Paranormal Activity 4

It's no secret that I absolutely loathed the first two entries into the Paranormal Activity series. I found them to be quite slow, very flat, not scary, and just unintentionally hillarious. Then part 3 comes around, and low and behold....I was actually quite impressed! My standards for part 4 were surprisingly high and unfortunately, I felt the movie fell a bit short of what I was hoping it would be.

Paranormal Activity 4 begins with where previous entries left off. Katie (Katie Featherton) has stolen her sister's child; Hunter, after killing her sister, her sister's husband, and her own boyfriend as well. The two are now located in Henderson, Nevada where Hunter (who now goes by Robbie) begins spending a lot of time with the neighbors. As unsurprisingly, the more "Robbie" is around, the more unexplainable events begin to happen to the family.

The performances in this entry are quite stronger than previous entries. Kathryn Newton holds her own, as Alex, the teenage girl who is on the receiving end of most of the spirits' mischief. She keeps the audience interested in her character and actually plays the role quite naturally. Katie Featherton once again shines as Katie, the girl who you know is up to no good. Every scene with her is bonechilling, Featherton milks every moment to its finest.

There are some pretty solid thrills here as well. It's not 100% terrifying from beginning to end, but a lot of the "Gotcha!" moments pay off and there some quite impressive visuals on display in this one, especially the scenes with the Wiiconnect playing as a camera to monitor all of the ghosts' whereabouts. And as usual, the last 20 minutes are easily the most frightening as all Hell breaks loose and it becomes a guessing game of who, if anyone will live to tell the tale.

Now for the negative; one of my biggest disappointments with PA4 is how little it explains to the audience. Part 3 left you with a lot of cliffhangers about the unlucky family's past, how this is happening, and why no one has noticed that more and more people just happen to be possessed by demons who give them the strength of Superman. PA4 provides little answers and doesn't seem to concerned with tying up the loose ends that previous entries have started having us think about.

But, my biggest issue with PA4 is just how similar it feels to past entries. Granted, it's much superior to the first two, but still, I didn't feel like this one really presented anything fresh to the series. It's pretty much the same ol' stuff, just with different people. Certain scenes seem like carbon copies of scenes that were used in the first three, and if they were creepy the first time....seeing them repeated in this one just makes the material feel stale at times. Paranormal Activity 4 had the potential to be stellar but instead it just decides to lay down and play dead.

2/4

High Tension





 It seems like foreign horror movies receive the reputation of either being absolutely gruesome, a million times better than American horror movies, or both of the two options. And I have to say, High Tension easily lives up to both of these standards. It’s bloody as hell but still quite effective at being very spine-chilling at the same time.

High Tension is about two semi-lesbianic (yes I’m aware that isn’t a word) friends named Marie and Alexa. While staying at Alexa’s parents’ house one weekend, a male intruder breaks into the house, murders all of Alexa’s family, and then kidnaps her, all of which was viewed by Marie who was hiding under the bed the entire time. Marie is determined to save her friend as she chases down the killer while viewing all the carnage and death he leaves behind him.

                High Tension pulls no punches when it comes to the blood. Every murder pretty much ends in an explosion of blood which is awesome, and from what I’ve read, a few scenes were edited down which actually makes me quite sad that we could have seen worse. But I digress, High Tension doesn’t back down when it comes to showing the gruesome shit on screen, there is very little left to the imagination. People are slashed, throats are slit, people are beheaded by furniture, kids are shot, heads are used as masturbatory aids, and you get the point. This is a huge positive though, gorehounds aren’t into using their imagination to picture what a death in a movie looks like, and they want to see it happen.

                Even though High Tension easily earns its’ R rating in the gore department, I actually would feel like the movie would feel quite menacing without it. The direction is quite clever actually, placing the viewer in the seat of Marie as she is following the killer and her kidnapped friend while he is doing all of this terrible shit to people. It actually makes the viewer feel like they’re in the back of a rollercoaster like Marie would feel in this movie and that’s something easily worthy of recognition. High Tension is solid at making the viewer feel like they are actually there watching everything occur in front of their own eyes.

                As for the controversial ending, I was actually pretty sold by it. Granted, it was completely ridiculous and was taking a similar path to many horror movies today, I still was a fan. This type of resolution is something that can really be sold if the actors are into it, and Cécile de France (the actress who plays Marie) sells the hell out of it.

          High Tension is a solid, thrilling, gruesome film from beginning to end, sold by the direction and strong performances along with a great pace that never lags. Sure it’s ridiculous as hell and if you pick it apart, it doesn’t really make a lick of sense. But that’s what the genre tends to entail, and for utter lunacy, High Tension is a great bet to put your money on.

3/4

Primal

These days I'm convinced that climbing Mount Rushmore is accomplished with less trouble than making a horror movie that keeps my interest from beginning to end. Failing to provide the goods, is Primal, a horror movie which really should stayed in the stone age and never came to this one.

Primal is about six friends on a camping journey in the wildnerness. When one of them falls sick after skinny dipping with leeches, the other five panic as her condition goes from worst to monster-worthy. She begins her "illness" by bleeding and ends it when she's completely deformed and hungry for anything with a pulse. She attacks, which then brings up the question of whether or not the others can kill a friend or not. Most of them seem to get on board, but others (mainly the boyfriend), are a bit less for the idea.

Primal unfortunately provides very little of merit, but I guess one thing I would consider satisfactory is the makeup. The creatures actually look really swell and I was impressed that that the monster/cavemen creatures weren't styled as shabbily as most movies of the genre tend to look. Granted, this is probably one of the few things I enjoyed about this movie, but still, could be worse I guess.

Now for the dreadful; and there's a bundle of problems worthy of being mentioned. All of the characters are ridiculously unlikeable. They behave in such stupid and barbaric ways it's hard to imagine there's something less intelligent running around. All five of them could have been killed at once and it would have been easy to not give a shit at all. The movie just feels routine and bland at all, created without any sense of fun or fright. Add in a routine finale and a movie that leaves you with more questions than answers, and you have something that is as substantial as a movie that was made by cavemen for the cavemen.

1/4



A Series of Unfortunate Events

When I think of movies geared towards children, I think of optimism. Lighthearted movies (mainly animated), where you know everything will be just fine and that there really isn't any present danger to the main characters. Here to kick that idea in the groin is A Series of Unfortunate Events, a movie that makes the ending of Bambi look like casual fluff in comparison.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is about three children; Klaus, Violet, and Sunny (most recognizable being Emily Browning from The Uninvited as Violet) whose wealthy parents were recently killed in a fire due to unknown circumstances. They are then sent to live with a distant, strange relative by the name of Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), and least can be said is that he has other things planned for the children besides a trip to the zoo. In the event of all of their deaths, Count Olaf gets bank. He is determined to get the mentioned bank, no matter how many others need to be offed in the process. Happy kids' movie right?

A Series of Unfortunate Events shines in many categories, but one of the movie's biggest strengths is the appearance; absolutely astonishing. It's as if the movie was the distant stepcousin of a Tim Burton creation, minus the Johnny Depp part of course. Every scene is shot to perfection, the colors are brooding and menacing, the setpieces are astounding. The movie really does create a successful atmosphere of melancholy.

The performances from everyone are really stellar, but Jim Carrey surprisingly nails it, I would easily consider this one of his best performances. He displays an unsual amount of uneasiness and terror for a PG rated movie, yet he hams it up when needed in the scenes where he depicts Olaf as a caring relative that couldn't love the children more. It's Carrey's show here and he really keeps your attention in every scene that he is a part of.

Though it's certainly not something I would call terrifying, A Series of Unfortunate Events is actually quite creepy which is shocking considering the low parental rating of PG that it received. Count Olaf really is quite a menacing guy who will take down anyone in his path. Granted, you aren't able to see any of the murders, but still, I was pretty impressed by the effective thrills that this material provides. It's like the children's movie that is geared for everyone. I just really hope this isn't the type of movie that will inspire 10,000 sequels. Because that is the type of event that is quite unfortunate, and will make the orphan's journey feel like a walk in the park in comparison.

3/4



Bride of Chucky

I've always been a big fan of the Child's Play series. I think all of them (with the exception of part 3) are tons of fun and they balance comedy and horror quite well. I was quite pleased with this one, as it easily rose above the last entry and was the beginning of one of my favorite recent additions to the Child's Play cast; Jennifer Tilly. I think she's tons of fun and a blast to watch in these movies as she really maintains the level of energy and camp that a movie about a 3 foot killer doll really requires.

Bride of Chucky picks up a few years after the third began, as Chucky reunites himself with an old flame named Tiffany. And through a miscommunication or two, Tiffany is killed and turned into a doll as well. Neither of them want to remain in doll form, and they have quite the potential opportunity to fix this through Jade and Jesse (Katherine Heigl from Knocked Up and Nick Stabile). They follow this couple, leaving a pile of bodies behind the couple at every step.

Bride of Chucky is cinematic eye candy and when done correctly, it can be quite satisfying. There's nothing Oscar worthy about anything in this movie at all, and everyone is aware of that, hence the success in the delivery. The performances are just the right amount overexaggeration, there's little jabs at other horror movies that will please the diehard blood fans, there's tons of bloody murders that occur quite frequently. All of the elements are here to make fans have a helluva of a great time.

3/4



Jeepers Creepers 2

"Once is a blessing, twice is a curse" is not only a very humorous, though often true saying for having more than one child, this can also be used for having more than one entry in a series. Jeepers Creepers 2 is a complete fail and it's still a mystery to this day as to why it was invented.

Jeepers Creepers 2 stars Ray Wise, as Jack Taggart, a father who is hellbent on getting revenge on "The Creeper" for taking away his son. Oh, and during all of this, a schoolbus full of teenage athletes, their coaches, and their bus driver are stuck in the middle of nowhere while The Creeper hunts them down. And I guess there's a psychic whose having visions about Darry from the first movie after he's been killed warning everyone to stay away from The Creeper. And no, I'm not making this shit up.

The only reason I'm not giving this movie an F is just based on the pure hillarity of the whole thing. The performances are terrible, the story is air thin, there's more scares in an episode of Rugrats, but it blows so hard it almost loops back around to being completely hillarious. Nothing can be taken seriously the entire time as the entire movie feels like a big blooper. I can't think of one scene that's even remotely chilling but I can name about 10 that made me laugh my ass off. It's just a shame no one informed the director on how comical Jeepers Creepers is from beginning to end.

1/4





House at the End of the Street

Still to this day wondering who the Fuck JLaw pissed off to get placed into this movie. That is one powerful person. 

0/4