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MY CALL: I wouldn’t call this film a conquest for the genre, but instead just a stop on the tour of ludicrous 80s horror films to be enjoyed.  Impotent acting and incontinent story synthesis are somewhat redeemed by creepy atmosphere and a diversity of moderate effects.  MOVIES LIKE The Church:  Looking for more bonkers 80s horror that fails to keep a straight face?  Try The Gate (1987), Society (1989), or any of the Italian horror mentioned in this review.

Let’s get something straight, people. This movie is weird.
Like…demon copping a feel weird!

The 80s blessed horror fans with numerous bonkers Italian movies with randomly fragmented stories—especially when considering Fulci’s (Conquest, Aenigma, Manhattan Baby) contributions.  These films are seldom “good” but often enjoyed at the very least, if not celebrated.  Today’s surreal film is such a movie…

Watch for a young Asia Argento.

We begin with a group of knights following some weird dude into a cave to meet an accused witch with a cross-shaped stigmata on her foot.  Upon visual (and laughably momentary) confirmation of her damnation, they naturally kill her and everyone in her obviously Satanic village.  Seems practical that a single purported witch results in citywide extermination, right?  Among the montaged savagery we find scores of bloody corpses, some of them naked, piled in a mass grave.  The site is blessed, they drop a giant cross on the pile of bodies and they build a church atop the macabre mass to “trap the demon” forever.  This sets the tone for a brutal Italian gorefest—and there are several somewhat gory efforts—but that’s not exactly what we’re in for…this is more eerie than gory.

Skip to present day and we find our gigantic gothic cathedral led by an inordinately venerable (and weird) priest.  Not sure if this is normal, but the church recently hired a new librarian, a young woman (Barbara Cupisti; Opera, Cemetery Man) to restore its art, and contractors jackhammering away in the catacombs below.  Pretty active for a European church, isn’t it?  Anyway, there seem to be some hidden cavities and caverns below the church and an old parchment scroll discovered in its walls begins to unravel mystery and subsequent mayhem.

Our intrigued librarian Evan (Tomas Arana; Gladiator, Frankenfish) believes that artefacts and secrets are hidden away buried beneath cathedrals, and this ignites his sense of adventure and discovery.  Do they grant supernatural power or other-worldly knowledge?  Who knows…let’s find out!  He solves the encrypted scroll, searches for “a stone with seven eyes” found atop the mass grave’s cross and resembling a mixture of Lovecraftian tentacles and the demon Baphomet.  It seals an abyss below and, as in The Gate (1987), some accidently drawn blood opens this infernal doorway.

Perhaps now partially possessed, Evan starts acting super weird…in fact, the whole movie starts getting super weird.  He pulls out his own beating heart for no reason at all, there is a demon goat home invasion, Evan turns into a sex-hungry creeper and he aims some of his unwanted affections toward a very young Asia Argento (Mother of Tears, Demons 2), Asia’s dad kills someone with a spiked fence and then suicidally jackhammers himself through the stomach to “finish” opening the infernal gate, an elaborate Indiana Jones mechanism is triggered to lock down the church and trap its occupants, more people get briefly possessed, a monstrous amphibian leaps out of the holy water and attacks someone…

…trapped people get feverish and delusional, an old lady uses her husband’s severed head to ring the church bells, a demon cops a feel of a girls bare butt, the old priest goes mad and gets impaled, there’s a mirror who’s reflection shouldn’t be trusted, and a sex scene with a goat demon and a woman on an altar.  Some of these things seem to be hallucinations whereas others are really happening but, as the movie viewer, I’m questioning my own sanity while watching this hilariously eerie nonsense transpire.  No clue why any of it is happening…but it’s happening!  So many bonkers things happen in this movie and it culminates in a giant mass of conjoined bodies emerging from the depths.  It reminded me of Society (1989) for just a moment, but not nearly as perverted.

The acting is completely stale and it feels like every scene was shot in a single, unrehearsed take.  And while the pace of this film could certainly be quicker, I enjoyed the creepy atmosphere.  The first act played out much more like an eerie mystery than a horror story and this set a solidly uneasy tone—one of the best aspects of this movie, by the way.  I may have wanted a more blatant gorefest, but the healthy diversity of moderate effects complemented the tone well.

Although not directed by Dario Argento (Phenomena), this film (originally released as La Chiesa) certainly wears his mark.  Rather Italian director Michele Soavi (Cemetery Man) is responsible for this zany Italian horror film.  I wouldn’t call this film a conquest for the genre, but instead just a stop on the tour of ludicrous 80s horror films to be enjoyed.  Aside from the impotent acting and incontinent story synthesis, a lot was left to be desired in terms of special effects, make-up and gore…none of which offered what I’d expect for a lower budget 80s flick.  Although the effort was readily apparent especially when the woman’s face is smashed (like a birthday cake; no really, it looked like a birthday cake!) onto a subway car and the mirror’s reflection scenes.  The macabre mass of bodies at the end was satisfactorily messy, yet should have been more harrowing.  But it just shows up briefly, then is dispatched; it doesn’t “do” anything but appear and shake a few limbs.  Similar can be said for the entertaining goat demon, which doesn’t really do anything other than look pretty neat…and have sex with someone.  LOL.

The movie ends typically, implying that the cycle of evil will continue but presenting it in a way that will draw no grins of satisfaction.  This was surely entertaining to this campy horror fan, but also surely not so great.

MY CALL:  One of the finer horror movies of the 90s, this film is an under-recognized masterpiece.  I’d recommend this to fans of Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft, and any movies that feature strong ancient evil-rooted stories and tentacled demons.  MOVIES LIKE In the Mouth of Madness:  Hard to say.  Just in concept, I’d suggest Dagon (2001), The Resurrected (1991), The Shrine (2010) and Bleeders (1997).  They all feature isolated locales and deliver us from rational thinking to an unraveled mystery.

If enough people believe in something, does it become a reality?  Such is the question John Carpenter (Halloween, They Live, The Thing) horrifically personified with In the Mouth of Madness, which perhaps strikingly alludes to H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.  The script wasn’t adapted from any specific piece of Lovecraft’s work, yet you’ll find his influence throughout the movie in the form of perversions of reality and time distortion brought about by an abyssal darkness-touched madness.

Noirish detective scenes introduce us to the savvy insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill; Event Horizon), hired to locate the mysteriously missing author (Sutter Cane) of a Stephen King-style book series that has cultivated a cult-like following.  Cane’s readers suffer from delusions, memory loss, and riot like zealots during book releases.  Trent casually diagnoses this as mass hysteria, yet suffers weird dreams of evil mayhem and murderous mutant people shortly after accepting the case.

Some elaborate puzzle-solving uncovers a hidden message in Cane’s work revealing his location.  So, following the clues, Trent travels to the mysterious town of Hobb’s End which has no business existing anywhere except within the pages of Cane’s novels.  Almost certain this is an elaborate hoax, Trent becomes increasingly obsessed.

Now well-introduced to the notion of madness, we encounter various symbols of wayward travelers as enigmatic bicyclists, Cerberus-alluding trios of dogs protect the town’s church, and a slimy malleable giant wooden doors leading to another world.  Among the townspeople we witness a contorted Exorcist crawler, mutant mongoloid children, people in a painting go from normal to disfigured mutants to tentacle monsters, and an old lady with “tentacle boobs” hacks up her husband…just all sorts of tentacle monsters.

This story begins rooted in a rational reality and gradually unravels into complete madness and small roles by David Warner (Waxwork, The Omen, My Best Friend is a Vampire), John Mahoney (Smallville, Gremlins 2) and Charlton Heston.  On the way, we enjoy a fine diversity of great Cthulhu creature effects, loads of strong Cthulhu concepts (even if only loosely applied), and a fine nod to Stephen King.

I was pleased with the acting, special effects, story, sets and character development.  This film is an under-recognized masterpiece.  I’d recommend this to fans of Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft, and any movies that feature strong ancient evil-rooted stories and tentacled demons.  Enjoy, minions!

You can download the pod on Itunes or LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!

We hope you enjoyed our previous episode:
The MFF Podcast #39: The Great Cinematic Character Trade.

SUMMARY:  This week the MFF crew discusses Christmas movies including Krampus (2015), Home Alone (1990), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

We also answer such important questions as…

“Is Die Hard a Christmas film?”
“Does Clark Griswold perhaps have a mental disorder?”
“What are the absolute WORST Christmas movies?”
“Were the bad guys in Home Alone actually really great thieves?”
“How would the MFF crew direct their own Lifetime Channel Christmas movie?”

LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
or head over Itunes so you can download, REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod.

Cherry Tree (Release Date, 1/8/2015; Video on Demand)

I just saw a trailer that had me stoked to this!  Making reference to such components as magical resurrection, the sacrifice of an unborn child and a coven of witches, this Irish film has me excited and optimistic.  The trailer’s shots and music seized my attention; dismal yet beautiful.  Written (Brendan McCarthy) and directed (David Keating) by the minds behind Wake Wood (2010, also an Irish film), we catch glimpses of some sort of webbed Species-esque (1995) cocoon, strange rituals and spellcraft.

On the Blumhouse website I also found all sorts of awesome, somewhat spoiler-ish screen shots complete with rituals, cultists, creepy lairs and monsters (perhaps a demon?).  All cool stuff, but I must admit that there is clearly a blatant overuse of giant centipedes in this film.  How’s that for a strange criticism?  But I’m not complaining…yet.

Unfortunately, despite my child-like excitement, Dread Central had a rather unfavorable criticism to offer:

“Compared to the well balanced, creeping horror of Wake Wood, this is amateur hour in the extreme. If there’s anything positive to be said about it, Cherry Tree does bust out some rather impressive physical effects work on occasion, and the lack of sexualisation of the coven is a nice touch. Battrick carries the film capably and manages not to embarrass herself completely amidst the torrential nonsense. But is that worth suffering the trip down this particular rabbit hole of absurdity? No. No, it isn’t.”

Does it really look so bad?  Here’s the TRAILER, see for yourself:

There is some absolute weirdness going on towards the end of that trailer, including some infernal MirrorMask demon lady!  Can’t wait to see this, but can’t help to be extremely worried by the available reviews–because yes, so far they’re all negative.  All should be warned by the consistently less-than-rave reviews of the film.

Cine-Vue wrote “the issues and problems cripple what could have been a gnarly genre piece…The pace is sluggish even when narrative events hurtle along like a freight-train with the brakes off…The film is nothing but a clumsy constructed yarn with a final scene/shot so cheap and misguided; it sums up Keating’s clunker with aplomb.”  Ouch!

Flickering Myth joined the dog pile and warned that “Getting a movie like Cherry Tree right is a very difficult task. Of course you want to take your movie seriously, but when you make a movie about witches and covens, you have to tread very carefully to remain on the right side of entertaining – otherwise you just end up looking a little bit silly. And in the case of Cherry Tree, the movie is just a little too silly…Being that this is a movie based around witches, ancient covens and the rebirth of the Anti-Christ, Cherry Tree is hammier than Porky Pig eating a bacon sarnie. The movie starts off innocently enough, but once the act of sex happens and the pregnancy begins, Cherry Tree devolves into an incredibly silly mess. Each passing moment is wackier than the next to the point where it’s laugh-out-loud funny. But the movie isn’t trying to be funny, it’s trying to be scary – which it fails at miserably.”

In case these reviews haven’t completely scared you away from considering watching this film, here’s the synopsis from IMDB:

Faith’s world is turned upside down after she finds out that her beloved father is dying. When the mysteriously alluring Sissy Young becomes her field hockey coach, Faith finds a compassionate spirit and much-needed mother figure. Little does she know that Sissy is the head of a centuries-old witches’ coven that uses the fruit of an ancient cherry tree in a secret ritual that restores life to the dead and dying. Offering to cure her father in exchange for a child, Sissy strikes a bargain with Faith, who suddenly finds herself pregnant with a baby that’s growing at an alarming rate. But with the clock to the child’s birth ticking down and the true intention of Sissy’s plans for humanity becoming more apparent, Faith and her father must stand together in order to save both their lives.

I am honestly someone who seeks the opinions of others before choosing my viewing options.  That’s not to say that I won’t see films which yield poor reviews, but I might de-prioritize them on my watch list.  That said, I remain to excited about this trailer and intend to ignore these reviews!!!  I’ll admittedly lower my expectations.  But make no mistake, I’m seeing this as soon as I can!

MY CALL:  If you’re looking for a campy Christmas horror anthology with a berserk Santa Claus, changeling shapeshifters, Krampus, creepy kids, zombie elves and evil seductive spirits—then this is for you!  It’s a decent flick if you don’t go in expecting much. MOVIES LIKE A Christmas Horror Story: For more serious holiday horrors try Krampus (2015), Gremlins (1984), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), Black Christmas (2006) and Black Christmas (1974). OTHER HORROR ANTHOLOGIES:  Black Sabbath (1963), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Uncanny (1977), Creephsow (1982), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985), Creepshow 2 (1987), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), Campfire Tales (1997), 3 Extremes (2004), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Chillerama (2011), Little Deaths (2011), V/H/S (2012), The Theater Bizarre (2012), The ABCs of Death (2013), V/H/S 2 (2013), The Profane Exhibit (2013), The ABCs of Death 2 (2014) and V/H/S Viral (2014).

This playful little holiday horror anthology opens with the general feel of a higher quality ScyFy Channel movie-of-the-week. But once it gets going the gore is more than adequate and there are some decently fun jump scares.  So I didn’t exactly have a bad feeling about this—just don’t expect high quality filmmaking and you should be fine.

This anthology bounces back-and-forth between four linked horror stories that can’t seem to agree when it comes to tone. As something of a wraparound story between segments, we have William Shatner’s silliness as a radio show host.  He’s okay, not great, maybe a fraction as charming as intended.  But he did his job—he got me to watch this movie after I saw him in the trailer and I chuckled at his scenes.  LOL. One little Easter egg is that Ginger Snaps and A Christmas Horror Story are both set in the fictitious town of Bailey Downs.

The first story introduces a group of young documentary filmmakers producing “Horror in the Hallways” about a years-past serial killing in their high school. It seems to take itself rather seriously while trying—and failing—to embrace the notion of personable characters who don’t know what they’re getting into like Grave Encounters (2011).

After our introduction to the first and more serious story, the tone shifts to something more tongue-in-cheek. Evidently the elderly have a special intuition when it comes to the evils of Krampus…and they tend not to warn others for some reason!  In Krampus (2015) the grandmother knows what evil looms but says little (and nothing clearly or in English) to try to save anyone.  In this movie, the elderly great aunt kicks out her nephew and his family after his tween son deliberately breaks a Krampus figurine.  Clearly an unforgivable offense—but the kid was being a little punk.

Meanwhile at the North Pole, after a self-mutilating accident in Santa’s workshop an elf becomes patient zero in a zombie outbreak of Santa’s little helpers. Now the tone has transmuted into fully slapstick, gory silliness.

Then our fourth tale, about a child behaving strangely on Christmas eve, is 100% serious. It’s hard to talk about this one without ruining it.  So I’ll leave it at that.  But it’s a neat little short.

These short films often feel sort of cheap—like they were the gems found in a Walmart horror movie bargain bin but just fit for Video-on-Demand. This movie is certainly joyously entertaining for horror fans, but its symptoms of weak filmmaking are readily apparent. The young filmmakers’ lines are poorly written, Krampus evidently hunts his cheerless victims by obliviously walking into traffic (like some stupid Sasquatch movie) and hoping the driver swerves into a wreck in lieu of running him over (although later he hunts them in a more appropriately fun manner), Santa’s expository dialogue was awful (but maybe funny in that respect), there were basically zero good camera shots, a girl gets possessed and immediately starts seducing teenagers with such Shakespearian prose as “I know you always wanted me”, and this was largely written like an R-rated children’s story that had to clearly and slowly verbalize EVERYTHING as if it was made for toddlers.  There is also no real development.  Krampus is mentioned, something bad happens, and now suddenly everyone talks about Krampus as if they have always believed in him.  Silly—just dumb and silly.

Furthermore, none of the mysteries are explained. And no, they’re not the kinds of things that are better left unexplained.  Directed by Brett Sullivan (Ginger Snaps 2), Steven Hoban (producer on Ginger Snaps), Grant Harvey (Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning), I’m not surprised by the randomness of quality and storytelling in this film—as this can be witnessed when comparing Ginger Snaps movies to one another. Just look at the varying quality in their respective werewolf movies.

But this movie was not without its share of bad horror charm. Seeing Santa slaughtering his elves was a great concept.  Even if the action/killing scenes were ill-executed at times, it always had me grinning even if I was rolling my eyes while I was enjoying the wholesale elf murder and dismemberment.  I enjoyed the mass “elficide.”  Krampus looked pretty cool and basically went all Mortal Kombat wielding his hooked chain like Scorpion.  And I loved how the Krampus-Santa battle transitioned us to the surprisingly satisfying ending.

This is not a “good” movie, but it’s a very enjoyable one!  Highly recommended to horror fans especially around the holiday!

You can download the pod on Itunes or LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!

We hope you enjoyed our previous episode:
The MFF Podcast #41: The 2015 Random Awards.

SUMMARY:  This week we discuss our thoughts on the trailers for the upcoming movies World of Warcraft, Cherry Tree, Kung Fu Panda 3, The Boy, Monster Hunt and Deadpool.

We also answer such important questions as…

“What 2016 movies do you think will be bad but you will watch anyway?”
“Is Deadpool the best thing to ever happen to Ryan Reynolds?”
“Who is the least threatening movie villain?”
“Will The Boy be any better than Annabelle?”

LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
or head over Itunes so you can download, REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod.

MY CALL: This underrated mix of body horror and psychological horror has a lot to offer more intellectual fans–even if it ends on a weak, loony note. MORE MOVIES LIKE Altered States: Possession (1981) and The Manitou (1978).

First I’d like to make a friendly disclaimer that I had not seen this movie before and, as such, my review is completely unbiased by any sense of nostalgia or past impression. That said, however obvious the film’s age may be, the plot did not feel numbed of its intensity as so many older movies can be. Director Ken Russell (The Devils, The Lair of the White Worm) and his cast do a fine job of mature, credible storytelling…at first. Later, it may go off the deep end a bit.

Pondering the inherent value of hallucinations, visions of Christ and other religious experiences, psychophysiologist Dr. Eddie Jessup (William Hurt; The Village, The Countess) experiments with sensory deprivation chambers and Mexican Toltec hallucinogenic mushroom rituals in search of deep inherent answers rooted in the 6 billion-year old atoms that compose our very bodies and which may, indeed, confer “genetic memories” under the right circumstances–that is, with psychedelic drugs.

The dialogue is highly intellectualized and well-versed. If ever there was an 80s horror movie for academics, this is it. Eddie engages in deep reverie regarding the inflexive oneness of Buddhism, resurrection and the self. Obsessed with proving his hypotheses linking our personal biological matter to the ancient past and, primordially speaking, “the beginning,” he sheds himself of all distractions…even his wife and children.

After a decade of experimentation Eddie turns to extremes which appear to afflict him physically. Doctors suggest seizures and trans ischemic attacks, but Eddie “knows” that his body is undergoing temporary transformations to more primordial states.

The sex scenes are not terribly graphic by today’s standards, but there’s something intense about them; not so much physically, but atmospherically. And whereas Eddie maintains a rigid mixture of academic focus and social disconnection, he is balanced by his colleagues’ (including Bob Balaban; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Lady in the Water) concern for his health and skepticism of his wild claims.

What present-day audiences may find hokey are the very abundant hallucination special effects. I’m sure at the time (back in 1980) they were trance-like and discomfiting. But now they look silly–although they get the job done of relaying Eddie’s mania and some of the religious imagery is a bit disturbing. But still quite pleasing are the pulsating physical effects as Eddie “transforms” into something more primitive which, for at least a moment, smacks of a less elaborate werewolf transformation.

Just as his genius eclipses his sanity, the film takes a turn for the worst into Looney Tunes land as the scenes of him running around as an ape-man felt quite awkwardly displaced and ran too long. The closing finale was weird…I’m not sure I feel satisfied with the outcome.

MY CALL: A pleasant indie horror film with both feminist and sexual overtones, Other Halves presents an evil dating app, a strong female cast and better acting than we should expect. It’s more playful than scary, the movie kills are weak, the gore is “okay”, but what makes this film work is some very likable characters. This is more for critics and film aficionados than general horror fans. MORE MOVIES LIKE Other Halves: Other techno-horror films include Smiley (2012) which uses Skype, Strangeland (1998) which uses old-school chat rooms and Unfriended (2015) which covers everything from Facebook and Skype to Gmail and Google.

Disclaimer: This review was solicited by the filmmakers. However, my opinion remains unbiased as I was neither hired nor paid to produce this critical review.

For more information about this film visit their official:
Website: www.OtherHalv.es
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4308714
Twitter: www.twitter.com/otherhalvesfilm
Facebook: www.facebook.com/OtherHalvesFilm
YouTube: www.youtube.com/OtherHalves
(includes trailers, clips, and behind-the-scenes)

After opening with a refreshingly honest commercial for the dating app “Other Halves” we cut to Jasmine (Mercedes Manning; Monster Heroes), who has just awoken naked, covered in blood, beside a dead man who was presumably her un-lucky date last night. Amplifying the contrast between these two opening scenes is that Jasmine reacts as if this has happened before. Uh ohhhhh…

We find the Other Halves programming team working out the bugs on the eve of their big launch. Rather than answering a series of vetting questions, preferences and filling out personal data, the app uses all of your online activity to summarize your “real” preferences to match you with your other half. The problem is that, in this case, the bug opens a psychopathic doorway to our most uninhibited selves (our darker half), which amounts to a bunch of sex and murder.

As the movie progresses people become “infected” by the app and a series of flashbacks reveal that some of them actually knew about the App’s flaw. But why keep that a secret? Well therein lies your story in this low budget techno-horror.

Now let’s be honest, people. There’s a good amount of full frontal nudity (male and female) in this movie–some of it gratuitous (okay, most of it), but some of it actually adding value to the scene. Now I’m not complaining about this at all. I’m just warning that you don’t go watching this with your kids or your grandmother. That said, I’d like to point out that there is a rather long shower scene in which we see Devon (Lauren Lakis; Lovely Molly, Witch’s Brew) and Jasmine completely naked for a good while. But what sets this film apart is that, and I shit you not, these ladies are seriously acting throughout this scene… totally naked, but addressing some pertinent plot points as seriously as if they were in an informal meeting. Bravo, filmmakers! I’d say you’ve risen above adding boobs to get teenagers to buy your movie and sort of made nudity cool again.

Some of the characters’ reactions were, at times, a little exaggerated. But this is to be expected in horror and, to be quite honest, the acting vastly eclipsed any expectations I had for a low budget horror capitalizing on dating and sex for its theme. I also found myself really liking a some of the characters, particularly the quirky optimist Devon, the geek-in-love (Megan Hui), and the rigidly literal socially awkward German Jana (Melanie Friedrich). These characters (these actors) offered up more than most horror movies deserve. And whereas the plot was quite basic, I never found myself bothered by its simplicity. The cast carried this film much to my satisfaction and they did so with the female characters bringing all of the strength for both protagonists and antagonists alike. The men filled more supporting roles–eye candy, love interests, victims. Even the female nudity was delivered in a minimally exploitative manner–even if gratuitous.

My only real complaints would be budget-linked. For example, there are a couple good efforts regarding the gore but the actual killing (except for a weak strangle scene), takes place off-camera. The ending also really gets overly hammed up–I guess I didn’t really care for that, or the “big reveal.” But sometimes simple concepts and melodrama are necessary tools to ensure your entire audience follows and understands the journey to its end.

Writer/director Matthew T. Price did a pretty nice job for his horror film. Am I going to recommend this film to general horror fans? Honestly, probably not. But I would recommend this to deeper and more thoughtful fans of the genre, particularly indie horror fans, who are always on the lookout for promising new filmmakers and underutilized concepts (i.e., techno-horror, social media horror, feminist themes). And I really like what Price and his cast accomplished. I’d like to see what this crew could do with a little more money and, no offense to the writers, but a little more experience.

A pleasant indie horror film with both feminist and sexual overtones, Other Halves presents an evil dating app, a strong female cast and better acting than we should expect. It’s more playful than scary, the movie kills are weak, the gore is “okay”, but what makes this film work is some very likable characters.

MY CALL: This bigfoot movie is not an example “amazing” filmmaking, but it’s a cleverly made monster movie that revitalizes found footage and reminds us that characters are far more important than creatures. Probably the best bigfoot movie since Harry and the Hendersons (1987), and easily bigfoot’s most successful foray in horror. MORE MOVIES LIKE Willow Creek: Afflicted (2013) and Cloverfield (2008) provide excellent examples of creating great characters. I’d also consider The Blair Witch Project (1999).

If you were to only glean the first five minutes of this film, you’d likely label it as just another tired found footage horror flick not worth your time. I consider myself to be a very open-minded critic and film fan, yet even I was thinking to myself “why am watching this…this couldn’t possibly turn out to be decent…what on earth makes this interesting enough to include in Five 21st Century Creature Features You Might Have Missed?”

But after about 10-15 minutes I realized that, not only do I not hate our main characters, but I might even like them a little…more their dynamic than the individuals themselves…okay, as the story progressed I liked this couple more and more. Jim (Bryce Johnson; The Skulls III) and Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) are a couple; one a bigfoot believer, the other a pragmatic and skeptical doubter. But we can see that Kelly has embraced Jim’s silly mania because she’s embarking on this Bigfoot Adventure vacation to visit famous sighting localities and interview locals for Jim’s documentary. This might just be their first trip together as a couple, and we get see them grow.

By the time I was halfway through the film I had to remind myself that this was, indeed, a “horror” film because, thus far, I had encountered nothing of the sort. But I didn’t mind. I may not think this film is “amazing” but I was caught up in enjoying watching this couple interview, banter and film their way through Bigfoot Burgers, local believers and witness testimonials on their quirky little vacation.

I’m actually reminded of the opening sequences of Cloverfield (2008) and Afflicted (2013). Now, these two films did a far superior job of this, but the similarity is that all these films had the ability to make me forget I was watching horror or sci-fi monster movies as I was content to just watch and see what was happening in these characters’ lives.

Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait takes heavily replayed horror concepts–like getting lost in the woods (Evil Dead, The Cabin in the Woods) and found footage documentaries-gone-wrong (The Last Exorcism, Grave Encounters)–and presents them with a less familiar spin. He doesn’t waste his time doing what every other filmmaker does. There’s not a single cheap loud noise jump scare, the movie doesn’t open with some brutal or provocative clip (to be revisited/realized at the end of the movie), and the film isn’t prefaced by some harrowing caption on a black screen. There are no gimmicks here, just two likeable characters and the story their journey has to tell…and that story gets pretty interesting in the second half of the movie.

The final act addresses the question: “So if you actually find bigfoot, what are you going to do?” In this case, it seems that bigfoot was looking for them. Long and generally quiet scenes are sporadically populated with sasquatch vocalizations, stick knocking and leaf-and-twig-rustling footfalls in the middle of the night. And they’re getting more frequent, louder and CLOSER.

This bigfoot movie is not an example “amazing” filmmaking, but it’s a cleverly made monster movie that revitalizes found footage and reminds us that characters are far more important than creatures. It’s probably the best bigfoot movie since Harry and the Hendersons (1987), and easily bigfoot’s most successful foray in horror. I’d strongly recommend this movie for a couples date night because there is zero gore, it’s more spooky than scary but generally it’s more on the fun side, and the couple’s banter is delightful.

MY CALL: This Austrian film is slow but stimulating, delicate yet brutal, and simultaneously sympathetic and cold. Some may comfortably pick a side to trust, but I found my sympathies indivisible across the tortured family. I’d call that a victory despite this film’s blatant premature predictability and a “great reveal” that falls flat.
MORE MOVIES LIKE Goodnight Mommy: The Uninvited (2009), The Visit (2015), Hide and Seek (2005), Orphan (2009) and Identity (2003), all of which do a better job at maintaining their mystery until the right time.
HOW YOU CAN WATCH IT: I saw this for free with my Amazon Prime Subscription.

Ok. Just to start out, I’d like to warn you that I confidently had this movie figured out after 12 minutes. No joke. I’m normally good at things like that–but in this case I think I was given a little too much a little too soon to piece things together a bit too prematurely. Now, hey, I still enjoyed this film. But something like this could spoil some people’s movie experience. On with the review…

When first meet the identical twins, Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz), they are refreshingly playing outside as young boys once did before the advent of videogame consoles, Netflix and the internet. They are clearly the best of friends and do everything together from hide and seek to burping contests on their large family farm estate in the countryside.

After returning home to recover from a terrible accident that initially goes completely unexplained, their unrecognizably bandaged mother (Susanne Wuest) is not greeted as warmly as she’d like–hardly a kind word is exchanged after the boys coldly deny her so much as a welcome home hug. Clearly any children would be shocked to see their mother’s face obscured by gauze. But this is more than that. In that moment, Mommy earns audience sympathy while being dehumanized in the boys’ eyes. It is evident that the boys doubt that this is, in fact, their mother standing before them.

Mommy makes her best effort to return to normal, but something is off. One twin (perhaps more disrespectfully than fearfully?) doesn’t speak directly to Mommy but rather whispers in his brother’s ear and, as a result, he is treated unfavorably.

More things hint that something is off. Mommy insists that she will not see visitors, the boys refer to what dad lets them do but he is never seen or mentioned otherwise, and Mommy essentially never even acknowledges the other brother as if implementing some form of extreme silent treatment. The boys’ somewhat surreal dreams convey the intensity of their distrust and other little hints (or red herrings?) abound, but I won’t ruin any of it for you.

As the story endures, the boys’ distrust only amplifies and so accordingly does Mommy’s impatience for their acceptance–which is never directly addressed. Their fantasies depict her as a something monstrous and inhuman–meanwhile they literally pray for the return of their “real” mother. Ultimately, the boys and Mommy turn to extreme measures and the film shifts from psychologically uneasy to brutal.

The greatest fault of this film–other than its blatant predictability–was that when the time came for it to reveal the truth, it just sort of “tells us.” As a whole the film still worked for me, and I’d even recommend it to anyone in search of something different from the horror genre; a change of pace. But realize that to some, this flaw may not be considered as forgivable as it was to me. Furthermore, I was delighted by the editing, cinematography and splendid acting. This was the first feature film for writer/director team Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala and I’m thrilled to see what they do next. There are some intense scenes, just a few with blood, mostly involving the threat or act of domestic violence. But we delve briefly into torture porn during the dental floss, cockroach and super glue scenes.

This film is slow but stimulating, delicate yet brutal, and simultaneously sympathetic and cold. Some may comfortably pick whom to trust, but I found my sympathies indivisible across the tortured family. I’d call that a victory.

For a less favorable, critical-but-fair second opinion on this film–just to hear both sides–check out this review [CLICK HERE].

MY CALL: As silly as it may sound, this neither scary nor gory indie Techno-Horror about a Skype session with a vengeful spirit was somehow VERY engaging to me. If you can get me interested in a film that takes place entirely on a computer monitor about a Skype call gone wrong, then you’ve succeeded as a filmmaker. Contrary to all expectations, I found myself introduced to characters that feel like “real people” doing “normal things” and reacting credibly to incredible circumstances–I liked them a lot. These kids all did a excellent job and so did the director and writing team!
MORE MOVIES LIKE Unfriended: Other technology-linked horror (or “techno-horror”) include White Noise (2005), Pulse (2001, 2006), Strangeland (1998), Other Halves (2016), Stay Alive (2006) and One Missed Call (2003, 2008).

Contrary to all expectations, I found myself introduced to characters that feel like “real people” doing “normal things” and reacting credibly to incredible circumstances–I liked them a lot.

After reviewing a video of her friend Laura’s (Heather Sossaman; Desecrated, Fairy Tales) suicide online and the embarrassing party video (posted by her “friends”) that led to her suicide, we meet Blaire (Shelley Hennig; Teen Wolf, Ouija), a cute normal teenager Skyping with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Storm). They playfully joke about blue balls and virginity and make plans for prom night when they are ambushed on a group Skype call by a couple of their friends…along with a mystery caller who joined the group. What’s weird is that this mystery caller must have answered for Mitch and Blaire, who was in the middle of a strip tease when the call was answered.

The group (Matt, Val, Adam, Jess, Ken) considers the mystery caller to be a hacker. But things get immediately more disturbing when Mitch and Blaire begin to receive harassing messages from Laura’s Facebook account (or whoever the hacker is)–so Blaire “unfriends” her account.

This hacker begins to type messages via the others’ accounts and uses their accounts (like Facebook) to post incriminating photos of each other, all the while insisting that it is, in fact, the deceased Laura. Conceptually, this may not sound so cool or edgy, but all this is happening in “real time”–so 90 minutes to us viewers is 90 minutes in the lives of the characters–and Laura threatens that if Blaire hangs up all her friends will die.

The only hokey thing about this movie are the deaths. While I giggled with satisfaction at the blender scene, the scene is choppy as if from poor internet signal.

This may annoy some viewers but I liked the flavor and it allowed this low budget flick work for me. Evidently Laura’s vengeful spirit is possessing those who slandered who one by one, and makes them kill themselves. She also gets them to turn on each other, playing vicious mind games with them.

Who’s up for a game of Never Have I Ever?

It’s all a little juvenile. But then, that’s simply the age group of the protagonists. And I must say how nice it is to see horror victims behaving in ways that largely make sense. They may not think of everything we would, but they are in tough situations which makes their absent-mindedness all too credibly human. What’s more is that they use cell phones, texting, Google searches, Facebook, Youtube, Skype and Gmail…making this the opposite of the communicative vacuum that is the “cabin in the woods” scenario.

I was especially impressed at the nuance in Mitch and Blaire’s message typing; the pauses, the deletions and rewrites, the delays while thinking about how to word something or whether or not to click send, even the scrambling between message boards and Facebook chats. It all felt very believable, very normal–but panicked. You really need to see it to understand, but this simple thing (i.e., the depiction of “typing messages” in a movie) has perhaps never been done better. This doesn’t feel anything like found footage horror, but something else altogether. I almost want to call it social media horror or console horror–“techno-horror.”

This neither scary nor gory movie was somehow VERY engaging to me–and I’m an over-analytical guy in his mid-30s. I’ve got to say, if you can get me interested in a film that takes place entirely on a girl’s computer monitor about a bunch of teenagers on a group Skype call turned-highway-to-Hell, then you’ve succeeded as a filmmaker. These kids all did a great job and so did the director and writing team!

MY CALL: This movie samples heavily from The House of the Devil (2009) and Housebound (2014), but lacks the stylistic magic of either. That said, I found this movie to be quite enjoyable. Not good, mind you, but enjoyable. The delivery is spot on for this otherwise ridiculous premise.

I know.  This job DOES sound too good to be true!

I walked into this movie with hopeful optimism, praying this wouldn’t be another evil doll movie disaster like Annabelle (2014; podcast discussion of Annabelle). I’m quite happy to say I enjoyed it…yet I would hesitate to call it “good.” It’s fun, it’s enjoyable (in my opinion anyway), but I could see a lot of people getting annoyed with it.

In the first half of The Boy our very capable director William Brent Bell (Wer, Stay Alive, The Devil Inside) samples heavily from The House of the Devil (2009) as we meet Greta (Lauren Cohan; The Walking Dead). Hired to nanny a young boy while his senior citizen parents are on a 3-month holiday–a little odd, by the way, to hire a nanny you’ve never met to meet your 8-year-old child one day and then spend the next 3 months alone with him as his sole caretaker–she travels all the way from America to a remote manor in England–so remote that, of course, there is no cell reception or internet access–only to find out that the boy is, in fact, a doll which the perhaps disturbed and elderly parents consider to be very much alive.

The delivery from the parents is awkward, eerie and a bit funny–probably exactly as intended. These nutty parents maintain a dire poker face while referring to the “boy” (strangely named Brahms like he’s some Austrian composer) as if this creepy doll could hear and understand them. But, just like The House of the Devil (2009), the pay is so unreasonably high to conduct such a (suspiciously) simple task that she stays despite the fact that her Creep-o-meter is reading an 11.  Oh, right, and the boy has rules.

As laughably farfetched as this premise sounds, I felt it was well-delivered and quite enjoyable. They got the tone just right. So if this movie isn’t for you, my guess is it’s because this kind of movie in general isn’t for you. It’s also not gory and more creepy than scary.

I know what she’s thinking.  The answer is yes, Lauren, this film IS going to reduce you to doing a shower scene.

And the answer is no, Walking Dead fans, you don’t see her naked.  LOL.  Just some upper thigh action.

My biggest criticism would have to be the needless addition of Greta’s crazy, violent, obsessed and abusive ex-boyfriend. He’s mentioned in the beginning to help justify Greta looking overseas for work, but after a couple more mentions it becomes obvious that we’re going to meet this Mr. Personality eventually. Thankfully it’s late in the movie, but the character adds nothing to the story. In fact, I found his presence aggravating.

After all sorts of needless drama picks up steam as we get on board the train to crazytown after “something bad” happens to the doll. Any explanation beyond that would surely spoil the ending. But the movie succeeds in maintaining an uncomfortably eerie atmosphere and some of the jump-scares were simply epic…for jump-scares anyway. I really enjoyed them.

This movie has a ridiculous premise, a straight-faced delivery, and it meets us in the middle with a very entertaining and in no way slapstick experience.

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This article contains images of prosthetic disembodied breasts and prosthetic naked bodies exploding.  No actual human nudity is present.  But, come on guys, you don’t want to get caught looking at this at work.
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MY CALL: No horror to be found in this gloriously raunchy slapstick horror comedy peppered with exploding hookers and rubber disembodied limbs. MORE MOVIES LIKE Frankenhooker: Basket Case 1-3 (1982-91), Brain Damage (1988), Killer Workout (1987), Death Spa (1989), Head of the Family (1996) and Hideous! (1997). Maybe even Puppet Master (1989), Ghoulies (1985) and Seed People (1992).

I have somehow gone 35 years of my life without seeing this movie, deprioritizing it, assuming it’s no big deal, sticking to the classics and new releases…boy was that a mistake!!! After just 7 minutes (yes, I paused and checked) of this B-movie madness I already know two things: 1) this movie is garbage, and 2) this is exactly the kind of garbage I LOVE!

We meet Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz; Street Trash, RoboCop 3), a man who has somehow been kicked out of three medical schools, and his reanimated Cyclops brain creature experiment that he is working on in the kitchen…and everyone simply thinks he’s just a little weird for working on a REANIMATED BRAIN with one eye on the kitchen table!!!! But his whole life is about to change when his fiancée Elizabeth (Patty Mullen; Penthouse Pet, Zombinatrix) is killed in a freak accident with a supercharged lawnmower he invented. The news coverage of the massacre is hilarious! Oh, yeah, this flick is something special for sure!

Jeffrey Franken is no Victor Frankenstein (2015). He over-explains his downward spiral into mad scientist mania to his mother as if reading a list of symptoms from a psychiatric manual. While comically narrating his own insanity he draws elaborate blueprints of electrodes over a body’s framework (and it has boobs LOL), power drills his skull to alleviate headaches, and has dates with his fiancée’s disembodied head. Needless to say the acting and writing are terrible (but maybe “good” for the bad horror genre), but this movie remains a delight.

Is it just me, or does it look like he’s designing a giant female bodybuilder??? LOL

So since Jeff needs perfect female body parts to bring life back to his fiancée, naturally he goes to the city and arranges a prostitute crack-whore party, plays doctor, measures nipples, wrestles hookers and watches them literally explode as they overdose on drugs–and we overdose on cheesiness.

Nudity and disembodied limbs abound. Jeff superglues and welds his perfect Elizabeth back together from sacks of spare hooker parts, a pile of severed breasts, and a trash can of severed legs with bunyans from extensive streetwalking.

Once Elizabeth is back on her feet after a deliciously B-movied-up Frankenstein’s laboratory scene, she stumbles about with all the twitchy grace of a newborn foal and sports a Sylvester Stallone lip sneer. Assembled from mostly hooker parts, she behaves like…well…a frankenhooker–all the way down to the undead sex scene during which she sex-electrocutes her first John to death.

Written and directed by Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case 1-3, Brain Damage, Bad Biology), this relatively goreless exploitation cult classic deviates from his violent normal pedigree, having not a scary nor brutal moment–it’s pure slapstick comedy shown through a campy horror filter. A few steps above the raunchier Full Moon releases (Head of the Family, The Killer Eye) or anything from Troma studios, this goofy flick boasts severed heads, abundant bare breasts, mutant monsters made of spare hooker parts and rubber limbs galore! It’s awkwardly weird, strangely funny and classically so-bad-it’s-good. The final twist is quirky campiness at its inappropriate best (think Sleepaway Camp).

MY CALL: This multi-dimensional movie equally boasts action, an alternate history based on a classic novel, a zombie apocalypse, and a gender role-rich love story complicated by the British class system. On all accounts, I’d say this film succeeded. MORE MOVIES LIKE Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: For more literary and historic figures fighting evil try Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) or Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013). Want more zombie-induced romance? Then maybe Warm Bodies (2013) is more your speed.

Best known for his work on the Zac Efron movies 17 Again (2009) and Charlie St. Cloud (2010), writer/director Burr Steers, boldly steps into 18th century England and tries to please horror fan and bookworm alike as Jane Austin’s complicated Victorian romance crosses paths with the zombie apocalypse in this sleek undead period piece. This is every bit as much a love story as much as it is a zombie action movie and its tongue-in-cheek comedy comes specifically from their admixture.

For the survival of our species the Victorian-era women have decidedly sacrificed some of their practice in the feminine ways of pleasantry to study the eastern arts of war in China and Japan. That is, of course, until finding a handsome man of means to marry well.

I went into this expecting something akin to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) or Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) in terms of action frequency, CGI and gore. Yes to the first two, but except for the gory zombie make-up/CGI itself (of which we see a great diversity) we don’t find the typically gut-ripping exploitative gore within the high production value. The amount of action is happily sufficient–though certainly not constant as there is a lot of plot and relationship going on as well. The fight scenes are not technically wowing–not like they got the choreographers from The Matrix movies or The Bourne series–but they remain very entertaining.

What this film lacks in flesh-rending it makes up for with stimulating romantic interests which will surely draw smiles as the dialogue often stays true to Jane Austin’s treasured novel. As Elizabeth Bennet, Lily James (Cinderella, Downton Abbey) does a fantastic job opposite Sam Riley’s (Maleficent, Ghost in the Shell) eligible but coarse Mr. Darcy. Douglas Booth (Jupiter Ascending, Noah) and Bella Heathcote (Dark Shadows, In Time) also deliver, and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones, Underworld 5, Dracula Untold), Matt Smith (Dr. Who, Terminator Genisys) and Lena Headey (The Purge, Game of Thrones, Dredd) provide various stage presence for the genre film fans.

There are a lot of scenes that will really stand out. The two fly zombie detection scenes and the church scene, to name a few, provided new flavors not commonly tasted in the zombie genre’s oft-rehashed brain stew. Most intriguingly is that this newer iteration of the zombie is intelligent. Not in the sense of the Romero trilogy zombie which slowly evolved into something more intelligent with each film (e.g., using tools, firing guns, enjoying music), but as crafty and manipulative entities hiding their zombiism and plotting against the uninfected. Now there’s a new spin!

This multi-dimensional movie equally boasts action, an alternate history based on a classic novel, a zombie apocalypse, and a gender role-rich love story complicated by the British class system. On all accounts, I’d say this film succeeded.

MY CALL: Just watch the trailer. If you really need to ask if this movie is for you, it probably isn’t. MORE MOVIES LIKE Turbo Kid: Kung Fury (2015), Manborg (2011), The ABCs of Death 2 (2014; W is for Wish), and various Tokyo Shock movies.

From the start, this movie is clearly an ultra-low budget flick that doesn’t seem overly concerned with acting quality. In fact, Michael Ironside (Extraterrestrial, Total Recall) gives perhaps his most ridiculously hammed up performance I’ve ever seen as some sort of evil tyrant in this post-apocalyptic Mad Max wasteland. Not one second of this film takes itself seriously and thank God for that. It’s part 80s action B-movie and part 80s videogame in theme and score, embracing its lunacy and running with scissors at top speed.

The Kid (Munro Chambers; Godsend) is a quirky young scavenger scouring the wastelands for trinkets to entertain himself and goods to trade for survival resources. He meets a bright-eyed, awkwardly idiosyncratic and perhaps mentally challenged girl named Apple (Laurence Leboeuf) who takes an instant liking to him…with a dash of stage-5 clinger craziness and equal parts adorable naiveté.

This attack legit kills someone…just saying.

This movie taught me a few things. For example, duct taping a lawn gnome to a baseball bat creates a dangerous weapon called a gnomestick. I also learned that the best way to settle a post-apocalyptic dispute is by arm-wrestling over hot toasters. Oh, and be wary of evil robots!

The adventure takes hold when The Kid finds Turbo Rider dead and dons his armor and turbo blaster power glove, which hilariously turns its target into explosions of gooey mess.

Written and directed by newcomers Yoann-Karl Whissell, Anouk Whissell and François Simard, this film feels rather innocuous until the gore graces the screen. Dismemberment accompanied by spewing red corn syrup and abundant gore-slathered chunky gushings beg us for forgiveness for the sinfully non-existent budget. And you know what? It works. I like watching torsos get quartered, blood geyser eruptions and bicycle-drawn disembowelment.

The connections to Fury Road‘s (2015) water tyrant and Soylent Green (1973) were well-intended, but didn’t fit my fancy nearly as much as the 80-90s videogame references to Zelda and the Nintendo PowerGlove. And despite its utter nonsense–best characterized by liquefying people and low-speed BMX chases–I “think” I enjoyed this. The combat violence was tedious at best (probably meant to be funny–but not so much for me), but I found it salvaged by the ridiculous gore.

There’s a pretty vast array of stupid-themed bad guys, saw blades and projectile buzz saws.

I find myself questioning the genre of this movie. It’s ultra-gory nature has made it an instant favorite to horror gorehounds, but it’s more of a campy action B-movie. I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s zany and bloody and funny, and that does it for me. If you enjoy pure cinematic lunacy, then this is probably for you, too. I will see that among movies like this, this is more on the forgettable side and I definitely have no desire to ever see it again. But I might be interested to see what these filmmakers do next, preferably with a bigger budget.

MY CALL: If you enjoy werewolf movies or off-the-beaten path indie horror films, I’d say you should give this film a shot. Steering clear of standard trope fare, it’s not particularly gory nor scary. But it has something I struggle to put into words for which it deserves a lot of credit.

MORE MOVIES LIKE Late Phases: The best werewolf movies would have to be An American Werewolf in London (1981; semi-humorous), Ginger Snaps (2000; metaphoric), Dog Soldiers (2002; unconventional) and The Howling (1981; serious).  If you want another utterly ridiculous werewolf movie, then move on to Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) and Howling 3: The Marsupials (1987).  Skip Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004), Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988), Howling V: The Rebirth (1989), Howling VI: The Freaks (1991) and The Howling: Reborn (2011). Cursed (2005; cliché-loaded and contemporary), Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004), Wolf (1994), Wer (2013), The Wolfman (2010), Wolfcop (2014) and An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) are also worth a watch.

Meet Ambrose (Nick Damici; We Are What We Are, The Sacrament), a blind Vietnam veteran transitioning into a retirement community to enjoy the late phases of his life after the recent death of his wife. But Ambrose didn’t seem to get the memo about “enjoying” himself. He’s grumpy, brusque, and stand-offish to the baked goods-toting welcome committee and even a bit coarse with his own son.

The first reluctant night in his new home is overcast by a full moon, an animal’s claw embedded in his wall, the death of his kind neighbor and the slaughter of his seeing-eye dog. Obsessed with discovering the assailant’s true nature, the seed of suspicion is planted.

I’ve gotta’ be honest here. The cast offers all levels of performances from good, to maybe decent, to stale–thankfully the more talented actors seem to get the most screen time. Oh, and I enjoyed seeing Ethan Embry (The Guest, Cheap Thrills) in this, even though his role was sort of weak. No performances are outstanding, but despite that this film seems to work quite well. And not because this is some “so bad it’s good” B-movie. No, that’s not what this is at all. This is a decent film that has something to show us in, thankfully, a manner that isn’t so familiar.

Directed by Adrián García Bogliano (B is for Bigfoot – The ABCs of Death) and written by Eric Stolze (Under the Bed), this film is far from amazing but it’s nothing to scoff at either. This horror movie succeeds on its own merits without the overplayed tropes of the gratuitous breast, the final girl or the intoxicated sexually active teenager. Violating all expectations, we watch as an elderly man plays our antihero. He discovers a supernatural threat, trains by swinging his shovel like a sensei, and procures silver bullets in preparation for the next full moon. Worthy of a few giggles, Ambrose shoots with stunning accuracy considering his impediment and the werewolf action scenes are sloppy, but I don’t think I cared. Coming in with low expectations, I ended up really liking this film.

I enjoyed the different approach to the hero, the unique retirement community setting, and the deviation from some standard tropes. But do you know what I loved most about this film? The practical effects. The transformation scene may not have been top-dollar, but it was cool and smacked of Hemlock Grove (2013-2016), The Howling (1981), Wolfcop (2014; transformation scene) and In the Company of Wolves (1984). The werewolf itself had a sleek look of its own, too. And once we start seeing it, we see a lot of it!  VERY pleased with the practical effects.

If you enjoy werewolf movies or off-the-beaten path indie horror films, I’d say you should give this film a shot. It’s not super gory (except for one scene) and not really scary either, but it has something I struggle to put into words for which it deserves a lot of credit. Again, it’s just…different.

If you’re not convinced and want a second opinion, read this: Late Phases: The Old Man and the Werewolf.

You can download the pod on Itunes or LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!

We hope you enjoyed our previous episode:
The MFF Podcast #45: The Best Comedies of the 21st Century.

SUMMARY:  This week we discuss, spoil, analyze and review three recent horror movie releases: the Austrian arthouse Goodnight Mommy (2014), the indie techno-horror Unfriended (2015) and Kurt Russell’s horror-Western hybrid Bone Tomahawk (2015).

We also answer such important questions as…

“Why would our co-hosts fit well into The 13th Warrior (1999)?”
“Why did the ‘real world’ food in The Matrix (1999) taste so terrible?”
“Would you be happy if you inherited the 13 Ghosts (2001) mansion?”

LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO,
or head over Itunes so you can download, REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod.

MY CALL: The claustrophobia of the first two films is rendered limp on this ship, the spirit of fun embraced in part 3 (which many disliked) is also missing, and I wasn’t rooting for anyone for the first time in the franchise. Essentially this fourth film has nothing that anyone liked from the earlier films. It isn’t really so bad as a random horror flick. It’s certainly well-acted, has decent special effects and production value, and it made for a breezy entertaining 90 minutes. MORE MOVIES LIKE REC 4: Apocalypse: REC (2007), REC 2 (2009), REC 3: Genesis (2012) and Quarantine (2008)–all of which are MUCH better.

Our final girl heroine spends pretty much the whole movie in a tank top.  We have an article that focuses on this phenomenon: The Tank Top Horror Film: A Horror Tradition.

Spanish TV reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco; REC) is rescued [picking up from the end of the second REC film] and sequestered for precautionary testing aboard a mobile laboratory on an ocean vessel. Finding herself in restraints, she doesn’t exactly feel “rescued” or safe, nor does she trust her new host.

This fourth franchise installment frees us from our most effectively isolated landlocked apartment building zombie siege and infected flesh-eating wedding to quarantine us on a ship. With no rescue boats and disabled radio communication, it seems that our militarized team of scientists have not only succeeded at finally isolating the virus behind the zombie epidemic, but also at sealing their own fate should operations go less than smoothly.

We have plenty of time to get to know our characters but I think we barely sufficiently give a damn about most of them, not nearly as much as with REC 1-3. Parts 1-3 not only laid solid foundation for personable characters, but did so while the urgency level slowly ebbed from completely innocuous happy environments to utter dire terror. Here in part 4 we are dropped into troubled waters immediately and neither we nor our main characters have their guard down for even a moment…not even for a 20-minute introduction during which we’d like for someone to think there was hope. As such, there is no hope that we’ll care what happens to these people and subsequently no hope that we the audience will feel the threat of “Apocalypse” as the title suggests.

Rather than being well-intentioned, altruistic or optimistic, our scientist-commander is viciously pragmatic and his coldness borders on villainy. This operation is tyrannical by his design and, spoiler alert, all his security provisions will fail. Cue the evil zombie monkeys!!! You heard me: zombie monkeys. Zombie animals alone don’t harm the legitimacy of a horror movie, but the way they are handled here does. They start out cool, then they go overboard.

Shipmates get infected, the gore and zombie effects are pretty good, and the action is high-paced. I’m entertained. The only problem is that I don’t really care. I’m far less invested in the characters and even though this is not a found footage film, the camera relentlessly shakes during zombie attack scenes (as if the Starship Enterprise got hit by a Klingon photon canon–you know that shake). But the camera is admittedly less shaky than the preposterous story of a ship laboratory that willingly sets its course into a dangerous storm…and they never explain why. This sequel bit off more than it could chew, feels way less credible than parts 1-3, and fell off the deep end into ScyFy channel movie-of-the-week quality.

The most interesting thing about the story is perhaps the very thing most people will find annoying. In REC 3: Genesis (2012), we were introduced to the notion that this zombie virus had a Biblical origin: demons! This movie builds on that idea and may or may not have borrowed some flavor from The Hidden (1987) and Guillermo del Toro’s parasitic worm zombies in The Strain. This development takes things in a zany direction that provides a solid disservice to its three predecessors.

This movie isn’t really bad as a random horror flick. It’s certainly well-acted, has decent special effects and production value, and it made for a breezy entertaining 90 minutes. So I’ll give this a weak to moderate recommendation. Fans of the franchise should see it (although I think it offers the least of the four films and will likely disappoint to some extent), zombie fans maybe, and general horror fans could skip it.

To writer/director Jaume Balagueró (Darkness, REC, REC 2), I must ask: “What happened?” The claustrophobia of the first two films is rendered limp on this ship (more a writing/direction flaw than the setting itself), the spirit of fun embraced in part 3 (which most people disliked for its deliberate drop in intensity) is also missing, and I wasn’t rooting for anyone for the first time in the franchise. Essentially this fourth film has nothing that anyone liked from the earlier films and brought nothing new to the table.

You can download the pod on Itunes or LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!

We hope you enjoyed our previous episode:
The MFF Podcast #47: Let’s Grab a Beer and Hunt Some Bigfoot Trolls.

SUMMARY:  This week we discuss, spoil, analyze and review Vin Diesel’s Dungeons and Dragons lovechild The Last Witch Hunter (2015) and Jane Austin’s contemporary adaptation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016).

We also answer such important questions as…

“What is the best superhero film with only one villain?”
“Why does The Last Witch Hunter keep reminding me of Constantine (2005)?”
“In out cold is it really possible to open beer bottles by hitting the cap with your snowboard?”
“Was Mr. Darcy in the right, or could we have lived peacefully with the zombies?”
“Why is there no Crouching Tiger Hidden Figure Skater?”

LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO,
or head over Itunes so you can download, REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod.

MY CALL: Highlander (1986) meets Constantine (2005) as our favorite immortal genre star slays his way through witches, monsters and magical spell effects using arcane tricks, potions and a FLAMING SWORD. YES!!!! This movie is for Dungeons and Dragons dorks who love Vin Diesel. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Last Witch Hunter: Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters (2013), Constantine (2005), Highlander (1986), Blade (1998) and Underworld (2003).

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Following the Blade (1998)/Underworld (2003) playbook, Highlander (1986) meets Constantine (2005) as our hero Kaulder (Vin Diesel; Furious 7, Guardians of the Galaxy, Riddick) suffers the Van Helsing curse to hunt criminal witches across the centuries. Vin Diesel’s immortal has gained no more wisdom or savoir-faire in his centuries of experience than Dominic Torreto has in his seemingly unending supply of heist movies. They’re basically the same coarse unkillable character, only one of them is a several hundred-year-old, flaming sword swinging hunter of the Dark Arts afflicted with a curse (eye roll!) of eternal life whereas Dom graduated from living life a quarter-mile at a time to $100 million dollar jobs across the globe.

They say Vin made this movie to erect a world around his love for Dungeons and Dragons and I’d say, as a major D&D enthusiast, he succeeded. The world-building may not be as refined as the program-infested The Matrix (1999), the enchanted academia of Harry Potter (2001), Avatar‘s (2009) xenoscape or John Wick‘s (2014) underground assassin society, but he laid down an ambitiously solid franchise foundation. Now I could write thousands of words making fun of this movie–poking holes in the story and pointing out things I think are silly or bit dumb…or very dumb. But at the end of the day, I really enjoyed it! Hell, I think I want more of these. Let the academics be critical and scoff, but I love Vin’s franchises (Fast and Furious, Guardians of the Galaxy, Riddick and maaaaybe even xXx, which is getting another sequel).

Parts of this movie feel like they’re straight out of an old adventure module.

This flick features an awesome diversity of witches, spells and magical items…down to flaming swords, the witch queen’s (Julie Engelbrecht) lair in a giant Game of Thrones tree, and even a Gummi Bear illusion reminding me of Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters (2013).

 For real, it’s like the Game of Thrones tree got infested with bark beetles and died.

But what keeps us from slipping off into the deep end is Michael Caine (The Dark Knight Rises). He plays his 36th Dolan, a watcher, confession receiver, advisor and record keeper to Kaulder. He is the humanity and soul of the film whereas Vin is more of the film’s flexed, sweat-glistening bicep. He is replaced by an eager-to-please Elijah Wood (Cooties), who is the Shia LeBouf to Keanu’s Constantine.

Caine dies but his apparently natural death was concealed by the darkest magic imaginable–“darker than evil.” Cue more eye-rolling. Phrases like “darker than evil” and constantly hearing Vin Diesel use the word “magic” verge on comical. Vin travels the world using pick-up lines honed over centuries on dim-witted flight attendants between Dungeons and Dragons missions to recover ancient artifacts. He even keeps a treasure horde in a secret vault like a high-level character in his chic NYC penthouse, afforded from centuries of saving up (I guess). It’s all very silly, even stupid, but there’s just something about this urban fantasy that appeals to me.

The witch queen resurrection!

In this world witches live among us in secret and, according to “the truce,” they cannot use magic on humans. Kaulder is the peace keeper, the Judge Dredd. And like John Constantine (2005), he keeps the balance and employs arcane boy scout tricks to detect magic. Oh, and his new girlfriend Chloe’s (Rose Leslie; Game of Thrones) bar is akin to Midnight’s hangout.

He also explains things a lot, simple things and obscure notions alike. I would have preferred more subtlety, but every time I roll my eyes it’s accompanied by a smile. Is all this blunt exposition perhaps deliberate? Well, let’s just say he actually makes reference to “a 14th level Warlock.” A classic D&D bazinga!

Have I compared this to Constantine enough yet? Probably not. Well Balthazar (aka Belial, a devil in the Monster Manual) is the bad guy, as was Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale) the baddie in Constantine.

No reason to be annoyed, though. Fun diversions come in all form of plague trees, magic potions, high councils, plague flies (crawling under the skin–yes, like Constantine), a monstrous sentinel (like a Bone Golem)…everything a Dungeons and Dragons dork could want. Except for maybe a dragon–they’ll save that for the sequel. And boy did they set us up for a guaranteed sequel.

This film does not deliver an original story–not even close. But the magical and monstrous visuals are a popcorn spectacle to be celebrated and our new gruff hero is familiar in all the ways we seem to enjoy seeing over and over again. Even if we’re not going to dole out Oscars at it, this flick is worth seeing, renting, even owning if you’re a Vin Diesel fan. And if you’re not, then you should’ve known better than to watch this.

If you decide not to be critical, then this will happily bring out the nostalgic geek in you.

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