Lake Noir (2013)

 

Content Warning: rape scene

A group of teenagers (at least one of whom is played by an actor clearly well into his 30s) drive up to an isolated lake for a weekend of swimming, fishing, boozing and screwing.  Not necessarily in that order.

They're the only ones camping at this particular lake, which proves a boon for those of them with a more fornicatory agenda.  The guys are especially delighted when a local warns them off from staying off at the lake, providing a rambling explanation involving a twenty year old rape and murder that has left the area stalked by a vicious supernatural killer.  This, they reason, will make a great ghost story to tell the ladies, and ensure they want to cuddle extra tight once the lights go out.

The idea that there really might be a murderous monster at the lake of course does not occur to them, which is why most of them will be dead by the end of the film.  That's not a spoiler, right?  "Bunch of highly-sexed teens go to the lake" has meant "bunch of teens get murdered" for over forty years now.

So this is a reasonably recent film which is consciously and openly modelling itself on slasher films in general and the Friday the 13th franchise in specific.  Which is something I could get on board with, to be honest, were it executed with any verve or imagination.

Alas, neither of these qualities are on show in Lake Noir.  The people behind the film appear to believe that as long as there are some topless ladies and a few deaths, they've done all they need to do.  Injecting any kind of life into the script, or indeed even giving the actors lines that sound like something real people might say, appears to be have been ruled out as far too much work.

Now sure, realism was never high on the agenda for the Friday films, either, but at least most of those understood the idea of at least trying to build tension, and of making the kill scenes dynamic and graphic so that the audience might actually react to them.  Lake Noir has kill scenes that are as dull as the painful dialogue that preceded them.

Killer Mermaid (2014)

 

Americans Kelly and Lucy take a break from their busy lives States-side to take a holiday in the Balkans.  They're planning to use the trip to see the beautiful coastline and to catch-up with their college friend (and Kelly's former flame) Alex.

The first wrinkle in this idyllic plan is that Alex is now engaged.  This is something he hasn't told the ladies.  The second wrinkle is that the spark between Alex and Kelly clearly hasn't guttered out.  The third wrinkle ... well, it's in the title of the film.  One impromptu visit to an abandoned jail on a Mediterranean island, and the holiday-makers are fighting for their lives against a lethal aquatic menace and her equally homicidal land-based minion.

Killer Mermaid kicked off with sufficient self-awareness that I was briefly hopeful.  If you give your film a title this unsubtle then it's not a bad plan to kick it off with gratuitous nudity and a boat hook murder.

Unfortunately, after a brisk and bombastic start the film founders on shoals of tedious relationship melodrama.  Even after it finally navigates those, it can't find a way back on course.  There's no momentum to the plot and the technical limitations of the action sequences mean that even when we finally get some life and death scuffles they're not at all compelling.

Ultimately, this film fails to keep its head above water.

Demon (2013)

 

FBI Agent Nicole Diaz is dispatched to Florida to look into several strange deaths that have taken place there.  Her arrival is not met with much warmth by the good old boy local sheriff, who has apparently been directly imported from the 1950s and is thus outraged that the FBI sent a lady type agent to investigate.

As the investigation progresses, it quickly becomes apparent that the cause of these deaths is a genetically-mutated Chupacabra.  Mostly because a couple of scientists turn up and say "The killings were committed by our genetically-mutated Chupacabra".  Something nominally reminiscent of action ensues.

Oh boy.

I have seen a lot of bad films in the course of this blog.  A lot.  So when I say that Demon is a shoo-in to feature on any "Ten Worst" list I might compile, understand how truly, deeply inept and tedious that means this movie actually is.

Demon is a disaster on every front.  The acting is grade-school theatre level, with lines delivered with all the grace of a hippopotamus falling out of a hot air balloon.  Mind you, you'd have to be the vocal equivalent of an Olympic Gymnast to engender any finesse to the clumsy, leaden dialogue on offer.

That's when you can hear said dialogue, mind you, because the sound mix is every bit as atrocious as everything else about the film.

There are good movies, and bad movies, and so bad they're good movies.  And there's cinematic faecal matter.  Demon is definitely the last.  Steer well clear.

Death Rot (2014)

Metal band "Death Rot" are in the middle of a long tour of the US.  When their bus blows out multiple tires on an isolated back road, their main concern is that they might miss the show booked for that night.

Those concerns will soon become a very distant concern.  The breakdown of the band's bus is definitely no accident, and the people behind it have a very particular, very unpleasant line of business for which they need some new inventory.

These death metal rockers will soon find the gore-spattered lyrics of their songs become an entirely too real experience ...

Death Rot is a micro-budget horror film.  I'm not sure what the exact budget was, but they are working in the kind of range where raising a few hundred dollars on Indiegogo is worthwhile.  Despite the obvious limitations this brings to the production, it's relatively competent on most technical fronts.  I can see and hear what is happening, the plot more or less makes sense, and the acting, while far from compelling, is mostly passable.  There are some minor roles that are ... not good, shall we say.

It's clear that the people behind this had passion for the project and have worked hard to make it as good as it could be, in the circumstances.  But is that worth a recommendation?  Honestly, I think if earnest micro-budget film-making is something you are into, then the answer might be "yes", but that's a pretty small niche. Also, if that is your niche, then I have to admit that Death Rot lacks the gonzo charm of something like Harvest Lake.

Trollhunter (2010)

 

A group of college film students set out to make a documentary about a suspected bear poacher, but instead accidentally stumble into the operations of a secret government agency.  This agency is tasked with hunting and killing trolls, and in doing do without revealing to the public that these creatures even exist.

Naturally, the students - once they get over their initial derision of the idea that trolls exist at all - quickly realise that this would be a huge scoop for them.  And luck is perhaps on their side, for the 'poacher' is actually a disgruntled troll hunter who is tired of his dangerous and poorly recompensed work and more than willing to ruin his employer's day by blowing the lid off this whole thing.

Of course, the authorities are not exactly pleased about this, and it's safe to say that the trolls aren't real keen on humans poking around in their territory, either, so the scoop of a lifetime could also lead to the end of their lifetimes ...

I'm a little torn over how to rate this film because minute-to-minute, Trollhunter is reasonably watchable.  However, in the end I feel that the film as an entire work is not satisfying, so I can't give it even a qualified recommendation.  

The film's problems are multiple: no explanation is ever given for why the existence of trolls should be kept secret, for instance.  Which given the obvious difficulties and expense of maintaining this secrecy, is definitely something I was asking.  Then there's the basic through-line of the plot, which is somewhat meandering and just kind of peters out rather than arriving at a meaningful conclusion.

I liked seeing more-or-less traditional Scandinavian trolls turning up on screen, but at the end of the movie I was left asking "wait, is that it?".

Train to Busan (2016)

 

Investment banker Seo Seok-woo is a cynical workaholic and divorced father, living in Seoul. When his daughter Su-an wants to spend her birthday with her mother in Busan, at the other end of the country, he initially tries to refuse her. Ultimately though, guilt over his own absentee parenting prompts him to agree to her request.

Seok-woo does, however, refuse to let Su-an take the journey alone, and accompanies her onto the train.  This proves to be very fortuitous, as Seoul descends into chaos behind them due to a zombie outbreak.  Alas, one of the infected manages to get on board the train as well, and soon flesh-eating undead are rampaging through the carriages.  Seok-woo, Su-an and the other passengers must try to stay alive long enough to reach a place of safety - though with the speed the zombie outbreak is spreading, it's unclear if any such place exists.

Train to Busan is a solid and engaging zombie film from South Korea.  It has some great sequences as the dwindling group of survivors try to stay one step ahead of the zombie contagion, offering a few set pieces that are distinctive and memorable and don't immediately remind me of anything I have seen from the genre before.

If you're not one of those people who has become burned out on zombie media, this is an excellent example of the form, and well worth a couple of hours of your time.

On a meta-textual level, I also think the film has obvious parallels to the Korean War - where Busan formed the final stronghold for fleeing South Koreans before the the UN force's invasion of Incheon forced North Korean forces to withdraw.  I would be very surprised if this parallel was not entirely deliberate.

The Blob (1988)

 

Arborville has seen better days.  The past two winters have been mild, which is not good news for a town that relies on trade from skiing-based tourism to survive.  But when a strange meteorite crashes in the nearby woodlands, economic doldrums will be the least of the townsfolk's troubles.

The meteorite, you see, contains a strange, ooze-like lifeform that is attracted to - and rapidly consumes - living tissue.  And each time it feeds, it grows.  This 'Blob' takes little time to start making use of the abundant 'food source' that the town represents, and nothing the locals can throw at it seems to slow it down.  But the swift arrival of the authorities will surely help them find a way to survive ... right?

This remake of the 1958 film of the same name adds a vein of black humour to the squishy menace of the Blob itself.  It smartly doesn't let that humour get in the way of the menace itself, though.  This monster may look like a massive pile of goopy, translucent silly putty, but it is deadly dangerous, and the film makes sure we know it.  This is not one of those 'horror' films where only jerks actually come to a sticky end. 

This version of The Blob is also transcendentally 80s in its style.  Don't take my word for it, though.  Just bask in the glory of the film's first shot of Shawnee Smith's character, Meg:

80s to the MAX!

This is a really fun monster rampage movie with a solid cast and a satisfying narrative that features some surprising moments.  If this is at all your sort of thing, you should check it out.

The Neon Demon (2016)

 

I have watched plenty of bad movies since I started this blog, but I am struggling to remember ever being genuinely angry about having to review one of them.

But this pompous, pretentious, boring film has already wasted 7 million dollars, a talented cast and two hours of my time.  So I am seething a little at the thought of expending even a few minutes effort on telling you how bad it is.

So I will be brief.

The concept behind the (overlong, meandering) plot of this film can be summed up as "what if the fashion industry literally consumed the young women who enter it?".  Which might actually be a workable if obvious idea on which to base a horror film, but not when it is literally the only idea you seem to have, and you only bring it out with ten minutes of the movie left.  You could literally watch the opening five minutes of this movie and the 'swimming pool' scene right near the end and you would have the entire story and would have saved yourself a lot of time.

You would 'miss out' on the movie's many rape-y and/or objectifying moments by doing that, but frankly that sounds like a win as well, to me.

This is smug, vacuous cinematic excrement.

Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

 

If you're a slasher movie fan, skip the rest of this review and just go watch this movie.  I don't think you will regret it.

For those of you are still with me, the premise of Behind the Mask is that, in a world where all the Halloween and Friday the 13th films actually happened, a small documentary film crew has arranged to film the training and preparations of one Leslie Vernon, who has ambitions to be the next great slasher-killer.  He has agreed to take them through his training regimen and explain how he will engineer and execute his kills, and in return they have agreed not to interfere in his murderous plans.

Now that's not a deal I would make, and I hope you wouldn't either.  But Leslie is a seemingly friendly and quite personable fellow, and while his intended murders remain just an intention, our trio of tele-journalists actually find themselves enjoying taking part in his elaborate machinations.  Of course, whether they will still feel so blasé about things when the blood actually starts to spray is quite another matter ...

Behind the Mask is obviously made by people with a firm knowledge of the slasher genre, and I love the effort they have put into coherently explaining the conceits and foibles of such films.  Just how does a killer who never seems to move faster than a walk keep getting in front of people who are running away?

I also love how straight they play their whole premise, however absurd it might be.  For all that the film openly deconstructs slasher movies, no-one is winking at the camera when Leslie's rampage actually begins.

I very much enjoyed this.

 

Creature (1985)

 

In the near-ish future, two companies - one American, one (West) German - compete to gather resources across the solar system.  So when a mission to Titan (one of Saturn's moons) discovers evidence of an advanced alien civilisation, there's immediately an urgent competition to seize what seems an astonishing resource.  Though perhaps both companies should be paying more attention to the fact that none of the original discoverers survived to make it back to Earth.

Because of course not all of these ancient aliens are dead, and the survivor is more than dangerous enough to slaughter any humans foolish enough to disturb it.  But I imagine you worked that out already, right?

With its 'spaceworkers stumble across a dangerous extra-terrestrial' premise, Creature (AKA Titan Find) obviously owes a considerable debt to the Alien franchise.  But I suspect that John Carpenter's The Thing was also a significant source of inspiration: and not just because this film very consciously and explicitly references the 1951 film based on the same short story as Carpenter's horror masterpiece.  Our alien nemesis here can infect and control humans, turning them into its agents, which allows it to use the same kind of infiltration and deception tactics as Carpenter's 'Thing'.  Of course, it probably also didn't hurt that 'it operates through human agents' allows this film to get away with a pretty minimal amount of actual on-screen alien action.

So with all that said, is the film any good?

Well, it's no Alien or The Thing.  The effects are bit rubbery and the plot isn't terribly novel, and there's some rather problematic, aggressive sexual content from Klaus Kinski's character.  

On the other hand, it is not without its 1980s charms, and the cast all know what they are doing.  Best of all, once we are past the rather disjointed opening sequences, the script doesn't ask the characters to behave in any too obviously foolish ways.

If you're in the mood for some space-based horror and you've not seen it before, you might enjoy spending 95 minutes with this Creature.

The Rezort (2015)

The zombie apocalypse happened, and we won.

It was by no means an easy victory, and some people still suffer from the effects. These effects may be physical: there are still refugee camps dotted in several parts of the world, for instance. Or they may be psychological, as is the case of the trauma still felt by Melanie Gibbs. But for most people, the war is in the past and it is time to rebuild.

Of course, people being people, not all of the ways that humanity chooses to 'rebuild' are particularly constructive. An example of this is 'The Rezort', an elite tourist destination where you can pay to shoot zombies within a strictly controlled, safe environment. It's mostly a playground for the wealthy, but it's sometimes recommended as therapy for those, like Melanie, who are still struggling with their memories of the war.

It's probably no surprise that those strict controls and safety don't last long once the movie starts.

If you're thinking "that premise sounds kind of like Jurassic Park but with zombies instead of dinosaurs" ... well, actually watching The Rezort is certainly not going to change that impression. The broad strokes of the two films are definitely similar, right down to a hacker attack that leads to the inevitable carnage.

But not every work of fiction has to be original in its basic outline.  Execution matters a great deal.  And The Rezort does pretty well on the execution front.  The cast is capable, the zombie make-up and action are solid, and the plot - the basic premise of creating a 'zombie safari theme park' aside - never demands you accept any particularly absurd actions on the part of the human characters.

If you're a zombie movie fan, this is definitely worth giving a look.

The Human Race (2012)

 

If you don't run, you die.

If you get lapped twice, you die.

If you leave the path, you die.

If you step on the grass, you die.

Only one of you can win.

Eighty people wake to hear those words in their heads, spoken in their own voices.  They don't know how they came to this strange place, or who brought them, but within seconds the truth of the warnings has been gruesomely proved, and so they all begin to run.

Of course, fast as they pound around the course, they can't outrun their own questions: why is this happening?  How do they get out?  How, at the end of it, can they survive?

All good questions, but not necessarily ones that are going to be given particularly good answers, alas.  Certainly no positive ones.  There's a pretty thoroughly negative view of humanity underpinning events here, to say the least.  On the plus side, while I don't think the movie goes anywhere all that interesting in the end - which you could argue is apropos since it is about a bunch of people going in circles - it does manage to tell a couple of reasonably engaging stories about the people caught in this situation.  Maybe, if I really worked hard, I could see recommending this as something that is more about the journey than the destination ... but it's kind of an unpleasant journey.

Content warning: scenes of attempted sexual assault

Do Not Disturb (2013)

 

Once feted as a wunderkind, screenwriter Don Malek now skulks in a grimy apartment in the roughest part of town, dodging persistent questions from his agent, Ava, about progress on his new script.

So Ava is understandably pleased when Don finally shows her what he's been working on, though she's a bit puzzled by his decision to stage an actual scene for her rather than just show her words on a page.  Still, his grisly murder scenario seems like the basis of a good story, so everything is good, right?

Well, maybe it would be, if the murder was actually just a story ...

This film was originally released in 2010 under the title New Terminal Hotel, but was re-cut into this shorter form a couple of years later.  It's hard to imagine that what they would have chosen to cut is 'a decent ending', so I can only assume that the way this movie finishes is the same as the original.  In which case I guess I can at least be glad that it took me 13 fewer minutes to reach it than it would have done originally!

It's rather a shame that the movie doesn't stick an ending as - despite its somewhat slow pace and obviously low budget - it has a pretty decent cast and a basic premise that could have gone in an interesting direction.  You see Dan's sudden change of career from author to killer is motivated by a desire to avenge his girlfriend and punish the men whose power - and willingness to abuse said power - led to her death.  A killer striking against toxic, narcissistic predators is a premise that could potentially create an interesting set of questions and dynamics.  After all, his motives are understandable and even sympathetic, but his actions are reprehensible.

Unfortunately, the film doesn't really engage with this and just goes down the "throw in a few grisly kills and horror buffs will be satisfied, right?" route.  But no, no, I won't.

October 2021 Schedule

As usual, my October reviews will all be horror-themed.  They will be posted on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.  Regular reviews will resume on Tuesday, November 2nd.