Dead Silence

Dead Silence
Starring: Ryan Kwanten, Donnie Wahlberg, Amber Valletta, Bob Gunton
Directed by: James Wan

Style: Supernatural Killer
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 2
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: Ripping out tongues
Overall rating: 1 out of 5

Dolls are creepy. They look like people and have the horrible habit of coming to life and trying to murder us, skittering about like rats and occasionally giggling just to drive us up the wall. In the town of Ravens Fair, there used to be an old woman named Mary Shaw. She was a ventriloquist who was murdered by an angry mob over a boy disappearance. Now, her ghost inhabits her collection of puppets, and if you scream, she tears out your tongue and kills you. Now, Jamie (Kwanten) must find a way to stop her before everyone in the town ends up dead.

This movie should have been better. It had all the makings of a direct-to-DVD movie with a kick to it, with some decent actors, a creepy premise, and decent production values. However, everything goes out the window because the director doesn't know how to work with an art department. The entire film feels like it was run through the Sharpen feature on Photoshop, giving everything a little too much edge and distinction to it. Also, the color palate is way out of whack, with entire scenes drenched in blue filters and then cleared with wipes. The director of photography would go on to be the DP for I Know Who Killed Me, to give you an idea of the look to the film. The best horror films let subtle things creep into the audience's subconscious, allowing them to scare themselves before flipping the switch to make us all jump. This film climbs into a Mack truck, runs everyone down, then points at them while screaming, "Scary, huh?!"

The actors try their hardest to be good, but the director keeps avoiding the performances, instead choosing to focus on atmosphere and effects, leaving the audience with no reason to care about anything that is happening. There is a moment or two of general creepiness when we can see the evil spirit behind the doll, peering out with maniacal glee. Again, these moments are quickly rushed away to allow for chases and manic energy rather than creeping dread.

This film should be used in film classes as an example of how to take something good and instead focus on something crappy. You may get a thrill from this movie if your idea of horror is living dolls. Otherwise, the only thing besides the film that will be blue is you, realizing you actually paid to see this thing.

Fido

Fido
Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker, K'Sun Ray
Directed by: Andrew Currie

Style: Zombie Comedy
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 2
Laugh Factor: 3
Weapons of choice: Biting
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

Zombies are a plague upon the earth. All they long to do is feast upon the living and shamble about, moaning and decomposing. However, what if we could find a way to keep zombies from wanting to eat us and instead make them do our every wish? That would be ideal, right? There is no possible way that could backfire.

In Fido, radiation from space has caused the dead to rise from the grave in the 1950s/ Luckily, a company called Zomcom has found a way to collar the dead, thereby turning them into a harmless batch of slaves for humanity to exploit. Timmy (Ray) comes home to find his mother has bought the family a zombie which he names Fido (Connolly). However, Fido's collar isn't quite right, and soon he is killing those who threaten Timmy. As the bodies pile up, Timmy can't let Fido be found out, as Zomcom will destroy him, and gosh darn it, the killing isn't his fault.

Fido works on several levels. Firstly, you have a great zombie comedy that pokes a bit of fun at the typical zombie scenarios while combining them with old screwball comedies of errors. Second, you have the social satire aspect which is hinted at more than being overt, allowing the comedy to play out as it would rather than being bogged down by "symbolism" and "meaning." Finally, you have a great family movie that happens to involve a zombie and people beaing eaten alive.

Connolly makes this movie. His expressiveness as Fido allows for all of the scenes to have depth to them, and that investment into the characters is what stands out in this film. It's not your typical zombie comedy where it just makes fun of the stereotypes but never really has much substance to it. Following in the tradition of Romero's zombies, the film isn't a zombie movie. It is a social satire that happens to have zombies in it. Even better, the movie is fun, which is more than can be said about a lot of comedies recently.

At the end of the day, this film is not groundbreaking, nor is it the best movie you will see this year. However, it does deliver on its intended promise of entertainment with just a hint of social commentary to stick in the back of your head. If you are in the mood for something different, this could be what you didn't evn know you were looking for.

Quarantine

Quarantine
Starring: Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris, Jay Hernandez
Directed by: John Erick Dowdle

Style: Undead Plague
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 3
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: Biting
Overall rating: 3 out of 5

Reporters have an easy job. You go to a scene after everything bad has happened and tell people what happened. However, you could decide to tag along with people who handle terrible situations, thus putting yourself more in harm's way and ultimately tempting fate into showing you the error of your ways. Angela Vidal (Carpenter) chooses the latter, tagging along with the late night fire shift to a routine emergency call. However, things get ugly quickly when the medical call turns out to be a quarantined apartment building. Soon, the government won't let them out, and the infected won't let them live.

Quarantine is a remake of the Spanish film Rec, a film nobody has seen because the studio bought the distribution rights and kept it from hitting America until after their film came out. Therefore, I can't really compare this one to the original. However, despite having the possibility of having a very creepy atmosphere and enough scare tactics to take the audience on a thrill ride, Quarantine devolves into a pretty generic zombie picture once everything hits the fan for our characters.

The film does a good job of setting up our characters as actual people, with the first 20 minutes of the film being an introduction and lead up to them actually going to the apartment building. However, the movie never really does anything with those characters, save for Carpenter's reporter who has a few conflicts of morality throughout. Thus, instead of having a good build up, the film instead looks like it is stalling to fill out the movie to feature length, particularly because the film could have cut 10 minutes off of the end of the movie. I'm not spoiling anything by saying the last 10 minutes attempt to explain the disease long after it becomes pertinent to anyone, especially because the explanation is more of a half-explanation that doesn't connect to anyone we've really met.

The main problem with Quarantine is that it fails to uphold the basic necessities to make a movie scary. It makes attempts at building suspense when the characters are more likely to be extremely cautious and paranoid, leading them to do things that have the audience screaming "Stupid!" After a resident goes crazy and attacks people, there are still two more occasions when people approach residents with the exact same symptoms and try to carry them to help. Suspense is more effective when people are forced to deal with infected or when they do not know where the infected are. Once you introduce what happens, using that same scenario twice more is predictable. Also, several of the scenes are very reminiscent of 28 Weeks Later. Now, rage zombies can be used and still not be a rip-off, but there are a few very moments that seem pulled almost directly from it. Very little of this film feels new, and that hurts a film trying to scare you senseless.

Overall, this film had the potential of being as tense as High Tension or other classic white knucklers. While there are a few good moments, usually with the cameraman trying to creep quietly down the hall without knowing what is in the room, the film has too much that feels reused, and the last 10 minutes seem to take forever after the conclusion is foregone. Finally, spoiling with your trailer is unforgivable. This may be a good midnight movie good for a few cheap thrills, but it should have been so much better.

Chopping Mall

Chopping Mall
Starring: Kelli Maroney, Tony O'Dell, Russell Todd, and Karrie Emerson
Directed by: Jim Wynorski

Style: Killer Robots
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 3
Weapons of choice: Items found in a mall
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

If you are a teenager, your life revolves around the mall. Unfortunately, there are things outside The Steak Shack that could kill you. That's right: security robots. In yet another foolhardy move to trust robots with our safety, Park Plaza Mall installs high tech security with low tech lightning protection, leading to the robots chasing down teens who just want to sneak into the mall and party all night. The robots must be stopped to make the world safe again for trespassers of the world.

This movie falls into the classic conventions of 80s horror: teenagers threatened by things outside the realm of reality. It's not intended to have real fright connotations and instead is supposed to fall into the category of cheap thrills with some comedy to boot. The trouble with this formula is that a lot of the 80s horror films are interchangeable, distinguishing themselves more with their villain than with the movie itself. This movie is no exception, to the point that I remembered it for a long time as "that mall robot movie" before I learned it was called Chopping Mall.

A lot of this film will be forgotten, and the performances are passable but are nothing special. Where this film fails is that the death sequences aren't even that interesting. If you are going to forgo quality on everything else, you still need to have interesting death sequences. This movie tries a few things that fail to impress, leaving the audience to wonder why they didn't rent something better.

As a result of the generic tone of the film, I'm kind of left with little to say about this movie other than to call it run-of-the-mill late-night fare for television. If it's on and you're bored, you'll watch it. otherwise, no real reason to seek it out.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Starring: Nathan Baesel, Robert Englund, Angela Goethals, Kate Lang Johnson
Directed by: Scott Glosserman

Style: Mockumentary Slasher
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 2
Laugh Factor: 3
Weapons of choice: All sorts of pointy things
Overall rating: 5 out of 5

Everyone has a dream growing up. Some of us want to be astronauts. Some of us want to cure cancer. But for Leslie Vernon (Baesel), he wants to be remembered as the next great serial killer. He enlists the help of a college documentary crew to record the preparation for his rise as a serial killer, and even allows them to attend his night of carnage. However, lead reporter Taylor (Goethals) doesn't want to stand by while people die. Can she stop Leslie's quest for infamy, or will she be just another tally on his knife handle?

Every once in a while, a horror movie comes along that truly understands the horror movie experience. It understands that audiences usually have seen a number of the slasher films and have high expectations and standards for what constitutes a scary film. In this case, the film is about what goes into being the perfect horror villain. The first half of the movie is all about preparation and setting the stage for the night of carnage, and the film goes so far as to acknowledge its roots outright.

The selling point of this film is Nathan Baesel. He brings charisma and enough sly humor to the character that we overlook the fact that he is brutally murdering people. We sympathize with his quest for perfection, even if it is slaughter. There is one moment where Leslie is sitting in the dark waiting to begin, and he is so overjoyed that his plan is about to become reality. The humanity of that moment is heartfelt and genuine, and it is such a rarity among the horror genre.

The second half of the movie plays out the way any other slasher film would, except because we have such an attachment to both the killer and the film crew, their conflict carries us through to the end. We've already been told what will happen, and so when the crew interferes and changes the game plan, we are surprised anew. Even if those surprises still follow the clichè, they feel new to us because we have been guided the entire way.

Everything about this film shows much planning and forethought, as well as an understanding of how horror films function, and the result is one of the best horror films to come around in a few years.

The Strangers

The Strangers
Starring: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward
Directed by: Bryan Bertino

Style: Cat-and-mouse Slasher
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 3
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Knives, firearms
Overall rating: 3 out of 5

There will always be people who take joy in other people's fears. People who like to make others squirm for no other reason than it is different. These are the people that come knocking at 4 a.m. James (Speedman) and Kristen (Tyler) have traveled from a friend's wedding to James's family vacation home. James was recently shot down proposing to Kristen, so the entire evening is already in the trash. Then three assailants in masks begin to terrorize them, first just appearing and disappearing, and each encounter grows more menacing. Surrounded and trapped, James and Kristen must find a way to escape before it is too late.

This film has all of the elements necessary to be a very solid horror film. The director clearly knows how to utilize slow-burn horror where danger is left in clear view without anything happening, leaving the audience to squirm and anticipate. If the audience doesn't know what is going to happen, they work themselves up about it. There are several long shots of the intruders walking around the home, not even chasing the protagonists, and it is chilling to watch. The violence is kept to a minimum except for a few graphic events, to the point that a bit of editing could have taken this one to a PG-13 rating. As a result, the actors are left to convey the terror the characters are feeling, and they do an excellent job at that.

The problem with this film, however, is that the suspense soon becomes a one trick pony. You can only have the intruders menace the characters for so long before it becomes repetitive. An intruder sneaks up on a character, is within striking distance, and then vanishes when the character turns around. This happens constantly through the movie, and it soon becomes clear that the intruders are more interested in toying with them than actually inflicting harm on them. It is here that the movie tips its hand too soon. The moment you realize that there is no real danger until the movie moves into its end game, the malice dissipates. It starts to become a cut-and-dry stalker film, not helped by the fact that it starts to follow all the conventions of those films. Every foiled escape ends exactly how you would expect it to the moment they announce the plan. Every "twist" is an element seen in other horror movies from the 70s and 80s.

Finally, there is the ending. Without going into too many details, it can be said that if you have seen enough of these types of films, you will probably know what is going to happen. Sure, the movie never pretends to be anything other than what it is, but at the same time, any suspenseful horror film worth its salt will give you a payoff equal to the amount you have sweated away on the edge of your seat. Anything less is cheating, and this movie cheats. After the movie, I left thinking, "Well THAT just happened..." but there was little satisfaction in the experience.

In the end, the film has a great sense of style and suspense, but that only lasts as long as the menace does, and for this film, it runs about a half hour too long. If this had run as an hour long horror movie, it would have been great. Since it doesn't, I was left feeling that this film has been done many times before, and usually with more skill. See the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to see menace done right.

Timber Falls

Timber Falls
Starring: Josh Randall, Brianna Brown, Nick Searcy, Beth Broderick
Directed by: Tony Giglio

Style: Backwater kidnapping
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Double-bladed scythe, firearms
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

Mike (Randall) and Sheryl (Brown) are looking for a nice weekend getaway in the national park, free from all the craziness of the modern world. Instead, they find themselves victims of the crazy world of a fanatically religious couple living off the beaten path. Between the dark intentions of their captors and the deformed maniac that is the captors’ son, Mike and Sheryl can only hope to survive long enough to escape.

This film struggles throughout the story to engage the audience, and that is its biggest fault. The actors all appear to be trying their best, but there are a lot of moments that are very hollow and flat, particularly between Mike and Sheryl. As a result, there is never a strong, believable connection between them, so the rest of the plot that hinges around them drawing strength from one another to survive, is left out to dry. Other characters suffer too. At one point, it seems like the director is trying to make the point that not all country boys and actually malicious, but then it decides to portray its characters as that anyway.

The main antagonists all do well for themselves, but the story seems to be aiming for a much more deep-seated, psychological horror and ends up being too subtle with all of the events. In fact, the early scene where Mike and Sheryl are intimidated by some country boys coming back from a hunting trip has a greater sense of danger and malice than anything else that comes after it. As the movie progresses, it has to stretch more and more to even have a sense of danger conveyed, something that is not helped by the fact that Mike struts around like he knows he has a 95% chance of survival no matter what.

Not all of the movie is disappointing. The maniac son with the double-bladed sickle and some decent makeup effects feels at home to this style of film, though it is a shame that the movie instead tries to be something it isn’t by focusing on the kidnappers and not their homicidal kin. While it is noble to try other avenues of horror, one cannot get away with psychological horror without very strong characters and an excellent sense of atmosphere and timing, something this movie lacks. Nothing proves this more than the final shot of the film ripped off from a genre already suffering from cliches.

In the end, this movie suffers from being far too generic and dull. No matter how many seemingly new tricks it pulls out of its bag, it still feels like its clunking along thanks to a few wooden performances and a lack of decent story development. With a few revision drafts to refine the story down to something solid, this movie could have been decent. Instead, it feels too sloppy and falls to the wayside.

Mulberry Street

Mulberry Street
Starring: Laurel Astri, Kim Blair, Ron Brice, Bo Corre, Nick Damici
Directed by: Jim Mickle

Style: Creature feature
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: Biting, fists, baseball bats
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

New York just can't catch a break. However, it does catch a plague pretty well. This oft-besieged-in-movies city this time faces an outbreak of people turning into vicious rat creatures. One bite from an infected rat or ratbeast is enough to turn you, and the city soon finds itself in quarantined lock down. On Mulberry Street, tenants of an apartment building have to buckle down for survival while others caught outside struggle to make it back home.

One of my biggest problems with this film is that it takes a very interesting idea and slowly bogs it down with bad directing, uninteresting writing, and very rough cinematography. There are quite a few moments where scenes happen in darkness, making it very hard to discern what is going on. This can work, but the way it is utilized smacks of trying to hide incomplete make-up and blood effects. It seems cheap rather than effective. If you are going to do a close-up and point the camera directly at something happening, we need to be able to see what it is. Otherwise, insinuate and put it behind a table or in a long shot.

Meanwhile, all of the characters are incomplete. They show the beginnings of characterization but never really develop past the survival instinct and a few broad generalizations. There are some moments, but they are so fleeting that nothing sticks. Thus, when the story gets to the point when a well-liked character almost escapes only to be dragged backwards to his or her doom, the movie acts like the audience should care. There are several moments like that, when the directors seems to say, "Oh ho! I bet you didn't expect I'd kill THAT character," and instead the audience doesn't really care one way or the other.

The entire film feels like it was taken from a horror movie text book. The writers and director went down the check list of everything a creature movie should include, but they don't quite know how to utilize the convention. For example, a character is killed right at the beginning to introduce the danger. However, it is a character we see for literally 2 seconds before that, and it is in the middle of character introductions. You either start the movie with a death and then start the story, or you weave the death into the story. Don't just show a body in passing. Also, you can't use the technique of trying to be quiet only to make noise more than once or twice. Every character in this film seems clumsy because they always give away their position by knocking into something.

This movie has no drive to it, which means even the good aspects like the few make-up effects we can see or the occasional good chase sequence gets lost in a film that unforgivably drags along. In capable hands, this film could have been a slick little creature feature. Instead, it should be buried.

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.

The Ruins

THE RUINS
Starring: Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore, and Laura Ramsey
Directed by: Carter Smith

Style: Survival creature feature
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 3
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Vines, natives
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

You would think that, by now, college students on vacation would learn to never deviate off the beaten path to go sightseeing. However, the quartet of characters, accompanying a man they meet randomly at their hotel, do just that. Upon exploring this uncharted Mayan temple, they quickly discover that the natives will not let them leave. Trapped atop the pyramid with little hope of rescue, their lives are also in danger of falling victim to the temple's inhabitant: vines with a thirst for blood.

When I first saw the marketing campaign for this film, I dismissed it as a cheap horror offering hoping to make a quick buck. However, I learned that the source material, a novel of the same name, was considered absolutely frightening, and despite the uninspiring trailer, I decided to give the movie a try. In retrospect, I am glad I did, as this film is very slickly executed from beginning to end.

Considering the characters are trapped on top of the temple, occasionally venturing into the temple through a hole in its roof, the suspense factor is limited to a few key moments, though when they come they are well utilized. Instead, much of the film is driven by their struggle to escape. Tempers flair, and character is tested. Soon, their own will is as much their enemy as the vines. It is here that the acting talent of the cast shines. The audience can actually relate to everyone trapped in the situation, humanizing them rather than treating them as meat ready for slaughter.

The violence in the film can be a bit graphic at times, but it never feels excessive. Instead, it is directly tied to the horror of the situation, which is what differentiates this from the standard gore fest that sometimes passes for a horror film. The kill when the party first arrives is a bit much, but it serves more as a sign that everything has gone to pot in a split second. Overall, all of the effects feel natural rather than being the hack CGI effort the film could have become.

Overall, I really enjoyed how this movie toys with us as the audience. It uses some cliches, but uses them in such a way that it pushes all of our buttons and pulls us into the story. There are few answers about the reasons for the killer vines, but the movie is good enough that it doesn't matter. The events that happen to the characters take center stage, and their acting and commitment to the story are what holds our interest.