A HOOK HANNNND!!

HOLY SHIT, MOTHERFUCKERS!  I'M BACK!

And rarin' ta go.  Sorry about the sabbatical.  I just needed a break.

ANYHOO!  On to today's almost so-bad-it's-good treat, Pitchfork.

Glenn Douglas Packard gets it.  He really does, but this one needs some fuggin' work.

First off, the problem is that he DOES get it.  He knows all about the slasher tropes and how to play them.  We get it.  If you have sex, you die.  It's totally a thing.  Considering, though, that your story starts with "gay boy goes home to deal with his family after coming out", you might want to steer more toward the sex-positive thing.  Ooooh, and the pitchfork for a hand.  That's... interesting...

Yeah, her.  She's gonna drive you nuts.

Next, kiddo, we need to talk about your pacing.  There are WAAAAAAAYYY too many points in this flick that need to be pared down.  There's the 10 minute "walking the dog" vignette at the beginning.  The 7 minute choreographed dance number.  No, seriously.  There's the 10 minute psuedo-rape scene with the girl above that just made me want to kill her myself and save us the time.  It's too much.  Edit.  You pay your editors to edit.  Let them do their job.

This (-->) motherfucker gets a lot of unnecessary screen-time.

Finally, how the hell did our main character live next door to the killer and know the killer when he actually lived in East Bumblefuck and NOT know that he was being physically and sexually abused to the point where he was basically a trained dog?  That's a huge fucking plot hole.  And how did the precocious little sister know that he could be ordered around like said trained dog?  I get that you said that she was "the animal whisperer" but dude's not a horse, he's a warped motherfucker with a pitchfork instead of a hand.  Come on, Now.

And who, apparently, needed a Freddy vs Jason fight pose.

Add to this the "coming out tropes" (with extra "be a man" added), the "I'ma be besties with the girl that fucked my boyfriend because she proved to me that he was a player by just saying so," and FOR FUCK'S SAKE THE MUSICAL NUMBER IN THE GODDAMN BARN, and you've got what could have been a disaster.

Thing is: it isn't.  It's actually not a bad piece.  It has faults but it's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.  It's strange and very amateur-hour but for a first effort, it could have been way worse.

I say give it a shot if you're bored. 

Flames... On the Side of My Face...

I...

Am entirely too forgiving a person.

Yet again, I find myself in need of a Hooters tank top, a 40, a cop and a film crew so that they can capture my "But he didn't mean nuthin' by it, he loves me!" moment even though we all know that he hates my fucking guts. Of course, we can't always get what we want, which is why YOU'RE here.

To help me fulfill my dream of being a professional complainer.

Dammiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!

I knew better.

I knew better going into this thing that I was gonna fucking hate it.  I knew that HACK, Eli Roth, was going to give us a flaming turd again.  I knew that I was going to watch privileged white kids get eaten which, by itself, isn't a bad thing but FUCK ME if I didn't want to serve these fuckers in a stew myself.

Awwww... someone nabbed a hair extension!  I wanted that!

Now, we all know that this is a throwback to Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox (both of which are pretty fucking awful in their own right but that grindhouse kind of awful that we expect and love) but, seriously, Roth, the point of making this kind of movie is to IMPROVE the genre, not eat it from the inside out.

From the screaming, iPhone-attached, daddy's money white kids to the utterly imperialistic and racist portrayal of "cannibal brown people" to the lack of respect for film making and the horror genre, this is a goddamn BARKER.

This does not look well-researched.

I don't even know why I'm spending so much time with you on this.  Run.  Fucking.  Screaming.  From.  This.

For real.  Don't waste your time. 

Eli Roth owes me anal sex for this.  I'm serious.

And This is Why I Don't Trust Homeschooled Kids.

WHEW!  Life got busy all of a sudden.  Busy and scary.  But you're not here for that.  Let's just jump right back on in, shall we?

Somewhere along the way some idjit decided that "spooky" and "heartwrenching" belonged together.  This is not a new thing but it's not something I normally look for in my horror movies.  Despite my disgust for the sob story (because I like to pretend that I have the emotional range of a pencil even though I'm the guy that ends up with sinus issues for a week when I watch Rankin-Bass Christmas specials), occasionally one comes along that works.

And that's where 2013's We Are What We Are comes in.

A remake of the Mexican film, Somos lo que hay (2010), the film follows two VERY sheltered teenage girls, Iris and Rose, and their father, an extremely religious man after the death of their mother who has a seizure on the way home from the grocery store in a downpour..  From that point forward, the girls are expected to carry on their mother's religious duties.

Sounds all drama-riffic, right?


Yeah, no.

Gosh, CHEST freezers come in handy...  Yes, I know it was bad.  Sue me.

So.  The family is a cannibal clan.  It's not even subtle about it.  I'm sure the kids have known for years that long pig barbeques nicely.  And now they're all, "Y'know?  Maybe I don't WANT to have to butcher the butcher or skin the schoolmarm to get a decent meal.  Can't we just go to Mickey D's?  Seriously, there's one right down the street."

But noooooo.  Dad has to be all, "I'm the head of the household and your religious leader so you're gonna fast until it's time for the slashy-slashy."

This guy?  Collateral damage.  And the local deputy.  And boinking a cannibal.

This is a GOOD movie though so you're not getting any more out of me on it.  You'll have to watch it for yourselves.  It's a SLOW burn, so be prepared for that.  Like, stock up on munchies BEFORE you sit down because putting this on pause for a minute makes you miss details.

Seriously, though, this one is dramatic without being melodramatic and it could have easily crossed that line. You feel for the girls even knowing what they are and knowing that THEY know what they are.  They want to get out of the life they were handed and it comes down to some pretty drastic measures.   Even the smaller parts have some sympathetic qualities.  The little brother they want to protect.  The local boy that Iris has a crush on.  The neighbor (Kelly McGillis) who offers a vegetarian meal (HA!).

Does it LOOK like we want your damn 5-bean salad?

And the tension builds throughout.  It doesn't peak and valley, it crescendos. You come out of this one satisfied, you really do.  It takes a while to get where it's going but from there it takes you to some awesome new places that seem familiar but really aren't.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think you will, too.

I'm BAAAAAAAACK!!

After a few days of COMPLETE mayhem, I have returned, triumphant and ready to snark your brain meats into submission!

Today's Choice?  Fresh Meat.

This New Zealand comedy/horror gem is AMAZEBALLS and it just proves to me that films from that region are just getting better and better. 

I mean, it's your standard "house invasion" movie only totally not.

See, it goes like this.  Rina Crane, college student of Maori descent and lesbian (it's relevant, trust me), goes home for a holiday and her parents, Hemi (Temuera Morrison from Star Wars and Spartacus: Gods of the Arena) and Margaret, an anthropologist and his celebrity chef wife, come out of the closet as cannibals.  It's a religious cult thing.  And then, a local gang bust one of their own out of a prison transport and choose the Crane house as their hideout.  Hilarity ensues. There's guns and chunks and people beating beaten with severed arms and crazy fathers and just... wow...

Ooooh... I'm all menacing in my pink hot pants...

Just in case you weren't aware, the Maori word for meat is "kiko".  And there's your education for the day.

The marinade is simply WONDERFUL!

It's really fucking simple but given the GLEEFUL amount of excess in this film, I'm fully prepared to accept simplicity.  There's so much raunch and humor and giddy scenery chewing that any kind of "eew" factor is thoroughly mitigated.  It's DELIRIOUSLY campy.  John Waters (Happy Birthday, by the way, Mr. Waters) would be proud.

I know this is a short review but the movie just speaks for itself.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's a Barbeque!

Y'all know how much I kind of despise "found footage" flicks, right?  I'm really fuckin' tired of shaky-cam bullshit.  Stop making me have to take Dramamine before going to the movies, film makers!  Somebody's gonna get a kickin'.

ANYWAY!  I'm going to prove my point.  Again.  

I had heard about Long Pigs a while back but I didn't get a chance to watch it until recently.  It was released to select theaters in 2004 but it's Canadian so US horror fans didn't get a lot of exposure to it.  It hit the film festival circuit but it didn't get a release on DVD until 2007.  Those DVDs?  Came with jerky.  Real.  Edible.  Jerky. 

It's about a documentary film crew that follows a cannibal around. 

Ummm...

Hmm.

Yeah.

That's it. 

Seriously?

Hooker butchering.  The next extreme sport.

Yes, there were statements about the implications of media and its affect on the world but, we've seen that before.  Yes, they actually tried to philosophically and ecologically justify cannibalism which made the film kind of disturbing.  Yes, the documentarians in the movie tried to use a cannibal to get revenge (and almost got caught when their car broke down at, appropriately enough, a pig farm).

And met a creepy pig farmer because I'm not sure there's any other kind.

And, yes, they discover that the cannibal is a CREEPY MOTHERFUCKER THAT KILLS PEOPLE AND EATS THEM!  Seriously?  We had to have the interview with the father of a little girl that the asshole ATE to learn this?  WITH THE KID-EATING ASSHOLE IN THE ROOM?!?

What the fuck?

I know there are a ton of gore-hounds that love this film for its butchery but I gotta say I was not a fan of this film.  It's not that it was badly made, it's just played out, bleak and their attempts at humor fell flat on their collective face.  If you want a horror mockumentary, watch Behind the Mask, instead.  It's a MUCH better film with a much more satisfying pay-off and better acting.

Long Pigs won a bunch of awards on the festival circuit but I really have no idea why.

This movie just made me feel dirty.

Good thing I invested in that Silkwood shower.

Innapropriate Familial Relations

Remember how I said that the British were awesome at horror?

I kind of take that back.  Just a little, though.

See, I watched Inbred this weekend and it left me with a strange feeling of unease.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is trying to be Britain's answer to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Hell, the poster practically SCREAMS Cannibal Clan.  And, to be fair, it's not a bad watch.  There's just too much wrong with it for me to not say anything.

In terms of story, there's not really a lot there.  A couple of case workers bring their young charges to the country for fresh air and some good hard work to get the evil out of their sinews.  We've got your standard bunch of kids, the pyro, the asshole, the black kid and the girl, all of them in the system for fairly unknown reasons except for the pyro.  Case worker number one is big, jovial, Laugh-a-lot Bear who's entirely too naive to be doing case work and case worker number two is Practical-Woman who obviously knows that the best way to the kids hearts is a trip to the local pub.  On the way into this tiny town, the kids see this out the car window:

Because EVERY kid LOVES a game of Shank the Scarecrow.

The local pub is run by the guy who's in charge of the whole town.  Which should tell you plenty given the name of the movie.  Dude apparently sticks it in EVERYBODY.  His wife makes "scratchin's" (supposedly pork rinds) that come in two varieties, hairy or wet.  There's a guy with a carrot fetish that harasses the girl. 

Anyway, the next day, the kids are brought to the train yard to be taught how to salvage.

Wait, really?  We teach kids to do this, thus training them for a lifetime of  vandalism and air conditioner theft?  Wow.  Way to go, Britain.

So... the kids run afoul of carrot guy again and try and report him to Pub dude while, at the same time, trying to get medical attention for Laugh-a-Lot who managed to slash his own femoral artery.  Pub dude decides to behead Laugh-a-Lot, lock the rest of them in a store room and put on a minstral show.

What?

Yeah, so there's the end of our plot.  The rest is "Let's kill people in new and interesting ways."  No, seriously.  That's it.  It's fun to watch.  Especially when you deal with Boo Radley in Drag.

Tell me about the rabbits, George.

But, really, there's nothing else of substance.  There's humor, in the form of the Ferret guy with the mysterious "incident" that causes him to be left out of the festivities and some in the show itself, but really the rest is somewhat badly acted "OMGWE'RERUNNINGFOROURLIVESALLBREATHLESSANDSHIT!!"

Add to that all of the conspicuously awful CGI:

If I can see it in this picture, you can see it on the screen.

And you've got a halfway decent watch but one that is not the best way to spend your time. 


But if you've got time to kill, go for it.

Heehee... kill...

Geiger Counters and Shame

Never let it be said that I am above capitalizing on a tragedy because I am not.  I write this blog, don't I?

Anyway, today's craptastic choice is Chernobyl Diaries.

It occurs to me that other than Sinister, the guy that created Paranormal Activity needs to stop getting paid.

Actually, no, I can't really say that.  I mean, he does come up with some pretty creative concepts.  His EXECUTION, on the other hand, leaves something to be desired.  Like, oh, I don't know... plot, direction and talent.

I get that actors need to start somewhere, I really do.  I also get that the easiest place to start is in horror movies because SO MANY young filmmakers cut their teeth on them.  I firmly blame this on the fact that there seems to be this standard cut-off age of about 35 or so when successful directors decide that horror does not suit their dramatic and artistic vision.  To that I say "Fuck you, Hollywood.  Stephen Spielberg needs to try and direct Jaws again with the same special effects crew and see if he can't make the shark work this time."

PEEK-A-BOO!

Now, that being said, I can tell that Oren Peli and Bradley Parker got some funding.  Not enough for them to make a movie in the United States but enough for a couple of steady-cams and a trip to Serbia.

So, the story goes like this:  A dude, his girlfriend and their bitter, recently-broken-up-with friend take a trip across Europe, stopping in Kiev to visit his brother who, it is assumed, works there.  They're supposed to go to Moscow but big brother convinces them to take a shady side trip with a shady "tour guide" to Pripyat, the town that housed the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their factories.

Ummm... what part of "European vacation" says "I would like to expose my handsome and, most of all, fertile young body to nuclear fallout" to you?  Sorry, but I'm not going anywhere NEAR that place without a radiation suit, I don't care HOW many dark, artistic, emo pictures I can take.

 Universal symbol for angst or Pedobear dropping?  You decide.

But, I digress.

So, anyway, it turns out that the place is a popular hangout for packs of wild dogs and cannibal mutants.
  

Near the site of a nuclear disaster.

Who knew?

Now, this movie could have been great, if it weren't for the fact that it was a jumbled, confusing, where the hell am I cluster of what the fuck.  You kind of  had an idea where people were but you really didn't.  You knew that the city had to have limits but it really seemed like they spread the actors out too far away from each other to be of any help to one another.  It was like the worst game of Marco Polo EVER.  These idiots couldn't even help themselves with a fucking MAP.  And they did get one at one point.

Add to that the worst example of a tacked-on government conspiracy I've ever seen and this just adds up to a very forgettable movie experience.

It's not a completely horrible way to spend a couple of hours, but only if you're REALLY bored.

Doug Bradley, You Putz.

Oh, Wrong Turn 5.  What have I ever done to you to deserve this?

Oh, yeah.  I turned you on and not like that.

Next time, can you at LEAST do me the courtesy of wearing a Hooters tank top?  Because I SERIOUSLY feel the need to remind my subconscious that I did not, in fact, fall into a doorknob.

You know, I really feel that this movie is Doug Bradley's repentance for being kind of a douche to me at the HorrorHound convention this year because, seriously?  He was not made to play an inbred, cannibal hick.

You're better than this, Doug.

Now, I'm normally willing to give sequels the benefit of the doubt.  Hell, I watched Piranha 3DD willingly (albeit just to watch the death throes of David Hasslehoff's career) but my eyes felt raped about 15 minutes into this one and I don't even think the beginning credits (with the cheesy hand representing the number 5) were done by that point.

This is yet another one of those stupid examples where instead of rigging up a practical effect for blood spatter, they chose to go with CGI.  Are you fucking kidding me?  EVERYBODY can pick that shit out unless you're working for ILM.  Please, filmmakers, ESPECIALLY INDIE AND LOW-BUDGET FILMMAKERS, STOP USING CGI!  It's obvious and detracts from the movie experience.  And, really?  How long does it take to buy a bottle of karo syrup, some soap, a little bit of corn starch and red food coloring?

IT'S THIS EASY!

There are very few films I won't sit and watch all the way through but I don't know how I managed to sit through as much of Wrong Turn 5 as I did.  There is no human face, no matter how deformed by birth defect, that looks like the freaky bird-like one, they killed off the one girl that should have survived (although she DID have sex, so I guess the trope wasn't completely subverted) and getting Mr. Bradley to lurk in the corner saying "You're all gonna die" in his least menacing voice, EVER, had to be the easiest paycheck he ever made.  All of this made me shut it off.

Walk right on by this one.  Do not pass Go and you can forget about your $200.  

Hell, if I ever catch the director, I'm gonna make him pay ME for the hour of my life that I'll never get back and my rates aren't cheap.