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Chain Reaction (2006 Video)
1/10
A lot of bus wrecks in European Seattle
31 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
This is one of the most unintentionally funny movies I have ever seen. The script defies logic and the acting is the worst I have seen in quite some time. I am still scratching my head and trying to figure out what they really wanted to do with this movie besides just be a really bad gore movie. Somehow a dead crow falls and hits a rock which rolls and down a hill and hits a doctors windshield which makes him crash into a bus transporting prisoners. The prisoners take him hostage and set out through the woods. Every at this point has heavy European accents and the background is obviously set around Germany, yet we are told that we are in Seattle! Okay, I guess? Well from there they walk into a fog and come out and there is an old cottage filled with people straight out of the 1700s. They speak like an olden time Yoda. We soon find out that these people are like vampires but look more like a a hairless werewolf/vampire hybrid if that makes sense. We have the standard slaughter scene of everyone but the doctor and this one female member of the tribe who has her inner vampire under control and helps him escape.

The cops catch up to the doctor and take him into custody. He has all the blood of the victims on his shoes but they can't find the house, so of course they are going to send him to jail. All the while we keep getting these black and white flashbacks of the doctor as a kid trading a toy clown to the female from the cottage for a cross that she gives him with a dog laying in between them.

Now we are in yet another bus transporting criminals. One of the men setting in the back of the bus says one of the funniest, unintentional gut busters of the year. We tries to pull off a thick southern accent and says "ahhh you don't wanna talk to Georgy Porgy". I laughed so hard that I had to pause the movie for at least 20 minutes.

The bus makes it to the same stretch of road when, you guessed it, another dead crow falls, hits another rock which rolls that spooks a deer into running out in front of a car and she hits the bus. Rinse and repeat. Now we have the doctor yet again in the woods with more convicts heading straight for the cottage again. In one of the oddest scenes in a movie, when they reach the cottage one of the convicts says I can see it all now and we see his thoughts in which he is drinking, raping women, throwing money around and smoking cigars. After this scene the doctor says "no it will go more like this" and we see his thought process of them all getting slaughtered. So did he read the guys mind or what? Anyways, the group enters the cabin, we have a very weird scene of the doctor removing a bullet from one of the convicts scrotum. What makes this scene weird is there is twangy country music playing the whole time that really does not fit the moment.

Once the monsters make it there we have the typical slaughter scene, with one exception that really left me perplexed. Everything in this house is from the 1700s, yet one of the convicts just casually bends down and picks up and chainsaw which starts with one pull of the string and starts sawing people. So this family lives like the 1700's, does everything that way, all their tools is that way, yet they have a gas powered chainsaw? Now were at the ending in which the doctor and the girl escapes. They make it to the road in which the doctor for some reason stands in the middle of the road with his eyes closed until, you guessed it, he is hit by a car which causes another bus crash. Only this time the girl is hit also and when she opens her eyes she is one of the monsters now. *sigh* I guess this means a sequel is unfortunately in the works. We cut to another black and white scene of the doctor full grown talking to the girl with the dog still between them and he thanks her.

Wonder if the state ever decided to check into this one stretch of road and see why so many bus crashes happen there and lose so many criminals there?
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3/10
Silent Hill in name only...
10 November 2010
I have been a Silent Hill fan since the first game. The series was a masterpiece. It took what Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil had started and then capitalized on it with its own brand of survival horror. Everyone seems to love the story of Silent Hill 2 the best ( I to am one of those people) but for the atmosphere and pure terrifying chills, the first Silent Hill is the one to visit.

When I heard that Silent Hill was being remade, I was very skeptical. Then I thought, well it might not be so bad if its a direct remake with amped up graphics. First we find out that most of the characters from the first Silent Hill are in Shattered Memories in name only. They bear no resemblance or anything for that matter to most of the characters. Lisa's character still holds some of that crazy charm she had in the original but keep in mind this one has nothing to do with the original. Instead of having the town turn to what most describe as "hell mode" it turns to this iced over frozen realm where we basically get the same creatures re spawning time and time again. The Silent Hill series has always been noted for its grotesque creatures and you never know when you are going to run into a new one. Not the case here.

I have a few hunches on what happened with this game. First of all I don't think this game was originally written to be a Silent Hill game. Both have sort of similar beginnings in which we have a father wrecking with his daughter and his daughter goes missing. I feel like when writing this story people caught on that it sounded a whole lot like Silent Hill 1 in the sense of the wreck and Harry searching the town for his missing daughter. So they decided to just reboot the franchise with this game. To me this game should not have Silent Hill in the title at all.
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2/10
Movie hidden within a movie...
9 November 2010
I am a fan of the original the Office so to see Ricky Gervais writing and starring in movies that would be released theatrically here in the states was very exciting for me. When I saw the trailer for this movie I was hooked from the start. It looked witty and funny. When I went to watch it though it turned out that movie that was being advertised to us was just the first 20 minutes of the movie and pretty much all of the trailer (at least the funny moments) are also the first 20 minutes of the movie. The movie does a 180 and turns from a witty romantic comedy with an original idea behind it to a religious parody. I find it ironic that at the precise moment that the movie changes course, so does the laughs. The movie basically tried to become an educational film on how religion is this horrible lie and atheism is the true way.

I admit, I am a Christian, but I do not force my views on anyone and I am as easy going and laid back as anyone you could meet. I was not offended or anything by this movie but rather I was disappointed. I was promised a romantic comedy with a quirky plot about lying. That promise was fulfilled for the first 20 minutes, then Gervais decided to cut the reel and insert his own beliefs to fill the rest of the film. At this point in the film everyone I saw this at the theater with walked out. Not because of the subject matter, but rather because the movie becomes mundane and loses all of its energy and laughs. Not one laugh was heard in the theater after the first act. A lot of people demanded their money back. Me and my wife stayed and watched the rest of the film, but when the film was over I felt like I had wasted my time and would have been better off if I had left with the rest.
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