Reviews

17 years after making one of the most famous horror movies ever with The Exorcist, William Friedkin decided it was time to revisit the horror genre in 1990 with The Guardian. Quite amazingly it was originally slated for direction by Sam Raimi, who while equally revered in the horror genre, is a man with a very different style.

The movie wastes no time in introducing us to its premise - a young couple leaving for a night out leave their infant in the hands of a nanny (Jenny Seagrove) they have recruited. However the mother has forgotten her glasses and returns to find babysitter and newborn missing, we get to see this is because she is sacrificing him to a tree.

I mean, there's actually text beforehand that explicitly states that there are nymphs who make sacrifices to trees, just in case you were in any doubt, but this is a hilarious way to open a movie like this. I mean the plot is ridiculous but I think it could be pulled off if you build suspense, knowing she's up to something nefarious but not exactly what. Here we've got it all laid out.

Anyway, she reappears in California under the name of Camilla when newly relocated couple Phil (Dwier Brown) and Kate Sterling (Carey Lowell) find themselves in need of a babysitter for their newborn. Things start smoothly until, well, Camilla decides to try kidnap him and sacrifice him to a tree.

I mean, it's hard to class this as a spoiler when it's made abundantly clear where this plot is going from the off, and it never really makes any deviations from it. There's no surprise here, no suspense, no stakes. The story is silly, but it's not the worst I've ever seen. I mean it probably makes more sense than John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, but that's a much better movie because it sucks you in before revealing its more ludicrous aspects. Here it's just - yep there's a witch who wants to sacrifice your kid to a tree.

Come to think of it, this isn't the first 'scary tree' movie, I mean both Evil Dead and Poltergeist feature them, and while the plant itself isn't the cause of evil, Ernest Scared Stupid has one that serves a similar purpose and all of those are better (yes, even Ernest)

The worst thing is, the production values are solid, the cast are workable (cameos from genre favourites Miguel Ferrer and Xander Berkeley) and when the effects do kick in I've no complaints with them. A good movie could quite easily have come out of this.

As it is, with this being entirely telegraphed in the opening act, it commits the cardinal sin for a horror movie of being boring. The climactic showdown is pretty well done and atmospheric, but it's too little, too late. Friedkin wouldn't wait so long to come back to the genre, he'd get involved with HBO's Tales from the Crypt, which fared better. Incidentally, cut the intro and some of the padding and this might have wound up better as an episode of that.

Lou Diamond Phillips must have one of the strangest CVs in Hollywood. From Courage Under Fire to La Bamba and Young Guns via Metal Tornado and Bats, the man is nothing if not diverse.

Here we find him in his SyFy originals phase. Now, these get a lot of stuck, and I'm not saying some, maybe even most, of it isn't warranted, but I think they served a purpose. As video rental stores were starting to die out, these almost took over as where you could see a cheap and cheerful little B horrors. They'd follow a pretty set template, usually with no excessive sex or violence, if nothing else they were a good entry level way to get younger viewers into the genre.

This 2009 effort is actually one of the more interesting examples. I'm not saying it's good, because it's not, but it's got something.

Things open with Cap (AC Peterson) and Quinn (Dominic Cuzzocrea) striking a mysterious deal to purchase an unseen creature. Cap murders the seller and takes the beast, which we soon find out is designed to be the latest attraction in his travelling Carneval.

This show has rolled into the small American town under the stewardship of Sheriff Atlas (Phillips) he is looking forward to the show, which can't be said for the town preacher Owen (Vlasta Vrana) who believes the entire Carneval to be the embodiment of evil - exacerbated by this new 'Jersey Devil' attraction.

On the opening night his fears are somewhat justified as the creature escapes and runs riot on the town. Can Atlas juggle stopping it, Cap's underhanded schemes to recapture it and the furore being whipped up by the priest?

Yeah this is pretty standard fare, but I did enjoy the dynamic of not one, but two sets of human antagonists at odds with each other as well as the heroes to compliment the monster. Unfortunately it does actually come at the expense of us learning anything about the monster, which is unfortunate given that 99% of your audience are here for that.

Speaking of him, he's actually pretty neat. While SyFy originals are renowned for just spamming awful CGI, here they do a bit more practical work which has the knock on effect that the CGI that is used is a bit better. We're not talking great stuff, but solid enough to not take me out of it.

The acting generally isn't too bad either. I mean Phillips is phoning it in but he's still got enough about him to work at this level. The remaining cast are workable in the circumstances. Cuzzocrea is a great character actor that I wish they'd done more with here.

Overall, I think most people know what to expect from the second you hear 'SyFy Original'. This isn't anyone's favourite movie, but it's a workable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The name is stupid though.

I have no recollection of this movie being released. Its generic name, bland poster and incredibly vague plot summary mean this isn't overly surprising, but I've seen it referenced repeatedly as underrated and worth seeking out, so I gave it a go.

The movie opens with Norah (Kristen Stewart) working on an experimental deep sea drilling platform in the Mariana Trench. Within minutes of her introduction, her world is thrown to turmoil as what appears to be some form of freakish earthquake rocks the facility leading to flooding. Finding a handful of survivors including the captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel) they come to the realisation that their only hope of survival is to don diving suits and try to talk along the ocean floor to a nearby base. However it soon becomes clear that it may not have been an earthquake that damaged the base, and they most certainly aren't alone out there...

There's nothing overly big or clever here. I mean the plot is almost beat for best lifted from fun 80s B-Movie Deepstar Six, with one exception. Now I'd normally try and avoid something so overtly spoiler-y as this but it's impossible not to mention as it's arguably the movie's potential biggest draw and also its biggest talking point - the disaster is caused by the awakening of Cthulhu and the Deep Ones.

It's actually kind of cool they didn't go all out to make this clear in promo work, therefore it's a big surprise, however the way the movie does it also undercooks it. It's made clear that the company behind the drilling, or at least one member of the team, was aware of the existence of these creatures but said character dies before this revelation so we don't really get to know any more - was this the classic trope of someone trying to awaken them? Or was he trying to study or even kill them? The Lovecraftian reveal, while kinda cool, could have benefitted the movie further by being examined more.

It's well made. It might actually be the first time I've ever seen a movie with the much maligned Kristin Stewart but I thought she was fine. Due to the nature of the story, where the disaster happens within the first 5 minutes, we never really get to see her, or any other character, in a 'normal' state which doesn't make things easy, either for the actors or for us, as viewers to relate to them as we never actually see their default state to gauge how they react. One of the survivors, Emily, as played by Jessica Henwick, does actually make some inroads into being an actual character - she's some form of researcher not used to the more physical aspects of underwater life and intimidated by the concept of the undersea walk - this could very easily come across annoying but it's to Henwick's credit I found her easy to empathise with.

Underwater is a somewhat strange film for me. I think it was underrated on release, and deserved a bit more success than it got...but now the somewhat retroactive push it gets online makes it sound better than it is. It's a well made, very polished modern blockbuster that doesn't have a great deal of substance to it. Worth a watch but don't expect any lasting impression from it.

With that said, I now know what that Gods of the Deep thing I watched a while back was ripping off.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife arrived with much fanfare to not a lot of success with critics. I didn't think it was bad, but the lack of originality really hurt it. As much as the current trend of 'legacy sequels' need to rely on nostalgia to a degree, I felt it was literally ALL it had despite a promising cast. As such I watched it, moderately enjoyed it and almost instantly forgot about it.

When a sequel, Frozen Empire, was announced I was intrigued though. The name alone was enough to tip me off we were moving away from Gozer (finally) and with the new descendants of the Spengler clan introduced I was actually quite optimistic.

As such we find single mother Callie (Carrie Coon), 18 year old son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and teenage daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace) have relocated to the firehouse in New York. Their former science teacher/possible stepdad Gary (Paul Rudd) is along for the ride too. Bringing the Ghostbusters back draws the ire of city Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) and it isn't long before Phoebe's involvement sees questions raised and her benched, ceiling her teenage angst. Her one outlet is a teenage ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Ind) that she has befriended.

Meanwhile, a layabout named Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) arrives in Ray Stantz (Dan Ackroyd) occult bookshop trying to pawn some mysterious goods that belonged to his grandmother. Amongst them a mysterious orb that seems to trigger all sorts of mysterious supernatural phenomena. As it becomes clear it contains a demonic entity more fearsome than the average ghost, will the Busters Old & New be able to stop it before the Big Apple becomes the Big Icicle?

Frozen Empire has left me with a somewhat strange feeling. Similar to Afterlife I enjoyed it enough, but didn't love it. It just kind of exists.

It's predictable, but not entirely in a bad way. It hits all the regular beats for a family friendly blockbuster, which means you shouldn't expect to be challenged mentally, but can easily have a fun time. I think it's biggest problem is that it actually has potential to be better, and the tantalising glimpses of a better story it gives end up proving frustrating.

For example, the focus is very much on Phoebe's child prodigy who thinks the adults don't understand when they do. It's a tired trope, and I don't actually think the movie's use of it is even bad. Yet, when you've got Finn Wolfhard seeming to be finally showing signs of playing something other than 'the Stranger Things kid' and his would be girlfriend Lucky (Celeste O'Connor) also having moved to NY, both being criminally underused, it's hard not to think they maybe focused on the wrong kid.

We also get 2 new characters who are memorable yet under used. Patton Oswalt's small role as a researcher condemned to the basement of New York library is striking, could be argued to be perfectly timed but Kumail Nanjiani's Nadeem is definitely under utilised. There's an air of the original movies' Lewis Tulley about him, and I don't mean that in a bad way. They aren't similar in terms of characterisation, but as unlikely allies. If there are any further sequels I'd love to see him hang around.

The nostalgia cameos aren't quite as gratuitous as Afterlife, but that was just silly. Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson's Winston and Annie Potts' Janine actually feel quite natural. Bill Murray's Venkman less so, but the chemistry between them at the end feels more natural than the preceding movie, so I can permit it. William Atherton was one of my favourite parts of the original movie, but here he feels a bit tired in what's basically a less funny retread.

The antagonist, a Persian Demon God, is a similarly mixed bag of good and bad. I actually quite liked the story and setup. Truth be told I wouldn't have argued with more of it being present. The marketing made it look like NYC under ice was going to be a big part of the movie which didn't really come to pass either. The thing I find most disappointing is the design. It's well realised, but just looks so early 2000's. Like the villain from a B-List videogame or like that time McFarlane Toys tried to imagine what the Blair Witch looked like. It's probably my biggest issue with the movie.

Everything is well made, you can't knock the production values, and as I've said, I enjoyed it enough at the time...I just feel there was potential for MORE. I remember in the buildup there was a quote doing the rounds about how the they were drawing inspiration from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon. While I'm not sure about the tone, it is a fairly apt description of how I feel about it. It's like an episode of a procedural, entertaining for the duration but don't pretend you'll be thinking about it tomorrow.

As much as they formed a disproportionately frequent part of my movie consumption in my teens and 20s, I've long given up on B-Movies. While I think movies made away from the mass produced media machine do offer a rare opportunity to try something different, in this day and age the ease of access to cheap CGI not only means that special effects are bereft of any character or originality, but it also means the filmmakers don't even have to get creative.

With that said something about Gods of the Deep caught my eye. I've got a soft spot for Leviathon & Deepstar Six, and the cover was reminiscent of these. I knew it wouldn't be in their, already far from elite, league, but surely worth a watch.

Despite being a fully British cast and crew, the opening scenes feel distinctly like they were shot in Eastern Europe. Don't expect recognise any of the cast, I'm British and I don't.

We find ourselves in the World of the Pickman Corporation, who have uncovered what looks like a man made doorway at the bottom of the ocean between South America and Antarctica. They approach Jim (Derek Nelson) our vaguely Gary Barlow-lookimg twenty something protagonist who's got some sort of beef with Pickman involving his dad going missing while working on...something. This mission intrigues him though and he joins our ragtag group of cliched crew members to search new depths.

After setting sail from somewhere that looks nothing like South America, they take their experimental deep see sub and head off towards the dark unknown. Amongst the party is Jed Pickman (Chris Lines) himself. Somewhere between John Hammond, Carter Bourke, a drunken Uncle and the 'you're all going to die" guy from Friday the 13th movie, he is easily the highlight.

After no time and no suspense, they reach the hole and descend, only to find themselves confronted by what appears to be the corpse of a giant, hitherto unknown creature. As Jim sets out in a minisub to retrieve a DNA sample, it becomes clear that the being is anything but dead. In the ensuing panic the sub starts taking on water, people fall and bang their heads, a low budget Bryan Blessed/John Rhys Davies looking guy somehow gets locked in a room and drowns, and despite a potential lack of oxygen people decide to smoke.

As they make their ascent, the tissue sample Jim took starts to do strange things. Despite Pickman's insistence of studying it, amongst rambling like a lunatic, it is locked away. Needless to say there are double crosses, unexplained phenomena with equipment, the sample doesn't stay locked up, lots of bad decisions, even more slime and a 'shock' ending anyone who has ever seen a movie, ever can see coming from around the 20 minute mark.

So yes, this is a largely predictable, by the numbers affair, but actually isn't without some merit. The Lovecraftian nature of the creatures certainly gives it an edge to what could otherwise be a fairly standard Alien clone. In fact, if anything I was rather left wanting more of them. What did Pickman know? And was he a dribbling lunatic before he got into proximity of them or was that their influence?

Indeed there's actually the backbone of a decent story here, it just isn't fleshed out very well. There's also some laugh out loud silly moments, particularly when people fall. There's one where our strapping hero takes a fall of about a 3 foot drop and knocks himself out at a crucial moment,

It's also not helped by a cast that leave a lot to be desired. Nelson and female lead Makenna Guyler are passable enough, probably pretty good tv level actors. Chris Lines is hilarious, possibly intentionally on his part, if not the asinine script he's got to work with. The rest of the cast...eh not so good. There's lots of shouting, no subtlety and a lot of cringing on the part of the viewer.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of practical effects on show. No they weren't amazing, but they were more than workable for what we were dealing with. Even the CGI wasn't overdone, though the repeated use of the one scene of the Cthulhu-style monster grated by the end, but overall I can't chalk the effects up as a pleasant surprise.

All in, Gods of the Deep isn't a great movie. It's not even a good one, and I'd be generous in calling it 'alright' but what I will say is that it's far from the worst movie I've ever seen, and I suppose I was actually pleasantly surprised by it in a way. This doesn't mean I recommend it, but I don't totally hate it either.

As much as I'm about to talk about it at length, I'll preface my review of Darkwolf with an entirely honest tl;dr abridged version: I saw this on DVD shortly after it was released in 2003 and it failed to register on me to the point that I genuinely forgot it existed.

In its defence, I was watching a LOT of cheap horror movies at this point, with the boom in budget DVDs meaning cheap horror flicks were very easy to come by, even for a teenager on part time wages. Still, it's impressive in an odd way to not register with me at all. I vaguely recognised the cover and title when I came across it again.

The movie very much wears its heart on its sleeve opening in a strip club where a crazy biker, as played by Kane 'Jason Voorhees' Hodder bursts in and grabs a girl. The police, led by Steven 'Once fought Jason Voorhees' Williams and bust him, but things take a turn for the worse when, in the back of the meat wagon, he turns into a werewolf, bursts free and kills Williams character before escaping into the night.

We then follow Williams, apparent, partner Turley (Ryan Alosio) who is being shadowed by apparent lesser cop, who wears her police shirt open to expose her white tank top, McGowan (Jaime Bergman) whom he has to give a crash course on werewolves and hybrid werewolves. He then takes her to meet the mysterious Mary (Tippi Hedren) who reveals she has been protecting the bloodline for centuries and that the force they are dealing with is the Darkwolf, the most powerful of the werewolves. His mission is to mate with a chosen woman, who anyone who has seen a movie, ever, will instantly recognise as Josie (Samaire Armstrong) a waitress we've just met who blurts out that Mary has "always looked out for her"

This absolute tour de force of cruise-missile-subtle plot development all actually takes place within the first 20 minutes of the movie. Literally. The actual mythology the movie is setting up actually isn't terrible, but the way it is sledgehammered into your face like this is somewhat disarming. You pretty much just wrap your head around this when Darkwolf, who clearly doesn't really know what he's doing, kills Mary (despite Josie being a matter of feet away) Turley, who also doesn't know what he's doing, runs with Josie, leaving the book Mary instructed him to give her and McGowan gets slashed. In its defence, one thing Darkwolf cannot be accused of being is slow off the mark

The problem is that after that, things do take a turn for the boring and/or nonsensical. There's an overly long sequence where Josie's idiot friends, who took the...nameless werewolf book, do weird makeup, get gratuitously topless and dance about to a terrible song, the inexplicably pointless death of McGowan, who was probably the most likable protagonist, only to prove a fakeout, and lots of scenes of Josie crying/moaning/wolfing out/eyes glowing.

As such, what on paper is set up to be a vaguely Terminator-y story about an unassuming young woman stalked by a monstrous antagonist, with only a single, slightly out of his depth hero for assistance...actually just turns out to be a whole lot of genuinely aimless scenes, several of which involve nudity from the female cast. Now, I enjoy the female form, but part of the reason B-Movies featuring gratuitous nudity has done such a beloved trope is the wink and nod nature of how they try incorporate it in the plot. Darkwolf doesn't try. There's no wit, no humour, just 2 naked girls in full body paint dancing and engaging in softcore antics...because we've got 15 minutes to fill.

As such the titular Darkwolf doesn't actually do a great deal, and when he does it's largely offscreen. They try and introduce an utterly superfluous addition to werewolf lore by introducing the fact that anyone Josie touches is 'imprinted' and Darkwolf is drawn to them (hilariously this is explained to her by Turley...while holding her wrists. I told you, not the sharpest.

This sets up a climax where Josie volunteers as bait (something McGowan suggested they do and got scoffed at an hour ago...) to draw the beast to the police station. Will the forces of good be able to halt his evil quest or will he succeed?

Darkwolf exists in that very 90s/early 2000s movie-verse where everyone is good looking, but nobody can act. Ok that's maybe a little bit harsh, Armstrong could at least say have made for a sound final girl with a less terrible script and I'm still not sure what Tippi Hedren is doing here. The rest of the cast are soap opera level at best, and in some cases even that is generous. I'll cut Hodder some slack, in that he is actually a very talented guy, he's installed character in a lot of monsters over the years simply through body language, but in a rare speaking part he doesn't shine.

Indeed, let's be honest, he's here as Darkwolf, which would be awesome except for the facts that 1. Darkwolf is hardly in it and 2. When he is he looks awful. Accomplished via a puppet/suit that looks like it was lifted from one of the lesser Howling sequels and absolute toilet level CGI. This hit at that unholy point in time where CGI became affordable on a low budget, and movies used it for the sake of it, regardless of how bad it looked. As bad as the rubber wolf is, at least it has charm, the CGI is just rubbish. What's stranger, is when we get a look at the she-wolf, she transforms via abhorrent CGI...but her makeup job is actually pretty damn decent!

As I recount my thoughts on a second viewing 20 years later, I feel like Darkwolf will meet the exact same fate as it did on the first viewing; by this time next week I'll have completely forgotten it even exists. It's the kind of movie that had it saw release in the 80s or 90s would have found a way to be a whole lot more fun, but as it stands it simply exists. Not bad enough to be good fun, but not good enough to be able to recommend to anyone. If you want to see Kane Hodder as a lycanthrope Project Metalbeast is better. Despite fun start it quickly degenerates into a slow moving dirge, where even an ending that sounds good on paper manages to be uninspiring.

After the third Amityville bombed at the box office, somehow the name was still apparently valued somewhat enough to be used for this tv movie. Sandro Stern, who helped pen the original movie, was drafted in to the director's chair, with the hope of bringing some chills to the small screen.

We open with a series of priests launching a team exorcism on the Amityville house. In the conflict, young Father Kibbler (Fredric Lehne) sees a demonic face in an antique standing lamp, however he is knocked out in the fracas, and is unconscious in hospital as the home's contents, including the lamp, are sold in a yard sale.

The lamp is shipped off to California as a present for Alice (Jane Wyatt) a wealthy pensioner who has recently had to take in her daughter Nancy (Patty Duke) and her 3 kids; teenager Amanda (Zoe Trilling), preteen Brian (Aron Eisenberg) and youngster Jessica (Brandy Gold) who are reeling from the death of their father. Jessica in particular is struggling, and starts to see the ghost of her father in the house, particularly around the lamp. As devastating accidents befall all who come close to the lamp, will Father Kibbler be able to make it to California in time to save the family?

Now, let's be blunt, the concept of film is complete nonsense, and the tv movie nature of it means it's rather tame in terms of scares, but you know what? This was probably the best Amityville movie to date. While the other 3 have much better production values, this actually has a much tighter, more focused script...even if it is about a haunted standing lamp. The biggest issue it has it when comes to the films climax it's just hard to make a lamp scary. Like I'm not sure how far the budget went, but surely the demon actually manifesting might have been better? For all I'm slagging the plot, the 'Haunted Artifact from the Amityville House goes elsewhere and causes bother' would become a series staple, so clearly someone liked it.

The cast isn't amazing, but they are solid. Duke is a good steady hand, albeit her character is probably the most underused of the whole family. It's unusual seeing the young Lehne NOT play some sort of criminal, and while he's a bit wet around the ears here he's passable.

While it's not by any means great, I actually find this one of the more watchable entries into this, to be honest, largely quite bad, series. If you'd caught it as a tv movie back in the day I actually think this would have hit the spot quite well, but you might have felt short changed if you'd paid for it.

I never really loved the first Amityville movie, despite a solid cast and production values, it had no clear direction. It was a fairly solid hit at the box office though, so a sequel naturally followed, albeit with a 3 year delay.

The Possession follows the Montelli family; gruff father Anthony (Burt Young), religious mother Delores (Rutanya Alda), teenagers Sonny (Jack Magner) and Patricia (Diane Franklin) and youths Jan and Mark (Erika & Brent Katz) as they move into the famous Amityville house.

It isn't long before strange occurrences begin, prompting Delores to call in local priest Father Adamsky (James Olson) to bless the house. Typically this doesn't go too well, and leads to him begging the church to perform an exorcism. Rebuked, he finds himself vindicated when Sonny, consumed by a demonic presence, takes a shotgun to his family.

With the demon taking hold of the boy, held by the police, will the resourceful priest be able to save his soul?

Clearly based on the very real DeFeo murders that took place in the Amityville house, this creates a fairly interesting paradox where fans debate if this is a sequel or an anachronistic prequel to the original, which clearly referenced the DeFeo murders as happening, but it's unclear if this is meant to be the DeFeo story or just 'inspired by' it.

Given this has an actual physically violent payoff, this certainly feels a lot more horrific than its predecessor. Given the possession angle, complete with prosthetics and makeup, it also leaves us in no doubt as to the genuine nature of Sonny's possession. Throw in some heavy handed parenting by Anthony and possession inspired incest between the teens, this certainly feels a lot nastier than the previous outing too.

While the plot does seem to have a more driven purpose, this still suffers from some fairly jarring changes in tone. Given its prominent place as subtitle, I actually thought the movie was going to be a slow burn descent into demonic possession. Instead the possession angle and shooting is established and done with fairly early on and we then switch to an odd cross between a courtroom drama and Exorcist movie where the house vaguely features at all.

This brings with it a complete change in main character too. Magner, who would only ever star in one other movie - fellow genre outing Firestarter, isn't quite assured enough to carry a lead role. On the contrary, when the movie starts, he's completely wooden and I was fearing for a long night. As his character succumbs to the forces of darkness, his acting does actually pick up however. I don't think we missed out on a huge star or anything but I do think he needs praise for somehow excelling in what should be the hard part of the role.

What's slightly off putting is that halfway through Father Adamsky comes in from being a supporting player to take over as protagonist. This isn't inherently a bad thing as Olson is a more assured player, but given that his character goes from 'obligatory priest in the background' to our main character with little to no exposition doesn't sit too well.

In terms of production values, this actually isn't too bad. The makeup effects for Sonny's demonic form are solid enough, albeit the climax shows it up a bit, but overall no complaints on this front.

By the time the credits rolled, I'm unsure where I actually sit on The Possession. I did actually enjoy it more than the original, but that's not to say it's GOOD as such. The change in tone and transition into an Exorcist ripoff doesn't sit well with me, and while I definitely don't regret watching it, I can't really see me ever being compelled to view it again.