vivalaricicles Reviews

Hitman (I) (2007)

disappointing....

[2/10 · 21 April 2008]

slick, professional, calculating and cold. These are the words that are suppose to describe 47. Instead we got the generic Hollywood action film that feels as if the link to Hit-man was thrown into the script before it was filmed.

It honestly felt as if the writer, Skip, had written it as a no brainer action film and then thought how can i make it more interesting? I know! I'll change the leads characters name to 47 and call it hit-man. The similarity between the game and the film stop there. i'm slightly baffled as to whether or not i've seen the same film as some people, the positive reviews saying that it is faithful to the films must of been written by Xaviers army of henchman trying to big him up.

the one thing i think i expected from the film was one super slick assassination that showed us just how cool, cold and dam badass 47 was. instead we got a unbelievably lame kill right at the beginning. i don't want to talk about it. i don't actually know why i'm wasting my time writing about this film, if only to warn others not to see it.

Mortuary (I) (2005)

Mortuary (2005, Tobe Hooper)

[4/10 · 26 December 2006]

by Matty Budrewicz

Review may contain spoilers.

"A Tobe Hooper zombie film? Great!" were my first thoughts on Mortuary when I first heard about its happening just over a year ago. Hooper was, after all, one of my favourite directors and was a director who had proved himself capable of handling zombie(esquire) action before- albeit very briefly- in the London takeover sequences of his troubled 1985 space vampire flick Lifeforce. The insanity levels of zombie mayhem in those particular segments of an other wise daft but entertaining sci-fi horror were, in my eyes, one of the stand outs and to see an entire Hooper movie about the undead (fully fledged undead too! Not just some alien possessed posers) would, I thought, provide some cracking results.

Mortuary, at its best, plays like an amalgamation of Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak and Lucio Fulci's neo-Gothic House by the Cemetery with it's story of an old worn down funeral home becoming occupied by the Doyle family who, like the protagonists in the aforementioned movies, discover a less than savory surprise in there home. The family consist of mother Leslie (played gallantly by Pet Sematary star Denise Crosby), son John (Dan Byrd) and daughter Jamie (Stephanie Patton) and the three of them mark Hooper's return to the idea of family- a motif which he utilized and dissected in previous films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and it's sequel, The Funhouse, Poltergeist, Invaders From Mars and Spontaneous Combustion.

However, what begins as an almost Lovecraftian nightmare (what the writers were aiming for according to a few interviews) soon descends into confusion of tone and, finally, plot. For one thing, is the film an all out horror or a comedy? Mortuary flies back and forth from a scare sequence (of which there are a few quite effective little numbers, Hooper once again proving that he is still more than capable of pulling the rug out from under us) to a moment of comedy or parody (I say parody- I hope to god it is, what with the standard "You don't know about your houses' previous residents?" speech. Please, let it be that Hooper was using it ironically…) and does it so heavily that there is no bridge between the two, often with the comedy appearing from nowhere. The writers, however, are just as much to blame for this.

Writers Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch- - scribes of Hooper's own Crocodile and his 2003 redux of sleaze classic Toolbox Murders- also seem content to play fast and loose with coherent story telling, flipping in as many left field "twists" and curveballs in as possible but never staying still long enough to actually explain them. Where, for instance, in the hell did the great frigging cthulu monster come from and what exactly was the deal with the deformed Bobby Fowler? Instead of offering any sort of answer the writers seem content to let Hooper do what he can with there underdeveloped script, making the film look as good as possible with some excellent cinematography from d.p. Jaron Presant and allowing his fondness for mutated maniacs to appear once more- just as it did in Chain Saw, The Funhouse and Toolbox Murders- in an attempt to cover up the tomb-sized plot holes.

Oddly enough, though. I did enjoy the film despite of its flaws (or maybe because of them?). However, when it comes to Hooper and CGI, you'd think that after Crocodile's Photoshop like effects ole' Tobe would know to steer well clear of anything remotely digital… Oh dear… Mortuary gets ** out of *****

The Dentist 2 (1998)

A great sequel to a great original

[9/10 · 19 February 2005]

Already I'm quite biased to this film as it is one of my all time faveourite horrors (and Brian Yuzna rules). However, this film still provides 90 odd minutes of mouth-bleeding madness for those who just want a bit of horror entertainment. If you enjoyed the first Dentist, this is well worth checking out as it eclipses the original movie by far, upping the ante in terms of gore, madness and bonkers direction courtesy of splatter master Brian Yuzna. However, if the you thought the first Dentist was awful or (if you're squeamish) a bit too gory, stay well away! This is definitely not for the faint hearted. All in all, a superb sequel to an ace original and well worth checking out if you're a horror fan (even if you're not I recommend it though).

My fan-boy rating- 10/10