#235 -- Kill the Scream Queen (2004)

Rating: 1 / 5
Director: Bill Zebub

I felt a little bit of hope when I realized that Bill Zebub was the director of this one, because I really enjoyed The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made. I thought, maybe, this one would be similar and have that same brand of extremely cheesy humor. The Worst Horror Movie had a good amount of cheesy horror, bad acting, and weird humor. It was one of those movies that's so bad it's good, and that's exactly what it was meant to be. Kill the Scream Queen, however, is just plain bad. I know what Zebub was trying to do with the movie, but he failed.

It's about a guy who lures young, hot women into an abandoned bar with the promise that they'll be in a movie that will make them famous. He then ties them up, rapes them, kills them, and throws their bodies in the woods. That's really all you need to know, because that's all there is. This lacks many elements of a story. It has a conflict and an antagonist, but that's it.  There's no real protagonist (except the very last woman, who puts the hurt on him but still ends up dead), there's no plot. There's no real beginning, because we don't know what drove him to do such things (other than him stating that he used to research serial killers), there's no ending, no triumph over the bad guy. There's just...nothing.

There is an interesting premise of having different categories of torture. There was humiliation, molestation, torture, fear, etc. But all of them looked the same. There was really no way to distinguish between them, so that premise was shattered.

If you know anything about Taoism and Lao Tzu, you know his yin and yang theory: that there cannot be bad without good. The dictionary.com definition of "antagonist" is the adversary of the hero. But since there was no hero, or protagonist, you could say that there wasn't really an antagonist either. It's just a crazy guy killing women; and a crazy guy making a horrible movie.

The killer does have a little bit of reasoning behind his killings, but only a little. He believes that scream queens kill horror movies, because all they're good for is their tits. They have no real acting ability, and they're only there to show a little skin. It's about the triumph of boobs and blood over story and acting. This happens far too often, I will agree with him on that. But in trying to make that point, he created one of those movies that he obviously hates. I believe that was Bill Zebub's point here, to make a movie that makes fun of itself. But it just didn't work.

What makes it worse is the effects. I'm no stranger to terrible effects in movies, and sometimes I even enjoy them. But the problem is that this movie relies solely on its murder scenes. When that's all there is, you'd better have some amazing effects, or the movie will not work. The reason that those other low-budget movies with bad effects work is because they've got a good story, some humor, or some other element that makes it interesting enough for us to overlook the bad effects. This has none of that, so we're forced to focus on how unrealistic this "real" snuff film is.

Zebub stars as his own terrible killer, and he was the best actor in the movie. I do enjoy him, and I like him as a crazed rapist/murderer. I think it could have been better if there was at least a little bit of story thrown in.  Again, that would have defeated his purpose, but it also would have created a better movie. The only thing it had going for it was the so-called scream queens. They were, for the most part, attractive women with their bodies exposed. So if that's what you're looking for...watch some porn, because that will have more story than this. If all you want is to watch hot babes being tortured and killed, then hop in a van to the nearest loony bin, because you're seriously fucked up. All kidding aside, this movie isn't really made for anyone. I honestly cannot imagine anyone enjoying this crapfest.

Maybe this movie was meant as a message to other film-makers. Maybe Zebub was trying to show them--in vivid detail--how important a story is to a horror movie. Maybe it was meant as a sort of "this is what not to do" movie-making guide. If so, then I have to give it props, because that point was made loud and clear. But, honestly, I think it was just a really shitty movie that should have never been made.

#183 -- Saw II (2005)

Rating: 4 / 5
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

I guess this is another series I'm going to be watching out of order. I've already seen the first one, though so it's okay. I'll just have to refrain from describing every little detail about the movies, since this is my first time reviewing one. I'm assuming that, if you're reading this, you've already seen the first one. So I'm not going into full detail about what's going on; you should already know that.

Jigsaw returns, but this time he's a little bit different. In the first movie, we only got to see the real man for a short time. Here, we get the full story of why he's a complete nutjob. Before he started his "work," he found out that he had cancer, and he didn't have very long to live. This was very depressing for him, naturally, so he decided to end it quickly rather than wait for the cancer to end it for him. He drove his car off a cliff, but miraculously, he survived. From this, he brought with him a new appreciation for life. He saw that, for some reason, he wasn't supposed to die there that night. That got him to thinking about all the people in the world who did not appreciate their lives. His belief was, "those who do not appreciate life, do not deserve life." He wanted to help them learn to appreciate what they have.

Shawnee Smith returns as Amanda, the only person to survive Jigsaw's shenanigans in the first movie. But he wasn't satisfied with how she continued to live her life afterwards, so he brought her back. This time, there was a group of people trapped in a house together. The doors would open onto freedom in three hours. The problem was that the house was leaking a deadly gas that would kill them in two hours. All they had to do was find the antidotes, and they had to do some pretty gruesome things to do so. One antidote was in the back of a furnace, but once the guy grabbed it, the door shut and the fires started. There was no way for him to get out, or get the antidote to anyone else. What was the point of that? One antidote was in a big box hanging from the ceiling. The box had little holes for someone's arms; but the holes were lined with knives. One was at the bottom of a pit of needles. One was in a safe, and the combinations were written on the backs of everyone's necks; one guy had to cut the skin out of his neck to figure out his number, because he was an ass and no one wanted to tell him. Along with Amanda, Xavier (the ass), theres Laura, Addison, Obi, Jonas, and Daniel. Jigsaw said they had to figure out what all of them had in common, in order to get themselves out of the house alive. That something was Daniel's father, a police officer who falsified evidence to arrest all of the others.

Meanwhile, outside of the booby trapped house, Daniel's father Eric was desperate to find his son. He played a more critical role in Jigsaw's scheme than he was aware of, though. There was a video feed of the prisoners; the police officers were watching every mode they made, and Detective Eric was growing very anxious. But, the feed wasn't live, it turned out, and while they were watching all these horrible things happen, Daniel was safe and sound. The point was the get Eric to that house, so that he could become the next subject. There was a nice twist at the end, which is the main reason this is one of my favorites in the series. I wasn't expecting it all (maybe some of you will...), so It was actually surprising to me.

This one also stars Donny Wahlberg and Beverley Mitchell (Lucy, from 7th Heaven!). I watched the first of this series not long after it came out. I didn't like it very much, because it left me confused. Once I figured out what the hell was going on in that one, it got me more interested in the series, so I started watching the others. I actually still haven't seen them all, but I know they're pretty great. This didn't quite deliver on the shocks or gross-outs or scares. The best gadget in the entire movie was the first one, so it was pretty disappointing in that department. But it was still a good story and a great movie.

Some more screen caps, 'cause I can

#174 -- Vile (2011)

Director: Taylor Sheridan
Rating: 3 / 5

When you read the synopsis of this movie, it's going to be intriguing. It's going to make you think that this thing has some potential and that it might be interesting. Both are true, but there are some things that make it disappointing, and those things cause it to lose a couple of points. It all starts when a group of friends picks up a female hitchhiker. When they reach her destination, she spews some gas at them, rendering them unconscious. They wake up in a strange house with a group of strangers, and they've all got vials implanted in the back of their heads. A talking head on a TV screen tells them that these vials must be filled with some brain fluid that is released when the body tells the brain something is wrong. In other words, they must be in extreme pain for these chemicals to be released. One of the guys actually points out that these chemicals can also be released during sex. But all the girls are so repulsed by that idea that they would rather torture themselves. Personally, I'd take the sex any day. But that wouldn't be much of a horror movie, though, would it? I think leaving that remark out of the script entirely would have made the characters look 98% less stupid. So, they all take turns getting the shit beat out of them, having their fingernails ripped out, being seared with an iron/boiling water, and other such torturous things. They have twenty two hours to fill the vials all the way up. There's a second vial in their skulls that will release some deadly thing that will kill them. So if they refused to participate in their host's twisted little game, it's lights out for them.

Okay, there are a couple of ways that this movie fails. First, the characters aren't all that great. There was only one character that I really cared about, and that was only because she was pregnant. But [spoiler alert] she dies anyway, so it doesn't matter. There was another character that I kind of liked, but that didn't end very well either. They were all shallow, cowardly, and they didn't care about anything but their own asses. There were a few who wanted to help everyone get out of there alive, but most were just vain assholes. Maybe that was a reflection of humans and their complete disregard and disrespect for one another, but it just made the characters easy to hate.

Second, you would think that being in the torture porn subgenre of horror, there'd be a little bit of blood, right? Fuck no, you'd think there'd be a whole shitload of blood. Well, there's just a little bit. There isn't all that much gore, and the torture methods are repeated so they can remain humane and not hurt each other too much. Fuck that, I say. Sure, that's the right thing to do, and I'd do the same thing in that situation. But that's not what I want to see in a movie that boasts about torture and calls itself "vile". I want to see people get seriously fucked up. One man did get pretty fucked up, but it didn't last long enough to really save it. I would have liked to have seen a little more variation, and a little more creativity. Fingernail pulling and burning is pretty bland, yes? There were some that made me cringe, but that's not really what I was looking for.

Lastly, the ending. [spoiler alert]It was disappointing for me, because like I said above, the pregnant chick dies. How are you gonna kill off the one person I was able to care about? I mean, really? I will say, though, that the last few lines of the movie had me giggling.

Despite all of that, I wouldn't call this a terrible movie, as other reviewers do. It kept me interested, because I wanted to see what they were going to do to each other. It failed on a couple of points, but there were some things I liked about it as well. I think was more on an emotional level. It was what people will do to each other in order to save their own lives; or what they will do to themselves to save their lives. I think the movie was going for a deeper sort of entertainment, and it succeeded somewhat, but not completely. It gets a three point rating because it was okay, but it could have been a lot better.

#129 -- Hostel (2005)

Director: Eli Roth
Rating: 4/5

This came out a year after Saw started, so you can't really help but think it was inspired by it. It's essentially the same, but in ways very different. Where Saw has kind of a moral of sorts, Hostel is just a bunch of senseless violence--but hey! We all love senseless violence, don't we? It's about a country in Europe--Bratslava, I think--that specializes in hunting humans. People pay to have foreigners captured and tortured, for reasons unknown to me. One man ranted about the thrill of torturing people, so I guess maybe they just did it for shits and giggles. Everyone in town is in on this little game, it seems. Our main characters meet a guy in Amsterdam who tells them to go to a Hostel in Bratslava, where the girls love Americans and will jump their bones when they hear their accents. When they arrive, the girls are certainly willing to please the guys in any way they want. But of course, things go south pretty quickly (and not in the good way). One of the guys, Oli, disappears. The Hostel workers claim that he checked out, though his friends aren't sure that he'd leave without saying anything. They never realize that Oli is actually dead. Soon enough, another one of the guys also disappears. He's taken down to the torture chamber warehouse place. I think the place was underground, though I can't quite be sure. We see more of his torture than any other, and it's pretty graphic. He gets holes drilled into his knees, and his Achilles tendons slashed. After having the tendons slashed, his torturer tells him he's free to go. He tries in vain to exit the chamber, and ends up dead, dead, dead. After a series of lucky events, our last remaining character manages to get out of the underground torture chamber. He's seconds away from escape when he hears a friend from the hostel (a Japanese girl) screaming. He decides to be a hero and goes back in to save her. She's busy having her face burned with a blowtorch. After killing her torturer, he wants to help lessen her pain. Since one of her eyeballs is hanging a little loose, he cuts it off for her, and some gross yellow goo oozes out. Maybe I'm getting a little too much into detail, but I'm all about gross-outs. There were a couple of parts that really would have gotten me freaking out if they'd shown them in all their glory--like the knee-drills and slashed Achilles tendons. But I love it when a movie can make me cringe; I love it when something has an effect on me in any way. Anyways, Hero and Japanese Girl make it to the train station. When she sees her reflection, she opts for a Hara-Kiri rather than actually make it to safety. So Hero has to make it the rest of the way on his own, and maybe seek a little revenge along the way.

Most of the time, I complain when a movie doesn't have enough story, or explanation as to why things are happening. But in Hostel, it works for me. Things are what they are, and they actually don't really need any explanation. The guys are in Europe, which I think was effective. Most Americans don't really know much about Europe, so it makes it a bit exotic. It also allows us to maybe believe that crazy shit like this actually happens there. Plus, hot European chicks? Yes, please. Senseless violence and torture without reason can grant entertainment to some people. It is not a mind-blowing experience; it is not thought-provoking; it is not life altering. But who cares? Not all horror has to be deep and meaningful, or artsy fartsy, or whatever else all the critics love. It's meant to entertain, and Hostel does just that. It's interesting, and it appeals to gore whores like myself. I think movies like this are called torture porn, which sounds like my kind of movie. So if you're a freak like me, and you want to watch people being put through unimaginable amounts of pain for no apparent reason--check out Hostel.