Cocaine Bear

 

A ludicrous concept with a fairly straightforward approach? Man, that kinda blows.

2/4

Candyman

It's a decent ride but overall pales in comparison to the iconic original and fails to leave a lasting impression. Kind of like that piece of candy at the bottom of your pumpkin that you forgot that you had received. 

2/4

 

Climax

As stimulating and involving as showing up 2 hours late to a drunken party, Climax will give you none of the sort. 

1/4

 

Clue

It starts out as flat as a board game but picks up momentum as the script and performances get wackier.

3/4

Captain Phillips

As he did in United 93, Paul Greengrass takes a true story, adds the Hollywood twist, and still manages to terrify the audience with the authenticity and pure terror as you watch the story unfold. It's quite easy to look up each tale and find out how they end out, but nothing can prepare you for the way Greengrass will makes things unfold in front of your eyes. This is easily one of Tom Hanks' best, if not the best performance of his career. He's unstoppable as Captain Phillips, coming across as strong yet vulnerable, sympathetic yet cunning. And matching each percentage of his power is Barkhad Abdi as Muse, the leader of the sea pirates who take Captain Phillips hostage. Every scene he's in keeps the viewer on their toes, as no one is sure what he's capable of ranging in his scenes as warm and sympathetic to cold and menacing.

There isn't one second of Captain Phillips that isn't full of tension. Unlike most Hollywood movies these days, Captain Phillips manages to stop your breathing without needing to drop an ounce of blood or CGI. It's the heart and soul of the movie that drives you until the credits roll. Captain Phillips is one of the best movies of the year.

4/4

Carrie

It's disappointing watching Carrie considering the consistent momentum it achieves throughout to watch everything crash and burn as everything in the movie actually starts crashing and burning. The scenes involving blood and guts ironically enough are the least gritty scenes in Carrie, stopping the movie from greatness.

What's up? Carrie White's (Chloe Grace Moretz) life is shit. At home, her overprotective, over-religious mother Margaret (Julianne Moore) prevents any freedom or independence on Carrie's end. She's the type of parent who would much prefer to put her child in a cage and watch her as opposed to releasing her into the real world where things can't be watched 100% of the time. At school her life is even worse. After a particularly embarassing attack led by Chris (Portia Doubleday), Carrie snaps, unleashing powers she never knew she had. One member of Chris' group; Sue (Gabriella Wilde) strives to make things easier for Carrie after feeling guilt on the bullying. She wants her boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) to take her to the prom for a night of fun, but Chris and the rest of the group are less then willing to give Carrie her time to shine.

What's good? A majority of the characters are brought to life by the performances. Chloe Grace Moretz is great as Carrie easily one of her best performances to date. As opposed the original where Carrie is just depicted as out there, Moretz gives her a deeper feeling, truly damaged, vulnerable and alone. She's great.

Julliane Moore shines as her mother as well. I would easily say her scenes are the most chilling of the entire movie. She's doing everything she does because of how much she loves her daughter but Moore makes her character terrifying as well. She owns her rendition of one of the more famous monsterous mothers in movie history.

Judy Greer gives some charm and fun with her portrayal of Ms. Desjardin, the only adult standing in Carrie's corner. Her scenes give a nice bit of comic relief and a warmth that the rest of the scenes and characters don't bring.

One of the bigger surprises is how deliciously evil Portia Doubleday is as Chris. She's so nasty and vile without an inch of regret you're waiting for her to grow horns. All of her scenes have a sense of entertainment in how much fun Doubleday has with throwing her venom on the viewers and on Carrie.

As I previously mentioned the scenes in Carrie involving the relationship with her and her mother are great. They're entertaining and very suspenseful, you never know what either of them are thinking or what either of them are capable of doing to the other one.

What the fuck? Unfortunately all the tension that Carrie builds up is dropped like a bucket of blood during the prom scenes. A cool death scene or two (most notably the one involving the wires and fire) can't shake a feeling of a nausea-worthy level of CGI involved. Carrie begins dropping so many special effects I was looking around for a controller to jump into the action. It just becomes silly and very far from scary considering how laughably overdone these scenes are.

As noteworthy as some of the characters are, I get a nagging feeling that some of them could have been written better, or maybe even acted with a bit more power. Wilde's performance comes across as rather tepid. Her character doesn't seem to be given much to do but look regretful and sad and I wish the Sue character was given more to do, or that Wilde should have done more with them. Same goes for Ansel Elgort as her boyfriend & Alex Rusell as Chris' boyfriend Billy, who feel like walking, talking cardboard cutouts of characters.

Overall: The final scene of the original Carrie is easily one of the most talked about scenes with the exception of the prom scene. And this version just seems to throw it all away at the end, resorting to cheap effects and a lack of an interesting conclusion. Carrie shot for Prom Queen and instead ended up as a solid RU.

3/4

The Conjuring

If there's a more fun and effective way to get your blood pressure raised then The Conjuring, I sure as hell haven't heard of it. The Conjuring is a blast and easily one of the best horror films of the last decade.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson play Ed and Lorraine Warren, two charismatic ghost hunters who work with truth and logic on their side. Rarely is a case so bizzare or malicious that the two can't offer a reasonable explanation for it; until they meet the Perron family, a group whose signs of being haunted range from creepy sounds and things being moved, to dead pets and unexpected guests. And surely enough, it even manages to go downhill from there.

The Conjuring has such an authentic nature you never really feel like you're watching a movie. I could watch the leads play the Warrens all day long and never believe they weren't real people on screen, the leads manage to give their roles some charisma and personality as well. They aren't your typical stiffs. The Perron family led by Lili Taylor as Carolyn Perron will make your bones shiver portraying a sense of compassion in their roles as each are haunted to death.

It's refreshing how James Wan has proven his versatility as a horror director I must say. After watching movies like Saw, I knew he could do the gory shit well but I never knew he could do the suspense well and he nails it. Every scene is milked to its' utmost potential, sometimes resulting in a false alarm, other times resulting in pure terror. Every set piece, character, doll, situation is used perfectly to nail the feeling of terror. The Conjuring is a roller coaster ride of a movie.

One of my other biggest compliments about The Conjuring is its' look. It takes a lot for a piece of scenery to make you feel spooked but even the scenery in The Conjuring is made to frighten. Every set piece looks amazing it reminds me of something you would see in The Haunted Mansion.

And unlike most horror movies which tend to fizzle out towards the end, The Conjuring stays strong until the credits roll. The exorcism scenes are spectacular (The Last Exorcism...take notes) the make-up is astounding. Everything works in The Conjuring, I loved every minute of it.

3/4

The Collection

I am convinced that we will be watching Saw/movies reminiscient of Saw until death. In addition to being completely unnecessary and repetitive, they also manage to be quite terrible. The Collection stands strong in its' awful quality, not even reaching one solid moment from beginning to end.

The main victim in The Collection is Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) a rich girl who is kidnapped after a night of watching everyone at the party she's attending get ripped to pieces (the scene's highlight, if there is one). Elena's father hires people to help find her, including the only survivor of the original. They follow Elena along the hotel, falling into all of the collector's traps. And that's about it in terms of plot.

The Collection appears to have been created on a budget of $5 excluding what had to have been distributed to the cast. The special effects are extremely cheap and transparent. They're obnoxious and in your face, plus the ridiculous music video styled direction doesn't help. Half of the time you can't even tell what the fuck is going on.

All hopes of getting a coherent story all go to Hell also. There's absolutely nothing going on here but tedious killings. Half of these characters don't even get a name or a plausible reason for existing before being hacked up by the collector or his toys. It's a shame that a movie featuring such a crafty and intelligent antagonist can feel like such a dumb journey into movie Hell.

0/4

The Call

Doing OT at a call center or Hell...just working at a call center achieves a level of bone chills that this movie could never. 

1/4

Click

          If you’re going to aim for the gross, at least make sure that it’s funny. If you’re going to go for the heart, at least make the effort feel natural. Failing at both goals will just come off as obnoxious, as presented in Click, a terribly unfunny and ridiculously sappy movie.

Click stars Adam Sandler as Michael, an overworked, overstressed architect who’s quite bored & unhappy with his life. He soon receives an opportunity to change it with a magical remote that has the ability to fast forward, stop, rewind, mute, and slow down the events of his life that he chooses to use them on. At first it seems to be going pretty well as he’s using the remote on trivial things such as muting his boss or using the remote to his favor during sex with his wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale from the Underwold series). After a while though, the remote has a mind of its’ own, coming into play way too often, resulting in Michael watching his own life feel like a matter of seconds as it goes before his very eyes.

                Click is awfully monotonous and flat which is quite surprising considering that though they are rarely amazing, Adam Sandler’s movies are at least somewhat interesting to watch. Click is as interesting as a remote control manual though. There’s nothing you don’t see coming from 10,000 light years away in this movie. Come to think of it, the more I think of it, the more it reminds me of Scrooge actually. With a non-human like factor coming into play to make someone who is unappreciative of their life realize that they shouldn’t be taking it for granted. Except for Scrooge being pretty awesome and Click failing to even hold a candle to it.

                What’s even more offensive about Click is how terribly unfunny the whole thing is. The first half is nothing but bodily functions and cheap sexual jokes that could be invented by any middle schooler, and the second half is just flat-out miserable when Click goes for the heart but just ends up giving you a migraine. It feels so phoned in and contrived that you can almost see the “Lifetime” logo appearing in the corner at some moments. If Click ever comes on your television then run for your remote and hope that it’s magical enough to vaporize the memory of Click from your brain.

0/4

Cabin in the Woods

Sick of generic horror movies? The ones where every good scene is shown on the previews? The ones where you can see every twist coming a mile away? Then Cabin in the Woods is the horror movie for you, breaking all of those common horror stereotypes while taking the viewer on a cinematic rollercoaster from beginning to end. Just when you think you've seen all the twists, one will blindside you like the last drop of a ride.

Cabin in the Woods starts out in a pretty routine manner. 5 friends go up to a cabin in the woods and begin to become attacked by creatures. The group of friends couldn't be any more common either; the slut (Anna Hutchison), the virgin (Kristen Connolly), the jock (Chris Hemsworth), the stoner (Fran Kranz), and the scholar (Jesse Williams). So you think you know where things are going, but then another twist is added from early on. Two men working in some top secret organization (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins) are monitoring and even controlling all of the groups' every move. Why they are doing this and how they are doing this are just some of the questions that Cabin in the Woods slowly begins to answer as the movie progresses. This is just one of the highlights of the movie; you don't see where it's coming despite having a ton of intrigue in knowing where it will end up.

Though you could argue that the whole "being watched and controlled" aspect has been done in movies like Stranger than Fiction and Truman Show, Cabin in the Woods takes these elements and mixes them in with many others, resulting in something that feels oddly original despite being advertised as the average horror movie from the previews. The organization part of the story always has something hillarious going on, often resulting in pure terror on the teenagers' end, to pure comedy on what is going on with all of the scientists. It's rare in a movie to scare you and then make you laugh like Hell 2 seconds after.

The special effects were also quite noteworthy in this one. Despite the fact that the teenagers look and speak like teenagers in this current decade, something about the visuals in this movie feel oddly reminscient of the 80's/90's....but in a good way. All of the monsters (and trust...there are many, ranging from killer robots, giant spiders, snakes, mermen, zombies, and killer redneck hillbilly zombies which are quite different mind you) don't feel like CGI overload. It actually reminded me of the good old days where people used costumes and makeup to get that more authentic feel for the creatures in horror movies. And watching a giant merman onscreen without that authentic and realistic feeling would just be so wrong.

The performances are also pretty stable as well. There really isn't a weak link among the group (which is a rarity) and there also seems to be a natural chemistry that is present amongst these people (which is a triple rarity). Most noteworthy being Kranz as Marty the stoner and Kristen Connolly as Dana the final girl. Who would have ever imagined a movie about killer redneck zombies praying on the living as coming across so hillarious, authentic, and just flat out fun?

4/4

Club Dread

Looked like a ton of fun to make! Shame it left out the audience in that party. 

1/4



Chronicle

Taking a fresh perspective on the typical movie involving superpowers is Chronicle, a film about three teenage boys who receive superpowers by a radiation hole. The twist on this movie is that unlike other movies where the main characters have powers....these three guys never even remotely consider the idea of using their powers of helping out others. Instead they're too busy on doing things like; moving people's cars, rearranging everyone's stuff, flying to different countries, and just being able to shoot the breeze on top of the highest building in the city. But like all movies with superpowers, a villain is formed, as the most conflicted and disrespected teenager; Andrew (Dane DeHaan) starts using his powers for pain as opposed to fluff. Chronicle contains some awesome visuals, the scenes of the three guys flying like planes look stellar and DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan are quite solid as the lead guys in this.

But unfortunately, Chronicle falls short of amazing mainly because of the lack of material provided. Too many scenes involving the guys using their powers feel repetitive and after a while...it gets a bit old to see them use these powers and the ending is highly disappointing. Nothing terribly interesting is provided, the fight scenes all feel like they're one big overlong scene and the absolute final scene lacks any sort of a satisfying finish. Chronicle shot for the stars but instead, it just hit about as high as the top of one of the buildings that the characters frequently hang on.

2/4

The Children

It's not exactly a mystery that children are generally regarded as a big pain in the ass, but The Children depicts this in a whole different way that is rarely seen; children turning on their parents. The Children is an effective horror movie about what happens when your offspring want you to disappear...for real.

Two sets of parents bring their younger children, and one teenage daughter up to the mountains for Christmas vacation. The younger children soon develop flu/cold-like symptoms all at once, and once the sickness kicks in...they'll want a little bit more then chicken noodle soup, turning on their parents and planning their demises the entire way.

One of the best things about The Children is the subtleties. The Children isn't a horror movie with back to back gruesome death scenes (though there are a few of those spread throughout), but what's most frightening about The Children is just the simple idea of it. How would you deal with a child that wanted nothing more than to see your head on a platter? Would you be able to strike them down or would your parental instincts forbid this action in your head? The Children answers these questions and more about the nature of evil children in a very chilling manner.

The Children is a solid horror movie that will capture and keep your attention from beginning to end. Though the idea of evil children (The Omen, Orphan, Wicked Little Things) setting highly unlikely and sometimes preposterous traps (Final Destination) for others to fall victim to, The Children sprinkles some freshness in the plot from beginning to end to avoid a "been there, done that" type of feeling that tends to suck the fun and enjoyment out of most other recent horror movies. And it will make you think twice about procreation after viewing this. What's not to love?

3/4



Carnage

What happens when you take a jump rope and try and stretch it to another country? You're obviously not going to have enough material to fulfill your goal. And that is exactly what is wrong with Carnage, a movie which isn't a movie at all really. Carnage is about two sets of parents who are dealing with a physical fight that their children got into, resulting in one child named Ethan losing two teeth. Zachary's parents (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) and Ethan's parents (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) try and deal with their dispute in the most calm and mature fashion possible, but soon after, their claws come out.

Carnage just doesn't have enough going on to really be considered as a movie to me. It runs 75 minutes which is certainly a very short period of time, but there's not much going on at all minus the parents and their arguments, so at times, 75 minutes feels like 7,775 minutes. The performances are all pretty solid though, most noteworthy being Christoph Waltz as Zachary's father, who provides a well-needed source of comedic relief and sour indifference. But overall, Carnage just isn't funny or entertaining enough to be recommended by me. If you want to watch a short, but entertaining and hillarious story about people fighting, just turn on an episode of Jerry Springer and skip Carnage all together.

1/4

Contagion

That is it. I'm officially losing hope on 2011 for being a great year of movies. Disappointment after disappointment hits theaters every week in this depressing years of movies. Contagion had all the potential in the world to be awesome. But instead, it wastes its great cast and gives moviegoers a tedious, safe, uninspired and unsatisfactory drama that's equivalent to 106 minutes of pure nothingness.

Contagion has a pretty solid premise, or at least, I thought it would have had a pretty solid premise. Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from her Hong Kong trip with a cold (or so she thinks it's a cold). Soon after, she's having seizures, memory problems, and eventually collapses into a condition which leads to her death, leaving behind a devastated, fragile, and very confused husband; Mitch (Matt Damon). Pretty much, the whole movie traces how the disease spreads; dealing with a doctor in Atlanta (Laurence Fishburne), a doctor sent to Minneapolis (Kate Winslet), a blogger in London (Jude Law), and another doctor who traveled to Hong Kong to find out what is the origin of the disease (played by Marion Cotillard). The movie traces how all these people relate to each other in more ways than once. So pretty much, it's Babel or Crash but with sickness. Fun times.

One of the big problems I had with Contagion is the structure. Unlike amazing movies like Crash that are able to connect all these stories and make them interesting & worthy of attention, Contagion just fails at that. You barely know anything about any of these characters so when bad things start happening to them, your reaction is just like....SO? Because of the billions of stories going on, so many actors are wasted as a result. While some are given very little to do (Kate Winslet and Laurence Fishburne), others turn in some of their worst performances yet. Matt Damon is a total stiff as the lead. He rarely acts like a human being throughout the entire movie and is totally devoid of any emotions. A scene later on in the movie where he's viewing his deceased wife's picture is supposed to be heartbreaking but it just comes off as bad Lifetime. Jude Law is another actor who really really doesn't do well here at all. There's just something so pretentious about the way he delivers his lines. You would think a movie about such intelligent people would present these characters as....PEOPLE. I've seen cartoons with more life-like qualities than these characters. Oh, and they totally waste Marion Cotillard as well. Her scenes were probably some of my favorites so of course they have to cut them short. Good times.

For a movie about such a deadly disease, Contagion is rather dull as well. Nothing exciting (minus the early scenes with Gwyneth Paltrow) really happens at all. Where's the tension? Where's the excitement? They barely touch on that, instead we get nonstop, neverending discussions about the disease. How did this movie even get labeled as a Drama without any drama? 95% of the time it reads as an insufferably awful documentary on some channel about learning. Da fuck? I've seen zombie & end of the world movies that present more situations about what people do in the face of disease than this one. The plot is just so dull and flimsy, I don't really get how the director thought he could stretch this like putty into a feature length movie.

And when watching the preview for Contagion, do you feel like this is the type of movie to present some new, relevant, and suspenseful information about the effects of disease? Yeah, well I was suckered too. Contagion tries to be intelligent, but as someone once said, "An empty barrel makes the most noise". There's absolutely no point to Contagion except for that disease can spread quickly from person to person. And the only people that is news to are those who lick the driveway for dessert. For everyone else....NAHT groundbreaking news. There's nothing informative or new about Contagion. There's not even a twist. Information which Matt Damon finds out about his wife after she dies COULD HAVE BEEN A TWIST. BUT THEY DON'T TWIST IT! NO TWIST! I'm pissed. Granted, any type of twist that was attempted at this point would have probably failed, at least it would have proved for being an entertaining failure instead of the tedious sludge that the moviegoer has to tread through. And just when you're about to get out of the sludge, Contagion actually has the nerve to throw on 90 more pounds of mold and toxic garbage. The ending is an absolute cop-out. A confusing ending only due to the amount of nothingness that was present.

Contagion is a cliched, tedious, disaster of a movie that had potential to be everything but what it turns into. A great cast. An accomplished director. A premise that had the potential to be interesting. But it sells all those things to the devil, resulting in a movie that lacks tension, originality, story, or even a reason to care. You know a movie is sinking like the Titanic when you watch a character on screen get her head cut open and think.......boy, she's a lucky girl.

1/4

Cowboys & Aliens

When cooking, do you ever take two ingredients and combine them even though it will create a bizzare combination that most certainly won't work? Well, Jon Favreau (who directed the amazing Iron Man) feels your pain with his latest work; Cowboys & Aliens, a bizzare disaster of a movie that tries to combine a western story and a scifi flick while not really succeeding at either genre.

In Cowboys & Aliens, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) is an outlaw who wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memories, tons of people after him, and an odd metal bracelet which doesn't seem to come off. He wanders into town, interacting with the locals, many of which want him thrown in jail, especially Sheriff Taggart (Keith Carradine),  Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano), and his father Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). Soon after as Jake is about to be taken away, aliens invade the town, kidnapping locals until Jake springs into action and finally finds out what that damn metal bracelet is good for. Soon after the first attack, Jake, his love interest Ella (Olivia Wilde) and many of the other locals who haven't been abducted take off on a journey to save their fellow townspeople and defeat the aliens once and for all.

There is very little redeeming qualities about Cowboy & Aliens, but one area where I will give props to are the special effects. The crew members who worked on those were some of the rare in between participants who earned their paychecks for this movie. The scenes with the aliens are awesome and I loved watching them and all of the destruction that they caused with the people.

As for performances, though most faltered (which I will start mentioning in an upcoming paragraph), one standout was Olivia Wilde. In addition to being absolutely beautiful, Wilde makes the very best of a threadbare, underutilized character. I will easily say that she is the actor that should hold her head the highest when viewing this movie. One of the few performances that isn't overbearing, obnoxious, or one-note.

And now for the negatives, which were certainly far greater in numbers than the positives. For one, combining two genres was an awful idea. The western scenes are flat, tedious, contrived, and unoriginal as hell. Nothing noteworthy happens except for a bunch of ridiculous speeches about bonding, being a man, and you get my point. Because that's totally what people want to see in a genre that's all about action. And they pretty much feel like they're copied and pasted from better movies of this genre. Steal from the best. Cowboys & Aliens even fails at that. The scenes with the aliens are just as bad. They rarely show up and you don't learn anything about them. Apparently, they're on Earth for gold but you don't understand what the purpose of gold is to them. It's such a silly idea that's never even explained at all. None of the scenes are exciting with the aliens mainly due to the amount of questions and tedium that follow. You're even supposed to believe that these aliens are such ridiculously intelligent creatures despite leaving a deadly bracelet within arms reach of the main character. What the fuck?

The performances are ridiculous as well. Daniel Craig is such a bore as the main lead. He grunts every line without any excitement or energy at all. He must have been taking lessons from Harrison Ford, who is even worse in this movie. He pretty much barks every line and for fuck's sake...IF YOU'RE 9000 YEARS OLD, STOP APPEARING IN ACTION MOVIES. Shit. Can't wait for the sequel where the Golden Girls are sword fighting with a bunch of pirates. Oh! I forgot someone else. Paul Dano....what a big step down from Little Miss Sunshine. Every scene with him (and thank God there's not that many) is totally pathetic and ridiculous. He's such an obnoxious, irritating character you wish the aliens would shut his fucking mouth before he even gets his second line out.

The story moves along like an alien oozing his goo on the ground. So many plot holes are present that you could jump in one and end up in China. For one...apparently the way to get the bracelet off is to...stop thinking. Yeah. You heard me. There's no codes. No passwords. Not even a fucking lockbox. Stop thinking. And these are the aliens we're supposed to believe are so much more superior in terms of intelligence than humans. Oh! And Ella's story line is pathetic. A little past the middle of the movie, her journey takes a flying leap off the tracks, resulting in one of the most ridiculous endings of 2011. I'll give you a hint. She's not human. Nor is she an alien. I'm not really sure what she is but based on all the intelligence dedicated to her character's journey...neither did she.

Cowboys & Aliens is easily going to be on my worst movies of 2011 list. Humor must have been on vacation in another planet. So were strong performances, an intelligent script, a cohesive story, a solid ending, or any credible explanations about the aliens or some of the other characters in the story. I would rather be beamed up by the most malicious aliens in history over sitting through one more viewing of Cowboys & Aliens.

0/4

Chain Letter

Chain letters are bad. Chain letters can kill. If you don't forward one then you deserve to be murdered by a guy with chains considering you gave up your right to privacy by using all this technology shit. Yes, I'm not even kidding, this is the motto to Chain Letter, a tedious, waste of an opportunity with a strange as fuck message to boot.

Chain Letter starts off with some promise. Actually, the best scene happens first which actually was pretty smart in getting audiences interested before showing them about 2 awesome minutes before 94 awesome ones. A girl is dragged by her parents' cars because she is attatched to (you guessed it, CHAINS!), after a certain point...she is led into traffic. Coolness. :D

Chain Letter actually has an interesting premise. An annoying hassle that everyone generally ignores could lead to deciding if you will live or die. Kinda ironic in a way actually. The problem is that Chain Letter goes about with this idea all wrong. It doesn't make much sense at all. So *Spoiler Alert* you find out that the killer is a soldier that had bad experiences in the war as a result due to technology. Ummm, okay. Not only was it not a supernatural entity like I was hoping the movie would be about, but it's about some random fuck that you never even get to see anyways. His motives just become really unclear. You never find out what these particular teens did (besides all being boring as fuck, I can literally count the things I remember them saying on one hand) to deserve these chainful deaths. And another question, if everyone was to continue forwarding the letter, what would he do then? Go to a lazier community? And another thing, at one point, someone who actually forwarded the chain letter is attacked by the soldier from his roof. What da fuck? Was he waiting up there all day? Stupid.

As for the bloodshed (one of the few redeeming factors of this movie), I would be lying if I didn't say it was kinda awesome. Characters are ripped apart faster then you can say "Oh shitfuck". Every death is bloody, brutal, and in some cases...actually a bit surprising. My favorite would be the one mentioned earlier, and the guy in the gym. Those were the most brutal which automatically makes them love in my book. Unfortunately though, despite these gruesome and appealing scenes, Chain Letter is never really that scary. There's no substance to this. It's like taking 5 pounds of sugar, putting it on bread and calling it a movie. The entire thing is pretty much like this. Kill scene, talking, looking at computer, kill, kill, kill, END! There's never any tension or real build-up here. You don't even see the main character (who turns out to be the girl from the first), have a fight with the killer. He just gets her and...that's it.

As for the performances, overall they're actually not that bad. Not one link is terribly amazing, but some actually hold their own pretty well, especially Nikki Reed (whose still responsible for one of my favorite movies ever) and Michael J. Pagan.

So overall, Chain Letter isn't the epic failure it could have been, but it is pretty lackluster. Missed opportunities, lack of logic, and a lack of genuine thrills sink the boat despite some awesome killings, a decent premise, and some decent acting. Can't wait for the movie about the killer party invitation to be the sequel. Lezz go.

1/4

Creature

I love cheesy horror movies. They're my guilty pleasure. Hatchet was cheesy as fuck but at least it was fun with competent performances and a ton of thrills and humor to get by. I think there can be a lot of fun with having a cheesy horror movie. Not here though, Creature is so fucking awful it's not even bad in a fun way. It takes a potentially cool situation and fucks it into the ground in the most tedious manner possible. It's like taking someone to an amusement park and stopping them with a hit to the head whenever they go on a ride. No fun.

Creature is an absolutely mind-numbing fuckfest of stupidity. The story can be summarized in less then one sentence. People get attacked by creature. Shit like this must have taken seconds, maybe minutes to come up with. Never has a 90 minute horror movie felt so goddamn agonizing.

It's really not scary or funny at all either. Shit on Scyfy channel has kept me more entertained in 10 minutes then Creature provides in the previously mentioned....ridiculously long 90 minutes. It's just awful. Not awful in the funny way where it's sort of amusing. Not awful in the way where it sucks but at least there's some good gore (just about every killing occurs offscreen...lame). Just awful. The writing is bland and the story is nonexistent.

And to make shitty matters even fuckier....they try to throw in some monkey-brained twists in the last half hour. I kid you not....a girl tries to fuck her friend's boyfriend, and then later goes on to giving her brother (who screws everyone over and turns out to have a Dad whose into sacrificing), a handjob. Yes. This is how deep we're gettting here, folks.



Creature is a ridiculously awful movie. Nothing redeeming at all and it will easily be one of the worst movies of 2011 no matter what is in store for films this year. Paying any amount to see this is like lighting your arm on fire when you're hot. Totally pointless, stupid, and in the end...you just feel burned.

0/4