That’s quite the titillating cover, isn’t it?! Hahaha, get it? Because you can basically see that woman’s tits? I remember seeing the poster for this movie and thinking it was going to be terrible and merely existed so that the girl on the cover had the opportunity to show off her knockers. A few weeks after seeing that poster, I was having lunch with my good pal JD and the old video store he used to frequent would watch fucked up movies on their TVs during open hours. Apparently they were watching a movie that was SO fucked up, they shut it off. That movie? Why, it was Cold Sweat, of course! Hopefully you saw that plot twist coming, otherwise it would have been a really boring story. Actually, that didn’t save it from being a boring story, but having heard about this movie twice in as many weeks and for different reasons was a good enough reason for me to watch it. Oh yeah, and as a warning, none of the actors have their pictures showing up on IMDb, so I was planning on using their names and character names, but I don’t really remember who was who or why. Oh well!
Is this what dentist’s see? Because this is disgusting. Now I know why they kill themselves so often.
After his girlfriend leaves him for some guy on the internet, our lead male character enlists one of his friends to set up the guy from the internet. These two go to the address of the internet guy, but when the girl goes in the house, she disappears. The guy goes in the house after her, only to find two old men keeping her and another woman captive. The woman who we haven’t met is forced to answer some crazy math equation, and when she fails, the two old men blow her head up with nitroglycerine. The woman we did meet is left alone with a bottle of acid on her head to keep her still. These two old men are using things like acid and nitroglycerine to try to encourage young people to get smarter? Or something? Anyways, the guy’s girlfriend is kept downstairs in the basement and is completely soaked with nitroglycerine. They need to get her out of there! For some reason they give her a haircut and take her clothes off so she doesn’t blow up, even after being chased by monster people who live in the basement. Uhhhh…okay. Eventually the trio of young folks are able to use acid and nitroglycerine to their advantage to escape these two old men, and we see then the boy rejects his girlfriend for the girl who helped him! Hoo-ray!
I know that Katy Perry wasn’t in this movie, but I did a double take with this picture. I’m talking about the one on the left, of course.
WHAT THE FUCK? This movie was all over the goddamned place. Every time you thought you had some sort of idea of what was going on, some new thing would pop up to confuse you and make you wonder what the fuck was happening. Who were these old guys? Why were they doing this? Who were those freaks in the basement? Why did they capture some blonde guy and force him to sit in front of a webcam to entice women? We’ll never know! But on the other hand, the only reason I was paying attention to the movie was to see if any of these questions were answered, or to see what crazy thing would happen next. There wasn’t anything all that good about the acting, directing, or writing, so at least the fact that was a clusterfuck was something to keep you engaged. Also, do any of you guys know much about nitroglycerine? If your body is covered in it, could you really blow up just from walking around? The “escape” sequence was so long and boring and not worth it. At least they determined one way to save her was to take her boobs out, and even that part was interrupted by freaks running around. Boobs and freaks, what more could you wish for!?
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.
I don’t quite remember why the fuck I ended up watching this movie, but I sure as hell did. most likely it was because I had found some list on underrated horror movies or some bullshit like that. Yeah, that sounds like something I would do. One problem with that is I get my hands on all these horror movies at once and I don’t remember what each one is about or which ones are supposed to be better than others or why on Earth I am watching it in the first place. The decision process eventually comes down to Rampaige, who asks me to tell her what the movies are about, and when I can’t do that, she relies on which title she likes the best. She chose this one because she said it “sounded most like it had something to do with dogs”, which I’d say is as good a reason as any. Sadly, there were no dogs involved. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.
Oh please I hope all of these characters survive! They are oh so very charming and three-dimensional!
The movie starts with a couple at some sort of “makeout point” or “lover’s lane” type of place, and when they hear a strange noise, the guy gets out of the car and is killed by a psycho. THERE’S A SHOCKER. Jump to some measurement of time after this event, and a group of five people are going the direction of where these events took place so they can celebrate one of them moving to a different country. Sadly, their car breaks down, but a woman who lives nearby offers to help them so they wouldn’t be stranded in the middle of nowhere. While all of these characters are at this woman’s house, they recount the story of the killer from the opening of the film. I guess a kid was chained up to a tree outside because his dad had returned home to see his wife cheating on him, so in addition to killing the wife, he chained the kid up outside. The kid grew up by eating nearby animals, and–HOLY SHIT THERE’S A LOT GOING ON IN THIS STORY. Totally not worth this much backstory. Anyways, it turns out that the killer’s sister was the girl who picked up the friends and she was setting them up to be killed. Don’t worry, one of the people who were going to the cabin was the sole survivor of the whole ordeal because everyone else was killed. Yeah, that gets the point across.
Image completely unrelated, but it was hard as shit finding any pictures from this movie, and this DVD cover is more entertaining than anything in the movie anyway.
Even though I got bored halfway through the summary of this movie, the only thing it had going for it was the story. Considering the woman who offered a ride to the strangers seemed normal, it was kind of a surprise that she was involved in the murders. I think some of the death scenes might have been pretty cool as far as special effects go, but other than that, there weren’t many redeeming qualities for it. I think that as I watch more and more horror movies and learn further the things I like about them, I am realizing how important it is to establish characters as people you want to watch. That’s something that was seriously lacking in this movie, that you either completely disliked the characters, or at best, tolerated them. Watching a movie where you merely tolerate a character is never going to be a movie worth watching, and this movie was no exception.
I think everyone who is a frequent visitor to my site knows I’m a huge fan of The House of the Devil, so I was thrilled to find out that not only was it being shown on 35mm on the big screen in a double feature with Ti West’s newest film, The Innkeepers, but also that Mr. West would be there in person. This would be my second time watching The Innkeepers, and even though I enjoyed it the first time on a small screen, I caught new details on this viewing that made me enjoy it even more. One scene involved Sara Paxton’s character gathering up all of her clothes and shoving them into a bag, when I have sworn I saw a Bad Brains shirt crumpled up in there. I ignored it, thinking it could have been ANY shirt, until I noticed in the credits, under the “Special Thanks” section, sure enough I saw “BAD BRAINS”. You’re telling me this guy makes great movies and likes hardcore? When I asked him about it, Ti also mentioned there was a Descendants shirt in there somewhere too. Maybe I’ll catch that on the third viewing.
WolfMan: With both The Innkeepers and The House of the Devil, you have these strong female characters that really have to carry the weight of the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed those characters and the way they broke the conventions of most female leads, especially Jocelin Donahue who felt like Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby”. While you were writing those characters, did you intentionally try to break those molds or were you just writing characters that happened to be female?
Ti West: It’s a little bit of both. I mean, I wrote movies that had female leads trying to do that, but the movies that I’ve written about guys don’t get made. So the fact that I’ve made two in a row and there seems to be this kind of feminist angle, that is an accident. It’s there, I guess, in the work to some degree but I’ve got movies about dudes that just for some reason don’t get made. In the case of The House of the Devil, it was a babysitting movie and would be a tough sell if it were a guy. I try to just write hopefully three-dimensional characters and if it’s about a guy or a girl, it doesn’t really make any difference, I just try to make them good. It’s just I’ve made two in a row and the third one’s going to be about a woman in space and it’s going to be this weird trilogy.
WM: From the beginning of The House of the Devil, I knew that it took place in New England. Did you intentionally shoot it in New England because there was something about that part of the country or was it just happenstance that you shot it there?
TW: Filmmaking was on sale in Connecticut so there was a big tax incentive to go there. I wanted I wanted to shoot it in Pennsylvania and then we found out it was on sale in Connecticut. I wasn’t sure if we’d find a place we wanted. It’s funny, I didn’t want to use that house at all and now I can’t imagine it not being that house. So it’s one of those things … financially that’s why we shot there and we just scoured the state looking for a place.
WM: When The House of the Devil came out, you also had that limited edition clamshell VHS. DVDs left, Blu-rays are gonna leave, do you think there’s something about VHS that might hold the test of time as some sort of collector’s item or was that just a fun novelty thing for that movie?
TW: I think it ties into that movie … if we did one for this movie (The Innkeepers), it wouldn’t make any sense. So I think it’s kind of a one-off, where we had the opportunity to make that. … I think it’ll be a cool collector’s item for anyone who has nostalgia for it. It’s like people (who say) “Oh it’s like records”…it’s not really like records, it’s like 8-tracks. It’s not a particularly good format, we just have a nostalgia to it, whereas records, actually you could make the argument that they sound better or the experience of putting on a record and flipping it over and doing those things is valuable. It’s a cool collector’s thing. I’m fine with VHS being like baseball cards.
WM: One of my favorite moments of The Innkeepers was the scene where Claire takes the trash out. I read in an interview that you said that was your favorite thing that you’ve ever shot. Did you know it was going to turn out so well going into that scene? Did you know “This is going to end up being my favorite thing” or was it just that between Sara (Paxton), the direction, the writing, what was it that made it your favorite scene?
TW: It was a scene that kind of meant something to me because I thought it would be funny, but it wasn’t until she going (imitates groaning sounds) and not getting it in and stuff was pouring out exactly … it’s just one of those things that everything lined up perfectly, so no. It was when the execution was done it was like the high-five kind of moment.
Image from the upcoming horror anthology “V/H/S”
WM: Lastly, you kind of touched upon it earlier (during an onstage Q & A following The Innkeepers), just found footage movies and how sick of found footage movies everybody kind of is, that with V/H/S (of which he wrote/produced/directed a segment in), it’s been described as a found footage movie for people who don’t like found footage movies. What is it that you find so frustrating about those types of movies and why is V/H/S going to be any different?
TW: I don’t have a problem with found footage movies, I have a problem with bad found footage movies. I don’t have a problem with Blair Witch, I don’t have a problem with Paranormal Activity, those movies make sense to me, they are what they are … whereas there’s all these ripoffs of them. It sort of peaked with that “Devil Inside” movie, a movie that I haven’t seen and I have no reason to dislike it, but everyone else seems to hate it. I feel like that was just a scam, it was like a three-card monte scam … when I see a trailer that comes out of nowhere that’s a found footage, exorcism thing, I’m like “I don’t know if I trust this”, but everyone else kind of just fell for it and I feel like that’s the gullible nature of audiences that just got duped on that one. The thing with V/H/S is that none of us are particularly psyched on found footage but there’s a reason for the found footage, it’s not just because that’s popular so we went and made something that way to sell out with. All of them are very clever uses of the found footage. But I think found footage is fine because it’s the age that we live in, everyone has cameras on their phone and are making movies on YouTube, everyone’s accustomed to that so it is an aesthetic that has to stick around, it’s not gonna go away. It would just be nice if it was used, not less often, but if there was just more of a reason to use it.
And on the subject of found footage, this conversation took place on the day that “Chronicle” opened, I asked if he was running out to see it, and he joked about how all the trailer consists of is people throwing things, even though everyone’s been saying it’s great. Between hearing his Q & A and speaking to him personally, I understand more and more that he is a filmmaker first, horror movie maker second. I have praised his work for a few years as someone who is helping to pave the way for the next generation of horror movie makers, and only now am I realizing that one doesn’t need to solely do horror movies to still be able to make great horror movies. The Innkeepers relies just as much on horror elements as much as a sitcom likes Parks and Recreation relies on the business of running that department of the government. The horror elements of two people working in a “haunted” hotel help move the story in one direction, but it’s the characters and their interactions that make it so enjoyable. West’s next movie, called “Side Effects”, will star Liv Tyler and is a science fiction movie set in space. I’m sure that will still appease the horror fans, but will venture into a direction. I think the next genre should be the vampire genre. Except instead of making it about the vampires, it’s a movie about some vampire killers…ones that are without fear. Yeah, I think he’d do a great job making a movie about fearless vampire killers…if you got that joke, give yourself five bonus points and then stagedive off your desk.
I don’t know why I had it set it my head that I was this big Lucky McKee fan. The only movies of his that I had seen before this were May, his episode of Masters of Horror, and Roman. May holds a nostalgic place in my heart after having seen it a few years ago at the Music Box Massacre, I might have only liked his Masters of Horror installment because even if it was only average, it was still better than most of them, and it’s possible I enjoyed Roman because Veronica Mars is in it. Have you seen that video of Veronica Mars talking about SLOTHS? Yeah, me neither. Anyways, I had just kind of assumed I would like this, despite not having seen the movie that came before this. I know it might not have been a necessity to see that film, called “Offspring”, but it probably would have helped. I guess I have no one to blame but myself for setting my expectations so high, only to be disappointed. Frowny face.
Proof that you can live in the woods and still have silky smooth armpits.
In a pretty typical suburban family, we start getting the sense that the father, Chris (Sean Bridgers), is an asshole. Turns out we were right, because he thought it was totally normal to take the feral woman (played by Pollyanna McIntosh) he saw while hunting into his wine cellar so he could turn her into a normal lady. The whole family is brought in to take part in the cleaning and feeding of this woman, and no one really complains. We learn more and more about how fucked up this family is, with implications that either the dad and/or son had raped and/or impregnated the older daughter. This doesn’t seem all that strange, considering we see the dad raping the woman as well as seeing the son twisting her nipple with needlenose pliers as he touched his boner. The only character who shows any sort of rational thought is the oldest daughter’s teacher (Carlee Baker) stops by the house to see what the fuck is going on with this pregnant girl missing school. Sadly for her, Chris takes her out into some barn he has and she is attacked by dogs he owns, until she is eventually killed by a DIFFERENT feral person. How does this guy how such a problem with feral woodspeople going all crazy!? When she sees her teacher being attacked, the oldest daughter frees the woman from the basement who goes on to kill the mother, the father, and brother. She treats this new feral person as a pet, and then takes the rest of the surviving family into the woods to live as crazy, dirty idiots.
Bet you wish that apron protected you from getting your face ripped off and thrown around like you were a wrestler, huh?! Whoops, spoiler alert.
Doesn’t really sound all that bad, huh? I guess as far as the story goes, no, it wasn’t really all that bad. Something I think I forgot to mention is that there was a slow motion musical montage every five fucking minutes. I understand that music and score are just as important for setting the mood of a movie as much as cinematography is, but there were so many times where one musical sequence was just a segue to another musical sequence, then another, that there weren’t that many scenes without an accompanying song. Another reason why music can be useful is that if the viewer knows the song before watching the movie, they can bring that emotional attachment to that scene. Whether the scene matches the sentiments of the memories of that song, or if they are intentionally juxtaposed, it is a useful tool to enhance the experience for the viewer. That effect is completely lost when all the song used are shitty and feel like you stumbled onto some shitty modern rock radio station. In fact, I’m sure you could mute the movie and put on some goddamn Nickleback or something and get the same experience as watching it with the volume turned up.
I’m not sure if it was intentional to release this image as an homage to the ending of Sleepaway Camp, but either way, this face is fucking terrifying.
As far as the portrayal of a feral woman, I have to give “kudos” or “props” or “respect” or whatever the fuck you kids call it to Polyanna McIntosh in this movie. She really did a good job of acting the way an animal would in that situation, which of course involved lots of screaming. That doesn’t explain how she didn’t have hair in her armpits, considering she’s a wild woodswoman, but I digress. Sean Bridgers plays a character that you hate, and I certainly did hate him, which I never know whether to commend the actor for being so detesting or if the actor was doing a bad portrayal of a character that wasn’t intended to be so grimy. Angela Bettis played a weird character, as always, so again, it’s hard to tell if she was accurately portraying a character intended to be strange and detached from her situation, or if that character was intended to be something different. There were some interesting concepts and themes, as well as a couple good performances, but I didn’t really enjoy any of the stylistic choices that McKee made with this movie. Maybe I’m not too big a fan of his after all.
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.
Look at me! I’m always on the cusp of movies that came out last year! That’s the cutting edge journalism you’ve come to expect from the Wolfman, isn’t it? This is another one of those movies from last year that a bunch of people liked, so I gave it a shot. Before I get too far into it, there are going to be a few plot details that are a little fuzzy because they had pretty thick accents. I know they were speaking english, which I should understand, but a lot of it sounded like mumbling in some other language. This isn’t the film’s fault or anything, I just need to get my hearing checked. And yet again, here’s another film where the ending and the twists are what made this movie so enjoyable, so my “spoiler free” review is to go see it, especially if you like the original “The Wicker Man”. Is it a spoiler to say that? I don’t think so, maybe it’s just because this movie features a screaming Christopher Lee (it doesn’t).
Are you sure it’s safe to wear that shirt AND that stick mask that close to an open flame?
Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Buring) wouldn’t necessarily be described as a “happy” couple, as our introduction to them is a big argument. There are financial problems because of Jay’s job, or possibly lack of job. That doesn’t stop them from inviting over their friend Gal (Michael Smiley) and a date over for dinner. It felt like the first half hour was just this married couple bickering and being uncomfortable, that is, until we see Gal’s date go into the bathroom and carve a strange symbol onto the back of a mirror. We learn the profession that Jay and Gal are involved in, which is the business of contract killing. They take a job to kill three people, but things get weird when the person who hires them cuts Jay’s hand wide open as some sort of blood contract. The first victim is a priest, who thanks Jay right before getting shot in the head. The next guy is referred to as a “librarian”, and when left alone with Jay, before getting killed, thanks Jay profusely and asks if other people knows who Jay is. Jay has no idea what these people are talking about!
MUCH SAFER!
Gal notices that jay is getting a little too carried away in this job, so they go to the person who hired them to try to back out of it. This plea is refused, and Jay and Gal go off to take care of their last kill, who is someone referred to as an “M.P.” Do you guys know what that means? I don’t. Before he leaves, Jay tells his wife to take their son to their secluded cottage for safety because Jay found pictures of him and killing the priest. Jay and Gall see where the M.P. lives and it’s a giant castle of a place. They wait outside and in the middle of the night see a bunch of people with torches and masks made out of sticks and some are in robes and others are naked, presumably a cult. When they’re spotted by the cult, they make a run for it, but the cult catches up to Gal and kills him. Jay makes it back to his family but then sees people with torches outside the cottage. He attempts to confront them, and the cult members encircle him, take his shirt off, and give him a knife. Also in the circle is a hunchback with a bigger knife, so Jay defends himself by stabbing the slow and awkward hunchback a shitload of times, right in the hunch. The masked figures start taking their masks off, and we see Gal’s date who put the symbol on the mirror, the guy who hired Jay and Gal, and when the hunchback is revealed, we see his wife laughing. She’s very much alive, but the hunch on her back was their child. Jay has a giant crown of sticks placed on his head, with all the cult members cheering him on, and as he looks around confused, the movie ends.
Those Brits are known for those dead-eyed stares into the middle distance. And The Beatles.
Those wacky Brits! I really enjoy the original Wicker Man, so of course I’m going to enjoy this movie. Just like with The Wicker Man, it’s a series of seemingly unrelated and confusing events, culminating with the reveal that everything was precisely planned out without the lead character’s awareness of anything. What exactly did the symbol mean? Why were Jay and Gal killing these people in the first place? How long had Jay’s wife been involved with whatever this cult was? Why did she want her son to be killed? Had any of these questions been answered, the movie wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable. I can admit that up until the symbol was carved on the mirror, I was considering shutting it off because there was so little going on. And sure enough, right when you can’t be more bored, something weird and mysterious happens and you can’t help but questions what the fuck is going on. It really wasn’t until the reveal at the end that I would consider this a horror movie, because it played out more like a typical “thriller” involving contract killers. Finding out how many seemingly normal people were involved in this crazy ass stick face cult is what pushed it over the edge into something horrific. Great performances by everyone involved, and I’m always a sucker for movies about cults and how shitty they are. The scenes of violence were pretty intense, including Jay repeatedly smashing a guy’s hand with a hammer, as well as that same guy’s head, causing his head to pop open like a spring-loaded easy access door to the brain. I think that had some of the plot points been tightened up a little bit and had the film as a whole been trimmed down ten minutes or so, this would have gotten a full moon. Oh yeah, and had I heard more about their chimney sweeping or whatever the fuck they were talking about a little better, it would have been more engaging.
Did I mention how many “Best Horror Movies of 2011″ lists I’ve been reading? Quite a few. Which might also confuse you because you can clearly see that this movie was made in 2010. Take it easy! Even though it made its debut in 2010, it didn’t get a wider release until 2011, doi! Look at that poster! How can you not want to see this movie after seeing that poster? Despite having read enough about this movie to pique my interest, when Rampaige asked what it was about, I believe all I could muster was, “It’s about a clinic or something and I guess stuff happens there,” was enough for her to tolerate it. Five minutes into the movie you see a pregnant woman and Rampaige threatened to not watch it if something gross happened to the baby, which it did, but she stuck around anyway. Hahaha, sucker! And before I forget, there are going to be spoilers, and those spoilers make the film more enjoyable, so I recommend seeing it before reading the review.
Her hand originally said “NOT PENNY’S BABY” but then it conflicted with that popular TV show called “The People who went Missing on that Island”.
A pregnant woman (Tabrett Bethell) and her husband (Andy Whitefield) are driving through Australia in 1979 when they stop at the only motel they can find. When the husband goes out for food, he returns to find his wife missing. Wait, “found her missing” doesn’t make any sense, because if she was found, she wouldn’t be missing. Is that a George Carlin joke, anyone? Point is, we see her wake up (naked) in a bathtub full of ice and with a scar on her stomach. Her baby was removed! She’s in a large complex with a bunch of other women, all recently with their babies removed. Eventually this group finds a bunch of caged babies with colored tags on them which they learn match up with colored tags that have been sewn into each of these women. One woman starts killing all the others to find out what color her internal tag clearly isn’t, rather than cutting up her own guts. Clever girl! Unfortunately, the other girls don’t like this, so they are now not only confused by what the fuck is going on, but also have a crazy lady trying to kill them.
I guess this was the guy who played Spartacus who died and they had to find a new Spartacus. Now I know who he is, and now I’m sad! Well, not that sad.
While all of this is going on, the husband is dealing with the shady motel owner and crappy detective, but unfortunately is killed when a car he has stolen crashes into a tree. As the women are picked off one by one, we see that there are a few people who are monitoring this whole process through security cameras. Our lead character, whose name is Beth, by the way, is able to avoid death much more successfully than the other mothers, and is even able to kill the woman who has been killing everyone else. In short, Beth is the only one left and learns her tag was violet. When she goes to retrieve her baby, she is knocked up and wakes up chained to a floor as she sees a baby with a purple tag being held by a strange Russian couple. Apparently this whole thing is set up by a woman who makes expected mothers fight one another while a potential couple can observe how the mothers react, ensuring their baby comes from strong stock. The woman who runs the whole operation offers this less than legal service and has been doing so for years, assisted by her mentally disabled son. Part of the adoption is the parents are forced to kill the mom, but lucky for Beth, she was nice to the disabled son who barges in and shoots the adopting parents but is also shot in the head at the same time by the couple. Beth breaks free and confronts the woman in charge, only to learn that she was adopted out of this program as a baby and the people she thought were her parents were the ones who killed her birth mom. After killing the woman in charge, Beth visits the grave of her birth mom and sees a man walking away from the grave. She learns that this was her birth father, and the movie ends were her planning to meet him.
Fun fact I learned about Australian women thanks to this movie is that they get their periods in their stomachs.
Admittedly, I nodded off maybe two or three times during this movie. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy it! Especially considering that Rampaige was with me to fill in the gaps of what I had missed! I really enjoyed the way this film was shot, speaking from a stylistic perspective. Some might say I enjoyed its mise-en-scène, if we’re going to start whipping out terms we learned in college. I should point out that there was a title on the screen that let us know it took place in 1979 and it also said that it was a few years before DNA testing. It seemed arbitrary in the beginning to mention that but the twist at the end involving all these women being doctors or athletes explained why it was important we knew that. In this day and age of DNA testing, everyone would love to have a kid who was genetically predisposed to be an athlete capable or surviving a battle royale with a bunch of other qualified candidates, so that explains the whole reasoning behind it. Supposedly this movie is “based on true events” despite never claiming that in the credits, but rather is centered around a series of kidnappings? Or something? Makes sense, I guess, to claim that a series of kidnappings is some weird eugenics based thunderdome thing. I also thought it was funny that the guy who ran the hotel commented on Beth’s jugs, and I thought, “This girl’s pregnant, but if she wasn’t, that line means we are DEFINITELY seeing her jugs,” and then five minutes later she had her knockers out because she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Isn’t that convenient?! The direction they went with the plot was fun, and there were enough twists and turns that I wasn’t anticipated to make it unpredictable, but there were a few lulls in the action and had a few too many endings. Other than that, I recommend it! yay Australia!
Holy shit, they made a third Hostel?! What is Eli Roth THINKING?! Oh, he’s not directing this one, nor did he write it, nor did he get involved with it in any way, shape or form. Maybe he is involved in some minute way, but I’m going to pretend he wasn’t. I enjoyed the first two films to varying degrees, and didn’t even consider watching this one until I saw a review saying it was mildly entertaining. I believe that review claimed it would be fun to watch with a group of friends, so I watched it with Rampaige, who kept telling me it was stupid and to turn it off. I can’t just turn it off! I got it on Netflix! To turn it off would be like throwing money down the toilet! But, in retrospect, I probably should have never rented it in the first place.
Deth by computer-generated cockroaches?! NOOOOOO!!!!!!
An American walks into a room where he is confronted by an Eastern European couple who start getting frisky in front of him. We have learned from previous Hostel films that Eastern Europeans are bad, so we get nervous for the American. The tables are turned when we learn that the American is the dangerous one, drugging the couple and taking them to an underground las Vegas lair. We jump to a group of friends going to Las Vegas who are there for a bachelor party, and every single member of this group of friends is more irritating than the last. One friend is taken captive to be tortured by the Elite Hunting group and to give this movie its Las Vegas twist, we see this friend being tortured while people are making wagers on method of execution, how long he’ll take to die, and how he tries to barter for his life. While the rest of his friends to try track him down, they also end up part of the captives of Elite Hunting and we then learn the whole thing was set up by one of the friends who is actually a member. The member wants to sleep with the fiancé so he orchestrated everything and as apparently paid to kill this guy. The guy is let loose for the two “friends” to compete, but eventually it’s the member of Elite Hunting that escapes while the building explodes behind him. We see the dickhead friend at home with the now grieving fiancé, who asks if he’ll spend the night. He accepts, but then a horribly burned version of the friend he thought he killed pops up out of nowhere to torture and kill that tricky little asshole. VENGEANCE!
Poor, poor son from Nip/Tuck getting all arrowed to death. He had a self-proclaimed “gimp leg” in the movie, which I kept expecting to be some sort of plot point, but it wasn’t. A guy get hit in the face a few times with his crutch, but it was about as effective as a broom, so I don’t count that as a plot point. Sorry!
Unimaginative kills, unimaginative characters, and a big sense of redundancy are some of the flaws of this movie. I can’t quite give it my worst rating, however, because there were a few moments that did turn out differently than what I anticipated happening. This isn’t to say that those twists and turns weren’t cheesy, because they were, but they were still things I didn’t quite anticipate. I figured the opening scene, with its over-the-top portrayal of an Eastern European stereotype of attractive women and scary men was going to play out exactly the way it would in either of the previous movies, but clearly didn’t. When the shitty friend admitted to being a member of Elite Hunting, I expected to see him use his powers to get his other friends to buy their freedom by killing someone, similarly to how Hostel: Part II ended, and was wrong. And again, despite the cheese factor of the whole thing, the Las Vegas twist of incorporating wagers on the torture of the victims was enough to keep me interested. Other than that, this one was pretty awful and I don’t think it will be fun for anyone to watch, I don’t care how many of your friends you’re with.
