Short Review: After the Dark (2013)

After the Dark

IMDB rate: 5,7

Genre: Fantasy, Drama

I'm sorry, but I just have to write a short review (or rant) about After the Dark. This has to be the most ridiculous and boring movie of 2013. After the Dark, or The Philosophers as it's also called, is about a group of students who follow the class of Philosophy and in this class their teacher gives them the task to think of possible ways to best survive an apocalypse. 

Of course, in this task their options are limited, each students gets their own life with a few limitations. They have to lock themselves up for an entire year (hypothetically) in a bunker where only ten people can survive because of oxygen limitations. They have to think who of these students are the smartest or have the best chance to reproduce/rebuild when they are released after this year. 

Now, I'm sorry to say this but this movie is utter shit. This class of students is really just philosophizing about the things I just mentioned and that's it. So everything they think is just hypothetically speaking, and will never happen. We get to see three different scenario's of these pretend apocalypses and every scenario is just bullshit. Their way of thinking is really stupid, and especially their third scenario is awfully stupid. No they don't want to rebuild the world, they just want to be happy. This has to be the most selfish group of people in movie history. They have hypothetical sex and hypothetical relationship  discussions because one of them is hypothetically gay. You have to bear in mind that they discuss all of these scenario's in class. 

Now, the special effects don't even look that bad. I would even go that far to see that they looked good, but all of that is just wasted with the biggest bullshit story ever made. The acting doesn't make things better because they're just a bunch of terrible actors. But well, what can you expect when Bonnie Wright, a.k.a. the only thing I disliked about the Harry Potter movies, has a role in it.

If one of these apocalypse scenario's actually happened the movie would've been a lot better. The story could be about their life in the bunker or about the life they have when rebuilding stuff, but not this make-believe nonsense. 

American Horror Story: Season 4 poster

I'm sorry but I'm really excited for this season, I wasn't a big fan of the second season and the third season was still not as good as the first one. But I do have really high hopes for this season! Can't wait!

Review: Contracted (2013)

Contracted

IMDB rate: 5,2

Genre: Virus

Contracted is another one of Netflix' brilliant selection of horror movies. I wouldn't necessarily say that Contracted is such a brilliant movie though, to be honest I don't really know what to think of this movie. It was a bit of a weird movie, although interesting as well at moments. It was somewhat original I would say. 

A young girl contracts what she thinks is a sexually-transmitted disease - but is actually something much worse.

I don't think this review will be spoiler-free so beware! 

The movie begins with a short scene in what appears to be a morgue, here we see two legs with a name tag on someones toes, also, it appears that someone is having sex with that body. Normally you don't really pay a lot of attention to these first scenes and you often forget about it very quickly again, but with this movie it's something that you need to keep in mind during the movie, especially since it's not mentioned again after this. 

This movie is over a timespan of three days and in this three days we see a girl get very sick. It's a pretty good build-up I think. The sickness starts small but quickly gets worse. The make-up effects of this illness are pretty impressive I would say, they look very realistic. 

There are a few huge plot holes in this movie though, for example the doctors are just terrible. At first she gets a blood test and she has to wait for the results, that's okay because there doesn't seem to be a whole lot wrong at that time. But after two days she comes back to the doctor and looks just gross and terribly sick, and this point the doctor still says to wait for the test results while she's at a point where she's definitely too sick to be walking on the street again. Why not send her to the hospital immediately? Even when it's not a STD, it still could be something infectious. 

I enjoyed the storyline of this movie, but I was terribly annoyed with the acting. It was HORRIBLE. Najarra Townsend plays the main character Samantha and she's just a terrible actress. This movie would be so much more appreciated if her acting was better. She's definitely not the only terrible actor in this movie, I think I haven't seen a good one to be honest. But well, she's the one that pretty much carries the movie, so if her acting was a bit better I think you wouldn't be as much annoyed with the other horrible actors as well.

The dialogues are pretty dumb as well, Dumb and Dumber seem more clever than this bunch of people. 

SPOILER: I thought the ending was kinda unsuspected, I thought she would just die eventually or get killed because she had nasty sick sex or something. But what appears to happen at the end is that this girl is turning into a zombie. I seriously did not see that one coming.

Contracted is a pretty original movie and I honestly was surprised by the ending. The acting in this movie is terrible though which ruins pretty much the entire movie. The dialogues are horrible and unreal but the make-up is very good. I'm just not really sure what to think of this movie.

My personal rate: 6/10

Review: The Tortured (2010)

The Tortured

IMDB rate: 5,5

Genre: Torture

It was definitely not a big surprise what subject this movie was about. It's really nothing more or less than torturing someone. I must admit that I was a tiny bit surprised by the ending of this movie, but overall I wasn't too impressed with it. 

In Rutland Country, the six year-old Benjamin Landry is kidnapped by a psychopath in the lawn of his house. His father Craig Landry unsuccessfully runs after the truck but the abductor escapes. Sooner the police discovers that John Kozlowski had abducted and killed Benjamin. When the criminal is sentenced to 25 years in prison only, Benjamin's mother Elise Landry presses her husband to kidnap John and torture him. Craig is a doctor and knows exactly how to inflict pain to the psychopath. They succeed to kidnap John from the prison transport, but Craig has an accident and John is hurt. The couple tortures the man until they find the truth about their victim.

The movie pays a lot of attention to the connection between the family members and how the parents are feeling after the murder of their son. I think this is a very important part for a movie in general because often you miss the connection between family members because of bad writing and stuff, but in this movie they really made sure that you knew how the parents felt about this. 

The first third of this movie is mostly flashbacks to their kid and the moment he was kidnapped. I expected that there would be paid a lot more build-up to the moment he was kidnapped, but it literally happens when the movie starts so I thought that was something nice. The second part of the film is about how the parents kidnap the murderer and from there on it's basically just torturing. 

I think the movie would've been better if it was a drama movie and just showed a story about the parents coping with the loss of their child. The beginning is really good, even the part of the kidnapping of the criminal is reasonably good, but when the torturing starts it just becomes slightly boring. The dialogues are getting weird and well, it's really just twenty different ways of torturing a guy. When you're watching the movie it feels like someone took over the movie halfway through and just turned it into a horror themed movie. 

The acting is pretty decent. The parents are being played by Jesse Metcalfe (John Tucker Must Die, Desperate Housewives) and Erika Christensen (Parenthood, Flightplan). They're both OK I think. The criminal is played by horror actor Bill Moseley, not a big part but impressive nonetheless. Their characters were written quite good I think, you know that the mother will blame her husband for losing their son even though it's not his fault, but even she admits after that that she can't help blaming him. I get that, you want to blame someone and he would be the obvious person to blame, their marriage failure after that was shown very quickly, but very effective as well. The dialogues were good until the torturing began, from that moment on the dialogues became kinda lame. 

The runtime is only 79 minutes, but I think that's a good thing. Torturing someone in a basement can only be entertaining for so long. If the movie was longer you will be bored very easily with this movie I think. 

The Tortured is not very original but it's not a bad movie. The acting is good and the plot is nice as well. When the torturing starts it does become a bit boring but there's a small plot twist at the end which did surprise me quite a bit. It was a good plot twist that made the movie slightly better. It's just a movie that I enjoyed watching for one time. 

My personal rate: 6/10

Review: Vile (2011)

Vile

IMDB rate: 5,0

Genre: Torture

The torture genre is quite popular the last few years, and it definitely brought a few good movies along. Think of masterpieces like Martyrs or American Mary, both amazing horror movies that I like a lot. Unfortunately, when something is becoming a hype you might expect a lot of bad movies as well. I think Vile definitely belongs to the latter one.

A group of friends stop to pick up a hitchhiking woman only to end up getting drugged by her with a gas. They awaken to find that vials have been implanted in the base of their skulls - which are of course instantly fatal if they are removed, a grinning professional looking woman informs them on TV screens that they have 22 hours to fill these vials with a specific amount of brain fluid, a fluid that is produced during times of extreme pain. Along with another group of unlucky test subjects and with time ticking away they decide to work together and share the burden of reaching their painful target.

I think the makers of this movie wanted to create something similar like Saw, only they fail terribly at that. It's a bit like the second Saw movie, only everything that's happening is terrible. I think it only reminds me of Saw 2 because there are people locked in a house and they have to do suffer to get something. Now, Saw 2 is not a very good movie but it is definitely a lot better if you compare it to the movie Vile. 

First of all, the acting is horrible. From start to finish, I wasn't convinced for one second by any of them. And well, the movie is about 8/9 people so I wouldn't say that there are not a whole lot of chances to impress, right? Another thing that I was so annoyed about was the sound-mixing of this movie. Because there's a whole lot of torturing going on you might expect a few screams but damn, the sound was mixed so badly that you had to turn to volume way down to not go deaf, and turn it way up again to hear them speak. The choice for background music was terrible too. It was terribly unfitting for the scenes and just seemed kinda random. Perhaps they wanted to create an ironic atmosphere when they played classic music during terrible torturing, but really, it was just one big fail. 

This movie is pretty much filled with plot holes. For example, they obviously needed to create adrenaline for the people who locked them up, that's what's you get when you're in great pain. But you can also produce adrenaline by having sex. There are at least two couples there and they rather try the torture way than the sex way. I'm sorry, but that's kinda messed up since they could've been having a great time while in that house. They really just messed it up for themselves. 

Also, what's the point of trying a new torture method for each person? Why not go with the same one each time? Sure, I get it in the sense of moviemaking, but not in a logical sense. These people want to get it over with and not think of new methods each time I think. 

Of course there is one bitch in this house that is making ignorant comments and is just a pain in the ass to everybody. As you can imagine, I was very glad that the characters thought the same way about her as I did, so they knocked her out pretty fast. Also, when she went too far with being annoying, they tortured her greatly, and I think this might've been the most beautiful moment in this entire movie. But unfortunately, it was also the only good moment. 

The ending was very predictable and just stupid. They walk out of the house but of course this is not where it ends, since one of the people captured is also one of the people who does this to them. Saw 2 much? When that moment is finally over I don't really get why the guy didn't go back for his girlfriend or at least contacted the police or something. It really was a messy and illogical ending. 

Vile is just a terrible movie that's filled with plot holes. It just tries too hard to create something original. It's illogical and predictable, and by the end of the movie you actually just don't care what will happen next. It's brutal on some points, but when something finally happens they often let it to your imagination to figure out what's happening. The only thing that you saw each time was when a fingernail was pulled, well great job for pulling a fake fingernail of that actors finger, those are just not the effects you're waiting for. 

My personal rate: 3/10

Review: The Den (2013)

The Den

IMDB rate: 6,0

Genre: Found-footage, Serial Killer

The Den is a bit of a twist on the found-footage genre, while it is indeed a found footage it isn't the shaky camera kind of movie. The movie is basically a screen recording of a macbook. The main character of this movie is visiting a lot of video chat rooms so when we see her, we see her through the camera in the computer. 

It's kinda funny because when we see things happen on her camera the quality is surprisingly good, while I'm pretty sure that the quality on computers is often not very good. 

I think we've all covered our webcams at least once in our life time because of the thought of possible hackers and well, that's exactly what this movie is about. This girl didn't cover her webcam and well, some pretty nasty videos of her were send around online. What I don't get though, when she finally finds out that people hacked her computer and made her webcam record personal stuff, she still doesn't close her laptop at night, meaning they are still able to watch her. This is kinda annoying especially because she is being threatened and they just know everything she does and when she leaves the house and stuff. It's like she doesn't even prevent that they can stalk her. It is a pretty scary idea though, that these people watch every move she makes, and manipulate her that way. It's a really modern movie that's about things that are actually possible to everyone these days.

The perspective is somewhat refreshing, but also a bit boring after a while. Basically we just watch a computer screen the entire time with sometimes a switch to cellphones. The conversations are all through programs comparable with Facetime and stuff, only this program also gives people the ability to chat with random people around the world, something like Omegle. So when she chats with strangers she obviously sees billions of guys jerking off and even the Nigerian Prince that needs to get rid of his money shows up. It's at least a bit of a different twist on the found footage genre.

I think this movie is comparable with the movie Untraceable. Untraceable is also about people being tortured online only with them the torture gets worse when more people start watching. In this movie it's more that one person pays to see someone get stalked and get murdered eventually I believe, at least, that's what I figured from the ending. Apparently there's a sort of torture porn site where you can subscribe to for 99$ and there you can just watch people get crazy basically...

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the bad guys and I think their outfit is a bit comparable with Michael Myers and The Strangers, definitely not the least scary guys around. The police is definitely not very realistic in this movie because one moment a 'girl' is texting and literally a few seconds later she's found in the bathtub with her wrists cut, while her phone is still in the kitchen. It's seemed kinda obvious to me that she was laying in the bathtub for quite some time already plus she could not text and cut her wrists that quickly after.

The ending is a bit weird and I still don't really know what the entire purpose of these attacks was. They sell it online or something, but I don't really see the point of killing people for nothing. It's a bit weird. When the girl finally escaped I was kinda hoping for her that she would escape actually, the scene was also very cool because she only had one tiny flashlight and she was in a very dark building. It reminded me a lot of one of those horror games where you only have one shitty flashlight, something like Slenderman or something.

The acting wasn't much special, which is kinda sad because I thought the movie was kinda impressing. It's a very modern approach and somewhat realistic too. There are many logical errors in this movie but well, I did enjoy this movie because it was pretty original. I think you should definitely give this movie a chance.

My personal rate: 7/10

Review: Bag of Bones (2011)

Bag of Bones

IMDB rate: 5,8

Genre: Ghost

Bag of Bones officially is a TV show, but it only has two episodes. I haven't read the book yet, I own it, but it simply didn't seem interesting enough to read. When I read some reviews about this movie I read that the movie was very different from the book, so I'm kinda curious about that difference. I will read it eventually though. 

I think this will be a rather short review, because I just don't have a whole lot to say about it. The episodes are each 80 minutes long but in my opinion things could've been much shorter. It was definitely not necessary to make it last in total for 2 hours and a half hours. I liked watching Bag of Bones but there were a lot of things going on that seemed unnecessary. 

I think it could've easily fitted in a 110 minutes movie. 

The acting is fairly good. I'm normally not a huge fan of Pierce Brosnan but he was quite good in this movie. He seemed a lot more sympathetic compared with his other movies. Normally I'm a big fan of Melissa George, but for the first time I was pretty annoyed with her. Her character was annoying and she didn't act as good as usual. 

I liked watching it, although I wasn't very impressed with it. It wasn't extremely interesting. The story of Sara Tidwell could've been revealed a lot earlier I think, because now she keeps returning as a character and it seems useless for the story. It's as if she's only useful as singer until it's revealed what her role is in this movie. 

I'm sorry this review isn't any longer but I really don't have a whole lot to say about it. I can't compare it with the book, which seems to be the biggest problem that others have with this TV movie. I thought the acting was reasonable, but the movie itself was nothing special. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. 

My personal rate: 6/10