Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

"Alice returns to where the nightmare began: The Hive in Raccoon City, where the Umbrella Corporation is gathering its forces for a final strike against the only remaining survivors of the apocalypse."

There's no point writing any kind of in-depth review of "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter". It's just as disappointing and "samey" as all of the "Resident Evil" movies, and it's even more boring than playing one of the linear computer games that it's based on.

With lots of overly dramatic music, big bangs and explosions, crowds of zombies, close-up hand-to-hand combat, surprise T-virus mutated-zombie jump scares, and too much reliance on timers to create tension (which nearly always falls flat), you will rightly wonder who exactly this movie is intended for other than diehard fans. It certainly wasn't intended for me or anyone looking for characters with any depth or a story that can't be summarised in more than three sentences.

The only character to stand out even a little bit is Isaacs (played by Iain Glen, otherwise known as Ser Friendzoned from "Game of Thrones") who goes through various incarnations of being either a clone or the real Isaacs until you don't care which is which. Various other characters from the previous movies return as little more than cameos. Wesker, the Red Queen, and Claire whatever-her-name-is (played by Ali Larter) all get dressed up to play pretend for hardly any reason.

The rest is just a mess of running around and fighting in the dark with CGI everywhere and computery things popping up to remind you that this is all based on the Capcom console game which nobody has played since the late 1990s. It's not difficult to follow what little story there is, but it's not worth paying too much attention to it either.

There's a bit of anti-Christian nuttery to make it appeal to the Lefties, but since the motivation of the bad guys and subtext is blatantly more akin to the the rise of the SJW religion/virus and the rioting zombies who subscribe to that ideology, it comes across as a pathetic and hilarious misfire.

Sadly, the once uber hot Milla Jovovich really looks her age now (and more so, once you get the in-joke that I've just made), so I'm glad this is "The Final Chapter". Any more would be as embarrassing as middle-aged James Bond.

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.

Blair Witch (2016)

"After discovering a video showing what he believes to be his vanished sister Heather, James and a group of friends head to the forest believed to be inhabited by the Blair Witch."

Starring another load of people you've never heard of and are probably never likely to hear of again, "Blair Witch" is an unnecessary sequel to a faux found footage movie I never liked very much in the first place.

So why watch it? Truth be told, I didn't. I just let my friends tell me how horrible it is, how annoying the characters are, and then I decided to write a nasty blog post about it. Hey, at least I'm honest.

I have no intention of ever wasting my time watching this shit made by Millennials for Millennials, or anything else Wingard and Barrett cobble together. From what I've been told, "Blair Witch" appears to borrow heavily from the Slender Man game and even features a thin-limbed CGI witch-creature to seal the deal. And that's really all I or anyone else needs to know. The rest of it is simply noisy jump scares.

Curious about what the Blair Witch actually looks like? Want to just see the witch and save yourself some money? Here ya go:

Naked Slender Man is actually pretty scary.

Fuck this movie and the original.

If I want motion-sickness from a movie which looks like a camera was being whirled round someone's head in a sock, I'm sure another equally lame "indie horror" offering will appear soon enough.

Gravity (2013)

"A medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after an accident leaves them adrift in space."

I don't know about you, but the thought of being stranded in space gives me the heebies. The mixture of claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and vertigo would drive most people insane, and let's not forget about the possibility of being captured and tortured by aliens! Unfortunately, "Gravity" doesn't go into those areas, so it's not very satisfying for horror or sci-fi fans.

"Gravity" is a disaster movie for science nerds who love movies such as "The Right Stuff" (1983) or "Apollo 13" (1995) and believe that there really are space labs orbiting Earth, Man landed on the moon, and all that other rubbish. It's not another "Event Horizon" (1997), "Mission to Mars" (2000), or even "Armageddon" (1998), except for some very superficial similarities and, of course, being set in space. Thus, if you're expecting something other than a potential Oscar winner, look elsewhere.

To say that I wasn't impressed by "Gravity" is the understatement of the year. I was, by turns, bored out of my mind, nauseated by the shocking waste of money that went into something which the BBC could have filmed for the price of a couple of bags of prawn cocktail crisps back in the days of "Blakes 7", and because it's hard to tell what's going on unless you have some kind of astronautical doctorate degree, I was even more confused by all the confusing things which Sandra Bullock was confused by. Basically, I hated it.

Maybe it's also because I read Ray Bradbury's short sci-fi story "Kaleidoscope"—which everyone claims isn't the inspiration for "Gravity" until they are blue in the face (even though it clearly is!)—when I was a teenager, and it stayed with me. Or maybe it's just because I can't abide movies about astronauts in the first place. Either way, I felt like I'd seen the best and worst parts of it before.

Here come the spoilers!

What a load of Bullocks!

I have no idea how much of "Gravity" is CGI or filmed against a green screen, nor do I care about the smoke and mirrors behind the scenes. The result is very clever, and with such great effects now available, I'm sure we'll get a fake Mars landing from NASA eventually. What I do know is that Sandra Bullock is hot for her age, and her 3D acrobatics look cool, but neither is enough to make any of this movie exciting.

Using the "running out of air" trope is the closest that "Gravity" gets to having any tension, and a couple of dead astronauts provide the only horror. If only Sandra Bullock could've been persuaded to strip completely like Barbarella rather than just down to her t-shirt and underpants like Ripley, it would have perked things up a bit. Alas, this is a PG-13, and she doesn't do anything particularly sexy apart from grunting, groaning and gasping. Okay, so she also barks and howls like a dog at one point, but you have your fetishes and I'll have mine.

What really pissed me off, however, was the lack of scientific accuracy about how things work in space. Not only does the whooshing and swooshing make no sense in a vacuum where sound doesn't carry, the biggest cock-up is that Sandra Bullock could have just given George Clooney a little tug (no, not THAT kind of little tug!), and there would have been no need for his predictable self-sacrifice. I've seen this cliché done to death (quite literally) in American movies so many times that it's guaranteed to make me cringe and grind my teeth in anger now. In this case, it's also a terrible waste of George Clooney!

"Look, Mom, look! A falling star!"

Frustratingly, George Clooney doesn't ever get to finish his Mardi Gras story about the "hairy guy", although I've got a feeling that the punchline would have involved some kind of monkey. I just thought I'd throw that in here because I'm sure everyone else with a normal brain felt cheated by the lack of closure too. I even Googled it to see if it was an old joke by a comedian who I've never heard of, but I couldn't find anything.

Nerds will probably love "Gravity" for the various spaceships with their big boards of switches and flashing lights, but I couldn't make head nor tail of which was which or how they are supposed to work. Apart from the Cyrillic in one and Kanji in another, everything looks the same to me. You also have to laugh at how years of training and millions of tax-payers' dollars are proven to be completely wasted when Sandra Bullock makes her "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" choices. I guess that NASA will be changing their astronaut training program accordingly, unless of course, that is their astronaut training program already. Mind you, it's not as if man (or woman) has ever managed to leave this planet in any way other than a coffin, so it's all bullshit.

My biggest complaint about this whole boring mess, however, is that there are no apes riding horses and catching humans in nets when Sandra Bullock finally gets back to Earth and crawls out of the lake. I'll never understand why they left out that very important detail, but hopefully, it'll be available as an extra on the DVD and Blu-ray later.

The alternative DVD ending.

As far as anything called "Gravity" goes, I still prefer Zlata Ognevich's sexy Eurovision video.

The Dirties (2013)

"Two best friends are filming a comedy about getting revenge on the bullies at their high school. One of them isn't joking."

If you're expecting "The Dirties" to be another "Rampage" (2009), think again. "The Dirties" is amateur handycam crap of the highest order with semi-decent acting wasted on an unoriginal plot which ultimately peters out and stops dead just as the excitement begins. It's all talk, very little action, and mostly unconvincing characters.

Apart from the location, "The Dirties" is far too similar to Samuel N. Benavides's "None Left Standing" (2005) for those of us who know our low-budget movies. Although "The Dirties" isn't a blatant rip-off and doesn't focus on a descent into madness as well, it's certainly in the same vein. Both are about a trio of students making a film with one of them being dangerously obsessive.

The difference, of course, is that "The Dirties" uses a no-budget student film within another no-budget student film as its novelty "meta" contrivance. The levels of metafiction reach their peak with Matthew Johnson not only acting as himself but also being the director and writer of this disappointing drivel. He doesn't do a bad job for a jack-of-all-trades (and master of none), but I would love to see Canadian filmmakers come up with something more original rather than lazily reworking American movie tropes to death.

Because of its borrowings, I'm not sure if "The Dirties" is supposed to be "found footage" of some kind or if it's meant to be a bizarrely filmed "fly on the wall" drama. Either way, it failed for me aesthetically and stylistically. The unseen cameraman (who I think is called "Ed" at one point) brings up too many questions about who is filming what and why, and it threw me out of the movie several times.

As far as stories about high schools and bullies go, "The Dirties" is full of the usual clichés; jocks versus nerds and all that bullshit which, as a Brit, I never encountered and can't identify with no matter how many times the same stereotypes are forced on me. There's nothing that any of the kids do in this movie that a good old-fashioned punch in the mouth wouldn't have solved if only the emasculated characters stood up for themselves. I know this is Canadian, but Americans and Brits are usually so mouthy about expressing everything that I can't even get my head around the internalisation which leads to isolation, self-destruction, or murder. In Canada, where the myth is that everybody is nicer and less selfish, the frustration caused by repression is maybe less puzzling.

Prior to watching "The Dirties", I came across an interesting documentary called "Bullied to Death: The Tragedy of Phoebe Prince" (2010) which covers the subject of American high school bullying and its psychological effects a lot better. But, as someone whose only experience of attempted bullying has been as a "victim" of the online geek-cliques of hypocrital prudes, their whiteknights, and "flaggots" who I laugh at for being so childish, I still don't quite understand how such things are allowed to escalate. Maybe kids need to find better ways to deal with their frustrations like going outside once in a while, helping someone less fortunate, or stroking a cat.

Teenagers are nasty buggers anyway, and every modern movie and documentary which shows the younger generation and their infantilised parents is an argument to bring back corporal (and capital) punishment. In my day, a few hard whacks with a cane would've sorted everything out. But enough of me on my soapbox. Suffice it to say that the predictably violent but very brief (and punch-pulling) ending of "The Dirties" is the culmination of what happens when you spare the rod and spoil the child.

"The Dirties" isn't a movie recreating Columbine or any of the other famous school shootings, nor is it meant to be, but what it's trying to say as a drama about teenage relationships, loneliness, and a kid who can't tell fiction from reality anymore doesn't work either. It's all too tame, and even an old British kids' TV show like "Grange Hill" dealt with the topics in a more controversial and satisfying way over 30 years ago.

If you're looking for something gritty, I recommend skipping this one.

We Are What We Are (2010)

(AKA "Somos lo que hay")



"When the patriarch of the family passes away, the teenage children must take responsibility for the family chores: the preparation of the rituals, the hunting and putting the all-important meat on the table. These newfound responsibilities are even more daunting, however, when you live in the city and happen to be a family of cannibals."

Just a quick one for "Woeful Wednesday". I'm not going to spend much time on this older Mexican movie since the only reason I watched it was in preparation for the American remake which is coming soon.

Although I now love Spanish language movies (whether they be Mexican, Chilean, Colombian or Spanish), I didn't get much out of this one. "We Are What We Are" is more about the family's disintegration after the death of the father than it is about horror. There's plenty of blood and gore along the way. but most of the kills are off camera with only the aftermath shown. Don't believe the quote on the DVD cover about it being "a cannibal gore-fest" because it isn't.

Everything else you need to enjoy a movie is in place including decent (mainly handheld) camerawork and adequate acting, but the story isn't that great. For a family of cannibals, they are more about keeping a superstitious ritual going than appeasing their appetite, and they're pretty stupid in the way they go about it. Despite having some comic relief anyway, "We Are What We Are" might have been better played as a comedy.

Meh. Whatever.

I won't say that "We Are What We Are" is boring, but it does drag from time to time. There's a pretty girl in it, of course, who doesn't get to do as much as the others, so it's also a bit barren on the tottie front. Hopefully, Paulina Gaitan, the aforementioned pretty girl, will turn up in something horrific again one day because, apparently, she's become quite successful in other Mexican movies and TV shows.

I really don't have anything else to say about this movie. It has a few similarities to "Spider Baby" (1968), "The Hamiltons" (2006), and "Mum and Dad" (2008), but it's not even close to being as entertaining as any of them, and the ending is full of clichés. Thus, I wasn't completely disappointed, but I wasn't amazed by it either. "We Are What We Are" is simply an instantly forgettable movie which could have been so much better.

Here's a trailer for the remake (with the genders of the family members changed) which I might not watch now. It does look quite good though.

I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013)

"Katie is trying to make it in the cutthroat world of modeling. When she innocently accepts an offer to have new photos taken for her portfolio, the experience quickly turns into an unthinkable nightmare of rape, torture, and kidnapping. When a twist of fate finally frees her from her captors - beaten, battered, bruised, and broken, she will have to tap into the darkest places of the human psyche to not only survive her ordeal, but to ultimately find the strength to exact her brutal revenge."

Starring Jemma Dallender (from "Hollyoaks") doing an American accent, Joe Absolom (from "Eastenders") with an Eastern European accent, Mary Stockley (from "The Woman in Black" remake), and a load of Bulgarians who you've never heard of, Steven R. Monroe's "I Spit on Your Grave 2" is not only the underwhelming sequel in name only that you would expect, but also the rape-revenge clone that nobody asked for or needs.

Annoying handheld camerawork which refuses to stay still, more screaming than is strictly necessary, multiple black screens to show the passage of time, and bucketloads of mean-spiritedness don't add up to anything remotely enjoyable. "I Spit on Your Grave 2" is just a time-wasting mess of predictable tropes, bad acting, and generic torture porn.

As someone who makes no secret of loving "extreme horror", even I have my limits when it comes to poor quality dreck like this. I was, by turns, bored, disappointed and thoroughly dissatisfied. All the criticisms of the first "I Spit on Your Grave" remake which I defended are now totally applicable to this movie instead. It's gratuitous for the sake of being gratuitous, soulless, and not even as entertaining as "Hostel" with its clichéd xenophobia.

Although things start off realistically enough, the whole raping, drugging and kidnapping shenanigans progress into being more ridiculous than harrowing. I'm sure that there are certain "Women in Horror" bloggers who will have a field day with the rape scenes because, let's face it, they've got puritanical sticks up their asses about this kind of thing, and their whole pointless lives are dedicated to seeking out the controversial so that they can pretend to be morally superior. As it's all they have to attract readers to their hypocritical blogs anyway, I'll let them have at it this time because nothing here was able to float my boat.

"Tell me how much you want to watch my showreel from Hollyoaks!"

Jemma Dallender isn't as attractive as Sarah Butler, her vain character is instantly dislikeable, and her change from being a haughty, prudish model to a semi-feral sewer-dweller has to be some of the laziest storytelling that I've ever had the misfortune to see. Aside from dozens of lapses in logic, her incredible character changes are unintentionally comical unless this movie is supposed to be a comedy. Given that the 1978 original is one of my top ten horror-comedies, maybe this isn't meant to be taken too seriously either, but how someone frail enough to be described as weighing about as much as a "leaf dripping wet" can develop superhuman strength after only eating half of a spit-roasted pigeon and three cans of beans is still absolutely mindboggling!

Despite being extremely graphic, the gory revenge elements are equally uninventive and lack the poetic justice which would make them memorable. All the background noise and screaming which obliterates the payoff lines is beyond irritating, especially as there's no way on Earth that anyone could decipher the most important one. I replayed it ten times before giving up!

I hate to say it, but after looking forward to "I Spit on Your Grave 2" ever since I first heard about it, I can't recommend this movie to anyone.

Lost Lake (2012)

"A young couple travels to a deserted town to try and find their mysterious uncle, only to discover that ghosts are real and very dangerous."

I'm a little bit flummoxed about how to review "Lost Lake". It's not that I've forgotten how to review movies to the extent that I need to MacDougall one from somebody else, but I can barely scrape together enough enthusiasm to put one word after another after watching this turd.

If I had my druthers (as they say round here), I'd be writing a review of "The Conjuring" right now instead of this one. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances and the heat, I still haven't gone to the movie theatre since "The Conjuring" started playing, and it's starting to annoy me that I've fallen behind everyone else this time. The worst case scenario will be that I wait for the DVD to be released. I'm bound to buy it based on the very positive buzz that's already flying around the internet, so it's not as if you actually need a review of "The Conjuring" from me anyway.

Just to tide everyone over until I'm back on track, I was looking for other ghostie movies to watch yesterday and came across "Lost Lake" on Amazon. Although I'm sure a lot of people have watched it, nobody seems to have had very much to say about it online. Thus, to redress the balance, I thought I'd give it a try. I thought, "It's only 80 minutes long, it's about ghosties, so what could be the harm in watching it?" Little did I know that it was going to be one of the longest 80 minutes of my life.

For a low-budget movie, "Lost Lake" starts off extremely well. I have to admit that the first jump scare is so well-timed that it actually got me. That rarely happens nowadays so I thought I was really going to enjoy everything which followed. As I was watching the movie "cold" with only a vague awareness of the subject matter and no idea about who was in it, it was all a case of "Thrill me!" and "Let's see what you can do!" rather than the predominantly negative way that I've been approaching "indie" dreck recently. After all the multipack reviews I did a few weeks ago, you can't blame me for being jaded, but I honestly wanted to like this movie.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, everything went downhill from the moment I saw the lead characters. It's not that they are the typical pretty teens in trouble, but bald-chested John Shartzer (who plays Jeff) looks about 12 years old, and I initially thought that his character was incestuously in bed with his older sister or something. When the next scene had him playing on the floor with a toy robotic arm, it took a while for it to sink in that he was supposed to be a nerdy student rather than a mentally retarded pervert. It was only when I scrutinized Katie Keene (who plays Tricia) more closely that I realised she was equally young. I doubt that she is more than 18 or 19, and it kind of made me feel like a dirty old man for ogling her as the story progressed. Katie Keene is very photogenic though.

The next thing which gave me pause was the intentional misdirection about Uncle Vern's identity which could have been good if it hadn't caused me a moment of total confusion and an unresolved question which remained with me for a few minutes after the movie ended. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but once you've seen "Lost Lake" for yourself, feel free let me know in the comments section if you get what I'm talking about. The motivation for a lot of things which happen in this movie is so poorly explained that I don't think there even is a good answer. The realisation of whatever clever ideas evidently went into the script sucks, and it's very frustrating.

A more outstanding example of ineptitude is when what should be a scary supernatural scene just isn't. As the leads investigate an abandoned grocery store, it's a time when some imaginative jump scares could make a lasting impression. For whatever reason, possibly budgetary, the gags aren't even set-up enough to fall flat, so ultimately, this botched non-event adds nothing but a decoy for possessed Uncle Vern (Ezra Buzzington) to do something important which we don't find out about until later. It's a plot contrivance for sure, but it could have been handled so much better.

While the camerawork and acting are fairly decent, it's not only the plot but the lack of horror action which really lets "Lost Lake" down. Apart from a severed finger and some realistic reactions to it, nothing much happens at all gore-wise. When it does, the bits you want to see are either off camera or too dark.

Contrarily, an unneccessary bit of animal cruelty involving a white mouse and a snake is something that I didn't want to see. Yes, I know that there are weirdo reptile owners who have to feed their pets as nature intended, but this scene is both gratuitous and superfluous. I may understand what writer/director Marcus Nash was trying to do, but I don't approve of it.

Filmed in Trona, California, a desolate place which I was intigued enough by to look up on Wikipedia, "Lost Lake" is all about a location which struggles to lift everything a couple of notches higher than the horrible storytelling will allow. Apart from a few tell-tale signs which give away that it isn't really a ghost town, including the electricity still being connected and a physical sign for "Free Wi-Fi" on one of the buildings, I wanted to believe that the setting was real. Well, the town is real, obviously, but you know what I mean.

I suppose that's all I really want to say about "Lost Lake". It wasn't the ghost story that I expected it to be, and I found the ending very disappointing. Suffice it to say that there's something about witchcraft to "Lost Lake" as well, so it's probably best to classify the movie as a below average "possession from beyond the grave" with slasher clichés and leave it at that.

Pacific Rim (2013)

"As a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse."

Do you want to know what irritates me beyond belief? Films like this and the fanboys who overpraise them.

For a start, "Pacific Rim" is a kids' Summer movie meant for little ADHD kids who like lots of robots, whirling things and huge explosions. It's not meant for adults even though there's a growing subculture of "weeaboo", "otaku" (Japanese for "idiots"), games console loving, overweight, comicbook convention nerds who all live in their parents' basements, grow neckbeards, and refer to the big robots as "Mecha" for some reason that I don't fully understand.

"Pacific Rim" is clearly not a movie meant for anyone of my generation (or the one below) except that a few sad acts who think it's hilariously ironic to praise utter shite have bought into it. It's those same hipsters who think that "Sharknado" is "kewl" and spend their entire lives collecting other ironically named movies and little dollies of Japanese cartoon characters. I despise them all.

So guess what I thought of the film after having been duped into watching it by Cosplaying internet friends who need to stop playing dress-up and grow up instead? Yes, that's right, I HATED IT!

Having never been a fan of Billy the Bull (Guillermo del Toro) or Michael Bay's "Transformers" movies, and being a hater of 99% of sci-fi movies anyway, there's nothing in "Pacific Rim" for me other than a lot of boredom.

I tweeted my displeasure throughout the movie, but I'm not going to repost all my Tweets this time. I may have only done that twice before, but the novelty has worn off. However, because it's Saturday, it's hotter than balls again, my neighbours' noisy brats are screaming outside my window, and I can't be bothered to dissect a movie from a genre that I have no interest in, I'm going to give you a list of bullet points of everything wrong with "Pacific Rim" instead of writing a real review.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

Everything I hated about Pacific Rim.

I have no idea who any of these people are.

• Rated PG-13. Gah!
• Pathetic faux Jap-comicbook crap turned into live action for little kids and weeaboos.
• The rift in time and space which aliens pop through sounds just like "Torchwood" 6 years ago.
• Naming the robots after an alcoholic beverage was a smart move, but even if I was drunk, I still wouldn't enjoy this movie.
• The alien monsters look stupid and are named after turds.
• 75% of the film is all "yak yak yak" with no action.
• Unrealistic, clichéd dialogue.
• It's 4 days too long! Actually, it's only 2 hours, but it feels like more.
• Gormless-looking Owen from "Torchwood" is in it... as a German.
• Psycho Sean Slater from "Eastenders" is in it... and he clearly still has anger issues.
• Basically, Billy the Bull got the cheapest actors possible and spent the majority of the budget on computer game effects.
• Ron Perlman got millions of dollars for showing his big hairy face for all of 5 minutes.
• It's a sausagefest! No eyecandy for heterosexual men.
• Memento Mori (or whatever her name is) isn't bad looking if you like that kind of thing, but I don't.
• No sexy fun time or other nudity.
• The acting is horrible. The accents are all over the place.
• Americans playing Brits, Brits playing Australians, Brits playing Americans, Australians playing Americans... and they have Asian surnames because presumably there weren't any male Asian actors available at the time.
• In the fight between Psycho Sean Slater and the other guy who looks just like him, you can't tell who is who.
• It's "Starship Troopers" but without the humour or exciting action.
• The scientist isn't Doogie Howser but he still mindmelds with an alien.
• No characters worth caring about.
• Psycho Sean Slater kisses a dog. Typecast much?
• No originality whatsoever. The plot is much the same as "Oblivion" but without Tom Cruise or the twist.
• The action is like watching the cutscenes from a computer game which somebody else is playing.
• Big robots that weigh more than several skyscrapers are (and have to be) carried into position by little tiny helicopters which could never support their weight in real life.
• Making tunnels under the city for people to hide in saves a fortune on CGI-ing little people.
• Watching two guys wearing spacesuits play Dance Dance Revolution inside a giant robot while fighting the "Cloverfield" monster is not fun.
• Almost as many buildings get destroyed as in "Man of Steel".
• Too many quick cuts, too much confusion, and it's hard to tell who is doing what to who or why.
• No one cares about who is doing what to who or why anyway.
• The cooler robots get destroyed before they have chance to do anything.
• It's all very, very loud just to keep you awake.
• 100% predictable and instantly forgettable.
• I would rather watch WWF/WWE with two fat dudes in Godzilla suits fighting each other than this crap. Same result too. Dull and fake.
• The Asylum could make a better movie. Oh wait, they already have: "Atlantic Rim".
• "Pacific Rim" is more boring than "World War Zzzzzzz".
• Even "Iron Man 3" is better than this!
• Inevitably, there will be a porn parody and a sequel.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I don't have anything good to say about "Pacific Rim" whatsoever.

Transformers + Torchwood + Cloverfield + Starship Troopers + Oblivion + cheap TV actors (and a couple of former Eastenders) + CGI robots fighting CGI monsters = Pacific Rim.

Don't waste your money!

Midnight Horror: Hatchets & Cleavers

Having looked all over the internet for a picture of this multipack before being forced to scan it myself, it looks like I might have an exclusive here for the first time in years. Despite being released last October, nobody else has reviewed "Hatchets & Cleavers" yet. There aren't even people complaining about it on Amazon!

Thus, it falls to me to break the bad news about this penultimate Echo Bridge Home Entertainment 8 movie pack. On the bright side, I only have one more of these collections to watch and write about before I'm done with them forever. Yay!


Loaded (1994)

"Seven young adults gather at a country home to shoot a horror movie. But they quickly learn that friendship, seduction and jealousy can be a very dangerous combination."

Originally called "Bloody Weekend", this is a BFI funded (and Miramax distributed) movie which stars Thandie Newton and a load of other Brits who no one has ever heard of. It's also as far from being a horror movie as possible so it makes no sense that it's part of a horror movie collection.

Basically, "Loaded" is a drama about emotionally immature art student types who alternate between poncing around while making a crappy handycam movie and talking about their relationships until, after an hour, they all get high on acid, have an accident, and go into low-rent "Shallow Grave" territory.

It's not a bad movie for what it is, and there are brief flashes of nudity, but it never really takes off. Good acting performances, and one character who sounds a lot like David Walliams, don't make up for the story being a whole lot of nothing which just fizzles out at the end. There are no scares either.


The Ridge (2005)

"A group of young adults head off to a vacation home in the mountains where they are joined by a legendary murderer known as The Ridge Runner."

Moving on from irritating British teenagers, "The Ridge" now presents a group of Americans with such a lack of communication skills that most people will turn these neurotic stuttery-gutses off in the first five minutes. If Vicky Pollard has an American equivalent, it's every character in this movie. Nothing they say makes any sense even within the internal logic of their own conversations.

Of course, what we have here is another batch of irksome cannon fodder all ready to be offed by an athletic serial killer in the most ungratifying offscreen ways that the low-budget will allow. Even for a generic slasher clone, this is an extraordinarily bad one.

Among all the lousy camerawork, improvised dialogue and non-acting, "The Ridge" is nothing but tropes, clichés and extremely alienating, pussified, teenage WASP behaviour. It also takes ages before it becomes anything other than a load of talk.


Animal Room (1995)

"When Arnold Mask is sentenced to isolation in a controversial program at his high school called 'The Animal Room', he is pushed to the brink by a gang of bullies."

"Animal Room" is another drama which doesn't belong in a horror collection. Just because it contains a brief discussion of "Night of the Living Dead" is too much of a stretch. By that token, it won't be long before "Juno" appears in a "Midnight Horror" multipack for mentioning "Suspiria" and "The Wizard of Gore".

Despite being almost as gritty as "Scum" (1979), "Animal Room" is very much a product of '90s America, a lot more punches are pulled, and it's hard to sympathise with any of the characters. Think "The Breakfast Club" with an R-rating and aspirations to be more "cult" than it really is. A home-invasion scene borrows so heavily from "A Clockwork Orange" that all claims to originality are lost at one fell swoop.

Once again, this isn't a bad film, but it probably only remains in print because it stars Matthew Lillard as a psychopathic bully and Neil Patrick Harris as his victim. There are some great performances (especially from Gabriel Olds as a half-way house looks-wise between Brandon Lee and James Franco), and a fair bit of violence and swearing. Unfortunately, it's all rather dated, uneven, and cringeworthy with it.

I enjoyed the novelty value of "Animal Room" being a movie that I'd never seen or heard of before, but it's not something I'd ever want to watch again. Although it's very brief and you don't see anything, the animal cruelty to a rabbit has no place in my entertainment.


Dirt Boy (2001)

"While reading the best-selling serial killer book 'Dirt Boy', Matty Matthews begins to make mysterious connections between the story and a small Cape Cod community."

I don't often do this, but I skipped most of this one on fast-forward because it's boring. Maybe I'll watch it one day after I've had my brain damaged by a stroke or something.

"Dirt Boy" is only a self-referential crime thriller with the gimmick of being a story within a story anyway, and it's not something that I could ever get into. Slow-moving, slightly comedic, murder-mystery movies starring uncharismatic leads simply aren't my cup of tea.


Hollywood Scarefest Premiere Edition (2010)

"A collection of award-winning shorts from the annual Hollywood Scarefest premiere."

Whenever I see this kind of short movie labelled as "award winning", it makes me wonder what exactly that award was for. In every case here, the award was presumably for being a crappy film school project.

The 6 shorts are:
"Vision" - a futuristic eye transplant with a criminal rehabilitation twist.
"Horla" - based loosely on the short story by Guy de Maupassant, an artist gets interfered with by some kind of succubus. (In black and white.)
"Recharge" - a dreary sci-fi about a quality inspector in a battery factory who kills people in gas masks for no apparent reason. (Also in black and white.)
"Cellular" - badly filmed images of people talking on cellphones which looks as if the camera was damaged when they made it. It turns into body horror as addiction causes the phones to embed themselves on the users' faces.
"Last Stop Station" - a tabloid photographer stops at a "gas station"... literally! Lots of dry ice and a couple of thieving Grim Reapers appear. (Black and white again.)
"The Suffering: Static" - a moderately attractive blonde falls asleep in front of the TV and sees herself getting murdered on it, but which side of the screen is reality?
"Fait D'hiver" - a Dutch horror with subtitles about a bald businessman stuck in traffic whose phonecall home reveals his wife to be having an affair. The twist reveals that he called the wrong number.

"Fait D'hiver" is a nicely reworked "Tales of the Unexpected" episode and is the best of a bad lot.


Green River (2008)

"Haunted by her sister's mysterious disappearance, Charisma and her friend Allison, return to Green River for answers."

The aerial shots of a car driving along a road during the opening credits look like an homage to "Burnt Offerings" or "The Shining", but that's as good as it gets. Everything goes downhill once the story begins.

Nothing happens for the first half of the movie other than a couple of uncomfortable-looking city girls get intimidated by the mere existence of hillbillies in a backwoods setting where much prettier girls have already disappeared. Red herrings, plot holes, and overuse of the "Chekhov's gun" trope abound, not that whoever made this movie understood how to use any of those devices properly anyway.

The camerawork is nice, and there's lots of scenery to look at, but all attempts at creating a tense atmosphere fall flat. From the constant expression of disgust on the stressy brunette Alison's face, blonde Charisma must have been farting next to her continuously out of spite. Sexier leads or some hot lesbian action might have made things more interesting. Hiking though woods and a failed bit of rock climbing provide a miniscule amount of characterisation but far more padding than is necessary.

Once the girls kidnap a suspicious game warden, the movie changes gear into the kind of "torture porn" that the Hallmark Channel would make if they did torture porn. I have to admit that Kristina Hughes' performance as an increasingly more horrible psycho-bitch is kind of entertaining, but her acting is still pretty bad.

I suppose there are worse ways of spending 90 minutes in front of the television, although I can't immediately say what they are without digressing far too much. The ending makes absolutely no sense at all.


Followed Home (2010)

"Four young adults witness a deadly attack during a weekend trip to the mountains. But the tragic experience continues as the killer follows them home."

As soon as the hot brunette during the prologue told whoever was on the other end of her phone, "the cabin down the street gets super loud" that was nearly the end for me. The correct word is "VERY' or "REALLY" not "SUPER" (ugh!) unless you are a Japanese marketing executive. Oh God, I hate this "super" nonsense that's crept into common usage via YouTubers from the West Coast in the last three years. Fortunately, the hot brunette then gets stabbed by a masked attacker so I was able to continue my appraisal of this low-budget crap with the satisfaction that someone else hated her grammar too.

But having suffered through another hour and a quarter of even poorer dialogue and lazier acting, I don't have anything good to say about this lacklustre slasher. The attack scenes are some of the worst that have ever been filmed, the jump scares aren't scary, and I really wish that I had switched "Followed Home" off when I initially wanted to. Five minutes showing one of the girls running round a park with terrible background music tested my patience beyond human endurance, and that's really saying something considering how drawn-out and tedious the rest of the movie is.

Apart from the first girl who makes a second appearance before allegedly dying in the hospital, there aren't even any pretty actresses (or actors, if you are that way inclined) to ogle in this. If I wanted to see girl-next-door types with highstreet tans, I could do that by going to McDonald's or sticking my head out of the window for free rather than buying a camcorder movie starring them.

There's an extra scene during the credits which will satisfy anyone who hates YouTubers (and an "outtake" at the very end), but frustratingly for anyone who cares, the identity and motivation of the killer is never revealed.


The Killing Mind (1991)

"A psychological profiler attempts to solve a case she witnessed as a child—the graphic murder of a woman dressed as a ballerina."

As much as I used to lust over Stephanie Zimbalist, this old PG-13 TV movie of hers isn't her finest hour. To be fair, nothing could ever compare with the level of fame she achieved during "Remington Steele" although I think she was at her most beautiful in "The Awakening" (1980).

While there's nothing fundamentally wrong with "The Killing Mind", and it's a chance to see Danielle Harris and Lee Tergesen in earlier roles, it's a cop movie not a horror. As far as TV movies go though, I found it dated but quite enjoyable.


One minor gripe about this collection is that the order of the titles printed from top to bottom on the two DVDs doesn't match up to their order from left to right on the menus. Since the movies are still on the same disc that they are meant to be, it doesn't make a lot of difference unless you are writing a review, but it's sloppy work.

From my most recent visit to Wal-mart, I can confirm that the $5 bargain bin has quite a few of these packs in it. Amazon, however, claims to only have one left in stock so be quick if you want a new one. You'd have to be very silly indeed to buy that with the best price for a second-hand one being only a penny (plus shipping), but some people are odd like that.

Not to be too negative about Echo Bridge Home Entertainment multipacks, but you do get what you pay for. If all you want is some below average horror entertainment, I wholeheartedly recommend "Hatchets & Cleavers" as the perfect example. The link is above if you need it. As usual, fans of good horror movies should look elsewhere.

The Black Dahlia (2006)

"Two policemen see their personal and professional lives fall apart in the wake of the Black Dahlia murder investigation."

Sometimes, although it's very rare, I'm just not in the mood to watch horror especially given the still very lacklustre selection available on Netflix. Instead of torturing myself with yet another piece of crap directed by somebody I've never heard and starring a bunch of equally anonymous non-actors, I went into a slightly "film noir" mode and revisited some classics over the weekend.

I started off by trying to watch Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing" (1956) but realised very quickly that I'm not actually a "film noir" fan and switched it off after less than ten minutes due to boredom. I prefer "neo-noir" so I did a quick search and found Roman Polanski's "Chinatown" (1974) which is still one of the greatest films ever made. It wasn't quite enough though. I was still in the mood for more of the same afterwards but Netflix didn't have "The Two Jakes" (1990) so I went into the uncharted territory of things by James Ellroy to watch instead.

Before I launch into a review of "The Black Dahlia", let me just say that after watching the BBC's "Arena" documentary back in 2001 about James Ellroy, I don't like the man. He came across as an arrogant asshole and he may even have a right to feel that way but I'll never read any of his books to find out due to his attitude.

I did like the movie adaptation of "L.A. Confidential" (1997) and, because I'd heard of "The Black Dahlia" (pronounced "Day-lia" by Patrick Macnee) from the "Hollywood Ghosts" documentary, I thought that Brian De Palma's movie would provide me with some worthwhile entertainment.

Unfortunately, although "The Black Dahlia" looked absolutely beautiful and had everything in place to make it outstanding including some gore, it was confusing as hell and didn't really have a lot to do with "The Black Dahlia" murder story at all other than it being weirdly relegated to a subplot.

The acting was really good, of course, but then you shouldn't be able to go wrong with the likes of Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, and Hilary Swank. It was just that the story made hardly any sense and the focus changed so often from what was important to what wasn't that I still have no idea what I watched or what the point of any of it was.

Since Hilary Swank had more screen time as the Black Dahlia's double than Mia Kirshner did as the "real" Elizabeth Short, I was very disappointed. As horrible as it may be to speak ill of the dead, both actresses were considerably more attractive than the genuine article which I've seen in photographs so it wasn't anything to do with their looks. it was simply the complete disregard for what could have been an interesting (if highly fictitious) account of Elizabeth Short's life which was the wasted opportunity.

As I've mentioned, "The Black Dahlia" looked the part with its excellent production values, sets, costumes, camerawork, music and all that other good stuff but the story wasn't well written enough to keep me interested. I doubt that it was James Ellroy's fault as I know that he has his own very personal obsession with the Black Dahlia murder which I'm sure makes a better book than such an appalling screenplay.

I noticed afterwards that there were a couple of other Black Dahlia movies on Netflix and I attempted to watch the Ulli Lommel version but barely made it through the opening titles before that crap went off. The other, "The Devil's Muse" (2007), went off just as quickly once I realised that it was some arty low-budget dreck starring more of the same kind of "actors".

I would love to see someone make a real period piece out of the life and death of Elizabeth Short because it's a fascinating story which needs to be told properly. After even the great Brian De Palma couldn't do it justice though, I doubt that it will ever happen.

The Uninvited (1944)

"A composer and his sister discover that the reason they are able to purchase a beautiful gothic seacoast mansion very cheaply is the house's unsavoury past."

I'm finally back to working on my "Hallowe'en Countdown" with another ghostie film which I'd never seen before. I'd never seen "The Uninvited" available as a DVD (not even a bootleg) or even a VHS tape and if it was ever shown on British TV then I simply must have missed it.

Luckily, TCM had a marathon of classic black and white horror movies on Monday night through to Tuesday morning and "The Uninvited" was one of them. Although it meant suffering through the irritatingly repeated poem of "The Wolf Man" (1941) beforehand, I missed most of that awful Universal dreck due to not knowing that TCM was on channel 63 on my cable box and having to surf for it.

Anyway, I finally got to see "The Uninvited" which a lot of horror movie review sites say was Hollywood's first attempt at a "serious ghost story". Well, it was and it wasn't especially since, aside from its Paramount Studios locations which are supposed to be Cornwall, it's very British. I'd call it more of a creepy romance with Ray Milland trying to be funny and failing than anything else.

There were quite a few bizarre relationships in "The Uninvited" which were actually a lot more interesting than the ghost story itself. Ray Milland's character and his sister immediately suggested incest to me (viewing it from a 21st century perspective), and I'm sure that he was supposed to be a middle-aged man who was trying to pick-up a naive girl half his age to boot. If this was purely artifice to allow the characters some romantic mobility then it was done badly.

The facts that the original owner of the house had been having an affair and his wife was certainly the object of a lesbian crush (if not more) stood out inarguably even if I may have been making more out of the other relationships than a 1940s audience would. Older men who live with their sisters while courting young girls wasn't quite so weird back then, I suppose.

You would think that even the laziest writer would still have mirrored the past with the present. For Ray Milland to not play a married man having an affair was a wasted opportunity which countless ghost stories since have reworked (right up to this year's "American Horror Story" on TV). Thus, for me, the story itself wasn't neat enough. It was a mess which meandered from one thing to another with far too much spoken exposition.

The reasons for the haunting were already predictable so the back stories became tedious rather than mysterious and the final "exorcism" of the ghosts turned out to be anticlimactic to say the least.

"The Uninvited" may have been an attempt at a serious ghost story but it wasn't a very good one. A lot of the formulas for future ghost stories, including getting a house for a lot less than its real value, animals being used to show that there is something very wrong there, and the "Cassandra truth" trope (and its reverse) being used ad nauseum, were laid down here so I have to give it credit for originality but that is all.

It wasn't a scary film. There was no real air of menace about the haunting and no tension. Although some of the effects were good for the time, unfortunately, Ray Milland completely ruined the atmosphere of the whole thing by being far too jocular and by mimicking the Irish housekeeper's accent at every opportunity.

I'm rating "The Uninvited" as just average. If you haven't ever seen it then you haven't missed anything important.

TCM are showing it again on Sunday, October 30th, at 9.15am.

Season of the Witch (2011)

"14th-century knights transport a suspected witch to a monastery, where monks deduce her powers could be the source of the Black Plague."

I wasn't really expecting much from "Season of the Witch" and was at least hoping to be entertained in a completely anachronistic action-packed way. I like films about witches and medieval witchcraft but this wasn't even as much fun as Full Moon's "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1991) which I watched a couple of nights ago just to get myself in the mood.

The highlights for me were Ron Perlman's character and, of course, Claire Foy as the witch. I just wish that the story had gone a different and more witchcraft based way rather than ending up with a messy CGI demon. Given the amount of effort that was obviously put in to make everything else look right, it was a shame.

Although I'm a big fan of Nicolas Cage, I have to say that "Season of the Witch" is far from his finest hour. He occasionally does the action hero role really well but this was not one of those times. Apart from getting a bit shouty and looking really awkward in his armour, I can't say that I'll remember his role as Behman. It was just so two-dimensional that he was eclipsed by everyone else that he shared a scene with.

The dialogue is what really let "Season of the Witch" down the most though. Sometimes it was all mock-Shakespearian hyperbole and then everyone seemed to forget what time period the film was set in completely and it all got jarringly modern. With too many comedic elements thrown in anyway, this kind of bathos just doomed the whole production to lacklustre B-movie status.

I don't recommend "Season of the Witch" unless you are really bored and can't find anything better to watch. Bear in mind that it's just a PG-13 film released in January with all the other movies that the studios don't really know what to do with.

Hopefully the year will get better but, from what I've seen so far outside of the horror genre, I don't think it will.