Mini Review: Life After Beth

Description from IMDB:

A young man’s recently deceased girlfriend mysteriously returns from the dead, but he slowly realizes she is not the way he remembered her.

Notable actors: Aubrey Plaza, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser, Anna Kendrick, Dan DeHaan, Matthew Gray Gubler, Garry Marshall

It’s a well-known fact that I enjoy zombie movies.  Because I have seen so many, I find myself drawn to films that are a bit different from the norm.  I like seeing a familiar story from a different angle.  This is true of horror movies in general.  Fido.  Colin.  Shaun of the Dead.  The Cabin in the Woods.  Scream. And so on.  If there is a movie with a new way of looking at familiar tropes, chances are good that I’ll enjoy it.  (Not all of them, though.  American Zombie was terrible.)

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I loved this movie.  It made me laugh pretty consistently throughout the entire movie.  It started off quickly (one of the first scenes is Beth’s funeral) and didn’t really hit any lulls.  The cast was terrific.  I wasn’t sold on Dane DeHaan at first, but he grew on me as the movie progressed.  I loved seeing how Plaza played Beth; she started as a sweet and fun amnesiac, and ended up being the flesh-craved zombie we knew she would become.  I loved John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon as her relentlessly naïve parents.  Most of all, I loved seeing this weird little story play out on the fringes of a citywide zombie outbreak.

My main complaint is that the music seemed to overtake the dialog from time to time.  I loved the atmosphere of the music (dissonant guitar squawls, courtesy of the great Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), but it had a tendency to be louder than it had any reason to me.  Perhaps that was to contribute to the chaos on screen, but I could have done with it being a little lower in the mix.  (Look at me, complaining about music being too loud.  I’m officially old now.)

That’s a minor complaint, though.  It’s not a perfect movie, but I had a lot of fun with this.  I’m already looking forward to watching it again.

Rating: 4/5

Mini Review: Under the Skin

Thoughts on Under the Skin, in three different stages:

1. During the movie. 

What is going on?  She's an alien, right?  That's what the description said.  Is she going to be driving around in this van for the entire movie?  Are those guys actually having sex with her and then getting destroyed, or are they consumed and converted to fuel without ever touching her?  That seems kind of cruel. 

2. Immediately after the movie. 

That was okay, I guess.  I think I kind of liked it.  It was different than I thought it would be.  I liked the thought process behind her trying to eat cake.  "I think I'm starting to feel things.  Maybe I'm human.  Let me check by eating this cake."  There are worse ways to check to see if you're human or not, I suppose.

3.  The day after the movie.

I really loved that movie.  Scarlett Johansson gave a tremendous performance.  She gave her stoic character a ton of depth, and brought her subtle character arc to life with silence.  It was odd and heartbreaking, and I'm really looking forward to watching it again.

Translation: it's not necessarily an easy movie to watch, but it gets better the more you think about it.  Plus, it can kind of be described as "Art house Species," which I’m a fan of.

Rating: 4.5/5

Mini Review: Snowpiercer

Bong Joo-ho's Snowpiercer - based on a French graphic novel - has some not-so-subtle things to say about class warfare, but that's an article to be written by someone much smarter than me.  An attempt to reverse the effects of global warming have backfired, leaving the sole survivors of Earth to circle the frozen globe in a self-sustaining train, powered by a Sacred Engine.  There's a cautionary tale in that, but I'm not the man to unravel it.

Instead, I'll just talk about how much fun this movie was.  Curtis (Chris Evans) is leading a rebellion against the powers-that-be.  To do this, he must lead his ragtag group from the filthy rear car to the posh front car.  It was almost like a video game, with each car presenting its own challenges.  Some of them contain puzzles to be solved, with new truths being presented that may disrupt their quest.  Others may be a car full of hatchet wielding maniacs who cut open fish to intimidate their attackers.  Others may contain exposition dumps.

It's a dark action movie, all taking place inside a train barreling through snow-covered landscapes.  It's a post-apocalyptic movie unlike any I've seen.  And, while it's bleak, there is a small glimmer of hope.  It's also a lot of fun to watch.

The acting is terrific.  Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Allison Pill are the highlights, but everyone here is great.

I've seen nothing but praise for this, and, while I loved it, I'll preach a little bit of caution.  I don't think it's quite as amazing as the rest of the world seems to think it is.  It’s a bit long and can drag at times, drawing out small scenes to be longer than they have any reason to be.  When I saw this, the hype level was still pretty low.  If I had seen it with sky-high expectations, I would have walked out disappointed.  As it was, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even if I had some minor issues with it.

It’s not perfect, but it’s still really good.  Keep your expectations reasonable, and you’ll love it.

Rating: 4.5/5

Mini Review: Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead

I will talk to anyone and everyone about the extent of my love for the first Dead Snow.  It's a little slow out of the gate, but it eventually delivers the full-fledged insanity I hoped that it would, while still developing characters I wanted to spend some time with.  It's one of my favorite zombie movies of the past 5 years.  What Tommy Wirkola was able to do on a small budget (roughly $800K) is nothing short of extraordinary.

As I mentioned in my Trailer Talk post, I was very much looking forward to the sequel.  Seeing as how Wirkola's Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters made $225 million on a $50 million budget, he was given a little more money to play with this time around.  It's tough to find exact numbers, but it looks like this film had a budget of around $5.5 million.

As near as I can tell, Wirkola took that money and immediately asked himself, "How can I make this movie crazier than the first?"  The answer, of course, was more.  More characters.  More zombies.  More fights.  More intestines.  More blood.  More deaths.  More weapons.  More laughs.  More insanity.

Daniel (Martin Starr), Blake (Ingrid Haas) and the Star Wars obsessed Monica (Jocelyn DeBoer) - self-appointed members of the Zombie Squad - travel from America to Norway to help Martin Hykkerud (the only survivor of the original) with his Nazi zombie problem.  "We've seen thousands of zombie movies," Daniel proclaims, as if this is enough information for Martin to have complete faith in their zombie-killing acumen.  Martin doesn't seem overly convinced, but put a hammer/shovel/hatchet in their hands, and they're more than willing to prove their worth.  Not to mention the fact that Blake has one of the all-time best zombie killing faces.

Martin had cut off his arm in the previous movie after being bitten.  In a case of mistaken identity (armdentity?), doctors attached a super-strength Nazi zombie arm to Martin.  At first, he found himself at war with it in a way that conjured up memories of Ash.  Eventually he learned to control it and found that he could bring the dead back to life.  Herzog - the leader of the Nazi zombies - has the same ability.  And so, as the trailer shows, we are treated to a massive zombie war: Herzog's zombies vs. Martin's zombies.  It's the kind of scene Wirkola didn't have money to do in the first film, and he's clearly holding nothing back here.  It's terrific.

The Evil Dead remake was a tense, nasty film, but it was clear the filmmakers were having fun as they dumped buckets of blood on the set.  That same feeling of glee is present here, only the events on the screen are much more comical.  Wirkola clearly had a lot of fun trying to think of new ways to kill people, or new ways to use their intestines.  With every new trick, I found myself grinning like an idiot.  I'm sure he was doing the same thing.

There's too much insanity to properly describe here.  If you like buckets of blood, miles of intestines and aren't easily offended, you need to watch this as soon as you can.  Even if you don't like zombie films, you're still likely to enjoy this one.

Rating: 5/5

Added note: I loved the chemistry between Martin and Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen) in the first film, so I was really happy to see Henriksen show up in this one as a different character.

Mini Review: Willow Creek

"Bobcat Goldthwait directed found footage Bigfoot movie."

That lovely bit of word soup is all I knew about this movie going in.  Since I had just visited the International Cryptozoology Museum, my interest in Bigfoot was at an all-time high.  My relationship with found footage has been a rocky one, but I was pretty excited about this. 

While I liked Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) pretty well, Jim (Bryce Johnson) really grated on my nerves.  One minute he's admonishing Kelly for not believing in Bigfoot and making fun of the town ("You don't believe?  You don't believe?  How could you not believe?  Believebelievebelieve?"), the next he's poking fun at a Bigfoot mural or jokingly interviewing a wooden Bigfoot or mocking a man who is singing a song about Bigfoot.  You can't have it both ways, fella. 

The movie was slow and riddled with plot holes/standard found footage complaints, but it was short (80 minutes) and provided a few good scares.  While it was ultimately disappointing, I thought it had enough going for it to offer a lukewarm recommendation.  Of course, that may just be my Bigfoot-mania talking.

Rating: 2.5/5

Mini Review: Oculus

As many of you know, I've been writing for Horror-Writers.net for quite some time now.  I started off writing reviews, but have since become the main TV writer there.  That (along with my time at PackerUpdate.net) has cut into my movie review time.  I'm still watching movies, but I find that I don't have as much time to write about them as I used to.  As much as I'd love to write a long, in-depth review on every movie I see, the reality is that I just can't do it at this time.
So I thought I'd change it up a bit.  In an attempt to ramp up this side of my writing, I'll be posting mini reviews for the horror movies I watch.  Nothing huge.  Just a sentence or paragraph saying what I thought about it.  Maybe I'll get around to writing full-length reviews of these.  Maybe I won't.  But these mini reviews should help me to still talk a bit about every movie I watch, if only a little.

First up, Oculus.

The trailer for this looked really creepy.  I had high hopes, but I was trying to keep my expectations low.    I had a fear that it would basically be Mirrors 3.
I'm happy to report that this was tremendous.  The cast was great (Karen Gillan and Katee Sackhoff, in particular).  Even the child actors were really good.
This was a really creepy film throughout.  I love how it played with the perception of reality.  I was never quite sure if what I was seeing was real or just an illusion of the mirror.  It hooked me early and kept me interested throughout.  There were a number of images that will be sticking with me for a long time.

Rating: 5/5

Godzilla

Monster movies are tricky in that the titular star is often a minor character, behind those that it affects. He is a plot point.  A puzzle to be solved. A villain to be conquered. They are often the center of the film, but they are unable to carry it. That duty in Godzilla falls on the humans.  For as much as I loved the characters in Monsters, I didn’t feel any connection to them here.  Bryan Cranston was great as the crazy-but-not-really-crazy engineer, but he didn't get nearly as much screentime as I hoped he would.  I really like Elizabeth Olsen, but her character bio was nothing more than "concerned wife".  Aaron Taylor-Johnson is supposed to be our proxy, but I felt no connection with him.  He was constantly in danger - he spent the entire film in the path of Godzilla and other nuclear monsters - and yet I never cared whether he lived or died.  If he was a minor character, the lack of connection wouldn't be a big deal.  But it takes a while for Godzilla to show up (and it takes even longer for him to do anything interesting for longer than 5 seconds), leaving Taylor-Johnson's meathead Ford as the driving force behind the film.  It's a terrible combination of an underdeveloped character and an actor with zero charisma. 

I wouldn't care that it took so long for Godzilla to show up if the characters were more interesting or their stories more compelling.  They needed to make me care about the characters and their struggles.  Get me invested in them, then bring up Godzilla and make me hope and pray that everyone makes it out okay.  They didn't do that, so the first half of the movie really seemed to drag.  The only thing I really loved in the first half was Bryan Cranston's running face, and that was a short-lived joy.

"Godzilla will get NOTHING."

We got a little action about an hour in, but it wasn't Godzilla.  We had two creatures designated as MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) that fed off radiation.  We saw some decent destruction involving these creatures: they were equipped with EMPs, so they would periodically shut down all electrical devices, which led to some great scenes of planes spinning helplessly to the ground and exploding on impact.  We saw one of the MUTOs - which looked like a mix between a Starship Troopers bug and the Cloverfield monster - rampage through Las Vegas.  They were good destruction scenes, but they weren't Godzilla destruction scenes. 

Once the Godzilla action showed up, it felt a bit like a tease.  Godzilla showed up in the city, a MUTO descended on him, a battle was starting...and a door closed in front of the camera, so we didn't see any of it.  We had a few of those false starts before the real action started.  And once that happened, I was all in. 

The fight scenes between Godzilla and the MUTOs felt like a clumsy bar brawl in the middle of a city; staggering into buildings, screaming and breathing fire.  They were glorious, and they left me walking out of the theater being really excited about the movie.

But that excitement fades after a little while, and I'm left thinking about all the problems.  The shallow characters.  The fact that EMPs knocked out all electricity, yet the news cameras still worked.  The fact that the army decided the best place to attack a monster who travels primarily by sea was a suspension bridge.  And so on.  And so forth.

"USA! USA!"

It was impossible to watch this and not think about Pacific Rim.  There was the obvious ("They should just build some giant robots to fight the monsters."), but it's also worth exploring some of the writing.  Pacific Rim knew the strength wasn't in the writing, so they just threw a handful of massive fight scenes at the audience to keep us happy.  Godzilla seemed to think its characters were good enough on their own and didn't feel the need to keep us distracted with fights.

I don't think the characters were better written in Pacific Rim, but I found that I cared about them more than I cared about the characters in Godzilla, and I think that's because the characters in Pacific Rim actually spent quite a bit of time together.  The characters in Godzilla were often in completely different places.  I found it hard to care about the relationship between Ford and Elle because most of their interactions were short conversations over the phone.  It was hard to see much love between them, so I had little love for them.

In the end, the main downfall of the movie was the lack of connection with Ford.  He was the one who was constantly in harm's way, yet I didn't care what happened to him.

Walking out of the theater, I could say that I really enjoyed myself, but its problems are impossible to ignore.  The long lead-up to destruction is a necessary evil, but I can't help but think that it could have been more interesting.  The characters could have been much better, but, in the end, we got to see The King of the Monsters beat up on a couple lesser monsters and unleash a number of his trademark screams. 

It's not a perfect movie, but it's worth seeing for the fight scenes if nothing else. 

Rating: 3.5/5

Before the movie came out, I wrote a Trailer Talk post about it.  You can read that here.