Monthly Archives: April 2013

REVIEW: Mary Reilly (1996)

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Mary Reilly: D-

The classic tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is experienced from the perspective of the doctor’s maid, Mary Reilly. If you don’t think about it, that sounds like a cool premise. But, think about it: why would I want to experience a story that already has a lot of the action cropped out of it from the perspective of a character who is even more peripheral? Jekyll is always blacking out when he turns into Hyde and part of the story deals with him filling in the horrifying blanks. In this movie, they switch the point of view, but it is pretty pointless because she is a goddamn supporting character.

Maybe I’m biased: I’m not into Julia Roberts, but I’m not going to go into that here. She’s America’s Sweetheart, but she ain’t my sweetheart. She isn’t awful, but she is really hit r miss for me, personally. However, I love Malkovich, so maybe my biases cancel out.

The movie is boring. That is the best word for it. It is just glacial in every way. Hyde gets into some murderous shenanigans, almost getting caught like fifty times by various flat characters with really really fake accents. Julia Robert breathes through her mouth a lot and her eyes get really big. Wow, what a talented actress. She views most of the movies excitement from around corners or sort of hears it from the other room. Fucking WHY? Such a pointless film.

There is some shameful CGI when Malkovich morphs; it makes the snake from Anaconda look like real life. The only reason it doesn’t get an “F” is because it is worth watching so you can see Malkovitch prance around like a sexual werewolf. He’s pretty funny. If there’s some paint drying anywhere in your home, you might want to watch that instead. But just glance at the paint from around the corner and occasionally gasp and go “oh dear!” in your worst British accent.

REVIEW: Evil Dead (2013)

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Evil Dead (2013): B+

If you went to this movie expecting to see something better than the original Evil Dead, what were you thinking? Have you not seen the remakes of Texas Chainsaw Masacre, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street? It really grinds my gears when people have skyscraper expectations for these remakes of films from another era. The remakes probably won’t be as good. Even if they are awesome, your own nostalgia has probably set up an unrealistic, untouchable expectation. So if you were expecting Bruce Campbell’s spasming eyebrows: get over it.

That being said: This movie was great. Tons of blood, gore, monsters, and all the iconic stuff you love about the original film. There were 1st person camera shots, severed appendages, choral deadite voices threatening to swallow souls, a Necronomicon, and, of course, the trap-door cellar.

There was comedy, but nothing like Evil Dead 2. I wouldn’t call it a splat-stick. The makeup was rad and the kills were fantastic. No off-screen cop outs or gratuitous CGI; you get to see beautiful teenagers smashed and slashed. I can’t remember the last time I saw this much blood in a movie. I’ll say there is even more than Dead Alive.

Go see it. or I’ll swallow your soul.

REVIEW: Devil (2010)

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Devil: D-

The old lady is the Devil. There. Now you don’t have to watch this movie.

This long stupid monotonous movie is about a group of people trapped in an elevator. One of the people in there (it’s the old lady) is the Devil and everyone is wondering who it is. The premise isn’t awful; if this movie was distilled down to  Twilight Zone episode or a chapter in an anthology movie, it would probably be good, but as it is, it is too drawn-out and repetitive. At times, it reminded me of Cube, what with all the claustrophobia and paranoia, but those were only flashes in a very boring pan; weirdly, this premise/atmosphere is never developed. The movie relies on jump-scares instead of any actual story or horror.

The suspense is spread too thin and it just doesn’t work. Once this thing gets rolling, you are literally just waiting for the next jump-scare. Look, I really want to stress this: it’s the old lady. She’s behind all the killing. She’s the Devil. That’s the whole twist. I wish someone would have just told me that before I watched it.

I’m trying very hard to think of a movie version of the Devil that I liked less than this one who hangs out in an elevator (disguised as the old lady) killing people when the lights go out, but I’m having a rough time. All that comes to mind is Elizabeth Hurley in Bedazzled, but I think she was probably better. George Burns was better.

There’s this part where the “wise elder” character points out to the audience that “sometimes [the Devil] tortures the damned on Earth before claiming them.” For some reason, there are also about a dozen other arbitrary rules that the Devil must operate under like only attacking in the darkness. This is a pretty painful 80 minutes of exposition interrupted by jump-scares. I’m just glad they didn’t find any ancient scrolls or whatever.

The token Shyamalanian “twist” at the end is there, but I doubt you’ll care (not just because you know that old lady is the Devil; I didn’t, and I did not care one fucking bit).

REVIEW: Haunted High aka Ghostquake (2012)

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Haunted High aka Ghostquake: D-

Jesus what the fucking fuck-fuck?

The ghost of an evil teacher and his demonic minions haunt a high school full of stereotypical horror movie teens who are trapped on campus. Their only hope is janitor Danny Trejo who, I shit you not, is trapped in the broom closet for 90% of the movie. There are heinously low budget kills (this is a Sci-fi channel original production, I think) involving CGI that makes Garfield 2 look like real life.

There are deaths in the weight room, home ec. room, locker room etc. Plenty of great one liners; one character is getting electrocuted by possessed defibrillators while MC Gainey laughs and shouts “I really get a CHARGE out of this!” and “You are quite a SHOCK, gal!” So many cop-out deaths and off-screen implied kills, though. One guy gets his soul ripped from his body and trapped inside the trophy case. Another chick’s head explodes, but you only know this because you watch her CGI shadow in the wall. All in all horrible, but would be fun to watch with friends; it’s one of those bad-good movies that is so terrible it is good.

REVIEW: The Traveler (2010)

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The Traveler: F

This movie has a Twilight Zoney premise in which a mysterious, well groomed stranger appears in a police station on X-mas eve ready to confess to a series of murders he committed. The stranger is Kilmer and the murders actually haven’t happened yet, but Kilmer confesses to them one-by-one as he commits them throughout the film using some unexplained supernatural powers. He looks like Pitt from Meet Joe Black on a cupcake diet wearing a Mighty Thor wig and a Robert Davi mask. We must have been about 20 minutes into the movie when we figured out that the killings were revenge for Kilmer’s own death in which he was beaten/tortured by the cops in the police station. The acting was terrible, the plot was predictable. There were two incidents of decent gore but that’s about all.

I want to go on to discuss an interesting phenomenon regarding Kilmer’s deterioration into obesity and a yet unidentified ailment that seems to be accelerating his aging (I’m thinking binge drinking/eating, though this is speculation). His role in straight to DVD films mirrors that of Steven Seagal so closely that it corresponds to a simple set of rules:
1. Kilmer must wear the same outfit which hides his flabby body shape throughout the film. Dark colors and baggy coats are used often.
2. Mediocre actors must carry most of the film and Kilmer gets a combined 8-20 minutes of screen time total, mostly from a stationary position, delivering one-liners.
3. Whenever action is involved, camera tricks or stunt actors cover for Kilmer.
4. Despite appearing blatantly physically useless, Kilmer is given almost superhuman prowess throughout the film, delivering unwarranted intimidation and terror despite the fact that he is laughably chubby and in all probability on a cocktail of stimulants.

I feel like this should have a name. Seagal Syndrome?

REVIEW: Werewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012)

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Werewolf: The Beast Among Us: UV

When a little boy survives a werewolf attack that kills his parents, he devotes his life to being a nomadic Brisco County JR. wanna-be know-it-all werewolf hunter. He is like a Safeway Select version of an already shitty monster hunter like Jackman’s Van Helsing; imagine Antonio Sabato Jr. trying to play Walker Texas Ranger. The setting is some ambiguous Carpathian-like village where people either speak with American, Russian, or English accents. Anticlimactic kills, cheap CGI, predictable everything. If, after twenty minutes into the movie, you can’t guess everything else that happens, I will shit my pants from shock.

REVIEW: Day of the Dead (2008)

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Day of the Dead (2008): C-

I have seen worse remakes and worse zombie flicks in general.

This one had the model premise of a sudden viral outbreak and a group of ragtag survivors banding together. They keep the idea of a domesticated zombie, but he is super-annoying and just makes “the most annoying sound in the world” from Dumb & Dumber for a long time.

Maybe this is the first time I have seen zombies devour one of their own in a zombie flick. That was new. Everything else is super-tired or lame. The other new thing they try in this movie is really fast zombies. You have seen slow zombies and you have seen fast zombies. Now there are really fast zombies who climb on the wall like Jeepers Creepers and when they run, they look like seizure victims with carp in their trousers.

There is some entertaining low-budget gore, but cardboard acting and a plot that could have been written by throwing darts at a flow chart keep this movie dead in the dirt.

 

REVIEW: Midnight Movie (2008)

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Midnight Movie: B-

Pretty solid indie horror flick about a group of teens who are watching a rare horror movie in an empty theater who get picked off one by one by a tall guy in a weak mask with a limp. Basically eight generic horror movie teens are watching a forbidden horror movie when one of them gets up to go to the bathroom and then all of the sudden he is seen on the theater screen getting killed by the killer in the actual horror movie. At first they think is just some psycho copy cat killer , but after strange events start happening they realize they are trapped inside the movie. That plot point was pretty weak and was pretty unnecessary and over all detracted from the movie.

The gore was a little above average, the girls were hot (forget it if you are hoping for nudity) and the killer was kind of stupid looking. He also used one of the dumbest weapons in slasher history.