Review: Little Monsters (2019)

Stars: Lupita Nyong'o, Alexander England


Budget: Unknown

Directed By: Abe Forsythe

Zombie movies are slowly shambling off the mortal coil so to speak, walking dead is done comic wise at least so i can't see the TV show lasting much longer either.
But that's for another report I may write in the future.

This is a zombie film and a romantic comedy mixed up into one movie. Sometimes the mix goes a little off but I found this film to have good amounts of everything going on at all times.
fantastic acting from Lupita brings this film up a few notches more than it deserves too. Alex who plays Dave is not bad either but the character is slightly unlikable and you don't 100% route for him.
That is until he comes out as totally truthful, then we see a bit of a corner turned by his character. Even the children actors seem half decent, though what they were like on set I cannot find.

So we meet Dave a typical stoner type in a relationship that's going no where fast with a woman that is not his type at all. They break up and he goes to live with his sister, sleeping on her couch still being a stoner. Dave is a musician, he had a band that split up we learn later in the film too. He's just a plain lazy bum really, BUT there is a reason for a lot for his hang ups we learn later on.
There's a funny scene where he uses his nephew dressed as Darth Vader to go back to his exes apartment to try get her back (the nephew is a star wars fan). Only to walk in on her having sex with some older balding guy.

His sister blows up on him for taking his nephew out at silly o'clock in the morning and for him seeing them have sex. She threatens to throw him out, only pleading from the nephew (Felix) and Dave saying he will change makes her stop it.
One change is he helps a lot more, so in the morning he takes his nephew to school, there he see's Miss Caroline (Lupita) instantly falling in love with her. He blags a lot about random things just to talk to her for a while.
A parent then drops out of helping look after the class while on a trip the next day, Dave instantly opts himself to help out. More to be close to Miss Caroline than through anything else.

The next day while on their way to the farmland park we see a nearby army base. It appears that some previous zombie experiments have broken free. The base is seemingly quickly overrun by them, The bus with Miss, Dave and the kids speeds past the base after it broke down.
We had a nice rendition of Taylor Swifts song  shake it off then too, a less better song performed by Dave lying to Caroline he's still in a band.
At the park we see a TV personality all the kids love is also visiting shooting an episode for his TV series. One Teddy McGiggles, you just a get a weird bad vibe from him right away. Anyway the kids go on a trip around the farm on a tractor Felix has a strangely unhealthy obsession with tractors too.

The zombies quickly take over the farm eating killing and transforming others into more zombies. The army finds out and sends in more troops very fast, The kids, Miss Caroline and Dave make it to the farm gift shop. Miss Caroline has told the kids it's a big game and not to be afraid so as to make them less afraid.
Teddy has taken over the gift shop refusing to let them in, Dave manages to break in through the roof then beating up Teddy and letting them all in. Teddy confesses he hates kids, only doing what he does to have sex with the mothers and an alcohol problem too.
Dave not realizing feeds his nephew some crisps/chips that set off an anaphylactic shock in him, Caroline then goes to get the medication after Dave wrongfully uses an epi-pen stabbing himself.

That night Dave has a heart to heart with Caroline telling her the truth about everything, his lies, the band and his relationship also why he is why he is. father troubles from when he was young and he's afraid to turn out like him and he just turned bad, he very quickly turns over a new leaf here, bit to quick really but that's the run time I suppose. Caroline tells him about her relationship and that she's really single too, she just wears a ring to keep lecherous dads away.
They decide the next day to escape due to there being a lack of food, elsewhere the army are planning to bomb the whole farm. While escaping Teddy is killed when he doesn't keep his word about helping them with his van.

Well that's about as far as i'll go as theres not much left of the film and the ending is pretty good and heartfelt just like the majority of the film. I'd put this a bar less than Shaun of the dead but certainly up there with some other zombie/comedy films. I did laugh a good many times while watching this as well going aaawww at certain other moments too. It just felt rushed with some character development and the ending.

THN awards Little monsters a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

Review: Underwater (2020)

Stars: Kristen Stewart, T.J. Miller

Budget: $50-80 million?

Directed By: William Eubank

Underwater, underwater, hhmm a tricky one this was some good things was some bad things. I will say the blinding obvious thing that most people have.
It's an underwater alien/aliens clone, more so alien. There's not much in the way of story-line, character development and build up is minimal too.
Not to say there isn't any there but it's like we join a story that's halfway through being told. All the people know each other well and the way it's acted is very believable too, except that means we get little to no further development between them over the course of the movie.
We feel like we've arrived late to the party and everyone else has clicked already.

Now this does mean we get straight into the story right away. The base is immediately in peril. effects wise the film is awesome, the tense scenes are very tense and I even, yes ME, I even got jump scared once!

Acting wise Kristen Stewart is Kristen Stewart as usual bland, nonchalant and lazy eyed lol, kind of fits the character though, she's (and fittingly so as the main character) the only one that gets most character development, though her development is still minimal and VERY predictable.
T.J. Is as always one of my favourite people in the film his dry humour is what I like despite him possibly being a bit of a dick IRL. The rest of the fodder are very predictable in their roles, the stalwart captain who just wants to keep his crew alive (but with a secret).
The couple who really love each other, the comedy relief and the guy who self sacrifices himself early on. On with the film review then.

we join Stewart's character staring blankly into a mirror as she brushes her teeth, the lights blink she frowns as if she feels something we didn't. stepping out into the corridor she is hit by a drip of water which makes her realise something is up.
Suddenly there's a loud explosion and the place starts to shake and fall apart. She meets another survivor as she's running who i'll call self sacrifice man or ssm. they make it to a door which needs to be sealed or they'll die just as two more people are seen running up the corridor. Unfortunately as things go in these types of movies, these nobodies get iced right away as the bulkhead seals. Obviously it's no ones fault and remorse is only felt for a few mere seconds.
Stewart then saves TJ from under some rubble and the crawl into a new section of the base looking for escape pods.

In the escape pod room they see the captain fussing over things in the sealed room, he's clearly sent off all the escape pods and stayed behind himself, like a proper captain. After getting in the room the captain says they need to make it to the submarine. On the way they find mr&miss in love in the communication centre. the plan obviously fucks up the first moment it can forcing them to get to new escape pods, This means they have go for a walk in the water.
Mr SSM selects good gear for everyone else but obviously chooses a defective helmet for himself, causing him to implode as soon as the door is opened and the pressure hits them. While on their way they get a distress beacon from a pod, going to investigate it they find a corpse. a weird little creature leaps from it attacking them. They think they kill it then a bigger one attacks the lift thingy they are in they think that's mother creature.

While walking across the bottom of the ocean to the other section the old section explodes breaking Mr In loves air purifier on his suit. He gets some poisoning due to this. In the new place they regenerate their suits air and batteries but Mr in loves is broke so they will have to go slow so as not to overload the scrubber and poison him. going through a tunnel TJ's Mr comedy relief is killed by a creature in a flooded section.
They get outside Mr in love is dragged off, the captain rescues him, is dragged off himself Stewart's character tries to save him. His suit is compromised by being dragged to the surface by one of the creatures to fast, Stewart's almost too but the captain cuts her free. She's separated from Mr&miss but finds her way to a decommissioned part of the base.
While there she changes her suit gets a flare gun discovers the captains secret about his daughter that was mentioned fleetingly earlier then goes to reach the base the were heading for again.

Almost there Stewart finds Mr&miss with miss dragging an unconscious Mr, they make it to the base but the door is blocked by many, many sleeping thingies. of course Kristen accidentally wakes one up she uses the flare gun to kill it. The flare gun then reveals the true terror of the water, the small creatures are part of a giant creature that's been tearing the base apart. They make it to a pod room, there's 3 pods one of them faulty Stewart reassures them she'll fix it and be right after them.
We then get her reveal of the film too.
There's a little left here but we don't spoil endings at THN as you know, this is a very standard film with very alien like vibes, maybe a bit of cloverfield thrown in too. It's saved by some TJ Miller, good effects and some genuinely tense moments. The best we can say is it's very average so we give it a strong 2 it could be a weak 3 but we don't do half marks here either so 2 out of 5 it is.

Review: Ready or Not (2019)

Stars: Samara Weaving, Andie MacDowell

Budget: $6 million


Directed By: Tyler Gillet, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

Nice, a more recent film for a change this one staring Samara Weaving. A girl who I am gaining large respect for in acting chops. Despite her being a clone of Margot Robbie, who is in a turn a clone of Jaime Pressly, I really believe this to be true, the blonde frowning look is just way to much of a coincidence.

Tinfoil hat aside she does an amazing job in this film with an equally amazing script. Only let down by the overly predictable ending, though it still has some spectacular character development.
A nice, for me at least, return to the screen for Andie MacDowell too. A modestly low budget used to great effect with some very comedic moments. Also some very tense moments thrown into the mix too.

heard the directors have some very up and coming scripts in line in their future too, all I can say is I look forwards to what these guys produce next.

So we start the film with and old rich family clearly chasing someone down, some kids are also running about the older brother hides the younger in the nearby closet in the hopes of sparing him seeing things.
Cut to the future we join Samara Weavings Grace marrying into the La Domas family, a family famous for it's board gaming empire. She is marrying Mark O'Briens Alex, with all the typical your family hates me stuff because of reasons.
It gets a little weird when after Daniel, Alex's brother comes in warning of marrying into the family Alex does warn Grace and give her an immediate out. She chooses not too then goes through with the wedding, just beforehand she does talk with Alex's mother (MacDowell) who seems to like her she also asks Grace to try and make him stay with the family again.
So later that night she has to choose a game to play, it all seems a little ominous but Grace does admit she's not scared of a little chess or backgammon.

Unfortunately there's one card you don't want to get which is hide and seek, unfortunately after the story of how the family got their wealth in the first place, Grace does get the hide and seek card. This means she has to be hunted by the rest of family then sacrificed so they can keep their wealth and not die a horrible death. It's seemingly tied to devil worship too.
Samara does an amazing job of very quickly going from thinking it's a bit of fun, to disbelief and then finally fighting back against the deranged family.
Comedy is on point with the boys (Daniel and Alex) sister (a clear coke head) accidentally killing the hired help. Alex just wants out and Daniel is fed up of the family practices up until now, they also don't believe the curse is real.

It's a lot of fun with some great performances, good character development dragged down by a little bit of a predictable ending. Of which us here at THN don't spoil ending here unless the film is completely abysmal. THN enjoyed Ready or Not awarding it 4 out of 5 stars.

Review: Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)

Stars: Justin Ipock

Budget: $1 Million


Directed By: Ana Clavell, James Dudelson

Contagium, contagium a word that makes you think germs, infection and just icky shit.
Despite being part 2 its supposedly an origin story for the first one, yet doesn't really have a massive amount to do with the original either.

Made for only one million the film does use some pretty good practical effects in it's oddly convoluted story. The acting is very B-movie quality by people I haven't seen in anything else other than this film.

This film does not take place anywhere near the locations of the original either, it feels like a way to cash in on a familiar name. Pretty much like the way asylum does when they release something similarly named to some big movie. Difference being asylum do on occasion make something at the least entertaining.

So here we go, in Russia in 1968 a group of soldiers break into a hospital where some kind of patient 0 is being cared for. They start killing people, one of the junior doctors grabs a phial then hides it in a thermos flask. He manages to escape the hospital but is gunned down dropping the thermos in the woods. The rest of the hospital is shot up then blown up with C4.
37 years later a group of patients at the rebuilt hospital happen to find the thermos buried in a tiny amount of soil. The puny people are unable to open a rusted shut flask so entrust it one of the other members. You may notice i'm not naming people, that because it's hardly worth it. The acting is blander than tap water with only the zombie acting being a slight highlight.

When one the others steals the flask after another has some kind of bad feeling about opening it, he manages to crack it open releasing the phial. This group of fucktards are now ground zero. By the night they each start feeling a little sick. One of them contacts a friend he thinks might know about the phial, somehow out of nowhere.
The next day some of them notice patches of dead weeping flesh appearing on their body, Emma, yes i had to name one of the idiots, is apparently pregnant. She gets angry and bites a guy on the arm unknowingly infecting him. Three of the other start to have advanced symptoms, dead flesh, coughing blood and thick varicose veins.
They and anyone else who they've been in contact with are quarantined to their dorm. The one who contacted their friend gets a message back not to open the phial its a virus that mutates human DNA. Later that night the man bitten by Emma dies.

Getting worse and worse Emma's friend manages to get hold of a gun which he uses to go see her, not before killing a guard. Marshal (the dead bitten guy) reanimates. This is the part where people start to die and reanimate a lot now, along with the main cast. It's a such a convoluted mess of mismatching circumstances it made my head hurt. Like some people are proper zombies yet others can come back fully coherent, albeit not for to long.
Anyway nearly everyone dies by either turning into a zombie and attacking someone, or being betrayed by someone else. Emma ends up with one of the others near the end and has her baby, that story ends there we then see a news crew attacked by a horde of zombies

Yeah THN where we rarely spoil the endings of films, unless of course they are total rubbish not worth watching at all. This film has NOTHING to do with Day of the dead, its a cash grab name just to dupe people out of their money.
THN awards Day of the Dead 2: Contagium 0 stars out of 5

Review: Virus (1999)

Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland

Budget: $75 million

Directed By: John Bruno

In a world where we are now facing a global pandemic, i mean wtf else can go wrong these days?
I really am waiting on everything to go mad max or the walking dead. Lets lighten the load with some movies that take that name, premise or just idea and run with it.
Welcome to Corona Virus contagion month.

Here's our first one a massive project from the late nineties directed by John Bruno who is no stranger to making big budget films, though just as a visual expert. He even worked with some of the cast before too, like Jamie Lee Curtis on True Lies.
But nothing significant in the directorial capacity before or pretty much after this.
Unfortunately a lot of said cast have came out and outright bashed the film saying it's possibly the worst film they've worked on.
Is this fair?
Is this true?
Let's take a look at Virus, some of it's flaws but also some of it's strengths, if there's any to find.

In space we see a weird lightning like thing streaking through the cosmos, it hits a Russian space station killing all the astronauts. It then gets transmitted down through the radio wave into a Russian ship called the Volkov (longer than that but that's what i'm calling it).
We then join the tugboat Sea Star, Donald Sutherland (Robert) is it's alcoholic captain, an ass hole through and through as we'll see more later. When bad weather hits he forces the crew to keep their salvage despite it possibly sinking them. It does get lost anyway, also the engine room gets damaged then starts taking on water.

When they get to middle of the storm (the eye) the water magically calms down then they spot a new vessel on their radar. When they board after no reply they realize the ship could be worth millions in salvage, with one caveat there has to be no one alive on board. Finding the majority of electronic on the ship have been destroyed or removed they all get a weird feeling. Especially when they capture glimpses of things out the corner of their eyes.

When they restore power to ship is when the shit really hits the fan, they all slowly piece together that something bad has happened with the electronics on the ship. Especially when they find some survivors that tell them it has gained sentience. They even eventually manage to contact the sentient life force. It unfortunately see's human as some kind of plague that needs to be destroyed. It then starts to make weird machine/human pieces robots to attack them.

Most of the crew admit they can't let this thing reach the mainland or it will spread and possibly destroy the human race. Robert however doesn't seem like the idea of leaving this much money behind, to the extent he makes a deal with the life force to help it kill the others.
Unfortunately like some of the other crew he gets changed into a machine human cyborg hybrid even after striking this deal. The crew gets whittled down to just Jamie lee's Kelly, Baldwin's Foster and one of the other survivors from the actual Volkov.

That's where i'll end this as we don't spoil films here at THN unless they are ungodly bad, so even though Virus does have it flaws, being another take on alien. It does have some very good practical effects even CGI for it's time. It does get tense and very dark at time especially when we see some of the horrible machine/human hybrids the entity makes from bits and pieces. I'd even say it influenced Ghost Ship (2002) that came afterwards with a very similar story. THN awards Virus a strong 2 out of 3 stars, it's worth one watch.

THN News: Scream 5

News in that a sequel?
Is on the boards for the series that revived the slasher horror franchise in the nineties, giving the killers a more human yet possibly scarier tone.
The project slated to begin production in may of this year (though with the corona virus tipped to be at it's peak by then it may get pushed back) I was very skeptical of a fifth movie in this franchise especially after hearing the brief, maybe somewhat unimaginative synopsis.

Spoilers after the ghostface!


After a spate of killings in her home town, a woman returns to try and find out who the killer is.
That's all we have at the moment, I think it sounds A LOT like scream 4, but there are also rumors that this might be one of them pseudo remake/reboot things.
I like the fact though that if it is they are so far keeping the numbering system. So I was a bit uum and ahh about this initially until I read who is behind it.

Ready or Not's directors Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet that amazing movie staring Samara Weaving showed great character development and how to truly write a good hero character. Either male or female, start off flawed then work your way to bad ass by the final act, so i am not worried in the directors one bit there.

More quell my fears are the rest of the production team and writers coming back too such as those guys third wheel Chad Villella as executive producer along with OG writer on past scream films Kevin Williamson, all in a neat bow under Spyglass films.
These factors have me believe that something good could come of this production, there's no ties any of the original actors coming back yet, which is a good and bad thing as if Sydney came back AGAIN and either survived again or actually died I think that alienate a lot of fans one way or another, maybe some kind of connection in the end would be enough suffice I think.
Hope you've enjoyed this report THN signing out!

THN: Sequel It!: Nightmare on Elm Street

The votes were set, I somehow thought this was inevitable though. Seems the next sequel it! people wanted to see was NoES. I think I know where I need to go with this one, in terms of casting it's a hard one, un like Ft13TH there's not a lot of survivors from past films in this franchise.
Where to start it off too, do i continue from Freddy's dead or new nightmare?
As with FvJ I am keeping that one a separate entity from this series, like a side step in you will. Who knows I may well do a sequel it! to FvJ one day (I think that's also inevitable).

Right so I think I've got ideas, this will be set after new nightmare, but in a psuedo twist it'll be a sequel to part 6 too, it'll sequel BOTH of them one as a film within a film I think. something to do with daydreaming, Freddy gets powerful enough to even invade simple thoughts.

Nightmare on Elm Street 8: Never Sleep Again

Cast:

Heather Langenkamp as Nancy/herself
Robert Englund as Freddy/Himself
Lisa Wilcox as Alice/Herself
Other people as Other people

Synopsis:
So we open like many Nightmare films with a female star staring at the Elm Street house in puzzled wonderment while the little girls in white dresses skip rope on the grassy yard. The girl walks into the house where all the usual stuff happens.
She follows screeching noises down into the basement, down there are rows of gurneys small children's bodies covered apart from their black shoe covered feet stick out out of the bottom of coverings.
we see the clawed glove screech along the pipes followed by the raw laughter of Freddy. She is stalked screaming running down the usual piped hallways with steam jets etc. Freddy seems to be able to cut her off every direction she turns.
Then she is caught by him only to have the knifed glove thrust into her stomach killing her. In the real world the girl who was in school stands up to the horror of everyone spraying blood around the classroom.

The screen turns a little blurry here then pulls out to a cinema room, we see the whole audience who are in fact watching a preview to a new movie. We focus in on a group of friends watching the film. One asks another what was the name of this film again?
One laughs being poked another, "The Springwood slasher"
"Oh this is the one based on that killer from years ago"
"Yeah then a bunch of parents roasted the guy and he supposedly came back to haunt their dreams"
"OOOOOH OOOH OH" shouts another forming a spooky noise.
A few other people turn frowning in the audience.
Two of the stars Robert England and Heather Langenkamp are doing a press release in a bookshop down from here next week before the main showing.
"Who is who in the film?"
"Heather plays the main girl Nancy's mother"
"Yeah and Robert plays the Springwood slasher Freddy"
"Didn't she play some mother in a film similar to this a few years back"
"Oh yeah that new nightmare with the demon invading dreams"
"It was bad"
All the while we hear familiar voices coming from the screen. The last girl seems weird as the rest of the cinema seems to drown out and warp for her, becoming totally empty. She hears familiar laughing but the screen has gone blank, frowning she looks around shivering. walking down the steps to the entrance the doors suddenly burst open to show us only a back-lit dark shadow in the doorway.
"You'll all remember" it says menacing then flicks it's clawed hand in a scissor like fashion.
The girl Tina awakes suddenly.
"The film that boring Tina?" A boy remarks.
"Shut up Tod, i had a late night" She scold him.
"Certainly wasn't with me!" the rest of them 'ooooh' in response.
We see from the screen that comes back into clear view, it almost seems like the Freddy on the screen is watching them. Then they all turn back to watch the rest of the movie that moves on once they do, then the scene fades to black.

Now throughout the week in the film the teens will each dream encounter Freddy who is not strong enough to kill them yet. as the film is about to open wide spread they each say to each other they believe the the film opening will give him all the power he needs to break through into their dreams and kill them.
They go to see Heather and Robert before the showing to try and get them to halt the release of the film. Heather and Robert strangely believe them but do not think they have time to prevent the showing. Heather remarks it feels like all this happened before, Robert says the character he played felt like it had a strange power. Tina decides to run to the premier to at least get it to stop there.

Unfortunately the showing is already on when she rushes into the screen to tell everybody to leave time slows down, the screen takes on a fuzzy dream like quality. Freddy on the screen looks down at Tina, his features burning away to leave a heavily burnt face.
"Ah back in the prime time bitch, your too late!"
Krueger reaches a massive arm out of the screen, the audience applaud Tina see's their faces are all blank as they clap. a massive finger blade pierces her stomach. She coughs up blood.
The others reach the movie theater as Tina burst out the doors cradling her belly.
"It's too late" She says through blood stained lips, then dies.

The rest of the movie the other teens, Robert and heather stage a coup of the film and try to review bomb it and slander it as bad to decrease Freddy's power. One by one they are picked off, until the news hits that copycat kills have been happening around the country. Freddy is so powerful that even if you let thought wander into daydream territory he can try to get you there too and does with one of the teens.
Heather and Robert are called to do an interview where they will decide weather to ban the film the or not, they realise this is the only the chance they have left and have to keep them alive to debate that the film should.

In his changing room, Robert is attacked by Freddy but not killed instead he locks Robert away in his own mind and takes over his body.
I'm not sure how it would go from here other than Robert trying to kill Heather on live TV, this is in fact the catalyst to banning the film though, He loses control over Roberts body but he is in a forever coma locked away.

Ending wise we see the remaining Teens and Heather over a copy of the film, they say it's ended for them now but films like this always gather a cult following if that fan base ever gets big enough again may be Freddy would come back.
After credits role we see Robert in a hospital bed, he smiles with Freddy's laugh echoing out in his dreams.