Last Shift - a pleasant surprise, this one. A movie centered around a rookie cop who has to guard an old abandoned policestation which is said to be haunted by the evil spirits of a Mansonfamily-like clan, the Paymon family. Juliana Harkavy has to carry this film as the rookie, and she does a good job. At the first sounds and appearances she reacts with a bit of curioisty and disbelief, then she th9inks she is being pranked and then, when the visions become clearer and more real, she gets afraid more and more, very well acted. It took me a while however to get into it: I even laughed in the beginning at the somewhat dumb tricks the ghosts were pulling, but nearing the end I felt that this movie had something over it. There is a nice twist in the final scenes, not entirely unpreidctable, but it adds just enough flavour to this film to remember it. Might give it a re-watch someday, nice job. Recommended.

All the boys love Many Lane (2006): Slasher flick with Amber Heard. Some horny and drug addicted teenagers drive to a ranch to party. Within this mess is Mandy Lane a seemingly prude girl that all boys want to have sex with. Then a killer shows up killing of the party people one after another. While there is a kind of twist at the end of the movie it was all quite predictable here. Nothing special. The acting is not so good imho and the strange (artistic?) editing of the movie seems off. None of the characters have a real background story, so you couldn't care less when they are taken down. Quite an unnecessary movie if you ask me. Skip this one.

Darling - I was in doubt for quite a while when seeing this film being available: should I watch this or not? I gave it a chance mostly because of it's short runtime, so that if my time would be wasted, then it would be only a limited amount of time (in this case 76 minutes). Well, while I was watching it, I still had these doubts: was this a good movie, a hidden gem, or was this just being pretentious and arty, not reaching any kind of destination for the audience? The more I saw of this film, the more I started to like it. At first I really had to get into it, but the main character (no name, just called "Darling" on the phone by another nameless character "Ma'am") had something over her. I knew her from The Woman, Pod and Jugface (a good, a mediocre and a bad film btw), and she is interesting to watch. She goes mad slowly but steadily, and while I really disliked the erratic editing of images to show the process of going mad slowly, all other ways to portray this were great. The movie is totally in black and white which adds to the atmosphere. There are quite some unpredictable things happening, along with some pretty predictable ones, like

Spoiler:

the murder she commits in the apartment

There is no clear reason why she is going mad, but that makes it actually more interesting: the hidden dangers (portrayed by the closed room in the apartment) are the ones you have to fear the most. Acting is very good, especially by Lauren Ashley Carter (playing Darling). There is gore, quite some actually, but it isn't very in your face because if the movie being black and white. This movie intrigued me, something which didn't happen to me for quite some time. Highly recommended.

Extinction - after a nuclear apocalypse most humans are dead. Others are turned into monsters which look like the naked vampire-like creatures from The Descent and I Am Legend. And then there are some survivors, who try to make ends meet and set up a life worth living while the world has come down to an icy environment without any human life (or monsters, for that matter). Two neighbours have lived through the evacuation and infestation phases together, but they are not on speaking terms now. One of them lives with a daughter, and through flashbacks you get to see how they got to this situation, and why the two men can't live together. One day, Patrick, the neighbour, discovers that the monsters are back and they have to defend themselves. They get the choice: staying and taking the risk of a monster invasion, or moving and taking the risk of not finding a good shelter. The movie focuses on the days in which this decison has to be taken, and the confrontation with the monsters that follows. Although the apocalypse genre has been milked dry, this has some aspects to it which make it more original than most of the films I have seen in this genre. The drama which evolves around the three persons living so close together but so far apart, is more important than the fact that there may be monsters out there. Acting is good, there is some gore in the monsterfight but nothing exaggerated. Pretty predictable ending, though, but still, recommended!

They're Watching - quite OK indie attempt at making a horrorish satirical comedy. "Home Hunters Global" is a TV show about American people buying real estate across the world and then fixing it up to turn it into a nice new home. The TV crew who filmed Becky, a pottery artist from LA who bought a house in Moldova, returns after 6 months to see what she made of the house. In the remote village of Pavlovka, it looks like the 20th century is still just about to start. The TV crew has to deal with the (in their eyes) backward population and the lack of modern means of communication. The producer of the show is quite a fiery woman who gets angry fast, the new member of the crew is the niece of the boss of the TV station. When part of the crew films a funeral, the atmosphere gets tense. From then on, the feeling of uneasiness increases and the filmcrew wants to complete their work asap so they can leave Moldova. There is still one more night to go, however... Acting is nice, some of the characters are quite witty and they keep the film going and the pace up tempo. It takes pretty long until something horrorish happens, but when it does, it is being poured upon you like from a bucket. I had fun, and after watching it, I thought of some scenes earlier in the film and had moments like "Ah, so that's why it was like this!" and that is always nice. Recommended.

Frankenstein - this film tries to retell the story in our own time, so Frankenstein sees the light of life first in a medical experiemnting station, and his "parents" are both whitecoated scientists who work there.When the "monster" gets out, he does the stuff the classic monster does, too, like throwing a girl in the water and then rescuing her afterwards. There are some slight changes at times, but here the monster also teams up with a blind musician, who happens to be homeless. In the end the monster goes back "home" to confront his "parents". Although the story is strong, it didn't really survive this treatment. This film was not very interesting, the monster irritated me often and although looking for references was nice for a short while, I wouldn't watch this film again.

I Spit On Your Grave 3: Vengeance Is Mine - more a sequel to part one than the second film in this series. The lead actress of part one returns in this film and through flashbacks you get to see (or are reminded of) what happened to her back then. Now she is in therapy and also joins a group where rape victims share their stories and support each other. In the group she meets Marla, a woman who makes her feel strong and talks about revenge and bringing justice to rapists often. Together they assault their first victim and from then on it gos down the downward spiral. It doesn't take long ecause the polcie gets wind of ehr actions, so she has to be more careful, but does she do that? This rape-revenge film is not so much about the rape as it is about the revenge and in that aspect it stands out against all other rape-revenge films I have seen before. This is more like a vigilante film, and it does what you expect from such a movie. However, it also has some kind of weirndess over it: sometimes I laughed becausse what I was seeing was quite ridiculous, sometimes I cringed because of the graphic torture. This made me wonder whether this film was a serious film or a parody, which is not a good thing considering the theme of the film. Acting ranges from OK to a tad of overacting, the story is interesting enough as long as you don't expect a rape-revenge film pur sang. Can't really recommend it, but it's not a waste of time either.

Lavalantula - at least with this film I had zero doubts about it's intentions: I had great fun watching this film, which never took itself seriously. Colton West, a washed up actionhero, is on his way home when a series of earthquakes happen. Nothing special in LA, but this time it's accomanied by a volcanic eruption and from the holes in the ground which appear everywhere, big spiders crawl out and they spit fireballs. It's now up t Colton to save the city from disaster, just ike in the good old days of his actionmovie career. This film made me laugh regularly, for example when it's discussed how to solve the spider crisis (by killing the queen spider, called Mamalantula), and when Colton meets Ian Ziering on the streets, who doesn't have time to help out because he has "shark problems" There is a cool and very predictable climax to the film, the only drawback is the sfx couple of which especially the man is very unfunny. Still, a nice ride with overly bad cgi, but I can recommend this for those moments in which you wanna have a laugh, or when you want some brainless entertainment.

Proof of the Devil - aka The Butcher of Louisiana aka The Exorcism Tapes. Now that I write this, I really don't udnerstand why anyone would ever wanna call this movie The Butcher of Louisiana, because that is not what this film is about. It's about a kid who gets that nickname from the press, but the film is about his mother, who wants to prove that he was innocent (he got executed for 23 murders). Therefore she wants to let herself be possessed by a demon, so she can show the world that her son was also possessed. Yeah, I know, this would never hold up in court, but hey let the woman think she is doing something useful eh? OK, so she hires a reality TV crew and a doctor, and they film her during the session. What follows is a somewhat boring film, with actors who can't act or don't want to act (it seems like part of the cast is not really interested in making the movie credible). The story itself has some good angles, but how it comes across on the screen is not so good. Some bits of "found footage"-like imagery, some kills (although not very graphic) and a lame attempt at a lovestory. Fortunately, this film only lasted 70 minutes so it wasn't that big of an investment timewise. I'd skip this if I were you.

The Girl in the Photographs - a photographer who made it big in LA goes to his hometown with his crew in order to make a photoshoot for a commercial. In this small town there is a girl working as a cashier in the local supermarket, and she has a stalker who posts up photographs with dead girls in them. While she gets recruited by the photographer to be a model, she wants to know who the stalker is and why all these dead girls are being pictured. For some reason, the police doesn't show too much interest, while it is quite clear that a homicidal maniac is working in the town's area. So the photographer and his crew are the only group of people she can rely on. These guys (and the models) are having a fun ride, but there are also the usual model problems with relationships and sex, etc. While the kills are pretty graphic and the way the maniac and his sidekick work reminded me of TCM and SotL, the film didn't really impress me. Acting was so so, the most famous actress (Katherine Isabelle) was hired for a few minutes only and the characters are spomewhat overtypified (if that's even a word). Like those policeguys, they are too much doing their best to not do anything useful. I had fun watching this, but I don't think I'm gonna give it a rewatch. The girls are nice, though.

Evil Souls - this one ca be put on the pile of British rubbish that has been coming out lately. Why? The story is quite capable of becoming a good movie, as there is a weirdo who thinks he is an apprentice of the infamous Marquis de Sade. He kidnaps his former schoolmates and tortures them for pleasure and pain. What the filmmakers fail to do, is show what the movie is about: it is always very dark except for some outside scenes. They also fail to explain where the movie wants to go, as it seems to just roll on and on, without any plan or direction. They also failed to hire credible actors, as overacting seems to be the major hobby of over half of the cast. The main rason this film is bad, though, is that it fdoesn't make real choices: it is something of everything, genre-wise. Therefore it is hard to not become vague and boring, and indeed this film does. I'd say skip it.

Roboshark - this one was very funny! With a title like this you know what you are in for and the level of comedy was high enough to have a good time. There are like one million movie references, they mock Syfy itself, the story is cliche and exaggerated and the cast is quite OK (except for Rick the father, who does a terrible job at overacting). The whole social media vs the military thing is a bit corny but it also has some good jokes. Of the sharkmovies I have seen this was one of the better ones. If you wanna have a good laugh, check this one out!

Wind Walkers - a group of hunters have a hunting party in the Everglades. Among them is an ex-soldier who was deemed unfit for service after his experiences in Afghanistan. There are also a father and his son present, and they have a family tragedy to deal with: their son/brother was lost in the same marshes where they are hunting now. When they see tracks of a beast, and the pother son of the father disappears too, tensions begin tog row inside the group. Suspicions change from person to eprson, there is a nice nod to The Thing in that aspect, but this film can't even tip the bottom of the Thing when it comes to quality in script, direction or acting. What follows is quite predictable, the "monster" is also part of an native legend and it kills off several hunters before the ideal couple manages to escape. Been there, done that, saw this a thousand times before and usually (a tad) better. So while this can be enjoyable, it shouldn't be the choice of the day. Nothing special.

The Loved Ones - whereas Britain lately succeeds in spewing out total crap and call it UK horror, the Aussies are actually doing a good job. After Wyrmwood and Deathgasm this is the third Australian horror which I really liked! Brent is a metalhead who plans to take his love Holly to the school dance. There is however another girl, Lola, who wanmts to take Brent. When he turns her down, he ends up being tied to a chair, the center of attention of a private school dance with only Brent, Lola and Lola's father. What follows, is an evening full of physical and mental torture. Holly and Brent's mother are trying to find him in the meantime, with help of a friend who is a policeman. Brent is very resourceful in escape plans, but will he be able to run from Lola and her father? Gore is nice and plentiful, acting was great: this actor really was Brent, whereas I also saw him in the modern day adaptation of Frankenstein in which he annoyed the hell out of me. Although the story is not very unpredictable, it is being executed really well and I loved it. Recommended, maybe even highly.

Foe - aka The Curse. Johan Meyer is an archaeologist who has been barred from working on American universities because of something in the past (it doesn't really become clear what it is during the film). He has been going around the world for jobs, and it seems he can get a good job at the university of Barcelona. He gets an offer for deciphering an ancient tablet which is the missing link from the Cyrus cilinder or something comparable. He turns it down because it isn't clear where the tablet comes from, but when he doesn't get the job at the university he gets tempted to do it anyway. He doesn't know what he is getting into, however. Horrorish thriller which doesn't show much supernatural stuff. What you are looking at most of the time is Johan discussing with his wife, his colleagues or with the stranger who gave him the translation assignment. The subject of these discussions is always the tablet. There are some hints at the Babylonian goddess who is behind the text, but it all remains quite subtle. This makes the film boring and unspectacular. Even though it only runs for 78 minutes it feels like you have been watching an entire evening. Skip this, I'd say.

Sinister 2 - I don't feel like writing much atm, so I'm keeping this a bit short. Sinister 2 was a disappointment. Part one was quite scary at times, and although this one has it's moments, it was dull most of the time. The kills (on film or not) are quite original and they look shocking, but the whole ghost thing with the kids was a tad too much for me. The escape from the demon had a price of course, but was relatively simple overall. If you have some time to kill you might like this a bit, but after you have seen part one this can only fall flat on you.

They Found Hell - the poster already made me think of this as a kids movie. It's not that bad, but it is more a horrorish adventurefilm than a real horror. It's about a group of students (quite a balanced group, for looks and for types of characters - what a coincidence!) who are experimenting with a transponder. They want to teleport a watch, but accidentally they open a large (cgi) hole in the ground: a gate to hell. Ridiculous of course, but hey, thi is entertainment. Soon they meet some Hellraiser-like creatures (the monsters are all cgi, therefore the best looking one is a guy wearing faces as makeup) and they lose each other trying to find an exit. In the meantime demons try to steal their souls and some of them actually lose them. When they meet up again, they use their knowledge of classical mythology (which is rather cool, as they are in Dante's inferno, not quite a classical myth) to get to the exit. Although this gave the film a nice touch, it was all so much BS. The professor looks a bit like a mad scientist, but together with the ony remaining student of the project they finally succeed to open the gate again. Who will survive this trip to hell? Just ffwd to the last few minutes to find out if you don't wanna waste 85 of them.

The Forest - Sara's twin sister Jess is in trouble. Since she moved to Japan, Sara hasn't seen her very often, and now she got a telephone call about Jess having disappeared in the Aokigahara forest, noticeable for it's attraction of peole who want to commit suicide. So the Japanese assume Jess is dead, but Sara's twinsister feeling tells her that she needs to go to Japan and find her. Several locals advise her not to go into the forest, because there are jurei, some sort of ghosts who can make you see things and enlarge the sadness in your heart so much that you would want to kill yourself. Sara meets Aiden, a charming womanizer type of guy who happens to know a Japanese forester named Michi, who is willing to take Sara with him into the forest to find Jess. Of course this search is not easy and Sara gets to see several aspects of the forest, both beautiful and dangerous. The ending was a bit ambiguous to me

Spoiler:

on one hand I thought it was cool that Jess was saved and Sara wasn't, but on the other hand I thought it was quite cliche to have Sara turn into a ghost like thing and do the "end jump scare" thing

The film succeeded in making me feel a bit uneasy from time to time. I'd say you won't waste your time watching this.

Ava's Possessions - quite an original posession film. Whereas most of the time the exorcism is the final scene, this film begins with the exorcism. What follows, is the recovery of Ava, who has been possessed for a while and during her possession she has done quite some illegal stuff. So she gets three options: jail, residentail facility, or joining SPA (Spiritual Possession Anonymous) where she has to share her story and try to work on it. Ava goes for the latter and she ends up in a group of people with similar problems. All her old friends, including her boyfriend don't want to contact her anymore. Ava has to try and find out what she has done while she was possessed herself, but while uncovering this plot, people start turning up dead. She befriends one of the girls in the group, because of the lack of any social contacts. This girl however, actually loves to be possessed again, and when Ava decides to help her, she doesn't know what she is in for. Acting is nice, plot is also nice although the subplots and the final plot twist were pretty predictable. I really like this take on possessions, if you wanna see something original, try this one. Recommended.

Containment - I read that this was a low budget production, so my expectations were low. I was pleasantly surprised that the cast was doing a lot to make me feel like I was watching a real movie, but it didn't get anything close to scary in the entire film. Sure, there were some moments in which I thought "wtf" but almost every movie has those. Whle I enjoyed watching this, it was also a bit calm: a good film to watch if you have a hangover or something, because there is not so much action going on. Clever use of the location and efficient use of the props: it is actually useful in the story that some of the hazmat suits are used more than once. It's only 70 minutes long and that is exactly long enough: more would have become boring fast, and the ending is quite OK. Nice filler for when you don't have so much time. Not very good, but gice it a chance I'd say.

Shocker (1989): A Wes Craven horror movie in which a murderer can take over the body of others through electricity. Sounds strange? And strange it is. A mostly unknown cast acts in this overloaded movie. There is way too much going on in the movie. It feels like they tried to squeeze in too much plot and thus the story suffers. Also what I noticed is that this movie is basically a rip-off of "A Nightmare on Elm Street". Yes, Wes Craven ripped-off his own movie! A guy dreams about the murderer at night and then can tell where he is going to be next. The version I saw on German TV was heavily cut. So that added to me not being able to enjoy this movie. I can't recommend this one.

Movienight with friends:

Scream Baby Scream - an early Troma film. Jason and his friends are painters, and when they get a visit from a famous abstract painter, Jason's girlfriend Janet disappears. He sets out to find her, and then discovers the horrible secret the abstract painter is keeping: the horrible paintings he makes are not products of his fantasy, he deforms and mutilates his models in such a way that he can depict them as they are. Short film, but the part in which nothing happens is too long: some dancing, some tripping (it's 1969 after all), some going out and some painting. It gets a little interesting close to the end, and actually only the deformed faces are a bit fun. I know I won't watch this again, although I had fun watching it with friends.

Treasure of the Four Crowns - now this was really something: an Italian 80s fantasy flick! It has music by Ennio Morricone and it also has all the wrong stuff you want to see in a film like this: a quest, some ancient crowns with superpowers, burning people, traps like in an Egyptian pyramid, fake monsters, a weird cult with an even weirder leader and explosions almost every other second. The story is about J.R. Striker, who gets hired to gather the remaining crowns, which are hidden in a castle where the weird cult lives. He sets up a team of old friends and adventurers who will accompany him on his quest. Then there is much ado about very little during the entire film, and in the end we get to see a nice endfight with again lots of explosions. SFX are laughable, we had great fun watching this one. Highly recommended for bad moviefans!

Bacterium - another film with ridiculous sfx (no cgi!), but this one couldn't hold my attention so well. It was also getting a bit late, so concentration was low. It had bad acting and a ludicrous monster which resembled the Blob a bit and it had hazmat teams who were fighting against guys armed with paintball guns. There was a nice Dr Strangelove reference, and we laughed regularly. Short film, but enough entertainment for bad moviefans for sure. Remember that if you are ever in trouble and need some bandages, that the present women could always tear their shirts up for you Check out Brett Piper if you like bad movies. Highly recommended for bad moviefans too.

Uncaged - yet another take on the werewolf genre and it wasn't a disappointment to me. It's one of those stories in which the werewolf at first doesn't know that he actually is one, but using a GoPro camera he finds out that he was the one who killed a person on a trainstation: it was on the news and he saw it. The fact that he is in his uncle's cabin for some days is part of a plan, to introduce him to his nature. His friends are busy with other stuff, like getting laid etc. The atmosphere was quite OK, it had funny moments and the way the werewolf thing is being kept secret from one of the friends is quite cool. The subplot with the black crimeboss and his wife was not so very well interwoven with the main storyline, but it also produced some funny moments (and some predictable ones). Only one change scene, but that's OK, they usually are quite bad anyway. I had fun, it will be on my positive werewolf list. Don't expect something scary or groundbreaking, just a fun movie.

The Sand - looking at the poster I expected some sort of a Syfy or Asylum monsterflick, but I was pleasantly surprised by this low budget B-movie. It all takes place in one location on a beach, the number of characters is quite limited, acting ranges from OK-ish to OK (so nothing exciting there) but I had fun watching this for sure. The story is about a spring break party on the beach, where two guys find a strange egg-like thing. They put it next to their campfire and the next morning it has hatched a monster hiding in the sand, eating everything that touches the sand, devouring the bodies entirely. The only survivors are the ones that stayed inside a car, a watchtower, etc. Now they have to find out how to get away without being eaten by the sandmonster, and before starving to death. Yes, there are plotholes, yes, it is not perfect, but I had a fun 80 minutes. Give it a chance, I'd say.

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