Film Festival Movies

This movie is just as good as the first one, but for different reasons. I was expecting it to be more about isolation and infection, but instead this film picked up on the possession theme that was alluded to in the first film. I have never seen a sequal that picks up so close in time from the original: this one takes place fifteen minutes after the events of the first, and is shot primarily by the SWAT team that assaults the building in response to the 911 call that drew the emergency personnel we follwed in [REC]. I was actually hoping to see a more infection-based story and I think I would have liked that movie more, but this film was really entertaining for what it did. Turns out the zombie infection is actually some sort of viral manifestation of demonic possession, and it's up to the SWAT team to accompany a priest on a medical mission to retrieve the work of a doctor who began the outbreak. This mission quickly devolves - as you might imagine - and becomes a fight for survival.

I also quite liked the way that, like in the first movie, the filmmakers buried themselves and the story is only shown through the eyes of the onscreen cameramen. when they have no access to a camera, you don't see the events. The camera also changes hands twice: we get the footage the SWAT team shot, the footage shot by three idiot fourteen-year-olds, and footage shot by Angela's camera, that reappears toward the end. Seeing the first movie is really vital to truly appreciate this one, as part of the pleasure is recognizing the zombies who were people in first movie and spotting the visual references to [REC], the most jarring one I won't spoil here. [REC] 2 should also be commended for granting new insight to the events of the first film, especially what transpired in the penthouse apartment. Overall this was a really good, scary, thrilling film and though I would have taken the story in another direction, sometime's it's good to see other people's takes.

This is a silly popcorn movie, and it's also great fun. I haven't seen Conan at all, but this film is based on a character written by the same guy. This movie is all spectacle and stock characters in archetypical situations, and it does what it's supposed to do very well. It hits all the right spots and is never anything less than entertaining. It's about a vicious warlord butcher that is confronted by an actual, old-school demon that says that it's time to collect his blackened and cruel soul. It's only then that he decides to swear off bloodshed. I'd personally rather see a guy who's in the same situation at the start of the movie and decides that if his soul is already damned, he's going to go as dark, cruel, vicious and black as he can in hopes that he'll earn a spot in Satan's graces. But I suppose that'd be another movie.

This is the best movie I've seen of the film festival yet. I can't get over what a great sense of humour Rob Stefaniuk has, and it's got everything that I loved about Phil the Alien and then some. I think the thing I find most endearing about this movie is how casual everyone is. This must be the most casual vampire movie I've ever seen. It amused me how everyone treated the vampire's hunger as though it's a drug problem, and the ensuing dead bodies as an inconvenience. I also really liked the way they likened the vampire's human servant - a staple of the vampire movie - to a roadie. I can't think of anything bad to say about this movie, except for perhaps the contact lenses of the vampires looked a little too spacy for me. But even then I loved their character design. Especially the head vampire who almost never stops grinning. See this movie. It's a fantastic comedy and a terrific vampire movie. What a gem.

Apart from the Blair Witch Project, this film pulls off the "spontaneous horror movie" thing better than any other I've seen. This is a completely new side of Adrian Pasdar to me, and he is great as the goofy dad trying to retain a normal family life despite two increasingly evil children. The woman playing his wife is equally terrific, and their dual roles (as a priest and child psychologist respectively) are wonderful and very believable onscreen. There are so many subtle little things in this movie that add to the aesthetic of found footage, most significantly I though the glimses of the family via a year's worth of holidays. I shudder to think what Jack and Emily got up to during the rest of the year when they weren't on tape.

REVIEW #666

I saw this film at the Toronto After Dark film festival and I think this was the gem of the lot. I have a soft spot for short horror films, and this group of four is such a multiplicity of tones and aesthetics. Each film stands out and is great in its own way, although some are better than others. Tit-For-Tat seemed to rely a little too heavily on computer animation, but I loved its ending. Happiness suffered from a slightly tired premise, but its execution was really skilled and the film totally engaging. My two favorites were the two most tonally different: Last Fright and In The Middle. Last Fright was a really terrifying movie about passive-aggression and guilt, all backdropped by a well-executed midair ghost story. It's a very rich plot for such a short film, and deserves a lot of praise. My absolute favorite of the bunch though is In The Middle, which is a horror-comedy about paranoid pop culture junkies who take a white-water rafting camping trip. Its cross-referentiality makes it especially funny and charming to horror nerds like me (as well, I'm sure, as the audience I saw it with). All in all, a great four films that rivals Three Extremes in quality.

I am so happy to have seen this! This was the best film I saw at Toronto After Dark. For all those out there that are sick to bloody death (heh) of romantic touchy-feely vampire movies (whose titles rhyme with "skylight"), this is the film for you. A guy who wakes up on the night of his funeral to find that he's some sort of articulate zombie and makes his way back to his best friend's house. From there the pair piece together thier situation and do thier best to keep Bart "alive". Chris Wylde and david Anders have such great onscreen chemistry and it's very easy to believe that they're old friends. The effects are great, the jokes land squarely and the premise itself is wonderful. My only complaint might be that it stops being a comedy at one point, becomes full-on horror and never really comes back from the dark side. The very ending is pretty funny though, and I really can't wait to see this again when it comes out in theatres. I really really hope it gets a theatrical release. This is sure to become a cult hit.

This movie was not as good as it could have been. I was quite disappointed. It's as though the director has pinpointed a few cinematic devices that can be used to frighten an audience, and sought to compile them into a film as quickly as he could. All his devices work of course, but they don't fit into the movie itself very well. He uses violent quick cuts to create tension, without realizing that if you do your jarring splices too quickly , it makes what is actually happening onscreen unclear. He;s also fond of rapid-fire quick cuts between two or more scenes or carnage, while allowing the audience to ake sense of none of them. I think that instead of the horror coming from that, it should have been generated by the relationships between the characters: the tension surrounding the teenaged daughter who's bitter about being made to endure a weekend with her family, the parents' unwillingness to believe that thier kids are capable of gruesome violence (and desire to protect them from the images of bloodshed that they themselves have wrought), and the tension between the parents was an excellent source of dread for a horror film. That was the element in this film that was genuinely creeping me out, but the filmmaker instead chose to focus on trying to startle the audience, which I thought was such a waste.

Oooh. This is a really gritty and interesting movie about realistic (sickeningly so) villainy. Nothing that happens in this movie is simple, and it would be a crime to describe this movie in terms of the barebones of the plot. Stephen Rea is the victim and Mena Suvari is the culprit, but circumstances complicate the situation. It's an accident that brings the two together, but the accident is made so much worse through Brandi's indecision, worry and inaction. It's really quite harrowing to watch the people in this movie digging thier own grave and sinking deeper in this more. The end though is really satisfying. It couldn't have ended any other way. The less I say, the better. If you were a fan of Hard Candy, you'll like this one. It's very similar in tone, but the events don't have any of the malice. It doesn't keep them from being anything but painful though.