Ever since “The Collective” got together to make their own anthology series revolving around demonic VHS tapes, every indie director has been attempting to cash in on the formula. “All Hallow’s Eve” is yet another take off on the concept, except it’s set around Halloween! A hot nanny (Katie Maguire) and two of the worst child actors in history have come back from trick or treating, and the nanny discovers an odd unmarked VHS tape in one of her charge’s trick or treat bags.
You have to give it to Will Smith. For a man prone to taking the spotlight and eating it up like a gluttonous child, he really is comfortable playing second fiddle in “After Earth.” Clearly just nothing but a vanity project for Smith and his son, he literally passes the torch on to his son Jaden to take up the role of the action hero. Smith meanwhile stays in a space ship for the duration of the film as the Maguffin leading his son to the film’s second Maguffin. It’s all for naught though since Jaden Smith has no screen presence, zero charisma, and can’t act to save his life.
Have we reached so low down the totem pole that we’re now ripping off Eli Roth movies? Is that the definition of desperation or what? “Aftershock” feels like one of those situations with “Poltergeist” where Eli Roth was ghost directing while Nicolas Lopez was credited as director. It’s a half hour of a lame tourist dramedy, followed by an hour of really silly gore and zero direction in its story, all leading in to a finale that shamelessly rips off the final scenes of “The Descent.” Thank goodness “Aftershock” is a merciful ninety minutes.
The crux of “American Mary” depends on the performance by Katharine Isabelle. While the film itself is a unique and very entertaining tale about revenge, madness, and masochism, the lead performance of Mary is most important. Almost any other actor probably would have played the character of Mary Mason completely over the top, but Katharine Isabelle’s turn as a slowly unraveling sadist with revenge on her mind is incredible. Even brilliant.
Almost forty years later, director John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” is still an excellent and mean contemporary western that never lets up on its audience. Director Carpenter has a knack for lensing the world to look like an alien habitat filled with despair and evil, and “Assault” is no exception. What begins as moving day for a local precinct descends in to violence, chaos, and murder with an enemy that will stop at nothing to quench its thirst for vengeance.
I’m sure National Geographic would love viewers to believe that “American Blackout” is exactly what would happen during a week long black out in America, but while the film itself is an entertaining horror film, it’s played mostly for shock value. Truly, “American Blackout” is fact based, presenting facts about our current emergency preparedness in America, but the narrative plays it to extremes. In either case, “American Blackout” does offer the notion that we’re screwed if we ever had a national catastrophe. Even in 2003 when the entire North American grid went dark, the US Government didn’t change their system, and won’t invest time in fortifying the power grid for the sake of emergencies.
For a film called “Axed,” I was expecting something really dark and gruesome, and yet in the end I didn’t realize how trying Ryan Lee Driscoll’s horror drama would be. It’s a practice in tedium and boredom, with a mean spirit that is often very forced. If that’s not enough the direction leaves much to be desired with a series of performances that are sub-par at best. It’s a despicable film about a despicable man, torturing despicable people for no real reason, when it all boils down to it.