Don’t let the advertisements fool you. Drag Me to Hell is no serious masterpiece of horror cinema. But it is a welcome return to what made Sam Raimi a camp genius.

Drag Me to Hell

Starring: Alison Lohmen (of White Oleander), Justin Long (who will forever be the nerd from Galaxy Quest and Drew Barrymore’s sometimes boyfriend), David Paymer, among a few others.

Rated: PG-13 (for violence, language, and kitten abuse)

IMDb Rating: 8.4 (Wow.)
RottenTomatoes: 93% (Double wow.)

Sample Review:

Think of this as Night of the Demon on amphetamines as reimagined by the Three Stooges.

For fans of Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, Drag Me to Hell will be like a trip to the past. To a better time, when movies didn’t take themselves so seriously, and even satire wasn’t self-serving. This movie is a horror-comedy, unafraid to go there on the big screen, where so many of its ilk are relegated to direct-to-DVD release.

It tells the story of a young woman attempting to escape her past as a chunky farm girl in order to live a more yuppiefied lifestyle. She has a good job as a loan officer, but is eyeing the newly vacant assistant manager’s position. She has a psychology professor boyfriend, but still hasn’t lived up to the expectations of his wealthy parents. It’s a common story.

Until an old woman asks her for help with an extention on her loan. She has already had two extensions, and now the bank is threatening to claim the old woman’s house. Do you think the young woman makes a good decision and extends the woman one final loan? Or do you think she ruthlessly denies the woman in favor of a promotion?

What follows is an epically awesome and hilarious decent into madness involving seances, talking goats, and other assorted looniness. If you have a weak stomach for body fluids, this might not be your film. But if you enjoy the camp classics of yesteryear, give this movie a chance. I laughed heartily throughout.

Mr. Todd is something of a legend in the horror genre, but I recently learned that he is also popular in the Star Trek circles as Worf’s brother! He will be attending Motor City Comic Con this year, and Villaintech hopes to get the opportunity to meet him.

The towering, 6’5 actor has appeared in films such as Platoon, The Crow, Night of the Living Dead (1990 remake), and the Final Destination series. He is best known for his turn as the frighteningly stone-faced supernatural murderer in Candyman.

I loved Tony in Candyman, and one of the first horror films I ever viewed, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh. While the sequel is far inferior to its predecessor, the backstory concerning The Candyman is compelling and utterly tragic. With his deep voice and haunted dark eyes, Tony Todd is an interesting part of the horror genre, and one that I hope to meet while I attend the Convention.

His Wikipedia Entry.

After resurrecting his career from the depths of child-actor hell, Jackie Earle Haley has been cast as the new Freddy Kreuger in the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street remake.

J.E. Haley has had one of the best comeback stories of the last twenty years, especially for a guy whose face is made for character acting. He was excellent as the child predator in Little Children, and a revelation in Watchmen. Can he bring that same twisted, utterly human appeal to Freddy?

Samuel Bayer is directing the relaunch, which was written by Wesley Strick. The movie starts filming on May 5 in Chicago.

The Haunting in Connecticut star Kyle Gallner has been cast as Quentin in the film as well.

Platinum Dunes’ Andrew Form and Brad Fuller are producing. John Rickard is co-producing.

“Looking at his performance in ‘Watchmen,’ here’s a guy playing a character under a mask yet you feel tremendous empathy for him,” Bayer told The Hollywood Reporter. “And in ‘Nightmare,’ he is going to be under prosthetic make-up. You have to feel something for the character. The greatest villains are multi-dimensional and I think he will bring that to the character.”

Bayer called this take of Krueger “Nosferatu meets Ed Gaines.”

The Japanese action/horror/comedy/epic Battle Royale is set for a Hollywood remake to be released in 2011. Here’s my advice to Hollywood: don’t screw this up.

Plot:

Sure, the plotline is a little far-fetched. A group of high schoolers are selected by random lottery to battle to the death on a highly monitored island. Their deaths are punishment for the millions of rebellious Japanese teenagers, a warning to their peers.

What made the original believable was that the movie didn’t really delve into the plot so much as hint at it with some screen text and a bit of exposition. Hollywood would do well to remember that sometimes subtlety is best.

Characters:

The film is primarily character driven, which is what most fans will be looking for. Battle Royale thrives on fleshing out many characters in a short span of time, making the audience understand the kids and their reasons for why they die. Short flashbacks to the characters’ lives are interesting tidbits and help further the plot without feeling heavy-handed.

The most important characters should be played by talented young actors. I am thinking kids like Anton Yelchin, Emily Browning, and Jamie Bell, instead of the mindless Hollywood choices like Hilary Duff or Zach Effron. This might help give the film more credentials.

Violence/Subversive Themes:

We know that American movies don’t shy away from violence, which is a relief. Brutal, creative death may be the one thing that can be assured for the remake. However, it is important that the movie remembers to include the more unsavory aspects of the film, including flashbacks to child molestation, suicide, and a present time attempted rape. The movie should be gritty, raw, and in keeping with the original.

I can’t say for sure that I’m looking forward to the remake, but if they heed my advice I’ll be first in line.

Classic horror films were some of the most memorable cinematic features to grace the television screens back in the 50s. One familiar film I sat down and watched the other day was the original classic monster movie, Rodan (1956). It definitely reminded me just how creative and meaningful films like these are despite the modern consensus regarding archaic special effects.

Rodan was created by the Japanese film company, Toho, a couple years succeeding the original Godzilla movie. Similarly to Godzilla, Rodan’s focus honed in on the story of a giant creature (this time the creature being a giant pteranodon/pterodactyl) being eradiated as a result of nuclear testing. Granted this movie seemed to have no relation to the Godzilla film, and purely was in its own universe.

As much as the main concept between the two movies was similar, Rodan differs from Godzilla in many varying ways. One of the main obvious reasons is that Rodan was released in color—when many movies during the time were released as standard black and white films. So this film marked the introduction of the Kaiju (Giant Monster) Franchise into the new world of color.

In order to be the astonishing success that Godzilla was, special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya knew that he had to climb toward new goals in order to flabbergast the audience. For example, a lot of the destruction demonstrated in the film is more aerial than actual physical destruction as seen in Godzilla. It gives the movie the same feeling of ‘nuclear disaster’, just in a different, more unavoidable manner.

This movie became fairly well-renowned and still is today along with other classics like previously mentioned Godzilla (1954) and Mothra (1961). In fact, the monster Rodan became such a well-revered character that he was brought back in several other movies, granted all of which were appearances in Godzilla films.

Rodan is absolutely fun to watch. It has action, horror, romance and even some comedy mixed in! I’m sure there is something in this production that everyone can enjoy, it’s just a matter of looking beyond its age and accepting the fact that it is one of the original monster-flick masterpieces.

I realize that this is an Americanized version of a Korean horror film. However, that does not excuse the film’s adoption of a different, and exponentially lamer, ending. What could have been a great little ghost story jumped aboard the Shamalamawagon.

Warning: A few spoilers, but nothing too specific.

The Uninvited

Starring: Emily Browning, David Strathairn (hubba^2), and Elizabeth Banks.

Rated: PG-13

IMDb Rating: 6.4
RottenTomatoes: 34% Rotten

Sample Review:

The ending annoyed me so much that it nearly erased my memory of anything worthwhile earlier in the film.

The horror genre needs to shape up. How many years has it been since The Sixth Sense came out? How fast has M. Night’s career gone down the drain? Why do filmmakers still insist on trotting out the same boring plot devices and twist endings?

The Uninvited has a lot going for it. It’s a relatively small cast, all very competent. Emily Browning is a hauntingly beautiful young actress with a lot of talent. Even Elizabeth Banks is good in her role as the would-be evil stepmonster. The atmosphere is creepy; a lonely beachside home where a pair of sisters lost their ailing mother to a fire.

The younger sister, Anna, cannot remember the details of the fire. She has been in a mental institution for 10 months trying to decipher dreams she’s had, and to explain the deep cuts on her wrists. They appear to be self-inflicted. Her counselor tells her that it is safe for her to return home to “finish what she started.”

She returns home to find that her father has married her mother’s nurse. In every scene where the nurse, Rachel, is alone with Anna, her words are threatening, even the music reflects this. The score is perhaps one of the only truly great aspects of the movie. At times it is somber, others nonexistant, especially when the tension is at its peak.

Soon, Anna begins to see visions, including the charred corpse of her mother, and three young children who seem to have been dead quite a while. These are all very creepy, and the tension mounts throughout the film.

I would say that this is a film worth watching if you can forgive the resolution. I had a hard time forgiving it because I think it went the easy way out. Still, the atmosphere, acting, and concept are good, and worth catching on Netflix one gloomy afternoon. It might deliver a few scares…

When I first saw the preview for the film The Ruins, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was as if the producers of the trailer threw all of the worst bits of the movie together and called it a day. Were they trying to scare people away from the movie? In any event, my viewing experience of The Ruins, new on DVD this week, was not nearly as bad as I had anticipated.

The Ruins (Please be advised that there will be spoilers in this review, not only of this movie, but others as well.)

Starring – Immensely talented (and sorely under-utilized) Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore (X-Men), relative newcomer Laura Ramsey, and Jonathan Tucker (the poor man’s Tobey Maguire).

Rated – R (for some extremely disturbing, and awesome, gore)

IMDb Rating – 6.2
Rotten Tomatoes – 45%

Sample Review –

Well filmed and acted, but with a plot as cheesy as a 1950s B-movie, this film is fairly creepy but not very scary.

I may have to agree with everything that reviewer stated. I would also like to add that this movie made me want to read the book, which is an accomplishment unto itself.

The “cheesy” plot revolves around two young couples vacationing in Mexico, doing what privileged white kids usually do; neglect worthwhile experiences and culture for poolside drinks and debauchery. They meet up with a hunky German named Mathias who informs them that his brother had run off with an archeologist to go explore some Mayan ruins, and promptly invites the kids to come along. With a shrug, they all venture to a desolate corner of the jungle, where they are confronted by, what they first assume to be, thieves. Thieves who don’t speak Spanish. Nor English.

Here is where the film transitions from the tired routine of slasher-flick set-up to an interesting study of man vs. nature. The protagonists are quarantined to the top of a rather small tower, where they find the corpse of Mathias’s brother entangled in the vines. With very little water and even less food, they are presumably left up there to wait for rescue, that is unless something else gets them first.

I have to be honest. I don’t find plants all that frightening. The recent up cropping of plant-related horror, such as The Happening and, more indirectly, Signs, were poor efforts to convince movie-goers of the threat of deadly flora. However, The Ruins manages to adequately toss in a few scares into the mix. This part I won’t spoil, but if you’re curious, and have a strong stomach, you can take a look at a few screenshots of the well above average gore

Click to Enlarge

(Muchos gracias to Rich from fourfour.)

One interesting factor of the film is the motivation of the villagers. With shotguns and bows, they shoot anyone who tries to get too close, and yet they leave the kids alive to be devoured. It is never explained why they don’t simply kill all five of the tourists as soon as they come in contact with the murderous plants that line all four walls of the ruins. At first I thought it was a major plot hole, but then I realized that they may have been appeasing the plants, and that the kids were actually human sacrifices. A very creepy realization indeed.

What the film has going for it is its beautiful cinematography, which captures the loneliness and dispair of the characters, as well as the excellent pacing and decent acting. While not exactly a pinnacle of filmmaking, The Ruins has much more to offer than many people, most of them critics, give it credit for.