Curse of Chucky Review

I Spit on Your Grave 2 - Review

From its initial announcement I was vocally unenthusiastic of I Spit on Your Grave 2. I Spit on Your Grave was a film that I felt didn't require a remake let alone a sequel to the remake. After watching the movie I can say with confidence that I was correct in my initial reaction. This movie is trash. Not trashy like John Waters because that would be a good thing. It's just trash. Garbage.

The plot follows a young woman named Katie who moves to New York City from the mid-west with big dreams of becoming a model. Of course she struggles right out of the gate and is told that she has a lot of potential but her portfolio needs work. Out of desperation she contacts a photographer who offers free professional photos to models. The trade-off being that they are able to use the photos in their personal portfolio and make money off of them. She heads on over to this guys studio and there are three thick accented Bulgarian brothers who are all kinds of shady. She opts out of the photo shoot once things get weird but unfortunately she has garnered the attention of Georgy who apparently has a penchant for serial rape. Predictably he stalks her, eventually breaks into her home, murders her friend and brutally assaults her. Georgy calls his brother who decides they have to clean up the mess. This entails drugging Katie, shipping her to Bulgaria, finding a John who will pay a wad of cash to do what he wants to her, murdering her and disposing of her body. That's in a nutshell but there is a ton of sexual violence that happens in that span of time from an additional rape to cow prodding. It's brutal, graphic and difficult to watch. As we expect she survives and exacts revenge upon her abusers.

Saturday Morning Massacre - Review

Saturday Morning Massacre has a simple premise. Scooby-Doo meets R-Rated horror film. It's an interesting concept that will probably resonate with any of us adults who grew up watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday Mornings. If you happened to be one of those early watchers you will recognize the plot. A group of four college age paranormal investigators go to a spooky old mansion with their dog and VW bus in tow with the goal of debunking a supposed haunting. Following some accidental drug consumption the line between reality and hallucination are blurred until events finally spiral into the promised massacre.

Our four main characters are Nancy, Gwen, Chad, Floyd and their dog Hamlet. These are of course fill-in's for Velma, Daphne, Fred, Shaggy and Scooby. The casting works relatively well here. The "Velma" and "Shaggy" characters have the right mix of believable character and cartoon based caricature. They manage to emulate the characters we expect them to be based on the influence without going over the top into cartoon land. The "Fred" and "Daphne" fill-in's are a bit more underwhelming. They don't come close enough to fitting the bill of what we expect and come off as more generic than anything. There is, however, a pretty gratuitous sex scene between these two characters for anyone that ever wanted to see Fred and Daphne get it on. Basically the casting of the lead's if 50-50. It's probably better that some characters feel more generic than caricature as it probably would have put the film too over the top. There's a good amount of comedy in here but it comes from the situation's and dialogue rather than the characters themselves.

You're Next - Review

The home invasion sub-genre consists of some of the most unnerving films in horror. The idea of masked individuals invading your home to attack you and your family is both plausible and terrifying. The monsters aren’t supernatural. They are human. They aren’t in a place that feels foreign. They are hiding under your bed and coming through your window. Home is primarily a universal symbol of a safe place where a person can rest and escape the dangers of the outside world. A successfully made home invasion film can turn that sense of security upside down. It can make you double check the locks on your windows and leave the closet door open. It can take the safety out of suburbia. You're Next is not the first film to utilize this concept (Funny Games, The Strangers and Halloween immediately come to mind), but it employs it well while successfully mixing in dark comedic elements creating a surprisingly original experience in an arguably tired sub-genre.

Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have pulled off another great collaboration balancing horror and comedy well with plenty of twists and turns throughout. The story is centered on the Davison family who are celebrating the 30th wedding anniversary of parents Aubrey and Paul in a secluded country mansion. The festivities take a deadly turn when lunatics donning animal masks begin picking them off one by one in gruesome ways. Although You’re Next has not been marketed as a horror comedy it easily falls into the sub-genre. Audience members around me were laughing as much as they were jumping in fright. A lot of the comedy comes from the bickering going on between the siblings. Joe Swanberg (Drake Davison) really shines as the stuck up brother who takes every chance he can to demean his siblings. Director Ti West also has a brief but memorable role as documentary film maker Tariq whose film was screened at the 2008 Chicago Underground Film Festival and prides himself on creating “art”. It’s an amusing skewering of the pretentious art-house filmmaker and his fans should get a kick out of the role.

Grabbers - Review

Too many movies in the horror genre devolve into lesser clones of those that came before using tired premises and overused villains. That’s why it’s refreshing to see a movie with an original concept executed in a fun and entertaining way. That movie is Grabbers, an Irish monster flick about bloodsucking alien squid that land off the coast of Erin Island and descend upon the small fishing village. In their way are Garda (Irish police) O' Shea; an alcoholic, Garda Nolan; a busy body on temporary assignment to the island, Dr. Adam Smith; a geeky British scientist and Paddy Barrett; a drunken fisherman.

The grabbers are a mix of CGI and practical effects but mostly CGI. They look pretty good though and it never takes you out of the film. They feed on their victims through a pointed tongue which shoots out like a frog grabbing their victims (hence the name) draining their blood. A grabber only needs two things to survive, water and blood, meaning the only time they can attack the island is when it’s raining and there happens to be a storm heading right toward Eden Island. Another of the grabbers’ weaknesses is none other than booze which basically means the Irish are the grabbers’ kryptonite. Once this is discovered it sets up the second half of the movie as O'Shea and Nolan struggle to keep everyone in town nice and hammered.

The Conjuring - Review

About 20 or so years ago at the ripe age of 10 my mother took me to see a presentation by Ed and Lorraine Warren, the famous supernatural investigative husband and wife team. They spent about an hour and a half showing us slides of ghost photos, possessed items and playing audio tapes of demons speaking through their possessed hosts. Hearing those voices and seeing the images of a purportedly possessed children's doll was enough to actually frighten that horror film obsessed 10 year old. So as The Conjuring unspooled in front of me on the screen it wasn't long before I was experiencing some major deja-vu.

The Conjuring concerns a family consisting of Carolyn, Roger and their 5 daughters. They purchase an old rundown home only to discover that it is inhabited by a malevolent force. As this force becomes more violent they seek help in the form of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed is a renowned demonologist and Lorraine a clairvoyant and they work to rid not only the home but the family members themselves of this entity before it literally tears their family apart.

The Conjuring is an amalgamation of several tropes and plot lines we have seen before. Wan calls on films like The Amityville Horror (also a Warren case), Poltergeist, The Entity, The Exorcist and even his own Insidious for inspiration. Actually, I think there may be a little bit of Evil Dead imagery in here as well. All of these sources could have been a major downfall for the film if it hadn't been well executed. However, rather than feel like a cut and paste money grab experience, all of these elements come together seamlessly into one giant melting pot of a film that works surprisingly well from start to finish.