Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Ok gonna be awhile till I make a new post

Just been feeling like shit lately,the change of seasons has majorly effected my mood. So I will be at least a week or so before I put up any new reviews. Sorry :).

Monday, March 22, 2010

House of the devil


House of the Devil is a recent film from director Ti West. A young college student has just moved into her first apartment and is trying to get enough money to cover her first months rent. She sees an advert for a babysitting job and calls the listed phone number. Turns out it is a couple that needs her to babysit on the night of a Lunar eclipse. She gets her best friend to drive her out to the house,and while she feels uneasy about taking the job. Her uneasiness is tempered by the father of the couple offering her $400,It seems they have no kid and just want her there to keep an eye on his wife's elderly mother. After the couple leaves she goes walking around the house and finds what seems to be a kid's room that has many current toys laying around. This causes her to get weirded out. Meanwhile while on her friend is driving home and stops in a local cemetery to rest and have a cig. While trying to light her cigarette she is startled by a scruffy looking man. He ask her if she is the one coming out to babysit,and when she says no. He shoots her point blank,and we get to see a nice blood and brain splatter scene. Back at the house,the young girl orders a pizza,while waiting she goes an plays a game of billiards. Finally there is a knock at the front door and it's the guy who killed her friend in the graveyard. She gives him a $20 and slams the door. Finally she sits down to eat and calm down. But after one slice she hears a strange sound upstairs and goes to investigate. But after she gets up to the third floor ,every thing gets all cloudy and she passes out. When she comes to she is in an all white dress and tied to the floor in the middle of a huge pentagram. It seems the parents and what I assume has to be their "child" are gonna sacrifice her. She manages to get one arm free and quickly gets herself free. She runs off but is confronted by the "pizza delivery" man. He shoots her in her right shoulder,but thinking quickly she slashes his throat with a knife she had managed to pick up in the kitchen. The two parents chase after her,but she manages to escape out of the house and runs down the long road. She makes it all the way to the graveyard and is confronted by the father,she uses the gun she got off pizza man and shoots herself in the head.Then we cut to a hospital room,where our heroine is laying in a bed almost completely covered with bandages. A nurse is attending to her and says "No worries you and your little one are gonna be OK." And then the credits roll. This film is one I have been hearing about for about the past 9 months all over the Internet. It is a throwback to the 80's horror films,but I also noticed a heavy 70's made for TV horror film vibe to it. It is a very very slow build,with nothing much happening until the 1 hour mark. But while in other films I would find this a major problem in this film it just works at building the tension. One thing that stood out to me is how grainy the picture was. I watched this on my decent sized LCD TV and the DVD is 16x9 anamorphic,so I assume it was supposed to look this grainy. The grain didn't really detract from the film,it actually made it feel more like something I would have rented and watched back in 1984 on the Beta max. The acting was all around pretty good. House of the Devil gets a B+.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Hellraiser Hellseeker




I have been a huge fan of the Hellraiser series of films since the first one came out oh so many years ago. But had never bothered seeing any of them that came out after part 5 AKA Hellraiser Inferno. Well a few weeks back at Coast Con a very nice female recommended to me Hellraiser Hellseeker which is the 6Th film in the series. The film starts of with Dean Winters and Ashley Laurence ,who are a married couple taking a drive in their car. While getting a kiss from his beautiful wife Dean swerves into the other lane and has to swerve back quickly to stop from being hit by oncoming traffic. This causes him to lose control of the car and it goes off a bridge into a lake. Dean manages to get out of the car,but sadly his wife doesn't and He sees her die. We then see him at the hospital. While there a cop shows up and starts asking a bunch of questions. It seems when the car was removed from the lake the cops couldn't find Ashley's body. Dean ends up as the prime suspect,and the cops seem to think he has killed his wife. He keeps having flashbacks,and very weird hallucinations. And also is suffering from massive headaches. The further we get into the movie the more it seems that reality is being replaced by what to me seems to be a very Lovecraftian world. The lead cenobite Pinhead shows up at various times during the movie giving Dean cryptic clues as to what is going on. And as I predicted everything is finally explained in the final 10 minutes. The various practical and CGI special effects in the film are very well done for a film that I am sure didn't have a huge budget. And it was nice to see Ashley Laurence back playing Kirsty. Dean Winters is an actor that before this I had only seen on Rescue Me,and had enjoyed his performances on that show. Before this film I had a theory about the various Hellraiser films. IMHO the odd numbered films were good to great and the even numbered ones were below average to pure shit. This one disproved that theory. I find Hellraiser Hellseeker to be the third best film in the series. And plan on buying it sometime soon. Hellraiser Hellseeker gets a B.