Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of horror movies.

REVIEW: Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

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Jacob’s Ladder: B-

Tim Robbins plays a scatterbrained ‘Nam vet who believes that demons, real and figurative, are out to get him. Is it a government conspiracy, or is Robbins nuts, or both? He has sort of a mullet, that’s for sure.

I hope you enjoy movies in which the protagonist suddenly wakes from a nightmare, drenched in sweat with a look of terror still on their face. Over and over. Because this is one of those movies.

The film progresses with the jagged velocity of a bad LSD trip. There are tense quiet scenes that are interrupted by violent Vietnam flashbacks and demon action. You might get up to grab a beer while Robbins is being adjusted by his chiropractor and when you sit back down, he’s being stabbed by Charlie in a jungle ambush.

The demons are great. Sometimes there’s just a reptilian tail subtly hanging out of someone’s trench coat. Sometimes, some guy in a car will jiggle around and morph into a demon. In one scene, Robbins is bobbing his head at a house party and everything explodes into demonic pandemonium like the orgiastic “lizard scene” from Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

Imagine you work at the post office, have a mullet, and ate the brown acid and now that’s your life forever.

When Robbins discovers that his war buddies are also haunted by demons, the supernatural element of the film settles down a bit and now we’re in an X-Files style government cover-up story complete with sunglasses-wearing guys in black suits and an abundance of car-bombs. Did the US government expose Robbins’s platoon to toxic materials that induce hallucinatory demon trips? Sweaty sleep-deprived Tim Robbins tries to get to the bottom of this.

You aren’t really sure if it’s demons or the government who are ruining Tim Robbins’ life, so the movie keeps you guessing, which is good. Macaulay Culkin gets hit by a truck, which is okay.

Points off for the most pompous/abrupt post-modernist cop-out ending I’ve seen in a while. This is the godfather of M Night Shyamalanian “twist” horror endings for sure.

REVIEW: Nurse 3D (2012)

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Nurse 3D: D

When a man sits down to watch a rated-R horror movie, he does so with the understanding that breasts and/or full-frontal nudity may be part of the deal. About 90% of the scenes in Nurse 3D feature the full frontal nudity of physically flawless people, many of whom are medical professionals. The 10% of the movie that wasn’t that was a cliche grab bag.

A hot nurse, Abby (played by Paz de la Huerta from Boardwalk Empire), hates guys who cheat on their wives so she entraps married guys by seducing them and then later, she kills them, usually while wearing only a bra or nothing. There’s a real Dexter vibe to this formula because she’s killing “bad” guys and we are treated to her witty voice-overs as she does it.

There are other characters whose function is to be oblivious or sexy, or oblivious and sexy. Katrina Bowden from 30 Rock plays another sexy nurse. Kathleen Turner is in it. I can’t even describe the ruckus that occurred when my roomful of friends saw that Judd Nelson was in the movie. He gets his arm cut off with a bone saw. The world is an imperfect place.

I fucking hate CGI blood and this movie was CGI drowning in it. Not just CGI blood either; there are CGI weapons that make CGI wounds that make the CGI blood. I watched it in 2D so maybe I missed out on some really life-changing moments where a CGI scalpel “jumps out” at me but – maybe I’m being cynical here – I doubt it.

There’s a really bizarre and consuming subplot that sort of evolves into the main plot. Abby develops a crush on Katrina Bowden, so she date rapes her and takes a billion blackmail pics. This is an excuse for gratuitous/mesmerizing boobs, ass, side-boob, side-ass, and vagina footage. We have the date rape scene, dramatic crying in the shower scene, looking at the date rape pictures scene, arguing in bra and panties the morning after the date rape scene, etc. If you wanted to watch that sort of thing, you certainly don’t need to go to Nurse 3D, a movie that simultaneously tortures you with predictable CGI carnage.

If you want someone to argue with you in their underwear, let me know. I don’t have much going on these days.

The movie reminded me more of one of those softcore semi-porn movies that Cinemax shows at midnight than a horror movie. There is a really violent scene where Abby snaps and kills a bunch of people in the ICU but, again, it’s a CGI-fest that really takes you out of the movie.

If you are really lonely, watch this film.

 

REVIEW: Sharknado (2013)

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Sharknado: C-

A CGI tornado full of CGI sharks hits LA in this perfect storm of B-movie shittiness.

Sharknado basically exists for you and your friends to converge in the living room, turn down the lights, and tear this movie a new asshole a la Mystery Science Theater 3000. It achieves this goal with a calculated, precise balance missing from most other movies designed to be fucking dumb.

One of the guys from 90210, Tara Reid, and the dad from Home Alone are trying to flee LA and the hungry Sharknado. The plot holes are astronomical, the CGI is cheap, and the acting is wretched, ON PURPOSE.

Numerous times, I caught myself marveling at the fact that this movie was allowed to exist. Like someone at SyFy said “Hey, how about we make a movie about a tornado filled with sharks and a blonde with huge breasts who launches missiles at the tornado filled with sharks and we make it so fucking bad ON PURPOSE that its intentional shittiness makes it all ok. And we’ll call it Sharknado.” And then they made the movie exactly like that.

A cocktail waitress operates a helicopter and the dad from Home Alone beats a CGI shark with a bar stool.

I couldn’t tell if it’s semi-ballsy genius or just another B-movie off the conveyor belt that, through some fluke, achieved some sort of flawless creature-feature awesomeness and inflated cult status. I fell for it though. In my opinion, Sharknado is the product of the realization that there are a lot of people who like to cleverly bash shitty movies and that these same people would enjoy a movie made for this purpose alone. The movie is meant to be mocked and SyFy did a great job of doing what they were trying to do.

In conclusion: this movie is fucking dumb.

REVIEW: Dracula 3D (2012)

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Dracula 3D: D+

This is a retelling of Bram Stoker’s classic with some added nudity, carnage, and a Dracula who looks about as threatening as an H&R Block employee.

The villagers who, in Stoker’s novel, were limited to being terrified background fixtures are more prominent in Argento’s retelling. They have secret meetings that reveal that they live in an uneasy alliance with Dracula. Dracula builds schools for them and loans them money with the understanding that he can eat anyone anytime he wants. As you might expect, some people aren’t really into this arrangement but insubordination is met with decapitation and/or a jugular extraction so for the most part, everyone plays ball.

There’s no England in this one. Harker, Mina, Lucy, Renfield, they all go to the Carpathian Mountains and get fucked with by Dracula, who looks like he’s modeling pea-coats for JC Penny. His hillbilly/gypsy/whatever accolades are an added threat. Van Helsing shows up, played by everyone’s favorite Dutch psychopath, Rudger Hauer. SIT THE FUCK DOWN, HUGH JACKMAN. He avoids a lot of attacks, wields crucifixes, and delivers his lines like a drunk Christopher Walken.

Harker gets turned into a vampire and there are a half dozen scenes where young actresses unburden their breasts from the oppression of constrictive corsets. One of these actresses is the director’s daughter, but you aren’t allowed to find that awkward because this is art!

The story loosely follows the original with the aforementioned alterations being the most significant. Dracula also showcases some new powers:

  1. The ability to turn into an owl
  2. The ability to turn into a swarm of house flies
  3. The ability to turn into a giant praying mantis
  4. The ability to teleport
  5. The ability to deliver telekinetic choke-slams
  6. The ability to look like an innocuous grocery store clerk

The special effects are cheap and include one of my pet peeves: CGI blood. The acting is mediocre and there aren’t any interesting twists on the story. All in all, this was a pointless, disappointing movie from Argento, whom, like I have said, I hate talking shit about. This is devoid of suspense or scares. You’re better off watching Bram Stoker’s Dracula if you want to see something interesting done with the original source material.

 

REVIEW: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006): B+

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Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon: B+

As if you needed more evidence that Scream is one of the most influential genre films ever, Behind the Mask is yet another example of meta-horror floating in Wes Craven’s wake.  Mask takes place in a world that not only acknowledges Freddy, Jason, and Michael, but treats their stories as if they were inspired by true events carried out by real killers.  However, instead of examining the horror movie tropes and rules from the victims’ perspective, a la Scream, it takes us…behind the fucking mask.  Duh.

Leslie Vernon is a mass murderer in training, but he’s also an affable guy who’s letting a broadcast journalist intern named Taylor (Macauley Culkin’s sister in Home Alone) and her two camera guys trail along as he prepares to massacre semi-innocent teens at a remote cabin.  The film crew looks on with a mixture of curiosity, awe, and trepidation as Leslie shows them how to select and stalk one’s “survivor girl,” do cardio to “make it look like you’re walking while everyone else is running their asses off,” and foil victims’ escape routes and defenses by blocking exits, cutting tree limbs, and sabotaging potential weapons.  Such is Leslie’s charm and humor that even though he’s describing terrible things, he’s exceedingly likable.

So is his mentor, played by Herschel from The Walking Dead.  The crew visits his house for a sausage cookout, but first they have to un-bury him from the backyard where he’s practicing the art of appearing to be dead.  He later regales them with tales of the truly great, enduring slashers and derides “one-hit wonders.”

Most of the movie is shot documentary-style until the turning point when the film crew decide to break the fourth wall and insert themselves into Leslie’s murderous scheme.  There’s a pretty sweet plot twist, a couple nice boobies, and a buttload of homages to horror flicks.  Robert Englund is an “Ahab,” the Dr. Loomis archetype (the dude from Halloween, not me) who knows Leslie’s past and is trying to foil his plans.  His character’s name is Doc Halloran, which almost assuredly has to be an allusion to The Shining, amiright?  There’s also an appearance by the “This house is clean” lady from Poltergeist (who knew that dwarf bitch was still alive?), and an awesome end-credits sequence that features Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees) over the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.”

Good stuff.  But to be truly great, you’ve gotta have a sequel.  So get with it, Leslie.

REVIEW: Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

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Berberian Sound Studio: B

Witness Toby Jones assume the role of Gilderoy, a soft-spoken virtuoso of sound who is tormented in this grim psychological thriller in which he is hired to toil on a gory Argento-type Italian horror film, the very essence of which eludes your gaze for the entirety of the runtime. Yet despite never laying eyes on the frightening film-within-the-film, the anxiety and brutality that pervade the accursed sound studio alone are enough to rend the nerves asunder! It is this unique horror that caused me to lose my wits and inadvertently imbibe a double measure of the accursed medications prescribed by the court, which now course through my veins like a poisonous elixir. Alas! 

Gilderoy, a seemingly meek soul well-versed in the art of crafting idyllic nature films, ventures forth, unsuspectingly, under the belief that his talents shall grace yet another of these films: a cinematic equestrian escapade! So Dear Reader, you can quite easily imagine the torment that befalls him as he finds himself working on a most abominable film of Giallo carnage! With ease you envision his disgust as he squirts scalding water upon a skillet, striving to recreate the abominable act of an undead witch vaginally impaling her hapless victim upon a red-hot poker!

And this is only the beginning, Dear Reader. Women’s agonized screams are captured, vegetables mercilessly chopped and stabbed, all in service of the ceaseless demand for the symphony of gore that this movie so requires. And then, Dear Reader, like your humble Keeper hunched over my bloody parchment, he stoops over his console, devoting endless hours to the arduous task of blending these vile sounds with the haunting strains of synthesizers and pipe organ chords reminiscent of a bygone era. Unsurprisingly, his sanity and happiness crumble like the ruins of forgotten civilizations. This unholy parallel triggered another unfortunate lapse and I am afraid I have taken a triple dose of my legally mandated capsules… Verily, my oral cavity, bereft of moisture, doth suffer from an insatiable drought, whilst the echoing whispers that once plagued my tormented soul seem to have manifested themselves anew… And somehow amplified!

In stark contrast to his own mild-mannered gentility, Gilderoy finds himself surrounded by a crew of macho Italian ruffians, undeterred by a ten-hour day of chain-smoking, imbibing spirits, and subjecting the female voice talent to their lecherous advances. By degrees, through a combination of the aforementioned workplace toxicity and the antecedents for his hideous sound work, Gilderoy’s gentle nature succumbs. He soon obsessively devotes his talents to dubbing sound for increasingly wicked and depraved scenes, diverging ever farther from the serenity of his previous cinematic endeavors. Ah, dear reader, behold the dire consequences of this tragic calamity: I was driven to seek solace in the intoxicating embrace of Irish whiskey! Alas, I failed to recall the ingestion of a triple measure of my prescribed medications! Hark! Do you not hear the solemn tolling of church bells, Dear Reader? These bells, once mere figments of my deranged imagination, have now assumed corporeal form to ring the death knell of Gilderoy’s innocence! Be you damned if you doubt me now!

I… tire… but persist in this review… The film, a captivating thriller at its inception, swiftly devolves into a tar-pit of surrealism and nightmare logic reminiscent of the spells of the malevolent sorcerer David Lynch. I shall not unveil its secrets, but I implore you, dear reader, to hold tight to your sanity as you traverse the labyrinthine nightmare that unfolds in the final twenty minutes, a macabre dance of metaphor and terror intertwined.

Have you, perchance, borne witness to the bewildering conclusion of Twin Peaks? Pray, spare me your inquiries, for in comparison to this wretched film, the confounding events of that series assume potent coherence! Oh, the wretched bewilderment that beset me did impel me to partake in the inhaling of forbidden narcotic powders, Dear Reader! I confess! Is it a sin to seek respite from this maddening abyss?! And in this demented state, my tongue not quite my own, spewed forth the most venomous invective upon my innocent feline companion when the poor creature momentarily stepped in front of the television! 

One cannot deny the allure of this accursed film, for it ignites within the viewer a newfound appreciation for the arcane craft of sound engineering and the diabolical creativity that lurks behind the scenes of the silver screen. Oh, the wicked delight derived from immersing oneself in the auditory symphony wrought by Gilderoy! For it is in his torment, not the unholy cauterization of infernal vaginas, but his consuming and palpable revulsion and distress, do we manage to revel in the true horrors of this film. Exhaustion doth overwhelm me now Dear Reader, for this arduous review hath occupied me most feverishly for a span exceeding three days and nights. Perspiration cascades from my trembling brow and… what’s that?… Ah, a beckoning voice, doth resonate from the depths of the cavernous unknown, captivating my senses with an irresistible allure. Some dark compulsion compels me to heed its  call, plunging me deeper into the abyss…

REVIEW: I, Frankenstein (2014)

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I, Frankenstein: UV

I, Frankenstein. It, blows.

This integrity vacuum of a movie left me absolutely positive that no one involved in its making is ashamed of themselves, when they should all be at seppuku levels of shame at the least.

Listen to this pearl of a plot: Demons are among us and the only thing that keeps them in check is a centuries-old clandestine tribe of Gargoyles who live in this giant 100 story cathedral that NO ONE SEEMS TO FUCKING NOTICE in the middle of some ambiguous grey metropolis. This conflict is the cause of about forty atrocious CGI battle scenes in the movie. The CGI, Frankenstein bullshit is insulting; Cinefantastique likened it to “watching someone else play a bad videogame.”

The Gargoyles look like CGI Xbox characters when in Gargoyle-form but they can also morph into humans that all look like characters from Prince of Persia complete with gratuitous leather arm-bands and daggers. The Demons look like the Wishmaster in slim-fit suits. Watching them try to act is like watching a dog try to open a jar.

Also: the film takes place in a world where Frankenstein isn’t a famous book by Mary Shelly but instead, a spooky legend that some people, INCLUDING FUCKING SCIENTISTS believe to be true.

Frankenstein’s monster (who, yep, is called “Frankenstein” in the movie) is caught in the middle of everything. He is a badass maverick (with sexy abs) who gets his hands on some sacred weapons which he uses to fuck up hella Demons in several slow-motion CGI battles. I lost count of how many times two characters jump at each other in slow motion.

Let’s talk about Eckhart. Vulture’s review says he “plays Frankenstein’s monster in a monotonous, teeth-gritting mode, as if someone had one gun on him and another on his family.” Pretty hilarious/accurate. I personally don’t know how he kept a straight face while delivering lines like “Descend in pain, Demon” and “Take me to the Gargoyle Queen.” There is a scene where a Demon tries to possess Frankenstein and he’s levitating and screaming and all I could think of was how fucking DUMB Eckhart must have looked laying on a green block in a green room writhing around and how it reminded me of the best part of the worst movie I saw last year.

There is a strange fluctuation in the mortality of Frankenstein. In one scene, he is hanging on for dear life off of the edge of a window so he doesn’t fall three stories. But in another scene, he purposely jumps through a window from the fifth story of a building, plummets through a sewer grate, and lands on top of a moving train and he’s just swell. He also starts off at the beginning of the film with eyeliner and gnarly scars. As it becomes clear that he’s a good guy, the scars recede and the eyeliner lessons and he looks all handsome, more “humanized” to fit his good-guy role. This is a drop in an ocean of plot-holes and bullshit that makes zero sense.

Yes, there is a scene where he takes his shirt off and there are about a thousand scenes where he does kung-fu with stupid weapons.

If you imagine yourself liking a movie sort of like Underworld but worse, maybe see it.

I, hated it.

REVIEW: The Innkeepers (2011)

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The Innkeepers: C

It’s a haunted hotel movie, but The Shining it ain’t.  To its credit, it doesn’t try for cheap, “gotcha” scares; it tries to earn them with silence and atmosphere.  To its detriment, it’s not fucking scary.  At all.  It’s not a bad film by any stretch, but there’s just not enough going on here to recommend it.

The Inkeepers centers around an old hotel, open for one last weekend.  Sara Paxton (who is fantastic in the far superior Last House on the Left remake) plays a hotel clerk.  This doofus she works with has a website which “documents” supernatural activities at the inn.  He’s got all that nonsense ghost-finding equipment, but he doesn’t really believe there’s anything supernatural going on until the chick records a piano playing a few notes by itself.

That’s about the extent of the horror.  Sure, there are some Shining-esque ghosts who’ve committed suicide and are unsettled and all that.  But there are virtually zero chills and no real plot twists.

Actually, the most horrifying aspect of this film is the appearance of Kelly McGillis as a psychic who stays in the inn.  She was an ‘80s icon, frenching with Tom Cruise in Top Gun and providing jerk-worthy footage to a young Dr. Loomis as an Amish mother seduced by Harrison Ford’s smoldering charm in Witness.  She’s unrecognizable here: a greying, flabby shell of her former hotness.  Suicidal ghosts have nothing on the ravages of Father Time.