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Woensdag (2005)
Bad in a good way
Woensdag is a Dutch horror movie made on a ridiculously thin budget that takes its inspiration from 70s slasher movies.
A new TV show is being made called 'Camp Slasher'. In it, there are 8 young men and women who are placed inside a tent in the middle of a dark forest that, apparently, is haunted by the ghost of an old lumberjack. They are given assignments to go find clues in the forest that will lead them to their escape from the forest, BUT they must be careful for when the ghost of the lumberjack catches you, you're out of the game. Those that escape from the forest get to walk away with prize of 50000 euros. The TV crew has cameras setup throughout the forest, and inside the masks of their killer actors so the people watching at home won't miss anything of the action in the woods. Problems however start to arise when the ghost of the lumberjack turns out to be a little more than just local folklore...
The total budget of this movie was a whopping 5000 euros, and it shows. The cast is made up of unknowns, most of which don't appear to have any acting skills at all. The lighting is crap most of the time, and the sound could use a bit of polish as well.
It's not all bad though. The studio segments are both convincing and funny. Particularly the effect they use to show a contestant has left the game.
Like any good 70s slasher movie, there's a gratuitous boobie shot. Like any good 70s slasher movie, the story is nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse to allow the filming of the killings. It's insignificant, and not particularly original either. Like any good 70s slasher movie, there are quite a lot of kills for you gore hounds to enjoy. Most of them are in reasonably well-lit areas, so no scream in the dark that is to mean the person has died, which is sort of a plus. Sort of, because the budget constraints made the wounds look really fake. Some kills are off-camera, but even those will make you laugh.
At 75 minutes it's a short movie, but I feel this is another good thing. Some scenes already feel a bit stretched out, but overall the pace is okay. It would be easy to lengthen the movie to the more standard 90 minutes, but it would slow this movie down to a crawl.
If you're looking for a horror movie that will have you sitting at the edge of your seat, biting your nails and jumping up from it every few minutes, you'll be sorely disappointed. If, on the other hand, you're in a joyful mood, and like to laugh at some really fake killings in a low-budget movie, look no further. If you like the concept of being put in a bad place, with cameras all around for the enjoyment of the home-front, take a look at the Japanese masterpiece Battle Royale.
Overall, they clearly had fun making this movie, and did a great job at maximizing the effectiveness of their budget, but it's still the Achilles heel of this movie. I think most casual moviegoers will want to skip this one. If you're into low-budget slasher movies, give this one a go. It's not the best you'll ever see, but it probably won't be the worst one either.
Splatter Farm (1987)
So bad, it stopped being funny again.
This movie clearly demonstrates why people shouldn't give other people their home-made movies.
The story, what little you can find of it, is that 2 twin brothers go to visit their aunt Lacy at her farm. The place is supposedly being kept in shape by Jeremy, but he's kinda busy killing people and using their corpses for sexual gratification. The twins begin finding body parts and grow weary of Jeremy. On top of this, Lucy has been alone too long and now finds herself lusting for one of her nephews. Eventually the twins decide enough's enough and try to get away. There's plenty of sick stuff going on, but the rest of the movie is so annoying, you'd be hard-pressed to even notice.
To my amazement, I actually found something not that bad in this movie. The guy playing Jeremy looked truly freakish and was doing a fairly decent job acting.
Absolutely everything else in the movie was undeniable crap though.
It was cut with a spoon, and put back together using chewing gum or something. You went from scene 1 with (extremely annoying) background music playing, to a silent shot of some scenery. No fading out the sounds here, instead they chop it off mid-tone. I lost count of the amount of times there was a crackle or pop when they put 2 scenes together.
The assembled corpses looked okay, but then someone would stand over one and work it over with an axe, getting blood sprayed into him from the side. Come on people, stuff like that isn't rocket science.
The lighting sucked in that oftentimes you couldn't see anything, but even more often everything was way, WAAY too bright, having the same end result.
The dialog, notably absent for the first 5 minutes of the film, was stupid and (st)uttered completely unconvincing. The redneck with Down's syndrome accents of the twins didn't help either.
This movie also has a rather large abundance of walking, sleeping, running, sitting doing nothing, reading the damn newspaper (and not noticing anything to help the story along), awkward silences and more, equally enjoyable filler.
The guy handling the camera seemed to be having Parkingsons disease or something. They couldn't even take a shot of the moon without shaking the camera!
To round it all off, they decided to add a (gasp) plot twist (!) at the end of the movie. If only the creative genius that dreamed that one up had been able to stay focused during the other 90 minutes of the film...
That this movie got a 3.7 here is a miracle in itself, and it's certainly undeserved. The fact that it's a home-movie doesn't excuse it from being the crap that it is.
This movie isn't fun, shocking, entertaining or gruesome. It's a dull, slow, boring, fake, cheap dog of a movie, and your time would be better spent watching paint dry.
The Captives (2001)
Do they expect people to pay for this?
What an awful, awful, awful movie. I tried *REALLY* hard to find something worth while in this and came up empty. I did enjoy the ending of the movie immensely, but that was only because it meant my suffering was over.
The story (which is *completely* irrelevant to the actual movie) is that some guy rapes and kills a woman on his brother's property. The guy goes to jail and because his brother tried to help him cover up the act he goes in for accessory to murder. He then escapes, meets up with his girlfriend and then introduces her to the 'gifts' he has stored in the basement, which is just a couple of people that somehow wronged him at his trial. He intends to kill them and her, so she tries to escape, struggles with and then subsequently kills the brother.
She's now home alone with 3 people that incidentally also wronged her in the past, so it's payback time.
At this point the movie has finally reached the part that people watching this movie paid for. Problem is it took almost 40 minutes to get there, and a *LOT* of those 40 minutes were spent watching long stupid scenes of nothing shot like your dad would film something with his handycam while walking. The background noise during this was a bunch of annoying buzzes and shreeks. Guess even soundtracks cost a lot of money these days.
The acting... It's a stretch to even call what they are doing 'acting', but for argument's sake let's do so. It's terrible. There's a scene where one of the 'actors' actually laughs when he's clearly supposed to be in pain. My guess is these 'actors', if they were even slightly serious about their acting career, pretty much blew it by signing on for this movie. If they had an agent, he should be shot (or worse, be forced to watch this movie).
There's a whole bunch of nudity in the movie, and while the main subject isn't exactly ugly, she probably won't become Miss Universe anytime soon. I think she's also the most tattoo-covered girl I've seen on film ever. There's a pretty explicit up-close and personal masturbation scene with her too, but that's about it. When she then does a similar thing with one of her captives, there's a striking lack of close-ups of the act. If anything would've been considered shocking (which is probably what the movie was intended to do) *THAT* would've been it.
Oh yeah, to keep some sort of story going, every so often they cut to black and white segments of her moaning on about why who did what. Aside from the fact that absolutely nobody cares about the story, this monotonous monologue is about as interesting as listening to someone reading entries out of the phone book.
If you have any plans at all to go watch this, PLEASE DON'T! If you wanted to see it for the shock-value, watch either "I Spit On Your Grave (1978)" or the less sexual "Broken" video by Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor. And if you wanted to just see the naked girl, rent a porno. I can guarantee you it'll be more interesting, have a better story, makeup, lighting, acting and BUDGET, and give you a lot more value for your dollar.
0 out of 10. Avoid at all cost.
Resident Evil (2002)
One of the better zombie movies
Based on the popular video game (they made a couple of comics too) this movie is just what the doctor ordered for us Zombie flick fans.
A secret Umbrella Corporation research facility becomes infected with a virus it was developing and the computerised security system sealed it off completely, leaving the present staff to die while exposed to the virus.
Since nobody knows what went wrong, a SWAT-type team is sent in to investigate. On their way in they run into Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Spence Parks. They guard the entrance to the facility and were rendered unconcious by the security system and as a result of which suffer some memory loss. Also tagging along is cop Matt Addison who just happened to be there when the team arrived.
They get in, run into lots and lots of nasties and need to get out in one piece. There's a few plot twists in there to keep things entertaining for people looking for a nice story, and for the hormone-driven males there's a couple of nice partial nudity shots of lovely Milla. It doesn't get in the way of the action though, and there's plenty of that.
The biggest flaw in the story is when the lasers come into play. The last type of laser used is the most effective, and it makes you wonder why the security system didn't use it immediately and get it over with. The rest of the story is solid as far as I can tell, and pretty much in sync with the game.
Now, as I said this is a very good zombie movie. There's a lot of them, and the special effects budget was well spent using mainly make-up effects, and saving the big bucks for the biggest nasty of them all (a 'licker', to those familiar with the game) which is played by the computer.
There's practically no gore in the movie. Sure, there's the bruises and wounds a zombie is likely to inflict, but no zooming in on it, or excessive blood squirts. I actually counted a total of one scene I would consider somewhat gory (when they reach the train on the way out), and it wasn't that bad.
The acting by most of the credited cast was okay. The zombies on the other hand were excellent. Normally they disappoint by trying too hard to act somewhat dead or by standing still while clawing at a character. In this movie they do what you expect them to do and do it well.
I'm giving this one an 8 out of 10. If you're into zombie movies (and I am in a BIG way) it's highly recommended. If you're just looking for some good scares, this movie delivers. Go see it. You will not be disappointed.
Batoru rowaiaru II: Chinkonka (2003)
Mediocre at best
Kinji Fukasaku died of cancer during this movie shoot, and thus his son and screenwriter Kenta Fukasaku took place in the directors chair. I can't tell if Kenta's directing was poor, or if the story was simply lacking, but this sequel pales compared to the original masterpiece.
Be warned. There are some small spoilers below.
Nanahara Shuya, having survived Battle Royale, has created a terrorist group of youngsters called the Wild Seven, who have declared war on all adults. They've been blowing up buildings and are currently held up on a small island. The country's leadership has since written up a new law, BR2, which... Well... I donno. It's explained that the group of kids sent in this time are the first under the new law, but practically nothing is done to explain this very law.
The class teacher this time around is played by some guy who tries to become Jim Carrey playing a psycho or something (and failing miserably I might add). I don't have a clue what he's doing there and from the looks of it, neither does he. In BR1, teacher Kitano (played by Beat Takeshi) takes time to explain the BR law, and to some extent why it was made. In this movie the teacher's only goal seems to be to scare the kids.
As with BR1, the kids get an explosive necklace (which in BR1 came with the most hilarious instruction video known to man), but this time there's a catch: If boy number X dies, the necklace of girl number X blows up aswell and vice versa. Knowing this, the kids are sent to the island with instructions to kill Nanahara Shuya. Since this is the goal the _adults_ wish to see achieved, it's kinda hard to understand this pairing rule.
Nanahara's group was expecting an infiltration force, so when the kids show up it's like meat to the slaughter, worsened by the pairing rule. This is where the real difference between BR1 and BR2 becomes all too clear. In BR1, there was a lot of solid character development. In BR2, half of the class doesn't even make it to the island where the real hardship's supposed to be.
To add a little twist to the story, Kitano's daughter Shiori (played by Ai Maeda, the sister of Aki Maeda who plays Noriko in both BRs) is amongst the group of kids who get sent in. Unfortunately this fact is vastly under-utilised. At the opening she volunteers for a BR2 training camp, but when she and her classmates wake up in the bus they all appear surprised, and later even unwilling to participate in the game. Not what you'd expect from a volunteer.
The action sequences in the movie are impressive, though about as realistic as Rambo 3, particularly near the end. One can only wonder why during a big push by the enemy, they would cease all hostilities to let a dying person make his peace, before continuing the fight again. Which brings us to the sentimental segments of the movie. They're too long and there are too many of them. Someone already pointed out the movie could do with tighter editing, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Overall, the movie can be considered a mediocre action flick at best. Watch it if you must, but don't expect another magnificent movie such as Battle Royale. And if you're aiming to collect all the great works of Kinji Fukasaku, skip this one. I read on a BR fansite only one of his takes made the final cut. Remember this great movie maker by his final masterpiece: Battle Royale.
5 out of 10.
Dead Homiez (1993)
Pretty good
This combination movie/documentary, with an emphasis on the documentary part, turned out to be pretty good. Most of this is thanks to the cast, who for the most part are themselves gangmembers. Quite a few of them died before the movie was released. The documentary and the movie are split up into small segments and for every 2 documentary segments you get 1 movie segment.
Starting off with the documentary segments, it's a shame that certain gangmembers that the viewer is introduced to appear to be more interested in telling the viewer how cool they think they themselves or their gang is. Those that are willing to go beyond that and tell you what happened to who and for what almost invariably run a chill down your spine.
It's interesting to see the young gangstas spouting off about how what they're doing is necessary, whereas the older gangstas have since thought it through and wound up wondering how anybody could consider it worth it.
The movie segment had a hard time maintaining my interest. You basically see a couple of bangers doing their thing in the wrong hood, paying the price and their homies retaliating, which will of course result in a retaliation, and so on, and so on. It's sad to think that that's actually the way things go, but if you want to see a good movie about this sort of thing, check out Boyz N The Hood or Menace II Society.
7.5/10 for the documentary segments. 6/10 for the movie segments.