Reviews

See No Evil 2 (2014) - as campy as See No Evil 1, if not more, the sequel is yet further proof that being a successful wrestler doesn't mean that you will be a successful actor (as if Hulk Hogan's abysmal movie career wasn't testament enough).

To that end, Kane (Glenn Jacobs) is no Kane Hodder, nor he is any other kind of actor. Whoever the director is, and I don't actually care enough to google it, made a critical mistake in letting the talentless Jacobs have any speaking lines in the film. Wrestlers are perfect candidates for slashers -- they're big, they look intimidating, and brief flashes of their bulbous physique is enough to inspire fear. But to expect any kind of acting from these steroid-abusing freaks is like expecting real verse from rappers. Predictably, Jacobs is terrible as the film's boogeyman, and the backstory of his abuse-as-a-child-that-made-him-the-killerr-he-is-today is beyond trite.

There's a good way to do horror films in 2014, and there's a bad way. Then there's the WWE Studios way, which is to use the mentally challenged as directors and screen writers while trying to rip off better movies. See No Evil 2 is a fine example of why WWE Studios will never be anything more than a mediocre producer of bottom-rung dreck, on par with Asylum pictures. It's a shame, too, because wrestlers like Jacobs have a lot of potential as possible slashers -- provided they keep their mouths shut. Is it any surprise that this movie sucks as bad as it does?

The Texarkana serial killer of the 1940s was the original homicidal maniac with a burlap sack over his head, a trend we still see to this day (The Strangers being a fine example). The Town that Dreaded Sundown is more of a sequel than a remake to the 1976 film of the same name, which itself functioned as a true-story of the real-life murders that took place in the border town of Texarkana in the 1940s. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's contemporary update is brutally violent without being especially bloody. It uses lighting effects and chase sequences to maximum effect, and the screenplay even contains a theory on the identity of the original Texarkana murderer. Above all else, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is proof that there's still a lot of energy in the slasher genre, and that it's possible to release one of these movies in the year 2014 without coming off as a plagiarist.

A group of annoying young people host a party inside of an abandoned hospital. Before long, their night of fun turns into a night of carnage as a massive, steroid-pumped and shellshocked Iraq war veteran mauls them all to death with various pieces of construction equipment. There are a few beheadings, a jock gets nailed alive to a wall, the token black dude is eviscerated with a drill bit, and a ridiculous latino gay caricature is burned alive in a church (how's that for offensive?)

Hazard Jack is a mostly formulaic slasher -- seen one, seen 'em all -- but it earns some points for seeming at least a little self-aware of its function as pornography. Its characters are so over-the-top stereotypical and the titular maniac so obscenely huge and bestial as to indicate as much.

But in the end, for a film like this, there really wasn't enough gore. Everything in the introduction -- from the deteriorating hospital setting to the brute killer's hefty arsenal of killing tools -- make you expect volumes of blood and guts, and yet the gore level is at best average. The slasher is one of the most overdone genres of film ever, and you can't sell one these days without extreme gore and suspense. Otherwise, it really feels like plagiarism.

As a devoted slasher fan, I hope Jack returns for a sequel. But when he does, I hope he's willing to paint the town red.

All Hallow's Eve is a film that is really a series of short films, each depicting the massacre of a young woman by bizarre assailants (the cyborg UFO is my favourite). While it might be one of the goriest movies I've seen in a while, I couldn't get past the gaps in logic in at least two of its chase sequences, and the ending was as anticlimactic as they come. Director Damien Leone & company seem so intent on depicting violence and carnage that they've altogether neglected key elements of storytelling like exposition and character development. All Hallow's Eve might have a few good scares and some decent gore, but overall it fails as a movie.

Mystery Road (2013) is a film about a small town cop whose investigation into the death of a young prostitute leads him into a dark underworld of meth producers and pimps. While director Ivan Sen tries to effect a dark and somber mood, it's kind of hard to take the whole thing seriously when some of its locales have names like "Slaughter Hill" and "Massacre Creek". Even the naming of the titular road seems to serve no purpose other than to remind us of the genre of film we're watching. Which is to say nothing of the film's weird affinity for aerial tracking shots of "Detective Jay Swan" driving from one dilapidated country shack to another. Mystery Road scores some points for its visual association of a rustic countryside setting with bleakness and decay (see also, True Detective and Breaking Bad), but everything from Aaron Pederson's flat performance to the overlong running time make this a B-list thriller at best. If the film has a saving grace, it's the deftly choreographed shootout scene at the end.

I don't think I have the words in my vocabulary to convey how terrible this movie is. Stilted, overwrought, contrived -- even these words fall short of describing the amateurish drivel that is the screenplay for The Disappearance of Lenka Wood.

Maybe it's best to let the film speak for itself. Here is an excerpt from the second act:

Army Guy: Next time, I'll cut your leg open. Then you'll have three wounds, and only two hands. You get to choose which one stays open.

Corrupt Cop: please, ill tell you where she's being kept

Army Guy: write it down for me

Corrupt Cop: I don't have a pen!

Army Guy: You can use your own blood!