Campers find a baby and wind up pursued by psycho rednecks in the woods. But Australian, so with no American over-the-topness, just sick realism, preceded a dreadfully slow 45 minute buildup in which nothing happens. Pure brutality-as-supposed-entertainment, nothing redeeming about this one at all. One of the easiest Netflix thumbs-downs I've ever given to a film that was technically well made.
Ok, now we're talking. There's something distinctly Kubrickian about this quiet, low-budget indie flick about three people who sneak into a penthouse apartment only to become trapped over the winter and descend into a grisly struggle to survive. Supernatural forces may or may not be at work. I liked this one pretty well, in a quiet, low-budget indie flick kind of way. The incredible, apparently universal hatred for this film is the sort of thing that makes me feel like I was born on the wrong planet.
Lauren Cohan stars as a gorgeous nanny hired by an elderly english couple in a remote mansion to care for what she thinks is their son but turns out to be a life-sized doll... until things begin to move around the house. Plenty of fridge logic abounds but I didn't notice it until the a few minutes after the credits rolled and Lauren Cohan had left the screen. She is, I should add, a pretty good actress, as these things go... actually, better than this material. But I would probably enjoy a movie of Lauren Cohan just walking around an empty room for 90 minutes. And this was actually even more than that.
Brooklyn guy takes in old friend who turns out to be a raving lunatic who thinks humans are turning into demons, thinks his girlfriend is giving him orders over the phone, etc. Not much actually happens, though.
Promising but ultimately disappointing future dystopian black comedy with a slight Clockwork Orange artifice and sterility to the production. Single people are sent to a hotel to either hook up or be transformed into animals and set loose in the woods. One man escapes and joins the "loners", who forbid romance, in the woods — at which point the movie completely runs out of steam, and spends the remaining half its length going absolutely nowhere.
Decent supernatural thriller with Mr. No-Nonsense, Art La Fleur. Two families are lured to look at a house out in the woods, arrive to nearly hit a young girl in the road with her tongue cut out, and soon discover they can’t leave the property. Every attempt to drive or walk back to the road just puts them back at the house. 7 cans of beef stew keep reappearing in the pantry every day. Months pass. Everybody goes a little insane, dead relatives appear, etc.
I will always love this movie. Most people hate it. Almost no plot: Annoying yuppie couple get accidentally left behind out on the open ocean while on a scuba diving excursion, float in shark-infested waters for a few days. And that's it. That's all that happens. In my opinion, expertly made—it's about mood, not story, and the cinematography and amazing soundtrack, a compilation of indigenous folk music from cultures around the world, carry it for me. Most people probably think it's boring. I will always re-watch it.
Humanity's survivors speed around a frozen globe in a train, get lost in class warfare and survival issues. Distinctive, quality, underrated, memorable sci-fi. An instant classic in my book.
ravers chased through the woods by satanists. Acrually surprisingly good, like how some episodes of 90210 were good.
Mark Duplass as a convincing narcissistic serial killer in this first person shooter, a sequel to a film I could swear I saw but don't seem to have reviewed. This is essentially two really good actors in a zero-budget self-indulgent vanity project that's far, far beneath them. (And, seriously, only two actors: a few other people appear in the first 5 minutes of the film, but after that, the entire rest of the movie is only 2 people.) A serial killer hires a videographer to make a documentary about him. She explicitly disregards the red flags (and tells the camera she's doing so, in case we don't notice) and basically goads him on, on the flimsy excuse that she's looking for views for her web series. Eh. Slightly better than such low-production-value efforts usual are, but not worth a second view.
In this movie, Eric Andre plays Sacha Baron Cohen in "Borat". Probably the least funny thing Eric Andre has ever done, which means, still a little funny. I did laugh out loud like twice, so, funnier than not watching anything at all, and in fact funnier than many things I have watched. Still, there's plenty of better things to get your Eric Andre fix from. Although having the outtakes and reveals where they tip off the unwitting victims under the closing credits is a nice idea.
What lulls you in by pretending it's going to be a raunchy sex comedy featuring a hooker with a heart of gold (and, refreshingly, a brain, played by unbelievably beautiful German actress Bella Dayne, who could be confused with a foul-mouthed Sutton Foster, definitely a good thing in my book) is actually a rom-com featuring a smart girl pretending to be a hooker with a heart of gold. A goddamn rom-com. Beware. I have to admit I liked her much better in the evening dress and talking filth. (Sue me. Look, without much of the promised raunch, I gotta find what I can in this movie to hold my attention.) Does have egg fighting though, and a great score of New Orleans blues, jazz, & funk.
what seems like it's going to be a thoroughly dull captivity/pursuit pic turns into a pretty good monster movie as a busload of English schoolkids are first lured into a trap and hijacked by an escaped lunatic and then trapped by a monster in a subterranean labyrinth that I could swear I have dreamed about before. No, really, it's better than it sounds. Also, decent '70s style analog synth score.
funny hybrid sci-fi/horror flick about a manly, tough-as-nails paranormal investigator, with a team of gorgeous researchers, who cures possessions by using scientific methods to enter the subconscious of the possessed, who are apparently trapped in a fantasy realm and must only be persuaded to leave voluntarily to cure the possession... by getting them to jump out a window. Very slick, "stylish" Hollywood-style production, full of tropes that seem learned in screenwriter's school, and everybody looks like a model. Seems like maybe it was an attempt to launch a franchise.
Guy just released from an insane asylum under house arrest in his parent's mansion starts seeing things. Thriller, not a horror movie. Meh, okay I guess, not bad but didn't grab me.
I was in the mood for some light fare so I tried this Keanu Reeves thriller. Had I known it was an Eli Roth film I wouldn't have bothered, there's "light" and there's "tissue-paper thin". Typically shallow and pointless Eli Roth torture porn fare, this time without even gore, and even more fridge logic than usual. Basically, the Small Faces to "Funny Games"'s Rolling Stones. Two teen girls take Keanu Reeves hostage in his home, seduce then torture him, for no reason other than it's an Eli Roth movie and someone out there thinks that's entertaining enough that they got name actors to participate. I wish Eli Roth would find another line of work.
couple sailing across the pacific wind up adrift for a month and a half. Considering how much I usually like these kinds of survival stories, meh. Somehow this one didn't speak to me.
Anthology horror. Not that well written, mostly just stories leading up to an often predictable "gotcha" or "surprise" twist and not plot-driven enough to bother follow the narrative any further than that to explore what happens, but surprisingly alright, mostly due to a reliance on character instead of gore and a pretty good cast turning in strong performances. Dylan Baker is the bright spot of the first and worst of the four stories; Samm Levine turns in the most solid acting I think I've ever seen from him; and Tony Todd ("Candyman", I've seen him a million times but never caught his name) turns in a touching performance as the husband of a terminally ill woman. Each story is slightly better than the last; overall I actually liked it.
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.
"The Lost Boys" was better.
WTF is this? It was billed as a horror movie, and 13 minutes into it, we've had he-men with huge biceps and crewcuts running around shooting guns, getting into a barfight, drinking shots of whiskey, and having a sex scene with a woman who looks like a bleached, hyperinflated, airbrushed playboy centerfold, and some of the all-around worst USA-Up-All-Night-quality acting I've ever seen. In the first 13 minutes. I give this flick about 2 more minutes and then I'm done. (Ok, right after typing that some sort of apocalyptic alarms started going off and a monster appeared outside his door and now he's freaking out. Ok, I'll give it a little while.)
Ok, very shortly I'm glad I stayed with it. Thi smight be one of those rare "so bad it's good" movies that really is so bad it's good. He spends the rest of the time trapped in…
Starts out as a documentary about a complicated performer, and turns into a documentary about the complications of making a documentary about a complicated performer. Good, and the events that unfolded in trying to make the documentary are amusing, but lump this in with "Catfish" in the "documentaries that must've sounded really good on paper, but never get somewhere quite as interesting as they promise to" category.
A hitman transporting a body on Halloween is mistaken for a partygoer in a Halloween costume. 20somethings wind up with the body and he wants it back. Truthfully, this movie was background noise while I was working on other things, and every time I looked up, it appeared to be fairly entertaining, until the third act, which appeared to be mostly a gory chase scene with the hitman pursuing the kids across the city to retreive the body.
Boy, what to say about this. Father says he wants a divorce, mom blows her brains out, six months later father brings kids & new fiance up to his remove fishing lodge and leaves them there in the dead of winter. Two acts of sheer, drawn-out boredom as the kids and new fiance first fail to get along, then come to believe they've died and are stuck in the house, lead into one of the most emotionally cold, cruel, brutal third acts I've ever seen. Can't exactly say it's a bad movie, but can't imagine who would ever find this entertaining. Not many movies have made me actually feel bad, but this one did.
Comedy based on real-life armored car heist caper. Zack Galiafinakis, Owen Wilson, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Jason Sudeikis, Sharon Jones, Joe Lo Truglio, and many more. With that many big comedy names in one movie, how could it be funny? Answer: it can't. It's mildly amusing, yeah. At moments. But that's the best I can say for it.
Unknowning damned souls board a tourist bus in Holland that strands them by a windmill where the spirit of an ancient miller drags them to hell. 2010's version of the kind of forgettable B movie that Vincent Price could have saved nicely, had he been in it. But he's not. Nice twist on convention at the very end, though, as Final Girl doesn't make it. Don't worry, that's not spoiling anything—you don't need to see this.
Harrowing and timeless 1983 realist family drama of postnuclear survival. Among my faves of this narrow genre (that being realist postapocaliptic films that are worth watching), along with the equally rough and moving "Threads" and the extremely-bleak-for-the-1950s "On The Beach". No sci-fi elements, no action, it's just a straight drama. Did I mention it's harrowing? It's harrowing.
The fact that this, "Threads", and "The Day After" came out around the same time, and all anyone ever talked about or remembers was the soap operatic, TV-ified "The Day After" (although all three were originally produced for TV), is a grim statement about our society's desire to appear to be confronting the potential horrors we've spawned while simultaneously, to the greatest extent possible, avoiding looking at all at the potential horrors we've spawned.
Julia Stiles and husband move to South America and encounter some sort of ancient supernatural tradition claptrap surrounding their young daughter. Paced like a political thriller. Political thrillers aren't scary.
Not sure why this movie isn't better known. The ghost of a murdered girl, trapped in the day of her death in the 80s, learns to travel backwards and forward in time meeting other eras' residents. Donnie Darko meets The Lovely Bones meets A Nightmare On Elm Street. Enjoyable film, well done, and, especially memorable for, a freaky "futuristic" take on current real-life 2015, during a flashforward into the present-day "future" which shows no technology that doesn't actually exist today, yet, by comparison to the 1980s context of the film, all suddenly appears to the viewer to be advanced and futuristic. This should probably be a cult favorite.
Another effective Canadian film. How do they do it?
Maybe the only shitty, no-budget Troma-studios-level bad indie gore flick I've ever truly enjoyed. An abandoned building full of junkies and lunatic squats comes down with a psycho virus and kills each other in ridiculous ways. But, talk about an A+ for effort. Can't put my finger yet on what made this one so different but I sincerely like it. Managed to stay far enough away from cliches to be entertaining, I guess. Or maybe the director is real good, or something. Didn't go over the top in the usual ways, but found new, entertaining ways to go over the top instead.
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