La cara oculta (2011)

Directed by:  Andi Baiz

Writers: Hatem Chraiche Ruiz-Zorilla, Andi Baiz (screenplay), Hatem Chraiche Ruiz-Zorilla, Arturo Infante (story)



If by any chance this is the first time you hear about this movie, immediately proceed with the following steps:

1) Read the rest of this text (it's completely spoiler free),

2) By all means avoid watching any trailers or reading any spoiler non-free reviews,

3) Promptly get the movie and watch it immediately because it absolutely rules!

Here's roughly what happens in the first half an hour or so: This guy Adrian, a young (and apparently very attractive to women, lucky bastard) Spanish orchestra conductor, gets dumped by his girlfriend Belen via a video message. Completely dumbfounded, he goes to a bar to drown his sorrow and there he meets a hot as hell young waitress called Fabiana, whom he promptly picks up, because he can. Lucky bastard. You would think he would spend some time mourning his previous relationship, but noooooooooooooo sir, this girl (whose hotness I can't stress enough) moves with him in what seems to be a matter of days. Lucky bastard.

 

Anyway, what I should mention is that all this takes place in a large house in Colombia, near its capital Bogota, the house which Adrian rents because he prefers the peace and quiet of the country to the city's... whatever the hell is the opposite of peace and quiet. To get back to the story, Adrian may have solved the lack of girlfriend problem, but other troubles kick in. First of all, the police are on his trail - as Belen apparently had never left the country, she's pronounced missing and guess who's the prime suspect? As if that wasn't enough, strange things happen in the house, mainly in the bathroom when Fabiana's using it (which, fortunately for us, she does quite often). Strange noises, water turning hot for no apparent reason, waves in the water in the sink when it should be perfectly still, et cetera, all that prompts Fabiana to think the house may be haunted. That's more than enough to give stress even to someone who picks up women so easily as Adrian, lucky bastard.

 

While this may sound rather mundane, the movie's structure and things that happen after that are anything but. Fabiana is scared of the house, but she also suspects that Adrian may still love Belen, he reassures her, blah blah, and than suddenly we see a ghostly face in the mirror and we are thrown back in time to get the explanation for all that's happening. We see Belen and Adrian, apparently a very happy couple, moving from Spain to Colombia because of his job and renting that awfully big house from some German lady. But that house also has a very interesting secret, which will become known to Belen during a conversation with the landlady, and it will kick everything in motion. Prepare yourself for a wonderfully conceived and directed story that's full of twists, it grabs you and won't let go until the ending, but also be prepared for a big emotional investment. I'm not talking about some teenage melodrama crap - this movie will have characters fall into grave dangers because of completely stupid small mistakes and you will probably very often find yourself rooting for them to overcome them. "No, no, watch that, watch it... nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!", "The mirror, look in the mirror!!! Yesssssssssssssssss!!!", "What the hell are you doing, you stupid bitch!!!??!?!?!?!?!" are some of the comments I made during some of the more tense moments in the film.

 

I simply cannot recommend this movie enough. If the greatly written and original story enhanced by good performances is not enough for you, then two beautiful female leads should persuade you. By the way, if you've seen this film and liked it, by all means check out the wonderful French film with Audrey Tautou called He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, which has a structure similar to this movie (same events shown from the perspectives of two main characters, where the shift of perspectives suddenly gives a very dark tone to what we have seen previously).

Pandemic (2009)

Directed by: Jason Connery

Writer: Aaron Pope

 

This movie begins with a man riding a horse and then dying a horrible virus-like death. He didn't even live enough to see out the opening credits, which I imagine was very disappointing to him. Soon after that, a young veterinarian Sydney visits a farmer named Spenser, whose filly is suffering a horrible agony, as if something is eating her skin. Spenser mercifully kills her, but that's not nearly the end of it. Soon other similar deaths start to occur all around the small county of Diablo, New Mexico. It's not long before military arrives and quarantines everything, which is the moment you know crap hit the fan. But the truth is even more terrifying than it looks (insert The Twilight Zone melody).

 

First of all, what really sucked about this movie is that it's actually not horror, but a thriller. The infected people simply die, without turning into crazy bloodthirsty zombie-like creatures. The same goes for animals. Imagine if the authors were brave enough to turn this into a movie about zombie horses! One can only dream...

 

Anyway, what happens next is not a large scale apocalyptic pandemic scenario (despite the movie's title), but a rather low key story about two main characters trying to get to the bottom of the things. Was everything just an accident or is the truth even more terrifying? (insert The Twilight Zone theme again) Sydney is calm and rational, while Spenser is an (apparently) crazy conspiracy theorist who blames the Government for everything. Sydney doesn't take him seriously at the beginning, but when the military forces blatantly attack them on the road in the night, she has to at least consider his side of the story. The truth is of course more horrifying than any of us could have imagined.

 

If you visit the IMDb page for this movie, you will see a low grade and a flood of bad reviews, criticising the story, the direction and pretty much everything else. Now, you can't really argue much against it, this is certainly far from the best movie ever made, but I found it a decent time waster. The reason is probably that I'm a sucker for the conspiracy theories and I found the two leads not too disgusting. I also liked the ending, where (spoiler) it turns out that the truth was even more terrifying than a Japanese long-haired ghost (end of spoiler), and for that I even forgave the lack of zombies, or horror in general. But, the problem for the filmmakers is that not everyone is as tolerant as I am, so I think the low grade is probably because the movie didn't feature any zombie horses.

The Facility (2012)

Directed by: Ian Clark

Writer: Ian Clark

Seven people volunteer as guinea pigs for the testing of some powerful new drug. They are taken to a remote facility, far away from any road or city, and have to stay there for two weeks, while the effects of the drug are tested. You won't believe it, but bad stuff happens.

 

One by one, the people start experiencing the horrible side effects of the drug that include, but are not limited to, violent behavior. The beauty of the facility's remote location is that they can't leave, so they have to wait for the next day and hope that someone will come to the rescue (of course, the phones aren't working and there's no Internet access). But that's not the end of it - any possibility of organizing into a group is effectively ruined by the fact that they have no idea who got the placebo and who the real drug, so they can't predict who's going to snap next.

 

The story offers no big surprises and earth-shattering plot twists, but it's believable, the characters (with the exception of one or two) are not irritating and the director did a good job of conveying the feeling of tension and paranoia. This is a low budget movie that uses the handheld camera a lot, but it's mostly justified by the context and the low budget doesn't really show. It seems to me that British filmmakers pay more attention to the cinematography than the Americans (of course, I'm referring strictly to this type of film). All in all, this is certainly no [REC] or John Carpenter's The Thing, but it's a good little debut movie that I think will satisfy most B-horror lovers who, like myself, are tired of the flood of cheap crappy found-footage films that comes our way for the past few years. Never trust the pharmaceutical industry, those people are evil!

The Kovak Box (2006)

Directed by: Daniel Monzón

Writers:  Jorge Guerricaechevarría, Daniel Monzón

Timothy Hutton plays a sci-fi writer who arrives on an island in Spain to participate in a conference or something. Everything's wonderful at first, but strange things quickly start happening. First there's a mysterious and disturbing video sent to him to his hotel room, then the unexplainable suicide of his girlfriend, who jumps off a window for no apparent reason. Just as Hutton's about to leave the island, he meets a young girl who also attempted suicide in the same way as his girlfriend. She claims that someone's after her. At first Hutton doesn't believe her, but then there's another suicide right on the airport, so they join forces in an attempt to find out whoever the hell wants to kill her and discover what the hell is going on.

 

This is one of those mystery movies that are wonderful at the beginning, when there's a building tension, a sense of paranoia, conspiracy and all that stuff. It's also competently directed and the characters are likeable. However, as it usually happens, the mystery itself is much more interesting than its solution. Once we find out the reason behind all that, it boils down to a rather conventional bad guy vs. good guy showdown. Near the end there's a potentially great mass suicide scene that unfortunately wasn't directed very well, so its impact (and the one of the movie itself) was greatly reduced.

 

 

A Haunting At Silver Falls (2013)

Directed by: Brett Donowho

Writers: Cam Cannon, Rachel Long, Brian Pittman

 

This starts off like a fairly standard ghost picture. Our heroine is a young girl who lost her parents, so she's staying with her aunt and her husband and one night she finds a ring that she puts on and can't take off later. Immediately after that she starts having a heavy case of ghost haunting - apparently, she's being chased by the spirits of two long gone twin sisters who want their damn ring back.

 

She's not exactly getting along with her aunt (or anyone else, come to think of it) and her only solace is a her nerd boyfriend who's a spitting image of a teen version of Eli Roth. However, soon it turns out that the spirits that haunt her don't mean harm - in fact, their father had been wrongfully accused for killing them and they are trying to lead her to the real perpetrator.

 

To me this idea was very appealing. With everyone (especially her relatives) acting more and more strange, it soon turns out that the only persons she can trust are - the dead twin sisters. It doesn't happen very often that you root for ghosts against the living people, so this movie has a point for originality because of that. Also, I quite liked the middle part of it, because it had a very nice kind of tense atmosphere where everyone seemed to be after our heroine.

 

However, everything falls apart at the ending, which is confusing and leaves heaps of questions unanswered. It's not the Michael Haneke kind of open ending, where you have to figure out what happened yourself (like in Hidden, for example) but rather a shining example of sloppy writing.

 

Still, this all makes for a rather pleasant and interesting viewing. If you liked this movie (and even if you didn't) I heartily recommend you watch Frank LaLoggia's Lady in White, a wonderful little film with somewhat similar story in a more Stephen King-like setting.

In 3 Tagen bist du tot 2 (2009)

Directed by: Andreas Prochaska

Writers: Agnes Pluch, Andreas Prochaska

In 3 Tagen bist du tot was a completely generic Austrian slasher without a single trace of innovation over the already infinitely repeated formula. I was pretty confused when I heard about the sequel, wondering what could they possibly do to make it even less original than the first film (since, as we know, that's what sequels are for). For better or for worse, Andreas Prochaska decided to make a completely different film. While the first part was about a bunch of teenagers getting offed one by one by a mysterious killer, this one puts one single character in a situation heavily inspired by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and similar films.

 

It's one year after the events of the first film and Nina, the heroine, tries to put the traumatic death of all her friends behind and lead a normal life. However, she receives a mysterious call for help from Mona (the only other survivor, it's the one that impaled herself in the first film, unfortunately without success). She promptly returns to her hometown and finds that Mona and her father have left home, which is now inhabited by some Chinese people. Continuing with her quest, Nina will find herself in an isolated hotel run by a family of weirdos and will have to use all her skills to survive.

 

The first part of the film plays like a pretty nice mystery, with director Andreas Prochaska taking things slowly and using the wonderful Austrian winter landscape to create some memorable shots and accentuate the lead character's isolation and crap like that. However, while this is by no means bad, whoever watched the first film will want to see some killings and it takes almost 70 minutes for the first person to bite the dust. Also, even outside of the subjective perspective of a bloodthirsty slasher fan, the first hour definitely contains some overlong scenes which serve no purpose.

 

Fortunately, things get better. Immediately after the breaking of the ice, people start dying left and right and killings are really gruesome and at times very explicit (shows that Prochaska has learned quite a few things between the two films). Heads are beaten to a pulp, eyes are gouged out and don't even get me started about male reproductive organs (!). Alas, the fun part ends all too soon.

 

While by no means a masterpiece, this is a satisfying movie which even made me think it would be cool if Andreas Prochaska made another horror. The things that lower the overall grade are the aforementioned first half, which is too slow, a scene of full frontal male nudity and a scene where Nina takes a hot bath - with her clothes on! Oh yeah, there's also this cop from the first part. He doesn't run over anyone here, but he's involved in the most unconvincing scene in the film - without getting into too much detail, his car is supposed to be stuck in the snow and it doesn't look bloody stuck at all.

In 3 Tagen bist du tot (2006)

Directed by: Andreas Prochaska

Writers: Thomas Baum, Andreas Prochaska

 

In 3 Tagen bist du tot, or You Will Die A Horrible, Horrible Death In Three Days, You Mofo!!!11 Okay, I did improvise the translation a bit, but the essence is the same. The key part is that you're going to be dead in three days. Three, not seven. Eat that, Samara!

 

Unfortunately for the killer in this movie, he (or she) is a completely ordinary man (or woman) and lacks the cool superpowers like being able to come out of a TV screen and stuff. Oh, yeah, and the movie is crap, which might also be considered a problem in some circles.

 

The only thing that sets this Austrian slasher apart from the myriad of others is that it's, well, Austrian. If IMDb's to be trusted, it's the first one to come from this country that gave us, say, Adolf Hitler. Not that it brings much difference, anyway - the language is different but everything else you've seen millions of times. A group of friends start receiving scary messages! Gasp! They start dying! The horror! They desperately seek for a clue. A mystery! Could it perhaps be caused by something from their past??? Sure enough, after about an hour they finally remember something that should have been so damn obvious from the start (obvious to them I mean, not to the audience, because it's never mentioned in the movie prior to that point).

 

The story sucks, the characters are every bit artificial and annoying as their average American counterparts and even the killings leave a lot to be desired. Many of them are off screen, most of those that we do see are boring, so there are only two scenes that stand out. One is the only nice murder scene in the movie, that includes the neck of a victim and a broken edge of an aquarium. The other is an unintentionally hilarious moment where some stupid bitch tries to run away from the killer, falls off the balcony and impales herself. However, even the impact of that otherwise great scene is taken away by the fact that she survived that. Boring! Another scene that was cool and unintentionally funny is when this stupid cop hits a girl with his car. Unfortunately, the director failed to realize the huge comic potential in his story and decided to make a "serious" movie. A fail if there ever was one.

 

Amazingly, for some inexplicable reason, this thing has a sequel (!) and I'm forced to watch it by my OCD. On the other hand, if you value your time, skip this one.

Bloodmoon (1996)

Directed by: Tony Leung (not THAT Tony Leung, I presume)

Writer: Keith W. Strandberg

Here's a martial arts movie posing as a thriller. Or is it the other way around? Whatever the case, the fighting part of the movie is rather good, while everything else is pretty much horrible.

 

The structure is typical of serial killer movies: There's this guy that kills people left and right. In charge of the police investigation is a funny black guy who's of course unable to find the killer, so the chief of police (Frank Gorshin in yet another gratuitously over-the-top performance reminiscent of his Batman days) asks a retired detective (Gary Daniels) for help in order the prevent the crazy maniac from killing everyone on the planet and causing an apocalypse. Of course, the victims are not randomly selected and finding the connection between them means finding the killer and it will also give Gary Daniels an opportunity to win back his wife who's pissed off about something, blah blah blah... Fairly standard stuff, without a trace of innovation of any kind.

 

However, what's of interest here is the way the murders are committed - each of the victims is a champion of some martial arts discipline and the killer is beating them in their own discipline before killing them. He's like Michael Phelps among the serial killer martial artists. It should also be mentioned that he wears a dreadfully silly costume and he's a computer wizard who teases the police by sending them cheesy provocative messages.

 

The fights are numerous and well choreographed, which comes as no surprise since pretty much everyone involved in the movie is a martial artist of some kind (this includes the director, the writer and all the lead actors). Unfortunately, there are some scenes where nobody's fighting and instead they're trying to talk and what not and it's really embarrassing. The highlight of this cheesiness is the scene where Daniels wins back his wife. I blushed during that one even though I was completely alone. Having someone walk in while you're watching this scene is worse than being caught watching porn by your grandmother. Everything except fighting is cliché after cliché and it gets really boring and tiring after a while. If you're a fan of martial arts, I recommend fast forwarding through these scenes and if you're not, skip the movie altogether.

Exam (2009)

Directed by: Stuart Hazeldine

Writers: Simon Garrity (story), Stuart Hazeldine (story and screenplay)

Well, if you read the title and hoped for a horror story where an university exam quickly turns into a total carnage when a professor starts murdering the students who cheat in horribly nasty ways, you'll be disappointed to discover that's actually just a clever mystery movie that features less than 20 dead bodies. Oh, well...

 

Exam actually doesn't have anything to do with universities - it's about a job interview for an extremely powerful company. Eight candidates are put in a room and given a pencil and a piece of paper each. The invigilator, played by Colin Salmon, tells them that there's only one question and only one answer and he gives them the simple instructions: 1) Whoever damages their paper will be disqualified, 2) Whoever tries to contact him or the guard will be disqualified, and 3) Whoever leaves the room will be disqualified. I paraphrased a bit, but those are the general guidelines. However, for the candidates it is extremely important to remember (and follow) the exact way the invigilator phrased the rules.

 

The exam starts, the invigilator sets the timer to 80 minutes and leaves the room (but will reappear quite a few times through flashbacks) and the people are left alone with their papers and the guard who stands quietly by the door. Then they turn their papers to see what the question is, only to find out they are completely blank. And here's where the fun begins. It's not a simple matter of answering the question, they have to find the question first.

 

One woman starts to write something like a motivation letter and is promptly thrown out by the guard (a note for the more bloodthirsty readers: she's not decapitated, shot, or even murdered at all, just escorted out of the room). This is when the other candidates realize they have to pay extremely close attention to the invigilator's instructions. Their first discovery is that anything that's not explicitly forbidden is allowed - so they can freely talk to each other. At first they think that the infamous question must be hidden somewhere on their papers, so they start to analyse the surroundings and try to find a way to get the bloody thing to appear. If you've ever played a point and click adventure, you're on a familiar ground.

 

The strength of this movie lies not only in what its director/writer Stuart Hazeldine does, but also in what he avoids. With a setup like this, there's a number of clichés the movie could have fallen into. For example - a there-can-be-only-one type of contest where the characters discover that only one of them will win and all others have to die for some reason. Or that they all are going to die because they share some connection or a dark secret, which is the very reason why they are here in the first place. Or that the mysterious organisation is really evil and they do some weird experiments on humans or something like that. Instead, (at least for the most part) there's not a question of anyone dying - it's just about solving a mystery of the missing question and getting a job.

 

You might think this takes out a huge amount of suspense, but you would be wrong. First of all, the mystery itself is very interesting. It keeps you guessing from the first scene to the last and it packs quite a few nice surprises when our heroes come up with progressively more imaginative potential solutions, only to find them completely useless as the question stubbornly refuses to appear. So, even if human lives weren't at stake at all, we have an enjoyment of a nice little enigma without an obvious solution. However, we find out that for some of the characters getting this job is extremely important. Through some cleverly written dialogues, which give us enough information to understand the character motivation, but avoid unnecessary infodumps, we are informed that some kind of pandemic is happening outside, that many people have died, and that some of the candidates have had close encounters with the virus. The reason why they need the job is closely related to the true nature of the mysterious company, which is slowly revealed as we approach the end of the movie.

 

The story is very well written and, as I've mentioned before, is somewhat reminiscent of the point and click adventure games, where characters have to solve some problem by closely analysing their environment and, if necessary, combining different objects. The great part of its appeal comes from the way the characters are kept in total darkness as to what exactly do they have to do. They try something and it doesn't work. Then they try something else and it also doesn't work. Then another thing, and it doesn't work, too. In the process, some of them are disqualified either by making stupid mistakes, or by being tricked by someone else. Then suddenly they (and we) realize that the movie is almost over and they still haven't found the question. Is there a question at all? How many can be accepted at all? Would they all have passed if they had just sat in their places the entire time and avoided breaking the rules? So by constantly keeping you guessing about the nature of the whole thing, Hazeldine skilfully prevents you from complaining about the body count being lower than in a Yoshihiro Nishimura movie.

 

When it comes to the characters, there aren't many surprises there - there's a usual irritating I'm-so-smarter-than-you-so-I'm-gonna-boss guy who promptly takes the spotlight, along with some predictably tame women, but it will turn out that some of the other people are prepared to do much, much more than it seems at first. A nice touch here, and one that also adds to the detachment of the setting from our regular world, is that the characters avoid using real names and instead invent nicknames for themselves. When the nickname moment came, I thought "Of course, now they're gonna screw it all up and instead of using some obvious thing like skin colour, they're gonna go for some politically correct crap!", but I was again pleasantly surprised when that irritating white guy from the beginning of the paragraph immediately named them Black, White, Brown, Brunette, Blonde, etc. One of the ladies complained about this, to which I immediately yelled "Shut up!" at her, and fortunately the other characters ignored her, so the politically incorrect nicknames remained.

 

Obviously, I can't say much about the ending without spoiling it, so here are just a few general remarks: Both the mystery of the question and the point of the entire exam are explained, along with the motives of the recruiting organisation, and I liked the explanation. The nature of the question is not contradicted by anything that happened earlier in the movie, so there's no cheating on the part of the authors. So it's not one of those movies that end with another mystery (like Cube) or an earth shattering plot twist that you'll never forget as long as you live (like Saw), but the conclusion is logical and doesn't ruin the preceding events.

 

The atmosphere has a nice otherworldly quality to it. I have already mentioned the lack of character names (that always works well), but other things also must be mentioned. The soundtrack uses some great ambient music that goes very well with the progressively revealed apocalyptic nature of the whole thing. It never tries to jump in front and grab your attention, but instead does its job of providing a good atmospheric background. Second, the entire movie takes place in a single room. We get a few glimpses of the adjoining hallway, but other than that there's not a single exterior scene. The examination room doesn't have windows (obviously) and even the beginning of the movie, which shows the candidates preparing for the exam, is done entirely in close-ups, so it doesn't show any of the surroundings. It can't be stressed enough how risky this is - if you choose to put an entire movie in a single room and provide the information about the outside world only through dialogue, you can easily end up with a boring piece of crap, unless you are Alfred Hitchcock or Sidney Lumet. The fact that Hazeldine managed to pull this off speaks volumes. I'm glad that the majority of the viewers seem to share my opinion, as Exam has a pretty high IMDb rating. So, Stuart, when's the next movie coming out?

The Day (2011)

Directed by: Douglas Aarniokoski

Writer: Luke Passmore

 

Here's another siege movie that's set in a post-apocalyptic future just because why the hell not. Absolutely the same story could have been told in any setting, but this one is just so cool these days and besides it gives a perfect excuse for everyone feeling gloomy and depressed. Can't have a serious movie without a huge amount of pain, right guys?

 

However, even though The Day takes itself a bit too seriously, it's actually a perfectly watchable movie, mainly thanks to good actors, who somehow manage to alleviate the cheapness of the dialogues and generic characters. There are also some nice action sequences towards the end, but these suffer from extremely poor CGI blood, that's in sharp contrast with the overall pale, almost black and white photography.

 

One trap that the filmmakers managed to avoid is too much exposition. We follow a small group of characters who, through their conversations, do explain that some kind of apocalypse had happened (because, of course, actually showing us a destroyed city or some similar thing was clearly out of the question), but they never venture into overly detailed explanations. We also learn that they are trying to avoid some other people, but don't know exactly why until we learn it first hand later in the movie.

 

It seems that during or after the apocalypse most people turned into cannibals of some kind, and our five heroes are possibly the last normal human beings. They are going somewhere, occasionally finding shelter and food in abandoned houses, but never staying in one place for too long. The movie follows the events that screwed up the group, namely when it turned out that the house where they stayed for the night was a trap made by the cannibals.

 

Now, having a small group of survivors barricaded in a house, awaiting the attack of the cannibal hordes sounds like a scenario from heaven, but unfortunately those cannibals look and act exactly like normal people, except that they have some marks on their skin. So, the action scenes don't create any kind of feeling different from a regular action movie, and since the entire movie takes place in (and around) that one house in the country, there isn't any kind of special apocalyptic atmosphere. The most interesting thing is to follow the relations among the heroes themselves. Some nice plot twists happen (look for the scene with Shannyn Sossamom and the shotgun shells towards the end of the movie), nothing too original, but enough to keep you from falling into sleep. So, while I wouldn't recommend this movie for its (post)apocalyptic atmosphere, which is severely lacking, you can watch it for a decent (albeit totally unoriginal) story and solid performances.

Black Rock (2012)

Directed by: Katie Aselton

Writers: Mark Duplass (screenplay), Katie Aselton (story)

Oh, well, here's one that's not so bad, but you won't really miss much if you skip it. It's all been done before, and it's been done better.

 

The story is as simple as they get - three girls (two of which can't stand each other because one of them screwed the other's boyfriend a few years earlier) go to some deserted island to have some fun (not that kind of fun, you sick bastard!) and perhaps rekindle some childhood memories, I don't really know. Don't blame me, I watched this from my laptop and the sound was crappy and I could hardly understand a word they were saying.

 

Not that it all matters much - what's more important is that three guys unexpectedly appear and you pretty much know what will happen. One of the girls (played by the director herself) gets drunk and starts seducing one of the guys, but when they get to a solitary place in the woods, she changes her mind and the guy is understandably less than happy, so he, as any real man would do, starts to force his way in. Abby (that's the name of the girl) is understandably less than happy about this turn of events, so she, as any real woman would do, hits him in the head with a large rock, causing him to abandon this cruel world rather prematurely (well, that's the word his mother would probably use, on the other hand most people wouldn't feel his death was a terrible blow to society).

 

When his two friends find out about this, they are understandably less than happy, and they, as all real friends would do, go for a revenge (meaning: the killing of all three girls). Our heroines are understandably less than happy about this and a desperate fight for survival ensues.

 

While the movie was generally well directed (I will leave out an obvious sexist joke here), especially when it comes to the treatment of the actual violence, which had an impact, but wasn't overly graphic, there were some problems that marred its potential. First of all, for the most part, the tension is ruined by the bad treatment of the villains. The main one doesn't look terribly smart, but at the same time he's horribly over the top, while his sidekick is too tame. So, the paradox is, even though some rather bad things happen to the girls, we never feel the bad guys are really much of a threat. Katie and her writing partner Mark Duplass should have drawn much more influence from classics like The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance.

 

The screenplay has its ups and downs, but to explain it in detail would mean to spoil most of the movie. Generally, I think the whole cheating story should have been left out (after all, the viewers don't need to know the real reasons of the animosity between the girls) and some dialogs could have been improved. There are also some really stupid decisions by the characters, the most problematic of which is the attempt to reach a boat by swimming through the cold water. But, on the other hand, I'm thankful for this, since it leads to a totally unexpected scene, which we will call the freezing scene. This is my favourite part of the movie, for all the wrong reasons, hehehee. Anyway, I would also prefer a higher body count, but that's just nitpicking really.

 

Overall, a solid fight-for-survival (TM) story, not exactly The Hills Have Eyes, but certainly worth a look. Especially the freezing scene :-)

Naked Fear (2007)

Directed by: Thom Eberhardt

Writer: Christine Vasquez

 

I’m not very good with words and similar crap, so I often have hard time convincing someone to watch a movie I liked. For example, I used to tell everyone how The Signal is an absolute masterpiece, but no one took me seriously. Or Intouchables – “Hey, you really really REALLY have to see Intouchables, it’s a great French movie about a rich quadriplegic and a poor black guy who works for him as a caretaker...” to which the person I’m talking to reacts either with eyes rolling or a facepalm.

However, with Naked Fear it’s a sitter. Lend me your ears! I mean - eyes! OK, this movie contains a scene in which the lead actress is continuously naked for more than twenty minutes and after that pretty much bottomless for another ten (!) I guess that does the job unless you’re gay or female, but even then you should be able to appreciate the beauty of a naked human female form. My Bloody Valentine 3D and Lifeforce combined do not even come close to Naked Fear in this department! In fact, to my best knowledge (and if I’m wrong, by all means do not hesitate a second to inform me!), this might be the longest nude scene in film history.
 

In other news, this comes from Thom Eberhardt, who made some really cool movies in the eighties. The direction is good and the movie does contain some suspense – for example, when the naked heroine is running away from the bastard that’s chasing her, you’re rooting for her not to get killed, but you’re also hoping she won’t find any clothes for as long as possible. Seriously though, even without the infamous nude scene, this would have been a perfectly acceptable B-thriller. And WITH the infamous nude scene, there’s absolutely no excuse for not seeing it.