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lipanwrangler
Reviews
Black Summer (2019)
EATS OTHER ZOMBIE SERIES ALIVE
Wow. I watched the first episode on a whim, and couldn't stop. THIS is what zombie horror should be.
Flat out the most intense thing I've ever watched, next to the opening of Saving Private Ryan.
No bull$#it flashbacks, no slow exposition. Just running and dying. Pure horror.
The acting is impeccable.
Does this bring anything new to the genre? No. Just A Class acting and writing.
Finally a zombie series that takes itself seriously, and has the chops to deliver.
Evil Dead (2013)
So Almost Good But Just Ain't...
Alright alright, we all know Evil Dead is and will always be one of the greatest horror films ever. As amazing as it is, it certainly has some inadvertently hilarious moments that could be improved on, made more serious, done with modern brutality, whatever. This is what we all hoped was being done with this remake. That is not what was done with this remake.
My gripes (some mild spoilers):
No tension. I just didn't feel it. Everything was OK, then it wasn't, and the characters just sort of rolled with it almost like it was expected.
No insanity. The constant mad cackling of the original is harrowing. These "Evil Dead" chumps just kinda come at you, not much talk and no laughs. They didn't seem that scary.
No actual "Evil Dead" at all. With the exception of one character, NO ONE in this remake dies and then becomes "the Evil Dead", which is sort of um...why they called the movie that. The shmoes in the remake become possessed, and then go ape sh*t. Only one of them actually dies and becomes the Evil Dead. Hmm...
The plot and "rules system" of this movie is a hot mess. They mention 3 specific ways to kill those who have become possessed...and then use them only occasionally. One chick goes down after having her head bashed in with the back of a toilet, another after getting shot in the face with a bunch of nails and getting her arm blown off. Also, right at the beginning we see one get knocked out by a shotgun stock to the head. Knock out a Deadite with a blow to the head!? Ridiculous. We know this, don't we?
Who the hell are those dummies in the opening scene? What's up with the freaks? Who is that lady and what language was she speaking and why!? Then after handling business quite nicely, they WRAP THE BOOK IN PLASTIC AND BARBED WIRE AND LEAVE IT THERE!? Good lawd. Someone should have second drafted the script and made some sense of something, somewhere, anywhere.
I'm not even sure what that was that crawled out of the ground at the end. Big villain? Seriously, what was it? It wasn't scary. Some skinny chick with no nipples...I would have preferred the black guy with the candle on his head from the book illustrations. Yikes...
Replacing the Lovecraftian horror of the original with the whole Satan thing was so weak it was sad. The book wasn't scary anymore, or mysterious and strange and ancient. It felt like some crappy Satanist's book printed in the 80s. WTF? And dude wasted no time at all reading the passages aloud, for not even a shred of a decent reason other than he was written to.
No one would be dumb enough to think that you could defrib someone with a car battery, jumper cables, and some hypodermic needles. No one.
I agree with whoever else said that the only thing they felt for any of the characters was a hope that the brother would kill that ho and get out of there so the movie could end.
OK, the few things I liked about it:
The look of it. I dug it. And the presentation of the gore. Dug it. The scene with the burning tree and the gravedigging looked great. The rain at the end was great, and a nice attempt at trying to top the broken pipe in the basement of the original film.
The two male actors were fantastic, I thought, and really carried what little weight the movie had. I thought they were both just excellent.
Well, that's it. I'm done burning this halfassery.
Conan the Barbarian (2011)
This is Conan as he was written!!! REH fans must see!
First off, I ain't no REH poser. I was given my dad's copies of the books when I was little, and have read and re-read them more than any other stories or books. I know Conan like he was friend in real life. I LOVE the bastard. So, that said, let me tell you from a real fan, that this film shows you the Hyborian Age, straight up like Howard wrote it.
Momoa IS Conan. He owns it. He clearly understands the character 100%, and delivered the performance to us perfectly. The dude gave me chills. I loved every second of his performance.
The setting is delivered perfectly. This film shows the Hyborian Age as written, with chauvinism and slavery intact, as well as the diverse range of ethnicities and cultures. I've been waiting to see this world on film my whole life, and last night, I did. And it was great.
A Few Cons: First off, the geography was jacked up, either that, or weeks and months were being glossed over in-between scenes. To get to Cimmeria from any given coastline on the map, you're talking about weeks or even months of travel. I think this is why they made up a lot of places instead of using real names from the stories, because that way they can claim everything is within a day's travel or so. So yeah, you don't really get a sense of distance from the film, as it sort of just jumps around from place to place with no in-between scenes. Secondly, the overall plot of the film was extremely generic; pretty much the same ol' fantasy film plot with a villain who needs to collect stuff to come to power. They could have used ANY of the Howard stories as a base, and the plot would have blown people away, instead of being a fantasy re-tread. Oh well. The setting and the performances and the little details were so amazing that they kept me from worrying about the hammy plot. Okay, and lastly, Conan's eyes weren't blue. I'm not sure why they weren't, because that has to be about the cheapest special effect nowadays. So yeah, not sure what the reasoning was on that, and it's kinda lame, but even though I am a huge fan and a stickler for details, I still loved the film.
Final Say: As a fan, it was brilliant. If you love the stories, you will love this movie, providing you can look past the little screw-ups I mentioned. Here's hoping they get to make a second one that's even better, and truly as wildly original as Howard's stories are.
Automaton Transfusion (2006)
I was ripped off for 9 bucks on this one.
This was a pile of fecal matter called a movie. Wow. I can't believe how awful it was. Whoever is responsible for those quotes on the box that made me buy it should be hanged. I guess it's my fault for being so naive though. I was just craving a good zombie flick, that's all. What I got was a really bad student film. Like a high school student film. Avoid this one.
Well, it appears that I need this thing to be ten lines long, so I guess I can say a few things about what exactly sucked about this movie (which was pretty much everything, but...). Here we go: first off, the film quality was really really annoying. It looked like it was skipping frames or something. I think maybe they wanted it to have the slight motion blur like 28 Days Later, but they just ended up making it look really bad. The acting was pretty bad, although not completely awful. I think some of the mohawk-guy and the black-guy's reactions were good, but they weren't really given much to work with in the way of a script. And yeah, the "script" was pretty much non-existent. I'm out.