Gore Orphanage (2015)

"Set in the depression era, Gore Orphanage shows that some things are worse than losing your family."

Sharing the title and same urban legend with an earlier low-budget horror movie from 1980 which I've never seen, "Gore Orphanage" adds to one of Ohio's most famous (albeit extremely fanciful) ghost stories by successfully slipping the motivation of real life English murderer Mary Bell into the mix.

Obviously, being British myself, I wouldn't have ever known about the Gore Orphanage urban legend, but I did know about Mary Bell who was all over the news in the early 1980s and caused another kerfuffle during the Tony Blair era when the government failed to prevent her (as a convicted murderer) from profitting financially through sales of her published story.

Of course, if you don't know or care about any of those things, it doesn't really matter. "Gore Orphanage" is a work of fiction whether you choose to read Emily Lapisardi's "Gore Orphanage: The Novel" right now or wait a few months longer to watch this movie which Emily Lapisardi has directed and co-written (with producer/actor Cody Knotts) when it's officially released in October. I've been one of the lucky few reviewers who was selected to see the screener, and I mostly enjoyed it.

"Gore Orphanage" stars Maria Olsen as a sadistic proprietor of a privately owned orphanage in a role reminiscent of the latest incarnation of prison governor Joan "The Freak" Ferguson from the Australian "Wentworth" TV series. Mrs. Pryor (Maria Olsen) is a nasty piece of work with mental health issues which may excuse but not condone any legal justification for her actions. You'll hate her, but you're supposed to. As usual, Maria looks attractive in some scenes and appropriately horrible in others, but either way, she can certainly act.

As a foil to Maria Olsen's character, Keri Maletto plays the younger and nicer Miss Lillian who also shows similarities to an early Joan Bennett from "Wentworth". I'm not saying that there are any borrowings as such here, just stereotypical and easily recognisable genre characters. I may have noticed them in "Wentworth" (the rebooted "Prisoner: Cell Block H") most recently, but such characters have been part of every prison and orphanage drama.

I don't know why Miss Lillian never takes her hat off when she's indoors.

Sharing the burden of looking after the orphanage is Bill Townsend playing Ernst the German janitor/handyman. I won't spoil it for you, but things may or may not be as they first appear with Ernst. There's certainly some good work there with the script and characterisation. More screen time for Ernst would have been nice, but maybe a little more depth would have wrecked his subplot too.

Since this story is set in an orphanage, the rest of the cast is mostly comprised of child actors including Emma Smith, Nora Hoyle, and Brandon Mangin Jr. I believe that this is their first movie, so I'm not going to judge any of them too harshly. Some of their performances are better than others (and some made me cringe), but generally, they do an acceptable job. None of them are up to the same standard as kids in movies such as "The Bad Seed" (1956) or "Stephen King's It" (1990), but they're as good as any Children's Film Foundation actors from back in the day.

If I had to pick one child actor out of all of them who looks like she will have a big future ahead of her, it would be little Nora Hoyle who plays Esther. She has some great expressions, is aware of the other actors, and makes her scenes convincing. I simply wasn't very impressed by Emma Smith in the lead role as Nellie, but she does have her moments.

To be brutally honest, the camerawork and the direction doesn't work in the favour of many of the children. Wrong angles, some bad framing, and keeping them on their marks tends to show through. In particular, faults are most apparent when the children are speaking to each other and eye contact isn't made at the right angle, and there are unnatural movements when these young actors have to walk or run to a certain point.

Again, I also have to make some allowances because this is Emily Lapisardi's debut feature and she still needs to learn her craft. Giving credit where it's due, she's done a lot better than I could ever do, but that's a redundant point since I'm not a filmmaker and have no desire to ever be one. I'm just an often overly critical viewer.

Mealtimes involve a lot of playing with food rather than eating it.

The cinematography by Nicholas Carrington is inconsistently but mostly competent. I prefer the scenes where he clearly used a tripod rather than the shaky handycam, but that's because I'm old-fashioned that way. The best of these is when Mrs. Pryor reads a passage from the Bible to the kids before they eat. Only in one scene near the end does the handycam accidentally make you think that you're watching a "killer's point-of-view", and this could possibly be stabilised more in post-production to remove that slight problem.

Editing is a laborious process for anyone, so I fully appreciate the effort which has gone into "Gore Orphanage", but even as a slow-burn murder/mystery/horror, it would benefit from being a bit tighter. The pacing is okay as it is, but... yeah, if I knew how to do it, I would swap a few scenes around and excise a couple of others. The soundtrack is also very basic and occasionally echoey as well. All these things are standard problems with low-budget productions, so you can take what I'm saying with the usual pinch or sackful of salt.

The 1930s depression era setting works well, and care has been taken with the various props, costumes, and location. "Gore Orphanage" is not quite as good in that respect as the movies which have inspired it, but it's noticeable that someone cared enough about attention to detail within the contraints of the budget.

Similar looking and themed movies such as "Flowers in the Attic" (1987), "The Others" (2001), "The Devil's Backbone" (2001), "House of Voices" (2004), "The Orphanage" (2007), "The Awakening" (2011), and ""The Secret pf Crickley Hall" (2012) do more or less the same thing, but "Gore Orphanage" doesn't have anywhere near the same budget as even the cheapest of those productions.

She still has that hat on!

One final (and very minor) gripe is that Chris "The Irate Gamer" Bores is listed in the credits but doesn't appear until after them. Apparently, he was in a cut scene which involved paranormal investigators. The only bit that remains is a post-credits bonus in which you only see him running away with three other people and have no idea who any of them are. Oh well, I guess that he won't be promoting this movie much on his YouTube channel now.

If you think from my critique so far that I hated a lot of this movie, you'd be wrong. In fact, I enjoyed the storytelling despite "Gore Orphanage" not being the supernatural or even bloody event which I initially thought that it was going to turn into. I truly enjoyed the acting, and I definitely got a kick out of the "twist" element. The wraparound scenes give that away more than I just have.

"Gore Orphanage" may not be brilliantly or slickly realised, and it's predictable for those of us who've seen too many movies, but it's generally okay. A little nod to "The Shining" doesn't become a cliché, and I totally respect and am grateful for the restraint shown there. I'm also grateful that no holds were barred when it came to the more taboo subject matter.

Having said that, I'm not entirely convinced that "Gore Orphanage" should be classed as a horror movie. It may be within the wider scope of the genre and contains a few slasher elements, but it's more of a drama and mystery than a "shit-yer-pants-scary" affair anyway.

For that reason, more than any other, I can only give "Gore Orphanage" a slightly below average rating as it stands at the moment. As much as I'm tempted to hypocritically gush about this movie and drop a marketing-friendly "quote" into my review to get a mention on the DVD sleeve, I just can't do it. "Gore Orphanage" isn't scary, and horror movies should be scary.

For more information about the DVD release, please check out the "Gore Orphanage" Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/goreorphanagethemovie.

Atrocious (2010)

"Two teenage siblings endure a terrifying experience while investigating a rural legend near their family's vacation home."

Thank God for "Bloody Disgusting Selects", not because the horror movies they've chosen are any good but because it's easy to write them off with a tirade of abuse.

"Atrocious" is yet another faux found footage movie in much the same vein as "The Blair Witch Project", and we all know how little I think of that piece of shit. Other than being Spanish, the only real difference is that the kids are younger, and that, in and of itself, is a big clue to the intended target audience.

After an exceedingly boring first-half with nothing but a dead dog to show for it, it all becomes a series of poorly filmed night vision scenes of lots of bushes and trees! Give or take some annoying screaming and shouting, it's just like watching a typical episode of "Ghost Hunters" which doesn't have any ghosts in it either.

With nauseating camerawork and no scares, "Atrocious" certainly lives up to its name and is going straight into the dungeon. I don't have time to watch any more shakycam crap like this, and I didn't have the patience to make it all the way through this one.

Supposedly, it has some kind of non-supernatural twist at the end.

Aptly named.

Smiley (2012)

"After discovering an urban legend on 4chan's /b/ board of a demented serial killer that has nothing but a carved 'smiley' on his face, Ashley, a mentally fragile teen, must decide whether she is going insane, or is the next victim."

Every so often I'm forced to watch a horror movie directed by someone I've never heard of and starring a load of people I've never heard of either. Sometimes it's a necessity for writing this blog, but occasionally I just do it for the lulz. Thus, when the chance came to see a movie about a supernatural serial killer on the internet who does it "for the lulz" too, I was intrigued.

Apart from Roger Bart (formerly the creepy pharmacist who fancied Bree in "Desperate Housewives" as well as one of the sickos in "Hostel 2") and Keith David, I honestly have no idea who any of the other cast members are, whether or not they are real actors or YouTube wannabes, or anything other than a vague recognition of a couple of their names.

Allegedly, one of the cast members is named Toby Turner, and he's big on YouTube for something, but I couldn't even tell you what he looks like or who he plays. Shane Dawson is more obvious as I've seen his picture floating about on the internet before yet have never watched even one of his YouTube videos either. From his limited acting ability in "Smiley", I probably never want to. As a non-actor, he isn't that bad, but he's a lot older, hairier, fatter and uglier than I thought a popular YouTube children's entertainer would be. His character name of "Pedobear" might be an in-joke based on his fanbase of 12-14 year olds. If there's something more to it than that, I didn't understand it.

In case I start to sound too negative, let me just say that I didn't hate "Smiley" or anyone involved in it. In fact, I really liked it as a "meta" movie about internet trolling. We all love to troll "teh interwebz", don't we? Imagine if the misery we like to inflict on others with our keyboards could manifest itself in physical form and you get the premise behind "Smiley". I thought that was kind of great.

I can haz cheezburger now? Oops, wrong meme.

Even though "Smiley" first appears to be little more than a ripoff of "Candyman" and the "Bloody Mary" urban myths, it's actually a bit cleverer than that. With a couple of twists at the end, although derivative of "Scream", "April Fool's Day" and "Urban Legend", "Smiley" is quite successful (yet overambitious) in what it sets out to achieve. As a horror movie though, maybe not so much.

It's probably not going to win any awards for originality, scares or gore, but it's still a decent looking movie with good production values, not too many lags, and only a few moments of dodgy camerawork. Unlike the current slew of "found footage" crap, there's certainly no need to take any dramamine before watching "Smiley" unless the jealousy that someone who you don't think deserves it has managed to get their horror movie released theatrically makes you nauseous.

Of course, "Smiley" has some flaws especially in the dialogue which may be a tad too unnatural for most people's ears. If people on the West Coast really speak to each other like that, they need slapping. It's a debut feature by somebody just out of film school, Michael J. Gallagher, who has been lucky enough to be able to make it so you have to make allowances. As much as I will always bash the talentless handycam brigade with their backyard "zombedy" epics, "Smiley" doesn't fall into the same category. It looks like it had a fairly decent budget for one thing, and there's obviously some technical ability behind the scenes.

The killer actually looks pretty good too. I think he'll be a poster on a few people's walls before too long especially if this becomes a franchise. As ever, the characterisation doesn't have much depth to it, and quite a few of the characters are instantly dislikeable, but that's always a bonus for a jaded movie reviewer looking for something to write about. For those people who loathe Shane Dawson's antics as a YouTube money whore, seeing him get his comeuppance is a nice piece of wish fulfilment which will most certainly drive his haters to this film only to be quite surprised.

To give more credit where it is most certainly due, Caitlin Gerard, who plays Ashley, is highly watchable and gives an outstanding performance. Looks-wise, she isn't my cup of tea although I'm sure the intended audience will find her incredibly hot. If I have a type, it's not mental, skinny blondes who scream, cry a lot and smash their laptops to pieces, but to each their own.

I'll take the one on the right, please.

Ashley's brunette friend, Proxy (stupid name but whatever), is sensationally gorgeous. Melanie Papalia is her real name (in case you wondered), and having looked it up, I think it's one to remember. Although I'm torn between her and Nikki Limo (who plays a babysitter at the start) for the "best looking chick in the movie" award, she definitely made "Smiley" more enjoyable for me. She can really act too, and I can't wait to see her in more movies.

As I said right at the beginning, "Smiley" is full of unknown actors, actresses and YouTube "stars" who you either may or may not recognise. The only big YouTuber who I've ever watched regularly is iJustine and, unfortunately, she isn't in this. That was a missed opportunity and a bit of a shame. If she had been in it, maybe the "real critics" wouldn't have been so harsh about "Smiley". Having accidentally read the titles of their critiques, I wonder if we've even watched the same film because I enjoyed it. Although everyone has an opinion, most internet critics aren't honest and a lot have become negative just to stir up controversy and more pageviews. The irony of that in reference to the subject matter of "Smiley" won't escape anyone.

Without checking, I can almost guarantee that Bloody-Disgusting, Dread Central and Ain't It Cool News will be overpraising "Smiley" as the second-coming in horror movie form just to get their names on the DVD artwork. Unless, of course, they didn't get a kickback (in which case they'll be hating it too). "Smiley" is a good film, but please take their nonsense with a huge pinch of salt. Better yet, ignore it altogether if you don't want the hype to spoil it for you.

If you love the internet, like to hang out in video chatrooms or just generally surf YouTube, you'll get a lot of entertainment out of "Smiley". It's not ideal for the older generation or hardcore horror aficionados, but if you are lucky enough to have it playing in a movie theatre near you at the moment, I encourage you to check it out... for the lulz. =)