Bubba Ho-Tep with Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell plays Sebastian Haff, an elderly gentleman who claims to be the real Elvis. He makes a good case of it, insisting he had an impersonator take his place while he escaped the limelight to the comforts of trailer park living – to impersonate himself.  He eventually breaks his hip, as old people are known to do, and ends up at Shady Rest Convalescent Home in Mud Creek, TX. Ossie Davis plays John F. Kennedy. His is a story that I don’t really think I am up for touching upon. Sebastian/Elvis spends a good majority of his time in bed in and out of slumber. When he’s awake, he’s complaining about some pus filled growth on his Action Jackson and talks about Pricilla (Presley) and daughter, Lisa Marie, which usually goes nowhere. A mummy shows up and starts stealing the souls of the residents.

JFK

In short, it’s like hanging out with your 108 year old, insane, great-great uncle. Same stories. Same amount of movement. Except you don’t get the reward of getting family members off your back for another year because you haven’t visited.  IMDB reports that they had quite a lot of extras at the beginning of the film. When it came time to use them, most of them had grown bored with it and went home.

The budget for Bubba Ho-Tep is ridiculously apparent. They couldn’t afford the rights to use anything relating to Elvis for a movie, more or less, about Elvis.

Bubba Ho-Tep is in the comedy horror genre. I might place it more in the “talkie” realm, maybe something Woody Allen might have written. I missed the comedy, and it might have reached the horror point, if anything happened besides everyone just falling asleep all the time. Maybe it’s the categorization that I have the problem with. I had high hopes for this movie. I had the pleasure of meeting Bruce Campbell for a brief instant at the San Diego Comic-Con a few years back. He called me “baby”, signed my “Army of Darkness” poster, and his people shuffled me along. After watching this movie, the memory is almost tarnished.

Shutter (2008)

Perhaps I just don’t like Joshua Jackson, maybe I’m not supposed to for this movie, I don’t know. Anyway, in the likeness of Ringu and Ju-on, Shutter uses the creepiness of an Asian woman with a bad haircut to tell a story of pain and suffering. You guessed it, she’s seeking revenge for her untimely death via her unhappy disposition and shitty attitude.

I’ll give Masayuki Ochiai the director’s “3rd place” award next to Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and Takashi Shimizu (Ju-on). Though the movie has it’s moments of “wow that was creepy”, the story line is pretty predictable and it’s really a bit of a pain to sit through.

I did like the medium format camera Benjamin Shaw (Jackson) uses throughout the film, which captures the ghostly presence haunting him; but that’s about it. Shutter goes through the motions of creepy thriller movies featuring disgruntled dead though: creepy woman in a chair (check), mistaking the dead woman for the living wife in bed and/or at work (check), ominous sounds when looking at plot points – photographs (check), dark stairwell and/or walkway scene (check), blue filter applied in post-processing of the film (check).

Aside the Shutter being formulaic, it was done pretty poorly. I’m assuming Mirrors (a Korean horror movie remake – Geoul Sokeuro) is going to be the same formula, but that’ll probably not be the case – which my pessimistic self will just see that as an attempt to not follow the formula deliberately… and that’ll make it predictable as well. There’s no winning here, these folks just need to do something “new”.

Perhaps I’m exaggerating, I’m sure that Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is a much worse film… so this is #2. Thus, if you’re a masochist, you gotta see it. If you’re a sadist, you gotta show it to your friends, family, or better – your loved ones.

The premise? I’ll keep it short, as the movie is only 55 minutes of excruciating torturous hell to watch. George Washington was a cannibal. The Washingtonians are part of a secret order that are in place to ensure no one finds out his evil dark taste for human flesh. The Washingtonians like to eat people too, and this movie may have had some saving grace if they were already dead while doing it. Nothing says “epic movie” like colonial period patriot zombies and their insatiable lust for the flesh of virgins…

I say, if you do watch this, be ready to take your “shit movie” scale notch about 10 clicks lower. In fact, after this? Movies like: Eragon, Dungeons and Dragons, and xXx State of the Union will be a breeze to sit though, no doubt.

Just a heads-up though, this film is Cloverfield-like in nature, first-person handheld camera, but done MUCH better as far as I’m concerned. The ultimate difference is the fact that it’s supposed to be shot from the point-of-view of a cameraman, and you actually get quality camera work as a reuslt, as opposed to the ultra-shakey “what the hell is going on?” junk we all had to sit through in Cloverfield.

There’s moments were you’ll just say to yourself (or outloud), “Wow! That was just down right bad ass!”, if you’re a morbid beast. The gore factor is kept fairly realistic, the special effects are clean, and the storyline is rock solid; definitely one of Jaume Balagueró’s better films.

In fact, Jaume Balagueró’s dark style is carried well into Rec. Having wood for dark, sinister looks in film, I’m a fan by default pretty much, but still. Much like Balagueró’s work on Fragile, though that movie was “eh”, the atmosphere and gritty feeling presented throughout really help push the movie along, without over doing it to maintain that realistic quality you’d want in a movie that’s supposed to be… realistic.

Rec is in Spanish, so be ready to read subtitles if you’ve forgotten all you learned in high school foreign language classes. All in all, it’s a thrilling, shocking movie that’ll keep you entertained from start to finish.

I’ve said it before but I’m not really sure why Rob and I aren’t best friends because as far as I can tell we have identical taste in movies, and we both used to spend way too much money at The House Of Monsters in Chicago. And that’s what it’s all about right? Is it bad that I’m actually considering canceling my Friday plans indefinitely to make sure I don’t miss any of these?