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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53591151071211236122017-11-20T15:46:19.028-08:00Horror and Zombie film reviews | Movie reviews | Horror Videogame reviewsZombie, videogames, and horror film reviews, the latest horror releases and games reviewed. Post comments with your favourite zombie films to The Rotting Zombie Blogspot.Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-26959274906618355942017-11-20T15:45:00.000-08:002017-11-20T15:45:18.852-08:00The Black Cat (2017) - Short Horror Film Review

The Black Cat is not another adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's cautionary tale as I first assumed, instead it is a charming adaptation of the short story of the same name by celebrated Indian writer Ruskin Bond that deals with the subject of witches. It features legendary Indian actor Tom Alter in one of his final lead roles before his sad death due to skin cancer.

Alter stars as Ruskin Bond; a writer who has recently brought a broomstick in order to clean his messy house up. However not long after taking his tool home he is visited by a mischievous black cat who causes the man no end of trouble. Hot on the heels of this unwelcome invader comes Miss Bellow (Shernaz Patel) who claims to be the owner of the cat and wants it back, but does she have ulterior motives?

This 20 minute short (directed by Bhargav Saikia in his second short film) is a whimsical and magical offering that stays on the side of fantasy for the majority but does have a few scenes that are more frightening. The majority of this has Bond home alone dealing with the troublesome cat, and then his bizarre meeting with Miss Bellows. I loved Alter's performance here, he came across as a likable character whose gruffness never seems much more than an act. Patel also gives a good performance as the mysterious woman that visits. I thought the set decoration for the home was pretty good, though in terms of props the broomstick did seem to be pretty useless as it seemed to cause more mess than it cleared up! The music throughout fits this short perfectly, it all adds to the fantastical nature of this.

There is some horror mixed in here, notably The Black Cat starts on an edited sequence of close ups of the titular cat and ominous music that created a false sense of expectation. Later there are some freaky make up effects used for the witch character who is the typical depiction of a witch (black robes, pointed black hat, long nails and rotted teeth). There were some great shots of her just staring at the camera cackling. In terms of the plot it was pretty simple, but then it was based on a short children's story after all, though felt it ended with no real resolution to anything.

I liked The Black Cat, it has performances perfectly suited to the material, and is filmed in a unified fairy tale type way that cant help but delight. Also special note goes to the great looking hand drawn end credits that was a fun way to end. The Black Cat is currently free to watch on Lorien Motion Pictures official YouTube channel.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-26276254956159104122017-11-19T12:14:00.001-08:002017-11-19T12:14:17.533-08:00Found Footage 3D (2016) - Horror Film Review

Found Footage 3D you might be surprised to discover is a horror from the found footage genre, not only that but it purports to be the first ever one made in 3D. I watched the 2D version as I don't own a 3D TV (does anyone aside from a handful of people?). The film within a film idea creates some funny moments as the tropes of the genre are brought forward in some meta ways, yet when the actual film itself falls for these same tropes you get the impression the ball got dropped somewhere along the way.

A group of filmmakers have decided to make a found footage horror film, and to make theirs stand out from the crowded genre they have decided to film it in 3D. The small crew head out to an abandoned farmhouse that just so happens to have a real world sordid history, soon they unwittingly find themselves starring in their own found footage for real...

This had some good ideas going for it, I will say that much. There are some really funny moments here that take the mick out of found footage in ways that really work Derek (Carter Roy) who was the writer for the movie (within the film) as well as the main actor has total delusions of grandeur constantly comparing his visions to those of famous directors. This leads to some funny moments of him constantly wanting to change the script, even to change the ending so that his character can survive. It becomes meta with the behind the scenes footage constantly being filmed by cameraman mark (Chris O'Brien), his interviews with the crew leads to parallels between what they are making on screen and what is actually being filmed. The increasingly sidelined director Andrew (Tom Saporito) states the two most important things you have to do is explain why the footage is being filmed in the first place, and why it continues to be filmed. That is something Found Footage 3D does well in that these bases are both covered.

A lot of my enjoyment came from the friction and fallings out of the small crew which comes to a head when online film critic Scott Weinberg (played by himself) visits the set for an article. His whole role is a lot of fun as he picks apart the car crash he has found himself a spectator of. It leads up to the very best moment of the film that I can't spoil, needless to say it was very funny. The actual film within a film idea was what made watching this enjoyable enough though has been done quite a lot in itself. The problems come when the very ideas that are being made fun of then occur. At one point they discuss what the evil of the horror they are making is going to be, saying it shouldn't be CGI as they can only afford bad CGI. Then when we get to see the real evil haunting them it is indeed obvious CGI which was very hard to find frightening. They lambaste the idea of jump scares only to then do exactly what they had been rallying against at several points. They even give away the ending of Found Footage 3D long before it ends and it is just as stupid as the idea they had been discussing, especially as a cheesy one liner precedes it.

While this is amusing on a lot of occasions the general tone is one of seriousness and so I couldn't really tell if they were making mistakes on purpose or accidentally. There was a really glaring continuity error that ruined what should have been the highlight of the movie in terms of terror. That one moment when the creeping horror spirals out of control into the insanity of a high action finale in found footage would have been fantastic here except for one bandaged arm. Earlier in the film lead actress Amy (Alena von Stroheim) has her arm sliced open and so has to have it heavily bandaged, then it goes to a scene with her acting with Derek but the bandage has vanished and her arm is no longer cut up. Then it goes to the next scene and her arm is suddenly all bandaged again. This wouldn't have been an issue but it happened during the most important scene in Found Footage 3D, rather than paying attention and getting immersed I instead found myself rewinding this to see if I had misremembered. I really don't know if this error was done on purpose as a joke or if it was accidental but it ripped me out of the film incredibly badly and ruined what would have been a great transition.

This follows such a rigid formula that it was hard to get excited. The slow building up of weird but isolated events, of characters thinking others are pranking them, of people telling the cameraman to stop filming, shaky cam in the woods, and the jump scare ending are all so predictable and dull. This is made more infuriating as characters have already pointed out these tedious tropes yet the real filmmakers follow them regardless. There are some nice ideas at times, the split screen showing two different people filming was nice towards the end, the generic intro text that is then immediately ripped apart by Andrew was a great way to start things off. The humour works, there are some good performances, and there are even some moments of horror that also work (a scene involving a hammer for instance). Yet the average CGI effects, the failing to be original enough, and slow build up combine to make something that is ok, yet hardly the breakaway film it thinks itself to be. I guess if you're watching this in 3D add on another zombie head to my score.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-9646531335383722422017-11-18T10:32:00.001-08:002017-11-18T10:32:10.889-08:006.66 PM (2017) - Comedy Horror Film Review

The award winning 6.66 PM is a comedy horror directed by Jim Klock (who directed and starred in Massacre on Aisle 12) and co-written by Tommy McLaughlin and Chad Ridgely (who also co-wrote and starred in Massacre). It is worth pointing out that other film, as like that this one is full of over the top manic people running around screaming, and full of humour that didn't resonate with me too much. On the plus side again just like Massacre I found myself enjoying this one despite how silly it is, you can't help but get caught up in the silliness and forget about everything outside of the movie.

A reality paranormal investigation crew have chosen the house of notorious serial killer Jimmy Timmy Beck (Scott Burkhardt) to film their new show. The crew include producer Lorraine (Autumn Federici who also co-produced this), cameraman Peter (Chad Ridgely), and two actors pretending to be legitimate investigators; Daniel (Jim Klock) and Sheryl (Alexis Kelley). However they have chosen the night that marks the five year anniversary of Beck's suicide, a night in which the criminal brother of one of his victims (Michael Buonomo also from Massacre but in a much more memorable role here) has decided to enact a ludicrous plan to summon Beck's spirit back into the land of the living...

For the first twenty minutes to half an hour I was not enjoying 6.66 PM, I felt it just was not funny, or particularly interesting with little plot to it other than the cowardly crew investigating an empty building. Thankfully after an early red herring sub plot of a murderer, Beck's spirit does indeed return. This takes the form of him possessing the bodies of the recently deceased which gives the film a very light The Thing vibe in that each time he is defeated he returns as someone else. Each and every character that ended up possessed gave a fantastic performance, the over the top craziness of the character of Beck was reflected so well that no matter who was playing him they all seemed to be the same person. I especially loved the voices put on for this dead serial killer. The heroes are the usual assortment of cowards and liars which lends the film a feeling of Scooby-Doo with adult overtones but does lead to lots of scenes of people either running around screaming or hiding in silly places (like behind a shower curtain, or on the backseat of a car).

I found myself caught up in the lore of the story a bit, the idea that the spirit is only able to remain in the world for just an hour meant I did feel some anxiety when the time was ticking down. In terms of time that title was one of the more amusing jokes, such as one character who states something like "shouldn't that just be 7:06?". A lot of the time I understood the jokes that were being gone for but they just didn't make me laugh at all. Practical jokes such as grabbing a ridiculous item to defend yourself with (such as a wooden bath brush or salt shaker) have been done in so many other horror comedies, while sex based jokes are never my thing. There were some good ones though, a late part involving a cat for instance was funny, and the notion that the deceased serial killer's MO was to only target transvestite midget circus clowns also stuck out for just how ridiculous it sounded, and how characters are constantly trying to say that in a p.c way. Though those aforementioned clowns are hinted at as being also summoned back into existence all you hear of them, and of a zombie cat roaming around are voices, I guess the double whammy of being hard to cast for, and budget constraints explains why neither of those made an appearance, truthfully it actually kind of worked that these are roaming around but never seen, added to the silliness of the whole situation.

Much as I said with Massacre on Aisle 12 this isn't the most amazing film in the world, however Ridgely's writing and Klock's directing really help in dragging you into the inanity of the place. There are some great over the top performances and it was nice to see some of the manic cast reunited once again. However the humour does fall flat a lot of the time and there is only so much random running around that can happen until you wish for something more substantial to fill the time. Still this was another fun dose of escapism and so there are far worse ways to spend your time. 6.66 PM is now out on Amazon and VOD.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-6197774125420609612017-11-17T10:11:00.000-08:002017-11-17T10:22:16.153-08:00My Name is 'A' by Anonymous (2012) - Horror Film Review

My Name is 'A' by Anonymous is an arthouse horror written and directed by Shane Ryan (American Virus, Oni-gokko). When it comes to these type of films I find they are a bit hit and miss for my taste buds, sometimes they resonate, sometimes they repel. With this movie it fell more into the later half, that is not to say I don't appreciate what was being done here, or the yearning for realism, it's just that the more arty this became the more I was put off.

Apparently inspired by true events this shows the days leading up to the death of a young girl in a small American town. We follow a few different people; Alyssa (Katie Marsh) and her best friend The Sidekick (Demi Baumann) are two immature young teens with a fixation on death. Then there is The Performer (Teona Dolnikova) who is a teenage artist with aspirations of a singing career, but who is plagued with depression. Finally there is The Angst (Alex Damiano) whose sexual abuse at the hands of her father have led her into feeling hatred for the world.

I liked the three act structure, each act roughly split into half an hour means this was split up neatly. with each act taking place on a different day. The first day serves as an introduction to our tortured souls. All the characters see no hope or future in the world and are mostly nihilistic in their thoughts. The middle chapter is a ramping up in terms of self destruction. The four main characters are all self harmers and there is a montage of them all cutting themselves, as well as the revelation that at least one of the girls is being abused by a family member. It is here that flash forwards to the murder are shown in meaningful ways. The final act sees My Name go into its most arthouse style with long shots of characters in silence with music playing over the top and filters put over the footage and increasingly scenes shown out of order.

In terms of realism this works well if only there isn't really any sort of plot going on. The film is done as found footage, not in terms of the characters filming themselves (though all of the characters are indeed constantly filming their actions). More that the camera is bobbing up and down constantly giving the film a raw feel, like the cameraman is just another silent character. Initially I thought some of the acting wasn't that great, but as this went on I became to feel more and more like these characters were fleshed out greater than it first appeared, they interact naturally with each other. They are all full of teenage angst and so feel like teenagers in the dramatic nonsense they speak about (such as The Angst shouting at God in one scene).

What was interesting is that due to the abstract nature of this there is some evidence to suggest these four are actually all the same character. The majority of the film these characters stories have nothing to do with each other, it is only at the end they are suddenly all together. The fact that they all self harm, they wear similar over the top make-up at times, they all do the silly fingers as a gun thing and they visit the same locations could suggest they are the same. This comes more prevalent later on when all four are shown holding the same shovel in different scenes, while the same thing occurs but with characters sometimes not together and sometimes together. This notion to me at least was the most interesting part of this, I do like it when the answers are not spelled out for the viewer. What I didn't think was as good is that there is no explanation for why the murder takes place, the flash forwards mostly remain just that until the act is shown to be vastly different to what had been suggested. There was an intentional disconnect for the time leading up to the act to what caused it to occur but left me a bit disappointed.

While the realism and the raw feel were effective in showing a slice of life into these dead teens it also couldn't help but make me become increasingly bored at the non events that were going on. I admit I had to go off and do something else for a little bit after the end of the second act as the thought of half an hour more of meandering nothing filled me with a quiet dread. The special effects were well used, the self harm scenes looked realistic to me with the blood being the dark red you would expect. Elsewhere the music was mostly pretty great at creating atmosphere, a few of the songs used grated on me a bit, I never really liked the sinister version of children's music that were used at several points.

My Name is 'A' by Anonymous is a film that personally I didn't enjoy too much, as I said the genre is just not to my tastes. However that aside there was some interesting ideas here, and the feel of following everyday teens trying to make sense of a dark world came across well. It is a hard film to recommend though so I guess you will know yourselves if this is something that would be worth watching for you.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-21916622138816383542017-11-16T06:20:00.000-08:002017-11-16T06:21:11.067-08:00Statik (2017) - Horror Video Game Review (PSVR)

So technically Statik isn't horror despite what I may have said in the reviews title, it does have an air of bizarre mystery about it, while sometimes it hints at awful things. This is an exclusive PSVR puzzle game that makes ingenious use of the PS4 controller to create atmosphere.

The plot is pretty obtuse but what is clear is that you are a test subject for Dr Ingen at an undisclosed laboratory. You are given a series of puzzles to solve, in each test you awake strapped to a chair with a strange device locked over your hands. By interacting with this device from the inside you complete a series of tests on it, once successful you are knocked out, awaking in either a room to be surveyed with weird questions, or inside a tank where you are given puzzle parts to make up some sort of cube.

It is going to be hard to explain just how clever and unique Statik feels. Each of the 10 or so levels gives you a different device to solve, this is done by using pretty much all the buttons on the PS4 controller. Each button or stick corresponds to a part of the device on screen, each device has three different sides that all have different functions upon it. So one time for example the buttons can set dials, other times rewind and fast forward cassette tapes. In each level you are expected to work out the answers for yourself, there is no hint system and all the answers are already subtly around you. Sometimes solutions to puzzles are contained within the set dressing of the room you are in, such as a poster on a wall (for a shape based puzzle), or as colour coded objects (for when you have to put in a colour combination lock). Other times it is the device itself that gives you the hints such as one that had a screen of static on it that would clear when pointed in the right direction. There are all sorts of ways you are forced to use your brain with memory puzzles, shapes and sound ones among others. Sometimes I would nearly be pulling my hair out in bafflement only to then have a Eureka! moment and feel like the cleverest person in all the land. The fact that you are always left to your own devices rather than spoon fed answers I always thought was fantastic.

With so many different buttons doing so many things per level it did get quite confusing with what did what. On quite a few occasions I went through a bad stage of constantly mixing up the controls and pressing and resetting things I didn't mean to do. The box is always a lot of fun to solve though and was cool how you have to (literally) think outside the box. One stage for instance has you using a map on the wall to work out how to turn off the lights in various rooms in the institute, another one had my very favourite Statik moment in which you use the device as a remote control for a remote control car. Using a little TV screen to control a car within the confines of a VR game felt so immersive, I felt like I was Inception style pulled into the game one deeper layer.

This is all held together by a story that was very mysterious. Dr Ingen is the only person you see here, and his face is pixelated out. He starts each experiment with surreal musings, going on and on about random vaguely sinister little monologues that reminded me of something from Jam. One such example is when he talks about being locked up in an Aunt's attic one summer, then confessing he doesn't actually have an Aunt so has no idea just whose attic he had been locked in. There are vague notions of this being an experiment your character volunteered for, but no reveal of just what is really going on, and hints as to the fates of previous volunteers. It leads up to a very slight Portal style moment that wasn't too unsatisfactory if only because the rest of the game had a vibe that wasn't the most exciting (did contain the single jump scare of the whole thing though!). Taking place in the sterile confines of a lab works well for VR as there isn't much detail needed anywhere, it may seem a bit bland but it focuses your attention on solving the puzzles rather than gazing around.

I enjoyed playing Statik and it has re-play value in the form of an alternate ending, but I felt once I had completed it there wasn't much need to return. The puzzles were satisfying to solve but the rewards for doing so didn't give as much of a return. Still if you own PSVR this is well worth a play, it has a demo on the Playstation store so give that a whirl to get a decent idea of just how this works.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-25928936557191143332017-11-15T08:22:00.001-08:002017-11-15T08:22:40.953-08:00February (2015) - Horror Film Review

All year long I had heard people saying how good a film called The Blackcoat's Daughter was yet I could just not find this anywhere. Luckily I realised the film is actually called February everywhere outside of the U.S, not only that but it had been sat gathering dust on my Netflix list for quite some time.

February takes place out of sequence quite a lot of the time, yet despite this it isn't actually that hard a film to follow. During half term at an American Catholic boarding school two students are left behind due to their parents not turning up to collect them. Kat (Kiernan Shipka) is worried her parents died in an accident due to a nightmare she had, while Rose (Lucy Boynton from I Am the Pretty Thing That Live in the House) purposely gave hers the wrong date so that she would have time to tell her boyfriend she is pregnant. Kat's behaviour starts to become very strange with the usually meek girl acting out of character which concerns Rose. Meanwhile in a separate storyline Bill (James Remar from Dexter) offers stranger Joan (Emma Roberts from American Horror Story) a lift with him and his wife after seeing the girl waiting for a bus in the cold winter night.

I loved the way February was set out, it creates mini cliffhangers, and has little chapters that play with time. Sometimes it shows the same timeframe but with another character's perspective, sometimes it runs stories concurrently that don't take place together. An example is a phone rings and a character goes to answer it, then future events happen and it is only later on in the film it goes back to the phone call scene and shows it in full. It does this with various characters in a variety of ways. Stripped to its bare bones this is a film about demonic possession, whether that be actual, or down to mental illness, but it skirts away from a lot of the usual tropes (with the exception of one scene) and has that angle put on the back shelf with it insinuated by how characters have started acting.

On the topic of acting there isn't a bad actor here, I thought all the performances were really good, especially with Roberts, Shipka and Boynton on the female side, and Remar's great turn as the genuine Bill. This is a bleak movie that moves along at a glacial pace yet is made all the more engaging by these wonderful believable performances. The writing and directing by Oz Perkins (I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House) is on form with stiff uniform shots mingled in with slow pans. The quality of the camera work, and of the lighting was all top notch. I loved the use of darkness here, the sense of isolation; the cinematography was solid.. With Perkins other film he directed being a yawn fest it is good to see he can actually do slow burns that draw you in.

I felt that sometimes the plot wasn't as clever as it seemed to want to be, it was obvious to see for instance how the seemingly unrelated plot with the hitchhiker was actually related. To be fair it is shown very early on in a mild twist, then the later twist by that point was practically being screamed from the rooftops well in advance. I felt there was some pleasure given in drip feeding the viewer unsettling clues and then leaving you to stew about them for a while. There are some great special effects used during a stabbing scene, the noise the knife makes and the blood spilt combined together for horrific joy. There is a feeling of low level sinisterism here but never really much terror aside from a couple of short scenes (such as a glimpse of Kat through a window manically prostrating in a dark boiler room).

As always with slow burning films they are not going to be for everyones tastes, yet when they are done well such as is the case with February it makes scenes drip with atmosphere. It helps that the acting is all so good here and that a well trod story is given a slightly different treatment than would be expected. February is currently available to watch on Netflix.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-72806327943850423812017-11-14T14:03:00.001-08:002017-11-14T14:05:42.343-08:00Bloody Zombies (2017) - Zombie Horror Videogame Review (PSVR)

Before I can get on with my review of Bloody Zombies it is essential I mention a few things which have certainly coloured my enjoyment with the game, and which have influenced the path of what I am about to say. Firstly I didn't complete the game, I reached the final level but it was just too damn hard to beat. This goes onto my second knowledge bomb; I only played this game in single player, as with every single scrolling beat-em up ever made the fun increases the more players you have. I did try and play online with other people but the servers for Bloody Zombies are pretty dead. My final footnote is that I played this in VR, going the other way I feel this would be a lot more bland outside of the virtual world.

Zombie apocalypse has come to the U.K but it has been contained within the boundaries of London thanks to the K.R.O.N.O.S Corporation who have built huge walls around the capital. A year since the outbreak occurred four survivors; Teller, Mick 'The Brick', Rei, and Eddie happen upon each other just as a K.R.O.N.O.S copter crashes in the street. They are informed by a transceiver they find in the wreckage that they need to use a homing beacon to locate the key cards of 4 key members of the company in order to get into the H.Q where the cure for undead apocalypse awaits.

Bloody Zombies is a classic style 2D scrolling beat-em up that has up to four players fighting through the over run streets of London. The graphics are cartoon like and reminded me quite a bit of the hand drawn style of The Dishwasher series of games. Each level takes place in a different location as is the way, these include a graveyard, a train, London bridge, the Natural History Museum, a night club and more. It was cool to have a game entirely set in London and made for some detailed environments. There is variation in the levels in that your not just fighting your way to the end, but occasionally have little missions to do. In the night club for example you have to destroy the speakers to stop zombies being attracted by the noise. At other points you have to survive against waves of enemies as you try to use switches and raise bridges.

So far so normal but it is the VR which really adds so much here. In VR you are watching the game from slightly a far, by looking left and right you can see the entire 2D level stretching out, and are also able to see parts of the background which you can get into to find secret weapon caches. The characters and monsters all take on a South Park style flat paper look to them which is very attractive looking. This added a lot purely in terms of how pretty everything looks, like you are viewing a moving diorama. Levels contain a variety of weapons to collect that have limited use to them before they fall apart. There are also shops you can use to purchase upgrades (more on that later). There are also plenty of traps dotted around the levels that helped break up the fighting parts with some mild platforming.

Each of the four characters have slightly different moves to them, some are faster than others, some are stronger, again as you would expect. The monsters on the other hand are very varied, it seemed almost up to the final level new enemies were being introduced, there is a surprising amount of them. Mostly these are all variations on ghouls, such as ones who can throw bones, others who have spikes protruding from their bodies meaning they can't be grabbed, teleporting ones, and armoured ones etc. Each level ends in a boss fight against a gigantic foe. The problem with the enemies is that as they are all zombies they don't really look too different to each other, the bosses in particular are all just huge blobs of flesh.

I had quite a few problems playing Bloody Zombies. The combat felt a bit off at times, say for example you knock a zombie to the ground, it stays there for a while before getting up but there is no button that allows you to attack a fallen foe. You unlock more and more special moves as you progress but I confess I couldn't actually work out how to do these moves, either that or they all look identical on screen. The majority of the game is pretty easy, in a fun way, then comes level 10 which took me a few attempts, fair enough, but then the final level...the final level is ridiculously hard, so much so that I wasn't able to get more than a third through it before losing all my lives, the enemies just pound you from all sides with projectiles, while the larger enemies have an annoying habit of coming to the front of the screen and blocking a large percentage of it with their mass. It would have been helpful to have them become semi-transparent or something. The most damning part of the final level is more to do with fundamental game bugs. By this I mean the game has around a 60% chance of simply failing to load the final level in the first place, I lost count how many times trying to load it the game would crash on me, pretty pathetic.

Up until the final level I was having fun with Bloody Zombies, I loved the setting, and it all looks so damn pretty in VR, a high difficulty spike ruined the experience, I have seen people complete it in single player so must be possible, but not for me. This is also a decent length, it was at least two hours to get to that last level, with 11 in total that take between 15 to 20 minutes each on average. If you're playing this with friends then add on a couple of zombie heads to my score. If you're playing this in regular mode and not using a VR headset then maybe knock a couple of heads off. For me though this was a great looking game that couldn't hide some at times bad gameplay decisions, get it if you see it cheap (like I did) but don't expect to be blown away.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-50554033354080618022017-11-13T15:06:00.000-08:002017-11-13T15:06:35.774-08:00Oni-gokko (2011) - Short Horror Film Review

Yesterday was American Virus and today is another short horror that was written and directed also by Shane Ryan. Oni-gokko (Tag) is an eight minute long Japanese horror, now I have a history with those as I consider the anthology box set; Tales of Terror (that is made up of 33 Japanese short horror films) to be the scariest, nay, the most terrifying item I own. To this day I haven't been able to bring myself to rewatch it, but that's a story for another time. This doesn't join that exclusive club, but there is something about this that leaves an impression.

The plot isn't totally explained, or rather it is left to the viewer to fill in some gaps. From what I can tell a teenage girl (Miki played by Eri Akita) is seemingly being haunted by the vengeful spirit of her sister Aki (Mariko Wordell) who holds her responsible for her death when she was just six years old. Aki wants her sister to prove just how sorry she is for her past sins...

I loved the mystery behind this, the fact that events are so open to interpretation means it stuck with me. The death of Aki in the past for instance, just how much was her sister to blame, there are so many questions about that. There is also a possibility that Aki is just a figment of Miki's guilt riddled mind, and that her self harm is a response to that guilt. Just because this features Japanese actresses this doesn't mean it follows the vogue of what occurs in that countries films, instead Ryan gives his own spin with a spirit that is less black and white. Wordell comes across as pretty sinister with the emotionless look on her face, her performance is helped no end by the use of light and shadow to really make her seem out of place, my favourite shot had her spinning in a circle while the lighting dims and brightens briefly. It was a bit strange that the spirit was not that of a little girl but it did add to the oddity to have Aki grown up.

There were some almost art house moments at times, such as the aforementioned lighting change, that and the fact there is full frontal nudity (which I have forever linked with art house in my mind). The nudity is for both characters but it isn't without purpose as it displays the scars of Aki and the cuts of Miki while also showing the vulnerability alongside that. The scar effects looked decent, though for me the cuts in the self harm scenes didn't seem as authentic. I will say that the manic act of the cutting was very well realised with a swift series of edits adding authenticity to this ritual. The silence that comes follows this also seemed realistic with Maki almost being in a fugue state as can often happen.

That more sedate section was the slight problem with this for me as Oni-gokko is a film of two halves. The first is much more horror oriented, the darkness of the room, the initial stairwell descent, the creepiness of Aki, the razor blade, these are some effective elements. The other part is better lit and more compassionate in tone, and so diffused some of the atmosphere ever so slightly. Again though the framing is lovely to look at, and I thought the ending was nicely done.

Oni-gokko is a neat short that in terms of the film work and music hardly puts a foot wrong. The openness to interpretation was welcome and adds a layer of mystery to something that is different to the norm (I say that a lot but it really is the case here). The full version of Oni-gokko was included in short horror anthology Theatre of the Deranged 2 that came out in 2013.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-91242404422331193772017-11-12T14:16:00.001-08:002017-11-12T14:16:43.294-08:00American Virus (2015) - Short Zombie Horror Film Review

I am getting sent a lot of short horrors for review at the moment which is never a bad thing really. As I have stated on many occasions before having such a limited time to tell a story really forces you to be creative in what you build. American Virus is a POV zombie film that I enjoyed, but which did feel more like a clip from a larger film than one that feels self contained.

A virus that turns its victims into flesh hungry crazies has been unleashed on America, but unlike the norm it has been successfully quarantined. That is until a small grassroots terrorist gang decide to escalate events themselves by stealing a sample of the virus with the aim to spread the infection to the whole country.

It was cool to see a couple of notable people have worked on this film, the biggest draw I guess being the daughter of Clint Eastwood; Kathryn Eastwood who not only stars as the main antagonist, but also co-wrote this with Shane Ryan (Red Oedipal, Ted Bundy Had a Son) who himself also co-stars and directs this. Tommie Vegas (Party Night) also makes an appearance that was nice to see. It was interesting to get a film shot from the perspective of the bad guys, though aside from the broadcast message the group have filmed for the media a lot of this camera work is very shaky and indie in that it is people running around. There is kind of a message here about the half life existence of the daily grind for the average person, but there wasn't too much time to fully explore that. There are a few different techniques used here, this includes editing that shows events out of order, black and white sequences, and news report style parts.

For me the music was the least effective part, it was all very dramatic and serious, but did come across as a bit generic. In terms of visuals though this was attractive enough when shaky cam footage wasn't being used, and the zombie/infected make-up featured plenty of great looking blood. American Virus also featured the best on screen kiss I have seen for a while, love really does make people act crazy! With a guerrilla type feel this zombie short feels different enough, and at just five minutes long left me wanting more. American Virus is to show up as a segment in upcoming zombie anthology Virus of the Dead that is due for release 2018.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-74727162444005939912017-11-11T15:26:00.001-08:002017-11-11T15:26:40.270-08:00Sightings (2017) - Short Horror Film Review

Another week and another short horror film from Andrew J.D Robinson (Placebo, A Walk Home Alone, Something Scary), this time it is Sightings that clocks in at just two minutes long. I would say in terms of effectiveness as a horror this was the best one of Robinson's I have seen yet, it gave me genuine chills.

Two sisters are consoling themselves about their other sister who has gone missing, however due to inserts of a corpse it seems the viewer knows more than they do...then they get a fateful phone call. At 120 seconds that is a nice little story, I confess I got so caught up in this that I totally forgot this was so short and so the ending took me by surprise. Sightings is made in a clever way, giving the viewer more information than the characters on screen (though could possibly be aspects of a dream one the two had). Throughout we get inserts of both a girl walking down a lonely path, and of a corpse (that has wonderful make-up effects on it). I was impressed with the quality of this and how relevant each shot was to the overall message.

The ending is very effective, it gave me proper goose bumps due to the simple repetition of a key dialogue line coupled with the music stabbing ominously. For me it was this ending, and the inserts that made Sightings work so well. There is very little dialogue here, what there is is all relevant and important (plus hints at a supernatural possibility).

 It takes skill to be able to tell a story in such a short span of time, this was an effective little horror that worked without the need for lazy jump scares, or unoriginal topics. It's freely available to watch on YouTube so check it out below and see what you think.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-10286935556464270992017-11-10T14:28:00.000-08:002017-11-10T14:28:07.865-08:00Horror News November 2017 - They Live Inside Us, Mortal Remains, Lilith, Alpha Delta Zatan film news and Steep Steps, Anthony Vincent music news

For the first time in over five years I have two weeks off of my day job, as I tend to favour just a week. Maybe it will be a bridge too far as I left my department in a battle damaged state, but regardless I intend to do a heck of a lot of stuff for my blog (as well as clean my very messy HQ). I have books to read, both digital and physical, I have video games to play, and lots of horror films to work my way through. Hoping to build up a surplus of blog posts to use for rainy days. Any way enough about me, here is another round-up of news.

The people behind the well made horror anthology series The Witching Season have announced they are planning to make a feature film. This film is going to be an adaptation of They Live Inside Us which is about a writer who spends the night in a haunted house in hope of getting inspiration for his latest work. I have actually seen that one but no idea when or how as I haven't mentioned it on this blog before. They say of this 'The feature film will be based on the same general concept as the short film, but the longer run time will allow us to expand and polish the idea into something very unique and powerful'. There is currently an Indiegogo campaign going to raise funds to fund the making of this film with a host of rewards available to backers. That page can be found here, it's worth a visit if only to check out the original short They Live Inside Us which is included there. I wish them all the luck.

Next up a fun music mash up by Electronic Production duo Steep Steps who have had the ingenious idea to mash up the Game of Thrones theme tune with the 80's synth of Stranger Things. The near two minute track is called 'Game of Thrones (in The Upside Down)' and there is a fun music video for it that has the two flitting between two worlds as they perform.

Keeping with music comes the gloriously silly '12 Songs in the Style of The Nightmare Before Christmas' by 10 Second Songs' creator Anthony Vincent. Over this four and a half minutes Anthony covers such classics as Michael Jackson's Thriller and Rob Zombie's Dragula and gives them a Danny Elfman orchestral twist. This is quite funny and had me giggling quite a lot. I was so impressed by this mash-up style that I subscribed to his YouTube channel as he covers a whole host of songs in the style of famous bands.

Shockumentary Mortal Remains is the debut feature of Cryptic Pictures and examines the cryptic life of Karl Atticus; a notorious filmmaker from the 60's and 70's whose works have seemingly been erased from history, and who himself was found dead in mysterious circumstances. This was filmed over a three year period and includes interviews with historians and horror aficionados, including Eduardo Sanchez (co-director of The Blair Witch Project). The trailer certainly makes this seem like something worth watching. Mortal Remains is now available on Amazon, GooglePlay, YouTube, iTunes and Vudu. It is due to hit Netflix next year.

A teaser trailer for upcoming horror Lilith has been released. This movie is about a couple; Heidi and Steve who are travelling cross country in a RV on a vacation where their path crosses with a young woman named Lily. This meeting brings with it all sorts of terror and mayhem. This indie film features actors that include among them Jessica Cameron (Truth or Dare) who was also the executive producer here, Carlo Mendez (Parks and Recreation), Ryan Kiser (Truth or Dare), and Ali Ferda (An Ending). It looks to be a bloody piece so may be one to keep an eye on.

Finally a trailer for gay slasher Alpha Delta Zatan is now out. This film from Together Magic Films and Reel Nightmare Films is now playing on Amazon Video US.UK and in over 100 countries on Vimeo On Demand. This is about a frat house that includes among its members a mask wearing killer, and was designed as a role reversal on the traditional female focused sorority slasher films, featuring as it does an all male cast.

Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-36655080682789222017-11-09T09:57:00.000-08:002017-11-09T14:54:02.316-08:00Machine Baby (2014) - Short Horror Film Review

Machine Baby is a stylishly shot short horror that really is something quite surreal. This award winning piece (GenreBlast Film Festival award for 'Best WTF Short Film') was written and directed by Sean Richard Budde and has recently been available to freely watch as part of Bloody Disgusting's World of Death series (episode 125). I shall be including the short below my review, at just 10 minutes it is worth a gander.

A paparazzo (Sean McGill) is outside the home of a beauty pageant contestant manager (Christian Gray) where he is secretly taking photos in an effort to find out just why the manager's clients are always so successful. Hearing a strange noise from the basement he sees something quite unexpected, however he is caught by the manager and chucked off the property. Coming back armed with a video camera he is determined to get his scoop, however the price may be too high...

This is a darn weird film but one that uses some interesting tactics to feel unique. The start is near perfection in the disorientating fashion it starts. There was a epilepsy warning at the beginning that I paid no heed to, but the introduction of a strobe light that gets more and more intense, coupled with a song that gets stuck on a small loop, married to the visuals of the manager whispering something to his on stage Miss California client made me feel quite dazed and almost unwell! It was a memorable beginning and was nice to see things stay almost as strange for the rest of this.

The horror begins in earnest at around the 4 minute mark, by this point the setup has been established, and the oddness is deeply ingrained with a room full of gas cans in which a woman in the background is crazily guzzling from them. Gray is the best character here, he exudes a sense of menace about him that applies even when he isn't talking. It leads up to a fun The Shining moment, and a stab effect that works fantastically due to the great prolonged gurgling noise used. As the title kind of hints at there is a birth here, and this was my only real issue with Machine Baby in that I don't really see how something that large could come out of a person. This occurs off camera so I don't think it was really known how to show this. The editing felt slightly off at times, such as when a character is dragged to the ground, but the transition goes from him standing up in one shot to laying on his back in the next and so seemed a bit unnatural. I did love the ending though, it almost matched the beginning in terms of captivation despite the end of the story taking place over the blackness of the end credits just as audio.

Machine Baby is a strange short, but it stands out due to this. There is a lot of quality on show that you might not necessarily expect, while the bizarre droning soundtrack and great sound design added a lot of atmosphere. Aside from a couple of bits of editing, and one character who looked the part but didn't necessarily sound the part this was a decent little horror that has a fun exploration of where vapid beauty pageant contestants could actually originate from.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-16233051423899522622017-11-07T14:28:00.002-08:002017-11-07T14:40:30.690-08:00The Last Witch (2015) - Horror Film Review

There was a period a few years back where I really fell out with the found footage horror genre. I felt it had run it's course and there was nowhere else for the genre to go. Then something awesome happened, there seemed to be a second wind for found footage with no end of good to great movies coming out (Be My Cat: A Film for Anne for example). Then there is The Last Witch; a Spanish horror from young director Carlos Almón Munoz that very much represents what I grew to dislike about these types of films.

Three friends; Mario (Alfonso Romeo), Eduardo (Jorge Gallardo), and Sandra (Paula Pier) have decided they are going to make a documentary in the hopes of making it big on YouTube. They decide to base it on the Terrassa witch trials that took place between 1615 and 1619 in Spain. Six women were convicted of being witches and sentenced to death by hanging, however while five of the women were indeed killed it is unknown what happened to the sixth; Joanna Toy. The trio decide they are going to investigate her home in order to try and work out what happened to her, a bad move it turns out, due to the legend that after 400 years have passed the spirit of Joanna Toy will return for her revenge against the hunter's ancestors. That would be fine, but not only has that exact amount of time passed, but Sandra also happens to be a descendant of one of the people who brought the witches to twisted justice...

I wanted to like this film, I really did, but it falls into so many tropes of the old style of found footage that I couldn't help but be constantly disappointed. This feels like a lower budget version of The Blair Witch Project, but with none of the scares that film had. Here you get shaky camera work, corrupted camera footage, running around in the dark and plenty of being lost in woodland. They even have a similar set up; two men and a woman camping in the woods in exploration of a legend about a local witch. Where this does stand out is that the Terrassa witch trials were actually a real world thing, there were indeed five women who were hanged, and there is no evidence today of just what happened to the sixth witch Joanna Toy. It isn't the first found footage to have horror based on a real event (Hungary's Bodom that was to do with the Lake Bodom Murders springs to mind as one example), however it is neat that research was done to make the film seem more realistic.

One problem I had with The Last Witch is how amateurish this feels. To be fair this is an indie film, it has an estimated budget of just €1,000 and so it is impressive that a feature length film was able to be created for that low cost. However when it comes to creating fear this fails time and time again. There is a pretty neat plot thread about a group of modern day cultists who worship Joanna Toy and who are hunting the three friends, yet this doesn't seem to at all perturb them. It gets farcical at one point, the three having camped in the middle of the night wake to see a park ranger being dragged off into darkness by some of the cultists. Rather than be scared the friends react with mild annoyance and just zip up their tent and go to sleep for the night! I liked the three, as always with foreign language films it is hard to judge the acting but they have some pretty fun parts where they are just goofing around (such as Sandra's pig impressions). It makes it seem more natural when the jokes they are making are not at all funny, yet amuse themselves, makes them seem like a close knit group. But then there is the usual forced division type moments when friction is conjured up for no real reason, and there was a later plot twist that I predicted happening very far in advance.

Another problem is that I didn't find The Last Witch to be that interesting, in fact I was quite bored for the majority of the run time which was a real shame. There are plenty of scene building moments of the camera just slowly panning around empty rooms. I think it didn't help that the characters were so hardy that they didn't seem to scare easily, instead the more odd things happened, the more irritated and annoyed they seemed to become. When the horror ramps up for the final half hour I'm ashamed to say it made me laugh more than anything. There were a few good moments with the witch character in a house the three decide to spend the night in, but editing becomes an issue with quite a few failed attempts to create jump scares. At one point a character is running through the woods with a camera, at several times a masked figure runs screaming towards the camera...then the camera goes black and it's the next scene with no explanation for how this person is still running unhindered. This same screaming figure did the exact same stunt on at least three separate occasions, it just become so silly, like the actors are trying to scare the audience rather than doing anything cohesive to fit into the world of the film.

I can't help but feel disappointed about The Last Witch, I really wanted to enjoy this but it just felt like too much of a throwback. At times this feels like a fan made remake of The Blair Witch Project, and the amount of found footage tropes this uses is dizzying. There are some nice ideas splattered throughout, and I love the Spanish language here, but for me this was a mostly boring piece that was ok, but failed whenever it tried to create any kind of atmosphere. That this was created for such a low cost is commendable though, it would be good to see what the director can do with a higher budget. The Last Witch is available to watch on Amazon Video, POV Horror Roku, and POV Horror Amazon Fire TV thanks to the great people at POV Horror.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-57421839255194122232017-11-05T14:49:00.002-08:002017-11-07T14:42:41.071-08:00All the Devils Are Here (2014) - Horror Film Review

All the Devils Are Here (previously known as Sleepwalkers) is directed and written by Ryan Lightbourn (Roid Rage) and was filmed on a budget of $30,000 over a two week period. Despite the low budget and swift filming time this is a quality production and features some great looking special and practical effects both for the creatures and the victims they kill.

Five college students have headed out to Florida to the remote holiday home of one of the group. These students include jock Kyle (Ben Evans) and his girlfriend Amy, nerdy Evan (Tommy Goodman), English Owen (Ben Owen) and Kate (Ansley Gordon). Here they intend to celebrate spring break together but instead find themselves at the beginning stages of a deadly zombie/vampire outbreak. Soon they team up with some locals and a couple of escaped convicts to try and survive the night against their relentless foes...

Ryan states that this film was made as an ode to straight to video horror films of the 80's and early 90's and that does show in the film, especially with the soundtrack that is ripped straight out of the 80's. There was a timeless feel about All the Devils Are Here for the most part, indeed I thought it was set in the past for quite a while until a character pulls a mobile phone out their pocket. It couldn't be much of a homage without a cheesy montage or two and there are a few here, I loved the early ones of the friends driving around in their yellow jeep, then when things get real there is a neat little montage of them preparing the house they are at for attack. The camera work on the other hand is all modern in style, it is crisp and clean, a nice compliment to the visuals; much of this takes place in the lazy sunshine of a nostalgic era with some nice saturation used. I did find that the final third that takes place at night was a lot harder to see what was going on. At times it seemed a bit too dark, but this did help immensely with having the already great special effects and make-up effects look even better. The camera had a habit of being a bit too close up to characters when they were fighting which I think contributed to the few moments when I struggled to make events out.

There isn't any bad acting to be found here, instead you have a bunch of actors who may sometimes have ridiculous lines but they play into their roles. Sometimes of course the lines are brilliant, my favourite being when someone exclaims; "What in the fu*kity fu*k fu*k is that fu*king thing!?". Instead it is the characters themselves that I didn't always like. Owen is perpetually paranoid about Evan's intentions towards Kate, while Evan himself may be a bit shy and geeky but he doesn't really come across as that decent a person either. Also Tre (Doo-Doo Brown) was pretty irritating at times with his cliche way of talking that sometimes came across as a pale imitation of Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction. None of the characters are particularly likeable but this leads to a nice Night of The Living Dead moment when they have to put aside their differences to work together and protect the house they are in from being breached.

The plot for All the Devils Are Here is pretty simple, but it does reflect the style of horrors that I think Lightbourn was going for, I have seen many 'creature features' like this but I still found this one to be entertaining, as it is far better made than the majority of the straight to video horrors he was influenced by. I had some issues with the general story in how far ahead of the viewers the characters were getting. After just three of the six strong group have encountered just one rabies like infected crazed woman all of them start to talk about how what is happening is the start of a worldwide vampire/zombie apocalypse. Sure they might eventually maybe be proved right, yet at that point in the movie there was no evidence to point towards that in the slightest. This leads to them setting up heavy defences for no reason at all (in terms of what the characters actually knew at that point in the movie) aside from a local myth one of them mentions and which everyone believes after not much convincing. This was only a small issue I had, and to avoid immersion breaking I put it down to mass hysteria. I should also mention that I liked this enough before the horror started that I recall thinking at the time that if it was just 90 minutes of friends hanging out I would have probably still enjoyed this due to how it was filmed.

On to the very best part of All the Devils Are Here which is the great special effects that are all done practically. The monsters I at first thought were zombies, the early ones that appear are infected humans in the beginning stages of transforming. Instead I think they are some sort of vampiric type monster, afraid of the light they only come out at night, they reminded me a lot of the creatures from The Descent. The darkness helps shield these cool looking creatures though we get some great close ups at times. It would have been nicer to see more of the infected humans, felt at times opportunities (as cliche as they would have been) were missed with infected characters dying off camera rather than turning. A scene in which a heavily pregnant creature gives birth to a rancid looking offspring was a highlight in terms of how great the creature design was. On the victim side of things there are some brutal looking special effects that include at least one head being ripped off its body, and an awesome looking one later on of a character's jaw being ripped straight off it's head!

While All the Devils Are Here doesn't really do much to stand out in terms of the story it is telling it does remain enjoyable thanks to the solid directing, a killer soundtrack and mostly good editing. It leads up to an action packed finale that is a bit dark, but stays enjoyable due to great special effects and great creature design. It left me not wanting more, but satisfied at what I had seen. All the Devils Are Here is now out on most VOD platforms that includes iTunes, Amazon, Sony Playstation, XBox Live among others.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-9299015680460252422017-11-04T06:44:00.000-07:002017-11-04T06:46:12.651-07:00Murder Made Easy (2017) - Horror Film Review

After a week or so of just putting up posts about my own stuff it was about time I returned to items that had been sent for my perusal. So today I watched David Palamaro's indie thriller Murder Made Easy. I should admit that my expectations were pretty neutral for this one, I knew the general gist of the film so assumed it would be pretty bland. However this award winning horror (won the Indie Spirit Award at the 2017 Women in Horror Film Festival) does something really quite clever and unique.

It is a year since Joan's husband Neil died of a heart attack (Joan played by Jessica Graham) and she and her friend Michael (Christopher Soren Kelly) have arranged a night to remember with several close friends. The two are soon revealed to be sociopaths and have planned to kill their guests in retaliation for crimes they had committed against Neil. They have arranged a series of staggered dinner dates to take place over one night, each guest is first confronted over their past transgressions and then murdered and hidden away in time for the arrival of the next one. However with the two finding themselves so adept at killing can they really trust each other once their fool proof idea has come to pass?

Murder Made Easy is a very simple idea, I don't mean that it is lazy, obvious or too bare bones, instead the fact this is an indie project is brought to the forefront. I kept thinking during my time with this that this would be excellent as a stage play. The majority of this revolves around the interactions Joan and Michael have with their guests and the eccentricities that each of the new people bring to the screen. Both Graham and Soren Kelly play straight people, cold and calculated who are quite subdued for the most part. Each of the people who turn up are the opposite, larger than life people such as Angela (Sheila Cutchlow) who is obsessed with the books she has written, idiotic indie film maker Damien (Daniel Ahearn), ultra strict vegan Cricket (Emilia Richeson), and the theatrical Marcus (Edmund Lupnski). At first when Marcus appeared I didn't like the acting Lupnski brought to the role, it seemed too over the top and silly, but then I realised this is actually perfect, he and the others put so much into their characters, make them seem so outlandish and crazy that it goes together fantastically. You get the sense that these people are lesser prey to the killers, something that goes with the controversial thesis Michael had written about the strong deserving to rule the weak however they seem fit. There were elements of Crime and Punishment in this thinking, a vibe that only gets stronger later on.

Murder Made Easy is split into chapters, each headed with a title card displaying what is next on the menu. So rather than get introductions to the next stages instead it is the food to be eaten. There is even a nice little black and white intermission halfway through that not only hints at what is to come, but feeds into an ending that could be interpreted as ambiguous due to the similarities shown at both points. The tone of this movie is quite farcical at times, this is no dark and gritty thriller instead there is a good dose of humour that comes both from the clever word play (such as Joan and Michael giving veiled hints at what has happened to people they have killed to the new guests). The humour also comes from the audacity of the plan, staggering the killings means the house is soon filling up with corpses and leads to great moments of mistrust and misdirection.

For me the plot on the surface seemed flawed, I couldn't see the worth of murdering a group of people over one night, especially when previous victims keep nearly being discovered. I couldn't see the reason why they had to die either, each of the guests caused Neil some problems in the past, whether it be refusing to pay back a loan, or plagiarising his work, but for the two sociopaths I didn't see why this would drive them to kill as it isn't like they seemed to have ever cared about Neil, or have anything to gain by killing. To keep things fresh each murder takes place in a different way, such as gunshot, poison and suffocation, I appreciated the variety but why the same method wasn't used each time I don't know, would have made things simpler. It gets to a point where the tension really ratchets up, the sudden arrival of a cop elevates the finale when I had honestly expected a more slow and singular finish. This breaths a last breath of fresh air into the story with some inspired moments such as when the cop stumbles across a handwritten note on how to dispose of dead bodies.

What I liked most about Murder Made Easy is how such a simple concept worked so well, having the entire film take place in the one house, with a small cast of varied people just plain worked. This is helped by the very fitting soundtrack that compliments the farcical nature with a series of tunes that range from the somewhat too obvious thrilling sound to what appeared to be slow jazz as you would find at a beach side club. The acting is exactly as it needs to be, in particular Graham stood out with her ice cold persona, while the absurdities of the visitors meant each in turn left a lasting impression. Elsewhere the directing and editing both both delight, a prolonged scene of jump cuts of Joan trying to haul away a body was very entertaining, and the slow single take pan of a series of photos that comprised the start credits for instance. It all comes together and makes a simple story work, and go to places I certainly couldn't have predicted. I came to this with expectations of a dull murder mystery and left having really enjoyed what I had witnessed.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-80044296578368085972017-11-03T15:01:00.000-07:002017-11-03T15:04:31.440-07:00What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) - Adventure Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

What Remains of Edith Finch is another game in the so called 'walking simulator' genre, seen previously with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Gone Home. I've wanted to play this for a long time so seeing it in a Halloween sale I snapped it up and played through the whole game in one sitting. Sometimes quality is better than quantity and that is the way here with an experience that took me around 2 hours to see everything.

You play as Edith Finch; the last of her line who has travelled back to the creepy family home she grew up in. The Finch's are said to be cursed with none in Edith's family dying of natural causes. She has gone back to the home as when her mother passed away she left Edith a key that is hinted will reveal the secrets of her family. Whenever someone died their bedroom was sealed up as a sort of memorial, as such new additions kept being built on top of the original building. With her key Edith finally gets access to these locked away rooms, and as she works her way through the maze like house she discovers exactly what happened to each of her cursed family.

I really enjoyed my time with What Remains of Edith Finch and I loved how the game is laid out. In the present you explore the ramshackle building, but each new room you get to you are then transported back in time to play out the last moments of one of the deceased. These all take place as interactive stories and range from the farcical to the fantastical to the harrowing. There are no punches pulled in that a fair few of these have you taking the role of a child, one even has you as a baby. Knowing that death awaits at the end of each of these you can't help but feel sad and sorrowful, yet the way these play out are pretty stunning at times. A guy working in a cannery for instance escapes the tedium of his daily grind by imagining himself in a fantasy kingdom where he has gone on a great voyage. While you control his hand dealing with the fish in his present, you also control him as a 3D avatar that is exploring a world. Another standout story was set within the confines of a horror comic. A story about a fatal home invasion is shown via cell-shaded panels and with John Carpenter's Halloween theme tune playing in the background. Elsewhere a hungry girl imagines herself as various animals scouting the land for food, you hunt leads you to human prey.

Some of the stories are almost humorously short, while others are darkly playful, such as the bunker dwelling hermit who finally decides to emerge from his self appointed captivity after 50 years. All of them left a lasting impression without ever seeming like padding. It was fascinating getting little snap shots into the lives of the lost. This is all tied up with the central story of Edith, now pregnant traversing the house, with the incentive to keep playing being that a tragic event led to her and her surviving family members fleeing the house some 7 years previously, and so I wanted to know exactly what occurred. The game itself isn't really scary, it is not designed to be, more it is a bitter sweet remembrance that has some nice voice acting and great use of music. I was most impressed with the level design, at several points I was convinced I had seen everything, only to turn around and see a new pathway that had been hidden from view. It isn't all perfect, there is quite limited interactivity in the game world, and a few times I went into a new room not realising I would never be able to return to the previous one. Also as much as I like the way the story is told by text appearing in the game world it did have a habit of sometimes ripping my control away and forcing me to look in a certain direction. Then a normal pitfall of the walking simulator genre is there is a lot of reused textures, in particular the titles of the hundreds of books that fill the huge house repeat time and time again.

A short review for a short game but regardless What Remains of Edith Finch is a beautifully told story that shows how much can be added by giving you even just a limited amount of interactivity. The fact this is an anthology of sorts means there is never the opportunity to get bored as something new is always just around the corner. Well worth experiencing and that's for darn sure!

SCORE:

Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-25994841567360570872017-11-01T15:03:00.001-07:002017-11-01T15:14:35.240-07:00Jigsaw (2017) - Horror Film Review

The first Saw film is a classic of it's type, I still state that to this day, I hadn't seen anything quite like it and that twist; boy was that twist cool! I enjoyed Saw II but already I could see cracks starting to show in just where the films could go. I ducked out of the next three films in the series coming back for Saw VI and was not impressed with what I found; a ridiculous and convoluted story that featured multiple protegees of the allegedly dead original Jigsaw killer John Kramer (Tobin Bell). While I enjoyed the actual torture game part everything around it was very confusing to me. Finally was Saw 3D (Saw: The Final Chapter) that purported to be the death of the franchise but ended unsatisfactorily. So hearing it was returning with a new name I admit to being interested to see where things would go now. This movie needed to be a shot in the arm and bring it with it new ideas, and a new attitude, but while I did enjoy Jigsaw it really is just more of the same.

The convoluted storyline is all but thrown out, to be honest I'm not sure if this is a semi re-boot or a continuation. So John Kramer the notorious Jigsaw killer has been dead for 10 years, but it seems a new game is being played. Five strangers awaken in a converted barn where they are forced to partake in a series of brutal and deadly games due to past sins they had been hiding. Meanwhile bodies start turning up all over the city, they appear to be the work of a copycat killer as far as Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) and Detective Keith Hunt (Cle Bennett) are concerned, but medical coroner Logan Nelson's (Matt Passmore) studies of the deceased seem to turn up more and more conclusive evidence that John Kramer is somehow (and inexplicably) still alive...

One thing I have always liked about the Saw franchise is how the stories always have clever beats to them, nothing is ever quite as it seems and so it was fun to see that is again the case here. At times I wasn't sure if this was a prequel or a sequel to the other films in that Kramer's origins are explored once again in a way, yet obviously takes place 10 years after he died. The reveal was as always neat and unexpected though I kind of figured a little bit of it out even if my calculations were a bit off. Like the others I have seen it was the game itself that was the more interesting part. I remember the series being very wince inducing but here it seems a lot more neutral when it comes to showing scenes of tortures, the camera never greedily focuses on the torture aspect but really doesn't shy away from showing some fantastic looking effects for the dead. There are some awesome looking corpses here and the camera never attempts to hide these away. An early one of someone whose head was sliced in half vertically looked great, later someone is turned into mincemeat, another person has their head opened up like a melon. The five victims were not an interesting bunch, sure they all had secrets to tell but when a few of these victims all turn out to have wronged Kramer at some point in the past I had to roll my eyes a bit. It is farcical how many people in that guy's life caused him legitimate pain and suffering, seemingly every single person he ever interacted with in his whole existence at some point did some evil act such as kill his dog, burn down his mailbox, or cut him up in traffic! The list is freaking endless and done to death.

The other half of the film is the investigation into if the apparent Jigsaw killer is Kramer or someone new. This is where the films tries to get bogged down in giving us a new list of suspects. Could it be Nelson's assistant who was secretly obsessed with Jigsaw? Could it be Halloran who appears to have purposely shot a perp who had information about this new killer? Could it even be Nelson himself who was never the same after being kidnapped and tortured for many months while on tour in Iraq? I admit it was fun discovering just who the killer was but this side of the film was pretty silly at times. Especially towards the end when our heroes decide to head to where the game seems to be being played without informing anyone. The script in general is pretty average with the usual mishmash of dodgy people, and the unwise inclusion to have a comedy character of sorts (one of the five strangers in the game). Saying that I did like the more basic aesthetic of the traps, everything seemed more jury rigged than the slick professional kill houses which gave this movie in that respect at least a differentiation.

My problem with Jigsaw isn't that it wasn't an entertaining film, it was, I enjoyed watching it. No, my problem was that it wasn't a reinvention at all, but rather just another copy of what had come before. Aside from the title there really wasn't anything here to set it apart from what came previously, this was disappointing to me. Setting itself up for more films to come also made me roll my eyes a bit, I foolishly hoped this would be a one off, but it seems stage two of the endless torture porn series is due to start. Saying that I really did have fun, and as much as I have complained I will be going to see the next in the series. If you like the sure films you will like this for Saw, ignore my rating and go see this, but if you never thought they were any good this won't do anything to change your opinion.

SCORE:

Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-77486407370451544872017-10-31T11:18:00.003-07:002017-10-31T11:19:11.280-07:00Zombie Apocalypse at the Forest of Marston Vale - Horror Event

So last Friday I attended the Zombie Apocalypse at the Forest of Marston Vale which is the biggest zombie apocalypse event in Bedfordshire. Basically this is a walk around Marston Vale forest in the dark where you have to make it all the way around without being attacked by one of the 40 zombies patrolling the pathway. It was advertised as being for adults only and so I had mild hopes it might be a bit scary, which it wasn't, but it was something different, and something fun.

So I got a lift up to Bedfordshire with my best friend and her friends, we started as we meant to go on with some pre drinks. The event started at 19:00, on arrival at a visitor centre we all had to sign a form to say we are fine with being scared, that we wouldn't attack any of the undead, and that we wouldn't run (and various other stuff). We were then each given a white T-shirt with a zombie silhouette and the event logo on it...I would include a photo but I have literally no idea what happened to my shirt at all, maybe too much of my vodka and coke I was drinking fogged my memory (drinking it for Dutch courage of course).

Around 20:00 we were taken out the visitor centre into a field where the event organiser explained how it would work. The task was to complete a circuit of the 2km forest path, making our way past the 40 zombies as we did so. If we made it back to the visitor centre without our T-shirt getting any blood on it we could get our ticket price refunded (£15), however the zombies aim was to touch your shirt with their blood stained hands. We were instructed to stay on the path at all times wherever possible, and that we would be leaving in groups. Luckily we were in the first group to be let go, so off we went, not getting too near the front of the crowd. I think there were roughly 200 people who attended this, being let go at one and a half minute intervals.

After a slightly confusing start in which we were led down the wrong path and were put back on track by a stressed looking attendant our walk of terror began proper. What made a lot of this event fun was that it took place at night in mostly pitch blackness. It was always easy to see other survivors due to the white T-shirts showing up, so whenever you could see a lone figure, or figures stumbling around in the distance you knew they would be one of the hungry dead. Usually you could tell when a zombie was ahead due to the amount of screams coming from that direction. During the first encounter we managed to lose one of our four strong team, later once we had found him he swore that he had just got separated but I can't help that feel he ran off in a moment of blind panic! With so many survivors on the pathway it was quite hard to avoid the undead, such as one time a stranger grabbed me and used me as a human shield as she passed by one of the rambling corpses. There was a dizzying amount of phone torches, head torches, and camera flashes to try and identify where the dead were situated. Personally I didn't like the idea of being illuminated so I restricted myself to camera flashes to see ahead. I had an ulterior motive of being determined to get a photo of a zombie, or better, a zelfie. However as you would no doubt be able to tell it is actually surprisingly hard to get a decent picture of a creature that is endlessly heading towards you with food on their rotted minds (and I am incapable of not pulling some sort of accidental ridiculous facial expression when I'm in shot).

My friend was the first of our group to go, taken at the first couple of undead, I'm sorry to say I wasn't much better pretty much stumbling into one of the dead a few minutes later. Our third member did not do much better, and managed to trip over on two different occasions, the second time a concerned hoodie wearing zombie broke character to check she was ok, bonus points for being a decent person, but minus points for not being committed to the role enough! Damned if you do and damned if you don't for sure; a horror based moral dilemma. So it was all down to our fourth member (who we eventually relocated after his heroic flight), but at some point he too got taken. The problem with being gotten was that it was harder to care too much if zombies attacked you or not. Now it is completely understandable all the undead actors are allowed to do is put their hand on your white shirt, personally it would have been cooler to have been dragged to the ground screaming (as happened at a live action zombie roleplay event I went to once when three ghouls cornered me and did indeed drag me to the ground).

The make-up for the zombies was all pretty great looking, it really helped with the atmosphere that it was dark and so harder to see them that well. I was also impressed with how much they got into their roles. I had many different challenges when I would try and work out how to duck and dive around once people in my way, it was easier when there was a crowd of survivors as the undead would get confused with choice. On multiple occasions it was just me, slowly backing away as the zombie followed, groaning, and with a completely dead expression on it's face. With the amount of nervous laughing and screaming I was doing I loved that the actors never showed any expression, the ones with freaky contact lenses in particular really impressed me. The most cheapest and legal way I can think of to make it feel like real life zombies are actually after you. The woods themselves were sparsely decorated, it would have been more fun if there had been set decorations as the one part that had a few bodies in sacks hanging from the branches of a tree really stood out to both me and my friend. Also of the zombies themselves, I think more trickery would have benefited. Say put a rotter in a white T-shirt like everyone else, or have one wearing a working head torch. Again the most memorable zombie to me was the unique one who was hiding in a bush until half of us had walked past then he suddenly burst out to give us all a great fright. 40 actors was cool but there were huge parts of the trip around where there were no zombies for ages which was a shame, though as my friend said it did build up suspense. Also I had hoped for a undead gauntlet at the end, instead it just sort of petered out (though I did become completely entangled in thorny vines while giving a wide berth to the final ghoul, cut up my leg a bit but was quite funny).

While Zombie Apocalypse at the Forest of Marston Vale wasn't really scary, and did feel a bit overpopulated with humans as opposed to zombies it was a fun time, it was something different, and something memorable. The geek in me wished there had been some sort of fictional story given to us for why we were walking around the wood for added motivation. Still a big rotted thumbs up from me!Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-12462629997269787582017-10-30T15:46:00.003-07:002017-10-30T15:47:01.885-07:00Serial Cleaner (2017) - Crime Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

I liked the premise behind Serial Cleaner, and I also liked the visual style. In my head this was going to be similar to Hotline Miami except rather than killing buildings full of goons you would instead clean up buildings full of dead goons. While this can be a lot of fun it can also be immensely frustrating at times and it was this divide that meant it didn't endear itself to me as much as it could have.

Set during the 70's you play as a man known as 'The Cleaner'; an expert at removing bodies, blood and evidence from newly created crime scenes. Mainly he does jobs for the Mafia, due to being deep in debt with them over gambling losses. One day however he get contacted by a new client, and it turns out the mess they leave behind is far more barbaric than what he is used to. With evidence pointing to the fact the Cleaner is helping out a sick serial killer his conscience slowly starts to get the better of him...

So this is 100% a stealth game that takes place in an elevated viewpoint that reminded me a lot of Party Hard. Each of the 20 levels takes place in a different location such as a farm, TV studio and rooftops. In each level you must avoid the patrolling guards while collecting evidence, hiding bodies and cleaning up blood. You have a vacuum with which to suck up spilt blood, with a set percentage needed for each level. Bodies can be picked up and either taken to your car and put in your boot, or placed in one of the environmental disposers. In the nightclub for instance you can dump bodies in the piranha tank, while in the Mafia hideout you can put bodies in the meat grinder in a butchers shop. Each time you are caught the level restarts, but for more difficulty bodies and evidence will spawn in a slightly different place each time, and the time of day will also change up.

The frustration for me came from the guards, the cleaner has no weapons or special abilities so your only option is to avoid the sight cones, and not get close enough that they would hear your footsteps. Objects can be moved to block enemies from getting to you, while things such as speakers and radios can be used to distract them. You have the ability to hide in a variety of objects (such as cardboard boxes) and thankfully the enemy A.I is dense enough that even if you hide right in front of them they don't know where you have gone. To me at least it seemed at times guards were able to see me through solid walls that was particularly annoying. There are also shortcuts that warp you around the levels quicker. All these elements are gradually introduced as you play through the 2 to 3 hour campaign. There are a small handful of different enemy types, you have the disco cops who can move quite fast, guards who will call for backup rather than chase you if they see you, and later on guards who will shoot you dead the second they see you.

Hotline Miami comparisons come more in terms of plot. After each level you go back to your mother's home where you can interact with items to get more story about the world, usually what you have just done, or what you are about to do is mentioned on the radio, newspaper or TV. Initially this was far more mundane with the Mafia story but when the serial killer angle got introduced I found myself swearing through the levels determined to see what was going to happen. The music is fitting for the time period but for me there wasn't really a stand out tune, it all faded into the background a bit for me. There wasn't really a huge amount of variation in the levels, mostly it all felt pretty similar, there were a few different parts towards the end (such as one level where you are avoiding security cameras rather than people for instance). The most fun levels are ones you have to unlock by collecting hidden film reels in the levels, and fittingly they are based on iconic films. These were cool extras and let you be in such iconic places such as the cantina from Star Wars and the ship from Alien with text changed up to reflect this.

I did like playing Serial Cleaner but at many times things did get quite frustrating, and it also felt quite short. I have never liked stealth games so this isn't the perfect fit for me anyway. If you liked Party Hard but didn't like the killing then this would be for you. As for me I had hoped for more involved slow paced, methodical cleaning rather than the speedy arcade like feel this has.

SCORE:

Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-77976006768709144722017-10-29T13:03:00.000-07:002017-10-29T13:03:04.814-07:00News: Halloween Edition 2017

It is close to Halloween but I'm really not feeling it this year for some reason. I should be, there has been a sharp rise in horrors at the cinema this month, while Z Nation season 4 is going strong, there was a triumphant return of The Walking Dead last week, and the much awaited season 2 of Stranger Things is out. I have two weeks off work in a few weeks so I hope that restores my mojo. I have an eclectic selection of news I am going to put up today, so excuse the lack of any sort of theme here.

First up some food news. Tabanero Hot Sauce have released a limited edition selection of The Walking Dead themed hot sauces. These include original, extra hot, Agave sweet and spicy, as well as a 'bloodiest mary mix'. As far as I can tell this is all just regular sauces but with The Walking Dead packaging. Worryingly Tabanero say these sauces can cure infection from zombie bites, all well and fun saying that now but come undead apocalypse there may be some unhappy customers! Still I guess they will be too busy eating brains to worry about lodging a complaint, and the bottles do look cool with a different zombie on each of the different flavour bottles.

UK thriller B&B has recently been released in the UK, US, and Canada. This award winning film is about a gay couple who get more than they bargained for when they decide to stay at a homophobic man's bed and breakfast. I said of B&B when I reviewed it back in May: 'I found it to be an interesting film, and an entertaining one, it helped that there was no bad acting'.
A collectors edition DVD box set of digitally remastered Traces of Death has been released thanks to Brain Damage Films. This box set contains all five volumes and purports to all be footage of real life death and gore. Really not my thing but I'm sure there are people out there that would love this.
The trailer for new horror show Bible Black has been released, the show promises to be a 'thrilling new hybrid of literature and animation' and aims to follow in the footsteps of Amazing Stories and The Twilight Zone. Episode 1 is now available on Amazon Video.

Released on 20th October was Celldweller's latest single Electric Eye (Zardonic Remix). This drum and bass remix is heavy in sound and quite energetic, it marks Zardonic's 6th remix appearance for record label FiXT. More music news and One Last Shot have released a music video for their song Slitting My Throat On My Own. The video has the band exploring a haunted house attraction, but as they make their way through it band members start to vanish one by one until it is just vocalist Jeremy Romance left. Romance said of the video "We also wanted to just have fun with this video and not be as serious as usual because Halloween is one of our favourite seasons".

A Shudder reminder next; Shudder is the Netflix of horror and features a multitude of horror films for your viewing pleasure. For the Halloween period there are going to be a fair few releases for the service, this includes Shudder exclusive Can't Take It Back (urban legend mixed with social media), Amer (Belgian-French giallo), I Sell the Dead (period horror comedy about two grave robbers), Found Footage 3D (filmmakers creating a found footage unwittingly find themselves in their own real life found footage) and UK Shudder exclusive The Girl in the Photograph (two psychopaths target a group of models at a secluded house). More excitingly the awesome horror show Masters of Horror arrived 23rd october, I adore this show, owning it all on DVD. Each of the hour long episodes is directed by a different legendary horror director that include Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, John Landis and many more. If you haven't seen that show you need to! Upcoming for November is Wolf Creek: The Series (Shudder exclusive), Another Evil, Sam Was Here, and a few other older horrors including the Basket Case trilogy. Shudder is available in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland on a variety of formats include the web, iOS, Android, Apple TV and X-Box One, and costs (at least in the UK) £4.99 per month, or £47.88 annually. I subscribe to the service and while I don't use it too much it is a great resource to have access to.

Mad Sin Cinema is in production of several provocative and experimental films by Shane Ryan that feature 16 year old gender-fluid actor Lilith Singson in the lead for several of them. These include Red Oedipal (a bloody and twisted romance) and Half-Breed (a transgender fantasy/horror tale). Red Oedipal is currently filming, while Half-Breed is in production. If you want to donate towards the completion of either of these films then head to the gofundme page (here).
I am at the end of my news splurge with a new trailer for psychological horror Blood Runs Thick which is about a woman who starts to hallucinate after her husband goes missing. The film gets it's red carpet premiere in Beverly Hills on October 31st.

Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-28869725347377156202017-10-26T08:24:00.000-07:002017-10-26T08:24:28.582-07:00The Evil Within 2 (2017) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

The first The Evil Within game was much maligned, mainly in that it didn't seem to have an entire identity of its own, instead it was content to grab elements from many games (notably Resident Evil and Silent Hill) and splice them together in a way that wasn't always satisfying. Indeed I felt very disappointed at the time, yet a second playthrough last month made me come to appreciate that a little bit more. With The Evil Within 2 promising to fix many of the issues the fan base had first time around would it be something better, or merely something different?

Three years after the event of the first game (in which detective Sebastian Castellanos got pulled into a monster filled hive mind dream machine named STEM) Sebastian's life is in ruins. Chucked off the force after his account of what happened to him was put down to mental stress, and with the shadowy Mobius group responsible for the event nowhere to be found he spends his days drinking his sorrows in seedy bars. Then Mobius member Julie Kidman appears, she tells Seb that not only is the daughter he believed perished in a fire five years previously still alive (Lily), but that she has been used as a key component in a second STEM machine. This machine had been used to simulate a sleepy American town but something went wrong and Lily went missing, Mobius want Seb to go into it to retrieve her for them. It soon becomes very apparent that things have gone south, with the participants in the STEM program having mostly transformed into murderous monsters, and so the former detective finds himself once more fighting through a nightmare world...

One of my early complaints with the first game is how the various areas didn't fit together well at all, there was an inconsistency to where you would travel. It seems the developers have listened as now the world is much more focused, and far more bland as a result. I only really appreciated how cool the seemingly random locations when I replayed the game last month, here there is far less of that. The majority of the game takes place in the artificial town of Union that has fallen somewhat into a state of disrepair. It is laid out as you would expect a town to be, having industrial and business districts among it's streets. These streets make a big departure for the series as it becomes semi-open world. Think Silent Hill in fact as much like that series streets are closed off by huge holes in the ground. Silent Hill was the biggest vibe throughout The Evil Within 2 for me this time around, especially Silent Hill: Downpour due to the amount of side quests you get to do. I loved these open world areas, made better that a large proportion of the buildings you find are fully explorable, and reveal secrets in the form of new weapons and XP, as well as giving you hidden side story, cutscenes, and literature that is all completely optional. There are roughly three such areas in the game, each of them a lot of fun to explore. There is also a weird underground facility area named 'The Marrow' that links up these disparate areas, I actually loved exploring this maze like place, especially in one really awesome scene that saw the viewpoint change to first person as you crept through a dank sewer! The core problem of having locations more realistic is that they lose some of the insanity that came before, it is only really towards the end when you get areas that reminded me of the best of the first game.

I liked how essential the side quests were even if a lot of them equate to just searching out the corpses of Mobius soldiers. With the influences again, I couldn't but help be reminded of Resident Evil 3 with Mobius replacing the Umbrella mercenaries of that game. A lot of the characters you interact with are staff members who initially went missing while investigating Lily's disappearance. These characters are responsibly handled giving the story a lot of weight, I loved how some of these side plots got resolved, you even get to speak to them with multiple choice questions in Resident Evil style 'safe' rooms. It is here where you also can travel to Sebastian's own safe room that includes a fun shooting gallery, a crafting bench to upgrade your weapons, and a patient chair used to upgrade yourself. The first game had green goo as the currency for both, now it is scrap metal dotted around the levels for your weapons, and green goo just for your upgrades. These upgrades include several branching trees that focus on such things as stealth upgrades, health and stamina upgrades.

Like before the main story is split into around 17 different chapters but these chapters were a lot more fleeting here. Before, each chapter took place in a wildly different location, here the chapters feel kind of pointless, one for example I recall took me less than 10 minutes to get through. It felt like there were far too many chapters for what you were actually doing, a cut down to around 10 I feel would make each one feel more impactful. The main story levels themselves also felt a bit disjointed compared to the freedom of the side quests. Mostly you end up going to a location that is very linear in design and going on a haunted house walk of sorts; being taunted by one of the games antagonists but not facing any real peril outside of bosses. Initially you are up against an art obsessed serial killer whose works are victims frozen in time at the moment of their death, later on you meet other nasty types who reminded me of the cult members of Silent Hill 5 in their twisted ideals, and how Union has changed to show their sick views of how things should be.

For the most part you are fighting 'The Lost', these are former townsfolk who have transformed into rabid zombie like creatures. Stealth has been thrown to the forefront with traditional combat being used for when things have gone wrong. You have a similar style of weapons you would expect such as pistols, shotguns, a sniper rifle, and more. The crossbow that fires different styles of projectiles (such as exploding, electric, and ice) is back and is good for crowd control. Bosses this time around are not as iconic to me, though no less freaky. A huge lumbering creature with multiple screaming female heads growing off it, a ghostly woman that whispers your name as it hunts you, and a mask wearing flame thrower equipped maniac spring to mind. The problem with these bosses is they usually then appear as regular enemies immediately after you first beat them. A cool later game boss rush made up of the bosses from The Evil Within brought to mind just how much more memorable those ones were. Of course the human antagonists do a much better job than the emo feeling Ruvik (main antagonist of the first game), though again there isn't really enough to them to make them stand out too much. The bosses here are a lot more varied to fight though, stand out ones being a fast moving humanoid, one that you must merely survive against while a timer ticks down, and of course the fantastic looking and epic end of game boss.

While the plot is never much more than 'find daughter' it eventually goes to some great places. The last couple of chapters in particular were pretty stunning to say the least, the story improved tenfold, and the level design while linear was glorious to battle through, culminating in that end boss that channelled The Evil Dead (something that Seb also does as his colour palette for his clothes is very similar to that of Ash). I only wish the whole game had had a story as well displayed as the end of this. There were references to the first game a plenty, but mostly this was its own unrelated plot with elements of that other story only subtly hinted at. The gameplay felt quite well balanced throughout, initially I was stuffed to overflowing with ammo, and pretty cocky to boot. By the end I was literally down to my last handful of bullets when I finally killed the big bad, so proper survival horror there.

With more conservative level design comes less use of filters and scenery morphing. There was some of this but not like the arthouse effects constantly used in the first game. A few standout moments have you in a Hell type dimension, the most memorable was a huge level that took place in a gigantic dark cavern type place, the only illumination coming from candles led to some thrilling moments of sudden attack. When it was all over I felt satisfied, yet not blown away. This game is on par with the first, mechanically it is better, but in terms of the horror this doesn't do anything to elevate itself. The plot is simple, but really isn't helped by some lack lustre characters (including Seb himself). I did appreciate how females are the stars of the show here with them taking up most of the friendly characters and at times dying heroically, while the males are the twisted antagonists, the manipulated, and the cowardly. So a sequel worth playing, just one that is different rather than better at what come before.

SCORE:

I streamed my entire playthrough of The Evil Within 2 on my YouTube channel, the first part can be found below...

Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-70425649237269819782017-10-25T10:48:00.001-07:002017-10-26T08:06:53.527-07:00DIS (2017) - Horror Film Review

I first heard of Bill Oberst Jr. back at the start of 2014 when I saw his powerful performance as the star of arthouse horror Coyote. I am firmly of the mind that he isn't capable of giving anything but his all to his performances as here he is in his latest film; DIS (directed and written by Adrian Corona) and once again he gives an intense and gruelling show. This film is the most arthouse I have seen for a while and with that style I sometimes enjoy them, I sometimes dont. Still at around an hour long this one doesn't have time to drag, instead telling an abstract tale that flows naturally.

So this was a bit hard to follow and I will admit the plot summary comes from both my own experience of this, and of the IMDB plot blurb filling in some blanks. Oberst Jr. stars as Ariel; an ex-soldier with a criminal past who has taking refuge in Mexico, in some woods after a probable recent escapade. While out hunting one day he comes across a ruined building, while investigating it (after seeing the figure of a half naked woman) he is ambushed by a hooded man who wants Ariel's bodily fluids as food for his mandrake garden.

So this is about the legend of the mandrake plant that this film states is grown from the blood of murderers. Even without Bill saying this was an arthouse film it wouldn't have been hard to guess (he also says this was one of the strangest projects he has ever worked on). It has full frontal male and female nudity, discordant music, and quickly edited together abstract shots so ticks all the arthouse boxes. DIS takes place in two different times, the present that has Ariel and his accidental meeting with the mandrake gardner, and black and white segments that has Ariel arriving at a remote criminal den after needing to lie low. The only dialogue (aside from screams) occurs in the brief black and white flash back moments and so a lot of what is going on is up to the viewers interpretations.

Mention must go to the cinematography, with this mostly centring around a wood, and a nearby graffiti strewn ruin. There are some great shots of this building that lend themselves to some evocative moments as Ariel explores the place, on the hunt for who knows what. I don't know in what context the films title is meant, for me I know Dis as the main city in Hell, and so I saw Ariel's descent into the stone labyrinth he finds as a contrast to entering Hell itself. I'm sure I am very wrong on that matter, but that is the fun with arthouse films, it is all so interpretive. The atmosphere built up during these lonely walks adds a lot of interest that this might otherwise not have had, as at times this is exhausting stuff.

A chunk of the film has Ariel chained up and at the mercy of a hooded figure for reasons unknown, as had happened in the prologue with a naked woman who had been chained up in similar circumstances. This is where things get the most uncomfortable with both victims being abused for the needs of the figures plants. The whole film has a dirty, scummy vibe to it with the filthy ruin a great location for a horror. For me while I didn't find this pretentious, I did find it a hard watch at times, I felt like I was slightly out my comfort zone. Oberst Jr. puts in another great performance, I don't know what it is about him but he always seems like he is a product of whatever film world he is in, he never seems like just an actor, but as someone who has inhabited the movie world his whole existence.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed DIS, it isn't really my thing, however that doesn't take away the craftsmanship put into this movie, it is an attractive piece. It has a cohesive mood that never falters, while Oberst Jr. is the perfect fit for the troubled ex-solider escaping (or confronting) his past. DIS is due for release in 2018 and recently made it's festival debut at the TOHorror film festival in Italy.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-22440548161755714752017-10-24T11:06:00.005-07:002017-10-24T11:24:56.695-07:00The Faith Community (2017) - Horror Film Review

2017 has been a good year for found footage horror, so much so that when I turn on a film to discover it has been made in that format I don't feel revulsion, but instead intrigue. In many ways The Faith Community (produced, written, and directed by Faith R Johnson) is fantastic, it goes back to basics with the found footage being extremely amateurish, this helps to add a good dose of realism that even some of the less stellar acting can't really take away from. The whole plot is also a big shining point here, I haven't seen a story like this in a found footage before, yet at a crucial moment the ball is dropped which really was a damn shame.

Three friends; Hannah (Janessa Floyd), Andrew (Aiden Hart), and Colin (Jeffrey Brabant) have gone away to a religious retreat for a weekend out deep in the woods. Colin is going to film what they get up to for a project the trio are doing. However upon arriving they find something quite different to what they had expected. The retreat is run by a charismatic man (Jeremy Harris) who calls himself 'The Messenger', and whose teachings are very twisted, as are his methods for dealing with those he sees as false believers...

The way The Faith Community is filmed is very raw in feel. Colin is a terrible camera man, awful in fact. His shots are nearly always out of focus, he is forever fiddling around audibly with the camera as he films, and he has a stunning habit of missing peoples heads out of shots. Because of this a layer of authenticity is created that sustains throughout. I always find it so immersion breaking to have found footage where the camera shots are perfectly framed constantly, here they are rarely well framed, only in one scene, and that is amusingly when one of the cult members (for that is what the trio have unknowingly joined up with) has set up the camera themselves. There is a vein of jet black humour that runs throughout this, several times I almost laughed out loud in purposefully set up moments. Colin who is the least religious of the three is constantly swearing, something the other two are constantly calling him up on, when events have started to take a dark turn they still obliviously call him up on his language that I found amusing. Another great scene had Andrew gushing with praise to The Messenger as unseen to him, just in the background what appears to be a corpse is being dragged away. I loved these little moments of levity.

There are four actors who really bring a lot of enjoyment to this movie. Colin and Andrew were the most realistic. I loved Colin's frank nature and how he deals with the rising threat. This is shown initially with a meal scene where his hands are the only thing on camera (as he has set it down), but you can visibly see his hands shaking having witnessed what he just had done. Andrew on the other hand is a super dork who is captivated by what he is seeing to begin with, but then later on his transformation into terrified is plain fantastic, the interactions between Colin and Andrew feel so believable. The other great part of this is The Messenger, Harris puts in a spell binding over the top performance that demands attention, just like the cult leader he is portraying. His theatrical performance is perfectly explained on camera and leads to some surreal moments that work well, such as a musical number he starts singing during a disturbingly real play he and his members have put on for the visitors. I got a huge The League of Gentlemen vibe from this sequence. Sometimes with him in particular he seems to stumble over his lines, I don't know if this was accidental or on purpose but it adds another layer of realism to the proceedings by making him seem all the more normal. Of the other characters they are a patchy lot, some come across as pretty average, but least these only have small parts to play.

It is a good half hour at least before anything horror like begins, yet I didn't mind, it was so obvious that there was something not right with the group, and there was some original ways this was hinted at. A good chunk of the first third is comprised of interviews Colin is doing with The Messenger, and then his right hand man Michael (Oliver Palmer). These interviews again are carried out in a clever way. The Messenger does several takes for Colin, yet each time he says the exact same sentences, with the exact same inflections that makes for a creepy tone. Michael gives the first foreshadowing that there really is something wrong, with a story about what led to him leaving the army, that leads into the great middle part, which then goes into the disappointing finale. I will say though that I really appreciated nothing is very explicitly explained; is The Messenger an expert at brainwashing, are his followers all drugged, or is there even a supernatural explanation? I liked this was left up to the viewer's imagination.

I had high hopes by around the hour mark of The Faith Community but when things eventually go wrong this was when it began to unravel. With around fifteen minutes to go an event occurs (annoyingly just off camera) that leads to someone else filming the final part of the movie, however this section was very dull, each moment sucking away the momentum that had been built up. I appreciate what was being attempted with this, and there was some hinting at what could really be going on, but to be truthful if this final part had been cut entirely (save the final shot which was cool) this film would have benefited a lot.

There is much to like about The Faith Community, it has an original story done well, some great performances, and an approach to filming that is either inspired or an act of lunacy, but the final third just dragged for me. However if you have even a passing interest in found footage then you need to see this, it may be rough around the edges but it proves there is strong life left in the old style way of making these films. The Faith Community has just entered distribution on Amazon Video, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV thanks to POV Horror.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-87380449571779884422017-10-22T03:05:00.003-07:002017-10-22T03:06:06.967-07:00Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter (2016) by C.A Verstraete - Zombie Horror eBook Review

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies may not have been the first historical zombie novel but it did bring the idea into the mainstream. There is something about an undead uprising before the advent of modern technologies that is endlessly entertaining to read about. Of course Pride and Prejudice's big thing was that it was the original text from Jane Austen but with extra parts slotted in. Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter is slightly similar, though this time around a fictional book has been written about real world Lizzie Borden who was on trial in the late 19th Century for the axe murder of her father and stepmother in Massachusetts, and who was acquitted of the charge. This book theorises what if she really did commit the murders, but with the twist that it was down to her parents both being zombies.

After finding her parents infected with a strange affliction that causes them to try and violently attack her, Lizzie Borden is forced to kill them. John Fremont; a member of a secret group named 'The Society' introduces himself to Lizzie and tells him that people have been returning from the dead all over the city, and that his group are dispatching them in secret so as not to cause a panic. However due to the clandestine nature of their actions they can't stop Lizzie from being arrested for murder. Without even knowing if she is going to be locked away for her perceived crimes she must work with John and others to investigate just how this plague came to the city, and what part her father may have had to play in all this.

This book starts off with no slow introduction, instead we are thrown straight into Lizzie's first contact with the undead. This abrupt start didn't really resonate with me as I felt more confused than anything at what was going on. Not at the actual events, more that the main character is in the midst of action with no feeling of what sort of person she was. However the book then settles down into something more familiar with the main bulk being the investigations that Lizzie, her sister Emma, and John carry out on various properties her father once owned. This leads to a lot of localised zombie fighting. I liked the idea of a secret society trying to contain an undead apocalypse from coming to pass and I liked what they did with the character of John. Initially it seems he is to be Lizzie's love interest, for me I couldn't stand his character as it felt like he was using her for his own ends, so it was good to see him fade out the story, I had worried this off putting nature of his was accidental on Verstraete's part, but it wasn't at all. Of the other main characters it is Lizzie who stands out as the best one. She is strong willed, but there was also a vulnerability to her character on the many occasions she bites off more than she can chew. The less said about her sister Emma the better though, she came across as a perpetual damsel in distress whose meek nature and poor sensibilities just created no end of situations where she need to be rescued from the ghouls.

I did wonder if basing this character on a real life woman was a good move, she may have been acquitted of the charge but there are many to this day who believe she was guilty of murder. However it has been over a hundred years so is not exactly like it matters too much in modern day. It leads to most the chapters starting with a real excerpt from her trial that was fun with the twist this story gives her motivations. There was a decent sense of Crime and Punishment at times with Lizzie living in fear of being arrested, but that whole element of the story is dealt with at around the halfway point. With the verdict already known it was less being worried about what would happen to her and more wondering how she would manage to avoid jail. The story is simple, but it is fun to read and leads up to an escalation, even if it does all get resolved frustratingly off the page for the most part.

As always it is cool to see how people of a different time deal with the undead, here it is mostly pistols and bats that leads to a lot of exciting scenes. There are comparisons of the zombies to things more well known of at the time such as Dante's Inferno, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which was a nice touch, while with the corpses themselves there is a little addition in that they are so full of insects that they often spill out upon the reanimates passing.

After a sudden start Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter slows down into a more structured read, one that doesn't create too many memorable characters but is still a good yarn told in a well written and engaging style. If your after a fix of olden days zombie slaying then this should do you fine.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359115107121123612.post-59297687848598022012017-10-21T10:15:00.003-07:002017-10-21T12:31:48.034-07:00Happy Death Day (2017) - Horror Film Review

I fell in love with Happy Death Day (directed by Christopher Landon of Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse and Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones) the moment I saw the trailer due to the glaring similarities between it and Groundhog Day. I loved that film due to the person stuck in time loop idea, and this is pretty much the same idea here, but with the added twist of each day ends for our heroine with her being murdered by the same mystery figure. Even that idea isn't wholly original as a similar concept occurred in Supernatural: Season 3 in the episode Mystery Spot where Sam was constantly reliving the same day in which his brother Dean was destined to die.

Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) wakes up on her birthday in Carter's (Israel Broussard) dorm room after seemingly having a one night stand after getting very drunk the night previous. She has no idea who the boy is and brusquely leaves. During her day Tree is shown to not be that nice a person, such as being in the midst of an affair with a married lecturer at her university, standing her father up at a meal he had planned, and generally being mean to everyone she interacts with. That night while walking home alone she gets attacked by a hooded figure wearing a baby mask (the baby being the university's football team mascot). She wakes up to discover herself back in Carter's room and soon discovers she is reliving the same day over and over again, each day ending with her murder at the hands of the hooded figure. Tree decides the only way to break the curse of the time loop she has found herself trapped in is to stop her killer from killing her...

Many story beats here are extremely similar to Groundhog day, so much so in fact that characters specifically mention that film (in a scene that was awkwardly implemented and kind of fourth wall breaking). It was fun they acknowledge the influence as this is very similar in style, except the slasher of course. As the same day repeats and repeats Tree starts to go a little crazy that is shown via a humorous montage, eventually she goes on a voyage of self improvement that culminates in one perfect day when she becomes who she needs to be for the various people she encounters. The way events happen is so familiar that this could really be seen as an unofficial sequel to that Bill Murray classic. Rothe is great in her role being able to bring a lot of fun to her character, her facial expressions in particular were always funny, whether it be from exasperation at finding herself in the same situation time and time again, or her knowing wink and nods to the various people she keeps bumping into. Yet when the time calls for it she can also come across as a determined heroine.

Murder is obviously the biggest difference here and that is what feels the most fresh. I loved how no matter what Tree does she cannot escape the masked killer, the variety of ways she is killed lead to some great moments, such as when she is drowned she wakes up vomiting, when she is blown up she wakes up with flames briefly reflecting in her eyes, and when she is knocked down with a baseball bat her surroundings change into the dorm room with her landing on a bed rather than on the ground like she should have done. I liked how this morphed the body count of a traditional slasher film by transferring all the deaths onto the same character rather than many. The slasher's mask is suitably creepy, it was actually designed by the same guy who designed the iconic Scream mask.

 A novel idea was that while she is resurrected at the days start each time she is actually carrying over the injuries she has sustained in a fashion. Each day she gets weaker and weaker, even passing out one time and being taken to hospital where she is informed she should be dead due to the apparent problems inside her. Unfortunately with this cool idea it doesn't really lead to anything, this sub plot is abandoned halfway through Happy Death Day and never really mentioned again. With regards to just who is trying to kill her and for what reason when that is revealed it is pretty lame, but this fact isn't ignored by Tree who pretty much states as much. Either way it was pretty uninspired though I liked the red herrings along the way, and the way back story into her tragic past is slotted into background details.

With a smart and often witty script, and a likeable main lead Happy Death Day is a fun little horror that never tries to be too seriously. The actual horror element may be a bit low for some but it was nice to have a twist on the usual teen slasher, and nice that the characters who mattered were not the usual super irritating ones that usually populate these type of films. Nearly an 8 from me, but the sometimes too familiar structure, and the too crisp and clean ending just about knocked it down to a very high 7.

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Daniel Simmondshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com