Farm House (2008)

(AKA "Farmhouse")



"Farmhouse is a psychological thriller set in the modern day mid-west. We follow a young couple as they leave their everyday lives behind and head out to a new beginning; starting over from scratch. After becoming stranded in an isolated vineyard in the middle of nowhere, the young couple is forced to face the secrets they're running from, all the while trying to escape the malicious intent of the vineyard's mysterious inhabitants."

Here's a blast from the past. Other than the gory torture scenes, I'd completely forgotten about this little gem until I was reading through one of my subreddits and realised that I ought to watch it again. How I forgot to review it is another story, but the end of 2008 and early 2009 wasn't the greatest time for me, and I had far more important things on my mind.

Anyway, having decided to rewatch "Farm House" to refresh my memory, at first I thought, "How many more times is 'Voices' (1973) going to be remade?" Of course, the plot isn't exactly the same, but there are many parallels in the first 30 minutes which should lead you to suspect an equivalent twist ending.

"Farm House" isn't a predictable ghost story though. The majority of the movie is a psychological thriller with extreme torture elements. I know that part of the horror genre has fallen out of favour and died away to nothing, but at the time it was great, especially when coupled with such mean-spiritedness and Kelly Hu being sexy as Hell (pun intended)! It's not that Jamie Anne Allman isn't beautiful in this too, but Kelly Hu is something else! The scene between the two of them involving a cheese grater will haunt you long after this movie ends, and you'll probably never look at a meat thermometer in the same way ever again either!

The acting is superb all round, although Steven Weber's psycho Samael eclipses William Lee Scott's not-quite-heroic Chad and Nick Heyman's valiant attempt at portraing the deaf Alal. The characters are stereotypes to some extent, and clichés abound, but there's actually depth to their characterisation which doesn't happen so much nowadays. How things have gone downhill in only 5 years!

As for the story, it's hard to tell you anything about it without spoiling it for you. Obviously, I don't mind giving spoilers for bad movies, but I prefer to keep them to a minimum for good ones. Suffice it to say that "Farm House" is pretty harrowing stuff and makes director George Bessudo's previous movie "Lake Dead" (2007) seem tame in comparison. If you look up the plot outlines, there are some superficial similarities between the two, of course, but it's like comparing apples to oranges. Everything (including the location, cinematography, and talent) is superior in "Farm House" to anything that was part of the After Dark Horrorfests.

Yes, I know I was going to stick to more "Hallowe'eny" movies this month, but my cunning plan has already been scuppered by a ton of new DVD and VOD releases. I don't suppose it matters much. Any horror movie is good this month, right? But if you want to see something truly horrific, I recommend that you grab yourself a copy of "Farm House" as soon as possible. The "Twilight Zone"-esque reveal goes on for a few minutes too long, but I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Another one for "The Vault".

The Devil's Carnival (2012)

"Lost souls enter The Devil's Carnival where they are each faced with the sins they committed in life."

Yeah, I know "The Devil's Carnival" is a musical and isn't my kind of thing at all, but I was challenged by the Real Queen of Horror to watch it. Once I discovered that it had the beautiful Emilie Autumn (one of my favourite musicians from the heyday of MySpace) and Briana Evigan in it, the idea didn't seem so bad. Challenge accepted!

Unfortunately, apart from providing the opportunity to lust over Emilie Autumn in a very small acting role as Painted Doll, the movie doesn't have a lot going for it.

It all looks very nice, but the three Aesop's Fables underneath aren't used to convey exactly the same moral messages as they were originally intended to. Moral messages are redundant if the recipients are already in Hell, but that little detail never bothered the Amicus anthologies much so I'm willing to make some allowances. The songs which unnecessarily repeat the same tales again are absolutely dreadful though.

"The Dog and his Meat" or "The Dog and her Shadow" doesn't quite match the original apart from being about greed. Let's be brutally honest here, Briana Evigan is far from being a dog! It's nice to see her get topless for a split second although it would be better if she turned round while being whipped. Boobs and blood are sadly lacking throughout.

The second story comes closest to "The Frog and the Scorpion" by showing the danger of trusting someone who is unable to control his nature, but it's still a bit of a stretch. Jessica Lowndes looks amazing in her '50s-style green dress, but her character, Tamara, is the one who can't change her nature to trust people too easily rather than the Scorpion (Marc Senter) who is nothing but a liar.

I can't even place the third story, "The Devil and his Due", among Aesop's Fables, but it's been many years since I last looked at them (plus there are over 650 of the buggers anyway). It could be one of Aesop's Fables or it might possibly be a conflation of any other fable with a Faustian theme. The punchline seems to be from "The Monkey's Paw", but it could even be from one of the fairytales by the Brothers Grimm. Whatever the case, Sean Patrick Flanery is okay in it but not exceptional.

The Devil or Lucifer, played by Terrance Zdunich, is the best of a bad lot. Having a slightly similar appearance to the late Andy Hallett from "Angel" apart from the green is no indication of talent though. Lucifer is no Lorne, and his sing-talking is worse than Ke$ha's.

As with all musicals, I can't help but feel that 'The Devil's Carnival" would've been a lot better without the music. The lyrics of most of the songs are hard to decipher and some don't fit the tone of the movie whatsoever. I doubt that they took more than five minutes to compose, and if they did, they were meant for something else. If you've never seen a musical like this before, just imagine a really crap pop video of a song you've never heard before which has been coupled with burlesque images that don't match the lyrics, then multiply it by twelve, take away the number you first thought of, and try to lick your own elbow.

Even though it's short, the film exceeds in self-congratulatory padding to show off the make-up, sets and costumes. Mercifully, this does limit the number of songs involved but still allows the ones that do exist to be unintelligible and boring. At least there are some pretty girls in bikinis to ogle.

It's no great surprise that "The Devil's Carnival" is from the same director (Darren Lynn Bousman) and writer (Terrance Zdunich) as the equally horrible "Repo! The Genetic Opera" (2008). What does amaze me is that anybody likes this kind of thing or that it has any commercial value outside of a very small niche. Netflix subscribers beware!

For me, "The Devil's Carnival" was 55 minutes of absolute torture compounded by the fact that I also spotted the loathsome Hannah Minx from YouTube as an extra. Yeah, she's pretty and everything, but why have such a talentless waste of space in a movie? Oh, because she has enormous boobs, obviously. Gah! You have to laugh that she's wrongly credited as "Hannah Jinx" instead of her YouTube moniker or real name. Aw, how sad.

After that segue, I'll end this review with an ungrammatical YouTube comment which sums things up almost perfectly: "It's just a bad musical with corny songs, corny dancing with a bunch of girls walking around with their tits hanging out."

Zena, if you truly enjoyed this, what the Hell is wrong with you?

Next!

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

"A loan officer who evicts an old woman from her home finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point."

I was going through a stack of DVDs (which I am about to throw out) earlier today when I discovered that I had an ex-rental copy of "Drag Me to Hell" among them. I realised that I hadn't even reviewed this film yet so I'll do it now as quickly as I can.

"Drag Me to Hell" marked Sam Raimi's long awaited return to directing horror after all those increasingly weaker "Spider-man" movies which really shouldn't interest any of us at all. Although Raimi had been the producer of several horror movies in the last ten years, including "The Grudge" (2004) and "30 Days of Night" (2007), he hadn't actually directed anything in the horror genre since "The Gift" (2000) and that barely qualifies.

Of course, everybody knows Sam Raimi's name because of "The Evil Dead" (1981) and its sequel (or more comedic remake) "Evil Dead II" (1987). With such groundbreaking films as those to his credit, everyone was expecting something quite special. Unfortunately, "Drag Me to Hell" was a polarising experience among horror fans with many of the director's former supporters boycotting the theatrical release of the movie because of its PG-13 rating. Those who did go to see it, came away disappointed because of the overuse of extremely loud music and jump scares.

Having watched both the theatrical release and the "Unrated Director's Cut", I obviously prefer the latter even though it's a bit like saying that I would rather eat my own vomit instead of somebody else's. The clichés are simply too many and the acting too uneven for this to be a good film even though it is still watchable if you keep adjusting the volume.

One of the biggest problems for me (apart from an obvious one that I'll mention in a minute) was that I couldn't empathise with Alison Lohman's character at all. I'm not the biggest fan of banks with their excessive charges anyway but the kind of person that Christine Brown was supposed to be really made me lose interest in her quite quickly. At times I felt like I was watching a horror version of "Clueless" or "Legally Blonde" although both those films are far more entertaining.

Then, of course, there was the sacrifice of one of the sweetest little kittens that I've ever seen in a film. Although it mostly occurred off camera, the corpse was shown and an animatronic version appeared again later.

Basically, any film which involves an animal death makes me angry even if it is necessary to the plot or highlights the extremes to which somebody would go to save their own soul. I was so disgusted by this that there was absolutely no way that I could feel anything for Christine Brown afterwards and, as I said, I wasn't really all that into her to begin with. When the inevitable and predictable end came with all its CGI, I was glad.

I am not going to recommend "Drag Me to Hell" due to the horrific and unnecessary kitten murder which ruined the whole experience. If you've ever seen "Thinner" (1996) or any adaptation of M.R. James' "Casting the Runes" such as "Night of the Demon" (1957), you'll feel like you've already seen all the good bits of "Drag Me to Hell" anyway.

Dark Floors (2008)

"A man emerges with his autistic daughter and three others from a hospital elevator to find themselves trapped in the building with devilish monsters."

You probably won't believe it of me, since I'm not a fan of Finnish heavy metal music at all, but I've wanted to see this film starring the former Eurovision Song Contest winners, Lordi, from the moment I first heard about it. The trouble is that there aren't very many DVD stores where I live and the ones that do exist have pitiful horror sections. Thus I was quite pleased to find that this (and quite a few other "Ghost House" films) are now on Netflix especially as I, like many other people, couldn't even get the service to work at all for most of Sunday night.

Was it worth the wait though? Well, yes and no. "Dark Floors" is rumoured to be the most expensive Finnish movie ever and the very high production values seem to confirm this. It looks really good, not unlike "Silent Hill" or "Resident Evil" in places, but, storywise, it's quite confusing if you try to make it into anything other than a little girl's recurring nightmare.

The majority of the film involves a small group of recognisable British TV actors (some with American accents) running around a deserted hospital which appears to be either purgatory or a kind of gateway to Hell (hence the title, "Dark Floors"). It's not overly original but occasionally there's a jump scare or other set piece of action which is quite effective.

The special effects vary in quality but Lordi look really good as monsters and there's nothing jarringly bad about the extensive use of CGI at all. The set itself was completely real (according to my Googling) and built specifically for this film so you have to give credit where it's due.

One thing which stood out for me was how much the security guard resembled Richard T. Jones from "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and, more recently, "Super 8". It's not him but the actor is certainly a "Richard T. Jones type" which makes me wonder why Richard T. Jones wasn't actually cast to play the role. He's certainly appeared in far worse.

I also wouldn't be me if I failed to mention that the blonde Dominique McElligott stole the show entirely. She was convincingly terrified throughout. I have no idea if she's been in other movies but I wouldn't mind seeing a lot more of her in the horror genre or anything else for that matter.

As much as all the actors did a really good job, the meaning of the story itself is open to so many interpretations that you'll either love it or hate it depending on how hard you want to think. I've noticed that a lot of Scandinavian films do this so it must be a cultural thing rather than bad writing. There's no real twist to this which would have made it a lot better though it's hinted at throughout.

I really enjoyed it though Lordi aren't really the stars. The band members appear here and there as various ghosts and monsters, and, of course, Mr Lordi does his trademark wing-lifting thing near the end. It's really like a feature length version of their "Hard Rock Hallelujah" video but without any of their music which I'm somewhat grateful for.

I'm not going to over-enthusiastically recommend "Dark Floors". It's something you might enjoy very late at night or as a supporting feature for something better which you want to watch.

The Sentinel (1977)

"Not ready for marriage, a fashion model moves into an unbelievably nice Brooklyn Heights apartment, where scary occurrences turn into a much more frightening turn of events."

Since I've been completely addicted to my Roku box and watching scores of Netflix movies for the last few days, I've decided to start reviewing a few of the better ones that I've seen. Obviously, this time it's Michael Winner's "The Sentinel".

I don't think I've rewatched "The Sentinel" since it was shown on Channel Four way back in the '80s and I didn't actually like it at the time due to having a totally irrational dislike of Burgess Meredith. There are just some actors and actresses who have me changing TV channels quicker than green grass through a goose and Burgess "The Penguin" Meredith is up there along with the Baldwins, Arquettes and Colin Farrell.

Fortunately for me, Burgess Meredith doesn't spend nearly as long on screen in "The Sentinel" as the absolutely gorgeous Cristina Raines who I remember most from "Flamingo Road". Yes, I used to watch some pretty strange things when I was a kid.

Anyway, "The Sentinel" is very much a "good vs. evil" movie in a similar vein to "Rosemary's Baby" but with far more diabolical goings on and an even more downbeat twist ending. The ending really is quite unexpected though I'm sure some people would say that they saw it coming from the beginning. I really didn't get into all the "Catholics versus The Devil" stuff otherwise I probably have picked up on what was really going on sooner but, honestly, I was just enjoying all the haunted house style shenanigans and bizarre characters to even guess at the bigger picture.

The other thing which completely distracted me was the huge number of famous actors and actresses in "The Sentinel" who are known for much better roles. If you are anything like me, you'll find yourself asking, "Isn't that so-and-so?" quite often and, yes, it really is so-and-so too. Even what you might think are just cameos or bit parts actually contain some very well known actors indeed.

What I really like about this film was that it had some genuinely creepy moments and stayed completely serious in places where it could have become somewhat ludicrous. If you are in the right frame of mind, however, you could probably also watch "The Sentinel" as a sick comedy in the way that some people now think of "The Exorcist".

One major problem for a modern audience is that there are a lot of times when nothing scary happens at all and the pace of the movie drags. If you've watched a lot of TV horror movies from the '70s then you'll probably think you are watching another one rather than an actual theatrical release. Some of this is due to a quite superfluous subplot with cops played by Eli Wallach and Christopher Walken. I must admit that any '70s horror films that lazily throw a cop sublot into the mix really turn me off whether it's Christopher Walken as one of those cops or not.

I won't say that "The Sentinel" is my favourite horror movie but I certainly wouldn't discount it as a legitimate entry into the genre. It has a couple of decent jump scares and some scenes near the end which exploit a load of physically deformed people in ways that even Tod Browning would be proud of.

If you are a fan of '70s horror movies then you'll probably like this. It's not nearly as good as "The Omen" (1976) as a genuinely frightening Catholicism-based supernatural horror but it is still entertaining enough and has a few shocks if you haven't seen too many other horror films from this time. I rate "The Sentinel" as "Just Average".

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

"Kirsty is brought to an institution after the death of her family, where the occult-obsessive head resurrects Julia and unleashes the Cenobites once again."

Now I know it's bizarre to rate a sequel higher than the first film in a series but while I found the original "Hellraiser" (1987) impressive, it wasn't until Clare Higgins came back as the skinless Julia (albeit with Deborah Joel as her body double) that I really felt that true horror had been achieved.

It's a pity that all the later "Hellraiser" films are so appalling compared to this as if they'd continued to get more brutal and surreal then I think a lot more people would be buying into them today rather than discounting "Hellraiser" as a franchise which has outstayed its welcome.

Every actor in "Hellbound" gives an outstanding performance which is only possible because they are all what I term "real actors". Apart from Doug Bradley and Ashley Laurence, none of the actors were known to me for doing horror and it was quite a shock to see the calibre of Kenneth Cranham, Clare Higgins and even Imogen Boormen (also known later for being the lead in the BBC's "Iphigenia at Aulis") in something like this.

The surrealness of the monsters and the effects used to create them in "Hellbound" really make this extraordinary.