31 Days of Horror – October 7th – “Dog Soldiers”

“Dog Soldiers” puts itself ahead of the pack right off the bat by coming up with a realistic reason for a bunch of people to be stranded in a dire situation. There’s a challenge in coming up with a premise that isolates the characters in some kind of horror hell. So many movies half-ass the set-up that they immediately fall flat.

A group of British soldiers embark on a training mission in the Scottish wilderness… and find they’ve bitten off more than they can chew when they discover most of a Special Ops group torn to pieces at a nearby camp. It’s 50 miles to the nearest town, and night is falling quickly.

Lots of good old fashion gore, not to mention a decent, comptent story (another horror rarity), follows. There’s an action scene towards the middle of the movie that comes off like a bunch of boys playing War, perhaps not helped by the incredibly fake sounding gunfire. But for the most part, the performances are solid. The dialogue is relaxed. A lot of (bad) horror movies are a little too aware of the fact that they’re horror movies, and the exchanges are forced and stiff.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 105 minutes

Directed by: Neil Marshall

Written by: Neil Marshall

Starring: Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee, Emma Cleasby

Theatrical Release: 05/10/02

DVD Release: 09/4/07

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 79%

The monsters reminded me more of the Egyptian god Anubis than your standard werewolves, which wouldn’t necessarily be bad, except they just look a little silly. Considering the budget, I have to cut the movie some slack. However, what a lot of movies don’t understand is that the unknown is scarier than the known, so not showing too much of the monster works to their advantage. This is especially true when the special effects are subpar. So even though I’ll forgive “Dog Soldiers” for the low budget effects, I think it would have been scarier had they not shown quite so much of the big dog heads.

Just to give you an idea of how low budget we’re talking, the movie was originally shot on 16mm and blow up to 35mm. For such a low budget affair, it’s a damn good movie, and no surprise that writer/director Neil Marshall went on to make “The Descent“, which is probably my favorite horror movie.

31 Days of Horror – October 5th – “The Uninvited”

The writers and directors of this movie should be Uninvited… from their professions.

“The Uninvited” opens with what turns out to be a crappy dream sequence. The main character, Anna (Emily Browning), is making out with her boyfriend at a party on the beach. He says, “I love you. And I have a condom.” And we say, “What the fuck?”  Apparently she has the same reaction because she stands abruptly and runs into the (very fake looking) woods. In the (very fake looking) woods, she discovers a little girl’s dead body in a garbage bag, which really has nothing to do with the rest of the story, just in case you were wondering. She proceeds to her home, where we see her sick mother in a hospital bed with a bell tied around her wrist. And then…. kaboom!

The next thing we know, Anna’s being released from a mental institution, with this farewell advice from her psychiatrist, “You’ve got to finish what you started.” Here’s a tip for the amateur screenwriter: The ironic line from the beginning of the movie that the main character will no doubt wind up repeating at the end of the movie really loses the effect when it’s delivered through a bullhorn.

“The Uninvited” is such a collosal failure at writing and direction- made pathetically worse because it’s based on a fanfuckingtastic Korean movie called “A Tale of Two Sisters“. “Two Sisters” is in my top ten favorite horror movies, and definitely somewhere in my top movies of all time. It’s got an excellent story, legitimately scary scenes (like “Ju-on (The Grudge)“, it’s one of few movies with scenes that are not to be repeated in my presence), and competent acting. The American “remake” has none of these things.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 93 minutes

Directed by: Charles Guard, Thomas Guard

Written by: Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard

Starring: Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbel, Elizabeth Banks

Theatrical Release: 01/30/09

DVD Release: 04/28/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $28 million

Metacritic Score: 43/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 32%

“The Uninvited” suffers from Insecure Writing Syndrome. Symptoms include: expository dialogue, unnecessary voice over, and the insertion of a superfluous love interest. The mystery and intrigue that made the original are no where to be found in “The Uninvited“. Perhaps the writers felt the original storyline was too complicated. The twists in “Two Sisters” are the kind that make you need/want to go back and watch the movie again, but I count that as a good thing. “The Uninvited” has actually been made more confusing and is rife with plot holes- I’m sure if I went back and watched it again (no thanks), it’d make even less sense the second time around.

At the very least, one would hope that a crappy remake would just directly copy the scary scenes from the original movie, right? Wrong. Clearly the people making this movie had no idea or interest in what made the original good in the first place.

I, like Anna, should have ignored that doctor’s advice. I should have turned it off after the first line like my gut told me to and NOT finished what I started. Save yourself the annoyance and check out the original.

31 Days of Horror – October 4th – “Pulse”

Day 4 in our 31 Days of Horror brings us cyber-intrigue and Kristen Bell. And by cyber-intrigue, I mean the opposite of intrigue.

Dear Horror Movie Directors,
Those “creepy” clip sequences you keep using for opening credits have now officially been beaten to death. Please find a new style of opening to bore us with. Thank you.

Yet another crappy American remake of a Japanese horror movie. In fairness, I have not seen the original movie, “Kairo“. Maybe it also sucks, but it’s got to be better than this.

All you really need to do to know that “Pulse” is going to be a crapfest is to check out the synopsis: a super nerd releases some sort of evil computer virus that infects humans. Symptoms include rapidly spreading inky stains on skin, loss of personality, and finally suicide. A crack team of co-eds must stop the evil virus before it takes over the world! Ugh.

The computer-to-human virus idea is way outdated as a movie concept. More detailed, more believable fictional computer and/or artificial intelligence realities have been around for almost 40 years at this point. Books like “Neuromancer” and even a huge budget blockbuster like “The Net” handled technological theories much more deftly years before the internet was literally a household occurrence. There’s really no excuse for this movie concept to get the green light in 2006. What’s worse is that there have been 2 sequels.

The cast is an odd assortment- Kristen Bell of “Veronica Mars” (one of tvcasualties’ favorite shows), Samm Levine of “Freaks and Geeks” (another TVC favorite), Boone- I mean, Ian Somerhalder, and… Christina Milian? Yikes.  Predictably, the script sucks, so I’ll let them all slide on the subpar acting this time. Except for Milian, for remaining unable to cover her middrift throughout most of the movie.

The evil computer ghost bits are clearly going for “The Ring” style creepy visuals, but they fail (like the rest of the movie) at even being interesting.  Other rip-offs of “The Ring” have done this and done it better. “Ju-on (The Grudge),” for example: the story didn’t make an ounce of sense to me, but at least the visuals scared the bejesus out of me. No one is allowed to talk about the way that woman crawls down the stairs around me. I can barely type about it without wetting myself.

“Pulse” is not even a proper crappy horror movie because it’s too boring to get any enjoyment out of making fun of it.

31 Days of Horror – October 1st – “The Thaw”

Hell yeah, October is finally here! First up in our 31 Days of Horror, a slighting chilling Val Kilmer picture…

Straight outta Canada, “The Thaw” is – weirdly enough – a politically conscious rip-off of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (which happens to be my favorite horror movie.) Global warming is the theme here, and we’re not talking underlying. It’s pretty overt, maybe even heavy handed. The film doesn’t try to tap into fears about global warming so much as actually use a loosely connected monster movie to try to get a cautionary message across. All told, it isn’t too annoying in this regard, which it easily could’ve been, but I do think something about the preachiness made it less scary.

A group of science students travel to the arctic research facility of Dr. David Kruipen (Val Kilmer) to learn from his work regarding the melting ice caps. The Dr. has just made a grave discovery, though, as hatching parasites found on a well preserved wooly mammoth carcass prove to be devastating to his team of scientists. The students arrive to find the empty facility, and it’s not long before bugs are scuttling over tiled floors and stainless steel counter tops, picking off college kids one by one in classic horror fashion.

Truth be told, the storyline of “The Thaw” even more closely resembles that of a Season 1 “The X-Files” episode, “Ice,” which was also heavily influenced by “The Thing,” even going so far as to hire the same set designer as the John Carpenter movie.

It’s not the recycled story that lets this movie down, though, or even the cast, all of whom do a pretty a respectable job. (Kilmer is only in the movie for about 10 minutes, but the younger leads – “Superbad‘s” Martha MacIsaac and “Veronica Mars” alum Aaron Ashmore, in particular, bring a lot of life to their roles, considering the material.)

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 94 minutes

Directed by: Mark A. Lewis

Written by: Mark A. Lewis and Michael Lewis

Starring: Val Kilmer, Aaron Ashmore, Martha MacIsaac

Theatrical Release: N/A

DVD Release: 10/06/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

The production quality fails the movie. Clumsy directing syphoned suspense away multiple times. Those long, quiet scenes that lead up to a startlingly loud noise would cut to a new angle just before the bang, totally undermining that lingering anticipation and moment of surprise. It’s like they were going through the motions of a horror movie cliché without having any idea what made it work in the first place. The opening sequence also looked very cheap and amateurish. It aimed for a fast paced, semi-disturbing montage juxtaposing graphic footage of wounds and flame with news clips about global warming – sort of like a crappy version of the weird videos in “The Ring” – but the way it was edited seemed dated and trite.

The biggest failure, especially when holding this up to “The Thing“, was the utter lack of a paranoid and desolate atmosphere. It didn’t capture the claustrophobia of being isolated with characters pushed to the edge, unsure of any of the people around them; those slow shots creeping over the blustery tundra that stretches on as far as they can see in every direction. “The Thaw” didn’t deliver on those almost intangible style elements that make a great horror movie “feel” creepy and interesting. And when it comes down to it, a horror movie lacking style, lacking a particular atmosphere to capture our imaginations, is almost not a horror movie at all.