Body#19 2007 Review

Body#19

waiter, there's a fetus in my soup...

I've been doing a lot of comedy lately, haven’t I? And although it’s been fun and swell, let’s tear away from this comforting zone to let ourselves be embarked on a terrifying tale.

Actual scary movies are hard to find, believe it or not. And to find one that is both scary and pretty damn good? Yeah…that’s pretty rare.

But here we are, Body#19, released in 2007 by Thai director Paween Purikitpanya. This movie might just be my favorite actual scary horror movie, the first time I saw it, coming across it by accident, I was amazed by the storytelling and twists and turns this masterpiece presented before me. But I’m getting ahead of myself, what’s Body #19, or more commonly known as ‘Body sob 19’ or simply ‘Body’ about?

Chon and his sister, a nurse working at the local hospital, found themselves renting a huge house from an unknown owner. All seems to go well until Chon begins to see questionable things crawling through the house. His sister decides to help him to unearth the mystery behind these strange sightings, but all they find is a name belonging to a woman who used to teach at the hospital. Things go from bad to worse as other people begin to fall prey to this monster that takes the form of a dismembered woman. And telling anything beyond this point would be a waste, because believe me guys, you need to see this movie for yourself.

This movie is incredibly hard to talk about because the plot holds so many mysteries and I really don’t want to spoil the fun for those watching this movie for the first time. You might think you've already got it figured out, the teacher is coming back to take vengeance on all those who wronged her as some sort of curse and Chon just so happens to live in one of the prosecuted future victims house, right? Believe it or not, if you thought something like that, you couldn't be more wrong. This entire movie is a rolled up burrito of mystery and twists till the very last second and you’ll never see them coming.

This movie needs to be seen at least twice to be fully understood, and believe me, the second watch will be a completely new experience. You’ll notice some of the expressions on the characters faces that you at first dismissed as just a little bit off to be a major plot point afterward.

But enough about the magnificent storytelling, how does the movie look? Well, pretty damn amazing, for the most parts. I’ll need to get this out of the way, the ghost/curse/grudge’s face looks…well silly for a lack of better term. Mainly the eyes that seems to be two Ping-Pong balls glued on the actress’s face. But thankfully it’s only visible in a few scenes and only when they use the practical effects, yes believe it or not, the CGI in this movie actually works and looks even better that the practical effects, never thought I’d say that.

But the effects, both practical and computer generated look amazing for such an obscure movie and fit the tone very well.

And is it scary? Well, for once yes, granted it’s not the scariest movie I've ever seen, but it did manage to give me trouble getting some sleep for a few days. That and the overall eerie and confusing tone of the film makes it an experience you won’t forget easily.

Soundtrack wise, there isn't a lot to be said except for one song that is repeated throughout the movie more that I’d cared for, but it does somehow tie in the plot so I’ll make an exception.

Even for its minor flaws, this movie is a must-see for all who can appreciate a good story that’ll keep you guessing and actual scares that work in the movie’s context. I love this movie more and more every time I watch it, and although the first view can be a bit confusing and make the movie seem like a bit of a mess at times, those who will stick with it till the very end will walk out of this movie with a smile on their faces.

Personal rating: 9.8/10

Critical rating: 9/10

Things I've learned from ‘Body#19’:

-Releasing someone from a curse is all about timing.

- Checking under your bed isn't always the safest route.

- Trucks are f8cking crazy.

- they missed a great opportunity in not having one of the museum workers scream “I BE PAKINZ BUTTREFLIES!!”, just saying.

- Also, fetus soup…

[SPECIAL AWARD]

The best scare ever, gets you every time

“Chon…”

It's Alive 2008

It’s Alive

the greatest condom commercial of all times, next to Gary Busey.

We've seen it all, haven’t we? Killer robots, giant spiders, giant robot spiders, zombies, psychopaths, clowns from outer space, ghosts, pissed off elves, maniac leprechauns, killer vagina’s, sharkpedo’s and even goddamn Santa clause seems to have gone homicidal, so really it was only a matter of time before we came across a killer baby.

Yes people, a killer baby indeed. Because apparently the only thing you need to make a movie is half a braincell and the ability to point your finger at a random word in the dictionary, two if you’re feeling fancy, and in this case the lucky words of the day were: Shut the hell up and watch this baby rip this guy’s head of for some reason.

Although saying that the writers of this little mess had the idea all by themselves would be putting too much faith in them, it’s actually a remake. A remake of a movie I’ve never seen. Reviewing a remake without having seen the original? This sounds promising.

So what’s this movie about? A rabbit finds a baby kangaroo and together they go on an epic quest to find the letter Q. it’s about a killer baby dammit! I’m pretty sure you can fill in the blanks. Mother has child, child is the spawn of Satan and kills people in all its CGI glory while the mother looks at him in her useless self, whispering ”That’s a good boy, my sweetheart needs a bath, it looks like you've got some Mr Wilkins on you” and the father is too busy doing f8ck all off screen to bother with the fact that his week old son has rounded up the population of the town to compete with the numbers of good books written by Stephenie Meyers…so to zero pretty much for those out there that though ‘the short second life of bland blander’ was ‘barable’.

All right, so is this movie any good? Well it might come as a shocker but no, really not. Although I am completely behind the idea of a homicidal infant, I’ll have to go with the little voice in my head and say this movie is proper crap.

Why? Well for one, the characters make no sense, the dad is never around and when he finally decide to show his face on set he is as useful as tits on a nun, but that’s at least better than the mother character. I get the whole “motherly love”, but when you’re kid start bringing dead animals home and eat them, I say it’s a good moment to call some help, and hopefully a priest…and an AK47 just in case. (And if the priest “kicks ass for the lord”, all the better)

She is utterly unobvious to the fact that her child is the f8ing resurrection of Patrick Bateman mixed with Ed Gain and a safe dose of goddamn crazy, and when she finally start suspecting something, she does nothing except washing the blood from her friends off her baby.

But the biggest of all flaws is the missed opportunities, for one: you have a movie called “It’s alive” and not a single Frankenstein’s reference? I’d even settle for a shot of Boris Karloff walking in the background, just saying.

And two, and probably most important, having a kid in a wheelchair and not getting creative with it. I mean, in an all-white horror movie, a wheelchair bound character is basically a giant rolling neon sign saying: “gonna die horribly in a really twisted way”. And guess what, the kid doesn't die, he doesn't even get a scratch on him. When the movie “DOOM” does something better, it’s time to take your movie on a date and rethink your marriage.

The effects are laughable, and not in a good way. All CGI, not a single practical effect, except for the blood that looks as believable as spilling kool aid over your buddies. The dialogue is silly at best and the movie takes itself way too serious. If it was trying to be funny I’d give the effects a free pass and see it as a silly little mess rather than a complete train wreck. The story is predictable and feels incomplete, why is that kid a monster? Never explained, so here’s the theory I came up after a half bottle of vodka with my friend from ‘a horror diary’, Melanie: this movie is actually child play 4, Chucky sneaked in the hospital at the time of birth, took care of the doctors with witty comebacks and an ax to the face, told the kid his secret for loophole sake, and got the kid’s body, however unable to speak he still goes on murderous rampages. Honestly tough, my drunken theories makes more sense than the whole movie. But anyway, not a great movie overall, maybe alright as white noise at a party, but I hope the original is better, by the looks of the trailer, they at least had the goofy side of things right.

Personal rating: 3.5

Critical rating: 4

Things I’ve learned from “It’s Alive”

- Good to know the baby from “Braindead” is still getting work.

- I’ve never seen so many people with different nationalities work on one movie.

- The best part are the credits, try to find a name that doesn’t end with a V, I swear to god there are more Droshnikov’s and Popov’s than retards at a klan meeting.

Sinister 2012 Review

Sinister

The killing ‘meh’

Well, about time I review a recent horror movie, last one I did turned out to be about musical chairs, so let’s hope that this one has something resembling a storyline.

It might be easy to notice that I’m not that big of a fan of Hollywood and it’s money-whoring habits at the moment, sure there is some gold to be found while searching trough  pop artists who’s balls haven’t dropped yet and shitty teen drama romance that makes my gag reflexes strongly react to its sheer stupidity every time someone chooses for the sparkling twat.

But the gold is there, horror movies like Mama and even the Evil Dead remake (didn’t hate it, I’ll probably explain further my opinion someday, hold your pitchforks at bay people) give me hope that there is yet a chance that this storm that surrounds our movie theaters  will soon come to pass.

But where was I? Oh yeah, the highly praised “Sinister”, Scariest movie of 2012 and all other great talk, bout time I give that bad boy a watch.

“Totally not Jack Nicholson from the Shining” obsessed horror writer Ellison Oswalt decides that it would be a kick-ass idea for his children to grow up in a murder house, why? So he can write a book about the horrible murder of an entire family that happened not that long ago. A troubled probably alcoholic writer obsessed with getting his story no matter what? You sure Stephen King didn’t write this one? Unfortunately not, but moving on, a strange box keeps appearing in the house bearing a strange collection of 8mm films, our dear buddy Oswalt decides to give it a watch and ends up strung along in a conspiracy about a demonic psychopath’s picnic and pool party with a very dark twist.

First thoughts about this movie? The atmosphere was okay, the characters two dimensional and the acting was bearable, and given there are some kid actors in this one, it’s quite the compliment.

But did it make me soil my panties and run in fear screaming like a little b8tch? Seeing as that my neighbors haven’t yet called the cops complaining about a maniac running down the street screaming something about the lead guitarist of Slipknot being out to get him, I’ll have to say ‘oh sweet mamma with a cherry on top hells no with a capital N.

Predictable cheap jump scares, running annoying little ghost brats and a (even more) psychotic  Mick Thompson, come on guys, gotta try harder than that.

The story was okay I guess, the only real scare factor in this movie were the tapes, that sometimes are just plain disturbing, and that was great, it’s just a shame that the idea bucket ran out around halfway through the movie and they decided to go down in cliché avenue with a quick stop at Boreville.

I’m perhaps being a little too rough with Sinister, also seeing as it was partially written by another internet critic C. Robert Cargill from Spill.com it should be at least able to avoid the common horror clichés, but for a movie as praised as this one, it’s unforgiving, it didn’t really bring anything new to the table, and even though the video viewing parts were great and the twist at the end waspretty obvious but still enjoyable, it didn’t raise the bar or even tried to.

Overall not really a bad movie, but the constant praise were highly exaggerated and left me with only one word in my mouth, Mhe…

Personal rating: 6

Critical rating: 6.5

Things I’ve learned from “Sinister”:

- Possibly the best missed opportunity for a “I heard the pool party kinda died after I went home” joke

- Painting on the wall is cute and all, until the axe comes into play.

- How to mow your lawn like a OH GOD WTF WAS THAT??

- Always watch the last parts of a video

Teeth 2007 review

Teeth

It's back...yup

The return of the killer snatch

Come on…?! Another one??Again with the killer vaginas?

Yes, it would seem there aren’t enough movies to scare us to death about the female genitals, after “Killer Pussy”, someone thought it would be a great idea to get an American version over the sea, that guy would be Mitchell Lichtenstein and said movie would be no other that the 2007 "Teeth", because F8ck it, there can never be enough movies about killer vaginas.

Although, unlike it’s Japanese cousin “Killer Pussy”, which was a straight up goofy comedy soft core porno ( see my review on that infamous little mess here: Killer Pussy Review), I can give “Teeth” the credit for actually trying to tell a good story, despite the fact that it’s at its hearth still somewhat of a comedy

The story revolve around Dawn, a nice little high school girl with somewhat of an unusual problem.

She has vowed abstinence with her group of Glee rejects, oh, and her snatch has a nasty case of the munchies, and given that the damn thing has a pretty good set of teeth, I’m fairly certain this movie’s gonna get interesting.

Why does she have a set of razor sharp teeth in her privates? It’s never really explained, although the constant shots of the huge nuclear reactors behind her house might mean something, who knows?

So Dawn goes on with her poor little abstinent life with constant temptations and advances from her creepy half-brother. Yes, it seems the premise is not the only thing that Teeth shares with its predecessor, they also have a character in common, seems that Creeper from killer pussy has a long lost brother in America, who knew? Not kidding, they’re practically the same guys character-wise, except that we spend more time with the brother to realize how much of a d8ck he is.

So, personal thoughts on this movie? Surprisingly I liked it. Yeah, go figure, me liking a movie about killer genitals, who knew?

But seriously, if you can put the ridiculousness of the premise behind you, you’ll find a pretty subtle and good comedy/horror. The pace was pretty good, except for the first few scenes that talked about god and purity and bla bla bla, we’ll get to that later, but for the rest, pretty good.

The characters were far less two-dimensional that I expected and had actually emotions and were able to emote them without having it feeling forced. A scene where the acting and the dialogue really amazed me was in the third act of the movie, after the father and the son had a fight and end up talking, the tension and the dialogue were there, and it is a hearth touching scene where the brother, instead of being a major d8ck like usual, actually opens up despite being in utter and complete control of the situation, and we get a creepy and honest revelation to why his character is so tormented inside. It’s pretty amazing if a movie can make me feel sorry, even for a microsecond, for such a despicable and cruel character as American Creeper.

But for all the good this movie does in the second and third act, my god was the first one a drag.

Preachy as hell, just enough to make you wonder whether they were parodying the whole ‘purity ring’ and all that religious nonsense or if they were serious. Here the thing though: I don’t have a problem with people who want to wait until the wedding to give in, hell, if it makes them happy, go for it, see if I care. However, this whole purity ring campaign bullcr8p and the religious aspect just manage to press the wrong buttons with me. And throughout the entire movie, Dawn never seems to get rid of her anti sex t-shirt, now granted, it’s pretty ironic given her condition. But the first act doesn’t focus on that how so ever. So it’s pretty easy to forget the whole ‘Killer in the pants’ thing and just watch two hyper religious teens giving each other lovely eyes and talking about how awesome god is and how evil sex is, which really drags on and on and on and on…

Thankfully the accidental castrations break in like trumpets to a fanfare to welcome the second act, but until then, useless teenage drama, the worse kind. What I’m trying to say with this, is that being abstinent and believing in god is like having a d8ck, it’s great to have one and it’s great to be proud of it, but please, don’t shove it in our face, k?

The editing is also really weird, I know it’s a weird thing to bring up in a movie about a killer box, but it was one of those few things that really bugged me with this movie. Some scenes would go nowhere and characters would show up at places at random without any explanations.

But with all this aside, great movie, although it could have been a little less graphic on the castrations in my opinion, I’ve seen BME Pain Olympics, and I must say that Teeth wasn’t far off. Pretty painful to watch at some points even, might I add (for a guy).

"Killer pussy" 's creeper's long lost brother

So here’s the big question, which is better? “Teeth” or “Killer Pussy”?

Well “Teeth” is a ok movie that I genuinely enjoyed about a girl trying to find a way to overcome her problem, “Killer pussy” was bat sh8t insane and had me laughing my ass off for all the wrong reasons.

So which is better? Teeth. Which is funnier? “Killer pussy”. Pick your poison. All I’m afraid of is when the darn things will learn to talk, now THAT will be terrifying…(Obvious foreshadowing is obvious)

Things I’ve learned from “Teeth”:

- America is weird as f8ck

- I never want to be a gynecologist, it’s like the ‘Killer vagina movie’ equivalent to a black guy in a horror movie…

- Both Japanese and American creepers got the same resolutions in both movie…weird

- The line between being a hero and being a d8ck is very thin.

Personal rating:

6.5/10

Critical rating:

5.8/10

Jack In The Box Review

Jack In The Box

‘Musical Chair Of Death’ , let’s hope they don’t try ‘Twister Of Torments’ next.

I’m not kidding, that’s actually a thing, you take a kids game, and with enough meth and absinth you can come up with a horror movie about that game. After such stupidities as ‘Battleship’ I really thought we had hit rock bottom when it comes to movie ideas, but nope, as always, I was wrong. People, I give you jigsaw’s version of the musical chairs: Jack In The Box.

Now, what has this 2008 horror movie to do with the title? A 30 seconds scene at the beginning of some woman who we’ll never see again giving her demonic child a jack in the box. Yup, that’s it, nothing else. So what is this movie really about? Musical chair! But wait, it’s musical chair from HELL!

Plot:

Six unlucky wannabe actors find themselves stuck in a basement thinking they were going to an audition, with a dirty hobo who only talks in riddles an rhymes and seems to have lost his marbles. The six prisoners (who have the same name as their actors, that’s either genius or just laziness) quickly discover they are in the game of their lives when the music starts playing from a ‘Felix the cat’ clock on the wall and the hobo shows them that they have to play the musical chairs with him.  

The loser gets the consolation prize of slow agonizing death (joy) and it becomes a tension building horror as they wait for the music to play again.

With movies like these, where the protagonists are stuck the entire movie in the same room, the whole thing needs to rely heavily on dialogue. What’s the main problem with Jack In The Box? The dialogue isn’t that great. You can tell the writers were really trying, but they just weren’t that good. No character has an interesting story to tell. There wasn’t a single memorable line in this entire movie, ok except “someone’s gonna sh8t some splinters…”, that one was pretty hilarious, only for the fact that they actually try to make it sound badass. I won’t give this movie too much sh8t, because writing dialogue is one of the hardest things to do with a movie, let alone one where the dialogue is the only thing driving the movie. However, choosing to do so was still a stupid idea, points for trying, sure, but it doesn’t make the movie any better. It doesn’t help either that they killed off my favorite as second, still kind of pissed about that.

Although, one interesting aspect of this movie is that it is shot in real time…ish, kinda. Every ten minutes the creepy Felix clock decides to drop some sick beats and our unfortunate heroes have to dance for their lives, which means ten minutes of exposition every time someone gets offed, great….

It wouldn’t be so bad that the dialogue isn’t worth much if the actors would give it their all, which they really don’t. Most of them sound tired or like if they rather be in a much better movie

The story is a complete mess also, if you thought for even one second you’ll get answers at some point in this movie, then I’m sorry for you. The movie drops hints here and there of possible connections between the victims of the identity of their captor, but seems to quickly forget how to tell a story and goes back to pointless expositions about the characters backstories that has nothing to do with anything.

Yet…I don’t hate it.

I know, I know, it’s badly acted and the story is beyond stupid, not to mention it bit off way more than it could chew. But I still felt the need to keep watching to see who would survive. It’s no torture porn like Saw, there’s barely any blood in it, which is pretty interesting on its own.

So yeah, not a great movie by any means, stupid as hell premise, but it didn’t bore me and I didn’t hate it as much as I should have.

But seriously, what’s next? Spin the bottle and die? Hungry Hungry Psycho’s? Truth or death? BattleGhostShip? Tag with knives? What the hell guys?

Things I’ve learned from Jack in the Box:

- Next time a friend invites you to play scrabbles, bring a effin gun.

- When William White tries to sound angry, he totally goes Solid Snake on us.

- This isn’t really something I’ve learned, but why didn’t they just stay seated? I mean, one guy does it and he isn’t disqualified or anything, hell, he even survives that round. As for that matter, why did they give away a chair every time someone lost? It’s not like they have to, just push the hobo in a corner or knock his ass out, and stay seated with the six of you until the end. It just seemed kind of…you know, pointless?

Personal rating: 5.2

Critical rating: 4.5