At this point in my life I find it exhausting to express how much we, as a generation, lament the loss of the musical aspect of MTV. Still, I think it’s quite something else to demonstrate exactly what it is we are missing out on.
A lot of nostalgia gets spent on Yo! MTV Raps, but back in the olden days, 120 Minutes was the bleeding edge of all things hip in pop music. With so many hard-focused music blogs with their ears to rail it’s really hard to imagine a tv station ever being able to predict (or even dictate) the trends in hipster music, but 120 Minutes foretold of the coming of the “alternative” music genre several years before it hit the mainstream. Quite simply, that moniker perfectly describes 120 Minutes, because they basically played anything that was not in MTV’s regular rotation and not generally accepted as hip-hop or metal (because they had other shows for that stuff).
One of the most interesting parts about this archive is some of the “top Alternative albums” lists (such as this one from March of 1995):
Top Ten Albums on Alternative Radio
10. Green Day- Dookie
9. Live- Throwing Copper
8. Adam Ant- Wonderful
7. Nine Inch Nails- The Downward Spiral
6. Mad Season- Above
5. Bush- Sixteen Stone
4. Juliana Hatfield- Only Everything
3. Matthew Sweet- 100% Fun
2. Elastica- Elastica
1. Better Than Ezra- Delu
It’s hard for me to remember a time when Green Day fell into a niche market and wasn’t one of the biggest bands in the world. I do remember an awful lot of people being into Better Than Ezra when I was in high school, but I don’t quite remember them EVER being bigger than Nine Inch Nails.. and I’ll be damned if I hadn’t almost totally forgotten about that Mad Season album.
Nation of Origin: USA
Ratings:
Justin: 4 1/2 out of 5
Kim: 4 out of 5
Notes: Yeah, I know October is over now but we attempted to rent this one a few times and it was out.
It’s hard to believe there is a growing generation of Sam Raimi fans out there that only identify his work with the Spiderman movies. I really enjoyed the first Spiderman but it would never fill the place in my heart that I have for Evil Dead II, which is my favorite of that trilogy. There’s something about Drag Me To Hell, however, that bridges the gap between old Raimi and new Raimi. This is very much how I think the Raimi Brothers might have done Evil Dead if they had hit it huge right off the bat and had millions of dollars to spend. Essentially the film is about a self-absorbed country girl, Christine, trying to get ahead in the big city (isn’t amazing how many stock characters there are in horror films?). When Christine forsakes her sense of right and wrong to do what she thinks her boss would approve of, she burns an old gypsie woman pleading for an extension on her mortgage and in return the old gypsie sicks a supernatural leg-breaker after her immortal soul (it is noteworthy to mention that the gypsie drives the famous yellow Oldsmobile that has appeared in every film the Raimis have made.) While this is mind-expanding cinema, this flick was fun on a bun.
Christine’s desire to have nice stuff and escape her redneck past is really what sets her on a moral decline in the first place, and even though we like her so much we know she isn’t really a very good person deep down inside and that’s why its pretty apparent that she’s had this coming for awhile.
Some of the CGI effects were disappointing but this is, overall, a very satisfying return to comic-horror form for Sam Raimi and crew. Justin Long’s character is just plain annoying but that’s hardly a new thing for him. A couple of the gross-out gags very much reminded me of Evil Dead, not just in style but in the sense that the poor girl playing Christine (Alison Lohman) gets put through the ringer much in the way that Bruce Campbell did for the Evil Dead films (the grave-digging scene especially was very “Ash” to me). The reason she won’t get the same level of respect from me is because I am sure she got paid way more than Bruce did as an actor for those films (and she lacks a prominent chin).
Speaking of Bruce, where was he in this film? I am surprised by his absence, as he almost always has a cameo in Raimi’s films.
Nation of Origin: New Zealand
Ratings:
Justin: 5 out of 5
Kim: 5 out of 5
Notes: I have nothing new to say about this film other than it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Everything in it is completely unnecessary, and just when you think it can’t get any more over the top… it totally does. Ass-kicking preacher? check. Zombie baby? Check. Personified rubber digestive organs providing the best acting performance of the entire film? Big check.
Most people are probably familiar with Dead-Alive by now because its director, Peter Jackson, has gone one to do one of the biggest movie trilogies of all time: The Lord of The Rings.
I don’t know if there is really anything scary in Dead-Alive, I’ve seen it so many times now I don’t think I am scared by it, but I am not sure that I ever was. It isn’t that kind of a film, really.. it’s just pure unmitigated gore, gore, gore and more gore. But it is also hilariously well done and the crescendo at the end of the film (keyword: lawnmower) usually has people cheering for more.
The custard scene always makes me feel sick for some reason.
Bonus: if you’ve seen this film but not Jackson’s 2 other gross-out films: Meet The Feebles and Bad Taste. Do yourself a favor.. especially Meet The Feebles which is like Dead-Alive plus Muppets.
Nation of Origin: USA
Ratings: **yawn**
Notes: Put simply, this film is an insult to my intelligence. It is a goddamn travesty how people are buying into the hype of this film. As I type this, this movie is the 2nd biggest earning film in theaters. I didn’t see it in the theaters and as I sat in a living room with grown people who were somehow hypnotized into fright when a door swung back and forth and some thumping noises came out of the TV speaker, I was convinced that they would not have reacted that way if they didn’t imbibe all of the bullshit advertising that is selling this flick as one the scariest films of the decade.
It’s cool when a movie costs $85k and impresses you with lean production values (a la Evil Dead), but when a movie costs 15 grand and LOOKS like it costs 200 dollars, there’s something wrong. Americans are being duped into thinking this film is the scariest thing since Swine Flu and, I don’t get it at all. I don’t know who these fools are, but there nothing– repeat, NOTHING– that is going to convince me that A) a door or some sheets moving by themselves while being filmed in infrared equates to being the scariest film of the decade and B) any film in which I have to watch people get ready for bed and brush their teeth more than three times whilst getting into awkward relationship quarrels is worth my $6 for a ticket. There is no art in this film, its like being invited over to someone’s house to watch them fight about what they want to have for dinner and there just happens to be a ghost there too. This is exploitation of the lamest kind: a 2 hour episode of Ghost Hunters with the usual team of clunky High School drop-outs replaced with Ross and Rachel from Friends. I am not exaggerating.
Early this month, I have said that I’m not so into “haunted house” movies because it seems like there is always that option of moving the fuck away from said haunted location and getting on with your otherwise unhaunted life. Early on, however, the film quells that notion by having a reputable expert (a psychic) tell Katie that the demon which has taunted her since her childhood will likely follow her if she were to leave the house. This psychic really doesn’t do anything for Katie and Micah but tell them how fucked they are and then leave. Ok, so, Katie can’t leave, but Micah could and it seems like great deal of the plot of the film is based around the “negative energies” created by the couple’s bickering. The psychic even says as much and for some reason Katie never brings this up again. The demon might follow her but at least she’d be away from the bad vibes created by her douchebag beau. I don’t understand why Katie and Micah seemed so content to move in together in the first place when, in addition to being possessed by demons, Katie is clearly high-maintenance and batshit crazy and Micah is your typical Dane Cook worshiping, self-absorbed douchebag.
Not to kick a couple of dead horses that will rise from the grave and haunt Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby in the upcoming City Slickers 3 (just kidding), but the last month on horror film watching has proven to me that good horror hinges on a connection to the characters and these two characters are plain annoying and obnoxious.. which really is fine. Every single victim in Friday The 13th is obnoxious and terrible and we love that because we take joy in seeing Jason dispatch them. That whiny wheelchair kid in Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so annoying that you don’t even feel bad for his disability. Still, this dynamic of being made to hate a lead character so you may enjoy their imminent death is kind of a cheap and crass way of bypassing the need for quality acting and character development and cutting right to the exploitation. it’s cheap and shabby, but it works. The problem with Paranormal Activity is that we never actually see the antagonist. Truthfully, we never get to see anything at all. We see a door move, a sheet blow up, and (at the very best) we see Katie dragged out of bed by an unseen forced. Not “unseen” like that intense part of Nightmare on Elm St. where the girl flies into the air and slams into the ceiling and bleeds everywhere, “unseen” like the way my brother-in-law ties strings to the door to slam them from across the room in order scare our cousins when they are glued to a horror movie in the dark. Without little doubt, he could have made this movie.
The people who made this film have no respect for their audience. Critics are lauding how cheaply made the film was, Sure, horror is one of the few genres that can be very cheap and still be super effective and some its best specimens are extremely low budget films that grossed millions. But this isn’t John Carpenter cheap– fuck this isn’t even Ed Wood cheap– this film is just irredeemably cheap. I want to take back all of the bad things I’ve said about Michael Bay after having seen this, because Bay really thinks explosions and loud sound effects are what people want to see. His movies are a complete cacophony but at least he’s put THAT much thought into a dunderheaded movie in order to exploit a popular toy from the 1980’s. Oren Peli needs to be punished for making this film, because he’s just exploiting simple-minded, superstitious Americans who will buy into any and all hype and believe anything if it is shot in “night-vision green.”
According the imdb.com this film was conceived because he had a box of detergent fall off a shelf– AND THERE WAS NOBODY THERE.
Nation of Origin: USA
Ratings:
Kim: 1 out of 5
Justin: 2 out of 5
Notes:
This movie was dreadfully boring, it wasn’t the worst film we’ve seen this month, but it comes really close. Creep was meandering and unengaging but it had momentum. This flick was pretty slow except for a handful of sequences and I’d still say it was way less stupid than The Last House in The Woods. Wes Craven, for some reason, got his name on the box as “presenter” but there is no indication that he had any hand in making the film. I guess since the film was more or less about insomnia and night terrors and because Wes Craven’s name is so strongly associated with Nightmare on Elm Street, the producers figured they get more asses in seats by putting the name of an “expert” on the cover.
Julia has night terrors and since she’s been studying for her Master’s they have subsided, until she comes back into contact with an old friend with a similar affliction and she starts experiencing them all over again. This film took 74 minutes just to get started and then, once it started, it ended, and you didn’t feel like anything was accomplished. I keep saying this over and over, but the number one element for good horror is you have to establish some kind of feelings for or against the main character. Sure, the film plays around with the idea of obscuring whether or not Julia is going insane, but you still have to like her. I didn’t like her. I didn’t hate her, either, and therein lies the problem. All of Julia’s friends are just as boring as she. Ethan Embry is in this film– possibly the most likeable happy-go-lucky guy ever– and the filmmakers were such jackasses that they cast him as this rude, ironic, grumpy painter.
The little night creatures are pretty creepy considering you can barely get a glimpse of them for 80% of the film, but during the climactic scene in a subway tunnel where Julia is attacked by a mob of the things, it appears these creatures are nothing more than an angry pile of barbecue ribs.
Once I realized they were just ribs, this entire film made more sense to me. Julia is tragically underweight during the entire film, and all of her friends are obviously bulimic (one of them going so far as to shoot himself in the head before taking another bite at a diner). The ribs aren’t trying to kill Julia, they just want her to eat them, but in her hysterical state of malnourishment she runs away from them.
Nation of Origin: Spain
Ratings:
Kim: 4 out of 5
Justin: 3 1/2 out of 5
Notes: The English translation of this film’s title is Shiver and that may be the most ambiguous title of any film we’ve watched thus far. Shiver could mean any damn thing and, having watched the film, I’m not exactly sure what the title is in reference too.. I guess it is just a reaction to fear itself. On one hand, you rent a movie not knowing a damn thing about it, on the other hand you rent a movie not knowing anything about it. I suppose that if you are are a filmmaker who is confident that your film works then ambiguity is not a bad way to go. I think this one works.
When, Santi, a troubled young teen with semi-prominent canine teeth and an allergic reaction to sunlight moves into a valley town with his mother to escape the direct sunlight, a number of brutal killings occur. The Villagers view Santi, his mother and their city-slicker ways with suspicion (as villagers are known to do) and Santi spends the rest of the film professing his innocence and leading his own investigation to find and capture the lightning-fast creature that seems to be doing the real killing.
I prefer my horror simple and effective, and this is far from simple. It’s kind of a murder mystery wrapped up like a horror movie. The problem is even though Eskalofrío works great as a horror film, as a mystery it violates one of the big rules of that genre: it withholds information until the end so there is no real way for the audience to figure what’s going on. The fun thing about the supernatural is almost all of the myths behind our favorite movie monsters are based somewhat in fact. (Caution, slight spoiler): This film doesn’t have as much to do with vampires as you would believe, but the underlying situation of the film is one very possible, but implausibly complicated, series of events. Really, the whole gimmick of this film is to overload the viewer with as many red herrings as possible so as to confuse them and then send some murderous child-beast in to send them over the edge with panic. Which, actually, totally works.
CAUTION SPOILER DO NOT READ: Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but, again, why the hell were so many people scared of that cute little Japanese boy in The Grudge?? Between Eskalofrío and [Rec] I am positive that Spain has the scariest flesh eating little girls on the planet.
Nation of Origin:
USA (Shot in Canada and most of the production is French, but its an English language film)
Ratings:
Justin: 4 1/2 out of 5
Kim: 4 1/2 out of 5
Notes: It’s really interesting how so few premises there really are in horror. A lot of modern horror films do away with the supernatural and get right into the potentially terrifying world our everyday lives take place in. We totally take for granted that so many potentially lethal (or at best, brutally inconvenient) situations never actually occur. In the case of P2, Angie, a somewhat self-absorbed young professional who has forsaken her roots to live in the big city and is trying to go home for Christmas. Despite this, she doesn’t have the “teeth” required to make it in New York, she timidly shrugs off the apologies of a co-worker who had made unwanted advances on her the night before and when what appears to be a series of unfortunate events that keep her locked in the parking garage, she encounters an obsessive security guard who “just wants to help her.” While other slasher films play with morality and send a violent killer after loose women, even Tom knows that Angie “is not a slut.” The angle in P2 is somewhat more realistic that normal slasher trash: Angie is being preyed upon simply because she is passive and alone.
The whole “young urban female getting locked inside of a public building” concept is exactly the same premise as in Creep, which we watched earlier this month (and hated). The remarkable similarities between the two films is staggering because that film really sucked and this one was goddamn awesome. One of the big differences might be coming from behind the scenes: the film was co-written by Alexandre Aja (the director/writer of Haute Tension, a favorite of ours this month) and Franck Khalfoun (who played Jimmy in Haute Tension) and respectively Produced and Directed by the pair. I think I love these guys. Much like Haute Tension, the concept is so pedestrian and common on paper, but so unbelievably satisfying and well done on the screen that you will find yourself unable to explain what is so awesome about it to your friends. Hitting the mark where Creep clearly missed is the emotional element: the first rule of slasher horror is that you have to make the audience choose sides. You are either with the killer or the victim and you have to make the audience acknowledge that connection. Angie is a beautiful and seemingly decent human being thrust into a very ugly and terrifying situation: done, you’ve got us hooked, now what? She endures the very worst and you are with her the entire time, she’s not annoying or obnoxious (the bane of the horror damsel) and she goes from victim to tormentor in very gradual and satisfying way.Tom is an unlikely antagonist who is capable of fits of rage while maintaining an aura of boyish charisma that makes you kind of like him but still ultimately want to see him get it in the end.
Something I found similar to Haute Tension are filmmakers obvious love of American exploitation horror but they are able to do it in such a classy and clever way that it doesn’t quite register as exploitation. Angie spends pretty much the entire film freezing her tailfeathers off in a low cut dress and there’s not many shots in the film where her cleavage isn’t somewhere in the scene… (well, look at the cover of the DVD case, yeah thats the whole film). Also, there are a handful of positively brutal moments that, while completely excessive and violent, don’t seem at all unnecessary for the plot of the film. Early on it is established to what level Tom’s skewed sense of ethics extends and later we see an example of what Angie’s struggle to survive will cause her to do. So really, the gratuitousness is curbed and it isn’t really gratuitous. Whatever, this is horror we’re talking about, it’s all exploitation: boobs and blood bladders put asses in seats. End of discussion.
Yeah, I don’t have much snarky to say about this film other than it is kind of like Home Alone but if Macaulay Caulkin had fantastic breasts, a fireman’s axe and if it all took place in a parking garage.
I’m writing the post while laying in bed. I like my phone and this wordpress app I just downloaded.
Nation of Origin: USA
Ratings:
Kim: 5 out of 5
Joe: 5 out of 5
Justin: 5 out of 5
Notes:
In Rob Zombie’s re-telling of Halloween, Michael Myers is upgraded from the archetypal taciturn, masked psychopath to a brutal juggernaut (played by Tyler Mane) which Dr. Sam Loomis describes as a “perfect storm of external and internal factors gone horribly wrong.” The fact that he’s 6′5″ doesn’t hurt, either. This version of Halloween gets into the pathology and psychology of Michael Myers which makes for a more compelling interest in the character but the news that Myers is a victim of his childhood kind of flips the audience’s alignment in favor of the slasher. Since criminal psychology wasn’t national past-time in 1979, the updated Halloween expounds more on the origins of The Shape and how he became the pit of nothingness that he is purported to be. Also changed from the original is the escalated level of annoyingness portrayed by Laurie Strode and her friends and as a result you feel far less apathy for Myers’ victims– which tends to be a let down for me because it plays into the tone of the slasher rip-offs that followed the original film.
SPOILER: Any good remake fulfills the expectations of the original film and adds something extra. The final exchange concerning the boogeyman between Dr. Loomis and Laurie Strode is only the beginning of a much more grisly ending for Myers which really should have completely eliminated any hope of a sequel (Zombie didn’t want to make a sequel, but did Halloween 2 because the studio wanted to make it and he didn’t want anyone else to ruin his vision). I haven’t seen Halloween 2, but I don’t know how they are going to manage reversing the effects of a point-blank shot from a .357 slug to the face.
Nation of Origin: Japan
Ratings:
Justin: 2 out of 5
Kim: 2 1/2 out of 5
Mike: 3 out of 5
Notes:
Honestly, I don’t know what America’s obsession with all things Japanese comes from. Sure they are cute and polite and make neat electronic gadgets and decent automobiles, but I don’t get what made Ju-On and its American remake so popular. Remember in the last review where I said “haunted house” movies are lame because the protagonists always have the option of leaving and never coming back? Well, you’d think Ju-On would be awesome because it removes that intrinsic plot-hole by making the ghosts a kind of communicable disease passable from people who come into contact with the house to the people who come into contact with those people (and they tell two friends, and they two friends, and so on and so on). Because I have not seen Ju-On 2, I am left to assume they filmmakers develop some kind of avian flu face mask that keeps The Grudge from passing.
I get the feeling that these films were way more intense to Japanese audiences who bought into the “vengeful ghost” superstitions, because I don’t really see these ghosts as being that vengeful. The ghosts in Poltergeist were scarier and that was a Spielberg picture! In most of the examples featured in this film, the possession just makes the victim crazy then they get listless and catatonic– which, really, is nothing a stack of manga can’t do.
The general rule of haunted house films is that they are just kind of creepy, not so much scary and this is no excepton. Apart from that really cool gurgling sound and some creepy little kid, there’s not a whole lot going on in Ju-On that will scare you.
Nation of Origin: USA
Ratings:
Kim: 31/2 out of 5
Justin: 31/2 out of 5
Notes: Have you ever caught yourself watching an episode of The Ghost Whisperer and thought, “Man this would be so much better if I could swap out Jennifer Love Hewitt with one of the finest actors of the last 50 years?” I’m not normally into haunted house movies because they seem like such an avoidable premise (it’s not like the houses ever follow people to the next city) but this is a pretty great film. The Changeling has probably the lowest death toll of any movie we’ve watched so far (I think a total of 4 and only two of which are directly related to the horror elements of the film) and it’s horror elements are definitely more of the creep persuasion than they are gore or violence.
This isn’t the scariest film you’ll ever see, but it’s definitely creepy. The loud banging noises and predatory wheelchair are very well executed effects and even though I just told you about them you’ll still probably freak out a little when you watch the film. Like most haunted house films though, there’s nothing really overwhelmingly real about the situation and you yell the same refrain at the screen as you did for Poltergeist and Amityville: “MOVE THE HELL OUT OF THE HOUSE!”
Essentially, George C. Scott moves into an old house and acts as a sort of personal injury lawyer for the restless spirit of the 9 year old boy that lives there… something he presumably learned about following the death of his wife and daughter in the beginning of the film. Really, that’s the only joke I can make about this film. It’s a solid picture and it doesn’t attract too much attention to one particular aspect or another. Yeah, I know.. boring review.
Nation of Origin: USA
Ratings:
Kim: 5 out of 5
Justin: 41/2 out of 5
Notes:
What could be said about Halloween that hasn’t already been said? Probably nothing, so prepare for my rambling now.
The bottom line is that Kim & I were sick of watching crappy movies and needed to watch something dependable before we’d ever find the will to move on to anything else. My knee-jerk response to watching Halloween (and The Thing for that matter) has been the same for years: What the hell happened to John Carpenter? He was like the low-budget Hitchcock right up and then he washed out commercially on Big Trouble in Little China (a movie everyone loves now but not when it came out) and it was all downhill from there. Like Hitchcock, Carpenter has touched on nearly every genre of film imaginable but always gets associated with horror and sci-fi themes. Unlike Hitchock, his films got worse instead of better.
Halloween is, by most accounts, responsible for kick-starting the slasher craze that took place in the 1980’s. Once people saw how successful this film was for its ridiculously low production value, scaring kids became a profitable industry. Friday The 13th is essentially a cheap(er) knock-off that didn’t come into its own until its 2nd or 3rd sequel (if even then). The slasher genre is typically associated with the trappings of exploitation film– gratuitous sex and violence for the sake of putting asses in seats– but Halloween is different. Yeah, Michael Myers is essentially a Young Republican. killing young girls who do naughty things with an ambiguous motivation (his motivation was more interestingly detailed in Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake in.. which I thought was really great), but there’s enough quality film elements in Halloween to outweigh the lowbrow nudity and brutal murdering.
For the better part of the film, Halloween no one dies but the movie just creeps you out and teases you. The audience knows the one thing that the ever studious Laurie Strode doesn’t know: that her friends are all about to die and she’s next on the list. The audience also knows the one thing preventing Dr. Loomis from saving her small town from a bloodbath: where Michael Myers is. It’s so excellent, and that theme of keeping the audience one-step ahead is rampant throughout the film in subtle ways– and it only works if you can get some kind of connection with characters, which is easy with the likable Laurie Strode (but you secretly want Annie and her big mouth to die much sooner). I am sure when this flick came out in 1978 people were yelling their faces off at the screen. As I have mentioned before, I’m also a big fan of the unassuming victim in the foreground with a vacant Michael Myers lurking blurry in the background. It’s so simple but so effective.
This is also one of the moments in John Carpenter’s career where his film score blends perfectly with the film and doesn’t sound clunky and goofy. It’s classic and it enhances the entire experience of the movie.
Nation of Origin: USA
Ratings:
Justin: 2
Kim: 1.5
Notes:
As far as the mainstream horror movie franchises go, your safest bets are always with the “Big 3″: Friday The 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween. That is not to say that every film in these series are good– some are incredibly bad– but in most cases your sense of nostalgia will propel you through the awkward spots and help you suspend disbelief. They might not scare you anymore, but there’s just so damned many of them that the serial aspect becomes as involving as a genuinely scary film might be. Some might even put the Hellraiser flicks in this category, or even Texas Chainsaw Massacre but those films definitely petered off after the first installment. The Phantasm franchise is easily a category B (if not C) series that everyone knows and almost no one loves. I rented this purely out of curiosity, because I didn’t know much more about the franchise except for those flying metal blade balls (by the way: It’s really sad when a prop featured in a total of five minutes of a film is the most recognizable aspect of said film).
So, really, we rented Phantasm because we either knew or remembered nothing whatsoever about it. I’m not sure I ever saw it when I was a kid. I want to say that I have seen some of the Phantasm films but I don’t know which ones. But, last year we rented Hellraiser under a similar pretense and re-discovered it to be one of the most amazing horror films ever. I wish this could have also been the case with Phantasm. What’s so bad about it, you ask? Honest to God, this movie is about a malevolent undertaker that turns our dead family members into dwarf zombies to be enslaved in another dimension. No, I’m serious.
That having been said, Phantasm has moments of unintentional hilarity. There’s an entire scene in the middle of the film involving what I will describe as a demonic gnat.. also one of the most blatantly unnecessary and gratuitous boob-shots in all of late-70’s / early-80’s horror. Almost makes the film worth renting….. almost.
SPOILER: It’s all a dream… or was it…
Trivia: Apparently director Don Coscarelli dreamed the idea of being chased by these futuristic blade balls in a marble mausoleum. These means that DVDs menu animation has more in common with the directors vision than any part of the film.
Nation of Origin: UK
Ratings:
Kim: 2 1/2 out of 5
Justin: 3 out of 5
Joe: 1 out of 5
Notes:
I get the feeling that our movie watching experience peaked early because the last few we have watched have been duds. This wasn’t really a bad movie, it was a solid picture, but it wasn’t anything special. As far as films involving manfaced rich German girls trapped in the British tube system, befriending homeless people while being chased by an unknown subhuman creature go.. this one falls at par. Yeah, Franka Potente– a.k.a “that chick from Run Lola Run– is, shockingly, even more man-faced when she has shit-tons of make-up on but gets hotter as she becomes dirty and cries and sees homeless people eviscerated before her eyes.
As far as this movie goes in terms of horror, it meets the expectations created by its title, but it doesn’t leap and bound into our our adrenaline centers like some of the previously watched films this month. It’s good, but it isn’t great. Because Joe has no register for mediocrity, he gave the film a very low score (but he didn’t see Diary of The Dead or, even worse, Grindstone Road, which we watched last year and is probably one of the worst films of any genre I have ever seen.)
The bottom line is that I have seen horror films that don’t at all meet the level of quality as this film, but were far more terrifying, so it’s hard to say that it this is a bad movie–it isn’t– it’s just not a great horror flick.
