We Are What We Are (2010) Horror Cannibals

We Are What We Are (2010) - "Somos lo que hay" Although I said I wanted to avoid cannibal movies for awhile, this small little film comes my way and gets me back in. What is good about this film is the scope. It is not really about cannibalism but more about dealing with a crisis and defining new roles when things go wrong in an organization. I know that doesn't tell you much so let me explain the plot a bit.
  The film is about a family of cannibals living in a Mexican city. They have set rolls with the elder father, wife, two sons and a daughter. All the children are teens or older the eldest son Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro) is a bit shy and questioning his sexuality, the younger son Julian (Alan Chavez) is stronger but hot headed, the manipulative but strong daughter Sabina (Paulina Gaitan) who will do what ever it takes to survive. Patricia (Carmen Beato) the mother, seems a hurt older wife who is displeased with her spouse as he is unreliable and his behavior repulsive to her.  The father (Humberto Yanez) an older man who does all the "hunting" for the family focuses primarily on prostitutes. By being a John to them it is easy to lure them to a place where he can subdue them and bring them back as food for the family. Although his wife does not like this aspect and frowns on eating "whores" when you see the old man in the beginning of the film it makes perfect sense why this is how he does it.
  In fact you only see the father in the opening scene as he stumbles through a mall before collapsing and dying of a heart attack. (Obviously too much red meat). This event leaves the family in a crisis, with the need to feed only a few days away the family has to figure out who will provide. There is trouble beyond just a family meeting though. None of the teen children have ever hunted and Patricia seems to be in a funk. Sitting quietly mourning in her own little world while the children discuss what to do next. If Mom was more approachable thing could probably be worked out but with the leadership vacuum there is politicking to do.
  The natural order of things would normally have been to have the oldest son take the reins. The timid Alfredo though is to scared to step up. Sabina seems like a hand of strength but her role as a girl in their society leave her only the opportunity to influence from behind the scenes. She maneuvers Alfredo trying to sure up his confidence about being the family's next provider. Julian, she says is to callous and hot headed and would get the family caught by making a mistake. Sabina is a good judge of character and is right on about both young men. The imperative to organize comes from the mentioned three days until they need to do the "ritual" and feed. It is never clear what the ritual is other than a sacrifice nor what will happen if it does not happen but it is implied with tone and urgency that something bad will happen. This setup left me wanting to know more but it is strategically held back.
  Alfredo and Julian work together on the problem and first decide grabbing one of the city's many street kids may be something they can pull off. Unfortunately for them the packs of kids stick together and they fail in a really embarrassing manner leaving their confidence shaken and raising the specter that they may fail at getting a subject. So plan B is to do what their father did and get a prostitute. They know their mother will not be happy about this but they can not see another option. When they successfully bring a girl home Sabina starts some of the preparations for the ritual. Unfortunately Mom comes out of her stupor and realizes that her sons have done the things she hated about her husband. She freaks out and kills the girl in what is not an acceptable way. (No Ritual , no meat?) Suddenly the family is back to square one and time is running out.
  The dynamics of the family makes this pretty compelling, the Mother does not see her children as anything more than that. At the same time she does not want to be back in the pattern her former husband created and she so disliked. So she scolds the boys and to make sure that they can never get near the prostitutes again to acquire a victim, she takes the dead prostitute back to the street corner making sure they all see her family and threatening them. Culture dictates that the oldest son inherits the leadership mantle but he has yet to find his way. Sabina who is supposedly powerless in this structure does what she can by wielding power behind the scenes. Still there is also a competitiveness with her Mother.
  A duel storyline comes out of this last incident, Patricia not seeing her sons as providers takes matters into her own hands. She seduces a taxi driver with sex and lures him back to the apartment. At the same time Alfredo is fighting through his sexuality question while trying to figure out the best way for his hunt to happen. He finds his way by seducing a young man and also bringing him back to the apartment. All the while the ineffective police force is closing in on the family. The family has made enough noise that they are finally getting noticed. The three groups come together around the same time in a climax that is worth the time invested in this film. The choices at that point are dictated by the circumstances and Alfredo I have to say steps up and makes a sacrifice I was not expecting. Good for him.
  Like I said in the beginning this is a small film and so if you are expecting explosions and special effects you will be sorely disappointed. This is more of a family drama where the family is a cannibal group. The payoff would have been better if we saw the effects of not feeding, or more about the ritual, maybe some back story on how this family came to be. Still it played out well and left us with an image at the end that I thought was very effective. I will definitely recommend this film.
Rating (6.1) 5.0 are recommended, some more recommended than others.

Chernobyl Diaries (2012) Horror Monsters

Chernobyl Diaries (2012) - SPOILERS ALL THOUGH THIS!!!!  There really is no way we can talk about this film's absolute inability to perform as a horror film without spoiling the movie. So I will take the low road here and completely spoil this film. If you do not want it to be spoiled for you PLEASE stop reading now.
 The Chernobyl Diaries is the story of  Americans in Russia where an exotic trip to the nuclear zone, the city of Prypiat around the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant goes horribly wrong. Chris (Jesse McCartney), Amanda (Devin Kelley), and Natalie (Olivia Dudley) track down Chris's brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) in Kiev as the travel the world. The setup is not quick in this film, we get several scenes of different places the group visits before they arrive at the brother's place in Russia. After a night of drinking Paul tells them that he has arranged a special tour in the radiation zone of the power plant which in real life melted down in April of 1986. So they are there 26 years later the radiation low enough to explore a world totally abandoned by humans. Some 350,000 people just up and left at the spur of the moment and left absolutely everything behind.
  Paul hires Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) a former soviet special forces soldier turned extreme tour guide to bring them to an abandoned city near Chernobyl. Joined by another unrelated couple  Zoe (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) and Michael (Nathan Phillips) the group climbs into Uri's van and after some initial difficulty with security forces sneak into the city. They walk around and check out buildings with Amanda taking photos and Uri explaining the disaster.  All of this set up takes about 35 minutes so the audience I was part of was starting to get board when the group finally heard a noise down the hall of one of the apartments there is this great set up piece where the group sees a pond and stops to check it out. There is this mutated fish with really big teeth dead on the bank. So we know we are going to be dealing with some mutant things later on. When Uri is making splashes in the water we see the live mutant fish swarming. It actually is a very good foreshadow if later someone falls in the water. In the buildings the sudden non supernatural scare is funny and surprising but boy what a long build up for a film that is only 90 minutes long. After this point the problems really start for the group and the viewer alike. When they decide to leave the van won't start, but it is not just that it won't start it has been sabotaged. It looks like someone has fucked with the distributor but this group does not seem interested in this point. Instead they quickly are turning on each other about how they got into the situation. Certainly it should have been the entire conversation, who did it?, Why they did it? but nary a word is spoken just Chris blaming his brother and Paul blaming Uri. What the fuck are these people even awake? Someone came into your van and trashed your ride and you are more into blaming each other than realizing you are in danger?

 Staying in the van for the night seems like a good idea, with a 13 mile hike out the next day it seems wise. Problem is that this film is waiting for nightfall and the chance to scare us. It does not take long for noises off in the dark to pull the curious Uri from the safety of the van. It makes sense that if someone is comfortable exploring in the dark it is the former soldier. Chris goes along for good measure and then something happens. We hear the yelling but don't get to see the attack that happens off camera. What kind of a horror movie has something happen off camera? One that does not want to spend any money at all. So Paul and everyone hears the shouts and Paul heads out and drags his brother back with a pretty severely wounded leg. Wild dogs are in close pursuit but that is not the extent of the attack. Being in the van they are safe but we learn Uri was not so lucky. We also learn that it was not just dogs but again the film fails. Chris does not say what else attacked them and no one questions him. WTF! At this point we are a good 50 minutes into the film and nothing has been seen. The characters that did see things, just don't want to talk about it and apparently these "future dead people" he is traveling with are fine with not knowing the danger. We here that it was not just dogs but that is all. You would think that Chris would describe in full his experience but it is just a horrible lead to leave the audience guessing. It should leave the other characters guessing too but they just ignore the comment. This is particularly frustrating as a viewer and at this point I am sort of saying Fuck this movie. It unfortunately is not its worse offense.
  After spending the night in the van they start a conversation about hiking out. Only then does anyone note that Chris has a bad leg and is not going anywhere. To recap these people have been sitting in a van all night long, with no radio or board game or weed and this is the first time that anyone notices that Chris is not going anywhere on his mangled leg. I guess this is what happens when idiots are put into this kind of situation. So some will leave and some will stay waiting for help. The group that leaves spends the next ten minutes of film time walking away from the van and avoiding the dog pack and find a similar van to the one they are driving. They explore a bus that has been fortified against attack, with obvious bullet holes from the inside towards whatever was attacking it from outside. Whoever was in there eventually lost and the bus is abandon except for some blood. Remarkably they get a new distributor and can head back to rescue the others. Then of course they need to hide and run and things start getting really shitty. Those dogs have spotted them and they need to run, yes outrun a pack of wild dogs. Instead of holding up in the fortified bus a hundred feet away they go running off into the open country side. Crossing an old bridge that is rotting they cross the stream the dogs don't dare to go near. Now payoffs are important and since we saw the fish earlier you would think that here comes the fish attack on a massive scale. Unfortunately though because of budget constraints or just poor writing there is no big mutant fish attack and although the dude that falls into the water gets a cut on his leg he and the girlfriend who pulls him from the water are alive and safe from the dogs. On the way back it is suddenly dark, yes they head out in the morning and after 15 minutes they find the car part but it then gets dark on the way back to the van. Maybe I dozed off or something and missed the entire day, but they did not get so off track that they were gone until dark. Fuck you Chernobyl Diaries!

  When they arrive back at the van, the overturned, onto its roof van, Chris and Natalie are gone.  Okay again, when making a horror movie NOT showing anything bad that happens is a really shitty thing to do to your audience. This film relishes not showing anything and thus it is a really shitty horror movie. At least things pick up from here, we get wandering around in the dark and scary mutant people chasing them. My memory is a bit bad and I only saw this once, because even though I had to write this review there is no way I would pay to see it a second time. So I think they find the blond Natalie and NOBODY gets the story from her of what happened to the van. Fuck you Chernobyl Diaries! Instead they just wander around in the dark and we finally get to that creepy scene where the little girl is standing and they see her back. In the preview it is really scary and Natalie is dragged into the darkness down the stairs. It happens just like that except we see what the reaction is from the rest of the group. They see her vanish and run after her but she is gone, at the bottom of the long stairway is a longer corridor but in both directions is emptiness. It just is not physically possible that she is completely gone. Again we never actually see what happens to her this movie is all about what not to do in a horror movie. We see more and more of the mutant people who are the problem. Hell their escape from the hospital is why the area was closed off for the day.  They create the last 30 minutes of the film where one by one the tourists are knocked off as they flee through underground passages from these cannibalistic mutants. In the end there is a semblance of an explanation but at that point you are just wishing this shit would be over. Even in the most tense parts the creatures are only revealed in blurry glimpses and shaky camera flashes leaving the viewer again wondering if there was any budget at all for effects. I was so angry by the time this movie ended that when my daughter and I started talking about the film we could only say negative things about it. So Fuck You Chernobyl Diaries!
Rating (2.5) 5.0 and up are recommended, some more recommended than others

Offspring (2009) Horror Cannibals

Offspring (2009) - How is it that Soresport Movies ends up with so many cannibal movies. You would think that in the thousands of films at our disposal that these would be few and far between. In this case it was all luck, picked up in a discount bin and filed away in giant books of DVDs Offspring was chosen completely by chance, a dice roll to be more specific. Sometimes when we just want to review something but do not know what to choose we just roll some 20 sided dice and let chance decide. So was Offspring a lucky choice, a movie of worth, well I guess that is what this review is all about.
Deep in the woods of Maine for more than 160 years there have been nomadic tribes of feral people just looking for a cave to sleep in and a bite to eat. Because we civilized humans have been encroaching on their habitat these feral nomads have taken the opportunity to get that bite to eat at our expense. Picking through our garbage like raccoons in the night? Ransacking our vacation homes for can goods? No, littering the countryside with our corpses as they kill and eat us. That is the premise and by golly this idea will be explored to the gore filled fullest.
To set it up we get the early kill we need to understand how vicious these people are. A drunk woman named Gloria (T.J. Graye) comes home, there is no way she should have been driving in her car with how much she staggered when she got out of it. A belligerent drunk Gloria yells for the babysitter when entering the wide open front door of her house. To her surprise the babysitter is in the kitchen, well it wasn't a surprise that she was in the kitchen really, it was a surprise that she was dead in the kitchen being eaten by cannibal children. Her alcohol fogged mind slowly comprehended what was going on and she turned to see another cannibal with the parts of her baby in a plastic bag. Yeah those cannibal children are a nasty ( hungry) bunch.
A quick introduction of the characters before we get into the bulk of the story. Computer game programmers Amy (Amy Hargreaves) and David Halbard (Andrew Elvis Miller) live and work in their home in the woods. They are a happy couple with a little baby named Melissa. They talk about being visited by their friend Claire (Ahna Tessler) and her son Luke (Tommy Nelson) who after being abandoned by her scumbag, financial manager husband need to get away from possibly being tracked down by the abusive lout. He also is a criminal like all those Wall St. types just in case being an abuser is not enough. They are coming for some quiet time in the woods and they will get part of that. Steven being a fucking thief he is also misogynist and all around asshole when he dies you are expected to feel good. Played with a spite filled gleam in his eye by Erick Kastel you do not even have to hate him for his implied financial crisis connection. You can hate him for just being a woman hating and abusing douche bag. Did I mention he was an alcoholic? Now that is just piling on.
He does serve a role though beyond being a driving force in bringing Luke and Claire to Maine. He is a counter evil to the cannibals. They are feral hunters who just happen to hunt humans. Predators who seek the easiest prey, most certainly dangerous but for reason outside of good or evil. Steven on the other hand shows how you don't have to be feral to be a predator. His personality was shown very well in a scene of him driving his Porsche to Maine to track down Claire. He stops to pick up this college girl who is hitching to Portland she is friendly and nice, but he is suggestive and cold. When she sees him drinking while driving she wants out. There is this dialog where he tries to convince her to be his guide in getting to hi upstate location even though she is not heading anywhere near there. He phrases it as an invitation with sexual possibilities but when she balks he plays it off as not that. She insists on getting out so without slowing down he tells her to get out of the car with a seriousness that is intimidating. Then he does what this kind of asswipe needs to do, to show control over the woman. He makes her throw her backpack out the window before he will stop. She is reluctant but sees it as the only way out so she lifts it with both hands to chuck it. As she does he takes a long firm feel of her breast. At least he only takes it that far but the girl is definitely feeling like she dodged a bullet when she got out of that car.
The remaining characters are the old retired cop George Chandler (Art Hindle) who was on the job the last time the feral tribe came through town years before. He is recruited by the local cops to help in tracking them down. Is expertise consists of not stopping them before they moved on the first time so it is surprising that he can be any help this time. Then there are the Cannibals lead by Woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) who no doubt got her role in the more acclaimed "The Woman" from her performance here. She brings a fire to the role of the woman in this film. I did not quite get why it was a matriarchal society since her male counterpart at least in age seemed more physically superior. It may be that they wanted a counter to the strong male roles already in the film. Whatever the reason she is menacing and able to lead. The kids are somewhat interchangeable as the tribe with the exception of the blond, maybe called First Stolen? Maybe Girl, I am not sure.
The plot is simple enough, this group of fine young cannibals attacks the home of David and Amy, there is killing and capture. Fleeing with baby Melissa are Claire and Luke. They hide in the wood in a tree house but when they see one of their friends being taken to the cannibal cave Claire heads out to save the day. At the same time Stephen arrives at the house and is run off by the crazy cannibal children. Drunk and belligerent he runs right into the police and George who are hot on the trail of the tribe. The rest plays out in a sluggish and standard survival movie way. Who will survive by fighting off the cannibals? Will Luke and the baby find help? Will the old cop still have what it takes to deal with the threat? Will a horror movie ever end without first setting up for a sequel?
Thoughts on this movie are these: It is a hard premise to sell. In a 160 years a group of survivors from a shipwreck went from being a civilized group to no more than cannibalistic cavemen? They mostly lost their language and apparently the ability to act human really? 160 years ago my could have been your great grandparents, so that would mean that living in the woods caused your grandparents to become cannibals, to not teach language to the next generation and thus your parents just have half words and grunts, they are possible eaten by their children because there was no obvious maternal caring in the tribe. No I just don't buy it, it is not a sound theory. Maybe the writer could explain it. What I did like about the movie were some of the characters and the wonderful gore. It was bloody and gruesome even though the film itself is just mediocre. Art Hindle was great a veteran actor in the horror genre with parts in some well known films like Black Christmas, the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Brood. Actress Amy Hargreaves gets a Soresport point for appearing in the best Edward Furlong movie ever as Kimberley in Brainscan (1994).
So I am barely going to recommend this film but it is truly a borderline call. You may just hate it for its stupid premise and ridiculous cannibals, or like me really enjoy the blood and guts of it and appreciate the writing of the character Steven. I normally don't feel so much venom for a movie character as I do for him.
Rating (5.0) movies rated 5.0 up to 10 are recommended on this blog.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - Horror Cannibals

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - Well that was not as half bad as it was billed. Cannibal Holocaust has been on my list as one of those infamous films so shocking that as a youth I was not allowed to see it. Then in adulthood never felt like a cannibal movie was something I wanted to see. In seeing it I have to say although there was some offensive scenes in it the film as a whole was not particularly shocking and fails to live up to its reputation. Mostly there are two things that make this film as shocking as it is. The first is the misogynistic abuse of women in the film, there are three scenes in particular that are horrible. One where a native man does a ceremonial rape (with sharpened branch) and killing of his adulterous wife. Then twice there are gang rapes and murder of women and some sort of abortion by natives which made no sense. All of these scenes are horrible and hard to sit through, and sickening to watch. The second gruesome set of scenes have to do with killing animals on camera, some south American rodent, a large turtle, a monkey and a piglet are all killed on screen. These scenes are not some sort of CGI but actual filmed killings. Really nasty stuff. All is to pull the viewer into a disgusted response to the film and all are effective for that purpose.

Then there is the two stories that these scenes take place. The film starts with scenes of the original four adventurers heading to the Amazon to get footage for a documentary about cannibal tribes, then we learn that they never came back and the film company hires Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) an anthropologist to head down after them. So the first 40% of the film is Harold tracking the route of the younger group. When he finds their remains he manages to get the canisters of film they shot and heads back to NYC.

The film takes an interesting turn when he is back in the city. The documentary producers want him to review the film and help put together a documentary about it. He agrees but after viewing the film knows that the first group behaved totally unprofessionally in their interactions with the natives. He tries to convince the movie people that the film would not represent good documentary journalism because of the harsh violent behavior of the team. They argue that outrageous behavior will sell a ton of copies and that intellectual integrity should be balance with what sells. As this conversation continues we keep going back to the original footage of the group where they rape and more like conquistadors then anthropologists. When Harold seems to be losing the battle with the production company he brings the executives in for a screening of the most horrific footage.

The first group, Jack (Perry Pirkanen), Mark (Luca Barbareschi), and Alan (Carl Gabriel Yorke) terrorizes a native village burning raping and murdering. They shout their bravado to the camera about how superior they are. Then the final canister shows how the female of the group Faye Daniels (Francesca Ciardi) is gang raped and beaten tyo death with clubs and the men are mutilated and killed in turn by the vengeful villagers.

What is interesting to me that we have this film Cannibal Holocaust, that is famous for selling brutal images making an argument about how much is too much. Amazing how the thing that is discussed as going too far is indeed asking the question, it is so meta. Still I think the imagery was too much out of my own tastes for me to recommend it to anyone else. So let me answer the question how far is too far? This is.

Rating (4.1) 5.0 and up are recommended, in the Zombiegrrlz system I would say SKIP IT!

Cannibal Ferox (1981) - Horror Cannibals

Cannibal Ferox (1981) - The year after Cannibal Holocaust and his own initial entry Eaten Alive! (1980), Umberto Lenzi throws his hat back into the cannibal movie ring with this mildly offensive entry. This film starts with a warning about the violent content and warns those who do not want to see sadistic torture to stop watching. Since Frankenstein first did this sort of "warning", it has never deterred anyone, so of course I continued to watch. It opens in NYC and we follow a guy walking around town as the credits play. As we learn later this guy is looking for Mike Logan (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), his dealer and eventually walks all the way to his apartment only to be accosted and then killed by two mob guys who are also looking for Mike. You see Mike took $100,000 from the mob and they are determined to get the cash back. The poor junkie, his only role is to get this piece of information out and bring our police characters into the picture. Its funny that the mob guy puts a silencer on his pistol only to have the sound effect be normal volume, they really thought that piece of dubbing out.

When the police come to the murder scene we learn of the owner of the apartment Mary Stanton (Fiamma Maglione) who plays a small role in the film helping to tie thins in the Amazon jungle to the NYC scenes. She ends up being Mike's girlfriend and is the one who heads down to find the guy in Columbia.

Now we are introduced to our group in Columbia, brother and sister Rudy Davis (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria Davis (Lorraine De Selle)are down working on Gloria's thesis. She is here to prove that cannibalism does not really exist and her brother is taking the photos. Gloria's friend Pat Johnson (Zora Kerova) is along looking for adventure. As they try to find a village where cannibalism reportedly happen we get to see Pat's character. Looking for a shower Pat is very willing to go home and sleep with a local cop to get one. Later she is referred to as a whore and really has no problem with that. There is some music that reminds me of Demons or House by the Cemetary one of those Italian horror classics. The three head off in the jungle, their jeep getting unmovable, stuck in the mud when they are well out of the range help. They have to decide whether to cut across this unfamiliar jungle to the river and hopefully catch on with a boat or walk the 3 days along the trail they just covered. From years of leading hiking trips I could tell you what you should do, but our folks do the opposite and head off into the jungle. When they come across a native sitting in the jungle eating giant grubs they are disgusted. Little do they know of all the rest of the native watching them. after a night of camping in the jungle a scene that is really unnecessary other than to have Pat tie this little pet animal up for the night, we get to see a python eat her put in graphic detail. If you are keeping score, 1 grub eating native and 1 small animal eaten by snake is the extent of the gruesome scenes.

Scene three is they come across the bodies of a couple natives dead from a jungle booby trap. Not really that bad but the sight of death creates a bunch of tension for them. When Mike and Joe ( Walter Lucchini) stumble out of the foliage we get a story. Oh and yes this is Mike Logan from NYC that the cops and Mary Stanton are looking for. They see that Joe is really injured and help the pair. Mike a coke-head who says they came down for cocaine, but met a guy who was searching for emeralds so they joined him. About a month into their prospecting he says they were attacked by cannibal natives and Joe and Mike were lucky to escape. The guy they went in with was not so lucky.

Pat takes a liking to Mike and they have a good time. In the morning Gloria is missing so the other four go looking for her. Rudy and Joe stumble across the village that is supposedly 10 miles away according to Mike's story. When they investigate they see dead bodies, but the native seem harmless. More and more of Mike's story seems questionable. They find Gloria and save her from a hunting pit and the pig stuck in it with her. Now all together again at the village Joe is not doing so well. The injuries he has are infected and he needs to rest. This is when we really get to see what a slime-bag Mike is. He wants to leave Joe and get the fuck out of dodge before the young warriors of the village come back from hunting. Arguing with Gloria about it he repeatedly calls her twat in the least appealing way (as if there was an appealing way.) Then things really go south with him. Hanging out with Pat doing coke they bully a couple of younger natives and Mike ends up killing one of them. Asswipe Mike he will be known as from here on.

Joe then relays the real story of the village and why all the old timers there seem afraid of the whites. See the guy Asswipe Mike followed out here was one of the Indios. He had a few emeralds and Asswipe Mike thought it was going to be an easy score to find a stash somewhere out here at the village. He decides enough waiting and tortures the guy trying to get him to give up a location for more emeralds. He castrates the poor dude and leaves him hanging on a post to die. While Joe is sharing this yearn with Gloria and Rudy Asswipe Mike and Pat are leaving them behind knowing that when the main force of Indios return to the village there is going to be shit to pay.

Back in NYC Mary and the police have a talk and she learns about Asswipe Mikes money theft and that the police are also looking for him. She knows he is in Columbia and heads down herself to look for him. This is important because you think she will be the survivors ride out of the jungle. This isn't true though and the entire storyline is wasted when she never finds any of them. So why continue to go back to this?

The jungle group are all eventually all captured by the natives and now Asswipe Mike is going to be made to pay for what he did. They string him up and quickly cut his dick off and eat it raw in front of him. This is really a gross scene but it is done slight of hand and is quick. They take the time to cauterize the wound so now Asswipe Dickless Mike can live to be tortured some more. Gloria sees the cannibalism though. To draw the story out longer the group is moved from one village to another. This gives Rudy a chance to run for it but unfortunately for him after falling and cutting his leg he falls in a pool of Piranha and is shot with a poison dart never to be seen again. Trapped at the new village Gloria gets the climatic realization about cannibalism. "What a God damn fool I was thinking I had to leave New York to find the reason behind cannibalism. Do you realize its us, the so called civilized people who are responsible for their cruelty. Us and our superior society, violence breeds violence." She was there to disprove cannibalism but then sees it as a reaction to the brutality of Asswipe Dickless Mike.

The final escape comes when a native feeling bad for the two women Pat and Gloria attempts to free them lowing a rope into the hovel they are kept in. Problem is at the same time Asswipe Dickless Mike is escaping and chases him off. While trying to escape he has one of his hands cut off when the villages capture him, this last chance moves us to the final shocking torture scene. These are indeed gruesome scenes that we were warned about. Pat is brought out and large hooks are stabbed up through her breasts and she is left hanging to bleed out and die. Poor Gloria has to watch. At this same time the plane with a government agent and Mary Stanton is circling the area looking for the village. Asswipe Dickless One Handed Mike is put in a head grip and macheted exposing is coke addled brain for feasting upon. So much for that coked out loser.

The nice villager helps Gloria to escape and she is found by a couple crocodile poachers and makes it back to NYC. The final scene we see her receiving her PhD after completing the thesis. Does she tell of the cannibalism or not? The film has some things going for it, it to an extent has things from early in the movie connect to things later on. The message that the cannibalism is a response to exposure to those from the "civilized" world is decent and presented reasonably well. Still there was a bunch of animal planet footage thrown in to extend the movie. The gross out scenes were few and far between and compared to what can be seen in modern film making are pretty tame. Then there is the fact that most of the characters are just not very likable. Even our final girl is not very nice although she is no where close the the horror of Asswipe Dickless One Handed Mike.

Rating (4.6) 5.0 and up are recommended, In the Zombiegrrlz system Skip It!

Shiver (2008) - Horror

Shiver (2008) - Eskalofrío in Spain, is a strange film that misleads you into scares but is ultimately not what it seems. The film starts with a misleading scene, a teen boy Santi is running to stay ahead of the rising sun. He is in the shadows of the trees with his house just a hundred yards away but there is no shade to stay in from here. He runs out hood up towards the house. He struggles more and more as he gets closer only to burst into flames as he nears the door and safety. He wakes with a start from the dream. So I am thinking looks like a vampire flick. His Mom, Julia is waking him at sunset and he goes off to night school. Yep alternate universe with a vampire protagonist.

Some things are standard though, he like main characters who happen to be in their teen years is an outcast. He is picked on by the larger boys at school, they meanly put his light sensitive face on the copy machine. He has a friend, Leo who stands up for him. After such an episode he and his friend are playing a video game shooting monsters and he reaffirms my belief about the world he lives in by saying 'When I kill monsters I forget that I am one myself.' Not a bad start but then the film does not leave you out there dangling. It quickly pulls you back in another direction. He is not a vampire as we learn with a visit to the doctors but has a skin condition. Extra sensitive to light he needs to avoid direct contact or risks cancer. Mom is apparently finally going to listen to the doctor and move north where the days are shorter and the mountains will further reduce the sunlight Santi has to be exposed to.
A new start for an outcast in his current situation, things are looking up for our young man. They rent a house in a steeply mountainous area, but the music lets us know this is not the happier place the Mom and Son are looking for. The landlord is friendly enough showing interest in Julia. Since she has moved away from her slot machine addicted husband why not a really new start. Of course that music is saying something very different. In their first night in the house, we shift to what turns out to be a neighbors house and he gets up after hearing his nervous sheep. He goes out in a creepy scene to find a ewe slaughter and partly devoured. He sees something off in the distance he can not make out, Wolf? Santi? who knows right now is just the set up anyway. Later we learn this was the third sheep to go down this way. He yells at the locals like they are all supposed to jump up and run out looking for a wolf. Can't be Santi since he was not there for the other two kills.
Santi makes a friend at school, his love interest Angela. She is the daughter of the local police inspector. He also meet Tito a younger boy on the way home from school. The pacing on this part of the film really picks up and I have to say it does well for the story. Tito sees the creature but not well enough to identify it. Santi hears something on his roof in the night and is frightened, and an ominous warning from Dimas' father saying to Julia that this is not a place for her all combine to make a mood of apprehension.
Still good as far as plot. We have the boys at school talking about hunting for the creature Tito saw and Santi goes along. When things go horribly wrong and on of the kids dies at the hands on the little demon looking thing Santi ends up falling on the body. Scared he stumbles onto the road where he is seen by a car, blood covered and frazzled. This is a very well done set up. The new kid who appears outwardly different from everyone is found with the victims blood all over him. hmm I wonder if he will become the topic of rumors? Inspector Cifuetos certainly wants to talk to him.
So there you have the basic plot, there is a creature, a kid to blame for bad things happening and a police inspector trying to get down to the bottom of it. Like I said earlier this movie is not quite what it seems though. Even the stuff we are guessing and are lead towards shifts into something different and unexpected. Like many movie from Spain after the reveal of what is going on we get some sort of exposition scenes showing how the surprise was possible. In the case of this film there is indeed a feral child creature loose in the area. Santi even finds a picture of her in his house. She indeed once lived in the house he and his Mother rent. The trick to the film is how she ended up prowling the woods and eating sheep. I will not spoil it here because I want all of you to get a copy of this film and see for yourselves. There are an ample supply of tense moments and the turn is well done. Now this film could be taken as rediculous by some and the abilities of the feral child are a bit to well developed. It is strange but that is what this movie is all about so enjoy.
Rating (6.8) 5.0 and up are recommended

Pandorum (2009) - Sci-FI Action

Pandorum (2009) - Imagine waking from a long hyper sleep to find the ship you are in is aging and the crew seem to be missing. At first you can't remember much because of the effects of the sleep, then in bits and pieces you realize you are the last surviving humans in the universe. You are trapped in the room you woke in and it becomes clear things are not how you left them the years and years before when you entered your hyper sleep. So it is for the crew members in Pandorum. They are soon to find out through accelerated evolution has created a group of cannibalistic hunter creatures who are between them and the resting of the generators that will keep the ship functioning. Much of this movie felt like the great "The Descent" with the ultra human creatures having a run at any human survivors they come across. It is dark and atmospheric with a subplot about space sickness called Pandorum that makes people a bit paranoid and crazy. Our main character Bower (Ben Foster) is trying to navigate to the engine room to reset the nuclear generator, with the help of his lieutenant, Payton (Dennis Quaid) he works his way through hostile ground and through chance meetings with other survivors Nadia(Antje Traue) and Manh (Cung Le) learns what has happened while he was asleep. This is not a bad science fiction movie, it keeps the set tight and claustrophobic, the action quick and exciting and doles information out at a reasonable pace. The twist at the end is decent although I have seen that some people did not like it. I enjoyed the movie well enough and definitely recommend it.

Rating (6.4)

The Road (2009) Drama

The Road (2009) - SPOILER ALERT! THIS MAY HAVE INFORMATION YOU MAY NOT WANT TO KNOW>>>> Joe Penhall very loyally adapted the Cormac McCarthy novel about a father and son travelling south through post apocalyptic America. Directed by John Hillcoat and starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Man and Boy. Hillcoat directed the 2005 brutal but fine film "The Proposition" and does a fine job here where it is a challenging story with limited character interactions. In the story we are ten or so years past some catastrophe that has killed all plants and thus all animals on the planet earth. Man is vanishing as well, scavenging for missed cans of food, bodies of bugs and at times other humans. The Man and the Boy head south to escape the ever colder winters of the north. A good deal of what they were about in the book we also see here, a shopping cart of what goods they have, is pushed along abandon roads every closer to there first destination the coast. The deal with the anxiety of roving bands of cannibals and the threat every other desperate soul presents them on the road. This is far from an uplifting story but is is an honest one. When the shit really hits the fan what kind of a human being will you be. Will you be the good guy, resist the hunger and starve before preying on your fellow man; Or will you take the survival of the fittest route? The Man is trying to prepare the Boy to be one of the good people. His story arc is about teaching the Boy that someone has to carry the torch of humanity even when things look bleakest. Viggo does an excellent job in this film, capturing the struggle between wanting to prepare the Boy as he knows he is dying. But also struggling with the desire to stop being so human in these the hardest of times trying to do what was right but not always being correct in his actions. The Boy has his own arc, the reminder to the Man that he is getting close to not being one of the good people. That kindness is not rented but paid for with self sacrifice. He during the story becomes more independent and ready for his future challenges. He is the witness for the Man's fallibility, starting as a cared for child and progressing to a capable survivor. During the trip we see the eating of humans by humans the keeping of people as food stuffs. In this world every encounter with another person can be dangerous, each house you want to search could hold deadly danger. It is because there is love that the Man can bring the Boy through this world and hopefully help him be the next wave of humanity. They did some things I really liked with this story. They increased through flashbacks the story of the Man's wife played by Charlize Theron as she decides instead of surviving in the world to kill herself. The passages in the book were fleeting but here she is a full character exploring the idea that not everyone will fight for survival. He is really haunted by her memory and struggles to let go. I actually like that they changed a couple smaller but significant things. In the book the Man is sick from the beginning of the story and I think you really know what will become of him early on. In the film the writer reveals the sickness more slowly, I think adding to the tragedy of it. Also in the book later on there is the pregnant lady with two guys, who eat the newborn baby. Here in the film that scene is not present. This seems the way to go to me. Besides the obvious grossness of it, it is later in the book and we have at this point in the movie already visited cannibalism. We get the idea of what is happening and it does not need more verification. I loved the landscapes they found for filming, destroyed houses of a post Katrina New Orleans, to the barren wastes of Mount Saint Helen and the Rust belt in Pennsylvania the film captures the poverty of the end of the world that McCarthy is so good at writing about. The neding is just like the book and I was glad for that. This is a tough story and not everyone will enjoy it, but I have to say I did.

Rating (8.1)