I'm disappointed in you, Christopher Smith...

Back in 2005 or so I got pretty excited after I watched a little British film called CREEP. I absolutely loved that film and still do. I feel that it's an excellent well made film. So I eagerly awaited what Mr. Smith would come up and release next. Well it seems that I had my hopes up for nothing.

I know I'm a little late in this cause Smith's next film after CREEP came out in 2006 and I'm just now getting around to watching it. Guess I wasn't as eager as I thought then, hmmm? Anyways, I've had the DVD, from Netflix, of SEVERANCE sitting on my entertainment center for the past 3 months, if not longer. Friday morning after I got home from a round of golf I decided to finally watch it. Well I tried to watch it cause I never did finish it. I got about an hour into the film before I just had to turn it off. I found myself being rather bored and doing other things than actually watching the film. I just was not being entertained by this movie, at all. There was a moment of interest when this one dude gets his leg caught in a bear trap and gets his legged severed, but that was about it.

So after all this time waiting I have to say that I'm severely disappointed in you, Christopher Smith and your movie SEVERANCE. I was left totally uninterested and turning it off before the climax of the movie.

BLUEBERRY (2004)

Directed by Jan Kounen
Written by Matt Alexander and Gérard Brach
Starring Vincent Cassel, Michael Madsen and Juliette Lewis

Blueberry (Vincent Cassel) is a Marshal for a small town in the west. One day he runs into Wallace Sebastian Blount (Michael Madsen), a man from his past, a man that he thought he had killed many years ago. After Wallace escapes from the jail with the help from his men, Blueberry and a couple of men go after him. They track him into sacred Indian territory where Wallace is on the trail of a legendary gold mine. What Wallace and Blueberry eventually find is something totally different and totally unexpected.

Basically this movie is just one long flashback, with the first 20 minutes or so the flashback that shows what happens between Blueberry and Wallace when Blueberry was a young man. At first this is really just a straight forward western but towards the end it spirals into some trippy ass shit that I really can’t explain. It’s just something you really have to see for yourself. Speaking of trippy about halfway through the movie when Blueberry is taking to his Indian friends for treatment after being nearly beaten to death by Wallace, he is given something to drink. Shortly after drinking it he starts hallucinating and we are treated with what he’s seeing. Although it’s really nothing more than just a bunch of CGI snakes, spiders, other insects and what looks like some kind of wacky octopus (?) it is executed fairly well and is pretty cool to watch. I believe they even try to make it where you feel like you are tripping yourself. And at the end of the movie we are treated with another trip scene that last about 20 minutes! Now this trip was just plain fucking wild and by the end of it I was starting to get a little dizzy and loopey myself. It was pretty great!

Like I said earlier it does spiral into something else at the end of the movie and I really couldn’t tell you what is all going on because there weren’t any subtitles for the Indian language. There is quite a bit of Indian dialog throughout the movie and with it not being translated for you it does take away from the movie a tad. Perhaps there are subtitles on other releases, I don’t really know. I have the Russian release and so all the menus and stuff were in Russian. Hell it took me several attempts just to get it on the English language track.

But don’t really let any of this deter you from checking this movie out. It’s worth seeing just for the visuals alone, for it is a beautiful and well shot movie. Tetsuo Nagata did any outstanding job at the photography for this film, beautiful stuff. Jan Kounen also deserves to get some kudos for his directing on this. I’m not familiar with any of his other work but he did a hell of a job on this. Jean-Jacques Hertz and François Roy do a fine job at providing some nice music that really fits the film. I would like to find this soundtrack.

Surprisingly enough there is a fairly big cast on this with the likes of Vincent Cassel (IRRÉVERSIBLE), whom I’m a big fan of, Juliette Lewis (NATURAL BORN KILLERS), Michael Madsen (KILL BILL), who does a nice job as the villain of the movie, Temuera Morrison (STAR WARS: EPISODE II - ATTACK OF THE CLONES) and Ernest Borgnine (THE WILD BUNCH) who has a funny part as the wheelchair bound Sheriff. Eddie Izzard (THE RICHIES) is also in this as a German with the worst German accent I’ve ever heard, hell it seems like he hardly even uses it.

At first I was going to recommend this to Western fans but this is really like no Western you’ve ever seen before. Overall I found this to be a very good movie that is visually stunning that I would recommend to everybody, whether or not it’s a film for you remains to be seen.

8/10

ASYLUM (2007)

Directed by David R. Ellis
Written by Ethan Lawrence
Staring Sarah Roemer, Mark Rolston and Jake Muxworthy

A group of college kids break into a restricted part of the new campus dorm, which used to be an old asylum in the 1930’s, and unknowingly release the ghost of the former head doctor. Now Dr. Burke is free again to help the sufferings of the teenagers, unfortunately for them.

This is a decent enough movie from director David R. Ellis, who you might know from directing films like FINAL DESTINATION 2 and CELLULAR. There are mainly fairly no name actors in this movie which stars Sarah Roemer as Madison who also played in 2007’s DISTURBIA. But most fans of the genre or movies in general should recognize Mark Rolston who plays Dr. Magnus Burke. He played in movies like ALIENS, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and a ton of other films. He does give a decent performance.

One character in particular was really annoying and I really couldn’t stand him as I can’t stand those people in real life. This character is Tommy played by Travis Van Winkle. He’s annoying cause he’s one of those loud mouth asshole’s that never knows when to shut up. So it was nice to see him get what he deserved. The character of Rez played by Randall Sims had some nice comedic moments which helped the movie out.

The deaths are really nothing special, I thought, but I’m sure that some people will like them. And there is hardly any gore in this unlike some people have stated.

My only real complaint of this movie is that I couldn’t hardly see a damn thing. Most of the movie takes place at night and it seems like the only things lighting the scenes were either a flashlight or a 10 watt bulb. So it was hard to make a lot of things out and it really irritated me, badly. But that was really the only bad thing about this movie. Everything else was pretty decent and enjoyable enough. Although I probably would only recommend this movie to the fans of haunted asylum films or those similar to this. So if you like those types of films then you should give this a rental.

6/10

PATHFINDER (2007)

Directed by Marcus Nispel
Written by Laeta Kalogridis and Nils Gaup
Starring Karl Urban, Moon Bloodgood, Russell Means and Clancy Brown

A young Viking boy is left all alone after all the others on the ship he was on die sometime after reaching the shores of North America. He is soon found by a Native American woman and brought back to the village where they decide to raise the child as their own. Flash forward 15 years and now the boy who they called Ghost is now a young man and while he is out on a hunting trip another boat full of Vikings have arrived and soon find his village and slaughter everyone. Later when Ghost is trying to get his revenge along with some other natives from a neighboring village are captured, the Vikings force him to show them the way to the other villages so they can cleanse this world of the savages and settle down in the new land. But the Vikings never figured one of their own would betray them for the savages.

Marcus Nispel, yes the same Marcus Nispel that directed the remake to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE returns to the big screen with this nice little period/fantasy piece. Personally I found this movie to be a much better and far more interesting film than that remake. After watching this I’ve went around reading reviews on numerous different websites and I was surprised to find that most people didn’t like this movie. Their reasons varied from site to site, such as the characters were shallow or the story was to predictable and shit like that. Now I’m not a professional film critic so I can’t really say anything that shit, nor do I really care to. I could care less about any of that because I found this to be a fun and interesting movie and that really all I care about, is if I have fun watching this. I’ll let other people worry about the little things like that if they wish to. This is not like many of the Period type films that have been released in the recent years. Most of those films had huge budgets and hundreds of actors, extras and crew members. PATHFINDER was nearly the complete opposite as this had a small budget and only a handful of actors and crew members. It was interesting listening to Marcus on the audio commentary telling about the many tricks that they had to use to make it look like the village was much bigger than it actually was. As well as the tricks with the actors and extras in a way that it looked like there were more than just a few that they actually had. PATHFINDER was pretty violent in some scenes, the only problem with that is that most of the blood was CGI which does suck. This film was released in both PG13 and Rated R so I would get the Rated R version like I got, because I’m sure all the fighting and “violence” is pretty lame in the PG13 cut of this.

The film is pretty dark in the lighting and the color palette and it might seem that some of the same shots and techniques are pretty similar to the TCM remake. That might be cause Marcus brought along Daniel Pearl, who shot both the original and the remake of TCM, as his Director of Photography on this film. Daniel always does a good job with the cinematography in my opinion and continues that streak with this film. Jonathan Elias provides a sparse score, yet I felt that it fit the film well.

Karl Urban, who you might know better as Eomer from the LORD OF THE RINGS films, gets the starring role as Ghost the grown-up Viking kid and does a decent enough job with what he had to do. Moon Bloodgood gets her first major role as Starfire, the love interest of Ghost and whom also helps with fighting off the Viking horde. We also get the wise Russell Means, who you might remember from such films as THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and NATURAL BORN KILLERS, plays Pathfinder the elder member of the Native village and brings yet another solid performance to the screen. And last but not least we get Clancy Brown, who always seems to play great villains is the leader of the Vikings. Overall I would say that the acting in the film is pretty solid by all who are involved.

I do have one complaint and that is the use of language in this movie. Personally when it comes to period type films such as this I prefer to have the native language of whatever culture we’re watching. For instance, the Native Americans in this movie are speaking English, why? Well, I probably know why, but I would prefer to listen to the natives speaking some native dialect. The Vikings on the other hand are speaking another language, albeit a poor form of Icelandic but at least they are speaking something different.

Overall I would recommend this movie to anybody that enjoys period/fantasy films and who likes to see Clancy playing a cool villain.

8/10

LIGHTHOUSE (2000)

Directed by Simon Hunter
Written by Simon Hunter and Graeme Scarfe
Starring James Purefoy and Rachel Shelley

A ship carrying some prisons, guards and a few other people hits a rock near a lighthouse and sinks. The survivors reach the shore but unfortunately for them another, more dangerous prisoner, the notorious murderer Leo Rook, has escaped the ship before the sinking and has reached the lighthouse ahead of them and has quickly taken care of the lighthouse crew. With any means of escaping the island or calling out for help being destroyed the others must now survive the night and keep their heads with the maniac on the loose. Who, if any will survive??

A rare slasher flick from England. Now this is my second viewing of this movie and I do admit that I liked it a lot more the first time I saw it a few years ago. I first came across it on the site Xploitedcinema.com and it looked and sounded interesting to me so I decided to check it out.

There really isn’t anything that separates this from the usual slasher fare, except for maybe the score. It does have a nice orchestral score that one would expect from a bigger non slasher film perhaps. It was a nice change of pace from the normal hard rock soundtracks that have been accompanying the majority of slasher films these days. And the piece of music right at the end when the last people standing have finally overcame the evil Leo Rook is a surprisingly touching piece.

As for the acting I felt that everyone did a decent job. The good thing about this was that the people in this movie were adults not the usually teeny bopper and young adult, so there weren’t any of those annoying roles or parts that usually come with those movies and that was a real plus. There were no real big names in this or really anybody you would recognize with the exception of the main guy, James Purefoy, whom you might have seen in A KNIGHT’S TALE and RESIDENT EVIL.

The kills are really nothing special as they don’t even show most of them but we do get to see a couple of throat slicings that do come with some nice blood sprays. There are a lot of decapitated heads in this as the killer likes to collect them, it seems and line them up on the seat of his lifeboat. But we hardly get to see any of those decaps actually happening.

Well like I said there is really nothing to special about this movie but it was a decent effort from the British in the beloved slasher genre. It is worth checking out if you are a lover of said genre. Since I didn’t enjoy it as much the second time around my score for this has fallen just a bit but I would probably still give it a decent 6.5 out of 10.

6.5/10

MIDNIGHT SKATER (2002)

Directed by Lucas Campbell
Written by Lucas Campbell and Andrew Campbell
Starring Cory Maidens, Nick Jackson

People are being killed at a small college, and a group of kids believe it’s the work of the Midnight Skater. A mysterious person who skates around the campus at, well…midnight. These kids finally get fed up with everything and decide to take action. They get together and come up with a plan to stop him.

While this is going on we also follow around a couple of drug dealers who are peddling the drug ‘Z’ to all the college kids. But this drug starts to take a strange toll on the users. They all become zombies after awhile.

But one night all hell breaks loose on the campus! Everybody turns into zombies and now the group of do-gooders must run and try to fight off these fiends as well as the real murderer. But who wins in the end? Do the zombies take over the world or do the good guys prevail? And do we ever find out who this midnight skater truly is??

MIDNIGHT SKATER is a pretty low-budget movie and the quality of some of the shots are not all that great, especially the night shots. But certainly don’t let this turn you off from seeing it, cause if you like blood and guts, then this movie is for you! We are treated with enough blood and guts to satisfy any gore lover out there. There are a lot of limbs being chopped off as well as some ears falling off. There are, also some detachments of the male anatomy that will make all the guys cringe out there.

The acting is alright. There are no Oscar performances in this movie but who really gives a shit with a movie like this? They all did their job pretty well. One character I kinda liked was Richard. He’s a disturbed individual to say the least and he has some pretty funny, cheesy ass lines in the movie. Another funny character is Alvin. He’s roommates with Richard and he’s a little weird. He also has an inflatable sheep that he keeps in his room.

The music’s pretty good. You’re treated to a new take on the old MUNSTER’S theme, that was pretty cool.

Well this movie has a little bit of everything. Lots of blood, guts, dismemberments, necrophilia, zombies and some sword play! There is a lot of perverseness in this movie folks!

I for one found this movie highly enjoyable and fun to watch, but I can understand how some people out there might not enjoy this and find it stupid and what not. But no matter, that’s their problem, not mine. So I would check this out if you ever get the chance you just might be surprised.

6.5/10

THE SIGNAL (2007)

Directed by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush
Written by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush
Starring Anessa Ramsey, AJ Bowen, Justin Welborn and Scott Poythress

THE SIGNAL is an interesting movie in the fact that there were three directors on this each directing a different act or “transmissions” as they are called in this movie. Each act has their own unique look and feel about them which is an interesting way to make a movie and these three guys did a fine job directing and writing this movie. There are very few modern American made films that I have enjoyed but this was a nice diamond in the rough.

The story starts off with two lovers, Mya (played by Anessa Ramsey) and Ben (played by Justin Welborn). Mya has to return home to her husband, Lewis (played by AJ Bowen) before he gets to suspicious of her adulterous affair. And this begins our first “transmission” (directed by David Bruckner) entitled Crazy in Love. Mya returns home and shortly thereafter all hell breaks loose with the signal starting to get to people and make them go crazy and start killing people. Lewis is one of the ones affected and kills a friend of his. Mya escapes and hides out till mourning and then makes her way to Terminal 13 to meet up with her lover Ben.

Along the way she crashes her car and has to walk the rest of the way. Shortly thereafter the second “transmission” (directed by Jacob Gentry) called The Jealousy Monster begins and basically follows Lewis. He finds Mya’s car in front of an apartment building and we’re introduced to two new characters, Clark (played by Scott Poythress) and Anna (played by Cheri Christian). The majority of this act takes place in Anna’s apartment and is a big change of pace from the first act. There is a lot of dark humor here and had me cracking up throughout the act. Ben shows up and saves Clark from Lewis.

The third “transmission” (directed by Dan Bush) called Escape from Terminus begins and basically follows Ben as he tries to reach Terminal 13 to find Mya. Clark tags along but they are not the first ones to reach the terminal. Lewis has beaten them to it. Now Ben and Lewis have to fight each other to the death to find out which one gets to have Mya.

As I said before THE SIGNAL was a pretty nice change of pace from the usual crap like remakes and sequels and the like that America has been releasing here lately. To me what made this film work as the fact that there were three different directors who each added there on flair to the movie. My favorite act was the second one, with its dark humor and funny dialogue. I’m not sure if the film would have been that strong without this act. There is plenty of violent acts in this one with some decent amount of blood and lots of head wounds.

All of the actors did a good job and I would say that the stand out performance comes from Scott Poythress who plays Clark. I loved his character and what he did with him. AJ Bowen who played Lewis also did a pretty darn good job with his character.

I would definitely recommend this movie to anybody, especially those of you that are looking for something different. Those of you that are tired of the endless remakes and sequels that are coming out of Hollywood these days, look for this nicely done low budget film. You just might be surprised.

8/10

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE (2006)

Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
Written by Shinya Tsukamoto
Starring Hitomi, Ryuhei Matsuda and Shinya Tsukamoto

A couple of people are killed brutally but the cops first think it’s just suicide, but a new detective, Keiko Kirishima (Hitomi) on her first real case begins to think that these people were actually murdered after noticing that they both called the same number before they died. She begins to suspect that they were killed in their dreams and enlist the help of a Nightmare Detective to go in the dreams on her and her colleagues to help catch this maniac butcher before he kills anybody else.

As you can tell by the plot NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE does take a little bit from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and I can already hear all those Freddy fan boys getting all up in arms over this. To those people that would go around saying that they stole from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET I say sit down and shut up. All it really does is take the whole dieing in your dreams concept and take it in another and more interesting direction. For me I’m glad that the Japanese and Shinya Tsukamoto took this in the direction that they did instead of having American make yet another boring and shitty sequel or even worse, a remake of this very tired NIGHTMARE franchise.

I am sad to admit that this is the first movie that I’ve seen of Shinya Tsukamoto. Fellow Japanese film fans may recognize the name as the director of TETSUO and A SNAKE IN JUNE and others. I have pretty much all of his films on my to watch list already and after watching this one I’m going to have to go and move them up. Shinya does a fine job on this film as the director, writer, cinematographer, editor and producer. He certainly had his plate full on this film and pulls it all off greatly. Hell he even plays a part in the movie as 0, the bad guy of the movie.

People that hate shaky cam may be turned off by the camera movement in this film. The camera felt like it was always moving and I thought it helped to keep the movie going cause this one doesn’t seem to bog down or start off slow like a lot of Asian horror movies tend to do. I never really noticed the shaky cam till the nightmare scenes and you were looking from the killer’s P.O.V. then things got pretty crazy. And the nightmare scenes are pretty cool, I thought, watching the victims getting sliced and diced from some unseen force. Until later in the movie when we finally get to see what is really going on. And this was shot in a way that they make the redness of the blood really stand out.

Like I said earlier I didn’t think this movie started off slow or bog down as the kills start off pretty early in the movie and the pace seemed pretty evenly paced to me. And that is sometimes hard to say about J-horror and other Asian horror films, so you might and I hope you are as pleasantly surprised as I am.

The acting is all pretty decent. It is really kind of hard for me and perhaps American’s in general to properly judge Asian acting. Sometimes it feels like there is a lot of over acting but who knows, maybe that’s how they act over there, but there really wasn’t all of that overacting stuff in this movie and everyone does a decent job overall. Hitomi who plays the lead detective Keiko Kirishima does pretty good in this movie. They said in the “Making Of” feature that this was her first speaking role in a film. She’s also easy on the eyes, so that’s a nice plus.

Overall NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE is a well done and interesting film that I would pretty much recommend to anyone, especially the fans of J-horror. Of course there are still some of those “What the fuck” moments and the ending perhaps doesn’t make the best sense but it is a very enjoyable film in my opinion and one that I look forward to adding to my collection. Now I got to get off my ass and watch those other Shinya Tsukamoto movies.

8/10