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.

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.

Warm Bodies (2013)

"After R (a highly unusual zombie) saves Julie from an attack, the two form a relationship that sets in motion a sequence of events that might transform the entire lifeless world."

"Warm Bodies" feels like an unofficial sequel to George A. Romero's "Land of the Dead" (2005) but toned-down to a PG-13 rating for the "Twilight" crowd using a similarly romantic story. Apparently, it's based on a book by Isaac Marion. I probably don't need to tell you that I've never read it and probably never will do either.

Essentially, it's another "Romeo and Juliet" designed to cash in on the last dregs of the zombie craze which has already gone way beyond annoying. On the plus side, "Warm Bodies" is quite decently made and enjoyable enough to watch. The slow pace and teenage comedy will put a lot of people off this one though. Once again, it's not really a horror movie.

Everybody will be comparing "Warm Bodies" to "Twilight" so I might as well get those aspects out of the way. Yes, the lead zombie is English just like Robert Pattinson and even looks a bit like him from some angles. His name, "R", could even be an homage to Robert Pattinson if you are dumb enough to not push it all the way to it's Shakespearean predecessor. The girl is, by necessity, Julie in case you still don't get it. And just like "Romeo and Juliet", "Twilight", and every other love story, they fancy each other but can't be together because they are from different worlds... blah, blah, blah. I can't really complain about "Warm Bodies" too much given my status as one of the few "Twilight-friendly" horror bloggers, but I didn't really get a lot out of it.

Nicholas Hoult (Tony from "Skins") and Teresa Palmer (Vanessa from "The Grudge 2") are okay in their roles. There's nothing special to report about them one way or another. They look the part except that they are both too old to play teenagers now. I'm not sure if they are meant to be teenagers really though. I was going to bitch about them mumbling enough to be teenagers, but I now think that's intentional.

Rob Corddry as "M" (which turns out to stand for Marcus not Mercutio) has the best lines, but isn't very memorable. I have no idea what he's been in before although I'd guess it was a lot of TV shows along with the rest of the cast. Again, there's nothing wrong with his performance. It is what it is.

Hipsters who have never seen any other films starring John Malkovich will love that he is also in this for a couple of phoned-in minutes as Julie's father. He's a bit miscast and would be more appropriate as Julie's grandfather given his age, but then it wouldn't be so obviously a "Romeo and Juliet" knock-off as intended.

Ultimately, it's nice to see that Jonathan Levine has directed something again after "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" (2006), but "Warm Bodies" is a bit bland and very predictable. It looks nice, the "boney" zombies might scare small children, yet it's not an exciting "zombie gorefest" by any stretch of the imagination.

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.

2, 4, 6, 8... Who do we appreciate?

Lionsgate!!!

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last month, you must have heard about the latest multipack releases from Lionsgate and the whole kerfuffle about finding any of them in the $5 bargain bins at Wal-mart.

It seems that some horror fans have been lucky enough to find the 8 pack (Waxwork / 976-Evil 2 / Ghoulies 3: Ghoulies Go To College / The Unholy / C.H.U.D. 2 / Chopping Mall / Slaughter High / Class of 1999) and 6 pack (Blood Diner / Parents / Earth Girls Are Easy / Sundown / Fido / Boy Eats Girl), and a few have also found the less interesting "Living Dead" 6 pack (Bride of Re-Animator / Beyond Re-Animator / Return of the Living Dead 3 / Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis / Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave / Night of the Living Dead 3D). Of course, there have been so many cases of resellers buying every copy they could find to put on eBay and Amazon (at five or six times the original price!) that the multipacks are now rarer than hen's teeth in the wild.

The picture above isn't of my own copies of these elusive DVDs, it's just one that I found by searching through Google Images. I haven't been to Wal-mart for almost a month now and have virtually no interest in the contents of these multipacks at all. Although I find it interesting that Lionsgate have finally started to release a few titles from the enormous catalogue of older movies which they have been sitting on, I wish they had done it better.

You see, none of these movies are particularly good ones anyway. They range from average to absolutely awful and there are far too many comedies in the packs to make me want to purchase them. I already have "Boy Eats Girl" on a previous Lionsgate 4 pack from Wal-mart (along with "Drive Thru", "Creep" and "Tamara"), don't want the inferior Re-Animator or Living Dead sequels (especially as the only good one, "Return of the Living Dead 3", is cut except on VHS), and I really couldn't care less about any of the other films on those packs.

Another oddity is how the films have been compressed onto the DVDs. They aren't double-sided flippers as you would expect but, in the case of the 8 pack, are two single-sided DVDs with 4 films on one side. This isn't as bad as it sounds even though there is bound to be a slight loss in quality, but it's a very unusual way of doing things. It goes without saying that these are all "bare bones" DVDs with no special features either.

I'm not into DVD piracy but, as an experiment, I actually ripped the films from a few of my own DVDs and burned four of them to a DVD+R (not even a DVD-R which is slightly bigger) and the result wasn't all that different to the original give or take a few (barely noticeable) blocky artifacts occasionally. So I got to thinking that this is what the DVD manufacturers should have been doing all along rather than cramming the discs with a load of superfluous crap which nobody ever watches anyway. I don't need three commentaries, subtitles in a dozen languages, the theatrical trailer and yet another boring five minute "Making of" featurette to be able to enjoy the film itself.

With Echo Bridge releasing similar quality multipacks (and, of course, Mill Creek being the masters of this practice already), wouldn't it be nice to see all of our favourite horror movies released this way from now on? Not only would it be a lot cheaper to have enormous DVD collections but the space saving alone would be worth it. If you've ever tried to move thousands of DVDs from one house (or one country) to another, you'll know exactly what I mean.

The biggest advantage of multi-feature DVDs, however, is their ease of use. Although there have been attempts by Sony to create "DVD jukeboxes", most people have normal DVD players and having to get up to change the DVD from the box under the TV has always been annoying. Being able to watch more than one film on a single DVD has always been the ideal choice for most viewers since we're all pretty lazy and it's surprising that it's taken until now for the companies to realise that and to finally start using the storage medium properly. Possibly, it's the way that people have happily switched to the lower-quality streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu which has given everybody a well-deserved kick up the backside.

If only the DVD manufacturers would stop ramming the alleged "superior image quality" of Blu-ray down our throats at every opportunity and start creating Blu-rays of all the franchises on one disc then they might start selling a few more of them again. In the current economy, most people aren't stupid enough to waste $20 or $30 on one movie but they might still pay that for the entire "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday the 13th" or "Halloween" series.

Even if the movie industry is too greedy to ever go that route, we can be sure that the current trend in low-priced multipacks will continue for quite some time. Happy hunting in Wal-mart's bargain bins!