Revelations... the Music Video!

Death metal with incomprehensible lyrics... Catholic Demon Hunters... Zombies... ... and an appearance by the always-fabulous Cheyenne King! What more can one ask for in a horror-themed music video?

Revelations (2010)
Starring: Sarah French, Cheyenne King, and Daigoro
Director: Eli Funaro
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

By the way, the people who worked on this low-budget video did a better job with the cheap digital gore effects than what I've seen in some recent big-budget, full-blown movies who have turned to the same technology. It's a sad commentary on how some effects artists are paid entirely too much for their incompetence; these guys should have been hired for "Machete", "Expendbles", and several other pathetic examples of crappy digital effects I could mention. On the downside... just what the hell is the song about? I think maybe I understood a total of five words out of four-five minutes of screeching.

'Tied in Blood' is an excellent ghost story

Tied in Blood (2012)
Starring: Paul McEwan, Kenneth G. Hodgson, Laura O'Donoughue, Chris Leach, Denise Cooke, and Amie Morris
Director: Matthew Lawrence
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Robert (McEwan), a talented professional medium who resorts to phony seances to keep the money flowing when his gift fails him, is asked by a desperate man (Hodgson) to banish the ghost that killed his family. Robert jumps at this chance to use his gift to genuinely help someone, but when he arrives at the haunted house, he is confronted not by the expected malevolent spirit but instead by the confused ghost of the murdered family (Cooke, Leach, and O'Donoughue). As Robert speaks to them, attempting to help them "cross over", a story of ghostly seduction, demonic rage, and deep, dark secrets emerges.

"Tied In Blood" is a slow-burn horror story that is more literary in its feel and execution than most movies you'll see. The horror here doesn't ultimately come from special effects gore splattering everywhere but from the darkness within the characters and how it got there.

The film can be compared to a dark and twisted version of "Ghost Whisperer". The protagonist spends the film communicating with the spirits of the dead in order to help them find peace so they can rest, while trying to prevent the living from screwing up his efforts by reminding the spirits of whatever grief or regrets are keeping them trapped between life and the afterlife. It can also be compared to "Rashomon" or "Five Times That Night" in that we're presented with different, wildly varying accounts of the same series of events, with the truth (or as close as we'll ever get to it) finally emerging at the end. And with "Tied In Blood", it's a horrible truth.

Screenwriter David Ross and director Matthew Lawrence paced the film expertly, producing a lean, straight-to-the-point movie where every scene and every line spoken plays into the mystery of what happened in the house. There is no need here to rely on fake build-ups abd "gotchya scares" because there are plenty of chills in the script itself. In fact, by horror movie standards, the cinematography is rather plain and everything is brightly lit and seemingly cozy and normal... even the creepy abandoned manor visited by the soon-to-be-dead teenaged brother and sister, and the nocturnal visits by the ghost (Amie Morris) are mostly free of spooky shadows. It's a rare and, in case, effective approach that makes the unfolding events all the more disturbing.

The dispensing of the hoary tricks of gothic horror that have been in play since "The Cat and the Canary", this film instead rests on its well-crafted script and the performances by its talented cast. Everyone in the film gives excellent performances, with as much being said with gestures and facial expressions as through the delivery of dialogue. And nowhere in the film is the acting more effective than the interchanges between Laura O'Donoughue and Chris Leach who play bother and sister. Even before their true personalities and relationship emerge through the various telling of events, the viewer can tell there's something not quite right simply through the way O'Donoghue and Leach portray them. It's some great acting, and I hope to see more of both of them in the future.

The same is true of the work of David Ross and Matthew Lawrence, who make their screenwriting and directorial debuts respectively with this film film.

If you're a fan of well-told ghost stories and horror films that command your attention through characters and story rather than special effects, should check out "Tied in Blood" when it debuts on DVD on June 26, 2012.





(This review was based on a preview screener that was provided by distributor Chemical Burn.)

Like an episode of a TV anthology series with padding

Fell (2012)
Starring: Jeff Dylan Graham, Kristian Day, Katie Walters, and Barron Christian
Director: Marcus Koch
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Bill (Graham) has problems. His psychiatrist has put him on medication that is distorting his reality, his relationship with his girlfriend has fallen apart... and there's a dead girl in his bath tub, but he doesn't know how she ended up there.

If you're like me, you enjoy movies that present mysteries that you can try to solve as the film unfolds, opportunities to get ahead of the filmmakers and then be proven right or wrong in your assumptions.

"Fell" is one of those movies. And being that it's a film that takes place almost entirely within the apartment and/or the mind of a madman, it presents numerous puzzles for the viewer to try to piece together ahead of time. While most of the answers to what is happening in the film aren't surprising, the build-up to them is effectively staged. Transformations in the apartment gives viewers hints as to what is really happening, as do the behavior of the characters. And while I correctly guessed almost every fact of what was going on in the film, there was a final twist at the end that made me change my overall evaluation from "that was predictable" to "that was predictable but cool!"

Unfortunately, as I mention in the headline, "Fell" suffers from too much padding, especially in the first half hour. It's got the story of an intense episode of "The Hitchhiker", "Tales From the Darkside" or "Hammer House of Horror", but the director makes the all-too-common mistake of either thinking his audience dim or not trusting his own ability to get his point across and thus ends up repeating himself to the point of tediousness in his effort to make sure we get that Bill is crazy and can't distinguish reality from hallucinations. Some trimming would have made this film even more intense than it already is.

Despite being a little flabby, I still think this film is well-worth a look by anyone who enjoys psychological horror... and for anyone who wants to see a perfect example of how to make a fine movie for very little money.

(This review was based on a preview screening copy provided by Distributor Chemical Burn. "Fell" will be in stores on June 6, 2012... but, strangely, not at Amazon.com.)

'Evidence of a Haunting' is a mess

Evidence of a Haunting (2010)
Starring: Jessica D. Fulling, Scott Evans, Renee Wiggins, Korin Medina, Christopher Cassarino, and Robert M. Alford
Director: Joey Evans
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Six ghost hunters on a reality TV show come up against increasingly dangerous spirits in their final three investigations.

"Evidence of A Haunting" is another one of those movies that draws its inspiration from the ever-increasing slate of shows like SyFy Channel's "Ghost Hunters". I haven't seen many episodes of any of them, but if the reality show that the characters in this movie star it existed, it would probably be like a cross between "Fact or Faked" and the aforementioned "Ghost Hunters".

I say "probably," because while we, in theory, are presented with at least one investigation as it would appear on the show, and we are given clips throughout the film of the kind that would appear on such a show, we never really get a sense of what the show is actually like. I suspect it would be a highly produced, high-end show like "Fact or Faked," but the film never gives us enough to work with to know where the characters fit on the hobbyiest to successful professional spectrum.

This problem could have been fixed if a little more time had been spent on the script in the character development department. The characters really needed to be explored more, as did their place in the world.

And if that had been done, maybe the filmmakers would have realized that their film was lacking in a consistent tone, or any sort of cues to the audience that the film would be shifting between "documentary"/"cinema verite" style and a regular, plainly fictional film, and eventually completely abandoning the conceit that we're watching footage culled from the team's final investigations.

A problem that no amount of improvement in the script, or a more consistent story-telling style used, would have fixed, is the wide variety of acting talent on display from the cast. A couple of the stars do almost professional-level work, but the majority of the cast are so wooden you almost have the feeling they were only making the movie because their families were being held hostage somewhere.

All in all, a film you can probably skip.

'The Cabin in the Woods' is worth visiting

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Starring: Kristen Connolly, Fran Kranz, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Jesse Williams, Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, Amy Acker, Sigourney Weaver, Brian White, Tim De Zern, and Jodelle Ferland
Director: Drew Goddard
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Five college kids (Connolly, Hemsworth, Hutchison, Kranz, and Williams) head to an isolated cabin for a weekend of fun, but things don't turn out as planned... for them, or the global organization that is secretly manipulating them.

"Cabin in the Woods" was the happiest cinematic surprise I've had in quite some time. Like most movies I see, I came to it knowing very little about it. Based on what little advertising I'd seen and what little "buzz" I'd heard, I expected a straight "Evil Dead" rip-off (at worst) or "Totem" done right (at best).

It turned out the film was closer to "Totem", but yet not anything like it at all. From the very first scene--which features a pair of stereotypical office workers having a mundane conversation by the water cooler--this is a film that surprises at nearly every turn... but does so through a solid, well-paced story rather than half-assed twists and forced scared. If more scripts were written with the care exhibited here, fewer people would be declaring the horror genre dead.

Because most of the fun in watching the mystery of what is really going on in the film come together, this is a hard movie to review. I can say that it's aimed squarely at fans of B- horror and sci-fi movies and that your level of experience with low-budget cheese will be directly proportional to the level of enjoyment you'll derive from this movie. Like the "Grindhouse" flicks from a few years ago, there is nothing terribly original here, as almost everything is a homage to, or a wry commentary upon, horror and sci-fi genre conventions and movies. But this is an effort far superior to those featured in "Grindhouse" (and the spin-offs), because the parts here add up to something greater than the whole and the movies being referenced.

I've already mentioned the exceptional script at the heart of the film, but the quality of the cast is also a major part of what makes the film so enjoyable. While the young actors portraying the teenaged victims in the cabin are all fine in their various roles as slasher-movie stereotypes, the real fun for me was had watching Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, and Amy Acker as technicians working to manipulate events around the other characters. Although their characters are, more or less, the film's villains, I found myself rooting for them as the film moved into its wild climax.

It's been a while since I've had this much fun watching a movie, and I loved every minute of it. The only complaint I have revolves around a lidded coffee cup that Richard Jenkins' character Sitterson is seen fiddling with in the early scenes. That cup is later placed on a control panel full of buttons and levers, the kind of place you wouldn't want to place a coffee cup that might get knocked over and thus spill liquid on sensitive equipment. But, after this obvious set-up of disaster, the cup just vanishes from the story... and that bugs me. I'm a firm believer in the concept that if "there's a gun in the first act, it hast to be fired by the third." The lack of pay-off for the coffee cup business is the only flaw I could see in this otherwise excellent picture.

Not much story to get in the way of the gore

Recycled Parts (2010)
Starring: Girstin Bergquist, David Dartt, Joe Duffy, Brandon Brendel, Lisa Gail, Michael Dias, and Larry Sands
Directors: Larry Sands, Erick Vega, and Bradley Young
Rating: One of Ten Stars

Three unlikeable college friends (Brendel, Gail, and Dias) and two stupid ones (Bergquist and Sands) become victims of a madman (Dartt) who is abducting people and harvesting their limbs and organs for sale on the black market (or something like that).

First of all, this turned out not to be my kind of movie, so maybe I'm unable to appreciate its strengths, but sitting through this movie was a miserable experience. Regular readers know that I can't stand "torture porn" movies... and there's really not much else to this movie that gory deaths and screaming victims.

The best thing about "Recycled Parts" was that it was that it was so to the point that it lasted just one hour.

But during that hour, you get to see just about every variety of incompetent filmmaking you can imagine--from bad dialogue to bad characterization; from amateurish Foley work to uneven sound levels and inaudible dialogue; from badly lit scenes to badly framed shots, this film has it all! Hell, it even has a textbook example of the moronic "shock twist ending" that is so bad it actually ends up being one of the worst parts of the movie.

The only reason I'm not rating it Zero, is that the filmmakers did manage to creep me out with te Christmas-themed lair of the psychotic doctor's assistant Einstein (played by Joe Duffy). Then again, with three directors and five cinematographers, one would expect them to get SOMETHING right. Unless, of course, each director and cinematographer was brought in to work on a part of the film that didn't play to their strengths....

Perhaps if you're really, REALLY into films with less substance and class and creativity than the "Hostel" series, you might like this film. Everyone else should probably stay away.





(Full disclosure: Distributor Midnight Releasing provided me with a screener of this film.)

If you imagine a horror movie by a frustrated director of music videos....

... you'll probably come up with something like this one.

Lady of the Dark: Genesis of the Serpent Vampire (2011)
Starring: Melanie Denholme
Director: Philip Gardiner
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

An even-tempered and normal young woman (Denholme) is possessed by an ancient, vengeful spirit and transformed into a sadistic, blood-thirsty monster.

If I spend waaaay too much time thinking about what this movie "means," I could probably come up all sorts of blather about how it's an allegory for the theological idea of corruption of innocense (there's actually little doubt that's what the writer/director WANTED it to be... altough the introductory dialogue seems to run counter to that), how it chillingly tracks a young woman's decent into psychotic madness (which is does... although it does so as effectively as a treasure map sketched by a drunken pirate, because we so very little of what she was like before she became unglued and violent), or any number of things.

But I'm not going to spend any more time than I already have, because I think the filmmakers weren't entirely certain of their ideas and what interperatations they wanted viewers to make as the film unfolded. If they WERE certain, their points became muddled in the disjointed and chaotic way the story is told.

Because the way the story is told is the biggest problem with the film. In fact, it feels far more like a demo-reel than an actual movie, showcasing director Philip Gardiner's ability to film in different styles or create dramatic effects with camera tricks rather than big budget CGI... or showcasing actress Melanie Denholme's ability to portray a range of emotions. All in all, "Lady of the Dark" feels more like a collection of music videos that a movie, as most it consists of scenes of Melanie Denholme walking around while goth rock or some variety of metal plays.

Denholme, in fact, portrays the only character in the film that gets any significant screen time at all, and this leads to the film's second big problem. We are led to believe, both through her own narration and by the mundane activities that she spends the first half of the movie doing, that Denholme's character Eve is just your average, happily married young woman. However, we never see the husband, nor do we we see her interacting with anyone at all... either second-hand through her narration or through scenes. We basically learn nothing about who she is or how she interacts with others until she turns into a sadistic murderer in the film's second half. While what Eve turns into is horrific and the scenes of her madness and sadism are chilling and horrific, they would have been even more impactful if Eve had been given more depth as a character.

But the way the film is put together doesn't allow for depth. Demo-reels are not intended to convey depth of character or stories, just to provide a sampling of what the creator is capable of.

I think that Philip Gardiner might be capable of making a good movie if he would actually apply himself to making one... but judging from this film and "Men in Black: The Dark Watchers" , I don't know that he's tried to make a full-blown movie. He is one hell of a director of music videos that much is clear... and it's made even more so by the fact that the actual music video included as a bonus feature on the DVD I screened is more interesting than the main attraction.

The rating I'm giving this film is a low, but still generous, 3 Stars. That said, if you're into music videos, or the world's biggest Melanie Denholme fan, you'll probably like the film more than I did.






(In the interest of full disclosure, this review was based on an advanced screening copy that was provided to me by distributor Chemical Burn.)

'Demon Kiss' is flawed but watchable

Demon Kiss (2010)
Starring: Sally Mullins, Elizabeth Di Prinzio (aka Jessica T. Perez?), Sebastian Gonzales, and Jamie Macek
Director: Dennis Devine
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A demon goes on a bloody killing spree, thinning the roster of an escort service while moving from body to body while searching for the reincarnated Mary Magdalene, the "mother of all whores." Meanwhile, a police detective (Gonzales) and the "psychoanalyst to the working hooker" (Mullins) are desperately trying to identify who the serial killer is and stop him.

"Demon Kiss" is a movie I should come down on like a ton of bricks. Its director, Dennis Devine, has helmed better movies (with "Caregiver" from 2007 springing immediately to mind); the cast is mostly community theatre-level when it comes to both acting skills and acting styles; the production was so cash-starved that the gore effects are weak and almost no effort was made to hide the fact that the same room is recycled as different locations, and the theological and historical under-pinnings of the story are so shaky that it made my old-time Humanities Major heart cry out in pain.

Despite all those negatives, however, the film held my attention... and that's saying a lot these days when I'm being pulled in all kinds of directions by non-movie related demands. I can't quite put my finger on what made this movie more entertaining than annoying, but the fact that ten minutes didn't go by without a attractive woman getting naked was part of it.

Another part was, despite the fact that the tired cliche of a "hooker with a heart of gold, looking for a way out of the profession" was joined with the slur that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute was one part of the script that stuck in my craw more than anything, was that Elizabeth Di Prinzio (or Jessica T. Perez in some credits listings) gave such a good performance that I wished she'd had more screen time. I was interested in seeing how things turned out for this character, especially with all the references in the film to Jesus having returned to Earth and that they two of them were fated to meet again. (And this is the demon's plan: possess the reincarnated Mary and thus later possess the reincarnated Jesus. Not a very good plan, but still a plan... which is impressive given how stupid and shortsighted this demon is portrayed as.)

A fun, over-the-top performance by Jamie Macek as a demon-possessed homicide detective was also something I found entertaining. He gives viewers a villain to hate even when he's not possessed by the demon.

The rest of the cast, as I mentioned above, are about par for the course for movies at this budget level, including the lead actress Sally Mullins (who also produced the film and co-wrote the script with Devine), but none are downright awful--a couple are borderline, but they were obviously hired for their boobs and tattoos rather than acting talent. But with the two fun performances to lift the film up, everyone else is passable.

The only things that keep this film from getting a Five rating from me instead of the low Four it has now is that Devine and Mullins weren't very adept in hiding their sources of inspiration for the story. I'm not talking about Bible sources, but rather films like "Fallen" and "The Exorcist" and/or low-rent rip-offs like "Eerie Midnight Horror Show". Not hiding your sources becomes a danger when the audience keeps thinking how the source borrowed from is better than what we are currently being subjected to... and it becomes downright fatal when the movie's climax is one that has been done better many, MANY times over. And to make matters worse, the whole bit with Jesus walking the Earth and Mary Magdalene being reincarnated never really pays off... and the obligatory "shock twist ending" pretty much established that it never will.

In the end, "Demon Kiss" stands as a deeply flawed but watchable film... assuming you don't mind boobs and gore mixed in with a weakly conceived theological horror plot.

'The Dark Watchers' is almost worth watching

It's been a while since I've had time to post an actual review here. Hopefully, this marks the reversal of that trend!

Men in Black: The Dark Watchers (aka "Dark Watchers: The Women in Black") (2012)
Starring: Melanie Denholme, Eirian Cohen, Val Monk, Lee Roberts, and Rudy Barrow
Director: Philip Gardiner
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A group of UFO enthusiasts (Barrows, Cohen, Denholme, and Monk) become targets of the Men in Black and gradual transformation into something not human!

This film offers a model on how to make the modern exploitation film. It's a cheaply made movie that's being promoted with great-looking graphics and a fascinating preview that highlights the three attractive women that play the lead roles and which, together with the title, bring to mind the completely unrelated big-budget "Men in Black" movies starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. The timing is also ideal, as there's a third Jones/Smith "Men In Black" film due out this year. A simple, great-looking website (which you can check out by by clicking here)further helps to make this film look like something you want to rent or buy.

Like the vast majority of exploitation flicks, the actual movie can't live up to the great promotional graphics and the nifty preview. (Actually, this can be said about a host pictures, including more "respectable" ones, but it is especially true of films like this one.) I was about 15 minutes into the film when I realized that it would not live up to the promises of the marketing material, any more than Roger Corman's "She-Gods of Shark Reef" did.

While the film is every bit as stylish as I would expect from the preview and it features decent acting and some great story set-ups, it fails to deliver on any of the promises inherent in those story set-ups. The film ultimately feels like an incoherent collection of vignettes during wich the main characters (and a couple of random chicks running around in blood-soaked clothes) are tormented by the Men in Black and the strange aliens who are heralding some unspecified doom. And at no point in the film does anything become any clearer, nor does anything that we watch ultimately seem to have any point other than to eat up the film's running time.

Ultimately, "Men in Black: The Dark Watchers" feels like someone edited out the film's content and left the padding. The music video included as a bonus feature on the DVD is more coherent, and therefore more interesting, than the main feature.

And this is really too bad. It's clear this film was written and directed by a creator of some talent, and the marketing is really very slick. If just a little attention had been paid to story, I think I'd probably be praising this movie instead of panning it.

'Gacy House' might be worth visiting

8213: Gacy House (2010)
Starring: Jim Lewis, Matthew Temple, Diana Terranova, Michael Gaglio, Brett A. Newton, Rachel Riley, and Sylvia Panacione
Director: Anthony Fankhauser
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A group of paranormal investigators (Gaglio, Lewis, Newton, Panacione, Riley, Temple, and Terranova) conduct a ghost hunt in the house built on the site where pedophile and serial killer John Wayne Gacy's home once stood. They find more then they could have imagined in their worst nightmares.

"Gacy House" is a film that will appeal to you if you are a big fan of TV shows like "Ghost Hunters" and found footage hoax movies like "Blair Witch Project". You're also going to be willing to overlook the fact that the film is plagued by numerous instances of characters behaving in ways so mind-blowing idiotic that Stupid Character Syndrome doesn't even come close to describing the degree to which badly considered plot dictates override common sense and logic. (The worst of these: A character who decides to bail on the ghost hunt, yet can't seem to figure out to how to use a cell phone to call a cab or to simply walk away from the haunted house.)

The film is mostly well acted and there aren't many instances where you find yourself groaning at the clumsy attempts at maintaining the illusion of reality... although, personally, the film lost credibility when it tried to present itself as actual police evidence, so I never did manage to suspend my disbelief in regards to the events of the film being real. That said, I did find a couple of moments very well done, such as the one where a character is working both with an infra-red camera and a regular camera, so we get to see a ghost invisible to the naked eye attack him in a clever sort of split-screen effect thanks to monitors.

While not as good as "The Last Exorcism" or "The Blair Witch Project", "Gacy House" is still a far sight better than many other attempts at this sub-genre. Still, it's flawed enough that I am giving it the lowest possible of a Five Star rating, and I think it's probably only of interest to the biggest fans of "found footage" efforts.

'Attack of the Vegan Zombies' is an uneven but entertaining effort

Attack of the Vegan Zombies! (2012)
Starring: Christine Egan, Jim Townsend, Natalia Jablokov, Kerry Kearns, Watt Smith, John D. Kelly, H. Lynne Smith, and Wyatt Gunter
Director: Jim Townsend
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A string of bad growing seasons might cause Dionne and Joe (Egan and Townsend) to lose the vineyard and winery she inherited from her father, so Dionne turns to her mother (Smith), a practicing witch, for help. Together, they cast a spell that causes the grapes to grow like never before... but there is one big problem: The plants are sentient and thirsty for the blood of anyone who drinks wine made from the vineyard's grapes.

"Attack of the Vegan Zombies!" is one of those films I wish I liked more than I do. It has a lot going for it... a cast that's generally more talented than what I often see in films at this budgetary level, and a writer/director who seems to actually haven taken his script through more than a single draft, because the dialogue actually seems polished (although I got the sense that maybe a little more research into wine-making might have been needed). Also, as an idea for a low-key "Shaun of the Dead"-type horror spoof, this is a great one.

Townsend also clearly has a firm command of the technical aspects of filmmaking. The scenes are well-framed and well-lit, the edits and establishing shots always dead-on, the sound always clear and well-balanced, be it dialogue or sound effects. On a technical level, this film stands heads-and-shoulders above the vast majority of is low-budget, direct-to-DVD kin.

But as much as I want to like it, the weaknesses present here are so strong that they really get in the way of my overall enjoyment of the film.

The most glaring and persistent of these weaknesses are the characters portrayed by Watt Smith and John D. Kelly. These are a pair of uber-nerds that are played with such over-the-top gusto and caricature that they are out of step with the more realistic performances around them, making their characters irritating on the level of the comic relief characters that were shoehorned into the majority of horror films from the 1930s and 1940s. However, the aren't quite as bad as the majority of those characters, because Kelly and Smith have enough charisma to be likable through the annoying character acting. It's a shame that director Townsend chose to go in that direction, because the geeky banter back and forth between these characters would have been even funnier if they'd been played in a more straight fashion.

Another aspect that weakens the film is that Townsend may have taken on more than he was ready to handle in his first outing as a director; he may have made a mistake when he chose to play the male lead in the film he also directed, because every scene he appears in as an actor seems flat and lifeless when compared to those he isn't in. The clearest example of this is the scene where Dionne and her mother reveal that they are witches with a very real ability to weave spells. It's a great little scene that brings back fond memories of the "Bewitched" TV show, but actresses Christine Egan and H. Lynne Smith showed far greater energy in the scenes where they were interacting with each other or with other actors while Townsend was off-screen watching the scene unfold instead of trying to watch it from within. With more time and money to "get it right", Townsend might have been able to both star in and direct this picture, but given that he only had $30,000 as his budget and presumably the severe time limitations that arise when you have to coordinate your cast-with-dayjobs with when your locations are available, I don't think he had the opportunity for the multiple takes probably needed.

Finally, the film, strangely, seems to come apart at the seams during the final half-hour. For most of its running-time, it builds steadily toward what promises to be a chaotic climax full of killer grapevines and blood-sucking zombies. But as we get to that climax point, promises made early in the film don't pay off--like the exchange the mother has with a local restaurant owner to whom she sells a case of wine that seems to have been made from the magical grapes and its promise of a whole hoard of zombies attacking the winery in search of more "nectar". There are also strange continuity gaffes, and a repeated shying away from anything resembling physical altercations or violent action: We get the set-up, but in nearly every case, the action is either truncated or completely absent. All-in-all, what seemed very promising just sputters out at the end... even to the point where Townsend makes the huge error of tacking on one last joke in the form of a "shock surprise ending" which is predictable, not very funny, and nowhere near the closing moments that this film deserved.

There is enough good about this film that I hope it does well enough for Townsend to either motivate him to self-produce another movie, or for someone to hire him to make one for them. I would like to see what he could come up with, given lessons learned from this film. I also wouldn't mind seeing Christine Egan take another turn in front of a camera, as I think she did a fine job here, in what seems to be her only film role so far. This really is a an okay little movie that got torpedoed by a few bad choices on the part of a first-time director.

"Attack of Vegan Zombies" was completed in 2010, and Townsend has been selling copies of the film directly through his website and on Amazon.com. However, it was recently picked up for distribution by Midnight Releasing, and it will be available everywhere come January 3, 2012.

(My thanks to the good people at Maxim Media for providing me with a copy of the film for review.)

Nine Days of the Ninja:Ninjas & Zombies: Tastes that go great together?

Ninjas vs. Zombies (2010)
Starring: Daniel Ross, Cory Okouchi, Carla Okouchi, P.J. Megaw, Dan Guy, Daniel Mascarello, Melissa McConnell, Tara Moore, and Will Stendeback
Director: Justin Timpane
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Three friends are granted the magical powers and combat prowess of The Ninja when a necromantic ritual unleashes a soul-sucking, zombie-creating demon on a small American town.

As low-budget action spoofs go, "Ninjas vs, Zombies" is fairly well accomplished on the technical front. The special effects are well-deployed, both the practical gore effects and the digitally generated "magical energies" and muzzle-flashes and explosions. Director Timpane seems to have a good sense of how to film action and martial arts scenes, and the editing generally helps cover up budgetary shortfalls rather than emphasize them. The main technical disappointment about the film is that the foley artists could have been on the job more, as there are several fight and effect scenes that are less effective than they might otherwise have been.

The acting is better than I've come to expect from films at this level of production, with lead heroes Daniel Ross and Dan Guy being particularly skilled and fun to watch. P.J. McGaw also gives a good accounting of himself as the root of all evil in the film, and the rest of the cast and supporting players are also quite good.

Unfortunately, everyone is let down by an inadequite script. Written by the director, it feels like a first draft, with flabby and repetative scenes and dialogue, particularly early on, and, worse, irrelevant scenes and pop cultural references that distract from the film's central high concept of Ninjas kicking Zombie ass without adding anything worthwhile to the mix. I suppose with Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer somehow still having careers and still making shitty comedies that consist of little more than stringing together random references to popular movies and pop culture, it was only a matter of time before a new generation of filmmakers started to copy them. (It also doesn't help that some of the character interaction feels like it was lifted from a Kevin Smith movie. Stealing is a time-honored tradition among script-writers, but one really should take one's screenplay through an extra draft or two to hide the sources a bit better. Even if it means bringing in a co-writer.

I think there is all sorts of potential for a great horror and/or action comedy when it comes to pitting Ninjas against zombies. I also think that potential is on display in this film, but it remains mostly unrealized. It's better than most of the Godfrey Ho patch-work Ninja films, but it's still not a film to go out of your way for, whether you're looking for a comdy, a zombie film, or a ninja picture. It might make a good second feature for a bad movie night, if your group has patience for films with slow wind-ups and irrelevant detours.

Low-budget but impressive, 'Bio-Slime' delivers goopy scares

Bio-Slime (aka "Contagion") (2010)
Starring: Vinnie Bilancio, Ronnie Lewis, Victoria De Mare, Kelli Kaye, Micol Bartolucci, Magic Ellingson, Gia Paloma, and Ron Fitzgerald
Director: John Lechago
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Troy (Bilanco), a down-and-out artist whose talent has been drained away by alcoholism finds himself stalked by a mysterious slime-monster that is absorbing into its mass the occupants of the ramshackle building housing his small studio. Trapped with his agent (Lewis), a few friends (Ellingson, Kaye, and Paloma) and a porn actress from the film studio next door (De Mare), Troy has to find a way to defeat the creature before they all literally become one body and mind.

With a little nip and a tiny tuck here and there to get rid of some bare breasts, "Bio-Slime" is the sort of movie you might find on the SyFy Channel with a "SyFy Channel Original" logo slapped before the opening credits. I'm not saying that to insult the film, but to praise it, because I suspect that John Lachago made this self-funded, self-produced film for a fraction of what those movies are made for... and his end product was as good as most of them, and even better in the effects department.

And those creature effects are the real star in this film. Most of the characters really serve no purpose other than to be monster chow, each suffering a dire, disgusting, and wholly unique fate at the pseudo-pods and tentacles of the slime-monster. All the creature effects, with the exception of a few of the tentacles, were practical effects--make-up, puppetry, and cinematography tricks. And they look great, far better than even some of the computer-generated effects in recent films with budgets 100 or 1,000 times what "Bio-Slime" was made on.

This is a movie that shows that the old methods of making movies are still perfectly adequate--and even superior--to hi-tech wizardry when those time-tested tools are being wielded by talented and skilled artisans like Lechago and his special effects make-up artist Tom Devlin. Devlin and Lechago also worked together on "Killjoy 3", so they obviously make a good team. Here's hoping I see more from them in the future.

I should probably mention that while very little character development takes place in "Bio-Slime", that's not to say there isn't a fully fleshed-out story here. Not only do we get hints of what sort of life the main characters have led beyond the dingy walls they have been trapped within, but there is a sense of history surrounding the monster as well. It emerges from a hi-tech containment device that is opened by the characters through a mixture of curiosity and outright stupidity, it talks about having a life so long that it can't recall where it came from, and the "prologue" and "epilogue" scenes hint and a story far larger and a threat of a possibly global scale that might visit the terror of the few trapped in Troy's studio to the entire world.

But these hints of a larger story are not presented in the hamfisted "Oooo we're setting up a sequel, kids? See? See?! We're not really giving you a complete story here, because we want you back for Part Two and Part Three!" that has become so annoyingly common over the past 15-20 years since everyone thinks their horror or sci-fi film is the next big trilogy or franchise. No... Lechago has written them into the film in an organic way, so we become curious about what might have happened before the film stars and what comes after the end credits finish their crawl. Any dreams he may harbor of sequels is up to him to discuss, but whether he had them or not, he managed to make the events of "Bio-Slime" feel connected to a much larger world, a world that viewers can't but help be curious about; he has planted his "sequel seed" the right way.

(In fact, Lechago did it SO right that I found myself imaging what could be going on... and the players in my on-again, off-again near-future sci-fi role-playing campaign will be dealing with something "borrowed" from this movie. And I can safely say this here, because none of them bother reading my film reviews, because they get enough of my rants in person.)

In addition to well-done story, the film also benefits tremendously from a nice, very traditional-flavored music score. I didn't really notice the music until the film was building to its climax and Troy was getting ready for his final showdown with the slime-creature, but it had been there previously as well. Michael Sean Colin's score is perfect in every respect, deployed at just the right moments and providing just the right intensity needed, mostly blending perfectly with the events unfolding on screen, but stepping to the fore when appropriate as during the film's climax.

Last, but far from least, the film features a great cast of actors. As I mentioned above, the characters in film are mostly here just to get killed, and there isn't much development that takes place with them. However, we get just enough to let us know the type of character each one of them is... and that type is then brought to seemingly full life through the talent and charisma of the actors playing them. While there might not be a whole lot for each actor to work with, what there is, they handle expertly, and they make us care about relatively shallow characters and to feel horrified as each one of them dies. Lachago matched the right actor with the exact right character, and the results are quite impressive. While I can nitpick some of the dialogue and some of the character interaction, I don't feel so inclined, because the actors gave such enjoyable performances, with Victoria De Mare as the bitchy porn actress and Vinnie Bilancio as the reluctant hero who was hoping to turn over a new leaf and make today the first day in the rest of his life, are particularly good in their parts.

"Bio-Slime" has not yet secured wide distribution, which is a shame. I think it's a film that deserves as audience beyond film festivals and cranky typists like yours truly.

(For a sample of what Lechago is capable of, you can check out "Killjoy 3" from Full Moon Features. Click on the link to read my review at the Charles Band Collection.)

'Night of the Demons' has Halloween gore

Night of the Demons (2010)
Starring: Diora Baird, Shannon Elizabeth, Edward Furlong, Monica Keena, Bobbi Sue Luther, John F. Beach, Michael Copon, and Tiffany Shepis
Director: Adam Gierash
Stars: Five of Ten Stars

After an illicit rave in a mansion that was the sight of mysterious disappearances and murder on Halloween night some 90 years ago, the party organizer (Elizabeth) and six friends accidentally discover what happened. In doing so, they awaken demons that have until dawn to possess and destroy seven humans in order escape their prison inside the house.

"Night of the Demons" is a remake of the 1988 horror fan-favorite of the same title. It sat on a shelf at the studio for a year before being released directly to DVD, has a more satisfying ending than the 1988 original (and, in an amusing way, manages to present one of those "final moment twists" I so often rail about that actually works), but other than that it doesn't measure up.

There is only one scene that's as scary and strange as anything in the 1988 film--involving lipstick and about a gallon of blood--but everything else is what we've come to expect from a movie about beautiful young people trapped in a house with demons that possess them and pick them off, one by one. The film has the further flaw that the characters aren't actually trapped, but appear merely to be too dumb to scale the wall around the mansion's grounds; the gate is mysteriously locked, but what's to stop them from giving one of their number a boost over the wall so that person can get a locksmith?

"Night of the Demons" is a fast paced, competently made but unspectacular horror flick. The stars all deliver good performances, it's got just enough story and character development to keep me happy, and its spiced up with plenty of gore and jiggling naked boobs to make me even happier. Perhaps if such a clear line hadn't been drawn to the 1988 title (if it had been called "House of Demons" or "Seven Until Dawn" or some-such), I would have considered it to be among the better paint-by-number horror flicks out there. As it is, however, it suffers by the comparisons it invites and therefore calls attention to the fact that it really does fall at the bottom end of average.

'Sinister' nails feel of a 1970s horror flick

Sinister (2011)
Starring: Donna Hamblin, Donny Versiga, Lucien Eisenach, Luc Bernier, and Isabelle Stephen
Director: Steve Sessions
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When Emily (Hamblin) comes to believe she is being haunted by the ghost of her mother, she enlists the help of her brother (Versiga) and a ghost hunter (Bernier). The discover that the root of her problem is actually an enraged voodoo conjurer (Eisenach) who has placed a death curse on her. Will Emily and her brother be able to harness the power of voodoo themselves and reverse the evil magic before it's too late?

In the years since the retro-flick "Grindhouse" captured the imagination of filmmakers with an affection for low-budget thrillers and horror films from the 1970s and 1980s (if not that of the movie-going public), there has been steady stream of movies made with the intent emulating "classic" drive-in movies.

Many of these efforts have been gimmicky failures, being run-of-the-mill direct-to-video low- or no-budget films with digital "aging" effects added. Even those pictures where the filmmakers tried to capture the essence of movies from the time frame, they usually failed to get the look, the feel, or the nature of the acting right.

But with "Sinister", writer/director Steve Sessions hits every right note to bring us a modern film that would have fit just as well in the 1970s as it does today.

When the opening credits appeared on the screen, the chosen font and the music both made me think that Maxim Media--the parent company of Brain Damage Films, Pendulum Pictures, and Midnight Releasing--had found an old movie that they were re-releasing along with their usual current-day indie fare. However, it quickly became apparent that what I was watching was not an old movie, but a movie where someone had finally captured "grindhouse" atmosphere in a new picture, because the featured actors were mostly not born, or were in pre-school during the '70s.

It isn't that Sessions tried to make a period piece--the film is full of cellphones and other 21st century references--that makes the film an effective mimic, but rather he actually seems to have watched and paid attention to those old time horror flicks.

From the use of lighting to the color schemes, from the cinematography to the soundtrack music, from the nature of the special effects to the style of acting, everything about this movie has a genuine "retro" feel about it. Even the pacing is reminiscent of an old style movie, with a shocking murder to get things going and then a quiet period while the film builds toward its terrifying finale.

If you can't get enough of those "grindhouse" movies, I think you'll find "Sinister" well worth your time.





(My thanks to Maxim Media for providing me with a screener copy of this film.)

'Bound by Blood: Wendigo' is a packed chiller

Bound By Blood: Wendigo (2011)
Starring: Brian Anthony, Cheyenne King, Leon South, and Bob Dobiesz
Director: Len Kabasinski
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

In the dead of winter, a small town sheriff (Anthony) and a doctor (King) face off against a band of ruthless assassins hunting a Federally-protected witness and the body-hopping, cannibal spirit known as Wendigo.

This is one of those movies that was much cooler in concept than execution. I absolutely love the set-up and the way the movie unfolds with three story lines--the Wendigo spirit cutting gory swath through the back country, the mysterious assassins honing in on their target, and the sheriff who you just know is in for the worst day of his life when he inevitably gets caught in the middle of several situations he can't even begin to understand. Or, rather, never gets a chance to understand, because the bullets are flying and the bodies are dropping too fast.

The biggest problem with the film is that here's simply too much going on. There are too many characters up to too many things at any given time. While Kabasinski is skilled enough as a writer and director to keep all these balls moving through the air in a steady and orderly fashion, he has to move back and forth between the sheriff and the doctor, the wendigo claiming victims, the FBI protection detail, and the hit team, with such frequency that the viewers never really get invested with one set of characters or another. The end result is not one that builds suspense but rather one that builds impatience. We don't care more for one set of characters than the other, so all we want is for the film to reach the three-way confrontation it's promising.

That's not to say this is boring movie. Kabasinski gives us plenty of action and gore as the film unfolds, and he generally keeps things moving at a fast pace. The only boring bit happens right at the beginning, in the pre-opening credits sequence. While I appreciate the need to set up the presence of the Wendigo spirit, that sequence could have been done in half the time and it would have freed up a few minutes later for some more time with the lead characters--the sheriff and the doctor portrayed by Brian Anthony and Cheyenne King respectively--or perhaps with the most interesting secondary character--the leader of the hit team portrayed by the director himself under the stage name Leon South.

This is the third film I've seen by Len Kabasinski, and it's the third one I've enjoyed. As harsh as my review of Kabasinski's "Curse of the Wolf" was, I still found it entertaining and with plenty of merit. He showed improvement as a filmmaker with his second movie, "Fist of the Vampire", fixing most of the flaws I complained about previously and showing improvement in just about every technical area. That development as a filmmaker for Kabasinski continues with this film.

With "Bound By Blood", Kabasinski continues to marry the action genre with the horror genre, but he has become far more adept in staging and filming the martial arts fight scenes. Camera placement is such now that viewers have the illusion that punches and kicks are being thrown and actually hitting home. The use of sound design to further the illusion has also improved over previous efforts. The only problem with the fight scenes is that choreography continues to feel under-rehearsed; with a little more practice time, perhaps the fights could be a little faster paced and the use of editing to conceal the fact they're not continuous could be reduced? I understand, though, that this might not be possible due to the budget constraints that Kabasinski operates under.

Kabasinski also once again deploys CGI effects with great skill through the picture, moreso than in his previous ones. Once again, it's mostly muzzle-flashes and bullet impacts, but it's done very effectively. He tripped up a bit when he decided to use CGI for a gore effect involving a character being shot in the head, but I've seen worse in movies with bigger budgets, so I can forgive him that one excess.

"Wendigo" is not a perfect film, but it's pretty good. I hope that Kabasinski eventually finds a backer who can give him enough time and money to make a movie that's closer to perfect, because I think he has the potential to create a kick-ass action/horror hybrid film.

Regardless, I'll be looking forward to his next movie with great anticipation.




"Wendigo: Bound By Blood" debuted on DVD from Midnight Releasing on May 3. My thanks to Maxim Media for providing me with a preview copy.

'Scream 4' will entertain if you liked the others

Scream 4 (2011)
Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Emma Roberts, Courtney Cox, Hayden Panettiere, Nico Tortotella, Marley Shelton, Eric Knutson, Rory Culkin, and Anthony Anderson
Director: Wes Craven
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Sidney Prescott (Campbell), once only famous for being the intended victim of the Ghostface Killer and several copycats, is now a successful self-help author who has left the dark terrors of the 1990s far behind. But the past comes back to life in a gruesome fashion when her book tour takes her home to Woodsboro... and yet another Ghostface copycat starts targeting Sidney's cousin (Roberts) and her friends.

There isn't much to say about "Scream 4". Despite all the talk about "new decade, new rules", it pretty much follows the tone and pattern established in the first films of the series, although it's thankfully closer to the first "Scream" in entertainment value than were the sequels.

The formula has seen some updating--with cellphones and social networking sites being prevalent everywhere and a running theme about the increasing prevalence of celebrities who are famous for being famous, and viral YouTube videos who give more people than ever 15 seconds of fame--but it's still the same old "Scream", with plenty of characters making jokes about slasher movie plots and a certain level of playfulness in the structure of film with genre conventions.

And I think the viral video aspect is going to be the driver for the sequels that Craven & Crew have promised if this film is successful enough to warrant them. Perhaps someone can finally do a horror film that fully incorporates the web and modern self-broadcasting technology, something which the filmmakers failed at here and here.

Sidney and series mainstay characters Dewey the Cop (David Arquette) and Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) have also been updated a bit, with ten years having gone by. Sidney, in keeping with the changes in slasher film cliches now spends more time chasing Ghostface and kicking his ass than being chased by him. Dewey is now at the head of the Woodboro police force and they are a little less buffoonish than in previous films--although still as ineffectual or there wouldn't be a movie. Meanwhile, Gale, the character who was a celebrity journalist in the first films, is trying to recapture her fame in this one. Leaving these central characters in place with some changes to their circumstances and personalities was the right thing to do for the film. Their fates through the course of the movie was also exactly the right thing to do; it's good to see that "new decade, new rules" didn't mean "crap all over the original movies" like it so often does in Hollywood, even when those involved were part of the original productions, as we saw in the god-awful "Halloween: Resurrection".

While few of the new characters are likely to be back in any of the sequels--thanks to the twist-on-a-twist-ending that would probably have had me spewing all kinds of venom if it had been in anything but a "Scream" movie--I hope this film will be the start of many horror appearances for several of them. Emma Roberts did surprisingly well in her role, and Hayden Panettiere was great fun as well, but there was no one who didn't do an excellent job in their parts.

"Scream 4" is one of the better sequels in recent memory, because it updates the right things and leaves everything else as it should be--it was great to learn that the new rules are, essentially, the same as the old rules. If the first ones entertained you, this is worth seeing. The wink-wink formula may not be as fresh as it was in the mid-1990s, but this is a well-crafted movie.

Another failed attempt at capturing a webcast

Dead on Site (2011)
Starring: Mai-Ly Duong, Jamie Perkins, Robbie Daymond, Maggie Guzman, Christopher Burnham, and Jaymz Johnson
Director: Scott Kenyon Barker
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A group of college students set out to webcast reenactments of gruesome, unsolved murders from the house they happened in. But after their website goes live, mysterious happenings, both online and in the house, make them fear that they are being watched... either by supernatural forces, or perhaps by a very real killer who might want to some reenacting of his own.

"Dead on Site" is the third horror movie I've seen that tries to build a story around webcams and the broadcasting possibility they represent vis-a-vis "reality television". It's also the third time I've seen filmmakers fail to make a good horror movie based around the concept.

The first was "Halloween: Resurrection" (2002) a sequel so misbegotten that Michael Myers felt shoe-horned into his own series. Then came "Hell Asylum",which was either a symptom of not-so-great minds thinking alike, or of what happens when schlock filmmakers want to rip off what they perceive as "the next great thing". Now, it's "Dead on Site", which is better than the ones that came before, but which is still a deeply flawed movie.

First off, the final college project that the film is based around is very inept in its execution, vaguely defined, and not the sort of thing I can see a professor signing off on, let alone giving a passing grade for at the end of the day. (Well, except out of sympathy, given the way things turn out but that's not what they could have counted on going in.)

Secondly, the script is poorly written. Each character sounds and talks alike and they don't even have much in the way of personalities to distinguish one from the other, so when they start getting killed off/disappearing, you'll find yourself asking, "Who was that again?"

It doesn't help anything that the attempts at casting this or that character as the possible killer that has infiltrated the group boil down to a pair of characters threaten to kill the one truly obnoxious member of the group.

The couple of characters that have interesting back-stories are also not properly utilized, such as the wanna-be detective hoping to crack the murder mystery--I don't think I've seen less investigation or less serious recreation of a crime scene take place outside of backyard cops-and-robbers games among 9-year-olds--or the B-movie actress turned grad student at the end of a flamed-out career. Both of these characters could have been utilized to add some depth and texture to the story. The performances given by the actors aren't bad, but the material they are working with is so thin that there's not much they can do with it.

Finally, there's a completely unnecessary and out-of-left-field supernatural element inserted into the story at the 11th hour when the killer is revealed to be an immortal servant of Satan. There is no set-up of this element, nor does it have any connection to anything else in the movie.

Perhaps if the script had been taken through another draft or two, the dialogue would have been sharpened and the character elements would have been more clearly defined and utilized in driving the story. Heck, perhaps even the "immortal killer" idea would have appeared at some point earlier in the story.

Basically, this film fails because of the one thing that even the lowest of low-budget filmmakers has complete control over: The quality of the script. And it's too bad that an otherwise decent cast is let down by it, with Jamie Perkins is particularly good at playing a complete jerk.

"Dead on Site" premieres on DVD on April 5. My thanks to Maxim Media for providing me with an advanced copy of the film to review.

'The Abducted' is saved by its stars

The Abducted (aka "Match.Dead") (2011)
Starring: James Ray, Kathleen Benner, and Michael Harrelson
Director: Jon Bonnell
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A serial killer (Ray) abducts a young woman (Benner) he met through an online dating site. After deciding he loves her, he forgoes his usual habit of murder, and he tries to win her affection through violence and terrifying mind games. Will she escape, or will she end up as just another victim?

"The Abducted" is a movie that's elevated by a actors that ALMOST manage to transcend the weakness of the material the are working with. The idea behind the film is an interesting one--it takes the basic framework of the countless torture porn movies that have been spewed forth into the direct-to-DVD market and onto the big screen since the surprise hit "Saw" but uses it for a psychological thriller instead of a disgusting sadistic gore-fest--but the execution is lacking.

The biggest flaw with the film is that we never get any insight into the film's villain, Ridley, and why he does what he does. Nor do we ever gain an understanding of the tortured heroine, Valora, even if we get several flashbacks to her childhood, which the writer and director presumably felt would explain why she was able fight her abductor and why he saw a kindred spirit in her. Because the villain and the heroine both remain unknowns to us, much of the potential emotional of the film never materializes. The battle of wills between the two characters feels a bit hollow and even the murder of the girl's grandfather feels like nothing more than a badly motivated excuse for some splatter and melodrama, because we know even less about the grandfather than we do the heroine.

While it's good for a movie to hit the ground running, it would have been nice if there would have been a little more set-up of the characters in this film. Specifically, how the main characters met, and why someone who seems as appealing and strong-minded as the kidnap victim had to resort to online dating to find love? All this could have been accomplished with just a few minutes at the beginning, perhaps even showing the two characters meeting after their online connection. (All the promotional material for the film references online dating and the initial meeting of the two main characters, so I wonder that material never made it into the movie.)

More background on the main characters would also have helped make the ending seem more satisfying, because as it stands Valora's transformation is very, very lame. (The ending also made me wonder: Why do so many action and horror films end with the villains getting killed? In so many movies, it would be a far worse punishment for the bad guy to go through the humiliation of trial and imprisonment. Death is the easy way out. It most cases, the justice isn't even poetic, nor barely even justice.)

It's a shame the script here ins't stronger, because James Ray and Kathleen Benner both give fine performances, and they each have enough charisma together and apart to carry the film despite its flaws. This is the second time I've seen Ray play an unpleasant bad-ass (the other time being in "Fable", a film which also happened to feature Benner in a small part), and I think he if all goes well for him he might find himself a prominent spot in the pantheon of cinematic heavies.

"The Abducted" will see wide release on DVD on March 7. My thanks to the good folks at Brain Damage Films for supplying me with an advanced copy.

'Son of Terror' requires your patience

Son of Terror (2011)
Starring: Ben Andrews, Alan Sutherland, Marcel Davis, and Meredith Binder
Director: Antony De Gennaro
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A reclusive artist (Andrews) discovers he has a psychic link to a serial killer (Sutherland) who is murderng vagrants around Seattle's Pioneer Square.

"Son of Terror" is one of those movies I wish I liked more. It was made by filmmakers in my home state of Washington, and it features a great deal of creativity in every technical aspect of its production. The use of sound is particularly ingenious, with the music soundtrack and ambient sound mixing and fading in and out in ways often so subtle that you won't realize why the scene your watching is as hair-raisingly creepy as it is. An impressive level of artistry and skill is on display in this movie, especially considering that it's the product of a first-time director who wore many hats and worked with a very tight budget.

Unfortunately, De Gennaro spends too much time putting his artistry on display and the end result is a film that you have to be very patient with. Not only does the story move slowly, but De Gennaro doesn't set up the somewhat unusual method he uses to tell it--switching back and forth between the main character (played by Ben Andrews), and the film's monstrous killer (played by Alan Sutherland), as well as other sequences that initially seem unconnected to anything else, and using television screens to denote the switching--and it doesn't become clear what he is doing until about ten minutes in. Compound the mild frustration and disorientation with the way nearly every scene seems to unfold at a leisurely pace and in a self-indulgent fashion that seems more concerned with making sure viewers notice the creative cinematography and (eventually catch onto) the very effective sound design that proper timing of the story, it's a film that even the most fair-minded viewer will be tempted to turn off before you reach the halfway point.

When it finally becomes clear what is going on in the film, patient viewers will be amply rewarded as it just keeps getting creepier and creepier. But you'll have to be very patient.

"Son of Terror" premiered at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival a couple of years ago, and it debuts in wide distribution on DVD and VOD on March 8, 2011. Although flawed, it's worth checking out for lovers of off-beat, psychological terror flicks, and I think Antony De Gennaro is destined for great things if he sticks with filmmaking. (I had a very hard time choosing between a Four or Five Rating for this film, but I ultimately went with the lower rating, because of the numerous pacing issues. But I still think it's worth a look.)