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.

The Monkey's Paw (2013)

"Jake is given a monkey's paw that grants three wishes. After the first two wishes leave his friend Cobb undead, Cobb pushes Jake to make a final wish."

Oh great! A generic re-imagining of W.W. Jacobs' classic short story—a more horrific re-imagining of "The Three Wishes" by the Brothers Grimm—which has very little to do with the original other than having a wish-granting monkey's paw in it. If you think you've seen it all before, you probably have, especially as the first movie version of "The Monkey's Paw" was made way back in 1915 and remade more than a dozen times since.

"The Monkey's Paw" has also been used as a theme so many times that it's hard to keep track of. Just off the top of my head, the "Wish You Were Here" segment from "Tales from the Crypt" (1972) is one of the more well known variants, "Deathdream" or "Dead of Night" (1972) puts a Vietnam war spin on things, and even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" reworked the core of the story into an episode called "Forever". Thus, it's only logical that, sooner or later, someone else would realise that "The Monkey's Paw" contains a certain element which is very popular at the moment, and decided to make another bloody zombie movie out of it!

In fairness, the resurrection of an already decomposing corpse is the scariest part of W.W. Jacob's story, and Stephen King also ran amok with its idea of the dead coming back wrong for "Pet Sematary", but did something which you can read in under 10 minutes really have to be dragged out for another feature length movie?

With the first two wishes granted in less than 25 minutes, this Chiller Films version of "The Monkey's Paw" takes far too long to tell a story which could be wrapped up in 5 more. In fact, around 50 minutes in, Gillespie (Daniel Hugh Kelly), the previous owner of the paw, retells the original story as exposition in a lot less time than that!

"I wish I was still on Harper's Island."

Apart from a ton of padding (including a police investigation which only exists to give Charles S. Dutton from "Halloween H20" a cameo), the plot of "The Monkey's Paw" is mostly "Ugh, I'm a psycho-zombie, look at what you've done to me! Give me my wish or I'll kill everybody you know!" for over an hour, and it soon gets pretty boring. It's one cliché after another, and towards the end, it almost becomes another "Friday the 13th"-style slasher to make sure that the machete kills homage absolutely everything in the horror genre which director Brett Simmons has watched.

The cookie-cutter eyecandy provided by C.J. Thomason from "Harper's Island" (for the girls) and Michelle Pierce from "NCIS" (for the boys) does nothing to redress the balance after turning Stephen Lang (a real actor) into a soulless zombie, but I suppose that's Chiller for you. As usual, there's no nudity or swearing because Chiller are hypocrites and those things are far worse than showing violence. Oh, and they just had to set the story in New Orleans because everybody (including "American Horror Story") is trying to make Louisiana the cool place to be creepy again this year.

While the acting is okay, and the gore effects aren't bad for a sanitised TV movie, there's no "oomph" to this: There are no scares and no chance whatsoever of a memorable punchline. Well, not when you already know exactly what that punchline will be anyway. Watch the 1948 version instead.

Elysium (2013)

"Set in the year 2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds."

Using key plot elements from "Johnny Mnemonic" (1995) and "In Time" (2011) may not be enough for the general public to hate "Elysium", but the "critics" have certainly gone out of their way to bash this movie with those reasons already. Consequently, I have very little to add to their arguments except that I didn't like the predictable self-sacrifice ending either.

What? Have I just ruined the movie for you? Too bad. You've had over a month to watch it, and it's not playing in cinemas now anyway. On top of that, "Elysium" is just another generic sci-fi movie set in a dystopian future which looks good but you've seen dozens of times before. Admittedly, you probably haven't seen one with Jodie Foster's mouth movements out of sync with her words, but that's a dubious bonus which you can now avoid until the DVD is released.

Unlike the "critics" (even though I'm one of them), I'm not going to hate "Elysium" for being aesthetically similar to "District 9" (2009) since it's by the same director, but it's disappointing that poor people (and "prawns") living in scrapyards have become Neill Blomkamp's trademark. As a South African with a bee in his bonnet about apartheid, Blomkamp also seems destined to repeat the same "rich vs. poor" storyline—with the underdogs always representing good—for the rest of his career. Maybe things will change in his next big sci-fi movie "Chappie", but I doubt it.

"Elysium" isn't without some merits, however. It's nicely paced for one thing, and Matt Damon might not be everyone's cup of tea as Max, but he's not bad in the action scenes, even if those scenes are worse than the Bourne trilogy for making it impossible to tell who is doing what to who. He certainly looks the part once all the robotic enhancements have been done to him, although how he managed to get his dirty t-shirt back on afterwards is anyone's guess. I didn't dislike his character, but there's not enough there to feel anything for him either.

"Everything I found out, I wanna forget."

South African Sharlto Copley, on the other hand, steals the show as psycho-mercenary Kruger, albeit with Alice Braga coming a close second by providing splendid eyecandy as Max's former love interest. Both are far more interesting characters than the doomed Max despite being as stereotypically two-dimensional. William Fichtner (aka Sheriff Tom Underlay from the cancelled "Invasion" TV series) has a small, very important (and extremely typecast) role, but is the only other actor worth taking notice of. Everyone else is either just there playing dress-up or in bit parts which are instantly forgettable.

As a sci-fi "popcorn flick", it's not worth reading anything into "Elysium" apart than what's right in front of you. The lapses in logic are so obvious that there wouldn't be a story at all if they didn't exist, but if that's what some people want to waste their time arguing about on blogs and message boards, good luck to them. I must admit that I read a few of the oh-so-serious nerdy debates before writing this review and had a chuckle over them.

There's definitely entertainment to be had here for teenagers or anyone with low-intelligence and expectations who enjoyed "Oblivion" or "Pacific Rim", but having said that, I enjoyed a few of the gorier action scenes too. I'm not ashamed of leaving my brain outside the movie theatre occasionally, especially when I don't have that much interest in the sci-fi genre to begin with.

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.

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.