society for a scarier planet

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PARANORMAL ACTIVITY(2007)
This movie starts with a man purchasing a camera to record the paranormal phenomena that he and his girlfriend have been experiencing at night. As the film progresses, the ghostly happenings become more intense until they eventually turn very aggressive and physical , all the while the camera documents the ever intensifying terror the young couple experience. Alot of people passed this off as just another BLAIR WITCH knock off and while yes there are similarities there are no more here than in any other film of the genre, most films after all are inspired by another movie , even the the best films out there give a tip of the hat to something else. What it does have in common with BLAIR WITCH besides the handheld camera thing is the subtle use of noises and other small things happening in a low key way and then slightly getting more intense as the movie moves along until BAM ! at the end a big shock and the movie is over. Ive said before that I'm a sucker for these cinema verite / handheld camera movies so i really enjoyed this. It just goes to show you don't need a billion dollars and butt loads of special effects to make an entertaining movie , a good story will do more for a film than anything else.


PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2(2010)
With part 2 we get , time line wise, a prequel but in reality its more of a tie in with the first film that kinda of meshes the 2 movies together to make one story that intertwines and overlaps both films , in fact if someone would edit the two movies together it would make one hell of a film. . It does a good job explaining whats going on within the movies and why the haunting is happening to this particular family .This movie concerns a family, the mother who is the sister of the girl in the first PA , who start to experience strange ,seemingly ghostly happenings in their home. Like the first movie it starts out slowly and gradually builds to a horrifying climax, all the while the events are being captured on security cameras placed in the house. Over all this is a little slower than the first film and there is not as many intense moments , however to me,the one thing that made this a little more cringe worthy than the 1st, is the fact that the haunting is centered around the family's infant son , it really creates an effective sense of dread when you think something is going to happen to the baby.Over all this is a good franchise with both films complementing each other very well. I recommend that you watch both movies together to get the full effect of terror.


TRAILER PARK OF TERROR(2008)
This is one of the many zombie/comedies released in the last 10 years and like most of the others its a pretty lackluster affair , this whole zom/com or whatever catchy little thing they are calling the genre these days is beyond played out, as a matter of fact it was never very good to begin with .
Anyway the story here is about a busload of troubled teens and their Priest / chaperone who are returning from a camping field trip that was cut short because of bad thunderstorms , they have a wreck and are stranded in the middle of nowhere . They seek refuge in a trailer park that they happen upon, much to their horror it is full of hillbilly zombies who end up offing the field trippers in various gruesome ways , the best of which is a sex scene with a female zombie riding the priest and in mid coitus she rips his head from his body. This movie features a rockabilly guitar playing zombie , hooker zombies and a guest appearance by country singer Trace Adkins , his brief scene as the devil , along with the gore scenes , are the best things this movie have going for it. Apparently this is also based on a comic book of the same name.


TOWER OF BLOOD(2005)
This tries real hard to be a 1980's style slasher and i guess in a lot of ways it is , its cheap , cheesy and stupid , filled with really bad acting ,dumb dialog terrible music and cheap gore just like all of the direct to video FRIDAY THE 13TH and HALLOWEEN knock offs released in the 80's. In this disasterpiece a group teenagers that all look to be 30ish, go to an abandoned high rise to party ,while there they encounter an escaped mental patient with a machete , so I'm sure you can guess what happens next , yep that's right ,the teens partake in sex, drugs and alcohol and are slaughtered by the masked wearing maniac.
So if you've ever watched more than 2 or 3 slasher movies this has absolutely nothing new to add to the genre. Besides being completely unoriginal , this thing has an insanely short running time , i guess i shouldn't complain about that though since that means i wasn't being forced to endure anymore of this crud , but the running time is 80 min., the opening credits are 5 min . of elevator doors opening and closing , the credits and a really bad nu metal rap rock song, then through out the movie there are long scenes of people sweeping , running and doing other mundane stuff with more of those crappy nu metal songs , then the actual movie ends at the 70 min mark and the credits roll for 10 min. with more bad music, so in reality there is only about 55 min. of actual story. This is crud , don't bother with this mess.


MY SOUL TO TAKE(2010)
Wes Craven returns to the world of teen horror with not so successful results ,Ive never been a huge fan of his anyway so i wasn't expecting a whole lot going in to this. He has a very sizable following out there but even his fans were disappointed with this for the most part , this thing was also ripped to shreds by many a critic during its theatrical run , and i can see why both felt the way they did about this movie.
There are a million reasons to absolutely hate this , it misses the mark in so many ways but for some reason i just cant hate it , i tried ,but something wont let me. Its filled with some of the most obnoxious teens ever seen , if my kids ever were to act like this id give them away to crackheads, most of the characters are total pieces of trash assholes and it also has one of the most confusing , twisting, turning , no sense making plots ever in the history of film. My head still hurts from trying to figure out what the hell happened . Craven just tries too hard to be clever and it just doesn't work,
In the town of Riverton there is a serial killer on the loose , he is caught in the act of slaughtering his family and is shot by the police , on his way to the hospital the ambulance crashes and catches fire , they find the gurney he was being transported on but no Riverton Ripper is to be found , he is presumed dead , believed to be drowned in the river. Jump ahead 16 years and we find out 7 children were born the same night the Ripper dies ,and now every year on the anniversary of his death these kids hold a ceremony commemorating the end of his reign of terror by destroying a dummy of his likeness, but this time they are interrupted by police and never finish the ritual and legend says if they don't destroy the dummy the Ripper will return to kill the 7 kids.
Pretty soon the children start to die and we are supposed to wonder has the Ripper returned or is one of the teens possessed by his spirit , even when its over we don't really get a real explanation.
Besides being confusing this is very derivative of other Craven films . Parts of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, SCREAM and SHOCKER are all somewhat Incorporated into this. Cravens attempt a humor also falls flat , its all just very awkwardly done . Also another reason this was disliked so much was that it was released theatrically in 3d but there are no scenes that justify a 3d release ,so people were pissed they paid the extra $ for the tickets . Now all that being said and with the above statement about the horrible teen characters , the one plus here is the actor who plays Bug, the main focus of the movie and in the end our hero , this guy does a great job and is extremely likable and because of that one thing this is somehow watchable , i cant understand it , being there are so many negatives here but i still enjoyed it. That much like the plot twists has also left me confused. My brain hurts.

CROC(2007) A giant man eating crocodile is gobbling up people in a tourist area in Thailand and Michael Madsen is a hunter out to stop him , he is helped by a foreigner who owns a croc farm/animal refuge. A subplot has the croc farm owner being framed by a local land developer who wants the land his refuge is on to expand the resort he is building. The subplot is thankfully only around through half the film as the land developer and his cronies are eaten by the carnivorous reptile , we then are able to focus fully on the hunt for the beast. This is one of those nature runs wild films that often seem to play on weekends on the SYFY CHANNEL . It was originally released in Canada on an on demand movie channel and has the feel of an 80's straight to video movie. While this could definitely be improved upon it is still a decent movie with a few good gore effects. Not a bad way to spend 90 min. It is available in a 3 disc set with SEA BEAST and SHARK SWARM, 2 more SYFY CHANNEL films, that you can pick up fairly cheap.

SEA BEAST(2008) This one starts with a fishing vessel caught in a storm, which is obviously a model ship in a pool, one of the crew members goes overboard and the crew assumes he was swept off by a wave but us and the captain see that he was taken by some kind of monster, the beast then latches onto the ship and follows them back into port where it starts to reek havoc in the small fishing community when it begins dining on the locals. Not a horrible movie but it comes close, the story itself is not so awful but the special effects are down right atrocious , so bad in fact that they almost sink this thing to the bottom of the sea. I'm not a fan of CGI in the first place and this film is a perfect example of why , the monster looks like some bad cartoon rendering superimposed on top of the film stock , totally out of place. That on top of the fact that we never get an explanation of what the creature is or where it comes from and that this movie is supposed to be about a sea beast and this thing spends more time on land stalking its prey than in the water , makes this one extremely flawed film with tons of plot holes. The only positive are a few gore scenes . You can Watch if you like but my advise , don't go into the water.

YETI (2008) aka Curse of the snow demon

Yet another entry in the MAN EATER SERIES by the SYFY CHANNEL and GENIUS ENTERTAINMENT , this one directed by Paul Ziller who the same year gave us the far superior LOCH NESS TERROR. While on a plane to Japan to compete in the countries first college bowl game , a Virginia football team crashes in the Himalayas ( which by the way you wouldnt fly over if you were on the way to Japan from the US). Besides the fight for survival against the elements and the worries of if they will be rescued or not the survivors of the crash are soon under attack by a hungry Yeti who has a taste for human flesh. The college students are led by star quarterback Peyton Elway (damn , thats terrible) through a series of events after the crash such as being forced to contemplate the canniblism of their dead teamates and how that act would effect and alter the rest of their lives , what to do about the unrelinting attacks by the monster and eventually the rescue of one of the cheerleaders who was kidnapped by the beast. This has a couple of good grisly moments such as a survivor using a severed arm as a splint for his broken leg and people being torn apart and eaten by the Yeti and while the gore is executed fairly well the Yeti itself is not , sometimes its a man in bad make up and other times they use horrible CGI effects , mainly when the monster is running or jumping ,and like the INCREDIBLE HULK this thing is given super powers and is able to jump 50 feet in a single bound. Like most SYFY productions its watchable with decent acting but its nothing special. Also for some reason the DVD release contains the tv soundtrack in which the cursing is edited out , while no cursing is no big deal its obviously edited because you can read the lips of the actors and tell what they originaly said , it just seems sloppy.