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Picking the rare gems out of a sea of crap.... so you don't have to!

Zombie - Evil Pleasures

Movie Review: Outpost

July 6th 2009 23:49


Premise: A group of mercenaries is hired by an American stranger to escort him to a site in a war-torn country. When they get there, they discover an abandoned Nazi bunker, and are soon after set upon by a mysterious, otherworldly foe.

I'm going to say this straight away: Stop reading, go out, and rent this movie. It as absolutely brilliant.


First of all, there is something about seeing convincing soldiers in a movie. One of my biggest turn-offs is watching soldiers on screen when you can clearly tell the actors have 0 idea about soldiering. I know I'm not one to talk, not even knowing any soldiers, but even a layman like me can tell the difference. Outpost has convincing soldiery, making the movie that much more convincing.

Soldiering aside, the acting is pretty top-notch.
None of the actors let the cast down, with the leads all putting in convincing performances. Although some of the supporting actors are stonger than the others, all are good to watch. Perhaps my favourite character, oddly enough, is the commander of the Nazis himself. Despite the fact that he doesn't say a single word, he manages to convey an air of menace, especially in the first scene in which his character reveals himself.


The gore effects scenes are pretty quick, with none of the long, protracted gore scenes that I have been becoming used to coming out of Hollywood.
Despite that, they are sufficiently brutal to keep the audience entertained. I particularly like how they could have made the movie much more gory and brutal, but decided to avoid it in favour of adding to tension. There are some scenes where you are gearing yourself up to see absolute carnage which doesn't eventuate, others where someone does die but off camera, and others where you aren't expecting much and are greeted with a neat little gore scene. Keeping the gore in quick little scenes helps this movie avoid degenerating into the gore-fest it could have very easily become.

I've mentioned the commander
Guerrilas in the Mist
of the Nazis, but I think the whole Nazi platoon deserves another mention. They are menacing, cool, friggin' scary! They aren't quite ghosts, and they aren't quite zombies, but linger somewhere in between the two. Not knowing exactly what they are, or what they are capable of, adds significantly to the air of menace surrounding them. The costumes are also pretty wicked, and knowing that they are Nazis just makes them that much more frightening. I might even go so far to say that these are the coolest bad-guys that I have seen in recent cinema, although there is stiff competition so that might be taking it a bit too far.

There's something that I noticed when watching The Bunker (also a great little flick) which was confirmed watching Outpost: Bunkers are an awesome setting for a horror movie. Almost as good as submarines. The sense of claustrophobia inherent in such confined spaces and narrow corridors, it's just wicked! Mind you, I could be biased seeing as the only bunker-set movies I have watched have been good ones, but still... when used well, this setting is awesome.

One of the major complaints I have read about this movie is one that is made about a lot of horror movies: Plot holes. The writers attempt to explain the bad guys here, which they really needed to as it links in to the whole premise of the movie. They attempt to tie in the bad guys with the theories of Einstein, in particular his unified field theory. Not being a physicist myself, I can't comment on how (im)plausible this may or may not be, but to an average joe like me it didn't seem that far fetched... no more far fetched than Nazi ghost zombies, that is. To be fair to the writers, most of the holes that people picked up were only there because the tools weren't paying attention, and were explained away at some stage in the movie. Sure, maybe watching this movie will require you to suspend your disbelief for an hour or two... but no more so than a finger-blade equipped psycho coming after you in your dreams, or an invulnerable killer coming after you camping near his lake.

Overall, an awesome little ghost/zombie flick, and definitely worth renting if you get the chance. I'm not usually a fan of buying movies, but I'm most definitely considering picking this one up if I get the chance.
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Posted By: Someone - Category: Zombie, Great Horror
   


Movie Review: 2001 Maniacs

July 5th 2009 04:33


Premise: 3 groups of strangers are all forced by a mysterious detour sign to enter the backwood town of Pleasant Valley, led by Mayor Buckman (Robert Englund). They are then invited to stay for the towns 'Guts & Glory' festival, but start getting knocked off one by one by the creepy townsfolk.

This movie is a severely tongue-in-cheek affair, and should not for one minute be taken seriously. That being said, if you're looking for some crude jokes, inventive deaths, and lots of naked breasts, then this is right up your alley.

Robert Englund is always a delight to watch, and you can immediately tell how much fun he is having playing the one eyed mayor. Probably the only other noteworthy role is Lin Shaye as Granny Boone. However, despite not being too noteworthy, most of the characters put in a relatively convincing performance.

The main two reasons for watching this movie are tits and guts, and plenty of both are delivered. There are also a few moments that are pretty funny, albeit in a sadistic way...

However, something about this movie just didn't sit right with me. Maybe it's because of my growing fondness for tension over gore, but I just wasn't that impressed. Don't get me wrong, the movie is a bucket of blood fun, but it just didn't float my boat. However, if I'd had a few beers or joint tokes, I think I would have enjoyed this much more.

So, if you're looking for a gut-rendingly good time, and aren't too fussed with good scripts or convincing plots, then this is the movie for you. Probably a great movie to have on a party, with the over-the-top death scenes and the gratuitous nudity.
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Posted By: Someone - Category: Zombie, So Bad It's Good
   


Film Review: Doomed

June 19th 2009 23:41


Premise: 10 convicts are offered a full pardon and 50 million dollars if they can win a game show. They are split in to teams of two, and placed on a remote island with one goal: to reach the other side of the island. Sounds simple, except the island is crawling with zombies.

Now, the premise sounds pretty goofy, and that's exactly how I would describe this movie: Just plain goofy. While a couple of the characters are tolerable to watch, most of them are annoying and instead of sympathizing with the plight of the characters, you spend your time hoping that they will die. The rest are just... well, goofy.

At first, I thought the script would be the worst thing about the movie. I mean, come on. Surely they could be a bit more inventive with game show names than 'Survival Island 2020'. That about sums up all of the creativity that went into this one. However, once I had seen the movie, I was sold: the script isn't that bad, at least not in comparison to this films worst trait: it's direction.

The directing of this movie is possibly one of the most botched jobs ever done. There are so many things about it that annoy me, but I'll stick to the main points. Firstly, every time there was a zombie on screen, we got the super-shaky-hand-held camera effect... but it was like the cameraman was having a seizure, during an earthquake. About the best thing going for this movie is the zombie costumes, which actually look pretty cool. However, the audience has no time to appreciate this, because every single time there is a zombie on screen, the camera is doing it's best impression of clothes in the dryer. Well, actually in retrospect there is one single scene where we get to see a zombie with a steady camera, but that zombie is behind a force field (I'm not even kidding) so that doesn't really count.

If it was just the shaky camera overdose, I might be able to forgive it as a horrendous but forgivable mistake... but the crappiness doesn't stop there. Every time they want to change scene, we get a (badly animated) 3D map and zoom in to whichever character or location the next scene is set in. For every single damn scene change. Even if 2 teams are in the same part of the island, we get 2 separate zoom-ins into the same part of the island. Oh, and it doesn't stop there. Every time a character dies, we get this awfully annoying 'transmission lost' sequence, which by the end of the movie is just grating on your last nerve.

Oh that's not even the worst of it. The most annoying part of the movie is that during every action sequence, every time someone lands a blow, there's a little pause and a point value pops up on screen. For example, someone gets kicked in the side, and everything will freeze for a split seconds and text will appear saying 'body shot - 200 points). Sure, that might have been an interesting concept, but they just use it over and over and over again until it just gets annoying. Maybe if they used it for every kill, but watching 2 guys punch each other with the movie stopping and starting once every second isn't fun to watch, it's irritating.

I'm about done ranting now, but there is one more thing. Generally movies with good (or bad?) looking zombies have decent gore-effects, seeing as a higher effects budget generally means a higher costumes budget as well. However, Doomed is quite deceptive in this regard. Obviously the producers spent every last cent on their zombie costumes, and had no money left for effects. Their solution? Just don't have any effects. So we get the zombie-pileup effect, where the horde of zombies all jump on their victim, conveniently obscuring them from view and not requiring any special effects. So, we don't get any juicy headshots, missing limbs or disembowelment in this one... and for a zombie movie this bad, that's just adding insult to injury.

That's all from me folks. Maybe, with a script rewrite, a different director, some recasting, and some decent effects, this could have been a decent movie. However, it is not, so don't even bother.
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Posted By: Someone - Category: Zombie, Absolute Trash
   


Movie Review: War of the Dead

June 17th 2009 05:13


Premise: A trio of nazi soldier zombies is hunting down the members of the platoon that killed them, and it's up to a member of an x-files-like government agency to stop them


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Posted By: Someone - Category: Zombie, Absolute Trash
   


The Blockbuster Challenge, and Severed

May 2nd 2009 04:37
I was a blockbuster near my house the other day, looking for a decent horror to watch, and I realized that I had seen a fair chunk of the horror section. Not quite half, but a decent proportion.

So, it got me thinking. And from that thinking came a challenge. I will not rest, I will not eat or sleep or even breathe, until I have watched every movie that the blockbuster horror dept. can throw at me


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Posted By: Someone - Category: Zombie, Good Horror
   




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