Halloween is traditionally for me the time of one of the best film festivals in Finland, Night Visions. A selection of horror, splatter, sleaze, camp and other weird movies played through the night, nonstop. This year's selection was not nearly as brilliant as in the past years, but still there was a few nice movies worth watching.
The Midnight Meat Train (2008)
I'm a big fan of Clive Barker's stories and The Midnight Meat Train was always one of my favourites. So I had mixed feelings going to see this. Part of me thought that the story is so good that you can't go wrong and part of me was scared as it's Ryuhei Kitamura's direction, who hasn't done anything more than close to average efforts before. Well both my hopes and my fears came to reality. It's a good story made badly. It's giving us a whole lot of cgi splatter and cheap scares, dealing with the true heart of the idea only superficially. The image it portrays of New York by night was a big disapointment too, nothing like the nihilistic view I was expecting. Vinnie Jones was surprisingly good as Mahogany and Bradley Cooper didn't do a half bad job either. All in all a good story done the wrong way, was worth watching but left me wanting something much better.
59%
Mirrors (2008)
Was looking forward for this one quite a bit as Alexandre Aja has shown us before that he sure knows how to build up tension. Well it started off great and looked really promising untill Kiefer "Jack Bauer" Sutherland showed up. That man has one face and it looks concerned and yes he's running around with a gun and screaming to a cell phone in this one too. And as if that wouldn't have been enough there's Paula Patton in it too to delight us with her lack of acting skills. So the cast was horrible. Unfortunately the story wasn't that much better. It had plot holes bigger than the sun and it took the obvious turn quite often. But the movie wasn't all bad, when you managed to force yourself from laughing to "Jack Bauer" and the stupid plot, there were quite few chills in it. At parts it looked like it's going to be a great horror movie with the tension building up to good heights. Thou it fell to the cheap surprise scares a bit too often. Give this guy a good story and a great cast and he will surely scare the crap out of you. Too bad this one didn't do that.
40%
Eden Lake (2008)
I read a review of this movie saying it's one of the most brutal horror movies in the past decades and that you don't just watch it, you survive it. Needless to say it got my hopes up. Well 30 or 40 minutes into the movie I was thinking what the hell was that critic babbling about as only thing I was scared of at that point was how long is this crap going to last. Luckily the tone changed and the movie started to go into the right direction. And yes I have to say it ended up to be quite disturbingly brutal and thought provoking movie in the end. Some scenes were horribly disturbing and the terror that comes from a total loss of hope was portrayed quite efficiently. But in addition to the boring start there were a few other things that bothered me. First of all the constant use of the "hunted" running into the "hunters" got really old quite fast. I mean come on, it's a huge forest and only a few people looking for you, how many times can you really run into to them? Also some of the scenes building up to the horror in the end were quite bad, they took a way too easy and predictable aproach on things which brought down the mood. With a better start and a bit more effort on the story this would have been one hell of a movie, but now it's worth one watch.
67%
Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
Well the funny title of this one ended up to be quite a correct interpretation of this movie. It's set in Tokyo in the near future, it's a story about a woman who is in a trigger happy privaticed police force and the movie has tons of gore. And I really mean it has tons of gore, hundreds of liters of blood and truckloads of bodyparts are slapt in the face of the poor viewer. At parts it gets quite boring, but luckily the movie doesn't take itself too seriously and is quite entertaining. I loved especially the outrageously funny comercials that portray the moods of the time. The plot is quite simple and all in all quite stupid too, but it fits the movie perfectly. There's certainly no lack of imagination from the creators when it comes to the mutants or engineers the police are hunting. Some of them are simply brilliantly wacky. But it's not really a brilliant movie, it's way too uneven. At parts it's up to par with the best comic splatterfests out there, but at parts it's quite dull when they focus too much on the blood and body parts flying and forget the humour. Was definitely worth watching thou and didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.
70%
Crime Insiders (2007)
At first I was planning to sleep during this one if it really turned out to be as bad as the reviews say it is. Well no hope for that, the movie takes you by the balls right from the start and doesn't let go untill the end credits roll. It's a gruesomely realistic view into organized crime today, told in a high gear speeding way. The movie basically smashes into you and leaves you wondering what just hit you. After seeing it I really had to check if it was the same movie all those reviews were about. For example it got criticized for the lack of characters. Well what the hell were they expecting, it's a story about modern mobsters, they are all trying to be tougher than the other and the common thing in everyone's mind is money. It's not some Hollywood glorified hero/bad guys who are in the business to preserve the old traditions and honour the family or some other shit like that. Fuck the traditions and give me the money, that's the view of this movie. Yes the characters are simple, all the men are mobsters and all the women are whores, but that just fits the story. And the story was another thing that got criticized, or the lack of it. Well I think it had a great story beneath all the killing, drinking and fucking. It portrays the mobsters narrow minded view of things brilliantly. You have only one thing in mind, money, and what ever comes in the way of that must be taken out. And they keep running in circles killing each other, fortifying the age old wisdom that crime doesn't pay. Doing it much better than most of the mafia movies ever made.
82%
Battletruck - Warlords of the 21st Century (1982)
A post apocalyptic movie of a fortified truck that brings chaos and mayhem to the survivors in the small villages around the wasteland that once was Earth. Of course there's the hero riding a motorcycle to fight the truck and save the day. At parts this really was so bad that it was hilarious, especially watching it at 5 a.m. in a state between sleep and awake. But in the end it had too many boring camera runs following the motorcycle running through the desert that it got quite boring. I fell asleep for a few minutes during it, but as it turned out I didn't miss anything.
20%
Donkey Punch (2008)
The old story of a prank that goes wrong escalating little by little into a major fubar. It's a story about a group of youngsters going to the sea on a yacht, doing drugs, having sex and ending up killing each other. This time the "prank" that starts it all is a freak legend about a sex manouver that doesn't really work as it should and thus resulting in a girl's death. The movie starts off surprisingly good and the characters are built up really fast. The cast was quite good and most of all quite believable. The story in all of it's basic idea still had a few nice points to it to keep it fresh. Thou some of the twists are a bit far fetched but all in all it works quite good. Definitely not a masterpiece but still a nice breath of fresh air to the genre.
77%
Robotrix (1991)
A classic Category III flick. Lots of boobs, sex, blood, androids, goofy effects, some comedy, much more unintentional comedy and of course kung-fu action. Was the second time I saw this, but sadly it's a one watch joke, didn't really work as good for the second time. Thou I didn't remember how hilarious some of the scenes were. The sound effects were funny as hell, especially on some of the sex scenes. Like someone was slapping a brick wall with a roast beef, classic. Definitely worth watching once, but looses most of it's magic if you watch it again.
59%
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