The Burrowers (Review)

The Burrowers

The Burrowers (2008)

Directed by J.T Petty

It's Tremors but as a western!

C'mon you know that's what you were thinking too.

Didn't they have a Tremors sequel that took place in the old west? I swear they did. And it starred the dad from Family Ties. Right?

In any case, The Burrowers follows that same formula. It's a tried and true balance of underground animal monsters feasting on our ancestors. Well not my ancestors...but maybe yours.

Just a step above Sci-Fi quality, it's a mediocre film with very cool monster effects blending in CGI, animatronics and old classic prosthetics. The story is a bit recycled and has more political correctness than you'd think existed back in the 1800s.

All in all, it's a decent monster movie, westernized but makes 90 minutes feel like an eternity.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

A band of courageous men sets out to find and recover a family of settlers that has mysteriously vanished from their home. Expecting the offenders to be a band of fierce natives, the group prepares for a routine battle. But they soon discover that the real enemy stalks them from below.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

The similarities to Tremors and Feast is ever evident. Though both those films are horror comedies, The Burrowers is straight forward horror. What JT Petty gives us is a slow burn of suspense, some glimpses of monster attacks and a United Nations band of gun slinging slingers.

After a family is slaughtered, a John Wayne average joe, a transplanted Irish bloke, his compadre wrangler and his stepson join the calvary to find the Indians that may have slaughtered the family.

The cast is filled with "That Guys and Girls". Clancy Brown (It's that guy from Starship Troopers!), William Mapother (It's that guy Ethan from Lost!) Doug Hutchison,
(It's that killer guy from the X-Files and that Dharma guy from Lost!) Sean Patrick Thomas (It's that guy from Barbershop!) and even Laura Leighton (It's that girl from Melrose Place!).

The filmed is filled with lots of the racist stereotypes of the Old West you'd expect. White man hates the Indians. Indians hate the white man. White man hates the blacks. Blacks hate the white man. Monsters hate and eat white man, red man and black man all equally. Thank the monsters for racial tolerance and not discriminating on eating anybody.

For the most part, the film is a mystery as the group head to an Indian reservation to find answers. They torture a poor Indian scout looking for answers. Soon a group of 5 venture out on their own.

Petty delves into the nature vs people aspect in the flick. The burrowers leave holes and in a Discovery channel docu-style he films ants within the holes. It's a theme ever evident in the film and the motivation of our hungry hungry hippoes.

They quickly disover a body, buried alive and motionless. The film hints at some jump scare moments but never delivers. There are so many set ups shots of these quick edit scare moments but nothing ever happens. Most of these in the dark, suspense buildup movies are very dependant on these jolts of BOO! But Jetty just teases and that's a drawback.

Soon after losing one of their own in a Sioux battle, they meet an Indian women whose family has been killed byu these burrowing monsters. She tells them the burrowers use to eat buffalo but once the white man killed all the bison, they searched for other food...and they got a liking to human flesh.

They use a poison to paralyze their victims then eat their organs when they've gotten mushy. I guess it's like ice cream. Thanks to the white men of old America, the monsters are looking to us as takeout.

The monsters themselves are very different from what we've seen. No slug like creatures in Tremors or big mouthy monsters like in Feast. These creatures look like that alien bug in starship troopers. They move on their inverted hind legs and have long nails to slash their victims. It's quite an odd looking monster, something new that makes them standout.

The ending is climatic battle of the remaining survivors against the horde of burrowsers. As we are on top of the food chain, you can guess who comes out on top. Though, the movie trudges along for an extra 5-6 minutes to give us our obligatory unhappy ending (remember, the politics of the day can't possibly have any minority survive this film) and we see one last glimmer of our monster (probably Lions Gate is hoping to poop out a Burrowers sequel if this does straight to DVD well).

The Burrowers is not a perfect movie by any means. It's very slow at times and their is no character you start to care about. However, it's setting is different for a monster movie and the monsters make sure your alert the entire time.

There aren't many monster movies coming out so the Burrowers may be your only outlet if you need your Mimic/The Relic/Tremors/Feast beasties fix.

Not good, not bad...this is as mediocre as you can get.

Gore-ipedia

Shotgun blasts
Ankle/foot trauma
Scalping
Burrowers trauma
Bear trap trauma
Fingernail trauma

Nude-ipedia

Damn I wish Laura Leighton got nude...but she didn't...so nada

WTF moment

The Burrowers burn up due to sunlight??? WTF???

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Welcome to Lion's Gate horror. Nothing new here but your average horror-core. Here are some fun facts from what I gathered:

1.) There is a "The Burrowers" TV series that leads up to the movie
2.) JT Petty also directed Mimic 3
3.) Entirely filmed in New Mexico

The Burrowers. Monsters + eating people = fun-verage!

Rating:

Trailer:











Tags:
the burrowers, the burrowers trailer , the burrowers review , monster movie, western,

Categories: feast, monster movie, the burrowers, the burrowers review, tremors, western

Splinter (Review)

Splinter

Splinter (2008)

Directed by Toby Wilkins

After watching Splinter, you get the feeling that you've been thrown back into the wayback machine of creature feature horror.

Part The Thing, part Ruins, all fun ickiness. Director Toby Wilkins champions the simplicity of unknown actors, CGI and Savini effects, a wrong place wrong time set up and some parasitic "splinter" creepy crawlies to make the best "monster" movie of 2008.

The Ruins teetered on this premise but I mean how can we really get fuckin scared from plants. Even M Knight fucked that up with The Happening.

Nature can wreak havoc on those pesty biologicals. It reminded me of a friend who told me that his friend went into the wilderness or outback and returned with some sort of fucked up Ebola parasite shit that ate his brain and it took fuckin 3 years to recover.

Now that guy funny enough is a CEO of a dot com.

Splinter is the fear of the microscopic baddie that infects you from the inside out. Everybody can run from an unstoppable slasher or a skyscraper tall monster. But you can't run from monster that once it infects you with a killer disease, you die.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

A young couple has retreated to the wilderness for a romantic camping weekend-but the trip quickly spirals into a nightmare when they are car-jacked by an escaped convict and his girlfriend. Thrown together by chance, no one can imagine the terrifying horror that awaits the two couples at a remote and isolated gas station.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Polly (Jill Wagner ) and Seth (Paulo Costanzo) play the city folk and are final guy and girl. One's a naturist the other a Dr. Biology. They get hijacked by Lacey (Rachel Kerbs) and Dennis (Shea Whigham) who are fugitiving to Mexico.

All play monster fodder well. Polly is our "firecracker" and Seth our dorky professor. Dennis the redneck is tough as nails but with some screws loose.

After changing a flat, they stop by a gas station where most of the action takes place. The infected humans are "driven" by our parasite and attack the survivors.

As Polly eloquently says: "It attacks you and you die".

We then see the end of an idiotic police lady by the splintered walking corpses and our rag tag team then start McGyvering ways to call for help by trying to pick up a police radio and then trying to find different ways out.

The most creepy moment is when a severed hand starts to attack, splintered spikes all over. You wouldn't think a walking hand would be fuckin scary, but it is.

Dennis goes all infecty and this requires some unscheduled surgery by Dr. Biology. HACK! CHOP! ARGHHHHHHH! later, Dennis is lacking an arm. Good times.

Soon the group plans their great escape and we have our final battle off ending 80 minutes of great fun.

Splinter is parasiticly controlled, retro virus gone awry, corpse walking hell of a ride. It does 300% more shit in its 1 hr and 20 min and limited budget. It's the mark of excellence on what a good story and solid acting and a few choice CGI effects can accomplish.

Splinter is definitely not a splinter in 2008. It's a big spike of horror movie. One of the 10 best easily.


Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)

Animal roadkill
Splintered up gas attendant
Splitted human and intestinal gutting
Corpse bashing windows
Severed arm surgery

Nude-ipedia (because you like boobies)

Nada

WTF moment

Severed hand comes alive!

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Splinter is a monumental achievement in indie horror done super duper right. Like Slither and all the other gooey, grossness creatures that wreak havoc in miniature form, it's all about the chills and goosebumps you get from knowing one little scratch and you're infected.

Because nobody wants to have to go out by having splinters grow out of em. Right?

Rating:

Check out the trailer below.





Tags:
splinter, splinter trailer , american horror , monster movie, splinter review, ,top 10 horror movies of 2008, ,top horror movies,

Categories: american horror, feast, monster movie, splinter, splinter review, splinter trailer, the host, the mist

Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds (Review)

Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds

Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds (3008)

Directed by John Gulager

Feast was #6 on my Top 10 horror movies of 2006. It took the typical horror stereotypes, ripped em to shreds and made a monster movie that was funny, sick and totally twisted.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

And now you get Feast 2. But this sequel still stinks of shit stains.

I really don't know what to make of it. It's got gore, pussing and oozing grossness and some funny one liners.

And it's still a yawnfest. How can they have screwed that up? Well let's see.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

The monsters have made it into a small neighboring town in the middle of nowhere and the locals have to band with the survivors of the bar' slaughter to figure out how to survive.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Instead of me babbling on about how much this was disappointing, let's go through our 'types. Some die, some survive, but somehow I don't care.

The Regulars

1.) Honey Pie and Bartender

They're back from the original. They've got a killer fight scene that is pretty fucked up. When can you see a hot babe take on a McCain-ish geezer, and the geriatric wins.

Guest Stars

2.) Biker Queen and the Bleeders

They just didn't bring anything to the flick. Except gratuitous nudity. But then again it was biker lesbo gratuitous nudity. Oh well. I'll take whatever I can get.

3.) Greg and Secrets and Slasher

A menage o trois of looniness. Secrets (Slasher's wife) cheated on Slasher (a used carsalesman) with Greg (his coworker). Best of these three is Greg trying to be heroic and instead commits infanticide.

I mean he committed fuckin infanticide??!??!?

That was pretty sweet.



4.) Thunder and Lightning

Two little people (one a Mexican luchadore and the other a snarky Wee man) who kick ass. They love their grandma.

5.) The Monsters

OK let's see what I can remember. They have completely gone nuts, eating everything in sight, their penises flapping around and fucking animals.

Our survivors run alot. Watch survivors die and get eaten and then the movie ends abruptly so they can set up part 3.

Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)

Head decaps
Flesh shredding
Hammer head smashing
Ear ripping
Monster "bobitt-ing"
Monster autopsy which includes:
Organ grossness
Weird Eye slaughter
Monster vomit
Monster guts
Human vomit
Monster sperm
Decomposing grandma
Pipe thru the skull
Midget slaughter
Infanticide and baby devouring

Nude-ipedia (because you like boobies)

Biker babe boobies

WTF moment

I did mention infanticide right?


The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

There were some decent moments. But all in all, I was bored. As they filmed this movie back to back with Feast 3: The Happy Finish, maybe they saved all the good stuff for the final movie.

If you're into the Feast series, it's probably mandatory to watch this. But the hype was for not.

Maybe the next set of horror stereotypes will be more entertaining. And with the rumor of monster-human hybrids, it may actually be worth 2 shits.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

Rating:

The Trailer




Tags:
feast 2, feast 2 sloppy seconds , feast 2 teaser trailer , feast, feast 2 sloppy seconds review, gratuitous nudity, japan films, project greenlight, horror movies 2008, dimension extreme,

Categories: american horror, feast, feast 2 review, feast 2 sloppy seconds, feast 2 teaser trailer, feast 3 the happy finish, top 10 horror movies of 2006, top 10 horror movies of 2008

Splinter (Trailer)

Hollywood horror is lacking on the monster/beast horror movies of old. I mean I'm not asking for killer, mutant 50 foot tall radioactive ants, but give me a killer monster and I'm cool.

So after watching the trailer for Splinter, we could actually get something Feast-like with Mist-ish qualities and The Host like craziness.

Or it could be a turd in a toilet.

Plot is dumb-esque.

A young couple has retreated to the wilderness for a romantic camping weekend-but the trip quickly spirals into a nightmare when they are car-jacked by an escaped convict and his girlfriend. Thrown together by chance, no one can imagine the terrifying horror that awaits the two couples at a remote and isolated gas station.

Check out the trailer below.





Tags:
splinter, splinter trailer/span> , american horror , monster movie, gratuitous nudity,

Categories: american horror, feast, monster movie, splinter, splinter trailer, the host, the mist

Feast 2 (Trailer)

I loved the first Feast flick. I ranked it #6 on my annual Top 10 Horror movies of 2006. Who knew a Project Greenlight movie could actually be good?

So I'm kinda psyched for Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds. The trailer looks wild, surreal and ambigious.

Oh oh.

Check it out below.





Tags:
feast 2, feast 2 sloppy seconds , feast 2 teaser trailer , feast,

Categories: american horror, feast, feast 2 sloppy seconds, feast 2 teaser trailer

Top 10 Horror/Underground Movies of 2006

10.) The Hills Have Eyes

After seeing Haute Tension at the Museum of the Moving Image a while back and meeting the director Alexander Aja, he told me it this was his next film. I asked him if he was going to do anything different and he told me that Wes Craven told him to make the movie in his own style. That's what Aja does in THHE. The set up is familiar but the payoff is outstanding. Grotestue mutant americana is interspersed with reltentless disturbing imagery. Good survival is always bloody, and Aja makes us see it without the Hollywood PG-13 tag on it.







9.) District B13

This may have come out in 2005, but District B13 is a fun little action flick that makes me think I can go and parkour around NYC. Gibberish plot about nuclear weapons and a cop/thug team up to stop the nuke from going off. Whatever. The stunts are classic here. Chase scenes as the 2 parkourers (?) go climbing, jumping and vaulting over every man made object. Totally excellent. Totally nuts.








8.) Severance

If the Office (British version) collided with Sean of the Dead, you'd get Severance. One of the most hilarious horroromedy flicks that got me laughing out loud. Bunch of office defense contractors go on a wilderness retreat and encounter some well....you're going to have to find out. The sly witty British humor mixed in with oodles of gory and bloody carnage is well done. Bloody well done.






7.) Snakes on a Plane

Without the internet hysteria, nobody would have seen this except me. But what Snakes is really is going back to basics. Forget the plot, just give me when animals attack in a confined area and I am happy as a kid on Christmas. Samuel L. Jackson plays Mr. Cool and the snakes are well...snakes....on drugs. Good Times.












6.) Feast

If Severance was the British horroromedy entry into this list, Feast is the American version. Where else can you find Henry Rollins playing a motivational speaker and bloody thirsty hell creatures boinking. I'll forgive this is a Project Greenlight movie because Krista Allen and the rest of the unknowns gave me a happy movie about killer monsters rampaing through a small town and attacking a bar where we know most of the characters (paper cutouts explained via a killer funny intro) are going to die. Totally gross, very goofy humor and an insane ending that still gives me hope American horror is not dead after all.






5.) Hard Candy

Question: Can you really make a movie about pedophilia and pass it off as a revenge horror movie?
Answer: Yes

David Slade's Hard Candy doesn't just aimlessly go all Kill Bill but delicately takes our heroine Hayley and disects her meticulous calculated revenge upon Jeff in a most intelligent way. There aren't outright scenes of carnage (except for a wee bit piece of unscheduled surgery). Most of the movie are scenes of painstaking conversation between Hayley and Jeff. And these disturbing talks about nothing and everything make the ending totally mindblowing.




4.) Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Chan-Woo Park's final installment of his Vengeance trilogy isn't as good as Oldboy or Mr. Vengeance but is disturbing and totally magnificent that you downright applaud its precise non chalant feel as you watch it. The characters, the settings and lady vengeance herself Geum-ja Lee are so well done that they make each scene mesmerizing. Of course as in the previous 2 movies, the ending is downright lovely (in that horror sort of way).




3.) Hostel

I hated Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. But I gotta admit, Hostel is a movie designed for the horror fan boy and follows the checklist of making a good horror/splatter movie. Let's go through the list.
Young horny teenagers......check.
Drugs and alcohol......check.
Gratuitous nudity......check.
Relentless gore and splatter.....check.
Plot revealed after 2/3 of the movie that makes the viewer go "oh i get it, that's fucked up"........check.
Ending that just doesn't live up to the entire movie but leaves room for a sequel that opens up this year......check.

You can't deny Hostel's disturbing imagery, ocular trauma and Achille heeling grossness. It almost makes you want to not travel abroad...almost.


2.) Slither

I knew when I saw Slither in the theatre that I was going to love this flick. And it holds firmly to #2 on my list. Spawning off Night of the Creeps and Shivers, it brings back the 80s feel of disgusting creatures infecting human carriers for the 21st century audience. The creatures are slimy and relentless (who cares what they are or why they are here). All that matters is once your infected, you go insane. Nathan Fillion is perfect as the sheriff designated to protect his small town against the parasitic invaders. The ending is so B-movie perfect Peter Jackson would have been proud. So gross, so disgusting, so apalling and over the top, I am proud to have my ticket stub of Slither framed on my wall.





and the best horror movie of 2006 is...................................



1.) The Descent

Without question, The Descent is the best horror movie of 2006. Group of women go sperlunking and all hell breaks loose inside the caves they explore. Natalie Mendoza as Juno steals the show has the pseudo leader who causes tension amongst the group of cave divers try to escape the monstrous cave crawlers. The claustrophobia and relentless darkness are done so eeriley and seemlessly you don't mind scenes that are in complete darkness.
UK ending is waaay better than the US ending and the flick has so many shocks and thrills that as the group goes from point A to point B, the ride is scary as hell. So many good things to say about this flick that by the time I'm done, the inevitable sequel will already be released.




Worst Horror Movies I've seen this year........

Saw 3, Turistas, Final Destination 3, The Hamiltons

Worst Horror Movies everybody agrees were just downright bad.......

Pulse (remake), Stay Alive, The Omen (remake), Black Christmas, The Wicker Man, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, The Grudge 2, When A Stranger Calls, Bloodrayne and plenty more that I shouldn't even take up more space.

The Most Anticiapted Horror/Underground movie of 2007.......

Grindhouse

Underground/Cult/Horror Movies that might be decent in 2007........

The Hitcher, Primeval (saw it, was decent), Black Snake Moan, Zodiac, Sunshine, 28 Weeks Later, Hostel 2, Rob Zombie's Halloween, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon


Blockbuster Movies that will have to be seen in 2007.............

Spiderman 3, Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Simpsons Movie

Tags:
horror movies , top ten , cult , grindhouse, splatter, the hills have eyes, district b13, severance, snakes on a plane , feast, hard candy, lady vengeance, hostel, slither, the descent

Categories: district 13, feast, severance, top 10 horror movies of 2006, top horror movies