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.
From director Sébastien Vaniček, Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters July 10, but that’s just one of two brand new Evil Dead movies releasing in the next two years.
Evil Dead Wrath recently wrapped production, with the upcoming film from director Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County) set for theatrical release on April 7, 2028.
We’ve known virtually nothing about the movie up to this point, but a recent interview with producer Rob Tapert has surfaced this week (thanks, Dread Central) and it reveals a very surprising bit of information about Evil Dead Wrath. The film is set in 1972!!
Tapert told the students at Michigan State University during a chat, “Evil Dead Wrath is yet another great departure. It predates everything. It takes place in 1972.”
That means Evil Dead Wrath takes place even before the arrival of Ash Williams and friends to that infamous cabin in the woods, which should give the film a whole new kind of flavor.
Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness was of course set in the Middle Ages, but Evil Dead Wrath will take place chronologically before Ash Williams was transported into medieval times!
“It will feel like a 1972 movie because the director and his DP want to imitate the film’s look and feel of something that’s called Ektachrome 100, which was a film stock,” Tapert notes. “Still available. A lot of movies shot on back then. And so it’s very warm, very tungsten.”
Tapert calls Wrath “very Tarantino-esque, very deliberate. [Galluppi] made a movie, not a horror movie, that I liked a great deal called Last Stop in Yuma County. It’s worth looking up.”
The Last Stop in Yuma County, it’s interesting to note, is also set in the 1970s!
Charlotte Hope (The Nun), Jessica McNamee (Mortal Kombat), Zach Gilford (“Midnight Mass”), Josh Helman (Mad Max: Fury Road), Ella Newton (Dangerous Animals), Elizabeth Cullen (Diabolic), and Ella Oliphant will star in Evil Dead Wrath.
Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi and franchise producer Rob Tapert are producing. Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin will executive produce alongside Romel Adam and Jose Canas.