Genre: Supernatural, Ghosts Director: Carlos Ramos Jr. Country: USA Availability: Netflix Streaming
I knew going in that Kill Katie Malone was going to be a low budget movie with subpar acting and bad special effects. I've certainly watched my fair share of low budget horror movies and am not opposed to them by any means, but I can think of many better ways in which to spent two hours of my time so the movie in question has got to be compelling enough for me to give it a shot, and my mood has to be just right. Usually I'm drawn more to low budget zombie movies. There's something charming about the amount of genre-love it takes to put on really bad zombie makeup and wander around moaning and feigning threat. Most of these movies come off more like a student film than anything resembling a real movie, but sometimes that just adds to the appeal. And sometimes you get lucky and find a real gem buried there - like Zombie Town.
Kill Katie Malone was no such gem, but it wasn't terrible either. I enjoyed the premise of the movie: buying a ghost on Ebay (called "Ubid" in the movie) and then having that ghost "do your bidding" (pun probably intended) as it starts picking off your enemies one by one until it sets its sights on you. But aside from some cool imagery closer to the end, and a long scene shot mostly in the dark, the movie was neither gory nor scary. Aside from simply knowing that people were dying, and that dying is bad, there was no discernible tension or feeling of genuine menace. And the acting was just okay, there were times that it felt labored and fake, and other times where it was convincing enough that I forgot they were Actors!, but the characters themselves were generally lacking anything remotely compelling. Overall, I just kept getting bored.
Genre: Zombie Director: Nick Lyon Country: United States Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
I'm actually quite conflicted on 2012: Zombie Apocalypse. There are so many redeeming elements to this low-budget zombie feature that they almost make up for the really bad elements - which are mainly really shitty zombies and the casting of Taryn Manning, who is fucking horrible.
We'll start with the good so I can sufficiently get your hopes up, and then end with the bad so I can adequately squash any dreams you may have of there finally being another good zombie movie out there, because naturally you dream of such things, as do I.
The movie starts with a thorough playback of the fall of the world due to a virus that turns every living thing into, that's right, (really shitty) zombies. These quick snapshots of a world falling to pieces gives us a solid feeling of desolation and despair. We're then quickly introduced to our main players, first to the three individuals who have spent the last 6 months in hiding and who are ill-equipped to deal with defending themselves against zombies, and then to the four individuals who swoop in and save their dumb asses. The story continues like most zombie apocalypse stories do, the group of survivors band together and travel the dangerous roads on a mission to find that "safe zone" that everyone hears rumors of. They take refuge in various abandoned buildings, some of our players die and we're introduced to new players, and there is always the scene where their beloved friend turns into a zombie and someone has to shoot him in the head, female crying ensues.
The casting of our characters was actually solid picks, these actors work hard to pull their weight in the face of some truly dorky dialog ("There was a zombie, so I killed it.") and of course there's Ving Rhames (wielding a sledge hammer for the whole movie, which he only puts down once in order to wield a fucking CHAINSAW) who should be in every zombie movie ever made. Ever.
The wide shots of the city our characters are travelling through is actually quite effective in helping the perception that the world as we know it is dead and gone. The city that they show is grey and abandoned, smoke hangs in the air everywhere from the fires burning out of control in various neighborhoods. There's no sound, no movement... just a stillness that is only broken with, ZOMBIES!
The script actually introduces us to some fun zombie labels, some of them we were already are privy to thanks to the Dawn of the Dead remake, like "runner" and "twitcher", and others have been used in the likes of The Walking Dead comics, like "packs" and "hordes", but the few I hadn't heard before were "newborns", "rotters" and "burners" (zombies you set on fire that then attack you, so now you're not only still being attacked by a zombie but now it's a zombie on fire).
There were nice homages, a strong black female character wielding a samurai sword (The Walking Dead), a zombie cheerleader still holding onto her pom-pons (Romero's Land of the Dead), a mention of a dead guy named Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead), the concept that the zombies are learning (Romero).
But have I mentioned the zombies are shitty? They SO are. First off they are completely inconstant with each other in terms of appearance. I'm pretty sure they had an open casting call for zombies and told everyone that they were in charge of their own makeup. Some of them look like their faces are covered in white paint with some blood around the mouth, some of them aren't in any makeup at all and just have blood around the mouth, and some of them are in like, monster movie style "What the hell is that thing supposed to be" kind of makeup. They don't even resemble zombies, they just look like fucked-up creatures who look like they're either burn victims or demons going to a KISS concert. And none of them act like each other. Some of fast runners, but like normal chasing your dog down the street kind of running and not like, I'm going to eat your fucking brains kind of running. And others, I shit you not, act like gorillas. Some are doing that lame limp and drag your leg thing while others are just slowly lumbering with their arms outstretched like they're The Mummy. This movie was in desperate need of a Zombie Coordinator because the zombies, well, they're supposed to be the best part. Their name is in the title. Their name is the name for an entire genre of movies. Without them, it's just people running around an empty city looking for something to be afraid of.
Speaking of being afraid, this movie was not scary at all. The kill scenes looked like they were happening in a video game - completely fake CGI awfulness. The movie takes place mostly during the day and mostly out in the open so you rarely ever have that claustrophobic feeling of being trapped with zombies and no way out. And for a world overrun with zombies there are surprisingly few of them when, for 80% of the movie these people are walking the empty streets of a city and no zombie is in sight. The zombies don't wander off alone so you never have just random zombies filling up the background, instead they're always in hordes and they're always attacking you like some crazed football team, running together full charge ahead. Ooooh, scary.
But! The end is pretty amazing in a so bad it's good kind of way. "Here kitty, kitty."
Despite my better judgement I still liked 2012: Zombie Apocalypse and recommend it to any of you who are hard up for a zombie movie. But it's not a good movie. And it's got really shitty zombies.
Genre: Vampires Director: Kathryn Bigelow Country: United States Availability: Amazon Instant Video
It seems like every time I watch Near Dark I have a completely different opinion about it. The first time I saw it, some 7 or so years ago, I actually turned it off about an hour in - I was bored and the movie was terrible. I gave it a second chance last year and I think my expectations were so incredibly low that I actually found myself enjoying the movie and walked away giving it four stars. Having recently purchased Near Dark I was looking forward to rewatching what I remembered to be a gritty, gory vampire movie that lacked all of the cheesy romantic melodrama that most vampire flicks drown themselves in. Before I go any further let it be said, here and now, that I have a terrible, terrible memory when it comes to movies. It's one of the reasons why I tend to rewatch them so many times because I genuinely don't remember much about them.
So imagine my surprise when my expectations were yet again thwarted and I found myself, mouth agape, at the absolute horrific dialog and over-the-top acting and ridiculous plot. Once again, like in so many movies that want to fit a romance into the story but don't want to dedicate the time to make it realistic, a boy and a girl meet and fall in love in a matter of hours. She turns him into a vampire and he doesn't want to be one. Then her crazy friends come into the picture and things go from bad to worse. And by worse I mean Bill Paxton. I don't doubt than sometime in the 90's Bill Paxton hired an acting coach and became somewhat competent at his craft, but in the 80's he had the power to single-handedly ruin an entire film just by being in it (see Aliens). Then add that dorky strange kid from Teen Witch, Joshua Miller, and you have downright unwatchable scenes throughout much of the movie.
Vampire movies tend to run in trends. Right now the trend seems to be smart, sleek, dangerous and gory. The trend in the 90's was sex, lust and partying. The 60's and 70's seemed to be gothic, mysterious, frightening and ... lesbianism. But the trend in the 80's? Awful. We had vampire comedies and rebellious, rowdy vampires. But what The Lost Boys got right with their rowdy vampires, Near Dark got all wrong. These vampires are not only rowdy, they're obnoxious. They're the loud frat boys at the party that you're constantly muttering "douchebag" to behind their backs. They aren't funny or sexy or charming. In fact most of them don't seem to shower. They're like a pack of wild dogs eating and humping their way across the land. And what's with them constantly losing track of time and then having to race against time to beat the impending sun rise? Seriously, after being alive for hundreds of years you'd think these guys would get their priorities straight and invest in some serious timepieces. And the ludicrous ending was just the icing on the roadkill.
One of the fun things to come from Near Dark (aside from my constant heckling) was that during the bar scene I noticed what eerie similarities there are between The Vampire Diaries vamps Damon and Stefan and the Near Dark vamps Severen and Caleb.
Genre: Vampires Director: Ted Nicolaou Country: United States Availability: DVD
Subspecies is one of those horror movies that is beloved by all who saw it as a kid, and bemoaned by those who see it for the first time as adults. Unfortunately I am of the latter camp and therefore this review will be decorated with words like ridiculous and silly.
I am actually quite the fan of ridiculous and silly and my tastes walk a fine line of the qualities that those words often times possess: sword fight between ugly vampire dude and hot vampire dude in a dank castle with babes in nightgowns fighting each other with fire - awesome ridiculous; girl gets a cut on her arm and is henceforth thrust into a constant fevered sleep which allows ugly vampire dude to feed on her undetected - dumb ridiculous. The movie is rife with examples like those - there are awesome tiny claymation demons that are created by the severed fingertips of the ugly vamp dude, a bloodstone that looks like a bleeding teet that all the vampires suckle from, the aforementioned sword fight, a captive chick with her boobs hanging out of torn clothing, and the burgeoning love between a beautiful woman and a hot vampire guy who share not only passionate kisses, but also the same hair cut.
Subspecies could have been gold if not for the mundane scenes that take up most of the movie. Too much screen time is devoted to the three, rather uninteresting women who serve as the movie's vampire fodder. Still, the lovely scenery and atmospheric castles add a lot of weight to the authentic feel of the movie. The evil vampire serves his creepy role well (though admittedly a bit too silly to be taken completely seriously - he kind of looks like Robert Smith from The Cure) but for a movie called Subspecies (named for the demonic claymation creatures) there was a woeful lack of them.
Surprisingly, there are a total of five Subspecies movies - all which continue to revolve around the main female character and the dorky bloodstone - I may just be convinced to give the second one a try...
