Hostel: Part II (2007)

I saw the first Hostel film on TV some years ago and it surprised me at just how gruesome it was. Having seen the first film, I was prepared for this one. I think actually that the worst scenes in the film were cut from the version I saw but without seeing it all I can't really tell.
Rich people bid for the "privilege" of torturing and killing tourists in Slovakia abducted from a hostel there. The facility where the killings are done is an old factory. This film sees a group of female college students on holiday get abducted. I liked the way that the two American men are depicted, one of the characters seems really intent on having a great time in his torture and killing. He is really vocal about it and the other man seems really unsure and just there because his friend is interested. Things don't quite turn out that way but I won't spoil the plot.
It is certainly well made and acted but the subject matter is pretty awful and dark. Not a family film, as they say! It's a film I can recommend to those who can watch it without taking it seriously. There is some dark humour in the film but you have to have the stomach for it, to catch it.

From The Dark (2014)

I watched this film this week and feel this wasn't a bad effort. It starts in the peat bog fields somewhere in Ireland and a man digging out peat logs from a ditch. He hits something hard that looks like a spike. In the ground is a creature of some kind, like a vampire or something. The man reaches into a hole and is pulled into the water in a deep trench. He manages to drag himself out but is injured and has a tear in his neck.
Earlier that same day a young Irish couple are in a car going somewhere they haven't been before. They are lost and end up getting stuck in mud driving along near a field. It turns out that they are close to the peat bog. The man leaves the women alone while he sees if he can find a house to get or ring for help from. He finds a farmhouse and also finds the man with the tear in his neck. He returns to the car and they leave it to go back to the farmhouse.
The man with the tear in his neck has become some kind of flesh eating monster who is sensitive to light. So the rest of the film is about the young couple and their attempts to save themselves from being eaten by the man and the monster from the bog.
The pace is good and the story, while fairly predictable, has a good strong female character and an interesting take on the genre by using sources of light as their defence. It's a good thing that mobiles have torches on them these days is all I can say. On the whole, I can recommend this film to fans of the more traditional horror film.

Scary Or Die (2012)

I watched this film this week and while it had some interesting scenes at times overall I was a little disappointed. It is a series of 5 separate short stories in the style of the films from the 1970s such as those from Amicus Productions (e.g. Tales from the crypt).
The stories are as follows:
1. The Crossing
2. TaeJung's Lament
3. Re-Membered
4. Clowned
5. Lover Come Back
The most interesting of these for me was probably TaeJung's Lament. It seemed to be set in Japan and told the story of a man who had lost his wife. He is lonely and looks longingly at women who remind him of his wife in various bars and locations we see him. In one of these he is sitting on a bench when a group of attractive young women walk past. One of them seems to notice him and smiles. He watches them for a while and is shocked when the one who smiled is taken out by a man who carries her away without the others noticing. He follows the man and interrupts an attempted murder. The woman is grateful and he takes her back to her apartment, she gives him her card and asks him to visit in a week. He returns to the apartment the following week to find it full of the attractive young women who turn out to be vampires. The murderer returns and we discover his name is Van Helsing.
I also liked The Crossing to a degree, the concept is about two low intelligence men who are returning to the Mexico border to send a message to Mexicans attempting to cross illegally into America. They are driving a truck and have kidnapped two men of Mexican origin (however one just had Mexican ancestors), unknown to the female partner of the men who has also come along for the trip. They get the men out of the back of the truck when they arrive at the place. There are already some graves and luggage littered around. They have brough guns with them and are ready to kill the men. The women doesn't agree with this and fights them, during the ensuing struggle the previous murder victims begin raising from the dead. The two men are eaten alive by the zombies and the woman, although injured, gets away. At the end of the story she is seen by two cops stumbling over the ground and one of them with a sniper rifle kills her, believing she is a zombie too.
Clowned was interesting up to a point but very laboured and was much too long.

Lord of the Rings trilogy extended editions

I picked up a bit of a post-Christmas bargain today from a charity shop. They were selling the extended editions of the three films for £1.99 each. They are selling for a lot less now than they were when they first came out but even so, I think it was a bargain. I do have the films anyway but to have the extended editions is still very cool.

Raze (2013)

I watched Raze the other night and without knowing what to expect I was pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be a subversive little film in ways I wasn't expecting. The film was very simply about a group of kidnapped women who are forced to fight to the death in hand to hand combat for the amusement of an odd husband and wife and some wealthy guests. If the women refuse to fight, there are cameras in the homes of people they love and they are told that their loved ones will be killed if they refuse to fight or they lose a fight. It's a very odd film in respect to the story.
There is a lot of violence in the fight scenes but I didn't feel it was ever excessive. It could have been a lot more graphic than it was and the women  keep their clothes on as they fight, I was pleasantly surprised that they weren't sexualised. It's not a film that's going to win awards based on its script because there isn't that much dialogue but what there is is enough to portray the story and keep it moving along. The film isn't over-long and it never lags, so it feels like a nice, compact little movie. I don't know what audience it would appeal to, perhaps one that likes to watch women fight in a ring, fans of Mixed Martial Arts I guess.

Pernicious (2014)

I watched this film this week and was kind of disappointed by it. It features 3 very beautiful women in Thailand who are there to teach English but as soon as they reach their accommodation in the middle of nowhere they come under the spell of an evil spirit. The supernatural element of the film actually misses the horror spot entirely in my view. There is a visit to a witch, which is the least spookiest witch scene I have ever seen. There are some scenes of gore when the women bring some British guys back to their house but even these are a disappointment. Overall, it's largely a missed opportunity to do something original. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it was an American remake of a genuinely scary Japanese horror film. I can't recommend Pernicious to audiences of either gore films or supernatural films.

Texas Chainsaw (2013)

I watched this film last night and was thoroughly disappointed. The premise might have been interesting, picking up from the end of the original Tobe Hooper film. There were a lot of things to go wrong when picking up such a story beloved by many fans and yup, practically everything went wrong with this.
The family at the farmhouse seemed much larger than I remember and they are shot and burned by a lynch mob led by a man who years later becomes the town mayor. The sheriff is black and seems to have no authority of his own, despite seemingly to have his own strong views it appears that the police department have just three staff - the sheriff, an officer who is there for cannon fodder and a deputy who turns out to be the mayor's son.
The film tries to blend different styles of horror film rather than sticking to the original film's bleak and terrifying style.
I can't recommend this film because it does such as bad job. The actors can't be blamed, the performances are not terrible. The effects are respectable too. It isn't scary though and it tries to soften Leatherface's character, which is a cardinal sin and is ultimately the film's biggest fail. I watched the film in 2D but I understand there is a 3D version. I can't think that a 3D version of the film I just watched would be any better though.

The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Directed by Lucio Fulci who is apparently a respected name amongst gore film fans. I watched this film with increasing confusion as it made less and less sense. There are moments of extreme gore, so if you like skin tearing and blood spurting then you'll like this film. The gore that you see is quite excessive but also obviously fake, so it never feels unwatchable. The dubbing from Italian to English is quite laughable, I assume it is dubbing just because the voice acting is so stilted and wooden. It's not a film worth watching for the plot because the story is really terrible. I don't know if this film is a standalone or part of a genuine story trilogy, if it is it might explain some of the back story I just wasn't getting.
This film seems to suffer terrible translation difficulties. There are lots of funny looks and close-up eyes-only shots. They might have meant something but to me they were laughable. There is a creepy librarian character who is just plain weird but, apart from being weird, seems to play no part in the story. I don't know if this version is a version that has been cut or not, it was a film that originally suffered heavy cutting by the BBFC. It may explain some of the incoherence.
I can't really recommend this to anyone apart from fans of gore films.

Dark Circles (2013)

I watched this film this week and thought it was ok but nothing very unique about it, the jump scares were quite effective. It concerns a young couple who have busy lives in the city, the man is a musician that is about to leave a regular band to go solo. He has a demo to finish and it seems as though success as a solo artist is just around the bend. His partner wants her next project to be a baby and a house in the country where the two of them can enjoy his success, him by composing in his own space and her by renovating the house. Nice plan.
Things don't get off to a good start. He misses the birth and arrives to see the baby in her arms at the hospital, at least her friend was there though. Aside from that, nothing unusual happens until they take the keys and move in to the new house. They find a half-burned and blackened child's doll under the lid of a barbecue in the garden. They don't seem to be able to get rid of it because after putting it in the skip it turns up somewhere else. There are a few of these sort of incidents but neither partner mentions them to the other, frustratingly!
The dark circles relates to their physical degeneration. The baby doesn't sleep. They don't sleep. They have less and less energy to do anything apart from look after baby. This part is done quite well, you do feel for them. The man is always patient but it does drive a stake between them as the resentment builds and he can't compose because he falls asleep. All the time this is happening, both of them feels they are having hallucinations because they think they see a woman in the house or the garden.
Towards the end of the film, after wandering around the local grocery store, at the checkout the man impulsively asks the 19 year old cashier if she can babysit one night to allow him and his wife to sleep. She agrees.
The film is well-crafted and builds but with such a limited story while it does this well, I felt the ending was a bit of an anti-climax. There is a great, chilling moment when the babysitter opens a cupboard in the kitchen but I won't spoil it by revealing what happens. I can recommend this film for a watch but it will resonate more with parents than others.

A Perfect Getaway (2009)

I watched this film this week and enjoyed it quite a lot. I wasn't really sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised. It is a thriller set on an island of Hawaii. There are some couples on holiday who learn of another honeymoon couple who have been murdered via police reports. The story is cleverly told, the viewer is never given all the facts. We seem to learn as the characters learn. There are some great actors in the film, Milla Jovovich for example plays a great part in a very different kind of film than her usual sci-fi ones. The twist at the end is a good one so I won't spoil it. I'd recommend this film to anyone really, especially if you like thrillers.

To The Devil A Daughter (1976)

I watched this film this week and it was an interesting effort from Hammer but ultimately not a vey satisfying one. The story's central character is a nun called Catherine, played by Natasha Kinski, who has been raised by an excommunicated Catholic order in Bavaria I think. The order is led by a priest played by Christopher Lee who is using black magic to bring Asteroth to life, which I understand to be the devil. Catherine's father last name of Beddows, played by Denholm Elliot, has arranged for her to be picked up by a character, last name Verney, played by Richard Widmark. He seems to be a good guy and knows about black magic. In his care, he recognises that Catherine's behaviour is troublesome and begins to understand why Beddows asked him to look after her. In some back story scenes we understand that there was a pact made between the priest and Beddows' wife. The priest and his disciples travel to England with an incubator that we presume contains a baby demon. The point of Catherine is that she is needed to perform some black magic ritual on her 18th birthday, which is why the priest and his disciples have come to England. It transpires that Catherine is under the spell of the priest and he performs some kind of mind control when she is alone. Verney leaves Catherine with friends while he goes to look up some important black magic information that he thinks the priest is aware of but while he's out the spell Catherine is under makes her kill one of his friends and she escapes. So Catherine falls into the priests hands and he can perform the ceremony. One of the priests disciples is seen donating blood, all of her blood infact for the ritual. The ritual is performed in a ruined church and the priest uses the blood to create a protective circle. The ritual starts and Catherine is briefly seen naked. It seems to be that the baby demon climbs inside her through her vagina however I'm not too sure about that. Verney manages to kill a disciple guarding the ritual by cracking him on the skull with a stone he picks up. But the priest thinks he is safe and powerful inside the circle of blood and standing on stone ground made from flint. What he doesn't know though is that Verney learned that he can enter the circle if he carries a flint rock with the blood of the priests disciple on it. Verney attacks the priest with the rock and the film ends with Verney carrying a limp Catherine away to safety outside the circle.
It is a strange, downer of an ending because the viewer is left with the impression that actually Catherine has not really been saved. It is an odd film and one that doesn't leave me feeling like I understood everything in it - I probably have some of the above wrong. It is based on a book by Dennis Wheatley, who apparently didn't like the film because it didn't follow the book and he didn't want Hammer to use any further novels of his in further films.

Happy New Year, 2017 is here

A wet and cloudy 2017 greeted us today, so its been a rather dark and inauspicious start to the new year. I return to work the day after tomorrow, which will arrive soon enough. I saw the new year in watching the final Harry Potter film in the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows part 2.
Today I have been mostly playing videogames and watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
On New year's eve we visited a restaurant that was new to us for a meal and then we went to see a film, Singing in the Rain - a sad reminder of how beautiful Debbie Reynolds was in her prime but also a classic film. My son and I took our cameras and took some shots, here are a few of mine.
 I wanted to record the Christmas lights before they are taken down and the high streets return to their usual presentation.

Julia X (2011)

This film begins in a way I expected, a woman (Julia, I guess) gets chatted up in a café by a date she met online. He turns out to be a serial killer and abducts her. She tries to get away but is re-captured. She is then driven out to an old oil well where he disposes of the body of a dead naked woman that she shared the van with.
She gets away and starts to fight back. Eventually she turns the tables and captures him. It gets weird after that. She has a sister. There are flashbacks to her child abuse. I can't really go on without spoiling the story but I was intrigued as to where the film was eventually going. It confused the hell out of me, not necessarily in a good way either, I found the sister's behaviour extremely odd. At one point she also entices a neighbour into the house and restrains him blindfolded in a chair directly opposite the serial killer. She does this for no apparent reason. In a later part, she also puts a pair of wire cutters in the serial killers hands, allowing him to free himself.
This is a strange film. It's another film that has a bit of an identity crisis due to a confused script. Not exactly rubbish and not good either, somewhere middling for this attempt. I think there was some attempt at humour but with the child abuse elements, you could hardly laugh at this.

Don't Look Up (2009)

This was a bit of an odd film. It told the story of a film maker making a film that was unfinished from many years ago. It isn't a documentary film or anything like that. I thought it was a bit of mix of different films blurred together to tell a story that wasn't very interesting. The not looking up of the title relates to some stills of the original movie that show a woman holding a candle and looking up. The part where the main character visits an ex-girlfriend just feels slightly like its in the wrong film and it's not clear sometimes whether he is just having a seizure and is dreaming or not. The effects are mainly just CGI and are pretty bad but probably just a reflection of the type of effects possible in 2009. I don't think the scares were very creative in this film, so were mainly based around the special effects. I was dissatisfied with this film, I can't say I was disappointed though because I didn't have any expectations to begin with,

Crawl or Die (2014)

I watched this film this week, I started it about 3 times without being sure I was actually watching it from the start, the premise is explained a few minutes into the film. Not that there is much premise to it. It is set in the future sometime, a "package" must be delivered safely by a crack team of special forces operatives. It sort if gives a nod to Aliens or a multitude of other films like this. Probably Aliens is the closest though.
Amongst the special forces is a blonde with a partly shaved head, her name is Tank. Don't know why and it's never explained. The package is the last fertile woman alive, the team are to deliver the package to a lab on Earth 2. earth 2 turns out to be inhabited by a predator and it starts to kill off the team of special forces. The remainder of the team enter a series of narrow tunnels with the predator pursing them and killing them one by one as they protect the package.
The film uses very confined sets and abridged storytelling, the action is largely just grunts and noises as they squeeze through tunnels. I don't know why the tunnels are there, I think they are going through the tunnels to get somewhere but I wasn't sure where that was.
I wasn't surprised, horrified or terrorised by the film. Infact if anything, I was a little bored I've got to be honest. I watched it until the end and despite feeling uncomfortably claustrophobic during most of the last half, I can't say I was sorry it ended.
Probably not a film I would watch again, not awful but not much happens and the ending isn't anything special either. I can't even tell if the acting was any good, there was so little dialogue. I imagine the actors faces were not faking the effort it took to get through the tunnels.

Dark Summer (2015)

I watched this film on Friday night, start of the weekend. It's set in the US and is mainly about the house arrest of a teenager who seems to have been guilty of stalking a fellow pupil, a girl. It is a slow film generally, set mainly in the house. The boy somehow is able to circumvent the Internet prohibition and gains access to the net. He has a couple of friends who visit him, one of whom is clearly in love with him. I don't know why, I found the lead actor rather annoying. There is no explanation of why he was infatuated with the girl he stalked and rather unbelievably she skype calls him and proceeds to commit suicide while he watches. She then seems to haunt him in his house. Or is it his mother's house? Why was he alone and she not there? So much was left unexplained in this film. I just got the sense of this selfish boy who was self-absorbed and didn't really need the friends he had got. I just don't get why they were his friends and what they got out of the situation. I found this quite a frustrating film in the end and was glad when it finished. There were probably only two jump scares in the film. The ending wasn't that surprising either. No recommendation from me for this one.

Wolf Creek 2

I enjoyed this return to Wolf Creek and the crazy Australian who likes to chop up bodies and torture backpacking tourists. Now I'm familiar with the character I didn't find this as disturbing as the first film. I did feel sorry for the German couple at the beginning and I thought that they would be the central victims in the story but instead it was the Englishman and history graduate. That was a surprise, I enjoyed that part. If "enjoyed" is the right word! Sorry to everyone, if that's a spoiler!
This film belongs to the same genre as Hostel and Saw, about some evil whacko who kills because he enjoys it. Like a butcher, humans are just meat to be carved up. No sense of conscience about them. It's hard to imagine someone like that but they must exist because you read stories like it in the newspaper. The story of poor Becky Watts from Bristol in 2015, for example, in which her step brother and his girlfriend murdered her and chopped her up. An awful and harrowing story but one that was true. So these things do happen in real life.

Phone upgrades

Well, it's been two years since our last phone. It has gone relatively quick but I must say I am glad to move on from my old phone. I had a Moto E. It has been a good phone but suffered from a lack of internal memory (8GB was once a massive amount of storage space but today it doesn't cut it). I have no doubt that I will feel the same about the phone I just got and that has 16GB. Other than the space, I thought it performed quick even though it was 3G and was good for phone calls.
My new phone is a model up from the Moto E, infact in reality it is probably several steps up from the phone I have because the Moto E is now on the 3rd generation.

Other members of my family are on the same contract and they got different phones to meet their specific needs. My daughter got the iPhone she has been hankering for over a year. My wife got a phone with a good camera, the Sony Xperia E5. My son's eyes lit up when he saw the Alcatel Pixi 4 6" but he was blinded by it having such a big screen. The shop assistant was helpful in explaining that the phone had a big screen but the processor was underpowered. Eventually, he decided to go back to the phone he thought he'd be happy with, the same Sony as my wife.

Dr Strange (2016)

I watched this film at the cinema with my son. Just the 2D showing. It was enjoyable and typically well produced as you would expect from a Marvel film. Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a good performance in the title role. He is an arrogant surgeon who thinks he knows it all. Until he has a car crash and looses control and sensitivity in his fingers. He felt that only experimental surgery would save him but the only person who perform the procedure turns him down. So in desperation, Dr Strange turns to oriental medicine but he is very sceptical. He has to have his mind opened to new impossible possibilities. His has to forget all of his training and education and begin learning everything from scratch again. It is a challenge that doesn't daunt him and after a rocky start he begins his new education and starts to progress.
The film has some really impressive visuals effects. Buildings are turned on their sides and collapse into each other, in a similar way to they did in the film Inception. I think some sequences were very trippy. Overall, anyone who enjoys Marvel films will like this one. I think we shall see more of Dr Strange in other Marvel films, as an origin story, this film is a good one.

Orc Wars (2013)

I watched this film but I can't work out why I recorded it. It's not a horror film and I'm not usually interested in fantasy films. So, anyway the film has a different title in America as there it is called Dragonfyre: the Worldgate Sentinel. It's a bit of a blend of orc verses military commando. There are lots of things that go unexplained that the viewer is just supposed to accept, like the fact that the estate agent just joins in and kills orcs with a sniper rifle. Like the princess. Like the gang of hooligans in the car. Like how White Feather escapes to fight another day. Like they ask a blind man to drive an armored car. Like why the real estate company didn't notice all the weapons in the basement of a farmhouse they were selling. To be honest, the acting in the film is quite poor and the script is awful. They orc makeup looks like it was borrowed from the Lord of the Rings, copied I should say. Just awful, don't bother watching it.

The Possession (2012)

I watched The Possession this week, it was made in 2012 and is a story about a family who have broken up and the two girls spend time with their mum and their father separately. There is a strange part at the beginning which has a woman thrown around a house by some invisible force. In the room there is a wooden box.
One day the girls are with their father and are at a yard sale of belongings from the woman's house and one of them is the box, which seems to call out to the younger of the girls. She wants to buy it and her father allows it. However, there was a strange sequence in which the young girl holding the box walks a little bit away from the sale on her own and the old woman who is in a nursing home sees her through the window and even though she is in bed and all bandaged up she screams at the girl and bangs on the window.
So, this is a story about possession. The interesting aspect is that the possession in question is by a dybbuk which is a dislocated spirit that wants to take over the body of another person.
I think it's well made and is a good film. There are some parts that are genuinely creepy. It is worth a watch and comes recommended.

Terror (1978)

Ok so I'm always a little excited to watch British horror films from the 70s. When the titles came on I got even more excited when I saw that Glynis Barber was in this film, I remember she played a beautiful blonde detective in the series Dempsey and Makepeace and she played Soolin in my favourite sci fi tv show Blake's 7.
Sadly, the film Terror from 1978 doesn't live up to the film's title. It employs a lot of good actors but the script is so poor its laughable. There are a few minutes of a topless exotic dancer thrown in for no good reason and one character runs a film studio where the worst software porn movie ever made is being filmed. The porn film is apparently being produced by just a single camera operator who is also the director. The scenes jump from urban streets in one cut to windy, wet, wild woods in the next cut. It's just meaningless, I could go on but it is so bad. And worst of all, it is not scary. There are a few bloody scenes but even these are poorly handled. I can't think of anything in the film that would lead me to recommend it. Not even beautiful Glynis Barber's presence redeems it, sadly.

Exit Humanity

I watched the film Exit Humanity this week, it took me several sessions to finish it. I didn't feel compelled to watch it all in one or two sessions, I think it took me four sessions. The film does organise itself into several chapters, the chapters of the main characters journal as he goes through a zombie nightmare at around the time of the American Civil War.
I felt the story was too long and not enough was happening in it. I didn't really like any of the characters in the story. The zombies were slow moving (like the film) and the bad guy wasn't developed well enough to really care if he was defeated or not.
There was a lot of groaning and wailing and shouting but not a lot of action.

Reykjavik Wale Watching Massacre

I watched this film expectantly this week, Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is in it for a short while. He was born in Reykjavik apparently.
I thought the film started fairly decently but then it sort of went downhill as I could see it was becoming a more typical slasher style film. The special effects in the kills are quite good, one guy is harpooned in the water. The other members of the party become less and less likeable. I don't really understand why but the characters behaviours suddenly became unbelievable and the film decended into a sort of satire of itself. I felt it was a bit of a waste and that there was something worth exploring in some of the characters, rather than simply killing them off.
I would watch it again for a bit of fun but its not the film I thought it might have been.

Lovely Molly

I saw this film this weekend and have to say my low expectations were completely unfounded. I think it was because I had seen two so so films that didn't do anything for me. This film is a good one. It was made, apparently, by Eduardo Snachez who was one of the makers of the Blair Witch Project.
Lovely Molly follows a young couple who move into a big house that turns out to be the Molly's family home after the death of her father some time before, it's not quite clear how many years have passed since the father died. There is no mother mentioned, unusually.
So Molly and her partner move in and we learn that her partner are not a wealthy pair, he is away a lot driving trucks and she is a cleaner. She is very pretty for a cleaner and should have gone into modelling instead! Anyway, I was reminded a little bit of The Entity while watching the film. Something about Molly being attacked physically by a supernatural entity we learn is her father. She has a sister, who tries to help. What's interesting is that Molly seems to have had a drug problem in the past. The sister doesn't help this because on Molly's birthday she gives her some marijuana.
So, as Molly's behaviour gets weirder her partner and sister both suspect she is using drugs again. It gives the story an interesting angle. I really thought there were very good touches in this film, I'd argue touches of genius. I rate this film very highly, it is creepy. Exactly what I want from a horror film.

Laid To Rest

I watched this film this week. I found it a very frustrating film mainly due to the main female character. I just found her really annoying, she couldn't remember anything and insisted on taking the most stupid course of action at most turns. There is a killer character that is central to the plot (if you can call it that), who wears a chrome skull mask, which is completely unexplained. So many frustrating things about this. It is a slasher movie that seems to string together a series of set pieces at frequent enough intervals but really I found it quite bizarre. At one point a young nerdy man who tries to help them contacts the police department by emailing them. So, there are touches of humour in this film but ultimately it's not a good film and not really worth it in the end.

Haunted (aka It's In The Blood)

Last week I watched this film. It tells the story of a family ripped apart by tragedy. It's a story told in the present and in the memories or flashbacks of the father and the son who are the main characters. October is the son's name and he has returned to his father who remained at the family home as the sheriff. I wasn't sure which country it was supposed to be set in, I thought it might be Australia but it could be any back woods small provincial place.
The father and son go for a trip into the woods to shoot a rifle and have a bonding session. October learns to drive the car and shoot. He seems to have been studying medicine as well. However, the nature of the tragedy and lack of communication between them since it happened doesn't make it an easy time. The father thinks he sees something in the woods and fires his gun, knocking him backwards and down a ridge where he breaks his leg badly exposing his bones.
The thing in the wood hunts them, October sharpens branches and makes some kind of trap. While this fight against something supernatural in the woods is going on the father and son are having flashbacks to the tragedy that befell them. It seems that October and his sister were unnaturally close and that the deputy sheriff had his own desires for the sister, who rejected him.
I won't spoil it by saying any more. This felt like a slow film, I wasn't too sympathetic to either of the main characters. The awkward communication between father and son did soften with the worsening of their situation. There were still long moments of not talking. I thought it was interesting and well made despite this. Not sure I'd sit through the whole film again though, having said that.
Something was weird about the title, it seems to be known by It's In The Blood but was advertised as Haunting, so when I was searching for it online I had hard a time trying to pin it down. I had to look through all the films on the Horror Channel website to find it.

Farewell September, welcome October

September ends this week and we move into October, one of my favourite months. It is not as cold as winter but the change in temperature is nice as out come jumpers from the back of the wardrobe and the heating comes back on. Windows need to be closed at night and the leaves on the trees start to turn orange.
At the end of October there are the half term school holidays and the clocks go back on the 30th, bringing lighter mornings (for a short time) and dark afternoons. Then Halloween at the very end of the month, a time of year I enjoy with all the related dressing up and theme events.

We Are What We Are

I watched this film this week. It concerns a family (a dad, 2 daughters and young son) who start the film with the death of their mother. The family seem to be very religious and sort of backwards in an Amish style way. Living in modern society but not having many of the modern day trappings of technology. However they do own, and the father drives, a car. Apparently, according to Wikipedia it is a remake of a Mexican film. I wonder what the original was like? The story revolves around a family tradition of doing what it must to survive, born out of a flood many years ago. The flood story seems to have been written up in a bound diary/journal that is regarded with bible-like respect. We gather the mother was previously the cook and the father the hunter. The game in this case being the unfortunate humans who every year have to be slaughtered so that the family can keep the tradition alive. The question why is not, to my recollection, really addressed. We just have to believe it.
There is an elderly doctor in the film, whose own daughter mysteriously disappeared years ago. He has been doing a lot of research and has a dossier of other deaths in counties outside of the nearby area and sees a pattern. Unfortunately the local police think he is just grieving and not letting go and seeing patterns that aren't there. His suspicions are further aroused by finding a bone in a local creek that runs by the home of the family. He believes it is a human bone and as he studies it further suspects it has been scraped with an instrument of some kind.
The doctor does further research. The family behaviour is erratic when the son has a fever and they have to bury their mother. The doctor notices a hand tremor in the father and does further research into something called Kuru, which is a disease afflicting a tribe in Papua New Guinea who had it because they were cannibals.
It doesn't end well for the father but I won't give any more away. It is a fairly slow paced film but one that is well made and builds well to its climax, which is pretty good. It's certainly not a bad film. The acting is pretty good and so is the story. Worth watching again in the future at some point.

Inside

I watched the film Inside this week, it's an Irish horror film. It is one of those found footage films, told posthumously from the perspective of the camera person. A man goes in to a pawn shop and tries to sell something but the manager only wants to give him so much, so they negotiate some money and a camcorder. The film follows the man who watches the footage on the camera he has just acquired.
A group of girls are celebrating a birthday and inexplicably they decide the place to go is a disused office building down some side streets of a city. They break in and start having a party. Unfortunately the party is violently interrupted by some men, I think they might be homeless men. It's not clear why the men are in the building but they start to attack the girls in the party but are interrupted. From then on the film follows the survivors as they try to escape and evade whatever it was that attacked the attackers.
Not a bad film, it manages to the action going without ever feeling over long or too slow. The acting is pretty good from what seem to be a group of unknown actors. The story is quite unsettling and stays with you for a while.

Crawl

I watched a film called Crawl this week. It is set somewhere in Australia but it could be anywhere, the location isn't that relevant to the story. An unpleasant bar owner hires a Croatian killer to kill an old man who runs a garage and auto shop. It isn't very clearly established why killing him was necessary but the important thing is that the Croatian plays a big role in this film. He is played by an older actor and does a good job of portraying someone to whom killing is a business rather than a personal thing.
The film is slow paced and I would say was a thriller rather than a horror film. There is nothing supernatural in this story. The tension is kept wound up tightly, there is surprisingly little music in the film, what there is seems quite sparse. I don't know if this is a deliberate thing or not. Not sure it works entirely, having watched The Entity recently I know that sound/music can play a massive part.
At the end things get a bit bloody but its not a gore-fest.
Overall, this wasn't a bad film, I'd have to be in the right mood to want to watch it again though. There are some things that happen and you think the story will come back to but it doesn't. So, it is slightly frustrating that some of the characters aren't developed as much as you want.

 

The Entity

Last night I watched the film The Entity, starring Barbara Hershey. She plays the single mother of three children who just one evening finds herself attacked in her own bedroom by an unseen force. The film steers a course between the terror of her attacks and the ineffectual hypotheses of the psychiatrist to the hope of the paranormal psychology team. It's a very clever film I think, I like the relationship she has with her best friend and the relationship she has with the man in her life is also well played, particularly towards the end of the film. I have watched bits of it in the past but this time watched the whole film and was very impressed. It's not easy to watch in parts, her attacks aren't very pleasant and the sound design is excellent and really helps add to the chilling atmosphere.

The Shallows

Last night I went to see a film called The Shallows. It is set somewhere beautiful and tropical where the surfing is fine and the beaches are golden. A woman is dropped off on her own because her friend has a hangover and she goes surfing. She joins couple of guys already enjoying the surf. The guys leave and she stays out a little bit longer.
She strays into the water where a whale has got stuck on some coral and has been attacked. Then she is also attacked. She barely survives but fortunately she is training to be a doctor and manages to swim to safety and is able to treat her bitten leg.
It's an Australian survival horror film and I thought it was quite a successful one. Blake Lively gives a strong performance as the woman who fights to stay alive. This is the sort of film that wouldn't have been made a few years ago. It has a strong female main character who is intelligent and brave and strong. She is also beautiful and feminine.
The plot is fairly predictable but it is fun to see how she problem solves and fights to survive.

Nude nuns with big guns

I watched this film last weekend as well and I was expecting that I'd have to turn it off after a few mins. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the film. It is a ridiculous film, don't mistake me but have you never heard the expression "so bad its good"?
There are a number of incomprehensible things about the film, why are the nuns nude? They seem to exist solely for the purpose of packing drugs into suitcases for the priests who are in league with Hells Angel gangsters. The Hells Angels henchmen include a big black guy that rapes to order an old nun who has taken a vow of silence so that she gives up her vow to reveal what she saw. In another scene a family pull up at the same gas station that they're at and he rapes the wife while the husband is humiliated and the daughter is in the back going to get raped next. All couched in a questionable comic-ish way.
There are plenty of boobs in the film and some nun on nun lesbian action but not quite as many big guns as I was expecting. It is a revenge film I guess and has a Wild West theme to it. Pure fantasy and a strange one at that. It's not a film that leaves you wanting more however once you start watching it sort of drags you in and keeps you there waiting for the next ridiculous scene.
Apparently there were two companies claiming copyright for the film who were suing a large number of bit torrent users for illegally downloading it prior to its release.
Would I recommend this film? Er not really sure, it's probably just down to personal taste, it will be repugnant to probably half the population at least!

Deadtime

I watched this film last weekend but didn't have time then to blog about it, hence this blog post. Erm, the British horror film Deadtime is bad. No other way to say it. It is a film about a has-been rock band about to fold when given a last reprieve in the chance of an opportunity to lock themselves away in a disused old building/music studio and make a video. I was a little confused whether they were recording music or making a music video or both.
Terry Christian and Leslie Grantham make brief appearances at the start of film. Happily they aren't on screen for long. The script quality was very poor. The cast performances were nothing to shout home about either. The aging front man of the band attempts to look hip and cool and dangerous and fails to pull it off miserably. It is embarrassing to watch.
The slasher-film action is sub-standard too. There are something like 11 murders and you just couldn't care less about any of the victims and even their manner of death is quite tame. The effects are all pretty lame.
I would not recommend this film to anyone.

The Hike

I watched the film The Hike this week. It is from 2011 and I have to say it is tripe. It starts badly and gets worse as time goes on. The cast don't really connect with the story, so you get the feeling they don't mean anything they are saying. This is a big problem with the film because the story sort of depends on you being tricked into not knowing who the bad guys are. This twist falls really flat when it should really make the film. It's very unfortunate. I wanted to like the film but it just did not deliver on the crucial fronts. The actresses are all gorgeous but that doesn't rescue the film and it's hard to tell whether they can really act or not.

Truth or Dare

I saw the film Truth or Dare yesterday evening. It is a film concerning a group of college friends who know how to have a good time and are at a party. A socially awkward young man who isn't in the clique but who fancies one of the girls chooses her as the person he'd like to sleep with in a game of truth or dare. Unfortunately her boyfriend doesn't see the funny side and takes it badly and the party gets intense when he challenges and then punches the young stiff. The story skips forward a year the friends are travelling independently to a party after their first year of university. It transpires that it is the birthday of the chap who was punched. It is set on his family estate somewhere in the wilds of the country, the guests are directed on foot to an old lodge building a walk away. It turns out that the friends find the lodge but it is only occupied by the brother of the awkward young man. He turns out to be a strong, fit soldier who has done several tours of some war zone. The man whose birthday party it is doesn't show because his flight has been delayed, that's what the guests are told anyway. I won't spoil it but the story is a good one. The film is pretty enjoyable, I thought the acting was good and the script was interesting and had a good twist.

Star Trek Beyond

I went with my son to see this film at the cinema last week and enjoyed it. It's perhaps not an epic film like the previous one was (Into Darkness) but it is still an entertaining movie to watch. It recalls the mood of the original TV series quite well, carrying on the tradition from the first two films. This film is directed by Justin Lin, JJ Abrams was filming Star Wars so wasn't available. I don't think Justin Lin is as exciting a director as Abrams.

Physical activity

I wanted to write a blog post about my recent experience with exercise. I have been a home worker for a long time now and I religiously work long hours at my desk, sitting down. As I've gotten older I have started to notice how stiff I have been getting. I have put weight on around my middle too.
To help remedy this, I could consider a gym membership but I don't think I would keep it up and those memberships can be expensive plus you have to wait for machines to become free and then try to look as if you know what you're doing even when you don't. No, a gym is not for me, much too public and would make me feel inferior compared to the other men lifting large weights and looking all sweaty. I just cannot see myself driving to the gym in the cold, dark winter months.
I purchased a second hand Pilates book from a charity shop and got a few exercise out of it. I also purchased an exercise mat from Argos for £15.99 and I'm very happy with it. I unroll it by my side of the bed, so you don't need much room for one.

I bought a resistance band and a wobble board from Tiger, less than a tenner for both. You can do so much with a resistance band, they are awesome things and very cheap (£3 I think). At first I wasn't sure about it but after a few workouts I am impressed. The colour is pink, which is slightly off-putting but it does the job. The other thing I purchased from Tiger (a great shop) was a wobble board (plastic, £5). You stand on the board and tilt it just using your feet or you can try and balance it in the centre without the edges touching the floor.

Lastly, I have purchased 2 kettlebells (£4.99 and £15.99) and this is all I intend to spend for a while on exercise. The other option I have is to go to the local park, which is great because they have machines to practice on. You also get the benefit of being in the open air. It is very public but the people in the park are friendly and keep themselves to themselves.

I wonder how long the equipment in the park will last with vandals. I think it is brilliant to have this equipment out for the public to use though. My local park has six areas where there are different sorts of machines. Absolutely great!