Tag: 2015

Directed by Todd Nunes [Other horror films: Scary Larry (2014)]

I have to say that I found this Christmas-themed slasher disappointing, but I also have to admit that I’m not surprised, given the generally lukewarm reception I’ve heard from this one.

And it’s a shame, too, because I suspect that, more than most people, I was looking forward to this one. Why? Because back in 2011, the director of this film, Todd Nunes, directed a 13-minute short titled Here Comes Santa. This is a short which I reviewed on my now-defunct Beyond the Darkened Door, a horror blog I was trying to run for a short and inconsistent time in my college days.

To keep things short, I found Here Comes Santa a pretty well-made short. I gave it a glowing review, and definitely saw potential should the director attempt a full-length version of the story.

But to all hope comes death, as the poets say, and the final product here just felt more hollow than anything. Which isn’t to say that the movie doesn’t have strong points, but really, aside from gore, what does All Through the House really have going for it?

I will say that I like the base idea of the film – three young women terrorized by a killer wearing Santa garb while helping to decorate a large house – but the story beyond this, what with the mystery of the focal character’s mother and another character’s missing daughter just sort of fell off the rails.

Again, I have to mention the failed potential here, because while neither of these mysteries were up there with those seen in classic giallos, it still brought a little additional element to the movie, but come the finale, the answers we get aren’t really that satisfying to me.

For what it’s worth, I thought most of the marginally more important performances were decent. It’s not likely that many would be blown away by Ashley Mary Nunes, Melynda Kiring, Jason Ray Schumacher, or Natalie Montera, but they all do fine enough with what little character they get to play around with.

That’s part of the problem, really. Most of these characters just seem shallow, and I don’t think we even get to know the main character of Rachel (Nunes) all that well. More than anything, this movie feels like an excuse to show off decent gore effects, which, while certainly appreciated, isn’t enough to keep interest in a story going. Had the mystery here been handled a bit differently, then maybe we’re talking another story, but with what we got, it just didn’t do it.

There’s also something that should be said about the editing. I don’t think I’m the guy to say it, because I’m not a film-maker, and I have literally no idea what goes into production and post-production of films, and thus lack the vocabulary to explain my problem, but the editing here just felt off at times. I sensed it from the very beginning, and though I can’t put a finger on why things felt off, I know that, to me, they did.

Overall, you have some impressive gory scenes here, but once you get past that, I don’t think there’s a lot holding this one up, and as far as Christmas-themed horror films go, I think that All Through the House will end up in the forgotten category more so than anything else. Definitely not a great experience, and a film I found rather below average.

5/10

Directed by Sheldon Wilson [Other horror films: Shallow Ground (2004), Kaw (2007), Screamers: The Hunting (2009), Carny (2009), Mothman (2010), Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010), Killer Mountain (2011), Scarecrow (2013), Shark Killer (2015), The Unspoken (2015), The Night Before Halloween (2016), Neverknock (2017), Stickman (2017), Dead in the Water (2018)]

I had the misfortune of seeing this Sheldon Wilson film before, and it’s not gotten any better since that first time a few years back. The thing is, I think this could have had potential with the setting and with the characters, but it’s entirely squandered to make a generically bad Syfy original.

This is something that Wilson has a history with, though. I enjoyed Neverknock and The Unspoken, true, and to a certain extent, I enjoyed both Kaw and Stickman, but much of his recent work, such as The Night Before Halloween, Dead in the Water, and this one, are really hard to get through, and this is one of the worse (though certainly Dead in the Water was probably a bit worse).

Was Stephanie Hunt attractive? Sure. Was Sarah Dugdale attractive? You know it. Did either one give a particularly good performance, or in fact, did anyone in the film give a good performance? That’d be a negative. I don’t blame the failure of the film on the performances though – Dugdale and Hunt could only work with what they’ve got, and if they’re given a bad script, what can they do?

The monster was a combination of the roots from The Ruins and that hideous monster-thing in Shadows of the Dead (another stellar Syfy original) – most of the time, it looked like angry embers and sticks were attacking people. This had to do with revenge from some witches, but the witches could have tried harder to not send a creature that reeked of hideous CGI.

I liked the setting – an island off some undisclosed state (probably Washington or something, but I don’t think it’s said in the film). It was a large island, but much of it seemed to be forest, which was sort of cool. And the characters being focused on all being sisters also brought a little bit confort, so we wouldn’t have to deal with any horrible romantic sub-plot (unless there was some lesbian incest going on, but no dice). It has the basics to maybe make for an okay story if they had wanted to, maybe an interesting mystery-slasher hybrid, or perhaps some type of psychological horror à la Hereditary set on an island. That’s not what happened.

Oh, also the younger sister had unexplained psychic dreams, so that was #cool.

When I initially watched The Hollow, I was disappointed because I was hopeful that maybe it’d end up being one of the better Syfy originals, but that’s not the case, and it’s really not a movie I can think of any real reason to watch.

5/10

Directed by Nick Lyon [Other horror films: Species: The Awakening (2007), Zombie Apocalypse (2011), Rise of the Zombies (2012), Foreclosed (2013), Bermuda Tentacles (2014), Isle of the Dead (2016), Titanic 666 (2022)]

Sometimes Syfy gets it right. It happened on such occasions as Neverknock, House of Bones, and a few other occasions. I can’t say this is quite as good, but it was a very solidly made film, though ultimately, I think it’s around average.

The story here is somewhat interesting. A teleportation experiment goes awry, and a bunch of college kids gets trapped in a Hellish dimension, and do their best to survive. The dimension in question is solidly creepy, with a bunch of decently spooky imagery (from a multitude of dead and disfigured bodies to hanging suicide victims to forest and jungle areas, etc.), and I found myself interested in learning more about this place.

The cast isn’t great, but a few solid performances stood out, such as Katy Reece, Kabby Borders, Chris Schellenger, Mirela Burke (who was quite cute here), and James Sobol Kelly. I expected Kelly’s character to matter more, but I’m happy with the restrained route they took. Also, two attractive young women, Katy Reese and Mirela Burke, made out, and that bumped the score a whole point. Hubba hubba.

They Found Hell isn’t amazing, and I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking it is. While the environments in the Hellish dimension are mostly solid, I didn’t like what they did with Hunter Canedy’s character, and the CGI for the creatures (such as the Hellhounds and the Flying Demons, or whatever they are) is about as bad as Syfy often does. Also, and this might just be me, but that opening seemed really odd, and almost disconnected from the rest of the story in a laughable way.

Still, I found this one a lot more palatable than I do many Syfy movies, and I can easily imagine giving this another watch.

7.5/10

Directed by Mike Mendez [Other horror films: Killers (1996), Bimbo Movie Bash (1997), The Convent (2000), Masters of Horror (2002), The Gravedancers (2006), Big Ass Spider! (2013), Tales of Halloween (2015, segment ‘Friday the 31st’), The Last Heist (2016), Don’t Kill It (2016)]

What makes a movie good?

That’s a question I sometimes, perhaps often, find myself wrestling with. There are occasions which I watch a movie that’s terrible on many technical levels, but I still enjoy. The IMDb score might be south of 3/10, but I still want to rate the film an average score (7/10 for me). Is enjoyment more important than technical value?

It must be, because despite the flaws, I found Lavalantula an exceptionally acceptable and enjoyable film.

Let’s talk cast, brothers and sisters: Steve Guttenberg (of Police Academy fame) stars, and while he’s definitely older, you can certainly tell it’s him. Honestly, I’ve not seen Guttenberg in anything outside of the 1984 classic comedy – at the same time, Police Academy is one of my favorite comedy movies ever, so it’s enough to feel nostalgic seeing him here. I really enjoy his sometimes over-the-top performance, and overall got a kick out of him.

No one else really blows me away in particular, but there are some solid performances here. Nia Peeples (who I just saw a few days back, at the time of this writing, in DeepStar Six) does pretty good as an action-oriented mother. Patrick Renna (X-Files ‘Bad Blood’ episode, 2006’s Dark Ride, 2016’s Fear, Inc.) was pretty amusing as a fanboy of Guttenberg’s action-hero persona. There are three characters here who also played characters in the original Police Academy (Michael Winslow, Marion Ramsey, and Leslie Easterbrook), but none of them really do a whole lot for me.

What makes this movie fun is the fact Guttenberg plays a washed-up action-hero, and there are quite a few references made to other films throughout Lavalantula that made me crack a grin (such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and of course, 1997’s Volcano). There’s not really anything that special about the humor, but I had a good time with it.

And I think that’s what this comes down to. Certainly, the special effects here, while still terrible, were better than fellow contemporaries like Arachnoquake, and the spiders here definitely had a better design than the creatures in Arachnoquake, but what matters more was that I had a lot of fun with this one. The conclusion is a bit more ridiculous than I’ve have preferred, but it doesn’t really damage the film much. Overall, Lavalantula is a movie I could see myself buying on DVD, or at the very least, watching again, without much guilt. Or at least, too much guilt.

7.5/10

Directed by Eric Red [Other horror films: Body Parts (1991), Bad Moon (1996), 100 Feet (2008)]

There’s very little about this Syfy film that’s worth seeking this movie out for. The fact it stars Rob Morrow is one of the few things I enjoyed about this, because otherwise, it’s pretty unremarkable.

My first big problem is the plot – some meteors fall from space, and it causes all dogs and wolves in a local area to go crazy and start attacking people. The funny thing is, despite the fact that these meteors were a bright glowing green, only once was it brought up that they might have something to do with it, and exactly no one in the movie seemed to notice them scattered across the town (despite them being, you know, a glowing green).

Speaking of colors, it wasn’t uncommon for there to be a red light tinting some of the scenes. Apparently, according to IMDb, director Eric Red was influenced by the lighting of Suspiria (1977), which amazes me. It’s great that he’s seen the classics, but after watching Suspiria, he thinks that this pile of trash is a good way to give reverence to it?

Rob Morrow, who I know mostly from the television series Numb3rs, of which I’ve seen every episode, is a fun presence here. His character’s decent, but more importantly, Morrow himself is just a solid actor to see here, which is a positive, as few others stand out. Playing his daughter, Tristin Mays did fine, but wasn’t particularly memorable. Her two friends, played by Mary Risener and Mary Katherine O’Donnell, were pretty pointless characters, and neither actress was impressive (Risener in particular). Lastly, Kelly Rutherford didn’t do a thing for me.

There are some solid dog attacks in the film, and there was a somewhat gory aftermath (including a body torn apart) that I enjoyed. But toward the end of the film, a lot of time is spent on random dog attacks in the downtown area, and as it dragged on and on, I was just bored out of my mind seeing characters I didn’t know get killed by dogs that hadn’t appeared before, especially since few of the attacks there were really worth seeing. Also, there were about five to six scenes using slow motion, which just looked ridiculously dramatic and utterly unnecessary.

Personally, if it weren’t for Morrow, I’d rate this movie quite a bit lower. It’s still nowhere near a good movie, or even an average one, but I think I see it in a slightly better light because Morrow’s one of the stars. That said, if you couldn’t care less about Morrow, than I suspect that Night of the Wild is one Syfy flick that you could do without. Even with Morrow, I understand that feeling.

Also, the CGI dogs at the end didn’t help either. It’s a poor movie, period.

4/10

Directed by Christopher Ray [Other horror films: Reptisaurus (2009), Megaconda (2010), Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus (2010), 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012), Shark Week (2012), Mega Shark vs. Kolossus (2015), A House Is Not a Home (2015), Circus Kane (2017), Minutes to Midnight (2018)]

This follow-up to the disaster that was 2-Headed Shark Attack is a marginal improvement, but make no mistake, it’s still pretty awful. The best I can say is that there are actually a few memorable characters here, and it didn’t feel nearly as shallow as the first one.

Even the story is a bit better, what with some of the main characters actually being scientists as opposed to just college kids who want to party and have carnal relations. While the underwater base was likely impractical, I actually thought it was sort of cool in a Jaws 3 type of way. The movie goes down a more generic route once the facility gets destroyed by the shark, which was a shame, though not a surprise.

Before I talk about the quality of performances overall, I want to speak specifically about Danny Trejo for a bit. Possibly one of the most well-known and prolific Latino actors, I’ve seen a handful of his films. I enjoyed Machete, and a few other roles of his. But the fact that he seems to accept any role offered to him doesn’t much endear me to the guy. In this film, he’s basically used the same way Carmen Electra was in the first one – to have a big name to draw people in. As it is, I liked Trejo’s character here, for the little he appeared, but his arc is exactly what you’d expect, and ultimately, he was pretty pointless as far as the film goes.

For other performances, you have a few that legitimately did okay, such as Karrueche Tran, Jaason Simmons, and Rob Van Dam. Jena Sims was rather attractive, and I somewhat liked her character, but she didn’t really amount to much, which actually caught me a bit by surprise. Generally, though, this movie, much like the first, seems more concerned about showing girls with impressive breasts in bikinis as opposed to crafting an even halfway decent story. While I won’t deny that some of the girls in question are beautiful (such as Brianna Ferris), it doesn’t add anything to the story being told.

In reality, while the movie was pretty terrible, it did improve a bit upon the first one (but honestly, given that I rated the first one extraordinarily lowly, that really isn’t saying much), and it seemed to want to be a better movie. It didn’t reach anywhere near average, but 3-Headed Shark Attack is a movie I could almost see myself re-watching at some point, which is definitely something I can’t say about the first one.

4/10

Directed by Peter Sullivan [Other horror films: Summoned (2013), High School Possession (2014), The Sandman (2017), Cucuy: The Boogeyman (2018)]

I’ll first say that this will be a shorter review than usual – I’ve seen Ominous twice now, and really, it’s not worth extrapolating on. Really, there’s only about one reason to see it, and that’s for a hilariously bad death scene. Everything else had been done before, and ultimately, this made-for-TV flick is just bland and pretty God-awful.

The cast is almost wholly poor. Mark Lindsay Chapman (who played Nick in The Langoliers, a fact I didn’t realize until after the movie finished) was the best of the bunch, and he had a solid, moderately sinister presence. None of the other performances did anything for me. There’s a few interesting names here, such as Barry Watson, who starred in 7th Heaven for quite some time, and Esmé Bianco, who I know mostly as a supporting character from Game of Thrones, but their acting didn’t come close to wowing me here.

A lot of the fault, though, can go to the uninspired plot. I just don’t get why anyone would want to see this film, in which bereft parents make a deal with the devil to raise their recently-deceased son from the dead, only to discover he’s the Antichrist, when they could stick with a classic like The Omen, or even a different take on the story, like the 2017 Little Evil. It’s a bad, low-budget television movie (which really shows in it’s special effects failures), so I just don’t get why anyone would opt into watching this willingly.

Admittedly, I’ve seen it now twice. Luckily, there are a few terrifically horrible scenes that make at least portions of this film bearable. In a classic sequence, a priest gets clobbered over the head by a falling cross, and then set on fire. In another, multiple people die from flying projectiles at a park. And then we have the bird attacks at the end – while slightly better-looking than Birdemic (which isn’t actually praise, believe it or not), the birds were horribly rendered, and it just looked so God-damned awful.

Which, when it comes down to it, is what this movie is. Ominous (which, by the way, is a terribly bland title) just sucks hard. It’s one of those modern-day television flicks which just reeks of pointlessness. As fun as some of the sequences are, it’s definitely not worth it to watch the whole of this film.

3/10