Good Time (2017)

I tend to like gritty, urban crime flicks and "Good Time" looked like something I should check out after catching a trailer for it a while back. Where I ended up on this one, ultimately, was pretty much split down the middle; finding it to have a very solid first half and a second half that fell a little short.

A New York reprobate and his mentally retarded, tag-along brother rob a bank and, after getting dye bombed and stashing the money in a pizza joint, seem to be pretty much in the clear... That is, until the slow-witted brother panics and runs from a cop, landing him in Rikers. From here, his bro who made a successful on-foot getaway sets out to free his sibling - along the way getting mixed up with some other forms of degenerate city scum through a course of chance events...

Up until a certain point - around the halfway mark, it seemed - this movie had me amply roped in, but I just found myself not quite finding the rest nearly as engrossing. The continual involvement of a certain character seemed a bit abrupt and what transpires from there just came across as far too questionable. "Twilight" star, Robert Pattinson, in - what I guess could be considered his 'breakout' role - does a decent enough job, though his character isn't given much time time to be fleshed out at all and the same goes for about every other character - namely Jennifer Jason Leigh - whose part was incredibly rushed. Overall, I was considerably disappointed with "Good Time". I feel there's a better movie in this that was lost due to iffy direction...

Mayhem (2017)

Either this movie sucks or "The Belko Experiment" raised the bar for office work-place survival-horror flicks. Could be both, seeing as how these movies are very similar in plot, as well as setting, but "Mayhem" went off in such an over-stylized and over-acted direction that it just came across as strained and irritating.

A new virus called ID-7 is making its rounds that causes its hosts to lose all their inhibitions and act totally on raw impulse - such as, say, going and beating the shit out of their boss, publicly fucking someone, and etc. Also, a murder loophole was established so a blind eye is turned in favor of those who are infected out of their mind and commit homicide. The virus finds its way into a giant law firm which is promptly quarantined while the staff is left to their own crazed devices for 8-hours as the contamination is extracted from the building. This gives a recently fired, cut-throat employee his opportunity to get to the top floor and get even with those who fucked him out of his job.

There's definitely a promising concept here - again, not unlike "The Belko Experiment", only with a mind-altering sickness afflicting a white collar work environment instead of a murder quota - but ultimately "Mayhem" just seemed to be trying too hard with the played-out narration providing introductions to all the main players, the heavily (if not IRONICALLY 'cheesy') stylized fight scenes and the incessant, inane one-liners. They just seemed to be going so far out of their way to try to be 'off-the-wall' that it just plays out as derivative and annoying, with nothing even memorable as far as violence and gore. Honestly, though, I can see some people enjoying this one, it's just not my kinda thing I guess.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

Taking into account all of the mundane, cliche-driven, hugely ineffective supernatural-horror movies that are thoughtlessly thrown before undemanding casual film-goers for the sake of a quick weekend box office cash-grab, it's always a breath of fresh air when a supernatural movie comes along and reminds us cynics that originality IS still possible within this horror sub-genre. "The Autopsy of Jane Doe" is a very intriguing and creepy film that manages to be unpredictable and compellingly cryptic.

A father-and-son morgue outfit receives corpse of an unidentified young woman who was discovered in the basement of a house containing several brutally murdered people. Set with a strict deadline to determine the cause of death, the duo start burning the midnight oil in search of any death-inflicting indicators. As the the examination progresses, they start finding weird internal harm and abnormalities throughout the body with no external signs of trauma. Things get more and more bizarre as they come across more arcane evidence within the body that culminates into a rather chaotic outcome...

The build-up of this movie works very well in providing a creepy and 'contained' atmosphere along with pretty convincing autopsy gore effects and, ultimately, an intensely morbid conclusion. The lack of the obvious, mainstream 'devices' all too often overused in 'ghostly'/occult-themed movies was also a welcomed sight-for-sore-eyes - such as the absence of children, dolls, spooky old country homes, and the minimality of jump-scares. Check out "The Autopsy of Jane Doe" if you're craving a cool, effective horror flick!

Jungle (2017)

"Jungle" is a bit of a departure from what I've seen from prior Greg McLean works - like the "Wolf Creek" movies and "The Belko Experiment" - in that it goes for more of a harrowing survival story than the carnage-laden stuff I've enjoyed from him in the past. And, low-and-behold, I dug the hell out of it.

Three backpacking buddies are offered by a experienced traveler the opportunity to hike into the Bolivian jungle to search for a missing tribe. Sold on what could only be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, as well as earn those National Geographic photography bucks, the four trek out into the dense jungle, but one of the men soon proves to be the weak link of their expedition when he gets a nasty case of trench foot and doesn't appear able to continue on. They make an attempt to raft down the raging river, but debate over navigating the harsh rapids leads to the men splitting up into two groups - one pair of them taking the river route and the other two proceeding on foot. For the rafters, shit doesn't go too well and they are separated - leaving one guy hopelessly lost in the jungle and forced to survive.

Among the things that this movie does well is making the South American jungle seem like a total bitch to be lost in. The poor bastard here is forced to extract parasites from under his skin, wanders upon quicksand, battles psychosis and more; and it happens to be based on a true story of a traveler who suffered this deadly ordeal (including stuff they had to omit from this film for time...) back in the early '80s. There's text at the end provides a few details involving some of the other guys in their party that was pretty interesting and could almost warrant a movie in itself, I thought. Also, Daniel Radcliffe - a former child star who shit bags like other former child star, Shia Lebeouf, should definitely take notes from as how to keep your career going and NOT become a retarded waste of life - pulls off his pretty physically demanding role incredibly well - even going so far as to do some of that 'method acting' shit in dropping a ton of weight to look emaciated. Could have done without some of the unnecessary flashbacks/cut-aways, but in all, "Jungle" is a very solid and enjoyable movie, just don't go into it expecting tons of violence and bloodshed.

Hotel Inferno (2013)

"Hotel Inferno" is another odd, gory and relatively entertaining film put out by Necrostorm. It's shot completely as a first-person action/splatter scenario, which, I guess, makes it the first of it's kind for this very particular film 'niche'.

A seasoned hit man is hired to kill a murderous couple in their hotel room by a mysterious client who has supplied him with computerized sunglasses that act as a camera. When the hit doesn't go totally as planned and the hired assassin figures something is 'off' when his targets start acting zombie-ish, he ditches the glasses and fights to escape the hotel that is loaded with Satanic, plague-infected goons. Even when the glasses are off, we still see all the action exclusively through the main character's eyes.

The first-person 'device' this movie uses is obviously far from new, as we've seen it in the shitty "Maniac" remake, "Hardcore Henry" and a good portion of "Enter the Void" - though they manage to do a decent enough job of making it work for the most part. I wasn't annoyed the entire time. The gore helped quite a bit and there were a few good practical effects here and there. In all though, I wasn't all that crazy about "Hotel Inferno". A few parts toward the end got a bit boring and dragged on too long (fucking candle lighting and long-winded exposition, my fucking gawd!) and I wasn't totally sold on the POV-video game type gimmick, but as far as European produced splatter flicks go there are a LOT worse. Moderately entertaining, overall.

Red Christmas (2017)

Figuring it wouldn't hurt to get a jump on my holiday horror viewing, I went ahead and checked out the new Xmas slasher, "Red Christmas". I didn't really know what to expect from this one (aside from its yuletide theme) and what it turned out to be was pretty much Ryan Nicholson's "Hanger" meets Bob Clark's "Black Christmas".

The movie kicks off with the bombing of an abortion clinic during a pro-life rally where a living fetus is discovered in a refuse bucket and carried off by one of the extremists. Cut to twenty years later where Dee Wallace is a widow hosting a Christmas get-together with her dysfunctional, intercontinental shit-bag kin out in the her home in the Australian countryside. While the holiday festivities aren't totally going off without a hitch to begin with, things get even more irregular when a cloaked, gauzed and mentally retarded stranger comes knocking. Upon reading a letter to his "mother", it becomes clear that he was the baby that was rescued from the clinic two decades prior and Dee Wallace happened to be the recipient of the womb-scooping. After being booted from their home, the distraught reject proceeds to kill off the family members one by one...

This one wasn't bad, but could definitely have been better. The concept is cool and Dee Wallace certainly steals the show, for sure. She's like a bad ass, foul-mouthed, take-no-shit June Cleaver in this! There are a few decent kills (the stand-out death involving a blender), though certain ones didn't seem to match the more serious tone much of the film, overall, as they were too over-the-top and akin to one of Adam Green's "Hatchet" movies, say. Another miss for me was in that they should've gone for a more Christmasy 'vibe'. This surely isn't a movie that you'll want to watch to get into that wintry, seasonal feel around December. Still, "Red Christmas" is a watchable slasher flick that I don't see myself revisiting any time in the foreseeable future.