Reviews by shawn tomorrow

this movie starts out bad...correction...not bad rather lame. everything about it reeks of mediocre copy and paste filming. right down to the hand held camera scenes and which blatantly rip off blair witch while making fun of it. and pointless middle of the road industrial/goth soundtrack. sad.

but....
hear me out. from there its gets....well ok there's a lot you have to take with a grain of salt at the beginning. the set up is awkward at best. like you can't ever believe any of these girls are archeologists and the whole plague doctor thing fails to be believable. once it gets into the story of 5 or 6 or more people locked in a old hospital that may be infected with "the plague" and may be haunted. honestly it begins to look like this movie is going to stun and amaze. i know it sounds silly, but things started looking good. creepy stuff, scary stuff, plots and subplots that unfolded very well.
and then....the end was....it was absolute crap. something about the beginning started over again...which was suppose to be a loop or maybe not. a baby with or without the plague...somehow the "reawakening" of a corrupt doctor who may have killed kids during the original plague. who cares really. the end was so horribly confusing i don't have a clue what they intended. screw it. don't watch it because it will inevitably piss you off. only if your desperate, its not horrible. it is however one of the worst endings i've come across.

ps the whole video camera thing was annoying from the start, not realistic as the one character carries it around constantly filming, and ineffective for what was obviously the sole reason they left it in the story. dud.

if you didn't know better you might mistake this as a stephen king movie. a dated one by now. they even poke some fun at the man which seems a bit ironic.

i liked this movie a lot when i first saw it but now, well it hasn't held up so well. all the actors come across as cartoons. only sam neill manages to rise above it, but only in brief moments. for a horror movie, even a "thriller", this is not a good thing. it probably was considered fine at the time. we've moved on.

still its not a bad movie and remains enjoyable.

the plot is about a private investigator who is hired to find a missing author. of course you have to take it with a grain of salt because the investigator, neill character, is good at finding cons and how they're done. so the company who hires him is obviously looking to trick him if they can and add publicity to the writer's upcoming novel. so sam and the secretary/editor, set off to find a fictional place written about in the books...and they find said fictional place. they also find the writer who has become some sort've god figure who is writing them into the story. meanwhile from the beginning theres a subplot of sorts where the books might be causing "susceptible people" to go mad after reading them. so in the end you know you're gonna be left with this "is he mad or not?" question and this is no surprise because we see sam's character admitted to a psychiatric facility in the opening scene. he asks "is its getting worse outside?" and refuses to be let out saying its safer inside.

good plot hooks, not terribly well delivered, and marred by the comic book portrayal. i'm surprised this doesn't get shown on TV. of course they don't really show movies anymore just reality TV. you're definitely better off watching this!

let's scare jessica to death is either bad grammar or a completely inappropriate title other than it has the main character's name in it and shes scared. it just really doesn't suit the movie.
but thats about the worse thing you can say about this movie. maybe its a bit slow by today's standard and there is no flashy effects. maybe the acting isn't 100% percent top tier. but on a whole its a great movie thats creepy, unique, and just a joy to watch.

a NY husband and wife by a farm out in the country. they are joined by another male friend to help them stage their new life. the wife has recently been released from a mental institution and we get glimpses that she may not be entirely "healed" before they even reach the farm. she sees people that aren't there. as soon as they reach the house she sees another person...but so do the other guys. turns out someone had been living there....so they're joined by another woman. conflict is bound to arise. sanity will be questioned. and then there's the creepy townsfolk who clearly would like them to just leave.

thats enough. i think. watch it and enjoy the story. its a keeper of a movie. great horror.

and so continues the mythology and legend of the sex pistols.
i'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing. i'm not sure of much after this documentary.
its an entertaining ride if nothing else. a bunch of dirty, cursing, spitting, barely musical, self proclaimed "c**ts".
this story depicts seemingly the group as a boy band put together by malcom mclaren as some sort've live art experiment and then taken where ever it wanted by mad genius jonny rotten who outright claims mclaren had no influence whatsoever in the pistols. having to learn to attempt to play is not enlightening...we already knew they knew little to start with and didn't exactly become profound. everyone else in the band is pretty much peripheral to rotten's antics. the story of course ventures into sid vicious' entering the band as the "ultimate fan" and pretty much being a jonny rotten poser who couldn't play and by the time he got sucked into heroin by nancy spungen could barely speak or pretend to play. he may or may not have killed her in an apartment after the pistols had already folded and he himself ends up dead months later from an overdose.

along the way they made some antics promoted by mclaren and pissed a lot of people off. yet...according to the film...they are solely responsible for punk, its style, and may be the only real punk band ever....if you believe that. i don't. and its hard to swallow after hearing these guys talk. the documentary does little to clarify and frankly avoids anything journalistic. that all leads to the very appropriate ending.....as the pistols ended.....with rotten asking "...ever get the fealing you've been cheated? goodnight." which makes me wonder if this anti-documentary adds anything or was ever intended to.

and yes, i do feel cheated. because its a good story and there was more work to be done. it'll take someone outside of their circle to make that documentary at a later time.
don't have expectations when watching this. its just stuff. violent punk stuff. good enough but bitter in the end.

i wasn't sure i wanted to watch this film when i did...monster squad seemed a little to 80's comedy and it was the only other film i had sitting around. so i actually read some reviews of the film. they ranged from "worst excuse for a student film" to "genius new horror movie" and you can bet your popcorn neither is true, but there was very little reviews that took a midground view. so what was i to think....stick it in and watch...i was curious if nothing else.

a st louis made film...interesting to me at least...but also may mean its basement quality filming. and straight from the start theres clear evidence of that. the sound throughout the film is bad. audible enough most of the time and when its not its nothing vastly important. but really the sound could have used a lot of work. the filming effects which equal every trick in the box of film possible over and over again....in the end it works for this film although its clearly masking some of the finer points of filmmaking.

acting is not all bad but almost entirely poor. many scenes lack the emotional aspect to the words being spoken...obviously not many retakes done here. but for a B film its far from annoying, just not good.

the story starts out with a long long long long overdubbed prologue scene of a voice speaking to a woman that just committed suicide, although to its credit it spells out the purpose of the rest of the film without being to confusing or overly heavy handed. and without that scene a lot of the movie would've made no sense or would have had to been added as dialog that would've weighed the script down and delivered by these actors would've doomed this film entirely. so it serves its purpose.

theres nothing terribly new here as far as the concept goes. 6 people are brought to a dimension to be tortured for their souls by its single "wizard" inhabitant. demons and angels want the wizard dead and so they use the suicide woman to infiltrate the arrival of new victims. she's given a vague mission to get the wizard to remember he was once human so they can get through the "ice from the sun" that surrounds his planet/dimension.

so some torture ensues (mostly of the live your fear sort) and its pretty good all in all. not scary but fairly gory. and for a no budget film fairly convincing most the time.

the end result is a film that kept me interested throughout, is of course not perfect but remains above par and unique throughout, uses a lot of film tricks which seem to make the movie at time more like a music video (like the long title sequence), and ultimately doesn't make any fatal errors. i wish there was more budget, better actors, and less "tricks" but in the end these guys should be proud of this effort.

ps i have no idea why almost everyone in this movie is dressed like they stepped out of the early 80's....it was filmed in the late 90's (nearly 2000). what was that about?

sure its old and sure its nothing shocking, but it is a good movie.

4 strangers take up residence in a haunted house. invited by a "researcher", two girls were selected and another guy is intended to eventually inherit the house. the researcher wants to find "the key to the spirit world" and the other guy thinks its silly and the suggestion will make his mansion worth less.
theres a surprising lesbian undertone to the girls budding relationship but of course it the standard important man falls in love with innocent girl story that wins the day. only to be dashed later by the appearance of his wife.

while theres nothing really new about this story now (maybe there was when it was released), i have to admit that there are even in the heavy handed old style a few moments of scary. the second pounding at the door scene has a surprising special effect that is so clever and so unique inside the whole movie that its quite effective. and the surprise entrance of the wife adds a whole new direction to the story which is well written.

there are moments in the script where you'll be asking "what the hell are they talking about?". when it first happens we eventually learn that one woman in the conversation is psychic...and thus the oddity is revealed. other times, however, theres just something odd about the script. and occassionally the dubbing is out of sync. it makes me think that parts might have been removed and or altered and the whole becomes a little less smooth. its a minor qualm but a noticable one.

overall good, nice pacing not too slow, good acting if on occasion over dramatic and stiff, good filming, and a tight story.
watch it. its definitely likable.

i'm left with a bit of want on this one.

the movie starts out in modern times with a girl having a nightmare. her mom takes a doll and a envelope from her that she had found in the attic. the envelope is somehow an entire journal....flash back....the rest of the movie except one more scene at the end. now i liked "neverending story" and its use of this kind've back jump related to a modern reading....but here its just absolutely unnecessary.

the actual story is set in history....and supposedly "based on true event's" aka people existed in history so this could've happened...whatever. in short: a man and his family is haunted by a demon/ghost/thing. they all suspect its brought on by a woman that he has wronged because he charged her 20% interest which was "against the church". really long build up till the man actually goes to the woman and tells her to kill him and be done with the curse...she says "you brought it on yourself". so despite all the confusing (is it a dream or not type sequences are abundant) and frankly uninformative scenes (almost none of the "clues" could be brought together to make any sense of them), the brief flashback scene ties together a story (a sort've "lets end this" by showing you clips of scenes that make a story....not see how the clues that you could've guessed fit together...but rather these are parts that make a story of it).
i'll admit the premise was not what i expected, which was nice. but the getting there was sort've messy. held my attention. acting was solid, filming was nice, story was good overall; its just that in the end there was no real "build up" only a "revelation" that ended the story. heavy handed sermon on morality and revenge.
and then we have another modern scene which was flat out stupid and almost entirely unrelated. bad choice. seriously anyone who watches this should skip all the "modern" part of this movie. it should've hit the cutting room floor and never seen the light of day. down to the fact that the acting, the script, the filming, and the story are all bad while the rest of the movie is good.

and thats what leaves me unmoved.
filmmakers, artists, writers, etc, a note: don't beat your audience over the head with messages...generally we're not stupid and if we are...what do you care?

unlike most modern horror films that rely heavily on gruesome relentless torture to mask the fact that everything else about the film is poorly developed, here is a story that has some weight to it and uses torture to build a contempt for the main bad guys and their religious cult practices. it also goes into more weighty issues like what will a person become who is exposed to this violence and forced to defend themselves and ultimately the weakness of those who believe they are without fear.
its difficult to take any of this seriously in the film to be honest. its not perfect by any means and clearly it uses torture to lift the film to an audience that begs for this kind've trite bs. i wish in some regards that they would have taken a wiser path because whoever was responsible for this film was perfectly capable of setting a mood, framing a style, and delivering a story. the acting as well is definitely good. those efforts are worth watching this movie. it is good and unique enough to at least hold your attention. and if you're squeamish about seeing someone tortured...well you either watch it because it effects you in that way or you'll just avoid this anyway.

there is a little of a tendency in this movie to come away with an impression that mexico is full of crazy lawlessness and cult practices that prey on white tourist. oh and women that are all prostitutes but at least somewhat nice. its the least redeeming quality of this film...and frankly a mistake. but if you believe that any of that is true and not the fiction that this story is...then you barking up the wrong tree.

a good film, done with style and not a boring moment really.

will finish as watched:

"ghosts of hanley house" 1968 haunted house movie as you'd expect from the title. given that so many of this type of story has been told and so many films used the subject, i don't think i expected much from it. ultimately theres a twist to it which made it interesting.
a bet: "you can't stay a night in the house" and so a guy and 4 of his "friends" which don't really seem to be his friends make the attempt. strange things start to happen and we learn that "evil spirits" lurk in the house.
nothing too very surprising here. but we do get to learn why the ghosts haunt the place and the one among the group who had something to do with it.
some nice lighting and filming, fair acting, and generally good script. about the only thing thats bad here is the transfer which is all over the place; mostly its tolerable like watching a degraded film copy but the sound is difficult to hear at points and theres no subtitling or closed captioning for the dvd to help.
still worth a watch, its a good film all in all.

kind've surprised by this film.
we put in another film by the same company and didn't make it but a few minutes in before we switched it to this. better filming and better acting held my attention enough despite the beginning which is confusing.

you understand quickly that something isn't quite right with whats going on in the movie. theres parts which register as off or odd. and you're right about it not being right, but you'd be hard pressed to guess how its going to manifest.

strangely the movie doesn't leave you playing a guessing game the whole time, but rather it gives you clues that all is not what it might seem. even if it was the movie was going to be interesting enough, the fact that it plays out differently from what you expect tweaks your mind a bit.

a literal-ist may find problems within the plot, but i just found it to be an enjoyable movie. there are some squeamish parts and a few parts that did leave me with questions but like i said...its worth the trip.

good movie, definitely worth seeing.

"i don't like this bubblegum. it sticks to my face when it pops." shocking scene blew my mind!