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Actually not *that* bad for a captivity/pursuit flick. Eastern european woman in this country illegally with her daughter is given a job caring for a religious man in a remote rural community with no phone or cell phone reception. Add in an unfortunate, hamfisted attempt at satirizing nationalism, plus some touches of Tobe Hooper-style over-the-topness, and, eh, not bad for what it is. Still a pretty bad movie, but I liked it ok for what it was.
So, this is a little different for a teen scream... this uninteresting-sounding tale is about a meme email that spreads around and forces you to be killed by your deepest fear if you don't click the link (yes, it's another horror movie about the internet, usually a bad sign.) It starts weak, but ends up being just a slight cut above, just barely, due to good acting and unusual casting of actual realistically geeky characters as geeks, and then giving them respectable roles. Turns out it's a Canadian film, so, ok. It also had a lot of funny little snappy patter, it sounded like the way wiseass kids really talk. Pretty much bottom of the barrel for Canadian horror but still, that means a cut above bottom of the barrel compared to most. It's sort of slightly-better-than-total-crap in that "Final Destination", actually-kind-of-decent-teen-scream way, which works even better for me because…
Ok, this is truly weird. A sea captain, rescued after 100 years of being possessed by"the Old Ones", encounters magicians and monsters trying to get back to his own time, who he mostly seems to find junkyards and abandoned industrial sites around town. This is zero-budget, sub-"Creature From The Black Lagoon"rubber-mask monsters, to tell a story with as much ambition, weirdness and imagination as a Clive Barker film. Terribly miscast macho he-men who look like extras from a"Dirty Harry"police station scene—the actor playing the captain has almost 300 IMDB credits to his name including"Donnie Brasco"and"Fast and Furious"—run around spouting scenery-chewing Lovecraftian dialogue at each other, like"I have to go. Things are hunting me. Hideous things that dissolve and devour..."or"My pets. You see them? The creatures that fill what men call the pure air and the blue sky", as cheesy, obviously papier-mache bugs and creatures float and skitter around. Meanwhile, out of place humor pops up periodically, like bringing a magician the heart of a demon in a styrofoam takeout container, and when they tell him,"We have brought you a tribute", he says,"What, leftovers?", before opening up a demonic portal in his torso, a giant, hideous gaping maw full of very obviously fake rubber and foam fangs*; or, at another point, a waitress character for some reason played, completely straight and with no explanation or anything to suggest it's meant to be humorous, by a hipster-looking male actor with a goatee and mustache. This seems like a movie made by a very imaginative person who hadn't seen a movie since they were a young child and had only vague memories of what movies are supposed to be like, and a special effects budget limited to whatever they could spend in an hour at the craft store. I generally don't get into"so bad it's good", but this is so over-the-top, and they try so hard, despite having no budget and no talent, I can't help but be entertained by the effort. I might even give it an"honorable mention"... which, in this case, should not be confused with saying it's in any way good. Rather, it's so pyrotechnically, impressively bad, so ambitious without having anything even remotely resembling talent involved anywhere in the production, that I have definitely never seen quite anything like it. I can say that much for sure. (*C'mon. How cool is this, just for being so unrepentantly awful: https://www.voicesfromthebalcony.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/H.P.-Lovecrafts-The-Old-Ones-1.jpg)
I call this the"Reuben Sandwich"of movies. I was at a deli once, and I looked at a Reuben Sandwich. It was corned beef, sauer kraut, russian dressing, and swiss cheese, on pumpernickel. I was like,"Oh my god, it's everything I hate in one sandwich. I must try this."And I liked it! This movie is like that. Found footage, perhaps the lowest budget movie I've ever seen—seriously I'd be surprised if they spent $150 on this, it seems like a guy shot out an email to a bunch of his friends saying,"You want to be in a movie? Here's your lines. You can do it from home, I'll just film us all on a zoom call", it's a"horror comedy"starring hipsters, no lighting design to speak of, features social media, looks like it was shot on a phone. Everything I hate in one movie! And you know what? I enjoyed it! It's sincere. It's like if"Paranormal Activity"wasn't so pretentious and had the good sense to just be a little silly and have some fun. Guy sits around the house, things go bump in the night, and the day. His friends explode during a zoom call. A ghost that looks like his wife in stage makeup makeup tries to lure him into a closet, which he deals with matter-of-factly:"I know you're not my wife, I just talked to her on the phone. And I wouldn't let my real wife lure me into a closet. Wait, yeah, I probably would. But that's besides the point."There's an unexplained monster. But, along the way, he has one good idea: what if there's a sinister reason why horror movies,"Amityville"in particular, spin off into endless ridiculous franchises? And: can he put a stop to it? I enjoyed this the way I'd enjoy a friend's jokey home movie if I was in on the joke. Don't expect any better than that, though.
What a weird movie. A motel with the ruins of a burned-down"Mystery Spot"tourist trap out back draws strange clientele: A man rents a room and spends all afternoon auditioning actors, asking them strange and probing questions. A writer, mourning her husbamd, checks into the next room. A policeman apparently lives in the parking lot, watching the filmmaker to try to figure out what he's doing. Now, make no mistake: this is a bad movie. It's poorly written. It's mostly poorly acted. It's a bad indie film. But, for that: it's pretty good. Most importantly, the leads, the filmmaker and the writer, are really good actors, far better than you usually see in this sort of thing. About halfway through the movie, they get a long scene just talking, getting to know each other—pure character development and, it seems to me the sort of thing two skilled actors might have asked the director to put in the movie and let them ad lib, just to give them some real acting to do. And, it kinda works, it elevates the film just a little bit. Plus, although it's really badly written, it's also not particularly derivative or anything I've seen before... maybe it reminds me a tiny bid of"The Lost Room", but it's not even terribly close to that. So: I kinda liked it! It's bad, for sure. But I liked it. If I had seen this on"Chiller Theater"when I was a kid, I probably would have remembered it fondly for decades.
Hah! I liked this. Thoroughly amateurish time thriller about a hipster playing a very improbably cryptographer who decodes a message for the NSA and begins to see giant Men In Black. Basically bad, strictly amateur hour, but somehow kind of fun, for being that. They really gave it the old college try.
In this cinematic anti-masterpiece, a corporate headquarters goes on lockdown, and it turns out all the employees have remotely-triggered explosives implanted in their heads, when a voice comes over the loudspeaker and gives them challenges that require them to kill each other or be killed themselves, apparently because, movie. An exceptionally violent, bloody, pointless movie, just violence as entertainment, but, for one of those, actually kind of good cheezy fun. John C. McGinley plays a slightly different character than he usually does, which is fun.
Activists try to defeat government-implanted chips that prevent the citizens from seeing that their gorgeous futuristic city is actually a slum. What a funny movie. A 2017 sci-fi B movie that looks for all the world like it's from about 1980 at the latest. Hammy acting, lots of practical and optical effects, sets that look big-budget and actors that look for all the world like Hollywood actors but aren't anybody you've ever heard of. Absolutely crap, derivative, but a little charming in that late-70s-bad-scifi way, and amusing that someone made something like this 10 years into the post-Matrix era.
You know, weirdly, I liked this strictly B-movie. It was sort of a bad movie that's saved by good direction and kind of a weirdly original approach. Brother and sister get trapped in a farm town taken over by rogue artists who do taxidermy on people. I, you know, kind of enjoyed it, which surprised me. Definitely not one I'd go out of my way to see, but kind of fun for a 2nd rate"teen scream"flick.
Fun little flick. Sci-fi comedy about a couple of 20-something friends who stumble into some intrigue involving a crashed ufo and a missing alien egg. Reminiscent of quirky indie sci-fi comedies like Buckaroo Bonzai, Repo Man, Bill & Ted, that sort of thing, although it doesn't really rise to anywhere near that level—it's still too much of a teen film for that—but nonetheless, a likable cast and fairly consistently successful comic elements make it a fun view. Definitely doesn't suck. Could maybe be a minor cult favorite, I bet, to people who haven't seen this sort of thing before.
A true aberration, the rare"so bad it's good"movie I enjoyed. This thoroughly"USA Up All Nite"-level fare about a bunch of frat boys who go to a bordello and are killed one-by-one by the ladies is, well, thoroughly"USA Up All Nite"-level fare, from start to finish. It doesn't really try too hard, and plays like something made in about 1972. These movies, you know, they remind me of my shiftless year or two right after college, working a shit admin assistant job by day and smoking weed and watching"USA Up All Nite"every weekend. Hard not to feel a little affection for a movie that evokes that this well. I'd never recommend anybody watch it, but I may again, if there's nothing else on someday. Suprisingly, this is from 2006. I would have given it no later than 1992 at the absolute latest, and probably earlier.
THIS IS IT! You found it-the one, the only BUG, the single greatest cinematic achievement not just in the admittedly crowded field of mid-20th-century apocalyptic giant insect scifi horror film, nor even just in the scifi or horror film genres, but in human motion picture history writ large, itself. The unrelenting cinematic greatness that this movie doles out in heaping helpings upon your uncomprehending cerebellum-line after line, minute after minute, scene after scene, shrieking burning head explosion after shrieking burning head explosion, without pause, from the opening preacher's sermon to the closing descent into the stygian bowels of the earth itself-simply cannot be adequately conveyed within the constraints of this forum. It must be experienced firsthand.The mere fact that this is one of the very few opportunities in American cinema to see a woman's head get set on fire in the Brady Bunch kitchen would likely be among the chief draws of any more ordinary film it might appear in. But this is no ordinary film, and even something that would obviously be the highlight of most movie-goers' entire seasons is here only the very most trivial, the most trifling beginning to the veritable cavalcade of entertainments bestowed upon the lucky viewer of this inestimable apotheosis of thrilling visual storytelling.To say any more would both unfairly rob the viewer of the opportunity to fully experience the unfolding of this stunning film firsthand, and, necessarily fall short in the effort, because words simply can not suffice.Bug. There is no substitute, no other film experience that can compare. On the rarified mountaintop of cinematic achievement, Bug stands alone.If you disagree with a single word of this review, you should know it was written by my 7-year-old self. And my 7-year-old self knows a BUTTLOAD about movies. You are not likely to convince him he's wrong.As of this writing,"Bug"is, happily, currently streaming on Netflix, and the world feels just that much more right.
A group of friends get stranded at a remote cabin and find nobody there, but evidence of people having picked up and left in the middle of activities. One by one, they disappear.
The production values are good, and ratchets up the tensions well enough to be a little engaging. But it's very, very badly flawed—aside from two-dimensional characters, more importantly it basically has only a premise, not an actual plot... it's one idea, and never developed beyond showing you that idea. It never bothers to explain what's going on, and additionally includes a lot of inconsistencies and points that are brought up and then never explained, or sometimes ever even mentioned again. The character motivations are all over the place... for instance, a man who brought his fiancee to ask her to marry him has sex with his ex almost immediately after she suddenly disappears, for no other apparent…
Installment #3, which a much bigger special effects budget and largely used well.
Most notable for the inclusion of the bizarre "Parallel Monsters", about a scientist who opens a doorway to a monstrous mirror dimension and agrees to swap places with his parallel self for 15 minutes, probably one of my favorite horror shorts that I've seen.
I actually kind thought this one was consistent and slightly better than the other two, which of course means the critics all panned it hardest of the three. Not sure what's wrong with people.
I still wouldn't go out of my way to see it, but would personally rewatch "Parallel Monsters" every now and again just because it's so damn weird.
It also marks the first-person-shooter style finally jumping the shark completely, as we see footage that could never be found (like a camera eaten by a monster showing…
First person shooter, blech. Ray Wise, yea! Overall, enjoyable enough for a bad first person shooter movie, mostly because of Wise, and decent creature design.
A horror director is contacted by a man who claims to have evidence of real monsters, who leads them to film a hole in the woods, with predictable eventual results and a larger-than-average helping of fridge logic, made enjoyable by, again, Ray Wise, and decent creature design.
Also notable because, unlike the overwhelming majority of horror movies, it does contain one really excellent scare.
N.B. I read that they cast the easily recognizable Wise instead of an unknown because they wanted it to be clear from the beginning that it was entertainment, not an attempted hoax. Ok, I dig that.
Another vaguely quasi-entertaining "V/H/S" film. I will say that save for Blair Witch this may be the only first-person-shooter where it didn't grate on me within the first 15 minutes. A couple of mildly effective shorts in here, directed at least well enough for some jump scares: a film crew does a documentary of a cult on a day when they happen to be committing mass suicide and summoning the devil, a house full of kids has some extraterrestrial visitors, and, bonus points for the creative idea of a pretty stock zombie short, but with the main zombie being a cyclist who died with a running GoPro on his helmet, so the entire zombie attack is seen from a zombie's-eye-view.
Young park ranger gets lost in the woods, finds a body, has to sit tight until morning waiting for rescue. For the first 20 minutes of this movie, I assumed it was a 1980s "USA Up All Nite"-type d-grade picture. It wasn't until she pulled out an iPhone and took selfies that I realized it was new.
The acting is crap, directing is crap, everything about it is amateurish and crap. But then, she spends the night out in the woods, and I have to say, it's exactly the kind of movie I like, but could never recommend to anyone else.
Nowhere near as poetic as, say, Open Water, another bomb that I love, but I have to say, it's effectively creepy just for the setup, as she slowly creeps herself out wandering around the woods at night all by herself.…
Not a favorite of mine but worth an honorable mention. Pretty much nonstop fun for a uniformly bad movie, in thanks to a particularly hatable protagonist who you want to see bad things happen to, and an exceptionally good movie psycho villain (played to the hilt and against type by, I realized, the guy who plays the hunky detective in "Angie Tribeca").
By any reasonable measure, this should not have worked at all, but it goes so over the top, and ticks along so well without ever really sagging, that it's actually kind of a fun romp if you don't go into it expecting to take it seriously.
It's another movie that I'd never recommend to anyone, but rewatch occasionally myself just for fun. I wouldn't be surprised if it became a minor cult favorite.
Starts off like it's going to be an unbearably annoying first-person shooter, but if you forward past the first 5 minutes it's not. Kids wake up hungover after a beach party to discover the sand has turned carnivorous... basically, "The Raft" from "Creepshow 2", with a beach instead of a lake. That rare actual "good bad movie". I liked it well enough to actually watch it again after a few months.
Don't get me wrong. It's a bad "teen scream" monster movie. But I like it.
Plus they got Jamie Kennedy to do what he does best: play a brief cameo as some random asshole who appears out of nowhere.
If you pretend this is the best student film you've ever seen, it's actually not that bad. Definitely more a product of ambition than experience (as evidenced by that 'arty' title that has little to do with the story's subject and even less with its tone). Long-estranged junkie friend turns up at a couple's door insisting the cops are trying to kill him. The problem is the filming conceit: even worse than a 1st-person-shooter, this film shows the action through all the lead characters' first-person viewpoints, often meaning you see the same scene three times in a row, a device that gets old within the first two minutes. Eventually, despite some weak acting performances, it shapes up into an ok enough neo-noir thriller that I don't regret sitting through it, and actually eventually kind of enjoyed that amateurish "let's make a 'great' movie!" energy. I wouldn't watch it again, though.…
Archaeologist looks for the Philosopher's Stone in forbidden parts of the Paris catacombs, finds something much worse than expected, in this rare non-execrable "found footage" film.. 10% Raiders Or The Lost Ark, 5% The Descent, 50% Blair Witch Project, but about 35% its own thing, which is pretty good for a movie like this. This had all the makings of a bad movie, first off by being a first-person shooter, but it's someone somewhere along the way knew a little too much about how to actually make a movie, and managed to fill it with enough cool style to make up for the thin substance... might be a good date movie. For a piece of trifle with almost no plot they actually managed to make it fairly gripping. Ending is sort of an anticlimax though... they go through their travails, then when the movie is long enough, the travails come…
A pleasant surprise. One of those rare movies that starts really lame and completely redeems itself by the end, provided you can take some amusement from the totally unexpected over-the-topness of it. First-person shooter in which the "never stop filming!" film crew is crass Americans that goes to a remote rural Eastern European village, pisses off superstitious locals by accidentally filming a funeral, and engages in some incredibly heavy handed foreshadowing before getting themselves stuck out in the woods to get picked off — and yet, somehow, rather than collapsing under the weight of almost more clichés than you could possibly fit into one uninspired seeming movie, the whole thing takes off into unexpected the territory with such a beautifully over-the-top SFX blowout that I think I said "wow" more than once out loud. Special-effects so good that you'll want to see it on video see you can pause it…
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