This sounds like a gimmick that would have worked beautifully in a movie about a killer who stalks you in your dreams (and it does) but it becomes too repetitive towards the end to elicit any strong feelings in the viewer. It’s a movie that, no doubt, appeals to fans of the series and film critics because the direction, concept, and writing are all very good and there isn’t anything technically “bad” about this film. But I was, frankly, quite bored by the halfway mark and couldn’t help feeling that the potential to make a truly scary Nightmare flick had been wasted.

The movie takes place in California about 10 years after the first NOES and introduces us to Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy, living her life as an actress remembered largely for her role in an 80s slasher flick. As with most actors who are remembered for a single iconic role, she distanced herself from the genre but soon becomes caught in a new wave of Freddy hysteria after rumors emerge that there might be a new movie in the works.

Langenkamp, who has settled down with her husband and young son, Dylan, turns down the offer to “play Nancy” again; but the film soon begins to take on a life of its own, blurring the line between reality and the subconscious, forcing Heather into a compromising position.

This was Craven’s attempt at returning his Freddy character to its roots but there’s actually a lot more going on than just that. The film’s self-awareness might be missed by casual viewers or people simply looking to get scared – it’s more of a commentary on the series and on what had become of his original concept.

Apart from a few minor inconsistencies, my main problem with this film was that it got repetitive midway through and dragged itself to a predictable and lackluster finale. Seeing Dylan “possessed” over and over again was unnecessary and the low-budget acting was more evident in a movie with decent production values. The redeeming factors, for me, were the ending (which tied together everything perfectly) and the self-referential humor, which was used sparingly but effectively.

With a remake of the original NOES slated for this spring (I’m not holding my breath), the series is about to undergo another potentially disastrous reinterpretation without Craven. While I didn’t enjoy New Nightmare, I understand that it’s a movie Craven made more for himself than for an audience – a complex, self-aware, therapeutic horror film intended to bookend the series. That’s something I respect even if I didn’t have any trouble sleeping after watching it.

Everything about this movie screams “Mystery Science Theater 3000″. The basic plot is a bit kooky, but has potential– two hillbilly gardeners Billy Buck (John Smihula) and Jacob (Adam Beske) move to the New Jersey ‘burbs where their lawn maintenance business is boming.  Soon, however, they grow tired of being treated like dirt by their rich yuppy clients.  This leads to a violent killing rampage as the two sadistically torture pretty, young, shallow suburbanites to death.  What will it take to stop these two deranged landscapers from drenching the entire town in blood and gore?

This movie has the feel of a subpar student film.  One gets the sense that Billy Buck is supposed to be almost sympathetic since his vengeful violence is aimed at upsetting the status quo of  greed and materialism.  He’s driven by a strong sense of injustice– the kind of injustice that can only be remedied by butchering young rich people, tearing off their faces and slowly disembowling them.  He looks like a WWE cast-off with black war-paint circling his eyes, bare-chested under denim overalls.  Being surrounded by materialistic, insipid yuppies is what drives Billy Buck to murder.  Jacob, on the other hand, kills because he enjoys it.  He’s more of a stereotypical masked lunatic with serious self-esteem issues.  The rest of the cast is essentially a string of bland, no-name actors, all generically attractive in a fluffy-haired 1980s model way. They all portray snobby, up-and-coming Wall Street bankers or doctor’s wives.  The acting is painfully stilted and hollow.  A tough psychologist (Maura Del Veccio) whose role is meant to be vital to the story, blends in so much with the other actresses that it’s tough to tell who’s who and why her character is important at all.

They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore skimps on some areas of production, yet it goes all out as far as blood and gore is concerned.  The special effects range from above average to downright ridiculous.  Violence to excess is the motto for director Nathan Schiff.  At first, seeing what’s obviously a dummy having an unconvincing mask being slowly pulled from its skull fits right in with the over-the-top dark humor of the rest of the movie.  But the longer that the endless torture scenes went on, the more uncomfortable I felt watching them.  Sure, the victims aren’t especially likeable. Yeah, they robotically deliver lines like, “It’s you I love, not just your body!” in scenes of seduction.  Yet evisceration seems like a steep price to pay for their transgressions.  The way the camera lingers almost lovingly on images of flesh being ripped apart, bleeding and then peeled away as the killers scoop out internal organs is disturbing.

I can see where the director was attempting to use this movie as a commentary on the culture of greed and capitalism that tainted the early-to-mid 1980s.  Somehow, though, amidst the overtly ridiculous plot contrivances and excessive torture-porn, the message gets drowned out.

This is a slick-looking horror anthology in the style of Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt but chooses to focus solely on the traditions of Halloween (and what happens to those who don’t heed its customs). The cinematography is excellent and makes this film a treat for the eyes, and the young cast does a fantastic job of adding to the fun and scares that take place on this very special holiday.

Writer/director Michael Dougherty manages to capture the essence of Halloween with this film and he does it by sticking to the basics – costumed kids, jack-o’-lanterns and a few well-placed monsters. Repeat viewings will reveal cracks beneath the glossy surface, but this is a movie about the joys of Halloween so (as long as you’re not looking to get scared) it won’t disappoint.

All four stories take place in Warren Valley, Ohio, a town that takes Halloween very seriously (they host a huge annual parade), though we don’t know how serious until we’re introduced to its strange inhabitants. We have the junior-high teacher carrying on a family tradition, a group of kids who play a prank on a Halloween-obsessed outcast, four fearless young women looking for a good time and a grumpy old man just waiting to die.

Dougherty expertly weaves together these four tales and it all works very well but the non-linear format was a little confusing during my initial viewing. Using the town parade as a reference point helps separate the intertwining storylines, as does the introduction of Sam (the boy in the burlap mask) who is a recurring character. His purpose isn’t immediately clear but it soon becomes obvious and serves to ground the four stories, adding that extra bit of Halloween magic to this movie.

However, while this approach works well in furthering the narrative and bringing the town to life, I felt it also distracted the viewer from the quality of the four tales. The first time I saw this (a couple of weeks before Halloween) I loved everything about it but after watching it again recently, I realized that two of the stories are far superior, in my opinion. It’s not that the other two are terrible but they weren’t as good as I remembered and just didn’t have enough going on to keep me invested in the characters.

Of course, since this is a horror anthology, we usually have our personal favorite story, so this is a minor gripe against an otherwise fine Halloween film. There was one other thing that I didn’t like involving Sam but that would ruin the last part. Most importantly, though, this is a film that was made by someone who loves Halloween and horror movies, someone who’s probably a lot like you and me but has a knack for storytelling and a dark comedic sensibility – this is horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously but is still satisfyingly creepy.

People working together, doing what it takes to make something just that much better, a little more cringe worthy, a deeper peek into the characters twisted essence or victims pain. Being in a situation im hopefully never going to encounter in real life, but still being someone believable and doing them justice in that moment.

There are those of us that become bored and generally unimpressed within the four walls of an office, ignoring the droning sounds of everyday monotony.
Nothing the blood sweat and tears and pure commitment put into a good horror film can’t fix! Turning anyones four walls into a gruesome murder scene were the screams of tortured victims drown out any other dull sound.
I personally really enjoy being a part of that little horrific escape.

I’m not the type to enjoy doing the same thing every day and, although I wasn’t truly shovel bashed or carved up, I was tied to support beams with rope-not the soft fun kind of rope. I wasn’t actually left to my death naked and bleeding, but I was confined to a real basement made of dirt, darkness, and enough space to kneel, mostly naked and covered in fair amount of fake blood. And even though I wasn’t really the lover a German psycho killer, I did have Zoey pinch my nipples before slicing open my dress-not for personal enjoyment but rather to capture the “cold look”
And even though at the end of it all I was cut lose and given a clean towel and a shower, I did still go home with real rope burns at my wrist and bits of matted fake blood in my hair.

Just little reminders when laying down to sleep and recapping my day, that I don’t have an office job and I love it! Thanks to all the wonderful people I have had the pleasure of working with, I intend to find myself covered in blood like substances or at least tied up, very soon.-Amber Rose

Which is why Tobe Hooper’s film adaptation of The Mangler comes as quite a surprise. No, it’s not scary, not even in the slightest and you won’t be woken up at night with nightmares of possessed laundry chasing you. Suffice to say, it doesn’t do for your dryer what Psycho did for showers, but it is quite entertaining nonetheless. And it’s probably the best possible adaptation given the source material. Most of the short story’s problems – beyond the premise itself – have been corrected, most importantly the ridiculous serious tone. In the film, there’s an acknowledgement of the premise’s silliness. The almost eager acceptance of kooky demon-possession theories by Officer John Hutton to explain the laundry’s malfunction in the story is replaced with initial skepticism and ridicule at the outrageousness of such an idea. In other words, he’s just as amused as we are. Even the tone seems to acknowledge how ridiculous the whole idea is, throwing in loads of over-the-top gore and Robert Englund hamming it up in double leg-braces and an eye-patch. Hooper has recognized the idiocy and adapted accordingly.

The movie sees Officer John Hutton, played by Ted Levine, investigating a series of deaths at the Blue Ribbon Laundry, where several women have been sucked into the industrial steam ironer, chewed up and folded out on the other side like a piece of clothing. What at first appears to be a series of baffling accidents turns out to be something more sinister, involving demonic possession, the owner of Blue Ribbon Laundry and a young girl.

As has been mentioned, The Mangler is never scary, but it is very interesting, a considerable feat for a film centered around an industrial machine grounded into a cement floor. There’s some great gore set-pieces involving the machine, but even when the gore falls to a standstill, the over-the-top characters keep it fun and lively. Levine’s officer is a prick who storms through the movie throwing curse-words left-and-right, his best friend is a kooky new-age hippie obsessed with the occult and the Laundromat owner is a senile cripple who never drops a decibel below a scream the entire film. It’s silly, highly theatrical and doesn’t get boring. It’s never scary, creepy or even very funny, but there are enough little oddities piled in to keep up ones interest. A steam-ironer-exorcism doesn’t feel as out of place here as it did in the story.

And beneath all the mayhem and hamming, there is actually something going on in this film. Several additions to the film, particularly a new ending, reveal a commentary on the corrosiveness of capitalism. By the end of this Laundromat-gone-evil flick, there’s more substance than not only the story and its cheap carnal thrills, but probably most other horror works of similar nature. It’s not the most nuanced commentary, but there are some interesting developments along the way and it seems to have flown over the heads of most who watched it.

The Mangler is typically regarded as one of the worst King adaptations. It certainly isn’t the best, but most of the criticism surrounding it stems from the ridiculous premise. Indeed, it is ridiculous and I’m not quite sure why this was made in the first place. However, Hooper has crafted the best possible film out of this silly idea, by not taking it to seriously and turning the focus from the inanity of evil laundry to something of more substance. I wouldn’t rush out to get The Mangler, but if you find an old VHS sitting around the house (as I did), it’s worth a watch.

This search for obscure cinema is the story in last year’s low-budget horror film The Hills Run Red, which does a lot right but essentially misses the mark. Don’t get me wrong, this is an above-average slasher that I really enjoyed – it’s self-aware, the story’s intriguing and Babyface is a great concept for a serial killer (intelligent and shrewd). It even touches on concepts like artistic freedom and the consequences of an artist’s obsession with his subject and chosen medium. But it peaks a little too early and tries to stretch out the climax by relying on violence to further the plot towards the end.

The intro is pretty gory as you watch a boy mutilating himself and transforming into Babyface. It then segues to present day and shows a young man, Tyler, looking up a trailer for a rare movie called The Hills Run Red, which was pulled from theaters for its sadism and graphic depiction of murder. Only a handful of people got a chance to see it and the director, Wilson Wyler Concannon (played by William Sadler), disappeared along with any known prints of the film. His legend eventually sank into obscurity and the movie was forgotten.

Tyler, however, becomes obsessed with finding the lost movie and convinces his girlfriend, Serina, and friend, Lalo, to help him make a documentary about it. They track down Concannon’s daughter, Alexa, who tells them her father died in his house in the woods. She agrees to help them and they set out to find the house and (hopefully) the film itself. Unfortunately for them, the killer in the movie turns out to be real and they realize the movie might be more realistic than they expected.

This sounds like a generic storyline but it’s much better than I’ve described, even if the plot wears a little thin by the half-way mark. To say that I got a Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe would be an understatement and I noticed a lot of clichés throughout as well. The plot twist is what makes it worth it though and just when you think this is just another “serial killer in the woods” slasher, it flips on you. And then it does it again.

Ultimately, though, it never reaches its potential. It shows promise right until the last twenty minutes, when you realize it has nothing else to say (though there’s a nice scene in a theater). There are numerous plot holes as well but I suppose that’s expected in a low-budget slasher. The gore isn’t over-the-top, the acting is ok and there are some nice twists (though I didn’t like the conclusion). This is meant to entertain and it does the job. No more, no less.

Unfortunately for fans of The Wolfman, Universal Pictures misinterpreted the “less is more” concept to mean less substance, less story, less continuity, less suspense, less… well, less everything… except gore.  What director Joe Johnston’s remake of the 1941 Universal classic lacks in coherent plot, character development, and rudimentary editing it makes up for with breakneck pacing and miles of small intestines.

That’s not a winning combination.

Unlike the original – wherein scenes actually played out and audiences were able to acquaint themselves with the characters – Johnston’s version is less a movie and more a manic succession of inter-spliced images overlaid with snippets of cringe-worthy dialogue.   According to Johnston, seventeen minutes of additional footage (largely comprised of finishing touches to existing scenes) “had been removed during the third editing pass to push the story along so that audiences would get to the first Wolfman transformation sooner.”  (Said transformation, disappointingly, is completely rendered in pulse-deadening CGI.)

As a result, the film never has a chance to breath.   Key plot-points fall flat and sequences meant to build tension collapse in on themselves as if the meat of the film’s performances were left on the cutting room floor.  Speaking of meat, a horror film completely devoid of suspense is just not scary and, when it seems that characters are introduced solely to be ground up into puppy chow seconds later, it’s almost impossible for the viewer to care.  Thus, the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies that litter the ground following the endlessly repetitive Wolfman attacks barely elicit a shrug from the audience.

When all is said and done, it’s Universal’s drive to update not only the plot but also the presentation that causes The Wolfman inevitably to disappoint:  the choreographed wire-works finale is so cheesy it would make Ang Lee wince.  Older fans who fondly remember the original are likely to be turned off by the remake’s excessive gore, while younger audiences watching this film won’t have any inkling why the 1941 classic was so beloved.

Sadly, what could have been a truly great horror movie has, instead, become just another indication that contemporary attention-spans cannot process the luxury of characterization, while modern sensibilities are ill-formed to deal with subtlety.  Perhaps we’ll have to wait for Hammer to set things aright.

The movie opens by introducing the freshly married Denise (Tracy Coogan) and Danny (Graham Sibley) as they joyfully skip away from the wedding chapel, eager to enter the honeymoon stage of their marriage.  The two lead actors have real chemistry.  Coogan’s performance is exuberant, at times downright giddy. This nicely complements the energy of Sibley as Danny– a more mellow, laid-back vegetarian surfer type.  Unfortunately, their blissful honeymoon is interrupted by an unwelcome, undead guest.

While relaxing on the beach, what should stagger out of the waves but an honest-to-goodness zombie. (You can’t have a movie called Zombie Honeymoon without one!)  Clad in a wetsuit, covered from head to toe in seaweed, the staggering zombie catches Danny unaware.  It lurches over, grabs him violently and spews a foul, viscous brown liquid into his face and mouth.  The precise nature of Danny’s death is left a bit vague.  Amidst the chaos, the zombie disappears, leaving a dying Danny and his hysterical wife on the beach.  Cut to the hospital:  Doctors make fervent resuscitation attempts and fail.  Just as Denise is about to resign herself to widowhood, the miraculous happens.  Danny’s eyelids flutter open and, much to everyone’s astonishment, he has recovered from his ten minute “death”.  The shocked doctor warns them that Danny will need time to readjust.  This turns out to be the understatement to end all understatements.

For the first day, Danny seems okay. He and Denise make vows to live for the present and celebrate his rebirth with lots of passionate, rough sex.  The only sign that anything is at all out of the ordinary is Danny’s flaking skin.  “Baby, you need a better sunscreen,” Denise chides him.

Danny’s condition rapidly deteriorates after that.  The former vegetarian goes on meat eating binges.  His memory is shaky and his skin takes on a deathly pale pallor.  When Denise finds him crouched in the bathtub gnawing on the entrails of a bloody corpse, the truth sinks in– this is not the man she married.  She’ll have to decide whether to stay with him through better or worse and whether their wedding vows still apply:  “‘Til death do us part.”

Zombie Honeymoon does not fit into a typical genre mold.  Zombie purists may be put off by the fact that the movie is really about only one zombie– who at first seems more like a simple cannibal– and the origins of his condition are extraordinarily vague.  In fact, Zombie Honeymoon is more about Denise and Danny’s relationship than the threat of brain-devouring undead causing carnage and mayhem.  There’s blood and gore galore, with a bit of female nudity sprinkled in for good measure.  It’s interesting that some of the more romantic and sexually charged scenes occur after Danny has been zombified but before either of them fully realize it.  Many zombie films focus on a large group of zombies as a monstrous enemy, yet tend to forget that zombies were people once, too.

Zombie Honeymoon may be low-budget, with some uneven acting and sound editing issues, but the meat of the story– how a couple deals with unexpected loss of humanity– is very novel indeed.  There’s also enough off-beat dark humor to classify Zombie Honeymoon as a dark comedy.  Classic lines include gems like: “I guess vegetarians don’t make very good cannibals, do they?”

Even fans of romance movies can find something to like in Zombie Honeymoon, assuming they aren’t too disturbed by the gratuitous gore.  Zombie Honeymoon truly does have something for everyone.