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

Reality Bites!: Cruel World (2005)

Cruel World (2005)

Rating: **

Starring: Edward Furlong, Daniel Franzese, Andrew Keegan

Some time ago, Reality TV gets a fairly disturbing twist in the horror genre after the success of dead teenager flicks around the 90s and a bit in the early 2000s with a Canada release known as My Little Eye (2002). The film pits a group of teenagers participating in what they believe to be a Reality TV show where the only rule is to stay in the house to win some cold hard cash. Unknown to them, the show was just a ruse to have them ripe for a bloody picking as one by one, they all fall victim to some fairly gruesome murders.

Many other titles such as House of 9 (2004) and Series 7 (2001) soon follow this idea, but Cruel World (2005) jumped the bandwagon a tad too late around its release as tame teen slasher flicks were sortah dying out, slowly being replaced by gorier horrors such as SAW (2003), House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and even the underrated 2005 House of Wax remake. 

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)'s Edward Furlong stars as the lead antagonist Phillip, a Reality TV reject who didn't take his leave all too well and plots bloody vengeance against those who were responsible as he stalks and murders a young starlet and anybody unfortunate enough to be in the way. After disposing the bodies, he takes full control over the house (which is supposed to be the set of a new TV project hosted by the now dead starlet) and begins his own twisted take on the show by pitting its occupants in a series of bizarre games. Those who survive gets to stay and wait for the next (and often more grueling) challenge, while those who are "sent home" bites the big one.

While the premise sounds promising, its execution could use a lot of work; for starters, the entire concept of the Reality show Furlong's character is running isn't all that exciting. It's simply one strange game to the next, with very little of the cast noticing how odd these are or even notice the fact there are no visible crew. (Save Phillip's mentally challenged brother) It actually took them long enough to finally realize how dire their predicament is and most (if not all) of those who noticed it sooner are already dead, leaving us with some of the dumbest victims in the face of Reality TV and/or teen slashers.



With that being the point, the entire film runs a steady routine of challenge-lose-kill-talk and it wears out any sense of dread or tension, bringing out instead the hammiest villain acting you can have in cheap celluloid. In fact, Furlong may have gained the physique of a believable loser who's out for blood via a strong will to manipulate anyone to kill each other, but that ain't enough to make his character seriously menacing if all he does is sit behind a computer gorging junkfood and emptying beer cans. He's twisted but too clumsy and inexperienced to do enough fieldwork to even qualify him as a slasher killer, but thankfully we got his brother doing the sidelines for him in the hack-and-slash department, that is if the big guy can set aside some personal (and childish) issues.

Murders and gore effects are limited to tame killings such as live burials, hangings and standard stabbings, and plot holes are ever present with some of the characters' fate left undetermined. (One girl gets chased and locked up in a barn, and we never get to see her again) Plus the actual games themselves are hardly imaginative, so if you're gonna spend a good time waiting for something memorable or at least shocking to come up, do not bother! The budget restrains have spoken and not even the film's third act can save it from being a bit dull!

I don't know whether this is to make a practical point on how silly the concept of reality TV is but Cruel World (2005) failed to do anything to mark an impact. The casts are boring, the murders are almost bloodless and the duo of homicidal brothers, with reasons for being psychotic hardly even qualifies to be understandable, are anything but scary. Still, I can't say I hated it, just expecting a bit more excitement coming from a rather fun-sounding premise. I guess you could say I enjoyed it because of how easily digestible this movie is and how I can simply pass this as a time waster that you can rent whenever it hits you right, but I can name plenty more films you can see over this that have the same plot. Better ones.

But if you're curious to see what John Conner looks like years after Terminator 2, what Jaime Pressly did before she went ahead to do TV in My Name is Earl, or is easily impressed by cheap B-Movies, then I guess Cruel World (2005) can be your poison. Just don't go crying on us if you hated it...

Bodycount:
1 male bound to a chair and weighed down a pool, drowned
1 female had her throat cut with kitchen knife
1 female buried alive
1 female found slaughtered inside a cow's carcass
1 male stabbed on the gut with a kitchen knife
1 male ran through the gut with a sword
1 male found murdered
1 female decapitated with a machete
1 male hanged
1 male shot on the head
Total: 10

Buzzsaw Surprise!: Kolobos (1999)

Kolobos (1999)

Rating: ***

Starring:  Amy Weber, Donny Terranova and Nichole Pelerine 

One of the biggest highlights of the 90s was teen Reality TV, as kids of that era somehow love the torture, pain, and misery of obnoxious teens crying over whatever reason that'll come in mind. Thus using this fad as a plot point for a few horror movies becomes a small trend itself that kinda continues to this day, but here'll be covering one of the stranger titles to follow the fad.

Kolobos is one of the many "Reality TV slashers" to come out during their prime, though the emphasis of the TV genre to it's plot plays little as the rest of the movie follows a more psychological bodycounting run. It starts off with a POV shot of a wounded girl staggering at a rainy street. A car hits her and the driver sends her to a hospital, where she's kept for questioning under suspicion that she may have done the damage to herself. Unfortunately, the girl remembers very little until she saw a newspaper ad looking for willing participants for what is basically a Reality TV show. Almost instantly, it all comes back to her...

We are now going face to face with five others teenagers who introduce themselves through promotional audition tapes: we got the comedian, the student, the loudmouth brat, the party girl and the rejected loonie house releasee. (AKA probably our girl) After a night of dinner with the show's director and probably hours later watching a cheesy slasher flick series, one of the girls gets their gullet sliced open by a projected buzzsaw from nowhere. One girl notices, screams, and the whole night went crashing down like dominoes. Evidently, there's a killer with a nasty habit of skinning his own face trapping them in the house and he somehow rigged it with some bizarre traps, further dooming these teens to the slaughter.

An engaging piece of horror imagery, Kolobos finds itself slowly moving to stranger tides along with the characters' descent to unimaginable madness. Early on, the movie does have the slasher tone and mystery head on, but the further the murders proceed to bump off the teens, the more we get to the surreal horrific hallucinations that prowl our obvious final girl. Interesting to note that said "hallucinations" are often accompanied by some Italian horror inspired set-up such as weird editing, lighting and sounds, which I believe was already foreshadowed by the movie's own opening theme, which sounds awfully familiar to that of Suspiria, a classic Italian horror that also practiced using horror imagery.

As a slasher, Kolobos is fairly thrilling; while it does suffer some pacing problems. odd acting and the overall lack of characterization, it delivers a pretty good bunch of onscreen murders and gore (including the aforementioned buzzsaw kill), pretty much a roundhouse of shocks, disgusts and grue, all in loving close-ups and even some odd angles. It's a sick and fair set for a slasher film of its time, quite refreshing with some creepiness to go around, mostly coming from the odd imagery at the near end.

So, where does Kolobos comes short in? Not much at a fact, but there is one thing that both fascinates me and caught me off guard: while the movie is a clear hybrid of traditional teen slasher and some Italian inspired visual horror, the film's final twist may not sit that well for some as it can get dang confusing. It's not exactly a first, but without spoiling much, it may debunked a lot of things that happened during the movie, though the reveal still found a way to be creepy.

It's a good film, but a little too familiar around its way; Kolobos manages everything it can with subtlety, harking some efforts from its own. It ain't a perfect teen slasher, but i find it recommendable for those looking for a good rent or late night viewing.

Bodycount:
1 female gets a hatchet to the chest (film)
1 male knifed to death (film)
1 female found with a fork stabbed to her neck (film)
1 female killed with hatchet (film)
1 male hacked to death with hatchet (film)
1 female sliced repeatedly by projected buzzsaws
1 male found with throat cut and wrapped in plastic
1 male bathe in acid, face bashed to sideboard
1 female pushed eye-first to deer antlers
1 male found dead with mutilated face
Total: 10

Michael's Homecoming Crashers: Halloween Resurrection (2002)

Halloween Resurrection (2002)
rating: ***
starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Busta Rhymes and Brad Loree

Previously! From THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHAEL MYERS!

In an alternate universe where deranged masked killer Michael Myers was been missing 20 years after his massacre in 78', his sister and last intended victim Laurie Strode have been living a disturbed life haunted by the memories of the night he came home until the Halloween of 98, where Michael found her and attempted to finish her off to end his quest of endless vendetta. But in a stroke of luck, Laurie had Michael pinned to the dirt, open to finish him off. Which she did by cutting his block off with an axe.

But as it turns out she didn't decapitate our legendary killer but rather a ruse of a man whose larynx was crushed and forced to wear Michael's suit and mask! So Laurie was traumatized-er and now locked up in a mental hospital where she anticipates her brother's return.

True to her fears, Michael catches up (again) and after a casual stalk and chase, a quick knife to the back sends Laurie (and Jamie Lee Curtis' horror roles) to her death. Now that he got that plot out of the way, Michael's free to go home now, passing his legendary knife to a potential butterball with a passion for serial killers and went on his way.

But it doesn't go too well for him once he finally got back; an internet entrepreneur and host turned The Myers House into a set for his reality TV show where six "lucky" contestants have to stay overnight and try to find the clues to the biggest mystery of all: what makes Michael Myers tick. Not a safe mystery but intriguing nevertheless.

As you can tell, teens and Michael don't mix very well so it isn't too long before The Shape is cutting down the house guests one by one, with millions of internet viewers believing it's all make smoke and mirrors. That being said, you can be as sure as shit these kids and everybody else involved are doomed...

It's not perfect. I admit it. But is it the worse? Hardly!

There isn't much to say about this movie rather than the fact it's just the big guns' attempt to continue a movie with an ending so impossible to follow. It's desperation, frankly, as the flick hardly felt anywhere as serious nor as creepy as the original and its first sequel but in teen slasher sense, this is by far a passable run.

Cheese levels in this one were high with powered tool combat, enough one-liners and witty comebacks to choke a dead Strode, iPad prototypes (were they supposed to come out in 2002?) and the popular "I'm-Alive!" shock ending and the inclusion of rapper Busta Rhymes (and Tyra banks for some reason) as a kung-fu-ing internet host who, fans be cringing, successfully high-kicked Michael out of a window! (I laughed at that scene. More than once) You can tell with all these craziness that this is one junk-fest of a Halloween movie with very little Halloween feel to it at all!

It's probably an overcooked slab of steak that's been turned from side to side over and over again until it dries up into coal but it sure damn as hell entertaining! First, this is probably one of the two entries of the series that actually had the slasher route in full effect and in its simplicity. No tie-ups that limits the film to depend from another for a full explanation and definitely no family drama that everybody seen millions of time on their damn afternoon TVs, Ressurection is plainly pure-to-the-bone slasher antics; masks, teens, bodycount, tits and nothing else. That being said, it's best to enjoy this movie without thinking much of the great big legacy our favorite simple-faced masked killer had and just enjoy this as it is. A slasher flick. Which I did. Hence the rating. Bleh.

It's not scary, nor does it have any sense of respect to the entire Halloween franchise, but Ressurection is as fair as any low-brow slasher flicks made out there. In fact, let's pretend there was no opening murders, let Michael wear a different mask and change his name to Mordecai, and the movie might as well be a title of its own existence. But alas, those with the cash thought it's best to tie in H20, which personally should just ended there, and brought Michael to the world of mediocrity that is B-flicks...

Bodycount:
1 male found beheaded
1 male gets a throat cut with kitchen knife
1 female kitchen knifed on the back
1 male gets a tripod leg to the neck
1 male kitchen knifed on the head
1 female pushed through a spike
1 female decapitated with kitchen knife
1 male had his head crushed
1 male pinned to a door with knives
1 female found hanged (some versions had us see her go through this...which is trash, by the way...)
total; 10

DUN DUN DUUUN!

"Supah Fun!": $LA$HER$ (2001)

$LA$HER$ ("Slashers") (Canada, 2001)
Rating:****
Starring: Sarah Joslyn Crowder, Tony Curtis Blondell and Kieran Keller

My admiration for Maurice Deveraux is limitless. His determination to entertain and shock us has been very admiring to me, since he always does it with very little budget to go by. He knows horror. He knows entertainment. He knows what makes a slasher movie fun.

Due to positive feedback, Japan's hottest, funnest, most controversial reality game show $LA$HER$ is having its first All-American contestants, composed of three men and three women from the States. The goal of the game is to go through and finish a maze full of hidden passages and special rooms, while trying to avoid three randomly selected killers. If they get you, they'll kill you...for real. If our contestants do manage to survive the maze, there's a million dollar prize money waiting for them.

Though, it appears that these new contestants have a few secrets of their own. Secrets that could either jeopardize the entire show, or jeopardize the group itself to their own doom...

Made as a one-take shot parodying crazy Japanese gameshows, $LA$HER$ provides one of the more unique and very entertaining slasher plot to earn a cult-status. It's a commentary of sorts on reality game shows and how silly the concept was to begin with, as well as the classic dangers of television and televised violence for the sake of ratings, sponsors and wealth. It's a premise fated to be parodied and done so already with the likes of films like The Running Man (1987), though this title offers a clever and creative use of its limited budget, as well as camera skills as the one-take runaround done for this movie looks fluid with invisible edits and proper timing. This, however, meant a few drama along the way as the movie takes its time developing its characters and motives before the good stuff happens, but the wait's worth it when grue humor, juicy kills and panache gets to be our reward for sticking around.

And true enough, the torch holders of this movie are its slashers, a creative blending of the popular tropes as we get deranged undead Bible thumper "Preacherman" who pays tribute to religious cult slashers; Chainsaw Charlie, a stereotyped chainsaw weilding hillbilly bumpkin sporting an Alfred Neuman mask; and, lastly, Dr. Ripper, PHD, a deranged medical man in the vein of fellers like "Dr. Giggles". They're hired to wreck havoc, taunt and kill one contestant at a time and will go berserk once they're unmask. Tis' the rules and they're sticking to it, even if it costs them their own lives. (now that's dedication to entertainment!) 

Preacherman is, sadly, underused as he didn't even get the chance to kill anyone and he's also, spoilers, the first to go. Fan favorite Chainsaw Charlie, however, earns his status with a funny and in-character performance with his psuedo-innocent wild persona, chuckling his way slicing pretty folks. Dr. Ripper, the main course of the game, never really peaked my interest that much as I never find him that interesting, his tendency to get carried away with his teasing borderlines being annoying and his design looks rush.

Preacherman

Chainsaw Charlie

Dr. Ripper

The show did have a wide array of killers shown during this film's opening number, including a clown, a pirate and some Chinese dude. I would have paid a lot to see them use the Pirate slasher or even the clown, but I guess a killer pastor and a chainsaw-loving country boy would do just the same.

$LA$HER$ , as most low-budget horror film do, have it's little flaws around its production like, for instance, some of the gore effects looking pretty fake as you can tell that's a dummy one character is stabbing or hacking to bits. Not to mention some very cheesy background tunes to go with the action, bitter acting from the the casts playing the contestants and some cheap jump scares. For a Direct-to-video feature, it doesn't really try harder to push itself and "get out there" when it comes to gore, instead sticking with B-movie fares and tricks. And yet, here I am still loving the hell out of this movie, so I guess not that big of a dent.

A cheesy and bloody psuedo-snuff that's made just for the sole purpose of entertaining, this film isn't going to appease everyone but it will for the right audience. This is perhaps the most honest slasher movie I've seen and I deeply appreciate that. Highly recommended for cheese fans and fellow bodycount fanatics who are eyeing for something slightly unique.

Bodycount:
1 female gutted with knife (opening)
1 female neck mutilated (opening)
1 male head seen (opening)
1 female had her throat cut (opening)
1 male seen bleeding to death from a missing arm (opening)
1 male had his throat slit (opening)
1 male disemboweled (opening)
1 male had a leg cut off with chainsaw (opening)
1 female her her neck slashed with scalpel (opening)
1 female gutted (opening)
1 male gets a wooden stake to the eye
1 female sawed in half with chainsaw
1 male had his side sliced with chainsaw, falls and impaled on spiked pit
1 male falls and impaled on spiked pit, killed offscreen
1 female beheaded with hedge trimmer
1 male gets a wooden stake to the ear
1 male gets a wooden stake to the back, throat cut with scalpel
1 male had his head chopped off with hedge trimmer
Total: 18

See you around slasher fans...in the sequel!

Second Turn Goes Deadly: Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Erica Leerhsen, Henry Rollins and Texas Battle

How would you follow up a simplistic, backwoods slasher about three cannibals hunting people in the woods? Why gore it up, sex it up and mess it up! Too much? Maybe, but it did work?

Yes. Oh, effing yes it worked.

A group of contestants for another "survivor" type reality show called "Apocalypse" gets put in the middle of the West Virginian forest (again) where they have to pretend being survivors of a world gone bad due to an "Apocalypse" (hence the title. Soooo original) and fight off as many pretend foes as they can in order to survive. By pretend foes I meant beeping boxes that give out scenarios and challenges that needs to be done to make sure they'll stay to see the next round.  What they didn't come to expect is a family of inbred cannibals that just so happens to be living within the woods and have taken a liking to them...as dinner. Now, one by one, cast and crew find themselves in a more dreadful situation than an elimination round, where survival is no longer simulated and blood runs for real.

Pushed to a max, Wrong Turn 2 faithfully follows the rules of sequels as more mutants come up (less deformed, though) and the gore turns very visceral. Even if it's as clichéd as the original, it's easy to look pass that with all the mayhem and chaos happening on screen and while the idea of adding teen-oriented material of reality TV isn't really that big of a deal as other slashers already tackled this (the concept of reality-TV turn deadly was already done around the early Millennium with Canada's My Little Eye or even the fairly stable Halloween sequel "Halloween: Resurrection), it's not half bad here as it have something going for it and paces Wrong Turn 2 a lot better with more action playing for it.

And then there's the grue. Gore is what made this film get going and gore it shall give. There's nothing sacred to these mutants as bodies go into twos, threes, diced, shredded, blown-up; whether it's from the scared little teens or the cannibals themselves, death comes swift and messy for this movie, enough to make gorehounds and splatter lovers go on gleaming.

If there will be any flaws, it is that while the original kept its characters interesting, Wrong Turn 2 did the opposite. Even if the cast are still an tolerable bunch, they did come out as very stereotyped: we have a jock and a jokester, a slut and the diva, a misplaced softie and a hardened warrior lady and, yes, the obvious final girl. Funny enough, we actually have two potential final girls here and any one of the pair would have worked fine even if one of them got killed. A little mean-spirited but hey, it's a gore film and a slasher at that, even. Mean-spirited? Doesn't mean squat for a movie of its kin. Throw in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre style dinner scene at the end and a bit of backwoods hocus, and you get yourself a slasher flick sequel that's surely did the franchise proud. (Or not, depending on your view.)

Wrong Turn 2 is a fast-paced, brainless, backwoods splatter survival slasher flick that's arguably an enjoyable piece of work. Perfect or not, does it really matter when you're having fun? What say you?

bodycount:

1 female chopped in half with axe

1 male gets a throat slit with knife, scalped

1 female gets an axe thrown to her head

1 female repeatedly slashed on the back with a cleaver

1 elderly male blown up by dynamite

1 male and 1 female shot through the heads with an arrow

1 male had his head chopped off with cleaver

1 male and 1 female blown up by dynamite

1 male neck strangled and mutilated by razor wire

1 male and 1 female shredded through tree de-barker
2 males implied murdered, clothes seen

Total: 15

The Eyes Of The City, Collected: Anguish (1987)

Anguish (AKA "Anguista") (Spain, 1987)
Rating:****
Starring: Zelda Rubinstein, Michael Lerner and Talia Paul

The scene starts with a small woman living a simple and satisfied life with her pet snails and her timid, grown-man of a son who happens to be working as an eye clinic intern. A completely satisfied life, that is, until she begins hearing some unsatisfactory grunts and complains against her son by listening through a sea shell. (Just go with it) Through hypnosis, the mother commands her son to collect the eyes of those who wronged him, further dragging the man into a murderous path until, stressed from being controlled, the son rebels and claims to do the job on his own.

As we watch the mayhem unfolds (about twenty minutes or so into the film), the camera zooms back to reveal to us a crowd of spectators watching our movie as their own. In fact, the film we were watching was no more than a movie within a movie and this entire room of moviegoers will soon find out that they aren't safe; one of them isn't all right in the head, you see, and their obsession for the film inspires them to start their own massacre and those around shall feel their wrath. As the two movies starts to blend together, though, who will live and who will survive is not the question here but, rather what is real and not?

I have my share of arthouse films and most of the time I never get them, but I do like the colorful styles these movies experiment on. Anguish (1987) is one film that merges this style of filmmaking with the bloody mayhem of a slasher flick with much originality in the plotting. Many a times we've seen some terror unfold inside a cinema, but how often do we have one done the way this film did?

Basically, we're treated with two slasher plots rolled into one, the first (plainly credited as "Old Movie" or The Mommy) being a bizarre yet effectively creepy take on the basic hack-and-slash formula that delivers gore and some very scenic cinematography. All the while, the second (labeled "New Movie") mixes the slasher build with a hostage scenario, featuring a gun-totting killer working his way quietly through one movie patron at a time in a similar effort from another gun-held slasher flick, TAG: The Assassination Game (1982), only with a higher bodycount and only in one location. The two will begin to merge chaotically in the end until the line of reality and make-belief is completely blurred that even us, the audience, can't tell what is real or not.

It is as creepy as it is convulsed, with the wailing and echoic commands of Zelda Rubinstein's Mother character being chilling and torturous along the schizophrenic imagery we're put into. I'm actually quite surprised at how some of these scenes legitimately gave me the creeps, particularly the hypnosis session our eye-gouging ophthalmologist (and us) gets put through, which ties in to the warning labels at the beginning of the film alerting us for some mild headaches and out-of-body experiences. By the time the second plot of Anguish (1987) gets introduced, it did got quite more intense with its very tight atmosphere as our gun-wielding maniac do their best to keep their killing spree as unnoticeable as possible despite, well, the carnage they're planning.

Oh God, oh God, oh God
is it real?!

While the kills had me going, I did find the acting and accent to be a tad distracting, but seeing this is a foreign title I wouldn't take it against the film. The late Zelda Rubinstein from the Poltergeist (1982) fame did steal a lot of the attention as the manipulative yet caring "Mother", whose presence reeks with a mystic aura that shifts from being a menace to a worried mother time to time.

I guess you could say I know why this movie is underrated; not only is it rare but its strangeness and gimmick might be off-putting for many and the lack of any clear plot could be too confusing for your casual horror fan. But if you got a taste for the weird, or something very different, I highly recommend this film. Arthouse flick or not, this is one slasher film you should not miss. You got to see it to believe it.

Bodycount:
1 female had her throat cut with scalpel
1 male stabbed on the gut with ice pick
1 male stabbed on the head with an ice pick
1 male stabbed on the back with an ice pick
1 female drugged, eyes removed offscreen
1 female shot on the chest
1 female shot on the head offscreen
1 elderly female strangled, later seen with throat slit
1 female slashed to death with a scalpel
1 male shot on the neck
1 female found dead
1 female shot on the back
1 male stabbed on the gut with a scalpel
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 female shot on the face
1 male shot to death by snipers
1 elderly female suffers a heart attack
1 female had her neck slashed with a scalpel offscreen
Total: 20

Seriously...did anybody else felt weird watching this? Headaches?
Drowziness?

Piercings, tattoos and reality horror: Suicide Girls Must Die! (2010)

Suicide Girls Must Die! (2010)
Rating:*
Starring: Amina Munster, Bailey Suicide and Bully Suicide

WARNING! REVIEW INCLUDES SPOILERS!

Okay, first of all, I'm not a Suicide Girls fan. I see their ads, I saw their site, I saw them in comic book form in an issue of Tim Seeley's Hack/Slash comics, but I was never a fan of body piercings and tattoo covered bodies. But even so, I'm gonna judge this film as fair as I can, and the only way to do that is to pretend these girls are ordinary girls doing a sexy calendar photoshoot in an isolated cabin; but its gonna take more than T&A to satisfy me.

Behold! Stained Meat!

The plot is simple, fifteen nude models for Suicide Girls.com goes on a road trip to an isolated cabin in the woods (again with that). Their exploits are all recorded via live camera ala Big Brother or Jersey Shore (or any reality TV shows out there showing obnoxious brats acting all crazy for attention). Along the way, they gave a bad impression to the locals by peeing in public (!), which brought all the way to the local sheriff who now is just as pissed off as the locals. Well, they did made it alive to their cabin, and no sooner on the next day, they started shooting. Bikini tops and bottoms flies away as these punker girls gone nudie and cameras starts taking pics. Well, that's just about it, until one of them disappears, one of them nearly got lost, one of them got bound to a table and splattered with blood. Weird stuff starts happening and somebody -or something- is killing off the girls. When seven of them are left, they decide to split up and look for help, which is obviously a big no-no, but they did anyway. Its not too long now before the killers show up their ugly rears...

Crazy Hermit killer? Or Just a mofugly fella?

The concept is good, but unoriginal. We already got "reality TV horror" like this such as My Little Eye, and they're better. For the first sixty minutes we see how whiney, pissed-off and just plain brash these girls are that its hard to feel sympathetic to them. Pissing off locals is never a good way to start a film, but they did and they expect us to feel sorry for them by the time half of them were axed to death.

Another thing that didn't work on this is the crazy plot twist. Look, I'm all for fake deaths and happy endings, but seriously, all that murders you played on us and none of it is real? Well, okay there's that, but then again, who cares? These girls are better off doing photoshoots and calendars than making movies like this. It just doesn't work if the victims aren't likable in the first place, it kills off every expectations or suspense this film would had offered and you're just wasting your time rooting for these girls to die. And even if they do, the murders are not worth the wait. And just to slap our faces to insult us, they gave us the most uninspired looking killers out there: Bush People. Yep, living, humanoid bushes...the plant, not the...you know what I mean.

Yeah, real nice.Too bad its fake.

Fans of Suicide Girls would definitely adore this; I've seen reviews in IMDB and most of them who gave this film a passing mark are fans of the girls. Fans of nudie photoshoots would also like this. In fact, is this even a horror flick? The only thing closest to horror here is seeing a pair of tits with both nipples pierced. (seriously, people finds that hot?)

As far as I'm concerned, this movie is a wreck, but if you want titties with inked skulls and ravens, then go ahead and see this film. Wish you luck.

"Bodycount":
1 female head bashed repeatedly with rock
2 females hacked to death with axe
1 female seen strangled against a tree with a belt
1 female seen killed
1 female seen hanged on a noose
1 female found hacked on the chest with an axe
1 female missing
1 female falls into a pit
1 female killed by a Bush Monster
1 female Killed by a Bush Monster
1 female killed by a Bush Monster
1 female Kileld by a Bush Monster
total: 13