Horror Films

HOLLOW MAN - Director Paul Verhoeven's films have always been known as fun movies with very shallow storylines and not great acting, along with the abundance of sexual activity. So when I went off to see his latest effort starring Kevin Bacon this is what I expected and YES... that is what I got !!!! The movie follows Bacon's character Dr Caine who finds the secret to invisibility and decides to test it on himself. In doing so along with becoming invisible he starts to slowly lose a grip on reality and sanity. With the result being everything from rape, fondling sleeping women to murder. The problem once again comes back to the many wholes in the movies story, along with some poor acting by some of the cast. One in particular is Elisabeth Shue which had me cringing at numerous parts of her uninspired performance (even though she looks damn fine in a G-string). The two highlights of the film has to be the state of the art special effects which includes an ape reappearing from invisible to skeleton back to full body and hair, this along with Kevin Bacon's fine performance manages to lift the overall feel of this film. One last point that I would like to make is that just because a man becomes invisisble this does not make the man invincible which the story writers and director obviously misunderstood!!! Anyhow, I must admit to being a little disappointed when leaving the cinema with my friends but then again it could have been a lot worse.

SUPERNOVA - Before watching this movie I had read loads of bad press relating to the number of directors who had touched this movie and also about how the movie was a cross between Alien & Event Horizon. To be fair to the review I will say that despite all this I was REALLY looking forward to watching it. The movie chronicles the search and rescue patrol of a deep space medical ship and its six-member crew. When their vessel, the Nightingale 229, answers an emergency distress signal from a distant galaxy, the crew soon finds itself in danger from the mysterious young man they rescue, the alien artifact he smuggled aboard and the gravitational pull of a giant star about to go supernova -- the most massive explosion in the universe. Sounds okay right ??? The only problem is that this movie has about as much depth as a childs wading pool with majority of the characters coming across as annoying more than anything else. James Spader puts in close to his worst performance ever and I find myself waiting majority of the movie for someone to die or SOMETHING to happen!!!! As with a lot of newer movies (Godzilla etc) they put to much into the special effects and not enough into making a good solid movie. It really is no wonder Director Wright took his name off of this movie because it really is a slow, boring and crappy movie!!!

BLAIR WITCH PROJECT - I have deliberately waited a while after the release of this film so that all the hoop-la surrounding it would die down, and thankfully it has started to ease. If you haven't seen this film yet, I'm sure you have heard all about the setting of three young filmmakers trotting off into the woods to make a documnetary on the so-called Blair Witch. Strange things start happening when they are out there and without warning it goes from a Discovery-Channel type doco. to a film which has some genuinely frightening moments. This movie reminds me of early Craven and Raimi films (such as Evil Dead) but is very unique in its own right. It is amazing how great majority of the acting is in this movie considering the small budget and lack of experience from the filmmakers. It's very easy to forget you are actually watching a movie and not watching a professionally filmed documentary. Okay, now let's get to the meat of the review, overall the first hour is a bit tedious and drawn out with a tad too-much bickering amongst the three filmmakers and no real tension, also, this film has no monsters, no blood and guts and no sex scenes. WIth that said, I believe it is one of the most original and clever movies I have seen in many years. It is the first film in over 5 years which I have actually woke up thinking about in the middle of the night. End result, if you want blood, guts, monsters or action you won't want this film but if you want eerie surroundings, spine tingling edge of the seat thrills then this movie is exactly what you have been waiting to see !!! I suppose the final question is.. Is it as good as it's hype ??? I'll leave the answer to that question up to you.

FEAR 2 (HALLOWEEN NIGHT) - This is the sequel to the original "Fear" Executive Produced by Wes Craven and basically it is your typical every-day B-Grade horror flick, with your typical bunch of young guys and girls stuck in a location with "Morty" the wooden statue slicing and dicing whoever comes his way. Directed by Academy Award Winner, Chris Angel and with special make-up effects created by John Buechler (Ghoulies, Re-Animator, Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3) it also features some promising new actors including Gordon Currie (Laserhawk), Stacy Grant (Gemini nominee), Brendan Beiser (The X-Files), Emmanuelle Vaugier (Halfback of Notre Dame), and to mbe quite honest with you the acting is quite good, as is the directing. The problem with this flick is that it is very B-Grade and for this reason you tend to look at it a bit awkwardly. One thing that pisses me off about this type of film is that even though it is totally predictable and you have seen it thousand of times before I still enjoyed watching it. It won't break box-office figures but if you want to watch a bit of B-Grade horror with a bit of un-intentional fun moments then you could do worse. Morty is still sporting a woody !!!!

DEEP BLUE SEA - This new Jaws-like action/monster flick from Director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Nightmare on Elm ST. 4) is a nice return for the greatest killing machine on earth, and while I did enjoy the film it could and should have been a lot better. Some of the CGI shots of the sharks were pretty ordinary with the sharks looking a lot like the characters out of a Playstation game and some of the sequences were very predictable. Put that aside and what you get is a lot of blood, a lot of action and a large amount of fun. The premise of the film is that a group of scientists are on a sea based laboratory where they are enhancing sharks brains to help make a cure for Alzheimers, and as the old saying goes "you shouldn't mess with nature". The sharks start attacking and it's a matter of the scientists fighting for their survival. The acting is good, with Samuel Jackson supplying another top performance and the directing is top notch as you would expect from Renny Harlin. What you get is blood , action,a babe in a bikini and loads of fun....what else could you want.

THE HAUNTING - Jan De Bont returns to the directors chair in this re-make of the now classic old-time horror film, his last film Speed 2 was a bomb but thankfully this film is a touch better. With great actors filling out the major roles such as Liam Neeson & Catherine Zeta Jones you would expect a well acted movie and this is the case in most parts but in other parts you can't help but feel that the stars are just going through the motions. The story surrounds Liam Neeson's character who is a scientist who tricks a group of sleep-disorder ridden folks into going to a haunted house to supposedly help them with their disorders. The problem is that this house is starting to get out of control and causing grief on the patients. Anyway, the film is a big budget scary house flick which really doesn't do what it is supposed to, and that is scare you !!!!!! The scariest part of the film is Zeta Jones' outfits. The childrens ghosts in the film remind me of Casper and that's a real worry considering that I was going to a film to get scared. All I can say abouth this film is that it is AVERAGE !!!!

RAZOR BLADE SMILE - This darkly satiric vampire film set in the swinging, Gothic scene of London in the 1990s, arises in 1850, when the beautiful Lilith Silver (Eileen Daly) was a dynamic, headstrong woman and still traditionally "alive." During a pistol duel involving her lover and a sinister, Sir Sethane Blake, Lilith produced a pistol of her own and shot Blake. Yet, despite inflicting a wound that would have killed a mere mortal, Sir Blake just smiled. Lilith herself was then brutally gunned down. Enamored with Lilith, Sir Blake bestowed the dark gift of the vampire upon her and all eternity became her playground! Now, 150 years later, Lilith is the most outrageous and seductive woman you'll ever meet. Armed with a coffin full of weapons, she's a contract killer hired to eliminate all members of the mysterious and evil Masonic "Illuminati" sect. Besides being the ultimate guillotine maiden, Lilith in her lascivious style eludes the police who are desperate to discover her identity and end the carnage. Now that we have the basics of what the storyline is let's get into the film a bit deeper. This film is being classed as one of Britain's best genre efforts in years which really wouldn't be that hard considering I really can't stand most British films. Let me just say that if critics think that this film is good they obviously are in the wrong business. This film is C-grade all the way, the acting is crap, the story-line is average and the directing is terrible. This film is so sad that a woman in leather with her breasts showing can sneak past two bodyguards with the guards standing less than 20 feet away. Okay, so there are a few good points in the film, namely the fact that the lead woman is dressed throughout the film in tight black leather and there is also a great bloody lesbian sex scene. If you like vampire films see Blade, Interview with the Vampire or even the original Dracula but stay away from this C-grade crap.

IDLE HANDS - This film died big time at the U.S. box office and the main reason for this was that the film industry and critics compared it to the Colorado massacre. How f@#$ing stupid is that !!!!! This film has nothing to do with that massacre at all. How could a film about a teen slackers hand that gets possessed by the devil and starts murdering people, have anything in common with a couple of morons who slaughter innocent school kids. The film does end at a school prom but give me a break this film should not have suffered because of this reason.

Devon Sawa (Casper, Wild America) plays the teen slacker with the bored hand that ol' Satan baby possesses and Seth Green (Austin Powers) and Elden Henson (Mighty Ducks) plays his slacker friends who are murdered by him but they decide to avoid the light and return to the world of the living. Overall this film is great, it starts in typical new-wave teen horror (ala Scream, Urban Legend) with a terrifying first 10 mins and then proceeds into more of a gore-comedy like the Roger Corman films of yester-year. This could be due to the fact that Director Rodman Flender graduated from the school of Corman movies. If blood and guts with a splash of comedy is your type of film then this movie is for you, with a great soundtrack from bands such as Offspring and Motley Crue and a cast that includes babes like Vivica Fox and Jessica Alba this movie is new wave gore smothered in laughs. Just one final note the girl making out with the Gene Simmons character in the car has the best tits I've seen in a movie for quite a while, it's worth watching the movie just to get a glimps of those.

WISHMASTER 2 - EVIL NEVER DIES - Before I watched this movie I had certain expectations in my head, they were a) I wanted blood b) I wanted good special effects and c) I wanted a fun film to watch. I am happy to say that I got what I wished for. This film while not being the greatest horror film of all time is great considering the size of the budget. When you consider that the FX budget on this was around 10 times less than the original it really is amazing what they have achieved. The basic storyline of this film is that when a bungled art theft goes wrong the evil Djinn is released upon us once again. This time however he is striving for 1000 souls so that his people can conquer the world. The Djinn decides to take the wrap for the theft so that he can enter prison where he knows that he can find many eager people to offer their souls. It's then up to the only surviving art theif (Morgana) and her ex-boyfriend who happens to now be a priest to stop the genie from reaching his goal. Andrew Divoff returns as the evil genie, but in this movie most of the time he spends as his alter ego Mr.Demarast and not in costume. This leads me to comment on the new and improved design of the Djinn's costume which is absolutely fantastic with its new tattoo's and scars.

Now I know that this film is not going to appeal to everyone but I would like to add that for a film with this size budget this is one of the better movies I have seen, the acting is above average, the storyline is compelling and the depth of character is thorough and well developed. Like I said, I wanted "Blood", "Fun" and "Special Effects" and I got them all.

WARLOCK - END OF INNOCENCE - I really enjoyed the first two instalments in this series and Julian Sands really came across as one hell of a Warlock. This film however comes across as totally B-Grade, the acting is a bit second rate as is the entire plot. Bruce Payne takes over the lead role as the evil Warlock and even though he is quite adequate as the devilish menace he just doen't have the sophistication of Julian Sands. The plot of this movie is set around a girl and her friends who visit an old relatives house in hope of salvaging some relics, and so that the orphaned girl can find out some details of her family. The only problem is that the old Warlock man needs her (her Mum was a witch) to make a sacrifice so that the Devil can walk the Earth once again. There is a bit of blood and guts, a few scares but very little excitement. I have to admit that the film was watchable and there is a lot worse films around but it still was very ordinary.

8MM - Director Joel Schumacher teams up with new wave action star Nicholas Cage to deliver this gritty action/thriller written by the man who brought us SE7EN. Cage is hired by a rich old widow to find out the validity of a "Snuff" video where it appears a young girl was murdered, from there it delves into the sleazy world of porn and the sick twisted minds who run it. This film has the same bleak, gritty outlook as SE7EN and it really is a bit sick and twisted, yet it is a thrilling and tense ride for the full two hours. Cage is great and Joaquin Phoenix as a sex shop worker really adds a little colour to an otherwise dark movie. Full on horror fans will be a bit disappointed by the lack of blood and deaths but still if your tastes include dark sick thrillers then this is a film you will really enjoy.....by the way, I really enjoyed it.

VIRUS - This film was another big budget sci-fi disappointment at the box-office, and it always seems that when films flop at the cinemas I end up really enjoying them, this is no exception. A lot of things that have been said about this film are true, it's not original, the acting is not great and the script is a touch predictable at times but still it is a really good action/sci-fi/horror flick. Jamie Lee Curtis is always a reliable actress and she once again stands tall in this outing as does Stepehn Baldwin,I felt that Donald Sutherland's performance was sub par he really is capable of a lot more. The film is centered around a tug boat crew caught in a hurricane who come across an abandoned Russian ship. Once on the ship the tug boat crew led by Curtis, Baldwin and Sutherland realise all is not well and soon come face to face with an alien life form who is using the Russians ship and dead crew as robots against them. The film borrows ideas from a lot of other films including Alien, Terminator, Deep Rising and Deadly Machine but this film has awesome special effects and the action is constant and intense.If you like sci-fi films or just good action films then this movie is for you.

THE MUMMY - A full-scale re-imagining of Universal Pictures' seminal 1932 film, The Mummy is an epic about an expedition of treasure-seeking explorers in the Sahara Desert in 1925. Stumbling upon an ancient tomb, the hunters unwittingly set loose a 3,000-year-old legacy of terror, which is embodied in the vengeful reincarnation of an Egyptian priest who had been sentenced to an eternity as one of the living dead. The Mummy stars Brendan Fraser (George of The Jungle), Rachel Weisz (Swept From The Sea) and John Hannah (Sliding Doors). The film was written and directed by Stephen Sommers (Deep Rising) and produced by James Jacks and Sean Daniel (Tombstone). Okay, now that we have the basics down let's get to the heart of this movie. Let me start by saying I REALLY liked this movie but I still was expecting a bit more than what I got. The effects from ILM were fantastic as was the action and adventure, on the other hand the horror aspects were not forthcoming which was to be expected from a PG-13 film and there was about as many chilling eerie scenes as you would expect to see in a Barney episode. Brendan Fraser was okay in the lead as Rick O'Connell as was Rachel Weisz as his love interest yet I have to admit that unlike his performance in "Deep Rising" Kevin J. O'Connor as Beni really annoyed me. All this aside this movie was a fantastic family action-adventure film in the same mould as the Indiana Jones films but I still beleive that this should have and could have been a lot better.

IN DREAMS - Claire Cooper dreams strange things from time to time. One night, she dreams about a little girl being taken away by a stranger, right in her neighbourhood. When her own daughter Rebecca is kidnapped and murdered only a little later, Claire is sure about the chilling truth that her and the killer's mind are connected to each other in dreams. But nobody believes her being able to foresee the killer's next steps, as she could with her own daughter. In addition, the nervous breakdown she suffers gets her into a mental facility after a suicide attempt. And here, locked away in a padded cell, she dreams of her husband being murdered... This movie comes from Director Neil Jordan who has always given us movies that tend to wander of the normal trodden path and sure enough this movie is not much different, while it obviusly "borrows" from some other well-known horror films (such as Nightmare on Elm. Street)it is still full of artistic impressions. So do these artistic impressions make this film good or not?? I would say NOT. The film tends to be a bit dull and boring, with large amounts of film time wasted. On numerous occasions I waited for the on screen action to heat up but to no avail. There are some very good chilling, eerie thrillers out there but unfortunately this film is not one of them. If you want to see a film of this sort but a good one I would recommend something like "Silence of the Lambs" which has everything in it that this film doesn't including chills. All that aside, the acting was top-notch and some of the sets were visually quite spectacular, but it is obvious to see why this film bombed so bad at the box office. If you want to see a film about a guy in someone dreams you would be a lot better off sticking with the old reliable Krueger dude !!!!!!

PROGENY - Brian Yuzna directs this Sci Fi/Horror film about a young couple whose joy of having a baby becomes a nightmare when they discover in horrific detail that this child was spawned by aliens. This film is the type of film you would expect Yuzna to direct, it is a low budget chiller with lots of nudity and blood. Jillian McWhirter spends majority of this movie in the nude which let me tell you is not all that bad. To be honest though I really was expecting more from this movie than what it produced with a lot of the acting a little shoddy and also a lot of the special FX a touch plastic looking. It's pretty obvious that this movie was made on a low-budget and unlike most of Yuzna's films you can tell. All that said it does still produce some chilling moments and as I said McWhirter is really the main reason to watch this film.

DENTIST 2 (Brace Yourself) - Brian Yuzna has a way of making people squirm in their seats. Everyone I know hates going to the dentist and Yuzna realises this and the original Dentist flick starring Corbin Bernsen was one of the most unsettling movies I have ever seen, put it this way if you don't mind going to the dentist you will after this movie. The sequel is basically about Bernsen escaping from a mental hospital and resettling into a small farming town, he then disposes of the local dentist and becomes open for business and once again tortures patient after patient. His wife from the original who he tore every tooth from makes a come back and all bloody hell breaks loose. Anyway, this is another classic sick film from Yuzna and if you enjoy feeling sqeamish and nausea then this film is for you. Loads of blood, loads of gore and loads of fun. I Love this stuff !!!!!