Fertile Ground (2011)

"Uninteresting Ground..."

Is the After Dark Horrorfest losing its bite? Asking that implies that it ever had a grip to begin with, but after last years' solid line up, we had hope for the future... Of this years entries that we've seen so far, we really liked Prowl, and we really didn't like Husk. Husk played like a Sci-Fi Channel movie for the most part, and just did nothing for us.

Now that we've seen Fertile Ground, we can honestly say that it plays like a like a Lifetime movie of a week, just with boobs and a little bit of blood. It also did nothing for us.

Fertile Ground made us sad too, Leisha.
Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate's ancestral home in New Hampshire. There, isolated and haunted by inexplicable noises and horrifying visions, Emily learns she's pregnant while Nate is possessed by the homicidal spirit of his forbearers. In a house haunted by past victims, Emily learns that she's the latest target in a murderous tradition.

It's a nice little film, it really is. It's well made, stars the sexy Leisha Hailey, and has a decent story... but as a horror movie, it's just too bland and uneventful. I mean the movie opens up with a shot of Leisha Hailey -and her amazingly amazing boobs- buck naked and rubbing herself in front of a mirror... how do you go wrong with that? Show her having a bloody miscarriage all over the floor, that's how. That will take the wind out of any sail.

Udderly beautiful.
Add to that some old genre stand by's such as:
Troubled couple moves to country to make a "fresh start."
The old home the move into has a "mysterious" and "troubled" past.
Odd things begin to happen, which all point to "creepiness."
Our heroine has odd dreams which all point to "creepiness."
Hubby slowly loses his mind and becomes increasingly mean and evil.
*don't forget the jump scares.

There's nothing original at all here, and worse than that is the fact that what is there isn't even compelling to watch. This honestly could be a movie on the Hallmark Channel (nudity aside), for all of it's horror, or even suspense.

Leisha Hailey really does give it a good go with her role, but she's working with very little here. Same with Gale Harold. Nice try, you two. We dig you.

D Fertile Ground isn't atrocious, it's just nothing worth making an effort to see. Catch it when it hits cable if you find yourself bored one afternoon, but other than that, give it a pass.

Unless you like Lifetime movies. Then, watch it.


Word.

Quick Review- Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

"At least they didn't remake [REC2}..."

I guess the best thing we can say about Quarantine 2:Terminal is that at least it isn't a direct remake of [REC2]. The producers went their own way with the material, and for that they get kudos. That's not to say that there's nothing else good about Q2, because it wasn't all that bad.

Beginning sometime directly after the events of Quarantine, Q2 is the story of a late night flight and a little stowaway virus that wreaks havoc on the passengers. I guess you could technically say the virus is airborne at this point, right? Heh. Yeah.

It appears that she does not appreciate our humor. Bah.
The plane is nearly empty save for a fat guy who needs two seats, a tough as nails kid who is tough enough to fly all by himself, an annoying young couple in love, some hot stewardesses, and a sweet as pie scientist, who just so happens to have a cage full of hamsters with him... now guess which one is responsible for dooming them all with the virus? If you said the fat guy, you're wrong. Sure, fatties are to blame for most pandemics, and his burly ass does get sick here first, but for me it's the hamsters. They're filthy little creatures, and I don't trust them. I never have.

They're always watching. Always.
After team hungry goes on his infected rampage up and down the aisle way, they land at the closest airport, and hide in the baggage area until help arrives. Little do they know that when help arrives, they will be...QUARANTINED (part 2)! Much as you'd expect, everyone spends the rest of the movie running around in a panic, glaring at each other suspiciously, and dying.

...and injecting shit into their eyes.
Q2 was not as good as Q1, which was certainly no [REC], which it was a direct remake of. What in the hell does that even mean? Well at its essence, it means stick with [REC] and [REC2], which are much better films. To a lesser extent, it means that Quarantine 2 wasn't bad, but it was no Quarantine. which was no [REC]... eh, you get the point.

Even after infection, she still seems less than amused at our attempts at humor. Who so serious, huh?
Q2 didn't have the same feel as its predecessor did, and that's due mainly to the fact that the shaky POV camera style of the first movie (as well as the [REC] films) was absent. Looking like a "regular" movie made it feel less regurgitated in a way, although the jarring POV style does bring with it a certain amount of tension, and a fair amount of scares. It wasn't the biggest deal in the world, it was just different. I'm analyzing this movie way too much.

For some reason, this scene felt very Fulci-esque to us.

The Master Says- C In all fairness, Q2 is about as good as a direct to DVD movie can hope to be these days, though it does have its faults. It's fairly predictable, it's not all that creepy, though it has moments of decent tension throughout, and the acting is less than stellar. Still, it's a decent direct to DVD sequel, and even has a decent ending. If you're down with the whole infected/zombie sub-genre, then by all means check this one out. You might just have fun with it.

Final Thoughts- She's in this. Meow.

The Shrine (2011)

"Who knew Poland could be creepy?"

*On VOD now, via IFC Midnight.
THE SHRINE
Sub-Genre- Supernatural
Directed by- Jon Knautz

Cast Members of Note- Aaron "The Other" Ashmore, Cindy Sampson, Meghan Heffern, and a bunch of people pretending to be Polish.

What's it About?- The Shrine is yet another story about an over ambitious woman getting herself and her friends in a load of creepy trouble (e.g. The Tunnel, Blair Witch, etc...) Carmen is a journalist who is tired of writing stories about bees. When her boss sends her on a trip to write yet another scathing expose' on bees, she instead takes off for Poland, to search for a missing backpacker. Of course she can't just go alone, so she brings along her trusty intern sidekick and her photographer boyfriend.


"Come on guys, nothing could possibly go wrong if we go down here!"
The missing backpacker was last seen near a creepy little town in the remote countryside of rural Poland (which looks a lot like Canada), and so Carmen decides to snoop around. It's not long before they meet a creepy kid and her blood covered dad, who shoo them off with angry Polish curses. Carmen has to get her story though, so she refuses to leave well enough alone, and begins snooping even more. When the investigative trio finds an odd swirl of fog in the middle of the woods, they figure, "hey, let's see what's in the middle of this!" It turns out to be a great idea.


Completely normal. Completely natural. Nothing odd about this at all.

And what exactly is in the thick depths of the absolutely unnatural fog? A statue of a demon, that's what. A creepy f'ing statue that bleeds. It's interesting to note that the statue bears a certain similarity to another creepy demon statue we've all come to know and love... what was it called... oh yeah, Pazuzu!


"Wait a minute... you... you want a hug?"
So now they have angry Polish villagers, a statue, a creepy kid and a haunted fog bank after them, which pretty much means they're screwed. What is going on in this crazy Polish town? What was with that fog? Why is there always a creepy little kid*? Far be it from me to spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that when the answers are revealed, they find out what happened to the missing backpacker. *because kids are creepy, that's why.


Yeah. Shit get's crazy, and this is where we end up.
The Good- I can hardly believe that this movie was made by the same people responsible for Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. That movie was one of our Do Not Want's last year if I recall it right, and The Shrine is something we very much want. So to recap, Jack Brooks sucked, this didn't. Now that we've cleared that up...

Aside from our Downright Horrendous gripe (below), The Shrine was enjoyable from start to finish, although the first half was a lot slower that the latter half. It wasn't "bad slow", but it's only fair to note that the set-up/build-up took a little while. Once the movie kicked into high gear though, it was engrossing and even nail biting at times. Best of all, it was creepy; Jon Knautz did what I'm always begging horror directors to do, and that's use subtlety to scare me, not jump scares and music cues. His approach worked very well. If Knautz keeps this kind of thing up, he might just be one of the genre's most important directors in a few years.


Subtlety.
The look, the feel, the acting; all solid. It's just a great story. The twists and turns that the movie takes were solid and not cringe inducing (for a change), and the ending was actually an ending. No cliffhangers. No lame ambiguity. It came to a climax, had a bit of resolution, and it ended. That was nice for a change.

The Bad- Where are the subtitles? I need to know what they're saying!

The Downright Horrendous- For the love of Christ, here are another bunch of characters that make the worst decisions in the world. Boss tells you to go investigate bees in Kansas? Nah, go to Poland to search for a missing backpacker. Get caught poking around in the Polish forest by angry locals that tell you to leave? Turn the car around and keep snooping. See an unearthly looking fog? Explore it. And when the creepy kid takes you to an underground bunker in the forest, by all means, trust her. Find coffins in the bunker? Don't run like hell and enjoy the rest of your life, open them. See what's inside! Bah!

The Gory- The Shrine is no slouch when it comes to the bloody bits. There's some nasty eye violence, sacrifice, a mass murder home invasion... not overboard, but definitely sufficient.

The Naked- We get a tiny bit of side boob and a few shots of naked and wet girls, though the good bits are all covered up.


Tits or GTFO!
What did we learn?- Don't fuck with Polish priests. Also, it's always the woman's fault.

The Master Says- A- This movie surprised the hell out of us and made us love it. Aside from the all too common "characters doing the dumbest things at the worst possible times" messiness, there wasn't much to not like about The Shrine; it looks good, it's creepy, the actors nail it, and and the ending was pretty awesome. In the U.S., if you have Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Cablevision or Bright House, it's on VOD now, and you should make this one your next rental

Final Thoughts- She's in this.

We would go to Zellwood with Sara Underwood any day...

We're not sure what this movie is actually about -it's billed as a zombie movie, but from the trailer, it looks more like a backwoods stalk-and-slash- but the important thing to note here is that it stars Playboy Playmate/G4 Sexpot, Sara Underwood.

Two young couples take one last relaxing trip to the country before moving to different cities. One final weekend getaway with good friends.
Secrets revealed around the campfire bring out vengeful jealousies as the weekend takes a deadly and unexpected twist with an airboat captain and his two daughters caught in the middle.

Again, it stars Sara Underwood. And zombies. We think.

The Best of 2011, so far...

Yes, we know it's too early for lists, but this one is short and informal.

2011 has reached its halfway point, and we as horror fans have much to be thankful for. We aren't totally sure which genre flicks are the best of the year yet (there are plenty of other goodies that we've seen), but so far, we have a few that stand out in our minds when we think "best of."

So click the pics below to check out our reviews of these cool flicks, and give them a chance to win your hearts over too. And don't yell at us for excluding your favorites. This is only a quick sampling, not any sort of definitive list.

The Worst of 2011, so far...

The following movies are the creative paper cuts that irk us, the celluloid splinters that we can't seem to dig out of our thumbs, the cinematic knives in our collective backs. 2011 has given us some plain old bad movies. A movie can be bad for many reasons, and the ones we've listed below all have their own, but bad is bad and these are the genre flicks that rubbed us the wrong way and made us rage. They all went awry in one way or another (or in the case of some, many ways.)

Click the pics for our reviews, where we make with the gory details... all except for Dylan Dog.

We didn't review Dylan Dog, mainly because it was so bland and boring that we had no motivation to type a word about it. It also gets hard to keep writing reviews for bad movie after bad movie, in a genre that seems so full of them. We even started doing "5 things we liked about..." posts to go along with the bad movies, just to be fair. See how benevolent we are?

So, no Dylan Dog: Dead of Night review. Just trust us, we promise it wasn't very good.

Quickie- Bloodlust Zombies (2011)

*click the pic for the movie's IMDB link
The only thing worse than sitting through this movie is sitting through this movie and then having to talk about it. As a horror film it's a wreck. As a movie of any kind, it's a wreck. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that it was supposed to be funny as well, but if it was, they missed the mark in that aspect too.

The only reason we gave it a chance was because it stars porn whore supreme, Alexis Texas; seeing her on the cover, all bloody with an axe, made us think that this could just manage to be a bloody good time with some bonus T&A thrown in for good measure... It's sad for us to even admit that. Shameful even. Well, there was some T&A, but even it couldn't save this shoddy mess. And in all honesty, what nudity there was wasn't all that great.

Stick to porn hun, or at least get yourself in some better mainstream flicks.
Truth be told, this movie felt like the average porno flick, sans the sex. The story,acting, script, and execution of it all was just porn-like, and that's saying something. In porn flicks, the cheesy stuff is there to give the sex scenes a "story." Here, it is the story, and standing alone it just hurts. The acting is horrendous. The plot, while vaguely interesting, is executed poorly. The funny bits were not funny.

We're always down for a cheesy, low budget slasher flick, or a nonsensical yet fun zombie flick, but this one was just slow, tedious, and when it did finally get to the "good" parts, it fell flat on its face. You want to make it cheap and easy, fine. If you do though, at least make it as good as you possibly can.

Good boy, Rex. We don't want it either.

5 good things about Bloodlust Zombies...

Since there are so many movies that we poo-poo after enduring (and for good reason), we thought it fair to come up with at least 5 things that were good or decent from the DO NOT WANT'S of the world. We will use pictures to illustrate said things.

So here are 5 things about Bloodlust Zombies that we liked (or at least didn't totally hate): Alexis Texas in bloody lingerie, the cats, the free flowing blood and gore, dat ass, the poster.

The Anniversary at Shallow Creek (2011)

"Shallow is an apt word to describe this slasher flick..."
*click the pic for the movie's IMDB link
The movie opens with some retarded twit dancing around in her underwear, which pisses me off because how am I supposed to get a non blurry shot of her ass if she keeps moving? When her gimpy boyfriend shows up, tries to get in her pants, she says "we've got all night!" a few times, and shines him on. Turns out they don't have all night, because he takes one in the head and she mercifully gets stabbed to death. Mercifully for us, I mean. And yes, I'm bitter about the whole blurry ass-shot thing.

Hold still, dummy!
For the next 40 minutes, we're treated to a bunch of inane characters spouting inane dialogue while doing inane things. The plot doesn't matter, it only serves to get a group of morons to a secluded cabin in the middle of BFE so that they can be picked off one by one. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, and in this movie it isn't totally bad. The problem is that so much nothing happens before something actually happens, that when something does finally happen, we're left wishing something else would have happened. I hope you followed all of that. I got lost after the 3rd "happen" myself.

Nah, don't get naked.... this is f'ing Shakespeare we're doing here, right?
Shallow Creek definitely follows the slasher movie blueprint, but it varies a bit, mainly in the fact that the killer uses a sniper rifle for many of his kills. To us it was both odd and interesting; many of the movies best kills were via gun, but it made the whole thing feel less creepy. At least the whole gun thing made for a few bloody good moments.

You've got the right idea babe, but that blood totally kills the mood.
There's no way you don't figure out what's going on in this movie before too long either. There's a twist or two that occur that are kinda obvious, although when they happen they aren't played in an overtly dramatic fashion,as most twists tend to be. They just happen, so I'll give some props for that. I also have to give the movie this; the way the killer creeped around was kinda cool. Some of the parts in the house were creepy, and there were very few jump scares. Kudos.

Ooh creepy. Now kill her, she's annoying.
This is another one of those movies where you really could care less about the characters or what happens to them, and maybe that's because the acting wasn't so great (it wasn't horrible either.) Maybe the story wasn't so great either. Or the dialogue. Alright, so not much about the movie was great. The worst part of all? The ending. Endings, actually.

Yeah, it's not even close to over yet.
As if the shaky, 20 minute shot of our final girl running down a dirt road wasn't ending enough, there's a sequence after that which felt really cheesy. Without spoiling, it came down to a lot of "Explain-y" dialogue and and equal amount of overacting. It really killed any tension that the movie had managed to build up to that point, which wasn't a ton to begin with. The last shot of the movie was the worst of all. I get what they were going for, but it felt more kitschy than forboding.

For a minute there, we thought this horse was eying up that chick for some crazy horse-rape... but neigh.

The Master Says- D You could see that the filmmakers put a lot of heart into this movie, but it's all rather flat despite their best efforts. There's some tension to be had in places, some interesting ideas too, but with so little gore, failing to utilize the hot chicks for some gratuitous boob-age, and so many slasher cliche's abound, there's not much here to love, or recommend. If you aren't too picky, you may have fun with it. We are very picky, so, no fun for us.

Final Thoughts- Not only is she a cutie-puss, but Brianna Lee Johnson also produces movies. Who knew?