More Quick Bites

A quick snipe at some recent films I've seen but don't have the heart to review in full...


Legion (2010): This is a movie that is fun to watch but impossible to take seriously. Not very scary either, and the whole concept of the movie is really half-baked. Still, it is thoroughly entertaining. 3 out of 4.

The Dead Outside (2008): This was a very compelling film about a small set of characters attempting to survive after a decimating viral outbreak which causes its victims to become violently insane. I liked it quite a bit but the editing and pacing just seemed to be a little bungled, and it took away from the mood of the film for me just a bit. 3.5 out of 4.


I will be reviewing the 2010 remake of The Crazies very soon!

Growth

 















  






TITLE: Growth
RELEASE DATE: 2009
SCORE: 2 out of 4


Woo! The college stereotypes and the creepy family meet up for "mustach weekend" as one of the cozy co-ed states; AKA hanging out on an island infested with a human-developed parasite (McGuffin Island has NO relation to Plum Island of real-life Anthrax research fame nor Ilsa Minor of Jurassic Park fame, ok!)

This is another in a long string of recent horror flicks that have great intro sequences and then fall completely flat during the actual "movie." This movie featured a really awesome intro about the development, testing and then outbreak of these parasites and its like 4 minutes long maybe. That should have been the movie! Not the movie about dumb moody people in dumb moody situations.

The movie isn't all that bad, though. It is an intelligent enough little squick flick and a small cast is employed well for suspense building scenes of conspiratorial intrigue. The main problem is that it doesn't really compare in quality to the first 5 minutes of the film and when the prologue is the best part of the movie, much of the entire experience is something of a disappointment.

This movie has a lot of filler taken up by what I call "pointless talk." This is meaningless dialogue that neither develops characters, forwards the plot or provides meaningful exposition. In other words: its very annoying for significant lengths of time to be taken up by talk about relationships between the characters that we highly suspect some of will die at some point in the film. It is, essentially, pointless. And there is just tons and tons of it in Growth: Mustache Weekend. It is boring and completely unrewarding for the viewer in most any way unless they happen to be amused by the most asinine of flirty dumb conversations.

This is of course countered by a fairly professional and intentional use of body-terror (although there certainly wasn't enough vomiting), gradual suspense building, and an occasional glimpse into something that could truly be described as horror - which would be the "taped doctor's footage" and whatnot. These are the high points of the film as I found it. Christopher Shand's portrayal of a tweaked out parasite-junkie is much better than his attempt at "gadabout teenager," or whatever his character was supposed to be initially in the film. Also, Richard Riehle played an awesome poor-man's Wilford Brimley (who swears)!

It seems to be constantly meandering between halfway decent and just terrible. Most often it is acceptable, but it isn't really very scary or very interesting, so that's why it gets such a low score. I enjoyed the ending though.

Tell Tale

TITLE: Tell Tale

RELEASE DATE: 2009

SCORE: 2.5 out of 4

This is a fairly dull, lifeless effort by Director Michael Cuesta and Writer Dave Callaham. It amounts to little more than a textbook rendition of the old "transplanted organ takes over life of transplantee" trope. Basically a man is given a heart transplant, but the donor was killed by an elaborate conspiracy and the man with the heart now is compelled to seek them out and kill them.

Seems like good fodder for a horror film, right? Except there are like four dudes and there's a ton of screen time taken up by scenes between the guy, his lady friend and some kind of daughter surrogate girl character -- maybe his actual daughter, who knows -- very little was thoroughly explained and all the dialogue was muttered to give it that "gloomy" feeling.

I have to give it points because it was stylistically shot well and the editing and everything was very professional. There are a lot of hospital shots that are well done and add to the atmosphere very nicely. The dialogue and acting were well done as well. I suppose it wasn't torture to sit through, but I thought it was rather boring and played-out.

Quick Bites

Here are some movies I've seen in the past I didn't really bother to write full reviews up for:


Book of Blood (2008) - I thought this was very weak and really had terrible pacing. The editing was very odd and the overlong ending is ridiculous. I 'm giving it a: 1.5 out of 4 


Spider (2002) - This was like a half an hour of story dragged out to more than two. This is not Cronenberg's best by far. 2 out of 4.


For Sale By Owner (2009) - I'm not sure. I vacillated between not liking this movie and thinking it was fairly ok. It was enigmatic enough to probably deserve a second viewing. 2.5 out of 4.

More new film reviews coming up soon, I promise!

The Thaw

TITLE: The Thaw
RELEASE DATE: 2009
SCORE: 4 out of 4

My first perfect score goes to the best horror film I've seen all year and possibly longer. It is simultaneously bleak and inspiring, its level of suspense, squick, angersome blood is intense -- those with hypertension beware. The Earth is thawing out -- and some very old things are waking up.

If you are afraid of bugs and/or disease, this movie should do a fairly good job of completely scaring the shit out of you. My hats off to the Lewis Brothers for a fine production -- rarely a forced line or moment lacking realism, and the shock and awe tactic of barraging the audience with a digital-media channel surf (complete with buffering) is clearly a homage to Romero but is done so amazingly well I had the tendency to forget it was fake.

Once the movie gets full steam ahead it never lets up, and it doesn't disappoint. From egg sacs in flesh to thousands of bugs devouring a corpse in a gigantic frenzy -- the imagery will stick with you. I dare not give to much about the plot away save those tantalizing clues. The film revolves around the concept of unforeseen consequences, in many ways. Its not just industrialization that will sting you in the ass but unprotected sex, not following lab protocol to the letter, not being paranoid enough...

Secondarily it focuses on the validity of ecoterrorism and thus on a broader scale the use of political terror in general.

And on a subtler note - perhaps the explicit theme is reinforced by the level of care put into this movie to make you squirm and scream. Is terror the only cure for nihilism? While the ending monologue cares to differ; me - I'm not so sure.

If terror it must be, then long live the guillotine!

Dismal

TITLE: Dismal
RELEASE DATE: 2009
SCORE: 0 out of 4

Dismal is an apt title for this horrible waste of (digital) film. You would think that after 5 different Texas Chainsaw Massacres, 2 different Hills Have Eyes and 1 Deliverance, the makers of this here movie would realize that crazy hick cannibal/torturers is worn quite thin as a theme for a thriller.

Apparently director Gary King felt he could add something to the subgenre. Unfortunately, he was quite wrong - he's a terrible director and I have no idea why he has a career in film. If he wants to vomit forth worthless rehashings perhaps he should try and get a job as a bulimic at Denny's.

The surprise twist seen from a mile away, the completely god awful cg effects (Quadrahelix should close up shop doors as their "FX" are utter shit), the obnoxious characters I was glad to see killed, major plot holes (the cell phones don't get service, until suddenly they do!), and editing that equals the skill required to make a youtube poop -- these all chalk up to one thing: one worthless fucking film.

The first half of the movie appears to be a study in exactly how annoying you can make stock "to be killed" college kid characters, and the second half is a less-than-tepid deep-south gorefest that is about as thrilling as a long wait in the DMV line. If you've ever seen even one horror movie in your life you can predict exactly what will happen moment by moment. Actually, the DMV line is even more unpredictable than this film -- sometimes it moves faster than you ancticipated!

No, "dismal" is actually too nice of a term to describe this movie - something like "road apple" or "used condom" is a better descriptor of what to expect from this film.

The Dunwich Horror

Title: The Dunwich Horror
Release Date: August, 2009
Score: 2 out of 4

This is not a good film. This is a very poorly edited mess of footage, consisting mainly of either a very poorly executed flashback and/or apparition plotline and a contemporaneous present-day plotline, the main one we're supposed to be following, I guess -- they seem to merge -- or do they??? Wooouhouhhgh!

It follows the major plotline of the story by H.P. Lovecraft to more or less a fair bit, and the script is peppered with enough Cthulhuh mythos lore to keep avid Lovecraft fans fairly engaged.

That's really all I can say about it with any due diligence. The sets were atrocious, costuming, make-up -- the entire production seemed willfully careless towards any sense of verisimilitude. Almost all aspects of the film appeared as though a small high school drama team were required to furnish everything for a whole 90 minute film, yet the acting unfortunately did not aspire even to secondary education level heights.

The movie was heavily bogged down in a formulaic rhythm of terrible and garish melodrama, followed by staid academic potboiler, it seemed to go on for hours with little to no regard for standard or even any entertaining style of pacing.

The film is thoroughly lacking and yet it delivers too much of a bad thing: a cheapened and whorish docudrama-like rendering of the backstory of the tale, executed by z-grade actors in laughably bad performances.

I would give it a 1, but, unlike so many tangentially Lovecraft-related films of recent day, the screenplay is much more closely aligned with its source material, so it gets bonus points for not butchering a great story.

If you feel the need to suffer through every film someone makes based on a Lovecraft story, I suppose you'd better watch this. Otherwise, this is not a portal you need enter.

PS: I could not locate any poster art for this film.