Martyrs (2008)

Pound for pound, Martyrs is probably the most disturbing film I've ever seen, and also one of the best horror films of the past fifteen years.

The film starts as a blood-splattered child is found fleeing an industrial complex in 1971. Fifteen years later, she and a friend seek revenge. Some very bad shit happens. The girls plan works perfectly, resulting in the grizzly murders of a family they suspect of kidnapping the one them, Anna, fifteen years prior.

Things quickly take a turn for the worst however. As it turns out the family are members of a sinister secret organization of people who enjoy inflicting enormous amounts of pain and suffering on people in secret dungeons, which doesn't bowed well for the girls.



When the organizations heavies arrive, one of the girls, Anna, ends up being imprisoned in a bunker/torture chamber. Then her long ordeal begins, during which time she becomes victim to all manor of degrading, demoralizing and torturous abuse. This period of imprisonment is where the film gets its notorious reputation from, the torture scenes are truly hard to watch, and a times left me wishing that they would just put her out of her misery.

There are curtain religious undertones in the film. The idea of purification through psychical pain is a part many religions, Christianity especially. The film, in its own extreme and graphic way, brings the questions of our mortality, god and the existence of the afterlife to light, making it a more thought provoking film then one might expect.

Martyrs is a technically brilliant, emotionally resonant, disturbing, mind-bender of a film, that will stay in your head for along time after viewing.

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Alien (1979)

Many hours of my youth were spent tucked up in bed watching Alien,  with my sheets in hand ready to cover my eyes. Like most kids, I'd watch films my parents told me not to watch, and Alien was one of my favorites, and still is.

This seminal sci-fi-horror released at the end of the 70's, the decade that produced some of the greatest horror and sci-fi films, Alien remains as unique, enthralling and dam right creepy as is was thirty years ago.

The plot is rather simple: a group of workers aboard a commercial towing vessel headed back home have their journey interrupted by a mysterious transmission from a nearby planetoid. They stop to investigate, only to end up bringing an extraterrestrial threat back on board their craft.

The film is basically like a slasher movie set  in space. Alien started an entire sub-genre we now know as sci-fi horror, and has influenced countless films with its effective blend both sci-fi and horror, and is a landmark in both genres.

The first hour of the film consists of a slow build up, concentrating on tone, mood and atmosphere. As would be expected on a deep space journey, tensions between the crew members would be inevitable, hence the rather amusing exchanges between Ripley, Brett and Parker. Ripley's relationship with Captain Dallas is also turbulent at times, stemming from Ripley's sometimes pedantic adherence to protocol, but despite their little tiffs you also get the feeling that they are also really good friends.

The film is basically like a slasher movie set  in space. Alien started an entire sub-genre we now know as sci-fi horror, and has influenced countless films with its effective blend both sci-fi and horror, and is a landmark in both genres.

The first hour of the film consists of a slow build up, concentrating on tone, mood and atmosphere. As would be expected on a deep space journey, tensions between the crew members would be inevitable, hence the rather amusing exchanges between Ripley, Brett and Parker. Ripley's relationship with Captain Dallas is also turbulent at times, stemming from Ripley's sometimes pedantic adherence to protocol, but despite their little tiffs you also get the feeling that they are also really good friends.























From special effects perspective, Alien was way ahead of its time. The use of practical effects is a rarity in today's world of CGI graphics. Alien along with 'The Thing,1982' are in my opinion the two greatest examples of the use of practical specials effects, and still hold their own even by today's standards. The chest-burst scene remains as shocking and unsettling now, as when I first saw it. If the same scene were filmed today, with cheap CGI blood added afterword, the effect would just not be the same.

The cinematography is dark, moody, and really adds a level of dread to the claustrophobic service tunnels and corridors of the ship. All the sets look fantastic and gives an authentic feel a space vessel, with computers, lights, beeping noises. Everything in the ship has a dark, scratched, worn look to it giving the realistic feel of a well living-in and overworked vessel..

Jerry Goldsmith's score is compelling, and the heart beat like thumping during key scenes is a real nice touch. Ridley Scott provides some superb, subtle directing, showing a real flare for building tension and mood. Alien was the precursor to Ridley Scott's timeless sci-fi masterpiece: Blade Runner, 1982, which shares the dark mood, tension and unique directorial style that has become synonymous.

Seldom has any film been so consistent in design, cast, direction, and out-and-out fear factor, the end result is powerful enough to bring it in at a full five skull rating.

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We Are What We Are (2013)

Boring...sums up the majority of this film. Set in a remote small town outside of the Catskill Mountains, the film centers on the Parkers, a fairly reclusive but otherwise normal-seeming family that, every year participate in a grizzly religious ceremony which has been a family tradition for centuries, and must be performed by the mother of the family.

The film opens with the death of the mother, leaving it up to the eldest daughter to perform the ceremony.  Still reeling from his wife death, Frank, the domineering father, kidnaps a young girl and imprisons her in the basement of the Parkers house in preparation for the ceremony.

The two teenage daughters in the family, Rose and Iris, are not so enthusiastic about their new responsibilities. Unbeknown to the Parkers, the locals are beginning to suspect them, especially the local Doctor (Micheal Parks) whose daughter disappeared with out a trace only days earlier.

The film has a style all its own - dark, gothic, macabre and unsettling; just a bit too slow paced for my liking. Which is a shame because the film had the makings of a cannibal classic like Ravenous - which is the only film I can compare it to in terms of style and plot.

The film culminates in a frenzy of cannibalism and stomach-churning gore, with an amazing scene which ranks amongst the best I've seen, in either a zombie or any other type of horror film. The ending however, doesn't make up for the slow paced, uneven, and at times tedious eighty minutes that precede it.
 

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Them! (1954)

Them! is a classic b-movie sci-fi horror directed by Gorgon Douglas. After strange goings on and several unexplainable deaths in the New Mexico dessert, the police and army call in a scientist to investigate.

The British scientist and his daughter soon discover that a race of gigantic ants are living under the dessert, and are mutations created from latent radiation left over from earlier atom bomb tests.

Them! is well acted, frightening, and engaging from start to finish. The cast is pretty damn good, especially James Whitmore as the pretty intelligent cop who found a five year old girl, aimlessly walking through the terrain of the desert— miles from her family's wrecked travel trailer—unresponsive by some catastrophe.

After a failed attempt to kill the ants in the dessert, they soon spread to the city and its a race against time to prevent them from breeding and spreading all over the country. Given the year this film was made, the special effects are very convincing, and a great soundtrack adds to the atmosphere. The last battle at the end of the film, between the army and ants in the storm drains of L.A. was the perfect ending, well acted and filmed.

Them! is one of the best monster films ever made. Certainly the best horror of the fifties, and is a must watch for all horror fans.

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Aftershock (2012)

Aftershock is a poorly produced mediocre survival film that has no scares, lots of cliches and bad acting. The major problem with the film is the unknown cast who were really bland and characterless in their roles. The dialogue was laughable in parts and the hole thing just felt cheap and thrown together.

The duration of an earthquake is only a few seconds long. During the aftermath of which the film didn't seem to know what to do with its self.  The budget must have been an issue as well, because most of the sfx set pieces looked like scenes from those crappy b-movie monster movies like Sharktopus. 

In no part of this was I shocked to see what came next; the whole thing was predictable as hell. Which can be put down to an underdeveloped plot - which the makers of  Sharktopus would actually be proud of.

The first forty minutes of tedious setup seemed more like a documentary about club-18/30 party holidays to Ibiza, and consisted mostly of the leftovers from scripts of the Hostel films. The fact that Eli Roth produced and didn't direct this film is very apparent, it just didn't have the style of dark sadistic torture and gore that I have come to expect from him.

One thing that this film proves without doubt is that Eli Roth can not act, and should stick to the directors chair. He was awful in this, and should have focused his talents on the lackluster script. Things become slightly more interesting towards the end with some moments of suspense and a big plot twist, but can't make up for the rest of this torturous ill conceived guff.

All in all a pretty poor effort, not what I've come to expect from Roth. I just hope he can redeem himself with his next feature.

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Machete Kills (2013)

I told myself not to take any of Machete Kills seriously before watching. I didn't, and I still struggled thought it, the script was shocking. The film starts with Machete and his partner busting in on a weapons deal between the US army and a Mexican cartel resulting in lots of gunfire and truly shocking dialogue.

Machete is later recruited by the president played by Charlie Sheen, to stop a revolutionary terrorist,who suffers from split personality disorder, from launching an nuclear strike against the US. The rest of the film basically evolves Machete mutilating and killing as many people as possible.

Some of the death scenes are so ridiculous they are actually hilarious, the intestines helicopter death is the best of all. The film is just a showcase of extreme gore and violence with no discernible plot. Just as I thought things couldn't get any worst --Lady Gaga shows up in usual brightly colored attire, attempting to act and failing miserably-- I was even more surprised to see Mel Gibson within a thousand miles of this film.

The one thing that really irritated me was the use of CGI blood everywhere. I mean what happened to practical effects? Even the gunshot wounds were CGI, that's just lazy. Anyway you look at it, lots of explosions and chopping people up doesn't make up for a shocking script, bad acting and ridiculous dialogue. And we still have Machete in Space to look forward to.

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The Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013)

The mysterious Dyatlov pass incident is a true story about a group of nine experienced Russian hikers that were found dead in Urals in 1959. Found in various states of decomposition and mutilated, it is still not known what killed them.

This incoherent mess has nothing if anything to do with the mystery, and is yet another blair witch-style found footage film. A group of students embark on a trip to the area where the incident took place hoping to solve the 50 year old mystery.

The first half of the film basically involves the group of annoying American students arsing around in front of the camera, filming the sky and drinking. Until that is, they find some strange footprints outside their tent...and immediately this group of genius's surmise that it is a yeti.

The group photo before the inevitable..

They press on in their quest to solve the mystery. Which eventually finds them running into the Russian army, cheap CGI mutant creatures, and the Philadelphia experiment? Yes that's right the director of this tripe thought it would a good idea to link together two completely unrelated historical mystery's into the plot.

As if the script wasn't bad enough, the acting was terrible. This muddled up mess of a film is probably the worst found footage horror I've seen so far. The only thing I enjoyed about this film was watching the annoying characters getting killed off one by one.

Considering the director made Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, I think he should have retired while he was ahead.

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