Review: The Dark (2018)

Stars: Nadia Alexander, Toby Nichols

Budget: Unknown

Directed By: Justin P. Lange

Noticed a trend with a lot of smaller productions from the past 5 years or so, a lot seem to have little to no budget info. With these more b-movie type films I like to know what's done on what they had to hand, allows me to shower more praise too if it's done on a smaller budget.

Anyway this movie is a strange one, a very authentic storyline of the likes I haven't seen before. I've seen similar yeah bit this seems almost dare i say it, original, gasp!

A very mixed up production as far as I can see too. Austrian film, filmed in a lot of Canadian locations with mixed actors.

This doesn't detract from anything though, in fact writing and acting is one of the most strongest points of this film (for the most part). It was originally shown at the 2018 Tribeca film festival, then shown officially in October 2018.

Actors wise the chops on some of these people is reasonably expansive, though I haven't seen any of the things they've been in before. Nadia has been in episodes of Elementary, Law&Order, Boardwalk Empire as well as other things and a few other festival type films. She seems the one with the most acting credits and it shows.

The film starts off like it's going to be a haunted house type affair. Even setting up a story that the house the guy is going to is your usual people vanishing type.

When the shop/gas station owner finishes telling our seeming protagonist this news the TV shows him as a wanted man. He blows away the owner with a revolver, putting us in mind that he might not be a protag we want to back.

Arriving at the house the guy is quickly freaked out by a ghastly looking girl. Not sure if she's a zombie it's never really stated and if she is she still has her faculties and can actually get hurt too, though this might be for a later reason.

He tries to run into the forrest to escape her but is slowed by traps she's set up, the blammo she's axed his face a question. She then proceeds to eat some his guts, very zombie like.

A little later she discovers a blinded boy in the back of his car. He's also severely atrophied and shit scared that Josef will get him. He's called Alex and the girls comes close to killing him but something stops her from doing it. From here on they form a steadily increasing friendship as they run and hide from people who are looking or hunting for Alex. The girl, Mina syarts having flashbacks to her previous life and it seems she was abused. Then fighting back one night her abuser kills her.

Yet somehow she returns from the grave kills him and her mum and goes to live in the woods as a monster.

One thing that did grind my gears, Buuuut I did understand as the kid was severely mentally scarred, is that Alex keeps thinking Josef is coming after him long after Mina has told him (multiple times) he's dead.

Also he says Josef has people that will come looking, I'm pretty sure no one does as the only other people are a search team out searching for the kid (after Mina kills a cop).

Now throughout the film Mina actually seems to be becoming less gross almost healing too, as in like a grinch type action of helping Alex is repairing her. This is the reason why I think she gets hurt some later on in the film.

Now it is a slow film, it's got good kills and goes when it does pick up though, it's also nice to see a friendship maybe even a relationship of sorts form between Alex and Mina but I'll leave it there as THN doesn't spoil endings as you know.

THN awards The Dark 2018 a strong 3 out 5

Review: Firestarter (2022)

Stars: Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon

Budget: $12 million 

Directed By: Keith Thomas

Another classic remade by the mighty horror moguls at Blumhouse pictures. Following their footsteps of invisible man they've taken the Stephen King novel Firestarter. Last handled way back in 1984 and starred a very young Drew Barrymore as the center stage Charlie Mcgee.

I've watched the Original but not for like 20 years, it's also one the very few King books I haven't actually read, so can't make any comparisons there. What I do know is this leans very much more into the psychic powers aspect that the original didn't though. Zac Efron plays the father and I totally didn't recognise him in the trailer and only realised when my friend pointed it out. He's looking more like Rylan Clark lately. The acting isn't one of the bad points in this though, but we'll get onto the bad points later.

Seems that John Carpenter is getting comfortable with Blumhouse lately too. What with the Halloween redo, now doing the music for this. Though this is in no way a bad thing. In fact the music is pretty banging in this film, alleviating some parts of the movie from drab to good.

I felt certain part of this movie that were meant to be shocking or hitting came across totally opposite. Like the scene where the clearly fake baby bursting into flames in the dad's dream at the beginning. People actually laughed in the cinema too. I usually can't handle babies in danger in films, for personal reasons, it even didn't trigger me.

There's a scene where Charlie sets fire to her mother's arms, now they know about her powers by the way. She just stares at her arms in flames until the dad puts them out, WHY put your arms out ffs don't just stand there, don't blame 'surprise' either, like I said she knows. One more scene is where Charlie is trying to pet a cat, it scratches her then the toasts it, again people (and me this time, maybe it would have different if it was a dog) laughed at that too. This is what I mean at some things. Zac does this silly neck cracking thing when he's using his abilities too, I don't know if this is in the book and can't remember if it's in the old one, plain and simply it's silly though.

Now it's not all bad and silly,  when people are using their powers the Carpenter tunes pump and it's almost like a different movie. Yes I suppose it's more like a superhero film, strangely enough this referenced later in the film, saying Charlie is like a superhero.

There's a LOT of differences in this film compared to the original too, such as Charlie isn't abducted her dad is, the farm ends up a massacre scene also there's another psychic hunting them from the shop rather agents.

So the premise under the guise of a clinical trial people deemed to have telekinesis, psychic or other powers are drawn in to use a special drug called LOT6. Two of them are a young couple who end up being Charlie's parents later, also some of the only survivors of the trial. 

Cut to years later they have a baby who grows up into 11yr old Charlie. She has the power of pyrokineis, telepathy and slight precog too. Yeah she's like super powerful. They've been on the run, don't use much technology like internet, smart phones etc. This is because they're hiding from Charlie that they are on the run.

She's in school trying to have a normal education etc, but there's bullies, of course its always bullies. One day they fet the better of her coping mechanism and charlie explodes a bathroom stall. This puts the Shop on their trail. The parents constantly bicker about helping charlie either use her powers or have the dad use his ability to make her forget about them. Though they flip flop about this until the mum is killed by the shops assassin psychic.

Her dad can't use his power to often as it's draining/hurting him now, thanks to Charlie they escape.

Charlie and dad go on the run when they meet an old guy who takes him back to his farm. Charlie finds his bed ridden wife who years before was in an accident. When the news shows them as fugitives she prices they're innocent by proving her powers telling him his wife forgives him. He tries to tell the arriving police he made a mistake then the psychic assassin guy turns the cops heads into Swiss cheese with a sniper rifle.

Charlie escapes and daddy Zac is taken back to the shop.

I was impressed by her going to free her dad like he freed her in the original, except this is the end of this movie.

I won't give away much more except it's a great scene with the tunes blasting too. BUT one major retraction to me was that the dad uses his powers one last time to MAKE Charlie destroy the facility, I didn't like that after his reluctance to do it before has he just turned his little girl into a killer?

I get it why he used his power so it would allow her to do what she did right after it with a clean conscious. As you can tell I'm trying to spoil to much as I never do unless a film is super dire.

So that leads onto my ranking and I've been thinking really hard on this. I really liked a lot if aspects of this movie but also really hated others. So after deliberation THN is awarding Firestarter 2022 a 2 out of 5 stars but say it's worth a watch if there's nothing else, maybe I should read the book?

THN Ramble: My Fave Streamers

Something I do a lot of is watch (mostly horror) movie streamers on the old YouTube. I really wish I had gotten into it a long time ago but the state of strikes and people out to fuck you over from what I see on these people's channels makes me have a lack of want for it.

So I turn to these 5 reviewers, now I love these 5 the most because they have a shtick. A good one too that adds and entertains on their channels. Here are the 5 that entertain me the most in no particular order.

1. Decker Shado

Hes the internet personality with the best hair, he certainly has amazing flowing locks too. I like Deckard as he puts a lot of himself into his videos, he's very down to earth.

He reviews some very off the wall or low budget films too that I might not of even known of if he hadn't.

Not only that he explains things very well no matter what he's reviewing. He's doing what he loves and you can tell because he's very annoyed by copyright claims, rightly so as he's doing it fair use. Not only that SOME of these places should be thanking him for exposure. I don't think he's had a good past from things he's said so I'm happy he's keeping this up and entertaining us all. Hope he never loses them locks lol.

2. Mike Bracken aka The Horror Geek

Damn I'm old, is one of my favourite lines from Mike. Usually so because I know exactly what he means lol. Mike very down to earth too and relatable in his love for gorehound movies.

Which is Mike's thing, he rates his movies on barf bag ratings. I like this because sometimes I just want to watch a splatterhouse kind of movie i can turn off too. Please take this the right way too, Mike's very informed compared to some Americans I even know personally. For a start he knows wales lol. He also suffers from the tyranny of YouTube censors. His channel also feels as close to something that I would like to make.

3. Brandon Tenold

Brandon is a Canadian who reviews a diverse number of films. From monster flicks, both sci-fi and horror to plain horror also. He's one of the more set in stone Tubers, he's even made documentaries on them, or at least had some input in them.

Everything from Decapitation! To him changing a music track makes me smile.

Also his extreme dislike of Kenny's in kaiju movies (watch them you'll get it then).

Another thing is he has a dry sense of humour which is something I like, he says everything so straight laced and serious but in a comedic way. Again thanks to him I've now seen some really obscure knock off films I don't think I ever would have otherwise.

4. Stitched Together Pictures

Or the maniacal cinephile, or Andy lol. A bandaged guy with multiple personalities, kind of reminds me of the guy you play in nightmare creatures 2. His thing is as said the multiple personalities, good Andy, normal Andy and evil Andy.

He's a functional schizophrenic as he knows about them and regularly converses between them. Despite normal Andy usually doing the bulk of the reviews we also get a simplistic good view smattering from the child like good Andy. Then a growling masochistic view from bad Andy. These are all of course done in a tongue in cheek comedic style.

In skits we learn Andy is a somewhat escaped asylum patient. We see in small skits from time to time. Often bad Andy has killed people to get them (or himself) something. Despite this he gives honest opinions on things he reviews. One of my favourite things he does is boots to reboots where he compares two movies usually the OG film compared to a more recent remake.

If he deems them bad he stamps on them with a big heavy metal boot destroying them in the process.

Would like to see more of his channel but I guess he's a busy guy, also I suspect his videos take a while to put together.

5. Fanboy Flicks

Is a newer one to me, Mark is also a Canadian I have fallen in love with very quickly. Again it's the dry sense of humour, there's a difference though. Every now and then Mark will break into laughter at his own jokes or at the scene he's trying to review.

One of my favourite things he does is put himself inside of the film in scenes. Very effectively to great comedic effect most of the time. Again a great source for more obscure films, espcially older ones.

Again a little sporadic with uploads but I'm also guessing all the work he puts in takes a lot of time too. If that means a sporadic upload then that's fine with me.

Since I'm writing this on a phone if any of the people mentioned read this please feel free to put your links in the message box. It's very hard for me to link so many on my phone, if I can re-edit this at some point on a pc or laptop I'll put in more stuff like pictures, links etc.

To anyone else since I'm in no way able to help monetary wise with these folks, please go find their channels and subscribe you won't be disappointed.

Review: Flight 7500 (2014)

Stars: Amy Smart, Ryan Kwanten

Budget: est. 5million

Directed By: Takashi Shimizu

A thriller/horror from Mr Shimizu of the Ju-on fame. Film in 2014 it took till 2016 to be widely released.

It stars a host of recognisable faces from around that time too. Such as Amy Smart and Leslie Bibb as well as others.

I'm surprised I've never seen or even heard of this movie before. It has a weird kind of Ghost Ship or house on haunted hill vibes for sure when you start watching it.

It actually had me guessing too as to what the he'll was actually going on, I mean I had 3 things in my head.

1. It's a monster

2. They are all dead

Or

3. Its a hallucinogenic experience.

I'll get more into it later but I was right with one of them so I wasn't to clueless. Quite seasoned to acting everyone does a good job in their roles.

So there's a flight, 7500 in fact we see many of our protagonists boarding the plane as the crew go through preflight.

They all seem to have something up with them. The newly weds but the wife is a hypochondriac. Smart and her partner have something in their past too. These all come up into focus at later times in the film. 

One of the more mysterious of the bordees is a man with a weird box. He later dies due to some complications. This is a little odd with it's timing and the overall plot of the film as I couldn't work out if it was due to this, after this or because of this other things happen.

Anyway this freaks out a few people as is course of things. Now a plot point introduced earlier comes into play.

When a seemingly drop in pressure endangers everyone, Smarts boyfriend (who us a paramedic and tried to help the guy eaflier) dashes around trying to help people again. There seems something wrong with the air masks too. Anyway after some worry it all calms down. Weird shit starts happening and they believe it's to do with the guy who died.

So some people vanish or are supposedly killed along the way. They look through his stuff and find a Shinigami death doll. If you know anything this solidified one of my theories if you know what that doll means. 

I want spoil anymore as usual, this film was pretty okay if you like any of the earlier movies I mentioned. THN awards Flight 7500 a reasonable 3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Killer Weekend (2018)

Cast: Mark Heap, Danny Kirrane

Budget: Unknown

Directed By: Ben Kent

Made for frightfest by Ben Kent I'm suspecting on a reasonably low budget as the only person I really recognised in the ensemble was Mark Heap, from Spaced, Big Train and a few other UK comedy programs. It has another working name FUBAR too. I enjoyed Mark in this though his part is relatively small.

I went into this knowing nothing about too, which I think is the best way to watch this film. So if you haven't seen it I suggest you don't read the lower half of the review. Mainly because I started watching this film thinking something else was going to happen that never did, which I actually liked. I'll expand on that later. 

So on with the movie. We join a group of lads going on a stag weekend. They've planned a zombie paintballing weekend for the groom. The friends are your usual group the one who's grown up has a family kid, the rich stuck up asshole, the still immature idiot who never grew up. Also on the trip is the groom, the father in law to be who doesn't really like the groom, a guy he knew in a job who is delusional that the groom is his best friend. Also his sister's boyfriend who doesn't really him either. Finally the friend who is a massive drug head.

They meet up with the other half if the group in a small cafe off the motorway. In there the ass is loud and obnoxious.  They get the ire of the waitress, then notice a large gentleman staring blankly at them who they also bad mouth.  When they get to the retreat the people running it are ex military (there's also a running joke the father in law was some kind of specail agent, though not disproven its highly hinted hes lying).

Anyway it seems one of the 'zombies' is the large blank faced man. This shits up the groom whose told to attack him with a soft baton. It doesn't go well.  Out in the forest they are attacked by the zombies the large man goes for the groom knocking his baton away then knocking him on his ass. Reaching for the baton the groom accidentally pick up a stick as he leaps on him impaling himself on it. Accidentally killing the man, though when he's not dead (just severely hurt) the idiot friend mistakes him for a zombie and finishes him off with a knife to the head.

They come to the conclusion to hide the body, they get him but take his phone. When the leader of the retreat texts him the idiot friend replies with a phrase that later he recognises when he says it. Anyway they go about and accidentally kill a few more people in the process. The other ex soldiers find the (poorly hidden) corpses then proceed to hunt the rest of the group.

I'll leave it there as the rest is a pretty decent watch, comedic but also quite gory in places, also the ending is pretty realistic in they pretty much say about the killings and consequences. Now I went into this thinking maybe the people really turn into zombies, there's a few flags through the film that suggest this is the case too, the way the initial guy is staring all blank and weirdly, they find nuclear warning signs in a building too. But it isn't, hope your haven't read this before watching it as I'm sure it'll trick you too.

It's nothing special unless you don't know what's going on. It's a decent film to pass the time too. THN awards this film 3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Werewolves Within (2021)

Stars: Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub

Budget: $6.5 million

Directed By: Josh Ruben

A gleefully fun film that is apparently based on a video game of the same name. I've never played it but the premise is pretty much you have to guess who the werewolf is.

This was unfortunately released at a time that movies weren't doing to well in the cinemas still so did not make it's budget back.

Whether this was truly to blame or that it just wasn't that great I'll get to a bit later in my review.

One thing I really did enjoy a lot though was the clue/cluedo vibe it gave me especially when they are all together in the hotel.

Though as always I did kind of guess who was what about halfway through, though it did throw me a few curve balls up until then which I enjoyed.

Was nice seeing Harvey Guillen in here from what we do in the shadows too. All the roles are pretty well acted and Milana exudes backwater sexiness despite being covered up a lot in this movie. All in all everyone is very believable in their given roles.

There's a few story lines going on in the film which i'm guessing is to throw you off who is what, but can some times bog down the pacing making the film a little all over the place from time to time. So lets get on with the main plot and a few tidbits from the story.

We join Sam Richardson playing Finn Wheeler a forest ranger travelling to a new area he's been assigned too. From the off we see Finn has confidence problems as he's listening to self help tapes about being more assertive. He's clearly had some relationship troubles too.

We are quickly introduced to the whole town as Milana's character Cecily, a mail delivery woman shows him around town. We see there's a dispute about with folks as a local businessman Sam Parker wants to set up a pipeline We have lots variety in the townsfolk a gay couple, the angry wife with cheating husband and your typical loudmouth hicks, lastly they go see Emerson Flint a crazy out of town loner hunter.

There's also the hotel owner Jeanine who thinks her husband ran off with someone, though we know from an earlier (that he was indeed going to cheat) scene that he was killed by, something.

There's also a environmentalist Dr Ellis staying at the hotel advising about the pipeline. When the one couple with the cheating husband dog is killed they go searching for who done it.

As more bodies appear and the electric gets knocked out seemingly by a blizzard then we later find out the generators were also slashed with giant claws.

This is where the film for me did pick up a bit as up until now I had guessed what was what but in a shocking twist the film makes you even question the existence of a possible werewolf and is it all just a set up?

So yeah really appreciated that, so as not to spoil anything I'll say no more other than, after a slow start I really did enjoy this film.

THN awards Werewolves Within a strong 3 out 5 stars

Review: Sanitarium (2013)

Stars: John Glover, Robert England, Lou Diamond Phillips

Budget: not found

Directed By: Bryan Ortiz, Brian Ramirez 

An anthology film featuring some actors you haven't seen for a while and some that become staple in these B-movie affairs.

It's based in a sanitarium where we have Malcom McDowell as a kind of narrator introducing us to the patients that the segments are based on.

I couldn't find any budget info anywhere but it's probably not a major amount. I'm always amazed by the people you see turn up in things like this these days. Always nice to see John Glover show up in things he's a good emoting actor in my books.

So we have 3 stories in this anthology 

1. John Glover is an artist who's a little delusional over his models. It's clear he's a big thing but he's paranoid everyone wants his models. Roberts also in this one as the curator to the gallery. When an offer for him to get bigger crowds in for $6 million but he refuses, his friend/aide doesn't seem to like this but says he says he trusts his judgement.  We have some shenanigans as Johns character seemingly loses the plot is it real or all in his head?

2. A bullied kid stars in this one I recognised some of the actors but none I really knew in this segment. He's not bullied at school but by his abusive single father, I'm not sure if he's supposedly sexually abused too or it's just his father taking of his belt to beat him. I suspect it's the former though, Malcolm introduces him as a multiple personalities schizophrenic. He's also adult by the time we see him in the asylum. One thing I did wonder while watching this if the other kids were real or not, the ones he was in a group with. Anyway a strange dark shadow that scares him throughout pops up in the end!

3. Lou Diamond Phillips stars in this one, u haven't seen him in anything significant since labamba or young guns this was a paranormal snoozefest, that's the best I can say about this one.

So overall it was nice to see some familiar faces in these, the film does have another title if you can't find it under this, in the US as monsters are real, which is one of the segments names. It's also on Pluto Tv at the moment too.

It wasn't anything special but worth a time wasting 90 minutes or so if you're bored. THN awards this 2 out 5 stars.