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.

Devoured (2012)

"An intense, troubling film, boasting a spectacular lead performance from Marta Milans, DEVOURED calls to mind such bleak and visceral late '70s NY urban dramas as TAXI DRIVER and DRILLER KILLER in its expert depiction of alienation and escalating horror."

The synopsis from Amazon.co.uk describes "Devoured" so perfectly that there's very little I need to add. That product description absolutely nails it, uses the word "visceral" correctly, and reminds me of the days when I used to write such concise one or two sentence reviews instead of rambling on to fill up a blog post. For someone who doesn't often suffer from nostalgia, I miss those days a lot.

But as I wouldn't be me if I didn't have my own two cents to add, I will just say that I haven't enjoyed any "low-budget" movie as much I did this one. According to the IMDb, the estimated budget was only $1,500,000. That's still a huge amount of money for normal people, but hardly anything in movie industry terms, so maybe that's one of the few points in any independent movie's favour which I'm willing to concede. You don't need hundreds of millions of dollars to make a good movie if you know what you're doing, but the caveat is that you really do need to know what you're doing.

Although this is Greg Olliver's first horror movie, he's been around for a while making award-winning rock documentaries. His IMDb profile page details how he learnt his craft the right way by going to film school and then working his way up in the industry, so he isn't one of the half-arsed hobby horror filmmakers. The result of his knowledge and experience is that he has created an impressively adult "descent into madness" drama here which, despite its obviously Poe-like elements, isn't predictable at all.

Maybe I would have noticed some flaws if I hadn't been so captivated by Marta Milans as the lead, but the attention to detail is such that I doubt there are any important ones anyway. I would like to say that Marta Milans is to "Devoured" what Gretchen Lodge is to "Lovely Molly" (2011), since they both give outstanding performances which carry the rest of their respective movies, but that wouldn't be a completely accurate or fair comparison. It also wouldn't be fair on everyone else involved. Movies are a team effort, after all.

Everything about "Devoured" is as close to perfection as the budget allows. The cinematography is excellent, and from the script by Marc Landau to the smallest acting role, this is a classy, thought-provoking, and thoroughly engaging production. There are some movies which can draw you in as if you're living in them, and "Devoured" is certainly one of them. Whether you would actually want to live inside another person's nightmare is, however, another matter.

For an American movie, "Devoured" has a very European atmosphere and grittiness about it which means that it's bound to be a bigger success overseas, even if it's only for a niche audience. Such slow burns with great characterisation are unlikely to be so highly praised by the teenage slasher crowd who just want to see boobs and blood, and that's a real shame, but stranger things have happened. No matter what your age or tastes, if you call yourself a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

As far as I know, "Devoured" is currently only available from Amazon.co.uk as a DVD or Blu-ray. Hopefully, a US version will start appearing in stores soon. Keep an eye on the official website for further details.