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!