Survival – Page 25

Chupacabra Terror (2005)

Witness the birth of a new description category, SPOS, which stands for Serviceable Piece of Shit.

The SyFy Channel can always be counted for a SPOS, and that’s what we have here. Though it played on SyFy as Chupacabra Dark Seas, it was originally, less evocatively, titled Chupacabra Terror.

In the interest of truth in advertising, there is a Chupacabra involved—and not much terror—though the GiaS (Guy in a Suit) factor is handled competently.

Sometimes that’s all the silver lining you get.

But not here. In addition to an adequate creature, you get a decent lead in Captain Randolph (John Rhys Davies) and an even better mad scientist with Dr. Peña (Giancarlo Esposito).

Along with the Captain’s curvy daughter (Chelan Simmons, a petulant blond with no acting talent), and some other guy (Dylan Neal), they spend the majority of the movie below deck of a luxury cruise ship searching for the titular critter.

Note on the mise-en-scene: It is apparent after about five seconds, that they are not, in fact, passengers on an immense ship, but rather four actors meandering around in an industrial location (Anonymous Industrial Walkabout, another long-needed category).

In order to reinforce the nautical illusion, director and co-writer John Shepphird wisely thought to tack life preservers on a majority of the walls, even deep in the bowels of the ship, which, if you think about it, doesn’t make a lick of sense.

As for the Chupacabra itself, actor (Stuntman? Intern?) Mark Viniello, resembles a squat, vaguely canine, wingless gargoyle, who tears out a few dozen throats and demonstrates the annoying ability to be everywhere at once when in attack mode, followed by long periods of dormancy in which the principals wander around the set saying not much of anything.

Esposito, who plays the amoral scientist, repeats the line “I captured him before, I can do it again,” at least five times.

There is some entertainment value to be savored in Chupacabra Terror, but it’s a mighty thin broth.

Hypothermia (2010)

What we have here is your basic ducks-in-a-barrel situation with a bit of domestic nonsense on the side, as two ice-fishing families find themselves on the other end of the hook!

If only writer/director James Felix McKenney had used that as his tagline, Hypothermia might have been box-office gold instead of a marginal curiosity starring The Walking Dead‘s Michal Rooker. Some competent supporting actors and a better monster suit would have helped, too.

Rugged outdoorsman Ray Pelletier (Rooker), his wife Helen (Blanche Baker), their clean-cut son David (Ben Forster; lousy actor) and David’s milquetoast fiancee (Amy Chang; I’ve seen totem poles that were less wooden) get their frozen fishing vacation interrupted by the arrival of an asshole big-game hunting yuppie (Don Wood), and his soon-to-be-supper son Steve (Greg Finley).

The two clans notice that something big and fast is zipping around beneath the ice and they join forces to land the beast, which turns out to be a normal-sized guy with pointy teeth squeezed into a fairly unimpressive Neoprine jumpsuit. The hunters, soon become the hunted, blah, blah, blah, gore, scream, flee.

Look, I love the guy-in-the-monster-suit solution, and I’ve said as much right here in this very blog. At least with the the suit you get a sense of menace proportion that’s reasonably accurate, as opposed to the sliding size scale you get with a CGI monster. Is it as big as a car? A boat? An airplane?

In this case, the proportional accuracy of the guy in the (not very impressive) suit works against the overall aim of the movie, namely, to scare me! Sorry, I just can’t summon up the adrenaline to freak out over a skinny dude in a wetsuit who looks like a hastily put-together Sleestak.

Furthermore, the finale of Hypothermia is a painful example of a the-checks-didn’t-clear, lets-pack-up-and-split ending, as Helen appeals to the monster’s sense of decency and fair play to spare her life. Oh. Effin. Brother. The movie’s not a complete flop, due to the steadying presence of Rooker in a surprisingly mild-mannered role. (Face it, once you’ve played Henry Lee Lucas in a movie, you’re pretty much type-cast as the psycho.)

Finally, I don’t understand the title. I “get” that the whole movie takes place on a frozen lake, and the threat of icy weather conditions are clearly present. But it’s like deciding that a better title for Jaws would have been Undertow or Cramps.

You have to scroll quite a ways down the page of worst case scenarios before settling on hypothermia. Frankly I’d rather freeze to death (they say it’s just like going to sleep!) than to still be conscious while my intestines are slurped up like ramen. But that’s just me.

Monster Brawl (2011)

It’s feather-light on substance, but writer-director Jesse T. Cook’s heart is in the right place.

Monster Brawl imagines a pay-per-view event that pits eight screen creatures (Frankenstein’s Monster, the Werewolf, Zombie Man, Swamp Gut, Cyclops, Lady Vampire, the Mummy, and Witch Bitch) against each other in an other-worldly rasslin’ match—and only one shall emerge victorious.

What could have been a totally brainless exercise in lowest-common denominator yucks, though not brilliant by any means, does fit the bill if you need to clean out your head with 90 minutes of reasonably clever mindless fun.

The good: Buzz Chambers (Dave Foley, from Kids in the Hall) and “Sasquatch” Sid Tucker (Art Hindle) are the commentators calling out the action, and really, their game commitment to the roles is probably the best thing about Monster Brawl.

Buzz is the flask-swigging play-by-play guy, while former champ “Sasquatch” Sid is the voice of ring experience. Both actors acquit themselves with straight-faced aplomb.

We should also acknowledge the efforts of resourceful actor Jason David Brown, who plays no less than three parts (Swamp Gut, Cyclops, and the Gravedigger)! That’s a helluva lot of time to spend with your ass planted in the makeup chair.

There are occasional splashes of gore that are entirely adequate (e.g., the zombie head squish). Lance Henriksen supplies some voice-over work.

Not so good: The monsters are at best, serviceable. Frankenstein’s Monster (Robert Maillet) is a decent interpretation, though the fact that he’s wearing a pullover from Land’s End is not to his sartorial credit.

For the most part they remain in character, though Witch Bitch (Holly Letkeman) is a disappointment, because she uses wrestling maneuvers against Cyclops, instead of her own vaunted sorcery.

Bad: The presence of annoying wrestling manager Jimmy “The Mouth of the South” Hart (who once managed Hulk Hogan!) adds nothing to the proceedings, though his two bikini-clad sidekicks are welcome eye candy in an otherwise desolate landscape.

Best dialogue exchange

BUZZ: And here comes Frankenstein!

SID: Technically, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, if you want to be a dick about it.

Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead (2009)

Let us proceed quickly down the cinematic quality scale for Wrong Turn 3, a straight-to-video, filmed in Bulgaria turd salad, with almost no redeeming qualities. It’s overwritten, stars no one, and features only ONE hideously deformed inbred mutant cannibal hillbilly.

Well, two, actually. Maybe three. But mainly just one, and that’s not nearly enough.

Things open with a bang, as a quartet of rafters park their boats in the middle of the boonies to smoke weed and make out. (The first victim announces, “I’m going to burn a stick.” I think the last and only time I heard that phrase was in an After School Special about a high school undercover cop.)

Three of the four adventurers are summarily dispatched by Three Finger, the little freak from the first Wrong Turn, who looks kinda like Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown crossed with an old-timey prospector. He’s the one who hunts with a bow, and soon he’s racked himself up a nice little body count under extremely arrowing circumstances (see what I did there?).

Meanwhile, in some other movie, a couple of cops are transferring a school bus full of dangerous prisoners to, um, a different prison for some reason. The cops opt for the scenic route through rural West Virginia, where they soon find themselves stalked by a very determined little cannibal.

Ye gods, what’s with all the plot cluttering up everything? Note to writer Connor James Delaney and director Declan O’Brien: We don’t care about the racial tension between the two alpha prisoners, Chavez (Tamer Hassan) and Floyd (Gil Kolirin); we don’t care about an armored car full of money that conveniently turns up; and we sure as shit don’t care about the hopes and dreams of good-guy cop Nate Wilson (Tom Frederic).

We’re here for two (2) things: grim, grisly deaths and the constant threat of cannibalism. Your decision to downsize that threat into a single antagonist may have shaved a few bucks off the makeup budget, but it left Wrong Turn 3, sadly bereft in the terror department.

In your defense, there were a few decent kills (the truck-drag comes to mind) and a splash of nudity, so thanks for that. And the scene where Three Finger happily chows down on Chavez’s brain like it’s a piece of birthday cake was a nice surprise.

Well, only three more Wrong Turns left. Let’s hope this was the bottom of the barrel.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

On the scariness scale, if you stack Wrong Turn up against The Hills Have Eyes, I’ll take Wrong Turn every time.

Granted, it’s a close call, but I find the isolation of backwoods West Virginia to be more sinister and oppressive than the stony desert of the American Southwest. At least the latter is open country so it’s more difficult to be taken by surprise.

In the dense vegetation of the forest primeval, bad shit could be hiding anywhere—and probably is. Plus the deft artistry of monster makeup maestro Stan Winston in Wrong Turn is impossible to top.

As far as sequels go, Wrong Turn 2, while not up to the original, is pretty fun. Like Texas Chainsaw 2, this one plays it for gruesome laughs, as the story concerns the pilot for a reality show called Ultimate Survivalist.

As hosted by steely bad-ass Col. Dale Murphy (Henry Rollins, who seems right at home here), it’s a cheap Survivor knockoff, with six meat sacks representing the major victim food groups (slut, jock, buffoon, ass-kicker chick, etc.) tasked with remaining resilient in the boonies after the collapse of civilization.

But of all the boonies in all the world, they had to pick the stomping grounds of deformed, inbred cannibal hillbillies. Oh, is that the dinner bell?

As I alluded earlier, the makeup effects are merely competent in Wrong Turn 2, but that’s to be expected without the presence of Winston.

Also in the “tsk tsk” column is a needlessly determined effort by writers Turi Meyer and Al Septien to add “color” to the script by including a relationship subplot between plucky producer Mara Stone (Aleksa Palladino) and doofus director “M” (Matthew Currie Holmes) that has fuck-all to do with anything.

Even so, director Joe Lynch keeps the ball rolling, the blood flowing, and doomed campers fleeing like bunnies through the bush.

And to give credit where it’s due, Meyer and Septien serve up an ace in their depiction of the monstrous (though eerily familiar) cannibal clan, who provide us with a domestic tableau that’s not only a dead-on tribute to Texas Chainsaw Massacre (specifically the dinner table sequence), but also bloody revolting in its own right.

Is Wrong Turn 2 any more grotesque than say, Honey Boo Boo, or that awful TV family who seem to spawn every other month? Really, I couldn’t say, but I probably would tune in to a show about the daily adventures of this particular pack of deformed, inbred cannibal hillbillies. Coming next season to TLC…

Bonus: There are three more Wrong Turn movies available! Hope they measure up, but I’m certainly not expecting miracles. Stay tuned!

28 Weeks Later (2007)

I avoided the follow-up to 28 Days Later (2002) for the simple reason that it wasn’t written and directed by Danny Boyle. As it turns out, this is akin to skipping Aliens because Ridley Scott wasn’t on board.

Writer-director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is no James Cameron, but 28 Weeks Later is very much a worthy successor to Boyle’s original. In fact, Boyle himself served as executive producer and reportedly did some second unit direction, so this lightning-paced, action-packed production was in good hands from the get-go, never straying far from the dark frenetic chaos of the first film, even as it chases a different thematic agenda.

About six months after the outbreak of the original rage virus in England, a US military deployment has succeeded in carving out a bit of safe territory in London. British government man Don (Robert Carlyle) managed to escape mutilation at the hands of roving maniacs by bravely lobbing his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) at them to cover his exit strategy.

OK, slight exaggeration, but he did scamper like a cat chased by coyotes, leaving the Mrs to fend for herself. Bad form, old bean.

Imagine his surprise when soldiers recover not only his son Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton, love that name) and daughter Tammy (Imogene Poots, ditto), but also his previously jettisoned wife, who appears to have a rare blood type that renders her immune to the virus—which soon makes an unwelcome reappearance.

The lovely Rose Byrne from Damages gets plenty of screen time as a military supervisor who decides to protect the kids and their valuable blood at all costs, aided by Jeremy Renner as a rough-and-ready sniper.

In 28 Days Later, Boyle focused on the breakdown of authority and the fallibility of leaders in a time of crisis. 28 Weeks Later is more of a domestic morality play. Carlyle’s character Don is punished for his cold feet and faint heart by becoming an alpha maniac relentlessly pursuing his children in a twisted act of devotion, trying to reunite his fractured family in death.

Naturally, the kids want no part of this nonsense, and much carnage ensues. Frankly, family time can be a real bitch.

Medium Raw (2010)

Unless your name is Orson Welles, a single person taking on all the primary tasks associated with filmmaking usually turns into a shit show.

Note to Quentin Tarantino: Stop acting. Forever! Thanks!

Writer-director-star Andrew Cymek shows sufficient promise while wearing 20 hats at once that I’ll give him the benefit of a doubt, but this is a ragged effort as befits one man and a microscopic budget.

Cymek stars as Johnny Morgan, a troubled cop who’s still haunted by the childhood memory of his sister’s abduction by a heinous serial killer known as “The Big Bad Wolf.” Though the killer has been dormant, a recurrence of his modus operandi several years later puts Morgan on the case with a chance to even the score.

Morgan succeeds in capturing the Wolf (Greg Dunham), who is then ensconced in a nearby home for the criminally insane where his va-va-voom girlfriend Jamie (Brigitte Kingsley) works as a psychiatrist.

Also in the loop is the Wolf’s lawyer (Mercedes McNab, from Buffy and Angel), the sinister asylum director Dr. Robert Parker (William B. Davis, the cigarette-smoking man from X-Files), and a colorful assortment of deranged inmates. One night, the power goes out and, sure enough, the patients are soon revolting.

There are a number of wayward plot points that remain unaddressed. What happens to Mr. Jacobs, the gigantic madman who turns insanely violent when he sees the color red? The movie ends with him still on the loose.

Why is there a nine-year-old girl wandering around in a nuthouse filled with cannibals, criminals, perverts, and killers?

To his credit, Cymek manages to keep enough balls in the air to maintain a respectable interest level throughout, and his conception of the insidious Wolf is fairly inspired.

Fans of actor John Rhys-Davies, who gets top billing here, should be emotionally prepared for his speedy exit.

Madison County (2011)

In this critic’s opinion, there are entirely too many films coming down the pipe that ignore not only fundamental rules of genre movie making, but in basic storytelling, as well.

Take Madison County, for example. For the first 45 minutes we’re treated to an exhaustive and tedious overview of the hearts and minds of the soon-to-be dead collegiate protagonists. Is James going to “hook up” with Jenna? What happens when angry older brother Kyle figures out that wiseguy Will is boning his sister Brooke? Is Brooke going to leave Will to attend grad school?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but we don’t give a shit, and never will. Writer-director Eric England should be reminded that less is more: less yack-yack-yack, and more whack-whack-whack.

James (Colley Bailey) and his photographer friend Will (Matt Mercer) decide to take a road trip to Madison County, Arkansas, to visit reclusive writer David Randall, who wrote a controversial book about local serial killer Damian Ewell.

But that’s a far too uncomplicated mission to be of any real interest, so England fills out the party with Will’s girlfriend Brooke (Joanna Sotomura), Brooke’s seething older brother Kyle (Ace Marrero) and her friend Jenna (Natalie Scheetz), and for nearly an hour the principles behave as though they’re characters in a romantic comedy that’s dreadfully unfunny.

And it’s for this reason I can’t recommend Madison County. (Can you tell I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped, lately?)

The news isn’t all bad. Madison County features a compelling psycho in the person of Damian Ewell, a relentless abomination who scampers about the boondocks wearing a darling hand-stitched cloth pig head. He’s portrayed by the formidable Nick Principe, who plays a similarly hostile guy in the Laid To Rest films, though this version is a deranged, brain-damaged hillbilly who likes to carve up nosy college students. And really, why should it be about anything else?

Look, I realize that there must be actual characters in horror movies, so that we can better keep track of who’s getting gutted at the moment, but for pity’s sake! We don’t need their life stories! When considering character development in a horror movie, let’s hearken to the model provided by the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

In other words, get ’em on, and kill ’em off. This isn’t Chekhov. Managing fewer storylines leaves more time for madness and carnage. And that’s what we’re here for, right?

Stake Land (2010)

I noticed this title had popped up on a lot of “Best Of” lists from two years ago so I was keen on seeing it. Saints be praised, I wasn’t disappointed. (Don’t you love it when that happens?) Lean, mean, and gritty, there’s not an ounce of fat on Stake Land; no extraneous drama, no clumsy attempts at comedy, and very little dialogue. It’s a rural, post-apocalypse road movie that’s long on action and intense situations. Admirers of The Walking Dead, The Omega Man, Road Warrior, and especially Justin Cronin’s novel The Passage will be in their happy place. The undead/post-apocalyptic genre is getting pretty crowded these days, but director and co-writer Jim Mickle manages to “stake” out a little fresh territory.

Martin (Connor Paolo) is a young survivor trying to keep his blood inside his body during the vampire infestation that’s swept the nation after the collapse of society. (Don’t you hate it when that happens?) His hard-boiled mentor Mister (Nick Damici) is a bad-ass vampire killer that drives a muscle car around the rural South, chasing bloodsuckers (and collecting their fangs) and steering clear of the crazy Christians known as the Brotherhood, who may well pose a greater threat than the undead. They stop and sleep where they can and barter with other refugees, all the while following a vague plan to head north for a safe settlement called New Eden, which may or may not exist. Martin and Mister are targeted for death by the head of the Brotherhood, Jebedia Loven (Michael Cerveris), a bald-headed fanatic who thinks the vampires are angels sent by God to rid the world of sinners.

The vampires in Stake Land are neither dudes in capes nor sparkly teenagers. In fact, they’re little more than zombies; grunting, snuffling ghouls on the hunt for a fresh cup of O-Positive. But they’re fast, strong, and seemingly all over the damn place. Because this is basically a road movie, things keep moving (duh!) and the action never bogs down. Martin and Mister fight, flee, make friends, lose friends, and gain enemies, and continue to chase a nebulous idea that somewhere else is probably better than here. Just like everybody, ever. It’s Martin’s determined belief that he can somehow find a normal (or at least livable) life that propels Stake Land, and keeps it from imploding in the face of hopelessness and chaos. Believe me, there’s plenty of hopelessness and chaos to go around; it’s almost as prevalent as the vampires and deranged bible-belters.

The Bay (2012)

The director of one of my favorite non-horror movies (Diner) hangs out his genre shingle in the found-footage eco-thriller The Bay.

Yep, Oscar-winning writer-director Barry Levinson, best-known for marquee attractions like Good Morning Vietnam, The Natural, and Rain Man, takes the no-name, low-budget road this time around, but still manages to scare the bejeebers out of me with a seemingly plausible environmental disaster scenario set in a small Chesapeake Bay community.

The story unfolds via video edited together from various sources, chiefly confiscated footage seized by government agents—after the fact. Former news station intern Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue) is interviewed on camera about a harrowing incident that has left her traumatized and paranoid.

The year is 2009 and the picturesque town of Claridge, Maryland is preparing for a festive Fourth of July weekend. (Considering the number of horrible things that happen to small towns during annual tourist-trap wingdings, I say we outlaw all community celebrations—forever!)

The assembled footage reveals that the polluted waters of the Chesapeake Bay are infested with parasites, now whimsically grown to the size of collies from steroids in the chicken manure dumped in the water from unscrupulous neighboring factory farms.

The nasty little critters infect the local water supply and cause the citizenry to boil over in gross, awful boils and blisters before the monstrous isopods grow to full size and chew themselves free of their human hosts.

The lion’s share of the blame for this catastrophic turn of events goes to Mayor Stockman (Frank Deal), a crooked, money grubbing shitheel who willfully ignores environmental regulations and dooms his community. Needless to say, he will not be getting my vote come re-election time.

If you’ve seen The Blair Witch Project you’ll be fairly familiar with the dramatic structure. The stitched-together scenes evolve from mundane and curious bits of exposition to choppy, nightmarish fragments, that show an all-American town overrun by fast-moving alien predators.

Fans of Discovery Channel fair like The Monsters Inside Me will no doubt be charmed and delighted as the hideous parasites soon have the run of the place requiring the feds to step in and hush up the whole affair.

It’s no masterpiece, but Levinson and writer Michael Wallach definitely succeed in creating an intense, effective piece of enviro-horror that doesn’t waste any time, thanks to a minimum of preachiness and pretense with “the message.” Recommended.