Ghost Team One (2013)

"Two roommates deathly afraid of ghosts both fall in love with a girl who believes their home is haunted."

I don't know why everyone is calling "Ghost Team One" a "comedy". It isn't funny, and it doesn't even have a particularly happy ending. What it does have is lots of awkwardness and the same atmosphere as the American version of "The Office" (which also isn't funny), and of course, a hot chick (or two) to ogle.

"Ghost Team One" is essentially another completely unneccessary "Paranormal Activity" parody which brings the number of such abominations up to an unlucky 13. How and why this has become a subgenre in itself is undoutedly due to the YouTube generation who can't seem to get enough of webcams, shakycams, and mediocrity. For those of us who prefer a real movie, these faux found footage movies are mostly an annoying waste of time.

There are a couple of neat effects in "Ghost Team One" which you don't often see in a glorified YouTube video like this, but it isn't a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination either. In fairness, though, I don't think it was ever intended to be. It's not "found footage horror" per se that this movie is lampooning but the whole "amateur-looking footage" subgenre in general. Even YouTube gets targetted!

The downfall with this, however, is that "Ghost Team One" is as tame as its targets when it comes to the adult situations: Punches are pulled everywhere, e.g. pornographic images on a bedroom wall are pixellated, and the "jokes" (if you can call them that) are little more than schoolboyish. Think Benny Hill but less creepy with it. For a movie which uses the promise of "horny ghosts" as its selling point (especially as the only ghost in it is supposed to have been a Vietnamese prostitute!), it's very disappointing.

Two guys I've never heard of and Fernanda Romero.

As I have no sense of humour when it comes to comedy-horror movies, spoofs or otherwise, I hate to say it, but I was slightly entertained by "Ghost Team One" in a low-rent "Men Behaving Badly" (British version, naturally) way. It's well written, the drama is nicely done, and the characters are stupidly amiable but harmless enough. Once you get used to the awful camerawork, the whole purpose of "Ghost Team One" is only an excuse to lust over Fernanda Romero anyway. If Fernanda wasn't in it, I doubt that I would have made it to the end.

Fernanda Romero (who keeps her real first name and clothes on throughout) steals every scene she's in to such an extent that "Ghost Team One" is best described as her "vehicle". If anyone else involved in this movie is deluded enough to think otherwise, they need to grab themselves a reality check next time they go to 7-Eleven for their taquitos and slushies, and understand that, apart from a few infantilised adults (who were born in the '80s and '90s) and their friends, the majority of people who will eventually buy this movie on DVD or Blu-ray are just going to skip to the parts with Fernanda in and crack open another box of tissues. Yes, she really is that hot!

Putting the novelty value of "Ghost Team One" as a "latino" movie aside, since I often tend to overrate any kind of Spanish or Mexican movie even when they are filmed in Los Angeles, I don't recommend this one. I'll give everybody credit for having a go, but "Ghost Team One" would have been better as a series of webisodes.

Fernanda Romero is the centre of attention.

[REC]³ Génesis (2012)

"A couple's wedding day turns into a horrific event as some of the guests start showing signs of a strange illness."

Alrighty then, it's the moment you've all been waiting for. Well, it's the moment some of you have been waiting for anyway. I'm finally going to review "[REC]³ Génesis" - otherwise known as "The Crappy Parody End of the [REC] Series".

As you may have already realised, I don't read anyone else's review of a movie before I watch it for myself. Although I do go to the IMDb afterwards, it's not for the reasons that some lazier bloggers do. I look up the names of the cast to make sure that I know how to spell them correctly (especially if they are foreign), and, yes, I happily admit that I will grab a synopsis there rather than writing one myself since I figure, "Why bother to write another synopsis when 99% of the reviews on the IMDb are actually synopses rather than reviews anyway?" I always put the synopsis that I've taken from either the IMDb, Flixster, Amazon or even the blurb on the back of the DVD sleeve in both italics and quotation marks just so everyone knows that I didn't write it. The one thing, I repeat, that I don't do is read any of the real reviews online. Thus, I watched "[REC]³ Génesis" completely oblivious to anything that had been said about it.

My initial thoughts as I made notes on the back of a piece of cardboard torn from an old cat food box (hey, don't judge me, paper is scarce in my house), were "WTF is this?" and "You have to be kidding me! A wedding video!!!" Was this supposed to be an homage to "Cloverfield" in some way? I know now that "Cloverfield" had a going-away party, but it looked like a wedding to me. Since "Cloverfield" (2008) was also a desperate piece of crap, I was getting a very bad feeling about this movie.

As the dialogue continued to be fairly lighthearted, I didn't think too much of it. I was watching Spaniards who are a little bit more carefree by nature so I just accepted it for what it was. I wasn't at all phased by a children's entertainer called "Sponge John", the almost "meta" talk about the cameras, or the ogling of the pretty girls by the cameraman. I was doing a fair amount of ogling myself while I was waiting for the uncle who had been bitten by Max from the first film to succumb to the supernatural-rabies and start biting people which, of course, he did.

But, at around the 22 minute mark, I didn't expect the "[REC]³ Génesis" title to appear before cutting to a broken camera. What was going on? After a few more seconds, I knew that the director, Paco Plaza, had abandoned the "found footage" idea which hadn't worked quite so well in the previous sequel with co-director Jaume Balagueró. Oh, so this was why the camera got broken? How clever! Was it something to do with "Royalties"? Or did I spot something a little bit too clever here?

Unfortunately, everything which followed was even crappier than "[Rec]²". "[REC]³ Génesis" turned into yet another zombie "comedy". I've put the word "comedy" in quotation marks for two reasons; the first of these is that it wasn't funny. In fact, I started to wonder if "[REC]³ Génesis" wasn't just a parody designed to destroy what little credibility the Spanish directors had achieved with their previous films. Did Paco hate Jaume for leaving him to do this project alone?

I won't say that "[REC]³ Génesis" was devoid of all merits. The over-the-top gore scenes were really well done, the acting was okay-ish considering the style of film that it had become, and, of course, Leticia Dolera who played the bride, Clara, was very nice to look at. I did indeed look at her a lot and discovered that she wasn't quite as flawless as I first thought, but I'll come back to that later. I'm sure girls who watch this film would fancy Diego Martín who played the groom, Koldo, so, apparently, there was something for everyone. Everyone that is except the true horror fans.

Not since "Shaun of the Dead" (2004) have I loathed a film so much while watching it. I despise comedies, and, when they don't have a "comedy" ending, i.e. a happy one, then I hate them even more. Yes, that was the second reason why I put "comedy" in quotation marks. A "comedy" doesn't have to be funny to be a "comedy". The recognisable humour or "joke telling" of most is only supposed to be a by-product. I could go into more detail, but I'm sure you don't want to read a 600 page thesis on the subject right now. Suffice it to say that "[REC]³ Génesis" was essentially a "tragedy" treated in an irreverent and lighthearted manner. So, don't call it a comedy! You can call it a worthless piece of shit, if you like, because it was.

As far as the story went, basically, it was just Koldo and Clara getting separated, going through various struggles, and trying to get together again while everyone around them died. Once again, my Classical education caused me to spot the influence of "The Greek Novel" although I don't think even Lucian would have written something this bizarre.

This brings me back to Leticia Dolera. She's beautiful and will be the only reason a lot of mentally pubescent fanboys give this movie more credit than it's due. They will also think that any hot chick with dripping mascara who kills zombies with a chainsaw while a cover version of "Eloise" plays in the background is "kewl" so let's throw in all the clichés, shall we?

I scrutinized every part of Leticia myself because she looked like she had a 20% chance of turning into Shelley Duvall later on in life. One thing which I spotted early on was her hands (yes, technically that's two things and my grammar sucks). I've noticed that nearly all Spanish actresses have short nails and I'm building a little theory about it in my own mind. A lot of actresses bite their nails because of stress, but the Spanish don't seem to have adopted the false painted claws or French manicures of the rest of the world. If you don't believe me, have a look through a few Spanish movies yourself including the previous "[REC]" movies. In "[REC]", Manuela Velasco had short nails and even drew attention to her hands in the dialogue. Leticia Dolera also had a massive mole on her left hand which was covered with make-up at one point but returned later. Continuity error? If a movie has them I will spot them.

Does any of that really have anything to do with "[REC]³ Génesis" as a horror movie though? Maybe not. Sometimes the tangents my mind goes off on when it's trying to escape a truly horrible movie are actually more interesting than the movie itself. If you've already watched "[REC]³ Génesis" then you may now wonder if what happens to Clara near the end wasn't some more self-referential or wish-fulfilment inspired humour. Do Spanish women all have ugly hands? Is this cultural or a motif of some kind? I have no idea, but I'd rather wonder about those things then remember any of this dreadful piece of filmmaking.

I rate "[REC]³ Génesis" as my first ever -1000 out of 10. Way to kill "[REC]", Paco! You totally wrecked it.

Taintlight (2009)

"When lovely young Stella strikes up a romance with pale, brooding vampire Edgar, the couple must navigate the treacherous waters of human-undead love and fend off the amorous advances of a werewolf named Jack. Meanwhile, another brood of bloodsuckers seeks to impale Edgar and claim Stella for themselves."

It may only have a running time of an hour but "Taintlight" was still 50 minutes too long for me. Although I didn't actually fast-forward it to get it over with, I was sorely tempted to do so.

"Taintlight" has to be the unfunniest and most poorly produced parody that I have ever seen. The only thing which kept me watching was that Meredith Host had some endearing expressions and was quite pretty. There were a couple of moments where she nailed the impersonation of Bella but they were few and far between.

As a more adult parody version of "Twilight" than "Vampires Suck", it was amusing for the first few minutes but it turned out to be a one trick pony and just got boring. The fact that it all looked like a YouTube video (and probably was one) didn't help much either.

I'm sure everyone involved had a lot of fun mugging at each other and making their eyes bulge as much as possible but I didn't get any enjoyment out of watching them.

How the hell did this crap get on Netflix?

Jesus wept more

I knew something like this was inevitable.

Yesterday, Michael McLaughlin (AKA behtbeht) sent me a link through Twitter to his parody video and so I'm posting it on here for other cat lovers to enjoy. Actually I'm not sure "enjoy" is the right word but it is funny (and creepy!). It also hits a bit too close to home in my case. :)

Buy a t-shirt and feed my cats

As you may know, a couple of weeks ago I decided to become a complete and utter sellout by monetizing on my blog.

Guess how much I've made so far? 83¢, yes, eighty-three whole cents! Woohoo, I'm rich and can almost buy a rather small chocolate bar as long as it isn't from anywhere that sells them while they are still in date.

Anyway, encouraged by this huge success, I've decided to put my limited design skills to work over at CafePress. Apart from slapping my site logo on everything to see what it looks like, I have now come up with something truly awesome: the "Team Willow" t-shirt (below). Yes, it's a parody of all those "Twilight" t-shirts since I know how much you all love the films.

"I run with cats"

Now you can support my site in style and buy a tin of cat food for my constant companion at the same time.

I'll get almost 50¢ from each sale and it's all going on cat food. Look at Willow, she's so hungry!!! All 20lbs of her is wasting away!

"I'm not fat, I'm festively plump!"

My other cat is not impressed but she's content to eat anything in her path right now or sleep.

"Meh."

She has, however, previously expressed an interest in having her own Macbook Air. All donations are welcome and much appreciated.

Vampires Suck (2010)

"A spoof of vampire-themed movies, where teenager Becca finds herself torn between two boys. As she and her friends wrestle with a number of different dramas, everything comes to a head at their prom."

Although "Vampires Suck" is clearly aimed at all the "Twilight" haters and doesn't really go much further than spoofing the entire first "Twilight" movie with some parts of "New Moon" thrown in, it's not totally without a few merits of its own.

The most obvious thing is that everybody does such brilliant impersonations of the real "Twilight" characters that it's often difficult to tell if this is actually a comedy or not. If you haven't seen "Twilight", you could watch this and and still go on to enjoy the official sequels with no problem at all. Jenn Proske (as Becca Crane) could be Kristen Stewart's Bella even though she's actually slightly prettier.

This attention to detail may be the parody's undoing though. There is a very thin line between what is an acceptable parody and obvious copyright infringement, but we'll just have to wait and see what Stephanie Meyer's lawyers make of it all. Personally, I think this is way too close to simply being a "Twilight" remake in all but name. It looks the same, the characters have 99% identical names, and the story is just far too close to the original for comfort even if everything is clearly played for laughs.

"Vampires Suck" isn't particularly funny though. There are a couple of amusing scenes but that's all they are, just amusing not side-splittingly funny. I'm not big on comedies anyway so it may be funnier to some people than it was to me, but I just didn't think there was anything here that can't already be found on YouTube in smaller doses. If you've ever heard a joke or seen any kind of amusing image lampooning "Twilight" or the Twihards themselves then it's repeated here. It seems that it's all by the same team who did "Epic Movie" and "Meet the Spartans", but since I've never seen either of those films and have no intention of ever watching them, I can't tell you whether this is any better or worse than those. It isn't as good as the last "Scary Movie" that I watched, but I don't think very much of that franchise anyway.

I did like that "Vampires Suck" had really good production values. There's nothing worse than watching an obviously low-budget parody especially when you don't like low-budget movies in the first place. As I mentioned, this really has a lot of attention to detail and it's possible to argue that this is probably how "Twilight" and "New Moon" should have been done in the first place especially when it comes to pacing. At around 70 minutes long, it all flies by with not too many lags. If you discount the two or three somewhat feeble pop-culture references which will date this film horribly in a few years then it isn't too bad at all.

Just because the actors in this did a much better job than the real cast of "Twilight", I am actually going to recommend "Vampires Suck". If you don't like comedies then you should avoid it. It's not a horror film, it's not scary, gory or even as funny as the "South Park" episode about emos, but it is an amusing and completely throwaway diversion.