A few reviews

I seem to recall that Owl Head Guy was a thing on YouTube as well, or at the very least something that looked similar. They would place hidden cameras in certain rooms of derelict houses where people were entering, then have Owl Head Guy come striding out of the shadows to scare them.
 
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Re: Jenifer

Zaharoff said:
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Seasoned types, this was a yawn.
Click to expand...


commenting as i seldom disagree with Z , so... novelty, from my perspective I enjoyed it 7.9786, guess I am not yet seasoned




was she disfigured? I preferred to see her as a variant on the human condition dictated genetically, exploring her alternate potentials in action and appearance and philosophy, beautiful in her own way.
 
Urban Explorer

Urban Explorer - 2011 - 4/10

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A mixed quartet of global tourists opt for the €300 (each!) illegal tour of the Berlin sewers.
Destination, a recently discovered, now sealed Nazi room.
Obviously, those 20ish gimbots have never watched a dead teenager flick in their lives.
What else would explain, "Oh, sewer walk, fun!" ?
Avoids clichés initially, then succumbs to predictability and formula.
Docked several points for lazy writing (eg: helpless, whiny female characters), and one stupid decision after another made by players so they could be easy targets.
Caveat emptor.
 
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The Borderlands

The Borderlands - 2013 - 5/10

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Horror yarn using the found footage template.
Pair of church techs arrive at tiny parish to substantiate claims of paranormal activity.
They set up recording gear, motion capture triggers, etc ... Investigating priest soon arrives.
Most claims are scams, trying to lure media, spike attendance in the pews.
First half sluggish, with unsympathetic characters (one being a prime twat).
Accelerates hard at the end.
All handheld. Expect out of focus, jerky pans, dimly lit.
As a “documentary,” I never bought that angle for a minute.
 
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The Woman In Black

The Woman In Black - 2012 - 5/10

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Hammer film starring Daniel Radcliffe, based on the West End shocker that has been playing since ... when ... the Gladstone administration?
Twisted tale set in haunted house where our young clerk must shift several lots of papers.
He gets distracted constantly. Noises overhead, creaking down the hall, movement outside. So he stops working to start chasing. I hate working with people like that.
Every five minutes, the film had a gotcha surprise punctuated with REALLY LOUD music.
Film-makers have opened up the play considerably with brooding exteriors and wonderfully appointed interiors.
Fellow members of the room audience thought the sets too perfect.
Good for some jolts, but an overall disappointment for me.
 
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The Woman In Black 2: Angel Of Death

The Woman In Black 2: Angel Of Death - 2014 - 4/10

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The cursed house out on the moors returns.
Timeline has moved to 1941. London children are being relocated to escape the height of the Blitz.
Two women are in charge of about eight kids, one of whom was orphaned in a bomb raid the night before.
The younger woman senses something is the house is not quite right, and investigates noises in the middle of the night. The nearby village offers hints, but that gets ignored in the story.
Children squabble, children perish.
Sadly, that pretty much describes the entire plot.
Scares are all gotcha stings, as you couldn’t care less about a single character.
Cheap, pathetic Horror film, that follows the laziest, sleaziest route - placing children in danger.
Writers, producers, director - all ought to be shunned for two years for that.
Clever photography masks shoddy sets and budget production values.
Ostensibly a Hammer film, it is dark and murky throughout. None of the legendary Hammer colour here.
 
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Heartless

Heartless - 2009 - 5/10

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Gloomy horror.
Photographer with disfiguring heart-shaped birthmark on his face roams London’s midnight streets.
Sees murderers under hoodies in action.
Hold on. Are those lizards under the hoodies?
Next, he is summoned by a demon. A proposal is extended, in exchange for services.
This really ought to be fun times, but the protagonist is a downer.
Even when he scores, he screws up.
Needs more lizards, less thinking.
 
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Grabbers

Grabbers - 2012 - 5/10

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Irish horror comedy set on remote island facing big storm.
Just in time for an alien invasion!
Giant octopods attack boats, devour pilot whales, then clamber ashore.
Next dinner course, tasty humans, though it spits out those crunchy heads.
Apparently the big squids suffer alcohol allergies, which village inhabitants discover.
Expect serious drinking.
Not as gory as it could have been, and certainly not as funny as it should have been.
Wasted opportunity. That said, should you drink as heavily as the characters, your enjoyment may improve.
 
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The Serpent & The Rainbow

The Serpent & The Rainbow - 1988 - 5/10

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Bill Pullman, field worker / anthropologist for Big Pharma, digs around in voodoo Haiti for cures.
Instructions are to find the “zombie drug” which supposedly will suspend life for a month.
Yeah, boss, wait till Marketing tries to overcome - “I ain’t gonna be no zombie” - consumer resistance.
Of course, he never gets that far. Instead he gets embroiled with the Bébé Doc Duvalier police state and growing insurrection.
Some curious dream sequences fueled by voodoo herbal cocktails, but the film mostly staggers around.
Directed by Wes Craven, this looks ten years out of date, circa 1975.
Pullman’s hair stays fluffy the whole movie.
 
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Haunting In Connecticut 2: Ghosts Of Georgia

Haunting In Connecticut 2: Ghosts Of Georgia - 2012 - 5/10

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Family (Ma, Pa and female young un) move to banged up ranch house out in the swamp.
There is an empty trailer nearby, so when wife's sister (Katee Sackoff) rolls up she has a place.
From the get-go, there are ghosts, weird animal traps, visions, coupled with the slow revelation. The females all share the "gift" for seeing beyond this world.
The plot really doesn't amount to much, though the effects team went hog wild with noises, shaky camera, juttering images, to make you think something was happening.
OK time waster if nothing else is on.
I yanked out the atlas. Connecticut is 1000 miles from Georgia, the film’s title is meaningless.
 
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Lake Of Dracula

Lake Of Dracula - 1971 - 5/10
AKA - Noroi no yakata: Chi o suu me // 呪いの館 血を吸う眼

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The Carpathian count bought lakefront property?
No no. Muddled Japanese homage to Hammer films.
Apparently, several generations earlier, the count did a bit spawning with a Japanese female. (Forget the notion of vampires being sterile). A hundred years later, the bloodlust DNA emerged.
Slow going, predictable, clichéd. I kept studying 70s clothes, hairstyles, and interiors.
Characters were downright clueless.
Truck arrived and unloaded the coffin into the house. Two sisters observed uncomfortably, then went shopping!
Another incident, an unconscious girl was rushed to Emergency. Almost drained of blood!
Doctors and nurses noticed two punctures on her neck, then decided, “We will ask her about those when she wakes up.”
 
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John Dies At The End

John Dies At The End - 2012 - 5/10

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Oh, if only.
My expectations were too high after reading so much acclaim for this one.
After taking a new drug, "soy sauce," two stoners stumble into the parallel world.
Clever film, but too wordy by far. Exposition delivers much of the plot.
Don’t tell, show.
Some genuinely funny moments, offset by strangeness.
All the leads are fine, effects adequate.
By the end, however, I was hearing Peggy Lee singing, "Is That All There Is?"
 
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Død Snø

Død Snø - 2009 - 6/10
AKA - Dead Snow

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Dead teenager flick, though prospective meals are a tad older.
Two carloads of medical students follow a remote mountain road, exit, then hike to a cabin in oblivion.
Inside, they discover stolen Nazi gold.
Resurrected Nazi zombies follow soon enough.
Gorehounds, take heart.
Though outnumbered, the medical types, accustomed to bloody organs, can dish it out.
 
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Død Snø 2: Red Vs Dead

Død Snø 2 - 2014 - 6/10
AKA - Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead

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Once again, the cursed Nazi zombies sweep through remote Norwegian countryside.
Killing, then converting hapless villagers to increase their numbers.
From the States, the Zombie Squad arrives (three geeks - one with an intense Star Wars obsession).
Gory mayhem, putrid bubblings, steeped with a wicked sense of humor.
Film packed with laugh out loud grossness, and a climactic battle between Nazi zombies and Soviet zombies from the legendary battle of Kursk.
(Not necessarily the best film to watch while eating spaghetti.)
 
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Parasite (2019)
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This movie might have beaten my favorite's Bong Joon Ho film "Memories of Murders". A poor and slippery family worms their way into being servants for a rich house. It explores the classic rich and poor divide with horror and humor, and for those who have lived similar circumstances the pain surprisingly twist deeper with each laugh. Characters mesh well and cast well and there's none that stands out at the expense of others. This is a great 2019 surprise so 8/10 for me.
 
Open Grave

Open Grave - 2013 - 6/10

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Excellent thriller, with one of those “must-not-disclose” plots.
I will just jot the opening five minutes.
Man wakes up deep down in a pit.
Climbs out, goes to a house filled with five others.
No one knows why they are there. Or who they are. Or what they are supposed to do.
From there, film sets off into several rabbit holes.
Viewer only gets clues as the characters discover them.
Definitely worth a look.
 
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Ring Of Curse

Ring Of Curse - 2011 - 6/10
AKA - Gomennasai // ごめんなさい

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Another riff on the “grudge” theme, popular in J-films.
Setting is high school, and the usual tropes apply.
Popular girls bully the misfit. Boys are props, standing around silently. Adults = where?
Girls decide to produce the school play and coerce the brainy weirdo to write the script.
Unluckily for them, she knows select words to write, in precise order, to launch a death curse.
Not a bad film. Better haunted schoolgirl movies are out there, but this is enjoyable enough and I watched this to the end bits past the credits.

Note: The lone available English subs had timing errors and malformed spelling.
I corrected those, and uploaded - Ring-of-curse-Gomennasai.
 
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