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.
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.
Well when it comes to horror, one can always feel proud to be an American when it comes to zombies. Sure we didn't come up with the idea of zombies (it's from African and Haitan folklore) but American born George Romero made zombies as popular as apple pie.
Vampires were brought to the masses via Stoker and werewolves from Greece. But zombies have felt always American and we can't get enough of the undead. And we all think that because we're a gun obsessed violent nation we can survive a zombie horde. When in the video below, that might not always be the case.
The crew at Rooster Teeth put it to the test. Check out the results. And oh yeah, Happy Independence Day!
I may be in the minority as one of the horror fans who loved Laid to Rest (full review here). I gave it 3 spinkicks even ranked it #8 on my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2009. So no doubt I would have the director, Robert Hall on my radar to see what he would come up with next.
So news via Bloody Disgusting and HorrorMovies.ca got me excited when the teaser trailer for Hall's new film debuted. It's called Old Scratch and it takes that record played backward for Satanic verses in for a spin.
Old Scratch follows Neven, a washed up musician living his his own faded shadow in Atlanta. One night, after another sparsely attended gig one his his former bandmates Terry shows up and plays one of their own demo records backwards with fatal consequences.
Now he must return to his roots and revisit a past he had hoped would stay forever buried. He has to find all six cursed demo records and decipher the eerie hidden messages before more blood is shed.
It stars Mr. John Connor himself and LTR alum Thomas Dekker, Ashley Laurence and Kevin Gage.
Deadgirl is like a depraved, warped up horror version of Stand by Me. Think an indie film with a horror element Romero-ed into it. Such is the beauty and the chill sicko-ness of Deadgirl, definitely one of the top 10 horror movies of 2009.
I've seen films where as I'm watching I feel really ashamed to be seeing this. Deadgirl so disturbing yet highly provocative that at the end you feel dirty, kinda ugh and your definitely not Jersey Shore fist pumping in the air. But when a movie like this comes along, you have to give it a standing O. It puts on screen images that challenge your morality, question your ethics, think of things a little differently and amp up your Klingon vengeance served cold. So many emotions are rushed into you in an hour 40 min, that even though they're not happy thoughts, it leaves an impact even the most logical Vulcan would feel. (yay! 2 Star Trek references in 2 straight sentences!)
Deadgirl is what a horror movie that runs fuel of all that is wrong, but somehow you want to see this Elephant Man car all the way to the end. That's the nature of seeing something so raw, so real and so disturbingly human. Boring Plot-O-Matic
Two high school boys discover an imprisoned woman in an abandoned mental asylum who cannot die.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and JT (Noah Segan) are stoner high school friends, our stereotypical high school burnouts who discover in a abandoned mental hospital a decaying woman who is unbelievably alive. Their discovery and what they should do is shocking but also establishes who these kids are. Rickie is our anti-hero, whose ethically challenged and JT who basically wants to play with their new sex toy and has no qualms about doing some fucked up shit.
In the middle of all this, Rickie has a uber crush on JoAnn, who is the GF of jock douchebag Johnny. After JT brings their other friend Wheeler into the mix, the wheels start turning as we see JT and Wheeler violate the decomposing corpse and Rickie struggling with what do. The film focuses on Rickie, his family life, his obsessive stalker persona of JoAnn and keeping this fuckin huge secret...well a secret. Later, others "discover" what's going on, pay for their horniness and leads to a JT vs Rickie vs Deadgirl showdown. The core will have figured out the ending but the jabronis (the few who attempted to watch this) will be screaming bloody murder.
Got all that? To review this movie you really have to strip the horror part of the zombie girl out of the mix. Because when you do, all your left with is a movie about men's perception of women, a teenage angst high school flick and the control of your destiny. Sure, we got zombies, some gore and splatter but Sarmiento and Harel could have easily made an ALIVE girl and not a Deadgirl and we would be talking about the same things (and worst, it would have made this movie 1 billion times more disturbing).
The misogyny engrained in Deadgirl is highly graphic. Not glamorized but highly gritty, the dead girl (played by Jenny Spain) is repeatedly raped and tortured. Treated as a piece of meat, the film takes the high ground in terms of torture porn. All the men who partake don't do it because they are evil (I mean they are...to do this, you gotta be fucked up) but because it's controlled and predictable. The opportunity is 100% guaranteed and in this adolescent world, it is - the peer pressure that overtakes all logic.
This segways into the teenage high school angst aspect. JT, Rickie and Wheeler get the crap beaten out of them by the jockiest jocks. With no control in the outside world, they are crawl into the basement of the mental asylum where they are in control. Deadgirl plays into the high school dynamic perfectly. In one way, Rickie goes back and forth between the two. His love for JoAnn in the real world is unpredictable and painful as opposed to this deadgirl world. But Deadgirl doesn't deliver us a John Hughes Bender/Claire happy ending. It's too smart to know we won't buy it. Instead, the reality of the 2 worlds clashes and in the end you get one that's blended like a bizarro world. And that's why JT and Wheeler embrace the dead girl world. In a most WTF moment,JT puts lipstick and a glamor mag on the dead girl to make her "attractive". They have accepted that they'll be pumping gas or live a life destined to servicing the above classes. JT utters this to Rickie towards the end of the movie.
"Think about it, we're just can fodder for the rest of the world. Down here we're in control. We call the shots down here....you don't have to be the nice guy"
Three distinct issues are blended into a movie and throw in a zombie girl (fun fact! the term zombie is never uttered by any of the characters) and it all equals a horror movie that you want to recommend but are ashamed to admit you watched. What the Deadgirl represents is multiple ideas. Our objectification of women, our longing to be better than who we are and our motivation to control our lives and the moments in them because we thing it's the easiest route to happiness.
Filled with the most disturbing and fucked up scenes of human depravity and even some moments of ha ha's, Deadgirl has vaulted up on my list of the best horror movies of 2009. The performances from the no-name cast are solid as is the story from Trent Haaga and the direction from Sarmiento and Harel. The disturbing images and some scenes of drag and even a few hiccuping weirdness knock out a half from my rating. When I tell you a movie makes an impact, don't take that shit likely.
That's my way of telling you to see this film with a bag over my head.
Gore-ipedia
Oozing oozes Corpse rotting Face and lip trauma Corpse yuckiness Deadgirl ickyness
Nude-ipedia
Is corpse nudity considered nudity?
WTF moment
Zombie BJ One hell of a shit Big momma kicks the crap out JT and Wheeler
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
This is another movie I've watched towards the end of the year so I can come up with a clear list of my top 10 horror movies of 2009. I do this every year and every freakin year something gets bumped that I originally had on there.
The fact that Deadgirl is going to bump something off the list, says frakin volumes.
It's out on DVD, probably through Amazon and Netflix or wherever you get your movies these days.
Dismal: Eat or Be Eaten (2008) Directed by Gary King
What kind of rating do you give to a movie that falls into it's so bad, it's good enough to be MST3K-ed and thus makes it funny enough to watch?
1 and half spinkicks? 2 spins? 2 and half?
Because that's how I felt about how I had to rate Dismal.
You'll see what I gave it at the end of this review.
Dismal: Eat or be Eaten is like a Dharma Initiative can labeled "HORROR MOVIE (WITH EXTRA CANNIBALS)".
It's so cliched, so generic, so assembly line produced, that it would have been tossed into the used DVD bin and be lost forever. Thank goodness the DVD I got was free.
Dismal is mix of Hatchet and the Hills Have Eyes. You've seen it all before. If it looks and tastes like canned peas. It's fuckin peas.
But what happens when instead of you seeing all green peas, they made some red peas, or blue peas or yellow peas. Wouldn't you chuckle just a little bit? Seeing M&M peas would make laugh. And that's why as I watched I went all Tom Servo and Crow on this mess of a flick and it actually made this hilariously decent.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
What does a girl have to do to pass science class? Stay alive!
Dana can’t afford to fail, so she goes on a field trip with other college students to the Great Dismal Swamp. While Dana and her tasty friends are looking for extra credit, terrifying swamp cannibals are looking for dinner.
Eat or be eaten!
Horror is served hot and steamy with a side order of sick in DISMAL.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
The simple cliched review is to do the pun on words and say Dismal was absolutely dismal. But it actually wasn't. The production value is highly low but the film itself was filled with some nice visuals, hot looking hotties and some mean looking makeup effects.
The CGI special effects on the other hand were hilariously bad. So bad I was cracking up at the sight of them. But we'll get to that in sec.
Below is a list of what we here at the jaded viewer deem as full of chunky gooeyness when it comes to the ingredients of a solid slasher-palooza.
Does Dismal achieve everything on this list?
1.) A mysterious, insanely strong, ridiculed as a child, deformed, inbred redneck slasher.
Check.(plus he has a undercover papa whose equally fucked up)
2.) Gratuitous, over the top, super fleshy nudity (with Grade A boobage)?
Check.
3.) Stereotypical teenage caricatures who die gruesome and horrific over the top deaths?
Check.
3a.) Are you telling me there's a brunette kick ass final girl, a blonde bimbo, a nerdy kid, a slutty whore and a token black guy?
Yes. I mean check.
4.) No Plot?
Check. 5.) Kills by our slasher that make you go "Fuck yeah!"
Semi check.(Well they didn't make me go "Fuck yeah", more like "HAHAHAHAHHA. That's fuckin funny")
6.) Gore, lots of it. Like serious decapitation, dismemberment, impalement, hatchet frenzy steroid rages and blood shooting out at various penetration wounds, limbs a flailing and mindless splatter and mayhem
Semi check.
OK here is where the death scenes become uber ridiculous as most of our kills are done with really bad CGI. I mean these were done on like Windows 98 using Paint.
1.) Token black guy gets "hooked" in the mouth. 2.) Slutty whore gets her feet "bear trapped" off (yet she doesn't scream?) and then gets her face bear trapped. 3.) Blonde bimbo gets steel wired sliced in half (the CGI on this is soooooo fuckin bad that I was literally on the floor laughing uncontrollably) 4.) Nerdy guy gets his arm cut off
7.) Geeky leader who takes charge of the hapless group as they try to escape who befriends a hot girl who knows about the "legend" (there's always a legend no one believes)
Semi check. (Hot girl actually doesn't know about the legend)
8.) Funny yet ill timed dialogue but also various quips and one liners that are funny only the first time around (yet somehow funny again when you buy the DVD and only when you're stoned)
Check.(But this movie is probably way awesomer when your stoned)
9.) Final girl goes all final girly?
Check.
10.) Wildly ambigious ending that can be used to warrant a sequel?
Check.
As I keep saying it's all generic. You know, couple has sex, they die. A run and trip girl gets caught in a highly complicated trap that no way a inbred redneck could possibly devise and dies. Random twist inserted for no reason whatsover.
I did mention the CGI was hilariously bad right? There are two scenes that make this milk coming out of your nose funny. One is a shotgun blast by our final girl where you see CGI blood oozing out from the fake CGI hole of our would be redneck slasher. The other scene is a supposed explosion of a cabin. The CGI fire and explosion look so fake, it's like they put a lighter in front of the camera.
But the filmmakers had to know it would look cheesy. So I'm gonna take it as such. And this is why Dismal will get 2 spinkicks. 1 spinkick for following generic slasher cliches with gratuitous nudity and 1 spinkick for the extra, would you like more Velveeta cheesy CGI effects.
Dismal is Hatchet's handicapped little brother who has a speech impediment. It does what it set out to do. Be funny, entertaining and outright ridiculous.
And peas, even deformed, colorful M&M peas taste good. Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)
Token black guy gets "hooked" in the mouth Slutty whore gets her feet "bear trapped" off and then gets her face bear trapped Blonde bimbo gets steel wired sliced in half Nerdy guy gets his arm cut off Horrible CGI gunshot to the stomach Burnt beyond recog Slice and stab Human Heart Wooden spike death
Nude-ipedia (because you like boobies)
Slutty whore boobs and ass Lots of belly skin WTF moment
The really fake looking slice and dice death scene of blonde bimbo
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
This is not a good movie by any means. But what happens when the movie is so bad, that you start to enjoy it because it's unintentionally funny. The "It's so bad, it's good" category of horror movies is very hard to rate. The first one that comes to mind is Snakes on a Plane which I ranked as #7 on my Top Horror Movies of 2006.
So after much thought, Dismal warrants 2 spinkicks. It's too bad MSt3K is gone and couldn't get their hands on this flick. Tom Servo and Crow would have a total field day on Dismal.
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?
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.
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.
We here at the jaded viewer do a lot of horror archeology. We dig and dig for the most obscure and not relatively known horror movies in the vast indie universe.
So with the help of the mainstream horror icon Fangoria, it's good to see we've finally found the fucked up movies of Adam Wingard.
I haven't seen any of these yet, but I am fully intrigued by the trailers.
Home Sick looks like a throwback to the grizzly 70s slashers (almost Abel Ferrera-ish) with its demented sicko carnage. It stars Bill Moseley, Tom Towles and horror scream queen Tiffany Shepis.
The plot is chocked full of bloody goodness.......
A maniac with a suitcase full of razorblades unleashes a super human killer upon a group of kids in a small Alabama town. They must take up arms with a insane Chili enthusiast if they want to survive.
Comes out August 26th on DVD.
Home Sick (Trailer)
Popo Skull seems psychedellically insane. I'm not sure I'll get it if I'm not high.
Diary of the Dead Diary of the Dead (2008) Directed by George A. Romero
Cloverfield with Zombies.
Oh George. Where were you trying to go with this one?
Suffice it to say, I didn't enjoy DOTD. The overall film didn't give me a happy like Land of the Dead where George with his all star cast and special effect zombie gore was like a good meal.
Here are my gripes in no particular order.
1.) 1st person perspective/multiple camera shooting type movies
I'm beginning to hate this film device with a passion. Cloverfield did it and it made me sick. Here the film is edited together from shot footage and for a zombie movie, this just doesn't work. The threat of zombies is seeing them in large masses. That's scary shit. They may be slow but in huge numbers your going to shit in your pants. The movie doesn't need this FPS type device to make it work. George could have made it without this crap and it would have been way better
2.) These characters suck and the acting was horrible
NYU-film school hipsters are worse than NYU hipsters being chased by a monster.
These characters are very badly written.
Jason (the director guy): Yo, you really gotta film everything? Seriously? I mean put the fuckin camera down and help your friends before they get eaten
Debra (the survival girl): She is a spitting image of Eliza Dushku. So annoying with her "I need to save my family" crap. I really wanted her brains eaten.....slowly.
Tony (a dude): ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Tracy (hot Texan girl): She barely got naked.
Mary (victim girl): The "where's the religion" perspective
Maxwell (the snotty drunk teacher): ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. He can shoot arrows really well. Mummy guy, other director guy, etc.
I wanted all of these characters to die. All of them. I hated all of them. They were actually worse than the Cloverfield hipsters. That says a fuckin lot.
3.) Missing: Gore Gore Splatter Gore
A couple of good gore moments. Sickle through the face. Gunshots to the head are always good. Arrow through the head. Acid through the brain. And that was it?
George, we know you don't fail us with the gore and splatter. It's what we love your movies for. But where was it here? I hate this CGI zombie kill gore. It just doesn't look real. We need Savini (I can't believe I wrote that). We need good ole fashion blood pumps and pig intestines.
That was a monumental failure in this movie. Without gore and splatter and blood, it's not a zombie movie.
Where were the scenes of zombies just munching and lunching? I paid $11 to see that shit.
Finally............
4.) The satire doesn't need to be explained to me through a voiceover
Horror fans are smart. We appreciate satire in our horror.
We got it. We didn't need it explained to us.
Night was about the plight of blacks in America, Dawn was a crack at consumerism, Day was a reflection on the corruption of power and Land was about classism and how through the most dire of circumstances the status quo somehow remains the same.
Diary is of course about how technology and media separate ourselves from reality and the world we live in.
George, we didn't need Debra telling this us in monologue voiceover. We didn't need those scenes explaining to us that he's shooting the film but not taking part in it.
We get it. You kind of made me mad and assumed I wouldn't get it.
But that didn't save the movie.
Only George would do an homage to his own Night of the Living Dead in Diary.
Diary at the end of the day is perceived as a zombie movie with a gimmick. Romero is of course the creator and he can take his zombie-verse anywhere he wants to.
What makes a good, fun slasher movie? Below is a list of what we here at jadedviewer deem as full of chunky gooiness when it comes to the ingredients of a solid slasher-palooza.
Does Hatchet achieve everything on this list?
1.) A mysterious, insanely strong, ridiculed as a child, deformed, inbred redneck slasher.
Check.
2.) Gratuitous, over the top, super fleshy nudity (and seeing the boobies of a former Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast member)?
Check.
3.) Stereotypical teenage caricatures with a few old people who die gruesome and horrific over the top deaths?
Check.
4.) No Plot.
Check.
5.) Kills by our slasher that make you go "Fuck yeah!"
Check.
6.) Gore, lots of it. Like serious decapitation, dismemberment, impalement, hatchet frenzy steroid rages and blood shooting out at various penetration wounds, limbs a flailing and mindless splatter and mayhem
Check.
7.) Geeky leader who takes charge of the hapless group as they try to escape who befriends a hot girl who knows about the "legend" (there's always a legend no one believes)
Check.
8.) Funny yet ill timed dialogue but also various quips and one liners that are funny only the first time around (yet somehow funny again when you buy the DVD and only when you're stoned)
Check.
9.) Gratuitous cameos by actors who have portrayed horror legends (Candyman, Freddy Kreuger and Jason Voorhees) that make you flash a metal sign and do the Beavis and Butthead pseudo head nodding.
Check.
10.) Wildly ambigious ending that can be used to warrant a sequel?
Check.
Hatchet is 80 minutes of the most fun I've had in a theatre. I had to scour NYC to find the one theatre it was playing at. Some of the jokes were kinda lame but the characters were throwbacks: geeky leader, token black guy (who plays the token black guy to perfection), bimbos with the idiotic director, Floridian elderly touristy couple, hot looking local and the asian (or not so asian) tour captain.
And the throwbacks made me all nostalgiky. Our man, Hatchet head is by far the most solid slasher to come along in ages. He's not a mysterious, conjured up evil or a pissed off fisherman, nor is he two teenage horror buffs.
He's a deformed, inbred redneck with a big hatchet scar. His had put a hatchet in his fuckin head. That's a awesome slasher.
Hatchet is great fun. It won't change your life, but when has seeing gore and titties at the same time made you think of changing the way you live. Right?
Insidious 
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.
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