Rotten Cranberry: ThanXgiving (2006)

ThanXgiving (2006)

Rating: 0

Starring: Ari Lehman, Suki Peters and Jaxon Stanford

...The flying fuck did I just watch here?

I heard about ThanXgiving all the way back at 2008 and I recall wanting to see it very badly then, thinking it's a rarity as it has barely anything about it online. Welp, I finally have my chance recently thanks to some shady video sharing site and I think I now understand why this shit has little to none online presence and how that's for the better.

As far as I can tell, the "story" of ThanXgiving is about a group of filmmakers going into the woods around the Traunton Riverbend camp grounds to shoot a horror movie, but the production is as problematic as this film's very existence as everybody seems to have some beef with one another and one of them even bled to death during the project when his leg got caught on some spikes and had to be amputated because...

Any way, filming continues (?!) and during an evening around a campfire, a local played by Ari Lehman (Yeah, Friday The 13th (1980)'s "lil' Jason Voorhees" Ari Lehman. I'm just as surprised as you are) joins the crew and tells them that a lot of people have been disappearing into these woods and many suspect it's the work of a deranged group of killers. And sure enough, our troubled filmmakers soon encounter a family of hillbillies who are hospitable at first until, that is, all the weird shit starts happening and everybody is getting in touch with their murderous side.

Mixing documentary and standard filming presentation with an obnoxiously surreal amount of editing effects, horrendous audio quality and truculently grained picture format, ThanXgiving is probably one of the hardest horror movie to sit through for the dumb reason that it's nearly incomprehensible as a whole. Its direction feels a lot like just random horror shit happening left and right, with a sense of structure that's one random home invasion footage away from falling atop the "Am-I-on-acid-right-now?" tree and hitting every branch on the way down. Nobody here acts normal too, so it's hard to figure out which crap is happening for real and which is just footage from the damn movie the characters are supposed to be filming, thus further adding to the overall aggressively confusing nature of the film.

It's disappointing, really, as I can tell this should have been a very easy plot to follow with a generous helping of blood and gore to boot. Perhaps the people behind this film wanted to make something more than just another backwoods killer-on-the-loose type and if that is the case, I wholly respect that, but the level of ineptitude done in this movie is just too much that it ain't even hilarious. In fact, it makes me mad! So MAD that someone out there thought this indecipherable garbage is good enough to be called a movie! Like, dude, ThanksKilling (2008) is more intelligible compared to this and that movie is a slasher with fucking killer turkey! Killer! Turkey!  

All in all, I'm thankful this Thanksgiving that I'm able to muster enough brain power to still write this review after the blow ThanXgiving did to my brain. Heed my warning, do not give this travesty a time of your day. Don't. Just don't.

Bodycount:

1 male had his chest flayed open

1 female had her throat crushed with a tree branch

1 male had his leg amputated with a machete, bled to death

1 male brained to death with a hammer (film within a film)

1 female ran neck-first through a line of barbwire, presumably killed

1 female seen dead in a lake

1 female hacked to death (film within a film)

1 male dismembered with knives 

1 male knifed in the head, disemboweled

1 female had her throat cut with a sickle

1 male had his throat cut with a sickle while being drowned

1 male falls into a lake and gets electrocuted with live cables

1 female had her neck crushed

1 male strangled with a line of barbwire

1 female seen hanging dead, gutted

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 male dismembered with knives

Total: 17

How To Erase People From The Face of The Earth: Vlog (2008)

Vlog (2008)

Rating: ***

Starring: Brooke Marks, Denyce Lawton, Skyler Caleb 

Vlogger Brooke Marks (played by, huh, Brooke Marks?) mostly enjoys two things in life: sharing her insipid lifestyle to the rest of the internet world for their enjoyment, and a love life in which she can find the right one through a succession of boyfriends ala trial-and-error social experiments. She made mistakes, mainly dating a guy with an annoying quirk or two, but it's mostly problems young adults like herself can handle on their own.

That is until Brooke starts receiving videos from an anonymous website, showcasing mysterious recordings of her friends and exes being brutally murdered by someone obscured. Rightfully disturbed, she goes to the cops fearing for her life, but would their involvement be enough to protect her from being the next victim of this random psychopath?

I stumbled upon this movie not really knowing what I'm getting myself into apart that this might be another one of those "Reality TV"- style slasher flicks like WatchUsDie.com (2001) or Girl House (2014). In a way, I wasn't far off, but unlike those movies, Vlog (2008) focuses on the exploits of a single girl rather than a group and it's mostly done with a mockumentary vlogger direction so it has a lot of distinctive styles going for its many scenes, mimicking the flashy and gimmicky editing of an everyday video blog. That said, it can get a tad dialogue-driven as the first half of the film have Brooke sharing to us her thoughts concerning the men she dates, as well as what she expects the world wanted to see more from her content as a mean to establish our lead's personality, albeit in a very testy way. 

Fortunately, Vlog (2008)'s recognizably short with only an hour and something minutes of running time if we're not to including the ending credits, hasten by a steady and speedy pacing that soon transitions to the shockingly brutal murders that really came out of left field. This last half is strongly the better part of the movie as the effects team really went all out on putting the grue on gruesome, highlights including a slow decapitation and a rather comical-looking explosive-laced bong. The ending is a little hobbled by its twist reveal, though. Something that could actually work better if they didn't dwell on it too much and kept it simple and quick. 

Not too shabby for a horror quickie, Vlog (2008) is an easy viewing sided with a good concept, sleek visuals and juicy gore. It may not make itself to be that great of a title (Like, really. It's another slasher about snuff films and/or internet red rooms. It's not like My Little Eye (2001) hadn't done that already), but it is good. And sometimes good is all you could ask for from a horror movie!

Bodycount:

1 male slowly decapitated with a cleaver, dismembered

1 male electrocuted in a bathtub with a rigged lamp

1 female decimated with explosive chemical powder

1 female knifed on the gut

Total: 4

Through The Eyes of Moros: The Burningmoore Deaths (2010)

The Burningmoore Deaths (2010) (AKA "The Burningmoore Incident", "Reality Kills")

Rating: ***

Starring: Tim Gallin, Joe Pallister, Tony Guida

Presented as a true crime mockumentary, The Burningmoore Deaths (2010) centers on an elusive killer named James Parrish who, three days before Christmas in 2005, murdered his entire family in cold blood before disappearing into the night, never to be seen from that day forth. With no clear motive to go by, authorities are left baffled by the sudden psychosis that befell on James and they can only suspect the possibilities behind the killings. 

Moving forward a couple of years, the film crew of an upcoming reality TV show Gettin' Hammered set their eyes on renovating an old waterfront New York home into a fancy Bed & Breakfast. After preparing the house and setting up cameras all over to document their misadventures, the crew and their hired contractors head forth to give the house a proper makeover for the show's pilot (given they're not busy smoking weed or ruining shots by playing rock music at the background), unaware that a certain Mr. Parish has been squatting in the basement all this time and is now prowling around the premises since they stepped foot, waiting for the right moment to strike.

The movie's formatting, despite being anything but new or original in this day and age, is probably most the notable aspect as its gimmicky style of hybriding recovered footage and cold case TV programming elements still holds a bit of hammy charm to it for how much work done to get that authentic feel, or how stylized yet bloody the killcount will get, regardless whether the direction goes with it or not.

For the first twenty or so minutes, Burningmoore Deaths (2010) fills us in with a retrospective of Parish's crime, fitting the mockumentary bill well enough for the detailed crime data and realistic interviews played in, thus giving us that nostalgic cold case docu-drama feel ala Unsolved Mysteries while introducing to us the basics of our villain. Once we get to the reality show footage, though, this is when the film curveballs away the documentary approach and more or less drop off any attempt to work any realism, simply diving ahead as a bonafide slasher.

Seeing the rest of the film is shot as a lost document of an supposedly unaired pilot, this meant that the remaining run is light on plot and lacking of solid characters to focus on since a good bulk of the action focuses on the sometimes-funny-sometimes-not exploits of the crew, as well as their eventual deaths. Writing around this part is a lot to be desired (How long does it take to notice three of your crew is missing for the next hour or so?), so those looking for anything deeper of a story than random people getting mass slaughtered by a maniac may not enjoy what they'll be sitting through. (Or at least not as much as the next guy)

For the kills, the factor that static cameras were placed in every room meant that the murders do get to be witnessed, but likely due to budget constraints and/or visionary flair, most are either obscured in shadows or happen just about off screen so while bloody, it's far from excessive and just about right on the blood quota. The editing and soundtrack done for these murders are a fair work, too, with composed pieces that have its creepy moments and some editing elevating the simpler murders into something more unconventional, at times borderline cheesy in a passable way.

Its absence of a deeper plot or shortage of blood-wet body bags may put off a few, but for fans of reality documentary filming and open slasher junkies, The Burningmoore Deaths (2010) packs enough craziness and bloodshed to be quite an interesting watch, albeit not looking much. A certified rent, or a guilty pleasure keep!

Bodycount:

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 male stabbed with a knife

1 female and 2 boys found slaughtered

1 male found hanged

1 female strangled to death with a power cord

1 male brained to death with a wrench

1 male pushed to a fuse box, electrocuted

1 male hacked to death with an axe

1 female knifed to death

1 female strangled

1 male bled out from a knife cut on the neck

1 male eviscerated with a circular saw

1 male attacked, killed offscreen

1 male thrown through a window, falls to his death

1 male found injured from crash, implied dead later 

1 male found murdered

Total: 18

An Evidence of A Slasher: Unlisted Owner (2013)

Unlisted Owner (2013)
Rating: **1/2
Starring:  Chris Ash, Levi Atkins, Chloe Benedict

So...cops edit crime scene footages to make horror movies? 

What we have here is yet another found footage slasher flick, one of many that's been popping in and out through out the years, most of which remaining unnoticed and Unlisted Owner (2013) kinda fares no better. Not with its micro-budget and faux document format that's overly familiar by now. Still, does it deserves to be left in the dust? Or does it, perhaps, earn more of our viewing for how on the nose it is on following the slasher format?

Unlisted Owner (2013) opens with a clunky yet light home video of a family moving in to their new house before the footage takes a grimly dark turn as we suddenly scratch-cut to one of the household’s daughters sobbing, claiming that an intruder is in their house. Next thing we know, we get a shot of the father dead in a basement and the entire family of five turns up murdered just hours after settling in.

From here, we then follow another set of footages shot by a group of friends who live in the same town as the murdered family. The gang was originally planning on spending the night camping and getting shit-faced in the woods, but with the murdered family's house being just a few miles away, the temptation to break in and document the crime scene of the now dubbed "Owner Killings" is just too much to ignore. Unfortunately for them, who or whatever is responsible for the slayings is still in the house and has now set their eyes on ending them, one hapless victim at a time.

As a slasher and found footage hybrid, Unlisted Owner (2013) does the remarkable job of bringing the best of both sub-genres, boasting a hefty kill count while using the stylized psuedo-documentary camera work to boost the creep factor of the murders, which certainly helps the matter that the kills are mostly offcamera, giving them that near-authenticity. The backstory behind these killings is also delivered interestingly as a brief interrogation of a side character edited randomly towards the mid-beginnings of the movie, a spin on your obligatory campfire tale told to give us a bit of an idea on who or what will be killing our victims, as well as to why? (And, I guess, this can also be considered as this movie's doomsayer character as the interrogated will never make another appearance through out the rest of the film...)

The only downside of this is that all it'll take about 40-some minutes for the movie to get on these gritty bits after the eerie opening murders, which means we have to deal with a group of obnoxious “friends” whose main traits seem to be to argue and shout at each other over trivial things. In a way, it does make them more organic than your dead teenager movie stereotypes, but the lack of likability from these characters and the matter that they're hardly developed at all warrant very little reason to invest in them, making their demise anticipated and appreciated but tedious for lacking depth or care.

Still, I find the effort put into Unlisted Owner (2013) deserving of some attention, especially if the final product halfway works as a slasher hybrid. If only the middle run wasn't so rude and prude all the way, or perhaps splatter a bit more of the red stuff here and there to make up for putting us through the torture of observing drunken teenagers being themselves, I would have liked this film more but for what it is, I say it could be worth a rental's night or two.

Bodycount:
1 female killed, method unknown
1 male killed, seen with a large gash
1 boy and 2 females mentioned murdered
1 male slaughtered offcamera, blood seen
1 male murdered offcamera
1 male killed with a sickle
1 female found slaughtered
1 male hacked with a sickle
1 female killed offcamera
1 male killed offcamera with a sickle
1 male attacked, presumably killed
Total: 13

HAPPY 2018 HALLOWEEN! (AKA What Am I Watching this year?)

Welp, it's October 31st here in the Philippines! That means-

Absolutely nothing unless you're age 10 and below. In case you are, then it means candy and a week off school. But for me-

IT'S HALLOWEEN!

And as someone who's practically an adult living in a country that doesn't recognize Halloween as a holiday, I mostly celebrate this by runecasting at a nearby church watching spooky movies from years old and new! So today, I decided to share with you my picks for my annual Halloween viewing! From a children's flick about evil witches to a hospital raided by eldritch entities, let's begin my picks with:

Gon-ji-am (2018) (AKA "Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum") - A very recent horror movie from South Korea following a group of Youtubers livestreaming a documentary style urban exploration of the titular asylum. Shot in a Found Footage format, the film isn't shy on tackling classic tropes and trappings of both Asian ghost flicks and mockumentary films, but what makes this film stand out is that the premise itself help elevate the sense of dread and nightmarish imagery that eventually starts haunting our crew, which includes effective jumpscares and loads of creepy imagery.

The Witches (1990) - Based on a children's book by Roald Dahl, this 90s fantasy horror "family" picture tells the story of a young boy named Luke who, after being orphaned, finds himself under the loving arms of his grandmother who appears to know a lot about what true witches are like. This odd knowledge soon comes in handy when the hotel they are staying at for a vacation turns out to be the meeting place of all the witches in England. It's now up to our two unlikely heroes to stop these hags from executing their plans on murdering hundreds of children with candy, so long as they don't become victims of these witches' wicked spells and potions themselves.

A little dated on some department, but nevertheless enjoyable on a darkly humorous way, The Witches is a fun little devious addition to this year's fright and gore heavy viewing. But I like to balance out the horror and fun in my movie lists and this one titles is fun enough for the dark holiday!

The Blob (1988) - I could have gone with the classic 1958 version with its funky opening music and cheese, but the matter of the fact is that the monster there is hardly threatening. Memorable, yeah, but its fear factor dwindled down when you realize how slow that blob is and you can simply just walk five feet away from it and blast it frozen with a fire extinguisher with some ease. The 1988 version, however, is a predatory monster with a limitless hunger that not only can squeeze into places to reach you, but squeeze, crush, bend and/or obliterate you so you're that much easier for it to eat, all in glorious glorious old fashioned practical effects!

The movie is your classic midnight monster genre with a comet containing the titular creature crash landing on a nearby town, releasing it with nothing in its nature but to eat, absorb and grow. In typical 80s monster movie fashion, it's up to a pair of teens who encountered and survived an attack from the blob to warn the townfolk of the danger, given they're not too late.

The Void (2016) - A modern day cult classic follows a strange night in a hospital where a cop, the hospital's staffs and patients are held inside the building by a cloaked cult-like figures. Little do these trapped individuals know is that there's something sinister happening within the hospital as patients start to go deformed and murderous, leading to horrific monster attacks and what could be an Apocalyptic end to all.

Kinda underrated but well worth the look, especially if you're into raw horror aesthetics like amazing practical and make-up effects, gory kills and Lovecraftian themes. It's basically a horrorhound's wet dream, given that you don't mind the attempted cerebral horror that appears to coat the story.

Trick 'R Treat (2007) - This is basically the horror movie to rival John Carpenter's Halloween as a holiday classic. Trick 'R Treat follows five gruesome tales within a small Ohio town during their annual Halloween celebration night as child murderer tries his hardest to cover his track, a girl in a Red Riding Hood costume gets stalked by a masked man, a group of kids visits a supposedly haunted quarry, a bitter young wife gets a painful lesson for breaking a Halloween rule and an old man is visited by who could be the spirit of Halloween itself.

Chock full of monsters, ghouls, scares and lots of nasty treats, done in a lush production value and colorful band of characters, Trick 'R Treat is one horror movie that understood the dark nature of Halloween and twisted it enough to give us this energetic, eerie and often darkly funny anthology movie.

WNUF Halloween Special (2013) - A definitive midnight movie, this is a cult classic that takes the mockumentary sub-genre into the limelight as it features what look like a news program special focusing on Halloween and a planned event by the station wherein one of their reporter follows a priest and a pair of occult experts inside a supposedly haunted building. What follows is a lot of tracking, vintage commercials, and a slow yet satisfying build to a messed up ending that's definitely shocking.

If you hadn't seen this one, then I really recommend hunting this film down especially if you love a good old-fashioned scare and a bit nostalgic just like me. I cannot stress enough how one should see this from beginning to end coz the pay off really sticks as one of the chilling final scenes in a horror flick that starts out like a joke.

~~~

And there you have my list of watchables this year! Really wish I could do more for Halloween this year but it falls on a workday and with the recent storm brewing, I guess being cozy at home while it rains outside doesn't sound too bad!

 What else can I say but have a Happy Halloween and watch out for monsters!

Something Something Something Jump Scare: #SCREAMERS (2016)

#SCREAMERS (2016)

Rating: **

Starring:  Tom Malloy, Chris Bannow, Griffin Matthews

Let me get this out: I have a love-hate relationship with jump scare tactics. 

If done right, the gimmick can be a fun way to get my heart pumping and send me into giggle land, but overuse and/or badly timed jumpers can get really annoying and lower the standards of whatever horror-themed genre using it. For a while, #Screamers seems to understand this but all good things can't last...

Shot in a mockumentary/found footage fashion, the movie centers on the entrepreneurs and staff behind an internet media company called Gigaler.com as they try to contact an anonymous poster who shared a popular viral "screamer video" at their site in order to strike a deal with them. The problem with this, however, is that the poster appears to be connected to a girl who have been missing for two years, prompting our main crew to track them down and investigate in hopes of making a name for their site. That is, of course, if they all will make it out alive...

With a running time of approximately 80 minutes, #Screamers mostly filled this space with a tech-oriented mystery surrounding the strange nature of an equally strange viral video, as well as lengthy expositions about why Gigaler is so innovative and daring for a website company and the drama that goes behind the computer screen which I guess was supposed to build character. It's a move that I can learn to like or at least be patient with given that the payoff at the end will be worth the trouble and the walk down to said payoff is interesting to say the least. I admit in this case that the early banters between the staffs and their bosses were some of the funnest aspects of the movie and the titular screamer videos were decently fun for a quick jump scare. Still, one can only go so long without seeing good horror in a horror film and this is where #Screamers failed.

After so much drama and intrigue shoved down our throats for the first quarter or so, you expect #Screamer will finally pick itself up and lead us down the path of workable thrills and bloody spills like any good slow burn horror movie. And, to be fair, it did exactly that at the last 20 minutes or less, but the problem here is that the plot still tries to tediously build some more tension and possible red herrings within this short span. Whether this is to unnecessarily fatten up an already cluttered story or not, all I know is that it turned the movie's slowburn direction from engrossing to downright annoying, further shooting itself in the foot when the resulting horror scenes end up feeling rushed, dull and kinda annoying.

That creepy grinning figure that is this movie's villain? Barely lives up to its unnerving look; apart from possibly being named "Francis" (Not that it's a terrible name. Just a terrible name for a villain, even after that little red herring they threw in about Francis Tumblethy, a Jack The Ripper suspect. Now I know why a certain Deadpool (2016) bad guy preferred to be called "Ajax"...), the killer "murders" his victims strangely and annoyingly by simply lunging/charging at them, shrieking his "screamer video" scream and "offscreening" them into nothingness one by one. It does this for the last few minutes of the film, jump scaring almost everyone to an off-camera death before giving us one last heartstopper that we more or less saw coming. Let how lazy that finale sounds sink in for a moment...

I was really hoping this movie would do okay just for the premise itself, but apart from an kinda inspired backdrop behind the found footage horror format and hints that "Francis" is supernatural, #Screamers misses its goal as an entertainment piece was too far out of line thanks to its desperate attempt to do something different. I admire the effort, but if the motive behind said effort was either lost or barely reached, what exactly was the point of all of this? I suggest skipping this unless you really wanna subject yourself to a mystery with a lackluster outcome.

Bodycount:
1 male jump scared, killed offcamera
1 male jump scared, killed offcamera
1 male killed offscreen
1 female jump scared, killed offcamera
Total: 4

Last Prank: The Jokesters (2015)

The Jokesters (2015)
Rating: ***
Starring: Nathan Reid, Gabriel Tigerman, Luis Jose Lopez

We all love a good prank. The more inventive, meaner, and/or wittier it is, the better. This is what four guys collectively known as Prank Masters live for and they are great at it!

An internet sensation that boasts hundreds of webisodes of them pulling jokes on each other as well as on their unsuspecting victims, it seems they're nearing their final run when their leader, Ethan, finally got hitched and is ready to move on.

However, one of the boys planned a joke for the newlyweds, a prank so daring with the sole purpose of being their series finale; it involves the remaining pranksters crashing their friend's honeymoon at a cabin in the middle of the snowy woods, dressed up as masked villains armed with axes. Freaking the couple out with shadowy figures and creepy noises, things suddenly went too far when an obviously pissed off Ethan shows up with a shotgun and threatens to kill them.

Technically, it would have been an interesting turn if one of the boys got killed off by their stupid prank, but that wasn't the case for The Jokesters; turns out the mastermind of this scheme, Nick, tampered the guns useless and once their buddy sees this, he goes ape on the former pranksters and gets a beating in return.

Understandably angry at this, Ethan and his wife, Gabby, gave the guys the most stern and intense scolding I've seen in a prank, which thankfully ends with the two forgiving the three and letting them stay overnight, but not before stripping them naked in the snow and made them apologize in front of their own camera.

All's well until morning came when one of the boys was found dead with a blueish infection spreading on his arm, then people starts to die in a way these pranksters never expected...

For an 80 minute film, The Jokesters mostly resembles an unholy birth child of MTV's Jackass and the horror-prank show, Scare Tactics, only much more entertaining and interesting. Seeing the film takes a good bulk of its run building up around the characters and their final prank, we get to see the cast at their boldest in the film's "behind the scenes" footage approach that, I admit, can be realistic with its conflict among those who are against the joke and those who are victimized by it.

So while it does take a bit before the actual horror happens, the films preoccupies us with the working of a prank that is feasible and, at times, funny. Around the time the third act happens, however, The Jokesters suddenly look like a different movie altogether with a sudden tone shift; without spoiling anything, a prank awakened a friend's bloodlust and began a killing spree. While some may get a bit shocked about this, I kinda saw the clues around the first act that this guy is a bit off in the head. Was it a bit extreme? Perhaps, but seeing this guy got into the most trouble than the rest of the dudes, there's a bit of a hint.

Now seeing the film was shot as a found footage and this happens in the last couple of minutes, the massacre does felt a bit rushed (thanks to the small amount of victims to work with and too the film's minor pacing problem) and half of the murders were done offcamera and heavily implied. Those that we do get to see delivered some blood, with the film's realistic approach working with it as gurgles and death rattles add to their notoriety. I wouldn't say its bad, but if the film had more budget, it could be greater.

With so much Found Footage titles coming out every year, The Jokesters can be easily disputed as another one of those horror movies where you question why the guys are still recording, but, plot wise, this film found a way around that plot hole and it is clever. Plus, I can tell a lot of effort were put to make this movie a thrilling ride, keeping the story as unpredictable as possible, and seeing they sort of pulled it off, I deeply appreciate this.

It's not going to be for everyone (especially for those who cannot stand immature pranksters) but The Jokesters delivers and it delivers fairly. Worth checking out!

Bodycount:
1 male hacked to death with a shovel
1 male shot, face bashed in with a shotgun
1 male attacked, ran over with a car
1 female presumably killed
Total: 4

Someone is Out There: The Pigman Murders (2013)

The Pigman Murders (Ireland, 2013) (AKA "Somebody's There")
Rating: **1/2
Starring: John Berry, Gerard Fallon, Mark Hutchinson

Shot as a lost footage, The Pigman Murders documents the last days of seven men who were celebrating a friend's death anniversary. For the first good chunk, we see them get in touch with each other as well as share something personal regarding their departed buddy; bars were visited, fights broke out, and soon they are visiting the Galway wilderness in memory of him.

Things were going as planned until they came across a bloodied half-naked man screaming bloody murder; bewildered, the group decided to think nothing of it but remain cautious. As night falls, they began to notice some of their friends are starting to disappear and soon, men in pig masks are seen skulking around the hills and the woods.

For most part, The Pigman Murders doesn't resemble much of a horror movie but rather an authentic and uncut vacation video. Little to no horror is seen and the only intense moment we were treated to were some of the men grappling with one another due to some sort of misunderstanding or a personal attack. The emotions the cast put on their characters can be seen as raw and nearly authentic, giving them at least a reason to be empathetic.

Unfortunately, this build-up ate most of the film's run as, for a 75 minute movie, the real horror starts around a quarter before the hour mark, giving little to no time to flesh out the menaces that are attacking them. Plus, with the opening of the film openly concluding that all seven men, excluding the killers, were missing, any possible way of intensifying this film was gradually lost and we pretty much made to wait for the next guy to be killed and hope these scenes of murder were gruesome. (Honestly, they're not; most of them simply "disappeared" or implied to be murdered, and some were just discovered dead.)

Hence, I felt cheated; true, some part of the film were suspenseful but the payoff is definitely lacking something. Perhaps it felt rushed, perhaps the murders aren't all that shocking as they were advertised, or maybe its the fact these boys hardly fought back and give us at least an exciting climax to enjoy. Whatever it is, it's not there.

There are plans that a sequel will be released as a follow-up to this film, hopefully improving what they delivered here, but as for now The Pigman Murders wins for at least knowing how to use a good build-up to keep up watching, but not so much in providing what we came for.

Bodycount:
1 male disappears, presumably killed
1 male disappears, presumably killed
1 male found covered in stab wounds
1 male knifed on the back
1 male choked to death
1 male gets a throat cut
1 male killed offcamera
Total: 7

Never Have I Ever: Unfriended (2014)

Unfriended (2014) (AKA "Cybernatural", "Offline")
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Heather Sossaman, Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson

We all can agree that all of us were cyber-bullied at one point in our lives; may it be a hateful comment that led to a tirade of humiliation, or some troll's attempt to ruin someone else's life, we all can agree that this is a serious problem that is affecting children (and adults) differently. Unfriended is a "cyber-slasher" that took this theme in heart and gave us a simple plot revolving six friends facing a seemingly unstoppable presence.

Precisely a year since their classmate Laura Barnes committed suicide due to the humiliation she received from a raunchy Youtube video, token couple Blaire and Mitch was supposed to have a fun night chatting with each other and their friends online via Skype, only to discover that a random user had also logged in to their session. The user, "Billie", somehow hacked into Laura's account and begins to harass the gang with photos and videos taken from the night Laura's video was recorded; things go for the weird when all the usual features of each site they visit start to go haywire and Billie appears to have full control over each of these webpages.

When the hacker threatens the gang that it'll kill them if they hang up, it all turns deadly when, one by one, they fall victim to an unstoppable force that possesses them into killing themselves if they don't comply or lose to one of Billie's games. Friends are forced to confront and reveal their own secrets, leading them to go at each other's throats, all the while dying a horrific death. In the end, who will be left standing and what fate awaits them, courtesy of this "Billie"?

On a hindsight, Unfriended could have been another found-footage slasher movie with a cyberspace backdrop (I say "another" cuz we already have one last year, a far better entry known as The Den) but thanks to its twisted story and interesting premise, it still is an entertaining time-waster that honestly worked better as a video release.

The acting from the cast is the film's greatest achievement since everything is supposedly happening live via video chat. We see them panic with great effect, which is delightfully well orchestrated seeing that the situation they are supposed to be in is everything but in their control. Scares are limited to loud jumps at the end of each creepy build-up and while the kills are a bloody nice bunch ranging from a classic gun kill to a gory blender murder, much of the film's most intense scenes involve the psychological torment our cyberbullies are subjected to. I never played the game "Never Have I Ever" but seeing how it works in this film, I'm not sure I wanna play it whenever I have my drinks.

Perhaps the only flaw here is that the plot is partially predictable; it is simply another revenge-driven slasher with a cyber twist and a supernatural influence that increasingly became obvious as the film continues. In fact, one of the the film's original title, "Cybernatural", was a dead giveaway to this before the producers eventually settled with a more ambiguous "Unfriended", but seeing how the cast had been opening up webpages involving Facebook hauntings early into the film, the element of surprise was reduced to a red herring that didn't work too well.

Still, seeing these unfortunate souls get picked off one by one by a paranormal presence in revenge for being a-holes and hypocrites never gets tiring. It's a slasher, yes, but a fun and partially creative take to the classic stalk-and-kill if I may say so myself. If only we get to see some more blood and guts, and some more active scenes (like, maybe, the presence can pick up a webcam and stalk their victims and stuff?), I would have given this film a higher rating but, hopefully, the talks regarding this film's sequels would do just that. For now, Never Have I Ever enjoyed this film!

Bodycount:
1 female shot herself with a gun
1 female seen dead, implied bleach ingestion
1 male had his throat shredded under a live broken blender
1 male shot on the face
1 female gets an iron curler shoved down her throat
1 male gets a kitchen knife to the eye
1 female killed, method unknown
Total: 7

(c) Google Images

Post. Publish. Infected: V/H/S Viral (2014)

V/H/S Viral (2014)
Rating: **1/2
Starring:  Emmy Argo, Amanda Baker, Rim Basma

Remember how V/H/S/2 gave us a promising look into the franchise by beating the first film as an entertaining found-footage anthology in almost everyway? Well my friends, Viral just knocked it back, not only to where it started, but perhaps a few more back.

Viral ditched the House full of presumably evil VHS tapes element and went on to something more "out there"; the wraparound, titled Vicious Circles, had us watching a video crazed teen boy trying to capture an unusual police chase involving that of a demented ice cream truck after finding out that the event was happening just around the neighborhood, much to his girlfriend's displeasure. As he ventures outside his house to catch the chase, his girlfriend was suddenly "infected" by a strange viral video that puts her in a trance and walking to near middle of the road. When the chased ice cream truck drove by, he finds her missing and assumes whoever was driving the truck kidnapped her.

Much of this wraparound revolves around him trying to catch up with the truck in hopes of saving his girlfriend, all the while we see people either dying trying to record the same chase or getting killed by accidents caused by it, as well as those who, somehow, gets infected with the same viral video that puts them in a homicidal rage.

Comparing this among the rest, Vicious is the lesser of the two awfuls in this anthology since, for a chaotic death porn, it's pretty intense if not altogether depressing as random acts of depravity and violence was simply bombarded at us in a near unforgiving manner. It's bleak but my true and only complain about this wraparound was it it makes no sense how it all connects with the segments, with each just popping out of nowhere (or in Viral's case, out of the static) and just happens. As if the crazy editing made it hard enough to follow this film but in the end, it raised more questions with its non-linear narrative and grimly mysterious nature, giving us something to ponder which I'm sure most of us wouldn't even bother with. For all we know was that whatever evil that forces people who watched those VHS tapes from the last two films to do or turn into nightmarish beings had finally made its way out of these houses and into the unexpecting public. Dark, grim and insane, but plot-wise? Not so much.

Now, the segments; it seems like the further this franchise goes, each entry is one segment shorter than the last. Now with only three segments, the first was undoubtedly the best of the bunch, titled Dante The Great, which is about a pathetic wannabe magician's sudden success in the world of illusions, thanks to a cape that was believed to have been owned by Harry Houdini himself. It somehow allowed him to do real magic but for a price: it must be fed!

Uniquely shown as a Found-Footage hybrid, utilizing everything from news interviews and clips, shots from security cameras, SWAT cams and Skype cameras, the segment was an entertaining piece despite it's more than obvious and ridiculous looking use of CG. It had energy, a quick pacing, cheesily acted yet interesting characters, and one of the nastiest magic-based massacres I've seen in a while. It was corny in nature but nonetheless fun, this segment that had me excited for the rest and with good hope, the next segment didn't fail to disappoint so far.

The second short was Parallel Worlds, concerning a Spanish man, a husband and a scientist, experimenting with a proto-type Dimensional Door that opens other realities. The footage shows what happened that one night it worked, meeting another version of himself in a world similar yet different. Out of scientific curiosity and excitement, he agreed with his other-self to switch places for a couple of minutes, to see what each other's worlds look like. Unfortunately for our scientist, the other world wasn't as safe as he hoped for and soon he is struggling to get back and save his wife from something frightening and dangerous.

It's weird for the sake of weird but, just like the first segment, Worlds had this cheesy feel that made it bearable in its short run and enough tension mixed in to keep us at the edge of our screen until the shocking if not unexpected ending.

Unfortunately, this is as far as Viral goes to keep itself entertaining, as the last segment blew it all. Titled Bonestorm, a trio of skateboarders with Go-pro cams on their helmets and skateboards, and their video recording fourth guy, travels to Tijuana to record all of their heaviest tricks for an awesome video but ends up fighting for their lives against a group of voodoo worshippers trying to awakened something, well, big and hungry. This should have been insanely fun if it wasn't for the annoying shaky quality of the videos. Not to mention all of those close-up shots of gored up heads and impaled bodies; now, I don't mind gory close-ups, really I don't, but to repeatedly bombard us with it just for the sake of gore with no other redeeming factor whatsoever, this is just desperate.

With no likable characters and virtually no story behind whatsoever, Viral's last segment just trailed itself with blood and ran into mediocrity just like that. Nothing frightening, nothing shocking, just loads and loads of gore shots that made this segment the perfect example of meaningless death porn.  So what exactly does this do for the entire movie?

Like the first V/H/S movie, Viral is a mixed bag, a literal half-and-half that balanced out the two bad entries with two worthwhile ones. Could have been forgiven if wasn't for the last effin entry, which makes me now wonder if that missing short, titled Gorgeous Vortex, would have improved this film. This being said, I might keep a lookout for Viral's future releases in hopes it'll include all of the segments and possibly redo this review but for now, all I can say is that this franchise now had its close call once, let's all hope it'll do better again!

Bodycount:
1 male ran over by a truck
1 rabbit flayed
1 female beaten to death
1 female disappears inside a cloak
1 male had his neck broken
1 male had his arms broken, crushed
1 male had his neck broken
1 male flayed open
3 males shot dead
1 male set on fire
1 male impaled on a bed of nails
1 male dropped dead
1 male shot dead
1 male shot dead
1 male disappears inside a cloak
1 female killed offscreen
1 male fell off a bridge
1 male dragged behind a truck, dropped head first unto the road
1 male had his face devoured
1 male knifed to death
1 dog stabbed on the head with a barbecue fork
5 males and 2 females stabbed to death
1 male and 1 female immolated by explosion
1 male shot on the head
2 males shot
1 male beheaded with a machete
1 male caught on fire
1 male impaled through with a sword
1 male stabbed to death with a rib bone
1 male bludgeoned with a skateboard
1 male bludgeoned with a skateboard
1 male beheaded with a machete
1 male shot on the head
1 male bludgeoned with a gun
1 male bludgeoned with a skateboard
1 male bludgeoned with a leg bone
2 males and 1 female killed in freak car crash
1 female bludgeoned to death
Total: 50