Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year

Yeah what it says up there.

Hard Ons of the Year

It's that time innit? Roll out the Santa's sack jokes and tiny Elf cock humour as the festive holidays are upon us and Happy Horror Hard On looks back on a year of arousing films.

I'm not sure if this is in order or not so the numbers don't really count save for FROZEN which simply is my favourite horror flick of the year.

1 FROZEN
2 A SERBIAN FILM
3 MONSTERS
4 THE LAST EXORCISM
5 REC 2

Honourable mentions to AMER (arty farty nut a great first act) CONFESSIONS (where has all the J-horror gone?) and PIRANHA 3D (sure it's no Oscar contender but in tits, ass and laffs it's number one).

Skyline

What the fuck is going on here? Led to believe this is an independent SF movie by a couple of effects wizards going against the grain what I got is a studio movie that's total rampant nonsense. A greatest hits of the film makers DVD collection which obviously contains INDEPENDENCE DAY I wouldn't be surprised to find the directors had bought the CGI models for their aliens at a garage sale from Silver Pictures MATRIX trilogy.

A huge turn off reducing Happy Horror On to Unhappy CGI Floppy!

Peeping Tom

Often associated with Hitchcock's PSYCHO due to originally being released within months of each other in 1960, Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM effectively destroyed his career while Mr. Hitchcock's reached new heights. And yet over the years Powell's voyeur themed thriller has maintained and grown a cult status truly deserved by this layered and multi-themed classic.

Set in late 50s London Mark Lewis explores the seedy underbelly of smut, pornography and prostitution using his ever running camera to record his voyeuristic experiences as he indulges in murder keeping footage of the last terrified moments of his victims deaths as home movies. A result of his fathers experiments during his childhood Mark Lewis is the first psychological film study of what would later be tagged as the serial killer.

PEEPING TOM shocked and appalled the critical elite on its release and was spurned as a sleazy exploitative effort, and Hitchcock learned a lesson from this by not showing PSYCHO to the press in advance of its release, by those not ready to allow sympathy for the films villainous lead or acknowledgement of the voyeuristic aspects of cinema into their 1960 mindset. The slasher film genre owes more to PEEPING TOMs Point of View death sequences than it does to the often honoured PSYCHO and now a new generation can be introduced to this classic film through an astoundingly beautiful re-mastered Blu Ray release before it is reaped for the poignant plot by Remakewood.

A happy horror hard-on for PEEPING TOM.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

The reputation of this movie proceeds it and the title to a certain extent serves as a spoiler. The movies central conceit that of people being sewn together to create the titular creature, is more or the less the only plot point in Tom Six horror feature.

Paving a new medical themed avenue into the much malingered torture porn sub-genre tag two female American tourists get lost in the woods in Germany at night after their rental car breaks down and they have lost their mobile signal. This cliched introduction leads the two girls to the house of a psychotic crackpot doctor who for reasons unknown sews the girls ass to mouth behind a third, a male Japanese tourist,

It's all very convenient that the doctor was ready to begin his experiments when the two girls stumble into his clutches. And it is this well trodden and obvious story that robs HUMAN CENTIPEDE from total originality. The actual events that follow are more original and surprisingly less disturbing than you would think, at least for the jaded horror viewer, and the movie is relatively bloodless and less exploitative than expected but in the end it feels like director Tom Six, with his cold clinical observational directing style, is testing the waters before he really unleashes the full scale of his body horror with HUMAN CENTIPEDE: FINAL SEQUENCE. A poor start does lead to an enjoyable disturbed tale that is likely a little more notorious that it really deserves to be.

Semi.

Rare Exports

Hailing from Finland RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is the feature length version of a couple of very clever short films of the same name which you can find kicking about YouTube.

A mining excavation in the northern wilds of Finland has found what appears to be a large burial mound containing the very original manifestation of Santa Claus. This is not the Coca-Cola sponsored image of the jolly Christmas chap but rather the dark and twisted fairy tale Santa that has been diluted from. Two young boys stumble across the discovery which leads one of Santa's "helpers" to follow them home and the true dark face of the Christmas legend becomes exposed.

RARE EXPORTS is an oddity more dark fantasy than horror it could likely be marketed as a kids film if it were not for the copious amount of old mans cock swinging about during the movies climax. It Is something a little bit different but is also a little lacking, a great set-up that around the fifty minute mark begins to falter sadly does not have any better than a fair resolve favouring an action outcome over horror like a kiddies DIE HARD 2.

Not as sharp as its short film origins I get RARE EXPORTS a semi-erection.

Spiderhole

A last minute replacement at Frightfest after the digi-beta tape deck fucked THE REEF right up SPIDERHOLE is a British torture porn and slasher variant about a group of squatters who pick the wrong house to doss down in.

Despite standard genre plot points SPIDERHOLE is a solidly performed and directed film that skates above the cliched norm and fliers with just enough ambiguity to tease a sequel or just leave as one if those open ending horror tales that leaves you wondering. It is a fun British variant on the dead teenager film with enough nasty malevolence to keep this reviewer happy for 80 or so minutes.

Semi- erection and a smile for SPIDERHOLE.

(P.S. I passed the poster for this all night in the Empire and kept wondering "Who get's it in the SPIDERHOLE?" fate brought us together I suppose.)

Choose

The words choice and game feature predominantly in the artwork for this direct to DVD flick that encapsulates neither the torture porn or slasher genres it hopes to ingratiate itself with.

A promising opening gives us a young girl faced with the ultimate Sophies Choice, pick either her mother or father to die or her little brother gets it. This is the introduction and one of a few appearances of the films villain credited as Scarlip. Next we are introduced to Fiona Wagner and her Sheriff father who become the central points of the story as they are tainted by the killer and investigate further leading them to a dark secret around Fiona's mothers death. A dull police procedural follows with the films villain disappearing for the majority of the films running time. No one ever really feels in any danger and there is a distinct lack of any tension, mystery or horror.

To compare CHOOSE to SAW or THE COLLECTOR is lazy and insulting to those films and their makers. This half-baked, hell one-tenth baked, script and cliche ridden mess fails to act on its two strengths a possibly good villian, though the use of a gun by slasher/anti-hero is a cheat, and a beautiful lead actress Kathryn Winnick last seen to genre fans in AMUSEMENT. There are no shocks, no thrills leaving this psycho killer thriller to commit the most heinous of horror movie crimes; inducing boredom.

Floppy, floppy, floppy.

The Silent House

Laura and her father are staying at a dilapidated old house, boarded up windows keeping the light out and the darkness in. Without power they use battery powered lamps and flashlights to explore the house as bumping and banging is heard from upstairs . Within minutes Laura's father is dead and she is left to confront whatever dark secret hides between the stone walls.

Horror from Chili does not come along very often and with this one comes a certain amount of hype. Lauded as the new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and sold amongst a bidding flurry at Cannes THE SILENT HOUSE sells itself as being shot on the prosumer level Digital SLR camera from Canon as well as being shot in one take. Immediately you are taken out of the film and challenging yourself to pick apart the technical aspirations of this low-budget thriller that has potential to scare if it could just straighten out its damn mind what the plot is or ifi it even exists. I assume there is a deleted subplot about a book as the lead character spends a lot of her looking at shelves, in minute detail.

Left with no idea why anyone was in the house, why the lead character was so scared of banging noises she spent the time looking about storage areas or how they explain away the placement of lighting sources in a one take movie nor why the audio suddenly dips like a wireless microphone has come loose in her clothing the hype of A SILENT HOUSE is never lived up to.

NOTE: Adam Mason's PIG has already used the same camera to film a "one-take" improvised horror movie in broad daylight.

Floppy.

Altitude

Look at that artwork posted there. How can this go wrong? It is not an Asylum produced Megacreature leaping at an aircraft. Those are tentacles. Which invoke two things - Lovecraft and THE MIST. Look at that trailer. Touches of CREEPSHOW and THE TWILIGHT ZONE. This is going to be a winner!

And then you meet a girl (Jessica Lowndes) far too pretty to be anyone in reality other than an actress/clothes hanger never mind a trainee pilot rebelling against her military colonel and chasing down the memory of her pilot mother who died in a plane crash. And her plausible boyfriend, a. Omicron book geek who would get nowhere near a girl this hot if it wasn't for the manipulation of their shared past. And their is the bonehead athletic boyfriend of her best friend the blonde film student who cannot work a camera and a fifth guy added in for some early disaster fodder.

And when disaster does strike it could not come fast enough. Such a shame the giant tentacle thing only kills one of the five. Bad acting, poor script but actually not bad CGI do not take horror to any new heights. It should be monsters on a plane but instead it's all hormones on a plane with only the all teeth and tits Lowndes making it palatable to the eye if you do not mind her Michael Bay inspired fake tanned face.

Limp dick for the movie. Lowndes causes some stirring.

Confessions

From Japan comes a tale of revenge filmed as confessions by various characters surrounding a school teacher who has lost her young child, the school pupils who may be involved and fact that the school milk has been infected with HIV.

Gloriously shot and beautifully crafted this is an indulgent movie both for the viewer and the film maker. Visually sparkling through slow motion rain showers, backward explosions and slapstick humour all scored with a constant medley of emotionally downbeat tunes added to startlingly observed performances from young actors underpin a disturbing story on the change of Japanese moral values and youth.

CONFESSIONS could be improved by a sterner hand on the editing shears lending a leaner view on this Eastern revenge tale before it greets a wider western audience and is much subtler than the expected violence of such a film from Oriental climes but shares a place with MOTHER and BEDEVILLED proving the dark side of Asian cinema is not all long hair ghosts and splatter.

Full on hard on.

Saw 3D

There comes a time when every man's mettle must be tested. This film, SAW 3D, is the hardest test for me as film "reviewer". As an impartial cinema watcher this film is utter shit! As a SAW fan this is an OK sequel ranked between II and VI but better served than V. if I'm true to myself as a fan this is a great film.

This is where I would put in a synopsis. It's SAW. There's people in traps. Continue below.

Most of the great horror franchise were played or playing out as I grew up as a film fan. This is truly the first I have lived through and with one entry a year for seven years can I really complain. SAW has gone batshit. Totally and irreversibly. If you're not onboard by now (I'd say IV is your jumping off point) then frankly, fuck off.

There's blood. There's carnage. There's nonsense. There's TV actors. There's a black guy with a "cool" hat. The 3D adds nothing. We all knew the doctor was a bad egg from the game. There's actors having no idea what is going on. It's mental. I slightly love it. I slightly hate it. It's SAW, it's unique, it'd better have a part 8!

Paranormal Activity 2

Last years PARANORMAL ACTIVITY was the little film that could. A $15,000 home made movie racked up nearly $200 million dollars in a repeat of the BLAIR WITCH found footage trick. Quick off the mark the $3 million studio produced sequel is with us less than a year later.

Focusing on a family unit, Dad, Mom, Step-daughter, new baby hunter and dog Abby PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 hinges on the believability of its actors. Naturalistic and not Hollywood pretty people the family, despite their affluent surroundings, ingratiate themselves quickly as a normal everyday unit doing things you and I may do. It is not long before strange unnatural occurrences begin to disturb the everyday lives of these people and the father installs six CCTV cameras adding a new angle to the found-footage format of the film. Initially the disturbances are similar in nature to the original film, rattling pots, opening doors and some rte worth a giggle. Once the attacks ramp up a notch in the latter half of the film it is clear that PA2 has more to offer and becomes a fun scare ride. With elements from POLTERGIEST, THE ENTITY and REC it appears that the supernatural presence genre is about to take the horror crown from the torture porn king that has worn it for the last decade.

Creepier, cooler and better made than the original this is a rare occasion where a sequel can build on the premise of the original, expand the story and have us re-evaluating what we think we know already. It is a clever exercise in playing with audience expectations and turning them at the last minute. With PARANORMAL ACTIVITY:
TOKYO NIGHTS being released in Japan in December and no doubt debuting in western climes sooner rather than later with PA2s inevitable box office haul it looks like a new franchise has been born. Does it have the staying power of the mammoth SAW juggernaut? We'll have to wait and see. To next Halloween then.

Semi-erect.

Damned By Dawn

Horror from down under already has a good foundation with the likes of BAD TASTE and BRAINDEAD or Australias own RAZORBACK and ROAD GAMES and in recent years this has been built upon by WOLF CREEK, UNDEAD, BLACK SHEEP and THE LOVED ONES. Acclaimed as Australia's answer to THE EVIL DEAD prepare to be DAMNED BY DAWN in the years first (of two so far) shrieking banshee movies.

The eldest of the O'Neil family is on her last legs and as the family gather around in her final moments she tells the story of the weeping one who must not be disturbed as she calls for the dead to welcome the recently deceased into the next realm. When this does not go to plan a force of the undead is unleashed upon the O'Neil homestead.

What was charming about THE EVIL DEAD was that it was truly amateur hour executed by some talented individuals. The same rings true here for the genre consortium known as The Amazing Krypton Bros who have truly pulled off a labour of love and full on Evil Dead style fan film. Sure the CGI is ropey but that is part of this films charm just like Sam Raimi's slapstick violence and stop motion effects were so beguiling of his. At times I was reminded of what Mike Mendez did with THE GRAVEDANCERS or Ti West's THE ROOST which are great Halloween fun shows rather than outright scarers and i only hope that these guys can continue to deliver the horror goodies in style.

A good happy horror hard on.

The Tortured

After the abduction and murder of their young son a young couple, played by Metcalfe and Christensen, hatch a plan for revenge. They will abduct their sons killer and utilising the fathers skills as a doctor keep the killer alive for as long as possible while inflicting bodily harm and medically aided torture on their prisoner.

When you stamp "from the producers of SAW" on a film you, as the distributor, are hoping to attract an audience who has helped a movie series shot on a low budget into the hundreds of millions in box office receipts. You are also inviting an audience who are trained and looking for your torture porn movies twist. And when that twist telegraphs itself very early on you are dead in the water. Maybe that is why the Twisted Pictures produced THE TORTURED has been sitting about on a shelf since 2007 and I suspect underwent some re-shoots by SAW maestro Darren Lynn Bousman who is thanked in the credits.

Conceit wise THE TORTURED does have a new take on torture porn, the good guys are torturing the bad guy, but the writer, director(s) and producer just couldn't find a way to execute it effectively. Shame as I'd like to see Twisted Pictures get a life outside of the SAW franchise but hopefully they have more horror treats to come.

Floppy and flaccid.

The Collector

After winning Project Greenlight 3 and having their script, FEAST produced by Dimension Films screen writing duo Patrick Felton and Marcus Dunst quickly became the go to guys for horror features jumping on to the SAW franchise steam train as well as finishing their own FEAST trilogy and doctoring scripts for the likes of MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D. Dunst makes a move into the directors chair for THE COLLECTOR.

Looking to score an expensive jewel and settle his estranged wife's loan shark debt Arkin (Josh Stewart) breaks into the home of the family where he has been carrying out construction work. Already in the house is a masked man who has tied the family up in various improvised torture chambers and rigged the house with an assortment of booby-traps. Arkin is caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse against the masked man and his contraptions.

The script was conceived during Dunst and Felton's pitch for the SAW series as a proposed prequel, a few adjustments later and it became MIDNIGHT MAN and latterly THE COLLECTOR. The trap orientated plot will certainly be familiar to fans of the work of John "Jigsaw" Kramer but this film is a lot meaner, if that is possible, and is unforgiving to its characters. Dunst's direction takes a startling lead from giallo slashers with contrasting colours and outright brutal violence. The traps idea may be a little contrived and stretch believability but this is entertainment, not true life and as a result this is a thrilling and gritty movie, a refreshing, vitalizing jolt to the torture/home invasion sub-genre and the best to come from US shores for many a year. It practically screams for a sequel but that is an inherant factor of the horror plot; evil going unpunished, and Felton and Dunst have already spoken on various internet interviews of taking THE COLLECTOR in an intriguing action orientated direction.

The movie has been crippled by distribution problems once the Weinstein's were unable to provide proper support so it has got a little lost in the shuffle, seek it out in a DVD store now.

Total hard on and ejaculation!

Rec 2

REC was 2008s outstanding horror feature utilising the point-of-view voyeur camera techniques that have been applied in other movies since such as DIARY OF THE DEAD or CLOVERFIELD. The story was told in real time with minimal edits and a largely improvised and naturalistic performance lending a scary true to life feel to what essential boils down to a zombie film. It was a delight at Frightfest Glasgow 2008 and as promised by co-directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza are back with REC 2.

The film tail ends its predecessor almost immediately following a SWAT team with helmet mounted cameras being led into the building by representative from the Ministry Of Health after losing contact with their doctor who entered the building an hour or so before. We follow the group as they uncover the aftermath of the original movie and meet a few familiar faces in the form of the crazy infected residents. The team soon find themselves in similar dire circumstances as those of the originals cast but this time the story adds even more emphasis on the supernatural aspects further distancing itself from the contrived American remake QUARANTINE. The addition of a group of young kids who sneak into the building under the quarantine cordon adds a new angle for both camera and story until the return of Angela and a twist on the night vision finale.

Keeping very much to the same formula allows REC and REC 2 to be viewed as one continuous piece. For the sequel the action is heightened, the mystery is deepened and one of the most original and frightening horrors of the last decade has set itself up to be a continual series. Balaguero is set to direct FLATMATE while Plaza is still circling his project CIRCUS before moving onto a third entry. We await REC 3 with much anticipation.

Erection and ejaculation!

Basement

Oh look they've reused the set from THE HOLE that could be cool. Or not as it happens.

When some anti-war protestors stop for a pee they stumble upon an underground bunker and get locked in. Three minutes layer they're shouting about never getting out of here while walking incredibly slowly to get out all their exposition while walking through a very small, limited set that is opposed to be maze. Shambles heaps upon shambles as we leap from disjointed scene to disjointed scene that seems like a bunch of monkeys have written in their own shit.

If it wasn't for British horrors like 28 DAYS LATER or THE DESCENT you would be forgiven for thinking Britain cannot make horror films to save themselves. It certainly seems like the writers, director and producers of BASEMENT can't. While it is well photographed, which is usually where low budget movies loose out the "script" is an incoherent jumble, or perhaps it is the edit and editor that is at fault. Whichever the film is directionless, the acting wooden and forced so the director is certainly to blame as are the producers for finding money for this utter waste of time. I can only say this is the worst horror film I have ever seen and I have watched Uwe Bolls genre fallacies.

This movie is so utterly atrocious I've shrivelled up and ingested myself.

Dead Cert

Craig (CLIFFHANGER) Fairbass is the lead in this gangsters meet vampires Brit flick in a substrate of horror that is fast becoming "High Street Horror" taking up residence at your local supermarket.

Fairbass plays the preposterously named Freddie Franken (my spellcheck just suggested Frankenstein there) who no sooner has achieved his dream of opening a strip club than he's lost it in an underground fighting bet. To a bunch of Romanians. Who are vampires. Led by Billy (DOGHOUSE) Murray and other British soap actors. Eventually, really, really eventually, they all scuffle, not really fight, it's all more of a struggle.

The production of DEAD CERT is very much a jobs for the boys number, nearly every key actor is a producer or executive producer on this show. The aligning of the gangster and vampire genre will not please fans of either being a half-baked cut and paste retread of the simplest of themes from both. Watching the trailer would lead you to believe there's a British FROM DUSK 'TIL DAWN waiting for you instead of the tame episode of Footballers Wives with Halloween fangs that you get. There's some pretty women on display but even the stripper characters remain clothed, where's the sex that used to ooze of of British horror in the Hammer heydays?

Shot in mostly master shots with a couple of poorly advised "name" cameos DEAD CERT is dead rotten ( I hope I haven't inspired the sequel there!) and a load of "soppy bollocks" though more of a silly film than actual outright bad. Floppy.

ZMD: Zombies Of Mass Destruction

In a small island community in the United States Of America a pretty young Iranian girl struggles against her fathers preconceptions of what her life should be and the locals misconceptions that she is from the other Middle Eastern country to begin with an I. There's also a gay couple, one a townie returning to come out to his family and his partner who is already way, way out there. Thrown into this backwards slice of America is the minor problem of an invasion of the walking dead.

When you have a horror film called ZOMBIES OF MASS DESTRUCTION you know you're getting comedy but you're also expecting a bit of flesh munching undead action but just like the films namesake mass destruction is no where to be found. Instead we're holed up in a community church where the local preacher tries to straighten outnumber the gay characters and the "local yokels" mix up Iran and Iraq in a ham-fisted social commentary. The digital photography looks like it's been washed in a dirty bath and needs a good colour correction to brighten it up a fair bit. Overall the problems lie in the execution of the script, both the production and the acting let down what could have been a fair comedy.

In the end the movie is as dull and lifeless as a corpse and as flaccid and floppy as my horror movie hard OFF.

Night Of The Demons

Angela is having a party...again. Where you there the first three times that demons were unleashed on unsuspecting teens on Halloween night? If so you might be interested to know that Adam (AUTOPSY) Giersch is returning to the popular franchise to resurrect the Demon House once more.

As a remake of one of the more obscure horror titles of the 80s your knowledge of the genre is really put to the test as to how much you know about the original three movies. As video shelf horror and late night cable filler the original trio has gathered a cult following and it mostly to this following that the reworking of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS will appeal most. It is not a film out to set the world to rights but instead is interested in painting the screen red and partying like this will be the last Halloween ever.

Character and plot begone. Exposed midriffs, punk rock and vaginal secretions are the order of the day. And while it sure looks pretty this reviewer would have liked to have seen the pus and ooze go further, the FEAST trilogy has already set the standard for squirting grue, and some of the kills could push the boundaries a bit more. The movie works best when it's having fun such as Shannon Elizabeth as the gothic temptress Angela slow dance seducing another female to the strains of Type O Negative and the Drac FX team turn in a interesting catalogue of demons.

Hampered by silly exposition but saved by not taking itself seriously NIGHT OF THE DEMONS is a reminder of when horror can be fun when played like an over the top Halloween funhouse.

Semi-erect

Cherry Tree Lane

Paul Andrew Williams follows up his tongue in cheek horror THE COTTAGE with a more sober affair the stark and harrowing, despite its name, CHERRY TREE LANE.

Fast being dubbed "hoodie horror" with the likes of EDEN LAKE and F before it CHERRY TREE LANE is a home invasion movie in which a gang of three South London "yoofs" come calling at a house on the titular street looking for revenge against the son of the ordinary unassuming couple that are found at home. For just over the next hour we wait uncomfortably for the return of son Sebastian as the gang members grow increasingly restless in their quest to sate their blood lust. Frustrated and impotent against the bickering teens tension mounts as we get closer and closer to the moment of Sebastian's return and the couple are subjected to an increasing catalogue of crimes.

Williams himself has said the idea came out of a fallback plan, should his filmmaking career hit the skids he would have a story that could be done simply in and around his own house. I certainly hope Williams career has not achieved such a low point as he is really beginning to show promise as a great British director. CHERRY TREE LANE is a simple premise that lives comfortably in the horror/thriller genre with other sparse and suspenseful cinema greats. It is a film that gnaws on your nerves avoiding splatter and blood shed instead favouring the suggestion and anticipation of terror.

Full on hard on.

30 Days Of Night: Dark Days

Ghost House Pictures have gone the age old Hollywood route of following up the successful 30 DAYS OF NIGHT with a direct to DVD sequel in conjunction with Stage 6 a direct to DVD production arm of Sony who also ushered through the direct to DVD VACANCY 2 and THE GRUDGE 3.

The story returns to Stella after surviving the vampire attack on the Alaskan town of Barrow. She has written a book on the event and uses her book launch in LA to flush out some actual vampire living in the city of Angels. This brings her to the attention of a small group of vampire hunters lea by a human sympathising vamp called Drake who intends to lead Stella and the hunters to the head vampire Lilith.

The biggest problem with Stage 6s direct to DVD production is it's lack of scope. The Dark Days comic book goes all out ALIENS, Stella becomes a tough bitch with a gang of armoured mercenaries out to take a war to the vampires, where as here she's become whining and simpering and has to be convinced by a group of underground vampire hunters to take on the dark forces. The major comic sub plot that was dropped from the original, where video evidence was taken from a helicopter and is now in possession of the pilots mother, is missing once more from the sequel. There is some nice running in dark corridors photography that has more in common with The Descent than 30 Days Of Night but we've been treated to nothing more than a fare to middling vampire tale that lacks the talent and depth of the original. The lack of Melissa George doesn't help neither nor does the lack of depth to the characters and the cliched beat sheet the plot strives to meet. It's all too safe and dull really.

The sequel needed to be bigger in scale and direct to DVD is not going to cut it. It's a floppy for Dark Days.

F

Johanne Robert's F is the latest "hoodie horror" following in the footsteps of ILS and EDEN LAKE and coming at the same as Paul Williams' CHERRY TREE LANE. Roberts himself as been an active participant in the UK horror scene making a name for himself with micro-budget features most notably the Horror Channel favourite FOREST OF THE DAMNED and the made for mobile phones WHEN EVIL CALLS.

Based on real circumstances where a teacher was killed for handing out an F-grade to a pupil Johanne Roberts' F takes the story and adds an element of siege where teachers and a few lingering pupils remaining in a school at the end of the day come under attack from faceless hooded thugs who move in preternatural ways and bring death in the form of box cutters and wrenches. The film is a thread bare suspense exercise that exploits the current lingering knife culture in the UK.

Roberts latest is a significant step up from his previous productions coming at a time when it looked like the negative reviews were going to swallow his career alive. Gloriously shot on the RED One camera, though will a little over use of the out of focus trickery, F looks like a bona fide large scale production with an outstanding performance from lead David Schofield and some creepy and well executed antagonists. It is a shame the film becomes laden with a few slasher cliches such as stumbling victims or impossible deaths when it goes to such lengths to avoid being trapped in the mobile phone cliches. A little more of the violence on screen could have heightened the experience though one particular attack aftermath could be the most memorable effect of the year.

F plays out more as a slasher/horror than the expected hoodie/torture thing and manages to be topical and a bit of a 70s throwback at the same time.

I got semi-erect at this one.

Devil

DEVIL proposes to be the first in M. Night (THE SIXTH SENSE) Shylaman's Night Chronicles where the now maligned director will put his story concept in the hands of another writer and director and take more of a producing role. DEVIL brings HARD CANDY and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT scribe Brian Nelson together with QUARANTINE helmet John Erick Dowdle.

When five strangers enter a skyscraper elevator their trip soon turns to terror as the break down between floors and slowly begin to get on each others nerves. As security, an engineer and eventually police work to get them out the danger of the situation increases as one by one they are killed off. Whether this is a complicated murder plot or supernatural forces at work circumstances have conspired to bring the players in this deadly game together which will reveal the real devil inside every human being.

DEVIL fairs better for having Dowdle as director but never pushes over any boundaries making it a safe commercial horror film for those who cannot predict a jump scare or have no stomach for the red stuff. Apart from a few grisly murder aftermaths DEVIL may have found itself with a PG-13 rating, or its equivalent, and the film lacks any real suspense. Dowdle draws on his experience with the limitations of the POV remake QUARANTINE to keep the elevator scenes dynamic but lack of any real creepiness in the plot undermines this talent leaving us with a passable pot-boiler supernatural tale. All gloss and no real guts yet this first entry of The Night Chronicles is far superior to anything that M. Night has been putting his name to in the last few years.

A floppy cock for this one.

Resident Evil Afterlife 3D

The fourth film in the Capcom game influenced franchise is upon us with the series originator Paul W S Anderson returning to both script and direct his wife Milla Jovovich as the superhuman Alice in her quest take down the Umbrella corporation.

The army of clone Alice's march down into the Tokyo headquarters of Umbrella and enact slow motion, high flying, 3D captured vengeance on her creators and once that is out of the way Alice v1 can get back to tracking down the friends she parted with at the end of Extinction. This leads her back to LA and the mass zombie hordes trying to get into a maximum security prison where the last few stragglers are left scrounging out their "afterlife". The hope of rescue from a ship moored off the coast is all that keeps them going and it is not long before the evil finds it's way in and all he'l breaks loose.

Resident Evil Afterlife's 3D is spot on, further proof if needed that the James Cameron developed system is the way to go with digital 3D, bringing the good looking and permanent lip glossed ladies to life and blood splattering onto the front of your glasses. Enjoy each chest juggling gun recoil and rejoice in the pounding neo-Carpenter synth score from tomandandy. Anderson has had fun with this film mining his DVD collection to bring in scenes from The Matrix, Blade II, Alien, Doomsday, Die Hard, Escape From New York,The Book Of Eli, Silent Hill and steering the movie franchise in a totally different direction from the game series. It is mired with plot holes and series inconstancies but, and I am a little tired of justifying this, if you are paying money to see a Resident Evil movie without enjoying the first three and bringing expectations beyond your inner thirteen year olds sci-fi horror action hybrid wet dreams you've bought a ticket for the wrong show.

A good hard on.

Dark House (Fangoria Frightfest)

Sometimes horror just needs to be good cheesy fun and DARK HOUSE does this in spades. It is a riot of contrived plot devices, a bit of a rip off of THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and is helped along by Jeffrey Combs stellar hammy performance and some other good turns despite the cliched character types. The set design and art direction is brilliant capturing the cartoonish over the top feel of a Halloween haunted house. It's a film that's easy to be forgiving of but equally easy to forget.

DARK HOUSE makes Happy Horror Hard On semi-erect.

The Haunting (Fangoria Frightfest)

Spanish language film NO-DO here repackaged as THE HAUNTING wants to be in the same league as the Del Toro produced The Orphanage and other Spanish spookshows but where we are used to a slow haunting build and rounded characters to carry those sort of films NO-DO is ham fisted and clunky jamming as many jarring juxtapositions as it can and over using CGI ghost effects rendering the whole thing a dull and obvious affair. When the film gets to breathe it starts to find its feet but no sooner are we settled in than we find ourselves cutting to, or here more appropriately dissolving to, another scene or morphing into poorly recreated "stock footage"

A sad Spanish haunting that leaves me floppy.

Don't Look Up

When an American horror director starts to receive visions of an unfinished 1920s Romanian film makers work he sets out to re-create the lost masterpiece and hopefully resurrect his stalled career.

Channeling the spirit of Bela Ort, who is played by Eli Roth in the briefest of cameos, and convincing a small crew to re-open a long abandoned film studio when a series of bizarre consequences begin to fall on the movie set as the spirit of a gypsy curse is reawakened. Which is just as well as no one films anything beyond one take, the crew take to running around smashing cars or knifing each other and there is a lot of howling and flies buzzing about and a bizarre Romanian location scout with the worst accent since Cate Blanchett tried to be Ukranian in the fourth Indiana Jones movie. And there's some stuff about and old guy hanging around with a baby growing in his neck tumour.

When a horror movie carries the name of respected Asian horror directors like Fruit Chan and Hideo Nakata you would be expected to be treated to something unexpected and probably actually scary. Instead DON'T LOOK UP is such a disaster it adds competence to any Uwe Boll film you may have seen. Horrendous acting turns, a disjointed "plot" and a couple of set pieces cribbed from Nakata's original RING and even a few from the TOMIE movie discredit any horror movie honour these two may have gained.

DON'T LOOK UP should be renamed Don't Look At All and is hilariously bad in the level of the equally inept GIALLO.

Flaccid, floppy and inert.

Shelter

Julianne Moore plays a hardened psychiatrist and profiler who does no believe in multiple personality disorder. Her father likes to challenge her opinions and introduces her to a patient who not only displays multiple personalities but can also manifest physical aspects of the people sharing his head. The pursuit to discredit the patients condition descends into a struggle with belief and faith.

Writer Michael Cooney (Identity, The I Inside and eh... Jack Frost) is on familiar territory as his story slowly unveils a psychological conundrum that unfortunately veers sharply into a crackpot, mystical hodge-podge where one of the major plot conceits relies on that unobtainable Hollywood power to have a computer do impossible tasks very, very quickly. This reeks of rewriting burying the original script under layers of Hollywood BS. It's like way him a Dark Castle film without the fore warning of the logo to let you know your about to watch a piece of crap.

It goes to show that it's not just remakes that are bereft of ideas but original productions also. Does the fault lie at the hands of the writers, the directors or the money men? Certainly not the audience who stayed away from Shelter in droves. This is a confused, uninspired film that feels more like a business deal and a bunch of paychecks than an actual attempt to rouse any scared or chills.

I'm left flaccid and floppy

The Last Exorcism

Reverend Cotton Marcus is, by his own admission, a fraud. He has invited a documentary film crew to follow him as he unveils the tricks of his trade and his fall out with faith that he has been preaching since he was ten years old. Cotton takes a an exorcism case which should be no more than a cathartic exercise for a deeply religious family. The Reverend will finally confront what he has chosen to deny.

Any exorcism movie is going to draw comparison ro William Friedkin's seminal classic but director Daniel Stamm and co have re-invented that genre for the digital age. This is a 70s era premise given a very millennium spin and the result is bone cracking, body twistingly good. Characters live and breathe onscreen with a couple of Oscar worthy performances and the documentary style helps enhance the immersion in the events which turn and push you in one direction and then take you in another.

Director Daniel Stamm was a natural choice for the faux documentary style movie after he showcased his talent in the form with A Necessary Death and though this style had it's detractors (and why? Would you say close-ups and wide masters, cranes, dollies and steadicam have been overused as well?) with REC, Paranormal Activity and now The Last Exorcism the Point Of View horror film is very much in vogue and is very much still effective at delivering a good old fashion scary movie.

Total erect and once more I ejaculated.

Burning Bright

Burning Bright sounds like a SyFy Channel premise; a tiger loose in a house stalking a college aged girl and her Autistic brother but it's execution is far superior than any of the nature amok films that are churned out for cable and DVD every month. Genuinely suspenseful and utilising a real tiger (take that CGI!) the simple story avoids being bogged down too much in melodrama and the very attractive husky voiced Briana (Step Up 2 The Streets, Sorority Row) Evigan makes a good show of herself all sweat soaked and running about in her pyjamas.

There are flaws, though minor compared to some larger budgeted films, and as no film is perfect they are forgivable. The editor does a good job of tying the shots together to keep the feel of the tiger and the actors in the same environment though gore hounds will be inevitably disappointed by only one on screen mauling, but for one "F-bomb" this could easily be rated PG.

A very enjoyable distraction that has Happy Horror Hard On suitably errect.

Splintered

Independently produced British horror Splintered has been floating around since its debut at the Grimupnorth festival last year which is finally getting a brief theatrical run this September followed by DVD a week later and late night showings on cable in the US.

The obligatory group of five teens head off into the woods in the search of a Welsh local legend, a mysterious beast that has been attacking live stock and has now escalated its preying to humans. Camping out in the woods pseudo goth chick Sophie wanders off pursuing the mythical beast and finds herself trapped in the ruins of an orphanage by feral psychopath. Sophie's friends try and find her and will find out the truth behind the story, is it man or beast or possibly both?

Although Splintered certainly won't set the horror world alight it is pleasingly competent, well acted and produced and is the sort of film that rises above the expectations of the direct to DVD and late night cable market. On it's limited and wholly independent budget as well as it's minor deviations on cliched plot twists Splintered is a film to have fun with for any horror fan to pass the time on a slow night and a safer bet for a "date night" horror film than most recent extreme fare.

A good stiffy.

Piranha 3D

Joe Dante's PIRANHA was launched by uber B-movie producer Roger Corman off the back of the success of JAWS. John Sayles blackly humourous script and Dante's gleeful malignant film have long been a cult classic. Followed up by a sequel helmed by non-other than king of the world James Cameron and remade again, for Television, in 1995 it seemed only right that in this age of remakes, and with the relative success of Corman's remade DEATH RACE, that the time was right to dip once more into the blood infested water with the killer fish.

Spring Break at Lake Victoria, Arizona brings twenty thousand hot young things down on mummy and daddy's boats to party the summer away. A freak earth tremor has cracked open a subterranean lake which has unleashed a pack of prehistoric piranha. When the two meet it's a hell of a mess. Plot, characters? Who needs them. If you go into PIRANHA 3-D looking for a cultural character study you're in the wrong theatre. This is for the fun crowd and we like our laughs bloody and tasteless served with a side of hotties.

Writer / Director Alexandre Aja pumps his film full of beauty, blood, boobs, blood, action and blood. It's a ramped up hyper-feast of fun, fun, fun in the sun as the rampant killer fish tear the revelers into little pieces and the excess of enjoyment is not hampered by the poor and mostly ineffective 3D post-process.

PIRANHA is a horror party movie, see it with a crowd who will cheer and laugh, jeer and giggle. It's a sleek, sharp-toothed thrill ride that offers good unsavoury summer fun that you'll return to again and again. Let's hope there's another shoal of deadly fish ready to come our way in the form of a sequel and this time it is filmed using 3D.

Full on erection and ejaculation.

A Serbian Film

Some films attract controversy through their exploitative handling of material and normally those films gather notoriety resulted from scaremongering drummed up in press and media. It is doubtful that most people that speak out against those sorts of films actual see the whole film. This will be the issue with A Serbian Film.

If I were to describe to you scenes and plot involving pornography, rape, child abuse and necrophilia you would immediately think of a poor quality, shot-on-video limited appeal film that is produced to sate the tastes of societies underbelly. And no matter how you approach it any description of A Serbian Film will invoke this. What it will not tell you that this is a superbly crafted, glorious photographed, strongly acted and fully committed film that explores a world of violence that is entirely possible and conceivable. It will also not tell you that rather than being a voyeuristic thrill show the makers of A Serbian Film have a point to make, mostly related to disillusion with their home country. They have chosen to do so in the package of an extreme horror film that will jar, excite, sadden and sicken.

To understand A Serbian Film you have to see it. You will be surprised at how palatable the film is. You'll find humour and horror. You'll find the most important horror film of recent years. I encourage you to make up your own mind, your own decisions and see it, maybe just the once, if you can take it.

The normal Happy Horror Hard On scoring system may be in poor taste or entirely applicable: full on raging erection and ejaculation!

Predators

20th Century Fox have put a third ALIEN VS PREDATOR movie on hold to delve back into the original PREDATOR franchise line, dusted off an old Robert Rodriguez written script and asked him to reboot the series (ignoring PREDATOR 2 and the AVP time line) and bring us a better bolder set of PREDATORS for the 21st century.

A group of desparate soldiers, mercenaries and freedom fighters find themselves abducted and brought to an otherworldly game reserve where they serve as the prey to a clan of an alien hunters with advanced technology against which the humans can have no hope of survival. Left with little choice or option to escape Royce (Brody) leads the misfit humans in a hunt against the hunters.

If PREDATORS had graced our screens a year or two after the original film it would be universally put down. This is a simple re-hash of many of the Schwarzenegger films key sequences; replace an Indian for a Yakuza, replace a nondescript former Soviet with a mini-gun instead of Blaine with a mini-gun, have a Venezuelan female deliver exposition, jump off waterfalls, cover yourself in mud etc. The new alien environment looks like the familiar Rodriguez trick of an initial lush exotic location such, as Hawaii, and then the rest of the action takes place on a Texan nature preserve once the audience has bought the set up (see SPY KIDS 2). For an alien world there is no alien fauna, this in no Pandora, and we are supposed to believe from the brief glimpses we get that mankind is not the only species hunted here and yet the whole world is overtly Earth-like. The casting is pretty hopeless, Brody isn't tough enough and the rest can't act enough. The films lags for an hour as the characters quick ascertain their situation but have no mission like the mercenaries of the original. It then shows promise as the Predators turn up though we only ever get four in total, and bogs down again with an unpleasant Lawrence Fishburne cameo (how did he get so fat living on an alien world for ten seasons?) and anti-climatic climax without the expected return of Arnie himself as a Predator tribe leader (believe me it was in one of the drafts). Most of the hunting is actually Michael myers/Jason like stalking or standing around. Like the recent FRIDAY THE 13TH movie this is a greatest hits collection that sadly misses.

Considering Rodriguez '94 tour-de-force script played more like STARSHIP TROOPERS this movie had to undergo some serious overhaul to get it in on a $40 million budget (less than AVP!) and the result is a cheat on the franchise. Stephen Hopkins PREDATOR 2 will be more fondly remembered for at least giving the alien hunters a new playground and for my money the AVP series was tieing in better with the Dark Horse comic series. If there is to be another sequel my Predators versus Space Marines on an abandoned alien space station is available for option.

I'm left flacid and floppy.

La Horde

Perhaps French film makers took the ending of 28 WEEKS LATER as a challenge as not long after the zombie/infected of MUTANTS we have a group of undead going under the name of LA HORDE.

A police raid on a tower block of illegal immigrants and gangster types turns to disaster when the criminals gain the upper hand and turn the tables on the cops who were hell-bent on bloody revenge for the death of one of their colleagues. Then France inexplicably erupts with a zombie infestation with the vast majority of them teeming toward the tower block. Now the cops and the crims must team up in order to survive.

Story wise there's nothing new here but the execution by directors Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher is slick despite massive plot gaps that they've run roughshod over with some corking violent action sequences. It takes only fifteen minutes to get the zombies on screen, the juddering fast ones of recent years with no decay in sight, and from then on the film only flounders when it tries to deal with characters and motives when all you really want is to see more ridiculous fight scenes. LA HORDE gloriously revels in it's ultra-violence as its antagonists go up against their undead compatriots in hand to hand combat. No mere kick and a slap will do though as every time there is a human/zombie battle there are over dozen head butts, ten dozen roundhouse kicks with fridges and kitchen appliances thrown in for measure.

Shot in a grime covered sets without a redeemable character amongst the group to root for LA HORDE is a hi-octane, foul mouthed, just don't give a f*** bad-ass zombie flick. Not as well done as the 28 DAYS LATER movies or Frances own MUTANTS this is put together like the levels from a computer game with lots of shouting, swearing, arguing and shoot outs. Any back story just gets in the way of really bad cops and really bad bad guys kicking the crap out of the undead. And it's a lot more fun than it should be thanks to its exhausting set pieces and the mad and brilliant axe-wielding veteran soldier character.

Viva la nasty zombie horde! A great big raging stiffy for this one.