The Collector (2009)

Director: Marcus Dunstan.
Starring. Josh Stewart, Andrew Roth, Juan Fernandez, William Prael, USA. 1h 30m.

Sometimes we just have the urge to sit back and watch people get tortured, and if that’s your bag, then this debut from budding director and gore king Marcus Dunstan is something that till tantalise as it has a fairly compelling backstory and delivers some trippy Saw like setups even if there are plot holes, the overall aesthetic and creepiness of the movie makes it a neon marvel of pain and guttural cinema for a new generation after the video nasty era slowed down to nothing all that special despite special effects and cheaper methods of film making becoming more available, it feels as if cinema got rather sensible for a while. But in the rise of gore and torture horror, for me this is own of the more wild and lavish mainstream titles.

Zombie Vs Shark

In the summer of 1979 Lucio Fulci released Zombi 2 also known as Island of the Living Dead, also known as Nightmare Island and sometimes known as Zombie Flesh Eaters, and possibly many other titles. This bold and sensual movie was intended as an unofficial sequel to George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), it was quite a popular theme for Italian directors to make unofficial sequels to American releases, for me the most iconic would be Alien 2 : On Earth (1980) which was Ciro Ippolito and Biagio Proietti’s attempt to make an earth bound sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 cult classic Alien. It’s as different as day and night to Alien and the intended sequel Aliens, but it’s a really wacky but thrilling lower budget movie. It’s brilliant that the ambition to make a daring sequel spurred on a wonderful director to try and achieve something new, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Monster Project (2017)

 

Day 7 – Monster Project

Director: Victor Mathieu.
Starring. Jamal Quezaire,Justin Bruening,Murielle Zuker, Toby Hemingway, Yvonne ZimaUSA. 1h 34m.

I want to kick myself after watching this film, I had high hopes and every one of them was smashed into pieces. It’s particularly hard for me as I often defend found footage movies, it’s such a unique genre that is often hated on and with movies like this… I have to hold my hands up and agree.

A couple of YouTube pranksters film fake monster and paranormal videos, they’re in it for the YouTube Bucks and the Likes, but they want to try and be more authentic and want to find real monsters to film to prove their existence. After making this snap decision they just pop out and find a few real critters, including a sleepwalker, a vampire tattooist, a real possessed Japanese chick who levitates and does the usual Sadako shit, after confirming their credentials, they hook up with their long lost ex’s and go to a remote location and begin the interviews. It’s quite apparent that one of the main members of the cast has a few inner demons to exorcise from his past and soon he becomes a focal point but why?

Black Cat (1981)

Director : Lucio Fulci
Starring: Patrick Magee, Mimsy Farmer, David Warbeck, Al Cliver. Italy.1h 32m

A giallo tribute to the brilliance of Edgar Allen Poe, but as Fulci was the king of gore it pulls away from the gothic nature of the original stories and lathers it in slasherific fun.  

In a small English village there is something macabre going on, a man notices a cat on the backseat of his car that appears to  hypnotise him which results in him crashing his car and his death, the car cheerfully scampers off home to the cottage is shares with Robert Miles (Patrick Magee), a retired; hateful professor who doubles up a psychic or medium and spends most of his time recording in at the tombs or graves of the recently deceased.  Meanwhile an American tourist Jill Travers (Mimsy Farmer) wanders into a tomb to take photos and finds a microphone, she’s eventually warned off b a local bobby Sergeant Wilson (Al Cliver). A young couple sneak into an airtight room in a boat house to make out, when a black cat appears suddenly the key goes missing and the two are seen dying from an unfortunate lack of oxygen.

Grave Encounters (2011)

Day 20 of 31

 

Grave Encounters – (Horror, Supernatural, Found footage,  2011) (18) D: Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz and others  P: Shawn Angelski, Michael Karlin and others C: ben Wilkinson, Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryko, Merwin Mondesir. 1h 32m. USA.

One of the most easily accessible and favourite found footage horrors, that is literally spread very thickly over YouTube in video’s claiming to have real ghost footage, so I feel like I’ve done myself a disservice by not watching this sooner because it now plays out like a YouTube best ghost clips real and at various points throughout the movie I was in full dejavu mode. Still it’s an uneasy yet engaging supernatural movie. Written and directed by the Vicious Brothers and premiering in 2011, it strives to and succeeded to deliver a few new haunts to the found footage genre.

Rosemarys Baby (1968)

Day 16 of 31

Director : Roman Polanski
Writer :  Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Starring : Mia Farrow John Cassavetes Ruth Gordon Sidney Blackmer Maurice Evans Ralph Bellamy Angela Dorian. USA. 2h 36m

A deep tale of Satanism and pregnancy which is actually from frightening than the components, filled with cautionary tales delivered by powerful performances from Mia Farrow and Ruth Gordon.

In Roman Polanski’s first american film adapted from Ira Levin’s  best seller see’s a young vulnerable woman sold down the river by her lover and the Satanic community in her new apartment block. The dank old building is famed for having an equally aged community which the young couple struggle to blend in. Immediately after moving in two noesy neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) invite themselves in and after protesting eventually Guy seems to warm to them after their intervention revitalizes his failing acting career, but at what cost? Rosemary potters around trying to make sense of her new surroundings, she befriends a fellow young girl who soon commits suicide and begins losing touch with her husband who is now best friends with the Castevet’s and whose temper gets shorter and shorter with his wife, until one fateful night when everything changes, Rosemary is unknowingly offered as a sacrifice of some sorts.

Hangul: 텔 미 썸딩/ Tell me something (1999)

Day 6 of 31

Director: Yoon-Hyun Chang , Chang Yoon-hyun , Chang Youn Hyun
Starring: Han Suk-kyu, Shim Eun-ha. South Korea. 1h 56m

So often have the Koreans fantasied with violent and psychotic serial killers, and often these cinematic gorefests are shrouded with mystery and loaded with grotesque skin crawling violence. The only film to date that had any real life connection is Memories of Murder (2003) which details the first properly documented serial killer in South Korea (correct me if I’m wrong, i’m just going by the details in my DVD cover), a case filled with blunders and much embarrassment. But in all fictional accounts the often flawed cops usually get their man..

Treehouse (2014)

Director :Michael Bartlett
Starring :J. Michael Trautmann Dana Melanie Daniel Fredrick Clint James. USA. 1h 38m

The film had so much potential and offered a lot of misleading ideas with previews cover art and publicity that’s ok because I understand that a film does need to be pushed in it’s early stages and it doesn’t mean that it’s a terrible film but it’s just not the supernatural thriller that I was expecting.

All that aside let’s have a look at what Treehouse has to offer, the film opens with a teen girl returning home to find her family missing, she grabs her daddys  shotgun and goes to investigate the scene ends with the screams of her little brother coming from the forest with a shadowy figure looming over her. cutting to the strife of two brothers at a local school the younger being bullied and the older looking after him after getting into a fight they return home to a TV broadcast about a missing girl and other local children, a new curfew has come into place but ignoring the advice they go out into the forest to find the missing kids and end up facing the worst nightmares after they found the missing girl disheveled and frightened in a Treehouse.

The Hallow (2015)

Director:Corin Hardy .
Starring: Joseph Mawle, Bojana Novakovic, Michael McElhatton, Michael Smiley . UK/Ireland. 1h 24m.

It’s interesting to see an Irish horror story that doesn’t revolve around leprechauns and banshees but instead picks at the pantheon of folklore monsters from deep within the Irish forests but doesn’t really dig into their tangles mythology.

Adam (Mawle) and Clare (Novakovic) receive a hostile welcome from the locals after the pair of cityfolk set up home in an isolated house on the edge of a forest that Adam is tasked to work on, causing friction with the eco bunnies but their neighbour becomes a more sinister daily threat trying to persuade Adam and the baby to keep out of the Hallow, “the forest is their home, they want the child”. So Adam takes the baby on tour of the forest and discovers a grisly neuro-active fungus that strangely connects with the child snatching kiddy folk.

Dog Soldiers (2002)

Director: Neil Marshall .
Starring:Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee, Liam Cunningham . UK. 1h 45m.

Initially I thought this was the beginning of the hammer horror comeback. But sadly a bunch of nonchalant thrillers were released years later, that aside this is what the hammer horror revival should gave been goddammit!!

A group of clueless army grunts get shafted by their superiors into a bullshit situation with a most vicious and unlikely foe. The film begins three times, initially with a couple out camping who get attacked by an unknown beast in a hail of blood, then again Cooper (Kevin McKidd) whois introduced a hopeful to be gain access into a special ops group but is failed by the callus Ryan (Liam Cunningham) for not shooting an innocent dog on command, he’s assumed a wimp and then the third and thankfully final beginning, we get the group, headed by Sergeant Harry G. Wells(Sean Pertwee), Copper is now under his command and is was more comfortable with his underdog team. They are dumped into the middle of nowhere in Scotland, their aim is to track down and capture a group of special ops, but after some banter and a mysterious (and hilarious) cow death, they find themselves being hunted by “big ‘owling things” stumbling on the special ops camp that’s been obliterated, there are blood tracks and “remains” but no bodies, apart from ?? who has been nearly fatally wounded, but reluctantly they rescue him and manage to find a safe haven in a lone cottage in the woods, after being rescued by Megan (Emma Cleasby) who knows a little more than she’s willing to admit. So with two wounded soldiers, some bad feelings and limited ammo they make a stand against “the ‘owling things”.