Horror Movie Review: Scourge (2008)

Overall: D

Acting: C

Writing: D

Story: D

Technical aspects: C

Effects: D

IMDB

Directed by:

Jonas Quastel

Starring:

Russell Ferrier

Robyn Ledoux

Nic Rhind

Particular trigger warnings: nothing I can really remember

Passes the Bechdel test: also not that I remember

            This whole thing has a “the worst of Syfy original movie” all over it. But maybe I just have a difficult time taking “Ultimate Evil” seriously when it expresses itself in belches and farts. Also, this is a bit more of a synopsis than a summary, because you should not feel at all compelled to watch this movie, so I feel no guilt in telling you exactly why it sucks.

            So basically the plot is that an ancient evil called “The Scourge” was locked up by priests a long time ago in the foundation of a church. In a fire, said evil is released, and possesses a fireman. We get some gross-out scenes as the young fireman suddenly begins eating everything he can – sticks of butter, cartons of expired milk, mayonnaise, etc. He goes to shower, starts belching and gurgling, and acting somewhat zombie-ish.

            Meanwhile, our main character Jesse (Robyn Ledoux) runs into our other main character Scott (Nic Rhind.) Apparently, the two were friends at once point, but Scott got in trouble with the law and with Jesse’s uncle, the sheriff. He was in prison for a while, but has since gotten out, and he was of course never a bad guy, but had simply taken the fall for someone else, now just wants to move on, etc. Jesse is a bit interested in him, but Scott already has a girlfriend.

            Later, the zombie-ish belching firefighter shows up at Scott’s hockey game and causes some chaos. He ends up wandering into the locker room, where Scott’s girlfriend joins him. Naturally she’s been cheating on Scott with the fireman, and is planning on a quicky in the locker room. (At her boyfriend’s hockey game… obviously.) So the fireman kneels down, and belches up a badly CGI’d evil squid bug thing that invades her bellybutton and possesses her. She goes through the same zombie-changes as the fireman, but presumably because she’s a hot chick there’s less eating and belching.

            She winds up going to a club and passing on the evil infection thing to a new guy in the bathroom. Scott has followed her, and he confronts her just in time to watch her spontaneously hemorrhage and die. Scott is assumed to have killed her, and since the fireman’s body turned up at his hockey match, the sheriff is after him.

            Blah blah, they figure out how to kill it, though I’m not sure why they need to do what they do (it involves electricity and alcohol.) Meanwhile the evil keeps getting passed from person to person, before it eventually gets passed to an obese photographer guy. Jesse sets out to seduce him and bring him back to a motel room where she and Scott can try to get the evil out of him. They attempt this, and it jumps to Scott. And because he’s the hero, he’s immediately aware of this, and rather than making him do unsexy things like belch and ravenously eat, he just tries to kill Jesse.

            A secret order priest type shows up at the end to conquer the evil and save Scott and Jesse, and the obese photographer is taken to the hospital. The priest man explains that they’ve gotten rid of most of the Scourge, but he’s always hunting down any remaining ones.

            Then insert one of those stupid “the end… or is it?” endings, letting us know that the horror isn’t really over!

            What a stupid movie. The acting is average, and is probably what can be complained about least. And don’t get me wrong, because the acting isn’t good. It’s just not as bad as everything else. The story itself isn’t unforgiveably awful, the idea of an ancient evil parasite jumping host to host, but it’s hard to find a way it could be more poorly executed. The most obvious thing wrong is the belching, farting, zombie-hosts. It’s just stupid. It’s consistently stupid. And if this were supposed to be a horror-comedy or a parody of some kind, it’d still be stupid, but understandable. But no, it’s played straight. And it’s clear that the writers realize that it’s stupid, as the hot girl that gets possessed and the hero both are spared the gross/stupid bits of the possession. The effects look awful – it’s bad CGI, and when it’s bad, it’s bad. And a maybe petty complaint when there’s already so much wrong – but the bellybutton is not an orifice! It doesn’t stretch to accommodate something entering the body through it and then return to normal immediately! It’s just… stupid.

            There’s really no serious gore in their violence, minus the girl bleeding out in once scene and the pretty non-explicit electrocuting of the guy in an attempt to draw out the Scourge. There’s only moderate sexuality when a girl showers and the fact that the parasite being passed from mouth to belly button usually is accomplished by implying oral sex is going to happen. It gets an R rating mostly due to language, meaning the younger pre-teen male audience that would probably appreciate the bodily humor couldn’t actually see it. It seems like it would have been better cut to PG or PG-13 and left to cable television and late night timeslots on SyFy, because it certainly didn’t deserve a DVD release.

Horror Movie Review: Hyenas (2011)

Overall: C-

Acting: C

Writing: D

Story: C-

Technical aspects: C

Effects: D

IMDB

Directed by:

Eric Weston

Starring:

Costas Mandylor

Meshach Taylor

Joshua Alba

Christina Murphy

Derrick Kosinski

Andrew James Allen

Christa Campbell

Particular trigger warnings: Mexican racial slurs

Passes the Bechdel test? Yes, but barely.

If you are hoping for a horror film that brings mostly unintentional comedy, this could be the choice for you. Because this was bad, but mostly silly-bad, with much of the camp probably deliberate.

Hyenas has several plot threads going, none of them especially compelling. First we have the story of Gannon (Costas Mandylor), a man whose wife and infant child were killed by a breed of “were-hyenas” brought to North America by slave traders. He’s initially unbelieving when it comes to the existence of these werehyenas, but a man named “Crazy Briggs” (Meshach Taylor), a hunter of these creatures, convinces him. Crazy Briggs takes Gannon on as something of an apprentice hunter.

Then suddenly that part of the movie just kind of… ends for a while, and we’re taken to an apparent gang war in the local small town between the obnoxious white kids and the Hispanic kids. Bobby (Derrick Kosinski) leads the white kids against Marco (Joshua Alba), the leader of the Hispanic kids. Complicating things, Bobby is hazing/recruiting Jasper (Andrew James Allen), whose older sister Gina (Christina Murphy) is dating Marco. Drama!

Meanwhile, it’s revealed that the leader of the matriarchal hyena clan is dying, and so the disparate packs are meeting in the mines outside the town to pick a new leader. Wilda (Christa Campbell) seems poised to take over.

Back with Gannon, they rescue a girl from some of the hyenas, leading to an incredibly contrived plot twist that I doubt anyone was fooled by if they were paying any attention.

Eventually the plots converge somewhat by coincidence, as Gannon and Crazy Briggs head to the caves to kill Wilda and the rest, while Bobby and Marco go there to fight out their issues, and Gina follows them in order to stop them.

[Spoilers] There’s a silly action-y ending, that again I doubt will come as much of a surprise to anyone: Bobby and Marco are suddenly friends, most of the good guys escape (minus a dramatic self-sacrifice,) and most of the bad guys get blown up. [End spoilers.]

This movie is just so damn silly. It’s often entertainingly so, but much of the badness also comes just from sloppy writing and inconsistencies. I joked that when it cut to a scene about the white kids/Mexican kids’ rivalry that they’d never be referred to again and that they would have nothing to do with the rest of the film… and I wasn’t really that far off. Most of the movie seems to be about the struggle Gina has with her brother being drafted into the white kids’ gang, and yet that’s ultimately inconsequential to the rest of the film and the hyena plot. It causes some additional tension between Bobby and Marco, but it was established that they hated each other whether Jasper and Gina were in the picture or not. Eventually, despite taking up a whole lot of screen time in the first half, Jasper’s character is pretty much dropped from the movie and has nothing to do with the resolution. I kept expecting the douchey white kid gang to have something to do with the hyenas, but there was no connection between the pack and either gang; the storylines only cross by coincidence when the characters wind up in the same place, rendering the “dramatic” gang plotline absolutely unnecessary.

There are a lot of times where it seems like there were a few scenes missing or something, where there are unexplained character changes or passages of time. For instance, it seems that Gannon and Crazy Briggs are the only two people to know about the were-hyenas, but then at one point Gannon is getting a report from another hunter that was never mentioned or introduced. At another point there’s a brief bit of narration by Briggs that tells us how he started training Gannon (rather than showing us any of said training) but it’s unclear how much time has passed. We later find out that it was three years since Gannon’s family was killed, but nothing in the narration made it clear that we’d skipped so far ahead until he mentions it. Toward the very end, [spoilers,] Bobby and Marco are ready to kill each other, and yet thirty seconds later they decide they’re BFFs. Granted they were faced with a cave full of werehyenas, but it goes beyond temporary truce and into the unrealistic “now we’ve overcome our differences!” resolution. [End spoilers.]

The effects are laughable mixes of bad costuming and bad CG hyenas. The “transformations” prompted snorts and giggles. Of course, your experience may be helped or hindered by the fact that Wilda has to take off her clothes every time she’s going to transform (a trait not apparently shared by any of the not-as-hot-as-Christa Campbell-werehyenas.) The nudity is still relatively lacking (nipple-less boobs!) but hey, it’s there should that be a draw for you. (Though would people find her as hot if she, like real female hyenas, had basically a pseudo penis? Just wondering. Maybe she does; we don’t see it.)

If you’re a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, you may recognize most of the mythology about the hyenas as being very similar to what was mentioned in the episode “The Pack” from the first season, where Xander and some other kids were possessed by hyena spirits. And honestly, I think I’d rather watch that episode a few more times than this movie. Still, the film is entertaining and campy and easy to laugh at.

Horror Movie Quick Review: Shadow Puppets (2007)

Overall: C-

IMDB

Directed by:

Michael Winnick

Starring:

James Marsters

Tony Todd

Marc Winnick

Jolene Blalock

Shadow Puppets is the story of eight seemingly random people who wake up in an abandoned asylum, none of them with any memory of how they got there. As they meet up with each other, they begin to search for a way out. But there’s some kind of sentient shadow monster lurking, which is hunting them and picking them off. They find a machine apparently used in experiments on erasing memories, and they rightly figure that since the machine was used eight times, it must have been used on them. [Reasonably minor spoilers] But when they find a ninth stranger in a coma, they realize that one of them has not had their memories erased, and that person must be the one behind everything. And so the traitor in the group is discovered and begins trying to kill everyone. [End spoilers]

This movie suffered the most from having way too many characters introduced in way too short a period of time. And because they don’t learn their names until halfway or more through the film, I was just giving them insulting nicknames the entire film, because otherwise I had no way to tell who was who.

The story starts off somewhat intriguing, with the strangers in the asylum, wondering what their pasts hold and why the building seems abandoned… but as soon as the (poorly animated) Shadow shows up, it just gets somewhat… silly. Its presence is never really explained (or rather, the explanation makes no sense.) If the pseudo-monster had been removed in favor of focusing just on the idea of the science experiment on their memories, it would have been an improvement. And anyway, most of the characters get little individual screentime outside of our mains, so when they’re killed and in danger it didn’t resonate any with me.

There are also several small but silly inconsistencies (things as simple as the characters constantly complaining that they’re freezing, but never wrapping themselves in the sheets they all have from the beds they awoke in.)

The movie was okay, but it started far better than it finished, and had more than a few moments that were unintentionally funny out of sheer ridiculousness.

Horror Movie Review: The Tenement (2003)

Overall: D

Acting: D

Writing: D-

Story: D+

Technical aspects: D+

Effects: D

IMDB

Directed by:

Glen Baisley

Starring:

Joe Lauria

Michael Gingold

C. J. DiMarsico

John Studol

Mike Lane
Ed Shelinsky

Danielle Russo

Particular trigger warnings: sexual assault, animal cruelty, prostitution, hard drug use

Passes the Bechdel test? I don’t think so

I basically give a synopsis below, because it’s hard to pick apart otherwise. Beware of spoilers all the way through.

The Tenement is a series of four loosely related stories about different occupants of the same tenement house.

The movie starts with a man named Ethan (Pete Barker) speaking to the owner of the building (Jude Pucillo.) Ethan says that he used to live there forty years ago, and he wants to know if the new owner has seen the building do anything strange to the people living there. Ethan begins to reminisce about the time he lived there.

We suddenly cut to a scene of a girl being kidnapped and crucified as part of a cultic ritual, but we soon find out that this is just a crappy movie within our crappy movie, as this is part of Ethan’s memory. It’s 1980 and Ethan (Joe Lauria) lives in his apartment with his bedridden mother (Doreen Valdati) and spends his time either at work or at home watching horror films by director Winston Korman (Michael Gingold), whom he idolizes. Well, Korman is in town casting for a new film, and Ethan is paid to deliver black roses to him. He gets mistaken for a prospective actor, but when he can’t act and freezes up, Korman laughs at him and mocks him until he runs away. Ethan goes home, kills his cat, and then leaves his overbearing mother. He dresses all in black, and goes to Korman’s house. Korman is outside, doing all he possibly can to prove even further that he is a caricature of a douchebag and we Should Not Like Him. After an awkward chase scene, Ethan kills Korman with a shovel, dropping a black rose on the body, becoming the “black rose killer.”

            The second story happens in 1990, and focuses on a young mute girl (mute apparently due to something traumatic in her past, though this isn’t expanded on) named Sarah Weston (C.J. DiMarsico). She spends her time waltzing alone to music from her radio. A neighbor named Henry Wallace (John Studol) keeps watching her, prompting her parents to take her away on a vacation for a while. They leave her alone for a while, and Wallace breaks in and sexually assaults her. She fights back, but he keeps overpowering her. In the midst of the rape, he suddenly blacks out and appears to be hallucinating and recalling trauma from his own childhood. He wakes back up in the living room, with Sarah gone. He finds her in the bedroom, and approaches her, but she turns up her radio, he starts screaming and holding his head, and then he disappears. Later on, with the Weston family back at home, Sarah is seen dancing in her room, but the shadows and mirror show that she’s dancing with some sort of creature.

            The third story jumps forward nine years to 1999, and is about Jimmy (Mike Lane), who has begun attending a therapy group to help him deal with his relatively unspecified issues. He appears to mostly just be a shut-in. On his way home, he’s attacked by a wild animal (and by wild animal, I mean a husky that just kind of happily trotted behind him for about three seconds.) He’s bitten on the arm, and he slowly starts becoming convinced that he’s turning into a werewolf. He thinks the symptoms are obvious, though no one else sees the transformation. He kills his friendly neighbor who apparently had a thing for him, he kills a male prostitute, and then he kills a female dancer in a strip club. Here he’s apprehended, and sentenced to life in a mental hospital. But then he’s attacked by some apparently “real” werewolves, who want to kill him for bringing too much attention to them.

            The fourth story happens in 2000 and is about another serial killer (Ed Shelinsky) living in the tenement, who pretends to be a taxi driver to pick up women and then torture and murder them. We see him capture and kill a prostitute, and then go out “hunting” again. This time he picks up a girl (who I can’t remember being named, but I believe is being played by Danielle Russo.) She has him take her out to the place where Winston Korman, the horror director from before, used to film his movies. She has to give him directions, but she says she’ll just go in for a second to get money for the cab fare. When the taxi killer follows her in and attacks her, she says she “likes it rough” and attacks him back, saying it was obvious he wasn’t a real taxi driver because he didn’t know the place she wanted him to take her, and the two fight some more. Apparently they realize that they’re soul mates or something, and the two make out. Then we see that they’ve joined forces and are killing people together. Aww.

            The movie closes with the elderly Ethan and the owner discussing that they have seen the house do strange things to people. Ethan lays a black rose on a nearby bench. The owner (who by this point I was calling “goth Fabio”) confronts Simon (Chris Alo) the local pimp and drug dealer, telling him to stop hanging around and selling all he sells in front of the building. Simon pretty much blows him off before hallucinating madly about drug use and overdosing and what the fuck ever, while the owner stands nearby, leering at him, obviously the cause. The end.

This movie was pretty bad. One of the reviews on the case says that it “certainly shows an affinity for the genre” and we remarked that that seemed like a backhanded compliment. And that really feels like the nicest thing I can say about it, too. It’s clear that the makers really like horror films, and it seems like they probably even really enjoyed making this movie, but I certainly can’t say that it was very good. According to something else I found online, the director, Glen Baisley, was a sexploitation film director in the 60s and 70s, and then filmed porn for a while, before coming back to horror films, and I guess I wouldn’t have a hard time believing it. (And the “Walter Korman” film we get to see a brief snippet of during the first story is a perfect sexploitation/horror, to the point I wonder if it was a clip from something the director did in the past.)

My problems with the movie are varied. The acting was generally really substandard. Some actors were fine, but some side characters delivered their lines so badly it sounded like they were reading them off for the first time, and at other times it was obvious they couldn’t remember their lines correctly.

The stories themselves just weren’t that well-told in my opinion either. The first one, it sounds like all the dialogue between Ethan and his mother was lifted from Willard (which is a much better film.) They refuse to show the mother for a while, and I wondered if it was going for the Psycho-style twist, though apparently that was just a deliberate allusion. It reminded me more of Willard, anyway, down to the tone and pitch of the mother’s voice. Plus there were the weird dangling plot threads like Ethan's hallucination-girlfriend. The fourth story just bored me more than anything else; it was too bloodless to really be shocking the way it seemed to be aiming for, and it just managed to leave no real impression. The second and third had at least glimmers of interest for me. I want to know more about Sarah and the thing she was dancing with. Does she have strange powers? Is she allied to some kind of demon that killed her attacker? Is the creature a personification of the “monster” she killed? And the third story, while (probably deliberately) ridiculously silly, at least has a twist that could be interesting in a better film; the idea that someone who pretends to be some kind of monster is killed by the real thing.

As far as the anthology goes, judging from the title and the prologue/epilogue frame story, we’re apparently supposed to think that the building is somehow compelling people to become violent or is giving them delusions and apparently occasionally psychic powers. But without the occasional exterior shots of the tenement house, there’s nothing that tells me that these people supposedly live in the same building; none of them meet each other, there aren’t any other ties between the characters or stories (aside from Gordon Korman being mentioned in two stories, and Ethan being a character in one story and the frame,) there aren’t any other clues to the setting. There’s also never any reason given for why the building would have this effect on people. It really comes off as just being the most tenuous possible way to connect four ideas that couldn’t quite be films on their own. And despite all the stories being relatively short, averaging in the 20-30 minute range each, the film drags.

The entire time we’re skipping around from the 80s onward never felt convincing to me either – there was never anything that made me believe we’d changed time periods. Hairstyles, clothing, technology, etc. all remained so constant that it was hard to feel that this was somewhere in the past, or that years were passing between the stories. And Ethan, supposedly our “tie” between the past and the present of the building, appears to have aged about fifty years since 1980, so either their math is bad, or the frame story is set in the future.

The effects are nothing great. Fights don’t look at all convincing, with it often being incredibly obvious that there’s no force behind any of the blows. The movie doesn’t overly rely on gore effects and the like, which to me is a point in its favor, since the blood effects they have aren’t that good. Some of the scenes ended up prompting laughter when it wasn’t intentionally funny.

Pretty much everything from the acting to the effects to the scenarios just feel completely unconvincing. And allegedly this is part one of a trilogy… I’m not sure how to justify continuing this through two more films.

Horror Episode Review: The River, Episode 8

Episode 8: Row Row Row Your Boat

Overall: C+

Acting: C+

Writing: C

Story: C

Technical aspects: C+

Effects: B

IMDB

Directed by:

Gary Fleder

Starring:

Joe Anderson

Leslie Hope

Eloise Mumford

Paul Blackthorne

Daniel Zacapa

Pauline Gaitan

Thomas Kretschmann

Shaun Parkes

Bruce Greenwood

Scott Michael Foster

So. Yeah.

            Having found Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood), the crew of the Magus is finally heading for home, intending to leave the Boíuna (the bizarre portion of the river they’ve been on) far behind them. Clark (Paul Blackthorne) gets involved with doing some final interviews for the crew, and speaks about how he’ll edit the video together for his TV show once they get home. Emmet, while surprised that the Boíuna and the related supernatural entities saved his life, seems to feel his quest was a mistake. He believes that the paranormal events that occurred really were warnings that he should have heeded. Lena (Eloise Mumford) desperately wants to know how she’s connected to everything, with her suspicious birthmark, but Emmet tells her to forget it, that he was wrong in thinking that the two of them had some special destiny related to the place.

            While Lincoln (Joe Anderson) and Emmet converse on deck, someone fires a shot at Emmet, but misses and fatally wounds Lincoln. The crew is unsuccessful at finding out the culprit since many have motives; Clark is in love with Tess, Jonas (Scott Michael Foster) was abandoned by Emmet, Kurt (Thomas Kretschmann) was overheard planning to kill Emmet (though he insists he’d never have missed the shot), Lena’s father died because of Emmet’s quest…

            [Spoilers ahead!]

            Against Emmet’s wishes and the wishes of her own father, Jahel (Pauline Gaitan) involves Tess in a ritual to call Lincoln’s spirit back to his body. The ritual involves calling on the Boíuna, which is not only the stretch of river, but is also an entity that is “God of Demons,” to return Lincoln’s spirit. Initially it seems to work, and Lincoln awakes, and says it was Kurt who shot him. Kurt is locked away by the crew. But then when alone in the kitchen with Jonas, Lincoln reveals that he actually saw Jonas shoot him. Then Lincoln kills him with seemingly supernatural strength. An obviously not-himself Lincoln also confronts Kurt, speaking German, telling him that Kurt isn’t needed to protect The Source; Lincoln (or the thing in his body) is enough.

            Meanwhile, Emmet realizes that this can’t really be Lincoln; he’s too affectionate towards Emmet, when they haven’t been on good terms since Lincoln’s childhood. Emmet gets Lena to make Lincoln drink something, which sickens him and proves demonic possession.

            It turns out the Boíuna is also possessing his body, though Lincoln’s spirit is there as well. The demon taunts them, especially Emmet and his lack of knowledge about Lincoln, and assaults Lena, thwarting their attempts at an exorcism. Eventually they speak to Kurt, as he had his own reasons for being in the region. He tells them he won’t attack Emmet, and then explains that a demonic possession can only be fought from within; Lincoln has to will the Boíuna out of his body. Speaking to Lincoln, they give him enough strength to take his body back.

            Afterwards, Emilio (Daniel Zacapa) speaks to Jahel, telling her why he’s tried to keep her from using her gifts. Her mother, who she believed to be dead, was driven mad by the voices of spirits demanding her help. He hasn’t wanted the same fate for Jahel.

            Soon they approach the end of the Boíuna, intending to rejoin the main Amazon, and a small village. But things aren’t where they’re supposed to be! And they lose the link to the satellite map! Sending up a sky camera, it’s revealed that the forest and river are literally changing in front of them, and it will not allow them to leave.

            [End of serious plot spoilers. But spoilers will continue in my reaction below.]

            So. This is how this season ends. The episode isn’t really all that bad. The demonic possession thing is at least fitting with the rest of the series. And quite honestly, the effects of Lincoln twisting around while possessed have been some of the better ones in my opinion. Characterizing the Boíuna as both an entity and a location simultaneously is cool; it strikes me as at least feeling rather authentic to the region, even if the specific entity in question isn’t a real figure. (And I do not know if it is or not.)

            However, for a show that has a questionable future, this was an immensely unsatisfying ending. Literally just about nothing has been wrapped up or given explanation. Leaving some things to interpretation or as mysteries is one thing, especially if there’s a definite future for the series to continue with, or if something being unexplained has some sort of point. But this is pretty much NOTHING, verging into the territory Lost infamously fell into with “we just didn’t plan this shit out!” Other than some random things like Clark doing final interviews, this didn’t in any way feel like a season finale. Not that I was expecting (or wanting!) it to end with them all surviving and making it home, but that this feels just like an episode from the middle of a story somewhere, with no real sense of closure whatsoever.

            A few of the things we’re left wondering about: What is with Lena’s birthmark, and the prophecy tied to it that Emmet believed in? What exactly is The Source? Why was Emmet’s life spared if the Boiuna won’t allow them to leave? Is there more explanation about the “angel-like” Zulo tribe? Why is Kurt there, and what is his connection to the area from before the series? What was with the research facility Mina had infiltrated, and how/why did they turn into zombies? Who locked the demon in the Magus, the one they found in the very first episode? If they never make it off the river, how are we viewing “found footage” from their tapes? And this is not an exhaustive list.

            In having none of these things explained, it feels like many of them had no purpose whatsoever. “The Source” was kind of downplayed here, with the Boíuna itself being the entity responsible for at least some of the paranormal things, contrasted to episode 6 when it was played up as what Emmet had devoted his life to finding. The symbol on the necklace Emmet gave to Lincoln, which is also Lena’s birthmark, which was also seen on the body of Zulo tribesman in the research facility… that and the supposed prophecy have never been relevant to the plot! So why were they in there at all? Why have a forced camera footage feel, which was often a detriment, feeling contrived and awkward, without having any plausible way for the “found footage” to actually be found?

            Now, the series isn’t officially cancelled. But it isn’t renewed officially yet, either. Viewership has been pretty low and declining, which I can’t really fault audiences for considering how disappointing most of the episodes have been. Apparently there are talks to move the show to Netflix’s streaming service for future episodes/seasons. And there’s no guarantee that even if someone makes more of the series that it’ll follow the same characters.

            If this episode came in the middle somewhere, this would probably be one of my favorites. The demonic possession was fitting for the series, and was well handled. I liked Joe Anderson’s acting between Lincoln as normal and in his possessed state – it was subtle enough until the attempted exorcisms that it didn’t seem ridiculous, but the difference was obvious. The rest of the acting was competent, though not perfect. Like I said, the effects were pretty good this time, and the story was engaging. If this had been “just another episode” it’d be a solid B. But as it is, it’s such an unsatisfying ending to the season (and maybe the series) that I have to knock it down just a bit. C+ still seems generous for how unfulfilling it was as a finale, but I did enjoy the episode, and don’t want to let feelings on the series as a whole color that too much.

            Because as a whole, the series disappointed me. The quality was very all over the place, straying from subtlety to over the top ridiculousness in almost every aspect, from acting to writing to effects to story. Some of the characters are intriguing; I’ve grown to like Kurt quite a bit, and Jahel is great when she gets to do something besides provide plot-relevant exposition. The understated drama and implication that Emmet focused too much on Lena because of her birthmark, and that being the cause for the emotional distance between him and Lincoln had potential, especially if Lena was going to have some type of special “destiny” that Lincoln didn’t. But the lack of consistency, not to mention dangling plot threads, is a huge problem for the series. While my individual episode grades have ranged from average (C), to slightly above average (B-), the series as a whole would probably wind up more with a C-. Not quite bad enough for a D, but still below average, because of all that inconsistency and wasted potential.

            Additionally, this feels like exactly the wrong length for this story to be. It could have been a decent movie, and could have lost a lot of the irrelevant filler that so many earlier episodes contained. Or it could have been a better long-form series, where episodes focusing on single legends, areas, or creatures would be more appropriate, and episodes could be devoted to character development without sacrificing so much of a limited amount of time. Of course, there’s the possibility that the series will continue and will wrap up all the loose ends I’m complaining about. But there’s also a possibility that it will do no such thing. And even if it does come back to wrap things up and maybe even gain some consistency… will enough people still care?

Horror Episode Review: The River, Episode 7

Episode 7: The Experiment

Overall: C

Acting: B

Writing: C

Story: C

Technical aspects: C

Effects: C

IMDB

Directed by:

Kenneth Fink

Starring:

Joe Anderson

Leslie Hope

Eloise Mumford

Paul Blackthorne

Daniel Zacapa

Pauline Gaitan

Thomas Kretschmann

Shaun Parkes

Bruce Greenwood

Scott Michael Foster

Katie Featherston

[Spoilers pretty much the whole damn time, this time.]

Zombies. We went with zombies? Really?

Picking up directly after the end of episode 6, the crew has arrived at the outpost where they hope to find Emmet (Bruce Greenwood). But it appears to be entirely deserted, and oddly like the abandonment happened very suddenly. Wandering around, they discover that this was a research facility, and Lincoln (Joe Anderson) speculates that they were trying to find a cure for cancer. Much of their experimentation appears to have been unethical, killing and studying the Zulo tribe members, who supposedly have nearly impossible good health. The crew then comes across a freezer filled with decaying human bodies, though Emmet is not among them.

Kurt (Thomas Kretschmann) goes off alone, followed by A.J. (Shaun Parkes). He finds a photo of himself and a woman revealed to have been his fiancée. He also finds Rabbit (Katie Featherston), the camerawoman who abandoned Emmet in the jungle.

She reveals that Emmet was in the facility, and though he was still very sick he’d been recovering. But then the crew is attacked by some of the inhabitants of the facility, who have somehow been thrown into a cannibalistic fury. Yep. We’ve got zombies. The zombie-fication is courtesy of Kurt’s fiancée, Mina (Lili Bordán), who was also on a security mission. She interrupted the scientists dissecting one of the Zulo tribesmen, telling them that their research would never leave. Shooting them, she apparently released some type of… virus? energy? or something that has turned them into zombies. She, too, has been infected.

Tess (Leslie Hope) nearly gives up hope of finding Emmet, though there’ve been clues that he survived. Then they spot a dragonfly, and recognize it as a symbol that’s always led them closer to finding him. Ultimately, they discover him in some type of cocoon, barely alive. Frantically trying to escape from the cannibalistic doctors and soldiers of the base, they make it back to the Magus.

But some of the zombies have followed them, and attack. Rabbit is killed, Kurt has to shoot Mina, and Tess is nearly killed. But at the last moment, she is saved by Emmet, who is out of his coma.

Well, again, at least this episode has plot. But seriously, I just can’t get past the fact that we brought zombies into it. I love zombies, don’t get me wrong. But they’re an obvious trend as far as horror and general pop culture goes, and this just feels… weird and out of place. The horror prior to this may not have been super successful in any consistent way, but focusing on supposed regional legends and creepy things at least gave the show some distinction. Or having the ghost ship, which at least made sense as a plot having to do with being trapped on the river. But zombies have nothing to do with anything except as a “hey, this is a trendy thing right now.” I suppose it could be making a point about the excesses of science trying to understand or replicate or thwart nature, and how it will end in disaster… but isn’t that more or less all the other zombie movies out there?

Leaving that aside, I guess it was an okay episode. The found footage style is starting to feel extra contrived, though, in some regards. Not that it was seamless and totally believable before. But just happening to find the computer in the facility, that just happens to contain the footage of Mina shooting the scientists… way too convenient. Similarly, deliberately not showing the scary things gets frustrating, too. Like supposedly the cameraman is disgusted so we don’t get to see more than a tiny glimpse of the bodies in the freezer. It’s not necessarily unrealistic, but it still feels fake. The “less is more” theory of horror doesn’t always work in my opinion. Sometimes it’s a good way to build tension, but sometimes when it comes to filming it just seems like a way to mask laziness and bad effects.

I’m liking the development we got for Kurt, even though it doesn’t explain all of his creepy behavior throughout the series, or why he (and Mina?) were on the mission that he reveals to A.J. [Extra heavy spoilers]: He reveals he intends to kill Emmet, probably to “protect the Source” as we’ve gotten cryptic hints about. And since he seemed to know that Mina would be in the outpost, they may have both been on complementary missions to do so. [End of spoilers.] I like Kurt’s willingness to discuss his secret plans and mission in German, since no one around understands him.

The cocoon thing with Emmet was… weird. It was intercut with a clip from his nature show about how some butterflies and dragonflies will essentially retreat into a pupa-like state in order to wait out hardship, sometimes for months or years. (While I know of fish and frog species that do something similar by retreating to a near-coma until conditions improve, I didn’t actually know of any insects that do something like this. I don’t know if it’s actually a thing, or if the show is just making shit up. It’s disappointing if they’re just bullshitting, but I don’t have any knowledge either way.) This “older footage” comes with commentary from Emmet telling the audience to keep this in mind if they think they could improve upon nature… that nature always provides a way for creatures to survive. This seems like the contrast against the scientific disaster zombies, but… HUMANS DO NOT PUPATE and I just can’t quite get over that. I know it’s supposed to be a mystery and unexplained and such, but… nature doesn’t work that way.

We’ve got one episode left. I have no idea how this is all going to be resolved in any way that actually wraps it all up. And maybe it won’t be; the implication of the “this is the footage they left behind” taglines in the commercials is that none of the crew ever returns from the mission. There also seem to be plans for this to continue for more than just this mini-season, though whether it’ll be the same characters and goals, I don’t know. We shall see.

Horror Episode Review: The River, Episode 6

Episode 6: Doctor Emmet Cole

Overall: B-

Acting: B

Writing: C

Story: C+

Technical aspects: C

Effects: C+

IMDB

Directed by:

Michelle MacLaren

Starring:

Joe Anderson

Leslie Hope

Eloise Mumford

Paul Blackthorne

Daniel Zacapa

Pauline Gaitan

Thomas Kretschmann

Shaun Parkes

Bruce Greenwood

Scott Michael Foster

            After finding out from Lena’s father a possible location to find Emmet (Bruce Greenwood) the crew sets off. They find Sahte Falls, and some evidence that Emmet was there, including a pocketknife and a bag containing some of his tapes. Taking the tapes back to the Magus, they see the last leg of the journey Emmet embarked on.

            The tapes show him leaving Russ on the Magus, and setting off on a long trek on foot with two other crewmembers and his dog. He went on some type of spirit journey and found “them,” a tribe that he believes guards the Source that he hopes to find. Soon they encounter a threatening “spirit” (though upon viewing the tapes Jahel, returned to her role as mystical exposition provider, recognizes it as a demon,) that he insists is merely “testing them” to prove they are worthy, and that all the other unexplainable things they’ve encountered have also been tests. He apparently believes that The Source is some kind of cure for death, that it creates magic but that the spirits of the dead can be found there as well. (He hopes to find the friends and crew he’s lost, as well as his and Tess’ first child, a girl who died in infancy.) He believes that members of the Zulo [I don’t know how to transcribe the name he’s saying, so my apologies if that’s wrong] tribe are angels on earth, and that they guard the Source. Eventually one of his companions is killed, and the other runs away in the middle of the night with their provisions, leaving Emmet alone and still followed by the demon. He continues on foot, filming as he goes. He addresses some of the tapes to Lena, insisting she’s “marked” and special. But Emmet starts growing weaker and sicker, and eventually seems near-death. But just as the demon comes for him, members of the Zulo tribe find him and carry him to some type of (military?) outpost, leaving him outside the gates.

            Lena discovers the birthmark on the back of her neck, the mark that matches the necklace Emmet gave to Lincoln.

            The current crew goes to find the outpost and Emmet, but when they arrive, it appears deserted.

            The other plot-relevant bit we get, which is also a spoiler: Lena reveals to Jonas that she used a remote satellite link to set off the beacon that brought everyone to find Emmet. She wanted someone to try and find her father because she believed the crew was still alive. End spoiler.

            At least the plot is back? Finally there’s some forward progress, now that we’re two episodes away from the end. For that reason alone, I’m inclined to say this is one of the better episodes.

            There’s actual development of some of the characters; Lena, Tess and Lincoln, Emmet himself. There’s progress made toward understanding Emmet’s goal, and towards the current crew’s goal of finding him. It was pretty competently acted, or at least I remember fewer cringe-worthy moments.

            Still, it’s not managed to shake the problems with the series as a whole or the individual episodes. Some are just seeming plot holes, which could maybe be resolved in the future. If the Zulo took Emmet and his camera (still filming!) to the outpost, why did they then take the tapes back to where the crew found them? For that matter, why did they continue filming him, from multiple angles at points? How has Lena made it to her early/mid-twenties and not noticed a pretty major birthmark? Since the first episode featured them finding a demon sealed in a room on the Magus, when will that fit into the timeline? It didn’t appear to have happened yet at the point when Emmet leaves the Magus.

            Some issues are with the writing and story, like why there are typical Judeo-Christian angels (basically winged humans) found in the middle of the Amazon? (And yes, the people don’t appear with wings, but Emmet tells us they scar their backs “as if removing wings.”) It just feels like it’s largely about moving Euro-centric mythology into an exotic location, which feels… shallow at best, and shittily appropriative more likely.

            It also felt like the horror was absent from this episode. Emmet was running away from a demon, but minus one shot of the demon having skinned a monkey to threaten them, and the largely uncharacterized companion being killed, there wasn’t anything “scary” that happened. There’s the more “mundane” horror of being alone and sick in the jungle, too far out to get help, but that’s a very different kind of horror than the supernatural or paranormal feel that the show had up until this point.

            Basically, I am glad to see a return of the plot, and it’s reignited some of my interest in the eventual resolution. But at the same time, it still fails to really pull together as a whole. Plus that eventual resolution feels increasingly like it’ll probably be very anti-climactic.

Horror Episode Review: The River, Episode 3

Episode 3: Los Ciegos

Overall: C

Acting: C

Writing: C-

Story: C

Technical aspects: B

Effects: C+

IMDB

Directed by:

Michael Katleman

Starring:

Joe Anderson

Leslie Hope

Eloise Mumford

Paul Blackthorne

Daniel Zacapa

Pauline Gaitan

Thomas Kretschmann

Shaun Parkes

Bruce Greenwood

In Episode 3, the crew is still seeking to rescue Emmet Cole. They hope that they have some kind of new lead, and go into the jungle. Unfortunately, when they stop for the night, it becomes clear that something is following them. Jahel, who has the most knowledge of the superstitions and legends of the area, believes that they’re being followed by the Morcego, a semi-paranormal/semi-real tribe that will judge whether they are worthy of survival or not. (Since it’s this show, of course she’s right.) After spending the night in the jungle, one by one they start to go blind. Seeking answers on the boat, they find out that it’s probably a poison, which has an antidote, if they can find the right tree. The few non-blinded members set off to seek out the antidote. Meanwhile, everyone on the boat has gone blind, including Lincoln, who is trying to tend a very severe wound of Clark’s. And of course the Morcego are on the ship as well, threatening to kill them. And meanwhile on the expedition off-boat, the cameraman A.J. is the only one who can still see, but he plans on abandoning the others. Ultimately he finds the antidote, though he has to face what turns out to, of course, be his most paralyzing fear in order to do so.

Spoilers for the episode: seriously, this crappy ending bugs the hell out of me. Simultaneously A.J. and Clark do something self-sacrificing. Cool. And this means that the Morcego decide to let them live, going so far as to actually save A.J. from death. But… really. It’s just so… cliché, yes? The idea that “oh, we’re so doomed, oh God, what will we do? We’re all going to die, because we’re being judged” but then oh, someone is willing to be a martyr, so everything is okay again, because of the goodness of the human spirit. It’s just so obvious and such an overplayed trope that I couldn’t take it seriously. End of the most serious spoilers.

Otherwise the episode is all right. I liked the development A.J. got as a character, since we didn’t see much of him in the first two episodes. Enough new hints were placed for some of the ongoing plot threads to keep it interesting. The Morcego were pretty creepy looking, though they held to the idea that “the less you see the scarier it is” for most of the episode. Once you do get a good look at them, they’re plenty freaky, but kinda in the same way the dolls in episode 2 were. Like it’s just so obviously done specifically TO be creepy, that it doesn’t feel surprising or real. I know that horror obviously has the aim to be horrifying, but something about this just feels like they’re doing it wrong. I’m not sure I can explain what I mean all that well... But in my opinion (for the kind of horror this seems to want to be,) doing it right would be a good atmospheric horror, where it’s unsettling and creepy and the horror serves to further the story. Where ultimately, the story is most important, it just happens to have a bunch of creepy happening, too. And this feels more like they just wrote a story with the intent of tying various creepy things together, so they can point and go “hey, it’s horror!”

I’ve heard a lot of “OH GOD, THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER PUT ON TELEVISION” opinions, and I think that’s kind of an exaggeration. It’s still entertaining enough and has a few legitimately creepy moments, but it’s also kind of underwhelming. Probably especially so if you’ve seen a lot of horror things in the past. My opinion hasn’t changed much since the first couple episodes. I’m still watching, and still want to see more, but this episode definitely felt weaker than the first two, and that’s not what I hope for out of a short series.

Horror Movie Reviews: House of Fears (2007)

Overall: C

Acting: C

Writing: C

Story: C

Technical aspects: C

Effects: C+

IMDB

Directed by:

Ryan Little

Starring:

Corri English

Sandra McCoy

Michael J. Pagan

Corey Sevier

Alice Greczyn

Eliot Benjamin

The best way to describe this movie is probably just “average.” It’s a pretty basic curses-killing-teens-type movie. We start off in Africa, where a woman is apparently intending to make a purchase from an archaeological dig. They arrive, her guide discovers that everyone has been killed, she grabs the Mysterious Evil Statue they unearthed, and in the interest of getting out, the guide says she can keep it.

Then back in America, we see a security guard doing a patrol of “The House of Fears”, a haunted house attraction. His dog companion freaks out about something, and they go to investigate. Of course, it’s the Mysterious Evil Statue, which proceeds to cause the dog to attack him.

Meanwhile, six high school kids are at a party dealing with some stock teenage drama. Hailey (Sandra McCoy) is angry that her father has remarried and hates her new stepsister Samantha (Corri English,) and is interested in Carter (Corey Sevier) who only has an on-and-off relationship with her, and… oh man, it is so hard to care much about any of these people and their stock teenage drama… But okay, Carter’s friend Zane (Eliot Benjamin) is into a girl named Candice (Alice Greczyn) and intends to invite her to the haunted house where he works. But she only wants to go with her boyfriend Devon (Michael J. Pagan.) (Can’t keep all the characters straight? That’s okay, most of the audience can’t either!)

Well, the six of them sneak into “House of Fears” where Zane works, and start their way through the “nine fears” that the house is supposedly built around – things like ghosts, death, spiders, the dark, etc. I’ll admit that the house itself looks pretty cool – it’s a haunted house I’d probably enjoy going through in real life.

But of course, because it’s a horror movie, the Mysterious Evil Statue exerts its power to literally bring individual’s worst fears to life, and starts killing off the teens one by one, as they’re forced to go progressively deeper into the house in hopes of escape.

It’s really hard to say anything about the movie except that it is just so painfully average. It isn’t bad, but it’s not especially good either. The acting is nothing special, but it’s all right. The story itself is basic, and it works to the extent that it has to. It’s a silly premise for sure, but doesn't require much more suspension of disbelief than half the horror films out there. The setting is nice enough, and like I said above, I can see this haunted house being fun to go through. But watching other people go through it? Eh, not as exciting, even if we do get to watch them die.

The effects are pretty good; again not spectacular, but not relying solely on CGI. That’s what pushes the effects category into C+ territory for me - I have pretty low tolerance for bad computer generated effects, but I love seeing more “traditional” effects with props and makeup and the like. 

It’s lacking in the sexuality and gore that a lot of teen scream type movies have, which may be either a deterrent or a draw depending on your position.

I can say that this could be a fun movie to watch around Halloween or with a group of friends, but it certainly isn’t particularly stand-out.

Horror Movie Reviews: The Descent Part 2 (2009)

Overall: C

Acting: B

Writing: C

Story: C

Technical aspects: B

Effects: B-

IMDB

Directed by:

Jon Harris

Starring:

Shauna Macdonald

Gavan O’Herlihy

Natalie Jackson Mendoza

Krysten Cummings

Particular trigger warnings: none I recall

Passes the Bechdel test? Yes.

This movie felt pretty “meh” to me. In all honesty, I was pretty bored through most of it.

            The Descent Part 2 is a sequel to the 2005 film The Descent. HEAVY SPOILERS FOR THE DESCENT FOLLOW: The basic plot of the first film is that six friends (all female) go on a caving trip together in the Appalachian mountains. There’s a cave-in, trapping them in the unexplored cave system where there’s no hope of rescue. Turns out that the cave system is occupied by a humanoid species referred to as “crawlers” who violently kill the girls one by one. Finally, two girls remain, Juno and Sarah. Some drama has happened, with Juno being responsible for one of the other girls’ deaths, plus being the one at fault for tricking them into going to an unexplored cave system, and it’s also been revealed that Juno had an affair with Sarah’s late husband, so Sarah attacks and wounds her and leaves. It’s implied that Juno dies off-camera, with an abruptly silenced scream, and we see Sarah escape. But then her escape is revealed to have been a hallucination, and the movie ends with her sitting oblivious below ground and the crawlers getting closer. I actually liked the first movie pretty well, and it's been on my re-watch list for some time.

            The sequel picks up with it being revealed that actually Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) has somehow made it out, and she stumbles into the road and is picked up by a motorist who takes her to a hospital. Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O’Herlihy) has the blood on her clothing tested. Upon finding that some of it belonged to Juno (Natalie Jackson Mendoza) he insists that Sarah take them back through the caves to find the other girls.

            The sheriff puts together a team consisting of himself, his deputy Elen Rios (Krysten Cummings), and three (pretty non-descript) “specialists” – Dan (Douglas Hodge), Greg (Joshua Dallas), and Cath (Anna Skellern). They go through a newly discovered entrance to the cave system through a mineshaft operated by a man named Ed Oswald (Michael J. Reynolds).

            Once down in the caves, Sarah has a flashback and strikes out at the others before fleeing. Sheriff Vaines chases after her, but encounters a crawler, which he fires at, and he causes a cave-in. Cath is separated from the rest. The three still together – Elen, Dan, and Greg – find a video camera from one of the girls in the first movie, and they see that the girls really were attacked by the crawler creatures. Then they themselves are attacked by crawlers, and are separated.

            Sarah and Elen meet up, and witness a crawler killing Dan. Cath and Greg reunite elsewhere and keep going, but are both eventually offed. Vaines is still going deeper into the caves, and he is almost killed before he is rescued by Juno, who somehow has survived, and in the few days since the previous movie has become particularly skilled in killing the crawlers. The four survivors meet up, and while Juno and Sarah start fighting, then they decide that maybe they should save it for later and just try to escape now. Juno says she can lead them to the exit, and Vaines handcuffs himself to Sarah so she can’t abandon them like he claims she did Juno. On their journey, he falls over a cliff, and Elen cuts off his hand letting him fall and die in order to save Sarah.

            Finally, the three remaining women are within reach of the exit, but as they try to sneak past a group of crawlers, Greg is revealed to be barely alive and he grabs Juno. She screams, he dies, the crawlers attack. Juno ends up wounded, and dies in Sarah’s arms. Elen and Sarah are horribly outnumbered, but Sarah sacrifices herself so Elen can escape.

            Elen gets out, but then Ed, the man who was operating the mineshaft elevator, attacks her and drags her back to be food for the crawlers. The movie ends with a crawler leaping at her.

            It’s hard to really pick out what exactly was BAD about this movie, except that I found it boring and it didn’t really hold my interest at all. I had to keep forcing myself to stay awake. The acting is all right, but the story was just dull. The three “specialist” characters felt unnecessary, and like they were only there for padding the length of the movie with their respective death scenes. I don’t have any lasting impression of their characters or any development they got, and can’t really think of anything that made them necessary to the story. I guess it’s better that this is called “part 2” rather than being billed as a real sequel. It seems to be trying to repeat the success of the first film by doing the same things, but that really is just more repetitive than anything else; predictable death scenes spaced out by boring stretches of travel devoid of tension because we’ve already been here and done this.

I also had a hard time getting past how clumsily it fits with the original. Both Juno and Sarah die in the end of the first movie, and it’s never explained how either of them actually escaped and survived. Despite the fact that Sarah was shown to be hallucinating images of her dead daughter, too far into the cave to possibly get out, while she was being surrounded by crawlers, she still managed to escape? Somehow, despite being horribly wounded and constantly hunted by creatures that hunt partially by scenting blood, Juno has survived for days and in that short time has become an expert at hunting and killing the crawlers? And she knows where the exit is, but hasn’t tried to get out herself? This didn’t feel well explained at all. (I realize that there were apparently alternate endings to the first film, and my review is based on the ending that I saw, which was the standard version on the DVD I watched.)

            The cinematography is good, and it feels dark and closed in like being in the caves. The effects weren’t bad, but the creature design of the crawlers was changed from the first movie. The change wasn’t good, in my opinion. The first movie had them looking like creepy, pale, slimy, eyeless things that had evolved underground… exactly what they were supposed to be. For the sequel, according to the designer, “Jon [the director] wanted them more viciously feral, inbred, scarred and deformed, with rows of sharklike teeth for ripping flesh.” The result to me looks… gargoyle-like. Less like a real species that could exist (and is therefore creepy or scary,) and more like a Halloween monster mask (which is not so creepy.) Their faces are wrinkled with broad noses and pointed ears. They have eyes and can clearly see. The wikipedia article on the first movie has a good comparison of the two designs, which I’ll copy-paste here: 

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent#Creature_design.)

            I would definitely recommend the first film (which wasn’t perfect, but probably would get a B+ from me) more than the second. If you really like the first one, and find yourself desperately wanting more, the second may provide that. But in my opinion it does so clumsily, and doesn’t add anything new to an interesting scenario.