The Disappointments Room (2016)

"A mother and her young son release unimaginable horrors from the attic of their rural dream home."

I'm going to address the elephant in the room straight away: "The Disappointments Room" is aptly named. Everyone can now sit back smugly and chuckle, because saying that is about as obvious and predictable as everything else in this ghostie movie.

It's such a shame when a movie like this fails to deliver, especially as everything was in place for it to be good. The North Carolina location is fantastic, Kate Beckinsale in a blonde wig is still as beautiful as ever, and there's even a cat in the story. Unfortunately, "The Disappointments Room" contains nothing which hasn't been done before, or more importantly, done better.

If you can't guess how "The Disappointments Room" is going to go after the first ten minutes, either you haven't seen enough horror movies (which is possibly a good thing) or you haven't realised the formulaic nature of just about every "ghosts and hauntings" movie ever made. You can be sure that director D.J. Caruso and his co-writer Wentworth Miller have seen everything though, and they've thrown as many tropes as they could into this in arguably not the best manner. Having said that, there are some good moments among the unoriginality, but even then, they aren't great.

Acting-wise, it's okay. Kate Beckinsale seems to have become the Belén Rueda of American horror, and will probably continue in the same vein for years to come. She's always technically been a MILF, but now she's playing one as part of the plot, and there's nothing wrong with that. Her supporting cast, because let's keep it real here, don't have much to do or very much screen time, but they are perfectly acceptable. The storytelling is a bit rushed, and it's that element more than any other which makes "The Disappointments Room" into more of a generic product than something you would want in your collection.

Gerald McRaney's role is woefully small but important, but hey, it's not the size but what you do with it, right? Fortunately, a potentially annoying child in the form of Duncan Joiner playing Lucas is also nipped in the bud early on. The latter has an encounter which is so obviously cribbed from "The Shining" that of course it works, and he's not such an irritating little piss afterwards.

"Bones" fans will spot Michaela Conlin for a few seconds with no discernable lines of dialogue, but who cares? She's in it, it's another IMDb credit, and the point of her character is made. For those who might blink and miss it, Lucas Till's character Ben pretty much nails why the rich, middle-aged "yuppies" have moved to the countryside anyway in a buzzkill, quasi "meta-cinema" line which isn't wasted at all. Some slight socio-political commentary there, maybe? On the plus side, maybe not.

If you want to see more original (although still highly formulaic) stories in the "ghosts/haunted house with a mystery" subgenre, you can choose from "The Uninvited" (1944), "The Haunted" (1963), "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" (1973), "Burnt Offerings" (1976), "The Haunting Passion" (1983), "The Haunting of Seacliff Inn" (1994), "House of the Damned" (1996), "The Others" (2001), "Penny Dreadful" (2005), "The Orphanage" (2007), "The Abandoned" (2015), and literally hundreds if not thousands more. There's even enough of the "architects renovating a building and setting ghosts loose" movies that they have become yet another subgenre in their own right. One that springs to mind from only a couple of years ago, "Altar" (2014), was almost the same story as this but set in a windswept manor in Northern England.

If you're a Kate Beckinsale fan, you'll love her in "The Disappointments Room". If you're a ghost story fan, you'll watch this anyway for completeness. But if you're looking for originality, something like this (or anything recent in the whole horror genre) is not for you.

Eva (2011)

"A shy genius is employed by his former university to design robot software."

Although "Eva" is really sci-fi, I needed something for "Fantasy Friday", and it fits this category too. In fact, it's closer to being a "Frankenstein"-esque fairytale than anything else, and for those of you who've noticed a theme going on this month, yes, it's another beautiful Spanish movie. I've been watching more foreign movies recently than ever before due to the lack of decent English language titles, but that will change again next week because I haven't got many new ones left.

Not to be confused with Peter Dickinson's YA novel of the same name (which I know you've never heard of!), "Eva" is about robots rather than chimpanzees, but it still brings up the same questions about life, consciousness, and what makes us what we are. The subject matter is a staple of sci-fi books and movies, so it's not the most original story in the world, and there are similarities to "Bicentennial Man" (1999) and "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001).

I'm not going to knock the big Hollywood robot movies which are obviously excellent, but I enjoyed "Eva" just as much as "Bicentennial Man" and more than "A.I. Artificial Intelligence". Apart from a twist which I didn't see coming (but should have done!), there's a cat robot in "Eva" which is outstanding, plus I'm kind of in lust with Marta Etura who plays Lana. If you don't know who she is, check out "Sleep Tight" (2011) and "Los Últimos Días" (2013).

Marta Etura and Claudia Vega.

Detractors may say that "Eva" is too slow, overuses long shots, and the characters don't have much depth, but I disagree. There are no pacing problems, and the cinematography is very good indeed. The characters could have been fleshed out a little bit more, especially in the case of Alex Garel (played by Daniel Brühl) who is a bit boring even for a scientist, but there's enough made of them to tell the story. Bearing in mind that a 20 minute prologue (which is included on the Spanish Blu-ray) was removed to give more emphasis to the twist, the characters weren't originally so flat.

As "Eva" isn't set that far ahead in the future, there aren't too many weird effects used except at the robot lab and every time Alex runs his computer program. Some people may find that disappointing, but I didn't. Less is more, as they say, and the snowy location covers a multitude of sins. There are plenty of robots if you look for them including little horses, dogs, more traditional machines, and, of course, the cute prototype 519. Channelling Robin Williams slightly, Lluís Homar undoubtedly steals the show as creepy servant-robot Max. His menace is a total red herring though and is completely unintentional. In this movie, it's the "free robots" that you have to be careful of.

Claudia Vega as Eva.

Horror fans will notice several similarities to "Splice" (2009) but without the incestuous implications. Claudia Vega who plays Eva isn't as sexualised as some reviewers suggest despite a couple of scenes which might make you wonder. If anything, she comes across like a nicer version of the little girl in "Sleep Tight", and her use of age-inappropriate dialogue is meant as a clue to her secret instead of turning her into another Esther from "Orphan" (2009). I can't say any more about that without spoiling the movie for you, but it doesn't take a genius to work it out.

According to a rumour on the IMDb, the Weinsteins will be distributing "Eva" in the USA later this year. In what format, I have no idea, but I expect there will be a dubbed version for the hard of understanding, and an inevitable Hollywood remake eventually. For now, I recommend importing the English subtitled Blu-ray from Amazon.

My Pussy's Possessed

I just found out about this and thought you might also get a kick out of it.

"It's Nick"s first date with Lisa at his home. She is excited to meet his cat Angel. But when Lisa tries to put her paws on Angel, despite Nick's warning, she must deal with the CATastrophic consequences."

Visit the official website at http://www.mypussyspossessed.com to see more.

The Cat with Hands (2001)

"The dark, surreal story of a cat who wants to be human."

Director: Robert Morgan
Writer: Robert Morgan
Stars: Livy Armstrong, Victoria Hayes and Daniel Hogwood-Kane

I think this will do as October's "Horror Cat of the Month".

For more horror cats, please check out http://horrorcats.blogspot.com. Now with over 1000 followers on Twitter!

Upcoming Horror Movie - Cat (2011)

Due to be released on July 7th, 2011, Park Min Young (who I've never heard of and I know you haven't either) will star in this Korean horror movie about pedigree cat owners being mysteriously killed.

I saw a few stills from "Cat" about three months ago but assumed it to be some kind of Asian vengeful ghost story so I wasn't quite as excited about it as I am now.

Having just been completely negative about the last three films that I've reviewed on here. I can almost promise that I am going to love "Cat" because, basically, for no other reason, it has tons of cats in it and I love cats. Yes, I have seen that viral YouTube parody video for "eHarmony" (now posted below) and I can assure you that I'm even worse than she is.



Even if "Cat" turns out to be a "murder mystery" rather than a real horror film, it's still going in my collection and will be one of the few blind buys that I make this year.

Have a look at the trailer and see what you think.

The Kiss (1988)

"This supernatural horror tale features Joanna Pacula as a mysterious fashion model who, as a child living in the Belgian Congo, was possessed by an evil spirit as the result of a kiss administered by a voodoo priestess. Twenty-five years later, Pacula shows up for the confirmation of her niece and soon the blood begins to flow."

I started watching "The Kiss" about 15 years ago on the German RTL2 satellite channel but only saw as far as the escalator scene before something went horribly wrong with my cheap Matsui receiver (if you are British then you probably had exactly the same one from Dixon's so you know what I mean). As you can see from the price of the DVD at Amazon, this isn't a film that you can acquire all that cheaply so it has taken until now for me to get it through Netflix. Obviously, "The Kiss" made such a lasting impression on me that I really rushed to find out what the hell I had been watching.

Suffice it to say that I could quite happily have never seen the rest of this film without any major impact on my life. It's awful in ways that make other bad horror movies look like Oscar winners in comparison. The acting is horrible, the weird cat-thing which does all the killing is as badly made as something out of "Pipkins" (yeah, that shows my age!), and Joanna Pacula from "Gorky Park" spent far too much time looking angry with her clothes on. Maybe she would have looked happier if she'd been nude for the whole thing. I know I would have.

I just couldn't get into "The Kiss" properly and it had nothing to do with how late '80s it all looked. A bad film is a bad film no matter what era it comes from. I also have no idea who Meredith Salenger is or was or why the fanboys on IMDb think she was so beautiful in this. Yes, she was sort of reminiscent of a young Sandra Bullock with a bigger mouth, but she did nothing for me especially as her character was hardly required to be sexy. Sometimes I just want to shake nerds on message boards.

Since I don't care if I spoil this film for you (especially as nobody reads my blog at the weekends anyway for some reason), it's all about some kind of snakey parasite thing which is transferred from one generation to another through a kiss. It's not quite "The Hidden", but the physical kiss itself has little to do with the parasite emerging out of the mouth of one host and going down the throat of another. I suppose the attempted girl-on-girl snogging could be considered erotic if you're 12 years old, but it did nothing for me. Why there was also a witchcraft angle to this I have no idea except that it made the whole thing seem more supernatural than the unimaginative science-fiction that it turned out to be.

I also have to mention the cat-thing that caused all the "accidental" deaths of Meredith's teenage friends along the way because it was so glaringly fake and considerably crap. Imagine if you got some cheap, horribly made, stuffed toy cat, stuck a load of extra fangs in its mouth and then shook it around in front of the camera with appropriate snarling noises. Yes, that was the effect. It looked dead, it looked fake, it looked completely unscary as possible. What were they thinking?

The death scenes could have been good if they'd actually occurred more onscreen than off, but I suppose the filmmakers were trying to make it more scary by leaving things to your imagination. Either that or they had no budget for decent effects. I've noticed that a lot of people remember the escalator death as being a lot more horrible than it really was which intrigued me because I only saw that far, as I said, before it cut to RTL2's commercials (and then I lost the free satellite channel completely) so I was sure that I missed something good. It turned out that I hadn't. You don't get to see anything!

Anyway, if you are looking for a quick way to waste about $50 on a crap late '80s horror movie just to see Joanna Pacula get topless for a few seconds then I wholeheartedly recommend "The Kiss" to you. If you'd rather wait until it turns up on VHS in a yard sale then I recommend it even more. Of course, you can always do what I did and rent "The Kiss" through Netflix because it's really not something that you want to admit to having in your collection anyway. Yes, this film is most definitely another one for The Dungeon.