Antisocial Movie Review

Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: January 28, 2014
Rating: NR?
Director: Cody Calahan


Sam is just like any other college student except that she's in love with a total tool. After talking with her boyfriend, who seems anything but a good boyfriend, via video chat, she tells him that they need to talk about something. Sensing that she wants to break up, he decides to pull the plug on their relationship and end things completely. Upset, she turns to RedRoom, the Facebookesque site everyone on campus uses to keep in touch, where she learns that he spent the night with another chick the night before.


Luckily, she has her best friend and the much cuter Mark by her side. As it's New Year's Eve, he suggests that she come over to his house for a party. Though she isn't really in the mood to party, she agrees to stop by, which was probably a huge mistake.


See, there's a virus sweeping the country that seemingly uses RedRoom to spread. Kaitlin wants nothing more than to party and have fun with her boyfriend Steve, while Jed seems more interested in video chatting with one of his friends online. While Kaitlin does a strip tease for Steve upstairs, Jed's friend warns them of the upcoming danger.


A knock on the door reveals that one of their friends from earlier in the night came back. Jed warns them that he's infected and showing some of the more common symptoms, and they agree to send him away. Sam throws up in the kitchen sink, but no worries, she's not infected. She's actually pregnant, which is what she wanted to tell her boyfriend about earlier.


After checking out RedRoom on his phone, Steve becomes infected. It doesn't take long before he starts showing symptoms, so you know Kaitlin is infected too. Sadly, the whole group is stuck inside a house that they locked down and barricaded from the world, so who knows who will make it out alive? Well, I know, but if you want to know, you need to just watch the movie.


I first heard about Antisocial a few months ago while checking out trailers on XBOX Live. It looked really interesting and made me tell my roommate about it, but I promptly forgot about it. Picked it up at Redbox the other night, and I'm glad I did. Antisocial was a refreshing change of pace from the Hollywood hack films that came out lately.


It's hard to explain what the movie is because it tends to jump around. It's definitely a plague/virus film, but it later turns into something of a zombie flick. We've all seen too many bad zombie films lately, so it's nice that this one offers something a little different. We all use Facebook or some form of social networking nearly every day, and this one might make you think twice before you log on the next time.


Antisocial does a good job of setting up the plot early in the film. Sam, while still chatting with her boyfriend, sees a man seizing on campus, who later turns out to be one of the first victims. We also see some video clips from two young girls on their blog as they succumb to the virus. When the movie jumps into an explanation of what happened and how the virus spread, I started to lose focus. When it jumped to a cure for the virus, I was all in.


I know I’ve said this a few times lately, but Antisocial is one of my top horror picks for the year. It had characters I cared about, some nice acting, and a strong story that hooked me in and made me keep watching.

6 Minutes of Death Movie Review – Waste of Time

Runtime: 70-ish minutes, felt like hours
Release Date: May 17, 2013
Rating: NR
Director: Joseph Ciminera


I usually give a brief or not so brief plot outline before talking about what I thought about a movie, but I'll skip all that this time. I'd love to explain the plot in depth, but to be honest, I have no idea what was going on in this movie. My roommate and I were so bored and so confused that we kept checking to see how much time was left. At one point, my DVD player said there was 7 minutes left, but I swear that it took an hour to get through that last 7 minutes.


When 6 Minutes of Death opens, we see a woman covered in marks and bleeding on the ground. A man standing over her whines about her sins and actions before threatening her with some weird metal whip thing. After yelling at her some poor, he hits her one last time and she presumably dies, though we don't see her face or reaction to that last hit.


The movie then jumps to a small town that reminded me a lot of Amish country. All the women wear long dresses and/or bonnets, and the men wear simple white shirts and black pants. The only thing that makes me wonder when this movie is set is when it shows a fairly modern looking woman leading their religious services. A boy in town comes down with some type of virus, which spreads to other people.


We then meet a little girl who catches the same disease from him. As it spread throughout their town, she gets sicker and sicker until she eventually dies. This leads to her winding up in some random other world where she meets a slightly older man. He tells her that she now has a second chance at life and asks her what she would like to do if she could do anything. She tells him that she wants to be a teacher in China, and he tells her that he can make that happen.


The man then goes off to find her a book on China, which after she reads will let her transition into a new life. While he's gone, she hears someone who sounds like her mom calling her name, so she gets up with a different book to look for her. A random doorway opens, and she walks through it with the book. This sets off some weird thing where the people with the books, who work in the library, must find her and bring her back before those working for the side of evil can find her and steal her book, which would bring horrible things to the library and the side of good. I can't even...I'm just really glad that it ended.

"The Bay" Movie Review – Leave Mother Nature Alone

Rating: R

Length: 84 minutes

Release Date: November 2, 2012

Director: Barry Levinson

We see a lot of horror movies that deal with Mother Nature rearing her ugly head, but "The Bay" focuses on what happens when human beings screw with ecology.

Donna is quite possibly the worst reporter on the face of the earth. Sent to a small New England town to do a story on its Fourth of July celebration, she's filming the downtown celebration when she hears a report of a domestic abuse situation turned murder. Grabbing her camera man, she starts her report on the scene only to learn that what's happening goes beyond a simple murder.

One by one, other people in town start dying of mysterious circumstances, and even more residents find themselves going to the hospital to seek help. They notice weird rashes popping up and other symptoms plaguing them. The main doctor in town does what he can, but he also sends footage to the CDC in hopes of getting help. "The Bay" also tells us that this true story was covered up by the government and that all footage left is what we see in the film. Everything might be connected to the fish that started turning up dead in the local water source, which just so happens to be what most people in town drink.

"The Bay" is one of the few found footage films of recent years that I actually enjoyed. Instead of using a single camera to show the action, the director does a smart job of introducing other camera types and views. We might see one scene from the camera attached to a police car, another scene shot with surveillance footage, and another camera from inside the hospital. Plus we have our trusty report with her powerful camera. We even get a few scenes from characters sending video messages with their cell phones or filming footage from their computers.

Some of the early reviews I read whined and complained about how "The Bay" was Levinson's pet project and spent too much time talking about how people should take care of the environment. Those reviews basically said that this was an ecological horror movie that focused on what will happen if we keep screwing up the environment. Those moments are in the film, but there are so many other great moments that I barely paid attention to the greater message.

"The Bay" never shies away from the action. We see some of the goriest things I've seen in recent years, and the camera is always there when something happens. The main issue that I had with the film was the character of Donna. The film sets it up that she's a new reporter, or possibly an intern, and this is her big break. All that really does is give her an excuse to act like a novice. Between her whining and crying, I just wanted her to go away. The moments where she doesn't appear and the film focuses on other characters are far better than the scenes where she's on film.

Not everyone with enjoy "The Bay," but it is a solid film. It had just the right amount of gore and an interesting story, which kept me entertained for much of the runtime.