The Anatomy of Monsters (2014) - Horror Film Review

I covered The Anatomy of Monsters back in May where I said that I hoped it turned out to be good as the central concept was pretty intriguing. This is a movie that despite it's obvious constraints still manages to be compelling viewing. I've been trying something different lately when reviewing films; to watch it with my VR headset on so that there are no outside distractions. This seems to really help with getting immersed in stuff.

Andrew (Jesse Lee Keeter) is a serial killer and he has headed to a local club in search of his next victim. He befriends a lone woman named Sarah (Tabitha Bastien from Run, Hide, Die) and together they head to a motel where he intends to kill her. However just as it seems everything is going to plan Sarah turns the tables on him, revealing she knows exactly who he is, and that she too is a killer. What follows is a psychological mind game as she recounts her past while insidiously planting the seeds of doubt in her captors head.

UK Festival of Zombie Culture 2016 - A Day of the Undead

So last weekend was the annual UK Festival of Zombie Culture that as always takes place at the Phoenix Arts Centre in Leicester, I have been putting up reviews of the five feature films throughout the week so now comes the time when I talk about the day itself.

Things started off badly on the Friday when the motorway I needed to get on was closed. Thankfully my quick thinking friend directed me via another route and aside from getting slightly lost in the insanity that is the road system of Leicester city centre we eventually got to the trusty car park we always use. The car park in question had been taken over by a gym however, thankfully there was another superior car park pretty much next door to that one even if it did look like the most sinister place in the world. With bigger spaces though there would be no repeat of last year when I managed to reverse my car into a steel post when trying to leave!

Peelers (2016) - Zombie Horror Film Review

Originally Re-Kill had been billed as the final film at this years UK Festival of Zombie Culture but at the last moment that fell through and Peelers was chosen as the film to replace it. Peelers has been shown at a lot of festivals this year and I have covered it before so was interested to see it. However I suspect that being the last film and with me fighting sleep I was not as receptive to it's charms as I could have been.

Peelers takes place almost entirely in a small town strip club on it's closing night, having been brought out from owner Blue Jean (Wren Walker) by a corrupt government official. The night gets off to a traditional start until the arrival of a group of oil covered miners who are out to celebrate turns the evening into a living nightmare. The oil that they are covered in changes them, turning them into unstoppable undead killing machines and soon Blue Jean, her strippers, bouncer Remy (Caz Odin Darko from Wind Chill) and her son Logan (Madison J.Loos) find themselves fighting to survive...

Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies (2016) - Zombie Horror Film Review

The fourth film at this years UK Festival of Zombie Culture was the horror comedy Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies. Coming right after the astounding Train to Busan and the much funnier Night of Something Strange this movie suffered a bit. Despite any misgivings I might have had there was definitely parts of this Austrian film that really charmed.

Pro snowboarder Steve (Laurie Calvert), his girlfriend Branka (Gabriela Marcinkova) and his friend Josh (Oscar Dyekjaer Giese) are left behind on a mountain after an ill advised prank Steve plays leads to his sponsorship deal getting cancelled. With no way to get to the nearest village until morning they are forced to seek refuge in a bar. Unknown to them the owner of the mountain in a bid to create snow has accidentally made a toxic concoction that infects a prospective investor, who then turns into a zombie. Soon the hills are alive with the sound of screaming and with no option Steve and his fellow survivors must battle the walking dead while looking for a way to leave the cursed peak and escape to safety.

Train to Busan (2016) - Zombie Horror Film Review

The South Korean made Train to Busan is a film that my best friend was very much looking forward to at the UK Festival of Zombie Culture we attended this past weekend. I had heard plenty of good things about it but I was just not prepared for how amazing it actually was, by far the best film shown at the event, and one of my top horrors of the year.

Workaholic Seok Woo (Yoo Gong) agrees to take his neglected daughter Soo-an (Soon-an Kim) via train to Busan as a birthday gift so that she can see her mother (who Seok is seperated from). The day they choose however coincides with the outbreak of zombie apocalypse and soon him and his fellow passengers find themselves trapped on a speeding train full of the running dead. With every station over-run with zombies the train driver has no option but to get to the end of the line at Busan where it is hoped it is still safe...

Plan Z (2016) - Zombie Horror Film Review

Plan Z is a passion project from Stuart Brennan who directed, wrote and starred in this low-fi UK zombie flick. He has stated that a lot of horror fans have a plan in their head for what they would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse, Plan Z is his idea given flesh. This had it's European premiere at the UK Festival of Zombie Culture and was the most realistic in feel of all the films shown there.

Brennan stars as Craig; a photographer who in his downtime while travelling the globe had come up with a plan on how to survive if zombie apocalypse ever occurred. He hadn't expected it to ever happen, yet when a swift world wide viral outbreak actually does lead to the dead returning to life Craig decides to head home and enact his idea for real. He is to wait out the chaos in the safety of his own home, then when supplies head low he intends to travel to a remote location until the worst is over. Even the best laid plans have problems though...

Night of Something Strange (2016) - Zombie Horror Film Review

So I have returned from another fantastic UK Festival of Zombie Culture that is held annually in Leicester. The same as previous years I shall attempt to create passable reviews based on brief notes and keywords scribbled down during the 13 hour marathon. This year there were five feature films shown, the first being the ultra gross Night of Something Strange...

A necrophiliac janitor unwittingly contracts a deadly and disturbing STD after sleeping with one of the bodies in the morgue he works at. Returning home it isn't long until the disease has transformed him into one of the walking dead, but rather than the desire to eat brains he has the desire to pass on his infection. Meanwhile a group of high school teens on their way to the beach for spring break end up at a remote motel where they find themselves at the centre of this strange outbreak.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - Zombies in Spaceland (2016) - Thoughts on the new mode

So yesterday the latest Call of Duty game came out; Infinite Warfare. While much of the game takes place in space I was far more interested in the developers take on the classic Zombies mode that is so beloved by me. Initially when it was first announced I thought it was actually going to take place in space, much like the Moon map from Call of Duty: Black Ops, instead it takes place during the 80's at a theme park based around space.

The animated intro (done to look like a 1950's pulp cartoon) sees four actors (Andre, Sally, AJ, and Poindexter) arrive at a disused cinema to audition for a once prolific horror director Willard Wayler. They had heard his audition process was tough but none were prepared for what happens next. Using some sort of demonic ritual Wayler creates a portal that sucks the group into one of his own films set at a Spaceland theme park. Once inside they find themselves dressed up like the characters they were due to play, not only that but find themselves under immediate attack by hordes of zombies. Wyler instructs the group to pass the audition they have to survive...

60 Seconds to Die (2016) - Horror Anthology News and Trailer

I would swear on a stack of bibles that my email on my phone doesn't show me all my mail as doing some admin on an actual computer I found several emails that I am certain I had never seen before. One such one is a trailer for (at the time) upcoming horror anthology 60 Seconds to Die which awesomely is an anthology made up of short horror films that are only one minute long each. Despite the email I found being from September I just had to put up a post about this. There has been a sequel to this called 60 Seconds 2 Die: 60 Seconds to Die 2 (quite a mouthful), both of these were released in the UK a few days back on Halloween. A third film is in the works that continues the trend for truly terribly titled compilations, it is to be released in 2017 and will be called...60 Seconds to Di3.

A trailer was released that was awesome in it's editing, it is full of blood, violence and plenty of monsters, psychos and vampires and has a strong indie/grind house vibe to it. I wonder just how many short films it contains? Check out the trailer below...

Layers of Fear: Inheritance - Part 2 of My Complete Playthrough

Welcome to part 2 of my complete play-through of Layers of Fear: Inheritance. In this second part I spend a bizarre amount of time completely baffled as to how to proceed. Check out part 1 here. Putting these up on my blog is all new so if it is something you think is pointless then let me know! In general my film reviews are the most viewed thing I do so this is kinda an experiment...

Layers of Fear: Inheritance (2016) - Part 1 of my complete playthrough (PS4)

I have recently started putting up more YouTube videos, these are very rough and are mostly just PS4 video games streamed live or prerecorded with me speaking as I play. I thought I may as well start putting them on my blog as well, they wont replace my regular blog posts but be in addition to them. This first one is for the Layers of Fear DLC.

So it is Halloween today, the most wonderful of holidays and I am in The Rotting Zombie HQ in lock down as I have no treats for visiting ghouls and so need to simulate being out. Actually I spent much of the evening out anyway as I went to my friends for our weekly The Walking Dead and Ash vs Evil Dead watching (were both excellent by the way!).

So I shall be doing a review of Layers of Fear: Inheritance down the line anyway so I wont say much more, other than the main game had you exploring a weird nightmare house as a tortured artist, in the DLC you play as his daughter who seems to be visiting her childhood home to confront the demons of her past. Happy Halloween!

5 Ghoulishly Gooey Filled Cookies (Tesco) - Horror Themed Food Review

It's that time of year again when food starts getting re-labelled to give it a Halloween edge. In the interest both of public information and an admittedly quick and easy blog post I present a review of Tesco's 5 Ghoulishly Gooey Filled Cookies.

Usually companies use blatant lies such as 'spooky' and 'scary' to describe their Halloween treats, with this one though I am unsure if it is a fallacy for I know not what 'ghoulishly' would actually be like. After eating some of these cookies I came to the conclusion that that word means sweet to a fault. The main part of the cookie has green food colouring used, while the gooey inside at the middle is purple. Both colours you could associate with the side of horror I guess (also the Joker). The cookie itself is very, very sweet, I don't have a sweet tooth so I found this to be quite overpowering with a very artificial taste to it. As a whole these cookies are very soft and thin, the raised middle has some purple stuff in it that actually wasn't that gooey.

I guess if you like disgustingly sweet cookies then these will be for you, for me I did not enjoy eating them, I could feel the non natural ingredients infesting my body. They look nice, though as you can see from my photo the circular shape was not intact, looks like a monster had already eaten off a part of one of them. Tune in this time next year for more horrific Halloween treats *sigh*.

SCORE:

Dark Blue (2017) - Film News

Dark Blue is an Italian indie film that to be honest I'm not sure if it would be classed as horror, the director Michael Segal (Anger of the Dead, Zombie Massacre 2: Reich of the Dead) describes it as an mystery/action movie. The synopsis does suggest a certain horror element and so I have included it here.

Segal stars as Mike; a fearless diver who along with partners Lisa and Kevin head out to a wreck of a legendary boat named Miorgarosormr that sank while fleeing the German Nazis and Italian Fascists in the 1930's. They hope to discover the precious cargo it holds and are led to the spot by an old sea-man named Hooper (David White) who seems to know more about the wreck than he lets on. Unknown to the small diving group the ship is purported to be guarded by a mythical Celtic creature that may still be residing there.

This English language Italian film is currently in post-production and will be Segal's first directed film. He is being assisted by the award winning Simone Modugno who will be integral to the underwater and drone shots. The movie is principally filmed in Elba and there will be lots of underwater scenes that were actually filmed around a real life sunken ship. With Segal being a stuntman it is promised there will be lots of fights and dangerous scenes. The movie is to premier at the AFM, then at the Toronto Film Market and Berlin.  Check out the trailer below, the concept is interesting but whether it turns out to contain any horror or not remains to be seen.