REVIEW: Plus 1 (2013)

Posted on March 23, 2014 by BloodCrypt Keeper

Plus One: D+

Some typical party-teens attend a typical teen house party when they are suddenly zapped back in time by about an hour or two. They are still at the party, but now they’re watching their past selves arrive and do all the typical teen house party shenanigans which they themselves did only hours before!

Every few minutes, the past house party zaps forward in time, so the zapped-forward teens watch their past selves “catch up” with them. With every flash-forward, additional guests from the party are duplicated and displaced in time. This gets the teens worried that once time “catches up,” they will merge with their past selves or maybe cease to exist.

The past doubles of the teens also act a little fishy and get the time-displaced teens worried that these might not be past versions of themselves, but alien doppelgangers who are bending space-time in order to steal their lives.

Here are some of the existential conundrums the movie presents:

If you could get back with your girlfriend by murdering your past self and then murdering her future self, would you?
If you had the chance, would you do that Bill Murray shit from Groundhog’s Day where you use your knowledge from the past to manipulate women?
Who would win in a fight: you right now, or you one hour ago?
If you stand near the place where your past self will be zapped forward through space-time, will the two of you become a fucking DUMB LOOKING conjoined twin thing?
What happens if you pour vodka in your eye? Will it get you laid?
What would happen if you ran into a tool shed to hide from a rift in space-time?
Would you eat sushi off of a stranger’s genitals? What if there was time travel involved?
Would you make out with your past self?
Would you make out with your future self?
If you made out with yourself from a different dimension, would the result be the two of you harmoniously merging into a smirking version of yourself?

Fucking boring!

If you hate annoying teen house party movies, imagine watching one where THE SAME SCENES HAPPEN TWICE with the only difference being someone LOOKING UPSET while it happens. It’s like some annoying bro took a philosophy class and made this movie.

There’s this one scene where a bunch of people hide in a shed, but the past gets zapped into the shed and there’s a bunch of fights to the death. Then you don’t know who’s left standing: past versions or present versions of annoying teens.

REVIEW: Jeepers Creepers (2001)

Posted on March 2, 2014 by BloodCrypt Keeper

Jeepers Creepers: C

A flesh-eating man-bat hybrid ritualistically slaughters people and consumes their body parts in Jeepers Creepers. Justin Long and his sister are driving home from Spring Break when they unknowingly drive through the portion of isolated countryside which the monster uses as his killing fields. You can see how this would lead to trouble. We don’t have to sit through an origin story for the man-bat but the “wise elder” character, a crazy old cat lady, tells us that the “Creeper” eats body parts which are then absorbed into the creature’s own body. Once the Creeper gets a whiff of a body part he wants to eat, he’ll stop at nothing to get it. He smells Justin Long and targets him for consumption. I’ve watched way less original stuff.

Justin Long gets worried a lot and he keeps making this face that looks like someone stuck his dick in a waffle iron.

The whole movie is Long and his sister trying to out-run the Creeper. There is a car chase and the song “Jeepers Creepers” plays. Imagine there’s an axe-wielding carnivorous man-bat out to get you and you actually manage to run him over with your car and immobilize him. From here, which things would you not fucking do? Whatever you thought of not doing, Justin Long does it. He loiters around town, asks a psychic for help, and tries to logically explain the phenomena of man-bat attacks to redneck police officers. Stop sitting in a fucking diner cringing like someone stuck your penis in a waffle iron! Get the fuck out of there!

Justin Long winds up at the police station and the Creeper breaks in. It’s nothing like the awesome police station scene in Terminator. The song “Jeepers Creepers” plays for the second time and the Creeper walks on the ceiling. The Creeper gets Justin Long and takes him to his hideout so he can mutilate him and the song “Jeepers Creepers” plays again. The credits roll and “Jeepers Creepers” plays for the fourth time.

SPOILER: You get to see Long’s dead body and, I swear, that fucking waffle iron look is on his dead face. I think they did a great job titling the movie Jeepers Creepers because of all the “Jeepers Creepers” in the movie but they could have totally called it “Ow, My Dick is Stuck in the Waffle Iron!” if they wanted.

REVIEW: 30 Days of Night (2007)

Posted on March 2, 2014 by BloodCrypt Keeper

30 Days of Night: C+

Based on a fantastic comic book series of the same name, this film follows a small band of human survivors trying desperately to avoid being eaten by really mean vampires in Alaska.

The really mean vampires come to this little town in Alaska at a time of year when winter plunges the town into 30 days of darkness so they can just walk around like OMG IDGAF #nighttime. They execute a coordinated assault that effectively strands the fuck out of a bunch of regular people in town and cuts off their lines of communication to the outside world.

I thought all this was really clever. No matter how powerful vampires are, they have always had two huge problems: they have to be careful whom they kill so as to avoid detection, and they are only active at night. This movie circumvents these traditional vulnerabilities which means big trouble for all non-undead characters.

The vampires move really fast, wear all black, and speak in a mean sounding vampire language. They look pretty cool, sort of a cross between Ukrainian mobsters and feral gremlins. They all wear peacoats but still look tough (unlike some vampires).

The movie doesn’t get very “deep” but there’s this one scene where the vampire leader puts his nasty fingernail on a record that’s spinning on a phonograph and the distorted sound that comes out makes all the surrounding vampires orgasm and giggle and I guess it symbolizes how they don’t have to hide and be quiet anymore. The leader’s name is Marlow who is probably based on Barlow from Salem’s Lot, who was for sure based on Dracula.

Once the vampires establish their dominance and strand themselves some humans, the movie turns into Diary of Anne Frank meets Dawn of the Dead. All the people have to hide for their lives and the vampires patrol around killing everyone. It is a cat-and-mouse movie with jump scares and a fresh fatality sacrificed to every new predicament.

The color palette of the movie echoes that of Underworld; it’s all grays and one shade of bright red. There is snow everywhere, so the gore that sprays from various characters’ arteries stands out that much more.

Josh Hartnett is in it and he spends the whole movie hiding in attics, running, and being really upset about the mean vampire onslaught. Some people turn into vampires and there is a cool scene where someone is fed into this industrial machinery and they get ground up like hamburger. The make-up is well done and there is some decent gore.

It’s a cool enough vampire flick that lets the vampires go wild if you are in the mood for that sort of thing.