renny61801

I just saw EOTL at the Palm Springs film festival, and I'm very pleased (the guy above would be also be pleased to know that this version was shortened to 95 minutes). It was the rare horror movie that did the fundamental thing right: made you care about the victims. Everyone, even the crazy cultists, was given layers and dimensions beyond surface stereotypes and caricatures (no token black-nerd-ditzy blonde-tough guy-final girl lineup here) This is also probably the only movie I've seen that's actually scary along with having graphic gore. The gore scenes themselves aren't scary, but they are intense, because they are happening to people that you've invested some emotion in. I'm also glad that the demon effects were used sparingly; Devereaux knows that real live crazy people can be much scarier. The atmosphere contributed greatly to this; I've always found scenes of people standing alone in those subway stations pretty creepy (best example: the scene with the Asian girl and the train. Those who've seen the movie will know what I'm talking about) The acting was top-notch across the board, my palms were actually sweating because I wanted at least most of the main cast to make it out alive. The special effects were not-surprisingly excellent; look for a nasty half-decapitation as a great example. Like I said before, it was good that the demons were rarely seen, but when they were, they were very well-done (aside from a few CGI ones, but they had to be in order to pull off certain stunts) Overall, I can give End of the Line the best praise for a horror movie: it does what it meant to do.

To anyone here who hasn't seen it, I strongly recommend this Eric Stanze film. Even considering its several flaws [grainy image, very uneven acting, sometimes-awkward dialog], it's still one of the best, most entertaining and thought-provoking micobudget independent horrors out there. I've heard it described from a cross between The Matrix and Lost Highway [not sure what that means, exactly ] to a Clive Barker film as directed by Trent Reznor, which is closer to the mark. The story can be summed up thus: an evil wizard takes his apprentice into an alternate universe of his own creation, and every few years they kidnap six people and torture-kill them, then take their souls, until the apprentice, now ultra-powerful and re-named The Presence, overthrows the wizard and takes over, prompting Heaven and Hell to recruit a female suicide victim as a sort of astral-plane assassin to pass through the wall of ice and destroy this "abomination of space and time" Gore, nudity, and lots of just plain unsettling images and sounds follow. I never thought I'd say this, but Ice From The Sun is not just a movie to be watched; it's an experience to be had.

I just watched Terror Toons, and here's my review of it. The plot is nothing special, of course. In this kind of movie, it's the execution of that plot that makes it worthwhile. So is it worthwhile? Some yes, some no.

The bad stuff: the acting, dialog, and the human characters. None of them are very memorable except for the main characters' mother, who is played by a drag queen[!] and who in one scene complains about her husband getting drunk at a wedding and moonwalking into the cake. That got a small chuckle out of me. Every other person is just dull; played by horrible-to-barely-mediocre actors spouting clumsy, cliched slasher-flick dialog.

The good: the villains, the gore/special effects, and the production design. This is one of the better looking, more ambitious direct-to-video horror quickies I've seen. Dr. Carnage and his monster-monkey assistant Max are appropriately freaky, if not actually scary, and they take great pleasure in creatively carving up the cast of disposable characters with exagerrated cartoon weapons; think Itchy and Scratchy, but live-action. The music/soundtrack accentuates this. It's very inspired by Beetlejuice and goofy sound effects are used as a jarring accompanyment to the murders. The sets are very skewed and funhouse-like, with bright colors and weird props; effective use of lighting creates a scary-funhouse kind of atmosphere.

The bottom line: you've got to see this movie once to experience it, but repeated viewings are not essential, in my opinion. It's an acceptable drive-in-style slasher flick with some minor innovations, nothing more.