Review: Martyrs (2008, dir. Pascal Laugier)

Martyrs is, simply put, one of the best horror movies of the modern era, but I would never tell someone they should watch it. The film’s brutality will leave you shaking, sick, and questioning life and our existence. It’s not an easy watch by any means, but if you can stick through it to the end, the payoff is quite explosive. Possibly the best (or at least second best, after Inside) movie of the solid pack of violent French horrors, it’s bound to become a classic in the genre.

The movie begins with a young, emaciated, bleeding, and hysterical girl fleeing from a run down building. Placed in an orphanage, the girl, Lucie, befriends another resident there, a girl named Anna. Fifteen years later, Lucie (Mylene Jampanoi)is still haunted by a vision of a scarred, feral woman from her childhood. She breaks into the house of a family and shoots them all as they sit and eat breakfast. She calls Anna (Morjana Alaoui), who comes to help her dispose of the bodies. The scared woman attacks Lucie and cuts her, but it is revealed to all be in Lucie’s mind, as she cuts herself. Overcome, Lucie slits her throat.

Anna then discovers an underground compound housing another woman, with a metal contraption bolted to her head. After trying to free her, the woman is killed by a group of people who come to the house. They take Anna prisoner in the chamber below and she becomes one of the “test subjects”. A woman, (Catherine Begin), explains to her that her organization wants to find what lies beyond the human existence. To do this, they inflict pain and deprivation past the point of what a person can stand. So far they have only created victims, and they are hoping to create a martyr who can come back and tell them what they’ve seen.

From then on, Anna becomes the newest test subject and it is intensely disturbing. Again, this is not an easy watch. The violence is brutal and emotionless and I felt empty inside once the movie was finished. The end of the movie will leave you feeling hopeless and lost.

8/10

Review: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003, dir. Marcus Nispel)

It feels a little bit odd reviewing the remake of the 1974 original movie before I’ve even reviewed the first one, but here we go. What I went into this movie trying to do was think of it not as a remake, but as a stand alone movie. And as a stand alone movie, it’s a decent slasher movies with hot young adults getting tricked and killed by a psychopathic family in the middle of Texas.

However, it’s not a stand alone movie. It’s a remake of one of the most adored horror movies ever made. I can’t lie, I love the original. I think it’s one of the greatest movies ever made, not just in the horror genre. And the remake, well, it gets quite a few things wrong.

The movie follows five of said young adults on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. There’s Erin (Jessica Beil) and her boyfriend Kemper (Eric Balfour), Andy (Mike Vogel), Pepper (Erica Leerhsen) and Morgan (Jonathan Tucker). None of them are fleshed out characters in the slightest, but hey, it’s just a slasher. The main issue I had in terms of differences from the original was the blood. There’s a lot of gore in this movie, and none of its very effective and seems slapped on screen at random moments. The thing about the original is that there was virtually no gore, but it’s still remembered as a violent film.

Really, I don’t recommend watching the remake. It’s not a great movie, and if you’ve seen the original (which you should if you haven’t), you’re not going to like it.

3/10

Review: Halloween (2007, dir. Rob Zombie)

I’m a big Rob Zombie fan. His movies, his music, him as a person- I tend to love it all. But Halloween might be my least favorite of all of his works. Remakes are tricky, and the thing Zombie did right with this one is he made it more of a reimagining than a straight remake. However, as a horror movie, it doesn’t live up to its namesake, which is one of the greatest horror films of all time.
Most of the movie tells the origin story of Michael Myers . At ten years old, Michael (Daeg Faerch) is a misfit living in the now infamous Haddonfield, Illinois with his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie), his older sister Judith (Hanna R. Hall), his infant sister Angel, and his mom’s abusive, drunk boyfriend Ronnie (William Forsythe). After Michael murders a bully from school, he goes on a killing spree to rid him of the people who have caused him trouble- his sister, her boyfriend, and Ronnie. He is found guilty of first degree murder and sent to an asylum where child therapist Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) attempts to help him.

The only comfort Michael (now played by Tyler Mane) finds during the next fifteen years comes from the array of disturbing masks he makes, mirroring the one he wore on Halloween during his killing spree. He escapes from the asylum and returns to Haddonfield in search of his baby sister Angel. Angel is now Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), a normal teenage girl who was adopted and knows nothing of her origins. Dr. Loomis teams up with Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) to try to find the escaped and dangerous Michael
It’s an okay movie, and it delivers on the jump scares like the original, but only in the last chapter of the movie. The majority of the film focuses on Michael as a child in the asylum and his descent further into darkness. It’s interesting and dark, but it can move pretty slowly and copies the original too closely in the end scenes to really deliver anything new. It’s a solid chapter in Rob Zombie’s filmography, and fun to watch to see how he’s progressed, but don’t expect to be blown away.

5/10

Review: Skinwalker Ranch (2013, dir. Devin McGinn)

Okay first off, what the hell is this movie. I couldn’t decide at first if I liked it or not, but it sure was a strange ride. The movie is based off of the supernatural events that have apparently plagued Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, which mainly consist of UFO contact. The story takes place on the ranch after the ranch owner Hoyt’s (Jon Gries) son mysteriously vanishes into thin air on video. The team investigating consists of head researcher Sam (Steve Berg), veterinarian Lisa (Erin Cahill), security expert Kyle David (Ray Reed) and journalists Matt (Matthew Rocheleau) and Cameron (Devin McGinn).

As far as found footage goes, it’s one of the decent ones. It’s not great by any means, but it’s a lot of fun. As time goes by on the ranch, we see through hand held video and security camera footage that almost every supernatural occurance is happening on the ranch. Ghost children, werewolf/bigfoot monsters, UFO sightings, and cattle mutilations are among the biggest offenders. It slowly becomes clear to the visiting researchers that they have bitten off more than they could chew, and now they’re stuck trying to survive.

Watching them try to figure out what the hell is going on is entertaining, because really, what the hell is going on. You never really find out, you just get to watch people terrorized by big baddies from all subgenres, which is great packed into one short movie. So much more could have been done with this premise, and it really could have packed a punch, but it’s obvious that McGinn simply wanted to make a huge stew of his favorite genres, and not a deep genre classic. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with making a movie for the fun of it.

 

6/10

Review: Evil Dead (2013, dir. Fede Alvarez)

Horror movie remakes are tricky. There have been few (if any) I’ve enjoyed, until I watched Evil Dead. This is possibly the best remake of a movie in any genre I’ve ever seen. It’s not a shot for shot copy, it’s more of a reimagining of the original. The original is one of my favorite movies of all time (and the best horror franchise in my opinion), and the remake does it justice and takes on a life of its own.

            The movie centers around five friends, Mia (Jane Levy), her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez), his girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Olivia (Jessica Lucas). The five of them head to the woods to spend time helping Mia kick her heroin habit, an effort that has failed them in the past. David and Mia have a very strained relationship, Mia begins acting strangely, which they all attribute to withdrawal, but when she begins complaining of a foul odor, they find rotting animals in the basement and the Book of the Dead. Eric ignores the warnings on the book to leave it alone, and reads aloud from it, summoning a demon to the cabin. While trying to escape, Mia is attacked by the trees and a demonic version of her.

            Mia begins to break down when no one believes her, and after they find her burning herself in a boiling hot shower, Eric recognizes it as a scene from the Book of the Dead. Unable to get to a hospital due to flooding, the rest of the group finds themselves locked in a cabin with a now fully demonic Mia and none of them are safe. If you watch the movie (which you should), you’ll see someone cut their face off with a shard of glass, someone cut their arm off with an electric meat carver, someone spewing blood into another person’s mouth, and other incredible scenes of gore and violence.

            And you know what, it’s done incredibly well. In my opinion, the reason this movie is so successful is due to the lack of CGI. When someone is soaked with blood, it’s not put in later, they are actually covered in fake blood. And there is a lot of fake blood. It’s not the scariest movie, but it certainly has its moments, but the sheer force of gore and battery of demonic possession ensures this movie sticks with you after the credits roll (watch to the end of the credits to make you sure see the Bruce Campbell cameo!). Sam Raimi produced the remake and chose Fede Alvarez to direct it, and it pays off. This is a thrill ride soaked with blood, and you’ll have a hell of a lot of fun watching it.

 

9/10

Review: Ginger Snaps (2000, dir. John Fawcett)

Every teenager should be required to watch this movie in school. That’s my position and I’m sticking to it. Maybe the best werewolf movie of modern times, it’s a film stocked with powerful female leads and a message: don’t mess with high school girls or they’ll tear you apart. Literally.

Sisters Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) are obsessed with death and dying together. They’re outcasts at their high school and take revenge by attempting to kidnap the dog of a classmate, because the town has been plagued by dog deaths. Ginger is attacked by something that night but her injuries heal miraculously quickly. Soon after, Ginger begins to change. She begins dressing differently, seducing classmates, growing hair and a tail, and she gets her period for the first time. Brigitte is concerned for her sister and gets the help of local drug dealer Sam (Kris Lemche). The two realize Ginger is turning into a werewolf and try to find a way to stop her from killing.

Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins

The heart of the movie lies with Brigitte and Ginger, two sisters who will do literally anything to save one another. It’s a beautiful and terrifying metaphor for female puberty. Perkins and Isabelle are fantastic in their roles, with Isabelle especially giving a powerful and incredibly memorable performance. It’s a twist on the werewolf genre, using women in a way horror movies tend not to, but it also shows it as a human problem, not a supernatural one.

7/10

Review: I Saw the Devil (2010, dir. Kim Ji-woon)

            This is one of my favorite movies of all time. My blood was boiling the entire way through, and when it was finished, it’s hard to decipher exactly what I was feeling. Every shot in the movie is beautiful and cold, and the violence follows in the same way. It’s a masterpiece of revenge, brutality and humanity.

            The movie starts with the murder of Joo-yun (Oh San-ha), a young woman whose car breaks down. The good Samaritan who stops to help her turns out to be a serial killer who has picked her as his next victim. Her fiancé, Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun) is a secret agent with the National Intelligence Service who makes it his mission to find the man who killed Joo-yun and inflict more pain on him than he could imagine. The man is Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik) a school bus driver. Once Soo-hyun finds Kyung-chul, he tracks and hunts him like a man possessed, inflicting acts of excruciating violence on the man without actually killing him.

Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik

            The movie reflects the worst and best of humanity- a good man’s ability to kill, and his capability to love. The lead performances of Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik are intense and incredible. I held my breath through a lot of the scenes they had together, just waiting to see what the next move would be. In its simplest form, this is a revenge story. It’s possibly the best revenge story ever filmed, but the heart of the movie is far more complex. It’s about right and wrong, and how far one man will go to find justice.

 

10/10 

Review: Cannibal Holocaust (1980, dir. Ruggero Deodato)

I’m finally reviewing a classic! I have an entire section of my heart dedicated to classic horror movies, as many of them terrified me when I was younger and have stuck with me for years. Cannibal Holocaust is one I didn’t watch until I was a bit older (thankfully fourteen year old me had enough sense to steer clear of this one for a few years), but I’ve seen it a few times since my first viewing.

            The movie focuses on a missing documentary crew who disappeared in the Amazon while filming cannibal tribes. Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) is sent to the Amazon to try to discover what happened to the missing team. With his guides, Chaco (Salvatore Basile) and Miguel, they eventually find the remains of the missing crew when they are taken by natives to a shrine made from their bones. They are given their reels of footage and they leave for New York. Hoping to make a documentary series from the footage, the truly disturbing scenes that have placed this film on the short list of the most disturbing films ever made, come from the footage recovered in the rainforest.

            The team of documentarians, Alan (Carl Gabriel Yorke), Faye (Francesca Ciardi), Jack (Perry Pirkanen), and Mark (Luca Barbareschi), are shown to be, well, terrible people. When they aren’t butchering turtles or torturing natives, they’re taking turns raping native women and burning entire villages with their residents locked in their houses. It’s horrible to watch, absolutely horrible. The most iconic scene from the movie has to be the bloody, naked woman impaled through her entire body on a stake. It’s really, really gross.

Each time I watch it I go in thinking I’m going to see it through new eyes, and I’m going to understand the true meaning of the movie…but I don’t. I understand completely why this is one of the true cinematic staples in the world. It’s a sick, bloody and hyper realistic statement piece about the cruelty shown to what we don’t understand and the western world’s perceived authority and right to dominate those who live differently than we do.

            However, the question of violence is one that is most prevalent in this movie. Is it too extreme? Is there a reason for the extended scenes of torture and rape other than to shock the viewer? I’m afraid I can’t answer that question, but believe me, there are plenty of people who will be willing to have a lively debate about the validity of violence in horror movies. If you haven’t seen Cannibal Holocaust, you really should, and you should read up on the charges brought against the filmmakers by those who thought what they were watching was a snuff movie.

 

6/10

Review: Live! (2007, dir. Bill Guttentag)

After having watched Live!, I’d be very hesitant to classify it as a horror movie. But I’ve watched it, so I shall review it. And I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It’s an incredibly farfetched premise, with a bit of overacting and so much stretching to make it realistic it almost crosses from fiction to magical realism. But it’s great. It’s an obvious indictment of the extremes we as a society will go to for entertainment, but the statement it makes is true (although not quite to the lengths this film takes it).

            Katy (Eva Mendes), is a television executive who is trying to come up with the next big show. She comes up with something she knows is going to not only push the envelope, but it might just bring her network down all together.

Eva Mendes

 

A game show based around Russian roulette. It’s not staged, it’s not fake. Six contestants and a revolver with all six chambers loaded, however only one of them has a live round. The show is eventually approved and Katy has to deal with many problems, ranging from legal issues to suicidal contestant applicants. Eventually, the six are chosen. They are a young writer (Rob Brown), a performance artist (Monet Mazur), a wannabe actress (Katie Cassidy), a second generation gay immigrant (Jay Hernandez), a struggling family man (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and a full of life sports star (Eric Lively). They’re all likable. And one of them is killed.

            It’s sort of shocking to watch and imagine it actually happening, even though you know it would never be allowed to be on television. My main complaint with the movie is the acting. It’s not great. I like almost everyone in the film (especially Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and there’s a level of over acting necessary to make this the caricature of society it needs to be, but I’m just not sure it worked. Yes, the plot is ludicrous but that’s the point, and it should be enjoyed, not scrutinized. Give this one a watch if you like to be absolutely baffled by movies and enjoy mockumentaries.

 

6/10

Review: House at the End of the Street (2012, dir. Mark Tonderai)

 

            I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from this movie, but it wasn’t what I got when I watched it. Maybe I was expecting something a little more akin to The Glass House and less like When A Stranger Calls, but needless to say, I was disappointed. I may be in the minority, but Jennifer Lawrence is incredibly hit and miss with me when it comes to her performances, and this is definitely not one of her strongest.

in case you live under a rock and don’t know, this is jennifer lawrence.

            The movie tells the story of Elissa Cassidy (Lawrence) and her mother Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) who move to a friendly small town where they live in a big house in the woods. The house next door is the Jacobson house, where the parents were brutally murdered by their daughter Carrie Anne while their son Ryan (Max Thieriot) was away. Carrie Anne disappeared after the murder. Some believe she drowned, some believe she still lives in the woods. Either way, Ryan Jacobson lives alone in the house and soon strikes up a romance with Elissa. As Elissa and Ryan’s relationship progresses, more is revealed about Carrie Anne and her mysterious disappearance.

            I know some were surprised by the ending of the film, but I personally thought it was fairly ordinary. It’s not a bad movie. The script is decent, the acting is solid and it’s an easy watch, but there was nothing original or new about it. There are enough thrills to keep you entertained, but it won’t stick with you past the closing credits.

 

4/10