Over the past few years, horror has been outsourced. If foreigners can run our call centers then surely they can make something as simple as a horror movie, right? In fact, they've turned out to be better at it than we are. After a run of J-horror (The Ring, The Grudge, any number of movies featuring dead wet girls with long black hair), there was a run on K-horror (A Tale of Two Sisters, The Host), and now there are the French imports: Haute Tension, Inside and the regrettably titled Frontier(s). It sound(s) like the title of a grad school paper(s), but is, instead, another reminder that people who live in the country are creepy and should be destroyed. 

In Paris, the banlieus are burning and four street kids use the riots as cover for a bank robbery. The criminal foursome are young, multi-ethnic and attractive, like a United Colors of Benetton ad. The designated group hottie, Yasmine, is pregnant and is planning on getting an abortion ASAP, while the guys like to smoke pot and video themselves having a lot of sex. It's like watching a Gus Van Sant movie dubbed into French. Très sexy. Très disaffected. Très hip.

Hiding out in a quaint country inn, the four soon discover that its rustic charm is undermined by the fact that it's run by a family of neo-Nazi cannibals, whose flesh-eating, inbred mutant zombie babies nest in an abandoned nearby mine. One by one, the criminals come to a bad end via hook, hot steam and chopper until only a traumatized Yasmine is left, because the Nazi family needs her womb to brew the master race.

By the time one of the sexy young thugs is impaled on twin meat hooks by an enormously fat, leather-apron-clad Nazi cannibal, you could be forgiven for thinking to yourself, "Mon dieu, it is Le Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and you wouldn't be too far off. If you ordered a horror movie pizza and said "give me everything on top," then what arrived at your door would look a lot like Frontier(s). If it's been in a horror movie, it's in this flick -- and we're not talking tips of the hat, but straight-up steals and samples from Psycho, Hostel, The Descent, Hannibal, Motel Hell, House of a Thousand Corpses, Haute Tension, Sheitan... and that's just in the first 30 minutes. After that my brain got tired.

Continue reading "Frontier(s) Review - Like a Horror Movie Pizza With Everything on Top" »

We'd have loved to review the killer croc movie Rogue, but the sketchiness of its release made that impossible. Instead, here are the early reviews from those who have already gotten to feast on Greg MacLean's follow-up to Wolf Creek -- surprise, it's better than you thought:

"More restrained than his no-holds-barred psychothriller hit "Wolf Creek," helmer Greg McLean's sophomore outing wants only to be a good B-grader and succeeds with regular scares and a monster worth the ticket price." -- Richard Kuipers, Variety

"Some horror junkies won't applaud the lack of gore, but the market is flooded with grade B thrillers which all but splash us with faux blood. Who needs severed limbs and entrails when you've got genuine thrills and a score that sounds imported from a movie with quadruple the budget?" -- Christian Toto, Washington Times

"McLean's monster is an ultra-realistic and unnerving design which does its job of scaring the audience half to death, and does it well." -- Carmine Pascuzzi, MediaSearch

"A no-nonsense assault on the nervous system with sleek looks, diverse characters and absolutely no shame." -- Sandra Hall, Sydney Morning Herald

Continue reading "MacLean's Rogue - "A Monster Worth the Ticket Price"" »

Jenna Jameson has undoubtedly suffered many indignities over the years, but facing critical review in the New York Times and its ilk is a trauma with its own special sting:

"As a movie, Zombie Strippers makes for a great trailer." -- Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly

"Those excited by the words 'Zombie Strippers' alone won't be disappointed by Jay Lee's unabashedly schlocky film, which he wrote, directed, shot and edited. (Need it actually be said that everyone else can safely sit this one out?)" -- Laura Kern, The New York Times

"Pole dance, gut munch, pole dance, gut munch, ad finitum." -- Dennis Harvey, Variety

"Even manages some George Romero-style social commentary, with zombie-dom as a metaphor for plastic surgery -- that star Jenna Jameson's plasticized, pre-zombie face is actually scarier than the final monstrous version only proves the point." -- Luke Y. Thompson, Village Voice

"What does not kill me makes me stronger? Sorry, Nietzsche. In Zombie Strippers, it's more like what does kill you makes you a better stripper." -- Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

"You could go less esoteric and simply view it as the big-screen version of Jenna Jameson's autobiography although with creative license taken on her dietary habits over the years." -- Erik Childress, eFilmCritic

It's House meets The Hills. Its Dexter mixed with 90210. No matter how hard you try to spin Pathology, the diagnosis is the same: It's not looking good.    

Dr. Ted Grey (Milo Ventimiglia) is a handsome young doctor who recently graduated at the top of his class at Harvard Medical School. After spending time working with patients in Africa, he joins the prestigious pathology program at the Metropolitan University Medical Center. Since Dr. Grey's reputation as the best and the brightest precedes him, he is immediately harassed by the in-house hotshot pathologists, led by the hyper-aggressive Dr. Jake Gallo (Michael Weston).

It's a lab that feels more locker room than classroom. Lectures around the corpses are filled with bad jokes, bullying, sex talk, and a competitiveness that is distracting. After a brief period of hazing, which may have been a day, several days, or even a week -- it's difficult to tell how much time has passed at any point in Pathology -- Grey is invited to join the cool clique for a night on the town. That's when the antagonistic Gallo asks Grey, "If you could kill anyone and get away with it, who would you kill?" Grey answers, "Anyone." Now the question is who to kill and how to hide it.

Continue reading "Pathology Review: Only Alyssa Milano Believes Things Will Work Out for the Best" »

In the '80s, seduced by the novelty of a brand new invention called the video camera, hordes of amateur filmmakers turned out dozens of clumsy straight-to-video horror cheapies like Doom Asylum and Video Violence 1 & 2 that clogged the shelves of mom and pop video stores across the country. Intoxicated by nostalgia, fans have developed warm fuzzies for these movies, so one big "thank you" to Zombie Strippers -- for reminding us just how bad they really were.

Zombie Strippers does deliver on the three implied promises in its title: There are zombies, there are strippers and there are zombie strippers. Beyond that, all bets are off. Relentlessly cheap, ugly and boring, this is the kind of movie that raises the eternal questions, like, "If the producers had enough money to hire Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund, to mug for a few scenes, didn't they have enough money to go on a nice vacation somewhere instead of making this movie?" And "Did Jenna Jameson really think this was a step up from porn?"

Pilfered YouTube footage sets the scene: A tiresomely satirical near-future in which America is constantly fighting wars overseas and George W. Bush has just been elected to his fourth term in office. Trying to improve Army retention rates, scientists manufacture a drug that turns dead soldiers into zombies, but an infected soldier escapes to a nearby strip club and bites the star stripper, Jenna Jameson. Her reanimated corpse turns out to be an even more popular pole dancer and... she... um...yawn.

... sorry, I fell asleep for a minute there -- something that'll happen to you often if you make the mistake of buying a ticket to this frightful fright flick. The sub-par special effects go for maximum gross out, but since they look to have been done overnight by the janitorial staff at a cut rate effects emporium, they have as much of an impact as a screen saver. But there is real horror here, true horror that will make your skin crawl and your mouth scream -- the strippers.

Continue reading "Zombie Strippers Review: Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund Can't Bring This One to Life" »

Jamie Lee Curtis has to be feeling pretty smug these days; nothing improves the memory of a bad movie more than an even worse remake. The critics uniformly detested the new Prom Night, racing to snatch the tiara from Brittany Snow's head, lest she become too attached to it:

"If comparisons to Halloween make Prom Night sound marginally watchable, I have erred. It's a bore, even taking into account unintentional moments of humor that resulted in audience members jeering." -- James Berardinelli, Reelviews

Continue reading "Prom Night Reviews: Not Worth Getting Dressed Up" »

Not quite a genre classic, the original Prom Night (1980) did possess a high camp quotient, the presence of scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, and some deliciously awful, waning-days-of-disco fashions. Today, with the prom industry at My Super Sweet 16 levels of garishness, the time is ripe for a remake chock full of old-school gore and timeless T&A. So let's hurry over to Bridgeport High where Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow) just wants to get through her Senior Prom without having flashbacks of that night when her crazed science teacher (Johnathon Schaech) murdered her entire family. Keeping her mind on lighter matters, Donna and her friends are preparing for their big night all the while trading barbs with the school's requisite "mean girl" cheerleader, who's inexplicably paid for the school's lavish festivities at a local hotel.

Continue reading "Prom Night Review: Not Much of a Party" »

Critics were guaranteed to grouse about The Ruins, but even a decently scary movie (and this is one) has its ups and downs. In this case, the downs are more entertaining to read:

"No matter how good your special effects crew, no matter how strong your cast, your movie is going to live or die on the whim of some shrubbery." -- Rene Rodriguez Miami Herald

"The Ruins could have been the most politically provocative horror film since Bug was released last year. It settles for gore and pain instead." -- Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times

"Heroes and villains alike are stuck in a persistent vegetative state." -- Kyle Smith, New York Post

Continue reading "A Persistent Vegetative State: Reviews of The Ruins" »

Imagine a vine. It grows vigorously up the side of a tree, sinking its roots into the bark. Creeping tendrils affix their sappy adhesive pads to the trunk, hauling the vine closer to the sun, ropey stems growing fast. Now, imagine that instead of growing up the side of a tree, this vine is growing inside your skull. Those tap roots are sunk into your frontal lobe. Those tendrils are pushing their way through your nasal cavity, towards the sunlight, and their unfurling leaves are blocking your airways. Imagine this vine is growing so fast, you can feel it moving beneath your skin like a snake, curling down the back of your throat; its tough tendrils wedging your jaw open, so its leaves can bloom out of your mouth and soak up the sunlight.

Welcome to The Ruins, a movie that will leave you with a deep and everlasting fear of... shrubbery.

Continue reading "Beware of the Shrubbery: The Ruins Gets Under Your Skin in a Good Way" »

With American Zombie, documentarian Grace Lee takes a stab at exposing the plight of the modern shambling corpse, offering a rare glimpse into zombie culture (they prefer the term "revenant"). Is the world ready? Critics can't seem to decide:

"A scene in a sweatshop in which the owner explains why he hires zombies for cheap labor has genuine satiric bite." --  Steven Farber, Hollywood Reporter

"[T]he zombies we meet in Lee and Solomon's film are pretty ordinary folks, albeit troubled by maggots and rotting patches of skin: They work low-wage jobs, keep scrapbooks with pictures of cute guys, do flower arrangements for funerals (other people's)." -- Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

"If Lee intended primarily to spoof documentary conventions, she should have chosen a theme less commercially overexposed -- and worked harder at making it more than just sorta-kinda humorous." -- Dennis Harvey, Variety

"There are plenty of laugh-out-loud funny bits with the occasional social commentary truth lying just beneath the parody, but there are also some really slow parts (maybe they had a zombie helping out in the editing room)." -- The Movie Chicks

"The kind of film that might have resulted if Christopher Guest had inexplicably been hired to do Resident Evil 4." -- Peter Sobczynski, efilmcritic