It seems like every other year there’s an attempt to deliver fans a new “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and like clockwork here comes “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Centered on Uncork’d Entertainment’s initiative to offer genre films based on classic nursery rhymes, director Jason Arber and writer Harry Boxley really don’t do anything new or creative with the whole gimmick that his movie is centered on. It’s, in a nutshell, a beat for beat, condensed remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but dropped down in to the UK.
Tag Archives: Survival
No One Will Save You (2023)
Director Brian Duffield’s science fiction home invasion film is a deceptively massive film. It’s simplistic in that it’s limited to a cast of mainly one person, and places the enormous crux of the dramatic weight on the shoulders of star Kaitlyn Dever. Thankfully Dever is more than up to the task, offering what is easily one of her best performances to date. Director Duffield mixes so many genres and sub-genres from home invasion, survival thriller, character-based drama, themes about grief and guilt, and extra terrestrials all colliding in an absolutely outstanding cinematic experience.
The Last House on the Left (2009): Limited Edition [4K UHD/Blu-Ray]
I’ll be the first to admit that I have never been a fan of Wes Craven’s “Last House on the Left” despite its legacy. I respect it for it becoming a platform for Craven but otherwise it was a fairy dull movie that squanders a good premise. Plus I could never get over the comedic sub-plot involving the pair of deputies. Dennis Illiadis completely remakes “Last House” in to the revenge picture that I was originally hoping for. In doing this he side steps about a quarter of the rape and torture, and amps up the revenge plot involving the pair of parents that are outnumbered but not outwitted.
The Last House on the Left (2009) [Arrow Limited Edition]
A gang on the run after their leader escapes bumps into two college students in a small town. Things go very wrong and soon one is dead and the other left for dead. As a storm comes in, the gang finds their way to a lake house where the owners do not take well to what they’ve done.
The Last Voyage of The Demeter (2023)
It’s pretty good to see at least one studio investing in transforming vampires in to relentless monsters once again after so many years where vampires have been watered down and overly fetishized. The vampires in André Øvredal’s interpretation of “The Last Voyage of The Demeter” as well as—well—Dracula in general, are not empathetic, alluring figures. They’re blank, cold and vicious monsters controlled by Dracula who is reduced to his most primal state for this re-visiting of one of the most haunting chapters in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Here For Blood (2023)
Warning: Spoilers pertaining to the movie abound.
You really haven’t seen it all until you’ve seen a wrestler elbow drop a flesh eating zombie multiple times until its head explodes. That’s that thing about “Here for Blood.” It has a ton of good ideas and a great sense of humor about itself, but it gets lost in so much filler and narrative excess. What could have been a simple and fun home invasion thriller turns in to a convoluted survival film about cults, and sacrifices, and masked killers, and anointed prophets. It’s all a movie that could have been so much better with tighter editing and fifteen minutes trimmed down.
The Dive (2023)
Maximilian Erlenwein’s “The Dive” is probably one of the most stressful movies of the year. In a time where deep dive survival movies have practically become their own sub-genre, “The Dive” is one of the better of the ilk to come along in a while. Erlenwein’s movie is a simple and straight forward survival thriller, but it’s one that depends a lot on triggering the audience’s personal phobias. Anyone with thalassophobia, claustrophobia, or taphophobia will find “The Dive” to be an endurance test of the highest order, and that’s why it works so well.