Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: July 25, 2014
Rating: R
Director: Paul Leyden
Dale is just a poor young guy when
his father brutally murders his mother at the beginning of the film
as he holds his rabbit and listens to her screams. When the police
show up, they swear that his mother is dead, but when Dale goes into
see her, she suddenly starts moving again.
Cut to Sarah and Josh, a young
married couple living in Las Vegas. Sarah is a graduate student and
Josh works in a casino. Though she recently survived a serious car
accident and has no source of income, Sarah really wants to have a
baby, but Josh wants her to focus on her recovery. He also wants them
to meet their new neighbor, who turns out to be a now adult Dale who
doesn't seem too thrilled that they brought him store bought cookies.
Not long after, Sarah begins
experiencing vivid and realistic dreams that always seem to end in
her death or the death of her husband. Unable to cope with the dreams
and frightened of falling asleep, Sarah turns to her best friend
Leslie. Leslie convinces her that the dreams are simply night terrors
and something many people go through, but she can't explain why an
old scar Sarah had suddenly disappeared. Though willing to accept her
explanation, Sarah doesn't know what to do once she finds bloody
clothing and other things that indicate her dreams aren't just
dreams.
Come Back to Me is one of those
movies that after it ended, I was left with my WTF face firmly in
place. It was also one of those films that I really wanted to talk
about with someone, but unfortunately, no one watched it with me. It
was so strange that I know it will stick with me for a long time.
Katie Walder, who I only know from
Rules of Engagement and How I Met Your Mother, was a good choice as
Sarah, though I do have to say that she occasionally overreaches a
bit. Matt Passmore from The Glades and Nathan Keyes also did well in
their roles as Josh and Dale. Keyes is equally parts creepy and
normal, which leaves the audience wondering what connection he has to
the current story, if any, and how the beginning of the story
connects to the rest of the film.
As a former fan of As the World
Turns, it was nice seeing Maura West again too. Though she's barely
in the film, she turns up towards the end in a pivotal role. She has
one of those scenes that left me shouting at the television. Fans of
the old soap opera may also get a kick out of knowing that director
Paul Leyden previously appeared on the show as Simon.
It's hard to say much about Come
Back to Me without giving away too much of the film, but I really did
enjoy it. I ended up recapping the entire movie to my roommates in
the car later that night and then encouraging them to go home and
watch it. Though it occasionally came across as a little like a
Lifetime movie, it was interesting, creepy, strange, and a little
weird.
Runtime: ?
Release Date: March 1, 2014
Rating: UR
Director: Sean Caufield, Scott
Dawson, David Sherbrook
In light of the fact that I
reviewed a number of movies lately that I wasn't too crazy about, I
thought it was time to post something I really did enjoy.
John Dante just wants to sell a
house. Unfortunately, he's stuck with a house that has a horrible
reputation. Thanks to a series of bad events that happened over the
years, no one in hell would ever buy the place. We then get to see a
few of the stories of the weird occurrences.
In one story, a group of friends
have a massive party and wake up the following morning to discover
that something a little hinky is going on. In the second story, a
band moves into the house and tries to live with their random
bandmate Freddie. Freddie is a little unusual and a little crazy,
which unfolds throughout the story. In the last story, a young man
comes home from war to live with his dad only for them both to
realize that something isn't right.
If my short summaries of those
stories lack any descriptions, it's because I'd rather you just watch
the movie and not live through my summaries. Trust me when I say that
the Freddie and the Goblins segment is a little disgusting and a
little funny at the same time and that this one does a good and smart
job of combining humor and horror.
I have a soft spot in my heart for
horror movies made on a small budget. A close friend of mine was
involved in the genre for a long time before passing away a few years
ago. After watching Dead on Appraisal, all I could do was smile,
shake my head, and think about how much he would have liked this
movie.
If you're the type of person who
loves mass produced Hollywood horror movies, you will not like this
one at all. If you're the type of person willing to go with the flow
and don't need big budgets to enjoy a film, I highly recommend it, if
only for the very end.
Dead on Appraisal features a few
"outtakes" and behind the scenes filming at the very end of
the credits. The roomie and I were literally rolling on the floor and
laughing our asses off while watching those scenes. I found my copy
in Family Video of all places, but I'm sure that other rental places
have it too. If you haven't heard of it before, give it a try.
Runtime: 82 minutes
Release Date: October 23, 2014
Rating: R
Director: A whole bunch of peeps
A guy and girl introduce us to the
world of VHS Viral. They aren't that interesting but serve as the
wraparound for the movie. He's obsessed with filming something that
will go viral and sees his chance when a police chase happens right
outside his apartment. When his girlfriend follows him, he spends
most of the movie trying to chase her down.
Dante the Great is our first major
story. Dante is something of a white trash loser when he finds a
magic cape that turns him into a famous magician. Unfortunately, the
cape is also home to a monster that needs fed hot young girls to
survive. When his assistant discovers his secret, will she help him
or turn the tables on him?
Parallel Monsters is the second
story and the one that made me scream. Alfonso is working in his
basement when his hot wife shows up and asks him to come upstairs.
Though he agrees, he waits until she leaves before revealing his
experiment, which is a portal into another world. Turns out that the
man on the other side is his exact double, but when the two switch
places, one will quickly find that the other world is nothing like
what he expected.
Last up is Bonestorm, which is
almost more annoying than the wraparound story. A group of what looks
like spoiled rich kids with too much time on their hands spend way
too long filming themselves skateboarding and acting like thugs
before deciding to take a little trip to TJ. Once there, they find
themselves stalked by a weird cult that they wind up attacking head
on.
The VHS movies are a little hit or
miss with me. Some of the stories stick with me, but others are
pretty forgettable. After watching VHS Viral, I'm not sure I'll
really remember any of these stories. Parallel Monsters was the most
entertaining and had the most WTF ending of all of the stories, but I
probably liked Dante the Great the most. Bonestorm lost me from the
very beginning and had a hard time keeping my attention once it got
going.
Vicious Circles, which is the
wraparound story felt a little pointless when compared to the
wraparound stories in the other movies. Instead of giving us a story
and introducing us to actual videotapes, we got a guy racing around
town on a motorcycle and using his cell phone to see footage. There
was one gruesome scene where a guy got stuck on a runaway vehicle and
had his feet drug along the ground that made me wince, and made my
roommate, a guy I might add who studies nursing, to actually turn
away from the television. The rest of the story was just kind of "eh"
and I wasn't too crazy about the ending.
I get what the filmmakers wanted to
do. They wanted to update the concept of VHS and make it fit more
with the modern age. How many people really have a VCR in their homes
now? More and more people now use YouTube and watch movies online,
which fits with the theme of the movie. Unfortunately, it kind of
felt to me like this was a movie trying too hard to appeal to teens
and younger audiences, which wound up alienating me a little. I might
not be a teen, but I still love my horror movies!
Runtime: 87 minutes
Release Date: August 29, 2014
Rating: R
Director: Victor Garcia
The Damned is the perfect example
of a film that fails to deliver on the promises of the trailer.
David takes his fiance with him to
Spain to see his daughter Jill. The two rarely talked since her
mother/his wife died, but he wants her to spend some time with his
soon to be new wife. After calling her multiple times without getting
a response, he simply heads to a cafe where he knows she'll be and
meets up with her and her aunt Gina. Gina is something of a free
spirit. She doesn't mind Jill smoking or spending a lot of time with
Ramon, who is Gina's cameraman (she works as a reporter) and Jill's
new boyfriend.
The five of them head off but
quickly encounter a police officer. He warns them that a bad storm is
coming and that they need to turn around. Just as they do, their SUV
gets stuck in the mud and then a wave of water hits them and knocks
the car over. Though all get out, Jill has a slight injury, which
leads them to run off in the hopes of finding shelter.
They eventually come across an
abandoned hotel seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The innkeeper
initially refuses to let them in until learning that David just wants
to help his daughter. Once he lets them in, he tells them that his
phone doesn't work. He then sees Jill's rosary, which was a gift from
her mother, and warns her that it won't protect her. Though she tells
her dad what he said, no one can make sense of it.
After nosing around the hotel, they
learn that no one has ever checked in since the late 1970s, meaning
that the hotel was empty for almost 30 years. The more they
investigate, the more something seems off about the place. It gets
even worse when they discover a hidden room in the basement and find
a young girl locked inside.
Against the warnings of the older
man, they let the girl out. This turns out to be a huge mistake when
the little girl seems to have a dark side. She seems to know all
their dark and dirty secrets, and she isn't above letting those
secrets be known as she makes her way through the group one by one.
The Damned had one of those
trailers that left me on the edge of my seat and with my WTF face on
firmly in place. I even made a little note in my phone just so I
would remember the name of the movie. Once I finally saw it though, I
wondered why I even bothered.
One thing that annoys me is
subtitles. I'm fine with subtitles if I know the movie has them, but
this move had no indication of that going into it. Turns out that
Gina, Ramon, and a few characters who pop up later in the film speak
primarily in Spanish. I'm the type of person who usually does a few
different things while watching a movie, which is impossible to do
with subtitles.
The movie also seemed to try too
hard to appeal to teenagers. Jill is such an annoying little brat
that she reminded me a lot of the girl from the last Transformers
movie. All she cares about is herself and whatever she wants, but
we're supposed to root for her dad to protect her. I'd love to see a
movie with a teen girl who actually cares about her family as much as
she does herself.
The Damned is definitely one of
those movies that I'll barely remember in a few weeks.
Runtime: ?
Release Date: December 23, 2014
Rating: R
Director: Brant Sersen
I remember a time in the not so
distant past when After Dark had a history of picking really good
movies for its festival. Then After Dark decided to produce and
distribute its own films, which left us with options like Sanatorium.
Sanatorium is one of those films
where the characters are so dull and stereotypical that I didn't even
bother learning their names. They're a group of annoying people who
somehow host and produce their own ghost hunters show. There's the
hot blond who is secretly pregnant and not yet ready to tell her
slightly geeky boyfriend, the guy who acts like a jock/douche bag
right out of high school, another hot girl, you get the drift.
The group heads to an abandoned TB
sanatorium for a new investigation on New Year's Eve. Legend says
that a patient when crazy from the disease, found his way to the
children's ward, and killed three kids.
They arrive the day before the
investigation starts to meet with the caretaker. We get several
minutes of filler where he keeps telling them that they can look
around but they can't go in until the next day. There's even a moment
where he catches them trying to get in and says something about how
if they go in early, he'll lose his job and chases them away.
Once they finally do get inside the
sanatorium, it turns into one of those typically haunted hospital
flicks. Instead of staying together, they go off in small groups of
two or three to look for signs of paranormal things. Naturally, they
start disappearing one by one and no one seems to notice. It's all
pretty much the same thing you would expect for a movie like
this...except for one scene.
The pretty girl is wandering
through the children's ward when she sees a ball roll across the
floor. It was right at that moment when I rolled my eyes about how
this is something that pops up in all movies like this. Before I
could open my mouth though, the douche bag character jumps out from
behind a door and starts laughing at her for falling for something so
lame. Not only did I get a little jump from his jump, but it made me
laugh knowing that the director was in on the joke. If there were
more scenes like that in the movie, I would probably give it a
glowing review. Instead, the director seemed to forget about bringing
something new to the table.
Sanatorium was a blind rental. The
roommate saw the cover and liked it so much that he rented it.
Halfway through the movie, he made an excuse and went to bed. Myself
and another friend finished it. Having watched a lot of movies like
this in the past, we pretty much both felt that it seemed like
something we'd seen before. He started playing a game on his phone
the last few minutes, and I got stuck flipping through a catalog that
came in the mail. I was hoping that this might bring something new to
the hold haunted hospital genre, but it was just the same old, same
old.
Runtime: 89 minutes
Release Date: October 24, 2014
Rating: PG-13
Director: Stiles White
Laine and Debbie are best friends
who loved playing with a Ouija board when they were kids. Once they
got older, Laine stopped playing. Cut to the present day and Debbie
playing with one of the boards by herself. After getting a message
she doesn't like, she tosses it in the fireplace and goes outside to
see Laine. Though Laine wants to hang out, Debbie convinces her to
leave. When she goes back inside, she sees the same board on her bed.
After picking up the planchette and looking through it, her eyes turn
completely white. Debbie picks up a row of twinkle lights and hangs
herself from the chandelier in her home.
Laine naturally isn't happy with
this turn of events. She goes from planning a camping trip with her
boyfriend Trevor to her best friend's funeral. While cleaning out her
friend's room and checking on the house for the girl's parents, she
finds the Ouija board. Hoping to talk with Debbie one last time, she
convinces Trevor, her sister Sarah, Debbie's boyfriend Pete, and
their friend Isabelle to come back to the house and use the board.
It doesn't take long before the
board moves to the letter D, which convinces Laine that Debbie wants
to make contact. The board also spells out, "hi friend,"
which freaks them out to the point where they all leave the house.
Over the next few days, they all find the "hi friend"
message left for them. Trevor finds in a tunnel, Pete sees it carved
in his desk, etc. Isabelle has the worst experience, when she sees it
written in the frost on her car window before a hand in the car
reaches out for her.
When the group heads back to the
house for another séance, Laine realizes that the spirit they
contacted is not Debbie. After looking through the planchette, she
sees the disturbing ghost of a little girl with her mouth stitched up
urging her to look in the opposite direction. Laine turns and sees an
older woman running at her. Though no one is sure what is going on,
it's clear that there is something dark and deadly in their former
friend's home.
Last summer we saw a trailer for
Ouija back at the drive in theater. Since then, both myself and my
roommate wanted to see it. Now that I have, I'm definitely glad that
I never bothered to see it in the theater. This is one of those
generic horror films that has little going for it with the exception
of Lin Shaye. Shaye pops up as a woman who spent some of her early
years living in Debbie's house. I don't want to give it away, but she
does a pretty good job of playing a woman who is sweet and a little
crazy with a sinister side.
The rest of the cast is fairly meh.
Olivia Cooke, who does a damn good job on Bates Motel, is just
another pretty girl in a standard horror flick. I kept waiting for a
moment that would make me jump or some type of scare, but nothing
ever came.
The sad thing is that there were so
many moments that could have been scary. There's the guy walking
through a tunnel with no one around for miles, the pretty girl
walking to her car alone late at night. The intensity could have
built to a big scare, but instead, nothing happened. I wish I could
recommend Ouija for at least one viewing, but even me, who loves bad
horror flicks from the 90s, can't do it.
Runtime: 84 minutes
Release Date: September 12, 2014
Rating: PG-13
Director: Sam Miller
Colin is a serial killer stuck in
prison and denied parole. Unhappy with the board's decision, he
escapes from prison and goes back to see his ex-girlfriend. After
taunting her a bit, he reveals that he knows she had a new boyfriend
and that he isn't happy. He brutally kills her before taking off
again.
Terry is a former lawyer who
defended women against their boyfriends and husbands before settling
down with her husband Jeffrey and becoming a stay at home mom of two
kids. Though the two once had a good marriage, they've had problems
recently. She shares some of her troubles with her best friend Meg,
who makes it clear that she doesn't approve of her friend's husband.
Though Terry urges Jeffrey to stay
home for the weekend, he plans to go away with his dad and promises
that the two will go away together soon. After Jeffrey leaves and Meg
makes plans to come back later that night. Terry makes dinner and
tries to go on with her life. In the middle of a bad storm, she hears
a knock on the door and finds Colin on the other side.
Claiming that he lives a few
streets over and had a car accident, he asks to use her phone and
offers to wait outside. Terry, feeling bad for him, brings him the
phone and then lets him into the house. So desperate for
companionship, she offers him a drink, gives him a clean shirt to
wear, and cleans his wounds. As the two grow closer throughout the
night, Colin slowly begins to reveal his dark side and reveals what
made him show up on her doorstep.
The trailers for No Good Deed made
it look like one of those taunt thrillers, but the film itself is
barely a step above a Lifetime television movie. As someone who has
seen so many of those movies, I'm actually pretty shocked that Idris
Elba even agreed to do it after reading the script.
Terry starts out as just another
bored and frustrated housewife. Once Colin arrives and she begins
telling him about her past, it's almost laughable. She goes on and on
about how she helped all these women and how she hates abusive men.
It eventually reaches the point where you want to just scream at the
television about why she doesn't realize the same type of guy is
right in front of her.
Since this is a PG-13 movie,
there's really no violence either. It's one of those movies where you
see him pick up a girl by the throat, the camera pans away, and then
she's dead. There is a scene where someone gets a shovel to the head
that made me jump slightly, but then it's right back to a lack of
horror or gore.
Elba is pretty good in the movie,
but let's face it, that man is good in everything he does. Sadly for
him, he just can't carry this movie all by himself or make it better
than the script. The only way I would recommend it is if you're a big
Elba fan or you love movie of the week/women in peril television
movies.
Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: October 8, 2013
Rating: UR
Director: David McElroy
Lacie is a college student down on
her luck and in desperate need of cash. Not so desperate that she's
ready to hit the pole but desperate enough that she needs to make
some extra cash if she hopes to stay in school. After running into an
old friend, she learns that he makes extra money doing research
projects. He gives her a number to call if she wants to take part in
the next study. When she calls, a voice tells her when to show up and
what to bring.
Once she arrives, she finds out
that the building looks like a hospital on the outside but a military
base on the inside. She also runs into her friend who also signed up
for the study. Then we get to meet a few other random characters.
There is the super lovey dovey couple who can't stand to be away from
each other for more than a few minutes, a random hot girl, and of
course a sassy black girl.
After the group has fun eating
together and partying, they wake to find out that the study started.
They all have to sit together in one room and go in one by one to
meet with the scientists. Lacie gets taken to a dark room and left
alone for a few minutes. Scared, she starts screaming before a weird
gas starts filling the room. She passes out and later wakes back in
her room.
That annoying lovey dovey couple
stars making out, ripping their clothes off, and going at it.
Suddenly, the girlfriend freaks out and starts attacking her
boyfriend. It doesn't take long before other members of the group
start following suit. What the poor college students don't know is
that the study is actually part of a military experiment designed to
create the perfect killing machines. Led by an unscrupulous senator,
the students must find a way to get out of the facility alive.
When I tried finding information
about a movie I saw called After Effect, I learned that it was
originally released under the name The Removed. I'm really not sure
why because it really doesn't have anything to do with that title and
After Effect makes more sense given that the majority of the movie
takes place after they experience the effects of some random gas.
The hands down best part of the
movie is seeing Daniel Baldwin as Senator Davis. He's only in a few
scenes, but he does his best to chew the scenery. It's almost like he
read the script, realized he was in a crappy horror movie, and
decided to just roll with it. There are literally moments where it
seems like he isn't even acting! He just strolls in with an angry
face and starts snapping at people. It might not seem like much to
some, but it was worth it for me.
All in all, After Effect/The
Returned really wasn't that bad of a flick. The scenes where the
couple turn on each other were some of the best in the movie. While I
wasn't a fan of the stereotypical characters or the sometimes forced
love connection between two of the other characters, it really wasn't
too bad. It kept me from reaching for a book or heading to Reddit,
which is more than I can say for a lot of recent horror films.
