The original “Flatliners” was a moderately enjoyable bit of schlock with B-grade material and a pedigree straddling the line between A and B-grade. This 2017 remake is inferior in every way. Outside of some interesting visuals and camerawork, this one comes up terribly short. For starters, look at the casting. The original had Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, and Oliver Platt. Who do we have here? Diego Luna (who is about ten years too old to be here), “Juno” (Ellen Page), the chick from “Degrassi” and “The Vampire Diaries” (Nina Dobrev), and…yeah, that’s about it. Hardly stellar. In fact, the most effective performance comes from for me the least familiar, Kiersey Clemons, who is charismatic, and plays one of the least objectionable of the leads. Sadly even she becomes unlikeable fairly quickly, and it’s a problem. The characters in the original weren’t exactly likeable, but these twits? No, thanks.

Nina Dobrev is particularly miscast as, like, totally a med student and everything. Also not working for me was James Norton who plays the most ‘camp’ resident lothario I’ve ever come across. Like Luna, he also looks to be around 35 and it’s very distracting. Ellen Page still looks about 12 and is still annoying, but she’s surprisingly solid. As for the one and only Kiefer Sutherland, playing a doctor here with white hair that absolutely does not suit him, he’s disappointing. He looks positively suicidal, and the normally reliable actor is surprisingly hammy in the worst way.

For me, the main problem here is that unlike the original where I just went with it, I resisted this film from a credibility point of view from start to finish. I didn’t buy it. Any of it. I found it particularly irritating that when Page goes through her near-death experience, it leaves her having one of those completely mythological ‘using more than 10% of your brain’ BS moments. Its clichéd and as I said, completely BS. We have access to 100% of our brain, we just don’t use 100% of it 100% of the time. I didn’t let it slide with “Lucy” and I’m not giving this film a pass, either. One character solves a Rubik’s cube supposedly really quickly, but unfortunately you will have seen 8 year-olds solve it much faster without the need to temporarily ‘cross over’. Meanwhile, being revived from death in an ill-advised experiment is one thing, but to then go and get liquored up right after? That’s moronic behaviour from supposedly intelligent med students. One quote in particular sums up the entire problem with the film: ‘They should bottle Flatlining. Sell it as a club drug’. Ugh. These people aren’t just students stupidly experimenting, they’re vapid pretty people pretending to be med students dangerously experimenting. I just didn’t buy them or any of this as real even for 90 minutes. I also have to say that the film isn’t remotely scary, and more so than the original this one is indeed trying to be a horror film. It fails. In fact, the film as a whole completely conks out at the 20 minute mark and just drones on and on soullessly after that. The finale is absolutely disastrous, the biggest rush-job I’ve seen in decades.

Ryan McDonald

The post Flatliners (2017) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

Someone’s gonna love this movie. I’m not it, but I can tell it’s the kind of thing that likely has a loyal following. I saw filmmaker Frank Henenlotter’s bizarro “Basket Case” when I was young and haven’t felt a desire to subject myself to it since. Once again, I’m aware there’s an audience for it, but I, neither then nor likely now would be within that audience in the slightest (Not that I can remember anything other than seriously disliking it). This bleakly humorous 1988 ‘body horror’ flick from the writer-director is…certainly better than I remember “Basket Case” being. I’m still not going to watch it a second time, but I can’t say I hated it.

When you get right down to it, the whole thing is a bit of a penis joke leading to a pretty objectionable oral sex-based murder. Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably too juvenile to even take all that much offence to it all, but still…c’mon. It’s not even a terribly funny joke, let alone one worth stretching out to feature length. Even if you’re curious to watch a film about a guy who talks to a grey penis that kills people, well the Blaxploitation film “Soul Vengeance” (not a very good film, either) did much the same thing a decade or so beforehand. So it’s not even original, really (Yes, I know here it’s a parasite and not a penis. Watch the film and tell me it doesn’t look like a grey penis, though).

Still, someone will love this. For me, I liked the music score by Clutch Reiser & Gus Russo, and there’s a few fun gory/weird moments, but there’s five minutes of genuine material here stretched to about 90 minutes. I found it tolerable as a curio, but like I said, I’m not watching it a second time. It’s just not my thing, really. I did like one funny gore bit though, where the main character (played by subsequent “The Bold and the Beautiful” actor Rick Hearst in his debut) has a nightmare about picking something out of his ear and blood comes pouring out. Other than that, I was a bit ‘meh’ about the whole thing, and the performances are wildly uneven. Hearst probably fares best, so it’s no surprise he’s the only actor I even recognised here.

Ryan McDonald

The post Brain Damage (1988) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

In addition to knowing how to make a damn good-looking movie, Gore Verbinski seems to have a thing for psychodramas, and this 2017 outing is probably better than his previous (and not bad) “Gothika”. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why people didn’t like it. It’s at least 20 minutes too long for starters, but I actually liked this one. It’s clever, good-looking, full of dread, and I didn’t even mind the ending, which apparently troubled some.

The early scenes reminded me of a cross between “Wall Street” (but with a Cronenberg-ian chill to it) and “Dracula”, probably intentionally, whilst the finale is very Edgar Allen Poe. We get a really nice sense of impending dread early on, especially through the music score by Benjamin Wallfisch. Typical for Verbinski, it’s an extremely good-looking movie, shot by Bojan Bazelli, with plenty of style and atmosphere. It’s very, very typical Verbinski, albeit with the occasional Kubrickian hallway shot or two. I think it was a clever idea to use wellness centres and cleansing treatments for the purpose of a creepy horror/thriller. There’s plenty of room for suspicion and nefariousness there. While you can see some plot, setting, and genre similarities to Martin Scorsese’s failed “Shutter Island”, this one is clearly the superior work. Although not scary, it’s interesting and weird (without being off-putting), and would’ve been a real winner if it had been 20-30 minutes shorter. As is it’s never dull, it’s simply too much movie, you start to get a bit restless before the climax. The film doesn’t feature any superlative performances, but Dane DeHaan (a cross between Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Furlong), Jason Isaacs (perfect casting), and smarmy “Buffy” actor Harry Groener are all solid. Hell, I even like the poster (the one with co-star Mia Goth in a bathtub).

OVERALL SUMMARY
The kind of film that I’m sure will be someone’s favourite film of the year, even if it’s not mine. I liked it, though. It’s good-looking, creepy, well-scored, well-acted, and interesting. Even though it has clear influences it doesn’t rip anything off, and Verbinski certainly knows how to make an atmospheric psychodrama. I just wish it were 20-30 minutes shorter. It really does hurt the film a bit. Still, this is a little underrated.

Ryan McDonald

The post A Cure For Wellness (2017) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

Although baffled by the Best Original Screenplay win at the Oscars for writer-director Jordan Peele (his debut directorial effort), I can certainly say this 2017 supernatural flick is thoroughly entertaining. It’s not exactly scary and it might not entirely live up to all that hype(rbole), but it’s certainly completely whacked-out, off-the-wall, interesting, and clever. I don’t think there’s been that one great African-American horror flick yet (“Blacula” sure is fun, though), but this is a good one, certainly.

Neither Daniel Kaluuya nor Allison Williams are outstanding, but they’re likeable, which might be more important, really. I’m always crapping on about how there are too few likeable characters in modern horror, after all. I will say for Kaluuya though, that he can certainly project both sadness and terror effectively, whilst Williams is certainly well-cast. However, Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford are immediately perfect as outwardly nice, seemingly progressive liberal white folk. However, once you notice that this supposedly progressive couple employ solely African-American servants…you know something’s wonky here. They give an explanation for it of course, but it’s not a convincing one. When you notice that the servants rarely talk around their employers and look zonked-out, you have to wonder why Kaluuya doesn’t just get the hell outta Dodge. Of course, then there’d be no movie and wow, what an insane movie it is, too.

I was really impressed with the hypnosis scene, an effectively creepy scene that I didn’t know Peele had in him, and more importantly it’s unlike any other such scene you’ve ever encountered. It’s easily the scene most closely tipping over into horror, as well. Although not a comedy, there’s definitely some bleak humour, as well as a funny performance by Lil Rel Howery as Kaluuya’s conspiracy nut friend. Although he’s arguably the most “Key and Peele” (a show I loathe) character in the film, he’s hilarious and apparently ad-libbed much of his own dialogue. Stephen Root has an interesting supporting role, too. In regards to the darker comedy, Peele is clearly poking fun at white liberals here, though I think some people have strangely taken his pot-shots seriously, which I don’t think was the intention at all (Peele has a white mother, for what it’s worth). There’s an especially funny bit where an old couple ask Kaluuya if he plays golf, and mention that they love ‘Tiger’. These creepy white people seem to want so badly for Kaluuya to know that they’re not racist, which makes them seem even more suspicious. However, that’s not even half of what’s going on here, trust me. It’s way more messed up than that. Peele sets up this wacky worldview really well, and also manages to blend the humour and thrills in a manner that doesn’t feel lumpy or awkward, which is no easy thing. Some might see where it’s going fairly early on (especially if you know your 70s sci-fi/horror flicks), but I have to admit I was surprised from time to time by it.

Ryan McDonald

The post Get Out (2017) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

I saw this 1988 horror flick from director and noted FX/makeup guy John Carl Buechler (director of “Troll” and “Ghoulies III”) as part of a week-long TV showing of supposedly ‘bad’ movies (The notorious “Troll 2” being among them). Scripted by a pseudonymous Don Mancini (the brilliant “Child’s Play”), I have to say I don’t think this is a bad movie at all. It’s cheese and I like cheese, it’s just not terribly memorable cheese. Like a lot of Empire Pictures, it’s got more gore and nudity in it than EP Charles Band’s offerings on other labels (Full Moon Entertainment etc.), but I can’t quite recommend it still. Any film that confines the inimitable Jeffrey Combs to a mere Lovecraftian prologue cameo has an uphill battle with me. That man’s just too talented to be so confined and wasted. Personally, the Lovecraftian prologue suggests a better movie would’ve been made out of that.

We get a good music score by Carl Dante (who worked on two glorious-sounding exploitation films “Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity” and “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death”), and perfectly fine performances by Deborah Farentino, old pro Yvonne De Carlo, and especially a well-cast Brian Robbins from TV’s underrated “Head of the Class”. On the downside, Pamela Bellwood is mediocre, seeming to think she’s on “Dynasty” or something. Her final scene is hilarious, however. Vince Edwards’ wannabe Raymond Chandler character never convincingly fits in with everyone else, either. Also preventing the film from being more enjoyable is that nothing horrific happens for at least the first 35 minutes or so.

The giant monster, when it shows up is quite good for a not terribly high budget film. Say what you will about Charles Band flicks, I think they at least excelled at low-budget FX work above all else. We get one really brilliant decapitation, and I love how Buechler doesn’t even try to explain how such a big monster appears out of nowhere in pretty confined spaces. Also unconvincing are Farentino’s sketches, with the initial work never remotely resembling the finished product. That’s not a complaint, just an amusingly cheesy observation. This is schlock, and pretty OK schlock at that.

Ryan McDonald

The post Cellar Dweller (1988) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

Whether it has great re-watch value or not, 1999’s “Blair Witch Project” did its job the first time around. It was 99.99% build-up, but the first time I saw it I was at least nervous that something could happen at any given moment, and the ending is very effective. I admired the filmmakers for coming up with something relatively fresh at the time. Then a sequel was made that did everything wrong and no one seems to want to admit that the first film was any good anymore. The brand name was tarnished somewhat. Now comes this 2016 film from filmmaker Adam Wingard (whose “You’re Next” was genuinely good) that is a kinda sorta sequel involving a supposed relative of one of the characters in the first film. Scripted by Simon Barrett (“Dead Birds”, “Red Sands”, “You’re Next”), I wish I could say that it restores some prestige to the “Blair Witch” name, but it’s actually one of the worst films of its year.

For starters, as with a lot of ‘found footage’ films, the filmmakers are incompetent and shoot themselves in the foot early on. Firstly, we get a corny title card giving us the same basic thing as the original, but with a 2016 technological upgrade. Then I notice the quite recognisable James Allen McCune, or as I called him when I spotted him: That creepy older dude Debbie wanted to hook up with on “Shameless”. 5 minutes in and the central conceit has completely failed. Did no one involved watch the first film? At least those actors were new to me. More importantly, they didn’t seem like they were acting in a fictional film. The same cannot be said of anyone in this film. These people are nothing other than actors playing pretend, though ironically enough McCune is the best actor of the bunch by a country mile. That’s fine for a normal horror film where you suspend disbelief for 90 minutes. A ‘found footage’ flick however, must go the extra mile in convincing you that what you are seeing is real, even though you know it’s not because you’ve consciously decided to watch a fictional film in the first place. Still, it’s a small but important thing that a film like this absolutely must get right or else the whole thing collapses. It’s fundamental, and the makers of the original seemed to get it. Wingard…he don’t get it.

The jerky editing is not only infuriating but even though it doesn’t go against the rules, it does take you out of the faux ‘reality’ as well. The original’s footage felt ‘as is’, this feels like it’s already been edited in post-production. I know you don’t want to do things exactly the same way as the original, but this just doesn’t begin to work and Wingard seems to have completely missed the point.

Ryan McDonald

The post Blair Witch (2016) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

The best and only decent “Ghoulies” movie is the one with the W.A.S.P. soundtrack and lots of scenes with the Ghoulies. That’s “Ghoulies II”, but we’re not here to talk about that, though. This 1984 horror pic from director Luca Bercovici and his co-writer Jefery Levy comes from Charles Band’s company Empire, with John Carl Buechler (“From Beyond”, “Demonic Toys”, director of “Ghoulies III”) in charge of the Ghoulies design. Looking back on this film, it comes across like a poor dry run for what Band’s later Full Moon Pictures company would have as its stock-in-trade. In other words, the Charles Band formula hadn’t quite been ‘perfected’ yet. A big issue is that there’s scant scenes with the title characters (low-rent, blood-thirsty “Gremlins” knock-offs), which are the reason for the film’s existence, surely. Instead we’re subjected to a bunch of the dorkiest ‘cool’ kids you’ve ever seen, including a pre-stardom Mariska Hargitay (looking hot) and some pretty dorky white guy breakdancing. Trust me, these goofy stoners have never, ever taken drugs. Ever. They’re also incredibly boring. You almost wish rocker/actor Michael Des Barres (AKA the poor man’s Billy Idol) were around more. He’s terribly hammy (and then some), but it’s surely meant to be that kind of film and at least he’s bringing the right kind of porcine flavour to proceedings.

It starts well, with a memorably yucky but spectacularly silly bit of devil-worshipping and demon-summoning by Des Barres hamming it up to high heaven. Jack Nance is a welcome sight early on too, underplaying as usual. Yeah OK, so he doesn’t know the meaning of the word subtle, but bless him he’s fun to watch rocking a sweet beard and overall ‘Crazy Ralph’ demeanour. Much less fun to watch, and sadly on screen far more often, are Peter Liapis and Lisa Pelikan. Liapis, who looks like a cross between Dermot Mulroney and Eric Roberts, and gives a performance so ludicrous that makes Eric Roberts look like a master of understatement. Pelikan is also terrible, and the scene where she falls down the stairs is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things you’ll ever see.

Although the rest of the FX are a miss, the Ghoulies themselves are fun and well-done for the time and budget. They’re suitably disgusting little buggers. The best thing in the entire film is probably Richard Band and Shirley Walker’s openly nostalgic score (very 50s and 60s-inspired despite the synth), which even references “Psycho” at one point. It’s a lot of fun, no matter the quality of the film itself. There’s also a cool tongue strangulation scene at one point. Other than that, I think most of Band’s “Puppetmaster” series is better than this. A lot better.

Ryan McDonald

The post Ghoulies (1984) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

This 2016 horror twist on “Wait Until Dark” from director Fede Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues comes with much positive reaction from critics, especially genre critics. Although a tad overrated, I’m happy to say that there’s some merit to the hype here. Aside from one character who should’ve been dead several times over, I really didn’t have any big issues with this one. That one flaw was indeed very silly, otherwise it’s effective in the moment, and that’s all it’s likely trying to be.

Early on I was worried that having a trio of thieves as protagonists would result in me having no one to root for, as the film kind of inverts the “Wait Until Dark” or “Panic Room” formula. I certainly didn’t care that much initially for Jane Levy’s ‘poor white trash doing whatever she can to get out of the slums’ rationale (though Levy’s pretty good in the role), let alone her two male cohorts. That stuff reminded me of the terrible “People Under the Stairs” a bit. Interesting characters are for me an absolute must in any horror film, so a film that doesn’t give me that has its work cut out for it. However, in addition to bumping off the least likeable thief first, you’ve got Stephen Lang playing the supposed ‘victim’ of the home invasion so you kinda know there’s more than meets the eye here, if you’ll pardon the pun. So it actually doesn’t end up being an issue that the protagonists aren’t very admirable. And boy is there ever more to this blind guy than on the surface of it. 20 minutes in and one look at this guy’s personal set of tools has you unnerved (Don’t worry, it’s not really a ‘torture porn’ film). These idiot thieves don’t know how much trouble they’re about to be in, because Stephen Lang plays very, very far from a victim or a nice guy here. This is a guy with a grudge and a completely twisted worldview (once again, pardon the pun), and in the dark he’s on much better footing against these intruders. Lang’s perfectly cast, and despite having little dialogue for much of the film, he’s put to good use.

There’s an interesting look to the film once the lights go out, kind of like film negative meets night vision. It’s overall a gorgeously lit film as lensed by Pedro Luque, and you all know I enjoy a good-looking horror film. If you enjoy the work of cinematographer Daniel Pearl, this is a very Daniel Pearl-looking film. This is ‘jump’ scare horror crossed with home invasion thriller, but so far as the former goes it’s a rare effective one. I normally find ‘jump’ scares lame and lazy and only momentarily (and barely) effective, but this is one of the better examples of the device.

OVERALL SUMMARY
This is really simple genre filmmaking with enough filmmaking talent on show to make me want to see what the next film from Alvarez and/or Sayagues is. It’s not great, but it is effective and that’s the main aim one supposes. Amazing, given the protagonists are unlikeable twits, that it works but it does.

Ryan McDonald

The post Dont Breathe (2016) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

Clocking in at around 50 minutes, this 1972 backwoods terror story from writer-director Terry Bourke (who also made the interesting but very slow and actually over-stuffed horror-western “Inn of the Damned”) was meant to be one part of a TV anthology horror series called “Fright”. It never happened, because this one alone was too much for early 70s Aussie TV, content-wise. Hell, it was even initially banned as a theatrical release. I mean, just look at the film’s most celebrated image of a naked (and creepily grunting) Norman Yemm holding a bloody skull in front of his man business as he approaches a prone Hoogeveen. Yeah. Played today of course, the film seems comparatively milder than not only modern horror films, but those that would immediately follow it, even. However, there’s still a raw power to some of this, undeniably, especially early on.

Given its intended origins though, it’s somewhat understandable that this dialogue-free, short/medium-length terror outing is a bit lacking in…well, an actual movie. This is a horror film or backwoods terror film stripped down to its absolute bare bones of sheer stalk and attack, with very little of anything else at all. You’ll probably either love it, or wonder why you’re watching a 50 minute trailer. For me, I think it’s well-shot, and for about ¼ of its length, really, really creepy. The late Norman Yemm (a veteran character actor of TV and film) makes for a perfect backwoods hulking menace. However, it becomes incredibly repetitive after a while, and the constant beeping and booping of the music score got on my nerves. There’s ultimately not quite enough to it for me, as we get the same basic situation twice over in the space of just 50 minutes. I need more narrative/character to latch onto than I ultimately got here. For me it’s got a great opening ten minutes and a fun closing ten minutes, but nothing much of interest in between. Given the film runs less than an hour, it’s not a hassle to sit through, but it’s pretty thin stuff. There’s the basis for a good, scary backwoods horror film here. I need more than the basics, though.

OVERALL SUMMARY
After a great first 10 minutes, the next 30 or so drag quite a bit, before picking up again at the finale. Norman Yemm is excellent, and some of you will love this for what it is, instead of lamenting what it isn’t. Pretty much the first Australian horror film, it’s not bad, it’s just not much, either. Good or not, it’s worth a look as a curio without question, especially in how it predates the more well-known American backwoods horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in the basic elements. At least that film managed to stretch things out to feature length, raw as it was overall.

Ryan McDonald

The post Night of Fear (1972) appeared first on Horror Asylum.

I gave the first “Conjuring” a mildly favourable review, but I felt it completely undercut any tension or terror with its split narrative. Every cut-away to the Warrens before they were properly integrated into the main story worked against the purpose of a horror film. The individual scenes were all well-done, it just wasn’t as effective as it could’ve been had there been a more linear narrative. Well, here’s the 2016 sequel from director/co-writer James Wan (“Saw”, “Insidious”, “The Conjuring”) and damn it, no one has learned a thing. And that’s a shame.

I liked some of this a lot more than the first film, but because it suffers from the same issues and it’s the second time around, I have to be much tougher on it. The fact that it’s more than 2 hours long doesn’t help, either. Also not helping things is the film’s dubious prologue. By dubious I mean that it’s set in 1976 and presents us with a very familiar house and a very familiar BS story: The Lutz family’s time in the Amityville house. We all now know that the Lutz’s were con artists, and while it’s just used as a prologue here, it’s still a film that associates itself with a bullshit story for a film about two real-life people whose exploits are already rather questionable. So I was immediately put offside by the film.

Thankfully, things eventually move to the UK, with a rather clichéd use of The Clash’s ‘London Calling’, but also with the lovely roving camerawork of Don Burgess immediately impressing and putting the audience at a certain discomfort. The low-level lighting is really nice, too. Having such young protagonists is a nice change too, and I was primed for a good scary movie. Well, there was the issue of one very poor piece of casting to contend with: Aussie actress Frances O’Connor is a surprisingly appalling detriment to the film with her completely unconvincing attempt at a lower-class English accent. She comes off like a Sally Hawkins impersonator, and the real thing is already irritating enough. Wan really needed to reign O’Connor in because she’s laughably bad. Still, for the most part I found myself getting excited, thinking they were going to improve upon the promise shown in the first film. Nope, not really.

After 15 minutes the narrative gets broken up and all the good work in the build-up gets undone. Can’t the filmmakers see this is a problem? The scenes of the Warrens early on aren’t even necessary. Just bring them in when they get called in. That and adding the case of the Lutz’s and some sceptics merely serves to highlight the dubious nature of what we’re being presented. You’re killing the validity of your own film. You’re supposed to suck me in for a couple of hours before I realise it’s just a movie. It’s a shame because this story, being that it revolves around a young girl is more disturbing than the one in the original. This is so damn frustrating. There’s good stuff in this that could’ve lead to something really, really good. There’s just too many cutaways and structurally/thematically it’s a re-tread of the first film. The kids are terrific, Vera Farmiga is perfectly fine, and the film works in fits and starts. That’s kind of the problem, though. It’s well-shot, but poorly scripted, structured, and paced. Cut it down to 90-100 minutes and throw the Warrens into the main storyline a lot quicker and you might’ve actually had something here.

OVERALL SUMMARY
There was potential here for an even scarier film than the original. Unfortunately, all of the same problems reoccur here and it’s far less forgivable this time. So it ends up being the weaker film. A comically bad performance by Frances O’Connor, the inclusion of the debunked Amityville case, and distracting clichéd British pop tunes doesn’t help either. The two young girls are terrific, though.

Ryan McDonald

The post The Conjuring 2 (2014) appeared first on Horror Asylum.