Paranormal activity (2007)

Yes, this movie scared the crap out of me, I will admit that and that is a good grade. The concept is simple and works just fine, as long as you aren't expecting a barrage of special effects and melting face, where a young couple decides to videotape their paranormal experiences and gets into a situation that progressively gets worse and worse. The husband has a tendency to behave a bit assholeish, but other than that it is a good horror movie. Should be watched with all the lights turned off. Cant say much more than that. If you like good, creepy horror, this is for you.

Now we wait for the Global asylum rip off. Or is it out already?

Carriers (2007)

The word of the day is: Pointless. A plaguemovie without the plague turning people into the living dead or homicidal maniacs? People on a journey through a dead country without the realization that the end of the journey will not bring any sort of happiness. Just betrayal and death.

Carriers follow two brothers journeying through the remains of America where a deadly plague has killed most of the the living. They live by a particular set of rules, which supposedly makes them outwit the infection but also feels a bit weird and goofy when you see this movie a couple of weeks after Zombieland. The somberness of the movie does keep the goof from bubbling up from under the surface and the scenes with the main characters picking up Christopher Meloni and his sick daughter who supposedly knows of a place where there is a cure strengthens that. It is an interesting journey but as soon as Meloni leaves the pictures we're left with an average apocalypseflick which probably could have used a horde of redeyed crazies to liven things up a bit. It's well shot and decently acted but doesnt really have anything to say. Entertaining up to a point and though worth watching, it's only the movies first half hour which you will remember. The rest? Pretty much pointless.

Moon (2009)

The scifimovies were better in the seventies, at least the hard ones. There was a somber, more calculated tone over and the special effects were more serious, preferring realism over flash. Movies like Andromeda strain and Phase IV (everyone who thinks its a worthy candidate for MS3TK is a second hand human being and should be shot in the kneecaps) set a standard which todayss scifi have a very tough time following, and are instead filling up with empty special effects. Well, Moon is not a perfect movie - it's pace is awfully slow and the "twist" is rather predictable but the movie comes out a winner since it is obviously made with love for the genre.
Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut on the final week of a three year shift at a mining facility on the moon. He is very happy that he is soon going home, but his mind is starting to play tricks on him, making him see things that arent there. Because of all this he has an accident while going outside to a automatic mining rig. He soon wakes up in the moonbase but there is already someone else there, someone that looks and acts just like him. What the f##k is going on?

You'll figure things out pretty quick and realize where this is all going to end, but it is still a worthwile journey thanks to a smart script and a two great performances by Sam Rockwell as Sam and... Sam? The visuals of the moonbase and the outside moonscape are another of the movie's assets, making the movie a nice, visual feast. Yes, this is a piece of levelheaded, good hard scifi in an era where hard scifi isnt interesting for the moviegoers. Thank you Michael Bay. Expect a slow pace and you'll be justly rewarded.

Messengers 2: The Scarecrow (2009)

The first one was better.

Not enough? The first one could've been pretty dull if it hadnt been for the Pang-brothers who has a nice visual flair to overcome a rather boring script. This one does not. It is very predictable and is rather unscary. It does have some nudity. That's about it. It's not bad, just... not very good. Pedestrian.

Shock-O-Rama (2005)

More Brett Piper!

This time we're dealing with an anthology with three fairly different stories, all made the same way - on the cheap but with a clear love for the genre and simple yet very effective special effects. Not everything works, particularily the third story but when the movie is over you know it was worth every penny.

This main story is about Rebecca Raven, an actress always playing the same type of roles for a moviecompany - cheap horror with lots of nudity. Now where have I heard that before? She gets fired when the head of the company wants a new starlet and decides to rent a house in the countryside to get some welldeserved rest. Well, until the dead black magician who used to live in the house decides to ressurect himself in the form of a decaying corpse.
Story number two, my favorite, is set in a junkyard where a small ufo crashlands and goes on the warpath to kill the owner and his exwife. It all ends with a supercool stopmotionanimated monster made out of old cars welded together.
Story number three is the blandest, something straight out of Outer limits though with a bit more nudity where a gigantic brain from the future uses young women in some sort of way to experience emotions, something you dont get to feel in the future where everyone is a giant brain.

It's a bit of a mixed bag, with fairly different styles but the result is overall good. The first story is the mosttraditional one, where Misty Mundae does a good job and is clearly in on the joke. She is a bit uneven, but has potential with the right material and she does show herself naked, which is a plus. There is even some gore here, nothing really exceptional but some cut off limbs and stuff like that. Story number two is as I mentioned earlier the best one, with good acting from Rob Monkiewicz and Caitlin Ross and together with the really nice special effects we get an hour of solid entertainment when our main characters are chased by some small gremlins who can turn scrapmetal into mechs. Story number three is the worst one, where the story is the culprit. It never really gets of to a decent start, is over before you know it (which of course can be a good thing), the acting ranges from really lousy to ok and the only thing that makes it watchable are the large amounts of nudity and a really nice nightmarescene with nudity, gore and a nice location.

Shock-O-Rama is a good anthology which stands up well to its peers in spite of some weaknesses, especially when you consider how much money was used. Brett Piper knows what the audience wants and manages to churn out yet another nice little exploitationpic

Sauna (2008)

Ok, here goes: Sauna is the best horror movie that Scandinavia has ever produced. So there. On the other hand, Scandinavia isnt exactly well known for it's quality horror output. Norway has produced a couple of nice looking slashers and the nice little chiller De Dödas tjärn, but other than that? Nothing. Well, if I'm forgetting something you're welcome to remind me but at the moment I cant remember one good swedish or danish horror movie. Thankfully Finland is here to claim the throne and show the world that the dreary, dark long winters can produce something that is better than most of all the movies that are produced out there. Finland is a bit like Sweden in a sense, which isnt so strange since finland has from time to time been a part of Sweden and a large part of Finland speaks swedish as their main language. Both countries has always has a tendency for bleak dramas, and most people out there has heard of both Bergman and Kaurismäki. I've been wondering when someone would arrive on the "scene" and combine that darkness with genuine horror and make a truly scandinavian horrormovie. And here it is: Sauna.

The year is 1595. A war between Sweden and Russia has just ended and Brothers Knut and Eerik are part of a joint Swedish/Russian expedition to define the new border between the two countries. While staying at a lone farmers house, Eerik kills the farmer (something that comes to him way too easy having been a soldier for a long time) and while Knut does not take part in the killing, he is perhaps not entirely without blame. As the expedition moves into an uncharted swamp, something is haunting them and it all culminates when they find an unknown village in the middle of the bog, built upon the old grounds of a russian monastery whose inhabitants mysteriously vanished. And then there is the Sauna, a building even older than the monastery itself which according to legend strips you away of all your sins when you enter. As one of the characters says early in the movie, "What if hell is just an unclean place unseen by the eyes of god?"

I've left the description of the movie purposely vague, since it needs to be experienced by visuals and sounds alone. There are so many elements that combine the whole story. The whole area is saturated by the horrors of the war and remnants of paganism that Christianity is trying to remove. Eerik is a soldier who is coming to realization that the war is over. The first word of the movie 73, the number of people he has killed and he is trying to come to grips with that. These are only a few of the pieces of the puzzle and I will admit that the puzzle itself doesnt exactly turn into an image you will be able to interpret fully. But when a story is as intelligent and dark as this, all of that becomes secondary. As a horror piece, this is superior. You feel that you are very close to grasping what really is happening, but never really enough. Just enough to come out of the movie satisfied and in the end, that is what matters. The horror images themselves are tremendeously delicious and the violence is cold and brutal. All of this is helped by great acting by Ville Virtanen as Eerik and Tommi Eronen as Knut. The cinematography perfectly captures the cold and grey swamp and Antti-Jussi Annila is one of the most interesting directors to come out of Scandinavia in years, especially after viewing this and his marrying of Kalevala and Hong Kong action in his earlier movie, Jade Warrior. Iiro Küttners script is full of great ideas which Annila captures perfectly with his camera. Yes, the pace is slow and there are a lot of things that aren't explained to satisfaction, but thats just about the only criticism I can come up with when it comes to Sauna and since it's a perfect 85 minutes in length, even slasherfreaks havent got the time to be bored. Some of them probably will, but it's their loss. Go back to watching Slasherremakes and worshipping Kane Hodder.

Yes, I loved this movie. It combines all that horrible Scandinavian despair with an interesting take on Finlands and Swedens past, and manages to make an original, genuinly Scandinavian movie. I keep saying Scandinavian because since I'm Swedish I would like to take some credit for all of this greyness but since Sweden hasnt produced anything like this, or even anything remotely good in the genre, I guess I will have to end this review by admitting that this is a 100% Finnish movie. So, Sweden, when are we going to do something like this? No no, Fuck us all, Göta Kanal 3 is premiering in a couple of days and a fourth of Swedens population will have seen it within six months. God, I hate Sweden. And you should watch Sauna.

Footnote: Göta Kanal 3 is what we in Sweden call a fars/farce. It's the humourequivelant of Deuce Bigalow European Gigolo. Only even more boring.

Comicbooktime

I thought I should beak the pattern for a bit and review two horrorrelated comicbooks. One of the is in swedish so for you nonswedish/danish/norwegian/etc readers, sorry.


The first one is Max Brooks The Zombie survival guide - Recorded attacks. Max wrote the superb fakenonfictionbook about the survivors of a zombieapocalypse, World War Zero. Recorded attacks contains 12 short stories about known/unknown zombieinfestations throughout our history between 60000bc and 1992, in various places across our globe such as Africa, Japan and Siberia. There isnt much dialogue here, just informative descriptions of the events as if interpreted from some old tale told throughout the years. The illustrations are Recorded attacks strongest asset, giving us many different ways of showing us how a zombiebite can look like. Other than that, it is a quick read, and an interesting addon to Brooks novel. If you like zombiemovies or World War Zero, you'll like this.


The other comic I've read is a slightly flawed, yet very interesting one. Silhuetter (Silhouettes in English) is a anthology of different horror comics, all made by some sort of comic book collective in Sweden who has decided that there arent enough adult comics produced in Sweden. They're absolutely right and I applaud them for this. The book has eight different stories, all horror, though in very different settings and moods. My absolute favorite is Bunkerfeber (bunkerfever), a short story by Lars Krantz (author of Dödvatten aka Deadwater), set in a trench in World war 1 which supposedly is part of a larger story, something I'm really looking forward to. The art is suitably dark and displays a good eye for horror. Another good one is Oflyt (some sort of swedish slang for Unlycky. Cant think of a good english word at the moment) by Johannes Streith which is a simple, yet effective story about a DHL courier being mistaken for someone else, with rather nasty consequences. Another story that has to be mentioned is the adaption of H.P.Lovecrafts The Statement of Randolph Carter, all drawn with animals instead of humans where our lead characters are a cat and a seal. The art is rather uneven, but has potential, but the main fault is that the story itself doesnt really lend itself to the format. The other stories are ok, lots of people going insane within these pages but nothing really special but on the other hand nothing really bad either. All in all, a decent little horror anthology and I really hope it sells, so that there will be a future for this.