Recently in Horror pg.2 Category

Synopsis: Sadistic doctors at an upstate New York mental asylum in 1908 take a special interest in a patient with a growth on his back which one doctor believes holds a separate mind. Horror. Directed byt David Buchert and Robert Ziegler.
 

I really do not want to dignify this one with too much talk. My only reason in including it with other real movies is that, if I can stop just one person for falling into the trap of buying/renting it based on the neat box cover or intentionally misleading description, then this blog will not have been in vain.

I can't really even describe Behind the Wall of Sleep. I believe, though I am not positive, that is trying to be a horror movie but its about as scary as watching someone change the oil on a vehicle. I've seen it described as a documentary, but this is pure fiction, supposedly based on a novel by H.P. Lovecraft. The setting is an insane asylum in upstate New York. Although its a period piece, there is no real effort to set it as such, other than the clothing. One of the lead actors has a hair style straight out of the 1970's, a period of time that has the distinction of owning dress and hair styles that had never been seen before or since. The plot is unintelligible, scenes alternating between one doctor's belief that the grotesque growth on the back of a patient contains a separate mind and his sadistic experiment on a female patient who appears throughout the movie with the top half of her skull removed, exposing her brain. Yeah, I'm serious.

There are awkward and inexplicable cuts to a group of children playing ring around the roses in an attempt, I guess, to make this seem like some sort of art film. It does not work.  The acting is atrocious, there is no other way to say it, particularly in the lead roles. I didn't include any of the actors' names in the synopsis just for that reason, I have to wonder if most of them are really actors, as you will find more talent in the middle school play in your neighborhood. This film is an embarrassment to Lionsgate, who backed it, and this is coming from a guy who is a big supporter of small budget and avant garde films. Its hard to believe that something like this gets made, when there are probably thousands of directors and actors out there with talent who cannot get their voices heard, so to speak. I will say something that I have seldom said before in this blog: stay away at all costs. Its that bad.     

Directed by Gregory Dark. Starring Glen Jacobs, Christina Vidal, Steven Vidler, Luke Pegler, Samantha Noble, Penny McNamee. Horror. Synopsis: A giant and particularly sadistic serial killer long thought to b e dead resurfaces in a planned ambush of a group of young work release prisoners who are guarded by the surviving officer who almost killed him.

Well, you have to be realistic in your expectations when you select a movie that is produced by the W.W.E. And I did. Now, I have nothing against big time wrestling, I can't say I'm a huge fan....actually not a fan at all. But, even if I were, I'm sure I would be skeptical as to the cinematic potential of a wrestling organization. To be fair, I'm not sure how much I would expect out of Dreamworks if they forayed into big time wrestling.

Having said that, I would say that anyone who goes into this movie with a serious expectation that this might be a really good movie is the same kind of person who tunes into Presidential debates really seeking straight answers from the candidates on the important issues. Now, I'm not saying that there are not those among us who will enjoy this flick. What I am saying is that this movie is basically an attempt to give a star from W.W.E. some exposure on the big screen and cover the shameless marketing of an asset in plenty of blood and gore.

And, they did that. Glen Jacobs a/k/a "Kane" plays Jacob Goodnight, a giant man who is a sadistic serial killer, which isn't redundant because this guy could turn the stomach of your run of the mill serial killer in a heartbeat.  He removes the eyes of the victims, sometimes before they are deceased, just to give you an idea.

The story heats up from the opening credits, when two cops track down a serial killer they later learn to be Goodnight, they find him in a home with a deceased victim and one survivor, who is very unfortunate in that he has already removed her eyes. Jake takes out one of the cops, but the other one (Steven Vidler Salem's Lot) gets off a couple of rounds, one hitting the bad guy in the head...yet he gets away anyway. Seriously.

Resilient guy, obviously. In this scene we are introduced to a song that will play over and over in the background of the film...and probably drive you crazy, though in fairness to the filmmakers, that is probably the intent, it kind of goes with the back story.

Anyway, our hero cop loses a hand and, in a flash, its years down the road and he is basically chaperoning a coed group of youthful work release offenders who are going to clean up a run down hotel for the weekend as part of their payment of the debt to society. And, guess who lurks behind the walls of this sleazy, repugnant hotel?

Look, the premise of this one and its back story are very unrealistic...the tried and true formula of isolating a group of nubile teenagers (played, of course, by 20 & 30 something actors) has made way too much money at the box office and rentals to disregard, but in this age of cell phones, blackberrys, etc., the idea of a group of people being totally cut off from the rest of society in the middle of downtown L.A. is kind of stretching it. And its not like we have the most ingenious villain here.

But, I doth protest too much, 'cuz the whole point of this one is to set up as many gruesome kills for the imposing star of the flick as possible. And, on that basis, mission accomplished. Fans of gore and Kane will no doubt love this one and, honestly, that is who it was made for. Nothing wrong with that. And, I'm not above loving a gorefest, but there has to be some element of true horror or a good story to really hook me. See No Evil doesn't hook me. Am I sorry I invested the time to watch it? No. Do I expect that this one will stick in the old consciousness for years? No. Would I watch it again if were the best flick on the tube. No, tune into ESPN or the History Channel...or something else.

That's my call.

Directed by Simon West. Starring Camilla Belle, Tommy Flanagan, Kate Cassidy, Tessa Thompson. Horror/Suspense. Synopsis: A remake of the 1979 film  of the same name telling the story of  a young teen aged girl who is terrorized throughout the night ,while babysitting, by  threatening phone calls from an unknown stranger  who ultimately finds his way into the home.  

I'm not one who is always down on remakes. Sometimes they work (Scarface), sometimes they don't (The Longest Yard). I do believe that, most often, you can't go home again. What I mean by that is, if you are going to remake a movie that was fairly popular and very memorable in its time-and was itself based on an urban legend that dates back in many forms at least forty years-you had better bring something new to table, whether its a different twist, feel, ...something, because we all know the story, and it is going to take us being enthralled with the character and sympathetic to her situation to have us jumping out of our seats like we did in '79. ( Not to mention the fact that we're no longer in 5th grade)

This version of When a Stranger Calls doesn't work for several reasons. First, it is updated to the present day, using the same characters, for the most part, as the original. Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) is a high school student who has just run afoul of her parents by going 800 minutes over her cell phone limit. (Hey, we've all been there. A little chit-chat, and the next thing you know, 12+ hours in the red)  This was due to her cheating boyfriend...who had the nerve to actually kiss Jill's erstwhile best bud Tiffany (Kate Cassidy). As if that weren't enough, Jill's upper-middle class suburban hell gets a little hotter when Dad insists that she is going to have to babysit to pay off her debt for the overuse of the cell phone.

So, in addition to missing the big bonfire, Jill is barred by Dad from driving and using her cell phone as punishment as he drives her way out to the middle of nowhere to babysit for a rich couple who live in a house only slightly smaller than a small mid-western town. As if this was not already an all too evident recipe for disaster, what real life empathy we might be able to muster is hard to bring up because it is just so...obvious. Jill's Dad actually asks her "if she is going to be all right out here..." showing that he also has some concerns about his daughter. But, that doesn't stop him from dropping young Jill off to babysit for people she doesn't know (By Goodness, that bill has to be paid!!!)

O.k., you're thinking I'm being a little too tough here, but it gets better. Jill meets the Mandrakises, a rich power couple who are so busy and important that, even though they are only going to dinner and a movie, they almost forget to tell Jill where the kids are. Further making the set up just a little too unrealistic to get us where we need to be is the fact that, apparently, there is a live in maid upstairs, so Jill shouldn't worry if she hears "some bumping around up there"  O.k., I'm an open minded guy, but the movie started to lose me here. I know that set up was put in there for two reasons: 1) to have there be another potential explanation for the noise Jill will surely hear after it gets dark and to add to the psychological terror she (and the audience) will feel and 2) give Jill a dead body to find later on. Fine.

But, I hate to state the obvious: if they have a live in maid why do they need a babysitter for six hours?   

There's more. There is a guest house that their adult son sometimes stays in, but he has the bad habit of not telling them when he will be there. O.k., now its getting to be too much. Maybe I can deal with a young man needing to get away from his parents to the extent that he needs to crash in the guest house even though the main house is only slightly smaller than Dubuque, Iowa.

But, again, wouldn't you at least check on the guest house...maybe big bro could babysit? By this time, I'm saying to myself "Unless the couple are in on it, this is just too unreal....", whether that observation is accurate or not I will leave to those of you who have not seen the film.

Well, it quickly gets dark and, (surprise!!!), its a windy and rainy night when the calls start coming in, interspersed with crank calls from Jill's buds (calling from the bonfire where the cell reception is so bad that it always cuts out later when Jill starts asking for help). Jill is the first teenager in a half-century not to have the TV and/or stereo going the whole time as she starts to field the calls.

Later, when best bud Tiffany shows up at the house (That Tiffany is something isn't she? Jill is no longer talking to her, but she manages to track Jill down at a house Jill has never been before) and the two engage in girl talk for a while. Jill, already uneasy about the calls, does just what anyone else would do in that situation: alone except for two kids she hasn't seen , no car, cops won't help you until you are already under attack, nasty storm outside, nobody answering their phone, homicidal lunatic calling every 10 minutes. So, when her best friend comes, what does heroine Jilly do? Well, she asks her to leave, of course, damn near pushing her out the front door.   

I could go on, but you get the point. The set up and plot are just too far fetched and the circumstances too unrealistic. I'm not familiar with Camilla Belle's work outside of this film, but I think she has some talent. There just isn't much too work with in this script. Hey, Tom Hanks was in He Knows Your Alone, Kevin Bacon was in Friday the 13th, and Johnny Depp was in Nightmare on Elm Street  , so there is life after teen age slasher flicks and I think Ms. Belle may do just fine.

I think the big problem here is that, unlike the original, in this version the entire movie is attempting to focus only on the calls throughout the night with no background or serious character development. Really, the best part of the film is the house, its wonderful looking and is best described as what those in the 70's probably thought all modern houses would look like by the 21st century. 

Look, there may be some who will enjoy this, but its hard for me to see anyone over 18 with any real life experience being scared or enthralled. (I mean, this family is superrich, and you're telling me someone calling from that palace can't even get the local cops to send a car over...c'mon. As a former law enforcement officer, I don't know whether to laugh or get mad)

And, it should be said that the film at least tries to scare you without resorting to cheap gore, although there are other cheap cliche scare tactics (a black cat....I'm not kidding) If you go see or rent this one, understand what you are getting. Unrealistic camp without the usual good parts and cheap titillation which we all decry yet can't get enough of. Its a film that made an honest effort, which is what keeps it out of the Dud category, but took itself way too seriously and didn't give us enough credit. 

Directed by Uwe Boll. Starring Kristanna Loken, Michelle Rodriguez, Ben Kingsley, Matthew Davis, Michael Madsen, Billy Zane. Action/Horror.  Synopsis: A story of a half human half vampire woman who leads a group of humans against the strongest vampire and his clan of vampires, the head vampire happens to be her father. Based on a popular video game.

I'll admit, the box cover of this DVD was the driving force behind my deciding to give this movie a shot. I didn't even read the description, although if I had, I would have picked it up anyway because I am a fan of almost all things vampire. Apparently, this is a flick based on a video game of which I am not familiar, though it seems to me that most of the buzz I've heard from folks who have  seen the movie and are familiar with the game pan the movie. Not surprising to me, based on similar reactions when a popular novel is made into a movie. But, I can't, and won't even try, to talk about this movie from the VG perspective, to me they are such separate mediums that it is borderline amazing to successfully capture the best elements of both.

I can say that Blood Rayne tries to be, and is in many ways, unlike most other vampire movies that you are likely to see. First off, in my opinion, it does not even try to be a horror movie. I include that genre in the synopsis only because I try to put as many possible descriptions on a movie as possible, knowing that one person's drama is another person's action and so on. To me, this is an action movie all the way with the vampires being shown to have more "human" characteristics and emotions than in most other adaptations of the vampire legend/franchise. Its also clear that the film was relying a whole lot on special effects to carry the story.

Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a half human/half vampire (called dhampir) who starts the saga as an unwilling freak show performer in a carnival, being as she has this funny habit of dining on blood, which seems to heal the cuts inflicted on her human skin at the start of the show. Of course, Rayne is fortunate enough to be a sympathetic figure among some of the other performers, including most importantly a fortune teller, who lets Rayne know that it is her destiny to find and destroy Kagan (Ben Kingsley Suspect Zero), the most powerful and diabolical vampire of them all, who leads the murderous vampire clan. It seems Kagan's vamp clan is after a rare gem, which for some reason will make vampires even stronger than they already are.

And there is this little kicker to boot. Kagan is Rayne's dad. Seems that Kagan violated Rayne's human mother. Fortunately, Rayen is that rarest of creatures, a dhampir who actually survives into adulthood, so she is in a unique position to, as they say, exact a measure of revenge, which Rayne is all too happy to do. Believe me, there is no Cosby-esque Daddy/daughter love here.

Fortunately for Rayne, she is not the only one wants a piece of Kagan and his clan, as she teams up with  fellow vampire hunters (Michelle Rodriquez, Michael Madsen, Matthew Davis). The most important of these pals is Davis' Sebastian, as he becomes Rayne's love interest and they combine for the film's only gratuitous sex scene. (Notice I did not say "love scene")  

The nuances of the plot are somewhat indecipherable and, there will be some cheesy dialogue there for you, so those of you who go into each and every movie looking to critique it against the Citizen Kane standard will have plenty to talk about. The setting is ambiguous, I suppose its set in the Middle Ages times, so I just decided to suspend disbelief a lot with the costumes, as Loken and Rodriguez are dressed in tight, revealing tops that you would expect to see in a Showtime late night bawdy flick...but I wasn't complaining.

Visually, the movie is way above par for its look and effects. We see the vamps going out in different ways than usual, although as a dedicated vampire fan, it seems to me that one of the staples of the franchise is that you have to play by the basic set of rules, whether the vampire is Count Dracula himself in Transylvania as in Bram Stoker's Dracula or hippie looking teenagers hanging out near a California amusement park as in The Lost Boys. That is, there are only a couple of ways to kill a vampire. So, what's this with all of the sword fighting? What the hell use is a sword against a vampire, unless you always manage to pierce his/her heart with it? And why would a vampire have a sword? And, of course, the biggest question: when did vampires start doing the actual deed? I mean, isn't it just accepted that their sucking of the blood is the symbolic replacement for having, shall we say, "relations"?

And, even when movies do imply that the vamp does the deed, its always in conjunction with his wanting his human partner to join him in the world of the undead (like in Blacula) . What I'm driving at here is, why didn't Kagan drink Rayne's mother's blood, what's up with that? 'Cause if he had, then Rayne would have been a full blooded (pun intended) vampire, right? Well, maybe I missed something or I'm just putting too much thought into this.

Anyway, you won't see superior acting in this one, notwithstanding the presence of Oscar-winner Ben Kingsley, who looks outlandish in his wig and seems strangely wooden, not scary or creepy like he did in Suspect Zero. Billy Zane (Titanic) in his cameo and Michelle Rodriguez are the best of the lot. Michael Madsen comes across as if he took this part to have some fun more than anything. Loken is not going to make anyone forget Meryl Streep with her acting, but I think its a little unfair to banish her completely to the "Eye Candy/ Can't Act Group". Like her role in Terminator 3, there is no doubt that her principal purpose is to look sexy but tough and be believable as an action hero, and she does that very well.

Here she has a lot of dialogue, most of it cheesy, but she brings energy to it and has some screen presence. I just think it's kind of hard to pull off this kind of role and really impress with your acting. I think Charlize or Halle might be able to do it, but there is a reason that those two have statues on their shelves, not too many other bombshells could do it, if any. Loken is not bad and, over time, if she ever has some real serious roles in a widely seen movie where she has a real chance to show some depth, a lot of viewers might be surprised, because I think she has some talent.

On the whole, can't say this is a good film, the story is incredulous even for its genre, the acting is mediocre, the directing is uneven, but it does try to step outside of the box somewhat and there are some good scenes and nice effects. You've seen better movies, no doubt. But you've seen a lot worse, no doubt. If you like a little special effects gore, vampire movies, or any of the main actors, lower your expectations, buy it/rent it when its reduced in price, have some popcorn and kill some time when you're bored.