Critters:

Review incoming....

 

Sleeping Beauty:

I finally watched Sleeping Beauty, a film which first seized my interests last year after I stumbled across the trailer on-line.

The fact that Emily Browning had a starring part in this film was a major seller for me, as I've always loved her previous roles. I don’t normally tend to seek out art films, even coherent ones, as they’re usually rather dull, but something about this one intrigued me, and I've always been a sucker for fairy tale references. Besides, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to view a film whose trailer reminded me of The Story of O, not so much for the latter's dealings with sadomasochism, as that particular perversion is not covered within this movie, but due to the similarities in atmosphere, at least in the beginning. Browning's scenes at the estate put me in mind of O's experiences within the Château de Roissy. While the desires and practices of the men in both films are very different, the dehumanization of the girls involved is eerily similar.

The story revolves around Lucy, a young college girl struggling financially, who responds to an ad looking for beautiful young women to act as servers and eye candy at an estate which caters to rich, older men. Lucy, who is given the name “Sara” by her new employer, is required to pour wine and brandy, while wearing expensive and barely-concealing lingerie. The job eventually extends to include having Lucy consume a extremely strong sedative which places her into a deep, dreamless sleep, during which time she is placed in a room where one of the gentlemen clientele may do whatever he wishes to her senseless body, with the exception of penetration.

First let me say that this is a very pretty film, but it’s also a very English film. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it tedious, but it creeps right up to the edge of that line and tap dances around it while dining on crumpets and tea.

This movie feels like what you’d expect to see if Jane Austen had written a soft-core porno.

There is an abundance of nudity in it, and yet very rarely does the bare flesh come off as titillating. Even when the women are being draped in reveling lingerie, their actions are so benign that they might as well be wearing full Nun habits for all of the actual arousal it invokes. They are nothing more than inanimate objects to the rich and powerful men they serve. The few “sexual” situations are also tame for the most part, except for one in particular, which just comes off as grotesquely comical in comparison to the dignified tone set by the rest of the film.

 

Emily Browning is stunningly beautiful in her role, which should come as no surprise, and she carries off her performance with a serenity that is often at odds with the situations her character finds herself in. I can’t really praise her acting too much, not because it was lacking, but that the story itself felt incomplete. There is some mediocre attempt to show the audience a brief glimpse of her character’s life, but none of it is explained in any depth, and any dramatics we are tantalized with are quickly forgotten with no further explanation or conclusion.

Still, considering how little she was given in the way of character development, and the fact that she doesn’t say very much in the film, she still managed to captivate me. There’s a hint of something more there, and it’s perhaps one of the biggest teases the film has to offer. There is a scene in particular which I found profoundly moving, in which one of the gentlemen quotes a book to the proprietor of the establishment, while both are sitting on the edge of the very bed that an unconscious Lucy is laying on. The depth so subtly expressed in that one moment is exactly what I was craving from the rest of the film. 

I won’t go so far as to call the movie shallow, as there is at least some meaning behind it all, I just wasn’t always so clear as to what it was.

Underworld Awakening:

The recent holiday festivities have tampered down my free time a teensy bit, so forgive me for the site's lack of reviews.

I'd offer up some dramatic gesture of supplication, but I leave grand posturing to the cam whores. Instead, I have procured a nice, juicy bone for all you Underworld lovers out there.

Tada! New trailer:     

Also, it's been confirmed that Scott Speedman, the actor who played Micheal Corvin in the first two Underworld movies, will not be in the newest film. For which I am exceptionally grateful. His character was boring as shit and I usually tune out whenever he's on the screen.

My interest has been tickled by the Super-Lycan referenced to in the trailer, and since everyone's favorite Werewolf from the series Lost Girl, Kris Holden-Ried, has a part in this movie, I can only cross my fingers and pray to Fenrir that he's been cast in the role of mutant Hulk-wolf.

Although, let's face it, they could have cast that hunkalicious man as an inanimate object and I'd still be fighting back the urge to dry hump my computer screen.

Happy Halloween!

Bloody Mallory:

Review incoming....

The Thing Cast Watches the Prequel:

Every single ass-munching monkey-fucker responsible for this piece of shit "prequel" deserves to die in an abandoned ditch on the side of some long forgotten road from massive blood lost and severe internal trauma after being anally fisted for 48-hours straight by a herd of rabid pachyderms. 

Also, whoever made the following video rocks. If I wasn't already sterile then I'd gladly birth your babies.

The Woman:

Anyone who isn’t a complete novice when it comes to the horror/thriller genres will surely have their interests immediacy perked the second they hear of a film collaboration between Jack Ketchum’s literary genius, and Lucky Mckee’s directorial madness.

Throw in the ever lovely Angela Bettis and you have the setup for one hell of a ride.

What we get is The Woman, which is based off the third book in a series written by Ketchum, and sequel to a 2009 film, Offspring, also directed by Mckee.

Now, first let me say that it is not required for you to view Offspring before watching this movie, as a large chunk of the unanswered questions that will be littering your mind by the time this is over with have little to nothing to do with the feral woman in question, and will revolve more around the family that finds her, which isn’t covered in the first movie at all.

In fact, the actual woman, who is played by Pollyanna McIntosh, reprising her role as the cannibal female known only as the Woman, from Offspring, seems more like a side-plot, and one that hardly holds as much interest as the main family’s interactions and eccentricities. If anything, she’s as much a spectator as the audience, and while she only mumbles a handful of words during her incarceration, the expressions on her face accurately mirror what most of us watching the film are thinking, which is that something is seriously fucked up with this family.

I actually found several of the more brutal scenes with her downright hilarious simply because of the actress’s facial expressions, which pretty much just vary from crazy, snarling she-bitch to mildly annoyed or amused. There is one scene in particular, where the crazed patriarch of the family, played by an increasingly creepy Sean Bridgers, decides to sneak down and enjoy some happy-fun-rape-time with our wild woman and during the entire encounter, she just looks bored. Here we have the very people who are claiming to want to rehabilitate and civilize her, instead raping and torturing her, and she just seems like she’s constantly on the verge of rolling her eyes at the inanity of their antics.

These people may be deranged, but even at their worst, they still fail to impress our savage protagonist in the slightest.

Also, when I say that this is an extremely fucked up family, I mean it, although not in the same way that the family in Visitor Q was fucked up, as these people are portrayed far more subtly. Even from the start the mood for this all American, white suburban family is well set, as the creep factor sets in from the moment we’re first introduced to them, and only escalates as the film progresses, especially given the nonchalant nature in which they all seem to accept having a half-naked, and wounded, woman chained up in their cellar, but with so much potential hinted at, I would have loved to see more than just the first superficial layer the movie’s creators offered up.

Holy shit, it's Albert fuckin' Ingalls!

My main complaint about this movie is that it was entirely too short, and left me wondering just what in the hell was going on. By the end of it, I was convinced that maybe the version I’d watched had left out a good hour or more of plot points that maybe, I don’t know, at least hinted to an explanation in regard to the back-story of the main characters, as there’s a lot happening with them and their extremely bizarre lives that’s left unsaid.

Instead we are left with nothing but speculation and confusion as to what in the fuck just happened and the why behind it all.

Now, don't get me wrong, this was still a fun film, and I really enjoyed watching it. If I hadn't, then I wouldn't give a rat's unwashed ass about wanting to know more about it, because I'd just be happy that the whole Gods-awful experience was done and over with, instead of wishing it had been longer, and grittier. The movie isn’t ruined by it’s lack of information, but it would have benefited a great deal from a tiny bit more exploration, especially given some of the “surprises” the end delivers.

I kept waiting for this movie to really get it’s hands dirty. But instead of going over the edge, it just crept up to it, dangled a toe over the side, then ran back to safety because it was too afraid to push the limits. And no, not every film has to get down to A Serbian Film levels of depravity in order to make for a decent horror flick, but come on, give us something here. This film is tame at best, fun and violent, but still tame. I’m honestly shocked it received an R-rating, because it feels like I’m watching something that‘s been strongly censored and edited down. It feels rushed and incomplete, like watching an episode from the old HBO Masters of Horror series. It just needed more meat on it's bones to be truly satisfying.

Rape? Torture? No biggie, but somebody is going to die for putting her in that ugly-ass dress.

I will say that the ending didn’t piss me off, as I was able to put enough together through the vague tidbits that were offered to understand why the surviving characters behaved as they did, but even that would have made more of a powerful punch or overall connection if the movie had bothered to take just a little bit of time to delve deeper into the family’s dynamics. The “dog” scene in particular seemed more like a cruel joke on the audience, as by that point, most people watching would have probably been satisfied with the flimsy, shallow build-up towards the film’s climax, only to have that incoherent morsel thrown in last minute, and blow everything straight to hell and back with it’s complete lack of clarification.

As it stands, this movie, while fun, is nothing more than a semi-violent cocktease that will leave you either hating it for being too stingy with it’s content, or loving it, but craving more.

Do I recommend it? Yeah, because despite the incomplete, half-assed feel to it, this film is still superior to most of the shit they’re calling horror these days. Plus it makes for a pretty decent mindless popcorn flick so long as you're not too particular about the plot quality of your horror films.

And who knows? Maybe they’ll consider releasing a director’s cut, which I usually abhor, but at this point, I’ll take any scraps they’re willing to throw our way in regard to this film.

100 Greatest Horror Movie Quotes of All Time:

This list is not of my making, but the quotes used on it are awesome enough that I support their inclusion.

Martyrs:

 

With the recent trend of American horror movie remakes, and laughable PG-13 ratings, I have turned to foreign films in the past few years in order to get my gore fix, or in the very least, not suffer through watching the films I enjoyed in my youth being raped beyond recognition by the onslaught of sub par directors littering Hollywood like so much garbage these days.

It was during this pilgrimage into the movie offerings of other countries that I ran across this gem.

Martyrs is the movie equivalent of a roller-coaster ride. It is a punch to the gut for everyone who’s sick to death of being spoon-fed tame, PG13 rated horror flicks that have been dumbed down in order to be more family friendly as a part of the ever rampant pussification of our society.

This movie is everything that a horror/thriller should be. It is a kick in the balls to every pathetic, watered-down, piece of shit, recycled puke that Hollywood has flung at us over these past 10 years, like a zoo full of retarded monkeys jerking off in their own feces because they’re too stupid to realize that nobody with a working brain could possibly enjoy such rancid tripe.

This film is beautifully fucking brutal, and it will blow your Godsdamn mind.

You want gore? It’s here. Violence? Sure thing. A plot line that’s not too tedious and yet delivers enough of a coherent story to disturb your peace of mind? This movie has it.

First off, this film is French-Canadian, and if you watch this, or any foreign film dubbed, and are not legally blind, then you are an idiot and should be dragged out behind a shed and shot. Your corpse doesn’t even deserve a proper burial, it should just be left in a ditch somewhere for carrion feeders and necrophiliacs to molest.

Now that I’ve addressed that, let’s get down to business.

This movie will screw with your head, and just when you think you have everything figured out, it completely flips the script on you and starts over from scratch. Sick of M. Night Shyamalan's twists? Of course you are, anyone with an IQ in the double digits was over that repetitive bullshit long before he jumped the shark with The Village, but don’t let the that pretentious monkey-fucker ruin your outlook on all movie twists in general, because this movie proves that they do still work if done right, and executed by a competent director.

What makes this movie so brilliant is the fact that the monsters in it are so subtle, and yet so terrifying in both their apathy towards their “victims” as well as their faith that what they are doing is not only acceptable, but imperative.

These are the privileged elite, targeting those who society will not miss, the orphaned, underprivileged, and forgotten citizens that would normally remain beneath their notice, but do not expect another underground social club full of pampered sadists, seeking death and torture to alleviate the boredom of their lives as shown in the Hostel films, as these monsters are far more merciless and methodical in both their approach as well as what they are ultimately seeking. Listening to their reasoning explained is akin to a watching a group of mad scientists at work. They are not doing this for some type of sick pleasure. They are not even ruining human life here, because these girls are not sentient beings to them, but tools which they will utilize to the fullest extent of their power in order to achieve their goals, and nothing will stop them, no matter how many of these “tools” they have to break in the process.

It’s dehumanization on a primal level, leaving nothing behind but mentally broken shells. The ones who do survive are driven to a lifetime of madness, as we witness through the eyes of Lucie, a young girl who escapes torture only to be haunted by an unseen but violently sadistic entity. She is played by the stunningly beautiful and talented Mylène Jampanoï, who is unspeakably breathtaking in this film, even through she spends a good part of her involvement in it coated with blood. She is joined in her crusade by her childhood friend and only confidant, Anna (Morjana Alaoui), who acts as a stabilizer for the enraged and maddened Lucie, who is determined to hunt down and eradicate those responsible for her childhood imprisonment and torture, and let’s just say that the bitch can kick some ass.

The bond between these two characters is nothing short of amazing. While Anna does not share her friend’s need for revenge, she does understand her on a level that few others could ever comprehend.

Now it has been suggested by more than one menstrual reviewer that this film is nothing more than “misogynistic torture porn” to which I say fuck you. Anyone who can dismiss this as being merely torture porn obviously needs to go back to watching My Little Pony reruns, because that’s apparently the only level their brains are capable of working on.

This film goes so much deeper than just the gore and violence that lies on the surface. If anything, the visual brutality is nothing more than a flimsy mask, covering an intent that‘s far uglier and more disconcerting than a little bit of physical abuse. As for it being “misogynistic” that’s just bullshit. The female characters in this film are the ones doing the most damage, and the original victim, Lucie, is responsible for some of the most violent and bloody scenes in the movie as she goes on the warpath with a shotgun. Even the real monsters of this film are mainly portrayed as women, and while they are not the only ones dealing out the torture against the girls in their possession, they are the ones pulling the strings.

Yes the film is violent, but it’s what’s beneath the violence that’s truly horrific. There is a reason behind their madness, and it’s so simplistic, and realistic, that it’s not hard to imagine something like this happening in real life, under the same circumstances.......that is what makes this film so bloody brilliant, the fact that the monsters in it are real, and closer to us in their fears, faith and mindset than the victims ever could be.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone who is looking for something to chase away the endless stream of lame that Hollywood has vomited out into our laps over these past few years. If you like kick-ass, beautiful and talented actresses, as well as hardcore brutality, then this film is for you.

If you have ever used the word “misogynistic” to describe a movie in your lifetime, then maybe you should just stick to Twilight films, or better yet, just wait until the American remake comes out, nicely packaged for the PG13 cinema-sheep, and starring Kristen Stewart.

And I really wish that was sarcasm, but they are actually planning a remake of this, and she has been contacted to star in it.

Way to go Hollywood, you can’t just satisfy yourself with raping horror films from the 70s and 80s, but you also have to jack the work of talented directors and producers from overseas and ride on the coattails of their success with your moronically sub par adaptation.

You fucked it up with [Rec.], and Let the Right One In, not to mention all of the Asian films you’ve dry-humped like a brain-dead poodle, and now you’re off to see what type of damage you can do with the French/French-Canadian films.

Fuck you Hollywood. I hope the entire lot of you are struck down by fire and brimstone like the days of Biblical lore and you're erased from this planet like the blight on humanity that you are.

A Serbian Film:

Finally I can review the movie I’ve been dying to chat about without having to worry about the people I know IRL thinking that I’m some type of perverted cretin.

I am of course talking about none other than the infamous A Serbian Film.

Yes, I was one of the sick fucks who downloaded the screener copy of this film and watched it in all of it’s uncensored glory.

Now, if you have not heard of this film, you should know that I will be discussing spoilers in the following review, but that’s Okay. You are going to want to know about every detail of this film before attempting to watch it.

Trust me, this is not the type of movie you want to go into completely blind.

I will start out by saying that despite the controversial nature and graphic content of this film, that from the start it is an excellent piece of cinematography. Everything from the quality of the video to the acting, even the story itself, is nothing short of amazing. Even the explicit scenes are beautifully shot, which only serves to make them that more surreal upon viewing.

The film follows the life of Milo, a retired porn star, and his very cute family. We know that Milo is an ex-porn star from the start as the movie begins with a scene from one of his films, in which he is happily fornicating with some chick in an alley. This plays just long enough to induce a nice, creepy vibe once it quickly cuts away to Milo’s 6-year-old son sitting on a couch, watching the very film of his fathers that we began the movie with.

You know that uncomfortable feeling of confusion mixed with dread in your pants? Yeah, it’s just going to keep getting worse. Be prepared for many scenes of graphic sex that quickly switch over to young children, teenage girls, and even newborns.

In other words, don’t watch this with your mother, unless you’re unnaturally close to the woman in which case this movie was made for you.

In fact, there is not a single scene of eroticism in this film that is not immediately followed by something equally disturbing. Every sexual encountered quickly cuts away to something that’s guaranteed to either nauseate or perturb the audience.

So five minutes into the movie and already you’re wondering about the legalities of it, well the ride has just begun, as our protagonist Milo, aka Porno Man, is starting to come up a little short on cash. While his stud years fattened his coffers considerably, his desire to grant his family the absolute best in life has thinned the honey pot by quite a bit.

Just as he’s starting to realize this fact, in walks the answer to his prayers in the form of an ex-costar of his who has a proposition for him. Some mysterious director has a desire for Milo’s talents for an art film he’s producing. It seem that our Milo not only has very impressive genitals, but he’s also able to achieve an erection on command, with little to no prompting, and can keep that sucker up for as long as needs be.

The twist, and a lot of people have criticized Milo for this, is that our director.....who looks just like Non, the dimwitted Kryptonian sidekick from Superman 2, seriously the resemblance is uncanny......insists that Milo not know anything about the movie beforehand.

Separated at birth?

Now this where most people who have seen this movie are screaming BULLSHIT, because this is obviously foreshadowing for something exceedingly twisted, but what my video comrades seem to forget in their indignation is the fact that Milo has his brother, who is a cop, investigate the director for him, as he was suspicious at first, not only because of the shady behavior of the director, but also due to the fact that his ex co-worker has a history of doing questionable work due to a drug dependency, which formed sometime after their acquaintance ended.

So Milo is not completely stupid here, he does attempt to do his homework, he just didn’t realize that he was trusting his future to a brother who’s obsessively envious of him and his life and has a nasty habit of watching Milo’s pornos whenever he’s entertaining females, as well as jerking off in Milo’s bathroom anytime he stops by for a visit.

So backed by his brother’s recommendation, as well as an unspecified offer of money that’s guaranteed to take care of his family's financial issues for the rest of their days, he takes the job.

Cut to Milo’s training montage complete with a special penis pov camera shot.

Now keep in mind, that during the initial set up of this offer, which makes up the first part of the movie, that the film is also building up the relationship between Milo and his family, which while unorthodox, is still extremely touching as the love between them is surprisingly realistic in it's portrayal.

In fact, it’s these touching scenes, that seem so out of place in the rest of the film’s setup that will deliver the most crucial blows later on. Say what you want about this movie, but the man responsible for it’s creation knows how to set a mood, and also just how to use something as innocent as a family’s love for each other to destroy the peace of mind of the audience later on.

Milo’s first day of work begins in an abandoned children’s orphanage, where he is given an earpiece and through it, instructed to perform some increasingly weird sexual acts in which he receives head from a woman while watching a little girl on a screen, and later is instructed to beat a woman during another oral encounter while a young girl dressed as Alice from Wonderland sits in a chair and watches. He’s obviously creeped out by this point, but is forced to hit the woman after she bites down on his family jewels to the point that she draws blood.

Afterwards, he decides that too many lines have been crossed for his comfort and plans to quit the project, but being a man of honor, he feels that he owes the director an explanation in person.

This is Milo’s greatest fault throughout the movie, the fact that he is basically a decent guy, putting his trust into others, and ending up screwed over for it in the end.

During his visit with director Non, he’s offered some brandy, and the director, in an attempt to change his mind, explains the nature of his film, which is to show the victimization of the Serbian people, which, is also what the actual director of this film claims his movie represents. He is shown a video which is the source of the majority of controversy this film has received.

Now I’m going to explain this scene in some detail, so bear with me here.....the movie is of a woman, in a dark and dank room, giving birth. A masked man stands nearby and anyone who hasn’t read spoilers will naturally assume that some post-baby sex is about to occur......which is the case, just the woman isn’t the object of penetration.

The birthing scene itself is the most explicit part of this portion of the film. Everything that follows is implied, but the implication of a newborn child being raped is horrific enough that most people are going to react with extreme levels of disgust and horror, the bottom line is that you do not see a baby being raped, you only have the suggestion of it happening. The worst part of the actual newborn rape scene are the shots of the “mother’s” face, which has a eerie smile plastered to it, while a screaming infant can be heard in the background.

Disgusted, Milo quickly leaves while a orgasmic Non (don't sue me DC) screams out “NEWBORN PORN” with the kind of insane frenzy usually reserved for high school pep rallies.

As he’s driving away, he stops at a light and a woman approaches his vehicle, overcome with a sudden, inexplicable urge of lust, he gropes the woman’s breasts and is driven away with her.

Cut to Milo in his home 3 days later, beaten, bloody, and with zero memory of what has happened to him. What is worse is that his family is missing.

What follows is Milo’s attempt to recover what has happened over the past few days, which he’s mostly able to piece together through various video tapes he finds while ransacking the deserted set.

Now, I have regurgitated enough spoilers into this review for now, and if you think my comments have ruined the film for you so far, then trust me, there is still a great deal to come as Milo desperately tries to locate his family and remember just what has happened to him at the hands of a artistic madman.

I will reveal one last tidbit in regard to Milo’s discoveries, as I feel that this is something people should be aware of before watching this film, as every other review just seems to focus on the implied newborn rape, which I do not consider to be the most distressing part of the movie as a whole.

There is a scene towards the end of the film where a young child is raped and frankly, it was this scene, out of all of the rest of the film, that I found truly sickening to the point that I have not been able to watch this movie since my initial viewing of it. The scene was so graphic, that you can literally see blood forming on the child’s thighs as he is being raped, and while you only see the lower part of his body, and I can only hope that a stand-in doll, or really small adult, was being used, it is still unsettling enough that all of the previous scenes, including the suggestion of infant rape, could not even compare. Even closing your eyes during this scene is not enough to block out what is happening, as the sound effects are exceptionally, but disturbingly superb.

This is the type of movie that will make you question whether or not you should register on some type of list after watching it. You will spend the rest of the night listening for sirens as you prepare for the authorities to break down your door in order to drag you off for your chemical castration.

The bottom line is that this film is about the destruction of innocence, the creation of victims and the need to feed into the desires of a society that craves ever-increasing levels of depravity and perversity in their entertainment. And it's also supposedly about the rape and victimization of the Serbian people, but I am not knowledgeable enough about Serbian history to comment on that particular comparison, so I'll just have to take the director's word for it.

Now, I have watched many a horror film in my days. I have seen countless pseudo-snuff films from NIN’s Broken to the Guinea Pig movies. I have a twisted and morbid love for rape-revenge movies and can watch extended scenes of fictional violence, rape and torture without flinching, and yet viewing this film hurt me on some level.

Afterwards I felt numb, shell-shocked, as if I had seen something so horrific that my mind could not cope with the proper emotional response.

Was this a good movie? Yes. It was an excellent movie. Everything about it was beautifully portrayed, and expertly exacted, and that is where the damage lies. It was too real, too brutal, and involved too many instances where lines where crossed. And not in the usual over-the-top, absurd manner that so many of these shock-jock, torture porn flicks attempt for either, it was masterfully done so that not a single scene of this movie could be looked at from a humorous angle.

There was no possible escape into hilarity, because each situation was so precise in it’s cruelty, that it didn’t overreach into the boundaries of B-horror movie humor.

So that is my take on this film. It was one of the best, and worst movies I have ever seen in regard to this genre. I do not believe that it will ever be topped, regardless of how many people Tom Sixx sews together in his Scaterpillar flicks, or how many stupid college kids Eli Roth kills off in his Hostel movies. Even the August Underground films are unable to hold a candle to this, mostly due to the fact that those movies come off like a bad student film, but also, because they lack the atmosphere and buildup that this film achieved.

Every touching scene in the movie quickly becomes bittersweet as we are taken captive by a sadistic madman, forced down a road of depravity just as surely as Milo is, caught in the web of our own making for gorier, more disturbing films to shock our increasingly desensitized minds.

This movie is what we asked for…..and we will regret it in the end because the worst part about this film is that it turns the mirror right back at us and forces us to face our own sick natures.