BA_Harrison

Dr. Glenn Maybrook (Aaron Abrams) and his 17-year-old daughter Quinn (Katie Douglas) move to the small town of Kettle Springs, whose founder operated the successful Baypen corn syrup factory, the mascot of which was a clown called Frendo. While attending a founder's day barn rave, Quinn and her new friends are attacked by killer clowns that emerge from the cornfield.

Based on Adam Cesare's young adult novel of the same name, Clown in a Cornfield has been described as a gateway horror movie, introducing youngsters to the genre without scaring (or scarring) them too much in the process. As someone who has seen thousands of horror movies, I expected to find CIAC too tame for my taste; but while I didn't find it scary in the slightest, I was surprised to discover that it featured a fair amount of blood and gore. So maybe not quite the gateway horror experience I had been led to believe it was.

Overall, I enjoyed this one more than I had thought I would: it's a well directed, fast-paced, no-nonsense slice of popcorn horror that, while not exactly groundbreaking, delivers plenty of fun. The reveal about who the killers are and why they do what they do won't come as much of a surprise, and the ending is weak, with the main villain simply driving away never to be seen again (at least until the sequel, perhaps), but even so, Clown in a Cornfield isn't a bad way to spend 96 minutes of your time.

My rating for Clown in a Cornfield is 5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

I don't think it was a wise move to release Bloodlines a week early on a double-bill with the first Final Destination movie: it just served to highlight how great the original film still is, and how lame this new entry is by comparison. Bloodlines has the complex, gory death scenes that one has come to expect from the franchise, and that might be enough for some fans, but I thought that the film suffered from unlikeable characters, making it hard for me to care when they died, while the comedic approach made the gruesome demises even less shocking.

Things began well enough, with an opening disaster set in the 1960s, at the opening of a high-rise structure, The Skyview, where Iris sees the collapse of the tower in a vision. The young woman averts the catastrophe, but over the years, death claims the lives of the people she saved, including those family members that wouldn't have been born had she not acted in time.

I'd have loved to have seen the whole film set in the '60s, with Iris trying to find a way to thwart death's plan, but as soon as the film moves the present day, it becomes bogged down in trite familial drama, Iris's granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) trying to reconnect with her estranged mother whilst attempting to convince her relatives of what is in store for them. The highlights of the Final Destination films have always been the inventive death scenes, and Bloodlines has no shortage of these, but it looks as though the makers might have penny pinched with the CGI, because they're not very convincing.

Next time - and I am sure there will be a next time - I hope they make the characters more engaging, cut out the stupid humour, and put a bit more effort into the special effects.

My rating for Final Destination: Bloodlines is 5/10. The late, great Tony Todd deserved a better swan song.

Helena tries an experimental patch to try and ease the pain of being a scanner, but the cure blocks out her conscience, turning her into a heartless psychopath.

Oh boy, this is a bad movie. I mean really, really bad. Especially when compared with Cronenberg's 1981 classic, or even director Christian Duguay's more than passable Scanners II (1991). Duguay is responsible for part III as well, but he goes full on '90s cheeze this time around, unwisely casting his untalented wife Liliana Komorowska as villainous scanner Helena Monet, with the equally inept Steve Parrish as Helena's righteous brother Alex. The supporting cast are just as terrible, the script is diabolical, and the soundtrack consists of excruciating wailing guitars. Consequently, I enjoyed the heck out of the film, the crappy nature of proceedings keeping me thoroughly entertained throughout. I'm a sucker for z-grade horror.

Komorowska overacts for all her worth, playing her part like a pantomime villain, pulling a variety of hilarious faces, while her hubby Duguay loads the film with trashy goodness guaranteed to please purveyors of dumb cinematic garbage, including topless scenes from his wife and busty babe Valérie Valois (who plays Alex's girlfriend Joyce), and a fair amount of messy gore, not forgetting the obligatory exploding head. Most of Helena's henchmen wear black and sport greasy little ponytails, Helena deals with some street punks by sending them flying into a garbage truck, there's a hilarious scene involving Thai kickboxers, and we get an exploding pigeon, but the worst moment has to be when Helena's uses her powers to make her loathsome work colleague start stripping in a restaurant. When that scene hits, you know that you've got something special on your hands.

7.5/10, rounded up to 8/10 for IMDb. It ain't good, but it sure is fun.