Genre: Zombies, Psychological Director: Ben Wagner Country: USA Availability: Netflix Streaming
If the zombie apocalypse came and you had a safe place to stay, would you ever leave? My reply, given from the comfortable, naive cocoon of normalcy, is fuck yes. In fact, this isn't really a question for me. I can barely stand to be at home with the curtains drawn, let alone be holed up in a cabin and literally not taking a step outside in six months. Zombies be damned, that's no way to live. I'll take my chances with the biters. I'll sleep on the rooftops and bloody my hands with the slaughter, but goddamn don't you cage me.
Dead Within takes place entirely inside a two room cabin with two people. We see their daily routines, how they've held on to the small niceties of life like cleaning the house and getting dressed up for dinner. And we also see how things have changed as they go to bed fully dressed with their shoes on, weapons at their fingertips. Mike leaves Kim during the day to look for supplies. Kim finger paints the walls and talks to a painting of her cat.
There are very few zombies in this zombie movie, mostly because they aren't really the point. The movie is more about isolation and what that can start doing to a person over time. The two actors in Dead Within are terrific. They are believably melancholy, morose, hopeful and hopeless, scared, paranoid, and tender. The score here is also really great. There's this ominous dread that builds with the music but not just during the suspenseful times, it plays over the mundane scenes as well, adding tension to the entire atmosphere that sustains itself throughout every scene. They really did a lot with very little for this movie and it reminded me of a play I saw last year. Proving that talented actors and a good story will make any production a powerful one.
Genre: Creature Feature Director: James Cullen Bressack Country: USA Availability: Netflix Streaming
I have a soft spot for really bad creature features. I have seen every Lake Placid movie (and there were four of them) as well as Birdemic, Sharknado, Piranha (the original, remake and sequel), and every cheesy killer spider movie you can think of. I don't make it a mission to seek out this sub-genre, but when they pop up on Netflix streaming and there's an added appeal like a former hot teen tv actor turned old washed up desperate actor, I say YES PLEASE and I tune the fuck in.
So imagine my delight when Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lamprey starring Shannen Doherty showed up in Netflix just when I had a bottle of wine and a night to myself. Can you say PARTY?
Admittedly, I didn't really know what a lamprey was when the movie started. Turns out, they are actually pretty terrifying.
I'm kind of surprised there aren't more killer lamprey movies given the fact that they look like that. But as with any good (bad) water-based creature feature, you have to figure out how to make the creature be as menacing on land as they are in the water. Because come on, if something in the water is eating people, you stay out of the fucking water. And that makes 1.) a short movie and 2.) a boring movie. To get around this little detail the lamprey in Blood Lake jump out of water and move across land like giant inch worms. Still, they're no fast-moving zombie so it's pretty hilarious to watch the people get overrun with them and die within moments of being attacked. Because... for reasons.
What Blood Lake lacked in, well, everything, it made up for in blood. And thank goodness. Because if you're going to be called Blood Lake, I'm going to expect there to be a bloody goddamn lake. Even if it doesn't make all that much sense. I mean, I'm watching a movie about killer lamprey, I'm going to buy pretty much anything you throw at me. Let's do this.
I may or may not be binge watching the 90210 reboot currently streaming on Netflix. So the fact that I recently watched an old-looking Shannen Doherty bad act her way through a handful of guest episodes in season one, alongside of a gracefully aging Jennie Garth, was extremely timely. Turns out she's just as old and bad at acting in Blood Lake as she is in everything else. No matter, I'm still a fan. Because she'll always be Brenda Walsh and Beverly Hills 90210 is a teen crush that will never die.
But still, I'm not sure why she decided to do this Made-For-TV Animal Planet movie. Was she inspired by fellow 90210 cast member Ian Ziering's performance in Sharknado? Did she lose a bet? Was someone blackmailing her? Either way I'm grateful. Because watching Shannen Doherty get attacked by jumping lamprey and then fall off a ladder, well, that image will be turning my frown upside down for many gloomy days to come.
Genre: Supernatural Director: Andrew Hyatt Country: USA Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
I was remarking to myself the other day that I'm beginning to think that horror movie writers/directors don't actually watch horror movies. Sure, they may cite The Greats as their heroes and inspirations, their childhood Gods if you will. I can't tell you how many times I've read some random horror movie director recalling how seeing - The Exorcist or The Shining or Evil Dead or The Omen or Psycho or Night of the Living Dead -changed his life and he knew from that moment that he wanted to write horror movies. Or maybe they'll throw a name into the mix - The Great Wes Craven, The Amazing John Carpenter, The Brilliant George Romero! And of course, they wouldn't be wrong in their praise, but the real question remains - have they seen any of the other 10,000 horror movies that are out there? The little indies that could? The little indies that couldn't? The shit-splattered reels that roll on and off of the video shelves faster that you can decide that you want your 90 minutes back? Or the small gems that go under-the-radar and are only whispered about by the ones In The Know. Because I don't think they've seen jack shit. If they had they'd know that their tired little "twists" had been done ten times over and a hundred times better. Which brings me back to The Frozen.
Kudos to The Frozen for taking some of my horror movie loves - camping, snow, being stranded, lone survivalist chick, creepy dead kids - and then adding 90 minutes of watching paint dry and a ridiculous overused twist ending - to kill any desire I may have in the near future to watch any of the aforementioned horror movie tropes.
Fuck you The Frozen. I don't know who in their right mind gave you the genre badge of Horror Movie but someone should rip it right off of your chest and leave that open wound bloody and oozing. You suck.
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: Slasher Director: Daniel Simpson Country: United Kingdom Availability: Netflix Streaming
It's been a long time since I've watched a horror movie that was so bad that it sucked all of the fun out of watching bad horror movies. So, way to go Spiderhole! You did... something!
Usually when I rate a horror movie 2 stars there's a part of me that still enjoyed watching it. Take Hell Nightfor example. It wasn't a so bad it's good movie, but it was still fun to make fun of. I gave it two stars because it was a shitty movie, but I still enjoyed watching it. Spiderhole on the other hand, was a truly unsatisfying experience. Instead of cheerily proclaiming the idiocies of the characters, I found myself angry at their ridiculous situation. I couldn't stand to watch them overreact and flutter uselessly about instead of getting their shit together and being proactive. At 81 minutes Spiderhole ran about twenty minutes too long.
So, the movie is about some art students that squat in a gross, creepy mansion for the summer so they don't have to pay rent anywhere, right? And instead of bringing things that they might need when living in a gross, creepy mansion, like a first aid kit and a tool box, maybe a crowbar or a sledgehammer, they bring throw pillows and knick-knacks to make the place homey. And instead of exploring the place to make sure there are no psychos lurking around (oh hello pile of bloody clothes) before bolting themselves into a place that seems to have sheets of metal covering every window and door, they break in, take one look around a few rooms and proclaim "home sweet home".
It really just goes from bad to worse with every scene as this group of sprightly twenty-somethings can't seem to fight back against an old man in scrubs. I would have much rather watched actual spiders coming out of holes in the walls while frantic teens scurried to smash them all like some kind of gross whack-a-mole.
Splintered has a lot of good things going for it. The atmosphere, for one, is dense and dark. It adds to the gritty fairy tale feel that seems so prominent throughout the movie. Our heroine, for two, is strong and resilient. She doesn't let a little thing like captivity keep her down. She's resourceful and thinks on her feet and she's not afraid of the big bad wolf.
Splintered also has a lot of things working against it. Like, they never really seem to commit to any particular idea, instead they give us splinters (hey-o!) of nightmares and lores and then leave it up to the audience to make assumptions. And aside from Sophie, our heroine, the other characters just seem like fodder for the kills. Which is fine, I know the rules of the horror movie, I know these people aren't going to live to see tomorrow. But it doesn't hurt to make them interesting or hell, even likable. Instead we get the generic, hopelessly dedicated best friend who seems more like a whipping dog, and her insensitive, over-reactive dick of a boyfriend. Throw in some half-assed love interest and a random quiet dorky guy and you've essentially got the supporting cast for Splintered. Clearly, they put little thought into this.
For the majority of the movie we're whisked from one scene to the next without knowing the clear motivations for why we're going there. Why do her friends follow her into the woods to investigate a werewolf lore if by when they make camp, they all seem pissed to be there? Why, out of five people, is Sophie the one locked up to be protected? Why does her apparent virginity matter? And is the man-beast really a werewolf or just some feral dude who has lost his mind? We never find out the answers to these things but that doesn't stop the movie from charging ahead and using each one of those points to move the story forward.
Fortunately, despite its flaws Splintered remains a fun romp. It's stylish and intriguing and at times even frightening. And of course the English accents make everything a little more awesome too.
I didn't catch it at the time, sometimes the dialog is a little hard to understand, but the male character's names are Sam, Dean and John. As in the characters from Supernatural. It makes sense once you know. The whole movie kind of feels like a Supernatural episode - curious twenty-somethings go into the woods to investigate a lore only to get themselves into trouble when they find out the lore is real. Except this time Sammy and Dean didn't show up to save the day. Instead, they were slaughtered. C'est la vie.
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: Slasher Director: Tom DeSimone Country: United States Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
Hell Night! An 80s' slasher flick about sexy teens partying in a supposedly haunted manor starring Linda Blair! What could possibly be bad about something that sounds so awesome? Well, let me tell you...
Linda Blair cannot act. Sure, she was terrific as Regan - the demon possessed little girl in The Exorcist - but maybe it's easier to act like a demon than it is to convincingly portray a regular teenage girl. A few months ago I had the misfortune of seeing her in an atrocious movie called Roller Boogie. And while it was clear from that movie that her abilities must have not made it past the age of 14, I had high hopes for Hell Night bringing Blair back to her horror roots. Not so.
Alas, Linda Blair's performance was not the only element making Hell Night a ridiculous bore to watch. The script was obviously written by a 12 year old boy, "Scott: What a little twat. We should have left her behind.
Peter: Why? Her behind is the best part. We should have kept her behind and left the rest of her." Oh yeah, the movie is full of gems like that. As well as gag scares, quick kill shots with little to no gore, an over-the-top end chase scene and extremely cumbersome and killable killers. Despite all of this, the movie could have been salvageable if not for the dull "character building" scenes that dragged out the middle of the movie. The very last shot of the movie was pretty terrific though and it made me sad that any potential that Hell Night had was squandered by its creators.
Genre: Serial Killer Director: Shion Sono Country: Japan Series: Bloody Disgusting Selects Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
I don't even know where to begin. From the trailer of Cold Fish I knew I was in for a rather bizarre movie but I guess I just didn't see this crazy, bloody, pornographic and abusive freight train of a movie coming. When we were twenty minutes in and they suddenly showed the opening title of the film it prompted us to look up the running time. 146 minutes! 146 minutes! At times throughout the movie it really felt like I had been watching Cold Fishfor my entire life. Miraculously, the movie maintains a level of strange intensity for the majority of the film's storytelling, peppering the plot with subtle sexuality and then overt, somewhat violent sexual encounters that leaves you unsure as to what kind of movie you're watching and where it's really going. You're essentially always waiting for the other shoe to drop and when it finally does, it fucking clobbers you. The movie suddenly turns into an absolute bloodbath, quite literally, and the gore and depravity that spins us into our final scene is horror movie work at its finest. I wasn't the biggest fan of Cold Fish while watching it, mostly because it seemed to never end, but the last 40 minutes combined with a lot of reflection and afterthought I would have to say Bloody Disgusting Selects has once again offered up a surreal and quality horror movie.
Genre: Zombie Director: Bob Clark Country: USA Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
Deathdream (also known as Dead of Night) was an interesting movie, if not a little vague and corny. It's got a great 70's feel, exasperated acting, ominous music, awesome outfits, and ridiculous characters. It's not exactly a zombie movie but it's not not a zombie movie. In fact, what is wrong with the boy goes unexplained and unexplored and instead we just watch him slip slowly into insanity while he craves blood and kills things. The ending is pretty great and is probably what makes the movie not completely disposable.
Genre: Creature Feature, Virus Director: David Morlet Country: France Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
Whoever wrote the synopsis for the movie Mutants is taking advantage of the audience's love of zombies by leading us to believe that this movie is in fact about zombies. I suppose it's shame on me, seeing as the title for this movie is Mutants and not Zombies, but hey, the movie title Zombies is already taken so maybe they were just trying to be clever? Yeah, not so much. Zombies are typically people who die and are reanimated either by supernatural forces or by a virus. They usually no longer have their wits about them and crave human meatloaf. Zombies are not people who are bitten and infected with a virus, turn into cannibals (without dying), and grow extra teeth and loose their hair and develop extra nostrils. Those, I guess, are mutants. This is all just to say, if my expectation were set a little more clearly I think I would have enjoyed Mutants more. But instead of a fast paced exciting zombie movie I got a slow, bleak, stark and frustrating movie about a man slowly turning into a mutant while his girlfriend waits for him to do so. The end picked up the pace and there was fighting and running and gore galore. All in all Mutants was an artfully done horror flick with beautiful scenery, solid actors, and some really gross moments. Recommended for any fan of the genre, just know what you're in for beforehand.
Genre: Supernatural Director: Jesse Holland, Andy Mitton Country: USA Series: Bloody Disgusting Selects Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
YellowBrickRoad is a fragile horror movie built with a foundation of tension, confusion, disbelief and despair. The less you know about this movie going in, the more chance you’ll have to truly be affected by the intended experience of the film. And the experience is what makes this little indie horror movie such a gem. Don’t expect shocks and gore, and don’t anticipate brilliance. Instead just sit back and allow the movie to take you on a journey that will hopefully worm its way into your brain so that for days after you sometimes find yourself still there. A riveting and chilling movie with stark imagery and a handful of gruesome moments, this movie kept me waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it did I was totally confused but satisfied by its complete weirdness. It's slow going at times and at one point I felt like I'd been watching it forever. But if you can muster the patience you will be rewarded with a unique and odd horror flick. Highly recommended.
