Sunday 18 March 2012

Boo (2005) - Horror Film Review


Boo is a ghost film kinda in the vein of Ghost Ship and House on Haunted Hill (the remake). I am glad the film makers called it Boo, and not Boo! as there is nothing remotely exciting about this dreary, muted film.

It's Halloween and a bunch of College students head off to a condemned hospital that is reputed to be haunted to have some Halloween fun. Also heading there is a son of a cop who is looking for his sister who vanished a few days previously. It turns out the Hospital is actually haunted, the group find themselves trapped inside by spirits that do not seem to want them to leave the third floor. With possessions, hallucinations and spooky goings on they need to find a way to escape.


This film is terrible, as in totally terrible and not really that interesting. The ninety minute run time drags and drags, I had to watch this in three chunks, each time was like an eternity. People wandering up and down dull lifeless corridors is just not interesting. The acting is truly terrible with the usual annoyances such as characters who get over their supposedly close friends deaths immediately, ones who decide to 'get it on' with each other totally inappropriately, and actors who cannot do emotional transitions (the token jock spends half the film shouting his head off in between random periods of calmness). It is all very awful, there is just not enough going on to even have a remote sense of dread or horror. Whenever characters are going to escape the hospital there is always some lame contrivance to get them to once again head back to the damn third floor, home of cheesy flashbacks and an oh so spooky ghost child.

The plot is nothing special and takes itself far too seriously for such a poor film. Special effects are ok, too many computer generated ones (possessed victims always explode in a burst of digitised gore when shot). A zombie dog early on is kind of funny, and the film does have an actual zombie who periodically reappears throughout (the best character as she kills the really really annoying jock). Ghosts do the boring thing of moving in fast forward and warping around, all so tiring.


Boo is not scary, jump scares sign posted from miles away, characters you can not care about, and a bland lifeless hospital that for some reason fails to invoke horror. Really do not recommend this, while not the worst film is still a poor, poor film.

SCORE:

Monday 12 March 2012

Familiar (2012) - Short Horror Film Review


Familiar is a short film from Fatal Pictures, directed by Richard Powell and produced by Zach Green. The film centres around an average looking family whose lives fall apart.

Robert Nolan stars as John Dodd the Dad of the family unit. The film centres on him with much of the dialogue of the film being what appears to be his internal monologue. He detests his family seeing his daughter as a parasite and his wife as his jailer. The voice in his head forces John onto more and more evil things until he starts to wonder if the voice in his head is even his own.


At around twenty four minutes long the film never has time to get boring. The film revolves around Nolan's character with a lot of scenes being close ups of his face as his ugly thought process is revealed. Being privy to the thoughts made me feel dirty and unclean. The wife and child are both nothing special but that's what make them work, they could be any ones family, John could be any man. Around the halfway point things turn up a notch as John starts to rebel against the unnatural thoughts. Is it a man battling schizophrenia or is something more sinister at work?

Being shot in HD the film looks terrific, slow direction builds up the creeping dread. The music is sublime being morose and bleak perfectly in tune with what is happening on-screen. Robert Nolan is fantastic as the middle aged man slowly going internally insane and gives the film a real power right up to the gut churning ending with some quite cool special effects throughout.

I would advise against seeing the teaser trailer as it spoils the films ending but for more information on Familiar check out the Fatal Pictures website.

SCORE:

Sunday 11 March 2012

Spongebob Squarepants: The Slumber Party - Random Zombie Appearances


With the hordes beating at my door all wanting me to do posts on their stuff it seems a bit odd to make my first post this month about Spongebob Squarepants.  Zombies have been mentioned before on the show (Fungus Among Us, and Once Bitten) but this marks the first time the cartoon has shown a zombie, albeit one in a film showing on a TV.

Pearl is having a slumber party at her house.  Her dad Mr Krabs is paranoid his house is going to be trashed so he tasks Spongebob with infiltrating the place.  After some carnage the guests trap Spongebob in the cellar.  Meanwhile they watch a horror film on TV called 'Slumber Party Zombie Massacre' in which a zombie (shown as a hulking creature) attacks some people during a slumber party.  Meanwhile Spongebob has decided to absorb all the Root Beer kept in the cellar making him grow to a giant size.  He bursts out the cellar and everyone seeing him panics thinking he is a zombie.


Not the best episode, but has a zombie in it, and makes for a nice little blog post to integrate myself back into posting.