Vlog and Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf offer a double-dose of cheap pseudo-slashers from a 4-in-1 boxed set I bought, so I thought I’d cover them in one blog. Plus, they both seem to steal from the Saw franchise.
VLOG (2008)
A hot vlogger chick regularly posts about anything she feels like talking about. She’s played by blonde bombshell Brooke Marks, who is some sort of porn chick in real life. Looks like she’s into all girl stuff if you go to her site, where she gained the experience to prepare for her role in this movie, because she does camshows on her site! Get out the credit card, straight guys!
So anyway, Brooke is killed onscreen while filming one of her vlogs. The movie is flashbacks to the events leading up to her death. We see her vlogging. We see her hanging with her friends. We see her dating a couple of guys. We see her playing dirty with chicks who are jealous of her vlog popularity.
Then the screen flashes a warning about explicit violence coming up.
Things go into Saw mode here, with some modified voice sounding like Jigsaw. Brooke has been sent videos of some dude killing all her friends and getting rid of the bodies in a show he calls “How to Erase People from the Face of the Earth.” This is where all the grisly gore comes in to satisfy horror fans (it’s pretty damn satisfying). Other than that, there’s no suspense or scares (and not much plot) in this hour and ten-minute movie.
Eventually it cuts to a TV show investigating Brooke’s death and disappearance, at which point newly discovered footage on her computer shows what really happened. Is it worth it for the twist ending? I guess it is if you got this movie in a cheap 4-pack with 3 other films like I did.
MEDIUM RAW: NIGHT OF THE WOLF (2010)
From what I can understand on imdb, this was a Canadian made-for-TV movie. Maybe I’m just watching too many simple, trashy, low-budget flicks lately, because the complex plot of this film confused me—or more likely, just bored me so I stopped paying attention.
In the first part of the movie, 14 girls have been victims to some dude, this one cop’s little sister was one of the victims years before, there’s this “Are you the woodcutter?” message linking the murders, and things become very Saw franchise when the cop tracks the serial killer to some creepy doll infested location loaded with booby traps. The cop’s partner dies, the cop seems to get knocked out….
…and suddenly, it’s three years later, and the killer has been captured.
The second half of the movie is a welcome break from the serious detective story in the first half. A group of people (including the cop) gets locked in the killer’s insane asylum at Christmas during a black out. Awesome. One of the dudes is adorable ginge/pro wrestler Jason Reso from the movie Dark Rising. Another is Mercedes McNab, the very funny blonde bimbo of Hatchet and Buffy. of course. Her presence makes sense because suddenly, this movie becomes a typical slasher with splashes of humor. Wahoo!
It’s also sort of like Thirteen Ghosts with crazy inmates instead of ghosts. This is the part I really don’t get. The actual killer seems like a total timid, scared lame duck. Once the blackout happens, all the doors are open and some freaky and creepy mental patients, each with a distinct look and personality, start roaming the halls, including a cannibalistic lesbian, a pervy old dude in a Santa suit (minus a shirt), and this big hulking monster-like man who talks with a demonic voice. WTF?
I just went along for the cheap thrill ride without understanding any of it. There are some funny parts, lots of jump scares, and some good gore. There’s some complicated reveal at the end, but I didn’t even care about the storyline.
