Now that I got the trash that’s trash for trash’s sake out of the way from my weekend marathon, it’s time to cover the “serious” horror trash. Here are 5 that didn’t disappoint in disappointing. Not even familiar horror names can save some of these.
ALMOST INVISIBLE (2010)
This movie is so unwatchable I couldn’t stop watching.
No, that’s not why (I’m lying). Whether experimental or just incompetent I can’t say, but everything happening here makes the viewer as tripped out and confused as the kids in the movie.
They go to party at the home of the weird goth girl they all hate, start trashing the place, and then begin to get pulled into weird vortexes as she floats around the house (an effective highlight for me).
There are weird flashes of sex acts, bizarre shit happens like them all getting swarmed by flies and getting trapped in the house with no way out, and they never seem to react appropriately to what they’re experiencing. All the while, a hypnotic rock soundtrack plays in the background.
Are they on drugs? Is she a witch who’s cast a spell on them? Have they entered another dimension? Someone please watch the movie and explain it to me…
Oh. And in case my blog didn’t make it obvious, there are loads of girls running around in their bikinis in this film.
DEAD OF THE NITE (2013)
I have to say, I didn’t expect the movie I got following the animated intro to Dead of the Nite.
I went in assuming Tony Todd’s appearance in the film was just for name recognition…and for the poster art that could probably get the filmmakers sued by the Candyman people… His role is virtually pointless and could have been (probably was) added as an afterthought when he was brought on board.
The film starts at the end. The police interrogate Todd about what happened, and then we spend the rest of the movie with…
…a group of ghost hunters that came to a house where a man killed his family then cut off his face with a sickle. Now, his faceless ghost supposedly haunts the place for more victims.
Don’t you just hate guys who look hot even in night vision?
What transpires is the most generic found footage film you could imagine. It’s mostly talking and fake scares as they explore, fight, use a Ouija board, make us yawn…
50 minutes in someone in a hoodie and a faceless mask who is clearly not a ghost turns this into a found footage slasher for the second half, eventually pushing the final girl to try to outdo Heather with her confessional sob story all up in the camera.
And by the way, their isn’t even a slight surprise as to who the killer is.
But there are a few fun moments watching a slasher in found footage format.
BLOODSHOT (2014)
I was excited to see Danny Dyer back in “horror,” but I had my suspicions about this one based on a mixed bag of genre tags.
This really isn’t a horror movie. It’s a psychological something…romantic thriller perhaps?
The beginning was intriguing, mostly because Dyer is jogging in a park at night, runs into a weirdo wrapped from head to toe in a blanket, and takes her home to stay the night.
Seriously, he essentially brings a mental homeless person home for all intents and purposes.
Then they both act weird for most of the movie, and you expect one of them to turn out to be a psycho who’s going to go all Glenn Close on the other. Or even better, both of them.
But the backbone of the story relies on Danny being a special effects guy who has horrific samples of his work—mostly mutilated women models—in a room the homeless guest is violently freaked out by because she hates violence towards women and feels his job perpetuates it. So…
They start a love relationship.
Things just continue to be weird, and the only horror sequence—and it’s a goodie filled with gore and demonic overtones—is a nightmare Danny has.
You can save yourself a lot of time by just watching that scene if it shows up on YouTube, supplemented with this pic…the one moment when you see Danny’s ass.
NIGHTWORLD (2017)
The director of the totally bizarre Hidden in the Woods (both original and English remake) brings us a movie that is nothing like that film.
This is like The Legacy, Nightwatch, and The Sentinel all rolled into one. So…you’d think it would be good.
Jason London is an ex-cop grieving from the loss of his wife. He takes a job as a night guard at a creepy apartment building, is told by the two men who hire him to call if anything “strange” happens. When he does, Robert Englund shows up. Call again, something strange just happened.
Other than that, London has one scary dream after another. You know how it goes…when your film isn’t scary, you fill it with scary dream sequences.
Eventually there’s a trip to the basement where the gates of hell are about to break open, and it’s up to London to prevent it from happening…with a gun?
THE SUFFERING (2016)
A hot man takes a job appraising an old farmhouse, befriends the old man who owns it, and begins to experience a bevy of supernatural clichés.
Mostly, he sees creepy people who just disappear without him even looking away then looking back, which is a maddening pet peeve of mine in horror. Plus, he has visions and dreams of a woman from his past.
As things make less and less sense, random characters are thrown in, and nothing comes together. As I was subjected to torturous, predictable cheap scares for an hour and 45 minutes, I had a really strong feeling this movie was going to piss me off in the end.
***COMPLETE SPOILERS***
OMAgnosticism, I’m so fucking done with movies in which the person is dead the whole time. And making it a religious message at the end is even more offending. There should be a warning on every movie in which the main character being dead is the big reveal twist, so we know that we’ve heard this one before. And we should be given a bigger warning when your horror movie is actually shoving religion down our throats.
