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braveswin13
Reviews
The Strangers (2008)
Pretty good horror/thriller
Lately I've been searching for a horror movie that would help me return to my days of actually being scared by a movie. The Strangers actually came pretty close to that. Starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a failed couple who hole up for the night at a summer house, strange happenings begin to occur as a group of killers show up to terrorize them.
To be honest, The Strangers delivered a lot more than I thought it would. Instead of filling the movie with gore and kills, director Bryan Bertino opts for a tense atmosphere and chilling shots. There is no doubt that I was seriously creeped by some parts of the movie, and that is something that hasn't happened to me in a long time. After reading the some of the message boards, I saw many people saying that this was a predictable movie. On the contrary, I think it was completely unpredictable and random. That's what gives the movie some of it's charm, is the fact that I really had no idea what was going to happen. More props go to how the film was shot and the score used. The moving camera and orchestral score helped give me the creeps.
The only thing that bothered me was the ending. And it's not like it was a bad ending; it just felt like the build-up wasn't worth it. When a movie that's only an hour and 15 minutes has a slow pace, you best believe I wanted to be completely satisfied with the ending. Not completely satisfying, but not horrible either.
I think a 7 is about as good a rating as it can get. This movie proved that you don't need blood and gore to get scares, and that atmosphere can still work in a modern-horror movie. I recommend it to horror fans looking for a decent movie that might give you chills. It's not the best horror movie I've ever seen, but it's definitely one of the better ones. Oh, and props to the main killer. Not only was his acting spot on as a Michael Myers wanna-be (notice the head tilt in one scene), but his mask was one of the coolest I've seen in recent memory. Nice!
À l'intérieur (2007)
It has balls but....
Here's a movie you'd think we wouldn't get in this day and age in the saga of the horror remakes. Taking a page from similar French film (and horror gem) High Tension, Inside stars Alysson Paradis as a pregnant woman struggling to survive her last night of pregnancy as a mysterious woman stalks her in her own home.
I'll give credit to the director for having the balls to create a movie like this, but this doesn't mean it was good movie. My brother had raved about it, telling me how gory and frightening it was. Well, he was right about the former; but calling this movie scary is completely wrong. There was NOTHING that scared me in this movie. No jumps, no tense moments, nada. To make matters worse, the director fills the lack of scares with gallons of blood and gore. I feel like it would have been much, much scarier if more had been left to the imagination.
Another thing that really annoyed me about his movie was the idiocy of some of the characters. You can check the forums if you really want to know (since I don't want to spoil the movie), but each character in the movie does something indescribably stupid. I wish I were exaggerating, but it's true. Of course that is the script's fault, but the acting was only decent to boot anyway.
Like I said earlier, this movie has guts. It's nasty, but contains no new chills that the horror genre really needs right now. Watch it if you want to challenge your intestinal fortitude, not your nerves.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
Eh....zzzzz
I knew when I popped this one into my DVD player that it probably wouldn't be too good, but I had no idea it would be this terrible. Despite being from the TCM series, this movie felt as formulaic as any of the remakes being churned out by Hollywood. I think the thing that disappoints me the most is that it just was not scary. There is no suspense, no question of whose getting out or who's getting killed. The acting was OK at best, with only E. Lee Ermy (Sheriff Hoyt) turning in a decent performance, and who wasn't nearly as good as he was in the first movie. Probably the best thing about the movie was the gore and the girls on display. Both Jordana Brewster and Diora Baird looked great; however, they couldn't rise about the now-stereotypical "idiot girls in slasher film". The gore scenes are actually very well done and quite nasty, but towards the end it starts to get a little boring. Gore for gore's sake has never been scary, and got annoying fast. I can only recommend this movie to series completionists or new horror fans who enjoyed similar bloodfests Hostel or Saw. If you're a fan of good horror (or at least decent movies), you should just steer clear.
The Brotherhood 2: Young Warlocks (2001)
below average
I put this movie into my DVD player without ever seeing the first Brotherhood or researching for this film, so I really didn't know what to expect, except that my uncle(who let me borrow it) said it was crap.
It's basically about 3 outcasts who meet a a new kid at their high school named Luke who promises them whatever they want is they break the 10 Commandments and be his friends. They all agree and break 9 of the Commandments with the last one being murder.
This movie is really just below average. The dialogue isn't great and it really isn't much of a horror movie as it's not scary and the horror elements don't really kick in until way after the halfway mark. If you watch this from beginning till about the halfway point, you'd think this was a coming of age teen drama with gay soft core porn.
I will admit that some of the music was pretty decent, and I thought it was edited together really well. Unfortunately though, for a cult movie there is pretty much no blood, just an off screen stabbing and a sliced throat.
I don't recommend this unless your a women or gay with some extra time on your hands to watch a pretty dull "horror" film.