Hollow Man

The idea of what we would allow ourselves to do if no one could see us is an interesting premise in itself. How much impact would morals have on us? Would we go by the motto "If you can't see it, then it didn't happen"? This is the basic concept of Hollow Man, a disturbing and fascinating thriller.

Dr. Sebastian Caine (played with awesome menace by Kevin Bacon) is turned invisible by his fellow scientists as an experiment which could possibly benefit the military in a large way. Of course shit goes wrong, and he ends up being stuck as an invisible man. At first, he seems quite harmless performing jokes as serious as going "Boo" at someone in the dark. As time goes on and Sebastian begins to feel the power, everyone including his fellow scientists, invisible dogs, and naked neighbors become vulnerable to danger at his hands.

The special effects in Hollow Man are easily the best things about the movie. The transformation scenes with Sebastian are ridiculously authentic and powerful. This really looks like a surgery that could be done in any hospital today. So yeah, scenes with Sebastian doing things as simple as throwing water on himself just look so amazing and fucking cool.

My biggest problem with Hollow Man unfortunately, is the length. There are definitely some legit thrills in this movie, but overall I feel like some of them went on for too long. The last act of the movie feels like it goes on for about 15 minutes too long, where nothing happens except Sebastian picking off his fellow teammates because of the fear of getting turned in. We know that once one of them is alone, they will become Sebastian's next victim. So when it happens...the scenes become a bit stale as a result of how expected they are.

Despite an unneeded length, Hollow Man is a very interesting thriller with an awesome idea and stellar special effects. Definitely recommended for those who circle jerk over worthy CGI effects.

3/4

Wrong Turn 3

I would love to meet the people that decide which ideas are solid enough to be turned into movies. What the fuck is being said no to when movies like Wrong Turn 3 are given the permission to exist? Wrong Turn 3 is an absolute shitfest, and easily one of the worst horror movies I have seen in years.

The original Wrong Turn, while maybe not the most original movie (hey there Deliverance), at least seemed to have a point in being made. I thought it delivered some legit thrills, was pretty entertaining, and minus the nonstop, never-ending obnoxious shrieking from Emmanuelle Chriqui....I believe that Wrong Turn was pretty fair in terms of performances as well. And then the straight-to-DVD sequel rolls around. And even though it felt like a cheap knock-off of the first movie, it at least had one or two surprises and a couple good scares. Wrong Turn 3 provides nothing. I see no point in this movie being made at all.

The story is so fucking retarded. This chick Alex (played with absolutely no intensity, excitement, or originality by Janet Montgomery) watches all of her friends gets murdered in gruesome traps, and pretty much hides out until a bunch of convicts and the cops escorting them show up. Wouldn't there be a bit MORE security when transporting convicts? If the hillbilly is so intelligent, then why didn't he just kill Alex off before she ran into the other people? How did she avoid danger? And considering this does take place in West Virginia like the first two movies, wouldn't people know to stay the fuck away from this? Absolutely retarded.

Thrills and chills obviously took a vacation as well. There's absolutely nothing scary or even creepy going on here. Just the standard cat and mouse game. Someone talks. Someone else walks into a trap that destroys them (in some of the worst CGI ever). Hillbilly laughs. People run. And repeat. And no, I'm not downplaying the movie's routine. It really is that fucking dull and montonous. Once you've seen one person get dissected by the hillbilly's trap, you've pretty much seen the entire bit of this 90 minute torture chamber of a movie.

And if the lack of thrills, humor, and a solid storyline aren't enough to say no thanks, the performances are so goddamn awful it's like a gun to the head. Janet Montgomery (while hot) can't act her way out of a paper bag. You never really feel like she's even remotely terrified, sad, or even peeved off. She goes through the motions in every line she delivers and puts herself on auto-pilot. And the prisoners' dialogue and performances are fucking ridiculous. Every one of them overracts and speaks like an angry middle schooler that just got out of juvie. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. I'm gonna fucking kill you. Get the fuck up. Die. Yeah, it must have taken years to write this great American script.

Wrong Turn 3 is an embarassing movie on everyone's parts. It's not scary, the acting is shit, it's boring, the effects suck, and it doesn't even have any sense of humor or fun in it. When the obligatory part 4 comes out, just avoid this like a tedious, neverending plague of grotesque bullshit.

0/4



My Soul to Take

If I didn't just view (more than once, actually) and enjoy Scream 4, I would really start to question where Wes Craven's head is at. My Soul to Take is a terrible movie, not only a giant step down for horror movies, but a giant step down for Wes Craven as well. No one leaves unscathed from this piece of shit.

My Soul to Take starts off with a bit of promise, introducing the idea of a killer with multiple personality disorder who apparently...can put his spirit into anyone else after he is murdered. Yeah, I didn't say it was an original idea...just a neat one. From there, My Soul to Take begins to go down the drain.

One big problem (of the several going on) with MSTT is that it just doesn't make any sense at all. You never really find out why these teenagers are being killed, or how the killer even managed to get into someone else's body in the first place. What made this killer so special? What is the point of killing all of Bug's friends? Why did the killer have to wait 16 years to make his move? Do we really even care?

My Soul to Take just isn't scary at all. There's no sense of urgency or tension at all. About half the cast is killed about two scenes after you are introduced to them (which is good, considering that none of them with the possible exclusion of Zena Grey leave any impression and would be labeled as too amateurish for the Disney channel). After these murders (which aren't scary or frightening at all, just gross and stupid) occur, you're left with a lot of down time....where absolutely nothing happens.

Once you find out who the killer is, you're just left with a big, "That's it?". The motivation behind the killings isn't there, and neither is the logic behind how the killer's soul arrived into this person's body. This is an ending that was created just to have an ending. No fucking point.

 Seriously, this isn't even a movie at all. It's a 90 minute time killer with a few bloody kills thrown in the mix. My Soul to Take is a lazy, tedious, poorly written and acted piece of amateurish bullshit that never should have been made.

0/4

The Final Destination

The Final Destination (what a dishonest title) is totally different then the first three in the series. Petty things like character development and fairly solid performances are totally out the window. There's something so unapologetic about how TFD plays out. This is a bittersweet compliment.

Like I just said, in terms of story and performances/characters, this is easily the worst in the franchise. Just about everyone either overdoes it and/or doesn't play it up enough. You really don't give a shit who dies, and I would be lucky if I could remember one thing that's said by each of the characters. This is easily the least interesting set of victims throughout the Final Destination series.

On the other hand, there's something so...bold about the formula for this one. While I wish it would have been a bit longer in order to flesh out some story elements, I felt like this one flew by at a brisk 80 minute time, which already gets some bonus points from me. There's very little downtime between kills which often pleased the inner gorehound in me. Some of the effects are really awesome as well, I loved the format used for the recreation of the accidents in past Final Destination movies, and the scene at the end that creates the big accident in this movie.

So, while I wish that The Final Destination had tried to be more of...well, a movie, I have to give it some props on the awesome pace, and new twist or two with how the deaths play out (I loved the visual clues that the main guy received before each death). It's not a great movie by any means, but for filler gorefests...you could do a lot worse.

2/4

Prom Night

A Shit show, completely devoid of anything fresh or even remotely scary, yet I can't help but love it for existing

1/4

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

Rarely does a horror movie come along where I feel myself having envy for the characters who meet their demise in it. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is a great exception to this. The people that are brutally slaughtered get lucky compared to the people that are watching this bullshit.

A big problem with movies like this one, is that they feel like adding gore in every scene will hide the fact that there's really nothing going on, certainly nothing suspenseful or frightening at all. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an empty, hollow mess that ups the amount of gore in hopes of compensating for the lack of....pretty much anything else.

TCMTB comes off more like an endurance test or a trip to the hospital then it does like an actual horror movie. There is no fun to be had here at all. The sense of humor is just too played-out and the death scenes come across as mean instead of entertaining. Very little development is given to the characters as well, so when they end up on the losing end of a chainsaw, you really don't give three fucks which is a big problem for a horror movie.

In addition to being ridiculously overdone in the use of gore, TCMTB is just a giant bore. You know the drill by now. Anyone who is not related to the bumfuck family is going to end up dead and/or eaten, so when scenes as mentioned follow...there's no element of surprise or unpredictability here. It's just a below standard entry into a series that really shouldn't have that many sequels/prequels to begin with. It's time to put this baby to bed.

1/4

The Last House on the Left

Continuing with the recent theme of expressing brutality for no other reason then just to kill time and try to entertain people is The Last House on the Left, a disgusting, vile, hideous, pointless movie.

The story (if you can even call it that) plays out like this; Mari (played by Sara Paxton in one of the only highlights of this movie) is raped, tortured, and left for dead. And ironically enough, the criminals end up staying at her parents house for refuge from the storm. Mommy and Daddy become upset once they realize how fucked up their daughter is, and decide it's time to bring down the house.

And that's about it. The plot is so threadbare it can literally be summarized in one sentence. I bet the only reason that there was a "story" created is so that it would be plausible for harsh, unscary torture scenes to follow. The rape scene is one of the most disgusting scenes I've seen in a movie in a long time. It feels like it will never end and is just totally unnecessary and ridiculous to watch. It's not scary or even entertaining. It's just fucking vile.

Nothing scary happens in The Last House on the Left. Literally it's just people being tortured and killed for the entire movie (which feels like it will never end). I felt like there was an interesting idea here with the parents. Since they are bringing pain onto the criminals, are they any better? Is revenge justfication for brutality? But nope, fuck that shit. Let's just throw in some more torture porn because God knows we don't have enough of that.

The Last House on the Left is a sadistic, unenjoyable piece of trash. There's no humor and no real frights here. Just nasty bullshit trying to convince you that it's scary and entertaining. Fail on both parts.

0/4

May

People suck, so why not just tear off the best parts of them and create the perfect best friend? This is the general idea of the lead character May, played by Angela Bettis like a pro.

May actually has an interesting premise. Unlike most movies, she doesn't want to murder these people just for the sake of a bloodbath. She wants to murder them in order to create the perfect companion. Someone that won't freak out over little things like getting off on blood or someone that won't kick you out for a hooker with legs to kill for. Sounds fair enough right?

Despite the cool idea and some creepy scenes (pretty much every scene with that damn, fucking doll), May never really takes off in the way that it should and kinda wastes some of its' potential.

The problem that holds May back from being excellent, is that it just doesn't do enough. You know from the start that May is batshit crazy, so it gets irritating when the movie takes forever to actually...get her crazy. There's one too many scenes of May just doing absolutely nothing but staring....and doing absoutely nothing else. You know she's thinking no good, so why does the movie always seem to be one step behind?

May is a decent, well-acted, filler horror movie that doesn't deliver behind the cool storyline. It's a bit too slow and clunky to really take off and become a horror classic.

2/4

Orphan

From what we've seen in horror movies in the last decade (Orphan, The Omen, The Children, Wicked Little Things), children are evil. Anyone considering having/adopting children should think twice, and then head over to the nearest Petsmart. But, Orphan has a neat twist or two that sets it out from the standard evil child movie.

Isabelle Fuhrman was the perfect choice as Esther in this movie. She conveys a real sense if innocence in the earlier scenes, and totally knows how to bring on her bad little bitch side later on in the movie. She'll smile in your face and kill the shit out of you within the same second. There's an ominous prescence that surrounds Esther even when she isn't plotting someone's death.

Props go out to the movie on actually being able to convey horror without having to resort to blood and gore every two seconds. Though one or two scenes is quite brutal (pray for that nun), the movie rarely uses blood to get the point across. It more so relies on the terrifying situation of knowing someone's up to no good, but not knowing why or how they are committing the crimes.

Orphan isn't perfect though. I wish the movie was a bit shorter (124 minutes isn't exactly that Tanner friendly) and some of the scenes towards the end with Esther in her father are just...really fucking weird. Besides those minor nitpicks, Orphan is a solid entry into the "Just another reason why children suck" franchise.

3/4