Look at that release date from the poster. Hahahaha. It was suppose to come out 2 years ago! It's not surprising as The Cabin in the Woods was filmed in 2009. Director Drew Goddard with co-writer Joss Whedon had me salivating at this movie but it totally disappeared when MGM went bye bye.
Here be the plot:
“A group of five friends going on a quiet cabin retreat scratch the surface of something so massive and horrific that they can only begin to fathom what might possibly be going on just as time quickly runs out.”
Starring Chris Hemsworth (pre-Thor) and Whedon favorites Amy Acker (Fred!) and Fran Kranz (Topher!) I have to say I'm kinda psyched for this. Kranz looks to play final guy and can recite Whedon lines in his sleep.
And WTF is the weird invisible forcefield and unseen tech angle in all this??? Whedon is my Master now and if he wrote this, it can't disappoint. No fuckin way. Check out the trailer and share your thoughts.
I've been on a tear reviewing some indie horror films of late (see The Landlord and Thicker than Water: The Vampire Diaries). Its a credit to the fact that I want the jaded viewer to be a haven of where little engines that could can reap the benefits of getting press and pub from the horror-sphere.
Because it's the indie filmmakers that put Hollywood on their toes. This is where creativity is still alive and where we the audience can go to when we're sick of the umpteenth Saw film or the remake of another remake.
So I'm glad director Dominic Perez sent me over a screener of his film Evil Things. The first thing when I received it was I thought I was being busted by the FBI. The packaging of this little film is done quite inventively.
As you can see below, we get an "official" FBI letter (not pictured), a DVD in FBI style labeling and a very authentic looking FBI evidence bag. Wow. I thought Fox Mulder would be knocking on my door any second. Now that's some creative viral marketing. With the officialnessy comes the official website which has some short pleas for help from the family members who seen their kin disappear.
I know what you're saying. You're getting the sinking feeling you've seen this all before.
Ahem.
Yes, the movie feels very Blair Witch Project which is the inevitable conclusion people may come to when they see the trailer or movie for the first time. With the proliferation of SOV/POV movies (see Cloverfield, Rec, Diary of the Dead) that's been invading the horror-sphere of late, I have to admit I'm not a big proponent.
So would a movie that follows the formula be any different?
Let's see.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
On January 9th 2009, 5 college students left New York City for a weekend in the country. 48 hours later they vanished without a trace. There were no leads and no evidence...until now.
It’s Miriam’s 21st Birthday. As a birthday gift, Miriam’s aunt Gail lends Miriam her beautiful country house for an entire weekend. Aunt Gail’s country house is amazing. It’s a four bedroom house surrounded by breathtaking mountains and miles and miles of woods. Miriam invites her college buddies Cassy, Mark, Tanya and Leo to join her at the country house for what looks to be the most amazing weekend ever. Of course they all jump at the chance to spend a free weekend in the country, in the middle of nowhere.
Miriam’s friends are totally in the mood for a big time party weekend. They’re also anxious to escape the dark and gloomy concrete jungle known as Manhattan. Miriam, Cassy and Tanya bring the food. Mark brings the beer and Leo, the aspiring filmmaker, brings his new video camera. Leo hopes to produce a short movie by documenting every amazing moment of this weekend getaway. Unfortunately, what Leo ends up capturing on camera is not a weekend of peace and tranquility, but a nightmarish descent into pure terror.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
Let's start off with what the formula for shot on video, POV horror films.
1.) The camera "person" films everything 2.) His friends who become part of the video 3.) Something sinister starts to scare them 4.) The film ends with "the final shot" that gets the audience shocked
This is of course how Evil Things starts off as Leo, our camera guy wants to document his vacation with his friends. His friends are of course OK with the fact that he is filming EVERYTHING. Which begs the standard..."Stop filming me!" quotables throughout. There is really no justification for him to film while horror ensues, but he does which makes only sense in this universe. Leo's hipster friends fall into their hipster stereotypes. That's not to say it's a bad thing. We've got Leo of course our NYU film student gone wild, Miriam, the birthday girl, Cassy, the pseudo leader, her boyfriend Mark the tough guy and the hot Tanya, our sick yet sassy friend.
When I reviewed Cloverfield, I wanted all the hipsters to die. All of them we're terribly annoying. However, in Evil Things I must say, I didn't have this homicidal tendency. Each of the characters, though flawed and prone to panic every 5 seconds, had me actually rooting for them to survive (though we know they all die because of the fact this is FBI evidence).
This is very important in these POV films. If I am not to made to care about this inner circle of friends, boredom sets in. All of them we're not terribly annoying nor were they people I'd actually want to hang out with (except Tanya :-P). The other thing I need to have is some funnies. Blair Witch had some awesome one liners and spread throughout Evil Things we get a few charactery tidbits. Leo caught in a bubble bath and Cassy doing a mom impersonation are quite funny. I only wish there were more of these characterologies. When you have Girl X ,Y and Z screaming all the time, complaining and arguing , it turns out just blah.
Now lets go over the sininster stuff. As the group heads out on vacation, they encounter some oddities on their way there. A mysterious red van impedes their route, then the same van makes an appearance at a gas station then a cameo at a diner they stop at. None of these make you jump out of your seat but they do add some eerie quality to whats soon to come.
As the vacation progresses, a quick hike to the woods turns out to plagiarize the Blair Witch Project to a tee. I was almost thinking we'd get a Heather POV "We're gonna die" monologue with snot coming out of her nose. But alas we get a few quirky noises and lots of arguing.
In the final act, normalcy gets interrupted as a mysterious knock on the door produces a grainy videotape. The group watches it Ring style and sees someone has been videotaping them (from the POV from that van) since they arrived in the country. Filmed while they sleep and while they were lost, it's very well done and we get the scary feeling we're headed to a home invasion movie waiting to happen.
The movie suddenly switches back and forth from Leo's footage to our mysterio footage. Even eerie music is backdropped in. Suffice it to say, we do get our "final shot" as indiciated by the rules of this genre not before we get another 2nd ending that sets up an inevitable sequel.
All in all, I have to say I liked Evil Things. Though it follows the formula you've seen before, it breaks it and makes it different. Whereas the camera would always videotape the supernatural (zombies, a monster, etc.) here we see a grounded in reality (or pseudo reality) footage of wacko hunters.
Evil Things is an entertaining indie horror film that goes back to the basics on what scares us. As Blair Witch taught us, we don't necessarily need to see the sinisterness, we just need to see just enough to get us paranoid. It's forgiveable that Perez used the hand held video cinema technique as he was constrained to the budget he had. As much as I hate this hand held world we live in, Evil Things works. The whole mock FBI packaging and the fact what we're seeing something SENT to the FBI brings up some good unanswered questions. Perez creates an odd mythos about this snuff like evidence and I dug the fact he went all the way with it.
Here's hoping we get to find out more about these mysterious killer voyeurs and see them dash and scare another group of hapless hipsters.
Gore-ipedia/Nude-ipedia
Wow. None for both. You have to use your imagination!
WTF moment The "final shot" The 2nd ending
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
First some fun facts!
-Filmed this year (2009) in January up at the Catskills Mountains in NY -Shot in 7 days
It's a good first effort from Dominic Perez. This is not the first movie to go all hand held POV but it's definitely one of the better ones. Though I have to say, one question that kept bugging me throughout is the fact that a movie like this could never be used as a commercial for Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile or AT&T.
Do none of these cell phone carriers have coverage in any place rural???
I mean seriously folks. Nobody could get a signal?
It's just one final gripe on logic from an otherwise great film. Because the most evilest thing you can do to any New Yorker is take away their ability to use their iPhone or Crackberry.
"Is this on? Are you taping? Keep taping!! Is my mic working? Damn this thing is out of focus!"
"OMG! What the hell is coming towards us?!?!?"
"Turn the camera light on!"
"Use the night vision!"
[Cut to something blurry]
"Run!"
[Camera shakes uncontrollably while running]
Where have you heard all this before? Yup it's another 1st person POV flick ala Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead.
Mind you if you read my reviews of those films, I hate this stupid sub genre of horror. You feel naseous while watching, they quickly pan over what they should be taping directly and it's just alot of shaky camerca shots while running.
But Rec actually pulls this off and makes a decent showing using this convention.
Hollywood also knows this which is why they are remaking this brilliant Spanish film into a movie called Quarantine.
I don't know what it was but at a relatively 1 hour and 10 minutes, I really did enjoy myself. I didn't feel vomity, they recorded stuff that should have been taping and there was minimal running camera.
When you do everything the opposite of what I hate, jadedviewer likes.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
A hot looking local TV reporter named Angela (Manuela Velasco) and her camera dude are doing a story about the fire department and the men who work there. Out of the blue, they are called to an apartment building where neighbors and police are investigating a screaming crazy woman. But chaos ensues and soon the building has been quarantined by the special police trapping all the residents, police and firemen.
We see Angela continue to interview the neighbors and videotape the chaos. A health official soon drops in and explains a lethal virus has been unleashed that seem to create violent zombie-ish corpses who spread the illness through bites.
Soon, the building is overrun and it's Manhunt, Manhunt 1-2-3. Angela and camera guy try to find a way out.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
Angela is hot. So seeing her in most of the shots was easy on the eyes. But Manuela Velasco does an awesome-rific job of being the fearless reporter and acting scared shitless. She's definitely the catalyst for the flick and if she couldn't pull off this performance, Rec would have been another movie in the used bin.
And whereas you always question the cameraman and why he doesn't help during the crazy chaos of whats happening....in Rec, our fearless camera guy Manu actually does some useful things. In doing so, the camera actually helps. Complete darkness? No problem, use the camera light. No camera light? Use Night Vision. Logical...I appreciate that.
The 1st 20 or so minutes sets up the chaos to come. The 2nd 30 is so minutes is everybody trying to find out what the fuck is going on and the final 20 is a survival horror at its best.
I particularly didn't like the ending as it came out of leftfield but it's satisfying like lemonade on a hot sunny day.
Influences
Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, 28 Days Later, The Ring
Gore-ipedia
Bloody chomps on necks, old fat crazy lady wounds
WTF moment
The final 10 minutes
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
I'm still jaded by these POV flicks. I just don't really like em. But this is the first one that I actually sorta enjoyed that didn't have me beating my head against the wall.
The residents of the building were all very unique. A Chinese family, a woman and her sick daughter, an elderly couple and a guy off his rocker. At least they weren't hipsters.
A lot of hype will accompany this film and its Hollywood ripoff as the handheld "cinema verite" flicks keep giving birth.
I can honestly say I wasn't bored and I'm a nega-reviewer on these flicks.
Just remember when your in a life threatening situation, and you have a camera...keep recording. Because your battery will never die, you'll have endless tape and you'll always keep things in focus.
And after you die, all your friends will see the video of you in our last waning moments, actually know how big of a wimp you are and give them vague theories as to how you died.
If George A. Romero made a zombie-verse and Matt Reeves made an alien monster world, director Jim Mickle has made a rat monster utopia in Mulberry Street. It’s by far the better of the 3 movies either director made this year.
With a guerilla, docu-style and the nitty gritty look of NYC’s Mulberry Street as his backdrop, Mickle takes us into an apocalyptic city nightmare come true. Because as every New Yorker knows, the 2 things we hate the most are tourists and rats.
Our main “Ben” (aka lead character from NOTLD) is Clutch, a former boxer who lives in an apartment on Mulberry Street (it’s the main street in NYC’s Little Italy). With his friend Coco, they eagerly await for Clutch’s daughter Casey to return home from Iraq. We also meet the other tenants in this dilapidated complex, Charlie and Frank who are a couple of old timers and Kay, a bartender and her son. It’s never explained what caused the “sickness” that is making every New Yorker slowly turn into rat creatures but that’s not important. What is important is that we see a depiction of real New Yorkers dealing with a supernatural threat and basically doing what we always do, survive. There is no nauseating shaky camera, no annoying hipster looking for their girlfriend and no film students trying to film something so they can post it on YouTube.
What we do have is seeing the pseudo-realistic media coverage of a threat and the response to it with some very chilling scenes of attacks from a mass of rat infected zombies.
I know what you’re saying. Really? Rat creatures?
It’s not as cheesy as it sounds. The infected don’t develop RAGE like super strength or quickness but become, well more psychopathic and ratty. And boy are these creatures hungry and bloodthirsty. The tenants have to pummel and kick and fight thru the city streets in order to survive. These are all fast paced and suspenseful scenes and are quite well done.
Mulberry Street uses the same genre conventions of a Living Dead or a 28 Days Later. And even though they may be assembly line tricks of the trade, they work.
And that’s the fun of Mulberry Street.
Jim Mickle also takes a page from Romero’s satire handbook by not so subtly commentating on the world, post 9/11. More specifically, the slow government response to a Severe Red Theat Level event (the President was in Bermuda!) is an obvious crack at the government’s reaction and response to Hurricane Katrina.
The only negatives are that the movie does look a little like a 99 cents store. The acting was very plausible though the dialogue was a little dry. The special effects seemed to be Sci-Fi channel-ish and the darkness blurred many scenes into utter static. But on a meager budget, Mickle used quick shots, music video style editing and a couple of good gory bloodbaths to get his point across.
Mulberry Street is the biggest gem in the After Dark Horrorfest catalog. So if you didn’t like the zombie or giant lobster monster movies you watched this year, maybe enter the cannibal-rat monster-verse, it’s a cheesy movie you probably might like.
As this was a DVD, I was able to watch the extras as well. Here's a recap.
The Extras:
The extras are pretty bland in comparison to the movie. There are storyboards, 2 deleted scenes which pretty much sums up that most of the cut is the finished product. Also included are director’s Jim Mickle’s early sketches of scenes and of the rat monsters (which would make great background wallpaper). There are makeup tests which are hilarious as you can see the evolution of what the rat creatures were to become. Also, there are behind the scenes of ratty munching and outtakes which are always funny as this is a horror film about rat infected humans.
Finally there are behind the scenes of the rats that are featured predominately in the movie. From the looks of it rats never follow their cues and are so demanding with their list of outrageous demands.
Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.
Cloverfield Cloverfield (2008) Directed by Matt Reeves
Fuckin Cloverfield. In a previous post, I speculated and tried to predict what the Cloverfield monster would be. I went out on a limb and said it was the Lake Champlain monster, Champ.
Of course I was fuckin wrong.
And then I saw the frakin movie and it made me dizzy and nauseous.
Fuck you Cloverfield.
To tell you the truth. I didn't really like it. I saw it like the mindless atomoton jabroni masses and got caught up with the freakin hype.
And so for about 80 minutes I watched the following:
1.) Hipsters acting like freakin hipsters and making hipster references for the YouTube crowd
2.) Hipsters running away from the big, giant lobster monster
3.) Hipsters in love doing dumb shit to move the plot along
4.) Hipsters reading off of a very badly written script and making corny hipster jokes
5.) Hipsters making a mockery of the subway system (Spring to fuckin Lexington? WTF?)
6.) Hipsters acting like a big giant space monster isn't important enough to film while on a rooftop that gives you clear view of the freakin thing
7.) Hipsters dying (that was my favorite part of the movie)
Ooooooo. There's a space transmission at the end. Ooooooooooo. The asteroid carrying the monster is in the last scene.
WHO THE FUCK CARES???
This is a monster movie without an awesome monster. So in between scenes of hipsters running around, you see glimpses of what can only be a lobster that shits out lobster babies. Wow.
And boy does the US Military kinda suck when it comes to killing a lobster.
No origin of the monster is explained. Just 9/11 like carnage Godzilla style. For somebody who actually was on the streets of Manhattan on 9/11, I don't need a reminder.
So suffice ot to say, Cloverfield is clovercrap.
If you want to see a monster movie, see The Host. Now that's a monster movie.
As I am still compiling my list of Top 2007 Horror/Underground Movies of 2007, below you will find the Top 6 anticipated Hollywood horror movies of 2008 with the trailers so you can be overhyped like the rest of us.
Neil Marshall, the director who gave us Dog Soldiers and The Descent is back with a futuristic 28 Days Later like scenario that can only be terrifying and scary as shit.
Release Date: February 15, 2008 (limited), May 20, 2008 (wide)
It's #1 because it's Romero + Zombies = AWESOMENESS. Did I mention it's freakin Zombies! The premise is all Blair Witch-ish but that won't stop this from giving us our zombie fix.
<-----click on the image to the left to see the monster in motion The vague trailer screen cap to the left is staticy and shadowed up. From what I can tell thats the back of the monster and it looks like it has a shell or an exoskeleton. It could be a gigantic lizard, or a monstrous amphibian or Gamera.
Who the fuck knows?
Everybody has a theory.
They've even got artistic renderings of what it could be.
Various sources say its an alien parasite or a giant robot (ala Voltron).
According to the director, Matt Reeves Cloverfield is the goverment codename for the monster:
"And it's not a project per se. It's the way that this case has been designated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearer in the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case,"
I've got my own theory.
And if I'm right, this blog post is proof of my prediction 10 days before the film opens.
The Cloverfield monster is...........................
CHAMP!!!
The Lake Monster of Lake Champlain.
Champ is the US Version of the Loch Ness Monster. Nobody knows what it is but my theory for the movie goes like this.
Some Japanese company dumped toxic shit into Lake Champlain which causes Champ to mutate into some big, gigantic monster.
Remember the first thing you see when you are in the Hudson River is the Statue of Liberty.
The US Government knows about Champ and the mutated monster plesiosauris-like creature. They codename the monster "Cloverfield". It's a reference for the small town near Lake Champlain where Champ nests.
Of course Champ escapes and goes down river causing much destruction along the way. People start seeing "something" but nobody knows what it is.
Finally, good ole Champ ends up in NYC looking to feed on yummy humans and cause mayhem and destruction.
The ending has Champ being driven out of NYC by the Army and a distant shot of Champ's famous photo (see above) will be the last scene as he swims toward the Atlantic Ocean.
This is my theory and if its 100% true, I thought of it first.