Tag: 2018

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 Hollow (2015), The Night Before Halloween (2016), Neverknock (2017), Stickman (2017)]

Oh boy. This Syfy film is pretty derivative of better movies from the past (such as 1989’s Leviathan and 1998’s Deep Rising), and doesn’t bring anything remotely interesting to the story to make up for the lack of originality.

What hurts the movie most isn’t necessarily the story, though; it’s the fact that the cast (comprised almost entirely of women) is utterly one-dimensional. I finally ended up learning their names toward the end of the film, but there was very little about the characters that we really knew, aside from the fact they were all on a ship together. None of the actresses did much with their shallow characters, but that’s more likely an issue with the script than the actresses themselves. I guess Nikohl Boosheri did the best, as tepid praise as that is.

The special effects weren’t terrible, though I didn’t care for the look of the parasitic organism. The stale nature of the story doesn’t really lend much in the way of suspense and mystery past a certain point, though, and more so, I can’t think of a reason to watch this when you could instead watch something like The Thing, or Leviathan, or even DeepStar Six. It just seems pointless, especially since there’s not much context to this movie to begin with.

Dead in the Water is an apt name for this – unoriginal ideas combined with uninteresting characters leads to a film that doesn’t take long to show how uninspired it all is. Theoretically, Syfy could have been able to cobble together something better than this (maybe along the lines of The Devil’s Tattoo, also known as Ghost Rig, from 2003), but as it is, this movie is very much so below average.

4/10

Directed by Stacey Alexander [Other horror films: What Happens in the Mountains – Should Stay in the Mountains Part II (2021)]

This movie is not that good, and in truth, it’s barely a movie (as it clocks in at around 42 minutes). But it is extraordinarily hilarious, so that has to count for something.

Filmed in Northern Georgia, with a cast of about three people (and multiple Bigfoots – Bigfeet?), this is as low-budget as one could imagine (in fact, at the time of this writing, the film does not have an IMDb entry), and there’s also not really much story. Basically, local Bigfoot hunter Buck encounters Bigfoot (there’s more than one in this area) while hunting. And that’s about it. They come to his house to extract revenge toward the end, and admittedly, that was filmed well, but this movie overall doesn’t have that much in way of a plot.

The main actor is Stacey Alexander (who also directed the movie and wrote most of the music), and I’ll fully admit, he had me cracking up quite a bit. Some of his dialogue was golden, and he came across a colorful character. A reporter who appeared a bit, played by John Tripwire, was less pleasing, though – his gravelly voice was something I couldn’t get used to, and he seemed rather soulless standing next to the soon-to-be-legend that is Alexander.

Being a comedy-horror, more than often the comedic influences overshadowed the suspense. There were multiple text overlays throughout the film I could have done without. That said, my favorite thing about the movie was the Bigfoot shriek. I couldn’t help but laugh until I cried during the multiple times that inhuman shriek popped up. Literal tears were in my eyes because of that. So it’s a low-budget movie, but it could be fun.

The scenery (Northern Georgia) looked rather beautiful, and they certainly had fun with this short feature. Not taken seriously, I could see this being a lot of fun to a small niche of people. I know that most would probably hate it, and that’s understandable, but I was amused, and while I wished it had been more horror than comedy, I just think of that dialogue (“Does a whale have a blowhole?”) and that shriek and start smiling again. Definitely not a good movie, but a solid viewing experience all the same.

6/10

Directed by Alex Merkin [Other horror films: Across the Hall (2009), House of the Witch (2017)]

For a modern-day Syfy original, this was a pretty interesting and decent movie. Unfortunately, it’s held back by a few things, but it’s still overall an okay popcorn flick.

It felt almost like a combination of Cube 2: Hypercube and Saw, with Cube’s influences coming in more toward the end. The film certainly had a solid atmosphere, albeit it there were more than a few things that didn’t really seem to make sense.

Young Jeni Ross did a fine job in the movie, and her character was decently likable herself. Her father, played by Mark Ghanimé, was fun also, and probably had one of the better performances in the film. The father/estranged daughter dynamic really helped ratchet the suspense up, and you couldn’t help but hope for a happy ending.

As it was, the ending wasn’t that great. In fact, it barely felt a competent conclusion. Instead of explaining anything, some characters discover that their horrors aren’t quite over as previously thought (those horrors not having been explained at all), and boom, the end. I was hoping for some kind of explanation to the situation they encountered, and a much better ending that, you know, actually felt like an ending. It’s a shame they couldn’t manage that, as the movie had a lot of potential beforehand.

Those are pretty big flaws, and definitely brought down my rating more than a little. I still think the concept and execution is decently cool, but without any type of explanation to tie everything together, the audience is left in the dark as to what was really going on. The father-daughter dynamics worked well, and those performances sort of help counterbalance the lack of a solid conclusion, but the movie would have been so much better had they buckled in and forced out a better ending.

Still, the story was interesting, and there were some creepy scenes and occasional gore. For a Syfy original, I’d say this did pretty well, but it’ll likely end up as little more than forgettable when all is said and done.

7/10

Directed by Ari Aster [Other horror films: Midsommar (2019), Beau Is Afraid (2023)]

This movie, which has gotten a decent amount of praise since it’s release, certainly had a strong sense of tension, suspense, and unease. However, it also seemed to lack some coherence toward the end.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t tons of explanations online – I’m sure there are. But the movie needs to stand for itself, and I won’t say that I wasn’t put off by the route this movie took. It was interesting, but I wanted more explanation than we ever really got.

Much of the movie feels more like a tense and uncomfortable family drama following the death of a family member, and these scenes are done well. When the horror elements begin showing up more, they’re also mostly done well. Many leave you guessing exactly where this movie is going (and that’s something that’s true up toward the end of the film, actually). As for the conclusion, though, I’m not sure I find it all that satisfactory, at least in how it was presented.

The cast was solid throughout, especially Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, and Toni Collette (and to be fair, these three make up most of the screen-time anyway). Collette’s increasingly erratic behavior as the film goes on is a sight to behold, and for as young as his is, Wolff’s performance here is pretty decent (although at times I felt he overacted a bit).

Hereditary is a bit difficult to talk about right now, having just finished it twenty or so minutes ago (at the time of this writing, of course). I’m still trying to digest some of it. But my first impression is that it seems like the type of movie you’d need to watch again to better appreciate it, and though the tone of the movie is great, and there’s an utterly shocking scene relatively early into the film that I applaud, given it’s over two hours long, and I wasn’t really sold on the conclusion, that’s not something I see myself committing to. For now I’d rate this somewhere around average, though it had potential to be more.

7/10

Directed by Dennis Iliadis [Other horror films: The Last House on the Left (2009), +1 (2013), He’s Out There (2018)]

I watched this pretty much at random after hearing about it from a guy at work. Generally, I think the film is pretty decent with some good suspense, but I can’t help but feel I lose interest the closer we get to the conclusion.

The atmosphere throughout the film is pretty top-notch, and is helped along by the moderately small cast (three, maybe four important characters in whole). Story-wise, Delirium’s not the most original movie, but it is tense, and portions leave you wondering what is and isn’t reality. I also have to give props to the cinematography – while there were more jump scares than I’d have preferred, like I said, there were some pretty tense and atmospheric scenes, and those were done right.

Topher Grace does pretty damn well as a man suffering from both a tragic past and mental problems. Solid performance, and even his facial expressions stood out, so there’s little to complain about there. Patricia Clarkson’s character was certainly iffy, but her acting itself was perfectly adequate. Genesis Rodriguez was pretty impressive in her role, and rather cute to boot. Lastly, Callan Mulvey certainly possessed a threatening feel to him, but I sort of felt he came across as a bit generic.

It’s the finale that I had the most issues with, and I can’t even quite explain why that is. It’s not really rushed, but it sort of answered things almost too cleanly, which I know sounds an odd gripe. I just think I’d have liked a bit more mystery near the end than what we got. It doesn’t help matters that much of what we got at the end was highly hinted at before, so none of it really came as a surprise. As for the final scene, I can only hope things work out for the best regarding Grace’s character.

The two highlights of Delirium are the tense atmosphere and Grace’s solid presence. While neither fully makes up for the ending, I do think that the film is generally pretty okay, and you could certainly do worse. As it is, it’s probably around average, but I’ll boost it a bit due to the factors I rather liked. One last thing worth noting – Dennis Iliadis, the director of this film, also did The Last House on the Left remake from 2009, so I’m happy to see that he’s both still operating in the genre and making better films.

7.5/10