Halloween reviews 2013

Check out my other blog: mattcottermovies.blogspot.com. I'm hoping to get some up on this blog, soon. Happy October!

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The Conjuring review

You can see my review of the new horror film The Conjuring on my main blog: mattcottermovies.blogspot.com, check it out.

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Apologies to Stephen King

I don't know if any readers recall my very first post on my blog. It was about Stephen King's IT, and I must say, although I stand by my opinion of the film, I feel, if Mr. Stephen King was reading it, I apologize. I was arrogant to start going off and saying your horror books aren't well written or are a bit "out-there". Although, in my personal opinion, I still prefer your sci-fi and drama work (as well as your short stories), I shouldn't have tried to make my opinion sound like fact. I reread a few of your books recently, and have come to appreciate them more, specifically Carrie, Cujo, IT, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claireborne, Misery, The Dead Zone, and Salem's Lot. I was wrong to say that you should only stick to specific genres, I think that you are a very good writer, and I do respect you, and I think you should have the freedom to write whatever types of stories you wish, including horror stories. I'm sorry that in that first post I was an arrogant douche who thought he could tell a respected and influential novelist how to write his books. If you read that post, I sincerely apologize.

Sinister 2: This is Bullshit!!!!! (May contain some spoilers for the first one)

I just heard some shocking and horrifying news: there's a sequel to Sinister!!! Now, I really loved the first film and was looking forward to a sequel, just go to my review of the film on my other blog: mattcottermovies.blogspot.com and you'll see that. Well, although Scott Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill aren't officially attached to it, the producers stated they'll begin filming soon for a March 2014 release, or somewhere around there. Now here's the problem, not only does it copy Insidious' "Chapter 2" thing, but Cargill and Derrickson specifically stated if they did a sequel it would not focus on a new family or the deputy character solving the case, as that's just retreading the same old stuff, but this time it would focus on more of the history of the film's villain Buguuhl, which I really thought was an interesting and cool idea. The producers have now stated that the film will in fact focus on another family of dipshits who move into the Oswalt's old home from the end of the last film. Oh, joy! This is stupid, to say you will not be doing the whole horror sequel backtracking bullshit and then you do it anyway is just lazy! I'm unsure if Cargill or Derrickson came up with the concept, but this is just bad. It's the stupid copy-and-paste type of story, the first one was successful, so they just make it again and just tweak things here and there. Absolute horseshit.

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The Purge review

Check out my review of The Purge on my main blog: mattcottermovies.blogspot.com, thanks for the support guys.

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The Lords of Salem: What the FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--------!!!!??????!!!!

Today I look at Rob Zombie's newest horror film. (Warning: Mild Spoilers, and I will describe certain very graphic images from the film.)

The Lords of Salem:
Heidi, a local rock DJ in Salem, plays a record she and her two co-DJs received from a group dubbed "The Lords", which the DJs re-dub "The Lords of Salem", assuming they're a local band. She then plays it on-air. This record as a strange effect on the women of Salem, and as strange events start happening around Heidi's home, she begins to discover that The Lords of Salem are more than just a band, they're a coven of witches from colonial days, and they're back for blood.... The cast for the film includes Rob Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie, Academy Award-nominee Bruce Davison (in a subplot story arc that was more interesting than the rest of the film), Jeff Daniel Phillips (most famous for being featured in several GEICO commercials, and Zombie's Halloween II), cult actor Ken Foree, Judy Geeson, Patricia Quinn, Dee Wallace (ET, The Hills Have Eyes, The Stepford Wives, The Howling, 10, Cujo, Critters), and Meg Foster (TV's The Scarlet Letter, Ticket to Heaven, They Live). This is an.... odd film. The movie is not as bad as Halloween II, but is nowhere near as good as The Devil's Rejects, or even House of 1000 Corpses. The movie is very upsetting. It goes way too far. I believe this is the very reason that Zombie has decided to discontinue making horror films, at least, for the mean time. You see, when a director with a very unique but dark style is given absolute free reign to do whatever they want, it doesn't always come out great. I'm not condoning censoring the artist at all, but here's a little breakdown. Zombie has always made his films independently (i.e. the way he wants to make them), but he's always had Lionsgate (a fairly large movie company, responsible for such hits as Saw, American Psycho, and The Hunger Games) backing him up, and making sure he never crosses that line of too much. Sure, he walks that fine line quite often, but rarely stumbles over it, and when he does, it's usually overshadowed by how well made his movies are. (Well, at least not his remakes, anyway.) This film was produced completely independently, it was supposed to be released last October, but it only did so in film festivals, it is only know getting a wider release. This film was picked up at the last minute by Alliance Films (another fairly large company which has produced such horror films as Insidious and Sinister, which unfortunately was bought out by a bigger company recently), who just took the film as it was. This was a big mistake. And this had happened before: flash back to 1990, Warner Bros. was very happy, as newfound director Tim Burton used his dark and unique style to produce three major hits for them: Pee-Wee's Big Adventure in 1985, Beetlejuice in 1988, and the mega-hit Batman in 1989. They decided that because Batman was such a huge hit, that Burton could do whatever he wanted with the next film. Although Batman Returns was a good film, it was an awful Batman film. Batman was placed secondary to the villains, who were grotesque and tragic characters, and the style and plot of the film was far too adult and creepy for children. it was infamous for having McDonald's pull the plug on the Happy Meals due to overwhelming complaints from parents that they took their kids to see the movie and it was far too violent and scary. It was also infamous for leaving kids in the theater crying and parents shocked and appalled. Burton and star Michael Keaton were booted off the next Batman film. Now, this is not quite the same case (this is not a beloved franchise which was advertised to children), but the imagery here is more shocking than anything we've seen from any of Zombie's previous work. The ending sequence is appalling, shocking, gross, disturbing, extremely offensive, sacrilegious, and fucked up beyond belief, and makes no sense, and the ending is total bullshit. It also feels like a Rob Zombie music video on a bad acid trip while watching fucked up horror films. The acting is sub-par for a Zombie film, and I'm not accusing Zombie of being sacrilegious, but there is some heavy emphasis of anti-religious material here. I know it was only here to make the witches seem more evil, but the witches (and even a heavy metal rock star character) constantly call religions, particularly Judeochristian religions, "evil" and call Jesus Christ "the deceiver of all mankind" and call his followers cruel names, and I believe they call Virgin Mary a "whore". There's also a great deal of disturbing, somewhat anti-religious imagery. In the surreal and gut-wrenching montage of horrors at the climax (which honestly is where the film loses you completely, due to the content and due to the lack of good storytelling) there are several extremely disturbing things. (i.e. severely burned demons in priest outfits appearing to make masturbation gestures with dildos, an infant doll crucified with barbed wire in hell, a gang of hypnotized women naked with disturbing demonic masks, the violent birth of a spider/squid creature, showing a friendly local priest as a pervert in a nightmare sequence, and a coven of nasty old witches: bare-ass naked.) Now most of these are only a few seconds long, but still, the disturbing factor is very high, and this is the main bit where the film goes too far, even more so than before. I'm assuming this was supposed to be a disorienting, nightmarish, hellish, artsy segment, and it did that well, if Zombie was going for that. Hell, I was somewhat offended by much of the imagery here, and I'm pretty nonchalant about gory films, and also pretty nonchalant about religion. The film also has a few plot holes throughout, and, unlike other Zombie films, really has no resolution or conclusion. Now, I could go on about the negative of the film for a long, long time, so here's some things I enjoyed. I thought Bruce Davison did a good job, I liked him the best of all. The supporting cast were good, too. The music and atmosphere are very surreal and creepy. The editing is pretty well done, and the cinematography is great. The references to classic films are clever, and the bits where it's genuinely scary (not just shocking) are genuinely frightening. The dream sequences throughout are creepy and disorienting. The news bit at the end is pretty creepy, but doesn't make up for the abysmal ending. I give Zombie props for trying to do an artsy, but balls-to-the-walls horror film, even if it goes way too far in a lot of places, and isn't all that good. The Lords of Salem is a very effective film, but not in a good way. Zombie's quality of films started in mediocre, then got very good, then sank into pretty bad. This film doesn't match the quality it was supposed to have. It is not on par with Insidious, Sinister, or even Zombie's own The Devil's Rejects. Zombie tried something new, it didn't work, he'll try again. I hope that he remains successful enough to do another film like Rejects. I was especially disappointed because I was very excited for this film. The previews in front of the film (for films such as The Purge, The Conjuring, The East, No One Lives, and You're Next) were better than the actual movie. I only recommend Lords to only the hardcore Zombie fans or hardcore horror fans, and they might not even like it. 2.5/5 stars.



(Images: Wikipedia, IMDb.com)

This is bad-ass!!!

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Scary Movie 5: Oh my fucking god.......

Today, I look at...ugh...it doesn't even need an introduction. Now, before I review this, here are some thoughts on the previous installments in this abysmal series (No spin-off films like A Haunted House, Epic Movie, or Meet the Spartans.) Scary Movie: Now, while this film is extremely stupid, it's that kind of so-dumb-it's-funny type of humor, not nearly as good as the Zucker's previous spoofs such as Naked Gum. Scary Movie 2: More gross-out gags, less funny humor. Still somewhat funny. Scary Movie 3: Series takes a serious dip in quality, as if it wasn't bad enough, especially due to PG-13 rating. Scary Movie 4: Worst in the series, parodies everything and anything. Still PG-13.

Scary Movie 5:
The first film not to feature Anna Faris and Regina Hall. Guess they finally got in their right minds and ditched. This film stars Ashley Tisdale, Simon Rex, Erica Ash, Sarah Hyland, Bow Wow, Kat Williams, Jasmine Guy, and Heather Locklear. It also features cameos by celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Jerry O'Connell, Mike Tyson, Snoop Dogg, Mac Miller, Sheree Whitfield, and Big Ang. The film crams in four parodies into 85 minutes: Mama, Paranormal Activity, Black Swan, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It also has "side-parodies" of films such as Sinister, Insidious, Inception, and Evil Dead (which must have been shot in the past week as that film came out a week before this.) It even has a "parody" of The Cabin in the Woods, which was self-parody to begin with, and is 5x funnier than this film. The "parody" is simply saying the title 8 times over and over. It also parodies pop culture such as Fifty Shades of Grey, Madea, and Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo. It also makes reference to Army of Darkness (one of the original Evil Dead movies), which in itself was a reference to The Day the Earth Stood Still. The film lacks any subtly, with only a few moments that made me chuckle, I was laughing because the people next to me were enjoying the film so much (they quietly informed me they were high, but who knows, they could have just been stupid). You know, this film would probably only be funny to a pothead, it's random, weird, and just all over the place. How they got all these actors and celebrities to be in this piece of shit is a mystery. I can't believe this is from the same people who made The Naked Gun, Airplane, and the original Scary Movie. This is the first film in the series to come out in nearly a decade, and I hope this effectively kills an already dying franchise. This is still in theaters, and isn't doing very well at either the box office or in the eyes of critics, so I hope this is the last film in this franchise. Scary Movie 5 is an awful, unfunny, uninspired mess. Why can't horror spoofs be more like The Cabin in the Woods or Tucker and Dale vs. Evil? That's all I have to say. 1/5 stars.

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The horror classic "The Evil Dead" gets a darker reimagining, will it be something to remember?

Last weekend I saw the reboot of the classic horror-comedy Evil Dead Trilogy.

Evil Dead:
Five friends go to a cabin in the woods to help one of them, a young college student named Mia, detox from a drug addiction. But when one of them discovers a mysterious book of the dead ("Necronomicon") in the basement, and Mia becomes possessed. The trip then becomes a gruesome nightmare, and it's a fight to survive the night. I was initially worried about this movie, but when I heard the original director Sam Raimi (who also directed Spiderman, Drag Me to Hell, The Gift, and Oz the Great and Powerful) and original star Bruce Campbell (Raimi's childhood friend who is also a cult star) endorsed the film and even produced it. The film, although being the first film not to be directed by Raimi or feature Campbell as the bad-ass character Ash, it's surprisingly effective. The red band trailer went all over the Internet, making it top at the box office in it's opening weekend. The film packs in a much gore as it can in 90 minutes. Whereas A Good Day to Die Hard was 97 minutes and felt like it was a half hour long, this film is several minutes shorter, and feels a lot longer, but in a good way, like you got your money's worth. The film, although much darker than the original, which played most of the violence for dark slapstick, was entertaining, thrilling, terrifying, and shocking. There were moments where people couldn't even look at the screen. I feel that the found-footage films are dying out, as the torture porn films did back in 2010, and I hope this is the direction horror films continue to go in. But a fair warning: if you are squeamish, just avoid this movie. The movie also showcases things that we saw in the original Evil Dead: strange and surreal camera angles, excessive gore, and practical effects. Something this reboot is being praised for is it's used of practical effects over CGI. The film also packs in a bunch of references and subtle homages to the original trilogy. With the success of this film, the filmmakers are thinking of coming out with a fourth Evil Dead film (as in a continuation of the original series).That would be awesome. If you like Sam Raimi's film, the Evil Dead franchise, or horror films, Evil Dead is a must-see. 4/5 stars.
(Note: One thing this film does well, is turn hot chicks into disgusting demonic monsters with the magic of special effects.)

 (Images: Google, Wikipedia, Chud.com)

Some news about director James Wan

I was researching director James Wan recently, and, from what I've read about his upcoming projects, he's branching into new genres. For those of you unfamiliar with the young, Malaysian-Australian film director, he has filmed and written macabre hits such as Saw and Insidious, as well as some mediocre flops such as Dead Silence and Death Sentence, as well as directing a commercial for survival horror game Dead Space (similar to crime filmmaker Guy Ritchie's popular Black Ops II commercial from late 2012). He has had several projects announced that never went anywhere, such as Fall Night, a vampire movie based off a graphic novel. Even a neo-noir/action film called X-Ray was announced in 2009, and it never got any more news. He even had a film called Haunts announced for release this year that was never mentioned again. But it appears he's gotten some big work recently. He was signed on to direct an adaptation of the MacGyver series. He also is to begin shooting Fast and the Furious 7 this summer, as he is directing it. A young filmmaker known for work in horror films moving to action blockbusters? Let's see how it works out....

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The Last Exorcism films

I'm going to take a look at the found-footage film The Last Exorcism and it's recent, non-found footage sequel. (I recommend you listen to spill.com's audio review of the second film.)

The Last Exorcism:
Reverend Cotton Marcus has performed several exorcisms in the past, and is working with a documentary crew to prove they are all a scam. He claims to have performed at least a dozen fake exorcisms, and the documentary crew is here to film his last one. He travels to the countryside to meet Louis Sweetzer, a man who claims his sweet (no pun intended) daughter Nell is possessed by a demon, named Abalam. Cotton begins his usual tricks to show that the exorcism is fake, but when strange things begin to happen while the cameras are on, Cotton and his team begin to feel that this troubled girl's issues may be a little too real. The performances by the main cast are pretty good for a horror film (especially nowadays). Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, and Louis Herthrum give pretty good performances as the main characters. There are some scenes in here that are absolutely terrifying, others kind of fall flat, a rather mixed bag, to be honest. But the final sequence is very disturbing, even if it goes a little overboard. The horror elements work very well, as does some of the drama. This film isn't a modern masterpiece, but it's one of the better scary movies that have come out in the past 5 years. The Last Exorcism is a worthwhile horror film, checkit out some time. 3/5 stars.


The Last Exorcism Part II:
Nell Sweetzer has no recollection of what happened to her in the first film, but is put in a girls' home in New Orleans, and life seems to be going good. But when strange things start happening to her again, she must take the help of a secret society of voodoo priests to stop Abalam's destructive power. Although Ashley Bell tries to give another good performance, this script just doesn't work. Many of the scares are funnier than they are scary. The romantic subplot for Nell is stupid, and the fact that the voodoo priests are barely helpful makes their whole part in this movie useless. The movie's ending sounds like the middle of a movie. And at the end, Nell does the most selfish thing anyone can do, and it makes her an unlikeable c*nt. Yep, that's what she is. It's totally called for. The special effects are dreadful, the ending is awful and nonsensical, and the entire film is dull. 1/5 stars.