Early Review of Sharknado (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Asylum

Runtime: 88 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: When a freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, thousands of sharks have no trouble terrorizing the waterlogged populace, but then when the high-speed winds also form tornadoes, nature’s deadliest killer rules water, land, and air.

Review: I know a lot of people love shark movies, but personally I'm just getting sick of them at this point, because the B-Movie genre is just getting over-saturated with them these last few years – they've become the easy go-to B-movie monster and I've gone on plenty of rants in the past about how we need to move away from them and give some other animals the spotlight. Luckily it seems that is finally starting to happen, seeing as how we've been getting plenty of good spider and dinosaur movies lately and a few less shark ones. Likewise, it's no secret that I'm just not a fan of Asylum's natural disaster movies. I give each one a shot, but I seem to find them all too similar to one another to really be of interest anymore and I also find that those are the ones that seem to have the laziest writing and the laziest acting and pretty much the laziest everything and I can't really muster up any interest for them anymore. 

With that stuff in mind, you can probably see where I'd be super cautious of Sharknado, a movie that combines both those genres into one movie – however, even I can't deny how damn eye-catchy and attention-grabbing that awesome title is, and when Asylum sent me a screener of Sharknado to review...well, I have no qualms in admitting that I was actually pretty excited to sit down and spend an hour and a half with this flick when I got home from work.

And boy, what a fast hour and a half it was! The movie started with a bang and never let up, only getting more and more insane (in a good way!) as it went on. It moved at such a quick pace that it was over before I even realized how much time had actually passed, and let me tell you – Sharknado doesn't waste any time at all. I was expecting the main event of the movie, the promise of the awesome poster art's flying sharks bringing down destruction onto a city to happen in the final 20 minutes or so as things often do in these movies, but I couldn't have been more wrong. It opens on a scene of sharks swimming in the ocean and getting picked up by the massively strong winds of a gigantic massive hurricane (Hurricane David, actually – which could be a coincidence but I'm willing to bet it was a nod to David Rimawi and David Michael Latt, the two main head honchos of The Asylum), which was directly followed by a scene of a fishing trawler getting caught in the whipping, whirling, teeth-gnashing shark-filled hurricane on its way to making landfall, and before the movie hits the 20 minute mark the hurricane and its army of hungry pissed off flying sharks has made landfall and rains destruction and chaos down, starting with a beach and its resident bar and boardwalk, and moving further inland from there, so literally from the opening seconds the movie has jumped right into its main plot and only escalates – no beating around the bush with this one!

Oh, and yes, the movie comes with just as many WTF moments as you would expect a movie called Sharknado to bring to the table; We have scenes of sharks flying in through windows, high winds knocking a Ferris wheel off its holdings and rolling down a street while at the same time sharks are falling down from the sky around it and trying to munch down on people, one of the sharks being knocked out by a bar stool being used as a bat, sharks swimming through a flooded Los Angeles and viciously attacking cars and chowing down on pedestrians, a shark shooting up into the air from out of a manhole only to get blasted mid-air by a shotgun blast, the main cast breaking into a hardware store and arming up on guns, chainsaws, and homemade explosives to battle the shark infestation, and of course the actual title mash-up itself of swarms of sharks being tossed around through the air by three giant F5-category tornadoes with all the damage, destruction, death, and fun moments of campy cheese that you would expect from such an amazingly unique sight!

The only part of these scenes that I found a bit iffy though, was during the flooding of Los Angeles, the water level as to how much of the city is flooded at any given time seemed to change from scene to scene. In some scenes the water was half-covering vehicles and deep enough for fully-grown sharks to be swimming around and playing Jaws in, while in other parts there's hardly any water (or even none) covering the streets, and certainly nowhere near enough for sharks to be fitting into. In addition, toward the end when the characters are trying to throw some bombs into the middle of the tornadoes to make them dissipate, both the people in the helicopter flying towards the tornadoes, as well as the people on the ground shooting up at the flying sharks, got way too close to the tornado – seriously, they were all pretty much inches away from these gigantic F5-category tornadoes and their hair wasn't even so much as blowing around, much less them getting sucked up into it, which is what should have happened being so close to the funnels. But hey, just some minor nitpicks in an otherwise uber-cheesy and just plain fun portion of the movie.

None of that cheese though would really be worth a damn if the special effects were utter crap, but thankfully they're not. There are a few weaker moments for it scattered here or there, but for the most part it's certainly above-average for the usual Asylum fare, though about on-average with the best of their 2013 selection (such as Age of Dinosaurs and the upcoming Atlantic Rim). Much like with 2-Headed Shark Attack they used practical effects for close-ups of sharks munching down on people and some of the shots of their fins moving through the water, but CGI for the wide shots as well as for the shots of sharks either swimming underwater or being whipped around through the air, and both types looked pretty good most of the time. Another part of the effects that certainly deserves a mention here is that the storm effects in the first part of the movie, as it approaches from the distance, were very well done. In retrospect that may have even been real storm footage that was just seamlessly integrated, or perhaps they actually filmed in front of an approaching storm, but if neither of those are the case then those dark skies and thick foreboding clouds were really well done CGI moments that had you almost feeling the humid winds approaching.

Another thing the movie surprised me with a bit was that it does a good job of very quickly establishing all the characters and making you care for them enough so that you're actually a bit sad to see them start getting offed. As I said above, the movie is in full-swing of its insane unique plot by 20 minutes in, and already by that point it has you feeling like you know the main cast and makes you genuinely care about what happens to them. And don't necessarily assume you know who will survive and who will die, because the movie has a knack for throwing some potential curveballs in there in that regard. I suppose that's also just as much a testament to the strong acting as it is the writing and directing as well – pretty much everyone here shines pretty brightly and never did take me out of the moment with any bad acting, which is made even more surprising by the fact that many of the characters are played by Unknowns that have very little previous acting gigs. 

Of course there are a few decent-sized names here as well, as there normally are in Asylum movies so they can slap their names onto the cover art. We have Ian Ziering as the main lead, most known for his voice work as lead characters on the classic animated series' Biker Mice from Mars and Godzilla: The Series, with Tara Reid playing his ex-wife that he does not get along with well at all. Sadly, Tara Reid is not aging all that well. She still looks beautiful with enough make-up on, but all those TMZ-reported-on nights of drugs and parties has not been so kind to her, making her look far older then she actually is. Admittedly though, she was a bit better then I was expecting her to be with this; I was totally expecting her to be nothing short of a painful trainwreck to watch and listen to, but thankfully she isn't. Hell, even though her line delivery is pretty bland most of the time and she may not be the best actor this movie has to offer, I'd still say she turned in a better performance here then she did in Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark almost ten years ago. In addition to them, there's also John Heard playing a hilarious comedic relief character that's an old drunk who is a regular to Ian Ziering's bar that jumps in the car with them when all hell breaks loose, and Jaason Simmons from Baywatch playing one of Ian Ziering's friends and not nearly as much of a womanizing asshole as I was initially expecting him to be, and actually turning out to be one of my favorite characters in the whole thing.

And sure, most of these actors play their roles and act their way through all these insane shark-related situations pretty straight-faced, but sometimes playing things straight-faced in an otherwise really cheesy movie just adds to the cheese, in my opinion!

As I mentioned at various points earlier in my review, Sharknado may have a couple iffy parts here and there that made me scratch my head probably more then I was intended to as opposed to embracing it (changing water levels of the flooded city, characters getting within inches of a strong tornado with no repercussions, a couple minor shots of CGI that wasn't quite up to par with the rest), but the good far outweighs the bad, and with buckets of cheese just oozing from every pore of screen time. I never thought in a million years that if you took the two sub-genres that I'm utterly sick of, and combined them together into one movie, that it would result in a damn good time and just the revitalization I needed to feel for both shark movies as well as natural disaster flicks. Honestly, a movie like this is almost above review, because you get exactly what you expect a low budget movie called Sharknado to give you; If you love the title, you'll probably love what the movie has to offer, and if the title is something that makes you groan instead of laugh, then you're probably better off just staying away because the movie gives you all the cheese you would expect out of that title. Between Age of Dinosaurs already being out and Atlantic Rim coming out soon, followed shortly after (hopefully) by Sharknado, it looks like Asylum has a damn fine summer for 2013, with hopefully just as fine of a rest of the year to follow.

As to when you can expect to be able to add Sharknado to your home DVD and/or BluRay collections, sadly no release date (or even trailer for that matter) has yet to be announced, however if I was to take a guess I would place my money on late-July/early-August sometime, but that's nothing more then my own speculation. I do know however, that it will be airing on the SyFy Channel as one of their SyFy Original Movies and is currently set to air on the night of July 11th. As soon as a home video release date is announced though, along with a trailer, I'll be sure to edit this part of the review to include them.

In the meantime, enjoy another picture!

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

Early Review of Atlantic Rim/Attack From Beneath (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Asylum

Runtime: 85 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: When monsters suddenly appear from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a special team of military deep-sea pilots must take control of giant robots to combat the new threat.

Review: The Asylum is one of my favorite low budget production companies, as I've often said in plenty of my previous reviews. I had really high hopes for their line up of movies this year, especially after watching Age of Dinosaurs which I felt was their all-time best movie to date and can't gush about it enough. But then 100 Degrees Below Zero came around and I have to be honest in saying I really really did not care for that one much, and even though I had been anticipating AE: Apocalypse Earth quite a bit, that one too fell a bit short of expectations. It was still decent, but nowhere near as amazing as I had hoped it would be. 

Which brings me to Atlantic Rim, Asylum's upcoming mockbuster of Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming CGI slugfest Pacific Rim (admittedly, I believe Asylum is changing the name of their Atlantic Rim to Attack From Beneath, to avoid the usual legal troubles they find themselves in these days with their mockbusters. Also, it can currently be found on IMDB under the name of From The Sea). This was another one I've been highly anticipating, based off just the amazing trailer alone, and the one movie in the last few months I feel could potentially be just as good as Age of Dinosaurs. While Atlantic Rim (aka Attack From Beneath) isn't due out until July 9th, Asylum was kind enough to recently add me to their screener list and lo and behold, this was the first one sent my way to review! Suffice to say, I was so excited to check this one out that I canceled my plans for the rest of the night and within minutes of receiving it, I had it opened up and ready to be watched.

With this one, well, you can pretty much guess what the plot is just based off what movie it's mockbusting – giant monsters appear from under the ocean and the U.S. Military employs some giant robots piloted by trained solders to combat them as they come out of the ocean and start attacking cities. Now, what struck me almost right off the bat as a nice change of pace from the usual Asylum fare, was that this one had a rather large ensemble cast. Normally if we get four or five main main characters in one of these things, that's a good day, but in this one we have quite a few: Most notably we have the well-known rapper Treach playing as one of the Mech pilots. Alongside him we also have David Chokachi (from tons of SyFy Channel Original Movies and other Asylum flicks) as the leader of the Mech pilots and kind of a loose cannon, always getting himself in trouble with his superiors and kind of doing whatever he wants. He actually sort of reminded me a bit of a mix between Bug Hall from Arachnoquake and Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man role (for multiple reasons, one of which I'm sure anyone who has seen The Avengers will be able to pick up on during the climatic fight). Jackie Moore, who was also in another Asylum flick, the found footage horror movie 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck, plays his girlfriend that's also in the military alongside him and is the third of the Mech piloting trio. Her role, and the way she portrayed it, actually reminded me quite a bit of Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica – only thing missing was a scene of her smoking a cigar and beating up a superior officer, hahaha. All three of these people also had excellent on-screen chemistry with one another and you never doubt even once that these three are all best buds with one another.

Other then the Mech pilots themselves, there is also the always-entertaining Graham Green ( Jacob's father in the Twilight movies and one of John McClane's fellow cop co-workers in Die Hard with a Vengeance) and in this movie he plays the role of the leading Admiral in charge of everything and was, simply put, a total joy to watch. While everyone did excellent with their roles and the acting from everyone was pretty much above-average for what you would expect from an Asylum movie, it was Graham Green that had most of the best lines; it was always hilarious seeing him chew out his subordinates and having them have to reply simply with 'Yes sir'. Hell, every other line from his mouth was hilarious, especially with his total straight-faced delivery, and he owned every scene he was in, chewing the scenery and spitting it back out like it was stale tobacco. Sharing some of the screen time with him was also Nicole Alexandra Shipley (from Asylum's semi-recent 12/12/12) as one of the main computer techs that works in direct relation with the Mech pilots, and Nicole Dickson in her first acting role playing the part of a NASA scientist that works with the Admiral on the new Mech project (Actually, its called Project Armada in the movie, but for the sake of the review I'll just be referring to it as the Mech project). She was probably the weakest in the movie in terms of acting, but she was surprisingly still not too bad considering it was her first role ever. That about covers it for the main characters – like I said, a much larger cast then usual, plus there are also still quite a few smaller roles throughout, such as one played by regular Asylum director (including of this movie) Jared Cohn as a fighter jet pilot that leads a squadron of jets against the giant monster during one of the earlier action scenes when the monster first makes its appearance while it crawls out of the ocean and proceeds to wreck havoc on a city.

And wreck havoc it does! Quite a bit! Actually, between monster attacks on various cities, occasional mechanical issues with the giant Mechs, and of course the action-packed Mech vs Monster fights, there is pretty much almost always something good going on, action-wise, and when we do get a few minutes of downtime it's wisely used to help establish the characters with some good characterization moments, and then it's never too long before we're thrusted back into some awesome action stuff again. As a matter of fact, I was quite surprised with just how realistic some of the characterization and character-specific beats were such as one scene where, after first finding out about and fighting a monster, David Chokachi's character, when face to face with his friends again, excitably relayed what happened during the fight just like a little boy would when talking about the newest episode of whatever show he and his friends are into. Personally, For Little Jeffrey back in the day, that would have probably been either Gargoyles or Power Rangers.

And speaking of Power Rangers, another thing I loved about this movie is that for a couple scenes after the main Mech trio fought off a giant monster, they get out of their giant robot suits and go through areas of the partially destroyed city to help those trapped or injured in the rubble caused by their fight, and the character played by Treach goes off to help the Red Cross out with fixing up people badly injured and all the other stuff they then have to deal with... which is something the Power Rangers never once did, that I can recall. With them, they fought off a monster and then always left right away to celebrate, thus leaving the city officials on their own to deal with half their city being destroyed (and on a regular basis, at that) – for shame, Power Rangers, for shame! 

Actually, I mention Power Rangers in this review quite a bit because I was reminded of the show pretty often throughout the movie. Hell, each Mech had lights on the outside of them, as well as interior lighting in the cockpits, that were all a certain specific color to each Mech; One was Red-themed, one was Blue-themed, and the third was Green-themed, and to add on top of that each one had its own unique Mech-specific power weapon! With those color designations, combined with special power weapons, matched up with giant monster-fighting robots, I was actually expecting some Power Rangers references at some point, and I have to say I was a a bit sad that we didn't get one. Also, this movie would have been the perfect opportunity for Asylum to bring on an old Power Rangers alum into their ranks, like perhaps Jason David Frank (Tommy from the Mighty Morphin' days). Seriously, how friggin' awesome would it have been to see Jason David Frank, the original Green Ranger, piloting the green-themed Mech in this movie?

But I digress. Kind of went off on a side-tangent there, hahaha. Back to the character stuff: It was nice to get a military leader in one of these movies that's not just all gung-ho about nuking the enemy creature in question and is actually against such a plan. So many times movies like this end with the military guy in charge essentially saying 'screw it' and dropping a nuke on the creature as an easy out, but not here, my friends, not at all! He's not only 100% against such a plan, but he actually has to put in a good effort to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen. As a matter of fact, all the characterization in this movie was more attention to that then Asylum normally gives in their movies and it was all much appreciated. For instance, there was also a little love triangle subplot added in between the three Mech pilots. Seems not only are two of them dating, but the girl had actually cheated on him while drunk a few weeks back, with the other one. It was an interesting subplot that added a bit of tension between the characters for a while, however it ultimately ended up being a bit pointless since it doesn't ever really get resolved at all. They're in the middle of dealing with it when they get the alert that New York City is being attacked by the Mother of all Monsters essentially, and they have to leave to go partake in the big climatic battle, and the movie never returns to that subplot anymore after that. Would have been nice to get some form of conclusion to that, but oh well. Just a minor nitpick.

There's actually a couple of other nitpicks I have with this, that I may as well get out of the way now. The first of which is that I would have liked to see a scene or two of the Mech pilots learning to drive and control their giant undersea Mechs. There is a point later in the movie where their Mechs get an upgrade to their hardware and there is a quick re-training scene of them having to learn how to use this new technology, and I suppose by the point we meet everyone at the beginning of the movie they're already familiar with how to pilot and control these things (after all, the movie can only be so long so they can't really waste time with stuff like that), but it still would have been nice to see, but it's far from a deal breaker. As I said, it's only a minor personal nitpick.

The next issue though is slightly bigger then a nitpick, though again not quite a deal breaker. In the second half of the movie, when the much-larger second monster makes itself known and begins its assault on New York City, we only ever see that one monster yet all the characters keep referring to it as 'them'. Anytime anyone talks about that monster, they keep talking about it as if there are way more then just that one, yet we never once see any of the others, so I'm unsure if there were supposed to be tons of other battles happening across the city but just all off-screen, or if it was some kind of dialog error, or what the deal was but it made the last 20 minutes or so a bit confusing as to what was going on with the monster and if there were more or not.

Over all though, since I liked this one quite a bit, I don't really want to end my review off on a downer negative note, so I'll bring things back around to the positive side in mentioning the excellent CGI effects work here. Seriously, this movie had astounding CGI and way above-average for what we've come to expect from Asylum. Be it the wonderfully-designed killer monsters or the giant Mechs themselves, or especially the city-destroying CGI brawls between the two, everything in this movie in terms of the special effects looked excellent and everyone at Asylum should pat themselves on the back for a great job well done! 

Atlantic Rim (Sorry, I mean Attack From Beneath) would make a great summer double-bill with Age of Dinosaurs, as both movies encompass the best that Asylum has to offer and both have truly insanely chaotic, awesome, and fun third acts. I know Asylum doesn't really do sequels anymore, but out of all of their movies that deserve one, this is the one I want to see a sequel to most. In addition, I find most of their best movies are their mockbusters, so its sad that they seem to be doing them a lot less and less as time goes on. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next two years they stop doing these ones all together. I mean, I can't blame them seeing as how its just leading to legal issues after legal issues these days, but its still sad to see them declining, so it's all the more important you get out there and support these mockbuster titles. 

As mentioned at the top, Atlantic Rim, AKA Attack From Beneath gets released on July 9th, so be sure to pick up your DVD or BluRay copy that day and help support our favorite B-Movie company and make sure they know which kinds of movies we want to see most!

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Cloned: The Recreator Chronicles (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Recreator Labs
 

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: Three teenagers stumble upon a secret laboratory while on a camping trip and encounter superior clones of themselves. Duplicates; Doubles; Recreations; they are exact copies of Craig, Tracy and Derek, and the teenagers are no match for their physically stronger, faster, and all-around better selves. Their only hope is to outwit them and to escape before they are replaced.

Review: Alongside a screener for Attack of the Herbals, I was also sent another screener by MTI Home Video for a movie they recently distributed here in The U.S and Canada titled Cloned: The Recreator Chronicles, a movie I had heard nothing about before seeing this screener, but was pretty excited to check out based on just the title alone - after all, I always love me some clone action!

This one starts off with a group of fun-loving teens going camping in the woods one weekend and during a really bad storm have to seek shelter in a nearby seemingly-abandoned cottage. Shortly after, identical clone copies of them pop up out of nowhere to save them from being attacked by the murderous couple who own the cottage, but it isn't long before its clear that these aren’t exactly identical clones – they are stronger, faster, mind game-playing evil clones that are out to replace the originals, which provided plenty of great tension-filled scenes. Actually, one of the things I enjoyed most about this movie was that it was never dull. It pretty much started off jumping right into the main plot pretty quickly, with something interesting happening almost every step of the way, or some sort of attention-grabbing scene going on to keep your focus rooted on the movie. Granted, there is a short bit in the middle where things slowed a bit, but it was only for a little bit and even during that it was still kind of fun to watch the characters interacting with their mysterious cloned copies.

Which brings me to another of the movie's really strong points. Each of the main actors here all did an excellent job, especially considering that each had to essentially play two characters, a good version and an evil version of themselves, which all of them did really well, never making it confusing as to which one we were watching. There was even some good twists toward the end as well, one of which I really loved that had to deal with one of the characters and their clone essentially switching roles for the climax. Of course with a movie like this, the majority of the fun comes from watching the evil versions of everyone as they loved to play mind games with the Originals and screw around with them - in both meanings of that phrase. See, another thing the movie has going for it is that it has plenty of good eye candy; steamy sex scenes, changing-clothes scenes, shower scenes, skinny dipping scenes, and walking around naked scenes. The only thing I love more then an evil clone babe? An evil clone babe that seems to have an allergy to wearing clothes!

There are a couple minor things I wasn't a fan of though. For instance, it takes way too long to start explaining what's going on in the movie, so during a lot of the scenes instead of really paying attention, your mind is instead focused on trying to come up with explanations as to what the deal is with these clones, where they came from, why they're doing what they're doing, and all that. I feel if they had explained some of that a bit earlier in the movie instead of saving it for the final little bit, it would have made things a bit more clear and my mind wouldn't have been wandering to try to piece things together quite so much. Especially since it's not like it's a part of some big twist or anything, I mean, we know right off the bat that these are evil clones, so it's more of just filling in some backstory on them a bit sooner then it actually does.

I also wasn't such a fan of the fact that none of these people seem to be freaked out or even care by the fact that exact duplicate copies of themselves just showed up at the door. They go around for most of the movie acting normal about this, as if these people were long-time friends that showed up to party with them. They eat and drink with them, play games with them, chat with them, screw around with them (again, in both senses of the word), as if it was no big deal that they're mysterious clones. I would have liked to see much more of the reactionary mental impact of that, but they kind of get over it and move on really quickly. The sole exception is the one teen that leaves right away because he doesn't want to deal with any of it and returns later in the movie to help save the day (which itself is kind of a plot hole since the clones are supposed to know what their Originals are going to do at any given time, so why didn't his clone know he was sneaking around and planning an attack?).

This movie was a pleasant surprise to me that while far from great, was a decent enough little time waster on this rainy day that I certainly don't regret watching. The fact that the actual title during the opening credits is simply 'The Recreator Chronicles', and then the subtitle of 'Cloned' comes up a few minutes later into the movie has me thinking that this was merely Part 1 in a pre-planned series. However, direct-to-video B-Movies, especially this day in age, very rarely get sequels so I wouldn't hold my breath for one, although I'd be thrilled if we actually get it. 

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Attack of the Herbals (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  Clear Focus

 
Runtime: 81 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: After years in exile, Jackson McGregor has returned to his grandparent's home in Lobster Cove, a small Scottish village where the daily routine consists of eating, sleeping, fishing... and drinking tea. After discovering a mysterious crate of herbal tea washed up on shore, Jackson, along with his friend Russell hatch a plan to sell the tea and save the village from a rich businessman. Unfortunately the tea given to the townspeople soon turns into a nightmare, and Jackson finds himself in a village of flesh-eating zombies.

Review: MTI Home Video recently got in touch with me and offered to send some screeners my way for some of their films, and since I'm always on the lookout for more screener opportunities of course I accepted. The first one that came my way for review is for a movie I've actually heard a bit about in the past, but isn't one I really followed progress on or knew a whole lot about. Attack of the Herbals is a horror/comedy in the vein of movies like Shaun of the Dead, Dead and Breakfast, Black Sheep, The Doghouse, and movies of that ilk, and it's about an old Nazi experiment during WWII that involved herbal tea that could turn whoever drank it into zombie-like creatures, and some remains of that experiment end up in present day in some small coastal Scottish town, and it's not long until it starts causing zombie havoc. That was pretty much all I knew about it going into it. This one I believe has already been released in the U.K. and some other European countries a couple years back, but just recently hit DVD over here in Canada and the U.S. thanks to MTI Home Video.

Unfortunately, the end result wasn't quite as much fun as I was hoping/expecting, given the very unique plot of herbal tea-created zombies. To start, the main lead is incredibly unlikable, which right off the bat makes it hard to really get into the movie. He's rude to pretty much everyone around him – his so-called friends, co-workers, grandparents, old bosses - but then expects those same people to bend over backwards for him over just about everything, and blames everything that goes wrong (even if its his fault) on everyone else...and yet all these people love him? Huh? The fact that this is a character we're supposed to connect with and sympathize with makes no sense to me because he's just so unlikable. There are antagonists in other movies that aren’t as much of a whiny asshole as this guy is. And if that's meant to be part of the joke of the movie, it totally went over my head because it did not seem that way at all.

Adding to that, the movie overstays its welcome quite a bit. It's only an hour and 21 minutes, but feels so much longer. I think the main reason for that is because many scenes, especially in the first half of the movie, were only there for awkwardly-delivered exposition and most of that exposition was for things that don't even really matter in the greater scheme of the movie, so it all came across as needless padding. All of those scenes could have been cut and the movie could have been tightened up a bit. It also takes way too long for anything to happen; Other then the opening scene, and one very quick 20-second scene of a dog being eaten (off-screen, at that), it's well over halfway through the movie before anything even relating to zombies or horror-esque stuff even happens. For about 85% of the movie, it's a total ABC Channel family-drama movie through and through. I keep saying that the worst offense a B-Movie can make is to be boring, and this one came very dangerously close to that, especially since the main lead is someone I couldn't get into at all, it made that first chunk of the movie very hard to sit through. Attack of the Herbals probably could have benefited from taking the Full Moon approach and have it only be just barely an hour, but a very tight and well-executed hour.

Luckily most of the supporting cast were much more likable and fun to watch, and I wish one or more of these characters could have been the 'central hero' instead of the guy we got. His best friend is clearly the real highlight of the movie and the kind of fun-loving but down-to-earth best friend that everyone kind of wants to have. In addition to him, the main character's grandparents play off each other quite humorously, as any couple who have been married for 40-odd years probably would, and I was genuinely sad when their fates came later in the movie, and all the random miscellaneous town residents are pretty quirky and have at least one or two good moments each. Hell, even the main antagonist (a rich guy trying to buy out the main guy's family's post office land so that he can make a golf course) was a blast to watch anytime he was on-screen as he was just such a hilarious kind of asshole, especially to his servants – you could always count on his scenes for a good laugh. It also helps that the acting is pretty decent from everyone involved. Sure, it does tend to go up and down depending on the scene, but it was mostly pretty good more often then it wasn't.

As for the reason anyone would even give this movie a second glance on the shelf, the zombies themselves, wellll...as I said above, it's well over halfway through the movie before any show up. As in like, an hour into this hour and 21 minutes movie. So we don't even get to the zombie action until the last quarter of the movie, which was a huge and major bummer for me as I was expecting something along the lines of the movies I mentioned above, where they kind of just get to the point pretty quickly. However when we do finally get them, the movie is a total blast for that last half an hour. These aren’t zombies in the traditional sense – here the tea just gets them addicted and wanting more and more of this tea, until whatever the Nazis put into it has worked its way into the people's systems and turns everyone into a wacky/looney boiling rage and makes them feel like they have to kill everyone else...and they only get worse from there, having their eyes go all creepy glow in the dark Underworld-style, and they get Evil Dead-esque demon multiple voice syndrome. This twist on the traditional zombie lore may turn some away, but I personally really enjoyed it. This day in age, zombie movies have been done to death, so I always appreciate it whenever one throws in some kind of curveball to make it at least a little fresh. And as to be expected in a movie such as this, there are a ton of really fun (and hilarious) zombie attack/fight scenes filled with lots of gooey gore once this portion of the movie hits, with a couple of really unique moments that I won't spoil here but I will say that one of them involves a drunk wheelchair guy that essentially becomes a hilarious Bruce Campbell wannabe, and that both of these scenes alone almost make the entire movie worth it.

Unfortunately all that excellent zombie stuff was just too late to really save the movie. While the first hour does have some quirky characters, funny moments, and decent acting to get you through it, it's still a very long and tedious hour, following around a very unlikable lead, before the movie finally gets to the goods. Props have to be given for attempting something new in a tired and overdone genre (awesome vicious demon-like zombies created by Nazi-experimented tea sure is a First in my books), but the outcome turned out to be a bit of a fumble that could have been salvaged had it been for better editing and some tightening up of the movie. As it is, I would recommend watching the first 15 minutes or so to get a feel for the characters, and then just skip to a few minutes before the hour-mark and watch the rest from there. Trust me, you really won't be missing much in between, and the movie will feel much stronger to you because of it.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

V/H/S/2 (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Collective

Runtime: 93 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into a house and find a large collection of VHS tapes. Viewing the horrific contents of each cassette, they realize there may be dark motives behind the student's disappearance.

Review: V/H/S/2 (formally titled the much better S-V/H/S) dropped last night at midnight on the Video on Demand channels and Itunes. I was hoping to stay up and watch it then, but due to time differences, 'dropped at midnight' actually meant about 4:30 am for me, soo... yeah, it kinda had to wait for the following day, plus I then wanted to wait for it to be dark out before I watched it, otherwise what would even be the point, am I right?

Anyway, V/H/S/2 starts on a similar wrap-around story as the first movie. This time around, a private Investigator and his girlfriend are hired to track down and find a missing delinquent teen and their investigation leads them to an old abandoned creepy house, which has contained within it a very large collection of old VHS tapes, of which (like the first movie) the following anthology stories are contained on. Overall this wrap-around segment was actually quite a bit better then the one in the first movie and had some nice genuinely creepy moments within it, as well as acts like an actual proper wrap-around story and doesn't just randomly end midway through the movie like the one in the first movie did. However one aspect of it really grinds my gears and annoyed me quite a bit – The teen they're looking for? Not one of the teens from the first movie's wrap-around segment like I was thinking it would be. The old creepy house he finds? Not the same one as the one in the first movie's wrap-around segment either. Despite being very similar to the first movie's, this movie's wrap-around portion is not related to the first movie's in any shape, way or form, making this movie 100% completely stand-alone and unconnected to the first movie. While I didn't like that portion of the first movie, it still would have been nice (and expected) for this movie to tie into that one in some way, preferably via the wrap-around stories, especially since this one's seems like it was initially written to do just that. Just seems like a pretty big missed opportunity to create a bit of background mythology, especially with a third movie having already been announced.

With that slight disappointment out of the way though, the first of the actual short stories deals with a man that gets a cybernetic eye to replace his lost eye, and the camera for this story comes from inside that eye. For reasons he doesn't understand, that new eye allows him to see ghosts, and he meets up with a girl who underwent the same experimental surgery to get her hearing back and likewise, it's allowed her to hear ghosts. Teamed up and trying to figure out what's going on, the two start getting assaulted by some very nasty ghosts. This story had a pretty great premise, with a few fun scenes and plenty of scares to go around. While it wasn't quite on the same level of unease as the first movie's opening segment, this one had quite a bit of jump scares to keep you on-edge. There are two aspects though that stop it from being great; The acting was distractingly bad, like SyFy Channel Original Movie of the Week level of bad, and was constantly taking me out of the moment and ruining some of the scenes that should have been way scarier then they were due to the acting. In addition, a lack of answers to pretty much anything that's going on also hurt it a bit. With some better actors and more time to fully flesh this segment out, this could have been one of the stronger stories here. As it is, it's still decent thanks to some great jump scares and creepy moments, and I was never bored or wishing it would just end already, but at the same time it's could really have benefited from some tune-ups.

Moving onto the second story, this one has a man with some kind of cam attached to his helmet as he goes for a bike ride in the woods, during which he gets bitten by a zombie and we follow around with him as he becomes a zombie himself and shambles around, attacking other people in the woods. I feel this segment thinks its being revolutionary and doing something new and unique that's never been done before (that's the vibe I get from watching it), however, this exact thing has been done countless times in dozens of homemade youtube videos and student projects that are online. And this version of it does nothing at all to set itself out from the pack and doesn't even attempt to bring anything new to the table. Chances are, even just reading this paragraph right now you can probably tell exactly how this segment plays out and can probably guess every single thing that happens in it, because it's just that generic. I find most anthology movies have an entry that you can just skip and the movie will be better off for you because of it. With the first V/H/S it was the invisible static man killer entry and for V/H/S/2, it's this one.

The middle story of this anthology is probably my top favorite of not only this bunch, but of both movies, and was brought to us by Gareth Evans, the guy who made the excellent The Raid: Redemption. A camera crew shooting a documentary is following a cult leader around on the Eve of the great 'passing over', an event that he and his followers believe will allow them to open the gates to 'Paradise' and cross over into that mythical realm. While this was easily my favorite and I could probably write a full-length review on just this segment alone, it's also the one I feel I should talk about the least just because the less you know about what happens in it, the better. This segment revels in the unexpected, and it should be watched knowing virtually nothing about it in order to get the full effect. All I'll say is that this story goes from 'normal' to 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' in about half of its runtime, and uses the other half to go from 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' to about twenty miles past that, so that by the time this segment is over you almost need to take a break and recuperate your sanity and nerves before moving on to the final story in the movie.

Which while this final story was still pretty good and I enjoyed it, its placement really should have been swapped with the previous one as I feel that would have been a much stronger and way more impactful way to end the movie off. In this last story of the movie, we get a camera attached to a family dog while the foul-mouthed children of said family (which at times pleasantly reminded me a lot of the kids from movies like E.T., The Goonies, and Super 8, among others) play a prank on their older sister and her asshole boyfriend, which is followed by a counter-prank...at least until some white-skinned, black-eyed aliens show up to abduct everyone. There's really not much more to the plot of this one then that, and it's easily the shortest entry of the movie at only 15 minutes long, but as someone who is pretty obsessed with the whole alien/UFO/abduction phenomenon, I found this one pretty damn creepy in its own ways, and it makes me wish for more creepy horror movies to cover ground like this (such as Dark Skies, which did a decent job with a similar plot when that was released earlier this year). As I said previously though, this entry would have fitted much better if it happened earlier in the movie and the previous entry took place here, because as much as I personally liked this one and was pretty creeped out at moments, it doesn't even begin to come close to touching the previous entry, and thus it seems very confusing to me as to why they would place this one as the final short story of the movie as it's very much a one-note, simple, cookie cutter entry that, honestly, not a whole lot happens in it and it kind of just peeters out instead of ending on a bang like the last one. Then again, at only 15 minutes long, that doesn't really leave much room for many things to happen.

In my review of the first movie, I stated that one of the biggest faults for some of the individual stories was that there just wasn't enough time for the subject matter and a couple of them could have benefited greatly from a slightly longer runtime. The exact same can be said for some of these entries as well, which is made even more frustrating this time by the fact that it's a much shorter movie to boot. Granted, it has one less short story then the first movie did, but they could have used that as the perfect opportunity to fill in that missing space by extending the length of each of these stories by an extra ten minutes each (except for that stupid zombie one) instead of just shortening the overall movie's runtime. My biggest complaint about most of these stories is just that, much like with the final story of the first movie, there's just not enough time allowed for the subject matter, and just about each one could have benefited from being given slightly more screen time.

Luckily that's the only thing about the first movie that's made worse, however that mixed with the utterly confusing decision to make a very similar-but-not-connected wrap-around story, the placement of some of these stories, and that terrible zombie segment does lower my score of this one a bit. But that's ok, because unlike the first, there's plenty of score to go around here. Most of the short story segments were vastly improved from the ones in the first movie (With the exception of that zombie one, which I could have done without) making this movie an overall improvement over the first, and since it's in no way connected to it other then in name-only, you can even skip that one and just move right on to watching this much-better version of essentially the same movie. Plus, between abducting aliens, zombie viruses, killer ghosts, and Chaos Death Cults (among a few other surprises in there) there's such a wide range of horror movie topics here that pretty much everyone will find something to love.

Now if you could just take the best segments from V/H/S, and the best segments from V/H/S/2, and mix them together into their own anthology movie (and make sure they're put in an order that makes sense), then we'd have a really nice and solid horror anthology film.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

 

 

Introducing The B-Movie Newsstand!

As long-time readers of The B-Movie Shelf may recall, I used to cover not only movie reviews but also B-Movie news as well, however I stopped due to lack of free time. I still have been wanting to get news items our there however, and I recently discovered a way to do just that, thanks to Paper.li - an automatic internet newspaper-creating website. The title will be The B-Movie Newsstand and I have it set to update once a week, every Thursday morning/early afternoon (depending on your timezone) and it will automatically collect links to every website article and news item from around the web, that has been shared on Twitter, by anyone, with the hashtag #bmovienews, so anyone at all can contribute to it as long as they use that hashtag.

I've set up a permanent link to it over on the right-hand side of this blog, near the top, but for the sake of also including it in this article, you can find the newspaper over here.