Category: 2000’s

Chakushin ari (2003)

Directed by Takashi Miike [Other horror films: Ôdishon (1999), Tennen shôjo Man next: Yokohama hyaku-ya hen (1999), Tajuu jinkaku tantei saiko – Amamiya Kazuhiko no kikan (2000), Bijitâ Q (2001), Koroshiya 1 (2001), Katakuri-ke no kôfuku (2001), Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu (2003), Sam gang 2 (2004, segment ‘Box’), Aku no kyôten (2012), Kuime (2014), Kamisama no iu tôri (2014), Gokudô daisensô (2015), Terra Formars (2016)]

Honestly, I have to say I’m a bit surprised by this one, and in this particular case, it’s not a positive surprise. This Japanese movie, despite the plenty of decent things I’ve heard about it over the years, just strikes me as a rather average film. It’s okay, it’s certainly watchable, but is it special? I don’t see it.

Chakushin ari, perhaps better known as One Missed Call, feels like Japanese ghost movie 101. It’s based on a novel by Yasushi Akimoto, and has plenty of what you’d expect from a Japanese ghost movie, such as a long-haired child spirit, some mystery behind the spirit and why the spirit is wreaking havoc, and the same jump scares you’ve likely seen before.

None of this makes this movie bad, but it does feel a little generic. It is true, also, that I’m not a big J-horror fan – honestly, I could probably count the modern Japanese horror films I’ve seen on two hands, and that’s after a finger or two gets lost in the garbage disposal. To be fair, I do rather love Dark Water, but this is directed by Takashi Miike of all people, so I sort of expected a little more.

I was mostly able to follow this story along though – sometimes Asian horror films confuse the hell out of me (such as A Tale of Two Sisters or Ju-on), but this one seemed pretty simple. I didn’t really care for the ending, but still, at least the story was okay. It even added spices of dark subject matter such as parental abuse into the mix, which of course is always good fun.

Only two performances really mattered here, and that’d be Kô Shibasaki (Battle Royale, Kakashi / Scarecrow, and Kuime / Over Your Dead Body) and Shin’ichi Tsutsumi. The amusing thing is, I wasn’t sure of the name of Tsutsumi’s character until the final twenty minutes or so. Shibasaki does solid with the role she has, and Tsutsumi is a comforting character at times, but neither one is particularly note-worthy.

What is sort of odd is that I got the sense I knew where this film was going – we open with a group of six friends eating together at a restaurant, and I was expecting a Final Destination-type thing in which each of these six friends would have to deal with the cell phone curse, but after it passes through three of them, the other two just disappear, and we’re left with Ko Shibasaki’s character, which felt sort of odd.

Actually, on the whole idea of the curse, in which someone gets a call from themselves in the future, sort of foretelling of when they’ll die, this movie does have an aged technological feel to it, as everyone is carrying around flip phones. What’s amusing about this, in my perspective, is that I’m an old-fashioned guy, and in fact, I still use a flip phone to this day, so that added an extra element to the movie, and at least personalized it.

Even so, One Missed Call just felt on the generic side to me. There wasn’t much of an emotional impact toward the end – I mean, they tried, but it just didn’t hit me in the same way the end of either Black Rat or Dark Water hits me – and while I can appreciate the song during the credits, I still think the movie comes out to about average. Not bad, just average.

Like I said, though, I’m not the biggest fan of J-horror, so it’s quite possible that it will do more for those who are than it ever would have for me.

7/10

La terza madre (2007)

Directed by Dario Argento [Other horror films: L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970), Il gatto a nove code (1971), 4 mosche di velluto grigio (1971), Profondo rosso (1975), Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980), Tenebre (1982), Phenomena (1985), Opera (1987), Due occhi diabolici (1990, segment ‘The Black Cat’), Trauma (1993), La sindrome di Stendhal (1996), Il fantasma dell’opera (1998), Non ho sonno (2001), Il cartaio (2003), Ti piace Hitchcock? (2005), Giallo (2009), Dracula 3D (2012), Occhiali neri (2022)]

The third part of the Three Mothers trilogy (following Suspiria and Inferno), La terza madre, better known as Mother of Tears, is pretty awful. It’s just not good. Even as a stand alone movie, it suffers, which is nothing compared to how much it suffers as a follow-up to two classics of horror. The ideas here are generally okay, but the execution is atrocious.

And I suspected that going in. I’ve held off on watching Mother of Tears for years, despite having bought it on DVD for $4 a couple of years ago, because I’ve heard it’s pretty lackluster and disappointing. It’s a pretty big shame, as you’d hope the final movie in a trilogy that began in 1977 would pack a hell of a lot more punch than this one did.

For positives, I can say that the gore here is okay. I was going to say ‘solid,’ but changed my mind last second, as some of it does feel a little cheap (and in fact, the whole of the movie shares the same feeling in my view). Still, there’s a woman who’s disemboweled and gets her tongue ripped out, someone gets their arm cut off, another gets their head smashed in, someone else gets their eyes pierced, and others get stabbed. It’s decently gruesome at times, which is sort of fun, but unfortunately, the story’s too messy to really take advantage of the decent gore.

Well, perhaps it’s not fair to call the story a mess. It gets it’s point across, and I’m sure Dario Argento knew what he was doing. I just didn’t personally care for the apocalyptic vibe of it, nor all the witches converging on Rome. It makes sense that the final movie in a trilogy would feel larger in scope, but by doing that, Mother of Tears doesn’t feel remotely similar to either Suspria or Inferno, both of which felt more intimate and personal affairs.

The base idea here was fine. I could have done without a character needing to master their innate magic (just by concentrating, she can turn invisible – quality stuff), and the whole finale felt especially weak to me. I did appreciate how they specifically referenced the events of Suspria, and spoke about Suzy Bannion by name, but this just didn’t have the same feeling that I associate with Dario Argento.

I also have to admit that I didn’t really buy into Asia Argento’s performance. I was surprised to recognize her (from the Vin Diesel movie xXx, but has also been in the 1998 Phantom of the Opera, The Stendhal Syndrome, and Trauma, Dario Argento movies all), but her performance just felt rather weak to me. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast, including Cristian Solimeno, Adam James, even Udo Kier, likewise failed to leave an impression on me.

I don’t know how much of this is necessarily the movie’s fault – I just couldn’t jive with this one. I liked some of the ideas, but the apocalyptic nature of the story didn’t do much for me (and I can honestly say I thought the 1997 movie The Eighteenth Angel does it better). I did like the scene in which a mother, under whatever mania was going around, threw her baby off a bridge, but overall, I left this quite unsatisfied.

For some people, perhaps this long-await finale worked. I just know that I didn’t care for it, and while I tried to keep my expectations low because I had heard lukewarm things about this one, I do think this is perhaps my least favorite movie from Dario Argento thus far.

5/10

Fear of the Dark (2003)

Directed by K.C. Bascombe [Other horror films: N/A]

A nostalgic favorite of mine, I first saw Fear of the Dark when I was a kid. I remember being home from school, likely sick, and catching this on television. It’s a movie aimed at a younger audience, but as I was a younger audience (if I was older than 12, I’d be surprised), it worked out well, and even since then, I’ve been a fan of this movie.

It’s a pretty simple story with a limited cast – a young boy deals with the dark thing (shadows that come to life, as they oft do) while he and his older brother are home alone. And that’s pretty much it – there are only five relevant characters, and if you discount the parents, just three. It’s a small cast, made with what I’d imagine to be a lower budget, but it works out beautifully.

Part of this is because, as a kid, I grew up on Goosebumps. I watched Goosebump after school all the time, and I’ve seen most of the episodes (along with owning all the ones released on VHS). Fear of the Dark feels like an hour-and-a-half long episode of Goosebumps, albeit mildly more mature (in regards to language). It feels like what got me into horror, in other words, and seeing it at a young age, during my early exploration into the genre, really cements this in my mind.

To be fair, one could say it’s a bit slow. The final 15 minutes have a ton of action, but there’s only a handful leading up to the finale. Honestly, this doesn’t bother me, as it just increases the tension, which is made even better by the ongoing lightning storm throughout the film.

Jesse James (The Amityville Horror, Dead Souls) does great as a young kid dealing with an intense, and justifiable, fear of the dark, and his interactions with Kevin Zegers (Shadow Builder, Vampire, The Hollow, Komodo, Wrong Turn), who plays his older brother, strike me as very genuine. In fact, playing their parents are Linda Purl (Visiting Hours) and Charles Edwin Powell (Screamers), and they also strike me as genuine, so the family in the movie feels like a real family.

The only other cast member worth mentioning is Rachel Skarsten (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer), and while it’s true most of her scenes aren’t until the final 25 minutes or so, she did pretty well, especially with some more emotional material (such as the loss of her brother, along with her fear of dogs).

The night things, or shadow people, do look a little silly. The main one wears what seems to be a cowboy hat, and there’s another one who wears a top hat. Honestly, they don’t look too bad, but it’s more that they pop up in a dark hallway to some raucous rock music, and while it’s not ineffective, it does look a little goofy.

Many of the other scares are decent, though, such as a figure in someone’s closet, or one of the brothers being stuck in the attic with overactive shadows, or faces and hands pushing the wall out, as Freddy famously did in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Actually, aside from some really hideous CGI cockroaches/beetles toward the finale, most of the action-orientated horrors are decent.

Honestly, though, Fear of the Dark is more than just the night things and the scary events the two brothers face during a stormy night – it’s about a strained relationship between an older brother who thinks his younger brother is too old to be scared of the dark, and a younger brother who doesn’t believe he can confide in his older brother, even when he’s being physically harmed by the dark. It’s a good movie showcasing the two of them growing closer, and I think that’s another big draw I feel toward it.

It can’t go without saying that another important aspect is that it’s from this movie that I first heard the song ‘Ski Bum’ by Les Megatones, which is pretty catchy and never fails to amuse me. It pops up during the opening credits, along with playing during the end credits. It doesn’t really seem like the type of song to be in a movie like this – it’s the opposite of anything I consider ‘dark’ – but it’s a fun song, and has graced my iTunes for years.

Naturally, a lot of the stuff in this movie isn’t likely to impress those who don’t already enjoy the 90’s, kid-style horror of Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, but as I grew up on both of those shows, this movie hits the right spots, and though it’s flawed in some aspects, I’ve never seen this movie and not had a good time with it. Honestly, I doubt I ever could.

Fear of the Dark isn’t going to be a movie that every horror fan loves, but it’s one of the movies that got me into the genre, and I personally love it.

8.5/10

The Ruins (2008)

Directed by Carter Smith [Other horror films: Swallowed (2022)]

It’s been some time since I’ve seen this film. If I had to guess, I’d say around ten years or so. I can’t remember if I’ve seen it once or twice, but I do remember enjoying it whenever it was I last saw it, and I can say that, after seeing it again with fresh eyes, that’s largely still true.

Based on a novel of the same title by Scott Smith (a novel I’ve not read, but am interested in possibly reading in the future), the idea is pretty simple – six unfortunate souls in Mexico decided to go to a ruin that’s not good for their health, largely out of their control. It’s a somewhat bleak film, as there’s very little within their control in the situation they find themselves in, and it’s done pretty well.

The cast is solid – the six performances really worth mentioning would be Jonathan Tucker, Shawn Ashmore, Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey, Joe Anderson, and Sergio Calderón. It’s true that Calderón doesn’t have a lot to do aside from look threatening, but he does it well. Ashmore (who I know as Bobby Drake from the X-Men films, but has also been in Mother’s Day, Devil’s Gate, Wolf Girl, The Day, and Solstice) is more likable than Tucker (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), but Tucker’s character is pretty good.

Jena Malone (Antebellum) reminded me of an actress on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t place her. Either way, Malone was pretty solid, and more stable than Laura Ramsey (Cruel World). I was hoping that Joe Anderson (The Crazies, Abattoir, The Reckoning) would have a bit more to do than he did, as I rather enjoyed his character, but it wasn’t to be.

The gore here can be pretty grisly. See, plants that grow around this ruin can get into your body if you have an open wound, and this happens to a couple of people. Not only does someone have their body cut in multiple places to pull out weeds, another individual has their legs cut off. That particular scene wasn’t too gory, but there’s a later one in which someone, under heavy mental stress, takes a knife to themselves in order to rid their body of the parasitic weeds, and that one can be trying.

It’s at this juncture that I should profess an odd love of plant-based horror. There’s not too many examples that come to mind, but those that do (including the somewhat awful Revenge of Doctor X) are films I have somewhat of an affinity for. I’ve always found malicious plant-life (or not even malicious – it’s just how they evolved) an interesting idea in horror. I have to imagine it comes from my love of Goosebumps as a child – Stay Out of the Basement, both the book and the two-part episode, are favorites of mine.

And on that note, I do wish we had some opportunity in this movie to learn more about these plants. Sure, the terror is in not knowing or understanding what exactly the characters are facing, but even so, it’d have been nice to have a biologist’s perspective, or even one of the Mayans who could perhaps manage some broken English.

Related, I understand where the Mayans are coming from, but wouldn’t it have been better to have a constant guard around the ruins as opposed to just trying to contain the problem after it was too late? Preventative measures, and all that.

I am aware that certainly they tried, but the problem is that the Mayans speak, well, Mayan, and can’t effectively communicate with people who don’t speak Mayan. If you’re trying to prevent people from going near this particular ruin, it might benefit them to at least learn Spanish, as many of those who approach the ruins could at least effectively be warned away.

Oh, and one last thing – did it never occur to any of the characters to possibly burn the plants? Sure, it might have been suicide, but I’d have definitely tried to light the plants on fire as opposed to starving to death with roots and weeds growing inside of me.

Despite those small issues, The Ruins is a well-made film. I don’t know what was changed from the novel, if anything, but it’s a high-budget film that’s somewhat dreary at times (and definitely could have done with an ending packing a bit more of a punch), plenty gory, and an overall enjoyable watch. It’s not stellar, but it is good.

7.5/10

Scary Movie (2000)

Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans [Other horror films: Scary Movie 2 (2001)]

I’ve never really been a fan of parody films, which ties into the fact that once the comedy in a movie is too goofy, my interest level dries up. Naturally, this doesn’t bode well for Scary Movie, because it’s really just way too goofy for me to enjoy whatsoever.

What’s interesting is that I recently revisited Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth, another post-Scream parody movie, and I had an okay time. I still rated it below average, yes, but there were some legitimately funny scenes and quotable quotes in that movie that I dug a lot.

I can’t say what’s different about the humor here, but Scary Movie wasn’t anywhere near as fun. There were some amusing ideas, and I’ll touch on them in a bit, but I had a lot more fun with Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth. For one, I don’t think SIYKWIDLFtT was quite as over-the-top as this, and perhaps more importantly, there’s not a whole ton of gross-out comedy in that film, while Scary Movie does have some present (which isn’t my type of humor at all).

To expand on that, there were jokes dealing with women characters having testicles (well, technically the character was a man, but people thought he was a woman, so whateves), wild pubic hair (which was done away with by electric garden shears), a blast of semen that plasters someone to the ceiling, and naturally, plenty of flatulence jokes, because that lowbrow humor works for some. It’s just not my type of comedy, and I don’t really like seeing it. Gross, sexual humor isn’t my type of thing.

Now, I can say that I enjoyed the ending of the film. No, not the horrible Matrix-inspired scenes, but the last couple of minutes. I’ve seen this movie before, but I actually forgot who the killer was (and in fact, wasn’t sure if this would even reveal who the killer was), so when it then copied the end of The Usual Suspects (which I’ve seen plenty of times, and actually watched a couple of weeks ago, at the time of this writing), I cracked up. That was pretty funny, and I didn’t see it coming.

Though it didn’t have much in the way of substance, I did enjoy some of the humor around Ray’s character (played by Shawn Wayans), who was a ‘closeted’ gay guy, and related, while it didn’t add a hell of a lot to the movie, seeing Marlon Wayans cackle at everything was sort of amusing too. But when it comes to comedic high points, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth has this one beat, and it’s not even close.

Anna Faris is one of the few here I actually liked. Regina Hall’s character annoyed the hell out of me, Dave Sheridan’s (Camp Twilight, Bloody Summer Camp, Blood Craft) Doofy was way too stupid for me, and Lochlyn Munro (Freddy vs. Jason, The Blackburn Asylum) unable to stand out. In fact, most people here, from Shannon Elizabeth (Jack Frost, Thir13en Ghosts) and Jon Abrahams (House of Wax, They) to Cheri Oteri and Rick Ducommun, weren’t notable. Again, both Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans occasionally cracked me up, but neither added much, and Faris, while consistent, didn’t add a whole lot either.

Largely focusing on parodying Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer (though not afraid to reference other popular films, such as The Blair Witch Project, American Pie, The Matrix, and The Sixth Sense), the story was about what you’d expect. Now, again, I want to give props to the ending. Again, I have seen this movie before, but it’s been so damn long, I truly didn’t see that coming, which surprised me.

Even so, much of the humor of Scary Movie just didn’t do much for me. I didn’t really have that much fun here. For the right group of people, Scary Movie could work, but as for me? Yeah, I’ll stick with Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.

4/10

The Hunt (2006)

Directed by Fritz Kiersch [Other horror films: Children of the Corn (1984), Surveillance (2006)]

I’ve vaguely known of The Hunt for a while. I imagine I first ran into it after hearing it was directed by the same guy who made Children of the Corn. As it was, the movie wasn’t half-bad. Well, it’s probably still below average, but honestly, The Hunt had a decent amount going for it.

What I found most intriguing about the film is that, for a lot of it, I had no idea where it was going. Sure, the main story – two guys (Robert Rusler and Joe Michael Burke) and a kid (Mitchell Burns) get lost in the woods while hunting – made sense, but it was the deeper stuff I wasn’t sure about.

At first, I thought this was going either a slasher-esque route, with a focus on snuff films. Then I thought perhaps it was something to do with government experiments, and then the idea of aliens came to mind. Before aliens, though, I was considering a Most Dangerous Game-type situation where humans were being hunted. Hell, at one point, I even thought of evil trees. It’s not that the movie’s wild or anything, but knowing as little about the movie as I did going in, I just had no idea where it was going.

The biggest problems here, I think, would be an unsatisfactory finale mixed with an uneven execution. I think part of this has to do with Robert Rusler’s character, who, along with leading me toward incorrect conclusions about the nature of the movie, was also just such a big dick that he was hard to care for. The story here is decent, and while the whole scope is just merely glimpsed come the finale, I sort of wish they gave us a little more meat in some form.

Oh, and while I sort of liked the whole “This is where the characters are after the event of this movie” thing at the end, it felt close to claiming the events of the film were true, and my hatred for that should be well-documented by now (as my thoughts on both Paranormal Activity and There’s Something in the Shadows demonstrate). This film does has a bit of found footage feel, but it certainly is more than that, so if that is one of your concerns, try not to let that turn you off.

Joe Michael Burke took a bit to grow on me, but he ended up playing a pretty decent character. As I’ve said, Robert Rusler (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge, The Unwilling, Blood Feast) played a bit of an asshole, but he did it well enough. Cliff De Young (who I suppose I recognize from The Tommyknockers, but he was also in such films as Dr. Giggles, The Craft and The Westing Game) was decent, though he wasn’t involved in much of the action. For a younger individual, Mitchell Burns was solid, and Thomas Cunningham had a good scene toward the end.

I will say that some of the special effects during the finale were a bit suspect, but overall, I was actually happy with most of them. They’re not really necessary most of the time, of course, but when they do play a part in the film, it’s not that shabby.

Like I said, though, I think the biggest problem here is probably the uneven execution. The story is decently interesting, and though I’d have preferred a little more explanation as to what exactly was going on, The Hunt definitely wasn’t a movie I’d call awful. It’s unlikely that The Hunt will end up being a memorable movie, and it’s probably below average, but for at least a single watch, it’s not a bad time.

6.5/10

In the Spider’s Web (2007)

Directed by Terry Winsor [Other horror films: N/A]

This film came as a surprise to me. It shouldn’t have – I’ve technically seen it before – but as it’s been over ten years, much of this slipped my mind. After refreshing my memory, the biggest question is how I ever managed to get through this one the first time.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever said this, but I have arachnophobia. It doesn’t bother me when watching most spider-based horror films, as so many are laughably unrealistic, such as Spiders, Ice Spiders, Camel Spiders, Arachnoquake, or Lavalantula. If it’s a big, fake spider, I have no problems. Hell, even if it’s something like Eight Legged Freaks, I’m not too worried.

There are a few films that have gotten to me, among them Arachnophobia, Kingdom of the Spiders, Deadly Blessing (those tarantula scenes tho…) and definitely this one.

In the Spider’s Web is utterly awful for someone who doesn’t care for our eight-legged friends. True, toward the end, there are some hideously CGI spiders thrown in, along with some rather fake-looking webs, but for the most part, these spiders look rather realistic. There were plenty of scenes of spiders coming down on webs as people were walking through spider-infested caves, and it was just a horrible experience.

Aside from that, the story’s of moderate interest. There’s a shady American doctor (played by Lance Henriksen) living in an Indian village (technically, this film was made in Thailand, but us Americans are unlikely to tell the difference) and also seems to have an unhealthy relationship with spiders. I did appreciate the minor backstory we got on his character, but at the same time, the circumstances of how we found out was rather ridiculous.

So a woman is bitten by a spider on a jungle tour, and the guides bring her to this village, as they know a doctor’s here. Three of the tour members go back to a small town, and alert the police. It’s a small police station, so one of them goes to a nearby, albeit larger, town. While at that police station, he picks up an outdated newspaper, makes a joke about how old it is, and boom, on the front page is a story about Lance Henriksen’s character. And this happens just in time for the day to be saved come the finale.

So yeah, that was a wee bit far-fetched. If they just had a different newspaper on a table, the ending would have been a lot grimmer than it already was. It’s whatever – I sort of like the gumption – but it definitely felt a bit forced.

Lance Henriksen was okay, but unspectacular. To be honest, I think I see him too often (Pumpkinhead, Hellraiser: Hellworld, Mansion of the Doomed, and Gehenna: Where Death Lives, to name a few) for him to make a large impression, but whatever, he’s okay. Others that tended to be average include Emma Catherwood (Senseless, The Reeds, Spirit Trap), Michael Smiley (The Hallow, Tank 432, Censor, A Field in England, Kill List), and Lisa Livingstone (The Redwood Massacre, Ghosts of Darkness).

To be sure, Cian Barry (Nina Forever, Ghost Town) wasn’t great, but I wanted to mention that his character takes a somewhat unexpected route. What the finale does to his character is somewhat odd – he’s told to stay somewhere, to wait for help, but he doesn’t. Instead, he goes back into a cave full of spiders. I don’t know why – they didn’t give a reason. It led to a somewhat terrifying final scene, but it just felt odd.

Though he didn’t get a ton of screen-time, Mike Rogers seemed like a fun character. Most importantly, though, is Sohrab Ardeshir. Playing a local police sergeant of a small town, Ardeshir seems like a small character at first, but he actually not only becomes rather important to the plot, but also becomes the most likable character in the film. A solid, stand-up guy, I really like Ardeshir’s performance, and while I didn’t think much of the character at first, I totally dug him come the finale.

All of this is to say that, while the story here is a bit lacking – especially when concerning the brother of Lance Henriksen’s character, who wears a spider silk sack over his head – there’s definitely some charm to be found. Most of the spider effects look pretty good, save a few scenes toward the end, and there is a bit of an interesting story at times. It’s still not a good movie, and personally, if only due to the spiders, I didn’t necessarily enjoy myself, but I definitely feel it’s not half bad, and might be worth a watch if it sounds like your type of thing.

6/10

The Pumpkin Karver (2006)

Directed by Robert Mann [Other horror films: R BnB (2023)]

I’ve known about The Pumpkin Karver for a long time, and in fact, way back in 2009, I made a list of about 150 or so horror films I wanted to see. That list has grown to 529 at the time of this writing, but the point of this is that from the beginning, The Pumpkin Karver was on that list.

I don’t really know why. If I had to guess, I heard it was a Halloween-themed slasher, and that was all it took to create interest for me. I doubt I heard much more about it, and really, aside from seeing a consistently low rating on IMDb (right now, on March 29th, 2022, it holds a 3.3/10 with 1,546 votes), I’ve not heard much about it since.

Honestly, though, after seeing it, I can see why.

This movie is rather poor. Sure, the budget is low, but the bigger issue is that the script is rather horrible, and the story doesn’t really make a lot of sense, at least not to me. That ending was absolute shit, also, which didn’t help. Even worse than the poor plot, though, is the fact it’s often boring. The film follows a group of teens as they party, and it’s not until half-way through the film that things really pick up, and I use ‘pick up’ loosely.

A few of the kills are okay, and by a few, I mean two. There’s a decapitation, which was simple, but always effective, and far more memorable was someone who was forced into a drillbit, which impaled the individual and revealed their organs for the world to see. It was really the only gore in the film, and it didn’t actually look that bad, so minor kudos for that.

And speaking of kudos, while most of the cast is rather unspectacular, I sort of dug Michael Zara as the lead. He had that quiet, brooding vibe you’d expect from John Shepherd’s Tommy from A New Beginning. It wasn’t great, but it was tolerable. Minka Kelly (who later played Dawn Granger, or Dove, in Titans) was pretty cute here, and one of the few characters who actually seemed okay.

Amy Weber (Dangerous Seductress) starts off pretty horribly, at least as far as her character goes, but doesn’t turn out half-bad come the end. Playing two utterly intoxicated fellas, David Phillips and Alex Weed were incredibly annoying most of the time, but they did provide some amusement in an otherwise dragging film. Oh, and Terrence Evans was overly silly, and while some of his dialogue was amusing, it didn’t do much to endear me to him.

Overall, The Pumpkin Karver is pretty awful, it’s biggest sin being that it’s dull. It’s a lower-budget slasher, so if you’re into that type of thing, it might be worth checking out if you can catch it free, but I really don’t think it’s worth it, and it didn’t do much for me at all, if truth be told. In the right mind-set, though, I suppose it could be fun.

4/10

Undead (2003)

Directed by Michael Spierig [Other horror films: Daybreakers (2009), Jigsaw (2017), Winchester (2018)] & Peter Spierig [Other horror films: Daybreakers (2009), Jigsaw (2017), Winchester (2018)]

I want to be as fair as possible, so I need to first say that as I write this, I am both sick and tired – I don’t mean figuratively, I mean I am literally sick and extraordinarily tired. I don’t really feel that bad – my throat is a bit rough, but otherwise, I’m okay. Still, I’m exhausted, and just wasn’t in the mood for this movie at all.

Undead is a lower-budget zombie science-fiction comedy movie. It has interesting ideas, I guess, but I hated the comedy, so I really can’t find it in me to care that much. Certainly zombie comedies can be done right – even ignoring larger budget films, check out New Zealand’s Last of the Living, which was pretty okay. The comedy here, though, wasn’t at all something I cared for in the least.

Also, while I can’t describe this fairly, the music was horrible. I can’t explain why. It sounded cheap and silly. That’s the best I can do. It was just shitty throughout, and that alone cost the movie something like two points. Godawful.

Look, the idea was interesting – instead of a generic zombie movie, Undead tried to do something new by throwing in acid rain, aliens, and giant walls made of metal. Even come the end, I didn’t really get what they were going for, and the story still confuses me, but I can appreciate that they tried to do something new with a sub-genre that’s overwrought with repetition.

I respect it, but I just can’t like it.

Only one performance did anything for me, being Mungo McKay’s. I didn’t get his character, but I didn’t get any of the characters, many of whom were over-the-top in their silliness, which of course makes me rather dispositioned to despise them.

Also loved all the ammunition wasting. It wasn’t until 40 minutes into the movie that they discovered they should aim for the heads. It made me think that zombies weren’t something people in this universe had a concept of. As it turns out, they did – later on, one of the characters admits that the people walking around are zombies. If they had a concept of zombies beforehand, why didn’t they just immediately try and focus on headshots?

Some people might call that a small nitpick, but that type of thing really annoys me, and it just gave me cause to dislike this movie more.

Even so, Undead, at the time of this writing (March 11th, 2022), has a 5.4/10 on IMDb (with 14,188 votes). Enough people found it decent enough to rate it above a 5/10, which personally amazes me. I get it – throwing in aliens and acid rain was a neat idea, and if it landed for some people, then glory be to God.

I’m just tired and bitter. I didn’t care for the comedy of this movie at all, nor most of the characters, and as interesting as some of the concepts here are, I don’t think they were explained all that well. I didn’t have a good time at all with this, but if it sounds like your type of thing, it may be worth a watch.

3.5/10

Cry Wolf (2005)

Directed by Jeff Wadlow [Other horror films: Truth or Dare (2018), Fantasy Island (2020)]

So Cry Wolf is one of those movies that I’ve wanted to see for quite a while. And to be clear, by ‘a while’, I mean since around 2009. Way back in the day, I made a list of horror films I wanted to check out, and this was on that list from the very beginning.

I never went out of my way to check it out because I thought I knew the type of movie it was going to be, and there were more interesting selections of films out there. As it is, I had an enjoyable time watching Cry Wolf, but I’d be lying if I said it ended up differently from what I expected.

It’s not really a case of all flash and no substance – the story here is sort of fun. The twists, while few are really surprising (come the finale, I was almost completely right, but made one mistake in my assumptions), keep the movie moving at a nice pace, and past a certain point, there are enough suspenseful scenes and mysteries to keep you interested.

What sort of didn’t do it for me, though, is just that it felt like they really badly wanted to make this a Saw movie, what with the twists, and that overly dramatic finale which threw a bunch of flashbacks at us (obviously with some additional context). I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was still enjoyable, but it almost felt like they were trying a bit too hard.

Performances all around were decent. Julian Morris (Donkey Punch, Something Wicked) is watchable enough, but he’s far from what makes the film enjoyable. Better are Lindy Booth and surprisingly Jon Bon Jovi. Booth (Wrong Turn, Dark Honeymoon) certainly had an interesting personality, and was playful enough, whereas Jon Bon Jovi’s (Vampires: Los Muertos) performance as a prep school teacher reminded me a little of Robert Englund’s role in Urban Legend.

Also, while I’m not a Supernatural fan, it was sort of nice seeing Jared Padalecki (also from House of Wax and Friday the 13th) here. His character is never super important, but he has a nice, clean-cut face. Gary Cole (who played a Vice President during some seasons of The West Wing, along with voicing a character Kim Possible, a favorite animated show of mine) was fun to see in a few scenes, and though her character was even less important than Padalecki’s, Kristy Wu had some zap to her.

What I think this all comes down to, though, as far as my feelings go, is that nothing in this movie really surprised me. Oh, some of the twists were unexpected, but I wasn’t once close to being blown away. I liked the conclusion well enough, but I think I probably would have liked this a lot more if I had seen it all those years ago when I first heard about it, as opposed to now when I’m #jaded.

Certainly I had fun while watching Cry Wolf, but I don’t think it’ll ultimately leave a large impression on me. It’s a stylish, occasionally clever movie with an okay mystery and a killer poster, and I do think it’s a decent film, but I don’t honestly think it’s a lot more than that.

7/10