When Ottway and his group of oil workers board a very shaky and shifty airplane, the surviving group of men find themselves in the middle of a frozen tundra after a horrible storm brings down the entire plane. Protagonist Ottway is often plagued by visions of his dead wife, a woman who apparently died a slow and miserable death. It’s a passing Ottway himself has never gotten over, and never had the chance to mourn. Rather than confronting his misery and pretty much overcoming this terrible loss that left his life a hollow shell, he instead chooses to run away. When we first meet him, he’s war torn, exhausted and enters in to the tamed darkness of his oil rig where he prepares to commit suicide in the abyss of snow. Choosing instead to live, for reasons we can’t quite know deep down, he ends up leading his remaining group of co-workers from the plane wreck and in to the white wasteland before them.
Tag Archives: Suspense
Haywire (2012) [Blu-Ray]
“You shouldn’t think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake.”
Criticize director Steven Soderbergh all you want for casting someone who isn’t an actual actor to lead a star rich action film, but director Steven Soderbergh accomplishes something studios are often too narrow minded to try. He casts a woman who is brawn, beauty, and brains all in one. While Hollywood and directors have a fetish for casting wafer thin women who look as if they can barely hold a pencil let alone a machine gun (I’m looking at you Milla Jovovich), star Gina Carano is a woman who is built like a fighter in every sense of the word and approaches every single brilliantly staged fight scene with competence and believability, because there’s no doubting a woman of her presence can handle a man two times her size.
The Bad Seed (1956)
For the most part, “The Bad Seed” is a classic horror film that lives up to its reputation of being an infamous movie about a little monster who will stop at nothing for gratify herself and her own ego. She’s the product of over privilege and an abundance of deifying from the people around her. To get it out of the way, my one gripe with “The Bad Seed” is ultimately the ending. Since audiences couldn’t bear watching a film end on a downbeat with the villain winning, and the studios insistent on the bad guy losing in the end, no matter how contrived or tacked on it seemed, the climax to “The Bad Seed” keeps the film from being a perfect thriller.
Day of the Dead (1985)
So the zombie apocalypse came and went and guess what? We lost. Miserably. After the world has been consumed by the cannibalistic walking dead by the hordes, there are really only a few dozen living humans on the planet. And they’re struggling to maintain the lingering shreds of sanity they still possess. Once upon a time, a long time ago, “Day of the Dead” was considered the lesser of the Dead trilogy from director George A. Romero, and it’s quite shocking considering “Day of the Dead” is a masterpiece. In fact it’s every bit as good as its predecessors “Night” and “Dawn” with just as much thought provoking material as the former titles.
Prometheus (2012)
Basically what’s hypothesized in “Prometheus” is what if the thing that created us sought out the answers to what created it? And what if in the process of figuring out its own creation, it managed to accidentally create us? And what would happen if the thing that created us in a mission to figure out what created it, actually really wasn’t a God, and pretty much hates out guts for being accidental spawns of its experimentation? It’s a dichotomy and a contradiction that’s worth exploring, because it’s a startling and absolutely crushing notion to comprehend, but not with “Prometheus.”
Dark House (2009)
I’m not going to pretend “Dark House” is an original horror outing. As a film it’s basically a pastiche of “The Haunting,” “House on Haunted Hill,” and “Thirteen Ghosts” with a skosh of “Haute Tension” for good measure. But in spite of the inherent derivations, I couldn’t help but have a damn good time sitting through “Dark House.” It’s deep down a very light on logic party horror film that you can sit through with friends and never be bored with. Even when it’s attempting to exposit the characters back stories, it really is at warp speed so that it can get to the bloodshed and gore. Thankfully I didn’t have much of a problem with that.
Piranha II: The Spawning (1981)
Flying Piranhas! Flying fucking piranhas! How does one mess up a film about flying piranhas?! I would love to view “Piranha II” as a film experience that’s so bad it’s good, but in reality it’s so bad that it’s actually just bad. It’s no wonder James Cameron tries to pretend he had nothing to do with this film and disowns it like a stepchild. It’s a bad movie and one that poorly takes off from the concept the 1978 film laid down. It’s a shame that a movie that completely reworks the concept of killer piranhas in to something even cheesier basically doesn’t have a clue on how to handle the creatures.