Fear Street Review: Cheerleaders: The Second Evil

Cheers- from the grave!

Out of the Grave

It's been a long time since I had one of these. I hate to say it, but I had a tough time reading during the summer even though, embarrassingly, I took this book with me to work literally almost every day after my last review of an R. L. Stine book. I know, I know, shame on me. Even more than that I must have looked mighty strange carrying around the same book (with a title like Cheerleaders) for months. I finally finished it, and here is my mostly kind of lackluster review. Sorry I'm not very bombastic with this one, but this book is very safe in my opinion.

What do I mean by safe? Well, it's simple enough. This book doesn't do anything new or different from the last book. Sure, it introduces a few new plot points and a new character or two, but mostly it is just like the first book except less interesting. Without the tension of the main character being blamed and hated for literally everything (and the subsequent mystery about what is actually going on), the book becomes a very simple evil spirit exorcism story. And an ineffectual one at that.

"The hooded man with the strange ghostly eyes- he must have followed her home."

This second Cheerleaders book starts a little after the last one. It is fall, and Corky is in the graveyard visiting her sister's grave. She's almost made out to be an odd sort of person for doing this, but she's obviously disturbed by the whole incident. Who can say that she's wrong to show her grief in this way? What is kind of weird and wrong is that she started dating her sister's boyfriend Chip. That does seem a little creepy, although I don't know if it's creepier for her or for him. You just know that relationship won't last...

I guess the story is pretty simple. Corky is trying to get her life back together. The other cheerleaders want her to rejoin the team, but she's reluctant to do so. And that's the basic premise of the majority of this book. Sure, a few new characters are introduced. John Daly, the brother of Jennifer from the first book, is shown in basically a single scene. He promptly goes missing and dies after threatening Corky. And Sara Beth, a college girl who seems to know a lot about the occult and the titular Fears of Fear Street. It's later explained that she is a Fear herself, which is why she is so knowledgeable and interested in the subject matter.

It's not very exciting to say the least. Most of the book revolves around Corky dealing with her issues, trying to pick her life up, and then slowly realizing that the evil is still around, although she has no idea where it could be. Her subsequent search for both history and truth is decently entertaining with the most interesting aspect of the story being the background on Sara Fear and Sara Beth telling the sordid tale.

"Chip's hand, cut off at the wrist, rested like a glove beside the blade."

There are a couple of deaths in the story, the most prominent being Chip, who dies after getting his hand sawed off. I will say that from my younger days this was the death from this series that was most ingrained in my mind besides Bobbi's own death from the first book. For whatever reason though, I had remembered Chip being more important than he ultimately turned out to be. He honestly did absolutely nothing in the narrative besides date both sisters and Kimmy. Then he died and left nothing else. Hell, he's barely mentioned after his death. Corky seemed to have gotten over it all fairly quickly. Then again she has to be numb about the whole thing at this point.

The gruesome bits in this book are few and far between, and the problem is that nothing here is all that interesting. I don't really care about Corky. I don't know why her character is so bland and uninteresting compared to her sister, but she truly comes off as a very dry character. Her mourning doesn't even really mean anything, and it should. There is an emotional detachment throughout this book. While the first book really pushed what bullying could do, showed some truly graphic deaths, and ultimately hit hard and didn't pull punches, this book does the opposite of all of those.

It doesn't show Corky's personality or grief, shoehorning her with Chip because he was a male character that was mentioned and dated Bobbi, I guess. It should be a book about her dealing with the death, ultimately finding a way to move on. Yeah, put the spirit story in there. Hell, even better, have her research the thing to see what it had been. But bringing the same story back again with simply another person possessed seems like lazy writing more than anything else. This whole book misses a ton of marks, and ultimately feels bland and uninspired.

Shame on you, R. L. Stine. For shame.

"A disgusting green liquid poured from her mouth. The stench of it rose up from the tossing water.

Corky gagged, struggled to hold her breath, trying not to breathe.

The thick green liquid oozed out of Kimmy's mouth. Took shape. Formed a long snakelike figure.

Longer. Longer."

Kimmy was ultimately the one possessed by the evil spirit. While this is perfectly acceptable, I guess, it also comes off as kind of stupid. Kimmy survives the book. But two guys are dead by her hand. I suppose the whole point of the spirit is that it doesn't (or isn't supposed to) get its hands dirty, but then it goes and tries to drown Corky with Kimmy's bare hands. In reality, a person who kills other people may actually get arrested and thrown in prison or something. There might be some sort of police investigation. Just maybe? But no. Those deaths were accidental evidently. Kimmy is never even looked at, and the spirit defense doesn't ever come up in court. That's really disappointing.

I'm being a little silly, but I do have a point here. This book clearly doesn't take place in our world, certainly not as I know it works. When I was younger this book worked so much better, back when I didn't know as much about things and stuff. But now it comes off as really stupid at times. I cannot suspend my disbelief as much as it wants me to, and thus my entertainment is stymied.

In the end Corky drowns the evil spirit out of Kimmy. It seems to work, giving a great description of what an evil spirit looks like in its native form. I don't mind the end of the book so much as the rest of it. At least there was some action rather than a reliance on Corky's personality like the rest of the book. I liked the apparent death of the spirit. And I liked how Kimmy's memory of all of the events since the graveyard were completely gone. That was a neat twist even if it was also pretty silly.

"IT CAN'T BE DROWNED."

In the end, there has to be a trilogy of books. So, the evil isn't gone, obviously. And it'll come back. That's for sure.

The Second Evil

I think it's obvious I didn't like this book. While it may have narrative important to the five book Cheerleaders series, it is wholly uninspired. I started reading it a while back, hoping to whip out a quick review of this months ago, but found myself unable to continue reading through pure lack of desire to want to read it. I found the writing lesser than the first book and the story completely uninteresting. There was no mystery, no great moments, nothing to really read and be in awe over.

The characters are mostly bland and uninteresting, especially Corky, who has no defining characteristics beyond "teenage female." Her mourning for her sister and her boyfriend should have been the main focus of the plot, but even though those aspects of her character were mentioned, very little ever came of it. He mourning was glossed over, becoming less about her character and much more about the fact of her mourning. That really seems like a poor choice to me. The emotional impact should have been there. It would have made the whole book much more than it was.

And what was it? A schlocky overdramatic evil spirit story. There were some good moments here and there, mostly involving Sara Beth Fear, who I don't think comes back in any of the other books (although egg on my face if I'm wrong). The history of Sara Fear was both interesting and nicely handled. It should have been the main focus of the book, showing Corky searching for answers about what really happened, rather than forcing a plot of the spirit possessing and killing others. Maybe that's just me though.

There are a few other creepy scenes, but most of them are simply written to be creepy, which in this case actually made me less interested in them. The graveyard scenes and the scenes with Corky in the school before she finds Chip dead really stuck out at me as those kind of scenes.

I don't know. There's not much else I can say. I didn't like this book, and would suggest others not to read it unless the Cheerleaders saga is important enough for you to read all the way through. The younger me loved this book, but older me sees it as an utter mess that could have been a whole lot better if it were planned out better. Corky finding Chip was still pretty good though. I liked that a decent amount. And I liked Sara Fear's backstory. Other than that, this book was utter dreck. Easily the worst R. L. Stine book I've reviewed so far.

Audiobook Evaluation: "In the Tall Grass" (2012) by Stephen King and Joe Hill

This is the absolute first full audiobook I have ever listened to. Of course it had to be Stephen King related, and of course it had to be this. Let me set the scene as I listened to this in my car because it might tell you a lot about my mindset as I listened to this story.

It was late at night, so late that it was probably early. I tend to drive long distances at times, and this was one of those three hour drives I sometimes need to take some nights because life. I was driving from New Jersey to Connecticut (where I live), going through the Saw Mill (River) Parkway in New York. It was so late at the time that there was nobody else on the road. Again, I see this quite often when I drive home that late. So, as I listened to this story about a car pulling off the road on a long-distance trip to check out what's going on in a field of grass, I was also driving and very much ready to be creeped out myself.

So, the mood is set. Now, let's get to the bare minimum about this story without spoiling anything. I really don't want to spoil anything. The story here is way too good to spoil, and I don't really think many people know a ton about this audiobook. While Stephen King and his son wrote this together, I wouldn't exactly call it well known, especially because one of the major forms of this novella is the audiobook format of it. While it also can be found as an e-book and was written in a magazine as well, it has yet to be inserted into one of King's story collections and thus is still relatively unknown despite being incredibly good.

The story follows a simple premise. As I mentioned briefly, a brother and sister are taking a long drive to San Diego, basically taking an extended vacation so that the sister, Becky, will have some time to decide whether or not she wants to abort her child or keep it. She's very young, nineteen, in college, and has become pregnant by an unknown father. Cal, her brother, is supporting her on this trip. They are very close these two, and the big reason might be because they are very similar in the way they think and act. Anyway, on the way they pull off the highway because both of them hear something coming from inside the grassy field. The thing they hear is a young boy crying out for help.

The story continues with Becky and Cal going to try to help the kid, who they think has simply wandered into the field while playing and become lost. The problem is exacerbated though when a woman's voice, the mother of the child, calls out to them to not enter the grass, to stay away. Becky and Cal become intrigued, enter the grass, and seal their eventual fate.

This story is about nature versus humanity, and maybe something beyond nature as well. I would call this a story about an eldritch abomination, one very much unlike a Cthulhu or a Lovecraftian horror, but one also very similar as well. Without giving too much away, the grass, the tall grass of the title, is very similar to the room in the story 1408. While there is much less psychological horror in this story than in that one, the premise is very similar, and the effects of both are quite chilling. While room 1408 seems to be fairly self-contained, more a nuisance than something that people are maliciously going to wander in to, the tall grass, and what lies within it, is very much in the open, unguarded, and finds its own way to attract others into its clutches.

This story is terrifying by the way. Listening to it in the day or at night doesn't really change that. The story still holds a creepy factor that does not go away, not even in the brightest daylight. It is a story about being lost, about being unable to ever find yourself again. It is about being pulled over the edge, being pulled over to the dark side of your own nature, against your will, or maybe as the only way to stay alive. The story has some horrifying set-pieces, although none of them occur within the first half or so of the story. During the second half though, the punches of horror keep flying. Topics such as abortion, miscarriage, cannibalism, insanity, rape, and eldritch horror are spoken about at length, each topic dealt with in a terrifying (and sometimes absolutely sickening) way.

There were moments as I listened to this audiobook, that I covered my mouth in horror and surprise. And on my first listening to this, especially once the second half of the story started playing, I actually needed to shut the CD player in my car off for a while so that I could collect myself. The story had literally upset me so much that I couldn't listen anymore without feeling genuinely sick to my stomach. I can't think of many horror stories that can do that to me, but this one is quality terror.

I don't really want to say much about the second half. There is a stone in a field, and things mentioned very early in the story become very important later on. It's reminiscent of "Children of the Corn" in a way, but that probably has more to do with the setting and slight religious overtones (of one sort or another) more than anything else. Actually the dealing with religion is very much a Stephen King staple going all the way back to Carrie. It seems that those motivated by a religion of fear tend to be the most loathsome sort to King, something I find very interesting.

I know that audiobooks aren't for everybody, but for the amount that I drive, they are basically perfect. And this is a damn good audiobook besides. The audiobook is read by Steven Lang, an actor I know specifically as Mr. Travitt from The I Inside, a character that I really loved, and he does a great job here, impersonating the voices and really doing a topnotch job as both narrator and storyteller. His acting really sells the story, especially when he really seems to get into it in the second half of the story. His voice is downright chilling at times as the story moves on, and that's about as good a compliment as I can give him.

Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, did a great job with this story. To me it has gone down as one of the classic short horror stories from Stephen King, up there with The Mist and N. in terms of quality and terrifying storytelling. I wholeheartedly recommend this audiobook to everybody. Check it out if you can. I wasn't disappointed. Actually, listening to the audiobook a second time really made me want to read, watch, or listen to more Stephen king stories...

So, that might be a thing.

Soon.

Movie Appraisal: Come and See (Иди и смотри) (Ідзі і глядзі) (1985)

So, this is less a horror film and more a horror of war film, but I'm going to make an exception. While I try to review or talk about or whatever 31 horror-things in 31 days, sometimes I feel the need to try something different. This Soviet film from 1985 is so incredibly different, psychologically scarring and, yes, terrifying, that I believe it truly belongs alongside of other horror movies, even if it isn't a silly little thing that makes you jump a little sometimes.

This movie, Come and See, directed by Elem Klimov,is quite possibly the greatest war film ever made, and also possibly the most accurate. It is set in 1943 and is centered around a young boy, Flyora, who wants to join the Soviet partisans who are fighting a guerilla war in Russia after being invaded by the Nazis. He finds a gun and joins up, only to be left behind very quickly. He meets up with a young woman who has some trauma of her own, and they decide to go back to his hometown before he goes back to the war effort. When they get there the town is sacked, his family is dead, and Flyora cannot easily accept it.

They both cross a bog in a truly intense scene to find a handful of survivors surviving on an island. One of the survivors is a badly burned man from the beginning of the film. Flyora then accepts the death of his family. As the story moves on, it becomes more horrific. Death seems to follow this young man, as the raiding team he goes with to find food are summarily killed one-by-one in various ways. He is left alone, helped by an old man, then taken in by Nazis. He stands by as a church with many Russian people inside is burnt down, killing them all but himself and a young woman who tried to save her child by rushing out of the church. Her child was thrown back in, and she was left to watch the execution of many.

After the burning, Flyora is left alone and broken as the woman is raped. The partisans come to kill the Nazis, too late for those in the church. The end of the movie shows that the Nazis are killed, but in a more merciful way. They are shot to death rather than burned. Flyora joins up, at the very end of the movie, with the partisans, leaving his village and childhood behind so he can fight this great and terrible threat.

That's a simplified plot. There is much more to it, but if you want to know it go and watch this movie. The horror here isn't in the story so much as in the way everything is shot, in how the movie is essentially about a boy losing his innocence, not to a woman or an ideal, but rather to death and blood. His journey is one of terror. Terror of the Nazis and their threat, the threat that so few could understand. It is the threat of cleansing, the threat of truly believing that others are less, the threat of reveling in death and mass-murder, and the threat of the inhumanity of war.

The emotional impact is exhausting. Having to watch the faces of these characters, their eyes and their thoughts, and seeing how they change over time. It's an ordeal of a movie, one for both the watcher and the characters. It is quite possibly the most visceral and effective anti-war film I have ever seen. It is also one of the most emotionally impacting films I have ever seen. The sounds of the movie are too much at times. The visuals are stunning and sickening. But it's really the acting and the directing that shine throughout. There are powerful moments on screen, moments that should never be forgotten, moments that should be watched by everyone so people, all people, can see the horror of war and what it does.

While World War II was obviously a bad war, it easily shows any and all wars, any and all conflicts. It is a movie that transcends the time it is about or the time it was made.

I don't know what else to say. While slasher movie and typical horror movies are creepy and scary and AHHHHH horror, this movie sticks with you in the dead of night. It affects you in a way that doesn't simply go away. It's a serious film for a serious audience, and I wouldn't tell anybody to go into watching this film lightly. It's scary in its reality. It's terrifying in what it portrays and represents. I don't think I'll ever forget the aftermath of the rape scene at the end of the movie, and how I almost felt viscerally sick, or how the burning down of the church made me clench my nails into the palms of my hands. It is a tough movie to get through, but the quality and the intensity is always there. I try to keep these October Nights as fun and enjoyable as possible, but if you want to truly be terrified, watch this movie and see the terrors of reality laid bare. I recommend this movie wholeheartedly but not lightly. It is disturbing and awful at times. That warning will always stand.

B-Movie Appraisal: Dementia 13 (The Haunted and the Hunted) (1963)

Francis Coppola? Francis FORD Coppola? Seriously, you did The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, but started out with this? I admire that. I also think it makes a ton of sense (since I dislike most of your movies), but I really do respect that. I think all great filmmakers should start with sci-fi or horror movies. They're simple to make, but incredibly difficult to make well. They hone skills that can be valuable in much more complex movies, are good for up-and-coming filmmakers to chip their teeth on, and will never be critical darlings so most will have free reign or a good amount of control on their project. These are all positives and one of the reason why so many GREAT directors started with horror or sci-fi movies.

Anyway, Dementia 13 was written and directed by Francis Coppola, his third movie directed and first real "actual" movie. I guess his first two "movies" were skin flicks or nudie flicks or whatever, but I've never seen them nor heard of them before I read about them existing for this review. It goes to show how far somebody can go to become one of the best known directors of all time. It also goes to show that he had some talent directing even in his early days. Because yes, this movie had definite talent behind it, even if it isn't the best flick there ever was.

I guess I should start out saying that this is an early 1960s movie, and, as such, is largely not very scary at all. Mostly it comes off as a rip-off (of a sort) of Psycho, which was made just a few short years before. Since Roger Corman produced this flick, I would have to say that it was definitely meant to cash in on this new-found and, at the time, newly popular genre of movie. That being said, as a cash-in, it still is a fairly solid slasher-lite B-movie with a bunch of hiccups that work against the feel of the movie but serve the obviously limited budget and production costs... and most notably the censorship that this movie also very obviously had to work around. Let it be known that while it was on its way out the Hayes Code was still strictly in effect. And yet the movie works around those codes very decently, creating a disjointed movie, sure, but an enjoyably disjointed movie. One of the biggest hiccups is the actual flow of the story and plot. The editing is odd, barely showing a coherent plot throughout, with a greater focus on jumping around in the narrative and showing more psychological elements of the characters. At least I think that was what was going on. The film's stiff attitude towards progression in the story is the biggest issue that holds it back from being either memorable or "good" in any modern sense of that word.

I know that this movie probably very mixed in both thoughts and feelings about it. To me it was a highly mediocre film with some good moments, especially considering when it was made. The fact that characters, fleshed-out and interesting characters, die both early and often is enough to convey that the movie is interesting and also a Psycho rip-off. I have to point that out because it is so obvious. (Also because it is historical record.) I don't have all that much to say about this film either. While it is well-directed, with every shot looking nice and leading up to something, the disjointed nature of the jumps of scenes and the character movements left me feeling very confused at times and, honestly, a little bored as well. That's never a good thing with a horror film. And it's especially bad for a film that seems to have a great deal of somewhat ridiculous filler already.

The plot of the film is simple: three brothers come back to their ancestral castle-home to reenact the funeral of their little sister who died years ago. Their mother insists upon it and refuses to let anybody else but herself and her three sons come to the ceremony. Things go awry early when one of the brothers (John) decides to go boating with his wife Louise. They are having a heated conversation about his mother's will, mocks his wife, then promptly has a heart-attack and dies. Louise disposes of the body and acts like nothing happened but John being called back home on business. As the movie progresses, Louise is intent on gaining the mother's fortune, trying to trick her into believing her daughter's spirit still roams the halls of the castle. She is found out and killed. Then a grubby little man-hunter finds her body and is killed as well. Louise was at the center of most of the first half of the movie, but her death, reminiscent of Janet Leigh's death is Psycho begins the disjointed narrative issues.

Having no central character left the narrative begins to follow four different characters: the two remaining brothers, Richard and Billy, the family doctor, Dr. Caleb, and Kane, the engaged of Richard. Watching them all try to figure it all out is a confusing mess. The focus is on Richard being the killer for most of the second half of the movie, even though Billy seems to be having flashbacks of the day his sister died, which psychologically implicate him. There are subplots with a grave at the bottom of a pond and a wax dummy of Kathleen that both serve as clues or weird pieces of evidence, but neither really is all that important.

Dr. Caleb figures it out, places Kathleen's dummy out in the open, lures Billy who attempts to kill Kane who wants to touch the dummy really badly for some reason. Billy is then shot dead by Dr. Caleb the hero of the story, and that's that. I mean, simple enough, I guess... or really odd, confusing, and overly complex at times.

I did like how the killer could have been either of the two brothers even if it was fairly obvious who it was from fairly early on. Of course it would be the troubled brother, without anybody in his life, who obvious has some psychological issues who would be the one to be the murderer. Obviously. Still, there were moments when I thought it would all be a huge misdirection, and the silhouetted killer was obviously in shadow to show that it maybe could have been either of them. I liked how that worked even with the obvious nature of how it all turned out. There was tension there, maybe not the greatest tension, but tension nonetheless.

I had issues with the idea that there really isn't a main character, just a collection of side ones. While Dr. Caleb kind of comes off as the main character towards the end of the film, he doesn't even appear in the first half at all. It was difficult to connect with the characters as well. None of them were people. They all very much came off as characters in a play, which was disheartening.

It's not a bad movie, not a good one either though. And yet, I'm not certain whose product I'm seeing on screen. Did Corman cut the production to his specifications? Or did Coppola have basically full control? The movie, while a mess, is both well shot, and very odd in the way it cuts to different (and sometimes inexplicable) scenes at the drop of a hat. The focus on characters and their faces is interesting, but also clearly ripped off of Psycho. I think the movie is ultimately an interesting mess of a movie.

But still I have a few questions. Why is it called Dementia 13? Does the title mean something I don't understand? I don't think I see dementia at all in the film. Nor the number 13. So... yeah, the title is incredibly flawed. Okay, and here's the biggest and most important question at all: why do the brothers not have Irish accents? It takes place in Ireland. They were supposedly raised there unless I missed something important. So, why did they all talk like Americans? It was incredibly distracting. They had the castle and had lived there as young children, it seems, but no accent. Man, that was a problem for me. I just couldn't look past it, specifically because other character have very strong accents. Wow.

So, I have a middling opinion about this movie. Check it out if you like old horror movies. If you don't just forget about it and try something else. I can't really recommend it as anything more than an interesting look at an early slasher movie, and not a particularly good or interesting one at that.

B-Movie Appraisal: Plaguers (2008)

The cheapest movie you will ever see.

So. This is something, let me tell you. This here is a movie among many other movies. It is a horror film. It is, in a word, something. I can't say if it's a good something or a bad something. All I can say is that it is something and leave it at that. I call this a B-movie as well, even though it isn't necessarily such because of the acting, the way the movie is shot, and, mostly, because it absolutely is. Unlike many of the movies that I review that are put into this October month of reviews, this one is wholly terrible. It rips of Alien and Aliens so bad it is actually physically painful. There is nothing good in this movie. There is no dialogue that is worth your time, money, or effort. There are no characters that are going to give you new thoughts and motivations throughout your life. There are, in fact, no redeeming features of this movie. It is, quite possibly, the worst horror movie I have ever seen. I would even go so far as to say it definitely is the worst horror movie I've seen, even worse than those crappy Japanese horror movies I review sometimes while I sigh and hate myself.

And yet.

I think I must have something wrong going on in my head. I think I must be seriously deranged and damaged. Because despite all the negatives about this film (and the film is nothing but negatives remember) I had a goddamn great time watching this movie. Its effects are laughable. The "zombies" or plague victims or whatever are laughable. The acting is literally almost painful. The script is terrible. The premise is simply awful. But there is something under the surface that makes it interesting despite the fact that it is a movie made of flaws. It is an enjoyable trainwreck.

Is it ever scary? No.

Will you ever have nightmares over the gore, the make-up, the situations, or anything else? No. Nothing is scary. The characters are never fleshed out enough to be interesting. The dialogue is so wooden and flat that it sounds like these "actors" for the most part are just reading off of a half-finished script. Steve Railsback is good as the android character. I'll give the movie that. It did have one legitimately decent actor in it.

But I think calling this movie terrible goes against all of my instincts. Is a movie terrible if it still entertains? Is it terrible when it is absolutely memorable? Yes, everything about this movie is bad. But at the same time I was never bored, never uninterested. Hell, I watched some scenes more than once simply because I wanted to laugh at them again. And some scenes played twice in the movie because the editing was literally that terrible. I'm looking at you, scene(s) where Riley's chest gets pulled open. The same shot of his rip-cage being exposed twice? Wow, movie. Did you really think I wouldn't notice? You must have. And yet, I still loved it.

There must be something wrong with me.

I will say that you'll know exactly what you're getting into in the first scene. Oh boy is that opening scene terrible. As soon as you see that you'll know what this movie is. It's schlock, pure and simple. It's a "horror" movie with terrible dialogue, terrible acting, sexy women because why not, an android because if they're going to try and rip-off Alien thirty years after the fact they'd better damn well use an android. Who is even going to notice? Besides everyone?

Oops, I meant to say syndroid there. Syndroid. Yeah.

There are moments of actual interest to me as a human. I think there is something to be said of each female character being strong in various ways and each male character being weak in various ways. The women are the strength of this movie and the male characters are paperthin and very horny caricatures of what a man might look and act like if sex were the only thing on his mind constantly.Which some might argue is completely true. I simply found that interesting. The male characters are in the background, with only Tarver the android (not really male) being interesting or compelling in any way. The rest of the characters who are interesting are all female. The captain who is the tough one. The psychotic pirate. The pirate who wants to be in charge. And... yeah... I'm sure there are others.

This movie makes me need a drink.

Any movie I've complained about before is nothing compared to this. This is the single worst horror movie I've ever seen. Why I enjoyed it I will never know. Why I can complain about and hate The Innkeepers and like this movie I will never know. That movie was at least shot competently and for its budget. This movie was not. And yet I liked this movie so much more. It had so much more to offer despite crappy visuals and everything else. It never talked down to me or asked a ton from me at all. It was a gory fun stupid horror film. I mean, no, it was never scary, but it had some life to it.

I don't know. I don't even know where to start. Or end. Or whatever. I guess the story is about these spaceship people who take aboard a mysterious object they found one day. They thought it was heading to a planet named Thanatos. Don't ever call a planet Thanatos. Seriously. You're just asking for trouble. Why it was called Thanatos nobody will ever know. Because that place has been dead for two years. Thanatos. Ugh. WHY? (For people who don't know Greek, Thanatos mean Death, usually in reference to the personification of Death.)

Anyway, these spaceship people find another spaceship in need of help. On board that ship they find four "gorgeous" women who appear dirty and awkward in terms of acting. These women turn out to be pirates who activate the zombie effects of the mysterious device. Then everybody turns into an awkward zombie (and some are awkward alien zombies for some... reason that none of us will ever understand). And that's it.

I have no idea what to say about this movie. I thought it was really something. While terrible in every way, it made me laugh. I had a good time watching it, and I get the feeling that watching this movie with friends would be really enjoyable. It's never scary or horrific, but it is substantially gory. There's no nudity even though parts of the movie look exactly like what a porn film looks like. You know, those stereotypical bad porn films about the pizza man coming into the house awkwardly asking to show the barely dressed bored woman his big sausage or whatever they do these days. Yeah, with how this movie was shot, I was literally expecting that. Anyway, we have Brad Sykes to thank for the way this movie was filmed and directed. I guess, good job? I have no idea. I said way too much about this movie already.

Movie Appraisal: Splinter (2008)

Well, this sure was a movie. Why did I want to see this again?

For whatever reason I had bought this movie, clearly intending to enjoy the hell out of it. For reasons unknown I didn't watch it until now and have completely forgot the reason I wanted to watch it in the first place. Not that it's a bad movie at all, it isn't, but it's also certainly not the kind of movie I usually enjoy.

It's another movie with few scares, little true fear shown, and much more about characters, zany snarky lines, and gore effects. And yes, the gore effects are good. No, the CGI is not. And oh man, is that Ax from the Animorphs TV show as an adult?

Ax

ADULT

Man. He's exactly what I expected him to be. He looks almost literally exactly the same. He has almost the same face on and everything. That's freaking uncanny. Wow. I like the film for him alone. Him as an actor. Not him as a character. Because his character, Seth, is a dumb person. PhD in Biology, my ass.

Anyway, while this was a fun film to watch, it was incredibly frustrating. As you may or may not know, I am a biology man. I did biology in school, specifically microbiology. So, it's kind of my thing. This movie either does not understand biology or has a character who has forgotten everything about being a biologist. I mean, seriously. Wow. This kind of incompetence is inexcusable.

The premise is simple. There's a biology experiment gone awry. A spiky mold fungus of some sort or another has gotten loose and is infecting animals. Enter Seth (Paulo Costanzo (Ax)) and his girlfriend Polly. They are a nice normal couple who fails at camping in the woods and succeed at getting their car hijacked and getting kidnapped by a strange couple: Lacey, who is addicted to some drug or another, and supercopetent Dennis (Shea Whigham). Well, eventually their shared kidnap car runs into a spiny beast on the road, setting up the whole idea of the "splinter" as seen in the title. Dennis gets the splinter in his finger while moving the tire away from the car.

The splinters and the creatures seem to be some kind of mold or fungus of some sort. They take over the biological elements of a body and can live completely independently of a brain. While this is wholly in the realm of science fiction, it's kind of an interesting idea. Technically a mold could infect something and use nerves, temperature sensors, and biological elements of the "body" or "limb" to reanimate it. You would expect a brain to be the focus of an attack (and with mind-altering parasites this is ALWAYS the case in real life), but these can and do reanimate limbs, fingers, and pieces of the body.

Okay, scientifically suspect, but I'm interested.

Continue.

Anyway, eventually they get to a gas station where the rest of the movie takes place. Lacey and a cop who comes to "help" them get killed by the murderous mold. The other three hold up in the gas station's convenience store and are completely ineffective at doing anything for most of the rest of the movie.

It's here that I should mention that mold has a few things that can easily dispose of it, which would probably exist in a convenience store. One is bleach. The other is fire, which they use at the end of the movie to kill the mold zombies. The problem is, why didn't Mr. PhD in biology Andalite Bandit figure this out? I know it from the biology I've seen, which should be quite a bit less than a PhD student. Mold doesn't like fire. Well, most things don't like fire. Why didn't they make a torch, or douse the creatures in flames and watch them burn? Why did he have to go to a complicated plot of having his body temperature lowered nearly ten degrees when all they had to do was burn things until they no longer moved? It just seems so needlessly complex and idiotic. I would have gotten in there, seen that the things were mold or fungus based, looked at the lighters, matches, kerosene and GAS STATION, and went, "Let's burn these fuckers."

I was screaming that most of the movie. It was a bit annoying that they didn't figure it out until almost the end.

Well, those are my complaints about the biological elements of the plot. Besides that I actually had a good time watching it. While it is basically a zombie film, it handles the situation differently enough that it stays fresh and interesting, being reminiscent of Pontypool in that respect. The movie also somewhat reminds me of The Last of Us, that new-ish video game by NaughtyDog that I'll be reviewing shortly. Both have "zombies" based off of molds or fungi, even though both are incredibly different in the way that they behave. I like how the spines work here, basically as syringes to inject into hosts. It makes sense to work that way.

One other thing I should mention is part of the movie reminded me of The Evil Dead movies, specifically when Dennis' hand/arm starts going haywire and needs to be chopped off. I liked that scene a great deal, and it was the only piece of the movie that actually made me uncomfortable in a good way. While incredibly gory and completely expected, it worked very well from a viewer's standpoint.

I do have one other complaint before I get into performances. I did not like the directing of this movie at all. I understand that there was probably a conscious effort by the director to hide the budget (or lack thereof) by any means necessary, but shaking the camera every which way and clearly not showing important details like WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN EVERY ACTION SCENE is a pretty big problem. I did not like that one bit. So, Toby Wilkins, the director of this movie, shame on you for using such terrible shots in this fine movie. I would recommend this movie if it weren't for that.

The acting is pretty solid though, and does a lot for this movie that other elements simply cannot do. While there is very little tension in the film, and even fewer scares, the characters are interesting to watch, and each of the main three actors' performances are really fun and full of energy. Shea Whigham and Jill Wagner are both very good in their roles, with Paulo Costanzo being more of a silly buttmonkey, but he is Ax, so... no surprise there, I guess.

Anyway, I won't recommend this movie even though I liked it just fine. I think it's a solid film, but I have no idea who it would be made for. Gore fans would think nothing of it. Horror fans wouldn't be scared. And normal people would avoid it. Maybe biologists would enjoy it? Maybe that's the demographic it's trying to appeal to. Well, if that's true then I hope every biologist goes out and watches this movie. I recommend it to biologists and only to biologists.

Movie Appraisal: The Sylvian Experiments (Kyofu) (Dread) (恐怖) (2010)

What the hell did I just watch?

I guess I should explain. If- Well, it's impossible to explain, but I'll try to say what I saw on screen. This is the most convoluted and confusing movie I've seen since Dreamland, and both share that whole science and ghost premise that makes both even more confusing. I guess I'll try to come up with an interpretation, but I seriously cannot promise anything.

The Sylvian Experiments is the final movie of the J-Horror Theater experience. (Yes, I'm reviewing all of these movies heavily out of order.) It is one of the stranger movies I've reviewed on this blog. It's gory at times, boring to the point of nearly putting me to sleep at other times, and ultimately has no coherent plot at all. I honestly have no idea if what I just watched meant something or if it was just an odd little movies for reasons unknown.

Where do I even start? I guess at the beginning. The movie goes in and out of the past, present, and future constantly, making it very difficult to follow. The movie starts with a middle-aged couple watching some neurological experiments that may let researchers see something beyond the living world. Their children, two daughters, come to them while they are watching and are very upset by the whole thing. Years later, a young woman named Miyuki, one of the daughters from the beginning of the movie agrees with four other people to commit suicide in a van. So, it's a suicide pact. Yeah. So, before we even have a moment to learn about her character she is already ready to kill herself. Kind of a bad start. We never learn why she wants to do such a thing, just that that's what she's decided to do.

Anyway, she disappears and ends up in her mother's lab where she and three of the others (one of the guys was a plant to capture them) are used in the same experiments from the movie at the beginning of the film. Their heads are cut open in some fairly gruesome scenes, and little sci-fi metal machines are inserted into their brains. Two of them die. Another is a virgin (which is important for some reason although we're never told why). Miyuki and the virgin, Rieko, disappear somehow from the underground hospital thing and end up being like ghosts, I think.

Meanwhile, Miyuki's sister, Kaori, has come to try to find her sister. She stays in her Miyuki's apartment, meets her boyfriend (eventually sleeping with him), and works kinda-sorta with a detective to find her. Kaori kind of becomes the central character in the movie, but her character is so flat and uninteresting that it is very difficult to relate with her. She does what she is told, never really fights anything, and is altogether a very weak character easily influenced by the other characters. While throughout most of the movie she is the point of view character, she ironically never shows a point of view herself.

The movie has some downright comical moments with the mother's two helpers and the boyfriend who was the mother's plant as well. Kaori is so ineffectual that it becomes a chore to watch her on screen. Rieko becomes virgin-pregnant with the afterlife itself. (I told you, this movie is freaking weird.) The detective is killed, there is a CGI afterlife light fog thing that kills all the "antagonists" (even though they barely did anything wrong), and... well, I'll get to the ending in a minute.

I just want to say that these four people who wanted to commit suicide wanted to die. Not to be a creepy and crazy person here, but they wanted to die. That's established. So, no, getting semi-tortured and experimented on isn't a good thing, but they wanted to die. So, why should I feel sympathy for them? I guess that's my ultimate point here without getting into any strange euthanasia principles.

Well, the movie ends in a fairly bogus way. I've liked this kind of ending in other movies, but it kind of defeats the whole purpose of the movie here. Yes, it turns out that in the end, Miyuki had probably died in the van with the other four. Although, the original plant in the van had a head wound, which seems suspicious and maybe not altogether a sign of suicide. So, I guess there could have been something there? I have no idea. I simply do not know what was meant by that. The detective is alive again, so that kind of says that nothing past their attempted suicides in the van in the beginning of the movie really happened.

But them Kaori's there at the end. How can she be there when we've actually really never seen the real her in the movie? Are we supposed to feel sympathy for a character we've never known before? I don't know. I figured the whole purpose of this movie was to pit science against nature and show that nature always wins. But no, it isn't. I've seen similar plots in Jacob's Ladder and Stay, done much better and much more effectively. The setup and pay-off in those films actually worked, with the whole premise of those movies being the ability for the character who are dying to come to terms with their lives, their mistakes, their guilt, and their deaths. That makes those movies beautiful, but makes this one a jumble. While it has some of those elements, they're not the focus of the movie.

Yes, there are certainly things that could be interpreted as a death dream. The mother is both antagonistic and a true scientist. She never does anything truly evil even if she is completely unethical. She's portrayed much more as a purveyor of science than as a monster. Which, if Miyuki's memories of her mother is correct, she might very well be cold, distant, and more interested in her work than her family. Kaori is portrayed as weak, ineffectual, and easily manipulated. She sleeps with Miyuki's boyfriend, which could be a critical thought about the two of them. Miyuki was more than likely unhappy with her relationship with both of them, and the interpretation of both of them breaking her trust seems like a reasonable thought for her to have, especially in a depressed and dying state of mind. memories of an old house and her apartment would also fit, being the places she would have remembered very well.

But there are so many things that don't fit with the premise of this being a death-dream. Why the comedic antics of the mother's helpers? Why the Rieko being afterlife pregnant? These elements do not work into the plot very well. I guess that's all I can really say.

I think some people have a pretty vitriolic feeling about this movie. I mostly find it an interesting failure. I liked the beginning and ending, but the middle felt overlong and tiring. It seriously almost put me to sleep. I was nodding off. The CGI was garbage, but the whole afterlife plot was interesting with the ending of the film making some sense even if it was not well set up earlier in the movie. The acting was pretty decent, and the filming of scenes was fine. I didn't really see any big issues with those things.

I didn't like the music, finding it distracting at times. The plot is dense, convoluted, and nonsensical at times. It really needed somebody to come along and say something about it. The tone of the film is everywhere, and I guess I was expecting a much different movie. It was bad per se, but it certainly wasn't good either. It's not scary either, so if you really want a scary movie, this isn't it. Again the comparison to Dreamland holds up pretty well. There are fairly similar problems in both. I think I like that movie more, but only because that one is seriously unique in terms of literally everything about it.

I can't recommend this movie to watch. It is a mess of a film that makes little to no sense at times. It had it's interesting moments, but ultimately fails the coherency test.

Movie Appraisal: Retribution (Sakebi) (叫) (Scream) (Shriek) (2006)

Well, that was a movie I did not enjoy. While it is the fourth movie in the J-Horror Theater series of movies, and it is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, it just does not do enough to be interesting. I was quite fond of 2001's Kairo but this movie just does not deliver on many of the same fronts that other better horror movies have. I found this movie to be very slow, something I usually like, but also just kind of odd in places. It was so slow as to become very dry and somewhat boring, and it never really did anything. The shots were sterile, the plot was fairly dull and predictable, and the acting, something I usually praise, was subpar.

The confusing plot did not help this film. And it's not as if the plot isn't spelled out either, but the confusion is more about why everything is happening the way it does. Why does the lady in red's ghost seem so powerful? She's so powerful that she can bring about the deaths of everyone? I mean, that's the point, right? That's ridiculous. I know it's also the ending, but even before that, I found little about this movie to like.

Most of the characters do not work for me. They never feel real or emotional. They never feel like people. They feel like set-pieces and window-dressing. The acting made me bored out of my skull as well. I'm not looking for overly complex screaming and emotional acting, but there has to be something more than what was given. The shots of the actors were so sterile and separate from the movie as well that I found it very hard to relate to those characters. It was incredibly disappointing because I went into this movie with a great deal of hope for something compelling.

Anyway, the plot is basically about a detective following a murder case (and eventually a string of murder cases) that involves drowning in sea water. It is very procedural, trying to find the suspect, and the detective being his own prime suspect for a while, which just kind of goes nowhere and is really dumb. He eventually starts seeing what he thinks is the murdered girl's ghost, but it isn't. It's just another girl in a red dress who happens to be a ghost. It just feels very silly and very uninteresting.

The movie is never scary. The red dress ghost is simply kind of goofy looking. She never looks like she belongs in a single scene. It doesn't work, whatever they did in the shooting of this film, and it makes the whole premise not only ridiculous but really bland as well. You can tell that they wanted to create a new horror icon about a creepy girl, but a ninety pound young woman will never be scary, okay? Horror movies, do you understand that? Young women are not scary by themselves just staring or saying weird things. You have to have more than that. Give me some tension or show me less or something.

I simply want to sigh and stop talking about this movie. I did not enjoy it in the slightest. I think others might, but for me the plot and the premise were too silly for me to take seriously. And without any scares this is hardly a horror movie. I've seen others place it in a mystery movie category, but even that's not right because so much of this movie isn't mystery so much as "Oh, we forgot to tell you major plot points!" I mean, the detective's girlfriend just happened to be murdered six months previous despite her having appeared in three-quarters of the movie seemingly perfectly fine. Why even do that? It just makes the whole thing needlessly complex. I get that the whole movie is basically an apocalyptic scenario over collective guilt or whatever, but it's so badly portrayed. It doesn't work on so many levels. And while I tend to like slow-burning horror, this movie has so many convenient excuses for plot that it bordered on actual bad plot writing.

I think many people might enjoy this one, but I certainly did not. I wholly do not recommend this movie, and would actively tell people to avoid it. There are some decent scenes here and there, but nothing interesting enough to recommend the whole movie. The music (and lack thereof at times) is fairly well done. And... I guess I really did like one scene, when the detective's partner disappears or is dragged into a bowl of water. It was well done. And it was perhaps the only scene that was.

It's disappointing to me because I found Kairo so compelling. It was a movie I remembered for years and years, and this movie will go down in my mind and my review as a forgettable and jumbled mess.

Movie Appraisal: Premonition (Yogen) (予言) (2004)

I love horror movies because of what they can do when they are spot on. A good horror movie won't just scare you, it will make you a wreck of a person. Once you get into a horror movie, really experience it, it can become a transcendent incident unto itself. That probably makes no sense. Let me put it this way: if a good horror movie can scare you, a great one will be a lingering fear within you for the rest of your life. You will think back on it as things happen in your daily life. It will become a part of you just as easily as the bad or mediocre horror movies are forgotten memories, only dredged up if you actively think about that certain movie.

Yogen, or Premonition to us English speakers, is such a movie. I don't even have words for what i just watched. I mean, yes, I'll write down a ton of words, but none of them will be a meaningful as my reactions as I watched this movie. Very few movies make me react viscerally to them. I can only tick off a few: Possession from 1981, Jacob's Ladder, 1408,  and that's about it. I mean, I'm sure there are a couple of others that I'm simply not remembering, but this movie... this movie was brilliant in every sense of the word.

It was not shot as a horror movie, and with most of the film being setup, it had very few moments of actual horror. But when those moments popped up it certainly hit me in a very visceral way. I was shocked at some of the things that happen in this movie, and not simply jump-scare shocked, but truly horrified at what happens. It is a slow-burn of a movie, even at only about an hour-and-a-half long. It feels like a much longer film.

As I said before, most of the movie is setup. It establishes the rules of this movie universe. It sets up the whole idea of fate, and that some people seem to be "gifted" to see what could happen in the future, or in this case, who will die and how. And these are not peaceful deaths either, but deaths of a violent and often very sudden nature. While we see very little of the actual deaths and dying, the ones that we do get to see are awful, really be benchmarks in how to film a death in a horror movie.

But would I even call this a horror movie? I was certainly shocked and horrified, but horror doesn't rightly describe this film. It is a film about terror, about trying to understand the workings of the universe and being completely unable to do so in any meaningful way. It is a film that shockingly states that there is very little we can do against the universe, and in the end we can only truly somewhat control our own fate and nothing else.

The movie is about a man, an overworked, very stressed out man named Hideki, who needs to send an email to his work, but that decision ultimately leads to his daughter being killed in a car accident. And that accident is so sudden that it literally shocked me out of my seat. His life turns into a mess. He loses, or gives up, his wife. And his whole demeanor changes. It doesn't change because his daughter dies though. It changes because he sees, or thinks he sees, a newspaper article concerning her death before she dies. He does nothing, and his guilt is what drives a wedge between his wife and himself, and basically everybody else as well.

Over time he starts seeing more of these newspapers around, foretelling deaths and terrible things. And he continues to do nothing about it. He doesn't try to change anything.He simply gets freaked out and doesn't want to deal with it. Then, when he sees a student of his in his newspaper of fate, getting stabbed to death, he tries to get involved, only to be too late to save her.

The movie moves on as we see his ex-wife, Ayaka, researching the phenomena he has been experiencing to try to grasp what is actually going on. Eventually, as she finds a psychic photograph of Hideki taken by a psychic person she had been working with who seemed to have died, possibly violently? It's never really shown how or why. Anyway, she starts to believe him, tries to talk with him, and eventually does. They team up to try to solve the mystery of what's happening only to find a great deal more than they would have expected.

It is a movie that goes through many twists and turns. Those who can see the future as he does are cursed. Either they go mad and die if they do not help the people in the newspapers out or they blacken and shrivel away like some sort of living spectre if they do warn those people and save their lives. So, it's a no-win situation. Hideki has chosen up to this point to do nothing, but when his ex-wife, whom he has become close to again, is mentioned dying in an article about a train derailment, he chooses to save her, thus damning himself. He changes her fate and that changes his as well.

The end of the movie is a cerebral turn that jumps from one memory to another. It is dreamlike, and called Hell by another character who is experiencing it... or who has. It's unclear exactly how much of it is real or really happening. This is the most terrifying and upsetting part of the movie, and the part that will probably be make or break for most people. It never seems to "really" be happening, but at the same time it is a part of the movie, and the most important part at that. I connected with the characters, really seeing them as beautiful pieces put into this film. They work well, and the ending works well because that added effort was put into making them as good as possible.

Anyway, in the end, Hideki chooses to sacrifice himself so that both his daughter and wife will live. And it is shown that that is his choice, but also somewhat his fate. The psychic picture of him was of his death photograph in the newspaper at the end of the movie that his daughter sees. So, how much of the end of the movie was his choice and how much was his fate is certainly up in the air, at least to me.

I don't really know what else to say. The movie is amazing from beginning to end. The music is wonderful when it actually happens. The filmography is well done. The acting is brilliant and believable with the actors being one of the biggest highlights of the viewing experience. The plot is well done, based on a manga "Kyoufu Shinbun" ("Newspaper of Terror) by Jiro Tsunoda published in 1973, and is certainly the best part of the film, so much so that... I just have no other words for it.

As for the director Norio Tusuruta, I had reviewed one of his other movies last year in fact. I did not like Kakashi very much and subsequently kind of eviscerated the movie for being a wishy-washy mess. Junji Ito films sadly tend to have that quality about them. This movie though, with its genuinely great script, great acting, great production quality, and great cinematography works on every level that Kakashi didn't. So much so that I basically want to apologize to Norio (even though I said I liked the directing of Kakashi) because this effort shows true quality that I have huge amounts of respect for.

This movie is also the second movie made in the J-Horror Theater series of movies, and that might be why the production values are so good.

Do I recommend this movie? Yes. Hell yes. Go see this movie whether or not you like Japanese horror. It is both a great movie and a great and viscerally upsetting horror movie. It deserves to be both watched and praised.

Also, since this is the first movie of the six J-Horror Theater movies that I've seen, and since it was so good, I've decided to check out the others in the series as well. Hopefully they keep up the quality.

Movie Appraisal: Long Dream (Nagai yume) (長い夢) (2000)

Well, I just watched this interesting, obscure little television movie based off of a Junji Ito manga. Yes, another one of those.While I haven't done a movie based off of Junji Ito's work in a while, I am always looking to find some. It's a weird fascination I have with these movies and the quality (or lack thereof) within them. While most of these movies have been basically horrid, there has been a great deal of room for these to be somewhat quality productions. Anyway, while I truly do like Junji Ito's manga, I am not so fond of the movies surrounding his stuff. They're usually all kinds of bad. But... but this one, Long Dream, is an exception with some caveats.

First off, this is a surprisingly good adaptation of the manga of the same name. The stories are both really good, and the mimicking of make-up and effects actually is incredibly well done, something I was not at all expecting. The facial details of those who have undergone the titular long dream for long periods of time are spot on with the manga, so much so that I was incredibly impressed, especially seeing this had to have had a television movie budget considering the quality of filming.

The quality is all over the place. It's never scary, but does feel interesting throughout. The shots are mostly very simple, and the camera used is obviously not the best one available. The sound effects are also very loud at times, so loud as to be distracting. And the acting ranges from subtle and well done to over-the-top and incredibly hammy. So, the tone is really inconsistent.

The adaptation is mostly very faithful to the manga, but since the story of the manga ends about halfway through this movie, about a half hour of original material is added. This mostly involves Dr. Kuroda's dead girlfriend Kana. It's done decently, but doesn't really fit into the overall tone. The only true "dream" shots involve Kana as well, making those shots almost artistic compared to the rest of the film.

Mokuoda, the man who initially has the long dreams (which are exactly as they sound, dreams that sometimes are centuries long), is fairly well done as well, with a good performance. The gravity of the dreams truly seems to weigh him down. I enjoyed watching him undergo the stressful worries of coming to terms with his inevitable fate of dreaming an eternal dream.

Mami, the woman who is exposed to the brain crystals of Mokuoda one he has withered into dust, is kind of a nonentity. She can scream all right, I guess, but her character is largely forgotten int he background of the more original content with the two doctors. I kind of wish I would have seen her in make-up as well, maybe undergoing the same stresses that Mokuoda went through, but no. Her story just kind of peters out eventually.

The doctors, Yamauchi and Kuroda, are really the centerpieces of the movie. Yamauchi especially acts incredibly well. He is the subtle actor I was hinting at above. Kuroda is the more over-the-top one. They simultaneously make the plot less interesting and move it along. I'm much less interested in their original stories of falling in love with patients or whatever and much more interested in the long dreamers. That whole concept is truly fascinating to me, which is why I liked the original, very short, manga story.

I will say that if you watch about a half hour of this movie, until it is revealed that Dr. Kuroda has injected Mami with Mokuoda's brain crystals and she has begun the long dream process, you will probably be completely satisfied, fan of Junji Ito or not. Again, it's nothing truly special, but it works as an interesting Twilight Zone type of plot. The second half hour just adds a lot of uninteresting and somewhat boring material. And the ending is simply silly. And you will probably see it coming from a mile away as well.

I can't really recommend this movie. It's simply not scary, and at only less than an hour long, it's really not worth the effort to track down. Reading the manga is a much better use of your time and energy. While I think it's perfectly serviceable as a kind of silly horror movie, it also doesn't really do anything interesting or new besides the plot. Hell, I found myself bored out of my mind for most of the second half of the movie. And the gore of the movie is only in the second half. Why it's there, I don't know, but it would have been better if it had been left out.

While it's one of the better adaptations of Junji Ito's works, it's only average at best.

Movie Appraisal: Apartment 143 (Emergo) (2012) (2011?)

Apartment 143 (also called Emergo in its native Spain) is a "horror" movie with "ghosts." It's an English language film despite being made in Spain. Its Spanish director, Carles Torrens, made his feature film directorial debut with this movie as well. Starring some pretty solid actors, it is a movie. It probably happens to be about ghosts. Maybe? I don't even know. Sorry for being lackluster about this film, but it seriously is about as mediocre as a horror movie can be. It doesn't do anything new or interesting or, most importantly, scary. It is a horror movie without a bite, a ghost film without a real ghost, a found footage film without any real footage that is found. I mean, seriously, it feels like this film goes by without anything ever happening. That's insane and the biggest problem a horror film could possibly have. It doesn't matter how well acted the characters are or how good the effects look or even how well-directed the movie is. It matters that the plot is boring and the movie is utterly not scary.

*sigh*

I guess we could call this a rip-off of Paranormal Activity and ghost hunter type shows on TV. It's fitting that I can only see those things when watching this film. Fitting indeed. While not a terrible movie by any stretch, Apartment 143 is not what I was expecting. It is neither scary nor does it ever really seem to try. While the acting throughout is very solid, and the direction isn't half bad, the movie suffers from a lack of absolute coherence. The pacing is simply bad. I can't say anything but that. Yes, there is a lead-up to a climax, but it is so spottily done- much like Paranormal Activity, but without that movie's build-up to something. The ambiguity is used as a crutch rather than an featured element. I didn't mind this film as I watched it, but as soon as it was done, I started forgetting everything about it. It's simply generic. It doesn't take chances. It doesn't try to frighten. It just kind of exists in space as a movie that could be horror if it cared enough to be.

Yes, the acting is solid. Honestly this is the part of the movie I liked best. Special mentions go out to Rick Gonzalez, Kai Lennox, and Michael O'Keefe, who, I felt, all turned in brilliant performances. Their dialogue was strong, their characters very well put together, and their situations compelling. The rest of the cast isn't half bad themselves, but these are the real standouts to me. Each had a moment in the film that left me nodding my head.

Do I even have to mention the plot? Seriously?

You already know it.

It's not as if you couldn't guess it.

Ugh.

Fine. I will. Begrudgingly.

Family thinks there are ghosts in the titular apartment. Investigators come. Things happen. No ghosts in the apartment. Teenage girl is schizophrenic and a poltergeist somehow, maybe. Not really. Since there is a bit of a stinger that completely shoots that down. Probably. Ugh. The dad is accused of molesting his daughter, but he probably didn't because he's a good dad. And the daughter is nasty and a little crazy mean herself. Obviously she's supposed to take after the less-than-perfect mother, who was a bad woman.

Some movies can do ambiguity well. This one is not a movie like that. The ambiguity just makes it confusing and annoying. The ending made me sigh. Hell, the movie was so predictable I was finding it difficult to keep interested in it. I was more bored than anything else. The dialogue and acting helped it not be the bottom of the barrel, but even they couldn't make the plot better.

I'll talk theories quickly. Yes, this movie probably has a ghost-thing in it. The doctor or parapsychologist, or whatever he is, is more than likely wrong or slightly off in his theory. The mother is probably evilly haunting the family and possessing the daughter since she has been established as being evil.

*sigh*

And that's that. I wish the movie would have been scarier, would have been more interesting, would have taken more risks, and would have had a better payoff. But it didn't. I found it lackluster and, in turn, I have no real energy to review it.

The direction was weird, with long periods focused on the same thing. I mean, there is only so long I can stare at a wall and not get bored of said wall. One scene with flashing lights made me not actually want to watch the movie anymore. I mean, seriously, it was so awful I didn't even watch the screen. I knew what would happen, and the flashing lights were making me feel sick.

Anyway, this is a highly mediocre film. It has no real relevance and does nothing different to make it stand apart from other, better films. It is so utterly standard and generic that it literally melds into the background, making it just another ripoff of Paranormal Activity, but not as good. I remember so little about the film, but every time I think about it I become slightly angrier thinking that with the strong acting and dialogue it could have actually been something new and interesting. Instead it was a bit of a waste. And the worst part is that I have so little to say about it because it is so mediocre. I would rather complain than say nothing at all, but that's what I have. This movie is so uninteresting that I have literally nothing to say about it.

Don't watch it. While it ha a few good moments, this film is nothing special. It's not memorable. It doesn't wow. And it doesn't frighten. It's just another movie. One that should be avoided.

Radio Drama Review: Salem's Lot (1995)

Well, here is a radio drama review finally. I say finally because I've been reviewing things for almost four years and have never actually reviewed an audio drama. Shame on me. They're actually worth a lot if done correctly, and this is one of the best I've heard. Anyway, before getting into this, I should welcome you all to yet another horror-filled month of reviews and enjoyment! October Nights are here, and these reviews are for you, dear reader, so much more than they are for me. I say that because every year I literally kill myself to get these reviews done for the amusement of the masses. I enjoy the hell out of writing them, but reviewing 31 horror-related things in 31 nights is often a little insane, even for me.

This is my forth annual October Nights, and as I mentioned in the post leading up to this first post, I think it will be a fascinating month of reviews. The last several years I've started the October month out with a Salem's Lot review, and I'm doing the exact same thing every year until I run out of adaptations to review. Anyway, this year is the radio drama adaptation by the BBC, and, honestly, it is by far the best adaptation I've had the pleasure of enjoying.

It literally hits most of the major points in the novel without missing a beat. And it's incredibly enjoyable to hear those scenes from the novel done incredibly effectively in an audio format. While both miniseries are enjoyable and fun in their own right, both make some pretty huge mistakes in the end. I spoke of both of the miniseries before here and here. (I also reviewed a sequel and the book itself if you want the story of what's happening, which I'm not going to get into here.) The miniseries alter and change characters and the ultimate fate of characters so much that it does affect some of my enjoyment of them. While both adaptation are actually quite good in their own right as adaptations or simply as standalone stories, both do suffer a little from their departure from certain parts of the novel's narrative.

This is one of the few books that I think is seriously near-perfect, which is why the changes of the adaptations actually bother me at all. Changing Callahan's character in the most recent miniseries was a grievous mistake on the creators' part, especially when Father Callahan would have such a pivotal part to play in The Dark Tower series after the events of 'Salem's Lot. And in the first television movie, the fact that characters are omitted (especially Dr. Cody) has always bothered me.

Now, speaking of this radio drama, most of the book is there. Yes, some parts (like the side-stories of characters who are not main characters) are either completely omitted or mentioned in an off-handed way by more main characters. The plot mostly focuses on just the core five or six characters of the narrative, barely mentioning the side-characters at all unless they become important to the main plot. While the purist in me loves the entire novel, filler and all, the writer in me loves how the audio drama accomplishes what it does. Of course some things need to be taken out of the narrative. I'm mostly glad that the characters and their stories aren't changed at all really. And I'm glad that the story unfolds basically how it does in the novel. While there are some big changes, like the bookends of the episodes of the radio drama involving Ben and Mark telling their story to a Mexican priest, most are cosmetic changes and omissions, something I cannot see a problem with.

Honestly, the focus on the main characters works incredibly well, especially backed up by fantastic vocal work by the voice actors all around. Mark is the only character who even sounds a little off, but most of the characters sound exactly like they should with Straker and Barlow (played by Doug Bradley of Hellraiser fame) being literally incredible voices in their own rights.

The production is creepy, especially as a vampire story. It works every bit as well as Dracula or some of the other more macabre vampire stories out there (of which there are far too few for my liking). Some of the scenes work very well, especially any scene involving Barlow, who has singularly jumped up my list of terrifying villains in fiction to basically take the top spot. Of special note is Matt Burke (played by Gavin Muir), whose voice is a pleasure to listen to. The acting is especially good all around, and you'll find yourself literally having goosebumps if you listen to this late at night.

I had the special circumstance to not only be in a small New England town on the day I listened to this, but also to be out and about on an overcast fall day as I listened. My job gives me the ability to listen to many audiobooks and audio dramas and such, and I took advantage of it on the perfect day to do so. I know that not everybody out there lives or works in a small New England town much like the titular 'Salem's Lot, but if that chance comes up, this is perfect listening in situations like that.

I wholly throw my support behind this adaptation of one of my favorite books. I recommend this completely, unlike last years debacle with the terrible A Return to Salem's Lot. Check it out if you get the chance. I doubt you'll be disappointed. Also, here's a website and podcast that you can download it from, just because I'm a great guy.

The only negatives that I can think of are Mark (who sounds funny to my ears) and some of the acting which can be slightly overdone. Also, at times, the action moments can sound very confusing. But as an audio adaptation, I would put this up there with some of the greats. Give it a listen if you want a spooky time, just make sure you have three-and-a-half hours to spare to listen to it.

October Nights 4!?

Guess what movie this is, and I'll say, "Yes, good job!"

Hey everybody out there reading this blog for one reason or another! For the fourth (yes, fourth!) year in a row I'm going to be reviewing 31 horror related things in 31 nights. I know this is quite the undertaking. Believe me, I know. It's a bit insane, but I love October so much that decided that I had to do this to make me happy, each and every year. Yes, happy. Happy.

Anyway, I have a diverse bunch of movies, books, audio things, special mentions, video games, and other stuff to review and talk about this month. While the focus here is primarily horror movies (mostly obscure or foreign since those are the ones I gravitate toward), I still have my ongoing R. L. Stine reviews which will be integrated into this series as well as a bunch of audio horror pieces that might be interesting reviews unto themselves.

I will seriously try to post these reviews every day before midnight, although in past years I found myself struggling to do that and instead posted any chance I had in October itself. I should have a more structured posting schedule despite my own schedule being full up right now. I'm mentioning this now a few days before October 1st so people have some time to accept that this IS a reality that WILL BE happening. I'm really hoping people check this whole series out. Tell your friends, co-workers, or basically anybody interested in horror or October at all.

I also am open for submissions of things to review. I have, I believe, five to six open review slots that I haven't chosen yet because I'm waiting for some ideas or something interesting to fall into my lap. Let me know if you have any ideas. I'd be thrilled to take any and all ideas if I can find the movie/book/video game/ anything else and have time to review it.

Well, that's about it. My first post will be up sometime on October 1st. Check out some of my old October Nights if you want to see the hodgepodge of crazy I go through every year. The first one is a little rough around the edges, but I think I really hit a stride last year. I'm hoping to have more of the same this year.

I hope you all enjoy the upcoming----

October Nights! Mwaa ha ha ha ha!

Sweet dreams...

ofpawsandclaws

Hey, everybody! I was seriously planning on putting a review on today. I still probably will, more likely tonight though. Not a big deal.

Instead I have a kind of big deal thing happening. I found out recently that my blog, this blog, has been copied. Now, I have never made a policy of saying, "Ha ha, but seriously don't copy my stuff and take credit for it." because I thought that people wouldn't do that. Well, I'm wrong. I tried contacting the offending "blogger," but have received no word back as of this moment. I would like to wait for a response before I claim copyright infringement or the like. While I've never said (and never will say) that I can't be quoted or linked or whatever, I think I'd appreciate some kind of heads up that every review I've written in almost the last year has been copied word-for-word on this other blog. And they changed the timestamps to appear as if they posted it earlier than me. Great, huh?

The best part is that they didn't reformat my posts, change colors, or re-link the links that link back to this blog here. I'm, I believe, understandably upset. I don't steal the words of others, and when my own words, things I value a great deal, are stolen out from under me without me noticing for such a good long while, I become kind of heated. I'm not losing revenue or, I believe views to this person, but it's the principle of the thing. I don't want to sue or get legal people involved because I'm not that kind of guy. I don't want money for this writing (although I certainly won't mind if I do happen to get ad revenue). My problem isn't that this person, "Deden Palupi" on his blog (which is really just my words over his website) "ofpawsandclaws" (Edit: 10/3/13 Watch out if you click that link. It seems to redirect to something else after a moment or two now. I don't know if the redirect is safe or not.) is stealing views or whatnot, but rather that he is stealing my words, my thoughts, and my opinions. He is stealing something that is incredibly important to me. He is stealing the thing that I enjoy most: writing.

So, yeah. You can compare the blogs, and if any of you out there have any advice, I'd be glad to hear it. For right now, I'm going to see what I can do, and I'm going to wait for a response. It could just be a spambot blogger or something, but I'd really like to know. Anyway, I may have another post up tonight if I'm not too angry about this crap.