Underworld Awakening

Screen Gems other husband and wife franchise returned to our screens this weekend in full on 3D and re-vamped (i'm sorry, really I'm sorry) to take the series in a new direction under the guidance of Mårlind and Stein, the Swedish directors of STORM (2005) and SHELTER (2009).

Kate Beckinsale returns to her goth fetish role after an absence from the third series entry as the Death Dealer Selene which finds her waking up 12 years after her capture to a world fully awakened to the existence of vampires and werewolves where ethnic cleansing known as The Purge has rid humanity of all but a few pockets supernatural beings. Smashinh her way out of incarceration Selene finds she has a daughter, a hybrid being similar to her father Michael Corvin and spends most of the film trying to exert an emotional link to the child. It doesn't work.

UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING shows promise for about four or five minites and then the whole thing collapses with the appearance of a terrible Scott Speedman doppelgänger and from there in it a myriad mix of crash, smash broken CGI windows, wirework martial arts that is not only cribbed from THE MATRIX but also the RESIDENT EVIL series and monsters borrowed from the last appalling MUMMY movie. There's also a ten minute game of "Is that Chris Martin?" and pointless bored performances from Charles Dance, Stephen Rea and the bloke that was the tour rep in THE INBETWEENERS MOVIE.

It will take some going for a film to be as bad as UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING this year but it is still January and there are plenty of disinterested franchises queuing up to take out money. I wonder if any of ten will make me feel genuinely embareased for paying for them like this one has.

1/5

Rogue River (2011) Frightfest Review

Torture and kidnap movies are a slowly waining sub-genre in the the current horror trends as we see a swing toward more supernatural flicks. There are still a fair few of them to be released from the indie circuit and ROGUE RIVER is one of these. A young woman sets off to scatter her fathers ashes and meets an unsavoury couple at the titular river. A simple premise and set up though there are a few nasty surprises along the way.

I do not think it is a spoiler to tell you that Bill Mosely is the bad guy in this piece nor do I think it was the film makers intention to hide that from you. Rather the journey from nice guy to psychopath is a newer path for Mosely, he's not an outright psycho from the get go for once, and ROGUE RIVER is not one of those movies out to re-write the rules of horror but one of those that shows you can still deliver a solid entertaining movie within the confines of expectation and you can play about with those confines a little to. Where I was expecting a bit of a dud I got a nice suprise from ROGUE RIVER at Frightfest where it was good to see most negative expectations overturned to a fairly positive response. It was nice to see a couple of psychos inhabit a clean and normal abode rather than a busted old farm house covere in skulls and skin lanterns.

ROGUE RIVER has a thoroughly nasty streak that I think deserves to be celebrated by more horror folks than have been giving this little indie love. I'm happy enough with half a hard on for this solid and a little depraved tale.

Underworld:Awakening not underwear arrousing

Looks like a return to business as usual for Screen Gems other no-brain action franchise. I can remember very little about the previous three, PVC suits and a big ship ring a bell, but at leasts Beckinsales back after her holiday from Part 3.

Interestingly Screen Gems have two female lead action horror series in RESIDENT EVIL and UNDERWORLD but stumble with the couple of Paul Bethany titles they've tried to get going.

Quarantine 2 Terminal (2011)

In the sequel to the remake writer and director John Pogue has abandoned the found footage style that has served the previous three films well. QUARANTINE 2 is shot in straight forward narrative fashion and progresses the American storyline that favours a super-virus over a supernatural cause for its crazed assailants. We are out of an apartment building and onto a aeroplane and an airport terminal with a mixed bunch of characters as panic and death sets in.

Straight forward and straight-to-DVD (again no UK Blu Ray) Q2:T doesn't forward the genre or the series/franchise but is a fairly passable entry in the crazed looney not zombies films of recent years. It is not a patch on REC 2 and I severely doubt we'll get to part 3 with the Quarantine off-shoot while the original Spanish movies rampage on to REC: GENESIS and REC: APOCALYPSE and hopefully the honour of being the greatest horror franchise ever.

I'll give Q2:T half a hard on. I'll also stop calling it Q2:T. And I proposed to the lead on Twitter. She said yes.

Happy Horror Hard On At World War Z

Glasgows George Sq has a very different set of traffic lights.











Anyone else been to the Greggs on !6th Street?

































































No one seemed to be paying attention to the banners overhead, a typical presence, but read them and you'll find yourself in Philidelphia.










































Can't find the GFT on here! How do I get to Frightfest?














Stunt car.







Chips!







Wouldn't take my First Week pass.





Oh no! I've heard their coverage is shit!
























Vistiors to the Corentian Club this weekend may find themselves standing for the national anthem. It will still be full of old slappers though.

Primal

I've heard many opinions that Australia's PRIMAL is brutal and brilliant but I'm here to reveal that it is in fact utter balls. It doles out horror cliches and baffling character motives like it's amateur hour seemingly only the cinematographer had a clue what he was doing because the writing, direction, editing and effects are just crap. And even at that he/she is only getting credit for not making this look like it was a shot on video number which most of the rest of the production seems to suggest. There's one sequence, a few minutes in a runtime of under 90, that has some horror quality that when the lead squealing female is trapped in the truck and the muscular lead, now eviled up, stalks aound it. It's nothing spectacular but does highlight that PRIMAL could have been a tense, dark THE DESCENT style horror flick instead of the crazy and outright sloppy derivative drivel on offer. I hoped for THE RUINS not a ruin.

This film had left me with such a hard off that I think it's disappeared into an innie!

I Saw The Devil

The Korean trend for dark and violent drama continues with Kim (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD) Ji Woo bringing the OLD BOY Choi Min Sik himself into a serial killer film with a very different skew.

After the murder of the Police chief daughter her fiancé Kim Soo Yuen, a member of the Chief's protection staff, begins a hunt for her killer narrowing the suspects down to four men who have been involved in or suspected of similar crimes. When he does find his man he engages in an unusual game of cat and mouse or more like catch and release. Without the aid of some nifty GPS and bugging devices he is able to track the sick killer and stop him every time he tries to rape or kill again. Each time leaves the killer injured but let's him go persistently following and interfering with him until can take no more and has to find a way to fight back.

South Korean cinema is a hotbed of talent at the moment and for those seeking dark and intelligent horror and drama this is the place to go. I SAW THE THE DEVIL is violent and brutal which cause it some censorship problems in it's homeland but director Kim Ji Woo uses violence to equally express the ultimate frustration of seeking vengeance against those who have wronged as well as using it as a tool to keep the audience on edge and squirming in their seats. Also present is that dark stream of humour that has been observed in recent South Korean films such as THE HOST or MOTHER. It is not used to spoof or undermine the plot and the darkness at the heart of the movie but it does give I SAW THE DEVIL a disturbing grounding in reality

Glorious cinematography, pitch perfect performances and a smart script mean that I SAW THE DEVIL is a real contender for film of the year and we're only at February.

A full on errection and ejaculation for I SAW THE DEVIL.

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.

Interesting Horror Goings On

Things floating about the zietgiest that have sparked my interest. Try them in a search engine-
Samurai Princess
Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl
Pandorum
Ju-On 10th Anniversary films
The Horde
The Pack
Sorority Row (hot chicks, fuck off)
Night Of The Demons remake.