Another boring Monday

January 19th, 2009 • chatter

I understand that today is a national holiday for most people, I know I loved it back in grade school. But honestly, today is just boring. We’re working and my girlfriend is swamped while I’m hardly doing anything at all. I’m reading RSS feeds for the most part, along with having a mild allergy attack. It just started to sprinkle and I’m just utterly bored today. Since I do not have class tonight, due to the holiday, I am set up to deal with this drear all day.

We saw My Bloody Valentine 3D last night and it was a real hoot. Granted, it wasn’t the best but it was exactly what it thought it was: cheesy. The over-the-top acting and deliberate accentuated action (done for 3D) was first class cheese. This movie didn’t take itself seriously at all, unlike Slaughter. I think more big budget flicks like this should be produced, not contrite garbage thinking it’s more than it really is. Take for instance Stay Alive from 2006. The premise was simple: somehow, a survival horror video game becomes real life and its players start to die. Overall, sounds pretty cheesy but it’s not. That movie was terrible and the acting was incredibly poorly done. It’s another case of a movie taking itself too seriously to function. But My Bloody Valentine 3D did not do this at all and that made it enjoyable. Sure, the plot was paper thin and you knew what was going to happen, it did so in a fun way. What American horror fans want is more stuff like this and movies that can really scare you. What we don’t want are very serious but bad movies and more badly done Asian remakes (The Ring 1 and 2, The Grudge 1 and 2, The Uninvited, Dark Water, Pulse, etc). I don’t have a problem with remakes usually but most of them completely miss the message of the original film and instead, shoot for the “jump” factor for scares.

I think since there’s no work to be done today, I’ll just continue watching Soul Eater or find something else to take my mind off things. I could go watch Anthony Bourdain in Egypt, I can only imagine the weird stuff he’d eat in their street markets.

It’s time for Horrorfest!

January 11th, 2009 • 3 comments chatter, movies

My favorite time of the year for movies, After Dark/Lionsgate Horrorfest. Albeit moved to January instead of the usual mid November showing, Horrorfest is here! It started yesterday but we couldn’t make it. Today was the airing of Slaughter. Unfortunately, the only thing that got slaughtered was my cash flow. This movie is a big budget horror flick that could’ve done so much but instead, decided to pander to predictability and transparency. The plot is ripped almost entirely from other movies, including After Dark’s own Lake Dead, which aired at last year’s Horrorfest. It’s a sad story about a backwoods/backwards/redneck family, crazy about incest and murder. And by sad, I don’t mean it’s a sob story, I mean it’s sad and hard to watch.

Unlike Lake Dead, the family aspect was practically unbelievable. The daughter, Lola, was supposed to be around 17 but looks like a dead ringer for a mid 20s girl (which Lucy Holt is). Her older brother in the movie, who I don’t even think was mentioned by name, had about two lines the whole time while her younger brother, Cort, ended up stealing the show. And her father, played by esteemed actor David Sterne, also barely spoke in the movie. Not a tight knit family at all, only Lola and Cort actually spoke to each other on screen. The major plot device for the family, and why what happens in the film happens, is almost blatantly spelled out for you around 30 minutes into the movie. That’s at least 20 or so minutes before it’s re-spelled out for you to realize what’s going on. If you see the movie, you’ll see what I mean. This whole movie was so one-dimensional. I’ve seen bad movies, I own bad movies, but this was about as bad as Screamplay from Troma, which is almost unwatchably bad. I found it hard to be drawn into the movie when I (and my girlfriend) knew what was coming. Almost How to Make a Horror Movie 101 predictable, the music certainly was no help. There’s no connection between the audience and the characters, the acting is just paper thin and the chemistry between Lola and Faith (the main protagonist) is almost non-existent as well. All of this is set on a farm on the outskirts of Atlanta (not that these farms actually exist), with cityscapes that look like European cities (because it is), and everyone drives cars with license plates from North Carolina. Maybe the director and producers thought no one would notice this. Are plates from Georgia harder to get than those from North Carolina? Literally every vehicle in the movie has the wrong plates. Or maybe Atlanta got relocated to North Carolina since I was last there in December.

Tomorrow is our other day to watch Horrorfest movies and I really hope they’re better than Slaughter. Last year’s biggest bust, for me, was Crazy 8s which at least had a discernible plot. Its plot may have been thin as well and very disconnected, but at least it had something to move the story along. Tonight’s movie was like watching a redneck movie train wreck in slow motion. Hopefully, things like Perkins 14, Autopsy, and The Broken can make up for it. I’ve got high hopes for Perkins 14 but after tonight, those hopes may be squashed.

If After Dark keeps putting out stuff like this, Horrorfest won’t last much longer. Which is sad given the very strong and entertaining round of movies they’ve had the last two years.