Decay (2012)

Directed by: Luke Thompson, Michael Mazur (co-director)

Writer: Luke Thompson

This film has not been authorized or endorsed by CERN. It is purely a work of fiction.

 

Is it now? Damn, and I thought all those zombies were real! What a disappointment!

 

Anyway, this is a really horrible horror film that takes place at the infamous LHC in Switzerland - surely you remember that place, a few years ago some kind of apocalypse was supposed to happen there but it failed miserably, as usual. Well, at least in this movie that bloody collider did some good - it didn't create any black holes that would swallow the planet, but it did cause a good old zombie outbreak.

 

I have to admit that I failed to understand anything in this movie. I had absolutely no idea who the main characters were (except that they were really annoying), what exactly was their job at CERN. There was also some professor that was playing some kind of a double game (that might be a spoiler, sorry), but I didn't understand what was his precise agenda. I also didn't understand how all those zombies came to existence. It might have something to do with me watching the movie on 4X for the purpose of this review, but if I remember correctly, I also didn't understand it when I saw it first, last summer. Hopefully it's the bad writing, but on the other hand maybe I'm just stupid.

 

Be that as it may, this movie fails on all accounts. While the story itself is passable (well, it's a standard zombie story, one of the coolest things in the world, you really have to work hard to mess that up), the screenplay is bad. The characters are idiots and in the moments of greatest danger they argue about who slept with who, who betrayed whom, who's an asshole (all of them) and stuff like that. The actors are even worse than in an average low budget movie and among them the final girl (TM) easily takes the cake. Rarely have I seen a creature so tragically robbed of any charisma, not to mention the acting talent. And when she gets all emotional with her new boyfriend and you are aware that it's still a loooong time till the end of the movie, that's a good test of your low budget horror endurance.

 

Basically, these people, who are students of some sort, are running down the LHC maintenance tunnels looking for a way to escape both from the building and the zombies. The writer/director Thompson occasionally throws at us some physics-related mumbo-jumbo to keep us entertained (or to show how cool he is), but it's not much relevant to the very simple plot. The direction also leaves a lot of room for improvement, with most of the scenes intended to be scary ending up being unintentionally funny. Also, I imagine Thompson cared about his characters more than I did, so while I was happy every time someone died, there's a possibility he intended those scenes to be serious.

 

After about an hour of chasing around through various tunnels and hallways, a welcome change of scenery happens at the very end, but it's all too brief to bring any substantial improvement. That ending was probably the only thing I liked in this movie and if they ever make a sequel, I'll seriously consider watching it, even after this train-wreck. Apparently, this movie was made by physics PhD students, which is a bit irritating. What makes them think that anyone can make a movie? It's a process slightly more complicated than "buy a camera and shoot some stuff" procedure. Imagine if some filmmaker who had never heard anything about physics since high school attempted to write a scientific paper. Doesn't work, eh? Well this is not much different.

 

On the other hand, I have to admit that maybe I'm being too much of a bitch here, even though the movie was very bad. First of all, it was made for a budget of 2000 pounds. How the heck did they managed to do that, I haven't a slightest idea. Just the tickets to Switzerland for the cast and crew would probably cost more. Anyway, for such a meager budget, the movie doesn't look entirely horrible and has some decent special effects. Secondly, the movie is free - you can download it from the company's website http://www.decayfilm.com/ Respect for that.

Frankenstein's Army (2013)

Directed by: Richard Raaphorst

Writers: Chris W. Mitchell, Miguel Tejada-Flores, Richard Raaphorst (original idea)

At first I was very skeptical about this movie - at least 95% of found footage films are pure crap. This lasted until the first monster appeared, when I thought "Hey, actually this doesn't look so bad!". After that came a "Wow!" and then another one and another one and this lasted to the very end.

 

The story follows a group of Russian soldiers, who face some really horrifying Nazi monsters in Eastern Germany towards the end of the second world war. The ever decreasing group of (anti)heroes stumbles upon a secret Nazi lab, where they find the explanation for the monsters' existence. Of course, one of the soldiers carries a camera and records everything.

 

As usual, the film gains nothing from being made in found footage style. The atmosphere is not improved one bit, while at the same time it imposes severe limitations on the narrative. Found footage films generally suffer from the "let's film everything even though we're dying left and right" and this one is no exception. The excuses the characters make to keep filming get progressively stupid. At the same time, it appears that monsters never attempt to attack the person holding the camera.

 

I also didn't like the portrayal of the soldiers. The film seems almost decidedly anti-Russian, so there are no sympathetic characters here. Everyone's either a murderer or simply insane or generally doesn't give a damn about anything. The identification with the protagonists is absolutely essential for this type of film, and yet they fail over and over again. Given this fact, some plot twists that follow (related to the identity and secret plans of some of the group members) have minimal to no impact. It's also interesting that none of the group members are played by actual Russians, so you can imagine what their accents sound like.

 

Having said all this, the movie simply wipes out all this weak points with its complete and utter coolness. You simply won't believe what kind of screwed-up creatures you're about to see here. I won't even attempt to describe them, my English is not good enough, though I suspect much better writers than me would have problems with that. The picture on the poster gives you some idea. Then, there's almost no CGI here, everything is done with the good old make-up effects. All those insane monsters, streams of blood flowing around, piled-up dead bodies, dirty old secret labs, mutilations, it's all real (so to speak). With all its drawbacks regarding the story and screenplay, visually this is a stunning work and deserves to be seen on a screen as big as possible. Thumbs up!

V/H/S 2 (2013)

Directed by: See below

Writers:  See below

 

The first V/H/S movie was pretty much a disappointment, at least given the names of some of the people involved. However, due to its anthological nature, it never got really boring, so I can't say watching it was a waste of time. Something similar goes for the sequel, but the quality of the stories varies much more here. Since there are only four stories (compared to 26 in The ABCs of Death), we'll look into each one of them briefly:

TAPE 49
(Written and directed by Simon Barrett)

The one that connects them all. Some people get into some house (which might or might not be the one from the first V/H/S, I don't remember), find some tapes and watch them. At the same time, we are made aware that something sinister is happening in the house, leading to a "shocking" twist at the end. Boring.

PHASE I CLINICAL TRIALS
(Directed by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett)

A filthy rich guy (played by Adam Wingard himself) gets a supercool fancy eye-camera implant, which unfortunately makes him see dead people (Haley Joel Osment, eat your heart out). He spends most of the time running around completely terrified after a huge number of jump scares, which creates some pretty funny moments. Then he's visited by a girl who hears dead people. And then bad stuff happens. This one is told completely in the first person POV, has some nice humor in it, so I guess I'd call it not bad.

A RIDE IN THE PARK
(Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale, written by Jamie Nash)

A guy goes for a nice bike ride in the park, only to fall victim to some zombies. He then wakes up as a zombie, forms a zombie party with some other guys and together they crash some child's birthday party. This one is also rather funny at times and it's interesting to see the events from a perspective of a zombie (the lead character has a camera on his helmet), however it drags in places and the birthday party chaos is not nearly as effective as it could have been.

SAFE HAVEN
(Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, story by Timo Tjahjanto)

By far the best story in the movie is also one of the most insane things I've seen in a long time. A film crew somewhere in Indonesia is making a documentary about a mysterious end-of-the-world sect, led by some obviously insane bastard. First they interview that insane bastard in a café or something, where he gives them a piece of his philosophy and then they persuade him to let them visit the place where his followers abide. Big mistake! After a somewhat slow intro, this quickly turns into a bloodbath of epic proportions, where randomly crazy stuff happens every few seconds. None of it makes much sense, but I guess the directors weren't exactly concerned about that - they wanted to give us a hilarious thrill ride, and boy did they succeed! This story was co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, the director of the mightily successful Raid, and I'm so glad he gave a shot at directing a horror. Let's hope he does a full feature one after Raid 2.

SLUMBER PARTY ALIEN ABDUCTION
(Directed by Jason Eisener, written by Jason Eisener and John Davies)

Some kids are playing pranks on each other and then they are attacked by aliens and everything goes to Hell. The stupidest and most boring story of them all, it consists solely of irritating kids screaming "Oh my God, did you see that, what is that, we're gonna die, woe are us!!!!!" and pointlessly running around trying to escape some equally boring aliens. I don't know why in the heck did they put this one at the end, to ruin the entire impression. Jason Eisener had previously made a great little short called Treevenge, which had a terrific idea and execution, which makes the complete lack of imagination in this one even more surprising.