20131018: Horror Review--Strange Circus

Strange Circus

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2005, 108 minutes, NR.  Spoken word is in Japanese with English subtitles.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 2,339 users.  Aspect: 1.85
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 80% liked it from 1,627 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 33,245 users.
5. Written and directed by: Shion Sono.
6. Starring: Masumi Miyazaki as Mitsuko / Sayuri / Taeko; Issel Ishida as Yuji, Rie Kuwane and Mai Takehashi as Young Mitsuko (at slightly different ages).


2. Setup and Plot
1. This film reminds me most of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1998.  Strange Circus has about as much cohesion and steady reference to a timeline.


2. The whole of the film seems to be the musings and ravings of a successful author who is also certifiably nuts.


3. During the film, the author fills in her story, or what she wants to present as her story. The back story is thrown at the viewer in broken pieces, rather like the piles of junk present in so many rooms recurrently visited.


4. The mythology starts around when the protagonist, Mitsuko, is twelve.  She unintentionally sees her parents having sex. Then her father forces her to watch from inside a cello case.  After several sessions of this, her father lets his wife know that Mitsuko has been watching.  Then he forces the mother and the daughter to switch places.  The mother grows to resent this; when the father is out, the mother abuses Mitsuko.  Not much later, Mitsuko 'accidentally' pushes her mother down the stairs, resulting in the mother's death.  Later Mitsuko attempts suicide and fails.  The cello case follows her around in the movie as she continues life from a wheelchair.


5. Those events are referred to again and again.  The resulting length of time in a wheelchair seems a bit variable.  Perhaps she's permanently there; perhaps not. 


6. As the film advances toward the end, the rate of scenario switching increases.  Did the mother fall down the stairs, or was it the father?  Was the child's suicide attempt just a part of the plot in a novel?  Was the father the mastermind who triumphs at the end, or did the mother and daughter stump him (cut off all limbs) and chain him for additional sport?


7. The subtitle of the film is 'Reality is the mystery,' and the film does a bang-up job of conveying that.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Matricide child grows down to be a delusional author, or did she?
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Soft, grainy focus is all too common; the filters in the circus scenes are at least as detrimental. Add in a dash of jerky camera movement.  To make things for interesting, the movie has scenes where walls are covered in blood (revolting and ugly), and rooms with very little furniture, but plenty of unorganized dross on the floors.  This is ugly for the sake of ugly.


2. Sound: 8/10 No particular problems.


3. Acting: 7/10 Tough call.  As with the actors in the films of Cronenberg (Existenz, Crash, Videodrome) or Lynch (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks), one has to figure the actors in Strange Circus are doing what the detail-oriented director wants.  On the other hand, several performances seem wooden or amateurish.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Watching this film is like watching someone do a finger painting.  The painting is done when the canvas is covered or the painter just quits.  Also like a finger painting, one can gaze at it at length, trying to figure out what it means, even though no fixed meaning was intended.
   

20131017: Horror Review--Dumplings

Dumplings (Gaau Ji)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Hong Kong live action feature length film, 2004, NR, 90 minutes, horror.  Spoken language is Cantonese; English subtitles.
2. IMDB: 6.8/10.0 from 5,209 users. Aspect 1.85.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 70% liked it from 5,878 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 73,115 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Fruit Chan.
6. Starring: Bai Ling as Mei (the cook), Tony Leung Ka Fai as Li Sije, Pauline Lau as Masseuse (Li's maid), Meme Tian as Connie, Miriam Yeung Chin Wah as Mrs. Li.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Aunt Mei cooks special dumplings that taste bad, but supposedly help women keep their health and good looks.  Mrs. Li is a former TV star who has more or less aged out of stardom.  She tries Aunt Mei's dumplings, and spits out the first one.  Mei talks her into resuming, after burying the rejected dumpling in the pot of one of her plants.


2. Mr. Li, a late midde-aged man, is having an affair with the masseuse, who looks to be early twenties in age.  Mrs. Li is discouraged by his excuses to leave town, but does not scratch very deep about it.


3. As the film continues, it becomes clear what the 'secret ingredient' is.  Aunt Mei used to be a surgeon in China.  In obstetrics.  In Hong Kong, abortion is against the law, and Aunt Mei has to keep a low profile.


4. Mrs. Li decides to visit her husband at his hotel near his work...only to find he's not alone.  Oh, goodness.  She visits their house, which is being renovated.  She discovers her husband's egg fetish.  He eats the eggs when the young bird is fairly close to coming out.


5. When Mrs. Li finds out what the extra strong secret ingredient is (by direct sight), she freaks out.  Then she returns.  Aunt Mei talks about how the much better the first born is, and how important it is to do the abortion without the usual drugs, which would damage the nervous system of the diner.


6. Does it work?  For a while her husband is very interested in her physically.  Does it have side effects?  Yes, she gets skin rashes that give her a decidedly fishy smell.  


7. While talking to Aunt Mei, Mr. Li overhears everything on another phone extension.  He seeks out Aunt Mei and starts taking the 'cure' himself.  It would seem that is what his eating bird embryos was about, so this is probably a natural extension for him.


8. Aunt Mei convinces him that he could do quite well with the dumplings.  She's 64, and he finds her quite desirable.


9. The extra strong dumplings continue to have bad effects on Mrs. Li, who consults a physician.  He tells her she's allergic to something in the hotel she's staying at, recommends she return home, and prescribes some medicine for her.


10. Mrs. Li counter-attacks by directing the police to the home of the 15 year old, whose fetus she ate, and to Aunt Mei's apartments.  Her husband returns to her, and she convinces (via currency) the masseuse to have her husband's baby aborted.


11. Yikes.  Mrs. Li listened to Aunt Mei's recipe preparation talks.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: The desire for youth meets cannibalism in Hong Kong.
2. Five stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 9/10 On streaming Netflix, at least, the aspect looks more like 1.33 than 1.85.  Go figure. Still, the visuals look good for the most part, with framing, lighting, and focus all fine.


2. Sound: 8/10 Good, but I've heard better.


3. Acting: 9/10 Quite nice by the main players.


4. Screenplay: 10/10 Quite a study in human degradation made possible by abundant money.

20131017: Horror Review--Dream Home

Dream Home

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Hong Kong live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 96 minutes. Spoken language Cantonese; subtitles in English.  Aspect: 2.35
2. IMDB: 6.5/10.0 from 2,610 users. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes:  74% on the meter; 64% from 886 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.1/5.0 from 38,776 audience members.
5. Directed by: Ho-Cheung Pang
6. Starring: Josie Ho as Cheung Lai-Sheung, Eason Chan as Siu To, Norman Chu as Sheung's father, Lawrence Chou as On Jai, Juno Mak as Cop Fat, Michelle Ye as 8A female owner.


2. Setup and Plot
1. There are two main threads.  In flashbacks, we follow Sheung's growing up in Hong Kong, from 1991 to the present, 2008 in this case.  We see why, ten times over, she wants a nice flat to live in with what's left of her family.  In the 'current' thread, we see to what lengths she goes to get to that difficult goal.


2. In the current thread, she's on a mission to kill certain people.  The murders that she has planned for she executes well, and seldom gets hurt in the process.  It's the extra killings she does out of irritation that get her into trouble.  Loud music sets her off, as explained in the flashbacks.  While finishing up her planned murders, she's annoyed by music from a nearby flat.  She ends up killing five people to make it stop.  Then the cops show up.


3. A running commentary is made through many characters: infidelity is rampant, as is the brutality of humans toward one another.  Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the infidelity, it still engenders hard feelings that sometimes have very bad results.  Her married lover is not all that great a choice for her.


4. Her father's illness due to persistent aspiration of asbestos fibres (he was in construction) was set against the coldness of the insurance company. Again, money limits caused large, painful problems in her life.


5. Sheung comes to quite a decision point when her father is in a crisis with his breathing.  She lets him die.  He was bankrupting her, after all, and he had insurance.  Through working a couple of jobs, plus collecting the insurance money, she scrapes together enough money to get the flat she wants.  Unfortunately, the seller made other arrangements while she was getting ready.


6. This is the spark for the killings mentioned above.  By a set of favorable outcomes (dumb luck, that is) the cops die as she's being handcuffed.  The seller of her target flat not only is willing to sell to her, but drops the asking price from 6.5 million USD to 4.9 million.  She demands 3.9 million.


7. Will her exceptional luck continue?


3. Conclusions
1. Like Caterpillar, Dream Home is much scarier than most fake gore films with supernatural themes.
2. In terms of visuals and sound, this is one of the most gorgeous movies I've seen in years.
3. One line summary: Obsession with lost family life destroys many others.
4. Five stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.


2. Sound: 10/10 Amazingly good, rich, evocative for this tale of obsession.


3. Acting: 9/10 Steady and good.


4. Screenplay: 9/10 The well-crafted story was about a difficult subject.  The director and actors did well together executing the script.

20131016: Horror Review--Nightmare Detective 2

Nightmare Detective 2

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2008, NR, 103 minutes, horror, drama.  Spoken word: Japanese; English subtitles.
2. IMDB:6.5/10.0 from 375 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 59% from 105 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 from 3,712 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Shin'ya Tsukamoto; written by Shin'ya Tsukamoto and Hisakatsu Kuroki.
6. Starring: Ryuhei Matsuda as Kyoichi Kagenuma, Yui Miura as Yukie Mashiro.


2. Setup and Plot
1. 'Damn, who will save me, then?'   This is my favourite quote from the film, spoken by the protagonist, Kyoichi, who can enter the dreams of others, and sometimes dispel the the bad ones.


2. Kyoichi is the nightmare detective.  Way too much of this film consists of short segments from his childhood: his mother's many fears including her fear of his telepathy, her suicide, his father's leaving her when Kyoichi was very young, Kyoichi trying in vain to find his mother after her death.


3. The other thread concerns a group of girls who were nasty to another girl, Kikukawa.  They suffer bad dreams for having done this.  One of the guilty, Yuki, consults Kyoichi, who tells her to seek out the victim and sincerely apologise to her.


4. The bullying girls decide, more or less by omission, not to apologise.  Then two of them die.  Yukie consults Kyoichi again; he gives the same response.


5. At Kyoichi's request, Yukie meets Kikukawa in a dream.  Yuki apologises to no avail.  Kyoichi intercedes, but Kikukawa does not settle into any kind of peace.  He starts strangling Kikukawa to resolve the matter.  In a parallel dream, Kyoichi's mother strangles him as repentance for bringing him into the world.  This breaks the impasse, and all the stranglings cease.  Like Kyoichi's mother, Kikukawa is afraid to live in this waking world.


6. In various dream levels, Kyoichi holds and comforts Yuki, Kikukawa, and his mother all at the same time.  Since he has nothing to lose in the waking world, he says he will stay as long as they need.


7. Unfortunately for Yukie, the curse of telepathy surfaces in her.  She and Kyoichi can communicate fluently without speaking.


8. The resolution at the end seems only partial; is there a sequel in the works?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Telepath deals with psychological dramas.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Dark, grainy, soft focus.  Add in the habit of jerky camera movements, and some odd framing choices.


2. Sound: 7/10 Some of the incidental music is decidedly tinny.


3. Acting: 7/10 Good.  I think.


4. Screenplay: 7/10 Both simple (not much happens in the real world) and multi-layered (dreams within dreams and the like), the story has a lot to capture the attention.  As with many psychological dramas, there is a lot of sound and fury that signifies very little.  Kyoichi has not learned to live with his mother's inability to deal with his telepathy.  Got it.  Yukie has a hard time the fact that her father is absent and her mother is distant and too devoted to work. Got it. Kikukawa has other fear issues.  Got it.

20131016: Horror Review--Caterpillar

Caterpillar

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 84 minutes, horror, drama.  Spoken word is in Japanese; English subtitles.
2. IMDB: 6.8/10.0 from 621 users;  estimated budget, 120,000 USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 91% on the meter; 47% liked it from 1,703 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.0/5.0 from 27,504 users.
5. Directed by: Koji Wakamatsu.  Written by: Hisako Kurosawa and Masao Adachi.
6. Starring: Shinobu Terajima as Shigeko Kurokawa, Keigo Tasuya as Tadashi ('Kyuzo') Kurokawa, Emi Masuda as Chiyo Kurokawa.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film is full of flashbacks, and one of the early ones was of Kyuzo and all the village dressing up for his departure from the village into the military.


2. Most of the film takes place after Kyuzo is a veteran of the war between China and Japan around the time of World War II.  He lost both legs and both arms in combat, his head is about 40% burned, and he is deaf.  His speech is adversely affected by the lack of hearing.


3. His wife Shigeko is horrified with this from the start.  She tries to strangle him, but does not have the strength. The villagers honor Kyuzo and his achievements, such as they were, in China.  They encourage Shigeko strongly to take care of the hero, the War God.


4. Shigeko learns to deal with his eating, waste, bathing, and sexual functions.  She takes care of him, which is an large daily effort, an enormous effort over an interval of years. She also works in the rice fields with the other villagers during the day.


5. He tries to learn to write/draw with his mouth and pencil, starting with 'I want to do it.'


6. She parades him around the village dress in uniform and medals.  Sometimes she leaves him in the cart to watch her work in the rice fields.


7. About half way through the film, she really gets into being the put-upon wife, and insists on his performing his responsibilities as well.  She gets lots of attention for this, and he gets a taste of all the work (done by others) that he generates.  Also, she becomes very conscious of the fact that he can no longer beat her.  After some time in this steady state, Kyuzo starts having bad memories of what he did in China.  Plus his obligations as War God never seem to go away.


8. By 1945, the war started to come to Japanese soil.  The radio in Japan reports something entirely different.  Shigeko starts getting inwardly discouraged with the horrible things that have happened.  Kyuzo has more flashbacks of his bad deeds in China.


9. Toward the end of the war, she needs satisfaction, but he has trouble even being aroused, since he's too obsessed with the bad memories.  She slings back in his face the horrible things he said to her before he left for war.  At one point, just seeing the flame in their evening lantern brings back the memories of rotten things he did, and how he lost his limbs.  This is when she sings a song about a caterpillar, which is what her husband reminds her of.




3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Traditional horror with zero supernatural elements; war is more terrible than fake gore.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Archival footage was in out of focus sepia; in other words, it sucked rocks.


2. Sound: 8/10 OK, but not great.


3. Acting: 9/10 Fine.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 The story hangs together well.  More cohesion about the flashbacks would have been nice.

20131016: Horror Review--We are the night

We Are the Night (Wir Sind die Nacht)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. German live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 99 minutes, horror, fantasy, drama; aspect
2. IMDB: 6.1/10.0 from 4,342 users. Spoken language is German; dubbed English.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 62% on the meter; 51% liked it of 6,591 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 from 154,783 users.
5. Directed by: Dennis Gansel.  Written by Jan Berger and Dennis Gansel.
6. Starring: Karoline Herfurth as Lena Bach, Nina Hoss as Louise, Jennifer Ulrich as Charlotte, Anna Fischer as Nora, Max Riemelt as Tom, Arved Birnbaum as Lummer, Steffi Kuhnert as Lena's mother, Mrs Bach.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Louise, Charlotte, and Nora kill and drink the blood of every one on a small exclusive jet. Then they jump out before the crash; nice touch.


2. Next we get a look at Lena, a teen delinquent: pickpocketing, credit card theft and fraud, assault and battery on a policeman, evading arrest, underage drinking, vandalism.  She evades policeman Tom after stealing the credit card of a Russian mobster whom Tom was chasing.  Tom catches Lena, but she gets away from him again.  Lena's mother seems to be intimate with Lena's current parole officer, which might keep the number of arrests down.


3. The vampire women host raves to meet people who will not be missed, plus drinking and dancing.  Louise is always looking for just the right pair of eyes; she likes Lena's, and lets her into a rave. Louise bites her in the ladies' room and Lena starts to change quickly, as in sunlight sensitivity the next morning, plus hunger for blood.  She returns to Louise the next night. In passing they mention that there are only 100 vampires in the world, and all of them are female.


4. After some enjoyment with the three older vampires, Lena makes the mistake of going home.  Tom meets her when she departs from her mother.  He promises not to rat her out about stealing from the Russian pimp.  They go for a coffee date, and start getting to know each other.  Tom can tell that something big has changed in her life, and it's not the new boyfriend that Lena claims.


5. Tom starts investigating; Lena keeps learning more about the other three vampires. 


6. Tom and his boss set up an assault on the hotel where the vampires live.  Nora is lost to sunlight, but the other three escape.  Lena prevents Louise from killing Tom, which complicates things considerably.


7. Charlotte says good-bye to her almost ninety year old daughter, who recognizes Charlotte before she dies.  Then Charlotte traps Louise and Lena in order to die from the sunlight of dawn.


8. So only the triangle (Lena, Louise, Tom) remains.  How might that end?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Girl power among German vampires suffers from love triangle.
2. Four stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.  Some of the better vampire healing FX I've seen.


2. Sound: 9/10 Excellent save the dubbing, which is merely good.


3. Acting: z/10 Karoline Herfurth was fine, basically playing three roles.  I liked the performances of Nina Hoss and and Jennifer Ulrich as well.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 A foot chase starts in complete darkness, but continues in full light.  No, thank you.  One strike on continuity.  The rest of the story hung together rather well.

20131016: Horror Review---Deadheads

Deadheads

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, NR, 95 minutes, horror, comedy, aspect 1.78
2. IMDB: 5.2/10.0 from 3,464 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 44% liked it from 302 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 104,073 users.
5. Written and directed by: Brett Pierce and Drew T. Pierce.
6. Starring: Michael McKiddy as Mike Kellerman, Ross Kidder as Brent Guthrie, Markus Taylor as Cheese, Thomas Galasso as Thomas Jeremiah, Natalie Victoria as Ellie Masterson, Eden Malyn as Emily, Harry Burkey as Cliff.


2. Setup and Plot
1. This zombie film starts after zombies are present in large numbers.  The two lead characters, Mike and Brent, are somehow intermediate: they show signs of death and decay, but they can speak, think, enjoy beer, enjoy food, and make plans about the future.  Mike finds an engagement ring in his pocket.  He remembers Ellie, his fiance.  Brent proclaims they should go find her; nothing is stronger than love, after all.


2. Mike and Brent are about to head off for Michigan from Colorado when the full-blown zombies attack the bar where they were having dinner. They pick up Cheese along the way.  Cliff (zero percent zombie) gives them a ride; he's intending to go to Lake Michigan to spread his wife's ashes.


3. The cause of the zombie problem is a chemical spill.  Someone or another decides to quarantine the area.  The quarantine team consists entirely of idiots and incompetents.  Cliff blows past the quarantine, but sleep is a problem; they let Cheese drive, and they run out of gas.  The subsequent 'camping' in the woods is a ghost story fest, aided by weed.  Mike works on his speech to Ellie, and Cheese kills a cop who shot Brent twice.


4. They use the cop's gas to continue.  The vignette with the horror films at the drive-in was an interesting touch.  The quarantine group recruits an escaped convict, Thomas, who likes to kill zombies.  They get captured, but Cheese breaks them out.  The scene with Mike being dragged for a few football fields was not all that funny.  Cliff makes it to the shore of Lake Michigan, but he has already run out of his heart medicine, and dies watching the waves.


5. They make it to Mike's house, and Mike remembers that Ellie's father killed him in that same house. The reality of meeting Ellie comes to pass; their ten year reunion is that night, so he goes to it, so he can tell her how he feels.


6. He puts on a mascot costume, and talks to Ellie.  The authorities drag him off; the next day, Ellie's father has a few more laughs at Michael's expense.


7. Thomas changes his mind, and decides to help Michael.  Michael makes it to Ellie's house, but the chief idiot of the quarantine squad catches up.


8. What could possibly go wrong?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Butch and Sundance as funny, smart zombies.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 9/10 Nice.


2. Sound: 10/10 Excellent.


3. Acting: 7/10 Could have been better.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 There were several funny moments, which is more than I can say for most films labelled comedy.  The story hung together, once one suspends disbelief about smart zombies.

20131015: Horror Review--Vampires out for Blood

Vampires: Out for Blood

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2004, rated R, 95 minutes, horror, action, fantasy, thriller, psychological drama, aspect 1.85.
2. IMDB:  4.0/10.0 from 1,020 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 36% liked it from 507 audience ratings.
4. Netflix:  3.0/5.0 from 82,512 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Richard Brandes.
6. Starring: Kevin Dillon as Hank Holten, Vanessa Angel as Susan Hastings, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe as Layla Simmons, Lance Henriksen as Captain John Billings, Kenneth Colom as Alex, Sam Kanater as 'Vampire Leader.'


2. Setup and Plot
1. Hank is an LA detective, and his wife Susan has left him.  He follows her. A fool tries to rob him at gun point; Hank disarms him, then proceeds to beat the crap out of him.  His captain reads him the riot act, then gives him a new assignment: find out about young women who go into raves, then go missing.


2. Meanwhile, Susan is on TV on the book circuit, selling her latest book on vampires, and dating an actor. 


3. Hank starts his assignment, and meets vampires the first night.  He gets close to a female vampire, Layla. They saunter through a den where an orgy is going on.  Then Hank starts to see the vampires feeding on their human partners.  He shoots several of them; the leader claims him and bites him on the neck.  He wakes up in an abandoned office floor.


4. He has a lot to answer for, and he tries to be honest about his experience.  'Vampires did it' was not well-received.


5. Hank reconnects with Layla.  Two officers intervene, but Layla kills them both.  He awakes the next morning, and the evidence is gone.


6. Hank starts to turn to being a vampire.  He seeks the help of his ex, but she is the opposite of helpful.  When she starts to recognize his change, she goes for another plan: use him to get a story for another book or three.  Susan convinces him to help her get to the leader, so she can know so much more, and, as a collateral matter, perhaps keep Hank from becoming a vampire.


7. Layla and friend break in; the vampires are about to eat Susan when Susan's new friend and his private detective burst in.  The vampires kill them and eat them, then leave with the rising morning sun.  Before leaving, they tell Hank that he has 24 hours before he turns.


8. Hank and Susan find the nest.  Hank handcuffs Susan to a railing, then goes in alone after giving her his cell phone.  What could possibly go wrong?


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Which is worse, fighting vampires or the ex?
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Good, but not great.


2. Sound: 8/10 OK.


3. Acting: 5/10 Lance Henriksen was competent as usual.  Kevin Dillon was better than I expected, but Vanessa Angel was worse.  The side actors were unimpressive.


4. Screenplay: 5/10  The plot meanders somewhat aimlessly at times, but at least there is a plot.  Too many times, a large chunk of vampire rules gets introduced suddenly from left field.  That seemed to be one of the purposes of the Susan character.  Hank wears one shirt (that I could see) during the film.  Yet the blood stains on it change remarkably more than once.

20131015: Horror Review--Slices of Life

Slices of Life

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 107 minutes, horror, slasher, aspect 1.78
2. IMDB: 4.6/10.0 from 466 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 100% want to see it from 56 users.
4. Netflix: 2.1/5.0 from 42,539 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Anthony G. Sumner.  Written by Anthony G. Sumner and Eric Richter.
6. Starring (Sketcher): Kaylee Williams as Mira, Marv Blauvelt as Tiny, Helene Alter-Dyche as Irma.
7. Starring (WORM): Jack Guasta as William Robert Moss, Alan Rowe Kelly as Web Cam Vamp.
8. Starring (Amber Alert): Toya Turner as Vonda, Thurston Hill as Lamont, Jamia Vinci as Ally.
9. Starring (Pink Snapper): Deneen Melody as Susan Ballard, Galen Schloming as Eric Ballard, Mike Tracy as Jack Ballard, Judith Lesser as Elizabeth Nadasdy, Bruce Varner as Edgar Nadasdy.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The Cycle Segment: Sketcher---Mira, Tiny, Irma


2. Sketcher is the overview segment.  Mira wakes up low on contextual memories.  The people near her advise her to read the sketch books that Mira herself supposedly authored.  Oi, there's a rotary telephone receiver.


3. The first book was about WORM; the protagonist is an office drone named William, who works at Nimrod Enterprises.


4. After completing the WORM section, Mira talks to Tiny and Irma, then starts reading again.  This time, it is the Amber Alert section of the picture book.


5. Vonda and Ally visit Mira, then Mira starts reading the Pink Snapper segment.


6. After Mira finishes Pink Snapper, a drunk comes in followed by Susan.  Yes, the same Susan as in Pink Snapper.  Susan makes it clear she's going to kill the guy.


7. Mira finds a second book.  The voices in her head tell her to read the book and to remember.  She goes to a suite where Irma and Tiny are.  Irma speaks of regeneration.  She had drawn Mira, who is a young version of herself.  Mira kills Irma, and Irma's spirit (or whatever) passes to Irma as low energy lightning.


8. Work Life Segment: W.O.R.M---William


9. One meaning of WORM is the derisive nickname that a lazy co-worker gives William.  His office is in the basement, and he circulates through the offices above doing computer waste pickup work.  The other meaning, W.O.R.M., concerns controlling people remotely using nano-technology.


10. William has just gotten his online 'degree' (whatever that means) in computer programming.  He tries to interest the people in the offices of Nimrod Enterprises about his fake accomplishment.  The people around him are self-involved and delusional, as is William. William thinks he will get a promotion into R&D.  Then he tries to join an online porn/companionship site.  Not surprisingly, this does not go well for the inexperienced young man.


11. To get on top of things, William gets the 'Nano Idea' disk, loads it, and figures out how to use it.  Right.  In terms of motivation, William's aim is to make (literally, as in to force) other people to like him.  What could possibly go wrong?  Quite a bit.  Everyone wants to see him since he unintentionally e-mailed the nano virus (nonsense, of course) to everyone in the offices above.


12. Unfortunately, the virus causes people to become zombies.  The authorities contain this, and lock up William because he started it, because he did not turn into a zombie, and they don't understand why not.


13. Home Life Segment: Amber Alert--Vonda, Lamont, Ally


14. Vonda is quite pregnant.  When she is alone for a short spell, the TV won't stay turned off, and she hears of several abductions of girls ages 7 to 10, including Ally.  She sees Ally in her back yard.  Ally acts strangely, and shows demonic transformations.  Vonda goes back into the house, locks her doors, and tries to hold up while familiar things in her house change shape.  She calls her husband Lamont to come home, then faints.  When she wakes up, he is there.  They discuss the missing girls; Lamont had not heard of Ally.  She rewinds the TV, but cannot find what she had seen before.


15. Vonda has odd sightings at the grocery store. People seem to change before her eyes.  She walks home, and finds a poster for Ally on the way.  She telephones, in but the other end has never heard of Ally; the poster for Ally reads Amber when Vonda goes to quote from it. Vonda and Lamont get in an argument when he gets home.  Lamont experiences the horror after that, seeing the abducted girls transformed into monsters.  He gets a ride in his car, with the car under control of someone else.  This does not end well for him.


16. Back at the house, Vonda has more visitations from the abducted girls/monsters.  She gets to find out some of Lamont's secrets. The monsters come for Lamont (you will know why) as he's about to do in Vonda.  The baby decides to show up about then as well.


17. This segment has a happy ending, except for Lamont.


18. Sex Life Segment: Pink Snapper---Susan, Eric


19. Susan gets a call from her brother Eric while her drunken cop uncle Jack sleeps.  When she gets off the phone, he molests her again.  Eric shows up soon, and engages the uncle, even though the uncle is heavier, trained, and stronger.  Susan slams the uncle in the head with a skillet, very hard.  They take the uncle's car keys.  They take the car and put some distance between them and the dead uncle.


20. Eric wonders what to do. Good question. They go to a house where they have a connection. Eric starts screwing Elizabeth, which is a really bad idea.  Elizabeth's father Edgar recognizes that Elizabeth had killed Eric using the sexual parasite in her private parts.  Edgar shoots Elizabeth in the head, killing her.  Susan is upset by the yelling.  She races upstairs, misinterprets the scene, and uses a hammer to kill Edgar.  Great stuff.  Three dead and quarts of blood strewn all over.


21. She gets too close to Eric.  Elizabeth wakes up just long enough to mark Susan with blood.  The parasite leaves Elizabeth and enters Susan.  That was quite a penetration.


22. Susan survives this, and heads home to the recuperating Uncle Jack.


23. Poor Uncle Jack.  Sort of.


3. Conclusions
1. Long, odd, and out of date; not well executed.  Some problems might have been fixed in post, but were not.


2. One line summary: Horror anthology low on scares and humor, terrible on acting and cinematography.


3. One star of five; two blackholes for cinematography and acting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Jerky, grainy, low-res, low contrast, stupid camera angle choices.  Sound is half a step out of phase with visuals, such as speech.  There is a rotary telephone.  This suggests the date of the screenplay is pre-1980, roughly.  Some of this film looks like mediocre to poor 1970s work. In the second and third segments, the out-of-sync between sound and visuals was pronounced.


2. Sound: 8/10 Nicely ominous.  The sound was almost as good as the visuals were bad.


3. Acting: 0/10 Hire some actors next time.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Not executed well, but there were story ideas in each segment, and the ending made sense, given the nonsense that preceded it.  The editing was bad, the continuity was bad, and better direction might have gotten more out of the non-actors.

20131014: Horror Review---Absence

Absence

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 81 minutes, horror, thriller.
2. IMDB: 3.7/10.0 from 242 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 25% on the meter; 44% from 192 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 stars from 18,509 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Jimmy Loweree.
6. Starring: Erin Way as Liz, Eric Matheny as Rick (Liz's husband), Ryan Smale as Evan (Liz's brother), Stephanie Schmolz as Megan, Michael Angelo Covino as Randy Kessler, Tamra Meskimen as Dr. Young.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Liz was seven months pregnant.  She wakes up one morning not pregnant.  Doctors had no explanation for this other than 'you killed it.'  The police interrogate them, check their plumbing for signs of disposal of the fetus, have them watched, but found no sufficient evidence early on.


2. Evan documents Liz's recovery during a trip taken after the 'abduction.'  They stay at Rick's aunt's house, where he used to visit as a boy.  Evan is incredibly obnoxious, and his camera work is poor.  Rick and Evan are always about that close to a fist fight.  Evan even goes out of his way to tick off strangers.


3. One evening while irritating Rick and Liz, Evan's attention wanders to a light in the sky with accompanying hum.  Shortly thereafter, Liz gets another nosebleed.  Rick and Evan talk about the progress of the investigation while Liz rests.  Rick talks about how he built a crib for the baby, filled it with toys and the like.  He's deeply discouraged that anyone would think that the baby was unwanted.


4. Evan meets Meg, and the four of them spend time together.  When Meg and Evan go driving, they see an odd light in the distance; the car loses some functions.  Rick returns some of Evan's nonsense by referring to this as Sasquatch and the like.


5. The childhood story about Liz letting the younger Evan take the blame for burning the house was possibly a clue.  Their parents died about five years later when Evan was 12, and Liz helped raising him.  During the subsequent night, the odd light appears in the room where Liz and Rick were sleeping.  Evan tries to get in but could not.


6. The next morning, Meg comes by.  The funny light episode seems to be completely lost.


7. Then Liz has a moving lump in her right arm.  The symptom subsides, so they decide to go to urgent care in the morning.  Later that night, the odd light comes again.  Liz is gone in the morning.  Evan evidently has the camera on, but neither frames nor focuses it nor even points it.


8. Rick and Evan go to the nearby town.  Evan talks to Meg, who has little interest in helping find Liz.  Of course, Evan's needy, demanding approach did not help things along.  They look in the woods near the lake where they had recently spent time with Liz.  Still nothing.


9. They find her after a short car ride.  She's not in good shape, and coughs up some blood.  They try going back to Rick's aunt's house, but Liz coughs up more blood and they take her to urgent care.


10. They don't get there.  It's completely clear that this is yet another 'found film' fake out, not a directed, edited, and scripted movie.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Blair Witch meets alien abduction, done badly.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 2/10 Shaky camera, focus problems, bad framing.  There are stretches where the camera is just pointed at car upholstery.


2. Sound: 7/10 Better than the visuals.


3. Acting: 3/10 Ryan Smale is just terrible.  Erin Way, Eric Matheny, and Stephanie Schmolz were better.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Lots of filler in this one.  Watching Evan drink beer or voiding his bladder or doing bad impressions?  Who cares?  Is there ever a resolution, or are we just supposed to rely on movie cliches to fill in the voids?

20131013: Horror Review--State of Emergency

State of Emergency

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, 89 minutes, SciFi, thriller.
2. IMDB: 5.0/10.0 from 1,079 users.  Estimated budget, 1.3 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 27% liked it of 198 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.3/5.0 from 265,761 user ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Turner Clay.
6. Starring: Jay Hayden as Jim, Andy Stahl as Pivens, Tori White as Ix, Scott Lilly as Scott, Kathryn Todd Norman as Julie.


2. Setup and Plot
1. There is a zombie outbreak near a source of chemicals.  A red zone is declared and enforced by military personnel.


2. Jim, Scott, Julie, and Ix end up (various stories) at a basically empty warehouse within the red zone.  After some scrounging, they get electricity, fans, television, weapons.  They keep up with official newscasts.


3. They have time on their hands, at least in the first half of the film, and they get to know each other.  The men pick off occasional zombies coming near the warehouse, and a woman who was in the process of changing.


4. Ix runs out of insulin.  Jim goes to find one of the airdrops, which may contain medicine. Jim finds the drop.  He kills another human who was turning to zombie, and recovers the medicine and as much food as he could carry.  Ix recovers.


5. A zombie gets in through the sewer pipes.  This returns us to the opening scene.  Jim and Scott again successfully defend.


6. The military come.  They tranquilize all of them, and conduct extensive blood tests and the like, before releasing them.  Jim, Scott, Julie, and Ix all survive in physically good shape.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Nice low-budget survival thriller with zombies.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Endless filters.


2. Sound: 6/10 Two levels, quiet conversation and loud zombie encounters.


3. Acting: 10/10 Much better than I expected.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 No waves of crazed zombies, but a fair amount of thinking and courage.  This is more of a straight survival tale.

20131013: Horror Review--Rise of the Zombies

Rise of the Zombies

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2012, NR, 89 minutes, horror, action, thriller, aspect 1.78
2. IMDB: 3.6/10.0 from 1,358 users; Asylum Films budget estimated at under 500,000 USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 16% liked it from 142 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.9/5.0 stars from 146,637 users.
5. Directed by: Nick Lyon.  Screenplay by: Keith Allan and Delondra Williams.
6. Starring: Marial Hemingway as Dr. Lynn Snyder, Ethan Suplee as Marshall, LeVar Burton as Dr. Dan Halpern, Danny Trejo as Captain Caspian, Heather Hemmons as Ashley, French Stewart as Dr. Barney Arnold, Chad Lindberg as Kyle, Madonna Magee (11/11/11) as Vivian.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The zombie apocalypse has already occurred at the beginning of the film. 


2. The zombie phenomenon is treated as if it were a disease.  One of the major plot threads is the search for a vaccine.


3. Supposedly one has been found by Barney Arnold.  There's a refuge on Alcatraz, where Lynn and cohorts reside.  Lynn makes contact with Barney, and hopes to get the vaccine.  Alcatraz gets a major zombie invasion.


4. Lynn leads a small group to get the vaccine.  Caspian leads a second group looking for a new refuge in Petaluma.  Dan stays on Alcatraz to learn more about the disease and hopefully heal his infected daughter.


5. While stopping at an upscale house to get food and rest, Caspian's group gets taken out (except for Kyle) by one zombie.  Dan makes some progress.  Lynn's team has better luck staying alive, but are slow to get to the vaccine.  Kyle perseveres.


6. Dan makes some progress on his research, but his daughter infects him so he takes them both out with a grenade at zero paces.  Lynn's group barely escapes another zombie attack; they reunite with Kyle.


7. How could this turn out well?  We've got four survivors in Lynn's group.  The amount of (unproven) vaccine that Barney has is probably very small, and hence unlikely to turn the tide, even if there were enough people to disperse it.


8. Ashley decides to commit suicide out of desperation.  We celebrate with another bad couple of SFX.  Down to three now.  They are attacked again at a police station where they were stocking up on weapons.


9. At last!  The three survivors meet Barney.  Is it too late?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Despite 4 real actors, still a bad zombie film.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Variable.  The daylight work is crisp and good.  The night scenes tend to be useless on visual to the point where sound is the only guide.


2. Sound: 7/10 Just OK.


3. Acting: 4/10 My history with Marial Hemingway, LeVar Burton, Danny Trejo, and French Stewart is through much better properties.  Given the screenplay, I still like them.  The rest of the cast might as well have been cardboard cutouts with speakers. On the other hand, the onscreen presence of Ethan Suplee is worse than the zombies.


4. Screenplay: 0/10  Logic problems aplenty.  The vaccine pursued through the whole film is unproven, and how much is there?  The answer is next to none, with no fabrication equipment.  The whole enterprise is pointless.  The zombies cannot climb much of anything early on, then later they can scale the Golden Gate Bridge?  In several scenes, two or three zombies can break open locked prison doors, but later 20 of them have a hard time with a chain link fence door.  What was the point of Dan's efforts?  All of it seemed to have been lost.  Those are hardly the only problems.  Barney says he needs a proper lab so he can replicate the vaccine.  Where might that be?


5. SFX: 2/10 Cheap, bad-looking.  The splatter shots were especially bad, the micro-organism shots were laughable, the delivery of the baby (by Lynn, who killed the mother) was just ridiculous.  The grenade explosion was really bad.  The electrocution FX near the end were cheesy.

20131013: Horror Review--The Dead Undead

The Dead Undead

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, released 2010, rated R, 93 minutes, horror, action, SciFi.
2. IMDB:  3.1/10.0 from 613 users; estimated budget, 1.1 million USD; aspect, 1.85
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 13% from 325 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 from 95,582 users.
5. Directed by: Edward Conna and Matthew R. Anderson.  Written by: Edward Conna.
6. Starring: Edward Conna as Doc, Luke Goss as Jack, Cameron Goodman as Summer, Johnny Pacar as Travis, Matthew R. Anderson as Viper, Spice Williams-Crosby as Gabrielle, Josh Alba as Curtis, Laura Kenley (Chinn) as Megan, America Young as Shelley, Luke Lafontaine as Aries, Lance Frank as Lance, Billie Profitt as Lance's wife, Vernon Wells as Raleigh.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Curtis, Travis, Summer, Megan, and Shelley arrive at a motel after a long warm drive in crappy truck.  They all want to check in and takes showers.  Trouble is, there is no management present.  After a bit of a wait, they pick out rooms.  A child vampire almost lunches on Megan, but the others intervene.  Megan freaks out, but a shower and clean clothes fix it.  Shelley freaks out over a mouse in her room.


2. Summer watches (peep hole in the door) two vampires duke it out.  Travis shoots some zombies.  Megan turns after a couple of hours, and Curtis gets mauled by a zombie.


3. A van runs over one of the zombies, then people (perhaps) with guns come out of the van: Jack, Gabriella, Aries, Doc, Viper, and a couple more.  They proceed to mow down a couple of dozen zombies.  They encounter Lance, who manages to convince them he's not infected.


4. "Relax honey, we're the good guys."  Comforting words.


5. Zombie-Vampires (ZVs) are explained.  They are hard to kill at night, but die in the daylight.  The zv are fast, as opposed to traditional zombies.


6. Aries gets a scratch; they let him tag along a while before he turns zombie and they kill him.


7. He and Gabrielle discuss Valhalla.  Great, very old vampires.  The extended flashback to the meeting of Aries and Gabrielle was amateurish, bloated, stupid.  Also, the yellow filter did not make it more interesting, just more repellant.


8. Soon after Gabrielle detonates Aries, the team shoots her until she dies.  Who knows when she got infected.  Lance finally gets it that the commandos are vampires who are not also zombies.  The zombie problem came from vampires switching to cows blood; unfortunately, someone ate a cow with mad cow disease.  The flashback to Viper becoming a vampire was also not interesting. The flashback for Doc was just as stupid as well as repulsive.  They used the ugly yellow filters again.


9. It was good to see the Doc character die horribly, but not heroically.  Vanity films usually suck rocks, and Eddie Conna's effort here is no exception.


10. The ending does not help with any of the film's shortcomings, but it does hint at a sequel.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Wretched as a vanity flick, repellant as horror hybrid, bad SFX.
2. One star of five.  Two blackholes for acting and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Fairly good for film mostly shot at night.  The weakest point would be the SFX.


2. Sound: 2/10 Beyond boring and repetitive.


3. Acting: 0/10 Next time, hire some actors.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Bad dialog.  Ridiculous exposition of motivation.  Zero characters to care about.  Excessive flashbacks to cover the lack of top level plot. Useless cameo by Forrest J. Ackerman.

20131012: Horror Review--Strigoi

Strigoi

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. British live action feature length film released in 2009, NR, 105 minutes, horror, comedy, drama.
2. IMDB: 5.7/10.0 from 763 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 65% want to see from 194 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.0/5.0 from 51,173 users.
5. Written and directed by: Faye Jackson.
6. Starring: Catalin Paraschiv as Vlad Cozma, Rudy Rosenfeld as Nicolae Cozma (Vlad's grandfather), Roxanna Guttman as Ileana Tirescu, Camelia Maxim as Mara Tomsa, Vlad Jipa as Octav.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Vlad Cozma is almost a doctor, but he's queasy around blood.  He's an omega male, and is ignored and shown disrespect regularly, often in vulgar fashion.  He's the protagonist since he wants certain mysteries solved.


2. After World War II, the Communists stole a huge amount of land in Romania, sending a modern nation back into feudalism.  The landowners could get their land back after the fall of communism.  However, the rising capitalist/carpetbagger class finagled laws requiring that original land deeds be produced to successfully conduct such claims.


3. One of Vlad's mysteries was, "where is grandfather Nicholae's land deed?"  That takes up a large chunk of the film.


4. Early on, Vlad signs a death certificate, which he should not have done.  He never quite got those medical credentials.  The police ferret this out, and one of the detectives, Octav, uses this fact to force Vlad to assist him in the investigation of the death.


5. The third major thread is the matter of who is a strigoi (vampire) and who was not, along with whether the strigoi exist or not.  The strigoi make Vlad's other two investigations that much more difficult.


6. By the end of the film, Vlad is no longer the omega male.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary:  Class warfare plus vampire issues in Romania.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Occasionally dark, but mostly competent.


2. Sound: 8/10 A little low at times.


3. Acting: 10/10 Just right for the screenplay.


4. Screenplay: 7/10  The plot was murky, but moves along. The conclusion was difficult but also satisfying.

20131012: Horror Review--23:59

23:59

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Singapore live action feature length film, 2011, rated R, 78 minutes, horror.  Spoken word, Mandarin with some English; English subtitles.
2. IMDB: 4.8/10.0 from 223 users.  Estimated budget: 600,000 USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and no audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.7/5.0 from 7,497 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Gilbert Chan.
6. Starring: Tedd Chan as Tan, Stella Chung as Shirley, Philip Hersh as Boss (voice only), Henley Hill as Jeremy, Lawrence Koh as Dragon, Tommy Kuan as Lim, Josh Lai as Chester, Mark Lee as Sergeant Kuah, Benjamin Lim as Captain Hong.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Young soldiers who speak Chinese share ghost stories about the minute before midnight.


2. Tan is the designated weak member in the group and receives a lot of static for it.  He gets tied up and stuffed into a locker in the middle of the night.  Bullying in Asia.  No surprises.


3. Jeremy tries to help Tan through the military training course.  The endless references to ghosts and past suicides keeps Tan on a downward mood. Jeremy tries to steer him away from this thought pattern, since Jeremy's early childhood included some fakery in the profession of mediums. This is the setting when the last, worst, road march through the jungle is undertaken.


4. Tan gets lost.  His pack is found, and the sargeant tells the recruits to go look for him.  It starts raining.  They find his body; Jeremy thinks he sees a woman watching.


5. The sergeant tries to blame the supernatural for the loss of Tan.  This captain will not have it.


6. The recruits are uneasy the following night in the barracks.  Jeremy thinks he sees Tan's ghost, for instance.  Making matters worse, the next morning Jeremy receives word that his father passed away.  The next day, while out walking, Jeremy sees an old woman gesturing to him silently; Lim and Dragon do not.  That evening Chester starts banging his head against the lockers, then speaking in a weird voice.


7. They bring in a priest for Chester; the rites seem to help a bit.  Chester shows Jeremy where he and Tan had a strange experience.  Something had grabbed Tan's leg and Chester had beaten it off with his rifle butt.


8. Jeremy's dream about Chester dying comes true soon enough.  Jeremy meets the two principal characters from a couple of the ghost stories told early in the film.  Dragon, Lim, and the sergeant find Jeremy, but do not see the ghosts themselves.


9. Jeremy returns home, and the gift he thought he never had lets him see his dead father.


10. The movie jump shifts forward in time, and the ghost story cycle starts again.


3. Conclusions
1. The Chinese ouija board was interesting to see.
2. One line summary: A thoughtful Asian ghost story.
3. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 A bit bland, but always competent.


2. Sound: 8/10 A bit bland, but always competent. It was loud enough for a Chinese speaker to understand, and perhaps a quarter of the conversation is in English.  The subtitles were fine.


3. Acting: 10/10 Wonderful.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Moves along well.

20131011: Horror Review--The Final

The Final

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, rated R, 92 minutes, 2010, horror, thriller, drama.
2. IMDB: 5.4/10.0 from 6,710 users.  Estimated budget, 1 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 13% on the meter; 33% from 863 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 294,731 users.
5. Directed by: Joey Stewart.  Written by: Jason Kabolati.
6. Starring: Marc Donato as Dane, Jascha Washington as Kurtis, Whitney Hoy as Bridget, Justin Bradley as Bradley, Lindsey Seidel as Emily, Julin as Heather.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The opening is in black and white, and is nicely done.  It seems to set up a revenge motive.


2. The shift to now and full color was a big one.


3. In a history class, the teacher quotes 'There was a price to pay for your actions,' from the past in China.


4. The setup is pretty clear.  The cool boys are big, heavy, strong, violent; they are entitled bullies and thieves to the core.  The uncool boys are smaller, perhaps decent at some time in their lives, and vulnerable to the cool boys.  The cool girls have ample bosoms, expensive clothes, no shame, and plenty of contempt for girls they think of as uncool.


5. The uncool boys and girls plot revenge based in the present, and the viewer is expected to enjoy it based on the imbalances exposed in the narrative.  Filmed in Dallas?  Not a surprise there.  It is odd that Texas accents are largely absent.


6. There's a party where the uncool kids spiked the drinks.  They chain up all the cool kids.


7. "The good news is, we don't plan to kill you.  The bad news is, you will wish that we had."  Unfortunately, the uncool kids talk too much.


8. The rest of the film is about torture and death, plus a little hunting humans at night in the woods.


9. The plot is pretty thin, in other words.  The middle part is overly long and slow.  Get on with it.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: High school in Dallas: the uncool ambush the cool with too many speeches.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Absolutely beautiful.  Unfortunately, degenerate teens are onscreen almost all the time.  Still, the visuals are extra fine in HD streamed from Netflix.  The film looked mediocre at best on standard definition when I saw it the first time on satellite TV.


2. Sound: 10/10 Fine.  There is music, but it is not leveled up 20db, which is all too common.


3. Acting: 6/10 OK given the screenplay.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 The adults are largely absent or impotent or complicit or corrupt. The teens are shallow and entitled and violent.  Got it.  There's about 15 minutes of plot spread over 92 minutes.  An uncool adult (Vietnam hero screwed over by American society) does show a minor counter-current of integrity toward the end.

20131011: Horror Review--The Devil Inside

The Devil Inside

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film 2012, rated R, 83 minutes, horror, mys
2. IMDB: 4.1/10.0 from 24,467 users; estimated budget, 1 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 6% on the meter; 22% of 43,573 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.1/5.0 from 441,790 users.
5. Directed by: William Brent Bell; written by William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman.
6. Starring: Fernande Andrande as Isabella Rossi, Simon Quarterman as Father Ben Rawlings, Evan Helmuth as Father David Keane, Ionut Grama as Michael Schaeffer,  Suzan Crowley as Maria Rossi, Bonnie Morgan as Rosa Sorlini.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The opening snippet was from 30oct1989 detailing a 911 call.  The caller, Maria Rossi, claims to have killed three people.


2. We jump the shark immediately thereafter.  The next part of the film is 'found footage' or whatever nice phrase one uses to describe Blair Witch style worse-than-useless camera work.  Someone follows the cops around the crime scene.


3. Priest in the kitchen with the monkey wrench to the head.  Nun bludgeoned in the basement with something.  Priest hung in the basement with the rope.  Signs that a chair was used to restrain a subject.


4. The daughter, Isabella Rossi does a film (oi, film within a film) to help Isabella understand what went on with her mother.  This film is not very good either.  It's sort of better than the police mess, but not by that much.


5. The interleaved television station news footage also sucked rocks.  The main part of the narrative (outside experts who are not in Isabella's film) is recorded in a fourth style, which looks quite competent.  The many cuts among these styles makes the film look like a hodge-podge of nonsense circling the bowl after flushing.


6. After being found not guilty by reason of insanity, Maria was committed to the South Hartford State Asylum.  A bit later, Maria is transferred to the Centrino Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Rome, Italy.  This is curious.  One hopes for future exposition of motivation.  Some facts came to Isabella in May of 2009 from her father.  Maria was the restrained subject in the room; the two priests and the nun were performing an exorcism on Maria.  The father died three days later.


7. Eight minutes in.  I hate this movie.  Isabella's film is so badly made it hurts to watch it.


8. Isabella contacts the exorcism school, and they allow her to conduct interviews and to film classes and the like.  Nice of them; of course, they have been doing who knows what to Maria for 20 years.


9. The video of the possessed patients that is shown in the school is of a fifth style, which is the worst of them all: grey on grey, low contrast, small images, iffy sound.


10. The admission to Centrino was described to Isabella's father by the Church as an act of forgiveness.  Perhaps the Church was asking for forgiveness from him for what they did to his wife.


11. Isabella's film traces her route into Centrino, then her discussion with the chief medic, then the first visit with Maria.  Maria is largely non-responsive.  Maria keeps saying connect the cuts for a while.  She does not recognize Isabella or the likelihood of her being her daughter.  She tells Isabella that she should not have killed her child, then goes off the deep end.


12. She meets with two of the exorcists, Ben Rawlings and David Keane, and shows them the interviews.  Isabella and the exorcists delve into what's legal and not regarding exorcisms post 1999, when the Church changed the rules on the subject.  They convince Isabella and crew to witness one of their off-the-books exorcisms.


13. That involved quite a performance by Bonnie Morgan.


14. Isabella, Keane, and Rawlings discuss what, if anything, they can do for Isabella's mother Maria.


15. They finagle getting into Centrino and seeing Maria semi-privately with Maria in a highly medicated state.  Maria goes to sleep on them, which is a sign that they are barking up the wrong tree.  The Maria goes off on them, screaming with eyes widely dilated, and then proceeding to say all sorts of nasty things, in German and English.


16. The hospital staff intervene.  No surprise there.


17. They consider options; they could approach the Church with the new video, or they could use Doctor Costa's recommendation might get a transfer back to the States.


18. Things start to fall apart toward the end.  The camera man, the exorcists, and Isabella are all upset and on edge.  The Church is investigating the incident at Centrino, for one thing, and Michael is feeling massively unappreciated.  David nearly drowns a baby that he was baptizing.  Things get worse after that.


3. Conclusions
1. Minus two stars for using Blair Witch style to such bad effect.  The URL www.TheRossiFiles.com does not point to a healthy page.
2. One sentence summary:  The Exorcist descends into a Blair Witch style pseudo-documentary.
3. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10  Uses many styles, most of which are terrible to look at.


2. Sound: 6/10 Uneven.


3. Acting: 8/10 The actors are fairly good at faking documentary style. The contortionist Bonnie Morgan was impressive as Rosa Sorlini.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Reasonably good for clear narrative and exposition of motivations. I would have rated this four stars if the camera work had been competent.

20131011: Horror Review--Rites of Spring

Rites of Spring

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, NR, 80 minutes, horror.
2. IMDB: 4.6/10.0 from 839 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 17% on the meter, 14% from 218 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.9/5.0 from 63,020 users.
5. Written and directed by: Padraig Reynolds.
6. Starring: AJ Bowen as Ben Geringer, Andrew Breland as Tommy Geringer, Anessa Ramsay as Rachel Adam, Sonny Marinelli as Paul Nolan, Katherine Randolph as Amy, James Bartz as Ryan Hayden, Shannah Forrestall as Gillian Hayden, Andrew Breland as Tommy Geringer, Hannah Bryan as Alyssa Miller, Sarah Pachelli as Jessica, Skylar Burke as Kelly, Marco St John as The Stranger.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Opening inter-titles: high school senior young women go missing, year after year, since 1984.  The film has already jumped the shark.  That sort of thing would have been stopped in well under 30 years.


2. Alyssa and Rachel leave a bar late at night.  Rachel is conflicted about having made a mistake at work.  Alyssa tells her to let someone else take the fall for it.  Their car starts, eventually, but they immediately get a flat.  Then they get abducted, taken to a barn, and strung up by their wrists by The Stranger.  The Stranger does whatever the monster in the cellar needs.


3. In a parallel thread, Ben and Paul kidnap Kelly, the daughter of Ryan, the principal employer in the area, and Jessica, Kelly's nanny.  They demand 2 million USD in 2 hours.  The kidnapping rolls forward on schedule, more or less.  Tommy picks up the money, but he also picks up Kelly's father Ryan.


4. Rachel gets free, then tries to help Alyssa, who is already dead by decapitation.  Rachel escapes and runs; she goes to the place where the kidnappers are. The two plot threads come together.


5. Ryan has Jessica freed, but Jessica is in league with Paul.  Jessica shoots Ryan, and Paul informs the rest of them that he and Jessica are taking the 2 million.  Then he kills Tommy.  Ben and Amy are left defenseless against these two.


6. Meanwhile, Rachel and the monstrous killer are racing toward the kidnappers.  No one listens to her, of course.  The monster decapitates Jessica. In the middle of all this, young Kelly breaks free and escapes.


7. Ben has an opportunity to end all this by killing Paul, but of course he does not have the courage.  Paul takes Rachel hostage and leaves.  Rachel keeps insisting they have to clear out.  The monster kills Paul, and takes another head.


8. Ben, Amy, Rachel, and the monster are left.  Ben and Amy go looking for a telephone, only to find the house of The Stranger.  Amy's probably out of luck, but when The Stranger starts to carve up Ben, Rachel hammers The Stranger.  The find Amy strung up on a cross, but the monster kills her.  Ben throws Rachel his keys, then the monster does in Ben.  Amy finds the car, travels down the road a bit, seems to find some help, but the one who could have aided her turns out the lights.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Kidnappers meet monster meets spring rituals.
2. One star of five. Two black holes for cinematography and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Camera shake. Intervals when all the frames are way out of focus.  I liked the 2.35 aspect ratio, which sometimes means that excellent cinematography is on the way.  Not here, not at all.  More camera shake.  Amateurish framing mistakes, inside-outside light level mistakes, ridiculous fades to totally out of focus blurs on the entire screen.


2. Sound: 7/10 Best part of the film.


3. Acting: 4/10 OK, given the script.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Corn plants that are 7 or 8 feet tall, with full ears, on March 21?  Perhaps not.  New abductions every year for close to thirty years with no solution?  I don't think so.  The monster had minutes of opportunity to do in Rachel.  He usually killed his victims in one strike.  What was the weird nest in the cellar?  Not answered.  Was this a crime movie?  Not a very good one.  Was it a horror movie?  Not a convincing one or a scary one.

20131010: Horror Review--12/12/12

12/12/12

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2012, rated R, 85 minutes, horror.
2. IMDB: 1.9/10.0 from 257 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 7% liked it from 126 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.4/5.0 from 104,494 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Jared Cohn.
6. Starring: Sarah Malakul as Veronica Delgado, Jesus Guevara as Mahari, Steve Hanks as Detective Barnes, Carl Donelson as Carlos Delgado, Laura Alexandra Ramos as Gabriella Martinez, Samantha Stewart as Officer Vokel.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film opens with a human sacrifice in some dark underground cultist den.


2. Then it jump shifts to a difficult birthing (Veronica, Carlos) in a modern hospital in Los Angeles.  Mahari, the murderer from the first scene shows up; where did that come from?  He disappears after murdering another woman who was trying to breastfeed her newborn.  The arrogant physician goes to C-section after kicking out Carlos.  This newborn is not delivered; he escapes.  Even better, the 'newborn' never moves, but somehow kills the physician and the attending nurse.  Someone else closes up Veronica, and she seems happy and calm while breast feeding the monster that just killed two people.


3. What a fine beginning that was.  Mahari, still in physician's garb, tries to enter the crime scene, but the cops prevent it.


4. Six days later, Carlos, Veronica, and Sebastian go home.  Soon odd occurrences start: the flies, the dead rat, Sebastian getting between Veronica's legs, Carlos pouring a kettle full of boiling water down his own throat, and Mahari shows up to try to steal Sebastian.


5. When the cops show up, Child Social Services take Sebastian. ("We're the good guys, Mrs. Delgado." )


6. Veronica goes to stay with her sister Gabriella Martinez.  On the way to the baby lockup, CSS Officer Vokel gets killed by her seat belt.  Barnes returns Sebastian to Veronica, saying a judge ordered it.  Gabriella lets Barnes know she's still sore about CSS taking her child Brittany from her.


7. The weird events start up again, of course.  Barnes lets them know that Mahari is on their radar; he's a Mayan prophecies doomsayer.


8. Sebastian kills Gabriella.  This was entirely unbelievable.  Mahari kills a variety of people.  Sebastian goes off on his own.  The dead rats and dead birds continue to be produced.  The murders continue.


9. Does this thing ever reach some sort of resolution?  About 60 minutes in, the fall into random events with no particular narrative, motivation, or logic is next to complete.  Unfortunately, the film continues.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Numerology plus Mayan 2012 bovine scatology.
2. One star of five; two black holes for SFX and screenplay


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Jerky camera movement; some of it so out of focus and badly framed that one would think the Blair Witch was nearby.


2. Sound: 5/10 Overbearing in some spots, quite weak in others.


3. Acting: 4/10 OK given the screenplay, I guess.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 The birthing scene was a motivational mess.  I suppose births have been handled that badly, but I certainly hope not.  The C-section birth has all the realism and logical soundness of a Chucky movie. The later actions have the same sort of problems with credibility.  The badness just never ends.


5. SFX: 0/10 Hideous.  Insulting to almost any sensibility.  The scenes with Sebastian are ridiculous. 

20131010: Horror Review--11/11/11

11/11/11

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, released 2011, rated R, 87 minutes, horror, drama.
2. IMDB: 2.5/10.0 from 791 users;
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 23% liked it among 263 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 213,070 users.
5. Directed by: Keith Allan
6. Starring: Jon Briddell as (Prof.) Jack Vales, Erin Coker as Melissa Vales, Hayden Byerly as Nathan Vales, Tracy Pulliam as Janice Karpinsky, Madonna Mcgee as Annie, David Bertolami as Chris Demms, Rebecca Sigl as Sarah Blight, Aurelia Scheppers as Denise, Lauren Dobbins Webb as Rhonda.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Jack, Melissa, and Nathan move to a new town and a new house in University housing.


2. At least three of the neighbors knew that Nathan's birthday was coming right up.  There's a bad sign if there ever was one!  The active hornets' nest was another, especially since the editor keeps cutting to it.  The rotten meat in Jack's office desk was a third; the claw marks on the family room wall should probably count as well.  The fellow who came by to fix the claw marks takes one look, runs away, gets hit by a car.  A door slams shut, followed by windows slamming shut and glass breaking.  Good start.


3. Melissa has an unexpected bleeding event which leads her to find out she's pregnant.  Her new doctor prescribes complete bed rest coupled with getting a nanny for Nathan and a nurse for Melissa.  The neighbor across the street falls, is impaled, and dies.  All sorts of clues come from neighbors and Jack's co-workers at the University.


4. The nurse is rather sinister, but the nanny Rhonda seems light and pleasant.  Denise beats the living crap out of her, muscles in on the job, including stealing Rhonda's mobile phone.  She majors in comparative religions and works part time at a butcher shop.  Great stuff.


5. This goes on and on: 'significant event' after significant event, right up to the end.  Unfortunately, the film brings none of this significance to fruition.


3. Conclusions
1. The ratio of netflix viewers versus RT audience is over 800.  Not too many people were willing to pay theater prices for this one.
2. One line summary: A bad film about numerology and satan worship.
3. One star of five; two blackholes for acting and screenwriting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 For daylight portions, the fundamentals were good. The filming during the first ritual sacrifice was hideously bad.  The night sequences were spotty.


2. Sound: 7/10 Probably the best part of the film.


3. Acting: 0/10 There were so many bad performances.  Hayden Byerly was terrible.  Aurelia Scheppers was a disaster.  None of the adult actors were worth much either.  Jon Briddell, as the clueless father, was the worst of them all.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Lots of bad execution. Very little of the action makes direct sense. Motivation?  Forget that.  A handcuffed, willful, incredibly stupid teenager escapes from the inside of a locked police car from the back seat, just seconds before the car explodes?  I don't think so.  Jack could have saved his wife by lifting the cord.  Jack murdering people to save the son who killed his wife?  What goes here?  Not logic.  The ending did not present resolution or clarification; rather, the ending seemed to deny so much of the rest of the film. The SFX were just sad.