You would think a survivalist horror film about a group of campers fighting off monsters born from stagnant infected lake water would be material for a gripping and intense horror film. But you’d be wrong. In fact, most of “Primal” is quite tedious and rote. I wanted to be choked with tension throughout most of “Primal” and just found myself basically yawning and zoning out for the most part. I wish I could attribute it to being high, but I’m not one to get high. In either case, “Primal” is pretty derivative of Bava’s “Demons,” where anyone who ingests the tainted water find themselves transforming in to demonic beings in an instant.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
We’ve all seen it so many times that I kind of get angry when a filmmaker sends me their latest horror opus and it’s comprised of the same premise. A bunch of teenagers have commandeered a cabin in the woods for the weekend, and decide that they want to get away for a few days of beer drinking and misdeeds of the sexual nature. While there they discover that the cabin houses a bunch of secrets that could be their undoing. And it’s all being manipulated by a secret government lab hidden underneath the cabin, manipulating every single moment of their weekend like a game of chess. Ah, but that’s not the whole story.
The Girl and the Ghost (2012)
Destiny and the hope for something amazing after we die, play a heavy role in animator Jacob Drake’s short film “The Girl and the Ghost.” While the film is essentially a short tale about friendship and being there for someone at their darkest times, the film itself feels like a hope that we’re not finished once we’ve passed on. There must be something beyond this world. We can all hope for that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to continue our journey. Fates collide one night when young Annabella refuses to sleep, convinced that evil monsters are in her closet.
Outbreak (1995)
It’s almost as if mid-way the writers and producers decided that a horrible virus eliminating an entire small town in a disturbing fever wasn’t good enough. So they inject a crusty scowling military man who has been given orders to destroy the whole town. It’s so rote and typical of Hollywood that it’s jarring to the tone of “Outbreak.” Wolfgang Peterson’s ensemble thriller can never really decide if it wants to be an action adventure thriller or a dramatic thriller. It wants to feature explosions and epic helicopter chases, but it also tries to inject explorations in to military policy, government corruption, and discussion about past events in history that were rationalized as a means to an end.
Waffle (2010)
This is one of the few times in my life where I’ve seen a waffle filmed on-screen and felt a twinge of disgust watching it. Director Rafael DeLeon equates the edible waffle desert with the character Wendy in his short film “Waffle,” and uses it as a symbolic way of revealing her apparent deformity that’s never quite revealed. The local high school alpha queen Dana indulges in a creepy dinner with local science genius and deformed high schooler Wendy and her mother.
Haunted High (2012)
Zombie frogs, demonic exercise machines, ghostly sports jerseys, and evil toilets, they’re all here to be about as moronic as possible in one of the least scary movies I’ve ever seen. RL Stine in his days of “Goosebumps” drew more chills from me than “Haunted High” a film so laughably bad, it’s almost impossible to watch in one sitting. It basically has everything a bad horror film should have. Special effects so bad they seem to have been created in the mid-eighties, a villain so non-threatening he barely registers above a yawn in the spook meter, and did I mention genre favorite Charisma Carpenter gets top billing for a role that’s literally only thirty seconds in length?
C.H.U.D. II – Bud the Chud (1989)
When I was a kid I was frightened of pretty much any movie that featured the walking dead, and surely enough my fright was induced whenever I watched “CHUD II.” I can fondly remember re-watching this movie on the now defunct “Monsters HD” cable channel in America three years ago and gazing in disbelief at this absurd and unfunny zombie movie. I was horrified of this? Seriously? “CHUD II” is a travesty not just because it’s an unfunny horror comedy, and not just because it’s not an actual sequel to “CHUD” at all. But because it’s a pretty blatant rip-off of “Return of the Living Dead” with brain eating intelligent zombies taking center stage, and even featuring a zombie dog who rolls with the group of zombies throughout the film.