Results tagged “Horrorfest” from SnarkyBlog

Mulberry Street (2006)

By
Snarky
 on August 21, 2008 9:50 AM |
D: Jim Mickle
S: Nick Damici, Antone Pagan, Tim House, Larry Fleischman, Bo Corre, Ron Brict, John Hoyt, Kim Blair
 
If a movie about were-rats infesting New York City sounds like something you'd be interested in watching, then this is definitely the movie for you.  Assuming, of course, that plot, characters, and cinematography aren't all that important to you.
 
Yes, the idea of an infestation of were-rats starting riots in the streets of New York definitely has promise.  And there's clearly an attempt to put an over-arching storyline in place - an Iraq War vet comes home on the night that all hell breaks loose, and attempts to make her way home to her neighborhood to see her father again.  And to be fair, the movie starts off on a pretty good note...the characters are decently established, relationships are explained, and the neighborhood in general is laid out for the future insanity.
 
Then the infections begin, and the movie moves from a slow-paced character study into the realm of bad lighting and music-video cuts.  Now, don't get me wrong - I'm very much in the camp of the less you show in a horror movie, the scarier it is (check out Session 9 for this - very little is shown throughout the whole movie and it's the creepiest film I've seen in a long time).  But, I also think that if you're going to show something, you need to show it, and not hide it with horrible lighting and bad camera tricks.  Which, unfortunately, is what shows up here.
 
It's not the worst movie ever, and definitely not the worst of the Horrorfest outings for 2007.  But it just takes too much time to build up to a delivery that's really not as good a payoff as you'd want it to be.  Really, it's just a poor knock-off of 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later, replacing zombies with rat-people.  It's fun, I suppose, but very slow to build and pretty difficult to track once things start falling apart.

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Review: Wicked Little Things (2006)

By
Snarky
 on May 13, 2008 10:09 AM |
 
Rarely is a movie both completely predictable, yet still fun and entertaining.  This movie manages to strike that fine balance, and because of that, it moves way up the list for my picks from the first set of Horrorfest films.  I'd probably put it in the #3 or #4 slot, behind Unrest and Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror.
 
The set-up is simple - back in the early 1900s, children were used by a greedy mine operator to drag dynamite into places that adults couldn't reach.  Of course, things go wrong, and an explosion traps a group of the children alive in a collapsed shaft, resulting in an investigation that ultimately closes the mine - but leaves the owner off the hook for his blatant safety and labor violations.  Needless to say, the souls of these children don't rest well, knowing the man who caused their deaths escaped justice.  So they somehow return, wandering the woods around the mine and feasting on the flesh of animals (or the occasional human) unlucky enough to cross their path.
 
Fast-forward to the present, and we have a newly-widowed mother of two - a young girl and a teenager - down on her luck after the death of her husband.  The family literally has almost nothing, except for the deed to a house out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods.  As it turns out, her husband's family were miners back in the day, and the house was "worker's quarters", provided by the mining company.
 
Of course, the typical "ghost story" aspects are foreshadowed by the townsfolk, particularly the high-school crowd that the teenage daughter immediately clicks with.  And, as I completely expected, the youngest daughter finds a doll, which she tells her mom belongs to "Mary", who "lives in the woods".  Yep, Mary is one of the flesh-devouring ghouls, but due to the particulars of her condition won't eat the flesh of family of the miners killed.
 
There's also the requisite recluse, played perfectly by Ben Cross (whom I have loved as an actor since his role as Barnabus Collins on the revival of Dark Shadows).  He tosses blood onto the doors of the family's new home, and places rabbits and other small critters on spikes throughout the woods, keeping the ghoulish children at bay.
 
And, soon enough, the human antagonist arrives - the grandson of the mine owner, who intends to clear all of the land owned by the mining company and start anew...including all of the homes on the property, forcing Karen and her girls onto the streets.  Of course, the ghouls have other ideas for him.
 
Overall, there's nothing shockingly great about this movie, but at the same time there's nothing shockingly bad.  The special effects are decent for the most part, and the children look appropriately cute and creepy, simultaneously.  It's not the best, but far from the worst, and if you're interested in some mindless horror fun, this movie will definitely satisfy that need.

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Review: Dark Ride (2006)

By
Snarky
 on March 21, 2008 11:41 AM |
 
Overall, the movies that comprised the "After Dark Horrorfest" from 2006 were pretty much less-than-impressive (not including the wide-release The Abandoned or the "secret" Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror).  The only one I really, really liked was Unrest, and even it had moments of slack-jawed awfulness.  On the opposite end of the spectrum from that collection of films lies Penny Dreadful, which just failed the suspension of disbelief requirement from the very word "go".  Dark Ride sits quite happily somewhere in the middle between these two polar opposites.  It's neither the best horror film to hit celluloid, but it's also nowhere near the worst.
 
The plot pretty much follows some old-hat conventions of the genre: group of college students off for Spring Break make a detour to spend the night in an abandoned pier-carnival ride that was the home to a series of brutal killings some time earlier.  The killer, they know, is safely incarcerated in a local mental hospital, so what could go wrong?  And, of course, we get the requisite scenes of abuse from the psych ward...and guess what - the killer escapes!  No way!!
 
If the characters and the actors weren't actually so much fun (and there weren't a couple good boob scenes), this movie would find itself relegated to the back of the stack, with other crap like Horrors of War.  However, even though you feel like you've seen this movie or something similar to it a thousand times before, the actors chew through their lines and the scenes with such pure, unadulterated enjoyment that it's actually fun again.  And there are a few really great death scenes (another pre-requisite for this type of film).
 
The "wow, I didn't see that coming" end isn't really so much of a surprise, but it is very well-played.  The reveal itself isn't the key to it being so well-played, it's how everything pieces together that is very well-crafted.
 
Aside from the few moments of "What the HELL are you thinking, GET OUT!" incidents, this is a pretty solid outing, though really not "to die for" like the After Dark marketing mavens wanted you to believe.  It's a fun, light, bloody slasher film, and it really doesn't try to or pretend to be anything other than that.

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Review: Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror (2006)

By
Snarky
 on March 7, 2008 9:31 AM |
D: Stacy Title
S: Snoop Dogg, Ernie Hudson, Danny Trejo, Pooch Hall, Anson Mount, Daniella Alonso

I'm a man of simple tastes.  And one of my all-time favorite series was HBO's Tales From The Crypt series, which spawned several less-than-stellar horror anthologies, both in film and on television.  One of the most forgettable was Tales From The Hood (1995), though it sure was a lot of fun.  Snoop Dog's Hood of Horror owes a lot to both TFTC and TFTH, and without both of those predecessors, it's hard to imagine it could've come to be.  It's by far the most high-profile of the After Dark Horrorfest movies from 2006 (of which it was the "secret" ninth film), though I'd still say overall it's not quite as good as Unrest.  By far the most unique of the films, though.

Needless to say, this isn't a movie that takes itself too seriously, as with any truly great rip-off of Tales.  In fact, the stories are all told with tongue firmly in cheek, and all are brought together with the story of the narrator, the Hound of Hell, aka Snoop Dogg himself.  The movie starts with an animated tale of a drive-by gone wrong, and this is the origin story for our narrator.  We then see the tale of Posie, a graffiti artist who's given the power of vengeance only to abuse it.  We're treated to a perfectly enjoyable story about a group of former Army buddies forced to live with a racist, bigoted, money-grubbing slimeball (and his too-stacked-to-be-anything-but-silicon wife).  Finally, we see the rise and fall of a rap artist willing to do anything to keep himself in the limelight, regardless of the deal he made with the Almighty when he was just another hood boy wanting to make it big.

The acting is good overall, the effects are both hilarious and disquieting, often at the same time (I guarantee you'll never look at caviar in the same way again), and when compared to movies of its ilk, it's very well done.  For fans of horror anthologies, this is definitely a must-see, up there even with the classic Creepshow, though clearly not with the same pedigree.

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