Zombieland: Words To Live By

Zombieland is a comedy horror film directed by Ruben Fleischer. The film revolves around a rag tag group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse as they try and find something to live for. Little do they know that they have already found a reason to be, in one another.

So, this is one of my favourite comedy horror films of all time, I have seen it a countless number of times and no matter how matter how much watch it, it remains excellent. This was the perfect storm of comedy, heart and peak Jessie Eisenberg.

My one complaint about it would be that it is not a horror film, it is classified as horror comedy, but it leans into the latter far more than the former. It is in no way scary.

Each one of the characters in this film seems so perfectly cast and brought to the screen and the interplay they have with one another is simply magical. The relationship between Eisenberg’s character and Emma Stone’s character is so believable and sweet that you would have to have a heart as cold as ice not to feel anything about it. The same can be said for any number of other character relationships in the film.

Columbus’s (Eisenberg) rules for surviving “Zombieland” are all terrific and will make you laugh, there is also a kernel of good wisdom in there if you look close enough. However, the real standout comedy moment of the film has to be the Bill Murray cameo, which is simply superb.

Overall, this was the perfect storm, lightning in a bottle. A once in a generation comedy horror film that everyone should see. I like to pretend the sequel never happened.

Pros.

The chemistry

All of the actors are on perfect form

The heart

The comedy

Bill freaking Murray

Cons.

It is not a horror film

5/5

Reviewed by Luke

End Of Days: Arnie Died For Our Sins

End Of Days is a fantasy action film directed by Peter Hyams. The plot sees muscles for hire Jericho (Arnold Schwarzenegger), become wrapped up trying to stop Armageddon. Jericho must protect a young girl, Christine (Robin Tunney), from turning into the reincarnated wife of Satan (Gabriel Byrne). His mission is to stop Satan consummating the union before the stroke of midnight of new years eve thereby brining about the end times and save Christine from her diabolical destiny.

So there is something almost therapeutic about watching Arnie beat the crap out of the Devil. This film does not really require much attention to watch and is a great passive viewing experience. It is dumb and the more you think about it the dumber it gets, but that is part of the fun here.

The film manages to be genuinely quite tense and scary when it wants to be. It uses Lucifer’s powers to get effect creating some chilling scenes. I also enjoyed the powerless feeling Schwarzenegger’s character had for most of the movie, it is interesting to see him play a character who can’t just punch or explode his problems away; though he does in the end.

Byrne is a lot of fun as the Prince Of Darkness, he plays the character with a lot of wicked menace but is also not afraid to crack a cool one liner every now and again, so that this film is not a completely dower affair. I also enjoyed watching his character interact with Schwarzenegger and I thought the two had great on-screen chemistry.

Overall, a great action horror thriller, there aren’t many of these types of films that work, but this one does to great effect.

Pros.

Byrne as the Devil

Schwarzenegger’s powerlessness

The tension and the horror

A few cool one liners

Cons.

The ending undoes the helplessness and Arnie just blows everyone up.

4.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

The Rental: The World’s Worse Air BNB: Imitation Is Not The Finest Form Of Flattery

The Rental is a horror thriller film directed by Dave Franco. The premise seems two couples head to a rental house for the weekend, once they get there they notice that it is the Air BnB from Hell and things quickly escalate.

Now, I had mixed feelings on this one. I thought for what it was trying to achieve and for a first-time directional effort it was good, but in a lot of other ways It was critically let down.

I thought the actual story itself was well done and well executed, it was tense and it used that tension well throughout. What I didn’t like however, was how blatant it was in its homage. This film feels like Franco is trying to make a Hitchcock film, there are several sections that seem directly inspired, I didn’t enjoy that. Mimicking the classics does not make your film a classic.

The characters are also a mixed bag. On the one hand you have Alison Brie as Michelle, the nice person of the group, she is likable and should really be the hero of the story; however she is unceremoniously killed off. The other 3 main characters are differing degrees of bad people and their unpleasant actions make it very hard to sympathise with them.

One more thing that bugged me about this film was the weird racism subplot from the start of the film. It plays into character motivations eventually and gets better over time, but at the start of the film it did not fit at all and felt forced and clunky. Trying too hard to be relevant.

Pros.

A solid first effort

Uses tension well

Alison Brie

Cons.

It feels like a poor imitation of one of Hitchcock’s lesser works

The racism subplot at the start of the film does not feel natural

3/5

Reviewed by Luke

Relic: The Devil You Know

Relic is an Australian horror film directed by Natalie Erika James. The plot sees a mother and daughter go and stay with their elderly relative after she goes missing for a few days, things quickly start to take a turn for the sinister and things are shown to be much more than they first appeared.

The first hour and twenty minutes of this film are great, they are tense, scary and ominous. The film brings you into this world and much like The Taking Of Deborah Logan you’re questioning whether what you see is the result of mental illness or something more. Then in the last few minutes the characters make a decision, said decision feels out of place, incredibly so.

Basically, the characters decide to stay, which in the circumstance would be the last thing they would do. The explanation we are given as to why they do this is some vague throw away reference from the start of the film. This one line in the beginning does not set this up, it feels forgotten about by this time in the film, if it was so important they could have at least said it again later on.

That said the first hour and twenty minutes do feel scary and if they alone were what I was judging I would give it a perfect score; however they are not, and the ending does ruin the film overall.

Ultimately, this could have been a great horror film if it was not for the ending that doesn’t work.

Pros.

The performances

The scares

You don’t know what is real

The tension

Cons.

The awful ending

3.5/5

The Beach House: Creatures From The Deep

The Beach House is a horror film directed by Jeffery A. Brown. The plot sees a young couple go to stay at a family member’s beach house, however, once they arrive they realise someone else is living there. Things only get weirder from there as strange creatures come from the sea, seemingly hell bent on taking over the coast.

This film comes so close to being good, but tragically falls short.

There are several good, unique and interesting ideas throughout, however the issue is that the film does not build on them at all, rather these good moments end and then you have to wade through monotony for about forty minutes before you get another good sequence.

In short the good aspects of this film represents about twenty minutes of the overall product, there simply isn’t enough interesting content to fill out the run time and it shows painfully at times. There are good tense sequences, but these are then let down by basically building to nothing.

The lead characters don’t help matters, they’re as bland as bland gets and honestly a few days after watching the film I can’t remember either of their names. They leave so little of an impression on you that saying you feel numb towards them is too much. They could live or die, and you just don’t care and crucially the film doesn’t make you.

Overall, this feels like cheap schlock, this film serves to remind us all just how overcrowded the horror genre is and also how many terribly average films there are within it.

Pros.

A few interesting ideas

An occasional tense sequence

Cons.

Building to nothing

Fails to capitalise on its ideas

Incredibly forgettable leads

A drag to get through

1/5

Reviewed by Luke

You Should Have Left: Kevin Bacon The King Of Horror

You Should Have Left is a horror mystery film directed by David Koepp. The plot sees a family go to the Welsh countryside to escape from the pressures of modern life. However, the house they are staying at seems to draw in lost souls, the damned and the broken for its own evil intent.

This film proves that Kevin Bacon is still a staple of the horror genre, he feels incredibly well cast and probably has the best formed character in the film. There is a debate throughout the film as to whether Bacon’s character killed his ex-wife or not, towards the end of the film we get answers and realise that the horror that had been plaguing him in his dreams and in the house was himself all along.

The film has some genuinely scary scenes, that stayed with me long after I watched the film. I will kid you not, I had a nightmare for the first time in a long time after I watched this film. The horror is very minimalist in approach but is incredibly effective with what it does.

The one part of the film that I thought was far weaker than the rest of it was the ending. The ending doesn’t feel very satisfying, it feels very much like just another generic science fiction ending; there is no care in it.

Overall, the first two thirds of this film are really well done, genuinely scary and well written, however it all comes apart with an ending that feels incredibly underdeveloped.

Pros.

The scares

Kevin Bacon

Doing a lot with very little

Cons.

The ending

The side characters

3/5

Reviewed by Luke

The Ring Two: Samara Gave Up And Decided To Phone It In

The Ring Two is a horror film directed by Hideo Nakata. The plot sees Rachel (Naomi Watts) survivor of the first movie and her son Aidan (David Dorfman), once again become under attack by evil video tape girl Samara. This time she want to possess a human host.

I feel like this film undoes a lot of what made the first film so good. It fundamentally changes the mythology of the series changing it from the iconic ‘you will die in seven days’ to a bog-standard possession film, albeit it with a little more mystery involved.

Moreover we don’t see near as much of Samara as we did in the first film, which is disappointing because her physicality and her appearance are part of what makes that film so scary. Instead we get cheap predictable scares and fake outs which ultimate fail to be scary. That for me is the fundamental issue with this film, it just isn’t scary.

Watts is trying her best, but it is not enough to save this film from itself. It is a shame that the creator of Ringu the Japanese film that would go on to inspire the American Remake was at the helm for this as this must surely have left him disheartened.

Overall this film fails to leave an impression and is in no way scary.

Pros

It has good atmosphere

Naomie Watts is trying

Cons.

It is not scary

It ruins the mythology of the first film

The scares are bog standard and predictable

1/5

Reviewed by Luke

Underwater: The Threat Came From Beneath The Waves

Underwater is a science fiction film directed William Eubank. The plot sees an underwater research centre become under attack by a strange unknown type of sea life.

I go back and forth on Kristen Stewart as an actress, sometimes I think she is good and worthy of all the praise she gets; other times I think she struggles with even basic emoting and can’t convince me of anything. However, I will give her praise here, she commands this film, her performance is striking and in some ways very reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver in Alien. This film would be far less good without Stewart in it.

Despite, feeling a little too overly familiar this film managed to keep me engaged throughout. It used the environment and tension to great effect and had a few great sequences that will stuck in my mind long after the film has ended. My one critique in this regard is the way some of these high-tension kinetic scenes are shot. The cinematography of these scenes makes them hard to see; which therefore makes it hard to tell what is going on. An example of my point is midway through the film one of the team is pulled out of their suit, but you don’t realise that you just see a lot of blood, you don’t realise what happened until one of the characters tells you. That is a big problem in my book.

Also T.J Miller is in this and he is every bit as grating as you are imagining. Horror/ dark science fiction films don’t need comedic relief.

Overall, a solid disaster film boosted tremendously by a great performance by Kristen Stewart.

Pros.

Stewart

The tension

Keeping me engaged in a played-out idea

Cons.

The characters outside of Stewart’s lead are one note

It is hard to tell what is going on

3.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Let Me In: Fresh Blood

Let Me In is a horror film directed by Matt Reeves. The plot follows a young abused boy Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who befriends a reclusive neighbour girl Abby (Chole Grace-Moretz). The two form a bond, and then it is revealed she is a vampire. It is an American remake of the Swedish film Let The Right One In.

I think this film is genuinely quite creepy and well done. Vampire films have been done to death, so they need to be novel and inventive to stick out to me and this did. Yes, there are some elements of it that seem a little familiar, but the idea of a vampire who is trapped in the body of a 12-year-old girl falling in love with a 12 year of boy who then becomes her familiar is something I have never seen before. It is horror romance done right, take notes Twilight.

There are some pretty gnarly scenes and some of the gore is wince inducing, that is a pro in my book. The scenes where we see Abby hunting and killing are also well done and Moretz does a hell of a job making us scared of a tween.

My one complaint would be that the runtime was too long and that at almost two hours the film feels oppressive, there is no reason this couldn’t have been an hour and a half. Films need to be tighter.

Overall, a great vampire film that proves that there is still fresh blood in the subgenre

Pros.

Moretz

The gore

A unique spin on the genre

An intriguing ending

Cons.

It is way too long

4/5

Reviewed by Luke

The Love Witch: Finding Love The Witchy Way

The Love Witch is a horror comedy film directed by Anna Biller. The plot sees witch Elaine (Samantha Robinson), set out to find the man of her dreams, someone who will love her as much as she loves them as well as live up to her criteria of what makes a perfect man. Sadly, the American dating scene does not live up to her expectations.

So, this one was a mixed bag for me, I enjoyed the style of it, mimicking horrors of the 60’s and 70’s and applaud it for being as out there and strange as it ended up being. However, it is not without its problems some of which really harm the film overall and stop it from reaching good film placement.

One of my main issues was how repetitive the film became after a while. It was the same thing over and over again, Elaine meets a dude, she does a weird strip show for them, she slept with them and then she killed them and on and on the cycle goes. This quickly made the film tiresome, the only reprieve from this monotony was the final act which I actually enjoyed. It was by far the most out there part of the film and had heavy Wicker Man vibes.

My other key issue with the film was the nudity, I understand Elaine’s character is all about sex magic, but she spends most of the film in a state of undress. It gets to the point where you question the need for it, I am no prude or puritan, but it almost felt like this film was a softcore porn film at times. The nudity or half nakedness also became repetitive and boring after a while.

Overall, this film has a great sense of style and a very interesting premise, but the writing ruins the film. By being incredibly repetitive you lose any interest in the film or it’s characters and a strong third act can’t change that.

Pros.

The style and the visuals

Trying to be different

Cons.

The needless nudity and half nakedness

The repetitive story structure

Immense pacing issues

2/5

Reviewed by Luke