Hallows' Eve (2013)

It's hard to describe how truly bad this movie was over the course of a small movie review. To do so properly would require us to give a play by play of the entire movie, and if we're going to do that, then we may as well tell you to watch it so that you can just see for yourselves.

Keep in mind that this movie is one of two Horror flicks out there with the title Hallows' Eve; the other one has yet to see release, but it's still easy to get them confused.

This is the one with Danielle Harris, who must have owed somebody a big favor to have even wasted her time appearing in it.

A bunch of mean teenagers jump a little girl named Eve (who looks like she's about 8-years-old) in a cornfield, while she's pulling a wagon filled with pumpkins on the way to her pumpkin dumping ground? Anywho, they smash her pumpkins and throw their guts and seeds all over her, which prompts her to make a run for it. Of course they chase her, which ends with her being run over by a tractor driven by someone who I think was her dad?

Flash forward 10 years, where all of the mean kids have grown up to be mean and pointless adults who seem to do nothing but smoke weed by the pound, and fight about who's screwing who. Little Eve is all grown up too, having survived the tractor mangling which apparently only scarred up her cheek real bad.

Couldn't they have gotten her skin grafts or something?

When a few of the now mean adults peek through Eve's window and see her changing, she freaks out as if she's just witnessed her family being slaughtered, and it's not long before a shadowy figure begins to dispatch every member of the asshole crew that caused Eve's tragic accident, oh so long ago.

Who is killing the asshole crew? Will any of them survive? Why in the world was Danielle Harris in this movie? I don't honestly care what the answers to any of those questions are, and neither will you.

Eye guess she had that one coming.

Tiffany Shepis was pretty funny in her small role, and Ashley C. Williams was hot and sassy playing the bad girl. The movie had a pretty decent amount of gore in it too, most of which was pretty solid.

Bad girls make the world go 'round. True story.

Hallows' Eve was a mess. By the time we get to the "!0 years later" portion of the movie, we're not sure who most of the characters are, or what they're doing. In the opening scene, they all looked to be 14-15 years old, and yet they all seem to be in their early 30's when the movie jumps ahead.

The characters only exist in this script to smoke weed, get laid, and be bumped off. Now, you might be saying to yourself "but that's how it goes in Horror movies, dummy," which is true, but the lack of coherence on display here makes the normal by-the-numbers genre staples distracting.

The acting is pretty bad across the board, although a lot of the cast really tries, but in the end their efforts are done in by a truly bad and confused script.

And what was with the bit with the Mother showing up at the end? That plot point pretty much came out of nowhere, and really didn't make any sense. Then again with this movie, that's par for the course.

That little person on the left has a very distracting haircut.

"Well, you and your friend's parents weren't the nicest kids back then, okay?" That's an actual line from the movie, and it illustrates just how poorly executed the whole mess is.

Plenty of gore to go around in this one, and most of it was pretty well done. At one point, you could tell that a dummy was being used in place of an actress during a kill scene, and it made us laugh.

It actually looked pretty cool, but it was so cheesy that we had to laugh out loud.

 

There was some nudity in this one, including a cute brunette taking a bath, and a dream sequence sex scene.

There was no best line here... what do you think this is?

Danielle Harris needs to start being a bit more selective when picking her projects.

Selena Gomez?

This could have been a decent little B-grade slasher flick, if only the story would have made any sense whatsoever. Everything felt so jumbled, and it was all conveyed by such poor acting, that what was going on failed to matter about 10 minutes in.

If you absolutely have to see this movie, wait for it to hit Netflix or Cable, because  it's a really tough one to justify spending actual money one. Trust us. We know.

Not even the lovely presence of Danielle Harris, Tiffany Shepis, Ashley C. Williams and Courtney Baxter could save this one. They've all done much better work, and will no doubt do so again, just not this time.

The Devil's Pass (2013)

In the Winter of 1959, nine ski-hikers (whatever the hell those are) went missing in the Ural Mountains in Russia. They were eventually all found dead, in varied states of decomposition and condition, skin colored orange, with one of them missing their tongue.

The incident has been a hotbed of legend and lore ever since, with everything Paranormal from Aliens to Yeti's being suspected as the cause of the group's demise. Exposure to dangerous weather and radiation are also said to have possibly been factors.

That is all an absolutely true story.

This movie... this sloppy, incoherent, ridiculous movie... is a Blair Witch-style Found Footage flick that attempts to explain what happened to the Dyatlov Group, via the investigation of a bunch of witless College students who have no clue what they're doing.

Hilarity and frustration ensue.

Beware: Here there be spoilers!

 

 

When a Psychology major decides that she wants to unravel the 50 year-old mystery behind the disappearance and death of some hikers in Mother Russia, she gathers up some of her College cronies, applies for a grant, and they all head off to the snowy Ural Mountains to do some investigating. On film, of course.

Along the way, all sorts of odd things happen to them; they find a tongue in an ice-box, wake up to find odd footprints surrounding their campsites, they have acid flashbacks, locals start shooting at them, they're attacked by a herd of Ukranian exploding mountain goats... it soon become apparent that these idiot College Hipsters should have stayed home, because they are ill-equipped to deal with the rigors of the Russian Wilderness.

Press on they do however, because "they just have to know what happened here 50 years ago!" From here on out this movie turns into some ramshackle craziness about time travel and Government conspiracy, and involves some oddly-placed mutant-things which look like discarded CGI tests for the creatures in I Am Legend...

Head shaking and frustrating groans ensue.

Lame.

The scenery and locations were gorgeous. Gemma Atkinson (who is Rowan Atkinson's daughter?!?) is really nice to look at, and... yeah, that's about it as far as anything good is concerned.

The acting is pretty bad; from the horrible line delivery, to the melodramatic emotional displays.That is absolutely the script's fault, in part, because it too is truly awful, but man, that acting... When Gemma Atkinson is the most solid player you have in a film, you know that there's an issue. That's no knock on Gemma, you understand, but I mean she's no Meryl Streep, you know?

Even those dogs look annoyed at their co-stars.

This has to be one of the worst scripts I've seen made into a movie all year. Not only is the story ridiculous and just plain silly, but the way everything is put together is just amateurish and clunky. It's supposed to be a Found Footage flick, but it's more than obvious that the characters in the movie are reading poorly written lines. Nothing feels real or natural about anything in this movie.

All of the overly-familiar and lame Found Footage tropes are present here, and used ad-nauseum; from the handy old FF stand by of "keep filming no matter what, I want there to be a record of this" to the fact that the characters actions play to the camera, even though no one would act in such ways in real life, and in such harrowing situations...

...and exactly how did the footage end up being found anyhow? The whole time travel plot kinda makes that an impossibility, unless I missed something.

-The avalanche scene, in which the characters basically murder one of their friends by leaving them to die in said avalanche, in favor of saving a supply pack, made us laugh. They killed off the best character with that bit, and in such a cheesy way.

-And did this movie really just try to connect The Philadelphia Experiment with the Dyatlov Incident?

-And by the way, Kholat Syakhl doesn't mean "Mountain of the Dead" you shitty, ill-informed writer, it means "Dead Mountain" as in not fruitful.

-There are some mutant-things living underground that look like rough CGI versions of the mutant-things from I Am Legend. That is to say that the CGI looks really bad, and felt really random.

At the point where the one chick started swinging a chain over her head at the oncoming mutant-things, I had to laugh and say "screw it!"

This movie also really smacked of Blair Witch, from start to finish, in its set up and plot structure...

 

The dialogue in this movie is horrible.
"Come on Ivan, the Cold War is over, we're friends now!"
"Are you telling me you didn't see those charges, or is that a herd of Ukranian exploding mountain goats!"

I could quote this shit pile all day, but most of the bad lines need to be seen in context with their poor delivery to be truly appreciated...

At least this close-up zoom of Gemma Atkinson's rack was satisfying...

I went into his one with the hopeful optimism that its creators would give us an interesting fictional addendum to the real life Dyatlov Pass Incident, but that is not the case. Renny Harlin's direction isn't bad here, but whoever this Vikram Weet guy is, he needs to go back to working on the Kardashian TV Show, and never write a script again.

Aside from some gorgeous location shots, this movie is frustratingly bad and offers little in the way of anything enjoyable...

I advise thee to skip this one, or at least catch it when it hits Cable for free in a few weeks. You know that's where it's headed, after all.

I refuse to believe that this hot-as-the-sun girl came out of Mr. Bean's penis.

Dracula 3D (2013)

It makes us so sad to hate on a movie given to us by Master of Horror, Dario Argento, but good God was his adaptation of the Dracula legend a piss-poor one.

The movie definitely contains some of the elements that we've all come to expect from an Argento film; there's plenty of blood and gore, although it mostly comes off as cheesy; there's plenty of nudity, including a scene in which the director's daughter is involved in a sponge bath with another hot and equally naked chick (creepy move, Dad); and the dialogue is cheesy and goofy, as it usually is in many Italian Horror flicks of old.

So many aspects of this movie fall right in line with the status quo of the Italian Horror world. Fine by us.

The thing is though, that Dracula 3D in no way feels like an Argento movie, nor does it feel like any sort of viable Dracula movie, for that matter. It's really not even that good of a Vampire flick, if we're being honest here.

This picture just about says it all...

Do I really need to explain the plot of a Dracula movie to you?

He's a Vampire. He bites people, turning them into vampires. His hot Vampire Chick minions run around doing the same thing. Van Helsing is his enemy, and shows up to stop him. People die. Shit gets staked.

That's the plot. You have to already know this on your own.

Rutger Hauer is awesome. The gorgeous Miriam Giovanelli gets naked and is some of the best eye candy we've seen in a long while. There were a few good kills. Did we mention Miriam Giovanelli's boobs?

The Master is all over those...

This movie is a sorry tincture made up of bad acting, even worse writing, and some of the goofiest shit we've seen on film in quite a while. Everything just feels cheap so and haphazard, from the set design to the plotting, even down to the concepts at play. Don't even get me started on the CGI, which was just laughable for the most part; especially the owl. That was bad.

Not even the always entertaining Rutger Hauer showing us as Van Helsing helped things much, although it probably didn't help that 75% of the movie was over by the time he did show up.

And what was with Asia Argento? Over the years she's proven that she's a competent actress at the very least, and yet in this movie she has moments of such horrendous acting ineptitude, that we cringed. Check out the clip below to gain a feel for what I'm talking about:


Doesn't it seem like it was being played for laughs? Was Asia Argento having some sort of seizure during this scene? Did they even watch their dailies?

I guess at the point when Dracula morphs in to a shitty-looking CGI praying mantis, shuffles up some stairs, and kills some poor sap by ramming his pincher through his chest, we pretty much lost all hope that this movie could be redeemed in any way whatsoever. The look he gives Lucy doesn't help things a bit, either.


Really?

There's plenty of blood & gore in this one, most notably a fun scene involving a shovel splitting a head open. The downside is that a lot of the bloodletting in the movie was CGI, and it looked horribly cheap.

Miriam Giovanelli and her naked body are a true revelation. The movie opens with a pretty lengthy sex scene, and there's also a bath scene where Asia Argento gets washed up by another chick.

Dario Argento should probably just stop now. He's more than earned a good rest at this point in his career.

"Hnnngggg!"

If you're interested in checking out Dracula 3D because its the new Argento flick, just skip it, because there's not much Argento going on in this film. If you're interested in checking it out because you're a huge Dracula fanatic, still skip it, because this version of Dracula is an embarrassment to the legend. If you're a Vampire lover that will see and love any film that involves Vampires (no matter how shitty, i.e. Twilight), then definitely check this one out, because you'll love it no matter what.

Dario Argento is old now, and maybe he's just lost too much of his biting edge. The man has paid his Horror dues and made his bones for many decades now, so he certainly has nothing to prove to anyone anymore, but it just hurts to watch someone so talented turn out such an embarrassing movie. Argento has made some cheesy movies before, but they've always managed to at least be stylish and effective.

That is not the case here. Not at all.

We DO NOT WANT!

Who in the hell is this Miriam Giovanelli girl, and where has she been all our lives? She is ridiculously gorgeous, and we need more of her asap. Also, Asia Argento is still pretty hot too.