Reviews

But, N.B., nothing more than that.

"Terrifier" is a nonsensical film where a nameless guy in a truly spooky clown costume commits a variety of atrocities. The atrocities, as well as the spookiness of the clown himself, are the purpose of the film. Two faces get wrecked in the first half hour alone. The film embraces the ethos of exploitation, specifically as developed in low budget horror films in the 1970s - 1980s, and exceeds any reasonable expectations you can have from that perspective.

Incidentally, though the real draw is the frequent and copious gore, there's a bit of subtlety as well. When re-watching a couple of key sequences, I was surprised to notice how rich the sequences were beyond the immediate dismemberment. For example, in an early face-mangling sequence, there are quick cuts away to beauty products, emphasizing that this isn't just a physical injury, but also a sentimental injury for a victim who takes great pride in her physical beauty.

Anyway, it's bloody and spooky and worth your time if you've watched classic gore movie and wonder why they don't make them like that anymore.

This action-horror film changes directions about once every 15 minutes. On the whole, I enjoyed it.

The downside is that every twist kills the momentum. There's not much continuity, and the last five minutes or so are quite arbitrary. I was expecting something to tie it together at the end, but there was nothing like that.

It's never dull. Instead of a gradual build up, this film dives into the action fairly quickly and never slows down. I enjoyed it as a way to burn a few brain cells.

...I have to write more lines to get this review to post. There's a bit of classic Kevin Smith dialogue at the beginning. It's nothing brilliant, but it's fun.

Starting a short film is always bittersweet; while excited about the contents, one also anticipates that it will be over too soon.

In this case, I was more surprised than usual when the credits started rolling prematurely. There's about 5 minutes worth of content stretched over a 25 minute running time, and when it ended, I couldn't believe that 25 minutes had passed without any substance. The heavy-handed statement that "SUBURBIA IS A LIE AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD" is presented most elegantly in the opening sequence, but then it is repeated a few more times as a series of clumsy clichés, and then the film ends. There's an uncomfortably silent and distant dinner scene, there's a bit of overheard child abuse that appears to be drawn directly from the filmmaker's extrapolation of the "don't let anyone touch your private parts" snippets from Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, and the big punchline is, quite literally, an episode of cutting oneself for attention.

It's all poignant, mind you. I did find the cutting-oneself-for- attention to hit close to home, and I will acknowledge that the film accurately recreates many snippets of dysphoric nightmares I've had over the years. The value of the film, if any, is in the (inconsistent) emotional resonance.

But it's too abrupt when the credits start rolling. wat? Was that it? Paradoxically, I did, indeed, find that it was over too soon. I had expected a 25 minute runtime to be long enough for a hint of development. Instead, the statement made in the first 30 seconds was all the film had to say.

For the type of film it is, it seems shallow to discuss the gore factor, but I am a horror fan, and most of you have been drawn to this film after hearing that it is exceptionally disturbing. Regarding the gore factor: there is next to none. If any gore happened on screen, I've already forgotten it. The camera cuts back and forth to show the aftermath of the injuries, but it won't have much impact on the contemporary horror fan.

I won't discourage you from watching it, because it really is over so quickly that you don't feel like you've wasted much time.

The credits are rolling as I type this, and my opinion may change upon further meditation, but at the present moment, I cannot think of a better film I've seen in my entire life.

This film is equal parts "The Piano Teacher" and "Serbian Film." It is deeply unsettling, profound, and beautifully executed.

I have to admit that my expectations were lowered by Antonio Banderas' involvement and the plot (allegedly) involving a surgeon trying to do something or other. It sounded like a tame, modern, artsy reinvention of "Eyes Without A Face." I suppose that film is a part of its heritage, but The Skin I Live In is much more engaging and unsettling.

I'm not going to take the time to organize my thoughts into a proper five-paragraph format. If you like disturbing stuff, and / or if you are a film snob, this is top-shelf. There's really nothing better out there.

"The Usual Suspects" falls in the same genre as "Reservoir Dogs," which is a crime subgenre in the setting of a fantasy universe populated with brilliantly intelligent career criminals and elaborate heists. The compelling thing about the genre is the complexity of the plots, which often involve several twists and several layers of deception.

The "problem" with the genre is that you've got to be buying what it's selling, which not everyone is. Roger Ebert famously gave this movie a pretty poor review. I sort of / kind of agree with him, in that I largely felt alienated from the whole thing. There were some great surprises along the way, but I never really felt invested enough in the plot to feel the impact of these surprises.

It's a well-made film with colorful characters, sweet lighting and camera-work, and enough mystery to keep your attention. If you like the genre in general, you'll love it.

I generally love Cronenberg's films. They (generally) have a unique, dark, hallucinogenic sensibility that is often compared to David Lynch, but characteristically differ from David Lynch's films in that they often get progressively weirder as they go, constructing their own logic and drawing the viewer further and further from what (s)he expects to see in cinema.

Naked Lunch is the only exception I've seen so far. Though the first 30 minutes or so suggest something familiar from his previous films, the rest of the film is too obvious in its intentions (namely, a figurative discussion of the writing process and of Burroughs himself), with no surprises or additional weird stuff being introduced. All the weird stuff gets introduced in the first 30 minutes, and then the "rabbit hole" feeling disappears.

There's nothing wrong with that, I guess, if you are a fan of Burroughs, or, alternatively, if you AREN'T a fan of Cronenberg. That is, this movie, while certainly pretty disgusting and weird relative to mainstream films, is actually pretty generic in its artistic sensibilities. It uses metaphors which are easy to interpret and nests social commentary in its dialogue in a way that is easy to recognize.

I wanted a movie that would challenge me, confuse me, and unsettle me more and more as it progressed. Instead, I started yawning and fast-forwarding as the same metaphors were recycled over and over. Again, this is fine from the standpoint of traditional art and narrative construction, but I expect Cronenberg's films to go beyond what I am able to interpret. No such luck here.

I can't say I really liked this movie, but I think I at least understand why it is so highly regarded. As far as the literal plot goes, it's standard fare for the subgenre. That subgenre, whatever it's called, is the same one that includes Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and the August Underground films. It's the subgenre in which a mentally ill serial killer is the protagonist, and we get to follow him while he commits a small number of extremely brutal murders.

The thing that makes this movie notable is the artful composition of nearly every scene and sequence. It has the sensibility of a Bruegel painting. (See The Massacre of the Innocents as an example; this and other Bruegal paintings are notable for depicting torture and murder in the same landscape as dogs playing, children laughing, etc.) While our protagonist murders a family, the family dog runs about excitedly, chasing after a toy ball that gets kicked on accident and eagerly jumping around to try and be part of the action. It's really poetic and exceptional filmmaking, and I suppose it can be said to push the genre to a further extreme of realism.

Also notable are a handful of unusual camera angles on which I am less sure how to comment, and a running narration of the protagonist's distracted thoughts while he's committing the murders. This narration is notable, because it's almost completely disconnected from the immediate actions; it's like he's having a hard time focusing on committing murders because he keeps getting distracted by other thoughts. If you've ever been hassled by a schizophrenic person on the street, it's kind of like that, and I guess I find this film's killer more believable as a result.

Anyway, the title of this review really covers what I want to say. As a horror fan, I'll credit this film with one good and extremely brutal death scene. The plot, character, and ideas, however, were entirely generic. The pace was too slow for me, and body count was about as low as it could possibly for the guy to still be considered a serial killer.

On the other hand, I can recognize that the filmmaking really was masterful. If you're the kind of person who gets excited about artful camera work and sequence composition, this is the film for you.

"Cannibal Apocalypse" is not a horror movie. The most gruesome deaths occur during shoot-outs; these sequences are more characteristic of Crime and Action genres than of Horror, and while there are a few scenes of people nibbling on each other, it's usually limited to just that.

Instead, this film uses, rather explicitly, a metaphor to address emotionally weighty ambiguities relating to loyalty, leadership, and social disenfranchisement. To be clear, this metaphor was wholly intentional by the cast and crew; in an interview on the DVD, the lead actor explains the metaphor more clearly and concisely than I will be able to in this review.

The general plot is that several soldiers, while fighting in Vietnam, contract (and this is the central metaphor) an ambiguous infection that makes them hungry for human flesh. It sounds like a set up for a fairly straightforward zombie or cannibal movie, but the focus is really on the soldiers' inability to readjust to society, as well as their desperation to be accepted as human beings. They're the "good guys" rather than the horror villains, and we sympathize with them as they try to find dignity in a world where they are fundamentally unable to "fit in." The film's protagonist is the former commanding officer. The most engaging aspect of the film, for me, was this character's difficulty in balancing his loyalty and obligation to support and protect his former troops with his obligation to serve the broader needs of society. I watched this film after recently being replaced as the president of a local organization, and perhaps for this reason, I found the moral challenges faced by this character entirely compelling. It asks the question, which really resonates with me, of how to follow through on an old commitment to lead, support, and protect a group of people after you are no longer officially recognized as their leader and no longer have any official powers with which to support or protect them.

Anyway, it's pretty cool. Even on a superficial level, it's reasonably enjoyable; it's got all of the quirks you'd expect from an old Italian B movie, including goofy music, unnecessary nudity, etc. Recommended.

...whatever that genre is. I'm not sure there's a name for it, but if there were, there would be no trouble filling a shelf with the relevant titles. It's the Truman Show genre, the Inception genre, the Shutter Island genre, etc.

It's not as strong as the above-mentioned films, but it's still fun to follow the twists and turns on the edge of your seat.

Maybe I'm disappointed, in part, because I liked the premise that was established in the first fifteen minutes or so. The film starts out as a condemnation of physical beauty, with the phrase "open your eyes" suggesting paradoxically that one must not look only with his or her eyes in determining the value of a human being. It's a cliché of sorts, but I liked it.

This theme becomes less relevant as the film progresses. By the end of the film, the phrase "open your eyes" loses its moral relevance. It just becomes a boring, nearly literal description of how the protagonist has a hard time know what is and isn't real. You can argue that, therefore e, it has a double (triple?) meaning, but it's kind of arbitrary, in that the second half of the movie really doesn't build on or develop the themes from the first half.

Yeah, anyway, so it's pretty cool, but IMDb's 7.8 seems a little high to me. Good movie, good entertainment, but not quite brilliant.

If I were going to put a number on it, I'd give it a point or two lower rating than High Tension, Frontier(s), Inside, and all those other movies people tend to lump together. The overall tone and quality of film-making is similar to the above titles, but it doesn't have the gore or the body count. There's just one character whose bad luck has to keep us entertained for the whole running time, and prior to the climax, there just isn't much going on. Like those films, there's also a paper- thin hint of artistic insight, but it's nothing brilliant and isn't enough to justify watching the film.

That said, there's three or four scenes that are completely off the wall and that make the film worth watching. I won't spoil them, because much of the thrill that this movie offered for me was in the sincere "lol wut" it pulled out of me at several points, and if you're going to enjoy the film, you're going to enjoy it for the shocking absurdity of these precious few scenes. These scenes are shocking in the way a David Lynch movie is shocking to someone who's never seen a David Lynch movie. They're just so bizarre.

On the whole, it's not great, but if you're reading this review, you've probably already watched all the great horror films. So, give it a shot, and you probably won't be disappointed.

The film consisted of a very well-developed "mood" stretched out over about 90 minutes. Sort of unusual for such a gruesome vampire film. The "mood" is hard to characterize; it's the sort of contradictory hope and despair of adolescence, combined with longing, danger, and uncertainty. Being set in a vampire apocalypse, it felt like a sort of daydream I might have had when I was 16 years old.

It really needed a story or novel idea to develop. It's weird; I was glued to the screen for the first 30 minutes, and I think the quality of the film was consistent throughout, but I got progressively less interested as the additional fight scenes and deaths rolled out. Towards the end, there was a "boss fight" of sorts; I can hardly remember it. The antagonists were one-dimensional bad guys, the good protagonists were one-dimensional good guys, and the "story" was pretty much just a road trip without any clear objective.

The best thing about the film was the nostalgia it created surrounding adolescence. The young male protagonist was an everyman of sorts; this is the one area where the absence of meaningful dialog worked in the film's favor. The placement of an entirely generic adolescent male at the center of a romanticized, dangerous, fantasy world allowed the film to feel sort of like an aimless daydream.

That's also, really, the worst thing. I imagine I could have watched any random 30-minute segment and gotten the complete experience.

REC was seriously one of the best zombie films of all time. After reading the lukewarm reviews for REC2, I braced myself for a disappointing sequel. Ten minutes in, I had mostly accepted the fact that this was a cheesy, inferior film to REC. I turned on "Guile's Theme" on loop, and suddenly it became an awesome movie.

Immediately (very early scene), we're watching "MARCO cam" and everyone's saying, "What's going on Marco?" Then Marco is a zombie and he's attacking everyone, and the guys are all saying "What the eff, Marco!" and "Get it together, Marco!" I couldn't stop laughing. The movie followed in similar fashion of being entertaining but stupid. I highly recommend it if you can get some friends to watch it in a goofy mood. I couldn't do this because I don't have any friends.

Unlike those who praise the lighting and other such nonsense of early Argento movies, I liked Argento just because he was weird. Giallo is anything but weird. It is among the most straightforward crime movies I've ever seen. Think Se7en with more on-screen action and less originality. The whole movie I was waiting for it to get weird, and it never did. Then the credits rolled. my reaction became the title of this review.

It wasn't awful. It really reminded me of late-70s exploitation films. Aside from an aging Brody in the lead role, it could probably pass for one. I consider this a plus. It also gets points for having a really gloomy feeling about it. The death scenes are more sad than thrilling, which is kind of unusual. However, this gloominess is really superficial.

Actually, the whole thing is. It feels insincere. I've rarely found Argento's forays into the subconscious insightful, but at least they're sincere. There's none of that here. Everything is exactly as it seems.

"This wudn't no Argento movie." Such comments have been flying left and right over his recent films. Even the Mother of Tears had her charms, though. Giallo, despite its title and plot, is unrecognizable as Argento's work.

I was kind of ambivalent about the fact that I liked this movie so much, but then I saw that it was the highest rated on IMDb since part 1. I wouldn't go that far, but I agree it is one of the better entries in the series.

It was marketed as a "reboot" rather than a remake, and I think this is appropriate. The Jason mythos as we have previously known it was developed through a series of afterthoughts and coincidences, and it was only a matter of luck that it evolved into something awesome. For example, Jason himself was a creation of Tom Savini, who suggested that Jason's appearance would be a cool ending to the first film. Jason's seeming immortality only became part of the mythos when fans got upset about his absence from part 5, and studios decided that he had to rise from the grave.

Thus, though the fan has a cohesive picture of Jason's story, no single film presents a complete portrait. That's where this film shines. It draws from the ideas of the entire series and presents them all in a unified 97 minutes (and I do mean 97 minutes--don't bother with the 'killer cut' DVD). The biggest punch comes in the first 20 minutes, summarizing the first two films before showing the title screen, and featuring the coolest sleeping bag death in the whole series.

There's also a depth to this film that I wasn't expecting (nor where the creators intending it--I think it was an accident). In previous films, Jason represented the hurt, vindictive, ugly, angry side of the viewer. We cheered for him so that we might vindicate ourselves vicariously. The "jerk" always died a terrible death, and the "good" girl usually survived. This was awesome, but a bit shallow.

Without spoiling anything, I will say that Jason is no longer such an adolescent indulgence. Instead, he is a champion of death itself: inevitable, indiscriminate. He doesn't care who you are. The question in this film is not who will die, but rather how the characters will react when confronted with the possibility of death. The highest point in the film, IMO, is at the intersection of Jason, Chewie, and Laurence.

As far as I can tell, the two biggest criticisms this film has received from fans are that there is too little gore and too many bared breasts. Permit me to argue against these criticisms: first, the Friday the 13th movies have NEVER been gory. Ever. This isn't the series for gorehounds. The only film to be immediately available uncut was part 9, which fans reject as not a true entry in the series. Second...really? You're complaining about breasts? I have nothing to say to you.

Some closing thoughts: the film fizzles out a bit after the spectacular opening. Jason himself looks pretty darn cool in my opinion, especially with the potato sack over his head, but doesn't get as much screen time as he should. The "filler" component of the film is as good as it's ever been, with some genuinely funny dialogue and one or two worthwhile characters. By mainstream standards, the characters are still pretty stupid, but I don't think fans of the series really have anything to complain about.

Of the Haneke films I've seen, this is the only one that didn't absolutely blow my mind. Funny Games is my all time favorite film, and The Piano Teacher is in the same league. Time of the Wolf (TotW) is stylistically recognizable as Haneke's work, and is certainly a well-made film. Unlike his other films, however, it contains nothing the veteran viewer hasn't seen (a dozen times) before.

TotW is a post-apocalyptic drama. The cause of the apocalypse is ambiguous; the focus is on human behavior under stress, and in the absence of authority. The style of the film is appropriately very bleak and dry. Though there are occasional dramatic events, they certainly do not feel like action scenes. Rather, the whole thing deliberately has a very "tired" feel to it. Most of the characters are very convincing, and the film's greatest strength is the horror it creates in showing normal people break under the stress.

A difficulty with making a post-apocalyptic story is that there are only so many things one can do with it. If you've read "The Road," you've essentially seen TotW. If you can imagine 28 Days Later with more subtlety and no zombies, you can imagine TotW; some components of the endings are nearly identical. I personally feel that Haneke's directing talents were wasted with this one, because it's such a tired old story that the slow pace and subtlety just makes it tedious--to the veteran viewer, there's no magic, no mystery; just repetition.

disclaimer: obviously, if you don't have a pre-existing love for zero-budget Italian horror, this won't be your cup of tea.

But if you do! My, what a treat! I overlooked this film for years because I confused it with "City of the Living Dead." I otherwise exhausted the genre's offerings. When I realized I hadn't seen this one, I was very excited, but I didn't expect much. I was in for a pleasant surprise.

Ugh, I'm no good at paragraph format.

The Pros: 1. The title, "City of the Walking Dead," is appropriate. This really is a city-wide infestation. This is not a board-up-the-windows movie. The scale is epic. So often, low budget zombie films restrict themselves to a few characters on a farm or something to save money. This one doesn't. I can't imagine how he was able to use some of the locations. (Actually, I suppose the title isn't quite appropriate, because the antagonists are neither walking nor dead. They run, and they're sort of still alive.)

2. Breasts are present.

3. I usually don't like zombies that deviate from Romero's mold, but Lenzi takes a risk and scores. These creatures combine the hypnotic element of Romero's zombies with the overwhelming danger of running zombies. According to an interview on the DVD, Lenzi did not want to just do another Romero rip-off, and insisted on coming up with his own sort of creature. He did it well.

4. For the first 2/3 of the film, the characters are sufficiently believable for the viewer to care about them. For example, a reporter finds himself in the middle of the zombie outbreak, and desperately tries to get a hold of his wife, a doctor, who can't be reached because she's in surgery. This is a realistic, human element absent from most films in the genre.

Cons:

1. 2/3 of the way through, it kind of falls apart. The characters who haven't died reveal themselves to be one dimensional after all.

2. The special effects are really inconsistent. Sometimes killings are mimed bloodlessly. In other scenes, heads explode.

3. The soldiers are pathetic.

In short, highly recommended.

"Zombie Diaries" does something that only the dorkiest zombie fan will appreciate: it takes the zombie apocalypse seriously. It does so at the expense of plot, character development, and even at the cost of entertainment. The stars of the film are not individual characters (I can't remember any of them), nor even the zombies themselves (they don't really get much screen time, and their appearances get repetitive fairly quickly). The star of the film is the zombie apocalypse itself.

I think this is why audiences have been so polarized. You have to already be in love with the idea of the zombie apocalypse for the movie to be enjoyable. I think that with all the well-made zombie movies in theaters lately (28 Days Later, etc), a lot people have convinced themselves that they are zombie fans. They're not--they just like good movies.

Zombie Diaries isn't a "good" movie. It won't make the zombie apocalypse seem very interesting if you don't already find it to be. It's even a bit boring sometimes. But that's kind of appropriate, because a real (lol) zombie apocalypse would be quite boring indeed.

To me, the movie was a jolly good time. It uses the Blair Witch camera technique, but unlike the other zombie films that do so (I can think of three others off the top of my head), this isn't a gimmick so much as a necessity. It deals with the zombie apocalypse so intimately that conventional camera techniques would get in the way.

In conclusion, this is not a zombie movie for horror fans. It is not a zombie movie for movie lovers. It is hardly even a zombie movie for zombie fans. It is a zombie movie for those among us who seriously, deeply, long to live in the zombie apocalypse, boring or not.

Wait, an additional point. The acting is kind of lame sometimes. And there is some audio added in post production that kind of doesn't make sense, IE scary music. just thought it should be mentioned.

I didn't think there was anything special about Martyrs. I also felt certain, while watching it, that a lot of people would love it. In my review, I will try to communicate both sides.

Short version: martyrs has some great scenes and takes some unusual turns. Despite what other reviewers have said, you should go in expecting entertainment (of the darkest sort!) rather than realism/art. Regarding "art," the film tries to tackle too much at once and falls on its face. Not the holy grail of horror, but it's still worth seeing.

Long version: Another reviewer, in a haste to discount any similarities to Hostel, compared Martyrs to Gaspar Noe's "Irreversible." I think Hostel would be an acceptable comparison, actually, but Irreversible is truly more similar in a deep sense. Irreversible and Martyrs are both very stylish, brutal, and captivating. They each alternate between scenes of shocking violence and philosophical contemplation. And in the end, both films are quite a ride but a bit of an ideological mess.

I will add another, idiosyncratic, comparison: Audition. Like Audition, I went into Martyrs expecting the most upsetting 90 minutes of my life, and came out wondering if I had seen the wrong film.

Martyrs starts out with a very realistic tone. A really mucked-up-looking young girl escapes from some sort of terrible abuse. It is quite painful to watch her run--there's something really helpless about her. There is not entertainment in this scene; only pain. Following are a few clips from a faux-documentary about her escape, increasing the realism. Only a few minutes more, however, and the film totally turns around.

At the first kill scene, the film takes a "leap" (pun!) from realism to romanticism. Someone gets shot, and flies through the air ~15 feet a la "The Matrix." Pretty cool! Concurrently with this, there's a little monster thing running around. Spooky, and symbolic! About 45 minutes in, the plot takes such a leap into the fantastic realm that I wondered if I was watching a dream sequence. I wasn't. The final act includes some hardcore torture to the tune of some sentimental indie music soundtrack--acoustic guitar and whatnot. I believe it was supposed to be sad.

In summary, I didn't like the film because it was too romanticized. Where it strayed from the torture-film template, it really just kind of stumbled around. For many people, this won't be a problem. For others, a problem will simply be that the film took itself too seriously about some absurd situations.

Regarding gore: Pretty gooey, I suppose, but not really. Some people get shot (in a big way, but no exploding heads). Some self-mutilation with a razor (unpleasant to watch, but the effect was pretty weak). There was one creative death which I won't spoil--worth seeing, but too ambitious for its own good and not very convincing. The most captivating makeup/effects were the aftermath of torture. "The skin is like paper!" (GG Allen)

"Zombi Holocaust" is my favorite zombie film to show to my zombie-curious friends. Despite belonging unquestionably to a genre that generally prioritizes gore above everything else, ZH throws a bone to all audiences by mixing in amusing characters and a decent plot. And of course, it gets the gore in there too. There aren't many zombies, but don't let that deter you. You'll get what you want.

Let me clarify everything I've just said. By "amusing characters," I mean that all the characters are charmingly clumsy stereotypes. Ian McCulloch's physical appearance is such an endearing cliché some friends referred to him as "Ken" (a la Barbie) throughout the film. His behavior follows suit, and the others are just as good.

By "decent plot," I simply mean that the plot is a driving force throughout the film. Many films in the genre present the entire plot in the first 15 minutes, and the rest of film just kind of follows logically. "Burial Ground" is the worst example: in the opening scene, zombies emerge near a mansion, and the rest of the film is just the zombies eating the people. ZH by contrast keeps up the plot development throughout the film, even throwing in "twist" near the end. The plot is, of course, as cheesy as everything else in the films, but at least it makes the viewer want to know what happens. There's even a "theme" (which does disappear halfway through) about vegetarianism/cannibalism/etc.

And gore. The connoisseurs will by pleased but not impressed. The best gore consists of bloody entrails being pulled from acceptably convincing torsos. There's quite a bit of variety, too, but none of Fulci's torn throats, and nothing is truly believable.

Really, there are only like 5 zombies in the whole movie. And they look like a mess. But you won't care. It delivers everything that a zombie film should.

Short Version: Seed isn't worthless. It's just derivative and inferior. And soulless.

Long Version: If you have never seen any of the films comprising the vaguely-defined "psychological horror" genre, this movie will probably melt your face off. Maybe not, but it will give you a good burn. The opening montage of real animal abuse will be sufficient to open your eyes to possibilities of brutality-on-video, and the (only) memorable gore scene later in the film will perhaps be more than you can handle. The climax will play with your emotions in a way that perhaps no other film has.

But that's if you don't have much experience with the genre. If you've seen the real thing..."August Underground's Penance," for example, you will, as I did, find it terribly difficult to stay awake until the end of the film.

Other reviewers have compared this to the video nasties of old. I understand this comparison. Like the video nasties, "Seed" is more violent than a mainstream horror film and less subtle. But the reason the video nasties are still known to us is not only for the above reasons--those that are still popular had something special. Permit me to be ambiguous, I think you will understand: those that have stuck around had "soul".

Take this quote from Gabriele Crisanti, director of "Burial Ground," on an interview on the new-ish DVD: "...we will never have more films like these, because today, technology has surpassed imagination. And technology is cold. So many things will disappear because small films like these won't be produced anymore. Today we have great, exceptional tricks that are very expensive, but they are cold. Today a horror, a terror film of this kind costs more than a million dollars. These films were not so expensive...they are real effects, made with our hands".

Perhaps it is wrong to take the comparison to old school horror so seriously. But Crisanti has hit the nail on the head. Even at their most seemingly exploitational, the best of the video nasties were pursuing a primitive "truth." And this is where Boll falls short. It's like he's seen the movies and not understood them. Everything on the checklist is there...BS about "making a statement about humanity," an obscene torture scene, etc. But it is, as Crisanti puts it, "cold." The gore is all CGI. The whole thing feels like scenes pieced together from other movies of various genres. And the pacing is sooooo slow. Man, so slow.

Another interesting note: the one gore scene really reminded me of a video game.

Anyway, enough BS. Weak movie.

"you can't take it realistically." -sheets

Zombie Bloodbath 2 (ZB2) is a world all of its own. I've really never seen anything like it. The only thing I can think to compare it to is psychedelic drugs. Forgive the cliché—I don't simply mean that it's incoherent and absurd, though occasionally it is. I mean that it takes you through such a broad range of intense experiences and unexpected emotions so quickly as to overwhelm you, and when it's over, you find that it's all happened while you were sitting on the couch.

It is worth noting that it's extremely low-budget, as a disclaimer to those who, after seeing "Shaun of the Dead," consider themselves fans of underground zombie films. Also of note is that it is much more "brutal" than you'd expect. Children get disemboweled, and someone taunts a teenage girl before shooting her in the groin. Her corpse is subsequently "raped." These are certainly not flaws, and indeed I feel it is to the film's credit. But if it doesn't sound like your kind of movie, don't waste your time.

(I don't mean to over-hype it, regarding brutality. Don't go in expecting "Inside" or something.) I hesitate to give away any of the plot, because it's really full of surprises. Even the opening scene, which has nothing to do with zombies, is at once a classic horror scene and something quite original.

Man, I'm three paragraphs in and I've hardly said anything at all. Here's why I thought the movie was awesome: 1. It's big, and it keeps moving. At one point, you expect it to turn into another NotLD clone, a board-up-the-windows movie where everyone stays in a farmhouse and argues with one another. By the end of the film, however, the farmhouse scenes will seem like a distant dream. There are also a number of outdoor, urban scenes. These are rare in low-budget zombie films.

2. The makeup/gore is much better than ZB1. More convincing and more creative. Something kind of funny: the early zombies look really lame. Then, halfway through, they suddenly look really good, with prosthetics and everything. Some of them look like Fulci zombies, some are reminiscent of Mr. Tongue from "Day of the Dead." And it's got big scenes of dozens of zombies shuffling around. Never gets old.

3. There's something oddly emotional about it. One character asserts that heaven exists, and that our dead/undead protagonists are now in heaven. In the context of the film, we believe it to be true. Though the characters behave with typical horror film stupidity, they genuinely seem to care about each other, and accordingly, I found myself caring about them.

4. The pacing is great. There's hardly a dull moment.

My only observation that borders on criticism is that Todd Sheets comes up with the most bizarre dialog I've ever heard. I personally feel it adds to the experience, but I don't think he does it on purpose, so I can't fairly give the film a perfect rating. (Example: when a car breaks down, the owner yells at the passengers. Then he says something to the effect of, "Sorry I yelled at you guys. You don't know what it's like to have your dad standing over you with a straight razor when you're five years old." wtf?) At the very end, it gets to be more than I can handle. Involves a montage with Bill Clinton, and then some preachy end credits explaining the zombie metaphor. Really, by this point, I was firmly re-living my drug experiences.

Highly recommended. 7/10.

I really liked ZB1. Really, I did. I have no problem with extremely low-budget movies, and I have enjoyed movies with worse production values than ZB3 (if you can imagine such a thing. check out 'wiseguys vs. zombies,' if you're interested). Indeed, I prefer lower budget zombie films, because I am suspicious that Hollywood directors do not understand what zombies are 'about.'

But ZB3 was just so bad. It was retarded. I don't want to bother being dignified in my criticism. I want my 90 minutes back, etc. Except that it really only took ~80 minutes, because partway through I put it into 1.4X fast forward.

Okay, here's some criticism.

1. The pacing was TERRIBLE. Everyone talked in monologues. Even when someone just had a single line, the camera work and the editing and the insertion of a bunch of F-bombs into every sentence made the line FEEL like a monologue. At first I was excited about the 90 minute running time compared to ZB1's 70 minutes, but there were actually fewer 'events' in ZB3. It's all talking.

2. The gore effects got stupider. Just glop rubbed around on people's tummies.

3. Despite the epic exposition, there really wasn't a plot. And the exposition is indeed epic! I won't spoil it, if you're going to watch it. (Don't watch it.) But then, it's just a bunch of lame characters walking around and bickering for ~80 minutes. or fewer, if you so choose.