Long Weekend

Yeah, yeah, I've been gone a while. I thought I made be done with this blog for good but here I am. So, I saw a lot of films since I last reviewed one. I may or may not review any of them. Time will tell. Today I watched Long Weekend and with this I return.

When I say Long Weekend I refer to the 1978 original, of course. As I understand, the 2008 remake is basically a shot-for-shot retelling of the story, so I ask you, "What's the point?".

First up, the tag line/promo line on the movie poster is genius.

Their Crime was against nature...nature found them guilty.

Also, it tells you everything you need to know about the film. Here is a couple that decide to take a break in nature for a long weekend. They appear to be a modern, suburban couple who have obviously hit a road block in their relationship. There is talk of an abortion, the child apparently the result of an affair the wife (Marcia) was/is having. The husband (Peter) also appears to be getting some on the side - the film starts with him parting from a woman that may be his lover.

Not the best premise for a weekend away.

They drive off with their (well, his) dog, Cricket, not the smartest of dogs. Marcia is in a piss-poor mood for most of the drive. This seems to be her default setting. Over the days to come there are some moments of tenderness between the couple, giving us some idea of what they once were. But this is only the backdrop.

To return to the promo from the poster, here are the ways in which they piss off nature:

Peter throws a cigarette out the car window, igniting what could be a wild fire.
Peter hits a kangaroo in the dark.
Marcia steals and later smashes an eagle egg. (A move I found particularly disgusting.)
Marcia applies bug spray everywhere.
Peter kills a dugong. Or not. This dugong is an especially ugly and fascinating beast.
Marcia hits ducklings with the car, splotches of blood and goo all over her windshield.

But this being Australia and horror and all, nature will have her payback.

This is awesome in a very 1970's kind of way.

7/10

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

This is so disgusting. There is, however, one reason to watch this (well, at least reason enough for me) and that is: Henry Rollins!

The premise is a reality TV show. Because, of course it is. The goal is to be the last man/woman standing after five days in a post apocalyptic world and most of it is scripted. So much for the 'reality' part. The contestants are an assortment of failures: a would-be athletes, 'actresses', an idiot skateboarder named Jonesy and a woman with military education. She, of course, is a tough lesbian. Because cliché. Not that it is going to help her any in the long run.

How this Jonesy character made it for as long as he did is beyond me. He should have been killed off much earlier than he was, for being annoying if not for anything else.

So, the cast and crew get killed and possibly eaten one by one. That is the plot.

The difference to part one is that we get to really take a close look at the deformed killers. We even witness one of them give birth. Also, we see two of them having sex (as if anybody needed to see that).

The baddies do get killed more efficiently here, thanks to a stack of dynamite that Henry Rollins chances upon. Since flying meat and spraying blood is not gross enough, however, the last two remaining get hacked to pieces by a machine that can handily dub as a meat grinder.

Did I say last two? I meant of course the last two to tie up the story nicely, before we get the final horror film classic open end shot of someone (something) giving the deformed newborn a cut-off finger to suck on.

As for Henry Rollins...Henry Rollins is a fucking one man army! Bad ass until the end. His end, that is. So much blood. So much blood.

3/10

Wrong Turn

I have so many questions.

Like, why would you linger in a house that is clearly inhabited by, at the very least, serial killers? Get the hell out of there!

Why don't you hide in the vast woods all around you (for miles and miles and miles) but chose to stay in plain sight for as long as possible?

How does anybody find anyone in those big ass woods? Ever?

Where do I know this Carly from? (The Mentalist. I looked it up.)

How did Desmond Harrington end up in this?

The story is as obvious as can be in a mediocre horror film. Young, attractive people stuck in the middle of the West Virginia woods. They chance upon a cabin (imagine!), where they find a number of very disturbing pieces of body parts, collected in various jars. They hide under beds, in store rooms, etc. and have to fight to keep quiet while witnessing their friend getting cut into pieces by inbred hillbillies. They flee (but not into the woods, mind you) and the villains catch up with them again and again, while the young, attractive people get killed one by one. Jeremy Sisto actually gets a nice Boromir send-off.

The prettiest boy and girl of the bunch eventually make it out alive after killing the baddies repeatedly. These here even exceed the mere standard two lives the bad guys in these types of films usually have.

Yeah, it's bad. Almost in a good way.

Almost.

3/10

The Thing

An alien taking over bodies of living beings (a dog to begin with, whoever is available after) to 'imitate' the host ends up in an American station in Antarctica. Scientifically, this is new and exciting and horrifying. Definitely something the scientists and/or doctor at the station should probably try to figure out. Stat. So....

Let's put the helicopter pilot in charge!

Never mind that he drinks way more than he probably should (and why is there so much alcohol available in the middle of nowhere, anyway?) and doesn't know the difference between Swedes and Norwegians (and, boy, does that joke get old quickly!). He is Kurt Russel so to him we shall listen.

What he has going for him is clearly being the inspiration for Pharrell's ever present hat! Behold!

 

If we chose to overlook the implausibility of the worker bee running the show (and we do chose that) than we can appreciate the dark atmosphere in this and, indeed, many other of John Carpenter's films. Sadly, he seems to have lost his touch as of late, painfully obvious in his latest film, The Ward.

But The Thing was made in his heyday, when the special effects could still gross you out. The dog splits open, for Christ's sake! And a head grows legs and turns into a giant spider thingy. Awesome!

If this film were made today, however, the first Norwegian on the scene might still have been shot (in that all-American Shoot First, Ask Questions Later! attitude) but the main objective of the team of scientists (and the trigger-happy, rough guy pilot, obviously) would be to isolate the dog or anyone suspected of being an imitation to see if this cannot be used in warfare somehow.

So a lot could have been handled better if, I dunno, the guy that figured out that one or more of the team may have been infected/imitated said something to his colleagues about it. They might have had some valuable input. As it happens, when something needs to be told they tell it to the pilot first. Why? Because he is Kurt Russell.

And a good thing too, because he does have a theory on how to test who of their group is/are affected. He knows science and medicine now! He has theories! If this were indeed made today, he probably would have been a scientist because at some point it became okay for them to be tough and sexy and bad-ass. The are also allowed to be women now! Imagine the possiblities.

I don't mean to sound like I didn't like The Thing. It did what it set out to do, which is entertain and gross out.

A friend pointed out this story to me, which tells the story from the thing's perspective.

8/10

Far North

We do not know for sure, but there is a pretty good chance that Sean Bean dies from exposure. After all, he runs off naked into the bitter cold in the end.

Two nomad women live together in the Arctic somewhere, away from their people. One of them, Saiva, was said to bring misery to everyone close to her. That is why her mother went to live in the wild to bring up her daughter years ago. Not sure where the other woman, Anja, came from but whatever.

They live together and survive together and have been doing so for some time, apparently, when one day Saiva finds a stranger, Loki, in the ice and brings him back to their tent before he freezes to death. Two women and one Sean Bean in the same tent can only spell trouble. Of course, both of them develop a crush on him. Initially, it is not clear who he will end up with. It turns out to be Anja.

The three go through an indeterminate time together until one day Anja announces to Saiva that she will be living with Loki once the sea freezes over.

The next part gave me a very distinct WTF? feeling.

Saiva chokes Anja to death with Anja's own braid before scalping her and skinning her face to wear as a mask and wig.

Ew!

Then Loki comes back from testing the ice for the next day's crossing and he gets all hot and steamy with the woman he believes to be Anja. Then the skin on the face starts moving in odd ways and he realizes that Saiva is wearing an Anja mask. Literally.

It is then that he flees the scene. Naked. (Yummy but also Ew!)

There is something beautiful about the frozen landscape and bleakness. Also, the film is compelling. And gross. Yes, also gross.

7/10

Scenic Route

Old friends Mitchell and Carter are on a road trip together. We don't know from where to where they are going, but they are in the middle of the desert (Nevada?). Mitchell is on crutches. Again, we are never really told what happened.

What we do know is that Carter stages a car breakdown because they don't talk anymore like they used to and he manufactures a situation where they have no choice but to talk. And while they're there he goes off on Mitchell for having given up on his dream on becoming a musician and marrying the "rebound-girl" after breaking up with the love of his life.

But first, they kick the shit out of each other. This happens before the credits. Mitchell has a broken nose and a bloody face and Carter does not move after one final blow. This is the intro.

Then we go back to the previously mentioned car trouble and the fight (first verbal) that follow after Carter's go at a life intervention and Mitchell finding out that his friend has simply removed a wire from the car to keep them stranded. He owns up when a passing car offers them a ride into town. Before the helpful man is allowed to drive off, Carter has to start the car to prove to Mitchell that he fixed it.

It is only after the driver left and some more fighting that the car is really broken. More yelling, blaming each other and the fight from the beginning follow. Mitchell comes to and Carter is still not moving. Mitchell mourns over the body of his friend and eventually starts digging a grave in the desert. As he pulls the body towards it, however, it tunes out that Carter is still alive. When he now realizes that he was about to be buried, he loses it and storms off.

The reunite and suffer together through the heat during the day, the cold nights and the lack of water. As a last ditch effort they stumble off in the direction where Mitchell thinks a town may be and eventually come to the remains of what used to be a small group of houses. But at least they find water.

And then suddenly a cell rings and they have reception again (hurray!) and are saved.

Or are they?

6/10

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

One of the most hilarious horror comedies in, like, ever.

Tucker and Dale go into the woods in the Appalachian Mountains to fix up Tucker's newly acquired "vacation home" aka cabin in the woods. At the same time, nearby, a group of college kids are camping.

After a short encounter in a small store, they run into each other again. The college kids go skinny dipping while the two country boys are fishing. One of the kids, Allison slips and falls into the water, hitting her head. Tucker and Dale come to her rescue and as they pull her into their boat, they are immediately mistaken for psycho killers by the rest of Allison's group. Leaving messages like "we got ur friend" carved into a log with an ax are not helping the communication difficulties.

What transpires then are a string of very creative accidental deaths by the college idiots as they try to "rescue" their friend from the psychos in the cabin. They run into pointy branches, fall on their homemade spears, jump headfirst into a wood chipper (and Tuckers asking the bottom half of the kid, "are you okay?"), shoot themselves in the face and so on.

It is awesome.

Also, Tucker and Dale are perfectly cast, played by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine.

9/10

Legion

Archangel Michael has a six pack and he is bad-ass. He knows martial arts and can handle all kinds of weaponry.

Don't believe me? Just watch Legion and you will see.

Archangel Gabriel is also kind of bad-ass and I am pretty sure that he has a six pack underneath all that armor, as well. Alas, we never get to see him shirtless.

But back to Michael, who has fallen (jumped?) from heaven because there is one task God asked of him that he is not comfortable with. You see, unlike the Lord, Michael has not lost faith in humanity and would rather save a baby than kill it. Yes, this here God is a vengeful one.

The setting for most of the film is a diner in the middle of nowhere (from the proximity to LA I would guess in the Nevada desert). The people inside get there first taste of the pending apocalypse when a little old lady comes in ordering steak that is practically raw. Then she tells the waitress that her soon-to-be-born baby (the one Gabriel is sent to kill) will 'burn', insults another customer (for constantly complaining) and bites the husband defending his wife's honor in the neck.

Shortly after, Michael comes, arms everyone and they all defend the diner. Or actually, Charlie, the soon-to-be-mother-of-the-coming-savior. There is some religious talk and lots of gunfire against the swarms of possessed (?) people surrounding the diner. It's like Feast, but without the humor and with a prettier cast.

Then, after the baby is born, there is one epic bar fight between Michael and Gabriel. The latter has the advantage of his armor and the wings, that appear to be sort of like an extra shield and kills his ex-colleague. But instead of dying like 'one of them' he dissolves into ashes and light to return a bit later, having earned his wings back and defeats Gabriel...but does not kill him.

So full of pathos and religious mumbo-jumbo but oh so awesome.

And did I mention Michael's six pack?

7/10

You're Next

The film begins with sex. Of course. Afterwards, while the young woman walks through the house wearing next to nothing and puts on some music, she feels like she is being watched. But, cool as she is, she does not panic, has a drink and...gets killed. The man, getting out of the shower and - you guessed it - wearing next to nothing picks up the half finished drink before noticing that across his wide windows someone wrote 'You're Next' in his girlfriends blood with the girlfriend lying dead on the porch.

The story, however, is about this guy's neighbors, if you want to call them that. These are weekend homes and there are stretches of wood in between them. Anyway, Paul and Abrey are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary. They are joined by their four grown children with their significant others in the massive house. Obviously, this is a very well-off couple. Over dinner, the kids start arguing and while they go at each other, the daughter's boyfriend gets up and walks to the window to have a closer look at something he say outside and gets shot in the head with an arrow. Then more arrows keep flying through the window and eveyone panics (cue very shaky camera work, which I am not a fan of).

Most of what follows is a group of culprits wearing animals masks trying to kill the family members off one by one, using seemingly every possible weapon other than fire arms (crossbow, axe, machete). As the family is trying to gather their collective marbles, one of the son's girlfriend - an Australian girl named Erin - takes matters into her own hands and puts measures of self preservation into action. Apparently, she grew up in a sort of survivalist camp in the Outbacks and knows how to put a cleaver to good use.

The resentments within the family lead to some hilarious conversations (and the laughs produced are planed for and not accidental) and at some point one gets the feeling someone inside the house must have some involvement in what is perspiring. And one is right.

Amidst all the carnage, Crispian (the son who brought the Australian girlfriend) runs off to 'get help' and after Erin has finished off each and every attacker (and son Felix and girlfriend Zee, after overhearing them talking about an inheritance and how this all should have gone down way easier than it is happening), Felix' phone rings and Erin picks it up without saying anything. The caller is Crispian asking whether it is all finished and it is ok for him to come back in. When he does he realizes that he has been talking to Erin and explains to her that the idea was that she would be the innocent bystander attesting to a group of lunatics randomly killing off the rest of the family (and - to make the story more sound - kill off a couple of neighbors, as well) and Felix and Crispian would split the inheritance. He apologizes and notes that nobody expected her to be so good at killing people and promises her vacations and money, money, money. She is having none of it, of course.

The ending of the film is hilarious.

8/10

House of Wax

Paris Hilton dies in the most satisfying way imaginable. This is really all you need as a motivation to watch.

6/10

House at the End of the Street

A divorcee and her teenage daughter Elissa move into a small town and a house they can really only afford because of what happened next door.

Legend has it that a young girl killed her parents years ago and now only the girl's brother lives in the house. The girl, 13 at the time, was said to have disappeared into the nearby woods and/or drowned in a nearby lake. But no body was ever recovered, so you know there is something very fishy about ti. The boy, one Ryan, had been sent away to live with an aunt after causeing an accident that left his sister mentally challenged. He is now back (and in college) to renovate the house so that he can sell it.

Elissa totally likes Ryan and even though the rest of the town, at best, shuns him or, at worst, beats him up she stands by him. Her mom doesn't like that either for some reason. I'm not quite clear why that is, especially since she has something going with a local policeman who finds no issue with the young man whatsoever.

Anyway, both Elissa and the small town cop are wrong about Ryan.

What really happened is this:
The parents were totally drugged out in the house while Ryan and his little sister were playing outside. The girl wanted to go higher and higher on the swing and Ryan failed to hold her arm for a bit and she fell off backwards and hit her head. This left her not retarded (bad word! bad word!) but, um, well, dead. The parents blame the boy and from now on decide that he is the daughter and raise him as such. But then once the teenage hormones kick in, he snaps and kills the parents and reappears as the poor discarded brother.

He cannot, however, cope without his little sister and keeps a young woman in the basement that he pumps full of drugs of some kind (whereever he got them from....). The woman in the basement is exchangeable because, you know, sometimes shit happens and he breaks her neck when she tries to run off through the forest and he catches up with her just in time.

Anyway, final showdown, cop dies, mom gets injured, Elissa kills culprit. And then....they move out again. Sure, they were fine living beside a house in which some sort of tragedy happened and where the town weirdo is still holed up, but now that it is just a house, no way José. We're done here.

3/10

Evil Dead II

I took a couple of weeks off from posting or, rather, from watching movies because I was preoccupied with working my way through all nine seasons of The Office.

My return to the blog is part 2 of the Evil Dead series.

Following this is a re-telling of part 1 in which our hero Ash only takes his girlfriend to the deserted cabin of the first installment. The find the book, girl loses her head, Ash is left to face the evil spirits all alone. He does lose a body part, as well. To save himself from alien hand syndrome he cuts the affected limb off with a chainsaw. And he goes slightly mad.

Soon he is joined by a group of four people, one of them the daughter of the owner of the cabin. Her scientist father found and translated the evil book and it was his voice on tape that called on the evil spirits. The daughter now brings with her the means to undo all that - missing pages.

But before they are saved of anything more blood will flow.

Basically the same as part one with different cast (except for the wonderful Bruce Campbell). The main difference is that this one does not take itself too seriously.

7/10

The Collector

The Chase family has recently moved to a remote location and as the house needs some fixing up, they have hired Arkin (Josh Stewart, very easy on the eyes) as a handyman. They also have a bit of a bug problem, so an exterminating firm makes an appearance early on in the film

Arkin needs money to pay off his wife's debts with some shady character. He needs this money right now. Luckily, the Chase family is set to go away for a couple of weeks and he knows where the safe is hidden and the things inside it will easily get him what he needs.

After dark, he goes back to the house and lets himself in. Just when he is about to crack the code for the safe he realizes that he is not alone, after all. The next thing he notices is that the entire house is rigged with deadly traps. A masked man, the 'Collector' in the title, is looking for an addition fitting for his collection (he collects humans, apparently) an it could be one of the Chases.

The parents are both stashed away in the basement, both badly hurt. Unfortunately, he could not yet get a hold of the two daughters of the family. The older, Jill, is a bit of a trouble maker (your average teenager) and off somewhere with a boyfriend after having refused to go on the family vacation. The younger, Hannah, is simply hiding. Also in the house is the previous collection piece, a man kept inside a red box (the box is what ties the collector's crimes together).

Arkin is torn between helping the people he was going to steal from and making a run for it. The latter option made very difficult thanks to the deadly weapons that could hit him in every room in the house.

Jill and her boyfriend make an appearance. They believe the house to be empty. When they start to make out the collector takes a creepy interest but Jill spots him and after being attacked dials 911 without being able to talk to the operator. There follows the death of the boyfriend, and a disgusting death it is. Arkin comes to Jill's aid while the collector is off investigating a sound. Arkin looks bloody and beat at this point and has no business being there in the first place, so Jill assumes he is an accomplice. While backing away from him she picks up a pair of scissors to use as a weapon, triggering a trap that nails her to the wall.

After he realizes that both parents and Jill are dead at this point, Arkin makes it out of the house but when he turns to look back he sees little Hannah begging for his help from an upstairs window. So back in he goes to rescue the little girl. Despite all the traps, some acid fluids, and one very angry dog they manage to get away. Arkin, having quite the bad day, gets hit by an oncoming cop car. Nevertheless, Hannah gets rescued and he gets put in an ambulance and taken away.

But there is no happy ending for him. The collector hits the ambulance with his own car, causing it to flip over and Arkin ends up in the red box.

Bad guy wins.

8/10

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Every boy in the high school wants to get into Mandy Lane's pants. She's allegedly still a virgin and got hot over the summer (their words, not mine).

A group of her class mates invite her out to Red's (the stoner) parent's farm, along with two cheerleaders (Chloe and Marlin) and two jocks (Bird and Luke). The only other person around is the farm hand Garth. During a night of drugs and alcohol, Mandy's former best friend Emmett - shunned because he made a boy jump off the roof towards a swimming pool (and, unfortunately, not quite making it) - starts killing them off one by one.

The first one to get it is Marlin, gravely wounded but not quite dead when Luke, heavily intoxicated, finds her by the lake. Luke is the first one to go, death by gun. Passed out Marlin gets the butt of the gun in the face (repeatedly), which leads to

DEAD CHEERLEADER ALERT!!!

The four others are at this point unaware of their friends being recently deceased. Bird then runs into Emmett and starts hitting him, before Emmett produces a hunting knife...

In the morning, Grant and Mandy have a heart to heart and we learn that nice, goody two-shoes Mandy is an orphan and that is why she is 'different' from her group of idiot friends. Awww! Then Grant gets lured away by a noise coming from upstairs. Mandy, asleep with her head on the table gets stroked by Emmett's bloody hand, so when Grant returns and sees the blood on her hair and the fridge decides that 'we need to get out of here'. As soon as the door opens, Grant gets shot in the shoulder.

Red and Chloe flee out the back door and find Luke and Marlin's bodies in a field. This leads to some making out (obviously) during which Red gets shot in the back. Chloe runs off into the fields, where she comes upon Bird's body before being chased by a car by Emmett and running....straight into the hunting knife, now held by Mandy herself (who was in on it all along). And again:

DEAD CHEERLEADER ALERT!!!

It was all really a suicide pact. But Mandy has one more surprise in store and planned to get rid of Emmett instead of dying with him. The bitch!

2/10

Retreat

Woah! Billy Elliott grew up handsomely, didn't he?

In this, Jamie Bell is army private Jack that ends up on an island in rather rough seas (off the British coast). He is all bloody and unconcious when a married couple finds him and takes him in.

The wife, Kate, has recently had a miscarriage and she and her husband Martin are staying at the island to work through their marriage troubles, brought on not only by the loss of the child but also by the fact that Martin apparently didn't want it in the first place because he didn't feel ready for it.

As if the situation weren't bad enough, Jack tells them a horrific tale of a virus outbreak that affected, and virtually wiped out the population on the main land. He makes them board up all windows and doors to stay as safe from the airborne virus as possible. Kate and Martin are never quite sure about whether to believe Jack's story or not.

So we have a grieving couple locked inside a house on a remote island with a total stranger (armed, no less). So far so average.

What pulls Retreat onto an above-average level is undoubtedly that it features three of the finest British actors of their generation. You have Thandie Newton as Kate, Cillian Murphy as Martin and the aforementioned Jamie Bell as Jack. The latter has the most interesting role of the trio and is consequently the most impressive one to watch.

The film itself is ok, with some nasty splattering of blood (the disease makes you practically cough out your lungs if you've contracted it) and a couple of nice twists towards the end.

Not bad at all, despite its mediocre critical reaction.

5/10