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Reviews
The Killing Floor (2007)
Great mystery, decent thriller. Much better than expected.
I watched this movie with low expectations. There were no ratings on IMDb, I had never heard of any of the actors, and all the reviews were praising it as if it were the best thing ever made; which led me to believe the only people who reviewed this movie were the ones who were working on it. I was wrong. The movie holds a very steady pace for the most part. Not a whole lot happens during the beginning; they tried to make it into a thriller way too early, and were unsuccessful. But about halfway through, the characters and story really started to shine. Just when you think you know who to point fingers at, you realize you're wrong-- again and again. Towards the end, the thrills just keep on coming until the story finally unfolds. It's enough to keep just about anyone's attention.
The acting, writing and directing were 100x better than I thought they would be, especially considering the obvious low budget. My only real complaint was the acting done by Marc Blucas. He just seemed to be over-doing it a bit. Too articulate and too serious about everything he said. Everyone else did a fine job, though. Especially Shiri Appleby. I really hope someone spots her, I'd love to see her again. Her character was spot-on, her acting was top notch, and she's as pretty as can be.
The Killing Floor is about as close as you can come to the border between B movie and Hollywood thriller... without the multi-million dollar budget.
If any of the cast or crew read this.. great job guys!
Brick (2005)
Highly over-rated on IMDb.
I watched this movie simply because the rating on IMDb was high and the plot sounded good. It wasn't a mistake to watch it, but I wouldn't suggest anyone follow in my footsteps (being fooled into watching it due to the rating). From start to finish, this movie was nothing more than a bunch of over-exaggerated high school lingo... half of it I didn't even understand right away. Take this quote for example:
"See the Pin pipes it from the lowest scraper for Brad Bramish to sell, maybe. Ask any dope rat where their junk sprang and they'll say they scraped it from that, who scored it from this, who bought it off so, and after four or five connections the list always ends with The Pin. But I bet you, if you got every rat in town together and said "Show your hands" if any of them've actually seen The Pin, you'd get a crowd of full pockets."
The last bit is really slick, but keep in mind these are supposed to be the words of a regular high school kid. The entire movie is like that. A whole lot of dialog that's trying way too hard to sound smooth. That was my biggest complaint, although not the only one.
The acting was .. OK. Unfortunately that's as far as it goes. I've seen Joseph Gordon-Levitt in several other films, and really enjoyed watching him. In Brick, he just didn't cut it. It wasn't his fault though; it was how the film was pieced together. Somebody would say something to someone, and then instantly, the other character would reply with some witty remark like I mentioned before.. there was no time between lines. Not even enough time to pause for a break in a sentence. That's something I've noticed in a lot of low-budget indie films, and it's one of my biggest annoyances. It makes the actors look bad, even if they did a good job. There were quite a few people with a lot of camera time in this, and most of them did an OK job. Nora Zehetner got under my skin the most. She's beautiful and she's talented.. but she's also way too over-dramatic. All her parts seemed like an audition for a stage play. Emilie de Ravin did an absolutely fantastic job.. she was probably the highlight of the film for me.. it's just too bad she didn't show up much.
On the flip side, the story had a lot of potential. A guy loses a girlfriend who he loved. After a few months, he still has that little something left for her and can't let it go. All the sudden she turns up missing and he goes looking for her. Sounds like a great plot to me. It would have been if the movie was laid out differently. There was really no suspense or surprises to keep me interested. They started going off into a direction with some skinny guy with a pimp cane who ruled over a high school cult. I'm sorry, but that's just way out there. It was a story told by someone who doesn't know the least bit about the new generation.. and it shows.
In a nutshell, it was a movie worth watching.. once.. and at a discounted price. But it's definitely not a movie I'd recommend to friends or fellow IMDb members. I give it a solid 4 out of 10.
Silent Hill (2006)
Don't waste your time. It's all hype.
I don't write reviews too often, but I wanted to voice my opinion on this one, because the ratings on IMDb were truly deceiving this time.
Let me first start out by saying that I did not play the games much before seeing this. I spent maybe 10 minutes walking around in Silent Hill 2. Enough to see the overall atmosphere and beat up some zombies, and that's it. I didn't know anything about the storyline.
The atmosphere in the movie, from what I saw in the game, was dead on. They did an excellent job matching that for the most part, and it had a great feel to it. However, this is the only thing I really enjoyed about it -- the creepy atmosphere. Then comes the actors. A few of them did what they needed to do, but they just didn't come through for us. Nothing felt genuine, to be perfectly honest, it didn't seem like they knew what their roles really were. On the flip side, a few of them (particularly Laura Holden, the police officer) were downright awful. For me, she completely ruined the first half of the movie, simply because she didn't fit her role. Another thing that added to the cheesiness of this was the makeup. The special effects in the movie were excellent, kudos to them for that. But the make up was terrible. When someone's supposed to look dead, or sickly and pale.. I don't want to see pink flesh on their eyelids where they didn't put white makeup. When someone's supposed to look like a mutilated burn victim, I don't want the skin to be shiny and look like plastic, and I surely don't want to clearly see where the makeup stops and their real skin begins. These were all things I immediately noticed when I watched Silent Hill.
Now comes the story. Again, I do not know how the story went in the game. In the movie, the story was a total mess. It seemed EXTREMELY rushed, and nothing fit together right. I honestly don't know how to explain it, so here's an example. Let's say you're watching a comedy, laughing until your sides hurt, and out of nowhere, Robo Cop comes in and starts terrorizing the city for no reason. Then Robo Cop leaves, and the comedy continues. This is how I felt with Silent Hill. Something would happen, and then it was over. Then something completely different would happen, then that was over too. No focus was placed on a single event for more than a couple minutes. Multiply that over 120 minutes, and throw in some time fillers, and you have the story of Silent Hill.
The IMDb rating on this movie (6.9) was the reason I went to go see it in theaters tonight. Judging by the comments I've read about the movie and by the movie itself, it seems you HAVE to have played the games to really enjoy this.
Don't get me wrong.. I wasn't bored while I was watching it, I wasn't mad when I left the theater, and I didn't feel like I completely wasted my money. It kept me entertained, I was just very disappointed, because I was expecting a fresh new horror. It had some nerve-racking moments, but no good scares. I had a wimp of a girl next to me who didn't flinch once. We both walked out ready to just go home.
All-in-all, the story had potential, but they screwed it up. If nothing else, I suggest waiting until it comes to video and rent it. If you're a fan of the game, and have thoroughly followed the story, you might really enjoy it. If not, I can almost guarantee you're going to be disappointed.
3/10
Hostel (2005)
Hostel: Strangeland meets Saw.
At the start of the movie, my first impression was another corny teen movie. I was right, to an extent. Some parts are corny, however, some are extremely suspenseful. It starts out with a group of three pot smoking friends on a vacation in Amsterdam hoping to get stoned out of their minds and sleep with lots of European girls. Typical and overused, yes, but it worked. Unfortunately, this scenario plays out for almost half the movie. My friend told me about this movie and summarized it as "lots of boobs, and lots of gore", and he was dead on. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy seeing a boob here and there, but come on, let's do it in moderation, OK? The nudity was excessive, and it felt like it was only there for the ratings. They could left out 95% of the nudity and still kept the viewers perfectly happy. As for the gore -- Hostel wouldn't be Hostel without it. There's no problem there. This is a movie that WILL make you cringe.. and it's a movie that WILL make you fold up into the fetus position. But it won't scare you. Hostel was much more of a thriller than a horror.
As for the acting.. everyone did a good job, with the exception of a few scenes. Everyone was convincing for the most part, even the "only hired because they were hot" European girls. Since I compared this movie to Saw in my summary, let me just say the acting was a thousand times better than in Saw. Don't worry about that.
All in all, I enjoyed this movie. But it definitely isn't something I'd buy. It kept my attention, it was very suspenseful at times, and the story was straight forward and believable. It just didn't have the spark. Metaphorically speaking, this is just another notch in the belt in terms of recent horror/thrillers.
I give it a generous 7 out of 10 stars.
Don't take your kids to this movie.
Shallow Ground (2004)
Better than good, but not quite great.
First off, let me say that the reason I gave this movie a 9 out of 10, is because I'm basing it off of my own personal horror flick scale. I almost always have to lower my standards a bit for horrors. So I rated it a 9 as a horror film.
Anyways -- At the start, I thought Shallow Ground was going to be another cheesy knock-off horror flick, and boy, was I wrong. It had its expected cheap scares, and some that were very original. I wouldn't quite call it scary, but more along the lines of really creepy. Given that the movie was on a low budget, they pulled out some great actors from the wood-works, I was very impressed. The story was, well.. unique, but not entirely -- yet it was very well written, and I have a hunch that the writer got exactly what he wanted (hopefully that all made sense). This movie will keep you interested as long as you have an open mind to latter day horror films. All-in-all, this was definitely one of the better horrors I've seen in a long time. It's just a shame I didn't know about it until a year after its release. It's worth a watch, trust me.
Oh yeah, and don't let your kids watch this one.
11:14 (2003)
A bad attempt at a good movie.
I honestly don't understand why this movie is rated as high as it is. I'm very open-minded when it comes to movies. This was supposed to be a comedy slash thriller movie, so I knew what I was getting into. The majority of the first half keeps you on edge, then it steadily grows more dull until the end -- with very few, if any, laughs in between. They did a pretty decent job piecing the story together, but there was way too much foreshadowing which leads you to know pretty much what was coming up next. The suspense scenes were fairly well done in this movie, though. It had my heart pounding though a good portion of it. The only problem is, the cheesy acting took away from the suspense at times. All-in-all, this was a mediocre movie at most. Watching this again will definitely not be on my to-do list anytime soon. 5/10