“Haunted” revolves around a group of characters who answer an ad for a writers retreat and unwittingly end up competing in a “Survivor”-like scenario, where the host withholds heat, power and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show or film that they expect will be made from their plight.
A haunted house tale told from the point of view of the ghost.
Official: The Beast is forbidden to ever enter the human world – only a mortal son could invite him. So the beast created one.
Long: The film tells the chilling story of Nick Di Santo , who is tormented by his ability to touch someone and see exactly how they will die. On his 23rd birthday Nick is summoned by his mother (Leslie-Anne Down) to the asylum where she has been institutionalized since his childhood. Hoping that her request to see him is a sign of improvement, Nick is stunned by her revelation that the father he thought was dead is really alive. He is alive and may know the origin of Nick’s terrible gift. Nick sets out to find his father with his best friend Ryan (Anthony Rey Perez) and girlfriend Eve (Alex McKenna). The trio are soon frightened and alarmed as every road they take on the journey leads them back to the same abandoned mansion – a house that only existed in Nick’s childhood imagination or so he thought. A house in a town that no map connects. Finally succumbing to the will of the house, Nick becomes embroiled in a battle with a dark figure (Tobin Bell). What started as a simple road trip soon turns into a terror-filled journey, full of horrifying twists and brutal surprise.
Reviewed by Mike Ferraro
Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) and Kisha (Essence Atkins) play a couple about to open a new chapter in their relationship when they decide to move in together. Malcolm, of course, decides to turn a camera on and record his new lifestyle with his significant other. However, it is Kisha who seems to feel the presence of something supernatural as soon as she steps foot in the new house.
A Haunted House, written by Rick Alvarez and Marlon Wayans, directed by newcomer Michael Tiddes, makes no attempts to be an original entry in an otherwise dead spoof genre. It’s full of jokes only a failed stand-up comedian could deliver while performing at a lower-end buffet in Vegas. READ MORE
Reviewed by Patrick Cooper
Having to sit through DTV found footage movies is starting to get painful. What stings even more is when one of America’s greatest filmmakers stamps his approval on one of these pieces of crap. Written, directed, and starring Sean Stone, son of revered director Oliver Stone, The Asylum Tapes (aka Greystone Park) is an exercise in patience. In a world blemished with countless Paranormal Activity and [Rec] biters, Sean Stone’s film offers up nothing remotely fresh for the audience to sink its teeth into. Instead, it’s another throwaway for the bargain bin.
The film begins with a dinner party in which Oliver Stone, his son, and others are smoking from a hookah and telling ghost stories. Mr. Stone seems really chill. He recounts a time in which he was in the woods and a female apparition scared the hell out of him. Alex, a friend of Stone’s, is really into ghost and urban legends and he suggests they all go to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital to sneak around and try to catch some juicy supernatural goods on camera. Greystone is an actual former psych hospital located in Hanover Township, New Jersey, which I’m vaguely familiar with from growing up in nearby Sussex County. The funniest part is when Oliver Stone apologizes for not being able to go along, like he would ever really consider it.
Staging it at this infamous hospital sounds interesting, but I couldn’t find any info on whether it was actually filmed there – guerilla style or otherwise. So Alex, Sean, and a woman named Antonella venture into Greystone under cloak of night and start snooping around. Sean is apprehensive and ready to bounce after a few minutes of exploration. Alex, on the other hand, is perversely determined to find this ghost, who sports a gas mask and lugs chains around. The trio then endures a series of cliché found-footage scenarios while becoming gradually possessed by the asylum’s former patients – sometimes with unintentionally comical results.
A number of TV ghost-hunting show tropes also run rampant across the screen. There are quick cuts to doll heads, dark corners, flickering lights – it’s like the title sequence of Are You Afraid of the Dark?. The cinematography is miserable and filled with eye-watering shaky cam, inexplicable cuts, and embarrassingly awkward fade-in, fade-out transitions. The film is painfully unoriginal in content and editing. It’s just a bad film. There are no characters to relate to, no engaging relationship between said characters, nothing. It honestly pains me to say considering Sean Stone’s pedigree, but The Asylum Tapes feels like the work of some teenagers who borrowed their dad’s camera.
Oliver Stone did a few horror films in his early years as a filmmaker: 1974’s Seizure and 1981’s The Hand. I haven’t seen either, but maybe they’re just as bad as Sean Stone’s The Asylum Tapes and he just needs time to blossom into a groundbreaking filmmaker. I sincerely hope that’s the case and this film was just a learning experience and minor stain on his future career.
A/V
The Asylum Tapes is presented in 1.77:1 widescreen with 5.1 audio. There’s lots of night-vision, which never looks particularly good. Overall it’s an average looking and sounding film.
Special Features
Alternate ending with additional robed ghouls.
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.
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.
n October 2009, the filmmakers went into an abandoned psychiatric hospital to explore the ‘haunted’ institution, famous for its radical treatment of patients with mental illness. Electroshock, insulin therapy, and lobotomies were commonplace. Once inside, the filmmakers quickly discovered that they were not alone; this story is based on their experiences.
Reviewed by Michael Ferraro
It’s impossible to name a found-footage movie that doesn’t take forever setting up its premise. Even passable titles, like The Blair Witch Project or [Rec], take a while to get going (although the exposition in those films are way more interesting than others to follow). The first 25 minutes of Cloverfield are almost impossible to get through, as well as Paranormal Activity (1-3), with only slightly more interesting openings. What all of these films have in common, however, is that once they do finally get going, those moments aren’t too bad. But is it worth it to sit through half of a dreadful film just to get to a few good moments? READ MORE
“The Beast is forbidden to ever enter the human world – only a mortal son could invite him. So the beast created one.”
It was announced today by the film’s producer Charles Agron that Steve Pattee from Maryland USA has won the Grand Prize in the Haunted “Be An Extra” Sweepstakes! Agron phoned the winner to congratulate him on being selected to receive the offer to visit the set of Haunted this week. Pattee will also be sent a comprehensive Haunted merchandise winner’s pack. Prize packs will also be going out to the friends that Steve recruited via Facebook.
Haunted, directed by Victor Salva, produced by Charles Agron Productions in Association with Blue Horse productions completes principal photography this week. Principal cast includes Tobin Bell (Saw films), Lesley-Anne Down (Rosewood Lane), Luke Kleintank, Max Gail, Lacey Anzelc, Anthony Rey Perez, Alex McKenna, Ethan S. Smith, Zack Ward. Salva reunites with director of photography Don E. FauntLeRoy for the thriller. Haunted is written by Agron and Salva from a story by Charles Agron and is produced by Agron, Salva and FauntLeRoy. The film is slated for a 2012 release.
Get more info on the film’s official website or become a fan on Facebook. READ MORE
It’s a last call! This is your final warning to enter our insane contest to win a trip to set of the Victor Salva (Rosewood Lane, Jeepers Creepers) directed Haunted, from Producer Charles Agron. Tobin Bell (Saw) joins cast members Leslie-Anne Down (Rosewood Lane) and Luke Kleintank (“Bones”) in his first feature role. Anthony Rey Perez (“Don’t Pass Me By”), Alex McKenna (“90210″), Zack Ward (“In My Pocket”) and Max Gail (“Gary Unmarried”) co-star.
The horror pic started principal photography Halloween day in Mississippi. Click here to learn how you can win a trip to the set — where you’ll be an extra for the day!
An early synopsis teased: “The Beast is forbidden to ever enter the human world – only a mortal son could invite him. So the beast created one.” After the break you’ll find the FULL plot crunch. Also check out a teaser video inside, and for more visit the film’s official website or become a fan on Facebook. READ MORE
Off the heels of our insane contest to win a trip to set, Bloody Disgusting got exclusive word that award-winning film and television actor Tobin Bell – best known as “Jigsaw” in the Saw franchise – has joined the cast of the Victor Salva (Rosewood Lane, Jeepers Creepers) directed Haunted, from Producer Charles Agron. Bell joins previously announced cast member Leslie-Anne Down (Rosewood Lane) and introduces Luke Kleintank (“Bones”) in his first feature role. Anthony Rey Perez (“Don’t Pass Me By”), Alex McKenna (“90210″), Zack Ward (“In My Pocket”) and Max Gail (“Gary Unmarried”) co-star.
The horror pic started principal photography Halloween day in Mississippi. Click here to learn how you can win a trip to the set — where you’ll be an extra for the day!
An early synopsis teased: “The Beast is forbidden to ever enter the human world – only a mortal son could invite him. So the beast created one.” After the break you’ll find an exclusive look at the FULL plot crunch. Also check out a teaser video inside, and for more visit the film’s official website or become a fan on Facebook. READ MORE
Fans of Jeepers Creepers get ready for the contest of a lifetime as Bloody Disgusting is exclusively hosting a giveaway where YOU can land the role of an extra on Victor Salva‘s latest genre outing, Haunted, Produced by Charles Agron, which is currently lensing in Mississippi.
Starring Leslie Down (with a major casting announcement forthcoming), “The Beast is forbidden to ever enter the human world – only a mortal son could invite him. So the beast created one.”
One (1) Grand Prize Winner will win a round-trip flight, to be an extra on the Haunted film set in Mississippi in November 2011. The Grand Prize Winner will be able to bring one (1) guest to Mississippi. Prize also includes one (1) double occupancy standard hotel room for two (2) nights/three (3) days; a Haunted Movie merchandise prize pack, plus meet and greet with cast & crew of Haunted.
In addition, up to three (3) recruitments from the Grand Prize Winner will also receive a Haunted movie merchandise prize pack!
TO ENTER visit the Bloody Disgusting Facebook page and click “Enter”. Your last day to enter is November 23, 2011.
Only persons residing in the United States, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Yukon who are at least 18 years of age can enter.
Check out a teaser video inside, and for more visit the film’s official website or become a fan on Facebook.
![haunted2110211 [Contest] Get Flown To the Set of Victor Salvas Haunted To Be An Extra!!](http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/photosizer/upload/haunted2110211.jpg "[Contest] Get Flown To the Set of Victor Salvas Haunted To Be An Extra!!")
While debunking the latest Jeepers Creepers rumor Bloody Disgusting broke the news that this October Victor Salva would be in Mississippi getting behind the camera for Haunted, about young man who can touch people — and inexplicably see how they would die. Sound a bit like Dead Zone.
We got exclusive word today that Leslie Down is the first to join the cast as “Molly”. Down also starred in Salva’s Rosewood Lane, which premieres at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival in CA next month.
We also got some new info on the plot, which plays out a bit like this: The Beast is forbidden to ever enter the human world – only a mortal son could invite him. So the beast created one.
READ MORE
While we all wish MGM would give Victor Salva the cashola to make a third Jeepers Creepers, Bloody Disgusting has quickly debunked unconfirmed rumors that the director was filming the third film on a Universal Studios backlot.
In checking with our own sources we learned that Victor Salva, who will see the premiere of his Rosewood Lane at next month’s Screamfest in Los Angeles, is actually gearing up for another genre project.
Bloody is told that this October Salva will be in Mississippi getting behind the camera for Haunted, about young man who can touch people — and inexplicably see how they would die. Awesome!
READ MORE
Warner Bros. is getting Haunted, buying Eric Kripke‘s spec script and setting up the project with Greg Berlanti through Berlanti Prods. and Kevin McCormick via his Langley Park banner, reports Variety.
Kripke, creator/exec producer of the CW drama “Supernatural,” will also direct Haunted, which is a haunted house tale told from the point of view of the ghost.
His other credits include the horrid The Boogeyman. Before “Supernatural” began airing in 2005, Kripke was known for his short films, which included Sundance entry “Battle of the Sexes,” as well as “Truly Committed,” which won the audience award at Slamdance. A total of 126 episodes of “Supernatural” have aired, several directed by Kripke.
READ MORE
Acquired last month by ARC Entertainment and XLrator Media is John Carpenter’s return to feature-length horror with The Ward (review), which stars Amber Heard (Zombieland, Many Lane, The Stepfather) and Danielle Panabaker (The Crazies, Friday the 13th).
The story follows a girl (Heard) who is admitted to a psychiatric ward, meets other girls there with distinct personalities and discovers a mysterious girl haunting the halls at night. It premiered at TIFF last September.
With the horror flick already in UK cinemas, inside you’ll find the first two clips that feature a lot of slow walking, and screaming.
READ MORE
Vikram Bhatt’s upcoming movie Haunted is India’s first stereoscopic 3D film. Haunted, will also be India’s first horror film in 3D format, with Hollywood technicians working on it. After gripping audiences with Raaz, 1920, and Shaapit noted filmmaker Vikram Bhatt wanted to take a step further in the same genre, but in 3D, reports Boxoffice Indie.
The story has been penned by Bhatt himself, is the story of a man (Chakraborty) who has been given the responsibility of selling a mansion in the hills. When he goes to the house, he realises that it is haunted. He cannot do anything with the property till he gets to the bottom of this issue. The rest of the film seeks to unravel the mystery.
The ace Director has roped in the 3D technicians and supports from Canada who have earlier worked in the 3D genre. The spooky saga will illumine Mahakshay Chakraborty and new find Tia Bajpai. Bhatt claims that the film is his “most expensive and ambitious project till date.” The movie is in its post production stage and will hit the screen early next year.
The spirit of a long-dead prisoner returns for revenge, haunting the prison’s new governor.
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