Baskin / Raid (2015)

Director: Can Evrenol
Starring: Gorkem Kasal, Mehmet Cerrahoğlu, Ergun Kuyucu. Turkey. 1h 37m

This surreal Turkish gory horror, directed by Can Evrenol, based on his 2013 short film by the same name, although in this  blood soaked feature length debut he turns up the nightmare factor to full. Not running totally parallel it’s like a lucid dream within a dream, something more like Inception (2010) Vs Hellraiser (1987). While it’s not obviously as to what’s going on, the puzzle presented within Baskin is not something that you’ll be able to work out until the end, providing you have the stomach to get to the bitter end. There is a heavy handed dose of blood, meat, strange symbolism and a chilly silenthillesque atmosphere that is bound to entertain horror fans throughout. It’s crowning achievement is that it successfully manages to make you a passive spectator as this incredibly vivid nightmare unfolds.

Jigsaw (2017)

Director:  Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig.
Starring. Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie,Matt Passmore, USA. 1h 32m.

So despite being dead since Saw 3, Jigsaw is back!? But how!? He was autopsied and buried already, but 10 years after he died John Cramer is once again making people confess to their sins and redeem themselves. I had to admit that I find the gory Saw movies highly entertaining and so much fun to watch, I honestly would love the franchise to run on forever I honestly don’t’ think I could get bored of this. When it comes to murder mysteries I find the typical Agatha Christie or Priot to be incredibly dull and struggle to follow along, with the length dialogue and cold bodies, Saw is the opposite there’s usually a lot of quick thinking, snap judgements, blood, gore and raw emotions, but strangely there are similarities too, like how this one uses the same index cards placed on the bodies as Christie’s Ten Little Indians (1965) but that’s where the similarities end.

Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017)

Director: Victor Salva
Starring.Stan Shaw,  Gabrielle Haugh,  Brandon Smith, Meg Foster, Jonathan Breck, Gina Philips USA. 1h 40m.

Have you ever felt totally cheated after waiting 14 years for a sequel of a movie just to be served up a half arsed film that promises great things next time around? The epic working title of this film was Jeepers Creepers Cathedral but it should have been names Jeepers Creepers, lets just waste your fucking time.. *inhale*…. *exhale*

The film brings nothing to the story and has absolutely no character development for the beloved Creeper, albeit we really just want to see him scary and slaughter people while being maimed in ludacris ways, this run around story doesn’t even deliver the basics. Originally he started out as a ghoulish bad guy with a wicked sense of humour trolling around the spring night in his BEATNGU van collecting body parts until he stumbled on a few delicious eyes that he wanted. In his next incarnation he returned for a group of victims, it’s always best to come back for a group in your Hollywood sequel,  his interactions were more comical and sinister and he became a flying spectre who crafted remarkable weapons from the body parts he collected, but he has an arch rival in this episode, a bit underpowered for the story but great additions for the creeper.. then it all went wrong.

Matthew 18 (2014)

Director: Roy Belfrey .
Starring.Lanore Van Buren Belfrey, Sanya Belfrey, Don Benjamin, Luenell, Faizon Love USA. 1h 41m.

This all black horror movie takes it’s religion in young people way more serious that I had expected. Being coined as the scariest African american movie of all time I struggled to try and work out what it was in competition with, Blackula (1972)? Abby (1974)? The Sorrows of Elizabeth (2016)? There aren’t too many that come to mind but it’s an subgenre of cinema that I’m not fully clued up on unless it’s a Nollywood epic. Centering around one young girl who thinks she’s too smart for faith, Michelle Jamieson (Lanore) was raised in a deeply religious family but wants to express her independence, by moving away and thinking for herself, when an opportunity arises for her to flee her bible thumping parents she’s takes a scholarship in a medical program and skips town to her aunt’s house, a large mansion which has been in the family for generations but what she encounters rocks her beliefs to the core.

My favourite scene – The Witch Who came from the Sea (1976) – Rock a bye baby

This lesser known video nasty from the mid 70’s has a small but dedicated cult following. The tagline of “Molly really knows how to cut men down to size” is a bit more descriptive of the film as Molly isn’t really a witch and doesn’t really come from the sea.

She does live and work along the seafront and gets a lot of shoddy tattoos by a scary weirdo, but after being sexually abused as a child by her grandfather she hates men and enjoys slicing and dicing them.

Insane (2010)

Director: Anders Jacobsson,  Tomas Sandquist .
Starring. Lars Bethke,  Alida Morberg,  Johanna Leamo.Sweden. 1h 27m.

An unusual B Movie horror with a lot of mixed messages, generally this works as a thriller but shows a lot of imagery akin to the modern day Hostel (2005) styled torture porn but doesn’t deliver a shred of this! Such a tease!

A mild mannered concierge with a big ole soft heart who single handedly runs a wayward hotel that doesn’t see much traffic due to a new road being built, meanders his life away,  the only random faces he sees are those who have old maps and ends up at the hotel by total accident but he accommodates them the best he can.

The Most Dangerous Game – Chess

First things first what’s the attraction to Chess? The King of Games…Well first it’s one of the oldest games known to man, it’s technical and shows a lot of character of the person playing.  As soon as you see a chess game set up in the movie you know there is a mental war going on. The cunning tactics that you need to lure a person into a trap, the poker face antics that are played until the final moments are all time which a director can really hit the message home that he’s playing for keeps, the characters are so high class and sophisticated if you’ve not picked up on a think or two then you’d better start taking notes.

There is usually a battle of minds, more than a battle of brawn, someone is up to an evil plan, so check the finer details and see if you can out play the director, and the most devastating move, death, usually this battle will result in some death in some way or in some scenes it will be played by death.

There has been a long lasting kinship between chess and cinema, often seen as the thinking man’s game it’s often used to display character and intelligence. Here’s a list of a few films that have some kind of chess connection.

 

01.Pawn sacrifice (2014)

The film that inspired this list. I am not a chess player myself, I struggle with draughts but I was really interested with this film, it had an usual atmosphere and based on real events, it was a chance to learn something and be entertained. Tobey Maguire, stars as Bobby Fischer, who battled against the soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). The film is as concentrated about the game as it the characters and tells a thrilling but tragic life story, filled with mental health issues and the US vs USSR cold war and how any event between the two countries was considered a  full on war.  9/10

Don’t Blink (2014)

Director:Travis Oates .
Starring. Brian Austin Green, Mena Suvari, Joanne Kelly, Zack Ward, USA. 1h 32m.

SPOILERS KINDA

The overall feeling of this film is like a drawn out Creepypasta, and not one of the good ones either.

The principles is simple but the story doesn’t go anywhere, let me explain. A group of 10 friends are heading out on vacation divided into 4 cars, their destination is a small resort village in the middle of nowhere. When they arrive at the picturesque town, they are shocked to find the town is totally abandoned, despite finding this quite odd they are forced to stay as they have very little petrol and no cell phone reception.(but there’s always a signal!!) So they make the most of the resort and act like nothing is odd until one by one they begin to disappear. Because a deserted town doesn’t mean anything that you should run for your lives..

Spotlight – Stephen Lang

05.Monkey’s Paw (2013)

This modern reboot of a 116+ year old story is sensitively approached, it’s hard to add a twist to a story which everyone knows and that has been retold in many ways over the years, it has some interesting qualities, but falls a bit flat, this is despite an excellent performance from Lang who isn’t cast as a lead but is the main character which catalysts the movie on in dark and gruesome ways, he’s on screen presence is certainly a bonus. 6/10

Brawl in cell block 99 (2017)

Director: S. Craig Zahler.
Starring. Vince Vaughn, Don Johnson, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson, Udo Kier USA. 2h 12m.

Not being a huge fan of comedy it’s not surprise that I haven’t seen a lot of Vince Vaughn, in fact the only film that comes to mind is the abysmal remake of Psycho (1999) which I sat through wondering a frame for frame remake was needed while nursing my very first tattoo in the back of a dingy Odeon Cinema… I was not impressed.

So when I heard that he has broken character and was starring in a grisly prison action drama from the unstable Bone Tomahawk (2015) director S. Craig Zahler. I knew this was going to be a great film and it didn’t disappoint, much like the horror western Brawl in Cell Block 99 take a while to really get into the swing of things.