Tag: 2014

Directed by Philip Adrian Booth [Other horror films: Death Tunnel (2005), ShadowBox (2005), DarkPlace (2007), Children of the Grave (2007), Ghouls Gone Wild (2008), The Possessed (2009), The Haunted Boy: The Secret Diary of the Exorcist (2010), Soul Catcher (2011), Children of the Grave 2 (2012), The Exorcist File (2014), The Attached (2023)]

Dead Still isn’t a movie I want to spend a lot of time on. I found it absolutely abysmal the first time I saw it, and time hasn’t been overly kind to it. It’s one of those movies in which it’s hard to put into words exactly why I despise it, but the dislike is indeed real, and based on how terrible this movie is, I imagine the feeling is mutual.

The basic plot – a camera used for death photography (taking pictures of dead bodies, apparently a thing back in the olden days) is discovered by a descendant, and things happen – could have been okay, but it wasn’t because the movie sucked.

To elaborate, I just didn’t get it – the souls of spirits are caught in the Negative World, and have been since they were originally photographed, but apparently mean no harm toward the person who trapped them there, one Wenton Davis (played by Ray Wise), but once a live kid (not the only live person, because a little girl who died is also alive apparently) gets there, things happen.

If someone is photographed by this old camera, they die a couple of days later. But that’s not all – even if someone has been nowhere near the camera, the ghost trapped in the camera can leave the camera to possess someone to self-mutilate themselves, and there’s a cult watching a house but the cult only has one member and that member has an ancestor who is dead but also alive and cameras and sacrifice and the worst ending I’ve seen in my life.

Dead Still is shit.

And even after I watched it the first time, I was curious as to why. I’ve not touched on the meta reasons it’s shit – I will, don’t worry – but this film was directed by Philip Adrian Booth. I didn’t know at the time I first watched Dead Still that Booth was the same director behind Death Tunnel, which was another amazingly bad film that I couldn’t believe was as atrocious as it was. After I found out that the same guy behind Death Tunnel was behind Dead Still, everything fell into place.

See, as terrible as the story is, the technique is worse. I’m not a behind-the-scenes guy. I can’t describe filming techniques or properly use filming terminology. What I can say is that many of the scenes here feel like they’re from a ‘scary’ music video – they quickly flash on the screen with no context, and the editing too is shit, also in a way I can’t describe. Actually, if you’re a director, or editor, or have some movie-making ambitions, watch this movie and tell me what went wrong – even if I never find it, it’s worth seeing how not to make a movie.

Ben Browder (Bad Kids Go to Hell, Hoax) isn’t a good lead. Ray Wise (Dead End, Jeepers Creepers 2, The Butterfly Room) was hammy, so at least he was having fun. Eric Ruff was terrible. Elle LaMont (Mercy Black, The Devil’s Gravestone) was sort of hot, but also not great. I felt quite bad for Gavin Casalegno, as he was only a kid, and he didn’t deserve this.

The performances don’t matter. No performance in the history of mankind could make a movie with this story and this editing worth watching. I’ll give Dead Still props for it’s gore, but I’ll take them all away for two reasons:

1. The finale was about 15 seconds long. It showed that, despite destroying the evil, that the evil wasn’t destroyed, and was still able to possess people.
2. Apparently, this was ‘based on a true story.’ Show me one piece of evidence that a ghost/spirit was trapped in a camera and was able to possess and kill people and I will give this movie a 10/10 and publically apologize for giving it the rating it deserves. Cameras do exist, but that’s as true as this movie gets.

I was going to give this points for a scene toward the end – not exactly a twist, or at least not a good twist, but an almost okay scene – but this movie just pisses me off. It gets nothing. It loses. GOOD DAY, SIR!

0/10

Directed by Joseph Henson [Other horror films: N/A] & Nathan Johnson [Other horror films: N/A]

While The Night Before Easter isn’t a terrible offering of low budget horror, and certainly not that time-consuming, I have to say that I wasn’t overly enthralled. The basic idea is fun, but it seems there was far more drama than there was killing, and while that helped build some of the characters, I’m not sure it did the overall movie great favors.

The plot here, or more specifically, the setting (being a storage facility) reminded me a bit of another lower-budget film, The Murder Game (from 2006), which also took place in a similar setting. That had probably the same amount of characters as this one did, but I also thought the story was a bit more solid, and while this film does boast a killer in a bunny suit, I tend to think The Murder Game was more memorable also.

As it was, the kills here are okay. Someone gets a saw blade thrown into their back, another takes an ax to the face, leaving  gnarly gash. There’s a throat-slitting, along with a decapitated head, so there’s a bit here if that’s your main interest, but a lot of these kills don’t happen until the second half, and it’s not really until the final ten or so minutes that things really start going.

To be fair, the movie’s a short one. The Night Before Easter runs at just over an hour – 65 minutes total. It’s easily digestible, but even with the time spent building some of the characters (such as Kelly’s infatuation with Riley, or Riley’s opening of a comic book store, or Brooke’s drinking problem), I feel like some of the characters here just don’t get much spotlight, and either could have been cut or given a bit of a chance to explore their backgrounds.

As far as performances go, I think that April Sinclair was the most note-worthy, and her scenes with Alyssa Matusiak were perhaps the most interesting non-murder scenes of the movie. I thought both did quite well with troubled characters. Keldon Flint (“She called me Danti!”) was amusing at times, Bonnie Marilyn Jean played the stereotypically bitchy girl well, and Emily Chidalek had some strong moments early on. I do sort of wish we got a little more from Eric Wyatt – he was okay, but I definitely thought his character could have been fleshed out a bit more.

Otherwise, there’s not really a lot going for The Night Before Easter. It’s an okay lower-budget film, and it can be fun at times, but there’s a lot of other lower budget films from the same time-range I’d probably want to spend my time with instead (such as Don’t Go to the Reunion, Silver Cell, You’re Not Getting Out Alive, and Vampire Ticks from Outer Space), and I don’t know if this film will end up being all that memorable.

5.5/10

Directed by Colin Theys [Other horror films: Banshee!!! (2008), Remains (2011), Dead Souls (2012), Deep in the Darkness (2014), Stalker’s Prey (2017), Stalker’s Prey 2 (2020), A Predator Returns (2021)]

So before I get into this atrocity (as much as I don’t really want to spend time on this), let me first recount why I watched this.

Back in March of 2017, I was pretty much recording any horror movie that was on television to watch, no matter how bad it sounded, no matter how much I thought I’d hate them (it was for this reason I recorded both 2-Headed Shark Attack and Finders Keepers). And so despite how terrible this sounded, I recorded it onto my DVR. Fast forward to the early days of 2021 (this is being written on the third of January), and I finally took the time to watch it.

I’ll give it that it tried something newish, or at least newish to me. Dark Haul (also known under the name Monster Truck, which is the title I recorded it under) is a fantasy-horror mix about a demon being born along with a superhuman sister with powers that aren’t fully delved into (she has sort of a warbling wave that can contact and calm her winged brethren) that are imprisoned by a religious group named he Keepers who believe in an end-of-the-world prophecy and such.

And bad things happen.

Within the Keepers, there is a hardliner who believes both the demon and the sister are evil, this hardliner played by Tom Sizemore. The leader of the Keepers is more moderate, and treats the humanoid sister more humanely, though still keeps her a prisoner. This kind gent is Rick Ravanello. The superhuman sister is Evalena Marie. There’s also a priest played by Kevin Shea who does a few things, though he’s not terribly important.

Perhaps if I were a fan of fantasy, I would have dug this more. Certainly the theological disagreements over the meaning of a specific prophecy were somewhat interesting to listen to, but the fantasy-action scenes didn’t do it for me, and when the demon escapes and the film veers more a horror direction, the CGI was so inept that it was painfully laughable.

I don’t fault the performances. Sure, Sizemore (of The Relic, Bottom Feeder, and Visible Scars) came across as ridiculously over-the-top sinister, but the movie almost portrays him as an unsung hero, especially when, at the end, Rick Ravenello’s character agrees with his tactics. Evalena Marie’s character was easy to root for, but in some ways, her success seemed to mean the end of the world. Kevin Shea (who I’ve seen in a surprising amount of low-budget horror films, such as Remains, Sasquatch Assault, Banshee!!!, and Dead Souls, some of which have the same director as this film, Colin Theys) was okay, but his character didn’t really get enough licks in to matter.

Still, I think most of the people involved gave it the best they could. I never personally felt any strong emotions toward any of them, even during scenes where you’d think an emotional response would be likely, but my problem with Dark Haul is the story, not the performances.

And the story is pretty lackluster, especially given I’m not a fantasy fan, but what’s worse was that hideous CGI, especially during some of the kills. A guy gets ripped in half, his organs falling out, and all I can wonder is how much that green screen cost. It was as pathetic and non-threatening as you could expect from a Syfy film.

Dark Haul was an easy film to get through, especially because I knew what I was working with within the first ten minutes of the film, but it was far from an enjoyable experience, and while I appreciated the fact that the writers went with a different approach, the fantasy aspects didn’t do it for me, and I thought everything else was embarrassingly weak also.

4/10

Directed by Jeremiah Buckhalt [Other horror films: N/A]

Blood Widow is a movie that has very little going for it. I mean, very little. Like, almost nothing, if not for okay special effects and Kelly Quinn, who played a stereotypical, yet sometimes amusing, hippie character. Even with that, though, this movie is pretty much a waste.

Obviously lower-budget movies can have a harder time making things work, but honestly, the special effects here were mostly okay. True, a few decapitations and dismemberments looked rather weak, but there were some decent butcherings here. The lighting, or lack thereof, is probably the bigger problem, though, as it rendered some of the scenes rather indecipherable.

Performances were generally weak too. I don’t necessarily fault the actors and actresses for the rather awful dialogue (“Check the other rooms” “I am not checking the other rooms” “Please, check the other rooms.” “Fine, what room?” is a quality example), but the characters fall entirely flat and into stereotypical territory, such as the hippie, nature-lover, acid-taker named Harmony (played by Kelly Quinn). Now, I liked this character far more than anyone else, but boy, talk about a walking caricature.

Otherwise, I guess Danielle Lilley was okay, but the way she just accepted her boyfriend’s (Brandon Kyle Peters) immature behavior and consistent lies rubbed me the wrong way. In general, though, I just felt bad for her. Emily Cutting and Christopher de Padua were entirely forgettable, and I think I only wrote their names down here to take up a bit more space. #Professionalism.

I honestly think that, with a few changes, this movie might have been okay. Not great, mind you, just okay. First, instead of 80 minutes (74 if you don’t count the six minutes of credits), just make this an hour. Cut the fat out, especially if you’re going to go with an ending like this one went for. Secondly, try and write a better script that doesn’t feel like a bare-bones, by-the-numbers slasher. Thirdly, invest in some lighting.

For Blood Widow, I honestly thought there was potential. Now, I didn’t go into this one thinking that they were able to make it work (I had seen the extremely low rating this had on IMDb before starting the film), but it still could have been okay if they tried a bit harder in some aspects. As the finished film is, it’s honestly just somewhat pathetic, and save some special effects and a stereotypical character, Blood Widow just isn’t a memorable movie for anything positive.

2/10

This is one of the films covered by Fight Evil’s podcast. Listen below as Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss Blood Widow.

Directed by Anthony C. Ferrante [Other horror films: Boo (2005), Headless Horseman (2007), Hansel & Gretel (2013), Sharknado (2013), Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015), Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens (2016), Forgotten Evil (2017), Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017), The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018), Zombie Tidal Wave (2019)]

Well, the first movie was pretty awful, but I still found aspects of it moderately enjoyable. Unfortunately, this one felt a bit more over-the-top to me, and while I had occasional fun with Sharknado 2, overall, it was more of a cringe-worthy grind than anything.

Ian Ziering plays his role so serious here that, somewhat paradoxically, he’s very hard to take serious. He can fly through a sharknado with a chainsaw and cut him up some sharks, though, so kudos there. His family, though, or more specifically, his sister’s family, were pretty much all useless. Courtney Baxter was sort of cute, but I didn’t know her name was ‘Mara’ until an hour and ten minutes in, so she certainly wasn’t important.

It was sort of funny to see Judd Hirsch pop up (I know him best from Numb3rs, a show I loved the hell out of), playing a taxi driver (which is a role he played in some 70’s show I’ve never seen). Hirsch is decently fun, but I sort of think they overused him without really expanding on his character. We know about as much about him at his last scene as we do his first, so the fact he appeared as much as he did felt sort of hollow. Also, Richard Kind (who I know from Gotham) appeared, which was almost welcomed, but then he hit a home run with a shark, and I can’t deal with that kind of descent into stupidity.

Like I said, I really think Sharknado 2 goes overboard on it’s intentionally silly plot. The first twenty minutes, in which Fin was dealing with a sharknado while on a flight to New York, was bad enough (I was even hoping that it’d be a dream, but alas, no), and of course threw in a reference to the classic Twilight Zone episode ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,’ but it only gets worse, and overly bombastic, the worst thing being a buzz-saw being attached to a woman’s recently bit-off hand. The baseball thing was bad, but boy, this was horrible.

To be sure, I wasn’t expecting a great movie, but it’s worth noting that the first movie is the lowest-rated of all six Sharknado flicks on IMDb, meaning that this one is somehow better? I know I didn’t see it. Some portions were okay, but more than anything else, I couldn’t get past how utterly ridiculous this all was.

4/10

Directed by Kaare Andrews [Other horror films: Altitude (2010), The ABCs of Death (2012, segment ‘V is for Vagitus’)]

For the first thirty to forty minutes, I was rather enjoying this flick, as they left much of the idiotic comedy that plagues the first two films and ventured more for a serious look at the flesh-eating disease. And it works out for about half the film, but then multiple factors come together to lead Patient Zero into a repetitive, rather uninspiring, direction.

It’s really a shame, as the film shows plenty of potential. The problem becomes that they jam so many things into the final twenty minutes or so that the movie quickly loses much of the fun feeling the movie had. Also, it didn’t help that it threw in a cat-fight between two woman who are both virtually skinless, because that’s something that the audience definitely needed.

Technically, the special effects and make-up are fine, but toward the end of the film, they go way overboard. Some of the victims of this skin-eating disease appear far more like what you’d expect from zombies as opposed to actual people, so some restraint would have been preferred. Early on, things look fine, but it just strikes me as unrealistic where things apparently end up.

Not many of the performances really helped out. I sort of liked Mitch Ryan, Currie Graham (who I know from two series, House and Agent Carter), and Jillian Murray. Graham’s character rather annoyed me, but it was nice to see a familiar face. Murray provided an attractive character, but really, she doesn’t matter past the first thirty minutes or so. I wasn’t necessarily expecting more from Solly Duran, Sean Astin, or Lydia Hearst, but I was rather let-down by their performances.

Honestly, though, it’s the story that’s the biggest problem here. The plot twist they threw in at the end didn’t come close to wowing me, and past the fifty minute mark, I won’t pretend that I wasn’t rather shut of the whole thing, which again is a shame, as if any Cabin Fever movie had potential, it was this one. As such, it’s probably better than Spring Fever, but if it is, it’s not by a perceivable amount.

5/10

Directed by Alexander Yellen [Other horror films: Battledogs (2013)]

There are times when a movie isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s utterly generic, unmemorable, and entirely unremarkable.

I think Finders Keepers falls into that category.

I don’t really have a lot to say about this one. The plot’s one we’ve all seen before: a mother and daughter move into a creepy old house with a sordid past, and the daughter finds an object (here a doll) and begins changing. This isn’t anything new or unique, and I’m honestly hard-pressed to come up with one thing in this film worth seeing.

Well, scratch that – Tobin Bell does have three scenes. Most well-known from the Saw series, Bell is solid here as a child psychiatrist. I wish he appeared more, but what we got from him was okay. Less impressive, but not horrible, were two of the leads, Jaime Pressly and Patrick Muldoon. Muldoon honestly didn’t make an impression on me one way or the other, but Pressly was definitely mixed. At times, she did rather well, at others, she seemed ridiculous.

Aside from Bell, though, I don’t know if this movie has much to offer. Most of the kills are unspectacular and, like the film as a whole, unmemorable. The ending is utter trash, and doesn’t make much sense to me. The child actress, Kylie Rogers, annoyed me more than anything else.

Really, Finders Keepers doesn’t seem to have a lot going for it. Someone of course could still have a good time with it, because it’s not really horrible, but after a few months past, some may find that they have little memory of it, for good reason.

Certainly not a film I’d go out of my way to see again, I’d only suggest Finders Keepers to fans of Tobin Bell. It’s certainly better than some of Bell’s other movies with small appearances, such as the atrocity that was The Sandman (2017). Finders Keepers wasn’t worth finding, and definitely far from a keeper.

5/10