As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of Dread.
"In the same vain as Martyrs, Dread's psychological (then physical) trauma inflicted on the victims is done to prove a point. While Martyrs went beyond the limit, Dread goes a tad lite on the issue.
Yes, I'm actually calling Dread a diet version of Martyrs."
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of Skjult aka Hidden.
"It's a little odd that Hidden has ended up in the After Dark Horrorfest 4 lineup. The film has some elements of horror, but it’s really a psychological suspense movie disguised as horror by a deceptive poster and a rapid edited trailer."
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of The Reeds.
"The one thing I’ll say about The Reeds is, well it had actual planty like reeds. As for the movie itself, it’s a muddy boggy creek. In other words, a complete mess."
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of Lake Mungo.
"I must admit, Lake Mungo was not on my must-see radar when reviewing the After Dark Horrorfest movies. But this is the hidden gem beneath the proverbial sand of the eight films. I was exceptionally surprised at how great the movie was and amazed that it didn’t slowly evolve into a cheap Paranormal Activity gimmick. The trailer and poster are very misleading and you may be convinced you’re seeing a midnight movie set to deliver jolts of jump scares.
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of The Graves. "How could a movie that consisted of hot girls in tank tops with bouncy cleavage and two horror titans, Bill Moseley and Tony Todd end up a worthless pile of crap?
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of Zombies of Mass Destruction.
"The zom com has been riding a high of late. Gone is your traditional slow moving scare em shoot em up zombie horror. It's been replaced by parodying self aware zombie comedies of late. So Zombies of Mass Destruction enters the fray into this subgenre. Is it as good as the Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead?
C'mon now. Of course not. But it's a damn fun ride."
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of The Final.
"The best way to describe The Final is its Saw 90210. In a typical suburban high school, a group of self aware misfits and outcasted teens devise a plan (based on horror movies, oh how self aware!) to take revenge on the jocks, popular douchbags and mean girls. Inviting them to a costume party, the partygoers are drugged and when they wake up are cuffed and chained together. Suffice it say, our teen outcasts are gonna get medieval"
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
Here's a little excerpt from my review of Kill Theory.
"Kill Theory is not great but compared to the others, it's pretty solid. The premise is an intriguing one. The movie poses the question: What would you do to survive if given the choice to either kill your friends in order to live. The answer plays out as slightly cliched and is executed in the most extreme way possible. And somehow it came out five by five."
Last year I saw 7 of the 8 films c/o of UGO.com who asked me to review them all. Well this year they asked me to do it again and I squeamishly obliged. The last few movies I've seen via After Dark were mediocre at best. I even had a horrible time watching Perkins 14 at the theater. I gotta admit I enjoyed making fun of the films but that can only go so far. I really wanted to see some good films this year.
One can hope.
So this be the database for all my reviews for After Dark Horrorfest 4. I'll post a link for each movie review that heads over to UGO.com. Most of these reviews are short (350 words or less). It's not my usual style to use letter grades and not use serious amounts of profanity but they all have that quirky dialogue you're all use to if your a frequent visitor to the jaded viewer.
I'll post each review preview on the blog as well me thinks. Well that's enough yapping, click on a link below to review!
But 2010 is a new year and we have a new batch of movies. So like I did before, I've posted as many of the trailers I could find for all the movies below. Also included are my thoughts on each of them solely based on the trailer.
Which of these do you think might actually be worth forking over a few bucks to see? I say none of them but that's the jaded viewer in me.
the jaded viewer says: Really? A political zomedy? Umm..err..I thought the zombie genre died in 2009? Could be like Dance of the Dead, could be utter crap. I'd go with the latter.
the jaded viewer says: The Breakfast Club meets torture porn. That was inevitable. Do high school teenagers even bully anymore? I mean when you see shit like this, I'd be scared out of my mind. Could be yay, more than likely it will be nay.
the jaded viewer says: I don't even know what they're saying and I can tell this is gonna suck. Oooh crazy images mixed with fancy editing and tons of bass. This is Norwegian (I think After Dark got this because they thought this might be Dead Snow 2)
the jaded viewer says: You think the Twilight tweens will come en masse to see this because somebody from that flick is in it? OMG, this looks like MTV produced web series like crap. Oooh what's your fear? My fear is I'll accidentally see this. This looks like the worst of the lineup.
the jaded viewer says: Making sure they are not left off of the Paranormal Activity bandwagon, After Dark picks up Lake Mungo. Yuppers folks. It's a faux documentary about ghosts and paranormal blah blah blah. Sometimes its too late to catch the wake of the shaky camp ghost flicks. Too little, too late Lake Mungo. WTF is a Mungo?
the jaded viewer says: Hot girls, road trip, evil possessed town, Bill Moseley and Tony Todd. Oh sure it looks like it might be good. It looks yummy but when you bite into it it's gonna taste like feces. From the trailer, this might actually be the best of all the flicks. But I've been wrong so many times. I can't tell anymore.
8.) TBD
To be announced
OK horror minions. Is there even one film in these 7 flicks so far that might be worth seeing? In any case, head over to the official After Dark Horrorfest site for more plot summaries and stills. They've also got a Facebook, MySpace and a Twitter pages.
After Dark Horrorfest will be in theaters from January 29, 2010 to February 4, 2010.
You know how much the After Dark Horrorfest III 2009 box set actually cost? $112!!! Get the fuck outta here.
You might as well spend that dough on a hooker. At least you know you're getting ripped off.
In any case, as you know I've been reviewing all of these movies for your benefit so you can get an idea of what you may be getting into. It's just one man's jaded viewer opinion but honestly they all pretty much suck. What did you expect...a good film? Maye something awesome like Frontiere(s) or Mulberry Street?
Don't believe the hype. It's mediocre-ville bordering in suckyburg in this year's After Dark Horrorfest.
So UGO.com was happy to take my reviews plus add their own and make a nice PG-13 mini DVD review of the flicks.
If George A. Romero made a zombie-verse and Matt Reeves made an alien monster world, director Jim Mickle has made a rat monster utopia in Mulberry Street. It’s by far the better of the 3 movies either director made this year.
With a guerilla, docu-style and the nitty gritty look of NYC’s Mulberry Street as his backdrop, Mickle takes us into an apocalyptic city nightmare come true. Because as every New Yorker knows, the 2 things we hate the most are tourists and rats.
Our main “Ben” (aka lead character from NOTLD) is Clutch, a former boxer who lives in an apartment on Mulberry Street (it’s the main street in NYC’s Little Italy). With his friend Coco, they eagerly await for Clutch’s daughter Casey to return home from Iraq. We also meet the other tenants in this dilapidated complex, Charlie and Frank who are a couple of old timers and Kay, a bartender and her son. It’s never explained what caused the “sickness” that is making every New Yorker slowly turn into rat creatures but that’s not important. What is important is that we see a depiction of real New Yorkers dealing with a supernatural threat and basically doing what we always do, survive. There is no nauseating shaky camera, no annoying hipster looking for their girlfriend and no film students trying to film something so they can post it on YouTube.
What we do have is seeing the pseudo-realistic media coverage of a threat and the response to it with some very chilling scenes of attacks from a mass of rat infected zombies.
I know what you’re saying. Really? Rat creatures?
It’s not as cheesy as it sounds. The infected don’t develop RAGE like super strength or quickness but become, well more psychopathic and ratty. And boy are these creatures hungry and bloodthirsty. The tenants have to pummel and kick and fight thru the city streets in order to survive. These are all fast paced and suspenseful scenes and are quite well done.
Mulberry Street uses the same genre conventions of a Living Dead or a 28 Days Later. And even though they may be assembly line tricks of the trade, they work.
And that’s the fun of Mulberry Street.
Jim Mickle also takes a page from Romero’s satire handbook by not so subtly commentating on the world, post 9/11. More specifically, the slow government response to a Severe Red Theat Level event (the President was in Bermuda!) is an obvious crack at the government’s reaction and response to Hurricane Katrina.
The only negatives are that the movie does look a little like a 99 cents store. The acting was very plausible though the dialogue was a little dry. The special effects seemed to be Sci-Fi channel-ish and the darkness blurred many scenes into utter static. But on a meager budget, Mickle used quick shots, music video style editing and a couple of good gory bloodbaths to get his point across.
Mulberry Street is the biggest gem in the After Dark Horrorfest catalog. So if you didn’t like the zombie or giant lobster monster movies you watched this year, maybe enter the cannibal-rat monster-verse, it’s a cheesy movie you probably might like.
As this was a DVD, I was able to watch the extras as well. Here's a recap.
The Extras:
The extras are pretty bland in comparison to the movie. There are storyboards, 2 deleted scenes which pretty much sums up that most of the cut is the finished product. Also included are director’s Jim Mickle’s early sketches of scenes and of the rat monsters (which would make great background wallpaper). There are makeup tests which are hilarious as you can see the evolution of what the rat creatures were to become. Also, there are behind the scenes of ratty munching and outtakes which are always funny as this is a horror film about rat infected humans.
Finally there are behind the scenes of the rats that are featured predominately in the movie. From the looks of it rats never follow their cues and are so demanding with their list of outrageous demands.
Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.
As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.
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