Descent part 2 (2009)

Ok, so what is the fucking point of this? This is the kind of movie that gives sequels bad names. Not that it actually is bad, as in Transformers 2 bad (A movie I still havent finished watching after two tries) but it's just so... useless. Not only does it follow the retarded ending of the american version, Descent 2 actually has an "twist"-ending that is so fundamentally idiotic that you just shake your head and almost wish you never saw the damn thing... anything for another sequel.

Well, I suppose we only have ourselves to blame. We wanted more of Neil Marshalls hideously frightening cavemutants, that is certain. But what the sequel does is unforgivable. The original movie has an all female cast of strong women that actually feels like a group of friend, women who know what they are doing but end up in hell anyway. Descent part 2 does it the other way by bringin in a group of nondescript climbers, a female cop who we know will live the longest because she has a photo of her children with her and a sheriff with an iq of about 60, engineered just for the plot to advance in ways that will make you groan. Yes, the only survivor of the american version is found alive, but hysterical and since one of the characters in the original was the daughter of a senator, the sheriff automatically thinks that she did it. He forces her to go down into the cave again through the tunnels of an old mine to find out what happened and before you can say "lack of imagination", they are all trapped and hunted by the same freaky creatures of the original. To make matters even more stupid, the filmmakers have included an extra large mutant, sort of like an end of the level boss in a computer game and that does not help the movie.

Actually, the movie isnt so bad. It has gore, claustrophobic cave tunnels and moves along at a decent enough pace. I was never bored, just frustrated of the characters stupid behaviour, and I would probably not hate it that much if it werent for that ending that just comes out of the blue. The original's ending is one of the more inspired and horrible ones I have ever encountered and I suppose that is why I'm judging this one so much harder. I have seen worse sequels, no doubt about it, and Descent part 2 offers up 90 fairly decent minutes but as a followup it is a travesty. I have to stop having high hopes for sequels, it's bad for me.

Salvage (2006)

How about a horror version of Groundhog day? Made on the cheap with somewhat dull digital photography and uneven acting skills?

Claire Parker is on the way home from her dull extrajob at a gasstation when a stranger arrives to pick her up in her boyfriends car, telling her that he knows her boyfriend and that he told him to pick her up. Naturally she is suspicious, but lets him drive her home, a bit freaked by his weird behaviour. Naturally, he is the major psycho she believes him to be but doesnt realize that until he later breaks into her home and kills her. As this is Groundhog day without Bill Murray and and a budget lower than the catering of previously mentioned movie, Claire wakes up again at the gas station, believing it all to be a horrible dream. But then weird things start to happen, she sees the man from her dreams several times but no one believes her. The events of the next day doesnt follow the "dream" exactly but she still ends up being killed by the same man, waking up again. Events continue the same way over and over, with the mystery deepening every time, especially when she finds out that the man really is dead. What the fuck us going on?

Yes, this is very low budget movie with a cast of about six. Lauren Currie Lewis who plays Claire does a decent job in a role that mostly requires her to frown and show up those pretty blue bambie eyes but the rest of the cast are rather bland. Thank god the direction is better, with an interesting script moving along in a decent pace. The photography is as I mentioned earlier somewhat dull but on the other hand, it does actually suit the movie rather well, capturing that drabness that a small town can have, whether it's in Sweden or in the US. It all adds up to a twistending which actually is rather good, either you see it coming or not. I'm not really sure I can recommend it to everyone, a few people will probably be put off by the low budget part, but if you like your chills independent and your twists good, you just might like this.

The Fourth kind (2009)

One of the worst movies I have seen in my entire life is Olatunde Osunsanmis WIthIN aka The Cavern, a movie so crappy looking that I still wonder if there was some kind of error on my dvd. For some mysterious reason someone out there saw the movie and decided that, yes, we want to give this man 10 million dollars to make another movie. How stupid can you be?!

But, this actually paid off.

The Fourth kind is a mockumentary whose gimmick is that it claims to partray the truth by having the actors tell the audience that they are indeed actors, all while showing the "real" footage of the people involved in the story that actors intends to portray. This is a gimmick that works just fine, although I had my doubts in the beginning of the movie, and it slowly grows on you until about halfway where the story finally got you in its grip. Storywise though, the movie doesnt really have anything new to come up with, but the presentation makes it work.
So, what is the story then? Well, there's this little town in Alaska where there has been an awful lot of mysterious dissapearances. The movie follows a widowed psychologist (Milla Jojovich) who have been interviewing people about strange recurring dreams. When she hypnotises them they reveal a more horrible story, something that might be alien abductions. Of course, the local police refuse to be believe her but when the threat comes even closer, things get weird.

This is nothing new and it feels somewhat odd that the scary parts feels more supernatural than alien, but the concept works thanks to good actors and never revealing too much of whats going on. Another plus is that the movie looks incredibly good with gorgeous Bulgarian woods standing in for the Alaskan town. By the way, did you notice that Milla Jojovich lives in the exakt same house as the family in Wicked little things, the childzombie movie from a few years back? So, my opinion on Olatunde Osunsanmi is slightly raised now. The Fourth kind is a good little horror flick that will give you a buch of nice chills and is recommended viewing.

Robert Culp 1930-2010 RIP

Another icon has passed away.

I think I will watch a Cold nights death this evening, a movie I've wanted to see for a long time but never got around to.

RIP

Because God tells me so (2007)

I am not gonna review this fine documentary on how the fundamentalist christians use the bible for gaybashing, but I am going to mention something I learned from it:

The same bible passage that says "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination." also says that it is an abomination eat shellfish, to wear garments of mixed fabrics and working on the sabbath. Still, a lot of people use that quote literally. This can only mean: Either they dont know what the passage really means because they are so busy obeying, they do not really understand any of it but their pastor tells them too or they are too caught up in their hate that they dont care. So much for a loving God.

My favorite little tidbit though, how horrible the content may be, was part of a deaththreat sent to the first openly gay Bishop in the Lutheran church and it tells me quite a bit of the person that wrote it.

Death to the faggits!

Survival of the dead (2009)

Finally, George A Romero is back with another zombiemovie. I will admit I am a huge fan of his movies and have been waiting for this for a long time. So, is the master back with another great movie? Diary of the dead was a fine movie and the initial dissapointment that was Land of the dead was blown away when I recently watched it again. It shames me to say this, but this is Romeros worst by far.

So, what is wrong with this movie? The story is fine, with one of the soldiers that popped up in Diary of the dead now having his own movie, trying to escape the zombie apocalypse by going to an island outside the US coast where two Irish clans are duking it out over what to do with the undead. One side wants to destory them, the other save them just in case a cure arrives. An interesting plot but the problem here is that Romero never does anything interesting with this. The headhoncho of the the clan that wants to keep them alive still goes around shooting zombies in the head whenever he feels like it and the plot never gets anywhere. I get the feeling that huge chunks of story were cut out of it. To make matters worse, the movie is full of totally unfunny gags where a zombie appears out of nowhere to be dispatched in a "funny" sort of way, a practice that is repeated way too much. My girlfriend even asked me if we were watching some kind of slapstickmovie. My biggest gripe with SOTD though, is the fact that there is never any sense of doom or desolation, something Romero perfected in his earlier movies, especially Dawn and Day of the dead. Our characters just travel from place to place, never encountering more than a couple of zombies at a time, which is weird for a world where 50 million people becomes undead every day according to the introductory narration(or something like that. I dont remember exactly). Big dissapointment.

But, on the other hand, this is a George A Romero movie, which means that while it might have a huge number of flaws, it is still better than most movies of its ilk. Romero gets good performances out of his cast and the story (however truncated and flawed it might feel) is still way more interesting than most. Part of the reason that I was dissapointed with this movie was, as I stated earlier, the high expectations but Romeros story feels like a filler episode in a tv-series and has none of the desperation of his earlier zombiemovies. That is what I miss most.

SOTD is by no means a failure, just a bit mediocre which isnt forgivable when it comes to Romero. I am used to high quality from the man and when he produces something like this, well, I get dissapointed. I just might watch it again later to see if I will like it better then, just like Land of the dead but in the meantime, let us hope that his next movie will redeem him.

The Jail - A womans hell (2006)

So, what do we have here? All the ingredients we need for a good movie?

* An all female prison, with all the characters that belong in the genre. The evil warden, the sleazy doctor who always has a cigarette in his mouth, the lesbians, evil lesbian, the evil governor that likes to hunt women for sport. You know, the usual.

* Nudity. Tons of it. If you have a fetish for asian women, your head will explode while watching this.

* Gore. One unfortunate woman gets her tongue cut out and her breasts cut off. A decent amount of squibs. A head cut off and some more. The special effects are cheap but fun.

What else do you want? Well, a giant radioactive lizard would be nice, but it would be sort of hard to fit him into the plot. Bruno Mattei has fashioned a fun little flick, a throwback to the Italian exploitationmovies of the seventies of the eighties and though his budget is low (the prison seems to consist only of a yard, a cell and the showers), he makes the best of it. The story is cliched as hell, the acting is pretty bad (one of the evil characters sounds like William Shatner on heroin) and the dubbing truly awful, but we already knew it would be like that after seeing his other Phillipino movies, Island of the living dead and Zombies: The beginning. Mattei was a professional and the movie looks as good as it can. The movie is violent, sleazy and crammed full of so much nudity the filmmakers could muster. If thats how you like your movies, then you'll lap this up. Thank you Bruno and we all miss you.

Pig hunt (2008)

I always like a really nice try when it comes to movies, when the filmmakers at least try to do something special. Even though it turns out to be somewhat of a failure, you can sense that there is some talent behind the camera and movies like are usually entertaining. Pig hunt is a perfect example of a nice try.

A group of friends leave San Francisco and head out into the woods to hunt for some legendary giant boar that is supposed to roam the forest. They hook up with some fairly unfriendly rednecks who are also looking for the critter and soon it turns into a Jawsclone on land. Well, actually, I lied. It actually takes of into another direction, more Deliverance than Jaws actually. But then there's that really weird cult of hippies, consisting of a huge black guy and a dozen naked women that will sure that the plot will take of into another direction. Confusing? Not really once you watch the movie.

The plot plays out like a Jerry Gross produced remake of Deliverance with a couple of nasty creatures thrown into the mix and works just fine. The problem is that with such a sleazy story, there should be a hell of a lot of grue, and there isnt really that much. It actually feels pretty tame at times. There are a few violent deaths but with material like this you feel a bit ripped off. It doesnt really help that script never creates any decent characters to root for, so when the Deliverance parts come crawling you dont really care about the main characters, you just want to see more of the naked chicks. Well, there is actually one character that's not a major asshole and he gets a pretty brutal and undignified death so I guess that is some sort of compensation.

And that is why Pig hunt is a nice try. The filmmakers try hard but fail. The script has lots of fun ideas but never goes to the excesses the movie needs to be the grindhouse experience it wants to be. It is still a fun movie, well worth watching, but had potential for greatness. Maybe there is an unrated version out there?

Boogeyman (2005)

So, this little kid is afraid of the Boogeyman, believing him to hide in the closet. When his dad tries to reassure him that there is no such thing, he gets taken by something in the closet, never to be seen again. 15 years later, the kid is now grown up but is still afraid of the closet and wears a constant frown on his face, most likely because the actor, Barry Watson, did 196 episodes of Seventh heaven. When his mother (a pretty unrecognizable Lucy Lawless. I had to check with Imdb afterwards) dies he returns to his hometown to clean up the place or confront his fears or something. He meets a young girl carrying clippings of young children missing who asks him if there is a special reason why he is back. Yes, the Boogeyman is still there and turns out to be a pretty goofylooking cgithing, and the story is so generic that it could've come straight out of the Haunted house movies for dummies. I spent the first 45 minutes of the movie half sure that I had seen it before even though I know that I hadnt. It's that derivative.

But, to the filmmakers defense, the whole damn thing looks good and the scares are halfdecent. The New Zeeland locations are excellent and the house itself a perfect design for a horrormovie. It could've used some gore and tits to liven things up a bit, but on the other hand there is never really any time to get bored. Yes, you'd probably be better off watching the Ulli Lommel movie instead, or why not Boogens but on the other hand, you could also do a lot worse than this. Grade D for Decent but klichéd.

Kung fu panda (2008)

They dont come more goodlooking than this. Well, maybe Wall-E. But not by much. It's funny too.

AM1200 (2008)

Lovecraftadaptions are usually a very mixed bag and the most succesful ones are based on stories that are easier to adapt or they work because to tend to differ a bit from the material. AM1200 is not actually an adaption, the material is an original script but the material is very Lovecraftian and works just fine in that old school EC way with a hilarious, yet groovy twistending. This is fun and well shot stuff which should be watched by anyone who likes good horror. The story is classic, yet enticing. A man is on the run after embezzling money (and causing the suicide of a colleauge) and heads out in the wilderness, just fleeing. Somewhere in the desert he finds a channel on the radio where a strange voice asks for help. Soon after he takes a wrong turn and ends up on a barely used forest road and wouldnt you know it, his car breaks down just in front of a path leading to that very same radiostation, AM1200. He finds the place deserted except for a man in a catatonic state and realizes that this is the person that called for help. But why?

There's not really anything else to say. AM1200 is a superbly shot little horror story with good acting and great looking photography and locations which, for once, has a story that easily could have been extended into something fullength. But David Prior, the writer and director, wisely sticks to his short format, making every second count and delivering some solid horrors that are sure to stick on your mind for some time after you finished watching it. Good stuff and quite a showreel for the future.

Alone in the wilderness (2004)

A lot of us out there in this world are people who long for something else but never really get to the point of doing exactly what we really want, for many different reasons of course. It can be that the goal is too farfetched to reach or that we just are too scared to go there, settling for what we have. Whatever the reason is, here is a documentary that just might inspire you a bit. And if it doesnt, it is still a warm portrait of a man who left our industrialised world behind to go exactly where he wanted and do what was in his heart.



Alone in the wilderness is the story of Richard Proenneke who at the age of 52 decided to quit his job as a mechanic and retired to Twin lakes in Alaska, an area in the middle of the wilderness. He spent a year in a borrowed cabin cutting down trees and making logs, then returning the next summer building a cabin of his own. He spent the next 30 years up there alone with mother nature, only returning to civilization in 1999 at the age of 82 when he decided that the -40 celcius winter temperatures were a bit too much to withstand. During all these years he filmed a lot of his life with a 16mm colour camera and we get to follow him as he builds his cabin and lives his life in solitude. It is truly a fascinating journey to watch Proenneke manufacture all the tools he needs himself (with the exception of some metal parts), build a cabin all by himself along with all the furniture he needs and growing a small garden to sustain himself. He does get supplies from time to time from a friend with an airplane, but mostly he is all by himself. All this is narrated by a big drone of a voice that suits the proceedings well, with lots of grainy 16mm footage of the area. I think the 16mm footage is something that adds an extra edge to the whole thing, since it's far from the perfect HD images of your average National Geographic documentary. It gets more personal, which is as it should be.



You cant help but to be impressed by Richard Proenneke and the life he provides for himself, especially after you see the view from his cabin window. Twin lakes is a marvelous place and although I realize that I am not cut out for that kind of life, I still envy him - both for his strength in achieving what he wanted and for a life without bills, subwaytrains, internet and promoting synergy. Proenekke was truly the perfect individual for this kind of venture. The documentary is fairly short, just about an hour, but there are two "sequels" called Alaska - Silence and solitude and The Frozen north, both of which I have not seen. Yet. There is also a book: One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, which I am going to track down and read. Proenneke was a fascinating man (He passed away in 2003 at the age of 86) and he gives us all inspiration, if its just the fact that it actually is possible to achieve what you want.

Drunken stupor

So, the last saturday I met upp with a couple of friends on the town for a nice little movieevening with lots of beer, booze and.. uh.. movies!

We started by making a huge dish of excellent lasagne, the kind that has you gasping for air and afterwards trying hard not to fall asleep as your digestive system is shutting down just about everything in your body to process the food. While doing this we watched Hardware on bluray. The movie is still as entertaining as ever, though the main talk during the movie was what Richard Stanley could've done if he had had a bit more money.

They live was on next - a minor John Carpenter movie for several reasons. Reason number one is Roddy Piper, who isnt much of an actor. Reason nr two is that it has a pretty pisspoor excuse for an ending. It is still a fun little flick but Carpenter has made a lot better movies and spent most of the time talking about Pipers haircut and all the the cool quotes that appeared in other media, like Duke Nukem 3d.

So, cherrycoke and absolut vodka? I think I'll stick to redbullvodka in the future. Yech.

Now we turned towards redneck territory with Pighunt, a mixture between the Giant animalgenre and the nasty hillbillymovie. The movie would've been better with characters that werent just assholes and there could have been a lot more violence, but the copious nudity and the nasty rednecks compensated a bit.

By now we were getting pretty drunk and the conversation turned turned, as it always does, to Heavy Metal, me being a more synthpop kinda guy. Nothing ever comes out of these discussions other than the fact that I still dont love poodle metal.

Next movie in line was two episodes of the magnificient british comedy series Garth Marengi Dark place, a superb parody of 80s horror which everyone should own. Seriously, it's fucking awesome.

After this we started to watch Versus, my favorite japanese zombiemovie, though I will admit that by this time I was pretty drunk and didnt watch much. We were just trashtalking alot with me mainly saying bad stuff about Heavy metal and the others about Kraftwerk. you know. the usual.

So, when Versus was finished i forced the others two watch Evil dead trap but then I began to feel pretty lousy so I decided to head home. It was, after all, three in the morning. When I left the other two decided too watch Martyrs, which is another excellent french flick but should frankly be watched while sober to maximize its effect.

Well, that was just about it. The day after was spent wathing Kung fu panda, Mythbusters and playing Left for dead 2.

Nine miles down (2009)

An interesting tidbit: This movie was supposed to be directed by John Carpenter back in 1996 but he left the production to make Escape from LA instead, which makes for some pretty interesting thoughts about how the movie would've turned out.

So, is Adrian Paul a good actor? I'm not a big fan of the Highlander tv-series and the last thing I saw him in was the horrible cheesefest Lost colony aka Wraiths of Roanoke, in which I accused him of just doing an "ok" english accent. Hehe. The man was born and raised british. Shame on me. Sorry Adrian. In this flick Mr Paul plays some sort of roaming security guard in the African desert who is dispatched to a drilling site where a group of scientists are performing experiments. They havent been heard from in days and our hero is to find out why. When he arrives at the location he finds it strangely deserted and in one of the rooms remains of some sort of animal sacrifice can be found. Then there's the blood on the walls, writing that says "Save yourselves". The next day he meets what seems to be the only survivor of the scientists, a young woman who shows him the bodies of some of the scientists who supposedly killed themselves. She also plays him the weird sounds that emanates from a huge cavern "nine miles down" which disturbingly sounds like human voices in pain. Our hero starts to see and hear strange things, and becomes very suspicious when he learns that the scientist team is supposed to be all male... but is all this in his mind, or have the scientists managed to open up a gate to some sort of hellish underworld and released evil into the world. You have to watch the film to find out.

Not bad, not bad. Nine miles down starts incredibly well with a great location and a good mystery which unfolds at a perfect pace. The first 40-45 minutes are excellent with just the right amounts of plotrevelations. Adrian Paul does a good job playing the securityofficer "with baggage" and Kate Nauta is ok in the role of the female survivor JC. She does appear a bit young for a doctor with phds but she is pretty sexy and play off well with Adrian Paul, which is lucky for us since the movie is basically about these two characters. Is he crazy or is she a spawn of Satan? The whole thing works well as suspense with a fair number of creepy scenes but unfortunately starts to fall apart somewhat halfway through. The more we learn, the less interesting it gets basically. It all lead to a perfectly decent ending, which on the other hand isnt especially hard to figure out in advance. I think my main dissapointment with this movie is the fact that it took of in a direction that I didnt want it to go, and if you consider that, Nine miles down is a fine little thriller which plays its Is it/Isnt it card well. Good viewing but one can only wonder what John Carpenter could've done with this. And yes, Adrian Paul is a good actor.

Dont wake the dead (2008)

Ok, so someone has given Andreas Schnaas enough money to make a movie again... what is the world coming to? I will forgive him for the Violent shit trilogy and Zombie 90, these are tongue in cheek flicks which shouldnt be taken seriously whatsoever and they have given me lots of entertainment back in the days when the world focused on vhsdupes of uncut movies. His Anthropophagous 2000 was better than I expected but then came the awful Demonium and one of the worst movies I have ever seen - Nikos the impaler. These are awful pieces of digital bits that are supposed to resemble movies and I swore to never watch a Schnaasmovie ever again. Until now.

So why did I let myself do such a horrible thing? The answer is - The trailer. From looking at it (once) Dont wake the dead appears to be nice little homage to Amando De Ossorios Blind dead movies and (yet again, from looking at the trailer) actually looks like a movie. The little kid in me rejoiced - zombies and gore. How can you fail? Well, actually you can. The movie starts ok with a flashback full of gore where a group of templars are killed by villagers in a small town. Flash forward to present day where some nice looking ladies are going to an old mansion (yes, where the templar buria l ground is located) to help a friend renovate. A german punk/metalband are gonna provide some entertainment and all looks well until a weird guy appears, performing some sort of ritual and presto, the dead awake (along with some nazis that tried to kill them during the war - now servants to the undead templars). So, the rest of the movie follow the usual patterns. Tits - gore - tits - gore. Should be a winner, right?

Wrong.

The first problem is that Andreas Schnaas still isnt a good director who doesnt know how to stage a coherent narrative. The result is a string of gorescenes loosely connected by an excuse for a plot, nothing we havent seen ten times before. It doesnt really help much that acting is pretty mediocre, though I suspect that that owes more to the fact that the actresses arent speaking in their native language. But the worst crime of the movie occurs about an hour in, when the punkband returns from the dead to have a concert in the mansion with all the templar zombies headbanging to the music. WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU SCHNAAS?!?! If you want to shoot a musicvideo for some of your friends, do that and include it in the extras if you really have to BUT DONT PUT IT IN THE FUCKING MOVIE! It stops the movie dead in its tracks, is intercut with the footage of the zombies stalking their victims and fits in the whole thing like, I dont know, a decent narrative in an Andreas Schnaas movie?!

You know, i wanted to like the movie more than I finally did. The movie is pretty quick with introducing the zombies (and you get several gorefilled flashbacks before that even happens) and you dont have to wait very long between the numerous (and decently designed) gorescenes. The actresses do a decent enough job even though they are struggling with the language and most of them have nudescenes which is a plus. I've seen worse, lots worse movies. But then came the concertscene. It's just... retarded. One second you're seeing the survivors being hunted down in the cellar by one of the former, now zombiefied friends and next you're wathing her dance in front of the stage in that FUCKING concert. Are you guys trying to be fucking Lordi?!?! Aaaaargh. This scene totally killed the movie for me, and I'd rather watch Violent shit 1 on a blurry vhs before ever watching this again.

If Schnaas ever decides to edit out that scene in a directors cut and perhaps tighten up the flow a bit, then this could be a decent enough little goremovie. But as it is today, I can only recommend this movie to fans of metalbands in monstermasks.

And who designed that poster? Stevie Wonder?

Hallelujah!!!

According to Fangoria, there will be another sequel to the fabulous XTRO-series!!!

Link here

“I am going to be starting XTRO 4 this summer; you are the first to receive this shattering news,” Davenport tells us. “A script by Daryl Haney is in the works, and my sales guys are salivating. It’s going to be a very odd movie indeed. Sort of back to the roots of the first one, but much stranger and, hopefully, more uncomfortable.”

A.W.E.S.O.M.E!!!

[Rec] 2 (2009)

Ok, Jaume Balagueró is by far the most promising movie director I have encountered in the last ten years. So far he hasnt made a movie even close to sub-par. Both The Nameless and Darkness are superior movies, and even the somewhat flawed Fragile had a number of awesome scenes in it. When REC came, it cemented his stature as a great horror filmmaker. Now comes REC 2 and the expectations are high. Is Balagueró capable of a good sequel?
Yes. REC 2 is as good, if not slightly better. The power of Balaguerós (and Paco Plaza of course) filmmaking is even more so when you realize that the movie is set in the exact same building as the first movie and and the fact they still manages to keep up the momentum is an awesome task.

So, if you havent seen the first movie you should. A cameracrew is following a group of firemen as they enter a building but it is soon quarantined when an infection, very similar to the one in 28 days later, starts to spread. It is a great piece of energetic horror with a lot of adrenaline all shown through the cameramans camera and part two is exactly the same. Fifteen minutes after the events of part 1 a SWAT-team is sent in along with a doctor to look for survivors. Of course, there is something more than that and we get an explanation to the cause of the infection. An awesome explanation. I gather some people will find it silly but me - that's the kind of plottwist I like. What really impresses me is that the movie basically reuses the same storystructure as the original, but somehow manages to come out fresh and engaging. If you liked the first part, you will like this as well. And if you hated the last 15 minutes of the first REC, you will hate the last 15 minutes in this one.

I liked this a lot, I just might even like this one a bit more that the original which proves once again that Spain is the horrormoviecountry of this millenium. So far at least. The movie is violent, scary and is an awesome example of how to make a sequel. Very well recommended.

Doghouse (2009)

I liked Jake Wests Evil aliens, a fun little movie full of gore and aliens and while it was a bit juvenile at times and too derivative of Peter Jacksons earliest goremovie, it was still always entertaing and full of gore which cant be a bad thing if treated with love. Here comes Doghouse, Wests latest project where he obviously has gotten a decent budget which means he can afford better actors and good production values. Too bad he wastes it all on a script like this.

So, a group of guy friends are taking a holiday in a small town to help one of their friends get over his recent divorce. Unknownst to them, the town they have chosen is exactly the right to place to do just that, since it's the site of some sort of event that has turned all the women into murderous zombies. Yes, this means there will be a lot of trash talk about females and relationships with them. Actually, there will be a lot of unfunny trash talk. The humour in this movie never really works, in spite of the fact that it is delivered by a group of very talented actors. The idea that women would turn into zombies could be made into a rather intriguing movie, but this sure as hell isnt it. Which sucks because Jake West handles the moviemaking bits with considerable skill. The horrorsequences are handled really well and the movie itself moves at a good pace with a fair amount of well executed bloody grue. In fact, this proves to me that if West finds good material, his next movie will be something to look forward to. As for Doghouse, if you can stand the stupid humour it makes for decent viewing. It's well done and gory, which I suppose makes up for some of its faults. Until next time, West.

Some good movies

Again, these movies do not belong in this blog but they are both so good that they deserve a mention.

Wall-E.
Cute, lovable and amazingly designed. Awesome stuff.

Coraline.
Stopmotion is rare these days, but Coraline is an awesome example that it still is a viable way of making movies. The movie scary fun of both adults and kids.

Days of darkness (2007)

So, a piece of a comet runs a trail through the skies above Northamerica. The next day most of the living people are walking corpses and the few survivors in LA are hiding in an abandoned military facility while constantly bickering within the group. Until they realize that there is more to these zombies than what appears at a first glance... you know, a scifi twist.

I wish I could say that this was a good movie, there are several things about it that i like but it's all drowned in a swamp of clichés. The story is interesting but draws too much inspiration from the movies the filmmakers obviously cherish, and suffers from some not so good storytelling. The story itself is fine, but the actions of some of the characters is somewhat erratic. The characters are ok, decently acted but never really feels like anything other than characters in a moviescript. The script tries hard but the endless monologues of exposition never feels authentic. Kudos for trying though, which is more than I can say for a whole bunch of movies with a similar budget. Another not so good bit are the special effects which are ok, as long as its plain facemakeup or gore. There is a sequence where a character is attacked by a creature, though well designed, just about as mobile as a McFarlane actionfigure. The whole thing just looks stupid. The background story is pretty fun but comes with a twist that is... well, corny to say the least.

Not all things are bad though. The movie has a decent flow, good amounts of fun gore, a little bit gratitous nudity and is never really boring. I found myself entertained throughout the entire movie so if you want your lowbudgetzombiemovies tinged with a bit of "50s"ish scifi, this just might be your thing. I've seen a lot of worse similar movies and all in all, it is a good try. Just keep your expectations low and you will come out of it unharmed.

Thankskilling (2009)

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