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Hellions Review

October 4, 2015 No Comments

Ooph. Where to start. According to the marketing department, the director (Bruce McDonald), made a splash with his previous flick, Pontypool. I’m not sure that ”a big splash” is the word I’d use for Pontypool, but I won’t argue too much; I enjoyed it a lot.

Some of the same mad genius is in play here as well, but unfortunately, Hellions is an uneven affair. Probably more so than Pontypool was. And while Pontypool had a really original idea to prop it up (based on a book by Tony Burgess), there’s nothing like this here to save it from mediocrity.

It looks good, and that probably accounts for most of the hype surrounding it (that, and the poster. Look at that fucking poster!)

And I have to say, I was a bit let down. I was looking forward to liking this. Hellions manages to be at once both muddy and obvious. When it’s not beating you over the head with the motherhood/abortion angle, you’re getting nonsensical flashes of a parallel world, weird, budget special effects and lots and lots of screaming. It looks pretty cool, but ultimately doesn’t seem to serve any purpose.

The premise of the film is fairly simplistic, but somehow confusing. Just like the movie, I am now confusing the shit out of you. What I mean is that while the movie straight up tells you what is happening eventually, in the meantime you’re watching a girl run around her house, or/and a parallel universe, always screaming and crying at the spooky little kids that want her baby. And you’re always expecting something more to happen, some kind of twist that will tie this together, but it never comes. Or maybe it does:

The cop that shows up about halfway through is both out of left field and completely on the nose. This was the point when my opinion on the film turned from ”Okay, this isn’t that bad” to ”Why am I watching this.”

It has a slightly stronger third act, but I had checked out by then. Your mileage may vary however, and while that’s a given for any movie, I feel like this one might have its fans.

2 out 5 Creepy Halloween Kids

The Heart Does Not Grow Back by Fred Venturini

September 30, 2015 No Comments

Now and again you pick a book, planning to maybe read a couple of pages, then check out what else you’ve loaded into your e-reader thing in the past few weeks as you impulsively buy anything that looks good on Amazon. My book pile grows larger every day and it’s sometimes hard to commit to just one.

Then you get a book like this one and instead spend all night reading this one, perfect book until dawn.

I probably have a soft spot for books about kids growing up in small nowhere towns. That said, even the best of those end up doling out some melodrama sooner or later. I stayed with The Heart Does Not Grow Back because it didn’t. While the events of the book are tragic, the book isn’t a downer; it’s too smart and it moves too fast for desperation to settle in. Don’t get me wrong, this is a dark, dark book, but the way it’s handled makes it more of a dark satire or even a black comedy.

Dale is a teenager when he realizes he has an extraordinary power: He can regenerate missing limbs as well a heal any wound at an extraordinary pace. Other than that, his life is pretty normal up the the point when a tragedy hits the small town, changing his life forever and leaving him a husk of his former self.

The ”catastrophe” mentioned in the blurb serves as the catalyst for the later action. It’s followed by a lull in the narrative that’s I wasn’t a big fan of, but I won’t dock the author too many points; it serves as a springboard for what comes next. Any notion of Dale turning superhero are quickly squashed (and thank God for that). Instead, we’re treated to the sad sack of a protagonist trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life and with his power, the two entwined. While Dale’s constant angst does get a little tiring, it’s never too much so; you end up rooting for the guy, even when he’s holding on to a teenage crush for years or failing to look after himself and his best interests.

The end is pretty satisfying, equal parts cold hearted and smart. I almost wish for a sequel.

You should pick this up.

4 out of 5 Hearts

Southpaw

September 28, 2015 No Comments

 

I expected to like this, but had my misgivings on the Kurt Sutter script. While I enjoyed the first season of Sons of Anarchy, the rest of them and Sutter’s ridiculous social media presence and macho bullshit have long ago turned me off his projects.

On the other hand, I like sports movies and I like Gyllenhaal .

For most of the movie, I felt like Gyllenhaal, getting my ass beaten by cliches building upon cliches. The aforementioned macho bullshit mar an already weak script by trying extra hard to make things dramatic. Our hero is a winner, he’s rich, he has a loving family, he dominates in the ring, but he does all this by letting himself get beat on because apparently he won’t block or dodge. Apparently he does this because he’s super tough and then he gets angry on the last round, hulks out and beats his opponent.

I’m no boxing expert, but I can tell you that’s the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard. While there is such a thing as tiring out your opponent, nobody goes in the ring with the intention to get right hooks to the face for twenty minutes.

I wont spoil the plot, but suddenly, overly dramatic thing happens and this leads our protagonist to lose literally everything. His wife, custody of his daughter, his house, his money (early on he’s giving out platinum Rolexes to his buddies, but six months later he’s homeless. What.), his friends and his career.

He takes about a week to wallow in this and then gets back on the horse by getting a shitty job in a shitty gym that a has-been coach runs (Forest Whitaker), intending to reclaim his throne.

If you haven’t had enough of cliches yet, the rest of the movie plays out like Rocky, only significantly dumber; the whole fight hangs on the use of the titular Southpaw stance, as if Gyllenhaal is a fucking Power Ranger striking his power pose.

However, it’s not all bad (it’s pretty bad). Gyllenhaal does the best with the lines he’s given, 50 Cent was born to play the shifty, shitty manager and some of the bit roles are pretty good.

2 out 5 Left Uppercuts.

P.S. Sons of Anarchy sucks, go fuck yourself.

I Review: Bound to Vengeance

July 7, 2015 No Comments

Bound to Vengeance has a 20% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is bizarre. I’m not saying it’s the greatest movie ever made, but in a long line of shitty slasher/exploitation flicks, this was mostly a pleasant surprise.

The review over at The Dissolve is particularly scathing, as it seems to be more interested in figuring out if the director ”sided” with the protagonist or not, which is an…interesting way to review a movie, I guess.

Anyway. This movie is about a kidnapped woman who manages to break free and capture the man that held her in his basement. She makes him lead him to all the other girls his ring of degenerates is holding captive.

This type of movie isn’t really my kind of thing. Victimized women, whether they’re getting revenge or not is something I’m not really interested in. I did stick around however, mostly because it seemed competently shot and acted.

The movie is overall a bit hit and miss. The violence (almost exclusively dealt by the heroine) is brutal and satisfying (What, they’re horrible people, they deserve what they get), the dead women less so. I’m not sure why the screenwriter went with that.

The minor plot twist near the end isn’t really that good. I’d call it pedestrian.

All in all, this is only a recommend for people who like shit like I Spit On Your Grave.

2 out of 5 creep vans

Review: Starry Eyes

December 30, 2014 No Comments

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Sarah (Alex Essoe) is a beautiful actress that wants to make it in the acting world. She’s willing to do whatever it takes, even at the detriment of her own personal being. When she’s scouted for the film The Silver Scream, Sarah has to decide exactly how much she’s willing to go through for fame.

Oh, aren’t you just trembling from excitement after reading that very original and not at all cliched synopsis? I know I was. Or rather, I decided to watch it because it was getting some good press and seriously, there had to be some kind of interesting twist to the plot, right? No way it would just be about a woman who desperately wants to be an actress that falls prey to some weird producers and ends up dead/monstrous/captive.

I got bad news.

Leaving the plot aside for a moment, I have to say that this is a competently made movie. The acting is mostly solid but not exceptional and it has some great photography, especially towards the end. The soundtrack didn’t really stick with me. The last five minutes of the film were pretty great and it kinda makes me wish that was the beginning of the movie. It largely felt like we got to watch the introduction to a much more interesting film. The details of the protagonist’s shitty job and shittier friends were of little interest, since it was all fairly shallow. Especially most scenes at her job were head scratching and completely differed in tone to the rest of the movie.

Sarah’s arch nemesis is another woman actor who always has something shitty to say to her, yet no one ever calls her out on her plain to see hatred of our protagonist. Why this happens is a mystery, especially after the tenth time she flat out tells Sarah she’s a huge failure and an ugly loser.

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Once the plot starts rolling, we’re treated to some vaguely unsettling scenes of Sarah’s auditions for The Silver Scream that instead of making her run screaming seem to only feed her need to be successful in her acting career. Again and again she goes back for more auditions, each one worse (and more humiliating) than the last.

The movie staff seem to be grooming her for some nefarious purpose.

I guess you’ll have to watch it if you want to find out. As far as I’m concerned, the ending was very obvious. Part of that is because of the marketing material, but the plot is so completely by the numbers that you’re lulled into a false sense of security (”I bet there’s a twist! I bet the plot will lead somewhere else other than the inevitable conclusion!”) but alas, it is not to be.

2 out of 5 Starlets.

Review: The Babadook

December 28, 2014 1 Comment

urlThe Babadook is one of those movies that you expect to be disappointed in. A creepy, atmospheric trailer seems to be a recipe for disaster, as proved by movies like The Conjuring, Sinister, Insidious 2, Mama and so on. Your mileage may vary on those flicks, but I was ultimately disappointed in all of them, even if I didn’t outright dislike them.

I’m happy to say Babadook breaks the mold. It’s not a perfect movie, but at least it delivers on what the trailer and the marketing promises. It can be a pretty scary flick at times, but it doesn’t overplay its hand. Even at a crescendo you don’t get a really good look at the boogeyman and it avoids the usual exorcism/easy solution trick that plagues the genre.

Amelia, a widowed orderly, has raised her son Samuel alone following her husband’s tragic death. Sam begins displaying erratic behavior: he rarely sleeps through the night, and is constantly preoccupied with an imaginary monster, which he has built weapons to fight. One night, Sam asks his mother to read from a mysterious pop-up storybook he found on his shelf. The story, titled “Mister Babadook”, is about a supernatural creature that, once someone is made aware of its existence, torments that person indefinitely.

It’s a pretty great setup. Even the book is pretty scary on it’s own.

While the son is pretty irritating and irritating kids are one of my top pet peeves in horror flicks, I have to say he comes around before the halfway point and is generally very believable in his role. The mother’s slow descent into madness and violence seems a bit improbable, but I’m willing to chalk it up to actual mental illness and/or the Babadook’s influence.

The movie is essentially the tale of how mother and son become increasingly cut off from the world as they fall victims to the attention of the Babadook. She loses her job, he gets kicked out of school, her (terrible) sister doesn’t want to see her and so on and so forth. Inside the house, the mother is becoming increasingly erratic and paranoid, at times attacking her own son and at times protecting her from the monster.

The few times we get to see it, it’s fairly terrifying and the sound design is particularly creepy. Bonus points for the movie being light on jump scares. Read on after the jump for my take on the ending.

4 out of 5 ba BA ba DOOK DOOKs

The Babadook

Spoilers abound!

I am a lazy man. My take on the movie as a whole and on the ending in particular is fairly simple: It’s a metaphor for mental illness. That’s not to say everything that happens in the movie is explained this way, I’m sure you can nitpick a few scenes that ”prove” that Babadook is real, but that’s not the point. Both mother and son are unreliable narrators and anyway, everything that happens is a metaphor as well. Amelia ignores the signs of her depression and whatever mental illness seems to be circling her and sinks deeper into it. She cuts herself off from everyone that can see what’s happening either by her actions or on purpose (pulling her kid from school). I don’t want to get too into it, but you could also argue that Sam just goes along for the ride, as kids usually do. Their parents are their compass. If mom says there’s a monster trying to kill them, who is he to argue? Especially since he has been insisting the same thing since before Amelia believed in it.

As for the ending, I take it as a (a bit on the nose) metaphor for acknowledging your problems and choosing to manage them, instead of ignoring them and letting them control you, as symbolized by her ”feeding” the Babadook, the monster (sickness) you can never get rid of.

 

Review: California

November 15, 2014 No Comments

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California by Edan Lepucki

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they’ve left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can’t reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they’ve built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she’s pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind’s dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

In hindsight, the blurb makes me groan and touches upon most of my issues with this novel.

It’s hard to talk about this without making some kind of judgement on the author, so I’m not going to beat around the bush. The author of this book has either grown up in the whitest of white suburbia or is writing about a society she thinks exists in that suburbia. The amount of complaining and the horror in which these characters treat problems that are commonplace for a lot of people today is dumbfounding. This is not post apocalypse, this is ”I’m going camping” level problems. Oh no the water we shower with is cold! Oh no we don’t have electricity! Oh no we sleep in a queen sized bed! It’s utterly bizarre that the image of post apocalyptic society she managed to paint was ”Sometimes the water is cold.” I’m not suggesting that vast swathes of the American population live without hot water or electricity, but for anyone who’s been even a bit poor, these things should be familiar.

I’d wager that in a post apocalyptic society there’d be problems like not having water to drink (let alone shower) or food. Cold would probably kill you, depending on location. While horrible things happen (suicide, death, murder) in the book and things are definitely grim, the overall vibe I got from the protagonists is that they are hugely spoiled middle class kids. That might actually be on purpose, but since no one else shows up that’s any different, I don’t think so. You’d expect some kind of contrast between a survivalist who maybe knows how to hunt and skin animals and build a cabin and the couple who struggles to garden and lives in an abandoned shed.

The second biggest flaw in my opinion, was the plot. While there’s a lot of meat on it to distract (and some of it is fairly enjoyable), for anyone who has ever consumed any kind of post apocalyptic media, this might be the most generic plot there is. People go looking, find strange community of survivors who appear to be doing really well and welcome them in, but are also secretive. What is their big secret? Read to find out. I mean, up to the point where they decide to go looking, they seem to have a pretty good life, without any major problems. Food, shelter, safety. The reason they leave all that is basically because Frida is bored and wants some cool shit to happen, or something.

What elevates this novel from the bottom of the barrel is the writing. While a bit pretentious at points, once you get used to it, it serves its purpose very well and distracts from the bare bones plot by adding a myriad of subplots and characters. Switching the POV between the couple is a smart move, allowing us a better understanding of their choices and motivations. I personally found Frida to be really unlikable and was forever waiting for Cal or someone else to call her out, but alas, it never happens. I suppose it’s fairly realistic, but at the same time not really that enjoyable, which always seems to be the problem with realism.

I admit to being a bit perplex both by the plot and the universe in which it takes place in. It’s a sort of ”soft apocalypse” where society has slowly crumbled, but it sort of doesn’t make a lot of sense. On one hand you have private schooling and a very middle class existence and on the other, you have suicide bombers and packs of marauding bandits. I’m not sure how those fit together. I can’t talk about the plot without some major spoilers, but there are a few things there that make no sense either. If civilization is mostly gone, who the hell would care about politics? It’s such a strange thing to get hanged up on when society has completely collapsed.

The major plot twists keep me from delving too much into the plot, so I’ll cut this rambling mess short. I enjoyed part of this novel, but was very irritated by Frida and a couple of other characters. A lot of things stress suspension of disbelief for me so overall I must say I was left disappointed.

2 out of 5 Spoiled White Kids

 

Review: Bring Me Flesh, I’ll Bring Hell by Martin Rose

October 21, 2014 1 Comment

20344598 Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.
Vitus is horrified to discover the photo of the couple’s missing son is a picture-perfect reproduction of his long dead son. This leads him to question the events of his tormented past; he must face the possibility that the wife and child he believed he murdered ten years ago in a zombie-fugue have somehow survived . . . or is it just wishful thinking designed to pull him into an elaborate trap?

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. I don’t actually care about the ethics of blogging or whatever, so this is the first and last time I’ll mention it.

Bring Me Flesh, I’ll Bring Hell is a genre-aware horror noir novel. There seem to be a few of those lately, which is something I’m pleased about. Now zombies aren’t really my thing, but I don’t think it’s quite fair to call Vitus a zombie. More of an undead private eye or a Hellboy kind of thing. Minus the brawls.

Vitus has spent a decade being dead and slowly falling apart, when a couple of clients shows up at his doorstep with a photo of their son, who has gone missing. Only the picture is actually a photo of Vitus’s son all grown up, even though he’s supposed to have died ten years ago in Vitus’s hands. At the time, Vitus was more of a traditional zombie and had fed on his wife and kid, before the people responsible for his condition came up with a drug that keeps him human (as much human as a decomposing corpse can be anyway). Now he takes a dose every few hours, lest he loses control again.

”We miss our son and would give anything to have him back, Mr. Adamson. Can You help us?”
”Anything at all, Mrs. Rogers?”
”Name your price, we’ll be happy to pay it.”
”Can you get blood out of everyday household items?”

Anyway, he takes the case if only because he needs to figure out what the hell is going on and if his son is actually alive. As per noir guidelines, this throws him down a rabbit hole of increasingly bizarre and complicated situations: A hooded figure following him around everywhere, trying to kill his clients; a femme fatale (almost literally, she’s a mortician) that heals his wounds and weird clients that keep ”rising” from the dead.

I’ll try not to spoil anything, as I believe discovery is half the pleasure in a novel like this. I found the book to be very well written, if a little ”purple” in places. However, any purple prose is satisfyingly gory, grim or funny. Nothing about sunsets and beautiful vistas, all about sinew, rotting flesh and fatalism. The plot is meaty and complicated, but not overly so. It really is a noir tale, which in my experience is rare to find, even when it says so right on the cover. Many an evening has been wasted reading The Maltese Falcon retreads.

The premise might seem ridiculous from the outside, but is handled deftly and doesn’t stress your suspension of disbelief too much, even when the really bizarre stuff happens. The last third of the book moves along on a brisk pace, with revelations just around every corner and it’s a pretty good ride if I may say so.

Check it out if you like: horror noir, grim humor or the Sandman Slim books.

 

 

October Challenge #2: Bride of Chucky

October 19, 2013 No Comments

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After watching the latest Chucky flick, I felt I had to see the two that came before that I hadn’t seen. Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. After watching the former, I’m not sure I want to see the latter. Anyway. I’m gonna keep this short because the movie isn’t worth it. The premise is ridiculous, the acting is atrocious, even the kills are dumb (if you go for that kind of thing). There’s very little to like here, especially not the nu-metal soundtrack that screams ”we’re cool we promise!”

IMDB plot summary says ”Chucky, the doll possessed by a serial killer, discovers the perfect mate to kill and revive into the body of another doll.” which is about as lackluster as the movie itself. Chucky gets resurected by his old girlfriend, who is hoping he’ll be super thankful and marry her or something. Turns out Chucky is still a dick and he kills her and turns her into a doll too. Now they’re both stuck in doll bodies, but they figure out a way that will allow them to change into human bodies. They need something from Chucky’s grave, so they hitch a ride with this neighbor kid that is eloping with his girlfriend. Even my synopsis sounds better than the actual plot of this piece of shit.

A bunch of things in the movie make no sense. In previous movies Chucky was pretty capable and largely resistant. In this one he gets placed into a play pen by his girlfriend and he’s stuck in there. He also (almost) dies when he gets stabbed. The part where everyone thinks the two young lovers are responsible for the murders is laughable too. Especially the one where a police car explodes and somehow they get blamed, as if they were carrying car bombs. I don’t know.

I give up, there’s nothing here to like.

1 out of 5 shitty dolls.

Bad Movie Two-Punch: Fright Night 2 and Curse of Chucky

September 30, 2013 No Comments

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I feel dirty just writing about these, but I felt I should warn people. Me and the girlfriend watched these in the last couple of days and we’re still reeling from the terribleness of it all. Curse of Chucky Decided to watch it because in the onslaught of bad slasher flicks, even a Chucky movie could be a nice change of pace. Though it did fulfil that role, the movie was really bad.

IMDB says ”After her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to recent bloodshed and chaos.”

It stars some TV actors I couldn’t really place. Nica’s sister is played by a woman with so many surgeries done to her face she could be the star of her own horror movie. There is a really dumb lesbian subplot for some reason. Chucky is now CGI and doesn’t really say a lot. When he does, even the cheesy one liners are not that good or funny (and always misogynistic).

There are a couple of decent shots but there really isn’t much here to like. The ending makes no sense. There is a scene after the credits that is better than the rest of the film put together, although it completely negates everything that happened before.

Mark the text below for spoilers.

About halfway through the movie, the niece disappears. It turns out she was hiding in a closet, playing ”hide and seek”. I’m not quite sure how she could be hiding and ignoring the million times each person in the house calls out to her, screams in terror, gets stabbed, dies, falls from the second floor, down the stairs or when the power goes out and so on. That’s one dedicated little girl. Then even though the niece survives, we watch as Nica is found guilty for the murders that Chucky committed. I guess the niece didn’t want to narc on Chucky. Oh hey, wasn’t there also VIDEO FOOTAGE of Chucky murdering almost everyone in the house? No, I guess the paraplegic murdering four people made more sense. Okay.

The after credits scene shows the kid from the original movies receiving Chucky in the mail. He answers the phone and Chucky gets out of the box just in time to get his head blown off with a shotgun. I’m not quite sure why Chucky is still in the doll, since at the end of the movie it looks like he successfully transferred to the little girl.

1 out of 5 Good Guy dolls.

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Next up: Fright Night 2 (2013)
I knew this was going to be bad, but I figured that the recipe is so classic that it could still be fun. I was wrong. The director chose to keep none of the original set up (vampire neighbor) but all of the original plot points. So you know exactly what’s going to happen and when, but it’s all dressed up as something else. Perfect.
It takes place in Romania, where some college-aged kids from the US are there to attend some classes (?). Apparently in Romania classes often take place after midnight and instead of teaching a class, there’s a full-blown rock concert show complete with smoke, lights and a WWE entrance by the professor. The professor, who is a hot hot hot lesbian (I feel the movie wanted me to really know how hot she was) that the main protagonist watches having sex at least twice before she’s introduced. Anyway, the rest is by the numbers with some truly eye-rolling events unfolding. Apparently Elizabeth Bathory was known as ”Countess Dracula” and was Romanian. News to me, but what do I know. They also switch out the Chris Angel-like Peter Vincent of the remake to an even more dumb Mythubusters kind of guy.
It’s just really, really dumb, I can’t go on.

0 out of 5 Draculas

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