Change Your Image
bruyve
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Rare entry in the western/horror genre ... and a good one
The plot of "Bone Tomahawk" is deceptively slight: terror hits a small western US township when two residents go missing, apparently kidnapped by cannibal natives. A posse of four men go out to save the day, with mixed results. Yet that synopsis hardly does the movie justice as, unusually for horror movies at least, the characters are well-rounded and the acting is almost uniformly excellent.
Some may find the gorier scenes on display hard to take, but seasoned horror movie viewers will see nothing more shocking than they've seen many times before. The key differences here are that the viewer cares about the main characters, understands their motivations, and can see the logic in their actions. If only all horror movies had these qualities.
The pedestrian pace may irk a few viewers, though the main criticism is the rather anti-climatic ending. The cannibals show little inclination to avoid gunfire, and after a brief skirmish the action, and the movie, peter out. This is gripe aside, few lovers of either genre will be truly disappointed by "Bone Tomahawk".
Beneath (2013)
Passable Descent-like underground horror
Trapped underground with something rather freaky going on; how scary you find that premise depends on how you react at a visceral level to being stuck underground in a confined space. This movie treads rather similar ground to "Descent", though less successfully, as it fails to sustain prolonged tension and (a common failing of horror movies) the characters don't always act or react as you'd expect under the circumstances. There are a few effective scares along the way, but nothing very memorable.
On the plus side, the acting is decent and one knows enough about most of the characters to have some vested interest in whether they survive. On the debit side, it is never explained what is causing the transformations into zombie-ish murderers, leaving some events to appear as if at random. Lots goes in the near dark, so be prepared to be squinting at the screen from time to time unless viewing in ideal conditions.
Overall, a decent Decent-like horror that passes the time.
Altar (2014)
Yet another haunted house movie ...
... which suffers from the same problems as pretty much all movies in the genre. A family moves into an old house with a shady history. Then the usual slightly spooky stuff starts to happen: windows open and close by themselves, odd knocking sounds are heard, faces appear in photographs, a phone inexplicably rings, and so on. Then the ghost starts to pop up here and there. And then things somehow go further downhill.
A dilemma faced by the makers of movies like this is that, once you've shown the ghost, where do you go from there? The ghost here isn't even particularly scary-looking, which would be fine if it were not that apart from looking scary, why would a ghost be frightening? It's not going to try to eat me like a zombie. It's not going to try to suck my blood like a vampire. Or even grab a big knife and slash me for no reason, like Jason Vorhees. It's not that an apparition cannot be scary, but to work in a modern horror movie there needs to be more than the fear the ghost might appear in your dream or do some weird thing with its fingers.
The acting isn't a problem here. The setting and scenery are both good. The cinematography is fine. The real problem is with the genre, which is looking increasingly tired. If you've seen a handful of haunted house movies in the last decade, you won't find much more here than tired clichés and a predictable plot (and yes, a ghost-hunter makes an appearance). If you've never seen a movie about a haunted house, "Altar" may well pass the time.
Resolution (2012)
Unresolved, but engaging
For a movie where not a great deal happens, I found Resolution an engaging effort. The acting from the main protagonists is compelling, the ambiance suitably unsettling, and odd characters come and go a la "Twin Peaks". Creating a claustrophobic and surreal environment, there was perhaps potential for something rather more than was realised.
In truth this is not a horror movie in the modern, conventional sense. There is no gore, no monster, no torture porn. Yet there are moments that are genuinely creepy, and you do at least care about the characters unlike in most horrors of the stalk-and-slash variety.
The ending will divide opinion, and nothing is given away here about the somewhat unsatisfying final scenes. Perhaps all will be resolved in a sequel ...
[Rec] (2007)
You Might Press "Stop" Before The End
The Blair Witch Project has much to answer for in sparking a glut of hand-held camera POV and found-footage would-be scare flicks. But whereas Blair Witch at least invoked an eerie sense of foreboding and was, if not scary, at least original, most additions to the genre have been more tiresome than terrifying. So it is with this Spanish schlocker, in which a pair of TV reporters follow a crew of firemen to a call-out in an apartment block only to find themselves trapped inside by a lock-down following the outbreak of some infectious disease. Said disease turns its victims into those staples of horror movies, zombies. Much running around and screaming ensues.
The gimmick of the hand-held camera POV adds nothing to the story or the suspense, to the extent that the movie might have even worked better filmed in a traditional format. Belief is beyond suspension at times when the camera operator keeps filming rather than taking more logical recourse, like running away or something.
The dubbing detracts further from the intended effect, and is at times unintentionally comedic. In particular, the odd mix of accents jars: English, American, Chinese. Few sound convincing. There's too much jabbering and general over-reaction.
There are few plot twists worthy of the name, and most developments are rather predictable. The effects are reasonable enough, and the last ten minutes provide the few genuine scares on offer. You may well have lost patience before then though.
Jobs (2013)
Poor Jobs
The difficulty with biopics is that, unless one is very familiar with the subject, it is hard determine how much fabrication is mixed in with the facts. The problem besets "Jobs", supposedly an accurate account of key features in the life of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple. The viewer is never clear how much portrayed in the movie is accurate, an issue not helped by the storyline either glossing over or simply omitting huge chunks of Jobs' life. Even Jobs' preventable early death is airbrushed out.
If the portrayal here is at all realistic, Jobs was a self-centred, egotistical manipulator whose limited talent stretched mainly to exploiting others with more technical ability than himself. One gets little insight into the alleged genius he possessed; in one supposedly telling scene Jobs gets extremely animated and fires an employee over a lack of font options on a prototype Mac. Was the mythos associated with Jobs all down to his love of fonts? If not, what was it? The main failing here is the movie is boring, and one can hardly root for a character so unappealing. The lack of engagement is not helped by the subject matter: people make computers, people sell computers, a company doesn't sell enough computers and ousts its founder, later desperate, the company takes back its founder and does better. Thrilling, eh?
Kutcher does his best with variable material, but his performance is too idiosyncratic to convince. Other actors bear physical resemblance to the individuals they portray, and are all competent, but it's hard to care. Only nostalgic glimpses of old computer technology holds the interest here.
Forget Me Not (2009)
Careful who you play with
Some teens meet grizzly ends, but as per "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (and numerous others), they kind of deserved it really. The twist here is that, once bumped off, you are totally forgotten about. This is both rather convenient as a plotting device and problematic. Would all photos of the deceased vanish? Suppose you had been with the deceased the night before they died, what would you remember of the night? Then again, horror fans don't all seek complete logic in their movies, just some good scares.
And there are some effective scares here. The creatures are weird, but certainly unsettling. Deaths are dealt out in varied fashion, and there are some unnerving and jump-inducing scenes. You probably have seen it all before, however.
The cast are not complete unknowns. "Hannah Montana" fans will recall Cody Linley as Hannah's boyfriend Jake in the series, and older sci-fi buffs may recall Barbara Bain from her "Space 1999" days. Mostly the acting is acceptable, although some characters' reactions to seeing the creatures are not what one would expect. For instance, near the end a character looks simply bemused when confronted with a posse of the things, but is oddly terrified at the prospect of one breaking through glass to get him.
Never likely to set the world alight, "Forget Me Not" still gets enough right to be an enjoyable romp for most horror fans. If sequels were anticipated by the makers, however, they were predictably disappointed.
Dark Ride (2006)
You won't ride twice
Another entry in the stalk-and-slash genre, "Dark Ride" ticks the usual boxes. A bunch of crazy teenagers are up to no good - drinking, sex, drugs, the usual stuff - and some are more dis-likable than others. A maniac killer is on the loose, and soon the world has fewer ne'er-do-well youngsters to worry about. Similarities with other movies abound, though a few novel quirks keep the interest.
About half the movie is set in a "ghost train" funfair ride at night, and the location provides some neat, if rather predictable, shocks. The killer is very much in the Jason mold: the bad childhood, mask, silent-but-deadly type. The teens wander around, and meet various bloody ends. Speaking of the end, you'll probably guess the "twist" well in advance, but it's likely not the worst finale to a horror movie you'll ever see.
If you crave originality, look elsewhere. If you're after a reasonably effective stalk-and-slash experience, this passes the time nicely. The acting isn't bad, there are tense moments, and the crazy guy in the mask is pretty scary. Just don't think too hard, or expect to watch it more than once.