\n10. Warm Bodies
\n<\/b>Directed by Jonathan Levine
\n<\/strong>Summit<\/strong> Entertainment
\n<\/strong>Release Date: February 1st<\/strong><\/p>\n
9. Beneath 8. Battle of the Year 7. Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D 6. World War Z 5. The Lords of Salem 4. Aftershock 3. Movie 43 2. A Good Day to Die Hard![\"warm-bodies\"](\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/warm-bodies.jpg\")
<\/a>It’s a movie where a zombie gets a make over montage by two hot girls. It’s a movie where zombies look like dirty invalids. It’s a movie where John Malkovich looks almost embarrassed to be starring. And who can blame him? “Warm Bodies” is as bland, trite, clunky, and watered down as your normal romance comedy, but the directors take down the zombie sub-genre with them. It’s been a year where we’ve had zombie movies for people who don’t want to admit they like zombie movies, and “Warm Bodies” is one of the worst. The zombie R is one of the walking dead who walks around looking more like a disheveled hipster than a zombie. I wonder how character Julie would have responded to him if R had no jaw, or a torn throat. In either case, “Warm Bodies” is everything but a zombie movie, and in the end, it’s anything but a watchable one. It’s a movie for twelve year old girls anxious for the zombie to be romanticized like the werewolf and the vampire have been. How long before we have a romance set between a woman and a yeti?<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/b>Directed by Larry Fessenden<\/strong>
\nChiller, Shout! Factory<\/strong>
\nRelease Date: July 17th<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>It’s a despicable film about despicable people fighting a really bad mechanical fish. Director Larry Fessenden is certainly better than what “Beneath” tries to feed us, as it’s nothing but a vapid and terribly awful movie that feels like it took the premise for “The Raft” from “Creepshow 2” and tried really hard to make it a serious examination of morality and human cruelty. “The Raft” was really only twenty minutes in length and managed to feel so much more horrifying than “Beneath” ever did, if only because we knew it was intentionally hokey since the story was sewn from the seeds of EC Comics. “Beneath” approaches every single story beat with a straight face, expecting audiences to take it as a horror drama, except without any horror. You have to love how characters scream “What do you want from us?!” at the fish, and attempt to beat it to death with paddles while someone underwater obviously keeps the fish afloat. And did I mention the lake’s consistently changing dimensions? One minute it’s a small lake, the next it’s a huge body of water, and then it’s a miles long vast ocean that takes hours for our characters to wade through. Just an awful genre outing for a talented director.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Directed by Benson Lee<\/strong>
\nScreen Gems<\/strong>
\nRelease Date: September 20th<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Everything about “Battle of the Year” is either uninspired or so utterly moronic. Director Benson Lee brings us in to a world where his documentary is the be all and end all of dancers, including B Boys. “Battle of the Year” is a beat by beat formula film that even the writers for the “Step Up” series would roll their eyes at. There’s the unconventional dance coach brought in with such “unorthodox” teaching methods, there’s Josh Peck’s dead eyed gaze, there’s a group of racially diverse, marketable, really rebellious dancers, and soon enough they learn to work together and form a brotherhood. Will the two best dancers in the group learn to work together? Will Josh Holloway ever stop slumping over pretending he’s unfit and out of shape? How many product placements will they slip in before the ninety minutes have run out? And will someone tell Stepford Josh Peck that squinting his eyes doesn’t make him look smoldering?<\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Directed by Dario Argento<\/strong>
\nIFC Midnight<\/strong>
\nRelease Date: October 4th<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Play “Suspiria” and this side by side and they don’t even look as if they’re made by the same director. Whether Argento honestly intended to add his own spin on Dracula, or whether the movie was forced on him, Argento can barely make a watchable film out of Bram Stoker’s original novel. Truncating a lot of the story and subtext, making Dracula a fierce but tame monster, reducing Van Helsing’s role from hero to slight supporting character, and placing greater emphasis on Lucy (it’s no shock she’s played by Argento’s daughter) than Mina, “Dracula 3D” is a farce from beginning to end. To boot, Argento doesn’t seem to know how to implement CGI to a great effect, so there’s either an over abundance of it, or the tactfully placed CGI looks downright awful. Argento focuses on the shape shifting aspect of Dracula but fails in that regard with bad animation of an owl, and even turning Dracula in to a giant mantis for no reason. There’s also really bad CGI backgrounds, awful set pieces, and performances ranging from abysmal to inadvertently comical. You know it’s a bad movie when you can’t be sure if the director is intending to make you laugh or not.<\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Directed by Marc Forster<\/strong>
\nParamount<\/strong> Pictures<\/strong>
\nRelease Date: June 21st<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Or as I like to call it “Brad Pitt vs. The World,” is nothing but an abysmal PG-13 remake of “28 Days Later,” mixed with video game graphics, and adorning the title of a very excellent zombie book. I would be able to forgive “World War Z” being only five percent faithful to the book, if the movie had any balls or originality to its narrative. Or at least gave us compelling characters to root for. “World War Z” is yet another of the mainstream titles released in 2013 that’s catered to audiences that want a zombie movie but don’t want to admit they enjoy zombie movies. How else to explain a movie about an alleged zombie apocalypse that focused its marketing on Brad Pitt and only Brad Pitt? These days zombie fiction is immensely popular and bonafide cash earners, so don’t feed me the Brad Pitt is a big star excuse. Pitt is one of the blandest heroes since Jake Sully in “Avatar” who spends most of his time travelling around the world, only to discover that the zekes in the movie don’t actually attack anyone already diseased. So why not take every survivor they can and stuff them in to hospitals? Oh no, but then we wouldn’t have the tense scene on an airplane where a poodle discovers a zeke before anyone else, or the finale that cemented the film as nothing but a live action video game. “World War Z” is a bland, boring, and infinitely forgettable pseudo-horror film that watches like a series of video game cut scenes edited together.<\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Directed by Rob Zombie
\nAnchor Bay Films<\/strong>
\nRelease Date: April 19th<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Rob Zombie’s latest horror groaner is a nonsensical hodge podge of dreary poorly lit scenes that steals wholesale from Ken Russell and Stanley Kubrick while ripping off “Rosemary’s Baby.” Slyly pushing his wife Sheri Moon in to the background gradually, Zombie fills up the screen with a slew of character actors and iconic horror stars, all of whom do the heavy lifting for Moon. Moon can barely provide dialogue without looking as if she’s forcing her emotions with all her might, so Zombie floods the film with imagery that unfolds the story for her. Meanwhile Bruce Davison is seemingly planted on screen to imitate Jeff Bridges and provide a ton of clunky exposition that holds the audiences hands. I struggled to stay awake through most of “Lords of Salem,” mostly because it’s so uninspired and fails to offer anything new in the sub-genre it’s pegging. Zombie has yet to reveal a unique style of his own, and has yet to impress as the alleged filmmaker he calls himself.<\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Directed by Nicolas Lopez<\/strong>
\nDimension Films<\/strong>
\nRelease Date: May 10th<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>I’d call this disaster porn, but that would require the film to be made up mostly of a man made or natural disaster. The big earthquake doesn’t actually occur until an hour in to the story. Meanwhile director Nicolas Lopez apes Eli Roth’s formula by spending a lot of time on lame stereotypes, comedy based around xenophobia, and forced drama that falls laughably flat. Star Eli Roth is especially embarrassing as a single dad trying to get laid throughout his time in Chile, and does nothing but force out tears, while providing one of the most laugh out loud death scenes ever imagined. Most of “Aftershock” is ugly and absolutely tedious to endure, with none of the characters engaging audiences as Lopez intends. When the film isn’t subtly preaching about pro-life crap, force feeds us horrible special effects, and a climax that rips off Neil Marshall’s “The Descent” without shame. It’s hard to believe we’ve lowered the bar so far that Eli Roth is now a force in the horror world.<\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Directed by Various<\/strong>
\nRelativity Media<\/strong>
\nRelease Date: January 25th<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/span>An embarrassing, despicable, disgusting, misogynistic mess, “Movie 43” is a nonsenical comedy anthology filled to the brim with huge stars, all of whom fail to be even remotely funny. Hugh Jackman, now considered a respectable name in Broadway, appears as a man with testicles on his chin, Chloe Moretz reduces herself to a one note joke about having her period, and wonderful character actors Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts cash in their credibility for a horribly unfunny and cruel segment about parents giving their home schooled son the genuine high school experience, just to name a few. To top off the idiocy, the movie sports two book ended narratives that introduce the segments, both of which are unfunny and ridiculous. I’m still not sure how the director managed to convince everyone in the cast that this would be a classic comedy film, but it can barely hold a candle to “Kentucky Fried Movie.” It doesn’t even hold a candle to “Soulplane.”<\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Directed by John Moore<\/strong>
\nTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation<\/b>
\nRelease Date: February 14th<\/strong><\/p>\n