Review - The Woman in Black (2012)

There has always been a place in my heart for the horror movies of Britain's legendary Hammer Studios. Long before my brain was able to attach the iconic black and white visages of Karloff and Lugosi to their literary counterparts, it had the likes of Lee and Cushing to usher my childhood interests into the very adult realm of horror. I relished the hyperrealistic sets and stern British countenance on the faces of its thespians. To me, Hammer was the quintessential maker of nightmares. As I grew older my fondness never waned, only my appreciation for its predecessors as I included Universal into my lexicon of all time greats.

In this world of oversaturated torture porn, teen slasher and found footage flicks, the days of Hammer seem long removed and all but forgotten. The studios now tend to scream “boo!” before you even turn the corner, instead of stalking you like the great ones did. So, it was with great excitement, and a little bit of trepidation, that I celebrated the return of Hammer. The Resident, although a nice thriller, seemed like a trial run. Wakewood, however, saw the new Hammer stretching its legs, and, then we were treated to a nice little trailer for a new production called The Woman in Black. Now THIS...THIS... was starting to look like Hammer. The costumes, the sets, the story, they all screamed a return to form for the Studio. Add in Daniel Radcliffe, right off of his titular stint as one of the most recognizable modern literary characters turned to celluloid, and I was excited.

Many modern horror films could take a cue from this film because it delivers. It delivers on all the promises of Hammer's classics and gives us a fable that while it could exist in the same period as its progenitors, never feels tired or outdated. With no heavy reliance of CGI or other modern conventions, the film itself in both setting and production has a timeless feel to it.

The story follows Arthur Kipps, a young man whose tragic loss of his wife has left him on the outs with his employer and in a last ditch effort to save his career agrees to take assignment collecting and ordering the affairs of a deceased family whose lives were also beset with tragedy. Tragedy is the crux of this story and is the driving force behind the supernatural evil that threatens to take the life of every child surrounding the derelict estate sinking in the marshes outside the small town.

Upon arrival, the town and its residents see Kipps as an outsider that can only threaten to worsen their accursed lives. After several attempts to get the young man to leave, Kipps resolve is only strengthened and he enters the estate, not knowing what awaits him. THIS, the “haunted house” portion of the films is extremely effective and sets up every scare with just enough foreboding to make you squirm waiting for the reveal. It is in this that Radcliffe also shows us how his skills outside of the Potter franchise come to him as effortlessly as they did throughout the series. Mournful, inquisitive, stubborn and grievous, Radcliffe's turn as the young accountant is note perfect, as is the long list of character actors that accompany him.

Kipps survives the night, ultimately becoming a believer in the local legend of the “woman in black” and begins to unravel the mystery behind her otherwordly pain and bloodlust for revenge. To say that his quest is a grim and dour one is an understatement and an already dark film becomes to plum the depths of darkness. It is the tone and overall atmosphere of WIB that truly brands it a Hammer film. From the claustrophobic feel of the small besieged town to the alien, yet beautiful mansion on the moors, WIB uses its paintbrush wisely, painting landscapes that are as foreign as they are familiar.

Our spectral antagonist proves to be worthy of her reputation and the scares where where she is central do not disappoint either. The evil in WIB has motives, and a thirst for revenge that is not easily slaked. It is this too that makes WIB so effective. Neither are we given a mutant hillbilly with cannibalistic hunger or an unstoppable supernatural stalker with preternatural strength and an idiot savante's knack for outwitting teenagers. We are instead given a force that feeds on loss, regret and ultimately revenge.

With a great cast, oodles of atmosphere and plenty of scares, The Woman in Black shows that Hammer can still hit the nail on the head.

Zombie Apocalypse (2011) Review

First thing you notice is the fact that we have a SyFy Channel Original Movie, this usually means pretty crappy overall with ass loads of CGI. For those who are uneducated in the ways of SyFy Originals, take any Lifetime Original production and remove the female man hating story and replace it with a Sci Fi (notice the correct way I spelled it, Damn you SyFy!) or horror story, and movie gold has been made. The funny thing is between Lifetime and SyFy originals the acting, effects, audio and overall feel are almost the same. The bottom line here is the fact that most SyFy originals just plain suck and not in the cool "so bad, it's good way".

Zombie Apocalypse is pretty much your run of the mill Z flick. You have a group of random people pulled together as the world goes to undead hell and they must find a way to survive and locate this island called Catalina. Most of these characters are transparent and I did not find myself caring for any of them. When your characters have no real back story and lack any development you cannot expect the viewer to care, much less be able to name the last one that died. If you need good character development in a story like this go watch The Walking Dead on AMC. I knew coming into this that the movie was going to feature way too much CGI and get a little corny (CGI zombie tigers?) but I decided to stick it out because as most know I watch any zombie flick that crosses my desk.



It seems someone tricked Ving Rhymes into doing another less than mediocre zombie film and this time he is billed even further down and has less involvement scene to scene. For those who do not remember he did that great remake of Dawn of the Dead and then followed it up by taking part in that complete mess of a remake Day of the Dead. We also see Taryn Manning who has been in a number of decent tv shows and movies like 8 Mile and Hawaii Five O. As for any other memorable cast members, I could not tell you because either they were pointless or I had already been on my third can of Four Loko at this point and we all know that makes things a little hazy.

Um so.... yeah, lets talk about those special effects. There is a place and time for CGI. Horror movies have gotten way too dependent on it because it is so much easier on the budget and we get that. Make-up is what makes zombies look great and numerous other horror staples like creatures, killers, torture etc. When you use CGI too much, and incorrectly I might add, you really piss of that 25 person core audience you already had. At times I had to wonder if this movie's effects were done by a high school group on a computer. I mean we had mistakes like the CGI bullets firing from guns. I do not believe a single person bothered to actually have knowledge on what a gun does or looks like when firing. Explosions were off timing and what about the zombie tiger. And as for the make-up, well when you have a zombie fighting you really need to make sure you have all that rubber and what not adhered before the shot. I noticed a time or two when you could clearly tell the make up was not right. I will also attribute this to the blind high school kids that helped the other high school SFX group.



So, what have we learned today? I hate CGI and Ving Rhymes needs to pick better movies or at least demand a bigger role. Until SyFy goes back to the correct spelling of the channel name all of their movies will suck? Anyone can write a zombie flick and SyFy will green light it all while supplying the kids needed to do your make=up and effects? It is safe to say that all of the above has come out of this review and stands as complete truth until someone tells me differently.



Pros.
It's about zombies.
Ving Rhymes

Cons.
CGI.
Story blah.
No character development.
SyFy is a horrible way to spell the channel name.

1/5

Absentia 2011 (Review)

If you came to this party looking for the next Saw or Nightmare on Elm Street you may as well turn right back around and walk out the door. This movie weighs more in the horror that you don't see and spends a lot of time building characters versus mindlessly killing them off in a gruesome manner. I am usually reluctant to see movies like this as my ADD ass prefers the kill a minute gore fests you hear me rant about on here from time to time, but this story interested me because I have somewhat of an unnatural fear of the tunnels like the one this movie revolves around. Yes, you can see everything and there is light at the end but are we really seeing "everything"? Absentia will challenge that notion and a few others along the way.

So we open with two sisters, Tricia and Callie. Neither really looked alike nor did they have similar mannerisms. They could have just as well played these two off as really close friends and left the family bit out. Tricia's husband disappeared 7 years ago and Callie has come to help get things in line for declaring Daniel, Tricia's hubby as "dead in absentia". Callie continually shows an increased interest in the tunnel across the street as she goes on her morning runs and what not. She soon finds a man who looks in need of some serious medical attention laying in the tunnel. She tells him she has nothing for him assuming he is homeless or a junkie (as she was at one point in her life) and moves on promising to come back with something. Why we did not call the police or an ambulance is beyond me. So to do the "Christian thing" as she calls it. A Tupperware container is delivered with food and left in the empty tunnel. She then comes home to find a necklace and other metal trinkets on her front porch similar to what Walter (the man she found earlier in the tunnel) had in his hand. So she takes these things back to the tunnel entrance to dump them off. As she is doing this a boy comes along with a bag and tells her not to do that, meaning do not leave things. At the same time he drops his sack at the entrance and walks away. This happens a few more times and the police are involved because trinkets are now in the house.

Meanwhile, Tricia is trying to pack up and move once this paperwork is all done for her missing husband. She is with child also and at no point do we find out whose it is. A detective seems to come around and there is a love interest there but he is never eluded to as the father. Tricia is having more and more nightmares featuring her missing husband and what looks like his distaste for the child she is carrying and the fact she is about to declare him dead. So a death certificate is finally produced and Tricia can actually move on. She has a date with the detective and as they are exiting her apartment, there stands her recently pronounced dead husband Daniel, looking like he was beaten for years straight and not given anything to eat or drink. Daniel is admitted for his condition and has no idea where he has been for the last 7 years or who/if anyone captured him. He just speaks of the "underneath" and that is about it.

A full blown investigation is underway into what has happened to Daniel and why, but before anything can be discovered he has disappeared again and Callie has relapsed back into her addiction. When Callie tries to tell them what happened they do not believe her of course as she is "using" and Tricia discovers her needle kit to prove it. Callie starts doing research and it is discovered that many animals and other locals have went missing in the area of this tunnel with no explanation. The movie goes on for about another 20 minutes and even ends without really telling you what this mysterious thing is that lives beneath the tunnel. I am not going to go into the ending because I do not want to spoil this for anyone looking forward to this title.

The acting was a little better than what I expected with Callie and Tricia both doing an excellent job of breathing some life into their characters. Some of the other smaller parts in the film either acted very stiff intentionally or just plain could not pull it off. The police officer/ love interest comes to mind along with all the other officers in this movie. You could tell this movie was shot on a smaller budget and in this case it worked for what it was. Sticking to a formula of "less is more" would be a good way to describe this film. They did not need expensive actors, mounds of CGI or special effects because the fear was more in the mind and less on the screen. There are some scares in there but really nothing that has not been done a million times before.

I had some issues with the audio on this title. I am not sure if it was the screener or my equipment. I attempted watching this using my home theater pc and my desktop, both units had real low and somewhat muddy audio. The movie could have benefited from additional music to set tense scenes, like when the husband appears after being gone 7 years. If there was music it was either way to low or drowned out by the dialog and what not.

Overall I found this title interesting and would recommend it to someone who is looking for a slower horror flick not built on tons of blood and guts. The idea was a little different and you could tell they did not want to go the route of gore to keep you entertained, but makes you wonder about an alternate world of torture and nightmare or something like that.

Pros
Decent acting from the female leads
Absentia just sounds cool
The tunnel is creepy (but all are to me)

Cons
The audio
Story (lack of history or explanation)
Acting (outside of the leads)
Ending


2/5

Review - Rubber

Since it's out of competition debut at the 2010 Cannes Festival, Quinten Dupieux's RUBBER has been piquing interests across the horror community. Labeled as "The Killer Tire" movie, Dupieux attempts to outsmart its audience with the tale of Robert, a tire left in the California desert that suddenly finds itself afflicted with a bad case of Life.

Confused about its new environment, Robert sets out to discover the world around, using its powers of psychokenesis to blow anything up that crosses its path. It starts small with tin cans and glass bottles, moving upwards to bunnies, scorpions and then human prey.

The movie starts out with a piece by a cop, stepping out of his car and delivering a monologue on the use of "No Reason" in Hollywood, evoking such choices as why is ET brown. He then orders his partner to hand out binoculars to a crowd that will be watching the events with us, breaking for the first time out of man, the fourth wall. This crowd turns into the often used Greek Chorus, commenting periodically on the events of the film.

The term "Killer Tire Movie" brings to mind the schlocky B-Movie turned Art House fare that we get from Robert Rodriguez or a younger Sam Raimi, however this film eschews the madcap action of the prior movies and delivers something that tries to go somewhere else, but seems to forget its destination. When we meet Robert as he wakes up, it’s fascinating to watch the tire explore its surroundings as something that has never before seen some common place items as a tin can or scorpion and its explosive reactions to these things, the quickly devolves into some kind of weird obsession piece as the tire begins to stalk a woman staying at the nearby drive-by motel. The movie sticks to its No Reason beliefs by stringing together a series of scenes that occur for no good reason.

As the film progresses, the kills become increasingly awkward, all head explosions. We even get a mass poisoning for, again, no reason as the cop from the beginning tricks the now seemingly held hostage binocular group into eating a bad turkey that happened to be in the desert, again, for no reason.

Rubber is as confusing as it is weirdly entertaining and will surely go down as one of those movies that are spread by weird word of mouth.

This is one of those movies that become legend not for its content but its subject matter like Snakes on a Plane or the more recent Human Centipede. It’s hard to recommend this movie to the common viewer, who will most likely find themselves confused as to what is going on, but for the more hardcore they may find a weird little art house piece that entertains on simply its “what the fuck” factor. This is a movie that would be best suited to midnight matinee viewings with a raucous audience shouting at the screen a’la Rocky Horror Picture Show.

After all is said and done, Rubber is a niche piece that will carve its name in the weird, experimental films that will garner much attention simply because of what the movie is about, but you know what, that in itself is just as fun, knowing that you are one of the few that will likely see this movie, and turn itself into an interesting conversation piece between movie fans.

Friday the 13th Double Feature

Stay up late with Jason Voorhees, if you dare, for a rare 35mm double-feature of Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) on Friday, January 13, 2012 at the historic Vista Theater in Los Angeles.

The evening will be hosted by La-La Land Records, Creature Features and ShockTillYouDrop.com, in celebration of the premiere soundtrack release of Friday the 13th Parts I-VI, A Limited Edition 6-CD Box Set, featuring composer Harry Manfredini’s acclaimed, never-before-officially-released Friday the 13th scores.

Between the films, a Q&A panel will be hosted by ShockTillYouDrop.com managing editor Ryan Turek. Special guests will include Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th Part 2’s Adrienne King, composer Harry Manfredini, and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives actors Thom Mathews, David Kagen, Darcy DeMoss, Vinnie Guastaferro and Nancy McLoughlin. More guests to be announced!

The event will serve as the release party for the Friday the 13th Parts I-VI box set, available in a limited edition of 1300 units. The box set includes 6 CDs and a 40-page book, and will be available for $70. (CASH ONLY, sales tax included). The box set will also be sold at www.lalalandrecords.com starting Jan. 13, 2012.

Special event-only merchandise, created exclusively for this screening, will also be on hand!

WHERE: The Vista Theater, 4473 Sunset Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90027
WHEN: Friday, January 13, 2012 @ 9:30pm
TICKETS: $15 EACH - AVAILABLE NOW AT CreatureFeatures.com/f13

article originally posted on www.creaturefeatures.com

Review - Panic Button (2011)

Panic button is a great representation of how a small movie with an even smaller cast can come across as a film with a much bigger scope than its means. It also represents a very real threat to us here in the digital age and that means a very real, palpable horror as well.
Panic button centers on four characters, each from different walks of life, who find themselves the winners of a social network site's contest that puts them on a private jet headed straight to the big apple for an all expense paid vacation of fun in the US. Right away, our all British cast almost gurantees a well rounded crew of capable actors (Not to digress here, but how many British productions do you see that have less than adequate acting chops among their central thespians? Scones and acting... those Brits bring their A-game). After brief introductions in the airport, our winners board their ride and are almost immediately treated to a game of " who's the biggest scumbag" MC'd by an on-board computer representing All2Gethr, the social network site that is soon to become the film's antagonist. It is here that the real horror of Panic Button shows its pearly whites. Horror is more than the killer in the closet, the monster under the bed or the maniac with a master plan to prove his demented philosophies to his victims. Horror is around us, laying in wait, packaged as a nice slick service that connects us to our friends all the while nearing closer to our jugular with a serrated blade.

Panic Button might leave a lot of horror fans thinking that the film is a little message heavy, but its point is poignant and topical enough that it doesn't feel forced. It reminds us that we are too quick to give up our freedoms and our privacies in a virtual word that is just as risky as the corporeal one. Our characters find this out quickly as their private lives and their misadventures are forced into view in front of them and their peers as the sadistic game unfolds. We soon learn that each character has their own secrets and as each are seperated from the group, they are given ultimatums from their host that could mean a grisly end for their friends and loved ones should they not meet its demands. 

I am a sucker for character studies, movies that move along by reaching into the past and allowing us to follow the backstories of its characters. Panic Buton is adept in doing this, withut using the conventinal means of flashbacks and grainy black and white footage. It manages to do so inface while propelling the present timeline forward and in doing so pushes it running time forward at a break-neck speed. If PB has any fault it is that it is almost too successful in exploring the depravity of its characters, leaving us looking for a hero, but luckily still engaged enough to let it slip by. These are characters that even when we are appaled by them, we realize that it s the human condition that it is their afliction and we must concede to our own introspection, allowing us to forgive them just enough to wish for their redemption. 

I could not help but to be reminded of the first Saw as I watched Panic Button. It has a tone and intent that mirrors the franchise starter and leads me to believe that this was only the first button to be pushed and that with a solid DTV audience, we can hope to see a little more panic in the future. 


Panic Button is available on DVD and Bluray. Check your local retail store for pricing and availability. 

Review - The Woman

Directed by Lucky Mckee and written by Mr. Mckee and Jack Ketchum, The Woman is a strangely odd tale about a man who finds a feral woman and decides to domesticate her....you know that old story. There is nothing usual about this story from beginning to twist filled end though, but,
lets start at the beginning.

The husband of a seemingly normal family finds a dirty wild woman out in the woods while he is out hunting. So, being a normal red blooded american male he captures her and takes her home to his family...like most normal people.

Once he gets her home and adequately tied up he attempts to clean her..not something that normally merits screen time but to be fair bathing usually doesn't lose you a finger, now does it? The hero, if you can call him that, then dispenses punishment for the action to "train" her not to bite. Ok..right here, right now im gonna say its hard to review this film and not give the good parts away. The problem being that the film relies heavily on "really?...did that just happen" moments..but in light of informing my audience, I will try.

Once the Patriarch of our normal little family thinks he has the wild woman docile enough he shows his family what he has found. They, being normal people and all, also think this is just peachy.

This is the point in the movie i started to grasp the real concept behind it. This film is horror alright but more of psychological than physical. You watch a family accept more and more from a man who gives less and less. It does become hard at times to sit and watch this husband/father be an ever increasing monster. To not give too much away you will realize by the end that Jason and Freddy are a lot less scary than a sociopath that you have to call dad.

That is what this movie does well. It forces you to watch a deconstruction of a family by a monster of a man. The Woman the movie is named for is actually only the catalyst to show what he can become and what he already is. In fact, they could have used any kinda woman or person in her spot. To be completely honest this may be my biggest gripe about the film. It just seems this film could have been just as effective with him doing the same things to a hooker or school teacher..maybe even more impactful in my opinion. Oh and also if your looking for tons of blood your not gonna get it but you will get well placed blood and guts... Just saying.

That being said this film makes you feel for the characters. It is downright uncomfortable at points with the extreme actions of the males in the film. The gore is well placed and not over used. The end of this film is very twisted and begs alot of questions and i like that since this film leaves most of the characters scarred and completely broken. McKee did a good job of moving the viewer through this maze while keeping them interested and slightly uneasy.

This is not a perfect film or story, but it does make you feel dirty and ashamed and you fear for the characters... and isn't that what a good torture film is supposed to do? There may be films that do it better but honestly the psychological aspect may be done better in this film than most of this genre. In the end The Woman is one girl you should not underestimate.



originally posted by contributor David Winterborne