Tag: Horror

Horror sequels are a hard beast to tackle. Horror spin-offs are another entity altogether. In fact, I literally can’t think of a single one.

After all, having a successful horror franchise is the goal of many horror films. They hope they are scary and unique enough to warrant coming back to. They might even take over completely unrelated projects and just take on the same name in order to live off the hype. But a spin-off? Really.

The Conjuring was a great movie. Most people would agree with that. Eventually we will get a sequel to that, but until then, we get franchise spin-offs based on things we see in The Conjuring. I guess. And honestly, an Annabelle movie talking about her origins before The Conjuring made sense. As long as it isn’t identical to Chucky, and as long as it is entertaining, then bring it on.

I hope they answer how any one could even want this ugly thing in their house.

Annabelle takes place a year before the events of The Conjuring. It is centered on John (Ward Horton) and Mia (Annabelle Wallis). Yes. The main female character is actually named Annabelle. The couple are expecting their first baby soon, and as a gift, John gave Mia the final piece of her doll collection. It cost a lot of money! And it looked creepy before getting all disfigured.

Unrelated to a doll, two members of a cult come by, murder their neighbors, then attempt to murder Mia and her unborn child! But the police show up and save the day, killing those darn cultists! The lady cultist bleeds on the doll, and apparently that is enough to invoke Satan, demons, and other terrifying things.

Needless to say, the doll starts doing some creepy stuff. But the baby is still born, so don’t worry about that! Just…What does this doll want? Hopefully not cuddles. With a new baby in the mix, I sincerely doubt there is time for cuddles.

Also featuring Alfre Woodard, Tony Amendola and Eric Ladin.

Let this be a lesson parents: Never get your child hooked on dolls. It only ends with Satan.

I think I am starting to realize why horror spin-offs don’t really happen or work. Based on all of the ones I have seen (all one), they don’t make a lot of sense in the plot department.

The could make a lot of sense, but that requires caring about the plot and the movie they came from. But based on the ending, there doesn’t seem to be a real reason for why Annabelle matters at all after this movie. Based on the mythos they created for the character and then explained in great detail throughout this whole movie, it should be over.

Now we have this movie and The Conjuring that both don’t do a good job of explaining why she still matters at all. And that is dumb.

Speaking of dumb, the ending in general of this movie was done. And the beginning and middle, but for different reasons.

I can’t believe they created a nonsensical and non-unique evil doll character. What a waste of time. I can’t believe we have to associate this with the awesome The Conjuring from now on.

1 out of 4.

1250.

Welcome to my 1250th review! This Milestone Review is actually a bit cooler than the last few. Something about a “250” is sexy. A quarter of a thousand. That means I am slightly closer to 1500!

Now I know what you are thinking. Freddy vs. Jason? That movie came out like, ten years ago? What in the actual fuck are you doing?

Well, my goal for a lot of these milestone reviews is to pick a specific sort of unique movie. A lot of the times they are well known movies that are critically panned and hated, which allows me to write to a specific audience and laugh at it with them. It also allows these “bad movies” to maybe get a fair shake, should they be great.

Unfortunately with my criteria, I feel like I basically got all the movies in my time frame. I mean, Twilight and all? After all the other movies, I kind of have to branch out more.

The reason I picked Freddy vs. Jason is because it was a pretty intense movie when it came out, putting together two horror icons who have been in pop culture for decades. And I never watched it! I only thought about it thanks to the review of the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. I realized this would be perfect for my next milestone, and I hope it combines the best elements of the two franchise with plenty of death and laughs.

I guess this scene falls under a plot element that both franchises tend to include in their repertoire.

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is a sad evil little nightmare. His power came from fear. He was getting back at the youth of a neighborhood that killed him, because he had it coming. Well, whatever the town did, they seem to have forgot about him. If they aren’t afraid, he has no power. If he has no power, he can’t invade their dreams. If he can’t invade their dreams, he is forgotten and will live an eternity alone.

So he finds Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger). Resurrects him, pretends to be his mother (Paula Shaw), and tells him to head to Elm Street for some revenge killing. If Jason does it right, they will think it is Freddy, and he will be back to kill again!

Especially her. They should make her their main goal and focus mostly on her. Definitely definitely her.

Hey look at that. Freddy’s plans work perfectly. Right after some teen sex, Gibb (Katharine Isabelle) is taking a nice shower, and her boytoy gets stabbed a few times and folded in half in one of those bed things. Man, fucked up! Since he died in a bed and in a weird way, this gets some of the older folks talkin’. They think somehow, despite all their prep, Freddy has come back and is again, going after their kids.

The kids don’t know that yet though. They have been sheltered and hidden from the horrible past of this area. They do know that somehow, some people are getting murdered. And you know what, it isn’t just in their dreams.

Sometimes a weirdo in a hockey mask shows up.

And Jason sure does know how to make an entrance.

Shit, one dude was even in a nightmare with Freddy who was too weak at the time. He woke up and escaped, but then was just straight up murdered by Jason. Everywhere seems to be terrifying.

Outside of the vague nightmares, they wouldn’t really know about Freddy if it wasn’t for Will (Jason Ritter) and his buddy Mark (Brendan Fletcher). They were at the local Psychiatric Hospital. Aka, they were being terrorized by Freddy and the town put them there to keep it away from the untainted youth! They even had a non-FDA approved miracle drug that would suppress dreams. Huh, how handy.

Either way, Will used to date Lori (Monica Keena), our main heroine pictured above. No bad blood between them outside of the fact that she had no idea what happened. He says he saw her dad (Tom Butler) kill her mom. Oh, that’s awkward.

With two supernatural entities, everyone agrees that is the most fucked up part of this.

Wait a minute. Everyone right now has to realize that Jason and Freddy share a universe. So some of these guys have heard about Jason before, and they know that this Camp ClearWater is a haunted area that people don’t go to. They know the stories.

So who is the biggest threat? Should they focus on finding a way to get their dreams to stop, or finding a way to make Jason leave first? They figure they want to get their sleep on, so they should probably go to the Psych Hospital and get that miracle drug so they can sleep with ease.

But even more importantly is that Freddy is really fucking pissed off. Jason on numerous occasions keeps killing, but he doesn’t want that anymore. Jason has killed people in their sleep, right before Freddy can do the job. That isn’t cool man. That is totes uncool.

Yeah man. Why can’t you be chill, man?

So, thanks to the help of young Deputy Scott Stubbs (Lochlyn Munro), they are able to break into the ward! Their team is young stoner Freeman (Kyle Labine), Lori, Will, Lori’s black best friend (Kelly Rowland), and a nerd!! (Chris Marquette).

Well, Freddy decides to possess one of the kids, because now seems like a good idea. He uses the stoner, because he can get him high first.

Stoner Freeman ends up getting rid of all the drugs. Not only that, but he also is able to tranquilize Jason who is still chasing the kids everywhere they go!

That’s right. Now Freddy can fight Jason in the Dream World and finally take him down.

I know, I can’t believe the two iconic characters actually get to fight either.

Well, given it is home turf for Freddy, the nightmare realm, he really starts to fuck Jason over good. So many torture devices to show him the business. But guess what? Jason seems invincible. Nothing is hurting him.

That is because Jason isn’t afraid. It isn’t until Freddy realizes he has one fear, water, that he knows what to do. He takes Jason back to the time when he was young and he drowned at the lake.

Meanwhile, back in the real world. The kids have a plan. They are continually tranquilizing Jason to make sure he doesn’t kill them and driving him back to the camp where he normally lurks. They also tranquilized Lori to go into their dream battle.

They figure if they can bring both of the entities to the camp, Jason has a better chance of beating Freddy. If he wins, then they might leave them alone because he is home. If he loses, well, they still have a Freddy issue, but at least Jason is done.

Lori’s job is to make sure Jason doesn’t die in the dream and to bring Freddy back to the real world with them. Yay more violence!

In this scene, Kelly Rowland calls Freddy a faggot. Not really funny, just awkward 2003 moments.

Needless to say, their plan only kind of works. Eventually Freddy is in the real world too, but more of them keep dying in the process. But at least Freddy and Jason are fighting again. And maybe, just maybe they can escape if one of them wins.

I bet you want to know who wins. Well, neither win of course. They both attack each other with each other’s weapons. But Jason does decapitate Freddy! Just. Freddy still winks by the end of the movie.

That lets us get more sequels that refuse to exist, including the very rumored Freddy vs Jason vs Ash movie that would be very sexy. I don’t care how old Bruce Campbell is.

Oh and Garry Chalk is in this movie as main police chief guy. I couldn’t find a good time to talk about him.

More fight scenes than you can shake a machete at.

For review 1250, I think I picked a really good film. 1300, 1350, 1400, and 1450 might suck, but this one is a decent one and a good one to break my yearly limit for.

I actually found Freddy vs Jason to be very entertaining. It took the extremely campy and scary moments from the Nightmare franchise and combined them decently with the senseless stabby violence of Jason.

I am clearly more of a Freddy fan of the two, but I think both of them were represented in positive lights for their respected franchises. Neither side of this fictional battle should feel slighted by what occurred in this cross over.

And they didn’t even skip out on the fight scenes. They made sure the two main battles between the two were unique, long, interesting, and true to characters. It wasn’t just 2 minutes tacked on to the end. No, we got a lot of it and the build up felt natural.

Well fucking done, guys. Well fucking done.

3 out of 4.

Welcome to the final day of Musical Week! Aww, sad, yes I know. Part of the reason I picked this week for a theme was because of the two musicals coming out, yes. The other reason is because I am on my honeymoon this week, and for the most part, musicals are set in worlds where people are happy and singing and dancing. Dancing is important. If there is no dancing, then you have Les Miserables and that is a sad musical.

But dancing can also be creepy. We learned that with the Thriller music video. Horror Musical isn’t a huge category. Stage Fright from this year attempted it, but it was also definitely a comedy for going for the happy musical + slasher movie elements. The only one I can think of that got really close was Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Oh well look at that. The Devil’s Carnival is done by the same people who brought us Repo! How quaint. I can’t believe how that segue came so naturally~.

In fact, a lot of the actors from Repo! are in this one as well. It is basically an unofficial and not at all related sequel to Repo!

Satan + Dancing = Horror musical.

The stories from The Devil’s Carnival are based upon Aesop’s fables. That isn’t subtle at all, because we have Lucifer (Terrance Zdunich) reading from the book to a kid. But at the start of the film, three people die. Ms. Merrywood (Briana Evigan) dies in a shootout with the police. John (Sean Patrick Flanery) has just lost his son and is about to slit his wrists. Tamara (Jessica Lowndes) was dealing with bad boys and got killed by an angry boyfriend.

And apparently they are all now in Hell!

The Ticket Keeper (Dayton Callie) runs this Hell/Carnival, where it uses demons and devils to teach those new residents their lessons. But you know, with circus themes and shit.

With such carnival employees such as The Painted Doll (Emilie Autumn), Wick (Alexa PenaVega), The Twin (Nivek Ogre), The Scorpion (Marc Senter), Hobo Clown (Ivan L. Moody), The Magician (Bill Moseley), and The Fool (Mighty Mike Murga), who wouldn’t have a good time?

This game is actually my favorite sort of foreplay.

The Devil’s Carnival is only an hour long, but it packs a lot of material and a lot of crazy shit into that hour. Anything more would definitely be pointless. The songs were both eerie and beautiful. There wasn’t a lot of time for talking either, as the story advanced through songs for the most part.

If I had one major complaint, it is that I thought we had repetitive songs. Not tunes or musical themes, but the songs themselves were basically saying the same thing a few times. I think twice this happened, where the plot/punishment was unfolding for the characters,through a song, then someone told the same story/fable in another song right after. It felt awkward. Like, stop talking about the Scorpion and the Frog. I don’t care that much.

Overall it was a really well put together story and the ending implied a lot more is to come. And there is! More importantly, it won’t just be a rehash of the first film with new people coming to Hell and new fables. No, they have grander plans in the underworld. The next movie, The Devil’s Carnival: Alleluia! It will be a full length production and should be coming out in sometime 2015.

I can wait, totally, a good while. Saying “I Can’t Wait” would be dishonest. But a part of me is pretty excited to eventually see where this story goes.

3 out of 4.

Please don’t get confused. This review is going to be about Jessabelle. Not Annabelle. Sure, they are both horror films, and they came out around the same time, and you know, have that belle thing going on. But they are nothing alike.

Okay, they have one more thing in common. But we will get to that later.

Jessabelle is obviously the less well known of the movies. It was supposed to come out in January, pushed back to August, then pushed back to a soft release in November with some of that video on demand. It ho hummed its way into existence, and then ho hummed its way onto my laptop. I love you video on demand.

Oh hey, I remember this scene from A Nightmare On Elm Street.

Jessie (Sarah Snook) is living a nice life. In fact she is about to move into her fiance’s house finally and she is pregnant with child. Then surprise, car crash, fiance is dead, unborn baby is super dead, and she is paralyzed legs down. Wow, that escalated quickly.

Now she has to go back down to rural Louisiana, with her dad (David Andrews), and you know her old family home isn’t wheelchair accessible. She just has no where to go.

Well, Jessie finds a box of VHS tapes under her old bed. They were made by her mother (Joelle Carter) before she was born. That is good, because she died when Jessie was young from that cancer. But these tapes are weird. She is acting all funny, talking about death and seeming threatening. Her dad doesn’t like them, saying that wasn’t her real mother, by then her mom was out of it. From the cancer. But what can it mean?

What. Can. It. Mean?!

Also featuring Amber Stevens, Chris Ellis, and Mark Webber.

Acting.

Somewhere lurking in the marshy waters that surrounds this Louisiana horror movie Jessabelle is a unique and decent plot. It it totally there, you just kind of have to scrape off the crap. But not everyone has time to scrape off the crap on their own, and the film makers certainly didn’t do it for us. So instead we got packaged crap and were kind of told to look for it on our own.

That sounded pretty harsh, but I thought I was being clever there.

But it is true! The acting wasn’t terrible. The movie was just slow. Some times people think movies set in rural areas need to take their time and can’t be high energy, but that is just silly. It had its jump scares, it had scenes that were alluding to other movies. And it had a decent plot. But it was full of other crap and given to us in a boring “seen it!” before way.

Oh well, maybe you can surprise me with some indie sequel in like, four years.

1 out of 4.

Since the Transformers franchise, Hasbro has realized it can print money by having their product turned into loud explosive military forces commercials. So they started to branch out. G.I. Joe movies happened and people were either disappointed or okay with them. Okay. Sure.

Then they said, screw it, let’s turn board games into movies, not just toys. And that is why we have the atrocity that is Battleship.

And maybe after all their action films, they realized that action doesn’t have to be their only go to genre. Why not horror? That is what the kids love these days. Maybe a nice soft PG-13 horror, to get more money and revitalize one of their games. So we all hope that means they are making a new Clue Movie (that could never be as good as the original)? Nope. We are getting fucking Ouija.

This just makes me not want to floss. Are you out to ruin our teeth too, Hasbro?!

Everyone knows for Ouija (/spirit) boards, they only work if someone knows they don’t work and they make their hand move the piece around. You can trick your little bitch friends and get a laugh out of it. Haha, big joke. Well, Debbie Galardi (Shelley Hennig) never really got over it when she played as a kid. She has always felt haunted by it. And now she is in a house alone, found the board in the attic and played by herself, which is a big no no. Next thing you know, boom, she hanged herself. Hey now, it’s just a shitty game.

Needless to say, people find this news troubling. Especially Laine Morris (Olivia Cooke), Debbie’s best friend who also introduced her to the game a long time ago. Eeek. Oh, and I guess Debbie’s old boyfriend, Pete (Douglas Smith), who was in a sexual relationship with her. He is beating himself off up over this for not seeing the signs.

Well, Laine wants to just try one thing before she is willing to let her friend go. And we know what she wants to do. She wants to Ouija board it up to see if they can speak to her, because she thinks something is up.

So she gathers her boyfriend (Daren Kagasoff), her sister (Ana Coto), their friend (Bianca A. Santos), and Pete and they Ouija it up. And hey, someone answered.

But is it Debbie or someone that contacted Debbie?

Come on, you know it’s the latter. Let’s not forget Lin Shaye, she is in this movie like a lot of recent horrors. But we can forget Sierra Heuermann, because I don’t like typing out her last name and want to not do it anymore.

This is the worst depiction of a Lens Of Truth that I have ever seen.

PG-13 (or lower, if they exist?) horror movies are a bane to the genre. We aren’t say that you need swearing, tits, or gore to be scary, but disturbing violence and terror is something they have given to make a movie R before, and I have to assume PG-13 would just be slight or mild terror.

If I had to describe the terror in this movie, I would call it extra mild. Like, no one should find any part of this movie at all scary. Nothing about the board itself is scary (It moves!? It moves with no fingers?! Ahhh!). The entire thing relies on some jump scares between some ghosts that haunt the house and the kids who love to die. The deaths themselves are not creative and don’t come to anyone as a surprise.

But worse than all of that is how incredible boring the movie is. It takes awhile for them to even get their Ouija on to contact the dead friend. It felt like a third of the movie had already passed. Then a longer time before anyone even starts dying. Everyone knows you need deaths throughout a film to keep up the fear. All at the end is pointless.

Once it was over, I was glad. But then I realized how much money this movie made despite its low budget. We are going to eventually get a Ouija 2, and it will suck. Hasbro is going to make movies about Candy Land, Monopoly, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, and they too will suck (not a joke). The only one that could be good is Hungry Hungry Hippos, but only if it is a serious African drama about a herd of scary ass Hippos eating all the things.

Olivia Cooke is being typecasted into these shitty horror movies. The Quiet Ones and The Signal were bad. Here only other real role, that is horror based, is Bates Motel. I hope she sticks to horror TV shows and gets out of these terrible movies before she has no career.

0 out of 4.

Despite Halloween being a thing weeks ago, horror movies are still coming out and existing. I gave horror movies a whole week! What gives?

Apparently I have to see horror movies outside of October too, which is dumb. Wouldn’t it be nice if every month had a genre theme? December would be my favorite month, because it clearly would belong to Musicals. June would be animated musicals.

That is all nonsense. I am now going to talk about The Babadook, an indie movie outside of Australia with a budget that all went towards making the creature. That’s right, it’s a creature movie.

And a movie involving books. How scary!

This is a simple story about a mother and her child. You see, Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single mother, because en route to the hospital to give birth they got into a car accident and the husband didn’t make it. Kind of a bad thing to happen on a day of life.

So life has been rough. She works at a nursing home, which pays enough for them to get by, although they aren’t rolling in the dough. And her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), he is a weird one. My guess is some sort of autism, but they never really say anything. He is definitely a loner, likes to yell, has behavioral problems in school. He pretends he sees monsters and wants to fight them, so he builds crude imaginative weapons to fight the invisible ghouls.

Well, Amelia likes to read to her son before bed. And today he wants to hear “Mister Babadook,” a pop-up book she doesn’t remember getting for him. Well, it is really odd and eerie, talking of a boogie man that once you know of its existence, will never lead, and it freaks the boy out.

And guess what the book unleashes. Guess. Come on. Guess. You probably couldn’t even tell.

Also with Barbara West and Daniel Henshall. They are important to the story. I guess.

Yeah, this picture alone just looks like autism to me.

This is not your typical current horror movie. It doesn’t really feature jump scares, it features a unique new creature, and it is pretty frightening at times. Aka, what you want in a horror movie!

Many different aspects of this film are unsettling, including just how Amelia/Samuel look throughout the film. Clearly the kid is creepy, with those big popping eyes and pale skin. The mom does a great job too, always slightly disheveled, conveying the emotions of someone who just can’t take it anymore. Someone who thinks they are literally going insane.

It was eerie and great. And hell, The Babadook didn’t even look that silly. It had a clear lower budget feel to it, but based on the animated from the books, from the boogieman stories and from nightmares in general, the style really worked for me. Even the creepy noises and voice he made seemed great.

The Babadook is on video on demand, and you most likely won’t see it in theaters anytime soon. But if you want a relatively unique and decent horror, this is one of the better recent ones to check. The theaters/Hollywood have been failing us over October, so this might be your best bet.

3 out of 4.

Canada.

It has to be Canada’s fault. That is what you would think when you hear of the term Zombeavers. Clearly a country who worships the proud and noble animal would make a horror/comedy based on them turning into the undead feasting for brains.

But nope. You’d be wrong. This movie is all America, baby. And it isn’t even set in Canada. Just a nice cabin in the woods by a lake. A classic tale if any.

Whatever the reasoning behind this film, I do appreciate the way the two words line up. Bloody brilliant.

Pun about beavers and feet stumps.

Three ladies, driving to a vacation in a cabin in the woods. How any real horror movie starts.

It was supposed to involve boyfriends, but apparently Sam (Hutch Dano) cheated on Jenn (Lexi Atkins). So they now want to make Jenn feel better, so Zoe (Cortney Palm) and Mary (Rachel Melvin) have to leave their men at home.

Of course, the place has no cell reception, and maybe some creepy individuals. Like a local hunter, Smyth (Rex Linn), who tells them to cover up their bodies more. Whatadick.

And it should be noted, I guess, that some apathetic delivery drivers lost a canister of radioactive material near the lake. Went down the stream right to the beaver dam.

And don’t worry, they aren’t just strange mutated killer beavers either. They are literally undead with all the characteristics that an undead zombie beaver would and should have.

Also with Peter Gilroy and Jake Weary, as the other boyfriends.

Pun about beavers and women.

Now, this movie is a tribute to B-Movies done right. Not shitty for shitty sake. But interesting and unique with arguably a dumb plot. That is what we want in our low budget weird horrors, damn it.

The beginning and end had me laughing more than I figured, but other than that, most of the comedy just game from snide remarks from characters and the ridiculousness look of the zombeavers. Hand puppets or something, not bad terrible CGI. Added some more uniqueness to it.

It was obviously not the best film of the genre, and wasn’t terrible unique in terms of plot. Basically just zombie film, but with beavers. But it still had some very unique scenes and ways the characters interacted with the threat that made it feel a bit more interesting.

I am super stoked that they made them zombies and just not mutated beavers, by the way. It provided a way more entertaining ending than just killer beavers.

And also, we have to give the film some props for such unique advertising.

2 out of 4.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you are thinking. “Didn’t you just review this movie?” Nooo, that was The ABCs Of Death! This is the sequel! You see, The ABCs of Death came out like, last year or 2012, depending on who you ask. This one is new, it is fresh, and that is why I had to rush it out before Halloween. On the same week as the original.

The concept is of course exactly the same. In The ABCs Of Death 2, we have 26 new short stories, one for every letter of the alphabet, with some repeat directors, some new people, and overall, a lot less subtitles.

If the man on the left represents this franchise and the woman represents the average film goer…

With the second iteration, I feel like I should note that the overall tone of the movie seems to have changed a lot. Technically it is still a horror comedy, but there is a lot lot less comedy and a lot more tales going for a serious horror/thriller short. Like, a lot of them.

For instance, guess how many of these shorts are about farting and dying from farts? Well, 0, which is definitely less than the first film.

Here are some other notable differences – Every short is a story, and there are no meta stories unlike the first film. I think there are more animated/claymation/etc shorts than the first film, of which I think only had a couple. This one didn’t have a lot either, but there were more. And of course, one of the shorts made me want to throw up, everywhere, and still makes me feel comfortable.

And it definitely wasn’t the bros versus hoes segment.

Seriously. I am going to do my best and not tell you what any letter means. And it will be simple, because I am typing this and not talking directly to you. Z. The ending of this film is fucked up. Super fucked up. Like. Really really cringe inducing, gross, yucky yuck, bllaarrrghghghghg. I had to send my loved one out of the room when it was happening so that she wouldn’t experience any of it and refused to tell her about it. It was just that bad and even describing it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.

And you know what? I guess that makes it kind of awesome. They wanted to freak me out, they did, and that is hard for a lot of horror films to do. Z will unfortunately stick with me for a long time, but that also speaks out to its uniqueness.

In other news, on a whole, I think I technically disliked this one more than the first. I thought the first was okay, and overall, this one too was okay. There is so much diversity and stories, it is hard for a single bad one to drag it all down, or a great one to elevate it. There is just so much average, that after watching it, I can only really remember a few of them anymore. The extremes.

I know I am mostly alone when I say I disliked this one more than the first, as most people liked how it was less humorous, but I thought the humor aspects gave the first one some sense of identity. I think it has to either embrace the comedic element more fully and equally, or get rid of it completely and go straight 26 tales of fright and terror. That is what I think a future movie needs to do. With the time constraints, they should’t have issues actually making tiny terrible tales, I just don’t want half of them to feel half assed.

2 out of 4.

Another V/H/S movie, another year. I liked the first two installments. They offered me a lot of variety, some bad, some really good, at least most of them were okay tales and pretty dang unique. I like the anthology format, as a lot of these stories you wouldn’t expect to last a full movie.

There isn’t a lot I can really say about V/H/S: Viral ahead of time. A few short horrors, one that plays between them that somehow branches them all together. Like before, this one was released on V.O.D. before a small theatrical run, in order for people to watch at their home for Halloween I guess.

Turn around bright eyes.

For this part of the franchise, we have an astounding FOUR short stories that make up the entire movie, including the one that is spread throughout the film. The main story, I guess, is Vicious Circles, and involves a police chase of an ice cream truck throughout Los Angeles. It interests a lot of the community, hoping to grab shitty cell phone footage to place it on youtube.

We have Dante The Great, a story about an illusionist who finds a magical cape that grants him real magical power, but one that needs to feast on the blood of others.

There is Parallel Monsters, about a man who builds a portal into an parallel universe, right when his parallel universe does the same. Everything seems identical, so they agree to explore the others side for 15 minutes, but of course, not everything is as similar as it seems.

And finally, Bonestorm, about a group of people wanting to film a skateboarding video, who head to Tijuana where there are big ditches that no one would care if they did tricks there. And then they also get involved with a Mexican cult.

There was supposed to be a story called Gorgeous Vortex, which was apparently cut for some unknown reason. I just know it was sixteen minutes long and it did not make it to the final movie (but I think I even still saw it mentioned in the credits, awkwardly enough).

First thing of note, this is incredibly disappointing in terms of number of stories. I feel cheated, like I barely got enough diversity.

The main story is terrible. For whatever reason, despite the good technology to capture all of the events, was full of class video tape stylized cut and screech noises, and it got totally annoying. It didn’t make any sense until the end, where it was kind of cool, but very disappointing leading up to it.

Dante The Great didn’t match the V/H/S style at all. It was very shitty and I don’t even want to count it as a short on this movie. It would have been better without it.

Parallel Monsters was the only good story of the bunch. It had a nice sci-fi concept and told a bizarre story. I still think it had too much filler in the middle, where it was just being weird without advancing the plot any forward.

And Bonestorm? I think it had a good concept, but the main characters were very annoying, it took too long to get to Mexico, and then when the cult appeared, it became incredibly confusing as to what was happening, who was dead, who was dying, and a lot of chaos made the end almost unwatchable and not exciting.

This is the worst addition to the franchise, by far. And based on the Vicious Circles story, it kind of gave the whole thing a bit of closure. But I assume they will still keep trying to milk this franchise, because it is cheap, and they don’t need to come up with 90 minute plot lines. I have no issues with the anthology horror genre, but this one is so much worse than the other two, it is incredibly disappointing.

1 out of 4.

Almost universally agreed upon, Leprechaun is one of the worst franchises known to man. It has always been known for its more comedic elements and campy atmosphere, but a lot of people just seem to loathe it. Most of knowledge of it came from Wayne’s World and seeing the first one as a kid, which kind of creeped me out. But then we also got Leprechaun 4: In Space and Leprechaun In The Hood. The series kept going because, presumably, no one puts Warwick Davis in a corner.

But now that part of the Leprechaun franchise is presumably dead. Now Leprechaun: Origins, serving as a series reboot, is being made by the very prestigious WWE studios.

The company who brought us character studies such as The Condemned, Oculus, and The Day.

Let’s not forget the filter. How else will they know it is dark and brooding?

Ireland, because that’s where leprechauns live. Two couples, one adventure to discover the richness of the land in front of them. What secrets may they find? What hidden gems?

Well, Jeni (Melissa Roxburgh) is looking to get her Masters in History next year, but not sure what she wants to do it on. So why not look around Ireland? Her boyfriend Ben (Andrew Dunbar) more or less supports her theories, although he wants to see cooler less boring things. They also have the less important couple (Brendan Fletcher, Stephanie Bennett), who are expendable.

They go to town, hearing good things, and find out artifacts that are super old. Just a 7 hour trip from the town. They had planned to stay there just an afternoon, but when offered a free cabin to stay in over night and a tour to the site? Well, sure.

But it turns out the town has pact with an ancient leprechaun. It wants to kill the town, as they stole his gold, but they have instead let them have human sacrifices in the form of out of town visitors. Yay, appeasing leprechauns!

Some townsfolk include Garry Chalk and Teach Grant, while the leprechaun himself is played by Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl, who I have been told is a professional wrestler.

Oh yeah, you can tell this is leprechaun, because of his…uhh. Um…Uh.

I was being a bit too hard on WWE studios earlier. They also helped give us Dead Man Down, which I absolutely loved. This is not one of those glorious times.

First off, no comedic elements. Okay, fine, straight horror. I can do that. But don’t give me a leprechaun movie without anything that resembles a leprechaun. You see that picture up there? That is a hideous fucking C.H.U.D. That is not a leprechaun. It looks like they took the C.H.U.D. costume, reduced the eyes, and just said fuck it, leprechaun.

Not only that, but a lot of the “Fear” early on, involved an unseen force rushing through the tall wheat or grass or whatever, and grabbing people. That shit is straight out of Jurassic Park, is it not?

Despite going for straight horror, this movie is not scary in any way. It is just dumb. Bad acting, bad plot, bad reboot, bad characters, bad “villains”, and it feels like it drags on forever. I’d rather watch the original Leprechaun film than watch Leprechaun: Origins again. I am also confused as to why they even bothered to have someone “famous” playing the leprechaun? He has no discernible features, doesn’t talk just growls, and is a complete waste.

It is hard to say that, but this reboot is a disgrace to the already pitiful Leprechaun franchise.

0 out of 4.