The Hazing Review

Whorticulture Reviews The Hazing

Tonight I watched The Hazing, starring Brad Dourif (the voice of Chucky from Child's Play) and my homegirl BFF (read: I met her once and she signed a DVD of the Night of the Demons remake) Tiffany Shepis.  Tiffany Shepis is pretty much the best modern day scream queen, so big shout out to her.  When your dear old Uncle Eddie was just a little girl, she dreamed of growing up and doing terrible, bloody, tits-out horror movies like this. 

Anyway, this movie is about a group of sorority & fraternity pledges stuck overnight in a house with the evil spirit of their professor who possesses them and murders them one by one. 

Okay let's be honest.  It's pretty fucking bad.  The acting is pretty lousy for the most part.  Brad Dourif isn't great in it.  Tiffany Shepis is probably the best.  It's fairly reminiscent of The Telling which was a huge steaming pile.  And it's all kinds a bastardization of the original Night of the Demons.  There are so many similarities I can't even.

HOWEVER!

It's actually a pretty fun romp.  It's bloody, it's got a delightful amount of boobs.  The story line sucks pretty hard but it's entertaining.  So congratulations, it's so bad it's good!

There are some stand-out moments - like watching a possessed tongue perform oral sex on Nectar Rose.  Come on, that's pretty quality.  That's some Re-Animator shit right there.

You might look this up on IMDB and see that Brooke Burke is credited second but don't get your hopes up.  Bitch dies in the first three minutes.  OF COURSE SHE DOES.

Go ahead and watch this if you're bored.  It's pretty fucking dumb, and you might hate me for it, but I liked it. 

6/10

Insidious

Whorticulture Reviews Insidious

I'm still catching up from spending the past two billion years pregnant, so pardon me while I watch movies tons of you have already seen.  I finally got to see Insidious yesterday, which stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne.  If you've followed this blog you know I have a pretty strict NO BIG NAMES attitude when it comes to horror.  Obviously every rule has an exception and Insidious is about as close to that as you're going to get.

Insidious is about a little boy (NOT the little boy in the poster - that's his brother, who really has very little to do with the movie) who excels at astral projection, gets lost in "the further," and is subsequently attacked by demons and other beings trying to enter his spiritless body.

I heard pretty mixed reviews ("Inshittious" to quote my buddy Alex) so I was ready for this to suck pretty fast and hard. 

It didn't.

Imagine that Poltergeist and The Shining had a baby.  That baby is Insidious.  I remember seeing the demon in the commercials - you know, the one who's painted up like Darth Maul - and I thought "that's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen."  It's used pretty well in the movie, however.  And there is some WEIRD shit that goes on.  It was pretty obvious but it wasn't entirely bothersome.  I dunno, I dug it.  There's no gore, no boobies, but I was entertained.  Lin Shaye was in it as well, and we should just consider her a veteran horror actress at this point.

I do have one complaint.  Rose Byrne, I'm sorry but you'll forever be Jackie Q to me, and girl you just did NOT sell this role.  I'm a mom ("the fuck!?" said so many of you) and I just wasn't buying the level of fear that should have been there.

Anyway, this review sucks, but the movie was pretty good.  8/10 on pure entertainment value.  If you've seen it I want to know what you thought.  Will you see the sequel?  What do you hope happens in the sequel?

V/H/S

Whorticulture reviews V/H/S

V/H/S is an anthology of found footage videos, each depicting some kind of horrible death, strung together by a story about petty crooks robbing an old dead guy.

So basically, these thieves are paid by an unknown source to steal a rare tape, but they have to watch all of the tapes to know which one is the right one.  They choose to do this in a room where they've found a dead guy in a chair because hey, wouldn't you? 

The first one we get is Amateur Night, and it's pretty good. 
We meet three huge douchebags who have spy glasses and a plan.  What could go wrong in picking up some drunk chicks from a bar, having sex with them (while wearing the spy glasses), then selling the tape to an amateur porn company?  Let's shake it up by picking up the creepiest girl there - and her hot slutty friend, which is a bonus.  It's got the trio - boobs, blood, and beasts.  This one is probably my favorite.

Next we watch Second Honeymoon. 
Pretty self explanatory; a couple on second honeymoon in the wild, wild west.  I can't really go much farther without ruining the whole thing.  This one gets a C+.  The gore was decent, but the story wasn't really that great and had a lot of filler.  The ending was stupid and kind of killed the whole thing.  It was about as scary as an episode of Snapped.

Tuesday the 17th 
Okay honestly, if I would have known that was the title before I watched it, it would have ruined the whole thing.  As you might imagine from the truly asinine title, a group of teenagers go camping at a lake and get murdered.  Title aside though, it was pretty good.  The acting was sub-par but the gore was delightful.  You guys know I'm down for the cheese so this one was definitely pleasing.  One thing though: the girl who runs back to the killer once he's fallen to ask him questions?  YOU DESERVED TO DIE.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger
I can't even with this one.  Fucking what?  Aliens?  I don't care.  A moderate level of gore - enough to make you uncomfortable.  I thought it was a ghost story.  That would have been better.  Oh, boobs though.  Pretty sad boobs couldn't make this one better.  Sorry, Joe Swanberg, this one is bad and you should feel bad.

10/31/98
A group of guys going to a Halloween party find some sick shit going on in an empty house.  No gore and no boobs, but a story that was interesting as hell.  Also really fantastic effects that made it suspenseful and fun.  This is the only one that could have been made into a successful full length motion picture.  Second favorite of the bunch.

After each of these, we go back to the frame narrative of the criminals invading the house, although I found their story (credited as Tape 56) boring.  And that's how V/H/S leaves us.

I don't know if I can recommend this to you guys or not.  It's so uneven.  I guess I will because the ones that are good are really pretty good and you should see them, but the ones that are bad make you sad you wasted your time.  I don't even really know how to rate this.  Giving it a low rating isn't fair to the ones that were so good.  Second Honeymoon was so middle ground and I'm pretty much going to have to ask for my 15 minutes back on that alien bullshit.  So let's see...

6.9/10

I'm sorry, I can't give it a 7.  But take the time to watch it and tell me what you think.

Atrocious

Whorticulture Reviews Atrocious

With a name like Atrocious, how did you think it was going to be?

Sigh.  The things I do for you people.

You see how that poster says "2011's ANSWER TO CULT HIT PARANORMAL ACTIVITY"...?  Well it should have said "Look, we remade the Blair Witch Project."

I mean, it's really everything you hate about Blair Witch.  The movie is only 73 minutes long, with the majority of that being two teenagers (I think?) lost in the woods behind their house.  It's supposed to be footage confiscated by the police after the entire family is murdered (that's not a spoiler, fyi, it says that in the goddamn info for the movie) but so much of it is just black screen, zero sound.

A quick plot outline:
A family of 5 goes to their vacation house.  They find a large wooded labyrinth behind the house. 

They hear an urban legend of a little girl lost in those woods years and years ago: her name was Melinda.  She wears a red dress and is supposed to show you the way if you get lost at night.  THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE. You think it's going to, but it doesn't.  It's just stupid, pointless filler.

The family, despite orders never to go in there, get lost in the labyrinth at night.

I won't spoil the ending for you.  I feel like I should, because I'd hate for you to sit through 70 minutes of movie for a 3 minute surprise at the end.  I should add, though, that just because I didn't see it going there doesn't mean it's good. 

However, there is something I need to discuss.  So we're watching the video, right?  Supposedly found footage after the bodies are found, right?  NOT AS IT'S HAPPENING, RIGHT?  But there's this scene where their dog goes missing, and they eventually find a trail of blood in the labyrinth which leads to the dog's body.  Then they go home, where they discover they HAVE. NO. FOOTAGE. OF. THE. DOG.  It makes no fucking sense!  We just saw footage of the dog!

Honestly I don't think anybody knows what the fuck we just witnessed.  I do know that they cut out 7 minutes when it came to America, maybe those 7 minutes hold the key?  It doesn't matter, it's not worth it.  The commercials for it were better than the actual movie. 

I think the next movie I'm going to review will be Assault of the Party Nerds.  It's not a horror movie, but it's got Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer in it and they are my scream queen dreams.  It's on Netflix so check it out.  You'll like it better than Atrocious.

Quarantine 2

Whorticulture Reviews Quarantine 2

Hello Freaks.  This weekend I sat through Quarantine 2, based on a request I received in my last post.  I'm late to the party AS USUAL, so I think a lot of you have seen this already.  In any case, here's what I thought.

You probably know that the original Quarantine was basically a mirror image of the Spanish film REC, and you might know that I ranked REC 2 as one of the best horror movies I've ever seen.  Sadly, whoever came up with Quarantine 2 decided to say a big FUCK YOU to the glory that is the REC series and go a totally different way with this sequel.

First off, I want to point out that this movie is NOT a found footage film.  I know I've been bagging on ff a lot lately, but when it's done well I can't hate.  But why follow an ff movie with this?  It's just a movie about a bunch of people on a plane out of Los Angeles, taking place concurrently with the original Quarantine.

In the original Quarantine it's assumed that all of this mess starts because of some super-rabies virus, and that's confirmed here.  Apparently the residents of the apartment building were unwilling test subjects for this super-virus and it got out of hand LIKE IT ALWAYS DOES.  And there you go.  That, my friends, is horrendously inferior to the plot of REC2.

If you see this, keep all thoughts of REC2 out of your mind.  I think that's what ruined this for me, because it was just so goddamn inferior I couldn't enjoy it.  On it's own I think it's decent.  Maybe a 7 out of 10 (but more like a 6 on a good day).  The acting is mediocre at times - I found the chemistry between the two flight attendants awkward and unbelievable - but the suspense is pretty tight through the whole thing.  Maybe that's just because I'm a big wuss when it comes to flying.  A super turbulent emergency landing?  Yeah I can't with that mess.  It's fairly claustrophobic, so it's got that going for it.  I thought I would care more when the characters died but I mostly just meh'd through the whole thing.  Oh, and it went heavier on the gore this round, and while I'm usually a big fan of that, it didn't seem like a good fit.

So at the end you find out that they've made it to McCarran, Las Vegas's airport.  It's totally set up for a third and PLEASE YOU GUYS DON'T DO IT.  I could not give less of a fuck about these "zombies" invading Vegas, so let's just not and say we did, ok?

In short: I expected to hate it more than I did, it was pretty mediocre, and everyone should just go watch REC2 instead.

6/10 - Tell me what you think!

It's Good to be Back

Hola, Bitches!

My New Year's Resolution was to get off my lazy ass and review more movies on this website, so here I am!  I know, you assholes missed me so much.  I won't bore you with my life, instead I'll bore you with this piece of shit movie I just sat through.

Apartment 143

I had some free time today, so I thought I'd watch one of the movies on my Netflix instant queue.  On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this movie a 1.  I'm being so generous, too.  It was straight up ASS.

Please don't waste your time on this mess.  Let me tell you...

"Hired by a family to investigate supernatural activity in their apartment, a paranormal research group find themselves haunted by a malevolent force." - Netflix info

The tagline of this movie is "The First Real Ghost Story."  I don't know who they think they're fooling.  I can tell right off the bat that it's not a real ghost story, since it stars (a much older and fatter version of) fucking FRED FROM ROSEANNE.  

In any case, it's like any of the other found footage films that have been shoved down our throats in recent years, except this one tried REALLY, REALLY HARD.  It wanted to be Paranormal Activity so bad, but it ended up making Paranormal Activity look like  Citizen fucking Kane.  It employed every cheesy trick in the book to look low budget and believable, and it failed constantly.  Shaky camera?  Check.  Filtered footage?  Check.  The effects they used to make the film look grainy were obvious, making the whole thing just scream FAKE for 80 minutes.  The acting was some of the most atrocious acting I've seen since I saw a bunch of grade school kids perform Shakespeare. 

I cannot stress to you how bad this was.  I had to fight the urge to turn it off 10 minutes in, and it never managed to suck me in.  The only thing that kept me going was the thought of trashing it on the internet and hopefully stopping any of you from watching it.  It wasn't even so bad it's good, it...ugh, I can't even with this mess.

I read so many reviews for this movie that were positive.  You know why?  Because those reviews aren't left by horror fans, they're left by huge vageens.  I remember in 8th grade, overhearing girls in my class talk about being terrified after seeing Interview with the Vampire.  THESE ARE THE KINDS OF PEOPLE REVIEWING THESE MOVIES.

I seem a little bitter, don't I?  You watch this train wreck and tell me you're not bitter, too.  I feel like I just got kicked in the throat.

See you freaks next time!

Perfect Gift for Horror Fans

Hey Uncle Eddie, I have a friend who's a big horror nerd like you.  What can I get them for their birthday/Christmas/Labor Day/Leap Year?"

Funny you should ask, everyone who has ever asked me before.  Why don't you get them one of these sweet horror jigsaw puzzles?

A lot of jigsaw puzzles are lame, yes.  But these are the most un-lame jigsaw puzzles ever created.  And as you guys know I live for Freddy Krueger.  You assholes make fun of me all the time for the many impure Freddy thoughts I have.  Look at how bad ass this puzzle is:

The guy who makes these said he'll be working on new designs too, and I'll be you ANYTHING there will be a Trick r Treat one.

And as a not-so-subtle hint to my husband and friends, this is the perfect gift for children...especially MY children.  Ahem.  You should probably get on that.