Review: A Little Bit Zombie (2012)

A Little Bit Zombie Review

Year: 2012

Stars: Kristopher Turner, Crystal Lowe and Shawn Roberts
Directed: Casey Walker
Running Time: 88mins

A zombie movie yet again! Well see if anything sets this one aside from the plethora of other titles that come out on a monthly basis. A little bit zombie is a blast, from the get go there is silly action. If any of you are zombie movie veterans you’ll recognise the starting actor Stephen McHattie from the zombie film Pontypool.

In there he played a radio DJ still broadcasting even when everything’s going to shit a good film I may review one day.
Right so we start off with some kick ass action that’s all a bit tongue in cheek, interspersed with scenes from a mosquito’s point of view. I already liked this movie when it didn’t particularly take itself seriously.
That’s right folks a tongue in cheek zombie movie. So I watched on to see where this film went and if it lived up to the cool beginnings.

So after the initial shoot fest we join the mosquito as he careens away obviously not very well. He proceeds to smash into the windscreen of our main protagonist’s car much to the disgust of his future wife to be.

The four of them in there, two asleep on the back seat are not well known actors. Aside from small Canadian/American TV parts and bit parts in b- to mainstream movies. Our main hero so to say is obviously not feeling the wedding vibe his bride to be is placing on him.
She is obviously a person who likes to be in control and set everything out with an outlined plan as we learn. She also likes to place blame elsewhere and make things seem a bigger deal than they are, I know what you’re thinking most women hey!
I’m joking; in a movie like this you’re obviously thinking typical zombie fodder.
Our main guy is obviously a guy who shy’s away from confrontation and likes to see the best in every situation, like most down trodden guys.
The sister and the friend/husband in the back wake up she’s one of those unimpressed moan a lot people, he’s a laid back doesn’t care kind of guy. So that’s the foursome we have for this movie, a pretty typical line up for both a comedy and a horror I would say.
Oh and to cap it all off they are going to stay in a cabin/cottage in the woods and gasp! The zombie mosquito isn’t dead. He proceeds to try to get into the cottage anyway he can while as a horror movie staple the laid back guy wants to get pissed the prissy girl doesn’t.
In fact she has the four of them making wedding favours! This movie really made me laugh for most part and even had some innovative ideas.

The movie in the most continues like this for a few minutes with them arguing over things wedding themed the boyfriend trying to diffuse them until. Our main guy gets bitten by the mosquito, again and again as he tries to kill it.

He starts feeling a bit odd almost right away, cut to the Zombie hunters and he orbs telling her there’s something wrong, of course the guy is one of those I’m so awesome people that he just brushes it under the rug.
We then have a weird dream sequence that’s just so funny it had me in stitches brains is the order of the day it seems.
We follow our hero as he transitions from human to zombie losing his pulse all with comedic consequences such as food not agreeing with him properly anymore, which he covers his bride to be in an absolute torrent of spew.
We find out he could be resistant to the zombie virus this is about the only serious storyline in the film which even a comedy like this needs to make it trundle along at a nice pace.
Anyway that’s that for the movie watch it yourselves to see how the rest goes as I’m not going into to many spoilers just believe me when I say you could do worse.

I’m not sure how far nearly 2 million Canadian dollars will stretch in movie land but it’s obviously done itself proud in this film some pretty decent effects and make up. Like the silly ball they use to tell them about the zombies, its bad but because it’s a funny film it just works.

Some of the effects are run of mill but it’s not bad run of mill, as in you’ve seen it before but it works so why change it.

Suggesting this to other people?

I’d say yes give it go, I’m pretty sure most people will appreciate it’s tongue firmly planted in cheek style while trying to be as serious as it can. As in straight faces in the most comedic of scenes it really is one of them films. Then there will the people who either don’t get it or just don’t like it because it comedy and they wanted to watch the end of the world.

I say fat luck to them watch this if you want a very enjoyable hour and half to be passed I know I had a laugh watching it.
So try out A Little Bit Zombie it’s definitely worth it just for the laughs and well deserves the 3 stars I’m awarding it for freshness and comedy in a zombie film, not something you see a lot of these days unfortunately.

Night of the Living Dead Re-Animation 3D Review

Night of the Living Dead Re-Animation 3D Review

Year: 2012

Stars: Andrew Divoff, Jeffrey Combs and Sarah Lieving

Directed: Jeff Broadstreet

Running Time: 84mins approx.

 

 

 

With no budget information to go on I can’t draw an amazing contrast to other low budget films, suffice to say this is filmed in 3D!

So I’m guessing the budget wasn’t amazingly tiny, also to cast 2 B-movie standards in there such as Divoff and Combs. These arent just bit parts either they are pretty much the main stars of the film. Divoff known (hopefully at least) for the wish master films, and Combs for Re-animators and a bunch of other TV and Lovecraftian parts.
Those popping up in this film surprised me and pleased me no end. The rest of the cast are minor apart from Sarah Lieving, who has had bit parts in some fairly mainstream films and lots of other B-movies.
Jeff Broadstreet does not have much under his belt either he is writer, director and producer of the film. He’s made a few other B-movies in there most noteworthy is American Grindhouse and possibly this films predecessor? Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006)

So we start off with Divoff he plays a mortuary owner Mr Gerald Tovar who seems quite a shady character from the offset and not afraid to kill a zombie or even a human. Which we also see not minutes into the film. We also learn a little later he has an aversion to fire so hates cremations.

Divoff’s acting is a little iffy to say the least not his best work. Just his lines seem a bit poorly delivered or delayed too much like he’s trying to build tension or be serious for me it just didn’t work.

Back to the initial zombie encounter, some reasonably good zombie make up says they tried to make an effort. Unfortunately the beheading of said zombie though only briefly flashed is a little poor CGI work, seen worse but it’s noticeable even with the small flash. The CGI makes me laugh in this film as its strangely mostly used to create CGI flies that accompany many of the rotting dead.
Sarah Lieving Pops up as Christie a woman seeking a job around now, she gets started as an apprentice and then shown around. Her acting is actually good and overshadows Divoff’s role when they first meet with better delivery and timing I feel.

So she’s introduced to Dye-Ann another apprentice and a bit of a gothic babe, we met her near the start of the film.

Then HURRAY! Jeffery Combs shows up, very briefly just pulling up to the Tovar and sons building.
Divoff a little later enters a room where he seems to wait for a dead person to arise then brains it with his favourite shovel.
Combs finally gets some lines here, he is introduced as Harold Tovar, Divoff’s brother he notices that Gerald’s padlocking the crematorium. It is so amusing to see these B-movie actors ham it up on the screen here trying to out act each other.
We get a sister Sara on the TV as well, who is a blatant rip off of Sara Palin, quite funny if you get the joke.

Even though some of the acting’s a little off and some effects are a little bad, there are some genuine good scenes in this film and I really quite enjoyed a lot of it which I will get to later in my review of this film.

Seems Harold is out of money and has come asking for some from Gerald threatening all the usual staples of a film like this. Even though they end up laughing about it Gerald’s got some ulterior motives inviting his younger sibling to supper.

You know one thing this movie shows is it doesn’t take a lot to do some decent zombie make up, like I said I don’t know the budget but I’m sure there have been some higher budget films with worse make up than this.

There quite a cool scene with Combs and Divoff at the Tovar house, Divoff tells Combs about the zombies and they have banter about the type’s slow movers sprinters etc. really made me smile Combs comes to the conclusion their Romero zombies.

It’s all a ploy though as Combs then goes about getting his brother on mental grounds, oh as you know how that will backfire later in the movie!
Back in the embalming room three high people are having a laugh when the new recruit gets a bit spaced out and has a trippy hallucination.
We also learn around this time how it’s all actually happened good old toxic waste! The meat and veg of zombie movies, chemical waste induced walkers is this just a homage to everything classically zombie or what?
Some fantastic references to night, dawn and day of the dead and the 1990 night as well as Combs rattles off dates and locations to *zombie cover ups* to his brother.
So because Divoff is afraid of the crematory oven, he was keeping the bodies in the crematory lock up where the waste was which he was also afraid to burn, which is how the corpses slowly come back to life. Of course this doesn’t happen when Divoff initially shows Combs.
Later in the movie after some good old fashioned zombie action in the mortuary, Divoff proves it to Combs that they come back after showing him their undead dad.

Anyway towards the end of the movie Divoff shows off a little crazy with the death of Combs character from a bite. He throws him into an already dug grave with a named headstone and buries him semi-alive.
The movie ends pretty much with a brilliant infinite shotgun moment of Gerald and Christie the only survivors shooting a crematorium full of zombies back to their rest.
There’s another little shock twist just before the end that as always I’ll leave you to discover yourself.

Yes this film had more ham than a bacon factory, and it wasn’t great by far but I loved it, it wasn’t bad at all but then again it wasn’t good either. If this didn’t have the B-movie greats in it, great make up or some top class references I think it would have been very poor all this was missing was a cameo from Bruce Campbell at some point.

Unfortunately it didn’t, though that doesn’t detract from the 3 star rating I’m giving it, I’m a hundred per cent sure that people will scoff at my high marking. Though seriously if you’re a zombie aficionado like me you’ll lap up the goodness this movie throws out in sweet little nuggets of gold I really enjoyed and recommend a viewing.

New Evil Dead 2013? Trailer

Not a brilliant copy folks looks like someone has taken a naughty video at somewhere showing a preview but well here it is for your enjoyment. Quite interested actually thought i would hate a remake of this.


Just copy and paste the link to your browser or click the link it'll take you to the video, Dailymotion seems to be having a problem at the moment so i cant link it straight to the blog :(

UPDATE:



OK! got you all a new trailer ok, dont know for how long for this time, a trailer of the Evil Dead 2013 Enjoy if you havent seen it yet!

UPDATE 2:

The Red Band Trailer for Evil Dead is Online! - ComingSoon.net

Official Red band trailer here at ComingSoon.net enjoy it looks good and i hate myself for saying that lol

Playback Review

Playback Review

 

Year: 2012

Stars: Christian Slater, Ambyr Childers and Toby Hemingway

Directed: Michael A. Nickles

Running Time:  98mins approx.

 

With a tiny budget of only 7.5 million that’s half the budget of screams 15million 16 years ago, this film which I can only really compare to Ringu or The Ring and that’s just lightly is a little bit of a mess. No means a bad film, just some unfortunate things that make it just a standard film using an idea that’s not been used often.

That is the cursed video tape angle, something I’m surprised not many other film makers have tried to cash in on. With that it makes this film pretty genuine, just too bad the other generic stuff places it in teen slasher flick territory.
Comparisons to The Ring? Well this entity or demon doesn’t manifest itself it takes over a person and turns them into a killing machine to achieve its ends.
Now with that budget they do manage to get some pretty decent twenty something teen actors, a few good effects and even Christian Slater!

Oh sorry did I make that out to be too much of a big deal? I apologise, poor Mr Slater how you have fallen.

I say decent acting because well it’s good for the budget they had, you get a lot of films with small budgets that get in any old person they think can to do a part, which if they’d looked a bit harder you’d find some pretty decent people who will work for peanuts like this film maker has (Christian Slater!). Which I can only give praise for.

So the film’s stars, I may have mentioned Christian Slater? So yeah he’s in here as a cop, perverted odd cop, brilliant part Christian! The rest of the cast is made up of reasonably unknowns soon to be re-used in TV series’ or other straight to video b-movies!

The film starts off with a little confusing for some, *real footage* bit of some naked chick (nakedness I’ll get to this later) getting the snot beaten out of her screaming about not hurting her baby, this is the *plot* of the film pretty much so I won’t say much as not to spoil it if you decide to give it a go.

Suffice to say we’re shown around with some of that terrible camera fuzziness I hated in asylum tapes, though slightly less in here. To some gruesome sights as we travel with the woman beater. Anyway this guy tries to put some weird soul into the baby when the cops show up and blah happens. This family is called the Diehl’s and this murder spree rocks the town.

Switch to some teens making a slasher flick based on what just happened! I think you can see where this film is going already no? Well I’ll carry on regardless.

So they’ve loaned the filming gear off some older kid (Quinn) a few of the other teens find a little creepy. Which I find justified as later when their giving the equipment back, he pulls up in a battered van, then proceeds to take a long deep inhale of some substance in a bag.
Off his tits he collects the gear and we learn he works for a news station the kid, Julian who is making the film asks if Quinn will search the archives for any info that might help him complete the film a bit better.

Quinn isn’t as big a deal at the news station as Julian believes he gets told off for loaning video equipment without permission when he gets it back, giving a suitable middle finger.

So after a few short scenes we see Quinn looking in on the girls changing room, yes there’s that nakedness again, that wouldn’t be an extra selling point to anyone there of course.
He gets a text message from Julian asking if he’s found any info huffing, as I’m sure anyone would he goes into the archives and starts scouting hey presto he finds some stuff on the murders that happened in the late 1990’s.

Which is when this should have been released and made it feels aged somehow like the teen slasher flacks of then scream etc., I know earlier I compared to ring but like I said it’s the ONLY comparison you can draw to this because of the influence of a haunted tape.

Anyway Quinn finds a tape a little later of the raw footage of the house which was being filmed just after the beginning of the film. Some weird shit happens as they bring a body out on a gurney, some fuzzy flicking of images etc.

The entity in the tape wants to find a host of the family to enter. Quinn re-watches and gets possessed by the entity in the film and passes out for a bit. We later see him pulling up to Christian Slater’s cop character Frank, who he gives a pen drive with video of the girl’s locker room on. Naughty little pervert cop!

The typical teen stuff happens in this film the party (not authorised by parents of course) Quinn comes seeming to be slowly getting taken over, and places a hidden camera in the girl’s room.

This video entity is know or at least something is known to the folks of the town a buried secret that come back to bite them.
Anyway Quinn gets increasingly taken over much to others misfortune as they start to end up dead now.
Enough film talk now we’re onto the meat and veg of the film after skirting the gravy the kills are fun not to imaginative and they have a pretty good effects due to some very decent cutting work you don’t quite catch a lot of it to scrutinise it.
Again brilliant work in conjunction to the modestly low budget, possibly due to teen naiveté throughout the film they don’t seem to notice Quinn becoming paler and even more weirder.
Quinn passes the curse to Brianna through a hidden camera he can also seem to control these possessed people like drones. Riley also gets kidnapped by Quinn around this time.

So the curse is confirmed a little a later as being very old as some footage shows a very old black and white film that where apparently everyone died on it after filming. That’s as much as I’ll spoil for you so I’ll just skip to my round up now as this review has been quite a long one!

Suffice to the possessed people go on killing rampages culminating in Christian Slater meeting an end at the hands of his fetish. Poor guy doesn’t even get a massive part in a low budget film like this!

Seems Julian is the baby from the beginning yes, didn’t see that one coming did we the old cliché of oh my god I’m making a movie that just so happens to be based on events that actually happened to me and I didn’t know!

Quinn finds out and kidnaps him where he takes him to the old Diehl house to transfer the curse right to him; Quinn is not looking good by this stage either a bit ill to say the least. So the curse needs to be passed on through family members to be able to survive.
Riley is able to escape then free Julian, why do these bad guys keep people around like that? You know she’s going to get free after some plot point takes you away from what you were doing for a few minutes.

So they run with Quinn in chase, Julian’s (now we know) foster mother also turns up, who was one of the cops on the scene of the original murders. She unfortunately gets blown away, drawing Julian out of hiding. Well that’d draw pretty much anyone who doesn’t really hate their parents out wouldn’t? I know clichéd but there it is.

Quinn and Julian exchange some fisticuffs with the occasional helping hand of Riley, unfortunately to no avail as he seeming is unstoppable and feels no pain duh!
Quinn almost succeeds in putting the evil in Julian twice more until a surprisingly un-blow away foster mum comes back. I won’t spoil it but I’ll just say the ending is your typical ending to these types of films.

Overall not a hugely bad film, just a bit out of its timeline for my liking which isn’t a bad thing really it just might not have any appeal to people who will watch this and go I know how this ends 15 minutes in like I did. Now 16 years ago when I was a spritely 14 year old first watching scream and I was wowed by it I may well have loved this as a follow up horror movie for another night as it stands now for my veteran mind I’ll give it a reasonably strong 3 stars and say stick it for your kids (teens at least please) for a sleep over or something they’ll enjoy it.

If you’re looking to pass 1hr 40mins yourself bung on you won’t be to disappointed. Peace out The Horror Nation fans!

 

 

 

The Asylum Tapes Review

The Asylum Tapes Review

 Year: 2012

Stars: Oliver Stone, Alexander Wraith and Sean Stone
Directed: Sean Stone
Running Time: 79mins approx.

 

 

Way hey another lost tape of some idiots who went into some where haunted and died/disappeared. So this "real footage" film was made for a low budget of just $3million. The film goes under another name of Greystone Park for some reason.
It starts of quite confusing; fuzzy images of torture in the asylum that flicker so badly you really want to skip past to the main feature.

I was surprised to see Oliver Stone in here on a table that’s intermittently put in-between flashes of the group getting ready to go to the asylum. Though he is the dad to the guy who wrote and stars in this. The table scenes are not real footage, though at least it feels like that as there’s no shaky cam.
Anyway they all tell ghost stories by candlelight with Oliver’s character telling of a mad Kate. As said this is in-between scenes of three of them getting ready.
All the actors in this movie use their real names possibly to enhance the feeling that these tapes are real.
Now that I’ll say there’s some pretty decent writing for most of the film and actually some reasonably standard acting for most of it too though this quickly degenerates when they start trying to act angry at each other and mad later on.
So they get to the asylum and it’s lit? I don’t know if this standard in America to keep derelict buildings semi lit?
Anyway some exploring ensues, this reminds of most of the TV programs we see that go explore haunted places, like most haunted. For the first part at least, there’s pictures being taken, stories being told like of a guy in a gas mask in chains that haunts the halls, a few little screams, and AN AMAZING ABUNDANCE of burnt dolls heads.

 

Anyway a little ways into the movie we start seeing little shadows in the corners of the film or some scary face in a window only flashes that the people there seemingly don’t notice. These little effects for the budget are pretty cool and some of the scares are cool. You can almost believe that the actors are genuinely scared up till this certain point.
The point where the film quickly goes down the toilet is when Alex disappears and they find him in a corner a few minutes later a little bonkers, not good acting at this point.
One thing that made me smile around this point is the Evil Dead sound effect they use. Then its immediately detracted because every major film transition they do is done by suddenly going very shaky cam, the camera cutting out and they will suddenly be somewhere different without an explanation other than one of them ran off.
That is about the only annoying bit in this film but it could put some off.

 

Later on in the film after a bunch more scares and some creepy exploring and others mental state degenerating. They are looking for a way out when they are jumped upon by some other friends who have been scaring them.
Almost right away scary shit starts happening again. We get another shaky cam transition it’s around this point everyone disappears from one scene to the next.
Sean and Antonela get separated from Alex and the other two new people, though they are quickly found with Alex trying to get them out of a locked room. They are brutally thrown around the room and killed, when they get in the room their bodies have mysteriously vanished.

 

The film now degenerates into each of the team vanishing with shaky fuzzy effects. First Alex, then Antonela after she locks Sean in a room.
While looking for Anton Sean finds a way outside though it’s just a veranda. As far as I can tell something snaps and he draws a knife given to him while their packing at the beginning and turns to face whatever is troubling him.
It turns out to be some apparition of the gas mask guy who seemingly beats him to death. The next scene we see Alex looking worse for wear come up to the camera which was placed on the ground Sean magically pops up to accusing Alex for all of it and that he’s covered in blood.

 

They both put this aside and go look for Antonela, they find her in the chapel seeming possessed with all devil worshiping shit around. Approaching her, she spins around and is suddenly the crazy Kate with grey hair and glowing green eyes.
The movie ends with a table scene and Sean strangely in a Stetson hat and overcoat in the basement of the asylum where he turns and walks off leaving his shadow on the wall.

 

This film for what it is isn’t all that bad there’s the bad stuff which I have outlined but there’s some pretty good writing and ok acting that stops this from getting too bad compared to a lot of other lost tape films out there.
Trust me by no means a good film but you could do worse if you can’t find anything else to occupy you for an hour and twenty minutes.
This film gets a strong 2 stars from me because of the decent way its wrote and directed, no surprise with a daddy like Oliver Stone helping out.

Review: The Possession (2012)

The Possession Review

Year: 2012
Stars: Natasha Calis, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick
Directed: Sam Raimi
Running Time: 86 Mins Approx.

Sam Raimi brings us a *based on a true story* film well it is loosely based and I’ll get to that a bit later. What can I say I’m a Raimi fan always have been and probably always will be, from evil dead to Spiderman and even this. This film bears a few Raimi hallmarks from the get go such as the bone crunching stiffness possessed characters have to the flopping around and floating.

Now based on a true story, from what I can find it’s a little sketchy some cursed Jewish wine cabinet. The story is of the EBay seller Iosif Nietzke, a Missouri college student, who sold an ancient Jewish wine cabinet box online, and warned buyers of the bad luck that came with it--for example, he was only in his 20s and had started losing his hair when he got the box.
Buyers bid on the box very quickly, even knowing about the "bad luck". It sold for $280 to a museum curator named Jason Haxton. After he bought the box, The Forward, a 107-year-old Jewish newspaper, published an article about the mysteries behind the box.
Many rabbis and other high-level Jewish scholars have offered to open the box and one even asked Haxton to take all images of the box off the Internet because it would serve as a way for spirits to invade homes. The spirit people are worried about is the "Dybbuk", which is supposed to be a malevolent spirit of a dead person.

So that’s the *true* side of the story this film is basically just about the box though and the possible spirit inside it.

The movie starts with some old staring at the box whose then Raimi styled around the room while her son is trying to get a response from knocking her door. A Separated father (Jeffery Dean Morgan) takes his daughters to his new place near the beginning of this movie.
Jeffery Dean, I like the guy I think he’s a reasonably good actor, I’m a fan of a show called supernatural and I was introduced to him proper on there as an actor. His work up to this has pleased me and I can say that he puts on a great performance in this too.
Some good angst dad thrown in there which I think endeared him to me in supernatural.

So they find a yard sale to help their dad get some stuff for his new place, the youngest daughter finds the cabinet on sale and is immediately drawn to it. I personally have not seen the daughters in anything I can remember off the top of my head but they seem like pretty good kid and teen actors for their parts, with the typical nastier older sister.

Some pretty decent writing and acting on all parts and some brilliant directing from Raimi stops The Possession from becoming an average run of the mill paranormal activity type film. Though thankfully it’s not shaky hand cam its proper film.
Though there are the usual shocks and thrills it’s not too bad of a film and definitely worth a watch if you’re a horror movie fan.
The effects are brilliant from the possessions to things popping out of mouths which too some I’m sure will be mildly disturbing. As said before there’s the definitive Raimi hallmarks that anyone who has seen Evil Dead or even Drag Me to Hell will recognise in here.

Now because I’m such a big Raimi fan and this movie didn’t make me want to fall asleep and kept me interested I want to give it 4 stars, for the people who just want to see a run of the mill horror movie this is above par, though worth a VERY strong 3 stars.
So based on that and that I don’t do half stars I will give this film 3 stars and this, if you want to watch a horror film you can do a LOT worse with some of the crap at the moment get this above anything else that’s out at the moment.