Paranormal Activity 2

The Hollywood cash grab annoys me. It is the reason the Saw movies keep getting produced, or why there are so many sequels, remakes, spin offs and other vanity projects. Paranormal Activity was the biggest surprise of last year and it possibly may have been the biggest surprise in movie history. If that sounds like hyperbole, go run a check on how much it cost to make and how much it ended up raking in. The movie just kept gaining attention and gaining a fan base and when it went to a wide release, the movie just exploded. Naturally, Hollywood wanted to cash in and got a sequel into production as soon as possible. The director of the original stayed on as a producer only and the franchise was handed to the director of Door in the Floor, which was not a horror movie. My interest in Paranormal Activity 2 (PA2) was minimal, but I found myself there at a midnight screening nonetheless.

After coming home to a house that looks like it got broken into, the family of Kristi, Dan, Ali, Hunter, Martine(the housekeeper) and Abby(The German Shepard) decide to install surveillance cameras. Strange spooky stuff starts going on and Kristi gets a bit rattled. Doors slowly open, gusts of wind where there is not wind, doors slamming shut, pots and pans rattling and other sorts of shenanigans start to spook out Ali as well. martine believes the house is cursed with demons but Dan does not believe her and fires her. There is something in the house though, something that drags Hunter(a newborn) out of his crib and down the stairs. Something causes the Ouija board to spell out Hunter's name. Clearly something is wrong. Kristi has a chat with her sister, Katie(From Paranormal Activity)about the freaky things and the sisters both remember things from their youth like this, but Katie reminds Kristi that whatever it is feeds off of attention and it needs your fear to thrive. Kristi and her family then try to ignore it until it goes away.

The thing that made Paranormal Activity such a fun movie going experience was the tension it built. There are people out there who complain about the lack of pay off and there is something legitimate in that complaint, but no one could complain about the slow building tension brought more dramatic by the slow bass sound every time it was about to get ugly. In PA2 the tension is just a bit lackluster, but the pay off, oh the sweet scary pay off is too delicious. I should say pay offs because this movie delivers nice big juicy jumps over and over again. Your eyes still dart all over the screen looking for the faintest of movements of anything. The movie is made creepier by adding a baby to the mix and for making the baby the prime target for the demon. There are pay offs in broad daylight (my favorite one) and there are a variety of pay offs in the final 15 minutes that more than make up for the lack of tension built.

The film takes place roughly 2 months before the first film. yes, this is prequel and we also get a bit of mythology built into PA2. I liked it. I liked that the writers appeared to be doing more than just grabbing cash, they were building a franchise to grab cash. I do typically love franchises if they have interesting mythologies and this one does. Even though the budget was massively larger in this movie, the movie does not feel any bigger and that is a plus when it comes to these Cinema Verite style movies. There is certainly going to be a third movie and most likely a 4th and 5th to follow if they keep making the kind of money the first one made and this one is currently making. Horror movies are cheap to produce and the return on the investment can be astronomical and so far, this budding franchise is absolutely worth it. The hype is delivered on and a great time is had!

PA2 works in a different way than PA, but like the original the acting is pretty bad and there are times when you wonder why they keep running around with a camera, but on the flip side, the hand held camera idea makes the basement scene so damn freaky that most people were watching it crouched down trying to find relief before we even saw or heard what we were scared of. If the movie fails to built tension throughout, it gets it right in the basement. If you enjoyed PA there is a great chance you will also enjoy PA2, but if you thought PA was ridiculous, this movie will not change your mind. They created this film with the audience in mind and kudos to them for understanding their fans.

Final Grade: B

Let me In

There is a part of me that thinks I need to create a post of Kyle Movie Rules, and link to it instead of restating certain things for any new potential reader. Let The Right One In, which is the foreign film on which this film is based, is an amazing drama about a young vampire girl. I feel like the movie is looked at as more amazing in this Twilight world because of how unsexy it is made to be. That is not to say the movie is not amazing, but I think it got elevated by being completely different. That being said, a Kyle Movie Rule is that you never base your opinion of a remake on your feeling towards the original. I hope to never once in a review say "The Original was better." It may seem like an impossible task, but I feel it is important not to judge a movie based on the source material. I believe it is a fundamental right of every movie to be viewed without those preconceived notions on what a movie is supposed to be. Matt Reeves, the director of the oft debated (in my social circle) Cloverfield, deserved me coming in fresh and I always want to deliver, so it was with fresh eyes that I viewed Let me In.

Owen(Kodi Smit-Mcphee) is a bullied young man without a great family life (his mother is never shown to us full faced). He loves to eat candy, but is not allowed to and he does not have a single friend. he also has dark dark fantasies of stabbing women to death while wearing a mask and he spies on his neighbors having sex or working out. When he gets new neighbors, he appears immediately intrigued by the young girl Abby(Chloe Moretz). When Owen and Abby meet, Abby tells him straight up that they cannot be friends, but the bond is formed regardless. Abby lives with a man with secrets who kills people and drains their blood. Why does he do that? Well, Abby is a vampire. She is a 12 year old vampire and the man is her...well we do not really know. Abby needs the blood to not look and smell like death. The bond between Owen and Abby grows exponentially quickly and Abby fears it is only a matter of time he find out. When the man has an accident during one of his hopeful kills, the cops start showing up and asking questions and Abby's life starts to unravel and her secret becomes clear to Owen.

This will be the only comparison I make between the original and the remake: Whereas Let the Right one In was a dramatic film with horror aspects, Let me In is a horror film with dramatic aspects. Let me In is a masterful American horror film. It takes the basic premise of Let the Right One In and gives it an American wash set to the tune of horror, or suspense. There is definitely enough gore to please those suffering from a need for bloodlust, but the movie is not drenched in gore. Matt Reeves, who did such a great job building suspense and tension surrounding the monster in Cloverfield, has done it again here. There are entire scenes where the tension builds so insanely that I felt like I was being suffocated. He delivers a whopper of a scene when the caretaker of Abby has his accident and the pay off after the tension is exactly perfect. I am very impressed by Matt Reeves and think he is going to have a lot of great work in the genre of horror for a long time. He understands where the place for gore is and he understands how, at times, what we do not see can be much more scary than what we do see. He plays with light and dark in a wonderfully frightful way.

The film really hinges on the two young performers and how they react to each other and the kids do solid work. I am not sure they had the kind of chemistry I would have liked, but they both sold the film and they were good enough together to buy the premise of the film. Mcphee is a nice young actor, but I am not sure if he can succeed in anything where he is not supposed to be sad. he just has the perfect look for this type of movie, but he does definitely act well enough to gain our sympathy from the beginning of the film and goes through enough of a transition to buy the drastic switch in the character in a particularly brutal moment. Moretz is a young, very gifted actress I hope has a long and healthy career. She fills Abby with such a heartbreaking sadness that I kept wondering what Abby had been through in all of her years as a vampire. I kept waiting for her to want to be staked or set on fire. For an actress who has done a few things where her characters are so full of life, it was quite jarring to see this. She has always played little girls with an edge, but this was just such a difference in tone.

Let me In kept my attention, had me gasping for air and delivered on every moment of tension in an interesting way. I still think maybe the relationship between the two leads could have been stronger and the tempo does get derailed momentarily in the middle, but it never gets too far off track. As far as American horror films go, this one is top notch. I was pleasantly surprised with the film in every way. Matt Reeves has officially put himself on the list of directors whose careers I will be watching closely. he took a risk by adapting such a well received film and by doing it only a few years later, but by changing the tone, he crafted this wonderful film that will hopefully be found by audiences some day.

Final Grade: B+

The last Exorcism

Cinema Verite is a style of film making that appears here to stay. It is the term for movies shot like a documentary but that are not documentaries. You know the style. The handheld, shaky cameras, the lack of too much score, weird focusing techniques, sometimes excruciating zooms in and out. Dialog that often sounds like it was made up on the spot and the use of mostly natural light. The idea is to put the audience directly into the action. In television it is being used for comic effect in The Office or Modern Family. But in film, it is almost always used for horror movies. Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Quarantine, Diary of the Dead and last year's runaway smash hit Paranormal Activity are all films that have used this style to varying degrees of success. Along comes the latest entry into the human possession sub-genre of horror. I follow Eli Roth on The Twitter and he has been plugging this thing like crazy and the buzz on it was actually pretty good, so I thought I would be worth checking out. Plus, when done well, I really enjoy Cinema Verite.

Cotton Marcus(Patrick Fabian) is a man who was born to be a preacher. He is the son of a preacher first of all, but he is also a man of infinite poise and charm. He knows how to work a room and he understands the "show" of it all. He is also a man who has performed countless exorcisms. The problem is, he does not believe in possession and he understands it is a scam. He was okay with it until he read an article where a kid was choked to death during an exorcism. Now, he wants to shine a light on the ugly fakery the church has perpetrated for financial game. So, he is going to do one last exorcism and let cameras film him so they can see how fake it really is. Marcus picks a letter at random and they set off to find a teeenage girl possessed by the demon Abalam. Cotton does a convincing, but fake exorcism and all appears to be well until Nell(Ashley Bell), the possessed teen, shows up at his hotel room that night. From there, all kinds of crazy shit starts to happen. Nell slaughters animals, speaks Latin, lashes out at the camera crew, puts her body is crazy positions and draws pictures she does not remember drawing. Cotton does not believe she is possessed, but traumatized by her pregnancy. She has been shamed into pretending to be possessed to lash out at a father who keeps her chained up, who may have raped her. Or maybe her brother did? Perhaps it was the local pastor?

It is really tough to figure out how I feel about this movie. It is unsettling for sure. It never really made me jump, but it did get me on edge quite a few times. I enjoyed how the movie played up the satirical opening 40 minutes by splicing the exorcism footage with footage of Cotton showing how he makes the magic. Fabian is a very charismatic actor and he does a great job in the opening when we see Cotton preaching and there is a great bit involving banana bread that gets great laughs. When the movie switches from kind of comic into this weird is-she-or-isn't-she possessed movie, it loses a little bit of steam, but it still kept my interest because of intensity of the story and the great, intimidating score. The performances work better during this section of the film, but the Cinema Verite starts to lose steam a bit. The film is too dark, and we lose too much with the camera man running and I get that is the idea, but it just started to bother me.

Of course, the big thing with this movie is the ending. And it is not just the final scene, it is roughly the final 10 or 15 minutes. When Cotton confronts the girl and she asks if he wants a "blowing job" instead of a "blow job" he assumes she is not possessed and she spins a story. Movie ends, or does it? Cotton, for some weird reason checks out the story, it is not true. Cotton and film crew go back and then shit just gets weird. I am all for weird, random and rushed endings, when they seem to have a reason. I do not need everything in a movie spelled out for me, nor do I need to have a firm grasp on the ending. Plenty of great stories have indeterminate endings and that is wonderful. I like to feel like the stories are not finished. However, when a movie throws a bunch of seemingly unconnected shit at you in the span of a few minutes just for the fuck of it, I lose interest. It is possible to piece these incongruous images together to form some sort of ending narrative. People have been explaining it all weekend The Interwebs. But the movie works so hard to be small and intimate that ending just blows that all to shit. And in a way it ruins the entire movie going experience.

The Last exorcism builds up a lot of good will and I can tell that people will have different opinions on the end and when a movie sparks conversation/debate I consider that to be a great thing, but this just rubbed me the wrong way towards the end. Along with the usual problems of Cinema Verite, which involves there being a point where the person with the camera would just drop the camera and run for the hills. But that is one of those things you just have to accept in movies. I liked the idea and most of the execution of the film, so it is enough to recommend, but that ending will really determine what you think of the film as a whole.

Final Grade: C

Piranha 3D

An Earthquake opens up a cavern under a lake and unleashes thousands of killer piranhas and it happens to be spring break. That one sentence is really all that is needed in terms of telling someone what this movie is about. You have killer fish and spring break. In order to make a successful movie, those two ingredients should be in your dish. When I say Spring Break, I mean the movie/MTV version of Spring Break. We have a sleazy Joe Francis type, Derrick(Jerry O'Connell), there is a wet T-shirt contest with Eli Roth as the Emcee, plenty of hot half naked (two fully naked) people and tons of alcohol. There is not any sex, really, but there are enough bare breasts on display to please any 14yr old boy. We have a few characters we are supposed to care about, including a family where the mother, Julie(Elizabeth Shue) is the sheriff, Jake(Steven R. McQueen), is the lovesick teenager and they also have two cute little kids. Jessica Szohr from television's Gossip Girl provides the love interest and looks great in a bikini and finally Kelly Brook as the sex object.

Of course, if you are coming to watch this movie for the story/plot/characters well you are kind of an idiot. Piranha is about watching piranhas eat and kill unsuspecting people. The first half of the movie we get glimpses of the carnage these underwater killers are capable of, but when the movie really lets loose, it is a full on bloodbath. Offering over the top gore, silly action, cheesy dialog, the aforementioned bare breasts and some classic B-movie style antics, Piranha 3D delivers on its promise in spades. It is the movie Snakes on a Plane was supposed to be. It is the movie B horror movie fans have been quietly clamouring for. It leaves the audience feeling giddy, disgusting and kind of in awe that the movie was able to get away with a lot of the stuff it gets away with.

There is a scene that can only be described as a naked underwater ballet between two gorgeous girls, there is topless windsurfing, a CGI penis being chewed up and spit out and enough CGI missing limbs to satisfy the entire audience of people looking for this type of movie. I know the appeal of such a movie is limited and if you are even hesitant about watching it, just stay away. There is no need for people who are even hesitating about this kind of movie. It is pure direct to DVD glory, but on the big screen and in 3D. To be honest, the 3D did not do anything for me. There are not any real "jumps" that come from the 3D and as a gimmick I have seen horror movies in 3D that were better, but it was not Avatar levels of distracting. The Piranhas look exactly the way I wanted them to look. They did not look too good where you can tell a lot of funny went into them, but they do not look too cheap where it is distracting how awful they look.

The pacing of the movie is nice and the references to other movies and to horror conventions is nice. The deaths get more and more outrageous and there are definitely enough just throw up your hands moments that you know no one is taking this undertaking seriously. Ving Rhames gets the "I'm tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane" line and he delivers it perfectly as he wields the motor from a motor boat as a weapon to tear through the piranhas. Adam Scott, in a role that makes me wonder who he owed a favor to, is kind of the bad ass in the movie as he saves lives and shoots piranhas like he is an old pro and Elizabeth Shue is there is give the movie a winking 1980s vibe. O'Connell's appearance as a douchetastic soft core porn director feels so close to real life, you wonder if O'Connell has experience.

I do not have much else to say except Christopher Lloyd's delivery of every single line as Mr. Exposition is dripped in B-movie awesomeness. and Richard Dreyfuss' cameo is a wonderful little bit of movie reference, but I wish it had been even less subtle than it was. I want my movies that feature CGI penis, naked underwater ballet, bloodied and missing limbs, and cheesy looking fish to be void of any sense of subtlety.

Final Grade: I cannot really grade this kind of movie

Splice

Small budget horror movies in the middle of summer can reap wonderful rewards for the audience. If you need an example, I point to The Strangers. It was this wonderfully creepy horror movie in the middle of the superheroes, boy wizards and transforming robots. Now, Splice did not come out looking specifically like a horror movie. If you can excuse the pun, it looked like a hybrid, a splicing of the sci-fi, fantasy and horror genres, but undoubtedly it looked interesting. We had it at our theater for a few weeks and it took me a while to get to it, but everyone coming out of the film talked about how weird it got. This intrigued me because the premise was already weird, so for it to get more weird, what would have to happen? This was the biggest question on my mind when I finally watched Splice.

Elsa(Sarah Polley) and Clive(Adrien Brody) are rebellious scientists who get on the cover of magazines for their cutting edge working styles and research subjects. They have created hybrid animals that will hopefully be used to treat human illnesses and diseases. However, these two young, rock star scientists want more. They want to go outside of moral, ethic and legal boundaries and splice together human and animal genes, just to see what would happen. Thus Dren (Yes, Nerd backwards) is created. At first, they just want to see if they can bring the creature to term, but Elsa becomes attached to it and soon, they are caring for this hybrid creature. Dren grows at a rapid rate and keeping her under wraps becomes increasingly difficult. Clive and Elsa both grow to care about Dren, but Elsa harbors a secret past and her crazy tendencies start to show as she tries to be a mother to this creature, so Clive takes a more nurturing role.

That plot synopsis may not be one of my better ones, but even writing about this movie brings back the feelings of just how damn weird and uncomfortable it got. There is a scene fairly early on when Else and Clive start to have sex on a couch, with Dren sleeping near them and Dren wakes up and watches. Clive sees her watching, but he cannot stop himself from sexing his girlfriend. It was at this moment, that I thought "Oh no...this is going to get strange." But I was not even prepared for the fucked up nature of this nonsense. The movie gets so bizarre that it negated what was a pretty damn good movie. Now, I am all for movies that just go there but this just took me so far out of the movie and just when I thought the weirdness was at a peak, it would twist out again. There are no less than 4 weird twists in the final 35 minutes that I just threw my hands up in the air and gave up.

However, up until that point, I was totally engaged. Splice is not a scary movie. It does not offer cheap jumps, or real jumps save 1 or 2 moments. The opening P.O.V shot of something being born/hatched/created totally put me right in the movie and was such a great way to start and from there the movie builds a lot of interesting tension. I was never scared, but I was often on the verge of being scared. I kept waiting for the jump and I kind of liked that anticipation of being scared. The effects of Dren are slick and gross, but not overly gross, until the movie goes batshit crazy. I liked the way Dren moved, very chicken like in her younger forms and I thought Brody and Polley were believable as these sort of renegade scientists. There is cool montage scene set to cool music that really sets the film up and I was excited for where it was going.

My disappointment in the final half hour was made more grand by the fact that I was so very much enjoying the movie up until that moment, and I knew, I just knew that moment was coming, but I was hoping the film maker was going to somehow avoid it. he did not. He wasted all of this tension, all of these interesting shots, and effects and this great use of light and shadows, for some cheap gross out moments, a completely disgusting rape and this horrid end. Yet, I got the very of the movie. I actually understood that is how the character would react in that situation, but the fact that the writer/director thought of putting Elsa in that situation just got to me.

I want so desperately to recommend Splice because of the fantastic first 75 minutes or so, but I cannot do it. It just took it to a place that ruined the entire experience for me. It was like having really great sex and before you can finish, your partner rips off her skin and is a reptile and instead of remembering how great the sex was, you remember you had sex with a reptile. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Final Grade: D

Nightmare on Elm Street

I could begin with a diatribe on the idea of the remake. However, if you have spent anytime reading this blog, you know I am one of the few who is not inherently against the idea of a remake, especially in the horror genre. I can list at least 5 horror remakes I prefer to the original. What I will say is that the difference between a good horror movie and a bad horror movie is often the smallest thing. Most Slasher Flicks are essentially the same thing with a slightly different killer. The differences can be death scenes, or the director's confidence, or the editing or music. Whatever it is, it can be slight. The difference between My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th is small, but Friday the 13th is a vastly better horror movie.

Nightmare on Elm Street takes place in some suburban city on some suburban street and inside some suburban houses. It has all of the usual suspects of a slasher flick: The killer, a group of teenagers and adults that are either clueless or are keeping secrets. The teenagers are: Quentin(Kyle Gallner), Nancy(Rooney Mara), Kris(Katie Cassidy), Jesse(Thomas Dekker) and Dean(Kellen Lutz). The Killer is the burned, knives for hands Freddy Krueger(Jackie Earle Haley). He invades your dreams and if he kills you in your dreams, you die for real. After Dean mysteriously slices his own throat in a diner late at night, the other kids start realizing their nightmares are similar. They all hear a creepy song, they have Freddy appear in them and often they are led to a preschool. The problem is, none of these kids knew each other until high school, or did they?? Quentin and Nancy are the main focus here and we watch them try and piece together memories and nightmares all while trying to not fall asleep and fall victim to the torture and the one-liners of Mr. Krueger

While the movie runs about 15 minutes too long and starts to run out of gas before closing out on a good climax, This remake/re imagining has enough good jumps, cool visuals and a super creepy Freddy Krueger, that I had a damn good time. Yet, there are problems. The flashback sequences to the horrible memories of the youth and giving Freddy more of a back story pulled focus, especially when it looked like the movie was going to humanize Freddy, ala Darth Vader. Therefore, I did get a bit annoyed a little more than an hour into it, but redemption came in the form of some seriously creepy, way left of good taste stuff in the climax. In the original film, Freddy was not so much the jokester the latter movies made him and in this remake, Freddy has some of those punchy/corny one-liners, but he is also a true monster and he has a few lines that just push him back into the side of pure evil and I like that the movie did not shy away from that.

Visually there are a few great moments, showing a first time director with confidence. I loved the nightmare in the bookstore when the books started vibrating and the waking nightmare in the pharmacy had a nice flare for the dramatic, in how Freddy appeared in a fiery silhouette. I liked that the transitions from nightmare into the real world. I should have tired of the constantly cheap and loud "jump" moments, but I found them to be mostly effective. I liked that the length of the nightmares varied a lot, so we never really knew what to expect or for how long to expect it. The last moment, visually I want to mention is during the climax where the director keeps cutting between the awake life and the dream of of Nancy. The parallels of Freddy and Quentin was a very nice effect and really brought home how deranged the Freddy in this movie was. I found it to be effective visually and in driving home this Freddy Krueger was never a man, but the kind of monster you hope to never encounter in life, or in your dreams.

The great thing about the idea of Nightmare on Elm Street is that the more the kids try to avoid Freddy, the more likely they are to encounter him. The more you try to avoid sleep, the more likely you are to experience dreams while awake as your brain tries to reboot itself. Effectively, by staying awake, you are putting yourself in just as much danger. This movie played up that idea pretty well and actually Freddy used it to his advantage. I thought there would be more focus on drugs/pills for young people to take to stay awake, but they did not do that. The movie is not perfect as the repetition of the nightmares can become exhausting, the script is pretty bad and a lot of the lines Freddy has are too groan worthy to even be moderately interesting. The make up for Freddy was not as good as I wanted it, but I could not put my finger on what my exact issue with it was. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way. As it is a horror movie, the acting varies from serviceable to obnoxious and I actually found the gore to be a bit off-putting, which is rare for me in a horror movie.

Nightmare on Elm Street does not quite live up to my favorite horror movie remakes (Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th and Dawn of the Dead), but it is by no means a truly bad horror movie. I had fun and my scary movie buddy did plenty of jumping and hiding in my arm and once she even dug her nails into my shoulder, so that always makes for a better movie going experience. The first jump in the movie is really successful and it sets a nice tone. The movie should have done away with the two extended flashback sequences and it could have cut the running time down by at least 10 minutes, which could have left the movie with a tighter, more compact effect, instead of getting slightly drawn out. However, a good climax with two great one-liners almost make up for that lull midway through.

Final Grade: B

The Fourth Kind

When I first saw this trailer, I was so geeked out for it. It looked crazy scary and had such a good gimmick! Sometimes a good gimmick can get you far and I was sold on this bad for, for sure. Then Paranormal Activity happened. Paranormal Activity had such a strong gimmick, amazing buzz and when it came down to it, it delivered. All of a sudden horror movies were going to have to work a little bit harder to win me over because one actually creeped me out. In that regard, The Fourth Kind just stopped looking like something I needed to see and became something I might see. However, on opening night a friend wanted to go and this friend is someone who gets into horror movies, which always makes them so much more fun, so it was on.

It is hard to fully explain what is going on here, but essentially, we are meant to believe this movie is based in fact. The director and screenwriter have gone out of their way to recreate "real" footage first, and then give us actors "acting" out those scenes and often the two kinds of footage are put side by side for effect. The movie is about alien abductions in Nome, Alaska. People go missing all of the time, and a Shrink, Abby Tyler, is carrying on her dead husband's practice, trying to help the people of Nome who are having trouble sleeping. She puts these people under hypnosis and while they are under, these people re-experience these horrifying nightmares. What starts as them seeing an owl, turns into something coming into their room and scaring them so bad that when they go home after the hypnosis, they get violent and one even kills himself and his family. Abby is trying to figure out what is going on and she eventually decides that maybe, just maybe, these people are being abducted. Then, some weird shit starts happening to her and her little girl goes missing. Everyone thinks Abby is crazy because after her husband was killed, she kind of lost her marbles, but she strongly believes what is happening in alien.

As far as gimmicks go, The Fourth Kind is a mixed bag. Often times the "real" footage enhances the action, but there are moments when it takes away from the action as well. using the "real" voices in the "fake" action gets far too annoying and the acting from the "real" footage is just not terribly convincing. I understand the idea is to scare you with something that actually happened because it is perceived to be scarier, but I think the makers go a bit overboard. The "interview" with the "real" Abby is interesting in moments, but I feel like everyone is working far too hard to convince me it was real. Reality should not take that much effort to create. It is a tricky line to walk because there are moments when it really does help create this sense of reality, so maybe they just needed someone better to edit the footage or put the footage together.

Of course, a horror movie is mostly about one thing: scaring you. And, The Fourth Kind does accomplish a fair amount of scares. There are three just wonderful scenes of horror that get the blood flowing. The first begins with just a voice, a deep, African demonic sounding voice and then from there, the scene goes into full blown horror, with Abby in her room trying to piece together what happened after she fell asleep one night. It is a frightening scene with great camera work, wonderful lights and some great scary sounds. The movie is a firm believer that the things we do not see are scarier than the things we can see, so we never get a glimpse at the aliens. It makes it scarier, honestly. The next great scene involves an almost possession of a body by an alien. It again shows us nearly nothing, but provides some great jumps, a super creepy voice and more great camera work, lighting and sounds. However, it all pales in comparison to the big climax. Abby decides she needs to go back under hypnosis, so her Shrink friends puts her under and she tries to find her daughter and tries to remember what happens and shit hits the fan. The movie goes scary, with the whole screen shaking, the demon voice proclaiming it is God and then bam, we see Abby in a ship getting something about to be drilled into the back of her head and it raises the hair on your neck.

The Fourth Kind is not going to fool anyone, I don't think. Nothing about it really seems real, and any sort of investigating on the Internet will show that it is not based in fact at all. It is a slow moving movie with some bad acting and writing, but in those three scenes, it does provide enough scares to consider it a semi success. I love that we never really see what is going on. In fact, there are entire sequences where we see nothing but white noise and it is mostly effective every time it happens. I think the problem is the movie too heavily relies on the same tricks over and over again, without altering the results. The movie has this massive jump 5 minutes in with something piercing the chest of a guy who is sleeping and from there, there is no slow build. It is just this constant barrage of sounds and "jump" moments. If Paranormal Activity taught me anything it is that a slow burn is the best way to get people in the mood to jump for real.

Final Grade: C

The Stepfather

Remakes to horror films are a dime a dozen these days and I have no real defense as to why I saw this movie, but there was something about it that looked interesting to me. Maybe it was the cast, I really do not know. The trailer pretty much gave away everything, although horror movies are rarely about the surprise these days. So on a Saturday night in Utah, I sat in a tiny 80 seat theater and watched this movie while innocent Mormon teens on group dates surrounded me in this PG-13 flick.

David Harris(Dylan Walsh) is a widowed man who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident a year before this movie takes place. He is trying to put his life back together and helping him is a divorced mother of three, Susan(Sela Ward). 6 months after they meet, they are engaged and he is living with the family. Susan's oldest son, Michael(Penn Badgley) has just come home from some nondescript military school for some nondescript behavioral issues and he is not exactly warming up to the idea of a stepfather. However, Harris seems like a genuinely nice guy who just wants the perfect family. Yet, he sometimes says things that come off as creepy and he is a bit mysterious, always paying in cash, not liking his picture taken oh and a killer on America's Most Wanted kind of looks like him. All of this arouses the suspicion of Michael who begins to find anything he can about Harris to prove he is a killer.

As far as horror movies go, The Stepfather is perfectly adequate. There is nothing terribly exciting about the movie, but it is not a total disaster either. The opening scene, while almost a carbon copy of the original is a nice way to set up the picture and Dylan Walsh does a really good job at making super nice seem super creepy at all moments. He also does a great job of showing the chinks in the David's armor and just how crazy the man is, especially in a late night scene where he is talking to himself, trying to pump himself up. Walsh has shined on Nip/Tuck, and I am not sure this movie will gain him a ton more movie roles, but he satisfied the role well enough for my tastes.

Penn Badgley is an action star in waiting, in my opinion. He is kind of slumming it in a PG-13 horror movie, but this is what stars of The CW do, so it is hard to blame him. He is a stoic, brave looking young man with big arms, an interesting voice and a pretty good screen presence. He is not the world's greatest actor, but he does what he is supposed to do. I think it is only a matter of time before he is getting action pictures, but even in those he will probably spend a lot of time shirtless, which was a running theme in this film for sure. The movie takes place in the middle of summer and the family has a pool so Badgley, and Amber Heard who plays his girlfriend, spend a lot of time in and around the pool.

Amber Heard, oh Amber Heard. Good God this girl is hot. He appears in 8 scenes and in 4 of them she is prancing around in itsy bitsy bikinis, coming out of water in slow motion and using her ample sexuality to flirt with Penn and the audience. Then she spends two scenes laying in bed in a tiny tank top and panties, for no other reasons than to make all those Mormon boys in the theater very nervously unsure of what to do. She is among the hottest young actresses out there right now, but she can't really act, so I am not sure if she can be called an actress. More precisely she is a hot piece of ass who will most likely always be in a bikini in her movies. Bikinis appear to have been created specifically for her body and any slow motion shot of her coming out of the water turns this movie into something so much better than it really is. If it seems extreme to devote an entire paragraph to the body of Amber Heard, well you have not seen the body of Amber Heard, then, because if you have, you would understand the need for a paragraph like this.

The Stepfather has a predictable climax, but it gets points for giving us a rain storm in the middle of summer just because horror movies are supposed to have the climax take place in the rain. it gets points for giving us a lesbian couple without making a big deal out of it. It has two or three moments that made most people jump and it actually deals with the horror film cell phone problem in a semi realistic way. This may not seem like actual good points for the movie, but the horror film cell phone problem is almost always annoying and in this movie, you actually believe both of the things that happen, can actually happen. There is nothing ultimately exciting or interesting in the movie, but I have seen many a horror film that were a lot worse than this movie. I was semi entertained, even if it was mostly for Amber Heard's bikini body.

Final Grade: C-

Paranormal Activity

It seems as if every year there is a movie that catches everyone by surprise. It is usually a little indie movie towards the end of the year that catches fire and ends up getting hyped like crazy. For the last few years, it seems like Indie comedies have had this hype machine on lock, with Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, but about a decade ago a little movie called The Blair Witch Project had the entire industry in a tizzy. Shot for almost nothing the movie went on to make $140,000,000.00 domestically. The problem with that movie was that it sucked. It was nonsense that swept people up into some kind of hype filled hysteria. It is kind of inevitable for a tiny horror film with big hype to be compared to The Blair Witch Project, so when Paranormal Activity ended up getting a real release, the comparisons started flowing. This made me nervous, but I was still too excited not to see it.

A suburban house may not seem like prime real estate for a horror movie, but for one couple, it turns out to be their very worst nightmare. Katie and Micah(Their character names and real names) are a young couple living together and dealing with some possible supernatural forces, so Micah decides it would be a great idea to set up a video camera while they sleep to catch anything that might be going on. Micah takes a liking to filming things and is constantly filming, which is how we see this movie. Katie believes something is going on in the house and while they are sleeping weird little things do start to happen; the door opens and closes slightly, Micah picks up some weird noises, at times it sounds like someone else is in the house, but it is all very minor. Katie does not want to take any chances, so she calls in a psychic and he confirms there is something going on, but he deals in ghosts and this appears to be a demon, which he has to stay away from, so he gives Katie the name of a Demonologist, but Micah refuses to let her call. he wants to handle it his way, which is to antagonize it. Bad idea!

Paranormal Activity was made in 2007 and here we are in 2009 finally getting to see it. It has slowly been released and the hype from people is insane. As far as I could tell, the hype is all deserved. Never in my adult life have I had a scarier movie going experience. Paranormal Activity spends 75 minutes doing nothing but building up this insane, hair bristling tension and then 20 minutes doing everything it can to leave you sweating, panting and completely exhausted. It is a brutally small movie that is paced incredibly well and is out for nothing but making you uncomfortable. The acting is whatever, the writing is whatever, and sure there are moments when characters make horror movie decisions, but none of that matters when the movie cuts to the middle of the night because we know some seriously freaky shit is about to go down. That is how good this movie is at pacing. The movie can kind of lull us into a calm for the day, but as soon as the night vision is up and the camera positioned where it is at night, you automatically tense up.

Does it help to have someone near you who is deeply affected by horror movies? Probably, yes. Do people go into this movie expecting a good time and act accordingly? Absolutely! But is that so wrong? If I did not think the movie was scary, I would not have been clenched up in my seat. I would not have have exhaled so violently when the daylight came in the movie. I was into this movie because it is effective. The sounds, the lighting, the visuals and the overall feel make up for those stupid horror movie character choices. Sure, the boyfriend is a complete douche bag, who no one would ever really love, but the movie makes a really good reason for them not just moving and it actually provides a really good reason as to why shit keeps escalating.

When the demon starts haunting in the middle of the day, or leaving a shadow, or claw like footprints, It is impossible to find solace. When Katie says she can feel the demon and then her hair moves, it is scary, but nothing really prepares you for the final act. I am not going to ruin any of the ending for anyone who wants to watch the film, but it provides two incredible jumps, some seriously unsettling moments and then when it is over, it provides you no escape from the idea that "this is just a movie."

Paranormal Activity is not going to appeal to everyone. People who are prone to feeling scared in real life should avoid it and cynical assholes should avoid it. Sure, it has some holes and could be considered silly in some ways, but most movies are easy to pick apart in some juvenile way. This is the kind of movie best enjoyed around a large group of people and preferably at night, but I think it can be just as scary alone in a house. The movie still gets me, four days later and I cannot wait to see it again, if just to catch any more small things I started to pick up towards the end.

Final Grade: A (just for pure movie going experience)

P.S. Go see this movie with a girl who likes to bury her face, dig her nails in and scream. It really makes it so much more enjoyable.

P.P.S. Guys always ask a girl if she has a history of being terrorized by demons before moving in with her. It can save your life.

Zombieland

Among Zombie movie fans there is an eternal conversation of fast zombies vs. slow zombies. George A. Romero purists will cry foul at the 28 Days Later faster moving zombies and fans of the faster zombies will say that slow zombies just do not create a scary enough effect anymore in a world with automatic weapons. I tend to not get in the middle of such conversations because to me, a zombie is a zombie is a zombie. Flesh eating undead creatures are scary, whether they run or lumber slowly. However, the zombie movie is kind of, pardon the pun, dead. Resident Evil movies are kind of the closest thing we get to zombie movies and well, those movies have just spun out of control. Well, when the slasher flick died, Wes Craven created a series of slasher flicks meant to scare and point fun at slasher flicks. It rejuvenated the genre (whether that is good or not can be debated). So, it makes sense that the same would be done to the zombie flick. In comes Zombieland. I know, I know, Shaun of the Dead, but Shaun of the Dead was not so much a good zombie movie as it was a funny movie. The difference is subtle, but it is important.

Columbus(Jesse Eisenberg) is a young neurotic man who happens to be one of a very few human survivors of a zombie epidemic. He has survived because of his list of survival tips. He is kind enough to share his list with us, in a series of voice over narrations as he takes us on his road trip with him. His tips include "Limber up" "Always check the backseat" and most importantly "Don't be a hero." These tips have helped him survive which is remarkable because he is nothing special and does not seem adept at killing zombies. Enter, Tallahassee(Woody Harrelson), a good old boy with lots of weapons and a serious hankering for Twinkies, who happens to be a great zombie killer. Columbus and Tallahassee make an odd team, but they work well together and soon they are joined by the sister team of Little Rock(Abagail Breslin) and Wichita(Emma Stone) who con the guys a few times before they decide to join forces and head out to Los Angeles because there is a rumor that an amusement park out there is untouched by zombies.

In what should be considered a hybrid of road trip/buddy comedy/zombie/video game style movies, Zombieland is ferociously funny, disgustingly gory and absolutely spectacular. Jesse Eisenberg's rules of surviving a zombie Apocalypse are akin to Jaime Kennedy's rules for surviving a horror movie and Zombieland takes many cues from poking some fun at the zombie genre. However, Zombies are not prominently featured in this movie. They appear exactly when they need to appear, but they are certainly not the main characters. What we get are 4 very real feeling characters not quite sure why they are holding on, but doing everything they can to hold on to life. Columbus believes he has survived alone for so long because he never felt close to anyone anyway. He lived life as a loner before the zombies took over and so there was no real change. Tallahassee is harboring ill feelings towards the zombies because they took the one thing he loved, so his venom is understandable. The conning sisters still have each other and with the help of a well placed flashback, we find out they have always just relied on each other.

In fact, all of the flashbacks are well placed, especially Jesse Eisenberg's. It is funny, depressing and surprisingly scary. The movie is not after scaring us very much, but it does have a few nice surprises up it's sleeve. The zombies are of the fast moving variety, but they are not intelligent creatures and are easily killable in a variety of ways, which Tallahassee has some fun with. He does not appear to like to use the same weapon twice and we get some crowd pleasing sequences with him doing some serious killing. He is also prone to some freak outs, just to keep him sane and in a wonderfully cheery scene, the entire gang destroys some property to blow off steam.

When the movie makes it to Los Angeles, things really get good. First, the group decides to take up residence in a famous actor's house, which provides the movie, with what might be one of the best cameos I have ever seen in a movie. Half the critics have ruined it and you can find it on Zombieland's IMDB page, but I will not ruin it for anyone who wants to enjoy the surprise. This cameo is funny, not just because it is a cameo, but because it is perfectly placed and perfectly used and does not end in a way you might think it would. From there we get two nice touching moments from the different pairs of people, all of which prepare us for an amazing climax.

The title Zombieland is meant to conjure up images of a country overrun by zombies and the voice over narration calls America Zombieland repeatedly, but adding the word "land" to the end of something also conjures up images of Disneyland, or at the very least an amusement park where there are games about killing zombies. First time director Ruben Fleischer obviously understood what the screen writers were doing with the name and the climax because he sets up a climax for the ages. Set in an amusement park that still runs, somehow, Woody Harrelson goes on half a dozen rides in order to kill the zombies lurking on the rides in what amounts to a free for all zombie killing roller coaster. It is shot beautifully and the action moves at such a break neck pace that you cannot help but get sucked in. Then, in order to bring the point home more, Jesse Eisenberg gets chased into a haunted house in the amusement park.

Zombieland packs serious comedy chops of the physical variety and in the lines, but especially with the use of block lettering reminding us of the rules. Woody Harrelson is having about as much fun as a person can possibly have making a movie and he plays very well off of Eisenberg. Emma Stone is truly a sexy young actress making interesting movie choices and is sure to be a geek goddess if she keeps making choices like this. Abagail Breslin plays perfectly against type and is having as much as I have seen her have in quite some time. These four actors have helped create a zombie infested land that seem like it could be kind of fun to live in. The gore and splatter level should satisfy the horror nuts, but this movie is meant to be pure unadulterated Post-Modern fun and it succeeds on every level. This is a movie sure to entertain me for years to come.

Final Grade: A

On a side note, how sexy does Emma Stone look holding a chainsaw? mmmmm

Pandorum

You could easily chalk this movie up to one I would have never seen if I did not see it for free. It looked like such a generic Resident Evil/Event Horizon rip off and neither Resident Evil or Event Horizon are very good movies, in my opinion. Being produced by the guys who brought us Resident Evil did not help matters. The movie did have one very good thing going for it: Ben Foster. If you do not know who he is, do yourself a favor and rent 3:10 to Yuma and Hostage. Dude plays crazy as an art form and from the trailer, he was going to do some of his crazy all over this film.

The year is something like 2174 or some time in the very far future. Resources on Earth have run out and it is time to find a new place to live. They find a planet they call Tanis and plan to inhabit it. The story picks up with Officer Bower(Foster) waking up after a Han Solo style frozen nap. He has no recollection of who or where he is. He is on a space ship of some sort and he knows a lot about it, and it is obvious he is an officer of something. Next, Commander Payton(Dennis Quaid) wakes up and he is the captain of the ship. They do not have any clue as to what is going on because the flight team that came before them was supposed to be there when they woke up to walk them through the details, but they can find no one on board. Bower heads out into the meat of the ship to try and turn the power back on. However, they are not alone on the ship. First Bower encounters a sexy Russian action chick, then he meets some weird creatures of immense speed, high pitch screams and a hunger for human flesh. Then, there is the Asian ninja and finally an old crazy black man. Bower, the Russian, the Asian and the Black Man are racing against these creatures to get power on the ship, while Payton deals with another survivor slowly going crazy.

For the first 40-50 minutes, Pandorum is a thrilling, claustrophobic, loud, creepy and interesting movie. There were moments when my heart was genuinely racing and I got excited and prepared for a thrill ride. The contrast of light and dark and quiet and loud are so effective, there is never a comforting moment. It gave me great hope that this movie would turn out to be awesome. Foster and Quaid have a nice chemistry as they try and figure out what the hell is going on. The early flashbacks added something to the story, but were vague enough to remain interesting and the fact that they were caked in light made me think that the past and the present were completely separate from each other. In a scene where Foster is crawling through ducts and panicking like crazy, I felt I was in the ducts thanks to great, close up camera shots and just the ambient sound of breathing.

Then, it all goes completely, horrifically wrong. You can tell where it goes wrong too, because the Asian Ninja appears and he fights the Russian Action Chick. Then they all join forces and nonsense ensues. The ship they are on is like a Noah's Arc, but we never see any of the animals, really. Oh and because we have to know what is going on, the movie provides us a crazy person who may not be crazy at all because he knows what is going on, so we get to pause for exposition city. However, we get exposition from two different people and the director wants it to be more exciting so he keeps jumping from 1 to the other. Very exciting, indeed!

Pandorum refers to a cabin fever style of craziness brought on by the Han Solo freezing, maybe. There is a flashback to another ship that shows that Pandorum causes someone to lose control and kill everyone. Payton believes the young man he finds starts showing signs of Pandorum, but Payton himself may be experiencing pandorum, but at this point, I stopped caring.

The creatures are fairly generic zombie looking creatures, except the baby looks like a creepy albino bat. They are loud menacing creatures, but when the movie starts to show them more and give them more to do, I lost interest. Creatures like that are better in the outskirts of a story. Of course, Pandorum is a split personality movie. It feels two stories slammed into one. And then the final 25 minutes could possibly have negated a Major part of the story, leaving the viewer with the impression that the creatures were not real. However, if they were not real, what killed the Asian Ninja? Also, there is no explanation for how the creatures came to be, which is not really a problem for me, but I am sure it would bug others.

When Pandorum ended, I was disappointed. The first third of the movie had really set me up to enjoy it and then it spun out of control, with no one there to correct it. Foster doe snot get to do his crazy stuff enough and the Russian Action Chick was not sexy for long enough to make an impression and what is the point of a Russian Action Chick if she is not sexy? There are 2 or 3 twists that might keep people interested, but I called 1 of them and the other, while kind of a shock, came too late to matter for me. Considering I would have never seen the movie, I cannot say it was horrible because in order for me to come out disappointed, it had to build up some good will and it did, it just ran out before the movie ended.

Final Grade: C-

Jennifer's Body

I was trying to figure out how to start this. Typically I fill my opening paragraph with my expectations, or some kind of background information of the movie, but I don't really have any of that here. I think people think this is the kind of movie I am drawn to because of the hotness factor, as if I am shallow. Well, it makes sense, I love Into the Blue specifically because Jessica Alba spends the entire movie in a bikini, but this movie is different. It is written by Diablo Cody who has such a unique writing voice and I respect that. Sure, having Megan Fox in the movie does not hurt, but the movie had more going for it than just Megan Fox. I feel like I need to make that clear. Okay, now that I have, onto it.

Jennifer(Fox) and Needy(Amanda Seyfried) have been best friends since the day they met as children in the sandbox. Jennifer is hot and incredibly insecure and Needy is, well needy, and kow-tows to Jennifer's wishes. One night Jennifer and Needy go to a local bar to see a band because Jennifer wants to bang the lead singer. The band, fronted by Adam Brody are not what they appear and one song intot he concert the bar goes up in flames and most of the people in it die, luckily Jennifer and Needy escape, but Jennifer decides to go with the band in their van. Later that night, Jennifer shows up at Needy's house covered in blood, acting creepy and eventually vomiting up some kind of black tar stuff. The next day, though, Jennifer is acting normal, well, until she murders and eats parts of a higgh school football player. The band was trying to sacrifice a virgin to Satan in order to be as famous as Maroon 5, but Jennifer is no virgin, she is not even a backdoor virgin, according to her. So, the band got world famous, but a demon now inhabits Jennifer and she needs to feed on boys to keep up her strength. Needy realizes what is going on but cannot figure out how to stop her, without sounding crazy. Of course, it all comes to a head at the prom, featuring a live performance from Adam Brody's band.

Diablo Cody is always going to be kind of a mixed bag. Juno had a lot of great things in it, but it also had things that were too cute, quirky or precious, like the hamburger phone. Jennifer's Body does not have any quirky props, but some of the dialog, is, as is common for Cody, too cute, or nonsensical. I did not like the word "jealous" being turned into "jello" and then used like "you are so like lemon and lime jello." I did however, love the line "Tits are like smart bombs, point them in the right direction and shit gets real." So goes Diablo Cody's writing style. She is still looking for the perfect blend of cute and too cute.The first half hour of Jennifer's Body feature all the Diablo Cody infused dialog you would expect, so some of it is really funny and some of it just comes off and uninspired and awkward, especially out of Megan Fox's mouth. However, once the first half hour is done, the movie's dialog evens out for the most part. There are still moments of bad one-liners, especially during the climax, but overall I was not distracted by it.

Megan Fox playing a girl who uses her body to eat men, might be hitting something too on the nose, but it works. Fox is walking sex, she is a metaphorical man eater and then she becomes a literal man eater. Kudos to the casting department. Fox is clearly having fun vamping up, or playing totally into the fantasies guys have of her. She starts the movie in a cheerleading outfit; she skinny dips, talks about anal sex, and wears skimpy pink and yellow outfits. Fox is not the world's best actress, but she is perfect in this role. I am not sure anyone else would have been able to make this movie and been so beleivable as a girl who uses sex to get power. She handles the Codyisms pretty well, as soon as you realize it is not Juno. She also is not afraid to get dirty, spending a good amount of time covered in blood and puking out black tar and blood. Perhaps that does not seem like a big deal, but a girl who looks liek Megan Fox obviously does not ever half to be willing to look the least bit ugly.

Amanda Seyfried is probably the stand out though. She is not uglied up, as much as she is just made to be homely. Her eyes still sparkle, her curls are still adorable and she is still smart and pretty, just in an amish kind of way. She gets to be properly helpless and then bad ass, as the main girl ina horror movie is supposed to be. The movie is told from her point of view and we get the voice over narration that will probably be a staple of Diablo Cody scripted movies. She handles the dialog very well and interacts perfectly with both Fox and the guy playing her boyfriend. She is believable as a nerd, but also believable as a girl who has simply had enough.

Jennifer's Body was mismanaged from the marketing side, with the trailers making it out to be a straight horror film, but it is not. it is funny, campy and charming in many ways and the horror aspects are pretty minimal. There are three legitimatly horror movie scenes and they are effective, but they are not the main part of the film. I loved the scene with Needy and Jennifer when Jennifer first shows up with the blood. It mixes the humor, horror and gore the best and the climatic scene which somehow takes place in an abandoned pool house is also pretty effective in terms of a horror film. theere are no "jumps" in my opinion, but these scenes work as effective scenes in a horror movie.

It is clear Diablo Cody did not set out to write a straight up horror movie and she does not blend genres as smoothly as one might hope and some of it might be the director was unsure of how to handle the movie. I do not know why it doesn't always click, but I know that for the most part I was entertained. Much has been made of the girl-on-girl kiss and as mainstream girl-on-girl kisses go, it is hot. It is not so over the top, but it is not timid either and then it ends perfectly with Amanda Seyfried's character blurting out "What the fuck in happening!" which is exactly what the audience is thinking since it seems to just randomly appear. The kiss, I am sure, speaks to the complex nature of female friendships where the girls are not considered equals. Needy is thought of to be in love with Jennifer and Jennifer is known to just like sex, so them going for a little kissing does not seem entirely out of place in the movie, just in that scene, which may be the point.

Jennifer's Body satsifies on most levels. It is a nice vehicle to show off Megan Fox's sex appeal and shows she can carry a movie (even though at the box office, she did not). It is funny, clever and interesting, even if it is a bit too clever in parts. It offers some gore, some horror, two hot girls kissing and mostly it just entertains. The movie did not hit at the box office, but I would not be surprised if it finds an audeince somewhere down the line. It is meant to be a campy B style movie and I think people just were expecteding something else, which is too bad. I think they are missing out.

Final Grade: B

Sorority Row

I am not going bother to write a normal review, because I like to have some fun with bad movies.

The story is simple, 6 sorority girls play a prank on a boy, but the prank goes bad and 8 months later, they start to pay for their prank gone wrong.

I wish I could have a way to get my initial unfiltered thoughts right onto this page, but here is my best shot.

The movie opens on a hot girl in her bra and underwear(Billed as Bra-clad girl) asking her boyfriend for her shirt. The next shot is four hot girls on a trampoline having a pillow fight with their asses hanging out of the pajamas. So far so good, Sorority Row.

A girl kissing another girl, while both in skimpy pajamas, still going well.

Having seen a few episodes of The Hills, watching Audrina Patridge take a tire iron to the chest is not a surprising wave of living vicariously.

OOOHHH...Horror movie cliche time!!!

No cell reception when you need it most: 4 times
Car will not start: 2 times
Music in a seemingly empty house: 2 times
Doors locked for no reason: 2 times
Gratuitous nudity: 4 times.


Jamie Chung is super duper hot, but being naked under the suds of a hot tub is dumb, if the audience cannot see.

Rumer Willis is odd looking and would not be allowed in a sorority with the hotness in a movie that did not need a nerdy girl.

Briana Evigan is like a poor man's Sophia Bush, which is still better than being not a poor man's something else.

Ooooh, douche bag boyfriends. It is time to play "Guess which boyfriend is the actual killer." (I was right!)

Carrie Fisher with a shot gun is kind of bad ass. She went out like a straight up G.

Hot chick in a mini skirt holding an axe is totally sexy and bad ass.

The explanation from the killer makes absolutely no sense. it makes me appreciate Scream more because those killers made sense.

Well, I know the movie is not over because they have not added the tag to show there could be a sequel..wait there it is, now it is probably over.

Sorority Row offers some T and A, only 1 cool death and a bunch of obnoxious screaming. IT WAS PERFECT!!

Final Grade: D, but an A for the first 10 minutes.

The Final Destination (Death spoilers)

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The Collector

A month ago I had never heard of this movie; that is saying something. I have at least some knowledge of all kinds of movies and this had completely avoided my radar. To be honest, I would never have seen it if my work was not playing it and I got to watch it for free. Typically if I have not heard of a movie a month before its release, there is no way it could be a very good movie and I rarely waste my time with bad horror movies these days.

Arkin is a man desperate for cash and his job just is not cutting it. In order to save his wife/girlfriend/baby momma from a loan shark, he needs a lot of cash quickly. To do so, he ominously visits a black man in a limo. They had a plan to rob a house, but Arkin needs the timetable pushed up to that night. Arkin just finished doing work at this particular house and with the family away on vacation, it is ripe for thievery. Arkin, see, is a safe cracker and this house has a diamond, or ruby, or stone of some sort. Arkin breaks into the house, but quickly finds out he is not alone!! Someone has gotten to the house before him and this other person has kidnapped the family and it torturing them, and this other person has boobie trapped the entire house!! Arkin must then turn into the good guy and try to save the family and get out alive against a masked man who collects people, or kills them, depending on his preference.

If you ever thought to yourself "Home Alone was great, but it would have been better with less laughs and a lot more blood" The Collector is for you.

If you want to watch a guy fall back into a room of bear traps in slow motion, The Collector is for you.

This is the kind of movie where acid eats through shoes, socks and kittens, but not wooden floors.

The kind of movie where no one turns on any lights, even when it would help you when you realize you are not alone in the house.

The Collector is the kind of movie where a guy keeps a gun in his safe, but keeps bullets in his bedroom drawer, nowhere near the safe.

In order to get the attention of the cops, the "hero" jumps in front of one and gets hit. If you like that kind of nonsense, go for it!

If you want to watch boobs wiggle in slow motion for a minute (and who doesn't) this movie does give you that.

If, when a movie is over, you enjoy leaving with questions about logic, or lapses in logic, The Collector is your kind of movie.

If you want to be made sick by the opening credits sequence because of how loud, colorful and obnoxious they are, this is definitely for you.

It is a better movie than the last two Saw movies and there were a few things I enjoyed (The use of Korn's "Dead Bodies Everywhere", the bear trap scene, and the breasts), but it is yet another useless piece of garbage torture porn movie. Big freaking whoop!

Drag Me to Hell

We were told we were going to witness Sam Raimi's return to horror. That was the hook. For those of us who know what Sam Raimi and horror mean, we knew to expect interesting visuals, slap stick humor, good scares and just more than a little bit of gross-out gags. The problem with that is Sam Raimi is not just that guy anymore. He has directed thrillers, romantic dramas and one of the most profitable summer franchises in movie history. He does not put cameras on bamboo rollers any longer. It is with all of this on my mind that I watched the awesomely titled film.

In 1969 a young boy stole a necklace from some gypsies and the gypsies cursed him. For three days he is haunted by a goat like shadow and then after three days his family takes the young boy to see a psychic woman who is too late to save the boy. Yes, the young boy takes taken to hell. At this point, you realize everything is possible, welcome back Mr. Raimi. Cut to modern times and a young loan officer named Christine Brown (Alison Lohman). She is a sweet soft spoken girl with a college professor boyfriend(Justin Long). She is after the assistant manager position, but her boss tells her he needs someone who is not afraid to make the tough decisions. Unfortunately for Christine, she starts to make those tough decisions to a disgusting old woman who wants an extension on her house payment. Christine says no and pays dearly for it. After work, Christine is walking to her car and she is attacked by the woman and a curse is put on Christine. Soon Christine is hearing things and seeing things. It turns out the demon is called a Lamia and it is a goat like demon that haunts a soul for 3 days before taking it to hell. The only way to get rid of it is to give the cursed item to someone else and let that person die. The old woman cursed a button and Christine wrestles with what to do. All the while being haunted by the lamia and visions of the old woman trying to kill her.

Drag Me to Hell delivers on everything it is supposed to deliver. It is campy, scary, gross, slap-stick heavy and full of interesting visuals. Sam Raimi has taken it back and delivered what his fans want. I have a problem with this. First off, as I said, Raimi is not the same director he was when he created the Evil Dead trilogy. He is a stronger director and this movie shows that. The suspense and the scares are so great and the point of view so strong, the b-movie gags take away from the movie. I understand it is supposed to be a horror movie that does not take itself seriously, but it was so damn scary I wanted it to take itself seriously, so I could take it seriously. In a brilliant scene, Christine is alone in her house and starts getting haunted. It is loud, scary, intense and disorienting, but for every great moment like that I had to endure bodily fluids and really bad CGI.

I have started to tell people this movie has three perfect scenes and then the rest is kind of a mixed bag. The seance scene does get a little Disney's Haunted Mansion, but I still think it is a perfect scene because it is the one scene that perfectly blends the scares and the laughs. Very rarely do I have need for a talking goat, but after some loud scares and weird laughs, the talking goat is exactly what the scene needed. The scene in the house is another of the perfect scenes and the final perfect scene takes place in a cemetery and is the best example of how much stronger Sam Raimi is now than he used to be. The entire scene is scary, but it is also gorgeously shot with awesome camera angles, perfect lighting and gives Alison Lohman her one chance to really act something other than scared and when Raimi frames her with a camera on the ground looking up, with the rain falling on her and Christine delivering the only great bad ass lines, you think "Damnit Raimi, why did I have to endure all of the bodily fluids."

I will never be the guy who says he loves the Evil Dead trilogy. I like the movies and completely understand their status as cult classics, but they are not movies I go back to on a regular basis. That might make me not the target audience for this kind of movie, and maybe I just don't "get it." I am willing to concede that, but Drag Me to Hell had potential to be one of the better horror movies in recent memory. The PG-13 rating did not hinder the scares, which surprised me and the score is bananas switching between perfectly scary and outlandishly over the top, which fits the overall tone of the film, but bothered me in the same way the film did. The CGI is almost all awful, which is probably the intention, but if Raimi was going to go through all the trouble of making a campy horror film, why did he not go back to prosthetics and real tangible props?

Drag Me to Hell is sure to satisfy a majority of the audience who will get everything they expect from a Sam Raimi horror film, right down to his infamous car. There is an incredible horror movie somewhere in this movie, but it loses out in favor of an old woman drooling and taking out her false teeth. I am glad that Raimi wants his fans to know he has not forgotten them, before he goes back to making a new Spiderman movie, but I wish it wasn't so damn suspenseful so I could have enjoyed the slap-stick more. I am perfectly fine with movies mixing genres and being all post-modern, but Raimi is too damn talented to wasting time trying to get his audience to laugh at stupid shit. Also, there are a few problems plot wise where a woman has the power to summon demons to send someone to hell but cannot summon a way to save her house, and the audience has to be okay with the movie damning a girl just because she did her job. I think people should see the movie if just for the three great scenes and of course, the talking goat.

Final Grade: C+

The Last House on the Left (2009)

In 1972 Wes Craven made a movie with the tag line "just keep telling yourself it is just a movie" and that movie was The Last House on the Left. It was a remake of an Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Springs, without the religious undertones. Well, it has been over 30 years so it is time for a remake, never mind the 2005 movie Chaos. Wes Craven is back as a producer and the movie has a lame tag line "If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?" The 1972 version was so brutal with violence that one would think the 2009 version would have to be even crazier, which would be hard to do and still make a point. Now, I never would have seen this movie if the trailer had not been amazing, but since it was, I saw it and so I want you all to see the trailer too.




First off, that song. Oh that cover. Haunting and beautiful and totally working with the images.

After watching this trailer, I had questions and it seems like the director knew all of my questions and answered a few of them in the opening minutes of the movie. The daughter, who in the trailer, is swimming with a bullet wound and seems to be able to hold her breath forever, is trying to be an Olympic swimmer. Case closed. The father, who utters the brilliant line "You are paralyzed from the neck down. I didn't have any rope or duct tape" is a doctor which answers my question of how did he know what to sever. Of course, the end of the trailer is obviously the final scene in the movie, which usually I hate because it makes a movie anti-climatic, but where that moment goes is so awesome, it actually made me excited that I knew a guy was having his head put in a microwave.

The Last House on the Left is an interesting slasher movie for many reasons, but mostly because we are actually rooting for the good guys. Typically we watch slasher flicks to watch Jason, Freddy or Michael kill people in interesting ways. This time we are cheering for a married couple picking off a larger group of bad guys. Also, the first 45 minutes really sets up just how bad these guys are. The rape scene of the daughter is truly brutal, not because it graphically shows things, but because the camera is so tight on the shot and all we see is the girl crying, clawing and we only hear the thrusting. It is nearly impossible to watch, but because they are so bad we find a sense of catharsis in this family exacting their revenge. And, make no mistake about it, these parents do whatever they need to do to get their revenge and the audience cheers when they do. It is weird to care about the good guys and it is weird to watch a slasher flick where we know everyone is actually human.

This is not Saw or Hostel, but there is a pretty large amount of gore. It is not torture porn though. In fact, by the time the parents start going after the bad guys the movie only has about 25 minutes left and it moves very quickly. The shaky camera stuff gets a bit too much, but that is becoming a staple of running through the Forrest scenes. The acting is quite good all the way around, which is rare for a movie like this. Even Monica Potter, typically awful, does a good job, especially in the scene where she is pretending to flirt with the guy who helped rape her daughter. Garrett Dilahunt, as the most crazy evil bad guy is so creepy, but it is not just a one note creepiness. He shows you layer 1 and then delves deeper into crazy and gives you new layers. There is a car crash in slow motion that gives you an idea of what a pinball goes through as the car hits one side against a tree, then another side into another tree before splitting head on with another tree. It is spectacular.

All of that being said, I had hopes for a little more conversation between the parents about the morality of it all. No one would blame the parents for wanting to kill the people who raped, beat and shot their daughter, but the transition is almost too fast for me. I wanted to see more of a gradual build up I guess or just a sentence of hesitation. Maybe the lack of conversation is the point. Maybe the moral black and grey area the movie operates in it is the point. We can never know our capacity for hate, murder and revenge until someone we love is taken from us, or nearly taken from us. if we lived in a creepy house in the woods and the power was out and we were sharing a house with the group of people who raped our daughters, would we not be inclined to murder? Would we not want to hear this evil man bed for his life? Wouldn't we want to put his head in a microwave?

Final Grade: B

Saw V (Major spoilers!)

Since watching this movie on Thursday night, I have been trying to figure out how to best review it. My initial thought was to say that I was only going to write the good things about the movie and then just have a blank review. I also considered doing my usual review, but this movie isn't worth it. So instead I am going to talk about the tag line and the ending.

The tag line for this installment of the most popular torture porn series was "you won't believe how it ends." In the third Saw movie, Jigsaw died, but he had someone carry on his legacy. What follows is a list of things that would have shocked me:


Jigsaw was not really dead.
The good guys win and the Saw franchise ends
The guy we thought was the good guy is actually bad.
Saw V ends in a musical number featuring Zac Efron.
Batman saves the day.
An ending with no death or gore.


Here is the one thing that would not shock me in the Saw franchise: The good guy is killed and the bad guy gets away.

So how does Saw end? Sadly, it does not end with a musical number featuring Zac Efron, no it ends with the good guy dying and the bad guy getting away with it. Not only that, but the other good guys think our good guy was the bad guy, so the bad guy gets away even more. What kind of nonsense is that? Look, I get that anyone willingly paying money to watch these garbage "films" probably gets what they deserve but seriously, is there a way to sue the makers for false advertisement?

Final Grade: F (of course)

Quarantine

Typically when a movie is not screened for critics, it is a very bad sign. Quarantine was not screened for critics, but some of them paid their money, watched and reviewed it. Surprisingly many critics thought it was very scary and wondered why it was not screened for them. Then, 4 or 5 people in my horror film class started talking about how surprised they were by how scary and good Quarantine was, so I gave in and decided to watch it. Plus, when the whole hand-held shaky camera thing is done well, I really enjoy it. Before I begin, I will not bother using characters names because I never learned them while I was watching.

A female reporter and her cameraman are doing a human interest piece on fire fighters and so they are spending the night shift with them. It starts off with fire fighters teaching her how to slide down the pole, put on the clothes and just goofing off. They have no idea what is about to happen when they are called out to an apartment complex. When they get there they are told a woman screamed and fell, so there are 2 cops and 2 firemen in the complex, now. The woman who fell is foaming at the mouth and bites one of the cops. Then a fireman gets dropped off the balcony. Everyone involved freaks out, they call it in and when the cops show up, instead of helping, they shut all of the people in the building and soon people start turning into these rabid, foaming beasts.

For about the first hour Quarantine offers some pretty creepy and scary moments, utilizing the whole hand-held camera thing quite well. The first 3 or 4 instances where they run into one of those rabies infested people, the slow moving people with heavy breathing mixed with the camera bobbing up and down results in a very tense, cabin feverish mood for the audience as we are the cameraman. Sadly, the movie is not only an hour long. In the final 30 minutes the lead woman does nothing but hyperventilate and scream and it gets very annoying very fast. All of her whining crossed with her cameraman trying to calm her down bogs down the final act, when the final 30 minutes should be the most intense and crazy. It does not help that the final shot of the movie is not only given away int he trailer, but on the freaking poster! Anyone who watches horror movies could pick out that it was going to be the final shot.

The gimmick of shooting everything with a hand-held camera has been done better and it has been done worse, yet, this is the first time I was really annoyed by the cameraman continuing to film through it all, even though they gave a pretty good reason for it. The two remaining people-cameraman and reporter need the light offered by the camera to see in the pitch black. It makes sense, but still at some point do you not drop the camera and just attempt to survive? I get it, people have a right to know that law enforcement lies, but at what point does your own survival become more important? Is what they are doing the ultimate act of self sacrifice? Will their death force changes it how our law enforcement works? Will they stop lying to us as a nation if this tape is shown? Won't the tape ultimately end up in the hands of law enforcement anyway?

I don't know why I was conned into seeing this movie by a bunch of people. Maybe they wanted me to share in their headache. I will be giving them a talking to on in class, that is for sure. I was interesting for a while and there were some good creepy moments and one legitimate scare, but it is all nullified by a super obnoxious final 30 minutes. The shaky camera work doesn't really get overly annoying, but there were moments when a steady cam would have been helpful.

Final Grade: C-

Mirrors

Before I begin I must admit that I left this movie nearly half way through, so it may be wrong for me to write an actual review of it. I have seen worse movies, yes, but with this being awful and the circumstances involved in me watching it, it was too much and I had to walk out.

In case you did not know you were watching a movie called Mirrors, the movie goes out of its way to remind you. The opening credits all have mirror images; there are tons of ominous looking shots of full standing mirrors and the word "mirror" is used in pretty much every single line of dialog spoken through the first 45 minutes of this suck fest. Keifer Sutherland even has a classic bad horror movie line "Mirrors...they are everywhere." BRILLIANT!! I left before the plot took hold, but allow me to take a stab at it. Keifer Sutherland is a cop who killed someone and has been drinking ever since. He takes a job as a night watchman in an abandoned store. The store burned down years ago and they have no desire to fix it, yet they have to keep homeless people out. When he goes into the store, the mirrors act weird. My guess there is a spirit in the mirrors that want out. Keifer goes searching for the reasons for the crazy mirrors, he finds it, fixes it but most likely pays for it with his life, or maybe he just gets trapped behind the mirrors for eternity. If you saw this movie, please tell me how I did.

Very rarely do scary movies have legitimate scares anymore. See, there are legitimate scares and fake out scares. Most movies only have fake out scares now. "What is a fake out scare?" you ask. That is easy. Anytime the movie gets super quiet only to suddenly make a loud sound. That is not a real scare. Yes, it makes you jump, but not because the movie is scary, but because sudden loudness from total silence makes people jump. That is nonsense. This movie features nothing but fake out scares, my favorite being a bird flapping its wings that are some how so loud they sound like a gun shot. It must have been some sort of super bird! The movie is gruesome for the sake of being gruesome, which I am sure is fine with gore hounds, but it is kind of relentless on its attack on good taste. The acting is horrid all the way around, but Paula Patton wins the award for most god awful acting. I am not sure if humans wrote the script or if they just let some computer do it for them using the keyword "mirrors" but it is so unbelievably bad, Porn scripts look good by comparison.

These movies have an audience and there was a time when I was maybe in that audience, but at this point in my life, I have better things I could be doing at 1am. Oh and since the spirits trapped in the mirrors can get you from any reflective surface, like water, this movie is erroneously called Mirrors, but I guess it is catchier than Reflective surfaces.

Final Grade: F