As far as the worst films of the year, The Devil Inside and The Wicker Tree are runaway “winners” so far. Devil’s ending had people booing at the Hollywood premiere (that the director and stars attended). Yep. That bad. And Wicker is simply an abomination that makes the Nic Cage version look like Raging Bull. Stay far, far away. I am pleading with you.

10. 2-Headed Shark Attack (Jan 17th)

You get Carmen Electra, The lesser O’Connell brother (Charlie), horny co-eds and, obviously, a 2-headed shark attacking anything that movies. What separates this from previous Asylum “Mega” movies is that it’s simply more fun. And it feels more like a complete movie than their usual hack job crap (though fun) and does well to remind viewers of the classic bad monster movies of the ’60s and ’70s.

9. Mother’s Day (May 4th Theatrical)

Darren Lynn Bousman may be the director of all the Saw movies that suck (2,3,4), but he’s also the creator of the Repo! The Genetic Opera, a personal favorite of mine. This remake of the classic film in no ways destroys or cheapens the original. And to me, that’s pretty damn impressive.

8. The Divide (April 17th DVD)

The Divide  is a bleak as f*ck take on the apocalyptic genre. It might make you vomit or wish you could. It’s nasty, brutal and in your face.

7. Silent House (March 9th)

It’s not often when you watch a movie you can say you literally saw a star bloom before your eyes, but that’s what happens with Elizabeth Olsen in this remake of a 2010 film. Lizzy absolutely kills it. The films plays quite scary until a rather weak third act. But that’s overlooked in this case because of both the impressive technical merit (it’s designed to look like one long take) and Lizzy’s acting chops.

6. Kill List (Jan 4 VOD)

The less you know the better, just prepare yourself for an experience you won’t soon forget. This one appeared on many top 10 lists (often #1 or 2) for festival flicks from last year. I wasn’t that sold, but it may rise up even further on my year end list because the more I think about the more I like it.

5. The Innkeepers (Feb 3rd)

Good ole fashioned haunted hotel movie from director Ti West (or as my friend calls him T.I. West). The Innkeepers concludes with a satisfying and terrifying final 10 minutes, something pretty rare in a business that so often insists on prepping for the inevitable cash cow sequel.

4. The Woman in Black (Feb 10th)

Speaking of good ole fashioned horror flicks, Hammer horror showed their return to glory wasn’t going to be short lived. Daniel Radcliffe is excellent in his first post-Potter role, the scares are genuine and the atmosphere is to die for. One of the few films on the list to make the hair on my arms stand to attention.

3. Rabies (Feb 28th)

Just watch it. You won’t be disappointed. It’s original. Scary. Great.

2. The Grey (Jan 27th)

So much more than just Liam Neeson punching wolves. It’s an existential trip through the human mind with horror elements. In other words, a thinking man’s horror flick which also has Liam Neeson punching wolves. For my money, it doesn’t get much better than that. The Grey also features one of the most realistic and terrifying plane crashes ever put to film.

1. The Cabin in the Woods (April 12th)

Easily the best horror film of the year so far is also the best horror comedy film in ages. An deconstructionist masterpiece from Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon.

]]> http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/05/07/top-10-horror-movies-of-2012-so-far/feed/ 1 http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/26/nazis-at-the-center-of-the-earth/ http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/26/nazis-at-the-center-of-the-earth/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:45:27 +0000 Micah http://www.365horrormovie.com/?p=2683

Smartest Scientist Ever

*Please watch the film before reading this review. It’s too insane not to spoil some of the finer points.

It’s nice to finally find out what really happened to the Nazis after WWII. Sure, indisputable facts are one thing, but only rubes believe in those. Thanks to The Asylum, the real truth is finally unveiled and guess what, it’s frightening. Turns out the Nazis have been hiding in the secret base below the Antarctic in the center of the earth. Oh f*ckballs!

Jake Busey, who was hired presumably for his ability to look like the most Aryan dude on Earth, plays Dr. Adrian Reistad, head doctor guy at research lab or some sort of similar nonsense in the Antarctic. A bunch of cliched Americans brainiacs are there, including one who, like any true American would do, saves a baseball through all sorts of torture, murder and running around in the middle of the Earth for just the right moment to take out a Nazi with said baseball. FDR would be proud. But I digress. People trust Jake Busey, yes I know, that sounds like an awful idea, and it is, because he is actually a bad guy in disguise. The Americans find out too late, when one of their faces is cut off by the Nazis.

See, the Nazis are awesomely advanced like one would suspect for a group hiding for 60+ years in the middle of the Earth with limited supplies and pretty much unanimous hatred by all nations. Hell, they’ve even invented some sort of Ion Laser Blast guns that disintegrate any human targets upon touch but have no impact to the surrounding environment when misfired. But they have one problem. Icky Face. Yep. All their best scientists can’t figure out how to keep the reborn Nazi army from turning into bad green makeup jobs. It’s always the little things that trip up the best laid plans. Icky Face plot lines take up roughly 50% of the movie because the thing about Americans is they have faces and the Nazis need faces.

Icky Face

Also important, and spoilery, is the old timey steampunk tank looking thing of which Jake Busey and Josef Mengele (His Wiki page is wrong, he didn’t die in 1979. Stupid Wikipedia, they let any old idiot update it) keep injecting stem cells into. This is where it gets a little weird. Busey murders his own unborn child to harvest the juicy baby stem cells and promptly injects them into the tank. The tank rumbles and then turns into a highly advanced Decepticon. But not just any Decepticon, it’s MOTHER F*CKING Hitler’s head attached to a robot body. Think the floating heads from Futurama meets some sort of Terminator body. Who knew? All that was needed to bring back Adolf was was unborn baby fetus cells. In retrospect, we all should have seen that one coming.

From here it gets a little weirder.

Hitler Robot shows off his awesomeness by decapitating a dude with his sword arm (one of his many attachments). Yeah. Same old Hitler. Suck a prick. At then the entire underground base also goes Decepticon and turns into a spaceship. I know what you’re thinking and your’e right, a spaceship makes absolute sense and is totally more believable than Jake Busey as a scientist doctor guy.

Probably one of the more historically accurate films based on the Nazis ever made. The Asylum has done their duty to bring forth this mostly true story (the love stories were made up because people need that in a flick) and for that they should be congratulated. Also because f*ck Nazis.

Rating: 7.5 Batsh*t Crazies out of 10

Snore Factor:  ZZZ

IMDB 2012

Trailer:

]]> http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/26/nazis-at-the-center-of-the-earth/feed/ 0 http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/17/the-wicker-tree/ http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/17/the-wicker-tree/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:46:43 +0000 Micah http://www.365horrormovie.com/?p=2679

This dress doesn't look fabulous to me

It’s only mid-April, but Wicker Tree is my clear front runner for worst movie of the year. So, congrats, Wicker Tree. You suck something fierce. It’s a little mind-boggling that Robin Hardy, writer/director of the original Wicker Man, decided to create a companion for his legendary film. Maybe Nic Cage and the bees caused him many restless nights. Or maybe he legitimately thought after nearly 40 years it was time for an update. Whatever the reason, his attempt at a spiritual counterpart could not get it more wrong. Could not. I repeat. COULD. NOT.

Country singer Poptart, Beth Boothby (Brittania Nicol), is a born-again Christian who, apparently after spending some time in Jesus Camp (now there’s a scary movie), decides to spread the gospel to the heathens of Ireland. Beth used to be a slutzo Xtina-style singer, but thanks to Jesus now chooses to sing about how great God is. Along for the ride is her boyfriend, Steve (Henry Garret), also a born again convert and true Texas Cowboy (ludicrous European idea of what a cowboy is). The couple wear purity rings. How quaint and idyllic. Along with the two lovebirds, every character in the film is a paper-thin cutout made of awful. A side note to foreigners, no one in America acts like the morons depicted in this movie.

After Beth sings a diddy in an Irish church, this is a cult-worshiping pagan horror musical after all, her and her Cowboy BF are recruited by Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish) to come preach in his tiny, weird village. Right away the movie gets illogical. For starters, Beth has no problem accepting the role of the May Queen for an upcoming festival, which is clearly explained to her as pagan worship about one minute before she agrees. Her rationale? The dress is fabulous.

The cockamamy side stories continue to veer all over the place. There’s some nonsense about how the town’s women are infertile due to a nearby nuclear plant (ran, ironically, by the head of the town), but can get preggers by sacrificing idiots from Texas. Beth struggles with her hoe-baggy past vs. her newfound Jesus Love (this is more ridiculous than it sounds). A detective, whose point in the movie besides a call back to the original film is unknown, attempts to dig up info on the cult. And the cult’s resident slut is slutty and naturally targets Cowboy Steve. And, of course, there is rampant and incredibly obvious cult activity (That Beth and Steve are oblivious of) going on as the town prepares for its big burning man festival.

At no point is there any sense of dread in the film. None whatsoever. There are, however, plenty of honky tonk songs and random pagan chanting. The film attempts to be a comedic piece of social commentary, but ultimately falls flat on that front as well. So, what’s left is a boring bunch of cliches that induce no restlessness, no tension, nor any laughs. Simply put, it’s bad.

At least the remake has Nic Cage punching a woman while wearing a bear suit. Which is far more entertaining than anything Wicker Tree has to offer.

Rating: 2/10

Snore Factor: ZZZZZ

IMDb: 2010

Trailer:

]]> http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/17/the-wicker-tree/feed/ 0 http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/13/tweets-that-are-incorrect-about-the-cabin-in-the-woods/ http://www.365horrormovie.com/2012/04/13/tweets-that-are-incorrect-about-the-cabin-in-the-woods/#comments Sat, 14 Apr 2012 05:26:48 +0000 Micah http://www.365horrormovie.com/?p=2650 I was curious about how the Twitterverse would react once the Friday night teenage population feasted their eyes on a Drew Goddard’s meta deconstructionist horror comedy masterpiece.

Collected below are a selection of tweets which prove, without reasonable doubt, that Jersey Shore has ruined our once great country. Be careful. Some of these tweets contain spoilers and many have committed grammar and/or spelling murder.

My favorite of the bunch declares that The Cabin In The Woods is worse than Mr. Magoo.

It’s not often that a movie comes along and redefines a genre, but that’s exactly what The Cabin in the Woods has done. And its done so with a level of cleverness, care and originality that’s almost never seen in horror.

I’d hate to be a director or writer trying to get a standard “Tweens Gone Camping” horror flick funded or seen by any size-able audience going forward. That genre is now dead. Much like Scream essentially murked the standard Slasher genre as we knew it, Cabin has made every film, in its slice of the horror pie, that came before it superfluous and badly defeated. And that is a great! How many of us die-hard horror fans (and casual fans alike) can literally regurgitate the entire plot of this heavily overused and incredibly tired sub-genre?

Let’s see. A group of walking stereotypes head out for a trip “off the grid” where there is conveniently “no cell service.” There’s always a hot blonde, a reserved yet cute virgin-esque girl (Kristen Connolly) who is destined for greatness, a comic relief stoner (Fran Kanz), a jock who bangs the blonde and a nerd who is vital to plot exposition. Oh, don’t forget the creepy gas station harbinger (or Jud Crandall) who always tries unsuccessfully to dissuade the doomed group. What else? Once the arrive the moronic group discover books with mysterious Latin (and promptly read it aloud), explore basements or attics, play around with mysterious objects and sometimes stumble upon horrifying newspaper clippings. From there something is awakened and they all die, save the good virgin girl and maybe the guy she’s into if the screenwriter was feeling generous.

Well, guess what? Cabin has all of those things too. In fact, every convention is represented and then some. Over the first act of the film they play out exactly like everything else you’ve ever seen. Minus one little (okay MASSIVE) point. Right from the start we know this group of hormones heading for a weekend of drugs, sex and death are being setup by a mysterious group of people in what appears to be some sort of secret lab. The two company men (Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford) in charge of this lab are knee-slapping rib-ticklers. Like laugh-out-loud-spit-up-your-drink-Eddie-Murphy-Raw-hilarious. On top of that, it’s captivating as all get out to see the lab juxtaposed (the film cuts back and forth) with the teens as the mystery unfolds.

The brilliance doesn’t stop there. The characters, play both for and against their clichés. The Jock (Chris Hemsworth) isn’t all meathead and the Blonde (Anna Hutchinson) isn’t only a warm place for a penis to be inside of. Every character is written incredibly well with charm, realness and often hilarity. Writer / first time Director Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, Lost) and writer Joss Whedon (Every Nerd Thing Ever) have created some of the most likable characters in recent horror memory. Nothing like the typical asshats that we fans have become accustomed to rooting against.

Cabin is mostly a black comedy first, horror flick second (Think a little like Evil Dead II – and you will due to the sheer number of homages). Don’t expect a ton of jolts or tension ratcheted up so high that you are white-knuckling your seat, but do expect a ton of intelligent and thought-provoking fun. Of course, this wouldn’t be much of a horror review if I didn’t comment on the amount of blood spatter. Legions of Gorehounds crave the gruesome, and while they won’t be let down, this isn’t Hatchet or “Insert your favorite gory flick here.” But you’ll be happy to know that all told some 20,000 gallons of blood are loosed on screen.

Bottom line: This is the horror comedy made for lovers of horror genre and it is absolutely genius. The Cabin in the Woods is the must see horror movie of the year.

Rating: 9.5/10

Snore Factor: Z (One of the Best)

IMDb 2011

Don’t watch the trailer until you see the movie. Trust me, it’s better that way.

Trailer: