Reviews

After seeing the trailers, I had positive expectations of this show and hoped for an emotional charged drama with sensitive insights to after-death spirituality and the living human condition having myself lost my own wife three years past. The brilliant and egotistical surgeon who finds some humanity when he becomes visited by the spirit of his ex-wife held personal connection to me though I envisioned the spiritual contacts to begin a bit more subtly than him supposedly "bumping into his ex" at a restaurant, having dinner with her (do spirits really eat food?) and then carrying on a conversation with her into the night. I found the concept of her appearing anywhere and almost any time to cheapen the emotional aspects of her visitations as I expected her spirit would arrive only in more prominent opportunities to help guide his life in more positive and less self absorbed ways (which see does do) and his contact with her spirit to have far more emotional impact on him than simple the appearance of a "friend" only he can see and talk to. Maybe further episodes will grow on me and disappoint less hopefully.

I first started hearing rumors of a t.v. series based on the comic book some time ago. By the end of summer, I was reading about an official series in virtually every horror magazine I subscribe to and names like Darabont, Gale Ann Hurd and Nicotero were attached along with comic book series creator Kirkman having an active hand. Well, episode one debuted on AMC on All Hallow's Eve and it's exceeded my every expectation. Admittedly, I hadn't read the comic book (though I'm sure gonna now) but I've been a huge zombie movie fan primarily thanks to George Romero. The show looks and sounds like a movie with top-notch production values and fabulous zombie FX. Lennie James steals the show so far in an exceptional cast. On top of it all, Darabont and Kirkman have humanized the unhuman in their touching teleplay adaption. No doubt, AMC have another runaway hit on their hands.

Halloween evening and I was on flick two of Fangoria's FrightFest of which "The Haunting" was one of eight movies. To be honest, I'm a bit of a subtitle snob as I'm a very visual person and love to get totally immersed in the sound and images of a movie and hate reading. And since my Spanish does not extended to understanding an entire movie, I went with the English 2.0 sound of which there is an odd hollow phasing I presume is not in the original mix so be forewarned if this is the audio you are accessing. Despite that this is a chilling movie with some very effective special FX and a moving score. The use of the "No-Do" short docu footage works in well with the storyline. Performances are steady throughout. Again, it's the visuals including some nice cinematography that's most effective on this film.

Halloween 2010 and since I just bought the Fangoria Frightfest movies, I thought I'd do a horror movie marathon and see how many of the 8 films I could make it though in on sitting. Unfortunately, I didn't even get to start viewing movies until the afternoon so no doubt I wasn't going to get through as many as I wanted to.

"Fragile" was on the top of the stack so I saw it first. The first obvious comparison for me is with the HorrorFest 8 Films to Die For movies which I have been a big fan of. "Fragile" is on par being an indy film but looking like a better movie due to the talents of its crew personnel. The acting department is where the film is hampered as the adults do adequate jobs at best. There are some effective spooky moments even in light of the fact that I was watching when it was still light out. Not much in terms of special FX though. All in all, a decent movie to start a Halloween horror movie marathon with.

I first heard about this movie upon seeing a cast and crew panel promoting it at a Fangoria Weekend of Horror convention. With a cast including the likes of horror vets Foree, Haig, Bond-son and bangin' hard body Pratt, I so wanted to like this movie yet honestly, I fell asleep three times in the first hour and I started watching it at 8 in the evening. It's still surprising it was able to garner such a genre friendly cast despite it's "shot-on-a-camcorder" look and the sometimes white washed out and shadowy blackened lighting and what's with all of those amateurish close up shots. No complaints about seeing Pratt up close but I can't really tolerate full facial framed shots of some of the older actors (no offense) plus the storyline was confusingly dull during the expository sequences which made up way too much of the film. Sorry to say but not one of the better flicks released by Raimi's Ghost House Underground.

When compared to some other movies born from the imagination of a musician, "DF" rates much higher than most.

To start this review off right... Big props to Lions Gate for again kicking off yet another quality series of indi or foreign horror movies that might well have never gotten release or had little to no notoriety here in the US had it not been released by them. Like the After Dark films, Ghost House Pictures present little-known gems of low budget horror film making with granted mix results but at least they're given their just chance to make it.

Though this was the 2nd of the 8 Ghost House Pictures releases I watched, it was the most impressive so far and in my mind is one of the more successful movies done by someone in another business the incomparable Mr. Lordi. For example of an excruciatingly awful film by a rock star you need go no further than Bret Michaels' untra-lame "A Letter From Death Row". "DF" goes much further than expected with it's genuinely creepy production design, effective special FX and atmospheric musical score.

Worth a look.