Adventureland's Nightmare on the Midway (Review)

To find the the very best haunted houses in New York, you sometimes have to venture away from the city. I've been stuck within the city limits, but with the help of The Raven and Black Cat and Survivor Bailey Squared we all jam-packed into a car and road tripped to the various haunts of Long Island. Our first stop was Jesse Eisenberg approved, Adventureland's Nightmare on the Midway and if you're looking for a place to take the kids, this is it.

The Long Island staple of amusement parks Adventureland is rich with nostalgia and oozes of summertime throwback fun. Adventureland is trying their luck with Nightmare and for a family friendly Halloween adventure, it's pretty solid. This month it as has been turned into a spooky Halloween attraction complete with monsters running amock and rides to be ridden in the pale moonlight. And they do have some haunted houses to get your fright on.

After sundown, you'll get to go to a zombie themed maze, "Zombie Asylum" which is a quick romp with screaming actors and an Addams family approved props ranging from wired gates keeping the costumed undead away.  It's as PG-13 as you can get and the tweenagers should be happy with their walk through. Teenagers may have attitude as they get accosted by other teenagers looking to scare them. Lots of screaming by both parties.

A haunted train ride which probably in the daytime is innocent is turned into something the kids who need to get their hayride fix in may enjoy. The train takes you all over the mini me park and slows down as stealthy actors in a variety of costumes and make and even one in a military style grass camouflage BOO you during the ride. The train passes a few stationary settings with Spencer Gifts props and animatronics but it's the actors that do their best to make it work. "S" from RABC, suggested there should be a tour guide who possibly could give you a story to what you'll encounter. I highly agree. A guide would distract from the actors ready to pop up for the jump scare.

Finally, we encountered a ride that made inner kid me smile. An old school Haunted Mansion like ride-a-long that has you encountering old school animatronics mixed in with some digital tech and packed with Universal monsters from Dracs to mummies. Good stuff. I love Disney like rides and with the ride a passenger for two, tweens will probably like it more.

Adventureland is trying something new and they are off to a good start. They've been adapting as they go along and have already made a few changes to make it all a good time for the Halloween starved Islanders and city folk who road trip out there. To compete in the multi million dollar Halloween haunted house industry in October, you really do need to stand out from the rest. I would highly suggest they take their namesake and milk the fact a movie with zombies in it took place in something similar. Wouldn't you want to go to a working Zombieland attraction? I would.

Nightmare on the Midway is a solid Halloween attraction for families, tweens and those high octane millennials. Riding a roller coaster at night with Jason Voorhees stalking you in is great (this happened!), a few mazes for your jump scares and old school rides that make you all nostalgic.  For a packaged price, the rides and Halloween themed attractions are hard to resist.

Now if we get a few more zombies chasing me around the park, I'd be happy as Carl when got his gun back from Rick in the last episode of The Waling Dead.

The Vitals

• The official site
• Like Adventureland Nightmare on the Midway on Facebook
• Follow on Twitter with the hashtag #ALandNOTM
• Nightmare on the Midway is now open. The park is located at: 2245 Broad Hollow Road (RT. 110) Farmingdale, NY 11735
• You can purchase tickets on the official site.

Categories: adventureland, halloween, happy halloween, haunted house, long island, new york city, zombieland, zombies

Carriers (Review)

Carriers

Carriers (2009)

Directed by Alex and David Pastor

It's New Year's Eve! What better way to end 2009 with a post apocalyptic movie, right? So with my last post of 2009, I bring you my review of Carriers.

Carriers is sorta a uber depressing version of Zombieland without the funny and kinetic moving zombies. There are 4 people (2 dudes and 2 dudettes), they have their own "rules" and they are traveling the US of A to get to a happy place. See what I mean? However, in Carriers it's more realistic and there is no search for twinkies. Also, the "infected" don't want to eat your flesh.

Other than that, it's the same formula. But Paramount Vintage ignored this flick giving it a small release this year whereas Zombieland went global. Carriers is a solid flick and for 90 minutes beats down the every man for himself theme down your throat. Survival of the fittest is the motto in this post apocalyptic world. And because they stayed true to this, it makes quite an effective flick.

But you know what I realized after watching this? If there is EVER a zombie epidemic or a national infection that can't be quarantined, the United States of America is NOT the country you want to be in. We turn into dog eat dog killers and only think of ourselves. Does this happen in the Bahamas?


Boring Plot-O-Matic

Four kids are trying to outrun the end of the world – and each other. No one is safe from the viral pandemic threatening to wipe out the human race. The four friends speed across the Southwestern U.S. to reach a place of safety while facing moral decisions no human should ever be forced to face. They discover that their greatest enemy is not the microbe attacking humanity, but the darkness within themselves.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

So Carriers has rules like Zombieland (5 total compared to the 33 in Z) Let's go through them shall we?

1.) Avoid populated areas at all cost.

The virus in Carriers is never explained and that's a good thing. We get thrown into the movie right smack in the middle as they travel the back roads. All we know when we start our journey with these 4 musketeers is that a virus has wiped out most of humanity and they need the essentials to survive: water, food, bleach and especially gas.

Carriers uses the open country setting well and shows us daytime which makes a infection movie even creepier. I've always thought zombie or virus movies should show us more daytime scenes. Makes us feel we're not safe at all.

2.) If you come into contact with other people, assume they have it.

OK let's introduce our characters. James T. Kirk himself, Chris Pine plays Brian who with his brother Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci) his pseudo GF Kate (Emily VanCamp) and Brian's GF Bobby (Piper Perabo) are our road survivors. Brian plays the rogue self appointed leader, Danny the obedient lap dog, Kate plays the damsel and Bobby who hottie with a heart.

The rules comes into play when they meet a father (Christopher Meloni) and his daughter (who has the disease) who need gas but as they follow rule #1, fate brings all of them together. The movie is one long road trip, we hear things about what may or may not be going on and they all end up at an abandoned school searching for a supposed cure.

Carriers is one depressing rest stop after another. The film gives some glimmer of hope, then coughs up and kills it without any remorse. It's this sort of without mercy storytelling that has an abandon all hope attitude.

Also, we get more in depthiness with our characters. The relationship between Brian and Danny is meshed with hostility and love and we get to hear some backstory of their lives before the virus. It's clearly a way to get us to care for these people and even at times dislike them. In many of these type of movies, the flick doesn't have time to let us know anything about our heroes. Instead, it's "Be chased! Run! Shoot in head!". Carriers allows us to get to know these people and all of them are a tad cool once you get to know them.

3.) The virus can survive on surfaces for up to 24 hours.

This rule should be combine with #4. So see the #4.

4.) Never touch anything that's not disinfected (or disinfect anything they've touched in the last 24 hours)

So obviously one of them gets infected. It's these moments that are as deeply human as they are real. I remember seeing the lines for the H1N1 vaccines and if you think about it, if there was a shortage, people would just be selfish and probably horde the vaccines. Would you do the same? It's easy to not care for a stranger but could you leave your husband, your wife, your kids just to save yourself?

It's always the same question these virus/zombie movies put to the test. As much as you'd like to think you'd take the high ground and be all Pope-ishly moral, I highly doubt we'd actually be civilized in an uncivilized world.

Carriers tries to answer this with hard truths.

5.) Take what you need and never look back (or the sick are already dead, they can't be saved)

After a confrontation with another survivor group at a country club, our scooby gang see the other end of the spectrum when they are questioned and all their supplies are taken. The ending is completely bleak and is the same tone throughout. No happy endings here, no reenacting Ghostbusters will Bill Murray.

Carriers is as depressing as you can get for a post apocalyptic movie (though I hear The Road is more so). Sure, I can dig a downer ending but I'd hope we'd have some hope of goodness inside all of us. Maybe I'm pessimestic about the human race (shit, it could be because I'm American) but I always thought the idea of an end of the world movie is to show how bad it can get and we can lose all our beliefs, but we can stick to at least one. I am a glass half full sorta guy. I think there are some of us that give a shit about each other.

Am I being naive? Maybe so, but that's why Carriers won't make my Top 20 list. I wanted to think we could be better than we are. It's that damn Star Trek vision of the future I guess.

Overall, Carriers is an effective film of post apocalyptic survival, characters you care about and a live and let die philosophy of who we are.

Wow, I'm totally depressed now. Maybe I'll move to the Bahamas.

Gore-ipedia

Infected ickyness
Virus trauma

Nude-ipedia

Oh I would have paid $5 to see Piper Perabo naked...but she isn't

WTF moment

Brian goes postal on some Christians

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Happy New Year's Eve! Trust me, this is not the flick you want to see going into 2010. But I can see why this was put on many Top 10 lists for 2009. It's a gritty, realistic and depressing look into the infection doomsday genre and doesn't care to give you any happy ending. See this, then see Zombieland. Its total ying and yang.

Carriers comes out on DVD on December 29th. Head over to the official site for more goodies.

Rating:

1/2

Check out the trailer below.

Categories: 2009 horror dvd, 2009 horror movies, 2009 horror trailers, carriers, ebola virus, infected, post apocalyptic, zombieland

The WTF List: Zombieland

Good ole America. We're back to take what's rightfully ours. I guy from Pittsburgh created the zombie film so it's fitting we take back the zombie comedy. Hey, Shaun of the Dead, you had your time at the top, but Zombieland shotgunned you out of the way and blew a hole right in your face.

Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have created the new standard in zombie comedy. You get the feel they took all the zombie culture references (Max Brook's The Zombie Survival Guide being most evident and every other zombie comedy and blended it into a cohesive, yummy tasting awesome comedy.

Woody H., Jesse E, Emma S and Abigail B are all working a nice solid with their performances. Just dead on with Woody as the redneck papa, Jesse playing his Adventureland role in a post apocalyptic way and Emma being the hottie with the scams and Abigail taking her tween acting into overdrive.

OK, enough of the gushing and spewing of love by me. It's just going to get messy. On to the WTF list. SPOILERS OHOY!

1.) The opening slo mo sequence is credit breaking-tastic
2.) Cardio
3.) Double Tap
4.) 406 may be the hottest zombie to appear ever
5.) Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock (now thats what I call memorable movie character names)
6.) Enjoy the Little Things
7.) The ring con
8.) Twinkies have a half life...I'm sure of it.
9.) Fast moving zombies are only awesome when there in slo mo
10.) The logical conclusion of fat zombies
11.) "You gotta love rednecks!"
12.) Who you gonna call?
13.) I did not know B.M. was in this. So when Zombie Bill showed up I almost laughed out loud my vocal cords
14.) "We're gonna build a fort" (I just liked that line)
15.) Tallahassee goes John Wayne on the amusement park zombies
16.) No more Facebooking status updates ever in Zombieland
17.) Columbus's Diablo Cody self aware dialogue
18.) Bill and Columbus reenact a scene from Ghostbusters with Wichita doing to Janine voice
19.) The end credits have one final scene with Bill and Woody
20.) Bill's demise and Garfield reference

21.) Zombie Kill of the Week!

Here are some of the 47 rules to survive Zombieland

1.) Cardio
2.) Beware of Bathrooms
3.) Seatbelts
4.) Double Tap
5.) Travel Light
6.) Cast Iron Skillet
12.) Bounty Paper Towels
15.) Bowling Ball
17.) Don't be a hero
29.) The Buddy System
31.) Check the backseat
32.) Enjoy the little things
33.) Swiss Army Knife

All the videos to the rules can be found here.

Megagasmic awesome flick thru and thru. The fact they didn't let up with the gore and splatter is a testament to the fact that they know Wiki about zombie movies. It hit on all the right notes, was self aware of what it was parodying but then made it its own.

Zombieland is probably going to be my #1 comedy (not just zombie comedy) of 2009. With this rush of vampire flicks infiltrating TV and movies, the zombie horror comedy movie may be on the decline. But Tallahassee isn't hearing that shit.

Go see Zombieland.

Categories: emma stone, horror comedy, jesse eisenberg, shawn of the dead, woody harrelson, zombie comedy, zombieland, zombies

Zombieland (Exclusive "Rules" Clips)

Well I may not be the biggest proponent of the horror comedy big budget productions coming from Hollywood, but I'll admit Zombieland looks damn funny. It may be the USA's answer to Shawn of the Dead.

Starring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg and a list of up and coming Hollywood hotties (Emma Stone and Amber Heard) and directed by Ruben Fleischer, it seems zombies aren't deader as dead yet after the vampire boom.

Here be the plot. (from the IMDB plot database)

In the horror comedy Zombieland focuses on two men who have found a way to survive a world overrun by zombies. Columbus is a big wuss -- but when you're afraid of being eaten by zombies, fear can keep you alive. Tallahassee is an AK-toting, zombie-slaying' bad ass whose single determination is to get the last Twinkie on earth. As they join forces with Wichita and Little Rock, who have also found unique ways to survive the zombie mayhem, they will have to determine which is worse: relying on each other or succumbing to the zombies.

Here be the trailer.





UGO.com has posted exclusive clips of some new videos starring Woody and Jesse answering viewer mail and discussing "rules" of what you need to survive a zombie onslaught. These include different weapons you may need (skillet, swiss army knife, bowling balls, etc.) And what do paper towels and the buddy system have to do with anything?!?

Find out by checking out all the viral vids. Check out all the exclusive Zombieland videos by going here.

Zombieland will be released on October 9, 2009.

Categories: amber heard, american zombie, emma stone, horror comedy, jesse eisenberg, shawn of the dead, woody harrelson, zombie comedy, zombieland, zombies