Mmm, OK. Well, I might watch them anyway, maybe as moving wallpaper or something.

Gnome Alone - very corny title of course, and yes, Verne Troyer is in it. He is the guardian gnome, sent to check on the curse made by a Leprechaun on a woman who stole his gold centuries ago. For some reason, the curse can be passed on by just giving away the gnome which comes with it, so I wonder why the old lady did it only when she was about to die. She gives it to Zoë, who now has the power to kill, although she doesn't know it. As soon as she says something like "I wish he was dead", the gnome makes work of it. Some gory kills, some unfunny oneliners and some beautiful babes are the core of this film. There are some very annoying characters (like officer Kelly) and some pretty weird ones (like professor Robinson who teaches class in a short leather skirt and has lesbian interaction with students). The storyline is pretty predictable and the ending is both OK-ish and boring. So yes, it's a bad film, although I'm not as harsh as wargand on this one. Still I'd say that you could spend your time better than with watching this film.

Masque of the Red Death - the 1990 remake and god, this was boring! It has little to nothing to do with the original from the 60s and the red death is simply a killer dressed in red killing off the participants of a party thrown by an excentric nobleman who is trying to find a cure to stop the decay of his ageing body. The characters are uninteresting, the acting is sometimes pretty bad, the setting is OK-ish but overall this was so uninteresting that I found myself checking news on my phone and stuff like that. The makers have succeeded in turning an excellent Poe story into a shallow slasherflick which causes you to have a mind numbing experience while watching this. Because there are no "so bad it's good" elements, I advise everyone to steer clear of this one.

Come on... you all know me.

The Human Vapor 1960
It is from 1960. It is... ok. It tries to tell a story. It has decent acting and camera work. Of course, it is a bit cheesy, but again: 1960.

So... Due to a medical experiment a librarian... former pilot, who got fired because he had cancer, got the power to turn into gas. He uses this power to rob banks and give the money to his girl friend. The police and a policeman's journalist girlfriend try to stop him.

As I said: A bit cheesy, also a bit slow. Best comparable with some of the old Jack Arnold movies.

Yes, indeed

Housebound - film which mixes comedy elements with horror elements. These films always have a hard time being either funny or scary. This one has a few scary moments and it also has a few laughs, so there it succceeds. The drawback is that it doesn't have a lot of them. Kylie Bucknell is a young girl with criminal intentions, so she gets judged not for the first time, and the judge sentences her to house arrest this time. Living hell for Kylie, because now she has to live with her mother, of whom she thinks she is a superficial blob, and her mother's new boyfriend, a man who simply doesn't talk at all. The mother is convicned that the house they live in is haunted, so Kylie, who has nothing on her hands for 8 months, is gonna find out what is true about that. Not only does she find out what the noises in the walls are, she also finds out about an unsolved murder plot. The story is quite cool, it resembles The People Under The Stairs at times, especially with the

Spoiler:

Eugene character, he reminded me a lot of Roach

there are some nice towists to it, and as said, some good laughs. I had fun watching this one, although it could/should have been scarier. In the end it is

Spoiler:

not horror at all

Mild recommendation.

Agreed. Was able to sit through it. But... was sometimes a bit hard to understand for me.

Subs are your friend

Come Back To Me - had this filed under /Slashers, but it is not your everyday slasher. It's about Sarah and Josh, they live a pretty normal life in Las Vegas, where Josh works as a croupier and Sarah works on her thesis about the influence of internetporn on relationships. Sarah really wants to start a family, but Josh keeps stating that he is not really ready for it. Across the street, a new guy called Dale arrives. He works in the local supermarket and cares a lot for Sarah, in a way that Sarah thinks it's a tad creepy. What's more creepy, is that Sarah starts having night terrors: she apparently does things at night but doesn't remember a thing about it in the morning. She talks this over with her doctor, who is also a friend, but she can't get a grip on it. Josh tries to help by taking her on a weektrip into town, but as soon as they have returned, the terrors return too. Sarah really wants to know what's going on, so she buys a camera to see what is actaully happening in those nights. What she finds out, is something totally unexpectable. What follows, is the unravelling of the plot, with developing a sideplot in the process. This unravelling is great. I had never seen it coming, although I of course had my suspicions. But, like Sarah, you can't get your head around the things going on. You know as much as she does, that's why the unravelling of the plot does have some impact. Unfortunately, this only starts happening after one hour. Until that time, the movie is quite boring. Skipping it could be an idea, but then you would miss all the stuff which is explained in the last part of the film, so just get some beers and sit through that first hour. It will be worth it. Recommended.

Nymph - mediocre creature feature. In Montenegro, a Serbian guy called Alex has a get-together with some of his friends from back in the US and his new fiancée. They exlore the surroundings, having some dramatic relationship stuff going on, and when they find a submarine tunnel which is out of use, they meet Boban, another friend of Alex. Boban convinces them to go to a mysterious island called Mamula. That evening, they get a warning by an old man (surprisingly played by Franco Nero) not to go there, but of course they go anyway. After having arrived, they see a man dumping human remains down a well. Afraid, they want to leave the island now, but the man has shot up their boat so they can't. Soon enough, they find out that the man is not the worst of the threats looming over them. Babes are OK, acting is OK-ish by some, subpar by others. Setting is cool, the island looks nice and mysterious at the same time. The creature wasn't so scary amd the ending was a bit stupid. Just a notch above Syfy level filmmaking, imo.

Nymph -- Yep. Seen it, too. A bit boring. But nothing for me to destroy. So... agreed.

Eat - pretty weird film because of the plot: a washed down actress called Novella McClure never gets any roles, she just sees others succeed on the auditions she attends. When she is about to be evicted, her life couldn't get any worse, but it does. For some unexplained reason, she gets appetite for her own body, and since she doesn't have any money to buy food, she starts gnawing at her fingers.After they have been bandaged, she turns to her feet. When she is committed to psychiatric help, the doctor who is gonna do sessions with her, is the same man she met in a club before, and she falls in love. Can he save her, or is this just another disappointment in the sucky life of Novella? AsI said: weird film. The eating scenes are gross and gory, Novella also has some very gory flashes and dreams. What is preventing this film from becoming a great one, is Meggie Maddock. She doesn't really convnce as Novella. Her acting is very erratic, with great scenes alternating with scenes with blunt overacting. Unfortunately, since she is the main character, and the story evolves around her, this is very noticeable and therefore annoying. A shame, because this could have been cool. Maybe it will become cult one day. Recommended for those who want to see something differrent, because that it is for sure.

Toxin - bad film. Some wonky story about a guy who used to be a soldier in a secret governmental experiment with biological weaponry which went wrong and now he wants revenge. For this, he hijacks a charter plane, and after it has very badly cgi crashed into the sea (this looked worse than stop motion, and it was done with cgi, geez...) the group gets onto an island and the story turns into something Lost-like. The revenge guy wants to look and sound like Clint Eastwood very much, and all other characters are very much oine dimensional. Some of the characters are played by pele who are totally unconvincable, like the military leader: he looks like a desk clerk, not like a high ranking officer. On the island, the people are infected, and therefore resemble zombies. Cgi blood all over the screen makes matters even worse, and although this one lasted for only 70 minutes, it felt like three hours. Avoid.

Frankenstein vs the Mummy - two classic monsters in a modern film in which they meet, according to the taglines. Well, they do, but only in the last 15 minutes, so this could have been called the LAT relationship between Frankenstein and the Mummy. Oh, well. The story is quite entertaining, good actors (the bald professor) have to deal with very bad actors (the somewhat chubby female student who is being used as a prey for the mummy) and the effects are OK. Te monster of Frabkenstein looks like he just walked out of Dark Floors, the Lordi film. This made me laugh, along with some other scenes. The main characters know each other from the past or something, but they go on a date and of course end up in bed immediately. The man is a professor in medicine, working on Frankenstein 2.0, the woman is a professor in Egyptology and therefore involved with the mummy. There are some trust issues to be dealt with, and in the end the man and woman do find each other but then have to deal with the two monsters. The ending is quite OK, overall I had fun, but would probably not watch it again.

Wolves - 2014 werewolf movie. Werewolves have been done to death of course, so the risk of rinse and repeat is big. This one has some touches of originality, though. Often described as a coming of age film, this one is about Cayden, a guy who finds out that he is a werewolf on an evening where his girlfriend almost becomes his first victim. Since he makes victims afterwards, he has to run and hide from the authorities. On this trip, he finds out about his werewolf roots, and much more than that. It's not a hardcore horror, because it is easy to feel good while watching this film, but the gore is good and there is also plenty of it. Some of it looks rather fake, but overall it is average and above. The story is pretty interesting, and yes, that is also because of the road of discovery Cayden goes down on (not sure if this is correct English). Some nice looking babes, a spectacular endfight and a nice twist in the plot makes this worth your while. Just don't expect great changescenes, as they are quite cheap ass. Recommended anyway.

Extraterrestrial – this recent scifi starts out with the disappearance of a woman. She was making a call in a phonebooth and all of a sudden she is gone. Sheriff Gil Bellows is wondering what happened in his little town. Then the main plot starts and it is quite unoriginal, with April and Kyle as a young couple going on a weekend to a cabin in the woods. Kyle has invited some friends to join them, and although April was looking forward to a weekend on their own, she gives in and they have a party with booze, weed and some fireworks. One night they see a red glow in the sky and a huge fireball in the forest. When they explore it, they find out that it is a crashed spaceship. What follows, is more and more contact between them and the aliens, and it culminates near the end of the movie in

Spoiler:

a visit to te spaceship in the air and the world of the aliens

Nothing in this film is new, it all has been done before, but it’s still quite a nice movie. Acting is decent, except for a few characters (like the blonde girl in the group of friends, she lacks personality and is simply cannonfodder). Some stuff is quite cool, like the fact that you can see the aliens quite well and the effects they make on earth. Other stuff is really cliche, like the beginning of the final scene. The real ending is better (although still not original). I watched this because it was made by the guys who also made Grave Encounters, and although it wasn’t as good as that one, it was pretty enjoyable. If you like the genre, you can easily have fun with this one.

The Dead, the Damned and the Darkness – pretty boring zombiefilm which was obviously inspired by The Walking Dead. A worldwide virus has killed many already, and one man, dressed up in kevlar and a futuristic helmet, armed with a plastic toygun and a sledgehammer, travels from Wyoming to the ocean to disperse the ashes of his family. This fact alone is really stupid, because why would you go through such a hassle, risking your own lfe, just to dispose of the remains of your family? It gets worse over time, the deaf girl is OK, she adds some unique elements to the film, but the bearded insurance salesman takes the cake: he wants to study the zombies, later he talks about signs of god to the kevlar guy and, oh no! The guy actually does get a vision of his dead wife! In the end he finds out that [spoiler]his daughter is not dead (he had been thinking that the entire time), but his wife is, so after throwing her ashes into the ocean, he reunties with the ddeaf girl and his daughter and they live[/spoiler happily ever after. Eehm, bucket, please? The only thing worth looking at in this film is the poster. Skip the film and spend your 90 minutes a bit more useful.

May I reuse this:



Exeter 2015

Technically this film is ok. Acting... as I quoted above: Decent. If there only were something to act. This is the only flaw of this film: The story. You won't believe it... a group of teens locked in an old asylum. A supernatural force possesses and kills them one by one. Heard this story before? Stupid question. Let me correct it: Heard this story less than a dozen times before? Nothing new. After a while one loses a bit track, why which group is in which part of the asylum and who is the current possessed. Plenty of senseless running around and screaming. But this does not really matter... if one only wants to see some gore. The end is a little bit surprising, but... too late, too little.

Still, I was able to sit through it. Mostly because it was well made. So... no total damnation.

See No Evil 2 - the first See No Evil was a nice surprise because I had low expectations and had a good time watching it. Yesterday I felt like watching a standard slasher, and this sequel (a pretty late one, btw) was the perfect film for it. Jacob Goodnight returns and in the morgue he is being transported to he starts another killing spree among the friends of one of the morticians, who is having her birthday (and thus has a party). One of her friends is played by Katherine Isabelle and I love her since Ginger Snaps, so I was very happy to see her strolling around in a sexy outfit and it was a bummer

Spoiler:

to see her die

Apparently, she is the muse of the Soska sisters, who directed this. This isn't a typical Soska film, though: it's a straightforward slasher with a series of kills and an apotheosis. It is far from original, but some scenes were nice, like the "awakening" scene, the scene where Tamara and Seth are hiding from the killer and the ending: I didn't expect

Spoiler:

the main character to die

If you want something new and original you better skip this, but if you are in the mood for a standard slasher like I was, then go for it.

Exists - a group of friends sets out on a trip to explore the woods where the uncle of one of them used to have a hunting cabin, but he doesn't go there anymore since he had an encounter with a wild hairy beast. The nephew has a goal: he wants to film Bigfoot. Of course there is nobody to be seen for miles, there is no reception and when the creature strikes, it also destroys their car, making a return to civilization a big hassle. You actually get to see pretty much of the creature, and not just shadows or shapes behind the trees. Of course it's a guy in a suit but it doesn't look too bad. The ending explains the anger of the creature which is nice. Acting is ok but nothing special and the setting is cheap but appropriate. Unfortunately this film had quite some boring parts, so I went to do other stuff while watching it in the background, never a good sign for the quality of the film. Still, the scenes which interested me were enough to make this not a total failure. Average monsterflick, I guess only for the fans.

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death - before I saw this, I had only seen the original Woman in Black from 1989. I thought that was a great film, with one of the scariest moments I have ever seen in a movie. When they remade this a few years ago, I didn't watch that one, because I was afraid it would ruin my memories of the 1989 film. Watching the sequel wouldn't do so, was my thinking, because often enough sequels don't have much to do with the original. I guess, after watching this one, I will watch Woman in Black remake (this same thing happened with I Spit on your Grave and the remake/sequel) because it must be a step up from this film. Because this film is simply too plain and simple: haunted house gets a group of kids for temporary stay (it's WWII and the kids are evacuated from big cities - which is a great start of the film and also a very believable way of putting children in the middle of nowhere). One of the kids is traumatized and being bullied, but soon the supernatural powers choose him to do their bidding. Strange things start to happen, a child dies, and from then on it gets worse everyday. Acting is mediocre, only the two leading women are close to be convincing. The setting is great, the ghost stuff is been there, done that but some stuff scared me a little (but most stuff didn't scare me at all). So apart from the setting (both time and location), this was nothing worthwhile. Move along, people!

Road Wars - "the Asylum presents", uh oh. This flick is a mixture between Mad Max and a zombiefilm like Stink of Flesh. It especially rips off the Mad Max trilogy, as there are these selfmade cars, the useless facepaint and the extreme haircuts. Oh, and gasoline is rare and they are searching for some all the time! Oh, and there is a rival gang and they have a fight with them! And there are zombies. Or infected people, or whatever. Nothing, nothing was new in this film and it was also really uninteresting. Acting was bad too, the only plus was that some of the music sounded OK, but it didn't fit the film. Stay away from this one, you'll thank me later.

Lust of the Dead 2 - the rape zombie trilogy goes on and this time there is a situation where the men are divided in two groups: toxic men (the infected rapist zombies) and otaku (something like: infected yes, but not sick yet). The otaku use the zombies to attack women, because they are angry about the fact that women took over everything since the virus broke out. There is one zombie with an unusually large penis. The women keep fighting back but they are losing ground, and now the men are trying to take back what was once theirs. One man is found who is not toxic and also not otaku and he is being investigated by a doctor now. The end. Acting was worse than in part one, characters were less interesting. Really useless trilogy so far.

Lately I read "the Asylum presents" as: You idiot, you did not pay attention what you downloaded... stop and delete immediately.

Hehe, LOL

Wrath of the Crows - unusual film. The setting is a prison: in the cells (they look more like cages) there are five inmates, three men and two women. The film starts with one of the men getting a chance to escape. He first has to be punished, but then he may run for his freedom. The sadistic guards have a bestial man with them to keep everything under control. After a short while, a new inmate appears, seemingly out of nowhere. She is dressed up in a slutty/kinky outfit and wears a large coat made of crowfeathers. Now that she is here, things start to get going inside the prison. You get to see the background stories of all inmates, so you know why they are there. You see their struggle against the situation, and also their doubt about what their chances are when they would get the opportunity to try for an escape. It's all symbolical, and the cells are actually meaning

Spoiler:

purgatory, and the new inmate is the angel of vengeance

I liked the ending, it was yet another twist in an already twistful film: in the first part I was surprised that I changed views on a character a few times. By the third one I knew the trick, but still. Acting is OK, the real drawback here was the sound: some actors are Italian and speak with heavy accents, combined with a bit of mumbling you get inaudible dialogues, which is a shame. When it gets available on DVD with subs, I'll give it a re-watch just because of this. Nice cast: Debbie Rochon and Tiffany Shepis are there again and they give a good show, Rochon more by acting and Shepis more by being sensual. The other characters are good too, but the guards could have been better. Gore is plenty and good, and like I said: the story was quite surprising. Recommended, I might even recommend it highly if the audio was better.

All Saints Eve - wanna laugh for 70 minutes? Watch this! In the 18th century, Caleb and his family get killed for witchery because they wouldn't hand over their land. Just before death Caleb curses the priest and the other people. In the present, there is Will, a far descendant of the priest (or of someone else, it isn't really explained), and he wants to build condos on the spot of the allegedly haunted house. So plans are to tear it down, but not before Halloween night, when Will organises a haunted house tour in the building. A group of friends is gonna visit it, but they dont know that between the dolls and the actors, there is also a real killer loose. OK, where to begin: the first person of the friends introduced to us is a devout catholic, and she gets introduced by singing Amazing Grace in church, but she is so much out of tune that it literally hurt my ears and I wished for her quitting singing asap. Then the group of friends: half of them can't act for shit, they just look dull and move like stop motion monsters from the 50s. One of the girls has such big boobs that it was a real task to look at any other part of her body whole she was onscreen, it was just that distracting. Then the haunted house: it has a killer loose but we never get to know who it is. According to Floyd (a character which is played by an actor I knew from somewhere, but since Floyd isn't in the credits, I couldn't look it up), it is Caleb, but we are never sure and we will never know. The kills are mostly offscreen, and I understand why, because some characters simply stop and wait to see what happens when the killer is wielding a large scythe, apparently because they are hoping that the killer will do something else beside kill them? Ridiculous. When they find one of their friends dead, they stay pretty calm, even though one of them has his head chopped off (which looks 120% rubber btw). The sheriff gets a report of the murders, and he calls for an ambulance and a coroner, but not for backup, even though he is there alone. Fortunately, the backup shows up by themselves miraculously. I could go on, but you really have to see it for yourself. The movie runs for just 68 minutes btw, the remaining 12 minutes are a featurette about how the film was made, which has some charming stuff, but doesn't explain why this film is such an utter SBiG fest. Highly recommended for bad moviefans!

Devil's Tower - British film with guest star Jason Mewes, who is really getting too old. Sarah gets kicked out of the house by her abusive mother and she ends up in Albion Court. This is a large building of which the caretaker is sure that it kills people, but Sarah doesn't believe him and regularly takes a look at the top floor which is restricted. Living in the "murder flat" she sees some strange stuff from now and then, for example when she gets robbed by two squatters (one of them Mewes, who wants to make up for it immediately and becomes the love interest of Sarah) she sees the face of one of them (not Mewes) on the TV later. We also get to see a zombielike creature watching all people in the building via a closed circuit. When Sarah's mother comes to visit, she gets an accident and dies, but the zombie does some lightning from his throat and brings her back to life (and possessed somehow). Now a horde of zombies is pillaging the entire building, thus crashing an ongoing party. Sarah and her friends have to battle the zombies, but with Mewes on their side they can never lose, of course. Unfortunately, it takes the film quite some time to get to this point of action. This was also a pretty bad movie, but not as funny as All Saints Eve, although the zombie and lightning scene were hilarious. Acting was less bad, but the rip was awful: everytime a possession scene (faces and static on the TV) played, the image got really blocky and that blockiness dragged on into the next scene all the time, really annoying. Bad film to have a laugh, but not as often as in All Saints Eve, so bad moviefans should go for that one, and all other fans should know what they are getting into when watching this one.

Speak No Evil - mmm, what to say? It wasn't really bad (it could have been way worse I mean), but it also couldn't keep me interested for the entire length of the movie, which is bad, because it is only 70 minutes long. The story is like this: a trailer trash woman (Anna) goes checking on her daughter (Joey) only to find that she is missing. As a viewer you already have seen a demonic creature in the corridor, so you know what happened, but Anna doesn't. She and her boyfriend Creighton are gonna look for her, starting at the home of Dale, Anna's ex. There she has a strange encounter with a stray woman, who is talking mysteriously about the situation. Dale isn't home, so Anna returns to the town, where she gets offered help by a very religious family, but she eclines. The next day, it turns out that more children are missing, and the police can't handle it. Now the religious family takes the lead and starts a search. When they find the children, they turn ut to be possessed and the religious people start killing them off. Anna, convinced that Joey is rescuable, does everything she can in order to save her daughter. Good things: most acting is decent, especially some possessed children play great parts. You don't get to see much of the demon, which is good because usually it turns out to be laughable. The personal problems of Anna are nicely interwoven with the story. Some scenes with possessed kids are kind of scary. Bad things: it is pretty clear what the solution is to get the demon out, and it is way too simple actually, so why wait for so long? The effects are bad: the kids have the same chocolate smear around their mouths to show that they are possessed. Other effects are even worse, like the fire in the house near the end

Spoiler:

and the fact that the policewoman doesn't lift a finger to save the now normal children

is also quite bad. ven though the film is short, it still has some uninteresting moments. Mediocre is what I would say.

Mega Shark Vs Mecha Shark - with a title like this, you know what to expect. Megalodon has returned, and the government has decided to build Mecha Shark. This is a steel shark replica with a built in computer called Nero, and it has to be commandeered by one person inside the shark (Rosie in this film) and one coordinator outside in a command center (Jack Turner, Rosie's husband). After megalodon has been localised, the navy and Mecha Shark are going after him, but the mission fails, and megalodon sinks a ship (after that, the commander of the navy says the nice cliche "I had friends on that ship"). Now a cat and mouse game starts, with Mecha Shark 2.0 and Jack and Rosie trying to take out megalodon even with the help of a marine scientist who sometimes just calls them to tell them various facts about megalodons. Wow, that comes in handy! Well, like I said, you know what to expect and so it's all really dumb and it is also bad cgi galore. Advice: gather some friends, buy a case of beer and watch this one. Don't use the subtitles however, they were made by someone with limited knowledge of English, and often they are confusing. Sometimes they mean the same as what is being said, but in different wording, very distracting. I decided after some 10 minutes to not use them anymore, which was a good idea.

Chance - Fear Itself episode nr 10. A very disappointing one, imo. This one was very boring, or I just missed the punch line. It's about a guy named Chance who has financial problems, but is sure he is gonna make a break by selling an antique vase which he recently bought from a guy he knows. The sale goes wrong and people die, and Chance gets to see his alter ego. This alter ego explains everything to him later, but if you have an IQ over 25, you shouldn't need that explanation. Dull, predictable, almost no gore, no horror imo. Bad. Shouldn't have been part of the series.

Disciples - an occult B-film about a somewhat complicated ritual. It's a B-movie actors parade, with among others Debbie Rochon, Brinke Stevens, Tony Todd and Linnea Quigley. Demons are gathering because they have to prepare for a confrontation between their lord Lucifer and a Seraphim. For this, a sacrifice is needed, but the demons also search for some girls and their parents, and for a virgin. Some old woman explains all about demon blood in a pendant found by yet another girl. It's all a bit confusing, and so is the film, it tries to get it all across but has a hard time doing so. Effects are OK-ish, in some of the make-up some nice details. It shows being a B-film in some shameless overacting, quite a number of plotholes and plastic jewellery which is of course superimportant for the reign of Lucifer or something like that. The ending was quite cool, though. Fun to watch, especially if you like B-movies.

Julia - weird type of film. I thought it would be rape-revenge, but it was a mix of that with lesbian drama and an arty atmosphere. Julia is an anonymous girl working in a plastic surgery clinic. One day when she is on a date, she gets drugged and raped by four guys, who dump her at the side of a river. Upon walking up, Julia doesn't know what to do, but when she overhears a conversation in a bar about a certain therapy which makes rape victims become stronger and more self confident, "masters over their body", she tries to get into that therapy. The therapy is rather extreme and soon blood begins to flow. Julia also doesn't follow the exact rules of the therapy, and while she is being warned about that by Sadie, who becomes her lesbian love interest, she continues and drags Sadie with her. The revenge-theme is certainly there, but it is being executed in a rather atypical way, with Julia being a very doubtful person in the beginning, and turning into a ruthless killing machine in the end. The lesbian affair thing doesn't make things any easier for those involved. I didn't really get the therapist's chain of thoughts, but overall I thought this was quite an original film with enough gore and action to sit through it., Acting is also OK and atmosphere is almost always a tad threatening. I'm giving this a recommendation.

The Returned - I felt like watching another atypical movie, so I picked this one. It has an original view on a zombie outbreak: since a pandemic in the 80s, a prescription of daily protein injections prevents infected people from turning into bloodthirsty beasts. When these people, the returned, miss one injection, they turn into zombies and it can't be reversed anymore: they are lost at that point. I thought this was quite a cool film, because I felt some parallels with the persecution of certain minorities in history while I was watching this. At some point, the injections become scarce, and society is divided between one group which says that returned people are as human as the rest, and one group which states that they are walking time bombs and should be separated from society. Kate, a nurse at a returned clinic, is in the midst of all this, because she also has personal reasons to support the case of the returned. More a thriller than a horror (the zombie action is really, really scarce), Kate has to fight the situation in order to keep her job and her loved ones with her. Betrayal and coincidence are close at hand, though. A bit predictable, but still pretty powerful dramatic ending. Recommended, too.

Alien Outpost – aka Outpost 37. A scifi whoich looks more like an unrealistic warmovie. In 2033 or something, the world has been invaded by aliens, but mankind (read: the Americans) have counterattacked and chased them off for the most part. In some regions of the world however, there are still some aliens roaming around, lurking for a chance to begin a second conquest of the earth. To keep these aliens (“heavies” according to the characters in the film) in check, outposts were built and manned. Outpost 37 is in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan (wow, what a coincidence!) and it is the most dangerous outpost in the world. A documentary is being made on the outpost, and you as a viewer go with the cameracrew to see what they see. Luckily this is not entirely filmed with handheld shaky cameras, there are w few scenes but that’s it. What you get to see is lots of firefights between the soldiers (with the exception of two they are all Americans, again a coincidence of course) and the aliens combined with the locals (hurray, Americans can shoot Arabs, or people looking like Arabs), and there isn’t a lot more to the storyline. Yes, they save the world in the end, but what’s on the poster (which is a cool poster, btw) is only for a short time in the movie, near the end. If I were a psychology student, I’d say this film was made to vent some frustration about the current campaigns in Afghanistan, but I’m not, so I won’t. The aliens look a but dumb imo, a tad like Transformers. The film is quite forgettable, so I can’t seriously recommend this.

From the Dark – a couple’s car breaks down in the bogs at night and the man goes to find help. It doesn’t take long before a monster, which looks a lot like Nosferatu, harasses him and his wife. This monster was dug up accidentally by the man who lives in the house which is close to the place where the car broke down. What follows is a series of encounters with the monster, but it is quite boring, as the same thing happens over and over again: the monster is afraid of light, so he tries to take out as much light as possible, whereas the man and the woman try to use as much light as possible. Cat and mouse ensues, but it isn’t too interesting. I won’t watch this again, that’s for sure.