Latest "Je nais se quois" files
Artifice Girl
Island Zero
Alien Weekend
LX 2048
Bug (1975)
ReSet
As Above, So Below
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…
Await Further Instructions
Ok, I like this one. What starts out as a very slow, almost dreadfully British film somewhere along very roughly the lines of "Coherence"—turn a normal gathering (in this case a family of unpleasant almost dreadfully British people) in a house into an increasingly desperate situation (in this case the house exits all being sealed from outside and the television issuing increasingly strange commands) and see what happens—gives absolutely no clue for the first two acts as to how far over-the-top it's going to go by the end.
How ridiculous it is, and how uninspired the storytelling and one-dimensional the characters are, is compensated for by the fact that it's not really much like anything I've seen before.
Really, you've got to admire its fidelity to itself. In some ways, it's a decent throwback to '50s monster movies. It decides where it's going to go, and sticks to…
Contracted
A small film, but one I like. Woman contracts strange degenerative disease that causes her body to decay. One of those ones you can't say too much about without giving it away, but takes an unusual spin on some things. Doesn't feel like much as you're watching it, but satisfyingly adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
John Dies At The End
A critic called this "a very interesting failure", and that's about right. This time- and dimension-hopping adventure wants really badly to be a cult classic somewhere between "Donnie Darko" and "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", and doesn't quite rise to that level, but, almost. It's pretty entertaining. I like it, have watched it a few times, and will probably watch it again.
They’re Watching
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…
The Inside
[originally reviewed on IMDB at https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3321049/?ref_=tturv_perm_8]
I just got blown away by this movie.
Yes, by conventional film standards, it sucks: almost no story, no narrative arc, almost no dialog for the second half, nothing is ever explained, it's entirely full of insipid depthless characters who are either brutally loathesome (most of the men) or spend a hell of a lot of time doing nothing but wandering through a darkened building whimpering and screaming (most of the females), it spends too much time indulging itself in banal torture porn conventions without going anywhere. I don't even think many of the characters had names. It doesn't even have a trace of the pretentious art-house conventions some films stoop to in order to try to justify the obvious lack of conventional movie-making skill.
And yet, I loved it. I was floored and genuinely scared watching it. I will definitely…
Nekrotronik
As "Buckaroo Bonzai" was to goofy sci-fi and interdimensional travel, so is Nekrotronik to the supernatural, ghosts and demons. Fun. And, it's Australian.
Hunter Hunter
Family of trappers living in the wilderness, Dad and daughter are into it, Mom's maybe getting tired of it, when a wolf starts raiding their trap line, and to say any more would spoil it. Rack up one more above-average flick for the Canadians. What starts off seeming like "wilderness family gets threatened by natural or unnatural monster" veers off into becoming a seriously dark backwoods noir that only very slowly builds to where it's going. It's far from perfect—sags in the middle a bit, and feels a little like something was left on the cutting room floor somehow—but, draws on Canada's apparently abundant pool of oddly engaging unknown actors, and manages to develop into something fairly original. Could be a low-key cult classic. By the very end, it tilts full-on into gore, but only at the very end, and by being somewhat demure up until that point—such as only…
Possessor
Assassin takes over other people's bodies to kill her targets. Another small-but-satisfying Canadian sci fi thriller, well-cast with a bunch of no-name actors. David Cronenberg's son, and I called this one as Cronenberg-related without knowing I was right, although I wasn't sure, because this was a little better than Cronenberg Jr's last film. Still self-consciously strange, strangely retro, and with some brief unexpectedly gory scenes this time, but definitely showing some maturity and self-assurance that was missing last time. I liked it, and had one of those rare endings that I actually liked better after I thought about it for a minute... it wasn't a good enough film that a bad ending wouldn't have ruined the whole thing, but it was a good enough film that a good ending redeemed the whole thing. If Cronenberg Jr's next film is as much better than this as this was than his…
Digging Up The Marrow
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.
V/H/S 2
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.
Body At Brighton Rock
Wow, talk about a flawed gem.
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.…
What Keeps You Alive
Ok, slightly better than your average captivity/stalking in the back woods movie, but I don't know how much of that to chalk up to quality (usually totally lacking in this sort of movie) and how much to me being personally suckered by having a the psycho captor/stalker be a hot lesbian instead of a grungy redneck. Still, the acting is decent, the minimal cast (4 characters in the whole movie, two of whom are only seen for a few minutes) is good. It's Canadian, surprise. Also, at one point, one of the characters plays a strangely good single-note blues song. I've really got to look it up and see if it's a real song, or just written for the movie, or what. [Edit: Found it. Bloodlet by Munroe.]
The Sand
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.
Assimilate
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers remade yet again, this time as a teen scream movie. I don't mean that facetiously, it really is an explicit Invasion Of The Body Snatchers remake. Considering the entire range of things a teen scream remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers could turn out to be, this one is probably near the best end of the possible outcomes. It's entertaining enough, for a teen scream, and is peppered with some occasional really nice touches. There have definitely been some worse remakes of Body Snatchers, long as you're ok with teen scream movies. Rewatchability: maybe okay. I could see sitting through it again someday. I'd rather watch this again than the Nicole Kidman one.
Update: about two and a half years later I did watch this one again. It's a slow starter, definitely seems through the first act like it's going to be utter…
Bad Match
Ok, what starts off as "Fatal Attraction" for millennials takes a cruel twist into a little more of a descent into madness than you'd expect at the outset. Far from perfect, and still kind of predictable, but ultimately a genuinely nasty little movie in its way, which redeems it from being totally derivative, totally predictable crap. I'll say it just makes the cut.