Archive for Pickin the Carcass

THE REEDS

Posted in 2011, After Dark Horrorfest Movies, DVD Review, Michael Arruda Reviews, Pickin' the Carcass with tags , , , , , , , on January 19, 2011 by knifefighter

PICKIN’ THE CARCASS:  THE REEDS (2009)
by Michael Arruda


Let’s take a boat ride.

A group of London friends take a boat trip through the Norfolk Broads, only to get lost in the reedy waters, where they fall victim to an unknown evil presence, in the 2009 thriller THE REEDS (2009) now available on DVD.

THE REEDS is a stylish thriller that starts out strong but then loses steam in a big way.  When things are unknown, and people are asking “What is it?  What’s out there?”  the movie is scary, mysterious, and works well, but once the answers start rolling in, the movie becomes confusing and the pacing slows down dramatically.

When we first meet this group, they’re a fairly entertaining lot, even though no one amongst them really stands out.   The acting is fine, but as written, these characters fail to make their marks as individuals.  As a result, I really didn’t care about any of them.

Anyway, this group of friends get themselves lost in the reeds, and they do it so easily it makes you wonder just what they’re doing in a boat in the first place?  They’re not that swift.  Further proof of their incompetence is they crash their boat and suddenly find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere.  At this point, I’m asking myself, why do I want to watch a movie about these people?

The crash is actually a good thing, because it provides the best sequence in the movie.  A huge— and very sharp— protuberance rips through the bottom of the boat right through the chest of one of the friends.  Since this protuberance prevents him from bleeding to death, he doesn’t die.  Nice! So, this poor guy has to lie there in agony pinned to the floor of the boat with this thick thing jutting out of his bloody chest.  Meanwhile, his friends are obviously freaking out, and as they scramble to save him, there’s lots of gritting of teeth and spraying of blood.  It’s an intense and exciting sequence, definitely not for the squeamish.

At this point, THE REEDS was rocking, but then— well, then our fearless friends hear noises coming from the reeds surrounding their boat.  Are there people out there?  Animals?  Just what is it that is out there in the darkness?  There’s almost a BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) feel to these scenes.   Too bad there wasn’t a witch out there in the reeds.  Instead, they discover teenagers running through the reeds, fleeing from a mysterious man in a hood, armed with a rifle.  This man is shooting the teens, hunting them down one by one.

Once this guy finishes with the teens, I’ll give you three guesses who he turns on next, and the first two guesses don’t count.  Midway through this movie, most of the cast is dead, and then things just slow down because it’s just a couple of folks running for their lives from the mysterious baddie in the hood.  Things have to slow down because otherwise he’d just shoot them, and the movie would be over.  Hmm.  That might have been a good thing.

So, here’s the scoop:  the evil in THE REEDS is an old man with a rifle.   But there’s more!  The teens he’s shooting aren’t just ordinary teens.  They’re ghosts.  Or at least I think they are.  It’s not really explained all that well.  See, this old dude with a gun, he shot a bunch of kids years ago, and now these same teens are still running around, and so he’s still out there shooting.  Whatever.

THE REEDS is a classic example of what happens when a story just isn’t fleshed out.  The movie is extremely stylish. During the first half of the movie, I really enjoyed the work by director Nick Cohen.  He sets up the action with flair, as there’s plenty of neat camerawork early on that more than makes up for the weak character development.  And the sequence where the guy is impaled is exceedingly well done.

But later, as the story stops making sense, the direction by Cohen becomes less impressive.

The biggest fault here lies with screenwriter s Chris Baker and Mark Anthony Galluzzo.  They create this creepy mysterious scenario, friends stuck on a boat surrounded by dark reeds with some unknown threat out there in the darkness, but then they completely fail in answering the question, what’s out there?  Had they thought this part out, had they created a real and genuine threat, they would have succeeded in creating a first-rate thriller.  As it stands now, the first half is fairly entertaining, eerie, and mysterious, but the second half is disappointing.

An old man with a rifle is just not that compelling a threat, and the ghost story involving the teens is so underdeveloped and confusing it’s a hindrance to the story.  Don’t get me wrong.   An old man with a rifle could be compelling.  Hell, if I were on vacation, and lost on a boat, and some guy with a gun was taking shots at me, yeah that would be scary, but Baker and Galluzzo don’t develop this guy at all, and they don’t turn him into a viable threat or memorable villain.

The same can be said for the rest of the characters.   Nobody was memorable.   While the acting was serviceable, no one stepped up and created a character who stayed with me.

THE REEDS begins as an atmospheric horror movie but eventually deteriorates into a slow-paced plodding snooze-fest, which is too bad because I liked the first half of this movie a lot, but then everybody dies, and the two people who are left are forced to slowly learn about the man with the rifle, and in this case, there’s just not that much to learn.

When all is said and done, this is one trip you don’t need to take.

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda

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MIDNIGHT MOVIE!

Posted in 2010, DVD Review, Horror, Michael Arruda Reviews, Pickin' the Carcass, Psycho killer with tags , , , , , , , , on December 29, 2010 by knifefighter

PICKIN’ THE CARCASS:  MIDNIGHT MOVIE (2008)
By Michael Arruda

MIDNIGHT MOVIE (2008) is a slasher film spattered with globules of creativity.

An actor playing “The Killer” in a slasher movie is so obsessed with his role that he fancies himself to be The Killer in real life. After spending years in a mental institution, The Killer escapes, when his doctor thinks as therapy he should watch his own movie. Where did this guy get his degree?  The Killer watches the movie and then promptly kills everyone around him.

Four years later, The Killer’s horror movie is about to play at midnight at a small town theater, staffed only by young twenty-somethings and teenagers. How convenient.

The young manager Bridget (Rebekah Brandes) has her hands full. Not only has her boyfriend  Josh (Daniel Bonjour) and his friends showed up to tempt her to watch the movie with them, but her kid brother has also snuck out of the house to see the movie.

Detective Barrons (Jon Briddell) thinks that the midnight showing of the movie will draw out The Killer (Lee Main), and The Killer’s doctor, Dr. Wayne (Michael Swan) agrees. This isn’t the same boneheaded doctor who suggested The Killer watch his own movie for therapy in the hospital; that idiot died in the opening bloodbath. Dr. Wayne actually argued against showing the movie, and so he wasn’t there at the hospital that night and escaped the mass murder. Anyway, Dr. Wayne and Detective Barrons attend the midnight movie together hoping to catch The Killer.

The only other patrons in the theater besides these two, and Bridget and her friends, are a biker Harley (Stan Ellsworth) and his girlfriend.

The movie begins playing, and this is when the fun starts. When one of Bridget’s friends leaves to use the restroom,  The Killer, wearing a scary skull mask, leaves the movie and appears in the real world in the restroom.

When this happens, the movie playing on the theater screen switches to the point of view of  The Killer, as the camera becomes  The Killer’s eyes. Bridget and her friends see their friend on the screen and they mistakenly think he’s filmed the sequence himself and spliced it into the movie on his own. When he’s killed on camera, they all think it’s a great big hilarious joke, the best stunt their friend has ever pulled. It’s a believable scene that works, and as a result it’s quite funny.

However, when the next murder takes place in the lobby of the theater, and the victims are theater employees, Bridget and her friends begin to suspect something is wrong, and apparently Dr. Wayne and Detective Barrons had never seen the movie before, because they don’t react to these new altered scenes. Curious, they check out the lobby and there discover the dead bodies of the employees.

Naturally, everyone tries to leave the theater, but all the exits are locked. Detective Barrons tries to shoot through the glass doors, but for some reason his bullets can’t penetrate the glass. Their cell phones don’t work. And worst of all, when the police do arrive and peer through the glass doors, they see only an empty lobby, rather than our screaming victims inside. Very bizarre. Are these weird occurrences explained?  No, but for some reason, the movie still works, because its creative premise keeps the proceedings lively and fun.

Even when the movie appears to settle into a more routine formula, as the group must defend themselves against  The Killer, it still manages to keep a creative edge that is very refreshing. For example, this group isn’t your standard variety of slasher movie victims. Yes, there’s your cliché group of young people, but there’s also a police detective, a doctor, and one bad-ass biker dude who’s extremely pissed off at what’s going on around him.

Plus, this group eventually discovers that when  The Killer appears in real life, they can see what he sees by watching the movie screen, and they realize they can use this to their advantage.

By far, the best part of MIDNIGHT MOVIE is the screenplay by director Jack Messitt and Mark Garbett. In addition to the creative premise of  The Killer coming off the movie screen into reality, a gimmick that reminded me of the Woody Allen film THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985), there’s also some neat dialogue which pokes fun at the genre, a la SCREAM (1996).

For example, Josh and his friends try to guess which woman in the movie will take her clothes off since that’s what happens in horror movies. There’s also a conversation about why people like horror movies, because they’re like roller coasters, scary but safe.

There are some things about MIDNIGHT MOVIE that aren’t so good. The most glaring weakness is the quality of the acting. Most of the acting here is pretty weak. Stan Ellsworth as Harley the bad-ass biker dude stands out as the best of the bunch, and he was my favorite character in this movie by far. The two leads, Rebekah Brandes as Bridget and Daniel Bonjour as Josh are okay, serviceable, but the rest of the cast is largely forgettable.

Now, I liked the look of  The Killer, with his cool skull mask, but his character isn’t fleshed out at all, and there’s nothing in Lee Main’s performance that brings this maniac to life. He’s like a stunt man wearing a mask. Ho hum.

The Killer’s movie—which is supposed to be a 1970s grindhouse film—is strangely in black and white. I would have expected a film from the 1970s to be in color. In spite of the grainy lines on the film, it’s not really that authentic-looking. It looks like a new movie made to look old.

Director Jack Messitt may have written an excellent screenplay, but as a director, he doesn’t really distinguish himself with this movie. The murder scenes are average at best. There’s sufficient gore, as  The Killer rips his victims’ hearts out, but there’s not a whole lot of suspense generated here, nor are there many memorable scenes. I’ve seen better, and I’ve seen worse.

The ending is predictable, but it’s not bad enough to ruin the rest of the movie. There’s also a horrible hard rock tune over both the opening and end credits which gave me a headache.

But I absolutely loved the script. I think someone with a better budget should re-shoot this movie. As it stands now, it’s a clever story hampered by low production values, sub par acting, and uninspired direction.

It’s still a fun movie, though, best watched at midnight, of course!

—END—

© Copyright 2010 by Michael Arruda

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THE BURROWERS

Posted in 2010, DVD Review, Michael Arruda Reviews, Monsters, Pickin' the Carcass, Westerns with tags , , , , , on September 29, 2010 by knifefighter

PICKIN’ THE CARCASS:  THE BURROWERS (2008)
DVD Review by Michael Arruda


As we pick from the carcass this week, we snack on THE BURROWERS (2008), and if we’re not careful, the title creatures from this movie will be the ones snacking on us.  Yikes!

I heard a lot of good things about THE BURROWERS (2008), and when I saw the trailer for the film, I thought, this movie looks terrific!  How can it not be a hit?  Well, the answer is quite simple.  The movie is not as good as its trailer.

THE BURROWERS starts out strong, with a quick pre-credit sequence that is genuinely frightening.  It’s the old west, and a frontier family is suddenly attacked in the middle of the night.  The family hides in an underground room, in a scene that reminded me of a similar scene in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009), only it’s not Nazis on the prowl, but the title monsters.  The family’s efforts to remain hidden fail, as they are discovered by the unseen predators.  It’s a scary way to kick off the movie.

When word gets out that the family has been kidnapped, presumably by Indians, the locals form a posse.  There’s John Clay (Clancy Brown), William Parcher (William Mapother), and Fergus Coffey (Karl Geary), among others.  They soon join forces with a cavalry officer and his soldiers, and the chase is on.

This is a good premise, and it drew me into the story immediately.  However, strangely enough, after this strong opening, the movie hits a lull.  There just isn’t that much suspense in the early scenes where the men set out in pursuit of the missing family members, and as the movie goes along, it oddly takes its sweet time getting to the scary stuff.

Eventually, the men discover large holes in the ground, and of course they speculate just what might be inside those holes.  When they capture one of the Indians, he tells them of “the burrowers” which they wrongly assume to be another hostile Indian tribe.

More creepiness ensues, including the discovery of a woman buried alive, who seems to be drugged and in a vegetative state, and finally- finally- as in the final third of the movie, we get around to the monstrous meanies of the film, the Burrowers, mole-like creatures who drug their victims and bury them alive so they can come back for them later and eat their “soft parts” when they’re hungry, which begs the question, why not just hunt when they’re hungry?  Why hunt first and eat later?

The Burrowers prove to be vicious adversaries, and after several encounters between our heroes and the Burrowers, advantage Burrowers.  This all leads to a surprisingly mundane conclusion that simply doesn’t satisfy.  It left me feeling hungry for more.

The scenes with the Burrowers are sufficiently gruesome and scary, but these scenes are few and far between.  I liked these scenes and thought they worked well, but there are simply not enough of them.

We don’t really see the Burrowers all that much either, as we only seem to catch occasional glimpses of the creatures.  This is too bad, because they look cool and definitely warranted more screen time.

Writer/director J.T. Petty does an average job at the helm of this western thriller.  While the Burrower scenes are intense, they suffer from the “Curse of the Drive-In Movie” in that most of these scenes are all very dark and difficult to see, the kind of movie that years ago you wouldn’t have wanted to see at the drive-in.   You don’t want to see it on DVD either.  Dark scenes, where you really have difficulty making out what’s going on, are not fun.  The darkness really prevents there being any memorable scenes in this one, as it’s hard to have memorable scenes if you can’t see them.

The acting here is fine, although no one really stands out nor dominates this film.  William Mapother probably fares the best as William Parcher, as he comes off as genuinely likeable, and Clancy Brown as John Clay [who we saw earlier this year as one of the parents in the remake of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010)] is a fairly strong presence as well.

The biggest disappointment for me with THE BURROWERS was J.T. Petty’s screenplay. The story’s a winner and should have been a gold mine.  It’s got a compelling premise, a posse of heroes in search of kidnap victims who encounter underground monsters.  It has a creative setting, in that it takes place in the old west, and I’m a sucker for the western-horror hybrids, from films like JONAH HEX (2010) to the old black and white cowboy vampire flick CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959).  How can this story go wrong?

Well, in the case of THE BURROWERS, it goes wrong because the story lacks focus. Rather than home in on the mystery and horror of the Burrowers, the story gets sidetracked with subplots of violent Indians, a pigheaded cavalry officer, and the background stories of several of the posse members that just aren’t that interesting.  Think JAWS (1975) leaving its shark storyline and going off on subplots about pirates, while delving into background stories of more of its characters, spending more time on these things than the compelling hunt for the shark, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

As a result, THE BURROWERS never really rises to the level of intensity and terror its title creatures suggest, which is too bad because from what little we do see of the Burrowers, they’re very scary.  THE BURROWERS had the potential to be a first-rate horror movie, but with its story muddled by pathways that are far less interesting than the main story about the underground monsters, creatures I would have been only too happy to learn more about, it never quite reaches that elite level.

I can’t really recommend THE BURROWERS.  While there are flashes of terror here and there, these scary scenes are way too sparse to be all that effective, and in terms of creativity and spunk, this one’s has about as much vision as a backyard mole.

—END—

© Copyright 2010 by Michael Arruda

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