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Horror Shorts: The Boogeyman (2010) & The Fifth (2007)

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Let me say right off the bat that I never read Stephen King’s short story, “The Boogeyman” so I don’t know if this short film by Irish filmmaker Gerard Lough is a faithful adaptation or not.  In THE BOOGEYMAN (which has a 27 minute run time) Andrew (Simon Fogarty) is talking to psychiatrist Dr. Harper (Michael Parle).  Andrew and his wife Rita (Joanne Cullen) have had three children die mysteriously and Andrew is trying to get off his chest that he knows The Boogeyman, who lives in the closet, is responsible for killing them.  The entire short takes place inside the psychiatrist’s office and we get flashbacks to some of the events that led Andrew to his present situation.

Right off the bat we get the feeling that Andrew is a pretty troubled guy who’s been carrying around a lot pent-up hostilities and stress.  Through his flashbacks we learn Andrew works a job he doesn’t particularly enjoy, he’s worn out and tired from having small children, and his married life isn’t as exciting as he’d like it to be.  Is this Boogeyman just an extension of his stressed out and fractured psyche or is it real.  Lough does a good job straddling that fine line and keeping the viewer guessing until the final scene.

Lough does a nice job telling the story and creating a nice tense and creepy feel.  Many of the scenes have a bluish hue to them and Lough utilizes a lot of really interesting camera angles that helps create a very mysterious atmosphere.  The two things this short lacks is action and shots of the creature.  Most of the action, as I mention above, occurs in flashbacks but it would’ve been more interesting if more of the story took place in real time.  The actual Boogeyman itself doesn’t get too much screen time, and what we do see of it isn’t too impressive.  It looks like a mask bought at the local Five and Dime store.  But overall Lough crafts a solid narrative that keeps the viewer guessing as to the truth behind Andrew’s story:  Are Andrew’s children dead as a result of a cracked psyche or is there actually a Boogeyman?  He keeps us guessing until the final seconds of the short.  This is a well-made short and I recommend it.

Director:  Gerard Lough (& screenwriter)

Plot:  3 out of 5 stars (could use more action)

Gore:  0 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

What’s more difficult than making a unique and solid horror film?  Making an effective horror-comedy that works and one which the comedy doesn’t overshadow the horror.  When the horror-comedy hybrid is done right it can be a whole lotta fun.  Just take 2004‘s SHAUN OF THE DEAD; this is the near perfect horror-comedy if there ever was one.  Well now we can add Ryan A. Levin’s THE FIFTH (which has a run time of 14 minutes) to the list.  THE FIFTH is a simple enough set-up:  Five guys leave behind their girlfriends and wives to get together for their weekly poker game.  Brian (Rob G. Kahn) is the new guy to the group and they all get along.  Sam (Simon Anthony) is the real poker-lover of the group and he’s getting a little pissed that Ken (Sam Lloyd) is running late.

Ken (Sam Lloyd); the face of a serial killer?

Finally Ken shows up but he’s not alone; he’s dragging behind him a dead woman (Nicole Surels) by the hair.  Very nonchalantly Ken apologizes for being late but he was raping and killing the woman and lost track of time, “So I didn’t have time to bury her.”  The rest of the group explains matter-of-factly to Brian that Ken is a serial killer and he’s also their friend.  Brian is pretty freaked out but listens to them.  But suddenly the “dead” girl bolts upright screaming and Ken flips out, bashing her head in against the table and slitting her throat.  None of the other guys (except Brian) bats an eye.  It’s a hilarious scene that is one of those rare moments in a genre film where you want to laugh but feel really uncomfortable doing so because let’s face it, a woman is being brutally murdered.  Very well done!!

That must've been a looong night of poker!!

Amidst all the violence Brian gets the hell outta there and runs off.  This sets off Sam because all Sam wants to do is play poker.  The guys are pissed at Ken not because he’s a serial killer (“we love and support you no matter what you decide to do”) but because they can’t keep a fifth player … Ken keeps killing them.  They want Ken to stop “bringing his work” to the poker games.  So in perhaps the funniest line ever, Ken stands up, looks genuinely sorry for continually interrupting the weekly poker game and then makes a solemn promise:

I’ll tell ya what; I’m gonna hunt down Brian, kill him, come back here, fuck his corpse in the bathtub and from that point on work is work and poker is poker.

Absolutely hilarious.  The short then ends with the guys at the poker table trying to figure out who they can invite next week to make the fifth poker player.

Writer-director Ryan A. Levin.

Sure the comedy does outshines the horror here, but the writing is so well done that you’re gonna have a lot of fun with this short.  The writing is crisp and funny, the scene of Ken re-killing the girl is violent and bloody, and the acting (especially from Sam and Ken) is fantastic.  Here’s the link to THE FIFTH below.  I’d love to hear what you think about it!!  I highly recommend it.

Director:  Ryan A. Levin (& writer)

Plot:  4 out of 5 stars

Gore:  1.5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

Horror Short: The Fifth

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Outpost (2011)

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

I think by now you know my thoughts on zombie novels.  Either the author focuses on the human characters and forgets he’s writing a zombie story, or the focus is completely on the zombies and we get absolutely no interesting human dimension to the plot.  I don’t ask for much, I just want a nice balance of zombie mayhem and solid human characters.  OUTPOST is the debut novel from author Adam Baker and though I do classify it in the “zombie genre,” Baker takes a rather interesting approach.  At the end of the day this is the story of the beginnings of some kind of zombie-like outbreak, but Baker’s approach is interesting.  We see the apocalypse unfold from the perspective of fifteen characters who are stranded on the Con Amalgam oil refinery called Kasker Rampart in the Barents Sea (in the Arctic ocean, north of Norway and Russia).  OUTPOST is an ambitious first novel.  Does Baker pull it off.

The main characters here are Jane, the Reverend on the oil rig who is also obese; Gareth Punch, the rig’s chef; Nail, a diver and muscle-head; Rajesh Ghost, the rig’s “go to guy” for anything that needs to be fixed; Rye, the rig’s doctor, and Sian.  These are the main players that weigh heavily on the plot.  The Rampart is getting ready to settle in for a long winter (that’s why there’s only fifteen workers on board), and this group is waiting to be picked up and brought back to civilization any day.

Then one day Rawlins, the rig’s manager, gathers them together to tell them there’s a situation going on in the civilized world.  There’s been an outbreak of some kind and martial law has been declared on practically every continent; there’s riots over food and many people have already died.  As the group watches a satellite feed of the news they speculate if it’s a mutated virus, a terrorist attack, or a bio-weapon, but they just don’t know.  But they soon find out that the ship coming for them to take them all home isn’t coming and they are pretty much stranded on the oil rig, completely cut off from civilization, left to fend for themselves and endure the long, brutal winter.  OUTPOST is a survival novel set against the backdrop of some kind of mysterious outbreak.

OUTPOST focuses heavily on the human characters as we watch them fight for survival against the brutal conditions of an Arctic winter.  Baker also throws many curveballs at the crew diminishing their chances of survival with the turn of every page.  The Rampart was luckily stocked with food, but after a crew member becomes infected and causes an explosion (one hell of an explosion), the rig becomes severely damaged.  Just when things look like its over for the rig crew, they spot a luxury cruise liner, The Hyperion, coming their way.  But what seems like a gift from the gods quickly turns into a Pandora’s box from Hell!!  But despite what’s thrown at the characters, they always buckle down and brave both the elements and infected people in order to survive.

I haven’t read a survival novel that’s caught my attention in quite some time, but OUTPOST grabbed me from the opening pages and really drew me into the story.  And considering it clocks in at 369 pages its an extremely fast read with really crisp writing and a very fast pace.  Baker doesn’t fill the story with silly subplots and meaningless asides.  Baker is a very focused writer who knows where everything is going and does a fantastic job taking the reader with him!!  Baker gives us some really great characters and develops them nicely.  Jane, for example, goes from an obese, suicidal woman contemplating jumping into the Arctic waters to kill herself instantly, to a lean, mean survival machine who will do anything to survive and get back to civilization to find out what’s happened to her family.

Author Adam Baker.

The one criticism I have with Baker’s writing style is when it comes to the passages describing the zombie violence.  Baker oft times takes a “describing the past in the present” kind of approach.  Instead of describing the action as it would unfold in the real time of the novel, we get many passages that describewhat already happened in the present.  For example, the Rampart crew eventually makes a second home aboard the Hyperion, who’s lower decks are full of the infected.  Eventually the infected break through the barricades and overrun the ship.  Unfortunately we only read about the overtaking of the Hyperion through flashbacks.  In another passage our heroes get attacked by a horde of the infected.  Baker starts off describing the action in “real time” but then suddenly shifts to the characters reflecting and detailing what happened in the past tense:

More passengers and crew climbed the steps from the lower deck. Jane backed on to the bridge.

Later, when they asked what happened to Ivan … [then we get what happened in the past tense]

This criticism doesn’t take anything away from the overall enjoyment of OUTPOST, but I think the novel would have flowed smoother by keeping everything in the present, real time, of the novel.

Now what about these “zombies?”  We never get a firm explanation as to the cause of the outbreak, and I like that.  This is not your standard Romero-esque zombie.  We get a pretty unique take on zombies here and judging by Baker’s hesitation to spoon feed us an explanation, I’m thinking he has a follow up to OUTBREAK in the works.  I sure hope he does because I sure as hell would love to read more about his take on zombies.  I’m not gonna go into them in detail; you’ll have to read about them yourself!!

Adam Baker tackles a pretty damn ambitious first novel.  He has a lot of characters and covers a lot of ground in his novel about surviving not just a zombie apocalypse but also   the brutal conditions at the top of the world.  OUTPOST will grab you from the opening pages and keep you engrossed until the final, rather depressing pages.  Check this one out!!

My Summary:

Author:  Adam Baker

Plot:  3.5 out of 5 stars

Gore:  5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  3 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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Virus-X (2010)

Sunday, April 24th, 2011

Thank god I take notes while watching all these genre films.  I always take notes just in case I’m not able to write the review right away so I have all my thoughts (which are usually partially drunken ramblings) typed into my iPhone for safe keeping.  But on occasions like now these notes come in handy because I can’t remember anything about VIRUS-X … not a goddamn thing!!  Now you might think I’m easily gonna write this one off.  Hell, I wasn’t even gonna write a review on it.  But after reading my notes on it I realized that VIRUS-X isn’t a terrible film, even though I forgot I saw it after one week.  So I set out to find out why it’s such a forgettable film.

Danita Herrington (genre fav Sybil Danning) is a wealthy and chesty multi-millionaire who is funding a group of scientists to create for her “a plague” (her words, not mine).  The head scientist Dr. Gravamen (indie actor Joe Zaso), are unaware that they’re creating a super deadly version of the H1N1 flu virus; they all think, the dumb poor bastards, that they’re making something to cure and/or help people.  Suckers.  Enter Dr. Studly McSixpack, or as he’s referred to in the film, Dr. Malcolm S. Burr (Jai Day) who flashes both his smile and his washboard abs every chance he gets and is a doctor with a heart of gold.  He’s the “good” doctor who has a troubled past (he lost a patient … boo friggin’ hoo).  And of course we need a love interest for Dr. Burr so the filmmakers throw in a sexy nurse/lab tech Abby (Sasha Formoso).  There’s also a handful of other scientists unknowingly working around the clock to create this super deadly H1N1 virus.  Ok, I’m no scientist.  In fact I can’t even spell “scientist” without the spell checker.  But even I have to think that even a bad scientist would know whether they were making a deadly virus or something that will help mankind.  Something like that, I imagine, just doesn’t appear in a petri dish!!

Little do our group of stupid, stupid scientists know is that down the hall their deadly virus-x is being tested on the dregs of society.  This week’s contestant on World’s Deadliest Virus is a whore that the in-house albino-thug-assassin Jerron (Domiziano Arcangel) picked up.  The whore is injected with the virus and almost immediately starts showing symptoms.  But as is always the case the whore still has a little fight left in her.  She over powers two guards and manages to escape to the other side of the hall (which looks to be a meager 10 feet away!!) where she looks for help from the stunned group of scientists.  They of course want to help her but just as she starts telling them what happened, our albino thug shoots her and her blood sprays all over all the scientists (hey, it was a helluva shot).  When Zaso calls Danning’s character to tell her about the tragedy Danning is thrilled that they now have a group of scientists instead of just one whore to test the most recent deadly strain on.

Sybil Danning ... interesting look!!

So being the good spineless bastard, Zaso does a facility lock down trapping all the infected scientists.  The rest of the film follows what happens to the infected over the next three days, their estimated life span.  Yeah I know; it sounds like a really cool set-up and for all intents and purposes this should have been a great flick as we watch the infected human lab mice succumb to both the pressures of being locked up in a small space to die and watching them die slowly from the H1N1.  But something happens here … something rather uninteresting.  We watch as each scientist comes down with flu symptoms on the first day and how they deal with it.  There were some solid performances here and only a few times did cast members overact and pander to the camera (Abby was especially guilty of this.  You’ll be laughing your ass off as one of Abby’s monologues goes from drama to melodrama rather quickly).  The acting wasn’t really the problem here.  The real problem is that not mush happens.  Not much at all.  This should have been a lit powder keg ready to go off with all the doctors scared and panicking from both the disease and the confined space they’re in.  Instead of the powder keg we get a slowly fizzling sparkler that has too much moisture on the wick.

Instead of director Ryan Stevens Harris building an uncomfortable tension and upping the violence and the doctors panic more and more, he’s more interested in getting a sex scene on film.  Yeah, get this:  On day two they’re all infected and apparently the virus has a side effect of making them all horny.  Ok, well I doubt that’s an actual side effect, but they all get horny.  Everyone’s sick and coughing up blood and suddenly two of them decide now would be a great time to suck face and bang each other.  I think the sight of my girlfriend, no matter how hot she is, bleeding from her eyes, nose, and mouth would probably have me reconsidering banging her.  I’m just saying.  This was an odd direction to take the film and it just didn’t work.

There’s a lot of confusing little parts to this film.  I appreciated that the writers gave Zaso some depth and didn’t make him the stereotypical “evil scientist”, but would his character really run into the quarantined lab on the second day?  Well he does.  And then there’s the big reveal:  We know that Herrington is a rich bitch who wants Zaso’s team to “make [her] a plague,” but for what ends?  Well I’ll tell you; she plans on that plucky little H1N1 virus giving her access to world domination.  I shit you not.  She has the anti-virus (which looks suspiciously like Dr, Herbert West’s reanimation serum) and somehow is gonna take over the world with it.  I think someone’s been watching too many James Bond films!!  And what happens in the final reel with truly have you rolling your eyes and the absurdity of it all (the good guys win and punish the bad guys.  Ho-hum).

So like I said above, this isn’t an out and out dog of a film, but it’s also not really one I can recommend.  The action is slow-paced and the plot feels pieced together offering nothing new and it feels way too much like 2009’s THE STEAM EXPERIMENT, and we all know how bad that film turned out (it made my “worst films of 2009” list).  If you don’t heed my warning and see this one anyway you’ll end up doing exactly what I did and forget you saw it the next day.  Skip VIRUS-X.

My Summary:

Director:  Ryan Stevens Harris (he also wrote the screenplay)

Plot:  2 out of 5 stars

Gore:  1 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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Dark House (2009)

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

Ok; where to start.  I’ll first start by saying that DARK HOUSE is a fun movie.  It’s a pretty flawed but overall fun film that is part of the Fangoria Frightfest 2010 lineup.  The story is about eccentric haunted house creator Walston (the always great Jeffrey Combs) who has lost his edge with his critics so he decides that his next haunted house needs to be built in a “house with a history” and needs to be balls-to-the-wall scary.  Walston finds the perfect house where 14 years ago seven foster children were killed by their foster mom (who then proceeded to shove her hand into the garbage disposal).  Walston and crew set the house up with all the latest technology, including a state-of-the-art holographic computer, and then hires the acting troupe from the local college (which of course includes one girl with a troubled past).

The always great Jeffrey Combs!!

Let’s stop right here.  Does this sound at all familiar?  Well it should.  DARK HOUSE basically steals from both the 1959 and 1999 versions of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (the remake also starred Jeffrey Combs).  Combs’ character in DARK HOUSE will totally remind you of the Stephen Price character (played by Geoffrey Rush) from the 1999 HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (Combs even has the facial hair).  The set-up here is nothing new but DARK HOUSE has a pretty fun energy to it and writer-director Darin Scott does a damn good job in creating a nice creepy atmosphere.  DARK HOUSE doesn’t blaze any new ground but it’s pretty fun nonetheless.

This bitch is pretty damn creepy looking.

Claire (Meghan Ory) is the standard troubled-girl-with-a-past that is somehow connected to the house’s grotesque past.  As the film progresses we learn more and more about Claire’s connection to the house and along the way get some solid scares.  The ghosts/dark force of the house almost immediately “hack” into the holographic computer and create some scary-ass holograms than come to life and start 86ing the cast one by one.  This part was fun; every hologram was a different creature/killer that offed a cast member in some pretty cool ways.  But the bad thing is that everything is done in the very typical “haunted house movie” style.  By the time the cast realizes there’s something wrong with the house there’s only a few of them left to try and figure out how to get to safety.  There’s some fun moments but there’s definitely nothing new going on here.

Dude got F A C E D!!

There isn’t a lot of gore along the way, but there’s a lot of violence.  We do get some good old fashioned decapitations and bodies being torn apart, but the really chilling scenes are the flashbacks of Mrs. Darrode (Diane Salinger) chasing around the foster kids and butchering them.  It’s not often we get the taboo of children getting murdered on screen, and here we get it in spades.  Nice touch.  I also like that director Scott utilizes both practical and digital f/x here.  We obviously get digital f/x for the holograms, but most of the creatures are practical and they look great.

Lots of lil ones get offed in this one!!

The final act throws a twist at us that you can see coming but which surprisingly works (kind of).  The ending (or should I say first ending) offers us a non-supernatural explanation for all the killing that has been going on and it centers around Claire.  I really liked this little twist because it made DARK HOUSE stand out from the standard “haunted house with a past” flick.  But then they had to go and ruin it by giving us a second ending which then goes back to a supernatural cause for the murders.  This second ending felt totally tacked on and added nothing to the film other than to clumsily attempt to setup a sequel.  Blech.

Another creepy-ass hologram ... or is it??

DARK HOUSE won’t be on anyone’s “Best of” lists but it’s a fun horror film that was smart enough to put Jeffrey Combs in the lead role, has good performances from the cast, and has some pretty fun, scary moments.  This is nothing you haven’t seen before but director Scott keeps everything moving at such a nice pace that you’ll forgive some of the shortcomings.  I caught it on one of the pay channels the other night and recommend if you come across it that way to give it a shot.  I know this isn’t a raving recommendation but that’s all DARK HOUSE is gonna get outta me!!

My Summary:

Director:  Darin Scott (& wrote screenplay)

Plot:  3 out of 5 stars

Gore:  4.5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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We’re Half Way To Halloween

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

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!

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »

Horror Shorts Roundup: Roid Rage (2011) & Crestfallen (2011)

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

“ROID RAGE 3D … This is one Salad You don’t Wanna Toss!!”

Some filmmakers just “get it.”  There are filmmakers out there who have such a love for the genre that when they finally set out to make a film their passion and love can be felt and seen in every frame.  Writer-director-producer-editor-cinematographer (phew) Ryan Lightbourn is one of these guys who “gets it.”  His short film ROID RAGE, which clocks in just shy of 14 minutes, is one of the most fun 14 minutes I’ve had in a film in a long time.  Sammy Jenkins (Zach Canfield) is a pretty simple man.  He’s not rich, popular, nor is he an exceptionally good looking man.  But he does have something that makes him rather unique:  He has a giant, mutated killer hemorrhoid growing out of his ass!!  This appears to be a mutation brought on by the local nuclear power plant and now a clean-up crew from the plant as well as the FBI are after Sammy.  The plant wants to destroy Sammy in order to cover-up the dangerous conditions at the plant, and the FBI want him in connection with a string of dead hookers (it always comes back to dead hookers, doesn’t it!!).

If you can’t tell, ROID RAGE isn’t meant to be taken seriously.  This is an homage to the good old grindhouse/42nd Street days and Lightbourn nails it.  This short has a neck-break pace and when it was over I definitely wanted to see more.  It’s full of adolescent, gross-out humor that had me laughing out loud.  In one particular scene a doctor (John Archer Lundgren) is “going in” to give Sammy a proctological exam and just as he goes to put his fingers into Sammy, Lightbourn does a quick jump cut to a cop eating chocolate pudding with his fingers.  It was so quick that you’ll gag until you realized it’s just pudding.

The f/x are a mixture of practical and digital.  The creature itself and some of it’s carnage was done practically and they were really fun.  All the blood splatter, though, was done digitally and I think you all know how I feel about CGI blood.  But I can understand Lightbourn’s decision to include the digital f/x (to keep the costs down; the budget here was $2,500!!).  ROID RAGE is a really fun, fast-paced, gory short that I could easily see being made into a feature length film.  As the end credits roll we get what looks like are scenes from part two.  Seeing how seamlessly Lightbourn glides between filming horror scenes and then action scenes, this is a filmmaker with some chops and I’ll definitely be looking out for his next short or feature!!

Director:  Ryan Lightbourn (& editor, producer, cinematographer, & writer)

Plot:  3.5 out of 5 stars

Gore:  7.5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

The next short, CRESTFALLEN, is a complete 180 from ROID RAGE.  There’s no gore or sophomoric humor in it but it’s a powerful short that stays with you long after the final scene fades from the screen.  Directed by Jeremiah Kipp (who you may remember made the 2009 short CONTACT), CRESTFALLEN examines and explores the very serious topic of suicide.  A young woman Lo (the beautiful and anythinghorror.com fav Deneen Melody) has made the very serious decision to end her life.  We see from flashbacks that her world has essentially crashed in on itself and she just can’t deal with it anymore.  She steps into a warm bath and cuts her wrist.  As the blood drains from her body she starts to reflect on the events that led to this decision.  Interspersed throughout the bad memories, though, are some good memories and these two sets of memories are fighting for the survival of Lo’s very life.  Will she give into the bad memories and let her life slip away or will she see the value of the few good memories and allow them to outshine the bad?

CRESTFALLEN (which runs a scant 5:55) means “to be brought low in spirit”, and this deals with a very serious topic in a visually stunning manner.  Kipp captures some strikingly beautiful scenes of some pretty disturbing subject matter.  As we watch Melody sink into the bathtub as the blood flows from her vein, it’s a grizzy scene that you won’t be able to turn away from.  Kipp doesn’t exploit the subject material but addresses it in a serious and lyrically beautiful way.  You feel the pain Lo is going through and you wish you could just reach into the film and give her a hug and tell her everything’s going to be alright.

Deneen Melody captures this role perfectly and plays it with the perfect balance of innocence/naivety on the one hand and strength and fortitude on the other.  You’ll remember Melody from the fantastic indie horror anthology SLICES OF LIFE (see my review here), which she plays Susan in the segment “Pink Snapper.”  CRESTFALLEN shows that Melody is an actress that is to be taken seriously; she can play both the scream queen and the serious roles.

Just like with Kipp’s 2009 short CONTACT, the images and subject matter of CRESTFALLEN will haunt you long after the final images fade from the screen.  Kipp is obviously a huge talent and I can’t wait to see what he does next!!

Director:  Jeremiah Kipp

Plot:  4 out of 5 stars

Gore:  0 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Both Films Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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Road Kill (2010)

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

What is this?  I think we have something special on our hands here.  Just in case you didn’t think the After Dark Horrorfest pumped out enough sub-standard, shitty flicks along comes the Fangoria FrightFest to throw it’s hat into the ring.  This label is of course associated with Fangoria magazine, which has dominated the genre magazine scene for decades.  So why, please tell me, would they risk tarnishing their reputation by starting a label that promotes some truly bad films?  (Yes this is the first film I’m actually reviewing from this label, but I’ve already seen all the films from it’s 2010 lineup.)

This brings us to ROAD KILL, an Australian film that makes this all the more disappointing.  Australia has put out some truly scary and solid horror films like WOLF CREEK (2005), ROGUE (2007), and THE LOVED ONES (2009).  So why choose ROAD KILL for this label’s 2010 lineup?  Four pretty stupid twenty-somethings playing teenagers (of course) hit the road for a vacation.  And like all Australian vacations they decide to go out to the most remote parts of Australia’s Outback (I think all Australian travel agents need to be kicked in the balls or in the box).  The “teens” are Marcus (Xavier Samuel, star of the amazing THE LOVED ONES), Craig (Bob Morley), Liz (Georgina Haig), and Nina (Sophie Lowe).  There’s tension among the group, two of them used to date/screw but broke up and the other couple is estranged from each other, which immediately has you thinking, “Why the fuck did these two couples even wanna go on vacation together?”

While traveling on a (of course) extremely remote stretch of road, a road train (the original title of the film) comes barreling behind them and passes their car.  A “road train” is a tractor trailer pulling two freight cars.  Craig, a rather douchy guy, takes it as a personal insult that the road train passed them so he speeds up and cuts in front of the truck.  The truck then smashes into the back of the car sending it tumbling asshole over tea kettle.  They all emerge from the car pretty much unharmed except for the douchy guy Craig.  He has a nice old compound leg fracture that’ll have you grabbing your own leg in pain.  So the estranged couple start walking(???) down the very remote road looking for help when they stumble upon the very truck that caused the accident.  After checking out the truck they realize it has been abandoned so they pick up the injured douchy dude and his girlfriend and steal the truck.

Soon after stealing it, odd things begin to happen to the twenty-somethings … I mean teens.  It seems as though the truck is possessing them or at the very least altering their moods and behaviors.  Marcus is driving, zones out (due to the truck) and they all awaken on an even more remote dead end road that they’re trapped on (it’s a really narrow road and there’s not enough room to back up the road train).  At this point the film becomes one of “those films” that seems to be searching for some kind of explanation to give the viewer some kind of closure to the events going on.  It literally feels as though the writer (Clive Hopkins) came up with the idea of a “haunted truck” terrorizing kids and then director Dean Francis started filming it before reading the entire script.  It seems they’re both making up the story as they go on.

Unfortunately for us the explanation they decide on is lamer than Christopher Reeves in a marathon.  Each teen (I’ll just give-in and call them “teens”) becomes affected by the truck.  Craig’s horrible compound fracture mysteriously heals and Marcus becomes more and more of an asshole to his girlfriend (going so far as to abandon her on the remote stretch of road).  But we keep getting hints that the truck is hauling something mysterious, suspicious, and maybe even a little supernatural.  The cargo bins are pad locked but not surprisingly they open whenever there’s only one character near it.  It’s kinda like the WB frog that only sings and dances when there’s only one person around.

So for the better part of 90 minutes we have to endure some truly lame cat and mouse games as Craig stalks and kills the others.  Or is it the real owner of the road train?  Or is it something from the truck’s cargo?  Or is it … who cares!!!  Trust me; you won’t care.  With dialogue like, “You didn’t take the truck, the truck took you” you’ll wanna swallow a bullet.  Sure ROAD KILL is full of laugh-inducing lines like this one, but the problem is this isn’t a comedy!!  And just in case you’re crazy like I am and wanna know what’s in the cargo, I’m gonna save you the trouble of watching this one:  [SPOILERS FOLLOW] The truck is indeed possessing the teens, but the real explanation here is that the truck runs on human blood and the truck’s entire cargo is a blood processing plant that grinds up people and funnels the blood into the gas tank. [END SPOILER] Yeah; I wish I was joking.  This “reveal” does absolutely nothing to explain what has been occurring in the film prior to it (like why does the camera keep focusing on the truck’s hood ornament of the three-headed wolf?).  The final act of the film completely falls apart making the first few acts a huge waste of time.

There’s a new “sheriff” in town folks and it’s called “Fangoria FrightFest”.  This is the first film of the 2010 lineup that I watched (I have seen all of them) and if this is any indication of future lineups then After Dark is gonna have a run for its money.  Forgettable performances, a ridiculously silly plot, horrible dialogue, and more insulting plot holes than is forgivable for any one film makes this one a film to put on your “avoid at all costs” list.  Now all we need is Rue Morgue magazine to sponsor a yearly shitty horror film festival to complete the hat trick.  Not recommended at all!!

My Summary:

Director:  Dead Francis

Plot:  1 out of 5 stars

Gore:  4 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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Diary of the Dead (2007)

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Here’s one that snuck by my radar and I’m not really sure how.  DIARY OF THE DEAD came and went back in 2007 without much fanfare.  The few reviews I read about it were pretty negative and many reviewers said Romero lost his zombie mojo.  Well I finally caught DIARY OF THE DEAD and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised.  DIARY incorporates and merges all the latest social media and “found footage” genre together nicely to give a new spin on what the end of the world by zombies might look like.

The film focuses on Jason Creed (Joshua Close), a film student who wants nothing more than to be a documentary filmmaker.  He and a bunch of his friends are filming his student thesis, a horror film about a mummy, in the woods outside the city when they begin hearing news reports about the dead returning to life.  The news further reports that chaos is erupting all over the city and country as the dead are rising.  The group of twenty-something’s debate what they should do.  One of his friends, a rich kid who lives in a gated mansion, decides to hole up in his house behind the safety of iron bars and wait out the epidemic staying drunk and high.  One of the girls thinks this is a great idea and joins him and they speed away.  But Jason has other plans.  He smells a great opportunity to make a hard hitting documentary and convinces the rest of his buddies to hit the road and document as much of the outbreak they can just “in case this thing turns out to be really big.”  So they load up a Winnebago and hit the road with the camera rolling.

Jason titles his documentary, “The Death of Death” and at every opportunity he gets he edits and uploads segments of it to YouTube.  At first he’s obsessed with how many hits he’s getting and even puts all his friends in danger while they wait for him to edit various parts of the documentary and upload it.  It’s clear that Jason is obsessed with the camera and capturing everything on film.  But is he doing this altruistically in order to get the truth out there and help others, or is he doing this because he wants to become famous?  We get evidence for both sides but it becomes clear as the film goes on what Jason is really after; he cares more about the camera and “getting the shot” than for the safety and well-being of both himself and his friends.

After this set-up the rest of DIARY OF THE DEAD is about following around these modern day beatniks as they hit the road recording all their various encounters.  One encounter has them meeting up with an all black national guard team who has gone AWOL and is now fending for themselves.  Another has them traveling back to Debra’s (Michelle Morgan) childhood home to find her parents and younger brother.  Once there the film takes a dark turn as Debra discovers the fate of her family.  One of the more light-hearted run-ins involves the group heading up to Amish country where they meet up with Samuel, an elderly deaf Amish farmer who is a fighter and who is rather hilarious.  Samuel’s choice of weapon is sticks of dynamite and he uses them like an expert.  It’s a nice scene that helps to alleviate the tension slightly without killing the mood and tone Romero worked so hard to create.

Meet Samuel; the ass-kicking Amish dude!!

But what makes DIARY stand out is the message Romero has infused throughout it.  Romero has always been a filmmaker to not only give horror fans the gooey red stuff but he also delivers a timely message that isn’t crammed down our throats.  In his masterpiece DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) we get the message that consumerism is out of control and dehumanizing.  In DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) we get an anti-bureaucratic message and how governments put the importance of numbers and statistics over the value of human life.  Now in DIARY we get some interesting insight into the relationship of the viewer and the filmmaker and where the two meet.  Where is the line and where does it get crossed?  Romero also examines the relationship between human beings and all the new technology and social media that have bombarded us in such a short amount of time.  We’ve become a society obsessed with becoming famous on the internet for posting a video of someone getting hit in the nuts with a baseball bat or with a stoned kid after the dentist.  Can humanity be found and/or defined in a bunch of 1’s and 0’s?  I’ve always loved Romero’s messages in his films and the message here is timely and very important.

But this isn’t to say DIARY OF THE DEAD is all talk and “messagey”.  Romero gives us plenty of the gore we’ve come to expect from his zombie films.  We even get some pretty cool and inventive kills.  One of the characters finds himself cornered in a warehouse surrounded by tanks of flammable gas and is therefore unable to use his gun.  Instead he finds a huge glass jar on a shelf and smacks the zombie over the head with hit.  The jar contained acid and we get to watch as the liquid slowly eats into the zombie’s brain and eventually killing it.  There’s a great many scenes of fantastic zombie makeup (supervised by none other than Greg Nicotero) that will satisfy all horror and zombie purists out there.

The man himself, George Romero, on the set!!

The film finally comes to a head at the above-mentioned friend’s gated mansion where the group finally decides is the best place to hole up.  But things haven’t gone too well there and we get a really tense and bloody final act.  But most of all the final act really illustrates what Jason has become.  He has lost his humanity to the camera and goes so far as to keep filming even when his best friend is getting attacked by a zombie.  He never puts the camera down and the camera never flinches.  Jason is, without doubt, a total dickbag and you wonder why his friends have stuck with him all this time.  But Romero’s final question of the film really hits hard as he asks, “Are we [humanity] worth saving?”

All the performances were strong here with the exception of Michelle Morgan (Debra).  She wasn’t horrible but she definitely stuck out as the least talented in the cast.  There’s also a ton of cameos:  Greg Nicotero pops up as a zombie, George Romero himself appears as a police chief, and we get the voices of Wes Craven, Stephen King, Simon Pegg, Quentin Tarantino, and Guillermo del Toro as newscasters reading the news on the radio.  DIARY OF THE DEAD is a strong entry in Romero’s zombie series.  He has a timely message and examines all the new technologies that do nothing but further remove us from other human beings.  I really liked this one and thought it was stronger than his 2009 SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD.  I recommend this one.

My Summary:

Director:  George A. Romero (& writer)

Plot:  3.5 out of 5 stars

Gore:  6.5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  4 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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2 Indie Horror Features: Livestock (2009) & Trilogy of Blood (2010)

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

This past weekend I watched a bunch of indie horror flicks and was overall pretty impressed with the offerings.  The films I watched were all entertaining and spanned the gamut from the suspenseful to overly ambitious to the gory.  LIVESTOCK and TRILOGY OF BLOOD have once again proven that if you’re looking for entertaining, original genre films ya gotta turn to the indie scene.

LIVESTOCK, written by Christopher Di Nunzio and Melanie Kotoch and directed by Christopher Di Nunzio, is quite an ambitious film.  The story involves the global conspiracy of a secret society that during the full moon kidnaps unsuspecting people for “The Feast.”  The film begins with a nervous Victor (Fiore Leo) sitting in a town car.  In comes Edgar (Robert Hines), a man of obvious clout and power, who tells Victor that he and the other leaders of The Pack have decided to promote him within the organization.  At this point what the actual organization is is kept a mystery but it’s apparent that it has far reaching tentacles in every aspect of society.  They have Pack members in all levels of the government and media and they are currently in the process of buying up tons of real estate.

In another story thread Annabel (Johanna Gorton), who has just gotten out of a bad relationship, is preparing to go out on a date with Jerry (Matthew Phillion).  Annabel’s best friend Tina (Christina C. Crawford) has a low level job in a company and she’s hoping to climb the ladder.  She’s supporting Annabel’s new date.  As you can guess, these two story lines come crashing together towards the end and have horrifying effects on all involved.

Filmmaker Chris Di Nunzio.

LIVESTOCK is, without a doubt, a very ambitious film.  Made for about $300,000 Di Nunzio has one helluva vision he was hoping to put on film.  The acting, especially from Fiore Leo, is strong and there are only a few instances of overacting from some of the cast members.  I was actually really interested in the story and right from the opening frames (the meeting between Victor and Edgar) I was hooked as to what was happening and what this secret society/global conspiracy was all about.  But the pacing of the film was on the slow side and there were many many scenes that were drawn out and slow.  Considering the run time was a meager 76 minutes I was expecting a tight, fast paced film.  So it really took me by surprise that there were so many shots where the camera would linger on empty scenes and hold long shots of nothing.

The other problem I had with LIVESTOCK was that the actual global conspiracy seemed confused and muddled, like Di Nunzio couldn’t decide on what he wanted this conspiracy/secret society to be.  We get hints that they might be vampires, werewolves, or a satanic cult (at one point The Pack is referred to as “The Order of the Eleven Wolves”).  But it turns out to be none of the above explanations, and honestly the actual explanation wasn’t all that exciting.  It was a bit of a letdown.

Victor (Fiore Leo) puts in a great performance.

Shot in only 16 days LIVESTOCK has its problems but is overall an enjoyable film that will keep your interest.  Di Nunzio is a talent to keep your eye on and I’m looking forward to seeing how his career progresses as he gets more films under his belt.  It’s also refreshing to get some friggin’ originality in a genre film.  With all its flaws LIVESTOCK is still more entertaining than bigger budget Hollywood turds like THE RITE and MY SOUL TO TAKE.  LIVESTOCK is worth a look.

My Summary:

Director:  Christopher Di Nunzio (and writer)

Plot:  3 out of 5 stars (great idea hindered by a slow pace)

Gore:  3.5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

TRILOGY OF BLOOD is a whole different beast from LIVESTOCK.  TRILOGY is a film I know Shaun, our beloved owner of wreckhousemagazine.com will love:  It’s full of H.G. Lewis-style gore and psychobilly music.  The film, in fact, was written by the founder/singer of the psychobilly band DEADNEKS, Joey Broy.  The set-up is simple:  Three rather plump girls (Elyse Carr, Tisha Gardner, and Brenna Lee Roth, yes that’s David Lee Roth’s daughter) are driving through the backwoods of Virginia when they decide to pick up an ultra redneck hitchhiker (Joey Broy).  The hitchhiker invites them to a good ‘ole fashioned barnyard dance and BBQ, but unfortunately for the girls these just happen to be redneck cannibal hillbillies (and man did they hit the jackpot with these three girls; each girl has to weigh well into the 200’s).

TRILOGY doesn’t try to pretend to be anything more than what it is.  This is a fun, goofy, gory film where we watch plump chicks have sex and then get killed in very Herschell Gordon Lewis-like ways.  The gore is not very convincing (just like Lewis’) but there’s a lot of it.  We also get to see three performances by the high charged psychbilly group the DEADNEKS.  Yes this comes across as more of a long music video with some gore in it and that’s the point.  This is also filmed to look like an old-school grindhouse flick, with grainy film stock full of scratches and jump cuts.

TRILOGY won’t break down and reinvent anything new in the genre but it will transport you back to the times of grindhouse cinema and when H.G. Lewis roamed the streets free to coat everything in blood and gore.  Plus if you like watching rednecks hump tractors and run around naked except for a sock on their cocks then you’re gonna enjoy TRILOGY OF BLOOD.  It’s a fun “buddies and beer” flick.  Check it out!!

My Summary:

Directors:  Rick Kelley & Charlie Ruckus

Plot:  3 out of 5 stars

Gore:  6.5 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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Bleed (2011)

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

What makes a great horror novel?  Well that question in itself deserves it’s own posting but for me there’s a few elements that are present in every horror novel that I end up really enjoying.  For one, there’s originality.  Does this mean that every aspect of a novel needs to be 100% original, redefining the genre on every page?  No.  Originality comes in many ways.  Look at the recent string of zombie novels I’ve been reading lately.  I’ve liked a lot of them.  Have they all been completely original?  Not by a long shot, but they all have original elements that add something new to the zombie genre.  I also love horror novels where anything can happen; where the unexpected happens.  Where main characters aren’t safe from a horrible demise, where just when you think the plot couldn’t get any more depraved it suddenly takes a grizzly downward turn, etc.  A great horror novel, for me at least, always includes these elements.  This brings us to the novel BLEED by Ed Kurtz.  BLEED has a pretty basic setup but the way Kurtz develops it and progresses the story arc makes this one feel 100% original.  Let’s see why.

The story begins with Walt Blackmore, who lives in a small Southern town, buying his first home.  It’s a fixer-upper and Walt is really excited about both fixing up the house and his future in general.  He’s about to start a new job teaching English literature in the local high school and he recently bought a ring and is planning on proposing to his girlfriend of three years, Amanda.  Walt is a loner but his love for Amanda is true and he feels his life is finally falling into place.  That is until he notices a fist-sized stain on the ceiling just outside his bedroom.  He thinks nothing of it at first … just something else that needs to be addressed and fixed in his new home.  But the more he tries to get rid of the stain the more it seems to grow and spread.

But as that mysterious stain grows, Walt’s behavior begins to change.  He becomes extremely tired, begins sleeping 12-15 hours straight, losing track of the days, and starts having really disturbing nightmares.  Amanda becomes worried as she notices Walt’s behavior changing.  He’s getting grumpier and doesn’t seem interested in socializing or doing anything but staying in the house.  The whole time the stain keeps getting larger and larger until it begins to drip onto the floor.  It’s obvious to Amanda that there’s something really wrong with the stain but she can’t get through to Walt.  Things keep going from bad to worse until Amanda realizes the situation has gotten out of control, but it might already be too late; Walt might already be too far gone.

For a first novel Ed Kurtz does a lot of thing right here.  About ninety-five percent of the novel takes place in one location (the house) and there’s only a handful of characters he weaves in and out of the narrative.  Kurtz’s writing style is really crisp and fast and from the opening line, “Papa comes back at night,” which takes place in 1923, the story grabbed me.  I burned through this 390 page novel barely able to put it down.  Kurtz’s ability to craft and develop three dimensional characters is second to none and you find yourself sympathizing and relating with both Walt and his victims.  Walt slowly becomes a sociopathic monster but he never looses his humanity.  Walt’s a fantastic character.

Author Ed Kurtz.

And let’s talk about that stain.  I don’t wanna give away too much of what’s going on here, but the stain continues to grow as it feeds off of the roaches and rats in the house, bleeding them dry.  As it grows, though, the stain begins demanding more than rats and roaches; it needs something with more substance, and Walt seems more than willing to oblige.  Kurtz does a really phenomenal job here describing the various stages the “stain” goes through.  What starts as a stain on the ceiling becomes … well it becomes something way more advanced.  I couldn’t help but think of Clive Barker’s story “The Hellbound Heart,” the story that later became HELLRAISER.  Kurtz’s attention to details as the “stain” grows is nothing short of horrifying.  The stain, which eventually takes a human-like form, demands more and more from Walt.  First blood, then small animals, and ultimately humans.  The whole time Walt is torn by the ever-increasing demands of the monster, but he’s also compelled to satisfy it.

What I really love in BLEED is that no one is safe.  Just when you think a character is out of harm’s way Kurtz throws us a curveball.  Besides Amanda and Walt, there’s other characters that exist on the periphery of Walt’s life and get sucked into his ever increasing violent world.  There’s Amanda’s best friend Nora, Walt’s sister Sarah, Walt’s closest neighbor Dudley Chapel and his wife Rose, and some kid’s from his class, Hershal, Brandon, and Alice.  Alice is perhaps the most fleshed out character as we learn a lot about her home life and what really makes her tick.  She’s a great character and Kurtz develops her beautifully.

What’s that?  Wanna know about the gore?  This novel is filled with disturbing passages, grizzly descriptions, and enough blood and gore that could fill four novels!!  Check out this passage (I’m leaving out the names of the characters here so as not to spoil anything):

[Unnamed character] cried out with pain and horror as he watched the jagged glass fragment sink into [another unnamed character’s] face, scraping noisily over her teeth before exiting through the other cheek. The creature then gave the shard a sharp yank and it ripped through the flesh, meeting the ends of [unnamed character’s] mouth. Now it all formed a single gaping gash from one jawbone to the next. Blood gurgled up, flooding her mouth and spilling out on the bed. The cackled with mad glee.

Of course this isn’t a perfect novel.  As characters start disappearing after they go visit Walt at his house it seems like it’s pretty obvious what’s happening.  But Walt never gets a visit from the police or from the husband’s of other characters who were last known to be visiting Walt.  And if you’re looking for a solid explanation as to what the hell the stain is and how it grew into … into that creature, well you might be disappointed.  Personally I think the explanation was completely satisfying; it’s not spoon-fed to us.  But I can see that some people may not be too thrilled about the explanation.

I really enjoyed this novel.  Kurtz is no doubt a force to recon with on the horror scene and I can’t wait to read his future novels in the years to come.  His crisp, fast-paced writing, excellent character development, and his ability to write some truly grizzly scenes will have you turning the pages at lightening speed.  As you read BLEED you’ll at times be reminded of the works and minds of Clive Barker and David Cronenberg, and that’s some pretty damn good company.  This is a fun, gory creature novel by a really fresh and original voice.  Highly recommended.

My Summary:

Author:  Ed Kurtz

Plot:  4 out of 5 stars

Gore:  8 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

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