Infini

                  

'Infini' is a low budget Australian sci-fi horror that combines elements of 'Blade Runner', 'The Thing', 'Alien' and even 'The Shining' in quite a pleasing way, but fails to be wholly entertaining or memorable.
Starting with some explanatory text, we find that the Earth is overpopulated and lots of people are forced into working for security forces that sort of teleport them to distant outposts to fix them or rescue people or whatever. There's a big catastrophe, and a squad is sent to the furthest outpost from Earth where they find that the frozen shit has  very much hit the space fan. It sports a wilfully unorganised narrative, which I think many viewers will find unpleasantly jarring, but I kind of enjoyed the lack of structure, reminiscent of the infected people's state of mind. Every character is infected fairly early on, pretty much removing any hope. Watching their actions I gradually lost my sense of rooting for one character over another as they were all mentally unstable, and the main reason for viewing became physiological study and morbid curiosity.

                      

                        
I enjoyed the tone though, and it was  a good looking movie (the sets really suited, very industrial and 'Alien'-esque). Their take on zombies were cool too, I found the self mutilation and taunting scarier than classic zombies (possibly because I'm just so used to regular zombies, but I did like the psychological element here for sure).
While most of the characters weren't thoroughly explored, they didn't broadcast their simplicity to me either. Their throwaway dialogue wasn't trying too hard to present one as the funny one, one as the bad ass, the coward, the leader, etc.
I don't want to make it seem like this film is perfect, though. The condition is quite simplistic (at least at first) - it's basically just played out as the sane part of the infected person fighting to control a growing desire for mindless violence - but I liked the concept. There's some sloppy editing too (I'm thinking the repetition of the final speech and the flash forward at the start here in particular), and this is where the low budget shows most, but overall they did a good job of it and the acting was solid and really carried the film.
It gets increasingly introspective towards the end, which is nice. I didn't really connect to the whole family love win out out over base desires thing, but it's a nice message I guess. The final twist of them being replicated completely and finishing the mission to return the Earth was fan-freaking-tastic. The best part is that they all seem to be at least partly aware that they've changed somehow, and that they could be taking whatever change happened to them back to Earth, but they just want to be home safe with their families and not dead after all, and we don't even know how much of them are really human. The threat wasn't the bomb, it was them all along. They are the payload, because selfishness wins out against both love and hate.
I mean it's left a little more open than that - maybe the alien life form was finally taught empathy, reconstructed the humans, and sent them on their way - but that's not how I interpreted it.

                

Infini: 50.9

Survival of the Dead

               

For the last film in Romero's dead series, he seems to have given up on getting any kind of meaningful insight across. That's a bonus, as far as I'm concerned, as the last film stank and the one before was too blatant and silly. This one is silly too, but it's not trying to be anything more than a fairly light-hearted zombie western about two old guys with grudges and a band of ex-military survivors lead by a Hugh Jackman lookalike.

                

              

The imaginative zombie dispatching is dwindling at this point, and the editing (one of the strongest elements of his classics) has become bland and formulaic. You can tell that nothing about this is an independent picture any more. Romero never suited mainstream Hollywood, he was at his best telling off the cuff stories that took a lot of feeling from their location and grew into cohesion in the editing.

I liked this one more than 'Diary of the Dead', but not quite as much as 'Land of the Dead'. While I hated the clunky commentary of that film, I did like the setting and general concept. This film was far more run of the mill, and while it was watchable, it was often comically uninspired.

           

Survival of the Dead: 33.2

Demonwarp

                    

Bigfoot. Zombies. An alien. What more could be asked of a film? The plot (as best as I can figure it): an alien crash lands and starts being worshipped by a priest, who feeds him the hearts of topless women. The alien also turns some guy into a bigfoot who runs around and kills people who turn into zombies that come back to the alien's cave/space ship to work for him as technicians. The main characters are a small group of interchangeable teens in their mid-20s who are topless about 35% of the time. That's over a third. It's as fantastic as it sounds. 

The acting is wooden and difficult to interpret (at the start I couldn't tell if those other guys were drunk too, or if they were just that bad at acting), the writing stinks, and the plot is all over the place (several characters never even meet the main group before being killed, making their presence in the film completely pointless). The copy I saw was really warped (I guess the tape had gotten wet at some point or something) which resulted in the camera wobbling and zooming about oddly. I'm not sure how much of that was intentional to create a sense of unease (doubt it), how much was bad camerawork, and how much was damage to the copy, but whatever the case it proved to be one of the more interesting elements of viewing.

         

        

I was bored a lot of the time. Occasionally 'Demonwarp' is unintentionally hilarious (much of the final act was brilliant) but there are long stretches of filler throughout the main act. Many of the characters were totally unnecessary, and there were lots of weird twists and turns in their relationships with one another (it sort of felt like the director occasionally forgot how each character felt about the others). Overall I'd definitely watch it if you're into bad movies, but don't worry about talking throughout.

                

Demonwarp: 12.2

The Mummy

                     

I think everything apart from Boutella sucked about this film.

                    

Tom Cruise is a thief. He stole... he tried to steal a ring, or something. And then he sort of stole that dagger at the end. I mean he grabbed it, anyway. He didn't steal my attention though. He was a bad choice of lead for this. That and the writing, which is devoid of nearly any wit, resulted in a hugely bland movie. So it's no fun (what I was expecting, considering the 90s 'The Mummy') but it isn't smart or scary either. Lets talk about why it isn't any of those things.

                 

                    

So, fun: now and then it feels like it's trying to be 'Indiana Jones' (running around with explosions at the start, that bit where he shoots the rope to do the thing, stuff like that), but it feels kinda weird when they're fighting Daesh. If this is Indiana Jones, these guys are the Nazis. Since it's current it felt awkward in the movie though, as the real life extremists fought fantasy American guy. The comic relief was almost soley in the hands of Nick from 'New Girl' (wasn't he in 'Jurassic World' too?). I like the actor, but he doesn't work for this and the writing is terrible, so none of the jokes landed. He dies later on, then they 'An American Werewolf inLondon'-ed him for the rest of the movie, only to bring him back to life randomly at the end. On top of all of that we had to open with Daesh shooting up a statue (of Ugallu? He had a lion head anyway - I'm not that hot on ancient Mesopotamia), which sort of pissed me off and left a bitter taste in my mouth that distracted me for the next half hour (art destruction is something of a pet peeve of mine, the older the more so).

How wasn't it smart? Well I wasn't expecting it to be (none of the other iterations of 'Mummy' movies have been), so it goes without saying that it was massively historically inaccurate. They were really laying on the 'Last Crusade' with the focus on crusader knights, and I didn't see any reason for them to move from Media to England so fast (if at all), but then I don't see why the whole thing couldn't have just been set in Egypt, so. The dialogue was far from smart - most of it was either stating the obvious or going over things, and the plot was predictable and mindless.

                   

                    

What was the last one? Scary? Yeah, it wasn't scary. I liked the mummy lady though (I don't think I ever fail to mention when Sofia Boutella is in a lead role): she was pretty and her tattoos were nice - also being the living receptacle of Set sounds like fun.

                  

The Mummy: 29.9

Diary of the Dead

           

Grandpa Romero thought that a zombie movie about the interweb would be good for the naughties. Somehow he also decided that found footage was an acceptable style. The result is this bizarrely unintentional throwback that feels false and pandering on every level. The people don't seem real, as they talk about bloggers and hackers - I felt like I was watching an episode of 'The Lone Gunmen' at times (bless them, but they have gotten dated). Is anyone even blogging any more?

          

        

Let's give the film a partial pass on that for being a decade old (at the time of writing), despite being oddly misinformed and outdated even in 2007. There are plenty of other major problems that I can talk about.

T he found footage element ties into this whole thing about the guy behind the camera being a student film maker and wanting to document everything and all that nonsense reasoning behind why he has for some reason filmed everything literally until his death. For this reason it's cute, if ridiculous, that he keeps giving people direction to make it look better. The resulting movie really does look like a student film, which it is in the fiction of the movie, to be fair, but I think they did too good a job of it. If their aim really was to make it realistically lame, well done! That doesn't subtract from the fact that this is a lame movie, though, and most of it doesn't seem self-aware (and the scenes that do, are so blatantly self-aware that they become unintentionally ridiculous. 

The writing of this movie was some of the worst I've seen in a while, resulting in some laughable dialogue. The bad acting didn't help, and because of this none of the characters really feel like real people. I thought I'd like the English guy, but just like everyone else he grew too overtly cliché to be enjoyable. There are also SO many long exposition scenes that no one seemed to even try and disguise with other things happening. The film literally stops for a few minutes to give the characters a chance to tell us what's happening and how they feel about one another. There are also lots of repeated scenes or clips of dialogue, for no apparent reason. Stuff that's happened less than twenty minutes ago is repeated in flashbacks in case we've forgotten about them already.

The one bright side I can see here is that there is still the occasional imaginative zombie dispatching, but many of them cross the line into being too silly for me at this point.

             

Diary of the Dead: 31.0

Pontypool

                       

A uniquely intelligent zombie horror about a radio host struggling to survive in a small town in Canada during an outbreak of English language spread zombie-ism. It's very low budget, and there may be a disappointing lack of action and gore for true zombie horror fans, but this is made up for by a focus on dialogue (as far as I'm concerned anyway - this movie is not for everyone). 

Stephen McHattie does a fantastic job in the leading role, channelling a Bruce Campbell-esque, pissed off, self aware kind of a character. He's all about conspiracy theories and riling up his audience, only now something really is happening. I found him very likeable; he's genre aware to the extent that it's enjoyable, without it becoming annoying, he's hammy and makes faces and has a certain surface level dislike for other people that I find very endearing, and he has a great voice.

                  

                  

These qualities make him the perfect protagonist for the situation, as there's a strong power of language kind of a theme. The rules that the infection follow are fairly well laid out and stuck to, and are original and difficult enough to remain a partial mystery for the majority of the film. 

The writing is really this film's strong point. There are lots of double meanings, and a lot of apparently throwaway dialogue, especially early on, carries a lot of weight. It doesn't build tension as well as I've seen descriptive scenes do before though, and at times the musical accompaniment is overbearing. 

It's a good, quirky comedy horror though. It has a strong focus on the breadth of sound contrasting with the claustrophobic little space that it is set in, and is unclear, almost indecisive in tone (in a good way).

                          

Pontypool: 69.3

Land of the Dead

              

So Romero skipped the 90's and went straight to the shitty naughties. Yep, it's the worst decade ever (until the next decade, which is now the worst decade ever (and if it's not the teens for you at the time of reading, I'm sure whatever decade you're currently inhabiting is currently the worst decade ever)), and now it's full of zombies and rich people who live in a big tower. 

I should get the fact that I really like this concept out of the way early - I really like this concept. The actual world building and execution in general is sub-par in this film, but if I were to just describe the world, it would sound pretty cool. It's basically '28 Weeks Later', except it's not London, and the rest of the world (I assume) has been taken over. '28 Weeks Later' did it better.

                  

                   

The rich people live in a tower while the lower classes live down below, and have to scavenge for the rich people. The commentary didn't really work. It was far more obvious than in previous films, and it was too shallow. There was no real reason why a monitary system would work in such a small society (and if it did, why it would be out of the control of the heavy hitting guys with the tanks and guns and in the control of the suits who don't appear to actually do anything other than give orders). The society is so small that they would be much more likely to have a bartering system. 

I've never been a huge fan of smart zombies either, though it's interesting how Romero's sympathy seems to swing further over to the undead's side as we make our way further through his movies. There were still plenty of fun scenes (the bit where the zombie pulls a belly button ring out of a girl and then spits it out was a highlight) but the characters were bland and forgettable and the plot was about as predictable as it could get.

                    

Land of the Dead: 33.6

Day of the Dead

                 

You know, I think I actually liked this more than the second one. I'm a big fan of bunkers - Not just in film, in any fiction really. Like space ships or jails, they're secluded. You can get some decent character work in there, and there's plenty room for some mystery apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic happenings up top. So I like this film almost despite the script problems and the 80's campy elements that are starting to feel tacked on (a warning of things to come for this franchise). 

There are a few military and science people left in a bunker in Florida, post-zombie victory event. That's all the set-up you need here, and there was a lot of potential. The script needed work though, and everyone was shouting at each other a little too much for my liking. The whole smart zombie thing was alright, but I don't think it was necessary and it started to mess up the universe as far as I'm concerned I'd have just had Frankenstein do fucked up shit and not get anywhere with it. Then there's a little more sympathy for the army guys when they kill him, right? But I guess grey is bad. Anyway, I like my zombies classic. No flipping around and predator mouth shit, no climbing up big walls in piles like ants, I was even skeptical of the fast zombies in '28 Days Later' - but obviously Boyle made it work for that. 

             

              

The characters are all a little too black and white too. I'd like to have seen a slower burn where we see things working at first and then crumble, where we can understand where each character is coming from. A proper tragedy, basically. I understand that this would have been boring to many zombie fans though, so fair enough. 

             

               

The action is spaced out more than you might expect, but it's decent and the effects work is brilliant. I can't really over sell it - it's the perfect mix of disgustingly gory and unrealistic that'll ensure you're both laughing at it and trying not to throw up. People's skin is apparently made of plastic bag material in Romero's universe, and we get to see zombies tear through it a hell of a lot towards the end of this jaunt. 

I get that it's totally under the winds of my own bias that I prefer this to 'Dawn of the Dead' (and obviously 'Night of the Living Dead is a classic too timeless for anything in this genre to get close to), but I just love the whole bunker thing so much. I even liked that aspect of the 'Resident Evil' series, though there was little else to enjoy there (I root for the Umbrella corporation, rather than the random red haired lady who's trying to kill all of them - and so kill the last bastion of civilisation. Seriously, does no one else read those films like that? I'm complaining about it now because I doubt I'll ever bother reviewing them (how many are there now, fifteen?)). The characters were sometimes cheesy, but no more cheesy than the ones in the last one. I actually felt I connected with them slightly more, despite the lacking script. 

If you're doing a Romero marathon stop here. I warned ya.

               

Day of the Dead: 76.1

Dawn of the Dead

             

Try and imagine a time when malls were the new flashy capitalist thing, and not the loathsome trash compactor dungeons that you venture into if you want to avoid the rain for a bit or if you like wearing tracksuits but are neither Paulie Gualtieri nor doing sport of any kind? You can't? Well, THAT TIME IS NOW. 

             

I like what Romero is trying to say here. More things should have subtle messages. It's good to stay busy, and I like things with more than one thing.

                   

               

There's not a huge plot or the presence of character arcs here, it's not a very conventional film, but it's great. The music is weird, the lighting is bright and static, and you get the impression that a lot was filmed but that the real movie was made in editing. 

We open with a news studio slowly falling into chaos and a swat team busting a zombie-ridden block of houses. Our four protagonists escape on a helicopter, and really it could have been anyone. They end up in a mall, where they survive for a while until a biker gang comes by to mess it up.

The four leads were pretty great, though a lot of the minor actors were a bit hammy. The filmography was pretty basic really, but there were so many fun deaths and quirky moments (many of the interesting deaths were apparently thought up at the time of shooting). It's a much more fun film than the first or third one, and it's also probably the one most people think of (it's certainly the one most people rip off). I think it's my least favourite of the trilogy though, simply because the first was a classic that created the whole concept, and the third was far darker and was set in a bunker.

             

Dawn of the Dead: 67.3

Night of the Living Dead

                  

Romero's zombie debut set the scene for the genre, and has inspired wave after wave of popular zombie movie fads (depending on your time of reading, you may be experiencing one now!) With a simple premise (a group of people trapped inside a house surrounded by the undead) George A Romero creates many of the staples of future zombie movies, and the film doesn't even feel too badly aged or cliché.

              

                  

It does a lot on a low budget, and the characters are all built believably without any unrealistic hunks of filler background dialogue. The script is fairly minimal, which works in the films favour, as characterisation has never really been this genre's strong point. The characters manage to stay believable and even get to tell each other their stories without it sounding at all forced or cheesy (ahem, every other zombie film of all time). 

I've seen both the original and the colourised versions of this film and I'd highly recommend the black and white for new viewers. The zombie make-up looks off when it's in colour (this is one aspect where the budget shows, but it still looks great in black and white, and the innards looked great regardless). 

The bleak ending must have been even more of a kicker when the film first aired, but it still packs a punch today. It was fitting, though, I think, and each of the characters died in a way that rounded up their main flaws nicely. It's a very small film, but it doesn't try and overstretch itself. It does what it's trying to do perfectly, and I don't think there's much higher praise I can give a film than that. Easily one of the best horror films of all time, and I expect the best zombie film of all time.

                   

Night of the Living Dead: 85.1

Creature

              

Can't... hold... focus....

                 

'Creature' is a tired boring 'Alien' rip that's hits so many of the same beats as it's host that I'm surprised they managed to copyright it as a separate entity.

I'm not going to bother explaining the plot, because it really is the same as 'Alien', save for the details. There are a few ships in this one and they all stay grounded for the duration, is the main affecting difference. The characters move around between the ships and do stuff for reasons, but they're all so thinly fleshed out that it becomes really difficult to follow the details.

                   

                

The creature itself was essentially a Xenomorph, minus the little tongue mouth and with some goofy glowing red eyes. The suit was clearly terribly constructed, and gets very little air time (one long and somewhat hilarious sequence sees it slowly make its way down a corridor while a human begs for the door at the far end to be opened. He sounds so panicked, but there was no real rush – the alien would have taken like an hour to reach him at it's slow waddle.

The acting was fairly shoddy all-round, save Klaus Kinski. Thank god for Kinski, he's pretty much the only redeemable thing about this movie, and he puts his creepy-ass all into it.

Don't bother with this one though, seriously. Even if you really like sci-fi, it just left me feeling mildly depressed.

                 

Creature: 12.4

Doom

                    

'Doom' is a great game (well, the original is - I don't know about that newer one) but a crap-fest of a movie.

                

                     

Seriously, this is really poor. They stick to the game's premise pretty closely from what I recall, but the characters are all shit, and the cinematography is either intentionally like the game but just done badly, or trying to be like, I don't know, 'Alien', or something, with the dark bits and stuff, and just didn't work out. Seriously, a lot of the time I just couldn't see what was going on, and not in a good way. The camera work was also terrible, and all the odd cuts, breaking of the 180 degree rule, and reverse shots rendered many of the action sequences incomprehensible.

What else? Well the plot was alright, if nothing original, and the sets were OK. I liked the Universal logo over Mars, and I liked some of the creature design (again: not very original, but a good use of practical effects). Towards the end there's a short 1st person sequence, which plays oddly and doesn't quite work, but it's cute that they tried, I guess.
That's about it, really. Watch this if you enjoy mindless violent action and the "Rock".
                 

Doom: 16.2

Night of the Creeps

 

What a weird cold open. It's delivered in two parts: some weird thumb looking aliens loose a big test tube in space, and then we see it crash land on 1950s Earth and infect half of one of those classic "sit in a car and make out on a hill and then check on a noise and get killed by an escaped psycho" couples. Then we cut again to 1986, and two guys who are somehow both nerds and unaware of what cryogenics are, are trying to talk to girls at a frat party. They're also very suggestible, so to join a sorority (I'm not American, but I get the impression that this is the kind of place where rich white boys went to help them grow up into rich white old men who would then be the bad guys on 'The X-Files') they end up trying to steal a body, which happens to have been infected by the slugs and then frozen in the 50's.

The comedy here is understated enough to be enjoyable, and has a similar feeling to 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' on its good days. The horror element is less satisfactory (especially tension wise, which is often intentionally goofy in any case) but does manage to produce the odd jump-scare. The characters are all pretty god awful, and each falls into very well defined stereotypes. That and them being children, yet somehow living in mansions, meant that I didn't care for any of them at all. I don't think character sympathy in horror is as necessary as people make out anyway, though (cough 'The Walking Dead' cough). The two friends are occasionally fun, what with banter and whatnot, and I liked the detective, but I didn't really care for anyone else.

 

"What is this, a homicide or a bad B movie?" - I hate to have to tell you...

  

Hey this looks more like a uni than a college, the liars. Anyway, there's a great deal of set up, and a multitude of characters and dangers introduced so that the last hour of the movie struggles not to be a convoluted mess. It partially succeeds, but I still think it could have done with the alien slug things not being able to race around by themselves, so that we only have to infested zombie bodies to worry about. There are also lots of weird continuity mistakes towards the end where the guy is wearing the flame thrower one minute, and the girl is in the next scene, and vice versa.

  

  

Overall an enjoyable, cheesy, self-aware comedy horror, with the odd neat (and very 80's) gore effect and an amusing set of characters.

 

Night of the Creeps: 35.0

V/H/S 2

The second installment of extremely gory 'Twilight Zone' episodes jammed into a pile of video tapes that pushes it's viewers to bleed from the nose eyes and ears before going insane. This movie is much the same as the original in basic premise and film style (found footage) so I'll get right into the plots.

The framing this time is a couple of somewhat useless private investigators who badly mess up a job (running away from an angry naked guy and narrowly escaping in your car bad) before immediately starting their next one. I wasn't really listening, but it was something about a kid who is living in a dilapidated little house who's parents want the PIs to check on, or something. The were told to record everything anyway, so that's why that is happening. They find the house empty, though there is blood spatter on the floor, and a pile of staticy TVs and video tapes (shocker). The guy leaves his partner to watch the tapes, while he searches the house. As the movie goes on she starts feeling weird, and eventually passes out. Then the guy comes back and is all "oh no! Her condition has continued to decline after I saw that her condition was declining and then left her to watch more videos!". Then the kid pops up and kills him, and it turns out that he has shot his lower jaw off (accident while attempting suicide for his very own video - I wonder how often that happens?) The film ends with him giving us all a thumbs up, which is nice of him.
 

   
The first video tells the tale of a guy with an eye cam that's hooked up to his brain and that is recording for clinical trials (I'm pretty sure this is the exact premise of a 'Black Mirror' episode). He starts seeing ghosts though, and is eventually killed by them. Most of this took place in his house, and the scares are all very ghostly and occasionally work quite well (bed ghost in particular). The guy is a little annoying, but it's not a bad start.

Here we go. Possibly my favourite clip in this movie. It's a simple story: a guy with a go-pro (enough reason to want him killed) is biking when he is bitten by a zombie. He turns, and then we get to follow him as he goes about looking for flesh. There is very little depth to this tale, but it's fun to watch. Not particularly scary either, but that's OK.

Next is a really creepy cult flavoured clip set in Indonesia. There are four reporters who we follow, and the cults oddly sweet mild mannered inhabitants of course turn out to be evil. It seems to be some kind of Devil worship, and there is lots of extremely gory imagery as people kill themselves and each other, or explode, or give birth to demons. The gore is over the top at times, but other than that it's very nicely put together.

Finally, we come to a group of really really really annoying children who are all abducted by aliens. There is far too much time spent on the kiddies here, and the abduction part is just wedged in for five minutes of action at the end. Didn't like it.

 Not bad, but slightly worse than it's predecessor in that it is slightly more sleek - something I don't like as it steps away from the 80s feeling of the first movie, and tries to turn this one into another slasher clone. 'V/H/S 2 is a decent horror, especially for those afflicted with a short attention span. I won't be watching the third movie, as I heard it was crap, so this is where it ends 'V/H/S'. You're really cool and funny, we should definitely stay friends though.

V/H/S 2: 45.9

[REC] 3

This third movie basically wipes the slate clean, but fails to replace it with anything other than some nice bleak humour. I am a fan of bleak humour (and there is a difference between bleak and dark, alright?) but so far this series has been much more than just laughs, and I expected more.

Actually, I'll go on about bleak humour for a bit, I think. Just skip this paragraph if you can't be bothered listening to my shite. "Shite". See, that's part of my point. Shite is to shit what bleak humour is to dark humour. Everyone knows dark humour. Dark humour can range from making jokes about killing people to jokes about how Smurfs procreate (yes I'm looking at you, Donnie). Bleak is when there's no hope left, or if there is, it's so distant as to not get overly concerned about. I hope this doesn't sound too patriotic, but it's a kind of comedy that, in my experience, is found more frequently on this island, and of Britain, the specifically bleak shite is found in larger amounts in Scotland. I'm so proud. No, I am - really. Bleak is dark + hopeless. It comes with a specific attitude that it's hard to describe, yet easy to spot. At the moment it's walking home past the flat from the pub (football was on today) singing 'Flower of Scotland' without actually saying any words. I've never thought of myself as being really, properly, Scottish, but that's my loss, and I do love it here.

Um yeah, so... Zombies, right. There were zombies in this, obviously, and the build up was actually enjoyable for one. The movie opened with a cheesy montage of these two wedding dorks, before cutting to the wedding itself. It's a big do, with a massive house and gardens and a ballroom and food and tables and everything. I bet they even had those little sausage rolls. Love em.
 

I'm not sure weather or not I like weddings. On the plus side: free food and drink, you get to wear a suit, there will probably be dancing. On the negative: you have to essentially be an unpaid extra in the concluding scene of someone else' romance movie, a lot of family will be there (and you won't know who 30-45% of them are), you have to sit through an outdated and somewhat pointless ceremony for one of the least interesting gods (sacrifice something, will you?) Watching a wedding full of strangers talking in Spanish is quite fun, though. No anxiety, and a nice noise instead of irritating communication. All the actors, even the extras, look so natural in their rolls, too. It could really be a home movie, it's great.

The zombie part is not so good. Early on we get an ominous dog bite on an uncle's arm. What annoys me so much about this, though, is that there's nothing to link it to the continuity of the first two films. The zombies aren't that scary, either. They're basically just normal zombies - the whole religious aspect that I like the '[REC]' series for is only referenced in passing, when a church guy reads the bible out over the loud speakers to render the zombies immobile (apart from that one zombie with the broken hearing aids).
 

There was plenty of laughs though. The literal knight in shining armour was smirk inducing. I think my favourite character was Spongejohn (copy write issues) who is the children entertainer who is naked underneath his suit. I dread to think what happened to all the kids he was looking after, who we never see. Actually no, I don't care.

That one of the few initial survivors was the royalties reporter was good. He became known to the others as "Royalties", and it's nice that he had a moment of badassery as he wails on some zombified aunt before he gets killed five seconds later.

I also liked the professional cameraman, who was clearly really enjoying the kid's attention as he kept spewing out cameraman jargon. His death was one of the few that made me sad (the end didn't really surprise me, I mean no one survives a '[REC]' movie).

All in all not a bad zombie movie, but not a great one, and for a [REC] movie it was terrible. The biggest mistake was not following the found footage theme (where the movies get their name, come on). As well as that, though, they took the story that had been interlaced between the last two movies so perfectly and threw it out the window. Not cool.

[REC] 3: 33.1

Dead Snow

What the hell is this? Is this serious? This is crap.

No, it's not serious. It's not that funny either, though.

I'll be honest: pre-viewing I got a little excited at the prospect of Nazi zombies. Now that you no longer take me seriously (as if you ever did) I'll tell you my opinion on the other aspects of this movie.

The acting was really poor, the sets were nice (but, I mean... outside so... not that hard), the horror elements were meh at the best of times and lame at the worst, and the writing was terrible. Some kids go to a cottage in some snow somewhere in Norway I think, and then there are Nazi zombies because reasons, and then one of them cuts off his own arm and then dies at the end anyway, I think. Or maybe he doesn't. I actually forget.

But yeah, if you like COD maybe you'll like this (bit mean to Call of Duty fans). There are lots of zombies and lots of Nazis, it takes a while to get into the action though, which surely is one thing a film of this caliber (though if this was a gun, it would be a turd on a stick, so it wouldn't have a caliber) should do right.

Dead Snow: 5.0

[REC] 2

So I saw this on TV the other night, and I found a copy of the somewhat disappointing third one online (I'm not going to bother with the fourth any time soon). Try as I might though, I couldn't find the original movie to steam that wasn't bereft of English subtitles or badly dubbed in American accents, so I'm now in the situation of wanting to review the second movie (and third, I guess - sigh) without having seen the first. Ah well.
Something about a trained swat team and zombies appeals to me, in a somewhat disturbing way. This is how '[REC] 2' starts, and I like it. The characters have no depth, which is OK I guess, but the Doctor/Priest got me curious right away.

The film falls apart when it breaks from the swat team, as far as I'm concerned. I Quickly got bored when they introduced the kids, and I eventually grew to hate them. One of my favourite parts was where the brother gets slapped. The only one i feel vaguely sorry for is the girl, but she complains just as irritatingly as the rest of them. to be honest i spent the whole time urging on the zombies when they were attacking the kids. They also fall into the old dumb thing with found footage movies, where they keep recording for an unrealistically long time. With the swat team it was more believable, as the cameras were set to record and were helmet mounted.

At least the kids don't last very long, but they are almost immediately replaced by a weepy reporter who complains almost as much.

Its a bit like alien in a way, with the priest playing the role of Ash, but instead of Wayland Corp. it's the Vatican. Talking of the Vatican, the religious element is refressing, combining a run of teh mill zombie horror with elements of 'The Exorcist', and I like that about this series. The night vision scenes was also excellent. The colours, the appearance of the woman, the way she moved, it all came together very well.

Also, the Spanish rock that played during the credits was cool.

[REC] 2: 40.6

V/H/S

Anthology movies don't get a good enough rap, as far as I'm concerned. Not only is this an example of a good one, it's also an example of a good found footage flick (yes, they do exist). The movie starts with a group of petty criminals who are being paid to break in to a house and steal a VHS tape. They find a body, a whole bunch of eerily staticy TVs, and an even larger pile of tapes. This story progresses slowly throughout the film, while acting as a framing device for five horror shorts.

Each one of these shorts has a different character, as each had different directors and writers. What the tapes have in common, though, is that they are all found footage, and all end gruesomely (though I rarely have any sympathy for any victims in the 'V/H/S' series, as they are all either annoying, horrible, or are having more fun than I am).
 

The first clip seems to be a cautionary tale, and features a group of hateful males being eaten by a freaky face-splitty woman. The found footage element is legitimized by one of them wearing glasses with an integrated spy cam. The social dynamics at play in all of these seem pretty good, and the writing is fair for all the clips. This one is pretty predictable (we all knew something was up with her as soon as we saw her, right?) But does feature some nice creature effects. Also I found the woman strangely adorable, even as she was having sex with and then ripping the throat out of a guy. She did like him, he just shouldn't have run away.

The second one is more of a bore fest, but ends with a pleasing twist. A ridiculously boring couple are going on a stupid trip and filming it so they can have stupid memories, and the guy is complaining constantly about getting a sun tan, washing hands after touching horses, etc. I was rooting for the murderer, who turned out to be the wife's lover, which was cool. Apart from the twist at the end and the surprisingly sudden death scene, this one wasn't very imaginative, both in conception and filming style. Filming style is where the whole movie suffers, unfortunately, as there is only so much you can do with found footage.

The third one features a group of young adults going to the country (why can't it ever be a group of people in their 40s in the city?) Turns out one of them is using the others as bait, or something, for an evil thing with a red head that causes the camera to freak out. The characters in this one all seem realistically insecure - but each in their own special way, of course. The horror elements are mostly just blurs though, and the gore is short lived.

Then there's one about a long distance relationship (so we know it ends badly) and... maybe... aliens? I've seen enough episodes of 'The X-Files' to recognise what's going on, anyway. There is some horror here, but not really many scares. As with the boring couple one, the most interesting part is the basic premise, and the twist that this creates towards the end.

Finally there is one about a group of tragically likable guys who are going to a Halloween party (so, Americans again then). They either turn up at the wrong place, or the party is really shit, as they end up interrupting an exorcism and saving the "girl" who, of course, turns out to be evil, and kills them all. The plot of this one isn't brilliant, but the horror parts are good, and it's refreshing to have some characters that are actually likable.
Overall, sure it's pretty dumb, but the heavy music that plays at the end over old footage of the gang trashing abandoned houses seems to tell me that they are aware of this. It's dumb-fun. A good one to watch late at night with a friend, or whatever. If you don't like one short, maybe you'll like the next one, and the found footage element is explained in a not too terrible way.

V/H/S: 47.0

Dead of Night

A very oddly constructed movie, which was also known as 'Deathdream' (it was difficult picking between them, as the name differs from one source to the next). If you were to read a plot summary it would sound a lot like an episode of The X-Files or The Twilight Zone and the premise would fit in either show. A soldier turns up at his home in the US hours after being shot dead in Vietnam. Big shocker - something's up.

There was a lot of good acting from all the main parts, and the dialogue doesn't sound forced (often a problem with zombie flicks). There is a strange stiltedness throughout. Not from the acting, but from the general layout and scene composition, I think. It's a calculated oddness, and combined with the odd pacing, I didn't really feel like I was watching a horror movie. The pacing though... it was definitely odd, but I'm not sure that it was good odd, I think it was just kinda slow and boring.

The lighting and colours throughout are odd (good odd, this time). The house is filled with minty greens, and the lights indoors often flicker and waver in intensity as if they are guttering candles. A few other random points: Andy's pale complexion and big brown eyes remind me of the lead in 'In the Flesh', which was a great show. I grew increasingly annoyed at the mother, which eventually turned to disgust as I saw how far she would go to protect her zombie kid. That's love, I guess.

Dead of Night: 32.0

House of the Dead

Is this serious? Is this just a really badly made comedy? No... No I think this is for real...

Oh dear.

Where do I begin? Well, there's porn with better acting. All the characters are stupid indistinguishable children who are summed up with one sentence given to each at the beginning of the movie, and from there they fail to grow at all, and I fail to care. It's not scary. The effects are bad, the jumps don't work, and tension appears to have been an abstract and unheard of concept to the creators. It warrants the occasional chuckle, but this is at the stupidity of the movie, and I doubt was intentional.

I've seen reviews that basically say "oh well yeah it's goofy but it's a B movie so what do you expect? They did pretty good for no budget" but then one of my favourite films ever, 'A Field in England', had a budget of only £300,000 while this piece of shit cost over £7,700,000 - that's more than 25 times more expensive.

You guys are totally wasting that mince.

It's kind of like 'Scary Movie' but not funny.

House of the Dead: 3.3