Horror Movies

[returnofjakedog]

New Alien movie!

Alien: Romulus, directed by Fede Alvarez, starts filming in February

The Alien movie being directed by Fede Alvarez is going by the title Alien: Romulus and starts filming in February.

www.joblo.com

*The working title is Alien: Romulus.
*Directed by Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead 2013, Don't Breathe) directs from a story he pitched to Ridley Scott some years ago.
*Will be a Hulu release, much like Prey earlier this year.
*Filming starts in February

Can't wait to see it!

 

[returnofjakedog]

Things gettin' really slow on the horror board!

Maybe I'll read a book:

 

[DJ Fieri]

 

[returnofjakedog]

Reality Z (2020)-

A Brazilian zombie miniseries about a group of reality tv show contestants trapped in a big, fancy compound as a z-pocalypse erupts. The contestants predictably turn on each other, and chaos erupts. This essentially repeats over and over.

I don't want to waste too much time on this one. It is hammy, and not particularly well executed. Even with ignoring the not so great dubbing and using subtitles it is pretty obvious that the acting isn't good. The story meanders and focuses on the drama between the idiots way too much instead of dealing with the zombie hordes........and when I say idiots, I do mean idiots. The writers really screwed to pooch and made the characters generally take the stupidest option in most situations. It is baffling how lazy this is considering that this was all already essentially written for them (more on that below)!
The good? Well, it had a little bit of budget behind it and the zombies look ok (not up to Korean standards though). There are some decent gore fxs here and there, but also flashes of poor cgi.

When I started watching this I said to myself "Wait. This is Dead Set!", a 2008 British miniseries which I have mentioned here a couple of times. Dead Set wasn't great but it was decently good and had a sense of dread and urgency that is very lacking in Reality Z.
When I say "This is Dead Set" I mean that very literally. The characters are the same. The plot points and story progression are the same. The scenes are the same. Even the dialogue is essentially a repeat. But it is all done slightly worse. The only difference is the setting. Now this does change after the first 5 episodes as a completely new group of characters is introduced for "Season 2", but it still feels exactly the same. The characters are still all shallow idiots who make the worst decisions, and the story still lacks any real depth or meaning.

4 to 4.5 outta 10 range from me. I might have liked it a bit more if I hadn't seen Dead Set first, but even then this is still SyFy channel level of lazy schlock.

If you are so inclined, watch Dead Set instead:

 

[DJ Fieri]

 

[DJ Fieri]

Anybody seen this?

 

[returnofjakedog]

The Invitation (2022)-


A financially struggling young lady takes a genetic test and finds out she is related to a British family. She travels to jolly ol'England to attend a wedding and meet the relatives and discovers they are very wealthy, and the hot young host dude that pursues her is megarich. But it turns out there is an ulterior motive for the family inviting her....

Spoiler

They are all a coven of vampires and the rich guy hitting on her is literally Dracula

A good looking well produced film that builds the tension and mystery quite well, but it has a big tonal shift after the "reveal". It basically devolves into a kinda cheesy 60s-70s B-movie.
Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with the a 60s-80s B-movie horror cheese, but after spending the first 3/4 on the run time on what appears to be an intriguing, and somewhat scary supernatural mystery blended with a fish out of water story, the reveal was a bit of a let down and the remaining stuff was kinda fun but just seemed out of place. Maybe the intentional over the top acting along the way from some of the characters should have been a tip?

There is some cgi that hurts just a little but they mostly do a decent job on the fxs.

I'm a bit torn. 5.5 outta 10 seems about right. That includes a half point deduction for the end scene.

 

[returnofjakedog]

Anybody seen this?

Yeah. It got eviscerated pretty badly here but in retrospect it is a decent "turn off your brain" fxs driven zombie action film.

There is a lot of fun stuff to enjoy in it but everyone was excited for an relatively big budget (~$90 million) zombie movie by Zack Snyder so the lazy stupidity factors really pissed some folks off. The fact that it wasn't stylistically anything like Snyder's 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake didn't help it either.

You can find some indepth bitching about it in this thread but to summerize, it is fun enough if you want a nonsensical remake of Aliens only with zombies, set in Vegas, with dumb characters. It has some good action, violence, and sone decent gore. But there is just some really, really stupid shit and very poor writing that hurts it.

Go in with expectations according to this and you will have some fun.

 

[DarthVedder]

I was kind of excited about M3gan, but I found out that it is PG13, so it will not be particularly violent or gory. Most of the potential with that robot was some fun, innovative death scenes.

 

[returnofjakedog]

Black Summer (2019)-



A family and general populace as a whole tries to evacuate a z-pocalypse but the military breaks and everyone ends up fleeing for their lives.
In Season 2, it follows surviving characters as they make their way through winter, and their attempts to escape to better areas.

Another hard one to rate. I watched S1 a couple of years ago and remember struggling with the story (or seeming lack of it) as it jumps around so much it is hard to follow and there is no time for plot or character development, but this pacing is intentional. Season 2 eventually somewhat returns to a more "standard" format and fleshes things out a bit more, and I actually went back and rewatched S1 with the added perspective, which clarified things.

There are quite a few brilliant "fleeing and fighting" scenes where they latch onto an individual as chaos erupts all around. The camera work is often great in these scenes, and they can be reminiscent of the entity chasing Ash through the cabin in Evil Dead 2.
Despite these types of shots being highlights that intentionally add to the chaotic confusion, this same lack of "focus" often is somewhat to it's detriment. When the viewer is just constantly and seemingly randomly quick jumped from one often unknown character to another with no basically no transition, and thrown into mass chaos, it can easily leave the viewer confused and full of anxiety. Again, this is intentional as it is supposed to put you in the place of the character but it makes for a tough watch.
When they finally do start to focus more it helps, but by this time the remaining characters are so untrusting of everyone else that they will just kill and run rather than even attempt to work together. Maybe that is more realistic? Z-pocalypse movies often point out that other humans are the biggest threat but this one takes it to a fairly extreme point, and I would like to think that the paranoia would find a more reasonable level to settle into.

Anyways........
*The fxs are good. Lots of practical, with the cgi mostly being properly "hidden" via quick flashes and other methods.
*The chaotic pacing with jarringly abrupt transitions, combined with the lack of character development make for a hard watch. But, as noted, this somewhat smooths out as the series progresses in season 2.
*The story itself is very small and focuses on one thing: escape!
*One of the what eventually is shown to be 3 main characters is Korean and speaks no english. This is a bit of a misstep imo as trying to understand anything about her is even more of a struggle than the others. But this is, again, done this way on purpose.

Anyways, worth a watch if you can handle the intentional lack of anything other than the breakneck pacing and chaos for most of the episodes. Some great zombie action and they are hard to kill.

I'll go 6.5 outta 10 range overall for the series as a whole. This is a jump up from the from S1 as a standalone, which I probably would have been about a 5.5 because of the seeming lack of focus.

Apparently this is from the same folks who did the long running Z-Nation series and they exist in the same universe? However that makes little sense as Z-Nation is tongue in cheek schlock, while Black Summer is played very straight and serious. If they do a Season 3 of Black Summer hopefully they don't try to overlap the 2 series.

 

[DJ Fieri]

 

[Nasty_Magician]

The Invitation (2022)-


A financially struggling young lady takes a genetic test and finds out she is related to a British family. She travels to jolly ol'England to attend a wedding and meet the relatives and discovers they are very wealthy, and the hot young host dude that pursues her is megarich. But it turns out there is an ulterior motive for the family inviting her....

Spoiler

They are all a coven of vampires and the rich guy hitting on her is literally Dracula

A good looking well produced film that builds the tension and mystery quite well, but it has a big tonal shift after the "reveal". It basically devolves into a kinda cheesy 60s-70s B-movie.
Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with the a 60s-80s B-movie horror cheese, but after spending the first 3/4 on the run time on what appears to be an intriguing, and somewhat scary supernatural mystery blended with a fish out of water story, the reveal was a bit of a let down and the remaining stuff was kinda fun but just seemed out of place. Maybe the intentional over the top acting along the way from some of the characters should have been a tip?

There is some cgi that hurts just a little but they mostly do a decent job on the fxs.

I'm a bit torn. 5.5 outta 10 seems about right. That includes a half point deduction for the end scene.

5.5 sounds about right. It was good enough but not great. Not a rewatchable but certainly worth a watch.

 

[returnofjakedog]

5.5 sounds about right. It was good enough but not great. Not a rewatchable but certainly worth a watch.

Yeah. If anything that might be a bit overrated (I re-read my post and thought that a straight 5 outta 10 might be more realistic).

It looked good. High enough production values, some ok fxs, and the schlock was kinda fun. But the what eventually revealed as a weak story, some questionable acting, and the audience pandering certainly didn't help it.

 

[UVA_Guy81]

 

[Sparhawk]

 

[returnofjakedog]

Looking forward to checking it out!

 

[DarthVedder]

I don't know if this looks terrible or awesome ... but will watch

 

[returnofjakedog]

I don't know if this looks terrible or awesome ... but will watch

I didn't even recognize that it is Nic Cage as Dracula!

 

[Sharkonabicycle]

@returnofjakedog I'll have to check out Malevolent... but wanted to ask you, did you see The Menu? Wanted to get your thoughts on that.. I was kind of disappointed by it.. it was okay, but very 'meh' at the same time.

 

[Sharkonabicycle]

I didn't even recognize that it is Nic Cage as Dracula!