Tag: Horror

Oh goodness, I am so close to being done with horror movies this season. I am pretty sure this is the last one, not counting random B movie slasher flicks that no one cares or knows about. Sure, The Collection just came out in theaters, but it isn’t showing anywhere near me, so it will be awhile.

But The Apparition? It didn’t come to theaters either. I only saw one preview for it, and it looked kind of cool, kind of supernatural. It intrigued me. Little did I know that there is a reason I only saw the preview once.

Why? Because hipsters. That is why.

Back in the 1970s, there was something called The Charles Experiment. They tried to summon the spirit of a Charles and I guess it worked. Many years later, a group of college students are attempting to do it again. But with MOAR technology and MOAR cameras. They are amping up their spiritual side a lot and hope to make the summon work! Well it works, and uhh, one of the people get sucked into the wall and presumably dies.

Some more years later, Ben (Sebastian Stan) is now living with his girlfriend Kelly (Ashley Greene) in a neighborhood with only like, one family neighbor. Rest are empty being built. Woo, being first.

Either way. Weird shit starts to happen. Ben finds out from his nerdy friend Patrick (Tom Felton, yes, Draco as a nerd) that they are all fucked. THey did the experiment again, because a dead friend ain’t nothing. This time, 4000 times as powerful instead of 400. Oh jeez.

Sometimes the movie cover is the ending of the film. I am looking at you, Quarantine.

Man, fuck this movie.

That is all I can really say without ranting.

There is about four or so characters in it, only two main ones, yet still there is no redeeming qualities about any of them. The trailer even sets up the movie to make it seem like something it is not. I don’t remember the One You Believe, You Die being a major part of the movie. Maybe because it was so bad. But also because the thing was fucking with shit long before they would believe in it, and trying to kill them.

Like the end of the trailer? Clearly it’s not working. All the lies man.

Remember when she yells “Get Out of My House?” Well, she doesn’t even yell that at the ghost, but her boyfriend. Because hey, he did supernatural shit, so why not make him leave the house, even though the ghost thing is in said house?

It is incredible how bad this whole movie is. So bad, that I am even a bit disappointed that I wasted my free rental on it. Mehhh. Meh.

My 666th review is Devil. Need I say more?
God, I’m so fucking clever.

Hey look, some people in an elevator.

The movie begins with a person jumping off of a skyscraper and landing in a car, pretty far away. Okay. Like, super far. But Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) is on the case! After investigating, he sees that a skyscraper has a broken window, so we are good to go.

But uh oh, the elevator has stopped! That sucks. Must be out of repair. There are five people on it too, a security guard (Bokeem Woodbine), a salesman (Geoffrey Arend), a mechanic (Logan Marshall-Green), an old woman (Jenny O’Hara) and a young woman (Bojana Novakovic).

And uhh, the Devil might actually be one of them in disguise? Hell, they might all be bad people too, and needing to repent for their sins. That is what one of the security guards thinks (Jacob Vargas), and an older non religious guard (Matt Craven). Watching it all go down, except for when the power goes out randomly.

Hey look, an action scene.

Although not the director, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to find out that M. Night Shyamalan is involved with this picture. There might be a twist by the end, but I felt like I had the whole thing figured out as soon as I saw the cast. Might have had some twists and turns, but really, it is all pretty obvious. Don’t worry, someone is the Devil. They don’t pull a The Village.

But the acting is bad, Chris Messina, what the hell are you doing? Your character barely changed tone the whole movie. Not even during your sob story. Logan Marshall-Green I would say is the best character, while the rest of of the cast just didn’t give a single fuck.

Jesus Christ, the Devil is bad.

Not flipping over the table bad. But just bad enough for me to not even write 400 words about it. How could I? The plot is the devil on an elevator!

House At The End Of The Street has had a little bit of an interesting history. It was actually filmed before Jennifer Lawrence went on to do The Hunger Games. But hey, releasing it before hand is bad for business. Why not ride the hot young actress coattails, and put it off, like, a year.

Heck, I am even fine with their marketing campaign. Shortening the title to HATES is a lot more convenient. Just annoying that it ignores the “of The” part of the title. Can’t even argue that it is unimportant articles and shit, since the “At the” is prominently features in the acronym. Oh well, making movie titles into acronyms (or vice versa!) is a lot of work.

Warning: This movie might feature a lot of miss Lawrence rolling about and running in this outfit.

Elissa (Lawrence) and her divorced mother, Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) have just moved into the house of their dreams. It is actually affordable. Why? Because the house “next door” has a secret. And by secret, I mean well known fact that a double murder occurred there. A girl, Carrie-Ann, killed both of her parents one night, and escaped off into the woods. They think she drowned, but never found her body.

She did leave her brother alive though, how nice! Ryan (Max Thieriot) mostly keeps to himself after the incident. After all, a fucking double murder happened, and he is still in the house. The town wants to buy his house and demolish it, but it is all he has left, so he refuses to sell, not caring about everyone else’s poor property values. The only person who doesn’t give him crap is a local cop (Gil Bellows).

Unfortunately for Elissa, Ryan is the only guy who actually seems decent. Tyler (Nolan Gerard Funk) is just as mean and pompous as the rest of the town, and just wants some sex. Can’t have any of that. So she tries to fix Ryan instead. Hopefully it is not weird either that it looks like his sister is still alive and living in a closet in his house. Whoops!

“Why is there a girl up in your trunk? In your trunk? In your trunk?”

On second thought, the title doesn’t really make that much sense. There is no real street here, just seems like random houses in the woods, despite it being a mostly rich like area. Even though their house is “right next” to Ryan’s, it is also as if there is still a big forest in between them. Can’t even tell how much of his house is on the same street. Plus, it seems like no one else lives close by. How could it ruin their property values?

Semantics. I was kind of bored by the movie to start. It had “Jennifer Lawrence” singing original songs at the start. Or at least that was the plan. Apparently someone else sang over her to make it sound a bit more better. That is silly.

But by the end, as it is with most horror movies, some twists began to happen and I actually liked them. It actually added some backstory and reason to the actions of the main characters, pretty surprising for a horror movie. Not enough to make it exceptional, but enough to make it kind of cool. For one viewing. Definitely wasn’t really scary either, felt a lot more like a thriller. But don’t worry, you will get to see at least two deaths.

When you get a free movie rental, normally you use it for something you like. I prefer to use it on things I would normally never get otherwise. And that is why we now get to talk about the potentially frightening, laughifying, and hardening movie Zombies vs. Strippers. I have to throw some curve balls every once in awhile, keep you all on your toes.

Or maybe I am doing this just to increase traffic to my website. Who’s to say?

The Tough Titty is a strip club, but with a pretty dumb name. Who would want to go there? The answer is actually no one. They have basically no customers, and the owner Spider (Circus-Szalewski) is going to close up shop. Tonight shall be their last night, so why not officially lock the doors and party! Just the normal crew, and the four strippers on duty.

Sugar Hills (Eve Mauro), the no nonsense “lead” stripper, who is pissed at the news. Vanilla (Brittany Gael Vaughn), a sassy black stripper, because stereotypes are real. Jasmine (Adriana Sephora), a dumb big breasted blond stripper, because stereotypes are super real, and Bambi (Victoria Levine), a younger newer stripper, needing money for some sort of schooling, because the stereotype quota is actually based on hard hitting statistics.

Despite the talk of closing, they manage to get guests in that night, talking about the craziness of the city outside. Sure, some of those guests might be zombies confused at their location, but they are probably harmless. Instead we get low life rock star who wants to party Spike (Adam Brooks), a rich guy who has tons of money to waste (Patrick Lazzara), and a mini bike gang lead by sturn philosopher Red Wings (Brad Potts).

Fuck the characters. You want strippers fighting zombies. Well, eventually, a long time into the movie, that happens. But until then, some bad acting and boobs. Basically the American dream.

Will The Tough Titty be the last bastion of safety for the Human Race during the zombie apocalypse?

“WE ARE NOT ENTERTAINED BY YOUR GLITTER PAINT!”

Zombies vs. Strippers reminds us that when the Zombie Apocalypse happens, not everyone will be in a grocery store or at home. There are many types of jobs out there, and those bills have got to be paid. So of course there would be a strip club, oblivious to the going-ons outside the city. Especially if it was a shitty strip club.

Yet somehow, despite this clearly being a “boobs and laughs” picture, it still seems to be strangled by normal horror movie tropes. Dumb things like, the main actress won’t get naked, even if she is a stripper like the rest. Sorry to break it to you blokes. Also, I am British now.

There was a pretty extreme lack of zombies and strippers battling it out as well. Really didn’t happen until the end, and felt a bit underwhelming. You will probably be surprised at who survives until the end, and might even wonder what happens next. I have been told that Zombie Strippers, which came out four years prior is a much better film. Not sure if that is just because of the lead actress or not though.

But the mere existence of that film makes this one a cheesy “skinemax” parody of the other, unfortunately. It is important to note that this film delivered a bit of what it promised, but probably could have used more jokes, more boobs, and more zombies.

No, the horror movies from October are not yet done. They are slowly falling through the cracks. I know at least one more I get to see next week, with another I know I never got to see. But that is future talk. Now talk should be reserved for The Possession, in all of its super shitty glory.

“Hey everything about you has changed little girl. Clothes, attitude, are you feeling sad? I am gonna assume nothing is wrong.”

Like every modern movie, the main parents in this one are divorced. Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is a made up college basketball coach. You wouldn’t know it was a college coach unless you paid attention to the details, because it looked like he was just in a high school gym the whole time. His wife (Kyra Sedgwick) left him because he spent too much time working, and got to keep the house that he paid for by working, and main custody of the kids.

His children! Hannah (Madison Davenport) the older girl, who talks openly of their separation, and Em (Natasha Calis), a now vegetarian activist, who loves the world. Until they go to a garage sale to get plates for the dad’s new apartment! In the middle of no where! There Em buys a wooden box, because why not. Too bad Jewish Demons live in the box and want to kill everyone.

What? Yeah. Em begins talking to the box after she figures out how to open it. And it talks back. Despite the weird things happening, like changing her wardrobe, only being by the box, attacking kids, being slathered in insects, yelling, and what have you, people really can’t seem to put two and two together. Even creeping around in the kitchen eating raw meat and attacking her mom with glass isn’t really enough to drive the point home. They are like, oh okay, vacation time. Because the new boyfriend, a dentist (Grant Show) is such a great guy.

But eventually the dad gets it. He finds out it is a Jewish curse. So he finds some Jewish curse experts to help catch the demon. TOo bad the only one willing is a young gun, Tzadok (Matisyahu), and hopefully they can snatch the demon out of the girls body and trap her back. Or you know, have her spirit roam everywhere, from body to body. Either or.

Matis. Fucking. Yahu.

Alright, there were a lot of problems with the movie. Yes terrible acting, and unbelievable actions from everyone, but that is a given in the genre. Unfortunately most other things were bad too. Like the transition between scenes. After something bad happened, it tended to switch to the next day or a few hours later. But every time it was an instant change with a loud DONG or BOOM, can’t even remember the noise. They just used it more than five times, and it was just laughable at how awkward it sounded.

I am probably biased here, but there was a side story of another college interested in his talents for coaching basketball, even though he is like a Div 2 coach and doesn’t seem to do much with his team. They don’t give the name, but it is heavily implied to be UNC Chapel Hill, which is even more laughable that a school like that would show a vague interest like they do.

But from the start of the film to the end, it just seemed like they took only the worst ideas they could think of to form the narrative. It wasn’t scary, it was just awkward. Lots of awkward. Lawkwards.

There is no way this is not the worst horror movie of the Halloween season.

Generally I am able to separate the real world from the movie world. I know that I won’t get sucked into a video game, and that I won’t be chased by a serial killer (because hey, why would anyone want to kill me?). But then we have certain movies that say, “I’m gonna to take something you love and make it scary for you, so that you can always think about the fear every time you do that task!” I like to call those movies “jerkfaces”, and that is what Sinister did to me in regards to watching movies. It is probably the same exact thing The Ring dids, but I wouldn’t know because I value my sanity.
Fucking Sinister.

Presumably this is the same thing that happened after The Ring, but fuck if I’m ever gonna watch that.

Our story begins quite creepily with four members of a family being hung from a tree on a very old looking roll of film. Well, now that the mood is set, we introduce the actual new family, moving into a new house with a very familiar looking tree. Great! Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a famous-ish author, who got his big break when he began to write true crime style novels. His book, Kentucky Blood, based on a real murder and his own research actually helped bring a criminal to justice and got him mega bucks!

But he just hasn’t lived up to his former glory since then. His books haven’t been as good and local cops now hate him. But this time, this time he has it! Hell, he actually picked the murder house to live in instead of just being in the same town! The family was murdered (by hanging) and the youngest daughter is now missing. He could be a hero!

After this book he has promised to quit because his wife (Juliet Rylance) is tired of it and his kids (Michal Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley) are tired of moving. Not to mention their son now has night terrors. What a creepy kid.

But when Ellison finds a box in their attic entitled “Home Movies” with reels from the 1960s to 2011, his curiosity gets the best of him and gives them a watch. Each tape begins the same way, a nice family scene, spliced with the murder of said family.  They also all feature the youngest child missing in the murder scenes, hmm.  These series of murders take place all around the country, and with the help of Deputy So-and-So (James Ransone) he might be able to find a connection between them all, and save the day! Or you know, die himself. It is really 50/50 at this point.

Oh yeah, also this shit happening. Fuuuuuck.

This story also is about an ancient pagan demon who steals the souls of children. He also lives in any pictures of himself, including movies, and can move between them and out of them. Great! Movies are now forever ruined for me!

The movies drops enough clues for you to understand everything that is going on, so you should be able to figure it out halfway through. But don’t worry, if you still didn’t get it by the end, it is fully explained to you. Based on the ending, it also looks like this film is a “one-and-done” series. That should excite a lot of you, because it means we won’t soon get flooded with ten sequels to a new original horror movie!

Most of the film is Ethan Hawke walking around his house at night, with so little light, and it is absolutely terrifying. I wish he would have turned on a light more often, but when you are drunk you make poor decisions. I personally felt paralyzed when I watched the screen, afraid that if I moved I might be the next to go. I am disappointed that it did resort on more than one occasion to the sudden pop up scares, most notably at the end of the movie. It could have ended on a classy note, but instead went for one last “boo!”

The best part to me is that this horror movie actually has a plot that is believable enough in the world it created. That means it might actually make you think while you shriek. I’d definitely call Sinister my favorite new horror movie this month, and the one you should watch on Halloween night.

It turns out that Silent Hill and Silent Hill: Revelation are actually connected movies! Shocking I know. But for some reason I just figured they’d be two different stories both set in the same town, based on different games in the series. After all, it has only been a six year difference between the movies.

But nope, Sean Bean plays the same character in both movies, so I had to rush watch the first one to make sure I understood all the complicated plot developments this movie would surely have.

Well, at least this also has snow. Wait no. Ash. Yep, that’s ash.

Well don’t worry, seeing the first film is not necessary. The dad (Bean) and daughter Heather/Shannon (Adelaide Clemens) are moving all across America because the cult in Silent Hill, West Virginia is after her. She doesn’t remember any of the events from the first film, when she was in the town with her mother (Radha Mitchell), and didn’t know that her mom was still trapped inside its city limits.

But when they move to a new town, with new identities, she continues to receive strange dreams that feel extremely real, telling her that she is never to return to Silent Hill.

So when her dad gets kidnapped to protect her location, she does what anyone would do in that situation, and returns to Silent Hill. Thankfully she has the help of Vincent (Kit Harrington) who also happened to be a new kid in school, and for whatever reason doesn’t find any of this weird.

The cult wants to kill her, because they believe she is the innocent part of a demon child Alyssa that is terrorizing their town…that they also created. They are hoping to kill the demon, in order to birth a new demon, who can uh…kill the world? I am not even sure. But Carrie-Anne Moss is in charge of it all, and Malcolm McDowell plays a blind crazy uncle.

This is also how I like my womenz.

I don’t go to 3D movies a lot, right now my count is at six, but I am trying to give them more chances. “Silent Hill: Revelation” is by far has the worst 3D I have ever seen, and I also watched Katy Perry: Part Of Me in 3D. Its 3D consisted entirely of things coming out at you and roughly zero of everything else. It was made purely for a scare factor, but even did poorly at that aspect.

I don’t think you need to see the first “Silent Hill” film to see this one, because they try to explain everything you need in the second movie. However, the plot made absolutely no sense to me, despite seeing both films. I can’t tell the point of the cult, nor could I fully grasp why the town went to hell in the first place.

Most would say that the movie isn’t about plot, but cool visual effects. Well, its visual effects are bad (and they should feel bad), so then the movie just might be about being scared! But even I didn’t find it scary, just predictable and weird. The first film most would agree was a bit dull, trying (and failing) to recreate the alone feelings felt from the game. I think it is obvious that for this film they tried to amp everything up, yet still it just didn’t feel quite right. A bit disappointing that this is the only horror movie to be released on Halloween week. If you are looking for some good scares, I’d recommend basically anything else but this.

I readily admit that I am a coward, but I also claim that I am willing to watch anything. This often leads me to situations where I scare myself for the entertainment of others. Like Paranormal Activity 4! I never really wanted to see these movies, but last Monday I marathoned the first 3 just to catch up, and strangely enough did not find them scary. I attribute that fact to my multitasking nature, and that I may have missed a lot more of the subtle scares in the build up.

In order to get the full experience, I realized I needed to see the movie with other people. A nice midnight release. Once I got there, I also picked my seat so that I would have groups of women on all sides. I figured hey, if women scream more at movies, I might scream too! If I increase my own fear, I can probably talk about the movie a bit better.

Paranormal Activity 4 takes place about five years after the events of PA1/PA2. Katie had stolen her sister’s kid, Hunter, killing everyone in her path, and disappeared never to be seen again! But now, we are in Nevada, with a completely new family.

Alex (Kathryn Newton) is your typical teenage girl, but lives kind of in a big wealthy house. Mac notebooks everywhere! She actually has married parents (Stephen Dunham, Alexondra Lee), but they fight a lot and might get divorced. You know, if they survive. She also has a younger brother, Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) who is pretty normal.

You know who isn’t normal? That kid across the street, “Robbie” (Brady Allen), who lives pretty much alone because his mom Katie (Katie Featherston) is away a lot. But when she gets injured in an accident, the family agrees to watch over “Robbie” for a few days while she is in the hospital. Just like every other movie in the series, weird stuff starts to happen in their house as soon as “Robbie” is staying over. Alex’s good friend Ben (Matt Shively) notices that “Robbie” is being weird while they Skype, so they agree to set up mac book pros around the house to record their activity and make sure he is on the up and up.

Definitely not a ploy by Ben to have access to Alex any time of the day. Perverted teenagers are not a thing.

Hopefully “Robbie” doesn’t befriend Wyatt too much. It would be weird if there was two scary young boys running around.

Nonchalant face of terror + night vision = pants being shat.

Paranormal Activity 4 turned out to be a pretty different beast than the previous three films. The technology used is ramped up, the replace a lot of the subtle scares with more noise based rumbles and shadowy figures, and the main character is a teenage girl instead of the adults. Some would say that replacing a lot of the subtle scares is almost a dumbing down of the film series, no longer rewarding the observant viewer, and yeah, I would agree with it.

But I am more upset that the main character, who has all this physical proof on her computer, has a great inability to show her parents and get some sort of solution in the works. Most notably would be the “car/garage” scene. It is almost as if they decided after setting up all the computers to never actually check them again for evidence, which is bonkers.

I also have a problem with this movie in that it doesn’t really answer any questions into the mythos of this world. The plot involving Wyatt and Robbie doesn’t actually make any sense, nor do the actions of Katie. Instead, we are left with another tragic ending, but practically no plot development, which to me only feels like a waste of time.

Boo! Okay, that never scares anyone anymore. No, we need more subtle weirder and realistic stuff to scare us. Which explains the Paranormal Activity franchise. Heck, the production companies love it because they are relatively cheap to make and can rake in the cash.

In case you didn’t see the first two films, here is some catch up! Obviously this contains spoilers for 1 and 2, but hell, 3 also.

In the first film, Katie has moved in with her boyfriend, after which she tells him that some evil presence has been following her around and messing with stuff. Well shit, kind of late there. Weird stuff happens, grows more and more, she becomes possessed and kills the boyfriend and goes missing.

In the second film, it takes place before the first! Ah sneaky. Instead of Katie, it is her sister Kristi, who is actually married with kids, including a new born boy. They recall that demons haunted them when they were kids, and that their family could have been involved with a cult that requires the first male born son. That son, Hunter, is the first in four or five generations. Awkward. Demon stuff happens, it escalates. Then the end of the film is after the events of the first, Katie comes, kills everyone, and steals a baby!

It’s Katie and Kristi! It’s Katie and Kristi! One is a demon, the other’s just dead!

So lets go to the third film now! Which takes place before both of the other ones, hah! Take that, continuity!

No, this movie takes place like, 18 years prior or so. When Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) and Katie (Chloe Csengery) were kids! Where recording stuff happened on big VHS recorders, with tape and wasn’t all snazzy and digital. They live with their mom, Julie (Lauren Bittner) and her boyfriend Dennis (Chris Smith), because not many people get married in these movies.

Weird shit happens, so he sets up some cameras around the house to see if he can record any more. If only he was their actual dad, then we could say we know it was some genetic issue for each family to do this later as well. But I guess it was the guys idea each time, so hmm.

Shit escalates. Some invisible demon bugs the kids, until it convinces them to do what it wants, mainly Kristi. They convince the family to go to the grandmothers house for a bit, thanks to all that weird ass shit. Then it becomes a fuck with Dennis movie, which it might have been all along. They hear weird noises at the grandmothers house, Julie goes to investigate, does not return. Dennis finds weird images in the girls room, but can’t find the girls. He sees shapes, but no one there. He notices the back door open, goes to investigate, heads to the back shed, turns it on, BOOOM, a bunch of old ladies in black just standing there all creepily.

Julie is found dead, and used as a projectile against Dennis. He finds Kristi and tries to hide with her. Doesn’t work. Finds Katie, she goes all demon on him and he falls down. Just to make sure, the grandmother pops up and breaks his body completely. Yay happy endings! So I guess uhh, after this, the girls go to live with grandmother all creepily until they move out?

Bloody mary is a fun game. And by game, I mean time waster. And by fun, I mean stupid.

You’d think they’d remember these type of things happening, since they even say they were haunted in the previous film. But their mom and her boyfriend violently killed? Come on.

Out of the first three, I think this is the worst. I think it has more subtle stuff going on, but having it go back to their childhood to help explain the first two movies? I didn’t think it really worked. Sure, a lot of weird stuff happened. But for the girls to just completely forget about it until almost 20 years later when it happened again? That just feels like a plot hole. A giant plot hole kick in the nuts.

The only plot that matters from this movie, if you were going to continue the series, is that you got to see they had a creepy grandmother, who probably knew about the demon cult curse thing mentioned in the second movie. Definitely not necessary (yet) to understand any more of the series.

My first thought when I heard of The Cabin in the Woods was of course, Evil Dead.

What? Evil Dead?

Yes. If you were awesome, you’d know why too. Not to like, immediately insult most of my readers or anything.

Why yes, yes that is Thor sitting on the chair.

Woo, trip to the woods! We got Curt (Chris Hemsworth) and his girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison) who just died her hair blonde! We also got a stoner, Marty (Fran Kranz, who you may remember from Dollhouse). On this weekend retreat, they really want to hook up their friend Dana (Kristen Connolly) with this new guy, who is also athletic, Holden (Jesse Williams).

Things are weird there though.

What else do we got? We got some scientists, kind of! Two head guys (Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford) talking confusing stuff about how the Netherlands and Sweden. They are being bugged by an assistant (Amy Acker) and have a new guard for their door (Brian White) who doesn’t want to be there.

And that is all you get, fuck you!

Well, they at least look like scientists. The validity of their science is another thing.

Pissed off at the shitty plot outline? Well good. Then you can go watch it and see what is up.

Never have I personally seen a more polarizing film amongst my friends, who all mostly got to see it before me it feels like. I didn’t see anyone say it was okay. It was purely a love or hate affair, which intrigued me. What does that usually mean? It means the film is either artsy, or weird. This one I would definitely describe on the weird side of cinema.

It just goes against the grain of what you expect, and rustles some of your jimmies doing so. Personally, I had a good time watching it. Wasn’t perfect. But super weird. So just give it a shot, and well, don’t get too upset when weird stuff happens.