Dead Alive movie review

 

I am not empty, I am not apathetic, and I like watching ghouls get torn to pieces on screen.

Dead Alive or Braindead (the North American title) is Peter Jackson's horror cult classic, done with awesome special effects, hilarious acting, and endless gags. You don't even need to know the plot of this film to enjoy it. Just load it up at any place and you'll be laughing. For me that's really appealing, especially since I like to watch movies so that I can critique the wasted effort of some horse shit. This film is so conscious of the fact of how easy it is to objectively call this film horseshit though that I immediately fell in love with it

It's in some ways not dark enough though, like the film is just one shade away from being covered in a decent amount of abyssal blackness. Maybe it has something to do with the setting, although things get darker and darker as the movie progresses.

I don't want to spoil anything but this movie is a must-watch

My Score 8/10

Silent Hill: Revelation

This film right here, I knew it was going to be bad before I even started it. I feel bad carrying these feelings into a viewing of a film before watching it, but for this..... it hit to close to home. Silent Hill is one of my favorite series... so I have to preface this beforehand, just so that I can express what a let down this movie is. I'm also not that picky about what has been released as many. I like pretty much every game and soundtrack, including Downpour and Silent Hill 4. I also enjoyed the first Silent Hill movie thoroughly. Sadly, this movie is a complete wreck compared to any of these other releases and let me explain why.

This film is more conventional form of Silent Hill 3, following a re-imagining of Heather's story line in the video game. If this wasn't already bad enough, they had to also create a boy-toy/boy-friend character (I can't really pin him down as his role in the film is very very very rough) and made Heather a high-schooler. These elements magnify the films extraordinarily shallow interpretation of Silent Hill 3's story line, not even grasping the Otherworld element, or the cult aspect, or even glimpsing the unsettling ambiance that anything else in the franchise has achieved.

The plot and dialogue are dog shit, the execution dog shit, with the only thing being of interest the gore and special effects (which are not at all aspects of which that make the Silent Hill franchise such effective pieces of art). The plot consists of Heather seeing jarring hallucinations of little creative value, until around 40 minutes in when the bell starts to ring and Heather walks around the ash laden landscape of this versions re-imagining of the Silent Hill Town. But instead of any of these hallucinations being used to build atmosphere or effect, they are used simply as eye candy for those hungry for more Silent Hill. Anyone who actually respects the best that this franchise can offer will be sordidly pissed off about how one of the few horror series that gives such a beauty to the abject, the suffering, and the alienated has now been used to generate quick and easy eye-candy for the gluttonous masses of consuming imbeciles.

The dialogue in this is used alongside facial gestures to give these cavemen written scenes some more substance than the watered down monkey business they are offering us. Really, it is only things like "You are following me!" with a scared face or "Come back home quick.." With a concerned face. The cringiest are the scenes with the boy-toy character, absolute horse-shit.

Look... just don't watch this, especially if you are a fan of Silent Hill. It simply puts me in a bad mood knowing hat they gave 20,000,000 in budget to a guy who doesn't give a shit about a Silent Hill but who could possibly use the mainstream success to make a couple bucks.

My Score: 2/10

Evil Dead (2013) Review

I began to feel a bit woozy around 10 minutes into the movie when the brother & sister characters started to reminisce. This scene, and many others reveal the strange pacing at how the story is shot & the more woodsy-wild feel to the movie than other Evil Dead releases. Unfortunately, this pairs poorly with the best parts of this movie, particularly the dialogue. The poor writing makes all the characters stiff and lacking in vivid motion. The opening shot of the movie was fantastic though, really brought me back to the first time I watched Evil Dead II. The book illustrations look fairly amateurish as well, and the scene where the character with the glasses scratches a pencil over paper to reveal a secret message in the book of the dead is completely unnecessary.

The opening scene creates an omen for the rest of the main story to come, which centers around the demonic force of a female character. This demonic witch trope is an interestingly executed device in this film. The character appears very different to other characters in Evil Dead films, making this film attempt a more psychological leaning, especially with the drug addiction theme. This though creates a major issue for me though, all the witch themes, woods themes, more focus on attempting to create characters with empathizing backgrounds all detracts from the what always made these films great in the first place. It makes me gather that the this film did not know its intended audience and only effected to create a haphazard mix of a fantasy flick and over produced b-gag horror gimmicks.

My Rating: 4/10