Verdict: ☣ 1/2

Southern Louisiana.
The Bayou.
Twenty years ago.
Someone had a shaky video camera!
Nooooooo!!
(cue shrieking violin)

Yes, my friends. The opening minutes of Evil Remains is nothing but someone on a bus with a camera pointed out the dusty window watching the Southern Louisiana bayou go by while PowerPoint style credits fade in and out, and ominous breathy music plays. This sets the stage for some major slashaliciousness, which is awesome if you’re into this kind of thing.

After we go on a trip through about ten miles of Louisiana backwoods, the story opens when a teenager murders his two parents in a cursed house on cursed property near New Orleans. Everyone blamed the curse, of course, and the murderer just disappeared. Wait. What? True Detective, this obviously ain’t. Anyway, twenty years later, a group of hottie college kids are all playing cards at a house party that is so poorly lit the cameraman has to stick the lens right under their noses Blair Witch style just to see their expressions as they talk and laugh and get drunk and say the F dash dash dash word with every sentence. Sooner or later, five of them decided to road trip it up to the cursed house on the cursed property to spend the day, in support of their friend who is writing his thesis on the history of the place.

The group of friends consists of the usual slasher stereotypes: Mark, the intelligent one (Daniel Gillies), is writing the thesis. His friend since childhood (and possible boyfriend but it’s never really said) Tyler (Clayne Crawford) is a very studious person who is grounded in reality and doesn’t waste words. Eric (Jeff Davis, one of my all time favorite Who’s Line Is It Anyway comics) is the funny one and interjects jokes nearly every time he shows up on screen to the point where he is annoying everyone. I’m reminded of Ryan Reynolds’ extremely irritating Hannibal King from Blade Trinity when I see him. Then, of course, there are the two insanely hot lesbians Kristy and Sharon (Estella Warren and Ashley Scott) who never really make out on screen… and just my opinion, but if insanely hot lesbians do not make out in a slasher flick, there’s really no reason to have insanely hot lesbians in a slasher flick.

Where was I? Oh yes… the students hit the road to the house to spend some time there. This is, of course, without stopping for donuts or getting any permission from the property owner or even considering that the murderer from twenty years ago might still be hanging around. Throwing caution to the wind, the students laugh and banter and hang bare feet out the VW van window and follow the map to the place. Honestly, I love banter. This scene was actually kind of cool and it made me wonder why the movie didn’t just surround the road trip. I would have enjoyed about another half hour of this much more than the movie the way it was done.

It doesn’t matter, because all too soon the trip ends and they arrive at the spooky house. Sneaking around the house and exploring the property, the students slowly do their ghost hunting thing… shooting photography and recording sound with a boom mic. And as they explore, they unfold their individual personalities and reveal a much deeper friendship between all of them than I was used to seeing in this type of movie. Like I said, I like banter and dialogue and this movie has plenty of that. Most slasher flicks don’t and fans of the genre will be bored with the constant back n-forth between everyone. Since I’m not a fan of slashers, I found the dialogue rewarding.

Speaking of… the script seems to have been improvised by the talents on screen. That or the script writers really knew how to bring out character development and should have a nice career in Hollywood ahead of them. The expansion on (at least) a couple of the characters through simple dialogue itself was disarming. I enjoyed just listening to them all talk, reveal their histories and bat ideas around. But again, I’m not a fan of slashers so I found that nice. Slasher fans will hate it!

However, the movie’s dialogue was slashed, as it were, by the onslaughter of the bad guy and the students I’d come to enjoy listening to start getting iced right and left for no other reason than they were just there. [cue slasher fans’ rejoicing!] Then there’s a twist that I saw coming, but only because I’d seen the same twist in so many other slasher flicks. All in all, this is the same slasher flick you’ve seen over and over from about 1960 on. [more slasher fans’ rejoicing!]

The long and the short of it is, for this reviewer, I found this movie to be very well supported by actors who took it a little too seriously. Everyone on set gave it their level best as if there were awards in consideration this year. I say “level best” in as much as a crummy slasher flick can give. This definitely wasn’t Shawshank Redemption caliber acting, but it was decent. However, the movie’s camerawork made Cloverfield look like CSPAN and its lighting was done by film students who haven’t graduated yet. There were entire shots in this movie that would have been more appealing if they’d been done in complete darkness. The budget for cinematography in Evil Remains seems to have been blown entirely on the cast, what with the likes of Jeff Davis and Kurtwood Smith (Eric’s Dad from That 70’s Show).

What offsets this slasher flick from practically every other slasher flick is that the actors bring their A-game so well to their roles, the character development is astoundingly deep for a slasher movie when you know every one of them is about to get whacked with a chainsaw or a pair of gardening shears. Which then, when the inevitable happens and teens start dropping, makes it all the more depressing because I had become somewhat emotionally involved in their individual stories.

All in all, a nice low budget popcorner to get laid by at the drive in but not one I’d keep in my Amazon Prime library.

Verdict: ★

First of all, this review is chock full of spoilers so if you’re really interested in watching it surprised (whispers behind hand: like that’ll happen since every scene you see coming five minutes ahead of time) then skip this review! You’ve been warned!

Okay now… I’m a monster movie buff as most of you know. And that covers, for me, everything from the old 1920’s black and white silent flicks to the likes of Cloverfield and Pacific Rim. So when a monster flick comes out, whether it’s a blockbuster or an indie, I’m willing to give it handful of popcorn and see what happens. There are movies I regret from both types… and there are movies I loved!

That said, it’s occurred to me over the years that sometimes big name actors make goofy, small beans monster flicks during their heyday because they want to do lunch in exclusive places with impressive friends and their checks from the blockbusters they just starred in aren’t quite enough to cover the tip.

I get that. And usually you see those actors starring by themselves in those goofy, small beans monster flicks because their managers didn’t catch them in time. Three of the biggest names in Hollywood were lured into this one by that tip-covering paycheck. Unfortunately, even their charisma, charm and good looks couldn’t make this movie any better than the used bar napkin its screenplay was scrawled out on.

Gremlins creator Joe Dante has made great goofy monster flicks in the past that had practical effects, blood and gore that looked like ketchup and wonderful fun stories to back it up. Not sure what happened here, but BTE told me he’s lost his magic touch. This movie had boring effects, film school caliber monster make up, blood and gore that looked like ketchup and a not-so wonderful story.

Ashley Greene (Alice from Twilight), Alexandria Daddario (San Andreas, True Detective), and Anton Yelchin (Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, Odd Thomas) head up this multiple A-lister and seem to have forgotten everything there is to know from drama school. Indeed, they act as if they’d tried reading that napkin five minutes before Dante shouted “Action!”

Max (Yelchin), a kid who works in a horror shop, is not brave enough to break up with his controlling, passive/aggressive manipulating girlfriend Evelyn (Greene) who walks all over him. He loves monsters and old black and white monster movies. She loves the environment and drinking soy. How the heck these two even met is not explained but everything she wants to do that takes away from his dreams opening his own horror shop is met with surrender and slumped shoulders as Max’s self-worth allows her to pull the strings in his life. He’s miserable and doesn’t know what to do about it.

One day, they walk into an ice cream shop against her better judgment, because lactose, but Max spends an awkward 15 seconds I’ll never get back begging and pulls her into the shop where they find Olivia (Daddario) dancing to rock music behind the counter. She’s obviously the exact antithesis of Evelyn and though you would expect sparks to shoot off between Max and Olivia in this scene as it was intended, that never happens. The two A-list actors just don’t have it in them and what could have been that “love at first sight” moment falls flat.

Instead, Evelyn goes all “future psycho-ex-girlfriend” on Olivia and ragewalks leaving Max there with his shoulders slumped and that dead look in his eye. But because the script on the napkin said so, Olivia starts to like Max. Soon however, a vague magical (see: goofy plastic) trinket shows up in the horror shop Max works for with no history behind it or explanation and as Evelyn forces Max to promise he’ll be with her forever and always, the trinket lights up and smoke comes out of it… which means poo is about to slap against a fan blade somewhere. That afternoon, Evelyn gets hit by a bus and dies.

<quick rant> Sheesh, I mean, even in Gremlins the mogwai doesn’t have an explanation, but at least there was a cryptic old Chinese man who owned the shop lending the entire thing some authenticity. This plastic trinket showed up via UPS. Effing really?? </quick rant>

Wait. Wasn’t this was a zombie flick? Where are the zombies? So far I’ve just been depressed having to watch Max be depressed because he has no self-worth and won’t break up with Evelyn. Suddenly, BAM! She’s dead. Okay, credits should roll. The popcorn was at least pleasant. I got up to hit the Eject button when Max opens his door to find Evelyn standing there as a sex-crazed zombie who has already started decomposing. After all, the aforementioned goofy plastic trinket blew smoke, so the devil must be in the details here.

Yes. You read that right. Evelyn is now a sex-crazed walking corpse. Necrophilia anyone? Ew. One thing I never thought I’d actually see is a zombie wanting sex with a human. That one was a little strong.

Burying the Ex is a zombie flick that kind of forgot about the zombie part. Evelyn doesn’t have much to do after she comes back from the dead, doesn’t even really have a hunger for human brains until the last half hour, and the movie mostly focuses on watching Max trying to keep it that way. Unfortunately, I found myself trying to encourage the movie along, much like running uphill and being fatigued at the end of it. I wanted to like it, and I wanted it to be good for the sake of the A-listers. But it just turned out to be exhausting for the most part. The A-list actors weren’t on their A-game. The script was trying to be Warm Bodies meets Superbad, but came off as warm ice cream meets plain bad. In the end, I hope these three got their tip money paychecks because this one was a waste of a good hour and a half for me.

24. The Fly (1958)
No list of horror films would be complete were there not a Vincent Price film. By far my all-time favorite freak out film for Price is The Fly. Not the fancy gimmicky one of Jeff Goldblum’s but the raw and frightening one starring Price. There is no one in film that sells crazy quietly, insanely and maddeningly slow, like Vincent Price. There are the machines of course, there are always machines with mad scientists, but the focus of the film is all on Andre Delambre (David Hedison) and his brother Francois (Price).

Andre is carefully, strategically working to solve the problem of wireless transportation. Using a device to transport living tissue, something goes horribly, frighteningly wrong: parts of a fly’s body replace parts of Delambre’s. Should that not be horror enough?  But at the end of the movie, the final scene…the screen enlarges, and enlarges and enlarges until we see…Francois Delambre looking down at fly’s body on which sits Andre’s head. A tiny voice screams “help me, help me” as a spider slowly creeps toward him.

I get chills even today just thinking about it, years later. It’s not slick and modern, like the later version, but it’s far more horrifying. Your scary movie collection is not complete if you don’t have this one. Watch the video if you dare, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!

Top 25 Horror Films

Here we go again and this time I’m going to tell you the best 25 horror films. There are few more subjective categories than the top horror films. In thinking about my own top 25, and trying to stay objective, I found myself struggling with movies that scared the hell out of me as a child, movies that thrilled me with original horror and even films so disturbing I would never watch them again. The ones that were truly great gave me great laughs, made me jump in my seat or were too horribly real; the ones that didn’t will be on someone else’s list. These are the movies that cause my nightmares, heart palpitations and even one that made me crawl under my seat as a child.

25. Zombieland
Obviously one of the newest horror film on any list, Zombieland is funny far more than scary, but a great film for all that. This is a large tub of popcorn, giant Slushee and a pound of peanut M&Ms size movie with one great cameo and 90+ minutes of great action. Original, disgustingly violent and unlikely characters make Zombieland one of the best funny scary movies ever. Oh, and you might want to sneak in some Twinkies, I so wanted one by the end of the film. Take a pen; you might want to write down the Zombieland rules before you leave, ya’ never know what you might face when you leave the theater. Oh, and start up the cardio, these Zombies are quick.

Yep, the excitement heightens and I’m all over it. Check out the extended trailer and then just try and wait, MUAHAHAHA!

This is actually the worst comic book movie ever made and I’ll tell you why. First, there’s not a single like-able character in the film. Not one of the principles is engaging, interesting or even once, funny. Second, there’s absolutely no attempt to make the film fun-not a single Yehaa! moment. I’m sorry, at some point there’s got to be some break in a dismal tragedy. And make no mistake, Fantastic Four is a dismal tragedy. Even the most depressing Shakespeare play has a comic break. Third, there are no surprises. The film and the characters are predictable if maybe a little more boring than you’d expect.

The dialogue is stilted, the chemistry between characters uninspired and the casting indefensible. I cannot imagine worse choices. These are some of my favorite comic book characters played with no understanding or empathy . Miles Teller is dull as Reed Richards, Kate Mara, bland as Susan Storm, Michael B. Jordan, sullen and resentful as Johnny Storm and Jamie Bell, an actor I like, is as unlike Ben Grimm, the always-loyal best friend of Reed Richards, as I can imagine. Whether this is acting or direction is debatable, but regardless it makes Fantastic Four painful to watch.

What’s even worse is the villain, Toby Kebbell. He is one of my favorite characters in both The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

In both films he’s not only a great villain but commands the screen. In Fantastic Four he’s hobbled by a really bad script and a terrible story. Of course, the original Dr. Doom, from the comic book, is lost to us after one reference to his home country, Latveria. I couldn’t even detect an accent. I’m sorry, but Dr. Doom, evil super villain and ruler of a tiny European country, is far more interesting than a slob of a computer geek with no personality. Not to be too harsh of course.

If I had set out to make the worst super hero movie ever, hired the most reviled director and a two year old to write the script I would have ended up with a better film. Pardon me, but, with little exception, main stream comic book characters we like, want to emulate and might like to get to know.

There’s not a single instant, till the last few seconds, that I enjoyed anything. There is one scene right at the end that shadows hope for the future. The special effects are cheesy, the dialogue lame and predictable and the plot unlike anything I can remember from the Fantastic Four franchise.

I would not recommend this film unless you were the last person on earth, had just enough power left for one movie, every other DVD had been destroyed and you had two hours to live. It would probably cheer you up about your impending doom. I felt more depressed after this movie than after a Chekhov play, and that’s horrible.

You don’t need to see this movie, but if you do, see it in the theater. You don’t want to be that despondent at home. Stop and grab a comedy on the way home to cheer up. That should help.

Rating: 0 out of 5 (and that’s generous)

1) Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

This is it, number 1! Head and shoulders the best musical comedy ever made and easily the best musical too, Singing in the Rain is Hollywood at its very best. There’s not a boring or wasted moment in the film and every scene advances the plot, adds wonderful story elements and even develops the characters.

Gene Kelly, Donald O’ Connor and Debbie Reynolds, screen icons all, star in the film and the chemistry between them is movie brilliance. The plot, based on the beginning of talking pictures, is inspired and lets Kelly, O’ Connor and Reynolds do what they do best-show off: Kelly singing and dancing in the rain, Donald O’ Connor flipping through the air and Reynolds singing her heart out. Singing in the Rain is pure entertainment from start to finish!

2) Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

A wonderful look at a traditional Jewish community during the pogroms in Russia. Topol stars as Tevye, a father of girls in terrible times, just trying to keep them alive and healthy. He’s also trying to maintain tradition and find husbands for them the old way. Unfortunately the husbands he finds, may not just match their desires.

Fiddler on the Roof is equal parts fun, heartwarming and dramatic and easily one of the best musicals ever written. It’s also one of the most delightful no matter what level it’s seen: high school, little theater and even in dinner theater it is wonderful.

Take an actor like Topol and put it on screen and it’s brilliant! You may walk away crying, laughing or shaking your head, but you absolutely won’t walk away disappointed.

Verdict: ★★★ 1/2

About twenty years ago, I read a small blurb which described Schwarzenegger having gotten a hold of a script that dealt with a lonely man (he wanted to play the lead) who was the last human on earth after everyone else became vampires. It was sort of a take on I Am Legend, and the script followed the man as he continued to lock himself up in his house each night as the vampires screamed and taunted him from outside. Then every day he’d re-build what they’d torn up, do his chores and whatever, then lock up as dusk fell again. Definitely a character study, the movie would have required amazing emotional depth to carry it through.

The movie never was realized, but I was immediately reminded of the script he’d read when I watched Maggie. I remember thinking back then that there was no way Schwarzenegger had the acting chops to pull off a movie of that magnitude without some sort of fast paced action sequences. I may have been right, I don’t think he did at that time. But now, 20 years later, he indeed may!

In the monster movie genre, there are action packed zombie flicks… there are goofy, funny zombie flicks… there are character study zombie flicks… then there’s Maggie. Schwarzenegger throws us a curveball with this change of pace from his usual blast furnace of heart-stopping action and gunfire, and slows us down to a nice, passive walk on the farm as Wade Vogel, a small town Midwestern man who speaks with an Austrian accent that no one seems to question.

Wade’s daughter goes missing just as the zombie apocalypse happens and he finds her in a nearby city with a bite on her arm. Bringing her home instead of taking her to “Quarantine”, he breaks all the rules and promises to um… take care of it when she does finally turn. Apparently turning into a zombie takes weeks because this ordeal Wade and his daughter go through is a gradual, cruel meander toward certain death with plenty of time to be afraid and think about your humanity.

Maggie (Abigail Breslin) is your typical teenaged girl, with boys and a diary and cute colors on her nails. As she turns, and her skin mottles, and her eyes milk over, and she starts to show traits of zombie cannibalism, her friends try to comfort her and invite her to parties and all that. But the overshadowing horror of unspeakable things lurks ever in the shadows of this world and she finds that no matter what she does or how she acts, nothing is the same as it once was. She grows up entirely too fast in those few weeks for a girl her age.

Her daddy, Wade, meanwhile has to keep that brave face which is getting harder and harder to do as other zombies (neighbors they once knew) continue to show up and Wade has to deal.

Maggie is more than a zombie movie… it’s a study in humanity and love. Beautifully done, yet a little slow paced, it keeps you wondering how things will play out and if Wade will actually “take care of it” when the inevitable happens. One thing is clear, however… Ahnold has the chops to pull this off and I look forward to more emotionally driven roles from him in the future!

Iron Sky

Verdict: ★1/2

Warning: Spoilers ahead in case you actually do want to see this one!

This movie was deliciously awful. A marvelous idea that, on one hand was funny and brimming with top-notch CGI for a couple of guys with one PC and 37 days of shooting but on the other hand, was woefully underutilized with a goofy story line and non-researched technical details.

In 1945, after the war, The Nazi elite suddenly disappeared and, lo and behold, settled on the dark side of the moon of all places. In the 73 years since, they’ve been pooling their resources and plotting their revenge against the Earth… and by plotting their revenge, I mean they’ve been building a monstrous tank like UFO mother ship out of iron gears the size of skyscrapers and huge bike chains to turn them. The only thing they needed was something… something infinitely more powerful to complete the construction and power the UFO back to Earth so that they could conquer it in Der Fuhrer’s name.

So 73 years later it’s 2018 and two hapless astronauts, who speak like they were plucked right out of the inner city and launched into space, just landed on the moon. Turns out the President of the United States, a soulless, trash talking Southern woman who spends most of her time on an elliptical machine, only used them to get re-elected because one of them was black. Yes, you read that right. Anyway, they land near the dark side of the moon only to discover Nazis already there mining Helium 3, an amazing element that is the most powerful energy source in the universe. The Nazis wear gas masks on the moon, and ride around on motorcycles and in black VW Bugs because internal combustion works in zero-oxygen environments. Apparently.

One of the astronauts has a smart phone (of course, because Verizon’s cell service reaches the moon) and the Nazis find out it’s the missing piece to their amazing, iron, bike chain UFO tank thing. Hooking it up, a Nazi scientist right out of Einstein’s wardrobe somehow hacks the smart phone and connects it up via USB to their UFO. Suddenly the giant bike chains start churning and the enormous iron gears start grinding… and the smart phone runs out of battery power. Beeeoooop. Everything shuts down again. So they make a decision to return to Earth to get more smart phones. The only way to do that is to invade with giant iron zeppelins, each hauling an asteroid behind them so that they can slingshot them into the Earth.

I’m not making this up! I actually spent most of this movie laughing at the utter ridiculousness of the story.

However, I said it was deliciously awful and I meant it. This movie doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and director Timo Vuorensola’s humor just slaps you in the face at nearly every turn. Written by Johanna Sinisalo and Michael Kalesniko, the guys behind Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, the effects given to Iron Sky are astounding with today’s software behind it. The film’s leading lady, a school teacher named Renata (Julie Dietze) steals the entire show as she slowly finds out through Earth’s history how terrible the Nazis really were, negating all the propaganda she’s ever taught her students on the moon.

I’ll put it to you this way… think of America in the movie Idiocracy, make the President a woman who just stepped out of a trailer park, add the UN from Austin Powers, and then let Nazis from the moon invade the entire thing. It’s just about everything you can imagine.