Sunday, November 22, 2015

Creep (2014) Review

Well, this is certainly a nice surprise, isn't it? An actual GOOD horror movie in 2014. 2014 was a weird year for horror movies. On one hand, you had big theater releases that absolutely flopped and did horribly like Annabelle, Ouija, and The Purge sequel. On the other hand, there were some absolutely terrific movies that either got very limited theater time or none at all like The Babadook, The Taking Of Deborah Logan (review incoming, trust me, I love this movie), and Tusk (again, review incoming because I love this movie too). This movie falls into the latter of those two categories, with it only being released on video on demand before becoming available on Netflix earlier in 2015. But enough intro, let's look at a movie that actually surprised me by how good it turned out to be: Creep.


CREEPY SPOILERS AHEAD

This film is directed by and stars Patrick Brice, and considering this is his first movie, I'm incredibly impressed. He used great lighting and cinematography to make a terrific found footage movie that makes most other found footage films look like trash. Most of the time, we don't even see Brice. Mark Duplass is the real star of this movie and man oh man, does he ever do a convincing job in this film. The plot is as follows: Patrick Brice is a freelance cameraman and he answers Mark Duplass' ad on Craigslist, which takes him to Duplass' cabin up in the woods on a big hill. There, Mark wants him to document a few days in his life as he prepares for his inevitable death from cancer. At first it seems pretty normal; Mark takes Patrick on a trip through the woods to a spring and they go to a restaurant for some pancakes. But then things start to get........creepy. Mark starts showing his true colors and Partick has to find some way to get away from him for good. 

Hey buddy, you're not gonna watch The Lazarus Effect are you?

That's all I'm going to divulge because you really need to experience this movie for yourself. Of course, with this being a Blumhouse production, there's bound to be a few cliche jumpscares, but for the most part, those stay in the beginning of the film. The second half of this movie is where things really start to take off. Whether it's the amazing tension that's built scene after scene, using only silence and a mildly lit hallway for atmosphere, Mark Duplass' incredible performance, or the weird, unsettling vibe that comes from Mark Duplass wearing a werewolf mask and calling himself "Peachfuzz The Wolf", this movie definitely delivers on it's namesake. I genuinely felt creeped out on multiple occasions during this film. 

JAZZ HANDS! HA-CHA-CHA-CHAAAAA

What makes this movie great is its ability to get under your skin. There's something so unnerving about Mark Duplass' character and until it's revealed why he's like this, he has this weird mystery to him that just puts you on edge. Something doesn't sit right with you from the moment you first lay eyes on him. Combine that with the incredible cinematography and lighting techniques used and you've got yourself one great horror film. The only nitpick that I have is that it did feel a little bit long. There's a third act to this movie when you don't expect there to be one and while that's where most of the best scenes happen, it does feel a bit out of place and unnecessary. 

All in all, Creep is an excellent horror film and if this movie is anything to go off of, I'm definitely looking forward to Patrick Brice's next films. He directed another film in 2015 called The Overnight that I've heard many good things about. Maybe I'll check it out someday. I give Creep 8 weird wolf masks out of 10. If you've got Netflix and you like being creeped out, definitely go check it out. 

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Apollo 18 (2011) Review

I'd just like to say before I start this review that the entire time while I was watching this movie, THE ENTIRE TIME, all I could think about was that "if two guys were on the moon and one killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what" meme. It may have ruined the immersion of the movie for me, but whatever, I love that meme to death. It's a real thinker. Just imagine. Two guys on the moon and one kills the other with a rock. Would that be fucked up or what? Like seriously. Anyway, this is Apollo 18.


Image result for apollo 18 2011 alien

SPOILER ALERT! IN SPACE! WITH ALIENS!

HOLY CRAP IT"S ANOTHER FOUND FOOTAGE MOVIE WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END

So basically, these two dudes go into space and they land on the moon and plant some machines to try and mess with whatever it is the Russians are doing on the moon because the US found out that Russians went to the moon and did some stuff on it. Then some aliens come out and that's about it. No, really. That's the whole movie. Really boring, right? Ehhhh, only a little bit. 


The aliens in this movie aren't your traditional "little green men", nor are they terrifying abominations with sickle arms and tentacle mouths. They are little itty bitty buggy type things that disguise themselves as moon rocks to get close to their prey. That's.....actually kinda clever. Props, writers. 

So, how this movie goes is that the two astronauts collect what they think are moon rocks the first day, and some of those rocks turn out to be aliens. They find a dead Russian cosmonaut in a crater and a Russian moon lander and then later one of the astronauts (we'll call him Jim) sees a little spider thing crawling inside of his helmet and when they get back to their lander, everything's fine. 

A bit later on, Jim starts experiencing paranoia and starts to go crazy in the lander and when the other astronaut (we'll call him John) examines him, he cuts a moon rock out of Jim's arm. BUT IT WASN'T A MOON ROCK IT WAS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE PARASITIC ALIENS THAT LOOK LIKE MOON ROCKS OOOOOHHHHHH SPOOPS! 

Anywho, Jim and John finally figure out that the aliens are little bugs that look like moon rocks and they're whats causing Jim to go nuts. They try to escape in their pod but surprise surprise, it's broken. They then try to go to the Russian pod, but Jim gets pulled into a crater by an alien. John makes it to the Russian pod and manages to take off right as a fully-alien-controlled Jim is about to break into the ship. Oh yeah, Jim's head explodes here too and it's pretty neato. 

John radios to the closest manned station, but they think that he's infected with moon bugs as well, so they say that they can't let him on. At this point, everything goes bad. Since this is a found footage movie, we have to find some way of killing off the main character. Sooooooo let's have the gravity shut off and then have that reveal that there were moon rock bugs on the ship the whole time and they'll float up into the air and all swarm onto John at once, resulting in nobody being able to control the pod and it crashing into the space station, killing everyone on board as well. Cut to pre-mission footage of Jim having a barbecue with his earth family and that's a wrap folks! 

 

Alright, so what did I think of Blair Witch In Space-errrr Apollo 18? Honestly, the found footage really made this movie incredibly boring. I think if it was shot like a traditional movie instead of the found footage, then it would have been a much more enjoyable film. The acting is okay, nothing spectacular and also nothing to awful. It does suffer a bit from shaky cam syndrome, but that's to be expected considering it's a found footage film. Honestly, this movie had a lot of potential to be a thrilling, suspenseful movie. It just didn't have the right delivery or pacing for it. Everything felt a bit rushed, which I blame the lack of plot for. The astronauts literally finish their mission in the first 20 minutes and are about to go home when all of the alien stuff starts happening. This could have easily been a short film with a mild alien chase scene as the climax and it would have worked a lot better. Some of the effects are neat and I really liked the overall design and concept of the aliens. However, style points only go so far and it's not enough to save this movie from being the snoozefest that it is. I give Apollo 18 4 guys being killed on the moon with a rock out of 10. It's worth at least one watch for the cool aliens, but you'll likely immediately forget about it afterwards. 

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Shrooms (2007) Review

Guys, please listen to me. I wanna preface this review by giving everybody out there a message. Drugs are bad, mmmkay? Don't do drugs. Chances are, your experience on drugs will be miles better than this movie, but still, don't do drugs. Just throwin that out there. Tryin to be a good role model and such. Anyway, this is Shrooms, a movie that I'm sure everybody in the stoner community was excited for but very disappointed by.


LIKE, ZOINKS SCOOB! THERE'S SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!


Alrighty, how on earth do I even begin to talk about this movie? Well, for starters, it's a stoner movie. That much should have been obvious based on the title. How do you make psychedelic mushrooms scary, you ask? Well, for starters, you invent a new type of mushroom specifically for your movie that is (very) loosely based off of the real life "death cap" mushroom, which is fatal when ingested. This movie's death mushroom is basically the same as that except with a black lump on top which exists purely for the idiot cast of this movie to make nipple jokes about. 

Don't you understand, Sarah? The ones with the nipples are POISON!

Speaking of the cast of this movie, they're all Irish. Well, not all of them. Only one of them is Irish in the movie, but the entire film was made in Ireland with Irish actors putting on bad fake American accents. The plot of this movie is pretty simple: a bunch of stupid college kids go to a remote section of the woods in Ireland with a local guide, looking for the ultimate mushroom high. In these woods, they encounter a bunch of creepy stuff like backwoods inbreds, a guy with an axe, a feral boy, and a creepy lady in the water. OR DID THEY?! OR WAS IT ALL A HALLUCINATION FROM THE SHROOMS(TM)?! 

See the nipples, dude? That means it's poison. Stay away from the nipples. 

Okay, so basically these characters who I'm sure had names but I've forgotten all of them, go into the woods and the local guide tells them ghost stories about grizzly murders that happened in this area. This freaks out a few of the college kids and leads into our main villain of this movie: actual incarnations of the monsters and killers from the ghost stories. I'm not even joking. 

But here's where things start to get interesting. Alright, are you following me here? I'm about to drop some knowledge on you. Two of the characters are just Jay and Silent Bob, but with different names. MIND BLOWN, RIGHT?! Seriously, one of them is a skinny guy with long blonde hair who never takes off his beanie, and the other is a kinda fat-ish guy with a backwards cap who barely ever talks, that is until his shroom tripping scene, which might I say is THE BEST SCENE IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE. 

Let's divulge into a critical analysis of Silent Bob's freakout scene, shall we? So Silent Bob has a freakout on shrooms late at night and he sees a really pretty girl running into the woods. So, being the college horndog that he is, Silent Bob chases her into the woods armed with only his boxer shorts and his quick wit. He follows her for a while before coming across the best character in the whole movie and quite possibly the best character of modern cinema, THE COW. Yessir, Silent Bob finds a cow just chillin' in the middle of the woods. And best of all? THIS COW CAN TALK! Oh, you expected it to just be a regular old cow that does nothing? NO SIR THIS COW IS MAGIC, SON! To quote the talking cow directly, "That's right. A fucking cow that can fucking talk." Silent Bob has a nice discussion with Madame Cowsley (that's what I named her because she didn't have a name in the credits) before finding a car that is shaking. Now, Irish man had told the group before about people who would drive their cars out into the middle of the woods to "get intimate" inside and if you happened to come across this car, you could roll down the window and stick your willy wong in and get a little slurpy slurp if you catch my drift. Now, Silent Bob sees his opportunity to get his tallywhacker polished and he whips it out and sticks it right on in. After a few seconds of niceness, it's all ruined when the woman inside brings teeth into the equation. Silent Bob's trouser snake is bitten clean off and he falls over on the ground dead. Might I also remind you that this is the first death in the movie, so it's an accurate representation of the silliness to come. 

Hey bud, you gonna eat that grass? (STONER HUMOR, STONERS, THATS YOUR CUE TO LAUGH)

Okay, with that little detour out of the way, how's the rest of the movie? 

Turns out that the one killing all of the kids was just one of their own, on a very good high from the death nipple shroom that caused her to go on a murderous rampage. Yep. Everything spooky in the movie was all the kids hallucinating as that one girl killed them all. She's the only survivor after it's all over so naturally, as she's being airlifted out, she kills the paramedic in the helicopter and slams against the window in a jumpscare because you have to know that she's the killer, don't you? 

That's it. That's the movie. It's really really boring besides that cow bit and at their best, the actors are still absolutely unbearable. This movie had a lot of potential because they could have done a lot with the hallucination stuff. You know, made it a lot more psychadelic kind of scary, like introduced the supernatural into it more than they did. The setting was pretty weird as well. It was like a woods setting one second, and then inside of a school, and then in a clear swamp that goes on for miles. This area is just every area in a horror movie ever. 

Overall, Shrooms is a movie that tries very hard to please its target audience and I didn't watch this movie stoned, but if I did, I imagine that I'd be just as bored, if not more bored. It's just......not very good. I give this movie 2 death nipple mushrooms out of 10. Just don't waste your time, even if you're high. 

Dude, same.