No Man's Land: The Rise Of Reeker - 2/5

As if "Reeker" wasn't complicated enough with all of its loose ends and odd twists of plot, the prequel/sequel "No Man's Land: The Rise Of Reeker" certainly makes it even more complicated. In some ways, this second film is better and worse than the original and evens out to sitting at about the same level. Is it as clever as the original? Not at all, but it does have a bit better execution for the screen.

A local sheriff around Death Valley is about to hand off his role as chief to his newly appointed son. When a group of casino robbers turn up at the diner where they are having a peaceful lunch, things turn ugly. And smelly. Now a group of local townsfolk, our two police heroes, and some of these robbers are out to find a way to survive one another in a strange variation of the world...and survive the wicked mechanical wrath of...the REEKER!

The one thing that made the original one so watchable (use that term loosely) was its clever story and wicked twist. Since we already know the twist, this film seems rather boring by the time we get into it. Not to mention the film doesn't know if it wants to be a sequel or prequel with its first opening scene showing us how the Reeker came to be...sort of. Thanks for half answering one of my questions from the first one, sequel! It then of course jumps to present day, which must be after the first one considering how it ends, and sort of fucks with your time line a bit too much. What the hell is this? This gives us 10 minutes showing us how the Reeker came to be...sort of...and you can subtitle it "The Rise Of Reeker"? Misleading!

Since the story line and clever twist are not there, then it has to be better executed right? Well that's a sort of too. At least it doesn't look like a made for TV movie this time around. In fact, the acting (in general) has improved even if the characters aren't near as charming or well built this time around and the special effects have taken a few steps up. There is a wicked scene where a few characters find themselves bound to the area by invisible walls (one by trying to drive a car through it!) and the overall gore and kill scenes are a bit better even if some of them come out of left field. None of these are spectacular elements to "No Man's Land" but they do improve over the original in many ways.

So really, "No Man's Land" sort of reverses the strengths from "Reeker" and still isn't able to top it. It just sort of matches it and decides 'eh, that's enough'. Not a great film by any means, but once again not a horrible way to spend a night on the couch with a low budget horror film. Would have loved to see it try to add something even more to its twisty premise instead of some minor details.

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Psych: 9 - 2/5

"Psych: 9" wound up on the old reviewing queue thanks to Ghost House Underground and their fairly solid selection of great underground genre films. Unfortunately, after the rather bad taste that was left in my mouth after "Stag Night", I was hoping that this one would pull off the surprise brilliance that films like "The Children" had done for the catalog. WRONG! Turns out, "Psych: 9" is a little creepy atmosphere driven flick that seemingly tries to fool its viewers repeatedly with vagueness and random plot twists not knowning that we just don't give two shits to begin with. It's hard to suck in an audience that's too confused to be fooled with half assed trickery.

Roslyn (Foster) may not have the best job, but its a damn job, right? Working overnights filing away records for the emergency room for a recently shut down hospital (that looks like its been shut down for 20 years), Roslyn begins to suspect that something sinister is going down in this piece of crap ex-hospital. With the help of the psych doctor on fifth floor (Elwes), a detective (Biehn), and her seemingly suspicious husband (Mann) she begins to uncover secrets about herself and the hospital as its linked to a spree of murders happening around the area. Ooooooo! Scary!

Using techniques similar to that of a vastly superior "The Broken", "Psych: 9" very much lathers on the atmosphere and 'less is more' dialogue to create a film that generally needs to be felt rather than followed. In this aspect, it does succeed with some solid performances from the main players of the cast (which are not helped in many circumstances by their dialogue) and a relatively good use of the setting and artistic design. Although I did mention that at times it can be over kill (the hospital looks like its been abandoned for a decade let along just closed), it works to build that feel that "Psych: 9" desperately claws at to obtain.

On the other hand, this film pretty much fails to use the atmosphere properly. Stuck in a weird purgatorial state between being a sort of half assed ghost film, a personal nightmare drama, and a serial killer slasher film, "Psych: 9" fails to be any of the above let alone a combination of the three. With its rather lazy pace, that seriously had me exhausted with lack of progress by a half hour in, and far too complex for its own good plot line, this film simply is too simple and over ambitious for itself. The weaving plot lines are not explained well enough to truly weave together. We get a story that sort of leaps paths to each plot as it goes rather than letting them come together in a natural way and its frustrating as all hell. Is this a game of fucking "Clue" or are we supposed to watch our lead fall apart from ghostly memories? The film tries to juggle both and ends up dropping all its balls.

There are quite a few aspects to "Psych: 9" that do peak interest, but the film fails to really justify its choices with how it approaches itself. This un-motivates the audience (i.e. me) and makes for such a boring watch that by the time its rather confusing and completely bat shit stupid climax approaches no one gives a damn. This is why "Psych: 9" is just a rather long waste of a horror viewing experience.

BONUS RANT: And what the fuck happened to the serial killer story? As the credits began to roll, that's all I could think about. Did it seriously end with Biehn's pseudo-funny line about burning the records? COP OUT!

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Stag Night - 1.5/5

Despite starting out on the right foot with some serious John Carpenter inspired score over the opening credits and having a cast of cult film add on actors, "Stag Night" quickly goes 'stag-nant' in this relatively rehashed film. Although it has a bit of charm to its low budget finesse, the lack of consistent pacing or purpose tends to make this Ghost House Underground release fall flat and makes for an unmemorable time in front of the television set.

After a night at the strip club for Mike's (Pardue...that guy from "Rules Of Attraction"!) bachelor party, four guys (including Scott Adkins, resident badass and ninja and Breckin Meyer...that guy who fought a video game Freddy in "Freddy's Dead"!) and two strippers find themselves lost in the underground railways. When they witness a cop get brutally murdered by three Rob Zombies...err...homeless and super violent men, they have to run for their lives and find a way out before they find themselves in the hands of CHUDs....whoops, I mean Rob Zombies...dammit! Hobos or whatever. 

In all seriousness though, the first portion of this movie is actually pretty good. It kicks off with that Carpenter score, it builds this great character interaction with the four guys and the two strippers, and it establishes a solid atmosphere with the setting and time of day. It has this great build that many horror movies seem to lack anymore, and if there is one thing that makes this film worth the watch, its how this is done.

Unfortunately, from that point on, the film slowly circles down the drain into unmemorable obscurity. The plot quickly fizzles into a mish-mash of slasher and hellbilly cliche's as our team inexplicably take detours and perform idiotic feats to get themselves killed. The high intensity sequences will give people motion sickness as the camera bounces at a frantic pace in the low lit setting, not allowing a single soul watching it to actual see what's going on. Then the plot seemingly just forgets that it needs to be memorable by having insane hobos as the villains. The moments where they could have built some sort of mythology to script (how the homeless people seem to use these violent folk as police or the weird trailer with the TV and mannequin) are left under huge question marks and no hints to their inclusion for the film. The film quickly becomes frustratingly cliche by its end.

With such a promising start, its sad to see "Stag Night" collapse into itself as it plays on. Despite some solid casting choices (I'll watch anything with Adkins!) and some good initial set up, this film just...well...kind of sucks. Too cliche. Too open. One of the oddest choices for Ghost House Underground for sure.

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Dark Floors - 2.5/5

Despite my love for Finnish melodic heavy Metal mongols Lordi and their cheesy Kiss inspired madness, I was still in the ideology that "Dark Floors" was going to suck. Basing an entire film around the four band members as monsters seemed like a gimmick that was going to produce some seriously poor Horror film moments. Luckily, this film does its damnedest to give a solid story and atmosphere to a concept that could have easily just circled the drain in awful horror sewers making it worth the watch at least once.

Sarah (Bennett) is inflicted with some medical problems that have made her a mentally unstable child not progressing. The hospital seems to be at a loss to figuring out her problems let alone fixing them. Her father Ben (Huntley) decides enough is enough and takes her out of the hospital one night. When the elevator taking them down stops unexpectedly they find themselves with a group of confused hospital workers and visitors in some sort of new layer of hell. Now its a race to get out of a quickly decaying building before they find themselves on the end of the dead stick by the hands of four mysterious creatures (members of Lordi) hellbent to end them.

"Dark Floors" isn't going to be winning any awards any time soon. Although it does have a relatively strong concept, at its heart it is rather cliche and the use of Lordi as the creatures seems to push the rather serious story towards a cheesy road. This doesn't effect everything, but it does hinder the film from going down the really scary route it could have with some clever monster designs. The acting is hit or miss too with its hobnob cast (or English actors in a Finnish film...don't ask too many questions now) and occasionally the film wants to tread more deeper waters without fully taking the plunge (the odd suicidal scene and its vague and rather confusing ending). Both of these aspects seem to hint at something greater but the film never goes there.

This Finnish film does, however, succeed in many places to give it a surprisingly solid foundation. The direction is tight with some great details for those willing to look for them and the atmosphere can be downright creepy as shit. With each floor of the hospital looking more and more like the nightmarish images from the game "Silent Hill" as they progress down, there is some great atmosphere build that truly makes the audience feel like they are crawling into hell with the characters. Even though the use of the Lordi members seems cheesy they do some cool and interesting things with them (like how one is a ghostly figure and none of them speak) to help balance it out.

Although my expectations for "Dark Floors" were seriously low, it does have some surprising depth and great executions to make it not a complete disaster. It isn't great, the story does get way too out there by the end, but it has its moments of glory that one can admire. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Room 205 - 2/5

Going into "Room 205" I had no idea what to expect. I picked it up solely because it was released through Ghost House Underground. Finally being able to get around to watching this Danish ghost story, I found myself, well to be honest, rather unimpressed. The film definitely tries hard to get itself going, but rarely finds solid footing to gather traction and eventually succumbs to its unoriginality.

Katrine (Ronhold) is the new girl at college. She is moving into a dorm of already well established (read: assholes) college students and is looking forward to moving on with her life. When the her new friends (read: assholes) begin to toy with her by scaring up a legend of a woman who was killed in room 205, she doesn't believe that the ghost haunts the dorm. Turns out their pranking isn't so much pranking as truth. Now the mirror that this trapped ghost was in is broken and she's free to roam the halls and kill the residents (read: assholes) at will. Can Katrine stop this pissy ghost before the murders are pinned on her?

"Room 205" is half 70s style atmospheric college horror flick and half inspired Asian ghost tale. Now that sounds like it might be a winning combination, but despite some valiant efforts from the cast and crew it rarely wins at combining anything. It's low energy slow build seems to take FOREVER to finally get going and with its rarely heartfelt characters guiding us to a very obvious conclusion, "Room 205" can't overcome its own unoriginality. It is filled with great ideas and some solid acting and directing, but it never meshes and the audience is consistently alienated from the story.

I do have to admit though, when it wanted to build atmosphere it could. Sometimes a bit too much. Barnewitz has a solid grasp of using subtlety and long shots to counter balance the modern style quick editing and shaky cams to try and blend the two styles together. Even the actors seem to be on game with this idea towards the film. Unfortunately, the foundation writing is just too uneventful and knock-off to build properly on.

"Room 205" carries some great execution and a rather ballsy idea for a film style, but its poor story and rather lackluster script just aren't enough for the rest of the film to get where it needs to be. With the ghost horror genre is already oversaturated, "Room 205" rarely stands out from the rest. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Substitute, The (2007) - 4.5/5

Does anyone remember Bruce Coville and his stellar young adult novels in the "My Teacher Is An Alien" series? I damn well do. One of the best books I read as a kid (I did prefer "Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher" though) and although its been years since I enjoyed my time with those 'classics', I did happen to come across a dainty little Danish Horror film that perfectly captures that same ideology of those books. Just more in an adult way.

Carl struggles with the loss of his mother. His classmates, although your average kids, don't really understand him and his father and younger sister are having enough of a tough time coping too. When his sixth grade teacher comes down with a sickness, he finds himself going head to head with the new substitute. Evidence starts to build for him and a few classmates that their teacher is from another world and despite their protests to their parents, they seem powerless. Now the children of 6B have to stop this evil alien teacher before her secret plans come to fruition.

"The Substitute" is a fun and quick paced little Horror film that's fit for the whole family. This is the kind of film that has been missing for some time, picking up in the tracks that classic 80s children lead films like "Monster Squad" and "The Goonies" left off, and giving a taste of that rather user friendly and fun time that those kinds of films succeeded at.

Its a wonderful change of pace to have a Horror film with no gore (and very little killing) that's carried by fun characters and solid acting. It's these young actors and great visual eye by director Bornedal that make the rather simple story such a treat to watch. Even our villain Ulla does a stunning and fun job at being both sinister and somewhat humorous without being too cheesy.

Some of the plot scenes and elements might come off as odd but its this unique and almost fantastical side of the film that adds to its charm. The silver ball that Ulla uses to accomplish certain tasks ("Phantasm" anyone?) or how she feeds on chickens make this film a ton of quirky joy to watch. The chicken feeding scene is remarkably hilarious in its own dark ways with its slapstick take on what could have been a rather disturbing moment.

Despite its fun and family friendly vibe, "The Substitute" does have some nice adult like moments too with his father's attempts to cope and some of the ideologies behind the film concerning empathy and love, but it never loses the balance of what sort of film it is. It scores a big recommendation from me in that sense.

"The Substitute" was a complete and utter surprise to me. It was fun. It was clever. It worked its family friendly vibes to the max without losing step on what the film was aiming for. This film was definitely worth the watch.

BONUS RANT: Turns out there is a plan to remake this film here in America. DAMMIT. Why can't Hollywood leave this great foreign films alone! 

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Trackman - 2/5

It's not very often that a Russian film comes across my viewing pile, but it was hard to resist "Trackman", which from the trailer looked like a more serious Russian answer to "My Bloody Valentine" with its goggled and pick ax armed underground slasher. Unfortunately, its not near as good as one would have hoped despite a few solid things about the film.

Bank heists never really go right and of course, they don't in Russia either. Despite some eager ideas and solid planning, a handful of robbers end up having to take a few hostages and flee into the underground rails of the Russian city to find their way from the police. Little do they know that there is an unknown factor in their getaway in the form of a psychopathic slasher with an affinity for eyes living down in those tunnels. Suddenly now these robbers and hostages have to work together to get out before he sets his sights on them.

The film tries desperately to be a stylistic and memorable film even with all of the unoriginal concepts it has contained in its hour and twenty minute run time. Director Igor Shavlak does his best to give the film some sort of depth (most of which is sucked dry from a lackluster script) by delving the film with thick atmosphere and lots of great light/shadow work and focus movement. Unfortunately, even some of his best efforts feel far too forced as he tries to keep the weak dialogue to minimum by outpacing the film. It feels too rushed and he tries to slow down the pacing by throwing in tons of stylistic slow motion points that feel more awkward and out of place than atmospheric. Its a film torn between trying to be an Americanized slasher with lots of kills and outrageous moments (where the hell does the Trackman get a fucking flamethrower?) and keeping that Eastern Horror film sense of tension and atmosphere. It never goes far enough to either end to truly work out.

This film also needs more motivation. It needs 'whys' for its details. It assumes a lot of its audience and although some of the acting is quite impressive for a low budget slasher, there is not near enough back story for our characters for the audience to care about their well being. Nor do we get enough back story on our villain to get what the hell he's doing. We get a little blurb about a diseased man from Chernobyl that goes crazy and lives in the sewers and perhaps glows in the dark (?!?) but his need to collect eyes and his madness is left mostly in the dark for the film. Not that its a bad thing to keep your monster man mysterious, but it felt rather lackluster on the script's part to not even HINT at what was the motive behind those goggles.

"Trackman" was steeped with some great shadow work and atmosphere, but a weak script with unloving characters and a far too mysterious villain make it more of a chore to watch than a fun slasher time. It has its moments but is too far away from realizing its own potential to be a must see.

BONUS RANT: The film opens with children's coloring pictures of the Trackman and his eye popping deeds and it leaves you to ponder 'what the fuck did it open like that for?' for the entire film until the very last shot in the movie. Where we get an even more confusing and odd moment that only pseudo-explains why the film opened that way. Were the filmmakers expecting to franchise this bad boy already? Were they giving the film an unneeded layer? Were they just smoking crack? Who knows. I sure as hell felt more confused by that connection than enlightened. I suggest you not expect a full explanation for it and just make up your own. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Offspring - 1/5

Good Lord, can I pick them lately. "Nine Dead", "Sorority Row", and now "Offspring". It's like I have a bad Horror movie streak that I just can't break! Even a film based on the relatively fun/controversial writer Jack Ketchum book of the same name couldn't save the streak. That's even with Ketchum writing the script! Needless to say, I'll try to keep this one brief as not to bore you with another review where I don't say much good.

"Offspring" weaves a post event tale where the children of a missing light house keeper from wee long ago have lived in the wilderness of North Eastern US and Canada surviving by eating animals and the occasional hiker. Of course this is about the second batch of cannibals that come into contact with society (the first is only referenced by the original police officer whom caught them) as they attack a family in search of a baby that...well I'm not sure why they wanted the baby actually. Something to do with religious juju or something.

So essentially we have a very violent "Lord Of The Flies" like group of young people that speak a random tongue out to capture a baby to induct into their society. Too bad the most intriguing part of this film is the lack of score and poor use of credits. It had an interesting story that went really no where, explained nothing, and gave me no reason to actually root for any of the characters. The best part of this film was some of the gore effects. Not usually a good sign for a low budget Horror flick.

The dialogue was sparse. As sparse as the character work/depth was. The directing had some nice moments with a visual side but stank of a bit too much amateur smell for its own good. Same went for the lacking score and make shift editing. All far too amateur for what I expected from something released in this set of Ghost House Underground. More or less, "Offspring" felt like a made for TV movie littered with some gore, nudity, and the occasional f word.

Not to mention that throughout the film it felt like something was missing from the story. It speeds through all the characters at high speed with not a lot of regard to its degradation of the film, and half of the time I felt like it rushed its story pieces too. I felt as though I needed more all the time.

I'm not going to go too much further into analyzing this one, as it doesn't have too much to analyze. It feels about half assed throughout every aspect and never reaches the horror or the suspense that the story needed to work. It comes off like a bad Stephen King film (ouch) more often than not. Of the four GHU released this year this was by far the weakest entry. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Children, The - 4.5/5

Evil children has been done before. Hell, its been done so many times that I actually put off seeing this film for quite some time. "Orphan" filled my need for killer children quite nicely and I figured this wouldn't be as good as I could have hoped, thusly, throwing it on the back burning. Eventually, I caught some solid reviews of the film from some of my favorite critics and decided to pop it in and give it a run.

As a couple of couples and their younglings gather round for Christmas, they find that tensions start to build and the children start to act funny as they suddenly come down with an odd sickness. A rebellious teenage daughter and her family find themselves at odds with each other and the fucked up kids as they desperately try to piece together what is happening.

I was immensely impressed with this low budget British film. Although it took a bit for the film to get going, all of the character work and establishment of setting and plot at the start up paid off when it started to really burn off later on. "The Children"'s director, Shankland, does a pretty solid job throwing in old school Horror elements into a relatively modern style to give us a little of the best of both worlds here. Significant tension mounts considerably through the beginning and mid sections before a final act that borderlines on the slasher element and it swiftly moves the flow of the film into them. The visual style was striking in its mixture and a solid and vague story adds a lot of 'what the fuck is going on' frustration to the audience and characters (all of it in a good way).

The flaws of "The Children" were fairly minuscule in comparison to what it accomplishes. Some might find the vague story of the 'illness' that suddenly nails the kids to be a flaw, where I found it to be a nice use of the real time aspect of the film and adds to the isolation element. I can see it being an issue with some, so there if fair warning there. My one complaint with "The Children" has to go with some of the acting which on the whole was quite good, but there were some iffy moments here and there. Not a whole lot that I felt was not going to pay off here and I appreciate that.

Now, killer children stories have been done to death in the Horror genre, but "The Children" takes a tried and true formula and makes it really stick with the viewer. I'm not sure how this film won't make you fear children by the end. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Thaw, The - 3.5/5

Coming at an almost perfect timing point, with Swine Flu scares running across the US and an almost 'too trendy for its own good' focus on Global Warming and being green, "The Thaw" is a perfect combination of these two concepts. The idea of a pandemic that is created when glacial melting releases a prehistoric infestation of 'bugs' couldn't be more relevant to today's society. And honestly, "The Thaw" does a great job of balancing this end of the world scenario with enough personal and character work to make it a just story driven enough. I was definitely surprised with the quality of work here.

Now I'm not saying that "The Thaw" doesn't have its flaws...as it does and they become apparent towards the end, but I was pleasantly surprised with the stoutness of this movie. It's a pretty basic story we've seen before as a group of people (this time ecology students on their way to study with the infamous and somewhat offbeat man of the hour Val Kilmer) are isolated into a situation with these deadly 'bugs' as they struggle to quarentine themselves and find a way out. It's classic isolation horror (ergo "John Carpenter's The Thing" with its 'no you're infected!' subplot) with just enough touch of current events to make it unique. Although the pacing is solid enough throughout, some of the odd jumps in logic for the sake of the pacing and story movement did hinder it. I'm sorry but in that situation I would have killed that Feddy kid (whom tries to only save his own skinny ass multiple times) and fed his ass to the bugs. And the why the other characters make logic of his motives felt a little forced. Happens a few times throughout and it was a bit frustrating.

The special effects were spot on (even some of the low budget CGI insect work did its job perfectly) and even with some of its over the top acting performances (the main girl started to unnerve me a bit towards the end, but the helicopter pilot's nice work made up for it earlier) the solid story and nice pace of the film made up for most of it. Add in some nice directorial touches like the opening sequence of the film which I enjoyed, and "The Thaw" was surprisingly solid. Although it did run a bit off towards the end, I have to admit the big 'bang' towards the end did take me off guard, its initial run was strong enough. Not a perfect film, but a nice addition to my collection. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider

Seventh Moon - 3.5/5

'He called them moon demons' -Yul

It would seem that other reviewers weren't as accepting of "Seventh Moon" as I was. Which is somewhat of a sad thought, considering that I thought it was a pretty solid film. It really focuses on the subtle and the 'in the moment' style of filming, which is what most others tended to dislike about the film, but I thought it brought a nice sense of tension to the film which many horror films lack these days.

"Seventh Moon" is about a couple whom takes their honeymoon to China only to find out that they came on the wrong fucking day, considering its the full moon of the seventh lunar month and a shit ton of 'moon demons' decide they are going to be their next sacrifice.

So what we have here is Eduardo Sanchez taking a pretty simplistic horror story line and deciding that they only way to make it work would be to throw the viewer straight into the terror by giving the film a very disorienting documentary look. Grainy film, odd focus shifts, almost no lighting, and extreme close-ups make this film feel like a roller coaster ride of horror proportions as we follow our couple through the worst honeymoon in history. At first, as with other reviewers, I wanted to punch the movie and tell it to 'quit fucking shaking all the time!' as this hand held camera style tends to frustrate the hell out of me. Not to mention he is a modern horror director and thinks that in intense situations that he has to have quick edits about a thousand times in the span of a minute. It's a flaw most horror directors fall into. Luckily though, despite its frustrations, all of his style (the grain, the light) make this film feel pretty damn real and it really holds this chaotic tension through the film. Solid performances from Smart and Chiou (although I'll be damned if they had more then 3 seconds at a time to actually act) add to the nice tension and make they baby tick like a time bomb.

Storywise, I had a few issues with it. Firstly, it started off killer so as one is trying to figure out what the hell is actually going on with these white skinned things and the abandonment of the country side. It tends to go down hill at the end though (SPOILER ALERT: why the fuck did they have sex towards the end? Was it something in the tea/water? I'm not sure for the reasoning of that. SPOILER END) and the somewhat lackluster ending was a bit of a disappointment. Had the ending really tied things together this would have been a 4 stars film for me, but its somewhat rushed feeling irked me a bit. Won't lie, it was damn nice to see the sun at the end and full spectrum of color again. It was a nice touch.

For my first film from the second releases from Ghost House Underground, I was definitely surprised with how well this bad boy balanced tension. All though, I would never personally direct a film this way, I appreciated that Sanchez was able to use it to his advantage. This was a surprise for me. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider