Party Til' You Puke (And Then You Die): La Central (2006)

La Central (Spain, 2006) (AKA "The Central")

Rating: *

Starring: Eduardo Lupo, Yasmina Córcoles, Ana Cánovas

All play and little bodycounting work makes La Central (2006) a rather dull and forgettable slasher.

The premise is simple enough; a group of twelve friends go to a big house in the woods to party. And party they did. On the lakeside beach. Inside the house. Then at the beach, again. In the backyard. Back in the house, again. At an indoor swimming pool. Hell, they even continue to party when one of their friends disappears after falling off a cliff, dismissing it as just a prank. It's nothing but obnoxious partying and shrill drunkenness, decibels of loud talking and hyperactive shrieking with unpretentious gay-bashing and sexism mixed into the mess. 

It isn't until about halfway into the movie when anything remotely interesting happened as the gang decided to play hide-and-seek in the woods (At night. While drunk and high) and one of the girls finds herself attacked and her arm carved with something sharp. The more responsible few of the group decided to drive their injured friend to a nearby town to get her patched up, leaving the rest of the crowd to fend for themselves when someone wearing a dark hoodie crashes the party and starts ending them, sometimes creatively (tricking someone into swallowing bulb shards, rigging a car for shocking results), but often uninspired. (plain axe hackings and wrench bashings, mostly offcamera and bloodless) 

The rising bodycount makes its way to your usual slasher flick stalk-and-stab between the final girl and the killer, with a few casualties along the way, accusations thrown around and the typical reveal/motive monologue combo once the stabby shmuck gets unmasked. (Or for this case, casually unhooded) This would have been a redeeming swing for La Central (2006), but not only was it hard to make out what's mostly going on thanks to the movie's shoddy lighting, but the killer's reason behind the murder spree hardly sparks any volume of creativity or originality, thus adding to the lack of any respectable characters in this train wreck and overall blandness of the movie. 

And that's pretty much what La Central (2006) is. Bland. The story is uninspired, the characters are irritating and most of the kills are boring. The only good things to come out of this are a couple of ingenious murders and the unintentional hilarity of the killer having that much durability despite looking so, well, normal, but these are nothing but a little nibble of good crumbs out of an entire headache-inducing dreck of dullness. It just ain't worth it! 

Bodycount:

1 male hacked in the back with an axe

3 males and 2 females electrocuted inside a rigged car

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 female bashed to death with a wrench

1 male shot, had his throat cut with a hunting knife

Total: 9

I Know What You Wrote Last Few Summers Ago: Killer Book Club (2023)

Killer Book Club (El Club De Los Lectores Criminales) (Spain, 2023)

Rating: ***

Starring: Veki Velilla, Álvaro Mel, Priscilla Delgado 

For the first few minutes, we see a room littered with book pages, a woman getting doused in gasoline and a girl setting everything ablaze with a burning copy of Don Quixote. Moving ahead six years later, we now follow college teen Ángela (Veki Velilla), an aspiring best-selling author and a member of the campus's book club which consists of her friends and acquaintances. She's feeling quite unsure of the quality of her own writing lately so she decided to meet up with a professor after class for some advice, but what Ángela got instead is a very bad time when the guy got too handsy and she narrowly escaped a rape attempt after she opted to be more than the slime ball could handle physically. The assault leaves the shy book writer traumatized but fortunately for her, the book club has her back and they all plan to get even on the shmuck by pranking him hard.  

As the night for revenge comes, everything was going according to plan; dress up in matching clown costumes, break into the professor's office, smash some shit and scare the bastard shitless, but all of this excitement goes horribly awry when the educator gets attacked for real, leading to him stumbling off a building floor and getting skewered through a statue's spear. Horrified of this unexpected turn, everyone involved in the prank swears secrecy, burns away their costumes and tries moving on with their lives in the midst of the media circus the professor's supposed accident/suicide eventually reels in the following morning.

No soon after, though, the gang gets an email invite to read the very first chapter of a new online horror novel penned by someone monikered "Madclown", detailing a familiar scenario of eight book club members who killed their professor out of revenge. The writer promises death to the killer book club and, true enough, our gang starts getting stalked, hunted and murdered one by one by a figure wearing a familiar-looking clown costume, wielding a deadly rock pick...

Looking into the plot, there's not much to write home about Killer Book Club (2023)'s story as it is basically a mash-up of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)'s secrets-unburied-turn-deadly gig and Scream (1996)'s meta-horror murder mystery, down to the characters getting their trust tested as they suspect one another of masterminding the attacks and disappearances, as well as the gang discussing the possibility of our villain being a horror buff considering their knowledge of slasher tropes and using this hunch to narrow down their potential suspects. There's little room for surprises here, though there is an attempt for novelty as the killer writes down the murders as chapters for their online novel, posting them moments after doing the deadly deed.

Execution-wise, the movie still does enough good to warrant a viewing; while the direction has its moments relying on the characters' odd and/or dumb choices to get the story going (like answering and following a text that's obviously a trap, or going along with a suspicious invitation to a book horror fair where everyone is dressed up as clowns), there's a charm to its familiarity, like a low-key throwback to the ideologies of postmodernism and skepticism commonly found within most 90s teen horror. The murder scenes are also among the movie's stronger points as a fair bundle of them have decent set-pieces and chase scenes, shot and edited to showcase the energy of their cat-and-mouse antics and a few are even punctuated with gruesomely bloody slayings. The camera work is scenic at its best, the acting is passable and even though the mystery behind the murders gets answered in the climax unspectacularly at first, we do get an unexpected twist that ties most of the loose ends wonderfully and makes the final act devilishly fun. 

Killer Book Club (2023) may have failed to bring anything new to the table, it does still deliver the bodycount goods and, honestly, it all could have been worse. Should you find yourself in a charitable mood for a teen slasher mystery at its most basic and don't mind some pastiche along the way, this one's a good watch! 

Bodycount:

1 female doused in gasoline and set on fire

1 male fell off a building and lands on a statue, impaled

1 male gutted with a rock pick

1 female impaled through with a rock pick's handle

1 male found dying from a throat cut

1 female found dying from a stabbed chest

1 male knocked off a building and impaled mouth-first through a statue

1 female caught on fire, burned to death

Total: 8

Masquerading Madness in Venice: Veneciafrencia (2021)

Veneciafrencia (Spain, 2021)

Rating: **

Starring: Ingrid García Jonsson, Silvia Alonso and Goize Blanco

In this giallo-inspired horror thriller, a group of five Spanish tourists visit Venice for what's supposed to be an extravagant bachelorette party, only to end up caught and tangled in a web of socio-political tensions and random murders committed by a madman in a court jester's outfit when one of them suddenly disappears the day after they all attended a secret rave. With a premise like that, Veneciafrencia (2021) could have had a rich world and intriguing plot points to center a bodycount flick around with its talks of mass tourism ruining a beloved country and the lengths some people would go to dispose what they deem as a "plague" that's ruining their beautiful city. Unfortunately, the movie can't seem to decide whether it wants to be playful with the idea or be straight with it, resulting to an erratic direction that further loses its worth as it focuses on a gang of charmless characters in a set-up not too far off from Eli Roth's Hostel franchise.

The pacing and tone are just all over, in turn, as the movie pretends to be something deep and witty as a by-the-book conspiracy thriller for some moments, only to be gutted down by its own cluster of hammy horror and crazy killings as a slasher flick in the next. It's a clumsy hodge-podge juggle that's unnecessarily complicated in its execution seeing there's really no sense of mystery regarding why the villains are doing all of this as it's basically plastered all over the scenes involving our casts interacting with many of the locals. This, unsurprisingly, results to the story's flow just bogging down with pointless police procedurals and investigations, making its hundred minute-long barrage of bland characters and tired clichés eventually lose its steam in its last act with an unrewarding conclusion to boot.

On a more positive note, Veneciafrencia (2021) does succeed in making its slasher scenes memorable in a goofy yet gruesome way, with a couple of murders happening during public daylight as our killer chortles at gathering crowds of tourists that everything horrible he's doing is just an act and these idiots simply eating up this claim without any sense of hesitation. It's absurdly silly and a tad too convenient, with all forms of logic and realism thrown out, but keeps rather a quirky energy in its viciousness, a welcome take for a bloody good time even if most of the kills were from random bystanders. Aside from that, the film also benefits from looking quite stunning with its location shots and camera work, showcasing the beauty of Venice in and out of the horror scenes and the stellar production work done behind the film.

With more miss than hits, Veneciafrencia (2021) is a good enough horror film that could've been better if it found a way to balance out its commentary themes and splashy slasher hook in a way that would benefit one another. Give it a try if you like, though expect a hobbled path. 

Bodycount:

1 male bludgeoned to death with a camera

1 female dragged away, killed offscreen

1 male repeatedly ran through with a sword

1 male repeatedly ran through with a sword, decapitated

1 female had her throat cut with a sword

1 male seen crushed on a dock by a cruise ship (video)

1 female had her hands and back hacked with hooks

1 male shot

1 male and 1 female found dead from cut wrists

Total: 10

Real Estate Break-In Night: Sweet Home (2015)

Sweet Home (Spain, 2015)

Rating: ***

Starring: Ingrid García Jonsson, Bruno Sevilla, Oriol Tarrida Homedes 

Apparently in Spain, there's a phenomenon wherein the elderly are forcibly removed from their homes by shady real estate with plans of using the space to build apartments. Now whether they use the same methods in real life as the ones seen from this slasher/thriller hybrid is something I cannot conclusively tell, but I sure hope they don't!

Alicia (Ingrid García Jonsson) is a real estate broker who, after inspecting a nearly abandoned building for a company, decided to use it as a secret rendezvous for her English boyfriend Simon's (Bruno Sevilla) birthday later that rainy evening. They eat Japanese food, have sex, Simon gets pissy at Alicia for getting him a birthday gift coz it'll make him feel guilty of not getting her anything back (...wait, what?), unbeknownst to them both that the company eyeing the building has sent goons to finish off the last tenant living there. When Alicia and Simon sees the result of these killer's handiwork and fail to hide themselves away, their night becomes one long cat-and-mouse chase which gets worse once a hulking slasher dubbed El Liquidador gets called-in to help clean up the mess.

A melting pot of home invasion thrills and hack-and-slash slasher spills, Sweet Home (2015) mostly passes as a fast-paced stroll through horror clichés, tainted with bad decisions and brutal bloodlettings. The story is straightforward for what it is, one long hide-and-seek session with stalking and killings, though its direction can get clunky given the number of times our protagonists could have escaped, only to get those chances botched by not only the killers but also by themselves. The action set-pieces and the bloody murders do make up for most of the horror trope-related dumbness though, enough to give blood and gore hounds a bout of satisfaction, especially by the time El Liquidador arrives with an axe and cases of liquid nitrogen at hand. (Jason X (2001), Mindhunters (2004) and now this? Gotta love liquid nitrogen!)

Production-wise, Sweet Home (2015) is simply eye-candy. The film is rich in amazing camera work and the abandoned building setting's just gorgeous, utilizing so many crevices, hidden rooms and tight spots to hide in and be stalked at that works quite well with the tension-building scenes. The talents involved are mostly alright with their acting roles, with Jonsson and Sevilla taking up a good streak of onscreen presence as our doomed couple who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, while the rest do away their best movie bad guy thug and silent axe murderer impressions. (As in talk mean, look mean and act mean)

There's not really a lot more to say about this movie. Sweet Home (2015) is foreign B-flick horror in its purest form, and, yes, the story could have done more to raise itself from being a mediocre run of horror and thriller trappings, but for what it is offering right now, it couldn't have done worse. Way worse. 

Bodycount:

1 elderly female slips in a bath tub

1 elderly male found murdered, cause unknown

1 male topples down a flight of stairs, killed

1 male repeatedly stabbed in the neck with a calligraphy pen

1 male dismembered with an axe

1 male had his head crushed with a thrown elevator motor 

1 male gets a cable tie tightened around his neck, axed on the head

Total: 7

The Dark Minstrel Strikes!: Tuno Negro (2001)

Tuno Negro (Black Serenade) (Spain, 2001)
Rating: ***

Starring: Silke, Jorge Sanz, Fele Martínez

In this Spanish jab at an early 2000s teen slasher, music and murder goes hand in hand as a mythical slayer known as the Dark Minstrel is killing students at one Salamanca University, wherein campus boys occasionally dress up and perform as minstrels as a sort of tradition. Architecture freshman Alex (Silke) gets intertwined with the killings when she appears to have spoken with the Dark Minstrel themselves via dial-up age chatroom, hinting to her that someone will die in their gown later that night.

True enough, a newlywed bride had her brains beaten out with a mandolin before getting daggered to death and a few of Alex's coed acquaintances just happen to be performing that night as minstrels for the wedding, among other sultry businesses. As more students starts biting the big one and many of them being Alex's friends, she soon tries to figure out the motive behind these killings which may be linked to a 16th century legend about a group of poor minstrels who sang for money in order to pay for their schooling, only to be stricken troubled and murderous when wealthier scholars decided to be minstrels just for fun, basically taking away their livelihood.

All the while, a pair of inspectors are also looking into the recent murders, one of whom going by Victor (Fele Martínez) obsessing over uncovering the identity of the Dark Minstrel and has fallen in love with Alex, tangling himself into a love triangle with campus minstrel Eduardo (Jorge Sanz) who also has the hots for her. As the semester draws near its end, will the Dark Minstrel be stopped? Or will the cloaked-and-masked slayer succeed in ridding the campus of its undergrads?

For a decent bulk of the story, Tuno Negro can be a rather fun and engaging mystery that hams itself up with its attempts to sound serious and sophisticated talking about criminology and old century art and traditions. It boasts some fair stalk-and-chase scenes and murder set-pieces, a few including a claustrophobic murder inside a girl's bathroom's stall and a race against time with our leads trying to find a stalked friend using the killer's live footage feed, and I simply love the design of our killer minstrel and the concept of the legend their murders are centered on. 

On the cheesier side, there are some comic moments that had me smiling like a corpse dissection with gross results and one drug-dealing hippie guy (who looks like stretched-up Tom Savini, way too old to be a "college student") getting a handful of ass from the last lady he should be doing it to, and too his demise that somehow involves early CG blood serpents for reasons. In fact, Tuno Negro used a good bunch of these early day computerized transition cuts and visual effects, all of which I can say definitely didn't age well and can be a bit awkward to look at.

The fact that a lot of the characters surrounding Alex's clique are just annoying and most of the deaths felt relatively tame does hold me back from from enjoying this film any more, sadly, though none of them have the same mildly-frustrating sourness as this movie's finale; after all of that sleuthing, slashing and one softcore lovemaking, the payoff didn't feel satisfactory as the reveal to our Dark Minstrel's identity hardly made sense and why this killer managed to escape is just groan-worthy. Ignorance kills is a quote passed around more than once in the entire story, but they're definitely ignoring one to two plot points and loose ends in need of addressing and tying up before the film simply open-ends abruptly. I can't hate this final act completely as it still has a good dose of workable craziness, such as one of the inspectors going trigger happy on any dude in a minstrel suit because of a hunch he has of multiple Dark Minstrels working around the murders. (Even though you can clearly tell these minstrel boys are just running for their lives coz, I dunno, the fucking cathedral was set on fire?!) 

Tuno Negro (2001) is undoubtedly far off from being anywhere as smart or fun as the likes of Scream (1996) or Urban Legends (1998), but I'm not taking it against the movie and the people behind it for trying. It's understandably obscure, though if you see yourself as the easily forgiving type and you just happen to come across a copy of this film, feel free to ty it out.

Bodycount:

1 female stabbed to death with a pair of dressmaker shears

1 female stabbed to death with a dagger

2 males and 1 female found slaughtered

1 male had his throat cut with a dagger

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger

1 female set on fire

1 male found murdered with a throat cut

1 female hanged

1 male set on fire

1 male shot

2 males shot

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger

1 male seen caught on fire

3 males shot

Total: 19

I Want Some Bloody Drama: Framed (2017)

Framed (Spain, 2017)

Rating: **

Starring: Daniel Horvath, Àlex Maruny, Enric Auquer 

A new streaming platform called Framed is sweeping the globe in popularity for its supposed easy accessibility, thus it isn't surprising that it has a dark side as those with much more ill intent can use it to stream their sick deeds such as live porn, terrorist acts and axe murders over the internet with ease. (Oh, and some guy eating his own shit. No, really)

Somewhere in Spain is a group of teenagers gathered to celebrate a friend's final night with them before they go working abroad. What these youngsters weren't prepared for, however, is getting their night turned against them as three psychos break into the house to play a cruel game of cat-and-mouse, ending in torture and death just for the thrills of the psychos' audience via Framed.

With this, Framed is practically another one of those cautionary horror flicks warning us about the dangers of viral fame and social media, satirizing one's shallow need to get attention through likes, faves and viewership, even if it meant being famous for infamy. It's a tale told dozens of times and over, though this movie tries to sweet talk us with a torture porn-cum-home invasion approach that, frankly, just feels like a gorier take of Michael Haneke's superior Funny Games. (Both 1997 and 2007 version, they're pretty much the same movie) It's not really gonna win much for originality and perhaps it's the matter that I've seen enough home invasion flicks that Framed's take on a brutal torture show feels overly stagnated for me, although I will commend the countless times this movie subverted my expectations, as well as a few inventive torture set-pieces.

 

The dark humor in the writing does bring out the mean spirited tone of the story, especially when it comes to scripting the leading villain (who's simply credited as Invasor 1) who comes across like a social media-obsessed mix of Patrick Bateman from the American Psycho franchise and Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of The Carribean film series. In fact, he's probably one of the movie's stronger elements, as actor Àlex Maruny really went all out swagging a threatening, controlling, unhinged yet flamboyant slasher with a vision for the carnage he is inflicting. 

Tally in an impressive looking production quality despite the supposed minuscule budget, leading to gore effects reaching top-notch visceral carnage and some so-so editing, and you still got this watchable, empathetic and very draining horror film that may not dent the face of a movie sub-genre, but you got to hand it some notice for its effort. Not my tall glass of social media horror satire, but I'm sure there's an audience for Framed out there 

Bodycount:

1 female taken, presumably killed

1 male brained to death with a baseball bat

1 male seen having his eyes gouged (clip)

1 victim beaten to death with a retractable club (clip)

1 dog stomped to death

1 male had his neck bitten open

1 male hacked on the neck with an axe

1 female eviscerated with a buzzsaw

1 female eviscerated with a buzzsaw 

1 male stabbed on the chest with a machete

1 male shot 

1 female shot dead

1 male knifed to death

Total: 13

This Madness In Your Head!: Deadly Manor (1990)

Deadly Manor (United States/Spain, 1990)

Rating: **

Starring: Clark Tufts, Greg Rhodes

There's a lot of things in life that test my patience: Noon traffic. Dumb, impatient customers at work. Slasher movies that take an hour before any action gets going. Like, really get going...

Enroute to a lake for the weekend, six teenagers on a rowdy ride through the backwoods county find themselves lost after, much to their frustrated discourse, they've been reading the map wrong. A hitchhiker they pick up along the way confirms that they are indeed off track as he knows the lake they're looking for, however mother nature and lady luck have different plans for them as before they can drive to the right direction, a heavy rainstorm suddenly sets in. 

Luckily for them, there happens to be a remote manor nearby that appears to abandoned, but borderline-supernatural spookiness are abound as one of the kids senses something evil living in the there and the mansion's décor (including coffins in the basement, human body parts in pickle jars, and a photo album filled with pictures of naked corpses) doesn't help say otherwise. (All it needs is Uncle Fester Addams and viola~!) Still, most of the group opted to camp in the mansion for the night, with the only one gal opposing to the idea of sleeping next to pickled scalps hiking back to the road, just for her to get caught by someone swiftly ending her with an offscreen throat cut. 

Eventually (and I use this word questionably), the group is hunted down by an assailant donning leather gloves who is a real stinge when it comes to creativity as most of their kills are offscreen throat slits and knife stabbings. A real disappointing payoff after all that padding this movie did to get this far...

Released in the early 90s when the slasher golden age were thought to be done and out, Deadly Manor (1990) looks to be aiming to better itself from being just another backwoods bodycounter by scaling up is sleazy and gothic imagery as much as it could, evident from the use of creaky old candle-lit murder mansion and random sex scenes that may or may not have happened. The film, however, succeeds instead on hobbling down as an oddity of unprecedented cheesiness and cliched horror movie dumbness as characters spit out ridiculously hammy lines and do every textbook example of what not to do in a horror film unless you are really asking to be knifed down by a porcelain mask-wearing nutbag. 

Now, I have no problem loving a bad slasher, particularly the cheesy kinds like Slaughter High (1986) and Jason X (2001), but what these movies have that Deadly Manor (1990) lacks is momentum, making us sit through an hour worth of characters just being dumb and cheekily written for the sake of building dreary tension that doesn't work quite well. Granted they throw in a red herring about the hitchhiker having a shady past for effort's sake, but most of us can tell that this is an old throwaway that gets resolved rather unceremoniously. Thankfully, the last act rally up decently with the villain giving out deranged monologues for both exposition and tongue-n-cheek reasons, as well as cashing in a last minute bloody kill. And, what the hell, why not have the final girl join in the fun and have her try talking some psycho-babble sense into the knife-happy slasher, too? That always work out, right? (Sarcasm)

While Deadly Manor (1990) sought to be an atmospheric and dark psycho-thriller, its undeniable that its overall badness dropped it more than a notch down to shlocky slasher shenanigans. Then again, it has a solid motive behind the killer's insanity and resulting massacre, albeit a challenge to sit and wait for. I guess that makes the film watchable on a level so its not a total lost. Probably a fair viewing for those with the patience of a god.

Bodycount:
1 male and 1 female seen slaughtered
1 female had her throat cut offscreen
1 male knifed to death
1 female had her throat slashed with a knife
1 male found with his throat slashed
1 male knifed to death
1 male had his throat slashed with a knife
1 male shot dead
Total: 9

I Want Your Baby. US Edition: Inside (2016)

Inside (Spain/US, 2016 remake)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Rachel Nichols, Laura Harring, Stany Coppet

To this day, filmmakers Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s 2007 extreme French horror À l’intérieur (or in English, "Inside") remains as one of my key slasher titles whenever I need a good scare and/or a sick sense of shocking entertainment. Its concept- a home invasion slasher centered on a pregnant woman and a baby stealing psycho- is as unsettling as the movie's use of over the top gore and a rather bleak conclusion, so I find the idea of remaking Inside kinda unnecessary as there's no possible way this film can be topped as an exploitative powerhouse. But, as you can see, Kidnapped (2010)'s director Miguel Ángel Vivas found a way to reboot this Euro horror cult classic and the results, though more commercial, honestly still delivered some solid thrills.

On her third trimester of pregnancy and still grieving over the death of her husband, Sarah (Rachel Nichols) decides to spend her Christmas Eve alone despite open invitations from family and friends to spend some time with them. Not long after, a woman (Laura Harring) comes knocking at her door asking for help with a broken car and it soon becomes clear that there's more to this stranger when she suddenly calls Sarah by her name. Police were called and, like most creeper scenarios, no woman was found by the time they get there, but they did promise to have someone patrol the area later that evening just in case.

Somewhat assured of her safety, Sarah eventually hits the hay, not knowing that the woman will return soon enough and find a way into the house, with a clear intention to steal the soon-mother's baby at all cost. What then follows is a cat-and-mouse situation between not only these two women, but also those unfortunate enough to get between them.

While the original Inside appears to build around a concept of nihilism and shock with its gloomy atmosphere, bitter protagonist and, again, generous supply of splatter, Inside (2016) has a quieter, simpler and somewhat more realistic stroll around the story, even when the carnage begins and is in play. A good deal of this could have something to do with the film's direction and writing, as the story actually took its time to flesh out the setting and situation, showing its lead struggling with her loss and attempting to voice out her concerns as a single parent within her loved ones and friends. The film even dedicated a few moments in the opening to show Sarah happily interacting with her husband before his demise a few scenes later, an approach that not only provided further context behind our lead's grieving, but made her more human and accessible to feel sympathetic for once trouble found her.

In turn, the horror elements of Inside (2016) has a calm yet intense approach that strongly focuses on tone and atmosphere instead of disturbing body horror and a messily high kill count. This can be easily seen on how the movie portrayed its villainess, an unnamed woman with a look and aura of normalcy around her despite hiding a sinister and methodic secret. Laura Harring plays this antagonist effectively with a chill, managing to create quite a disturbing character that doesn't need to overly mutilate her victims and paint the entire house red to be scary, but through sheer dedication to her goal and simple gestures such as holding up a picture of a victim's loved one over their face while slowly killing them.

This meant that (save for one victim) the gore and blood work of Inside (2016) are relatively simple. Far from being tame but harking back to the quick and easy killing styles of late 70s and early 80s slasher flicks, with a lot of stalking scenes and home invasion survival horror, many of which are effectively shot and structured around Sarah's disability to hear (caused by the car crash) and, of course, her vulnerability from carrying her child. Both weaknesses even found their way to stylize the scares and thrills together by deafening some moments to nothing but the sound of heartbeats, Sarah's and/or her child's, emotionally reaching out to us to feel what they feel. Sometimes these styles and directions work, sometimes they don't, but I can honestly say that Inside (2016) would have made it pretty far as a decent remake and a movie of its own, if it wasn't for its last third act.

While the first hour of Inside (2016) follows the plot of the original with only a few tweaks here and there, the remaining 20 to 30 minute run rails off the track and went on with its own pace and plotting, something that would have been fine with me if it didn't felt like re-hashed scenes from countless slasher tropes, from entering a spooky house (which is obviously the killer's hideaway) to look for help, to hiding inside closets where you know the psycho will most likely wise up to and attack our heroine at. None of these, however, measure to the odd conclusion director Vivas went with, making our villainess curveball to a more "honorable" type despite all the cruelty and lives she took, doing the finale away with chock full of symbolism, orchestral score and stylish visual works. I admit it's in tone with the rest of the movie, but the routine slasher scares barely made an impact and that heartwarming and sympathetic twist on the killer felt a tad too forced.

In my eyes, nothing will top the wild, artsy, no-holding-back exploitation Inside (2007) assaulted our senses with, but it is nice to see a more comfortable variation of this film in the form of Inside (2016), especially since there's more hits than misses. With its style and twists mostly deviated from its source material, this remake might as well be a film of its own and it strongly deserves to be seen as one. See it!

Bodycount:
1 male killed in car crash
1 dog killed offcamera
1 female gets a glass shard to the neck, bled to death
1 male stabbed on the back with a knife, smothered
1 male had his throat slashed with a knife
1 female shot on the eye
1 male repeatedly stabbed with a peeler, throat punctured with a pair of scissors
1 female drowned inside an enclosed pool
Total: 9

Cheese Without a Face: Faceless (1987)

Faceless (Les Predateurs De La Nuit) (France/Spain, 1987)
Rating: ***
Starring: Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie, Telly Savalas

Singling this movie out as a slasher is only a portion of the truth. Should you add medical thriller, mad science, sleazy exploitation, and whatever movie genre allows a detective to fight an uber-muscular yet comically-voiced bodybuilder, then you will have the near-perfect definition for this strange late 80s euro-horror.

Starting the film classy with a shot of the Eiffel tower at night and a very vocal fellow (Vincent Thoma) mellowing our ears with the movie's own theme song, we soon follow Dr. Frank Flammand escorting his sister Ingrid and his assistant Natalie around the city as they have whatever fun rich and successful plastic surgeons can think of. Their evening was soon interrupted when one of Frank's former patients caught them off guard and tried to melt the doctor's face with acid in revenge for botching up her face. Fortunately for Frank, the vengeful patient misses when his sister pushed him away. But for Ingrid, however, she received the acid attack instead, severely burning her face.

Years passed and both Frank and Natalie are finding ways to repair Ingrid's face, most (if not all) of which involves kidnapping beautiful and fair-skinned women in hopes of placing one of their faces to Ingrid's. Why it never dawned on these two that some people will recognize the face they'll be stealing should their project be a success and get themselves in a bigger mess, I have no clue, but they seem to be sticking with this plan as they proceed to add another captive, an attractive fashion model for a new one-of-a-kind watch.

With the model's father rightfully concerned about his daughter's sudden disappearance, in comes private detective Sam Morgan snooping around in Paris and trailing whatever leads he can get. All the while, Frank, realizing he needs a professional's help, asks former Nazi doctor Orloff for assistance, a requests the surgeon is happy to accept as he sees it as an opportunity to hone his mad science talent yet again.

So now we got the mad science part. Where do the slasher bits come in, you say? Welp, just to cater for us blood junkies and gorehounds, Faceless also packs a fair amount of chunky bloodletting on behalf of Natalie and a mute (and sexually frustrated) brute named Gordon whose job is simply eliminate any living leftovers from the doctors' surgeries, as well as those who got too close on discovering their little secret. Truth be told, out of all the murders here, only one felt legitimately in tune with a slasher flick's with a nice chase scene and a power tool-wielding Gordon, while the rest were more or less just extra bloody and grandeur killings you can pull off for a crime thriller. This being said, while I am pretty impressed by the splatterific gore effects here, I cannot help but think that the dead women in this movie aren't the only ones missing their identity.

Basically, Faceless is every B-grade horror and exploitation flicks rolled into one since there's a little bit of something for everybody, such as the likes of unapologetic sleaze scenes, bloody murders, crazy Nazi science, and cheesy action sequences just to name a few. And like most hodge-podged stories, the tone is, unsurprisingly, shifty as it ranges mostly from being unintentionally (or maybe, intentionally) hilarious to just plain gross and uncomfortable, bringing nothing more to the table than some really bad writing in both the sense of scripting and plotting, but saved by the grace of just having the right amount of cheese, some fun (albeit oddly acted) characters and an EC comic- style take on horror and macabre. The pacing is relatively easy to follow too, and rarely boring as something interesting and/or cheesy is always going on, so while it's not a good movie, per se, Faceless has the charm of a really bad midnight picture that only a 70s sleaze-meister like its director, Jess Franco, can provide.

Obviously not gonna be everyone's kind of biscuit, this cult fave euro-horror is mostly enjoyable as a popcorn flick for the no-brainers and tongue-in-cheekers, and I wouldn't want it anymore than that! Some people might want to look elsewhere should they want a stronger mystery or less exploitative "detective story", but for the rest of us horror fans who just wanna have fun, there's nothing Faceless cannot provide!

Bodycount:
1 female hacked with a machete
1 female body seen
1 female injected with a syringe full of chemical into an eye
1 female decapitated with a chainsaw
1 male stabbed through the throat with a pair of scissors
1 female powerdrilled through the head
1 female had her face flayed off, presumably killed
1 male had his head pushed into a hanger hook, impaled
Total: 8
(Note: due to the nature of the ending, I decided not include 2 possible additional victims)

It Was All A Joke: Los Inocentes (2013)

Los Inocentes (Spain, 2013) (AKA "The Innocent", "Bloody April Fools")
Rating: ****
Starring: Joan Amargós, Enric Auquer, Àlex Batllori

An hour and some minutes of down-to-basic slasher goodness from Spain? Oh my, I think Christmas just came early for me!

A collaborative effort of 12 directors (!), Los Inocentes (2013) tells the average slasher tale of nine teens getting lost in the road one El día de los Inocentes night (which is like April Fools day in Spain, celebrated it in late-Decembers), only to find refuge in an abandoned brothel and plan on spending the night there to party, drink and getting some old-fashioned premarital sex.

Unknown to them, however, the brothel was the site of a prank-gone-wrong 15 years ago, wherein a young man was scorched to death. Now, it appears someone -or something- doesn't want the teens there, promising death to all of them in the grisliest and far-fetched manner.

If you know your slasher movies then you'll know Los Inocentes did a lot of things right as a bodycounter, ticking down the clichés and twisting it enough to create something out of the ordinary once in awhile. I guess you can say that the movie is a bit of the old and the new together, paying good tributes to classic slashers like The Burning, Friday the 13th and Slaughter High without the need of name-dropping or purposely copying scenes from these films for the sake of a "tribute". Instead, Inocentes felt like a familiar story, running through the slasher trappings from the silent killer's POV shots to the ole' sex-means-death trope, told in a way that is refreshing and energetic, choosing the right moments and directions to keep it shocking and dark when the moment calls for it.

This is quite evident with the wildly varying kills awaiting our hapless teens, including nailgun shootings and gasoline burnings, as well as really strange ones like bee attacks and death by laughing gas. These murders are done away with a good mix of CG and practical effects, a welcome effort made better with the movie's devilish side of dark humor and some good build-up for a couple of these deaths.

The killer committing these murders also gets played around as we never catch a glimpse of them until the twist reveal, resulting to a good bulk of the murders either being set-up as traps or were just too fantastic to be committed by a mere mortal. This isn't to say that the film heavily implies the supernatural, but there are a few that uses nightmare logic (or no logic at all) to snuff out the victims, thus making the reveal at the end quite a surprise in a way only a lovable B-flick can.

With only a running time of 65 minutes, Los Inocentes (2013) breezes through the plot with a fast pace, luscious camera work and a few likable (if not just tolerable) set of good-looking teens. Finding flaws among the mountainous amount of goodness this slasher have proves to be a rather difficult task, but I do have mixed feelings on how open-and-shut the ending was, with it being way too easy of a conclusion after all of that. Of course, this coming from a movie where one boy gets killed by a swarm of bees coming out of a car's air conditioner, the ending still fits with enough mean-spirited tone to be acceptable nonetheless.

More of the good and almost none of the bad, I'm proud to say that Los Inocentes (2013) is well-worth the video hunt for all of you slasher and horror fanatics out there! Gory fun to watch, easy on the brain, all the makings of a fun popcorn throwback slasher! Seek it and keep it!

Bodycount:
1 male scorched to death inside a boiler room
1 female bitten by a snake, hit by an incoming bus
1 male shot on the eye with a nailgun
1 female slips and cracked her skull against the floor, fingered on the brain
1 male stung to death by bees, beheaded
1 male doused in gasoline and set ablaze
1 male and 1 female suffocates on laughing gas
1 male shot to death
1 male shot with a hunting rifle
1 female shot
Total: 11

The Woods will be Painted Red: Paintball (2009)

Paintball (Spain, 2009)

Rating: ***

Starring:  Brendan Mackey, Jennifer Matter, Patrick Regis

Feeling the need for adrenaline?  To feel alive after countless hours of working behind the desk? Why not get away from it all and experience the ultimate paintball weekend at an exclusive backwoods to get that rush of life? 

 Eight young workaholics signed up specifically for this and find themselves not only bagged and driven to a secluded mountainous forest but also under the mercy of not a rival team and instead, a real sharpshooter aiming to end them all one by one. What was a supposed weekend of fun and friendly competition turns into a deadly struggle for survival as these victims must learn to show their teeth and live through a predicament where you have to kill or be killed.

As a plot, there really isn’t much going on for Paintball; while the sport isn’t exactly new to tackle for slasher movies with 1987’s Masterblaster having a maniac killing participants during a paintball match and 1986’s The Zero Boys having it as a backdrop for its characters’ survivalist nature, Paintball is a sort of amalgamation of these two films. 

Exploiting some basic bodycounter flick clichés like hiding the killer behind POV shots or vaunting nasty kills that some might find either ingenious or cheated (half- if not all- of the best murders were done through the grey-scale infrared vision of the murderer), all the while showing the lengths our characters would go to survive from leaving teammates for dead to first-hand murder, the story is quite easy to follow once you understand the structure.

There were still some flaws to get by, however; since there wasn’t any form of appeal found to alleviate our victims, they're just as whiny, trying, or even cruel as any standard horror flick cast. Usually for these kinds of cases, the killer would have been our bet and, to be fair, he came in pretty close; we never get to find out much about him except that he is brutally imaginative with his killings, making use of whatever resources he can grab hold to kill somebody in the least likely way. (Remember how Michael Myers used a shotgun to impale a victim in Halloween IV? The killer here did something similar, only more work and in grey-scale heat vision.)

In an attempt to add more mythos on this killer as well as on the ordeal our death toll-to-be are going through, there’s also an added element of people paying good cash to see all of this happen in real life. It’s a twist similar to Hostel's or My Little Eye's only they don’t appear anywhere as menacing or intriguing; they’re simply just there, well-dressed with their pockets fat enough to plot all of this, though the only contribution we get to see from them was that they instruct (or rather instructed) the killer on his targets and that they did a little scavenger hunt for the victims in an attempt to give them a little bit of advantage. Out of the ordinary? Yes. Original? Not much. Shallow actually.

It may sound like Paintball have a lot of defects but I can assure you that this doesn’t chip the film that greatly; as I mentioned, it is still quite easy to follow and the little attempts to add some intrigue to the story is admirable despite not working all throughout. The production quality is crisp, the steady pacing helped build some tension around a few moments (though it can get a tad sluggish), gore and make-up effects from CG to practical is sick in a good way, and the film wraps itself up quite nicely in the end. 

If you’re the kind of bodycounter who disregards characters and story just for the kills, then Paintball will do nicely for your viewing pleasure. A basic slasher accompanied with lead heavy action, it's just the kind of horror cheapie you can enjoy with a side of chips and cola.

Bodycount:
1 female shot on the head
1 body found burnt against an electric fence
1 male snared then dropped unto an erected rifle, impaled
1 female stabbed on the gut with a machete
1 female shot dead with an automated rifle
1 male stabbed to death with a machete
1 female fell into a spiked pit
1 male had his face smashed in via rifle butting
1 male had his neck slashed with a hunting knife, later had paint mines decimated against his belly
1 male killed offcamera
1 male impaled through a branch
Total: 11

A Killer Paradox: Timecrimes (2007)

Timecrimes (Los Cronoscrimenes) (Spain, 2007)
Rating: ****
Starring: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga

I may not be a big scifi fan, but I am willing to try a few titles so long they're well worth to sit through and it doesn't get too confusing with its many plot twists and scifi babble to the point I'm lost and snoozing on a theater seat. Or a couch.

Now, if said movie mixed in some mad slasher antics, however, I can guarantee that it will have me baited but still keeping an open mind as pulling off a scifi horror hybrid that revolves around a trope-filled subgenre such as a slasher can be tricky; while many easily did this by exchanging fleshy humans for robots (HARDWARE (1990) and Chopping Mall (1986)) and aliens (Alien (1979), Without Warning (1980) and Almost Human (2012)) for killers, or lazily chucking slasher anti-heroes into a scifi setting (Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996) and Jason X (2001)), sometimes we have people like director Nacho Vigalondo trying a more grounded scientific exploit, which is the major plot point of this ingenious thriller.

Hector is a bored husband who's moving in with his wife to a new home comfortably tucked near the woods. After being spooked by a silent phone call, he decided to pass the time by testing out his binoculars, spotting a radio tower and a girl who's currently stripping. Obviously thinking this is beyond ordinary, his curiosity leads him into the woods, looking for the nude girl but only to find her passed out against a rock and that he is not alone when a man with pink bandages covering his head stabs him with a pair of scissors. After a chase through the woods, Hector sees salvation in the form of the radio tower he spotted earlier and upon approaching, a voice from the building helps him get in and instructs our hunted man to hide from the killer inside a large container filled with white liquid.

When he re-emerges, Hector finds himself exactly an hour earlier from the events involving the bandaged man, spotting his earlier counterpart and learning through the young scientist working in the radio tower that the container he hid in is actually an experimental time machine. Despite the man protesting Hector to stay put and let the events play itself, Hector nonetheless ventures out of the lab and will soon figure out the consequences of damaging the loop of time.

Timecrimes (2007) is a swell flick that makes you think on how one same event will play out through different vantage points of the very same person and how desperate a situation can get considering it is something beyond our control. It craftily plays with this idea and despite it's lack of any real depth or meaning, it is surprisingly entertaining nevertheless.

Plot holes are, not surprisingly, present but what makes this thriller a bit different from your other time travel movies is that it dwells into the darker realm of the fictional science theme, tackling the subject of sacrifice and devolution of one's personality whenever the scenario comes to play, quite an extravagant theme that could overlook any flaws in the story without being all too complicated itself.

Told true, the limited settings and characters make this story simple yet intriguing; the movie is vehicled by Karra Eljade's workable role as Hector, an average man plunge in a not-so average situation that, albeit being a person that's not too likable, you do get to feel for his plight as he tries to piece things together. There are other casts (including the director himself as the young scientist who does his best to help his estranged subject) and these good folks play their respective roles strongly enough, but are slightly overshadowed due to the film's focus on Hector. The "slasher" aspect of the film, interestingly, wanes the further the plot goes, beginning in full force before completely disappearing as the later parts become a situation/character study.

Timecrimes (2007) is a scifi film that is accessible in its lack of over-complicated twists, yet promising every possible small detail will hide a higher purpose. It's the best of both worlds and it's often hard to come by of such a film that perfectly balances itself. May you be a horror fan, a scifi geek or a plain movie lover, this thriller definitely offers an excellent viewing.

Bodycount:
1 female pulled off from a roof, fell to her death.
Total: 1