31 Days of Horror – October 11th – “Doomsday”

In 20o7, a deadly virus pandemic breaks out in northern UK. The British government’s solution is a massive quarantine over all of Scotland. Those left in the quarantine area are left to fend for themselves, which doesn’t go over so well.

Fast forward about 20 years later and enter our badass leading lady, Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), complete with eyepatch. The Reaper Virus is back, and the Big Kahunas send an elite group of soldiers into No Man’s Land formerly known as Scotland to see if they can find anything that might lead to a cure. Who is selected to head up the task but our one-eyed heroine… who, coincidentally was one of the last few lucky people to make it over the wall the night they put the quarantine into effect.

I was mega excited to see this “Doomsday“, having enjoyed both of Neil Marshall’s previous films (“The Descent” and “Dog Soldiers“). The opening scene had my interest piqued- massive disease pandemics are high on my creep list.  About twenty minutes in, the movie takes a more bleak, post-apocalyptic angle. Right on! I’m thinking “Fallout 3 meets Half Life 2: The Movie”, and I’m ready for some action! About thirty minutes in, the movie makes a 90 degree turn for the 80′s. Complete with the psychotic bad guy, Sol, with his silly punk rock hair-do and spiked jacket. Sol does a jig on stage, eats some human flesh, and I’m lost.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 105 minutes

Directed by: Neil Marshall

Written by: Neil Marshall

Starring: Rhona Mitra, Craig Conway, Sean Pertwee

Theatrical Release: 03/14/08

DVD Release: 07/29/08

Production Budget: $33 million

Domestic Gross: $11 million

Metacritic Score: 51/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 48%

The confusion doesn’t end there, either- there’s still a “Gladiator” scene, a car chase scene that looks a little more like a car commercial than anything else, and the neatly packaged ending.

There’s so much wrong with “Doomsday“, and so much that could have been right. Either the disease pandemic angle or the bleak post-apocalyptic angles could have been awesomely scary. And if Marshall wanted to do an 80′s action/apocalypse homage, that’s cool, too, but pick a genre and stick with it. I’m not necessarily a big fan of the medieval-meets-cheesy-punk-rock apocalypse style, but I’d tolerate it if the movie at least made sense.

“Doomsday” has a disconnected feel, as if it were written in 10 or 20 minute chunks that wind up not really corresponding to one another. Eden’s eye patch, for example, disappears after her first scene.

This was Marshall’s first big budget movie, and think a lot of directors get dollar sign fever when they finally get the big budget. They forget the old adage that “less is more.” Hopefully Marshall will get back to basics for his next feature.

31 Days of Horror – October 10th – “The Wizard of Gore”

Next up in our 31 Days of Horror countdown is “The Wizard of Gore“, a “kind of” remake of a 1970′s Herschell Gordon Lewis movie of the same name.

From a writing perspective, I think “The Wizard of Gore” could have been good- probably even great, and maybe could have cracked my top 5 horror movies, given my penchant for film noir. It’s got the mystery, the shape shifters, and to top it off, a creepy magician. Unfortunately, the directing and production are such collosal failures, the movie assumes the shape of a giant terd.

Montag the Magnificent is not your garden variety magician. When he chooses a female audience member to be part of his show, instead of making a purse disappear or pulling a scarf out of an ear, he slices them open and pulls out their innards or stuffs them inside a giant barbeque and lights it up. But at the end of the show, just as everyone’s about to flee from the theatre in horror, he says his magic words and the girls appear alive and well before the audience’s eyes. But while the girls may leave the stage unharmed (except for being hypnotized into getting naked, no biggie!), one by one they show up corpsified. Journalist Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue) becomes obsessed with the show and the disappearing girls.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 95 minutes

Directed by: Jeremy Kasten

Written by: Zach Chassler

Starring: Kip Pardue, Crispin Glover, Bijou Phillips

Theatrical Release: N/A

DVD Release: 08/18/08

“The Wizard of Gore” looks cheap and amateur across the board. The colored lighting and craaaaaazy camera angles are reminscent of mid 90′s MTV, and I don’t mean that as a compliment, in case it wasn’t obvious. There are odd visual flashes throughout the movie that I found confusing since they tip off the already obvious twist. If they were going to be there at all, they should have been a lot more subtle a la Fight Club. Perhaps director Kasten should focus a bit more on communicating the plot to the audience and a little less on the camera tricks.

Dourif (as a crooked herbalist) and Glover (as the aforementioned creepy magician) give good, if not over-the-top, performances. I get the sense that both actors are desperately trying to save a movie they know is destined for the crapper. Kip Pardue struggles as the lead. His lines are delivered so stiffly, it’s almost as if he’s never seen a noir film.

When I noticed the credit for the Suicide Girls in the opening, I thought, “Send in the boobs.” There should be a Countdown to Titties clock in this movie. Anytime you see a chick with tattoos, put 60 seconds on the clock. And it’s not that I’m opposed to breasts in movies, but pointless mam-shots have become so predictable for horror movies that I find it a bit annoying. Make a decent movie and then you’ve earned your tatas.

31 Days of Horror – October 9th – “Cube”

From the opening scene “Cube” thrusts the audience, along with 6 characters, directly into a booby-trapped maze of cubed rooms.  No one, neither characters nor audience, knows quite why they’re there.  But the film never lets up by leaving those claustrophobic cube chambers for a flashback or an easy explanation.  It maintains an intense focus, and the suspense just builds and builds.

This is a pretty cold open:  Six people in jumpsuits awake in a strange arrangement of connected cubes.  Each cube has a door on each of its 6 walls (including up and down.)  They quickly discover that some of the rooms are booby trapped with a variety of motion detecting traps such as poison gas, tons of slicing mechanisms, flame throwers or a face melting acid spray.  Yikes.  An early, and disturbingly painful, death shows just how high the stakes are.  Without food and water, they’ve got maybe 3 days to find their way out.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 90 minutes

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali

Written by: André Bijelic, Vincenzo Natali, Graeme Manson

Starring: David Hewlett, Nicky Guadagni, Nicole de Boer

Theatrical Release: 09/09/97

DVD Release: 01/26/99

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $501,000

Metacritic Score: 61/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 58%

Tension builds as a viewer, but it builds even more for the characters.  They’re pushed to their limits, and when one snaps, it changes the group dynamic completely over the second half.

Released in Canada in 1992, “Cube” has slowly but surely found an audience on DVD.  Borrowing some from John Carpenter’s “The Thing“, the basic premise of confined characters searching for both meaning and salvation in their actions makes this more or less a blueprint for the “Saw” series without the lame Jigsaw the master puppeteer angle.  I’ll just say that “Cube” is many many times better.

Beyond being without some of the unrealistic behavior that you see in movies like “Saw“, “Cube” isn’t all contrivances and manipulations.  It’s more than just setting up twists.  It gives the audience plenty to really think about with a clear philosophical theme of chaos vs. order.  The question of why they’re here is an obvious one, and one that they can’t know without getting out, if ever.  Did someone meticulously plan this cube and specifically target them to bring them here for some grand purpose?  Or was it all a lot more random – the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, more or less – based on the little information we have on the cube’s construction, the latter at least seems plausible.  The characters discuss it at length.  Both sides of the debate seem reasonable enough.

“Cube” engages the audience in the best way a movie can. It asks big questions. It leaves a lot to the imagination, but it makes you think. It doesn’t just present easy, digestible answers that are more about convenience than meaning. The movie does not fit into a neat little “Cube“.

31 Days of Horror – October 6th – “The Last House on the Left”

“The Last House on the Left” opens with a long campy sequence that is reminiscent of “Happy Days” or even “Leave It to Beaver” in its quaint cheeriness.  Mom and Dad sit in the den and joke with their coming of age daughter about her upcoming birthday.  Life is simple.  Everyone is all smiles.  And then the lead character and her best friend get raped.  Yep.  That’s basically the summary of the first act.

Welcome Wes Craven to the big screen.

The forementioned daughter, Mari (Sandra Peabody), and her best friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) make a grave mistake on their way to a concert when they ask a stranger, Junior (Marc Sheffler), if he knows where to find some grass. He takes them to an apartment where they are immediately held against their will by two escaped convicts, Fred (Fred J. Lincoln) and Krug (David Hess) (those names sound familiar?), and their crew.  Phyllis is raped almost immediately.  The next morning the convicts load the girls into the trunk and take them on the road.  When the car breaks down they haul them into the woods for more torture and rape.  Their murders look inevitable.

Pretty bleak, eh?  Despite many production shortcomings, there are a lot of things that work really well here.  First of all, the torturers seem sadistic in a believable way, maybe partially because they are also pretty dumb, basically insensitive, rather than the super vindictive genius masterminds that we see in torture porn movies lately.  Krug and Fred work as villains because they are horrible but still somewhat subtle, and a scene of reflective remorse shows that they are ultimately still human.  On top of that, Craven’s directing goes over the top in a few scattered comedy scenes and grows subtle and careful during some of the most horrifying violent displays.  The first rape scene happens off screen, the camera slowly zooms in on Mari’s horrified face as she watches a man attack her friend.  One of the early torture scenes keeps cutting back to a music videoesque montage of the Mom and Dad in 70′s garb hamming it up as they bake a birthday cake for their daughter, which somehow heightens the creepiness of the whole thing.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 84 minutes

Directed by: Wes Craven

Written by: Wes Craven

Starring: Sandra Peabody, David Hess

Theatrical Release: 08/30/72

DVD Release: 05/12/09

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 65%

There’s a major shift for the final act, though, and the story almost does a 180 degree turn.  At this point, it becomes morally gray in a new way.  Those subtle displays of violence earlier turn more graphic.  And the movie doesn’t really tell you what to think of it all.

Craven’s debut (as both a director and writer) somehow succeeds at being disturbing and being ironically funny, sometimes achieving both within just seconds of each other.  Despite a very tight budget with a young, inexperienced cast and presumably production team, Craven keeps it entertaining and shows flashes of great instincts for what will really effect the audience. The slang, bell bottoms and acoustic rock soundtrack (actually written and performed by the actor that played Krug) gives “The Last House on the Left” an interesting 1970′s atmosphere that actually adds more than it detracts as far as dating the film.

31 Days of Horror – 2009 Edition

Happy Halloween, nuggets! In honor of our favorite holiday, our gift to you is a horror movie review for each day of this kickass month!

October 1st – “The Thaw”

October 2nd – “Wolf Creek“

October 3rd – “The Hills Run Red“

October 4th – “Pulse“

October 5th – “The Uninvited“

October 6th – “The Last House on the Left“

October 7th – “Dog Soldiers“

October 8th – “Giallo“

October 9th – “Cube“

October 10th – “The Wizard of Gore“

October 11th – “Doomsday“

October 12th – “The Fog”

October 13th – “Cemetery Man”

October 14th – “Pitch Black”

October 15th – “Drag Me To Hell”

October 16th – “Dead and Buried”

The Acolytes: Underground Horror from Down Under

Part serial killer thriller, part good teens gone bad, Australian indie “Acolytes” is the kind of horror movie they should be making more of. I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to this genre, and I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Mark (Seb Gregory) wanders into the woods one day and spies a man burying something. He and his friends James (Josh Payne) and Chasely (Hannah Morgan Lawrence) decide to unearth the buried treasure, but instead of money, they discover the body of a young woman.

Here’s where the movie takes a turn for the “Kids do the darndest things when they find a body”, and I start wondering if I ever really want to procreate. Instead of reporting the body to the police, Mark and James cook up a scheme to find the murderer and blackmail him into killing an evil scumbag kiddie rapist (Michael Dorman) who has recently been released from prison. Schemes like this in thrillers never play out as planned, so things go from bad to worse pretty quickly for Mark, James, and Hannah.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 91 minutes

Directed by: Jon Hewitt

Written by: Shayne Armstrong, Shane Krause

Starring: Sebastian Gregory, Joshua Payne, Hannah Mangan Lawrence

Theatrical Release: 05/15/08

DVD Release: 07/28/09

Production Budget: $4 million

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%

With a small budget of only four million dollars, “Acolytes” has a great visual style and excellent performances by the cast, especially considering their age. Unlike most teen horror flicks, the characters in “Acolytes” are handled as real people instead of hash marks on a killer’s bed post.

You’ve probably seen movies that have one twist too many. The theatrical release of this movie has four or five too many- so many twists piled on top of one another is overkill and takes away from the overall impact. The ending is a bit of a cliché for a thriller, which is the biggest let down of all. (The DVD features two alternate endings.)

Overall, “Acolytes” is a movie I would certainly recommend to fans of the horror/thriller genre. It’s dark and disturbing and has just the right kind of jump-out-of-your-seat tension. The DVD became available in the U.S. today.

Ranking the New Shows: #9 – Fringe

Of all of Fox’s recent attempts at the science fiction genre, “Fringe” looks like the most likely to succeed. It made number 9 on our list of best new shows.

The show: “Fringe”
Synopsis: Remember the “The X-Files“?
Debuted: September 9th, 2008
Our take: “The X-Files“ plus insane doctor equals awesome. Some of the time. John Noble carries this show as the mad scientist Walter Bishop. His absurd comments and non sequiturs add an element of quirky comedy to what would otherwise be a crappy cop drama with aliens and monsters. Not only does he make me laugh out loud several times an episode, but the show relies on him to deliver huge chunks of exposition to sell the “scientific” explanation of the disease/monster/wereporcupine of the week to the audience (with little help from the script).
This leads me to the main problem, which is that the story of the week element is extremely formulaic. And the formula is a pretty mediocre one. Even if I suspend belief to swallow the week’s pseudo-scientific disaster, the reactions of the characters and their subsequent solutions are much too cozy for me to buy. (How many times are they going to download images from a dead person’s brain or shove Olivia back into the Sensory Deprivation Chamber?) The season long story arc has compelling aspects but gets buried, and the suspense in general is lacking.
What it would need to do to keep me watching: I’ll keep watching for John Noble, and I do see some potential in the show as a whole, but I’ll never be a devoted fan until they invest more in the long term plot.

Horsemen: Ponyloaf.

Here’s a recipe for braised bullshit movie: one 12 oz. can of David Fincher’s “Se7en” (Up), one leg of “Silence of the Lambs“, and two squirts of pure Quaid sweat. (This recipe calls for Dennis. Randy is an acquired taste. Little gamey.)

Yep. “Horsemen” is a blatant “Se7en“/”The Silence of the Lambs” copycat. Their strategy was to not merely recycle that material… but to kick it up a notch by totally sucking. Quaid (Dennis. Randy wouldn’t touch this script with Gary Sinise’s sac.) stars as Aidan Breslin, a work-obsessed homicide detective slash crappy dad. We know he’s a crappy dad because his eldest son, Alex (Lou Taylor Pucci), harps on the subject every time he’s on screen. A 16 year old boy that insists on giving his dad lectures on parenting? Science fucking fiction. It’s so heavy handed it makes Queen Latifah’s meathooks look downright dainty.

In one scene, young Alex suggests the family go to a hockey game. Daddy Breslin responds as if he’s either never heard of the sport or the notion of spending time with his offspring has never occurred to him before. Immediately cut to the family decked out in matching Red Wings gear. Huh?

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 110 minutes

Directed by: Jonas Åkerlund

Written by: Dave Callaham

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Lou Taylor Pucci, Ziyi Zhang

Theatrical Release: 03/06/09

DVD Release: 07/14/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

Similar crappisms abound in “Horsemen“. I sense severe editing going on here. Several transitions left me feeling as if a whole chunk of movie had gone missing, which is often the case with straight to DVD turds.

Even Ziyi Zhang, who I’m a fan of, struggles. She is not nearly sinister enough to pull off the gloating female temptress the movie wants her to be. Her performance comes off as silly and a little embarrassing.

Plotwise, the movie is just as blah. Detective Breslin hunts a gruesome murderer. Eventually he realizes that this is not the work of one killer, but a kill group! Four, to be exact, each one representing a horseman of the apocalypse (rather than each murder representing one of the 7 deadly sins). Spooky, no? The actual murders lack believability and the quick discovery scenes don’t seem to give them the reverence such brutality would require – even the filmmakers aren’t buying it. We’ve seen it all before in “Se7en” and the dozens of movies that have already ripped it off. The biblical details are meaningless – a catchy name and an excuse for cryptic bible passages are all it really adds up to. Which is kind of how the whole movie feels. No substance and not even much style.

“Horsemen” fails on the very basic level of establishing a connection between the audience and the characters, rendering itself suspenseless. The movie could have almost saved itself (by a pussy hair) by following through with the final twist. Instead, it limps off with the cheesy, stupidly optimistic ending. Why? Movies like “The Descent” and “Se7en” resonate because they don’t go for the “things are finally starting to look up!” Hollywood ending. In the end, “Horsemen” failed to even successfully rip off its predecessors.

Killshot: Resurrected From the Depths of the Weinstein Vaults

Yet another shelved movie comes to light on DVD this week in “Killshot.” You already know the Weinstein routine – reshoots, delayed release dates, editors removing a major character (Johnny Knoxville), producer Quentin Tarantino removing his name, and a theatrical release covering a pathetic five theaters. What’s left is a movie gutted to just 90 minutes – essentially a straight to DVD release.

Mickey Rourke plays Armand ‘The Blackbird’ Degas, a half Native American hitman for the Toronto mob. Blackbird’s first rule on the job is that you kill anyone that sees your face. (Except for Rosario Dawson because he loved her in “Rent.”)

During a job in Detroit, Blackbird manages to royally P.O. his former boss by snuffing “one of his best girls.” (Bros before Hos, gentleman. Bros before Hos.) So he runs to the sticks, where a pseudo-psychotic small-time criminal named Richie Nix (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) attempts to relieve him of his wallet and car. These two knuckleheads bond over the experience and decide to team up, Captain Planet style. Richie hatches an elaborate scheme to extort some cash from the owner of a real estate agency by – wait for it – threatening to kill him if he doesn’t pay. (Why didn’t I think of that!)

TV Casualties Rating:

Run Time: 95 minutes

Directed by: John Madden

Written by: Hossein Amini, Elmore Leonard

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Diane Lane, Thomas Jane

Theatrical Release: 01/23/09

DVD Release: 05/26/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $18,000

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

As in all pulp crime stories, the plan goes horrible awry. The two miscreants arrive at the real estate office during lunch hour (Classic mistake!) and confuse a realtor’s husband, Wayne (Thomas Jane), with the man with the deep pockets. Wayne makes short shrift of the criminals, of course, defusing their plan, saving his lovely wife and breaking pretty much every window in the building – all with one length of pipe.

Wayne and his wife Carmen (Diane Lane) made a grave error during the bungled heist, though: they looked at Blackbird’s face. (Let’s not forget Bird’s very clear “See my face – shoot your face” rule.) The couple enlist in witness protection and head to Missouri for a few bland scenes before we get to the big confrontation.

“Killshot” is more style than substance, and even the style loses its luster after 15 minutes. The characters are paper thin and boring, and even though this is a talented cast, the performances are equally dull. Gordon-Levitt plays the only character with any color, but he goes so far over the top, you’re begging Blackbird to put a cap in his face after five minutes. Rourke has solid moments but spends most of the movie talking in an annoying clipped English (to prove he’s part Indian, I guess). Similarly, Jane speaks with a ludicrous accent that I can only assume is his attempt at sounding like a Detroit-native. Instead he sounds more like the “Da Bears” skit from SNL. Despite the fact that Lane graces the posters and DVD cover, she’s the least compelling of all.

If the Weinstein’s were going to give “Killshot” such a non-existent release, why bother with all of the editing and reshoots in the first place? When a movie is stripped down for a straight to DVD release like this, I always wonder what could have been. What exactly was in the 30+ minutes they left on the cutting room floor? How would Johnny Knoxville’s character have fit into the plot? We will likely never know.

Taken: Liam Neeson Will Rip Your Damn Face Off

Who doesn’t want to spend 93 minutes watching Liam Neeson get hands on with some perps?

And hands on with the bad guys Neeson does get – early, often and hard.  He also gets feet on, knife in, electricity through and several bullets lodged within them.  Yep.  The man who played Schindler is one ruthless son of a bitch this time out.  The possibility of a Liam Neeson/Chuck Norris vehicle looks more likely than ever.

The pace in “Taken” doesn’t just sizzle, the plot itself combusts.  After a brief setup, retired spy Bryan Mills (Neeson) gets thrust into an international rescue mission.  While vacationing in Paris, his daughter (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped by Albanian mobsters that plan to sell her into prostitution.  Let the head cracking, neck breaking and face shooting begin!  Mills bashes his way toward answers with fury and speed.  93 minutes fly by.

TV Casualties Rating:

Run Time: 93 minutes

Directed by: Pierre Morel

Written by: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Olivier Rabourdin

Theatrical Release: 01/30/09

DVD Release: 05/12/09

Production Budget: N/A

Box Office Gross: $144 million

Metacritic Score: 50/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 57%

I’m not easily impressed in this area, but the action sequences were executed extremely well, both in terms of choreography and cinematography.

Action means little to me, typically, but this had me on the edge of my seat several times.  A few fairly unbelievable moments popped up here and there, of course – especially during a big car chase scene – but on the whole, the action was strong, and I’m surprised this movie wasn’t a little more popular on the strength of that alone.

On that note, Neeson actually made a fine action star.  His imposing frame (6’4” according to IMDB) made this seem plausible, of course, but he has always struck me as a gentle personality.  (If I were Irish, I may even call him a bit of a puff.)  Early on, I was skeptical.  He won me over in a hurry, though, and he actually brought a believable intensity, even a hard-nosed negativity, to the role that went above and beyond what a cardboard action hero would’ve been able to muster.  This wasn’t the smirking hero with a one liner ready at all times.  Liam Neeson will rip your damn face off.

I’d go beyond the praise for Neeson to say that the whole cast did very well with what they had to work with. That said, the characterization (outside of Neeson’s fierceness) proved weak – a massive Achilles heel for what was an otherwise quality production.  I can respect that “Taken” didn’t waste much time establishing relationships and feelings and such when the movie revolved around action.  Non-existent characterization would’ve been better than the painfully cheesy “awesome dad” fantasy that this became.  The last scene proved needless and sentimental, not only highlighting this weakness but foolishly making it the final flavor in the audience’s mouth.