Horror film | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Darren

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is probably the funniest movie I’ve seen in a long time. I’ll admit that I probably skew a little bit towards it, what with being a fan of cheesy horror movies and a sucker for a high concept comedy, but Eli Craig’s cinematic debut feature is a masterful comedic deconstruction of the conventional horror film, daring to turn genre conventions on their head and ask: why do we always side with the college students in these sorts of films?

What a waist...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Alan Tudyk, Dale, Eli Craig, film, Hills Have Eyes, Horror film, Movie, non-review review, review, Tucker, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Tyler Labine, wes craven | 2 Comments »

The Virtue of Ambitious Failure…

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Darren

When I was compiling my “top twelve” list for 2011, there were a lot of films contending for a place on that list. I felt bad about having to leave off stuff like We Need to Talk About Kevin and Preludio and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. However, I didn’t find myself trying to justify the inclusion of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, despite the fact that I found the film completely and utterly compelling. I’ll be the first to concede that Soderbergh’s disease epic had some fairly considerable flaws, too many for me to legitimately rank it “one of the best of the year”, and yet I think it’s one of those movies I couldn’t stop thinking about. What it is it about an ambitious failure that makes it so much more fascinating than a modest success?

Figuring out the formula...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: ambition, Contagion, failure, film, films, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Horror film, mark strong, Movies, Soderbergh, Steven Soderbergh, We Need to Talk About Kevin | 8 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Resident

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Darren

While I was watching The Resident, I couldn’t help but think of Pacific Heights. Maybe it was the fact that I had just watched Jackie Brown and Michael Keaton was fresh in my head, but I really couldn’t get the comparison out of my head. Both movies have a rather fascinating central premise, and a fertile ground for horror – the notion that we know next-to-nothing about the people we finding ourselves living with – but both also fail to follow through on some truly great potential. There are moments when The Resident seems to be working, but they’re all too briefly brushed aside in a movie that doesn’t seem willing to build or develop its unsettling undertones.

This relationship is suffocating her...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Christopher Lee, film, hammer horror, hilary swank, Horror film, Jackie Brown, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, michael keaton, Movie, non-review review, Pacific Heights, Resident, review | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Contagion

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Darren

It’s somewhat ironic that the biggest fault with Contagion is that it’s not nearly clinical enough. Soderbergh’s exploration of the impact of a mass pandemic actually works best when the director pulls back to give us a high-level overview of a society collapsing, the individual lives reduced – appropriately enough – to microscopic cells in a larger organism in what might be its death throes. It’s these sequences and shots that are brilliantly effective, demonstrating the systemic and group dynamics that enable and facilitate the spread of a deadly bird flu variant, while the more intimate moments feel awkward and shoehorned in, never afforded enough space to develop character or plot lines. Still, if you pull back and look at the big picture, Soderbergh’s latest effort is an engaging ambitious disaster movie.

One sick picture...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: bird flu, Bryan Cranston, Contagion, disease, film, films, Gwyneth Paltrow, hollywood, Horror film, Jennifer Ehle, jude law, kate winslet, laurence fishburne, matt damon, Movies, review, roland emmerich, Soderbergh, Steven Soderbergh | 6 Comments »

Red State Red Band Trailer

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Darren

Kevin Smith’s latest film, Red State, seems like a break out of the director’s comfort zone. While the director has tackled the idea of organised religion before (in the superb Dogma), his latest effort seems like something decidedly more serious. Being entirely honest, I’m always eager to see an established director attempt something that we’d never expect from them, and Smith’s cast (John Goodman, Melissa Leo and Kevin Pollack) is populated with enough skilled (and underrated) performers that it looks to be well worth a chance. If nothing else, the exploration of extremist religious groups in the United States always makes for a juicy viewing experience, even if Smith might not be going for a lot nuance. It looks like a mish-mash of a whole host of subgenres – from the hints at awkward teen comedy at the start to a sinister horror thriller through to an all-out action adventure. It seems like a lot for the director to handle, but the cocktail is intriguing enough to grab my attention.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Dogma, Horror film, john goodman, kevin smith, Melissa Leo, Michael Parks, Red State, United States | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Ringu

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Darren

There are a handful of movies I will forever associate with a particular viewing experience – and some with the first time I had seen a given movie. I remember, for instance, seeing Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for the first time with my father in the local cinema during its nineties re-release. When I think of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I recall the time I had to sit in the hall while the grown-ups watched it. Anytime I see The Shining, I think back to watching it in the wee hours of the morning with gran and granddad. The Japanese cult horror Ringu is something of a similar experience.

All's well that ends well...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, film, Gore Verbinski, Horror film, John Carpenter, Movie, non-review review, review, ringu, Television, the ring, vhs, wes craven, Woody Allen | 10 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Fright Night

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Darren

This movie was seen as part of Movie Fest, the rather wonderful film festival organised by Vincent and everybody else over at movies.ie. It was well worth attending, and I’m already looking forward to next year. Good job all.

Fright Night is great fun. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s one that’s produced with enough skill and charm that it feels well worth your time. A superb cast and confident direction make the film feel like a breeze, even with a slightly muddled middle section and some strange plotting and pacing. It’s also one of the best uses of 3D I’ve seen since Tron: Legacy, and I genuinely don’t say that lightly. All of adds up to a movie well worth sinking your teeth into.

Put the Fright one on...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: anton yelchin, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, colin farrell, Craig Gillespie, david tennant, film, Film festival, Fright Night, Horror film, Imogen Poots, Movie, non-review review, review, toni collette, twilight | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Shelter

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Darren

Shelteris a horror with an intriguing original premise. However, it’s also packed with tonnes of other premises, some of which are remotely interesting, while others are quite mundane. It’s an uneven film, which actually works best when it paces itself more as a thriller or a mystery than an out-and-out horror, but there are weaker choices out there.

Psyche!

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, Dissociative identity disorder, film, gillian anderson, Horror film, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Julianne Moore, Movie, murder, non-review review, review, sam raimi, shelter, shelter (movie) | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Scream II

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Darren

Today, we’re reviewing the entire Scream trilogy. Sadly, I’ll have to wait to get a look at the latest instalment, but reviews of the first three will be going on-line throughout the day.

I actually like Scream 2 a great deal – perhaps as much as I enjoyed the original Scream. Which, to be honest, takes me by surprise because it’s a much weaker movie in a lot of ways, the most obvious being the fact that it sort of fizzles out in the third act. Still, there’s just something about the cheeky and energy of the sequel that grabs my attention and keeps it, as if moving the series from a stereotypical high school and into a college film class. Of course, as Randy the resident film buff points out, the only thing more stereotypical than high school slasher movies are college slasher movies, but there’s just something cool about the fact that most of the cast (rather than just Randy) are relatively genre savvy this time around.

Film Buff-y?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Drew Barrymore, Horror film, Jamie Kennedy, Joshua Jackson, liev schreiber, List of Scream characters, Omar Epps, Red Right Hand, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Scream, Scream 2, Slasher film, Timothy Olyphant, tom cruise, top gun, wes craven | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Scream

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Darren

Today, we’re reviewing the entire Scream trilogy. Sadly, I’ll have to wait to get a look at the latest instalment, but reviews of the first three will be going on-line throughout the day.

It’s hard to really look back at Scream in context these days. It was released in the mid-nineties, a period where the slasher movie had all but died off, after series after series produced weaker and weaker instalments. Audiences had been sort of numbed to the impact of the slasher film as a genre, expecting the bland stock scares, the stereotypical mumbo-jumbo, the teen angst, the sexual politics and even the unstoppable killer. It’s not too much of a stretch to believe that Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson intended the movie as something of an epilogue for the genre, a not-too-fond farewell to the type of films that had been churned out since the seventies, with never a hint of growth and development.