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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Maléfique (2002)

Here is another movie that somehow eluded me. I've known about it but for some mysterious reason I ignored it, until now. Which was very, very stupid. Maléfique is a movie that every horror fan out there should see.

The entire duration of the movie is basically set in one room (with the exception of two short scenes) and it is a damn fine feat to keep a constant momentum for 90 minutes. Maléfique does that, with honors. The movie starts with an excellent intro where a man paint a strange symbol on a wall, using the blood of a dying man as paint, taking it from a open wound in the "soontobeacorpse"'s stomach. We then flash forward 80 years to the same location, a prison cell, where a new intern has been incarcarated. He shares his cell with three other people: Marcus, a violent transvestite, Paquerette, seemingly retarded who ate his six months old sister and Lassalle, an intellectual who killed his wife for unknown reasons. Our "hero", Carrère, is here for a trial for fraud but is waiting for his wife to post bail. When he realizes that his wife has taken ownership over his company and is refusing him to see his young son, he gets a bit peeved. At the same time he finds a mysterious book hidden in the wall of the prison cell, some sort of diary describing a way to create a portal that will lead out of there. None of the belives any of the writing at first but when Lassare reads an incantation out loud at night and Paquerette loses his fingers on both hands "because the wall ate them", they start to take it a bit more seriously. When one of the characters try to destroy it, well, lets just say that the book punishes him in a way that almost made me look away from the screen. They try to get rid of the book after that but we all know that it will appear again, under really mysterious corcumstances...

Good stuff indeed. Maléfique is a blast from start to finish thanks to an intriguing story that never goes into some arthouse lalaland which so often happens when filmmakers really dont know how how to wrap things up properly. These guys have a story to tell and they tell it well, with a great ending which obviously is inspired by all those cool horror comics from EC and Warren. It is also populated with interesting characters who are all well acted and not just horror movie clichés. They all have their little quirks and weird ways of behaving which just adds to the entertainment. Another bonus are a couple of nice gorescenes which are all painful to look at and beautifully executed with old school special effects. Yes, I liked this film a lot. It has a french tinge of Lovecraft and Clive Barker which cant be a bad thing if treated properly and it's twists are never overly murky in its details. A must see actually.

Growth (2009)

Talk about a wasted opportunity! I love parasites. Yes, I love and worship the little critters, I admit that. There is nothing more vile and disgusting than a creature that enters your body, grows into it and changes your dna for the only purpose of its own survival. What a perfect plotdevice for a horror movie, eh? Movies like Alien have shown that you can make a great horror movie with the concept and while it would be unfair to compare, you still do. Growth takes an interesting backstory and does... nothing much with it I'm afraid. It starts out well but dribbles away into oblivion leaving the viewer very dissapointed. It does have a pretty good trailer though, which made me buy the movie without even reading any reviews. Sucker.

It starts incredibly well with a sequence detailing parts of an experiment gone wrong on a small inhabited island where a scientist is performing experiments with parasites to create some sort of superhuman. When the intro ends we have learned that the experiment failed horribly and that a young girl was evacuated in a small boat. Ok, flash forward 20 years and the young girl now grown up has received a letter about a property on the island which belongs to her which she should be able to sell at a high price so naturally she goes there along with her boyfriend, her sick stepbrother and a female friend who has the hots for the brother. The locals arent exactly happy that she has arrived though.. maybe they are hiding something? Could it be that the parasites are on the prowl again? How big is the chance that the waekling brother will be infected by the parasite that supposedly turns a normal human into a superhuman? And why is it that the police seems to have their HQ at a highschool?

Yes, it starts out well. A couple of flashbackscenes (that both are in the trailer) are incredibly effective but it seems like the filmmakers didnt know how to handle this potential. The brother gets infected and runs around being alternately evil and not so evil, only to suit the purpose of the somewhat confused plot. The concept and execution of the parasites are well handled with the slithering little things poking out of eyeballs and holes in the infected bodies, but when the plot meanders around never reaching a satisfactory climax, it's potential is wasted. The script somehow feels as if it was only half finished when they started shooting it and made up stuff along the way and the climax is somewhat anticlimactic since there is never any real threat to the community. There are supposed to be a fairly decent population on the island but you never see any of them except in a scene or two and I can promise you that there is no horrorcontent in those moments. The actors do a decent enough job with the material they have and there is absolutely nothing wrong with Gabriel Cowans directing capabilities, only his scriptwriting. The movie feels like yet another one of those generic Syfymovies, although somewhat better shot and with better special effects, but with a worse script than usual. It's not the worst movie out there, it has some good bits but also a shitload of plotholes and stupid behaviour (My favorite being a bit spoilerish so skip the next sentence if you dont want to find out - the heroines boyfriend gets killed in a random scene without any particular impact but she never even asks about him or seem to miss him at all. Eh?).

A interesting concept but deeply flawed. Too bad, the parasites themselves were cool.

Blood creek aka Town creek (2009)

Do you want to know why this world is going to hell? There are many theories but I believe that there is only one reason - there arent enough nazizombie movies. Thankfully Joel Schumacher, trying to redeem himself after the vile Batman movies he made, has made a fun little flick which actually only has one dead nazi, but one hell of a nazi who can bring the dead back to life. Zombiehorses, thats a first. Well, technically Amando De Ossorios Blind dead had zombie horses, but the ones in this movie are pretty nasty and try to eat people. Which is nice.

In the early stages of the second world war a german family are living on a small farm in America. They receive a letter from the German High command that they are to accomodate a scientist searching for a mysterious rune. Forward to today: Evan is a paramedic who somehow is the scorn of the family. At least to his senile dad since he didnt go to Iraq to serve his country. His brother did, but he dissapeared on a fishing trip a year earlier. While the rest of his family still believes he is out there somewhere, Evan is trying to get some closure. Until his brother bangs on his door one night, looking like he hasnt shaved or washed himself for a year. Before they tell any of the family, he asks his brother to bring a gun and come with him, without asking any questions. They travel by boat on the town (bloooood) creek to a remote house (which is the house we saw in the prologue) and, well, all hell breaks loose. It seems the evil nazi in the beginning of the movie has stopped the family from aging so that they can provide him with fresh victims while he sleeps in the cellar near the runestone. Now we have a siegesituation where the dead nazimummy/zombie/vampire resurrects anything dead in the vicinity to get to the brothers. Horsezombies, yay. Dogzombies too.

This is fun stuff. The evil nazi looks great in his dark leather coat and filthy facewrappings and the whole idea of him laying a siege to the farmhouse by raising dead farmanimals is genuinly exciting. Sure, there is nothing really that original about the whole affair but Shumacher keeps the action flowing, adding a sprinkle of gore now and then. Henry Cavill and Dominic Purcell are fine as the two brothers, and Michael Fassebender seems to have a good time as our lovable nazifiend even though he is covered in makeup most of the time, though he looks decidedly unscarier when he removes them later on and even more unscary when he removes his facial skin. His later appearances doesnt even come close to what a cool creature he is when he first appears and its too bad they didnt keep that all throughout the movie. Still, he looks much cooler than your average slasherfiend so all in all, it's a good nazizombievampire we have here and as nazizombiemovies go, Blood Creek is not bad. It is a well shot, fairly exciting and slightly gory romp which I would recommend to all fans of the genre and even if you are not a fan, it is still a fun little horrorflick and Joel Shumacher is partly forgiven for his Batmanmovies.

Tropic thunder (2008)

As usual I dont like to review mainstream movies, but Tropic thunder needs a special mention. Ben Stiller has made a fun, gory homage to 80s jungle exploitation and if you like his sense of humor, this will be an excellent afternoon. As a bonus we get Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr, Steeve Cogan, Tom Cruise and a bunch of other good comedy actors in good comedy mood. Good shit!

Atomik Circus - Le retour de James Bataille (2004)

Since this is one of my favorite movies of the past decade I decided to translate my swedish review to hopefully gather some more fans of this delicious little scifigorefest, which everyone should own. So go and get it now! Or read the review and buy it later.

Jason Flemyng plays stuntman James Bataille (James Battle) who arrives in the little town of Skotlett in the french swamps (looking a bit more like Louisiana than France. A bit like the Cajun village in Walter Hills Southern comfort) to perform a motorcyclestunt during the annual Cow Pie Festival. He meets the mayors sexy daughter Concia (played by french singer Vanessa Paradis) and they both fall madly in love. Of course, the stunt fails miserably and James Battle manages to destroy the Mayors bar which results in a long prison sentence. A year later the village is planning the Cow Pie festival and by chance a slimey record company representative happens to be in town and gets really horny when he meets Concia, who just happens to dream about being a recording artist. In the meantime James Battle escapes from prison to reunite with his beloved Concia. To this mix we add all the weird inhabitants of Skotlett and the nearby swamp, for instance we have the guy who lives in a small cottage together with his dead, stuffed grandmother (Who James Battle manages to rip an arm of) or the guy who plans to perform in the Cow Pie talent show by squeezing on his dogs tumour so that the poor dog "sings". It's like a french comic book version of Deliverance.

And it gets even better.

While all of this is happening a meteorite crashes nearby and out of it emerges a swarms of evil, tentacled aliens who float around killing everything in their path. Escept the record company guy who only gets infected. In this movie infected means that he turns into a wandering tentacled alien in a suit who still wants to fuck Vanessa Paradis.

Wow.

Atomik Cirkus is glorious entertainment from square one. One part twisted arthousecomedy, one part french comic book, one part musical (Vanessa Paradis performs a couple of really good rock songs throughout the movie) and one part scifigore. Brothers Thierry and Didier Poiraud direct a script based on a comic book that they wrote themselves and they do an excellent job, being flashy where it needs to be without overdoing it. The cinematography is superb and together with the lovely, dirty environments and the great special effects, Atomik Circus is a feast for the eyes. The wonderful aliens dominate every scene they're featured in and it gets even better as soon as they start to dish out gory death, which means lots of decapitatons by tentacle. Acting is generally good (with a cameo by Venantino Venantini who we've seen in many an italian exploitationmovie) and the only negative thing I can come up with is that the characters are a bit shallow and stereotypical. But who cares? Tentacled aliens goddangit! The only thing a movie needs! The one thing that stops the movie from a perfect ten though, is a somewhat ambigious ending where you get the feeling that the filmmakers didnt really know how to end this. Or maybe they were setting it up for an even wilder sequel? In the end, it doesnt really hurt the movie. Atomik circus is a delightfully shot, gory cult movie that will stay in my heart for a loooong time.

The only dvd I know of with english subtitles is the thairelease which is cheap, but I have no idea of the quality. It's still worth it.