ORBzine - Slasher Flicks 2007 Movie Reviews
Black Christmas (2006)
A spree-killer escapes from an Asylum, and returns home.
The family home (and murder scene) is now a sorority house,
where a group of college girls [including
Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
] spend Christmas.
Unfortunately, the serial killer is lurking in their attic.
There are several red herrings, but nothing really new (although it is slightly tongue in cheek). Kristen Cloke [the Director's wife] pops up, claiming to be the elder sister of one of the missing girls ... The girls won't leave their friends, which explains a suicidal action towards the end.
This is a remake of a little-known 1974 cult classic pre- Halloween slasher. James Morgan , best known for starting the Final Destination franchise, delivers another tongue-in-cheek horror film. It's gruesome, about an eyeball-eating cannibal.
Black Christmas (1974)
A group of college girls [including
Margot Kidder
] spend Christmas in their sorority house.
Unfortunately, a serial killer is lurking in their attic.
Bob Clark , best known for starting the Porky's franchise, delivers a nail-bitingly suspenseful horror film. It is regarded as a classic, and supposedly inspired Halloween . However, it avoids the conventions that modern slasher films have developed. The killer doesn't have a mask, or a backstory.
I've Been Waiting For You
This was adapted from a novel written by the writer of
I know What You Did Last Summer
. Teenager
Sarah Chalke
moves to a new town, where a witch was burned to death 300 years previously.
Soon after her arrival, descendants of the witch-burners are brutally murdered.
Paradise Lost AKA Turistas (Go Home)
Josh Duhammel [
Transformers],
Melissa George
and a couple of other English-speaking back-packers get lost in Brazil.
Some friendly locals offer to look after them ...
This is basically another example of the new trend in horror films - Torture Porn. Anyone who's seen Wolf Creek won't get any surprises. The only thing that really stands out about this film is the fact that making the inbred villagers Brazilian [instead of Scottish, Appalachian or whatever] makes it liable to accusations of racism!
Creep
Franke Portente
misses the last train home, and is trapped in a London Underground station.
Worse, the people she meets are murdered one by one.
Something horrible is stalking her!
This owes a lot to the 1970s film Death Line , about murderous inbred cannibals living in a disused Victorian tunnel. And when we finally see the killer ... There's a damn torture porn scene!
The title, along with the plot, appears stolen from a story in 2000AD. A bald ugly mutant murdered people in the Undercity, a maze of tunnels beneath Mega-City One (Home of Judge Dredd ). In truth, the movie seems a mix of both these sources - but it would be nice to see credit given where it is duely deserved!
Seed of Chucky
This is the most recent installment in the series.
Chucky seems to get destroyed at the end of every movie,
but always comes back for more.
Billy Boyd [ Lord of the Rings ] is Glen, a young puppet who wants to find out who his parents are. He tracks them down because he recognises his birthmark (Made in Japan). He realises they must be the evil puppets, Chucky [Brad Douriff] and Tiffany [ Jennifer Tilly ]. They're now just on the set of a movie - a movie about them!
Jennifer Tilly is on the movie set, voicing Tiffany's character. The killer dolls follow her home so they can artificially impregnate her. Of course, bystanders like Jennifer's assistant [ Hannah Spearitt ] and paparazzi John Waters get in the way! Jen meets Redman (the rapper director behind Xtina's Dirrrty), who wants to cast her as the Virgin Mary.
With Glen fighting his murderous subconscious [is he Glen or Glenda?], Tiffany insists that she and Chucky make a no-murder pact. But how long can they hold out?
This is a long way from the original film. It's got a much bigger budget - but is incredibly tongue-in-cheek. It was probably filmed in the UK, because of all the British actors.
Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre AKA The Next Generation
Renee Zellweger
and a couple of friends are on their way to the school prom when the car crashes.
They end up in a cabin with the psycho hillbilly family!
Leatherface is now a tame, harmless crossdresser, and there are only a couple of scenes with chainsaws. It's hardly a massacre! The brains and brawn of the family is Matthew McConaughey [ Reign of Fire ], who is a decent actor but due to the mediocre cinematography is less than threatening.
Despite the pair of big-name stars, this is a low-budget effort from BEFORE they were famous! It's very poorly made, and the stars have disowned it. No wonder that the series had to revert to a remake of the original! This is the weakest of the series that I've seen. The remakes didn't come out soon enough! A pity the treacherous Darla [ ] didn't get more of a career afterwards.
Vacancy
Bickering married couple Luke Wilson [
Charlies Angels
] and
Kate Beckinsale
get lost while driving in a remote part of the USA.
They stop at a local motel, run by rapidly-aging Frank Whalley [
Broken Arrow
]. Then they discover that the videotapes left in their room are snuff movies -
and they are going to be the next victims!
The couple are menaced by a couple of men in masks and boiler-suits. Cut-price Jasons, really. It's all a bit lightweight, compared to other slasher films. It has its moments, but it's really not a very impressive film.
Captivity
World-famous model
Elisha Cuthbert
is kidnapped, and wakes up in a dungeon.
She's tortured by a masked figure.
Then she discovers that she's not the dungeon's only inmate ...
This film in particular has come in for a lot of criticism. Instead of being over-empowered, as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer , the heroine is a generic damsel in distress. Worse, it's part of the torture-porn sub-genre.
The director is apparently an Academy Award winner. Unfortunately, this film is so bad that ... Let's just accept that the plot is so full of holes and the film is so deeply flawed that the unfortunate director must be well past his best.
Deathproof
This is the second half of the Grindhouse experience.
It's full of all the cheesy music and effects that we though were left in the 1970s.
Predictably for Tarantino, of course.
And his foot fetish is more obvious than ever!
A bunch of gorgeous young women got for a night out in Austin, Texas. At the bar they meet up with the likes of barman Quentin Tarantino and regular Stuntman Mike [Kurt Russell - The Thing, Escape From New York ].
14 months later, in Tennessee;
Zoe Bell, Tracie Thoms, Marie Elizabeth Winstead, Rosario Dawson go for a drive along some quiet country roads ...
Disturbia
We go from Deathproof, which put a new spin on 1970s slasher films, to this -
a remake of Rear Window (1954).
Yes, the protagonist is a teenager and he uses 21st Century technology in his spying,
but it's more or less the same story.
Shia LeBoeuf [ Transformers ] punches his teacher, and the police put him under house arrest for the summer holidays. His mother [ Carrie Anne Moss ] cancels his X-Box subscription, so he has nothing to do but spy on his sexy new neighbour, Sarah Roemer .
Unforunately he begins to suspect that his other neighbour, David Morse [ Green Mile ], is a serial killer! This leads to all the predictable scenes, as the police don't believe him and he tries to get proof ...
The climax involves Shia being stalked by a thug in a boiler-suit. Yet another Jason Vorhees rip-off, one may suppose, but it works quite well. And while we see the killer's torture tools, this doesn't descend into torture porn. All in all, it's a well-paced suspense thriller for a younger audience.
Halloween (2007)
It's 30 years since
Halloween
was originally made by
John Carpenter
, and ten years since
Halloween H20: 20 years later
came out. Rob Zombie
, who leaves himself open to being called a hack,
attempts a remake of the 30-year-old masterpiece
. The result?
Well, there are more b-movie cameos than in a Tarantino film ...
The story starts with ten-year-old Michael Myers getting bullied by drunken step-dad Ronnie [William Forsythe - Virtuosity ] and schoolboy thug Darrell Sabara [ Spy Kids ]. Myers also enjoys torturing small animals, so School Principal Richard Lynch [ Galactica 1980 ] calls in child psychologist Dr Loomis [Malcolm McDowell - Tank Girl ]. Unfortunately, this just sets the little creep on a kill-crazy rampage!
Michael ends up in a mental institution staffed by nurse Sybil Danning , janitor Danny Trejo [ Spy Kids ] and security guard Leslie Easterbrook . Yes, that's right - Callaghan from Police Academy. Which should give you some idea of the quality of the security that is meant to keep Myers from getting loose. After almost 2 decades of incarceration, Myers has grown from a chubby boy with long girlie hair into a seven-foot-tall giant with superhuman strngth and long, rock-star hair. Naturally, he massacres the entire staff and then goes home ...
Loomis and Sheriff Brad Dourif [ Alien: Resurrection ] must save the townsfolk from the kill-crazy maniac. The sex-crazed teenagers include a familiar face from the original series. The sheriff's daughter is Danielle Lloyd [who, despite being about 30 years old in reality, can pass for 17 years old in this film].
The original film's Michael Myers was a genuinely creepy, terrifying character. Unfortunately as the series developed he became more like the lumbering thug he had inspired - Jason Voorhees. And now Michael has been reinvented as a slasher with too much backstory who kills without reason ... Michael Myers is the core of the film. And since the makers didn't get Myers right, the film has no chance of working.
Saw 4
Every Halloween, regular as a clockwork boobytrap, we get a new SAW film.
This starts after the previous film, but gives a completely different take on the ending ...
With most of the original cops left, it's up to Riggs (the SWAT Commander) and Costas Mandylor [ Fist of the North Star ] to solve the mystery. Unfortunately, they're part of JigSaw's next twisted game ...
We get yet more backstory on Jigsaw - when the first was the best, really. Now he has an ex-wife, and a pitiful tale of how they lost their unborn child. Tear-jerking, but not really what this kind of film needs. There's plenty of gore and complicated murder-machines, of course ... but there's just too much being thrown at us. And as terrible as this sounds, it's just more of the same!!!
Shrooms
A handful of young Americans arrive in Ireland
to go on a psychadelic experience with some Magic Mushrooms.
They spend the night camping in the grounds of a disused Borstal,
next to a forest inhabited by a couple of inbred yokels.
During the night, their local friend tells them a gruesome campfire tale about the Borstal's horrible past. And in the morning, the deranged killers from his story start to pick the kids off, one by one.
This was the great hope for the Northern Ireland film industry. Unfortunately, the characters are completely stereotypical and two-dimensional, the story is cliched and the ending is predictable. There's a lot of repetition - we get a long build-up of suspense, followed by a loud sound-effect to make the audience jump! All in all, a great disappointment!
Return to the ORBzine LJ
Return to the ORBzine Homepage.
© Speculator 2007-8