December 31, 2013

The Worst Horror Movies of 2013

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2013 gave us some pretty awful Horror flicks to digest, there's no debating that. Most of the bad ones won't come anywhere near your average Worst Of 2013 list though, mainly because there seems to be no end to the amount of Direct-to-Video garbage that is released every year, especially since anyone with a camera phone can make a Found Footage flick and upload it to YouTube these days.

The movies that did make our list were of a higher profile for the most part, although we did include a few lo-budget DTV flicks because they deserved to feel our true wrath.

So here are our Worst Horror Movies of 2013, and a few Honorable Mentions that didn't quite make the top of the list. Remember to keep in mind that while taste is surely subjective, our disdain for the following films comes from an absolutely objective place.

Enjoy. (Not the movies, but our scathing indictments of them!)

*For in-depth reasoning behind our choices, be sure to check out our original reviews of them, via the handy link provided.

The Lords of Salem
We had a chance to see Rob Zombie's latest offering again, months after we wrote our initial review of it, and it's safe to say that we liked it even less the second time. Zombie has so much talent and potential as a director, Horror or otherwise, that it's baffling to us that the majority of his movies are so incoherent and haphazard. He definitely needs to stop writing his own scripts, or at the very least, kick his crazy ideas to a solid writer who can make better movie sense of them than he can. LOS was just painful for us to endure, and it made us laugh (at it) even more than it made us scream.

Our Review of Lords of Salem.
 
Dracula 3D
It's hard to articulate just how bad this movie truly is; we imagine that MST3K would have a field day with this one, because it's so absolutely ripe for the lampooning. Dario Argento is a living legend, and rightly so, but his take on the Dracula tale is an extremely poor one. Maybe the worst ever committed to film. If you don't laugh heartily at the praying mantis scene, you may have actually passed away during the movie. Dracula 3D is an embarrassment on nearly every level, and it makes us sad to see one of the greatest Horror minds of all time fall to such a low. We love you, Dario, but you dun goofed this time.

 Our Review of Argento's Dracula 3D.

The Devil's Pass
This movie may as well have been called The Devil's Butthole for as shitty as it ended up being. What in the fuck happened to Renny Harlin's career? Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Long Kiss Goodnight; the guy made some excellent action flicks back in the 90's. How in the hell he ever ended up here at the helm of this ridiculous, shoddy Found Footage flick, we'll never know. The whole Time Travel thing was just goofy and confusing, and aside from the gorgeous locations that Harlin shot in, so was the entire movie.

 Our Review of The Devil's Pass.

The Purge
If only we could purge the memory of this shitty movie from our damaged little minds, the world would be a better place for us. The Purge was working with a great concept, and it's too bad that it mangled that concept all to hell. This movie ended up being more about cheesy Social Commentary that it was true Horror, which is a genuine shame because this one could have been creepy as hell. It blows my mind that this fuck-hole of a movie made close to $100 million Worldwide, because it was so, so very bad. At least we have The Purge 2 to not look forward too now, right? Right.

Our Review of The Purge.

Hidden in the Woods
Had this movie had any sort of rational plot to go along with the incessant barrage of randomly depraved and sickening things that it threw at us, we might have liked it more. We love movies like A Serbian Film, Antichrist, and Baby Blues, so it's not like disturbing material or heavy themes are an immediate turn off for us. With this one though, it's almost like there's nothing to it but 90 minutes worth of debased shock gags. It doesn't look good, what plot there is makes little sense, the acting is fairly poor for the most part, and it was a chore to sit through. If there was one movie in 2013 that we totally hated enduring, it was definitely this one. Hopefully Michael Biehn's upcoming remake of this joke will end up working much better.

Our Review of Hidden in the Woods.

The Last Exorcism Part 2
How something can be the "Last" of anything more than once, I'm not quite sure, but this movie sure as hell is The Last Exorcism... for the 2nd time! Maybe the first movie should have just been called The Next to Last Exorcism, or even The Penultimate Exorcism, then this one could have just been The Last Exorcism, and everything would have been fine...

Anywho, this movie is nowhere as good as the first one, and that's saying a lot. We really liked The Last Exorcism, despite its flaws, but this sequel seems to be made up of only flaws. This movie was nothing more than a string of tired gags played out over a stale story, with a ton of jump scares thrown in for good measure. By the time we got to the scene where (Whoa-oh, Black Betty) Abalam tried to make sweet love to Nell, we were finished. Just a poor effort that should have been far better than it was.

Our Review of The Last Exorcism Part 2.

Shiver
We didn't review Shiver back in October because it was the last of four "new" Danielle Harris movies that we had watched in a row, and they were all so bad (save for the enjoyable Hatchet III), that we felt as if we were picking on her, which we weren't at all. Shiver is an awful movie, and a complete waste of the talents of both Danielle Harris, and the usually great John Jarratt (Wolf Creek.) It's just so shoddy on every level, that even Danielle Harris' best effort did nothing to make it suck less. Whether the horrendous dialogue, the bad CGI, or the fact that John Jarratt seemed to magically appear wherever he needed to be, at precisely the right time, this movie had us groaning from start to finish.

We did not review Shiver

Evidence
Want a bland movie about some Cops attempting to solve a brutal Mass Murder by sifting through a bunch of Found Footage (while mean-mugging) for 90 minutes? Then Evidence is your movie! Don't make the mistake of thinking that there's a good payoff waiting for you at the end though, because there isn't. Stephen Moyer and Radha Mitchell give it their best go, but they do little to help the poor story, and its lame, predictable, and laughable twists and reveals.This may have been a decent effort as a TV Movie of the Week back in 1984, but here in 2013, it's more like the failure of the moment.

 Our Review of Evidence.
 
Hallows' Eve
We feel bad ripping on another Danielle Harris movie in our Worst Of list, but what can we do? This movie was such an ill-conceived and poorly executed effort, that we're not even sure how Danielle Harris ended up starring in it to begin with, so it can't be her fault... can it? If anything, this movie made us laugh in spite of itself, although we're pretty sure that we weren't meant to laugh at what we did. There was a movie that was released around the same time as this one called All Hallows' Eve, and Hallows' Eve was far worse than that one was, which is really saying something. Chew on that comment for a while, and then avoid them both.

 Our Review of Hallows' Eve.
 
Hell Baby
We were so excited to see this, mainly because it had a wealth of our favorite Comedians starring in it. I mean how do you go wrong with the likes of Thomas Lennon, Rob Corrdry, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel and the like? Well, I don't know, but it did go wrong, and horribly so. Hell Baby is a Horror Comedy, that neither made us laugh nor feel much Horror. We didn't include this movie on our Worst Of list because it's hopelessly irredeemable, but rather because it was such a massive letdown to us that it still hurts to think about it.

Our Review of Hell Baby.

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Some of these came really close to making the top of the Worst Of list, and any of them easily could have. Garbage usually tends to be interchangeable, you see. *FYI: Not every flick below is "garbage." Technically.

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Contracted was a movie that irked the shit out of us to no end, and yet found its way on to many a Critics Best Of Lists this year. It had its good points, but for the most part is was so frustrating and implausible, that we just couldn't help but hate it.

Black Rock and Girls Against Boys were your typical Backwoods Survival/Rape-Revenge movies; both tried forcing their own special message of female empowerment down our throats, and both missed their intended marks completely. Black Rock was better than Girls Against Boys, but both of them were better than the shit pile that was I Spit on Your Grave 2. Oh, Rape-Revenge movies, when will you ever learn.

Come Out and Play was a weak remake of a great flick, and All Hallow's Eve was a bunch of YouTube shorts strung together in Anthology form.

A Haunted House was horrendous. Riddle wasn't much better.

Sharknado was Sharknado.

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Lord there were some shitty Genre flicks released this year, and you can take your pick as to which of them were the worst for you. For our money, we'll go with After Earth. Will Smith needs to stop starring in cheesy, shitty, bland, movies that underwhelm, and he also needs to stop putting his talentless kid in movies, because he sucks more than the movies do.

Also, Stephanie Meyer needs to stop writing her shitty Mary Sue-centric tween romance schlock too, because there's just no excuse for The Host.

So there went the movies that irked us the most in 2013. We heartily recommend that you avoid them all if you haven't had the misfortune of seeing them already, because life is short and don't waste your precious time on this tripe.. or something.

The Best Movies of 2013 are up next. That list will hurt less, we promise.

December 30, 2013

The Middlin's of 2013

The middle of the road. The average. The could have been greats. The nearly tragic. These fair to middlin’ movies entertained us in some ways, while letting us down in others.

They simply were neither The Best nor The Worst of the year.

I'm sure that some of the movies on this list will cause people to throw cyber rocks at us, because many people praised them to no end, and included them amongst their best of the year. All we can say to that is, get over it.

You either can click on the pictures of the movies that we reviewed for a more in-depth look at our thoughts on them, or head below for our brief comments.

Either way, here are The Middlin's of 2013.

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Let's start with the big 2. You're Next and V/H/S/2 seem like they're on just about Everybody's "Best Of" lists this year, but not ours though, because we're rebels! You can click on the reviews to see our in-depth thoughts, but basically both films just underwhelmed us. You're Next was solid, but but too sloppy for us to truly love. V/H/S/2 had one great segment (Safe Haven, which was truly brilliant), but the rest of them did little for us. They're solid enough, just not Best Of material for us.

Curse of Chucky and Warm Bodies were pretty popular with most Horror Critics and Fans this year too, and we found them to be fun flicks, though we didn't really love them as much as most seemed to. Again, both are solid, enjoyable efforts.

Haunter could easily be an Honorable Mention on our Best Of list, as it was a pretty solid little flick. The same goes for Crawlspace and John Dies at the End. Magic, Magic and Wither had their moments too.

Many, many people in the Horror Community cried foul on Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Texas Chainsaw 3D, to which we say poppycock! Fine, they may have been cheesy, not so great movies, but we had a ton of fun with them anyhow. Maybe they aren't so great, but they're enjoyable enough to not be amongst The Worst of the Year for us either.

As for the Middlin's that we didn't review, most of them were simply average fare. Carrie was good, but we were interrupted a few times at the Theater, so it probably didn't have our full attention. We'll be giving that one another look once it hits Blu-ray.

Finally, we have +1; the movie that we wanted to love, but just couldn't because it felt so jumbled and confused.

As for the rest of The Middlin's, you'll just have to click through to our Reviews to see what we thought about them. Ha!

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We see a lot of non-Horror flicks around here, mainly because Action, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Thrillers and the like are all pretty much in our wheelhouse anyhow, you know? We love straight-up Dramas and Comedies too, but if we stretched our coverage to those Genres, we'd have to be The Movie Club.

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Elysium was pretty fun, as was Jack the Giant Killer Slayer. Neither burned up the Box Office, but we had fun with both.

Iron Man 3 disappointed the hell out of us, but there was enough good stuff packed into its framework that we mostly enjoyed most of it. Kinda. The Mandarin thing really killed the whole movie for us though. We haven't picked it up on Blu-ray yet, and that about says it all.

Machete Kills is a pretty bad movie, but we ate it up despite its many flaws. Riddick was good, but it should have been far better than it was. We really enjoyed them both for what they were, though they were far more disappointing than we thought they'd end up being. Double bummer.

Oblivion was decent, though rather bland at times. Ditto Star Trek: Into Darkness; it just didn't wow us like the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie did. Then again, I have never been much of a Trekkie. Both were worth a watch though.

We liked Trance, as we're definitely big Danny Boyle fans. As much as we love Edgar Wright and his films, The World's End just didn't do it for us. It had its moments, but we found it ultimately forgettable. Both movies were passable, yet unremarkable for us.

If nothing else, these movies were all pretty fantastic, on a technical level.

So those were the movies of 2013 that neither fully inspired nor completely revolted us. They're all worth a look, and in fact, some of them are pretty good. Just know that there were far better (and far worse) movies to be had in 2013.

We'll be getting to those post-haste. (That means very quick, in fancy speak!)