The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Friday 17th March 2023

As I mentioned earlier, I'm really phoning in my blog posts for this week due to both a new season of Fortnite coming out, and a friend visiting for half the weekend (weekends being when I currently write my posts). With that in mind, here is the second news post of the week.

Project Skyquake is a sci-fi film from director Jozsef Gallai, it stars the late Tom Sizemore, Laura Ellen Wilson, Robert LaSardo, Laura Saxon, and Simon Bamford and is available now from Bayview Entertainment. It may not be pure horror but it has an interesting synopsis. After strange trumpet like sounds are heard in the sky around the world, an amateur journalist sets out to investigate with terrible results.

Camp Blood 666: Exorcism of The Clown is the sequel to the more simply titled Camp Blood. Directed by Will Collazo, and starring David Perry, Julie Ann Prescott, George Stover, and Mel Heflin, this is now out on DVD and Blu-ray and will be coming soon to VOD. After the events of the first movie, new owners have taken over Camp Blood, renaming it Camp Blackwood. An attempt by a local pastor and his church group to cleanse the area of the souls trapped there has the unfortunate side effect of bringing the killer clown and his demented cult back. Even worse, a vengeful witch has also turned up, determined to defeat the clown, but not caring who gets caught in the crossfire.

Finally for today, found footage horror Ghost Webcam is now available to watch for free on Tubi. Directed by Sebastian Dove, this follows Nate, someone under house arrest who is shocked to discover his virtual date seemingly being murdered live on camera.

The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes (2021) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 5)

After the success of their interactive horror story game Until Dawn, developer Supermassive Games decided to make a series of smaller games of the same type, wrapped up under the guise of them being part of an anthology. This was always something I liked in theory more than in execution, while all have amazing graphics, first game, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan was fun if forgettable, while the follow up, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope almost verged on tedium due to long periods of not really doing anything other than walking down long empty roads. Seeing the penultimate game in 'season one' of the anthology series on sale I decide to pick it up, and I am very glad I did as The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes is by far the best of the lot, even eclipsing the full price games of Until Dawn and The Quarry. I finally understand what the developer is attempting to do with these games and I am well up for it.

This takes place in 2003 with the American army in Iraq as part of their response to the events of 9/11. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Eric King (voiced by Alex Gravenstein - Moonfall, X-Men: Dark Phoenix) has been working on specialist technology designed to be able to scan underground in order to locate Saddam Hussein's alleged chemical weapons, which are believed to be hidden in an underground facility. Convinced he has pinpointed the location, he leads a small squad of soldiers, who include among them King's estranged wife, C.I.A officer Rachel King (Scary Movie 5), her new love interest, Nick (Moe Jeudy-Lamour - X-Men: Days of Future Past), his squad leader, all American good boy Jason (Paul Zinno) among a few others to the apparent site. Ambushed by the Iraqi army, a firefight ensures, resulting in a series of large sinkholes appearing which sucks both sides beneath the sands, where they find themselves confronted not with a secret chemical lab, but instead with the ancient ruins of a vast Akkadian temple from 2231 BC. Trapped underground with no apparent way out, the survivors decide to head deeper down into the Earth, hoping to find an alternate exit, but instead stumbling into the resting grounds for a group of monstrous and near indestructible creatures.

I have found myself struggling to properly explain to people what these games are like. They are essentially an interactive CG movie, with much of the choices you make affecting other characters opinions of you, or whether you survive the numerous quick time events (which require you to quickly press a button that appears on screen in order to avoid negative consequences such as tripping over a rock while running away from something). There are also more interactive sections where you have agency to explore various locations, looking at items that provide more clues as to what has gone on.

As I said in my intro, these games have never really clicked that well for me. They are meant to feel like horror movies changed into a game, but with so much downtime (especially with Little Hope) they have suffered from bad pacing. That is not the case here, if House of Ashes was a film, it would be a wild creature feature, the claustrophobia of The Descent mixed with the high action of Aliens, with a little bit of Lovecraftian cosmic terror swirled into the mix. From the thrilling prologue that takes place in 2231 BC, all the way up to the action filled finale, this just didn't drop the ball in term of constant excitement, there was barely any sense of downtime throughout. That was really impressive that this remained so exciting and focussed over the six or seven hour playtime.

Previous games have not really had memorable characters, and while the cast of House of Ashes are arguably stereotypes, that more than anything really cemented the feeling of playing through a wild B-movie horror film. A part of these games is shaping characters into the type of people you want them to be. I had two firm favourites here, firstly, Jason was a character I grew to love, initially my version of him was a bit of a xenophobe, but the bromance that can develop between him and Iraqi soldier Salim (Nick E. Tarabay - Pacific Rim: Uprising) was wonderful to see play out. On the subject of Salim, I thought it was a really good decision to not only include an Iraqi soldier as one of the playable characters, but to make him such a good person. Salim is a badass who is not only reasonable, but has the most noblest of aims, wanting to escape so that he can get back to his child who he is a single parent to. I loved the agency it felt like I had been given to mold these characters to what I believed them to be. In one of the cheesy (yet great) scenes towards the end you can choose whether to go back for Salim (who had gotten separated) or continue forward, with Jason stating to the question of why he would go back to assist an enemy something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "After all we have been through I see him as one of us. We never leave a soldier behind!".

I've been skirting around the antagonist monsters of the game, and while I won't go into too much detail, they are a spin on a traditional movie monster, and they are a constant threat. The world building was excellent for this, not only with its insight as to what happened to the ancient civilisation who once existed there, but also with regards to an ill fated expedition to the temple in the 1940's. The later is represented later on with a series of fun black and white flashback sequences that reveal what happened to them. Being set almost entirely underground there were plenty of memorable locations. Sure, you get lots of caverns, but you also get lots and lots of temple, and the late game reveal that takes you to a cosmic nightmare that wouldn't be out of place in a H.P Lovecraft story.

With The Quarry one complaint I had was how easy the quick time events were to pass, here there are so many, and some have such tight time limits that I failed a fair few. Luckily none of the ones I failed led to anyone dying, I didn't survive the game with everyone intact, but only due to purposely killing off one or two due to feeling like it would have been appropriate times for them to die if this had been a film I was watching.

If House of Ashes had been a movie I would have loved it, and getting to take these mostly interesting characters through their ordeal was a huge amount of fun. That this managed to even end on a good note was impressive, as mild spoilers, the previous anthology games had late twists that suggested things really were not as they had appeared, but this one commits to the events playing out in a way that was satisfying to see. I thought The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes was a fantastic horror game, and hopefully this is the series finally reaching its potential.

SCORE:

Attack on Titan - The Final Chapters: Special 1 (2023) - Horror Anime Episode Review

The convoluted and lengthy final season of horror anime show Attack on Titan is almost at an end, again. The fourth season began in 2020 and had already been split into two parts, so me and my best friend were quite surprised when at the end of Attack on Titan: Season 4 Part 2 it was revealed there was yet more to come. Rather than stretch things out even further it turns out the final two episodes are both bumper ones, with Attack on Titan - The Final Chapters: Special 1 being an hour in length, rather than the usual twenty or so minutes. Obviously there will be spoilers for previous episodes to follow, so read on with caution in your hearts.

The story is too much to sum up, basically, Eren (voiced by Yuki Kaji) has unleashed 'the rumbling' onto the world, which equates to him unleashing a seemingly unstoppable army of titans (giant humanoid monsters) whose sole goal is to crush and destroy all they come across outside of Paradis Island. There was little hope for the enemy city to survive, being so close to the sea from where the monsters appear, so Eren's secondary goal is to then march to the location of the enemy's mountaintop military base, in order to fully defeat them. The goals have a very high civilian casualty rate, and so his former colleagues, including among them his childhood best friends Mikasa (Yui Ishikawa) and Armin (Marina Inoue) have teamed up with some of the original invaders of Paradis Island in order to try and find a way to stop his terrible plan of genocide to the world outside of his home.

Due to the scattershot approach to the release of the series (it all started ten years back with the first season), it has been increasingly hard to follow the story, especially in later seasons where politics and internal machinations have really made some plot points hard to follow. Thankfully then, this first part of the very end of the show tells a somewhat simpler story. In addition to the main and urgent storyline going on, there is also a few flashback moments that try and justify Eren's approach to dealing with the threat of the outside world to his people. This displays the fact that he isn't a heartless monster, but instead is very aware of all the innocents that will be killed in his murderous path as leader of the rumbling. The key theme appears to be about stopping the cycle of hate, with most characters putting aside their differences in order to try and save what remains of the world as a whole. Each character recognises they have committed terrible acts that have resulted in the deaths of innocents, and so maybe for some, they see stopping Eren as a way to somewhat atone for their atrocious acts. On a side note, I find it funny that the bonus character skin for the new season of Fortnite is Eren, due to him currently being a genocidal maniac in the anime!

The animation is fantastic here, with some really wonderful moments, such as a sequence in which a long standing character all the way from the first season dies (a moment that saw my best friend tear up). There are also lots of moments of gratuitous violence, with the titans crushing all they come across. Most violent moment of the episode shows a child's head getting crushed in slow motion by a titan's foot, very graphic indeed! For the first proper hour long show (I don't include the lengthy recap specials), this was perfectly paced, going around to all the key characters. It all leads up to an exciting showdown, I fully expect a lot of the final final episode will be a protracted fight sequence in which all the special titans come to the field of battle.

Initially I had expected to review the final part in one review, but learning that not only that it consisted of just two episodes, and that the second one isn't due to air until this Autumn, I felt I had to review this now, rather than wait till later in the year and forget what had happened. If you've got this far then of course this is essential watching. For me nothing eclipses the horror feel of Attack on Titan: Season 2, nor does this excel itself above some of the simply stunning episodes of Attack on Titan: Season 4 Part 1, but regardless, this was a fantastic special that sets things up very nicely for the final run.

SCORE:

The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Monday 13th March 2023

In a move that I highly doubt anyone will even notice, I have shifted my schedule around, with film reviews now coming every 'even' day of the month rather than odd. That is due to my best friend occasionally staying at my house over the weekend every other week. It also helps that this weekend has seen the release of Fortnite's new cyberpunk/Japanese themed season, so I will be wanting to play that more than watching films for review.

Succuba is a new horror film that comes from Jaron Lockridge. It stars Keith L. Johnson and Ketrick Copeland and is now available on Tubi, Amazon and Apple TV. In the horror, an evil presence attaches itself to a lonely widower. There is a behind the scenes featurette about the film, and the trailer can also be viewed below.

Australiens is the fantastically titled sci-fi action comedy from Acort International that chronicles an alien invasion of Australia. I don't have many more details other than it features Rita Artman, Doug Hatch, Tamara McLaughlin, Lawrence Silver and Paul Adams. The trailer can be seen below.

Finally for today, Acrostar have released the official trailer for romantic horror film Desperate Souls, directed by Steve Hermann. Moira is a being who 'survives on the lust, despair and grief of men', luring them in so she can take their souls. The romance part comes from her discovery of Devin, their meeting results in a realisation from both that they have finally found the missing pieces of their existence. An Indiegogo campaign is currently running for this movie.

Abruptio (2023) - Horror Film Review

An irrational fear of mine has always been puppets that are designed to look like humans. This isn't some 'screaming out loud for the views' type fear, instead it is more an unsettling 'uncanny valley' type creepiness that bubbles away. It's for that reason that I've never been able to bring myself to watch Team America: World Police despite liking the team behind it. Abruptio is a special type of Hell for me then, as this inventive horror is one life sized puppet show from start to finish. Directed and written by Evan Marlowe (Blood Rush), this took eight years to create from start to finish, and features a surprising number of high profile actors providing voice work. On that last note, rather than repeating myself, just remember that all the actors mentioned going forward have all lent their voices only.

Les Hackel (James Marsters - Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series) is no one special. This thirty five year old has a dead end job, a nagging girlfriend, and still lives with his parents, and also happens to be a recently recovering alcoholic. One day, after having visited his best friend Danny (Jordan Peele - director of Get Out, Us), he wakes up to an alarming message telling him to check his neck. Doing so he discovers a fresh stitch, going back to Danny's apartment he gets told that Danny has received text messages from persons unknown saying if they don't do what they want then a bomb implanted in their necks will explode. This all turns out to be true and soon Les finds himself an unwilling criminal, forced to perform all sorts of dark deeds in order to preserve himself. These include teaming up with various other people in similar situations, such as bad comedian Sal (Sid Haig - The Devil's Rejects), and germaphobe Mr. Salk (Robert Englund - A Nightmare on Elm Street film series). With this hidden conspiracy even spreading to the ranks of the police force, anarchy and mayhem has spread onto the streets, with seemingly hundreds of people all being forced to kill or be killed.

First off, the unique look. From what I can tell, a lot of the puppetry here is life sized puppetry. I may be completely wrong, but it looks like real people are playing the parts, wearing a full head puppet, and with their arms also covered to look like puppet material. With these puppets existing in what seemed to be the real world there was a consistent creepy tone that was there even before anything untoward happens. It all looks great, the puppets have a slightly exaggerated look to them, so Sal for instance has a gigantic nose, while other characters have really huge eyes. Les himself is relatively normal looking (for a creepy puppet). The puppets blink, speak in time to the dialogue being said, and their creepy look is helped by the very human movements they make (due to being worn by humans)

This is a dark film that goes to some very dark places, think the video game Hotline Miami crossed with the unforgettable Black Mirror episode Shut Up and Dance. Les doesn't seem to struggle to begin his new life of murder, an early scene for instance has him in a home invasion, where he barely fights against his task to kill a mum, dad and young child. Later scenes has such delights as feeding naked female corpses into a giant fan, and a very dark scene where he is in a creche cutting the heads off of babies with garden shears! Maybe not as completely untasteful as it sounds as there is an alien invasion subplot that may or may not actually be occurring, so those babies have The Thing style tendrils coming out of their severed heads. Due to the late film reveal of what is happening, some of Les' more guiltless unsavoury moments can be explained away, especially when this is taking place against a backdrop where both the police are unconcerned about the crimes being committed, and there are bigger signs that society as a whole is imploding.
Counter balanced, and a way to give the film at least a little bit of light, is the school girl character of Chelsea (Hana Mae Lee - The Babsitter: Killer Queen) who Les shares an almost fatherly role in protecting against the increasing danger of the world on the brink of apocalypse.

Purely due to my dislike of puppets, Abruptio was an unpleasant watch from start to finish, even without factoring in the very dark moments that take place here. I find it amusing that I've been waiting for a film to genuinely creep me out for ages and it comes in the form of an irrational fear of mine. I had hoped the story would have a more meaningful resolution than it got, and I felt there could have been more made of the characters essentially being forced to act like puppets with the removal of most of their free will. Despite those small issues though, this was well worth watching though, not only for the lovely voice actors, but also for the inventive look, there are few films which look so visually unique. Abruptio premiered at the Santa Monica Film Festival, and is screen virtually at Cinejoy from March 1st to March 10th.

SCORE:

The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Friday 10th March 2023

Another news post, on the day that the new cyberpunk/Japanese themed season came to Fortnite. I'm predicting that my blog posts for the next week may be a little light on content...

First off, VIPCO and Bayview Entertainment had four new releases that came to Blu-ray and Prime Video in January, while at the end of February four more titles came to Blu-ray in the USA and Prime Video worldwide. The February releases included Carnal Monsters, in which a group of friends discover two unconscious girls outside a nuclear facility who turn out to be crazed killers. Another film was Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night, this sequel takes place on the day of a Halloween party, with The Plague Doctor and The Creature (whatever they are) turning up to cause mayhem. The final two releases were It's Not A Wolf that from the cover image seems to be about a dinosaur, and The Things We Cannot Change, this is a vampire film about two different factions of vampires who have different thoughts on how best to live their un-lives. All of these can be purchased on Amazon.com.

Some music news now, dark electronic folk bad Hem Netjer released their debut album The Song of Trees on February 28th on all major digital platforms, including Bandcamp. The album was mostly written remotely during lockdown and the press release states it is a 'musical journey through the five elements'. Tracks announced include Void, Salt and Tears, Eldur, Freedom, Connect, Elemental Cry and Otherworld.

Sex Tape is the new single from the upcoming EP The Sex Tape Sessions by Kill Shelter and Death Loves Veronica in their first collaborative work together, with it due to come out 17th March. The EP includes two new tracks as well as two remixes from Death Loves Veronica's album Chemical, and also some extended releases. In anticipation some specially put together bootleg cassettes and VHS tapes were leaked, with the VHS including adult material that won't be included in the official release. Pete Burns of Kill Shelter says of this '...is an exploration of that idea surfacing highly emotive themes of sex, passion and death'.

Craving (2023) - Horror Film Review

Craving is a horror film which also delves into the crime genre. Directed by J.Horton (Edge of Darkness), and co-written by him and the ever reliable Gregory Blair (Amber Road, Garden Party Massacre), the general outline of the plot had me thinking one thing, but what actually happens was slightly different.

Set in 1998, this begins in medias res with two detectives arriving at a remote bar to discover a slaughter has happened there. Upon discovering a bloody sole survivor, barmaid Shiloh (Rachel Amanda Bryant - Vexed, The Campus), the story goes back to the previous evening to show how events came to pass.
The previous night had been business as usual for the staff and regulars, that is until a gang of drug addict criminals, led by Gail (Holly Rockwell) burst into the place and take everyone hostage. They were on the run from another group, a masked gang led by the elderly Hunter (Al Gomez), who decide to barricade everyone within the bar, under the impression that one of the drug addicts is hiding a terrible secret that they will become forced to reveal.

This was a blend of the crime and horror genres, with the first two acts far more firmly seated in the crime genre. It was only the third act (roughly the last half hour of the ninety minute film) where this becomes pure joyously violent horror. From the synopsis I had assumed that Hunter's gang were the big threat, but they turned out to be a bit impotent, with them happy to just wait around outside for events to play out. Vague feelings of the first The Purge movie got replaced with the realisation that the drug addicts were perhaps more-so antagonists than those outside.
The cast of all three groups were varied, my favourite probably had to be the nerdy cowboy Travis (Blair), he was just great in his role. Horror icon Felissa Rose (Terrifier 2, Sleepaway Camp) turned up in a role which I figured would be slight, but was still enjoyable. As for the rest of the non-criminals it was only really CeCe (Toya Morman) who had much to her. It did feel like a bit of a waste that there were a handful of characters who did so little over the course of the movie that it felt like they may as well not even be there. Most the hostages spend much of the film just stood around doing nothing. The drug addicts had more interesting roles, though none of them were at all remotely likeable people. They included Kevin Caliber (Ugly Sweater Party) as Mac, Ashley Undercuffler as the very annoying Frenzy, and Xavier Roe as Will among a few others.

The whole plot taking place at the bar wasn't the most captivating, but what really worked were the many flashbacks to the various character's pasts. Notably, there were sections set in 1981 that revealed how they all met, and for Frenzy, there were a few key scenes that took place in the very recent past that shed new light on how everything came to be. I thought these flashback sequences were a great idea, with their slow drip feed over the course of the movie being well implemented, though I never quite understood why it was decided to make a criminal gang made up entirely of drug addicts. I guess it gave the film's title a different meaning, both for the addicts wanting their fix, and for the hidden one among them with a completely different addiction. For those who like to turn off as soon as the end credits roll, you might want to stick around as the final part of the film's story plays out over the credits, in a fun sequence that reminded me a lot of how Jennifer's Body ended.

The best thing about Craving were the special effects, by the time the end credits roll there has been a high body count with some very gory and visually violent kills. These include someone getting their head ripped open vertically, people's insides being torn out, and some brutal looking head trauma effects. This is all helped by the well edited close up shots that really give the impression of more happening than it would have appeared to be if they had occurred fully on camera. With characters literally soaked in blood on multiple occasions, this was a satisfying blood bath.

When the horror does come it was quite unexpected with the angle they went for, I had expected something far more traditional than the Stranger Things-esque direction this went in. I did enjoy watching this, especially with the great special effects, but it did feel at times like there was only such a large cast in order to give a larger body count. Still, for a bloody crime horror, this indie film could be what you are looking for.

SCORE:

Life After: Zugzwang by Bryan Way (2021) - Short Zombie Novella Review

I'm dog sitting at my sisters place in the middle of a trailer park today (at the time of writing), so I don't have my typical two screen set-up, hoping that won't affect much as I am instead using my blogging laptop and my iPhone instead. Life After: Zugzwang is the second in horror author Bryan Way's second trilogy of short stories/novellas set in his Life After world of zombie apocalypse. Where the first entry, Life After: The Maze could easily be taken and enjoyed as a stand alone tale, with this one it really only makes sense if you have read the mainline books, specifically Life After: The Void. Mild spoilers for that book to follow.

The main focus of The Void was zombie film expert Grey and his group of survivors attempt to head across country and meet up with some fellow survivors, in order to bring them back to the safety of their high school base. Zugzwang follows the survivors that Grey would later set out to rescue, giving glimpses into how their situation became untenable, and their ill-fated attempt to rescue Grey's brother from his campus apartment.

The first thing I did when coming to write this review was look up the meaning of the word 'zugzwang', the definition is as follows 'a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one's turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage', which seems to be in reference to Chess. That title really sums up the flow of the story that takes place here. With so many characters, and with some time passed since reading The Void it did take me a fair while to really get it straight in my head exactly when this took place, and who these characters were. It begins with Grey having already requested that they make an attempt to locate his brother who lives nearby to them. As a fan of the series it was great getting some outsider perspectives on Grey, with many of the group either not knowing who he is, or thinking he is a bit of a tool. It was also cool realising this took place slightly earlier in the apocalypse, a time when there is still a minimal police presence on the streets and where there seems to be plenty of random survivors going about their business.
The first half shows the already fracturing dynamics of the group, with various groups within the larger group who seem to actively dislike each other. 

The main protagonist seems to be a girl named Dory, who due to having a close friendship with Grey's brother, is determined to seek him out, even if her majority rules decision making group decide against launching a rescue mission. The second half of the sixty page novella is the rescue attempt, where things become more entertaining, and where I finally figured out when this story likely took place.
As a stand alone zombie story I don't think this would be too easy to follow, but that really isn't the intention here. Instead, as a side story giving more details into the plot of The Void, this was pretty cool.

After getting over my initial confusion of just who all these characters were, I soon got into the plot. I still admit that I can't recall which of these characters made it to the events in The Void, but knowing that their mission to get Grey's brother likely wouldn't be successful kept me wanting to find out exactly what would happen. Life After: Zugzwang may not be an essential read if you are heading into it fresh, but if you're a fan of the main series this was a lovely little sidebar giving the world some more flavour.

SCORE:

Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff (2021) - Horror Film Review

Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff was quite a bizarre movie. Directed by Sam Bhattacharjee, this supernatural horror outstayed its welcome, yet never became boring, instead there was a feeling of endlessness to the relatively simple story being told.

Set in the late 1970's, this takes place in a small coastal town in England which has become known for the oddly high number of suicides that have all occurred on the same cliff. With Inspector Jenny Jones (Emma Galliano) baffled as to the reasons why this keep happening, she calls in the mysterious paranormal detective Barun (Priyanshu Chatterjee). He soon learns that this phenomenon may be supernatural in nature, and that it could well be linked to an old house on a cliff nearby. Meanwhile, Soumili (Nyra Banerjee) and her husband Harmesh (Sid Makkar), newly arrived in the country have moved into this house, with Soumili in particular beginning to experience apparently supernatural occurrences.

I'm pretty sure the version of the movie I watched was dubbed, either that or many of the actors were not able to say their lines in a believable way. At first this was distracting, but to be honest, corny dialogue aside, I had mostly zoned out the weird delivery of lines by the film's conclusion. There is a lot packed into the two hour run time, yet paradoxically not really much happens. There is a slight body count, and moments of attempted horror, but this maintains a chilled relaxed atmosphere to it. The story on the surface is very simple, I'm not quite sure how it fills the run time.
The characters are mainly strange in their behaviours, I did kind of like Barun, his introductory scene in which he walks around a house that a series of murders has taken place, and is able to see snapshots of the murderer and victims frozen in time was actually neat, it made me want to keep watching. I'm not sure who Barun's assistant was played by, but the actor had a genuinely impressive mane of hair that I was quite jealous of. Tony Richardson had a fun role as Father Paul, though his subplot appeared early on, only to fizzle out until it re-emerged right towards the end of the movie in an entertaining exorcism segment. Then there was Brian (George Dawson), the mentally challenged man-child with the knack for taking photos that proved to be very much needed for Barun to crack the supernatural case.

It seemed that the reliance on CG effects was all consuming here, even when it felt like it would have been far easier to use a practical effect, a CG effect was used in its place. Outside of a few moments (such as a roof ripping off a house, swarms of bugs, and people dissolving into pixelated fragments), these effects were nearly passable. My problem with them was they looked too clean, they didn't look 'raw' enough, more with a clinical feel that took away from the atmosphere the film was going for. Doors and windows opening on their own, objects moving around, and even characters who appeared to have been possessed by demons all looked acceptable, but the moments that try and elicit fear often fell flat due to the obviously fake effects.

Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff wasn't a great film, it didn't really even feel like it had the makings of such a movie, instead it was middling in nearly all aspects, but weirdly addictive to watch Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff was due for release from High Fliers Films on 27th February.

SCORE:

Other Side of the Box (2018) - Short Horror Film Review

You can tell I was trying to phone in my blog posts this week, as Other Side of the Box is the second short horror film I have chosen to watch for review. I have often seen this Caleb J. Phillips directed (and co-written) horror when on YouTube as a recommendation, but it was only after my friend recommended I review it that I decided to check it out.

One evening near Christmas a couple, Ben (Nick Tag who co-wrote this) and Rachel (Teagan Rose) are cooking when they are disturbed by the arrival of an ex-friend, Shawn (Josh Schell) who brings with him a gift. He tells Ben to open the box, but upon opening it appears to be empty. Shawn makes a hasty exit, apologising for what he has done. The darkness within the box is perplexing, and after a few experiments it seems the box somehow has no bottom. Then something bad occurs, having looked away, the couple look back to see the top of a human head impossibly peeking out of the small box (Tyler Pochop), a quick read of the card that came with the 'present' and it is revealed that they must never take their eyes off of the box as the being is only able to move should no one be looking at it.

First off, a decent idea for a horror, in terms of rule making it didn't seem too different to something like It Follows, which is no bad thing. This is the second short I've watched this week that actually felt like a small horror film, as opposed to a poor effort basic plot stretched around a central idea. The cast of four were well chosen, especially with Schell, I liked how easily you could infer the friendship ended due to something that occured with Rachel. The man in the box is of course creepy, with much of the middle act revolving around his slow initial emergence.
This all leads into a third act where the stakes got ramped up in a way that was more exciting than I had anticipated, even if you have to ignore some of the film's own self-imposed rules and logic that get broken along the way. Culminates in a perfect way to end the short.

Other Side of the Box was a great little horror film which I could see working equally as well as a feature length. A good idea, and well executed, this was an entertaining fifteen minutes of horror.

SCORE:

The Omen (2006) - Horror Film Review

It is complete. Around twelve years ago my girlfriend at the time brought me The Omen: Pentology box set from HMV. This five film collection included the four original films (The Omen, Damien: Omen II, Omen 3: The Final Conflict, Omen IV: The Awakening) as well as the 2006 remake, and at three o'clock this morning (at the time of writing) I finally got around to watching that remake. I reckon that if I had seen this back then I would not have appreciated it as much, but watching The Omen remake now, I got a real nostalgic hit from a film that is extremely early 2000's in feel. I will try and keep spoilers to a minimum, but part of this review will be comparing it to the classic original.

Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber - X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Scream), an American ambassador is devastated when he learns that his child has died after complications with its birth at a Catholic hospital in Italy. A priest there has a proposal for him however, he says that a woman also at the hospital recently died after the birth of her healthy son, and that to save Robert's wife, Katherine (Julia Stiles - Orphan: First Kill, Save the Last Dance) the heartache of learning her child has died, should claim this child for his own. The man decides to go along with this, but little does he know that the baby is actually the Antichrist, the son of Satan who is prophesied to bring doom to the world of man. It is on the child's fifth birthday that events begin to be put in motion, and it isn't long before Robert has reluctantly teamed up with press photographer Keith (David Thewlis - The Sandman TV series, the Harry Potter series of films) in order to investigate for sure if his son really is a creation of Hell, after being warned by Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite - Inception, The Usual Suspects) about the deception.

This John Moore (A Good Day to Die Hard, Max Payne) directed horror remake plays it very safe with the story and how particular events play out, so much so that the poor screenwriter wasn't even credited, due to his screenplay being so similar to David Seltzer's (who wrote the screenplay for the 1976 original). Part of the reason I had left this so long to watch is that I didn't want vivid memories of the original clouding my opinion of this. That worked to a degree, I knew all the story beats, but I couldn't really recall how the original looked. Some things are done better, some less so, and unifying this is the peak 2000's feel. Firstly, some of the death sequences look fantastic, better than the original.
Bizarrely, the most memorable death scene for the original film (a character getting pinned to the ground from a falling piece of church masonry) looks quite bad here, due to the obvious replacement of the actor with a fake body that the camera lingers on for too long. Thankfully other death scenes are better replicated, a person compelled to commit suicide has an identical scene but it looks more visceral, and the iconic decapitation scene delighted by occuring in a slightly different way than in the original.

The 2000's seemed a bit of a dark time for me in regards to horror films, it felt like every classic movie was getting a subpar and needless remake, and I'm sure I would have felt scorn for this back then (I do recall seeing the trailer at the cinema). In modern day however I am at the stage in my life where I feel quite intense nostalgia for bygone decades, and seeing Schreiber and Stiles (someone I've always had a crush on) in a movie together was delightful, it took me back to the feeling of that decade. Being set in that time period there has been some alterations to make this more current, such as 9/11 and the Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003 perhaps tastelessly being injected into some of the portents for the rise of the Antichrist. My biggest issue came with some of the actors chosen to play the roles. Now, I think David Lewlis was simply stunning in The Sandman, his acting there was very impressive, but here...not so much. Whether it was the actor or his direction, his portrayal of a press photographer is extremely generic and stereotypical, with the man distractingly always chewing gum and forever squinting his eyes. I struggled to take this character seriously, which is a problem when he becomes an essential side character. As for the previously mentioned Schreiber and Stiles, I could watch both of those in anything, even if here they aren't particularly memorable characters. Other notable actors includes Mia Farrow (Rosemary's Baby) as the evil nanny, and Michael Gambon (the Harry Potter series) in a very brief appearance, and of course you have Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as the five year old Damien, someone who at the very least has a decent ability to give a malice filled stare. The ending shot may be identical, but it is just as effective here.

Demonic possession films are one of my favourite horror genres, so this is kind of in a similar ballpark. It is a film that has improved with age, if only for it being such a snapshot of the time period it was created in. On the other hand, being so extremely similar to the original it felt a bit pointless, I've never really understood remakes that try and be identical to the film they were based on, I feel if you must make a remake then at least put your own darn spin on it! Complaints aside, I did enjoy The Omen, not essential by any means, but it was entertaining enough to watch.

SCORE:

Life After: The Maze (2021) by Bryan Way - Short Zombie Novella Review

Life After: The Arising was a zombie novel from 2013 that made the mundane the focal point of the story, and by doing so really seemed to set itself apart. That novel was followed by three novellas taking place in and around the events of that one. In 2016 the full length sequel, Life After: The Void was released, and that too has a trilogy of stand alone novellas to accompany it. The first of these was Life After: The Maze.

A lot of the events of this particular story only start to make sense once the story is over, with the characters seemingly more clued into their current plight than the reader is. Four survivors of the zombie apocalypse have battled their way into a strangely designed building in the middle of a dense forest. It is here they aim to find a way to the nearly inaccessible higher floors where it is hoped the pursuing zombies will be unable to reach them.

Way has stated that this story was inspired by The Twilight Zone, and with the twist ending to this I can see how that was the case. That ending provides better context to the story, and even with a partial re-read I was picking up on a lot of stuff that went over my head the first time around. I'm not going to talk about that, instead I will mention the meat of the twenty four page novella, which has the four survivors in the bizarre building. The four seemed to have a shared history, with them seemingly having been in plenty of similar situations in the past. One of them is a real hindrance to the group, especially Mallory who is fed up with the dead weight's incompetence, I enjoyed this mini-conflict. I could see this story really working well as a short film, it has some interesting scenes, such as the first time I think I've ever thought about zombies and slides in conjunction with each other. I also enjoyed the feeling that characters had knowledge I wasn't aware of, it gave this a feeling of history having taken place before the story even began, like this had been taken from the middle of a much larger story.

Some of the earlier novellas built off of The Arising showed promise, but this was the best one I've read so far. This was the second one that suggested far more important things were occurring in the Life After universe then Grey and his highschool friends (from the core series) were aware of  It may be a relatively simple plot, one focussed on action more than anything else, but Life After: The Maze was thrilling and something a little different to the norm.

SCORE:

Esther (2023) - Short Horror Film Review

Red Tower is a new genre production company/digital network that is all about showing short horror films 'for a new generation'. Their debut short film is Esther, directed by Matt Cunningham (The Spore, 3 Demons), wo also co-wrote this alongside Brian Levin. This may not do anything revolutionary, but at least it looks the part and has good atmosphere.

Katy (Haley Heslip - The Spore, 3 Demons) has recently moved back to her childhood home where she finds herself with a strange puzzle. Every morning at 2AM she is awakened by her smoke alarm going off, something that is all the more odd when it still goes off despite having taken the batteries out. She soon comes to fear that there is something in the house with her, something which may be related to an imaginary friend called Esther that Katy had as a child.

All too often with short films you don't actually get a film. Instead it is more an idea that a plot has been clumsily wrapped around. With Esther however this actually felt like a short film, and I was impressed with the quality of this. I have seen feature films with a similar story that don't manage to bring it together half as well as this ten minute mini-film. It does take a little while to get going, I did like the cold open that had Katy recording a message for her psychiatrist, it provided much needed backstory in a plausible and efficient way. Much of the first half isn't too eventful, Katy constantly being woken up by her smoke alarm and not much else. It's only really the final two minutes when the horror properly begins, and while it was enjoyable, and while abrupt endings can work, I felt this was a little too abrupt, without even a credit sequence appearing.

The plot is generic, but the imaginary friend angle was something slightly different, and I was impressed with how well this was put together. A more natural feeling ramping up of horror may have benefitted this, but as it stands, Esther was still a solid short that is worth a watch. Check out the film below, and to find out more from Red Tower you can go to their website here, follow their Instagram - @redtowerent as well as their TikTok - @redtowerdigital.

SCORE: