Review of The Final Conflict (1981)

The Final Conflict (1981) is a horror/thriller film, the third film in the The Omen film franchise.

Directed by Graham Baker (Alien Nation (1988), Beowulf (1999)).

Written by Andrew Birkin (Joan of Arc (1999), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)).

Starring: Sam Neill, Rossano Brazzi, Don Gordon, Lisa Harrow, Barnaby Holm, Mason Adams, Dick Anthony Williams and others.

Once again we follow Damien Thorn, who now is 32 and the CEO of Thorn Industries, one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Don’t be fooled by thinking that the movie is set in the future. It is set in 1982, so since 1976 when Damien was about 5 he has grown up really fast.

After getting hypnotised by a dog, the US ambassador to Great Britain commits the most elaborate suicide ever and guess who gets appointed in his place? Our friendly neighbourhood Damien. So the movie is basically about his rise to power, while a bunch of people try to get in his way, only to suffer horrible deaths.

It is revealed through concrete scientific evidence that some sort of star alignment crap suggests the second coming of Christ. Not on Damien’s watch, he’s going to kill every child born on a specific date. Oh, but guess what, his right hand man has one of them Christ-children, so we get a subplot that matters very little.

The scenes where the astronomers are figuring out how stars mean that they should bring back crucifixions, introduces one of my big disappointments. The score suddenly contains some distinctly 80’s sci-fi themes. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as it is not mixed in with the classic, huge Jerry Goldsmith chanting parts, that are common in The Omen series. It’s just two clashing styles.

The themes and implications the movie brings up are quite interesting, sadly they’re not really explored as much as one would like. You have to think of how you would act if you knew you are destined to be a great, powerful man and something threatens this. You can identify with Damien’s paranoia, his ability to not view himself as entirely evil, since his path of life was chosen for him. I don’t want to say that his actions are reprehensible or character not despicable, but there’s a fine line to walk when your protagonist is the villain.

The movie is in a way a precursor to slasher movies, where they make sequels that progressively glorify the villain, who is the returning character on another adventure, and makes the innocents less innocent, less interesting and less likable. We don’t want the evil to be victorious, but we have started to care about Damien and he has almost become a tragic figure. To be fair, he has a lot more personality than the average slasher villain, but the connection could be made.

And yes, the good guys here come off as silly and worthless. And when we see Damien walking around, creepily charming the pants off of everyone, it is hard not to take the wrong side. If good is so boring and uninspiring, why not root for evil? That’s a fine question, that, sadly, I don’t think the movie asks intentionally.

Damien also isn’t built up as all that evil. His rise to power is quite slow. He is just a CEO of a big company, but he doesn’t seem like the most evil one even amongst real-life ones. He has a romantic interest, sure, he’s a bit rough with her in the bed and makes her son his right hand ‘young’ man. But that just doesn’t seem that bad. He’s like some mafia godfather, who doesn’t even do his own dirty work most of the time.

The worst part is probably the ending. It is well built up and it seems there will be this epic Good vs. Evil stand-off, but it’s the most anticlimactic thing imaginable. It’s just nothing, there’s no spectacle, nothing. The Omen ‘trilogy’ ends with a faint stabbing sound.

The best part about it is Sam Neill’s performance as Damien. He is really good, exuding dark charisma. Managing to look like a youthful millionaire playboy, but at the time pulling off the sinister undercurrents of the son of satan, now fully aware of his power and purpose.

Overall, I would say that the previous movie was more reliant on the novelty deaths, so if nothing else, this is better than that and Sam Neill is awesome. Still, not a worthy sequel to the original. Not recommended.

“Last night I semi-raped your mother. We are going to have so much fun today.”

Review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012)

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012) is a fantasy/romance/adventure film, the fifth film in the Twilight film franchise based on the series of novels by Stephenie Meyer.

Directed by Bill Condon (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011), Dreamgirls (2006)).

Written by Melissa Rosenberg (Twilight (2008), Step Up (2006)).

Starring: Michael Sheen, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Maggie Grace and a shitload of other good-looking people.

Here we are again. Thankfully, for the last time. Please, even if they decide to do some shitty spin-off, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Unless it is about Aro. I want to see a movie about him.

I don’t know where to start talking about this, because I don’t want to. The series as a whole has been an incredible journey through bad female role models, bad acting, bad effects and bad filmmaking in every other way. A year ago we saw the first part of the adaptation of the fourth novel. It was one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen Heaven’s Gate, Titanic and Alexander‘s final cut. It dragged like shit. If you pressed your ass against the floor, had some diarrhea explosion and then tried to blow it along the floor, using your mouth, it would be a more or less acurate representation of watching that movie.

To be fair this movie was way less boring. I still got bored, but I could see the simple-minded fans, who like the blank characters, enjoying the ethnical stereotypes, idiotic plot and the horrendous special effects.

We start off with Bela Lugosi waking up as a vampire chick now, all her senses have heightened, so she hugs Squidward with her Hulk-strength and then decides to go hunting for deer, doing weird faces and feral noises. She almost kills some cliff-climber, who doesn’t look down to see her jump away in a humourously frozen position doing an arc over a canyon, one of the many special effects in the movie done by a 5-year-old with Down’s Syndrome. Just donate the money, don’t make them work for it.

Then she remembers her baby, which is the most fucking creepy thing I’ve ever seen. Now she’s kind of pissed that Sixpack has ‘implanted’ her baby, so he’s destined to bang her. Him saying „It’s not like that!”, when it is exactly like that doesn’t sit well with Bela Lugosi, so Kirsten Stuart tries to do something she hasn’t done before. Emotions. Sorry K-Stu, A for effort, but F for looking like you’re face and voice doesn’t understand the concept.

After this, Sixpack goes to show his six-pack to Bela Lugosi’s dad, Charlie Movember. Sixpack for some reason thinks that taking off his clothes and turning into a cartoon-wolf would somehow explain his daughter’s absence. It doesn’t. Like at all. Charlie Tom Selleck is the saddest character ever. Every scene is him saying „Fuck it, no one is telling me shit, there’s no reason for me to be in this movie, I’m just going to grow my fucking moustache until someone decides to actually give me something to do.”

So basically Eddie Van Paleface and Bella Van Blankface have their horribly deformed child. It seems she’s ok, except for Sixpack’s  pedophile curse, being half-vampire and having this disgusting CG face. It’s uncanny beyond the valley of death. I wanted to turn away every time I saw it. 10 actresses play their daughter. So they all (or at least 9?) have CG faces. It is insane.

And that is not the only awful effect they have. They’re all rubbish. Almost every scene takes place on a set. There’s a shitload of blurry matte paintings, green screen as shitty as they get. Having people wave their arms in front of a green screen, and then replacing the background with a sped-up footage of a forest is not an effect I should see in a 100+ million dollar movie.

The movie starts as an unfunny fish-out-of-water comedy with Bella Lugosi discovering her abilities, having PG-13 extreme close-up sex and ironically having to learn to act human. Then it transforms into a superhero team forming movie, where vampires from all over the world are gathered. They all have various superpowers and represent stereotypes, eurotrash Russian guys, red-haired Irish ones, an Egyptian (might as well be Indian) who is the last airbender, yet conveniently forgets to use his abilities during the final battle and even some Amazonians and later Brazilians dressed in loin-clothes and face-paint.

They need to gather this team of vampire X-men, to protect them from Volturi, the evil vampires, who want to kill Squidward and Bela’s daughter Jailbait, because they think it’s a full vampire and not a half-ling that will look like a full-grown woman at the age of 7, when Jacob is going to fuck the living shit out of her unstable pre-school psyche. For some reason they manage to gather this team from every corner of the earth during a couple of months or something, while the Volturi are travelling from Italy. What is taking them so long? Are they taking the bus?

The plot they devise to protect the little CG-creep is so stupid and involves so much unnecessary details, which does not make sense when they have a chick, who can tell the future. I guess these vampires don’t get wiser as they get older. Just like the wolves keep looking completely awful as the movies go on.

I do have some good things to say. Since the love triangle is resolved, the movie is a lot less annoying, since characters actually have some motivation. The actors seem more comfortable. Chicken-Stu attempts emotions, Bobby Patterson at times seems to enjoy himself and Squidward laughs when Betty is kicking the mexican’s ass. And the mexican gypsy is somewhat likable, since he’s moved on and is saving his sixpack for Charlie Brown Moustache and his 8-year-old granddaughter.

Another thing I loved was Michael fucking Sheen. He acts so over-the-top flamboyantly gay, I almost felt like being prison-raped and loving it. I think he knew exactly what he was doing and joyously screeching at the sight of the abomination that is the little half-vamp Renesmut, is something he did specially for me the desperate anti-fan, who somehow failed to feel the tone of scenes despite the constant bombardment soft rock and score telling me what to feel.

So yes, the ending that involved the most decapitations you’ll ever see in a movie, Michael Sheen’s constant mugging, mincing and overacting, while masturbating in his pocket and leaving the unconvincing love-triangle in the dust made the movie barely, but bearable. Despite the ending introducing a cop-out twist, some deus-ex machina and Beige saying „No one’s ever loved anyone as much as I love you, Squidward.”, which is an outright lie. Turning it into a B-movie was the right choice.

Overall, it was better than the previous Twilight movies, but that’s like saying a kick in the balls is better than a paper cut on the tip of your penis. Some might disagree, but most will agree that both are pretty bad. I would never recommend this movie to any sane person. But let’s rejoice, it’s over.

“Oh my, Carlisle, you’ve been working out, haven’t you? And that neckerchief, a feast for eyes, you are.”

Review of Damien: Omen II (1978)

Damien: Omen II (1978) is a horror/thriller film, it is a sequel to The Omen, set seven years after it.

Directed by Don Taylor (The Final Countdown (1980), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)).

Written by Stanley Mann (Conan the Destroyer (1984), The Mouse That Roared (1959)) and Mike Hodges (Get Carter (1971), Pulp (1972)).

Starring: William Holden, Lee Grant, Jonathan Scott-Taylor, Lance Henriksen, Robert Foxworth, Nicholas Pryor, Lucas Donat and others.

They know how to make us remember the first movie. We start with the over-the-top score blasting, we’re on a beautiful location and you think that this might be more of the same arguably good movie.

Seven years have passed between the first movie and this, so Damien isn’t just a grumpy tyke. Now he’s a frustrated teenager, living with his adoptive family and trying to act as a real boy. You’re not fooling anyone, Pinocchio. Ok, actually Damien is fooling everyone, except his aunt, who’s making a fuss about it, so she’s put down by the dark forces. With dark forces I mean a crow looking at her ominously.

Damien goes to some kind of military academy with his cousin/brother. There they meet a new platoon officer played by Lance Henriksen. He doesn’t get to do much with the role, but it’s at least nice to see him. Later on he informs Damien of his destiny.

Jonathan Scott-Taylor plays Damien quite well, both managing to make him intimidating and tragically frustrated. He really doesn’t seem to have a solid understanding of his abilities for most of the movie and acts evil more instinctly than consciously. When Damien realises his purpose in life, he is quite distraught and it makes you feel sympathetic. I wouldn’t really want to find out I am the antichrist, seems like a lot of responsibility.

If someone is closing in on Damien’s dirty little secret, they can expect a visit from the friendly neighbourhood hell-crow pretty soon. But don’t let the death of suspicious aunt fool you. He doesn’t just stare at everyone. As we learn from his next attack, he’s going to actively try to harm you, leaving his staring contests exclusively for old ladies.

The crow-attack effects are quite well done, it’s no Birdemic: Shock and Terror, though. The problem is that after a nicely done crow pecking a woman’s eyes out, we see her walk in front of a truck only for us to behold something that suspiciously looks like a „love-doll” dressed in her coat, get run over. It seriously looks like a student film special effect.

Soon another problem becomes apparent with the crow attacks, but actually concerns the movie as a whole. It takes a step back from developing characters and moving the plot along and 40 minutes in, it’s still not clear if the movie is building up to something or are we just going to watch various novelty deaths of people who don’t like Damien, most of the time involving the goddamn crow.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the set-pieces are really cool, like one, that takes place on a frozen lake, but there comes a point, when new characters keep being introduced, just to be killed a couple of minutes later. The movie seems to be just a bunch of death scenes, somehow stringed together by the actual plot.

Yes, the first one had death scenes, but they were inventive, but sparse and mostly happened to characters I cared about. Not to mention that The Omen was a far more intelligent movie, that actually played on the psychological terror, while this is a B-grade exploitation version of the first film, relying on cheap set-ups and impactless pay-offs, pretending to have more substance than it actually does. Also it seems to abandon some of the more interesting ideas of the first one.

Overall, it’s not awful, but it tries to replicate the first one without really understanding what made it good. Using a shitload of death scenes as a safety net. Not recommended.

Pictured: The curiously snake-headed antichrist, looking just like Damien Thorn. Or any other doughy faced innocent looking kid.

Review of Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) is a Canadian horror/thriller film, that is a prequel to Ginger Snaps and was shot back-to-back with its sequel Ginger Snaps: Unleashed.

Directed by Grant Harvey (Freezer Burn: The Invasion of Laxdale (2008), Held Hostage (2008)).

Written by Christina Ray (The Collector (2004 TV), XIII: The Series (2011 TV)) and Stephen Masicotte (The Dark (2005)).

Starring: Katherine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, JR Bourne, Brendan Fletcher, Hugh Dillon, Adrien Dorval and others.

We’re back with the Fitzgerald sisters. Yes, both of them. And it’s really nice to see Katherine Isabelle back in a leading part, no matter how contrived the reason.

And the way this movie is set-up is really silly, we have the same actresses, basically play the same characters with the same names, just thrown into the 1800s. They even act like they’re from modern times. It is considered a prequel, but it’s less ‘let’s provide a backstory for the whole werewolf thing’ and more ‘let’s put the sisters in this wacky situation’.

So they’re wandering through a forest, Brigitte steps into a beartrap and they run into some native American dude, who takes them to some civil war-camp. The men there seem to be weary of some kind of evil outside the camp, so they’re kind of distraught when these two teenage chicks just waltz in.

Ginger seems more innocent at the beginning here than in the first one, but it doesn’t mean the film takes a very different route with her character, except that she’s a lot more passive this time.

Some other familiar faces from previous films pop-up, but in very small and different roles. I’d rather have liked the allegories about becoming a woman and all to make an appearance. Ginger’s transformation both visually and psychologically is so much less impactful.

I liked the whole ‘holding down the fort’ aspect, which I was expecting from Unleashed. The outpost is being attacked by werewolves and no one is too happy about this, the tension rises even more with the possibility that there could be some danger on the inside of the walls. This leads to an homage to The Thing, where leeches are used as a test if you’ve got the „wolf’s”.

Although it doesn’t even come close to the original, this one, as was the case with Unleashed, does provide more of a tonal consistency and doesn’t feel so broken up into acts. Here we get a spooky atmosphere throughout, but its effectiveness is debatable in the light of how silly the whole thing actually is when you think about it.

What it boils down to, is that this is just the same story as the original, minus the modern-day setting and what made it stand-out. It’s watchable, but not memorable. It probably has almost nothing to offer to those who didn’t see Ginger Snaps, while having almost equally almost nothing to offer to those, who have.

Overall, admittedly this is a bigger waste of time than Unleashed, but I did like this better. However, it’s really not worth watching, not recommended.

“Hey man, you got any weed? I have some serious glaucoma going on.”

Review of Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (2004)

Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (2004) is a Canadian horror/thriller/drama film, which is the sequel to Ginger Snaps.

Directed by Brett Sullivan (The Chair (2007), The Border (2008 TV)).

Written by Megan Martin (Ninth Street Chronicles (2006 Short), Tangled (2010)).

Starring: Emily Perkins, Eric Johnsons, Brendan Fletcher, Tatiana Maslany, Katherine Isabelle, Janet Kidder, Pascale Hutton and others.

We return to follow Brigitte, the younger of the two Fitzgerald sister from the first movie. She is using the „cure” she developed in the previous film, but there’s a problem – it works only temporarily so she has to take regular injections.

She soon ODs on the stuff and is taken to a hospital/rehabilitation facility. She doesn’t feel like she fits in with the rest. I have to add that there’s only female patients there, which allows there to be the biggest douchebag of a male-nurse ever, even exchanging various drugs for some sexual services. Though it seems that even if he didn’t have anything to offer in return, most of those chicks would jump at him.

This is tonally a very different movie, but themes are somewhat similar. Locked up in the institution, Brigitte starts slowly changing, both physically and psychologically. The humor of the first movie is pretty much gone. What we get instead is some bizarre scenes, like when during a group meditation session, Brigitte starts seeing all the girls in the room start to masturbate, following instructions provided by the doctor. I guess, that’s amusing. More similar to the tone of the original is a group therapy session scene, where Brigitte describes what will happen to her if she doesn’t take her medication and the therapist writes in her notepad „lesbian?”, the ending also is quite humorous, yet very dark.

Soon we learn that the „locked up in hospital, growing fangs” isn’t the only problem and something ominous is going on outside the building and I got a bit excited, I thought it was going to be „holding down the fort” kind of movie, something like Dog Soldiers only set in a hospital instead of a house. But they disappointed me and halfway into the movie Brigitte teams up with this girl who looks like barely 13-14, but apparently drives a car. So they both escape.

The werewolf puppet heads look a lot better than in the first one, but these are actually different werewolves than what we saw in the first one. Also Brigitte’s transformation was a lot more gruesome than Ginger’s, Ginger was a sexy werebitch, Brigitte looks like the Elephant Man.

Emily Perkins as Brigitte convincingly grows up from the previous movie and is able to hold her own here and gives a better performance than before, however, besides her, there’s not really any other stand-out performances. Tatiana Maslany was quite annoying, but she does deserve credit for looking 13, while actually being 18. Katherine Isabelle appears, which was nice, but it felt more like fan service than actually having a reason to be there.

Overall, some people consider this superior to Ginger Snaps, I certainly do not, even though it’s more consistent, it lacks in many departments, but by horror sequel standards it’s pretty decent. If you watched the first one and would like to see what happens to Brigitte, give it a try. Not recommended.

“”You shouldn’t brush so hard! It’s not good for the teeth! Oh, look at me, I’m a dentist!” Let’s see what you have to say about this, you asshole with no medical degree!”

Review of The Expendables 2 (2012)

The Expendables 2 (2012) is an ensemble action/adventure/…action film, a sequel to The Expendables.

Directed by Simon West (Con Air (1997), The Mechanic (2011)).

Written by Richard Wenk (16 Blocks (2006), Vamp (1986)), Sylvester Stallone (F.I.S.T (1978), The Expendables (2010)) and others.

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Liam Hemsworth, Nan Yu and others.

This is a movie made specifically for me. When I was growing up, most of these guys were my idols. They were my favourite actors, not because they were good actors, but because they’re bulging muscles and sweaty, snarling faces made me believe in superheroes, people, who could machine gun entire hordes of bad guys down, while standing in plain sight and not take one bullet. And then face off with the main baddie, who was really bad and after killing him, spit out some cheesy one-liner. I looked up to them, I felt protected by them. We approached the 2000’s and soon these guys went away. I was left with action stars, that looked like male models.

I couldn’t be the only person who felt disappointed. Sure, I like good acting now, but seeing Arnie jam an enormous drill into a guy, while screaming “SCREW YOU!” was something that I missed seeing in movies. And I really wasn’t the only person. When I was a kid, I would have never imagined a movie like this possible, but two years back, Stallone answered my childhood prayers and made The Expendables. If you think I could ever have enough of this you’re insane. So did I like The Expendables 2? Of course, I did.

I mean, it is NOT a good movie. The dialogue is bad, the one-liners stupid, acting silly, plot simple, action over-the-top and so on. But, this also describes most of the action movies with these guys that I loved. This is what I wanted and this is what I got. There’s no use in describing the plot, there’s nothing really specific about it, mostly coming down to Expendables shooting people and blowing shit up.

The best parts were the call-backs and references and self-aware humor. Willis and Arnold are in the movie a lot more as well, even Chuck Norris, who has maybe the smallest part does get more than one appearance. Jet Li is in the movie only for the first action scene, though and Rourke doesn’t appear at all. My favourite was definitely Dolph Lundgren, who is more of the comic-relief character here, which is interesting, since I think I liked him the most in the first one as well, when he played an asshole. They added some younger/newer faces, like Nan Yu and Liam Hemsworth, but in all the testosterone provided by the rest of the cast they got lost and forgettable.

The action is insane, but pretty well choreographed and mostly practical effects, except for additional CG gore and the more complex effects scenes. The movie opens with an action scene that is just crazy violent and over-the-top. Stallone takes down a helicopter by “driving” a bike into it. And the movie rarely slows down after that. There’s not much to say about it, except that you should know what to expect going into it.

Overall, more funny and entertaining than the first one, if you want no holds barred, balls to the wall action with some real gory mayhem and puns, if you grew up with 80’s action hero movies, definitely recommended.

Pictured: Irony, as the one who is supposedly the most bad-ass of them all, is the only one who looks and sounds like some maintenance guy.

 

Review of The Woman (2011)

The Woman (2011) is a horror/drama/comedy film, which is a sequel to the film Offspring.

Directed by Lucky McKee (The Woods (2006), Red (2008)).

Written by Jack Ketchum (The Girl Next Door (2007), Offspring (2009)) and Lucky McKee (Roman (2006), May (2002)).

Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh, Angela Bettis, Sean Bridgers, Lauren Ashley Carter, Shyla Molhusen, Zach Rand and others.

We open up to some kind of BBQ party and this family is set up and right from the start you get this feeling, that something isn’t right with them, I didn’t get it at first, but as the movie goes on, it turns out, that the family is a collection of very unusual people. Not much happens, but there’s this incredible tension between the family members and you realise that they’re the kind of family that is totally dysfunctional, everyone knows it, but they try to pretend everything is normal.

One day the father goes hunting and sees this wild chick having a “bath” in the river and then suddenly rock music starts blasting as she takes a bite off of a raw fish. This is the moment where the movie first shows that it is actually a dark comedy. Of course, the father clears out an outdoors bomb-shelter/basement, goes back to the woods, captures the wild woman and chains her up in there. This is the moment where it becomes clear that the father is insane.

The woman bites off his finger, only mildly in pain, he responds “That is not civilized behavior.” and leaves to use some painkillers, which he has lying around. After composing himself he goes to punish the woman by punching her a couple of times and then shooting a shotgun right next to her head. They throw in a high-pitched noise, so we can enjoy her pain as well. If you might think he’s just this disturbed person, who wants to rape this woman or something, that’s only half the story, because he introduces her to his whole family. And since this guy is a complete fucking lunatic, the rest of the family is too intimidated to contact authorities. They have a pet woods-woman. And things only get crazier from here.

The movie has a really dark sense of humor, starting from the creepy characters to the upbeat indie music accompanying all the dark shit that’s going on. It is also a reversal of “hillbilly horror” sub-genre, where the backwards person is so uncivilized, it becomes the innocent, abused by the “normal” people. It takes a stab at the patriarchal family archetype taken to its limit. I’m not surprised that this is written by Jack Ketchum, watching this I was even reminded of The Girl Next Door, though, not as shocking, this is still an equally sick movie.

I really liked Angela Bettis’ performance as the mother of the family and the way the tied-up woman could be seen as a metaphor for her abusive marriage to her sociopath of a husband. I got goosebumps, when she finally snaps. Pollyanna McIntosh is impressive as the woman, it’s quite a demanding role.

The last 20 minutes are total madness, it’s one of the horrifyingly most entertaining climaxes of a horror flick I’ve seen recently, it throws in some twists and turns that are so unpredictable and twisted and crazy that your jaw drops and you don’t know if it’s scary or straight out funny in how over-the-top it is.

If you watch this, keep watching after the credits, because there’s a bizarre short semi-animated clip with the youngest daughter.

Overall, this might be one of the better horrors of 2011, although it’s more fun entertainment than dead-serious chills, the sick nature of it really makes it a curiously unsettling experience. Recommended.

“Oh, yeah, I’m making this douchebag face to hide my ‘I might rape a dead pregnant woman if I encountered one’ face. I’m fun like that.”

 

Review of The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

The Dark Knight Rises is an action/sci-fi/drama film, the sequel to The Dark Knight and conclusion to the trilogy of films based on DC Comics character Batman.

Directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight (2008), Batman Begins (2005)).

Written by Jonathan Nolan (The Prestige (2006), Person of Interest (2011 TV)), Christopher Nolan (Following (1998), Inception (2010)) and David S. Goyer (Death Warrant (1990), Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)).

Starring: Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anna Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Michael Cane and others.

It’s hard to review a movie like this, I have no idea where to start. Not only is it an almost 3-hour movie, with a lot going on, it’s also an adaptation of more than 70 years of various interpretations of a character in comics and the last movie in a largely succesful trilogy of movies, probably the most anticipated movie of the last 4 years for the general movie-going public. I’m not going to go over all of this, because in the end of the day I’m just another geek who went to see the latest Batman flick. The reason why I bring up this is because how in hell can a movie like this not be overhyped and not disappoint in some ways.

I’ll start at the beginning of the movie, we see three guys with bags on their heads get taken to a plane, one of the guys is buff as shit, who could that be? That’s Bane! He is the main villain of the movie. The voice is really bad, it’s way too loud, I get that it’s hard to understand him through the mask, but cranking his voice way louder than everyone else’s is not the answer. I took me like half the movie to get used to it. Other than that Tom Hardy was great, him being so huge and those eyes just make him really intimidating and his sort of delivery of lines make him menacing, although at times he feels a bit cheesy, like a Bond-villain. There’s one of my favourite scenes in the movie, where this guy says “I’m in charge!” and Bane lightly places his hand on the guy’s shoulder and asks him “Do you feel in charge?”. Most of the people in the theater laughed, but it was like an uncomfortable laugh, a laugh to hide that you just shat your pants a little bit. Figuratively.

This movie is set 8 years after The Dark Knight and Batman has retired and Bruce Wayne just walks around the house with a cane. Speaking of canes, Michael Cane, who is perfect as Alfred, at some point just leaves the Wayne Manor and we don’t see him until the end, not that he needed to be there, I just would have loved to see him more. Catwoman steals a necklace from Wayne Manor and so she meets Bruce Wayne. I really liked Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, there were multiple times where she did something and I thought “That’s so Selina Kyle!”, I was hesitant about her before the movie and still think there were better suited actresses for the role, but Hathaway did good.

Christian Bale was as always great, this time the movie focused more on Bruce Wayne and his inability to move on. His Batman voice sounded better, but when you have Bane speaking like Sean Connery through Darth Vader’s helmet and Batman barking like a chain-smoker with laryngitis, it becomes slightly comedic. They improved the Bat-suit, so all those who thought his previous one was less a costume and more a motorcyclist’s armor, this time it looks very much like a superhero suit and I don’t know what did they do to his cowl, but it looks a lot better. Though, I still find it hard to accept that every time before putting on the mask Bruce puts on black make-up circles around his eyes.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is really good as this idealistic police officer, but there’s this weird nod to Batman fans, which actually would piss-off Batman fans and is more of a nod to people with only a general knowledge of Batman. But what they decide to do with the character in the end is pretty cool and there would be an awesome way to play it into the planned Batman reboot, but probably they’ll just recon everything.

The movie is messy at times, there’s a part, where supposedly a couple of months pass, yet it feels like only a week or so, they could have expanded that a bit, I wouldn’t have minded if the movie was like 200 minutes. It starts really slowly, even though a lot is happening, we get so much thrown at us, you kind of lose interest, but then at like 40 minutes in, it finally kicks in and the next 2 hours I was really into what was happening. The tone was kind of inconsistent, I realise they wanted to go all out with this one, but it seemed to shift from the realistic view to some straight out The Avengers cheese. I didn’t mind, I like it, because, if we’re following these people who wear costumes, it means there must be some theatrics involved.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie a lot. I’d say I liked it less than The Dark Knight, but more than Batman Begins. It has heavy flaws, but it was also entertaining as a superhero movie and moving as a character study of Bruce Wayne. If you didn’t like the previous two, this won’t convert you into a fan, but if you did, I don’t see why you wouldn’t enjoy it. Recommended.

“Master Wayne, why don’t you get a leg-brace and stop using a cane?”
“Dump the cane, huh? I’ll do that, Michael.”
“…Fuck you, Bale. How’s that Robin Hood-look going for you?”
“Touche.”

Review of Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) is a horror/mystery/thriller film and the ninth film in the Hellraiser film franchise.

Directed by Victor Garcia (Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007), Mirrors 2 (2010)).

Written by Gary J. Tunnicliffe (Megalodon (2002), Hansel & Gretel (2002)).

Starring: Tracey Fairaway, Jay Gillespie, Sebastien Roberts, Sanny Van Heteren, Steven Brand, Nick Eversman, Stephan Smith Collins and others.

This movie has received roaringly negative reviews, mostly due to Clive Barker bashing the movie on Twitter (for a good reason, but not having seen it), Doug Bradley not returning as Pinhead and the low production values. But beyond this, I personally didn’t find it that bad.

It opens with two guys filming themselves driving in a car. And I instantly thought “Oh, god, this is going to be a found footage movie”, but it isn’t. It shows that their car is stolen (which has no real effect on the plot) and then we see them opening the box and Pinhead appears. Then it turns out the mother of one of the guys is watching this on a video camera.

The parents of the other guy come over and it turns out they like to hang out together after their sons have been missing for a year and have a casual dinner. There’s also this chick that is the sister of one and girlfriend of the other guy and she goes to her brother’s room and watches some stuff on the camera. We then get to suffer through a jagged and pointless narrative when we constantly change back from standard to the handheld camera footage.

The boyfriend guy bangs another chick and then somehow kills her, while the other passes out. It’s very confusing, since we get a reaction shot from the sister after the killing part, which wasn’t filmed. Thank god, that’s the end of the videotaped shit, at least we don’t have to see it. The sister finds the puzzle box and starts playing around with it as her brother suddenly appears and everyone is mildly surprised by this. This is a running gag, as a character gets shotgunned in the stomach, but stays alive throughout the rest of the film, looking only mildly displeased with the turn of events.

We also get random flashes of Pinhead doing various hell-like things, like posing by some chains. He also is making another pinhead cenobite and stuff like that. The new Pinhead is kind of silly. I thought that after the first two movies, they were starting to light Pinhead too brightly and he lost his menace. Well this time we’re back with a Pinhead, who not only lacks the gravitas of Doug Bradley, but also looks sort of chubby for some reason. Is it really so hard to make a guy with pins in his head look scary?

The most pleasant surprise for me was the return of skinless make-up, it doesn’t look as good as in Hellraiser II, but still, it’s pretty bad-ass. And this actually signifies the return to the roots of Hellraiser, it has lack of skin, it has these darkly perverted hidden desire elements, it has some incestuous tones, all the good stuff. It feels a lot more like a Hellraiser film, than the previous, at least, four, probably mostly due to an original Hellraiser script and not a rewritten unrelated one.

So considering the film being rushed by the studio, because of copyright issues and having a very low-budget, I didn’t find it disappointing. The bad response to this film surprises me, since I would imagine fans recognizing it being closer to the original Hellraiser ideas, than those Rick Bota directed ones, which if they were children, wouldn’t be accepted in the orphanage for quadruple amputees.

Overall, a bad movie, but not one of the worst of the series. For a 300,000$ budget and three-week production, it has relatively impressive special effects and a decent twist. Not recommended, unless you’re a Hellraiser fan, who hated the previous three installments.

“Yeah, my parents don’t approve of my lifestyle. I guess they’re right. I won’t be a politician. I can take the pierceings out, but I will not drop the S&M!”

Review of Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) is a straight-to-video horror/mystery/thriller film and the eighth film in the Hellraiser film franchise.

Directed by Rick Bota (Raising the Bar (2008 TV), The Vampire Diaries (2009 TV)), who also directed the previous three Hellraiser movies.

Written by Carl V. Dupre (Bone Chillers (1996 TV), Inkubus (2011)), based on the short story “Dark Can’t Breathe” by Joel Soisson.

Starring: Lance Henriksen, Doug Bradley, Henry Cavill, Katheryn Winnick, Khary Payton, Cristopher Jacot, Anna Tolputt and others.

Since this is another one from Rick Bota I didn’t have great expectations, the series was not in great shape before that, but he completely destroyed all the dignity it had left. Also you know he prefers quality over quantity, when he releases two movies of the same series in one year, both based on rewritten unrelated scripts.

We open with a funeral of some guy and we are introduced to his friends, who didn’t bother to dress up for a funeral. One of them is our future Superman – Henry Cavill. If Immortals made me enthusiastic about him being Superman, this kind of took the enthusiasm back a notch, although, you can’t blame him for anything in this movie.

It turns out all the friends and the dead guy play some shitty online computer game called “Hellworld”, which is based on the Hellraiser mythos. I don’t exactly understand, how this works, do all the previous movies exist in this universe? It is never made clear. So they play this incredibly shitty game and they all get invites to a Hellworld party in a mansion. Sounds like a great party.

They go to the mansion and this party is filled with hot goth people, all dancing and doing all the other stuff, the outgoing community of obscure online game players do. Also it’s hosted by Lance Henriksen. You can guess three times if he’s going to be the villain. For some reason he gives the five college kids a tour of the house. So what, is he showing it to all the guests? There’s like two hundred people there. He must have been doing this all day. The mansion is kind of cool, filled with babies in jars and other shit, everyone loves.

During the late 90’s, early 2000’s there were a lot of potentially dangerous video game related generic horror flicks and this is one of them in addition to being a total slasher movie, even having a group of one-note characters – “virginal girl, jock douchebag, black guy, slutty chick and sensitive guy”. They get separated and killed off one by one as well. It is irritatingly generic, just as most post-Scream slasher flicks.

Doug Bradley’s last movie as Pinhead, he appears from time to time and does things that he wouldn’t do, until it is later revealed it wasn’t actually him. Or was it? I don’t know, by the end they throw a couple of desperate twists at you, that make the movie make even less sense than it did before.

Overall, a pretty painful experience, since after the exposition they turn the blandness up to eleven and you kind of sit there, just watching the characters being confused about things. It’s a worthless piece of shit, not recommended.

Pictured: A single man, who longs to have some pickle-babies of his own.