TITLE & REVIEW
After the events of the first film, Andy's mother is sectioned.
Andy is sent to a foster home with
Jenny Agutter
and Gerrit Graham [
Philadelphia Experiment 2
].
Eight years since the events of the previous film,
Andy has grown up to look like Justin Whalin [
Lois and Clark
]. He's attending Military School, along with attractive female cadet
Perrey Reeves
.
This is the fourth film in the Child's Play series.
Of course, after the third film was wrongly associated with the Jamie Bulger murder case,
it was probably the right idea to pick a new title to go with the series' new direction.
Chucky the killer doll looks up an old flame, Jennifer Tilly . They have a falling out, and she ends up with her soul trapped in a female doll. Yes, now there are TWO killer dolls on the loose!
Katherine Heigl and Gay Best Friend Michael Gordon Wolvett [ Andromeda ] are among the unfortunate teenagers menaced by the rubber duo.
.
.
Kenneth [Andrew Lee Potts -
Primeval
] is a stuttering epileptic janitor with a crush on
Jessica Alba/Julia Stiles
looklike student doctor Catherine (
Arielle Kebble
). Of course, Catherine would rather hang out with her fellow medical students,
a gang of sociopathic malcontents and egotists led by Kim (
Sarah Carter
). Kenny bumps into the Medics on their night out on the town.
They're high on drugs stolen from the hospital pharmacy,
and poor Kenny becomes the victim of circumstance.
OK, he's not really a nice guy - he's a peeper who undresses corpses in the morgue.
But still ...
Kenny ends up in a coma, and Catherine is the only one who feels bad about it. She tries to save him with an experimental drug. Unfortunately it activates the part of his brain that causes out-of-body experiences. And he uses this power to possess peoples' bodies. His aim? Bloody vengeance on the people who destroyed his life!
The murder spree is suspenseful but not overly-graphic. It's certainly superior to the Director's previous effort, Shrooms . The final act is a bit too fast-paced, the script evidently trimmed down, but it all comes to a thrilling conclusion.
This is a very early stalker/slasher film from 1955.
Robert Mitchum (
Cape fear
) is a serial killer who preys on rich widows.
He spends a month with a bank robber (Peter Graves - Mission: Impossible)
as a cell-mate, and learns that the loot from the robbery has never been found.
The villainous preacher seems to have inspired the character of Caleb in Buffy: Season 7 . His menacing presence, disguised by a Puritan attitude of godliness, permeates the entire film. He marries the robber's widow ( Shelly Winters ), then stalks the children.
The cinematography in this effort is wonderful. The aerial shot of the opening sequence, the nature shots of wildlife as the children flee through the darkness, the murderer's silouette on the skyline as he pursues them.
The third act come to a conclusion too rapidly for modern tastes, though it's filled with irony and deeper meaning that may well elude fans of the Friday the Thirteenth series.
The Police, led by
Dina Meyer
, close in on Jigsaw (Tobin Bell -
X-Files, Alias
). Unfortunately, the killer is actively targeting one of the detectives.
A handful of people wake up in a room. One is the detective's son. Another is Amanda ( Shawnee Smith ), a survivor from the first film. The victims have been dosed with poison, and have only two hours to find the antidote. Jigsaw has conveniently left the antidote hidden in the house, but the victims have to risk an array of hideous boobytraps.
This is directed by someone new, which explains the slightly flashier
visual style.
This film is slightly better than the previous couple of efforts.
It still has a modicum of gore, but it also has something of a plot!
One of the survivors of the last massacre realises that Jigsaw is still alive. He goes after the surviving killer - never realising that he's completely out of his depth. Jigsaw's specific and sadistic targeting of police officers shows his complete and utter hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, Five people wake up in a dungeon. Julie Benz is in a black wig, but still looks good. Dexter and Rambo are nowhere in sight, but while she's not Darla from Angel she still does a reasonable job of surviving ...
Yes, it's Hallowe'en time again, and everyone's favourite torture-porn franchise is back.
Taking up where the previous film left off, Jigsaw has a new set of victims lined up.
This time he's inspired a popular theme, that of the US health-care industry.
The victims are employees of a medical Insurance company.
Meanwhile, the FBI are closing in on Jigsaw. They have evidence that they haven't even shared with the local police detective in charge of the case.
In the flashbacks we get to see even more tension between Jigsaw and his accomplices. The whole thing is remarkably convoluted, compared to the relative simplicity of the first film. And the problem is that there are no sympathetic characters. There's nobody to cheer for, just a bunch of idiots who are doomed to an unpleasant ending.
Donna D'Ericco
is the great-grandaughter of the Candyman.
She faints every time she sees him, which is probably for the best.
Donna sells her great-grandaddy's paintings to a Latino Art dealer. He has a big showing of them at his gallery in a Spanish-speaking part of Los Angeles. This is a great opportunity for us to meet the b8unch of cliched stereotypes that Candyman will spend the rest of the movie slashing his way through.
This is a modern 21st Century remake of the little-known 1970s thriller,
starring Charles Durning.
Now, it has been said that modern remakes allow a modern audience see
familiar stars of their own generation in a familiar plotline.
This remake, in fact, contains no recognisable names or faces.
In fact, the only really modern aspect is the presence of cellular phones.
It's a relatively suspenseful film with none of the OTT SPFX and gore
that permeate horror films
from the 1980s
Friday the 13th
series to the more modern
Saw
torture-porn films.
A babysitter is left to look after a couple of children. Late at night, someone makes prank calls to her. Things get more and more sinister ...
This was Directed by Frenchman
Alexandre Aja
and filmed in Morocco (sitting in for the New Mexico desert).
It is a remake of a
Wes Craven
slasher from the early 1970s.
Craven himself Produced this, so it retains the standards of the original.
Ex-Cop Big Bob (Ted Levine - Silence of the Lambs ) and his family (including nubile teenager Emilie de Ravin ) take a detour off the highway, and end up in a remote former nuclear test site.
The radlands are inhabited by a family with hideous mutations (which actually look more like Vietnam-era Agent Orange birth defects). The mutants ambush the family, attack them and generally do terrible things. Bob's son-in-law, a bespectacled non-violent type, ends up laying down whup-ass like Hoffman in Straw Dogs.
The level of violence in the original film was ground-breaking. With this film, in contrast, the extreme violence is run-of-the-mill. The big break with Hollywood tradition is the depiction of sexual violence. It's a big no-no, even in Horror films,
Yes, another horror sequel about a group of people get stranded in the middle of nowhere and picked off one by one.
Usually it's a pathetic bunch of idiots passing themselves off as College students.
A pathetic bunch of idiots passing themselves off as National Guard reservists.
On the face of it, one could compare this to Southern Comfort rather than Aliens or Predator . Unfortunately, the kids making up this platoon of rookie part-timers (including a couple of supermodels) are in no way convincing as members of the US Military. Fair enough, the film is about cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers, but when even the human protagonists are unbelievably stupid (invoking every cliche in Horror Movies) then suspension of disbelief is a thing of the past.
This is filled with sickeningly OTT violence. The monsters kill and eat any men they catch. Worse, and more controversially, the female victims are used for breeding.
This starts soon after the end of the previous film.
While the actresses have aged 4 years, this is set 2 days after the team
originally entered the cave.
The Sheriff (Gavan O'Herlihy - Willow ) decides to lead a rescue team down into the cave system. He takes his deputy (the token dark-skinned Latina), the sole survivor of the original trip (who has shell-shock and Amnesia), and a trio of pot-holers.
We're used to horror movies like this where screaming teens act like complete idiots and always make the wrong choice. This time it's the Sheriff who messes everything up on a regular basis! In fact, the characters generally act so stupidly that it's almost impossible to root for them. And if you don't care about the characters' fates, why bother watching?
The climax of the film creates so many plot holes that one can only hope it was all another hideous delusion.
A remake of a low-budget 1980s slasher film about a masked killer on a rampage,
chasing after one of the Winchester Brothers from
Supernatural
on the weekend of Friday 13th of February 2009 ...
Sound familiar? Well, while we're waiting for Jared Padalecki's appearance in the Jason Voorhees reboot, we're treated to Jensen Ackles being chased by The Miner. This is part remake of the original MBV film, combined with ideas for the planned sequel.
Harry Warden, a thuggish miner, goes on a kill-crazy rampage in a small backwoods mining town. Ten years later, the survivors reunite. Tom (Ackles) has inherited a controlling stake in the town's mine, while Alex is now the Sheriff.
This is more than a simple hack-and-slash affair. It's a horror-dunnit, as we try to work out who the Miner is before we run out of likely suspects. And it's all in glorious 3-D. No cheap cardboard glasses this time, but hefty ones that you can wear over your prescription spectacles. Unfortunately this means you have to pay extra for admission.
A recent remake of a 1980s slasher, where a masked killer chases one of
the Winchester Brothers from
Supernatural
? Sounds a bit like
My Bloody Valentine (2009)
, doesn't it?
Jared Padalecki visits the ruins of Camp Crystal Lake to discover what happened to his sister, who went missing while camping there. He, along with a bunch of twenty-something television actors playing college kids (including Ryan Hansen from Veronica Mars ) are stalked by the machete-wielding freak.
This is pretty much a wasted effort. It's a nasty little shocker, full of plot holes and cliched characters. The humour of the original series is gone. This is to the original series what the Daniel Craig films are to the original Bond series.
Marcus Nispel directed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake a few years ago.
The film starts in Winter 1944.
The Red Army (with REAL T-34s, very impressive!) is pushing through Lithuania.
Nine-year-old Hannibal and his younger sister Misha get mixed up with local fascist militia types.
Grutas (Rhys Ifans) and Kevin McKidd (
Rome
).
These scum of the earth (they didn't make the grade for the SS!) end up trapped in a blizzard, with nothing to eat ...
Ten years later, Hannibal is a medical student. He gets the chance to get even with the militia, bumping them off one at a time in a series of gruesome murders that regularly splash blood across his face. Dominic West ( 300 ) is a Police Detective investigating the gruesome slayings.
This is an impressive period piece, a film noir suspense thriller with touches of gore.
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