Random Streaming MOTW Review: The Amityville Legacy (2016)

"Clocking in at a whopping 66 minutes, this movie was about 80 minutes too long."

Every week, we sit down, surf through the Netflix and On Demands of the world, find ourselves a random, B-Grade Horror flick that we've never seen, and watch it. Sometimes we're surprised with how well they turn out, and sometimes they're just as bad as we expect them to be. 

Either way, it makes for a good time. This is one of those films.

You could argue that after the first one, there were no good movies in the Amityville Series. The 2nd one had its creepy moments, the third one was a bit of cheesy-bad 80's kitsch, and the remake was solid enough for a glossy Hollywood money grab, but entries like Amityville Theater, Amityville Asylum, or The Amityville Haunting were just abysmal.

We came across The Amityville Legacy while browsing Amazon Prime for something cheesy to watch, and being that one of us is an absolute Amityville fanatic (yes, she even loves the really, really bad sequels), we had no choice but to give it a go.

All I can say after watching it is that it's honestly not even right that this movie has the name Amityville in its title.

40 years after a red-tinted flashback that shows the original DeFeo murders (or at least some guy walking from room to room in a red hallway, shooting a shotgun), we see a bunch people driving to an isolated farmhouse in Nebraska (?!?) to attend a family reunion. Or maybe it's Dad's birthday. I think it might be both.

Everyone gives Dad his gifts, one of which happens to be a cymbal-banging monkey toy, which came from the Amityville Garage Sale (movie coming soon, I'm sure), and is possessed.  Or cursed. Either way, once Dad gets his presents, he starts to act irritable and is visited by the ghost of his dead father who urges him to kill everyone, because, haunted monkey.

Nothing Amityville-related at all ensues. 

WHY.

I really try not to rip on small, micro-budget movies like this that someone obviously spent their weekends off from their real jobs making, because even the worst of movies take time, effort, and passion to make, but man, this was a bad one. We spent our time watching it, so we're allowed to rant.

• First off, aside from the fact that the there was a model of the Amityville house used in the flashback at the beginning, there is nothing about this movie that has anything to do with the Amityville story. A cursed monkey toy bought at a garage sale that came from the DeFeo house? Listen, if you are going to make a cheap movie, that's fine, but if that cheap movie has Amityville in its title, at least have it be set in the house, or directly related to the original story.
• Also, if you're going to make a Horror movie where someone loses their mind and kills everyone around them, maybe show the murders. Almost none of the deaths in this movie happen on-screen, and there's barely even any on-screen blood, which would have at least made the movie somewhat redeemable. Hell, squeeze some ketchup on someone and film them laying there playing dead. At least that would have been something.
• The acting in this movie is really bad, not that anything else about it is particularly good, but given that so much of this hour-long flick is nothing but talking, the lack of quality really stands out. And hurts. I'm pretty sure that someone in the crew got their Nana to star in this one. I really mean that.
• No violence, no nudity, bad actors working off of a bad script... what exactly is supposed to be the draw here? I'm not even trying to be an asshole about it, but what was the point?
• Without the 6-minute long credit crawl at the end, and it's a sloooow crawl, this movie would have been 57-minutes long. I guess that pretty much says it all.

"KILL THEM OFF-SCREEN!"

These Amityville sequels really need to stop, or at the very least, they need to get a metric shit-ton better.

SO ZORRO REALLY IS THE GAY BLADE. HUH.

Look, making a movie is a labor of love, especially when it comes to small, micro-budget flicks like this. I'm sure everyone tried real hard to do their best here, and I give them credit for that, but The Amityville Legacy has no connection to the original, isn't very well-made or acted at all, is devoid of Horror, and it just doesn't have much of a point.

Even for fans of bad movies, this one is a tough watch.

The Amityville Legacy is available now on VOD and streaming free via Amazon Prime.

The ladies of The Amityville Legacy.

Netflix Review: Mockingbird (2014)

We were originally going to pass on reviewing Mockingbird, because it was a really bad movie, and there wasn't going to be a lot that we could say about it that wouldn't seem like we were just bashing it to bash it, you know?

But then we saw a "review" of the movie on a "Horror Site" that praised how great and effective it was, ultimately giving the film a grade of 4 out of 5.

This review began with a disclaimer that basically said "Hey, we're friends with the people who made this movie, but that won't influence our review at all. We promise!" Right.


So at that point, we decided to go ahead and write our review, because it pisses us off when a big site, with a big audience, pimps the sub-par work of their buddies in such a blatantly shady manner. We understand that opinion is subjective, and that one man's masterpiece is another man's tragedy, but we're also objective enough to understand that bad is bad, no matter if we enjoy something or not.

If you want to skip our spoiler-filled review of Mockingbird, there's only a few things that you really need to know about the movie anyhow:

• It had promise, but it was awful.
• Blumhouse has had this one sitting on the shelf since 2012 because it's so awful.
• Bryan Bertino is a much better writer/director than this movie suggests.

That's basically the crux of it. If you'd like to know why we found Mockingbird to be so awful, then by all means, read on. Be aware this review is 100% spoiler-filled, and that reading on will give just about everything away.

Set in 1995, Mockingbird is the story of a group of people drawn into a sinister game by an unknown creep of some sort... who might just be Jigsaw's cousin or something, because he totally uses the "I want to play a game" line with no shame.

You have a husband and wife who are getting ready to enjoy some quality alone time, sans kids; a single woman who lives alone and seems depressed about something; and what may be the biggest loser on the planet, who is desperate for friends, money, and is really annoying in general. So, the perfect cast of victims.

"YOU WANNA FILM WHAT AFTER THE KIDS LEAVE?"

Each of them receives red gift boxes on their doorstep, containing a camera inside. Convinced that they've won some sort of contest that they signed up for, they're all ecstatic until they learn that whoever gave them the cameras has something dark and twisted in mind for them; they all have to film everything going on around them, or else they die! Well, one of them has to dress up like a clown, and run around town doing all sorts of silly errands (that still tie into the plot), but he has to film everything too, so that still counts.

The couple and the woman find themselves trapped in their homes, being toyed with, and left completely at the mercy of their mysterious tormentors (there has to be more than one tormentor, right? Different locations and all?) From here on out it's a battle of wills not only between killer and victim, but between us and our remote controls... because in hindsight, we should have just had the good sense to push STOP, and call it a night.

RANDOM PRESENT ON YOUR DOORSTEP AT NIGHT? SEEMS LEGIT.

Mockingbird has been finished since 2012, but is just seeing release now, in October of 2014. Ib most cases when a movie sits on the shelf for a year or more, it's because it's bad, and the companies behind them know it. In the review from the other that I mentioned earlier, it was said that everyone at Blumhouse was proud of the film, and that its long delay was only because they were looking for the right release date.

For two years.

That being said, we were legitimately excited to see Mockingbird, for two reasons: One, because we LOVED director Bryan Bertino's 2008 home invasion classic, The Strangers (our review HERE); and two, because Blumhouse Productions has put out some great movies over the past few years, and their track record gives us confidence in most of the projects that they choose to support.

Mockingbird opens well enough, with an extremely tense scene that made us think "holy shit, this movie is going to be crazy!" As many Found Footage/First Person/POV films do though, Mockingbird descends into a confusing mixture of implausible plot devices, and genuinely effective tension. The mechanics of this movie are the real issue here; they're frustrating, and they don't really work all that well, and it's really hard to "feel" a movie when so much of what happens during its running time just rings false.

To be fair, as messy as the movie ended up becoming, we have to admit that the tension was pretty high at times during this one.

THE BEST PART OF THE MOVIE.

I guess my biggest problem with Mockingbird is the stupidity of its script, and the even deeper stupidity of its characters.

The main plot device that allows this movie to exist is that people randomly receive video cameras, and they're told to keep filming everything or they die. Fine. After a while though, they figure out that the killers can see everything that they're doing, because there are transmitters in the cameras, which is the first thing we took issue with...

• Why not put the camera in a closet or another room or something, so that they can't see what you're doing/planning?
• Why not just smash the camera?
• Why not drop the camera, and run from your house into the night until you get somewhere safe?

The character's frustrating inability to do anything remotely intelligent to change their situations is one thing, but are you telling me that none of their neighbors can hear screams, yelling, glass breaking, or the fucking loudspeaker that's playing creepy, repetitive messages from outside in the middle of the yard?
 

ONE OF THEM IS A MURDERING SOCIOPATH, THE OTHER, A LOSER.

And the ending... we pretty much figured that they'd all be lured to the 1805 Mockingbird address once the couple got the card at the beginning, and that somehow they'd all be duped into killing each other, or at least they'd try to... but a house full of balloons? Watching them all wading through an endless, congestive sea of balloons (that filled every inch of space from floor to ceiling) was almost comical.

And once the balloons parted and they were finally in the same room together, and they shot each other, I couldn't help but think "these people are great shots." Only two people had guns, and as inexpert, terrified, and confused as they were, both of them managed to shoot two people dead in a manner of seconds?

Come on.

STAB DOWN, KID. STAB DOWN.

All of the above sloppiness could have been forgiven to an extent, had it not been for the atrocious ending.

The reveal that it was a bunch of 12-year-old kids behind the elaborate "game" was just downright silly, and even more so insulting. How in the world were they able to orchestrate the terrorizing three separate households full of people, and then all make it to the place of the final showdown, to be able to witness them killing each other?

I mean, the couple's kids left, and went to a bowling alley where it's revealed that these other killer kids were all hanging out, taking pictures with the clown; then somehow these killer kids split up, went to the couple's and woman's homes, and began their terrorizing of them; and then once the victims are told that they have 10 minutes to get to the Mockingbird address, these kids all somehow get there before them, so that they can be laying in wait for them?

How do those logistics even begin to make sense?

• If this was set in 1995, how could the kids afford to pull this off? Back then, do you know how much all of those cameras, and the technology to wirelessly monitor them, would cost? How could children afford that?
• Even if they could somehow afford it, how in the world would they know how to do such things?
• And how were the kids monitoring the transmitters in the cameras?
• How did they even place them in the cameras to begin with?
• Even if they knew how to do such things, how did they all get to and from different residences, a bowling alley, and back to the house at the end? None of them can drive!
• And how did the camera batteries last so long?
• And how did they break into these peoples homes in the middle of the night, and video tape them while sleeping? Were they all emancipated, and had no guardians?
• And where did they get all of those balloons? Literally, it must have been 1000+ balloons? Who paid for those? More importantly, who blew them up? WHO BLEW THEM UP!

NO WAY IN HELL could  bunch of children be able to pull off this type of elaborate, tech-savvy "game" in this day and age, let alone in 1995. The fact of the matter is that they most likely wouldn't have even been able to conceive of such a thing.

HOW? HOW ARE YOU ACTUALLY WATCHING THEM?

There's just so, so much about this movie that made absolutely no sense whatsoever, that we're honestly not sure what in the hell happened.

We can tell you one thing though: Mockingbird should have never made it out of the scripting stage.

PRETENDING TO BE A BABY WILL NOT SAVE YOUR LIFE.

The fact that the same guy who wrote and directed The Strangers, wrote and directed this mess of a movie, perplexes the living shit out of us. Maybe it sounded great on paper, but in execution, Mockingbird is a tragedy. We're going to forget this movie ever happened and just wait for Bryan Bertino's next effort, There Are Monsters, because honestly, he's better than this.

Mockingbird is available now on VOD, and is also streaming on Netflix.

It's always great to see Audrey Marie Anderson in something new. We've loved her ever since her days on The Unit.

 

(Import) DVD Review: 7500 (2014)

You know, I actually found myself kind of liking this movie right up until the back half, when it promptly shit the bed.

7500 was originally supposed to be released waaaay back in August of 2012. For some reason, it was delayed until April 2013. For some other reason, it was delayed again until October 2013. For yet another unknown reason, 7500 was delayed again until sometime in 2014.

It doesn't really matter what the specifics are, because when a movie is delayed that many times over the course of two years, it's because it sucks, and the people who own it, know it.

Some people will surely say that 7500 won't be released because of the recent real-world disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370, which would make sense due to the film's subject matter and similarities to that tragedy, but make no mistake; this movie has been shelved over and over again since 2012 because it's really bad.

This review is going to be Spoiler Heavy, because there's no way to avoid spoilers if we're going to discuss this movie in appropriate fashion.

Flight 7500 is en route from L.A. to Tokyo, with a lively cast of characters on board, all of whom have some serious issues; there's a vacationing couple who are only happy on the surface; a doucher thief; a married couple,one of whom is a snobby bitch; a creepy dude with a mysterious wooden box; a Goth chick who is overly-witty and not afraid of death; and two stewardesses, one of whom is a spineless lair, the other a whore.

THE WHORE IS IN RED.

After the plane experiences some turbulence, creepy box guy winds up vomiting blood, and dies. The plane carries on, and the guy's corpse is moved to the upstairs section of the plane, and covered with a blanket. Soon after, another incident occurs (in which the plane experiences a drop in cabin pressure, oxygen masks drop from their little compartments, and an eerie smoke fills the cabin), and everyone is even more freaked out.

BUT WHERE IS EVERYBODY?

Things go from bad to worse when creepy box guy's corpse goes missing, and everyone discovers a creepy and supposedly evil doll in his creepy box. From here on out, people begin to die at the hands of some off-camera monster or something, and by the time the end of the movie rolls around, you realize that the whole thing has been some sort of allegory about being at peace with how shitty of a person you are before you die. Yeah.

DON'T WORRY, MATE, NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW YOU WERE IN THIS MOVIE, BECAUSE IT WILL NEVER SEE A PROPER RELEASE.

7500 could have been a solid movie: it's got a great cast; an interesting premise involving a Shinigami Death Doll; and a competent director in Takashi Shimizu, who is no stranger to Horror films. Sadly, the script is so bad, and the movie was executed in such a haphazard and ineffective way, that there's really not much that could have saved it from it's own silliness.

I guess our biggest issue with 7500, is that we hate movies that kill their own mojo with a shitty ending, or a lame twist that negates everything that they've been selling you up until that point; in this case, it's the old "the characters are dead, but don't really understand that they're dead" gag that killed it for us.

THERE WERE SOME PRETTY CREEPY MOMENTS IN THE MOVIE, BUT NOT NEAR ENOUGH OF THEM.

It's obvious that the filmmakers tried to make a Supernatural movie here, and it is one, but when it turns out that the characters are already dead for most of the movie, the only Supernatural aspect of things lies in the fact that they were ghosts who weren't ready to let go and cross over? There was no evil force trying to kill anyone, and the whole Death Doll subplot felt like a ruse, because the movie is really about a visage of death "taking" the spirits of the already-dead to the "other side" once they're "ready" to go. 

When you sell me on a premise involving an otherworldly force of some sort killing off the passengers on a plane, don't you dare give me this "they were already dead, and everything that happened after that didn't really happen in the way that it seemed to happen" bullshit. Maybe with a solid script, a story like that could have been effective and worked the way that this one was envisioned to, but that's just wishful thinking on our part.

MARILYN MANSON'S CAMEO IN THIS MOVIE WAS COMPLETELY WASTED.

The cast really tried here, as most of them are all solid actors in their own right, but they had very little to work with. In fact, it was baffling how well they were doing their jobs in the confines of such a mess of a movie.

The mechanics of the movie weren't any better. The "scary" parts of 7500 were all poorly executed jump scares, and every time something "happened," all we got to see were the actors staring off-screen and screaming... and then that was it. There was no visceral payoff whatsoever.

About the last scene in the movie, we wrote this in our notes: "That legitimately had to be one of the worst, most nonsensical jump scares ever."

Ditto that basic sentiment for the movie in general, and you have yourself the perfect summary of 7500.

THEY LOOK BEWILDERED. AT LEAST WE WEREN'T ALONE IN THAT.

It's absolutely no surprise that this movie was repeatedly, and still is, delayed, because it's just plain bad. If you really, really want to see it, despite our warning, it's available on German Blu-ray & DVD, so you could import a copy for yourself... or you could just move on to something else that would actually entertain you more.

Like watching paint dry.

While the movie may have sucked, it is at least populated with some very pretty ladies who made it all a bit more bearable.

VOD Review: Leprechaun: Origins (2014)

I have to imagine that the only reason this movie exists is that the WWE Studios "brain trust" were sitting around one day, trying to figure out what kind of new, cheesy B-movie they could make a buck with, when somebody said "Hey, we've got a midget on the payroll, let's remake Leprechaun!"

Great idea, but too bad they didn't give Hornswoggle a cute little outfit and have him run around saying cheesy one-liners as he killed people though, because then maybe this sorry movie would have at least been somewhat watchable. 

Now, I've never been a big fan of the Leprechaun movies. They were campy fun for what they were, but by the time the series got to the point where the title Leprechaun was followed by such subtitles as "In Space" or "Back 2 Tha Hood," I was fine with never watching any of them ever again. I mean, how high does someone have to be to actually want to see the Leprechaun get all pissed off at Mack Daddy O'Nassas because he stole his hit record-making magical flute?

There's not enough drugs in the world.

Still, at least the Leprechaun flicks of old, for better or worse, were played for silly laughs, and never fancied themselves to be genuine quality Horror flicks.

So along comes WWE Studios with what they claim to be a "prequel" to the original franchise, even though it clearly is not; yes, the poster says "A Horror Icon is Reborn," but this movie contains no Horror Icon whatsoever, nor does it connect IN ANY WAY with the original franchise, and so that phrase is a lie, plain and simple.

What we do get with Origins, is a grunting, rubber-suited mongoloid that we're supposed to believe will somehow evolve into the wise-cracking, humanoid creature that Warwick Davis made so famous back in 1993. At least in some form or another.

Sadly, we got nothing of the sort.

The movie opens with a couple running for their lives from what we presume is WWE Wrestler Hornswoggle in a rubber suit. Since they're running through some tall grass, we can't actually see what's chasing them, but we sure do know it's scary. Why we can't see Hornswoggle dragging both of them to their deaths, even though the grass isn't really all that tall, we have no idea.

I know this is a WWE film, but  come on, man.

Soon thereafter, we get a group of four young American tourists who are looking to discover the wonders of Ireland, when it's suggested to them by some locals in a tavern that there's a special place for them to see... none of that really matters though. Point is, the locals are up to no good and they lock the kids in a house, so as to make some sort of sacrifice for Hornswoggle.

Oh, just drink it.

When Hornswoggle shows up in the middle of the night, looking for blood, he chases the kids around, claws at them, and chases them around some more. Luckily they find an ancient book in a basement that explains the plot to them, and lets them know that the WWE personality chasing after them is supposed to be a Leprechaun. Then there's some more running, more clawing, some growling, and an ending that made us want to suplex our TV.

"Wharrgarbl!"

There's not much good here to report, I'm afraid. The movie has some solid production values going on, as most WWE products do, but it's a lame, uninspired, and boring effort for the most part. Too bad that the screenwriter (Harris Wilkinson) sold Lionsgate on his "darker pitch," because they originally wanted it to be a more humorous effort in the vein of the original series.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that he won't be selling them on his pitch for a sequel.

There's no story here, no build up, we don't have any reason to like any of the characters... everything just kind of happens, and in an unremarkable fashion.

"Who wrote this shite?"

The big mistake they made with this one is that it's just not fun like the old Leprechaun movies were. If anyone should know how to make goofy shit palatable to an audience, it's the WWE, so we're not sure why they decided to go the "serious" route with this movie.

Had they made the script fun, and made Hornswoggle actually play an evil Leprechaun with some sort of personality, it could have at least been a so-bad-it's-good type of effort like Sharknado, or any other SYFY original movie. As cheesy and silly as the old Leprechaun flicks were, they were at least in on the joke, you know?

She's looking for a better script.

Here are some questions that we have about Leprechaun: Origins:

• Why do we only get to see quick glimpses of the Leprechaun?
• When we did actually get to see it, why did the Leprechaun look like an angry raisin with teeth?
• Could they not have designed a better costume for Hornswoggle to wear? 
• Why did the Leprechaun have "gold" heat vision? 
• Why were the end credits 12 minutes long?
• What was with that ending? If a petite, young girl can kill the Leprechaun with a machete, why are the villagers so afraid of it? They have shotguns.
• Did they actually think that the "fuck you lucky charms" line really fit anywhere in this movie?
• What was the point of the gold? It popped up at the beginning and the end, and served absolutely no purpose.
• Why do so many Horror movies these days have to include a scene where someone gets dragged away by something that is unseen? Do filmmakers understand what sort of logistics they're implying with something like that?
• What exactly is this movie a reboot of?
• What just happened?

Please just hit each other, and let's be done with this.

The WWE should stop making movies if this is the best that they can do.

Odd, we had the same looks on our faces during this one.

If you really wanna see this one, then there's certainly nothing that we can do to stop you, but just ask yourself why you would want to waste 78 minutes of your life on something that isn't even laughably bad.

This is the first Do Not Want grade that we've handed out in a while (mainly because we've been trying to avoid movies that we know we'd flat out have to bash), but this one is absolutely too well deserved to skip over.

Leprechaun: Origins is easily the top contender for Worst Movie of 2014 so far, and we honestly hope that we don't have to endure another movie as horrid as this one anytime soon.

At least WWE Studios knows how to cast good looking girls in their movies. At least there's that.