Director Lucky McKee’s most recent film, The Woman, garnered a lot of critical praise at Sundance in 2011 but gained the most publicity when some old codger decided to have a freak out that was caught on tape where he said the film was degrading to women and demanded it be burned. Luckily for the sake of art and free speech, the negative was not burned and the film has indeed been released on DVD and Blu-ray.

The film follows the Cleek family and their zany adventures trying to ‘civilize’ a wild woman the patriarch finds in the woods. I put civilize in quotes back there because that’s how the film is officially described, but in my book giving someone a bath and making them wear clothes doesn’t actually amount to trying to civilize them. No, for that, one must teach them proper dining etiquette. Obviously, as this is branded a horror film, the titular woman chained up in the basement must cause some havoc, though she’s not the true villain in this story.

Kills

It takes awhile for us to get our first death, but we’re eventually treated to four of them, all clumped together.

Ills

Much like the kills, most of the ills come at the end of the film. As we’re dealing with cannibalism, we get a lot of biting and some eating of human flesh. Someone is cut in half, a heart is ripped out, but yeah, mostly just chomp-chomp-chomping here. Oh, with a side of rape. Can’t forget the rape and molestation, though it’s not shot graphically so grandma doesn’t have to leave the room.

Lust

First we see The Woman all dirty and nasty with her boobs out and it’s gross. Then later she gets a power washer bath and she cleans up nice, showing off some bare breasts and some bush.

Learning

Women are actually good for three things, and one of those things is eating people’s faces.

Review

The Woman threatened to lose it immediately during its too-long raised by wolves Woman in the woods opening. It feels completely unrelated to the rest of the film. When things get started for real, the film is actually hilarious. It’s not clear why people where so upset at the movie or how anyone could call it misogynistic. Sure, Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) and his son are total male assholes, but saying that makes the film misogynistic is like saying Saw is pro-murdering people in elaborate games. Chris is clearly the bad guy here.

Some people were apparently troubled or disturbed by the film, but Bridgers’ performance was over the top sunshine in an effort to show how normal this dark character tried to be. It was tough to take anything in the movie seriously, which means I may have had a drastically different experience from everyone else. The cinematography is bright and cheery – the film takes place mostly during daylight, and the musical choices are all pop songs. In trying to have a stark contrast between the images and the music, it sort of played like circus music over a massacre. Granted the film does manage to get a little gross here and there and abandon the pop music, but overall the film was darkly comic and not overly graphic, scary, or overtly demented.

Viewed through that lens, the movie isn’t bad, though the hype doesn’t make sense. It wasn’t offensive or shocking. I’d say I half-way enjoyed it. I don’t think Lucky McKee shoots violence and gore very well – there are plenty of opportunities to really hammer home the horror of the situation, though we never see it. That aspect of the film was underwhelming. Further, speaking of the violence, I’m not entirely certain how a piece of wood was used to chop someone in half, nor do I really understand the decision to have the 125lb Woman be able to toss another 100lb+ person through the air like a rag doll.

The Woman is best described as a Lucky McKee film. If you like his work, you’ll probably like this. If you don’t, you won’t. It features Angela Bettis as Belle Cleek, who has been in all of McKee’s films, and the movie, intentionally or not, bears his off kilter style. Again, I don’t really see the horror in this movie as it plays out in a fairly comedic way. McKee’s friend Sean Spillane wrote, composed, and performed a pretty awesome soundtrack for the film though, which should definitely be checked out.

When all is said and done, The Woman is not a great film. It’s a bit goofy at times, which may not have been intentional, and doesn’t handle the horror and violence in a way that would make a true impact. It does have some good moments within it and if you approach it with tempered expectations you might enjoy it. It’s also important that the film comes from the brain of Jack Ketchum, who wrote The Offspring, a semi-prequel to this flick. Ketchum is a dude that doesn’t mind having a ton of kids die in his stories, which I totally respect.

Anyway, I’m torn on this flick. I don’t get the hype or horror around it, but ultimately I enjoyed bits and pieces of it, even though it’s oddly comedic and goes awry in shooting the violence. The Blu-ray is presented well though, with a song from the soundtrack, deleted scenes, and a making of featurette.

Opening in select theaters tomorrow and currently available on Video on Demand, Kill List is a clever little film from writer/director Ben Wheatley that’s been garnering a good bit of attention around the ol’ internet. It follows the journey of hitman Jay (Neil Maskell) and his buddy Gal (Michael Smiley) as they take on a contract to kill three men. As you might guess, things don’t go entirely smoothly.

If you haven’t yet seen Kill List, you should probably stop reading, go see it, and then come back. You should watch it. It’s good. Don’t read anything else about it. Ignore everything you’ve heard, just walk into it blind and experience it. If you’ve already seen the movie, read on, or if you need extra convincing, read on, but for best results, see it with as little foreknowledge as possible.

Kills

The film starts slowly on the kill part, focusing more on the list part, but by the end it racks up 17 on-screen deaths at least and a few more probables.

Ills

Kill List delivers the goods when it comes to gore. There’s not a ton of it, but when it’s there, it’s really there. There are plenty of gunshot wounds, some dead animals, some stabbings, a gunshot to the face, cigarette burns, and some beautifully brutal usage of a hammer.

Lust

Jay’s wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) is a super hot Swede, but she keeps her clothes on. We see a little bit of naked here and there, but a lot of it is fairly unappealing.

Learning

The less you know, the worse things get.

Review

I think your mileage varies with how much you about Kill List walking into the theater. If you know next to nothing, it’s probably fucking brilliant. So if you still haven’t spoiled yourself, get out now! Go see it!

I knew perhaps a little bit too much going into the film, in fact, even knowing too much about the genre can be wrong. The film should be approached primarily as a crime thriller. Again, leave now. Because it’s time to get spoilery.

With allusions to a failed mission in Kiev, it becomes apparent early on that some very strange people are very interested in Jay. The film, much like The Descent, starts out as one thing and only later on becomes something almost entirely different. The Descent is basically 45 solid minutes of the best spelunking movie you’ve ever seen, while Kill List perfectly captures the crumbling home life of an out of work assassin struggling to make ends meet. Once he embarks on his crusade, things slowly get weird, to the point you’re a solid hour in before you start even thinking ‘horror movie,’ which is the great tragedy of the advertising surrounding it. I went into this flick thinking it was a horror movie – and it’s not, not really, at least not until the end. I wish, I wish, oh how I wish I walked in thinking it was a crime flick. Because it will fuck your mind.

The performances are all A+ throughout and the directing is excellent. The sound design is sharp, though there is a lack of score throughout much of the film, which is different. During the third act, the score is more like noise than music, and it’s unsettling. Speaking of the third act, it’s probably the coolest “action in a tunnel” this side of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie – but with significantly more killing and guts spilling out.

As exciting as the third act is, I can’t say it’s entirely original. It quickly becomes apparent that we’re heading for an ending that is a mixture of The Wicker Man and A Serbian Film. I figured out pretty far in advance what the ending was going to be, and pretty much nailed it right on. Still, even knowing, the last few minutes of the film left me with questions – was that laughing or crying? It means an entire world of difference, and we’ll never know.

Despite the somewhat predictable nature of the ending, Kill List is a tightly woven thriller with tremendous, gritty, realistic violence, great performances, and a pretty wonderfully exciting third act. It’s a pretty big downer for the most part, as you’ll figure out quickly, but Wheatley interweaves a great mystery throughout so you’re always wondering, always questioning exactly what’s going on. But he doesn’t tell you. No, that’s for you to stew on.

By now, you should probably have realized that we will never reach the final destination, since we’re already a destination past that with more on the way. Likewise, you should probably have a pretty good handle on how these things happen. A kid gets a vision of a totally awesome and very lethal disaster, which prompts him and several others to leave the danger zone, abandoning hundreds of others to die. Death, not liking the idea of being cheated, then kills all of the survivors through an elaborate series of accidents. And for the most part, it’s all good.

So recognizing all that, for the fifth installment of the franchise you can just plug in all the new names and faces with the scenario suspension bridge collapse. While there isn’t much new, Final Destination 5 manages to be an entertaining entry in the series, providing plenty of gruesome kills – in three dimensions!! OOoOoOoOoOoooOOOooOoOOOo

Kills

The Final Destination franchise is well known for massive body counts and for showing most of them twice. This is no exception. One would assume the bridge collapse kills several hundred people and we see at least 8 specific deaths. Throughout the rest of the film there are at least 10 individual deaths. Conservatively you’d have to put the overall death total somewhere near 400, though that includes disaster.

Ills

Here is where the film really delivered for me – gruesome kills. There are several impalements, some delicious rebar through the face, bodies are cut in half, heads are smashed, people are crushed, eyeballs are popped and squished, guts and limbs go flying, a wrench gets embedded in someone’s face, and there are gun shots and a rotisserie spiking. All of that pales to my personal favorite death though – gymnastics accident. BOOM. STUCK THE LANDING.

Lust

A big, fat, disappointing zero. Seriously, film, what the efffff?

Learning

You can’t escape death. Duh.

Review

It’s not a great movie, in fact, as a film, it’s probably like a C-level average, but once you factor in the gore and the amazing opening credits sequence, it gets a significant bump. The ending was also a clever and satisfying surprise. You see it coming maybe two minutes in advance, but it still tastes just as sweet.

If there is one thing this movie, and the franchise as a whole, have really gotten a handle on, it’s false foreshadowing. We all know someone is about to die, the only question is – how? Director Steven Quale does an effective job of building tension right before the deaths, especially in the gymnastics sequence. There are, as SpikeTV says, a thousand ways to die, and in some of these scenarios, you can identify all one thousand. Every loose bolt, exposed wire, or creaking piece of lattice could strike the fatal blow. Once death has reared its head, you’re on edge. Trying to out-guess him. Sometimes you do, often you don’t and it’s splattertastic.

For those of you looking for something smart or new, look elsewhere. For those of you that have fun with the Final Destination movies, gear up and give this one a shot. It’s definitely not the worst installment, and based on a pure fun level, it’s probably second or third.

Genre buddy and fellow root canal survivor Rob Hunter came to my aid this week when it was time for title selection. I was stupidly about to put in The Wild Hunt, which has something to do with LARPing and virgins or something, when the Foreign Objects author suggested I try something a little more sub-titled.

Dream Home is the story about the American dream taking place in Hong Kong. Young Cheng Lai-sheung (Josie Ho) is a phone representative for a bank in Hong Kong and all she wants out of life is a nice flat with a view of the ocean for her ailing grandfather to live in. She’ll stop at nothing to get that home, from scraping together every penny and working two extra jobs. After raising enough capital to buy into the flat, the sellers decide to ask for more money and Cheng reacts completely reasonably. For a psychopath.

Kills

If you thought people made a killing in real estate, you’ve had no idea until you’ve seen this film! Puns are fun! No but seriously a lot of people die in this movie. Like thirteen of them.

Ills

Hunter promised me gore and director Ho-Cheung Pang delivers the gory stuff. The first kill is an uncomfortable, harrowing death by zip-tie strangulation and a razor blood. It’s bloody and intense and sets the movie off in the right direction immediately. Later we get a broken nose, a screwdriver through the eye, some disgusting miscarriage fluids, a couple of suffocations, some severed fingers, an amazing disembowelment, gun shots, and a lot of stabby-stabby.

Lust

We’re initially teased with a little pornography on television and things look bleak – until we get to see some passed out sweater puppies, some doggy-style banging, male and female butts, a lesbian kiss, an unseen blowjob, and a lady who is kind of enough to be on screen naked for like three minutes solid.

Learning

Real estate is serious business.

Review

Dream Home had its hooks in me right from the start with a fantastic kill. It’s so good you wonder how the film will ever top it and the next few kills are good, but not nearly as good as the first. You’re pretty sure they blew their horror load right up front, but then the movie decides to just go guts-out dicks-off crazy for the climax.

The gore in the flick is pretty fantastic – there are tons of great practical effects, from guts to prosthetics, blood and stabbings. There are some CGI sweeteners here and there, which are noticeable but not too bad. There is one bit of CGI towards the end that sticks out in a negative way – but only compared to the rest of the film. It’s good as far as CGI goes, but definitely sticks out after we see so many great practical effects.

Visually, the film is beautiful, the colors are mostly bright and vibrant and it looks great. Pang does play with focus a few times throughout the film and it felt pretty distracting. It may have been digital focus shifts inserted for variety at least a few of the times. It didn’t really work, but it by no means ruins the experience.

Cheng’s character is very well done. She handles a lot of emotion in the film, from being sad to being stabby. Really stabby. She gets to play coy most of the film, but after a little psychotic break she turns into a dedicated terminator of renters and it’s awesome. Her transformation at the climax of the film is pretty phenomenal. The look of contentment on her face makes you want to kiss her, except that what’s brought great joy to her life involved a whole lot of knives and zip-ties.

Dream Home drags for a touch when exploring Cheng’s younger life, but it ultimately is a very satisfying and very bloody experience. Well shot, with a strong central performance, and tons of excellent gore, this is one Netflix Instant title you should check out.

Also that German DVD cover image I used has almost nothing to do with the film but would you look at that for crying out loud? That is awesome!

Psycho Sleepover is a strange flick. It’s low budget to the point that it was pretty much literally all filmed in one location – the producer’s house. A lot of the people behind the camera end up in front of it. The quality isn’t so great. The plot is non-sense. Basically 30 psycho-slasher killers walk out of an unlocked Asylum and head to a sleepover to get their murder on while a couple of dudes make a ton of dick jokes and masturbate.

In “The Making Of” extra, the co-director says of the film: it’s pretty retarded, but it’s awesome. He was 60% right.

Kills

If the movie doesn’t get an A for technical ability (it doesn’t), it sure gets one for enthusiasm, racking up, by my count, 29 on-screen kills. There are a couple of severe injuries that may have ended up in death, so one could probably assume the actual number of deaths is around 36 or so.

Ills

The blood spills freely, even if it is a bit too syrupy, but again, this is a film made by guys in their friend’s house more or less. A face gets ripped off, there are a ton of stabbings, a bunch of headshots, a face gets blown off, a few necks get slashed, a cock or two gets severed, a guy is sodomized to death by a pool cue, and a hand is stuck in a blender. I’d say two of my favorite ills are when a head gets stomped and explodes and when a girl gets hit in the gut with a sledgehammer so hard she throws up.

Lust

There are a couple of disappointing pairs of tits, a kind of gross pair of tits, and a decent pair of tits. There are some good looking ladies in the film but ultimately the movie is defined by dudes masturbating and talking about blowjobs. One of the opening lines of the film is I don’t know how to say this, but I want you to suck my dick. And you know what, it’s hilarious. Also, dildos. Dildos everywhere.

Learning

Girls, for the love of Christ, suck your man’s dick. This entire massacre could have been avoided with blowjobs.

Review

Surprisingly, Psycho Sleepover is pretty entertaining. I found a lot of the corny dialog about blowjobs and boners pretty hilarious. This is definitely a movie for immature boys – if that’s you, it’s actually a pretty good time for the most part. The litmus test for this flick is probably whether or not you find this line funny: Maybe I’ll get that boner I’ve always wanted. Is that funny? If you clicked Yes, you should watch this movie. If you clicked No, avoid it like the plague.

Psycho Sleepover is a horror movie made while on drugs. Now, I know about some drugs, but I can’t even begin to tell you what you’d have to be on to create this film. Chingy has a cameo in a film-within-a-film called Murder Pizza and he proudly announces, after promising free pizza, that It’s murder pizza, bitch! Oh, and his victims are two Suicide Girl looking lesbians.

While the film is only 84 minutes long or so, it still does start to drag on about three quarters of the way through. It’s silly through-out and the production value, again, is pretty low, but it has got some strange, acid trip balls hanging out. Some of the acting is actually okay, though it’s always over the top, and the variety of shitty psycho slashers is mildly amusing. Sometimes there is even a 16-bit style score going on. The film is all over the place and you’re either with it or you hate. Personally, I was with it most of the time and found myself pleasantly surprised. This film isn’t for everyone, not even close, but if you’re alright with low production values and insanely immature humor (dick blowjob dick cum fart cunt blowjob boner boner boner), then you owe it to yourself to experience this mindfuck of a film. Oh, and in addition to Chingy, Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) and Lloyd Kaufman have cameos.

I’m not certain why, but when Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale played during the one Fantastic Fest I was present at, I missed it. I was probably drunk on Peanut Butter Milkshakes and also whiskey and Rob Hunter had yet to convince me to start watching movies with subtitles. Over the recent Christmas season (it’s over now, take down your decorations), I caught up with the film in the comfort of my own home all while being mostly sober.

Rare Exports is a Finnish import about the havoc created when the truth about Santa Claus is quite literally unearthed. You think you know all about this jolly fat man, but brother, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If you watch this film though, you’ll see plenty of old man dicks, so there’s that, in addition to a pretty pleasing film.

Kills

Overall there are about nine kills in the film, but at least seven of them are off-screen. If you’ve got a bloodlust, this isn’t the film for you.

Ills

We see tons of dead reindeer, an old man is impaled, an ear is bit off, and a pick-axe finds an unlikely home in someone’s head.

Lust

My notes, verbatim: dirty old man dick, naked old men, old men dick. So yeah this film is sexy.

Learning

The real Santa Claus is a lot cooler than that chubby Coca-Cola swilling bastard.

Review

Rare Exports is one of those rare films that scores close to zero on the normal criteria for being awesome, but it is in fact quite awesome. The film started on the right note as it illustrated the Finnish relationship with guns, which is basically give everyone over the age of five a gun. Recipe for disaster? Only to your naive liberal ears.

If there is a problem, it’s with the speed of the plot. The entire film moves fast with a run time of under 90 minutes, but our pint sized hero Pietari jumps pretty much from “what was that loud noise” to “do you think they unearthed the real Santa Claus and he is not a nice man but is actually a kidnapper of children?” It’s a bit of a stretch. Maybe the St. Nicholas mythos in Finland is very much alive and well, as even the adults are pretty much on board with this old man actually being Santa Claus after about four minutes of examination.

Overall, Rare Exports is a strange film, but that may just be some level of culture shock. To be honest, I was left wanting something a little bit bigger, but the film is constrained by a modest budget.  The film starts off being fairly creepy and you almost expect a Santa Slasher, though it switches gears into full on ridiculous mode half-way through and the action kicks up a few notches. This is perhaps due to the parent’s willingness to believe the children. No one here questions the idea that Santa is real, so there is no need for Santa to hunt the children. Once everyone believes that Santa is indeed out there, they decide to take the hunt to him.

Rare Exports is a good holiday flick with the right balance of creepy imagery and childhood wonderment. It’s kind of like Super 8 but with Santa Claus and lots of penises. Go in expecting something more akin to a family adventure than a Santa’s Slay and you’ll be well rewarded. It’s also worth noting that the Blu-ray is pretty well stacked with features, including Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil follows two lovable, well meaning rednecks through a series of misunderstandings that result in a group of vacationing college kids being convinced the duo are out to murder them. Like any educated group, the kids decide the best thing to do is to take the war to the hillbillies and try to kill them and rescue their “kidnapped” friend. Things go comically and fatally awry to great effect.

Kills

Things don’t go so well for the non-hillbillies and a full dozen kids find themselves on the wrong end of pointy objects.

Ills

Death’s preferred method this go round is impalement, as people find themselves skewered on tree limbs and spears. Other unlucky folks meet up with a woodchipper, nails to the brain, bullets to the face, a weed whacker to the  face, and a few people meet up with flames in the worst way possible.

Lust

We briefly see a big pair of boobies from a far off distance and those same boobs are later covered in a bloody goop. We also briefly see a very hot woman in her underwear, but it’s easy to keep your boner contained during this flick.

Learning

You can’t judge a hillbilly by his overalls.

Review

I had heard a lot about Tucker & Dale vs Evil coming into it and the film had a ton of positive built up from festival screenings even before it acquired a distributor. I’m pretty happy to report that the film is immensely enjoyable. It has a good bit of gore and a ton of laughs.

The real success of the movie is in casting the leads: Tyler Labine (Reaper) as Dale and Alan Tudyk (Firefly) as Tucker with Katrina Bowden (Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive 2011) as Allison. The hillbillies play perfectly off of each other and Labine steals the show as the affable Dale, who assures us over and over again that he’s plenty stupid, but has a brain that can recall just about anything he’s ever learned.

The Blu-ray comes stacked with extra features, including a mode called “Tucker & Dale Are Evil” which is the film told through the POV of the college kids that illustrates how they came to believe Tucker and Dale actually were out to kill them, which is pretty cool. It includes alternate takes of the footage, takes that aren’t as good as what’s actually in the film, so you’re best of watching this for giggles later.

As it stands, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is an excellent straight to DVD release that you should pick-up if you like some laughs with your blood. If I had an issue with the film, it would be the occasional misuse of CGI that looks pretty bad. Otherwise, there are a lot of great practical gore gags in the film. Oh, also, next time lets get some more boobies on screen.

This flick, which carries the Frightfest banner, follows a group of friends who head out on a, you guessed it, pig hunt. Our crew, led by good guy John Hickman, formerly of the area, are soon joined by some of his old “friends,” a couple of ne-er-do-well hillbillies. The group clashes with each other, with small boars, hippies, rednecks, and eventually, a really big pig.

Kills

Pig Hunt gets down and dirty with north of thirteen kills, excluding animals which are pretty routinely killed.

Ills

If you’re a member of PETA, you probably want to skip this one as we see a lot of carcasses, a dead dog, a decapitated horse, dead boar, and a dead deer. There is plenty of pig shit, gunshots, bites, stabs, and arrows. There is some tusk-goring, a head gets cut off, and in one excellent gunshot execution a whole tone of blood sprays everywhere.

Lust

Early on the film shows some man butt, an ugly bra on a good looking girl, a nude centerfold picture. Later on we get a sex scene, some more bra shots, a couple of boobs, and a scene with 8 nude hippie chicks, which is a blessing and a curse. I mean, boobs are awesome but hippies are nasty.

Learning

It’s best to avoid hillbillies and rednecks. Also, don’t hang around with people that hate you when they have guns.

Review

Pig Hunt is a strange beast. On one hand, it’s not all that good, but on the other, it’s pretty violent and bloody at times. There are a lot of strange, out of place references to the war in Iraq. It’s as if the filmmakers wanted to make some sort of statement, but settled for awkward dialog at random points.

The biggest problem with the movie, in my opinion, has to deal with false advertising. If you look at that awesome poster, you see a giant motherfucking boar. If you watch the movie, you will not see a giant motherfucking boar. At least not for 90 minutes. The movie is only 99 minutes long. When the boar does show up, it is actually pretty sweet. It’s a behemoth and the effects are all practical. I wish the boar featured more into this film.

Instead, we get lots of rednecks and hillbillies. Now, the film wants to portray the rednecks as bad people, but in all honesty, they’re really kind of the victims. While two people are having a spat, this annoying asshole city boy decides to get all uppity and kills one of the rednecks. Murders him. So, of course, the whole hillbilly clan has to take vengeance on this group. It actually sounds a lot like justice to me, so I didn’t have a whole ton of sympathy for the idiots the hillbillies set their sights on.

If you stick with Pig Hunt, you’ll be rewarded with a strange, semi-apocalyptic looking finale that features a hillbilly war and an appearance from a giant, mutated boar. Hell, as long as you’re not expecting an awesome killer pig movie (which you would be, from the title), there is a lot of blood to enjoy here.

Chillerama features Joel David Moore, Lin Shaye, Ray Wise, Eric Roberts, and the man behind many masks, Kane Hodder, all of whom are intentionally hamming it up in roles ranging from cliched military generals to a Frankenjew to Adolf Hitler. Never taking itself too seriously, the film makes an inordinate amount of dick jokes, spills a lot of blood, makes two dozen poop jokes, and sprays all sorts of fluids across the screen.

So if you’re into that…

Kills

As a whole, Chillerama probably kills somewhere between 35 and 50 people. Wadzilla kills a bunch in a monster rampage, while each of the others contribute plenty of individuals getting things bitten, stomped, and popped.

Ills

There are a wide variety of nasty things in the movie – most of them of a bodily fluid nature, not a death nature. The violence is pretty much all campy, but we get to see a bunch of heads getting popped, eyeballs eaten, a menorah rammed through a face, arms ripped off, heads knocked off, people ripped in half, bit in half, and fucked in half. On the just regular gross side, there are plenty of sperm, seminal fluid, balls, zombie dicks, burst testicles, and human excrement.  Oh, also a Werebear rapes a guy in the ass so hard a pink bear dick pops through his stomach.

Lust

Wadzilla features several smoking hot women, fully clothed, while Zom-B-Film features a couple of real lady tits. There are also some prosthetic dicks and balls, the Statue of Liberty does a sexy dance and then gets raped by a giant sperm, there are a few blowjobs enacted, and two dozen zombies fuck each other in various states of death.

Learning

Zombies are perverts and the level of maturity in this film makes a preschool class seem like a Gatsby party.

Review

Chillerama starts off strong with Wadzilla, a tale of a giant sperm told through a non-stop barrage of euphemisms and blatant dick jokes. It’s hilarious, with a fantastic sperm-creature design, though there is some poor CGI spread throughout. I Was a Teenage Werebear is second in line and is easily the worst of the shorts, though I must admit I was partial to he 60s style doo-wop music.

Adam Green’s The Diary of Anne Frankenstein is a close second after the sperm-tale, featuring Joel Moore as hilarious Hitler who ends up building a super-Jew. The short starts off with Moore speaking something close to German, but by the time it finishes he’s spouting off non-sense before a Kane Hodder Meshugannah breaks into a traditional Jewish dance. The story bringing them all together, Zom-B-Film is okay for the most part, but it really wants to shock you with its depictions of zombie blowjobs, zombie masturbation, and blue ejaculate.

I really wanted to love Chillerama from start to finish. It sounds like the most amazing of films and I was totally on-board, full steam ahead until I Was a Teenage Werebear. Despite how enjoyable Anne Frankenstein is, the film never really recovers and starts to slide down an immature slope. If you’ve read my writing, it’s clear that my tastes aren’t too sophisticated so for me to call a film immature, something has gone wrong.

From pretty much the first frame, the film is packed with trying-too-hard on the nose references to other films or actors, whether it’s theater owner Cecil B. Kaufman (combining Cecil B DeMille and Lloyd Kaufman) or the countless quotations, it really starts to grate on you after awhile. There are call-outs to Star Wars (Red Five, Standing By), Gone With the Wind and pretty much every movie you can think of. It seemed as if every character was only speaking in quotes during the last 10 minutes – and one of them was. At one point Cecil Kaufman (played by Richard Riehle) just shouts catch-phrase after catch-phrase as he kills zombies. That was mildly entertaining, but before that, the constant quotes were driving me nuts. When Riehle told two kids to “get to the chopper” when there was no chopper, I literally threw my pen and said “what the fuck.” It’s as if they ran out of dialog and decided to just recycle other films. It wasn’t all that clever at the beginning of the movie and let me tell you, 100 minutes in and you’ve had enough – but they’re just getting started.

Really, the entire film is one big dick joke about ejaculation – there isn’t a single segment that doesn’t feature ejaculation and most of them also feature rape and blowjobs. I’m obviously not against any of this, but it’s just repetitive and seems like shock for shock’s sake that isn’t all that shocking. Perhaps the film wanted to make a statement when Cecil Kaufman stares at the camera and says “Fuck modesty” while zombies rape and masturbate and someone shits on a painting, which is clever the same way a child thinks he’s clever when he shits himself. That is, it’s not clever.

Again, I really wanted to like the movie, but overall, it was just immature and fell short of expectations. I would definitely watch Wadzilla and The Diary of Anne Frankenstein again, as well as most of Zom-B-Movie, but viewing Chillerama a second time will benefit from the fast forward feature. A for effort and the idea, C+ for execution.

Which brings us full circle to Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings, a movie that kind of almost sort of tells you how it all began. In case you were wondering, these in-bred meat eaters weren’t always wild – no, they spent a few weeks in an asylum before managing to escape, start a riot, and kill a good portion of the staff. Then the state of West Virginia apparently decided to pretend that never happened and just ignore that gigantic building, allowing the inbreeders to use it as their base of operations before they, I guess, move out into the woods by Wrong Turn.

That may sound like this movie was bad, but that’s just my snarky way of writing, in fact, the movie is quite -

Kills

At least a dozen people are killed during the movie, and most of them brutally. A kill or two may have slipped my attention in the first segment, which was the hectic asylum murder party.

Ills

These redneck murderous bastards do a good job of spreading the red. A jugular gets bit, a nose is eaten, an eye gets stabbed, a woman is given electroshock therapy until she dies, and a man is quartered. Though maybe he was fifthed, because when they’re done with him he’s in five pieces. Later we get a spike to the head, some stabbings, and a few heads are cut off. The highlights involve a very bloody and very awesome barbed wire noose and some heads popping off.

Lust

Within the first ten minutes we’re treated to two sex scenes, one of which features some lesbian cunnilingus, and we see a couple of pairs of white boobs and a delightful pair of ebony breasts. Later in the film we get another lesbian sex scene for good measure.

Learning

When you get a chance to kill the literal monsters trying to kill you, do so.

Review

Bloody Beginnings starts on an awkward foot – it’s plenty violent, but the acting from the child retards is poor and the prosthetics are lackluster. One also wonders where these guests of the psychiatric system manage to get their hands on so much barbed wire throughout the film, but how they manage to get several yards of it while still in the asylum is the most boggling.

Written and directed by Declan O’Brien, Wrong Turn 4 is far from a masterpiece, but miles above his other works like Rock Monster and Sharktopus. If you’re tuning in to see exciting snowmobile footage or engaging characters, you’re obviously an idiot for choosing this movie. However, if you’re looking for hot women who get naked and then murdered, this movie fits the bill. There are some truly brutal moments, some great gore, and then some not so great CGI gore. Of course, in addition there are some truly stupid character decisions, like when they kind of whiny bitch says “We can’t just kill them!” Of course the fuck you can, burn those mother fuckers to a crisp then shoot the remains.

All in all, Wrong Turn 4 is a mindless addition to the series that doesn’t break much ground in terms of character or an engaging story, but kills enough people in enough ways to be worth a watch.

When someone thinks about The Howling, often fondly, placing it among the best werewolf movies (saying little, as most werewolf movies strangely blow), what comes to mind? A prolonged, awesome transformation scene a la An American Werewolf in London perhaps? Maybe 40 year old leads? Either way, you probably conjure up in your head, I don’t know, a giant werewolf?

So if you were to make another installment in this franchise, you’d think at the very least there would be a cool transformation scene and a big, bad ass werewolf. I think I would have preferred that you made this film, as The Howling Reborn is satisfied with their dopey, emo werewolf narrating his sad story rather than turning into a werewolf. Rather than anyone turning into a werewolf. Okay, so that’s not entirely true. There are werewolves in this movie. For a few minutes anyways.

Kills

There are about four real kills in the film, and then an explosion at the end wipes out some werewolves, presumably a lot, but it’s anti-climactic and boring so I’m not going to count it.

Ills

We’ve got ourselves a tame one here. At the beginning we see a child’s hand come through a dead, pregnant woman’s stomach, a dude is thrown down stairs, someone is tricked into eating part of a finger, and there is a broken neck. We also see a heart ripped out and a severed head. If any of this sounds bloody and brutal, it’s not.

Lust

Ivana Milicevic is great looking, but there is nothing sexy to speak of.

Learning

Werewolves aren’t especially bright, dangerous, or sturdy.

Review

As I teased earlier, there isn’t a lot of werewolf action in the movie. We don’t really get to see a werewolf for about sixty minutes and even then, there’s not much. When a werewolf does show up, it kind of looks like one of the Underworld creatures wearing really furry Ugg boots. The climactic final battle takes place when two werewolves hug each other through some walls. Then the movie is over. All told there is maybe four minutes of werewolf footage, a solid half of which is just some werewolves dicking around breaking stuff while the camera cuts like the power is going out.

On the positive side, the soundtrack is good and the film generally looks pretty good throughout, when nothing is being computer animated. The major shortcomings are all story related, in that the story isn’t very interesting, there are no werewolves, and the characters are mentally challenged. One school bully with perhaps a French accent brings a gun to school for some reason and when he discovers shooting at a werewolf three times doesn’t do much, he calls it quits and throws the gun in the trash can.

Later, when our heroes remember that werewolves are now apparently vulnerable to fire, they whip up a couple of homemade flamethrowers in about sixteen seconds. Time isn’t much of an issue when you’re being chased by werewolves – there is time to craft flamethrowers and sneak off into the science wing to make out.

Unfortunately, The Howling Reborn is an obvious, uninspired, on the nose transformation film that doesn’t manage to sell much. Our hero starts out as a sissy wimp, finds his inner werewolf and then pretty much stays a wimp. But sometimes his voice over sounds like he’s changed. But then again, his actions indicate he’s still a pussy.

It’s hard to imagine fucking up the franchise more than The Howling III: The Marsupials, but this film managed to leave out everything interesting: sex and werewolves. Just imagine this never happened.

Clean off your claws and read more Coroner’s Report

So the kid comes back with an ax and chops his mother into little pieces.

What follows are eighty minutes of blood, gore, violence, nudity, and… hilarious dialogue, fun performances, and a ridiculously entertaining script. Is it intentionally one of the most absurdly funny slashers ever made? No clue. But does it matter?

Kills

Mom gets chopped up in the beginning, and the rest of the film throws in girls getting beheaded, bearmed (?), stabbed on a waterbed, and gut sawed. Plus a head shot!

Ills

Axe damage. Chainsaw damage. Butcher knife damage. Ball damage. And plenty of scenes featuring bloody bodies in whole and in parts.

Lust

A full frontal nudie puzzle reappears throughout, but we also get various boobs of mostly top drawer quality, a guy’s bare butt as he fornicates in the garden, a shower and change after tennis practice featuring T&A&B, and a dimly lit wanker. Oh, there’s also a super sexy aerobics class.

Learning

So many lessons here that it’s difficult to pick just one, so we’ll go with this… if your campus is experiencing a rash of chainsaw murders, it’s probably not a good idea to get into an elevator with a man dressed all in black and holding a chainsaw. Just saying.

Review

“The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on the waterbed.”

Forty years after the mom-meets-ax-blade opening, a rash of killings has begun on a college campus in Boston. A girl reading in the park in broad daylight has her head cut off by a dude with a chainsaw, and the attacks continue in swimming pools, bathrooms, and elevators across campus. Who could be doing these terrible things?!? Certainly not the big guy (Paul Smith) who’s always fondling chainsaws and giving disapproving looks to young lovers. Lt. Bracken (Christopher George) is brought in to investigate and tells his partner to use the police department’s entire budget if necessary… and then basically puts a student named Kendall (Ian Sera) in charge. “I’d stake my life on it,” he says when asked if he can trust the kid he just met.

Back in 1982 the advertising campaign for Pieces included the tag line “It’s exactly what you think it is.” It was a fairly genius line, but it’s also not really accurate. The title, trailer (see below), and synopsis make the movie sound like any run of the mill slasher pic filled with blood, boobs, and misogynistic tendencies, but, and I’m as surprised as anyone, the movie is hilarious and filled with dialogue, scenes, and moments of accidental brilliance.

I say “accidental” because nothing else in director JP Simon’s career hints at this degree of intentional entertainment value. No, not even Slugs. The same goes for writers Dick Randall and John Shadow whose career highlights include films like The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Microscopic Liquid Subway to Oblivion, respectively.

Pieces walks a fine line between two halves… the first is the expected slasher with all the usual trappings which Simon has crafted with exuberant competence. There’s a solid cast of suspects, attractive women disrobing frequently, and a gushing torrent of blood and gore in the form of dismembered body parts and effective prosthetic work. Two of the highlights include a beautifully shot waterbed murder featuring a knife that enters the back of a head and exits out the woman’s mouth and a chainsaw attack that sees the tool saw into a coed’s bare waist. The film definitely doesn’t shy away from the grue, and it earns its misogynistic badge with a shot of the chainsaw cutting through a stall door with in/out motions (as in penetration!) to highlight the link between the girl’s supposed whore-ishness and her impending demise.

But even as these gore-filled murders are happening the movie weaves an unexpected tone throughout that entertains on a completely different level. An often hilarious, absurd, and WTF-filled level.

After the first murder Lt. Bracken arrives and immediately suspects an inside job of some sort. Why? And what the hell? He sends an undercover cop named Mary (Linda Day) to campus as a new tennis coach, and we’re subjected to a solid two minutes of a match complete with audience reaction shots showing their heads moving back and forth in unison, and the two players have clearly never touched a tennis racquet before in their lives. And the number one suspect may or may not be the funniest red herring in film history as he glares, squints, and mimes punches towards everyone around him.

A handful of non sequiturs populate the film including scenes of a female skateboarder who we see riding through campus, greeting fellow students and smiling, intercut with workmen unloading a giant mirror from a truck and heading around the corner (like a classic comedy skit). She sees them too late and crashes into the mirror… never to be mentioned or referenced again. Bracken asks a professor if a chainsaw could have been the weapon used in a brutal murder… as they both stare down at a blood and flesh encrusted chainsaw sitting beside the dismembered body. And then there’s the Asian dude.

And the nuttiest final shot in slasher history.

Pieces is not a comedy, per se, but it is laugh out loud funny at times. It’s not a deconstruction of the genre like Scream or a pure attempt at making a slasher comedy like Student Bodies, but instead it’s a rare hybrid that finds humor everywhere but the central conceit. To be clear, it is the graphic, bloody, flesh filled horror film implied in the film’s title and marketing, but it’s also so much more. If you haven’t seen it before and can handle the skin and blood, give it a chance. It just may surprise you.

Pieces will be released on extras-filled DVD by Arrow Video on September 5th, and you can order your region-2 copy from AmazonUK

Hungry for more horror? Catch up on The Coroner’s Report here.

The woman on the other end of the line sounds like a desperate and angry Betty White, and she’s quite possibly calling from well outside Mary’s area code. Or any area code. Soon Mary and those around her, including a shifty neighbor (Luiz Guzman) and a too-helpful teacher (Stephen Moyer), are in danger as the woman on the phone begins to wreak vengeance from far away.

How do you stop a mad woman intent on terrorizing you from across space and time? I mean aside from changing your goddamn number…

Kills

A handful of deaths and acts of violence, but they’re almost all off screen.

Ills

A severed finger, some decomposed bodies, a woman hanging from the ceiling, and some tame spousal abuse. They save the best for last though as there’s a solidly done assault towards the end.

Lust

Lefevre shows off her mild cleavage, bare shoulders, and long legs, but when she eventually gives it up to vampire Bill we get some blurry nudity that makes us think we’re seeing more than we actually are.

Learning

Don’t taunt the crazy lady.

Review

The Caller features a fairly fascinating premise at its core that would feel right at home in an episode of The Twilight Zone. We discover early on that the caller is a woman named Rose who lived in the same apartment thirty years prior, and that she’s actually calling from 1979. As her audible anger grows she becomes a serious and seemingly unstoppable threat to Mary. She can do things back in her own time that immediately take effect in Mary’s present day. Someone close to Mary can disappear, and while she knows the truth behind it all she’s unable to stop events from decades past.

Lefevre is the heart of the film, and she does a solid job (especially for a ginger). Her biggest role to date was as the vicious vampire Victoria in the first two Twilight movies (before being unceremoniously dumped in favor of Bryce Dallas Howard for the further sequels), but she proves herself quite capable of taking on a leading role here as she runs the gamut of emotions and actions.

The remaining cast is fine, but it’s here where the script by Sergio Casci starts to cause problems. His central story, the relationship between Mary and Rose, should have been enough to carry the film’s narrative. But Casci either wasn’t confident enough in it or felt that he needed to stuff his story with red herring overkill. The three men in Mary’s life are brought to life by competent actors (well, two of them at least), but they’re also all used to create artificial menace at times.

Casci makes further mistakes with the film’s logic and at times turns Mary into an incredible dumbass. She never once tries to get her phone number changed. She never unplugs the phone (which was already in the apartment when she moved in) and simply uses her cell phone. At one point her and the teacher lose a baseball cap at the fair, and later that night there’s a knock at her door which she opens to reveal the lost cap sitting on the ground several feet in front of her. No one there, no explanation… so she tosses the hat on the table and starts feeding the dog like something creepy as hell didn’t just happen. And then there’s the ending. It’s both telegraphed well in advance and stupidly illogical given the events of the movie.

Director Matthew Parkhill doesn’t help matters by keeping ninety percent of the movie so ridiculously and artificially dark as to be annoying. We can see sunlight through the shades and behind curtains, but Mary and friends intentionally keep the apartment almost pitch black. Lamps are visibly turned against the wall for christ’s sake.

The Caller might have made a stellar anthology short or even a solid film had the script been tightened and toned a bit more. As it stands the movie is an unfortunate missed opportunity that may still be worth it for genre fans thanks to a good lead performance, a cool story conceit, and the few minutes towards the end when the film’s atmosphere gives way to a well shot and somewhat terrifying action scene. It’s everything else that marks this as a call you probably don’t want to answer. But you can let it go to voice mail… and then play it back later (on DVD).

The Caller opens in limited theatrical release this Friday.

Atrocious is the bastard Spanish love-child of Blair Witch Project and Insidious, and yes, in that scenario Insidious is the male who donated little more than a genre and a one word adjective for a name. It falls victim to some of the same problems that plague most found footage films… namely a meandering first half, segments consisting of little more than the camera being shaken repeatedly, and the nagging question as to why these people are still filming, but it also creates and builds enough solid tension and legitimately frightening scenes to mark it as one of the better examples of the genre.

Kills

Four people meet the wrong end of a murderous implement. A dog dies too.

Ills

All of the violence is committed offscreen leaving us with only the bloody end results. The various violent acts include a stabbing, a beheading, a betongue-ing (?), and a fire pit roasting. There’s also the overall stress that bloodcurdling fear can have on the body.

Lust

None. There are only two female characters here, and one is a barely glimpsed mother while the other is an underage teen. The girl is cute in that Disney Channel kind of way though. Pervert.

Learning

If the spooky garden maze is behind a padlocked gate… stay the fuck out.

Review

Cristian and his sister July are fans of urban legends and welcome the chance to explore the rumors of a ghost girl named Melinda who supposedly was lost in the woods many years ago and never found. They say if you get lost she’ll appear to help guide you to safety unless you turn your back on her. Which I guess is a rude gesture in Spain and worthy of mauling. The two of them tag-team with dual cameras and document their walks through a large, overgrown forest maze behind the house. They don’t think much of it all until their dog goes missing and they find his bloodied carcass in the woods. And it only goes downhill for them from there.

This is writer/director Fernando Barreda Luna’s feature debut, and while it suffers from a slow setup, an annoying lead, and some odd editing issues it should mark him as someone to watch. He succeeds in making both the house and the woods characters unto themselves all while offering up red herrings as to the nightmares to come. There are some missteps in the editing though with scenes that benefit the narrative and scares but that make no sense in a supposedly true story. An example can be found when they record a mysterious person with their back to the camera in their woods… and then they cut to next scene. Real people wouldn’t have simply walked away and forgotten about that creepiness. But the mystery enhances the atmosphere…

Love them or hate them, found footage films are here to stay. They’re cheap to produce, and as Paranormal Activity showed so well a couple years ago they can sometimes turn big profits. What some filmmakers forget though is that it helps if the movie is actually good. Should go without saying, but a lot of these films tend to spend more time on the idea than on the execution, and the end result is a boring slog seen through a shaky lens.

Which is an apt description of one long stretch in the middle of Atrocious. The film’s first third does a good job of setting the scene, laying out the background that will feed later paranoia, and getting viewers to pick who they want to see survive. (Hint… it’s not Cristian.) The middle section sees the action pick up as they head into the woods at night, but the scenes goes on forever, longer than the movie’s entire running time even, no seriously, they do not end.

Until they do.

At which point a pretty damn terrifying third act kicks in, and all bets are off. The ending is a fresh take on the material and not the least bit expected, and while it still manages to offer up a few problems of its own it brings the film to a mostly satisfying conclusion. It’s a short film, and Luna gets more right here than he gets wrong, but the running time highlights the weaknesses even more than usual. But when it’s scary, it’s scary. Like Paranormal Activity and [Rec] this is a film best enjoyed with a crowd, so if you have the opportunity to check it out before it leaves theaters you should do so. Just be sure not to turn your back on it until you’re safely back home.

Atrocious is currently in limited theatrical release at an AMC theater near you.

The new IFC release Spiderhole sees a quartet of homeless (by choice man) twenty-somethings who move into an abandoned home with the intention of claiming squatter’s rights on the domicile. The windows are all boarded up, but they’ll worry about that in the morning… for now they’re more focused on finishing off the bottle of vodka they found. Big mistake. They wake up late the next morning and quickly realize they’ve been drugged. The doors are bolted shut from the inside. The windows are covered in soundproofed shielding. And they’re pretty much fucked.

Kills

Four hooligans go in, a lesser number than that come out.

Ills

Drunk schmucks get gassed! An eyeball is removed at one point and it looks like one of those old psychic surgery bits where the guy palms the organ/tumor/eyeball that he then pretends to remove. There are also some beatings with a nail-embedded bat.

Lust

One of the girls has some of the “sex” that those young kids are into, and while we don’t get any nudity we do see a close-up of her tight, sweaty belly. She also flashes her white panties, but the scene lacks sex appeal thanks in large part to the hack saw threatening to sever her leg.

Learning

Squatting is illegal for a reason. That reason has little to do with psychotic madmen plucking out your eyeballs, but still, better safe than sorry.

Review

The setup here isn’t all that original, but it really doesn’t need to be. There are only so many plots in the world so it’s what you do after that setup that really matters. In that regard, writer/director Daniel Simpson offers two glimmers of hope in an otherwise drab, emotionless, and by the numbers horror thriller. They both come late in the film, so we’ll get to them later in the review.

The initial setup isn’t all that fresh, but it works on a mechanical level to get the characters into a single location. Once there though they identify themselves as three and a half idiots. Toby (George Maguire) and Zoe (Amy Noble) are young, in love, and excited by the prospect of squatting. Luke (Reuben-Henry Biggs) and Molly (Emma Griffiths Malin) aren’t quite at that stage yet, but unless things go really bad and they’re attacked by a madman or something the two appear to have a bright future together. Four people sharing half a brain is a recipe for disaster though when they hear noises upstairs and find a pile of bloody clothes… and decide to sleep in the house anyway.

When they realize the next day that they’re captives they search the house, bang on some walls, and watch through a pinhole as someone steals their van. When it rains it pours apparently. Anyway, they start getting picked off one by one, sometimes due to a gaseous substance and sometimes because they wander off on their own like characters in a horror movie. And it’s this entire 2nd act that just drags for no good reason. Characters scared for their lives should create some tension, but they don’t. The appearance of the psycho behind it all should be somewhat unsettling, but it isn’t. The tortures and atrocities he commits against the trespassers should be terrifying, but they’re not.

The aforementioned glimmers of hope come in two stages. First, unlike almost all of the films in this specific sub-genre Simpson offers a teasing glimpse of the killer’s living quarters and the man himself in a brief, thoughtful repose. But his tantalizing back story is gone as quickly as it appeared, and we’re thrust back into the stupid interlopers being bashed and cut by the man for a seemingly ridiculous reason. And second, mere moments before the end credits roll we’re treated to the first and only genuinely creepy scene that (unlike the film as a whole) ends far too soon.

Spiderhole had promise, theoretically, but it fails to generate much in the way of suspense or scares. Shots of dusty pipes, slime dripping from faucets, and spiders crawling about are no substitute for real atmosphere, character development, and emotional investment.

Spiderhole is currently available On Demand.

Come to find out they’re a couple just playing a game inspired by the opening of When A Man Loves A Woman starring Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan. It’s a solid romantic drama, you should check it out if you get the chance. Anyway, Ken and Rachel meet up with a third friend, the fur covered Marco, and they all head out for an afternoon of sailing and fornication. Well Marco will be missing out on the fornicating goodness, but he does get to steer the boat.

Unfortunately he steers it right into the shallows when he spots an even furrier man dragging himself through the water, and soon the three friends are trapped with a broken boat, a dead stranger, and a mystery woman who sings a dangerous song drawing them all to their doom! And by ‘doom’ I of course mean hallucinations, acts of supreme idiocy, and a little skinny dipping. Oh, and murder.

Kills

The film features a very small cast so the pool of potential victims is pretty shallow, but in addition to a couple dead strangers we do get to see the mystery lady kill folks not-so softly with her song.

Ills

A dead guy with a graphically severed leg is seen taking a dirt nap, a man’s eardrums bleed out on him, and there is a total disregard for sharp objects.

Lust

There are two early scenes featuring hip thrusting into lady parts including one couple going to town in a dirty restroom and another christening a new sailboat’s dining table with their sweaty coupling. And all we get for our troubles is a guy’s bare ass. The tease continues when MAIN takes a nudity-free shower and when the mystery woman removes her shirt to seduce Marco and again we, the loyal viewers, see nothing but her naked back.

But it pays off when the two hot ladies strip down and walk slowly into the ocean while their round, clearly edible asses sway side to side in mesmerizing fashion. (That’s edible in the figurative sense by the way… not in the way Robert Fure would have meant it.)

Learning

There are quite a few lessons to be found here, but clearly the most important one is that women shouldn’t be allowed on boats.

Review

Simply put, anything potentially worthwhile about this flick got lost somewhere between concept and execution. An exotic locale, hot women in little to no clothing, one or more of those hot women killing other people, potential lesbian hook-ups, supernatural/Greek-themed storyline, a big ass fucking knife… these are all things the DVD art and the film’s description led me to believe could be found in Siren. They’re also pretty much all lies.

The film’s setup is fine in its simplicity. Three friends out on a boat trip means one of them (Marco) is a third wheel and perfectly suited to add to the dramatic conflict, but aside from a brief bit where Ken questions the furry guy’s motivations very little is made of it. Luckily Ken is enough of a dick that he doesn’t really need any motivation to fuel his douchiness. He’s even perturbed when the stranger kills himself on the deck of their boat.

The action, such as it is, starts once they choose to bury the guy on the nearby island. The mysterious woman appears and she does what we know by the title she’s destined to do… draw them each to their unfortunate demise. The problem once again is in the execution. We know the legend of the sirens and that they lull unlucky seafarers in with the sultry and alluring sound of their voice, but the film still feels compelled to slowly dole out the “suspense” as to her character… is she evil? Or a victim? Who knows?!

We do.

From there it’s just a very slow countdown to the inevitable as the three start having dreams and visions of very bad things. These dreams make little sense, but they do feature the film’s only real bloody bits. More of that spread throughout the “real world” would have served the story better, especially as it fails in the other promised arena as well… sex and nudity. A beautiful woman who seduces people to death, two bouts of sex, a shower, and a skinny dipping scene, and all we get is some bare butts? Granted, they’re damn fine behinds, but for a film that seemingly promised sexy horror it’s ridiculously light on both.

There’s plenty more I could rail against here, but the film ends with an onscreen “In memoriam” for the director, Andrew Hull, who died last year. So he doesn’t need any more grief.

Siren is currently available on DVD. Do not heed its call.

Knautz’ new film, The Shrine, retains some of that same solid effects work, but there’s not a funny moment to be found. Well, at least not an intentionally funny one.

A journalist, her best friend, and her reluctant boyfriend head to rural Poland to investigate the disappearance of an American backpacker, but they only find active and suspicious resistance from the locals. Further digging reveals a mysterious and creepy shrine in the fog-enshrouded woods and a deadly secret that they’d have been better off never learning. Now they must not only fight to survive but also answer the most important question of their lives… how many Polish people does it take to whack three stupid Americans?

Kills

A nameless guy is killed at the very beginning, but then it’s a long, death-less haul to the third act where everyone dies. Okay, not everyone, but it’s not a stretch to say that almost everyone we’ve been introduced to ends up sacrificed, ripped to shreds, disemboweled, broken, or impaled with something sharp.

Ills

A hanging pig carcass is magically transformed into bacon, a crossbow bolt is shot through a calf (the leg, not the baby cow), a girl gets a crash course in cutting, spikes are driven into some poor sap’s eyes, and a little boy ends up with his insides on his outside. Yes, that is as cool as it sounds.

Lust

For a film that introduces its female lead in the shower this is disappointingly sparse in the area of exposed flesh. We get a bit of side boob and that’s it! Sure the girls are stripped naked later and dressed in creepy gowns, but nothing aside from bare backs are shown. That’s okay though as there’s nothing sexy about forced nakedity.

Learning

If your girlfriend suggests you join her on a trip to a remote Polish village to “work on” your relationship tell that bitch goodbye. Or, curiosity killed the American backpackers.

Review

As mentioned above Knautz eschews any attempt at humor with his follow up to Jack Brooks and instead focuses purely on the horror element. His efforts are met with varying degrees of success, but the biggest issue is unfortunately the film’s most important element… his script.

Basically, the setup and execution are rarely imbued with any degree of smarts or relevance. The characters are introduced with little reason to care about any of them, a factor that grows exponentially when they start making ridiculously poor decisions. Yes yes, it’s a horror film and stupidity is to be expected, but it doesn’t have to be. Jack Brooks is basically a comedy, but Knautz still showed a wit and intelligence both in the script and with his characters. There’s none of that in evidence here.

A strange, eerie, and unmoving wall of fog in the creepy forest? Sure, let’s enter it one at a time. A freaky little girl leading us into an enclosed, underground dungeon? Sure, let’s all walk in and let her lock the door behind us. I could go on, but then I’d be tempted to point out the inanity of the film’s payoff and explanation.

Luckily for the film there are other elements here to enjoy, namely the effects and some solidly shot scenes of action and terror. One of the best occurs in a house where two of the protagonists are hiding out from the baddies along with a family they’ve taken captive. A brutal assault on the family is presented purely through sound effects and tense camerawork, and even though we see only the end result it’s a frightening and well done scene. A handful of action scenes are also shot fairly well as is our introduction to a bleeding statue (that resembles the cat creatures from Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers and goes on to serve little to no purpose), and Knautz makes a wise choice in not offering subtitles for his Polish townsfolk… it adds to the (albeit limited) tension when the viewers are just as disoriented and confused as the characters in this foreign land.

Knautz’ sophomore effort isn’t a failure, but it’s far from his charismatic and fun debut. Horror fans will enjoy the blood work and creature effects, but viewers hoping for a smart and thrilling ride are bound to be disappointed. The initial mystery and setup, Americans sticking their noses into the backwoods cultures of foreigners with terrible results, is nothing new and really needed a fresh take to help the film stand apart. Unfortunately that’s not in the cards here, and the brief bit of originality towards the end comes too little too late to mark it as a success.

The Shrine is currently available on demand from IFC Midnight.

A group of high schoolers make life miserable for a science-loving geek named Marty, but when a prank goes too far the poor nerd is left scarred, burned, and on the edge of death. Some years later the bullies are invited back to school for a reunion and discover on their arrival that not only has the school been closed but they’re the only ones on the invite list. Death is in session and soon they’re getting picked off one by one in gruesome and gory ways.

Kills

Eight or so kills in total starting with the janitor caretaker who gets his head impaled on a coat rack. Some of the remaining highlights include a guy who chugs a tainted beer and immediately sees his stomach burst open, a girl taking a leisurely bath amidst the chaos who soon realizes acid isn’t good for her skin, and a fornicating couple who are the victims of coitus electrocutionus interruptus. And one girl is pierced with a javelin (as a visual metaphor for the penile stabbing that Marty expected to be doing in the beginning of the movie).

Ills

The prank that gets out of hand sees Marty burned with both fire and acid, and every other act of violence leads immediately to the victims’ death. A toilet overflows with blood… somehow. The most devastating visual though is the full frontal shot of Marty’s dangler in the shower.

Lust

Caroline Munro teases Marty with the possibility of sex, but he’s the only one that gets naked. Some girls do push-ups that involve more pelvic thrusts into the floor than arm movement. Munro (almost) talks dirty with her sweaty and overweight agent, and she has two shower scenes that reveal nothing but bare shoulders. Which is rude. Two of the other girls do show a bit more though including one topless girl in a bathtub (to wash blood off her face) and another topless gal who strips down for some of the sexing. Interestingly, the two naked girls are topless and the two naked guys are seen bottomless. Just an observation.

Learning

The meek shall inherit the earth? If there’s one black character in a slasher they’ll always be the first to die? High school reunions are for nerds?

Review

Slaughter High is pretty much what you’d expect in a slasher film with three first-time writer/directors. The basics are here, but there’s no real skill involved in their assembly. None of the characters are likeable and all of the actors overplay their performances, so instead of suspense or fear viewers will actually look forward to their eventual demise.

For all its faults though there are some elements that work. The killer who stalks the halls of the school wears a jester mask which may seem goofy but is close enough to a clown to be scary. The jingle of the bells actually adds a bit of an ominous tone as well. The effects work well too, with the highlight being the gut busting scene in the film’s first half. The odd thing there is that other death scenes that seem ripe for gore effects get nothing more than a splash of blood… the lawnmower murder for example should have been a messy delight.

It’s worth noting that Slaughter High‘s original and working title was April Fool’s Day, but the producers sold the name to Paramount for a bucket of cash for their own (far better) slasher. The filmmakers discovered this too late in production to make changes to the script so the prank-filled holiday still plays an obvious and major role in the story.

This is by no means a good movie, but there’s enough entertainment here between the murders, gore effects, and cheesy 80s synth score for fans of the genre to enjoy. Everyone else will probably want to pass though as the bad acting, terrible script, and cheesy 80s synth score may be a bit too much to stomach. If it is right up your alley however (and your DVD player is capable of playing region 2 releases) the new Arrow Video disc is the way to go. There’s a solid assortment of extras including a very candid interview with Mark Ezra, one of the film’s three directors. He’s quite honest about his feelings when it comes to the film’s production and quality, and it’s actually more entertaining than the movie itself. But however you see it, if you see it, don’t blame me for the emotional scarring you’ll endure after seeing Marty’s geeky weiner.

Slaughter High is available on DVD from Amazon as well as a just released special edition DVD from AmazonUK (region 2)

Bitter Feast isn’t a gourmet meal served in many courses. Nor is it exactly fast food. It’s kind of like a pretty decent banquet buffet that unfortunately sends you to the toilet right at the end. What could have been an interesting and delightfully macabre film about a chef taking out revenge against an overly harsh food critic misses a few notes and ends with what I called a “shitty cliche ending.”

Kills

By my count, the kill stands at a lean four, though that’s to be expected in a torture based movie.

Ills

We see some dead animals and a dead chicken is prepared – to some that is terrible, to others, delicious. There is some gushing blood, a bite to the hand, a fucked up face, an axe to the back, a stab wound, some  gunshots, and in the best bit – a dude gets hit in the face by a very hot cast iron skillet.

Lust

There is a non-butt undies shot and some underwhelming boobs. Not very exciting.

Learning

If you don’t have anything nice to say….

Review

While Bitter Feast is ultimately disappointing because of a shitty ending that mars the entire film, it is pretty watchable otherwise. There is an early cameo from celebrity chef Mario Batali and familiar face James LeGros puts in an excellent performance as Peter Grey, the wronged chef. Joshua Leonard is the object of his malicious intentions and does a decent job crying and getting smacked around.

Right from the start one standout aspect of Bitter Feast is a very strong percussive score. Grey’s motivations for taking critic JT to task are flimsy at best, but hey – everyone snaps sooner or later. Then again, JT does come across as an undeniable and unrepentant douchebag, so maybe he just deserved it. The problem with that line of thinking, of course, is that if you hate the protagonist and want the antagonist to win, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

For foodies interested in horror or anyone who hasn’t yet had enough torture, Bitter Feast isn’t a total waste of 88 minutes. It is, however, a waste of the last handful of minutes. It’s as if the film lost its heading in the last turn, makes some stupid decisions and everyone appears to slack off. Maybe you should just turn it off with 10 minutes to go and make up the ending yourself. That would probably be better.

As it is, the ending annoyed me so much I can’t say go out and get this or even give it a watch if it’s on. If you’re interested, watch it. If not, you aren’t missing much.

Why do I feel more confident in this year’s horror slate? Because in trying to find just 11 titles to bring attention to, I had to whittle it down from sixteen. Why not give you all sixteen? Because it’s 20-eleven, not 20-sixteen, duh.

Anyway, here are the 11 horror films to keep on your radar this year.

11. Piranha 3DD (September 16)

I stand by my opinion of the original remake (huh?), which was that it was a pretty worthless film, good for background noise and jerk-off material for high school boys. John Gulager (Feast) steps into direct a sequel that will hopefully bring some charm in addition to the tits and gore.

10. Insidious (TBD)

Leigh Whannell and James Wan, the guys behind Saw, bring their spin to the haunted house genre, hoping to turn it on its head. These guys aren’t given enough credit outside of the Saw world, where Dead Silence and Death Sentence were decent. I’m definitely willing to give this one a chance, especially with Patrick Wilson and Rose Bryne headlining.

9. Cabin in the Woods (TBD)

I’m not a Whedon fan, but with Chris “Thor” Hemsworth starring in this seemingly lost project, I’d definitely like to see what Whedon came up with to put a spin on this genre. Expect all deaths to be random, meaningless, and cheap. Zing.

8. 11-11-11 (November 11)

After seeing Darren Bousman’s disastrous Mother’s Day remake, anything he touches has an air of doubt about it. However, the plot to this one seems interesting. On 11/11/11, the 11th Gate of Heaven opens up and an unearthly presence will walk the earth for 49 minutes. I like the idea of a set time frame which will hopefully translate into 49 minutes of awesome shit happening on screen.

7. Knights of Badassdom (TBD)

With Steve Zahn, Ryan Kwanten, and Summer Glau starring in a film about Live Action Roleplayers fighting a real demon, what’s not to love?

6. The Thing (October 14)

John Carpenter’s amazing remake gets a remakquel (remake/sequel) starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead. While I’m of course hesitant, I’m also a big fan of both the Kurt Russell vehicle and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, so I’ll be there.

5. Scream 4 (April 15)

The Scream franchise is looking to play catch-up with Saw and pump out three more films this April. With an entirely new cast of young actors in addition to the original survivors, I’d place my money on said survivors not making it through this film. I mean, how many times can you survive a slasher? Worth a watch just to see Courtney Cox taking a blade to the face.

4. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (TBD)

Another remake that had a very creepy and very strong trailer show at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con, this film stars Guy Pearce and features some nasty looking little CGI monsters. Hopes are rising.

3. Fright Night (October 7)

Moooore remakes. This one stars Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, David Tennant, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Toni Collette, so there is some star power behind this one. The original is great fun, so hopes are high for this one too – the only negative in my mind is dull director Craig Gillespie at the helm.

2. Black Death (March 11)

Black Death swept a lot of good awards at the Los Angeles Screamfest Film Festival and stars Sean Bean, so already I’m on board. Surrounding a group of warriors sent to stop someone thought to be behind the bubonic plague, the early word on the film is that it’s super gritty. Hell to the yeah.

1. The Collection (TBD)

A follow-up to Marcus Dunstan’s surprisingly tight and tense trap/slasher The Collector, this would offer some insight into The Collector himself. While a less than perfect ending keeps it on a lower level, The Collector could have ranked up there with John Carpenter’s Halloween. It was still a great film so see it now and catch the sequel late this year.

Those are eleven of the films I’m looking forward to. There are a couple of other good ones on the way, like the interesting looking Apollo 18 and Kevin Smith’s potentially disastrous Red State.

Which ones are you looking forward to?

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