the jaded viewer

Interview with Stuff Monsters Like

2012-01-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

It's rare that I get asked to talk about myself and my blog. But when I do, it's an honor and I will go out of my way to make it as fun as possible. So when the awesome-tastic site Stuff Monsters Like asked me to do a celebrity interview, I said "Who's the celebrity? Wait you mean me?"

So I obliged and answered the questions in only the way I can...by being all around goofy. Check out the interview and read my thoughts on the state of horror, how the jaded viewer got started and which country makes the best horror movies. Plus I think I make a reference to porn. I'm pretty sure I do. Yup, tons of free porn.

Check out my interview with Stuff Monsters Like
Check out Stuff Monsters Like (they've got cool interviews and awesome reviews)
Also check out their Facebook and Twitter pages

Kill List (Review)

2012-01-23T11:00:00.010-05:00

Kill List

Kill List (2012)

Directed by Ben Wheatley

On the surface, Kill List looks to be your standard five and dime crime thriller. Underworld goons doing their trade eliminating threats for $$. But as I thought about the film after watching it, you start seeing the layers underneath Kill List that enable you to see a movie that has more than meets the eye.

Kill List is a film that slowly burns you into a look into the life of a retired hit man and scopes out a world where his past, his present and his future all collide into an orgy of madness. It's an interesting journey seeing a drama, gore soaked slaughter and a Wicker Man-ish horror flick all blended into one. Sure there is a twist at the end and numerous unanswered questions which make you go WTF but it stills hit you harder than a hail of bullets.

What you'll get from Kill List is a character study of a soldier turned assassin who elects to try to live as a normal but it seems PTSD and pure conditioning to kill are not as easy to shut down when you get home. There is pure hell to pay for the sins of your past and it seems mysterious forces want have molded our hit man's world into their own.

Kill List is a solid flick that may seem like Pulp Fiction without the glitz and glamour. And for that it gets high marks for showing me a touch of all the genres I love from the UK.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Eight months after a disastrous job in Kiev left him physically and mentally scarred, ex-soldier turned contract killer, Jay, is pressured by his partner, Gal, into taking a new assignment. As they descend into the dark and disturbing world of the contract, Jay begins to unravel once again - his fear and paranoia sending him deep into the heart of darkness.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

I'm going to break this down via Earth layers. Seems easier that way as far as I'm concerned.

The Crust

Kill List starts off as we see Jay and his Swedish wife Shel arguing about money. It seems Jay is a retired ex soldier with tours of Iraq who came back and went all crime underworld . We meet his friend and partner Gal and during a dinner party they talk about their lives, a past botched job and the life they now lead.

Clearly Wheatley uses this first Act to make us care for Jay and Gal and their alpha male shenanigans. Jay and Shel have a son and we see his fatherly side as well as Mr. Husband. Both Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Buring) have an uneasy relationship and you can see the scars Jay has been dealing with bubbling up. He's angry and all his instincts have have been dulled by being in this normal life.

Both Maskell and Buring give off good chemistry as a husband and wife who know they have had issues as they both transition to normals (Shel knows Jay is a hit man which is unique). Michael Smiley as Gal is still struggling to go normal but it seems as we move on the the list, we'll see who still has the instincts to do the job.

The Mantle

As both Jay and Gal fulfill their assignments, Jay slowly descents into what he was in the past. Before they embark on the kill, they stake out their victims finding in their now grey moral world reasons to take them out. The kills involving a Priest (highlighted in big white text), a Librarian are dastardly brutal. They slowly start out as professionals but it seems as Jay's scars get reopened (allegor-ized by a inflicted slice on his hand) he's going towards the deep end.

It begs the question can a soldier or even a hit man just turn off "their switch" when they retire? Is it just that easy to do? Kill List says no and I agree. Jay who seemed to be a brutal killer back in the day is as vicious when he gets a taste for it again. Each of the victims on "the list" are moral embodiments to stop him from going back to his killing ways. A priest representing morality, a librarian representing logic and a government official representing the law. Jay ignores all of this and slaughters them all.

The Core

The final scenes with the final kill go into weird Wicker Man territory. Everybody seems to have been played and characters who looked idle appear to be more sinister. A action sequence through a tunnel is mesmerzingly claustrophobic and vicious. These last scenes are very peculiar whipping in survival horror with bizarre rituals. It' s possibly fitting Jay confronts organized chaos as his final test. Having been now conditioned into a cold blooded killer/soldier, his instincts kick in and he becomes the embodiment of a savage.

Could we have gotten a better explanation of the "game" being played? Final answers on why characters actions became oddly weird? Sure but Whealtey seems to want us to fill in the holes which is fine with me.

Kill List gets a barely 3 spinkicks from me for taking me on a long journey of how easily a man can be stripped of his normal suit and launched into a naked and vicious savage. That's what you should take away from Kill List.

Nude-ipedia

Nada

Gore-ipedia

Hammer to the head trauma
Gunshots to the head
Torture trauma
Sliced bowel trauma

WTF moment

The twist ending

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Kill List is available on VOD and on Amazon Instant Video. It comes out in theaters on February 3rd.

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

The Jaded Viewer has been censored by the United States Government...

2012-01-18T00:00:00.001-05:00

Learn about SOPA via the video below and contact your congressman or congresswoman letting them know you are against SOPA and PIPA. The Jaded Viewer and other sites rely on the flow and freedom of information to contribute to the lifeblood of the Internet. Any censorship by the government would discourage innovation and destroy creativity . Don't let this happen. Join in the protest and raise awareness.

Best/Top Horror Movies of 2011 (Compilation from the Internet)

2012-01-16T11:00:00.004-05:00

Hi y'all! (as Tucker and Dale would say) Well it's that time again where I make your life easier by compiling the top 10 (or best of) lists for 2011 for every major film and horror site, horror blog and online magazine out there on the interwebs. I'm not sure why I do this. It's a bit of a headache but it's fun comparing my list to everybody else.

I haven't tallied all of them but checking on most of them, you'll see the same movies on the list though a lot of different #1's. You'll see Insidious, I Saw the Devil and Tucker and Dale vs Evil on numerous lists. Yup they're all on mine as well. Be sure to check out my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2011.

Lot of readers or random stumble upon people like this aggregated post every year (Yeah I notice you all!). Everybody like me wants to know what they may have missed and get caught up. I'm the same way.

Well here ya go. Like last year, I've divided it up by different categories. Enjoy!

Horror Bloggers

Horror Websites

Film/Movie Sites

**Thanks to PromoteHorror.com for aggregating some of the lists**

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Did I miss a site or blog? Tweet me your list or post it on my Facebook page and I'll add you in. If you don't have a site, leave your top 10 in the comments below.

Appreciate the effort? Become a follower of the jaded viewer on Twitter and a fan on Facebook!

Top 10 Horror Movies of 2011

2012-01-13T11:00:00.011-05:00

Well here it is...ironically on the scariest day of the year Friday the 13th. My Top Horror Movies of 2011! Sorry for taking so long to get this posted but I had to catch up on some of the movies I missed this year. I usually look at other bloggers and horror site's lists and watch the movies that I missed.

Like last year, I've extended this to 20 films but numbers 20 to 11 are listed briefly as honorable mentions. My list has few movies that have appeared on others but I do put a spin on the order. I had a different take on what was considered "the best" this year and my picks are totally abnormal from everybody else. I'm just quirky that way.

First some fun facts and sidenotes!

Though some of these movies came out in 2010, I label any movie that got wide releases or DVD releases in 2011 as coming out in 2011.
It's a mix of indie horror and theatrical releases but mostly indies
I missed seeing some theatrical and indie horror movies but you have to rank what you saw so that's what I'm doing.
The top 10 films broken down by country: USA = 3, Canada=1, UK=2, Korea =1, Hong Kong=1, Norway=1, France =1
The 10 films broken down by spinkick rating: 4 spinkicks=3, 3 and 1/2 spinkicks= 3, 3 spinkicks=4
A movie that had 4 spinkicks doesn't necesarilly mean it was better.
To read the entire review of the film click on the title.

So what did 2011 offer us in the world of horror?

This list is dominated by independent horror films
Korean revenge reemerges and reinvents itself
3D Horror and remakes were everywhere and sucked yet again in most cases
The haunted house story likes getting retold
Everybody has Insidious in their Top 10 (it's not on mine)
The number one movie on my list is from the USA!!! (can you believe it???)

I take it some of picks will lead to WTF faces and "you're fuckin crazy". Isn't that the fun of these year end Top 10s? Let's get to the list! Here is #20 to #11 as honorable mentions.

Honorable Mentions

20.) Cropsey (2 spinkicks): Real life serial killer documentary examines the Staten Island Boogeyman.

19.) Paranormal Activity 3 (2 spinkicks): I didn't review this film but found it as good as the original but it brought nothing to the lore. Good scares for a prequel.

18.) The Walking Dead Season 2 (3 spinkicks): Sure it turned all soap opera bubble bath but it still had its killer moments of zombie craziness and WTF. Plus Glenn got some!

17.) Insidious (2 spinkicks): Everybody loved Insidious. Insidious is definitely a mixed bag for me but it definitely is slightly above average. With Insidious, James Wan amps up the traditional haunted house, flips it inside out, inserts twizzler twists and creates a genuine mythos based on extrasensory perception.

16.) The Human Centipede 2 (2 spinkicks): The Human Centipede 2 is not a good film by any means but its like a newborn's dirty diaper....you get a hell of a surprise. Devoid of any decent plot, a psychopath that is a couple of deadly sins incarnate (think sloth) and 100% medically inaccurate, its a film that is a big "FUCK YOU" by Tom Six for anybody who claimed the original didn't go over the edge.

15.) Kidnapped (2 spinkicks): Kidnapped will shock the shit out of you (that ending will stick in your mind like a splinter) but says nothing of why violence fascinates us. Kidnapped is awesome style, but little substance and stands on the lower ladder of the home invasion genre. It's also why I disliked The Strangers so much. I need more than "Because you were home"

14.) Machete Maidens Unleashed (4 spinkicks): I was salivating to see the history of Filipino exploitation films as I was too young to know what these films were and how they were made. Machete Maidens Unleashed is an awesome in depth look into a period of filmmaking history where anything went, labor was cheap, the blood poured and the boobs, well they were real and they were spectacular.

13.) Rage (3 spinkicks): Rage plays with it's audience so well, I even got duped by its overall simplicity. It's a mix of Hitchcockian slickness, Twilight Zone twistiness and Spielberg terror magic. Sure it's hindered by its low budget and some odd flashback placement but overall it's an entertaining movie that plays out like a long riddle of emotion. Rage tricked me big time and it's why it was so much fun.

12.) Stakeland (3 spinkicks): Stake Land draws a world of post apocalyptic America filled with non sparkly vampires and religious extremism taken to it's most extreme. Comparisons to The Road meets the Walking Dead meets Red State have to be made. And these are all good things in an above average flick.

11.) Bedevilled (3 and 1/2 spinkicks): Bedevilled is revenge cinema that will drive you nuts, pull at your emotions and above all make you think that all could have turned out differently if one only helped in a time of need.

The Top 10

10.) The Troll Hunter (3 spinkicks)

Thanks to Andre Ovredal's latest flick The Troll Hunter, my views of lovable trolls has now been smashed to smithereens. The Troll Hunter gives a unique spin in that now tired shaky cam/found footage subgenre. You've all seen ghosts, zombies, cannibals and other found footage flicks. What makes this one any different? Honestly, I gotta say it's trolls.

Somehow the subject of this college film crew discovering real life trolls makes the fantasy fun to watch. I actually didn't know much about the fairy tale and the folklore of trolls but as I watched the film it started educating me just like a documentary would. Add in some gratuitous running shaky cam, a glimpse of a real life Paul Bunyan troll hunter and some solid trolls FX and you have a great film that lives up to it's tagline.

9.) Attack the Block (3 spinkicks)

Attack the Block is a mix of a thugged up Goonies meets Gremlins and it's all freakin awesome. Blending a mix of comedy, monster mayhem, action-palooza and some class warfare "MESSAGE!!" it's a slice of fun fun fun. The unlikely criminal tykes we bloody fuckin hate somehow grow up, learn a lesson and gain respect the hard way.

Throw in some neato sci-fi monsters, a few splatter and gore and quick witted pop culture references rapid firing at a mile a minute and it's all the fun you'll have in 90 minutes.

8.) Black Death (3 and 1/2 spinkicks)

Black Death is a medieval throwback that stabs and slices with intense battle scenes and also challenges your cerebral with religious themes and the quest for power. It's an unbelievably constructed film that stays true to being a 14th century story without going into the ridiculous of being Monty Python. Director Christopher Smith takes the setting of the times of the bubonic plague and spins a story that you'll think about weeks after you've seen the film while balancing it out with characters that you empathize with. Only a master storyteller can keep you interested in such a tale and Smith just does that.

Black Death is a conflict waiting for you to see. A conflict of the body vs disease, man vs man and belief vs non belief. The contradictions man has to endure are as brutal as the battles and Black Death makes you experience all of these. There is no twist in Black Death. The only curveball is that it's brutally honest right up to the very end about the plight of humanity during one of the worst periods in history.

7.) Dream Home (3 and 1/2 spinkicks)

Dream Home is an uber slasher exploitation film that not only will make inner gorehounds FAP but make the intellectual cinephile think and FAP as well. Rarely does a Cat 3 make you think. Usually you think you're gonna watch some vicious kills and see some boobies. But with a stellar performance by Josie Ho and director Ho-Cheung Pang satirizing the desire for the have nots to have at any costs, it's a tour de kill slasher film of 2011.

Dream Home is intelligently designed to be an effective satire and an uber bloody and gory slasher which is to say, not an easy thing to do. Ho drives the movie, her performance yings to a woman who has lived harshly than yangs to her being a vicious, cold blooded motherfuckin killer.

I have not seen a HK Cat 3 movie that's left an impact this much like Dream Home. I think I've grown as a horror fan in that I'm not easily glamoured by wicked gore or spectacular splatter anymore. I expect my wickedly gory and spectacular splatter slasher flicks to say something about the world I live in.

Dream Home does just that.

6.) Rubber (4 spinkicks)

There is a lot of "no reason" in movies Quentin Dupieux through the character Lt Chad likes to tell us in the opening of Rubber. I'd never really given it great thought. Filmmakers slip in a deux ex machinas and you rarely question it. Maybe even a twist that makes no sense. But rarely does a movie go full frontal no reason like Rubber does. If the movie is trying to either make a statement about no reason in films or exists for no reason, you be the judge. All I can say is that it's an absurd motion picture that I thoroughly enjoyed. And I'm here to give you the reasons why I think it's one of the best of 2011.

Rubber is a throwback to all that is awesome about independent film like Linklater, Jarmusch and Kelly. Dupieux may not be on par with those names yet but he's brought back that vibe that percolated in the early 90s. Rubber is a genre film that somehow breaks all genres. I can't even generalize what it exactly is. It's a surreal-meta-weird horror comedy. It made me laugh countless times and made me think the rest of the time. Not a lot of movies can do that.

But the question you want to know is should you watch Rubber? I say yes and for one reason.

No Reason.

5.) Hobo with a Shotgun (4 spinkicks)

Don't fuck with the homeless.

That's the lesson I learned after watching Hobo with a Shotgun, the infamous grindhouse trailer turned full frontal feature from director Jason Eisener. If this was the 3rd film in a triple feature with Planet Terror and Death Proof, I'd have to say it was the best of the three by far.

Hobo with a Shotgun punched me in the face with it's witty humor, clever cleverisms and pure blood drenched awesomeness. It's a time travel throwback to 80s Troma mixed in with Street Trash and would be a banned video nasty if this were 1985. Each scene is like a mini trailer in itself, which you could cut up and edit and make 10 more trailers out of the film.

But even though it's hilariously ridiculous and you start scratching your head with one WTF after the other, it still never loses it's power to make you laugh, make you scream and make you applaud like a pimp at a whore convention.

Hobo with a Shotgun hits harder than a cop during a riot. You're not going to get a better throwback grindhouse movie this year. And for the first time in a long time, I'm giving it the highest rating the jaded viewer can bestow.

4.) The Innkeepers (3 spinkicks)

The Innkeepers is smart enough to know it's audience and by doing so gives us an old fashioned spooky throwback ghost story that balances the line between being cute and scary. The characters are drones, the guests are odd and the ghosts are cliched visual jump scares. With all the said, I still had a few problems with West's lack of a firepower ending and his overabundance to drag the movie into zzzzzzzzzzz territory but some things can be overlooked when I'm having fun.

But I'm all for the nostalgia for my vintage Poltergeists for the new millennium. The Innkeepers could be Generation X's's answer to that 80s classic.

The Innkeepers is damn fuckin smart. Characters react as I thought I would react, they get nervous, stammer and crack jokes like I would. Call me a horror hipster too. I'm not ashamed. The Innkeepers is a Generation X ode to the horror ghost story that younglings will like but keep us hardcore aged horror fanatics on our toes.

3.) Tucker and Dale vs Evil (3 spinkicks)

Sometimes looks can be deceiving and that's never been more evident in Eli Craig's Tucker and Dale vs Evil.

The fun in Tucker and Dale is that it takes the redneck/hillbilly slasher and turns it upside down. What if the hillbillies were just regular Joe Schmoes and the douchebaggy college kids were the dumb schmucks that caused 'da killin.

If you ever saw Wrong Turn, Friday the 13th. Texas Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes films, you can grasp where this is going. It's been a while since I've seen a horror comedy that knows the genre its making fun of. All the stereotypical elements are dropped in from the music to the scary general store owner to Dale's maniacal laughter. But all are misunderstood elements that twist the hillbilly horror genre into a world of strange coincidences and full of LOLs.

It's a film that definitely holds its own in the Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland horror comedy pantheon of films. Tudyk and Labine are a comedic duo of devilish funnies. I'll say it right now. It may be the best horror comedy this year. It hits all the right banjo notes, is awesomely quick witted and a very clever parody of redneck slashers.

2.) I Saw the Devil (4 spinkicks)

It wouldn't be the same if Korea didn't release an awesome revenge flick this year. But surprisingly they released 2 stellar revenge movies with Bedevilled being the other. I Saw the Devil is on lots and lots of Best of 2011 lists and deservedly so. It's a top notch, blood soaked crime thriller that echoes the pantheon of awesome Korean revenge but takes a step into a whole new frontier. You're not just given a rinse and repeat formula, oh no. In this dark and dreary tale, Jee-woon Kim serves up a curveball that will befuddle all your senses, pull your emotions and have your jaw completely on the floor.

What separates I Saw the Devil from its American counterparts is a sense of humanity that gets loss at our most vulnerable. The white knight becomes dark. And the level of grey is maximized to give the audience a decision to evaluate who is exactly the "devil" in this film.

I haven't questioned my loyalties in a while but I Saw the Devil is like a personality test for all those involved. Revenge is a dish best served on a heaping pile of decapitated heads and blood splattered walls and floors. I wouldn't want it any other way.

1.) The Woman (3 and 1/2 spinkicks)

Oddly enough, I think I was one of the few who watched Andrew van den Houten's The Offpsring, the original movie The Woman is a sequel to. I gave it a "C" which is the equivalent of 2 spinkicks.

With The Woman....the shock value is amped up to give you a fuckin punch in the nuts. What you get is a film that clearly satires the -ism it puts front and center and spews a vicious gore appetite, the squeamish may just walk out of the theater (which is what happened in Sundance).

Lucky McKee and Jack Ketchum with The Woman challenge your perceptions of civility by sending you scene after scene of what misogyny and sexism looks like on gamma radiated steroids. It's disgustingly violent and atrociously hard to watch but in this disturbed suburban nightmare, father demands he knows best and some may actually may agree. I was truly mesmerized by this tale of satire-sploitation. It's a film with exploitation characteristics but has so much to say as well.

The Woman will clearly be a "love it" or "hate it" film. It's a satire of the cookie cutter American family and the values they teach to their children. Even in this odd set up of a feral woman being "civilized", there is black humor and a few chuckles. The movie attacks traditional gender roles and the woman in The Woman maybe not be who we think she is. I have to say, it's a masterpiece of Americana horror satire, a film you have to respect because it hints at a truth that we all want to deny is real.

The Woman shows America's contradiction in a bloody gory horror movie. When you remove the blood and gore, what you get is an examination of how mentally savage we might be. That's almost as sickening as seeing our Woman slaughter her captors.

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OK, I know you fellow jaded viewers have your 2 cents. So go ahead and let me have it. Throw that smelly poop at me or if on the off chance you partially agreed on some of my picks, send me that love. Chime in and let me know what you think.

This list of the Top 20 Horror Movies of 2011 also is an opportunity to see the movies you may have missed that made many of the best of 2011 within the horror community. We all missed a few flicks here and there. I hope you all give all of these movies a chance and then come back and let me know what's the what.

The Jaded Viewer Related Linkage

The Best Elephants, DIY Indies and OMG! Movies of 2011

2012-01-11T11:00:00.014-05:00

Before I post my top 10 horror movies (yes it's coming soon), I wanted to go over the other movies (yes I saw other non horror flicks) that I thought were super duper awesome this year. From the box office Hollywood juggernauts to the indie spectaculars, these stood out like no other (plus there the only ones I saw). There are also a few films you may have missed that will completely blow you away.

"Box Office Elephants"

1.) Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Best sci-fi/action flick of the year. Serkin made me care about ape-kind.

2.) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: I'm a big Potter fan (shhhh) so I liked how it all ended.

3.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Rooney Mara gets all naked/grunty/scary in this remake of the Swedish bestseller. She drives a typical crime mystery into awesomeness.

"DIY Indie Spectaculars"

1.) Super: Not as good as Kick-Ass but fun nevertheless. Wilson and Page made an awesome crazy dynamic duo as normals become superheroes.

2.) Kaboom: Gregg Araki makes a comeback with a WTF film that will make you sexual uncomfortable as it will make you scratch your head...and your balls.

3.) Waldo the Dog: Best indie screener I received this year. Waldo the Dog will be unlike any other film you have ever seen. It's the equivalent of seeing a fancy car get wrecked, miraculously repaired and then totally wrecked again. As much as you'd like to look away you can't. It's just so mesmerizing to watch.

4.) A Foundling: A Foundling breaks the handcuffs of the conventional indie film. It's a serial Western with a twist and though follows such a simple story of 2 sisters reunited, it's even smart enough to comment on the world around them.

"The OMGs"

1.) Ninja Kids!!!: One of the best films of 2011 from Takashi Miike. Ninja Kids is like Spy Kids on acid. Think Harry Potter but with over the top ninjas and slapstick comedy. It's a cute Japanese family film with a Miike insanity mixed in. And it works from start to finish. It's super duper funny, has some dog poop humor and a ton of CGI madness that only Miike could think up. Based on a long running Japanese TV show called Rantaro the Ninja Boy, it's filled with humor that's international in the LOLs. It's got visual wackiness, self aware parodies and villains that are basically clowns with swords and ninja stars.

What you get is a family comedy that leaves you feeling freakin awesome after you leave the theater. Ninja Kids is heartwarming Japanese wackiness, the Miike way.

2.) BKO: Bangkok Knockout: BKO: Bangkok Knockout which is without a doubt, the best action movie of 2011. BKO is an orgy and ballet of violence set to a soundtrack. You won't know the names of the characters or care if the bad guys get their comeuppance. Seriously, it's not important.

As long as you were mesmerized by the punches, kicks, double kicks, double punches and the synchronized attacks, BKO has done it's job.

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What non horror movies did you think were the best of 2011? Let me know!

The Winner of The Jaded Viewer 2 DVD Giveaway is.....

2012-01-10T11:00:00.001-05:00

Well because of the holidays, it took me a while to get back into jaded viewer mode. But I've finally picked a winner for the jaded viewer 2 DVD Giveaway.

Like I said previously, I'll be honest, I had no interest in reviewing these flicks. Looking at some reviews, they're not what you'd consider "kick ass awesome" or even "mediocrely average". Sure I could have watched them and probably created awesome mockery reviews but I'm going to hope the winner can do that for me.

So the winner of this giveaway is....

Kim K.!

Congrats Kim. Now can you write me a review? :-)

More giveaways to come so keep checking the Jaded Viewer Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.

Dream Home (Review)

2012-01-09T11:00:00.006-05:00

Dream Home

Dream Home (2011 - USA)

Directed by Ho-Cheung Pang

I take pride in watching Category III Hong Kong flicks. I loved the Anthony Wong driven The Ebola Syndrome and Dr. Lamb, video nasties that were fucked up beyond recognition. So it's been a while since I've seen a Cat 3 HK flick but having seen Dream Home litter a few best of 2011 lists, I knew I had to seek this beauty out.

And what did it do? It slaughtered a few of the other flicks from my 10 story top 10 list and moved right into the building (see what I did there?) Dream Home is an uber slasher exploitation film that not only will make inner gorehounds FAP but make the intellectual cinephile think and FAP as well. Rarely does a Cat 3 make you think. Usually you think you're gonna watch some vicious kills and see some boobies. But with a stellar performance by Josie Ho and director Ho-Cheung Pang satirizing the desire for the have nots to have at any costs, it's a tour de kill slasher film of 2011.

Dream Home does suffer with issues with realism, the kills are somewhat comic bookey and there is a serious issue with the use of flashbacks that may confuse some viewers. A subplot of affairs and pacing issues also hurts the film a bit as does the super strength of our uber killer. But all that aside, Cat 3 HK flicks have always had a bit of slapstick and oddness about them that makes them mesmerizing to watch.

Dream Home is my dream movie. Fuck yeah.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Cheng Li-sheung is a young, upwardly mobile professional finally ready to invest in her first home. But when the deal falls through, she is forced to keep her dream alive - even if it means keeping her would-be neighbors dead.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Let's break this down movie down by different sections of an apartment building.

The Lobby

Cheing Lai (Josie Ho) works as a telemarketer for a bank around 2007. She's a regular office drone leading a typical life (working 2 other jobs, taking care of her father and brother, being a mistress and whoring it...you know typical shit). However, she has a dream. She wants to live in an apartment looking over the ocean bay of Hong Kong. Despite her lack of funds to buy this apartment she is willing to do anything to make her dream come true.

It's not everyday a movie opens with some suffocation via plastic bag and plastic handcuff restraints. With Dream Home, you get sucked in and the movie starts to establish a pattern of Cheing Lai going to slasher school while we also get flashbacks of her life as a child which establish her motivations for what happens in the present.

The Living Room

Soon we start seeing our girl in action as she slaughters her would be neighbors all in one night. The odd part of this is I usually root for the slasher and was kinda mystified by my lack of cheering as it seems silly to kill your potential neighbors to bring the price down of an apartment. But the slaughter is magnificio! Our first kill scenes revolve around a pregnant woman who is brilliantly suffocated via suction (you gotta see this shit...fuckin crazy...see below)

....and the old reliable ocular trauma makes a cameo. But as the movie went on, Cheing Lai showed she was vulnerable, getting wounded in the midst of her battles and though we shouldn't empathize with a cold blooded killer, I was hoping she'd be OK.

Maybe it's because she's a woman but oh have Cat 3 flicks changed. Cheing Lai rivals Anthony Wong's throne of being the hardcore of hardcore slashers.

The Kitchen

I mentioned previously the movie employs ill timed flashbacks. First with Cheing Lai as a little girl whose family has to deal with being forcibly removed from their apartment by Triads working for greedy developers. Later she sees the plight of her family and the tole of her dad being sick and not being covered by health insurance.

The flashbacks show up without any notice and sometimes I got lost in where I was. Early on years were subtitled in but it's a bit confusing as one can't tell where we are with the story. I'll say the flashbacks do give you a glimpse of our slashereta's motivations of why this apartment by the sea is so important. Sure it's not justification to kill people but for a crazy insano like Cheing Lai, I guess it is.

The Bedroom

Ahh the bedroom, because that's where the good action all takes place. Cheing Lai's best kills when she home invades a group of Chinese hipsters, whores and drug dealer. The movie climaxes in the kill scenes here with a variety of creative kills ranging from intestine spillage, toilet trauma, glass beaker neck stabbings and wood to mouth Fangoria approved slaughter. And some J. Bobbitt. Because's what's a slasher movie without a penis trauma right?

It's a testament to non CGI-ness of it all. Cheing Lai also gets some luck to get out of the mess she's been in as the cops want to bust in and stop the madness. It's this ridiculousness that makes Dream Home a little fantastic. Can a dude still smoke a joint while his intestines are all over the floor? Dream Home says yes.

The Patio

With all this fuckin awesome slaughter, the movie poses a few ideas about why our mistress of slasher-dom does what she does. The movie satirizes what one is willing to do to buy her own home which in turns plays out the notion of how the housing crisis evolved. Sure Cheing Lai goes the fuckin beserk route to get the price down by the real estate agent by murdering a bunch of people in the building but in retrospect the working class, even the poor are willing to do what it takes to own their own home thus taking those shady deals from the Fannie Mays and other home brokerage companies. Should they have known better? Of course. But somebody should have told them it was wrong. These companies didn't.

As the flashbacks indicate, the HK government seemed to conspire with the mob and real estate developers to remove poor people from their homes in order to replace them with luxury high rises. It seems we can then conclude that the movie was implying that the working class wanted what was originally theirs. Cheing Lai is the embodiment of that.

The movie ends in irony and it's pretty obvious that nobody will live happily ever after. But what Dream Home establishes is a why in the midst of the chaos. The slasher genocides these people for her own selfish reasons but in a way the movie wants us to ignore that she's killed innocent people and empathize with her working class background.

Dream Home is intelligently designed to be an effective satire and an uber bloody and gory slasher which is to say, not an easy thing to do. Ho drives the movie, her performance yings to a woman who has lived harshly than yangs to her being a vicious, cold blooded motherfuckin killer.

I have not seen a HK Cat 3 movie that's left an impact this much like Dream Home. I think I've grown as a horror fan in that I'm not easily glamoured by wicked gore or spectacular splatter anymore. I expect my wickedly gory and spectacular splatter slasher flicks to say something about the world I live in.

Dream Home does just that.

Nude-ipedia

Whores show boobies
Simulated sex and BJs
I love Cat 3 nudity!

Gore-ipedia

See my descriptions above
So much awesomeness and creative kills, it should go into the Hall of Fame

WTF moment

The whore gets floor boarded

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Dream Home came out in Hong Kong in 2010 but was released in NA and EU in 2011. It's available on DVD via IFC Midnight. Rarely does one see a Cat 3 film and say that it's thought provoking. Usually I go and say that shit was hilariously fucked up. I can proudly say that it's both!

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

The Best Jaded Viewer Features of 2011 You May Have Missed

2012-01-06T11:00:00.003-05:00

Sometimes throughout the year, I'll miss a damn good post by another horror blogger. It's hard to go back and see what good stuff has been written by them. I mean how will I ever get to read it if he or she doesn't tell me about it again?

Well I'm hoping you use this post to get to read some of my best features, reviews, lists and article I've written in 2011. Seriously, some of these are kinda hilarious if I say so myself. I re-read them and I'm kinda amazed I actually wrote it.

My favorites out of 2011 are my Half Moon review, the Sucker Punch photo blog, the Netflix vs VHS post, the Occupy Wall St/Romero article and when I reviewed Exit 33 starring Kane Hodder by parodying Rebecca Black's Friday.

I hope you get a kick out of these and LOL as you read them. Enjoy!

January

My review of Half Moon which stars pornstar Tori Black where I count how many times I see either boobs, the moon or a wolf
The Roommate: What the generic still photos actually tell us
My predictions for 2011 weren't really accurate
2010 Top 10 horror movies

February

March

April

May

June

Congrats! You're a Horror Blogger....now what?

July

A Picture review of Bloodrayne: The Third Reich
The WTF List: Sucker Punch (trust me it's pretty good)

August

3 Pairs of Arnold Schwarzenegger Films that are Unintentionally Connected
5 Social Media Sites that would reinvent the horror movie
5 Horror Movies Hollywood will NEVER remake (because they don't know how to)
Exit 33 Review (I review this movie by parodying Rebecca Black's Friday and via tweets from other horror bloggers)

September

Insano Steve's review of The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence

October

November

December

The Best Quotey Quotables from the Worst Movies I saw in 2011
Final Girl's Bloggenaire: The Jaded Viewer (a lost Q&A interview with yours truly)

Kidnapped (Review)

2012-01-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

Kidnapped

Kidnapped aka Secuestrados (2011)

Directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas

I've always thought the home invasion film is one of the most terrifying genres in all of horror. I mean the reason why is pretty obvious. It realistically could happen. That's terrifying as shit right?

Lots of movies have been made about this and I've seen a lot of them. Them (aka Ils), The Strangers, Inside and Funny Games are all the notables. When I first saw Michael Haneke's Funny Games, I'll admit I was blown away. Vicious violence and Haneke's attempt to chide us and ask if we were desensitized to it all was revolutionary. Now we're given yet another home invasion film that's just as nihilistic and unrelenting as Funny Games and one has to ask why?

Vivas's Kidnapped is a Spanish import that puts the audience uncomfortably close to a home invasion playing in real time and let's us squirm as a family is robbed, tortured and terrorized. It's pure cinematic wickedness as Vivas employs only a few cuts/edits and instead hovers the camera around the action as it plays. It's a damn eerie and effective technique, one where audience has nowhere to escape but feel as terrorized as this family.

But the problem with Kidnapped lies not in it's dread or viciousness but in it's characters. Our family are ridiculously badly drawn: Dad is inept, Mom is too houswifey and daughter seems like a spoiled brat. The bad guy's don't fair either. I'm going to use a Miami Heat analogy that may or may not work to explain their dumb-ititude.

In the end Kidnapped will shock the shit out of you (that ending will stick in your mind like a splinter) but says nothing of why violence fascinates us. Kidnapped is awesome style, but little substance and stands on the lower ladder of the home invasion genre. It's also why I disliked The Strangers so much. I need more than "Because you were home".

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Three hooded Eastern-European criminals burst into a home in a Madrid gated community, holding the family hostage in its own home, and forcing the father to empty his credit cards.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Let's get that pesky plot out of the way. Innocent Spanish family has just moved into an awesome new home and they display all those qualities of rich families I despise. Dad is mega rich, Mom is all into house wife duties and the daughter wants to party. When 3 ski masked criminals invade their home, they are abused and fucked up. Dad is forced to get PINs for all his credit cards and driven out into the city and take out the max from ATMs. Meanwhile, mom and daughter are guarded into a sense of home invasion normalcy.

Later, unexpected visitors ring that damn doorbell and get caught in the mix. It's up to our fearless duo to make sure their master heist goes according to plan. The camera work here is utterly flawless. The shots hover like a guardian angel, we peek in from scene to scene with no cutting whatsoever. Violence becomes almost dreamlike. In one scene where our girls try to escape, the terror is amplified by a Vivas technique where he goes split screen and we see the action take place simultaneously. It's damn effective revealing the horror of both scenes. My eye wandered to the criminals as I knew I'd see mega fuckedupness on their end.

It's this style that is suspenseful and draws an eager viewer into this hellish world that's taking place. Kidnapped is paced so well that it's a testament to the actors and actresses to get all their dialogue, motions, etc all accomplished without any cuts. You really do admire this type of cinema as its exhilarating to watch.

Let me go into that Miami Heat analogy. When one goes into home invasion as a criminal activity you'd think the 3 of them would be on the same page. Let's break them down with their Heat counterparts.

Master Chief Criminal: Wade

We have a leader who is the one takes the dad around town maxing out his cards. You'd think this guy could be able to handle his crew but you'd be wrong. He's doesn't have the pulse of his team and seems to be a useless kind of leader. But you get the feeling he's gonna put a dagger through your heart and come up with a Wade like game winning bucket.

Petty Criminal Crazy Guy: LeBron

OK this guy is kinda nuts. He goes all crazy and almost goes all Lebron in the 4th quarter. The entire heist was in jeopardy because of his actions. He goes all murdery on a inspector and decides to "SVU" the daughter. He's totally the muscle of the crew but definitely a total choker...you know like Lebron.

Petty Criminal Morality Guy: Bosh

This guy has a total change of heart and feels bad that Lebron guy is totally fucking up everybody and is out of control. Like Bosh, he's the 3rd fiddle and he brings absolutely nothing to the game. If you're recruiting for a home invasion, you need soldiers willing to do anything to get the job done. They brought Morality Bosh Guy. And he's a fuckin pussy.

So there you have it. Your Big Three master criminals. The master plan is completely flawed. How much can one really max out from an ATM machine to get a big score? Not a helluva alot I would imagine. Home invasions are bash and dash. You get in, you loot and you get out. But these guys are having a fuckin sleepover. Plus their team isn't as solid as one might think with a bad captain, a crazy guy and a wuss.

If it wasn't for Wade guy saving the day, they'd have lost to the damn Cleveland Cavaliers family. In every home invasion movie, the family always tries to fight back or escape. And sure our family does here. I'd take the argument that summoning up courage is hard to do when you fear for your life. But one has to make sure when they are fighting back, you actually defeat your enemy. I like to think in a way that the family was only up by 2 pts and thought they had won the game. That's when Amazing happens.

Kidnapped's characters are just not at all interesting and the logic is a little off. The style as I said was spectacular but the substance of what this nihilistic journey was for is lacking. In Funny Games, Haneke broke the 4th wall and talked to the audience and asked us what WE WOULD DO. It seemed that Haneke wanted to provoke the audience and ask why we want to see the violence and when he REWINDS the action, we're even more thrilled. There is a message within Funny Games with its clean cut villains and the quagmire they give the family.

In Kidnapped, it's all glitz and glamour. Oh we see our big 3 wreak havoc, we see the dazzling dunks of gore and splatter and a game winning shot and I enjoyed seeing this mayhem. But it didn't really give me anything to talk about after seeing it. I didn't come away with something that might be thought provoking or worthwhile.

Kidnapped gives you a taste of home invasion genre, the life and death struggle but doesn't have a conceptual theme of what we just saw. It's nihilism for nihilism's sake and sometimes that's all you get.

Nude-ipedia

Daughter has serious cleavage issues

Gore-ipedia

Sliced throats
Gunplay
SVU action
If I told you more, the movie might be spoiled

WTF moment

The ending

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

I know Kidnapped is high on many Top 10 lists and it will get an honorable mention from me in mine. I expect more from my home invasion and I got what I expected. European imports usually have both style and substance. I'm kinda shocked Kidnapped didn't have the latter.

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

Rage (Review)

2012-01-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

Rage

Rage (2011)

Directed by Christopher Witherspoon

Who knew 40 years ago, a TV movie by an unknown director named Steven Spielberg would still be influencing filmmakers today? With Duel, Spielberg made a statement about man's isolation against a force of nature or something like that.

That's where Rage draws it's inspiration from and because of this influence, director/producer/editor Chris Witherspoon even drew up a scene commenting on what the metaphor might be. One can make up comparisons but I'm pretty sure Generation Y and Z have never seen Duel. So Rage becomes it's own malevolent little indie that takes cat vs mouse to a whole new level. What Witherspoon has created is a tense, suspenseful and amped movie about a ordinary Oregonian with his share of secrets and thrown him into a deadly game vs a masked villain whose motivations are also hidden in secrecy.

Rage plays with it's audience so well, I even got duped by its overall simplicity (I'll explain in a bit). It's a mix of Hitchcockian slickness, Twilight Zone twistiness and Spielberg terror magic. Sure it's hindered by its low budget and some odd flashback placement but overall it's an entertaining movie that plays out like a long riddle of emotion.

Rage tricked me big time and it's why it was so much fun.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

A thirty something man who lives in a suburb just outside of Portland says goodbye to his beautiful and loving wife and heads into town. There he unintentionally provokes the wrath of a mysterious motorcyclist. The confrontation between the two, sets in motion a day long battle. Beginning in the form of harmless taunts then quickly escalating into something more serious and then into something unimaginable.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

So we get to hang out with Dennis Twist (Rick Crawford), a 30 something writer from Portland, OR who with his wife Crystal (Audrey Walker) live the American suburban life. But all is not well with the Dennis. He has a few secrets and on his day off, we're going to see all of them. As he drives off in his SUV we see him get into a scuffle with a black helmeted motorcyclist over a parking spot. Dismissed, he meets with his mistress who he breaks off an affair and also meets with a friend where they discuss his failed writing career.

Soon the stalking of Dennis begins and the motorcyclist is appearing at every angle. He is taunted at a red light, then his car gets keyed is only the beginning. Later his breaks are cut and a random beatdown at a bathroom get it all into the bit of ultra violence. Dennis plays mouse and our Darth Vader mute (he doesn't speak throughout the film) are gaming it up for all of us to see. It's not until Dennis gets home does all shit hit the fan. Uber gorehounds with rejoice in the splatterific scenes involving chainsaws, stab-o-palooza and an uncomfortable rape-ture. The end of Rage is pure madness and one final twist breaking down what the fuck just happened is the WTF of the entire movie.

Let me get what irked me out of the way. There is a bit of bad acting by all (Dennis's neighbors are cardboardy) and Rick Crawford who plays Dennis goes in and out of his Irish accent on more than one occasion. During highly emotional scenes, none of our actors can emote above a 5. But overall Crawford plays a mousey mouse well and shows a man littered with guilt and believes karma is out to get him.

Witherspoon also added a few B/W tinted flashbacks of scenes that only happened 5 minutes before. I have no idea why these were added. I'm pretty certain I was following along and didn't need a reminder. There were also a few odd camera angles that had me scratching my head ( a lunch scene in particular was a bit odd)

But these can be forgiven because Witherspoon for an indie does a nice job of getting SUV vs motorcycle shots all over Portland. Solid camera work for on the location shooting and I was impressed. It's a testament to Witherspoon's ability to make low level speeding into car chasing awesome.

Rage is clearly a guessing game. Witherspoon plays with the audience tossing in clues and red herrings to get us emotionally vested as well as riddling all of us. His mistress ex BF might be the man under the helmet but we savvy vets are ultimately going with the Twilight Zone route and expect somebody else. Everybody wants to know who this road rager is and why he might be doing it but it's not until the end do we get a clear explanation. At first, I thought I had been gypped, that all that had occurred was too far fetched for our stalker to go through to exact revenge.

But I remembered a scene Witherspoon inserted mid way in where cordial social parking protocol was followed and realized what I was watching. The movie wants you to believe our psychopathic biker is the embodiment of karma, what goes around comes around. Our man Dennis has to pay for his transgressions, for all the evil that he has done to his wife and to others. It's a brilliant play on the audience's preconceived notions of what we SHOULD expect. But the world is a much simpler place. People get angry for the stupidest and dumbest reasons and real ultra violence happens for far less. I mean people got beatdown for retro Air Jordans, wedding dresses and an Xbox during Black Friday madness.

All the clues lead to Rage. It's the damn title in the movie and the clues are littered throughout peaking at that scene I mentioned earlier. Witherspoon's Rage is so creatively smart that even the best cinema-phile might have been duped. It's one of the best movies I saw in 2011 and I'm going to keep my eyes on Witherspoon (he played the biker BTW). In a few years, we might be calling it Witherspoon terror magic instead.

Nude-ipedia

Nada

Gore-ipedia

Chainsaw trauma
Stabby stab stab stab

WTF moment

The reveal at the end

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

I get a lot of indie screeners sent to me and I toss them into a pile and figure I'll get to them eventually. But the horror blogosphere is getting this little indie the buzz it deserves and I decided to watch it based on the hype.

Rage has no release date but it has won tons of awards. Rage won top honors at the 2011 Horror Quest Film Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. Rage screened in festivals across America and all over the world including the Oldenburg International Film Festival in Oldenburg, Germany and the Cryptshow Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain.

Hopefully Witherspoon gets a distributor so the horror universe can see this awesome bad boy.

The Vitals

The official site

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

Attack the Block (Review)

2012-01-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

Attack the Block

Attack the Block (2011)

Directed by Joe Cornish

The first thing I noticed about Attack the Block is the dialogue. British ghetto younglings have a speech all their own and it's really mesmerizing to hear. Lots of "Get me?" and "love" and "Believe!". At times, I had no idea what the fuck they were saying. But that's the fascination right?

I know all the supposed "bad" neighborhoods in NYC. But I've been getting the feeling I should never set foot in Brixton in south London if I ever visit. Get these kids in a movie theater and shit gets loud (oh no he didn't go there!) Lots of ghetto kids go see a horror flick and will yell shit at the screen saying if faced in the same situation with the killah they'd "fuck that suckah up!" (they're words I cleaned up a bit) The beauty of Attack the Block is now we get to see these same tough thugs battle hairy, glowy teeth but blind alien monsters and see if they're all just talk.

Attack the Block is a mix of a thugged up Goonies meets Gremlins and it's all freakin awesome. Blending a mix of comedy, monster mayhem, action-palooza and some class warfare "MESSAGE!!" it's a slice of fun fun fun. The unlikely criminal tykes we bloody fuckin hate somehow grow up, learn a lesson and gain respect the hard way. Throw in some neato sci-fi monsters, a few splatter and gore and quick witted pop culture references rapid firing at a mile a minute and it's all the fun you'll have in 90 minutes.

Quick rehashed plot revolves around a thug of youths led by Moses who mug Sam a girl who lives in the projects (is that what they call em in London?). Soon our ragtag group of misfits (3 blacks, 1 white boy, Sam, pot smoker Brewis) are running and dodging these reject monsters from Star Wars. Aided by Nick Frost and also on the run from a kingpin drug dealer, the block is all in chaos in this one night.

The action scenes are well executed. The kids have bikes, scooters to aid in their escapes and they've got the weapons and use em. Samurai swords, knives and fireworks (the dangerous kind) all come into play and shit gets real fast for them. But these same kids, supposedly tough as nails get scared too. It's this balance in characters that makes them feel human and empathetic. The fact they know the choices they make have consequences is a theme throughout. Lots of good suspense and wicked kills are littered throughout ATB and director Joe Cornish paces it nicely.

He also puts in great scenes of funny jampacked with British references. They call the monsters gollums (LOTR) and Dobbies (HP) and it breaks the tension to have them be all kids in such an adult situation. Any reference to video games will give me a chuckle.

Sure it's a bit silly at times and the monsters aren't very memorable as they should be, but it's forgivable. Clearly we get racial overtones and "the feds" are willing to go all Rodney King on any black youth we see. I mean after seeing the shit that went down during the London riots (that video of the foreign exchange kid getting jumped comes to mind) you really want to hate these brothas from south London in real life and in this movie. But it's all about the choices they make and here they make the right ones.

Attack the Block is a sci-fi kid adventure and twisting the protagonists around makes it worthwhile. You'll rarely see a film that takes the outrageous cheesiness of furry alien monsters and blend it in with thug life. It's a one of a kind movie, one with charm and scares.

Believe.

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

I Saw the Devil (Review)

2011-12-29T11:00:00.012-05:00

I Saw the Devil

I Saw the Devil (Akmareul boatda) (2011)

Directed by Jee-woon Kim

"I will kill you when you are in the most pain. When you're in the most pain, shivering out of fear, then I will kill you. That's a real revenge. A real complete revenge."

-Soo-hyun

It wouldn't be the same if Korea didn't release an awesome revenge flick this year. But surprisingly they released 2 stellar revenge movies with Bedevilled being the other. I Saw the Devil is on lots and lots of Best of 2011 lists and deservedly so. It's a top notch, blood soaked crime thriller that echoes the pantheon of awesome Korean revenge but takes a step into a whole new frontier. You're not just given a rinse and repeat formula, oh no. In this dark and dreary tale, Jee-woon Kim serves up a curveball that will befuddle all your senses, pull your emotions and have your jaw completely on the floor.

What separates I Saw the Devil from its American counterparts is a sense of humanity that gets loss at our most vulnerable. The white knight becomes dark. And the level of grey is maximized to give the audience a decision to evaluate who is exactly the "devil" in this film.

I haven't questioned my loyalties in a while but I Saw the Devil is like a personality test for all those involved. Revenge is a dish best served on a heaping pile of decapitated heads and blood splattered walls and floors. I wouldn't want it any other way.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

I SAW THE DEVIL is a shockingly violent and stunningly accomplished tale of murder and revenge. The embodiment of pure evil, Kyung-chul is a dangerous psychopath who kills for pleasure. On a freezing, snowy night, his latest victim is the beautiful Juyeon, daughter of a retired police chief and pregnant fiancée of elite special agent Soo-hyun. Obsessed with revenge, Soo-hyun is determined to track down the murderer, even if doing so means becoming a monster himself. And when he finds Kyung-chul, turning him in to the authorities is the last thing on his mind, as the lines between good and evil fall away in this diabolically twisted game of cat and mouse.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Simple premise really. Fiancee of special agent Soo-hyun is killed by a most depraved serial killer Kyung-chul, who makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mickey fuckin Mouse. In his quest for revenge, Soo-hyun methodically tracks down the scum of Seoul until he finally meets our fucked up Dexter. But death would be too quick for Kyung-chul so Soo-hyun decides to turn the tables as the cat is now the mouse. It's this twist that breaks the mold. It's executed brilliantly and the path these two leave are dead bodies, scarred victims, confused cops and massive beatings not seen since Oldboy.

The type of revenge Soo-hyun implements is almost as methodical as a serial killer. It's calculated, it's wicked and it's fucked up beyond what I can describe. But clearly this Korean revenge film could have delved into mucho sadness but during the cat and mouse scenes, it echoes a Tom and Jerry vibe. The violence is insanely sadistic but in almost over the top cartooney way. We get head bashing, bag suffocation, Achilles heel trauma, random pipe beatings and mouth trauma. Really in all this mayhem, I found myself chuckling at the ACME level smashes to the sternum.

But what drives I Saw the Devil is clearly it's two main pro/ant-gonists.

Let's start off with Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi). He is a serial killer who has no morality whatsoever. We see him hunt women and kill them without any remorse. Choi is absolutely brilliant displaying a performance that shows a man who in this midst of survival and second chances remains as evil as can be. True evil killers, similar to a Category III HK flick villain are what Kyung-chul embodies. He is a wolf and clearly he sees all people as his sheep. Even though he is bruised, battered and rundown, he still unleashes his teeth. It's unbelievable. Instinct would tell you that once you got the shit beaten out of you, you'd give up. But it's Kyung-chul's perseverance that is a trait that no other serial killer on screen has ever shown.

With Soo-hyun, he slowly devolves, losing his humanity in his quest for vengeance. Like Ahab in Moby Dick, all he cares about is slaying the White Whale that crippled him. His fiancee's death, she was the daughter of a former police chief, has driven him into madness and Byung-hun Lee plays him with a calm robotic quality. All his anger and sadness are buried deep and in the film's final act does it unleash into a wicked but clever way. Great performances by these actors.

I Saw the Devil is stylish, punch in the gut of what revenge cinema can do to you. Your emotions sway and the basic instinct to give "an eye for an eye" are something we all have thought about. Like it's well known predecessor Oldboy, it has a twist and a rawness we Western audiences hardly see in are Hollywood CGI blockbusters. It's why the Dark Knight seemed to work for us when it gave us the same dilemma.

Let's make sure that I Saw the Devil gets the accolades it deserves. It's a bloody, gore splatterific opera of revenge cinema at it's sharpest. A movie that leaves you thinking of what YOU would do if faced with the same situation. If you had superhero, CIA-tech and awesome fight skills like Soo-hyun, would you do the same? Are we all capable of being evil when we believe it's justified?

Who exactly is the devil in the film? Maybe it's actually all of us idly applauding this masterful and brilliant film of 2011.

Nude-ipedia

Victim boobies are creepy to look at

Gore-ipedia

So much gore and splatter if you blinked, you'd miss a decap

WTF moment

Our killer makes a discovery in the bathroom
The ending

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

See this bad boy ASAP. It's out on Blu-Ray and DVD released via Magnet Releasing. I still have chills thinking about that ending. Fuckin brutal.

The Vitals

The official site

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

The Best Quotey Quotables from the Worst Movies I saw in 2011

2011-12-27T11:00:00.008-05:00

It's that time of year again where I go through all the crappy and mediocre movies I've seen and give you my best witty jabs from each review. Everybody has their worst of 2011 lists. But as I try to AVOID bad films, sometimes I'm lucky enough to not have seen any of the garbage. But when I really hate a film, I'll admit, it turns into awesome funny reviews.

So enjoy some quote snippets from the crap chunks of movies I saw that made me smash a few walls with my head....yet again,

***********************************************************

"The Anniversary at Shallow Creek is full of countless cliches, ranging from 1st person camera creeping in shots to loud BA BOOM! sounds to get you to jump. It didn't have a mirror scare but get this, no cell coverage is replaced with the fact they couldn't even find their cell phones!"

-from The Anniversary at Shallow Creek review

"Bloodrayne: The Third Reich is the equivalent of seeing a monkey throw its own feces at a tiger. It's kinda goofy and totally outrageous. You're hoping to see the tiger just rip the monkey to shreds. But all we get is more feces thrown all over the place. Yup...there's shit all over the place."

-from Bloodrayne: The Third Reich review

"The ending is completely out of leftfield. Hell I think it's out of the 20 yard line. Come to think of it, I had no idea what sport I was watching. The movie spun out of control and ended up being one long scene of boring."

-from Bleading Lady review

"Closed for a Season is a 2 hour (!) pseudo horror film that potentially could have been a scary flick with an abandoned amusement park as it's backdrop but they didn't put in a ride for the audience to scare us at all. And the purpose of the awesome rides like roller coasters is to get a fright and thrill for 2 minutes. That's a helluva rush. Instead we get a ferris wheel (which is our maxed out conclusion, how appropriate) and the viewer has ridden a ride of a film that did absolutely nothing.....That's just freakin boring."

-from Closed for a Season review

"The fact that I could watch YouTube FAIL videos while I watched this flick shows how long these boring scenes were. I'll admit, I've got American ADD and it's not my style to watch long drawn out scenes that set up a BOOO! scare. But even the scares were like flat soda."

-from The Coffin review

It’s Hodder, Hodder
Gotta get down with Hodder
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the killin, killin
Hodder, Hodder
Gettin’ down with Hodder
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the killin

-from Exit 33 review (where I use Rebecca Black's Friday to create a parody lyrical review of this film, click on the link to read all the lyrics)

"OK I've watched a few women scorn movies but I'm no expert. I tend to use logic like an alpha male and start asking pesky questions. Call the police? Why wasn't this an option? I've seen my share of Law and Order: SVU and clearly the police can arrest somebody and convict them in an hour."

-from Fatal Secrets review

"If you think watching this film is the equivalent of reading Mary Shelly's book, you'd be wrong. Very wrong."

from The Frankenstein Syndrome review

"Fright Flick is campy and corny and jokey...like Jokey Smurf. Sure the explosion in a gift gag is funny the first 3 times but after a while you want Gargamel to eat that motherfucker. We carefully encounter a reveal which can be easily figured out using your standard Sherlock Holmes detective manual."

-from Fright Flick review

"Wolf dude tells TB about his life and he is lonely. Score! TB falls for it and they get into the lovemaking. It's a love scene but Tori Black makes it seem like she's on the 5th hour of a gangbang orgy."

-from Half Moon review (starring pornstar Tori Black and also where I count how many times the movie shows either boobs, the moon or a werewolf)

"The Human Centipede 2 is a competitive horror viewing contest. The original was easy to stomach, participants easily digested everything they took in. But HC2 is seeing a dude eat beyond his capacity and then vomit it all up. Do you really want to see that shit?"

-from The Human Centipede 2 review

"Black and white might've been an attempt at art. This shit ain't art. This shit is shit."

-from Insano Steve's The Human Centipede 2 review

"What's left is a indie movie that's ambitiously slick for it's own good. I can buy that there are redneck sections of Canada, but government conspiracies and a town hiding one of helluva secret is a bit much. Director Brooks Hunter via the press release says the movie reflects his bipolar disorder and there are metaphors throughout. Clearly if I knew this I'd have probably seen a broken glass of milk as something other than a broken glass of milk. Sorry, I'm not that clever."

-from Kenneyville review

"The film itself is a miragy mix of Harmony Korine's early stuff and it's just plain boring. Add in the visual nausea and the meanderings of dialogue (and bad acting) it's a milkshake of nonsense."

-from My Name is A by Anonymous review

"The dialogue is clever but the actors don't seem to have the comedic timing I was hoping for. Sure you'll get a chuckle on a few one liners but mostly it's a rushed indie blockbuster film with lots of ambition. The movie was made in some dude's house (maybe without their knowledge!) and their isn't a lick of gratuitous nudity (well somebody was gonna ask)"

-from Ninjas vs Vampires review

"All in all, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is Dowdle's grand attempt to cash in on the mockumentary and found footage craze at the same time. I think if I had seen this in 2008 I would have called it "revolutionary" and "creepy scary". But in 2011, I'll say it is revolutionary and creepy scary but I'll add in one more thing. "Cheaply dated"."

from The Poughkeepsie Tapes review

5.) I've tasted human blood and it kinda tastes like purple drink. Why can't these creatures just buy some purple drink from the local 99 cents store instead of murdering innocent mall shopping teens?

I like purple drink too. Next thing you know purple drink gonna be sold at Hot Topic and mass marketed to suburban kids everywhere. Gone will be the days where people enjoyed the novelty of purple drink as a cheap, watered down grape tasting beverage. What was your question again?

-from Prowl review

"The thing about a film that tries too hard, is well it tries too hard. Respire treads on so many horror genres, it felt like like a movie montage."

-from Respire review

"I knew from the moment I first saw the trailer for “The Roommate”, that it was a must-see movie (not necessarily a must-pay-to-see). As a bad movie connoisseur, I was pleased when this film received less than 10% positive reviews. Comically bad acting and incoherent plots are what I’m all about.....The Roommate definitely delivered the bad movie I was hoping for."

-from Insano Steve's The Roommate review

"Savage makes a SyFy original movie look like a Hollywood blockbuster. It's not only that the characters are boring, the plot is laughable or Bigfoot is clearly taking HGH. It's that the movie is filled with scenes of people talking about a plot and subplots I didn't care about. I believe it was something about some forest fire, shady real estate deals, an armed robbery and a pregnant woman......All I cared about was seeing a vicious Bigfoot killing and eating campers. And even that sucked."

-from Savage review

"We've all seen mice experiments before and you know eventually it'll get to the cheesy middle. It's how the maze is conceived is what makes it exciting. And Shellter has an interesting way to get there but your going to go on a lot of dead ends before you get there."

-from Shellter review

"I don't get it....Every other reviewer seems to think this was a creative and unique take on the old Romanian legend that spawned the vampire. Maybe I have ADD and can't stand long, boring scenes of nothing. Maybe I don't get the humor in this. Maybe I don't understand why Romanians speak English. Maybe I don't get the fact the film is goofing around with a generational gap.....Maybe I just don't get this flick. "

-from Strigoi review

"It's the gore and splatter that drives Sweatshop, make no doubt about it. It's not reinventing the slasher genre but it's making sure the definition is being 100% adhered to."

-from Sweatshop review

"The entire film COULD and I stress could have been awesome. A horror comedy that relaxes the viewer, a ghost story that gets them edgy and a creature feature that gives you the sexual willies. But the first 2 never really got into the final story and by the end, you're not expecting much. Slices of Life is an unfired firework, ready to explode but nobody lit the fuse. Instead we're given sparklers and told "Have a good time kids!"."

-from 3 Slices of Life review

"I'm also a big Jamie Chung fan. I have no idea who Abbie Cornish is. And I have indeed seen Vanessa Hudgens naked."

"So the "dances" are actually the action scenes. Clearly OLD ME understands this film concept but TWEEN ME can't get enough of seeing Emily Browning do backflips and Jena Malone shooting a gun that weighs more than her."

-from Sucker Punch WTF List review

"I mean at times this movie got boring...I could only imagine what real ballet is like."

"This is like when Hogan went from the yellow and red to the black and white."

"Mila's been busted open!!! OH THE HUMANITY!!!!"

-from Black Swan WTF List review

***********************************************************
Also check out my previous year editions of The Best Quotey Quotables!

What's your worst horror movie of 2011? Got any quotey quotables you want to add from some not so good movies this year? Comment away!

Insidious (Review)

2011-12-26T11:00:00.000-05:00

Insidious

Insidious (2011)
Directed by James Wan

Well I'm pretty late with a review for this. Part of the reason why I didn't watch this initially in theaters or on DVD was the overhype. It's on a bunch of best of lists and it's currently fresh on Rotten Tomatoes so I figure I'd give it a chance.

In any case, if you still want a review here you go. I'm going to make this quick as I know most of you have already seen it. Insidious is definitely a mixed bag for me but it definitely is slightly above average. With Insidious, James Wan amps up the traditional haunted house, flips it inside out, inserts twizzler twists and creates a genuine mythos based on extrasensory perception.

These are all awesome things and 3/4 of Insidious had me intrigued. It's when we are pushed into the boundaries of the ethereal plain and LITERALLY see the sight beyond sight called "The Further" does it all turn into a piling heap of doo doo. There are qualities of Insidious that call out "Poltergeist me!" and will always be in the back of the horror hound's mind. We see ghost/demon infiltration and we think Poltergeist...it's kinda not hard to. For all it's cheesiness, Poltergeist did it first (or mainstreamy first) and that sets the bar fuckin high.

I won't go into the plot too much. You know it. Family moves into a nice suburban home, child goes into unknown coma, weird scary jump scares start happening and a medium is brought in with her Mulder and Scully ghost hunter crew in tow. Secrets are revealed and dream worlds are seen. Cue scary ghosts and light bulbs shattering.

Performances are all OK, but the part I liked the most was the slight explanation of the phenomenon. It kind of made sense in an odd way. There hasn't been a mainstream feature film about astral projection and that should make Time Life Books proud. The old lady medium adds a flair as do the ghost busters with their PKE Meters and science gizmos. Even the initial mythos of The Further was pretty original and creative. The seance is one of the best scenes in the entire movie. I was hooked and I had this hovering around 3 and 1/2 spins, then.....

It's when you finally see the apparitions does it all look cheesy. Ghosts in bridesmaid dresses, ghosts in suits, ghosts with red war paint. The dreamworld is just our world with more tint. Why is that? Wan clearly could have figured out a way to make something unique. Even the fights between our hero father were a bit contrived.

For all that WTF, Insidious did ooze of originality and a millennial throwback to that traditional ghost story. Having seen The Innkeepers before seeing Insidious, I have a different perspective on how the generic ghost/haunted house movie can be warped into something fun and awesome. Sometimes, NOT seeing things makes the best believing. Insidious hovers like an apparition bent on wreaking havoc but in this case, only knocks a lamp over and unhinges a few picture frames.

Clearly that wasn't enough to scare me at all.

Rating:
1/2

Check out the trailer.

The Innkeepers (Review)

2011-12-23T11:00:00.007-05:00

The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers (2011)

Directed by Ti West

There is a king of the slow burn horror movie and his name is Ti West. West, who's filmography includes The Roost, Cabin Fever 2 and The House of Devil has made a name for himself in the methodically paced horror movie. I was not a fan of this in The House of the Devil writing:

"However, at the end of the day the movie is a wicked slow slow slow burn. It takes so long to get to the nitty gritty that no Red Bulls were helping to keep me awake."

However, in The Innkeepers the slow burn has hills and valleys and surprisingly has humor in it filled with cleverisms and pop culturisms that rescue it from being engulfed in eternal boredom. It dabbles in LOLs while fine tuning a ghost story as it's central premise. What you get is a fun, mish mash of amateur ghost hunter hipsters making contact with the ethereal plain which slowly evolves The Innkeepers into a non laughing matter.

The Innkeepers is smart enough to know it's audience and by doing so gives us an old fashioned spooky throwback ghost story that balances the line between being cute and scary. The characters are drones, the guests are odd and the ghosts are cliched visual jump scares. With all the said, I still had a few problems with West's lack of a firepower ending and his overabundance to drag the movie into zzzzzzzzzzz territory but some things can be overlooked when I'm having fun.

But I'm all for the nostalgia for my vintage Poltergeists for the new millennium. The Innkeepers could be Generation X's's answer to that 80s classic.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

After over one hundred years of service, The Yankee Pedlar Inn is shutting its doors for good. The last remaining employees - Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy)- are determined to uncover proof of what many believe to be one of New England's most haunted hotels. As the Inn’s final days draw near, odd guests check in as the pair of minimum wage “ghost hunters” begin to experience strange and alarming events that may ultimately cause them to be mere footnotes in the hotel’s long unexplained history.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

When you do a supernatural horror movie, you can possibly go one of two ways. You can go all LOLs or you could go deadly serious. It seems Ti West elected to do both. In The Innkeepers, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) are hotel worker drones who man the Yankee Pedlar Inn (in CT) for one last weekend before it goes out of business. There is a history of dread, as the hotel has a legend of Madeline O'Malley, whose death in a cellar has caused her to haunt this now defunct hotel.

The movie revolves around the dynamic of our hipster duo. Luke documents the history of his paranormal workplace on a website while Claire is in awe of a famous old timey actress (who she adores) that has checked into the hotel. Both are realistic drones who burn their boredom away with clever dialogue, actual job duties, beer and a search for scientific proof of the supernatural.

Staying at the hotel 24/7, they take shifts but at night, Claire goes all Fox Mulder and starts hearing the creeks and squeaks of something not right. It's here West goes all slow burn, hovering above Claire as she searches the remnants of a hotel (sometimes in full daylight) other times in the dead of night. Sara Paxton has a mesmerizing quality that made me buy into her performance. Claire is an asthmatic, everyday girl whose ambition has slowly died away. Paxton's performance is quirky stellar, similar to that of the cutout of a "hot gamer girl" but in this case "hot ghost hunter girl".

Pat Healy's Luke is goofball lovable. He's the horror geek, bad at web design, obsessed with the supernatural and possibly infatuated with his partner in crime. And his performance is not condescending to us horror hipsters at all. I could easily call these characters my friends.

But West wants to make sure that you get just enough haha's before he unleashes his House of the Devil style slow burn jump scares. And don't worry you get some eerie buildup of falsehoods and glimpses of either hallucinations, dreams or actual paranormal phenomenon. The fact that it's vague is part of the charm all the way to the end. It's almost a perfect film in how the atmosphere gets built up (a lost art in my opinion) and a perfect blueprint feature resembling those viral Internet videos with the "actual ghost footage" that leads to a growly scream of a "ghost" that usually scares the shit out of you.

My gripes, though few, are the things I originally said about House/Devil. I appreciate the false alarms but they take fuckin a Lord of the Rings trilogy to get there. Other characters such as Leanne Rease-Jones (played by Kelly McGillis) is the equivalent of the guy who always knows about the legend. Leanne plays a healer/medium who senses danger but elects to stay at the creepy hotel anyway. A few more guests make appearances but none add to the overall film.

Finally, I still don't think Ti West knows how to end a film. With such buildup, one demands an ending which can hold up the entire movie. Instead, West goes all conventional and I was a bit disappointed. I'm not looking for some M. Night Shalatwisters, but it still felt a little flat.

But as I said before The Innkeepers is damn fuckin smart. Characters react as I thought I would react, they get nervous, stammer and crack jokes like I would. Call me a horror hipster too. I'm not ashamed. The Innkeepers is a Generation X ode to the horror ghost story that younglings will like but keep us hardcore aged horror fanatics on our toes. I love my nostalgia not remade but repackaged in original creative tales. Ti West has finally made a movie I liked, nay loved. That's a first.

The slow burn horror king has built a kingdom with a unique style, flair and has a treasure room of all those very familiar cliches. Sometimes royalty shares the wealth with the people and Ti West does just that. Hopefully the 99% will see The Innkeepers for the gem that it is.

Nude-ipedia

Sara Paxton shows some leg (she's so damn cute!)

WTF moment

The first encounter with Madeline O'Malley

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

The Innkeepers will premiere on Video in Demand on December 30th, 2011. It'll be in theaters on February 3rd, 2012 courtesy of Magnet Releasing. The film is in conjunction with Dark Sky Films and Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix.

The Innkeepers is definitely going to find a place on my Top 10 of 2011 list. If you're looking for a quality old fashioned spookster, this is the perfect film.

The Vitals

Facebook Page

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

The Shortround: House Call (Review)

2011-12-22T11:00:00.001-05:00

Erik L Wilson is a filmmaker from Chicago and recently dropped me a line on his new short House Call. It's headed to film festivals soon so be on the lookout. House Call is a supernatural short filled with creepy creeps, betrayal and revenge. Here be the plot.

Synopsis: Janice does the unthinkable in order to start a new life with her new boyfriend. However, strange things begin to happen on the night of their one year anniversary.

the jaded viewer says: With any supernatural or ghost story, you've gotta go all slow burn to get the desired effect of jump scares and BOOs! House Call does just that in creating an atmosphere of slow burn eerie that will eventually lead to vengeance. Pacing, suspense are built up nicely and Wilson takes his time to develop the characters and the story. A few wrinkles of CGI are even added as a voodoo mom exacts her dish best served cold.

My problem with this short are the characters. None are remotely empathetic and you pretty much want all of them to die because all their actions are pretty much evil. Who should I root for? The evil people or the more evil people? It's this that had me not caring about Janice, her boyfriend or the ex.

Some nice touches are thrown in like a neighbor's call and some rad gore and makeup effects. But it's an uneven balance and all in all House Call is effective but average supernatural macabre tale.

Check out the trailer.

House Call -- Horror Short -- Trailer from Erik L. Wilson on Vimeo.

Check out the Facebook page for more info!

The Woman (Review)

2011-12-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Woman

The Woman (2011)

Directed by Lucky McKee

Oddly enough, I think I was one of the few who watched Andrew van den Houten's The Offpsring, the original movie The Woman is a sequel to. I gave it a "C" which is the equivalent of 2 spinkicks. I originally wrote:

"What the book and Ketchum tried to hint at is that these cannibals are like locusts and it’s in their nature to kill. Moreover, the “civilized” ex-husband versus the uncivilized cannibals act eerily similar when their lives are on the line. That’s the connection you should have made but the movie fails at this and all we’re left with is kid on kid violence for the sake of shock value."

With The Woman however, that connection is clearly made and the shock value is amped up to give you a fuckin punch in the nuts. What you get is a film that clearly satires the -ism it puts front and center and spews a vicious gore appetite, the squeamish may just walk out of the theater (which is what happened in Sundance).

Lucky McKee and Jack Ketchum with The Woman challenge your perceptions of civility by sending you scene after scene of what misogyny and sexism looks like on gamma radiated steroids. It's disgustingly violent and atrociously hard to watch but in this disturbed suburban nightmare, father demands he knows best and some may actually may agree. I was truly mesmerized by this tale of satire-sploitation. It's a film with exploitation characteristics but has so much to say as well.

The Woman will clearly be a "love it" or "hate it" film. It's a satire of the cookie cutter American family and the values they teach to their children. Even in this odd set up of a feral woman being "civilized", there is black humor and a few chuckles. The movie attacks traditional gender roles and the woman in The Woman maybe not be who we think she is. I have to say, it's a masterpiece of Americana horror satire, a film you have to respect because it hints at a truth that we all want to deny is real.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Family man and lawyer Christoper Cleek (Sean Bridgers) must do what he can to protect his family when he comes into contact with a feral woman (Pollyana McIntosh) living in the woods near his isolated country home. Through a series of harrowing encounters Cleek and his family quickly discover there is more to this woman than anyone would suspect and that sometimes the devil wears a handsome face.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Let's get the nuthshell plot out of the way. We meet the Cleek family, Chris (Sean Bridgers) our alpha male, hunter and lawyer father, his wife Belle (Angela Bettis) who plays the obedient house mom, their daughter Peggy whose having teen issues that could be featured on MTV, their son Brian, a clone of his father and wee Darlin (their youngest).

Meeting this functional family in suburbia, one can only believe their is more to them than meets the eye. Chris is a motherfuckin patriarch of patriarchs. He is a throwback of man and he has "civilized" his family to know their roles. Discipline is handed out in physical abuse, where a Rick Flair "Woooooo!" would be said after every slap. When Chris discovers a feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) in the woods, his instincts (sexual) and other wise get raised and he decides to bring her home to the family for her rehabilitation. Like a sick dog, the family does has dear old dad tells them to.

Soon the dysfunction is hitting everybody in the family. Dad's being too comfortable with our savage in the cellar, son is becoming like dad and the the boiling point of mom is breaking. Secrets are revealed and the final 30 minutes are off the charts on the WTF scale. The Woman is a play on how those red states might believe is what America should be, spewing the same hate on the airwaves and brainwashing their children to do the same.

The performances are top notch with McIntosh delivering a seething anger through incomprehensible dialogue and emotional vengeance stamped to her face. She is beautiful but deadly and shows a flair aiken to Jenny Spain in Dead Girl. Bridgers is stellar as the misogynistic father who unleashes fury to get his respect. Bettis has a memorable scene when she unleashes her vent up frustration and anger. Great overall performances by the cast all around.

The Woman has a feminist agenda for sure. It dabbles on the identity of gender roles, maternal instinct and how compliance is just as deadly when nobody questions authority. It's easy to ask why nobody questions their father's judgement. But one should ask how savages can act civilized while we in the modern world do not. We cover our savagery with colorful dialogue, double entendres and we give B.S. reasons for our abuse.

The Woman shows America's contradiction in a bloody gory horror movie. When you remove the blood and gore, what you get is an examination of how mentally savage we might be. That's almost as sickening as seeing our Woman slaughter her captors.

Gore-ipedia

Ripped Necks
Bloodied corpse
Random neck trauma
Slice and diced
Oozing orifices

Nude-ipedia

The lovely Pollyanna McIntosh gets naked (full frontal) multiple times

WTF moment

The family's secret
The last 15 min

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

The Woman is headed towards my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2011 for sure. I was a little scared this wouldn't live up to the hype I gave it. It is the definitive Lucky McKee movie, the one that hovers above 76% on Rotten Tomatoes and deservedly so. No horror movie this year has made wince, cringe, nauseate and think all the same time. See The Woman.

Rating:
1/2

Check out the trailer.

Contest: Win 2 tickets to Nightmare: The Experiment!!!

2011-12-17T18:45:00.001-05:00

Tis the season to be fearful, fa la la la la, la la la.

Well after having attended Nightmare (Before Christmas) The Experiment, I got a good dose of fear, humor and had tons of fun seeing others cringe. It's a great show and the audience definitely gets their money worth participating in this one of a kind show.

Partnering with Nightmare: New York, I'm giving the gift of fear by having a contest to win TWO (2) tickets to Nightmare: The Experiment on 12/22 (Thursday). The contest will run from today to 12/20 (Tuesday).

What do you need to do to win?

***Tell me the most embarrassing or craziest story where you had to face your worst fear.***

Based on creativity, humor and triumph (and a combination of all 3), I'll pick the best story. The first fear you'll have to overcome is telling this story to the Internet.

I'll pick the winner on Wednesday 12/21 and you'll get to experience The Experiment for yourself! You can enter in the following ways:

1.) Through a comment on THIS POST

2.) Via Facebook on the jaded viewer page

3.) Via Facebook on Nightmare New York's page (make sure to tag the jaded viewer Facebook page)

4.) Via Twitter (@jadedviewer and @NightmareNYC)

5.) E-mail jadedviewers at yahoo dot com

**Be sure to include your e-mail address as well if you enter via comment**

If you win via Facebook, please contact me from the e-mail address above for further instructions. If on Twitter, I'll DM you.

From the official site, here's the info about this new holiday haunt.

Psycho Clan, producers of NIGHTMARE, New York’s most horrifying haunted house and AOL CityGuide’s No. 1 rated haunted attraction in NYC have announced that they will expand the sensory assaulting theatre experience THE EXPERIMENT into an off–Broadway run on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A special holiday version of NIGHTMARE (BEFORE CHRISTMAS): THE EXPERIMENT will run December 9 through December 23, 2011 at Los Kabayitos Laboratorio at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street between Rivington and Delancey.

Studies have shown that the anxiety of the holiday season, coupled with seasonal depression, heightens the neurotransmitters associated with feelings of fear. The Psycho Clan experimental division plans on exploiting those levels of fear for an adrenaline rushing 50 minutes of twisted holiday pleasure, with NIGHTMARE (BEFORE CHRISTMAS): THE EXPERIMENT. The event was originally part of this year’s haunted house as a second attraction, but due to its popularity, has been expanded and will return for a horrifying Christmas spectacular that’s able to amplify what it did in its previous installment and experiment on the whole audience in a terrifying (and entertaining) examination into the limits of fear.

“Christmas is supposed to be a joyful time. For too many, it just isn’t. If you don’t always feel joy during the holidays, a good scare will trigger those senses,” says Co-Director Timothy Haskell. “The same endorphins that are released during moments of joy and pleasure are the same ones coursing through your nervous system during times of great fright. So let fear ignite your holiday spirit!”

The Experiment runs from Dec 9th to Dec 23rd. Tickets are $20 and showtimes run at 7pm, 8pm and 9pm. The haunt lasts about 50 minutes or so.

You can purchase tickets here.

Check out the trailer!

My Name is A by Anonymous (Review)

2011-12-15T11:00:00.001-05:00

My Name is A By Anonymous

My Name is A By Anonymous (2011)

Directed by Boneshin (aka Shane Ryan)

Anonymous aka Boneshin is clearly not that anonymous. My Name is A is directed by Shane Ryan, who clearly is a fringe filmmaker who's helmed the infamous Amateur Pornstar Killer series as well as Warning!!!! Pedophile Released. Having not seen the latter which I hear is actually pretty good, I'm left to judge his merit on APK and this film.

My Name is A (formerly a short called The Columbine Effect) is clearly in that genre of fictional recreations where a real life tragedy is turned into a film but shaded with arthouse flair. The film is a recreation of the life and times of alleged murderer Alyssa Bustamante who at the age of 15 killed Elizabeth Olten, who was only 9 years old. I had not heard of this crime and it's clearly something TruTV would focus on. Oh wait they did.

The film plays out the real as real life. You can read the entire notorious murder by heading here. We meet Alyssa, a gothy teen, who paints her face Joker style and has a taste of the killing. She's accompanied by "the sidekick" who follows her orders to a tee. In parallel we also meet "the performer" who is trying to find her direction in voice and art. Finally, we meet "the angst" who's abuse from her stepfather has her vomiting into jars.

Told in a shaky cam 3rd person blended with Flip/phone cams, it's got a docu-teen feel to it. Everything is overlayed with a music video quality and the dialogue is pure vulgar spewage. But whatever Ryan was trying to do here is lost on me. Movies like The Zero Effect and Van Sant's Elephant that recreated Columbine did so by not judging the killers, only following them on that day's events. After such a tragedy, nobody ever has a clear understanding why.

In My Name is A, Ryan clearly wants us to see Alyssa's madness manifest themselves in visual characters of performer, angst, sidekick, etc. Why did she kill this little girl? Was it the culmination of sexual abuse with teenage angst, being a rebel and trying to be "famous"? Clearly, we are led to believe this is the case. Why is never important when creating a fictional version of a real life tragedy. One has to judge on it with uncertainty...it's the only thing that's certain when it comes to motive.

The film itself is a miragy mix of Harmony Korine's early stuff and it's just plain boring. Add in the visual nausea and the meanderings of dialogue (and bad acting) it's a milkshake of nonsense. Every scene seems picked from the true story such as the Joker makeup, the kid brother, the electric fence playground and the actual way the victim dies. Even her look (see the link above) is mimicked in unison. However, I didn't see a what felt like 10 minute music video dream sequence coming. No idea what that was about.

There have been movies like this before. The Sylvia Likens case comes to mind and I watched 2 films based on that. An American Crime (starring Ellen Page) and The Girl Next Door. Both handled the real life horrific murder solidly and elegantly. Even Elephant was oddly mesmerizing.

Unfortunately My Name is A by Anonymous clearly wants to give us innocence lost (a killer and a victim) theme, but none of that really stood out. Instead, Shane Ryan tricked me with a cool title and made me watch a film with untapped potential that had me asking him....why??

Nude-ipedia

Umm I try to not think of what I saw as nudity... ::shivers::

Gore-ipedia

A bit of blood

WTF moment

Where did this Russian music video come from?

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

My Name is A by Anonymous comes from Mad Sin Cinema. Here's some info on the vitals. My Name is A by anonymous (formerly known as The Columbine Effect) stars Russian pop star Teona Dolnikova, Demi Baumann – the younger sister of actor Ken Baumann from The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Sean Cain. With newcomers Katie Marsh, Kaliya Skye, Joseph Marsh and Alex Damiano. Produced by Alisha Rayne, Cinematography by Arturo Guerrero.

Rating:

Check out the trailer.

Rec 3: Genesis Trailer shows the wedding from hell

2011-12-14T11:00:00.003-05:00

Every once in a while I get excited about a horror movie. I wrote my Best of the Rest 2011 list and I've yet to see most on that list. But when it comes to the Rec series, I have to say it hasn't disappointed me as of yet. I gave the original Rec, 2 spinkicks and Rec 2 3 spinkicks. Could Rec 3: Genesis get the elusive 4?

After watching the trailer, you gotta admit, it looks fuckin awesome.It takes place at a wedding in broad daylight. Shaky cam POV is back, so is the over the top gore and a bride and groom surviving until death do us part. It's a sequel but from the plot summary, it will release info on what the virus or whatever it is, that has been unleashed.

Director Paco Plaza helms this 3rd flick and the film stars Leticia Dolera and Diego Martin. Our bride has a cute final bride look to her and you know the wedding reception is going to be one hell of a party. I'm kinda hyped.

It sucks the guests won't be able to line dance.

Check out the trailer. Via Bloody Disgusting.

Nightmare: The Experiment (Review)

2011-12-12T11:00:00.003-05:00

Fear is defined as "a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid." Some people are afraid of different things while other fears are universal.

So it's clearly an emotion that haunted houses like to tap in every October. But haunted houses usually only utilize a few of these. In Tim Haskell and John Harlacher's Nightmare: The Experiment, we get a variety of different fears put to test by willing and consentful participants (namely the audience). The Experiment is a presentation of corporate sponsored science run amok; where fear is tested in a variety of ways that will make you squirm, gag and shiver either by having you participating in the experiments or watching them close up. It's brilliantly funny as it is cleverly clever.

If you went to Nightmare: Fairy Tales (see full review here), you also attended The Experiment, the 2nd half of the haunt. I called this portion: "It's truly a revolution of the haunted house, one that is tailored to the fears you've overcome and with the fears that still linger in you." Now having fully expanded this concept, this 50 minute show has clearly evolved into a nicely conceptualized, very funny and tour de hysterical look as how others feel when engulfed in 100% pure fear. I have to say it's the most fun I've had laughing at people put in Fear Factor like stunts while I sat safely in my chair. But I knew I had to volunteer myself to get the full experience and I was indeed embarrassed in front of a large audience (but we'll get to that in sec)

Tim Haskell described a bit of his thoughts about The Experiment on his blog I Scare You. But the basic overview is this. Two scientists who work for a foundation have been tasked to study human fear. A brief presentation is given, so is a disclaimer and everybody recites in unison their consent. If you become picked and cannot complete the experiment, one must sit in a ridiculous sponsored corner. There are 10 experiments total in this new theater of fear and they include repulsion, paranoia, heartbreak and underachievement to name a few. As the night began, members of the audience participated and had their fears tested. Clothing was let go, vermin were let loose and sizzling hot stimuli tested one man's loyalty.

I decided to participate in the experiment called "Underachievement". Asked to answer some questions while my blood pressure was taken, I did my best to show my super smartness. Question after question I got wrong and I was inexplicably shocked as I KNEW my answers were right. It seems I wasn't smart at all and the scientists had outsmarted me with a WTF at the end. I also participated in the Repulsion experiment as I battled others to gobble up some questionable food items. Sadly, I was not quick on the draw and my competitor ate some pre-chewed gum before me. Hmm, maybe it's good I was a little slow this time.

Other experiments were conducted with cruelty and dread being favorites. Many of these made the audience shout out in delight (OK that was me) and others squirm and empathize with a desperate man choosing pain for profit. The joy of watching all of these is seeing the faces of the people next to me. Many people didn't want to be picked, sitting quietly hoping they wouldn't have to participate. Others eagerly raised their hand (yup like me) hoping to face their fears head on. A special VIP ticket that you can purchase (a band aid will be placed on your cheek) will make sure you get selected to be part of the experiments.

The Experiment is a show unlike any other you will see this year. The holidays are a time of giving and John Harlacher and Tim Haskell give us a gift of prepackaged fear that is unpredictable and hilariously funny. You're definitely going to laugh at how ridiculous we as humans can be when put in preposterous situations. But will you be able to laugh at yourself when you're in one yourself?

Head over to The Experiment and see.

From the official site, here's the info about this new holiday haunt.

Psycho Clan, producers of NIGHTMARE, New York’s most horrifying haunted house and AOL CityGuide’s No. 1 rated haunted attraction in NYC have announced that they will expand the sensory assaulting theatre experience THE EXPERIMENT into an off–Broadway run on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A special holiday version of NIGHTMARE (BEFORE CHRISTMAS): THE EXPERIMENT will run December 9 through December 23, 2011 at Los Kabayitos Laboratorio at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street between Rivington and Delancey.

Studies have shown that the anxiety of the holiday season, coupled with seasonal depression, heightens the neurotransmitters associated with feelings of fear. The Psycho Clan experimental division plans on exploiting those levels of fear for an adrenaline rushing 50 minutes of twisted holiday pleasure, with NIGHTMARE (BEFORE CHRISTMAS): THE EXPERIMENT. The event was originally part of this year’s haunted house as a second attraction, but due to its popularity, has been expanded and will return for a horrifying Christmas spectacular that’s able to amplify what it did in its previous installment and experiment on the whole audience in a terrifying (and entertaining) examination into the limits of fear.

“Christmas is supposed to be a joyful time. For too many, it just isn’t. If you don’t always feel joy during the holidays, a good scare will trigger those senses,” says Co-Director Timothy Haskell. “The same endorphins that are released during moments of joy and pleasure are the same ones coursing through your nervous system during times of great fright. So let fear ignite your holiday spirit!”

The Experiment runs from Dec 9th to Dec 23rd. Tickets are $20 and showtimes run at 7pm, 8pm and 9pm. The haunt lasts about 50 minutes or so.

You can purchase tickets here.

Check out the trailer!

The Shortround: Too Late (Full Short and Review)

2011-12-09T11:00:00.001-05:00

From director Rani Naamani and starring Nelson Brown, the short Too Late has been making the horror sites and blog rounds. Pretty creative with a WTF ending. It's nicely paced at 2 minutes and it's better than watching 90 minute straight to DVD zombie crapfests.

Check it out below.

Too Late from SIDE FILMS on Vimeo.

The Cabin in the Woods (Trailer)

2011-12-07T11:00:00.003-05:00

Look at that release date from the poster. Hahahaha. It was suppose to come out 2 years ago! It's not surprising as The Cabin in the Woods was filmed in 2009. Director Drew Goddard with co-writer Joss Whedon had me salivating at this movie but it totally disappeared when MGM went bye bye.

Here be the plot:

“A group of five friends going on a quiet cabin retreat scratch the surface of something so massive and horrific that they can only begin to fathom what might possibly be going on just as time quickly runs out.”

Starring Chris Hemsworth (pre-Thor) and Whedon favorites Amy Acker (Fred!) and Fran Kranz (Topher!) I have to say I'm kinda psyched for this. Kranz looks to play final guy and can recite Whedon lines in his sleep.

And WTF is the weird invisible forcefield and unseen tech angle in all this??? Whedon is my Master now and if he wrote this, it can't disappoint. No fuckin way. Check out the trailer and share your thoughts.

Final Girl's Bloggenaire: The Jaded Viewer

2011-12-05T11:00:00.002-05:00

Searching through my jaded viewer folder, I discovered an interview I did a while back for Stacie Ponder, who runs the awesome blog Final Girl. She started an interview feature where she sent all of us horror bloggers 23 questions to answer and she'd post the Q&A up on her site so others could discover new horror blogs. Well it looks like I didn't make the cut as the "bloggernaire" abruptly ended in the summer of 2010 and I never got posted.

Crap.

Well after reading my answers (they're fuckin awesome BTW) I figure I'd share my responses with all of you. I figure you should know more about me and if this were posted on Final Girl it would have helped my horror blogger cred. I'm sure Stacie would have posted my Q&A eventually so it's all good in any case. At least now I got a pre-packaged interview for you to read up. Hey, it's still an honor sorta being part of "The Bloggenaire"!

I also just got interviewed by Stuff Monsters Like and their interview (hopefully) will be posted in late January of next year. Cool beans all around. Well here is the jaded viewer's bloggernaire. Enjoy!

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Your name: Jeff
Your blog's name / URL: The Jaded Viewer (http://www.jadedviewer.com)

1) What's the key moment that led you to click that "Start Your Blog" button?

My friend and I use to trade movies back in the old Internet days. So in order to entice more trades, we started reviewing the movies we had in both our collections. Most of our reviews were nonsensical, whimsical and very incoherent. But they were very very funny.

I wanted to share my reviews with everyone, hoping they’d get a chuckle and half out of them. As the blog evolved, my posts became my mindless thoughts on anything horror related.

2) Please describe your blog in no more than 3 sentences. You must include the words / phrases "morbid", "aesthetic", and "electromagnetic".

What’s the jaded viewer other than a morbid parking space on the internet? It’s got electromagnetic posts of fun, a lost aesthetic of all that is wicked and free popcorn for the first 500 visitors. And porn without the nudity.

3) Bearing in mind that opinions are subjective (except mine because I'm always right), do you enjoy movies that are generally considered "bad"? Why or why not?

Bad movies fall into my “they’re so bad, I can MST3K them” which turns a bad apples into apple sauce. When you can make fun of a movie with help from friends, nothing can be scratch your eyeballs bad.

4) Did you know that there exists one variety of carnivorous parrot? It's true. They live in the mountains of New Zealand, and they eat the fat surrounding the kidneys of sheep- WHILE THE SHEEP ARE ALIVE. It's horrible.

Thank the Feebles, Peter Jackson can obliterate these creatures with an RPG.

5) What's the one- ONE- horror movie you love so much you want to stick it down your pants?

Fulci’s Zombi 2. You’d think after my 1,234,678th viewing of zombie vs. shark it’d get kinda boring. If only Fulci made the shark suffer some ocular trauma I’d be in ecstasy.

6) Adrienne Barbeau. Discuss.

My most recent Adrienne Barbeau sighting was seeing her in the awesome short Alice Jacobs is Dead. She was absolutely stellar playing a sick human to zombie wife.

7) Why should people bother to read your blog?

It chops, it can be used to keep you warm and it’s been described as LOLs, WTFs!??!, OMGs and WOW! What is this product that can do so much but cost a fortune? It’s The Jaded Viewer! Reviews of your favorite mainstreaminess with a few indie horror mixed in. And if you call now you won’t just get reviews, we’ll even include Lists (who doesn’t love lists?), exclusive shorts and pictures of horror hotties that are banned in Utah. Did I forget to mention it’s made out of 100% recyclable material? Are you ready to order?

8) Where does Jigsaw get all the money he needs to build all those traps and buy all that warehouse space? Better yet, does he have some sort of engineering background? He must, right, if he designs all that crap?

He totally won the lottery and got a degree in engineering from the University of Phoenix. Also, he’s enslaved elves to help him build those traps. Super smart, college educated elves.

9) Several theories regarding the reasons why people would subject themselves to watching horror films (when they're so, you know, traumatic) exist. Which is closest in line with your feelings on and reactions to the genre? Feel free to elaborate. Or don't, see if I care.

a) RELIEF THEORY: The unpleasant feelings of distress cause more stimulating feelings of relief when the unpleasantness passes- the stressed arousal caused by fear becomes pleasurable arousal later on.
b) CONTINUOUS REWARD: The excitement felt during the film is the appeal in and of itself.
c) SOCIAL THEORIES:
1) Stereotypical gender roles are reinforced: men act as protectors, women need protection.
2) Violating social norms- watching "deviant" entertainment- is exciting.
3) Experiencing heightened emotions with others makes us feel like we "belong" and we're truly part of a group.

It’s gotta be C. There hasn’t been a C in like forever. In any case, most horror is watched with social aspect whereas most of society’s social mores are thrown into a tailspin. We don’t usually see a slasher or monsters in our normal, everyday boring lives and seeing these as entertainment make us all experience something together that draws on all our common fears. Deviant entertainment is only deviant to the ones doing the labeling. To the horror fan, it’s a Friday night.

10) Which year produced better horror movies: 1977 or 1981? Why?

1981. Two movies: Evil Dead and Cannibal Ferox.

11) What the eff is up with those French and their crazy horror flicks?

I know right? For the last 2 years I’ve picked Martyrs and Inside as my best horror movies of the year. Our biased American assumption that the French are sniveling cowards who drink lots of wine and eat croissants is sadly untrue. They are actually a people bent on taking over the world through horror cinema. Subliminal horror movies that tell us to CONSUME and BREED. You know what I’m getting at right?

12) What's your favorite Animals Run Amok movie?

Gremlins 2. Oh those silly gremlins!

13) If Jason Voorhees is on a train heading east at 80mph and Leatherface is on a train heading west at 65mph…why the hell would anyone ever watch Rob Zombie's Halloween?

Trick question! Rob Zombie didn’t actually direct Halloween. It was Uwe Boll.

14) What are your funereal wishes?

Funeral? That’s so 2004. I’m getting myself cryogenically frozen.

15) Why do I have such a fondness for Shelley Hack? It's not like she's really done much to deserve it, but there it is.

I think it’s the same feeling I have for Jean Claude Van Damme. Insert dancing Van Damme animated gif here.

16) You're on a sinking ghost ship that's being piloted by a witch. What are your last words?

“Yo Glinda, Imma let you finish, but Hermione Granger had one of the best boat crashes of the year.”

17) Asking about your funereal wishes and your last words means nothing, I swear.

No worries. I’ve had multiple blogicide attempts over the last year.

18) Do you know where I can get some lye?

Tyler Durden….is that you?

19) Weren't you glad when THAT JERK in THAT HORROR MOVIE got what was coming to him?

Totally happy. After he escaped from the unkillable slasher, I heard he got a college education, opened up a car wash franchise and married the hot high school cheerleader he had a crush on.

And abruptly died from a massive coronary after eating at a Carl’s Jr. Hahaha sucker!

20) Overall, what’s your favorite era of horror films?

80s. The birth of the horror franchise.

21) Would you rather be:
1) a vampire
2) a witch/warlock
3) a werewolf
4) a Frankenstein (and yes, I know technically it’s “Frankenstein’s monster” but “a Frankenstein” sounds better)
5) a Jaws

Vampires sparkle. Being a witch/warlock seems to involve lots of memorization, werewolves are hairy, Frankensteins are too slow… That leaves a Jaws. Who wouldn’t wanna be a motherf*ckin shark?

22) If you could turn back time- if you could find a way- would you take back those words that hurt me, so I’d stay?

Stacie, it’s time you learned the truth. I'm from the future. I came here in a time machine that I invented and tomorrow I have to go back to the year 1985.

23) What's something you want people to know about you or your blog that I didn't ask?

My rating system is based on Van Damme spinkicks. I also tend to write my reviews in an FAQ style which on occasion turns out quite hilarious. Also, I have a running joke where if a quote from a review I’ve written appears on the back of a DVD box, I will immediately terminate the blog.

I’m serious. OK maybe 30% serious.

EXTRA CREDIT! You can ask me a question, if you want to.

So now that you’re super famous, can we expect a reality show following your exploits?

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Is there anything else you want to know about me? I guess leave your question in the comments and I'll take a crack at it. And to answer your first question, it's front to back.