October 27, 2009

The 31 Days of Horror- #5


The Hidden Gem:
 
The Master says: Though not the scariest movie I've ever seen (as it's been hyped), Paranormal Activity definitely creeped me out, made me uneasy, and made me jump enough times to walk out of the Theater with a smile on my face. Love it or hate it, you have to give a movie credit for doing what most multi-million dollar Horror films can't seem to manage; scare the crap out of the audience... and they spent less than 20,000 to do it. Magic? No. Try atmosphere and minimalism, and maybe characters that remind us either of ourselves or someone we know on some level. It's all very familiar, and it's so subtle that it's not too far fetched to think that this could actually happen to us. It's nice to see a solid little movie beat the hell out of another tepid Saw sequel at the Box Office for the Halloween dollar, I just hope they don't turn this one into a multi-sequel franchise too...


The Train Wreck:
 
The Master says: To have seen this horrible film adaptation of a pretty fun video game is akin to having seen your father making love to the turkey the night before Thanksgiving; they're both thoroughly cringe-inducing, unsanitary, clumsy, ridiculous, and you will never, ever, never get that image out of your head. Ever.

Aside from the shoddy acting, script, and Uwe Boll's craptacular direction, this movie fails at trying to be like an actual video game. Complete with crazy bullet-time action shots, dumb-ass kids that suddenly become deadly Zombie-killing mercenaries out of nowhere, Zombies that die from machete wounds, Zombies that are defeated by lame wire-fu Karate moves, and inter-cut with actual scenes from the video game itself, it's really insane how horribly horrible this horrible movie is.

In April 2008, Uwe Boll promised to retire if an online petition gained 1 million signatures asking him to do so. I pray to every God or deity that exists, please make this happen. I swear that if he retires, I'll stop watching clown porn, and let the kittens out of the "Hamper." I swear.



5 comments :

  1. Can't really credit Paranormal Activity for anything other than running an extremely effective hype campaign. The movie didn't scare me at all; not once. The only horrifying thing was wondering whether the tedium, atrocious acting/dialogue, and lame plot devices would ever end. It made me appreciate genuinely creepy "handycam" movies like the original Blair Witch and Noroi even more.

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  2. I blame YOU for making me watch this Seinfeld version of handy cam horror: a movie about nothing! Watching two middle class idiots acting all 2.0 for one hour and a half is NOT scary. I was actually relieved when the movie ended and I didn't have to hear the hysterical screaming and bitching around.
    This is like Shining (which bored the hell out of me, too) without anything cool in it.

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  3. PA was enjoyable, not scary but creepy at times.

    I don't understand why folks go on about Blair Witch - I mean is was just pathetically bad.

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  4. Blair Witch was effective on a minimalist level. I didn't think it was the best thing ever, but at the time it was boldly different from anything else we'd seen, and effective.

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