The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Synopsis:
Authorities find over 800 VHS tapes made by an elusive killer in and around Poughkeepsie, New York.  We the viewer – most of whom are absolutely not police or FBI agents – get to watch some of these and see what terrible things this killer did.  Awful things.  Twisted things.  Why did they let us watch these? 

My thoughts:
This wasn’t as much out-and-out scary as it was supremely unnerving.  I had to keep telling myself, “This isn’t real, this isn’t real.”  I believed myself for the most part, but a little part of me knew that I’m not a smart person and was probably lying.

This movie is 86 minutes long.  There is a whole lot of life-scarring material in this movie for it being so short.  There are things in this movie I will carry with me for years.  Maybe the rest of my life.  I may pass those things down to my children.  They don’t deserve this, man.

There is a lot of stuff going on here, but a decent portion of the movie deals with the kidnapping/torture of Cheryl Dempsey.  She was a teenager when she was abducted.  She was abused physically and mentally to a terrible extent.  We see the torture.  We see her mind cracking under the strain of it all.  It’s heartbreaking.
In a particularly chilling scene, the killer videotapes himself as he approaches Cheryl’s mom, offering to help find her child.  Eventually it dawns on her mother that she is talking to the man who took her daughter.  As she is paralyzed with fear, the killer laughs and walks off.  That scene broke me down.  Of all the things I saw him do over the course of this movie, that felt like one of the worst.  It felt like someone punching me in the gut.  The torture I can take.  But that?  That’s a bridge too far, fella.

But that wasn’t the worst.  Not really.  He did some, let’s call it “creative surgery,” that was horrifying.  Just horrifying.

Both his psychological and physical torture are next level sadistic.  If this man existed in real life and was anywhere close to my town, I would have picked up and moved a long time ago.  Maybe burned my house on my way out of town for good measure.

I feel like I’m really talking this movie up.  I liked it, but it wasn’t perfect.  There are some slow moments.  There are some scares that don’t really land.  But those are small moments and relatively easy to overlook.  Again, it’s a short movie, and those moments are in the minority.  For the most part, this is an extremely well-done movie.  It used the found footage genre to perfection.

If you’re looking for an unsettling serial killer movie, this is it.  It has had a troubled release history, so it’s not the easiest movie to track down, but you can find it if you search hard enough.  That aspect makes this a little creepier: it’s a movie about hours and hours of torture and murder, and it’s not easy to track down.  That aspect makes it feel a little more real.

Turn off the lights, check to make sure all your doors and windows are locked and throw this on.  You may find yourself staring at the screen as the credits roll, wondering what you have gotten yourself into.  Then checking all the closets in your house.  Just in cases, you know?

Rating: 5/5

Notable actors: Bobbi Sue Luther, a real serial killer (probably)

Maniac

Description from Netflix:

In this high-gloss update of a 1980 slasher flick, Elijah Wood stars as Frank, a mannequin store owner who develops an unsatiable lust for blood when he becomes obsessed with a young artist who turns to him for help with her latest exhibit.

Notable actors: Elijah Wood, America Olivio

You can read my review of the original version here.

My thoughts:

One minor point to nitpick in that description.  Frank did not suddenly develop “an unsatiable lust for blood” when Anna comes into the picture.  We saw him kill at least one woman before he meets Anna.  If anything, Anna makes Frank try to fight his psychopathic tendencies.

Aside from two small scenes (as well as a few flashbacks), the entire film is told through Frank’s POV.  When I first heard about it, it seemed a little gimmicky.  An easy way to generate some press.  The cynic in me immediately saw a cash grab.  “Look!  You see everything through the eyes of the killer!  Give us your money!”

Thankfully, that was not the case.  The use of POV was amazing, and Wood did a great job at playing the Frank character in such a way as to convey his overwhelming psychosis without having to see him.  We were treated to scenes that showed what was going on in his head that drove him to kill.  We hear his heavy breathing when he’s stalking his prey.  We are not the killer, but we see everything from his perspective.  I don’t know that we necessarily sympathize with him, but we can definitely see why he does what he does.

To me, one of the most telling scenes comes after a kill, when Frank catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror.  He has just finished murdering and scalping a girl he took on a date.  He sees himself in the mirror, and begins to vomit.  In build-up to that scene, we see why he kills (a deep-seated psychosis brought on by his mother).  But in that scene, we see that his actions sicken him.  He does not want to kill, but he is driven to kill.  He hates himself for it, and he can’t stand the sight of himself after committing such a vile act.  He knows he’s a monster, but he can’t help it.  It’s a terrific scene, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful if the film wasn’t told through the eyes of Frank.

Elijah Wood is the obvious stand-out here.  After all, it’s not easy to command a movie when you’re rarely seen, but he does a tremendous job here.  You can hear the crazy in his voice.  When you catch a glimpse in the mirror, you can see the crazy in his eyes.  And yet, behind the crazy is a tenderness.  A sense of longing.  A need to belong in a world that he no longer can find his place in.  It’s an amazing performance.

But he’s not the only one who turns in a great performance.  Nora Arnezeder (Anna) is perfect.  She’s able to see through Frank’s craziness and appreciate the person he wishes he were all the time.  Through her interactions with Frank, we see how hard he tries to fight his compulsion to kill.  She’s an extremely important character, and Arnezeder kills the role.

Really, I could talk this way about every actor in the film.  Everyone was fantastic.  There wasn’t a weak link in the cast.

The film looked great.  Where the original was a dirty, grimy film, this one felt very sleek, and the pulsing, electronic soundtrack only added to that feeling.  It reminded me of Drive.  But with more scalping.  (Although with less elevator head-stomping, which I felt was odd.)

If I have any problems with this movie, it’s that there were a few scenes that were a bit hard to follow.  But I think that’s less a problem with the narrative structure and more because we’re seeing the events of the film through the eyes of a psychopath.  As a general rule, a madman is not the most reliable storyteller.

Overall, I really loved this film.  There weren’t really any jump scares, but more of an overwhelming, suffocating dread that didn’t let up for the entire film.  It was an expertly crafted film with some tremendous performances.  As of right now, this is in my top-three horror films of the year (along with Mama and Evil Dead).

One final note: there’s a terrific scene after a kill where Frank catches a reflection of himself in a car door, holding a scalp.  It’s a terrific homage to the poster for the original.  I really loved seeing it in there.  It showed the love and respect this director had for the original, while still being able to remake it in his own style.

Rating: 5/5

Maniac

I usually hear this movie mentioned in the same breath as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.  I don’t think that I necessarily enjoyed Henry, but it was a good movie.  So I thought I would give this one a shot.

After watching it, I can see why they’re mentioned together.  They both had the same feel to them: less scary and more unnerving.  More like a documentary than a normal horror movie.  They both are extremely raw, and unsettling with their intimate brutality.

The story is simple: Frank Zito is a lonely man.  His mother was a prostitute, and she abused him.  She died in a car wreck years ago, but he has never been able to escape her grip on his life.  So he kills women, scalps them, and puts them on his ever-increasing collection of mannequins in his small apartment.  He keeps one mannequin in his bed, who he talks to as if she was his mother.  When he tires of that particular mannequin, he kills another woman, scalps her, and puts her hair on another mannequin.

Eventually, he meets Anna, a photographer.  They go on a couple of dates for some reason (they don’t really talk about why she has agreed to go on these dates).  He meets some of her friends at a photo shoot, and he kills one of them.  Because that’s what he does.

The love story element of this movie bothered me quite a bit.  It felt extremely forced (the love story element of Henry, on the other hand, felt very real and organic), which hurt the movie.  It’s a complex movie, with a complex lead character, which made the love story seem even more ridiculous.  It’s like they shoehorned this storyline into an otherwise well thought-out and realized story.  I don’t understand it at all.

I also had a major problem with the ending.  [SPOILER ALERT…even though this movie came out in 1980]  Frank had gone on a killing spree spanning a few days and several bodies.  He terrified an entire city.  And yet, when the police are finally tipped-off, they send two cops to his apartment (one of whom appears to be comfortably in his 60s).  They bust in the door, and find him on his bed, stabbed through the stomach by a sword.  Instead of checking his pulse, they shrug their shoulders and leave.  When Frank opens his eyes at the end, instead of being shocked, I was just mad at the ineptness of the police.  [END SPOILER]

There was one scene that was more popular than others, so I would be remiss not to mention it.  That scene would be when a character referred to as “Disco Boy” on IMDB (played by special effects wizard Tom Savini) has his head blown off by a 12 gauge shotgun at close range.  It was glorious: insane, brutal, and very realistic (Savini served in Vietnam and used his experience there to create as accurate a depiction as possible).  It was pretty shocking, even though I knew it was coming.

It wasn’t an amazing movie, but it was really good.  Like Henry, I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but I’m glad I watched it.  Again, it was in the same vein as Henry (Maniac came out 6 years prior to Henry), but it wasn’t nearly as good.  So I guess I would say, “If you can only watch one serial killer movie that makes you feel pretty dirty, make it Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.  But, if you have the stomach to watch two, make the other one Maniac.”  Still, it was very well done, and extremely well-acted (after seeing Joe Spinell in this movie, I’ll never watch Rocky the same way again).  It was pretty disturbing and very unsettling.

Notable actors: Joe Spinell, Tom Savini

Rating: 3.5/5

Midnight Meat Train, Wrong Turn 4

Midnight Meat Train

Going in, I figured this would be a mindless, bloody slasher movie.  I got the “bloody slasher movie” part correct, but it wasn’t exactly mindless.  There is a psychological aspect to it that really held my interest. 

Bradley Cooper plays Leon, a photographer, who, in an attempt to get his pictures featured at an art exhibit, walks around the city in the early hours of the day, trying to capture the city as it really is (dark, dirty and dangerous).  He comes across a group of thugs trying to rape a girl, and he stops them.  He watches the girl go into the subway, and he leaves.  The next day, he finds out that she has gone missing.  He continues to stalk the streets, and comes across Mahogany (played by Vinnie Jones), someone who rides empty subway cars by day and works in a meat packing plant by day.  Leon becomes obsessed with Mahogany, who he believes has something to do with the disappearance of the girl he photographed.  It consumes his life.

Like I said, there’s a lot of blood, but there’s also something else that drew me into the movie a little more.  Also, there’s a twist at the end that I did not see coming.  So that was fun.

Overall, it was a good movie.  Much better than I was expecting.  Also, Bradley Cooper’s character is named “Leon”.  I found that endlessly amusing.

Notable actors: Bradley Cooper, Vinnie Jones, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields

Rating: 3.5/5

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

Having watched Wrong Turn 1-3, I had witnessed the declining quality with each movie.  So, while I was kind of excited to watch this new movie, I did not have high hopes for it.  I knew this was a prequel, but that's all I knew.

In this movie, we see the early life of the inbred family that shows up in the first three movies.  At the beginning of the movie (set in 1974), they are children, living in an insane asylum in West Virginia.  They escape, release the other inmates, and kill all the employees.  

Fast forward to 2003.  A group of college kids head off for a ski trip in the mountains of West Virginia.  They get off course.  With a snow storm on the way, they needed to find a place to stay.  They find the abandoned asylum, and decide to stay for the night.

Of course, the brothers are still in the area.  They begin to terrorize, kill and eat the kids.

I liked it.  It wasn't as good as the first movie, but it was at least as good as the second movie.  The script wasn't amazing, but it was pretty good, and the story moved along pretty well.  The acting wasn't great, but it was better than I expected.  

And that's how I felt about the movie as a whole: better than I expected.  If you're a fan of the inbred-slasher subgenre, you'll like this movie.

Rating: 3/5

Midnight Movie, Slaughter Night

Midnight Movie

I read a review of this that sounded good, so I thought I’d check it out.  I ran to Wal-Mart and grabbed a 4-movie pack that had this movie in it for only $5.  Thank you, Sam Walton.

As it turns out, this movie was highly mediocre.

The premise is what made the movie interesting.  A madman made a movie.  After said madman watched it in a mental institution years later, everyone ended up dead, and the madman escaped.  Five years later, the movie (The Dark Beneath) was being shown for the first time since the incident, in a little run-down theater at midnight.  The movie itself pretty much looks like a rip-off of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with elements of Psycho thrown in for good measure.  Before too long, strange things start happening, and the handful of people watching the movie begin to realize that the killer is somehow escaping the confines of the screen and killing people in the theater.  So, basically, the theater turns into a horror movie, and the patrons are the victims.

Like I said, it was an interesting premise.  The slasher genre seems like a hard one to do something different with, but this movie manages to do it.  The acting and script weren’t great (which is a huge understatement), which made the set-up pretty rough to get through.  But the inventiveness of the plot was enough to carry the movie once it got going.

It wasn’t a great movie, but it added something new to the genre, and that’s always cool.  I can definitely recommend it, but it’s more of a, “Check it out if you get a chance,” rather than a, “You need to watch this movie now,” recommendation.

Rating: 3/5

Slaughter Night (SL8N8)

We were looking for a movie to watch after Midnight Movie.  I had added this one to my instant queue a week or so earlier, so we decided to check it out.   It’s called Slaughter Night, and the girl on the front was covered in blood (and was also fairly attractive).  What could go wrong?

A lot.  A lot could go wrong.  First of all, that girl on the cover doesn’t appear in the movie.  At all.  Second of all, it was awful.

There was a long set-up having to do with a 19^th century child murderer somewhere in Denmark (which is where the movie was filmed and set).  The cops tracked him down and killed him outside of the mine in which he operated.  Fast-forward to present day, and there is a girl who gets in a car wreck with her father.  He father (who had been studying this child killer) dies.  She becomes intrigued with the case, and decides to go to the mine with her friends, because…well, I don’t know why.  Fun, I guess?

They go into the mine, where the spirit of the child killer is still roaming about.  He surfaces, and people start getting killed.

I think that’s what happened, anyway.  After about 40 minutes, we came to the conclusion that the movie was terrible and boring, so we decided to fast forward it until it looked like something interesting was happening.  We stopped a couple of times, but even the scenes where someone was getting killed seemed boring.

In other words, don’t see this movie.

Rating: 0/5

Cyrus, Rubber, Trick R Treat, Severance

Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer

I saw this movie in Best Buy a couple weeks ago, and I thought it looked interesting, so I grabbed it from Netflix.

It was a decent movie, but not great by any stretch of the imagination.

In this movie, we follow Maria (played by Danielle Harris), who works for a show called Last Steps, in which she goes to places of notable murders and interviews people.  She goes to a small town for a story on Cyrus, “The County Line Cannibal”.  She finds a man named Emmett (played by Lance Henriksen) who knows a lot about the life of Cyrus.  After we get his backstory, we see some of the murders. 

The more Emmett talks, the more we realize that he knows a lot more details than he probably should.

Like I said, it was a decent movie, but it never really pulled me in.  It seems like they were going for a specific mood, but I don’t think they were quite able to capture it.  Danielle Harris and Lance Henriksen were great, but the guy who played Cyrus (Brian Krause) wasn’t great, and that kind of hurt the movie.

When I watched this movie, all I could think of was how much better Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was.

One final note: it says that this movie was based on a true story, but I haven’t been able to find out what story that is.  I’m pretty sure it’s “Based on a true story” in the same way that The Strangers was based on a true story.  Which, in this case, would mean that there once was a serial killer who lived in a rural area.

Rating: 2.5/5

Rubber

I had actually started watching this movie about a month ago, but I just wasn’t in the right mood for it.  I’m not sure I was in the right mood for it this time, either, but I watched the whole thing.  So that’s something.

Rubber follows a tire named Robert (I know it’s his name based on the synopsis…I don’t think they ever actually say it in the movie) who can explode objects (bottles, animals, human heads, etc.) through telekinesis.  It rolls through a town, exploding everything it comes across.

There’s a whole “movie-within-a-movie” thing going on here, which is pretty funny.  I thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue, and the acting was fantastic.  I only recognized a couple actors (David Bowe and Charley Koontz), although there were a couple more that I’m sure would be recognizable to others (Wings Hauser, Roxane Mesquida and Stephen Spinella).

Overall, it was a really bizarre movie, but with enough funny moments to keep me interested in it.  I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, but I’m glad I actually sat down and watched it this once.

Rating: 2.5/5

I had seen these next two movies before, but I rewatched them this past week, so I thought I’d throw them up here.

Trick R Treat

An anthology of horror stories, all taking place in a small town on Halloween.

I think I liked it better the second time around.  It’s a terrific movie, and it’s extremely well done.  Great stories.  Great actors.  And it’s legitimately creepy at times.  There aren’t many likable characters in the movie, but it still works.  If you haven’t seen this yet, you definitely need to watch it.

Notable actors: Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker, Brian Cox, Tahmoh Penikett, Leslie Bibb

Rating: 5/5

Severance

A British horror/comedy, which follows a group co-workers who head to a lodge in Hungary for a team-building weekend.  They start hearing things and seeing glimpses of people outside of the lodge.  And, eventually, people start dying.

It’s fantastic.  It’s really funny, but there’s also a fair amount of gore and tense moments.  They mix comedy with the slasher genre (as well as some scenes that would actually fit really well in the torture-porn genre) extremely well.  The characters are funny, but also very human. 

It’s never an easy task to mix genres, but they do it to perfection here. 

Notable actors: Danny Dyer, Toby Stephens

From Hell, Chromeskull

From Hell

The story of Jack the Ripper, as imagined by Alan Moore.  In this version, we find out who Jack the Ripper is...and we find out that it may have been a little more than just one man acting alone.

This is, of course, a big budget movie.  The headliners in the movie are Johnny Depp and Heather Graham (both of whom are fantastic).  There are also a couple other recognizable actors in this movie: Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggins) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) were the two that really jumped out at me.

I enjoyed it.  It was a unique take on an old story, and it looked great.  It really drew me in to the world they had created.

Rating: 4/5

Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2

I watched the first movie in this series (Laid to Rest) a year or so ago.  I enjoyed it for what it was...a pretty standard slasher movie.  This guy was high tech, mounting a video camera on his shoulder to tape his kills, locking his victims in coffins and communicating with them by text message, etc.  He never talked, and you never saw his face...he always wore a chrome mask, which I assumed was because he had a messed up face.
The killing was violent, graphic and quick (well, quick provided it wasn't one of his preordained victims...in which case it was slow).

This one was kind of along the same lines...but not as good.  The "not as good" part mainly comes because the acting was terrible, the script wasn't great, and Brian Austin Green was prominently involved (seriously.  That guy is terrible).
In this movie, Chromeskull isn't a one-man killing machine.  He has an entire organization behind him.  Brian Austin Green was one of his cronies, but he wasn't happy just helping out.  He wanted to join in on the killing.  So he does.  Which doesn't make Chromeskull happy.  It all goes downhill from there.

Urban Legends, Ripper, Village of the Damned

Urban Legend

It's an interesting take on the slasher genre: someone is killing college students (at Pendleton University) in the manner of urban legends.
People fight.  People die.  The ones that aren't dead try to figure out who is behind the killings before they die.  There's really not much to it, but I think it's a fresh take on the genre.  I really like it.

There are a handful of big names in this movie: Joshua Jackson, Rebecca Gayheart, Tara Reid, Jared Leto, and Robert Englund.
There are also some other, not-so-big names in this movie: Loretta Devine (who plays the Foxy Brown loving security guard), Alicia Witt (better known for her role at the clarinet player in Mr. Holland's Opus), Brad Dourif, and Danielle Harris.  My favorite connection here is Dourif and Harris.  Dourif played Harris' father in the Rob Zombie Halloween series.  And, while they never share screen time here, I still liked that they were in the same movie.

Rating: 4/5

Urban Legends: Final Cut

This movie is a sequel in name only.  The only character who shows up from the first movie is Loretta Devine, who is now working as a security guard at a new school.
This movie takes place at a film school.  I can't remember the name, but I guess it's not really important.  The main character can't figure out what her senior film thesis should be.  But, after talking with Devine's character, she decides to make a movie where someone kills people in the manner of urban legends.  Shortly thereafter, a friend of hers is said to have committed suicide, but she believes otherwise.  As she begins work on her movie, her friends (and crew members) start being murdered.  Although, unlike the first movie, they're not being killed in the manner of urban legends (except for one).

I don't like this one quite as well as the original, but it was still an enjoyable movie.  I thought it ended really well.

Random actor sighting: Eva Mendes, Anthony Anderson, Joey Lawrence

Rating: 3.5/5

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary

Another sequel in name only.  They reference the events of Pendleton University in passing, but that's about it.  No characters from the first two movies show up at all.

The basic plot: the movie starts in the 50s at a dance.  Football players drug three girls in order to...well...to do what football players do to girls after they drug them.  One refuses her drink, and fights back.  She is accidentally killed, and her killer stuffs her in a box in a storage room.
Fast forward to present day.  Three girls are having a slumber party, and they talk about Bloody Mary.  So, after a pillow fight, one of the girls says "Bloody Mary" three times.  They giggle.
The next morning, the girls are missing.  As it turns out, some football players drugged them and took them to a cave.  Or something.  Basically just to pull a prank on them.  One by one, the football players start dying in terrible ways.  We find out that it's the girl who was killed in the 50s, exacting her revenge.

This was a terrible movie.  It was just awful.  About the only thing worse than the acting was the script.  This was an amazingly terrible movie.  At about the 15 minute mark, I just started fast forwarding through the movie, stopping at points to see if it got any better.  It never did.

The only person I recognized in this movie was Kate Mara.

Rating: 0/5

Ripper: Letter from Hell

Years before, Molly Keller (AJ Cook from Tru Calling) was the only survivor of a terrible massacre of her friends.  She is now in college, and is studying serial killers under a famous FBI profiler.  One by one, her classmates start getting murdered in the same manner of Jack the Ripper's kills.  By studying Jack the Ripper, the class hopes to find out who the next victim might be, and who the killer is.

This was a fun movie.  Not altogether different from most slasher movies, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating: 4/5

Village of the Damned

Since this was on Netflix instant watch, I opted for this version over the 1960 original.

In a small town, the entire population loses consciousness at the same time.  When they wake up, all the women are pregnant.  Then, 9 months later, they all give birth at the same time.
Before too long, it is apparent that these children are not normal.  There are a series of deaths, all of them ruled accidents.  As it turns out, the children are the spawn of an alien race, and are capable of mind control.  As they get older, the children get stranger.  They all have white hair, they all hang out together, they show no emotion, and they kill anyone who gets in their way.
The movie turns into a fight between the townspeople and the children.  But, as the townspeople find, it's hard to fight against a group of mind-controlling children.

It was an enjoyable movie.  The set-up was a little long, but, once it got past the birthing scene, it was really good.

Big name actors in this movie: Christopher Reeve, Mark Hamill and Kirstie Alley

Rating: 4/5