10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

"After getting in a car accident, a woman is held in a shelter with two men, who claim the outside world is affected by a widespread chemical attack."

We all know how trendy it is for the jealous never-will-bes to bash J.J. Abrams (or any of the other successful producers/directors such as Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, Alex Proyas, or Neill Blomkamp) with their cowardly passive-aggressive tweets and boring podcasts which nobody but their equally slimy friends listens to, so don't think for a moment that I'm going to pander to any of their kind of audience with my review. This movie was directed by a new addition to the Bad Robot team, Dan Trachtenberg, rather than Abrams himself anyway.

Although it's no secret that I absolutely hated "Cloverfield" (2008) when it came out, and think that "Gwoemul" (2006) is far superior in every way, there were some bits of it I liked. I would have liked those bits even more if "Cloverfield" hadn't been filmed in the motion-sickness inducing faux "found footage" style. Thus, the fact that "10 Cloverfield Lane" (a sequel in not much more than name only, since it started life as a standalone story called "The Cellar") wasn't filmed with shakycams makes it a whole lot better than I expected without having to do anything else.

I used to have a piss bucket this size too.

"10 Cloverfield Lane" is more or less a triple-hander featuring John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (from "The Thing" remake), and John Gallagher Jr. (who I've never seen or heard of before). There are a couple of other cast members who appear briefly, and a few voices on the radio, but the bulk of the story is really about the interactions of the aforementioned leads, how they cope with their confinement, their suspicions of each other, and all that kind of thing. There's a hint of romance too, but not much. There's no sex or nudity, barely any "bad language" (oh, so edgy!), and not much of anything scary either. I think you can guess the certification.

As a psychological thriller, "10 Cloverfield Lane" is as full of clichés and formulas as most modern movies. If you haven't seen many movies, you'll probably think it's pretty good, but those of us who are older and have seen just about everything the genre has to offer will find it all very predictable and somewhat irritating. Let's face it, we aren't the target audience for products like this anyway, so it's likely to make us even grumpier than usual.

Despite this, the cast does a great job with what is essentially a ripoff of at least one famous episode of "The Twilight Zone", and John Goodman plays the "evil all along" trope in much the same way as Chuck Connors in "Tourist Trap" (1979). All Howard (John Goodman) needs is a limp, some creepy dolls, and telekinetic powers, and "10 Cloverfield Lane" would almost be the same movie. So yeah, it's really not the same at all, but you'll see what I mean.

It's a 550 piece jigsaw puzzle called "Catfish". That is all.

Once again, there were no cats in this movie. I'm obviously not on the right blog to make a big deal out of that at the moment, but at least Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) and Michelle (Mary Elizabth Winstead) spend some quality screentime putting together a puzzle of a surreal snorkelling cat.

Apart from bonding the two younger characters, does the puzzle have any significance other than being a puzzle? Who knows? I'm sure there are a few theories floating around the nerd sites, but I couldn't care less about any of them. Looking for subtext in a throwaway movie like this (or any movie for that matter) is absolutely pointless unless you are one of those stooges on the "big name" sites (and in magazines) who are desperate to publish absolutely anything to vainly stay relevant, spoil other people's hobbies, and get money out of their sheep.

For that reason, I don't really have anything else to say about "10 Cloverfield Lane" except that it's better than the first "Cloverfield", it's not "groundbreaking", and it certainly isn't very original. It's entertaining, the production values are way above average, and John Goodman is awesome, and you can read what you like into what I haven't written about or said in this sentence.

Clever graphics, but the bunker isn't really that far underground.

Minor Spoiler
Do we really need yet another "final girl" trope? Puh-lease! Just fuck off with this trendy "progressive" shit. We get it! Women, just like all human beings, can do stuff. Now all the SJWs can clap their manginas with glee. Oh yay, she's a "strong woman". You go, girl! Bahahahaha! Jannicke in "Cold Prey" (2006) is still much better than all of them. And Sarah Connor is pretty fantastic too. Well, when she was played by Lena Headey anyway.
End of Spoiler

I suppose, given the fact that there's nothing any better to watch right now, I have to concede that I enjoyed "10 Cloverfield Lane" more than I thought I would or ever should. There's no lag, the story plays out quite nicely until the extremely annoying ending, and it's not quite as shit as most American or Canadian movies.

If you're looking for a psychological thriller rather than a pure horror or sci-fi movie, "10 Cloverfield Lane" is okay. Just don't expect it to be as great as something like "How I Ended This Summer" (2010) though.

The Lazarus Effect (2015)

"A group of medical students discover a way to bring dead patients back to life."

Remember "Flatliners" (1990)? How about "Pet Sematary" (1989)? Yes, of course, you do. So does everyone else, especially Blumhouse Productions. Thus, it comes as no surprise that "The Lazarus Effect" is a quick and dirty remix of the two fondly remembered "millennial generation" movies from the poorer first-half of the 1990s, and seems to be another product designed to grab some easy money by using nothing but predictable formulas and tropes.

Yes, all horror movies are mainly repeated formulas, clichés, and tropes anyway, but Blumhouse have been working on getting this down to a fine art for some time. You have to give them credit for studying the genre and at least trying to create the "perfect" formulaic horror movie, although they do still seem to fail at it more often than not. The better movies which they homage are too recognisable and way too fresh in the minds of the target audience, and that makes these Blumhouse products fairly redundant.

In this case, "The Lazarus Effect" is yet another in a long line of Frankenstein-genre (or "science run amok") movies where Man plays God and things go very wrong. A little bit of pseudo-scientific babble and the old "science versus religion" chestnut get another outing to create depth, but nobody really cares one way or another as long as there are some gimmicky special effects to look at.

Adding Evan Peters who is currently in vogue by being eyecandy for teenage girls in "American Horror Story", and American TV staple Olivia Wilde (who I really only recognise from her movie roles in "Turistas", "In Time", and for wearing a very sexy costume in the horrible "TRON: Legacy"), is another stroke of Blumhouse genius to attract these actors' fanbases to this movie. Knowing how easily pleased some people are, I'm sure that it works too.

For what it is, "The Lazarus Effect" is an okay watch with very good production values, effects, and above average acting. However, despite an effective set-up, the narrative is a bit thin overall, and it obviously plays out like at least two stories mashed together badly because it is.

"The Lazarus Effect" is hardly the worst sci-fi/horror ever, since it does entertain and delivers exactly what it was created to do, so it's hard to find fault there. It even has a decent atmosphere and a couple of attempts at jump scares, but due to being PG-13, it's just not very scary or destined to be memorable.

I don't recommend it.

The Demented (2013)

"Six college friends unite for a weekend getaway where they find themselves fighting for their lives after a terrorist attack turns the local residents into rage infused zombies."

Gah! Another generic zombie movie which unfolds as a checklist of every formula, trope and cliché. Having said that, "The Demented" is put together more competently than most of these "Night of the Living Dead" and "28 Days Later" clones.

I'm not sure what the budget was for this movie, but apart from too many quick cuts during the action scenes, it looks quite professional. The locations are good, the pacing doesn't lag, the gore is realistic, and it even has some fairly decent acting in it. Unfortunately, there are no characters to care about unless you think any of them are hot. The pretty "teenagers" are as poorly defined as ever; the curse of trendy teen horror strikes again!

Everyone makes the same stupid decisions that you've seen a thousand times before although, in fairness, these are young Americans so what do you expect? There's hardly a brain cell among them considering that they are supposed to be "college students". I'd hazard a guess that they attend a community college rather than a University though, and they clearly haven't seen enough zombie films to know how to survive. How the latter could happen in a world saturated by zombie movies is anyone's guess.

One contrived scene where the black guy (yes, you know what is bound to happen to him!) swerves to avoid a little girl Rage-zombie after just running over an adult male Rage-zombie only a few minutes earlier is shark-jumping of the highest order. This same character also has no problem with using a baseball bat on an infected dog! Aw, but zombie kids are sacred. The ethical double-standards and levels of hypocrisy in this movie know no bounds!

I like pretty girls!

"The Demented" stars Kayla Ewell, Richard Kohnke, Ashlee Brian, Brittney Alger, Sarah Butler, and Michael Welch, but I have no idea who any of them are apart from the two girls in the picture above. Kayla Ewell is from "The Vampire Diaries" and Sarah Butler had the lead in the "I Spit on Your Grave" remake. It's safe to assume that everyone else is from TV shows.

As this is Christopher Roosevelt's directorial debut, I'm willing to let a few things slide and even admit that the "double-ending" of a dream followed by the more downbeat reality is a nice touch. It's not original, of course, but it's satisfying. Did I just spoil it? No, along with everything else, it's even in the trailer!

The bottom line is that "The Demented" is a rather entertaining but instantly forgettable "beer and pizza flick". You can play a good drinking game by taking a shot every time somebody refers to the rest of the group as "guys" too. Just be prepared to have your stomach pumped afterwards.

If you haven't seen any other running Rage-zombie movie EVER, you'll enjoy "The Demented". But what are the chances of that?

"The Demented" will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 30th, 2013.

World War Z (2013)

"United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself."

It's not often that a Summer movie is so boring that I can barely bring myself to write a review of it, but "World War Z" has easily earned that dubious honour for this year. I'm not so secretly still hoping that someone will announce how the movie is meant to be a high-brow meta-parody of the zombie subgenre just so that I can stop feeling disgusted with myself for wasting two hours on this utter shite. Given its lack of tension or scares, the unintentional laughs which certain scenes are likely to provoke suggest that has to be some multi-million dollar trolling, right?

Very loosely based on a novel by Max Brooks which I've never heard of and have no intention of reading, "World War Z" is little more than several CGI-fuelled action set pieces (which are given away in the trailer) padded out with a whole lot of nothing else. Fundamentally, it's a big-budget attempt to cash-in on the success of "The Walking Dead" and all the other apocalyptic-virus/zombie movies which sheep-like teenagers have ironically bought into.

The running zombies from "28 Days Later" (which I also loathe) are back again, but this time they have a hive-mind like ants or the numpties who waste all day posting on Reddit. That, in itself, should give "World War Z" a minor claim to originality except not really. If you ever watched a certain episode of "The Burning Zone" TV series back in the day, the concept of a sentient virus has been done before but better. It's not exactly a new idea. Philosophers have been speculating about this very thing, vis-à-vis mankind's relationship to the planet, for centuries.

The other big difference between "World War Z" and the thousands of zombie clones already in existence is that this movie is appropriately named as a cure for insomnia. I assume once again that the "Z" is meant to be some kind of in-joke about sending the audience to sleep rather than standing for "zombies" or Z-grade which it most certainly is.

Glasgow has become so Americanised!

Contrivances abound such as using the liability of an asthmatic kid to bring Brad Pitt's character into a direct, street level confrontation with the world gone mad, but the worst part of the "adventure" (for that is what it is) is the wild goose chase all over the world to find the answer to how the outbreak started. It serves no purpose other than to show zombies running amok in more countries.

As with every Summer movie, there's lots of gunfire, vertigo-inducing aerial shots, huge explosions (including the obligatory exploding helicopter and a plane crash), and it's all very loud. Unfortunately, even with the mid-range turned up to deafen everyone, Brad Pitt is still a mumbler, the African actor who plays his United Nations boss has an accent that's almost impenetrable, and the lack of characterisation means that nobody cares what anyone is saying anyway. Apparently, the actors were told to improvise their own dialogue, and it shows badly. Just a minor quibble, but isn't this why movies have writers?

With its predominantly blue, green and beige palette, and no bright red blood or gore to get excited about, "World War Z" is particularly bland visually. The camerawork is awful, some scenes are way too dark, and the quick cuts in the action scenes mean that its impossible to tell who is doing what to who. The fact that so little time is spent on characters who randomly appear only to disappear again just as quickly render the whole movie emotionally inert so why would you even care in the first place?

Characterisation is actually so flat that if you aren't looking out for it, you're unlikely to catch the name of Brad Pitt's character let alone anyone else's. It's Gerry, by the way, but I couldn't tell you the names of his wife or children despite the story pointlessly cutting back and forth to them onboard an aircraft carrier. Whoever his ginger-haired wife is, she doesn't do anything except look mopey and hug her greasy-haired brats so what's the point of her? Gingers have no souls anyway and neither does whoever made this horrible movie. Ah yes, it's Marc Forster, the same guy who made the equally unwatchable "Quantum of Solace". Case proven.

I could bitch about "World War Z" all day, but I'm not going to. Nine paragraphs is more than enough to critique a boring, PG-13 rated zombie movie which wouldn't even be worthy of the SyFy channel if Brad Pitt wasn't involved in it. Forget the 3D gimmick too, it's a waste of the extra $3 which you could use to buy a DVD of a real horror movie meant for adults instead.

Although I could have summed-up "World War Z" in one four-letter word with an optional seven-letter expletive preceding it, I'll leave it with an even better three-letter word:

Meh.

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

"A young woman travels to Texas to collect an inheritance; little does she know that an encounter with a chainsaw-wielding killer is part of the reward."

Maybe it's because I've been watching a lot of crappy indie horror movies lately and damaged my brain with gin, but I don't think "Texas Chainsaw 3D" is as bad as some people would have you believe. For a start, it has a fairly decent budget of $8,000,000 behind it which is more than can be said for a lot of January films. At least it's not found footage or a zombie movie.

Of course, my only reason for watching "Texas Chainsaw 3D" was Alexandra Daddario as Heather. Some of you may remember her as being in the only good part of "The Attic" which, ironically, was the January movie from 2008. I always knew Alexandra had potential although it's taken until now for her to show up again in something that anybody might actually want to see.

All the nerds are moaning about the continuity error in how Heather Miller should be 39 not 25, but in fairness, who would you rather see running around on screen? Nobody wants to see a 39-year-old woman do anything unless her name is Kate Beckinsale or Milla Jovovich, but that's only because they've been drinking from the fountain of youth or something. In reality, most 39-year-old women look like Carrie from "Sex and the City"... ugh!

Is that a chainsaw or are you just pleased to see me?

Anyway, I suppose you want to know all about the gore and scares. Well... there isn't enough of either unless CGI does it for you. I'm sure that pleases the gloating fanboys of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) even though there isn't any gore in the original. I've never really liked Tobe Hooper's only real claim to fame outside of "Salem's Lot" (1979) so comparing the two films isn't that important to me. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of homages to the original despite "Texas Chainsaw 3D" still being a re-imagined sequel for the most part.

You can ignore the last two "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" films anyway because "Texas Chainsaw 3D" is supposed to be a direct sequel to the original movie as if there were never any others in between. Yes, it's just like what "H20" tried to do for the "Halloween" franchise. That's a very good thing here though because all the other sequels suck balls. Can you believe that it's been almost 10 years since the 2003 remake? I still haven't reviewed that one either. What can I say? I just don't like slasher films very much.

I can't say that I really liked "Texas Chainsaw 3D", yet I didn't completely hate it. I'm certainly not going to rave over it, but I'm not going to tear it apart either. It's just another formulaic slasher full of stupid people who you want to see getting killed off among a load of even stupider rednecks. Essentially, it's the same old crap as usual but with different actors. Dan Yeager is the new Leatherface, but Gunnar Hansen appears briefly both as Boss Saywer and as Leatherface in flashbacks at the beginning.

To be honest, it doesn't matter who plays Leatherface. He gets lots of time on screen, but I couldn't care less about who plays some guy in a mask. Anyone could do it. I'm willing to bet that Dan Yeager will start showing up on the convention circuit now charging $25 for his autograph along with all the other mask-wearing non-celebrities. Sadly, there will even be people who want that to happen.

Texas Hots, anyone?

Aside from the old guys, "Texas Chainsaw 3D" is chock-full of "pretty" actors of both genders. Trendy teen horror lives again! If Alexandra Daddario doesn't do it for you, the other hot chick is sexy Tania Raymonde who played Alex Rousseau in "Lost". As you can see (above), she looks a lot better in "Texas Chainsaw 3D"... for a while anyway. She definitely has the best death scene in the film. I'm not going to spoil it for you but "BANG!"

Nearly all the characters are the usual generic and flat cannonfodder, and nobody gets nude, so it's not really worth mentioning anybody else. Just from the trailer, it's easy for you to predict who is going to die and in what order. Pretty "teenagers" breaking the rules, disposable black character, jump scares, lots of running around and screaming, final girl... yeah, we've seen it all done before in every other franchise that's been sequelled to death, rebooted or cloned just to make a quick buck.

The camerawork is okay, some of the practical effects are quite acceptable although not outstanding, plot holes abound, several opportunities are missed, and the script is lousy, but you could say the same thing about any horror movie from the last 20 years. For the intended audience (which doesn't really include me), "Texas Chainsaw 3D" is fine. The whole horror genre is so unimaginative now that anyone brought up on a diet of utter shit won't find anything wrong with it. Hey, it's set in Texas (but filmed in Louisiana), it has a chainsaw in it, and there's 3D... so what is there to complain about?

The 3D stuff is nice but so underused that it makes you wonder why they even bothered, and the crappy ending (and gag after the end credits) will piss most people off, but "Texas Chainsaw 3D" isn't the worst horror film ever made. Trust me, I've seen far worse! It's just not very original or memorable.