Tag Archives: reviews

REVIEW: Baby Geniuses (1999)

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Baby Geniuses- UV because it’s too scary.

This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s about people doing science to babies, which is cool, but then the science gives the babies superhuman intellect. They become like malevolent stand-up comics who can do science themselves but still have speech impediments.

These geniuses also still wear diapers, like that black hole guy in the wheelchair. But these diapered sociopaths don’t need wheelchairs. And there are lots of them. And they start to make plans and talk shit to adults. Because they don’t care.

There is one guy who wants to stop the baby geniuses, but only for his own selfish ends. So, its one of those movies with no good guy-and everybody is totally merciless.

Kathleen Turner is in this movie, by the way. She used to be hot but hoo-boy…this is the movie where she really hit the wall. What wall? That wall all actresses eventually hit…the too-old wall. Some aging ingénues can survive hitting the wall. They ease into roles more suited to them and don’t end up disgracing themselves-like Oscar winner Jane Fonda in Monster-in-Law or Lindsay Lohan in Machete.

But not Kathleen Turner…she hit that wall hard. And her eyebrows tell you that she didn’t expect it. Or maybe she’s just scared of the babies.

Because watching these CGI babies walk and talk and tell bad jokes …is horrifically disturbing, so much so that I’ve started preparing for when this movie becomes a reality. And so should you.

Because just imagine: baby hands…stopping your breath. Too small to detect…too smart to get caught. And as you fade away, alone in your bed with your shitty life flashing before you….

…while the baby that killed you sits on your floor shitting his diaper, playing with your keys and laughing like a grown up.

Scares you, doesn’t it? Well it should. Don’t see this movie.

REVIEW: House at the End of the Street (2012)

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House at the End of the Street: F

This is a cookie-cutter PG-13 thriller that spends more time emphasizing how cool Jennifer Lawrence’s character is than actually doing anything thrilling. It is like a commercial for Jennifer Lawrence and it is not scary.

Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) is so deep and interesting. There she is, sitting on the hood of a truck wearing a flannel as she strums an acoustic guitar. And hey, there she is playing with keyboards and drum machines and singing enigmatic songs about love. Her mom say that Elissa always “finds the most damaged person around and makes it her mission to fix them”. So she is interesting AND sensitive AND empathetic. The movie reminds you of this with several long scenes that are not suspenseful or plot-driving or any of the ingredients needed for a thriller.

Deep/beautiful/interesting/artistic Elissa and her mom move into a House Not at the End of the Street. Some melancholy eighteen year-old guy lives in the House at the End of the Street. His parents were mysteriously murdered there and he inherited the House at the End of the Street. The movie knows it has to have a back-story. There it is.

The guy has been a kooky, brooding introvert ever since his parents were killed so Elissa latches onto him and makes him one of her “missions” and tries to “fix” him. He is really resistant to the “fixing,” so much of the movie is about this hot, artistic, blond eighteen year-old girl trying to crowbar herself into the life of a scrawny, creepy, unpopular loner. Just like real life, am I right?

It’s characters like these that really make it seem like the film was written by teenagers with ADD who have watched too much Disney Channel.

If you thought maybe that the guy who lives in the House at the End of the Street turning out to be a bit of a homicidal lunatic would be a little predictable, and maybe his kooky brooding is just misdirection written into the film, I have some bad news for you. He is a homicidal lunatic. There is also painfully predictable PG-13 violence and a real lack of scares/gore.

You also have to forgive a lot in this movie. Like people forgetting cell phones exist, cops with dead batteries in their flashlights not calling for back-up, people tied to chairs with tattered strips of t-shirt, and rolls of flaming toilet paper breaking through double-pane glass.

They try to do multiple “twists” at the end but there are so many crammed into a short amount of time that it is laughable and you’ll feel sorry for everyone involved in this waste of time.

THIS WAS ABSOLUTE HORSESHIT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xd2ceHDd-g

REVIEW: The Conjuring (2013)

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The Conjuring B+

Take my word for it-whenever you round up a bunch of 8-year-olds and sit them around a table to do a dramatic reading of The Crucible, they will all mispronounce the word “conjure” and all of its variants. They all put the emphasis on the second syllable: “con-JURE”. It’s infuriating and they do it every time the word comes up, every time I have one of my table-reads!

So I…correct…them.

I can only imagine that all over this great nation, there are young Americans telling each other: “Let’s go see The Con-JURE-ing! It looks scary”.  They will have no realization just how dumb they sound. But not the ones whom I helped; they know better.

So I DID do some good. Take that, Officer Beetleson.

Why am I writing about The Crucible? Because Fuck You, that’s why. But there are some things that connect both works. First, they’re both true stories with real people and events shown EXACTLY AS THEY HAPPENED. Second, the ghosts and demons in The Conjuring are tenuously connected to the Salem Witch Trials, which lends credence to the “true story” claim.

Norma Bates and Nite-Owl are demonologists.  They get a request from the wife of the Office Space guy. She wants them to check out their fucked-up new house. Weird things started happening the first day they moved in. Things like: the dog won’t come inside, there’s random fart smells at night, and other stuff. And the mom has been getting weird bruises (all over) which she first assumed came from banging Office Space too hard. But they didn’t. Then things got worse.

This is a solid haunted house movie. It’s creepy, disturbing and has some non-telegraphed scares and smartly puts the lives of Office Space’s 5 daughters in mortal danger. I suppose I shouldn’t say “smartly” because that credits the writers and director but they didn’t have to do shit because this really happened.

One thing I like to see in a movie is something I’ve never seen before. We’re all familiar with that hallmark of American cinema called the “musical montage”. Like the “training montage” or the “learning montage” or the “they’re going to bang after this song is over” montage. You know.

Well this movie has a “setting up the scientific paranormal investigation equipment all over the house” montage. And it makes that seem exciting. There’s lots really involved equipment like black lights and bells on all the doorknobs so they can be heard opening. Now I realize why all my neighbors hang bells on their doors at night. They’re scared of ghosts!

I have some silly paranoid neighbors! This movie would freak them out!

This movie is nothing great, but there’s nothing it fails at either. See it if you like haunted house movies. You won’t feel cheated or pissed or ashamed or ugly on the inside if you do. Now, if you feel that way going in, you’ll probably feel that way coming out. Movies don’t solve your problems. Believe me.

REVIEW: Dark Harvest 2: The Maize (2004)

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Dark Harvest 2 – The Maize: F-

I must first preface this review by saying that this is the most impressive movie I have ever seen. Now I do not mean impressive in the sense that the story was incredibly well written, or that cinematically it was magnificent, or the use of lighting was superb, or that it was expertly acted. I mean that I was incredibly impressed that someone had the audacity to film this garbage and put it on screen.

The biggest tool in low budget cinema, Bill Cowell, stars as the self proclaimed “benevolent Shy Walker” a slightly out of shape, divorced father of two hideous children who starts having crappy prophetic visions about some demon in a cornfield. Unperturbed by these Microsoft Paint level dream sequences, he decides it would be an awesome idea to take his daughters to the local corn maze on Halloween and let them wander around alone. Well as dark approaches and his kids are not yet back, he goes deep into the corn maze himself to confront the horrors that lie within, while searching for his children.

Well after this stupid and unbelievable set up the rest of the movie consists of Cowell walking through a cornfield yelling “Girls!” “Girls!”while looking for his missing daughters. That’s it. Literally almost nothing else happens At one point he escapes the maze only to be arrested, then he punches the cop and escapes arrest band runs back into the maze where he continues to meander about aimlessly. Throughout the course of his shitty adventure he falls over like 11 times and at least 3 of them were not on purpose, and there is an 8 minute scene of him digging into the dirt with a gardening tool. And as if it was not dumb enough already, at it’s merciful end, Cowell outsmarts the local killer by having a running handheld camera trained on him as if it were some kind of magic spell.

I cannot believe I watched this whole thing, as it is truly one of the worst movies ever and is in my elite pantheon of awful

REVIEW: Mama (2013)

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Mama: B-

Everybody has that one thing that makes them shit their britches. Bloodcrypt Keeper’s is creepy old women, so he asked ol’ Dr. Loomis to review this flick and let him know if he could handle it as long as he had his blankie.

The answer: probably yes. Mama is the creepy-but-flawed story of two young girls who are kidnapped by their psychotic father (Kingslayer Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones) after he caps their mom. They end up in an isolated cabin, where he’s about to complete the family holocaust by pulling a George on his eldest daughter’s Lennie when a floating, wraith-like presence makes off with him.

Fast-forward a few years, and the Kingslayer’s brother (who is just the Kingslayer with a different haircut) has hired some dudes to find his nieces and presumably his brother, but he’s not the point because he’s a wife-killing piece of shit. The girls get found in the cabin, where they’ve apparently been living off cherries and dust bunnies. They’re also not terribly well-adjusted, because they’ve been raised by the aforementioned wraith bitch, whom they refer to with a mixture of love and terror as “Mama.”

The Kingslayer and his girlfriend (the CIA Chick who got Bin Laden) bring them home to live with them, and CIA Chick is not totally on board. She’s this punk rawk gurl and doesn’t dig kids all that much, much less kids who snarl and gnash at the breakfast table. Shit gets worse for her when Mama moves into the kids’ closet and pushes the Kingslayer down the stairs one night, hospitalizing him. Of course, this enables CIA Chick to find her inner nurturer, and the central conflict of the film is the allegiance of the two girls to choose between CIA Chick, who has great boobs and makes them macaroni n’ cheese or Mama, who flies them all around their room and kills whomever gets in the way.

There are some good scares here, although the Mama from the short film that inspired the feature is scarier than the one they ended up using. It’s also not totally clear what, exactly her powers are: blunt force, soul-sucking, haunting, all of these? The younger girl is actually probably the most frightening thing in the film; she’s like a combination of a feral cat and that dude James Bond chases at the beginning of Casino Royale.

There’s also a subplot with a psychologist who hypnotizes the girls that doesn’t really make sense, but I’m willing to admit that could’ve just been the gin talking and not a flaw of the film itself. Ultimately, it’ll scare folks like the Keeper just enough, but their britches should stay shit-free.

REVIEW: Brainscan (1994)

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Brainscan: C+

Edward Furlong (you know, Jon Connor) plays Michael, the ultimate 1990’s teenage loner. He lives in this awesome 90’s loft where he plays video games, wears flannels, and admires the purloined street signs that decorate his room. Even though it’s 1994, his computer is some really advanced Jarvis-type setup that talks to him and recognizes his voice commands for stuff like light switches and phone calls. But he rarely turns the light on or calls anyone because he is such a melancholy 90’s grunge gamer.

His new video game, Brainscan, does some pretty evil shit: As soon as Michael pops the game in, it summons a new playmate, this guy who calls himself “Trickster.” He has this kind of Drop Dead Fred / Beetlejuice / British Invasion thing going on. He looks like a zombie troll doll who plays keyboards for the Rolling Stones. He teleports around and acts like Ace Ventura while he goads Michael into playing Brainscan and progressing through the levels. He says many horrible puns/jokes.

The game itself consists of a combination of hypnosis and virtual reality and the only objective of each level is to commit a murder and not get caught. Michael slips into a trance and experiences extremely realistic 1st person POV game play where he stalks/stabs people. When he wakes up, he’s all sweaty and scared, like how he’ll be when he finally kisses a girl.

Then he finds clues (like body parts in the fridge and Detective Frank Langella snooping) that reveal that the murders are all real and the game is turning him into a serial killer. “Oh, man! What have I done?!” exclaims Michael to fucking no one except his computer butler. Trickster just ROFLs at Michael and convinces him to play more levels, which he does for some reason. His Brainscan kills start adding up. He even murders his only friend and gets pretty close to killing the babe who lives next door.

The plot gets real sloppy. Trickster says he actually is Michael but he has also been possessing Michael and making him murder. Possessing… yourself? What the fuck? There’s a lot of reality “layers” too, which to me, is always the cheapest cop out in a horror movie. Is it all a dream? Or is it all a dream but really just a game? But does that make it real if the game is real? A dream within a dream within a game that is real? But it’s not real, is it?

It’s all a game. It’s all a dream. Whatever. The kills are cool. The 90’s mania is hilarious. The primitive graphics are entertaining. They don’t rely on CGI. There is gore. There is only one good jump-scare in the movie. I promise you’ll know what I mean.

REVIEW: Sanitarium (2013)

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Sanitarium: C-

This is an anthology movie that has three separate tales about insanity presented to us by Malcolm McDowell who plays the “cryptkeeper” character and the head doctor of a sanitarium. In between each tale, he gives us a cryptic monologue about insanity. Who is he to talk? Have you seen the movies he’s been in lately?

Case 1 is about a crazy artist who likes to talk to his dolls. Sometimes the dolls tell him to murder, so he murders. The guy looks like Sideshow Bob and he gets REALLY intense while bickering with his dolls. This was the worst tale in the anthology. Most of the time he is having REALLY intricate arguments with the dolls and the audience can’t even hear the fucking dolls. He pushes Freddy Kruger off of a building and he lynches some woman whose boobs are exposed within the first 15 minutes of the film.

Case 2 is a lot more fun. It’s about this nerdy kid named Steven. His teacher at his Catholic school is the brunette Mean Girl and his dad is an alcoholic who likes to beat/molest him. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’s also being stalked by a giant homeless looking dude who wears a hood because his face looks like 1990’s Venom from the Spiderman comics. I won’t tell you what happens but it does involve Steven stuck in a burlap sack and does NOT involve his dad having a change of heart regarding rape/beating.

Case 3 is about Lou Diamond FUCKING Phillips! Through a series of flashbacks we see he was a professor / doomsday prepper who believed in the 2012 apocalypse nonsense. He lost his job because all of his lectures devolved to his crazy rambling/prophesying and he lost his family because he started ignoring them and building an underground bunker. Flash forward and we see him chilling in his bunker listening to opera music, talking into a tape recorder, doing push-ups, and other stuff a psycho would do in a bunker. He thinks he has to hide down there because up top, everyone is dead and there are aliens. Maybe he really is hiding from aliens. Or maybe he killed his family and he’s hiding from the truth. DUN DUN DUUUUN! His acting is actually really good and the guy looks great at 51.

Overall nothing special but the movie keeps you interested. No explicit carnage or really any on-screen graphic violence. The soundtrack is LOUD AS FUCK. I kept waiting for McDowell to ask some cliche rhetorical questions about society; “aren’t we all trapped in our own cell?” kind of thing. Never happened. So I guess the movie was surprising and unpredictable too.

REVIEW: Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (1987)

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Silent Night, Deadly Night 2: B-

This sequel picks up shortly after the conclusion of the first film and follows the homicidal misadventures of Billy’s younger, sweater-wearing brother, Ricky, who is also a traumatized lunatic because of a killer Santa murdering his family.

The guy who plays Ricky is somehow a worse actor than the guy who played Billy. His fucking facial expressions, intonation, and head movements surpass Shatner levels. Just this guy abysmally sucking at acting so bad for 90 minutes while keeping a straight face was enough to earn the movie a C. Look at the picture I posted up there. That’s him looking “edgy.”

Ricky is in a nuthouse at the beginning of the movie. It seems he has committed his own string of murders (“PUNISH!”). We get some flashbacks from SNDN1 in the form of original footage and refurbished scenes that include Ricky as a more active participant.

The flashbacks evolve into a frame story that show Ricky murdering some “naughty” people. This is B-movie slasher GOLD. Anyone who has seen the movie will tell you straight up that the “GARBAGE DAY” execution is a magical achievement in low-budget horror (please see the end of this post). He does all sorts of crazy stuff. He chokes a woman with a car antenna and jumper-cable electrocutes a guy. He also shoots lots of people, many of who don’t seem very naughty at all.

Ricky keeps killing and killing until the frame story ends. Then he breaks out of the insane asylum and keeps killing and killing some more. Remember the nun who used to beat Billy with a belt because he was a sinful little shit? Ricky finds her and gives her the ax.

Lots of goofy carnage and anti-acting. Funny music and an impressive body count. Worth your time.