Tag: 2017

Directed by Richard LeMay [Other horror films: Blood Bound (2019)]

I wasn’t really expecting much from this remake, but I was pleasantly surprised, at least for a bit. It certainly had the chance to be an okay slasher/mystery, but it sort of loses my interest as soon as overt supernatural events come into play.

To be clear, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the original Dementia 13. I thought it made for an okay proto-slasher, and it did have a better, more gloomy atmosphere than this did, but there was room for improvement. This movie looks like it’s going in that direction, but then throws in ghosts and such, which is not what I call an improvement at all. It could have remained a grounded slasher-mystery and I’d have been content, but that ending, along with the small supernatural stuff sprinkled in along the way, just spoils everything, as Sansa would say.

Before it shoots itself in the head, though, Dementia 13 is okay. I thought most of the performances were decent, the film had a few hints of humor throughout, and the setting was pretty good. It didn’t have the same charm or ominous nature the original did, but it was doing well for itself.

Steve Polites had virtually no character. To be honest, it took me a little bit to figure out he wasn’t a child of the mother and actually one of the daughter’s husbands, which isn’t anything against him as an actor, but his character just didn’t have much to give us. Ana Isabelle was pretty stereotypical, which I’m guessing was called for in the script. She was attractive, though, so there’s that. Lastly, on the negative side, Julia Campanelli didn’t really do much for me, and came across as generic.

The others did reasonably well, though. Channing Pickett had the good-girl look down solid, Christian Ryan had a somewhat predictable but fun arc, Roland Sands made for a decent red herring, and Donal Brophy needed more character, but he was pretty solid the time he was on-screen. Marianne Noscheze and Ben van Berkum were my favorite characters here. Noscheze started off being a bit of a brat, but Berkum’s character throughout was good humor value.

Most of the kills here weren’t really that great, and I don’t think that this would have been a new-age classic had they gotten rid of the unnecessary supernatural elements, but I do think it could have been a decently enjoyable and competent slasher that I wouldn’t hesitate to revisit.

With the addition of ghosts (which is something that horror remakes don’t need to do – the 1999 House on Haunted Hill wasn’t any better than the original because they added ghosts, and the same is definitely true for this), though, just makes the film ultimately blah, and not really worth going out of your way for, which is a damn shame.

5.5/10

Directed by Craig Tudor James [Other horror films: Granny of the Dead (2017), Solar Impact (2019)]

I recorded this off Syfy some time ago, and before I started to finally watch it, I looked it up on IMDb to gauge some feeling of what I was going to watch. At the time I read this movie’s entry, though, it had an astonishingly low 51 votes, which blew me away then and still surprises me now. How can a movie that was on Syfy a handful of times have such a low amount of ratings? Are people that tired of zombie films? [I have delved deep, though, and after my review, have found the answer].

Well, no matter the reason, I feel that the now 52 of us who have actually rated the film were the unlucky ones, because Survivorz is almost intolerably a pointless movie.

Everyone’s seen zombie movies (apparently everyone outside the characters in this movie, I guess) that are just following all of the expectations and adding nothing of their own into it. It’s for this reason that, to me, many zombie films just seem repetitive and harder to really come into their own and feel enjoyable. Some movies can definitely manage it, such as 28 Days Later… and Zombieland, but I feel that easily 60% of the zombie movies that have come out past 2000 have been on the other side of good, and this movie has to be one of the worst offenders of that.

Certainly this movie had the budget to have some potential. I don’t know exactly how much they had to play around with, but most of the shots in the film look well-shot, and though the special effects aren’t great, this film wasn’t made by a bunch of teens on a camcorder (and in all fairness, most films like that have more heart than Survivorz does). So it had potential, but the story and characters? Oh, fuck me with a whirling lawnmower.

Listen, I liked the setting, at least. A bunch of younger American kids in London meant we still had to deal with a mainly-American cast, but seeing a slightly different locale added maybe a little spice to the movie. It didn’t make any difference, as the story done here would have played out exactly the same in the States, but hey, spice.

Here’s my problem. Early on in the film, a woman comes stumbling in from the street, and she is visibly wounded (she was bit in the early stages of the zombie outbreak). Now, they don’t know she’s been bitten, of course, and they try to help her, but of course she turns and attacks them, and they rightly defend themselves. That’s fine.

Later on, one of the guys in the group, Gabe, gets bit. It’s bothersome when they keep telling him “it’ll be okay” when he’s obviously showing the same symptoms as the woman before, but it’s been a few hours, and he’s a friend, so I get it. When he starts attacking them, though, and is killed, one of the guys is like “Oh, I wish you were alive” or something bullshit like that. What, he wishes the zombie was alive so he could too be infected and/or eaten?

Then Benny gets bit (sorry for the spoilers, by the way, but this movie doesn’t exactly set out to surprise anyone, as the two people who make it to the end are the exact two people you would expect), and his girlfriend is like “oh it’s okay” and the others are like “oh, it’s okay” and the fact that they care so much means that he won’t actually be infected.

That’s a joke, because he is infected, and he eventually does the smart thing and locked himself in a room before he starts attacking his girlfriend. On a side-note, it took Gabe maybe five minutes before he became a mindless zombie, but it took Benny at least ten minutes (long enough for him to propose to his girlfriend, and then hide with her from another zombie, then talk to her for an additional few minutes), so that’s great. But when he locks himself in the room, his girlfriend wants him to come out, and the others too find it a hard pill to swallow that he’s protecting them from himself.

All of this could be explained if no one in this universe has ever seen a zombie movie, which has got to be the case, because I feel like if something like an onset of zombies were happening here (which, this is written in 2020, so let’s not jinx it), I would know immediately after the first person bitten and turned that “Hey, it’s a lost cause. Sorry you were bit, but we need to kill you.” It’s harsh, but there’s no other options unless they can be locked in a room and wait for a potential cure (more on that soon, though). But no, these people must think the power of friendship will prevent their friends from turning into zombies after being bit, and it annoys the fuck out of me.

Later on, they meet a guy whose wife was bitten. Now, he can’t kill his wife, so he has her tied up in her room with the hopes that a cure can be found and she’ll be fine. This isn’t a bad idea as long as he is upfront and tells everyone to not go into that room, and ensures the room is secure. He goes into the room himself, though, because that’s where he keeps his firearm, and lo and behold, his wife breaks out and bites him.

Earlier on in the movie, the group of friends see a zombie woman with a baby carrier around her neck, and the two women (played by Penelope Shipley, the one British group member and Lucy Aarden) want to “save the baby.”

Slams head on desk and dies, then revives to finish shitting on this movie

If there is a zombie apocalypse, and there is no safe way to save anyone, it sucks, but if you care about surviving, you cannot set out on a lost cause to save people. It’s a fucking baby. It would only be a hindrance, and they don’t even know if it’s actually alive (plot twist – it’s not, it’s some freaky zombie baby, because of course it is), so why even discuss trying to save it? 

Takes a deep breath

So obviously, I have some problems with the story here. What I will say is that I actually rather liked the hopelessness that this movie showcases. Even though there are three survivorz at the end (the third one, if you’re wondering, is the sister of Shipley’s character, who was miraculously alive), there’s not a hell of a lot of hope for them, because they’re trapped on a church tower with no food or water and hundreds of zombies surrounding them, so they’re probably screwed.

Unless they’re shot down by the helicopter, because that ending even made things more suspenseful somehow (??????) why

Survivorz was almost entirely pointless. I thought that there was some potential, and the fact that only 50 others had taken the time to rate it (and on average, the rating at the time I watched this was actually a 5.4/10) added to the mystique, but I look at a movie like Isle of the Dead, which I abhorred, and I at least can admit to myself that that movie tried to do something almost interesting. This movie really didn’t. Fuck it. Fuck life. Fuck zombies.

3/10

And now for the spicy research.

Up near the director’s name, I list another movie he directed, being Solar Impact (2019). Now, it’s important to note that the IMDb entry for Survivorz doesn’t list the director – I got that information from Moviefone.

Solar Impact is the same movie as Survivorz. Sort of. I mean, I’m guessing it’s mostly the same – I watched the trailer and I recognized most of the scenes. Under alternate titles of Solar Impact, Survivorz is listed as an ‘working title for the UK.’

Here’s the rub – IMDb lists Solar Impact as 2019, and I know for a fact that I recorded Survivorz off Syfy in either 2017 or 2018.

I don’t know why the movie is listed twice. I don’t know if Solar Impact adds anything. It could simply be a mistake. But as far as I’m concerned, until IMDb addresses this, these are two separate movies.

Also, while Survivorz does only have 57 total ratings, Solar Impact has 637, which is something I found worth addressing.

This has been IMDb delving with Jiggy. See you next time there’s an issue with multiple entries of movies.

Directed by Christopher Landon [Other horror films: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014), Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), Happy Death Day 2U (2019), Freaky (2020)]

When I say that this movie was one of the biggest surprises in the last few years, I totally mean it. This was a pretty big movie when it came out, and beforehand it garnered quite a bit of hype, but after glancing cursorily at the plot, I didn’t find it interesting. Having finally seen the movie, though, I can definitely say that I had quite a fun time with it.

I mean, there was just a lot of hilarious stuff here. The montage of death sequences, concluding with Jessica Rothe’s Tree character stating that Israel Broussard’s Carter’s plan “totally sucked” was funny, but even more amusing was Jessica Rothe’s character turning into Emma Stone’s from Easy A. Strutting around naked just because, or convincing the closeted gay guy to be himself (her reaction when she discovered he was gay was really funny, too), or pushing back on the sorority chick for fat-shaming another girl, or her dialogue while trying to get arrested (“I’m drunk. Wasted. And I’m high, ya know, pills, weed. You name it, man, I’m on it”), Rothe’s character here was fantastic in the latter part of the film, and it’s no stretch to say I had so much fun with this.

Happy Death Day is more than that, though. There’s not a whole lot of great timey wimey based horror films (Timecrimes comes to mind, and maybe Triangle, but really, what else has the genre got?), so that in itself was unique. And starting with a stereotypically terrible sorority girl, and over the course of the same multiple days turning her into a sympathetic character with depth (her conversation with her father on one of her last days before the loop broke was fantastically emotional) was a fantastic idea.

Central among important characters are those played by Jessica Rothe and Israel Broussard. Though it takes something like forty minutes for the two of them to really make a connection, I think it’s definitely sweet when they do, because Israel’s nice-guy attitude is so far removed from Jessica’s crass and loud personality, though at that point, she’s desperate for help wherever she can find. After the karma discussion with Carter, Tree attempts to make amends for the life she’s been leading, and it’s just heart-warming, especially the aforementioned discussion with her father.

A lot of the kills here aren’t that great, but there’s a few ones worth noting, such as the car explosion and taking a baseball bat to the head (which leads to a pretty good scene transition to Tree waking up again, still in the loop). I won’t say many others are amazing, but it’s the story of the film and the characters that make this such a good movie, and it certainly works.

The one weak portion here is the identity of the killer. I do prefer it over Tree’s original idea of it being a random serial killer who happens to be in the area, but the justification behind the killer’s actions strikes me as weak. That said, it could accurately be stated that the killer is somewhat psychotic, so though the reason seems somewhat small, it still makes sense.

Regardless, I enjoyed this movie so much more than I thought I would, and it’s a definite winner in my eyes. It’s just a shame that it took me as long as it did to see this one.

8.5/10

Directed by Alex Merkin [Other horror films: No Escape Room (2018)]

For a Syfy original, I think House of the Witch is decent. It’s not great, by any means, but I do think it transcends much of the crap that they’ve put out in the last seven years.

There’s not much in the way of plot – a group of teenagers go to the local haunted house for a small Halloween party, but shortly after arriving, things begin to happen, such as entities appearing in mirrors, and the doors lock, trapping them all inside.

Despite this, I generally found the film enjoyable, albeit easily on the average side. I think a large part of my tepid enjoyment was due to the six central performances all being reasonably decent. Starring Jesse Pepe, Coy Stewart, Michelle Randolph, Darren Mann, Arden Belle (who is probably the weakest link), and Emily Bader, I found most of them acceptable and decently realistic, so while the story itself isn’t overflowing in creativity, it comes together nicely.

Most of the special effects are your average Syfy fair, but there was one decent scene in which one of the characters had a few of their fingernails pulled our – definitely a painful sequence to watch. Another thing I enjoyed was the idea that breaking the windows of the house didn’t lead outside, but into something else (what that could have been wasn’t explained, but I liked the way they went about it).

House of the Witch isn’t the most inspired Syfy original, but I do think it was decent enough to be thrown an around average score. It’s not as good as Neverknock was, but it blew films like The Sandman and Truth or Dare (all three Syfy films from 2017) out of the water.

7/10

Directed by Peter Sullivan [Other horror films: Summoned (2013), High School Possession (2014), Ominous (2015), Cucuy: The Boogeyman (2018)]

This Syfy flick isn’t the worst I’ve seen the channel make, but it is overly generic and pretty close to pointless. Ultimately, it comes across as a poor knock-off of Firestarter, what with a little girl who has a power she can’t control being chased by military men, and I just couldn’t find myself caring whatsoever.

In terms of what the film does right, I felt there were a few solid kills that warrant a mention, such as a character’s head getting compressed until it pops, along with a scene in which the Sandman breaks the spine of one of the soldiers. Also, Tobin Bell has about six minutes of screen-time, so that’s cool, right?

Shaun Sipos’ character ends up being a lot less important than one might think, which was a bit surprising, but honestly, I couldn’t find the effort to care much. Lead girl Shae Smolik does about as well as you can expect a little kid to do, but I personally found her a bit irksome throughout. Amanda Wyss (Tina from ANOES) appeared for a bit, but I honestly didn’t know who she was until I checked through her IMDb credits. Haylie Duff somewhat sucked. But hey, Tobin Bell has about six minutes of screen-time, right?

Honestly, the more I think about this one, the more derivative I feel it is. Like I said, I kept getting a Firestarter vibe from it, which was exactly how I felt when I first saw this film, shorty after it’s premiere in October 2017. I didn’t like it then, and I certainly haven’t changed my view in light of another watch.

To be entirely truthful, I don’t think there’s really anything else to say about this, other than that I really didn’t care for the design of the titular Sandman (it didn’t look near organic enough, if that complaint makes sense). This flick wasn’t the worst Syfy original I’ve seen, but it was entirely pointless and without merit. I mean, at least I got to see Tobin Bell in a handful of scenes, so that’s enough, right?

3.5/10

Directed by Nico De Leon [Other horror films: N/A] & Jose Montesinos [Other horror films: Nightmare Wedding (2016), Sinister Minister (2017), From the Depths (2020)]

Oh dear. This series was looking marginally better with 3-Headed Shark Attack, but it dropped down a bit with this one. Now, this is definitely better than the first movie, but boy, it’s not a good or even enjoyable flick whatsoever.

Well, scratch that – there was one decently amusing scene of a multiple-headed shark (who’d have thunk it?) jumping out of the water to attack a helicopter. That was rad, in a hideous-CGI sort of way. Otherwise, I didn’t much see the point of the film.

Sure, both Lindsay Sawyer and Nikki Howard look steaming in bikinis, but that’s not enough. I did sort of like Jeffrey Holsman’s character arc (such as it was), and Chris Bruno looked super familiar (I’m guessing because he’s the brother of Dylan Bruno, an actor I enjoyed in the series Numb3rs), and was decently fun, but there’s still not a lot of reason to go watch this one.

Part of the issue is the repetitiveness of the plot – group goes out on the water, gets attacked, comes back to mainland, decides to go out on water again, gets attacked, so on and so forth. I mean, I’ll be honest, I don’t expect a whole lot from most shark movies, but even for a sub-genre as often dry as this, the film was pretty bad.

Worth noting – for the first 35 minutes or so, the shark only had four heads. Then, for some reason, the shark’s tail became a fifth head. Yes, it’s tail, and yes, it looked as stupid as you’re probably imagining right now.

I’ve now seen 2-Headed Shark Attack, 3-Headed Shark Attack, and 5 Headed Shark Attack, God help my soul, and none of them have been great. The closest the series has gotten to average (and it was still a far way off) was 3-Headed Shark Attack, and I’m sad to see that the series dipped down with this rather lackluster outing. Here’s hoping the next one is better, but let’s be honest, how likely is that?

3/10

Directed by Kelton Jones [Other horror films: N/A]

I went into this one hoping for the best, and I liked aspects of the first half, but in the last twenty minutes or so, Dry Blood really started to irk me.

To be fair, I was irked earlier on also. So the main character (Clint Carney) is a drug addict trying to get clean, so he goes to a rather secluded cabin he partly owns in order to dry out. So far, so good. He asks a friend (Jaymie Valentine) to come to the cabin to help, and she does, so he now has support.

Here’s the issue – apparently even before he got addicted to drugs, the main character has a history of hallucinating, and so when he goes into withdrawal, the stuff he’s seeing could be caused by multiple issues (including, by the way, drugs he brought with him that he may or may not remember taking).

All of this is to say that we have a super unreliable narrator in Carney, and come the conclusion of the film, it’s hard to say what the true events of his stay at the cabin actually are. Did he kill some people, including a cop, or was that another vision? Even with that reveal in the last few minutes, I still don’t really know. Was the cop hounding him, as it seemed? Did his ex-wife come by? I have no idea, because with the drugs and hallucinations, nothing is clear-cut, and when they throw in possible flashbacks, it’s even worse.

Little in Dry Blood wowed me to begin with. I guess some of the special effects are decent, the cabin itself is a perfectly acceptable setting, and sure, the idea in of itself was interesting, but what we have here is mostly a ‘Oh, is it supernatural, hallucinations, or a combo?’ thing going on, and at that point, who knows what’s actually happening.

I went into Dry Blood with little expectations (assisted by the fact that I had never heard of this before starting it), and honestly, the first thirty, forty minutes of the movie were pretty solid. Once we are faced with more visions/dreams/drugged artifacts of the mind/supernatural stuff, though, I became more frustrated than anything.

Now, it is possible that everything is there in order to make sense of the story. Maybe with a close re-watch, the story of what really happens at that cabin emerges. It’s possible, and it would be unfair of me to discredit that. However, with this first-time watch, that certainly wasn’t the case, and while the movie does do some things right, and the basic idea is worth considering, I didn’t much care for this final product.

6/10

Directed by Eli Craig [Other horror films: Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Zombieland (2013)]

I will fully admit, I didn’t go into this one with expectations that I’d enjoy it. I try my best not to go into a movie one way or another, but I find it rather difficult at times. Despite my thinking that I wouldn’t care for this one, though, I’d say that Little Evil pleasantly surprised me.

A lot of this comes from the fact that the humor wasn’t too overbearing (until the final ten minutes or so), so while it was definitely a light-hearted film, I never got the sense that what I was watching was idiotic, which some comedy-horror films tend to be.

The route the story took assisted in this aspect also. While at first it was virtually a comedic Omen, in the last thirty minutes, the movie switched gears and went an entirely new (and welcomed) direction. Obviously, I won’t divulge that exact shift, but it even led to (believe it or not) an emotional scene or two.

Much of the cast was somewhat forgettable. I did like seeing Tyler Labine (who played Dale in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil) for a bit, and Bridget Everett was pretty fun, but most of the side characters were just sort of there. Clancy Brown was a nice face to see, though (I know him best from The Shawshank Redemption), and Adam Scott did really well as the main character. I don’t really know Scott from many things (he was in Krampus, but let’s be honest, I don’t remember any individual character from that film), but I couldn’t help but get a Thomas Gibson feel from him. Regardless, he did pretty good here.

Because the movie took a few interesting turns, it didn’t turn out to be nearly as stale or bad as I initially expected. It’s nothing great, mind you, but it’s certainly serviceable, and there are a few rather funny scenes here (I liked both the principal and Adam Scott’s conversation, along with the footage of the wedding), to make a single viewing of this movie go down pretty well.

7/10