I absolutely adored this short. It was one of the first I'd seen (since then I've been watching shorts a lot) and yet it remains one of the best. Probably, for me, the best. I had to go back and watch again, just because I wanted to look for clues. The actor does a very good job, an the ending is just brilliant I thought. You can kind of imagine what is coming, but still, the way it's done is just eerie. The director creates a great sense of tension, and it reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode. Check it out, especially if you like psychological horror. This is absolutely worth watching, and even if you don't like it (although I can't imagine anyone not liking it) it's only 5 minutes of your life.
Reviews
13 Reviews
Animus
(I) (2013)
Worst acting I've EVER seen, including in homemade horror on the internet
7 May 2014
Warning: Spoilers
This is a really bad movie. Really, really bad. It was obviously very low budget, you can tell by the film, but that doesn't always mean the movie will be bad. The story is ridiculous. Some kid is a patient in a mental hospital for children, it turns out he is the bastard son of the guy who runs the place, and his wife tells him to deal with the kid "one way or the other" which makes no sense because shes telling him to kill the kid. That's only one way. There is no other. So he tries and the kid kills everyone. Meanwhile, the woman telling this story worked there, and she said she knew the kid and took care of him for a while. Then he was moved to another floor and "she never saw him again." Three sentences later she says she saw him again, pulling bodies across a floor. The dialogue is horrendous. I mean it's really, really bad. When the group of students start driving to the hospital to film, the girl in the backseat and one of the guys next to her start arguing, and I thought to myself that no one in the world is this bad at talking. It's painful to watch. The actors have no chemistry, and the redhead is just the worst actress I think I've ever seen. I feel bad saying that but she really makes a bad movie so much worse. Her facial expressions are so stupid, and I have no idea how this girl is an actress. You could probably pull a random person out of a Wal-Mart and ask her to read some lines and she would do better. I don't know what other movies she's been in, maybe they're better and it's just this role (maybe they told her to seem unlikable and stuck up?) but it's just SO bad. I just wanted to hit her the whole time. I think she's supposed to be funny and hot but she comes off as neither. I don't think there are any redeeming qualities to this film- I know it's a first time effort for the director, so it's understandable that it's not great, but next time he needs to find better actors, because there are a lot of watchable movies with stupid plots. This isn't one. It's not one of those that is so bad it's funny either, it's just appalling, and I have no idea how it has a 3+ rating. There are a bunch of clichés, like when they get to the small town with the abandoned hospital most people are nasty and call them "city folk," one man says something about them hanging out with a "negro" and they'e all yelled at and warned not to go in the hospital because "the scandal along with the shut down of the mine nearly ended the town." Oh and at the beginning the unlikable redhead says "omg it's time for ghost chaser!" which is a reality show in which a guy named "Wes Carpenter" (I don't think Wes Craven or John Carpenter would want anything to do with this) literally yells at ghosts. He became a ghost chaser (probably a rip off of Supernatural by the way- in Supernatural there is a reality show called Ghost Chasers) when he was doing plumbing at a house and saw a ghost. Oh and there's an idiot ex boyfriend who tracks the girls phone by GPS and follows her to the hospital. Guess who dies first? His character is killed off about a minute after he shows up. Also there's one girl who has to pee a lot. We see her squat a lot. Every bad cliché in a horror movie is in this. There's a scene where two girls come out of interviewing someone and the unlikable girl and someone are having sex in the car, and they just stare through the window while talking about how awful it is. It's just awkward and bad. Do yourself a favor and watch ANYTHING else. It's just SO bad. Really bad. The special effects are awful. The music is bad, and this is literally the worst acting I have ever seen. EVER. I can't stress how bad this is. I love horror movies, and I forgive a lot, but I have honestly seen a LOT of better movies on YouTube done with iPhone cameras.
Contracted
(2013)
Really good
28 April 2014
I really likes this movie. I read some reviews on it (actually in the middle of the movie I started getting worried about how disgusting it was going to be so I went to check) and I cam across one that "without giving away any spoilers, if you watch the whole movie, the ending is a nice surprise and it explains a lot about other movies." To be honest I wasn't surprised at all, I knew exactly where it was going and what was happening to her, but even knowing what the "surprise ending" was (it's not really a surprise at all) this was still a great movie. And it did explain a question people probably have been thinking about for a while. I wasn't bored even for a second, and that happens with a lot of horror movies I've seen recently.
There are some graphic, gross scenes, but nothing too over the top, the director managed to do the gore perfectly, in my opinion, and not go to far. He managed to make it gross without turning it into a torture porn style movie, which it very easily could have been. The actors are really good. The main character not doing what she should wasn't because of stupidity, as we so often see in movies like this, but because she had serious issues, which we see even before the horror really starts. So her denial, even though most of us would do things differently, is still understandable.
Overall I found Contracted to be a nice surprise. I was going through Netflix this afternoon, came across it, watched it without ever having heard of it, and I'm so glad I did. This is now up there with some of my more recent favorite movies.
There are some graphic, gross scenes, but nothing too over the top, the director managed to do the gore perfectly, in my opinion, and not go to far. He managed to make it gross without turning it into a torture porn style movie, which it very easily could have been. The actors are really good. The main character not doing what she should wasn't because of stupidity, as we so often see in movies like this, but because she had serious issues, which we see even before the horror really starts. So her denial, even though most of us would do things differently, is still understandable.
Overall I found Contracted to be a nice surprise. I was going through Netflix this afternoon, came across it, watched it without ever having heard of it, and I'm so glad I did. This is now up there with some of my more recent favorite movies.
Antisocial
(I) (2013)
Social media will be the end of the world
10 April 2014
Warning: Spoilers
By half an hour in, I was wondering who possibly could watch this movie and not want to throw something at the screen. I read about the movie and it said a bunch of college students are holed up in their house while crazy events happen around them. That's not what happens, really, it's just a bunch of students holed up in a house while a virus spreads making everyone act like zombies. I didn't realize it was an almost zombie movie, and I'm pretty tired of zombies, I don't find them scary and I think they're played out. But every once in a while I'll see a zombie movie I like, so I stuck it out. They're not actually zombies though, they're not dead, they're just sick, and violent. For some reason the news in the movie says it's a biological terror attack, but in reality it's a virus spread by social media. Seriously. It comes through the cell phones of people messing around on "the social redroom" (facebook.) So there's that. Forget that it's literally impossible to spread a virus (a biological one) through a computer or a cell phone. It's like a computer virus that spreads to people if they spend too much time on social networking sites. This is explained at the end of the movie, which helps a little, but not really. The people in the movie don't realize how it spreads yet. They're all at a new year's party and a few of them spend most of the time with their friends on their phones or laptop. A bit of the movie we watch takes place on a screen on the screen. Then there's one guy who keeps saying "we don't know if he's infected" about 1) a friend of theirs who shows up at their door demanding to be let in with his nose and ears bleeding (the signs everyone says to watch for). He still wants to let him in, because "we don't know if that's what he has." Really? Then his friend who is in the house tells him he's sick, and says he has the symptoms, and he says it again. "We don't know if that's what you have." But then, when the girl in the house pukes, he thinks she has it. The one person with symptoms that don't fit the virus is the one person he assumes has it. This guy, by the way, is a medical undergrad student. There are some kind of interesting ideas, like when the dead die they basically become like computers themselves, or phones. I just can't get past the idea that if you look at a screen too much you will get a biological virus, because..no. The explanation is (SPOILER) that the site, and the infected, make your brain grow too big for your head. Even with that though, I probably would have enjoyed it more if the actors didn't act like such morons. They do in a lot of horror movies, but these guys are too dumb. And the ending doesn't really make sense, though I kind of liked it.
Cabin Fever: Patient Zero
(2014)
I really enjoyed this movie
9 April 2014
Warning: Spoilers
A lot of people are giving this movie bad reviews, and I don't think it deserves them. It's better than most horror movies I've seen lately. It's a gore-fest, like the original and it's sequel, but lacks the ridiculousness of the second. There are a few things I could have done without-at one point a guard is going to shoot one of the guys visiting the island for a bachelor party, so the outbreak would be contained, but when he pulls the trigger, his hand breaks off, flips up and around and lodges itself in his face. At another point during a fight, the infected stop acting like humans and start doing weird zombie moves (breathing heavy and arching their backs and rolling their shoulders while moving their tongues around) which seemed weird because up until a minute ago they were normal humans, and I've never seen a human do that during a fight. Then again, if I just had the skin pulled off my arms I don't think I'd have the strength to fight, so I guess at that point realism wasn't the goal. Also, for a containment lab, they had a really lax security system. (The guys lift up a metal thing over the window and then just break the window and walk right in. They're on an island, but I still think they'd probably have a fence, or at least an alarm, especially since the lab was on lock-down. Later we see that breaking the window wasn't even necessary, one of the guys presses a button on a keypad and the door just opens.) The other thing that bothered me is the way infected bodies were just left on the island they take care of the lab, but leaving bodies to rot on land would do as much damage as leaving an infected lab, especially since the movie made it clear the virus spreads from humans to rodents to fish without ever having to mutate. But besides that stuff, I really liked the movie. The actors were good, and I like that Sean Astin was in it, and was the carrier. Somewhere in my head I would like to think maybe he crossed movies, and gave Rider Strong the virus when they met in Borderlands, and then Ryder didn't get tortured to death. Instead he went back home and gave it to all his friends in Cabin Fever. (Obviously that's not what happened, I just liked the connection between the two actors and the fact that the other movie they were in together took place in a Spanish speaking country tourists travel to all the time.) Also, it helped explain my thoughts after the first film, which is one of my all time favorite horror movies just because of how surprisingly and horribly disgusting it was, but at the same time not so over-the-top gory that it comes off as unrealistic or cheesy. I wondered where the virus came from, but I didn't expect them to ever answer that. I'm so glad they did, and I can't wait for the next one, Outbreak.
State of Emergency
(2011)
Not a zombie movie, and not what I'd expected.
21 March 2014
This is a pretty decent movie. People keep comparing it to a zombie movie, and the set-up is similar to that of a zombie movie, but this is NOT a zombie movie. A chemical explosion causes people in a town to go mad. Someone complained that they can speak. Yeah, they can speak, and reason at times. Because they're not zombies.
I thought a few scenes were pretty creepy. The scene when the main character remembers the morning the explosion happens, for one. I have always been freaked out by movies with nuclear blasts or bombs, and even though this has neither, the explosion caught my attention, and the military being there...I believe this is a pretty realistic portrayal of what would happen in a situation like the one the characters face.
This isn't an action movie. It's more like a study of what people would go through if something like this happened. They're not out of food, they're in a pretty safe place, but they're stuck, and they're waiting for rescue. It's interesting. If you're looking for a zombie movie, you're not going to like this. But if you're just looking for a decent, creepy thriller to watch one night, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
I thought a few scenes were pretty creepy. The scene when the main character remembers the morning the explosion happens, for one. I have always been freaked out by movies with nuclear blasts or bombs, and even though this has neither, the explosion caught my attention, and the military being there...I believe this is a pretty realistic portrayal of what would happen in a situation like the one the characters face.
This isn't an action movie. It's more like a study of what people would go through if something like this happened. They're not out of food, they're in a pretty safe place, but they're stuck, and they're waiting for rescue. It's interesting. If you're looking for a zombie movie, you're not going to like this. But if you're just looking for a decent, creepy thriller to watch one night, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Evidence
(III) (2012)
I don't understand what everyone is complaining about
20 March 2014
Warning: Spoilers
I've been reading the reviews and I really think the majority of people who wrote reviews either weren't paying attention or otherwise are partially brain dead. The story is NOT confusing at all, it's actually pretty straightforward. There are NO ZOMBIES. THIS IS NOT A ZOMBIE MOVIE. One reviewer wrote that the monsters are monsters because "they were exposed to a virus or some DNA" and besides the fact that that is not how biology works, again, no one is "exposed" to anything.
The main premise of the film is that 4 young adults go camping, and things go horribly wrong. The guy who wrote the movie, Ryan McCoy, plays an aspiring documentary filmmaker (also named Ryan-all 4 major actors in the movie were called by their real names) and he is attempting to do a documentary about his friend, Brett. Before going further I want to point out that there are almost no boobs in this movie (one reviewer said something about "40 minutes of boobs later" which just causes me to think that he didn't even watch the thing before reviewing it) but at the beginning, while Ashley is packing, Ryan films her cleavage and she flashes him her nipples. For a split second. That's all the boobs in the movie.
So Brett, Ryan, Ryan's girlfriend Abby, and her friend Ashley borrow a friend's RV, and they drive up to a pretty secluded area up in some mountains. They hear some weird noises, see a weird looking creature in the woods, and everyone wants to leave but Ryan. He has the keys to the RV, so they stay. The creatures start stalking them, they ruin the RV, and so they're stuck in the woods.
We find out the creatures are coming from a testing facility presumably controlled by the government. There are no zombies, but when they run through you realize that the creatures were probably once human, or at least part human. There is one man in the facility in a hospital gown who acts crazy, and he makes the same sounds they heard in the woods. There are other creatures too. From what I understood, it is a bioengineering facility, and they'r making new creatures, some with human DNA (which is probably why some of the creatures were smart enough to do what they did the whole beginning of the film) but there are creatures other than the ones that were out in the woods as well, like a giant beetle-y bug that runs down a hallway. Some of the creatures that had seemed smart originally (the ones from the woods) do seem much less intelligent, but hey, some people are pretty stupid too, so maybe those creatures were created from the less intelligent people. I don't know. They don't explain everything, but that makes it better in my opinion.
I watch a LOT of horror movies, and I'm pretty picky I think. You don't see many movies like this. I don't even like zombie movies, they're overdone and they've become so mainstream that they're not even really scary anymore. So I repeat- this is NOT A ZOMBIE MOVIE. It's better. It's much more original. For a found footage film, they show a lot, it's not all just screams and crying and the audience guessing. It looks like it was made with a very low budget, but it's much better than SO many bigger budget horror movies I've seen. It's creepy, it's not torture porn, it's not a remake, it's not a haunted house movie, and there are no zombies. Just for that it stands out to me. But it's definitely worth watching. It's a movie that makes you think a little, Anyone who is confused by this movie just either wasn't paying attention, or has a problem when it comes to using their imagination at all. If you're looking for a movie with a premise you haven't seen much of recently, give this a chance. It's def worth checking out.
The main premise of the film is that 4 young adults go camping, and things go horribly wrong. The guy who wrote the movie, Ryan McCoy, plays an aspiring documentary filmmaker (also named Ryan-all 4 major actors in the movie were called by their real names) and he is attempting to do a documentary about his friend, Brett. Before going further I want to point out that there are almost no boobs in this movie (one reviewer said something about "40 minutes of boobs later" which just causes me to think that he didn't even watch the thing before reviewing it) but at the beginning, while Ashley is packing, Ryan films her cleavage and she flashes him her nipples. For a split second. That's all the boobs in the movie.
So Brett, Ryan, Ryan's girlfriend Abby, and her friend Ashley borrow a friend's RV, and they drive up to a pretty secluded area up in some mountains. They hear some weird noises, see a weird looking creature in the woods, and everyone wants to leave but Ryan. He has the keys to the RV, so they stay. The creatures start stalking them, they ruin the RV, and so they're stuck in the woods.
We find out the creatures are coming from a testing facility presumably controlled by the government. There are no zombies, but when they run through you realize that the creatures were probably once human, or at least part human. There is one man in the facility in a hospital gown who acts crazy, and he makes the same sounds they heard in the woods. There are other creatures too. From what I understood, it is a bioengineering facility, and they'r making new creatures, some with human DNA (which is probably why some of the creatures were smart enough to do what they did the whole beginning of the film) but there are creatures other than the ones that were out in the woods as well, like a giant beetle-y bug that runs down a hallway. Some of the creatures that had seemed smart originally (the ones from the woods) do seem much less intelligent, but hey, some people are pretty stupid too, so maybe those creatures were created from the less intelligent people. I don't know. They don't explain everything, but that makes it better in my opinion.
I watch a LOT of horror movies, and I'm pretty picky I think. You don't see many movies like this. I don't even like zombie movies, they're overdone and they've become so mainstream that they're not even really scary anymore. So I repeat- this is NOT A ZOMBIE MOVIE. It's better. It's much more original. For a found footage film, they show a lot, it's not all just screams and crying and the audience guessing. It looks like it was made with a very low budget, but it's much better than SO many bigger budget horror movies I've seen. It's creepy, it's not torture porn, it's not a remake, it's not a haunted house movie, and there are no zombies. Just for that it stands out to me. But it's definitely worth watching. It's a movie that makes you think a little, Anyone who is confused by this movie just either wasn't paying attention, or has a problem when it comes to using their imagination at all. If you're looking for a movie with a premise you haven't seen much of recently, give this a chance. It's def worth checking out.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
(2010)
Freddy isn't Freddy without Robert and Wes
4 July 2013
I want to start by saying (like so many did before me) I am a HUGE fan on the Nightmare on Elm Street Series. I saw the first one when I was 7, it was actually one of my first horror movies, if not THE first. I used to go to the video store and send my allowance on Freddy movies every weekend.
I was actually looking forward to this sequel. I knew it wouldn't be as good as the original, but I thought they could do some really cool things with it. I was extremely disappointed when I found out Wes Crave wouldn't have anything to do with it, but I was still going to give it a chance.
I was SO disappointed. I loved Freddy, even as a little kid. He was a child murderer in the original films. The molestation thing was not spoken. I read somewhere that Wes originally had it in mind for him to be a child molester, but at the same time the movie was being done, there was a story in the news about molestation, and he thought better of it. (Anyway, who could like a child molester? Not that we like murderers either, but I bet I would never have gotten a Freddy Doll for Christmas if he'd been a molester. Nor would I have wanted one. I wouldn't even have been allowed to watch the movies at 7 years old!) He made a good decision obviously, because Freddy became quite popular-they even sold Freddy pj's, and no one would have wanted THOSE for their kid if he'd been a molester. So anyway, that was disappointing, because I always liked Freddy-I wanted the good guys to win, but I still enjoyed Freddy. You can't like a child molester. So there was that. Although Jackie Earle Haley did do a good job portraying Freddy as evil, the idea of him being a child molester just threw me off.
The story wasn't great. The original had a good story, characters you liked..unlike other horror movies where there are just a bunch of generic kids getting sliced, you actually felt for the kids of Elm Street, especially Nancy. In this one they're just like the kids from every other slasher. I didn't really care if they made it to the end of the movie or not.
The one thing I thought was going to be awesome was the special effects. They could have done SO MUCH with the dreams! But they didn't. Most of the movie isn't in the dreams, and what is isn't very creative. There's one scene (it was in the trailer-this is what got me excited thinking they made some awesome dream sequences) where it snows inside. That was cool. I don't know why they didn't do more things like that.
I know they said they wanted to make a scary Freddy, because in the originals he started becoming kind of a trickster, and he joked around a lot. But there was no reason to reinvent Freddy from the first film, because in the original movie, Freddy was pretty scary. He made a few cracks ("I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy") but it was creepy. What they did in this film though was take parts of a few of the series and put them into one, so I guess I understand why they did it. I just think this movie would have been better if they'd gotten Robert Englund to play Freddy. To me, Robert IS Freddy, and I'd bet there are a whole lot of fans who would say the same.
I'll wrap it up now. If you want a good Nightmare on Elm Street, watch the original. I don't even consider this one part of the series. Any Freddy movie without the read FREDDY isn't worth watching.
I was actually looking forward to this sequel. I knew it wouldn't be as good as the original, but I thought they could do some really cool things with it. I was extremely disappointed when I found out Wes Crave wouldn't have anything to do with it, but I was still going to give it a chance.
I was SO disappointed. I loved Freddy, even as a little kid. He was a child murderer in the original films. The molestation thing was not spoken. I read somewhere that Wes originally had it in mind for him to be a child molester, but at the same time the movie was being done, there was a story in the news about molestation, and he thought better of it. (Anyway, who could like a child molester? Not that we like murderers either, but I bet I would never have gotten a Freddy Doll for Christmas if he'd been a molester. Nor would I have wanted one. I wouldn't even have been allowed to watch the movies at 7 years old!) He made a good decision obviously, because Freddy became quite popular-they even sold Freddy pj's, and no one would have wanted THOSE for their kid if he'd been a molester. So anyway, that was disappointing, because I always liked Freddy-I wanted the good guys to win, but I still enjoyed Freddy. You can't like a child molester. So there was that. Although Jackie Earle Haley did do a good job portraying Freddy as evil, the idea of him being a child molester just threw me off.
The story wasn't great. The original had a good story, characters you liked..unlike other horror movies where there are just a bunch of generic kids getting sliced, you actually felt for the kids of Elm Street, especially Nancy. In this one they're just like the kids from every other slasher. I didn't really care if they made it to the end of the movie or not.
The one thing I thought was going to be awesome was the special effects. They could have done SO MUCH with the dreams! But they didn't. Most of the movie isn't in the dreams, and what is isn't very creative. There's one scene (it was in the trailer-this is what got me excited thinking they made some awesome dream sequences) where it snows inside. That was cool. I don't know why they didn't do more things like that.
I know they said they wanted to make a scary Freddy, because in the originals he started becoming kind of a trickster, and he joked around a lot. But there was no reason to reinvent Freddy from the first film, because in the original movie, Freddy was pretty scary. He made a few cracks ("I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy") but it was creepy. What they did in this film though was take parts of a few of the series and put them into one, so I guess I understand why they did it. I just think this movie would have been better if they'd gotten Robert Englund to play Freddy. To me, Robert IS Freddy, and I'd bet there are a whole lot of fans who would say the same.
I'll wrap it up now. If you want a good Nightmare on Elm Street, watch the original. I don't even consider this one part of the series. Any Freddy movie without the read FREDDY isn't worth watching.
Nostrum
(2010)
Bad plot and very unrealistic portrayal of drug culture. Sorry, lots of spoilers.
14 November 2012
Warning: Spoilers
I'm going to start this by asking why it seems like most movie writers/directors who make movies about using drugs can't be bothered to take 5 minutes to google how people use the drug their movie is going to be about. As a recovering addict, this kind of stuff drives me crazy. Not every junkie walks around in torn up clothes, and I never once saw a heroin party, where ten or more people all use at the same time. These are addicts, and they wait for a party to all get high together? Again, maybe, but I actually went and googles it myself so I wouldn't do the same thing the writer did. Heroin is NOT a party drug. I know people share needles, but these kids obviously have enough money to buy dope without robbing people, so I would think between the ten of them they could come up with the $2.50 it costs to buy a bag of needles. Heroin addicts don't buy dope and wait until they get to a house with a group of people to do it, and they also don't do"needle graffiti" (in the dope "party" house at the beginning someone tagged a syringe on the wall). Also, there is no point in using a tourniquet unless you're shooting into a vein, which I didn't see any of them do. One of the junkies uses and then kills himself with a butcher knife he happened to have on him, and his friends all run and decide it's time to stop using.
OK so besides the unrealistic portrayal of junkies, which easily could have been fixed with 5 minutes of time spent online...there is a doctor who is making a cocktail meant to make junkies kill themselves. The 1st time we see this guy he's talking to a colleague, who tells him that one of the test animals bit off it's own arms and legs, to which is the result they want, but another test animal has killed all the others. (In response to this the doctor tells his colleague to try a mix of 25mg thorazine with diluted methadone. So the cocktail he's using to make junkies kill themselves is what they use in rehabs? Really?) The doctor then gets a call from a shady senator complete with dancing naked chick, complaining that the cocktail is turning junkies into killers, rather than what it's supposed to do, just make them kill themselves (bc they need to win the drug war) so he tells the doc to fix it, & make sure no one can trace it back to the senator. So now the doctor goes on a mission killing all the people he gave the dope to; the dealers, and whoever they sold it to. Because apparently leaving a wake of bloody bodies isn't conspicuous at all. At this point I have to wonder why they would make a drug that makes junkies suicidal in the first place. Just make some dope that kills them! This has been done before, it's not that hard to kill a junkie, just sell him some bad stuff. No need to spend all sorts of $ to come up w a drug to make them suicidal. I'm pretty sure that would be more likely to be investigated than someone just selling a bad batch of dope, because it's pretty obvious it's not an accident.
I guess because the whole premise so far wasn't unrealistic enough, the doctor gets a call and shows up at a crime scene. He walks up to a cop, and flashes the cop a card, saying he runs a drug prevention lab. Apparently that will get you clearance into a crime scene, and the doctor tells the cop not to let anyone else in until he's finished in there, bc he needs to rid the place of the bad dope...for whatever reason the cop seems okay with this, and he gets away with it.
So these stupid kids lock themselves into a house to get clean, but they have to have one more night of getting messed up. (Btw also these kids are doing dope like it's coke. People don't "need a hit" of heroin every 20 minutes.) They have some of the bad batch, and when one of the guys starts biting a windowsill (in the process breaking his teeth into fangs) and then he attacks one of his friends, and one of the girls says "we've all had bad trips before." No. Just...no. It's not acid. You can think you're going to OD but you don't have a bad trip" no heroin where you bite windowsills and attack people, it just doesn't happen.
It's pretty simple to guess where the movie goes from here. Since this drug both makes junkies kill themselves or kill everyone else, one of the chicks actually kills herself with a metal spoon. Chaos ensues, a bunch of kids running around trying to get out of the house they locked themselves in before they're all killed either by the murderous junkie or the crazy doctor.
This is NOT a good movie. All the mistakes and unrealistic crap would be forgivable if the movie was at least scary. But the characters aren't likable, even the death scenes, for those of you who watch horror movies for them, aren't very good. The first half interested me because I wanted to see how stupid one movie could actually be, by 35 minutes in I kept drifting off and had to keep backtracking. If you want to be entertained, you should probably look elsewhere. I've seen worse, but that's not saying much. It's not even bad in a way that you could enjoy laughing at it. It's not worth your time.
OK so besides the unrealistic portrayal of junkies, which easily could have been fixed with 5 minutes of time spent online...there is a doctor who is making a cocktail meant to make junkies kill themselves. The 1st time we see this guy he's talking to a colleague, who tells him that one of the test animals bit off it's own arms and legs, to which is the result they want, but another test animal has killed all the others. (In response to this the doctor tells his colleague to try a mix of 25mg thorazine with diluted methadone. So the cocktail he's using to make junkies kill themselves is what they use in rehabs? Really?) The doctor then gets a call from a shady senator complete with dancing naked chick, complaining that the cocktail is turning junkies into killers, rather than what it's supposed to do, just make them kill themselves (bc they need to win the drug war) so he tells the doc to fix it, & make sure no one can trace it back to the senator. So now the doctor goes on a mission killing all the people he gave the dope to; the dealers, and whoever they sold it to. Because apparently leaving a wake of bloody bodies isn't conspicuous at all. At this point I have to wonder why they would make a drug that makes junkies suicidal in the first place. Just make some dope that kills them! This has been done before, it's not that hard to kill a junkie, just sell him some bad stuff. No need to spend all sorts of $ to come up w a drug to make them suicidal. I'm pretty sure that would be more likely to be investigated than someone just selling a bad batch of dope, because it's pretty obvious it's not an accident.
I guess because the whole premise so far wasn't unrealistic enough, the doctor gets a call and shows up at a crime scene. He walks up to a cop, and flashes the cop a card, saying he runs a drug prevention lab. Apparently that will get you clearance into a crime scene, and the doctor tells the cop not to let anyone else in until he's finished in there, bc he needs to rid the place of the bad dope...for whatever reason the cop seems okay with this, and he gets away with it.
So these stupid kids lock themselves into a house to get clean, but they have to have one more night of getting messed up. (Btw also these kids are doing dope like it's coke. People don't "need a hit" of heroin every 20 minutes.) They have some of the bad batch, and when one of the guys starts biting a windowsill (in the process breaking his teeth into fangs) and then he attacks one of his friends, and one of the girls says "we've all had bad trips before." No. Just...no. It's not acid. You can think you're going to OD but you don't have a bad trip" no heroin where you bite windowsills and attack people, it just doesn't happen.
It's pretty simple to guess where the movie goes from here. Since this drug both makes junkies kill themselves or kill everyone else, one of the chicks actually kills herself with a metal spoon. Chaos ensues, a bunch of kids running around trying to get out of the house they locked themselves in before they're all killed either by the murderous junkie or the crazy doctor.
This is NOT a good movie. All the mistakes and unrealistic crap would be forgivable if the movie was at least scary. But the characters aren't likable, even the death scenes, for those of you who watch horror movies for them, aren't very good. The first half interested me because I wanted to see how stupid one movie could actually be, by 35 minutes in I kept drifting off and had to keep backtracking. If you want to be entertained, you should probably look elsewhere. I've seen worse, but that's not saying much. It's not even bad in a way that you could enjoy laughing at it. It's not worth your time.
Hellraiser: Revelations
(2011)
complete waste of time and an embarrassment to the hellraiser series
27 October 2012
Warning: Spoilers
I'm only giving this movie a 1 because you can't give it a zero. This is the worst sequel to a horror movie I've ever seen, and I have watched a LOT of garbage horror. I actually just read another review on this movie, and it reminded me how badly I was disappointed by it so I came on here, hoping that other people won't waste their time, and also hoping if no one actually goes out to rent this than the idiots who produced will regret their decision to make it. They were apparently going to lose their rights to the movie so they threw together a piece of crap with $300,000 and in 11 days. The acting is horrible-they took the blood going into the floor from the first movie and used that to make it kind of resemble a hellraiser movie, but it happens in some room where the main character is screwing a hooker and can hear the dead guy in the floor in his head saying "kill her, kill her." he does, with the puzzlebox (why the puzzlebox? i don't get it) then when the dead guy rises (from under the mattress, i guess they saved some $ on special effects that way) he narrates what's happening "the blood is bringing me back! bring more!" the characters narrate what's happening around them almost the entire movies. and when one of the men's faces gets cut off, his friend brings him inside and asks for towels. for his missing face. Oh, and the guy playing pinhead is no Doug Bradley. he does a terrible job. maybe it's not his fault, but if the guy who played pinhead in EVERY movie, even the direct to video silly ones, won't act in this one, that should tell you something. worst movie ever. no plot, just a bunch of talking and some face blood. don't waste your time.
Stay Alive
(2006)
at least get your game references right
17 August 2012
Warning: Spoilers
I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. As a gamer, a HUGE fan of survival horror games (Silent Hill especially), and someone who absolutely loves supernatural horror, I thought this movie had the potential to be like a dream, or nightmare, come true. Unfortunately, the writers of the movie must not really be into gaming, and even that would be okay if the movie creators actually did a little research. Stay Alive is a beta version of a computer game, Frankie Muniz uses an alienware laptop, but it's played with playstation controllers (I think-at least its a PS controller on the movie cover). The tester plays the game with a couple of friends, and if you die in the game, you die for real. (I even found the tag line of the movie annoying.."you die in the game, you die for real" sounds too much like a nightmare on elm st's +you die in your dreams, you die for real.")
I was disappointed in this movie in the first ten minutes. The main character, Hutch, works as some kind of clerk in an office. His boss calls him in to ask advice on the game he's playing, Silent Hill 4. He needs to know how to beat the last boss. Hutch tells him to "dop the hyperblaster-it has unlimited ammo but drop it anyway-then go down the stairs to the boss, and she'll just die. First of all, no last boss just dies when you do nothing. Second of all, there is no hyperblaster in SH4. Finally, the last boss in SH4 is a man, not a woman. I realize I may sound like a nerd, but I honestly think if you're going to make a movie about a survival horror game and you want to reference a game, at the very least wikipedia it first.
So anyway Hutch ends up with Stay Alive, and he gets together with some gamer friends and one girl who has never played anything before, and they all play. These are supposed to be serious gamers. So at one point Hutch's character is standing in a room with a fireplace and a closet, and there's a GLOWING LIGHT coming out of the closet and the door is ajar. Pretty obvious you'd think.. but he doesn't see it. The girl who had never played a game before goes "wait! wait! the wardrobe!' to which Hutch responds "NICE eye!!!!" The friends then praise her for noticing the completely obvious hidden room. If he's a serious gamer and he didn't know to check the door with the glowing light coming out of it..he should find a new hobby.
Besides silly things like that though, the movie isn't all bad. I wouldn't call it scary, but it was a cool idea. The story wasn't explained as well as I would have liked, and there were some things left unanswered (I noticed people saying they never said who made the game, but they did) for example, the cops were looking to arrest Hutch bc he knew all the murder victims. When the cops show up at the house his friends are hanging out in, they run (Nevermind that Hutch had an alibi for all the murders, apparently knowing people is all it takes to be thrown in jail.) and at the end of the movie, I guess the cops just give up? There were a few loose ends that were kind of annoying. Altogether though it's worth a watch. The idea was solid, the game scenes weren't bad, and if this actually comes out as a game, I would definitely play it. As a gamer it offended me a little, but as a horror movie fan I liked it, because it was a unique idea and hasn't been done to death. Overall I'm glad I watched it, but I don't think I would sit through it again.
I was disappointed in this movie in the first ten minutes. The main character, Hutch, works as some kind of clerk in an office. His boss calls him in to ask advice on the game he's playing, Silent Hill 4. He needs to know how to beat the last boss. Hutch tells him to "dop the hyperblaster-it has unlimited ammo but drop it anyway-then go down the stairs to the boss, and she'll just die. First of all, no last boss just dies when you do nothing. Second of all, there is no hyperblaster in SH4. Finally, the last boss in SH4 is a man, not a woman. I realize I may sound like a nerd, but I honestly think if you're going to make a movie about a survival horror game and you want to reference a game, at the very least wikipedia it first.
So anyway Hutch ends up with Stay Alive, and he gets together with some gamer friends and one girl who has never played anything before, and they all play. These are supposed to be serious gamers. So at one point Hutch's character is standing in a room with a fireplace and a closet, and there's a GLOWING LIGHT coming out of the closet and the door is ajar. Pretty obvious you'd think.. but he doesn't see it. The girl who had never played a game before goes "wait! wait! the wardrobe!' to which Hutch responds "NICE eye!!!!" The friends then praise her for noticing the completely obvious hidden room. If he's a serious gamer and he didn't know to check the door with the glowing light coming out of it..he should find a new hobby.
Besides silly things like that though, the movie isn't all bad. I wouldn't call it scary, but it was a cool idea. The story wasn't explained as well as I would have liked, and there were some things left unanswered (I noticed people saying they never said who made the game, but they did) for example, the cops were looking to arrest Hutch bc he knew all the murder victims. When the cops show up at the house his friends are hanging out in, they run (Nevermind that Hutch had an alibi for all the murders, apparently knowing people is all it takes to be thrown in jail.) and at the end of the movie, I guess the cops just give up? There were a few loose ends that were kind of annoying. Altogether though it's worth a watch. The idea was solid, the game scenes weren't bad, and if this actually comes out as a game, I would definitely play it. As a gamer it offended me a little, but as a horror movie fan I liked it, because it was a unique idea and hasn't been done to death. Overall I'm glad I watched it, but I don't think I would sit through it again.
Evil Things
(2009)
Save an hour of your life. "Spoilers" ahead (I used quotations bc it's impossible to "spoil" this movie)
10 April 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Before getting into this review, I want to point out that I am a HUGE horror fan, but that I like horror that is different from what most horror fans are into. So when I see bad reviews I don't think much of it-some of my favorites have had some pretty crappy reviews on IMDb.
Also, I did check the little box that says my review contains spoilers, but let me say it again, I am definitely including spoilers in this review. If you can call them that. Personally I wouldn't call them spoilers, because I would have rather read someone's summary of the movie than have wasted an hour of my life on it. So there are spoilers ahead, but really, nothing in this movie could possibly be spoiled any more than what the filmmaker has already done.
It was the name of the movie that got me really interested in watching. It started out decent, not great but I thought maybe it would go somewhere. The creepy van kept me on edge before they get to their destination, I was actually pretty freaked out for a little while. When they finally got to the "cabin" (I've never seen a cabin that big in my life) and the b-day girl's aunt showed up, I was actually relieved. I thought, okay awesome they can tell her about the creepy van that seems to have been following them for HOURS, just in case, that way maybe the aunt can call every once in a while and if there's no answer she'll know something is wrong and call the police. But no, birthday girl says "please don't mention the van to my aunt, she's way overprotective." So everyone agrees, because apparently they've never seen a scary movie before. (These kids are supposed to be from NYC, you'd think they'd be a little more street smart.) Everything seems OK now, we see the kids hanging out and filming each other being silly/annoying for a half hour. The next morning they go into the woods, for some reason (to see a cave I believe?), and somehow get lost. I thought this was going somewhere..but it doesn't, it's just a bunch of whining and fighting and Tanya being annoying. They are actually lost in the woods for the entire day, then when it gets dark they start freaking out about a noise, run, and magically find their way back to the mansion cabin which has been lit up like a Christmas tree the whole time (either these kids know nothing about not wasting electricity since they left in the morning and when they get back every light in and on the house is lit up, or they don't realize "hey who turned all the lights on") and apparently has been less that 500 feet away. They get home, and by this point, I'm actually hoping something will happen to Tanya because I can't understand how ANYONE would be friends w the girl, let alone bring her on a weekend getaway.
So now they're back, there's a knock on the door but no one is there except a videotape (no footprints or anything even though there's snow on the ground), the kids realize the van guy has been filming them since leaving the city, and the van comes creeping up the driveway. I don't want to give the rest of the plot away (not that there is much, by this point the movie is more than 2/3s over) but I will say conveniently the phone lines get cut, their cells have no service, and apparently the birthday girl's aunt doesn't have any internet service (I realize the phone lines are cut but this woman has top of the line everything, I'd think she'd have some kind of back up something in case of an emergency) we see nothing happen but people keep disappearing (at one point the kid with the camera has a three minute argument w Tanya telling her to hold his camera so he can go look around, she argues that she CAN'T, she's too scared, then finally she takes it and she decides to FOLLOW him around to find the guy/guys/entities that are messing with them. This girl who has been whining the ENTIRE MOVIE that just refused to even move or hold the camera in her hand somehow got the nerve to go looking for the bad guys.) Then we hear a bang and some screaming, and the camera goes out, and it switched to the stalker's camera. Last thing we see if the stalker's camera in night vision following a girl as she's feeling her way along the wall, she makes it to the door, opens it, screams, looks behind her, we hear some weird popping noises and then we get a freeze frame of the girl screaming. I don't know if the stalker was supposed to be supernatural, it kind of sounded like the noise from the grudge but not as creepy...I have no idea what was supposed to have happened in this movie.
If I'd known how bad this was going to be I absolutely would not have watched it, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, ever. Save the hour of your life, and read a book, or watch TV, or fold laundry for an hour, anything would be better than this movie. I like some creeze movies that not many other people would want to watch, but even I thoughgt this was crap, and I'm actually really annoyed because the title had me thinking it was actually going to be scary. Don't waste your time.
Also, I did check the little box that says my review contains spoilers, but let me say it again, I am definitely including spoilers in this review. If you can call them that. Personally I wouldn't call them spoilers, because I would have rather read someone's summary of the movie than have wasted an hour of my life on it. So there are spoilers ahead, but really, nothing in this movie could possibly be spoiled any more than what the filmmaker has already done.
It was the name of the movie that got me really interested in watching. It started out decent, not great but I thought maybe it would go somewhere. The creepy van kept me on edge before they get to their destination, I was actually pretty freaked out for a little while. When they finally got to the "cabin" (I've never seen a cabin that big in my life) and the b-day girl's aunt showed up, I was actually relieved. I thought, okay awesome they can tell her about the creepy van that seems to have been following them for HOURS, just in case, that way maybe the aunt can call every once in a while and if there's no answer she'll know something is wrong and call the police. But no, birthday girl says "please don't mention the van to my aunt, she's way overprotective." So everyone agrees, because apparently they've never seen a scary movie before. (These kids are supposed to be from NYC, you'd think they'd be a little more street smart.) Everything seems OK now, we see the kids hanging out and filming each other being silly/annoying for a half hour. The next morning they go into the woods, for some reason (to see a cave I believe?), and somehow get lost. I thought this was going somewhere..but it doesn't, it's just a bunch of whining and fighting and Tanya being annoying. They are actually lost in the woods for the entire day, then when it gets dark they start freaking out about a noise, run, and magically find their way back to the mansion cabin which has been lit up like a Christmas tree the whole time (either these kids know nothing about not wasting electricity since they left in the morning and when they get back every light in and on the house is lit up, or they don't realize "hey who turned all the lights on") and apparently has been less that 500 feet away. They get home, and by this point, I'm actually hoping something will happen to Tanya because I can't understand how ANYONE would be friends w the girl, let alone bring her on a weekend getaway.
So now they're back, there's a knock on the door but no one is there except a videotape (no footprints or anything even though there's snow on the ground), the kids realize the van guy has been filming them since leaving the city, and the van comes creeping up the driveway. I don't want to give the rest of the plot away (not that there is much, by this point the movie is more than 2/3s over) but I will say conveniently the phone lines get cut, their cells have no service, and apparently the birthday girl's aunt doesn't have any internet service (I realize the phone lines are cut but this woman has top of the line everything, I'd think she'd have some kind of back up something in case of an emergency) we see nothing happen but people keep disappearing (at one point the kid with the camera has a three minute argument w Tanya telling her to hold his camera so he can go look around, she argues that she CAN'T, she's too scared, then finally she takes it and she decides to FOLLOW him around to find the guy/guys/entities that are messing with them. This girl who has been whining the ENTIRE MOVIE that just refused to even move or hold the camera in her hand somehow got the nerve to go looking for the bad guys.) Then we hear a bang and some screaming, and the camera goes out, and it switched to the stalker's camera. Last thing we see if the stalker's camera in night vision following a girl as she's feeling her way along the wall, she makes it to the door, opens it, screams, looks behind her, we hear some weird popping noises and then we get a freeze frame of the girl screaming. I don't know if the stalker was supposed to be supernatural, it kind of sounded like the noise from the grudge but not as creepy...I have no idea what was supposed to have happened in this movie.
If I'd known how bad this was going to be I absolutely would not have watched it, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, ever. Save the hour of your life, and read a book, or watch TV, or fold laundry for an hour, anything would be better than this movie. I like some creeze movies that not many other people would want to watch, but even I thoughgt this was crap, and I'm actually really annoyed because the title had me thinking it was actually going to be scary. Don't waste your time.
The Perfect Man
(2005)
cute movie, bad Brooklyn accents
5 February 2012
This movie is really cute. It's cute for what it is, and the mother-daughter relationship makes it a good movie adults can watch and enjoy as well as teenagers. As with most romantic comedies, it's a bit far fetched, but thats's what makes it fun. I would not have paid to see this in theatres, I probably wouldn't even have paid a few bucks to watch it on demand, but it was on cable this morning, so I put it on, and I was happy with the results. It's not a movie that made me laugh out loud, or inspire any deep emotion, but it was cute, and I wasn't bored. It makes you feel good, and it makes you smile. The reason I bothered to write a review however is because I have a BIG complaint. If you're going to make a movie about a city where people have a certain way of speaking, make sure your actors know how to speak that way. This movie takes place in Brooklyn, and half the actors sound like they're from the Sopranos, the other half just sound like they're trying really hard to sound like the cast of the Jersey Shore, or some other show about Jersey. I grew up in Brooklyn and I don't speak like that, nor do any of the people I grew up with. It's ridiculous and it makes viewers who don't know any better think that people from Brooklyn talk like Jersey Shore trash. It's just so completely not what people from Brooklyn sound like, and it's insulting!
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