oldsharky

World War Z (2013)

I haven’t read the book by Max Brooks, but the lovely Barbara assures me that the movie is a major departure. Instead of an oral history of a war with the undead as told by the survivors, World War Z tucks us into Brad Pitt’s hip pocket as a battle-hardened U.N. inspector who swings into action to find an antidote for the latest zombie plague.

One fine day, while shepherding their two darling daughters to school in Philadelphia, Gerry Lane (Pitt) and his wife Karin (Mireille Enos, from The Killing, who is criminally underutilized) encounter a traffic jam caused by a rampaging band of zombies who look an awful lot like those depicted in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. They’re fast and insanely violent, more like bitey berserkers than your traditional Romero-inspired shambling flesh eaters.

Lane is apparently quite an in-demand figure, as he spends most of the film being whisked all over the globe by helicopter, trying to root-source the cause of this worldwide catastrophe. His bacon is saved several times by phone calls to his U.N. superior (Fana Mokoena), who for some reason sees his former coworker as the last, best hope for humanity. Lucky him! And while the rest of the world is engulfed by hungry, hungry humanoids, Lane is repeatedly snatched from the jaws of fate.

You will not be bored by World War Z; it moves lickety-split from one dire scenario to the next, always with swarms of zombies in pursuit, clambering over each other to mount the walls and get at the yummy remnants of humanity. But despite their formidable swarming capabilities, the zombies are virtually indistinguishable and often resemble blurry video-game creations. It’s a CGI world we live in I’m afraid, and that makes for an altogether less frightening zombie holocaust.

Sector 7 (2011)

In the mood for a Korean homage to Alien set on an oil rig? I hope so, because Sector 7 makes for a dandy monster matinee—plenty of thrills, a kick-ass female lead (Ji-won Ha), and an imaginative creature that takes a pounding and keeps on hounding.

A small crew on an oil rig off the coast of South Korea is menaced by a bloodthirsty beast from below. Resembling a slimy hybrid of giant crocodile and a pit bull with tentacles, the monster grows, regenerates, and catches fire easily since its blood is flammable. But damn, if it ain’t resilient! Hottie heroine Cha Hae-joon (Ha) hits the thing with everything but the good china and it just…keeps…coming.

Sector 7‘s nods to Alien are numerous and easily spotted: the sweaty, gritty industrial sets; a monster that begins its life as a tiny specimen and quickly grows to er, monstrous proportions; a representative from the oil company (Seong-gi Ahn, the Korean Robert Forster) with a secret agenda; and finally, one of the two women crew members proves to be the toughest and most resourceful character in the movie.

The creature and gore effects are outstanding, and director Ji-hoon Kim is a gifted visual stylist, utilizing an arsenal of nimble camerawork, fast, tight frames, and even imparting a knowing sense of cosmic wonder and whimsy into the action, not unlike Guillermo del Toro. Between Sector 7 and 2006’s The Host, South Korea might slowly be revealing itself as a promising player in the import horror market.

The Mummy’s Hand (1940)

Haven’t sat down with a good ol’ Universal monster movie in quite a while, and that’s a shame since they were the primary catalyst for making me the horror fan I am today.

Imagine your humble narrator as a wide-eyed moppet in footy pajamas staring in wonder at another episode of some regional spook show like Creature Features or House of Fear, my shaky hand seeking the comfort of the popcorn bowl in a profound darkness lighted only by a small black-and-white TV set.

Or better yet, don’t.

Yes, the Mummy is a slow-moving, clumsy bugger usually manipulated by some dude in a fez to deliver him hot chicks in nightgowns, but not many monsters have such a formidable (and underutilized) mythology behind them. You know, Egypt, hieroglyphics, sarcophagi, curses, tombs, and the like?

It’s a wealth of sinister and exotic pageantry, and I for one will never tire of an ambulatory roll of bandages hunting down a bunch of foolhardy archaeologists.

The Mummy’s Hand isn’t the first entry in the series (that would be 1932 version of The Mummy with Boris Karloff) but it’s a fine jumping-off point to get acquainted with the whole premise.

Brawny archaeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran—not much of an actor, I’m afraid) and his comedy sidekick Babe Jensen (Wallace Ford) launch an expedition to find the tomb of Princess Ananka, and instead stumble upon Kharis (Tom Tyler) a 3,000-year-old living mummy who serves the latest in a long line of high priests (George Zucco, who would return to the role two more times in The Mummy’s Tomb and The Mummy’s Ghost).

Interlopers are strangled, a tasty dame (Peggy Moran) is carried away by the lovesick Kharis, and the high priest gets gunned down by the comedy sidekick. It’s a lot of movie packed into a short running time, and even with some unlikely set dressing decisions (I spied a dragon motif affixed to the temple of Amon-Ra. Were Egyptians into dragons?) and elastic mood swings (e.g., Babe Jensen sits around the campfire with his magician pal, the Great Solvani, trying to learn a corny parlor trick about 10 minutes after they discover a murdered comrade in the forbidden tomb), but it’s fast-paced entertainment with an eerie menace that stands the test of time.

Do yourself a favor. Visit your mummy more often.

Munger Road (2011)

Let’s give credit where credit is due. Writer-director Nicholas Smith has quite a pair of balls. Anyone who has the nerve to invite me back for “Part 2” after boring the shit out of me for 87 tension-free minutes, is not lacking in confidence. Does he even know what a horror movie is? Surely no one with any understanding of the genre would so blatantly string us along without anything resembling action or plot development, only to ring down the curtain with “To Be Continued.” Let me guess: somebody’s check bounced.

Smith seems to be under the impression that having film veteran Bruce Davidson (Willard, Dead Man’s Curve, X-Men) stumbling around several poorly lit locations in suburban Illinois in search of an escaped killer and some missing dull teenagers is sufficient to entice the viewer to return for the second chapter of this magnum dopus. How dare you, sir! Munger Road is the facade of a movie that never happens; a shell, a sham, a shame.

Donner Pass (2012)

A little R&R in the heart of cannibal country? What a great idea! Donner Pass may have a teeny weeny budget, but I have grudging admiration for director and co-writer Elise Robertson’s commitment to blood-and-guts filmmaking and her insistence on adding a few surprise ingredients to the (human) stew.

A quartet of students in search of a winter’s idyll take up residence in a remote snowbound cabin. Sure, it sounds innocent enough, until a truckload of their drunken buddies crash the party and a partially devoured body count ensues. Apparently the rumors of cannibal pioneer George Donner haunting the hills in search of a little warm flesh have some basis in fact. You just can’t keep a good man down!

Although she’s playing with well-worn tropes (e.g., should they leave the cabin and try to get help during a blizzard or sit tight and await the dinner bell? Decisions, decisions …), Robertson gamely tries to instill some believable humanity in her doomed characters—a bold gambit considering we’re not tuning in to see if Kayley (Desiree Hall) and Mike (Colley Bailey) can work out their relationship difficulties or if reluctant host Thomas (Erik Stocklin) is going to get in trouble with his parents for having a rowdy soiree in their absence.

Although the trail of misdirection that leads to the hungry mastermind isn’t exactly revelatory, it’s got a pinch of panache and a dollop of entertainment value. There’s also a straight out of left-field date-rape revenge subplot that has no reason to exist beyond padding the movie’s scanty 80-minute run time.

All things being equal, I’m going to give Donner Pass a cautious recommendation. Robertson and her amateur cohorts display enough dexterity and creative moxie with these frozen leftovers to warrant a watch—but only if you’ve finished your chores and walked the dog.

7 Below (2012)

A lukewarm, paint-by-numbers haunted house entry mainly notable for the presence of Ving Rhames and a doughy Val Kilmer. Rhames tries his best, but 7 Below never really heats up.

After a bus accident and the threat of bad weather, seven uninteresting people take refuge with the mysterious Jack (Rhames) in a house where 100 years ago an evil little boy sliced and diced his kinfolk.

It’s slow, contains little gore and no nudity, and by the time the final scene washes up on the beach, just barely alive, you’ll probably have switched it over to ESPN.

I watched so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

Beast Beneath (2011)

Another case of the cover art being scarier than the film.

If you’re in the mood for a low-budget, slow-paced monster matinee, I guess you could do worse than Beast Beneath. But you’d have to try pretty goddamn hard.

Seated beside a campfire, a father tells his bored teenage son the true (?) story of Griffith Park (their present location) in Los Angeles. Seems the family that once owned this prime piece of real estate was cheated out of it by a trio of unscrupulous douches.

The offenders and the land itself are cursed, and now the ghost of the family patriarch and his demonic dog haunt the premises. Sounds good on paper, but Beast Beneath never transcends the restraints imposed by its humble budget, and instead of inspired amateurism, we merely get amateurism.

Of note to followers of “Where Are They Now?” trivia. Jimmy Buffet-esque one-hit singer Bertie Higgins (“Key Largo,” 1982) cowrote and stars in Beast Beneath. His son Julian is the director. Hope they didn’t sink their own money into this project.

Mama (2013)

For the first three-quarters of Mama, I was absolutely transfixed. Executive producer Guillermo del Toro imbues the action with his trademark otherworldly finesse, though the overall feel of the film, courtesy of co-writer/director Andres Muschietti, seems more like Sam Raimi with a splash of Sleepy Hollow-era Tim Burton. It’s an eerie, heartfelt, and stylish fairy tale, featuring a fiercely maternal ghost that will probably be guest-starring in my nightmares for years to come. And yet the foot comes off the gas pedal when Muschietti endeavors to make the ghost more human, more of an actual character, toward the conclusion.

Mama opens with a bang as a deranged father (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), fresh off a killing spree, snatches his two young daughters, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lily (Isabelle Nelisse) and heads for tall timber. He drives off a snowy road, crashes the car, and herds his frightened children to an abandoned house in the woods. Five years later, the now-feral girls are discovered by hunters searching the wilderness in the employ of their Uncle Lucas (Coster-Waldau, again).

The girls are bathed and brought back to civilization under the watchful eye of Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), and are given over to Lucas and his hot (though not particularly maternal) girlfriend Annabelle (Jessica Chastain) who plays bass in a Muffs-style pop-punk band. The question is, how did two young girls survive five years in the woods on their own? Answer: With the help of a madwoman’s ghost who leapt from a nearby cliff with her own baby more than a century before.

Really, Mama is one of the most impressive “ghost” movies I’ve seen in years. The ending drags a bit, and the vengeful spirit becomes less awesome the more we see of her, but these are minor quibbles. Drop your knitting and get on it; you just might discover (as I did) that this is the sort of thoughtful, wondrous, and best of all, frightening, ghost story that you’ve been hankering for.

Killer Mountain (2011)

Hey! Aaron Douglas from The Killing is the lead! He was the nicer of the two prison guards that watched over Death Row inmate Ray Seward. That’s about it for my list of recommendations as far as Killer Mountain goes, other than it’s another made-for-SyFy shoestring operation from writer-director Sheldon Wilson (Shallow Ground).

Douglas plays world-famous mountaineer Ward Donovan, a chunky bloke who gets coaxed out of retirement by a mysterious plutocrat (Andrew Airlie) in need of a rescue mission leader. The mogul’s first team, including Donovan’s partner (and presumed love interest) Kate Pratt (Emmanuelle Vauiger), disappeared on the face of forbidden Gangkhar Puensum (“Killer Mountain”) in Bhutan. It’s a sacred place to the locals, considered the gods’ mountain, and woe unto anyone that dares blah, blah, blah…

The gods turn out to be poorly constructed CGI critters that resemble unscary spider/iguana chimeras, and soon after, when you discover the idiotic reason everyone’s risking their lives climbing this stupid peak, you’ll know you’ve been played for a sucker. Spoiler alert: The plutocrat has cancer and has reason to believe Shambala or Shangri-La exists in this accursed location, offering the key to immortality or some shit.

Look, just don’t bother and you can thank me later.

Grim (1995)

Since when does a movie made in the 90s look like a movie made in the 70s? When it’s made in England, pretending to be Virginia! It certainly helps explain the abundance of denim jackets in this thing, that’s for sure.

Nutshell: Rob (Emmanuel Xuereb—he’s good in anything!) is a mining expert inspecting a series of tunnels and caves under a housing in development in “Virginia” (actually, Coleford, Gloucestershire) where folks have been disappearing. He and a bunch of concerned homeowners go spelunking into the bowels of the earth and are set upon by a magic troll-like being who can walk through walls.

The creature (Peter Tregloan) is the best thing about this SPoS—a toothy brute who bites and kills some of his victims, while others are imprisoned, presumably to be scarfed at a future date. By the way, the monster is initially summoned by some bored New Age suburbanites playing with a homemade Ouija board.

Grim is an idiotic film, but it’s the right kind of idiotic, as writer-director Paul Matthews leaves plenty of lengthy silences in the script so viewers can hurl snarky comments with impunity (a perfect movie for MST3K-style riffing). The story also gets increasingly (and I would argue “winningly”) bizarre, contains a decent amount of bloodletting, and leads to a WTF finale, with a minor character helplessly snared in a completely FUBAR situation. Grim is an amusing time-waster with an OK monster—nothing more, nothing less.