Abattoir (2016) - Horror Film Review

It is one of those glorious weeks where I get to pick a film of my own choosing for review. For today's film I picked out the Darren Lynn Bousman (Spiral: From the Book of Saw, Saw II - IV) directed Abattoir, a film from my pile of horrors I own but have yet to watch. I enjoyed this, didn't quite live up to its potential but it had some interesting ideas.

After her sister and nephew are brutally murdered in their home, investigative reporter Julia Talben (Jessica Lowndes - 90210 TV series) becomes obsessed with trying to find an explanation for it. She discovers that quickly after the tragedy took place, someone purchased the house and removed the room of the crime from it. This leads her down a rabbit hole where she first discovers that a mysterious person named Jebediah Crane (Dayton Callie - Fear the Walking Dead TV series, Halloween II) has spent the past fifty years or so purchasing the buildings where murders took place and removing the room that was the crime scene. She then learns an even stranger fact; each of the victims had originally lived in a small town called New English. With the hat-trick of surprises culminating in Julia discovering her birth mother (who she never knew) also happened to come from New English, she decides to travel to the remote town, with her ex-boyfriend - detective Declan Grady (Joe Anderson - Horns, The Crazies) hot on her heels. There she discovers a town-wide conspiracy spreading back decades, the elusive Jebediah Crane, and a huge mansion made entirely out of murder rooms.

I didn't expect much from this horror, but it was actually a lot different to what I expected it to be. I had thought this would be a Seven clone, taking place in a city with a serial killer on the loose. Instead, it was something entirely different. While not Lovecraftian in nature, this does include a unique and strange town that holds a terrible secret, so there was some crossover.
Immediately apparent was the sometimes terrible script. Some characters fare better than others, and some manage to make their cheesy lines work and some struggle with them. The worst character for me was Grady, he comes across as the most stereotypical hard-boiled detective imaginable, all of his lines just sounded so artificial and corny, a feeling that Julia seems to mimic in every scene she is with the man. Some characters seemed to be given life by the script. A mid-movie highlight was the eccentric Allie (Lin Shaye - Ouija: Origin of Evil, Insidious), and for a time I thought she was going to be the stand-out actor in the movie. She effortlessly stole every scene she was in, but there was a second character who came to be the most interesting to me. I thought Callie was fantastic as the antagonist. There was a slight feeling of Needful Things to him, and the backstory that he had apparently been to Hell and managed to return was decent. He doesn't appear a huge amount, but when he does it always made for some enjoyable scenes.

This had elements of a mystery, a thriller, and a horror to it, with each act feeling like a slightly different genre of movie. Things really got interesting in the short third act, in which the house of murder finally makes its appearance for the final twenty minutes of the roughly 100 minute horror. A feeling of Thir13en Ghosts to this part, and despite some CG that wasn't the best, I had also seen far far worse. I loved the set design for this. Truth be told, I did really enjoy this part of the movie. There is a decent amount of horror here, but it was often diluted by that aforementioned weak script. Some parts did stand-out, such as a videotape Julia receives of her sister's murder, and an old projector that shows Jebediah back in his glory days.

A film about a mansion made up of stolen rooms where people have been murdered was a really cool idea. It was a shame that the movie took so darn long to actually get to that part, I wish the third act had lasted longer than the scant twenty minutes we are given. I did enjoy the whole mystery aspect from before that bit, but I felt that the story was never really explained too well. I didn't look too closely, but I had the feeling I would be able to pick holes in things if I had done so. Abattoir was a better film than I had expected, and certainly had its moments, but the weak script and some odd story decisions meant this just missed out on being a classic.

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Trespassers (2016) - Short Horror Film Review

Trespassers (original title Inkräktare), is a Swedish short horror film written and directed by Johannes Persson (Feed). My best friend actually recommended this one to me, even if she wasn't too pleased that I scheduled it in for a watch rather than check it out straight away!

Having not too long ago returned from a hiking trip up in the mountains, Ali (Ardalan Esmaili) is going through the photos he took on his laptop, with the intention of sending them over to his mother to check out. Looking through the photos, Ali reminisces to girlfriend - Sara (Evin Ahmad), about the old couple they met who told the two a ghost story related to the area visited. He then notices a collection of photos that he doesn't remember taking, with Sara eventually admitting to him that on her own she had visited an unmarked woodland gravesite the couple had warned them about not going to under any circumstances. Briefly annoyed, Ali brushes it off with a joke about the supposed curse, but then the couple start to notice that every photo that was taken on that trip includes a mysterious figure in a white dress lurking somewhere in the background...

There are certain things about short horror films that I really dislike. Namely that so many of them seem incapable of coming up with an ending any more advanced than an attempt at a jump scare. Trespassers almost fell into this trap, for it does indeed include an ineffectual jump scare, but thankfully that comes prior to the end of this five minute horror. Ghostly images appearing in photographs is something I do have a fondness, I like the merging of the supernatural and technology. Lake Mungo springs to mind instantly, as well as the ever amazing Sinister, both featuring pleasing scenes of spooky photos.
I enjoyed the pacing of this one, and it was neat to head back and see the figure in white was in the pictures even before she was first pointed out.

The attempt at a jump scare aside, I thought Trespassers told its story well, the parts with the photos had some decent enough creepy moments, and the insert shot of a characters eye (digitally) going bloodshot was pretty cool looking. With clear and easy to read subtitles, and enjoyable pacing, Trespassers avoided the pitfalls of being another generic short horror.

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Dead by Daylight (2016) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 5)

Towards the end of last year I really started to make an effort to get into the asynchronous horror multiplayer video game Dead by Daylight. I really loved the idea behind it, but it had never clicked properly with me. Sadly, after around five or six months of trying to get the game to click, I failed, I appreciate the game, but it just isn't something that is for me, which is a real shame.

The game has you either playing in a third person perspective as one of four survivors, or playing in a first person perspective as a killer. The survivors aim is to repair a set number of generators randomly placed around one of the stages, once this is done the exit gate opens and they are able to escape. The killer meanwhile is tasked with sacrificing the survivors by attacking them, and them placing them on sacrificial hooks to a dark entity in whose realm both survivors and killers alike are trapped. There have been a whole host of famous video game and film characters added over the years, survivors including characters from Left 4 Dead, Evil Dead, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and more, while killers include a host of movie maniacs such as Ghostface, Chucky, Leatherhead, Pinhead and videogame antagonists such as Albert Wesker and Pyramid Head.

I have previously spoken about the game in various blog posts about different killers I tried. My problems are two fold. Firstly, I find playing as the survivors really difficult, I constantly fail the quick time events that occur when trying to repair the generators, and typically get hooked and die within around a minute or two of starting a match. Playing as a killer is more fun, but it puts a lot of pressure on you. There is a method of playing that makes the match fun for survivors, so you need to not play to win cheaply. There is no type of tutorial mode on how to play as each killer however, so the only way to discover how they work is to play against real people. This can cause no end of humiliation as you try and figure out how to play as the character you have chosen. I rarely played well, and after several months of trying different killers I realised I just wasn't having as much fun as I would have liked. I put off playing due to not really knowing how to play the game. 

I love the amount of famous killers put in Dead by Daylight, but I came to the realisation that the game simply wasn't for me. Either side I was pretty useless at playing, this was a real shame. Also, due to the game originally launching in 2016 it looks quite terrible in my opinion, I find the various levels all bland and similar looking, while the core mechanics always felt a bit too simple.

Don't let my lowish score trick you into thinking Dead by Daylight isn't a good game, I imagine playing with a bunch of friends this would be loads of fun, but playing against or with strangers never felt good, I always felt anxious that I wasn't doing my best, and this came to really impact my enjoyment.

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Dead Island: Riptide - Definitive Edition (2016) - Zombie Horror Video Game Review (Xbox One)

You have to feel sorry for the Dead Island series of first person survival horror zombie video games. The release of Dying Light in 2015 really took the wind out of its sails, an extremely similar game but looking better, controlling better, and having a better story to it. Dead Island will always hold a special place in my heart though, when I first re-discovered the person who would become my best friend, she was raving about a Dead Island novel, completely unaware it had been based on a game.
With Dead Island 2 recently heading to Xbox Game Pass I figured it was about time I caught up with the story of the previous games I had yet to play. Dead Island: Riptide was a confusing entry when it first came out. While it seemed to be a sequel to the first game, the lack of a number '2' led to many people (myself included) unsure if this was a new game or a definitive version of the first game. Speaking with a friend about this recently, he summed it up perfectly, describing it as a stand-alone expansion. I also felt at the time that I wasn't sure if I wanted to return to the world of the game so soon after having completed the first, especially as this really did look like it was more of the same. Spoilers for Dead Island to follow.

I do love it when a sequel picks up immediately after the end of the first, and that is very much what happens here. Having left the zombie infested island of Banoi in a helicopter, the four survivors (Xian Mei, Logan, Purna and Sam.B) find their chopper running out of fuel, spying a military vessel they decide to land on it. Their relief is short lived when they find themselves being imprisoned below deck once it is known they are immune so that experiments can be performed on them. Knocked unconscious while resisting, they awaken some time later to find the ship overrun with the undead. Out of control, the ship has crashed into the nearby island of Palanai where the survivors discover to their dismay that the zombie virus has also ravaged this place. Forming an uneasy alliance with Colonel Hardy (the person who was in charge of the ship), the group make it their aim to travel to a military base in the nearby city of Henderson, where it is hoped they will finally find sanctuary.

It may be a new island this sequel takes place on, but it is very much business as usual. Unlike the first game that was split into a variety of areas, this time there are two main ones, the flooded jungle and the city of Henderson. It took me around fifteen hours to complete this, with about two thirds of the game being in the jungle, with the city both smaller in size and with less missions to it, though very well designed. My initial thoughts were very negative. Despite playing the Xbox One 'Definitive Edition' the game still looked very ugly. Even worse were sound issues that led to characters constantly speaking over each other in cutscenes, and music that would get stuck and keep repeating the same few bars over and over again. I played the game as Xian Mei as I did previously, but it doesn't really matter what character you pick as you only really get proper story in the cutscenes. 

The focus is mainly on melee weapons that you can get blueprints to upgrade at work benches to do all manner of status effects, such as poison, fire, and electricity. There is a big skill tree that soon has you much stronger, being split into three segments, the rage metre part (once a bar is filled up you basically become invincible for a limited time), the attack part, and the healing part. Fighting zombies is a load of fun, you lop off limbs and heads constantly. There were 'boss' style undead as well, but when it is so easy to run past these rather than fight them, their inclusion felt a bit pointless. The big new thing for Riptide is the defence missions, where you and A.I survivors must survive against waves of zombies attacking wherever your current base happens to be. To help you can set up electrified fences and gun turrets, but this is all very slight and unexciting. At least, despite being a bunch of these they were all easy to complete.

The meat of the game has you completing a variety of quests and side quests in order to make your way to Henderson and find safety. The side quests take you to optional areas, but the quests themselves were unexciting and felt like far more could have been done with them. The core story was fine, but unexciting, your mission to safety had already been done better in Dead Island, so it felt like things were just repeating here. There was nothing that occurs here that felt remotely original or compelling, I didn't care about any of the characters, and it leads up to a final boss fight that didn't feel like a great way to end the game. Dead Island: Riptide hasn't aged too poorly, it does look dated, but gameplay wise it is perfectly fine. This only really exists for people who loved the first game and wanted more. The setting felt familiar but not as fun to traverse, with less interesting looking areas, the story was a low effort repeat, and the revelations about the source of the virus were very generic. Least it is out of the way now, so will move onto apparently terrible prequel, Escape Dead Island, which I am going to have to dig out my Playstation 3 to play.

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The Elder Scrolls Online (2014-23) - Fantasy Video Game Review

I first intended to review The Elder Scrolls Online many years ago. This was the first MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) that I played and so far remains my favourite. My problem with reviewing this is that it isn't really possible to complete. There has to be thousands of quests and new content is always being released. Annoyingly the game never tells you exactly how many hours you have sunk into it, I estimate mine must be somewhere between a hundred to two hundred hours.

It has been literal years since I completed the main storyline in the game and so I can't really say what the story would have been. Something concerning demons and cults most likely. The way I play the game is like a roving adventurer. I go to wherever my next quest is, rather than head to an area and experience everything it has to offer. It's an irritating limitation that you can only have twenty five active quests at a time, meaning there are so many new quest givers I have to ignore and walk on by, with the hope to remember where they were so I can revisit when more convenient. My travels take me all around the game world but the haphazard way I play the game means no quest really means that much to me. One moment I can be helping a lizardman out in the swamps, swearing to retrieve a cursed object for him, the next moment I teleport myself off to Skyrim to uncover a plot concerning killing the Skald-King. My journey keeps everything always feeling fresh.

I have tried the Final Fantasy MMORPG, but despite liking that world more, the quests are far more bland, and I absolutely detest that you are forced to go into dungeons with other real people. Elder Scrolls for the most part, allows you to experience much of the game on your lonesome. There have been plenty of updates over the years, my favourite was the ability to get an A.I companion to always be by your side. There was an update some years back that made all the weapons much stronger, making playing the game so much more fun. It can be frustrating that you start some quests, only to discover three or four steps down the line it was intended as a group quest. The group dungeons are far too hard for someone to do on their own, but I have zero desire to play with real people.

The amount of quests is ridiculous, some are better than others, all feature fully voiced characters. From stopping an army of the undead, to investigating cults, travelling to the demon world and saving villages, there is always something to be doing. Best of all, and something which stopped me playing Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls has no monthly subscription requirements. Sure you have to pay for expansions, but there is no monthly cost. For many years I did pay the subscription, this gives you all minor expansions for free, as well as an unlimited inventory size and in-game currency each month. Worth doing if this is your main game, but I tend to play this in fits and bursts, whenever I have the space on my Playstation 5 hard drive to have it installed.

Graphically this isn't stunning nowadays, but at least on the newer consoles and PCs this loads really quick, and it certainly isn't an ugly game. This is one of the most popular games of its type, and if you like your straight faced fantasy then there is plenty here to appeal. It is a huge time sink however, and if you are the type of person who likes 'beating' games then this will frustrate. Overall though, I always come back to The Elder Scrolls Online, no matter how long I've been away, I love getting lost in the world.

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Life After: The Void (2016) by Bryan Way - Zombie Horror Book Review

Life After: The Void is the sequel to Life After: The Arising, a zombie novel about a somewhat irritating teen who teams up a group of others after a zombie outbreak occurs in his hometown. Despite my misgivings with the main character, and the over the top verbose way he narrated the story (with it all told from a first person perspective), I still really enjoyed this more sedate version of apocalypse survival. This was followed by three short stories, only one of which (Life After: The Basement) has any bearings on the sequel's plot. I was pleased to discover The Void is a better book than the first, especially when it comes to pacing and character development. There will be unavoidable spoilers for both The Arising and likely the spin-off stories to follow, as a warning.

It is around three months after the end of the first novel, and the group of zombie apocalypse survivors holed up at a school are not doing too bad, despite frequent arguments between them. They are led by Jeff Grey; a former student who is still struggling to deal with the loss of his girlfriend Julia, Anderson; a National Guard soldier and best friend of Jeff, and Rich; a former homeless man. With evidence that society has survived beyond their base, the group must make a hard decision, whether to stay where they are in relative safety, or to go and seek out one of the fortified government controlled safe havens.

What I loved about The Arising was how comparatively bland the survivor's journey was to the typical zombie survival story. This can even be seen with how the story wraps up on itself, Jeff's journey both begins and ends in his former high school. I was happy to see that for the most part this follows a similar format, with over half of the novel taking place within the walls of their base. This gives time for Way to focus more on the characters, in a The Walking Dead type of way the zombies almost take a backseat to the struggles of the group, who are more concerned about possible human antagonists finding them than the undead.
Characters felt so well developed, with a few in particular really standing out. Anderson had moments in the first novel where he appeared almost reckless, and here that is expanded upon with more definite character flaws becoming apparent. Grey was always a character I struggled to like in The Arising, he came across as arrogant, immature, and needlessly angry, and I could never place if his wordy first person account was a result of the character or the author. This time around the writing felt more measured, and I see that as a result of the character himself growing as a person, making plenty of awful mistakes along the way (a real low point was when he aggressively dismisses Anderson's pain at witnessing the deaths of his National Guard colleagues). There was one particular moment where Grey spots his ridiculous bowler hat on the ground (that he insisted on wearing in the first novel) and decides not to retrieve it, instead stating something along the lines of that 'being a part of the old him'. I appreciated that, even if he does keep up with his painfully 'cool' trench coat and toothpicks. I also appreciated how his arrogance and anger is constantly being challenged. The novel doesn't try and make him an amazing person, instead he is someone full of flaws, with several pivotal moments (especially towards the end) that solely occur because of his cockiness, and on occasion cause him to make a real fool out of himself.

Rusty Lake: Roots (2016) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

Over the past six months I have been working my way through the many different games that make up the Rusty Lake series. These are a bunch of simple horror escape room puzzle games that are interconnected in clever ways. In February I put up a review of Rusty Lake: Hotel, behind the scenes I have been playing far more of them, but due to me playing them in chronological order I have yet to finish Cube Escape: Collection which brings together ten of the games (I am nearly finished with it though). Due to playing Rusty Lake: Roots over a five month period the experience was a little lost on me, I could never quite remember what had happened before each time I returned.

Rusty Lake: Roots follows a family over several generations who happen to live in a mansion near to the titular Rusty Lake. Over thirty three different chapters, each of which is set during a different time period, we follow a story about a magical concoction that grants either immortality or death, and about a generational wide attempt to resurrect a man from the dead, via the use of a potion that requires various body parts and bodily fluids from related family members. Along the way there is murder, suicide, imprisonment, amputation and other horrors within the sordid family.

I admit most my synopsis I got through looking up the plot online. A very slight quibble, which I admit is my fault, is that by playing it over such a long period, and by only playing a few chapters at a time, I could never remember what had come before. The structure of the game has various chapters appearing on branches of a family tree. By the time that three children have entered the story the game has branched into three different paths that can be tackled in any order. For anyone who has played other entries in the series, this provides the origins of the creepy Mr. Crow. The game (I believe) takes place from around the mid 19th Century up to around the early 1920's.

Among the Sleep (2014-2019) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

Among the Sleep is a game I have owned for years, yet I have never gotten around to playing it. The reason for the delay was that I recall there was a lot of interest when it first got announced, but upon its release it got a more muted reception than many people expected. It stands on its own for having the character you play as be a two year old child, but in a horror setting, seeing the darkness of their world through their eyes.

The game takes place on your second birthday, as one of your presents you are given an old teddy bear which you take an immediate liking to. Later that night, after you have been read a bedtime story and put to bed, you awaken in your crib to discover your bear has vanished. Managing to get out of your crib, you explore the house and discover the teddy inside the washing machine, which you manage to open. The teddy explains to you that something doesn't feel right, and that you should seek out your mother. This begins a journey through various different horror tinged locations as you seek out four items that relate to memories you have with your mother, in order to be reunited with her.

The idea behind the game is a good one, I've played games before where I have been a young child, but never in a first person horror setting such as here. This is a adventure game that is combat free, instead there are slight puzzles that must be solved, and some vague stealth gameplay in that each new location you visit has its own adult sized monster walking around in it. Playing as a toddler I expected it would be impossible to die, that isn't the case though don't expect any sort of gratuitous scene of death, instead the screen just fades to black. Death can come from drowning, or by being caught by one of the black smokey antagonists stalking the levels. As a child you don't really have any powers. You can drag stools and open drawers to climb up on surfaces, you can run, but do that too much and you will fall over into a crawl (actually kind of irritating). Then, for moments when things get too dark (fear represented by the screen shaking), you can press a button to hug your teddy bear which will create light.
Obviously you are a silent protagonist, you don't even cry out when scared, the story telling falls to the teddy bear, he is the one who sets out your goal of exploring these different levels. Story is also revealed by environmental details (packing boxes for instance suggest you have only recently moved into the house the game takes place in), as well as blurred flashbacks that feature a bit of muffled dialogue, I assume as the child wouldn't be able to understand what was being said.

Dying Light: The Following (2016) - Horror Video Game DLC Review (Playstation 4)

I really enjoyed playing Dying Light and so when a sizeable expansion was released (titled The Following) I happily snapped it up. Fast forward some six years later and that DLC was still sat unplayed on my Playstation 4. With Dying Light 2 coming out I thought it was about time I returned to to the original to finish things off, but after playing this ill suited expansion I almost wish I hadn't bothered.

A mortally wounded stranger appears in the zombie infested city of Harran and before he dies he speaks of a cure that has been discovered in the area surrounding the city. With map in hand, the protagonist Kyle Crane (voiced by Roger Craig Smith - Batman: Arkham Origins) heads into the nearby countryside in search of this cure, as the supplies of the virus suppression drug Antizin has almost ran out at the HQ of the main survivors in the city. It is not long before Crane learns there indeed is an apparent cure, a strange cult named 'The Children of the Sun' are said to be immune to the undead, as are its followers, and with this knowledge in hand, Crane sets out to infiltrate the cult and discover the secret to their thriving in an undead world.

The Following is around a ten to twenty hour experience that takes place in an open world setting that is bigger than the base game's two maps combined. Much of this setting is open countryside, while there are a few small towns dotted about the place. To make up for this huge area you get provided with a buggy, this buggy provides you with a new skill tree, points are earned for this skill tree by doing stunts and running over zombies. The buggy, while a neat idea on paper, is what really ruins this DLC. There is only the one vehicle in the entire game, it requires constant repairing of five different key parts, as well as fuel to keep running. Should you accidentally flip over the buggy then there is no way to put it right again, the only option is to slowly traverse the giant world on foot until you can get to a safe house and respawn the vehicle. That wouldn't be such an issue if the buggy wasn't so notoriously difficult not to flip, I literally lost count of the amount of times I was in absolute nowhere and my buggy either got jammed on a bit of the scenery or got knocked over. This made traversal a real headache, add in to this equation of misery a complete lack of a fast travel option and frustration station was the place I spent far too much of the playthrough at. Dying Light wasn't designed to be an open world game with a vehicle, try as they might the antiquities of the base game meant the developers really didn't think things through. It's made even more annoying that quests typically bounce you from one extreme of the map to the other.

Sam Was Here (2016) - Horror Film Review

I have intended for 2022 to be the year that I spend more time watching films of my choosing rather than solely watching horrors sent to me for review. I found the Christophe Deroo written and directed Sam Was Here towards the back end of my Shudder queue and I admit I chose to watch it based on its short running time of seventy five minutes. This remains Deroo's only feature length movie he has created and it stands apart as a very mysterious film, style over substance, but that is one of the things that I really appreciate in films.

Sam (Rusty Joiner - Resident Evil: Extinction) is a travelling salesman who is travelling through the Mojave Desert back roads of California in order to get home to his wife and young daughter. After his car breaks down he is baffled to find everywhere he visits deserted, yet with signs of people having recently been there. He also finds he is unable to contact anyone on telephones, either receiving dead ringtones or answer phone messages. The only bit of normality he does find is a local radio station hosted by a man called Eddy. The radio show is talking about a killer on the loose and the more Sam listens the more he begins to realise that the person being talked about is himself. Soon he finds himself hunted by the inhabitants of a rural community who want the confused man dead.

I had read beforehand that this film was like an episode of Black Mirror if it had been directed by David Lynch, I can kind of get that. While not as surreally nasty as Lynch's work can feel, this had its weird moments that really did give off a vibe such as that. For one thing you have a strange red light constantly showing up, both far off in the sky, and closer to home. Then you have the story that is a slow burn of limited reveals. I fully expected the film to loop around on itself like Lost Highway, it had a similar kind of vibe at times, I also expected maybe this was a Twilight Zone style hellish afterlife in which a bad person is forced to face endless persecution. Instead the film ends with nothing explained which I can see frustrating some people. There is plenty of suggestions throughout but nothing concrete or definite is ever given. Apparently Deroo said of the film that the only part of Sam Was Here intended to be understood was the atmosphere, and the paranoid desperate journey of Sam's, punctuated with moments of brutality certainly maintains a cruel atmosphere all the way to its finale.

Bad Ben (2016) - Horror Film Review

I have fallen into a Bad Ben rabbit hole it appears. Bad Ben is a found footage horror film that was directed, produced and edited by Nigel Bach who also plays the movie's sole character. Inexplicably the release of the ninth entry in the series; Bad Ben: Benign is just around the corner, surely this makes this indie series one of the most prolific found footage series around? I have a screener of the latest entry but I wanted to get up to speed and so chose the very first film in the series to get an idea of what would be in store to me. I figured the first would be the roughest, but despite being derivative, especially of Paranormal Activity, this was bizarrely watchable.

Bach plays Tom Riley, a grumpy middle aged man who has recently brought a house with the intention of sprucing it up and then selling it on in order to make a profit. He has decided to stay at the property while doing this, but he begins to experience supernatural occurrences, such as objects moving around on their own and doors slamming. Not wanting to waste his investment, Tom decides to stay and does everything he can think of to make the ghosts of the house, and in particular the titular 'Bad Ben' leave. However, as the intro spiel says, the recordings that make up the film were pieced together from footage recovered from Tom's phone, it seems he may not have been very successful.

Bad Ben falls extremely deeply into the old style of making found footage horrors. That Bach manages to carry the entire movie by himself is baffling, yet somehow he does. There always needs to be a good reason for footage to be filmed, yet here there isn't at all. Tom is constantly narrating as if he is making the videos for people to watch, yet at several points he admits to himself he has no idea why he is filming. At least him saying that meant I could see his incessant self recording to be a symptom of an underlying mental health issue. It also felt weird he had set up a ridiculous amount of cameras around the house, he says its for security but I felt it was a touch overdone. I imagined before watching this that it would be a small feature length, instead this is nearly ninety minutes, much of that is just Tom walking around not really doing anything of note. Just as I began to get the first feelings of boredom I noticed the film had crept into it's third act without me really noticing.

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: Season 1 (2016) - Zombie Horror Anime Review

It's been a while since I watched any anime, mainly because I'm always forgetting my Crunchyroll password! Well, I reset it yet again and decided to check out the zombie anime Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. The show shares many similarities with Attack on Titan, both with the apocalyptic vision of the world as well as a mistrusted main protagonist. I watched the original Japanese version rather than the one with English dubbing.

The show takes place in a post apocalyptic steampunk version of feudal Japan. While it is not told in the show the synopsis says that at the onset of the industrial revolution a zombie outbreak suddenly occurred. These zombies, in the show called 'Kabane' soon overrun the entirety of Japan. The human survivors exist within towns and cities that are ringed by huge insurmountable iron walls, and they travel between these settlements on large armoured trains. One day the Kabane manage to invade the settlement of Aragane Station, in the process a young inventor named Ikoma is bitten and infected. He somehow manages to stop the spread of the infection by a device he straps to his body. The survivors flee the doomed station aboard the Kotetsujyo. It is here that Ikoma discovers he is now a Kabernari - half human/half zombie and that another person, the young Mumei also is one. Mistrusted by the other passengers and the crew of the train they all travel onwards to the capital city. As is always the case it soon becomes clear that there is more to fear than the Kabane...

The anime is made up of twelve episodes, the majority of them take place on or around the train (the titular iron fortress I guess). It is neatly split into half, the first six episodes have humans versus the zombie creatures. It culminates in the excellent two parter of Inescapable Darkness and Gathering Light. The second half of the season picks up on the familiar trope of other humans being the most dangerous thing in a zombie infested world. A villain emerges whose motive is that weak people deserve to die, and it is only the strong who have a right to live. I won't spoil who this villain is, but it wasn't that much of a surprise as the reveal happens within half an episode of this character first appearing.

The Moonlight Man (2016) - Short Horror Film Review

Due to being away on a short vacation I decided to watch a bunch of short films for review so that I had some posts stored up. The Moonlight Man is a short horror coming in at under three minutes. Written and directed by Danny Donahue (Vermin, Grin) this doesn't try and do much to set itself apart from the crowd.

Late at night a young woman (Casey Fichtner - Vermin) is walking back to her car when she notices the shadowy figure of an odd looking man (Phillip Kreyche - The Creep). Fumbling for her keys she drops them and as she struggles to find where they have gone the moonlight man gets nearer...

I've seen this type of horror film many times before, that of a lone woman on an isolated street at night being stalked by a male figure. Horror films are a mirror to the fears of our reality and it can't be denied that take away all the make-up and costume design of the titular monster character and you would have something that felt more real. That doesn't mean that this was too effective however, while it was good the monster was kept out of sight for the most part it was still obviously a man dressed up in a costume and not an actual monster, so much so I wondered if that would turn out to be the case within the film. The horror aspect was a miss for me but this was still competently made, and this gets a shout out for resisting the urge to finish on one of those lame jump scare endings that so often plague short horror films.

Despite any misgivings I had as to the originality of The Moonlight Man there isn't much excuse for not watching it, at under three minutes it doesn't have time to be anywhere near to outstaying its welcome. Outside of its lack of surprises this wasn't that bad a film, good enough that a sequel was made to it in 2017. The Moonlight Man can be seen on YouTube.

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Gears of War 4 (2016) - Sci-fi Horror Video Game Review (XBox One)

Continuing my relentless playthrough of the entire Gears series I have recently beaten Gears of War 4. Not including the remaster of the original game this was the first to come out on a newer generation console and it sure does show, the game is beautiful. With the original storyline coming to a definite end with Gears of War 3 I was intrigued to see where things would go, and by using a timeskip I was overall impressed even if there were some dud characters.

This fourth entry takes place 25 years after the Locust and Lambent where both finally defeated. In that time deadly windstorms dubbed 'Windflares' have begun. As a defensive measure the COG (Coalition of Ordered Governments) have created walled cities which the surviving human population mainly reside in, though others nicknamed 'Outsiders' choose to live outside of COG rule. J.D Fenix (voiced by Liam McIntyre) is a former COG soldier and son of Marcus (John DiMaggio). He, along with wisecracking best friend Del (Eugene Byrd) have recently abandoned the COG due to the strictness of the regime, they joined a group of Outsiders and befriended the chief's daughter, Kait (Laura Bailey - the voice of Abby in The Last of Us: Part II).
One day while stealing from a COG construction site they are set upon by the robotic COG army at the behest of First Minister Jinn (Angel Desai), she accuses them of kidnapping her people, much to the confusion of everyone. The following evening the Outsider village is attacked by unknown monsters. Fearing that the Locust have somehow returned J.D seeks out his estranged fathers help.

The very worst part of Gears of War 4 was the god awful irritating protagonist you are forced to spend the whole game playing as. He is a lazy Nathan Drake knockoff, the kind of arrogant smart mouthed idiot who always seems to win despite always feeling like he is way out of his depth. I loved playing as Marcus in the original trilogy, he was a meathead but that made him all the more endearing. He was someone with muscles wider than his head, and someone whose permanent anger resulted in him heading headfirst into danger at every opportunity. Not so with J.D, I couldn't stand this character so it was good that the three supporting characters were much better. Kait was a bit moody and miserable, understandable as her mother had been kidnapped by the new monsters (named 'The Swarm' by J.D and co). To begin with I hated Del also, but he has a lot of genuinely laugh out loud moments, my favourite was an exchange between him and Marcus which went something like... "Everybody better stock up on ammo" "Why? Do you think we will need it?" "Yes, unless your Lancer runs on smartass" "Well it seems to have been able to do that so far". As for Marcus it was a lot of fun to have him be so much older, though often felt weird when cutscenes ended and I realised I wouldn't be controlling him. In his old age he has surprisingly mellowed out, despite being lumped with a trio of people barely out of their teens. What the four did have was great banter, I loved how they named each new enemy type they discovered, and I loved the whole ongoing conversation about 'jinxing' things. That last one led up to some humorous playing around with the classic guitar riff that plays when all enemies are supposedly defeated in an area.

Oxenfree (2016) - Horror Video Game Review (X-Box One)

Oxenfree is a combat free adventure game that is heavy on story but short on gameplay. It feels kind of like what modern day text adventure games have become. While personally I didn't feel the need to do a second playthrough, the story is set up in such a way that you would need to do so in order to get a true ending.

Alex (voiced by Erin Yvette - Firewatch) heads to the currently uninhabited Edwards Island along with her best friend, Ren (Aaron Kuban), and her new step-brother Jonas (Gavin Hammon) for a weekend of partying, as is the coming of age tradition of teenagers in her town. There she meets Clarissa and Nona, two other school mates. There is a local legend that certain radio frequencies cause supernatural events in a large cave on the island and so Alex and Jonas decide to check it out. They discover a strange 'tear' deep in the cavern and are surprised when tuning the portable radio Alex has that this tear begins to open...then all chaos breaks loose. Some time later Alex and Jonas awaken to find themselves somehow transported to the opposite side of the island. Lost and confused they eventually learn that all their friends have also been transported to random places within the island. It seems they have somehow awakened a living frequency, a force whose intentions are unclear, but which has the power to not only create time loops, but to also be able to possess Alex and her friends.

Oxenfree is a beautiful looking 2D adventure game that features vaguely ugly 3D character models. It is both the graphics and the superb soundtrack that really got me hooked. The island is split up into different areas, such as the beach, the military base and the mountains, each of which has a lovely look to it that made it seem like it had been hand built via arts and crafts. In each area you are restricted to a 2.5D path. Occasionally there are minor puzzles, such as working out how to open locked doors, and how to power on various devices, but mainly this is all about walking and talking. Over the course of the roughly five hour game you play as Alex, but often who you are with changes up. Dialogue is the main way the story plays out, with characters walking and talking constantly. Usually you are often given multiple responses to what the other characters are saying, typically agreeable, disagreeable or sarcastic and angry responses. In terms of what you actually do this is mostly just walking around, with the story playing the main draw.

All the Wrong Friends (2016) - Horror Film Review

All the Wrong Friends is a thriller that was co-directed by Ryan Hawkins and Mark Kerins in what was both their feature length directorial debut. Having a look at the credits on IMDB it appears that the story was put together by a whopping 10 different people. Too many cooks spoil the broth? Maybe, but this fits neatly into the tiny sub genre of horror that looks at how people react upon finding a dead body.

A group of former high school friends are on their way to a music festival a year after graduating. Along the way one of the group, Logan (Sean O'Connor) asks for them to visit the remote home of a friend of his, in order to get something off of him. Logan's friend isn't there, but he is so insistent about waiting for him to return that he convinces everyone to stay the night. Both alcohol and drugs are soon found and the friends begin a night of partying. That is until they discover Logan's friend, murdered in one of the upstairs rooms. Due to the illicit partying they take the drastic move of trying to cover their tracks, planning to spend the night and then contact the police about the body in the morning (for some reason no one owns a mobile phone). Not much later there is a knock at the door, two hikers looking for assistance. This begins a night of paranoia and mistrust and an ever rising body count, for it turns out that for these clowns they really did have...All the Wrong Friends.

This is not high brow entertainment but I did find it to be quite entertaining. It helps that every character in this film is an idiot, I couldn't care less about any of them, in fact the opposite, I was happy for them to rip themselves apart. The moronic leader, Logan was a complete bully, hardly surprising his attire is a wife beater vest. Then there is his bitchy girlfriend,  Adam (Tom Gelo - Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) who is a whiny drug addict loser, gormless Simon (Dexter Hostetter - Zombie Love), and Drew (Ricco Fajardo) and his girlfriend Nani (Krishna Smitha). Those last two are given the role of protagonists and are the most level headed of the bunch, however, their willingness to follow the totally moronic plans of the others means they are no better in my eyes. 

Child Eater (2016) - Horror Film Review

Child Eater is based on the 2012 short horror film of the same name. When I reviewed that a few years back (here) I commented that I hoped the feature length version would improve upon the lore built up in it. Like the original short, this one too is directed and written by Erlingur Thoroddsen, and this one also stars Cait Bliss who reprises her role as the babysitter, Helen.

A quarter of a century before the events of the film there was an old man named Robert Bowery who lived in the woods near a small town. This man had failing eyesight and believed by consuming the eyeballs of children he would be able to get his sight restored. After a little girl manages to escape from him he is finally caught and believed killed. In present day, Helen (Bliss) is asked by her father to babysit a young boy, Lucas (Colin Critchley). The boy complains of a monster hiding in his cupboard, Helen humours him but when she looks there is nothing there. Later that night she hears a strange noise coming from Lucas's room, she goes there to find he has vanished. She decides to head out into the nearby woods to search for him, unaware that Robert Bowery (Jason Martin - Gotham) has returned in a new supernatural form to once again kidnap children...

I assumed a feature length film would find time to build on the lore and the characters that the original short didn't have time to do. However this seemed far more content to stretch that original short into a feature length with minimal added of any consequence. After a tiny sliver of character development the film soon gets to the original place the short started. Nearly the entire movie takes place over the night Lucas vanishes, and from what my memory told me this goes along in a very similar fashion to the original. I found Lucas to be an annoying character, and there was a bit of a throwback in feel to the early 2000's in how he acts. There was a weird stretch of time in the past where it seemed children were being given scripts for adult characters. This led to child characters speaking and acting with a maturity that came across as creepy rather than realistic. Such is the case with Lucas who the film would lead you to believe is a lot more articulate, rational and intelligent than all the adults around him. This just makes for a creepy character, and so I wasn't that fussed what the titular child eater would do to him. There are a bunch of other characters but there is so little development with any of them that I couldn't care less about them. Bliss was fine as the babysitter but I didn't really understand why she felt the need to rescue Lucas after a certain point in the movie.

Lake Bodom (2016) - Horror Film Review

Lake Bodom is a location that has appeared in many different horrors over the years. The place is infamous due to the brutal murder of three campers in the 1960's. There were many different theories as to who the killer was, but no one was ever charged. Confusingly, in Finland this was released under the title Bodom, which also happens to be the name of a Hungarian found footage horror from 2014 that has a very similar story (my review of that one can be found here). I have started watching horrors from Shudder on Sundays, this was my second pick after skipping the Sunday previously.

In 2016 four teenage friends head to Lake Bodom with various motivations for doing so. Nora (Mimosa Willamo) and Ida (Nelly Hirst-Gee) have been tricked into thinking there is going to be a cabin party there. In reality, Atte (Santeri Helinheimo Mantyla) has told them that so they would agree to go to the isolated lake with him and his best friend, Elias (Mikael Gabriel). Atte is obsessed with the 1960's murders that took place there and hopes he can get the girls to help him recreate the police crime scene photos, while Elias is hoping he can get lucky with one of them. However, nothing works out for any of the four teens, as their camping trip is rudely interrupted by a killer...

I had heard many good things about Lake Bodom over the years but had never gotten around to watching it. I did enjoy my time with it but it requires a huge suspension of disbelief. It isn't too long into the movie before the friends are camped out at the lake and so the horror begins relatively quickly. There are many curve balls thrown by this pretty generic beginning, and while I was surprised with where this went I didn't think it worked that well. Maybe one twist would have worked out well but we don't get that here, off the top of my head I think over the course of the movie there are six big twists. These twists all alter the perception of events and characters, but it almost (but not quite) becomes farcical with how much is changing constantly. If this had all fallen away to reveal a The Cabin in the Woods style resolution I don't think I would have been surprised.

Slain: Back from Hell (2016) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

I have gotten to the stage where both my hard drive and external hard drive on my Playstation 4 are totally full up. I had been dipping my toes into various games I owned to see if they felt like ones I could easily get through. Upon playing Slain: Back from Hell I soon realised I was totally addicted it, eventually I played through the whole thing in around four different play sessions.

The game takes place in a dark fantasy world in which the all powerful Lord Vroll has conquered the lands with his army of monsters. The world has been completely consumed by evil with nothing but darkness and death around every corner. An angel like being resurrects an ancient hero and tasks him with setting forth from his tomb and defeating Lord Vroll.

The first noticeable thing about Slain: Back from Hell is how damn beautiful it is. This is a 2D hack and slash adventure game that is displayed in gorgeous pixel art. The levels appear as living locations, they are layered in so much detail, from blood rain sweeping across the sky, to undulating slime. Horror rarely looks this attractive. Playing this I was reminded of the early Castlevania games. You sword wielding character is about the same size as the characters in those games, and action plays out in a similar fashion. It also bizarrely reminded me of Hotline Miami. This is a game in which you will die a lot, a heck of a lot, and so when everything comes together and you finally get through a tough area, avoiding all the traps, killing all the enemies it feels really quite satisfying.

She's Allergic to Cats (2016) - Horror Film Review

I figured the one good thing about this pandemic would be the amount of free time I would have to work on my blog. Instead it is the opposite, ended up not only still working full time, but the added bonus of all holiday being cancelled and so I'm not going to get a chance anytime soon to catch up on my outstanding posts. I'm currently fit to bursting with movies to watch for review and so I need to be a bit more picky. Director/writer Michael Reich's She's Allergic to Cats didn't sound like horror in the traditional sense, but it sure sounded unique and so I knew despite my new found pickiness I had to check it out.

Mike Pinkney stars as Mike, a dog groomer in Hollywood with aspirations to make films. As a hobby he makes video art, and his big dream is to re-make his favourite horror movie Carrie, but with cats playing all the parts. One day at his day job he meets the mysterious Cora (Sonja Kinski - Holidays segment "Mothers Day") and instantly they form a connection. They agree to a date, a date that will tragically change their lives forever...

She's Allergic to Cats is a really bizarre film, and that aspect is what drew me to it. It straddles several different genres, it is both horror, romance, and comedy wrapped up in an art house bow. Art house can be a tough style of filmmaking to love, I sometimes feel the abstract nature of it can hide deficiencies in the storytelling. Here it is pure art house at times, my unofficial criteria of this genre includes nightmare sequences, non sexulised nudity and a general unraveling of cohesiveness. This had the feel of a more indie Garden State, helped by the fact that Pinkney really reminded me in look of Zach Braff, and how the main characters of that film were also oddballs like Mike and Cora were.