Castle Freak (1995)

OCTOBER 14, 2020

GENRE: MUTANT
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

It was somewhere around 1996 or 1997 that I had my one watch of Castle Freak, but it didn't really dawn on me until I saw it in Shudder's lineup just how long ago that was. Now that I've occasionally not only rewatched but once again written up reviews of movies I already saw for HMAD, it's obvious my memory of a movie I saw a decade prior to the site's creation would be of no use whatsoever, but it was the sheer amount of time that passed that really troubled me. It didn't SEEM like that long ago, but Jesus Christ - it's been 23-24 years! I don't know if I even had a car yet when I watched it on my little 13 inch TV that had channels that needed to be tuned.

I also barely knew who any of its principal players were; I had seen a couple of Stuart Gordon's movies (Dolls and Fortress) but not because they were "STUART GORDON MOVIES" - just things I happened to see. And in turn I knew very little about Jeffrey Combs and even less about Barbara Crampton, so the idea of the trio (and writer Dennis Paoli) reuniting after Re-Animator and From Beyond, which was a primary draw for most of the people who saw it back then, meant nothing to me. Long story short, I enjoyed the film at the time, but not enough to rewatch it, and over time I just kind of forgot about it (even though I have a McFarlane toy of its eponymous creature in my collection). But then a recent Fangoria had Combs and Crampton chatting about their work on the film together (tied to a longer piece about an upcoming remake, which Crampton is producing and has a fairly different story), and nothing rang a bell, so I knew I had to finally check it out again.

Ironically, my biggest takeaway is that it was a good call to watch it before the others, because while Combs is a terrific actor it's hard to see him as this normal, average guy *now*, because I keep expecting to see Herbert West emerge from this somewhat ill-fitting "dad" shell, something that wouldn't have been an issue when I saw it all those years ago. It's not that he's bad in the role, but it feels like he's been denied his best assets, like casting Christopher Walken in a role where he never speaks, or Jackie Chan in a movie without any fighting. It's not until the third act, when he gets a bit more manic due to the film's events, that he starts giving off that electric energy that has made him such a compelling performer over the years (if you had a chance to see Nevermore and passed it up, I truly feel sorry for you). There's a dickish police officer who has it out for Combs' character, and while it's naturally a smaller role I can't

help but think that the movie might have had a little more fun to it if Combs played the cop instead and they roped in their old pal Bruce Abbott to play the hero.

Otherwise, it's a solid flick, if a bit low-key compared to Gordon's other work. The story goes that Charles Band had the title and the location (it's actually his own castle) and made a deal with Gordon that as long as it delivered on the title and was set mostly there, he'd give the filmmaker a decent budget to do whatever he wanted. What Gordon and Paoli came up with was a mostly original story that was influenced to a degree by Lovecraft's "The Outsider" and "The Rats in the Walls", that of a family who inherits a castle from a distant relative and arrives there to catalog its belongings and prepare it for auction, having no intention of living there. Said family recently had a death of their own; Combs was driving drunk with their two children and got into an accident, which left their young son dead and their teenaged daughter blind, while he escaped without a scratch.

Crampton's character (not in the car at the time) rightfully hates him for his action (and for being the one to survive intact) so they're basically separated but living together for the sake of the daughter, who has trouble getting around and just wants them to be a family again. Anyway, they're in the house for about seven seconds before they start hearing noises, though thankfully Gordon doesn't delay the mystery by trying to make us think it's ghosts or anything like that - it's Giorgio, the deformed son of the previous owner, who has been chained up in the basement for his entire life. Now that his mother has died, he escapes from his shackles and wanders around the castle looking for companionship despite having no idea of how to communicate (plus: not the handsomest fella), which results in him lashing out. Things intensify when Combs drunkenly brings home a prostitute; he pays her and walks away in shame, assuming she'll find her way out, but Giorgio captures her and... well, it gets icky.

There isn't much more to it than that, though. Combs starts poking around and finding out who Giorgio was and how they are connected to him, while the cops accuse him of the woman's disappearance, so he's got a "clear my name and save my family" bit of action heroics to carry out in the third act, but the movie is well over halfway over by the time all this stuff happens. Until then it's just kinda padded out with people walking around the castle and having near-misses with Giorgio, with no one seeming in a rush to get anything more exciting going (the opening sequence, showing Giorgio's mother's death, drags forever), making me wish Gordon had saved his idea for a Masters of Horror episode where the hour long format would have been perfect.

(It doesn't help that Shudder's stream is seemingly taken from VHS itself, robbing it of some of its atmosphere. There's a blu-ray out there with a respectable - and widescreen - transfer, so what gives, Shudder?)

Giorgio is a terrific monster though; it's pretty obvious why this relatively obscure DTV flick got a McFarlane toy to go alongside Freddy and Jason and the others. The deformed body and always gory mouth certainly leave an impression, and Gordon teases it out by having him wrapped in sheets for most of his early appearances (there's one bit where he hides in plain sight in a room full of covered furniture that is staged perfectly). It's a shame the climax is so relatively brief though; he chases Crampton and the daughter only for a few minutes before Combs shows up to save the day, limiting the former's chance to do much Mama Bear stuff of her own. And they really could have milked the girl's blindness for a sequence where Giorgio is in the room with her but she thinks it's her mom, but alas he botches it almost instantly by touching her with his gnarly hand.

But hey - despite the talent involved it's still a mid-90s Full Moon production, so there's only so much we can expect from it. It's miles better than anything else they were doing at the time (Arcade, anyone? How about Head of the Family?), to the extent that I wish Band had given this deal to other legitimate filmmakers instead of going to the same wells with the established franchises and endless "little killer" movies. Maybe it's not exactly top tier Gordon, but it could have been a great stepping stone for other filmmakers at the time, or a chance for someone like Jeff Burr (who did Puppet Masters 4 and 5) or future X-Files/Game of Thrones guru David Nutter (thank him for the later Trancers sequels) to do something original as well. And it came in between Gordon's two big sci-fi movies (Fortress and Space Truckers), so I can appreciate that he took a little break to get back to his low-budget horror roots and make something a little different with his trusted collaborators. Basically, I enjoyed it, but now I remember why it didn't make the leap to "movies I watch over and over" territory - it's just a little threadbare is all.

What say you?

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Resident Evil (2002)

DECEMBER 28, 2016

GENRE: MUTANT, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Even though I saw it when it came out, it's still hard to remember that when the first Resident Evil movie came out in 2002, it was the first zombie movie in multiplexes in nearly a decade (the last one was My Boyfriend's Back, which shouldn't even count since it was a Disney comedy). There were a few indie/foreign ones, of course, but the sub-genre - which had never really been a major box office success in the US - was deader than slashers are now. However, video game movies were chugging along at a fairly steady rate, with the previous year yielding Tomb Raider, which is and remains the biggest game-to-movie hit of all time. While nowadays the zombie aspect would be what got it in theaters, back then it was almost a red flag - it's kind of crazy how much things have changed in the past 15 years. Imagine a world with so few zombie movies that we would flock to this one out of sheer desperation!

Given how no other game to live-action movie series has lasted past a 2nd entry, it's also crazy that the series is still going, with the sixth and so-called Final Chapter* hitting theaters next month after a lengthy gap between it and the previous installment, 2012's Retribution. These things came out like clockwork every 2-3 years, but with Retribution's muted reception Stateside (it cleaned up overseas) and Milla Jovovich's pregnancy, we had to wait over four years, which might as well be an eternity for my increasingly forgetful mind. So I figured I'd revisit the series to refresh my memory (I'm gonna try to do the same for Underworld, a series of films I couldn't follow in the first place), and review this and Apocalypse since those came before HMAD (I might also give Retribution a proper review if I have the time, since the joke doesn't work as well now, as people probably forget it came out on the same day as The Master). I honestly don't know if I ever watched this one again since it first came to DVD, so my memory is dim enough to qualify it as a proper HMAD review (instead of a "non canon" one), so it was kind of fun to go back and watch it with fresh-ish eyes.

One thing I never really appreciated before is how the movie really does function as a prequel to the game series, as I forgot that it didn't have a single actual character (well, human character anyway) from the game(s). I recall being mildly annoyed with it at the time, but looking back, it makes sense. While the game series eventually did do their own prequel (later that year, if memory serves), at that point we never really got the whole story of how the outbreak occurred, where the hunters came from, etc. Not that the movie is canon with the game series in any way (it's probably contradictory, if anything), but it's a fine way to go about working within the parameters of that world without boring players with an exact retelling or pissing them off with changes. They throw in references to the hallmarks - the T-virus, Umbrella, Raccoon City, etc. - without screwing up the characters we may love. Indeed, one thing that always bugs me in the movie series as it's gone on is how certain characters are treated, i.e. Barry in the last one. As the franchise has gone on, Alice (Milla's character, an original) rarely meets other original characters, but finds herself allied by game heroes more and more often. It puts those films at a disadvantage that this first one didn't really have to deal with - it kind of has a blank slate here.

That's not to say it's particularly great or even better than the others (I have trouble ranking them since none are great and they kind of blur together, though I know Extinction is my LEAST favorite, at least in my memory - I'll do a ranking when I finish this refresh!), but it's nice to watch without rolling my eyes that a game character was awkwardly shoehorned in (like Claire in Extinction, an obvious replacement for Jill), or being confused at the narrative. They never really adapted any particular game, but they certainly retained the games' insistence on being convoluted. No one stays dead, people just disappear in between entries, clones are thrown into the mix... all I want is to see Milla Jovovich kicking monsters and zombies, why can't they just be satisfied with that? Why all of the gobbledygook? But this one's pretty straightforward - Alice wakes up with amnesia and within a few minutes a bunch of commando badasses take her under their protection (along with another guy played by Eric Mabius) and explain the situation to her as they work to contain the outbreak and make their way back out. I forgot that Wesker and his ilk aren't even in the movie - there's no real human villain until one guy turns on them late in the film. It's just the zombies, monsters, and lasers.

It's also got a lot of door opening, a fun little nod to the older games that used such actions as loading screens. Paul WS Anderson defends it on one of the bonus features, saying that you never knew if a door would lead to an empty hallway or a pack of monsters, and so he tried to incorporate that here - it's actually kind of successful in a "what will be next?" way, though it rarely offers that sort of creeping dread that the game did. One key difference is that the game had you alone and often severely underpowered, making even a single zombie a bit of a challenge in some instances - but these are hardasses with machine guns and three or four other people watching their back. So the film is never scary in the traditional sense, opting for a more action driven style that isn't necessarily a bad thing in theory, but makes Anderson's attempts to live up to the game in that sense very underwhelming. Silent Hill did a fine job of retaining the game's sense of atmosphere and terror, I think - if Anderson was even trying to scare the audience here, he kinda botched it.

But he keeps it moving, and unlike the game he doesn't backtrack - our characters are always moving from A to B to C, not going in circles like the game often had you doing back then (they've since moved past that, and, perhaps partly because of the films' success, also moved more toward action than horror). He's got a big hard-on for Aliens, and so he follows Cameron's lead by offing the badass types at an even clip while letting the "civilians" take charge as it goes, with Alice in the Ripley role. Most of the action revolves around turning this thing on or opening that door, with the backstory about the virus delivered mostly via flashback or expository dialogue from Mabius' character. He also keeps the enemies fresh - they first fight a bunch of zombies, then the dogs, then different zombies, then a hunter, in addition to the ticking clock scenario adding to the excitement. The CGI is a mixed bag, of course, and the film isn't as bloody as it could have been with an R rating (the film's most famous kill, of the laser grid slicing a guy up into little chunks, is almost entirely off-screen, though we get to see that cool oozing eye at least), but the sheer variety makes up for it, and it's of course fun to see two females as the leads in this kind of thing. The games always had a female and male combo, but since the two male characters of note don't do that much (one of them turns villain) and they're the ones on the poster, it does the games one better - you get Jill AND Claire, essentially, instead of one or the other. Even better, no one makes a big deal out of it - one guy questions Michelle Rodriguez's ability to open a heavy door early on, but otherwise it's not any battle of the sexes statement or anything - they're just competent fighters and the guys respect that, end of story. When filmmakers go overboard making their female heroines superior to the males and constantly showing off said superiority, you end up with angry trolls perceiving it as a threat or an insult on men, and all the fun gets taken out of it. Just let them simply BE and only the worst of the worst will be whining into their little void, while the rest of us can simply enjoy or dislike the movie on its own merits without it becoming a target for some ongoing political/social commentary.

Now, you can't bring up this movie without someone whining about how they fired George Romero and hired a guy whose name elicits the same sort of derision usually reserved for Michael Bay and Uwe Boll. Alas, as someone who was also sure that a serious crime had been committed, I read Romero's script back in the day, and it kind of sucked. It was more or less a retelling of the first game, albeit with some odd changes (Chris and Jill were lovers, blah), but it was just dull as dirt. Granted, I played the game so I knew the beats, and presumably a good chunk of the audience would not be as familiar, but I've also read books that got turned into movies and found them engaging, so there's more to it than that. And with that one change he'd already be annoying a good chunk of the gamers, so even though I don't think Anderson made a particularly great film, I DO think his is better than what Romero's would have been like (if that script was used) and that he made the right call to go into prequel/blank slate mode so people could judge it on its own accord. Granted, it'd be a better example if the movie was really good instead of OK, but we gotta take what we can get here.

What say you?

P.S. Since someone might be wondering - as far as the games go, I played 1-3 on the PS1, Code Veronica and 4 on PS2, and 5-6 on Xbox 360 (and RE1/Code Veronica were the primary draws when I bought my PS1/2, respectively). I never finished 2, 4, or 6, however; I got stuck on 2, had too much trouble with the controls on 4 (I've since bought the Xbox version but haven't played yet), and just plain didn't like 6 enough to finish it. I own Zero and the Revelations games but haven't played them yet. I also did the RE-themed "escape room" recently and we were told that we were the 2nd fastest group yet. Boom!

*No horror film with that (or similarly "final") subtitle has ever proven to be the last one.

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Return To Nuke 'Em High Volume 1 (2013)

MARCH 23, 2014

GENRE: MUTANT, SPLATTER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Overall, my biggest complaint about Return To Nuke 'Em High Volume 1 is hinted at in the title - this is very much a volume 1 in that it just sort of stops at one point, without any real climax to tide us over until volume 2 comes along. Kill Bill definitely works better as one unit (and no, simply watching volume 1 and 2 back to back isn't the same - there's a small but key difference in "The Whole Bloody Affair" that makes the whole thing work so much better), but it had that big showdown at the restaurant, and the inciting action for volume 2. This has a weird sequence with some action, but hardly counts as a showdown, and then the movie just sort of hangs out with itself for another 15 minutes before the titles roll. Maybe if we had a firm release date for Vol. 2 (which is in post) it'd be less of a bummer, but leaving us in limbo is mean-spirited!

Because otherwise, this is actually a pretty delightful romp that lives up to other modern Troma productions and, in my opinion, easily tops the original Nuke 'Em High, which is one of my least favorites. I'm no expert on their stuff, mind you - I've only seen about half of their films (I don't count the ones they picked up; only the ones Lloyd directed himself or at least had a heavy hand in production), but of those this seems to be the most consistently entertaining and on point in quite a while. The benefit of splitting it up is that it would have been 2.5 hours or so, which sounds ridiculous but in reality isn't too farfetched an idea: Terror Firmer is 2 hours, and I feel I walk away from nearly all of their films saying that they were too long. This clocks in at a perfect 85 minutes, enough time to let the story (such as it is) breathe a bit, but without lagging all that much or going off on pointless tangents.

I truly enjoyed how it updated the scenario and more or less stayed in continuity with the original film (which we are given a brief recap of early on, earning a huge laugh by skipping over the sequels), even if it's sort of a remake. The school has been rebuilt and the power plant is gone, with a food conglomerate (Tromorganic) taking its place and offering healthy alternative food that is seemingly just made out of the leftover toxic waste. It doesn't take long for the student body to start turning into mutants; after a few isolated incidents (including a terrific sex scene gone awry, with melting bodies and such) the Glee Club is turned in its entirety into Cretins, and the usual sort of awkwardly paced but gloriously insane Tromatic carnage begins. It's been a long time since Kaufman helmed a feature himself (I believe Poultrygeist was the last one), and as I've said before - the movies he makes for the company are almost always infinitely better than the ones they pick up or that he merely produces (Cannibal: The Musical being a rare exception), so you know you're in good hands.

The humor is also on point; there are some truly tasteless jokes about Sandusky and the Colorado movie shooting, but as with South Park, pulling punches in some areas just make the other jokes more offensive in a way. I was laughing pretty often, particularly at the "so idiotic it's brilliant" bit where a bit of foreshadowing is followed by the shadow of a number 4 on a wall. I also particularly enjoyed the pair of teachers who are inexplicably arguing about Justin Beiber, pause to look at a burning student running down the hall, and then continue their argument. As always, you have to be in the right mood for it, but some of their films don't even work when you ARE in such a state, so when they nail it, it's worth noting.

It's also, I think, Lloyd's first digital film, and I'm happy to say it actually looks better than a few big budget digital films I've seen (Kaufman > Mann), not to mention offers more vivid colors than usual - all the better for any scene involving dismemberment or puke. The plot may be gibberish (and incomplete), but any scene taken on its own has every dollar of its meager budget on screen, qualifying it as a success. The only drawback: I was kind of sad to see that the shitty Troma logo has been retired in favor of a new high def one - why did they splurge when it was part of the charm? But fear not - even if it matches worse than usual, we still get to see the Kabukiman car flip, and everything else about the film lives up to Troma tradition (Lemmy pops up, male nudity is as common as female, Toxie makes an appearance...). It's a fine mix of old and new, and since digital is cheaper/faster (not better!), it proves to be a good fit for the brand.

I say that because as always, the extra features aren't exactly congratulatory - most of them focus on things that went wrong, Lloyd getting annoyed at one crew person or another, etc. There are three such pieces, and while they skip over the film's actual production (presumably being saved for Volume 2), it's almost amazing they got that far considering how many issues arose with figuring out effects, casting (poor Asta Paredes, the star of the film, is seen having to test chemistry with about a dozen actors. Translation: making out with a lot of random dudes), and having to use an old morgue as the film's production office. The two commentaries (one with the cast, the other with Lloyd and select crew) back up these issues with even more stories, thought it's not in an angry or bitter way - everyone seemingly knows what they signed up for and are proud of the finished result. In short, the tracks are fun and useful; there's no better way to learn about filmmaking than being a PA, and these tracks can give a glimpse of what you can expect if you wish to join the Troma team on their next production (if they ever came to Los Angeles, I'd probably do it). A quick teaser for Volume 2, a music video and a highlight reel of Lloyd's other films round things out - it's not as jam-packed as other Troma releases, but again I assume they're saving some of the meatier behind the scenes stuff for Volume 2.

Hopefully the 2nd installment comes sooner than later; not only am I legit excited about seeing it, but I suspect it'd be easier to sell audiences on this one if they knew when they'd get the rest of the story (The Hobbit made more money than it deserved, but I wonder if it'd have done as well if audiences weren't told in advance when parts 2 and 3 would be arriving). It's the first time they've attempted something akin to a serialized narrative (previous Troma sequels, such as Toxic Avenger 2, can't even decide if they're direct followups or parodies), and I'd love to see it pay off - maybe it can get Anchor Bay or someone to back an Avengers-style teamup with all the Troma heroes in one film (instead of quick cameos), offering a true celebration of the past 30+ years of their specific brand of demented horror comedy. With Lloyd pushing 70, I fear he'll retire without ever getting to make a true Troma epic, with a crew of passionate fans that have also had the benefit of 10-15 years' worth of DVD/Blu-ray special editions to prepare them for the less than stellar working conditions that have led to underwhelming productions in the past. I think it'd be glorious.

What say you?

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Scanners II/III (1991)

SEPTEMBER 8, 2013

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MUTANT
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

When I watched the original Scanners for this site a few years back, I was kind of disappointed with it - take out the headsplosion (which I had already seen) and maybe 1-2 other little bits, it was a fairly boring film, with Cronenberg's usual insistence of not having any fun weighing down a pretty goofy concept. Thus, it probably won't surprise anyone to discover I found Scanners II: The New Order and Scanners III: The Takeover to be more to my liking; neither of them are particularly GOOD movies, but they rarely bored, and director Christian Duguay dove headfirst into all the different ways a Scanner might use his or her powers, giving them an energy that satisfied me to a certain extent.

Scanners II focuses on a Scanner named David who is recruited into an organization where his kind are sent to the dirty work of various crooked politicians. Of course, it doesn't take long for him to realize this is a bad use of one's time and tries to free himself of their control, only to be chased endlessly. It's actually a lot like the first Universal Soldier, with the main evil guy from the organization constantly in pursuit - there's even a scene where our hero goes to his family home and gets some answers only for his adoptive parents to be put into danger. It's here that we find out how this connects to the original (spoiler): David is the son of the 1981 film's heroes, and has a sister to boot - though this a bit of a botched reveal, as he should only be about 10 years old instead of 30 or so (or the movie should be set roughly in 2013). I like movies that tie together, sure, but this connective tissue is flimsy and unnecessary, since it's not like the ones in the first film were the parents of ALL the scanners in this movie (or the next one), and thus we don't need to know why HE has the power. And the way the first film's heroes are killed is pretty weak - they apparently forgot about their powers since they just get taken out by a regular (non-Scanner) guy.

Once David goes on the run it improves; the first half hour is basically a remake of the original as we're introduced to the world of Scanners all over again, complete with a headsplosion that will end up on a highlight reel or one of those 100 best kills compilations on Youtube. I don't know what the budget of these things were, but it feels like a cable movie of that era; not overly cheap, but just BLAND, making it hard to get too involved as it just seems like everyone's going through the motions. Drak (this movie's Revok) is a fun wild card, but it's not until him and David are truly pitted against each other that the movie really takes off. There's some new stuff with the Scanners too (and thankfully no "body switching"), like when David and his sister team up to use their powers to mind-control a guy past some security checks in order to infiltrate a compound, and there's a goofy bit where Drak uses his abilities to kick ass at Operation: Wolf, an old arcade game. And no matter what issues I may have had with the film, they're all rectified by the end credits theme song, which is a ballad on par with Bonfire's "Sword and Stone" from my beloved Shocker.

Scanners III is even more action packed, to the point where it's barely even horror anymore. Sure, there's still a few headsplosions (including one under water!), but it's purely an action thriller, even cribbing parts from Rambo III. This time it has no relation to the others at all beyond the core concept (and someone even specifically says it's the 90s, so it's possibly a prequel to part 2, assuming anyone was putting any thought into it), but it offers the most intriguing good vs evil pairing yet - a man named Alex vs his sister Helena, with the former returning from Thailand to stop the latter when she goes nuts and begins decimating everyone involved with the study/creation of Scanners, including their father. The Thailand stuff is where it feels like a Rambo ripoff; he goes there to become a monk and live in seclusion after he accidentally kills someone at a party while being encouraged to show off his powers (so it can't be a prequel since the end of 2 set up the idea that Scanners aren't dangerous and just want to be left alone). There's some martial arts fighting and even an older mentor type a la Richard Crenna who comes to see him and encourage him to help take up the fight - the deja vu was laid on pretty thick, in other words.

Needless to say he eventually rejoins the world to take on his sister, though not before hooking up with his ex girlfriend and getting a haircut. Again, it's all a bit blandly shot (there's a reason Christian Duguay's filmography is mostly DTV/television work), but there's more action than even Scanners II, including a rooftop shootout and even a car chase, plus more scanner villains than usual (Helena gives them all these little discs that they can put on their necks and intensify their powers, and they form a little mob tasked with finding Alex). Plus they finally figure out that they can blow up something besides heads - one guy gets his finger "scanned" off, and Helena takes care of a pigeon that pooped on her as any Scanner should (and I love the bewildered expression on a character's face a few minutes later when he keeps finding feathers on the table). There's even a dance routine, for some reason - Helena gets pissed at her douchey boyfriend and scans him into gyrating around like an asshole at some fancy restaurant. Again, it's a completely goofy concept at its core, so the idea that Duguay and his writers aren't taking it very seriously and using it as a vessel for what amounts to typical B-movie action fare, to me, is better than being all dry and stuffy about it.

Scream Factory is putting these two out on Region 1 disc for the first time, I believe - there was a European release of the "trilogy" but that's about it, and this is definitely their debut on Blu-ray. As you might expect they're hardly reference worthy transfers - there's only so much a high def release can do with a cheap film - but they're quite good all the same, with fine audio (2.0) and no DNR tinkering. Sadly they lack any extras whatsoever - both films are on the same disc (there's a DVD packaged inside as well) and the menu only offers the choice between them - no scene selection menus are available, just chapter breaks. The Euro release had some interviews with Alan Jones, it's a shame that they haven't been brought over. But, for those of you who are like me and don't import discs, it's great to finally have them on disc instead of junky, inferior VHS tapes.

There are also a pair of spinoff movies under the Scanner Cop title; no idea how those are or if they're worth seeking out (no disc release for those either, far as I know), but as the only true franchise to be spun off from a David Cronenberg idea (can't really count Dead Zone or The Fly as those were other people's stories to begin with), it demands some attention. All of his peers (Carpenter, Craven, etc) saw at least one of their creations turned into total junk, so it's sort of like a rite of passage in a weird way. Maybe someday I'll give the original another chance - I doubt these will get put back in the player all too often, but I currently consider them better, and I'm not too comfortable with saying I'd rather watch a Christian Duguay movie than a David Cronenberg one.

What say you?

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After Dusk They Come (2009)

JANUARY 23, 2013

GENRE: MUTANT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I should start tagging the movies where the production history is far more interesting than what is on-screen. I've certainly seen worse movies than After Dusk They Come, but nothing in it was as intriguing as its FAQ on the IMDb page (where it goes under the title The Forgotten Ones), which explains that the movie was shot in 2006 (!), and apparently considered for release in the After Dark Horrorfest (remember those?), only to be shelved because the producers thought it was bad.

But it gets funnier. Not wanting such an amazing story go to waste, the producers reworked the script a bit and tried again with a new cast and crew a couple years later. That movie, which has the exact same plot (a group of 20somethings crash their boat and end up on an island of cannibal mutants), was released as The Lost Tribe about 2-3 years ago, and I've been asked to review it a few times by HMAD reader August Benassi, who I hope will just count this one since I only have 70 movies left and it'd be silly to watch the same damn movie. How this one got a new name for DVD is left to our imaginations, but since they put Twilight star Kellan Lutz on the cover instead of actual star Jewel Staite, I assume they wanted some sort of tie since "dusk" and "twilight" are similar concepts in terms of "time of the day" (the back of the DVD makes this connection more obvious, going all out with "As TWILIGHT sets, an epic battle begins!". Good work, guy!

Shockingly, none of this is mentioned on the DVD's sole bonus feature, a brief making of that's mostly about the rainy conditions and how cool the guys playing the creatures are. But these sort of things tend to have barebones DVDs, so I'm actually kind of surprised it had that much. The movie itself is basically a combined ripoff of The Descent and Predator, with Staite in the Sarah (or Arnold) role. Indeed, Lionsgate even put trailers for both Descent films at the top of the disc, despite being several years old at this point, because if you somehow missed them and liked this movie, you'd definitely want to check them out. As in Neil Marshall's classic, a group of friends are off on an adventure when they become trapped, and then their scary situation turns worse when a bunch of humanoid creatures start picking them off one by one. Except, here's the thing - Marshall's film was scary even before the monsters showed up, whereas this one is merely serviceable. Our characters aren't the most likable lot in the world, and their various romantic issues (one won't commit! one is jealous of another couple! etc) aren't nearly as interesting as the Sarah/Juno/dead husband triangle. So it's not terrible, but you'll be looking at your watch waiting for the monsters to show up.

And then they do, and things seem like they're going to get pretty awesome, but (SPOILER) writer/director Jorg Ihle inexplicably kills off the entire cast save Staite over a period of about 7 minutes, leaving just Staite alone to battle the monsters. So not only do we not get the personal through-line that Descent had (where Sarah gets revenge on Juno AND her escape plan in one swoop of a pickaxe), but we don't have much of ANYTHING, either. Staite's not going to die, and she doesn't find a human inhabitant or anything, so the final 25 minutes or so are just her running around, trying to avoid being eaten. This is where the Predator stuff comes in (in addition to the jungle setting, though big chunks are set in a dark cave a la Descent), since that one similarly left it down to Arnold and the Predator for a reel or so. But watching Arnold kick ass is not the same as seeing Kaylee run around trying to avoid doing that. And when she DOES fight back, it's too little too late. It's kind of interesting that the final half hour of the movie doesn't have a single line of dialogue (save for some radio chatter in the final minute), but it doesn't exactly serve the movie in any meaningful way, and it certainly doesn't do it any favors to not keep Lutz or her boyfriend around longer to give us SOME sense of suspense. Predator's an action flick, so it can get away with it as long as the fights are coming - not so much with a horror movie, especially one that's cribbing so heavily from a classic like The Descent.

But had Ihle given us a kill or two sooner, and saved another for the final 10 minutes, he'd have a pretty good movie here. Staite is a very likable performer who I don't see often enough, and playing a character much different than her Firefly one. And it's fun seeing Lutz play the thankless "male lead's pal" role (he's also not as bulked up as he is now, being two years before he came a Cullen), and for a while it seemed like he'd earn his placement on the box art since he was doing most of the action hero stuff (Staite's boyfriend doesn't do shit). And the design on the creatures is pretty good, and both their actions and their kills are delivered with a minimum of CGI, so that's a relief. And the delay even helped a bit - had this come out I'd just hate on it for being a cheap Descent knockoff, but after 6 years of torture/found footage/slasher remakes, I actually just wondered: why HASN'T Descent been ripped off more often? It was a critically acclaimed horror film that actually made decent money (even more impressive since it was an import), grossing 26 million in the middle of summer with no stars and an R rating. So shouldn't I have seen a dozen of these sort of things by now?

But nope, "Descent ripoffs" is not a big sub-genre, and this one went through so much trouble to get to store shelves that I doubt it'll make much of an impact. Indeed, it's so old that it was actually shot on film! At first I thought I was seeing things when I saw a few specks on an establishing shot, but sure enough, this was made by folks who actually gave a shit about delivering a quality image with life to it, before so many people who DIDN'T care led all the film companies to basically quit making the stuff. Such a nice trip down memory lane...

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Wrong Turn 5 (2012)

OCTOBER 18, 2012

GENRE: MUTANT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (SCREAMFEST)

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Wrong Turn 4 was a pretty fun entry, since it was from Declan O'Brien, the same guy who made the abysmal Wrong Turn 3. And thus, I was somewhat hopeful for Wrong Turn 5, since O'Brien was back and maybe now he knew how to go about it. But alas, it's just as bad as (possibly worse than) WT3, so now I'm at a total loss - my only explanation is that 3 and 5 (the bad ones) were shot in Bulgaria, whereas the other, GOOD ones were made in Canada. Score one for our Northern brothers!

But I still think perhaps Mr. O'Brien just tapped into something on WT4 that he tried to recreate here without understanding what it is we liked about it. It wasn't so much that the deaths were elaborate and over the top - the movie actually had some genuine (accidental?) suspense and a good setting, and the kids were likable enough to care about their fate but not so much that we wouldn't laugh a bit when they died. Here, he opts for something horribly mean-spirited, where the nice people are killed most viciously, and the traps are so elaborate that it becomes ridiculous (even for a horror movie) that they're going to all of this trouble. For example, they grab two of the guys in the group in the middle of "town" (more on that later), but rather than just kill them there, they for some reason drive them out to the local school's soccer field, buries one of them up to his head, and chops his head off with a snow plow. Even Jigsaw would be wondering why they went through all of that, even if we somehow believed that a trio of mute mutant rednecks would have that much patience and brainpower to pull it off. Plus, they're cannibals - why would they bury their food?

And it's just VILE. When the nicest girl of the group is killed early on, it's fine - it works as a nice sort of Psycho-ish twist because she seems like the most likely Final Girl. But when another girl gets her eyes poked out and then Doug Bradley (as the brothers' caretaker - the familial relation, or where the hell he came from, is never explained) threatens to rape her, and then seemingly will get his wish at the film's conclusion, it's the furthest thing from the fun or funny tone that O'Brien was seemingly going for. Oh, and another character has to blow their own head off with a rigged shotgun in order to avoid being immolated to death. Yeah, real knee-slapping stuff.

Oh, and everyone is a complete idiot. The kids, fine - they're a group of assholes going to a "Burning Man" type festival (albeit one that only lasts a few hours, apparently), so we know right off the bat that they're not the best decision makers (or math prodigies - "Four tickets at 90 bucks a pop, that's 260 bucks..."). But the local police are just as stupid; one cop sees three armed mutants running for him and he just says "What the hell?" instead of drawing his weapon, and the sheriff makes carefully thought out plans like giving shotguns to the town drunk and a kid who was taken in for carrying drugs and assaulting someone, utilizing a ham radio to ask a kid in New Hampshire to call the state police, etc. And there are only 3 of them, I guess (the other one is too busy banging some girl in his car at the festival), because despite this huge festival going on, no one thought to hire extra security, bring in cops from the next town, etc.

Then again, the festival doesn't seem to exist anyway. We see people walking the streets and news reporters early on, but when night falls and the action focuses on the police station, it becomes a ghost town - we can't even hear the festival, let alone see it, despite the fact that it was established to be pretty much on the same block. Also, the town set is one of the worst I've seen; you know those tram tours at Universal Studios where they show you the sets for old west towns or whatever, and they look fake in the daylight without movie coloring and appropriate actors nearby? Well this movie looks faker than that, somehow. Hell, they could have green-screened disproportionate still images of a town behind the actors and it wouldn't look as cheesy. The accents don't help the movie's complete lack of authenticity, either - it's supposedly West Virginia but everyone sounds like a European trying REALLY HARD to hide the fact that they're not, which makes the painfully stupid dialogue sound even worse.

The plot also has zero drive. Hilariously they seemingly took my suggestion from my review of WT3, opting for an Assault on Precinct 13 type story where a bunch of folks are assembled at the police station as the mutants attempt to free one of their own (Bradley). But they sure drag their heels doing it; despite having weapons and brute strength (and even more intelligence, it seems), they never really try to get into the station - they will drive nearby and kill someone that comes out, but then they'll take off again. In fact, they never really enter the building at all; Bradley more or less frees himself, probably because he got sick of laughing and saying "My boys will come for me" every five minutes, which is pretty much the extent of his role.

Of course, beloved genre icon status aside, we're here to see the three mutant brothers, not a guy in a jail cell, so that's fine. After all, the reason that this and 4 are prequels is because most of the mutants were dead, so this was a way to get them back into the series without resurrecting them, Jason Lives style. But they don't do shit! Three Finger gets his usual amount of screentime, but One Eye and Saw Tooth spend most of the movie just sort of lumbering around nearby, if at all - they seem to disappear a lot. Then again maybe that's for the best, since the makeup job is atrocious. There's a bit of irony to the festival subplot; people are wearing "hillbilly" masks as part of the "Mountain Man" celebration, and honestly the kids pulling pranks don't really look much different than the film's should-be scary villains. And (spoiler) not a single one of them is killed or even injured, so the ending, which is already unpleasant, takes on an extra bit of ickiness. Since Bradley isn't around in the first film, they could have at least killed him off and led this one up right to the beginning of WT1 (with the two random rock climbers), but no, it hints at a Wrong Turn 6 that continues this story, instead of pretending it never happened.

There are a few inspired moments that keep it from being a complete failure, I should note. I loved the way that the title is delivered; "Wrong Turn" appears on screen and then a disembodied hand sticks out its "5" fingers - it's the wittiest thing in the entire movie. There's a pair of pretty good car crashes that seemingly ate up half the movie's budget, and even though it was nihilistic on all levels, at least it wasn't easy to pick the order that the characters die, offering moments of minor surprise. But they don't stick; no one is missed when they're gone, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of it was unintentional - maybe an actor only SEEMED like they would be killed quickly because there was no way that an actor that incompetent would be hired for a major role. Good tune over the end credits, too. So there you go, out of an 89 minute movie, there's about 47 seconds that I was enjoying myself.

Since they're seemingly locked into a certain setup for the next one, I hope they at least ditch O'Brien and hire someone who understands the difference between joyful meanspiritedness (think Silent Night Deadly Night) and just plain contempt for the audience. I know I had the "Bulgaria vs Canada" theory, but come on - the supporting actors and grips aren't responsible for such a hateful script. They can certainly find a director that doesn't try to make jokes about his own movie during a very sparsely attended free screening. Real classy guy!

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The Toxic Avenger: Part 2 (1989)

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

GENRE: COMEDIC, MUTANT, SPLATTER
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I'm sure there's an audience for The Toxic Avenger: Part 2, but I can't say I'm part of it, finding only the barest of bare minimums' worth of entertainment in its bloated 103 minutes to keep it out of the crap bin. Not that I loved the original by any stretch of the imagination, but it had an odd charm and a fun spin on the revenge plot, a far cry from this rubbish, which is little more than a series of barely connected sequences in which Toxie takes on a bunch of random villains over and over.

And no, that's not a typo - this fucking thing is 103 minutes long (Casablanca is 102 minutes, just to make one unfair comparison), despite a plot that boils down to "Some guys want Toxie to leave Tromaville, so they send him to Japan for a while until he comes back." Apparently there's a 96 minute cut out there, but it's missing all the gore, which is one of its few saving graces. I wish I could tell you to seek out the shorter one if you absolutely must watch it, but alas it would actually be a bigger waste of your time, as some of the FX are kind of impressive.

I can also give it this much: there's a fun variety to the bad guys he fights ad nauseum throughout the film. In the film's endless opening sequence he battles an American Indian (as well as the other Village People personas), some 1930s gangster-looking dudes, a giant that is dressed like Super Mario, a midget Mr. T type guy... the costumer on this movie must have had the most work to do. And this motif continues once he goes to Japan, with Kabukiman, samurai dudes, etc all taking their turns being brutally murdered by our hero.

But the fights are dull - they all amount to someone trying to kill Toxie by running at him, maybe swinging a weapon as they do, before he grabs them and rips their head off or impales them with a nearby object. Worse, director Lloyd Kaufman is more interested in humor than actual horror violence, which means if you don't find cartoon sound FX and over the top mugging from hero and villain alike to be particularly amusing, you're going to be shit out of luck with this one, as every single fight is peppered with shit that would probably embarrass Friedberg & Seltzer. Especially when everything in between is even worse - scenes of Toxie wandering around Tokyo (lot of fish out of water "humor") or talking to either of his two love interests (one of them another blond woman who is blind, but not the same one as the original) are about as dire as they come. Worse still are any scenes where the villains are discussing their evil plans, which make little sense even for a Troma movie and are played by the film's worst actors. At one point the villainess even explains what happened "in the first movie", despite the fact that this is supposed to be a direct continuation (meaning, it's not like Halloween III where they watch Halloween, as it's established as a separate movie-verse).

To be fair, there are a couple of funny lines here and there, usually in the otherwise grating voiceover from one of the two actors who play the character this time (neither of them are the guy from the original). I liked his observation that he knew he had to be half-Japanese because he always had non-American urges to work hard and not live off of credit cards, and there's an inspired bit (probably stolen from something) where someone quotes Shakespeare and the person they're addressing offers "Fuck you!" and attributes it to David Mamet. With roughly 1000 more lines like this, the movie could have been tolerable.

But alas, it's just an endless series of not particularly exciting or funny sequences, culminating in a car chase between Toxie (in the back of a taxi) and the villain (named "The Black Rider" - second one this week!) that's about as low-key as you can imagine for the climax of a movie. That the Black Rider is an out of nowhere villain that we have zero association with is the least of its problems (though it gave me unfortunate flashbacks to last month's pathetic Bourne Legacy), but at least there's a couple of car explosions along the way to break up the tedium.

I later learned that the film's first cut was nearly four hours long, which would explain the half-assed "ending" of this one - it's basically the halfway point of a movie. The 2nd half was turned into Toxic Avenger III, which I guess I'll suffer through soon enough just so I can see how his uninteresting fight against the evil corporation all plays out. At least that one's a minute shorter, so I'm already more likely to prefer it.

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The Unborn (1991)

JULY 14, 2012

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MUTANT
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Maybe someday a horror movie will find a couple trying some new procedure in order to have a child and things will go perfectly well for them in that department, but they'll be menaced by bears or something on the way home. Until then, we have movies like The Unborn, which plays out almost exactly as you might expect it will as soon as you know a. the setup and b. that it's a horror movie.

However, the devil's in the details, and thanks to some inspired bits of insanity (all in the 3rd act, sadly) and a few bit parts played by future stars, this one manages to squeak past security and land in "worth a look" territory. I should also stress that just about every movie I've seen that is similar (It's Alive II, Blessed, even Godsend kind of fits) I've only seen because of HMAD, so maybe you're not as privy to the "If you don't make a kid the normal way it'll kill you" sub-genre and thus will be more surprised by its chain of events. But to me it was all pretty paint by numbers, plus the guy who runs the clinic is James Karen, so you know something's up because he's the one who screwed over the similarly "nice normal family" in Poltergeist.

Unfortunately the baby takes a while to be born, and the movie isn't all that exciting until that point. Brooke Adams as the mom starts to experience mood swings and such, but for the most part it's just TV movie-esque melodrama... until she tears her cat apart with her bare hands and then talks to it as if it's just sleeping, at which point she decides the cat just wants its mouse toy and tears the house apart looking for it. It's a major turning point for the flick, which just tosses in more weirdness from there - the apex being when, apropos of nothing and never addressed, a little person rolls out on a skateboard, smiles at Adams, and then rolls away. I've seen a lot of weird stuff over the years but that one's for the record books, in my opinion.

The mutant baby is also pretty awesome - the design is cool and he's pretty vicious, stabbing a dude in the eye with a knitting needle and causing a car wreck later on. And he's the only one who gets some play, as Adams goes into the lab and, in a somewhat disturbing setpiece, shoots the makeshift embryos that are holding a bunch of others. Mutant or not, it's just weird seeing little babies being shot and exploding in gory fashion. And then consider that it's the "action" highlight of the movie!

One thing about the movie that could have helped is a stronger role for the husband. He disappears for most of it (business trip), and while I get the need to isolate Adams for when she starts to suspect something is amiss, we never get his take on events, reducing him to a glorified extra, basically. Other characters come and go with alarming frequency; she meets someone in passing and suddenly they might as well be best friends, and another character seems to switch from villain to hero out of nowhere. It's a short film, so I can't help but wonder if they had a 1:45 or so version of the movie and then cut it down to 80 since it'd just be another 25 minutes until we got to the mutant baby.

Lisa Kudrow, however, was probably never intended to be in the movie more. Sporting brunette locks and a very perky demeanor, she pops up in one of her first roles as a nurse in the clinic - her entire role is showing the husband to the room where he must produce a sperm sample. It's always amusing to see future stars in bit roles like this, and this one's an all time classic considering the circumstances. I also delighted at seeing Kathy Griffin as one of the teachers at the "natural" Lamaze type class Adams attends, which has its own creepy agenda as well. Not that I'm a fan of hers - on the contrary, I was delighted because her character is smacked around with a hammer. If only it were Whitney...

Speaking of her character, the movie seems to have a very conservative slant. Our villains are lesbians and scientists, abortions have horrific results, etc. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but it definitely feels like it was written by FOX News interns at times. Even Adams' character is old-fashioned; things are fine when she's just sitting at home being a mom, but when she attempts to further her career by going on a talk show, horrible things happen. OK, we get it! Nothing should have changed since the 1930s!

When I attempted to find any background info on the flick (I was not successful) I discovered that a sequel was made a few years later, although it seems to be "in name only" as the only name in cast OR crew that returned was producer Roger Corman (though I can assume it was about the same experimental lab, at least). Director Rodman Flender went on to make the underrated Idle Hands, and screenwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris have worked on a number of huge movies, including T3 and David Fincher's The Game. Not too shabby for all this talent to come out of a goofy little movie like this.

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Squeal (2008)

JUNE 29, 2012

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, MUTANT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I can usually sleep pretty easily on an airplane, especially during an overnight flight (i.e. a time when I’d be sleeping anyway), but this early morning was an exception – I maybe dozed for about 40 total minutes for my entire 5+ hour flight to New York, thanks in part to the restless girl next to me, who insisted on using my shoulder (and the guy by the window) as a headrest (or footrest during his turn as human pillow). Any time I started dozing she’d kick me or trap my arm by moving again, so I was never able to join her in slumberland. Nor was I able to watch Squeal on the plane as originally planned, because I was worried if I got out of my seat to get my portable player she would just overtake it entirely.

But maybe she was just doing me a favor, making me save it for my hotel room where I’d at least be more comfortable as I suffered through the damn thing, and be spared of the embarrassment I’d surely suffer from had anyone on the plane looked my way and saw a grown man not only watching but TAKING NOTES for a movie about killer pig-men, instead of, well, sleeping.

The main problem with Squeal is the fact that it delivers on the promise of its title; the characters spend the first half whining and yelling at each other, and then the second half screaming at the tops of their lungs during the endless “chase” part of the movie, where our three pig-men (well, one’s a pig-woman) villains display their complete lack of an objective by kidnapping some of them, killing others, kidnapping some and then killing them… at first it seems they might want to eat them or whatever, but then the littlest pig-man just slashes two of them to death at once, which I’d think would severely diminish their appeal as dinner.

It’s possible that they HAD real plans for them but just didn’t want to deal with them anymore, because they are the most hateful group of people I’ve seen in quite some time. The biggest offender is Travis, who is a typical horror movie asshole – being a complete prick long before he had any reason to be on edge, begging for help when things go bad, and leaving the others to die when he has the opportunity to help. Naturally, it takes forever to kill him, so we have to put up with his bullshit forever. Then again, he’s barely less tolerable than the others, who range from idiotic to obnoxious (second movie this week with a Jack Black wannabe guy). Even the film’s hero drops F-bombs with every other line, and the Final Girl is a militant vegan who pushes her agenda on everyone else, so there is literally no one here worth caring about in the slightest. The only endearing quality about any of them is that the three guys are in a band and are named Mark, Tom, and Travis, which are the names of the members of Blink 182. Hopefully the band will sue this movie for some weird form of defamation.

As for the villains, well, I’ll give them 1 point for novelty I guess. They’re (poorly explained) science experiments gone wrong, sporting pig noses and squealing instead of talking, but otherwise they just do the same sort of shit I’ve seen in a dozen or so other “kids break down and run afoul of backwoods _____” movies, instead of focusing on what made them different. Who were they before the experiment? Were they already murderous, or did the serum (?) make them crazy? What DO they eat? And why can’t any of their victims escape their flimsy chicken-wire cages?

The direction didn’t help matters any, with director Tony Swansey opting to just swing the camera around like in a found footage movie more often than not. It also seems like someone forgot to rent lights for a few shooting days, especially during the scenes where the “nice” characters poke around looking for the others (who have already been taken), sequences which are so dark it’s almost comical, considering what they are about. I assume the low lighting was a way to hide what is probably not the best makeup job in the world for the pig’s noses, but without a single well lit shot of any of the villains (and the film’s low grade digital photography doing it no favors) it’s hard to say. And far too many of the deaths are “creatively edited”, so you THINK you’re seeing something cool but you’re actually just watching a guy wave a knife around and then someone screaming from the presumed hits. Which is fine if the movie is Psycho and it’s amazing and no one is showing up to see the graphic violence, but with this sort of junk it would at least give the gorehounds a reason to stick around. Way to disappoint every type of fan.

One saving grace – the DVD doesn’t have any extra features besides the trailer, and the runtime is a mere 79 minutes. I was able to watch this thing and still have time to hit Dunkins, shower (it was like 95 in New York – forgot what humidity felt like), and finally get some sleep before heading out to see some friends I hadn’t seen in years, hoping none of them asked me what I've been up to. “So you moved 3000 miles away and now you watch movies about killer pig-men? This made sense to you?”

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Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

MAY 25, 2012

GENRE: MUTANT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

If Paranormal Entity actually had credits or an IMDb page when I saw it a couple years back, maybe I would have noticed that the guys behind it were credited with the script (along with producer Oren Peli) for Chernobyl Diaries, which is sadly more interesting than anything in the movie. Is there no better reward for creating an Asylum mockbuster than getting a nice paycheck and big theatrical release alongside the guy whose movie you were mockbusting? Well, probably, but it’s still kind of awesome.

That said, I guess it’s not much of a surprise that Chernobyl often feels like the biggest budgeted Asylum movie ever, in that there’s not a lot of action, the (seemingly improvised) dialogue is atrocious, and it seems as if it may have been shot in 10 days tops. And the plot seems cobbled together from other films, notably The Ruins (tourists going into an area that they shouldn’t, led by a local who should know better) and The Hills Have Eyes (mutants living in a town that has been abandoned due to radiation exposure). There’s also a touch of films like Catacombs and Urban Explorer, with the idea of “off the record” tour groups going into a dangerous place and then panicking when they find themselves in danger.

However, despite the paint by numbers plotting, it actually works for the most part. The location is terrific, with husks of buildings, ferris wheels, and cars littering the overgrown fields and disgusting streams that comprise the town of Pripyat (the residential area next to Chernobyl that was evacuated instantly after the reactor meltdown in 1986). With Paranormal Activity on the brain, it’s easy to get into the same habit of constantly scanning the frame looking for the bad guys lurking in the background or peering out of windows, and the constant threat of entering an area that’s too rich with radiation adds a ton of tension to the chase/panic scenes, as they can’t always simply run in the opposite direction if their Geiger counter starts chirping. Add in the disintegrating bridges and walkways and other elemental dangers, and you have a place that would be pretty terrifying even without any living threats.

But the movie has a bunch of those too; in fact, possibly too many. While there is evidence of a human presence early on (Yuri, the tour guide and the film’s best character, notices the ashes of a recent campfire while the tourists take photos in the next room), the movie doesn’t really show its mutant characters until the 3rd act, and you will never get a good look at them without the aid of a pause button. However, the 2nd act is loaded with animal dangers – dogs and wolves roam the area seeking fresh food while providing the film with its most terrifying sequence (an attack on their van). There’s also another animal that appears out of nowhere and in an unexpected place, which is probably the best jump scare in the movie even though the CGI on said animal is kind of shitty - director Brad Parker is a VFX guy, who what gives? (NOTE - I have been told this was a real bear. It had that weird glossy look to it so I assumed it was CGI. Perhaps a composite? Or just one of the many drawbacks of digital projection? At any rate - my apologies). Honestly, I think the movie would have worked better without the mutants at all – there was enough to generate a good scary movie just with the setting and the animal threats. The mutants just create too many questions, and having a bunch (dozens, it seems) of anonymous mutants doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from Hills Have Eyes, which had only a few villains, but they were memorable and unique from one another. Even the average zombie film has a couple of “hero” undead, so why Parker and Peli neglected to make even ONE distinct menace is kind of puzzling.

There are two other issues that must be addressed, though only one really bugged me personally. Despite the trailer’s focus on the film’s (very few) video-shot scenes and the title, which makes no sense within the film (whose diaries, exactly? The movie is not anyone’s account of an event, nor is there a diary shown in the film), this is NOT a found footage film – it’s just shot like one, with an exclusively hand-held approach and a general lack of grace to the cinematography. There are even major scenes that happen off camera, as if there was an unseen 7th tourist filming everything and constantly sticking with Devin Kelley’s character (not that I’d blame him). At one point Yuri and one of the other characters head off to check something out, leaving the rest of them in the van as the camera just swooshes around looking out the window, where we can’t see a damn thing, instead of following the others who are actually doing something interesting. I assume the point is to put us in Kelley’s shoes throughout the runtime, but when the film is marketed as a found footage film, and written by the guy responsible for the sub-genre’s newfound popularity, it can be a bit disorienting. There were two or three moments (including the one described above) where I momentarily wondered who was currently filming, only to remind myself that the camera operator was not a character in the film.

The other issue didn’t bug me as much, but I can see how it might be a major problem for the intended audience – almost nothing happens in the first hour. One could argue that the Paranormal films are guilty of this as well, but they always had some really great, unnerving scares to guide us along, not to mention slightly less idiotic protagonists. The folks here are all pretty dumb (for example, the mutants destroy a certain car part, which they are able to locate in another car later, but no one takes into account that they also killed the battery and have no means of jump-starting it), and the setting/situation doesn’t lend itself to the “this could happen to me!” feeling that the Paranormal films excel at. I might someday find myself besieged by a ghost in my own home, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never be on the run from mutants in a radiated city (mostly because I’m lazy). So there’s a lack of built-in familiarity with the situation, and given today’s audiences’ short attention span, they might not have the patience to make it until the first kill before they start texting and ruining the experience for everyone else in the theater (luckily, mine was close to empty). And that’s not even mentioning the interminable first reel (hah! “Reel”), consisting of all the “character development” and rather flimsy chain of events that gets them into the town without permission. One character plans to propose to his girlfriend, a stock horror movie subplot made even more groan-inducing by the dialogue, as the guy checks to make sure his girlfriend isn’t looking before showing the ring to his brother, and then adding “I haven’t asked her yet.” Well no shit you haven’t, asshole, that’s why the ring’s in your pocket instead of on her finger. Sadly that’s not even the most eye-rolling example.

And even when the mutants DO show up, there’s not a lot of on-screen action of note, and that’s where I’ll warn you that there are SPOILERS AHEAD!!! Of the seven deaths in the film, only two of them actually occur on-screen, with all of the others being a variant of “they are pulled away and never seen again”. There’s also a lack of a satisfying fight back; even in movies where all of the characters die (such as the Texas Chainsaw prequel), there’s a moment of triumph for the heroes, but this movie never has one. I think one mutant gets kicked away, but that’s about it, with the final five minutes seemingly setting up a sequel (or prequel) and being so vague and poorly constructed that it might change the mind of even someone who loved it until that point. The movie’s rich atmosphere and admirable restraint (be it creative or budgetary) bought it a lot of goodwill with me, but I’ll probably be in the minority, and I think disappointment with the final 5 minutes will be fairly unanimous.

As I noted on Twitter, this is like the best January horror movie ever released in the summer. Every January the studios put out a couple of mildly entertaining, mostly disposable horror flicks that would have no chance of competing in the summer against the big budget stuff, or in October with the most prestigious horror fare (i.e. Paranormal Activity sequels). I’m not sure why Warner thought going up against Avengers, Battleship, and Men In Black 3 (not to mention their own Dark Shadows, which I assume they thought would be making far more money still given its 150 million budget) would be the best idea; granted the film couldn’t have cost much, but it still seems a shoe-in to be crushed by the competition, especially when it’s such a shrug of a movie. My guess: this way they’ll be able to have it on DVD for the Halloween season, which is just as well – it’s the most average horror film of the year and thus perfect rental fodder.

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The Dark Lurking (2010)

MARCH 28, 2012

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MUTANT
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

A few minutes into The Dark Lurking, I started having flashbacks to games like Overblood and the original Resident Evil – not because of the plotting or situations, but from the VOICES. Everyone sounded like they were delivering lines for a video game cutscene, with that strange detached tone of voice and habit of making every single line sound like it was a punchline or meant for a trailer. So it was even more obnoxious when the movie actually began resembling a video game as well.

The plot points in this movie are straight out of any “Survival Horror” game you’ve ever played over the past 15 years or so. Characters are tasked with turning machines back on, taking alternate routes in order to open jammed doors, etc. I half expected one of them to discover that they needed to slide some tiles around in order to form a picture in order to proceed any further. And all of this stuff serves the main “plot”, which, I shit you not, is about the characters trying to pass a number of levels (meaning floors, but called levels every time) in order to escape. Or, you know, WIN. Oh, and it kicks off with a woman waking up in a strange room and with a mysterious tattoo – the same way far too many games in this genre start.

It’s also paced like a video game, in that you get a few seconds of plot/dialogue and then a lot of action. For a low budget movie, I’ll give them this much – they sure as hell don’t skimp on the violence, as it seems there’s another epic shootout or fight every 5 minutes, with lots and lots of mutant blood/goo splattering everywhere. But it’s also like a video game where you play the same level over and over – the enemies never get tougher, there are no new kinds, and no “boss” of note (though there is a traitorous human enemy, Wesker style), which makes this a very repetitive 90 minutes. You could swap the big finale action with any random scene in the middle and it wouldn’t mean much in terms of escalation, something that might not be as noticeable if they weren’t seemingly hellbent on making Dead Space The Movie.

The excess of action is a blessing in one way though: the actors and dialogue are pretty much awful across the board. The main girl is thankfully OK enough, but it doesn’t matter much when she’s given such nonsense to say. The backstory is a confusing jumble of plot points from a dozen sci-fi/horror games and movies, as if they figured by cribbing a bit from everything they could make their own unique concoction. And that can actually work under the right circumstances, but sadly this is not one of those times, because it has no personality of its own. Doomsday was also a “Movie Stew”, but it had the cast (and money) to deliver some real spectacle – when you’re in the low budget world, you have to counter with what you CAN provide (fun dialogue, unique looking monsters, etc).

Another major flaw is that they inexplicably start the movie with a team of guys who are alerted to the problem at the base and head there to help extract survivors. Which would be fine if they were our main characters, but they’re not. After this bit, we are introduced to our actual heroine, who doesn’t know the things we just heard about. It’s very disorienting, and not in a beneficial way – it just makes the movie seem unfocused right from the start. She’s our gateway into this story, so we should be learning things when she does. Plus, it’s not long after we meet her (in a calm scene) that the action ramps up again, so the opening bit is hardly necessary from a “let’s start with a bang” way of thinking – without it we’d still have a big action setpiece before the ten minute mark. Also, I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but the credits are equally disjointed – all out of usual order and skipping the entire cast for some reason – it actually added to the “we’re joining a story already in progress” feeling.

I was far more impressed with the DVD’s making of piece, which ran about 25 minutes and covered tons of technical matters: building the set, creating the FX, etc. Lot of DIY ingenuity and creativity on display here; I would welcome a full length doc if only for the fact that seeing this much work go into such a disappointing movie always bums me out, so 25 minutes is perfect. There’s also a fun short film from the same folks, involving a “Netherworld” – I’d actually be more excited about a feature version of this than I was for the movie, honestly. A fairly impressive trailer and (why?) a still gallery round things out; a decent array of extras for a movie that I wish was better.

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