Archive for horror
Mar
02
The Crazies: Review
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The film director known as George “king of zombies” Romero is only known for his gory social allegories the “Dead” series (Night,Dawn,and Day of the living Dead).These were the standard for the modern zombie flick. In between making Night of the living dead and Dawn of the Dead he also made two other films not zombie related, one was “Martin” a variation of a vampire movie and “The Crazies” a bio-terror movie. Both films flopped and only true fans have seen them, not saying they’re bad movies, just not widely seen. Now fast forward 37 years later and The Crazies gets the remake treatment…does it suck? Heeelllll to the NO.
If anyone has been reading my posts you already know what a huge fan of horror movies I am and let me tell ya this, movie delivers, BOY does it. Like the awesome “Dawn of the Dead” remake, this version is much better than the original. I guess it helped that George Romero helped produce this remake.”The Crazies” is about a military plane crashing in a lake that just so happened to be carrying a military grade biological weapon, A virus that causes people to go violently insane. When I say violently I mean it turns you into a murderous being who only exists to kill, KILL, KILL (a la 28 days/weeks later) only they seem to have higher brain functions like pre-meditation to murder (not completely mindless ). The lake water is of course the source of the towns drinking supply so gradually the whole town is affected by this “virus” and the carnage begins…ohhh the carnage.
What is the military doing the whole time this is happening, why planning a quick and somewhat quiet clean up of their tragic mistake, you can guess what that means. But wait…..there are a handful of unaffected people around trying to leave town alive, these are the people we care about. They have to fight not only affected townsfolk (family and friends) but the military also. This hackneyed premise has been used thousands of times but in the hands of a capable director (Breck Eisner) can be verrrrrry entertaining, which this film is. Not since 80′s era Brian Depalma channeling Hitchcock have I seen horror movie suspense used so effectively not cheesily…sure there are a couple cheap scares and I mean literally 2,but the rest are genuine. This makes for a more scary than gory horror movie, the gore is there don’t get it twisted but the scares outweigh the gore in this one. A perfect first date movie as your date will be grabbing you in terror, a lot. I recommend this one highly. Even though it’s a genre flick, it delivered well. Timothy Olyphant’s performance and those around him help to elevate this film from being too corny and formulaic. Horror fans go see this you’ll love it…so will everyone else. This is one of those rare “good” scary movies. A definite 8.5
Rating: 
(8.5/10)
Smite All Cornballs
Sir M
Jan
31
Legion: Review
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Take 5 or 6 people, mix up age, gender and race, put them in a diner in the middle of nowhere (the Arizona or Nevada desert) and have them face off with an unspeakable horror…oh and make sure to stack the odds against said people. Seen this before…? YES, of course you have, dozens of times, so have I but this is basically what the film “Legion” is about.
What makes this film stand out from the rest though is the performances, action and the tone of this movie…did I mention the action? For one, there’s not enough, too many unnecessary lulls for this type of high end B-movie. This is not a dis’ to the film but an honest assessment, personally I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it highly to fans of B movie entertainment…everyone else, meh. The special effects are good, not cheesily done at all. There are some solid performances by the main cast with Paul Bettany as the angel Michael, Lucas Black as “Jeep” Hanson, Tyrese Gibson as Kyle Williams, Charles Dutton as Percy Walker and Adrianne Palicki as Charlie.
The story goes like this, God has given the angels the order to wipe out humanity because he feels he made a mistake. Lone angel general Michael defies this order and tries to save humanity at the cost of fighting his brethren whom have arrived to start the “cleansing”. The only hope for the survival of humanity lies within a pregnant waitress named Charlie who doesn’t really want the kid in the first place…ohh the drama. With hundreds of possessed people outside surrounding the diner, a crazy ceiling crawling, foul mouthed possessed old lady, angel-on-angel fights & biblical references, what more could you want?
After all is said and done I’d give it about a 7,don’t rush out ,but try not to miss it, definitely see it on DVD. Not the greatest writing and a director/editor that needs a lesson in pacing slow the movie down a bit. Don’t get me wrong, it was very entertaining but I also knew what to expect going in.
Rating: (7/10)
Smite All Cornballs
Sir M
Oct
04
The (Non-Wimpy) Top 10 Scary Movies
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In the spirit of halloween I have composed a cliche’d top ten list for you to look over. The top ten scariest movies of all time…now this is just my opinion, a very informed opinion mind you but feel free to comment, judge or whatever. My criteria for this list was that the movies had to have scared me or made me jump at some point, not gory, not a murder mystery wrapped in horror, not comedy horror ie.Evil dead 2,Dead Alive etc., Just plain old scary, creepy & disturbing.
I’ve been a horror movie fan all my life, read Famous Monsters magazine, Fangoria etc., I’m a “hardcore” horror movie fan, any genre J-horror, zombies, creature,vampire, haunted house & slasher. So read on and enjoy horror movie fans:
10. The Fog-John Carpenter’s original,when that bible fell out of the wall, DAMN! the scares began
9. Suspiria-Italian horror genious Dario Argento’s classic,slow start but creepy in levels till that ending.
8. Friday the 13th-the original,when Kevin Bacon got it classic,suspenseful and gory.
7. Psycho- Alfred Hitchcocks classic still holds up.
6. The Descent-When the cave creature first appears behind the chick made even the toughest guy jump, dark, claustraphobic, suspenseful, gory, classic.
5. The Unborn- Some of the creepiest most disturbing imagery yet.
4. Ju-On – The original japanese classic,otherwise known as “The Grudge”,dread from begining to end.
3. Dawn Of The Dead(remake) - Zack Snyder put his thing down with this one changing zombie films forever,my personal favorite zombie flick.
2. Alien-Ridley Scott’s space horror classic,who’d a thought they’d be able to get 4 sequels out of this classic(Aliens being the best)
1. The Exorcist-We all know why, must I go on? Please hollywood DON’T remake this stand alone classic, if it didn’t scare you, you aren’t human or a good liar, I saw it in a theater at age 9, it ruined me for yrs & STILL holds up. Watch any of these alone in a dark rm, or even with your lady, I dare you.
Honorable mention: Mirrors-veeery creepy.
Next, top ten scariest video games, again no wimps allowed, I mean really scary.
Sir M
Oct
04
Pandorum Review
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If you saw the trailer for an intriguing sci-fi horror film called “Pandorum” you may have come to the wrong conclusion about this movie.Surprisingly layered, this ”Event Horizon”- like sci-fi horror flick keeps it’s frenetic pacing throughout. More of a thriller than horror movie, it delivers it’s scares very well and not cheaply ( i.e loud creepy noises for no reason) and not relying on gore.
(spoiler alert)The story is that in yr. 2174 we have over-populated earth to the point of not being liveable anymore so, we discover an almost perfect match for earth called Taaris 123 light yrs from earth, which means we build a ginormously huge space-ark to send 60,000 humans and a little of everything to Taaris,still with me?Now the movie begins with ,of course,with a “hyper-sleep”(o.k. so begins the cliched sci-fi naming thing)chamber opening,I know, seen this a 1000 times ,but wait it gets better, slowly and directly other chambers open,but we are only concerned with the two characters that mostly carry the movie,Engineer Bower(Ben Foster)and Lt. Payton(Dennis Quaid) being the other character.See how you had to wait this long to find out what “Pandorum” means,so did I,It basically means space-madness,which is what you experience when you hyper-Sleep too long,paranoia,hallucinations,etc.Well,to sum it up the hyper-sleep chambers mal functioned and opened waay later than supposed to, 900 plus yrs,in that time on board this massive ark some humans who were awakened earlier mutated with the ship into these humanoid cannibals who ate 60% of the humans,but not to fear,theres still hope.The ship has been underwater for the 900yrs on Taaris already and 1231 humans survive thanks to our main character,yaaaay,oh on the way we meet the feral kung-fu girl doctor,the non-english speaking Kung-fu warrior dude,and the craaaazy cannibal black guy,it all sounds cheesy I know, but for real a thouroughly entertaining movie that doesn’t insult you,awesome “date” movie,and a good successor to Event Horizon,which was a better movie of course, this one kicks ass in it’s own right.Not for anyone who doesn’t like horror,it’s essentially a haunted house in space joint,and it is scary.All in all worth the money.
Rating: (7/10)
