Tag Archives: horror

REVIEW: American Psycho 2 (2002)

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American Psycho 2: F

Oh, I am tormented by the wraiths of despair who pierce and rend the flesh most harshly as my curse compels me to watch American Psycho 2, Dear Reader! Even the star of this wretched spectacle, Mila Kunis, with the faint flicker of dignity, has openly stated her disdain for this abominable filth! It is enough to drive a man to drink Irish whiskey in most troubling quantities! 

The feeble tether between this cinematic abomination, rightfully destined for the dark recesses of straight-to-DVD confinement, and the seminal masterpiece that is the first and only American Psycho, is but a wispy specter. It appears as though a sophomoric scrawling of a banal thriller was repurposed with a mere sprinkle of references to Patrick Bateman, so that filmmakers could emblazon “AMERICAN PSYCHO” upon the cover, perched above the visage of the bewitching Kunis, her countenance devoid of emotion, and adjacent to a grotesquely photoshopped meat hook. Ah, the horror aficionado knows this ploy all too well: the sacrilege committed against beloved films through the proliferation of cheap sequels and soulless reboots!

‘Tis enough, Dear Reader, to drive your humble Keeper to the enslaving elixir of Irish whiskey, which I confess I have consumed in great quantities prior to penning this vicious screed!  

The studio, oh so cunning, hoped for one of these thoughts to echo through your mind as you stumbled upon this accursed creation:

  1. “Oh joyous day! American Psycho 2! The first one captivated my very soul! I must delve into this offering!”
  2. “Oh blessed be! Radiant Kunis as a serial killer! She is a vision! I must partake in this spectacle!”
  3. “Oh woe is me! Shatner graces the screen? Such is the lament of my existence. I must subject myself to this curious torture!”

Alas, I am sorry to confess another sin in addition to my excessive consumption of corrosive Irish whiskey: I succumbed to the studio’s malevolent machinations, primarily due to the morbid allure of the third enticement. And now, my life teeters all the more precipitously on the cusp of madness.

The tale unfolds with Ms. Kunis embarking on a rather dull spree of slaying her classmates, all in a desperate bid to secure the coveted role of Mr. Shatner’s teaching assistant. Or at least, that is the impression that seeped into my consciousness as I greedily inhaled draughts of intoxicating Irish nectar! 

This abomination of a film was birthed in a mere twenty days, and oh, the evidence is palpable. This film possesses none of the wit, the visceral splendor, the profound meaning, nor the sheer malevolence that permeated American Psycho. It appears as though Shatner and Kunis engage in a perverse contest to determine who can render their lines with the greatest strain. Gratuitous voice-overs torture the viewer and drive him to consume Irish venom. The soundtrack, oh how it plucks at the strings of absurdity, with whimsical melodies that one might expect to accompany a children’s film.

Kunis, for the majority of her screen time, is reduced to vacant stares, lost in a void while her wretched voice-overs echo. Her demeanor is akin to a lifeless automaton. Occasionally, she contemplates the nature of her murderous soul, yet it feels contrived to the point of inducing retching, which I am doing now most violently.

REVIEW: Creepshow 2 (1987)

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Creepshow 2: D

Have you ever seen a sad clown cry?

Well, you would have if you were with me while I was watching this turd. Or when I try to pee during a “flare-up” (the pills don’t always work).

I would beat up this movie in the park if I could. It is just horrible hack-work with a gold-seal pair of names attached to it-and that gold seal is a fucking lie. I hate this movie so much.

It’s marketed as an actual sequel to the God Damn awesome Creepshow. That film was actually written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero. This movie was marketed as “from Stephen King and George Romero”.

But that’s a lie. This infectious bloodworm of a movie was directed by some fucking hack and only has three stories. 2 of them say they’re “adapted” from “story ideas” by George Romero. Then a significant part of the running time is taken up with weird cartoon interludes between the stories.

I think what happens in the cartoons is that a little boy gets a delivery from a zombie mailman and then the town bully tries to take the package and the boy kicks the bully in the balls and that makes the bully want to rape him so the bully’s gang chases the boy but the boy has giant man-eating flowers in a vacant lot for some reason and the flowers eat the bullies while the boy laughs.

Only one story comes from Stephen King-and it’s in fact one of his best short stories- “The Raft”. And they do it pretty well until they fuck up the hopeless scary as hell ending for some shock value that I think they just needed for the trailer. But what’s the fucking point of giving away the new shock ending in the fucking trailer. That fucks up your whole shock thing, Hollywood.

If I worked for the Hollywood, I wouldn’t have done that.

One thing I did like was the “sharing body heat to stay alive” scene in “The Raft”. It’s also got a good amount of people getting scalped for the history buffs out there. And a gigolo for the ladies.

Fuck this movie. Go read “The Raft” instead. And if you don’t like reading, then play with your butt awhile. That would be better for you than watching this movie.

REVIEW: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

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Rosemary’s Baby: A+

This is one of the best horror films ever made. It’s psychologically creepy as fuck and the writing/acting/direction are fantastic. Structurally, each scene is like a scene from a play with a beginning, middle, and end that all contribute to the overall plot. There is no wasted screen time or pretentious/frivolous scenes thrown in for the hell of it.

Rosemary and her struggling actor husband Guy move into a New York apartment building and befriend local weirdos Roman and Minnie Castevet. The four of them drink fancy cocktails, and swap stories by the fire with Guy and Roman having plenty of private after-dinner chats while Minnie distracts Rose in another room. I wonder what they’re talking about in there…

The film starts by getting you hooked on Rosemary. She is so sweet and charming it’ll make your face hurt! Guy, on the other hand, has all the charm of a pedophiliac car salesman, which is probably why Rosemary begins to suspect him of selling their first born to the Castevets in exchange for material wealth and success. After a few weeks of Guy and Roman’s private time, good news! Rosemary is pregnant! She is a little distressed when she wakes up with scratches all over her body and what feels like a roofie-hangover, with no memories of sex with Guy, only remembering how the night before, Guy was fucking FORCING HER to eat this creepy ice cream sundae that tasted like chemicals. But, regardless, she knows right off the bat that she is with child and this makes her super-stoked.

This paranoia she has about Guy, by the way, is so entertaining to watch because the events that inspire it increase in intensity exponentially, starting with really subtle pangs of doubt to full-blown suspicions of murder and occult rituals, making for great pacing for a psychological thriller. While at first, she is only weary of what appear to be coincidences, she starts to freak the fuck out because she thinks she’s uncovering a global Satanic conspiracy that centers on her baby! 

Guy’s career mysteriously takes off and his rival in the biz contracts a terminal illness. The neighbors all take a special interest in Rosemary’s pregnancy, feeding her funky herbs and monitoring her every move. The Castevets act even weirder and become obsessed with her baby and it seems like everyone is in cahoots, ganging up on Rosemary. People die and stuff.

This is a movie like no other and you owe it to yourself to see it.  

REVIEW: Unlucky Charms (2013)

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Unlucky Charms: F-

Charles Band is the founder, director and lead writer for film production company Full Moon Features. After viewing Unlucky Charms he is also very high on my list of people to punch in the face. This cinematic crap fest sets special effects back about 20 years, while simultaneously bringing us a a jumbled mess of a story and the lesser of the O’Connell brothers, Charlie O’Connell.

The movie starts off with some midget with a fake beard named Farr Darrig sitting in front a green screen consoling a small child. Soon he is joined by 3 other midgets all wearing terrible masks, and we learn that they are 4 mythical creatures that can be called upon to do the deeds of whomever holds the ancient “4 charms”. Well it turns out that the person currently holding these 4 charms is some bitch named Deville who is deathly afraid of getting old. To solve this problem she holds a fake reality TV casting, where 3 strippers and a fat chick get to battle it out to see who becomes the model of Deville’s newest fashion line. However the reality show is just a front for her actual intentions which are to use the 4 demons to steal the girls’ souls so she can stay young.

Once these shitty plot points are established, the demons go around killing the poor strippers with special effects that looked like rejected scenes from the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. All of this is pretty ho-hum until the director pulls a fast one and enacts one of the worst plot twists in history when the demons suddenly gain a sense of morality and decide that killing the strippers is wrong and they should instead kill Deville.

Now not only is it stupid that evil entities all of the sudden become moral beings, but it also limits the amount of kills in the movie to 1, and it means that I did not get to see Charlie O’Connell killed either, which is 90% of the reason I kept the movie on past 11 minutes.

On the plus side the chicks are hot, even the fat one in a chubby way, and we see some boobs and get the pleasure of watching another O’Connell embarrass themselves on the silver screen.

Overall do not watch unless you are under 12 and can somehow not access porn on the internet.

REVIEW: Brain Dead (1990)

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Brain Dead: C

Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton star in this bizarre, poorly written but somehow mildly entertaining horror movie about a doctor that slowly descends into madness. Bill Pullman is a star experimental neurosurgeon who has developed a method that can alter a person’s personality, and/or their memories. Bill Paxton is his former college roommate who is now a corporate slime ball, and he needs Pullman’s help to recover the missing portion of an equation from a former employee named Hallsey.

Despite Pullman’s initial rejections of the idea, he eventually succumbs to Paxton’s charms and agrees to do surgery on Hallsey to get him to remember the equation. During the course of the surgery Pullman fixes Hallsey, but he soon begins to develop paranoid delusions of his own that send his world spiraling out of control.

From here the movie picks up steam but starts moving in so many different directions it is very hard to keep up. First Pullman starts seeing a blood covered doctor everywhere he turns and he keeps having visions of his wife and Bill Paxton banging in all sorts of odd places. Once you think you get the idea that Pullman is a nut bag, the film shifts again as Pullman is now being portrayed as a life long mental patient who created a false reality about him being a neurosurgeon, and he and Hallsey are actually the same person. Well once you accept that portion of the film it shifts again and Pullman just starts waking up from dream sequences over and over again until the viewer eventually gets frustrated and kind of tunes out.

Overall the director did a good job of keeping the audience guessing about what is real and what is not, and as far as a philosophical allegory for what the true nature of reality is, it shits on The Matrix. However the movie got a little jumbled and to hard to follow at points. Worth a viewing if you have always wanted to see the two Bills share the silver screen together.

REVIEW: Creepshow (1982)

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Creepshow A

This is another Stephen King anthology film and was directed by George Romero.  It has 5 stories. It’s an homage to horror comics from the 50’s. In fact, the first time I encountered the stories in this film was in the tie-in comic book (drawn by the great Bernie Wrightson) that was published at the time the film was released. I found it in a Safeway magazine rack while my Dad was taking his blood pressure at that free thing Safeway has. The comic and the movie are both on my list of favorite things (at # 57 and 58, respectively. # 56 is making crack heads do footraces for crack I don’t really have).

Anyway, he best films are the ones with characters that have desires and motivations the audience can relate to. Creepshow has that in spades.

For instance:

  • A ten-year-old boy who wants to voodoo doll his dad.
  • A put upon daughter who wants to bash in her awesome father’s head
  • A dirty hillbilly who wants $200 for the meteor he found.
  • A rich guy who likes videos of drowning people.
  • A college professor with a loudmouth wife and access to an abominable snowman.
  • An old man who hates people and bugs, but not in that exact order.

I know I’ve felt all of these exact feelings, and if you’re being honest with yourself you know you have too. What I like about Creepshow is that it delves into these everyday human desires and fleshes out what would happen if only we had the freedom to indulge in them. You know…a FREE country. Not “Obamerica”.

This film might seem dated to today’s douchebag viewer like you. It was cheesy for its own time-but that’s intentional. The comic-booky visual scheme works well. It provides an otherworldly feel that makes the outrageous events more acceptable and makes the 80’s seem less lame.

This movie is perfect example of how enjoyable the fun/scary thing can be when done properly-with respect and affection for the genre and its history. It’s not even too scary for kids. You should buy it and watch it. Then you should leave it out so that your 9-year-old can find it with minimal effort and then show it to your 7-year-old. They’ll watch and end up just sort of traumatized. But more importantly, they’ll feel like they got away with something. Occasionally, you just have to give kids these little victories.

Why? Because if you don’t they’ll voodoo doll the fuck out of you. The prologue/epilogue of this movie makes that clear.

But even if your kids don’t have voodoo dolls, you have to let them win a few. If you don’t, the next thing you know your son wants to be a nurse and your daughter’s dating outside her race.

You listening, Dr. Loomis?

REVIEW: The Bay (2012)

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The Bay (2012): A-

Y’all know Dr. Loomis has a found footage fetish.   So when I became aware of the fact that Barry Levinson (Diner, The Natural, fucking Rainman!) directed one, I bumped it to the top of my Netflix streaming queue.

I’m here to tell you to do the same.  Like right fucking now.  The Bay isn’t just a found footage movie.  It isn’t even just a horror movie.  It transcends genre.  Best of all, it’s terrifying, and the scares ain’t cheap.

The film takes the unique approach of being told from the perspective of a reporter who witnessed and survived the events of the film.  She watches the spliced-together accounts of different sources from a small Maryland town on the 4th of July, 2010 and re-lives the horror of that day, providing perspective and foreshadowing the fates of the poor fuckers onscreen.

I actually didn’t think I was going to like the movie in its early phase, because the trouble starts with boils.  I’m not scared of boils, blisters, or rashes.  This is why I hated that stupid-ass Cabin Fever.   Turns out the boils are just a symptom of something much worse.  Loomis don’t spoil shit, but let’s just say lots of the corpses (and there are fucking scads) end up with their tongues chewed out.

I won’t tell you what’s doing all the damage, but the delivery system is what gives the film its frightening scope.  Remember how Jaws had everyone afraid of going into the water because you might get eaten by a giant fucking shark?  The Bay takes that concept and doubles it the fuck down.  It’s not just swimming that can get you killed.  See, the water’s polluted.  The officials of the town chose the profitable chicken factory over the purity of their coast…and their drinking water, since it comes from a desalinization plant.

Before any of you Ted Nugent motherfuckers starts with, “Aw fuck, Loomis!  This is some kind of faggot tree-hugger message movie?  I ain’t watchin’ anything Obama wants me to” just know that while the film deals with eco-horror, It’s not heavy-handed.  What creeps me out so much about this flick is that the gruesome phenomenon is examined with scientific precision; the first thing the doc does at the local hospital is call the CDC- they’re fucking useless.  It really does feel like something that could happen to any town in any part of the world.

The environment’s generally pretty resilient, but what if it gets fucked with in exactly the wrong way, under exactly the wrong conditions?  That’s the haunting question that arises amidst the nightmarish carnage of The Bay.  If you don’t care about the answer, then you’re probably a fucktard who should stick to Kevin James movies.

REVIEW: The Ward (2010)

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The Ward: D+

Thanks for this, John Carpenter. This movie has the same plot as Identity staring John Cusack. Your movie made me think about John Cusack. How do you like that?

Here’s ANOTHER movie about a mental institution with dark secrets and ghosts. ANOTHER movie about multiple personalities offered up as one of many cop-out “twists.” ANOTHER movie where the “crazy” protagonist has to do detective work to figure out what a fucking ghost is trying to say to her.

Kristen is in a mental institution because she burned down a barn and can’t remember doing it. The only other patients in there with her are other good looking girls in their 20’s. They all become buddies and they dance around and stuff.

A ghost that looks like a female zombie keeps teleporting around everywhere and killing the patients one-by-one. Kristen tries to warn the staff but why should they believe her? Her amnesia that she had one time in her entire life rules her out as a reliable source of information regarding what clearly look like murders, right?  “There’s no killer, Kristen is crazy,” says the British guy from Mad Men who orders her shock therapy.

The murder/warning/disbelief cycle happens over and over and over and over. After the kills, the ghost leaves behind some clues about who she is/was. Kristen has to put the pieces together JUST LIKE CUSACK IN MOTHERFUCKING IDENTITY. When the reveal happens, I dare you to give a shit.

There are some good jump-scares. Maybe a couple of scenes of suspense but they are short lived and overshadowed by a shameless carnival of cliches and your own inner monologue asking how any of this shit is going down the way it is.