Kolobos51 Reviews

There's Someone Inside Your House (2021)

Not literally every horror movie has to be about misfits.

[4/10 · 11 October 2021]

The second this movie started and I saw a white boy in a letterman's jacket, I thought "Well, he's going to turn out evil then die." Since IT Chapter 1, it seems like every horror flick has to be about bullied nerds and outcasts and I'm legit sick of it. That is not everyone's school experience so maybe let's get a little variety in here.

Aside from that, generic slasher, not much terror, unmemorable all around, James Wan's influence is not felt at all.

Come to Daddy (2019)

A thriller, not a horror film, and we've seen the twist done before.

[5/10 · 14 February 2020]

Elijah Wood stars as a hipster that goes to visit his father in a remote, ocean side lodge. He and his dad have not seen each other since the dad walked out on him and his mom as a child.Once he arrives, Dad (Stephen McHattie of a History of Violence and Pontypool) greets him less that warmly. The old guy drinks too much, shows no remorse for ditching him, and screams into the phone late into the night.

Ultimately, our hero learns his father is not what he seems leading to a twisty, noirish story involving kidnapping, bank robbing, and sudden bouts of extreme violence. The movie seems to want to be a Joe R. Landsdale style weird mystery and I guess it is. It just never gets off the ground.

The two leads, Wood and McHattie, are good but they can't save the movie. Wood's character is the guy we're following and frankly, he just isn't that interesting. I've seen the movie's big twist before and done better. It's reasonably well shot and some of the violence, all of which is in the third act, is shocking and impressive but the movie takes so long to get going it just wasn't worth it for me. Not terrible, but not a recommend either.

The Lurker (2019)

I like slashers, I like Scout Taylor-Compton, I did not like this movie.

[3/10 · 5 February 2020]

I like slashers and I wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt because I like the lead actress. Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie's Halloween movies, Cynthia, Feral) stars as a high school student and yes, she is very, very clearly too old for her part. But I was willing to let that slide because I like the actress and let's face it, this is a movie set at Crystal Lake High. You shouldn't expect much, just some dumb slasher fun. Unfortunately, it doesn't even deliver on that.

Taylor-Compton is good in her role and it's actually one of her better parts. She's starring in the school production of Romeo and Juliet and is popular but has some problems. Her play's director hates her, she has a weird relationship with her mom's boyfriend (and honestly she only looks about four years younger than either of them), and she has a dark secret the movie is constantly alluding to. And she's pregnant, which is given away in the trailer.

That's all well and good. What sucks is how incredibly slow this movie is. It's really structured more like a high school melodrama with the kills few and far between. The movie is just dull and by the third act when things actually start happening, I was already pretty checked out. Considering how short this movie is, it's incredible that it still feels so boring and drawn out. I only recommend it for Scout Taylor-Compton's most die hard fans.

Pickaxe (2014)

Most fun grade Z horror flick I've seen recently.

[6/10 · 6 December 2019]

First and foremost, of course this movie isn't good. I watched it because I was bored and hadn't seen Tiffany Shepis in anything in a while. Shepis was a B list scream queen in the 2000s appearing in low budget movies that were sometimes goofy (The Hazing), sometimes entertaining (Nightmare Man), and sometimes unwatchable (Nympha). Anyway, I've always liked her and her output has slowed in recent years.

She appears in this with A. Michael Baldwin, the other other guy from the Phantasm movies, as the sole survivors of a notorious rampage that ended with the killer being put down and them going their separate ways. He became a Sheriff, she became an obsessed alcoholic. Then some naked girl with no motivation resurrects the killer and he emerges, looking like a giant guy in a Halloween costume and nowhere near as cool as he does on the poster. Unsurprisingly.

Cut to a group of dumb, really dumb, people (I refuse to call them high schoolers) on their way to some screamo rock show. They holed up in a cabin and find themselves right in the path of the pickax wielding killer. And their only hope is Shepis and Baldwin, who are in the movie enough not to irritate their fans who only saw the thing because of them.

Positives for the movie are that it is relatively ambitious, with numerous locations and many different characters. So, it never gets boring. There is a fair amount of gore, some laughs that are so stupid you might smirk, really trashy women flashing skin left and right, and just general stupidity abound. In short, the movie's a hoot if you like low tier, cheesy horror.

The biggest downside is the image quality, which is relatively poor.

But I'd watch a sequel.

Clown (2019)

Waste of time, it's an Asylum movie and not even a rip off of It.

[2/10 · 20 September 2019]

The Asylum is a film production company that specializes in "mockbusters" or movies that are cheaply slapped together to mimic a recent major release. Think of movies like Alien vs. Hunter, I am Omega, Atlantic Rim, etc. I assumed this was their It knockoff and thought it might be a hoot but it's not. This is an incredibly bland, slapped together dead teenage movie about a wronged clown fooling people into his cheaply constructed funhouse. Young people wander in and most of them die. Uh spoilers, I guess. This thing sucks. A really cheap and poorly made horror movie needs to deliver on at least two of these three things to warrant watchable status: sex, violence, laughs. None are present here. The only reason I even gave it 2 stars is because I liked some of the girls in it, especially the one in the glasses. Terrible movie, though.

Big Top Evil (2019)

Amateurish Rob Zombie knock off has its moments, but is mostly boring.

[4/10 · 20 September 2019]

This movie really feels like it should have been released in the late 2000's. The characters behavior, all party hardy bro stuff, the rock soundtrack, the grimy faux grindhouse style, and the harsh violence all make this feel like it should have been released sometime shortly after movies like The Devil's Rejects and Hostel. Heck, it even features Bill Moseley in a sort of extended cameo as the murderous leader of a carnival.

In this movie, gypsy carny crooks rove around looking for people to swindle or enslave and force to take part in their act. Enter a group of generic dumb young people that go off the beaten trail looking for whatever and find the killers. Bloodshed ensues.

Unsurprisingly, this isn't a very professional outing. It's cheap looking and not well put together. Acting is, eh, okay, and the Bill Moseley stuff is fun.There's also a gorgeous female carny dancer played by Austin Judd. Okay, so it's obvious she's a rip off of Sheri Moon's Baby Firefly but I still really liked her and hope to see her in more stuff.

The big issues here are pacing and payoff. The gore is mostly crammed into the second half of the movie and by the time it kicked in, I was already half checked out. There are some okay kills though. And a note to the filmmakers, don't tease nudity if you're not going to deliver. That happens multiple times and it's better if you just don't bother instead of going to the trouble of setting up a sex scene or a shower scene and then shooting around the girl's modesty. Just stupid and pointless.

This movie bored me more than anything and it's overall pretty skippable. There are worse movies but I still wouldn't fool with it.

3 from Hell (2019)

Zombie bounces back after a series of fan alienating films.

[8/10 · 18 September 2019]

Rob Zombie is possibly the most controversial, off beat, and, in my opinion, interesting filmmaker working today. But after the trippy Halloween 2, the downright surreal Lords of Salem, and the haphazard 31, he is on shaky ground with his own fanbase. And I openly admit I enjoy all of his crazy, wild, over the top movies to varying degrees. But I get why people didn't love his last three movies. So maybe it was logical he would go back to the well and bring back his most iconic characters for a direct follow up to his undisputed masterpiece, The Devil's Rejects.

As it turns out, Otis (Bill Moseley), Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), and Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) all survived the bloody shootout at the climax of the previous movie. My buddies have a fan theory that it has something to do with Dr. Satan but he is not mentioned here. All three are in jail 10 years later and the film opens with an interview from Spaulding and Otis. Soon after, Otis stages a bloody prison break with his never-before-mentioned petty crook brother Winslow (Richard Brake who the played the great villain Doom Head in Zomvie's previous movie 31).

Otis, eager to solidify his name as "Public enemy No. 1", and WInslow, a goofy but dangerous sidekick along for the ride, decide their next move is to break Baby out of jail. In the meantime, Baby has gone absolutely NUTS during her time in jail and she babbles, rages, and attacks, making life miserable for the guard stuck watching her (an unrecognizable Dee Wallace).

The prison warden is a good old boy jerk played by Zombie regular Jeff Daniel Phillips. He and Otis have a Hannibal Lecter vs. Dr. Chilton style rivalry that we know will have to pay off. But there are plenty of others aware of the notorious Firefly cult.

I have to say two things about this movie. First, I loved the first half of this movie. It does everything I wanted out of a Devil's Rejects follow up. The cast is great, the violence is brutal, and the dark, vulgar humor Zombie enjoys so much mostly lands. It is fantastic seeing evil antihero Otis back to murdering and mayhem while it's fun seeing Baby back in action and literally nuttier than ever. I also love that Rob Zombie refuses to back off his fearless, grimy, and utterly un-PC style. This is a mean, nasty movie that makes no apologies and in an era of overly cautious, tame entertainment this is a great antidote to the safe spaces we are used to.

The down side is that the movie is a little on the plotless side. It feels like a prison break movie but the second half of the movie, which involves a trip to Mexico, feels almost like a totally new movie has suddenly started. At that point, 3 From Hell suddenly feels less like a psycho horror movie and more like a Sam Peckinpah movie on crack.

I also wish Sid Haig and Danny Trejo, who returns as one half of the bounty hunter duo the Unholy Two, had more than just cameos. I have to admit that I kind of enjoyed how totally amoral this movie is. Otis and his crew are the leads and this flick never pretends that the 3 from Hell are not its literal heroes. But others might take issue with that.

I liked this thing a lot and it is good time for fans of rough and brutal cinema. It's just a little under devloped. But Rob Zombie should win some fans back and I truly hope we get another evil adventure with the Firefly clan in the future.

Edit: Sid Haig's reduced role was apparently due to his failing health and not any kind of artistic decision on the part of Zombie. Rob Zombie apparently worked very hard to ensure Sid Haig was in this movie at all. And at least Sid Haig got that one last good movie before his death.

RIP Sid Haig, a clown that danced for us all for nearly 50 years.

Madness in the Method (2019)

Mewes the actor, thumbs up, Mewes the director, thumbs down.

[4/10 · 7 August 2019]

As long as he is remembered at all, Jason Mewes will be known as Jay of Jay and Silent Bob. In that cycle of movies from Clerks through to Clerks 2 (and soon Jay and Silent Bob Reboot) , two things were clear, the guy was genuinely funny and not a professional actor. This wholly fictional movie kind of takes that and runs with it.

Mewes is desperate to break out as a serious actor and gets hold of a legendary book on method acting that will change his life. Yes, this entire movie hinges on a paperback book with a forgettable title. And that book literally drives Jason Mewes insane.

The shocking thing is that Mewes is a literal sociopath in this movie as he rather violently rampages through Hollywood trying to get a coveted role in a buzz filled drama being directed by his frequent costar Brian O' Halloran (of Clerks, Mallrats, etc.).

First off, in true Kevin Smith fashion, every name actor in this movie is a cameo, including, oddly Kevin Smith. I actually thought based on the advertising that this movie was going to be an interesting, fictionalized retelling of their long time friendship and working relationship. It's not. This is strictly a vehicle for Mewes and, as an actor, the guy actually shows surprising range and ability. But as a director he falls flat.

This movie is slapstick as hell sometimes but gets oddly dark in other places and Mewes cannot handle the tonal shifts at all. Honestly, by the end, I was more than ready for the thing to be over and a little surprised by how real the movie gets in some places, (Smith and Mewes get into a screaming match over the latter's well publicized struggles with addiction) followed by something really silly like Mewes going to murder a professional rival with a nail.

Along the way. one of the guys who wrote the movie keeps popping up as an annoying and unfunny idiot detective determined to bring Mewes down. Tough guy character actor Vinnie Jones (The Midnight Meat Train, Snatch) gets blamed for his crimes at one point, and the late Stan Lee wonders into one scene for a title drop moment.

I laughed a few times but the flick just isn't that good. I think with better writing and direction Jason Mewes actually could turn in a really solid performance but this isn't the movie that will break him through. Although he may get more work off it in the future.

Hellmaster (1992)

It's not THAT bad.

[4/10 · 18 July 2019]

This movie's reviews would have you think it was absolute trash. It's not. It's not good, don't get me wrong, it's just not that bad either. The 90s were a wasteland for horror. The genre bottomed out in the 80's due to a mixture of bad press and lowest common denominator filmmaking, and this certainly falls into that category. It's a movie made by kids in their early 20s about a psychotic professor (the always great John Saxon of Enter the Dragon, Tenebrae, A Nightmare on Elm Street 1, 3, and 7, and From Dusk Till Dawn) who has accidentally mastered the ability to control people's minds. So, he does the next logical thing, builds a weirdo family of mutilated Hellraiser knockoffs and returns to the college campus that turned on him to exact revenge. Again, not a great movie. But not a terrible one either. There's enough weird visuals, John Saxon evil (never one to phone it in, he does enough self-important evil maniac to satisfy his fans) and general weirdness to keep die hard horror fans interested. But the thing is the 90's were something of a dead zone for horror. There were a few great movies (In the Mouth of Madness, Scream) but, generally, they were weird, disjointed garbage. And this movie is certainly is that. Relative to lousy straight-to-video movies, it's above average, but still not good. I've seen both the director's cut and the theatrical version and, honestly, there's not much difference. A few character beats and that's it. I didn't hate it and there's much worse but the movie only works as a time capsule or as an interesting example for fans of B-list icon John Saxon of what happens when he plays a power drunk psycho. A few decent visuals, mid-level gore, and one tacked on nude scene. Watch if you dare...

Pet Sematary (2019)

A lousy remake I would just as soon have skipped.

[4/10 · 21 April 2019]

I love the original Pet Sematary. It has aged poorly but once you get past the fact that it almost looks like a TV movie by today's standards, it's a fantastic Greek tragedy brought to (relative) modern times by Stephen King's phenomenal script and Mary Harron's edgy, envelope pushing direction.

This movie however had plenty of promise, with a solid cast, interesting directors (the guys that made Starry Eyes), and great source material, and. honestly, I was shocked by how bad it is. The editing is horrible and the script is lousy, and the movie fails to hold together AT ALL. It's silly, it's not involving, and the only people I think should watch this are teenagers with 10 second attention spans that need a jolt in every scene to stay interested.

John Lithgow as Judd, the friendly and knowledgeable neighbor, is not given enough to do. Jason Clarke is underdeveloped as Louis Creed and his actions seem obligatory rather than natural. And so does this movie.

The thing is that when this movie follows the original story, it feels like bullet points, a necessary series of "well this is supposed to happen" moments. Then, when it deviates from the original, it seems silly and forced. And don't even get me started on how terrible the ending is. I really can't recommend this to anyone except die hard fans of the cast and kids that don't care and just want some cheap thrills. And there are some legitimate fear moments. But not many. I disliked this movie more than I ever thought I would and would place it towards the bottom of the heap as far as horror remakes go. This is just not a good movie.

Watch the original. Even watch the silly, over-the-top sequel. Or watch It again. Just don't watch this. You absolutely will regret it.

The Candy Snatchers (1973)

Nothing like Last House on the Left.

[3/10 · 21 April 2019]

Despite clearly trying to imitate the marketing of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, this movie is a mild, fairly standard kidnapping plot. It hits all the familiar notes and, honestly, just watch the Mel Gibson flick Ransom instead. It's better acted while neither deliver on pure exploitation levels.

Glass (2019)

Not as good as I hoped, not as bad as I feared.

[6/10 · 18 January 2019]

M. Night Shyamalan returns for the third, and presumably final, film in his superhuman trilogy that began with Unbreakable, then continued (sort of) with Split. Those films' stars, James Macavoy, Bruce WIllis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Anya Taylor-Joy return along with Spencer Treat Clarke as Willis's son and Charlayne Woodard as Jackson's mother.

As implied at the end of Split, this movie opens with Willis's character David Dunn, along with his son acting as his techie sidekick, are hunting the Horde, Macavoy's multiple personality monster. Both actors slide into their signature roles with great ease and the only thing more fun than watching Macavoy's uncanny ability to swap personas mid-sentence is watching Bruce Willis, who has famously sort of stopped caring, and stopped trying, when it comes to his film roles. But his old collaborator Night managed to wake him up and for the first time in a long time, he is giving 100% effort. And I liked last year's Death Wish but even then, he seemed to be firing on roughly 80% of his ability.

I absolutely enjoyed the first third of this movie. It's exactly the sequel to Unbreakable we all wanted and given that movie is widely considered to be Night's best, this is a good thing. But then TV star and frequent Ryan Murphy collaborator Sarah Paulson enters and, as given away in the marketing (this movie's marketing is seriously spoiler heavy giving away almost all of the movie) she locks both hero and villain in an asylum, along with Samuel L. Jackson's Elijah Price, now permanently confined to a wheelchair and seemingly catatonic. This second act deals with Paulson's doctor trying to convince the three that they aren't what we all know they are. The middle of this movie is pretty bad and not helped by Sarah Paulson, who is just terrible. She's done solid work on the small screen but she is really out of her element here and it doesn't help that the middle is just kind of boring anyway.

There are two central problems with Glass. The first is the tonal problems that are arguably inevitable when trying to make a sequel to two largely unrelated films existing within two different genres. This film alternately feels like a drama, a horror film, and a X-Men movie. The other issue is that the movie has no lead. Samuel L. Jackson is good returning to a character that he gave what was arguably his best non-Tarantino performance as years ago. And he is as close as this movie has to a lead despite the fact that he has next to no dialogue in the first 2/3s of the movie. This is just so unfocused that it doesn't really have a central plot. It just has a bunch of disconnected ideas that are roughly pulled together in the final act.

I didn't hate this movie but for a sequel nearly two decades in the making, it feels like Night rushed this thing. More work and careful craftsmanship could have pulled the movie together a bit better. Maybe some of the filler could have been cut. Perhaps Night would have realized that Bruce Willis logically should be the lead here. As is, the movie significantly reduces his role in the second half and that's really where the movie struggles. It's okay, I guess, like Night's last couple movies. As with The Visit and Split, this movie is competent enough to float in our times, when good filmmaking is so rare that we've essentially been trained to praise "good enough" movies because at least they're better than the really bad ones. But this is certainly no classic.

Haunting on Fraternity Row (2018)

Better than I expected at least.

[6/10 · 4 November 2018]

With a title like this it feels like the movie has little hope of being anything but a dumb, lowest common denominator fear flick. This isn't that. Honestly, it kind of felt like Scream 2 by way of James Wan.

In this movie a group of frat bros are throwing a giant, end of the year Luau party and are immediately expelled for cultural appropriation.

Just kidding, this isn't a documentary although it is a found footage movie and the gimmick here isn't as obtrusive as it can be.

The guys unwittingly unlock an ancient evil hidden beneath the house which begins to wreak havoc during the massive, and I do mean massive party. The plot is pretty straight forward and the acting and characterization are surprisingly solid. There is a fair amount of humor that's totally organic to the situation and a little nudity both male and female.

The CGI isn't great but I've seen worse. The big problem is that it just takes way too long to become a horror movie. With the exception of a few quick jump scares, almost all the horror is saved for the last 20 mins of a movie that is actually over 90 mins. I clearly remember checking the clock at the hour mark and thinking this thing really needs to get started soon. And it did and the finale is a strong, chaotic set piece with a higher, and less predictable body count than you'd think.

This movie really isn't half bad and I suggest paying to see it, supporting the creators, and checking out whatever comes next from them because with a little improvement, they might make something really worthwhile next time.

Suspiria (I) (2018)

Slower than slow burn, but a wild finale that actually lives up to the original.

[6/10 · 4 November 2018]

Suspiria is the shockingly long remake of Dario Argento's expressionistic masterpiece of surreal, supernatural horror. This version stays fairly close to the plot of the original, but it removes much of the horror and replaces it with... Well, not a lot. The first 90 mins or so of this thing are just brutal. But then the movie just goes nuts and despite having a completely different third act than Argento's film, it actually starts to feel like a remake of that deranged master's class in terror.

This movie hits the beats you would expect for the first part. Special guest star Chloe Grace Moretz is panicking, half crazed with fear that her prestigious dance academy is run by witches. She runs for her life and something bad happens to her. Presumably. Like I said, a great deal of the horror has been removed here, perhaps unsurprising given this is the director of last year's homosexual coming-of-age romance Call Me By Your Name. So, instead of overt, gory terror, we get repeated cuts to an ancient psychiatrists suspicious of the academy while the women that run the place (led by the always fantastic Tilda Swinton) endlessly argue about the direction the academy should move in under its mysterious matriarch, the Mother.

In the meantime, as in the original, an American student recently arrived (Dakota Johnson) is indoctrinated into the school's weirdness while her suspicious friend and fellow student (Mia Goth of A Cure for Wellness) snoops around.

There are direct call backs and specific plot points taken straight from the first movie and a solid, if somewhat less memorable soundtrack provided by a member of alt rock band Radiohead. The acting is strong also but my lord does the pacing need work. This movie should be AT LEAST 30 mins shorter than it is. If you recall the brilliant horror film Hereditary from earlier this year, you may also know that great, 2 hour film originally ran 3 hours and was wisely cut down for a leaner run time. This movie would have seriously benefited from the same disciplined editing.

Suspense is not consistently sustained and the characters are too thin to warrant such a bloated run time. On top of that the absolutely excessive, and largely unnecessary amount of time given to the psychiatrist character just goes nowhere and simply did not need to be there.

Suspiria 2018 is an interesting but very flawed horror remake that is worth watching but you should probably wait for the home release where you have the option of pausing or even fast forwarding.

Boar (II) (2017)

Boar=Bore

[3/10 · 25 August 2018]

I'd like to say three things about this movie right out. First, this is not a remake of the ozsploitation cult classic Razorback, although the openings are almost identical. Second, this is slightly better than the average Syfy original creature feature by grace of a solid cast and a (mostly) practical creature. And third, this movie is a poorly structured mess that doesn't have enough low brow thrills to work as a guilty pleasure but also lacks any semblance of suspense that might have made a, you know, good movie.

The movie is about a giant wild boar that emerges from nowhere to terrorize a small Australian town. The first half focuses heavily on John Jarrat (Wolf Creek franchise) as local, regular Joe farmer whose simple, happy life is disrupted by this monster. And I do mean monster. Even though it's technically supposed to be nothing more than an unusually large boar, it has large patches of rotted and bloody skin that make you think it's more like a zombie boar or something. Zomboar??? Sounds like a be to me.

Then, the second half of the movie shifts focus to Bill Mosely (The Devil's Rejects, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) and his family, briefly introduced at the beginning, who are on a trip to see their giant Uncle (Nathan Jones of Mad Max Fury Road this director's previous film Charlie's Farm).

I didn't care enough about the characters to really mind when they died. It was weird the way the movie essentially shifts gears halfway through to be about something different. There aren't enough casualties, although the few there are were generally spectacular enough to warrant watching. The simple fact is that I had totally lost interest by the end and just barely made it through the whole thing.

Boring is not a good word to use while watching a creature feature and that's why I say you really should just skip it. Maybe watch Pig Hunt instead. It wasn't great but it was still kind of a loony good time. Or watch the surrealistic Razorback. Just don't watch Boar. There's simply not enough here to recommend it.

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018)

The first decent Puppet Master movie in decades, but still not great.

[5/10 · 25 August 2018]

I've seen at least a little of every movie in Charles Band's incredibly long running franchise. The fact of the matter is that really only the first two movies were any good and everything after that ranged from barely watchable to downright awful.

The Puppet Master brand is basically all that has kept series creator Band's company Full Moon alive since the 80's and he has mercilessly milked it, sometimes openly cheating fans in the process. There were PG-13 sequels (rolls eyes), movies that were clearly shot back-to-back to save money (groan), and even a freaking clip movie (screams in anger)! So, when I heard that the brilliant, uncompromising genre author and filmmaker S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99) was writing the next film in the franchise I thought one of two things: either Zahler was a longtime fan that wanted to write the first truly great Puppet Master movie OR Zahler had a car payment due and knocked out a script in a weekend. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be what happened. Puppet Master Littlest Reich is not a great movie but it's still better than any other sequel since the second movie.

This film is a reboot which reimagines the puppet master, anti-hero Andre Tulon, into an outright villain portrayed by horror legend Udo Kier (Blade, Flesh for Frankenstein, Suspiria, Fear Dot Com). Kier is fantastic, playing a hideously scarred, wantonly sadistic Nazi sympathizer that wants to continue the Third Reich's mission of a pure white race and intends to do so, even after his death, with the help of black magic and an army of puppets he mass produced and sold prior to an unfortunate run in with the cops.

Flash forward to find a divorced, broke comic book writer (Thomas Lennon of Reno 911) in possession of one of Tulon's puppets, Blade, which he finds among his dead brother's things. There is a convention being held at Tulon's old house where collectors intend to auction off all the old dolls belonging to the notorious psychopath.

Everyone loads into a hotel, the puppets all come to life, and much, MUCH bloody mayhem ensues. Along the way we are joined by fantastic scream queen Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, From Beyond, and the original Puppet Master) as the retired cop that took Tulon down and professional b-movie tough guy Michael Pare (The Lincoln Lawyer and basically every Uwe Boll movie) as the cop currently on the case.

Let me just say that the script for this movie was either hacked to pieces or sorely underwritten. Concepts and ideas are introduced and dropped at a moment's notice. Crampton's character has no pay off, supporting characters fall in and out of the story, plot points are introduced only to be dismissed immediately after, the tone is all over the place constantly swapping from dumb fun gore to weirdly preachy anti-nazi talk, and the ending makes no sense and just kind of drops off with a lame bit of sequel baiting.

On top of that, the director makes some serious technical errors. Some scenes are underlit, the editing is at times hard to follow, and dialogue is recorded too low sometimes.

As far as its places in the franchise, the sloppy plotting is nothing new and this movie is a great deal faster paced than most of the other films which, after part 2, started leaning towards cheap time killing devices over actual action. The direction is unusually bad, though. Most of these movies had a generically competent, TV sort of vibe to them but this movie really kind of felt like one of those ultra-violent, straight-to-video horror films of the late 90s.

I'm fine with the revamp on Tulon, especially because Kier is so great in the role but I do really wish he had been in it more. I hate the redesign on the puppets. They look cheap and action figure like, lacking the artistry that made the original puppets so distinct. I also dislike that the puppets no longer have any personality. They're all just mean little killing machines. There's no real sense they are actually ALIVE and instead all feel like instruments used by a primary antagonist that's a little too off screen to really resonate.

Thomas Lennon and most of the rest of the cast are strong (with the exception his annoying, motor mouth boss) and I did have fun watching the movie. However, thinking about it afterward, I couldn't help but feel that this movie was a little too flawed to really say I liked. It was alright and gore hounds and puppet fanatics will probably have at least a little fun, but it could and should have been a lot better.

Blood Feast (2016)

A strong finale, once you finally get to the blood feast...

[4/10 · 25 August 2018]

This movie is a remake of a classic Herschell Gordon Lewis film. Lewis, known as the Godfather of Gore, did extreme and extremely silly high concept horror films like The Gore Gore Girls and 2000 Maniacs (remade as a Robert Englund flick about a decade ago). I'm not a huge fan of his and my interest in this movie had more to do with its marketing, which swore it was a hardcore, over-the-top gore film. Honestly, though, this movie seems almost apologetic for its intense content.

It tells the story of an unstable, American restaurant own that moves to Paris with his wife (Caroline Williams of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Hatchet 3) and college aged daughter (Sophie Monk of The Hills Run Red). He is going broke and goes off his meds then promptly begins hallucinating, believing he has been ordered by an Egyptian goddess to perform a blood sacrifice in her name.

He begins murdering and cooking young people while his suspicious wife noses around and his oblivious daughter is romanced by a local cop. Blood is spilled but it's often slightly off camera, which is disappointing. The opening is pretty awesome and the finale is great but the entire middle is a snooze. A lot of this has to do with a dull supporting cast and a stilted leading man. Caroline Williams and Sophie Monk, the only two actors I had heard of beforehand, are great but they're kind of peripheral to the movie for the most part.

I can't really recommend this movie. The trailer is stronger than the actual film and I found it kind of boring overall. There's certainly worse out there right now so I guess, if you're desperate, give it a look. Just don't expect too much.

10 to Midnight (1983)

An interesting but not entirely successful genre bender.

[6/10 · 11 August 2018]

It's easy to forget that in the 80s, action movies were every bit as violent as horror films and 10 to Midnight is pretty harsh. It feels like they're attempting to make both a Friday the 13th and a Death Wish movie AT THE SAME TIME!

Charles Bronson plays a tough cop dedicated to his job. He stumbles onto a serial sex killer and obsessively hunts him down only to have the system fail him leading to a truly shocking bloodbath at the finale.

10 to Midnight is Cannon film, thus it's over-the-top with lots of sex and violence. It's also through and through a Bronson film so there's a lot of tough guy grandstanding and complaints about a broken legal system that values the rights of the accused over those of the victim.

The positives of this movie are that it has a truly solid cast. Bronson actually seems to care about his performance (not always the case in his later films), the villain is creepy and frightening (he likes to attack his lady victims while he is totally nude), and the kills are intensely effective.

The negatives are that the movie is just a little too slow. There are too many cop movie cliches and I didn't care at all about Bronson's partner. Honestly, I feel that this movie would have worked much better as a straight forward giallo film.

This is a cop movie that occasionally turns into a slasher film which leaves a movie that can't find a consistent tone. Fans of slashers and cop flicks are both likely to be put off by the movie but it is unique enough that I get why it has a cult following. It's an above average latter day Bronson film and probably at least worth a look for fans that don't mind a little (or a lot!) of bloodshed.

Feral (2017)

A well shot mess.

[4/10 · 26 May 2018]

Feral is not a good movie. I wasn't that impressed with the ads and mostly just saw it because of the leading ladies. Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie's Halloween films), Renee Olstead (Unfriended), and Olivia Luccardi (Channel Zero) are the leads who, along with a couple of lame guys, go on a camping trip after finishing college then run across werewolves er, ferals.

This movie starts with a gore soaked cold open in which special guest star Lew Temple (The Devil's Rejects, 31, The Walking Dead) seemingly tortures a monsterous female to death. While watching this, I had two thoughts. The first was that this is a pretty cool start to the movie. The second was this terrible feeling that this was probably the best part of the movie. And, aside from endless cleavage shots of its lead actresses, it is.

And yes, this movie is so bad that the cheap, juvenile thrill of pretty girls in tank tops ends up being a major highlight and that is a majorly bad thing.

The five kids on the camping trip are boring and annoying AT THE SAME TIME. There's a sort of vague, millenial SJW vibe to these kids that made me think I wasn't even supposed to like them. There's a listless, bored quality to the most of the actors, who never seem that worried about what is going on, to the characters, that are lucky to have one trait a piece, and to the pace, which is just slow and dull.

This movie could REALLLY have benefited from a sense of humor, some gratuitous sex and violence, dumb humor, anything! It's just so boring. By the end I was checking emails and just waiting for it to be over.

I like Scout Taylor-Compton but her character is such a Mary Sue. She kind of reminded me of the ridiculously capable gal from You're Next but lacked even that character's charm. She's really just too capable too early and the character has nowhere to go. Lew Temple is equally one note and Renee Olstead isn't even in it that much. Olivia Luccardi is the only one that manages to develop much personality and I had the impression that was mostly because of quirks the actress threw in herself, like flipping a character the bird behind his back because he's being a jealous prick to her.

The only memorable thing here, if you can call it that, is that the lead couple is two girls instead of a hetero normative couple. The movie doesn't do anything with them though so, really, instead of getting a bland, underwritten romance between a man and a woman, we get a bland, underwritten romance between a woman and a woman.

The creature effects are okay but that's about it. I didn't like this movie and only gave it a 4 because I had the impression that at least some people involved were trying. The DP shoots the film well, the makeup effects are solid, and Scout and Olivia Luccardi do what they can with their roles. Still don't recommend spending money on it though.

In short, as I said at the beginning, Feral is just not a good movie.

Scarecrows (2017)

Goofy fun first half, but fails in the second half.

[4/10 · 29 April 2018]

This movie starts out so silly it almost feels like parody but it's not. It just is that stupid. It's a group of amusing simpleton kids that go looking for a "lagoon" and end up on the property of a deranged farmer that likes turning people into scarecrows. I actually kind of enjoyed the first half of this movie. It's dumb funny, has lots of eye candy, and if you like stupid, low budget horror movies, you can probably imagine the kind of dumb fun I'm describing. The problem is the second half. When the movie starts trying to take itself seriously and be scary, it isn't. It's boring. The humor and gratuitous skin are gone and they're not replaced with anything. The gore is minimal and the scares are non existent. They should've just kept to laughs the whole time because they don't know horror. I was really, really struggling to stay awake through this thing.

Annihilation (I) (2018)

Not as smart as it wants you to think.

[4/10 · 18 March 2018]

Annihilation was meant to be the big mainstream breakthrough for the filmmaking team that made Ex Machina. Instead, it pretty much tanked, with much of the discussion of the movie in the media centering around politics (why an all female cast, why change the race of the lead) and most of the fan discussion online centering on whether the movie was too smart for the mainstream. My reading is this: if you go into this thing expecting something smart, you can see that but really, this is just an incredibly self important sci-fi film that could have worked but just doesn't.

Natalie Portman stars as a college professor in a deep state of grieving because her soldier husband (Oscar Isaac) is dead only for him to walk into their home like nothing happened after a year. Only now, he seems deeply shell shocked, won't discuss where he's been, and has a serious illness that gets him and her quarantined at a military base so shadowy even the viewer can't really tell what is going on in there. I know I sure couldn't. Whatever it is, Jennifer Jason Leigh is in charge and she's been closely monitoring an inexplicable phenomenon called the "Shimmer" emanating from meteor strike at its center. Portman rather easily secures herself a spot on the next expedition into the Shimmer which will be led by Jason Leigh herself. And here is the first logic bump, why keep allowing people just to wander into this thing if no one ever comes out??? Maybe attach tethers to them, try going in with vehicles, something. But whatever. The next bump comes immediately after. There is very little development on the team. VERY LITTLE. I came to identify them as sad smart one (Portman), obsessed leader (Jason Leigh), one with slight accent, timid one, and hot headed one. It's not clear why they were chosen. They certainly don't seem to be preeminent in their fields and show no special levels of skill once inside. Portman was nothing but a college professor, for goodness sake. She did have some military experience but nothing suggests her service was particularly distinguished.

They get inside the Shimmer, find that their devices don't work, they lost time, and everything living, plant and animal, is being mutated. We learn this from an early encounter with a gator that has shark teeth and let me say that as pretty as the exteriors are, lush green vegetation lit by a rainbow prism created by the Shimmer, the special effects are not good. That first gator looks only slightly better than the gator from Lake Placid and that was what, 15 years ago now?

Later, characters start dying or going crazy despite the fact that we know next to nothing about them. So who cares what happens to them? I spent most of this movie just plain bored. With a seemingly intentional slow pace and no characters to latch onto, there was just nothing that I really cared about happening on screen. Normally I would have clicked off, and honestly I kind of wanted to, but decided to force my way to the end on the basis of reviewers claiming it gets dramatically better as it goes on. Saying it gets better really is just saying that it starts bad and gets marginally better. I wasn't so bored later but I still can't say it was good and to be perfectly honest, there's not much to recommend here.

If you want dumb creature fun, watch Deep Blue Sea. It you want heady horror, catch The Void. Hell, if you want a genre film with an all female cast, check out The Descent. Even the acting can't really save this thing because good actors are left such incredibly one note characters. This just feels like a fan fiction retread of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" that thinks it's "2001 A Space Odyssey" and isn't nearly as good as either.

Flay (2019)

Bland Blumhouse wannabe.

[3/10 · 10 March 2018]

I normally wouldn't bother reviewing a movie this bland but since no one else has bothered so far, I'll take a few minutes and maybe save someone else 90 mins.

A junkie mother dies under mysterious circumstances which the movie in not one but two cold opens assures us was supernatural. After that, her daughter has to return home to settle some affairs and care for her rebellious teenage brother. The supernatural force which is barely Slender Man starts menacing them in a series of whatever scares that might land for very young viewers.

The acting, the story, everything is just unmemorable. It's not even that the movie is remarkably bad. It's just blah. When you picture grade Z horror made by people that were neither exceptionally incompetent nor remotely talented, this is exactly the movie you see.

Death Wish (2018)

Above average remake that was better than I expected.

[7/10 · 4 March 2018]

Let me start by saying this movie had A LOT going against it. The release date was pushed, both the star and director are in massive career slumps, the director has never stepped outside the horror genre, remakes are rarely any good, and the marketing wasn't great either. Honestly, the main reason I saw this was the novelty of seeing Bruce Willis on the big screen again. But let me just say I was really pleasantly surprised by this movie.

The plot is vaguely similar to the original Death Wish, a movie that many forget was not actually a revenge film. It was a vigilante film while the sequels were more straight forward revenge flicks. This movie kind of splits the difference. Bruce is a buttoned down doctor living a nice, quiet white collar existence with a loving wife (Elisabeth Shue) and a sweet daughter. Then a random break in leaves his family destroyed. He tries to be a good guy, wait for the cops (played by Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise) to do their job, but Chicago is in the middle of a crime wave and it becomes increasingly clear that this crime will go unpunished. Fed up, he decides to take the law into his own hands, stopping random crimes and becoming a media sensation. Then, he finally gets a lead on the people that hurt his loved ones and does something about it.

Okay, I'll start with the positives and there are plenty. First, Bruce Willis has taken the time to truly craft a character. He's a quiet, sorrowful man and Willis rarely takes the opportunity to do the sort of grand standing common actors that are asked to mourn onscreen. Later, the subtle pleasure he takes in hurting criminals is actually kind of unsettling. As the movie goes on, he evolves into a full blown action hero and it's actually kind of interesting watching this character become the Bruce Willis we all know and love. A couple of the villains and Vincent d' Onofrio as Bruce's brother also stand out.

The action is well staged and Eli Roth finds a solid balance between action and drama, in my opinion, better than the first which was a little slow at times. I also like that this movie modernizes the story and touches on actual questions people would be asking if this really happened (for example, a great deal is made of the fact that the vigilante is white while several criminals he kills are not).

As for the negatives, there are some weak supporting actors. The guy playing the father in law was particularly bad. There are a couple scenes that just don't work. The car jack scene that's all over the trailers feels like it was thrown in because Eli Roth movies always have torture in them. An AC/DC music cue also seems tonally wrong and the climactic shootout is a little small in scale.

Modest problems aside, this is a really good, hard R action film with relatable characters, a true blue movie star, a good story, and no pretense of being anything more than entertainment. In short, I wish there were more movies like this and I recommend it to fans of old school action movies.

The Ritual (I) (2017)

I read the book, saw the movie, these are my thoughts.

[6/10 · 10 February 2018]

Netflix has been cranking out original content in an effort to stay relevant as more and more online competitors rear their heads threatening to take a bite out of the rental and streaming juggernaut's business. This latest effort is directed by David Bruckner, who did "Amateur Night, "easily the best segment in any of the V/H/S films, and a forgettable Bella Thorne Amityville sequel that debted on GooglePlay. It's based on a pretty solid novel and, for the first half, stays true to the source material. The second, simply put, does not.

Is this movie good? Sure, not great, but solid enough and not as bad as some of Netflix's other original features. Is it as good as the book though? No.

The story is the same. A group of old pals from Britain nearing middle age hike off the beaten patch in the Netherlands and end up lost, having to brave bad weather and carry an ornery and injured mate along the way. And there's this THING stalking them. They find mounting evidence of pagan rituals, mutilated animals in trees, and evidence that the locals, if there are any at all, may not be eager to help.

The acting is solid enough, although I didn't recognize a single name in the movie. The film is exceedingly well shot, capturing the claustrophobic dread of being hopelessly lost in wild. The effects are good as well.

The downside is that the characters are weak and because this is such a character piece, it just causes the whole movie to fall a little flat.

Then there's s the third act. It's good enough, I guess, and if I hadn't already read the book it might have bothered me less but dropping a sublplot involving a deranged death metal band and replacing it with a more standard cult just disappointed me and made the story feel more familiar than it had to.

I was little let down by this movie but, again, I think that was mostly because I dislike the alterations from the book. It's a perfectly fine horror film that, like the book, feels a little lopsided on the wilderness vs. creature elements. Give it a shot, but don't expect a classic, or something quite as strong as the book either.

Hostiles (2017)

Christian Bale is brilliant, but the movie...

[5/10 · 27 January 2018]

I had read quite a bit about this movie leading up to seeing it this weekend but, curiously, had nod seen a single ad. All I really knew was the Christian Bale's performance was getting raves (big surprise), the basic plot synopsis, and that I had enjoyed Scott Cooper's previous films. I had a bit of a bad feeling going in that it might be slow, preachy, and obvious but considering one review came right out and said this was the best American Western of the last twenty years, I was cautiously hopeful.

I should have listened to my instincts.

Hostiles isn't as unbearably overlong and self-important as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but it's close. In fact, it might not even be quite as good as that movie. At least I was fully engaged with all the characters in that film. In Hostiles, it really is just Bale and the people standing around him. The movie is way too long, very slow in the middle, and just not very engaging.

I can't say I hated it because the acting is great all around, except for a badly out of her element Rosamond Pike. Rory Cochrane, Scott Wilson, Jesse Plemmons, Wes Studi, Adam Beach, Stephen Lang, Ben Foster, etc. all turn in great work even if their characters aren't that strong. And then there's Bale. Hostiles works best when thought of as really great showcase for the brilliance of Christian Bale, how natural, how carefully constructed, how emotionally raw, and at times remarkably subtle a performer he can be. I truly believe in the future his name will be mentioned in the same breath as Marlon Brando and Robert de Niro. But he really needs to find himself better material. Like Exodus, the last thing I remember seeing him in, Hostiles shows him doing great work in a barely okay movie.

The problems I have with this movie are that the lead actress is stiff and awkward, playing a complex character whose arc does not even remotely land. The supporting characters are mostly disposable with only Cochrane, Studi, Foster, and a guy named Jonathan Majors who plays the sole black member of Bale's battalion really making any impact.

The pacing is all off. The movie grabs you by the throat in the first thirty minutes then just kind of tapers off until the finale. And even then, the plot isn't nearly as smart or impactful as it thinks it is. Most of the time, you'll know exactly where a scene is going from the moment it starts. Honestly, I knew exactly where the movie was going after reading its plot synopsis on IMDB.

Christian Bale plays a soldier ordered to transport some captive natives across Western country which he reluctantly agrees to do because he has been at war with natives in general and the chief, played by Wes Studi, specifically. And he picks up Pike's pretty widow along the way. If you watch movies, you can guess every beat pretty much from there. Brotherhood of man, whites are just savage as the native "savages," romance blooms in unlikely places, etc. Oh, we're all awful for taking native land. The movie is just too proud of itself, too filled with Indie movie "big important movie" pretension to be as obvious as it is.

I wanted it to surprise me, to deviate a little, to do just one thing I really didn't expect but it just doesn't. At least not until the last ten minutes of the movie when Scott Wilson rides in for his bit part.

I can't say I didn't like the movie at all. I did actually really like the first third, Christian Bale is amazing, and there are great moments sprinkled throughout. I just wish Bale could get more work in better films. PS Hey Hollywood. how about letting Bale and Tom hardy face off again, but without the masks this time. It would be a treat for film fans and almost certainly better than the last few Bale films released.