Lake Placid

Lake Placid
Starring: Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson
Directed by: Steve Miner

Style: Creature Feature
Blood and Guts: 2
Fright Factor: 2
Laugh Factor: 3
Weapons of choice: Firearms, biting
Overall rating: 3 out of 5

Lake houses are generally seen as peaceful places, especially if your lake is called Placid. However, if people suddenly start disappearing or showing up in pieces, that is usually a good sign to move to a city where all you have are lunatics and not giant savage beasts.

Alas, someone has to deal with those creatures once you are gone. That someone is Fish and Game officer Jack Wells (Pullman), sheriff Hank Keough (Gleeson), and paleontologist Kelly Scott (Fonda). Together they must find a way to deal with the giant crocodile, as neither lake nor land are safe from this hunter.

Overall, this film falls on the favorable side of the comedic horror line. There is enough of the bickering between the different leads and with an eccentric crocophile played by Oliver Platt to keep the movie clipping along. As for the horror aspect, there are never any truly suspenseful moments, but the movie can be forgiven for that as nothing ever feels really weak or out of place. The creature effects add a sense of realism to the movie, as the CGI blend they are using isn't half-bad. All too often a movie like this will put together a junk creature with bad special effects, but this film managed to get it right.

As for the violence, the film barely squeezed on an R rating. yes, there are a few mutilations, but most of it feels like something you would see on a late night movie on TV with a few extra seconds of gore added to tip the scales. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but the movie also doesn't have the suspense factor to back it up. All of the tense sequences feel tired, with other films doing it better.

It is hard to fault a film like this, as it delivers exactly what it promises up front: a well-paced, fun adventure with a giant killer crocodile. The reason this film isn't better is mostly because to never achieves anything beyond that good time. A movie like this that can provide a great time is what makes something into a cult classic. As it stands, Lake Placid doesn't have the snappy script or originality necessary to be one of those movies that everyone tells their friends about. It's fun, but don't expect much else.

Day of the Dead (2008)

DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)
Starring: Mena Suvari, Ving Rhames, Nick Cannon
Directed by: Steve Miner

Style: Zombie horror
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: Biting, firearms
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

Life is never easy in secluded towns in Colorado. The isolation is a highly desired trait when scientists look to build labs for controversial research, and there is much wildlife nearby prone to mutation from said experimentation. However, this movie decided to tackle the tried and true threat to humanity: zombie outbreak.

The story follows Sarah Bowman (Mena Suvari), a tough-as-rock corporal charged with quarantining her home town. Things go bad when her sick mother needs to be taken to the hospital, as she has a flu that seems to be afflicting most everyone in town. Soon, the hospital becomes a madhouse of zombies and she must fight their way to survival. Joining her are several disposable army faces, most notably Nick Cannon, and later on, her mopey brother and his girl, and together, they must find a way to escape the town and its hungry, hungry inhabitants.

My first problem with this movie is that it has nothing to do with the George Romero original, yet they claimed adaptation so that they could use the notable title to drum up an audience. As hip as this movie tries to pretend it is, they could have done better than just ripping off a title. In fact, the entire movie feels like a project that was abandoned and rushed to DVD release. Why else would you have B-list stars, the director of Lake Placid, and the writer of the Final Destination series dump this crud directly onto DVD?

Another issue is that the zombies are of the fast variety, so that "suspenseful" chase sequences can be added, but the movie fails to employ this as an interesting technique. Instead of making the zombies run at breakneck speed and with pure rage-filled intensity, they run like guys in makeup that are struggling to make it across the street. They even go so far as to occasionally crawl across the ceiling like spider monkeys. The person who made that decision should be forced to watch the zombie classics for 3 months to learn why that is ridiculous.

Acting-wise, Mena Suvari does her best to look tough but just never gets there. Ving Rhames shows up for 5 minutes to out-act the entire movie, much like Sid Haig in Night of the Living Dead 3D. However, the "Murder him please" award goes to Nick Cannon. It's not his fault. His dialog was written by someone with a random urban banter generator. It was like a Will Smith Character but written by the Waynes Brothers.

Overall, there are one or two interesting ideas in this movie, but they are never given time to develop, and the whole movie gives up on any semblance of plot and just pumps in more zombies. It becomes just a half-hearted attempt at a zombie movie, and in my book, any film that goes with digital blood shows any lack of commitment to quality.