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Oh Joon-woo (Yoo Ah-in) is trapped in his apartment as a deadly virus spreads outside, turning mild-mannered folks into zombies. With no family, minimal contact with the outside world, and little food and water, Oh Joon-woo must figure out how to survive. This 2020 South Korean film mixes plenty of drama with the horror, but it does have the pedal to the metal pretty much right from the start. If you are a fan of zombie movies, you will easily recognize elements of different films from the genre in this one--from Shaun of the Dead to Dawn of the Dead to 28 Days Later to World War Z, it seems writer and director Il Cho took some of the best parts of these films, threw them into a pot, stirred them all up, dumped them out, and #Alive was the result...and the result was actually pretty good! Ah-in makes for a likable lead, and the inevitable woman he comes across (Shin-Hye Park, and don't look at me like that for having a spoiler. We know it's only a matter of time before he comes across a woman/potential love interest) is equally impressive. Then we have the zombies...
Stand down. I'll be nice.
The zombies look cool--they're not as gory as some we have seen in other films, but their look and especially movements make them frightening. Speaking of gore, it is surprisingly minimal here. Instead of seeing intestines thrown about, we are presented with an approach that leaves much of the horror to the viewer's imagination, and while this can be a bore in some movies, the approach absolutely works in this one. If you allow yourself to be wrapped up in this film, you will find some moments to be genuinely scary. Unfortunately, some of the directing and editing decisions will take you right out of the movie. The shots when there is a camera strapped to the actor are brutally bad, there are too many jump cuts, and, worst of all, we get slow motion during a very tense scene. The closing moments deflate the balloon somewhat--you know what is about to happen, but you wonder if it will be a nod to 28 Weeks Later or Back to the Future Part II (I won't spoil this part). Even with these shortcomings, #Alive is a very good zombie movie, and certainly one I recommend checking out.
A woman runs off to a cabin with her secret lover and 8-year-old child. Somebody then kills the adults with a sledgehammer. Ten years later, a group of people party in the same house--I usually say "group of youngsters", or "group of young people", as that is what we have more often than not in these movies, but this group looks to be at least in their late twenties, if not into their thirties; however, they act like teenagers, so I don't know how to accurately describe them. That is just one of the many oddities in this 1983 film that looks like it was shot on a home camcorder--if you were born after the 1980's came to an end and have no idea what I am talking about, here goes...long before everybody carried around cell phones and thought it necessary to take pictures of every aspect of their mundane life and share them with the world, people had home video cameras that were generally only brought out during holidays, birthdays, or other special events, and used largely to not only capture those special moments, but also make people feel very uncomfortable while being recorded--a long way from going to landmarks around the world and instead of capturing the landmark itself, positioning the camera dead center on your own mug and hamming it up while the landmark becomes nothing more than a blur in your backdrop, all in hopes of impressing complete strangers. The cameras were big, bulky, but most importantly, they got the job done.
And they looked like this
I'm not sure why, but I find homemade/no budget movies from decades prior to the 2000's much more bearable than those of more recent years--I theorize it's because they were shot on actual tape instead of digitally. Anyway, this movie is an absolute train wreck of a project. If you have read many of my movie reviews, you will know there is one thing I truly despise in movies...okay, there's a lot I hate about movies, but one thing that really irritates me is the use of slow motion, and practically everything in this movie is in slow motion. There is even one scene that shows two of the characters going for a walk--literally nothing else happens in this scene, but we have to endure it that much longer because the entire scene is in slow motion! Needless to say, if they are going to present this in slow motion, we are also going to receive our action in the same format...and that we do, all the way up to the final battle. There is also an extended scene of a guy playing guitar...nothing else. Just a dude and his guitar. As you would expect in a horror film, there's lots of screaming--this isn't when people are being killed in this movie, however. No no, this is during truly exciting moments such as a guy eating a sandwich, others chugging beer, and an intense food fight. I'm not sure there was actual scripted dialogue during the party scenes, as all the characters talk over each other--not that any of them were likely saying anything important. Then there's the lighting--dear readers, I am going to give you a free lesson in movie making. This lesson is with lighting. When lighting is done right, it's something the viewer doesn't think about or acknowledge consciously. It is often taken for granted, but lighting plays a much more important role in production than most realize. When the audience notices the lighting, you know something went wrong, and in this movie, the lighting sticks out like a sore thumb. We see shadows of not only the characters on screen, but also of those waiting for their cue to enter the shot, and of various crew members and their gear. If you are making a movie and you don't land any other technical aspect upon initial shooting, at least make sure you get the lighting right. Class dismissed.
What are we seeing here?
The fun doesn't end there. We know the kid is the one who killed the adults at the start, but the movie alludes to this maybe not being the case before saying "yeah, okay, he did it"...but then it gets really weird. The kid is now a giant who looks like Franklin from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre wearing one of those cool, clear faces you find at Halloween stores...but he can shape-shift back into his child form, and seems impervious to pain...until he's not. This may have been explained near the end when the child version of our killer speaks, but apparently the director forgot to tell the kid to take the marbles out of his mouth before shooting, as whatever he says is unintelligible. I would say the acting is bad, but I'm sure you assume that already. Unfortunately, all this makes this movie sound much more entertaining than it is--cutting out abut 20 minutes of nothing at all happening would have done wonders for this movie, and may have thrust it into the "So Bad It's Good" hall of fame. What we end up with is a boring, technical disaster that is just entertaining enough to keep you watching until the end.
Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini) created a parasite, but the deadly thing is stuck to his stomach. Now he is trying to figure out a way to kill it while trying to escape from Merchant, a government agency that wants his creation. Not to be confused with the much more critically acclaimed 2019 South Korean movie of the same name, this one was released in 1982, a time that seemed somewhat obsessed with post-apocalyptic stories such as this one. The setting for this, however, was just ten years later, in 1992--being so many years removed from 1992 and seeing a "futuristic" movie set during that time is very strange (thank goodness gas prices in real life weren't what they were in this film). Somewhat surprisingly, the movie was released in 3D...maybe they thought this added to the "futuristic" feel, and I don't know what this movie may have looked like in that presentation, but unlike with many other 3D films, there's not much to distract the viewer when not watching it with those groovy red and blue glasses. If you are looking for star power, there's not much to see here, though Cherie Currie (lead singer of The Runaways and Sara from Twilight Zone: The Movie) pops in, and this is just the second movie Demi Moore ever appeared in, for what that's worth.
You didn't expect her to look different, did you?
The story is a bit of a convoluted mess, but that's not uncommon for this genre. The special effects are delightfully cheesy. The acting, while not unbearable, is bad. None of this really holds the movie down too much, and in fact adds to the enjoyment of it--what does make this film a challenge to get through is the pace. The story just plods along with long stretches of nothing happening to advance it, so be prepared to struggle with focusing on the screen. Still, Parasite is a fun 1980s sci-fi outing.
Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom) thinks she has found the perfect one bedroom apartment--what she doesn't know, however, is being a part of this complex community means more than saying hello as you awkwardly pass your neighbor. For whatever reason, I seem to be stumbling across these cult community movies lately (The Sacramentand Midsommar are examples)--with those two movies, I knew going in what to expect, but with 1BR, which my girlfriend chose from Netflix, I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Of course, as soon as you see everybody at the apartment complex being nice and helpful to each other, you know there must be something odd going on.
This has cult written all over it
This movie does a good job building tension--what starts as a slow-burn approach turns up the intensity quickly in a fairly unsettling scene (poor cat), but unfortunately, it fails to hold this tension, and the scares all but disappear as the story unravels. Once Sarah learns what is happening, the movie goes into cruise control, and we crawl to the finish (more on that later). Bloom does a decent job with her role, and the rest of the cast is fair as well--there are no fantastic performances, but none that are horrible either. While there is not a lot of blood and guts, the violent scenes are certainly ones that will grab your attention. I would have liked to have seen more development with the characters who were already a part of the community, but no such luck. The action finally picks back up when Sarah inevitably attempts her escape--the final ten minutes are enough to bring the movie up a point, and the final scene is quite memorable. If you find yourself scrolling through Netflix and come across this movie, give it a shot--you can certainly do worse on that streaming service.
Back in the 1980's, there was this irrational fear that swept the United States--the story was that teenagers were listening to heavy metal music, worshiping Satan, and committing ritualistic murders. Any of these three actions alone is bad enough but combine them, and we have some real trouble! What We Summon the Darkness does is takes this real-life (largely) urban legend, replaces the Beavis and Butt-Head type metalheads with three chicks, and adds a Christian-lead agenda to the whole mess. While this may sound fun on paper, the delivery leaves a lot to be desired. The profanity-laced dialogue is most disappointing--filled with mind-numbing conversations and failed attempts at humor, nothing any of the characters say will make you care about them in the least. Speaking of the characters--they look like they could be Fairuza Balk's daughter...
...Colin Farrell's son...
...Abigail Breslin's sister...
...and Johnny Knoxville's father...
Wait...that IS Johnny Knoxville!
Speaking of Johnny Knoxville, he turns in the best performance in this movie--this sentence speaks volumes to the level of acting from the rest of the cast. As the film starts, none of the six primary characters are convincing, and they get even worse when the blood starts to spill and the over-acting begins. There is a fair bit of gore, but unfortunately, the CGI in some scenes is so bad you will laugh out loud--pay particular attention when the cop gets shot and when one character's hair catches on fire. If you're looking for some good 1980's metal...let's be honest; not a lot of that exists in the real world, and there is none in this movie. Making matters worse is the level of stupidity the characters exhibit--how hard would it have been to move the towels out of the way?! Unintentional hilarity, if nothing else, will keep you going through this movie, with my favorite being the character flying through the window after tripping over another character's arm--it's not quite on the level of the ending of The Galaxy Invader, but it's not far off. I also have to give kudos for the use of the T'Pau song "Heart and Soul", a somewhat forgotten gem from the 1980's, in the closing credits. We Summon the Darkness is a movie you will make it through, but not one you will likely enjoy while doing so.
Patrick (Kentucker Audley) is joined by two guys from an alternate news company called VICE as he searches for his sister Caroline (Amy Seimetz, Pet Sematary) at a place called Eden Parish. What is Eden Parish? It's a commune. This is a horror movie. We, as horror fans, know that when you see a commune in a horror film, there's going to be some weird going on, but maybe not necessarily evil or bad. We then meet the leader, Father (Gene Jones), and find out he speaks words from The Bible. Now that we have a Christian in a horror movie, we are SURE evil is happening, and the religious dude is the villain.
There's also a creepy girl, just because
We can tell already this movie has a ton of elements we are used to, but the third act reveals something even more familiar--this is when our "Jim Jones" vibe is brought to life completely, as most of the rest of the story plays out as a reenactment of the very real Jonestown Massacre of 1978. With all that said, naturally a lot of what happens is fairly predictable, but don't dismiss this movie quite yet. Surprisingly, the acting is rather good here--more surprisingly, it's a halfway decent found footage film that bypasses the standard of the characters dropping F bombs to express fear, choosing to take a much smarter route. The film also does a nice job building tension--the music helps this tremendously, as it adds to a general uneasy feeling. There's not a lot of blood and guts in this movie, but there is a scene or two that will grab your attention in this category. If you see Eli Roth's name above the title, don't be fooled--his contribution is strictly as a producer, as the movie was written and directed by Ti West. The ending is, sadly, predictable and uninteresting, but even with this, The Sacrament turned out to be better than I expected it to be, and it stands head and shoulders above most found footage films of the past ten years...not that this is a great compliment.
A group of campers and rangers head deep into the forest for a getaway, but find themselves stalked by a vicious killer. This 1983 film can fittingly be deemed a combination of Deliveranceand Friday the 13th...only not as good as either. The movie does come out of the gate hot, as we see a couple on a motorcycle offed in unusual manners--the girl especially meets a wicked fate. From there, we meet the would-be victims for the rest of the film, and there are a lot of them--sadly, most live, making one wonder why they went with so many throwaway characters but didn't kill them off?
"Don't ask me. I wanted to kill them all!"
Speaking of the campers, there are surprisingly some familiar faces here. Daryl Hannah (Blade Runner, Splash) is probably the biggest name to come out of the film--in fact, this movie was shot in 1981 and shelved until 1983, being released as Hannah's star began to shine. Joe Pantoliano (Risky Business, Memento) kind of steals the show (as he tends to do) as the insane Eggar, and fans of The Jeffersons will recognize Ernest Harden Jr. Rounding it out is Mark Metcalf, and if you ever saw him in the Twisted Sister videos and wished somebody would kill him, this movie has what you've been craving.
"What do you wanna do with your life?!"
The main drawback of this The Final Terror is the lack of anything of any substance happening--specifically, it is a slasher film with few kills and practically no scary moments. There is little character development to compensate for this, resulting in the campers being rather interchangeable. There are some nice shots of the woods and a river, and one scene involving a raft that is cool, so that will help get you through the movie. The few death scenes we see present decent effects. The final scene is anti-climatic, but it does offer a shot that is both unique for its time and well done. Watch it to see some stars early in their careers, and for the interesting directing, but there's not much more to see here.
