Category: 2000’s

Directed by Pablo Macho Maysonet IV [Other horror films: The Things They Left Behind (2011), The Red Suit (2014), Fear of My Flesh (2015), Await the Dawn (2020), Tales from the Other Side (2022, segment ‘Scary Mary’] & Brian Rivera [Other horror films: N/A]

I’m an individual who’s seen plenty of lower-budget horror, and while I have a high tolerance of occasionally shoddy film-making, that doesn’t mean I’m oblivious to it when it occurs. DeadHouse is a movie with problems, and while it’s certainly not all bad, I can fairly say it’s far from good.

The story is rather basic – two sisters and a friend have car trouble while traveling, and run awry of some killers who live in a decrepit house. And – well, actually, that’s it. We get a bit of background on the killers, and there’s a very choreographed twist toward the end that I suspect would fool very few people, but then again, not all slashers are dripping in creativity.

And actually, I’ve seen DeadHouse before. A long time ago, Blog Talk Radio was a pretty decent site, and the horror forum Horror Movie Fans (a forum I’ve been of member of since 2009) had a show that I called into plenty of times. During one of those shows, we discussed DeadHouse. Now, that was a long time ago – 2010, if I had to guess – so it’s been around 13 years since I’ve seen this one, and as such, remembered very little of it (not that there was much to remember, truth be told).

If I recall, this used to be on YouTube in full, as I’m sure that’s where I watched it. Nowadays, it seems like it’s a mostly forgotten film, but luckily (such as it is), I own a copy on the 50-movie set Catacomb of Creepshows. Though I don’t care for the film overall, I am glad to have access to it, as it seems a rather difficult film to find online nowadays.

In all honesty, there’s not a whole lot to say about this one, though. The story’s rather simple, but it fails due to technical aspects, primarily the audio. The audio here was really bad – there are multiple conversations that I can’t understand at all, because it seems there was no microphone in the vicinity. Other times, the music plays over the dialogue, and little-to-none of the characters’ voices actually stand out. I’ve seen movies with poor audio before, but the consistently poor audio of this film was almost astounding.

Otherwise, you have occasionally decent (though rather low-budget) effects. Someone gets stabbed with a pitchfork, which was probably the best scene. Another gets their head slammed into a wall, causing said head to explode. Someone’s body gets slammed into a tree, causing their spine to crack. None of the deaths are that memorable, but at least they’re here.

I thought the performances were alright. Keep in mind, I couldn’t hear them a fifth of the time, but that’s not their fault. Tracey Dalton and Cara Dalton played believable sisters (and given their shared surnames, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually were sisters). Pablo Macho Maysonet IV (also the director of this film) had some occasionally amusing dialogue, but was mostly whateves. Brian Rivera had a friendly persona, and Anthony Carvalho (who isn’t even credited on IMDb at the time of this writing) was fine too. None of the performances here did much, but at least they averaged out okay.

The story, though, didn’t feel fresh enough to me. I didn’t care for the twist at the end, and given the garbled and difficult-to-understand dialogue, it was a bit of a rough one to get through, made only marginally easier by the fact I was able to rope my brother into watching this one with me (shout-out James, wherever you are brah). It’s not a good movie, and while there are certainly worse out there, never doubt that there aren’t thousands of better ways to spend your time.

4/10

Directed by Tim Sullivan [Other horror films: Driftwood (2006), 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010), Chillerama (2011, segment ‘I Was a Teenage Werebear’)]

I’ve not seen this one in at least 12 years, if not longer, so I was eager to revisit it. As it is, while this remake of the classic H.G. Lewis film was somewhat fun, I’d have a hard time saying that it was that great of a film. It’s certainly serviceable, if you’re into a gory time, but it’s not something I entirely loved.

I should say that it’s been a while since I’ve seen the original 1964 movie (though I think I’ll throw that on next), so I can’t say with certainty whether the ending they had here was also in that version, but I was generally happy with the finale of this one. For the longest time in the film, we don’t really know why the folks of Pleasant Valley, Georgia are killing these young people, aside from the fact that they seem to hate Yankees. And honestly, though I’d seen this before, I wasn’t sure if we were going to get an explanation at all, but we finally did, and I appreciated that.

Two points in the movie’s favor are the gore and Robert Englund. The special effects here are decent, and while the kills don’t always land (such as those metal teeth), they’re usually pretty solid, and live up to the moniker Guts and Glory Jubilee (though I’m somewhat disappointed they didn’t recreate the knife barrel I remember so clearly from the original).

As for Robert Englund, well, naturally he’s a big name in horror (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Phantom of the Opera, Kantemir, Eaten Alive, Galaxy of Terror). In fact, if you’re a horror fan who doesn’t know Englund, something went wrong, brahs. He’s obviously having a lot of fun hamming it up in this film, and when Robert Englund has fun, I generally have fun too.

Englund aside, we did have some other performances that worked out, including Lin Shaye (Dead End, Insidious), who took a more prevalent role in this one. Of the younger crowd (Jay Gillespie, Dylan Edrington, Matthew Carey, Brian Gross, Marla Malcolm, Gina Marie Heekin, Mushond Lee, and Bianca Smith), the only ones that really stand out are Gillespie, Malcolm, Carey (Hollows Grove), and, to an extent, Mushond Lee. Oh, and Peter Stormare (Fargo, The Lost World: Jurassic Part II, Bruiser) pops up for a bit.

Still, being a horror comedy of somewhat questionable humor, I didn’t entirely love the jokes here. Some of it was a bit much for me, such as the guy who was chasing around his pig (as he engaged in carnal relations with the animal), or some of the dialogue. No doubt some of it was pretty funny (“if I supply the peaches, can you supply the cream?”), but it was very much mixed, in my view, and not altogether my type of humor.

Despite my issues, I still largely found 2001 Maniacs fun. The finale had issues, but it was decent, and I appreciated how they pulled some things together and gave us some answers. I didn’t love all the humor here, and it’s a pretty simple movie, so I’m leaning around average with this one, if not a little lower. Loved Robert Englund here, though.

6.5/10

Directed by Robert Kurtzman [Other horror films: The Demolitionist (1995), Wishmaster (1997), Buried Alive (2007)]

I’m sure I’ve said this before in recent times, but I feel I’ve grown more cynical in the last couple of months.

I say that because at one point in time, I probably would have given this movie some mild props. To be sure, I still will – some of the special effects were quite solid – but I think that, in the past, I would have been more forgiving. Now, though, I can honestly say I thought that 95% of this film was utter trash.

To be fair, zombie movies have never been my biggest interest. Plenty are quite good, such as 28 Days Later…, Dawn of the Dead, The Return of the Living Dead, and Zombi 2, but it’s never been a subgenre that really turned me on.

That said, I can appreciate plenty of zombie films, but there’s also quite a lot of them that are abysmal, and I think The Rage is a good example of that. Some of this disdain comes from the fact I find the story absolutely terrible, and some comes from how terrible some of the CGI is, but no matter from whence my displeasure arises, I just know it’s there.

I won’t spend too long on the good, naturally. Like I said, some of the special effects are decent. There’s a mangled corpse of a little girl, and I appreciated that they had the guts to show that (as I can imagine plenty of bigger-budget movies wouldn’t have wanted to offend people’s sensibilities). Of course, said girl was mangled by hideous CGI birds, but more on that shortly.

The fact is, about half the special effects here are commendable. It’s very rarely the case, though, that good special effects make up for a failure in every other department. I don’t want to say it’s impossible – I can’t honestly say I’ve never given a movie a decent review solely because of the special effects – but it’s far from common, as I find the plot of a film much more important.

Naturally, that’s where the problem comes from. Elements of the story are interesting – Andrew Divoff’s character has a background that could have lent to a decently fun zombie movie. There’s an element here of trying to destroy the capitalist system of the USA, and as a socialist myself, I love the idea of destroying capitalistic systems. Not only that, but shots are also taken at the pharmaceutical companies and for-profit medical industry, which is all fair (as I 100% believe that, if the cure for cancer was found, those industries would do all that they could to suppress the information).

None of those elements, though, make up for how terrible the story generally is. It’s possible that, if they went in a more solidly comedic route, maybe some of this could have worked. Comedic elements are present during the last thirty minutes (much of it coming from some dwarf character), but it seems that it’s largely played straight with some campy performances (such as Andrew Divoff’s), and I don’t think it does the movie any wonders.

On that note, I don’t think any of the performances were great. Actually, I’d say the best performance in the film was Reggie Bannister (Phantasm, The Mangler Reborn), and he only really gets one scene, so that’s all the more disappointing. To be fair, Anthony Clark wasn’t bad either, but he wasn’t exactly what I’d call inspired. Ryan Hooks and Rachel Scheer were more on the generic end than anything else.

Sadly, most of the focus is on Erin Brown, Andrew Divoff, and Sean Serino. On Divoff (best known for Wishmaster), I can say that I’ve enjoyed him in the past, and I’m not averse to his hammy acting, but I just didn’t care for it in this movie. Erin Brown (Lust in the Mummy’s Tomb, Splatter Beach, Lust for Dracula, Cannibal Doctor, Satan’s School for Lust, An Erotic Werewolf in London, Holocaust Cannibal, Strip Club Massacre) isn’t at much fault here, but I wasn’t wowed by much of what she brought. Sean Serino (The Dead Matter) was given some really bad pieces of dialogue to play with (“Is God punishing us?!”), but she probably did what she could.

Another thing I have to mention – the CGI vultures were shit. There was a lot of bad CGI toward the finale, such as fire and blood (and no, nothing as grand as GRRM), but those vultures were the worst things I’ve seen since Birdemic, and I’m not much exaggerating. Just atrocious.

The plain fact here, though, is that I didn’t have fun during this. Some of the locations looked nice – apparently this was filmed entirely in my neighboring state of Ohio – and some story elements had potential, but overall, I found this a pretty terrible time. I imagine some people could get a kick out of it. Mushroomhead popped up a little toward the beginning, so maybe that’s enough to pull some people over. For me, though, I found this a struggle.

3.5/10

Directed by Tobe Hooper [Other horror films: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Eaten Alive (1976), The Dark (1979), Salem’s Lot (1979), The Funhouse (1981), Poltergeist (1982), Lifeforce (1985), Invaders from Mars (1986), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), Spontaneous Combustion (1990), I’m Dangerous Tonight (1990), Night Terrors (1993), Body Bags (1993, segment ‘Eye’), The Mangler (1995), The Apartment Complex (1999), Crocodile (2000), Shadow Realm (2002), Toolbox Murders (2004), Djinn (2013)]

I’ve seen Mortuary at least twice before, I believe, though it’s easily been ten years since the last time I set my eyes on it. I remember not being overly fond of the film, and after revisiting it, I can definitely see why that’s the case.

It’s a shame, too, and not just because Tobe Hooper directed this. Of course, Hooper is one of the big names in horror, but truth be told, there’s only a handful of his films that I actually care for (among them Poltergeist and Eaten Alive). More so, though, the first half of this movie, while not exactly good, is perfectly serviceable, and it’s only around 48 minutes in or so when things go terribly off the rails.

Tonally, the film is a bit of a mess. It seems that out of nowhere, they wanted Mortuary to become some type of comedic zombie movie. I mean, I guess that’s what they wanted – it wasn’t exactly clear to me how intentional the comedic aspects were. Still, it took a decent story and completely turned it around, with zombies vomiting and infecting others, and the fact these zombies can still speak cringe

Mortuary really had potential early on, and I was sort of surprised, given my limited memory of this one, that I was digging the film. But when it goes off the rails, it really goes off the rails, and it just ends up a major disappointment.

I didn’t have a big problem with the performances. I do wish that Denise Crosby (Dolly Dearest, Itsy Bitsy, Pet Sematary) had a bit more to add to the story, but otherwise, I thought she was solid. Dan Byrd (The Hills Have Eyes remake, Salem’s Lot) didn’t make for the most interesting character, but Alexandra Adi was fun enough, and Rocky Marquette (Triloquist) was okay. The trio of Bug Hall (The Shadow People, Arachnoquake), Tarah Paige (Otis), and Courtney Peldon (Skin Walker) could have been fine if handled differently, but boy, they weren’t handled well at all.

Past a certain point, I pretty much lost all interest in the story here. I still paid attention, of course, but my engagement was certainly not what it used to be. I can say that I don’t think aspects were tied together that well – Bobby Fawler didn’t seem to be infected, for instance, but still worked with the black mold/infected zombies for some reason, apparently? I don’t know, I thought they had a potentially fine story here at the beginning, but something got screwed up along the way (which I keep repeating, but I can’t possibly stress enough).

Overall, I can’t say that Mortuary was a particularly enjoyable watch. Seeing it again was interesting, but as a whole, the movie definitely has some issues. I’m sure this one has some fans out there, but I can’t say I’m one of them.

5/10

Directed by Zach Parker [Other horror films: Proxy (2013)]

I barely knew anything about Inexchange before watching it, but the little I did know pulled me in immediately.

See, this low-budget film was made at Ball State University, a university in Muncie, Indiana, and more importantly, where I went to college. The first scene of the movie shows the statue Beneficence, which is right across from the Student Center (and diagonally across from Elliott Hall, where I dormed for two years). Later in the movie, there’s a scene near Frog Baby, outside Bracken Library. I couldn’t tell which dorms they used to film in, but I did noticed a scene in the Teacher’s College, where I had a handful of classes.

This personal connection doesn’t necessarily make the movie better, but it does lend a very relatable feeling to it. It helps that the movie follows an awkward student as he’s bullied and mocked, only for him to get his revenge by making a deal with a mysterious, supernatural figure (who looked quite a bit like Candyman, as he wore the same type of coat). I was never bullied in college, but I did feel out of place (as described in my review of Last Night in Soho), and I felt for Sean Blodgett’s character.

Sean Blodgett made for a pretty solid lead. He got the awkward personality down fantastically, and it was nice to see his budding relationship with Tiffany Marie Wilson’s character (despite it not going exactly how he wanted). Wilson, for her part, played her role pretty well, and seemed a decently likable character. Both Todd Richard Lewis and Bradley J. Gunter did great at playing a pair of bullying dicks, and Andrew W. Burt shined as the mysterious blindfolded figure.

The ending wasn’t anything surprising, but what was surprising, and pleasantly so, was the score throughout, which had a dark, occasionally ambient, vibe to it. Not only was the music solid, but toward the end, there was a pretty good use of editing, showing someone having intimate relations for the first time and, at the same moment, a guy getting tied up with barbed wire and splashed with corrosive acid. Overall, the gore here isn’t the focus so much as the psychological issues that Sean Blodgett’s character goes through, but there are a few scenes here that were good.

I can’t say that Inexchange is that special a film, but the fact it was filmed largely at Ball State does make it a more interesting one for me, and while the story’s not exactly what I’d call original, it’s still a decently-made film for the budget they had. It’s not special, but even so, I didn’t have a bad time at all with this one.

7/10

Directed by Wes Craven [Other horror films: The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Stranger in Our House (1978), Deadly Blessing (1981), Swamp Thing (1982), Invitation to Hell (1984), The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Chiller (1985), Deadly Friend (1986), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Shocker (1989), The People Under the Stairs (1991), New Nightmare (1994), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997), Cursed (2005), My Soul to Take (2010), Scream 4 (2011)]

It’s been a long while since I’ve seen Scream 3, and in fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen it once. Because of that, going into this one was a treat, as I pretty much forgot everything about it save that it took place in Hollywood. While it’s not quite as memorable as portions of the second movie were, I think Scream 3 is still an okay way to spend your time.

For being an almost two hour movie, I do think it moves at a pretty solid pace. There are segments in which there’s little in the way of murder, and the film focuses more on the investigation and the mystery, but as I was invested in the mystery (and I should say I was incorrect about someone who I thought involved), that wasn’t an issue.

Also, Sidney (Neve Campbell) has a somewhat smaller role in this film, but toward the finale, she certainly puts the work in, so it’s not something that’s really a negative. I think it helped that they brought back both Dewey and Gale – even if it’s not the familiar faces we might want to be focused on, we still care about where their storyline is taking them.

The movie does feel a bit neutered insofar as the kills go, though. I mean, it’s not like the original movie was particularly gory, but this just feels light in the way so many slashers from around the same time period felt (such as Valentine, Urban Legend, and Cherry Falls). Given I was interested in the mystery, and figuring out who the killer is, it wasn’t something that took that much away, but I definitely noticed that this veered a bit more comedic (though still within reason), seemingly in exchange for better kills.

Though she’s not really the focus for half of the film, it’s always nice to see Neve Campbell (The Dark). The movie throws more at her character, and it’s all a good time (especially that chase in the mock Woodsboro). Both David Arquette (Eight Legged Freaks) and Courteney Cox were quality, though I have to admit, I’m still not a big fan of Cox’s character. Patrick Dempsey was a fun character also, and definitely one to make your suspect list.

Because it’s a meta movie that takes place in Hollywood, there are actors here who play counterparts – for instance, since I’m awful at words, Parker Posey plays a fictional version of Gale. It’s a fun dynamic – Posey (Frankenstein) doesn’t get along with her real-life counterpart at all, and Emily Mortimer (Relic) did sort of feel like Sidney circa the first Scream. Though not every actor character does much, such as Deon Richmond (Hatchet) and Matt Keeslar, it was still a fun element to mess around with.

There are some additional familiar faces here – Liev Schreiber (The Omen, Phantoms) reprises his role as Cotton Weary, Jamie Kennedy made a surprising return as Randy via a videotape he made, and Lance Henriksen (Man’s Best Friend, The Pit and the Pendulum, In the Spider’s Web, Damien: Omen II, Gehenna: Where Death Lives, Mansion of the Doomed, Hellraiser: Hellworld) showed up for some reason. I mean, don’t get me wrong, his character is important, but I entirely forgot he was in this movie.

I don’t know Scott Foley, but he was pretty solid here. Two other faces, though, are ones I do know, being Heather Matarazzo in a single scene, and I recognized her immediately from Hostel: Part II, and then we have Patrick Warburton (Better Watch Out, and voice actor in Kim Possible, one of the best cartoons of all time). As soon as I heard Warburton’s voice, I knew it was him, so it was a nice surprise to see him pop up, and not in just a single scene either.

So we have a tamer story that seems to focus more on the mystery than the kills, and while that might disappoint some, like I said, I tend to think this is just as good as the second movie. The finale isn’t amazing, but it got the job done, and though it’s probably one of the most generic of the Scream films, it’s still not a bad sequel at all.

7/10