Envelope Twitter Instagram
welcome to the blog

More Bad Movies: Ghost on Air, Black Rock, Magic Magic

January 9, 2014 No Comments

Ghost-On-Air-Poster

Ghost On Air
I liked the premise of this movie enough to go against my gut feeling and watch it. A popular radio DJ gets moved to the night shift slot and decides to tell ghost stories. Scary shit follows. How could you fail with this premise?

Turns out, pretty easily. The plot was a tad confusing at places, mostly because it featured a bunch of unrelated ghost stories with similar elements. One of them is about a girl who has an abortion and is haunted by her dead kid. The girl’s mom finds her hanging. Then there’s a different young girl haunting a store and it becomes really hard to tell which old lady is the mom from the first story and which one is the shop owner and how, if at all, these two stories are connected (from what I can tell, they’re not, but I’m still confused).

In any case, the DJ’s dead girlfriend was a horror writer who decided to investigate some ghost stories she heard about. It’s unclear even at the end of the movie, if this research was the cause of her death (I’m unsure if we’re ever told how she died, all we get is a scene in a hospital where she’s on a stretcher) or if it was unrelated. The dj finds her notes and after telling the stories on air, decides to also look into these hauntings.

There’s also a subplot about how a young female dj takes the prime-time spot from his, but it’s fairly misogynistic. I was expecting something more interesting to happen, as the woman is always trying to help the protagonist and he always blows her off. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re really supposed to think she’s a horrible monster.

Spoilers follow, including ending.

The movie has a pretty dumb ending. After the DJ ”solves” the hauntings by revealing the truth, he wins an award for best male DJ, gets his old job back and gets to push his rival out of the show. Apparently being a woman and having a job means you’re a whore and you should be punished.

In any case, there’s a scene right after that where the DJ watches on his laptop a video of his girlfriend telling him she’s haunted and asking ”Where are you?” I’m not sure why she’s recording this video or why she’s asking that, it seems like she could have called him or something, but what do I know, I’m not a ghost. Then the ghosts descend upon him and presumably drive him crazy. The end.

All and all, I wouldn’t recommend this movie. It has no good scares, the plot is convoluted for no reason and there just isn’t anything all that interesting here.

2 out of 5 ghost DJs.

BLACK-ROCK

Black Rock (spoilers throughout)

Another utterly dumb movie about how apparently ordinary people will decide to commit felonies for no reason, with no regard for their own safety or best interest.

Three women decide to go on vacation back to their childhood vacation spot, on a tiny island. Once there, they meet three hunters who they kinda-sorta know and invite them to hang out. After one of the women flirts with one of the men and invites him into the woods to presumable have sex, she has a change of heart but the guy won’t take no for an answer and tries to rape her. She cracks his skull open with a rock.

His two buddies are upset and decide to kill the three women because of reasons. I don’t know, not a lot makes sense here.

They play the usual cat and mouse game on the island, including more dumb scenes, like having the women try and make it into the water by crawling towards the beach, but one of them freaks out and starts screaming and gets up to run, immediately getting shot in the face.

I don’t know why. She couldn’t get the pressure of crawling on a beach I suppose. The remaining two women run into the water only to realize they’re freezing to death, so they get back out. This, despite a five minute conversation they had before they put the plan in motion, where one of them absolutely knew she could handle the cold water. I guess she was wrong.

The two women get naked to battle hypothermia. I guess the boobs were unavoidable.

Anyway, the movie ends as expected. It’s really dumb. If you’re really into watching women get victimized for an hour and then maybe get their revenge for two minutes, I guess you could give it a shot.

1 out of 5 hypothermic, naked women.

magic_magic

Magic Magic (spoilers throughout)

Ah, the dumbest of them all. I admit to being intrigued for the first half hour of this movie, but once I realized the movie has an unreliable narrator, I kinda gave up on the whole thing. I like unreliable narrators, but when you got every other character acting weird as shit and then compound that with a protagonist that appears to be schizophrenic, is there really any point in watching? If there is no basis for reality and the events aren’t even that interesting (oh woo, this guy is mean to her, her friend was rude on the phone, a dog tried to hump her), it’s hard to take it seriously. Couple this with a really dumb ending and you get Magic Magic.

Everyone in this movie is both irritating and stupid. And terrible, like the guy who wants to have sex with his girlfriend who had an abortion the previous day and suggests anal when she says she’s still hurting. What.

In the ending, her friends take her to a Mexican witch who tries to exorcise her and ends up chocking her to death by feeding her a frog. This is happening as about ten people watch, none of them saying anything, apparently convinced she’s possessed.

I can’t say enough bad things about this movie. Fuck it.

0 out of 5 humping dogs.

These Movies are Terrible: Home Sweet Home and Insidious 2

January 6, 2014 8 Comments

Home Sweet Home (2013)
What a terrible movie. The home invasion resurgence I’m seeing is bad enough on it’s own, but where other movies might try something a little bit different, this one is happy to be the usual shitty tripe. There is no Wikipedia page and the synopsis on IMDB is one line long, so I’ll have to wing it. A couple is spending a night at home when they realize some dude wearing that mask from Saw has broken into their home and also trapped them inside. That’s really about it and from here on, expect major spoilers.

Of course, the husband immediately gets his, leaving the wife to play the cat and mouse game with the killer. Of course right before that, she thought she’d surprise her husband with some sexy times while wearing a cheerleader uniform, so naturally the killer hunts her around the house with her dressed as a slightly aged cheerleader. She gets captured, escapes, gets captured again and so on.

A lot of dumb shit takes place, she makes choices that make no sense, her husband is completely useless and gets fucked up constantly and then in the end we have the usual fake-out death. The killer then stops messing around and murders the poor woman and then the plot twist hits. Turns out he was a police officer and under the painter’s onesie he’s wearing is a full cop getup. He stages the scene to make it look like he was called to the house and the credits roll.

I’m not sure how he’s going to explain that he got shot with the victim’s gun or where exactly he was earlier and why he’s at their house when no call has been made. Does this guy even have a shift? Or is he more like a freelance cop that works on the weekends? I don’t know. I’m sure you can plug these plot holes with some mental gymnastics, I’m vaguely aware that there was a whole thing where the couple had called the police the previous day about a prowler, but really, it’s too dumb to think about.

There is really nothing interesting about this movie.

1 out of 5 home invaders.

Insidious 2 (2013)

I honestly didn’t love the first insidious and I could never understand why people talk it up. It felt like one of those movies that you’d only think are interesting if you watch maybe a couple of horror movies a year. To me, it had a bunch of ideas I’ve seen before, but at least it was competently made, so I wasn’t completely disappointment. I’m even planning a re-watch.

I went into the sequel/prequel with good intentions, but ultimately, it was pretty bad. Again, Wikipedia fails me for a synopsis.

The movie takes place almost immediately after the end of the first one. The family moves to another house and tries to get things back to normal. But weird shit still happens, this time apparently centering around her husband and the baby.

Spoilers ahead.

The movie serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the original movie. We get a flashback showing how the father of the family also had a run in with the demons/ghosts/whatevers when he was a kid and managed to suppress his astral projecting abilities. Everything that takes place in the flashbacks is really well done and all around interesting. The problem lies with all the shit they add to the current timeline, which ends up coming off like a an episode of Supernatural mixed with American Horror Story season one. They throw in some ghosts, an overbearing, crazy mom, a cross-dressing serial killer that appears both as his innocent child self and his later, murderous incarnation and somehow try and tie all this in to the events of the first movie. It fell flat for me, though your mileage may vary.

I kept waiting for something to happen that would tie it up nicely, but it never came. It really is as disjointed as it looked to be. The bit of mindfuck where the events in the flashback are a reaction to the events of the future (you’ll know it when you see it, the movie makes sure to hit you over the head with it) was really the only interesting part of the movie.

The movie isn’t shy about showing us a bunch of ghosts in broad daylight (always accompanied by the usual piano and string cues), which gets ridiculous pretty fast. There is only a handful of effective scares and none of them are really that original or interesting. It’s a very formulaic offering, overall.

It’s probably not completely terrible, but nowhere near as good as the original, which wasn’t that good to begin with, so eh.

2 out of 5 ghosts.

October Challenge #2: Bride of Chucky

October 19, 2013 No Comments

bride_of_chucky_poster_01

 

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.

October Challenge 2013: The List

October 6, 2013 No Comments

This is the list of movies we’re watching this October. I expect some of the movies to be switched with others as the mood strikes, but that’s okay. It’s a weird list because it’s really not a top 30 of my favorite horror movies or anything. Lots of movies didn’t make the list because I had re-watched them recently or just because I didn’t feel like re-watching them.
Let’s see if I can come up with anything interesting to say about these flicks after the jump.

list

 

1. Stake Land – I’ve seen this one before and I still enjoy it. It has some goofy kung fu stuff going on, but I like that they took the time to do some world building in this one.

2. Haunting of Helena – First viewing. I posted the review yesterday. Not something I’d re-watch.

3. Pontypool – It has an interesting premise and I’ve forgotten enough about it to want to re-watch it.

4. Lords of Salem – Re-watch solely for the visuals.

5. Paranorman – We watched this recently so we might end up not seeing it again, but it’s just really good and a perfect fit for Halloween.

6. Livide – This one was a bit of a letdown when it finally came out, but it has some of the best scenes I’ve seen in a horror movie. Definitely worth a re-watch.

7. Vanishing on 7th Street – This one isn’t really that great, but the girlfriend hasn’t seen it, so we will.

8. Monsters – This one I actually like, but I’ve definitely watched it too many times. Girlfriend hasn’t seen it though.

9. Coraline – It’s pretty good. Worth a re-watch. I think the director is the same as for Paranorman.

10. Splinter – While I’m getting tired of watching this, it’s still a fun movie. I dig the monsters.

11. The Burrowers – This one is a bit slow, but it’s been a while and I want to see how it holds up on repeat viewings. Cowboy horror!

12. GP – One of my favorite horror movies. Looking forward to watching it again.

13. Trick ‘r Treat – Might save this for Halloween. It’s the perfect movie.

14. Teeth – I’ve described the movie to my girlfriend a hundred times, but we still haven’t watched it. So in it goes.

15. Cold Prey – I’m not a huge fan of slasher flicks outside the classics, but this Norwegian movie has a nice setting and it feels pretty fresh for what is essentially a run-of-the-mill slasher movie.

16. Slither – Always fun.

17. The Dark – I liked some of the visuals. I think Sean Bean dies in this one.

18. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil – Probably the best horror comedy in existence.

19. Dead Air – I don’t actually remember this at all and I’ve watched it.

20. R-Point – Another Korean horror movie. Not as good as GP, but still good.

21. Undead – I haven’t watched this in ages. I remember it’s a pretty crazy Australian zombie flick.

22. My Little Eye – Mostly for nostalgia’s sake.

23. Bride of Chucky – The only Chucky film I haven’t watched yet.

24. The Nightmare Before Christmas – Needs no introduction.

25. The Blob – I like this remake. I watched it as a kid and fell in love with it.

26. Teen Wolf – Not sure about this one, but it’s definitely been a while since I last watched it.

27.

28.

29. All the Evil Dead movies.

30. The Conjuring – Heard good things.

31. Pacific Rim – I guess this is cheating, but I wanna watch it and can’t wait till November.

32. The American Scream – Bonus round. A documentary about families and their Halloween decorations.

 

 

 

 

October Challenge #1: The Haunting of Helena

October 5, 2013 No Comments

haunting-of-helena-face
I’m running a bit behind, but I’m still watching one horror movie for every day of October this year.

Me and my girlfriend started out with The Haunting of Helena, a horror flick that takes place in Italy for some reason. Some of the plots points are tied to historical events, but there really is no point to it actually taking place there. Everyone speaks English (except for a psychologist guy who was dubbed) and everyone acts like they’re in the US, so whatever.

The-Haunting-of-Helena-Theatrical-Poster1Anyway, IMDB says ”A single mother moves into a new house with her daughter. Soon after the young girl has her first baby tooth fall off, she begins to recount that she is having nocturnal visits by a tooth fairy. It seems the house has a sinister history” which sounds about right. The irresponsible dad isn’t in the picture because he’s roaming the world. The mom likes to overreact at everything, like when an elderly neighbor says hello and asks if she’s the mom of the little girl that lives in the building. She looks at him like he’s the boogeyman. He eventually does turn creepy when he says ”GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN”, but I wasn’t sure why the mom was creeped out from the get-go. Then the kid loses a tooth and it disappears because the tooth fairy took it. Eventually the mom is called to the school because apparently her daughter was buying teeth from the other children. I have to say two things about that:

1. That’s actually a pretty neat idea for a short story.

2. Why the fuck would a teacher care if a kid is buying up baby teeth? Kids will trade fucking everything, including teeth, cat skulls, Pokemon cards and dead pigeons. This isn’t cause for alarm.

Anyway, the mom is really disturbed and takes her to a psychologist and she gets like a hundred CAT scans. Her dad calls and thinks it might be epilepsy (that’s not how epilepsy works) but eventually the mom sees the ghost! Shit goes downhill from there. Spoilers follow, including THE ENDING. Mark the text to read them.

Turns out the woman that used to live in the house had a really jealous husband. He got really angry and pulled out all her teeth and left her to die in a closet. Now the lady haunts the house and is trying to get her teeth back.There’s a huge jump in time after the mom and daughter escape the house and the ghost. The kid is in a mental institution and finally the dad has shown up. He’s an asshole and wants to take the kid back to the US. It took him four years to come see his daughter, two of which she was in the institution. Talk about a shitty dad.

The mom figures out that the lady ghost wants her teeth back and does some research to find them. She eventually does (it really wasn’t that hard) and goes back to the house to drop them off. That’s when the plot twist ala The Ring happens. Turns out the lady wasn’t the victim of a jealous husband, she was a fucking cannibal that murdered kids. Her husband found out and took her teeth out to save the town kids. Now the ghost lady had her teeth back, she was free to eat kids again, which she does immediately. All in all a happy ending.

Anyway, this movie wasn’t terrible, I liked some of the effects and some of the ideas behind it. It’s a perfectly passable b-movie with mediocre acting but decent CGI effects. The plot twist is kinda apparent but it takes so long to happen that you’re almost fooled, but I can’t give it too many points for that.

 2 out of 5 baby teeth

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

September 30, 2013 No Comments

Curse-Of-Chucky-2013

 

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.

separatorwt9

Fright-Night-2-A

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

All images copyright Yorgos Cotronis ©2022