Hell Reviews - A Whole Abundance of Movies in the Order she Vaguely Remembers Them

So!
Sorry it's been a while since I uploaded, just been in bit of a creative frenzy with trying to get some stories out.
But last week I watched a load of movies over the weekend, which is already unlike me...I'm not exactly known to be a cinephile or whatever they're called.
But between the 21st of July to now I have watched a whole series of them, some well known and some not. Some with amazing directors and some made on a shoe string budget.
Most of these will just be my initial reactions, nothing too extensive and unlike my other reviews I won't include the movie posters and the synopsis of each one, but hey...some little pictures added in here and there.
Let's take a look shall we!

Deadpool - Was pretty damn sweet, I can see why it got the reviews it did. Great humour, as expected with the likes of Ryan Reynolds, great action and just all over wicked.

Would I recommend it?
Yes

Rating: 8.5/10


Prey - A cheap B-movie about another bunch of teenagers who don't listen to warnings whilst on holiday (or vacation to some) and end up getting munched by El Chupacabra. It's pretty much what you'd expect, you want nearly all of them dead and the creature looks more like something that crawled out of The Decent's cave and got lost, but it's decent for a short bit of entertainment.

Would Hell recommend it?
Sure, if you grab some friends and have a good laugh, just don't expect much from it...like logic.

Rating: 5.5/10 - I guess...

We Are What We Are - It's alright, bit a slow burning film, which can be great if done correctly. However it's predictable as all sin and I have seen films about this subject done in manners just as deep but also more interesting.

Would I recommend it?
I'm a bit iffy on that, I think if you liked things like Only Lovers  Left Alive and The Witch or even The Village, then I think you'd get some intrigue from it, just don't expect to leave the experience feeling anymore elated or wise.

Rating: 6.5/10


Everest - A wonderful telling of a true story. It's a great story to be told and is fantastically filmed, the scenery is breath taking, the action is suspenseful and the acting is awesome. The whole thing pulls on your heartstrings.

Would I recommend it?
If you enjoy documentary style films then yes, without a doubt I'd say this is one to check out.

Rating: 7.5/10


The Walk - The film that I keep calling Walk the Line...which I know is a completely different film, but it makes sense! I personally really enjoyed this film, it's joint top place with another that I will be mentioning soon. Like Everest it's a documentary film, this one about the man who freakin' tight rope walked between the Twin Towers. I thought it was wicked and humorous but I an also understand why some people walked out of the cinema screening, especially if seeing it in 3D...it plays with vertigo really well.

Would I recommend it?
You bet! I thought it was a good little time passer.

Rating: A high 8.5 to maybe a 9/10

Axe Giant - A killer Paul Bunyan story. Do I really need to say much more? The effects were pretty laughable, but it was a B-movie so I couldn't even expect much to it. There's nothing worth mentioning, it was all just...kind of hideous, but well done on the effort?

Would I recommend it?
Not unless you want a laugh and drinking game with friends. Don't watch it alone.

Rating: Barely a 4/10

The Body - Bugger me...the girls in this movie were irritating, inane and dumb. It barely runs for about 75 minutes and I already wanted to rip my hair out, it was fairly predictable what was going to happen and it does play out how you'd expect it to but if you enjoy little home invasion style films then it's alright. Just don't expect any logical choices, half the time you'll be like the picture under the rating before merely sighing and resigning to it.

Would I recommend it?
As stated up there, if you enjoy the type of story this film offers go for it, but it is easily passible.

Rating: 5/10

Crimson Peak - Holy crap...I really enjoyed this film, but it's right down my alley. Ghosts? Yes.
Large moths? Yep. Spooky looking but gorgeously large and isolated house? Mmhmm. Tom Hiddleston playing a charming British man with a brief glance as his bare, gorgeous behind? You bet! Honestly, despite me not liking Pan's Labyrinth in itself, I can still appreciate the visuals that Guillermo del Toro can create and boy does he deliver once again in Crimson Peak. It's all over gorgeous. The story itself is a little predictable, we figured out what was happening barely thirty minutes in, but it's still a decent film with wonderful practices in mixed physical and CGI effects and great acting throughout. Also Jim Beaver's in it...and he's cool.

Would I recommend it?
I think it's fairly clear I would, but it won't be for everyone.

Rating: Once again a high 8.5 to 9/10

Ant Man - It's alright, honestly not the best Marvel film created (that I've seen...which isn't many), there's plenty of action to it but there were plenty of parts the fell flat. The humour was kind of...meh...and just missed the point sometimes, I guess I'm biased because I miss the over cheesiness that the first Thor film offered, whereas the jokes in Ant Man feel more like when a little kid is trying to tell you a joke.
You know what's going to happen and you smile politely, waiting for them to finish, but you're already finding it unfunny before it's over.

Would I recommend it?
Kind of, I mean...it's part of the Marvel universe, but I wouldn't say to go out of your way to see it.

Rating: 6/10

And that's it!
That's the collection of movies I've seen over the last week, until Wednesday for my next Supernatural book review!

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 - 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: Sanatorium.

 

Synopsis: For the 100th edition of their popular TV show Ghost Trackers , a team of paranormal investigators visit the notorious Hillcrest Sanatorium where a bloody massacre once took place. They venture into the bowels of the abandoned hospital to investigate claims of disembodied voices, ghostly apparitions and incidents of missing children that have made Hillcrest infamous. What they discover there is far worse than anything they could ever have imagined, and as they go deeper into the building they start to realize they may never get out alive.

 
This is one film I picked up on a whim, and surprisingly I really enjoyed it.

I personally really enjoy a good asylum based horror story, whether it’s film, novels or non-fictional stories, there’s just something about the details of the institution and the patients that just give me a thrill.

There’s something about the creepiness of the stories of past inhabitants, the actions of the staff or just general practices from back in the day that really grab my attention and screams at me to continue taking notice.

Sanatorium is a good, easy watch film, one where if you feel like watching a film you don’t need to be too invested in and just want to switch your brain off watching then there’s nothing you’d miss by putting this one on.

That’s not to say it’s bad and an empty film which lacks content, it’s an entertaining film for it’s run time but it’s certainly not one where you go in expecting nothing and want to unwind watching and instead end up find yourself catching things in the background of the shot that give small hints as to what’s going on along the way, hints that you need to pay attention to in order to follow the story.

This is usually where I’d put the ‘cons and pros’ but I have very few points so it would render it useless in this segment, so instead I am going to just make small points in a paragraph of each.

Now for me, it was a solid story for the film it was trying to be, while the characters could be a bit eye roll worthy they’re still fun to see interacting with each other.

It’s not a totally original story, it came out in 2013, only two years after Grave Encounters which was released in 2011. Considering the format and content of Sanatorium it’s easy to compare to Grave Encounters, and whilst it’s a good film Sanatorium isn’t one that I would choose to watch over the other if I had both on DVD.

The characters are the basic ones you’d expect to see in this kind of film, they have a little bit of background to make them have a story but otherwise they are mostly just blank slates, these kinds of characters are usually made so that the audience can project themselves onto them. I find that in horror films it’s unneeded, I would rather watch a horror film of characters I care about than one where it’s like ‘see, this could be you, what would you do?’

I don’t need to think about what I’d do in that situation, that isn’t why I, personally, watch horror films. I can think about that kind of situation and what it’d be like to be stuck in it, without needing the film to give me a character to latch onto and claim as being ‘me’.
Sometimes it seems like the writers weren’t sure if they wanted to make blank slate characters who you can project yourself onto, or characters who you need to feel and sympathise for so they floated in a happy medium. This didn’t really hit me until I sat here and just thought about the film, so it’s neither a negative or a positive, just a thought in hindsight.

The atmosphere is hard to get into as it’s a film of jumpscares, just like Grave Encounters was.

Despite being a horror fan I have an immense dislike to jumping, I am the first to admit that I jump easily which is a large disadvantage to being a fan of this genre these days.
Unfortunately it seems like all creators lately believe that jumps and screams equal fear and to me it just doesn’t. I would much rather be sucked in by an uneasy atmosphere and build up than sudden jumpscares to get a reaction from the crowd. The problem is that so many people say they were ‘scared’ when watching these kind of horror films, whilst I see jumping as more of a reaction and reflex thank fear, but the masses opinion means more than a mere few.
I felt the same about Paranormal Activity, given it’s hype I was hoping there’d be more to it than just mere jumps. It had an interesting story but I felt they were trying too hard to fit in the scares than create an atmosphere.

Did I jump whilst watching Paranormal Activity?

Yes.

Was it due to fear?

No

And it seems to me these days that most films seem to take that route, sadly Sanatorium is no exception. I’m just glad this one has an enjoyable premise behind it otherwise I’d be leaving my first watching with a large ‘meh’.

My only, and main, problem with this otherwise good film was that it is a more found footage style, which does fit the film due to it being another reality TV copy.

This is only a gripe of mine due to motion sickness, and compared to other films it’s not the worst or least stable when it comes to camera motions.

So would I recommend it?

Sure, it’s a good film and one that I kept the DVD of and would happily suggest to a friend.

Side note: Not to be mistaken for Sanitarium, even the great Robert Englund can’t save that borefest.

Happy Easter! With an Added bit of Potential Horror!

Hey everyone!
It's officially Easter here in the UK, so I dropped in to say that I hope everyone enjoys themselves and has a decent holiday.
The clocks have officially gone forward here, it's currently 3am and I'm tired from some long days at work, so I'm currently lounging in bed watching Criminal Minds.
Plans for Easter would be helping my dad make some chocolate rice krispie/cornflake cakes and enjoying a nice roast for dinner and trifle for dessert! Not that anyone cares but hey-ho!

Today I feel like we stumbled into a horror film earlier at work, as we were getting ready to leave and doing the final sweep of the shop to make sure it's all clean and ready for the two working on Bank Holiday Monday, and my co-worker stumbles across some random USB stick.
Now I've seen enough media in my time to know that there could be some juicy stuff on there!
Perhaps a secret link to a deep web red room ring.
Or perhaps co-ordinates leading to a location with Hostel like intentions and a location tracking device for those who look at it.
The USB stick would be left lying around for unsuspecting and curious people to pick up, stick into a computer and 'decipher', maybe a do-gooder would check it out to see if there was any information on there to contact the original owner or find an address to post the stick to. Thus luring in their next victim or victims who have to fight for their lives despite complete inexperience.
With the stick in what seemed to be it's original packaging I'm guessing they re-packed it to make sure that no-one would suspect anything, no need to worry about something that looks so innocent.
Or you know....it could just be a brand new USB that hadn't been unpacked and popped into a larger clear, plastic bag that got dropped by accident.
I'm sure I've just watched too many films, but I'd still watch another one like any of those!

Anyway!
Happy Easter everyone!

Update: We just made our cakes! Sadly we didn't have any Mini Eggs to put on the cakes, so instead we got large M&M's!

Hell Reviews: Silverhide

Synopsis: A group of conspiracy theorists are secretly watching a Top Secret military base in the desolate Welsh mountains. They are looking for experimental and highly classified test aircraft to report about in a magazine, when they suddenly discover a Top Secret and highly lethal creature, first discovered in the 1920's, which the military and Government are testing. The creature's fur has the ability to turn invisible in moonlight.

As the group are stalked by the creature, nicknamed "Silverhide" by the Army, they are also being hunted by the military who will stop at nothing to keep their classified specimen a secret.

 

I love werewolves.

Silverhide looked like a werewolf film.

Silverhide was not a werewolf film.

Silverhide is a terrible film, disguised as a good film with an eye catching cover.

 Thankfully, this is one B-movie I picked up really cheap at the local ASDA and only about £3 was wasted of the very little money I make in the first place.

When I get a selection of DVD’s that are piling up I like the stack them in order of which I’m more excited to watch, the ones I am eager to see the most I put at the bottom.
Silverhide was bought along with Starry Eyes and Fear Clinic and sat right between the two in my building pile of regret.
Now Fear Clinic was no masterpiece, but I still regret watching it before Silverhide. I’m sure with the former having Robert Englund in helped to be honest.

 Pros:

1: The cover -The cover has a definite draw to it, I love the colours it uses even if it is very cliché and simplistic for that kind of cover and the creature on the front really catches the eye. It definitely does its job well to sell the film from the shelf.

2: The…well that’s just it…that’s all there is.

Cons:

 1: The acting - In this kind of film you don’t expect the acting to be Oscar worthy by any means, but anything would have been better than what we got. Over the years I’ve seen some terrible films that at least had some form of decent acting going for it, as surprising as that may be, this one however had nothing.

All the acting was wooden and stilted, if you weren’t looking at the actors when they were talking then I’d pretty much guarantee that you’d believe they were just reading straight from the script. Hell, I still believe they had cue cards held up by the camera.
I can’t even tell if it was an actor/actress problem or a directing problem as I wouldn’t recognise any of these people if I saw them in anything else, so there’s no way I could even compare their performances.

2: The story - The synopsis sure did its job in sounding promising, too bad the execution didn’t live up to it. Nothing seems to lead anywhere, you’re just being dragged along at a painfully slow pace before all of a sudden it just ends and you’re left feeling a little bit betrayed and unsatisfied.
There is nothing note worthy that happens, even the creature’s appearances are lacklustre and scarce despite being the whole point of the film. I’m not one of these people that needs a deep story that I have to unravel to keep me entertained, I don’t exactly shut off when watching these things but I can still enjoy a mindless movie, but all I ask is that you offer me something.
The only way I can sum this up is with this one scene that led to nowhere, for about ten minutes you’re watching these two girls in completely different locations talking via walkie talkie and I, for the life of me, can’t remember a single thing that was said.

3: The creature – By far the thing I am most disappointed with in this film.

Now the creature on the cover isn’t the best looking beast I’ve seen, maybe I’ll make a top ten kind of thing for that one day, but it’s by far not the worst (I’m sure we’ve seen enough asylum films to know what I mean.) The beast is appealing enough to get you hyped up to see this thing in action.
Then you get a shot of a mask with someone’s hand controlling it.
Don’t get me wrong, budget is always a big factor when it comes to these things, but I’ve seen all kinds of short films on Youtube with less budget than this film used and they turned out better than the entire thing.
When going into something like this you don’t expect amazing effects or fantastic CGI, but you expect something. The way they dodge around budget for this is by making the creature invisible by moonlight and then shooting over 90% of the film in the dark, unfortunately very little else is offered for the periods where no creature is visible or even stalking around.
This led to me feeling amazingly cheated.

Would I recommend it?

No.
Unless you wish to admire a lot of grassland and a woman in a tent, then go right ahead.

All in all, it’s not worth throwing any money at.

If you can watch it for free and have nothing better to do then maybe it’d be worth checking out, but don’t expect to be entertained or even awake by the end of it.
Let’s just say that there’s a reason there’s thirteen one star reviews on the UK side of Amazon and a 3.9 on IMDB.

You.Just.Made.the.List...

...Of worse film I've watched this week.

I just finished watching Krampus: The Christmas Devil.
....Don't....don't watch Krampus: The Christmas Devil, wait to watch the big budget one for the sake of yourselves.
There's a reason it's only got a 1.9 on IMDB.