Survival – Page 23

Almost Human (2013)

It’s no work of art, but writer-director Joe Begos has successfully crafted a nifty low-budget, alien-abduction thriller. If you can get around some amateurish acting and an uneven plot that provides few answers to nagging questions (e.g., Where do these aliens come from and how come we never get any idea of what they’re up to?), Almost Human delivers decent gore and a respectable body count.

Rural Maine citizen Mark Fisher (Josh Ethier) disappears one evening after a visit from his buddy Seth (Graham Skipper), who seems agitated in the extreme over the disappearance of another mutual friend. Mark’s house is bombarded with weird lights from the sky accompanied by horrible, paralyzing banshee shrieks, and neither Seth nor Mark’s girlfriend Jen (Vanessa Leigh), who witness the abduction, has any idea of where Mark has gone.

Two years later, Seth is a nervous wreck while Jen has moved on with her career (waitressing at the local greasy spoon) and her love life, getting engaged to Clyde (Anthony Amaral III), who presumably furnishes her with a more stable, down-to-earth relationship. The long-missing Mark is soon discovered nude and freezing in the woods by a pair of hunters, who quickly become the first casualties of his alien-augmented rampage.

In an interesting turn, Mark chooses to keep his victims close in order to secrete goop all over them and transform the newly departed into not-very-capable killer zombies. He’s also got a plan to get back together with Jen and start their own little litter of star-spawn.

If expectations are kept to a minimum, there are enough shocks and jolts in Almost Human to keep the viewer engaged—if not exactly enthralled. There are even a few subtle nods to The Thing, Evil Dead and Reanimator lurking in the details, if you need additional stimulation.

Barricade (2012)

In which the hunky star of Will & Grace (Eric McCormack) gets the opportunity to go all Jack Torrance while snowed in at a remote cabin with his two nervous children. However, instead of chasing his kids around with an axe, he attempts to prove his mettle by protecting them against ghosts—and a really nasty case of the flu.

Terrance Shade (McCormack) is a recently widowed MD who’s never really bonded with daughter Cynthia (Conner Dwelly) and son Jake (Ryan Grantham). After his wife’s unexpected demise, he decides to take his estranged offspring to an isolated mountain cabin for Christmas. On the Bad Idea scale, this rates near the tippy top, because, as the kids remind Pops again and again, he’s not handy, hardy, or even barely competent at wilderness survival. The whole Shade clan comes down with a bug courtesy of the town sheriff/shopkeeper/landlord (Donnelly Rhodes), and Terrance begins to see and hear things that cause him to come unhinged in a big way.

The crux of Barricade becomes readily apparent all too soon: Is Terrance hallucinating or is there an actual evil spirit loose in the house that’s causing them no end of misery? Why does Terrance keep flipping in and out of consciousness? Are the family members being haunted by their own sense of loss and guilt over the death of the wife/mother?

It’s not really much of a mystery, but director Andrew Currie and writer Michaelbrent Collings make sure that the atmosphere is suitably tense and claustrophobic throughout, and McCormack delivers a first-rate performance as the hapless patriarch trying his best to keep his children out of harm’s way. A very watchable little fright flick.

The Colony (2013)

When in doubt, a frozen hellscape will definitely add depth and dread to a horror movie. It’s also a good distraction from having the main characters in The Colony spending entirely too much time hiking around on another egregious AIW (Anonymous Industrial Walkabout).

Still, the production values here are decent, the story is reasonably compelling and the atmosphere is chillingly claustrophobic.

The presence of a couple genre vets in Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton, doesn’t hurt either.

Nuclear winter has fallen and in a few lonely outposts, humanity attempts to restart its society underground. The titular colony has suffered a drop in numbers lately, thanks to a nasty flu that’s been going around.

This is generally followed by the afflicted citizen either getting shot by an increasingly paranoid Mason (Paxton) or being sent on “the walk,” a stroll through the aforementioned frozen hellscape which offers a grimly minuscule chance at survival.

Hey! At least they have a choice!

When Briggs (Fishburne), the colony commander, loses radio contact with one of the last outposts, he takes a small team out to investigate.

And here come the cannibals, led by a fearsome bald giant (Dru Viergever). But how do three guys fight a ravenous mob? Unsuccessfully, as it turns out.

There’s nothing innovative going on in The Colony, but cowriter and director Jeff Renfroe keeps it moving with a minimum of stupid crap we don’t care about—despite a surfeit of aimless rambling.

You will watch, you will care, and you will be effectively entertained.

Frankenstein’s Army (2013)

OK, this bad boy rocks.

If you haven’t seen anything worth inviting into your Netflix queue lately, Frankenstein’s Army is a brilliant remedy.

What we have here is a disturbing Weird War tale with steampunk accoutrements fitted into a “found-footage” frame, with a visual aesthetic that’s bold and nightmarishly distinctive.

In the waning days of World War II, Russian troops are streaming into Germany, wreaking havoc along the way. One such unit is accompanied by Captain Dimitri (Alexander Mercury), a cameraman making a documentary about these “heroic” soldiers.

While holed up in a bombed-out village, the group discovers a church converted into a mad scientist’s lab and are soon set upon by the most outré pack of Nazi zombie-robot-monsters I’ve ever seen.

Frankenstein’s Army is a Czech/US/Netherlands co-production filmed in the Czech Republic, which perhaps goes a long way toward explaining its unique appeal.

A hearty shake of my flippers goes to director and story man Richard Raaphorst, who hits a horror home run his first time at bat.

Admittedly, the lengths needed to preserve the found-footage premise become increasingly (and purposely, I think) absurd as a 70-year-old Soviet movie camera is able to capture pristine audio while getting tossed around like a Samsung at a frat party.

But Raaphorst is a filmmaker with vision: his nimble mind invents extraordinary beings, and like Dr. Frankenstein (Karl Roden), he has the ability to bring them to life.

He’s clearly not just another fawning acolyte of Sam Raimi or Tim Burton—if anything, his work reminds me of England’s once-reigning madman, Ken Russell.

Take it from me, Frankenstein’s Army is some very fresh hell, indeed. Highly recommended.

Blood Runs Cold (2011)

Based on the description, I thought this might be some annoyingly clever musical crossover, since its rather featureless lead character Winona (Hanna Oldenburg) is supposedly a successful pop singer.

To my relief, she doesn’t sing a note. She’s far too busy trying to elude the zombie-cannibal-miner-hillbilly freak that’s intent on having her over for a snack (if you know what I mean).

Blood Runs Cold is filmed somewhere near Stockholm, pretending to be North Carolina—which also accounts for the mercurial accents on display.

Winona (not a Judd) must four-wheel her way through several miles of frozen tundra to a remote house near her hometown that has been rented by her manager.

Note: If this guy was my manager, and he stuck me way-the-hell-out in some snowbound hick town without my entourage, he’d soon be nut-punched.

Winona (not a Judd) finds her crummy dump of a house, settles in and drives to a nearby tavern where she stumbles over her high school sweetheart Richard (Patrick Saxe) and his friends Carl (Andrea Wylander) and Liz (Elin Hugoson).

She invites them all back to her crummy dump (lots of time spent driving around in Arctic conditions just adds to its zero-budget charm) where they fall prey to a multifaceted maniac (David Liljeblad—who also serves as producer and co-writer) with a penchant for pickax perforation.

He falls a bit short of frightening, but I would have appreciated two minutes of backstory on where this colorful killer came from.

With Blood Runs Cold, director Sonny Laguna gives us a fascinatingly unadorned minimalist study in the field of hack-and-stack. Not one dime of this film’s budget was spent on set dressing, wardrobe, or the cast; it’s all earmarked for blood, guts, and decapitation.

And if you ask me, that’s money well spent.

Devil’s Pass (2013)

With a found-footage narrative similar to The Frankenstein Theory—film crew blunders into a frozen hell searching for answers to an unsolved mystery—Devil’s Pass provides sufficient diversions for an afternoon of chilly thrills.

Plus, it’s directed by former A-list filmmaker Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight) who seems to have fallen off the map of late.

A five-person film crew from the University of Oregon (Woooot! Ducks represent!) retraces the steps of the Dyatlov Expedition, a Russian team that perished under mysterious circumstances in the Ural Mountains in 1959.

Why anyone would want to follow the path of a doomed expedition defies comprehension, but as team leader Holly King (Holly Goss) notes gleefully on camera, “We got a grant!”

Once they land in the former Soviet Union, the crew is bedeviled by a failing GPS navigator, huge footprints in the snow that randomly appear and disappear, and some scary sounds in the night.

All this leads to the discovery of a huge door in the mountainside and hints that the Russian military has been messing around with alien technology.

The finale of Devil’s Pass makes a passable attempt at explaining all the questions that have emerged during the movie’s running time, but it’s still kind of a train wreck.

So instead of yeti we get teleporting ghouls that maybe used to be human? Sure, ok, whatever. The bottom line is that it’s a grueling and unpredictable trip that’s worth taking.

Don’t trip over the plot holes along the way.

Beneath Loch Ness (2002)

I hate to repeat myself, but I’m going to say it again: If you don’t have a halfway decent onscreen monster, your monster movie is doomed. Doomed I tell you!

In the case of Beneath Loch Ness, the best that director and co-writer Chuck Comisky can manage for Nessie, the ill-tempered plesiosaur that occasionally wreaks havoc on local fishermen and scuba-diving scientists, is some dreadful animation that would shame a high school computer lab.

While seeking photographic evidence of prehistoric critters, a team of researchers in the employ of a cable TV adventure network loses its leader down a freshly opened trench at the bottom of the loch.

Enter the team’s former honcho, Case Howells (Brian Wimmer) who arrives fresh from the Middle East to wrangle the beast, soon followed by his ex-wife Elizabeth (Lysette Anthony) a pushy producer from the network.

The cartoon creature kills some more people so Howells teams up with Blay (Patrick Bergin—say whatever happened to him?) an obsessed local who lost his son to the monster several years before.

In his kilt, William Wallace makeup and Captain Ahab harpoon, Blay is easily the most compelling thing about Beneath Loch Ness. That, and some arresting footage of rural Scotland.

The animated Loch Ness Monster here is a thing of no scale or substance—so how could it frighten anyone? Even the guys sweating their asses off in rubber monster suits at Toho Studios understand this.

Look, if I want cartoon entertainment I’ll stick with The Venture Brothers or Metalocalypse, thanks.

Let this one return to the depths from whence it came.

The Task (2011)

Filmed in Bulgaria masquerading as upstate New York, this faux reality-show-set-in-a-haunted-prison feature is severely lacking in just about every department.

From a generic, no-name cast to a predictable fake-out finale, The Task is a starvation diet of style and tension. And with precious little blood and guts—and no nudity—to distract our attention, the overall cheapness and absence of fresh ideas dooms the production from the get-go.

An assortment of reality show hopefuls are kidnapped and taken to an abandoned prison with a sinister reputation. Formerly under the rule of a sadistic warden who tortured and starved his inmates, the rambling edifice is rumored to be haunted, and the unlucky contestants must spend the night, completing a variety of unsavory tasks, in order to win $20,000.

Though the prison is wired with cameras, props, and spooky audio effects, the presence of a legit ghost throws a wrench into the works.

The Task is a total dud, no matter how you slice it. We’re never given a reason to care about any of the characters—and we don’t. If they were faced with an awesome battery of mind-bending horror and derangement, the blandness of the characters wouldn’t have made any difference.

As it stands, the stakes are never enough to draw anyone into the low-voltage narrative of The Task. As my former editor would say, when presented with uninspired copy, “It’s awfully so-whatty.”

Stag Night (2008)

When using public transportation it’s generally a good idea to pay attention to the stops. This is especially true of the New York subway system since the labyrinthine underground is apparently teeming with cannibals.

Hmmm. Cannibals of New York—sounds strangely familiar.

A quartet of yuppie jerks gets 86ed from a strip club while celebrating Bro Mikey’s (Kip Pardue) bachelor party. On a whim they decide to catch a subway uptown for more partying, and meet up with a pair of strippers en route.

Mikey’s asshole brother Tony (Breckin Meyer) fails to impress exotic dancer Brita (Vinessa Shaw) with his drunken machismo so she judiciously maces the whole bunch, forcing them to evacuate the train—at an abandoned station.

All too soon the foreplay’s over and they’re on the run from a bunch of CHUDS (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, duh!) who look like off-duty extras from The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Stag Night successfully takes a moldy premise and breathes some life into it by not wasting our precious time with shit we don’t care about. The group is dropped into perilous circumstances with very little fanfare, and the ensuing action is breathless and brutal, with buckets of believable blood and guts (including a couple tasty decapitations).

The depiction of the subterranean squatter camps is rendered in vivid detail, revealing a savage society that has siphoned electricity and water from our own, while developing its own harsh code of survival.

Writer Peter A. Dowling relies a bit too much on the chaotic shaky cam, but he’s obviously right at home with this sort of fast-paced murderous mayhem.

Worthy and watchable.

Return to Horror High (1987)

Once again I’ve been overtaken by a bout of idiotic nostalgia, so hold onto something. Let us return now, to the mid-1980s, a time when George Clooney was a nobody; when women strutted about in loose-fitting jumpsuits, and men wore break-dancing pants and white sneakers—all the better to flee from the axe-wielding maniacs, who seemed to be popping up everywhere.

Return to Horror High wears the trappings of a slasher film, but it’s really more of a sly primer on the genre as well as a goofy tribute to those resourceful filmmakers who routinely found a way to finish a crappy movie that no one would even admit to watching in the first place, because slasher movies have no redeeming qualities. And yet, watch them we do.

A schlocky horror picture crew sets up shop in an abandoned high school, where a few years before, a series of grisly murders took place. (Let’s face it, we’re not here for non-grisly murders.) Somehow, the killer was never found! (Which doesn’t say much for the competence of the local constabulary. Just sayin’.)

As the film crew, including cheapskate producer Harry Sleerik (the great Alex Rocco), director Josh Forbes (Scott Jacoby), and leading lady Callie Cassidy (Lori Lethin, from Bloody Birthday and The Prey, among others), feverishly tries to re-create the mayhem of the original murders, they begin to notice that both actors and techs are disappearing all over the place.

The premise allows writer/director Bill Froehlich to zoom in on the nuts and bolts of the slasher movie, even as his characters gamely go about the business of unmasking a killer and finishing the stupid film. “Why do people walk into dark basements without a flashlight?” wails Callie, as she and her policeman boyfriend Steven (Brendan Hughes) prepare to do exactly that.

Return to Horror High is like Truffaut’s Day for Night—as directed by Roger Corman. It both lances and enhances the illusion of low-budget filmmaking, and in doing so, offers up periodic glimpses of why so many of us cheerfully waste our lives watching such wretched nonsense.

Froehlich layers past and present like a cake boss, telling the story of the original massacre, the making of the film, and the comic police investigation (featuring Maureen “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” McCormick) that follows, all with a wink, and a few timely “meta” observations from the cast.

When Callie objects to having her shirt torn open in a meaningless scene, Harry realizes a compromise is called for. “Write ’em a hopeful, life-affirming scene where they talk about love and children—and make sure it’s set in the showers,” he commands the hapless writer.

Note: A very young and boyish George Clooney does indeed get top billing, even though he only lasts about 10 minutes. That’s called shrewd marketing. Harry would approve.