Evil Dead  (2013)    17/100

Rating :   17/100                                                                       91 Min        18

This remake of Sam Raimi’s classic 1981 film of the same name manages to exist as boring, grotesque and irritating in pretty much equal measure, and has kept the basic idea of its progenitor but excoriated all of the darkly comedic aspects, quirks and playful horror that made the original such a cult favourite, a film that became so revered there is even a musical based on it (see below for a short excerpt). Oddly, production credits here find Raimi alongside Bruce Campbell and Robert G. Tapert, all of whom worked on the original trilogy (‘Evil Dead II’ arrived in 1987, and then ‘Army of Darkness’ followed in 92) and it seems the idea for this film is for it to act as both a reboot and a continuation of the original three, with an ‘Army of Darkness 2’ to follow, then a sequel to this one, and finally a third film to tie together the two separate story arcs. An interesting plan, but with the final product here, one could be forgiven for starting to think Raimi has lost his touch, especially on the back of his previous film ‘Oz The Great and Powerful’, as although he is not on directing duties (that dubious honour belonging to Uruguayan Fede Alvarez, handpicked by Raimi) this is ultimately badly shot, conceptualised, written, cast and staged.

It also suffers from the very, very familiar set up that takes place – a bunch of teens go to a cabin in the woods, seemingly fully intent on tempting the dark arts and getting themselves mutilated in a series of ever more bloody ways. Ironically, the success of the original has helped saturate the horror spectrum with this same concept, so much so, of course, it was satirised in the grand homage that was 2011’s ‘The Cabin in the Woods’. Here, the stage is set by the main character Mia, played by Jane Levy, wanting to kick her drug habit and thus isolating herself in her family retreat with some trusted friends and her brother, but this entire plot element is left dangling limply by the narrative and gets in the way of things more than anything else. Pretty soon they happen upon a cursed ancient tome, and one of them very cleverly works out what the words they should never ever utter are, and unleashes some kind of evil demon, one that ends up having no more scripted structure than a serious of exploding blood bags. It’s simply revolting, and fits right into the stratum of modern horror films that want to cerebrally butcher the audience as much as possible rather than thrill, scare, reward, or entertain them.

Unless you really want to see young girls wearing bright yellow contacts, cutting their tongues in half and flaring their nostrils so wide the camera could practically fit up them, then give this one a very wide berth.

Rec 2  (2009)    67/100

Rating :   67/100                                                                       85 Min        18

The 2009 sequel to 07’s wonderful Spanish handheld horror film ‘Rec’ (which was given an American makeover in 2008 with ‘Quarantine’, which was also very good). The original featured a documentary crew embedding themselves in a Barcelona fire station and tagging along with the response to an emergency call. Little did they know they would be entombed within a building whose inhabitants were all turning into flesh eating zombies….

Rec 2 picks up exactly where the first one ended, with the camera inside a vehicle taking a military Swat Team to the cordoned off infested building. They haven’t been fully briefed on exactly what they can expect to be confronted by, so the film does suffer a little from the inevitable, ‘What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? You mean they’re freaking zombies?! Like brain eating freaking fracking zombies?!’, ‘Yup’, ‘Fucking shit man!! Wait, what’s tha…Aaaaaargh!’, ‘Well now that was pointless explaining to you, wasn’t it.’

The story behind what’s going on is expanded upon a little, and the unholy nature of the zombification process, or rather the prospect that there may be a cure or reversal, genuinely makes some of the brutality a little difficult to watch. Not as taught as the original, but still pretty good and justifying the making of a third released in 2012, and the announcement of a fourth and concluding chapter, expected toward the end of this year. The original writing/directing team of Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza returned to helm the sequel, this time joined by Manu Díez for the screenplay instead of Luiso Berdejo.

Dark Skies  (2013)    30/100

Rating :   30/100                                                                       97 Min        15

The new horror film from the makers of ‘Insidious’ and ‘Sinister’ (Blumhouse Productions), and bearing similarities to their ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise which began before those two releases, sees many familiar motifs return and take on new cross-genre twists, actually leaving the film in danger of becoming a parody of itself. The culturally ubiquitous idea of ‘The Boogeyman’ is back, and right from the beginning we are informed this stalker of children’s nightmares will now appear in the guise of extraterrestrials. Some of the scares are decent enough, though most are exactly what we expect from previous material and the screenplay is dire to say the least, especially when it comes to the adults in the story. As per the norm the action concerns an average, struggling with bills, family of four that have mysteriously become the centre of attention of some otherworldly visitors.

What the film doesn’t swipe from its predecessors, it takes very obviously from other sci-fi sources; mention of the truth being out there and wanting to believe immediately bring the wonderful ‘X-Files’ to mind, the title is shared by another nineties sci-fi tv series about alien invasion, scenes are lifted directly from both Spielberg’s ‘E.T.’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, and at one point we witness scores of birds flying kamikaze style into windows and walls, identical to scenes in ‘Red Lights’. The introduction of alien expert and victim Edwin Pollard, played by J.K.Simmons, brings a bit more interest to the piece, and also a little more sympathy for the family, but it’s nothing more than a brief glimmer of what could have been with the application of more invention and originality. If done in the right way, this could have spawned a franchise in its own right, ‘Dark Skies’ the tv series was good until it lost its way toward the end, and long before that there was ‘The Invaders’ (and the bit more camp ‘V’), a fantastic series that highlighted the potential for ‘they are amongst us’ stories to engross and fascinate skeptics and believers alike.

This is a dilution of the genuinely quite scary ‘Insidious’ (10), and then the nowhere near as good ‘Sinister’ (12). Look forward to the next logical step from Jason Blum and co where the aliens discard their used human experiments at Fukushima, wherein they become zombies that all look like the girl from ‘Ringu’ and can only be properly seen by the naked eye via surveillance cameras, forcing the army to get involved, who originally blame immigrant Korean workers until the evidence becomes overwhelming, although the Japanese emperor still refuses to acknowledge what’s going on, until his wife turns into a zombie and eats him.

Stoker  (2013)    7/100

Rating :   7/100                                                                         99 Min        18

Nothing about this film makes any sense. It’s trying to be a Hitchcockian version of Lolita, with some disgracefully gratuitous and out of place nods to that director so we get the point. India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) father has just died under mysterious circumstances, enter the hitherto unmentioned uncle (Matthew Goode) who comes to stay with her and her mother (Nicole Kidman). We can tell instantly exactly what will unfold, and as it does there is little to no reaction from Stoker as events occur that would have anyone in their right minds dialling for the emergency services. What supposedly stops her, the charismatic allure of her uncle (the expected Dracula reference), doesn’t work as it hasn’t been justified at all by that point and Matthew Goode’s character is about as charismatic as a gangrenous ulcer. ‘Watchmen’ (09) is to date his only role that springs to mind as memorable, and here he manages to be both creepily omnipresent, and yet still entirely wooden.

Plot holes continue to open their cavernous mouths as the film progresses, and sadly I can’t go into any of them without giving things away, but look out for the freezer that is a country mile away from any sensible location, what’s in the freezer and the distinct lack of reaction to it, and, well, pretty much everything in the second half of the movie. It’s a massive disappointment as it is the first English language film from the South Korean director of ‘Oldboy’ (03), Park Chan-wook, who frenetically cuts out of sequence shots together and uses various camera tricks to try and keep us interested, but ultimately it comes as no surprise that he’s working with a debut script – one from ‘Prison Break’ actor Wentworth Miller, no doubt deciding to exorcise his sexual frustrations by putting them down on paper. Though Stoker is older (she has just turned eighteen) than the eponymous character in Nabokov’s classic novel, there are many parallels, with the onset of her sexual awakening being central to the story, partly represented by a CGI spider that can be seen crawling up her leg at one point. There was a study done years ago that found there was a huge rise in the fear of spiders in young girls at the onset of puberty. The theory to explain this was that there was a subconscious psychological match between the strange and perhaps disconcerting bodily change of hair appearing where once there had been none before, and the hair of the spider (this study was presumably not undertaken in Britain). Now, whether or not that conclusion was far fetched, I wonder if Mr Miller did not also come across it whilst writing his script.

It gets a rating of seven purely for the good performances of Kidman, Jacki Weaver in support, and, particularly, Wasikowska. As a sad afternote, the film was produced by Scott Free Films, and as such is the final film to have been produced by the veteran, and much loved, director Tony Scott, who took his own life by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles during the film’s production.

Hansel and Gretel : Witch Hunters  (2013)    62/100

Rating :   62/100                                                                       88 Min        15

Gory fantasy violence as the traditional fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel gets a modern makeover. The original story was of course written by the Brothers Grimm, and indeed the look and feel of this film is very similar to Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Brothers Grimm’ with a lot of attention paid to the production design, including an animatronic troll, and complete with a very similar role for everyone’s favourite bad guy Peter Stormare. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton play the titular two, grown into adulthood and battle hardened after many successful seasons of witch hunting, but now they face multiple child abductions in the same area, and a brush with their mysterious past. Famke Janssen makes an appearance, and you can expect lots of frenetic and gaudily over the top fight sequences with blunderbusses and magic. Ok, but instantly forgettable.

A brief look behind the cameras – look out for what must surely have been a painful blow to the midriff…

Mama  (2013)    67/100

Rating :   67/100                                                                     100 Min        15

Decent horror film with a few moments of palpable fear, exec produced by Guillermo del Toro (‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘Hellboy’) after seeing director Andres Muschietti’s Spanish language short film of the same name. The eponymous mama appears in traditional tattered rags and multi-flex atrophied limbs, whereupon she decides to become the protector of two young girls, which is all well and good to begin with but eventually leads to relationship problems with other family members, and some much needed counselling. Many clichés, but also various successful attempts to avoid cliché – we end up with the buxom female (in this instance a convincingly gothed up Jessica Chastain) as the central adult focus, with ample cleavage as her most visible weapon, but as she avoids monstrous devourment (apparently, despite The Red Dragon using this for years, this is not a real word. It has to start somewhere though…) we are spared endless pointless chases, the ghost pretty much just gets on with it when it can be bothered, or rather when it is bothered. One of the hand drawn pictures in the girl’s bedroom is pretty scary, featuring some sort of creepy zombified Goofy. Hmm, yes try not to look at that actually (you can see it above).

Warm Bodies  (2013)    33/100

Rating :   33/100                                                                       98 Min        12A

A classic tale of undead zombie falls in love with young pretty lass, but still has to win over her father (John Malkovich) before they’ll have peace. The problem is, it’s very much a one trick pony, and once the slight amusement of the premise has passed there is nothing particularly funny or interesting left in the rest of the film. It’s mainly the fault of the director and screenwriter (the same person in this case – Jonathan Levine) and less so of the actors who do OK with what they have. The would-be Romeo and Juliet (who can’t resist aping the star-crossed lovers’ balcony scene) are played by zombie Nicholas Hoult (‘A Single Man’ 09) and not-zombie Teresa Palmer (‘I am number four’ 11), who almost looks and sounds like someone has mashed together bits of Amanda Seyfried and Kristen Stewart, an interesting combination …

The film also has an inherent problem in that the leading male character can’t speak properly. It does, though, at least have a pretty good soundtrack, but it even repeatedly succeeds in garbling that, cutting off songs like ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’ by Scorpions before they’ve even started – if you’re going to sacrifice a decent story and script for good music AT LEAST PLAY THE SONG! If you really want to see a zombie romcom then forget this and watch ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (04) instead.  SPOILER ALERT (though I’m sure you will see it coming a mile off anyway) to make matters worse, their cross-species love saves all of zombiekind who start to become more human again. Bleurggghhh.

Texas Chainsaw 3D  (2013)    60/100

Rating :   60/100                                                                       92 Min        18

This is the latest offering in ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ franchise. In fact, it’s the seventh film of the lot after the original from 1974, then ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’ (86), ‘Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3’ (90), ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation’ (94), ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ a 2003 remake of the original starring Jessica Biel, and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning’ (06) a prequel to that remake. This version goes all the way back to the original film and follows on with the immediate aftermath to the events that unfolded in the town of Newt, Texas. There’s been a little more of an effort made with the story here, certainly compared to the other two modern instalments, and a degree of sympathy has been put into the narrative which is new. You can be sure though, that the owners of the franchise were not going to miss out on the money making machine 3D has gifted producers with, and they are far from the first horror filmmakers to be milking the new tech with its higher cinema ticket prices.

With that in mind a lot of what follows in the film is true to previous form, with a group of ridiculously good looking teens throwing themselves into every obstacle in their path in order to satisfy the audience’s gore fetish, including the rather phallic weapon of choice of everyone’s favourite country bumpkin: ‘Leatherface’. Lead actress Alexandra Daddario (‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ 10) certainly has a body to die for, and the camera has no qualms about showing it off as much as possible. Scott Eastwood, Clint Eastwood’s son, also stars as the local town sheriff. Very much an example of horror porn rather than torture porn (the likes of ‘Hostel’ 05 and so on where the emphasis is on the intricacies of the actual mutilation) and not too bad for what it is, decent enough if you’re just in the mood for a late night slasher.

Resident Evil : Retribution  (2012)    55/100

Rating :   55/100                                                                       96 Min        15

If you are like The Red Dragon, you probably have intense difficulty in remembering what happened in Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4, and your memory of the first one is reduced to the outbreak of the T-virus in the beginning, people getting diced in the corridor in the middle, and then some fairly ropey computer graphics at the end. Happily, ‘Resident Evil 5:  Retribution’ begins with not only a recap, but with the end of the last film replaying in slow-mo reverse. With some apt music playing it’s a nice intro. The rest of the film follows very much in the vein of its predecessors, which is precisely its problem. The reason distinguishing the previous incarnations from one another is so difficult, is that they all had precious little point to them.

Here, true to form, interest dwindles as the unrealistic plot is matched by an endless series of unrealistic fight/gunfight sequences. Parts look slick enough, and the characters and actors invest just enough to merit another possible sequel, but the next one must surely have more going for it for the franchise to continue in film.

The Possession  (2012)    60/100

Rating :   60/100                                                                       92 Min        15

This is very much a standard exorcism film, which is decent in its own right but brings nothing new to the table at all. It’s not as scary as the new wave of horror films that have followed in the footsteps of ‘Paranormal activity’ (07), and it doesn’t have as many jumps as the likes of ‘The Woman in Black’ (12), but it does have a little more in the way of narrative in the guise of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Clyde, the recently separated father of two young girls, one of whom is about to discover a strange old box…..