Reviews

Well, there are plenty of plot synopses around here, so I'll skip that part.

Overall, this movie was very atmospheric to me and worked very well up until the very cliché-ridden finale. The acting is pretty good. My greatest fear initially was that the two kids would ruin this film, but, instead, they do a really good job and help the movie be better than I expected. The rest of the cast do their jobs pretty well, too. The story is fairly good, I'd say. I like that it mixes up exorcism and "cursed item", which especially helps keeping the first half of the movie from getting boring. Yes, the movie is slow, but I was really grateful it stayed away from throwing jump scare after jump scare at me and instead tried to go the unnerving, atmospheric route. For me, that worked perfectly and the possessed girl sent shivers down my spine several times, something most other exorcism flicks fail to do.

There are only two downers for me here: I would have enjoyed getting more background on the dibbuk and the finale is disappointingly loud, in your face and "already seen that". Basically, I would have enjoyed a finale in the mood of the rest of the movie a lot more...

Still, if you enjoy exorcism movies, this one here is definitely among the better ones and beats stuff like Devil Inside the Exorcism of Emily Rose by miles.

I've bought Dante's Inferno shortly after its release, simply because I needed a hack'n slay fix. To be honest, I regret that purchase. I really don't understand all the high praise this game got.

While it does copy God of War wherever it can, that in itself isn't a bad thing in my opinion, games do that all the time. Sadly, it doesn't offer the same quality as God of War does.

First and foremost, the controls just aren't tight enough. They work and after a bit of time you will be able to pull off some decent moves, but overall it just doesn't feel as if you're directly in control. To me, it often felt like shouting instructions to the guy and waiting for him to do as I say.

The next important thing about a game such as this, level design, isn't that great, either, and often gets pretty atrocious: Camera angles in platforming sequences often make it hard to judge where your character really is in the scene. Jumping forward onto a slowly moving, rather large platform, shouldn't be a gamble. Checkpoints are regularly placed before menial tasks, but not before harder bits. The result of this can be pretty infuriating: For me it's just plain annoying to open several chests and do some very easy platforming time and time again only to die at the following fight.

Presentation-wise the game isn't bad, but not jaw-dropping, either. Often it looks good, sometimes even offers some vistas that are worth the ride, but some of the things that get repeated throughout the game simply look like a PS2 game (the souls swimming in a liquid or the walls "of the damned", for example).

It's a bit sad that they wasted all the potential the idea of the game had. If you really need a hack'n slay and have played all the others out there, just rent it.

First off: I have a weakness for bad movies, especially for the ones that are so bad they're funny again... also I like horror movies.

Liking bad movies and having seen tons of them, I can say with certainty: This is not the worst movie ever, not by a long shot.

The story is based on an idea that hasn't been beaten to death already, which is good. Other than that, it's not great, but it works, if you're kind enough to look the other way every now and then, and I actually found it interesting to watch. It's pretty coherent overall, too.

Sure, the actors won't get any awards for this movie, but they do a bearable job. Some of the minor roles are noticeably worse than the leads, but overall the acting is good enough to not be distracting.

The production values are those of a typical non-Hollywood B-movie: Picture quality is somewhere at the lower end, although I've seen worse, the special effects won't wow anybody and the action scenes are pretty weak overall, which hampers the finale especially.

Still, the movie surprised me in a good way. Although it's not bad enough to be funny, it's not bad enough to be a pain to watch, either. I had entertaining 80 minutes with it. Don't expect an award-winning masterpiece, get over the low production values and you should be able to enjoy it, too.

Basically, "The Rocker" is a 100% cliché sports / music movie. The hero falls flat on his face, then you have the "training phase". When he's back on his feet on the way up, there's a "twist" putting him down and quickly after that comes the happy end. Nothing new, nothing unexpected here. Added into the mix is quite a bit of comedy, which works fine. I had some good laughs and some smiles during the film. The two things annoying about the file for me were:

a) the band seen during the vast majority of the film is not exactly what I expected seeing in a film called "The Rocker". The songs aren't bad, but they just don't rock. Real letdown for me.

b) I play drums and I know quite a few drummers and it got on my nerves that, obviously, nobody found the time to tell Rainn Wilson how to hold drum sticks. He does an admirable job of hitting roughly the right things on the drum set at the right time, but... well, I could just tell he's not a drummer and that he's faking, somewhat ruining the "illusion". He took the time to seemingly learn one or two beats and to learn when to hit what during some of the more prominent breaks in the songs seen in the movie, but nobody told him how to hold the sticks. I just don't get that.

Anyhow... nice, fairly enjoyable movie overall. If you have the choice between School of Rock and this one, I'd pick School of Rock, especially if you haven't seen it yet. Same structure, better music, more / better gags and the kids know what they're doing.

The plot summary on the back sounded somewhat interesting, so I rented this one tonight. I just finished watching it.

Overall, there's just not much to say about it. Everything is slightly worse than mediocre. The movie falls into that ugly gap between being so bad it's entertaining and being an honestly good movie. The four "characters" are basically non-existent and there's close to no background about the "monsters". Speaking of those, they aren't even especially gruesome in any way, neither regarding their looks nor their practices. The film tries to get some tension going, but it just didn't work for me at all. The plot is as foreseeable as it could be right from the start, not a single surprise to be found and the ending is very, very... unsatisfying.

I just watched Virus Undead and I have to admit I'm disappointed.

First off, I was stunned that somebody on this production had the really stupid idea to have German actors speak English. While the guys certainly aren't bad with the language, some of them still have a pretty strong German accent, making the whole ordeal somewhat of a joke to me.

On top of that, the movie tries way too hard to have your typical US hillbilly scenery and character clichés, which are already a vast exaggeration when set in the middle of nowhere in the US, but just don't work at all in a town in the middle of Germany. You have the default unfriendly "town sheriff", complete with sunglasses and donuts, the commonly known town ruffian, including tons of tattoos, a goatee, leather clothing and a pea-sized brain and they even have a "restaurant" in the middle of the woods making sausage out of any dead animal they can find. Those two things made me wonder why the writers were too afraid to actually try something fresh and simply go with the "set in Germany" thing and pull through with it. Instead, they chose to take the generic "hillbilly town" cliché and move it over here. Kind of idiotic. Just like the hillbilly town in horror flicks is a big exaggeration of clichés about American towns in the middle of nowhere, an exaggeration of clichés about small German towns would have been far more entertaining and would have worked a lot better. Basically, this movie tries very hard to be an American B-movie set in Germany played by German actors, which was what I found very disappointing.

The story covers the basics of "virus causing zombies", but doesn't go any further than a rough outline and the characters are walking clichés with some odd moments here and there. I agree with NeilCassidy, though, that the movie at least looks professional.

Overall it has some mildly entertaining moments and is well done on the technical side of things, but to me the story and setting were pretty much atrocious. I've seen a lot worse films, but this one stands out for almost intentionally ruining any potential it might have had.

Do you enjoy watching really bad movies?

If you don't, run as fast as you can.

If you do, don't miss this one. It's simply ridiculous, from start to finish. Mind-bogglingly bad dialogs, a completely wacky story, pointless nudity, charmingly fake-looking gore and Templar and Nazi zombies. What more could you possibly want?

I was thoroughly entertained throughout the whole movie. The characters can't make up their minds about anything, switching positions back and forth basically from scene to scene and sometimes even in the middle of a dialog... just as the wine bottles here seem unable to decide whether they're full or empty, etc etc.

Actually, there's not much more to say about this one. As I said: If you enjoy watching a really bad movie every now and then, just watch this.

I just rented this one, mainly because of the DVD case saying "based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft". After a few other movies I've seen that said to be based on Lovecraft I have to say I was cautious, but still I wanted to like it.

Overall, I actually do like this one. The budget obviously was tiny, so, the picture quality is really bad, the sound FX often sound off and some of the voice-overs don't match too good either. Still, the whole thing manages to stay enjoyable, if you're able to lower your expectations considerably in those regards and don't compare it to current blockbusters. The story is alright, although I simply have no idea on what Lovecraft story it supposedly is based on and the credits don't even mention Lovecraft. Still, it has some Lovecraftian moments in there and the creatures also definitely go in that direction. The acting isn't brilliant for sure, but I've truly seen far worse, although the dialog sometimes gets a little on the weird side of things. The visual FX actually are pretty good overall, again considering the budget, and never get in the way. One flaw that can't be attributed to the budget is that sometimes props go missing and reappear from scene to scene, especially obvious when those things are lights in an overall very dark movie. The ending is pretty predictable overall, but not bad.

In the end I enjoyed this one and I'd say even compared to some way more expensive movies in the Lovecraft corner, this one holds up pretty well.

First off: I like zombie movies, I really do. I like them that much that I rent zombie movies which are almost definitely bad.

That said, I simply had to rent this. Only when I started the movie I noticed that this was NOTLD 3D, as it was just labeled "Night of the living dead" here. Even though the notion of "3D" implicated that this one would be a pretty awful remake, I simply wasn't prepared for this. It's pretty damn courageous to begin and end your film with the the opening scene of the original and also have the original running on TV during the movie when the remake is such a pile of garbage. From terrible acting over just plain awful special effects and missing wounds, everything here. The worst thing though is that the script only bears a slight resemblance of the original's story. True, it begins at a graveyard. True, at some point in the movie some guys are trapped in a house. The names of the main characters are the same. That's it. All the other things that were good about the original (and even about the first remake) are gone and replaced by a completely generic "horror" story, centered around Sid Haig. There is no reason why this movie should be called "Night of the living dead". It has nothing to do with NOTLD... well, about as much as any other zombie movie has.

Problem is: Even most really, really low-budget zombie movies I've seen were far more enjoyable than this one. Simply stay away from this one. And if you're like me and simply can't stay away from it, don't say you hadn't been warned.

Now that movie was incoherent. The first 45 minutes none of the main "characters" meet and all you see is a lot of scenes standing for their own with simply no line connecting them. At last two of the main characters meet and I got the hope that it would get better from here on, but sadly: It didn't. Adding to the confusion was that you don't get any clue whether a complete scene or only one object in the scene is real or imaginative. So, overall the movie completely fails to deliver something like a plot, simply due to sheer confusion and incoherence. Good thing there was a summary on the DVD case (basically the same that you can read here): Without that it would have been hard to figure out even that tiny bit of a plot from the movie itself. That aside, the acting isn't that bad, with a few scenes nearing good. Sadly the supposed father either wears a dead rat as a wig or the hair stylist did a tremendous job making his hair look fake and I couldn't shake the impression that the father and Ian were played by the same actor. Especially bad when there are lots of cuts going from Ian in the present to his father in the past and back and so on.

If you want a lesson in incoherency, watch this movie. Otherwise don't.

I love horror movies. I like John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson in most movies I've seen them in. Honestly, I tried to like this movie. Decent actors, a haunted hotel room setup, what's not to like, after all?

In the beginning I thought my hopes would be fulfilled, the setup is just nothing short of great. John Cusack plays a disillusioned horror novelist visiting supposedly haunted places, only to find there's nothing to them after all. After returning from such a place he receives a post card that lures him to room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel. Samuel L. Jackson comes into play as the manager of said hotel. The following dialog between Jackson and Cusack is really well written and well acted and sets the bar pretty high for the rest of the movie: Jackson manages to convincingly portray a manager who's really trying to talk a guy out of staying in that room. After that I was pretty hyped for the rest of the movie. Sadly, the setup sets the bar too high for the rest of the movie to deliver on the promise.

The problem is that "1408" happily includes about every cliché imaginable for a haunted house story. It's all there: Room getting colder, bleeding walls, light flickering, thing's moving or appearing / disappearing, pictures changing, ghosts reliving their demise, ghosts attacking the visitor... everything. Too bad there is nothing really surprising or catchy about it. The background of the room is sadly completely left in the cold after the setup that it's "evil" and that people died there. The main character's background gets a bit of attention after all, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it's just there so that the room can use it against him: It's left in an unfinished state, just a rough draw of a background for our hero. Until the big "twist" the movie still was somewhat decent, but that thing doesn't even deserve being called twist. It's so obvious from the first scene of that supposed "twist" that it hurts, trying to hard to make the audience wonder.

When the movie finished I was left really disappointed that it failed so miserably at reaching the goal it so eagerly set for itself.

Overall: Okay for a rental or simply watch it on TV when it gets aired.

I just left "The Mist" with mixed feelings. The acting isn't bad, the FX aren't bad, the story isn't bad, nothing is really bad about this movie. Except perhaps for the ending, that obviously is a matter of taste judging by the discussions going on here, I didn't like it. The problem is, nothing is really good or even great about this movie, either:

Rarely did I feel true suspense during these 2 hours, most of the time it felt somewhat empty. The obvious "comment on human nature" does work out somewhat, at least I really disliked the "preacher" character. Other than that the "comment" is one done at least a dozen times, and half of the time better than in this movie. Furthermore the movie failed to capture me in any significant way, perhaps mostly due to the dialogs, which sometimes seemed really stupid or incoherent. Overall it was an "okay" 2 hours to spend, but I've definitely seen far better movies than this one and somehow I regret seeing this one even more than a really really awful movie, because it just left me "empty": nothing to feel good or think about and nothing to be really angry about.

When I rented this movie I somewhat expected a disgusting gorefest, seeing that the case inlay seemed to put quite an emphasis that there are real corpses in this movie.

In that regard, I was disappointed. "Unrest" is more like a thriller, although I found the anatomy lab scenes to be done really good. They actually left me feeling something, compared to the over-the-top gore scenes normally seen in movies. I liked that. I also liked that the movie completely neglects the "loud and noisy" shock section, except for one scene. Instead it slowly builds up tension by using music. Whether that works with you or not is probably a personal matter. It did for me. It isn't overly suspenseful and didn't keep me on the edge of my seat, but its premise is interesting and kept my attention through the whole movie.

Still, the movie had some serious flaws for me: First of all, the background of the cadaver isn't really explored. That's a shame, I would have loved more background info on that one, as the basic idea is pretty interesting, but it doesn't go much further than that. There are plot holes, too, and some scenes make you question the heroes' collective sanity. The main character's development is rather hasty, too. The acting is decent, though.

Overall I still had a really good time with this movie.

I just watched "I am Legend" and have to admit I had expected more. During the first half the movie succeeds in developing a sense of isolation and manages to get across how 3 years of loneliness can affect a man. Will Smith does a good job in portraying that, and actually the dog manages to become a character as well. The shots of an abandoned metropolis, New York in this case, are just as impressive as the shots of an empty London in "28 days later" were. The main difference for me is that the main character has lived in this world for a few years now, and has managed to stay relatively sane by playing small "games". That makes him quite likable. Still, he is on the border of insanity, which makes him interesting. For me, that's a really good mix. Sadly, after the first half, somehow it seems that the CGI department took over. Why they used CGI for the infected is just beyond me, lots of other movies did far better jobs at portraying similar "monsters" with just some makeup and perhaps prosthetics where needed. The infected in this movie just stand out far too much to be taken really seriously. Lots of badly done CGI monsters with no variation to them whatsoever to make them at least look like they could have been human. From there it goes straight downhill and finally comes to a conclusion with a typical Hollywood happy ending, which is the most disappointing thing of all.

If you've seen "Die Nacht der Lebenden Loser" (I guess it's called "Night of the Living Dorks" in English), you can basically imagine this movie to be an exact rip-off, except that this one has more gore in it, but less good gags in exchange.

That said: It's enjoyable. The gore and FX are well-done most of the time, the zombies do look decent. The acting isn't bad and there are actually some gags that work. It's too bad that most of them don't, however, at least not for me. The main character turns into a zombie more slowly than anybody else, but that's okay. The problem is, his desire to eat humans obviously is so small, it doesn't even count, and there are no funny scenes like "oops, I ate *insert name here*" or anything like that. Lots of occasions for gags wasted. For a comedy that's pretty lame.

Still, there are a few gags in there, the zombies are decent, the gore is good and the story isn't that bad, which makes the film enjoyable.

I really like this movie. Some of the effects are simply crappy, true. The zombies themselves, though, do look decent. And the dialogs are pretty funny if you're into that kind of humor. If you don't think it shows humor that the heroes ponder whether they're dealing with classical "Romero" zombies or the new viral "sports" zombie type, then this movie is not for you. Otherwise, you're probably going to have some good laughs in this movie. I had. Other than the gags, the dialogs are surprisingly good for a B-movie and witty throughout, the actors aren't as bad as I had expected either. And the ultra-bad CG effects somehow aren't that distracting, they somewhat add to the feeling of watching a comedy, willingly or unwillingly, I don't know.

Worth a rent.

The story of "Simon says" is nothing new. Some teenagers in the wood get hunted down by some sicko. So, I didn't expect much anyway in that regard. Still, the movie disappointed me. The teenagers are just your basic clichés for this kind of movie, which is not necessarily bad, but the main problem is the main character, Simon. In my opinion he's just way overdone. The acting is almost like a caricature. So, what should be a threatening character ends up being a (sadly bad) joke. The kills are good, but that's about it. Everything else in this movie just is below par, even for the genre.

Still, with a better Simon this movie could be fun. With that guy it's more a pain to watch than anything else. Avoid this movie.

I really liked this movie, although I initially didn't expect it to be much good. Overall it was a really nice afterlife flick.

If you're a Christian you might be disappointed, because how you led your life obviously doesn't matter all too much in this version of the "purgatory". Also, "hell" doesn't try to tempt you into going there, being shown blatantly for what it is. That left aside the film actually manages to provide some likable characters. The acting isn't the best of the best, but I've seen much much ... much worse. There is much talk in this film and close to no gore. Still it manages to not get boring. I found the plot easy to follow and the rules of the afterlife simple to understand. There aren't too many rules anyway, if you turn your brains on it comes down to two or three, although they get reiterated from time to time.

If you've got a movie night coming up with some friends that don't like gore but still want to have something that would count as a horror movie, this one isn't a bad choice at all.

I LOVE this movie! I personally think it deserves a 10/10, the predalien and everything is great on EVERY LEVEL!

I just watched that movie, and was pretty disappointed. I didn't expect much to begin with as the premise of the movie doesn't suggest greatness anyway. Sadly, it doesn't even manage to deliver just as stupid entertainment. The main problem is probably the acting. While I've seen far worse actors in far worse movies, the story would require some people to act out as violent maniacs, some others as people caught a in really stressing predicament, and they fail to deliver that. Although I watched the German release I watched with the original audio, so it's definitely not just bad voice-overs or anything like that. Added to that, the German DVD release seems to be cut, the killings are all pretty much left out, meaning that except for a few semi-gory scenes closer to the end the German release doesn't deliver as a movie for "gore-hounds", either. Can't comment on that for other releases of course. The plot has some stupid moments thrown in here and there and the beginning is just hilarious (ever heard of a demon visiting a psychiatrist?). Too bad the movie takes itself far too seriously, if it was filmed as a horror-comedy and changed a bit here and there accordingly it might have worked better. The ending is just a huge disappointment.

If you've got really nothing better to do and just can't stand the boredom anymore you might (and it's really a weak "might") consider this movie. If there's anything else available to watch or do: Pick that alternative.

well, I just watched that movie. And I was rather disappointed. I didn't expect much to begin with. After all the summary sounded a lot like Hostel, which I didn't like too much, either. But this movie was incredibly dull. It takes 50 minutes for the part I'd define as introduction. That's just a bit more than half of the movie to get to the point. That said, there are some bad events happening in those 50 minutes, but nothing shocking. It's not even enough to keep the main characters from taking a swim every now and then or get romantic and / or drunk. So why should the audience feel frightened if even the main characters don't seem to be? When things finally do go really bad for the heroes / heroines me and my friends couldn't empathize in the least with them. Probably because for one their characters aren't exactly well-developed, to be polite, and the "torture" they go through is just stupid and actually manages to wipe away every little feeling of suspense you _might_ have had.

To sum it all up: Watching grass grow might be more fun and definitely less stupid.

"The Return" is a pretty basic mystery thriller. The story isn't too surprising for anybody who has watched at least a few movies from this genre. Still, the story is far from bad and has some nice touches. Additionally it gets tied up really nicely at the end and that's worth more to me than being surprising no matter what the cost. Sarah Michelle Gellar does well in portraying a confused and torn woman trying to find out what's wrong with her. The other actors do a pretty good job, too. There were some genuinely creepy moments in the movie and I liked that. Cheap, loud bangs are kept to a minimum and the movie focuses on the story and keeps up a comfortable amount of suspense throughout.

Sadly not too surprising overall, but a nice movie nonetheless.