Darko's Recently Viewed Diary

Dead Shack - Meh, pretty generic fare that desperately strives to be a modern comedy horror classic but has neither enough horror or comedy to work. It's fitfully fun with a good cast and likeable characters but its low budget shows and it feels less like a fully formed film as it does a short padded out.

Creepozoids - A great poster does not a great film make and Creepozoids, unfortunately, manages at 65 minutes to feel overlong and boring. Yes the FX work is decent and there's one or two fun moments but overall it feels like a film thrown together in the hopes of something sticking. Remove the shower scene and this could easily be a PG rating which is kind of the opposite of what one wants from a film marketed as a sleazy sci-fi.

Ghsotbusters Extended Cut - Far better than is has any right to be, Ghostbusters is a light and fun big budget blockbuster that is funny, smart and looks great. Yes, some of the dialogue is a little too forced, the run time could do with losing 20 minutes and the character of Kevin is incredibly mishandled but overall there's more to like there than not. Jones and McKinnon are great and own the film, they bring a manic energy that's welcome and the inclusion of the original cast is a nice touch though Murray's cameo is awful and Akyroyd appears to be in a rush somewhere.

The biggest problem with the film is just how indebted to the original it is. With so much of the film spent pay homage to what came before, Ghostbusters never really finds an identity of its own. The films best moments come when it does it's own thing and hopefully the sequel will forget about tipping its hat and just do its own thing.

Psycho Cop Returns - Psycho Cop Returns is exactly what one expects, trashy, sleazy and fun it's the kind of early 90s direct to VHS horror film that the world needs more of. Full of gratuitous and unnecessary nudity, a decent helping of gore and in Psycho Cop himself, one of the best genre antagonists around. His deadpan one-liners are great, they don't all work but there's a rare joy to be found in dialogue such as "You have the right to remain dead. Anything you say can and will be considered very strange because you're dead. You have the right to an attorney, but it won't do you any good because you're dead. Do you understand these rights that have just been read to you? Are you even listening? It would be a lot easier if you were a little more cooperative!".

The Evil Within - Despite some questionable performances, an at times cheap aesthetic and some shoddy writing The Evil Within still manages to impress. The brainchild and passion project of a Getty heir with a severe meth addition, The Evil Within was shot over 6 years, edited over 7 years and released 2 years after the director's death as a result of meth addiction.

Striking, bold, adult, unsettling, beautiful, demented, dumb, awful, jaw-dropping and what the **** is this are all words that apply to The Evil Within and as a calling card it makes one hell of a statement. It's the kind of singular vision that is rare, a film confident in what it wants to do and say and there is no doubt that had Getty not passed away he would have gone on to great things.

The bloated middle may at times drag but that opening and finale are exceptional making this something to seek out.

Feast - The kind of honest to goodness cheesy horror comedy that works, the violence is well staged and the gore plentiful. The laughs for the most part land and all in all Feast is a bloody good time that promise a little and then goes and delivers a whole lot.

Eat Locals - Sure it's grand best sums up Eat Locals, a low key no-budget horror comedy that's light on both but has a charm of its own. Uniting the leads from Lock Stock though not all onscreen this is the kind of no-frills fare whose budget limitations are evident from the get-go but was clearly made by someone will a well-stocked Rolodex of "that guys".

Charming in its way, this is the easy to enjoy nonsense that plays it all with a knowing wink and doesn't outstay its welcome.

Boa vs. Python - Nowhere near as fun as I remembered, Boa vs. Python is SyFy film of thw week by the numbers. Weak characters, cheap fx work, amateur dramatics and a real sense that they were making it up as they went along in whatever eastern European country passed for America.

There's nothing to really recommend here, it's fun in an unassuming brain-dead manner and Hewlett is decent but overall it's overlong and bland and never really gets out of first gear.

A Study in Terror - Holmes vs. the Ripper in this perfectly serviceable and fun spin on the Sherlock mythos. Well acted and with some gorgeous locations, A Study in Terror is a lesser film in the Holmes series but it's rather bloody good and a lot of fun.

Vampire Hookers - Vampire Hookers is a cheap piece of trash but it's a damn fine bit of fun with a wonderful sense of humour and some nice moments. The theme song is a highpoint, it's like a Bond theme but butter as it discuss vampires giving blow jobs.

Mindhunters - A slight slasher with a good cast, a great setup, some nice kills but also some awful one-liners and a lack of tension. Harlin is all over this and the impression is that he took the script and made it his own which is fine but when you have lines of dialogue like "I guess we found out his weakness... bullets" delivered by a deadly serious LL Cool J after a man has been shot in the head it feels like the film may have missed a beat by not going full on dumb action.

Time Walker - Time Walker looks and plays like a low budget made for TV mid-week movie and is all the better for it. It's sheer hookum and is one of those rare treats that promises the ridiculous and not only delivers but goes beyond all expectation. Ben Murphy is great fun as our dashing Indiana Jones in a cardigan and brings some gravitas to a role that could so easily be cliche 101.

The Time Walker is a genius piece of cinema horror, a ludicrous and yet played completely straight set up that never tries to play it tongue in cheek but rather deadly serious all the way through.

The only downside is that promised sequel that never materialised, ending on a To be continued, we deserved to see just how out there a sequel would be.

Re:Born - 100 minutes of bone-crunching violence, sidestepping bullets and Metal Gear Solid looking villains make RE:Born one of the most wtf releases in some time. It's not big or striving to be original but instead wants to tell a simple story in the more brutal of manner and succeeds. Violence is the name of the game here and there's more blood spilt and bones broken during Re:Born than all other action films of the past year combined.

Resurrection - A Se7en rip off the manages to work thanks to a truly ludicrous and out there ending. Lambert is as one expects, squinty and mumbly and Robert Joy as the most obvious killer in cinema history hams it up rather well. Storywise it's familiar and at almost 2 hours long could do with an edit but the kills are great and the killer's workpiece is great and that rooftop finale is a thing of beauty.

Resurrection is fine DTV serial killer fare that's well directed and manages to do something with it's subSe7en set up. It won't ever be looked on fondly for lazy night viewing it's perfect.


Night Fare - Low budget horror at its best, a simple set up leads to some genuinely startling tension that builds in an organic and interesting manner cultivating in one of the most unexpected and impressing finales in some time. It's pulsating score gives the film an early 80s feel and the stripped back narrative and lack of motivation for out killer creates an off-kilter feel that allows the film's cracks to be quickly papered over.

It's by no means perfect or even close to being so but for a 70-minute low budget horror, it's pretty damn good.

Nightmare Weekend - An awe inspiring piece of ****, genuinely one of the oddest and most surreal slices of low budget trash that almost works due to how inept and surreal it all is. Starring a hand puppet that's alive, a bevy of bimbos who dance awkwardly and undress and fornicate in the most rote and unsexual manner possible, some great gore shots and make up FX and even a couple of familiar faces amongst the rabble though with almost the entire cast being over dubbed badly it's hard to really know.

Nightmare Weekend is trash, an unmitigated disaster on almost every level and yet its entertaining and never boring even when the whole thing threatens to descend into the toilet.

Battle Royale II: Requim - As sequels go BRII is a complete an utter bust, a brain dead waste of time that thinks it is striking and daring by trying to bring real-world politics into play but is then too afraid to actually say anything or place any blame. Far too long, full of cheap FX and gore shots and written by an angry teenager it's the cinematic equivalent of Nickleback. No one asked for it and now it's here nobody wants it and is hoping it'll take the message and drink itself to death.

The Brood - David Cronenberg 101, the Brood is a ****ed up look at motherhood and the agony of perceived loss. It's exactly what one expects when they hear that Cronenberg made a film to help him get over a divorce. All kinds of craziness is thrown at the screen in a bid to create a body horror that's equal parts gross and intriguing. Performances vary, some are stilted and monosyllabic while others such as Reed embrace the ridiculous and just go for it.

The Brood is entertaining but as the credits roll it feels more like a short than a feature, it's gorgeously grotesque body mutilation and mutations are icky in a way few others manage and the image of a mother licking blood off of her newborn baby is one of cinema's all-time great wtf moments.

A Quiet Place - A Quiet Place, much like It Follows and Get Out is a critical darling that promises to defy expectation but sadly never amounts to a whole lot. It's a fantastic premise with a botched execution resulting in a film which fails not because it's bad but simply because of how middle of the road it is.

It is a film in which every twist is telegraphed 15 minutes beforehand, a film in which in place of exposition we instead have a dream board full of pandering and banal hints at what is to come. It is a film in which blind creatures that can hear a pin drop at 5 miles stalk the land but yet no one in the world seems to think about using a sound as a weapon.

It's hard to **** all over A Quiet Place, it at least strives to do something interesting but is just let down by a poor script, pedestrian direction, crap CGI and a complete lack of logic. Worst of all it never answers the question as to whether a fart is a death sentence in 2020 or ponders how it is that women have survived not being able to get the last word in.

Downrange - The opening 10 minutes of Downrange is one of the most excruciating pieces of filmmaking ever attempted. It's an exercise in endurance full of truly awful acting, cringe-worthy dialogue, weird edits and a sense that we are watching some no-budget slasher film from a first-time filmmaker and not the latest from an established and celebrated director.

Thankfully, once the violence starts the film kicks it up a gear and delivers the goods. The daytime setting is a treat, it's rare to see an exploitation film set entirely beneath a blazing sun but here Kitamura makes the most of it. With nowhere to run and few places to hide Downrange slowly cranks up the tension in an exhilarating game of cat an mouse culminating in a finale that is at once shocking awful and fun.

Acting here, for the most part, is awful, there's some weird tonal shifts and a number of scenes look like they were shot on the cheap over a couple hours long after the fact. The entire final 10 minutes is just plain odd and feels totally out of place.

Downrange is not a good film, in fact it's a bad one but when brain matter is being spilt and eyes popped with bullets then the film manages to come alive. It's just a shame that these moments are few and far between.

The Cloverfield Paradox - The Cloverfield Paradox is a decent rip off of Sunshine by way of Event Horizon with a smidgen of Alien and pretty much every other iconic sci-fi film for the past 50 years ruined thanks to an odd decision to retroactively tack on some giant monsters so as to pretend that this is somehow linked to the Cloverfield film.

I get what Abrams is trying to do with these films, it's commendable in a way but at the end of the day it's becoming clearer and clearer that neither Abrams or anyone else has a clue what they are doing and tacking on some unrelated bull**** does more damage than good.

The Cloverfield Paradox as a film in its own right is Saturday night SyFy movie of the week only with prettier visuals and worse acting. Chris O'Dowd an actor he is not, his performance here is cringe-worthy, a sad attempt to add some comedy and levity to a film that didn't need it. Don't get me wrong, I've liked O'Dowd in some comedic roles but Calvary and now this proves that he simply cannot do any heavy lifting and is incapable of delivering a line of dialogue in a convincing manner. The rest of the cast range from fine to forgettable but no one really makes much out of the one-note characters.

It's hard to **** on The Cloverfield Paradox, it's not bad in any way bar the whole tacked on monsters, it's just that as a film it's safe and familiar. Much like A Quiet Place, you can guess every twist 15 minutes before the film springs it.

What is a crock of **** is that truly god awful final shot, The Cloverfield Paradox ends on one of the most inexplicably dumb moments in cinema history. It's the kind of truly terrible moment that makes me wish that Abrams would do the decent thing and take the franchise outside and put it out of is misery or at least stop taking perfectly decent middle of the road fare and trying to make it fit some franchise that no one cares about.

Taking Lives - Why, why does this exist. Taking Lives is a decent setup squandered on a by the numbers Hollywood serial killer thriller that is so dumb that it makes my head hurt. It's a film which would never work now based on the ludicrous setup and while a game cast tries their best they're underserved by a poor script that's pretty much Criminal Minds by the numbers.

Mountaintop Motel Massacre - Regional horror of the 80s kind, cheap and cheerful but with an abundance of good performances, an evocative and haunting location and a couple of decent gore moments. It's pretty formulaic fare and the final moments feel a little out of left field but all in all Mountaintop Motel Massacre is a fine genre entry with a demented sense of unease.