My Summer Of Horror: Dracula 2000

I watched this movie a long time ago…like around the 4th of July long time ago. It’s driven me nuts because I honestly am at a loss for what to say about it. To put it simply, it’s exactly what you should expect from something with Wes Craven’s name on it. Although I’m confused about his involvement in the film. He neither wrote nor directed the movie. It simply says Presented By Wes Craven. I’m assuming that means he was a major financial backer and pulled the strings in the background to make the movie something he’d want to put his name on.

It’s an OK movie. I’d probably watch it again if I caught it on cable or something like that. This movie really fits the mold of what the title suggests. What I mean by that is that it lives up to the hard hitting action that one would expect from anything cashing in on the hype that was the year 2000 new millennium bull crap. It’s movies like this that paved the way for movies like Underworld and Constantine that had bigger budgets, better actors and were much more successful. It’s quitchy very much so how everything now is called HD, it’s a very loosely defined concept.

I liked the beginning concept of a movie. It begins with a Van Helsing character who has taken it upon himself to be the guardian of Dracula’s body and has made it is quest to keep him contained so as not to unleash him into the world. Enter money hungry fools who break into Van Helsing’s safe and steal the casket containing Dracula believing that there is valuable treasure hidden inside. The rest of the movie becomes your typical race against time to defeat Dracula yada yada yada, some tie in with Van Helsing’s daughter and a vague love interest of hers that is barely interesting…and then the movie gets weird.

It turns out that in this depiction of Dracula, he is actually Judas. Yepp…the betrayer of Christ. He meets his end by getting hung from the neck on a neon cross and there are some flash backs to him hanging himself in biblical times. It’s all wrapped up in to one neatly weird little package. This puts this movie into the category of a million movies that would play off the faults of Christianity and turn a commonly critisized faith into a horror story. Just like The Exorsist or Stigmata, or the previously named Constantine just to list a few.

So to recap: Van Helsing, Dracula, A Heist, Action, A love Story, Judas, The End. This movie was so many different things hence why I think it left me at a lack for words on how to describe it. If you like vampires (like I so unabashedly do) then it’s worth the watch. If not, I’d skip it.

8 months ago 

My Summer of Horror: My Bloody Valentine

                                         

Last night after scrolling through all the Netflix had to offer and feeling uninspired I settled on My Bloody Valentine. I had remembered a friend of mine saying it wasn’t half bad for a cheesy slasher film…so I figured why not?

I guess I would agree. It wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t terrible. I would say that this movie was just a great excuse to see senseless gore in 3D. Since I don’t have a 3D tv a lot of those effects were lost in my experience.

The beginning of the movie moves pretty quickly. They establish a back story and get straight to cutting people up. However, after the initial gore fest the movie begins to slow down and at some points was excruciatingly slow. The acting is terrible, so all the relationships that they try to establish between characters and all the back stories they try to tell are pretty lame and weren’t of much interest to me.

This movie pretty much follows the horror formula by the book. It begins with drunken teenagers,  there is an unnecessary sex scene that goes on too long, and a collection of idiotic characters who seem to make the wrong decision at every move they make. And of coarse the bad guy never really dies. I was hardly scared by this movie, in fact, most of the time I was just aggravated at the stupidity of the the characters.

There was also a lot of nonsensical aspects to this movie which made it hard for me to get into it…everything was just so unbelievable. Aside from the nonsense factor there were pretty big holes in the story. For instance I don’t ever really remember hearing a motive for the original Tom Warden murders. Why did their police department appear to only have 3 police officers who apparently never learned the importance of calling for back up? And how did the killer manage to change in and out of his miner get up so quickly without ever getting caught? C’mon people! The twist in the movie is barely a twist as it reveals itself too early on. They try to throw you off the trail for a moment or two, but I don’t think there was big enough of a pay off at the end.

On a positive note Jensen Ackles is pretty dreamy. He’s a terrible actor, but he’s decent eye candy. The most redeeming quality this movie had for me was the killer itself. I’ve always been creeped out by the idea of being in a coal mine. Further more old fashioned miner suits really creep me out. If I were to ever be faced with an angry pick ax weilding miner I’d probably die of fright. I’d give it two thumbs up for the gore factor. They did a pretty decent job of ripping people apart in the nastiest ways possible which was impressive for a character who only had one weapon at his disposal for the duration of the movie.

I think this movie would have been a lot more fun to watch in 3D. It might even have got a jump or two out of me in a theater setting. The gore and graphics were pretty top notch which is what I would expect from a movie made in 2009 however the acting and storyline were pretty weak so it loses points for that. Overall My Bloody Valentine is just a fun slice and dice movie to watch when you don’t want to think. It’s also really fun to make fun of, which let’s face it, that’s the best thing about watching horror movies.

1 year ago 

My Summer of Horror

I’ve always been a fan of horror movies, however my horror education is quite lacking. Pretty much every time I log into my Netflix account I browse through the horror section. Majority of the movies are bad B-horror movies that you only watch to laugh at. Thrown into the mix are a few of the classics and then a handful of tolerable new releases just to make it seem like the people over at Netflix aren’t totally ripping you off. I found myself thinking one afternoon how fun it would be to go through the entire list and watch every single one of those movies. Seeing as the year has already gotten off to a great start for me, I thought this could be one more fun thing to add to my list of things to do this summer. It will probably take me longer than the summer to get through it all, and then I’ll have to rename this little segment of my blog, but for now I think this works. Today I started my personal movie fest by watching Paranormal Activity. Here is my 2 cents on the matter:


Paranormal Activity is a clever movie that plays into everyone’s instinctive fear of what happens when you’re not looking. I think for many people the movie is set up to be increasingly more scary than your average slasher film because it is presented to the viewer as being real. The dialog doesn’t feel overly scripted and the actors appear to be regular people like you or I. Even going into the movie knowing that it’s fake, it’s hard to not get lost in what appears to be raw camera footage and snippets of a real person’s life.
I think for me the most genius parts of the movie are the first few night shots when little to nothing actually happens. These dull moments of inactivity allow the viewers imagination to take over as their eyes dart all over the screen looking for any snippet of “evidence” of a paranormal entity. I thought that it was smart on the film makers part to include such long moments of nothingness. I’ve always believed that the scariest movies are often the ones that don’t show you everything. I felt more suspense in those moments than I did in the moments in which things were actually happening and the scare was being handed to you.
The downfall of the movie for me were the characters. They weren’t very likable people and it made it hard for me to feel sympathetic towards them or to feel afraid for them when I thought something bad was going to happen. I feel like Micah was overly macho and I was rooting for him to go pretty much from the beginning. Katie was too passive of a character and the delivery of her story about her haunted past was very cheesy and induced an eye rolling moment for me.
This movie obviously took a page out of the “Blair Witch Project” book. Seeing as they blatantly copied the style of another movie I was hoping that they would have done something a little differently or ground breaking, but I don’t feel that they did. Even the ending in which your only clue of horror is incessant screaming and the death of the characters isn’t actually visible felt almost identical to my memory of the ending of Blair Witch. I would say the only virtues that this movie had over the “Blair With Project” was the lack of snot close ups and that it wasn’t as unbearably long.
I can see how this movie probably would have been more effectively scary in a theater setting. Good surround sound, and the intensity of an audience surely help films like this along. However, I still feel like this movie was overly hyped. It by no means was the scariest movie I have ever seen. It also wasn’t the most entertaining thing I’ve ever seen either. I admittedly was checking my Facebook and playing games on my iphone during some of the slower points of the movie. It’s something that I’m glad I watched, but will probably never watch again.

1 year ago 

My Summer Of Horror: Dracula 2000

I watched this movie a long time ago…like around the 4th of July long time ago. It’s driven me nuts because I honestly am at a loss for what to say about it. To put it simply, it’s exactly what you should expect from something with Wes Craven’s name on it. Although I’m confused about his involvement in the film. He neither wrote nor directed the movie. It simply says Presented By Wes Craven. I’m assuming that means he was a major financial backer and pulled the strings in the background to make the movie something he’d want to put his name on.

It’s an OK movie. I’d probably watch it again if I caught it on cable or something like that. This movie really fits the mold of what the title suggests. What I mean by that is that it lives up to the hard hitting action that one would expect from anything cashing in on the hype that was the year 2000 new millennium bull crap. It’s movies like this that paved the way for movies like Underworld and Constantine that had bigger budgets, better actors and were much more successful. It’s quitchy very much so how everything now is called HD, it’s a very loosely defined concept.

I liked the beginning concept of a movie. It begins with a Van Helsing character who has taken it upon himself to be the guardian of Dracula’s body and has made it is quest to keep him contained so as not to unleash him into the world. Enter money hungry fools who break into Van Helsing’s safe and steal the casket containing Dracula believing that there is valuable treasure hidden inside. The rest of the movie becomes your typical race against time to defeat Dracula yada yada yada, some tie in with Van Helsing’s daughter and a vague love interest of hers that is barely interesting…and then the movie gets weird.

It turns out that in this depiction of Dracula, he is actually Judas. Yepp…the betrayer of Christ. He meets his end by getting hung from the neck on a neon cross and there are some flash backs to him hanging himself in biblical times. It’s all wrapped up in to one neatly weird little package. This puts this movie into the category of a million movies that would play off the faults of Christianity and turn a commonly critisized faith into a horror story. Just like The Exorsist or Stigmata, or the previously named Constantine just to list a few.

So to recap: Van Helsing, Dracula, A Heist, Action, A love Story, Judas, The End. This movie was so many different things hence why I think it left me at a lack for words on how to describe it. If you like vampires (like I so unabashedly do) then it’s worth the watch. If not, I’d skip it.

My Summer of Horror: My Bloody Valentine

                                         

Last night after scrolling through all the Netflix had to offer and feeling uninspired I settled on My Bloody Valentine. I had remembered a friend of mine saying it wasn’t half bad for a cheesy slasher film…so I figured why not?

I guess I would agree. It wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t terrible. I would say that this movie was just a great excuse to see senseless gore in 3D. Since I don’t have a 3D tv a lot of those effects were lost in my experience.

The beginning of the movie moves pretty quickly. They establish a back story and get straight to cutting people up. However, after the initial gore fest the movie begins to slow down and at some points was excruciatingly slow. The acting is terrible, so all the relationships that they try to establish between characters and all the back stories they try to tell are pretty lame and weren’t of much interest to me.

This movie pretty much follows the horror formula by the book. It begins with drunken teenagers,  there is an unnecessary sex scene that goes on too long, and a collection of idiotic characters who seem to make the wrong decision at every move they make. And of coarse the bad guy never really dies. I was hardly scared by this movie, in fact, most of the time I was just aggravated at the stupidity of the the characters.

There was also a lot of nonsensical aspects to this movie which made it hard for me to get into it…everything was just so unbelievable. Aside from the nonsense factor there were pretty big holes in the story. For instance I don’t ever really remember hearing a motive for the original Tom Warden murders. Why did their police department appear to only have 3 police officers who apparently never learned the importance of calling for back up? And how did the killer manage to change in and out of his miner get up so quickly without ever getting caught? C’mon people! The twist in the movie is barely a twist as it reveals itself too early on. They try to throw you off the trail for a moment or two, but I don’t think there was big enough of a pay off at the end.

On a positive note Jensen Ackles is pretty dreamy. He’s a terrible actor, but he’s decent eye candy. The most redeeming quality this movie had for me was the killer itself. I’ve always been creeped out by the idea of being in a coal mine. Further more old fashioned miner suits really creep me out. If I were to ever be faced with an angry pick ax weilding miner I’d probably die of fright. I’d give it two thumbs up for the gore factor. They did a pretty decent job of ripping people apart in the nastiest ways possible which was impressive for a character who only had one weapon at his disposal for the duration of the movie.

I think this movie would have been a lot more fun to watch in 3D. It might even have got a jump or two out of me in a theater setting. The gore and graphics were pretty top notch which is what I would expect from a movie made in 2009 however the acting and storyline were pretty weak so it loses points for that. Overall My Bloody Valentine is just a fun slice and dice movie to watch when you don’t want to think. It’s also really fun to make fun of, which let’s face it, that’s the best thing about watching horror movies.

My Summer of Horror

I’ve always been a fan of horror movies, however my horror education is quite lacking. Pretty much every time I log into my Netflix account I browse through the horror section. Majority of the movies are bad B-horror movies that you only watch to laugh at. Thrown into the mix are a few of the classics and then a handful of tolerable new releases just to make it seem like the people over at Netflix aren’t totally ripping you off. I found myself thinking one afternoon how fun it would be to go through the entire list and watch every single one of those movies. Seeing as the year has already gotten off to a great start for me, I thought this could be one more fun thing to add to my list of things to do this summer. It will probably take me longer than the summer to get through it all, and then I’ll have to rename this little segment of my blog, but for now I think this works. Today I started my personal movie fest by watching Paranormal Activity. Here is my 2 cents on the matter:


Paranormal Activity is a clever movie that plays into everyone’s instinctive fear of what happens when you’re not looking. I think for many people the movie is set up to be increasingly more scary than your average slasher film because it is presented to the viewer as being real. The dialog doesn’t feel overly scripted and the actors appear to be regular people like you or I. Even going into the movie knowing that it’s fake, it’s hard to not get lost in what appears to be raw camera footage and snippets of a real person’s life.
I think for me the most genius parts of the movie are the first few night shots when little to nothing actually happens. These dull moments of inactivity allow the viewers imagination to take over as their eyes dart all over the screen looking for any snippet of “evidence” of a paranormal entity. I thought that it was smart on the film makers part to include such long moments of nothingness. I’ve always believed that the scariest movies are often the ones that don’t show you everything. I felt more suspense in those moments than I did in the moments in which things were actually happening and the scare was being handed to you.
The downfall of the movie for me were the characters. They weren’t very likable people and it made it hard for me to feel sympathetic towards them or to feel afraid for them when I thought something bad was going to happen. I feel like Micah was overly macho and I was rooting for him to go pretty much from the beginning. Katie was too passive of a character and the delivery of her story about her haunted past was very cheesy and induced an eye rolling moment for me.
This movie obviously took a page out of the “Blair Witch Project” book. Seeing as they blatantly copied the style of another movie I was hoping that they would have done something a little differently or ground breaking, but I don’t feel that they did. Even the ending in which your only clue of horror is incessant screaming and the death of the characters isn’t actually visible felt almost identical to my memory of the ending of Blair Witch. I would say the only virtues that this movie had over the “Blair With Project” was the lack of snot close ups and that it wasn’t as unbearably long.
I can see how this movie probably would have been more effectively scary in a theater setting. Good surround sound, and the intensity of an audience surely help films like this along. However, I still feel like this movie was overly hyped. It by no means was the scariest movie I have ever seen. It also wasn’t the most entertaining thing I’ve ever seen either. I admittedly was checking my Facebook and playing games on my iphone during some of the slower points of the movie. It’s something that I’m glad I watched, but will probably never watch again.

My Summer Of Horror: Dracula 2000
My Summer of Horror: My Bloody Valentine
My Summer of Horror

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