Phobia (2013)

"In 1885, a female doctor helping a group of people with their phobias becomes embroiled in a murder mystery surrounding a patient that may or may not be a vampire."

What the Hell did I just watch? It's not often that a movie is so soulless and ineptly made that it leaves me speechless, but this is one of those times. After "Phobia" ended, I sat staring at the blank page on my computer screen for three hours afterwards waiting for the neurons in my brain to reconnect, and then I had to go to bed for a long depression nap before I could bear thinking about it again.

Even though it's only 90 minutes long, "Phobia" feels several times longer because of how dialogue heavy and boring it is. When I say boring, I mean really boring in the way that watching an amateur dramatics production or a high school play is boring. Actually, no, this is worse than either of those; "Phobia" is seven-year-olds-performing-a-nativity-play-boring but in a foreign language which you don't understand. I was familiar with the subject matter, I knew what was intended, but I couldn't process it because it was so shit.

How any movie could be both overwritten and overacted but contain characters so underdeveloped at the same time is a mystery to me, although I'd hazard a guess that it must take some severely misplaced genius to create such a thing and a lot of luck to get it distributed. Maybe not so much luck since "Phobia" is only another one of many Gravitas Ventures VOD movies which I've written off this year, but still... I can't even... I don't know... my head is full of FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU! Sorry for writing like a fifteen-year-old, but honestly, this movie was probably written by a teenager too. With no nudity, swearing, or anything more gory than you'd see in an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", it's definitely PG-13 all the way, and it's impossible to call it horror with a straight face.

She's dressed as a man, but he's wearing a fake beard. WTF?

If you can concentrate on anything in the first half-hour without being distracted by Erica Leerhsen's thumbsucker-mouth which stands out more because she's supposed to be disguised as a man (à la "Yentl") then you're a slightly better person than me. But if you don't wonder why she still wears a girl's wig, or notice that Sigmund Freud (played by Matt Moore) has a ridiculous fake beard, there's no hope for you as a movie critic. I know this is a low-budget B movie of sorts, but what the bloody Hell were they thinking?

Also how can anyone hire Eric Leerhsen—the only girl in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2" (2000) who gets naked—and not ask her to get naked again? Wouldn't a clichéd and gratuitous nude shower/bath scene being overlooked by another character make a better reveal of her gender than removing a stupid black wig which doesn't match her ginger eyebrows? It's not as if you can't see that she's a woman anyway, but... oh my God!

Bearing in mind that director Jon Keeyes is only a couple of weeks younger than me and hasn't directed anything worthwhile other than "American Nightmare" (2002), a few shorts, and a couple of horror TV shows for kids, he should still know better. Exactly what age group is "Phobia" intended for? It's too talky for kids and too tame for adults. And what's with all the badly spoken French with subtitles? It's distancing, alienating, and irritating. It certainly doesn't make the period setting more realistic.

You just have to have a bald Nosferatu guy called Guy!

Once there are no more scenes of Americans butchering the French language, things improve slightly, but just to redress the balance towards crap again, half of them now need to have fake Romanian accents which are more like Russian. Has no one ever heard a Romanian speak before? They usually sound Latin (for obvious reasons including Romanian being a Romance language) not Russian! Jesus wept! And was it really necessary to have a bald-headed Nosferatu lookalike just so that everyone knows that this is a vampire movie? Seriously?

Beautiful Tiffany Lonsdale spices the eyecandy up a bit as bald Guy's sister with claustrophobia, but the lack of any family resemblance is uncanny. She doesn't even look like anyone in the family portraits or her cousin Val Drakul! Maybe she was adopted or a lusty milkman paid her mother a visit? Casting decisions were clearly not a strong point, so it's probably better to not overthink these things.

At least everything improves considerably after the location change from Paris to California (although it's really Texas). Once Erica Leerhsen starts wearing big Victorian dresses, lets her hair out, puts on some lipstick, and looks like a woman again, she's actually quite pretty. She's still not believable as a doctor, and her relationship with Nicholas Brendon lookalike Chase Ryan Jeffery lacks chemistry, but to give credit where it's due, her performance gets much better as the story progresses. The fact that Dr. Lesley doesn't get the chance to cure her patients' phobias is relatively unimportant.

Stephanie Rhodes (the Camp Counselor in the "Friday the 13th" remake) steals the show completely in her scenes as sexy Elizabeth, the ward of agoraphobic Annabel Lee (Carolyn Wickwire), but not enough is made of her to be memorable overall. Without any eroticism or some desperately needed sex scenes, why even add a lesbian facet to Elizabeth's character? What's the point? Again, who are the target audience?

The saddest thing is that everyone in "Phobia" can act! They've all been in other things before, whether TV shows or movies, and they don't disgrace themselves once you take into account what they had to work with. The fault rests almost entirely with the script despite annoying background music which outstays its welcome, lethargic pacing, cheap-looking camerawork, and a lot of staginess which doesn't help. Whatever clever period mystery Anne Gibson may have thought she was creating, it would have been better as a pulp YA novel than a movie. To say that "Phobia" is reminiscent of Kim Newman would be an insult more than a compliment, however, since I can't stand that grinnygog or his books.

Okay, she does look a bit better in a dress.

On the plus side, the way the use of hypnotism and vampires are combined into a mystery seems to be fairly original. If my mind wasn't still numb, I'm sure that I could find better examples than "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" or "The Vampire Lovers" to prove myself wrong, but as all roads lead back to Hammer and Bram Stoker's "Dracula", I'm positive that there's nothing new here other than the way it's presented. A couple of homages to Edgar Allan Poe are harmless additions.

Before I wrap this up, I have to mention the effects. Apart from the wig and beard fiasco, the make-up is generally good and a couple of torn throats look the part. Inevitably, there are some very cheap "Buffy-esque" CGI effects near the end which place this movie in the "Syfy Original wannabe" category and will doom it to appearing in Echo Bridge or Mill Creek multipacks one day, but they do provide some horror action. I doubt that "Phobia" will ever been shown on TV unless Chiller (or Zone Horror/The Horror Channel in the UK) get it for next to nothing though.

According to the IMDb, the ensemble cast from "Phobia" is due to reappear in "The Harrowing" (2014) but with the addition of Debbie Rochon instead of Erica Leerhsen. As I'm done with being a masochist after suffering through this borefest, I think it'll be another good one to miss.

Beneath (2013)

"Six high school seniors celebrating with day's excursion find themselves on rowboat attacked by man-eating fish and must decide who must be sacrificed as they fight their way back to shore."

As much as I would like to write "Beneath" off as nothing but a load of bickering teenagers who you've never heard of (plus Mark Margolis in a creepy cameo) being menaced by a more evil version of the big fish from "The Singing Ringing Tree" (1957), I really can't. For what it is, which is another highly sanitised Chiller TV movie, "Beneath" is far more entertaining than most of the sources it homages, but not in a good way.

Essentially, what director Larry Fessenden has done is rip-off the only good segment of "Creepshow 2", throw in a healthy dollop of "Lifeboat" (or "Lifepod"), and then stir-it all up with some pop culture references, a little bit of social commentary, and even some trendy GoPro camera product placement. All this without any nudity or swearing too! The guy is clearly a genius! Or not, as the case may be.

The biggest problem, other than the ridiculously ginormous piranha-style fish, is that the script isn't very good. The characters are so poorly written that even though you can see that everyone is trying their hardest to act and take it all seriously, there's nothing much for anyone to work with. As a result, there's not one likeable character, and the story becomes little more than a "slasher in water" as you just wait and hope for each annoying idiot to meet his or her demise.

All of them are toast fish food.

The great thing about "Beneath" is that it isn't a comedy. Of course the giant fish is one of the most poorly realised practical creature effects in any movie about giant fish since "Jaws", but as the story progresses, it becomes easier to accept its existence than to believe that the teenagers are really teenagers or were ever friends with each other. Their reactions are more wooden than the bored hosts who used to take the boats of tourists round the "Jaws" ride at Universal Studios, which, alas, is no longer a future employment option for anyone involved in this production.

The gore is surprisingly good for a hypocritical American TV movie with various cuts, bites, slashes, and dismembered limbs oozing blood all over the place. It's not to the same standard as "Piranha 3D", but "Beneath" obviously didn't have the same $24,000,000 budget to play with. I'd be amazed if this movie had even a third of the $1,000,000 budget that The Asylum sets as a maximum for each of their mockbusters.

As with every low-budget abomination nowadays, the camerawork isn't exactly brilliant, and the oh-so-important GoPro inserts make things look even worse. If you can get past that, there's barely any tension in the teenagers' predicament either. There is some, but it's mostly ruined by the stupidity of their childish behaviour. A different director might have got a better balance, but it is what it is. I've got a feeling that Larry Fessenden knew exactly what he was doing. I just can't prove it.

If you're a grumpy old misanthropist like me who is always on the look-out for something else to hate about people, "Beneath" has a lot to say about smartasses, snarkiness, white knighting, entitlement issues, relationships, cliques, and, basically, how disgustingly selfish today's teenagers are. It's almost as good as reading through the online dramas on horror message boards! The only difference is that everyone gets what they deserve this time! And it's glorious! Absolutely glorious!

"Das singende, klingende Bäumchen" has a lot to answer for!

Sharknado (2013)

"A freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, causing man-eating sharks to be scooped up in tornadoes and flooding the city with shark-infested seawater."

Since I mentioned it in my last post, I suppose I ought to say something about "Sharknado". What better movie to review for "Surprise Sunday" especially as the biggest surprise is that I actually liked it?

Yes, I can find very little wrong with "Sharknado" other than the obviously awful effects and scientific impossibilities. It's very nicely paced, has some amusing gore, lots of action, and even a couple of decent moments of suspense. As far as disaster movies go, "Sharknado" is as exciting as any of the Summer blockbusters. In particular, there's a sequence with a Ferris wheel which is really outstanding considering the low-budget.

I didn't get bored, although I nearly did during the school bus rescue scene and a bit of superfluous family drama near the end, so I'm going to rate "Sharknado" as one of the best movies from The Asylum that I've ever seen. Take that with a huge pinch of salt though because I've only seen half a dozen of their products anyway. Clearly some talent was accidentally allowed to sneak in which I doubt will ever happen again. The Asylum have been trying for years to make an intentionally "so bad it's good" cult movie, but more through luck than judgement, they got the balance right this time.

Enough said!

Having got the praise out of the way, it's time to look at the more negative aspects.

"Sharknado" is, of course, a "B movie". Worse than that, it's more like a C, D, E or F movie, but it's certainly not "Z grade" like most of the theatrical films that I've reviewed recently. There's entertainment to be had here if you are in the right frame of mind, or even if you aren't. A lot of message board snobs have said that they'll only watch "Sharknado" with a load of beer on board, but there's no need for that unless you want to make a party out of it.

The acting is TV quality which is in keeping with this being a TV movie, but some of it is uncommonly bad. The biggest name in the film is John Heard, and he's beyond awful. Maybe it's his age or the fact that he just didn't care that much, but his performance is painfully embarrassing to watch.

Ian Ziering does a fairly decent job as the annoying lead character named Fin (geddit?) who doesn't realise the "no good deed goes unpunished" rule no matter how many times it slaps him in the face. That surprised me because I absolutely loathed him when he used to play Steve in "Beverly Hills 90210". What a difference almost a quarter of a century makes! Mind you, I only used to watch that show for Shannen Doherty so I barely registered Ian Ziering and didn't ever know his real name.

I still don't really know who Tara Reid is. I know she's in a couple of movies which I have on DVD ("The Big Lebowski" and "Urban Legend"), but I can't say that I recognised the name or was able to put a face to it even with that information. Apparently she plays Fin's equally irksome ex-wife, but if you'd told me that she was the daughter I wouldn't have been any wiser. Neither of them do much in this movie so Tara Reid's status in my mind isn't going to change.

You're going to need a bigger bookcase!

Cassie Scerbo, the pretty, shotgun-toting brunette with a slightly wonky nose, steals every scene she's in, so if anyone will be remembered from "Sharknado" in a 100% positive way, it'll be her. She alternates from cute to sexy in a heartbeat and may be someone to look out for in the future. It seems that she was in "Bring It On: In It to Win It" (2007), but I don't remember too much about that or if I ever watched it. She'd probably be great as a final girl in a real horror movie.

There's not much else to say about "Sharknado" as it's just a bit of fun. Apart from a couple of stunts, all the action was done with CGI and green screens, plus some models and a couple of latex mock-ups, so make of it what you will.

I think there was more talent shown with this computer generated silliness than in movies with a far bigger budget so I'll not-so-grudgingly give out praise where it's due. The stars of the show are the often incongruous effects, but getting the movie to look half as good as it does with the budgetary contraints and schedule must have taken some doing. Realistically, I can imagine that it was a lot less fun for everybody behind the scenes. Whoever did the post-production editing had such a great sense of timing that they also deserve some kind of award.

I have no hesitation in recommending "Sharknado" as the "must see" SyFy channel movie of 2013. Since I'm an "elitist prick" rather than a hipster, I'm definitely not saying that to be ironic. I couldn't care less if it makes me look like a hypocrite either. There's an exception to every rule and liking "Sharknado" serves me right for making rules for myself in the first place.

"Sharknado" isn't something that I'm ever going to buy on DVD (unless it's in a multipack), but it's certainly worth a rental once it comes to Redbox in September. I'm sure it'll be reshown ad nauseum before then though.