If I’m watching a zombie movie and I need to refill my drink and I don’t bother to put the movie on pause, that’s a problem. If while watching it I start wondering if I’ve gotten any interesting emails, that’s a problem. If during the major ‘fight for their lives’ scenes I get distracted by 4chan, this is a problem. All of those happened. The thing is I just couldn’t get interested and everytime I tried I found myself more bored and annoyed then I had been previously.

I watched it last night, and after sleeping on it I think my biggest problem is that the zombie aspect of this movie is a widget. They could easily take the exact same script and change all the “zombie” references to “vampires” or “warewolves” or fucking “mummies” for that matter and it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. When you have a zombie walking around holding his decapitated head out so that he can lead his body in the right direction, it’s pretty clear you don’t give a crap about zombies and are just using a random default ghost movie device for your scene.

Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, which is saying a lot for someone who isn’t bothered by running zombies, but I think if this had been called High sGhoul Prom or Prom Bite and the monster of choice hadn’t been a zombie I would have at least been amused. But pulling of the Dead into your title I think at least puts some obligation on you to either try to add something to the genre or blatently ignore it and try to cash in and suffer the consequences of the fans. I don’t think this film did either, mostly I think they just didn’t get it.

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”.

There are some places tourists shouldn't go. Like, Brazil

When the movie “Hostel” was made, the city of Bratislava, Slovakia was understandably a bit…angry…with director Eli Roth. They invited Roth to Slovakia, considered threatening legal action, and probably thought about chaining him to a table to disembowel him. (I’m taking a wild stab with that last one, with my limited knowledge of Bratislava.)

When the movie “Turistas” was made, Brazil, on which the movie “Turistas” is based, threw up it’s collective hands and said “Okay, you got us.” A quote, if you will, from the Brazilian Tourism Board: “We hope moviegoers will be inspired to learn more about Brazil…”.  No bitching.  No “Hey, don’t forget that we gave you Pelé.”  No defense.

Take into account that Brazilian murder rates have been compared to war zone like highs. The Tourism Board accepts this.

Enough about facts, figures and me planning my next vacation to Iraq; on to the movie. Turistas was directed by one John Stockwell, of “Blue Crush” and “Crazy/Beautiful” um…fame, I guess you would call it. Turistas is about the organ harvesting legend, as experienced by a group of oversexed, drunk idiots who I’m pretty sure I would have wished involuntary, sans-anesthesia, organ donation right here in the US of A.

It's cool, these guys know where the party's at.

This is the only natural next step in directorial evolution I would assume for the director of Blue Crush. I read an interview featuring Mr. Stockwell, an act you should never, ever attempt yourself. Remember in high school when the head cheerleader had to give a book report? It was like, you know, like, well, yeah, uh *pops gum*….like that.
Quoth the Stockwellnator: “I always loved Deliverance. Not that this is it, but I loved the idea of people going into a situation which they think is going to be one thing…” I’m going to stop you right there, John. First things first, if someone goes into a situation like, say, Brazil, and they aren’t even a little bit concerned that shit could go down, they are terrible Googlers and haven’t picked up a newspaper – ever.
Second, let’s take a look at what “Turistas” and “Deliverance” have in common.

All Star Cast – Deliverance, not Turistas
Oscar Nominations – Deliverance, not Turistas
Burt Reynolds – Deliverance, not Turistas
Anyone being asked to squeal like a certain ungulate – Deliverance, not Turistas
Ability to hold my interest – Deliverance, not Turistas

If we both agree that Deliverance and Turistas have nothing in common, why do you bring it up?  No worries, John, surely you can rely on a stellar script, true thespians and excellent cinamotography to be your saving grace.  No?  Oh.  Well, you got boobs in there right?  Okay! I tip my hat to you. All is forgiven.

One last quote: “The best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing… but the worst thing is nothing.” – Crazy, organ thieving guy

I’ll be sure to write that down.

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.

Guess what? It’s not that bad. It’s different for sure, but it’s very Romero. The social commentary is front and center, and I can see how people might be quick to write it off as just following the Blair Witch or Cloverfield style [see the trailer] but I think to tell this part of the story that was the best choice. As with other Romero flicks the zombies are just the setting for a much larger discussion but for the first time someone in the film actually says “they are us” pointing out the crux of the struggle has never been how do we deal with this outside menace but rather how do we deal with ourselves. I thought the conflict of the people who were filming everything trying to decide what was more important, helping out in a single instance or documenting it for the future was very well thought out.

At the same time I can see why people who were looking for something like the remake of Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later might be disappointed, though I was amused with the jokes about dead things not moving fast. This has action, but isn’t an action movie. It has gore, but isn’t a gore fest. It’s definitely the most introspective in the Romero series which could put someone off if they weren’t in the mode for it. That said, I enjoyed it. It’s not my favorite thing he’s done, and it’s not the best zombie flick to come out in the last few years but it’s entertaining, thought provoking and worth watching for sure. That is assuming you like zombie movies, and since you are reading this I’ve gone ahead and made that assumption.