#342 -- Cut (2000)

Director: Kimble Rendall
Rating: 3.5 / 5

It's funny how you can choose a movie for weird reasons that aren't always good. I definitely didn't choose this one because I thought it sounded great. My boyfriend thought we'd already watched this, but I didn't. He was thinking of a movie called Skeleton Crew, but he didn't believe it. So, we started the movie to see who was right. I was, of course, but that's not the point. See, it's funny because you can choose a movie you might not necessarily think is going to be good, and then it is. If you choose a movie you expect to be great, it usually isn't. At least, that's my luck most of the time. Cut isn't the best movie, not even one of the best, but it's good; I didn't really expect that.

It was filmed in Australia and Germany, with a mostly Australian cast; but there was one person that I recognized -- Molly Ringwald! She was older, and blonde, so it took me a minute to recognize her; but I was happy to see that she was actually one of the main players. It's sad how no one seems to care about her anymore; I actually like her. Kylie Minogue was also in it for a little while. I'm not really familiar with her (I know the name and one of her songs), so I didn't recognize her at all until I saw her name on IMDB. Anyways...It started off with a horror movie being filmed, and Molly was its star. It was something about a man who had been horribly burned and went around killing people. Well, the actor who played the killer wasn't very great in the director's eyes, and she planned to fire him. He didn't like that, so he killed her. He also killed some other man and attempted to kill Vanessa (I'll try to refer to her by her character's name, rather than Molly...); thankfully, she was able to defeat him with a swift kick to the nuts and a pair of garden shears . Needless to say, that movie was never finished.

Fast forward to twelve years later, and a group of film students decide to finish the film. As they're doing research, they learn that there's a curse on the movie: anyone who tries to finish it dies. That doesn't stop them, of course, because they're quite determined. The director has some personal issues with the movie, which aren't exactly shocking, but you'll get over it. Sure enough, once they start production, people start to die.

There are plenty of red herrings here. We argued throughout the entire movie, because we each had our own theories on who the killer was. Each was cleared, however, and it left us scratching our heads wondering just who the fuck was under that creepy mask. It made for some suspense that a lot of movies I've seen are desperately lacking. So, it's got that going for it. The characters were just okay; some were well developed and likable, while some others were just background players. The most we knew about most of them was who was fucking who, and who everyone wished they were fucking. But that's all we need to know, I guess, since society is obsessed with sex. I did like the killer, and I thought the mask was creepy though it was simple. There were also some good kills going on, though most of them were offscreen or hidden. The ideas of those kills were great though -- like a girl having her head cut off by a motorized saw. I'm guessing that budget issues kept them from being able to show these kills in all of their glory, which I think is better than showing us something that looked tacky and horrible.

I know the story doesn't sound all that unique, but it actually kind of is. There's a twist at the end that I, personally, wasn't expecting. Once it started to be implied and theorized, I hoped that it wasn't true, actually. I wanted things to go one way, and they didn't. But once it all happened, I was actually glad for it. It was different, and they went a different route than I thought they would. It's not your typical slasher movie.

But, really, it all comes down to one thing: was it interesting? Well, I'll tell you this. We were only going to watch a few minutes of it, to determine whether or not we'd already seen it. We ended up watching the whole thing. That's got to mean something, right?

#331 -- The Slaughterhouse Massacre (2005)

Director: Paul Gagne
Rating: 2 / 5

So, I went to Movie Stop the other day because I realized that I hadn't bought anything new in a while, and I wanted to add something to my collection. I decided to buy one that I'd seen and knew I liked, and then one that I hadn't seen. So, I bought Dead Silence, and...this. Thank goodness it was only $2.99. I walked out of the store hoping that it would be good, but knowing deep down that it probably wouldn't. Mostly because on the cover it boasted that it was "more terrifying than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and that it was "the scariest movie of the year!" If it was really any good, it wouldn't be comparing itself to something else. But...why compare your shitty movie to one that people around the world have come to absolutely cherish? That's just dumb. But I digress...

Let me break it down for you. The story of the killer is broken into different parts in the movie, so you find out new information a little at a time. But I'll just let you in on the whole sorry mess right now. Marty Sickle (clever, right?), who worked at the slaughterhouse, raped and killed some girl. Everyone knew he did it, but due to lack of evidence, he was set free. The girl's boyfriend and his jock friends decided to take matters into their own hands, so they went to the slaughterhouse to get some revenge. They hanged Marty over a tub and left. But the rope broke, and Marty fell into the water. Uncomfortable, probably, but very much alive. A little while later, a couple decided to go into the slaughterhouse to have sex (because to the girl, the idea of making love where defenseless animals were murdered was extremely arousing). Marty came out of the shadows, killed the guy, and the girl took his head off with a machete.

The first scene in the movie was that couple getting freaky next to the tub. The scene took about ten minutes. Then it cut to ten years later, and a group of college kids had decided to go to the slaughterhouse. By then, Marty was an urban legend. They said that, if you go to the slaughterhouse, at the exact place where he died, and say a rhyme ("Sickle once, Sickle twice, Marty came to take a life," or some stupid shit like that) three times, he'd rise up from the tub and kill everyone. So, the guys thought it would be funny to get one of their friends to put on a costume and jump out at their girlfriends to scare them out of their bras and panties. But the thing is, it took them for-FUCKING-ever to even get there. There was a ridiculously long party scene (a very boring party, by the looks of it; I thought college kids were experts on this...) that was absolutely pointless, and then they finally made their way to the slaughterhouse. They did their little rhyming game, but their stoner friend (whose name was, literally, Stoner) was too busy -- you guessed it-- getting stoned in his car outside to remember that he was supposed to be doing something. That was his role throughout the entire movie, by the way: getting stoned in the car. He did nothing else until the last ten minutes. Anyways, when they started to hear creepy things, the guys just thought it was Stoner doing what he was supposed to be doing. It wasn't, of course, and it turns out that their little rhyme actually worked.

Looks more like a pedophile than a psycho-killer...

When I started to get really bored and looked at the timer, I realized that nearly an hour had went by, and nothing had happened. It took about ten minutes for those kids to die at the beginning. The party scene was about twenty minutes, and I think fifteen of those focused on two naked chicks making out. Then, once they finally left the party, they spent 5-10 minutes wandering around an abandoned town, with the final girl whining constantly about how she wanted to go home. So, that's approximately thirty/fourty-five minutes. At about the fifty minute mark, someone finally got killed, and by that point, I would have been happy with someone falling down and bumping their head. The kill was actually pretty decent, but it only got worse from there. And, after wasting so much time developing characters that still remained underdeveloped, they actually killed one person offscreen. After wasting our time, they had the balls to not show us everything, those fuckers. The entire movie was about an hour and a half, so you can see how long any real action took place. Actually, scratch that. There was no real action. The so-called action sequences were rushed and half-assed and didn't look good at all.

Let me go back to that final girl. I hated her. She was annoying as fuck, and all I wanted was for her to shut the hell up. I actually liked her best friend more; but she, for some reason wasn't final girl material. I guess because she didn't rope her cheating boyfriend into proposing to her by telling him she was pregnant. The movie wasn't that bad, technically speaking. The kills did look cheesy, but I've definitely seen worse. It was just too slow, boring, and had too many scenes that made absolutely no sense at all (like the girl taking her skirt off at the end, for no reason whatsoever). It boasts that it's scarier than TCM; but it's just a shitty rip-off that tried to be good and failed miserably.

#328 -- Idle Hands (1999)

Director: Rodman Flender
Rating: 4 / 5

Oh, how I love reminders of my childhood. I was nine years old when this movie came out, and I watched it constantly as a kid. I even taped it from my TV, along with Cherry Falls and Shriek if You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th. It was one of my favorite movies back then, and it had been way too long since I'd seen it. Watching it now, I can see that it's not a perfect movie at all; but I still think it's absolutely wonderful.

Devon Sawa stars as Anton, a slacker/stoner with not much going for him. Okay, nothing going for him. There's been a string of murders going on in his town, but he doesn't know anything about that, of course. He's too busy watching cartoons and getting high. But one night, the murders come into his house, when he finds his parents dead bodies. He starts to think that, maybe, he had something to do with it. It becomes undeniable when he accidentally kills his two best friends, Mick and Pnub (played by Seth Green and some other guy). His hand has a mind of its own, he can't control anything he does, and the hand wants to kill everyone around him. He eventually decides that the only solution is to cut the hand off; but that doesn't kill it, it just gives it more mobility and it becomes more dangerous than ever.

As in every horror movie, there's a character that knows everything about what's going on. That character comes in the form of Vivica A. Fox. She travels the world in search of the possessed hand (which, I guess, jumps from body to body, though I'm not sure) hoping to stop it from taking an innocent soul to Hell with it. The innocent soul that it's after this time is Anton's girlfriend, Molly (Jessica Alba), and they've got to save her before the hand can get to her.

As a kid, all I saw when I watched this was a whole bunch of awesome. I still see that, of course, but I can recognize the flaws now. Like, back then, I never even questioned how Mick and Pnub came back from the dead. I thought, "Zombies! Awesome!" Now, though, I really do wonder how the fuck that happened. They said something about a bright light, but it was too far away, so they just turned back around. Typical stoners. There are definitely parts of the story that don't make sense, but that doesn't even matter. It's always been an awesome movie, and it always will be. It's got some creepy things going for it: the glow-in-the-dark writing on the ceiling that says "I'm under the bed," the zombies, and the murder stuff. All of that was really well done, I thought, and the effects were great. There was an awful lot of comedy in there too; it was very dark comedy, but great comedy too. IMDB says it's horror, but I'm sure a lot of people just call it comedy. There's just too much blood and guts for me to be able to say that, though.

The point is, even though it's flawed and far from perfect, it's a wonderfully dark and funny movie that will always have a special place in my heart.

#327 -- Dead Noon (2007)

Director: Andrew Wiest
Rating: 2 / 5

Oh, how they rope me in. I found this on Demand, and I thought the idea was somewhat interesting. Nothing I'd be dying to watch, though. When I scrolled down a little bit and saw Kane Hodder's name, I was completely sold. They get me like that every time. But don't let them fool you too; Kane is hardly in the movie at all, and even his awesomeness couldn't save it.

The back story on these folks is interesting enough, but somehow they just failed to deliver. So, back in the old West days, a sheriff finds his partner, Frank, sleeping with his wife. He kills his wife, every member of Frank's posse, and then sets out to kill Frank himself. He succeeds, and Frank ends up in Hell. While in Hell, he plays poker games with who I assume was the Sheriff. They always have the same deal: if Frank wins, he gets to go back to Earth. Frank usually loses, but this time he gets what he wants. So Frank walks right out of Hell and goes on a killing spree, searching for the last remaining relatives of the Sheriff's, so he can end their bloodline once and for all.

Pretty cool, huh? No. Frank and his resurrected posse go about killing everyone, and it's just mindless slayings. There's no real structure to it. For the most part, it'll leave you feeling confused. Once you realize that he's searching for the rest of the bloodline, it makes a little bit of sense; but not much. So, we're following Logan and Stuart, brothers and great-great-grandson's of the sheriff. They're cops too, and they're out searching for whoever has been killing all these people. Along with some chick (who happens to be much better with a gun than both of them combined), they're hoping they'll be able to stop Frank. They finally learn what Frank's all about, and it doesn't seem to bother them all that much. And, that's pretty much it. There's a fight scene at the end, and a shoot-out, and then - finally - it's over.

So, where does Kane Hodder come into play? Well, at the beginning he's got some girl held hostage, and he's telling her this story. She's all beat up and we can only assume that he means her harm. I'm going to spoil the ending now. Not that you care. The movie spoils itself by being so terrible. So, Kane ends up being a demon himself, and he's here to finish what Frank couldn't: ending the bloodline. The girl was supposed to have been Logan's daughter, which is what she thought all her life, but apparently she was Frank's daughter. I'm not really sure how that happened; I guess he raped Logan's wife. It wasn't explained at all. So, that's it. Kane's in the movie for maybe ten minutes altogether. And here's an interesting fact that I found on IMDB-- he wasn't even in the movie at all originally. The movie was made, and when a company decided to buy it for some reason, they added those scenes in. They also re-edited it, and worked some magic to make it better. So, originally, it was actually worse. Good grief.

Kane actually is the best thing about this movie. I usually say that just because I love him, but here it's actually true. The other actors were horrible; the effects were stupid, and the story was jumbled and made no sense most of the time. Usually, I can ignore bad effects. I'm no low budget hater. But I can only ignore that if everything else is done well which, here, it absolutely is not. Altogether, it's just a flat-out horrible movie. That one extra  point I gave it in my rating was for Kane, of course. He's wonderful, as usual. You should see it if you, like me, are a huge Kane fan. Otherwise, just skip it. You'll thank me, I promise.

#326 -- The Last Exorcism (2010)

Director: Daniel Stamm
Rating: 3 / 5

The reason that I even wanted to see this movie is beyond me. I'm not a fan of exorcism-based movies, and I'm definitely not a fan of this found footage craze going on. But, for some reason, this movie intrigued me. It's probably those scenes in the trailers with that girl all bent up out of shape and looking creepy. Who knows. But I took the plunge and checked it out, even though I was still hesitant. I knew that the worst that could happen was that it would be absolutely horrible, and the best, naturally, that I would end up loving it. Neither of those things happened.

It follows Reverend Marcus, a man who has been in the preaching business pretty much his entire life. His father was a preacher, so it's only natural that he'd follow in his footsteps. His dad also reveals that exorcisms run in his family; they've been in the family for generations. Marcus is no different; he'd been doing exorcisms for years. When his son was born with an illness, and they weren't sure he would make it, things changed. His son ended up being perfectly fine, but the whole mess caused him to question his faith and what he was doing. He decided to stop doing exorcisms, because they were all scams and he was no longer into tricking people that way. So, he hired a film crew to follow him on his "last" exorcism, so that he could show them all his tricks and prove that they were, indeed, fake. He would actually rig things very elaborately to make these people believe there was a demon in their presence; and he didn't even believe in demonic possession.

So, he and his camera crew ended up at the farm of the Sweetzer family, where Nell Sweetzer was believed to be possessed by some demon. Marcus performed all his fake exorcism mumbo jumbo and had the family believing that all was well. But Nell still showed signs of some sort of ailment. They took her to the hospital, thinking that she was sick. That wasn't it. The Reverend became convinced that her problems were purely psychological, but her father refused to take her to a psychiatrist; he asked for a second exorcism, and threatened to take care of matters himself if Marcus wouldn't oblige. They also learned that Nell was pregnant, and the issue of incest arose. Marcus and his crew were extremely worried about Nell's well-being, as they'd become convinced that her father was sexually abusing her. Even though Nell had proved that she was dangerous, they refused to leave until they could get her away from her father. Of course, her father wasn't the problem here, and more demonic things were going on. His last exorcism ended up being the only one that was actually real.

Overall, I thought the movie was pretty good. The found footage bit wasn't that annoying, up until the end (people running around in found footage movies never looks good). For the most part, it was done in a way that allowed me to forget about it. I also think the actors were really great; they were very natural, and it felt like it was a real documentary. There were a couple of somewhat spooky moments, but I can hardly call it scary. It's not -- at all. The problem was that it was extremely slow. The characters were easy to care for, yes, but after a while it got boring. By the time the action started, it no longer had my full attention. Therefore, I was left feeling a bit confused. I'm not entirely sure if it's because I wasn't paying attention, or if that was the point all along. But the ending worked in its own way, so I wasn't disappointed by it; just confused. I'll definitely have to be seeing the sequel; hopefully it will answer some of the questions this one left me with.

Spoilers after the jump. Continue at your own risk.

#320 -- Hold Your Breath (2012)

Director: Jared Cohn
Rating: 3 / 5

I first found this movie in Wal-Mart's little five dollar bin. I thought it sounded interesting, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to shell out the cash to buy it. Sure, it's only five bucks; but I'm a cheapo, so I've got to be absolutely sure about something before I'll buy it. A couple of days ago, I realized it was available for instant streaming on Netflix, so I didn't have to buy it after all. Though it's definitely not a terrible movie, I'm kind of glad I didn't buy it that day. It's not bad, but it's definitely not a movie that I'd be dying to own.

It's about a group of twenty-somethings getting together after being apart, I assume, since high school. They were on their way to a campground way out in the woods (a campground you can just drive right into without paying -- the kind I need to find!). Automatically, we know that this is not a good idea, even if we know nothing about the movie at all. But the first of the movie showed us a deranged serial killer being fried in the electric chair (but not before killing a warden as a last "fuck you!" to everyone), so we know it's going to have something to do with him. On the way to the campground, they passed a little cemetery. One of the girls made everyone hold their breath, because of an old superstition that the evil spirits buried there would be able to possess them if they didn't. Everyone agreed to appease her, except the token stoner, because he was too busy choking on marijuana. The evil spirit of that serial killer possessed him, and later made him murder a police officer. Every once in a while, the spirit would jump between their bodies, making it impossible to fully trust any of them.

There were a few different locations present here. One, of course, was their campground. They explored an old abandoned prison in one segment, which was the best. I thought they should have used that location more. They eventually met up with an ex-security guard of the sanitarium where the killer had been. He was the typical character who knew absolutely everything about their situation, and he promised that, if they did everything he said they'd be able to get rid of the spirit and save their lives.

I want to take a moment to explain my rating system. In most systems, a three-star rating means "I liked it." At least the systems I'm used to. But here's how mine works. 1 star - I hated it. 2 - I didn't like it. 3 - It was okay. 4 - I liked it. 5 - I loved it. So, that's why so many movies here have three star ratings, because most of the movies I've been watching lately are simply okay. There's nothing about Hold Your Breath to make me absolutely hate it, or to say that I didn't like it. It had an interesting story, though the characters were bland (I'm used to that, though, so that's nothing), and it never actually bored me or anything. The problem with these movies is that they lack something that I just can't explain. That, and the fact that they always fail to blow me away. So, if you should decide to give this one a go, you'll be entertained for a little while. You won't necessarily regret watching it, but you won't seek it out for a second viewing.

#317 -- Ringu (1998)

Director: Hideo Nakata
Rating: 3 / 5

I have a confession to make. Sometimes, I like to pretend I'm cool because I watch foreign movies. But truthfully, sometimes I just don't get them. For the most part, I do really enjoy Asian horror movies, but I can hardly call myself an expert on the subject. Sometimes I just can't get behind them. So, if you catch me saying something like "That's a remake of [insert Asian movie title], you should watch the original," don't pay attention. I'm just talking shit. I actually have no idea what I'm talking about.

That being said, I only slightly enjoyed Ringu. While the story behind it is definitely intriguing and terrifying, the movie itself just failed to give me that special feeling. The story here follows Asakawa, a reporter who finds herself surrounded by the mysterious legend of a killer video tape. She was researching and talking to locals about this tape, when her niece died. She came to believe that her death had something to do with the tape, so she took her research to another level. She ended up in possession of the tape and found herself with only one week to live. Her ex husband helps her in her research, and the search to find a cure for this "curse."

At the basics of it, the remake is the same. It's got the same basic story and follows a woman, her husband (or ex, I can't remember if they went the same way there), and their son. But the remake had several things that this one didn't. For one thing, this one just wasn't scary. There were a few scenes that I assume were meant as jump scares, but they just didn't set in. Even the typical Asian-horror theme -- the creepy, long, black hair -- didn't work very well for me. I think the terror here lies in the "what-if". The idea of this kind of thing happening to you is absolutely terrifying. The idea that you know, without a doubt, that you're going to die in a week...and you're racing the clock to figure out how to prevent that is scary as hell. But watching it on screen just didn't do anything for me. The majority of the time was spent with the characters doing research and travelling back and forth between locations.

There was one interesting concept that I don't remember being present in the remake -- that Sadako and her mother had magical powers, and that is what led to their deaths. Her mother was a psychic, and Sadako was able to kill people simply by wishing it. But other than that, it was generally unremarkable. I've seen Ringu 0, which is a prequel to this one, and I enjoyed it more. It focuses on Sadako's life before she was killed. Even though I can hardly classify it as horror as it's not scary either, it's an extremely sad story that I could get behind simply because of the emotions.

So, here we have something very rare. I actually liked the American version better. I thought it was scarier, it explained the ghostly occurrences better, and it succeeded in getting under my skin. When I first saw it, I was worried that I'd be afraid to watch television anymore. That didn't happen, of course, but you get my point. It left a mark. This one didn't.

#310 -- Sinister (2012)

Director: Scott Derrickson
Rating: 3 / 5

Horror movie are really good at creating trailers to reel people in with false hopes that they'll be scared shitless. I know that's the point of a trailer, and I'm glad that they're able to do this, for their own sake's. But sometimes it can be downright annoying. When I saw the trailer for Sinister, I knew that I had to see it. I was sure that it was going to be different from all the other shitty horror movies that come out these days. I just knew that it was going to be genuinely scary. Sadly, the scariest part of the trailer turned out to mean nothing at all in the actual movie. That's not to say that Sinister is a bad movie; it's just not at all what I'd hoped it would be.

Ellison Oswalt was a true-crime novelist who moved into a house where murders took place in order to do research for his newest book. He apparently had done this several times before; sometimes, he found clues the police had missed and helped solve the crimes, and in other cases his antics let killers go free. His last success was around ten years ago, and he was convinced that this one could be his comeback. This explains why he continued with his research even after everything went extremely wrong: he was obsessed. He had access to a bunch of home movies which showed exactly how a set of families were murdered in their homes. I'm not sure how he gained access to these films, since the police department (the sheriff, at least) absolutely refused to help him. I think he might have found them in the home's attic and checked into them just because. In each case, every member of the family was killed, except for one child, and that child was never seen again. Slowly, Oswalt began to link each murder together, proving that they were all committed by the same person. Or at least, that's what he thought. The main thing he noticed in the films was a ghostly figure that appeared in the shadows, as well as a strange symbol that was always painted somewhere in the families' homes. He did some research, got some professional help, and discovered that this "ghostly figure" was actually a demon called Bughuul who stole children's souls by way of digital images. Once a person saw him in the images, he was able to jump from his dimension to theirs.

All of this is very interesting. It sounds like an old folk tale or something, but as far as I can tell, Bughuul  was created specifically for the movie. I was hoping this was a real myth, so I could do some digging and come out with something cool. But I applaud them for coming up with an original villain. Sinister works on certain points (several, actually), but it fails in the most crucial way. It does't rely only on jump-scares, as most ghost/haunting/demons movies do, which is always nice to see. There are a few of them thrown in, don't get me wrong, but it mostly relies on things that disturb you rather than scare you shitless. The old films of the families getting murdered were, indeed, quite sinister. They were disturbing to Oswalt as well as viewers. They were also creepy, artistic, and very well done. The characters were engaging as well. Ethan Hawke was great as the obsessed writer losing touch with reality and slowly losing his mind over his work. I could understand him. He was also very jumpy and easily spooked, which offered some comic relief (not that it needed any..) I could also understand his wife, Tracy, who was exhausted with him. I was actually worried about their marriage, which is a shocker. Most horror characters --aside from the villain--are extremely bland.

Even though the old films were great, they were used for too long. It was slow going, and it took a good while for anything to happen in Oswalt's reality. And once the line between the dimensions was erased, things got cheesy. The ghostly children showed up in Oswalt's house, but it looked like there was a slumber party going on and his kids' friends were trying to scare him. The kids weren't spooky at all. And that is where the movie fails. It's just not scary. Though it has a good idea and does a lot of things right, it just fails to offer up any real scares. It wasn't quite disturbing enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. It didn't keep me up at night. It didn't make me hide behind my pillows with my heart racing. In the end, even though they did some things right, what they created was a forgettable horror movie that really tried.

#309 -- Silent Hill (2006)

Director: Christophe Gans
Rating: 4 / 5

I've heard about Silent Hill for years. I've always known that a lot of people love it, but I just never got in on it. It was based on a series of Japanese video games by the same name. I've never played any of the games, but after watching the movie and researching a little bit about them, I can't wait to play them...Once I get a better game system, that is. There just aren't that many good games for the Wii unless you're eight years old. Anyways...

The movie is about a woman named Rose whose adopted daughter, Sharon, has nightmares about a place called Silent Hill. In order to figure out what these nightmares mean, Rose decides that she needs to take Sharon to Silent Hill, in hopes that the girl might remember something and figure out why she is so scared. Rose's husband advises against it, since the town was known for a disastrous fire and is still unsafe. Rose, of course, goes on without her husband's blessing. Once they arrive in Silent Hill, Sharon disappears, and Rose realizes that the town is not normal -- and there is no escape. She meets with a police officer (played by Laurie Holden!), and together they weave their way through this spooky ghost town searching for Sharon and a way out.

There are definitely some interesting things going on in Silent Hill. There are amazing and horrifying characters, a cult that murders children, and indescribable creatures lurking in the darkness. There's also a man/creature that carries the biggest knife I have ever seen in my life. This is a fantasy world that is very easy to get caught up in, and that's just from watching the movie. Imagine what it's like playing the games! I can't wait. The movie itself kind of plays out like a game. The entire time, the viewer is left extremely confused and unsure of what is going on. We know what we see, and what Rose sees, but there's no way for us to know exactly what it all means until the very end. I found myself feeling stupid throughout the majority of it because I didn't fully understand, but the ending made everything perfectly clear, and what an ending it was! Rose learned a few shocking secrets about her daughter's past, as well as the awful things that went on in Silent Hill before it was turned into a ghost town. There was a magnificent final villain that was unique and definitely frightening.

I don't want to say too much about this movie, actually. I went into it not knowing anything about it, and I was so surprised and awed by it that I couldn't believe it took me so long to see it. I think that's how everyone should experience it. You don't need to know anything, really, because the shock of what you will see is part of the fun. Just know that it is a wonderfully creepy movie with some of the greatest horror characters I've ever seen.

#303 -- The Possession (2012)

Director: Ole Bornedal
Rating: 2 / 5

The first thing you'll notice when watching this movie is that it claims to be "based on true events." That's not really surprising, as most ghost stories claim the exact same thing. I did some research, though, and it turns out, it kind of actually is. There was a box (known as the Dibbuk Box) selling on Ebay that was supposedly haunted. It was originally owned by a Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust; it kept changing hands, each person who owned in claimed that they experienced nightmares, health issues, and sometimes death around them. It eventually made its way to a man named Jason Haxton who wrote a book about the things he experience while in possession of the box. It all comes down to what you, personally, believe. I don't know how much, if any, of that I believe. But it does mean that the movie was at least partially telling the truth. I've made it a mission to find and read "The Dibbuk Box" by Jason Haxton, so that I can see just how truthful the movie is, but I have a feeling that the events in the movie were only loosely based on the things that actually happened.

Anyways, here's what the movie is about. A man, recently divorced, gets to have his two daughters every weekend. After buying a new house, he stops at a yard sale to see if he can find some new dishes. One of his daughters, Emily, finds a strange box that she is very drawn to. He buys the box for her, and she becomes obsessed with the thing. She won't allow anyone else to touch it, and if they do, she gets extremely violent with them. Eventually she even starts getting violent with her family. She stabbed her dad with a fork, and threw a bunch of glass at her mother. But that was pretty much where the action ended. The main reason they were concerned with her to begin with was that she was acting weird, unlike herself. They just decided to get her some help when she started being mean. Her dad, who was a basketball coach, went to a professor at his college to have him inspect the box. He learned that it was a Jewish device used to contain demons, that it should never be opened (which of course, Emily did), and that the only way to get rid of the demon (and save his daughter) was to get the demon back into the box. To New York he goes, to find a rabbi who can help him.

All of that sounds interesting enough, though I still feel like the "real" story is more interesting. The movie, though it had an interesting story, was incredibly boring. It mostly consisted of Emily getting distant from her family and friends and her obsession with the box. By the time there was any action, half of the movie was over; and when that action took place, it wasn't that great. I've already stated two of those things above, and there was only one more to speak of. The ending scenes, where the rabbi was trying to help them get the demon back in the box, were more comical than anything. It wasn't exciting; it wasn't scary. It had an interesting story, but I'd much rather read Jason Haxton's version of things. What's sad is how much I was looking forward to seeing the movie, and how disappointed I was with it. I was hoping for some real scares, even if they were cheesy or cliche; but there were no scares at all.  I will say that once the demon had fully taken over Emily, it looked pretty cool. So, there's that...

#299 -- The Devil's Carnival (2012)

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Rating: 3 / 5

I didn't know anything about this movie going into it. I found it on Netflix, and I thought it sounded interesting. The synopsis Netflix gave me was something along the lines of lost souls being trapped in hell, forced to face the sins they committed. It sounded pretty cool. But, little did I know, it was directed by the same guy who directed Repo! The Genetic Opera. I didn't like "Repo," so if I had known that going in, I probably would have been more hesitant about it. On the other side of things, if I'd known that he also directed three Saw movies, I probably would have been more hopeful; I probably would have also been more disappointed. Anyways, the point is, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I saw that Emilie Autumn was one of the stars, which intrigued me. I don't know that much of her music, but she does have one song that I happen to love. Seeing her name should have given me a little hint as to what I was getting into, but I guess I'm naive. I had no idea that I was about to watch a musical. The lead singer for one of my favorite bands, Five Finger Death Punch, was also in the movie; but I didn't care for his part, or the song that he sang, which is a huge disappointment.

What Netflix told me was pretty much spot on, because that's pretty much all there is to it. At the beginning, we see three people die. One was John, who committed suicide in his bathroom for unknown reasons. The second was Tamara, who was apparently murdered by her abusive boyfriend or husband. The third was Merryweather, a jewel thief, who we can assume was killed by police once they caught up with her. The movie is narrated by The Devil, who tells the stories from a book of Aesop's Fables. John wanders around Hell looking for his son, though I have no idea what his son might have been doing there. I think that maybe his son had died, and that was the reason that he killed himself. The Devil did say something about him giving into grief, so it makes sense. But toward the end, it hints that maybe John hated his son and wished that he'd never been born, so again, why was he looking for him in Hell? I'm not sure if his "sin" was the hatred for his son, or the simple fact that he committed suicide. I don't understand why Tamara was there at all. Again, it looked like she was killed by an abusive man, so why should she be blamed for that and sent to hell? Once she got there, she met a guy they called Scorpion. He asked for her help, and promised to protect her. Once he gained her trust, he killed her. This is the fable that I actually recognized, "The Scorpion and the Frog." I guess her sin was that she trusted people too easily, but is that really a sin at all? Merryweather was understandable. She was a thief, she was greedy, and no matter how much she had, it was never enough. She lost everything gambling to gain more possessions.

I didn't really understand the story. I didn't get why these people ended up there, and I didn't understand the things that happened to them once they were in Hell. There was also very little character development. That, and the fact that their stories were impossible to understand, made it very difficult to care at all. The musical aspect of the movie was better than the story, though not by much. They sounded good, and all of the singers were talented; but the songs weren't catchy enough to love, and they were hard for me to understand without looking up the lyrics. Even then, I didn't get the point that they were trying to make. Visually, the movie was incredible. It was all cast in an eerie red lighting, to create more of a Hellish atmosphere, and it looked wonderful. The carnival setting was absolutely beautiful, and all of the demons were great. There were also some ladies dressed like little gothic dolls, and they definitely were easy on the eyes. I was engaged throughout the movie, and interested in seeing where it went next. But sadly, it didn't really go anywhere.

Overall, I think it was a good idea that didn't quite work out. I liked the premise, but it was too hard to follow and I didn't understand the story it was trying to tell. I liked it better than Repo, but not by much. In fact, I feel like I'm reviewing Repo again, because I said basically the same things about it: good idea, but it didn't play out all that well. But with The Devil's Carnival, I at least didn't feel annoyed at the musical aspect of the movie. So I guess I've go to give it props for that.

#288 -- Mirrors (2008)

Director: Alexandre Aja
Rating: 3.5 / 5

First of all, I want to say that I liked this movie. But I'm pissed. After watching it, I did a little digging - as I often do - and realized that it has happened to me again. I have watched (and enjoyed) a movie that I had not realized was a remake. Ugh. But I don't know why I'm acting so shocked, since the reason I even did a little digging in the first place was because I had a feeling it might be. Pretty much everything is these days, but still! Mirrors is a remake of a 2003 Korean movie called Into the Mirror.  I've looked on Netflix and Blockbuster and wasn't able to find it, so it looks like I'm going to have to do some serious digging if I'm to watch the original. One day I will, and we'll see how this one stands up when that day comes. But until then, let's take a look at how it stands on its own.

Kiefer Sutherland stars as Ben Carson, an ex police officer trying to get back on his feet and hold his family together. He takes a job as a night watchmen at a burned down, abandoned old department store in order to make ends meet for the time being. Why an abandoned building that's no longer in use even needs a security guard, I'm not sure. Regardless, Ben shows up to take the place of the old watchmen who is now dead. When he arrives, the man who works the shift before him says something about not looking at the mirrors, and that the other guy was obsessed with cleaning them constantly. So we know immediately (as if the title wasn't enough to clue us in) that these mirrors are not normal. Pretty soon, Ben starts to see some strange things in the mirrors; like, when he moves, his reflection doesn't, or vice versa. He also sees charred bodies in the mirror that are not actually there. He gets good and scared, and he finally realizes that it's not just the mirrors in the building; that whatever this is, whatever is trapped inside, can travel between any mirror that it wants to. It can follow him home. It can torture and kill his family if he doesn't do what it wants him to. And what it wants him to do is find a person who the whole world believes is dead. Many before him have tried, but none have succeeded. Will Ben be able to find this person and save his family from what's trapped inside the mirrors?

The story behind the mirrors was pretty interesting, though it's a little bit weird. None of that really mattered, though, because what I was interested in was the alternate dimension aspect of the movie. The fact that Ben could see things in the mirrors that he couldn't see normally was very intriguing. That and the fact that these spirits, or demons, or whatever they were, could travel to his home was also interesting. Oh, and not only could they travel through mirrors, but they could make themselves visible in windows, and water - anything that could make a reflection. Nowhere was safe. Ben and his wife painted all the mirrors and put newspaper over all the windows and photos, but they forgot about the doorknobs and the bathtub. So even though they went to all these measures to make sure they'd be safe, they still weren't. Ben still had to go find this mysterious person who wasn't extremely willing to help him. It was a race against the clock when it came right down to it, and it almost cost his family their lives.

Amy Smart gets a face lift.

I thought pretty much everything about the movie was good. The effects were great, and there were some pretty grisly murders going on here. Amy Smart played Ben's sister, Angie, and her death was the most gruesome and fantastic. It was absolutely phenomenal. The spirits inside the mirrors looked pretty wicked as well. The ending was sad, and not at all what I'd hoped for. But it was good, and I can understand it, so I can't really fault it for going in a direction that I didn't quite agree with. It's only because I'd hoped for a happy ending, and I didn't really get it. But oh well, shit happens. I wasn't disappointed with the ending; just sad.

Even though it is a remake, and probably mainly because I didn't know that at first, Mirrors is definitely not a bad movie. I have to fault it a little bit for not being original, but other than that...I dug it.

#286 -- The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Director: Lucio Fulci
Rating: 2 / 5

I'm thinking that, maybe, it wasn't such a good idea for me to watch this movie. You see, even though I know nothing about him or his movies, I know that Lucio Fulci is pretty beloved in the horror community. I've heard some great things about the movies he's made, but I've never seen any of them. Until now, that is. This my first introduction to him, and I think we started off on the wrong food. I have a pretty bad first impression of him, and apparently I'm not the only one who finds House by the Cemetery to be a bad movie.

The Boyle family moves from New York to Boston so that dad/husband Norman can research the death of a colleague, and continue on with the research that said colleague was undergoing. They rent this house, and immediately realize that some strange things are happening. The house once belonged to a family called Freudstein. The man of that family was a surgeon who liked to delve into illegal and inhumane procedures and was disgraced by the public. Norman came to believe that, maybe, whatever his colleague found drove him mad--mad enough to murder his mistress and then take his own life. But the truth was something far worse, because there is something living in the boarded-up cellar, something that is not quite human.

The basic story of it is interesting enough, even though it's not something we've never heard before. But when  you get into the details of the movie, it just doesn't make sense. There are scenes that seem like there's something there, but then they just fall flat and leave the viewer confused. There is a little girl throughout the movie that we can assume is a ghost. At the beginning, she is seen in a photo, and the Boyles' son, Bob, tells his mother that the little girl is warning him to stay away from the house. Once they arrive, though, the little girl doesn't do much of anything. She becomes Bob's new "girlfriend," as he likes to call her, and she plays with him in the woods and never tries to help him get out of the house at all. She never warns him anymore, never tells him anything that might give him a clue as to why she was ever warning him in the first place. At one point, the little girl sees a mannequin in a shop window that she's transfixed by. The mannequin's head then falls off and starts squirting blood. Later on, we meet Bob's new "babysitter," who looks exactly like that mannequin. She is creepy, vague, and really seems like she might not be quite human, and that maybe she's got something to do with the house. But then she is killed by the thing in the cellar, so those theories are completely squashed. That raises the question: what was the deal with the mannequin? Was it just foreshadowing? And if so, why do we require foreshadowing of the death of such a minor character? I can't really be sure why, but these two things really bothered me. They felt like they could have really gone places with these two ideas, but they just let them die. Also, the killer was living in the cellar, which was boarded up almost the entire time that the Boyle family was there. So, how was he getting out to kill all these people?

Besides that, I feel like the movie wasn't sure what it wanted to be. The scenes that show the killer's hands as he is slitting throats, cutting off heads, piercing hearts, etc. make it feel like a slasher movie, for sure. All the blood and guts and heads rolling down stairways only cemented this notion. But once the story started to unfold about the Freudsteins, it started to feel like it might be a ghost story. Maybe the spirits of the Freudstein family never left the house, and they're angry about something that we'll discover later (we don't, by the way...). It never expands on the story of that family, though, so we never get to learn anything about them other than the fact that the man of the family was a mad scientist. When we finally get to see Dr. Freudstein down in the cellar, the movie takes a turn and feels like a zombie movie, because the doctor is completely rotted with absolutely no face. And he's apparently been keeping himself alive by killing people and using their live cells to recreate his dead ones. The movie's biggest failure is that its story is all over the place. It's a jumble that leaves the viewer unable to figure out just what kind of movie they're watching. It was hard for me to follow, and it got confusing the more it went on. Add in the terrible acting and the cheesy effects, and I've found the movie that I should not have let introduce me to Fulci's work. I'm not giving up on him, though, because I know how so many people adore him. I only hope that I'll enjoy his other works much, much more than this.

#285 -- Ju-On (2002)

Director: Takashi Shimizu
Rating: 4 / 5

Usually, my stand on originals vs. remakes is pretty simple. Very rarely to I enjoy a remake better than the original, and I stand very firmly by those originals. But here, I'm really not sure where I stand  in the battle.

By now, I think it's safe to say that everyone's familiar with the story, but here's the quote from the beginning just in case you're not. "The curse of one who dies in the grip of a powerful rage. It gathers and takes effect in the places that person was alive. Those who encounter it die, and a new curse is born." At the very core of it, that's what Ju-On is all about. It centers around a certain house in Tokyo where a family died, and now everyone who enters the house meet their ends as well. Here, the main character is a girl named Rika who works at the Social Welfare Center, and is sent to the house to look after the elderly woman living there. Her son and daughter in law are who-knows-where, and she seems to be gripped by a terrible fear of something that only she can see...for now. The "grudge" will kill anyone who enters that house, and if they happen to escape with their lives, it will follow them. So, really, there's no way to escape this curse.

I am a fan of Asian horror, everyone knows that. I love the atmosphere of them, and I think they're some of the scariest movies ever made. Even though most of them do share the same basic ideas, they always have something new to offer, and I almost always love them. The problem that I have, most of the time, with the remakes, is that they lack that atmosphere that I love. Asian horror movies have that way of making us feel suspense, building up to a certain moment, and then slapping us in the face with some long-haired woman that will surely fill our nightmares for days to come. There's definitely something unique and special about them; something that most remakes just don't have. Here, though, both original and remake were directed by the same man, and even starred the same actors as Kayako and Toshio, the two ghosts in the house. So, really, they're essentially the same, aside from the fact that the remake caters to Americans. I think this one might be confusing to some of us, simply due to the cultural differences. That, and if you look away from the subtitles for two seconds, you'll be completely lost. There were some parts here that I didn't understand, but I'm just going to go ahead and say that's only because I'm not Japanese.

Even though the two are pretty much the same, there are a few differences. In Ju-On, the story of Kayako and her husband wasn't explained quite as much as in the remake. It tells us that she apparently had been cheating, and that her husband, outraged, killed her, their son, and their cat, before killing himself. But we didn't get all that mumbo jumbo about Bill Pullman and how she was a stalker. It also didn't stop once the main character's story was finished; it continued on about some teenagers going into the house for some dangerous fun, and then an entirely new curse was born (with a new set of angry spirits). This is the part that really threw me off to begin with. But I figure that the curse (or the grudge) doesn't have to involve the same set of people all the time. It simply states that it involves people who die in the grip of a powerful rage. See, those teenagers were abandoned by one of their friends, and they were left in the house to get killed by Kayako. This made them very angry, so they followed their friend home and tormented her until her mind unraveled.

Again, the two movies are essentially the same, so I'm not sure how I feel about each of them in the original vs. remake battle. They're both very good movies and, no matter how you look at them, Kayako's death rattle is absolutely terrifying in any language. So I think I'm going to call it a draw.

#283 -- A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

Director: Jee-woon Kim
Rating: 3.5 / 5

I had been waiting to see this ever since the last time that I watched The Uninvited, which is its American remake. It took me longer than it should have to link the two movies together, but once I did, I knew I had to see this one. I knew that it was going to be very different than its American counterpart, but I never imagined just how different it would be. It actually shocked me at first, and I wan't sure what to think of it. I'm still not entirely sure what to take away from this movie, but you can be sure that it's different.

A Tale of Two Sisters is about a family that is seemingly full of mentally unstable people. The first of the move shows us the two sisters, Su-Yeon and Su-Mi, returning home from a mental hospital. We only ever saw Su-Mi at the hospital, so it's safe to assume that Su-Yeon was simply accompanying their father to pick her sister up, and that she was never admitted into the hospital herself. She, in fact, seems to be the most mentally stable of the bunch. Their father seems a bit reclusive and isn't seen very much; their stepmother seems a bit overbearing and quick with punishments, and Su-Mi seems quick to anger and slow to trust. Su-Yeon is a shy girl who only seems to deal with her relatives' issues. She follows her sister everywhere and does what she says, she cowers before her stepmother, and I can't remember her ever even interacting with her father.

It is quickly made obvious just how little Su-Mi trusts her stepmother. There are several arguments between the two which seem a bit trivial at first, but make a little sense once you realize what's going on in Su-Mi's head. When she discovers some marks on Su-Yeon, she is certain that their stepmother is to blame. She confronts the woman, and she admits to punishin Su-Yeon, by locking her away in a wardrobe in her bedroom. This seems bad enough to begin with, but by the end of the movie it is expanded upon in a scene that is extremely cruel and disturbing.

Meanwhile, Su-Mi is plagued by nightmarish figures appearing before her, and it seems that there could possibly be some sort of spirit lurking in their house, and that it might be that of the girls' dead mother.

There are a couple of ways that this one differs from most Asian horror movies; or the ones I've seen, at least. It does rely on atmosphere, as most do, but it doesn't rely as much on spookiness. There are no creepy ladies with long black hair crawling around on ceilings here. What could make this movie scary to some is the idea of what might be. It isn't nearly as in-your-face as the American remake. It doesn't give you every detail of the story, which might turn some people away. It definitely shocked and confused me. Most of the details are left up to the imagination, and you have to interpret the things you'r seeing in order to figure it out. Sometimes I like movies like this, since there's never just one clear meaning. The movie is what you make it out to be. I went into this having already seen the remake, and I thought that maybe the two would play out a little similarly. They didn't. That was where I went wrong; that's why the movie confused me so much: because it went in a different direction than the one I was sure it was going to take. It was somewhat similar to the remake, but again, it wasn't quite as up front about it.

[spoilers ahead]

My interpretation comes from a line said by the girls' stepmother. "You want to forget something. Totally wipe it out of your mind. But you never can. It can't go away, you see. It follows you around like a ghost." There were hints throughout the movie that there might be a spirit in their house, but I think the only ghost present was the ghost of regret. In the end, it is revealed that Su-Yeon had been dead all along, and it is plain to see that Su-Mi is not in her right state of mind, and that she might have (most likely did) killed her sister. It is not completely clear to me, but I believe she locked her away in that wardrobe to starve to death while trying to claw her way out. The things that she was seeing, the assumptions she was making about her stepmother: they were all ways that her mind was trying to erase the evil thing she had done. She still saw her sister every day, everywhere she went, and her mind created this situation in which she was not the guilty one. She placed the blame on her stepmother, an outsider, rather than feel the weight on her own shoulders.

[end of spoilers]

A Tale of Two Sisters is not a movie for everyone. The pacing is quite slow, and there aren't any real scares here. The scares are entirely in the viewers' minds, as we imagine the evil things taking place. If you're a fan of those creepy movies like Ringu and Ju-On, with those creepy long-haired women on ceilings, you're not going to find that here. If you enjoy the creepy atmosphere of those same movies, you won't find that here either. It is full of bright colors, a wonderful summertime setting, and the music was very soothing to me. The things taking place and the way we see them are totally contradictory. You feel like things should be happy there, but they're not. That's what makes the atmosphere creepy. It's a subtle sort of terror, unlike what most horror movies strive for. Again, it's not for everyone. Some, like me, might be a bit confused at first. Director Jee-woon Kim gives a lot of credit to his audience, and he lets us figure things out for ourselves rather than slapping us in the face with facts. You really have to think about this one if you're to completely understand it. I still don't completely understand it, but I've got my own ideas and interpretations. That's exactly what you'll have to take away from the movie as well.

#278 -- V/H/S (2012)

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, David Bruckner, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, Glenn McQuaid, Radio Silence, Joe Swanberg, Chad Villella, Ti West, Adam Wingard

Rating: 3 / 5

Okay, so I'd wanted to see this for quite some time. I'd heard some good things about it, and what I knew about it seemed interesting. What I heard was something about a killer who only showed up on tape, or something like that, but that wasn't even right. Maybe I was mistaken. What it is, really, is a found footage anthology. See, I didn't know that. If I had, I probably wouldn't have jumped on it so quickly. But at the same time, I'm kind of glad that I didn't know, because I'm happy that I watched it. I've never been a fan of found footage movies. They really get on my nerves. I've only seen a couple, and that's because the idea of it is so entirely shitty to me. I absolutely hate Blair Witch; Quarantine was okay. And then there's V/H/S. Out  of the three that I have now seen, I'd say this one is the best, even though it makes the least amount of sense. I get that it's an anthology (even though it took me a minute to figure that out), and that means that naturally, there's not just one solid story; there's a bunch of them. That's cool. I like anthologies. The problem is that I like my anthologies to make a little sense, and for the wraparound story (if there is one) to at least mean something.

So let me break this down for you. The movie starts off showing us a group of guys who like to tape crimes that they commit. They mug girls and take their clothes off, and they break into abandoned houses to destroy them. Really immature stuff, but still pretty bad. Apparently one of them knows someone who can give them a lot of money to go to some guy's house and steal a video tape. They jump on the opportunity, and of course, they have to tape their adventures. When they arrive at the house, the old man who lives there is dead, and they have no idea what they're looking for. They do find a shitload of VHS tapes, but they're not sure which one it is that this mysterious guy wants. So they start watching them. This is where the other stories come in. They're all horrible and weird things that people have video taped over the years, and they're  honestly pretty wicked.

One is about some guys with some video recorder glasses who decide to make a porno. They pick up a couple girls at a bar and take them back to a hotel room for some drunken fun. The girls, of course, don't know that they're being recorded. The first girl, who was hot and skanky and really drunk, passed out. So they went on to the second girl, who was really weird. She really liked the camera man, though, because that's pretty much all she said the entire time. "I like you." She was genuinely creepy to begin with, but once she started eating people and turned into some kind of winged demon, shit got intense.

There are stories about ghosts, demons, and just plain 'ol killers. And, of course, the one about the mysterious killer who either only shows up on tape or can't be recorded. I couldn't really tell which way they were trying to go with it. But it looked cool.

Then there's the wraparound story. I get that these guys were looking for some tape. They were told that they'd know which one it was when they saw it, so I get that they had to watch all of them to figure it out. All that makes sense. But I don't get the dead old guy in the chair that was sitting behind them while they were watching them. I don't get why only one of them could watch a tape at a time, or why they each disappeared after they watched something. It never clarified on that part. Then the old guy disappeared from the chair and ended up chasing one of them around the house. I didn't get that either, and that's where it ended. No explanation, no resolution. Just, BAM! He wasn't dead after all (or maybe he was?), and now he wants to kill you. But why? That's where my problem started, and I'm just glad it waited until the very end to disappoint me. There's no point to the entire movie. Sure, everything's cool and creepy, and some parts of it kind of freaked me out. But at the end, there was just no point to any of it. The wraparound story was pointless, since it didn't bring the separate stories together like it should, and it didn't have a proper ending.

"I like you..."

I will say, though, that V/H/S succeeded at what all found footage films set out to do: to make things more believable. I was completely engaged throughout the entire movie, even though I was kind of confused at times. Things definitely did seem natural to me, and some of the segments were pretty scary. The actors did a good job at looking like they weren't acting at all, and the gore, where present, was pretty amazing. Overall, it's a pretty great movie, considering it uses a method that I despise. But in the end, it's severely disappointing in its failure to have an ending. I didn't feel like I wasted my time completely, but it did feel like sort of a waste. They had so much potential, they built up this great story and let it die out in the end. I expected something like The Ring. You know,watch the video and die. But it never offered any explanation to anything, which made the movie fall flat for me.

Even though I was disappointed by it, I would still definitely recommend it. Don't go into it expecting a fully structured story, because you're not going to get it. I would recommend it based only on the separate segments. They were interesting and spooky, sometimes downright scary, and they're definitely worth it. You'll be disappointed when the ending (or lack thereof) completely sneaks up on you, but you'll like the rest. I did, at least.

#276 -- Hard Ride to Hell (2010)

Director: Penelope Buitenhuis
Rating: 2 / 5

I guess if you read the synopsis of Hard Ride to Hell, it sounds pretty interesting. Sort of. But the main thing for me was Katharine Isabelle. I've always loved her, and I love seeing her in whatever I can. It's an okay story, with okay characters and actors. It's safe to say that everything about it was just so-so. It wasn't all that bad, and it did keep me intrigued, but somehow it failed to completely impress me.

It starts off as any typical horror movie does: a group of friends taking a camping trip in their RV. They're on their way to do something for Habitat for Humanity, though it's never really clear exactly what it is. A couple of them have a little sob story going for them, making it kind of easy for us to care about them. They stop at some campground (which is actually just an open field with a sign that says "campground.") to have some rest before the rest of their journey. When one of them gets drunk, can't wait for his girlfriend to get out of the bathroom and decides to go take a piss in the woods, things turn sour. He meets up with a snake, almost pisses himself again and starts running for his life. He, of course, gets lost. He ends up finding a group of bikers in the midst of some sacrificial ritual. He starts recording it on his phone, and then his worried friends try to contact him via the walkie talkie he forgot he had. The bikers hear it, and they go after them. From there, their little camping trip turns into a nightmare.

It turns out that the leader of this biker gang is an immortal satanist who used to be a priest. He's been going at it for at least seventy years, we know, maybe longer. He's trying to find a woman who can carry his child, which is conceived by fire or something. That baby will also be the anti-christ. When he meets Tessa, the woman who recently had a miscarriage and will do anything to have a child, he thinks that she might be the one. He impregnates her, and like, three hours later, the anti-christ is born.

The movie consists mostly of people getting bitten (because the satanic bikers are also cannibals; that's apparently what you've got to do in order to become immortal by way of satanism), a bunch of knife fights, and some mumbo jumbo that no one understands. Most of the characters were impossible to care about (including Katharine Isabelle, I'm sad to say), and the part of Tessa was played by Laura Mennell. I've only seen her in Hell's Gate: 11:11, but I didn't really enjoy her all that much. Or that movie. Her part here was pretty much the same: dull, dull, dull. That was until she became impregnated by a demon seed. She turned a little creepy, and I liked that bit. But the knife fights were kind of weird, and there really wasn't all that much to it. I have to give it some props, though, because it didn't bore me at all. I was interested the entire time, but I honestly can't tell you why. In the end, I wasn't entirely impressed by the movie. The material was good, and I think it could have made a wonderful movie if it was gone about in the right way. I think they should have went the comical route, because that at least would have given it a more lasting impression.

Rating

Storyline - 7 points. It was okay, though not completely original. The introduction of the cannibal bikers made it into something I'd never seen, so I'll give it some points for that. But overall, it failed to leave a mark.

Characters - 4 points. I liked the two main characters, mostly because I felt bad for their situation. But they hardly ever even interacted with one another, so it was difficult to feel any love between them. And the other characters were only filler. I was disappointed, since they had one of my favorite actresses available, but they did nothing with her. Oh, and the bikers. Their leader, Jefe, was okay. But the rest were far too comical for a movie that was otherwise not comical at all. They looked like they belonged in a Troma movie, which didn't fit here.

Gore - 5 points. There were plenty of knife fights and cannibals biting chunks out of people, but there really wasn't all that much blood present. Shame.

Scariness - 1 point. The scenes after Tessa was impregnated and possessed might scare small children. Might. 

Cinematography - 5 points. It looked like someone had at least a little idea of what they were doing. It didn't look like a home movie, but it wasn't mind-blowing either. So-so, like everything else here.

Overall score - 22 / 50