FINAL GIRLS!

I would compare FINAL GIRLS to THE LAST ACTION HERO but that might infer some negative connotations to the film.  I can't deny that FINAL GIRLS does have a similar concept of people getting trapped in a movie through the magic of cinema.  Instead of getting stuck in JACK SLATER part IV starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, our protagonists find themselves in a slasher flick from the 80's titled CAMP BLOODBATH having to battle a Jason Vorhees type slasher named Billy Murphy.  Both are highly imaginative but LAST ACTION falters by being too zany with the concept adding an out of place cartoon cat that is a detective and having that annoying kid from PREHYSTERIA as the lead actor.  FINAL GIRLS does a better job with the concept.  It manages to stay on the line between between horror and comedy to deliver a sincere heartfelt drama that is surprisingly effective.

Max (The exceptional Taissa Farmiga!) loses her mom (The also exceptional Malin Akerman!) in a car wreck at the beginning of FINAL GIRLS.  Her mom was an actress who played one of the doomed counselors in the cult classic CAMP BLOODBATH.  Max is talked into going to see her mom's film playing at a nearby movie theater.  When a fire breaks out in the theater Max and her friends escape through the movie screen and find themselves in the actual movie.  Trapped Max and her friends try to work with the fictional characters to fight off Billy the invincible slasher who gave the camp its notorious name of CAMP BLOODBATH.

The film is about Max dealing with the loss of her mom.  Seeing Nancy, the character her mom played in CAMP BLOODBATH alive and well, Max takes it upon herself to try and save her from her inevitable death at the hands of Billy Murphy.  If Max can save Nancy in the movie world then maybe somehow she will have her mom back too.  You can see that FINAL GIRLS has a lot of heart to it.  In most horror films nowadays you only see heart if it is literally torn out of a characters chest with liberal amounts of red stuff strewn about.

FINAL GIRLS doesn't rely on gore at all. There is barely any blood anywhere!  How brave!  Blood is replaced by an imaginative story.  Max and her friends find themselves in a horror movie.  This means they are experiencing every scene in the movie.  They see the movie credits.  They get absorbed into the flashback scenes.  They teach one-dimensional counselors to have more depth to them.  Its all rather interesting taking your mind off the fact that there is no gore.  The PG-13 rating doesn't hurt the film.

Billy Murphy looks exactly like the Jason Vorhees from FREDDY VS. JASON except for the mask of course.  Billy's trademark mask is more of a wooden block carved to look like an angry frog totem.  Billy's back story of how he became disfigured is similar to Cropsey's in THE BURNING.  Not a bad combination.  Having to abide by the rules of slasher films  only the 'final' girl can kill Billy at the end of the movie.  This presents a problem for Max's plan to save Nancy. Max is now a character in the film and there can be only one female protagonist alive to defeat the killer.

My hope is that FINAL GIRLS continues to find a bigger and bigger audience influencing the next generation of horror film makers.  Horror needs that.  For the last 20 years or so too many creators of the horror genre have been overly influenced by the classic TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.  Bleak and bland horror has now taken up too much of our time.  In contrast the look of FINAL GIRLS is bright and cheery with beautiful flowers growing about in various colors.  It takes a daring director to try such a thing in a slasher film.  Granted CAMP BLOODBATH is a fake movie meant to look different from the real world presented in FINAL GIRLS but I think a bolder look to horror that is more visually vibrant and not so colorless would be a refreshing approach.  At least it is a good way to get your slasher film to get noticed.  Slasher films can be artistic too.

Jason

NEON MANIACS! We want a sequel!...Or at least I do.

After being the only survivor of an attack by a group of crazy costumed zombie/monsters at a park near the Golden Gate Bridge, Natalie tries to get back to her normal life as a high school student.  The problem is that the police do not believe her account of what happened and the parents her newly dead friends want to know where their missing loved ones are.  Thankfully Steve Guttenberg and Paul Rudd had a child together and he grew up to be Steven who shows up and starts up a relationship with her.  Starting up a relationship is a great way of getting your mind off of your friends who you have just seen get murdered by monsters a couple of nights ago.  Well don't worry, folks.  This isn't a romance movie.  The Neon Maniacs have her pegged to get murdered and they do what they can to kill her even if it means showing up to one of the most awkward and embarrassing battle of the bands in the history of cinema.

NEON MANIACS is a slasher film with strong concepts that hint at bigger ideas that should be explored in further sequels.  Sadly there are none.  The movie presents these creatures that are never fully explained.  A narrator at the beginning gives a vague voice over about the world becoming violent which brings the Neon Maniacs.  That is all we are given.  Each Maniac has his own unique look or occupation.  We have a samurai, a surgeon, an archer, a hangman, stabby guy, an ax wielding psycho, a biker, a soldier and one guy that looks like he has scimitars for hands!  There are more but I must move on.  To accompany them are these one eyed dwarf lizard people that collect and drag back the murdered victims of the Neon Maniacs with meat hooks leaving no bodies.  We are left intrigued and we want to know more.  What are these guys?  Where do they come from? What do they do with the bodies?  Did these guys invent cosplay?  The answers are left to our imaginations.  Some guy at the beginning of the film finds a cow skull with tarot like cards that each has a picture of a Neon Maniac.  Then the guy gets axed.  Does the movie go back and explain the significance of these cards?  Heck, no.

There is a good sized body count and some fun gory moments to keep the audience from realizing that there really isn't much story or plot to THE NEON MANIACS and the dialogue isn't as clever as it thinks it is.  Still the movie has a strong spooky atmosphere when the night comes and the fog rolls in and the Neon Maniacs emerge from underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.  I wouldn't want to be there when that happens.  Another interesting thing is that the Neon Maniacs have a strong aversion to water.  It makes them melt.  I think it is their only weakness.  Now I know that sounds dumb.  Somehow the movie makes it work.  For instance one of the main characters is a young girl who wants to make monster movies.  She really is into monsters.  She takes it upon herself to figure out how to kill the Maniacs.  She uses crosses and garlic but when she uses "holy" water the monster attacking her dies.  I thought that was a clever way of figuring out their weakness.  Who would have thought that water would be so effective?  Also I like that a girl was cast in the part of the monster enthusiast.  Most of the time a boy would be written for that role.  Way to be ahead of the times, NEON MANIACS.

I saw on THE FACEBOOK that there was a page for NEON MANIACS 2.  Hopefully someone is out there trying to make that happen.  I would love to see a sequel to answer the questions brought up in the first one and maybe give us even more questions to ignite our imaginations.  A good horror movie inspires the imaginations of it's audience.  That is exactly what the first one accomplishes.  THE NEON MANIACS, despite being cheesy and flawed, is a terrific film that should be seen by every fan of eighties horror movies.  I will guarantee after watching NEON MANIACS you will do what I do and keep a fully loaded Super Soaker in your car at all times just in case you have a run in with some cosplay weirdos that just may not be from your dimension.  You never know.

Jason

Steve Guttenberg and Paul Rudd had a son...

SCARE ZONE is a splattery good time! LOL!

SCARE ZONE is about a group of young people taking up jobs to help run a haunted house attraction.  They each have their own troubles getting adjusted to their new jobs but eventually they all manage.  Oopsy for them though, someone has taken it upon themselves to make these young people permanent fixtures of Scare Zone.  One by one a killer stalks the new hires killing them throughout the three day event and hiding the bodies in plain sight as part of the gruesome displays.  You just know that one day this is going to happen in real life.

Most of the characters are a little over the top and don't feel like real people but it fits the light-hearted tone of the film.  I did like Oliver the high spirited owner of Scare Zone.  He brings the much needed energy to the screen gleefully assigning people to their duties and comically dealing with the Hispanic workers (Who really are the funniest part of the film.) that help build the sets.  A big surprise comes from the developing relationship between main character Daryl and a goth chick named Claire.  It starts off weird with Claire talking about cutting herself and setting her up as a red herring (Possibly!) for the audience to suspect as the killer.  As the movie moves along we understand her more as a young woman dealing with issues from her past that Daryl wants to help her with.  Their relationship keeps the movie glued together making you actually care for somebody on screen.

You can see if you pay attention that there is a little more thought put into most aspects of this film.  It is a funny movie when it wants to be.  Sometimes it isn't when it wants to be too but the hits out weigh the misses in my opinion.  There are a few weird musical montages set to modern vanilla pop rock featuring young people goofing around being "hip" and "funny" and "young."  I don't know how I feel about those.  For the most part this is a well filmed entertaining piece of work.  SCARE ZONE was shot in one of the Universal Studios Halloween attractions but the film isn't locked into one location.   Visually the film opens up to more locations so you do not become bored by the rubbery dummies, fake blood and dimly lit set pieces of the haunted house attraction.  The camera work has some creative angles and movements to draw the audience in without being too noticeable.  Toward the end the movie really picks up when the killer goes on a killing spree murdering the haunted house workers in front of the patrons to their jeers proclaiming that everything looks fake or lame.  Now that is funny in a dark sort of way.

If you are looking for a fun bloody slasher movie that doesn't take itself too seriously then give SCARE ZONE a try.  It maybe a little overlooked but it is a good one.  I bought it because I was going to Universal Horror Nights and I wanted to see if I could recognize the attraction they used.  I didn't recognize it.  By the way if you haven't been to Universal Horror Nights and you are a huge horror fan then I suggest you do yourself a favor and go!  It was one of the best nights of my life.  Their attractions are so real that you feel like you are walking through a horror movie.  I went through the CABIN IN THE WOODS house and it was exactly like the movie.  Surreal!  There was so much to see.  I want to go again and again and again.  If you do go you may want to go more than one night because you will be waiting in line a long time!


Jason

YOU'RE NEXT: A perfect slasher film?

YOU'RE NEXT goes to the next level of horror that most horror movie makers do not even know how to get to.  It is the last of a trilogy of popular horror films where masked individuals invade a home and terrorize the family or occupants inside.  First came THE STRANGERS which had its moments but otherwise was rather predictable and somewhat of a let down.  Five years later (Really?  Five years?  Time flies by doesn't it.) came THE PURGE which was awesome.  A few months later came a little known film that was so well made that despite a low budget and a cast of relative unknowns made its way to theaters.  YOU'RE NEXT is the best of the bunch.  I really do think this is a perfect slasher film.  It has some iconic villain masks, realistic gore, a clever script with a great sense of humor and the movie is pretty darn scary too.

A family get together is violently interrupted by a trio of masked crazy people laying siege to the house killing everyone inside one by one.  Unfortunately for the trio, one of them fights back.  That is all you need to know.

YOU'RE NEXT may not be the scariest film ever made but it does have its moments.  What the film does well is give you a cast of characters that you genuinely care for.  That is very important because when the horror stuff starts happening you are invested in everyone's well being.  The children are all grown up and they have brought their significant others to this little family get together out in the middle of nowhere.  We see how they get along (Or not get along.) and we form some very uninformed opinions on them.  We see at the end just how uniformed our opinions were.  Weaved through the mayhem is a little bit of wit that comes out in small moments.  One of the characters may say something funny but you may have missed it because you are too worried about what is going on in the immediate situation.  You really have to pay attention because the movie isn't going to slow down and point out the funny parts.  In other words this movie expects more from its audience.  It expects you to be engaged and it won't insult you.

This is not your typical home invasion movie.  Where other horror movies fall short is giving the audience someone strong to root for.  We need a hero.  YOU'RE NEXT gives a strong heroine (Erin played by Sharni Vinson.) who fights back. This movie is too well written to have her just crawl into a corner and scream like most other horror movies out there.  When the bad guys kill she kills back.  We need more heroes and heroines in our horror films.  We franchise the villains when we should be franchising the heroes.

The blood and gore effects are all practical.  You will never be disappointed in the work by special effects wizard Mike Strain and everyone at his company FANTASY CREATIONS FX.  The gore doesn't reach cartoon levels to the point you can't believe what is going on.  The violence is visceral and as close to real as possible....Well maybe not the blender part but it was still pretty cool.

People probably thought this was just another "Guys in masks committing a home invasion"  movie.  I think that is why the general audience stayed away.  Still the marketing campaign was genius with the iconic white animal masks appearing on other movie's posters and at other movie's panels at Comic-con.  They had fun with it but to no avail.  The movie is simple but very profound in the Slasher genre if you pay attention to the details.  You may think it at first but by the end you will realize that this isn't the same slasher movie you have seen before.  This movie plays to a different beat.  Things happen unexpectedly whereas movies like THE STRANGERS follow the same old tropes where the villains are always one step ahead of our protagonists and they always seem to be in the right place at the right time.  The masked killers of YOU'RE NEXT are not so lucky.

YOU'RE NEXT had a good amount of success for being a low budget film.  I still think it deserves more attention than it has received.  There is a story told that doesn't insult the audience by pulling it's punches to set up a sequel.  You may go into this film with high expectations and be put off by how simple the concept is or you may have low expectations and be caught off guard at the clever script and effective use of blood.  Either way you will be entertained.


Jason

THE PURGE aka NATIONAL KILL ANYONE YOU WANT DAY!

THE PURGE is a great little movie.  It was a sleeper hit that simply presented an intriguing idea of a family surviving a night  during national Kill Anyone You Want Day.  The premise was so good that people went to see what this movie was all about.  It didn't have the biggest names in Hollywood and it was rated R.  It didn't matter.  People wanted to see what this movie was all about.  It looked good and it was.......Well at least I liked it.

Ethan Hawk (Sometimes called Kevin Bacon when I get confused) plays a business type guy whose business specializes in making security systems.  That is a very profitable business in a world where one night a year all crime is legalized.  He plans to spend Purge night indoors with his family.  Unfortunately a man shows up to his door being hunted by rich punks in scary masks.  Ethan's son lets him in and now his home is surrounded by crazy rich kids that want to get inside and kill everyone.

The thing that made me really like this movie is the quiet tension that builds quickly at the start of the film.  We are brought into the story hours before the Purge takes place.  We see a rich neighborhood settle down and get ready for the night to begin.  The rich are secure in their fortresses far from the bad neighborhoods of the slums where most of the killing and crime will take place.  The rich even throw parties for crying out loud.  The calm before the storm is scary and no one has died yet.  We see how everyone gets ready for the night.  Some hide behind their big mansions while others get ready to do their own purging.  Purge night is the one night where everyone can take off their everyday masks and show everyone who they really are.  How do you really know who your neighbors are before it is too late on Purge night?  What would I do on Purge night?  The film gives the audience some interesting thoughts to ponder before all hell breaks loose.

This is one of those movies that has a strong beginning and an almost stronger ending.  Where it falters slightly is in the middle.  The middle where all the horror stuff takes place is for the most part good.  The killers trying to get in are fascinating and wonderfully psychotic.  They keep you interested but the Ethan Hawk's kids have a tendency to do dumb stuff like run off when they should be sticking close to their dad who is trying his best to keep them safe.  It really bugged me that something would happen when everyone was starting to get together and suddenly one of the kids runs off to danger just because the writer couldn't think of something smarter for the kids to do.  It is a poor excuse to keep the kids in harms way to pad out the running time.  That is the only thing I really didn't like.  Otherwise I thought the ending was brilliant and somewhat subversive.  What you think would happen doesn't.  The ending is rather bloodless for a movie all about violence.

I know I may be a little too forgiving of this film's possible faults.  I just don't see them like some others do.  I just really appreciate that a film like this can be successful.  It only goes to show that a good imagination or concept can make a good movie that people actually want to go and see.  I know some people were disappointed with THE PURGE.  I think some wanted something more.  They wanted to see more Purging.  They wanted something on a more grander scale.  Well they got their wish with THE PURGE: ANARCHY.....


Jason

SLASHERS GONE WILD is unwatchable.....BUT I WATCHED IT ANYWAYS!

SLASHERS GONE WILD is not a very good movie.  In fact I am not sure it is really a movie at all.  What we have here looks more like a collection of kids in bad generic slasher costumes acting like Pro-Wrestlers in their backyard for a rejected cable access show trying so hard to be horrific and funny but being too adolescent to understand how to do either.  The "movie" is one long ugly smear across the t.v. screen that goes on and on and on never developing into anything remotely resembling a movie.  SLASHERS GONE WILD tries to have fun with the slasher genre.  I appreciate that.  The problem is every possible concept, visual, and story element is so poorly conceived and thought out that it makes you wonder what were they thinking  I don't think they were.  By the way I don't think that two of the three slashers on the DVD cover are even in the film.  Who the heck are they?  I could be wrong though.  This "film" hurt my eyes a lot so it was hard to tell who was who sometimes.
 
There is no plot or story to SLASHERS GONE WILD.  Yes, it does try to tell a story but it is kind of hard to do so when you have no script and it is painfully obvious that there was no script.  Almost every scene is just some guy who is suppose to be a slasher stabbing, cutting, mutilating or whatever some person tied down to a chair, table or couch.  This collection of scenes become more and more irritating as the film goes on because you realize that THIS is how the whole "movie: is going to be and none of it makes sense.  Here is the premise.  A reporter is in a room and starts investigating a website where slashers compete (by sending videos of themselves killing people I presume) to join a business of some sort that is nothing but slashers who kill people who pollute the environment.  The winner gets to join the club and receives pills that make them a super unstoppable Jason Vorhees like killer.  Problem is you don't see the slashers compete on some show where they are running around killing hapless victims which would be a great idea.  No, instead we just see guys with victims tied to objects cutting on their victims while ad libbing mostly audible lines and laughing after every word they say.  It is really annoying. 

You can see that the makers of SLASHERS GONE WILD missed the point as to what a slasher is.  They only understand recognizable cliched iconic visual trademarks like hockey masks, chainsaws, blood and intestines.  They only grasp the lower common denominator of what a slasher is.  A slasher has a reason for what they do.  They stalk and chase.  The really good slasher films of the past had likable characters that you root for or if you hated them root against.  Those films mixed cheap thrills with often spooky moods and haunting atmosphere.  I guess SLASHERS GONE WILD didn't have the budget for atmosphere.  Remember how awesome the original BLACK CHRISTMAS was?  The killer in that didn't even wear a mask AND it wasn't that bloody compared to most.

The strange thing about this "film" was that it wasn't the big problems like the nonexistent story, horrible VHS quality video, out of sync sound or even the annoying characters and monotonous pace that bothered me the most.  It was the small things.  I got the impression that this whole fiasco was super rushed with no thought to anything that they were doing.  It is like they filmed a bunch of horror themed skits, slapped them together when they realized that together there was a long enough run time to qualify as a movie and put them on a sleek looking DVD trying to trick people into thinking this was a genuine movie.  For instance there is a character named Loonitic.  See how they purposefully changed the 'U' in 'Lunatic' to 'OO' in an attempt to be clever?  Do you think they meant to change the 'A' into an 'I' as well?  I don't think so.  Loonitic likes to tie people up and play Truth or Dare and if they don't get the question right he kills them and if they do answer correctly he kills them anyway.  Wait a minute.  How do you get a question wrong in Truth or Dare?  Last time I checked Truth or Dare is when you ask someone to tell a truth about them not some random impossible math question that nobody would ever get the right answer to.  It's not suppose to be 20 Questions.  Also the motto or whatever to the slashers club is POLLUTE OR DEATH?  I am not asking a question.  There is a question mark at the end of their motto.  Shouldn't it be POLLUTE OR DIE with no question mark?  It is little annoyances that indicate that there was no effort put into anything in this "movie".

At the end of SLASHERS GONE WILD words appear threatening a sequel.  I looked it up and found that they have a Indieagogo or Kickstarter campaign going.  I honestly wish them success even though it seemed like they were intentionally trying to kill me with this "film".  I know that sounds strange coming from some jerk on the Internet who just trashed the "film" but I don't like wishing ill will on any film maker.  Uwe Boll being the exception of course.  I just hope they grow as film makers and realize that TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE isn't the only horror movie around.  Everybody rips off TCM and that isn't even that gory of a film either.  Gore isn't horror.  Gore is just gross.

Oh, and the special effects belong in the 'Not So Special' effects category.  Just sayin...

Jason

TEDDY, POPULARITY KILLER, BLOOD BROTHERS!

Tired of watching the original HALLOWEEN for the billionth time?  Feel like watching something different that your friends haven't seen yet this October?  Looking for something special while helping make a difference in the world of horror cinema?  Well my friends, head on over to slasherstudios.com and pick up TEDDY, POPULARITY KILLER and BLOOD BROTHERS on DVD.  These are three short films directed by Steve Goltz and written by Kevin Sommerfield.  There is a great deal of talent presented in front of and behind the camera in all three films.  The acting is good to great (for the most part), the writing is sharp, and the camera work is phenomenal especially in TEDDY.  They accomplish a lot with so little and I feel like they deserve our support.  The only thing that kind of sucks is that they are only short films.  By the end of each one you wish that they would go on longer and develop more into a full length feature.  Hopefully one day they will make one.  Hey, at least these guys put special features on their DVDs showing true love for their audience. 

If you had to pick just one film to buy I would highly recommend TEDDY.  It is a film about four young people going camping who accidentally run over a guy out in the wilderness in front of his weirdo adult son who still carries around his stitched up one eyed teddy bear.  Instead of getting help they scoop him off the road as if he were nothing more than roadkill and continue on their camping trip.  The weirdo son seeks bloody inappropriate revenge.  This is the best looking out of all three films.  Visually it is the most colorful and entertaining with creative if not controversial deaths.

POPULARITY KILLER is about a masked killer murdering high school students at a small get together at night.  Both this one and TEDDY embrace the classic slasher flick genre of the early 1980s making no apologies whatsoever.  It is a kind of who-done-it slasher movie.  Most slasher flicks back in the day were like that.  Movies like TERROR TRAIN, PROM NIGHT and THE INITIATION are a few examples that I can think of. 

BLOOD BROTHERS is way different.  Its not really a horror movie but more like a violent family drama.  It is basically about a man and his wife held captive by his desperate brother and his girlfriend.  This one you should watch last for Mike Goltz performance as the protagonist.  He is pretty much unrecognizable as the clean cut good guy.  Mike steals the show in TEDDY and POPULARITY KILLER playing the ever so charming drunk, jerk-face, jock character that has no problem spraying beer out of every orifice of his body.  What a great actor.  Maybe BLOOD BROTHERS isn't the best out of the three but it is nice to see that Steve Goltz and Kevin Sommerfield can do other things beside slasher films.


Support independent horror by buying them here.


Jason