Hell Reviews - Supernatural: One Year Gone

Synopsis: A Supernatural novel that reveals a previously unseen adventure for the Winchester brothers, from the hit TV series! Twenty-seven years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force. Following the tragedy, their father taught the boys everything about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners of America... and how to kill it. This story will fill in gaps in the Supernatural timeline thanks to the author s first-hand knowledge of the show and unrivalled access to the show s creator. Dean believes that Sam is in Hell so he is trying to keep his promise to his brother and live a normal live with Lisa and Ben. When he realizes that a spell in the Necronomicon could raise Lucifer and therefore Sam, he convinces his new family to travel with him on vacation to Salem. Meanwhile Sam is not as far away as Dean thinks and is determined to protect his brother from the Salem witches... Eric Kripke (creator and executive producer of Supernatural) has written a foreword for the book.

Oh boy, here we have it people, the crème of the crop of the bad Supernatural novels.

The one at the very top where I’d have to stop repeatedly and comprehend what I had just read, if it wasn’t just blatant mistakes on when Sam’s birthday is (which kind of irked me for reasons to be explained) then it was the awful porn like quotes:

Paraphrase of a quote because Hell is too lazy to flip through the book and find the actual thing:

Random blatantly witch, bad guy girl from the past to Sam: You remind me of a horse my family used to own.

Sam, kind of smirking I think, he’s soulless and doesn’t care about whatever: Well then giddy up.

What….what was that?!

Did I just slip into an erotic book by accident?

Look Sam, you’re my favourite character in the show and always have been. Most variations of you have been hot beyond believe, from moody Sam to Lucifer!Sam to soulless Sam, heck even demon blood Sam would have been hot if it wasn’t for the whole out of character sleeping with a demon thing (then trust her over your own brother?! What.the.hell?)…but bugger me if you did that to me I’d be laughing too hard to go any further with you, naked or otherwise.

Just what is that?
Dear god.

So, in case you didn’t get it, One Year Gone is based on that year or so between when Sam jumped into the pit and when Dean got pulled back into the game.

Which is for the best really, I mean…come on Lisa, you were bit of a meh character.
“You shoved my son!”
Yeah…after he was warned to stay the hell away and didn’t listen and put himself in danger, the little shit deserved to get more than shoved.
Maybe if you taught your kid to listen every once in a while it wouldn’t be an issue.
Forced conflict is forced.
Anyway, I digress.
The point is that you spend a lot of time flitting between, Sam’s case, Dean looking for the Necronimicon whilst acting like he’s there for holiday time with the new family and short passages of a similar case to Sam’s in past with what I believe is their ancestors.

Now the positive is that I really enjoyed the parts in the past, those parts I found really fascinating.

We had a look at past ancestors never mentioned before during the Salem Witch trials, which was one of my favourite subjects to learn about in English class. (Not to brag, but I got a B in that subject and an A in a law paper…yeah.)
This part was something new and fresh, brand new characters to form opinions on whilst being linked to our favourite brothers, it was all mayhem and it was awesome.

Sadly that’s all there is to the good of this book, which is a serious shame.

Everything else is just a glob of ‘what?’
There’s just a bunch of things that could have been promising, I mean come on there’s Dean’s worst enemy next to demons, witches, and they just posed such a small threat that it wasn’t worth the energy that getting excited would have used.
Sam is off hunting by himself and being soulless, once again could be promising but turns out to be a complete was of time unless you wish to see him pick up some witch to bang and do nothing else that’s really memorable.
Trust me, after the ‘giddy up’ nothing else sticks out for Sam, that was so bad that I had to share it with my best friend the second I was online after reading it.
When ‘that’ is all that sticks out about one of the main characters, then you know there’s an issue.

The main flaw of this book is that it drags so much.

I knew what I was getting into and I didn’t go in expecting the brother’s to be magically reunited only for Dean to magically lose his memory by the end of the book so it can continue with the canon story, I mean that’d be ridiculous even for Supernatural’s standards.
However the promise of finding out how they were coping separated, one ‘settled down’ but still obsessed with finding a way to help his brother, whilst the other being completely emotionless and just hunting because it’s what he knew during that dark time of having no soul would have been so interesting, if done right.
But Rebecca added nothing that gave these two separate and potentially interesting stories life.
It’s so cardboard and boring and bugger me, Lisa and Ben are still annoying as all heck.
The main thing about Supernatural is its focus on the family bond, the chemistry between Sam and Dean, and the actors playing them on screen, is vital for the stories to work.
Without that there’s nothing to keep you interested and their understandable separation in this book just makes it drag out for so long that it almost became a chore to read it.
I wasn’t going in blind, I knew it was going to be about their time separated and looked forward to it, but it all just fell so short that eventually I was pushing myself to get to the end and almost gave up on it altogether a few times.
If it hadn’t been for the time jumps to the past at random times, I wouldn’t have bothered.

Another flaw is that it’s just far too coincidental.

Now any Supernatural fan will know that coincidence and the Winchesters go hand in hand, but this book takes the biscuit sometimes.
You expect Sam and Dean to get out of being tied up with relative ease to beat the bad guys if it’s a one off episode, you expect clues to turn up in ridiculous circumstances so the plot can progress within its hour time slot, but this just got ridiculous.
Let me give you an example, don’t expect explicit details as I tried to bleach this out of my brain.
There’s a part where Dean has to sneak into somewhere and Lisa was like; “Here’s some balaclavas so no one recognises us, I packed them from home.”

…What?!

What?!

You’re going to Salem! Why would you pack freaking balaclavas unless you’re expecting to rob a place whilst there?!
Now, this may be due to my geographical ignorance, so please do correct me if I’m wrong because I really need a peace of mind over this, but is there a reason in Salem to pack balaclavas?
Is it normal to look at your luggage and think; “Well we’re going to Salem, better pack those balaclavas.”?
Please help me, this is keeping me up at night and that occurred five years ago.

My main problem here is that author themselves.

If this was some random thrown in author then it may have been different if they had written exactly the same things, sure the book still would have been bad but perhaps I’d have just tucked it away and not thought about it again.

However, unlike my usual self I glanced over the foreword of this book which is a small statement from the creator of Supernatural, Eric Kripke himself.
In this statement he says how we’re lucky to have this book in our ‘hot hands’ because it’s written by someone who knows Eric Kripke’s story and what he envisioned for Supernatural inside and out and someone who has actually worked on the show.
If that’s the case then how the hell did we get this crapfest of a book?
The person is supposed to know all the intricate little details flitting around in Kripke’s mind better than he does, he said so himself in that very same statement, so how can so much feel so wrong?
If she’s meant to know the show so well how can she gets Sam’s birth date wrong? (Which I know they do in season 11 too, I haven’t gotten there yet but I saw the screen shot….is it that hard to remember May 2^nd? Or is something else going on?)
I think this is why this book felt so disappointing and it made it clear that David Reed was the superior writer of their co-produced previous book, The Unholy Cause.
After that huge hype up of Rebecca, I expected more and was left high and dry.

So, those are all my gripes.

I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

 

I found this one so bad that it was one of my first reviews I ever actually wrote on Amazon.
Look…right there, at the top…it’s me!

 

Only one person found it helpful?! Come on…it’s worth at least two helpful ratings!
I feel like I was trying to be too nice, on recollection it’s definitely not worth the three stars I gave it.

Hell Reviews - Stalled

Synopsis: It's Christmas Eve. A down-on-his-luck janitor is cleaning cubicles in an office block. Unfortunately for this forlorn floor-sweeper, he becomes trapped in the washroom the very second a zombie outbreak occurs. Will he be able to hit the emergency alarm with severed fingers and a catapult bra? Has he met his Waterloo? Will he just go potty? Or will he simply remain...Stalled? Consistently hilarious, brilliantly executed, cleverly constructed and visually imaginative, director Christian James' remarkable comedy horror is The Evil Dead meets Phone Booth in a toilet.


Straight off the bat I have to say…the bathroom in Stalled is the cleanest public bathroom I have ever seen in the history of using public bathrooms.

They’re also the biggest bathroom stalls I have ever seen that wasn’t a disable stall.

I wasn’t expecting it to be a Christmas movie.
I know in the DVD synopsis it says it is, but on the Horror channel write up it didn't and that's the only one I'd read.
I’m not sure what kind of place these people work in, but it’s one odd place if wandering around half naked or in a bikini is acceptable.
Office buildings are apparently such an enigma.

Too bad the rest of the film is just crap.

One decent thing about this movie, it doesn’t take long to get into which is something I love. I can’t stand films that take the hour of an hour and a half film to get into the story.

Also the janitor's name is W.C, haha get it? Because he's stuck in a toilet?!

Classic.

Too bad that that's pretty much all it has to offer, aside from one high sequence that's kind of fun.

Now I can’t say the acting is exactly amazing, but it’s a horror comedy about a man stuck in a toilet on Christmas Eve during a zombie apocalypse, for once I think I can give a pass on the less than stellar acting.

Seeing as the guy who wrote this film is the guy playing W.C then after watching this film I believe it's fair to say that he may need a tiny bit more experience in both areas, but he's getting there.

The female he has to talk to is honestly just really annoying after five minutes, if that.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t understand half of what she said at the start because she was muffled by other bathroom stall walls, she’s just irritating after two minutes.
I can feel a bit of sympathy for her in the end due to who she turned out to be, it's not really a 'shock' but I still won't reveal it here...I didn't hate this film THAT much that I don't care about spoilers.
But let's just say I'm kind of like her.
However...she's still annoying as all hell (no...not me, that annoying Hel in the office whose name is short for Helen who you just want to stab with a pencil because she talks too loudly on her cubical phone, ya know...that Hel.)
I mean he’s their only hope to get out of that bathroom and she throws him drugs that make him hallucinate, then nags about ‘hello, he’s the one that has to get them out of there’.
Because logic.
I am a fan of sarcasm as a form of humour and even crude humour, but she just becomes more of an irritation the more she speaks.
Also to be honest the constant references can get a bit tiring after a while and most of them tend to fall flat if they’re meant to be jokes, but over all it’s a good throw away film.

The effects aren’t that bad either, pretty good for a purposefully cheesy film.

It’s not bad for a film made on a budget of 450k.
This is one film where I don’t mind not knowing all the answers, like how the zombies came into being, why did they all accumulate in the bathroom? And another very ending specific question I’ll keep to myself.
There are a few cheap ass jumpscares, which I despise, but it happens.

Would I agree that it’s the ‘successor to Shaun of the Dead’?

No, it’s a long way off, but it’s good for harmless entertainment.

If you’re looking for a horror comedy to whittle away the time then Stalled is a half decent one, but I wouldn’t say it stood up to what I expected.

This is one movie that should have been flushed without a look back. (I’m so sorry.)

Hell Reviews - Paintball

Synopsis: Low-budget horror. A team of eight adrenaline junkies applies to participate in the ultimate paintball game. On arrival they are blindfolded and taken deep into a remote forest, and the game begins. But the game soon plunges its players into the realms of nightmare as one team member is hit with a real bullet, and what began as a thrill-seeking sport becomes a desperate struggle for survival.

Well…here we go again.

What is there to say about Paintball?

Not much honestly.

Just like Silverhide, Paintball has an interesting concept but over all the execution is just boring and flat. On the plus side, at least this one has some decent acting in it…but I can’t see how you can mess up screaming, crying and panting.

This isn’t a film I paid for, it’s currently being shown on the Horror channel and I figured I’ll watch this one, then watch the zombie in the bathroom film Stalled which is on straight after.
I shall be reviewing Stalled as I watch it, that’ll be put up soon enough.

From the bat you can tell it’s one of those independent, low budget movies that Horror channel likes to show. Sometimes I fully believe they pick these films to fully troll their audience, knowing most of us are suckers for B-movies and will probably sit through anything, even if we hate it.

Ah…the fun of horror film masochism.
I think they did pretty well with what they had, I don’t know a final number for the budget but I do fully believe that it wasn’t that high just from general watching.
The effects were pretty good, not scary, bloody splatters everywhere kind of pretty good, but more slightly above realistic kind of blood splatter levels.

The characters are complete non entities, I couldn’t tell you who was who, who died and who survived as none of them seemed to have any individual personalities.

From the bat we’re given a very brief shot of each character in a truck preparing for the game, but not given a clue as to why the hell we should give two shakes of a rat’s ass about.
None of them have their own personalities or quirks that help differentiate who is who to the watchers, except for one guy.
His whole thing is being fat apparently, because you know…character building.
In fact the only time I remember them being singled out and named clearly is right near the end when fake documents about each character are found and their names are read out.

The acting is bearable, but I feel that that’d mostly be because there’s just not much that needs to be emoted, the script hardly calls for anyone to make an Oscar worthy performance.

If you can seem worried and panicked then hey, you can have a part.
The only acting that stood out was one of the women who was behind the ‘hidden attackers’, but that was only because she stood out as the worst damn actress there. How can someone sound so hollow when pleading someone not to kill another because that isn’t what they do?
Other than that the acting was passable.
One of my main gripes however was that sometimes it was hard to understand what the hell they were saying, sometimes it was due to them panting through or screaming their lines and sometimes it was simply because they just didn’t enunciate properly.
Now I understand that when someone is panicking and frantic, scared for their lives and crying it’s normal to not be able to speak clearly, but when you’re trying to make a form of media you at least want your audience to have a brief understanding of what is being said in their moment of distress.
Speaking of panting and screaming once again, there’s only so often you can listen to people pant, cry and scream before it gets tiring.
A prime example of this would be The Human Centipede.

The ending itself is just a snorefest, the ‘final stand off’ is just not worth the film it’s on.
Not to mention the very, very end scene before the credits roll is so freaking pointless and adds nothing at all. Actually it’s extremely cringe worthy to be entirely honest and doesn’t offer a thing that makes you think: ‘You know what? That was worth it in the end’.

Do we find out why they were doing what they were to the people?

No.

Would I have liked to know?

Hell yes! Then I wouldn’t feel like I wasted my time.

What’s the point of a movie like this if the motivation behind the antagonists aren’t explained properly and you’re left with the impression that you have to just shrug it off and accept ‘just because’ as an answer.

If the film had been done well and had an effective ending that stuck with me then I wouldn’t be too bothered, as I’ve said in previous reviews I don’t need everything spelled out for me and sometimes being left in the dark can be fun if the film leaves a positive lasting impression.
Paintball’s only lasting impression is my recommendation to not watch it unless you’re extremely bored.

Overall, it’s an interesting concept of paintballing gone wrong and the forest they filmed it in was absolutely beautiful, but this is nothing to write home about.

The pacing was far too slow, the acting was alright but in the end I just didn’t give a toss about what happened or why it was happening.
I’m certainly glad I saw it for free.

You could make a drinking game out of it however!

1 drink every time you can’t understand what someone says.

2 drinks every time someone yells at someone else.

3 drinks every time someone says any form of ‘fuck’.

4 drinks every time the camera moves in a way that you can’t tell what’s going on or makes you feel a little sick.

5 drinks every time you find yourself zoning out or realising that you just don’t care about what’s going on.

Review and Apology - Hell Reviews - The Facility - Note: There will be spoilers.

Synopsis: Horror in which a clinical trial at a remote facility goes terribly wrong. Among those who sign up to test ProSyntrex's latest drug Pro9 are Adam (Aneurin Barnard), Joni (Alex Reid), Carmen (Skye Lourie) and Jed (Oliver Coleman). The trial is highly secret, with no-one, including the staff who administer injections, aware of who is receiving the drug and who is in the placebo group. Shortly after the trial begins it becomes clear that something has gone wrong. There are unexplained disappearances, bizarre silhouettes and screaming from behind locked doors. Locked inside the facility, unaware of the true nature of events, the surviving patients and staff must band together to try and find a way out of the nightmare.

Alright, it's a wonderful Friday night and I have literally just finished watching this film and all I can think is:

 

The facility was this weeks premiere on the Horror channel.

It's a film I've noticed quite often, I remember picking up the DVD case whilst browsing various shops over the years and thinking; Huh, I need to watch that, it looks good.

Finally, three years later I get to see it and...hooo boy was I wrong!



It started out promising enough then completely lost it part way through, I got so bored that I stopped paying attention for about twenty minutes without realising and when I zoned back in I still feel like I hadn't missed anything.
Except what happened to Arif, who I kept mistakenly believing was called Aaron throughout the whole film.
Seriously, where'd he go?
I know he got raged after the drugs took affect, so I can only presume he died but....yeah...I dunno.

The story had so much potential then ended up being lacklustre, and I feel like I say that far too often on here, but it's sad how often that turns out to be true.
In my opinion at least.
Now I am by no means a cinephile, I am but a mere casual viewer. However I'm not one of those stupid ones that needs everything explained to me, but there are certain titbits of information I wouldn't have minded to have for this particular film.
There are tons of films out there that create this mystery serum, some are explained (usually the more high budgeted things I've found) and some to be used simply as a means to an end, The Facility is unfortunately the latter.
To push this even further, however, it seems that this particular film doesn't even explain 'why' to anything it throws at you.

Why is ProSyntrex testing this on humans?
We don't know.

Did they test it on animals first?
We don't know.

Why does it make every participant go into the same kind of rage rather than have multiple results on varying people?
We don't know.

Why would you make it so the staff members themselves don't know who has the placebo and who is actually injected, thus putting themselves and the test subjects in danger?
We.don't.know.

Nothing is explained as if it's supposed to make us more on edge when everyone starts going nuts and killing each other.
Let's not forget the typical; Oh no! We were told not to tell anyone about this and have no contact with the outside world, aside from this one connected phone line throughout the facility, but that's been cut and we only have these walkie talkies that won't connect to anyone outside.
Which always happens as soon as it goes insane in the membrane.
I can suspend my disbelief, but there comes a limit and sometimes it takes merely one throw away sentence to answer all the questions I have left over after watching.

The characters range from passable to irritating.
I figured the whole point of having test subjects is getting a variety of people with varying backgrounds and personalities, this should help with better results on how the serum takes hold of each person.
Well they kind of got the varying backgrounds down, from the small hints you were given at the very beginning, but all of them were total asshats.
Although I kind of like Arif....come back you germaphoby dude, I miss you.
And you Howard, I think you were a caretaker or security guard or something, either way, you were nice and didn't get enough screen time.
There was a nineteen year old there who acted like a bloody eight year old.
A typical jock type who was blatantly going to be the first to go mad, and not just because he was injected first. It was because he was a total asshole and those characters very rarely get left until last, especially in movies like this when there's a whole selection of people to get rid of.
Pick off the asshole first, it's a guaranteed winner.
I was dealing well with Toby, who seemed to be an ex-druggie and over all cool 'older guy' of the group...but once again we didn't get official confirmation, from what I remember. Of course because he started off cool he simply HAD to turn into a twat in the end.
The other characters, aside from our main guy Adam, proved to be completely pointless.
Heck even the doctor and the nurse were ultimately useless.
I believe there was a reporter women who signed up with the purpose to do an article on this test, my main issue here is that it was supposed to be a super, ultra, mega secret test so how did she get wind that it was going on?
In fact...how did ANY of them?

Another thing, were these characters supposed to have pre-existing issues?
I mean Arif was obviously a germaphobe.
Toby had been there and seen it all.
Nineteen year old clearly had stunted mental growth, whether that was intentional or not I can't say.
Adam seemed to have some kind of social disorder, perhaps? He was your typical, hang back all quietly like until things needed to be put in order.
I'm not sure, I don't remember getting clarification either.

Wow...not even an hour has passed since I watched it and I'm already lacking on information, that says a lot.

So this is where the official spoiler talk starts, so I guess if you don't wish for spoilers than scroll past this section and head straight past it!
Anyway! It turns out that, DUNDUNDUN!!!!
Adam was the placebo recipient all along.
Dat plot twist man!
Also there's an epilogue of forced caption reading for you to read so you can get the gist of how this whole test ended.
You know the one thing that annoyed me beyond belief?
No, it wasn't that there were all of two survivors apparently.
I'm presuming that one was Adam, the other one?
I...am not entirely sure, four very short clips were shown at the end of different characters all looking alive and well, for some anyway.
No, it also wasn't that ProSyntex had no repercussions for sending these people into a living hell and causing deaths which these people's families will have to mourn.
It's the fact that it said the affects wore off after seventeen hours!
I HATE when films do that!
I find it to be such a cop-out.
People's lives have been ruined because this company seemingly hadn't done their job properly and tested the serum accordingly before moving to the next stage.
It seemed like no one, not even the doctor giving the damn injections, knew any of the possible results and everyone had a 'wait and see attitude. If that was me I'd want all the information they could possibly give me before accepting anything they wanted to stick in my arm.
It seems logic is not welcome in this place.

In conclusion, it's awful and I would recommend you give it a miss.
Is there a chance I'm just being stupid and didn't pick up on the small hints given in places?
Of course, as I said I found myself drifting away, but had the film been more gripping then it wouldn't have been an issue.

Now, I will take this moment to apologise for slacking so much this month.
It's been a surprisingly hectic month, but it's started calming down and I can focus on writing my reviews and randomness.
Although I know I don't have any followers, I still feel bad for slacking off and just being a terrible updater.
But it should all be back soon, I'll even post a few more stories.
That's all!
Hell out!

Hell Reviews - Drag Me to Hell

Synopsis: Director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man trilogy, Evil Dead series) returns to the horror genre with Drag Me to Hell, an original tale of a young woman’s desperate quest to break an evil curse.     
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is an ambitious L.A. loan officer with a charming boyfriend, Professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long). Life is good until the mysterious Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) arrives at the bank to beg for an extension on her home loan. Should Christine follow her instincts and give the old woman a break? Or should she deny the extension to impress her boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer), and get a leg-up on a promotion? Christine fatefully chooses the latter, shaming Mrs. Ganush and dispossessing her of her home. In retaliation, the old woman places the powerful curse of the Lamia on Christine, transforming her life into a living hell. Haunted by an evil spirit and misunderstood by a skeptical boyfriend, she seeks the aid of seer Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) to save her soul from eternal damnation. To help the shattered Christine return her life to normal, the psychic sets her on a frantic course to reverse the spell. As evil forces close in, Christine must face the unthinkable: how far will she go to break free of the curse?

Oh man...where do I even start with this one?
It's absolutely atrocious, from start to finish.
For some it may be a 'so bad it's good' kind of film, but for me it was 'so bad I regret wasting my time'.

This is one of those films where the advert made it look so good! I was amazingly eager to see it and revel in one of the 'scariest films of the year'.
A little side rant here, how do things get things be the 'best comedy/horror/action' movie of the year when the years has just started. So often something will be advertised as this in the early months, from January-May, and to me that just kind of shouts; "We don't have much hope for this movie."
Anyway, back to this atrocity.
What were they thinking?

The story itself had so much potential, but the execution lacks so much that it barely constitutes as a horror film and comes across more like a comedy.
Given a half decent writer and director I think this film would have done alright and not become the laughing stock it is, I mean even the kings of stupid movies and jumpscares could have done a better job (Looking at you, Insidious and Paranormal Activity people,) and most of their movies are utter trite.

The acting can be laughable at best.
I was honestly surprised to see Alison Lohman had quite a few things under her acting belt, but  I doubt many of it has her in the lead position.
As the main focus of the film, she came across so poorly, but the writing was also so bad that you have to kind of wonder if that's her fault or if the director just couldn't get his tone right and therefore her performance slipped as a result.
It seemed Alison was only there because they couldn't get Kirsten Dunst to appear in this travesty. Sam Raimi sure loves the 'squeaky clean, cute blonde' look for his stars.

The characters were unlikable in every sense of the meaning.
I didn't feel an inkling of sympathy for Christine as she came across as a self entitled bitch.
I'd have rooted for the Lamia the whole way if the old woman wasn't just as unlikable, you silly woman, pay your damn debts and stop cursing people, then maybe you wouldn't have to beg and be humiliated in public.
The boyfriend was completely pointless to be frank, only there to push in the whole 'perfect life' angle Christine had going for her before her life went to shit. Ultimately he is forgettable at best and irritating at the worst, which is a shame...I kind of like Justin Long.

Everything was ridiculously predictable.
The séance scene with the damn talking goat was the best part, next to the ending of course.
I admit...I kind of like the last five minutes in bits and pieces, even if some of it was eyeroll worthy.

All in all, it's good for a laugh with some friends, but don't go into it expecting anything spectacular.
If you can, give it a miss and waste the spare hour or so bashing your head in a doorframe, it's much more enjoyable.

Hell Reviews - Doll Graveyard.

Synopsis: Low-budget horror. In 1905, 12-year-old Sophia (Hannah Marks) plays all by herself in her big, creepy house with four handmade dolls as friends. When her abusive father (Ken Lyle) has finally had enough, he forces her to bury them in the backyard. But, after she slips and accidentally breaks her neck, her dad buries her right along with the dolls. 100 years later, the Fillbrook family moves into the very same house. Guy Fillbrook (Jared Kusnitz) finds the buried dolls while playing in the backyard. After the 100 year old, decaying dolls are unearthed, Sophia's spirit begins to possess Guy and the dolls are brought back to life. When Guy's bullying sister has a party with her friends and turns on him, the dolls stand up for Guy once and for all, violently showing the nasty teenagers who's boss.

Oh man, Doll Graveyard.
What can I say about Doll Graveyard?
Let me tell you...nothing positive.

This was part of the pile that my older brother bought me for Christmas and up until that point his track record was already pretty damn poor.
I completely understand that it's low budget, I really do, but that doesn't give it an excuse to be so bloody dull.
I'm not even sure if this falls into the category of so bad it's good, was it meant to be a horror comedy all along?
Or was that an accident on the producer and writer's part?
Because if it was either they A: Managed to make it just bad and B: Failed to make it funny.

The acting was just atrocious, the girl at the start seemed promising until she had to 'die', by...slipping on the dirt as she got out the grave her father forced her to bury her dolls in? Being pushed by the father? I can't tell, all I saw was a girl fall in a super controlled way, as you do when you slip.
The modern actors were worse than the 'ye olde day' actors, my left toe has more acting ability than any of the people named above.

The story was pretty much incoherent half the time, easy to follow but still 'what the fuck?' worthy at every turn.
These guys take 'dumb teens' to a new level of awkwardness.
The sister was a bitch, the friends and boyfriends were assholes for the sake of being typical jocks, there was the quirky girl who had to be untainted just because, you know...the type who wouldn't hang out with that group of friends in the first place?
The brother was a typical nerd who they tried to develop a love story with involving the quiet, shy, non-drinking virgin girl.
Which all gets fluidly forgotten when the Puppet Master rejects come into play.
The acting doesn't get better though.

It's really boring, avoid.

Though I love this little bitch of a doll.

Belated Movie Monday Review - Hell Reviews Fingerprints.

Synopsis: In this terrifying supernatural thriller, a troubled teenager sets out on a grisly path to discover the disturbing truth behind a well-known urban legend. Haunted for fifty years by the horrifying tale of a train colliding with a school bus, killing all the children aboard, the small town left behind continues to suffer as a stomach-churning chain of murders claims victim after victim. Brought to life by a stand-out cast including Kristin Cavallari (Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County), Leah Pipes (Malcolm In The Middle), Josh Henderson (Desperate Housewives) and Lou Diamond Phillips (Courage Under Fire), Fingerprints will leave its mark on your nightmares!

 

The old legend of the children pushing the car across the tracks is one of my favourites out there, it’s so sad yet so endearing at the same time.

In retrospect it could have been such a good film idea in the hands of competent writers, but unfortunately we weren’t gifted with talented screen writers.

What a terrible film this was.

Not only was it a cliché mess of a film, but the story just had nothing to it that was worth watching.

The characters were bland and offered nothing, aside from the mother of the main character being a totally unlikeable bitch.

We have a main character who is interchangeable with any other person in the film and the impact would be the same, the actress is just barely watchable at times and is a complete non-entity.

It’s such a bad film that there’s just nothing to say about it except don’t watch it, it’s up there on my list of worst films along with Krampus: The Christmas Devil.

Avoid it.

Hell Reviews: Knock Knock - May contain minor spoilers...like it's awful.

 

Synopsis: Keanu Reeves stars in this home invasion thriller directed by Eli Roth. Left at home alone while his wife and children are away for the weekend, Evan Webber (Reeves) receives a late night visit from two attractive rain-soaked young women asking to use his phone. But after letting the girls inside and allowing them to use his shower and dry off their clothes, the night takes a turn as the two girls seduce Evan to thank him for his hospitality. Reluctant at first, Evan eventually gives in to temptation but not without suffering the consequences...

 

What happened Keanu?

Was this a quick money maker?

You actually had talent years ago and now this shoddy film has made me wonder if maybe I’m having nostalgia over an actor I haven’t seen in enough movies to have nostalgia over.

But Knock Knock was just so bad.

The premise of the film had so much promise, so how the hell did it fall this far?

The story of a father and husband being seduced into a threesome and then tormented for his mistake sounds like it could be a great idea, if it had been written better.

It goes without saying that this particular films seems to have gained a wonderful title of one of the worst films to come out that year and it’s not hard to see why.

Unfortunately it’s another of Eli Roth’s films that I will mentally slap myself for watching, and I know it’s bad when I can remember who the director is as I don’t pay attention to such things usually, but he’s proven in the past to be a disappointment.
I’m looking at you Hostel…and Cabin Fever….

To start off with Keanu’s character, Evan Webber, made such a drastic shift in a matter of minutes that it made no sense.

He goes from loving and devoted husband and father, hard working architect type to a cheater and a complete imbecile in mere seconds.
Now I know some people would defend it with; “But it’s two hot girls being easy and asking for it, who wouldn’t go for it? Heheh.”
Let me tell you, most men who give a damn about their family like he is originally shown to be, as weird as it may sound to say it, a man like my dad wouldn’t fall into such a pitiful trap because he has more respect for my mum than he would for two random women who think they’re clearly all that and can simply get away with it just because.
But we got to get the plot rolling somehow!

It’s one of the things I dislike about such things, rather than give us good story telling they’d rather get into showing the sexy women and torture so screw logical characters and motivation, and sometimes this may be forgivable but when the story you’re given leads to nothing and you’re supposed to live with “It happened just because,” then it makes Hell a very unhappy girl.

This isn’t to say that I need things painted out for me, but sometimes it’s nice to have a little motivation to go with your torture.
It wouldn’t have even taken much, a small change to make him in an unhappy marriage whilst not creating a masterpiece would offer some form of reasoning to why he’d go for it and I’m not buying that moment of weakness crap either.
Sometimes ‘just because’ isn’t enough, at least in The Strangers they said it was just because they were home, but Knock Knock feels like it’s trying to deliver a message and falls on its face halfway to your post box after tripping out of its delivery van.

The two girls were the worst antagonists ever, everything they did made my eyes roll.

From their more than obvious innocent act to the ‘we’re insane and can kill you’ act.
Who thought these characters up?
Never once did I get the impression that these girls are veteran cheater killers like they seem to imply that they are.
I also don’t understand the logic of going to relentless seduction attempts to make someone cheat and then punishing them for it.
I’d rather have seen this based on a character who is shown to be a serial cheater and scumbag than on someone who hasn’t seemed to do anything to anyone until pushed to it.
It just doesn’t make sense to me, it’s like making someone eat cake and then laughing at them and calling them fat because you made them eat the cake.

I admit that I am guilty of enjoying a good home invasion movie, they don’t even have to make sense but the feats in this film are just impossible. From how destructive they’re being around the house to how quickly they can move around and get changed seemed inhumanly quick, unless there’s meant to be a time lapse that isn’t even implied.

I can really enjoy characters who are a bit screwed in the head, take Mileena from Mortal Kombat and Tira from Soulcalibur, they are two of my favourite characters in video games and they’re bat-shit crazy, so why in films do the nutty women always make me groan and roll my eyes or physically cringe at the way they’re acting?

Not to mention that people with the attitudes they showed annoy the hell out of me and I honestly can’t suspend my disbelief to rationalise some of the stuff they managed to accomplish.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to think that girls can’t accomplish anything involving a man, but there are also natural limits when you look at basic physics of two tiny, scrawny girls who look like the wind could blow them over and someone of Keanu’s build.
Why did Evan not just punch one of these girls in the throat and then take out the other one whilst her friend was down?
He slapped one of them and choked another so clearly harming them isn’t a moral issue, so why didn’t he fight back like his life was genuinely on the line…which it was!
They were open on so many occasions and yet somehow they managed to outwit and overpower him ludicrously easily multiple times.
I also dislike it in these kind of films where anyone who comes into the picture that could actually help always gets easily taken out, with the most minimum of effort at that.
Even worse is that we’re supposed to believe that they’ve done this multiple times and haven’t been caught?
That’s absolutely ridiculous.
Then again I’m one of these people where I get irrationally annoyed when we’re supposed to believe this character is able to outwit everyone and pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes when it’s clear as day it’d never work in real life. (I’m looking at you Amnesiac.)
Technically I have no place to be taking entertainment from the fictional world if I’m that finicky about things.

The creators clearly had no idea how basic things seemed to work either, like when you call the police. Here I was thinking that if you hung up on the emergency services that they’d attempt to call you back and then dispatch the police to investigate if you don’t pick up, especially after you just spoke the words; “I’d like to report a break in.”

But I’m not part of the police force nor a dispatcher, so what do I know?

Who are we supposed to be rooting for?

At first you want to try and sympathise with Keanu Reeve’s character, but he cheated and cheating is a massive ‘no’ in my books. Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t man enough to stand his ground and decline their awfully obvious seduction tactics, how are we supposed to root for someone who just went for it?

That and he’s a completely unrelatable character, and that’s mainly because he’s so wooden and dull that there’s no personality there.

The girls aren’t the type I’d root for either, crazy for crazies sake doesn’t get me excited and I have, quite often, in the past found myself slightly disappointed when the antagonists I can actually wave a flag for get their comeuppance.

But that takes good writing and dialogue, something this film needs drastically.

 
The acting was simply horrific, but it goes along with the execution of the story really, completely crap and not worth your time, and I have seen some terrible acting in my life (I mean let’s face it, I’m a Supernatural fan and some of the acting on there can be questionable at best.)
The dog, Monkey, however was pretty cool, can’t fault that stellar acting.

The constant 'sexy' acting got tiring really fast, but I'm not part of the audience who these two moderately attractive girls are supposed to be appealing to.
Their act got tired quickly, especially the blonde Bel's constant 'daddy' talk during one scene, it wasn't sexy, it wasn't cute, it was just annoying and went on for too long.

If executed in a half decent way this film could have done for tormenting cheaters what Hard Candy did for tormenting suspected paedophiles, too bad it just seemed to be an excuse for the director to show off his ‘hot wife’.

Take a back seat Resident Evil, there’s a new wife flaunter in town.