Joy Ride 3: Roadkill - Review

Joy Ride 3 sees Rusty Nail return with his trusty tractor trailer to run down a new set of victims. This time his sights are set on a group of young street racers on their way to Canada to take part in a competition known as the Road Rally 1000.

The original Joy Ride is a movie that surprised the hell out of me when I first saw it. Filled with suspense, likable characters, good acting, a simple premise and a frightening antagonist it was easy to be sucked into the story and come out at the end satisfied. That’s why it’s so disappointing to see this become nothing more than a modern slasher franchise that utilizes characters we can only barely like, features kills that feel like rejects from a Saw movie and seems to be positioning Rusty as a wise-cracking slasher in the vein of Freddy Krueger rather than an ominous presence hidden behind the wheel of his truck.

The film opens with two meth heads in a motel room, high as kites and having sex. They run out of meth so they come up with the bright idea of calling a trucker on the CB radio and robbing him of cash and drugs. Of course they call up Rusty Nail who proceeds to tie them to the front of his truck and tell them that if they can hold on for one mile he will let them go. You can see why I make the Saw reference as most of the kills are setup in a way to torture the victim and draw out their death. So right from the opening scene we have two characters being killed by Rusty who fully deserve what they get. Seeing them be run over by his big rig is satisfying rather than terrifying. I will say that Ken Kirzinger chews up his role as Rusty Nail and is a good fit for the role but setting up the audience to root for him is a mis-step.

After this opening we are introduced to our main cast of characters. They include two incredibly annoying women and a bunch of completely underdeveloped male characters. We are simply supposed to define them by the fact that they race cars. The only character I found myself even remotely liking was Austin and that was because he makes a Large Marge reference which I can totally appreciate. It’s the only scene in the movie where I found myself smiling.

As you can imagine the remaining run-time is filled with the racers running afoul of Rusty and he kills them off in various creative ways while they continually make horrible baffling decisions. He ties onecharacter to the top of his truck and drives full speed under a bridge. He places one characters head between a lift and the bottom of his truck slowly crushing it. He sets up an elaborate contraption where one characters head is slowly wrapped with a chain and impaled. There are a few others as well but most involve some sort of elaborate setup. Again, this is why I make the Saw comparison. He puts in so much work to kill these people when all he has to do is run them over with his truck.

I don’t have much more to say about the movie. It’s from the director of Wrong Turn 3, 4 & 5 which I have yet to see but haven't heard many good things. Hopefully the Joy Ride franchise calls it quits at 3 and we aren’t exposed to any additional sequels though I doubt it. Overall it’s a formulaic run of the mill slasher movie with unlikable bland characters and an unoriginal uninspired story that left me bored. There are some good gore effects, decent car chases, and the acting’s not half-bad but that’s hardly enough to save this movie.

Score: 1.5/5

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Antisocial - Review

Zombies are everywhere in pop culture. The success of the Walking Dead has only helped to catapult them further into public popularity so it’s not surprising that the number of zombie films out there is so high. It’s not much different from the slasher movie fervor in the early 80’s and, like those, the zombie films desperately try to find a way to spin the concept in a unique way and set themselves apart from the herd.

Antisocial is a film with its “spin” based around social media. The plot concerns a group of college aged adults who are a small part of a larger worldwide obsession with a website called the Social Redroom. It’s basically a fictional version of Facebook where everyone can connect with friends, share pictures, post updates about their lives etc. but, unbeknownst to them, the site has been transmitting a subliminal signal which causes users to become addicted to the website. One day during a normal update to the site the signal goes bad and infects everyone with a virus that puts them into a violent zombie like state. Only those who haven’t accessed the site remain safe from the virus. Due to the nature of the transmission of the virus it only takes a day before most of the world is infected.

The concept of a visual or auditory signal that turns people into zombies via technology isn’t entirely new. Movies like “The Signal”, “Pontypool”, and even “They Live” utilize the concept to some extent as well as books like “Cell”. If done right, the concept can work incredibly well since most of us rely on these technologies daily and the thought of them turning on us is kind of unnerving.

Antisocial primarily wants to function as a satire hiding under the guise of a zombie film. The movie pokes quite a bit of fun at the people who use social media and is quick to point out the shallowness and stupidity of those who use it. There is, however, an issue with the way the filmmakers approach the topic. It’s clearly stated in the film that the signals transmitted via the site are what cause those to be addicted in the first place. This takes the blame off of the users and turns it from a film poking fun at a societal issue where the users are the cause of their own demise into a film where the users are the victim. I am fine with this approach as it makes sense in some ways so that we better empathize with the characters as victims but it doesn’t hold up as well as a satire of the social media generation. It would have been interesting had they removed the subliminal message aspect and just made it an unexpected side effect on all of the users as a result of a regularly scheduled update. This would have maintained the message about our current obsession on social media and the consequences of that obsession.

One additional issue with having the cause of the virus be dependent on a website is that the power has to stay on for the entirety of the film for it to continue spreading. If the world were really being overrun by billions of zombies in the matter of a single day the power grid and all communications would cease pretty quickly yet internet, cell phones and power continue to work right up until the end. It’s a minor flaw but difficult to believe.

While I take some issue with the overall message of the film there are aspects that work well. For one, the characters are likable. Some of them fall on the side of bland but at no point do we really hate any of them and I found myself feeling generally bad for some of them as they became infected. There is also some good effects work. Most of the effects are practical including one scene with a drill to the head which is effectively cringe-worthy. There is also some minimal CGI work but it blends well with the film and practical effects.

Overall Antisocial’s major failing is that it can’t fully pull off the satire angle that I believe the filmmakers were attempting. It works as a zombie film in the way that any post Night of the Living Dead zombie film works. If you can manage to take a group of people and hole them up in a house for an hour or so while maintaining some sense of suspense and whetting our appetite for gore then you succeed. It’s more a question of whether or not the film can distinguish itself from the others in the genre and, in my opinion, Antisocial doesn’t quite do that. However, I commend them on attempting something different and mildly recommend it.

Score:2/5

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Podcast Episode 27

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Episode 27 features reviews of two very different movies. First, Mike reviews the 2007 horror comedy "Hack!". How bad could a slasher movie sendup starring Winnie Cooper from "The Wonder Years" really be? Adam follows up Mike's review with his take on the first of the "Class of" trilogy, Mark Lester's "Class of 1984". We also talk what we've been watching, Nightbreed, The Purge and more! Enjoy!

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Podcast Episode 26.5 - It's Time for another Minisode!

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Episode 26.5 was a last minute recording so in lieu of our regular format we recorded a minisode! In this minisode you can hear our thoughts on the new Predator and Rambo movies, the MPAA, a slew of box sets and more. In addition to an overabundance of news talk we also give our reactions to a variety of movies and series we've been watching including Almost Human, the Re-Animator trilogy, Bates Motel, Trophy Heads and more! While 26.5 may be formatted as a "minisode" we certainly aren't lacking in content! Enjoy!

Blood Shed (2014) Review

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Podcast Episode 26

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Episode 26 marks our official one year episode so we decided to review a couple of sequels to movies we covered in the first 25. Our first review is of the follow-up to Teen Wolf, 1987's Teen Wolf Too. We follow up with a review of the Jeff Burr directed sequel to Pumpkinhead, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings. Can either of these sequels live up to their namesakes or should they forever languish on the long list of sequels that shouldn't exist? Listen and hear our thoughts! Enjoy!

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Rent "Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings"or Purchase the Scream Factory Blu-ray on Amazon

Stitches - Review

Stitches is a Comedy/Horror movie about a clumsy unfunny clown name Richard "Stitches" Grindle (Played by Ross Noble). Stitches is hired for Tom's (Played by Tommy Knight) birthday party but when he isn’t as funny as the kids want they play a prank on him causing his death. Six years later Stitches comes back from the dead to seek revenge on the kids that accidentally killed him. Stitches is written and Directed by Conor McMahon who previously directed a few short films and also wrote and directed "Dead Meat", which was featured as part of Fangoria's Gorezone label. David O'brien was a co-writer for the film who is known for “Shrooms” from 2007 and a few other films. Stitches is played by Ross Noble who is an English actor with a long list of credits including self-titled videos, shorts, and documentaries.

The film starts right off with Stitches banging some girl in a trailer, so be careful with kids in the room it's the first thing you see. This is the only real raunchy seen, other than this we get one nip slip, but it is about high school kids so...

In the middle of having sex Stitches remembers he has a birthday party to do so he just stops, pulls up his pants and heads off smelling like liqueur and sex to little Tom's birthday party. Stitches arrives at the party while the kids are in the driveway playing and drives straight for them as they jump out of the way. Tom's mother's tell him he’s late, he call's her ugly and proceeds on into the house. Just the clown you want at your kid’s party right?!

Stitches is not a good clown. He can’t do tricks or even make balloon animal's so the kids decide to throw things at him and tie his shoes together. This is where everything goes wrong for Stitches. Stitches death scene is really funny and contains some great effects. All of the effects in this film are actually done well. Many are filmed on a black background but the cut's from the film to effects are smooth and worked well and while the effects are definitely not realistic but are still fun to watch.

We then learn that all clowns have an egg with a painted face and that holds the clown soul and that all of these eggs are stored away in a special clown tomb. Not sure if this a real thing or not but let's just roll with it. We also learn that if a clown dies in mid-act then he or she can never rest until the joke is finished.

We now jump ahead six years where all of the kids are in high school. They did a surprisingly good job of matching the younger kids to their high school aged selves. Tom starts having visions of Stitches the clown including one with Stitches ripping his friend’s dick off. While the scene will definitely make the men in the audience squirm it manages to be both gory and funny.

Tom's friends are trying to convince him to throw a party but he is reluctant. Finally Vinny, his childhood friend, convinces him but he only invites his closes friends. Unfortunately for Tom there’s a social media site called "My Face" where someone posts an invite to the party. One girl’s MyFace invite reads "You invited everyone to come on My Face" which is just one example of the low brow humor which fills up the movies run-time.

The party is where the bulk of the action happens. It’s a huge typical high school party with a lot of beer and weed. I don’t want to spoil anything but the best scenes happen here.

The acting is really good with each character possessing a distinct personality and the progression from childhood to teenager allows us to see how none of them really change. I mentioned earlier how well the special effects work and I would like to touch on a few specific scenes. There is a decapitation scene where a character’s head is kicked off and their lips are still twitching as it fly's through air. There is an eyeball that is popped out directly towards the camera. Someone has their head blown up with a balloon pump which you have to see to really understand but it’s pretty funny. There is even a chase scene with two kids on mountain bikes and Stitches on a tricycle.

Overall Stitches just a fun movie. If you’re looking for a feel-good movie or romantic comedy this is not for you. If you’re up for a good laugh and plenty of blood and gore then this is for you. Or maybe you just need to receive a life lesson to never fuck with a clown (or did “IT” already do that)? I would definitely recommend you check this out. The re-watch value is high and I fully enjoyed it for what it was. Unless you’re scared of clowns, then you should probably stay away!

I give this a B-

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Podcast Episode 25

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For episode 25 we are once again taking a look at a couple of low budget indie productions. The first is a shot on video 80's style kung-fu action film from 1992, "Lost Faith". With shot on video productions regularly falling on the side of awful, how does "Lost Faith" hold up? The other is 2014's "Lucky Bastard". This found footage thriller is based around a one day porn shoot and features some extreme soft-core sexuality and an NC-17 rating but is it any good or just another in a long line of terrible found footage films. We also discuss Edgar Wright walking away from Ant-Man, our hesitation towards a Lifetime network rendition of The Omen and more! Enjoy!

Rent or Purchase "Lucky Bastard" on Amazon
Rent or Purchase "Lost Faith" on Cult Movie Mania