Underworld: Blood Wars (now on home video)

Review by Bob Ignizio

Plotless is a criticism one often sees leveled against action films. That's one failing  UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS certainly does not suffer from. On the contrary, there is so much plot that the film becomes a huge, incomprehensible mess. Not only do we have four previous films worth of backstory to recount in flashbacks and voice-overs, but there are multiple factions of vampires and werewolves each working to their own ends as they cross and double-cross each other. And sure, you can follow it if you pay close attention, but given how dumb and ridiculous it all is, the rewards don’t really justify the effort.

Dumb and ridiculous has always been a trademark of the UNDERWORLD series in which blood sucking “death dealer” Selene (Kate Beckinsale) has to do battle with the savage Lycans (the series name for werewolves) while simultaneously fending off scheming members her own kind. That was fine in the previous films, though, as it never felt like they took themselves all that seriously. As disposable as they may have been, they were entertaining on a B movie level, always offering plenty of well-staged action scenes and cheesy special effects. Here, the action and CGI monsters seem like more of an afterthought, with Cory Goodman’s script instead focusing on the dense mythology of the series.

 

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Cold Moon (now playing at Tower City Cinemas)

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: COLD MOON opens today in Cleveland exclusively at Tower City Cinemas.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

The late writer Michael McDowell is best known these days, if at all, for co-writing the screenplay to BEETLEJUICE, which led to further film work in the nineties. But during the eighties, he cranked out a number of pulpy horror novels, including the then ubiquitous “Blackwater” series. Early in his career he wrote the novel ‘Cold Moon Over Babylon’, published as a paperback original in 1980. That novel has now been adapted into the film COLD MOON by director Griff Furst and his co-writer, Jack Snyder.

At first, COLD MOON plays like a fairly typical seventies gothic slasher movie, something along the lines of BLOOD AND LACE or THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, perhaps. That means unlike a FRIDAY THE 13^TH eighties style slasher, there’s more emphasis on character, place, and subtext. We sense there will be a little more meat on its cinematic bones than just seeing how high a body count the killer can rack up, and what interesting forms the deaths might take.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Death Note (now available on Netflix)

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: DEATH NOTE is now available on Netflix.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

A high school student finds a magical book that lets him kill anyone he wants just by writing their name in DEATH NOTE. Based on a Japanese manga which was, in turn, previously filmed as an anime feature film, director/writer Adam Wingard’s version tries to adapt the premise for western audiences.

The student in question is Light Turner (Nat Wolf), a smart kid who sells term papers and is still coping with the murder of his mother. Once he finds the book and starts reading it, a demon named Ryuk (voice of Willem DaFoe) appears and explains that he can kill anyone Light wants him to, provided he writes the victim’s name in the book and can concentrate on their face.

Light decides to use this newfound power over life and death to be something of a superhero, taking out the kind of bad guys his policeman father (Shea Whigham) often has to let go due to technicalities. Sort of a supernatural Dirty Harry, if you will.

Nosferatu (October 6th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[NOSFERATU screens Friday October 6th at 9:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque. Live musical accompaniment by The Invincible Czars.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

For those who don't already know, F.W. Murnau's silent horror classic NOSFERATU is in reality a very thinly disguised and very much unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. Stoker's heirs were not pleased and tried to have every copy of the film destroyed, but like any good movie monster NOSFERATU managed to rise from the grave. It is now considered one of the undisputed classics of the horror genre, one of those films that film historians and critics will tell you that you simply have to see in order to have an appreciation for the development of cinematic art, blah, blah, blah. And they're right, of course, but that's not why you should watch it. You should watch NOSFERATU because, even at almost a century old, it's still fun to watch.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: It

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: IT is now playing in theaters.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Stephen King’s 1986 novel ‘It’ is over 1000 pages, takes place in two different times, boasts a monster who appears mainly as a clown but is, in reality, comprised of orange lights from another dimension, and includes a scene in which group of adolescent friends engage in a consensual gang bang. To say that it is a difficult work to adapt faithfully to the screen is probably an understatement.

The first attempt to turn ‘It’ into a movie was the 1990 TV film version directed by Tommy Wallace. It boasted a strong cast that included Tim Reid, John Ritter, Harry Anderson, and Annette O’Toole, with Tim Curry giving an iconic performance as the monstrous Pennywise. It’s well acted and reasonably true to the book, but in trying to cram everything into three hours skips over a lot. The special effects are, to be charitable, dated, and much of the horror had to be toned down for the television standards of the time to the point that you’re not always sure whether characters have died or disappeared or been injured until it’s flat out told to you.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: The Blackcoat's Daughter

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER

 is now available on various home video formats.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Although it is the first feature film directed by Oz Perkins (son of Anthony), THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER is his second to see release. I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE was released last year by Netflix, and was one of this critic’s favorite films of the year. Despite having sat on a shelf for a while, THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER is almost as good.

Perkins takes a familiar horror film setup – a private girl’s school oozing with barely contained sexuality and beset by evil – and puts a fresh and satisfyingly creepy spin on it. With most of the students going home for break, Kat (Kiernan Shipka) remains, waiting for her parents to arrive and fearing that they won’t. The only other student on campus is Rose (Lucy Boynton), who has lied to her parents about when they should pick her up because she needs to deal with her unexpected pregnancy.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Beyond the Gates

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: BEYOND THE GATES is now available on various home video formats.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Imagine JUMANJI as a low budget eighties horror movie, and you have a fairly good idea what to expect from BEYOND THE GATES. Two estranged brothers – the successful Gordon (Graham Skipper) and ne’er do well John (Chase Williamson) – reunite after the death of their father to settle his affairs. In particular, there’s the matter of the video store dad owned and all the movies contained therein. Left behind in the store’s back room: a strange board/VHS game that sucks the brothers into a netherworld where their choices result in people dying. And once the game has begun, quitting is not an option. 

Director Jackson Stewart, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Scarlata, is obviously working with a low budget here, but that’s fine. He clearly knew what his limitations would be, and doesn’t try to stage anything he can’t pull off satisfactorily. Besides, capturing that eighties aesthetic doesn’t really require millions of dollars. Just plenty of fog, colored lighting, latex, and slime. 

The patriotic alternative to NFL Football is Cinema Wasteland in Strongsville, Sept.29-Oct.1

 I suppose you are all wondering where the Cleveland Movie Blog stands in the NFL athletes-taking-the-knee-against-the-National-Anthem controversy. Well, I am proud to announce that we of the Blog are on the same side as President Trump with this one.

Our reasons are as obvious as the stars and stripes on the Banner We Wave. You see, in schlocky movies, football jocks are almost horrible characters, top of the cruel food chain in cinematic depictions of high school or college.

Usually they are portrayed as dumb school bullies and would-be rapists who hold sadistic hazing rituals. They torment the cool kids - who are, typically, the only ones who know what to do when aliens or zombies invade – and they play stupid pranks all the time. So much so that when a mad slasher starts killing all the kids, for most of the movie nobody takes evasive action because it’s assumed to be harmless mischief by the moron football players with their practical jokes. Until that scene when some innocent girl (usually played by Jill Schoelen) find the bloody bodies of the whole line of scrimmage stuffed into a row of lockers and knows it’s not them making everybody disappear.

Repost: Halloween (September 21st and 22nd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[HALLOWEEN screens Thursday September 21st at 6:45 pm and Friday September 22nd at 9:10 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Has it been 35 years? Really, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS! since I heard locker-room whispers around the NE Ohio high school I attended that there was a new movie out called HALLOWEEN, by that maverick director John Carpenter who had previously done that attention-getting, whacko low-budget science-fiction flick DARK STAR (a film-school project that had won bonus re-release to cash in the success of STAR WARS).

And HALLOWEEN was talked up by my youthful classmates as the coolest thing ever; all the guys on the football team were going to get stoned with their skank girlfriends and see it again on the weekend.

I took that rave with a slight bit of skepticism. Much as I admired DARK STAR, this was the late 1970s, remember. And Ohio kids would get stoned to go see a roadshow return engagement of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, as long as someone brought the keg and the dope and the skank girls. 

Twilight Zone: The Movie (June 23 at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE screens Friday June 23rd at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Rod Serling’s revered TV half-hour anthology The Twilight Zone, aired originally from 1959 to 1965, told different sci-fi and fantasy-tinged morality plays each week. It’s long shadow inspired this Warner Brothers big-budget movie anthology that made its theatrical debut in 1983 – an era when the blockbuster box-office returns of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg fantasias led the entertainment rackets to lavishly remake, relaunch and reboot all the way-out properties they owned the rights to. Whether the studios “got it” or not.

Three parts of the four installments in TWILIGHT ZONE – THE MOVIE remake favorite TZ episodes, but the first, directed by John Landis (hot after AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON) is an original. It's about a bigoted businessman (Vic Morrow), ranting about losing a job promotion to a Jew, who instantly finds himself cruelly knocked about the whole 20th century, suffering the same persecutions as blacks in the Jim Crow South, Jews in the Holocaust, and Indochinese during the Vietnam War. This was the featurette in which actor Morrow (and two child actors) died in an on-camera accident, perishing beneath a crashing helicopter while filming the Vietnam section. The horrific waste made even more disappointing by the segment itself, a one-note bashing of a nasty guy that feels like something whipped up by slumming liberal Hollywood film-school students.

47 Meters Down

Review by Bob Ignizio

Last year THE SHALLOWS found success with modestly budgeted shark thrills, limited locations, and small cast. This year 47 METERS DOWN tries to not only replicate that success, but one-up it by doubling the number of women in peril, increasing the number of sharks, and adding in the additional danger of being trapped under water in a shark cage with limited air.

In a vacuous but thankfully short setup we meet sisters meet Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt) vacationing at a seaside resort in Mexico. Lisa is getting over being dumped by her boyfriend, the one thing in her opinion that she had going for her over her more popular and fun sister. The reason she was dumped, she confides to Kate, is because her ex found her boring.

Can You Check Out Any Time But You Can Never Leave...Horror Hotel in Hudson? June 15 - June 18

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

At the annual installment of the International Horror Hotel Festival & Convention, you can see a short subject called DICKEATERS: THE MOVIE. Wouldn't it be worth it alone, to say you did that?

After all, the Cavaliers lost; might as well have some takeaway for 2017.

Horror Hotel is an early-summer offshoot of The Indie Gathering, a long-running series of meetings and networking expositions and festivals put on by and for DIY Ohio filmmakers. The Indie Gathering upholds "microcinema," ultra-low budget moviemaking outside the big film-industry system.

The Indie Gathering has a big annual international film festival in Hudson, Ohio, in early fall. But from the submissions that were coming in, the organizers - stunt coordinator Ray Szuch and actress-producer Kristina Michelle, of Cleveland - noticed that backyard filmmakers around the world most often gravitated horror and science-fiction genre shorts and features.

It Comes at Night

Review by Bob Ignizio

Chances are, IT COMES AT NIGHT isn't the horror movie you're looking for. The recurring complaint from many who caught it this past weekend is that the marketing was deceptive. That based on the trailers, they were expecting a more traditional kind of horror film. What they got instead was more of a grim drama. It's still a horror film, but the scares IT COMES AT NIGHT delivers are not of the fun, jump out of your seat variety. Nor do they involve much in the way of violence and gore. The kind of fear this film trades in is more thoughtful and disturbing than that.

The premise is a familiar one. Some sort of plague has devastated humanity – the details are vague, but they aren't important. All we know is there's a nasty bug going around. It's lethal to humans and animals alike, and it's highly contagious.

Alien: Covenant

Review by Bob Ignizio

Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS proved to be a divisive film for fans of the ALIEN franchise. Personally I liked it, but I get the criticisms. Despite a great cast and some interesting ideas, there were some definite problems with the film's script. And for many, it didn't help that there wasn't much alien for an ALIEN movie.  

For his follow up, ALIEN: COVENANT, it feels as if Scott has given in to the complaints and tried to "give the people what they want", while still indulging his thematic musings on the origins of intelligent life and the nature of good and evil.

The plot follows the titular spacecraft as it sets off to colonize a new world. After an accident, android Walter (Michael Fassbender) wakes the crew from their cryo sleep early. Sadly, he is unable to prevent the death of the expeidtion's commander and a few random colonists whose pods malfunction.

Repost: The Neon Demon (May 11th and 12th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE NEON DEMON screens Thursday May 11th at 8:55 pm and Friday May 12th at 9:15 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Is THE NEON DEMON a horror movie? It's certainly horrific in the way it depicts how the fashion industry chews up and spits out the young women directly involved in it, reaching out to taint those who merely consume it, as well. And there's no doubt that writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn is drawing heavily on the visual style of seventies and eighties "giallo" films. The very first scene in the movie is a fashion shoot in which ingénue Jesse (Elle Fanning) is depicted as the victim of a bloody knife murder right out of a Dario Argento film. Other, far more real horrors lie in wait for Jesse later.

So yes, I'm going to call it a horror film. A very beautifully shot, lit, costumed, and set-designed horror film that is light on plot and character, but heavy on theme and style.

The Void (April 11th and 15th at the Capitol Theatre)

[THE VOID screens Tuesday April 11th at 7:30 pm and Saturday April 15th at 11:59 pm at the Capitol Theatre.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

A siege by mysterious cultists. A mad doctor conducting unholy experiments. Characters cutting the skin off their own face, then transforming into Lovecraftian tentacle monsters. Gore and creature effects alike realized as physical, on-set creations rather than being cooked up in a computer. Yeah, there's a lot in THE VOID for fans of old school horror to like. So much that its easy to imagine many viewers forgiving the film's narrative and thematic shortcomings as warm waves of nostalgia engulf them.

The basic plot is like a combination of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and PRINCE OF DARKNESS. A group of disparate characters hole up in a hospital surrounded by white robed cultists. There's danger inside, as well. The aforementioned mad doctor and monsters are troublesome, to be sure, but perhaps just as dangerous is the mistrust among the would-be survivors.

At Cinema Wasteland the Best Picture Oscar wouldn’t have gone to La La Land either, in Strongsville April 7-9

[The Cinema Wasteland Movie Convention takes place Friday April 7th through Sunday April 9th at the Strongsville Holiday Inn.]

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

This weekend Clevelanders can pay tribute the heroes of independent cinema motion-picture fine arts, renown and honored around the world for the immortal moments on celluloid these artists created...No, not at the Cleveland International Film Festival. What does that have to do with anything?

No, the real deal is at the Holiday Inn Select in Strongsville, for a 50th Anniversary reunion of indie film vets who created NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in the Pittsburgh area, and movie history (let alone Pennsylvania history) was never the same.

Macedonia filmmakers seek to fund their project 'The Dollhouse'

[Press release from 'The Dollhouse'.]

Producer Julie D’Aloiso was inspired to start this project when she was introduced to a L.A. Director Russell Emanuel by voice actor Alan K. Courtright. Julie interviewed Russ about his upcoming movie Occupants and began to piece together ideas for a script about a teacher that haunts a local high school. High school students in her after school club expressed interest in this project as well as members of the community since Julie runs the Nordonia Hills.News Site. http://nordoniahills.news/

Director Bio: Russ Emanuel founded Russem Productions in 2002, in order to promote his short films including Her Knight (2003), the award-winning Girl With Gun (2005), and the documentary Restoration of Paradise (2014). Occupants (2015), marks Emanuel's fourth foray into feature filmmaking, having previously directed P.J. (2007), Chasing the Green (2009), and The Legends of Nethiah (2012), all with producer Howard Nash and actor Robert Picardo. His current projects in post-production are The Assassin's Apprentice (2017) and Collar (2017).  He has worked with such name actors as Robert Picardo, John Heard, Vincent Pastore, Ryan Hurst, Jeremy London, William Devane, Theresa Russell, Marina Sirtis, and Sean Kenney.

You can help make their proposed film The Dollhouse  a reality by making a contribution through their indiegogo page. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-dollhouse-feature-film-project-horror#/

Lake Bodom (April 1st and 2nd at the 41st Cleveland International Film Festival)

[LAKE BODOM screens Saturday April 1st at 11:35 pm and Sunday April 2nd at 1:35 pm at Tower City Cinemas as part of the 41st Cleveland International Film Festival.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

LAKE BODOM starts out with a fairly standard slasher movie set up. A co-ed group of teens decide to go camping in the woods at the site of an infamous murder (an actual case, the 1960 murder of 3 young campers at the titular lake in Finland). Sexual tension is in the air, and it seems fairly obvious the characters will pair off to fool around at some point. Putting a damper on the fun is the presence of a killer who seems bent on dispatching the horny young people.

But then things take a twist and LAKE BODOM turns into more of a crime/suspense film with a subtext about sexism and sexual harassment. A film about the ways in which a rumor, even one that's completely unfounded, can not only destroy a reputation, but spread out to destroy other lives.

Except it's not. Psych.

This is one of those movies that is all about the surprising twists and turns. Well written characters, thoughtful themes, and a solid, believable narrative aren't really major concerns.

And that can be fine sometimes in horror, where style has often trumped substance.

Certainly director/co-writer Taneli Mustonen displays a bold visual style and a knack for playing with his audience. It's just not enough to make up for how contrived some of the film's twists feel. And then there are the film's sexual politics, which can be cringe inducing at times.

It's hard to get into specifics without getting into spoiler territory. Let's just say there's a particular type of female character that is very much an overused trope. This kind of character often comes off as offensive when handled poorly, and sadly that's the case here.

There's an undeniable energy to LAKE BODOM that carries it over some of the rough patches, and Mustonen is clearly a talent behind the camera. As a script writer, perhaps not so much (although co-writer Aleksi Hyvärinen shares some of the blame).

It also helps that the film's female leads (Mimosa Willamo and Nelly Hirst-Gee) give strong, committed performances – imagine what they could have done with actual characters. But since none of the characters in LAKE BODOM are fleshed out beyond the most bare bones stereotypes, it's hard to care about any of them. It's also hard to swallow some of the plot contrivances and over the top moments. At times, it kind of reminds one of Alexandre Aja's 2003 debut HIGH TENSION (aka SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE), both for better and for worse.

Nonetheless, one can still admire Mustonen's filmmaking skill. He may not be working from a great screenplay, but he still directs the hell out of it. With a better script, he has the potential to produce a top notch thriller or horror film. This just isn't it. 2 out of 4 stars.

If you don't get a chance to catch it at the festival, LAKE BODOM will be released exclusively on Shudder in May 2017.

The Lure (March 23rd and 26th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE LURE screens Thursday March 23 at 8:35 pm and Sunday March 26th at 6:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Eric Sever

Take some of the darker elements of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" and set the story in a smoky, Soviet era discotheque, and you might get some idea of what you can expect in the THE LURE.

As a Polish horror-comedy-romance-musical with plenty of gore and nudity, director Agnieszka Smoczyńska's film is one slippery fish. (Yeah, I said it.) Defying traditional classification, the story of two human-eating mermaids being taken in by a family of strip club performers is told with a suprising amount of sentiment and character development.

Kinga Preis gives a particularly compelling performance as the beautiful, but hard-living mother figure to the band of mucisians who take two mermaids, Silver and Golden (Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska), under their wings to feature them in their bawdy musical acts. Preis is equally watchable whether she's performing on stage or in the danker moments of her character's everyday life.