Horror Movie Project

This review may contain spoilers. An American independent horror movie from filmmaker Randy Moore. It stars Roy Abramsohn, Elena Schuber, Katelynn Rodriguez, Jack Dalton, Annet Mahendru, and Alison Lees-Taylor. It premiered at the official selection of Roger Ebert, at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18th, 2013. Synopsis Jim is a depressed middle-aged man that despises his family life but wants to try to hold it together for a vacation to the Walt Disney World Resort. Jim receives a call before they leave and, unfortunately, Jim has lost his job as well. It proves too much to handle as this trip to the Magic Kingdom becomes a hellish nightmare. Jim’s mind cracks as we watch him deal with Disney’s seedy underbelly. Complete with elaborate corporate conspiracy, undercover sex workers, and demons. Oh and two very young French girls that Jim lusts over. It’s gross. Analysis The acting is amateurish. It’s nothing that’s going to win any awards or anything. The wri...

Murder Party is a 2007 independent horror comedy film from writer and director, Jeremy Saulnier. It did well on the independent film circuit, winning best feature at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival . It stars indie actors, Chris Sharp, Sandy Barnett, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt and William Lacey. This has been on my watchlist for years. I always started watching it, and then ended up getting involved in something else. This time, I thought why not make this the first movie of the 2018 Edition of 31 Movies of Halloween . So here we are. Christopher responds to a random costume party invitation that will be held on Halloween night. A Murder Party to be more accurate. Dressed as a cardboard knight, Christopher arrives to find a strange costumed group that has plans for him. Murderous plans for artistic reasons. They tie Chris up and begin discussing how they want to kill him. Unfortunately, things don’t quite go the way the group intends. A series of mishaps ensue leading to...

I had originally been interested in The Witch, from a few spots that I had seen online. I actually thought that this would have been more of a Dogme 95 type film and I was mistaken. But that's not a bad thing. I was also allured by the interesting setting and amazing cinematography. It appears to be a really pretty movie. The setting is New England in 1630. A puritanical family is banished from their village and forced to live on a farm out deep into the dark and ominous forest. The family is quite large. A husband and wife with five children, a dog named Valor, a large goat named Black Phillip and various other farm animals. Something sinister is lurking around the family. Children start getting abducted and the family starts straining. Chatter of a witch starts. Could a witch be doing all of this? Creating such havoc in these people's lives. This movie is beautifully shot and incredibly frightening. The lighting is dramatic and foreboding but completely natural. In ...

You have to prepare yourself for watching something like Street Trash . It's not something that you just jump right into. I had seen Slime City prior to watching this one. So I was kind of ready for the putrid ugliness. It's vile and disgusting, but it really gets the job done. As I said about Slime City,  this feels like punk rock film. In your face and against the system.  Some strange toxic liquor called Viper is making it's way around the streets. Homeless people are picking up these bottles and drinking the lethal concoction that makes your body physically melt. We take a look at two homeless guys that are trying to survive the effects of the booze while also dealing with other asshole homeless dudes and junk yard workers.  Gore and mutilation effects are all over this picture. Body melt is a common theme. The effects are creative but terrible at the same time. They use really bright colors as a stark contrast to the usual blood and gore that we ar...

This movie is an strange roller-coaster ride of comedy and horror. It stumbles through comedic scenes like a variety show on prime time Comedy Central. If you like Key and Peel, Reno 911, The Nick Kroll Show, and comedic shows like that, then you will really like this. It's a good thing I am a fan.  This horror film is brought to you by Lieutenant Dangle and Deputy Junior. That is the most hook-worthy way to pitch this to friends. Robert Ben Garant started his film career back in 1992. He hadn't wandered into the horror genre much, if at all. However, he is incredibly seasoned. His long-time writing partner, Thomas Lennon, is no rookie behind the camera either. He has held positions in editing, producing, writing and directing. By the time he is working on this, he has already been a huge contributor to many comedy troupes and programs including Human Giant and the Upright Citizens Brigade.  This movie is about a very expectant couple, Jack and Vanessa (Rob Cor...

This movie feels like Twilight Zone completely let loose. It has gore. It has horrible acting. But more importantly, it actually has a decent story line. Albeit a bit thin. It was the movie that ushered in the Splatter genre of horror films and it cements itself in the grind house archive forever. This was a fun ride from start to finish. I can even forgive the incredibly annoying and horribly long banjo introduction. The film is about a town in the deepest south of America. A town that celebrates tradition in the most gruesome of ways. On the town's centennial they held a large event to lure in travelers from the north (Yankees). Their goal is to capture some unsuspecting travelers and murder them in honor of The South. The Yankees were wined and dined. They were given a place to stay and treated like kings. That is until their deaths. Some of the group gets wise but most meet their demise.  The ending was really smart and it carried the movie. It kind of surprised m...

Saw is a wildly successful independent horror movie from Australia's James Wan. The movie is very complex and very engaging. The film has a really heavy overarching feeling of dread and anguish that is only rivaled by movies like Se7en. Supported by a solid story line and equally solid script. The actors and characters are fantastic. Our main heroes played by Carey Elwes and Leigh Whannell do a great job of building the tension. It's really well executed. This is also the movie that started really celebrating the "twist" ending. It's pretty glorious. This is the story of two men that wake-up finding themselves being imprisoned in a damp, dark basement. Both are shackled around an ankle and held on opposite sides of the room. Through their captivity, they start to remember and realize things. They learn that they are being held by a psychotic serial killer that "plays games" with his victims by putting them in killer obstacle courses of sorts...

Death Proof Year: 2007 Dir: Quentin Tarantino Style: Grindhouse Revival I know, I know... Sid, what the hell are you doing? Death Proof isn't a horror movie. It's an action thriller at best! Screw that. Quentin Tarantino does a great job of taking a simple car-chase movie and adding the creepy elements. This isn't just about slick muscle cars tearing up the asphalt. This isn't just a movie about girls out on a simple road-trip. It's much more complicated than that. This movie definitely gets your blood pumping.  Kurt Russell does a masterful job of being the psychopathic serial murderer Stuntman Mike that stalks young girls and runs them down viciously in his stunt cars. We watch Stuntman Mike stalking two sets of girls who seem fairly similar. Jungle Julia, a local radio jockey, and her crew along with Rose McGowan are the first set of victims. Then we have the stunt-women. After being stalked by Mike, these tough chicks are eventually confronted. Stun...

Feast is a horror movie reject piece, produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Wes Craven through a short-lived bad idea, called Project Greenlight. The movie is a slapstick comedy/horror combo with some sort of All-Star cast. Henry Rollins, Judah Friedlander, Balthazar Getty, Duane Whitaker, and Jason Mewes are just to name a few. The movie is highly stylized and overly comedic. I think it was too much. Bozo, Beer Guy, Hot Wheels, Edgy Cat, Tuffy, Grandma, Bartender, and Boss Man all frequent this bar out in the middle of nowhere. A few out of towners are in tonight, drinking and having fun, when a Hero and Heroine both come into the bar warning about a coming force of weird, deadly creatures. The rest of the night the group in the bar is holding up and trying to fight back against the monsters. All the while not ripping each other apart. These are all horrible people. No one that you can identify with. The Heroes are all boring and typical.  The comedy is the p...

So I am watching this horrible VHS copy of White Zombie that I bought at the Goodwill for a dollar. I think it was a dollar well spent even though the sound and picture are as questionable. I will try to power through it.  The movie is about a girl and her fiancee who are due to be married upon arrival to an old plantation in Hati or someplace like that. They stumble  across a which doctor who serves as the antagonist for the rest of the film.  People are risen from the dead and they attack the living. That plot device crowns White Zombie as the first zombie movie ever made. What about Frankestein or the Mummy? Weren't they dead and resurrected too? Well this Zombie is made of Black Magic or Voodoo. Spell and enchantments are put on the bodies to make them rise. It is the first voodoo zombie film, I'll give it that.  The acting in this movie is way off. I know it's an independent feature but it is really bad. It is a victim of it's own time and fea...

The Westboro Baptist Church is a group of homophobic baptists that preach out of a congregation in Topeka, Kansas. They hold inappropriate signs at protests in some of the most sacred of venues; Gay Rights Conventions, Veterans Hospitals, Concerts, Sporting Events, High Schools, Jr. High Schools, Elementary Schools, and even Funerals. They are mostly known for the latter in that laundry list. You can almost be certain that when their leader Fred Phelps Sr. (and mouthpiece Shirley Phelps-Roper) caught wind that indie film director Kevin Smith would be making a horror film based on their church. They were angry. Red State is a horror movie that is based on the Westboro Baptist Church. There are some little differences, as the movie actually points out for you in a phone call. This group of hate-mongers actually kidnap "homosexuals" and kill them in front of their congregation as part of a big ritualistic thing. They also have a heavily guarded compound, and are ready to figh...

After the 31 Movies of Halloween review spectacular I had a few months back I decided to take a few  months off from writing. I scribbled out a review or two since then but I haven't figured out a schedule. But for now here is my review of the Blair Witch Project. In 1999, I begged a group of adults to buy tickets for my friends and I to see the Blair Witch Project. We gave them the money and they bought each of us a ticket. It was amazing. I was about to walk into the most hyped movie of the fall; yeah... I admit it, I was taken by the publicity that surrounded this movie. It was like the first viral marketing campaign. Everyone had some sort of sneaking suspicion that this movie was real. That all of the events were real. Coming out of the theater that night I realized that I was terrified. It wasn't just hype. It was the way the movie was filmed, and that ending. That ending scares the crap out of me. I really don't like it. It stays on me. Because of that I did...

October 31st 2010 So this is it, the cream of the the crop for Halloween horror movies. The final movie of my 31 horror movies of Halloween is none other then the original, I repeat original, Halloween from 1978. This is John Carpenter's masterpiece, he hasn't really done anything worth a damn since this movie. I mean it look back at the movies that he has on his record and put them up against this... Well I guess that the Thing stands up there pretty good, but thats just about it. I am a huge fan of this series and I think that this is a great start point for the consistently depreciating franchise.   The movie is about a girl named Laurie that is being stalked by Michael Myers. Myers is being stalked by his short, stocky, and bald psychiatrist. The psychiatrist blows into town and takes over as the head sheriff.  He does little to help anyone actually find the killer, but he does shoot him. Well that is kind of what happens, but if you don't know then you sho...

I like to go out and hit up garage sales early in the mornings on Saturdays. Usually you can find some really good stuff, other times you just look at piles of shit for 20 minuets, moving so slowly. Maybe that's just me though. One time I found a copy of Crazy Fat Ethel 2 on VHS, it came with Tron and a bootleg copy of Eraserhead. I called some friends and we all watched this movie Crazy Fat Ethel 2. Holy crap! This movie is a roller-coaster ride of poop. From the director shooting on, what looked to be, the cheapest equipment ever. To their not being a shred of decent audio. To the amazingly terrible script. There is not one saving grace to the entire film. The movie is offensive and stupid all rolled up into a nice tiny ball of turd. Now that I got that out of my system... I could not believe what I was watching, Fatsplotiation! The tag line to the movie, which actually doubles as the plot, is "Never come between Ethel and a well-stoc...

Parody comedy is really something that is hard to pull off, I am really critical of it and I actually hate it more than any other comedy. Directors like Rob Zombie makes a lot of these parody horror movies, that have a real certain flair to them. His movies are more of an homage, yet they have this certain dark comedy to them. This movie is just like any Rob Zombie horror movie. I can see everything in this movie that he uses in most of his movies. Or maybe its just the fact that Sid Haig is in the movie, that could be it. To touch on what I said above, this movie really feels like a really watered down version of either House of 1000 corpses or The Devil's Rejects. The movie has to do with a crazy family, including Lon Chaney Jr. The family has some disease that is named after them, the disease makes you turn into some sort of crazy beast in a devolution style thingie. The disease makes them kill and mame people, it makes the eldest girl hate everything and the middle child k...

So first off this movie is not serious at all. The Chiodo's brothers know that they are filming this parody, goofy, slapstick horror movie and we are fine with that. Just knowing that stuff alone lets this movie get a pass in our book when looking at say, the Acting, the Story, the Character arcs. What we have here is a movie that was made just so that the brothers Chiodo's could showcase their Special Effects work. So right off the bat we know that the Brothers, who are responsible for the movie, don't necessarily have a film making background. They are effects guys, and you have seen their stuff other places too like Critters & Team America. The acting in this movie is atrocious, but I think that it adds to the charm of the film. The movie itself harks back to the 50's monster movies, where a small town has to deal with an antagonist from space. This time the small town is Santa Cruz, and the antagonists aren't giant Rats, or Robots, or Plants that want ...

I am a sucker for any H.P. Lovecraft film and this is one of the best, Re-Animator! Here we have a mad scientist, the undead, and a little gore action. I mean there's a reason why this is considered one of the greatest cult horror films of all time. Really cool effects and a pretty solid storyline, deliver a really great horror film and what i consider to be one of the top scary movies of all time. Dr. Herbert West, played by Jeffrey Combs , is a student who is kicked out of his studies from Switzerland. He is accepted to a University in New England, and starts turning his room mates basement into a laboratory so that he can study his Dead Re-Animation formula. Problems arise when West's room mate's girlfriend's cat goes missing, only to be discovered dead and reanimated by West. From there we have evil scientists trying to steal formulas and perverted headless guys trying to cozy up to co-eds. This is really one of the greatest horror movies of all...

2LDK (aka. 2 Bedroom, Living Room, Dining Room, and Kitchen) is a strange suspenseful horror movie from Japan. The entire thing only features two characters and takes place in the span of one week. The movie features two young actresses that both get an apartment together and learn that each one is being considered for the same role. This infuriates the two women and they end up battling for seventy minuets. Not just fight but they literally beat the living shit out of each other with various items thorough out the house. They use various items in the house including a chainsaw to attack each other. This is it. This is the entire plot of the film. Jealousy spawns physical battle. Its pretty basic. The entire thing is filmed in one location. They don't vary from this recipe and I believe that it actually hurts the film. I respect what they are going for here, but other than it being a pretty interesting idea the movie falls f...

Here it is children, the grand-daddy of the zombie apocalypse. George Romero's 1968, classic, groundbreaking film; Night of the Living Dead. This is the movie that starts the whole fucking thing. This is the movie that starts everything. I am pretty sure that you can just about credit 99% of modern horror to this movie. The movie follows Ben Huss, Barbara, and five other people that become trapped in a farmhouse during the zombie apocalypse. The plot seems simple enough, however this one simple plot has spawned a slew of other movies that rely on it as the starting point of the un-dead end. Of course we are talking here about Dawn, Day, City, Diary, and even the Return franchise. This one singular film can be seen, at least in part, in all of these movies. The casting is impeccable. Ben Huss takes the reigns as your lead character once Barbara falls into a catatonic state. This is a ballsy move since Ben Huss is African American. In 1968 it was almost unheard...