Runtime: 98 minutes
Release Date: September 6, 2013
Rating: R
Director: Robert Ben Garant &
Thomas Lennon
Heavily pregnant and soon to pop
Vanessa and her husband Jack move into a new house known around the
neighborhood as the House of Blood. They learn the nickname when
F'resnel, one of the guys in
the neighborhood, pop up on their first night there. On the same day
that they move in, the camera pans up to show a scary naked woman
standing in the window.
Since Hell Baby is a spoof, the
film kind of combines elements of Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and
other horror flicks. Vanessa suddenly starts eating raw meat, washing
her hands until they bleed, and practically speaking in tongues,
while Jack finds himself woken early one morning to the naked and
toothless scary woman from the beginning going down on him in bed.
Once the Vatican learns of the problem, they send Father Sebastian
(Robert Ben Garant) and Father Padrigo (Thomas Lennon) to
investigate.
Hell Baby got some really bad
reviews, but it seems like more horror spoofs get bad reviews. A lot
of people hated on Scary Movie 5 and complained that it wasn't as
good as the first few, but I liked it. Then again, even the other
Scary Movie films got bad reviews. I first heard about Hell Baby when
Microsoft offer a free rental a few weeks ago, but I didn't get the
chance to watch it thanks to some personal issues going on at the
time. When I saw it in stock at Redbox and had a free coupon code, I
decided what the heck and grabbed it.
It's hard for me to review Hell
Baby because I both liked it and didn't like it at the same time. I
laughed multiple times, but I have a girl crush on Leslie Bibb
(Vanessa) from her Popular days, and I thought Rob Corddy was the
highlight of Hot Tub Time Machine. (Yes, I do sometimes watch films
other than horror movies, including a recent viewing of Blue Jasmine,
which I loved.) I thought that maybe I just wanted to like it
because I liked them, but my roommate found it pretty funny too.
It probably helps that I loved Reno
911 and love both Garant and Lennon. I can't see Lennon anymore
without thinking about his small roles in We're The Millers and the
Harold and Kumar Christmas movie or recently discovering he had
scenes deleted from The Internship.
While I thought the movie was
funny, it got a little grating towards the end. I found myself
laughing less and less as the movie progressed, and I probably only
cracked a few smiles in the last 30 minutes. It almost felt like the
movie was pushing itself to remain as funny at the end as it was at
the beginning. By the time Vanessa gave birth, I was just relieved
that the ending was right around the corner. Though Hell Baby was
only 98 minutes long, the last 30 minutes or so felt like an
eternity. I wish it was just as funny throughout its entire runtime.
Runtime: 81 minutes
Release Date: June 14, 2013
Rating: R
Director: BJ McDonnell
Marybeth (Dannelle Harris) is a
real bad ass. Hatchet III starts right after the second film ends,
which means that she just took down Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder).
Since this is a Hatchet film, nothing can really stop Crowley, not
even Marybeth and her chainsaw, which she uses to cut him in half.
Completing her work, she heads back into town, where Sheriff Fowler
(Zach Galligan) captures her. Not believing her story, which he
thinks is just an urban legend, he arrests her for murder.
Fowler then makes the mistake of
taking a team of men deep into the swamp to discover what really
happened. His ex-wife, who just so happens to be an investigative
reporter, heads to the jail and interviews Marybeth. Though Amanda
doesn't really believe her story is 100% true, she does agree to take
her and another cop to investigate her claims. As Amanda's father was
one of the ones who originally helped kill Crowley, she thinks that
she knows the answers to why Crowley keeps coming back.
I really, really loved Hatchet. I
watched in once, took it back to the video store, and immediately
bought a copy and watched it again. It's one of those movies that I
recommend to people who love horror movies and those who don't really
love horror. Everyone I ever recommended it to loved the movie too.
When I heard it was a trilogy, I couldn't wait to see the rest of the
films. The way I feel about Hatchet 3 is the same way I felt about
Hatchet 2: meh.
On their own, the sequels are
fairly good films, but when compared to the first one, they are
definitely lacking. I absolutely love Parry Shen, and I love that
they find a way to bring him back after his character died. He's
incredibly funny and easily the highlight of the movie. The rest of
the characters are just kind of meh.
Seeing Zach Galligan, who I
absolutely loved in Waxwork and Gremlins, was fun, but once the fun
and excitement wears off, he's pretty much a one-dimensional
character like most of the actors and characters in the movie. It was
a treat to see Sid Haig, but he's unfortunately not in the movie for
very long.
One of the problems I had with the
sequels is the replacement of Marybeth. I really enjoyed the original
actress and thought she brought a lot to the movie, but I don't feel
the same way about Harris. Casting her in a horror film at this point
almost feels like stunt casting. It was one of those wink and nod
moments to horror fans when she showed up in Urban Legend, but now
she's appears in what seems like every horror movie ever made. While
some horror fans love her, I liked the original actress better.
Hatchet 3 was an okay movie, but it
wasn't nearly as good as the first one and it didn't really feel like
it added much to the franchise.
Runtime: 77 minutes
Release Date: October 17, 2011
Rating: R/NR?
Director: Martin Kemp
Paula is a best selling write
struggling with her next book. After the urging of her
publicist/agent Sara, she decides to spend some time in her old
family home. Everyone thinks that getting her away from it all for
some time will help her focus and get her to buckle down and write.
Not long after arriving, she meets the housekeeper who will take care
of the home and her needs.
Things change when Paula meets
Linda. As her new personal assistant, Linda promises to do whatever
it takes to help her write, but it quickly becomes clear that Linda
has some darker ideas in mind. Between a sudden injury that never
seems to go away to the fact that Linda always seems to be popping up
out of nowhere, Paula finds that getting away from it all might be
the biggest mistake that she ever made.
I'll confess something here: this
movie was hard to follow. I sat down to watch it with my roommate
after watching Hell Baby (review is coming soon!), but a lot of the
time, we watch movies while chatting about other stuff and playing
online. This time, we were both watching the movie the whole time. At
one point, he looked over and asked me if I had any idea what was
going on, and I had to admit that I wasn't sure.
The problem is that Stalker tends
to jump around a lot. One minute we're watching a scene of Paula and
Linda having a conversation, then someone else will appear, it will
jump to a scene of Sara talking to Paula's doctor, then a
conversation between two completely different people, and then back
to Paula. Given the ending of the film, the jumping around makes
sense. The director wants to keep you on your toes and unsure of
what's happening, but it just made the movie hard for me to follow.
Despite the jumping around, it's
easy for anyone to predict the ending. My roommate very casually
said, "I bet X, Y, and Z" at one point in the movie, I
agreed, and damn if that isn't exactly what happened. If the director
hoped that the ending would surprise anyone, he probably shouldn't
have used so much foreshadowing in the earlier parts of the film. It
left me unsatisfied and feeling like I just watched a made for
television movie.
Runtime: 97 minutes
Release Date: July 26, 2013
Rating: R
Director: Sebastian Silver
Alicia and her best friend/cousin
Sara (Emily Browning, The Uninvited) decide to visit a remote area of
South America for their vacation. Sara looks forward to the trip and
introducing her cousin to her boyfriend Augustin and his sister
Barbara. When they arrive, they find that the duo brought along their
new foreign exchange student friend Brink (Michael Cera), who clearly
seems unhinged from the very beginning.
Sara receives a phone call about
some problems with her school, and she leaves for what should be a
short period of time. Left alone with a group of people she barely
knows, Alicia slowly starts coming apart at the scenes. Brink seems
especially interested in her and willing to do whatever it takes to
make her his, while the other characters are mainly there to make
Alicia more unsettled. As the film progresses, more weird things
happen that make the viewers wonder if these things actually happen
or are just a part of her mind.
After watching Magic Magic, I
wished that I hadn't wasted an entire $1.20 to rent it from Redbox. I
really did think it was that bad. It was one of those films that I
finished watching and didn't say anything because I wasn't sure how
anyone else felt. My roommate looked at me and said, "What was
that shit?" and my other friend's reaction was, "Why did
you make us watch this?"
That was why I was so surprised
when I saw that it had such good reviews online. Did we all watch the
same movie? Magic Magic was just plain bad. There was literally
nothing about this movie that I enjoyed. Everyone in the film seemed
cast for the wrong parts, and the movie itself was just plain
confusing. I get that some films want to make you question reality
and consider whether what you saw was real, but this one just left me
scratching my head. It's literally the only time that I wanted to
take a movie back and demand a refund from Redbox.
Runtime: 97 minutes
Release Date: October 18, 2013
Rating: NR
Director: Vincenzo
Natali
Lisa (Abigail Breslin, The Call) is
an ordinary teenage girl. On the day before her sixteenth birthday,
she wakes and finds that fog rolled in through town, making it
impossible to go for a bike ride or even leave her house. After
watching her brother Robbie play an Atari game and talk to his
imaginary friend Edgar, she notices that something seems strange
about her house. The next day, she wakes, and it's the same day all
over again.
Her mother lectures her on the
clothes missing from the washer, while her father seems overly upset
and angry about the car that needs repaired. After experiencing the
same day several times, Lisa comes to the startling realization that
her family is dead. They keep reliving the last day they spent
together. She also realizes that The Pale Man (Stephen McHattie,
Pontypool), who suddenly appears from out of nowhere, has a
connection to her home.
Things become even more complicated
when Lisa runs into the ghost of Frances, a young woman murdered in
the house, and when she suddenly finds herself seeing flashes of the
future. After waking in the body of Olive, a young woman from modern
times, she realizes that whatever happened to her family will just
keep happening again and again. She sees Olive's father shouting
about his car, her parents fighting to the point that the father
throws things, and the Olive's sister upset and crying. Lisa must
find a way to end the ghostly cycle that keeps taking over her home.
I know I haven't been that positive
about most of the horror films I viewed recently, but Haunter changed
my mind. Just when I thought that my streak of bad luck would
continue, I randomly stumbled across this little gem in Family Video.
The cover caught my eye, but it was the film that kept my attention.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what
it was that I liked about the film. It's fairly predictable and
anyone who doesn't see the twists coming probably wasn't paying
attention, but I actually liked that. You have the one "twist,"
which is that Lisa and her family is dead, but that was something the
film set up early on. You then get the twist about The Pale Man, and
then you get a completely different twist when the film jumps into
the future.
The acting in Haunter was much
better than I expected too. Breslin isn't an actress that I
particularly like, and when I saw The Cell, I actually found her
pretty annoying. She's still a tad annoying her, but I think it's
just because of the way the writer wrote her character.
The real standout is Peter DaCunha,
who plays her little brother Robbie. There's a scene, where Lisa sees
him wearing glasses for the first time and asks him when he started
wearing glasses. When he looks up at her and tells her that he never
wore them because he wore them the night the bad stuff happened, I
got chills. Seeing a little boy afraid to wear his glasses because he
knows he wore them when he died was pretty intense.
I try not to read too much about
movies before I see them, and I literally heard nothing about Haunter
until after I watched it. I'm glad I did because it didn't get such
great reviews, but I really liked it.
Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: October 1, 2012
Rating: NR?
Director: Derek Cole
Paul is a writer who convinces his
girlfriend Stella to move into a haunted house. Though Stella agrees,
she quickly realizes that living in the house is a little creepier
than she expected. It doesn't help when Paul tells her the story
behind its haunting. The father of the family murdered his children
and wife before killing himself. Though some people think that it was
the result of a home invasion, he determines through his research
that the killer was the father and that no one else was involved.
One night, the door to their
bedroom slowly comes open, which freaks Stella out and doesn't really
bother Paul. While in the house alone, one of the kitchen drawers
slides open. Though she's scared, she tries to keep moving on, but
then sees all the doors start opening and closing at once and finds
the furniture stacked on top of each other. She is so upset over what
happens that she breaks up with him and moves out. Left alone in the
house, the paranormal activity heats up and directs itself at Paul.
I have mixed feelings about An
American Ghost Story. Halfway through the movie, I looked at my
roommate and said, "So this is like a cheap version of
Paranormal Activity?" and he pretty much agreed. It's the type
of film where you keep waiting and waiting for something to happen,
and once something finally does happen, it's nowhere near what you
expected. When the bedroom door moved, I literally giggled.
After the first half of the movie,
it actually does get better. It almost seems like the character of
Stella drags down the film. The director could have cut out her
scenes and made the movie entirely about a single man who moves into
a haunted house and I wouldn't even realize it. She's really just
there to complain about not wanting to live in a haunted house and
the house freaking her out. If it bothers you that much, don't live
there? Granted, Paul doesn't reveal all the details until they are
there, but she still willingly agreed to move into a haunted house.
The one thing that An American
Ghost Story has going for it that other films doesn't is that it
actually manages to introduce a few jumps. I've seen enough films
that I'm usually not jumping off the wall, but there were a few
scenes that left me squirming in my seat just because I wasn't sure
what to expect. It also had a strong ending. It's the type of ending
that wraps up the film and makes you feel satisfied but still gives
you that one last jump. Though it got some poor reviews, An American
Ghost Story was better than I expected and better than some of the
mainstream films released in recent years.
Runtime: 76 minutes
Release Date: 2013?
Rating: R/NR?
Director: Byron Turk
The Bates Haunting opens with Agnes
and her best friend Lily. Lily is the more adventurous and outspoken
of the two, and she recently earned an acting job working for The
Bates Haunting, a local haunted attraction that is only open for a
short period in the fall. Though Agnes doesn't want to even visit,
Lily begs her to come and go through on her opening night to see her
in action. Something goes wrong, and Lily catches on fire. Most
people laugh and cheer because they think it's part of the show, but
Lily dies in the fire.
Cut to one year later. Agnes is now
working in a fast food restaurant, but she quits her job. Needing to
find work, her father manages to get her a job working in the same
haunted attraction. Though the last thing she wants to do is work in
the same place where her friend died, her father and friends convince
her that it will be good for her. Not long after starting her new
job, some of her coworkers die. As more bodies pile up, it becomes
clear that something dark and sinister is going on here and that
someone wants Agnes dead.
The Bates Haunting is one of those
films that you see at the video store (if you still have those) or at
Redbox and think that it looks interesting. Despite how the box
looks, this movie has nothing to do with Psycho or anything related
to the Bates Motel. This is a straight up horror film that takes
place at a haunted attraction that just so happens to have the same
name as a popular horror franchise and somehow manages to escape
being sued.
This film has its share of good
moments and bad moments. On the one hand, it offers a fairly
interesting look at what happens behind the scenes of a haunted
attraction. Maybe everybody doesn't hang out after hours, drink, and
hook up, but I like to think that they do. It also has some pretty
good acting for a straight to DVD flick. I've heard comments about
how Jean Louise O'Sullivan (Agnes) was a terrible actress, but I
actually liked her performance. For someone with just a handful of
credits to her name, she does a pretty good job. My now ex-boyfriend
particularly loved seeing Ryan Dunn turn up in the beginning of the
film. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing that this was one of
his last performances.
On the other hand, this is just
your stereotypical straight to DVD horror flick. There really isn't
anything new or different that it offers to the genre. Most of the
death scenes seem a little lacking, and many of the actors appear to
just sleepwalk through their roles. While I don't think I'll add The
Bates Haunting to my want list anytime soon, it was interesting
enough to keep me watching and worth the rental price.
