[Rec] 2 (2009)

MAY 20, 2010

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, RELIGIOUS, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

At long last, I finally get to see one of these movies in a theater! I missed Quarantine’s theatrical run, and the original [Rec] never played around here as far as I know, so I was very stoked to see [Rec] 2 on the big screen, especially after I heard so many good things about it from my colleagues. However, while I enjoyed the movie, I don’t think it’s quite the home run that I was led to believe it was (some friends even said it was better than the original!).

The main issue I had was that it breaks tension by giving us too many points of view. While it was always the same guy in the original (to the best of my recollection - someone might have grabbed it for a brief time I suppose), here we have I think four different cameras capturing the action. First is a team of SWAT types who are accompanying a priest (this is supposed to be a surprise when its revealed, which is odd because I just assumed the guy was a priest right from the start) to investigate the aftermath of the stuff that happened in the first movie. They each have a camera, and it gets confusing which one is filming at times, especially since they seem to always be focusing on the priest guy instead of each other. We occasionally get these 24-esque split screen scenes and such, and it just didn’t work for me - I like that we didn’t always know what was happening in the original, whereas here (returning directors) Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza are always cutting to whoever is filming the best action. At one point one of them goes up into an air duct - I think it would have been so much more terrifying to simply watch him go up and then only HEAR the inevitable attack from the ground below, instead of actually watching yet another zombie/demon thing scuttle toward the camera.

And the problem just gets worse when, halfway through the movie, we switch to an entirely different group of characters (a group of teens - sigh) who arrive on the scene at the same time as the SWAT guys (we see an event for a 2nd time, now from their POV, to establish the timeframe). Plus, they’re outside! And it’s a while before they are actually in any danger, so we just have to watch them playing pranks and arguing with each other until that point. It’s a bit fun to see certain events from a different perspective, but I don’t think it’s worth the severe break in the tension.

Also, since I wasn’t really big on the religious angle in the first place, I was a bit restless when its expanded for this film, which goes so far as to have one of the things stop attacking when a religious medal of some sort is hung on the door it is trapped behind, not to mention a few scenes where they talk in Pazuzu-esque voice. In fact, at times it feels more like a verité Exorcist sequel than one to [Rec], as it’s only been an hour or so and yet the infected things behave completely different (one even crawls across the ceiling!). I know a sequel has to expand things, but when it’s expanding something that wasn’t the best element to begin with, it’s a bit problematic. I would have rather that one escaped from the quarantined building somehow and wreaked havoc elsewhere. And Descent 2 did a way better job of recycling its predecessor’s location (finding/using the bodies of those who died in the first movie, for example) - it’s the same night, after all, yet apart from the bloodstain at the bottom of the stairwell, there’s very little visual evidence of what happened before.

This is minor, and technically correct, but I also wasn’t a fan of the occasional muffled sound after a loud noise. On most (all?) digital cameras, a loud spike will cause the internal mic to sort of “shell” itself, producing a muffled sound for a few seconds after. Balagueró and Plaza use this technically-correct-but-creatively-annoying trick at least three times in the film, one of which goes on for so long I began to wonder if it was actually just something wrong with the film. It worked in Saving Private Ryan - it doesn’t here.

But it still works as a thrill ride experience. The jump scares come fast and furious, and there seems to be a lot more zombies (or whatever you want to call them) this time around. There are also a couple of terrifically nerve-wracking scenes, such as when they need to use night vision in order to see hidden panels and such, which also limits how much of the room they can see. And I loved the third act developments - the movie starts to essentially repeat itself (yet another “be quiet with the monster right next to you” scene), and then it spins everything on its ear, delivering a nice twist to this movie and showing us the aftermath of the last one (i.e. what happened after Angela got dragged away).

And since I had a lot of problems with Quarantine, I loved how they made the entire movie “shot for shot remake” proof, since so much of it deals with the religious stuff that Sony’s redo didn’t bother to include (pretty much the only change they DID make). In order to use this as the guide for the inevitable Quarantine 2, they’ll have to include it, which would sort of contradict their first movie. So oh no! They might have to come up with their own fucking ideas! Poor Sony.

Also, they continue to be better than most of the other mockumentary films with regards to filming. The SWAT guys have built in cameras in their helmets, so they’re completely covered there, and the bulk of the climax requires night vision (which is sort of a generic trick at this point, but some don’t even bother with that much). Not sure why the kids keep filming when shit starts to go down, but it’s still better thought out and executed than many of its peers for the most part (I love that the sister lets it dangle by her side while it still records). I mean, it could have been worse - they could have just had a bunch of outcasts going into the building that they filmed [Rec] in before going crazy and killing each other.*

At the same press event, I also got a chance to see the new Neil Marshall film Centurion, which isn’t horror (but IS bloody/gory as hell). I wasn’t sure what the film was going to be like - it started off like Gladiator, and having just seen Robin Hood, I was about to just take a rain check since [Rec] 2 was next and thus my ass would probably prefer not to sit in those goofy chairs at the Wilshire Screening Room for 4 straight hours. But I stuck with it, and was glad I did, because it’s actually more of a chase movie (not unlike Judgment Night), albeit with the medieval setting. Michael Fassbender is a terrific hero, and I also really liked Liam Cunningham (who played a similar character in Clash of the Titans). And I will never argue with putting 28 Weeks Later's Imogen Poots in a movie. I thought that the end was a bit abrupt, but it definitely delivers sword and sandal thrills with the best of them, and Neil infused the film with just enough humor (some a bit anachronistic, but that’s OK) for it to be humorous without becoming a joke. Highly recommended, especially if the PG-13 Robin Hood or King Arthur left you cold - at one point we just see like 30 bloody battlefield kills in a row.

Not sure what see [Rec] 2’s release plan is like - as it is from Magnet/Magnolia I can guarantee it won’t be on 2000 screens or whatever, but perhaps it will play better at home anyway. It’s a pretty typical sequel - not as good as the original, but there’s a comfort in taking the ride again.

What say you?

*I actually like Blair Witch 2, believe it or not, though I will be the first to admit it's one of the least satisfying approaches to a sequel imaginable.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Splice (2009)

MAY 19, 2010

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

When HMAD started, I was very spoiler-heavy with my reviews, often blowing the twist in the first paragraph. It wasn’t to be malicious - I designed the site as a way to “talk” about horror movies with others that had seen them, and thus nothing should be spoiled. But as the site got more popular it got harder to do that, especially in instances like today, where Splice is not even released yet and thus I can’t imagine too many readers have seen it yet (and the review is supposed to be enticing people to go see it when it is released in two weeks). So don’t worry - I will not be spoiling any of Splice’s surprises in this review.

And thus it will probably be a short one, because so much of what makes the movie such a delightful surprise is the odd places that the story goes, and I wouldn’t want to even hint at them (I was actually admonished on Twitter simply for pointing out that the 3rd act is incredible!). I will say this though - the trailers are doing a very good job at selling the concept of the movie without giving too much away. In fact, I’m pretty sure the entire trailer is comprised only of footage from the film’s first act. And while the Twitter guy may feel otherwise, I think it’s kind of important to let folks know that the film is much different than they might expect (while not going into details why). Based on the trailers, you might be fooled into thinking that Splice is a Species knockoff, with a monster being created by well-meaning scientists, escaping, and being tracked down by the folks who created her. But that’s not what the movie is - it’s much more original and interesting than that.

The trade off is that it’s a bit light on the action/horror elements - I’m actually kind of shocked that Warner is putting the film out at the top of summer (it’s more of an August type movie - cerebral and dark, not overblown and popcorn-ready like the films it will be competing against). There are only like 6 people in the entire movie, with main scientists Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody and his wacky wardrobe) taking up 95% of the screentime. The movie is as much about their relationship as it is any of the “splicing” elements, and both actors deliver terrific performances - certainly more than just a notch above what you’d get in a “monster” movie. But as you might expect, this means that the body count is obviously pretty low - I’m not joking about the limited cast. Apart from the crowd in a brief conference scene and a few nameless lab techs, there are LITERALLY only 6 people in the movie.

One of whom is “Dren”, the spliced being that they create. THIS is how I love to see CGI being used, as it’s a real person (Delphine Chanéac and Abigail Chu at different stages), with CGI enhanced appendages and such. While Gollum and Jar-Jar are terrific creations (well, only in the technical sense for the latter), they’re still entirely digital, and thus display - albeit in limited form compared to others - problems that they bring (overly fluid motions, occasional weightlessness). Dren has none of that, and it makes her interactions with Polley and Brody all the more believable, which in turn makes the film’s turn of events all the more easy to accept.

There are still a few “spectacle” moments for hardcore horror fans though. Again without spoiling anything, something occurs around the halfway mark that is so horrifying and grotesque I thought for sure it had to be a dream sequence. And as this IS a genre film, the climax obviously has some bad things going down. In a way, it’s sort of like a really great early season episode of The X-Files, where you have a fairly talky first 2/3s or so, with some good (if brief) action to close it up - which also makes it a better X-Files movie than the actual 2nd X-Files movie, which concluded with a guy being hit over the head and Skinner waving a gun around.

I was also excited to see Vincenzo Natali return to the genre. After Cube he dove into the thriller (Cypher) and existential comedy (Nowhere) genres, neither of which I have seen (though Cypher is on my queue), and I was starting to wonder if he would ever come back or if he was pulling a William Friedkin and making a landmark genre film and then stepping away more or less forever (is The Guardian Friedkin’s only post-Exorcist full blown horror film? Bug is sort of up for debate.). Cube is one of my favorite horror films of the 90s (and one of my all time favorite commentary tracks - essential for low budget filmmakers!), so it’s great to have him back. Hopefully his next foray into the genre won’t be so long in coming. Maybe it’s just because of the Canadian setting, but his work here reminded me a lot of early Cronenberg (technically and creatively), which is not a bad guy to be compared to, in my opinion. He’s clearly got some big ideas and isn’t willing to churn out junk (I’m sure he’s been offered several remakes/sequels over the years - you don’t make a movie as good as Cube and not get courted), which makes him very respectable as well as talented.

Maybe when the Blu-Ray comes out I will review the film again, and talk at length about its twists and such, as well as discuss a few minor negative points that would be difficult to get into without spoiling anything (very vaguely - there seems to be some missing character development for both Elsa and Dren). I also think that they try a bit too hard to make Elsa and Clive out to be the coolest, rock-star scientists of all time - the Wired magazine cover is one thing, but the giant anime poster over their bed and wall-to-wall Yo Gabba Gabba and Sock Monkey toys are a bit much. But it’s a minor quibble; as I said the other day with Lo, I just love seeing a movie where I have no idea where it’s going to go, and Splice certainly qualifies as one. It might not be my favorite movie of the year (so far that title belongs to Shutter Island, which is ironic because that one I guessed the ending almost instantly. Power of Scorsese!), but it will almost certainly be one of (or THE) most original and unique, at least from a major studio. Grats to Warner Bros/Dark Castle for putting it out there (and giving it a pretty big push) next to all of the 3D and PG-13 tentpoles without a single original idea between them.

What say you?

P.S. If I can’t spoil stuff, neither can you. Any comments with major spoilers will be rejected (at least for the next month - after that I’m sure it will be common knowledge, at least amongst folks who would bother reading talkbacks on a horror movie blog).

PLEASE, GO ON...

Are You Scared 2 (2009)

MAY 18, 2010

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

“What is the essence of Nebraska?”, Tony Todd asks at a late point of Are You Scared 2*. It’s a question folks have been asking since it joined the Union in 1867, and a valid one to be sure, but I’m not convinced it has any business being asked during the climax of a Saw ripoff. Other things that have no discernible reason for being in this movie include giraffes, Tony Todd impersonating a turtle, Tony Todd playing with an etch-a-sketch, or the title Are You Scared 2.

See, as they are wont to do, Lionsgate simply took an unrelated crappy movie and gave it a new title that would connect it to one of their other crappy movies. So thus, as The Maize became Dark Harvest 2, Geohunt became Are You Scared 2 (and yet, a legitimate sequel to Machined simply became Reborn. Lionsgate must simply enjoy making confusing things for people). Luckily, it’s a SLIGHTLY better fit than the Dark Harvest “sequels”, because it’s at least the same type of movie - once again, a criminal mastermind is killing young kids for the sake of a sadistic online game show. But that’s about it - there are no traps this time, just a weird religious freak and a Leatherface clone killing our heroes whenever they find it convenient to do so.

And to give it some credit, they at least do a few original-ish things. For starters, we actually get to know our characters for a good 20-25 minutes before they are drugged, locked up, and told of their predicament, something you never get in the Saw films, which usually introduce their protagonists after they’ve been kidnapped by whoever the writers decide to show kidnapping them 2-3 films later. Also, while its clumsily executed in every conceivable way (to the extent where I think I now know LESS about the topic), the geo-caching backdrop is fairly novel, and there’s some effort to give them a reason for poking around where they shouldn’t be, instead of the idiots in the first movie who easily agree to play a game that will more than likely get them killed.

However, these minor things are the only reason the movie isn’t being tossed in the Crap pile, because it’s fucking terrible. None of the heroes are even remotely likable, save for maybe the girlfriend of the main guy, simply because she doesn’t whine the whole time like the other girl (who at one point complains about her car being dirty, even shouting “LOOK!”, but the directing/writing team of Russell Appling and John Lands aren’t skilled enough filmmakers to actually show what she’s talking about with a cutaway of said dirty car - just one example of the many baffling editing/shot choices throughout the film), nor is she an insufferable douche like the two male leads, who seemingly live in a world where geo-caching is the most attractive and awe-inspiring thing one can do with his life. See, throughout the pre-“oh shit” section of the film, we are treated to shots of very attractive girls curled up with their laptops, following their adventures online, which is supposed to establish how “awesome” these guys are. We also get Buffy’s Adam Busch as a sort of rival geo-hunter, who is upset that our main guys are about to break the record for geo-hunting.

It’s also shockingly boring. The least any of these fucking things can offer is a lot of bloody death scenes, but no! There are only I think six kills in the entire movie including the three villains, many of which are off-screen. Most of the film is given to the leads looking at their little geo units and trying to figure out how to exit (while ignoring things like windows and clearly flimsy doors/walls in just about every shot), or running up and/or down stairs (yes, we see them go both ways in one single sequence). That, or Todd in his little control room, talking to his turtle or just saying things at random. I really like Todd, and I’m not sure what he did to go from being a dependable heavy in several high profile films of the 90s, to appearing in garbage like this, but I hope he regrets it as much as fans do. Even Lance doesn’t stoop this low (well, Mangler 2... maybe they’re tied). Then again, Tony’s credit has a different font than all of the others, so he got himself a pretty sweet deal. Everyone else has what appears to be Calibri, but he’s got some “scary”, not Microsoft Word standard deal. Go Tony!

We’re also treated to some gloriously awful CGI maps and “walk-thrus” whenever we see the GPS screens, which literally show every step of the way they’d have to take in order to reach a giant yellow EXIT arrow (a waypoint, if you will). There’s also some nonsense about everyone with tracking devices, and they show up as blue or red dots on these screens, but the dots just float around on the diagrams in a manner not befitting any human I know (we will also see all of them moving around, even when the characters have stopped to look at it), and as far as I can recall, its never used for any meaningful way. You want to see a good “the beep is getting closer” scene? Watch Alien. THAT’S how you do this sort of thing. There is seriously not a single moment of actual suspense in the entire movie.

Luckily, the DVD has no extras of any kind, save for the trailer reel. I just hope whatever movie they slap the title on next gets the series back on track! There have been 5 Saw movies since the first Are You Scared?, it’s a goldmine of plot devices to rip off!

What say you?

*I’m sort of amazed that they didn’t go with Are You Scared TOO?, because not only would they get to keep the question mark in the title, but it would put it in company with similarly worthless sequels like Teen Wolf Too and Look Who’s Talking Too.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Crimes At The Dark House (1940)

MAY 17, 2010

GENRE: BRITISH, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 4!!!)

Like a lot of the movies in these budget packs, Crimes At The Dark House can barely be considered a horror film by today’s standards. I guess back then, simply having a guy kill a few people made it a horror movie, whereas today it might be considered an adaptation of a particular episode of CSI: Miami. I will say though, I was surprised to see a murder occur so early on, and a somewhat disturbing one at that (a railroad spike through the head!). Obviously we don’t see the impact, but most of these things just have bloodless gunshots or maybe a strangling.

In fact one of the things I quite liked about the movie was that it wasted no time in getting going. The movie is about a murderous thief (Tod Slaughter) who impersonates the dude he killed in order to get his inheritance - and he’s accomplishes all of that in the first 4 minutes. I figured it would be like a half hour before they got around to that, but by that point in the movie, he had already offed another character or two and gotten married (in order to rob her as well). Our guy doesn’t dilly-dally.

Of course, his impulsiveness means that his plan is pretty much shit (which is why the body count is so high - he kills everyone that catches on, which is a lot of people). I don’t think a single part of his made up backstory went unquestioned, nor did he ever come up with a good lie on the spot to cover it up. Or he simply goes out on a limb with nothing, like when he tries to get his new wife to sign something that will screw her over. She asks to read it before signing, and at first he says that as a woman she wouldn’t understand any of it (smooth, though she more or less sees his point, hilariously enough), and then accuses her of not trusting him. See, when *I* am trying to get my wife to sign shit that will cause her financial ruin, I make stuff up and walk her through it, using a bunch of jargon and fancy lawyer talk to confuse/bore her to the point of getting her to sign it so I’ll shut up.

I got to thinking during the movie - time has really sort of killed the standard horror movie plots. Look how much trouble he had convincing people of his false identity THEN, without photo ID and Facebook and security cameras on every corner of every street. I cannot conceive of any logical way one could do the “pretend to be a dead/long lost man” story nowadays. And it’s just not this type of story - breakdown/survival type movies are becoming more contrived in order to get rid of the cell phones and other modern technologies that would prevent anything from happening (slashers have fallen prey to this as well), and we don’t need metaphorical giant bugs to deal with the horrors of war - we just need a cable hookup. And people in general are less care-free and adventurous these days - people just stick around home instead of going camping. I think we’re going to start seeing more period horror films, simply because it’s easier to put people in danger in the 1970s than it is nowadays. Who the hell can get lost when so many cars actually come equipped with GPS?

Back on point, the movie is based on Wilkie Collins’ (no relation, as far as you know) book The Woman In White, which was adapted a few times before and has been adapted several times since. From skimming the Wikipedia entry, it sounds a lot more dramatic than this film, which isn’t surprising since the book did not have Tod Slaughter playing the main character. I’m not too familiar with the guy; I only know that he’s usually a scenery-chewing ham, as he is here. Yelling “Curses” all the time, laughing maniacally, and sporting a big twirly mustache, he’s pretty delightful, and I can’t imagine a book version of the character having the same sort of energy, which was pretty much the main draw for me. Plus, I bet the book makes him sort of intelligent, which is no fun. If they were remaking this specific adaptation, they’d probably get Crispin Glover or maybe Johnny Depp (Slaughter actually performed "Sweeney Todd" on stage, so it would be fitting).

As with several Mill Creek transfers, the film is bizarrely off center, with a big black bar on the bottom (none at the top) and a line on the left that’s about three times the width of the one on the right. It’s also very washed out (though less “broken” than most transfers of films from this era - I only caught 2-3 skips). Apparently, my 40 cents doesn’t net me a quality transfer. But it’s also one of the last movies on the set I can qualify as horror, as most of the others that I haven’t watched yet are about gangsters and crooks and such. Mill Creek needs to assemble a new package for me! Chilling Classics II, perhaps?

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Lo (2009)

MAY 16, 2010

GENRE: COMEDIC, SUPERNATURAL, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

The film Lo has been available on Netflix instant for a while now, but I wanted the DVD, because I figured it would have some cool extras, based on what little I knew about the film (chiefly, that it was shot for two grand in a single room). But sadly the DVD redefines bare-bones - the main menu has “Play” and “Scenes”. Not even some goddamn subtitles?

Though maybe the subs just couldn’t fit on the disc, since this is a very talky movie. If you want a lot of action and such, I’d steer very clear of this movie, as it’s essentially one long 80 minute conversation between a lovesick guy and the demon he has summoned to help him find his girlfriend. Their scenes take place in a single location, on the floor of a room that we cannot see. Flashback scenes take place in (intentionally) cheesily painted sets that wouldn’t look out of place in a grade school play. Sometimes writer/director Travis Betz works in jokes about the setup - at one point the demon (the titular Lo) claims he doesn’t like the setting and suggests mixing it up a bit, at which point the light over his head changes color. It’s a top notch sight gag.

And the minimalist approach also pays off in the end, though it’s a bit vague. My interpretation differs from others I talked to, which means I’m probably wrong, but mine is the only one that gives the “set” a deeper meaning beyond “it looked cool and was a way to save money”. So I dunno.

Betz’ methods to pad the film to a respectable running time aren’t quite as successful. Right off the bat I was worried, as it takes a full minute and a half for the title to appear in full on screen. As you might have noticed, Lo is a very short title (the 2nd shortest in HMAD history, after P), and thus shouldn’t take more than maybe half a second to appear. And in the middle of the movie our hero says “Goddammit” over and over for like a minute or so. And while I loved the first musical number (a 50s style pop ballad called “Demon Girl”), the 2nd I could have definitely done without. All told, there’s about 15 minutes that probably could have been shaven off the running time.

And yes, the demon singing does look a bit like Lorne from Angel, which is a distraction only exacerbated when he starts singing. So what? Name one monster/demon in recent horror movie history that didn’t slightly resemble an older one. And then compare that to Lo’s budget - familiarity or not, it and Lo are remarkable creations that I would have thought would cost more a piece than the entire film did. So shaddup!

What I really dug about the movie was that it took a very supernatural and strange approach to what is ultimately a very simple story, of a guy who is afraid to let go (again, this is going with my interpretation of the ending, which is that it was all in his head). Instead of the usual indie “hey let’s just sort of rip off Kevin Smith” approach to a guy who just had his heart broken, Betz and co. did something unique and original, and also found a bunch of capable actors (never a true indie film’s strong suit). Even with minimal characterization, I got to really like Ward Roberts (Justin), and even though he’s pretty much just sitting on the floor for the entire movie, he’s one of the better horror movie “heroes” in recent memory. More often than not, I’m caring about the male lead just because I am familiar with and like the actor (Ryan Reynolds in Amityville '05 comes to mind), but I don’t know this guy from Adam, and yet I was totally in his corner by the end of the first act. And Sarah Lassez is also a delight, playing what the AV Club might call a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but without the ironic detachment that usually makes me hate such characters (see: pretty much any Zooey Deschanel character).

Like I said earlier, the film won’t be for everyone, and even its biggest fans have an issue or two with it, but like I’ve also said more often - give me an original approach (story AND design) to a simple story and I’m on board. Even casual moviegoers complain that they don’t see enough originality anymore - I watch these things every day! So something that doesn’t remind me of 562 other movies is automatically a win for me. Whether or not it’s perfect is irrelevant - the movie could have been flat out BAD and I still would have been happy that it was at least doing something new and interesting. Kudos to all involved.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Wilderness (2006)

MAY 15, 2010

GENRE: PREDATOR, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

Two anonymous (or one impatient) HMAD readers both suggested Wilderness a while ago, so I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to it. It’s got a couple of Neil Marshall cronies (Sean Pertwee and Alex Reid), and it sounded like a survival horror version of White Water Summer (one of my favorite 80s movies), in that it’s about a bunch of punk kids going off to the woods to learn how to work together and read maps and such, but they end up getting picked off by a sniper (and his loyal pack of man-eating dogs).

And for the most part, I dug it. It’s fast paced, has some great (and surprising) deaths, and it’s well shot by director Michael J. Bassett and DP Peter Robertson. But there are a couple of blunders that kept me from loving it, and I think another pass or two with the script might have resulted in one of that year’s best genre films.

For starters, the female characters need to go. Reid is tough and has some nice repartee with Pertwee, but she’s not around much so if she’s there or not it wouldn’t matter much. The two teen girls she has with her, however, are a dreadful invention. Not only do they break up the “boy’s club” appeal (come on, how many all male horror movies do you see?), but they also provide generic plot contrivances and waste screen-time that should have been used to develop the boys a bit more and solidify how they interact with each other. Much of the psychological backdrop (guys who essentially hate each other having to work together to survive) is lost in favor of pointless “bros before hos” arguments and a truly idiotic attempted rape scene.

The overcrowding also robs us of some stronger death scenes. Two characters are more or less killed off-screen as we race along through the story, and others never seem to get any sort of reaction from the rest of the folks. In fact, the editing as a whole is a bit choppy; there’s a scene where one character thought dead suddenly resurfaces, and it comes out of nowhere, AND the other characters don’t even seem to react to it. It’s not even clear how they see her; they just suddenly appear at her side. There are a couple other moments like that, and I can’t help but wonder if fewer characters would allow for more coherent character motivations and stronger setpieces.

And the biggest asshole of the group doesn’t get a really memorable death scene, which I think is sort of a ripoff for the audience who has been spending the past hour and a half hating him so much. He pees on one of the weaker kids, constantly uses the others as shields or bait, murders a hermit for no reason... I hated this fucker more than I’ve hated any movie character in the past 5 years. But ultimately he just gets forced to cut himself (not deep enough to kill or even take him out of commission) and then he just gets shot. Come on! I want this guy’s jugular torn out by the dogs, his manhood ripped in half, maybe partially set on fire.... but he actually gets off easier than most of the other, more likable characters. Why save him for the end if you’re not going to give us a big crowd pleasing death?

I think The Descent connection was distracting me too. Part of what I loved about that movie was how scary it was even without the monsters. I think Wilderness would have benefited from putting the guys in some actual life-threatening situations - climbing a cliff face, trying to stay underwater... that sort of stuff (perhaps with the sniper guy nearby just to make things even more suspenseful). But it’s all just running and dodging.

It still works are a pure adrenaline rush though. I can’t think of a single moment where it got too slow or boring (even before the killer shows up), and the gory bits were well done, not to mention surprising. One guy gets half his face torn off by the dogs - a moment made even more surprising due to the fact that I wasn’t expecting him to die anytime soon. Plus, I am afraid of snipers in real life, and even though the dogs and bear traps get most of the kills, the threat of being sniped was always there, which kept me a bit tense. And since they establish early on that they’re not interested in going in the predictable “order” for horror movie victims, it gives the film a “no one is safe” feel for a while.

Since I watched on Netflix I have no extras. I wondered if there were some deleted scenes that helped smooth out some of the rough editing, or a commentary explaining that the producers demanded a few girls in the cast or if it was always in the plans, but it seems the only extra on the DVD was a brief making of. Bummer. The movie is still a good thrill, but if you want a little more meat on your bones, I’d stick with Descent, or maybe even Severance for a more humorous (but still gory/scary) take on a similar setup.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Shadow Of The Vampire (2000)

MAY 14, 2010

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Not sure when or why I bought Shadow Of The Vampire, but I’m pretty sure I’ve owned it for at LEAST 5 years. It doesn’t appear to be a used copy (no video store labels on it), though it wasn’t in shrink wrap either (I don’t usually take off the wrap until I sit down to watch it - easier to tell which ones I haven’t seen yet). Maybe I borrowed it from someone? Eh, whatever. All I know is, a few folks have recommended it over the past couple years (including HMAD reader ColinB), so I decided to finally make good on whatever inspired me to obtain it in the first place.

The concept is brilliant - What if Nosferatu star Max Schreck was really a vampire? Furthermore, what if F.W. Murnau knew that and didn’t care, because he knew it would help him make his perfect vampire movie? It’s an awesome concept; one I can’t believe something similar hadn’t really been done before (at least to my knowledge).

But the execution is a bit... off. It never really kicks into any higher gear than the one it’s in from the second Schreck (Willem Dafoe, in a justifiably Oscar nominated performance) appears; even the climax more or less boils down to yet another scene of Schreck attacking someone in the crew while Murnau (John Malkovich) shows more concern for his film than the well being of his colleagues. Perhaps a subplot with one of the other crew members digging around, or more with the locals who know about Schreck’s true nature, could have helped add a bit of tension and suspense that the film sort of lacks.

Also, Steven Katz’s script sort of tries to fit into two different versions of history. Obviously in the real world, Nosferatu was completed and is a classic film, but Max Schreck is not a real vampire and did not really die at the end of production. Yet the film presents both as fact, instead of just going with one or the other. It could have said that Max was really just a crazy actor, with the plot twist being that there was no supernatural activity whatsoever. OR, since he was obviously playing with history, he could have pulled an Inglourious Basterds and just went gonzo at the end, tossing history out completely and having Schreck kill everyone (including Murnau) and finishing the film himself or something. Instead, it’s like “well, let’s just assume the audience doesn’t know anything about Max Schreck and only make shit up with regards to him. Everything else is true.”

And while I don’t know Nosferatu enough to be sure, I’m sure they could have played with the idea of flubs in the film, showing that they were the result of mishaps on set caused by Schreck trying to eat someone. Like, for example, according to the IMDb, there’s a shot in the film where you can see a crew member waving some cloth around on the side of the frame - this could have been imagined as a crew member being attacked by Schreck, with the cloth being a loose part of his clothing as he flailed about. Die hard fans of the film would get all giddy, and the rest wouldn’t think anything of it.

The film DOES work on a performance level, however. Dafoe is incredible (and almost completely unrecognizable), and he appears in the film more than Schreck did in the actual Nosferatu, despite what is obviously a far more extensive makeup design. Couldn’t have been easy for the guy to act at ALL, let alone as brilliantly as he does here. And Malkovich is a delight, obviously relishing the chance to play a snooty, pretentious director (more than likely drawing from some experience). There’s a wonderful line early on where Schreck is basically asking who he could feed on, and Murnau replies “I am loathe to admit it but I need the writer!” And near the end, he begins freaking out giving direction (as it was a silent film, all of the scenes in which we see them filming have Malkovich/Murnau talking the entire time, giving direction both direct and abstract), yelling “You fucking rat bastard, DIE!”. The supporting cast is also wonderful; Cary Elwes is having fun as an eccentric DP, and Eddie Izzard plays probably my favorite character, the actor Gustav von Wangerhein, who is increasingly scared of working scenes with Schreck. Everyone’s a little weird in the movie too, in fact Udo Kier is probably the most normal character, which is odd in and of itself.

And it's actually funnier than I was expecting. In addition to Malkovich's theatrics, Schreck himself seems to be enjoying being an actor (I laughed my ass off when he graciously leans in to help the DP check the focal length), and there are other little bits of oddball comedy sprinkled throughout. I think the point of the movie was to show how obsessed filmmakers can be, but I've seen that sort of thing often, and it's sort of a thin concept that doesn't lend itself to multiple versions. It's the out of nowhere bits, like Udo talking about the time he saw some ectoplasm, that made it interesting for me.

One puzzling thing in the film are occasional silent movie-esque title cards that deliver exposition, but these things are always revealed in the film itself. Like early on, one of them addresses that Murnau wanted to do Dracula but couldn’t get the rights, so he simply changed the names. But this is repeated 5 minutes later in the dialogue, so I’m not sure they had both. Plus, the more realism that they add to the setup, the more the movie comes off as an attack on poor Max Schreck, instead of an outright alternate universe.

The DVD has a short but good interview with Dafoe, as well as a longer one with director E. Elias Merhige, who also provides a commentary. As I learned on the Suspect Zero DVD, the guy is kind of a pretentious bore, but here it’s sort of fitting to the material (a film about a pretentious director, as opposed to one about a psychic serial killer). I left his commentary on in the background and only really paid attention to some of it, but from what I sampled it seemed like he was a bit more tolerable here than on that film, as he actually discussed the actors and certain aspects of production, instead of just abstractly narrating the film and talking about themes (which he does as well). It’s a good listen if you’re in film school and think your short films about people staring at walls and clouds are genius, however. There are also a few Lions Gate (this is back when the company was two words) trailers, which they don’t force you to watch! One’s a really terrible one for Frailty, and the other is for Gods and Monsters, which is also a fictional docudrama about a horror film director, in that case James Whale. There should be a whole franchise about these folks! I’d love to see one about Tod Browning, at any rate.

One odd bit of trivia I want to note about this film - the two stars and producer Nicolas Cage were all up for the role of Green Goblin, which obviously went to Dafoe. I can’t help but wonder if Dafoe turned it down, would Cary Elwes or Udo Kier be next in line for consideration? It’s like the casting director was determined to hire someone involved with this movie.

So it’s a good movie, but it could have been a bit richer I think. The performances and basic concept make it worth watching, but I don’t think they went as far with the “what if?” scenario as they could have.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Non Canon Review: Scream 3 (2000)

MAY 14, 2010

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)
LAST SEEN: 2001 (DVD)

While I had no desire to revisit Scream 3, readers have requested that I do so quite a few times since I did the first two back in October of 2007, and I figured with S4 now finally happening, I’d eventually need a refresher, assuming the new film addresses this one at all. See, my main issue with the film is and always has been that the new screenwriter (Ehren Kruger) brought a completely different tone from the others, plus some rather revisionist plot developments, and thus I wouldn’t be surprised - nor would I mind - if Kevin Williamson (who is writing 4 as we speak) just ignored it entirely.

Before I explain away why this one doesn’t work for me, I will point out what I DO like. For starters, it’s perfectly good on a technical level. Peter Deming is one of the hands down best DPs in the business, and while the reported 40 million budget isn’t on the screen (I’m guessing a big chunk of that went to paying the principals to return), it still looks far and away better than any other horror movie of the era (and yes, the eye candy doesn’t hurt - Jenny McCarthy in particular has never looked better). Likewise, Patrick Lussier’s editing is as good as ever - the scare scenes are tight, and even with a few viewings, still manage a few thrills. The chase in the set for Sidney’s old house is a wonderful sequence - not only does it actually work as intended (since Neve was clearly not in the film as much as usual, it was actually feasible that she WOULD indeed be killed off halfway through, especially since it comes after Randy warns she’s just as in danger as anyone), but it’s just a terrifically constructed chase scene, with a great, unexpected punchline that pays off the whole “Hollywood is fake” thing, and then another beat that continues the series’ charming tendency to make Ghostface a really clumsy, oft-knocked to the ground killer.

And I like that no one has been replaced or curiously left out. Few part 2s in slasher series ever have returning cast and crew, let alone part 3. But with the exception of Williamson, everyone that matters is back - Craven, Neve, the Arquettes, Liev Schrieber, the producers, composer Marco Beltrami (though his attempts to copy the Zimmer/Broken Arrow themes for Dewey are terrible - why didn’t they just license the score again?)... even Sid’s dad shows up again. There are no characters of note who simply got written out or ignored entirely - if they were in Scream, and not dead, they’re here. Hell, they even bring back Billy’s dad for a single shot! It gives the film a consistency that few horror franchises ever have.

Unfortunately, that just makes the script’s failings all the more apparent. Everyone comes back and gives it their all, but they’re stuck with a script that rewrites the history of their previous adventures. It’s the type of ret-conning thing I never care for, ESPECIALLY when it’s another writer. If Williamson wants to say that Billy and Stu were hired by some douchebag, one who then spent another 4 years not bothering to do much to find Sid (she wasn’t in hiding in part 2, Mr. Bridger!), then he can. Ehren Kruger, as far as I’m concerned, hasn’t earned the right to do that. Especially for such a weak and plot-hole ridden revelation as this one - how is it that Gale, in all of her book writing and research, never came across anything about Sid’s mom being an actress? It’s just dumb.

The humor is even worse. Instead of referencing horror movies, Kruger has a bunch of shitty meta-humor that wouldn’t feel out of place on Family Guy. By the time Carrie Fisher (not as herself) is bitching about losing the part of Princess Leia because she didn’t sleep with George Lucas, I wanted to give up entirely. Plus: Jay and Silent Bob cameos? Roger Corman bemoaning violence in the movies? Come on, this is Mad Magazine shit, not clever satire. And again, it doesn’t seem like Kruger has any real love for the genre, which makes even the somewhat appropriate meta-jokes (actors complaining about their scripts being rewritten, an actual problem with both Scream 2 and 3) feel forced and sort of mean-spirited. Worse, since they aren’t referencing legitimate horror movies, the film has completely lost the “real world” appeal that the first two had. We cared about people like Randy not just because he was a good character, but because he, like us, watched things like Prom Night and Dorm That Dripped Blood in his spare time. It gave the first two films a sense of realism that most horror films lack, and the fact that everything in this movie is about fake movies just makes it doubly problematic.

It also feels like Kruger’s script tries too hard to copy the first film’s structure, right down to having the entire final third set at a party in a giant house (and the less said about this movie’s version of the voice scrambler, the better). Again, this makes its flaws all the more apparent (i.e. the finale is a complete bore), but it also keeps the film from feeling surprising at any turn. Supposedly, this being the end of a trilogy (HAH!), “all bets are off”, but the film plays it remarkably safe. The new characters are all unmemorable, so you can forget about being upset when any of them die, as you might have been for Randy, or Tatum, or even Derek from 2. The only new character who managed to strike a chord with me is Patrick Dempsey’s cop (and his partner, who is sadly absent from the 3rd act for some reason). Not only is he the only viable red herring in the entire movie (another giant step down from the first film, which excelled in this department), but once it became clear that he was NOT the villain, he was the only one whose fate I wasn’t sure about. We know Dewey’s indestructible, and if they were going to kill Sid they would have done it halfway through when they had a chance (and used Neve Campbell’s limited screen time in a more creative way - instead of having her disappear for large chunks of the film, they could have gone the Psycho route, putting her front and center for a while and then BAM!). And they curiously leave Gale out of the action for the finale once Sid shows up, though not in a red herring type way because we already know it’s not her. So can someone explain why I’m watching a Scream movie and the only person I care about is Patrick Dempsey*? I should also mention the bummer opening, which sees the death of Cotton Weary (way to put me in a bad mood right from the start), who was an interesting character, not to mention played by one of the series’ best actors (Liev Schrieber, who I’ve been a fan of since his expanded role in Scream 2, and continue to find him one of the more interesting actors in his age group).

Speaking of the lack of red herrings, I think the idea to only have one killer this time around was a mistake. Sure, the audience was probably expecting it, but was it worth the trade off, to have so few suspects, and have characters occasionally act suspicious for no reason whatsoever to make up for it? I think not.

They also bring back the “going in sequence” concept from Scream 2, and again, pretty much drop it as soon as they bring it up. This time the killer is killing everyone off in order of when their characters die in the Stab 3 script, but as soon as it’s mentioned, we discover that there are multiple scripts for the movie, and thus the next victim could be any of three people. So we have an instantly worthless plot contrivance. And many of the victims in the movie aren’t actors from Stab (the Patrick Warburton character, Lance Henriksen, Cotton’s girlfriend...), so why even bring it up? Just to get to a meta-joke about how Scream sequels tend to have various drafts?

And I HATE the completely misguided nightmare scenes (gee, I wonder how Mr. Kruger came up with those), which don’t fit at all and waste Neve’s restricted screentime. Again, this is where the fact that everyone else has returned betrays the film’s design. If it was a new director, and an entirely new cast (save for maybe one minor character), then the huge shifts in tone and style would sort of be expected, or at least easier to swallow. But for a part 3, why are the same people going about it all differently? Even Dewey and Gale’s love-hate relationship feels forced. I’m not saying the movie has to be the same thing over and over (that would actually be worse), but large sections of the film simply don’t feel like Scream to me.

Oh and the Randy scene? Ridiculous. Since none of his rules are followed anyway (for example, he says “some of you will die”, but he’s addressing the only 4 people in the movie that DO live), and some of them don’t even make sense. What the hell part 3 had a suddenly supernatural killer? Jason didn’t turn into a zombie until part 6, Freddy and Pinhead were always supernatural, Michael wasn’t even IN his part 3... hell, even Randy’s beloved Prom Night actually went the supernatural route with the 2nd film. I just don’t have the slightest idea why they thought this scene would be a good idea. Sure, it was nice to see our favorite character again, but was it worth it at the expense of suspending our belief more than ever (he actually refers to the rules as his “life’s work”, as if it was the only aspect to his character)? Christ, if Randy was so worried that he was going to die that he would actually make a tape for his friends to watch in case a 3rd killer came along, why was he egging on the killer in 2? Again, the things we learn in this movie ruin things about the first (and superior) two films.

And why use a cover of “Red Right Hand” instead of the Nick Cave original? Come on, work with me here!

At least the DVD meets expectations. Alternate cuts of the opening and ending, a few other deleted scenes, outtakes, TV spots (including one that makes Deon Richmond look like a main character and plays rap music over the tail end of it - OK?), bios, trailers, a Creed music video (Creed is all over this movie, in fact, and yet it’s the least of its problems)... the whole nine yards. There’s also a commentary with Craven, producer Marianne Maddalena, and Lussier, where they talk a lot about the cast and technical details, and, perhaps tellingly, almost nothing about the script, though they do mention that it originally had a lot of scenes of Ghostface talking on camera (as opposed to over the phone), which again confirms my belief that Kruger had no idea what he was doing. They also reveal that they never had a test screening, which is a shame. I mean, there are problems with the film’s very core, and a few edits or reshoots probably wouldn’t help much, but a 95 minute disappointment is better than a 117 minute one. Wes also makes a hilarious “Macarthur Park” reference, which is incidentally the best laugh on the disc (though I do like Dewey and Dempsey’s “Was that a threat?” face off).

In a way, it’s sort of like the Die Hard 4 of the series; in that it’s a passable entry in its genre, but it’s a lousy one with respect to its franchise. Like the former film, it seems written by someone who failed to understand what made the earlier films so special, and ultimately delivered something that didn’t elevate the standards of its sub-genre, but simply catered to them. I’m pretty forgiving for slasher films in general, but I expect more from my Scream films.

What say you?

P.S. When looking at the IMDb page for the film for research, I noticed people on the board claiming this one was their favorite of the series. If any of those folks are reading, I IMPLORE you to explain your reasoning in the comments. I can see liking the film more than me, but if it's your favorite of the series, I have to assume you simply just didn't like the first two.

*I also actually kind of liked the Matt Keeslar character. He's not in it much, but he's got a great little bit with Gale and manages to come across as likable even though he's written as sort of a douche. Go figure.

PLEASE, GO ON...

High Plains Invaders (2009)

MAY 13, 2010

GENRE: ALIEN
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

After yesterday’s Blood Monkey, I wasn’t expecting to dip into the Maneater pile again so soon, but that’s just how things work out sometimes. I had picked a different movie for the day (Suicide Girls Must Die), only to discover that my screener copy was just a ten minute preview. So I grabbed the next title on the screener pile, which happened to be High Plains Invaders, which is essentially a standard western but with aliens that look ripped off from War of the Worlds (maybe that’s why they weren’t on the cover - the studio might be afraid that they’d get lumped in with the Asylum’s WotW knockoff).

Like Sea Beast (and Carny, which I just discovered was also a Maneater production), the movie is basically OK, with just enough effort to keep it above a lot of its Syfy brethren. So maybe Blood Monkey was the fluke? Are all of their movies kind of OK? Any Maneater experts reading this? Which do you recommend?

Anyway, what makes this one kind of work is that the characters are all adults, and no one is trying to be funny. You hear “aliens in the old west” and you think camp, but it’s played fairly straight. Even James Marsters, who was a comic delight on Buffy and Angel, is pretty humorless. There is a slight sense of fun to the proceedings, particularly in the scenes revolving around Sanny Van Heteren's character, a female bounty hunter, but it’s hardly the alien version of Undead or Alive or whatever.

I also liked that there were no obvious fodder characters, and that other than the two obvious survivors (which is a term I guess I shouldn’t use after Blood Monkey, though here they play it safe and let the two leads survive), I was never sure who would die next. A character I thought for sure would be one of the last to go actually died first. And there were some decent character shifts - the would-be evil corporate guy, who seemingly knows about the aliens’ existence, turns out to be a very helpful ally, and the bounty hunter, who wants to collect the reward on Marsters, turns out to be even more of a jerk, instead of eventually siding with him against their common enemy.

I just wish that they had a little more balls with Marsters’ character. Near the end of the film, we find out that he’s actually more or less innocent of the crimes he’s been accused of. Remember Pitch Black? Part of what made that movie awesome was that Riddick was a murderer and all of the other things he was in prison for. And that was a decent sized budget theatrical film! I don’t see why these DTV movie writers can’t be a little more daring - they don’t have to worry about hitting every target demographic and Cinemascore and all that other shit. Especially when you have an actor that genre fans love. Maybe they felt it would be a bit too familiar to have Marsters play yet another villain turned hero, but I’d take familiarity with relation to the actor over familiarity with relation to the hero character in 569 other movies.

It also gets a bit slow at times, particularly in the third act, where the human conflicts seem to overshadow the aliens. I know the budget wasn’t particularly high, but it seems like the aliens are constantly walking down the same part of the street and then burrowing into the ground. I can’t recall if we ever see more than one on-screen at once, either. And they have these giant whip tail things that are never used much, even though I would think it would be cheaper to utilize them, as all they’d have to do is make a tail out of the usual foam and latex and such, and then use close-ups to have it smashing through walls and knocking characters aside.

Also, the characters never seem to learn that shooting at it is a bad idea. Not only does it almost never work (near the very end they finally find a weak spot to shoot at), but it also results in the death of one of the heroes, since the alien’s hard shell just causes the bullets to ricochet. All I could think of was Prince of Space, with the Prince constantly telling Krankor that his weapons were ineffectual, only for Krankor to order his men to fire at him yet again. Granted, it eventually works, but it fails so many times before that, I started looking at all of the characters like idiots.

The editing could be better too. It seems like the entire town just disappears, as does a fairly significant character, who then reappears just as unceremoniously a while later, right about the time most audiences would have completely forgotten he existed. There’s also a scene where a few of the protagonists try to head out of town on a wagon, only to return moments later. Everyone knows why, and reacts accordingly, but it’s several shots and seconds before we understand what has happened (an alien has blocked their way). Like Feast, I suspect that they never had time or money to shoot everything in the script (or simply had a really shitty script supervisor), and thus ended up missing some crucial cutaways and master shots that would help make certain scenes a lot easier to follow.

But it’s still an above average time-waster. Other than the shooting stuff I never got mad at the movie, and I was never bored throughout its running time. And I liked the characters (even the sort of villainous ones), which after yesterday’s movie (and the 10 min of Suicide Girls nonsense I endured), is something of a godsend. Like a lot of things tend to do, it reminded me of an "Onion" article, where a basketball player prospect was praised for being a decent human being instead of a complete piece of shit like most NBA players. Likewise, I was surprised with this movie because, for a change, the characters weren’t repulsive or moronic. Let’s make “likeable characters” the next trend in horror movies!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Blood Monkey (2007)

MAY 12, 2010

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

DTV junkies even more diligent than myself are probably quite familiar with the Maneater series, but my exposure has been sadly limited, due to the fact that my Blockbuster doesn’t stock them and for the most part they are the type of things I wouldn’t go out of my way to find. I own one, but that’s only because a buddy of mine wrote it (and since it’s 3 hours long, I still haven’t found time to watch it). And I saw Sea Beast, which was a notch or two above this sort of thing. But I fear more of them are like Blood Monkey (or Bloodmonkey according to the IMDb), in that they suck.

I don’t really ask for much from anything that would air as the Saturday night movie on the Sci-Fi channel, but Blood Monkey can’t even deliver that. Pretty much every kill in the movie is off-screen, something they probably think is made up for with the fact that every character dies (spoiler). But no, because I didn’t like any of the characters, so the fact that they all died doesn’t change the fact that they didn’t die instantly and just let me enjoy the scenery for the remaining 85 minutes.

And off-screen or not, there is no excuse for the fact that the film’s requisite human villain is killed not by Blood Monkey himself, but by a trap that Blood Monkey apparently built himself. It’s one of those tripwire “giant thing with spears sticking out of it swings down and impales the guy” deals, and since this is a low budget movie made by folks who don’t really give a shit, the spears sticking out of the guy’s torso move independently of the thing they are supposed to be attached to. So instead of having the monster in your monster movie kill the guy the audience hates, you instead ask the audience to believe that the monster would set up traps, and to be OK with one of them killing the guy, poorly. OK.

Oh, and the guy is none other than Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham, continuing his 25 year decline since Amadeus. Seriously, what the hell, man? It’s one thing to take on hammy roles in B-movie junk like Surviving the Game, because at least there you’re getting to chew the scenery with other great actors. But what could possibly be the reason for taking on this role? He’s at the point in his career where he should be living more than comfortably off of residuals, and unlike guys like Lance Henriksen (who stars in at least one of the other Maneater films), he doesn’t have any alimony checks to pay, as he’s been married to the same woman for nearly 50 years (grats to him!). I just don’t get it.

Maybe he just wanted the free trip to Thailand. The best thing I can say about the movie is that it’s at least in a different locale than I’m used to - right off the bat I knew we weren’t in the usual Bulgarian or Canadian forests. I mean, yeah, it’s just trees, but they are DIFFERENT trees, and it’s the most original thing about the movie. Well, second most original thing - there’s a pretty hilarious bit where Blood Monkey urinates all over their tent. All monster movies should have urination scenes, in my opinion.

And while it’s not exactly a GOOD idea, it’s at least a SURPRISING one that the end of the movie rips off Blair Witch Project. For the whole movie, one of our characters has been filming for a documentary, and thankfully we are spared too many “POV” shots until the final few minutes, where they are using the nightvision mode to see in the dark cave. Suddenly, Blood Monkey (off-screen, of course) kills our two would-be survivors, as the camera drops to the ground. Then we FINALLY get a clear shot of Blood Monkey (raise your hand if you’re shocked to discover he’s a terrible CGI creation - and they made him more like a gorilla, to boot) and the movie ends. I mean, every minute of the movie is ripped off from others (I’m sure even the urine one came from another movie), but they are the ones you’d expect - Congo, Predator, etc. Blair Witch Project? Not so much. Way to steal outside the box, folks!

But the one movie they should have ripped off is The Descent, because they obviously had caves and they obviously DIDN’T have the means to have a good monkey/ape. Why not have all of our dumbass kids get trapped in the cave and simply use the claustrophobia/limited supplies stuff to provide the tension, added to the fear of Blood Monkey being down there with them. Instead we just get a bunch of scenes of Abraham acting like a total jerk with our moron heroes following him anyway, or half-baked romance/comic relief interplay between the students.

Since I watched on Netflix, I don’t know if there were any extra features. I wouldn’t care if there was. The worst thing one of these movies can be is boring, and that’s the perfect word to describe this one. Christ, the title has more action.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...