CABIN IN THE WOODS is the JURASSIC PARK of horror movies!

Finally we get a horror movie with some imagination.  CABIN IN THE WOODS is one of those movies that you want to know as little as possible about.  Don't watch the trailers.  Don't read the synopsis.  Stay away from reviews.  Just go and see it.  Stop reading this right now and go see it.  I am going to spoil everything so just go away.  This movie kicked my butt.  If you love horror movies then you should love this one.  There is lots to see.  In fact I think CABIN IN THE WOODS is the ultimate horror movie.  Let me just say that it is not about five friends going to a cabin in the woods.

CABIN IN THE WOODS is about five friends who go to a cabin in the woods.  Before that however we are introduced to two company men (One played by the bad guy from BILLY MADISON.  Hurray!) working at some unknown company talking about their lives and such.  They are a couple of likable funny individuals who apparently are monitoring our five friends as they go to the cabin in the woods.  We discover that these two are manipulating the youngsters into summoning something bad to kill them from an elaborate facility underneath the cabin.  The question is why.

This movie has everything.  It is way bigger than what you think.  The facility holds thousands of different kinds of horrors in holding cells waiting for the college kids to choose (accidentally of course) which monster will arise and kill them.  The kids think they are on a weekend getaway but really they are being led to the basement where several strange objects are kept.  Kids are suppose to explore the cellar eventually activating one of the objects to summon whatever monster the object is tied too.  The employees actually take bets on what monster will be summoned.  Funny stuff.  At the end the two college survivors sneak down into the facility where they release all the horrors onto the staff and armed guards.  What we are treated to is a whole SyFy Channel Original Movie Monster Reunion of epic gruesome proportions.  We have a giant snake, a giant spider, a giant bat, a kick ass looking werewolf, a Pinhead knock off,  a scary clown (Who I named Stabby McStab Stab), psycho killers from THE STRANGERS,  a killer teeth face ballerina and a Merman which apparently is the Aqua Man of the horror community.

If you are a kid or just looking for inspiration for a horror idea this movie is perfect for you.  It is extremely smart and clever with interesting characters including all five college friends.  Horror cliches are present but implemented in a very clever funny way.  The movie gets crazier and crazier leading up to one full blown holy heckola of an ending.  It really is more of a funny movie than it is scary.  In fact the movie reminds me of season 4 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER where the government has a research facility underneath Sunnydale where scientist experiment with monsters and demons and such.  I guess that makes sense since Joss Wheadon helped produce this sucker.

CABIN IN THE WOODS brings originality back to the horror genre. It is a big movie that starts off small  The goods are delivered and then some.  Boringness is nowhere to be found and for the most part the story is unpredictable.  Mostly.  It will be extremely hard to beat this movie for "BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR" at the awards show in my mind.  Good luck, all the other movies coming out this year.  You are going to need it.


Jason

CHILLERAMA hurts my balls!

Its the final night of a closing drive-in theater.  To celebrate three (technically four) extremely rare films are being shown for the first time in decades.  These films are so rare that only one copy of each exists.  Movie enthusiasts pack the drive-in eager to see them.  Unfortunately for them  one of the drive-in workers decided to try and corpse rape his dead and buried wife who just happens to be a zombie.  After getting his "johnson" mauled by the undead the worker goes to work and whacks off his now undead spunk into the popcorn butter which is the distributed to the audience.  Zombies happen.

What we have here is an anthology of short films representing different kinds of monster movies from the past.  The titles are kind of funny.  You have WADZILLA,  I WAS  A TEENAGE WEREBEAR, and DIARY OF ANNE FRANKENSTEIN.  Oh, and lets not forget DEFECATION!  Actually lets forget that last one. 

WADZILLA is about a giant sperm that eats everybody and tries to mate with the statue of liberty.  This one was kind of funny.  I like the main character.  He is a short nerdy guy who can only produce one sperm.  Ray Wise is his doctor and he gives him a experimental drug that makes his one sperm a giant monster.  WADZILLA has its moments  I think I relate to the humor a little bit just because I have balls and that is what this story is all about.  The ending is funny when the monster is exploded and everyone gets covered in goo.  His new girlfriend is drenched and she wants to kiss him at the end but he doesn't really want to because you know why.  Not too bad.

I WAS A TEENAGE WEREBEAR is like a sixties California beach movie.  The title is pretty creative and the story about a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality could have been great but it ends up being the weaker entry due to it being a musical.  Nice try.  You do get to see a guy killed by being impaled by a "red rocket" though.  Why would I want to see that?  That is just gross.  The story is about a young man who is bit on the butt by a gay tough guy who turns into a burly bear man in leather fetish gear.  Our hero becomes a werebear too but unlike his new friends he doesn't want to kill anyone.  Now he has to stop them from eating party goers or something like that.  I just thought this one could have been better.

DIARY OF ANNE FRANKENSTEIN is the funniest one of all.  The best thing about it is that the humor relies less on toilet balls humor and more on clever and unexpected moments.  It is definitely the best story.  Hitler finds Anne Frank and her family and discovers they have a diary from Frankenstein who was there relative.  He takes it a creates a Jewish Frankenstein monster played by Kane Hodder.  I really liked this one.  It is more creative and has the most laughs.  It is filmed in black and white and does a good job of looking like a classic Universal Frankenstein film.  Good job.

The story taking place at the drive-in is kind of good but the whole place gets overrun with zombies that rape you to death.  That is a little overboard if you ask me.  There is one awesome moment when the owner of the drive-in starts blasting away the horn-balls of the undead with a shotgun quoting popular movie lines from better movies.  That was cool.  Other than that CHILLERAMA is a mix bag of funny, unfunny and extremely tasteless.  If you found BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD DOES AMERICA to be an enjoyable experience then you might want to give this one a try.  But if you like a little more thought in your humor then you won't be missing much by skipping this one.  I really wanted to like CHILLERAMA.  I could tell the makers were having fun with this one but it was just too immature for my delicate tastes.  It was like they were paying homage to poop jokes disguised as a bow to older exploitation films.  Less balls and dongs please.

Before I go I just want to add that I will never look at the Statue Of Liberty the same way again.  Thanks CHILLERAMA.  No, seriously.  I mean it.


Jason

NEGATIVE HAPPY CHAINSAW EDGE....

Yes, it is true.  In this world there exists a movie called NEGATIVE HAPPY CHAINSAW EDGE.  I will give you one guess as to the country's origin that this movie was made in.  I found this one on THE NETFLIX and started watching it immediately knowing nothing about it.  I am just going to assume this movie is based off a Japanese comic book.  I can't be too sure since there isn't any tentacle rape going on in this movie.  But there are a ton of weird ideas play-doughed together to form a story about young love.  This is not a horror movie despite the chainsaw wielding maniac on the poster.  This is a love story.  Yeah, I guess the best way to get me to watch a love story is to put a chainsaw wielding maniac in it with a lot of kung-fu crap.  SOLD!

Yosuki (I'm not even sure I am spelling his name right) is a young man in high school who chances upon a girl his age named Eri who every night must fight a chainsaw wielding maniac who comes from the moon.  I am not sure if he really comes from the moon.  I am just assuming that.  Hey, anything is possible in Japan.  The guy looks like he just escaped from a Resident Evil game.  Seeing a chance to be greater than his friend Noto who died in a bike wreck, Yosuki tries his best to help Eri fight the monster each and every night.  He hopes to top Noto with a greater more spectacular death.  Noto was always better and cooler than Yosuki.  The weapons chosen are always different.  She will use a sword or throwing knives but then she will fight the monster with a golf club or umbrella for some reason.  Don't ask me why.  I have no idea.  The monster is defeated every night but it gets away and never dies.

NHCE is creative and fun and even a little touching.  Even though it is a weird movie with weird moments and weird characters it all feels natural to the story  It all belongs.  I think the only problem I have is that the energy the movie has doesn't continue throughout the entire film.  Not sure where the movie is going with no resolution in sight with repetitive scenes of hanging around waiting for a monster to show slows the film down slightly.  The focus of the story is on two teens dealing with their own personal demons in different forms  (Noto and Chainsaw Wielding Maniac) and along the way they fall in love.  There is some big special effects fight scenes with the whole flying around in the air craziness you would expect from the land of the rising sun.  It is all good but there is only a few of these scenes.  The rest is all character development stuff.  But that is good too.

NEGATIVE HAPPY CHAINSAW EDGE was a nice surprise.  If you want to see something different that your nerd friends don't know about yet then I suggest watching this one.  Your friends will think you are the coolest when you tell them about it.  After that get new friends because your old friends aren't good enough for you anymore, you culturally superior bastard.

Jason.

SILENT TRIGGER: DOLPH LUNDGREN IS A CAMPING NOOB!

When I am playing CALL OF DUTY multiplayer I can almost always point out who the snipers are in the lobby.  When I see a guy with a gamer tag that has a word like SNIPE, LONE, WOLF, NINJA, SWORD, ALPHA, RECON, IAMAGAYASSSNIPER in it I just know they are setting up camp somewhere lying on the ground in a heavily dark corner complimenting themselves on just how badass they are because they are going to have the best Kill/Death ratio in the lobby.  They like to pretend that somewhere in this world there is someone who is not a child molester (this time) that gives a darn.  CALL OF DUTY has given snipers a bad name.  Thankfully Ol' Dolph is here to show how badass snipers really are.

SILENT TRIGGER (directed by Russell Mulcahy, the guy who did HIGHLANDER, lol) is a strange film indeed.  It is not your typical action film.  Dolph Lundgren plays a sniper working for something called 'The Agency'.  It is a vague organization that I can only assume exists to perform assassinations on political targets.  At the beginning of the film we are treated to a flashback where Dolph does not pull the trigger on a political target and his female spotter Clegg is ordered to kill him.  A helicopter shows up with a group of local militia (I assume) preventing her from killing Lundgren.  The question is would she have done it in the first place.  As the movie goes on we are treated to more flashbacks expanding from the beginning showing us Dolph's and Clegg's escape and parting when Dolph finds out that she has been ordered to kill him. 

The main story takes place in a large skyscraper under construction where Dolph is setting up for another assassination.  Here is what I don't understand.  Years have passed since the incident where he couldn't pull the trigger yet Dolph is still working for the same agency.  Why is he still with them and why haven't they killed him yet?  I don't get it.  I must have missed something.  Apparently Dolph is recreating the same incident with Clegg returning unaware that her partner is Dolph.  He wants to know if she would have killed him and at the same time get revenge on the guy who ordered his death.  That is the story.

What is really weird about this film is how the tone of the film changes from an action movie to a haunting psychological horror movie.  The empty building is spooked with foreboding music highlighted with the boom of thunder and drowned in falling rain.  There are two overnight watchmen who guard the building.  Now usually in most action movies these characters last about ten seconds on screen either by getting themselves perished by the baddies or they just don't show them anymore because they aren't important.  In SILENT TRIGGER they become two of the central characters of the film.  Basically there are only four main characters Dolph, Clegg and two night watchmen.  Very strange.  One of the night watchmen is a real bastard and tries to rape Clegg.  At one point he starts doing drugs and starts to see C.G.I. spiders everywhere.  Weird.  Actually what is really weird is he has small spiders tattooed all over his body.  He kind of becomes the main antagonist for awhile. None that is what you are expecting.

There are only about three action moments in the film.  I don't really count the fight with Lundgren and the crazy security guard but you can if you want to.  Actionwise this is a decent film.  The beginning with Dolph on a tower gunning down baddies with his sniper rifle is awesome and at the end he shoots a guy with it from point blank range.  Very bloody.  The blood effects are pretty good but there is a cartoon helicopter straight out of a SYFY Original Movie that crashes into a tower with really weak cartoon explosions.  Hey, at least they use practical blood effects.  Nowadays they would color that stuff in with an electronic computing device.

SILENT TRIGGER is a unique action movie experience.  I liked it alot and if you are a fan of Dolph's then you should too.  Dolph Lundgren makes camping noobs look like total badasses........Nah, they still suck but I ain't telling Dolph that.  Be my guest.


Jason

I COME IN PEACE....Wait...DARK ANGEL? WTF?

Why is the U.S. release of I COME IN PEACE titled DARK ANGEL?  This isn't nerdy anime.  This is a badass cops versus a drug dealer from outer space movie whose organs are made of cottage cheese.  The alien is a really tall guy who pumps people full of heroin and the spikes their brains and extracts the endorphins that are produced so he can sell them in space.  If Dolph doesn't stop him more will come and it will be this big time slaughter.  Coolest thing of all is the alien only knows one phrase in English.  That phrase is "I come in peace". 

So Dolph is an undercover cop trying to bust a local big time drug lord.  We are introduced to his character listening in on a conversation from his car.  His partner is inside doing a drug deal with the boss himself.  But across the street some not nice guys rob a liquor store forcing Dolph to leave his post and kick some butt.  Unfortunately this happens as his partner is exposed as a cop and murdered.  The boss leaves laughing actually enjoying the moment.  Now I just wanted to point this scene out because the rest of the movie is the standard two cops paired together who don't like each other story.  We already have seen this kind of story before.  Obviously these two will hate each other but eventually find themselves friends after saving each others life once or twice.  I COME IN PEACE should be noted as one of those rare action films that leaves a big loose end.  Dolph never avenges the death of his partner.  I guess big alien trumps that story.  You see the drug boss goes on vacation.  We never see him again.  In fact he sends Dolph a Christmas card with a picture of the boss in Hawaii or some place tropical with two hot chicks having the time of his life.  He never gets his comeuppance.  He gets away with murder and gets to boast about it.  I find that kind of shocking.  There should have been this big scene at the end where all the bad guys get together to do a really big drug deal but the alien shows up with Dolph and his new partner following closely behind to start a big shoot out between goons, cops and alien.  The whole thing should have ended with all the bad guys dead.  It kind of bothers me that it didn't.  I figure the writers forgot all about that guy and they were like "Whoops" when the film was done.

This is still a really good movie.  The tall alien is pretty badass.  He likes to shoot what I assume is his collection of Celine Dion Cd's into people's throats.  I guess liking Celine Dion was just a passing phase from back in the day.  Now he looks more like he is into Norwegian Death Power Metal.  He is a formidable foe for Dolph to say the least.  Dolph has to rely on the alien's own technology to blow him up at the end.  There is a cop alien who shows up to die and give Dolph his gun that is really good at blowing up cars.  It fires and stuff just explodes.  That is it.  I could use something like that in CALL OF DUTY.  I can't help but notice how similar this movie is to Rutger Hauer's SPLIT SECOND.  Both are about two polar opposite cops who come together to bring down a strange creature.  Also both movies have that mousy gnome faced actor Michael J. Pollard in them.  Both have an exploding monster at the end of them too.  It is just kind of weird.

I don't have much to say about this one.  It is good and you should watch it.  Just don't call it DARK ANGEL.  This isn't a film for the Nerd-o's.  THE END.


Jason

SKEW

Full disclosure time, folks.  The director, Sevé Schelenz requested that I do a review of his film SKEW which I happily accepted.  I think that is a very ballsy move on his part to ask someone who could turn out to be a complete jerkola to review his work.  Did you know that there are horror fans out there in the world that have Internet access who are jerkolas?  Anyhoo in order to watch the film I had to subscribe to THE NETFLIX again which I am glad I did.   I was made aware of a show called DOWNTOWN ABBEY which I was told had a character named Thomas who looked just like me.  Truth be told I guess the dreamy eyed, dark haired, handsome Thomas does have a strong resemblance to me.  How charming.  Now I know what I would look like if I kissed another man.............

Moving on.

SKEW is one of those 'caught-on-camera/found footage' type of horror movies.  I know that the genre is a little overplayed nowadays like it was when THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was so popular but SKEW is one of the good ones.  There was a lot of thought put into the making of this movie.  I will admit that I am a big fan of these caught on camera films like the first PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and BLAIR WITCH so I had no problem sitting through another film with similar style.  If you hated those movies then you probably wouldn't like SKEW.  But if your main complaint was that those films didn't show anything then let me tell you that SKEW shows stuff.  Ghosts jumping at your face kind of stuff.

So three friends Simon, Eva and Richard are going cross country to a friends wedding.  Simon is the main character who has brought along his new video camera to film every single moment possible.  He has a girlfriend who oddly enough decided not to come.  Along the way we discover Simon's attraction to Eva which as the trip goes on strains the friendship of the three.  Eva is Richard's girlfriend.  Whoops.  Got to love drama.  Also it doesn't help that Simon is starting to get a little creepy with his new hand held camera.  The poor guy can't seem to stop filming and his sanity starts to be questioned.  The trip is plagued by death all around.  They accidentally run over a coyote, a bus full of people crash and die and a hotel clerk is shot shortly after checking into their hotel.  People's faces sometimes will show up on video as twisted misshapen C.G.I. gooblty-gook.  Simon discovers that his camera skews the faces of those who are about to die.  Worse yet maybe the camera itself might be causing their deaths.  To break up the monotony of people talking in cars or in hotel rooms the ghosts of the dead will pop up and say "Boo" from time to time.  At one point Simon is filming Eva and Richard sleeping.  When he pans around the room BOO! a ghost appears in the room.  Immediately we see the footage rewind and check to see if the ghost is caught on film.  It is not.  Whoa!  Now wait a minute!  Don't get all high and mighty by pointing out that if this was a caught on camera movie you wouldn't see the rewind.  Just let the movie do its thing.  This is one of those movies you got to stick with to the very end.  All will be revealed......sort of.

At first I wasn't sure how I felt about SKEW.  I have seen these kinds of movies before.  The scares are a little forced and when you can tell you are looking at a special effect the film loses a little bit of its realism.  But if you are paying attention to what is going on, SKEW has a way of reeling you in.  A lot of credit has to go to the actors who bring a strong sense of reality to the movie.  They don't feel like actors playing parts in a horror movie.  They come off as genuine people which is a hard thing to do in these kind of "reality" horror movies.  As the spooky stuff started to happen I was constantly intrigued wondering what was going to happen next.  I wanted to know why all of this was going on.  There is a strong element of the psychological at play here.  The ending is what really sets SKEW apart from the rest.  It is a very simple moment.  If you are not paying attention you might not even notice it even when the film points it out.  It is a moment that makes you question everything you have just watched.  Its good stuff and exactly what these caught on film type of horror movies are suppose to be.  CREEPY AS HELL!

Even though the ending left me with more questions than answers I can't help but recommend SKEW.  It is one of those movies that still has me thinking.  I replay a lot of the scenes from the film in my smaller than usual sized brain trying to piece together the enigma the movie left me with.  The relationship of the three characters is important to the overall outcome of the film.  You care about these three.  You care about what is going on.  And you dread what will happen next.  Not the scariest movie but it is hard to shake off the creepy feeling the film gives you at the end.  It is a good WTF moment.  Watch it on THE NETFLIX, folks.

Jason

OFFICIALLY UNINTERESTED IN THE EXPENDABLES 2 PG-13!!!

Well let us just face the facts, folks.  It is a cruel cold world and happy endings are few and far between.  When things line up and start to point to the inviting half open door of awesomeness, WATCH OUT(!) because balanced atop that door just on the other side is a bucket full of cold harsh reality.  I should have known that THE EXPENDABLES 2 was too good to be true.  I should have learned from last years disappointments in my own personal life that I shouldn't get my hopes up.  But I did.  I dared to dream big.  I expected nothing more than a action packed violent film that trumps the original.  Then I found out that THE EXPENDABLES 2 is going to be PG-13.  PG-13?  How about PEE-PEE 13?

I know it is too early to judge because I haven't seen the movie yet.  Who knows maybe the whole PG-13 is just a hoax.  And who knows maybe one day I will discover a large vein of gold deposited somewhere far up my butt.  Not bloody likely but I am going to keep digging just to be sure.  What I have read so far is that Chuck Norris doesn't want any bad words in his movies because kids maybe watching.  Uh, last time I checked THE EXPENDABLES was made for adults.  Wouldn't the more violent aspect of the film be more disturbing to kids?  I believe honestly that the film was probably written to be PG-13 to begin with.  A harder edge film probably wouldn't interest a high on values Chuck Norris anymore.  If you think about it changing all the unpleasant words but still having lots and lots of stabbings to the face will still land you an R rating.  If the first EXPENDABLES had no bad words in it but still had all the blood and guts and torso removings would that mean it was PG-13?

Violence matters, folks.  You can't just make a big action movie dependent on big car chases, big explosions, and big heights to hang off of stuff.  Those are called adventure films.  Which is better ROBOCOP or ROBOCOP 3?  Which was the more violent film?  Which one was the smarter film?  Which film didn't insult the audience by visually lessening the consequences of what it looks like to be shot?  Which film left the greater impression on you?  Did a jet pack flying Robocop make up for the lack of blood?  It is a larger spectacle to have a flying Robocop than one that simply drives around.  Violence is an ugly thing and when you water it down you weaken the horrible aftermath of it.  It makes violence not seem so bad.  When ED-209 is unloading two cannons into some poor bastard in ROBOCOP you see how horrible it is to be shot.  At least it didn't look too pleasant for that corporate executive guy, what's his face.

I am predicting that THE EXPENDABLES 2 will have a lot of car chases, a lot of kung-fu, a lot of jumping from explosions, and neck breaks galore.  Maybe a bloodless stabbing or two also.  Will that be better than droves of baddies blown to pieces by a fully automatic shotgun?  I can't wait to see a fight between Stallone and Van Damme but will it be so over the top in it's scale to make up for the lack of on screen violence?  Is this going to be way over indulgent like Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi's final fight in EPISODE 3?  I doubt the fight will top Scott Adkins and Van Damme's fight in THE SHEPHERD or any fight scene in a Isaac Florentine film.  Being a large action film does not mean great action film.  I want another RAMBO part 4 not STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT.

I will see THE EXPENDABLES 2 in the theater.  I am sure I will like it.  But I know it won't be great.  I know already that it could have been better.  It will be fine at best.  Despite having some major flaws THE EXPENDABLES part 1 will be better.  It did not compromise.  A good action film never compromises the integrity of it's art no matter how cheesy it is.  Fix your film, Stallone.  We want blood and major impalement issues galore.  This time how about using practical realistic effects.  Stop relying on C.G.I. cartoony blood.  And don't put another Shinedown song in your movie.  They suck. 

I can only hope that one day I will wake up and all of this was just a bad dream.  Until then I will be more excited for UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: A NEW DIMENSION and BULLET TO THE HEAD.....Oh, and THE RAID!


Jason