MY CALL: Very entertaining, but it’s not making any “top” lists this year. This film was good-but-mismanaged and found greatness out of reach due to weak story synthesis and character development. However, this movie is rich with charm, jumps and excellent production value. So watch it with a date instead of with a horror snob. MOVIES LIKE The Quiet Ones: Case 39 (2009), The Conjuring (2013) and Oculus (2014) all share some positive elements of this film.

Loosely based on a true experiment that took place in Oxford in 1974, this film delves deep into the notion that what we commonly consider “the supernatural” actually represents telekinetic and “teleplasmic” manifestations of the minds of disturbed believers. Led by Professor Coupland (Jared Harris; Poltergeist, Pompeii, The Ward), graduate students Krissy (Erin Richards; Open Grave, Being Human) and Harry (Rory Fleck-Byrne; Vampire Academy) and videographer Brian (Sam Claflin; Snow White and the Huntsman, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) band together to investigate the psychic phenomena produced by the suicidal young Jane (Olivia Cooke; Bates Motel) with hopes of “curing” her.

That’s right, Jane.  Put all of your psychic animus into the doll…becas

From Act One to the next weird things happen, Coupland’s methods are called into question as Jane’s health is placed at increasing risk, and Coupland shifts from methodical to manic in his obsession to cure her. Both Coupland and Brian share a competitive interest (almost a sexual fixation) in saving her, but go about doing so by conflicting means. Jared Harris’ psychological descent is impressive and committed whereas Sam Claflin embraces his character’s own brand of emotional fragility.

This film was filled with entertaining moments including shocking effects, gripping jump scares and some long scenes tensed up with a solid creep factor. I’d add that the acting was very good; great, in fact, for a horror film. Olivia Cooke managed to capture crazy, disturbed, scary, dangerous and sympathetic all at once. The style of the film goes from something like a “house” movie, to a demonic possession movie, and then to something altogether different which I don’t want to spoil (not that it’s anything super special).

Jane has her good days (above) and her bad days (below).

However, as the story shifted gears from skeptical science and rational explanations to “what have we gotten ourselves into?” I found myself generally uninvested in the characters and the outcome. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is not without its charm, I enjoyed it and was entertained, and I really “liked” the characters. The thing is, their “development” didn’t lead me anywhere interesting. And whereas the facets of the story (and the scenes behind them) were independently interesting, they failed to find any of that effective and satisfying synthesis that makes us care if the protagonists succeed.

This actress really captures desperate, bewildered loneliness in a sort of Christina Ricci way, doesn’t she? Like a grown up (and psychologically messed up) Wednesday Addams.

Director John Pogue (The Skulls, Quarantine II) may not have wowed us with this film’s story synthesis. But, given his résumé, this represents a good step forward in his professional development and I must admit that it was very entertaining. However, the premise itself is more interesting than its execution. It won’t please gore hounds or story snobs who pine only for unique horror fare–and who, might I add, are almost never 100% happy with what they’re served–but it will please the popcorn “movie night” guys who just want to see good effects, enjoy acting that doesn’t hurt their soul, and laugh at well-placed jump scares. It would probably be a good scary movie on date night as well. Had it only balanced its writing with its quality scares, acting, ideas and filming with a better screenplay, this would have been quite good instead of good-but-mismanaged.

To the less-initiated and perhaps younger horror fan, this PG-13 film may serve as a great introduction to horror. Those who aren’t overly critical or “so tired” of loud-noise induced jump scares should get a real kick out of this. What it lacks in character development and cohesiveness it more than makes up for with jumpy scares, neat effects, minimal gore, great acting, solid production value and a cool premise.

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MY CALL: This fun, monster-driven B-horror movie follows The Thing‘splaybook. It’s entertaining, but I’m not going to suggest you break down doors to see it. MOVIES LIKE Blood Glacier: The Thing (2011). ALTERNATE TITLES: This Austrian film was released by the name Blutgletscher. This was also title The Station. TRAILER:  CLICK HERE to see the TRAILER.

Finally, a film with a message! This film addresses the important questions, like “What will happen to us if the polar ice caps melt?” The answer: we’ll all be starring in a mash-up of National Geographic and The Thing (2011)! I figure this is the inconvenient truth that Al Gore wanted you all to think would happen as a result of global warming if you don’t start investing in more solar panels.

This film opens with blatant over-exposition “explaining away” why each character is important in a color-by-numbers format. Our story takes place at a climate research station in the Alps housing four people and a dog.  Did you just cringe, thinking about the dog kennel scene in the original The Thing? Yeah…me, too.

During some sort of “weather patrol” with the dog (wink, wink) they stumble across a “blood glacier.” They briefly lose track of the dog and everyone somehow gets conveniently cut or bruised. From here, the auspiciously scored “infection sequence” is so obvious there may as well be smoke signals. But it’s not just the researchers we have to worry about. The blood from the thawing glacier infects the local wildlife with some hybridizing single-celled organism that mutates them into hideous monsters. HOORAY!

The effects are not exactly high-tech, but they get the job done and the clumsily-puppeted rubber creatures put a big grin on my face. There’s a beetle-fox mutant (think The Nest), a giant killer roly-poly (think The Bay), giant mosquitoes, evil mountain goats, insectoid birds of prey…see the grin forming yet?

There’s nothing in this movie you haven’t seen before many times over. The scene with examining and explaining the virus/parasite/mutagenic thing, the infected dog scene, watching the clock as infected people become a liability, pulsating parasitic infections housing brooding monsters… I mean, there’s basically even a facehugger scene. Speaking of facehuggers, in the opening scenes the strong female scientist character feels almost as if they were trying to make her reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver in Alien.

Yup…been there, done that.

Is it just me, or does this guy smack of the The Thing’s MacReady? Or Joel Edgerton’s “not Macready” character from the “not remake” prequel?

Yup…narrow eyes and beards across the board.

SO, WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER? Well, there is the bummer that this was not in English. This isn’t necessarily a “flaw”, but I don’t speak German. I saw it dubbed in English, so I wasn’t distracted from the effects by “reading” the movie or anything. But the dubbing quality was akin to a less-popular Anime and the characters’ mood and enthusiasm rarely seems to match the scene. You also get little appreciative sense of the acting and you can basically hear in the tone of the voice actors that they simply don’t get paid enough to care. I felt this especially detracted from the humor of the opening scene, in which the debilitatingly hungover technician Janek (Gerhard Liebmann) is called to fix a glitch in his underwear.

Director Marvin Kren (ABCs of Death 2, Rammbock: Berlin Undead) successfully delivers a trope-rich, predictable, fun monster movie that should please horror fans and gorehounds. I’d save this for the fanatical, though. Folks who watch “a scary movie” once a month will likely consider this terrible.

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MY CALL: A wholesome, cute, spunky, almost Disney-esque horror movie with none of the rated R-ness but just enough evil to take it seriously at times. MOVIES LIKE Odd Thomas: The “adultness” of this matches up well to the first three or four Harry Potter films. However similar in tone, this movie is considerably less wowing and lacks the enchanting world-building elements. The Men in Black franchise feels like a close sci-fi counterpart, despite having no younger actors.

“I see dead people?” Well, it’s been done. But it’s been a while since I cared. So I gave Odd Thomas a shot and I’m glad I did. It offers up something that may not be meant for me, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

So Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin; Fright Night, Star Trek: Into Darkness), a boyish young man, sees dead people. Playing out with all the carefree background mood and pleasantries of an episode of Desperate Housewives–and all of the almost playful menace as well–Thomas lives in a nice California town surrounded by nice people where he solves crimes using clairvoyance. One day Thomas may be avenging a kind ghost’s wrongful end and the next, stopping a killer from continuing his latest spree. But when things are going to become really bad Thomas sees Bodachs, evil nether creatures which sense the disastrous upcoming events and feed on the death and suffering that ensue. Our story picks up when Thomas starts seeing a disturbing number of Bodachs invisibly lingering about a strange man who clearly has a doomed future and a dark past.

Is it me, or does this guy look like Edgar from Men in Black?  Remember the Edgar suit?

Bodach (above); Dungeons and Dragons Bodak (below)

Thomas has a wholesome girlfriend named Stormy (Addison Timlin; That Awkward Moment, Californication) who has the Disney sitcom dream of owning her own ice cream shop in the mall. She’s spunky, brave and supports Thomas is all his odd dealings with the dead.

Thomas’ main squeeze, Stormy.  Isn’t she just cuter than a puppy made out of kittens?

Another clutch comic book style role is the chief of police (Willem Dafoe; Spider-Man, Antichrist), who is a friend and confidant, and is also aware of Thomas’ secret . Like a crime-stopping kid show, the chief is on speed-dial and he trusts Thomas and Stormy’s word, sending police aid on request.

“Yes, this is the chief…oh, hi Thomas…sure, how many officers should I send to help you…no problem, I trust your dead-people-seeing judgment.  Toodles!”

The special effects are not great, but feel strangely appropriate, if not perfect, considering the “Disney-goes-PG-13″ feel of this film. I’m not making fun of it at all. This feels like Disney’s answer to the old Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark (1991-2000).

As for the action, normally my answer would be “absolutely not.” As an adult, I did not find Anton Yelchin’s physical prowess in this movie credible. No matter how well-choreographed the fights may have been, and with all their cool slow-motion bits and chase sequences, I simply don’t buy this little guy as a fighter or athlete. But here’s the thing. It all looked so good and, again, empowering our smaller-statured boyish protagonist just seems to match the wholesome feel of this movie perfectly.

However often I reference Disney in this review, there was at least one scene that shamelessly brandished a common horror trope.

Director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) had some fun with this one, which feels like a PG-13 Disney Rom-sitcom horror stretched into a movie. It’s often charming and cute, the story is cohesive, and it all comes to a touching end. Watch it on family movie night if you have some tweens who aren’t ready for real horror just yet.

MY CALL: This semi-art house, semi-perverse film is only for lovers of true indie horror. That said, this was well-done considering its shoestring budget. MOVIES LIKE Night of the Tentacles: Lo (2009) was another bare bones budgeted film that had a lot to say. Dagon (2001) is another tentacular horror love story. The Boogens (1981) and The Kindred (1987) provide some classic 80s tentacle movie monster fun. And Grabbers (2012) offers about as good a time as a ball of tentacles can deliver.

After suffering some serious heart complications, fantasy erotica artist David (Bath Salt Zombies, Easter Casket) strikes a deal with the Devil for a new heart. He didn’t turn to Medicaid or venture to Canada for cheaper solutions…nope. The Devil had just what he needed. And with that David’s heart is replaced by a tentacle monster in a wooden chest. Just one problem: the monster needs to be fed living flesh in order to survive. The monstrous heart is eloquently voiced by an Bill Nighy sound-alike.

So, yeah…this is what the Devil looks like in this film.

Writer/director Dustin Mills (Bath Salt Zombies) clearly made an effort with this script. His writing is far from brilliant, but he definitely deserves credit for delivering far more than I’ve come to expect from the vast majority of direct-to-DVD horror. Theatrical devices like overt melodrama, narration and asides add an irregular flavor to this film. Whereas this flavor may please the art house crowd, some may find it over-the-top and distasteful.

Speaking of distasteful… Is there a lot of sexuality and perversion? Yes. But I see it as being used more as an exploitative “device” than purely as a crutch to cover the film’s shortcomings. There’s masturbation, which seems to reveal our protagonist’s desperation, and nudity, which does not utilize the typical stripper-cast actresses. There are also several sex scenes with little to no nudity.

Some of the acting in this is real crap (sorry, but I’m referring especially to Dustin Mills’ cameo) and the effects are about as cheap as they come. But considering this film had a budget of about $1500, I think I’ll let it slide. If you can make anything that entertains me for that cheap, then you’ve succeeded as a filmmaker. The closing action sequence is awful and fun and, for the few dollars left in the budget, they tried to do a lot with the gore.

I should note that whereas this film is not nearly as deep or art house-ish as Lo (2009), the style is similar enough to warrant comparison.  Those who love true indie horror will likely enjoy this film. But just because you consider yourself an adventurous horror-goer, that doesn’t mean this is for you.

MY CALL: This is truly a “great” bad horror movie and it has more integrity than others of its generation. Although I wouldn’t recommend it to gorehounds, fans of classic 80s slashers will enjoy it.

Remember the days when all horror was rated R? Yeah, I miss the 80s, too. Those were the good old days when everything was either good or “bad” good. I’d call this particular 80s film a “great bad” horror.

Let’s meet this movies spoiled brats… The one on the far right looks like Jeremy Sisto and Sean Pean’s lovechild.

Meet Virginia Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson). She’s one of the smartest and most popular kids in school, but she suffers from memory loss and blackouts. Now, in the days leading up to her 18th birthday, her hip clique friends begin dying one by one in strange ways and many of them begin acting strangely.

As her friends become defensive, aggressive and damn near homicidal, Virginia slowly regains traumatic memories from her past. However, she also seems to be seeing some things that her friends aren’t seeing. All the while we are left to wonder just who is killing all these privileged private school brats? After the first kills, all we know for sure is that the victims know their killer. Is the killer the now mentally unhinged Virginia, or one of her snotty privileged friends?

Grin-worthy 80s lameness abounds. From the opening sequence we have a lame strangling which is salvaged by a most spirited struggle by our hysterical coed victim. The deaths range from ho-hum quality to laugh-out-loud hilarity. My favorite kill involves giving a mean spot while someone is doing bench presses, which of course reminded me of Killer Workout (1987; aka Aerobicide) and Death Spa (1989).

And the deliciously macabre birthday scene at the end smacks of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

The gore was definitely adequate for its time, but nothing special. This film is clearly more for classically bad 80s slasher fans than sloshy gorehounds, and this lacks the level of zany gore suggested by the DVD cover art. Fans of the 80s will be pleased to see Lisa Langlois (The Nest, Phobia). And by the way, this was directed by J. Lee Thompson (the original Cape Fear, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes)!

Not as sensational as I expected this scene to be.

Maybe what sets this 80s slasher most apart from the rest is that it is filled with red herrings. Virginia’s flashbacks, blackouts and possible hallucinations combined with her friends’ changing behavior offer ample opportunity to misdiagnose the killer. The ending packs such a twisted punch that it would make the plot of a Mexican soap opera seem plausibly reasonable.

This 80s slasher maintains a great deal more integrity than its peers as well. There is no nudity and some effort was clearly placed in constructing the twist-rich plot. I’ll say that again, this is a low budget 80s horror/slasher flick with a thoughtfully made plot. That never happens! That’s reason enough to consider it worth seeing. But, plot aside, this is fun in its own right anyway. I really enjoyed it.

MY CALL: Interesting, inspiring, and even soulful with Mickey Rourke’s narration, this film brings a modern day Pumping Iron to today’s generation. MOVIES LIKE Generation Iron: Well, of course Pumping Iron (1977). I’d also suggest the Jay Cutler Living Large series on Youtube. There are about eight 10-15 minute episodes. Rich Piana also has a lot of good Youtube webisodes. These Youtube videos take you deep into the lives of these pros.

Generation Iron follows a group of professional bodybuilders from pro-qualifier competitions to the 2012 Mr. Olympia. Some make that journey rather stress free, others find it more tolling. The presentation of these men is appropriately down to Earth and humanizing. You forget that they are in the top 0.0001% in their sport and appreciate them for their flaws and struggles in the microcosm of this single competition in their career. When we see them fail, we understand the realities and that there can only be one winner. But when they triumph, we get lost in the moment and feel happy for them. By the end (when they named the 2012 Mr. Olympia) I was at the edge of my seat…even though I already knew who won!  LOL

Mickey Rourke’s soulful and wizened narration breathes life into this work and allows the audience, who may have once viewed these athletes as steroid-abusing sideshow spectacles, to understand the level of determination and struggle of these men.

Pumping Iron (1977) introduced the world to bodybuilding which, at the time of its release, was just as unknown and fantastic to the general public as Harry Potter‘s wizarding world and Hogwarts. In need of a protagonist, they depicted the arrogant veteran and current champion Arnold Schwarzenegger as the hero while essentially vilifying the kind-hearted newcomer Lou Ferrignou. Here, we find Phil Heath filling the role of the arrogant champion and Kai Greene as his humble opponent. The dynamic, however, is rather different since Kai Greene is a veteran who never won a Sandow (the trophy) and Heath is a young champion. So it comes with little surprise that Heath finds comfort in his arrogance. He expects to win whereas Kai Greene expects only to bring his best. That said, there is no clear protagonist in this story. In a way, that may be the documentary’s greatest fault. But I still thought it was great!

Phil Heath (above) and the artistic Kai Greene (below)

All of the competitors presented have found their way to the Olympia in different ways. Branch Warren thrives on his instinct and almost reckless work ethic whereas Ben Paluski relies on science to track his progress and hone his training program. Kai Greene protests that his devoted training will earn him Mr. Olympia, but Phil Heath suggests that his natural talent provides a powerful edge. We get a taste of many bodybuilder philosophies, but we delve very shallowly into supplements, training programs or steroids. Although, they do make some strong statements about steroid use in general with respect to competitive professional sports and bodybuilding, especially the fact that steroids don’t make their jobs at all “easy.” Their development is wrought with pain and sacrifice.

Branch Warren

These powerful athletes, often considered dumb meathead hunks of chemically-developed muscle, reveal their vulnerabilities and what they can and cannot control. For some, their career is everything, for others it’s just a chapter in their life, and bodybuilding saved Kai Greene from a youth of delinquency and a likely troubled adulthood.

This is a fun ride for any fan of the sport. You’ll see the likes of Lou Ferrigno, Michael Jai White, Busta Rhymes, Phil Heath, Kai Greene, Dennis Wolf, Jay Cutler, Ronnie Coleman, Ben Pakulski, Roelly Winklaar, Bob Cicherillo, Branch Warren, Hidetada Yamagishi, Sibil Peeters, Victor Martinez, Dennis James and Jim Stoppani. Stick around to the end of the credits for a Mike Katz cameo paying homage to when he was pranked by Ken Waller in Pumping Iron almost 40 years ago.

As a weightlifter myself, I found this film inspirational and I’d beg anyone with waning dedication, discipline or interest to give this a watch. You’ll be re-invigorated!

MY CALL: Worst of the franchise. I wouldn’t recommend this. MOVIES LIKE Wishmaster 4: Wishmaster (1997) and Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999) are both much better, largely for Andrew Divoff’s ability to appear credibly pleased with his Djinn’s evil. Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001) was nothing special by comparison to the earlier installments.  For a totally zany and great bad 80s movie try the evil genie flick The Outing(1987)–loads of fun.

Director Chris Angel (Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell) returns to bring us the dreaded fourth installment in this series. Some may be shocked that he’d be asked back after seeing part 3. But, much like the Matrix sequels, parts 3 and 4 were filmed back to back with hardly a weekend’s break in between. So don’t be surprised that the make-up for the Djinn looks exactly the same since, well…it is.

Bro: “So you basically had your ruby randomly found and rubbed in part 3, you tried to open the gates of Hell and got defeated, and got banished back to your ruby prison…and THEN, like a day later another girl accidently found and rubbed your ruby AGAIN and released you AGAIN?”

Djinn: “Pretty much, bro.”

Lisa (Tara Spencer-Nairn) is in the middle of a pretty rough patch with her boyfriend, who suffered a crippling motorcycle accident. As with the previous installments she somehow randomly encounters the Djinn’s ruby prison, rubs it (really just touches it) and releases the Djinn (unbeknownst to her). Magically disguised as Lisa’s lawyer, our genie tricks Lisa into making her first two wishes, which include a healthy legal settlement and her husband’s ability to walk again.

This woman is literally orgasmed to death.

If Lisa makes her third wish then all Djinn–oh, yeah, Hell is just brimming with their kind–will be freed and they’ll create Hell on Earth. At this point it should be easy for the Djinn to fool her into making some whimsical wish. No clue why he doesn’t…she still has no idea that he’s actually an evil genie. But wait, there’s a weird twist. When Lisa wishes something the Djinn can’t grant himself, he most dote on her emotions to make her love him…in order to open the gates of Hell…romantic, huh? That’s right! Djinn’s can’t just make someone fall in love with someone else. Evidently the Disney Aladdin genie followed the same rules.

Djinn: “Why won’t you love me?”
Chick: “Dude, you are literally slimy, your hair tentacles look like an STD and you are way too old.”

The execution of the gore is iffy at times. But there are some satisfyingly gross moments like the “face peel” scene typical of the franchise and some genie-wish-induced self-mutilation. We also get to see other Djinn, which was neat I guess.

Overall…meh. I wouldn’t recommend this.

Don’t get mad at me for saying this, but isn’t the Wishmaster franchise about due for a serious remake/reboot? The original isn’t even 20 years old yet and, to this day, is very entertaining and a favorite to gorehounds. But I’d love to see this approached with a real budget (which none of the franchise installments have ever enjoyed) and a far more serious tone. Yes, serious. If it’s not serious then there’s no point in remaking it at all.

MY CALL: This film doesn’t masquerade as anything it isn’t. It’s honest, campy, bad, fun…and breasty. MOVIES LIKE Smothered: While tasteless and much more raunchy, I’d consider films like The Killer Eye (1999), Breeders (1986), Chillerama (2011), Head of the Family (1996) and Hideous! (1997) for a combination of boobs, gore and giggles.

Golden Eye‘sXenia Onatopp gave viewers an unexpected sexual thrill when she killed a man with a leg scissorhold mid-coitus. And that was just PG-13. John Schneider has stepped it up a notch and brought us a big-breasted temptress who commits mammary-assisted murder! That’s right. She smothers people to death with her breasts.

Probably inspired by recent news of the near death of a suffocating German lawyer to his amply-endowed girlfriend and the trailer park murder of a redneck who was “boobed” to death by his plus-sized wife, it seems that fatal breast smothering has become something of a new fad and John Schneider has playfully capitalized on this gimmick in bringing us Smothered.

In this horror comedy, we find Kane Hodder (Chillerama, Hatchet, Wishmaster), R. A. Mihailoff (Hatchet II, Texas Chainsaw Massacre III: Leatherface), Don Shanks (I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary) and Bill Mosely (The Devil’s Rejects, Texas Chainsaw 3D) play themselves for the most part at a Louisiana horror convention.

A glimpse into the horror con scene.

The cast is accompanied by a few others including Trixie (Shanna Forrestall; The Last Exorcism, Feral) and the murderess DeeDee (Brea Grant; Halloween II, Dexter, Heroes)…aptly named given her ummmmm virtues.

Embittered with a weak turnout in autograph sales (largely due to a cameo by John Schneider stealing the show), Kane accepts a gig to “haunt” a trailer park as Jason Voorhees. So he recruits his fellow unpopular horror icon friends to help him with this task. Upon arriving to the site of the RV park, they start dying one by one under strange accidental circumstances…and, of course given the title, a few breast smotherings for the sake of comedic T’n’A.

What’s odd is that the title and the opening breasticide set a standard that the rest of the movie doesn’t at all follow. We’d expect several more breasty assaults picking off our victims–making the title and opening scene more of a marketing strategy than a premise. Of course, a bunch of smothering cleavage murders would result in about zero gore and that obviously would leave the audience wanting more. That said, this film remained entertaining in a deliberately goofy way and those femme fatale weapons do enough appearances to rile up randy viewers. I had a lot of fun watching this cheeky horror comedy and the occasional non-breast-based murder turned out to be most welcome.

R. A. Mihailoff awkwardly attempting to be scary and Leatherface-y to scare the locals.

There were some solid efforts in the gore department. Some of the more fun gory scenes involve a razor wire snare trap producing some floppy flesh-rending gore, someone self-mutilating themselves to death basically by accident, and a slapstick “face peel” scene followed by an improvised first aid treatment that had me howling. Another effect I was especially fond of was the CGI ants–they actually looked kind of cute in one of the scenes.

This film was written and directed by John Schneider. Yes, the very same John Schneider you knew as Bo (The Dukes of Hazard) and Jonathan Kent (Smallville)! I guess his more recent work in Snow Beast, Return of the Killer Shrews and Super Shark give him a taste of playfully “bad” horror. I’m glad he’s taken this step in his career. I was certainly entertained.

This film doesn’t masquerade as anything it isn’t. It’s honest, campy, bad and fun.

MY CALL: The utter bonkersness of this movie, by comparison, makes Snakes on a Plane feel like a perfectly reasonable action movie that could totally happen…and that’s a good thing for the adventurous dumb-movie lover who doesn’t mind a zany flick with a low budget and shamefully abundant past-gen CGI. MOVIES LIKE Sharknado 2: Sharknado (2013), Sharknado 3 (2015; upcoming) and Snakes on a Plane (2006). Also try Deep Blue Sea (1999), Shark Night 3D (2011), Piranha (1978), Piranha 3D (2010) and Piranha 3DD (2012).

Now heroes, Tara Reid (Sharknado, The Crow: Wickid Prayer) and Ian Ziering’s (Beverly Hills 90210, Sharknado) returning characters are no strangers to the over-exposition that plagues Scy-Fy’s movies-of-the-week, including Sharknado (“the first one”). But fret not, it’s all in good fun and we don’t get five minutes into the movie before paying homage to William Shatner’s (or John Lithgow’s) Twilight Zone short Terror at 20000 Feet! Even using the famous line “There’s something on the wing!!!!” Only now..there are sharks on the wings of the plane! This is basically how I knew this would be worth a watch….that, and part one was bonkers amaze-balls fun!

Director Anthony C. Ferrante (Boo, Sharknado, Sharknado 3) lays on the stupid fast and heavy…and by stupid I mean stupidly awesome! The utter bonkersness of this movie, by comparison, makes Snakes on a Plane (2006) feel like a perfectly reasonable action movie that could totally happen.

Is this movie fast paced? Well, it has plenty of slow parts where we are forced to watch the cast try to act their way through to the next scene. But when the action is happening all is forgiven, lots of funny dumb stuff happens, and festive CGI gore abounds.

Are the effects good? It’s a ScyFy movie-of-the-week…so NO. No they’re not. But the movie is still fun and there were some choice gore effects and the sharks are fun to watch.

Billy Ray Cyrus, everyone!

Is EVERYONE in this movie? Absolutely! Fantastic cameos include The Today Show‘s Matt Lauer and Al Roker, Kelly Ripa, ex-Sugar Ray singer Mark McGrath, scream queen Tiffany Shepis (The Hazing), Judah Friedlander, Billy Ray Cyrus, Perez Hilton, Vivica Fox (Kill Bill Vol. 1/Vol. 2, Independence Day), Judd Hirsch (Independence Day), Jared the Subway guy, Kelly Osbourne and Andy Dick.

Much to my surprise I must say this movie taught me a few things…

1) Based on more than one scene I can safely say that the best way to fight a shark is with a baseball bat. That, and Ian Ziering has an amazing swing whether wielding a bat, chainsaw, fire axe, sword or that wooden thing they use to get pizzas out of a pizza oven.

2) Sharks hate physics and take every opportunity they can to defy its lame laws. As you watch this movie you’d swear the sharks were “aiming” themselves at their victims harnessing the propulsive force of the tornado.

3) Not only is Ian Ziering tougher than a CGI shark, but his butt is so rock hard that he doesn’t even feel it when a baby shark is biting it! He probably taught The Rock how to be tough.

Tough enough to try to defeat a Sharknado with Vivica Fox and a giant slingshot.

4) Judd Hirsch is actually Jason Voorhees! Bare with me for a second. Whenever you don’t see him he transports unreasonable distances almost instantaneously and he’s always where you least expect him. The only real difference is that there are no drug-using, fornicating teens around to trigger his urge to kill.

This movie is pure, mindless fun. Just watch it and stop being so judgy.

MY CALL: I’d only recommend this to the most adventurous horror-goer with a good sense of humor and low expectations. There’s nothing special here and the tone erratically shifts. But there’s some bonkers humor for those who enjoy such flavor. MOVIES LIKE All Cheerleaders Die: There are far better high school horror movies. Namely Jennifer’s Body (2009), The Craft (1996) and The Faculty (1998).

After the tragic death of the captain of the cheerleading squad, her meek outsider friend Maddy (Caitlin Stasey; Evidence, I Frankenstein)cleans up and goes undercover as an enthusiastic pom-pomer to expose these mean girls for what they really are. Early in her sting operation, during a beer bash Maddy and her close newfound cheerleader friends are wronged by the captain of the football team (resulting in their accidental death) and now she has an entirely new target.

Here’s Maddy. She goes from this….

…to this…

…to THIS!

But wait, Maddy died. So how could she exact her revenge? The answer here is weird little divination stones (or Wicca witch rocks or something, not sure what to call them exactly). A full moon, a little blood and the right cast of the stones seemed to be enough to resurrect three wrongly killed cheer squad members essentially by accident. They basically turn into super strong, zombie succubi and they show up to school the next day with a killer new sexy look and an appetite that is to die for! Cliché.

Co-writer/directors Lucky McKee (The Woods, May, The Woman) and Chris Sivertson (I Know Who Killed Me) don’t really bring us anything special this time around. Their actors are weak and inexperienced (but serviceable, I guess), the effects are mundane, none of the characters develop at all, and the story and execution is weak. Strangest and least consistent is that the tone and direction of the movie change erratically between scenes…shifting from a zombie succubus cheerleader revenge movie to a weird gemstone-eating dude versus a bunch of scared cheer zombies. That sentence probably made no sense–rest assured that neither does the movie

But there were some fun perks. After the resurrection two of the girls accidently switched bodies, there’s a randomly hilarious “cat kill”, we see a lot of girls in their undies, and some bonkers dumb-but-funny things end up happening.

That said, I’ll only recommend this to the adventurous horror goer with a good sense of humor and low expectations.

MY CALL: Although still fun, this was the least impressive flesh-eating virus movie of the franchise. It’s often more than gory and wacky enough to please fans of the franchise though. MOVIES LIKE Cabin Fever: Patient Zero: Cabin Fever (2002), of course it should probably be seen first…okay, it really doesn’t matter. Then Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009). But true lovers of hilariously gory overkill should also hit Evil Dead (2013), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Final Destination 5 (2011), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Drag Me to Hell (2009), and of course Evil Dead 2 (1987) and The Evil Dead (1981).

A group of friends embark on a Caribbean bachelor party cruise and come across a remote island research facility and they are exposed to a deadly, flesh-eating virus during a gore-chummed snorkeling expedition.

Simultaneously we switch back and forth with a parallel plot in which researchers have isolated “patient zero” (Sean Astin; The Strain, The Goonies, Lord of the Rings)–the carrier of the original strain of this horrible virus that blessed us with this franchise–moved him to an island lab (yes, that lab) for study and… we’ll just say things get out of hand inside their research facility as well. So we have two simultaneous infections occurring on this normally sleepy, sunny island.

Is it just me? Or has Mr. Samwise been creating an awful lot of apocalypse-plague shenanigans recently? In The Strain he helps the Nazi vampires spread the Nazi vampire zombiism worm virus. Here, HE is patient zero!

If you’ve seen any of these movies, you’ve sort of seen them all. But let’s be clear here, director Kaare Andrews (The ABCs of Death – V is for Vagitus, Altitude) delivers extravagant levels of gore consistent with the franchise. After exposure our early infected cast members have a rash which quickly shifts to symptoms of blisters and…worse.

More advanced victims practically melt away and projectile vomit liquefied gore into the faces of the yet uninfected. Skin sloughs off of bodies, pus erupts from bloated flesh, and–perhaps the most flawed aspect of this sequel–victims eventually become almost zombie-like. Also, like its predecessors, it uses a sex scene to set the tone of the urgency…because after all, and I can’t speak for everyone here, but when my girlfriend’s body is covered with festering sores the first place y mind goes to is “then we should probably have sex!“

“So while we wait for medical care how should we pass the time?”

“Guess what, bro? Her STD test results just came in…she tested positive!”

Perhaps this is all just to teach younger viewers that sex might just catch you something deadly. Oh, and bonus, there’s also a flesh-ripping zombie girl catfight.

Part one of this franchise succeeded with a rather serious tone, part two was basically slapstick and goretastically hilarious, and this third installment attempts to re-secure a sense of fear and urgency as the infection advances while maintaining some playful silliness (e.g., having your softened, flesh-eaten skull crushed by a giant dildo).

In my opinion the urgency is long missed and, while this movie is entertaining for the sake of the gore and some most welcomed wackiness, the overall Cabin Fever experience doesn’t measure up strongly to the first two and is, in fact, ranking far below either of them in quality.

The nigh-zombiism of the infected left me feeling a bit derailed and the plot (revolving around getting off the island) degenerates down a dumb path. But kudos for not just “redoing” the movie and “calling” it a sequel as we often see in the horror genre. At least a solid effort was made to make this installment feel different from the others. In that respect, the entire franchise is successful.

I must say I was entertained, though. This flick was a lot of fun and any film featuring a bludgeoning death-by-dildo scene deserves some attention from gorehound goofballs.

MY CALL: This lesser-known slasher film was the ultra-violent movie of its time, brandishing more gore and “visible” kills than others of its era. This will please seasoned admirers of 70s and 80s slashers. MOVIES LIKE The Prowler: Happy Birthday to Me (1981), The Burning (1981), The Funhouse (1981). ALTERNATE TITLE: I believe that this is titled Rosemary’s Killer in the UK and Australia.

The year was 1945; it was a time of war. After receiving a “Dear John” letter from his girlfriend Rosemary, a soldier with a wounded heart returns home and goes on a killing spree. 35 years later, a (perhaps new) killer wearing WWII regalia begins slaughtering youngsters on the weekend of their Graduation Dance before he even changes out of his military greens. And, following in the most typical and dated of horror tropes, once the kids spike the punch bowl and start touching each others’ fun parts prior to saying their “I do’s” the killing can commence.

The acting is bad and the story runs way too slowly, but after the dragging lulls of plot we are rewarded with satisfying (for the era) death scenes that should please seasoned lovers of the classics but which may leave youngsters who grew up on the Final Destination films wanting quite a bit more out of their kills.

The gore is “simple” by today’s standards, and representative of Tom Savini’s early work. But hey, make no mistake, it was the 80s and before horror ever had much of an effects budget. For its time this was REALLY GORY! And what’s really impressive is that you can see the penetration of the weapon into the victim during the kill scenes instead of a shot of a knife, a shot of a screaming victim, and a shot of blood spraying on the wall.

For those of you who have seen few movies that came out before the 90s, this was really graphic in 1981!

At the time of its release this was the equivalent of what we now call “ultra-violent.” The style of the kills in this film predates the commonality of “fun” kills in horror, but there’s still some good diversity including a couple getting collectively stabbed by a pitchfork while making out, someone getting stabbed all the way through the skull and then having it wrenched back out, someone’s head is blown to chunky bits before our eyes, and there’s a delightfully drawn out and gory shower kill.

So graphic for 1981!

The clichés abound but…wait a sec, here…as I watch I actually realize that this movie is so old in the history of slasher flicks that at the time things like murderer POV shots, the all-too-cool killer “walking” after his victims who just can’t seem to outrun him because of stumbles and locked doors and dropped keys and jammed doors, the killer suddenly “appears” in places to which he couldn’t possibly have moved in the allowed time and circumstances, and of course (VERY, VERY long) shower scenes weren’t even tired out clichés yet.

So the moral of the story here is, ladies, don’t send any of our troops a “Dear John” letter until your absolutely certain that you’re not in a horror movie! Otherwise, you and the next generation may be in for an unpleasant surprise at your next school dance.

MY CALL:  This film becomes more farcical from beginning to crazy end. If you’re in to that sort of thing, then you might like this. Just don’t watch it simply because you’re a Kevin Smith fan. MOVIES LIKE Tusk:  Body modification horror comes to mind… things like American Mary (2012) and The Human Centipede (2009).

Ever wonder what happened to that kid who saw dead people in The Sixth Sense (1999; Haley Joel Osment)? Well search no more. He’s right here! Sure, he’s been doing some other stuff (Alpha House, A.I., some videogame voice work), but that was the big victory for me here–recognizing him. Otherwise Tusk largely disappointed me over and over again. Why? Because I thought I was buying a ticket to an envelope-pushing, body modification horror laced with torture and festooned with off-putting perversions of human frailty and fixation. That stuff was in there, but I feel that the execution did not do the theme justice.

From crude, hilarious dialogue and interactions with Canadian customs agents to excellently ominous scoring, this film’s tone yoyo’d between serious (with funny introductory themes) to farcical…leaving me most perturbed as to what I was in for as I watched. We start by meeting shock podcaster extraordinaires Teddy (Haley Joel Osment) and Wallace (Justin Long; Drag Me to Hell, After.Life). They tell the dirtiest dick jokes, have fun with ridiculous Youtube clips, and interview internet sensations (often losers). Tusk‘s story finds its unsure flippered footing in one of Wallace’s trips to interview a Canadian Youtube clip star who had cut off his own leg with his clumsily geeky katana skills. Wallace treks to Manitoba, all the way making Americans look like ignorant assholes to our friendly northern counterparts, only to find that his interviewee has killed himself.

Hoping not to return home empty handed, Wallace seeks some other “Canadian weirdo” to interview for his podcast. And in the restroom of a Canadian bar he finds an ad for a living arrangement with an old man who has “many stories to tell.” He has found his man!

Our villain (Michael Parks; Django Unchained, Death Proof) was largely appropriate for an over-the-top horror film. From the moment we meet him things feel weird. He was zany and sometimes twistedly funny, but just plain sick and insane. Only a few times did his character lose his footing and misstep from over-the-top to farcical (e.g., the “walrus fight” scene or the “walrus suit” itself).

I felt that the effects met the gross-out expectations of the audience and that the body modification (or surgery) scenes succeeded at conveying a sense of sick hopelessness, torture, futility and a truly twisted mind. We see Wallace suffer in complete terror and we believe it. We see our villain take sick joy in Wallace’s transformation…and we believe it. Unfortunately, the later in the film we find ourselves, the more frequent and long-lasting are the farcical aspects…to the point that the last 20-30 minutes feels purely farcical while trying to maintain its unsure grip of a very serious concept (i.e., that one can be stripped of his humanity and made into a monster).

Behind the scenes shot of Justin Long in “surgery”

Director Kevin Smith (Zack and Miri Make a Porn, Clerks II) has always been amazing at capturing his northeastern audience (and quickly the rest of the nation) with his well-crafted, oft-off color comedy. And whereas I felt that Clerks II (2006) showed a notable drop in quality in his work, I still loved it and formerly considered his only failure to be his most risky and quite off-genre undertaking of Red State (2011). Red State succeeded at being brutal and intense, but I just didn’t feel that the delivery was there with the characters. But still, kudos for taking the risk. I like dipping my toes into risky movies.

Justin Long did a fantastic job.  His mustache, however, I feel was some totally displaced vestige of Kevin Smith’s separation anxiety from his Clerks films.

This was another big risk on Smith’s part. I consider it a failure, but I appreciate the risk that was taken. The failure came in keeping the tone consistent. I should add that if I walked in expecting something farcical (and was in the right mood for it) I probably would have enjoyed it MUCH MORE. I’d still wish it was “consistently” farcical, though. Whereas expecting something serious and sick, I left annoyed and feeling cheated.

It felt like Smith couldn’t steer clear of his old ways (a la Mallrats and Clerks) as he painted his characters in this film. Wallace’s too-gorgeous-to-be-true girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez; Identity Thief, The Last Stand) felt a little forced and their relationship issues didn’t really fit in the story. Johnny Depp (Transcendence, Dark Shadows) felt horribly misused and so farcical (compared to his surroundings) that I found his character to be nothing but annoying every minute he spoke or could be seen. And the shift from mostly serious at the story’s inception to entirely cartoon-farcical at its close…well, that’s what broke me. That was where my interest suffered.

This does not at all address my problems with the shift from serious to farcical. But an Amazon reviewer made a good point: “There’s really only one thing you need to know about this movie: It’s about a guy that kidnaps another guy and starts turning him into a walrus. If that sounds interesting to you, then you can stop reading this and go watch the movie. If it doesn’t sound interesting to you, then you can stop reading this and don’t go watch the movie.” I wanted to see it knowing that, and I was disappointed. Just FYI.

Looks easy enough, right?  Not like it would take a medical degree and a lot of surgery experience to pull this one off.

Lots of risks were taken in this off-farcical film. And this is not a slam-review, it’s just a review from a disappointed viewer who can still appreciate a risk-taker even if I don’t like the product. My advice to you…don’t see this until it’s free for you to view and even then think twice. My advice to Kevin Smith…please keep taking risks outside of your comfort zone, but ask for some help (like a co-writer or co-director with experience in the genre but who also appreciates your style).

       MY CALL:  I think evil doll movies practically make themselves. But this is an absolutely incompetent horror film that should disappoint fans of the genre whether they were birthed in the era of serious slashers, classic Hammer releases, or campy 80s slapstick gorefests. The only way this made it to the big screen was by riding the tidal wave of hype created by its link to The Conjuring. I feel genuinely cheated!  MOVIES TO WATCH INSTEAD of Annabelle: There are really soooo many wiser choices you can make for your scare-tastic Saturday night.  Maybe Dead Silence (2007), Dolls (1987), Poltergeist (1982) or The Conjuring (2013).

Let’s start with a little disclaimer here. I absolutely adored The Conjuring (2013)!  I viewed it as an instant classic which also stylistically paid kind homage to the classics while maintaining a more contemporary intensity.  So when I heard they were making a movie about the creepy doll introduced to us in the Warrens’ cursed menagerie, I was giddy like a school girl.

The story is very simple. A young soon-to-be doctor gets his pregnant wife a gift, an antique style doll for her collection.  She adores it.  After some random cultists randomly choose their home to invade the police dispatch the murderous satanic cultist assailants, the blood of a dying cultist coming in contact with the Annabelle doll and presumably completing some ritual opening a gateway for some other-worldly demonic spirit to possess the doll and use it as a conduit on its soul-procuring mission.

From here, we learn the particulars about the cultists, demons and how a soul must be “offered” to them. And then we watch as the twisted, possessed doll manipulates our young family (specifically the mother) in order to get what it wants.  Is it the young couple’s new born child?

At this point I feel the need to say that there are a lot of positive reviews out there about this movie.  THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

I won’t spoil anything, but the movie itself left a spoiled taste in my mouth. I was impressed by nothing, affected by nothing more than cheap jump scares and blaring sound effects, and utterly bored by a story whose end I couldn’t see coming largely because of the disconnected randomness of the events that were meant to build urgency.  Creaky chairs and slamming doors can be scary, and creepy dolls can really make a horror movie work all by themselves, but the mood just wasn’t developed to maturity for me.

Was the doll creepy? TOTALLY…perhaps even in an over-the-top way.  I mean, that doll—would anyone actually make a doll that looked that evil even before it got possessed and dirtied up?  Those cheek bones and thin eyebrows felt reminiscent of the Wicked Witch.  But the doll’s creepiness and a few jump scares are all the good I have to say about this.  The Warrens were mentioned once, but we got nothing more than that little tease of something better…and that something better never came to my aid.

Instead of the Warrens I got mysterious baby carriages in ultra-creepy basements with no explanations.

Some may say it’s not fair to compare Annabelle to The Conjuring.  But I’d respond with the fact that the entire advertising campaign was designed around linking the two movies by the very tagline: “Before The Conjuring, there was Annabelle.”  More like “Before The Conjuring there were lame horror stories that weren’t told well.” The only way this made it to the big screen was by riding the tidal wave of hype created by its link to The Conjuring. I feel genuinely cheated!

Things seldom work out well for the good-intentioned priests in these movies.

Let’s talk about what The Conjuring had that Annabelle did not: a director who had proven himself in horror, experienced writers, and an absolutely legit cast.  What does Annabelle have?  Director John R. Leonetti, whose biggest prior accomplishments were The Butterfly Effect 2 and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (if we’re considering these “accomplishments” at all), led the project.  He worked with the foundation of an inexperienced writer and an almost completely unrecognizable cast offering forgettable performances and a stale story.  The only thing that haunted me about Annabelle was all of the promising hype that got me to waste my money on it.

In my perhaps overly critical eyes, this is an absolutely incompetent horror that should disappoint fans of the genre whether they were birthed in the era of serious slashers, classic Hammer releases, or campy 80s slapstick gorefests.

MY CALL: I wasn’t sold, scared, or really even interested in this possession film whose scenes lacked any sense of synthesis and whose story never maturely developed. MOVIES LIKE Deliver Us From Evil: A mainstream crime-mystery-horror that I loved was Fallen (1998), another meta-genre possession movie with a great cast and excellent execution.  BETTER POSSESSION MOVIES: The Unborn (2009), The Last Exorcism (2010), The Quiet Ones (2014)…and even The Possession (2012), which I described as the “diet coke of possession movies,” was better than this.

New York police officer Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana; Deadfall, Hanna) has recently started getting some strange cases. A woman in a drug-induced manic craze, a call of “strange sounds” coming from the basement in a “possessed” house, a crucified cat, some self-mutilated crazies in animal enclosures at the zoo…but that’s New York, right? As Sarchie investigates further, these strange incidents appear to be darkly connected.

You are charged with one count of trespassing in the lion’s enclosure and eight counts of being creepy.

During his investigations Sarchie is approached by a drinking, smoking, edgy Jesuit priest named Mendoza (Édgar Ramírez; Wrath of the Titans, Zero Dark Thirty) who offers his help, but is met only with skepticism. No clue why. I often solicit the advice of leather jacket-wearing Jesuit priests who wander into my place of work unannounced and offer assistance. There’s nothing weird about that.

As we slowly accumulate clues Sarchie starts hearing things, seeing things, weird things are happening in his home, and everything gets really… “satanic.” Scratching sounds abound, lights burn out as if extinguished by evil, chiseled bloody fingernails on perps, insane Latin babble, and dark etchings on walls set an abyssal tone and it is effective for the most part. Realizing the darkness that has befallen him, Sarchie chooses to work with Mendoza, who is (of course!) well-studied in demonology and exorcism.

Not really sure where the cat fits in to all this, but whatever.

I really like writer/director Scott Derrickson’s (Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) past work and I admire his ability to recruit mainstream actors into his horror casts (e.g., Olivia Munn of Magic Mike, The Newsroom playing Sarchie’s wife and Joel McHale of Community). Olivia Munn handles her very minor role well and Joel McHale brings some often out of place yet totally welcome humor.

But despite the cast and all this cool “evil satany” stuff I just never found myself caring about this movie…like, at all. There was just something–something big–about the whole story, the characters and composition that didn’t work for me. I wasn’t sold or scared and, not to sound mean but, I was never really even interested. I mean, some individual scenes were sort of working for me. They just didn’t have anything close to the kind of synthesis I needed to suspend my belief and immerse myself in the movie.

Ultimately, I found this film boring. Even during the exorcism scene, which I’m sure was meant to be intense and climactic, I was legitimately bored and waiting for the movie to end.

I won’t say don’t see this movie. A lot of Amazon reviewers loved it. I’m just clearly not one of them. And on a totally random note, this movie made me hate Jim Morrison. Watch it and you’ll learn why.

MY CALL: This playful creation-gone-wrong film by a young Wes Craven brings back a wonderful 80s nostalgia to this lifetime horror lover. Just enough zany gore, silly scenarios and a wack-tastic ending to overcome a severely limited budget. MOVIES LIKE Deadly Friend: Man’s Best Friend (1993) comes to mind, along with the MUCH more gory Re-Animator (1985) and Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993). All three movies involve creations that get out of hand.

The 80s loved robots… The Terminator (1984), Short Circuit (1986), Chopping Mall (1986), *Batteries Not Included (1987), Short Circuit II (1988)… and here’s another one!

A teenager on a university scholarship studying the human brain, young inventor Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux) creates artificial intelligence. Let’s just stop right there. This “kid” develops a free-thinking robot…in the 80s…with the computer technology we had IN THE 80s…and he’s somehow not bitches’n’hoes, rap-video-rich and sprinkling crushed diamonds in his food already? I wonder, in the movie-verse, how the events of this movie would affect Skynet going live at 5:18 pm ET on July 25th, 2004 and attempt to eradicate Sarah Conner along with all of mankind with terminators. Paul is already lecturing to students at PolyTech… I’m assuming one of his students was Miles Dyson.

We meet Paul’s cute neighbor Samantha (Kristy Swanson; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Swamp Shark) and her uber-creepy sweaty abusive dad (Richard Marcus; Enemy Mine, Tremors, The Being), his creepy old neighbor Elvira (the mean old villainess from The Goonies), and some local punks who get their balls squeezed by a protective BB. Speaking of which, BB is super cute but he seems to take note to those who have wronged him.

Paul’s robot “BB” is nothing short of absolutely adorable and he sounds like Disney’s Stitch or a Star Wars Jawa. At one point when he was meeting the teenage neighbor boy I think he said “Houtini.” BB is always getting upgraded and, as a result, smarter. Meanwhile Paul is making decades of scientific progress in mere weeks, already developing the circuitry to jump-start the nervous system of a cadaver.

When a prank-gone-wrong results in creepy Elvira shotgun-blasting BB to robot Heaven, Paul loses his robo-bestie. Worse yet, the very night of his first kiss with Samantha, a domestic dispute with her father sends her to the hospital with a fatal injury. So naturally Paul steals Samantha’s body, surgically implants BB’s “spare brain” (a motherboard, basically) into Samantha, and then Weird Science meets Re-Animator as he reanimates BB-Sam complete with remote control. Why there is no button to turn his Cyborg-girlfriend into a sex droid is beyond me. I guess as a teenage neuro-robotics prodigy he gets plenty of play already.

This poster kind of goes with the sex droid theme. A bit misleading if you ask me.

Let’s just say that the remote control doesn’t work out as effectively as Paul would like, because BB-Sam goes on a killing spree to snuff out everyone who ever wronged BB or Samantha. This in mind, maybe it’s a blessing that he didn’t go the sex droid route. Although it would have made for a great death scene! LOL.

Director Wes Craven (Scream 4, Deadly Blessing, Cursed) was playful with his low budget-limited few moments of gore. A violent dream sequence has Samantha killing her father and then being doused by his blood as if pouring from a spout. We also witness the exquisitely goretastic use of a basketball for a detonation-like decapitation. Not to mention the unreasonably stupid but equally super-fun gory surprise ending.

Well this is totally reasonable. You see, BB’s robot spirit caused genetic changes such that under the skin her organs were replaced with circuitry and metal. Isn’t pseudoscience fun?

The basketball scene and the ending alone are worth owning this movie, but it offers a lot of 80s horror nostalgia and a story that works in its own zany way. I really enjoyed it.

MY CALL: Hardly an action movie at all, this clever sci-fi film is much more about the gracefully naïve evolution of sentience in an artificial being. And at that, it does a fantastic job! You hardly notice the humble budget, which was handled very well. MOVIES LIKE The Machine: There are many movies which do well in the depiction of realizing self-awareness and conscious learning in cyborgs and other forms of artificial intelligence, yet I fail to find in proper similarity between any such movies as a whole and The Machine. Consider that a major selling point as to why you shouldn’t miss this one!

During a Cold War with China in the future, a new kind of arms race begins to create artificial intelligence. And like SkyNet (Terminator, T2), HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey), ARIIA (Eagle Eye), David (Prometheus) and VIKI (I, Robot) have taught us, this never tends to turn out well. Kind of has me wondering about this Siri phone voice chick now. Speaking of which, there is a lady Cyborg in this movie named Suri.

This film captured my interest right away. In the first act of the story our lead scientist Vincent’s (Toby Stephens; Black Sails, Robin Hood) approach to assessing a program’s self-awareness and human-like cognizance involved thought exercises that are brilliantly simple, they make sense to us (the viewers), and we can tell when they’re successful or not. Adding conflict to the story, Vincent has a dying young girl with brain damage who lacks even the self-awareness of the programs he is assessing. But great things can emerge from conflict. And whereas this family-centric conflict finds little development through the course of the story, the film remains quite successful in its greater aims.

Vincent’s place of employment is a research facility littered with early prototype cyborgs made from brain damaged ex-soldiers that have lost their capacity for oral speech…and they all seem shady, untrustworthy and dangerous. They also seem to house a mystery.

Vincent takes young scientist Ava (Caity Lotz; The Pact, Arrow) under his wing to develop next-gen artificial intelligence and she is much more sympathetic to their Cyborg subjects. Ava is very curious, and that’s not good in an industry loaded with secrets.

Long story short, Vincent makes a Cyborg with Ava’s consciousness. Cyborg Ava is smarter, more aware, and more compassionate than past prototypes and has an immediate attachment to Vincent. But she is also naïve, scared, easily manipulated, and modifiable. Caity Lotz does an even finer job playing the enchantingly child-like Cyborg as she does the scientist.

When the action begins (towards the end), Caity Lotz convincingly moves with robotic precision in brilliant contrast to an elegant and tastefully shadowed nude dance scene humanizing her early in her development. The action is nothing special, but it’s every bit as good as it needs to be to keep our attention–with a few brutally cold, robotic, and entertaining moments.

She reminds me of a better-acted version of Jean-Claude Van Damme in Universal Soldier.

Written and directed by someone (Caradog W. James; Little White Lies) of little experience in the sci-fi genre, I feel this film was extremely successful in concept execution, did a solid job of world-building (despite the limited sets and budget), a nice job in story development, and a perfect job in depicting Cyborg-Ava’s mental development.

This tasteful dance scene shows Ava-borg discovering music and self-expression. It sounds lame, but this was a deep, impacting scene.

This is surely a must-see for any fan of Sci-Fi. Just don’t go in expecting laser guns and six-armed monsters. This one is a bit more subtle.

MY CALL: A perfect zombie movie that doesn’t at all feel like a “zombie” movie in the best possible way. Shift your expectations appropriately away from gory horror to a very human, relationship-driven drama and you, too, should love this film. Very powerful. MOVIES LIKE The Returned: There is no proper match to this film, which is part of its splendor. Recent werewolf and vampire films like Wer (2013) and Afflicted (2013) have taken contemporary approaches as well, but still err in being “overly supernatural” and seem to lose sight of plausibility as their stories progress. 28 Days Later (2002) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) did better, but they didn’t necessarily feel plausible…just not so radically impossible.

From the opening credits we are presented powerful imagery from the past of a brutal, traumatic, and even plausible domestic attack in which a wife and kids are cannibalized by a loved one-turned-zombie.

Shifting to the present, we meet Alex (Kris Holden-Ried; Underworld: Awakening, Lost Girl). He appears in every way to be a regular guy in a regular happy relationship talking about regular things…”it’s time we told them,” he says to Kate (Emily Hampshire; Good Neighbors, The Cradle). The kind of thing you’d say about informing your family of good news or bad; a pregnancy, an engagement, or even cancer.

Cut to a hospital and we see Kate treating people in the “Returned Unit.” Patients, small talk with co-workers, kind bedside manner, “good news” from doctors…everything seems normal until a doctor’s advice to parents taking their recovered child home seems just “a bit abnormal,” as we are introduced to the fact that this “returned” child is being returned to his parents with instructions to give him an injection every day…an injection for which it is rumored that supply will soon fail to meet demand. Kate assures the parents that everything is fine, then secretly stockpiles the drug at home. A drug that keeps the virus at bay for no more than 24-36 hours.

“Returned” is a household term met with adversity–much like abortion. And likewise, it has it’s protestor demonstrations, financial interests and political conflict. Whether “returned” or not–people are scared…people are angry…people are in denial…people are desperate…and people want to live normal lives. Eventually, some people even turn on the people they love.

In this world the threat of zombies is real, and it truly “feels” real. This film’s approach to the “zombie” is perfect and, in essence, this feels nothing at all like a zombie movie. The premise is shockingly plausible and I was immersed. Only during the most limited “turned-zombie scenes” does this feel momentarily like a zombie film–but such scenes were handled well and fail to challenge my investment in the realness of the story. The gore was very little and very, very rare. What we see is done well. But even as a totally camp-tastic, rubber-guts-ophilic gorehound I still absolutely loved this film.

As we observe the downward spiral leading to the much feared “next epidemic,” the cast does a fantastic job infecting us with urgency. The relationships between the characters are palpably strong. We feel them, we empathize for them, we want them to be okay and, when things grow dire, we feel it tugging at our heart strings.

Shift your expectations appropriately away from horror to very human, relationship-driven drama and you, too, should love this film. It had me totally committed from beginning to the very powerful end. Very powerful.

MY CALL: My greatest cautionary advice would be to skip this cautionary tale and watch something else instead. After all, this theme has been executed much better in the past. WHAT TO WATCH INSTEAD OF The Monkey’s Paw: Movies like Wishmaster (1997) and Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999) come to mind. They’re gory and zany and tons of silly fun. I’d skip Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001) and Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (2002), though. Also try Tales from the Crypt (1972). Stephen King’s Thinner (1996) distorts in a similar vein using a curse.

Based on the classic horror story and cautionary tale based on the short story by W.W. Jacobs, The Monkey’s Paw tests the waters of mixing distorted wish-granting with “be careful what you wish for” notions. In this iteration Jake (C. J. Thomason; Husk, Sutures) comes into possession of the ill-fated magical talisman at a local watering hole from his embittered ex-boss who seems a little too glad (in almost a vindictive way) to be rid of the fate-twisting trinket.

It’s a little silly, but not necessarily unrealistically approached with the wish-making. The first (rather skeptically made) wish was for a car: “I wish for that bitchin’ GT outside.” The second saves the life of Jake’s rough-around-the-edges co-worker Tony (Stephen Lang; Conan the Barbarian, Avatar, Salem). And if Pet Sematary (1989) has taught us anything, it’s that people who are magically saved from death tend to continue life as a homicidal husk of what they once were. In this case, that husk of a man also really wants the last wish from the Monkey’s Paw.

The weakest point of this movie is that it relies on a homicidal pseudo-zombie for its kills instead of several uniquely distorted and gorily treated wishes. It makes the story about Tony, as if he were a motivated killer instead of one of many victims of a Monkey’s Paw. This fails; we don’t care, Tony isn’t interesting, and we’re looking for more creative death scenes.

At one point Jake goes to see a fortune teller. That, of course, is melodramatically treated and to no satisfaction of us viewers. Jake tries to rationally explain his situation to people…that NEVER goes well in these movies either. Then we get the explanation of how the paw works from the former owner. Again, none of these storytelling or harbingering devices work remotely well for us. Triple storytelling fail. But, hey, that’s okay because the acting is great…no, scratch that…wrong word…appalling is what I meant. Yup. That’s it. The acting is appalling.

Yeah, that was MY face throughout much of this movie.

Normally direct-to-DVD flicks like this will at least possess the saving grace of an effort towards excessive gore. Negative again! Evidently the filmmakers were relying on their heavily flawed, soap operatic storytelling to sell DVDs. I wonder if they sold enough DVDs to buy a tank of gas yet.

The fun of these “wishes gone wrong” flicks is all in how the gory, funny, ironic deaths are handled and how creative the wish distortions are. We see neither such redeeming quality for even a moment. Contrastingly, clever writing can make these supernatural stories feel feasible when the ancillary characters of course disbelieve the magic and find the protagonist crazy (if even dumb eough to try to explain their story to, say, a police officer). No clever writing either. Nope. This flick was crappy through and through.

This is the bulk of our gory fun. It’s very “meh” in quality.

All of this was gleaned after 60 minutes of the movie. Just imagine how bad then the final 30 minutes must have been. NOT GOOD, folks. Let’s skip this movie. Don’t buy it, rent it, on-demand it, Netflix…don’t even watch this on the Scy-Fy channel at 2pm laying on the couch on a rainy sick day half asleep from cold medicine. Yeah, it’s that kind of lame.

               MY CALL: Although suffering from a slow pace and over-exposition, this was a promising little micro-budget movie by a filmmaker early in his career. After seeing this man-eating water nymph story, I look forward to what he can do when paired with better writers and a meatier budget. MOVIES LIKE Killer Mermaid: Other fun and, to be honest, better made mythological/folklore-based movies in contemporary settings include Thale (2012), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) and Trollhunter (2010). ALTERNATE TITLES: This movie was also released as Mamula and Nymph.

Opening, in all straight-faced seriousness, with a soulful Moby Dick quote only to transition into a cute couple’s vacation montage scored by promiscuously-themed club music and by the fourth minute baring breasts upon us…this movie is clearly all about balancing mood. Maybe more about balancing one ominous introductory quote with lots of bikinis, butt-angled camera shots and mermaid breasts to come.

Kelly (Kristina Klebe; Breadcrumbs, Chillerama, Halloween) and Lucy (Natalie Burn; In the Name of the King 2, The Expendables 3) go on a Mediterranean adventure vacation to a small, uninhabited island with Lucy’s Serbian ex-boyfriend Alex, who is bringing his fiancée…awkwaaaaaard. Needless to say, some lovelines get crossed. Also needless to say, this is hardly pertinent to the story.

Our young attractive group of vacationers encounter a super creepy old man (Franco Nero; The Woods, Django Unchained) who tries to warn them away from the island they wish to visit (Mamula) and of the man-eating nymph Scylla, who evidently “ate” this old man’s entire diving crew. I wonder why they didn’t buy into his totally credible story about an aquatic chick eating six grown men. So they go despite these warnings.

The island looked so beautiful in the daylight.

After he opening scenes and meeting the characters, things move at a sluggish pace and the acting is nothing to brag about. The good thing about that is that we more than sufficiently get to know the characters and maybe even care about some of them. The bad part is that we came to see a movie called “killer mermaid” and an hour into the movie we still haven’t seen this flesh-gnawing fish girl!

Nothing like The Little Mermaid‘s Ariel, our “monster” in this movie is a mix of Greek mythology’s singing siren and an anthropophagous mermaid. But to compliment this we also get a psychopathic fisherman pick-axing people with a grappling hook. When we eventually see the mermaid with her latex suit and CGI-tail it is, in fact, satisfying. I just wish we got to see a lot more of her throughout the movie. And no, I’m not talking about mermaid boobs…but they’re there as well.

She’s kind of cute.

The gore in this fantasy-horror is hardly present, minimal and infrequent. A bucket of chum made of severed hands, an impaled neck (but we don’t see it happen), some corpse butchering (but we don’t see it happen), and a single satisfying axe to the back make up everything leading up to the equally ungory finale. No good mermaid-related kills though. And that just ain’t right!

Oh, right…she transforms from pretty to “less” pretty.

Directed by Milan Todorovic, who is credited as the creator of the “first Serbian zombie movie” (Zone of the Dead) and now the “first” Serbian sea creature movie. I’m not so sure that these “firsts” should be considered noteworthy, but this movie wasn’t awful. It was really only “bad” in “good” ways and it certainly showed us what Todorovic can envision and do with a tiny budget. The storytelling suffers from over-exposition, especially in the very end, but this is fixable with experience and is nothing I’d advise skipping the movie over.

“I told you kids to stay away from that island!”

Give this flick a chance.