Terror 5

This is NOT Gene Simmons.

(2016) Horror Anthology (Artsploitation)  Lu Grasso, Augusto Alvarez, Airas Alban, Emilio Guzzo, Rocio Lopez, Agustin Rittano, Clarisa Hernández, Juan Barberini, Cecilia Cartasegna, Julián Larquier Tellarini, Marcos Woinsky, Marcela Luznik, Jorge Prado, Rafael Ferro, Gastón Cocchiarale, Walter Cornás, Nai Awada, Giselle Motta.  Directed by Sebastian Rotstein and Federico Rotstein

 

Horror anthologies generally tend to be uneven in terms of quality. Even when the segments are all directed by the same person, tonal shifts can sometimes work against the film, particularly when the directors are trying to work from a variety of styles.

This Argentinian anthology is set in an unnamed Argentine city in which a lurid trial is taking place. Some months earlier, a building collapsed, killing 15 people. The mayor (Ferro) has been charged with corruption, money laundering and essentially depraved indifference along with two of his cronies. He is the very picture of power; arrogant, indifferent to the suffering of others and manipulative.

Most of the participants are awaiting the verdict, either watching on TV or listening on the radio. The first story involves Sonia (Grasso), a student who is helping her boyfriend Juan (Alvarez) prepare for an important test. However, rather than studying with him, she takes him to the school after dark where they participate in a student revenge group that tortures the teachers that mistreated them.

In the second story, a couple – Gaby (Cartasegna) and Hernan (Tellarini) – adjourn to a hotel for a night of passionate sex. However, the attraction between the couple is purely between the sheets and once the sex is over the arguing begins. What they don’t realize is that they’re being watched by an auteur who plans to make them part of his latest work.

The third story involves a group of friends gathered to party torment one of their own number, whom they address as “Cherry” in regards to his virginity. As the abuse grows, he begins to grow more resentful until the point that he reveals his true nature.

The fourth story concerns two men (Rittano, Barberini) who await in separate cars for their girlfriends – having decided to swap partners for the night. As you can guess from the tone of the movie, it doesn’t go according to plan at all.

The final story is the one closest to the linking story. A busload of relatives of the dead from the apartment collapse have gone to the cemetery to mourn their loved ones. As the injustice of their situation grows, the dead are moved to rise and wreak havoc on the town. The bus driver (Prado) manages to keep out of sight of the vengeful dead but he has an agenda of his own.

The anthology is set up in kind of a weird manner; after the set-up of the linking story, the first story is told in its entirety but the other four are told concurrently, weaving in and out of each. It’s a bit disconcerting and leaves the audience wondering “Did I miss something?” I can sort of understand why they chose to do it that way – the first story is completely different in tone from the other four and it really isn’t connected to either the overall story or to any of the other four. It’s almost as if the directors had an additional short film lying around and decided to insert it.

That said, this is actually a terrific film. The psycho-sexual aspects recall Pier Paolo Pasolini, while the gore recalls the work of Dario Argento. There is an undercurrent of rage here; oppression by authority figures permeates all of the stories. People are either pushed to violence, or are subsumed by the violence of their oppressors. It is rare that a horror film is as politically astute as this one is.

The performances are as you can imagine across the scale; some are outstanding (Cartasegna) while others are merely adequate. The stories also vary in quality; the first story definitely feels out of place while the two men in cars just never generates any suspense or terror until the very final shot of the vignette. The other three are gripping and visceral both from a sexual and violence aspect. It also must be said that the living dead when they show up with their blue glowing eyes are really cool. The overall look of the film is bathed in green, red and blue – primary colors rendered like lurid neon.

The film is in Spanish and subtitled so that may give some American horror fans pause. If you’re willing to put up with reading the titles, you are likely to find this a worthy investment of time. If you like your horror with a healthy dose of kinky sex, you’re definitely going to need to look this one up.

REASONS TO SEE: The zombies with the glowing eyes are tres cool.
REASONS TO AVOID: The dialogue is pretentious in places.
FAMILY VALUES: There is sex, nudity, violence, gore, profanity and drug use – better to ask what’s not in there!
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film was nominated for a Best Argentinian Film at the Mar de Plata Film Festival.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, Google Play, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/9/19: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Eyes Wide Shut
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Tag

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Unfriended: Dark Web

Your computer is watching you and no, that’s NOT a good thing.

(2018) Horror/Thriller (BH Tilt) Colin Woodell, Stephanie Nogueras, Betty Gabriel, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Andrew Lees, Connor Del Rio, Savira Mindyani, Douglas Tait, Bryan Adrian, Chelsea Alden, Alexa Mansour, Rob Welsh, Alexander Ward, Kurt Carley, Chuck Lines, Eric Watson, Maya Nalli, Ashton Smiley, Kiara Beltran. Directed by Stephen Susco

The Internet is like landing on a brand new planet; there are all kinds of places to explore, from web comics to news sites to social media. You can spend hours browsing Wikipedia, Snapchat, Spotify, Amazon, eBay, iTunes and wherever else you want to be. There are some corners of the web however that are best left unexplored.

Matias (Woodell) has a brand new laptop. Well, new to him anyway…he purloined it from the lost and found of the coffee shop he works at. He needs a new one because his current one is unreliable and slow and he can’t afford a new one. He can’t even afford a used one. He desperately needs one because quite frankly he needs to get back in the good graces of his ex-girlfriend Amaya (Nogueras) who he is almost stalker-ish obsessed over.

It’s also game night for a bunch of his millennial friends and in true tech-dependent fashion, rather than meeting up in person they get on Skype to play Cards Against Humanity (isn’t there an app for that?). His friends include cute couple Nori (Gabriel) and Serena (Rittenhouse), conspiracy junkie AJ (Del Rio), British tech guru Damon (Lees) and YouTube-famous musician Lexx (Mindyani). If these descriptions sound like stereotypical clichés, it’s mainly because they are; little thought is given to supplying any depth to any of the parts.

Editorializing aside – there’ll be plenty more of that kind of thing later – it turns out that there are some hidden files on the laptop and those files enable connection to the dark web, the semi-mythical place on the Internet where dirty deeds are done dirt cheap and nearly any perversion can be had for the asking, including murder and torture. Some of the files on the laptop show gruesome scenes of snuff and torture as well as webcam footage of a local missing girl. And the owner of the laptop now knows that someone else has it and is logged in and they want it back and not tomorrow but right freaking now. To prove how serious he is, the owner kills one of their number on camera, warning the survivors if they go to the cops he’ll kill them. And naturally, their life expectancies has just taken a turn for the worse.

I don’t really know where to start here. The acting is mostly okay – the majority of the cast has served time doing teen-oriented TV shows like Teen Wolf and The Originals. You really can’t complain about the actors because they are given so little to work with and their characters are required by the script to make some unbelievably dopey decisions in order to move the generally unrealistic plot along.

All of the action is viewed through various apps and laptop/tablet/smart phone screens, which is the trope that was used in the original Unfriended and is essentially the only connection between the two movies. This isn’t so much a sequel as part of an anthology which I can understand, but might not have been the best idea but then again, the original wasn’t all that compelling and had no characters in it that you’d want to see in another movie. Just like this one.

At least the first film had a fairly original concept but since it came out in 2015 several other movies have utilized the same or a similar gimmick. The supernatural element of the first is gone but replaced by a nearly real-world tone which goes completely out the window when we discover that the owner of the laptop utilizes a special jacket that causes cameras to malfunction, allowing him to not be seen; sort of a Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility for the Snapchat set.

And that brings up another problem – this movie essentially has built-in obsolescence. Any relevance it might have had (the first one at least had an anti-cyber bullying message) will be lost in the very pop culture/social media consciousness of the film. What’s cool in 2018 might not necessarily be in 2020. This is a film with a shelf life which means that buyers remorse will likely set in quickly once you realize that the movie is “so 2018.”

I was mildly entertained by this one – Rittenhouse and Gabriel make an appealing couple and Gabriel is actually a decent actress who needs some roles that will let her spread her wings a little. The scares aren’t terribly scary – clearly the producers were aiming for a PG-13 – the characters aren’t memorable and the plot is riddled with clichés like Swiss cheese is with holes. In an era where strong horror films are becoming more and more available, efforts like this which seem to be cash grabs capitalizing on a popular could-be franchise film aren’t really worth your time if you’re a horror gourmet. Of course if you’re ,more of a gourmand you might find this more suitable.

REASONS TO GO: There is some nice family bonding moments.
REASONS TO STAY: The filmmakers are trying too hard to make it witty and cute.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s a fair amount of disturbing imagery, sexual references and profanity herein.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: There are two different endings in the theatrical version; also, the original title was to have been Unfriended: Game Night but the title was eventually changed to avoid confusion with the Jason Bateman comedy.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/26/18: Rotten Tomatoes: 57% positive reviews: Metacritic: 53/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Searching
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Six Days of Darkness Day Two

Vacancy

This is not the kind of room service you want in a motel.

(2007) Horror (Screen Gems) Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson, Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry, Scott G. Anderson, Mark Casella, David Doty, Caryn Mower, Meegan E. Godfrey, Kym Stys, Andrew Fiscella, Norm Compton, Ernie Misko, Bryan Ross, Chevron Hicks, Kevin Dunigan, Chuck Lamb, Richie Varga, Cary Wayne Moore, Dale Waddington Horowitz. Directed by Nimrod Atal

 

We take hotels for granted. We check in and go to sleep, completely vulnerable. We don’t know who is at the front desk, or what sort of people they are. They have access to our rooms, could enter while we’re sleeping and do God knows what to us and we wouldn’t know it was happening until it was too late.

David (Wilson) and Amy (Beckinsale) Fox are already having a bad night. Their marriage is already sinking into a morass of self-recrimination, self-medication and naked hostility following the tragic death of their son. On their way to a family function, David decides to take a shortcut off the interstate and is soon hopelessly loss. His navigator Amy is in a Xanax-induced snooze bordering on a coma, awakening to find one more reason to bicker.

A raccoon in the middle of the road causes David to swerve and crash. Nobody is hurt, not even the raccoon, but the car is barely drivable. They limp into a gas station that is anything but all-night. A friendly mechanic (Embry) tries to help them, telling them there might be a mechanic on duty in a town down the road, but their car has other ideas. They only make a few miles before their car expires of plot contrivance.

The bickering couple hoofs it back to the gas station, but the friendly mechanic is gone for the night. However, the fleabag hotel next door is open for business. The smarmy night clerk (Whaley) gives them a room with a view – of the parking lot. Hey, it’s the honeymoon suite. At first, David and Amy are not thrilled about spending a night in the same bed. After seeing the stains on the bed and the bugs in the bathroom, they aren’t thrilled about spending a night in THIS bed. Resigned to a terrible night, David puts on a videotape in the high-tech VCR on the TV which you half-expect to find rabbit ears on.

They see what appears to be a cheap horror movie of half-nude women being raped and slashed to pieces by masked killers. Then David notices something familiar about the scene. The bedspread looks an awful lot like the one in the flea-bitten room they are staying in. So do the curtains. Disquieted, David puts another cassette in and discovers it to be much the same thing – a couple being horribly murdered in a room not unlike their own. That’s when Amy makes the startling realization that it is their room. Their every move is being watched through a series of hidden cameras placed throughout the room. The sound of insistent knocking on their door signals the beginning of a night of terror in which the odds are stacked against them as a trio of killers comes after them to make the next episode in their snuff film series. Will David and Amy be able to survive the night, or will some other unfortunate traveler see their tape in that broken-down motel room?

Luke Wilson has been charming in a great number of better movies, but he is a bit flat as a slasher film hero. It’s not for lack of effort, however; he just seems a bit stifled. Beckinsale, from the Underworld movies, is gorgeous and resourceful. She makes the perfect heroine for this kind of movie, although her character’s bitchy moments make it difficult to root for her survival. Whaley is appropriately creepy, and most of the other characters are either meat for the grinder, or the ones doing the grinding.

Director Atal made his English language debut. He made the impressive Kontroll a few years back and his visual style seems tailor made for Hollywood. His seedy hotel is really seedy and claustrophobic. Paul Haslinger’s score is Horror Film Music 101, but at least it isn’t intrusive. Beckinsale is very pleasing to look at, and there are a few genuine scares. There is almost a Jim Thompson quality to the motel and the night clerk working there. The action sequences are pulled off nicely.

The stranded travelers are a hoary old premise for terror flicks going back to the earliest days of the movies and Vacancy doesn’t contribute anything particularly new or exciting to the genre. Wilson isn’t a terribly convincing hero; you keep waiting for a punchline that is never delivered.

As horror movies go, this one is about average. Beckinsale is easy on the eyes and as mentioned above, there are some pretty decent scare sequences. However, I wound up with a feeling I’d seen it all before, and better. If you haven’t seen a lot of horror movies and you want to see this one, you might not mind the clichés that are thrown at you like a water buffalo to the face, but otherwise this is merely a diversion.

WHY RENT THIS: Some pretty good scares can be found here. Beckinsale is a resourceful slasher film heroine.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The plot is pretty mundane. Wilson is a bit lackluster as the slasher film hero.
FAMILY MATTERS: The snuff film sequences are graphic and disturbing. There is also a great deal of violence, and a fair amount of nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The film was shot on the same soundstage as The Wizard of Oz was.
NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: The DVD edition has an alternate ending; the Blu-Ray contains this and an alternate opening as well as a compilation of all the snuff footage in one feature if you’re of a mind to watch that.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $35.3M on a $19M production budget.
SITES TO SEE: Netflix (DVD/Blu-Ray only), iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, Fandango Now, Crackle, YouTube
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Strangers
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Moana

Sinister 2

Bughuul reminds us there’s no talking in the theater or else he sends these kids after you.

(2015) Horror (Gramercy) James Ransone, Shannyn Sossamon, Robert Daniel Sloan, Dartanian Sloan, Lea Coco, Tate Ellington, John Beasley, Lucas Jade Zumarin, Jaden Klein, Laila Haley, Caden M. Fritz, Olivia Rainey, Nicholas King, Michael B. Woods, Tory O. Davis, Howie Johnson, Grace Holuby, John Francis Mountain, Nicole Santini. Directed by Ciarán Foy

There are monsters in this world; people who beat their wives, their children. People who create an atmosphere of fear, all so they can feel like a big man. One can run away from monsters like that; but then there’s no running away from the demons that follow you.

Courtney Collins (Sossamon) has separated from her husband with the intention of divorcing him. He is an abusive, evil man who has turned her twin sons Dylan (R.D. Sloan) and Zach (D. Sloan) into a terrified, nightmare-ridden boy (the former) and a mean, spiteful kid (the latter). She has found an old farmhouse with a de-consecrated church in the yard.

What she doesn’t know is that the house was the scene of a horrible crime in which an entire family was slaughtered – chained to the church floor and eaten alive by rats – with the young son missing. Investigating the crime is a Detective (Ransone) who was once a Deputy investigating a similar crime in the first Sinister. It weighs heavily on his mind that he couldn’t save his friend Ellison Oswalt and his family from the same fate; in fact, he was accused and later acquitted of the heinous crime, although he lost his job over it.

Now he has made it his mission to stop the demon Bughuul who is responsible for these murders. Bughuul, through the lost children he abducts, influences a child in a family moving into the home where one of these murders occurs to become his minion; when the family moves out, the child films the gruesome murders he commits. Afterwards, Bughuul takes his soul to join his legion of lost children.

Now the kids are after Dylan, showing him the murder films which stop the nightmares. The Detective is unnerved to find people living in the house – he’d been told it was vacant and had plans to burn it to the ground, stopping the demon’s reign of terror. He grows attracted to Courtney and the feeling is mutual. But with her ex Clinton (Coco) hot on her trail and hell bent on taking the kids back home with him, with no judge or law enforcement official in rural Indiana willing to stand up to the wealthy Clinton, Courtney is caught between hell and a hard place – literally.

Although a sequel pretty much to the first Sinister, this has little in common with the first film. No Ethan Hawke, for one thing – Sossamon is the biggest name in the cast which helps keep the costs low and the profit margin high. Scott Derrickson, who directed the original, is still on board as co-writer and producer but it is Irish director Foy, who has a nifty thriller called The Citadel to his credit, in the chair here.

The first film was incredibly creepy; the atmosphere was much more intense than it is here. There is more a Children of the Corn vibe which is said to be on purpose; Foy had wanted the film to be a tribute to the Stephen King story which spawned a plethora of cinematic stinkers – and has a lot in common thematically with both of the Sinister films. While some might find the homespun Indiana cornfield look frightening, it doesn’t quite do it for me personally.

Ransone does, though. Moving from a background comedy relief character to genuine horror hero, we get the kind of hero we can all get behind; he’s not brawny or a particularly good fighter (he gets beaten up at least twice during the film) but he is smart and sympathetic. He’s a nice guy whom we fear is going to finish last.

The movie’s subtext having to do with abusive husbands/fathers is welcome. Often the physical abuse is given as a reason as why abused kids turn into psychotic serial killers but here it is shown as terrifying as anything the demon can conjure up; there’s a scene where the Collins family is having dinner and Clinton eats first while the others sit in frightened silence, awaiting the signal that they can eat. It’s as stark and scary a scene in any horror movie this year. Sadly, none of the Bughuul stuff can equal it.

Part of the problem is that the kid actors in the movie who take up most of the screen time range from adequate to hard to watch. A movie like this by necessity requires a good number of child actors and that’s a double edged sword; if you can get good ones, it ratchets up the fear factor. If not, it can make your film look amateurish. It doesn’t quite sink to that level, but it certainly isn’t elevated by the performances of the children. And that’s not a knock on the kids, mind you – I don’t think it’s for lack of effort on their part, but they do have an awful lot of burden on their shoulders and that might be a little too much to ask of them.

Another issue I had with the movie is the various snuff films. The death scenes are so elaborate that to a large extent they aren’t believable. Sure, the kids are being helped by a demonic presence but it doesn’t feel like a kid could come up with these complex killing methods, ranging from putting a family on crucifixes and burning them alive to hanging them upside down above a swamp where alligators take their heads off. Gruesome fun to be sure, but not believable gruesome fun.

Even despite the deficiencies this ends up with a slightly higher rating than the first Sinister, largely because the ending of the first one was such a stinker. The ending here is a lot better; and while Bughuul is not the terrifying monster that maybe this franchise needs, the movie is scary enough in a white bread kind of way that it makes the movie worth checking out.

REASONS TO GO: Fairly creepy. Ransone steps up nicely. Like the inclusion of the abusive father.
REASONS TO STAY: Children of the Corn vibe doesn’t work. The filmed death scenes too elaborate. Overreliance on kid actors.
FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of violence, much of it gruesome; bloody and disturbing images, and some fairly foul language.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The only returning characters from the first film are Bughuul himself and the Detective, who in the first film was Deputy So & So (he never gets a name); here he is Detective So & So.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/30/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 12% positive reviews. Metacritic: 31/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: :Insidious
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Mistress America

Gut

Jason Vail likes to watch.

(2012) Horror (Gut Productions) Jason Vail, Nicholas Wilder, Sarah Schoofs, Kirstianna Mueller, Kaitlyn Mueller, Angie Bullaro, Ria Burns-Wilder, Leisa Haddad, Misty Gonzalez, Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Karl Pfeiffer, Jordan Sariego, Christine Kadets, Deborah J. Atuk, J. Brett Rose, Heather Lattuca Ferrari, Frank Pelligra, Antonia Roman. Directed by Elias. 

There are things in our personality that we aren’t proud of. It might be a quick temper, or a tendency towards procrastination. Sometimes they are dark sides of our nature, something that we can’t share with anyone but a select few.

Tom (Vail) has a pretty decent life all things considered. He has a job albeit not a very good one, but his closest friend Dan (Wilder) works with him. The two have a shared love for horror flicks, the darker the better. But since Tom got married he and Dan have been drifting apart.

And why wouldn’t Tom start drifting away? His wife Lily (Schoofs) is amazing, very into sex and supportive. Their daughter Katie (the Mueller twins) loves her daddy very much. It’s a pretty good life, with a better one in their sights; Katie and Tom are thinking of moving away where they can get a better home and a better job for Tom. Besides, Dan has gotten a bit…clingy.

The two have lunch together nearly every day at a local diner. Not because the food is so great but Dan is sweet on Sally (Bullaro), a waitress there. Dan whines about Tom paying less attention to him and eventually Tom agrees to drop by and watch a video with him.

So one night Tom goes over to hang out with Dan in his apartment and Dan pulls out this DVD he’s purchased from the Internet and it’s freaking creepy. It’s a naked woman strapped to a table. Her cries are muffled.  A pair of hands in surgical gloves rubs up and down her torso before producing a wicked looking knife and cutting her open. Her cries slowly fade away as she bleeds out….after which those surgically gloved hands go inside her body, rooting away in an almost erotic, loving fashion.

So is the tape real? Both Tom and Dan seem to think it is. Tom is at first appalled and tells Dan not to order any more of those sorts of DVDs anymore. But despite his protests, Tom is secretly mesmerized by the images. And turned on by them. Sex with Lily has become less exciting and no matter what she does he finds himself unable to be stimulated unless he is thinking about those images.

As you can expect Dan gets more tapes of similar types and it is plain both men have become obsessed. Dan is missing work and Tom, well Tom and Lily are beginning to have problems. Even roughhousing with Katie is bringing images of blood on her bare torso to Tom’s mind. He can’t seem to get those images out of his head, even though he knows its wrong.

But as they inevitably do, things spiral out of control and both men begin to suspect that each of them may be the one taking these movies. Who is behind it? And what was Tom doing at the beginning of the film?

This is a disturbing psychological horror film. While there is some blood, there isn’t an overabundance of it. The theme is more about obsession with death than it is about actual death, and about the eroticism of horror.

The movie is very starkly filmed. Possibly that’s because of the low budget but I think it might also be intentional. The feel is almost clinical in some ways, which makes the horror even more intense. Adding to that sterility is the flat performances of the actors who at times seem to lack any emotion. Is it a commentary on how numb our society has gotten? I like to think it is.

This is both social commentary and horror – the eroticism of death and the general desensitized populace that is modern Western society. The problem with horror films in 2013 is that they have a hard time competing with the real horrors that we see every day – gunmen opening fire on schools, whack jobs planting bombs at popular and prestigious events, planes full of gasoline being flown deliberately into buildings full of people, terrorists strapping bombs to their chest and setting them off on city buses. How is a vampire or a werewolf compete with that when there are monsters everywhere with human faces?

Gut actually explores that a little bit and modestly at that. I found it to be disturbing and provocative and, if you’ll pardon the pun, a cut above most horror films that are out there.

NOTE: Gut is being released on DVD on May 28. Click on the photo above to go to their home page and find out a little bit more about it, or to stream the movie from several online sources.

REASONS TO GO: Unnerving. Clinical view of horror makes it more intense.

REASONS TO STAY: A curious emotional flatness to nearly all the characters.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s some gore, quite a bit of graphic nudity and sexuality and a bit of bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Played last year’s Orlando Film Festival.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/6/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 17% positive reviews. Metacritic: no score yet; while not a lot of mainstream critics have seen this (and those who have didn’t like it much), the underground horror press has been raving about this one for some time.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Videodrome

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: Pain & Gain