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2012

Help Us Add A Few New Categories To This Year’s FEAR Awards!

Games
Posted by Adam Dodd on December 11, 2012 @ 3:30pm
Category: Games / News

For a while, the FEAR Awards nominees, categories, and winners were chosen by TJ and I. That’s super dumb. Last year, you chose the winners, and this year, we’re taking that idea even further by having you help us add a few new categories. Obviously, we have the Game of the Year, best indie, best multiplayer, most anticipated, etc. — no, we’re looking for more unusual categories. Check out the current list after the break!
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Creep Van

Posted by David Harley on December 11, 2012 @ 9:20am
Category:

Never get between a creep and his van. Spastic anti-hero Campbell Jackman finds himself the target of a maniacal killer behind the wheel of a sleazy, beat-up death van.

[BD Review] ‘The Garlock Incident’ is Predictable and Unnecessary

Movies
Posted by David Harley on December 05, 2012 @ 10:44am
Category: Movies / Reviews

Reviewed by James A. Janisse

The Garlock Incident is a little low-budget horror flick made by filmmaker Evan J. Cholfin and his wife Ariana Farina. Shot in the ever-popular “found footage” style, the movie follows a director and her group of actors after they get stranded in the desert on their way to Las Vegas. Cholfin, Farina and their actors put a lot of time into creating a realistic background for the story, rooting the characters and their ill-fated trip in lots of social media sites. They have a Twitter, a Tumblr, a Facebook – all purportedly made by the families of the victims in search of their daughters and sons. It’s a commendable effort in making their movie stand out, but unfortunately, the film itself lacks any originality or pay-off for the short time we spend with these characters.

The story gets underway pretty quickly after director Lily, holding the camera and narrating most of the footage, suggests they make a stop at a ghost town called Garlock. The actors show varying signs of interest, but all of them are left upset after only finding ramshackle houses that may or may not have been recently inhabited. Even worse, they return to a van that won’t start. 60 miles from the nearest town, they have to decide what to do, and what follows is a study in desperation as their situation grows more and more severe.

Lacking any kind of effects and propped up by the simplest of stories, a lot of the movie falls on the shoulders of the cast. Ana Lily Amirpour, as Lily the director (all of the cast play characters with their own names), is ever-present behind the camera, a detriment to the film. Her bored sing-song narration is grating and she acts less like a director than the annoying relative with a camcorder at a family gathering. The other actors are much more enjoyable; the cast is an attractive and diverse group of people, all of them playing characters with clear and distinct motivations. There are a lot of moments – mostly early on – where their overlapping conversation falls in sync, resulting in a lot of natural humor in their dialogue. If they had more to do during the movie, I’m confident they’d be able to deliver excellent performances.

Unfortunately, there’s really nothing for them to do. After their van breaks down, all of their problems seem forced and fake. With no villain or opposing force in motion, the actors resort to inflating the danger of their situation, constantly asking each other “what the fuck was that?!” when nothing is going on and complaining about being wet when there’s no reason they should be. At one point, Lily follows Adam, the most captivating and interesting of the actors, as he runs toward the house they previously investigated. He ducks behind bushes and shouts, implying that he saw something. The camera zooms in, shakily, toward the house… and absolutely nothing is seen. Most of the movie is like this. The only time something actually happens to a character – a venomous snakebite – the action takes place offscreen. The dialogue is repetitive and inane, and after a while it’s impossible to ignore the artificiality of the whole ordeal.

The movie ends with a predictable twist that doesn’t do the narrative any favors. The filmmakers should have come up with an actual antagonist that could be seen on film; otherwise, they should have explored the idea that all of the characters’ worries were self-wrought. There’s footage of the actors doing interviews and read-throughs interspersed within the narrative, and in those moments there’s a lot of talk about imagination. There’s potential in this idea – that these actors, who require an active imagination for their occupation, end up worrying themselves to death in the desert because they can’t stay grounded enough to survive a serious situation. But, like the rest of the potential this movie has, it ends up wasted and unexplored.

Despite the best intentions and efforts of the filmmakers and cast, The Garlock Incident is an unnecessary addition to the increasingly overpopulated “found footage” horror subgenre. Without anything original or exciting to add to the field, The Garlock Incident‘s footage would be better off remaining lost.

The Spike VGAs Premier This Friday, What Horror Games Do You Want To See Revealed?

Games
Posted by Adam Dodd on December 04, 2012 @ 1:00pm
Category: Games / News

For the most part, the Spike VGAs don’t accomplish much outside of being a big commercial for several upcoming video games. There’s a lot of awkward celebrity hosts and annoying back-patting, but it’s also one of the year’s juiciest sources for major video game reveals. Last year’s event introduced us to Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, among others, and the year before that brought us Mass Effect 3, Prototype 2, Skyrim, and Batman: Arkham City. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 has already been confirmed to be at the event, alongside BioShock: Infinite and The Last of Us, but I’m sure there’s plenty more we aren’t aware of yet. So I have to ask: what horror game would you most like to see unveiled at the show this Friday? Let your voice be heard after the jump!
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[BD Review] ‘Slaughter Tales’ Is Deliberately Awful And Not In A Good Way

Movies
Posted by David Harley on December 02, 2012 @ 10:13am
Category: Movies / Reviews

Reviewed by Patrick Cooper

Slaughter Tales is a self-aware love letter to the bygone SOV era that’s been making sort of a comeback this year thanks to distributors like Intervision. It doesn’t aspire to be anything more than a low-grade gorefest and on that front it’s a success. That doesn’t mean it’s all that great a film though. Maybe that’s the point? I dunno. All I know is that I found myself reaching for the fast forward button more than once. Despite admiring the enthusiasm of the teenage filmmaker, there’s not much else to get out of watching Slaughter Tales.

The anthology film was written and directed by 15-year-old Johnny Dickie (who also stars) and made on a budget of $65. The film starts with Johnny snatching a VHS tape from a thrift store. Before he throws it in the VCR, he psyches himself up in the mirror by saying stuff like “Oh man, this is going to suck!” I hear ya, man. Then an apparition (played by Johnny) appears and warns him not to watch the tape. Bad shit will happen if he does. Johnny shrugs it off like the stalwart cinephile he is and presses play.

What follows is five shorts, all starring Johnny and featuring homemade special effects made from dollar bin goodies and lotsa fake blood. None of them really stick out in my mind. One of them has some fun stop-motion that made me smile, but they’re all just really shitty. In between shorts the film cuts back to Johnny, kicking back on his futon, commenting on how much this movie sucks. What I got from this frame story is that Johnny wanted to make a shitty movie, but make it look as 80′s SOV as possible.

Mission accomplished, Johnny. Slaughter Tales looks like it really was salvaged from a thrift bargain bin where it’d been collecting dust for a decade. Besides its look, it’s paced and edited like crap, much like the “best” SOV films with those too-long pauses in between cuts. These are some the aspects of “so bad it’s good” films that people get a kick out of, but they’re done in such an intentionally tongue-in-cheek manner in Slaughter Tales that it’s difficult to get any organic enjoyment out of the film.

I appreciate Johnny’s rabid enthusiasm and, let’s face it, how many of us can say we had a film released on home video when we were 15. The problem is that in deliberately making a shitty 80′s SOV throwback, he forgot to make an entertaining, watchable movie. After watching Johnny puke for the fifth time, I wanted to throw in the towel. Or maybe that was the point? I give up.

A/V

Slaughter Tales looks like the 80′s SOV films it’s paying homage to. It flips between aspect ratios at times, which is kinda distracting.

Special Features

MAKING OF AN AMERICAN NIGHTMARE (2:38): This brief behind the scenes feature takes a look at the making of one short, starring Johnny’s mom. You gotta love that his mom supports her son’s bloody interests and was willing to get killed in his movie.

THE EFFECTS OF SLAUGHTER TALES (11:00): This looks at Johnny’s homemade effects. There are lots of dollar store items used to full effect. I can’t help but admire this kid’s ingenuity.

COMMENTARY: Dan and Tim from VHShitfest join Johnny Dickie for the feature-length commentary. They talk about how much Johnny curses, how his original idea led to a full-length film, and his myriad of influences.

6 Degrees of Hell

Posted by David Harley on November 27, 2012 @ 9:53pm
Category:

Six individuals are caught up in a supernatural perfect storm, as an evil lays claim to one of them while threatening to tear apart the soul of a small Pennsylvania town.

Slaughter Tales

Posted by David Harley on November 20, 2012 @ 9:53am
Category:

After a teen steals a VHS tape titled “Slaughter Tales” from a yard sale, he seals his fate by ignoring a ghostly apparition in his bath tub and watching the stolen tape. As the movie progresses, simple nightmares turn reality as evil is released from the tape.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part 2)

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on November 16, 2012 @ 12:00am
Category:

Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to Jacob Black, Bella Swan has endured a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife to reach the ultimate turning point. Now that Bella has made her decision, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating and unfathomable consequences.

[BD Review] ‘Outpost: Black Sun’ Plays Out Like a Boring First-Person Shooter

Movies
Posted by David Harley on November 11, 2012 @ 2:35pm
Category: Movies / Reviews

Review by James A. Janisse

Outpost: Black Sun is a horror movie released earlier this year about Nazi zombies. Actually, I think zombie Nazis is more accurate, since they were Nazis before they were raised from the dead, not zombies who decided to join the National Socialist party. In any case, the film is a sequel to 2008′s Outpost, a fact I did not know before I sat down to watch it, so bear with me since I’ve never seen the original and thus might be missing some background information. In any case, Outpost: Black Sun doesn’t deliver on the good times zombie Nazis would suggest, ending up a muddled affair that plays like a boring first-person shooter.

After a set-up that shows us mad Nazi scientist Klausener (David Gant) and his re-animated soldiers kicking some ass, we meet Lena (Catherine Steadman), a young Jewish Nazi hunter trying to track down aging officers to exact revenge for her ascendants. This quickly leads her to an undisclosed location in Eastern Europe, where she joins engineer Wallace (Richard Coyle) to uncover why, exactly, there are so many NATO troops in the area. Their search eventually teams them up with a squad of soldiers who are venturing deep into the woods to turn off an electrical device that’s powering an army of reanimated Nazis.

This set-up is kind of preposterous, but there have been plenty of great movies built upon outlandish premises. What makes those movies work, though – and I’m thinking of silly affairs like Rocky Horror or Repo! The Genetic Opera – is that they don’t take themselves seriously. They embrace the campiness inherent to their story and just roll with it, winking at the audience to let them know they’re in on the joke. Director Steve Barker, who also co-wrote the film with Rae Brunton, inexplicably shoots Black Sun completely straight-faced, as though these zombie Nazis were a somber threat his audience should be made aware of.

I wouldn’t bash the decision to make this a serious film if it had been done cohesively. After all, the Nazis were an actual real-life terror, one of the most evil groups of people humankind has ever seen, and it’s not inconceivable that their return – undead or not – could be played as commentary on fascism in the modern world, or something like that. But instead, we get a hunchbacked zombie woman whose shrill laughter never stops, a dude hooked up to electrical cables that can spew out force lightning at random, and a script with so many “F”-words that it could have been written by a middle-aged boy. It’s really hard to take a movie seriously when lines like “This is for all the marbles” get uttered without a modicum of self-awareness.

And that still isn’t the worst bit of dialogue in the film. The aforementioned lightning guy is incomprehensible, dejectedly reciting lines that sound like they’re coming from an angsty first-year philosophy student. “The world is vibration particles, nothing more,” he says to Lena, as if that actually meant something. The confusing dialogue and story-line is made worse by perpetual dark lighting and camera movements designed to give the viewer motion sickness. Its honestly hard to imagine them making this movie worse than it already is.

Filmmakers who work in cheesy B-horror take note: If your movie’s material sounds ridiculous at the offset, play it up and don’t take yourself too seriously. If you do, you might end up with Outpost: Black Sun, a joyless movie that isn’t even graphic enough to satisfy gore-hounds.

Video: A lot of Outpost: Black Sun is very dark, a sad fact since it looks pretty damn good when you can see what’s going on. The video is crisp and the colors are appropriately bleak, but whether the characters are indoors or outdoors, they’re moving around in perpetual darkness, making it sometimes hard to see what’s going on.

Audio: One of the few great things about Outpost: Black Sun is its sound design, which gets great 5.1 treatment on the Bluray. The Nazi growls come through excellently, and the occasions where sound gets muffled for dramatic effect are perfect.

Extras / Special Features:

Making-of (5 minutes): 5 minutes of interviews and on-set footage. Barker talks about his decision to make a sequel to Outpost and how he had $200 grand extra to make it. Steadman and Coyle talk about their roles and the movie’s plot, and even they seem like they’re not entirely sure how this script got written. For the record, they both did a great job with the material they were given to work with.

Trailer (2 minutes): The trailer gives a good condensed version of the plot, chronologically introducing Lena, Wallace, and the soldiers. It’s actually more clear than the movie in telling the story, and it does a really good job of making the movie look exciting.

[BD Review] ’6 Degrees Of Hell’ Bores and Confuses

Movies
Posted by Pat Torfe on November 11, 2012 @ 1:33pm
Category: Movies / Reviews

I’ll admit that in my miserable life, I haven’t been to many haunted house attractions. Okay, I haven’t been to any. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up in a small Canadian town. It’s an unfortunate thing, but at the moment, I’m not about to lose sleep over it. Director Joe Raffa tries to bring home the experience (and then some) of a haunted house in 6 Degrees Of Hell, but you’ll have a time trying to get to it.

This is one time that I had to go back and actually re-read the premise for the film, as well as go back and re-watch the beginning of the film to see just what the hell is going on. “Uncle Jack’s Hotel of Horror” is an attraction in Northeast Pennsylvania, run by a guy named Uncle Jack, who’s constantly dealing with an asshole cop who thinks that he runs the town. Unfortunately, two of Jack’s friends, Chris and Kellen, unwittingly release an evil energy by transporting a collection of haunted objects owned by a local psychic to be used as props in the attraction. June is a local teen who also possesses the gift of being a psychic. It’s one that she doesn’t like to use, but when she does it seems to draw paranormal energy to her. Her gift also attracts the attention of a local TV ghost hunter, who confrontation with the evil energy years ago resulted in his sister’s death.

Oh, and as for Corey Feldman? He has little or nothing to do with the main plot. He just shows up as a paranormal investigator who listens to the entire story after the fact from another cop who was there to witness the whole thing.

Obviously, if the film involves possession of folks, you’d be in for fun times most of the time. Luckily, that’s the case here. The evil energy released from the props ends up doing a number on the hired actors at the hotel, turning them into real monsters, who in turn begin to kill unwitting guests, and everyone else thinks that it’s all part of the act! The film lets itself go and cranks out some truly creepy characters at this point, which if you’ve stuck around for the first hour, you’ll be glad that you did.

Yeah, that ‘sticking around for the first hour’ part? I’m not joking. 6 Degrees Of Hell‘s biggest problems lie in the fact that the film takes on way too much for an indie film. Instead of keeping things simple, we get a whack of stuff that’s just a chore to sit through. From the beginning of the film, we’re introduced to multiple plotlines that jump back and forth between the past and present time where Feldman’s busy smoking that eCig. For the next hour, this only serves to confuse and leaves a lot for the viewer to decipher in that time. Making things worse is the serious lack of character development during this time (an hour, remember?) that combined with some awkwardly acting by some of the younger cast, has you questioning why you should care about these characters at all. It’s all partially salvaged once we do get into the Hotel of Horror, but by then it’s just been a chore to get there.

Oh, and note to director Joe Raffa: having your asshole cop character making homophobic remarks doesn’t do well to really get the point across that he’s an asshole. It just makes the character offensive and your film look bad for having to resort to doing that in the first place.

Since this is a screener disc, the audio/video and extras aren’t final. Extras on the screener include a Making Of, footage from the film’s world premiere at The Sherman Theatre in Stroudsburg, PA, a blooper reel and an interview involving Corey Feldman, a walkthrough of the Hotel of Horror, a promo for the NEPA Ghost Detectives, a commercial for the Hotel of Horror, a photo gallery and a collection of teasers and trailers for 6 Degrees Of Hell and other Breaking Glass films.

It’s a shame that the Hotel of Horror ends up being the only noteworthy aspect of 6 Degrees Of Hell, since everything else leading up to the moment once we do get into the attraction is so poor. It’s a payoff that needed to happen, and when it did happen, you’re thankful that it did. But when you look back at the rest of the film, you end up wishing that the care and effort put forth in the climax had been carried over into the events leading up to it. Or, you just end up seeing a film that despite an excellent climax, is still lacking and not worth much of your time.

I’m leaning towards the latter.

The Garlock Incident

Posted by David Harley on November 10, 2012 @ 10:20am
Category:

On December 16th, 2011, eight people on their way to Las Vegas stopped in the ghost town of Garlock, California. This footage documents what happened.

Outpost: Black Sun

Posted by David Harley on November 06, 2012 @ 1:55pm
Category:

The year is 1945, the closing stages of WW2, and a German scientist by the name of Klausener is working on a frightening new technology that has the power to create an immortal Nazi army. Flash forward to present day, and a NATO task force is hurriedly deployed to Eastern Europe, where a sinister enemy appears to be mercilessly killing everything in its path. But this is no ordinary foe. Only Helena, a gutsy investigator on the trail of the notorious war-criminal Klausener, accepts the reality of that they are facing a battalion of Nazi Storm-Troopers, a veritable zombie army on the march. With the help of Wallace, a man who’s been chasing Nazi secrets for years, the two of them team up with a Special Forces Unit to venture deep behind enemy lines. Their mission to fight their way back to the source of this evil army and prevent the seemingly inevitable rise of the 4th Reich.

[BD Review] ‘The Legend Of The 5ive’ is no ‘Blair Witch Project’

Movies
Posted by Pat Torfe on October 27, 2012 @ 3:30pm
Category: Movies / Reviews

It’s hard to believe that it’s been just over ten years since The Blair Witch Project hit theatres and sparked the whole “found footage” thing. It isn’t hard to believe that it didn’t take long for Hollywood to ruin things with a rushed sequel, but that’s another story. Nowadays, we have Paranormal Activity and its sequels picking up the slack left by Blair Witch, as well as the ever-present independent horror scene, which has had its fair share of copycat films as well as a few that try to switch things up. James Weatherall’s The Legend Of The 5ive is one such film that combines the found footage style of Blair Witch and melds it with the reality TV/documentary style of something like Ghosthunters or, in Weatherall’s case, his native UK’s Most Haunted.

The story has documentary filmmaker and skeptic Julia Marsh (Lennah Seelig) teaming up with Greg Connell (Greg Tanner) and his team of ghosthunters called ‘Paranormal Investigations Inc.’ for their live Halloween special. Julia was roped into this event by her friend Joe Weaverly (Emma Kendrick), who is also a member of Greg’s team. This particular special focuses on a remote English farm. Their objective is to uncover the truth behind the legend of the ‘Screaming Spectres of Emerson farm’, known locally as ‘The 5ive’. Apparently, 300 years ago, five strangers were found sliced up on the farmland and their bodies arranged in a pentagram. It’s said that the strangers’ ghosts are sometimes seen on the farmland, screaming and running from whoever/whatever killed them. Needless to say, after setting up shop and conducting a short séance to get things moving, the crew end up over their heads.

I suppose one thing that The Legend Of The 5ive has going for it is the look of the film. Being in the countryside late at night, away from civilization and any way to reach anyone is definite scare material. Even with floodlights keeping their immediate surroundings lit, the darkness beyond still holds that fear of the unknown, which also ups the potential for creepy stuff. Another aspect of the film that’s nice is the camerawork. There’s not the frantic shakycam stuff that has plagued a lot of these types of films, but it’s still realistic enough that, for example, when folks are running, it’s not like everything was filmed with a steadycam. Add to that some interesting shots from cameras monitoring specific points on the property and good editing, you’d think that it was the start of something good. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Have you ever watched a film that was a chore to sit trough, regardless of the running time? The Legend Of The 5ive is one of those films. It’s been a while since I’ve been privy to seeing a film that dragged on for what seemed like forever with nothing happening, but that’s what this film is about. Even after 30 minutes into the film, there was barely anything to hold my interest. And when things finally did start to happen (like the spirit of one of the five being on one of the investigators’ backs after being summoned), it was either the acting or the script that killed whatever tension there was, and had me itching to fast forward. Seriously, when confronted by a potential spirit, what do they do to try and communicate with it? Why, try to piss it off! Because that always works in diplomacy, right?

Speaking of the acting, it fell into either being overdramatic to the point of practically being hammy, or to being in amateur hour territory. No matter the situation, Lennah Seelig would always sound like she was acting, taking dramatic pauses or speaking in such a way that came off as anything but natural. Greg Tanner is much the same way, in one instance being as subdued as possible while supposedly trying to act excited about seeing something (in the pitch black woods) making a “peeping motion”. Fortunately, he wasn’t like this throughout the film. Instead, the script took over and made his character into an idiot. Damien Hale’s hysterics had me wanting to backhand the next person with an emo haircut. Unfortunately, he didn’t die in the most horrible way possible.

Also, what does it say when something bad happens to one of the characters, your first reaction is to laugh? Yeah…

As a whole, the film feels less like Blair Witch Project and more like a low budget version of Ghosthunters minus any real tension or excitement. The film took forever to get going, and once it did, there was hardly anything to keep my interest. None of the acting feels genuine, and none of the scares are noteworthy. You’re better off seeing the film that was the source of The Legend Of The 5ive‘s inspiration — The Blair Witch Project — and leave The Legend Of The 5ive in the dark.

[BD Review] ‘Airborne’ Barely Gets Off The Ground

Movies
Posted by David Harley on October 27, 2012 @ 12:53pm
Category: Movies / Reviews

Reviewed by James A. Janisse

Airborne, an Image Entertainment production, premiered earlier this year at the British International Film Festival. It’s been getting billed as a horror film, but it’s more of a thriller or mystery, at least until the second half. The main drawing point seems to be Mark Hamill, though his role is confined to a subplot that never gets off the ground (zing!). The A-story follows a small group of passengers on a red eye flight in the middle of a huge Atlantic storm. Some passengers begin to disappear, others notice and freak out, and the whole thing escalates into a hijacking with a supernatural twist.

Airborne grabs you pretty quickly with its sleek and sexy style, and although you might think back to Final Destination as director Dominic Burns briefly checks-in with all the passengers before they board, it’s easy to just go along with it and enjoy the ride. The movie will seem familiar because it’s cliche, going so far as to include a menacing trumpet flair after a character announces a murder, but most of the time that doesn’t work against it. The characters, for instance, aren’t anything more than simple stereotypes – pompous old rich guy, wise-cracking military buddies, a young horny couple – but put those stereotypes on a small plane and make them panic and it’s still a lot of fun to watch.

An airplane is a great location for a film like this and unlike Wes Craven’s 2005 film Red Eye, Airborne never abandons the setting for safer ground. The whole thing feels claustrophobic and eerie, especially as the passengers slowly start to piece together that things aren’t right. One, a frequent flier, realizes that the plane is turning when it should be flying straight; another sees a spot of blood on the floor. There’s a sort of Twilight Zone feel to it all, and although it later adapts more slasher elements, picking off the passengers one-by-one, the movie always escalates nicely, raising the tension and excitement in tandem with the body count.

There are some things that feel pretty amateur. Most of the dialogue is just plain bad. Strangers open up to one another and share life stories, the hijackers comprehensively explain their motive and plan, and worst of all is when Julian Glover delivers a monologue over the plane speakers. When the film takes its disappointing supernatural turn, even that gets talked to death, the spirit onboard explained in full detail to the characters and audience. Combined with cheap-looking flashbacks that shade in murder scenes better left blank, it’s obvious that writer Paul Chronnell needs to learn more about “show, don’t tell”.

In case you’re wondering about Mark Hamill, the man does a good job with his role, though he’s nearly unrecognizable in both appearance and sound. That is, until he yells. As soon as he starts yelling you can hear Luke Skywalker all the way down. His character’s storyline, an air traffic controller on his last shift before retirement, is mostly just padding, sometimes getting put on hold long enough to be forgotten. It’s a bit of a shame, but like I said, he works with what he’s given and it’s definitely the stand-out performance of the film. Much better than fellow Star Wars cast member Julian Glover, whose awful lines are croaked out with an elderly rasp that comes off as cheesy.

Airborne has a promising take-off but never develops any substance. When it’s not being cliche, it’s not making sense, and it relies so much on its flashy style that it sometimes substitutes special effects for plot points. With a little more time in the writing phase, Airborne might have been a successful airplane thriller, but as it stands, it’s mostly a let-down.

[BD Review] ‘The Cottage’ Is A Cheesy, Stereotypical Thriller

Movies
Posted by David Harley on October 27, 2012 @ 12:38pm
Category: Movies / Reviews

Review by James A. Janisse

The Cottage is a film that preys upon our fears of home invasion, of letting someone into our lives and having that person violate us and our family. David Arquette plays Robert, a quiet romance novelist who moves into the guest house (cottage? I guess) behind the Carpenter family’s house. At first it seems like he’ll be a good match for them – despite their apparent wealth, they claim that they need the extra cash, and Arquette makes a first impression as a quiet and polite, if a little awkward, guy. But this living arrangement quickly turns into a nightmare for the family, especially the pair of teenage daughters, as Robert’s creep signals grow louder and clearer.

This movie is a pretty straightforward suspense film with some culty elements and sacrificial rites mixed in for good measure. It does a good job building the menacing threat that Arquette’s character becomes. Robert’s not exactly consistent and some of his actions seem abrupt, but Arquette works with what he’s given – this man is not an amateur, and his professionalism shows. The family, played by lesser-known actors, keep up with him onscreen, with Kristen Dalton and Victor Browne as the worried parents and real-life sisters Morissa and Alana O’Mara as the angsty teenage girls Danielle and Rose.

Despite the story’s lack of tangents or frills, it still seems cobbled together sometimes. It turns out that Robert is running a harem of petite teenage girls who he’s apparently brainwashed into killing their families and pledging their love to him. There’s not any further explanation given to this side of the story, and it doesn’t necessarily need a whole backstory explained to the audience in precise terms, but the way this plot line is introduced is jarring and inconsistent with how it evolves later on.

Other scenes are apparently pointless at first, like when we see Rose’s social situation at school or Danielle’s romance with her father’s music student. It turns out that these elements are only in place to provide a higher body count later on, during the film’s climax that finally brings Robert’s madness into full light. The scene’s sacrificial wedding unravels into the film’s final moments, when people just start running and driving around the woods without any direction, finally culminating in an ending that lacks resolution or satisfaction.

For quite a while, The Cottage seems like it will be a fulfilling movie. It’s shot well, the cast is talented, and there is some legitimate terror in the fact that Arquette, a guy who exudes a certain sort of slimy sexuality, is within a stone’s throw of these teenage girls and their swimming pool. The fact that it fails in the end is probably because it’s screenwriter Nick Antosca’s first feature film. Or maybe it’s because the film remains relatively timid despite its skeezy antagonist. Had it gone for all-out depravity, it might have ended up being notorious or at least memorable but as it stands, The Cottage is a cheesy stereotypical thriller that squanders the effective set-up it begins with.

Dust Up

Posted by David Harley on October 26, 2012 @ 10:07am
Category:

A former vigilante who has embraced his peaceful nature comes to the aid of a young mother in trouble with a cannibalistic drug lord.

Fun Size

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on October 26, 2012 @ 12:00am
Category:

Described as a cross between Superbad and Adventures in Babysitting on Halloween night. In the film, Wren and her little brother Albert secretly head off to a party. The night turns to sh*t when Albert goes missing and it becomes a race to find him before ol’ mom finds out.

[BD Review] ‘Do You Like My Basement?’ Needed A Better Contractor

Movies
Posted by Pat Torfe on October 19, 2012 @ 4:03pm
Category: Movies / Reviews

Ever since Kickstarter, uh, kickstarted the “crowd funding” of various projects, it seemed like a no-brainer that indie filmmakers would be a perfect fit for the service. Rather than running around in the “old-school” way, trying to secure funding from investors, you now just post your project on Kickstarter for would-be investors to send money your way. One such project is Do You Like My Basement?, written and directed by Roger Sewhcomar, whose previous work up to this point includes a couple of shorts and a documentary.

Do You Like My Basement? centers around an aspiring filmmaker named Stanley Farmer, who from a young age has taken a liking to having a camcorder and filming people. Stanley’s goal is to create the ultimate reality horror film. In order to do so, he “rents” out an apartment and hosts interviews for actors in the apartment’s basement, which would double as the film’s set. Needless to say, Stanley has an “unorthodox” way of conducting the interviews, as well as showing a penchant for more than just filmmaking.

Shot almost entirely from the view of either Stanley’s handheld or cameras placed around the apartment, Do You Like My Basement? maintains a documentary-style shooting that gives the film a unique first-person feel. There’s no exaggerated nausea-inducing shakycam moments (which is a relief), and oftentimes the composition of shots through holes in plastic sheets or from the eye level of a cutting board as Stanley stuffs a chicken are pretty fun to see. The handheld shots also lead to some pretty creepy moments, particularly when Stanley is “moving around” or asking some of his unusual interview questions.

Speaking of Stanley, we never entirely see his face (as it’s always behind the camera), and are instead treated to only his voice, which when coupled with his British accent, makes it feel as if we’re being treated to a documentary by the BBC (albeit a sinister one). This again also helps with the creep factor in Stanley’s interviews, whose calm demeanor when asking the increasingly disturbing questions during interviews is unsettling. Great job by Charlie Floyd for that. As for the rest of the actors, they do a fairly good job, though some performances (such as Jessica Green’s unconvincing turn as one of the interviewees) are weaker than others.

Unfortunately, the film suffers in the writing department, which becomes very apparent as the film progresses. Apart from some rather big plotholes (such as what happened to the owners of the apartment?), the film doesn’t give anyone really to root for, since the actors auditioning for the film are for the most part unlikeable or are just plain stupid. Even Stanley isn’t given much of a background or anything really to endear him to the viewer, leaving you feeling lost in that respect. As well, we also get some clichéd movie moments that are seemingly pulled out of nowhere (where’d that red button come from?). The ending of the film feels slapped together and reminiscent of something of a Saw trap that is neither impressive nor executed particularly well, mixed in with a Bond-esque villain laugh from behind the a security camera. The “ha-ha” epilogues of the actors played at the end of the film only seem to make the ending worse, like someone covering up an embarrassing moment with a bad joke.

Do You Like My Basement? started out with promise, but ultimately started tripping itself up before crashing at the end. Some great performances by much of the cast are almost in the film being bogged down by its writing, which unfortunately happens a lot when indie filmmakers take on more than just directing. As it stands, this basement looked nice, but when it came to construction, needed a better contractor.

American Horror Story: Asylum (TV)

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on October 17, 2012 @ 12:00am
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Set at an East Coast asylum for the criminally insane in 1964, the upcoming season revolves around Jessica Lange’s new character — a nun — and her boss at the institution, played by James Cromwell.

Episode 1 – “Welcome to Briarcliff” (Airs October 17, 10:00 pm e/p) – Welcome to Briarcliff Manor, a notorious insane asylum home to the deranged serial killer, Bloody Face. Lurking in the shadows of this “sanctuary of healing” are terrifying evils that blur the boundaries between reality and insanity.

Airborne

Posted by David Harley on October 16, 2012 @ 12:43pm
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As Britain is battered by a storm, one last plane takes off. Shortly after, the handful of passengers start disappearing one by one; those that remain frantically try to discover who – or what – is behind it before they share the same fate.

Sinister

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on October 12, 2012 @ 12:00am
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Found footage helps a true-crime novelist realize how and why a family was murdered in his new home, though his discoveries put his entire family in the path of a supernatural entity.

Frankenweenie

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on October 05, 2012 @ 12:00am
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In Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie” (based on the 1984 short) young Victor conducts a science experiment to bring his beloved dog Sparky back to life, only to face unintended, sometimes monstrous, consequences.

From Tim Burton comes “Frankenweenie,” a heartwarming tale about a boy and his dog. After unexpectedly losing his beloved dog Sparky, young Victor harnesses the power of science to bring his best friend back to life—with just a few minor adjustments. He tries to hide his home-sewn creation, but when Sparky gets out, Victor’s fellow students, teachers and the entire town all learn that getting a new “leash on life” can be monstrous.

A stop-motion animated film, “Frankenweenie” will be filmed in black and white and rendered in 3D, which will elevate the classic style to a whole new experience.

V/H/S (VHS)

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on October 05, 2012 @ 12:00am
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Limited Theaters October 5: When a group of petty criminals is hired by a mysterious party to retrieve a rare piece of found footage from a rundown house in the middle of nowhere, they soon realize that the job isn’t going to be as easy as they thought. In the living room, a lifeless body holds court before a hub of old television sets, surrounded by stacks upon stacks of VHS tapes. As they search for the right one, they are treated to a seemingly endless number of horrifying videos, each stranger than the last.

So who is part of the madness, you ask? Adam Wingard (You’re Next, A Horrible Way to Die, Pop Skull), Simon Barrett (You’re Next, Dead Birds, Red Sands), Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Roost, The Innkeepers), David Bruckner (The Signal), Joe Swanberg (Silver Bullets), Glenn McQuaid (I Sell the Dead), along with YouTube sensations Radio Silence.

Looper

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on September 28, 2012 @ 12:00am
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Looper is centered on a group of killers who send bodies of their victims back in time.