As much as I wanted to like the first movie, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The cover looked pretty cool, but a lack of story didn’t make up for a few cool death scenes. I was surprised to hear they were making a sequel, especially considering the main character died at the end of the first one. APPARENTLY HE DIDN’T! I read that Danielle Harris was involved in this one, and I wish I could say that would help me determine if it would be any good, but unfortunately, her involvement doesn’t guarantee quality as often as I wish it did. Furthermore, Brian Austin Green was in this one, and he fucks Megan Fox when he could be fucking…NOT Megan Fox, my confidence in him wasn’t very high. BUT HEY, FUCK IT, RAMPAIGE WAS GONE SO I WATCHED THIS PIECE OF SHIT.
Quit acting like you’ve never eaten a knife before.
The sequel started where the first movie left off, with that girl who use insane superglue on the killer’s face escaping, along with some other dude who helped her or something. Shortly after they leave, some weird squad of people, all dressed similarly to ChromeSkull, throw him in the back of a van and take off. Surgeons “repair” ChromeSkull’s face as best they can, but it still looks like shit. I guess ChromeSkull was some rich guy weirdo who had a whole team of people, including Brian Austin Green and Danielle Harris, helping guide him to kill people. I guess there are some characters that are taken hostage or something and someone is trying to escape or something, I don’t know, it doesn’t really fucking matter what happened. Well, except for the fact that Brian Austin Green’s character was helping design ChromeSkull’s weapons and shit, and got so into it that he shaved his head and got a tattoo in attempts of taking over the “ChromeSkull” position. The real ChromeSkull got all pissed and shit, so he killed Brian Austin Green. At the end of it all, ChromeSkull won the day and survived, I think, because I think something happened at the end where Danielle Harris used a computer? Or something? Fuck it, I don’t know what happened, and I don’t really care.
You really think Brian Austin Green used a bald cap for this movie? REALLY?! Surely Mr. Austin Green takes his acting roles seriously and spares no expense to get into character!
Despite obviously not giving a shit about a lot of things that happened in this movie, I liked it more than the original. This installment really amped up the kills, making them happen more often and in a more gruesome fashion. The plot of the “victims” or whoever it was that was captured wasn’t any more interesting than the characters in the first, but the whole backstory of ChromeSkull actually was kind of fun to watch. We didn’t get ALL the answers, of course, but a big thing missing from the first movie was how or why these victims were getting chosen. We got to learn how it was possible for him to accomplish this stuff and made us realize he was just a rich psycho, which was all I felt I really needed to know. I’d say that if you were at all interested in this “franchise”, which hopefully doesn’t go much further, you’d serve yourself well to skip the original movie entirely and be much more entertained by this one.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! How can anyone, ANYONE, see this poster and not want to fucking see it? THIS LOOKS INSANE. Lady with sharp teeth. Nazis. Not much clothing. Blood. Brass knuckle/stabby knife combo thingy. The word “DEVIL” in the title. Of course I had to fucking see it! When I gave Rampaige a description of what it was about, I said “something about Nazis”, but even if I hadn’t been that descriptive, I know she would have been sold on just the fact that it had something to do with devils or rocks. I’m sure that if she asked what it was about and I had been able to telepathically project this image into her head, she would have gotten even more excited. And I must say, that despite starting this movie around midnight, she stayed awake for the whole thing! THE WHOLE THING! She’s normally asleep by 8:15! GOOD JOB!
You have been awarded five points for your Cannibal Holocaust reference!
It’s World War II (of course) and two soldiers from New Zealand are on a covert mission to destroy some Nazi base (of course) and discover there is scary Satan stuff happening (of course). One soldier is killed when found by Col. Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) while the other soldier, Captain Ben Grogan (Craig Hall), is merely taken captive. Meyer attempts to interrogate Grogan on why he’s there and what he’s doing, but Grogan can’t seem to focus because of the female screams he hears coming from nearby. I should also mention that this base they are at is a bunch of poorly lit tunnels and the base is littered with dead, mutilated Nazi soldiers. Grogan overpowers Meyer and when he tries to rescue the female, he sees its his dead wife Helena (Gina Varela). WAIT, WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?! Meyer explains how the Nazis are all about the occult and the person who appears to be Helena is actually a shape-shifting demon. Once she’s called on her bullshit, we see that yes, in fact she is a demon lady with bright red skin and horns and all that shit. A transmission comes through about a buttload of Nazis coming towards the island, so Meyer convinces Grogan to help him conduct a ceremony to banish her to Hell. This “demon bitch” keeps trying to get Grogan to feed her Meyer, because apparently evil people taste better. Scared that she’ll escape and kill the entire world, Grogan helps with the ceremony, only to have Meyer turn on him. Damn Nazis, you just can’t trust them anymore. Grogan gives him the slip and lets “Helena” feed on him. Keeping in mind what’s best for the war, Grogan does nothing to get rid of the demon, and instead tells her about hos many evil Nazis are coming her way that she can feast on. He says he will come back eventually to finish her off, but she can eat as many Nazi dickheads as she wants. The film ends as we see Grogan bury his wife’s picture on the beach as Nazi ships and planes and helicopters approach.
Things got pretty scary when she got all Aphex Twin-y.
I guess that cover made true of its promise, and I don’t know what else you could ask for in a movie like this. There were Nazis and demons and WWII things happening all at once, but really nothing more. I guess it was pretty cool that all of the effects were practical ones, so clearly the crew must have had a good time shooting, and the makeup effects for the demon were practical as well. On the one hand, it made everything feel like it was a movie you’d see on SyFy, but on the other hand you were thankful that it wasn’t shitty CGI. The whole time I was watching this movie I couldn’t help but think of how it’d be much more successful if it was one of those Masters of Horror short films as opposed to the 90 minute feature it turned into. I think there’s really only so much you can do when you take three actors and lock them in a bunker and see what happens. Granted, it held my attention for the whole thing, and the twist of the demon staying alive to kill more Nazis was pretty cool, but there wasn’t really anything else to it. I will have to say that it gets bonus points for their usage of evil insignias from the Necronomicon instead of just throwing pentagrams everywhere. It was a nice way of breaking things up a bit!
Are you seeing this, JD?! You recommended this movie to me months ago and here I am, finally reviewing it. This is yet another movie that falls victim to the curse of Netflix Instant. I add it, I actually consider watching it, then just scroll past it to watch Parks and Recreation or Archer or something. I recently did attempt to clean house as far as my queues were concerned and got rid of everything I knew I’d never watch. This movie stuck around, and I even bumped it right to the top of the list so I always had to look at it to get to something else. The time finally came for me to watch it, and these are my thoughts on it.
This is basically what I think I look like any time I wear a denim vest. Except I will never have a beard this gnarly.
The first few minutes of the movie we see Erica (Amanda Fuller) acting all slutty and stuff. It took me a few moments to even know if this was the movie that JD asked me to watch, and apparently it was. Erica claims she won’t sleep with any guy more than once and she isn’t in a relationship, and even gets gangbanged by a couple of “rocker dudes”, including Franki (Marc Senter). Despite her promiscuous ways, Nate (Noah Taylor) takes an interest in her, and despite her initial rejection of affection, seems to take a liking to Nate. They don’t appear to have a sexual relationship together, but something deeper. The story then cuts to Franki and his shitty relationship which leads us to his discovery that he is HIV positive. He is able to track this back to Erica, so him and his other rocker friends kidnap her to confront her, which results in her being Franki’s captive. The story cuts back to Nate, who returns to dinner at a restaurant to find Erica missing. He finds a credit card that belongs to one of the kidnappers and heads to their house. He mentioned earlier his involvement in the military so it’s not too big of a stretch of the imagination to believe he could access that information. He arrives at the guy’s house and tortures him, his wife, and their daughter. When Nate asks where Erica is, the man says she is in his trunk. When he opens the truck, Nate only sees one of Erica’s body parts. Realizing she’s been killed and dismembered, he tracks down and tortures all the people responsible. Franki gets it the worst, as he is tied down and has his entire head skinned while still alive. We then see Nate driving out into the desert, presumably to put that life behind him, and we see him bury a photo of him and Erica on the night that they had gotten married.
HOLY SHIT I WANTED TO RIP THOSE GODDAMN FEATHERS OUT OF YOUR STUPID EARS YOU DUMB PIECE OF SHIT.
But why is it called Red White & Blue?! I can’t remember where I read it but I saw somewhere that each different color represents a different character? Or something? I don’t know if I believe that, but I do believe that Noah Taylor had a sweet denim vest with an American flag on the back of it while he was torturing people. Speaking of which, Noah Taylor was fucking awesome in this. I’ve seen him in plenty of things before this, and he’s always good, but he’s typically a character used for comedic relief, so to see him in a grizzly beard and acting like a goddamn maniac was pretty terrifying. I don’t know whether or not Marc Senter can be considered “good” in this movie, because he annoyed the fuck out of me. It’s entirely possible that means he was great at being annoying, but either way, I was quite happy to see him getting his head ripped off. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure if this was the correct movie for the first half hour or so, because it’s mostly just showing Erica and Nate’s characters and relationships develop, but when Nate sees Erica getting sexually harassed by coworkers and Nate attacks them with a hammer, it clarified that it was indeed a horror movie. It was slow-paced, which I typically enjoy, but considering that “slow pace” also involved seeing a lot more of a character that I thought was really fucking annoying wasn’t all that enjoyable. Franki also had a side story about his mother having cancer or something and overdosing on pills, which I guess was supposed to justify how he could snap like he did, but I found it unnecessary. If you like revenge movies, I’d recommend checking this out, but without Noah Taylor it might not have been as enjoyable.
Anthology? More like MAN-thology, am I right?! Because all of the writers/directors were guys? Ugh, whatever, that was terrible. At least there’s finally a film that combines the talents of Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Adam Rifkin, and Tim Sullivan! Also known as the director of Hatchet/Frozen, director of Wrong Turn 2, writer of Underdog, and director of 2001 Maniacs! Oh, you guys don’t really care that these people got together? Well, neither did I. Other than Adam Green, who I really want to like but have a hard time doing, I didn’t know who any of these other people were. When this popped up on Netflix Instant, I figured I’d give it a shot. Normally when I review anthologies, I just lump the whole thing together and give it one moon rating, but this time you guys are getting moon ratings for each segment, AND one at the end! TECHNOLOGY!
Wadzilla
When a man has a hard time getting his wife pregnant, his doctor prescribes him some medicine that is supposed to make his sperm stronger. Rather than making each individual sperm strong, the medicine results in just one super sperm being created each time this guy got a boner. They get progressively bigger and seem to grow larger on their own, even after escaping the man’s body, to the point that one giant monster sperm wreaks havoc on the town. The sperm tries to impregnate the Statue of Liberty, which is when the army corners it and makes it explode cum everywhere. This was a strong, funny start to the movie, and it was able to switch back and forth between a gross out comedy with exploding cum-like material hitting all the actors in the faces while also mocking sci-fi movies from the 50′s. If only Underdog was this disgusting and funny!
Wolfman Moon Scale
I was a Teenage Werebear
We’ve heard of werewolves, so this is probably about someone who turns into a bear and kills people, right? Well, kind of. This was part musical and part 60′s surf movie, with the idea of someone turning into a bear thrown in. Rather than it being a grizzly or polar bear, the werebears in this film turn into gay bears. Part bear, part homosexuals who are large, fat, and hairy. Other than the fact that this kept happening, I can’t think of what the fuck this movie was about, other than playing with the idea of physical changes in someone’s body being manifested into a horror movie. Remember how in Carrie, when Sissy Spacek got her period, she got super mental powers? Or that in most werewolf movies, once a month someone turns into a crazy monster, like when girls get mad when they are PMS-ing? I understood that this was what Tim Sullivan was going for, and he wanted to (possibly) represent a boy going through puberty to realize he was a “monster” for being attracted to other guys. The point just seemed lost in the silly surfer musical parody and nothing was really funny or entertaining enough to justify it being made…at all. Really the weakest segment of the entire movie, and brought the high hopes that Wadzilla set all the way down and into the gutters. I realize now that pointing out that the one segment made by an openly homosexual filmmaker just after I commended how entertaining a low-brow short film called “Wadzilla” can be viewed negatively, I accept any sort of hammer judgement that my gay readers would like to smash me with. Maybe I didn’t “get it”, or I’m trying to bash a gay filmmaker solely because of his sexual orientation, but I didn’t enjoy the segment for a plethora of reasons, whereas I felt Wadzilla kept in line with the overall tone of this anthology.
Wolfman Moon Scale
Diary of Anne Frankenstein
Even the name itself is funny! This segment starts with the discovery of the Frank family by Nazis, when Hitler himself breaks through a wall to steal the Frank family diary. Once he leaves, he takes that diary back to his laboratory to build a zombie made from the body parts of Jewish people, which now that I type it, seems a lot more offensive than I originally thought. Once reanimated, the monster wears a yarmulke and wears one of those scarves that Jewish guys wear, and Hitler tries to train it to do his bidding. It was ridiculous, offensive, silly, and a lot of fun. The best part was that Joel Moore, who played Hitler, as well as played robot legs from Grandma’s Boy, doesn’t know any German. That means any time he was speaking German, he was just making up gibberish. For the record, Rampaige picked up on this before I did, and she was very proud of herself for noticing…AS SHE SHOULD!
Wolfman Moon Scale
Zom-B-Movie
See what they did there? The title of this segment is the story that pulls all of these movies together, and is not only a play on the word “zombie”, but also a play on the idea of “B Movies”! SO CLEVER! This story, which we see in five to ten minute increments, involves a group of friends attending a screening at a drive-in movie theater where the own screens his favorite films. Those films? Wadzilla, I was a Teenage Werebear, and Diary of Anne Frankenstein! Whoa! The plot involves a guy digging up his wife’s corpse to jerk off onto her face, when she rips his balls off and I guess infects him with something? He goes to the drive-in and starts infecting more and more people as the film goes on. These zombies don’t just eat brains, but they also eat cock and pussy! In the sense that they are horny monster things that are killing and fucking and fucking and killing EVERYTHING. The actors weren’t particularly all that good, but there were funny enough references to other movies and good enough special effects to make up for the poor acting and dialogue.
Wolfman Moon Scale
In case you’ve seen this movie before, you might notice I left out one of the films, titled “Deathication”. It involved lots of poop splatters going batshit crazy everywhere, but only lasted a couple of minutes before the final act of Zom-B-Movie took over. Even though none of the segments got a particularly high rating, I wanted to give the movie as a whole the 3/4 moon rating. All of the segments were fun and really in the spirit of paying homage to B movies that would play at drive-ins. In addition to all the segments being entertaining, the story that tied them all together was also entertaining, which is what most anthology films lack. You might get SOME story that connects everything, but a lot of times it might just be one segment fading to black, and then the next segment fades in and you see the title. The whole thing was a lot of fun and would definitely be a good movie to pop in with your friends. The only thing preventing this movie from getting the better rating is the Werebear movie. Maybe I didn’t get it, maybe you guys will say I hate gay people, but it really felt out of place and seemed to be included mostly as a favor from the other people involved. If there was a way to watch this movie without that segment, I’d be all for it, but instead, the filmmakers will have to deal with the rating they’ve been handed. I’m sure they’ll lose sleep over it.
Did you see what day it was?! Did you see the name of the movie?! Okay fine, I’ll admit that this isn’t any sort of “Christmas classic” or anything, but it does have Christmas in the title. Unless, of course, you get the DVD and notice that it calls itself “Black Xmas”. Either way, I watched it recently and because I was lazy when it came to reviewing, the timeline of events allowed this to get posted on the holiest of molies. Ya know, like “holy moly”? Whatever. Here’s the goddamn review.
Could have used a little more cleavage and a few more pairs of Ugg boots to truly capture the spirit of a sorority house.
This remake starts in an asylum with guards bringing food to an inmate on Christmas, when that inmate uses a sharpened candy cane to kill guards and escape. We cut to a babe-filled sorority house which is having it’s annual Christmas party as a blizzard descends upon it. As if a house full of drunk sorority ladies wasn’t dramatic enough, there’s also some drama involving a sex tape and one of the girls’ boyfriends? Anyways, that boyfriend shows up and there’s an argument that results in him letting the girls know the history of the house. The family included a mom who had murdered her husband and remarried, and a little boy with a skin condition that made his skin yellow. One day, the mom snapped and murdered her new husband, as well as raped Billy, they boy, and eventually gave birth to another yellow-skinned psycho named Agnes. Eventually the boy also snapped and murdered his mother, and used a cookie-cutter to make Christmas cookies out of his mother’s skin. Gross! Would it surprise you to find out that the man in the insane asylum in the beginning was this boy, and that he’s the reason why sorority sisters have been disappearing all night? It turns out that Agnes has been living in the attic and between the walls of the house, and Billy has come back to join her. A bunch of the characters die, and eventually Agnes has her head defibrillated to death and Billy gets impaled on a Christmas tree. Sounds more like a RED Christmas, am I right?!
Agnes was missing one of her eyes, so I’m sure there was SOME reason why she removed the victim’s eyes, but the reasons were completely lost on me. Oh well!
This movie gets a lot of shit and has terrible reviews, but ya know what? They’re all pretty much right. To say that this movie is “good”, by any stretch of the imagination, wouldn’t quite be accurate. You might remember my review of the original film, and in case you don’t, it is regarded by most to be a pioneer in the “slasher” genre. Considering where the slasher genre is now, or where it was in 2006, it was highly unlikely for this film, let alone ANY film, have a lasting impact on the slasher genre in any way, shape, or form. I assume the filmmakers knew this, and rather than have it be a typical contemporary slasher, they went a much weirder route. The whole thing about the family’s skin being yellow? That’s a plot point that never really made any sense, other than it was weird and made the murderers in this movie look even creepier. Most of the onscreen deaths included huge explosions of blood, and one scene towards the end shows Agnes and Billy having adorned their Christmas tree with the severed heads of their victims with their eyes removed. What it lacked in ground-breaking, genre-defining plot structure and tone, they attempted to make for in disturbingly strange imagery. From the way the flashback sequences are shot to how poorly lit each scene is to the over-the-top stereotypes of bitchy sorority girls, what this film lacks in originality, subtlety and mood, it makes up for in exaggerated characters and the entire film looking strange. Might not be considered a holiday classic, or any type of classic, but it has just enough gore to keep you interested, and just enough Christmas nostalgia that it’s something I don’t mind watching each year.
It’s hard to keep a frame of reference for when something is “popular” and “anticipated”, or when it’s “forced down your throat”. For example, I constantly saw ads and promotions for this movie coming out on home video, and it gave the impression that this was a movie people were actually interested in seeing. Clearly I had the good people of the world in mind when I determined I would get this movie and review, so the masses could finally see my thoughts on such an anticipated movie. Well, when the movie showed up and I started to watch it, I realized it was distributed by Bloody Disgusting, which just so happens to be a website that I regularly check for horror movie news. Apparently there really weren’t that many people talking about it throughout the world of the internet, but all the times I saw it promoted on BD made me think it was everyone in the world. Sorry, guys! Here’s another movie review that maybe some of you guys have possibly heard of.
So this is what passes for teenagers these days? I’m pretending to hear a Spanish language version of Skid Row’s “Youth Gone Wild” right now.
A group of teens or young adults or something, I can’t really tell how old they are, have a show in which they investigate urban legends/paranormal events. This leads them to a house in their family where there is supposedly a woman who disappeared from the woods and comes back to steal people out of those woods. The investigators try to get video coverage of lots of areas of the house, but there’s only so much they can do or investigate, and things start getting serious when their dog is found killed in the woods. There’s some further investigation that result in unseen forces physically assaulting some of the members of the group, leaving them so shocked that they can barely explain what has happened to them. Oh shit, have I mentioned that the opening of the film tells us that these characters are dead by the end and this is just found footage? Well, we already know that, but the further these violent assaults happen, the more the tension builds. Eventually it’s the mom of the investigators, I think, who ends up killing them? Maybe? I don’t know, it got kind of confusing and the mom wasn’t a memorable enough character to immediately recognize her as the killer. I don’t know, they were speaking in Spanish the whole time!
You looked better when in night-vision and not being terrorized.
I guess to say they were speaking in Spanish the whole time might not have been entirely accurate, because I watched it with the English dubbing because I don’t know how to read. It’s hard to say how much that dubbing effected my judgement of the acting, because I didn’t think anyone in it was all that good of an actor. I guess cutting out their voices would make me judge things quite differently. This movie had quite a low production value, as I’ve come to expect with all films that Bloody Disgusting distributes, but the goal is to take an independent movie and get it out there for more people to see. Despite the poor production value, what this movie did have going for it was the story. We’ve seen countless found footage movies, and yes, this is another one, but the urban legend of a possible ghost, resulting in these people being assaulted by an actual physical force was a nice twist. Maybe I could have paid closer attention to what was going on, but there was a good 20-25 minutes in the middle where I was really bored before things started to pick up. If a movie is barely over an hour long, and you have 20 boring minutes, that’s just about half the movie where I don’t care about what’s going on. So again, another Bloody Disgusting movie that had the best of intentions at its core, and some promising elements, but ultimately didn’t stand out. Maybe we can have an English language remake coming our way soon!
I’ve had this movie on the Netflix Instant Queue for a few weeks ago, and Rampaige was the one who kept wanting to watch it, saying how the cover freaked her out. I also think the description mentioned a demon, or it was suggested as a “supernatural thriller” or something, which we are suckers for. Every time I stumbled across it and pulled up the description, I couldn’t help but notice that Trevor Matthews, a.k.a. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer himself, was in it, which I was glad to see since I didn’t know he was still acting. Not that he would stop acting or anything, just that I thought Jack Brooks was promising and wondered what he was involved in now. More research showed that Matthews was teaming up again with Jon Knautz with producing and writing duties, while Knautz was directing the picture. That was the same combo for Jack Brooks! I guess that meant my expectations were somewhere in the middle, since Jack Brooks set the bar just above a SyFy original movie.
Sorry guys, that’s not Bobby Drake from the X-Men movies. This is the twin who got to be in Veronica Mars, which makes him even cooler than the one who kissed Anna Paquin.
The film opens with a man being strapped to a table, a metal mask being placed over his head, and a guy in a robe using a fancy hammer to smash that mask into his face. That scene is immediately followed by a woman coming out of the shower. Yes! That woman is Carmen (Cindy Samson), an investigative reporter for DCypher magazine. Hahaha DCypher, that’s fucking stupid. She learns of a man who went missing in Europe, and for some reason decides to go over to Europe to investigate the disappearance, despite being instructed to investigate bees. While investigating the last place the man visited, she encounters weird townsfolk who seem to be hiding a secret and avoid talking to her. She’s there with her boyfriend, played by Aaron Ashmore, and an intern, played by Meghan Heffern, who go with her to investigate some weird fog in the woods. Both Carmen and the intern see a creepy statue (or “shrine”, if you will)in the fog, and then the three are apprehended by the townsfolk. The intern gets the same mask smashed into the face treatment that we saw in the beginning, but then Carmen and her boyfriend are able to escape and seek refuge in a nearby cottage. They aren’t able to hide there for long, as the people in charge of smashing masks into faces find them, only to realize that Carmen is turning into a scary demon monster. Apparently the only way to kill these demon monsters is by smashing their faces with these masks, and the townspeople were trying to protect humanity from these demons, as opposed to just being jerks. Go figure!
Couldn’t they have at least put a funny mustache on the mask? I mean, I think mustaches gaurd all demons from hurting people, right? Maybe I need to read the Bible more.
Even though I’ve only seen two films that have come from the Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer team, I think I can point out a few of the trends in their films. It seems as though they go with affordable actors who are able to memorize the script, while incorporating one person who is somewhat recognizable. Obviously having Robert Englund in their first film was far more recognizable than Aaron Ashmore, but still, it’s something. I don’t know what kind of cameras they shoot their movies on, but it seems more like TV quality than film quality, which I’m sure has something to do with budgetary reasons. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is about each scene that makes me think that, it just seems like everything has a soft enough focus that there’s no way it could have been shot on film or on a high quality digital camera. Despite the acting and direction not being that exceptional, this crew can succeed because of their story. Maybe it was because I was writing this movie off as being stereotypical by having a small European town with scary residents, but I didn’t see the twist coming until the very end. Again, maybe if someone was paying more attention to the story, and hadn’t already made up their mind on the quality of the film, might have known earlier than I did, but it was a fun enough twist for me. I think that had the budget for this movie been bigger it could have been more successful, but it is still showing promise of this creative team. Hopefully their next movie will have just as fun of a story but won’t attempt too much, or at least won’t attempt anything outside of their reach. I kept forgetting this movie was called “The Shrine” while watching it, which I think was a good thing, because I completely forgot that the shrine in the movie was important at all, so I recommend the same for you to enjoy it at maximum capacity. Oh yeah, and Trevor Matthews had this terrible haircut in the movie, which was maybe an attempt at being an authentic European?
The first time I saw this movie was at the Music Box Massacre IV back in 2008. I am pretty sure it was shown at six in the morning when no one had an idea of what was going on in their lives. It might have even been later than that, I don’t feel like using my brain to remember that detail at this very moment. The parts of it that I remembered were fun, and I told my friend Duke that it might be something he would like. Another reason I thought he would like it was the fact that Jack Brooks was a plumber, so he was often wearing a tool belt and fixing things, and Duke is a carpenter, so there was that connection. A couple of weeks after seeing it, I said we should try to watch it, and Duke bought it for me for my birthday, which falls shortly after Halloween. All of these reasons combined add up to this movie being more of a nostalgic favorite of mine, rather than it actually being all that good. And the fact that it’s Canadian certainly doesn’t help matters much.
The facial hair/baseball hat combination also kind of looks like my friend Duke. But that denim jacket? ALL WOLFMAN STYLE.
Jack Brooks, played by Trevor Matthews (who was also one of the producers and helped come up with the story) has an anger problem, which certainly wasn’t helped by the fact that his family was killed by a monster when he was a kid. As in, a real life monster that came out of the woods. He’s unhappy with his life, his girlfriend, his job, and doesn’t really know what he wants to accomplish in his life. Lucky for him, his professor at night school, played by Robert Englund, uncovers some weird monster demon heart thing in his backyard that causes hm to turn into, well, a weird monster demon thing. While all Jack really wants to do is coast through life without getting too much attention or disrupt the status quo, he is thrown into the thick of an epic monster battle as his professor has changed into full-fledged monster and is infecting other students one night. As Jack attempts to escape, the song he heard while his family was murdered comes on the radio, causing him to use his anger to destroy all of the monsters. He succeeds, and when the film ends, we see him confront the monster who killed his family, as well as venturing to remote parts of the world to do the one thing that had been calling out to him his whole life: SLAYING FUCKING MONSTERS.
This is what Robert Englund looked like when he turned into a monster. I guess it kind of sort of looks like him?
I wish I could provide a more enthralling dissection of this movie, but as you can see from the plot, it’s relatively straightforward. Robert Englund was awesome in this movie while going through his transformation scenes, and considering Trevor Matthews mostly just stood in at the last minute as Jack Brooks, he does a pretty decent job. All of the special effects and gore were practical effects, so it was good to see a movie that would sacrifice “believability” for how practical effects looked. I also can’t really say this film is completely a horror movie, because there are quite a few comedic moments in it. Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned multiple times, combining horror with comedy is a tricky subject because I feel like every attempt at the mixture ends up one or the other, but not both. Given that, I’d say this movie was a lot funnier than it was scary, but it did still have some pretty good practical effects. I’d say it was like a good SyFy movie that entertains you for 90 minutes, but unless you are like me and don’t have nostalgic memories attached to it, it’s not too memorable.
Everyone remembers the cartoon of this story, right? Well, not only do I remember that, but I also remember that we bought live-action version of the story starring Jeff Goldblum from the grocery store some time in the early 90′s, and it was boring and shitty. The first time I watched this installment, I had invited my mom to watch it with me because it was probably a Friday or Saturday night and I was a loser with no friends. Much to our surprise, this movie was bloody as shit!I don’t necessarily mean that in either a good or a bad way, I guess it was just surprising. Where am I going with this? I really have no idea, I’m just trying to fill the “introductory paragraph” that you have all come to know and love. Oh wait! I saved the best for last! Did you know I’ve actually fucking visited Sleepy Hollow? Ya see, back in college, when most other people were doing drugs or having sex or whatever, I was convincing friends to go on roadtrips in the middle of the night to places like Sleepy Hollow. Did anything spooky happen there? Nope! But it’s pretty funny that the name of every building and company there had “Sleepy Hollow” in the name. Thanks like “Animal Hospital of Sleepy Hollow”, or “Sleepy Hollow Diner”, even “This Building is Awake and Solid…of Sleepy Hollow”. Okay fine, I made some of those up.
Despite Johnny Depp fitting the part, this relationship seemed a little forced. One exchange of dialogue included Ichabod being all “OH HEY GIRL, ARE YOU LIKE, A FUCKING WITCH OR SOMETHING?”, and she’s all like “WHOA HEY WHY ARE YOU BEING A DICK TO ME RIGHT NOW”, and then Ichabod is all like “NAW BITCH, IT’S BECAUSE YOU’VE FUCKING BEWITCHED ME……OH SHIIITTTTTTTTT!!!!” and then they fuck or something.
It’s the turn of the century, which I think was the 18th going on 19th, and Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is sent from the police brigade (or whatever they called it) in New York City to the town of Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod is seemingly chastised and punished for investigating all deaths and pushing for the science behind all murders. It appears he’s met his match when the people in Sleepy Hollow are blaming the recent deaths on an old legend of a Headless Horseman, who is the spirit of a brutal war criminal. As more and more people are being murdered, and Ichabod Crane, in his bumbling yet scientific ways, is trying to find out what all of the victims have in common. After some detective work, it turns out that all the murders can be tied to some sort of dispute over land or money or something, and there’s one lady who has something to gain from all of these murders, so she had taken the skull of the Horseman, allowing her to command him. Crane is able to take possession of the skull and return it to the spectre that’s been beheading everyone, who then takes the one commanding him down to Hell with him. Feeling as though his job was accomplished, Ichabod Crane moves back to New York City with Christina Ricci and some kid whose dad was killed by the Horseman.
“FUUUUCKING PAAAAARTYYYYYYYY!”
I DON’T REMEMBER ANY OF THAT SHIT FROM THE CARTOON. And to be quite honest, I think Mr. Burton took a few artistic liberties to make this movie. Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane was a good choice, and he was able to play a character who is odd and quirky, yet not stupid or insane. It’s a much more subtle version of some of the Johnny Depp characters we’ve seen in the past decade. Most of the supporting cast was pretty good too, especially Christopher Walken as the Head-having Horseman. The look and feel of the film was one of the highlights, as Burton was able to make everything look authentic, yet give the feeling of unease. Lots of scenes, if not all of them, were filmed with blue-tinted filters that gave everything a cold and detached look. Despite the film being interesting to look at, and all of the cast doing a great job, the biggest issue with this movie is the liberties made with the plot. I’m still not sure if I have any fucking clue what was going on in it, and it was made for more complicated than I felt it needed to be. I understand that there might not have been too much to go with as far as adapting the source material into the movie, but did it need to be that complicated? I totally left shit out of the plot because it would have confused me again trying to figure it out, but you’re not missing out. Another thing was that even though the look and feel of the film was odd and interesting, it wasn’t actually scary. I think the creepy part about the Headless Horseman is the mystery behind who he is and why he kills the people he kills. I feel that way about most legends, that the less you know the better, and that there was no rhyme or reason as to why you’d fall victim to this phantom. It certainly committed to a certain tone, but that tone wasn’t all that creepy or anything, and was a little too similar to any other “slasher” that was out around that time.
I have absolutely no qualms about really enjoying the first film, and really can’t remember much of what happened in its sequel. I do remember not liking the sequel, and was considering not going to see this because the trailers weren’t that exciting. Correction, the first trailer, singular, was kind of lame and I didn’t enjoy the direction that the franchise was headed. I told myself I wouldn’t watch any further trailers and then would wait to hear some reviews, but then when I went to see Drive, they played a trailer for this that looked like it gave away EVERY FUCKING SCARE IN THE MOVIE. I was pretty pissed, and confirmed I wouldn’t see this movie. Luckily, it was revealed that basically all footage in the trailers was there just to throw people off, which redeemed my faith in the possibility that this could be entertaining, and luckily, I was right. Oh yeah, and there’s going to be spoilers all over the place, so if that’s not your thing, you might not want to go further.
Is this a scene from the movie? No, it’s just that scene from the trailer. I’ll try again next time.
Each previous movie focused on one of two sisters (Katie Featherstone and Sprague Grayden), and this installment starts with the realization that these sisters were filmed as children, but all of the VHS tapes of them went missing during the course of events in the second film. PA3 shows us what was contained on that footage. We see the sisters Katie and Kristi, played by Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown, growing up with their mom and her boyfriend who makes a living videotaping weddings. Kristi is constantly talking about her imaginary friend named Toby who lives in the crawl space of her and Katie’s room. For some reason, which isn’t really made clear, weird things start happening, so the boyfriend begins videotaping the weird sounds that are happening in the house. From lightbulbs shattering to seeing objects move, things are getting weirder and weirder. The occurrences become so powerful that babysitters are being physically assaulted, large items are being moved great distances or destroyed, even Katie is lifted into the air by her ponytail, and the whole time Kristi is blaming this stuff on “Tony”. The boyfriend does research on demons and witches and shit, and sees a photo of some coven of witches wearing necklaces with a strange symbol. When this symbol is seen in the crawl space of the girls’ room, the family goes to stay at the grandmother’s house. That night, the two girls and their mom disappear into the house, and the boyfriend tries to find them. We can see him being followed by strange silhouettes, and when paintings are moved to the ground, we see strange symbols on the walls. Exploring the garage, the boyfriend sees a group of women in black robes and wearing the same strange necklaces as from the photo he found. The girls’ mom is then thrown at him from the top of the stairs, his body is contorted and broken by an unseen presence, Katie’s face flashes to that of what we saw at the end of the first movie, and the grandmother takes the children by the hand, while Kristi makes sure to invite Toby to come with them.
Is this a scene from the movie? Nope, guess again!
I really wanted to dislike this movie, probably because of how disappointed I was in the previous installment. The first film didn’t need any sort of background of mythology whatsoever, that I was annoyed with how the built upon that in the second. Something about a curse and a demon taking the firstborn male in the family or something? Yeah, no thanks. However, now that we can see how this “curse” started (kind of) and learned that the victims of the previous movies were subjected to this torture because their grandmother was a witch? Actually pretty cool. Before I say too much stuff that’s good, let’s say some things I didn’t like. The first big “scares” of the movie were scares involving people, where they built tension thinking a ghost or something would do something crazy, only to have a human jump out. Sure, it was fun to do once, but repeatedly? No thanks. The acting wasn’t all that strong, but that isn’t too big of a surprise when keeping the previous movies in mind, but the more characters brought in, the more you noticed it. The boyfriend takes a camera and attached it to an oscillating fan, and even though it was a clever idea, it was too predictable that ANY time you saw that shot, you knew something creepy was going to happen. Same goes for when Katie plays “Bloody Mary” with the person watching her, so it was just making it way too obvious when to expect things to happen. Oh yeah, and there was a “sex scene” which seemed really arbitrary and pointless. Not necessarily complaining about what I saw, just seemed like an executive said, “Hey guys, sex it up a little bit!”
Look at how dramatic THIS is! This clearly must be in the film! BZZZT. WRONG.
What I really like about all of the movies in this franchise is the fact that you never, EVER see a “ghost”. You see objects, figures, and shapes, but they never resort to showing what the source of everything is, which is something most other films are all too quick to do. Nothing is as creepy as what we imagine “Toby” to look like, and I’m glad this franchise is keeping it that way. Whenever there was about to be something creepy happen, there was always a subtle, high-pitched sound that was made, implying the entity was causing that to happen. We’ve heard the ominous rumbling sounds, but I don’t think this effect was used in this waY in the previous films. And although there were plenty of moments where there was obvious CGI, the practical effects that they did were pretty cool. I won’t get into detail about EVERY little twist and turn that happens in the movie, but if you know these movies, you can just imagine some things that they do. They way they can make objects appear, disappear, and the way Toby manifests himself are all pretty cool camera tricks.
Wait a second….HOLY SHIT, THIS REALLY IS FROM THE MOVIE! THIS IS A PICTURE OF THE MOVIE! FOR REAL!
Quite a few more good things than bad things, huh? So why am isn’t this getting a better rating? Well, I know this movie stands on its own, especially considering it’s a prequel, and that it shouldn’t rely too heavily on the two previous films. That might be all well and good, but do you remember how pointless Paranormal Activity 2 is? Let’s think about it; the first film didn’t really establish any mythology at all, other than Katie has had issues with “ghosts” before, which resulted in her house burning down. Does anyone care? No. They liked seeing doors open and close and footsteps. The second film reveals that there is some sort of blood curse, but this curse is pursuing a different family member who viewers don’t really care about. It gave a little bit more information, but not that much. Now that we’re on our third film, the one that establishes curses and witches and demons, and maybe it’s because I have a soft spot for all of that stuff, I really liked where it went. The franchise changed from being afraid of this demon to instead being afraid of the witches who summoned this demon, and whether it be Rosemary’s Baby or The Last Exorcism, I will always be more creeped out by the calm individuals who are unassuming, but summon demons in their free time. I think that maybe had this film been delayed a little bit and Paranormal Activity 2 never existed, you’d have a very solid franchise on your hands, with just enough information being given and just enough mysteries for the viewers. Instead, we’ll probably get a fourth installment that won’t make any sense because we already know how the original victims got involved in these terrible things in the first place. I was really hoping this one would end in a giant fire like the one they talk about in the two previous movies, but they’re probably saving that for part 5 or something. Oh yeah, and that movie Catfish was probably fake. Dammit.
