Solo (2013)

"A teenage girl is terrorized when she spends two nights alone on a remote island as part of her camp counselor [sic] initiation."

My second movie today is this extremely generic Canadian "Friday the 13th"-esque clone.

Don't watch the trailer because it gives away all the good bits!

"Solo" is typically Canadian with better acting than it deserves, more clichés and borrowings mixed together with a big paddle of predictability, and no chance at ever getting a higher rating than "just average". The main character's backstory provides some originality, but as it's lost in favour of a traditional "kidnap, escape, and chase through the woods" third act, it's hardly worth mentioning.

Nothing much happens horror-wise until the end, and the gory money shot is far too short, but everything looks okay. Decent production values, competent camerawork (albeit sometimes shaky), and solid acting tend to cover a multitude of sins in the pacing, lack of atmosphere, and script.

Annie Clark is satisfactory as the lead, and the bad guy gives a damned good try at being nutty as a fruitcake, but neither performance is outstanding or very memorable. As usual, I have no idea if anyone involved in this production is famous in other respects such as TV, and I can't be bothered to look them up.

One thing I picked up on is that all the male characters smoke and don't seem to be able to get through a scene without lighting up. It's not important to the story in any way, just a theme which runs throughout. Maybe there's an in-joke there which someone can explain to me later. As a smoker myself, it amused me that I was puffing away along with them.

Unfortunately, "Solo" isn't very scary. I had hopes that more would be made of the ghost story about the island being haunted, but alas, it was not to be. It's a mystery thriller with some horror elements, and only a minor upgrade from Syfy Originals and other "filler" genre movies.

I have a feeling that "Solo" is pretty much a directorial debut. Sometimes I tend to be more lenient with new talent, and there's enough talent involved in this movie to make it watchable. If you want something more exciting, however, I recommend one of the earlier "Friday the 13th" movies or "Sleepaway Camp" instead.

It's Friday the 13th again!

And I couldn't care less. I hate that stupid '80s crap.

All you're going to hear about today is "Friday the 13th" this and "Jason Voorhees" that until you're sick to death of it too. "Don't forget to buy the new overpriced Blu-ray boxset with crappy packaging that scratches the discs inside!" etc., etc., etc.

Yeah, you can now buy all the movies again on Blu-ray for nearly $90 - Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection [Blu-ray] - as if that'll make them magically better. Yawn! I don't think so.

Seen one, seen 'em all.

Feel free to read my review of the first "Friday the 13th" here though.


A Quick Guide to Friday the 13th
(by Blizzard_Beasts from the IMDb. I wish I'd written what follows, but I didn't.)

Part 1 - Jason's mom kills people, and she is beheaded at the end.

Part 2 - Jason wants revenge and starts killing people, and survives a machete to the shoulder at the end.

Part 3 - Jason still wants revenge and keeps killing, and survives an axe to the face/skull at the end.

Part 4 - Jason still wants revenge, and young Tommy Jarvis kills him by putting a knife through his eye that comes out the back of his skull. At this point Jason is dead and gone.

Part 5 - Since Jason is dead, a copycat killer wears Jason's mask and starts killing people, and he gets killed at the end by being impaled on spikes.

Part 6 - Even though Jason is dead, Tommy Jarvis wants to destroy him by digging up his body and setting it on fire. But for some reason, he sticks a metal pole in Jason's chest during a storm. Lightning strikes it and brings back a zombie Jason, who still wants revenge. At the end, Jason is chained to a rock at the bottom of the lake.

Part 7 - Girl has psychic powers. Her dad dies by mistake. She tries to resurrect her dad with her powers, but accidentally breaks open Jason's chains, and Jason comes out still looking for revenge. At the end, she brings her dad back with her powers, and her dad drops Jason to the bottom of the lake once again just like the end of Part 6.

Part 8 - A power line gets hit by a boat and causes electrical currents to flow through Jason's body, and he's back once again for revenge. He gets killed by toxic waste at the end.

Part 9: Jason Goes to Hell - ignored all the previous parts since the franchise was sold to New Line Cinema.

Part 10: Jason X - ignored Part 9.

Part 11: Freddy vs Jason - ignored Part 10.

Part 12 - reboot, ignored everything.


If you really must watch something about "Friday the 13th", here's Paul Zamarelli's video instead. It's informative but slightly incorrect. "Friday the 13th" jumped the shark long before New Line Cinema took over the franchise!



Bored now.

You're Next (2011)

"When the Davison family comes under attack during their wedding anniversary getaway, the gang of mysterious killers soon learns that one of victims harbors a secret talent for fighting back."

I thought it best to wait until the other horror bloggers exhausted their overpraise before watching "You're Next". It's been described as everything under the Sun including a parody and a comedy, but I can't see how this low-budget crap could be either of the latter except unintentionally.

Basically, "You're Next" is a mixture of Mario Bava's "A Bay of Blood" (1971) and Dae-wung Lim's "To Sir with Love" aka "Bloody Reunion" (2006). Despite the masks which the bad guys wear, it's not overly similar to "Ils" (2006), "The Strangers" (2008), or "The Purge" (2013) apart from the home invasion aspect. Hell, if it wasn't being classed as such, I wouldn't even call this a horror movie. It's more of a crime drama with horror elements than anything else.

After 25 minutes of boredom, which was made worse by everything being filmed with a handheld camera, all the shouting and screaming over the top of each other just made me want to walk out. I didn't, of course, because that would be wasteful, but I didn't enjoy anything which followed either.

I wonder what this movie is called?

While "You're Next" might be fine for teenagers who want the kills to occur off camera with only the aftermath shown, I prefer to see the brutality in all its glory. Unfortunately, every time there's the potential for something to be "lush", the punches are pulled. Whether that's due to the budget or because Adam Wingard is a shitty filmmaker is anyone's guess.

Out of the not very inventive deaths, only two deliver a decent amount of blood, and their repetitive nature gets old pretty fast. I suppose stabbing someone in the head either with a crossbow bolt, a screwdriver, or a knife is the quickest way to finish the job, but it doesn't make interesting viewing. It also takes considerably more force to stab anything through someone's skull than some tiny Australian girl is capable of, so there's that too. Female empowerment, my arse!

Even though nearly everybody knows about the twists now, I'm not going to spoil it more for you except to say that the reveal comes far too early at around the 50 minute mark. Thus, there's another 40 minutes of clichés, poorly written dialogue, and bad acting to get through afterwards which I can't be bothered to talk about. As thrillers go, "Panic Room" (2002) is infinitely more entertaining, tense, and scarier than this drivel.

"Our target for this year's purge is hiding in your home."

The only character who I almost liked was Zee played by Wendy Glenn, simply because she's hot! There's no depth of characterisation to anyone though. In generic slasher-style, they only exist to die as quickly and as unpleasantly as possible.

At the end of the day, "You're Next" is just another overhyped home invasion movie in an oversaturated subgenre. No wonder it sat on the shelf for two years. In better days, this would have been straight-to-DVD fodder rather than being worthy of a theatrical release.

An American Ghost Story (2012)

"When Paul, an unemployed writer, decides to rent and live in a house that's rumoured to be haunted, he puts his life and his relationships in grave danger as he obsessively attempts to get the story that will finally make his career."

Whenever a yet to be released horror movie which was made for under $10,000 achieves a 7.5 out of 10 rating on the IMDb, I smell shenanigans. Either not enough non-shills have found it and voted, or the "critics" who received screeners really did find it outstanding. The chances of the latter being true are invariably slim to none though.

Thus, as much as I didn't want to backtrack to another one of last year's movies—especially not one with a title change designed to cash-in on the success of FX's "American Horror Story" TV series—curiosity meant that I had no choice but to check out the ghost story formerly known as "Revenant". I'm pleased to say that I wasn't disappointed by my discoveries either. Although very little has improved since Derek Cole and Stephen Twardokus made "Human Behavior" (2006), at least this movie is in colour like something created in the 21st century should be.

Unfortunately, with annoying, atmosphere-killing background music throughout, "An American Ghost Story" fails to generate an ambience conducive to scares. Things improve enormously when silence reigns, but at its worst, the music sounds like a cat walking up and down a piano keyboard while a tone-deaf 5-year-old child practices chords next to it. Occasionally, it even overpowers the dialogue, and that's a real shame because the acting is fairly decent.

Stephen Twardokus is very good as Paul the obsessive ghost hunter who bites off more than he can chew, and natural beauty Liesel Kopp is ideal as his girlfriend Stella. Liesel Kopp has a lovely, expressive face with big, watery eyes that exude genuine fear in her nighttime scenes. It's a pity that Stella disappears from the movie after 30 minutes, but she's really only in it to represent the sane action which most people would choose when faced with living in a haunted house.

Even Paul's best friend Sam (Cain Clifton) is likeable, so I have to give credit where it's due for the casting choices and characterisation. Wendy Haines is a bit over the top as former resident Sue, and Jon Gale isn't quite so hot as Skip the house-owner, but they only have very small roles which don't add much to the story anyway. Both provide minimal exposition/confirmations about details which have already been said rather than falling into the "idiot lecture" trap.

So where does it all go wrong? Well, apart from the aforementioned awful background music which is only used properly in two action-packed places, "An American Ghost Story" is a very slow burn, and it's full of clichés and homages instead of originality.

There's absolutely nothing here that you haven't seen before, especially if you're a fan of haunted house movies. In particular, "An American Ghost Story" owes a lot to the "Paranormal Activity" series. You could even describe it as a conflation of all the jump scares from the "Paranormal Activity" movies without the camcorders and home security surveillance contrivances.

As much as I would love to praise the "old school" use of tripods and zooms to provide an easy film to watch, there are flaws with the cinematography. Some of the long shots never zoom in enough, and several others are poorly framed. One of this story's biggest contrivances is to have Paul investigating the house at night using a flashlight, which leads to scenes that are too dark to see properly. The intention may have been to cover-up a multitude of effects sins by using the darkness for cover, but it also makes Paul's actions moronic in a house with fully functional electric lights and no power outages!

The house itself is very modern, and amazingly neat and tidy inside. It may have a lot of mismatched wood going on—a mahogany dining table among light oak cupboards is the worst culprit—but it's not a sinister looking house at all. Apart from one of those Crosley Companion radios which is designed to look like an antique one, there's nothing creepy to see. The characters may keep saying how oppressive the atmosphere is, but the "Emperor's new clothes" technique doesn't work when the reality is so painfully obvious.

Even with its flaws, all but two of the jump scares work, but so they should since they've been done to death in other movies! Without spoiling things too much for you, I'll just mention that doors and cupboards open on their own, a basketball is predictably rolled towards Paul by an invisible being, the scary-looking radio switches itself on, and there's a chair-stacking homage to "Poltergeist" (1982) which made me groan. There are a lot of excessively loud bangs to catch you out, and one computer-based moment which I should have known better than to fall for (because I leaned in close to the screen) really works! All I'll say about it, after nearly soiling myself, is that I'm surprised that anyone still uses AOL mail... and you can't animate a jpg image! Well played, Derek Cole, you ass!

As you can see in the trailer, the big thing in "An American Ghost Story" is the use of "sheet ghosts" which, of course, also appear briefly in "Paranormal Activity 3" (2011). The last time I saw sheet ghosts before that was in The Avalanches' "Frontier Psychiatrist" music video. Sheet ghosts are traditionally used for comic effect as in "Beetlejuice" (1988) rather than being terrifying for anyone other than small children, but they work very well here. In its favour, "An American Ghost Story" seriously attempts to make sheet ghosts scary again!

What's my verdict then? All things considered, and with the wind blowing in the right direction, I don't think "An American Ghost Story" deserves its 7.5 out of 10 rating on the IMDb (note: it's now dropped to 6.2 and still falling), but I'm willing to give it a pass mark of 4.5 out of 10 simply because I was entertained. If "An American Ghost Story" was due to be released without any background music, it would be much stronger. It still wouldn't be more than a clone of other haunted house movies, but the sad truth is that the chances of ever seeing any groundbreaking originality in this subgenre is unlikely anyway.

"An American Ghost Story" is definitely worth a rental. If you aren't so enamoured by Katie Featherston that you've vowed never to watch another haunted house movie unless she's in it, you'll probably enjoy this a lot more.

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.

Alone in the Dark (1982)

"A quartet of murderous psychopaths break out of a mental hospital during a power blackout and lay siege to their doctor's house."

It was another gloomy, rainy Monday afternoon so I went in search of something not too involving to satisfy me. This time I found "Alone in the Dark" and not the crappy Uwe Boll version either.

Although "Alone in the Dark" was released back in 1982, I never saw it at the time. A lot of American horror movies never made it to Britain either due to their distributors or, more usually, because they were too crappy and the independent video rental stores wouldn't waste their money on them.

Whatever the case, I didn't really miss anything outstanding with "Alone in the Dark" except for the chance to talk about some more horror movie trivia such as the first use of a killer wearing a hockey mask before Jason Voorhees made it his trademark.

Since it was only another slasher in the "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" mould, complete with the usual tropes, abundance of plaid shirts, and a couple of decent yet obviously cloned kills, "Alone in the Dark" was just a very average '80s horror.

Something which made it kind of ironic was having Dwight Schultz, known as "Mad Murdock" to fans of "The A Team", playing a psychiatrist in it. Well, I found it ironic anyway and nothing more than that since the character wasn't very well developed.

Donald Pleasence played yet another psychiatrist who was actually a little bit nicer than his famous Dr Loomis character and was certainly more naive. Of course, it wasn't much more than a cameo role but that could be said about all the big names who were involved in this project.

Jack Palance, Martin Landau, and even Erland van Lidth (later to be Dynamo in "The Running Man") each had their moments of glory as psychopaths. They didn't do a bad job considering that none of them were on screen for very long. Martin Landau stood out the most but that's nearly always the way with religious nutters. Erland van Lidth played a paedophile really well too though.

As for the story, it was basically "Halloween" with four lots of Michael Myers and less than a quarter of the scares. Only one scene around the 50 minute mark, which involved a very frightened (and very nice to look at) Carol Levy being menaced in the bedroom, had any real suspense to it. This also had a very early "meta" moment when it was announced that the noise in the closet couldn't possibly be a cat since nobody in the house had one.

Everything else just plodded along but mostly lagged. A couple of stand-outs in the little girl who played Dwight Shultze's daughter and Lee Taylor-Allan (who very nearly got nude at one point but, instead, provided a very weak jump scare with a Tom Savini created corpse) were the only highlights and they weren't quite as memorable as the characters themselves were irritating.

There was a surprise reveal of one psychopath known as "The Bleeder" who I'd completely forgotten about the existence of by the time it came to pass so I'm happy to raise the rating which I would have given "Alone in the Dark" by a point just for that.

Generally, however, this was all pretty weak in the horror department. Everything was telegraphed so far ahead that when things did happen they weren't a surprise. It was simply a very underwhelming, almost goreless, and badly paced slasher with some seemingly original touches which were actually borrowed from half a dozen better movies.

Superstition (1982)

(AKA The Witch)



"A witch put to death in 1692 swears vengeance on her persecutors and returns to the present day to punish their descendants."

Although this was quite a popular video to rent back in the early '80s, I thought of it as just another Amityville clone with a clichéd story about a witch coming back from the dead. Having seen the far superior "Black Sunday" (1960), I was not impressed.

As you know, I've been looking at a lot of VHS collections recently to see what people are still into since new horror movies have dried-up completely. One of the titles which VHS fans all raved about was "Superstition" but I took it with the same huge pinch of salt that I usually reserve for anyone talking about crappy Dario Argento movies.

Having watched it again last night to see if I had been missing anything, "Superstition" was actually worse than I remembered. It's essentially little more than a predictable slasher film with laughable special effects as well.

The acting was particularly bad and the story served only as padding between the various gore scenes. I admit that the amusing gore was welcome but, as I've often said, if you don't care about the characters then it really has no value.

A lot of people moan about this film not being on DVD when in fact it has been out in the UK (uncut) for ages. I'm not sure about the Anchor Bay US release since I'm not part of the loop and they don't send me any free DVDs to review (unlike some of the even crappier review sites on the internet). I assume that it must be out of print again now like so many others.

I've actually reached the point where I'm so bored that I wouldn't mind a few screeners especially from Lionsgate who seem to be sitting on a huge back catalogue of crappy '80s horror movies. I'm sure they would go down really well as some kind of compilation set even in this age of people downloading everything for free and not buying as many films on physical media anymore.

If "Superstition" was part of a "4 horror movie multi-pack" along with "The Witch Who Came from the Sea" (1976) and a couple of other witchcraft-themed "video nasties" then I'd actually recommend it as cult viewing, but alas, on its own, it's just a bit too dated and average.