Movies
Best & Worst of 2009: Ryan Daley Picks His Bottom 5!
As I’m primarily a DVD critic for Bloody-Disgusting, my year-end Top 10 list traditionally cites only DVD horror releases for a given year, which automatically excludes some of the movies I’ve seen at festivals or through pre-release screeners. Whereas I’m generally jealous of my fellow B-D critics for their all-encompassing year-end lists, I have to admit that 2009 was a fantastic year for horror DVDs, and this list was a pure pleasure to put together. Once again, just so I don’t catch any flak down in the comments, this is a list of the WORST HORROR DVDS OF 2009.
David Harley (Best/Worst) | Ryan Daley (Best/Worst)
RYAN DALEY’S BOTTOM 5 OF 2009
This is the first year I’ve had the same director appear on both my “best” and “worst” lists, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. I loved director Toby Wilkins’ Splinter as much as I hated The Grudge 3, a sequel that stomped the previously respectable franchise into the Japanese dirt. Sloppy and awkward, it’s a pasty-faced effort that should be forgotten as quickly as it was conceived.
Train tried its best to swing a big gory dick in the face of horror fans, but the flat characters couldn’t carry the show. Brutal and highly effective makeup effects can’t save a movie with a plot that’s this damn derivative. Hostel on a Train (as it’s been occasionally dubbed) is too kind. Retard Hostel on Car Number Six would be more accurate. Bad plotting, bad characters, bad movie.
Remember in The Fly, after Jeff Goldblum put that steak through his transport pods and then fried it up, how it didn’t quite taste right? If you put a quality torture-porn movie through Brundle’s pods, it would emerge tasting a lot like Gnaw.
Horror fans have been jizzing all over this movie since September, but here’s my take. Out of all of the people who wanted to see Paranormal Activity, I’d guess about 25% got a chance to catch it in a movie theater. The remaining 75% will have to wait for the DVD release. And I’m predicting the worst DVD backlash this side of The Blair Witch Project. Paranormal Activity has been insanely over-hyped, and soon everyone will see that there’s nothing behind the curtain but a little, musty old man. This movie has been loitering around the festival circuit for the past few years, and it suddenly finds success after Spielberg helps tack on a new ending? Whatever. After mentally preparing themselves for the most frightening movie of the past 10 years, DVD audiences will be faced with a poorly-acted, piece-of-shit home movie with exactly three scares. It’s not going to be pretty. Hope you saw it in the theater when you had the chance.
Survivalist drama disguised as suspense film, The Canyon is easily the worst film I’ve seen this year. With picturesque Grand Canyon cinematography and an interesting character performance by Will Patton, it’s a movie that starts with a fair amount of potential before regressing into a slow-witted impression of a Reader’s Digest reenactment. Avoid with extreme prejudice.
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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