These three may not have anything in common, but I watched them one after the other on Prime, so I’m cramming them into one blog!
CARNIVAL OF FEAR (2010)
As soon as I began twitching while watching this one, I checked the run time. Nearly two fricking hours! Why? Just…why??? How do filmmakers not watch their films back before release and realize, holy fuck this shit is going nowhere slow!!!
What kept me watching is the fact that I’m a fan of both leads. I adored Aimee Brooks in Monster Man, one of my faves, and the same goes for cutie Damian Maffei with the luscious lips from Christmas with the Dead.
The pair gets trapped in a creepy, closed amusement park at night and begins experiencing terrifying situations…that are never actually happening. And that’s where things get repetitive and unscary. You know they’re never really in trouble despite taking on an alligator, a swamp creature, clowns, rapists…it’s like passing through what is inevitably a controlled carnival fun house environment.
The disjointed plot heads in the most obvious direction. Both characters have a past connection to the park, and unless you’re new to the genre, you’re sure to know what’s happening before it’s spelled out.
The most obvious problem here is an unbearably long segment in the middle of the film in which the pair plays carnival games with a booth vendor. I can’t fathom who thought this never-ending sequence was a good idea. Without it, the film could have been 90 minutes long and delivered a much better paced, cheesy horror experience. Sure, there’s some bad CGI (especially a roller coaster scene), but it’s mostly a fun midnight movie vibe that would have worked better if it were faster.
FRESH MEAT (2012)
Playing off a Tarantino/Guy Ritchie vibe, Fresh Meat is a dark comedy about a home invasion gone wrong when the criminals discover the hard way that the family is a bunch of cannibals.
Yes, once again it’s that twist on the home invasion plot, but making it fresh is that the daughter has just arrived home to discover her family has gone cannibal right before the baddies break in.
It’s her split moral dilemma that makes this one unique…along with the added burden of a budding romance.
There’s plenty of action as well as campy gore to entertain, and you’ll get some laughs out of it even if it isn’t as funny as it could be. The big guy in bra and panties steals the show for a while, but once the tide turns on the plot, Jango Fett, who’s still as sexy as he was 20 years ago, gets the spotlight, ending this one on a high note.
JURASSIC CITY (2015)
The director of Silent Night Zombie Night brings us SyFy quality CGI raptors and head biting…in a prison…with a bunch of sorority bimbos as the survivors trying to escape.
That sentence tells you everything you need to know about Jurassic City, so either take it for the craptastic entertainment it is or avoid it.
The prison has an aggressive lesbian inmate, a tough daddy inmate the girls have to team up with to survive, Ray Wise earning a paycheck to put food on the table by playing the warden, and one jump scare that actually got me.
And just when you think the only CGI dinosaurs you’re going to get are raptors, a big T-Rex and Pterodactyl are randomly thrown in at the end.
Not going to lie. The hubba hubba and I got a few good laughs watching this one.
