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Reviews
The Collector (2009)
Violent thriller with franchise written all over it
This is a film that deceives you and not in a good way. It's a crazy premise with a beginning that ultimately turns out to be a pretty bogus red herring. The opening 15 minutes ends up being a pathetic excuse for a set up, making you think it'll build to one thing and eventually failing because of the director and umpteen producers' desire to create the next Saw. Josh Stewart (from No Ordinary Family) plays a safe cracker who doubles up as a carpenter - this fact seems to end up being a burden rather than an aid, who also has an estranged wife and a cute daughter. He plays out a strange scene with the owner of a night club and obviously an extra curricular employer and returns to the house where we first meet him to steal a gem stone. All relatively simple and massively contrived; however just as he's about to crack the safe, someone else appears to break into the house and we're transported onto a roller-coaster of torture and some of the most explicitly nasty moments in cinema history. The main problem with this part of the film is that Stewart appears to break into the house with ease and within minutes of him doing it, the entire place has become a death trap, with bear traps, razor wire, booby traps, and just about every conceivable way to maim imaginable; yet he either didn't set one of these traps off on arrival or they all got laid in the three minutes it takes him to find the safe and begin cracking it. The next hour is just one relentless 'video nasty' but remarkably, for all the vileness, it seems to retain a soul about it, despite similarities to a number of other stalking bad men films of the last 30 years (from Halloween to the aforementioned Saw). The last 10 minutes stretch the already far-fetched story even more and will leave you with mixed emotions and potentially a bad taste in your mouth. You want a conclusion, but you don't get one; you just get a set-up for a sequel and I'm sure that after 90 minutes of a harrowing story that isn't what you want. If you like this kind of torture film, with some female flesh and some ingenious ways to die, then this is a 10 out of 10; for every one else, it only makes half that.
Ghosts Don't Exist (2010)
Not what it says on the tin
I have seen some bad films and while this is no where near as bad as some I've seen it gets pretty close. Had it been a TV movie shown on one of those cheap cable movie channels I would have expected no more, but this bigs itself up to be a huge cinematic release and it would take a very successful cinema to show this, because it would have hundreds of empty seats once word got around. The acting is on par with some of the films SyFy pay to get made; the story is a muddle - I don't know if this is because of bad writing, bad editing or bad film making; but it was difficult to follow and parts of it made no sense. It's one of those films that leaves you thinking about specifics and realising that there is no rhyme or reason for it. The shame about it is that given to the right people it might have been a good film, but that would have required cutting away everything apart from the title and the idea that you can have a ghost hunter who is on his last case. I also found the blatant good reviewing by obvious stooges a very underhanded attempt at upping the film's rating. I'm disappointed that tactics like this are used, because they just come back and bite the reviewers' on the a$$. A poor show.
Skyline (2010)
Bonkers film
I really can't understand why people hate this so much; or maybe I can. Americans don't like films where they don't win and no one wins in this. Yes, the acting is a bit ropey, anything with Eric Balfour tends to be on the bad side of poor (Anyone seen Haven?) But the pace is brilliant, the concept scary and the special effects are just mind-blowing. Comparisons to Cloverfield are unfair; I don't think this ripped off that many films and those it did was done in a unique and different way. Yes, some of the dialogue was poor and the characters were mostly less than likable, but since when did you have to feel empathy or sympathy for the characters to enjoy a movie? Sometimes it helps, especially when the ending is so downbeat, yet so totally different. I expected Skyline to be rubbish; so many people were condemning this film that I went into it with zero expectations and that's the way to approach it. It is like Aliens meets Transformers on crack and if you accept it for 90 minutes of explosive genius with a really neat twist then you won't go far wrong. I loved it and I'm normally really hard to please!