Thought Chasm

Christian Slater hasn’t been this awesome since true romance (or maybe very bad things). His performance as the Milton-esque office drone is pretty impressive. Cuthbert does a pretty good job, also. It was entertaining and intriguing, though the end has me slightly miffed. It’s fairly predictable, but confusing.

The direction is great. Bob (Slater) is disgruntled, to understate it. There are quite a few fantasy sequences and Cappello does them well. The C.G.I. is used quite a bit, but doesn’t get to the point of annoying. The whole thing is visually appealing and does a good job of conveying Bob’s mood throughout. The interaction between the characters is exaggerated and almost surreal. There’s almost no character development, but the way Bob interacts with them changes. That leads to the ending, sort of.

I won’t ruin it, because I think this a film worth watching, but I’m left with an uncertain reaction. The event is fairly interesting and, though it’s predictable, is a pretty solid ending. The idea behind it is what confuses me. If you look it up, you’ll see there’s a lot of debate on the I.M.D.B. (caution, spoilers are everywhere on there). I agree with some of it, but I think the ending was better than a lot of people give it credit for. That’s all though.

I think it’s a fun show to watch and the idea is pretty solid. The execution may be a bit stale, but it’s darkly humorous and entertaining.

***

Horrorfest is a series of low-budget horror movies that came out all in the same two weeks. I saw a couple in the theaters, but recently took time to watch the rest of the eight. Thoughts are below. I’ve ranked them, the last one being the best of them.

Nightmare Man
From appearances, this was shot in three hours with a $300 camcorder with a budget of three grand. The actors were just slightly worse than usually come with a Sci-Fi channel original. The plot was preposterous, predictable and incredibly lame. They took the worst parts of The Mask, fallen and any slasher movie ever in order to make a surprisingly large pile of lame. The story had no real path and generally stunk of afterthought. I could have made a more interesting film. I give them style points for injecting completely ridiculous toplessness and a few bouts of almost-orgasm moaning.

Things I learned:
Never date an attractive girl and visit one of her college friends in the woods. Women are helpless unless they imply that they are at least slightly into other women. Men are protectors, but generally die far quicker than you’d imagine. Never hang out with slutty women. Evil will rip your clothes off and send you to Crazyville faster than accidentally shooting a small child. Which is pretty fast.

Unearthed
I have never once seen such lack of attention to treacherous demon. This thing was ridiculous. It looked like a character from a super nintendo game jumped the cable and was granted a starring role. Which, I guess is nice for him. Still, the premise was impressively weak and the action wasn’t even that interesting. There was some sort of “science” that they kept trying to throw at me, but I wasn’t having it. They also wanted to throw in a side-plot about the sheriff that was humorously unnecessary.

Things I learned:
Women are helpless unless they are drunken sheriffs or obscenely smart in the ways of biology and radiation. Native Americans know creepy mysticism and the ways of the earth like old white men know Republican politics. When driving through the desert, always get gas at every station. There’s some sort of die out there that, when applied to organic matter, reflects different colors depending on if it’s part of the plant kingdom, animal kingdom or the others (there are five). Don’t be an archaeologist.

Mulberry St.
This one is sort of like I am legend or 28 weeks later, but without the intent to make something watchable. The idea is overplayed and obvious. They went the extra mile and made the creatures just plain dumb looking. The acting was sub-par like golfing a 300 and passing out drunk in a sand trap is “sub-par.” This one gets more points because it force-fed some sort of reunion plot into the whole thing. The infected were awesome looking.

Things I learned:
Interacting with people will get you infected with an unknown virus. We need to clean our streets. Not because of our growing homelessness problem that no one talks about, but because we’re endangering out lives. Cloth, against all laws of physics, can fall straight down like a stone in the right (read: fictional) circumstances.

Lake Dead
The story revolves around three sisters, who inherit a resort on a lake when their estranged grandfather passes. It is every slasher movie you’ve ever seen, but mostly friday the 13th and another one that has incest in it. It’s preposterous, mildly disturbing and filled with ridiculous to a point that even I was laughing in the theater. The production value is less than the combined worth of my t-shirts and the acting is on a 5th-grade-play level. The sisters are relatively attractive, but the entire thing is laughable.

Things I learned:
Again, avoid slutty women. You will die. Don’t be a bad-ass. You’ll die. In incestuous procreation, for every normal-looking, dim-witted offspring you get a horrifyingly deformed intellectually-vacant giant. If you inherit a resort from an obscure relative, ignore it. Sell it site-unseen. It’s likely your family is batshit crazy. If you go up to inspect the property and organize your affairs, you’ll die.

Crazy Eights
You have some kids who, for some reason I missed, end up back at a home they don’t remember being terrorized by some sort of ghost they can’t identify. It happens all the time, but this time is different. Well, okay, so it’s not, but maybe you thought just then that it was. Anyway, they all come back and are plagued by a guilt for something they don’t remember until act two. This would probably be categorized by a thriller if you were promoting it and as predictably lame in any other case. This was apparently based on true events. Sort of like how Deep Impact probably was.

It starts out with a professor lecturing on the instinctual feeling of guilt and how it’s ingrained so that society can exist. This, of course, means that she did something shitty and twisted that will play itself out in the rest of the movie. There are some awesome death scenes and a what-not-to-do lesson to screenwriters throughout. It’s a fun show and about as thought provoking as the first six stories on any local news broadcast.

Things I learned:
Guilt is natural and universal, so things you do as a child are unforgivable. Behavior modification is wrong. Stay with the group. I repeat, stay with the group. If you wander off you’re guaranteed to become lost and be attacked by a figment of your imagination. Never sneak up on a just-recently-blinded woman holding a jagged-ended pipe.

The Deaths of Ian Stone
This one came action-packed with lofty abstract ideas and dramatic near-effects. The concept was interesting, but the execution was terrible times ridiculous. The acting, for at least the first bit, was better than any of the others talked about ’til now. It took the creature movie to another level by forcing a romantic plot on us while speaking inanely about other dimensions and other oddities. The action is paced fairly well and kept attention despite the film’s absurdity. I’m a sucker for supernatural sci-fi thrillers, so I was already going to like it more than the others. Take my thoughts as you will.

Things I learned:
Um… well… nothing….. oh, wait. Maybe that supernatural beings have a college-aged coed fetish?

Borderland
Here’s another one that was based on true events. I think this one is more on the mark though, because it basically tells the tale of a few adventure-seeking near-grads who head down to Mexico for some fun times and they all sort of end up disappeared after finding a mass burial site and a group of crazies. There’s a lot of human nature wrapped up in this one. The acting is pretty terrible, but they mask it in not knowing the language or speaking through horrible accents. The story is grandios and hard to swallow, but the gore is impressive enough.

Things I learned:
Never, ever, go to Mexico. You’ll die.

Tooth and Nail
What would happen if gasoline ran out? This movie attempts, with about as much suspension disbelief as anyone can handle before their brain leaks from their ears, to answer that topical question. Apparently, with no refined fuel or, I guess, alternatives, we forget how to farm, die off in vast numbers and go all Donner party on everything. I would like to think the human race would be able to, say… tear down an abandoned house and plant potatoes before started reenacting scenes from the most dangerous game, but it definitely played into my pessimistic nature. The acting did the job, but was lame in a lot of parts. The story was relatively impressive, if you ignore the logic-void that spurred the depicted events. It had treachery, hope, Rider Strong (Cabin Fever), Vinnie Jones (snatch) and a shitton of gore.

Things I learned:
Alternative fuels are a myth. As soon as gas runs out, we have no hope. Even if you’re 6′ 5″ and three hundred pounds of muscle, a knife to the gut will kill you almost instantly. Cook your meat thoroughly.

Overall, the experience was enjoyable. The eight films probably have a combined budget that matches any one lame horror movie in the works. They may have been cheap, but they covered aliens, apocalypse, slasher, ghost and supernatural genres. They’re all ridiculous and I feel slightly dumber by watching all of them, but it was totally worth it. Let’s hope that After Dark gets some money off these things and can put a little more financial investment (and maybe thought) into the next round. And remember, as always, watch Sci-Fi on saturday nights.

In summation:
** for comedic effect and general gore.