Showing posts with label gut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gut. Show all posts

Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Best Quotey Quotables from the Worst Movies I saw in 2012

It's that time of year again where I go through all the crappy and mediocre movies I've seen and give you my best witty jabs from each review. Everybody has their worst of 2012 lists. But as I try to AVOID bad films, sometimes I'm unlucky and see some utter crap. The only salvation in seeing horrible movies is they turn into awesome funny reviews.

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

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"Recycled’ doesn’t necessarily resign a movie to a fate of suckage. When you’re playing to human fear, there are only so many threads to explore. Filmmakers in the genre build on and borrow from each other almost as a rule. But you’d better add something original to make it stick in people’s heads if you’re going that route. The fact that one of the hillbillies vaguely resembles Willie Nelson is not enough for me."

from Special K's review of Savage County

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

from Kidnapped review

"Alien movies, even when done well, are not typically the subgenre I reach for first. Plus, I tend toward thinking that any film with the word ‘Ferocious’ in the title is bound to be lame. But you can't judge a film by it's cover right?

Okay... maybe you can."



from Special K's review of Ferocious Planet

"Today we get shit like The Summer of Massacre. A movie whose sole premise is that it holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the Highest Body Count in a slasher film at 155. To get this record it fills 1 hour and 37 minutes with HORRIBLY BAD CGI KILLS. And I don't mean these were Romero like CGI, I mean this is MS Paint bad CGI. It's the equivalent of super transposed 16 bit Genesis graphics on top of the movie. Atari had better graphics than this film."

from The Summer of Massacre review

"If you want to see Aussie Suicide girls battle sea monsters, this will be your favorite movie. I liked the eye candy and the fairly cheesy monster mash gore. But clearly it's the same as watching a Skinemax action movie. Pick your poison."


from El monstro del mar! review

10.) The movie cop ineptness is a thankless job. It's hard to this stupid.

from Scream 4 WTF List

"Yes fellow jaded viewers, it's called "A Fall from Grace". And it's so horribly bad that it's fuckin awesome. It makes The Room look like Citizen Kane. It makes Birdemic look like The Birds. This short has elements of all that is perfect in this millennial age. It's vintage 90s (or it maybe circa early 2000s I actually have no idea so I'm gonna say late 90s), its made my college film students and it utilizes the now archaic Internet communication of the time (it's AOL Instant Messenger!)."

from a co-worker's short called A Fall from Grace

"When you do an ensemble, you should have 1-2 main antagonists, a comic relief guy, some eye candy and a WTF guy. Elevator has them all but none do a decent job at...well their jobs."

from Elevator review

"The ending was weaker than Mike's Hard Lemonade"

from Gut review

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

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Gut (Review)

Gut 

Gut (2012)

Directed by Elias

If you tease me a movie about the snuff film, it's an urban legend that gets me curious. When you make an intriguing trailer, you've sucked me in.

But when you make a film that doesn't live up to any of that, well you've just pulled off a cruel joke. With Gut, the premise makes it seem we'll see The Ring meets August Underground. But somehow it's a slow burn psychological film instead, which didn't really resonate with all the bells and whistles of what a snuff film could be.

Clearly it's trying something different and being an indie horror film you'd expect a creative approach to the subject. But somehow there isn't much really going on. It's your standard everyday salaryman and his goofy friend stumbling on snuff and going down a rabbit hole of friendship damage and impending doom. Dudes work, eat, fuck (err.. with their significant others) and watch snuff. All ends as it should. With me being bored as all fuck.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Family man Tom has seen something he can't forget, a mysterious video with an ugly secret that soon spreads into his daily life and threatens to dismantle everything around him. 

Awesome Review-O-Matic

It seems the universal consensus by my fellow reviewers is this is a psychological horror kick. OK I could see glimpses of that in Gut. However, slow burn scenes of repetitive nonsense are not a way to go. Tom is a husband and father who with this wife Lily and daughter Katie lives the suburban life of work and play. Clearly this has sucked the life out of him so his BFF Dan (a horror freak) seemingly injects some crazy into his life in the form of a video he receives via the underground web of IRC chat rooms. 

The video consisting of a woman's stomach being sliced open is mesmerizing to the duo and they soon get hooked. It infiltrates their lives from work, to their relationships and to their friendship. Soon the movies become more personal and people die. Sorry that's the best summary I could do.

First let me say that the special effects are pretty solid. All looks wickedly non CGI-ish and is creepy snuff from the other pseudo snuff films I've seen. Add in the fact we get our standard share of boobs, that's one for Team Boobage. But somehow we get Tom's naked Shamus like pasty white ass in every random sex scene. It's the most awkward sex scenes I've seen bordering on those old Skinemax parodies of horror films.
Add in the fact that most shots are dialogue-less scenes of Tom and Dan staring aimlessly with their concerned faces, slow burn is given a new meaning. I can take long drawn out scenes that go on endlessly, but usually these end in a POW! fashion (See Ti West). Gut draws out that the snuff is affecting Tom but fillers everything with scenes of absolute Seinfeld-esque nothing. Bored out of mind, I was truly tempted to fast forward. 

If this is a psychological thriller about the loneliness of both sides of the equation (married couple vs single guy) it does neither to amp up the tension. I started to realize if this is something about something I missed the point. There are no real scares, no real scenes that made me "Oh Shit!" and nothing that made me think. I'm not sure what everybody else saw but clearly I'm in the minority here. 

Tom slowly loses control but there never seems to be a on the doorstep evil that might be on it's way. If this was intentional, then I think Elias missed a perfect opportunity to explore the evil that may be where we don't expect.The risks Elias takes on this direction of the snuff urban legend is weak at best. You have so many levels to work on and it seems he didn't even scratch the purpose.

But in the end, I needed the movie to give me something that I could take away. And all I got was a punch in the gut. A very weak one at that.

Nude-ipedia

Lots of cute boobs

Gore-ipedia

Slice and dice
Punch to the face trauma

WTF moment

The ending was weaker than Mike's Hard Lemonade

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

At least I marked this off my indie horror screener pile. Gut is clearly different but didn't accomplish what I was looking for. Maybe I expected more, but I really should have expected less.

Here is the official site and Facebook page.

Rating:


Check out the trailer.