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Archives Mama Movie Reviews

Mama Movie Review by Tim Walchusky

For those who are new to me, you are going to witness someone who loves horror movies. You will also notice I don’t pull punches and i will tear apart the genre i love if its nothing but an epic failure.

For those who DO know me, you are already used to it!

With that being said, I had the fortune, or how i see it, MIS-fortune to watch the movie Mama.

First thing is first. I am absolutely critical of any horror movie rated PG13. Only one movie have i ever enjoyed in my 33 years on this planet was the movie Insideous. Even now I adore that movie and what it accomplished with that rating.

I am a big fan of Del Toro. I think Pans Labrynth and also The Orphanage should have gotten more recognition than they got. So even me, being weary of the PG-13, I had confidence in him to create something wonderful. Maybe not so much on the gore, but in building the atmosphere. Well after Del Toro that’s where this movie falls apart. I didn’t like a thing about this movie. I won’t list any pros to this movie because there wasn’t any. But here were the reasons I hated this movie.

The characters… I couldn’t identify with any of them. I felt them annoying. And to be honest with you i could care less if they all died. In fact, I wish they had (IN THE MOVIE!!)

The CGI was awful. To his credit it was used sparingly. However, if he didn’t use it at all, or even more it wouldn’t have made a difference. I would of hated it either way when it was said and done.

Tension. This is the big one for me. First and foremost I am a gore hound. I guess you can say I’m a follower of Director Tim Sullivan’s philosophy about “Spread the red” . Being this was PG13, I KNEW this wasn’t going to happen. So they best fill up the tension. This movie didn’t do that. So no blood, no tension. Now I am getting pissed.

Another big issue I had was backstory. I didn’t really explain much at all. It tried to. It really did. But once again, what was presented wasn’t enough to make it a satisfying movie. Fail. The running time was 1 hour 40 minutes. As an Atheist I was hoping the pain would end quickly after I got half way through. IF it went any longer than it did, I probably would have started looking for God.

Feel free to follow me @timmah1979 on twitter. Thanks for reading. Guest review by Tim Walchusky

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Archives Excision Movie Reviews

Excision Movie Review

This was one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever sat through. AnnaLynne McCord was blew me away in this one. Upon first viewing the trailers, I didn’t recognize her at all. It follows her character Pauline and her deeply disturbing delusions. She has dreams of being a surgeon and has odd psycho-sexual dreams. She lives with her overbearing mother (Traci Lords), her deeply passive father and her sister Grace (played wonderfully by Ariel Winter) who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis.

I chose to wait a few days before writing my review and I remain at a loss for words. A majority of the movie is a simple dark comedy about a dysfunctional family and a slightly messed up teenager, but it goes so far off the rails for the ending that it forces its way into the back of your mind. The ending is one of the darkest and most heart breaking climaxes I’ve seen in a film in a very long time. One of the strengths to the ending is how sudden it arrives and how thematically different it is from the rest of the film. Like I said, I’m still at a loss on how to adequately describe this movie so I guess I’ll just do a simple point form review.
Good Acting? Yes Good Story? Yes Funny Moments? Yes Gore Galore? Yes.

I definitely recommend this film, it’s both funny and haunting. It is simultaneously a sad film about a family and a disturbing film about a deeply warped teenage girl.

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Archives Exit Humanity Movie Reviews

Exit Humanity Movie Review

 

Exit Humanity is a 2011 Zombie Western written and directed by John Geddes and starring Mark Gibson and Adam Seybold. This film was an absolute pleasure to watch.

It has been a very long time since I’ve seen a movie that took the time to develop its characters the way that this one does. Granted, there are times when this movie could have jumped right off the rails and gone straight to pure camp, but Mark Gibson’s performance as Edward Young was absolutely fantastic. He ably carries the film from its opening moments right until the end. The journey that Edward Young goes on, both physically and emotionally is at times difficult to watch, but always compelling. His character transformation from the beginning until the end was very well handled.

The score, composed by Jeff Graville, Nate Kreiswirth and Ben Nudds was also another pleasant surprise to this film. All of the music perfectly fits their accompanying scenes and is definitely worthy of its own release on cd/vinyl/itunes.

 

This movie is told through the journal of Edward Young, passed down through generations and read by one of his ancestors (Brian Cox). There are several chapters that mark the journey and all of them are paced perfectly. In chapter two is when we are introduced to Isaac (Adam Seybold) who is on a journey to rescue his sister Emma (Jordan Hayes) from the insane General Williams (Bill Moseley).

This film was fantastic and is very highly recommended.

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Archives Lovely Molly Movie Reviews

Lovely Molly Movie Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JXnv9YZrcY

 

Lovely Molly is a 2011 possession film directed by Eduardo Sanchez and starring Gretchen Lodge. It tells the tale of Molly Reynolds returning to her long-abandoned family home with her husband Tim. Tim is a trucker and leaves home a lot and Molly is a recovering Heroin addict.

At roughly the three month mark of living in the house, the couple start experiencing strange things. The film switches between a conventional style and a home video camera. The scenes done with the handheld camera start off innocently enough, but slowly get more and more disturbing until their chilling climax.

One of the strengths about this film is the acting of Gretchen Lodge, who doesn’t even have her own wikipedia page. I definitely feel that this could be a breakout performance for her and I definitely hope to see her in more films going forward. Although I classified this as a possession film, it is often difficult to tell if there is actually anything supernatural going on or if Molly is just mentally unhinged. This film was a lot slower than I was expecting from the trailers, but I find that the deliberately slow pacing works wonders for the story being told. There’s really nothing new here that hasn’t been done with other spiritual possession films, but this is still definitely worth checking out.

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Archives Movie Reviews State Of Emergency

State Of Emergency Movie Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksKj7nG0JXw

 

State of Emergency is a movie that I had very little expectations of going in. This isn’t out in North America yet and after seeing a few trailers and reading some reviews I thought I’d check it out once it was released here, then I found out it was already released in the UK. I’m lucky enough to have a region free blu-ray player and a neighbor who in addition to being a big horror fan also makes frequent trips to London.

Most of the reviews I read were really bad so I initially thought this was going to be just another low budget zombie b-movie. So, with expectations incredibly low, I popped the disc into my machine and hit play. What followed was the best hour and a half of movie watching I’ve experienced in a long time.

The movie starts with main character Jim moving slowly through a hallway, taking his place at the top of a stairwell and signalling another man (who we later find out is the character Scott) to stand back. We then get the “4 days earlier” caption and we go back to the beginning of the story.

The movie takes place in the small town of Montgomery County after an explosion at a chemical plant. This releases a virus/bacteria that starts turning some of the residents into zombies.

At just under an hour and a half, the movie is slightly short but in that time it has a good balance of suspense, character development and drama. For the most part the characters evolve and break down as the time passes by and the group dynamic grows awkward. The only real complaint I had character wise was Julie, played by Kathryn Todd Norman. Her character seemed almost an afterthought once she was introduced and had the smallest amount of screen time and fewest lines of the survivors. Initially I didn’t care for the character of Ix very much either, but her development goes down a path I wasn’t really expecting it to and by the end of the film she was one of my favorite characters.

This movie isn’t fast paced by any means, and relies more on developing the characters and using the tense group dynamic than gore or violence. If you’re expecting to see a movie like the Dawn of the Dead remake or even 28 Days Later then you’re going to be disappointed. If you’re expecting to see a very well thought out movie with an excellent soundtrack and very likeable characters, then this is the movie for you.