Horror Archives - Page 28 of 40 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

I Know Who Killed Me (2007) + Captivity (2007) [Uncut] – DVDs

March 11, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Thriller

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME
**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras D
starring Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty
screenplay by Jeffrey Hammond
directed by Chris Sivertson

CAPTIVITY
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gilles, Michael Harney, Pruitt Taylor Vince
screenplay by Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura
directed by Roland Joffe

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I wasn’t that upset about the bad reputation I Know Who Killed Me had acquired until I saw Roland Joffe’s Captivity. I Know Who Killed Me recently took home Worst Actress and Worst Picture Razzie awards and was at one point listed on WIKIPEDIA as “one of the worst films ever made.” Captivity, meanwhile, despite the not-insignificant controversy surrounding a disastrous billboard campaign and a scathing editorial by Joss Whedon condemning it sight-unseen, has all but vanished into obscurity. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense. Poor Lindsay Lohan (I’m sorry, but her pathetic Marilyn Monroe spread in the current issue of NEW YORK gets my sympathy sensors buzzing) is a staple of the tabloid industry and an easy target for hipster schadenfreude. I Know Who Killed Me has the trappings of a serious thriller and requires Lohan to do a little bit of stretching while playing off her off-screen persona. Captivity, on the other hand, is considerably less ambitious and considerably more exploitive, and as such, actress Elisha Cuthbert’s participation can be dismissed as just another former TV star paying her dues in the horror genre.

30 Days of Night (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

February 4, 20082000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, New Zealand, Thriller, Vampire

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster
screenplay by Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
directed by David Slade

by Walter Chaw The dialogue is woeful and the scenario is stretched at feature-length, but there's a lot to like about David Slade's graphic-novel adaptation 30 Days of Night. As high concepts go, it's a pretty good one: What if a band of vampires was enterprising enough to head north to Alaska–where some towns experience the titular month-long blackout–to live it up in luxurious dark? It makes so much sense that it's a wonder it hasn't been done before, really, and a few glacial, arctic moments in the film gave me a thrill of anticipation as to what might be possible should Dan Simmons's The Terror ever receive a proper, big-budget treatment. The gore is good and plentiful–not explicit to the point of exploitative, but packed thick with unequivocal suggestions of child murder, cruelty, and the wholesome goodness of a satisfying, old-fashioned decapitation-by-hatchet. And in a fall that sees the flicker of resurrection of the early-Seventies/late-Sixties western, it's easy to place 30 Days of Night in the context of another revision of that hoary American genre, complete with exit music suggesting that the way to salvation lies in the assumption of the enemy's tactics and identity. Explanation at last of what our government is thinking when it tears up our Constitution to fight people wanting to tear up our Constitution.

The Hand (1981) + Wall Street (1987) [20th Anniversary Edition] – DVDs

December 18, 20071980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Horror, Thriller

THE HAND
*/**** Image B+ Sound B Commentary B
starring Michael Caine, Andrea Marcovicci, Annie McEnroe, Bruce McGill
screenplay by Oliver Stone, based on the novel The Lizard's Tail by Marc Brandel
directed by Oliver Stone

WALL STREET
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, Terence Stamp
screenplay by Stanley Weiser & Oliver Stone
directed by Oliver Stone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Sometimes, our stated moral goals don't add up to who we are. It is said, with some justification, that the personal is political, but all too often this is taken to mean "there is no personal, there is only political": we pretend that the ideology to which we pledge allegiance is the sum total of our ethical standpoint, then use that to justify or paper over the contradictions and fissures in the way we live our lives. The ironic thing is that our refusal to acknowledge that which lies outside our ideology means we do that ideology a disservice–playing out our personal grudges on the political stage when we should be harmoniously integrating both sides into a whole life.

Metalocalypse: Season One (2006) + The Lair: The Complete First Season (2007) – DVDs

November 28, 2007Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Horror, Music, Mystery, Romance, Television, Vampire

Metalocalypse: Season One
Image B+ Sound A Extras D+
"The Curse of Dethklok," "Dethwater," "Birthdayface," "Dethtroll," "Murdering Outside the Box," "Dethkomedy," "Dethfam," "Performance Klok," "Snakes n' Barrels," "Mordland," "FatKlok," "Skwisklok," "Go Forth and Die," "Bluesklok," "Dethkids," "Religionklok," "Dethclown," "Girlfriendklok," "Dethstars," "The Metalocalypse Has Begun"

The Lair: The Complete First Season
Image B+ Sound B Extras D
episodes 101-106

by Ian Pugh I never understood the appeal of Brendon Small's "Home Movies", a show I've always found more frustrating than anything else. Besides being hard on the eyes (its characters evolving from garish preschool squiggles to sharp-yet-shapeless Flash monstrosities), it gathers together a lot of smart, funny people to meander aimlessly through three or four of the same maddeningly droll scenarios. Teamed with "Conan O'Brien"/"TV Funhouse" alum Tommy Blacha, Small finally has a purpose to go with his aesthetic. Following the daily activities of death metal band Dethklok–idiot vocalist Nathan Explosion (voiced by Small), self-loathing bass player William Murderface (Blacha), balding Midwesterner Pickles the Drummer (Small), "the world's fastest guitarist" Skwisgaar Skwigelf (Small), and Norwegian naïf Toki Wartooth (Blacha)–"Metalocalypse" certainly allows its characters to ramble incoherently, but its premise demands such focus that even the incoherent rambling has to lead somewhere.

Cannibal Man (1972) – DVD

November 12, 20071970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Horror, Spain, Thriller

La semana del asesino
The Cannibal Man
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Vincente Parra, Emma Cohen, Eusebio Poncela, Vicky Lagos
screenplay by Eloy de la Iglesia and Anthony Fos
directed by Eloy de la Iglesia

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Despite some cheesily-gratuitous murders and an awkwardly-inserted sex scene, Cannibal Man clearly wants to be more than exploitation. Pity that for long stretches, the movie–a study of a man trying to hide a sin while committing many more to cover it up–doesn't have much else to go on besides the horrible irony that drives its gimmick: we're trapped with this guy repeating his brutal mistake over and over again to the point of irrationality and intimations of a Kids in the Hall parody. The working-class milieu and lack of leering stupidity soften the blow, but there's no denying that a certain dearth of invention keeps this from crawling all the way out of the grindhouse barrel. Still, it's a solid two-run hit and was clearly made by people with compassion; the film even earns remarkable points for its equation of a lonely gay voyeur with an unhappy man who can't cover up his escalating violence.

Dr. Giggles (1992) [Twisted Terror Collection] – DVD

October 30, 20071990s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Horror

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Cliff De Young, Glenn Quinn
screenplay by Manny Coto and Graeme Whifler
directed by Manny Coto

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I have a sentimental attachment to Manny Coto’s Dr. Giggles. This was the movie I saw the night I lost my virginity–October 22, 2000. (I kept the receipt from the video store.) That was my third viewing of the film, the first being when I was 10. My mother rented it and we watched it with her boyfriend Johnny, who had already seen it on cable and called it “kind of a B-movie.” I loved Dr. Giggles so much I showed it to my dad later that summer. Afterwards, I remember him chanting the “Dr. Giggles” nursery rhyme in jest.

Hostel Part II (2007) [Unrated Director’s Cut] – DVD

October 27, 20072000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Czech Republic, DVD, Horror

***/**** Image A Sound B Extras C
starring Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips
written and directed by Eli Roth

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. A continuation of the original film's premise of murder as a commodity available to those who can afford it, death is the only earthly pleasure in the world of Eli Roth's Hostel Part II, not just as a metaphorical substitution but as an active replacement for every other human itch as well. Killing and dying are the only ways to earn respect from your peers–the only ways to pass the time and especially the only ways to get your rocks off. In this sense, the film simultaneously embraces and resists the notion of subtext in the images that seem to most warrant some kind of allegorical interpretation; when some poor bastard has his penis placed in mortal jeopardy, you might see it as an exertion of sexual supremacy–but more likely, the act is simply the last word in torture for a disturbing landscape where mutilation is the alpha and the omega. Where visual suggestions of the Grim Reaper are so omnipresent because the phrase "I am become Death" has become orgasmic in its literality.

Cujo (1983) [25th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

October 25, 20071980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Horror, Stephen King, Thriller

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh-Kelly, Danny Pintauro, Ed Lauter
screenplay by Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier, based on the novel by Stephen King
directed by Lewis Teague

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It takes more than Lewis Teague to make a St. Bernard scary. His awkward, lifeless adaptation of one of Stephen King's less celebrated high-period novels is so thoroughly incapable of rendering its central "monster" even slightly disturbing that the end result is more hilarious than horrifying. What's worse is that Teague isn't good for much else in this movie, either: the extended set-up to Cujo's rabies rampage is completely lacking in style or subtext, leaving the occasional titter to be had during the climax as hollow compensation. The director is clearly treating this as a bread job, what with every story beat pursued apathetically and the loaded (if banal) violation of middle-class home and hearth left unexamined. King has peddled some pretty awful ideas in his day, but at least he can be said to have conviction.

Wolf Creek (2005) [Widescreen Edition – Unrated Version] – DVD + Hostel (2006) [Unrated Widescreen Cut] – DVD|[Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

October 22, 20072000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Czech Republic, DVD, Horror, Thriller

WOLF CREEK
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring John Jarratt, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath, Kesti Morassi
written and directed by Greg McLean

HOSTEL
**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova
written and directed by Eli Roth

by Walter Chaw When I say that I enjoy a nihilistic film on occasion, I don’t mean movies that aren’t about anything. There are films that adhere to the philosophy that life is meaningless, that there’s not much hope, that we might be in Hell or, better, a godless maelstrom of happenstance and entropy. And then there are ostensibly nihilistic films like Wolf Creek and Hostel that are more accurately examples of nihilism. Both inspired by real-life events*, they seem to use their basis in fact as protection against not actually telling a story with gravity or purpose. They’re not governed by a prevailing philosophy or buoyed by any artistry–they have nothing beneath their grimy veneers to reward a careful deconstruction (though we’ll try). Worse, they know only enough about their genres to (further) discredit them in the popular conversation. I look at these films as though I were observing an alien artifact, an insect with solid black eyes. If there’s intelligence to them, it’s not a kind I understand.

The Monster Squad (1987) [Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

October 18, 20071980s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Teen, Vampire, Werewolf

**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras A
starring André Gower, Duncan Regehr, Stephen Macht, Tom Noonan
screenplay by Shane Black & Fred Dekker
directed by Fred Dekker

by Bill Chambers Since I caught myself mouthing a portion of the dialogue while revisiting it for the first time in almost two decades, I think it's fair to say I internalized The Monster Squad through multiple viewings in my misspent youth. Still, as that TriStar horse sprouted wings, I realized I had no tactile memory of the film, no real recollection of what it felt like–and the answer is: it feels like 80 minutes, give or take. It's pabulum, albeit pabulum with a pedigree. The latest nostalgia trap to get a nerd baptism (an AICN-sponsored reunion screening at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse is more or less single-handedly responsible for the picture's splashy DVD release), it's at least better than the movie to which it's most often compared, the Steven Spielberg-produced The Goonies, if only because it's a good half-hour shorter and, by extension, comparatively unpretentious. Beneath its own Spielbergian façade, The Monster Squad works like those old horror hosts used to by sanctioning the classic monsters for a younger generation, whereas The Goonies aims only to erect a shrine to itself.

The Reaping (2007) – DVD

October 15, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller

*/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, Stephen Rea
screenplay by Carey W. Hayes & Chad Hayes
directed by Stephen Hopkins

by Walter Chaw Brave enough to show a few kid corpses hanging up in a basement but not brave enough to actually be about a tormented woman murdering an adorable antichrist, Stephen Hopkins's The Reaping harvests its share of not-startling jump scares and not-interesting scripture for a frugal repast of mainstream diddle. Neither bad in the way of End of Days nor good in the way of Stigmata, it is instead another millennial picture about sacrificing our children to questionable causes and Old Testament vengeance wrought upon the unholy. I understand why we get films like this in 2007, films full of dead kids and religious wrath, but understanding why isn't the same thing as valuing the picture. Its confusion between being neo-conservative while believing that it's ultra-liberal muddies the final "twist" of the picture, posing the interesting conundrum of whether or not abortion is okay if the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Though it's pretty clear where the film has led its audience, that doesn't make the question any less thorny. (What it does do is make The Reaping's consummate, dedicated emptiness its only lingering aftertaste.) Count as its scattershot sources Rosemary's Baby, The Bad Seed, The Amityville Horror, Alien, I Walked with a Zombie, The Skeleton Key, Exorcist: The Beginning, and so on–the only purpose of composing such a list to point out how much the film allows for masturbatory skylarking, harking back to genre pictures better and worse.

28 Weeks Later (2007) – DVD

October 8, 2007****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Spain, Thriller, UK, Zombie

****/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras B
starring Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba
screenplay by Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, E.L. Lavigne, Jesús Olmo
directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Walter Chaw It’s phenomenal. Where 28 Days Later… was saddled with ambition that exceeded its reach and, in Danny Boyle, a director who not only disdained the genre but has otherwise proven himself a grade-A tool as well, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s sequel 28 Weeks Later is brutally graceful in its vision of a nuclear family’s dissolution as the metaphor for a broader, collective unrest. The triumph of the picture, though, is that it’s as succinct and eloquent as a heart attack; as a parable of the Iraq War (popularly called “The War in Iraq,” a subtle semantic distancing technique particularly trenchant to this discussion), it’s all about aftermath and occupation. It’s impossible not to compare it to the years and tens of thousands of fatalities since the declaration of “mission accomplished” when the picture begins with the reassurance that everything’s peachy in dead-as-a-doornail England. Repatriation and reconstruction have begun six months after the outbreak of the first film’s “rage virus,” reuniting two kids, Tammy (future superstar Imogen Poots) and Andy (Harry Potter-named Mackintosh Muggleton), with their tightly-wound da’, Don (Robert Carlyle). In an end-of-the-world opening in what only appears to be night (it’s the first of several brilliant reversals), we see how a fissure develops in Don’s marriage to wife Alice (Catherine McCormack), and of how that stress fracture becomes the foundation for the rest of the picture’s relationships and politics.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007) – DVD

October 2, 20072000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Germany, Horror

*½/**** Image N/A Sound C+ Extras C
starring Erica Leerhsen, Henry Rollins, Texas Battle, Aleksa Palladino
screenplay by Turi Meyer & Al Septien
directed by Joe Lynch

by Walter Chaw As the first half is so abominable, colour me surprised that the second half of Joe Lynch's DTV sequel Wrong Turn 2 is actually good in a nominal way, dipping into the backwoods family well in a wonderfully derivative banquet sequence (borrowing from the first and third Texas Chain Saw Massacre pictures) and offering up bits of inventive, comic-book gore along the way. It's never scary and never tense, but it does feature scream queen Erica Leerhsen in another performance that's leagues better than the film she's in deserves. What's missing is that sense of pathos that defines the horror pictures of the '70s: Where the first film replaced it with glib ugliness, this one replaces it with smirking self-consciousness–neither tactic doing much to honour the idea that the family that slays together, etc., making the late-game sparks of brilliance ring suspiciously like glad-handing, happy horseshit. I appreciate that the cannibal hillbillies are given a family structure by the end of the piece–I just wish that that family wasn't the Cosbys. It's not really supposed to feel like a sitcom, is it?

Going To Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006) [Unrated] – DVD

September 19, 20072000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, DVD, Horror

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
director uncredited

by Alex Jackson My cardinal rule about documentaries: they shouldn't just coast on the gravitas of their subject matter. They have to have some kind of perspective and work on their own terms. With that said, documentaries about movies are a bit of a blind spot for me, as I have a particularly strong difficulty separating my affection for the film and my affection for what it's about. I know that This Film Is Not Yet Rated isn't very good–it's childish and doesn't mount a terribly convincing case against the MPAA. But come on, I could talk for hours about the MPAA if I could find somebody who would want to listen. Cinemania? Yeah, the filmmakers didn't do much more than point and laugh at those guys. God help me, though, I had a little envy for them: I only wish I could theatre-hop in New York City, exclusively watching the films that interest me without worrying about money or having to review them. I could feel that my critical capacities were being tested in these cases, but I survived. However, when you have a documentary that isn't about merely the movies, but about slasher movies specifically–well, shit, any pretense of objectivity on my part has officially gone out the window.

TIFF ’07: George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead

September 15, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: George A. Romero, Film Festivals, Horror, TIFF, Zombie

***/****
written and directed by George A. Romero

by Bill Chambers The problem with 2005’s Land of the Dead is that it could’ve been made by virtually anybody at virtually any time. While I imagine that George A. Romero, stalwart hippie that he is, has an anticapitalist streak a mile wide, that picture’s “eat the rich” trajectory ultimately felt like a rather flimsy pretext for Romero to resume chronicling social change through the prism of his precious undead. Given that the “Dead” films have typically had long incubation periods, it’s surprising to see Romero return to the well so soon, but then it was probably best to hit the reset button post-haste. George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead does just that in more ways than one: Here, Romero disentangles himself from the cul-de-sac of a zombie-human détente by starting from scratch in the present tense, making this the Casino Royale of the series.

TIFF ’07: Mother of Tears: The Third Mother

September 9, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Dario Argento, Film Festivals, Horror, Italy, TIFF

La terza madre
***/****
directed by Dario Argento

by Bill Chambers Sanity and fatigue are ineluctable corrupting influences on an aging filmmaker, but it brings me great pleasure and no small relief to be able to report that while Mother of Tears: The Third Mother–Dario Argento’s long-gestating conclusion to his “Three Sisters” trilogy–is neither as artful as Suspiria nor as dreamlike as Inferno, it nevertheless surpasses expectations fostered by Argento’s recent work to emerge as his best movie in decades. Fitting that Argento should choose to tell the Rome-set story of Mater Lacrimarum last, marking this as a homecoming in more ways than one.

Halloween (2007)

August 30, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Malcolm McDowell, Sherri Moon Zombie, Scout Taylor-Compton, William Forsythe
screenplay by Rob Zombie, based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
directed by Rob Zombie

by Walter Chaw If Rob Zombie ever decides to direct a horror movie, watch out. To date, up to and including his remake of John Carpenter's legendary Halloween, he's presented us a series of family melodramas peppered with modest genre references and exploitation flourishes. His best film, The Devil's Rejects, is widely misread and underestimated, the most common complaint being that it isn't scary. It's a lot like complaining that Ordinary People isn't scary. But I'd challenge anyone to come up with many more ebullient, honest moments of uplift than the conclusion of that film (set to "Free Bird" of all things), as Zombie's miscreant clan makes a bid to let their freak flag fly in the middle of the American desert. His pictures are throwbacks to the Seventies in more ways than their relationship to drive-in and grindhouse fare: they're lovely odes to a sense of frustrated possibilities in a United States suffering the first throes of post-Sixties culture shock. It goes hand-in-hand with the Nixonian westerns littering the popular culture in the new millennium; no surprise to me that this administration–and the attendant feeling of paranoia and cynicism befouling our air–encourages this kind of revisionism, and really, who better than Zombie to helm an update of Carpenter's seminal slasher?

TIFF ’07: Just Buried

August 27, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, TIFF

*½/****starring Jay Baruchel, Rose Byrne, Graham Greene, Nigel Bennettwritten and directed by Chaz Thorne by Bill Chambers Just Buried (formerly Pushing Up Daisies) stars Jay Baruchel as Oliver Whynacht (get it? "Why not?" Me neither), a neurotic with a really annoying affection (his nose bleeds when he's nervous) who inherits a small-town funeral parlour from his estranged father. He's ready to hand over the reins of the money-hemorrhaging business to a competitor when he falls under the spell of the Lady Macbeth-like mortician, Roberta (Rose Byrne), whereupon the two hatch a scheme to drum up business that rather rapidly transforms them…

Succubus (1968) – DVD

August 20, 20071960s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blue Underground, DVD, Germany, Horror

Necronomicon – Geträumte Sünden
**/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B-
starring Janine Reynaud, Jack Taylor, Howard Vernon, Adrian Hoven
screenplay by Pier A. Caminnecci
directed by Jess Franco

by Alex Jackson Jess Franco's Succubus begins with heroine Lorna (Janine Reynaud) torturing and molesting a man chained to a stake while his similarly bound, bloodied, and partially-nude lover watches. The lover protests, so Lorna tortures her some until she passes out. She then goes to the man and plays with him a bit before skewering him with her ceremonial knife. The lights fade up and an audience applauds. The snuff scene was simulated. It's part of an act Lorna performs at a chic nightclub. This opening is the most eloquent and lucid scene in the film, for it establishes that director Jess Franco no longer has a responsibility to be eloquent and lucid. Succubus is going to be told subjectively through the perspective or Lorna, who is going schizophrenic (or something) and is increasingly unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Thus, whatever we see might actually be happening–and then again it might not be. We never really know.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) [Unrated] – DVD

August 15, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Wes Craven, ZERO STARS

The Hills Have Eyes II
ZERO STARS/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras D
starring Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso, Jacob Vargas
screenplay by Wes Craven & Jonathan Craven
directed by Martin Weisz

by Walter Chaw I don't have any real objection to anything depicted in The Hills Have Eyes II: not to the live-birth prologue that ends with the grisly murder of the mother; not to the greenstick demise of one National Guardsman or the death-by-feces of another; not even to the brutal rape of still another enlistee whose very existence opens the door for an ugly sequel. No: testament to the howling ineptitude of the enterprise is that its every desperate attempt to offend fails miserably. It's so poorly directed and edited, in fact, that not only is nothing frightening (which is to be expected, frankly)–nothing's surprising, either. Every jump scare is completely telegraphed, the nigh-invulnerability of the bad guys is totally predictable, and every fatality of every alleged hero is delivered sans pathos or, really, consequence. It doesn't matter who dies because who lives has already been decided within the first few minutes. What's more, it's already been divined by the dullest member of the audience–said dull member the only one who gives enough of a shit to try to figure it out in the first place and stick it out through to the end. The sole reason why anyone would watch the whole thing would be if they were paid to do so, and even then, it's only money. Let me stress, though, that you're not leaving because the movie is horrific, appalling, and a moral vacuum–you're leaving because it sucks balls.