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Reviews, Various

I watched recently: CHANNEL ZERO:NO END HOUSE/THE STRAIN/47 METERS DOWN/THE LURE

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Last year I watched season 1 of tv series called Channel Zero, which was quite good considering that it was done by SyFy Channel which usually puts out a lot of crap.

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This year, season two was just released and boy it was a good one. First of all, I must clear one thing. You can watch season one or season two separately, meaning they are two separate stories and they are not linked with one another whatsoever. This second season is called No End House based on an urban legend of a house which appears in various parts of the world and has six rooms one scarier than the other, made to make those who visit the house crazy. As it usual is, a group of troubled teenagers with issues enters the house and steps in the crazy limbo of reality and fantasy. The acting is the average for SyFy Channel releases, meaning nothing special, but the screenplay is actually good, having a lot of bizarre and scary scenes. This season is six episode long, so you can watch it in one night.

As long as we are writing about series, here is another gem. The Strain just finished wrapping the story up with its fourth and last season. I really enjoyed this series being one of my favourite tv vampire shows besides True Blood.

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Based on novels by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, this apocalyptic story about the fight between strigoi and their wicked Master and a handful of people resisting was a blast. It has everything in it that I desired from a good story, strigoi, Nazis, past, present and future colliding and of course plenty of action and gore for your entertainment. FX did a really fine job with these four seasons, so I was actually sorry that it finished but they did a good job with the ending. I read only the first novel in the trilogy so I dont really know if it finished the way it is in the books. In the beginning of the fourth season I was kinda let down first three episodes, but later it gets awesome!

47 Meters Down is an adventure/animal attack horror movie.

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It is about two sisters on a vacation in Mexico and to drown their sorrow because one of them was dumped by her boyfriend, went to dive in a cage with sharks. From then on things get fucked up and the girls, you guessed it, end up in a cage 47 meters under the sea with limited oxygen and surrounded by sharks. I have seen literally tons of movies with sharks, doing this and that and this one is one of the better ones in that subgenre. The underwater camera is nice, the sharks are nicely done, not that poor cgi that usually spoils the whole movie from the beginning. The movie also has enough intensity to make you watch it from the beginning right to the very end.

And, Monty Python would say, now for something completely different. The Lure is a weird movie from Poland.

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It is a mixture of comedy, drama and horror movie. The story revolves around two mermaid sisters, namely Golden and Silver who are adopted into cabaret in Warsaw. One sister socializes and enjoys human company, while other wants to eat people up and kill everyone. The movie is weird in many ways. It is filled with dancing and singing the weird songs so it almost borders with musical. The gore scenes are few and not too bloody. I dont really know what to think about this movie. Some parts are utterly stupid and some are touching and funny. Weird European movie indeed!

 

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The movies I have seen:RASEN/PHOENIX FORGOTTEN/IT STAINS THE SANDS RED/THE TEMPLE/

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Hi, people of this page who read my stuff and make it worth writing and keeping the flame burning. This episode of the movies I have seen may start off with j-horror, meaning Japanese horror RASEN. It is a 1998.made movie based on the novel by Koji Suzuki, Japanese Stephen King.

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Doctor pathologist troubled by his past investigates the death of his college friend involving the mysterious video tape. When you watch the tape, in seven days you die. The only solution to avoid death is to make a copy and give it to someone else who must watch it. Sounds familiar folks? Ringu anyone? Well, you are right. Bpth Ringu or The Ring and this one were released simultaneously in the same year throughout the Japanese theatres, but Ringu was a great box office hit and this one flopped. This one was supposed to be a sequel, some of the characters being the same as in Ringu.

Although I love the Asian horror movie scene and especially J-Horror, this one left somehow bitter taste in my mouth. There are just too few spooky scenes and situations in the movie, plus those parts that we Europeans dont understand. Have you noticed that almost every Asian horror has approximately ten minutes of the movie that is understandable only to Asian people? I dont mean to offend anyone here with this connotation, maybe I am just to stupid to get some things or something. The deaths in the movie are too soft, not to mention the ending that is so philosophical and melodramatic that makes you regret you wasted an hour and a half of your life on this one.

Moving on to something different. Time for found footage cross between alien abduction conspiracy and horror. What? Yes, people, time for PHOENIX FORGOTTEN, Ridley Scott produced found footage. It is based on the true stories regarding mysterious lights in the sky in Arizona. The story revolves around young girl who is looking for her older brother who went missing as teenager along with two other kids in the Arizona desert.

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Like it usually happens in those kind of movies, they find a broken camera with the tape inside and the girl watches the found footage that explains and opens more questions regarding the disappearances. I love found footage, it is besides slasher, my favourite horror subgenre, but this one absolutely did not work for me.

The rule in found footage is that absolutely nothing important happens until maybe 40 or 45 minutes into film. Then about half an hour of running around, shouting, impossible to see anything clearly and than the movie usually ends with a camera falling on the ground and remaining there. Blairwitch set the standards and many jumped on the bandwagon of success. The action in this one was just too thin, and I swear that I already saw the ending in one movie, at this moment I just cant remember in which one. Bad movie, but nice to see that the genre still exists today alive and kicking.

When I first saw the trailer for IT STAINS THE SANDS RED it made my mouth water. Finally, I thought, the zombie horror movie worth watching. Reading some of the reviews, some people that I know wrote that the movie sucked. Now I am happy I didnt believe them.

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The movie opens with the scenes from Las Vegas and its a general chaos there. Sirens, fires, smoke, dead bodies…then we are moving to Nevada desert highway, where a stripper and her semi criminal, dealer friend get stuck in the sand with the car tyre.  They see a lone person walking towards them on the road, wearing suit and tie. It is a zombie and it quickly eats the dealer and the rest of the movie is a survival adventure of the girl running and trying to stay alive in the desert chased by that zombie. Although it is an interesting premise the story in the movie is so much more than that. The zombie and his mood is nicely written, the simpathy that the girl gradually has for that zombie which she called Smalls is at the moment touching.

Gore scenes in the movie are nice, some parts made me watch and laugh with disbelief and the ending of the movie left the space for the sequel which I am kinda hoping and kinda not hoping they will make. Zombie horror subgenre became somehow lame for me in the last couple of years, but I just loved this one. It was an incredible fun to see this one and I recommend it with all my heart.

For the last movie in this episode of reviews we return again to Japan. THE TEMPLE trailer and the story looked attractive to me, so I decided to watch it.

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The movie opens with the Japanese police search party roaming through the woods looking for someone. They enter the spooky looking abandoned temple and find a badly burned survivor.

Afterwards, the police interrogates the survivor in the hospital trying to find out what happened. In fact, they are looking for the couple of missing American students, who were last seen traveling in that area. The survivor tells them his story about the group of American students who were making pictures or documentary or whatever involving old Japanese temples.

So, being naive and stupid as most of the characters in horror movies are, they disregard all warnings by the natives and enter the temple which is surrounded by the dark legend that people go mad there, some children went missing and never returned from there bla bla…Anyway, weird shit happens and one by one, the protagonists lose their minds, lives and everything. The movie has some spooky scenes and made goosebumps on some occasions while watching, but generally speaking it was too dark made and some of the scenes were ruined by being too dark to see anything. It also has a twist in the end, but it is one of those horror movie clichees that you have seen and I am certain you will guess it before the movie ends. This could have been much better movie. I wish it were.

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Some movies I have watched lately!

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There are couple of movies I have seen lately and I would like to write something about them, whether they were good and fun to watch or bad.

First off, THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT 2 was a giant surprise that it came out at all, because I remember the first one not being so good, rather boring stuff, and they made a sequel.

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In this one, the girl that I guess survived the first one and the movie documentary crew travel through America visiting hunted scary attractions and hayrides looking for some which could scare them so two thirds of the movie represent some kind of weird commercial for haunted fair attractions across the USA. The last third of the movie turns into some kind of mindfuck psychological horror or at least it tries to be and in the end leaves you with bitter taste in your mouth not really knowing why or what happened to the characters. This one was a shot in the blank space and it is definitely not worth your time.

Going to the next one, or the next two to be precise. as I watched both JOHN WICK movies back to back. Many call these movies mindless shootout , nothing intellectually worth, but I guess they didnt make them to be mentally challenging, on the contrary, they made them to be action packed fun flicks for no brain pressure release fun watching.

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In the first one, John Wick(Keanu Reeves) is a retired mafia super hitman, whose wife Helen just died of cancer and left him a dog as a last token of her love?! and to have someone with whom he can share his grief. While one day shopping for fuel, the son of Russian mobster sees his Mustang car, decides it must be his, breaks into Johns house, steals the car and murders his dog. Unfortunately for the whole Russian mob organization in town, John Wick decides to move out of retirement and settle the score. This one has a pretty excessive bodycount and attractive action scenes that kept me attracted to the screen for the whole duration of the movie, so I really loved the first movie.

As for the second, tentatively called Chapter Two, the story continues in the same way. Upon hearing that he went out of retirement to settle the score in the first movie, Italian mafia boss burdens John with a hard task, but the one he must do, in order to stay alive and retire out of the previous life once more. Not all goes according to the plan, so once more there is bloodshed and general shootout all through the movie, so it is very similar to the first one, the only difference is that this time it went international in the story, not only in one town like in the first movie.

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In my opinion, the first one was somehow better. I cant really tell why, because in the second one, the bodycount is bigger, the action scenes are even more attractive but it just somehow didnt work for me.

Anyway, I am glad to see Keanu Reeves doing again what he did best in the past and that is making great action movies. I kinda missed him since the Matrix glory days.

 

 

Now is the time for some Asian, to be precise Korean flick. AGE OF SHADOWS is a Korean movie set in 1920-ies when Japan Empire occupied Korea and small band of resistance fighters played cats and mouse game trying to outwit and do some serious damage to the Japanese, who also had Korean collaboration police on their side.

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As it usually goes in those movies, the story is action packed and tense, but what fascinates me the most are the characters. The characters in such movies are so greatly written that they are usually so to say larger than life and you actually feel regret and happines and sympathize with them during the movie. If you expect action blockbuster here, dont watch this one, because, while it has many action scenes, this one is in its core spy drama movie. This movie was great and it only proves how much Korean film industry rose in the scene and somehow became I would dare say leading force in the Asian movie theatre with due respect to Chinese and Japanese movie industry. Anyway, if you are interested and like such movies, see Age of Shadows, you wont regret it!