DVD rentals

I rented a couple of horror movies recently, so I'll give them some quick mini-reviews.

First and foremost, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. The premise is that there's a new serial killer in town, in the vein of Freddy, Jason and Michael, and he is hiring a documentary team to film him preparing for the slaughter of some hapless teens. What it ends up being for at least the first two thirds of the film, is a rather hysterical satire on the slasher horror movie. Any cliche you can think of is broken down in this movie, to why the serial killers never get hurt and can always catch up with their prey, to how come so many of the victims die (because the killer has already prepared every inch of the site).

It's a rather brilliant look at the genre. However, for the final third, the movie becomes a typical slasher film, made only slightly more interesting by the fact that the victims know the killer's plan of action, and need to find a way out of it.

Still, this movie is a lot of fun, and if you like your Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween, then you will like this one.

Unfortunately, I also rented this movie called Perfect Creature. Humorously enough, the box proclaims it to be Children of Men meets Underworld. I can envision something like that I guess, but this movie was nothing like it.

Basically, in an alternate Earth, before Gregor Mendel, some guy created vampires through genetic manipulation. These vampires are smarter than us regular humans, and thus become our protectors and scientists and such. Flu is a major problem, and they are the main workers trying to find a vaccine for it. So as a result, it creates an interesting hierarchy, where vampires agree to protect and serve the humans so long as the humans donate their blood to feed the vampires. However, a vampire named Edgar is eventually infected with a new vampire disease that basically makes them go insane and turn into the more violent vampires we are familiar with from other movies.

Edgar goes on a rampage, infects humans to make them bloodthirsty crazy vampires, and kidnaps a woman, and the movie deteriorates into convention and boredom. The movie is left open to a sequel, but hopefully that won't happen.

The acting is laughably serious, with everyone whispering for the most part. The budget was small obviously, but above average camera work does a pretty good job of hiding the limitations that low budget brings.

Still, it was a rather pointless movie. It started out well enough and I liked the idea of the vampires being the humans' protectors and helpers, but it all had to break down and be lame.


What else... Black Sheep was another horror movie I've seen recently. It's basically a zombie movie if you replaced the zombies with sheep. But because they ARE sheep, and it's a well done funny horror movie, I have to recommend it.

Basically, some scientists are working with gene therapy to create amazing sheep breeds, but they end up creating flesh eating sheep instead and all hell breaks loose.

Summer Blockbuster Wrap-up

So another summer blockbuster season is over for me. I'm not going to consider Simpsons and Bourne Ultimatum to be blockbuster caliber, though both will hopefully be good.

My blockbusters were Spiderman 3, POTC3, Harry Potter 5, Transformers, and Die Hard 4. I've already done reviews for Spiderman 3 and POTC3. To summarize, Spider-Man I didn't find to be awful. I enjoyed it mildly... very mildly. Pirates I found to be very bad, about as bad as 2.

So what happened with the remaining three?

Well the next that I saw was Transformers. After seeing it, I thought, ok it was better than Spiderman, but just barely. Since, I've thought about it, and it's fallen from grace. I really can't stand it. People are saying "oh come on, it was fun, it was about big robots fighting each other, what did you expect?" Well for one, I expected Michael Bay to become a good director since The Island. I don't know why, I did, that's my fault. Really, it was Michael Bay that killed this movie for me. He's terrible. He doesn't get a free pass because every single one of his other movies was a mindless action film. I just thought Transformers was bad.

Harry Potter on the other hand improved greatly from the fourth installment, which I didn't like. OOTP could have suffered from the same things Goblet suffered from. That is, I thought Goblet was emotionless and vapid. I felt that they were just going over the major events in the book, and that was it. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson were awful to watch "act".

In Order of the Phoenix, which was even longer, I felt that it was much sleeker, and a better job was done injecting feeling into the movie. It wasn's great, but it was based off of a 900 page book or something like that. Things were left out I thought might not have been. But for a shallower movie version of an already shallow book series, it wasn't as terrible as I might have feared.

Finally, Die Hard 4. While it wasn't really a Die Hard per se, it was still a well done action film, that could have done without the terrible John McClane standing on a flying F35 fighter jet scene. Unlike Transformers, which had awful out of place humor at all the wrong moments, the humor in this movie is wellplaced and actually funny. The action scenes were scattershot, some good, some ridiculous, but worked for the most part pretty well. Again, not great, but worthwhile.

So as the summer ends, at least for tentpole films, how did this summer do? Better than last year, thank heavens. Last year was disgusting. This year was alright. Nothing brilliant, and while Pirates really stunk it up, Die Hard and Harry Potter made up for it.

What else have I seen?

Well nothing really amazing, some good stuff though. Still a weak year for movies that I hope improves. I'll be back as soon as something blows me away, good or bad.