The Messengers (2007) Review

What do you get when you mix Kristen Stewart (the discount Emma Roberts), Dylan McDermott (the poor man's Joaquin Phoenix), and a plot that is trying waaaaay too hard to be The Grudge? I'm glad you asked! The answer is the huge mess of a movie known as The Messengers!

This film has a 12% on RottenTomatoes. Now, twelve is better than a lot of movies, but it's still not low enough for this piece of garbage. If it were up to me, this poopfest would get a 4%. The only thing keeping it from being a 0% is that Kristen Stewart is kinda hot.

Let's get right down to it. This movie is an obvious ripoff of The Grudge that features a mother and son who die and haunt the house that they were killed in. Except that this time, the house is on a farm instead of in the middle of Florida. The entire movie is Kristen Stewart seeing the ghost kid and the ghost mom and getting scared. THAT'S IT. The climax is some stupid plot twist that I'm not even gonna tell you because a plot twist this stupid should be experienced first hand. The ghosts are more like zombies and they come out of the walls and floor through mud that's imaginary one minute and then real the next. It's a confusing mess and it's just a dumb idea. Mud people aren't scary!

I've never seen a more appropriate title.

The ghost zombie things occasionally crawl around on the floor and ceiling and it looks like the director just pulled some guy off the street, gave him an action figure of the ghosts and told him to move them around in front of the camera. It's stop motion in the movie, but it's just so jerky and unnatural. That might be what they were going for, but it just looks so dang stupid.

Did I scare you, mister? No? Oh, okay....

It's scary how unscary this movie was. The movie is full of cheap jump scares with no buildup whatsoever and did I mention that there are 6(!) jump scares within the first ten minutes of the film? BECAUSE THERE ARE SIX JUMP SCARES IN THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF THIS FREAKING FILM! 

Now's when you're expecting me to say something about how the acting was good. Nope. Kristen Stewart underacts as usual, Dylan McDermott is a mess of overacting and the other characters were so wooden that I barely even remember them. Yes, they were more wooden than Kristen Stewart. I know, I didn't believe it either.

"Oh no! Not the Twilight fanfiction authors!"

The plain fact is that this movie has no plot, no scares, no structure, no originality, and not a single ounce of good anywhere in it. Here's a fun fact: The first time I watched this movie was 2 days ago, when it randomly popped up on FOX and I had nothing better to do. I had no intention of watching it when it came out in theaters because in 2007, all 13-year-old Synester was concerned with was acting like the biggest hip-hop poser on earth in front of all the black people at his school. Middle school was not fun. But that's another story. 

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

All in all, The Messengers is a terrible mess of a movie that should never be viewed by anyone at any time. You're far better off with the movie that this movie is trying too hard to copy, The Grudge. I give this movie 1 ominous crow out of a possible 10. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go listen to the new Whitechapel album that just came out today.

Phil Bozeman is the best screamer of all time. No contest.

Gremlins (1984) Review

Alrighty guys, this one is one of my all-time favorite horror movies, as well as one of my all-time favorite comedies. You're in for a treat today. I give you.... 3 Simple Rules (For Keeping Your Mogwai Cute And Cuddly)!

Seeing as how this is more of a comedy than a horror movie, I think I'll take this time to tell you guys a funny story of what happened to me the first time I saw this movie. 

The year is 1998. Little Synester is 4 years old and his mother just rented a movie called Gremlins from the local Blockbuster. The entire family sits down in the living room to watch it; me, my mom, my mom's boyfriend at the time, grandma, and grandpa. At first, I love the movie. It's cute, it's cuddly, it's just so darn adorable. And then we divebomb straight down into the 9th circle of hell. I spent the rest of the movie cowering in fear, clutching my mother's arm as little green monsters ripped right from my nightmares invaded the screen, laughing that high-pitched cackling laugh. I had never been more terrified of something before in my whole life. Now, I was much too young to realize that when the monsters were on screen, they were mostly doing funny stuff, and my grandma noticed this as well. When the movie ended, I went into the bathroom to drain my bladder of all the urine that had I had managed to not release in fear during the movie. And then the moment happened that I will never forget. While I was peeing (pants completely off because I was 4 and didn't know how else people peed), my grandma steps in the door behind me, shuts off the light, and does a perfect imitation of the Gremlins' high-pitched laugh. 

That was it. That was my breaking point. I ran out of the bathroom screaming, still pantsless and still urinating, all the way back into the living room where I jumped onto the couch by my mom, and getting piss everywhere in the process. And that, my friends, is the wonderful story of why Gremlins was my number one fear until I was 10 years old. 

Don't give me that smirk, you little shit.

So, now that your respect level for me has dropped significantly, what did I actually think of the movie Gremlins? Here's another interesting tidbit: even though I was totally terrified of it, I still rewatched Gremlins multiple times throughout my childhood. I actually liked what I was most afraid of! I credit this movie with getting me hooked on horror movies because it was the first horror movie that I can remember watching, and it's also the first horror movie that I remember liking a lot. I couldn't get enough of this movie! I eventually learned that the movie was intended to be a comedy, and I learned to laugh at it more than it could scare me. I think that a good horror movie should do exactly that. It should scare the crap out of you, not to the point where you are too terrified to re-live it, but to the point where you will intentionally rewatch it and scare yourself because you enjoy it so much. THAT is what makes a horror movie immortal, and that is why I kept coming back to Gremlins. Sure, it scared the piss out of me (literally), but I think that even as a small child, I would've listed it among my favorite movies. 

You're alright, man. You're alright.

I don't need to explain the plot, you all know it. A kid gets a new pet, and he ignores the rules given to him by the man who gave him the pet, and the pet spawns evil mutant versions of itself that run amok around the town. A simple plot, sure, but it's very original and one that everyone remembers. 

The acting is really good as well, even though most of the actors left their careers in the 80's. What I really love about this movie is the insane amount of detail they put into it. I've watched it countless times and if I watched it again today, I'm sure that I could find something that I didn't notice before. I blame Steven Spielberg being one of the producers for that. He has a habit of putting waaaaaay too much into his movies, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The little touches, like the Gremlins all watching (and enjoying) Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in a movie theater, or the Gremlins getting drunk at a bar and starting a massive bar fight, or the homage to the classic late night monster movie shows, complete with an aging host dressed as a vampire. The team who worked on this movie put a lot of effort and heart into it and it definitely shows. 

I didn't know David Letterman was in this movie!

Overall, this movie is fantastic. The acting is spot-on, the direction is beautiful, the creatures are scary and they still look good to this day, which is a real feat for an 80's horror movie where the main monsters are puppets. The comedy is slapstick gold. Every second the Gremlins are on screen, something hilarious is happening. It's one of the few comedies that makes me laugh out loud every single time I watch it. All in all, I highly recommend you check out Gremlins. Oh who am I kidding? You most likely already have! That's the impact that this movie had! It's wildly popular, and for good reason! I give Gremlins 8 pissing 4-year-old me's out of a possible 10. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, and it will never leave that list. 

They're actually kinda cute now that I'm not horrified of them anymore.

Frankenstein's Army (2013) Review

I'm not usually a fan of found footage movies. I've only seen a few in my life that I'd consider decent. However, Frankenstein's Army has changed that.

The best way to describe Frankenstein's Army is "An H.R. Giger fever dream". And that's putting it lightly. This movie is chock full of blood, guts, monsters, and everything a horror fan could ask for. And it's all conveniently wrapped up in a brilliant homage to Frankenstein. 

Frankenstein's Army may be a found footage movie, but there were multiple times in the movie where I couldn't tell at all. The camerawork is very professional and almost never suffers from the "shaky cam" disease that most found footage movies have. That may have something to do with the fact that the main character is a professional cameraman that was hired to record a squad of Russian soldiers on their mission to find a Nazi scientist and capture him. 

This movie is absolutely perfect. The acting is spot on, the horror is terrifying (this is the first found footage movie that actually had a scary atmosphere instead of just cheap jump scares), and the plot is incredibly original, while still staying true to the Frankenstein story that it was inspired by. The only thing that I have to complain about is that I would've much more preferred if the actors actually spoke in Russian with English subtitles instead of putting on those obviously fake heavy Russian accents over English words. But then again, that's just a tiny nitpick. 

Now then, let's move on to the main attraction of this movie: THE MONSTERS! Good Lord, these are some of the most terrifying abominations that I've ever seen in any horror movie.  The man who thought these things up must have done so from inside his asylum cell, because these things are absolutely horrifying. They managed to put together just the right mixture of machinery and dead human flesh to make each one of the monsters as shockingly gruesome as possible. You'd think that machine parts and dead skin would not be very original, yet each one of these things is extremely unique. I gotta give major props to the creature designer, these monsters are incredible! Just have a look at some of these terrors! 

It's like if Razorsharp from DC Comics and Josef Mengele had an illegitimate love child.

Somehow, removing that scary shark face and giant hammer made it MORE scary.

I'm feeling some strange feelings right now.

I.....I got nothin'....

"Let's see, people are scared of dentists' drills, and mosquitoes. LET'S COMBINE THEM!"

It's like if Isaac Clarke from Dead Space went to see that back-alley robot surgery guy from Futurama.

Third Down! Blue! 24! Blue! 24! Down Set! HUT!

Jesus Christ. These monsters is what really makes this movie. And they're not even the freakiest part! There's one part where the main character discovers the doctor's study and in the middle of the room is a glass cube. Inside of that glass cube? 

*sobs* I WANT MY MOMMY!

Good f*cking God. And that's just a still picture! Imagine seeing the full scene, with the bear's arms and legs moving and the head's mouth slowly mouthing the words "Help me"! It's been a VERY long time since a scene in a horror movie has been able to creep me out this badly. 

Anyway, Frankenstein's Army is a terrific movie, even if it uses the found footage cop-out. I give it 9 life-scarring teddy bear/human hybrids out of a possible 10. I highly recommend you check this one out. It's bloody, it's disgusting, it's compelling, it's terrifying, and all in all, it's everything a horror fan could ever want in a movie about a mad scientist who takes dead body parts and sews them together to make new zombie people!