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Demons Standard Horror - Evil Pleasures

Movie Review: Season of the Witch

April 3rd 2011 12:12


Plot: A couple of bad-ass knights (Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman) witness the slaugher of women and children during the crusades, and desert from the army. They return home to discover their homeland in the grips of the black plague, and are quickly discovered to be deserters and taken into custody. While in jail, they meet the girl accused of being the witch that caused the plague, and are told they must transport her to a distant abbey so that monks can perform a ritual to end the plague. They get together some cannon fodder companions, and set off for the abbey.


SotW is a movie that can't make it's mind up. It tries to be Lord of the Rings, The Exorcist, and maybe just a hint of Kingdom of Heaven, but just falls horribly flat on all accounts. As a fantasy epic, it's just too damn small. You've got the fantasy, but it's just not epic enough. They go 'round some mountains, over a rickety bridge (which OF COURSE falls into the chasm as soon as they get over) and through a forest, and there they are. Epic? Hardly. As a fantasy movie, it's too dark and maybe a bit too gory. The Harry Potter fan-club will not be frothing over this like they were with The Sorceror's Apprentice. That being said, as a horror it's not nearly dark or gory enough. As a psychological thriller (they lamely try and leave the guilt or innocence of the accused witch ambiguous for as long as possible), it just fails, since it's perfectly obvious from the very beginning.


Script: Bad. The premise is interesting, and with a bit of work could have been a great setup for the movie. Unfortunately the writers obviously realized that they could churn out standard fantasy fare with minimal effort and get away with it, so decided to go with that. The dialogue is sub-par, and in some parts really, really cheesy, and the 'twist' (you knew there would be one) is just stupid.

************************Epic Spoiler Alert************************

I'm ruining the ending here, so if you want to see the movie and want to experience the stupidity for yourself, skip to the next paragraph. The ending twist is that the girl isn't a witch at all, and is actually a demon. This demon wanted to be transported to the abbey so that it could get it's hands on a holy book containing all the exorcism rites and rituals, which the monks were planning on copying out and disseminating worldwide. Bear in mind, the whole abbey had already been killed by the plague. So, instead of taking a leisurely stroll to the abbey, the demon decided it would be a better idea to be transported there by some knights and priests, who obviously would oppose and try to kill it. Forgive me if I'm a little underwhelmed by it's devilish cunning.

Acting: Nicholas Cage can infuriate me like pretty much no one else can.
It's not that the man can't act: he most definitely can. And it's not like he's a good actor that just takes some godawful roles in between the good ones (like Michael Cane). The man can act, but only sometimes. He has done some truly great movies (Kick-Ass, Lord of War, Adaptation., to name a few), but in between them he has made some absolute abominations (Ghost Rider, the Bad Liutenant remake, or my personal favourite, The Wicker Man). I like the guy, I really do, but the lack of consistancy is enough to make me want to glass him. Granted, this is not one of his good movies, but it's no Wicker Man. What we get is a Keanu Reeves-esque wooden performance, enough to get through the movie but nothing to write home about. Ron Perlman is as Ron Perlman does, I like his style so I can't really fault him. The rest of the cast were decent, in particular Claire Foy as the Girl, but nothing really noteworthy.

Effects: Lame CGI. The effects are where blockbusters tend to shine, since
they have money flying out their ears, but I was disappointed by SotW. Not that they looked bad, really, but for a high-budget movie I was expecting top-knotch computer wizardry. Some of the landscape shots were good, but in all the effects were pretty tame. One of the standout features was the costume design.
come here and gimme a kiss
Granted, it's pretty hard to mess up when you're dealing with robes and cloaks, but to me it all seemed pretty authentic. In particular the plague victimes looks suitably boil-and-pus-ey.

Overall, this one's a definite disappointment. An interesting premise and a huge budget spoiled by poor scripting and average acting. Not worth seeing at the movie, but watchable over beer and popcorn if you're renting.
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Film Review: Reeker, and No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker

June 15th 2009 00:35


As I explained before, I lost a review of each of these movies, so basically I'm going to just do one review to cover the both of them. Don't worry, you won't miss much, they're basically the same movie.

Premise: A group of people feel a mysterious earthquake, and then finds that they are trapped in a remote desert locale with a demon hunting them.

Now, I watched No Man's Land before I watched the original, so I may have a skewed opinion about it. Both the movies are, and I am not exaggerating, virtually identical in terms of scripting. Even down to the exact same twist/explanation at the end. When I bought these movies I had no idea that they were so similar, so I didn't watch them together for comparison.

However, seeing as this is basically your typical hollywood-style horror movie, I'll be brief. No Man's Land is a complete ripoff of Reeker. Someone has decided that the Reeker franchise wasn't quite dead yet, so decided to add a little bit of a backstory to the Reeker character, and then proceed to basically rescreen the first movie. The whole Reeker backstory from the movie can't have lasted more than 15 minutes, after which they've decided they couldn't be bothered thinking of anything more inventive, and just used the script from the original Reeker film as filler. Like I mentioned previously, the similarities extend right down to the same twist at the end.

Now, I haven't seen No Man's Land recently, so my memory of it is a little sketchy, but overall I thought that the second one was better, simply because of it's bigger budget. While the first has a more cultish feel to it, the second has much more to offer in the gore department, which is really the only reason we watch movies like these anyway.

Overall... I can't really pick which one to recommend. It depends what you're looking for. If you prefer a more cultish tinge to your films, or if you think watching a blatant money-grabbing ripoff would be sacrilege, well then go with Reeker. If, on the other hand, you are after some higher budget gore effects, and don't mind recycled scripts, then No Man's Land is probably a better bet.
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The Devil's Chair

May 28th 2009 06:29
Warning! Spoilers!



Premise: A healed mental patient is released to the care of a psychology professor, who along with 3 students takes the man back to the abandoned mental hospital where the man claims a chair took his girlfriend 4 years prior, in an attempt to discover what really happened.

As I mentioned in my previous review, twists are a hard thing to get right in a movie. If done badly, and they're hard to do well, they can ruin a movie (think M. Night Shyamalan. The Village, The Happening... eugh). However, if done well, they can define a movie, elevate it, make it stick with you long after the movie is over, and make you watch it again and again. Think back to the first time you saw Fight Club, or The Usual Suspects. Hell, even The Sixth Sense.

Mmm... Comfy.


Back to the movie at hand. The first hour and ten minutes is fairly standard Hollywood horror-by-numbers... the chair is a gateway to another realm, in which a blood-demon is killing whoever comes through. There are the standard cliched twists, like the evil professor and the man not actually being crazy, and you are thinking wow, what a waste of a promising movie.

I am warning again of spoilers, I am about to totally ruin the movie.

And then the last 10 minutes just blow you away. Turns out the majority of the movie, borrowing heavily from Identity, is just a representation of the main character's mental struggle. What follows this realization is a brutal 10 minute sequence in which the main character slaughters everyone else with an axe.

Now, the last 10 minutes are easily the most disturbing of the movie, even though there is little gore. There's alot of blood splashed around, but the actual gore is always just off screen... What makes it disturbing is how the first hour-ish of the movie is spent building the main character up as a hero, who risks his own life to try and save one of the students, and then cutting to reality, in which he is raping said blood-soaked student. Creepy stuff.

What also makes it believable is the acting. Now, I have a couple of bones to pick with the casting, which I will get to shortly, but overall the acting was above average. Best among them is the lead (Andrew Howard),

who does a good job handling the shift from sane hero to psychopathic killer. I also didn't mind the blonde student (Elize Du Toit), who isn't half bad.

However, what the hell were they thinking when they cast Matt Berry in a serious movie. It could be because I'm a fan of The IT Crowd, but I cannot possibly ever take that guy seriously. Ever.

Also, the Professor was way too melodramatic to be realistic... however, seeing as he was part of an illusion, and seeing how the Narrator (Howard) himself comments on how it's like a crap B-grade movie, it's entirely plausible that this was done on purpose.

Overall... probably not one of the twists that will stick with you for the rest of your life (come on, you know Fight Club will), but if you get 50 minutes through the movie and you're about to turn it off... just let it run. The last 10 minutes I feel more than make up for the rest of the movie. Especially the ending, in which the main character, soaked in blood, drives away with his imaginary girlfriend. Probably worth a watch, but there are definitely better movies out there.

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Pumpkinhead 3: Ashes to Ashes

May 24th 2009 12:05


Well, having watched 4 before 3, I figured it was only fair to give this one a go


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Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud

May 21st 2009 02:11


Premise: 2 families, the (snooty) McCoys and the (redneck) Hatfields, have been at war for a years, following a car accident that left one of the Hatfields crippled. However, a Romeo & Juliet-esque love affair between Ricky McCoy (Bradley Taylor) and Jodie Hatfield (Amy Manson) has developed in secret


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