Venom

Boredom + OnDemand = me watching VENOM. Actually, I was surprised that I enjoyed this. It is your typical beautiful boys & girls safe horror but it does have a couple of things going for it. First, it has a nice, original voodoo plot and great Southern atmosphere (it was filmed in Louisiana; Miramax dumped it in limited release after Hurricane Katrina...huh?). Second, it runs a quick 87 minutes. Finally, the film has a vicious streak in it. For example the end takes place in a underground vault. The possessed killer keeps the bodies of his victims in a pile. To escape capture the young heroine hides among the bodies. Her unconscious boyfriend is thrown on top of her. Later she has to witness her boyfriend wakes up and gets a screwdriver in the brain right in front of her eyes. Nothing groundbreaking but for a Dimension release, where it is expected the young lovers both survive, it certainly is. Director Jim Gillespie also did I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. It is kinda sad that it is 10 years later and he has come back full circle with his only "major" accomplishment in between being Stallone's D-TOX.

Of course this is no genre classic but once you've seen some more typical slasher flicks of this decade, you have to conclude that this movie is not all too bad in the long run. Nothing too memorable but just good enough to watch it.

People tend to call these type of movies new age horror but fact is that these type of movies have been around since the '70's, in which a bunch of hot looking teenagers are all getting killed one-by-one by a maniac/monster. Not much has changed since the '70's, except for its style and look.

Storywise this movie is of course very formulaic in every way thinkable. It's actually a very simple written story, in which basically nothing out of the ordinary happens and everything progresses and happens by the book. It's the type of screenplay that makes you go think; Hey! I could have written something like this! The story is perhaps the movie disappointing aspect of the movie, since otherwise this is basically a fine and well made movie.

I liked the movie its style. It kept the movie going, even though when nothing was happening in the movie. It makes sure that you never get bored. This is also thanks to the editing by Paul Martin Smith, who is a good editor but hasn't really been given good movies yet to proof his skills to the world. The directing was good and fresh and it seems to me that Jim Gillespie has some talent as a director, even though he hasn't really showed it with his movies yet. Perhaps he needs to stop working with Kevin Williamson, perhaps then he will get some better movie propositions to direct. Ever since "Scream" Kevin Williamson hasn't done a decent thing for the genre anymore but he's still active in the business, probably because he is the guy who wrote "Scream". For this movie he serves as a producer. He also wrote the previous Gillespie directed movie "I Know What You Did Last Summer", which became a success, though probably only because it got released so shortly after the success of "Scream" and the genre was hot and popular again at that time.

This is not the type of horror movie that should ever scare you, it's more a movie that entertains with its horror, perhaps of the reason that everything happens in such a predictable way. But Jim Gillespie obviously understands the genre though and knows what is important. So there is some gore and good make-up effects as well as a good 'killer'. You don't really ever start to care about the rest of the characters though, mainly because they remain so superficial and obviously also aren't being played by the most talented actors.

The movie brings zombie movies back to its roots; Voodoo. The earliest zombie movies, from the '20's on, always featured voodoo themes, whenever zombies were involved with the main story. Just too bad that the didn't really used much of the voodoo concepts to make this movie a bit more interesting and original to watch.

It's enjoyable enough for the fans of the genre and certainly not as bad as everyone tries to make you believe it is.

6/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I saw this movie at a screening as well and it must have been a different version than the reviewer who thought it was "pure $hite". While the acting for the most part is typical teenager and a little disappointing except for the bad guy, the film looks fantastic, the actions sequences are great as well as the kills, some of which were hard to watch due to their realism. In this version at least, the cheesy special effects seem to be gone or at least vastly improved from what the other reviewer saw. It moves pretty well except for a few scenes of obligatory explanations regarding the voodoo deal and "teen angst", but there are a couple of really good scares as well as a good sustained overall tension throughout. The kills are brutal for the most part with one exception thats kind of lame, but the fight sequence close to the end is especially effective and looks just great as well as what has to be some new scenes, possibly even a new ending, since the lighting and overall look is so different from the rest of the film, but it still looks great. In my humble opinion it's definitely worth seeing and an R rating based on the blood and gore if thats what you expect from a horror movie. Gillespie definitely knows how to make an audience squirm.

Yes this brings back memories, the times were movies that were classified under horror were rated R. It also gets credit for having two slasher movies come out in the same week, though technically speaking, Cry Wolf isn't a slasher.

The movie would have probably done much better during the 80s, a time when a Friday the 13th sequel hit the screens so many times, people lost count. The movie is your typical, teens outside in a wild area (this time a swamp instead of the woods) and are stalked and brutally murdered off by a killer who is literally unstoppable.

If you want to go see a movie were people get killed and their is a lot of blood and gore, then go see this now. If you want a movie that has good acting, great story, and is smart and suave, hold off of this and check out Cry Wolf.

Or better yet, try to go out and see booth.

I liked it and thought it had a good story line. I really liked the Ray character he was pretty scary right from the start and just makes you think about the don't judge a book by its cover saying. The effects where done well, the snakes were cool, and the acting was better than some of the low budget movies I have seen. I've seen a lot of horrors as I love a good horror and I enjoyed this one. People should stop being so fussy and just enjoy the movies, unless it is a shocker like low budget ones usually are, Example: Vampire Assassins.

I would recommend people that like horrors to see this movie.

Kat.