Suspended Animation Movie Review

Runtime: 114 minutes

Release Date: December 25, 2001

Rating: ?

Director: John D. Hancock

Suspended Animation is like two, two, two movies in one.

Tom is one of the more popular animators working for some type of Disney studio when he decides to take off on a winter trip with some friends. After hitting the woods on snowmobiles, they become separated, and Tom accidentally crashes his in the woods and goes for help. An older woman answers the door and tells him that help will be there soon before introducing him to his sister and later promising that his friends will easily see the crashed vehicle.

Not long after they take him in, they quickly show their darker sides. While one sister is a little on the sweeter side, the other is dark and deadly. They tie him to a chair and talk about all the things they plan to do to him, which naturally include eating him. Though he tries to distract them with promises of making a movie based on them and creating animated characters that resemble them, they finally get him into the basement and begin doing everything they promised.

While that sounds like an interesting movie in its own right, Suspended Animation becomes something entirely different. After being rescued from the basement, his white knights kill one sister and claim they shot the other but no body is ever found. Tom then goes back to his old life with plans to turn his adventures into a new movie. When a new woman suddenly arrives in his life, he realizes that she may have a connection to what happened to him in the past.

Have you ever watched a movie where you loved the first half and tried to keep yourself awake for the second half? That's exactly how I felt about Suspended Animation. The first half, or at least the part of the film that took place with the sisters in the cabin, held my attention and kept me entertained. I loved seeing the way he tried to play the two of them and even turn them against each other. It was also interesting to see the dynamic between the three characters.

Though it started off a little slow, it didn't take too long before Tom realized that the sisters weren't quite as sweet or as innocent as he originally thought. All three actors in those roles did a great job of making you want to know what happened next. By the time the second half of the movie kicked in, I wasn't as interested anymore.

The second half deals with Tom meeting a woman who shows no interest in him and then suddenly wants to be his new BFF or at least FWB. There's a lot of confusing stuff that happened in the middle, with new characters arriving, the new girl keeping secrets, and basically me trying to figure out what the heck was going on. By the time it finally ended, I really didn't care too much what happened to anyone, which is sad because the beginning was so great.

Suspended Animation had a strong opening and then kind of faded away.

The Ouija Experiment 2: Theatre of Death aka Ouija Resurrection

Runtime: 86 minutes

Release Date: August 15, 2015

Rating: NR

Director: Israel Luna

For the last six months or so, I had The Ouija Experiment in my Netflix queue and never got around to watching it. On my last fateful trip to Redbox, I grabbed a movie called Ouija Resurrection because I liked the box. Little did I know that it was actually a sequel to a movie I never watched before. Redbox made no mention of the fact that it was a sequel, and I honestly think they deliberately changed the name so people like me wouldn't rent it without seeing the first. I'll try not to taint my review with my extreme displeasure.

Ouija Resurrection doesn't pick up where the first movie left off, which is probably a good thing. Instead, it makes it out like the original movie was just a movie. All the characters from that movie, including some I'm sure died in it, come back to play themselves. They head to a showing off the film at a theater with some of their fans on hand.

When the director opens things up for questions, they learn that the theater where they're screening at is supposedly haunted. There's something about how a woman died in labor and her baby ended up being crazy or something like that. The point is that the family supposedly fed the baby humans to fulfill its cravings for flesh. No one really believes the stories, so you can guess what happens next. People start dying.

Ouija Resurrection is such a confusing movie because there is so much going on. There are a few scenes with actual ghosts running around and attacking people, but there there are scenes that indicate the stories told about the theater are true and that there really is some flesh eating chick hanging out in the basement. Ah, fuck it. There really is a demented crazy lady living in the basement who eats people and her family really does keep her chained up down there and feed her people.

The characters are kind of iffy too. Eric Window, who apparently played Calvin in the first movie, keeps popping up to give his catchphrase from that movie, which is something like, “C to the A to the L to the VIN,” which continues being annoying long after the first time you hear it. I did get a kick out of Swisyzinna, who plays herself. She comes across as the stereotypical African American chick from a horror movie, but she plays it like she knows she's exactly that character. There's one point where she even references it and mentions how it's always the black girl who goes first.

It's also funny the way they set up the Q&A for the movie. Though there's quite a few people on hand, there are literally only two or three people who bother to ask questions. Then there's a subplot about how some favorite fans get the chance to go backstage and meet the actors. This is really just a setup for them to show one of our actors dead with them all thinking it's part of the show they created for them. Oh, and did I mention that there's the stereotypical goth girl with long black hair who keeps feeling things? Yeah, it winds up being way too many things crammed into one movie.

Once I watch The Ouija Experiment, more of this movie might make sense to me, but right now I have to give a thumbs down to everything about The Ouija Experiment except for Swisyzinna, who I totally want to hang out with in real life!

The Day Movie Review – When the World Ends, We All Become Cannibals

Length: 87 minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: August 29, 2012

Director: Douglas Aarniokoski

A group of three men and two women wander down a bleak road until they come across a charming farmhouse. Adam (Shawn Ashmore, "Frozen") flashes back on his life before joining the group. He remembers leaving his wife and daughter alone in their car to rifle through an abandoned house, only to have someone break into the car and steal them both. Shannon (Shannyn Sossaman, "One Missed Call") explains to Mary (Ashley Bell, "The Last Exorcism") that Adam, Rick, and Henson were best friends before the world ended, which is how they ended up together.

Rick discovers a treasure trove of canned food in the basement and shows it to his pals. Henson is especially happy because he's near death and they apparently haven't had food in awhile. Moving the food sets off an alarm that lets those outside the house know that someone broke in. As those people attack, Rick dies, and Mary tries to attack one of the men. Shannon overhears Mary talking to the man and learns that she has a tattoo that identifies her as part of a similar group. When they get back on their feet again, they need to decide what to do about Mary, while Mary attempts to decide what to do about herself.

"The Day" is a film with a lot of promise, but I can't help feeling like it missed the dark. The director uses heavy contrast, which gives the movie a dark apocalyptic feel. You seldom see many shades other than black, white, or gray, and when the film does introduce color, it creates a jarring effect. When blood is shed, the bright color of the blood against the black and white backdrop is pretty amazing.

Many of the actors and characters in the film are interesting especially Mary. The woman rarely speaks to anyone in the ground, which leads to a showdown between she and Shannon. Shannon lets her know that the group is a family and that if she can't act like they do, she needs to leave. While she has a tattoo that marks her as a cannibal, she knows that she can't go back to that life and live that way again, but she doesn't know how to explain herself to the others.

We don't get a lot of backstory about anyone else. Rick and Shannon are apparently in a relationship, but after his death, she just turns into a bitch. We get one scene that shows them together, and then she suddenly forgets he was even part of the group. All she cares about is killing Mary and moving on. Even when the others agree to let her redeem herself, Shannon still wants her to die.

The Adam backstory is a little out of place too. We see him cradling the head of a baby doll in one scene, and he flashes back to losing his family. We learn that the doll belonged to his daughter, and while he does mention her a few more times, it doesn't really make sense. If he was traveling with his wife and daughter, how did he wind up with the group? Shannon even points out that they've been a group for years. It also explains why he hates cannibals, but it doesn't explain why he lets Mary redeem herself. He goes from wanting her dead because she's one of the people who killed his family to risking his life to save her just a few scenes later.

"The Day" was far better than I thought it would be, but it does have a few flaws. Ashmore is a great leading man, and I look forward to seeing him in more movies. Bell is an even stronger actor, and given that I really disliked "The Last Exorcism," I was surprised at how well she did here. She definitely has more of a range than I previously thought. As for Sossaman, had I known she was in the film, I probably would have skipped it.

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines Movie Review

Runtime: 91 minutes
Rating: 5
Release Date: October 23, 2012
Director: Declan O’Brien

Wrong Turn 5 literally starts right after Wrong Turn 4 ends, which is a nice bit of continuity. One-Eye, Three-Finger, and Saw-Tooth reunite with their dad Maynard (Doug Bradley, Hellraiser). Apparently, this is supposed to be the same guy from the first two films in the franchise, but he looks nothing like him since this is an entirely new actor.

They make their way to Fairlake, West Virginia, which conveniently is getting ready for the annual Mountain Man Festival. Billy and his girlfriend Cruz start having sex in their tent when their friends interrupt them. While making breakfast, Billy promptly reveals that he brought massive amounts of drugs with them, right before driving away with the drugs in the car.

Maynard decides to basically throw himself in front of the car so he can snag some hot booty for his sons. They go back to check on him, but when he stabs one of the guys in the leg, they retaliate by kicking the crap out of him. Just before his boys jump out of the woods, the police arrive. Sheriff Angela Carter (Camilla Arfwedson) decides that the easy thing is to just arrest everyone and sort things out back at the station.

While loading the guys and girls (who by the way did nothing) handcuffed into her car, her deputy discovers Billy’s collection of drugs. This gives her more reason to haul them into the station. Once there, his friends gang up on him, and the sheriff reluctantly lets the others go free. When running Maynard’s fingerprints, she discovers that he is wanted in multiple states, and that pretty much leads to her keeping him locked up for the night.

Back at the accident scene, the deputy she left behind finds himself attacked by the mutant cannibals. The mutants then decide to head to the police station and get their daddy an early release…

As a fan of the first two Wrong Turn films, I never know what to expect from the franchise. The first film is a favorite, the second film was a great outlet for Henry Rollins, the third put me to sleep, and the fourth was entertaining. Wrong Turn 5 somehow manages to fall somewhere in the middle of the films.

I often talk about suspension of belief/disbelief in horror films, and this one takes the cake. The festival is somehow such a big deal that literally everyone leaves town for it. The sheriff sends all of her men to the festival except for the one left behind, which leads to her deputizes a bunch of random kids and a man that she literally locked up hours earlier for public intoxication. Even as our characters wander through town, they only encounter a few teenage boys making trouble and the sheriff’s husband. There’s a small town like this near here that has an even bigger festival every year, but the shops are still open and people still walk around because not everyone loves the festival.

Once you get past that though, this is actually a solid little film. The mutants don’t look as great as they did in the earlier films, but I can overlook that given the shrinking budget. The characters are all pretty one-dimensional, but most of them die off pretty quickly so that isn’t a problem.

Wrong Turn 5 also has the classic deaths that we want in these films. One (two actually) involves a man buried in the ground with only his head sticking out as a mutant rides a commercial lawn mower, and another occurs in a Saw-like trap involving a car. Then there’s the moment when Maynard decides to dispense with one character by cutting out her eyes with nothing but a letter opener.

Not everyone is going to like Wrong Turn 5, but if you were disappointed by the last few films, this one will make it all better. It has the appeal of the original with some modern twists.