Blast Vegas - Mini Review

 Another Syfy produced film, like the movie, Scarecrow, that I just reviewed.  This is the better film between the two.

  A group of friends in Vegas, steal a sword and initiate an ancient Egyptian curse.  Soon, devastation is set upon Sin City.   This was a fun movie.  While not taking itself too seriously, it was a fairly good horror/disaster flick.

  Though not totally perfect, the visual effects / CGI was done well.  It was cool witnessing Vegas landmarks get annihilated time and time again.  The acting was great and the writing was intelligent.

 I would give the film 4 out of 5 stars.

Scarecrow 2013 - Mini Review

 This is a mini review for the Syfy channel original movie, Scarecrow.  First off, you might be enraged to learn that this movie does not contain a single crow, whatsoever! 

  The story involves a teacher taking a bunch of trouble teens to a farmhouse, where there is a legend about a killer scarecrow.  The film suffers from lazy writing, the kind many a horror flick falls victim to.  An old legend that no one believes- check, cell phones don't work- check, troubled, sex-crazed teens- check, truck won't start- check, etc.  My favorite part was when five of the characters were knocked unconscious at the same time, and awoke a few hours later, all at the same time.  The characters don't act realistically at all.  They behave irrationally and many times when they are being chased, they take their time and frequently pause to assess the situation.  The movie also doesn't explain many things about its plot.

  There is a lot of overacting in the cast, although, Lacey Chabert and a couple of the others in the cast do a fairly good job.  The creature is not a typical scarecrow.  It is created using Syfy's typical "discount" CGI.

  I did like some of the locations, particularly, the boat graveyard.  In summary, it was an adequate movie, just a typical straight forward kill the teens movie.  I would give it 2 out of 5 stars.

 

Ticks - Mini Review

  From the pre-CGI early nineties, comes Ticks!

  This campy horror film is infested with a  good cast, with many familiar names, including a young Seth Green.

  The story is about a group of troubled teens who are sent to a wilderness camp (filmed in Big Bear, California), to confront their inner demons.  Little do they know, they are about to encounter real monsters, like mutated ticks and worse... crazy locals! 

  The movie is fairly good.  The practical effects are mostly well done.  There were some issues near the end, where there were jumps in the editing.  It was like they rushed through some of the ending shots. 

  I enjoyed the film.  I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Random Acts of Violence - Mini Review

This is a documentary style film about a British man who casually kills people in New York. His main motive for this murder spree is to drive out all the pretentious rich people, so the artsy, real people can return to New York City.

The film has a dry sense of humor.  I think it is inferior to similar films, like "Behind the Mask".  It has a few twists, but I found it hard to stay interested in the film.  Despite being listed on the cover, Kirsten Dunst only makes a very brief cameo, as herself.  I thought she was going to be one of his victims, but no.  A loss of a cool opportunity.

The DVD has no extras.  I would give the film 2.5 out of 5 stars.

I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Mini Review

 This is a dark, horror movie with a dash of romance.  It is very reminiscent of the 1998 movie "What Dreams May Come".

  Mischa Barton plays a woman questioning her faith in religion, after enduring a tragedy.  She starts experiencing some strange phenomena in her life. Someone she cares about disappears and evidence seems to indicate he went, willing or otherwise, to the top floor of his apartment building.  The only problem with that, is the building used to be a mental hospital and the top floor is an abandoned, haunted hellhole.  After the police don't believe her, she and three friends must brave the eerie hallways to try to find him.

  The movie is very slow paced, during its almost two hour length.   The first part of the movie is the build up to the horror-filled second half. 

  The acting is good, and in a rare feat for a horror movie, the characters are actually intelligent.  They don't foolishly do stupid things, to create further plot complications due to lazy writing.  The story was interesting and unpredictable.  The movie doesn't dumb itself down to explain things to the viewer.      

  Where the movie shines is in its build up of the horror on the top floor and the creepy atmosphere / cinematography
of those hallways.  Once the four characters get off the elevator to start the search, the dread in the air and the danger they face is apparent and equally felt by anyone watching the movie.  These are the qualities that really make a good horror movie.

  While very well done, the movie is not perfect.  At times it gets a little too crazy.   It also might not be for people with attention deficit disorder.  I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.

We Are What We Are - Mini Review

   First, a warning about this movie - if you don't like seeing people brutally tortured and savagely put through hell, please remove all mirrors and any kind of reflective surface around you, before you watch this movie.

   We Are What We Are and what we are is a bad movie.  A film about a family of cannibals.  It is slow.  It is stupid.  It did have good lighting.  If all you all you want out of a movie is well lit scenes, then you may like this.

  The behind-the-scenes and interviews run a total of 75 minutes.  I didn't care to watch them.

  I would give it 1 out of 5 stars.

Sanitarium - Mini Review

 This film is a horror anthology with tales based around some type of madness.  Malcolm McDowell plays a doctor at a sanitarium.  The movie involves him relating the stories of three of the residing patients.

  The acting is good.  There are many well-known actors in the cast.  The premise of all three tales are very promising, but how they all play out is disappointing.  The stories lose focus and tend to drag, especially the final one.

  The three stories involve:

•  An eccentric artist who creates these evil-looking clay figures straight out of a Tim Burton film.  He might be bringing these creations to life in more ways than one.   
•  A boy who suffers abuse at the hands of his father is suddenly stalked by a figure that may be even more savage than his old man.
•  A man who believes in the Mayan Apocalypse of 2012, builds a fallout shelter to survive it.

If only the film realized the potential of the three stories.  I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Carrie 2013 - Mini Review

 I was looking forward to this movie, because I really like Chloe Grace Moretz as an actress.  I did have some trepidation about this remake, as Chloe was going against Sissy Spacek, who really nailed the character of Carrie as a sheltered outsider in the original.  It turns out my fears were realized as this turned out to be another soulless remake of a classic.

Despite the fact that the new Carrie is very similar to the original, with some aspects of the story being emphasized / de-emphasized, they just got it all wrong.  It's funny, because in the behind the scenes features on the disk, many times it is mentioned that the remake is going to be more realistic than the original.  This couldn't be farther from the truth. 

To start out with, Chloe is mis-cast as Carrie. Not just because she is pretty, like every critic of this movie has pointed out, she just doesn't have the emotion of a scarred individual that is oppressed by her mother, as Spacek had in the original.  Just observe how the line "You should have told me, Mama!" is delivered in both versions.  Sissy really made you feel the pain in her life with her performance and you felt for her.  The original was about a shattered girl trying to shake the mis-guided will of her mother and fit in with the rest of the world with tragic results.  In Carrie 2013, the title character is quite a bit less syphathetic.  This remake, in the words of the director in one of the featurettes on the blu-ray, "Is a superhero origin story".  Bleck! 

   I think Chloe has a great future as an actress, but I think doing this movie was a mistake for her.  I would have to give the movie 1 out of 5 stars.