Just Watched Movie (2011)

[Fenril]

- Don't be afraid of the dark. Shortly after her parents' divorce, 8-year-old Sally is sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend in an old house they have been restoring. The house where legendary naturalist painter Blackwood dissapeared decades ago. The house where strange whispers are heard at night, razors and scissors dissapear from bathroom cabinets and plates of children's teeth are offered near sealed furnaces...

The latest in the current wave of remakes, trough this one is only marginally related to the little-known 1973 tv movie.
I can't quite decide what I feel about this. It has a good mithology for the monsters (lifted verbatim from Arthur Machen, but there are worse people to emulate), an interesting tendency to put children in peril rather than adults and the cast tries so hard. But... it's just not scary. Either because it shows too much of the monsters too early (and gives us perhaps more information than necessary) or because the characters aren't quite developed enough to really care about them.
Average.

[slayrrr666]

My Soul to Take-When a group of friends find themselves being killed off one-by-one, they find a curse from a maniacal serial killer at the root of the problem and try to stop the rampage from happening. The concept here is pretty good and definitely has some legs, the early stalking scenes are fine and the film has some pretty good cheesy action scenes with the river celebration and the classroom presentation among them. Even the kills were pretty good and got some good stuff out of them, and the house finale is a real standout. However, the fact that this one doesn't seem to want to make up it's mind about what's going on, since it's a body-possession-by-the-serial-killer film, a killer-resurrected-by-his-own-curse film or a stranger killing people off under the influence of a curse, and there's ample evidence to support each one making for a lot of uncertainty as to what's going on. Then there's the absurd amount of time spent with a group of victims that don't really warrant the action and just make the lack of the killer's screen presence all the more obvious. Those are far more damaging than the good stuff, and really lower it a lot.

The Rig- When the crew of a storm-battered oil rig finds themselves being killed off one-by-one, they discover a giant creature has come onboard and have to fight it off before a rescue team can come get them. Wow, this must be one of the most disappointing efforts to come along, since the potential for this one to be awesome was frightening. We get an old-school style rubber monster, a creepy location with a creepy vibe during a time-period designed for letting loose with the atmosphere and a great premise behind it, but in the end, it hardly ever comes close to realizing any of it except for the atmosphere. Most shocking is the fact that the creature is so hidden from view that we barely get enough time to determine what it actually is, as no one provides any info about it nor is that expected, and the darkness during the attacks as well as the rapid quick-cut editing leaves even more to imagination. The fact that the creature attacks come so late isn't all that much of a relief, proving how boring the beginning is. Even the action at the end when they're hunting it down is substandard due to cutting away to a lame subplot that won't bear repeating and a prologue longer than the actual finale to hammer home how ludicrously short it was. Too bad, as it could've been a golden monster movie.

Chain Letter-After receiving and failing to forward a chain letter, a group of friends find themselves killed off one-by-one by a masked madman and must find a way to stop him before they’re all killed. A lot of good things here, most notably the awesome death scenes which are incredibly gory and a lot of fun, plus we have the added bonus of the unusual weapon for doling out the death that works really well and adds an extra dimension to the kills. Some of the kills are pretty suspenseful and definitely creepy, and the action presented in the set-ups are rather fun. The main problem here, which is what's really damaging to the film overall, is the utter cluelessness of them to figure out what's going on, waiting until far too late into the film to finally determine the true nature of what's happening and getting the proper authorities to realize the matter from there doesn't have any time to develop because of their cluelessness, which could've been avoided rather early on. As well, the cult angle comes out of nowhere and has so little set-up it's hard to feel for them since we know nothing about them, their purpose or even the motive behind this batch of kills. It's still watchable due to the gore and the kills, but a little more info would work well.

[slayrrr666]

Botched-Attempting to steal a valuable treasure, a group of thieves and their hostages find the building controlled by a psychotic killer and his sister who kill intruders in the area and try to get away with their stolen goods before they're all killed. A pretty strange horror-comedy, mostly in the fact that like so many of these kinds of films, the horror angle here is awesome yet the comedy aspect fails lamely, due to the common factors of either the joke not being funny or being weird doesn't make it funny. Scenes like the killer rolling around the corridors on roller skates to disco music playing on the speakers as a victim remains stuck through a trap in the area, using ballet moves to chase after a fleeing victim or arguing with the inside man about the job he's doing are just some of the different ways in which that's obvious, but as mentioned, the horror angle here is awesome with outrageously bloody kills, a mostly-imposing killer and some pretty neat twists later on. It's a lot better than it sounds, but it's still got some problems even though it's pretty watchable.

[slayrrr666]

Fertile Ground-After moving out to a secluded family-owned house in the wilderness, a woman begins to fear that the ghost of an ancestor is looking to be reborn through her unborn baby and tries to save herself before succumbing to a curse that will enable it to happen. An overall decent enough effort, there's some pretty good stuff here and a couple utterly aggravating ones. The initial mystery of the house and how it's built up are fairly well-done, with some classic old-school style hauntings of things reappearing or doing something they're not supposed to be doing just off-screen from their viewpoint or the old standard of a figure dashing by in the background, but as well the unraveling mystery of what's going on inside makes for some really good stuff. That makes the finale pretty interesting with it's action sequences of trying to keep the possessed figure out of the house, but the film ultimately suffers due to the utterly aggravating and totally irritating tactic of trying to force the fact that behavioral change is the main selling point of something horrific or terrifying in the course of the film, and instead of generating fear, it instills anger at him for the treatment inflicted upon her and annoyance at her for putting up with it to begin with. That also leaves a large segment of the middle of the film totally devoid of action, lowering it's momentum and pacing somewhat, but overall it's still not a bad time at all.

[slayrrr666]

Let the Right One In-A rash of murders in a small Swedish town has a young kid convinced his new friend is the one responsible, and upon learning of his nature as a vampire, tries to help him control his bloodlust before he murders again. A massively overrated entry, since not a whole lot at all really happens and it's more of a drama than a horror film, which I'm not personally interested in watching. The extremely long takes of silence or simply focusing on one specific image, the lack of energy in many of the scenes, the maddening way it takes forever to get everyone clued in to what's really happening despite it being plainly obvious from the start due to the type of attack a vampire initiates, it just really drags out and doesn't really have a lot of interesting things going on. The few attacks are awesome, including the cat attack and the resulting aftermath in the hospital, and the film does do a rather good job of employing a rather unused mode of vampire lore here, but it just can't help make up how boring it is.

[Fenril]

Oct 13, 2011 10:17:10 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

Let the Right One In-A rash of murders in a small Swedish town has a young kid convinced his new friend is the one responsible, and upon learning of his nature as a vampire, tries to help him control his bloodlust before he murders again. A massively overrated entry, since not a whole lot at all really happens and it's more of a drama than a horror film, which I'm not personally interested in watching. The extremely long takes of silence or simply focusing on one specific image, the lack of energy in many of the scenes, the maddening way it takes forever to get everyone clued in to what's really happening despite it being plainly obvious from the start due to the type of attack a vampire initiates, it just really drags out and doesn't really have a lot of interesting things going on. The few attacks are awesome, including the cat attack and the resulting aftermath in the hospital, and the film does do a rather good job of employing a rather unused mode of vampire lore here, but it just can't help make up how boring it is.

Sorry you didn't like this one. I'm kinda impressed that you seem to have figured out Eli's true gender in one watch, trough, as very few people have.

- Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Two youngsters "meet cute" in a train ride and end up spending the night together. Despite the fact that they are strangers, each seems oddly familiar to the other. Perhaps the Lacuna company has something to do with this...

This is a movie I took a long time to finally see. In principle it has everything I love in movies: an early work by a quirky director (Michael Gondry, later of "The science of sleep"), a good ensemble cast (Jim Carrey *can* act, it's just that he's seldom paired with a good director or script), a solid "low" science-fiction premise that's more focused on personal drama than dumb action scenes... What had been turning me away from this was the scriptwriter.
I know "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" are cult favorites, but I never quite liked them and frankly I find Charlie Kaufman vastly overrated. Mostly I feel his scripts pretend to be smarter than they are and tend to dazzle the audience rather than provoke them. This is just my opinion.

I liked this movie. It still has some quirks that I dislike in Kaufman's scripts (especially giving the support cast outlandish plots with no buildup to them), but Gondry's good eye for visual effects helps compensate for that, as do the good performances all around.
Recommended, even it it's no favorite of mine.

[slayrrr666]

Yeah, I know what you mean about that long hair, it kinda threw me at first, but there was just something nagging at me that said it wasn't a girl but more of a male. I can tell you I initially thought it was a girl at first the way they interacted together and it being about a romance between the two, but as it went on it seemed to hit me that it was a guy, through their interactions together and several other individual moments.

It also doesn't hurt that I'm pretty familiar with Scandinavian names through my musical interests and know the names of males and females from that area.

Metamorphosis-While traveling to Hungary for research on a book, a man mets the vampiric daughter of the original Countess Bathory and tries to help her in her quest to destroy the last remaining vampire of a rival clan out to kill her for her mother's crimes. An admittedly decent attempt to mix together a romantic vampire storyline with one about dealing with a dangerous member on the loose, it ends up becoming fairly decent when it gets down to it. The scenes of the rogue on the loose in the grand castle are a lot of fun, with the vampire enjoying his time with his victims and verbally toying with them and making comments and gestures so as to encourage them on into a hopeless confrontation, and there's some fun from that to. The beginning stages where it's more of a romance aren't too thrilling, but it does stay interesting throughout and keeps up a fairly nice pace and atmosphere so as to be watchable if not exactly a standout entry.

[slayrrr666]

30 Days of Night: Dark Days-Having survived the original massacre in Alaska, a woman finds herself joined with a group of vampire slayers to take down the mastermind behind the original group's plans of attacking the town when she arrives in Los Angeles to get over the whole ordeal. A surprisingly enjoyable effort, mostly due to an extreme amping up of gore here which makes for some incredibly messy scenes including several raids on vampire hideouts, a ton of shootouts and even a lot of great messy kills on both species, which makes for some great times. The extra layer to their society explored here makes for some creepy moments and even makes them a lot more intelligent than previously thought, which is helped along by the nice detail given in the story as well as the action scenes throughout, though it could use a bit more explanation as to what happened amongst the group which just seems a little short and not all that detailed. Overall, a great sequel and definitely worthwhile.

Seconds Apart-When a series of brutal murders seem to be done by the hands of sinister twin boys, a detective races to solve the truth behind their seemingly strange powers before their rampage grows even-more bloodsoaked. A complete and total bomb, as there's very little of interest in this one. It tends to trade most of it's creepiness on the appearance of the twins rather than having them do anything or even make the film creepy, and if twin boys with a cold glare, sinister haircut and dress aren't creepy to you, it really does very little. Most of that is due to the fact that it centers on a mystery angle with the detective investigating their activities to the point of aggravation and boredom since it's just plain dull, the boys aren't given anything remotely resembling a normal motive which is all left to the imagination, and really the whole film comes across as been-there, done-that in regard to their powers, their appearance towards others and what they've been doing all along. It's only interesting in the finale, when it gets interesting once they get ticked off with each other, but it's all too late to be of any help after such a lame twist beforehand. Not really all that worth it.

The Task-When a group of reality show contestants arrive to participate in a horror reality show at an abandoned prison, a series of gruesome accidents has them believing that the site's resident ghosts might be the ones responsible and not the show's fear-based antics. While it may start off as being somewhat cliched and rather familiar, this one here manages to become somewhat watchable through several really good points. As is usually necessary in such situations, the atmosphere and location are just incredible, giving off such a foreboding sense of suspense and creepiness that by doing nothing, it still gives off a rather tense vibe, especially when it starts with the guidelines of the show being filmed. Several of rather freaky and definitely enjoyable, especially since it tends to skip over some when it comes to going wrong so that there's a lot of anticipation as to when it'll go sour, which is a great feeling and keeps it interesting. The last half is where the film gets a little off-track, since it tends to pile on twist after twist in attempt to try something new, but it's still really enjoyable.

Prowl-After crashing down on a remote highway, a group of friends find the tow-truck at their rescue is delivering them to an abandoned warehouse to be of use for a group of bloodthirsty creatures in hunting training. This ending up becoming one of the biggest disappointments around and it really had no reason to do so. It has an awesome premise that's incredibly original, filled with boatloads of gore in a creepy location filled with pretty chilling creatures, yet instead of playing with this as expected, there's just not a lot of other good stuff here. We have way too much time in the beginning with the group of friends trying to establish their relationship together just goes nowhere and feels endless overall, the film's confrontations with the creatures within the abandoned building really tend to stop and drag itself out in the middle when they should be building up furiously during that point and becoming the film's highlights instead becomes a dull, dreary mess, and the final twist at the end doesn't help matters. Too bad, as it doesn't need a whole lot of work to end up pretty awesome.

[slayrrr666]

Daughters of Satan-After buying a strange painting at a sale, a man begins to suspect something sinister is occurring after noticing his wife's resemblance to a figure in the painting and comes to realize that a coven of witches are involved and tries to stop them before he becomes a victim of their wrath. An admittedly fun witchcraft movie, though it does has a few minor areas of improvement to really work itself out of it's overall hum-drum feel. That's the main fault of the pacing in this one feeling just so dreary that nothing really exciting happens, with everyone tending to talk about the proceedings since the film plays it off as a mystery about painting and the reincarnation which can be fun but overall it tends to just drag the pace out. That said, the mystery angle here is actually inviting due to being a rather creepy mystery surrounding the painting, the few action scenes are rather well-done and it's certainly got enough horror elements to keep it enjoyable. Plus, any film that opens with topless female whipping definitely has it's head in the right direction. Overall, not bad but has some problems.

[slayrrr666]

Deadline-After renting out a huge abandoned house to work on a screenplay, a writer finds the ghostly hauntings around her might be the result of a grisly murder and begins to investigate the few pieces of evidence left with her to help solve the reasoning behind the activities. This here is an incredibly middling effort, hindered mostly be the fact that it's just so cliched and familiar that hardly anything here is of any real surprise. It seems to also ramble on without doing anything of any real interest due to the fact that the majority of the film, and that's not a misnomer, nearly ninety-percent of what happens here, is viewed through the video-camera remnants left at the location with just about the rest of the time taken up with her mumbling incoherently as she rambles about the house supposedly terrified of the hauntings going on that really aren't all that terrifying or creepy. In short, this one is a rather bland and dull mess.

[slayrrr666]

SuicideGirls Must Die-When a group of models for an internet website arrive at a location shoot in the wilderness, they soon realize their slowly disappearing members are the result of a madman in the area killing them off one-by-one and must put their own feelings toward each other aside to get away and survive. While I'm not the least-bit familiar with the site and the intentions of it, that alone might not be much of a factor in this one being a decent if unspectacular slasher. The greatest obstacle in overcoming this one is the difference of the titular group's appearance and attitudes toward each other, which is certainly understandable since it's not exactly the norm to witness and it's an acquired taste when they start their shoot to witness such acts, even though the generous and heaping nudity does lessen it somewhat. Once it starts to become a slasher film, it goes up a little better in quality if only for the fact that the reality-show like filming style would allow for more gore and attacks to be witnessed as they should be rather than as a blurry mess, but overall it's still not all that bad of a slasher effort.

[slayrrr666]

Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde-After drinking a magical elixir during an experiment on behavior control, a scientist discovers it turns him into a raving lunatic which causes deadly problems for the residents of his conservative London community. A rather hard-to-place horror film, mainly due to the fact that this just spends so little time actually dealing with horror elements that it's really hard to generate any sense of fear from the proceedings since it spends so little of it's overlong length dealing with them. With the first transformation taking place around the hour mark, we're left with tons of scenes of him talking with all sorts of people, from his fiancee to her parents and his medical partners about their daily lives and so on, which is just endless, boring and not at all relevant for a horror film. Even still, when the change does come it hardly does anything impressive with it, instead turning him into a lecherous old man rather than a diabolical killer, and the transformation's appearance isn't a radical departure at all from most men and doesn't really seem to be appropriate to inspire fear. There's a few times towards the end where it generates some kind of energy, but it's really too little too late to save this bland, boring hardly-horror film.

[slayrrr666]

R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It-After trying to scare her brother with a tale of a monstrous creature, a teen finds that the titular creature has been released into the world and must try to stop it before it consumes more people from their town. A pretty interesting teeny-bopper film, mostly due to the fact that its more of teen drama in the first half before it focuses on the book and the creature being released, yet strangely none of this is really all that bad or boring, making it still entertaining despite the lack of focus on the horror angles which in turn makes for the film’s one big flaw. However, once the switch-over occurs, it’s a lot more enjoyable with a creepy legend at the center of the film, a fantastic creature that looks fantastic and has a lot of realism to it, a couple of decent shocks and an overall sense of fun that arrives from the whole affair. However, due to the teen appearance and all of the focus surrounding them, it doesn’t have the air of danger it really should since nothing’s going to get too frightening or dangerous for them and it won’t really wallow in the usual trappings the genre normally dishes out, which might make for a strained viewing but it’s still not all that bad of a film.

The Frankenstein Syndrome-After joining an illegal group of doctors to find a way to improve stem cell research, a woman finds the latest experiments bring the dead back to life and the one test subject chosen gets stronger and more violent over time, threatening the quality of their work. This was an extremely disappointing effort, mostly due to the fact that the film’s decided route makes for an incredibly unsatisfactory effort. Making the investigation of the team into their research and how they deal with each other isn’t interesting or enjoyable, making for the first half of the film to have hardly anything worthwhile. Once it switches over into the regeneration angle, it’s still quite a bit of time before the creature goes berserk as they spend a great deal of time treating and studying the subject, and it’s really only the last ten minutes or so where it turns into a bloodbath when he goes crazy in the facility. That there’s more damage done by a member of the team than the titular creature is another problematic point, and most of the scientific mumbo-jumbo is pretty headache-inducing if not inclined to follow along, but as mentioned, the last ten minutes are pretty good with the creature going through the facility killing them off one-by-one, but it’s really too late to be of much use and leaving this one woefully underwhelming.

The Haunting in Connecticut-While trying to deal with their son's illness, a family moves to a large abandoned house near the treatment center and find the real reason behind the shadowy figures in the area and try to put an end to the whole ordeal before they succumb to its deadly powers. Certainly not all that bad of a teeny-bopper horror flick, this one does manage to contain enough to make it entertaining and interesting. While initially starting off as being about the house and it’s creepy appearance, which is quite impressive and definitely worthy of inducing a sense of chills with its’ look, actually fades into the background as it moves along with its backstory investigation because that soon becomes the best part of the film. By making it creepy enough with the right amount of spacing out through the events that unfold, it’s unnerving and chilling presentation makes for extremely good fodder for haunted house efforts, and mixed with narration to accompany the few visual re-enactments becomes a real highlight of the film. The only real downside to this is the fact that, before the discovery of that, the film is mostly all about the traditional shock-jumps found in these kinds of films, from figures moving in the background to creepy flash images and loud noises, which get old and irritating after a while without a change-up in attack, but it’s still a pretty entertaining entry.

Savage-After a forest fire brings about numerous causalities, a small town finds itself under siege by the same legendary creature they use to attract tourists and must find a way to stop it's rampage before it kills more townspeople. Overall, this was a pretty decent Bigfoot movie that has some good stuff going for it as well as some flaws. One of the better areas in here is the fact that the body count is pretty high, giving us some pretty good gore in the bloody kills, as well as some great use of the local woodland scenery to provide some tension among the stalking scenes as it portrays the creature as using its environment to ambush its prey effectively. Also of note is the fact that it looks pretty decent as well, being a little more humanoid in appearance and not the big, hulking hairy brute so often associated with these movies, and the change is quite nice. On the downside, it does manage to waste a large amount of time on plot-points that go nowhere which tend to just drag this out by going nowhere and the fact that most of the gore is seen as aftermath and the on-screen mangling is hardly seen firsthand. Otherwise, this one is pretty decent.

[slayrrr666]

Survival of the Dead-After finding shelter on a supposedly-abandoned island, a group of soldiers and an exile find it overrun by zombies helped along by a group of deranged farmers trying to tame the creatures and must stop them in order to survive. This isn't all that bad of a zombie film, especially a Romero one, as this one decides to go back to the original series idea of introducing a decidedly-original tactic for the continuation of the zombie plague, training them to not devour human flesh and attempt to eat something else. While the religion-based logic it's used to try that is the film's single-biggest flaw as listening to those faulty and pig-headed speeches that just make the characters sound more brain-dead than the zombies and get old after a while, the fact that it's a new concept works pretty well. The zombies aren't that bad-looking, the gore is certainly enough to stay interesting despite the lack of either originality in kills or execution as it really lacks a stand-out kill one way or another the way the others in the series have done, but overall it's mostly enough to forget the religion introduction that really hurts this one.

Zombie Women of Satan-When a burlesque troupe arrives at the home of a TV presenter to give a new interview, they discover his secret cult-like convent of women have been turned into flesh-hungry zombies and must try to get away before they get on each other's nerves. An incredibly entertaining and enjoyable British zombie comedy, mostly because it's just so demented and hilarious it overcomes it's minor limitations. The comedy here is the main focus, as the rapid-fire one-liner and smackdowns they all engage in at the drop of the hat make for some gut-busting moments, especially at the compound where they manage to effectively gauge the line between hilarious and obnoxious, perhaps the film's only true flaw. Either way, it's still pretty funny to watch them interact with each other, even in spite of the lower amount of scares, but that's made up for by the film's near constant stream of nudity and over-the-top gore, which is more than enough to make for some entertaining times. Overall, this one was immensely enjoyable.

[slayrrr666]

Severed: Forest of the Damned-After investigating a strange disappearance at a logging firm, a man finds the camp's survivors and activists being stalked by bloodthirsty zombies mutated from a tree-enhancing chemical and must stop the epidemic before it spreads outside the area. A pretty enjoyable zombi outing, not necessarily the most original but definitely has enough good parts to keep it interesting. Enough gore gags to make for some entertaining and original kills, giving it some nice bloodshed as well, and the large number of encounters makes for some high-intensity action scenes, and coupled with the initiation of the epidemic early on, gives it a really great pace which makes for a really invigorating watch. Still, the tendency to shake and rotate the camera during every single action scene to the point of being unable to discern a single item in the frame makes for some extreme annoyance and irritability, as it's only on those scenes where you want to watch what's going on yet the filming technique makes it impossible. The rationale for unleashing the zombie epidemic is also a little weak, being a small blurb that doesn't really have any weight to it and makes no sense, but beyond those two minor gripes, it's not all that bad.