Film Review: Hybrid

 A killer car film  or maybe it’s a creature feature

Synopsis  a car prowls the streets of Chicago hunting humans when it gets smashed up in a collision with another car. It is towed to the 29th district garage where the staff quickly realise the car is alive and it is hunting them all down.

This film is really not very good. The basic idea may work on paper but it is still basically stupid. Anyone with any training in biology may have to be restrained from attacking the screen when they hear the rubbish theories by the characters when they are trying to figure out what the car is. Maybe that was actually a subtle joke about poor educational standards.

The film is fairly tedious with lots of running around and driving cars about in the garage. The killings are fairly tame and bloodless and most came about from script induced acts of stupidity.The padding is quite obvious when the car, which can change to look like any car, keeps doing this even when no-one comes near it to see it

I didn’t really care about the characters. Oded Fehr‘s character Ray is so incredibly stupid and he’s written that way to ensure that a weak idea for 30 minute short is padded out into a full length feature film. The main protagonist Tilda, played by Shannon Beckner, annoyed me lot. The actors are okay but they are playing poorly written characters.

CGI plays a big part in this film but it really lacks credibility or imagination and instead looks like just another bland spectacle more suited to a derivative first-person-shooter game.

I don’t really now who this would appeal to because it really didn’t appeal to me.

rating 3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004L5UIMU

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152827/

 

Film Review: Sea of Dust

 I just about made it through this and I want a fucking medal.

Synopsis:Some weed in a costume (Troy Holland) is whining to some older bloke about some thing and Prester John (Tom Savini) gets mentioned. Prester John lives on the other side. I’m not sure what other side they mean but I might have drifted off at that point.

The weed then goes to a big house full of costumed loonies where he tries to propose to some bird he loves and then gets thrown out by daddy loony. After leaving the house he finds an unconscious woman on the road and takes her to a doctor to be tied up, a service rarely offered in modern socialized medicine. Then he takes her home where her dad tries to kill him for tying up his daughter but he kills the dad and then some truly pathetic special effects take him to beach where he gets hooked and taken to a castle full of loonies presided over by Prester John who recruits the weed into his army as his general – amazingly rapid promotion especially since from then on all he bangs on about is stopping Prester John.

This film is very badly written and the story is incoherent and making anyone watch should be considered a form of abuse. The acting is so awful that there are scenes littered with corpses and they can’t even act dead convincingly.

Tom Savini really is very hammy in this with a big purple cloak that he swishes around a lot. There is also Ingrid Pitt who seems very lost and confused and that wasn’t much to do with her acting. I really cannot think of a single redeeming feature of this film and I cannot recommend it at all

Rating 0/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003M9878S

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0471032/
http://www.seaofdust.com/

 

Film Review: Trollhunter

Synopsis: a trio of student documentary film-makers (Glenn Erlan Tosterund, Johanna Mørck and Tomas Alf Larsen) follow a troll-hunter Otto Jespersen around the Norwegian countryside as he goes his job of eliminating any trolls that wander out of their territory, endangering human lives.

Being a documentary there is not much in the way of a plot except that the hunter is a bit disgruntled and wants to help the documentary to get made to stick it to his bosses

The trolls are spectacular creatures it is a pity that their reaction to sunlight has prevented any filming of them in the daylight. The footage of the crew being chased through the forest by the three-headed troll was really tense.

It is a pity some reviewers are comparing this film to fiction like Blair Witch Project since the reality filmed here is much more disturbing than some snottery girl blubbing into a camera. I’ll certainly be very wary of going to Norway in the company of a Christian from now on.

Rating 7/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
http://www.facebook.com/thetrollhuntermovie?sk=wall

Related articles

• Movie Review : ‘Trollhunter’ (movies.nytimes.com)
• ‘Trollhunter’ Proves Big Trolls Only Look Better on a Big Screen (Review) (popmatters.com)
• Trollhunter Stomps onto Blu-ray and DVD (dreadcentral.com)

 

Film Review: Hatchet II

Synopsis: Spoiler Alert – any discussion of this film’s story cannot avoid a major spoiler of the first movie so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want the plot spoiled then go see it first.
Now that they’re gone let’s be frank, this film gleefully follows the formula of the slasher film so closely that it’s hardly much of a surprise that there is only one survivor from the boat trip in the Louisiana swamps in the first film and this last girl standing, Marybeth (Danielle Harris) is out for revenge on Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder) – the vengeful ghostly deformed mutant from the first film. She enlists the help of Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd ) who assembles a team of victims a group of hunters to go back into the swamp to kill Victor Crowley.

In a gory slasher film the plot is just an excuse to set-up a series of grisly physical effects death scenes. This film does it with such a deliberate knowingness that it teeters on the edge between pastiche and parody (and crosses right into parody in a scene involving an unfeasibly long chainsaw). Each pair of characters get their bit of a set-up before being slaughtered in some bloody gruesome way.

There is a lot of humour in this film and that really is what carries it through. Kane Hodder does his job well but it’s Tony Todd who really stands out here as a great big ham. I enjoyed the ride even if there was little in the way of scares, just gore and gore and more gore and of course a few gratuitous naked titties.  I just wish the market for naked dick shots was a strong as the one for naked titties.

Rating comedy horror  7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0051ZH40S

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270835/

Related articles

• Hatchet 2 Heading to UK Blu-ray and DVD this August (dreadcentral.com)
• San Diego Comic-Con 2010: Hatchet II Panel Expands; New Still (dreadcentral.com)

 

Film Review: The Rain (2009)

This is also known as Dark Fields as you can see from the DVD picture

Aren't they all dark at night?

Synopsis: A town called Perseverance is suffering from a curse which affects all the adults that can only cured by rainwater which only comes if the townsfolk pay a terrible price.

The film looks at the story from three different times but still manages to bring the story together since the events in one time have their consequences later. David Carridine plays farmer with two young children in 1866.  Dee Wallace is mother of three girls in the 1950s. The third section set in the present follows a young student played by Sasha Higgins studying at a college away from town who finds herself coming down with the curse

The three parts of the film deal with subject in very different ways especially with regards to the supernatural element of the curse. The 19th century part of the film has a living breathing shaman who has struck deal with the town to bring rain and prosperity. In 50s it really becomes a type of psycho horror with a father who is decaying both physically and mentally. The present day section has supernatural spirit with various magic powers as the main antagonist.

The film is quite well done and I like the blending of the three times and styles. The make up effects were quite good and the CGI was pretty minimal in all except the present day scenes. There wasn’t a lot of gore so it’s not one for the gore hound or anyone looking for flashy spectacle.

Ratings
Horror 7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004H0M2RS

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212023/

http://www.deadwaitproductions.com/