Yeah yeah yeah … I know; another shark movie.  Sure the situation is slightly unique (although it was done before in 2009 by the SyFy channel in MALIBU SHARK ATTACK, my review here), but at the end of the day BAIT is just another movie about sharks attacking and killing people.  But there’s an exception.  What’s the exception?  BAIT kicks ass!!  Seriously; this film gets it right and delivers tension, solid performances, scares, and a great final act.  Let’s find out what makes BAIT stand out.

Just like in MALIBU SHARK ATTACK, a tsunami is the major plot point in BAIT.  It’s such a simple setup, yet director Kimble Rendall takes this material and really makes it his own and gives it a unique flavor.  I got scared when I saw that there were six, count ‘em SIX, writers (including Duncan Kennedy, Justin Monjo, and Russell Mulcahy), but whoever was responsible for the final draft did a fantastic job of eliminating the cliches (and there were tons of opportunities to sink into cliches) and really creating a great atmosphere of suspense and tension.  There’s quit a few moments in this film where I found myself holding my breath and not even realizing it.

Rory (Richard Brancatisano) and Josh (Xavier Samuel) are life guards and best friends.  Josh is engaged to Rory’s sister, Tina (Sharni Vinson), and life is good.  One day while on duty a great white shark swims in close to shore without anyone seeing it and before you can say, “What’s that white fin-like thing coming at me,” the shark starts chomping on swimmers and kills Rory.  Josh is devastated over the event because he couldn’t save Rory and it eats him up inside to the point where he loses both his job and Tina.  Sure the opening will give you flashbacks to the opening of CLIFFHANGER where Stallone couldn’t save the chick on the mountain, and sure the CGI in this opening is horrible (seriously, they’re horrible), but I promise if you stick with BAIT the payoff is well worth it.

Flash forward a few years and Josh’s life is a disaster.  He’s broke, Tina left him, and he works in an upscale grocery store stocking shelves.  The grocery store is underground in a pretty swank shopping area.  Then without warning an earthquake hits the area which causes a tsunami to flood the better part of Queensland, Australia leaving it underwater.  Unfortunately the flooding gives a couple of hungry great white sharks the keys to the kingdom and allows them to freely swim around the flooded grocery store, terrorizing the survivors in the aftermath.  The survivors in the store include Josh, Tina (who just got back to Australia), Steve (Tina’s new boyfriend), two guys who were at the grocery store to hold it up, Doyle and Kirby (Julian McMahon and Dan Wyllie), and a handful of other shark fodder.  There were also a few survivors trapped in the flooded parking garage.  The action goes between the survivors in the grocery store and those in the parking garage and director Rendall does a great job keeping the tension high in both story lines.

Other than the opening, pre-credit sequence, the f/x are fantastic.  The sharks are very real looking and the attacks are ferocious and brutal.  The acting is also way above par.  Xavier Samuel (Josh) is definitely a force to be reckoned with in the horror genre.  He starred in the phenomenal THE LOVED ONES (my review here) and once again proves in BAIT that he has the chops for a long acting career.  But what I really appreciated here is that director Kimble Rendall, who also directed the 2000 flick CUT, really delivers.  He knows that what makes a great shark attack flick is when sharks fucking attack and kill people.  But we don’t just get scene after endless scene of people getting killed by the sharks.  We get great setups full of tension and suspense and Rendall does something not usually done in these kind of films:  He scares us!!  There’s a few legitimate jump scares that are extremely effective and really fun.

The story is also very different than most of the films in this sub-genre.  The new trend in these “nature gone amok” films is to have the sharks bigger, smarter, and more aggressive than your average shark.  BAIT, though, goes back to the basics.  We don’t get some ancient, ‘thought-to-be-extinct’ shark or some shark that’s had it’s intelligence amped up due to steroids.  These are just great white sharks, albeit very large and hungry great whites.  It was a great choice using the good old, reliable great white.

The ending will also have you on the edge of your seat.  The survivors pretty much make a last stand realizing that no one is coming to save them and if they do nothing they’re gonna die.  It’s exciting, fast-paced, and really well filmed.

If you’ve given up on the killer shark sub-genre and are simply burned out on SyFy originals, you are in for a treat.  BAIT shows that there’s still a lot of bite and fight left in this genre and it shows how damn good it can be when you have a great cast, a great director, and a great script.  Don’t miss this one!!

My Summary:

Director:  Kimble Rendall

Plot:  4 out of 5 stars

Gore:  5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of posts recently, I’ve been busy promoting and working on another business that I run as well. Scott and the rest of the team have been swamped as well. I’ll try my best to get some new stuff up this week like some reviews for stuff and some previews, etc.

Until then check out what I’ve been working on personally. It’s called “Customs From The Crypt” and it’s custom jewelry, accessories, 1 inch buttons, belt buckles, etc.

Facebook: www.Facebook.com/CustomsFromTheCrypt
Etsy: www.Etsy.com/shop/CustomsFromTheCrypt

We here at Wreckhouse Magazine want to wish all of you a very scary Christmas and a frightful new year!

For those of you that are fans of George Romero and Night Of The Living Dead you already know what the Evans City Cemetery Chapel is and what it means, but for those of you that don’t here’s what it is. The Evans City Cemetery is where a good part of George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead was filmed and the chapel was used in the film. Well since then the chapel has not been used and is in great disrepair and it was going to be torn down. Well a campaign was started to raise enough money to restore the chapel to it’s original glory.

We fully support this project and you should too. If you’re a fan and you can even afford to donate a single dollar it will greatly help the cause. If you don’t want to just donate money there’s also a store section with some cool merchandise with all proceeds going to the project. Currently they have posters, shirts and hoodies. Check out the artwork below.

George Romero himself is backing the project! CLICK HERE TO READ A WORD FROM GEORGE ROMERO.

For more information on the project and to help out and donate or purchase some merchandise head on over to www.FixTheChapel.com

Full Moon Features has an awesome Christmas contest going on right now and you have until December 20th at midnight to get in on the action. They’re giving away some AWESOME prizes, check out the run down below

ONE GRAND PRIZE:
One (1) $500 Gift Certificate to the Full Moon Direct Store!

TWO First Prize Choices:
(pick one)

First Prize (choice 1)
The NEW Puppet Master remastered Blu-ray AND the Puppet Master 10 DVD Box Set

First Prize (choice 2)
The Subspecies remastered Blu-ray AND the Subspecies 5 DVD Box Set

TWO Second Prize Choices:
(pick one)

Second Prize: (choice 1)
Gingerdead Man 1, 2 and 3: 3 DVD Box Set

Second Prize: (choice 2)
Evil Bong 1, 2 and 3: 3 DVD Box Set

TWO Third Prize Choices:
(pick one)

Third Prize (choice 1)
Killer Eye Halloween Haunt DVD

Third Prize (choice 2)
Killjoy 3 DVD

These are some pretty fuckin’ awesome prizes so I suggest if you’re a fan of Full Moon DO NOT miss out on this contest.

For full information on the contest and how to enter click THIS LINK and head on over to Full Moon’s website.

This is another first for me here at anythinghorror.com.  A few weeks ago I received an unmarked package in the mail containing a five CD box set of audio programs called TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE.  That’s right, you read that correctly; five CD’s of audio horror stories.  But this isn’t a bunch of amateur horror writers sitting around reading their unpublished horror short stories.  Oh hell no!!  Created and produced by indie horror powerhouse Larry Fessenden (WENDIGO, THE LAST WINTER) and Glenn McQuaid (I SELL THE DEAD), TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE is a top-notch produced series of audio stories by some very familiar names both behind and in front of the microphone.  This is a hugely entertaining series of stories that I had a really fun time with.

I’ll admit when I first received TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE in the mail and realized they were audio CD’s, my first reaction was, “When the hell am I ever gonna listen to these?”  Then I saw that each story was around 30-33 minutes long, and since it takes me 15-20 minutes (depending on traffic) to get to and from work, I decided to pop the first disc in the old CD player and give it a shot.  Besides, my car’s CD player was getting pretty rusty from non-use!!  I was friggin’ hooked from the first minute of the first story, “Man on the Ledge,” written and directed by Joe Maggio, the whack job behind the creepy BITTER FEAST (my review here).  “Man on the Ledge” had the voice talent of Vincent D’Onofrio as a man, John Alba, sitting out on his ledge overlooking Manhattan.  What starts out as a speech about how lonely and alienated he feels turns very dark by the end and becomes the ramblings of a psychotic.  D’Onofrio does a fantastic job and puts a very convincing and passionate performance in.  I in fact sat in my car outside work, unable to get myself to turn it off.  I had to listen to the entire story (yes, I was late to work).

All ten stories (there’s two stories on each disc in the box set) are fun as hell and contain either some kind of twist or very dark ending that you don’t always see coming.  Some of the more disturbing stories are “The Conformation,” by Paul Solet, the warped mind behind the 2008 GRACE.  This one’s about plastic surgery and what would happen when a doctor obsessed with creating the perfect form finds a patient obsessed with becoming the perfect form.  Sure this entry, like all the rest, is only an audio story, but wow this one is friggin’ creepy.  The sound effects and the actors involved do a phenomenal job.  The final surgery scene is a perfect example of a director giving the audience just enough material to create their own mental pictures of what’s occurring.  The result is chilling, gory, and disturbing!!

“This Oracle Moon” is another great story, although it stumbles a bit in the end.  Written and directed by Jeff Buhler, who worked closely with Clive Barker in writing the screenplay for MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN and had his directorial debut with INSANITARIUM in 2008.  Here he takes us deep into space to a distant moon as we follow a team on a search and recover mission to find out what happened to a group of settlers who disappeared without a trace.  This one features the voices of Ron Perlman and Doug Jones and is a great, action-packed story.

“Trawler” (by Glenn McQuaid) and “Johnny Boy” (by JT Petty) are also two very effective stories.  “Trawler” can be seen as an updated version on “Moby Dick,” but if you thought that novel ends bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet!!  “Johnny Boy” explores one young couples anxieties of dealing with being new parents and a mother who starts hearing strange voices over the baby monitor late at night.  Is it postpartum depression on her part, or is there something else more sinister and evil going on with her baby?  The ending is terrifically disturbing and just solidifies JT Petty as an amazing storyteller.

There’s so much to love here, people!!  Larry Fessenden is the narrator who introduces each story.  He has a great voice and reminded me a lot of, perhaps, the most classic horror voice ever, Vincent Price.  All the stories have a kind of TALES FROM THE CRYPT-TWILIGHT ZONE-OUTER LIMITS kinda feel to them and as I said above, all the stories are hugely entertaining.

TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE is produced by Glass Eye Pix (Larry Fessenden’s independent film company) and will be available as individual CDs, a five CD box set, and as digital downloads on Amazon and iTunes starting on October 11, 2011.  I can tell you that this has already become a new yearly tradition for me; I’ll be listening to these stories (and hopefully future seasons) every year at Halloween time!!  Don’t miss this collection; TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE is an old-school way to enjoy some really kick ass new stories.  Here’s how the stories are paired up:

VOL 1: MAN ON THE LEDGE & THE HOLE DIGGER

VOL 2: BRITISH AND PROUD & THE CONFORMATION

VOL 3: IS THIS SEAT TAKEN? & THE GRANDFATHER

VOL 4: THIS ORACLE MOON & TRAWLER

VOL 5: JOHNNY BOY & THE DEMON HUNTSMAN

My Summary:

Director:  various directors for each story, but all hosted by Larry Fessenden

Plot:  4 out of 5 stars (for overall collection of 10 stories)

Gore:  6.5 out of 10 skulls (for overall collection of 10 stories)

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

In a new age where classic horror movies now date back to the 80s , a great way to introduce these films unfortunately is to remake them. You see this being done now more times than often. Last year , we saw a revamp of the now classic 1984 A Nightmare On Elm Street. Now with this happening most of the stars from the orignal films have been surfacing a horror conventions all over the world. It is a smart idea IMO. Why not? It is a good way to show the youth the original and how it is superior IMO to the newer additions. Now with that being said , to coiencide with the movies , many docuemntarys are seeing the light of day. Some work and some don’t . I Am Nancy is a docuementarty that does work.

I am Nancy follows the life of Heather Langenkamp. Heather’s is most know for her role as Nancy Thompson , the original heroine in A Nightmare On Elm Street. Heather and film crew capture her meeting fans and asking herself , ” Freddymania? Why not Nancymania?! ” You follow her through a candid yet personal journey though the convention scene. Along the way , we do see some familar faces like NOES creator Wes Craven , Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) and some cast members from the original , Dream Warriors and New Nightmare. We also see the fans and they are asked the question as well. ” Is Nancy marketable like Freddy?” Seeing the fan reactions and vendors are pretty funny and make this documentary all that better. What really is great is seeing how NOES has become a classic horror movie and how Robert Englund has made a memorable monster. Oh wait… there I go talking about Freddy … Sorry Heather , I guess this fan answered your question.  3 Stars

Directed by Arlene Marechal Approx 71 Minutes

For Info : WWW.IAMNANCY.COM

article by NzaSixx

As being a regular going to conventions all over I have run into all different types of guests. Some are there to get their pay. Some are there to promote a new project. Some are there that look and act like they could care less. One guest that I’ve had the privilege to meet that does not fall into any of these categories. He is Miguel Nunez Jr. Now some right now might not know who I am talking about. Maybe even you. Miguel has been in a lot of films and television over his 20 plus year career. To the horror community Miguel started off playing two memorable roles. Demon in Friday the 13th Part 5 and Spider in Return of the Living Dead. He is the guy who meets his demise in Friday the 13th in the outhouse. Ring any bells? “Oooooh Baby , Ooooh Baby”. Some of you might know him as the lead character in Juwanna Mann. The basketball player who dresses like a woman to get his shot in the pros.

Here is a guy that brings life to the convention circuit. He’s constantly cracking  jokes, being the life of the party and bringing a smile on both sides of the table. Any Q&A that I’ve seen Miguel be a part of, he steals the show effortlessly. Now the main point of this article, Miguel mentioned something at the last Q&A that most fans did not know. While filming Friday the 13th, he was actually homeless. He said he did not mention it and really has not mentioned it a lot.  Now for keeping something like to yourself and making yourself into something really is remarkable. He mentioned that he would take a bus or three from the set back to the shelter only to return the next day ready to shoot his parts. When hearing this my girlfriend and I just looked at each other. Just really in shock of the whole story. Here is a guy that could’ve played the sympathy card and could’ve easily given up. He didn’t. I am glad he didn’t and I am sure all his fans are feeling the same way. Miguel treats his fans with respect and does not take them for granted.

I guess the moral of this tale is, nothing is ever that bad to just give up. Follow your dreams and believe in who you are. Your success has to start somewhere, most likely it’s already inside of you. You just have to find it and make it to what you want it to be.

If you ever have the opportunity to meet Miguel , You should. He is totally worth your time. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KACW2vzo71U  <——Here is a link to a candid interview with Miguel I did in Sept 2010

Article by NzaSixx

Bottom Line. If you have a sucessful box office run , a sequel is a given. I thought a great idea for Hangover Part II would be they wake up and the whole Part I was actually a dream , now the real search for Doug begins. I thought it would work. Hangover Part II is nothing like that.
The Wolfpack are back. Stu (Ed Helms) is ready to get married in Thailand. His father in law dislikes him … ALOT. To play it safe , Stu rather have a bachelor brunch than an actual party. That is all well and good and actually does take place at IHOP. The Wolfpack has added another member , Stu’s soon to be brother in law Teddy (Mason Lee). This does not go over well with Alan (Zach Galifanakis) and sets up some very funny jealous scenes. Anyway , Phil (Bradley Cooper) talks Stu into having one beer to celebrate which then leads to a bit of Deja vu. “Why the hell does this keep happening to us ? ” is the vibe and the hilarity ensues and does not stop. Stu , Alan and Phil wake up in Bangkok and discover they have lost Teddy , well not all of him , they do discover his severed finger. Doug (Justin Bartha) is poolside at the resort and is there for support on the phone. He is kinda like their cooler , just to keep everyone informed that the boys are on a fishing trip.  Along for the journey , the boys have Crystal , a drug dealing monkey. As they start to unfold the previous nights events , the story takes some twisted turns and some WTF scenes as well. Mr. Chow (Ken Jeoung) is back and he steals the movie. There is a scene that takes place in a strip club and it had me almost on the verge of tears from laughing so hard.

I don’t want to spoil anything so I will not go any further. The film follows kinda the same formula as the first , it worked once , it will work this time out too. I did enjoy Hangover Part II. Will they get Hungover again , probably yes. Will I go see it again , Most likely yes. 3 Stars

The Hangover Part II was directed by Todd Philips.

 

review by NzaSixx

Check out the video FearNet posted for Easter. I don’t really have much to say about this other than it’s awesome and w00, we’re half way to Halloween!