Survival – Page 24

The Graves (2009)

Ah, beware of roadside attractions, because as we all know, they’re just fronts for bloodthirsty cults in search of sacrificial offerings.

The Graves is a dirt-cheap, low-budget fright feature that nonetheless delivers a bit of gore and sinister atmosphere. It also boasts a pair of hot, snarky rocker chicks getting chased all over the Arizona landscape by some horror film veterans, including Bill Moseley (Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, The Devil’s Rejects) and Tony Todd (Candyman, Hatchet II).

Megan Graves (Clare Grant) and her little sister Abby (Jillian Murray) are comely aficionados of comic books, heavy metal, and schlock culture. In search of a good time they happen upon Skull City, a ghost town tourist trap that turns out to be a death trap.

Under the direction of Reverend Stockton (Todd), sightseers are routinely captured and sacrificed to a disappointingly unseen demon that provides for the townsfolk of nearby Unity, Arizona.

Megan and Abby are pursued, grabbed, escape, and then pursued some more by a bunch of desert-dwelling wackos, many of whom are killed by the surprisingly resourceful sisters.

The Graves isn’t a great movie; it isn’t even a pretty good movie. But once again we have a writer/director, in this case Brian Pulido, who shows promise.

And if he had more than a few hundred bucks in his bank account he could probably make a heckuva film. Kickstarter?

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Happened to catch this on SyFy today and felt compelled to wrangle a few words. Now, there have been some wretched, wretched entries in the Friday the 13th series—but this is the worst. Not only does Jason NOT take Manhattan, his reputation as a first-tier remorseless killing machine takes a serious knee to the groin.

Yet another crop of one-dimensional teens takes a slow boat from Crystal Lake to the Big Apple, and recently revived Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) decides to hitch a ride. (Probably wants to audition for Phantom.) See, it’s a senior class trip for good ol’ Crystal Lake High (?), and Sean (Scott Reeves), the son of the ship’s captain, is in love with Rennie (Jensen Daggett), who as a kid was nearly drowned by the child version of Jason (?) because her asshole Uncle Charles (Peter Mark Richman) dumped her in the middle of Crystal Lake to force her to learn to swim shortly after her parents were killed in a car crash— *has aneurism* Cue funeral march.

Just a few notes for writer-director Rob Hedden: Dude, I’ve read Shakespearian comedies with fewer subplots. All we really want is for Jason to strap on his hockey face and amass a respectable body count, preferably utilizing a battery of imaginative and colorful devices. Fail.

And how come when Jason (finally!) gets to Manhattan, he ignores the teeming masses of street gravy in order to pursue a handful of pipsqueaks from his hometown? Hell, they get mugged within 5 minutes of arriving! Couldn’t Jason go after the Mets or something? Why doesn’t he just merrily filet the entire city? The regulations that govern Jason’s behavior are awfully vague. What’s his deal anyway? I mean, I like the guy, but he needs a reboot. What’s Quentin working on at the moment?

And aside from a shot of Times Square and a few Statue of Liberty cameos, the New York location doesn’t figure into the story at all. Hell, they could have been going to Halifax. Consider this the nadir of Jason Voorhees.

Student Bodies (1981)

This early attempt at slasher satire is pure, unadulterated corn.

Student Bodies is an “Alan Smithee” production, written and directed by television veteran Mickey Rose (The Odd Couple, Happy Days, The Love Boat, Too Close for Comfort, and like a hundred others).

Cheap, goofy gags abound as repressed virgin Toby (Kristen Riter, who would later appear in the J. Geils Band “Centerforld” video) tries to figure out who’s killing off her horny classmates.

A maniac known as “The Breather” (he sounds like an obscene phone call—especially when he’s making obscene phone calls) stalks an assortment of high school kids, waiting until they’re getting ready to get it on before killing them with a ludicrous assortment of weapons, including paper clips, an eggplant, an eraser, and a horse-head bookend.

Final Girl Toby tries her best to stop the fiend—who strikes during the homecoming parade, the big game, and the prom—but ends up as the prime suspect instead.

Student Bodies isn’t especially witty, but the sheer volume of schtick keeps it afloat, as it turns out the entire faculty, as well as the brain-damaged janitor, are all murderous psychopaths.

No real nudity or gore, but at one point, a man appears on screen who explains that “R” rated movies make more money. So he says “fuck you” to the audience.

An interesting curiosity from decades past that’s at least as funny as anything from the Scary Movie franchise. Yeah, I know, faint praise indeed.

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.

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.

Frontier(s) (2007)

Parisian robbers on the run pick the absolute worst place in the universe to hide out.

Frontier(s) writer-director Xavier Gens is obviously smitten with genre classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, but I suspect there’s a sneaky tip of the beret to French New Wave provocateur Jean-Luc Godard, as well.

See? I studied film.

A quartet of reasonably attractive thieves flees the political turmoil and violent protests in Paris for the anonymity of the French countryside in order to count their loot.

Editor’s Note: What could people in Paris be upset about? You live in Paris! Have another creamy pastry and wash it down with some fine wine. Sheesh!

Unwilling accomplice Yasmine (Karina Testa) and her three co-conspirators decide to hole up in a bed and breakfast/pig farm staffed by Cannibal Nazi Hillbillies (Canazibillies?) and are soon horrified to find themselves on the menu.

The Canazibillies have little trouble subduing the brash bandits, but then old resentments boil over during the divvying of the spoils and the Master Racists are reduced to fighting amongst each other.

Even as Paris is awash in violence after the election of a right-wing candidate, Yasmine and her friends use the opportunity to commit robbery, preferring cold, hard cash to either side of a political demonstration.

I believe it is their cynical lack of commitment to a cause that makes them suitable candidates for torture and a trip to the pantry. What happens when shameless opportunists meet fanatical sadists? Well, it ain’t pretty that’s for sure.

Even if the revolutionary subtext is stretched thin to the point of invisibility, Frontier(s) provides effective shocks to the system with frantic regularity as captor and captive alike meet a succession of grim fates.

Perhaps Gens is pointing out that the fruit born of violence, whether calculated or chaotic, is equally bitter and deadly.

Don’t worry, this won’t be on the test.

The Frankenstein Theory (2013)

The Frankenstein Theory is a well-made addition to the monster’s cinematic pantheon.

It’s The Blair Witch Project set in the Yukon and the tension build is exquisite. Sure, there’s no monster and no killing for most of the movie’s 86-minute running time, but the slow changes that occur, the gathering darkness that descends on a hapless film crew in search of the legendary Frankenstein’s monster is expertly handled by writer-director Andrew Weiner.

Brainiac scientist Jonathan Venkenhein (Kris Lemche, who is excellent) enlists filmmaker Heather Stephens (Vicky Stephens) and her three-man documentary crew to follow him to the Arctic Circle in search of Frankenstein’s monster, a fictional construct that Venkenhein believes to be flesh and blood.

He produces letters, maps, drawings, and all sorts of theoretical evidence that gets laughed off by the film crew and the team’s hardboiled guide (Timothy V. Murphy), but as they move closer to the frozen heart of nowhere, they begin to realize that there might be something to this mad doctor’s hypothesis after all.

The Frankenstein Theory is a slow turn of the screw, but worth your patience. Action fans might be distressed by the lack of a towering body count, but in doling out the frights in small measures, Weiner makes the anticipation of a showdown worth savoring.

As with most mockumentary/found footage features, there are improbable scenes of “anonymous” camera work (i.e., “Hey, who’s supposed to be shooting this sequence?”) that stretch credulity to the breaking point, but I’m going to let it pass.

Hell, I would watch this again, and that’s something you don’t hear me say very often.

Crowsnest (2012)

Another found-footage cautionary tale about the dangers of a rural partytime weekend with your buds. Seriously! It sounds like a good idea on paper, especially, as in this case, if the hot-girl-to-dude ratio is 3:2.

But just look at what can happen! And if you must roister in the wilderness, for the love of gawd, don’t videotape every moment along the way.

To be fair, this doomed crew has a better excuse to shoot endless footage of their misadventures than most (documenting evidence of a crime), but it’s become apparent to me that one look through the cursed viewfinder is enough to cook your goose.

A quintet of assholes (really, is it too much to ask that our protagonists have at least one or two attributes that aren’t thoroughly annoying?) pile into their four-wheel drive for a roadtrip to a remote cabin. Needless to say, they never arrive, because the dudes brilliantly decide to take a detour to the middle of nowhere (Canada? Upstate New York? Can’t remember. It ain’t important.) so they can buy a bunch of half-priced beer.

Seems like a solid plan until they find themselves pursued by a pack of cannibals in a Winnebago. Yep. Hungry, hungry hillbillies.

The camera gets passed around from one victim to the next, followed by the inevitable chaotic, shaky handheld footage as the unfortunates get chased through the tall timber by mostly unseen predators looking to restock their larders. After all, winter’s coming.

Crowsnest contains some genuinely grueling scenes of savagery, and the gradual decay of trust and friendship amongst the assholes is effectively documented. It’s a fairly slow journey into terror, but once you’re there the blood and guts come pouring down in buckets.

Writer John Sheppard and director Brenton Spencer aren’t reinventing the wheel here; they’re just reemphasizing a lesson we know all too well. A carload of attractive jerks doesn’t stand a chance out there.

Shadow (2009)

You’ll have to roll with some changes in this Italian horror import, but ultimately, I think it’s worth it to do so.

Shadow begins as a fairly standard-issue case of strangers beware, before shifting gears about halfway through into a nasty bit of torture porn, and finally revealing itself in a Twilight Zone-meets-Dalton Trumbo finale.

David (Jake Muxworthy), an American soldier recently returned from the front lines of Afghanistan, decides a bicycle trip through a remote patch of Eastern Europe will help him unwind.

He meets a pretty fellow cyclist (Karin Testa) who invites him in to share her tent, and soon both are on the run from a pair of bloodthirsty poachers. (Ottaviano Blitch and Chris Coppola).

But wait! There’s more! After a few skirmishes, David and the poachers find themselves the unwilling guests of the evil Mortis (Nuot Arquint), a bony, bald albino with a penchant for inflicting pain—which he does.

And then there’s a twist ending that actually works for me.

What Shadow has going for it is devilishly effective tension escalation. Circumstances get increasingly grim without deteriorating into a pointless bloody mess, and Mortis has to be one of the creepiest kooks to come along in a long time.

Some of you will not care for the conclusion, but I appreciated the “one last surprise” card being played. Rather than a rip-off, I consider it a rather creative solution.

See for yourself. I doubt you’ll be disappointed, because this trip is a trip.