Recently Watched Films Round Up, Part Two (2014)

Welcome to Part Two of some quick reviews to catch you up on what to see and what to avoid like it was Ebola. Let’s get to it:

DEAD SNOW 2: RED VS. DEAD (2014)
That pesky, troublemaking Nazi-zombie, Herzog (Orjan Gamst), is back!! This time Herzog has big plans for world domination and he’s recruiting an army to help him. And of course by “recruiting” I mean “turning people into zombies.” But Martin (Vegar Hoel) is also back and he “recruits” his own army of dead Russian soldiers killed by Herzog and his men back during WWII. Let the battle begin!!

Simply put, DEAD SNOW 2 is one of the best times I had this year watching a horror movie. All the energy, fun, and gore that made the first film a classic is present. The pace is fast, the Nazi-zombies are more cruel and more evil than ever, and the script is a blast. The film picks right up after the carnage from the first DEAD SNOW. Martin is arrested and blamed with killing all his friends, but back at the hospital Martin realizes that the zombies are back and hellbent on world domination.

Director and co-writer Tommy Wirkola knows what his fans want and he gives it to them in spades (there’s even a huge nod to EVIL DEAD 2). Wirkola’s use the stunning landscapes of Iceland also make this a beautiful film, despite all the gore. And fear not, DEAD SNOW 2 has enough gore for about two or three films!! We also get some great new characters: An American Zombie Squad who comes to Iceland to join the fun (but just wait until you see the members of this “squad”). This one’s a no-brainer … don’t miss DEAD SNOW 2!!

MY SUMMARY FOR DEAD SNOW 2:
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Plot: 4 out of 5 stars
Gore: 8 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 4 out of 5 brains

BLOOD LAKE: ATTACK OF THE KILLER LAMPREYS (2014)
In a sleepy little lakeside town in Michigan, lamprey eels, which already decimated the fish population, have turned their attention a little further up the food chain … to humans. As the town is overrun with lampreys no one is safe as long as there’s water around!!

Why this movie, produced by The Asylum, didn’t air on the SyFy channel is beyond me. Instead it debuted on the Animal Planet channel. This has all the earmarks of your typical SyFy flick. A cast of B-list actors must overcome their own personal dramas and come together to fight off the slimy little bastards. Shannen Doherty, Jason Brooks, and Christopher Lloyd lead the cast in the fight. Director James Cullen Bressack keeps everything moving at a brisk pace and gives us a little more gore than we usually get from this type of film. The plot of BLOOD LAKE follows the JAWS blueprint to a “T” so much so that when faced with losing tourist dollars the mayor of the town even says, “Keep the beaches open at all costs!!”

BLOOD LAKE won’t win any Academy Awards but you’ll find yourself having a blast as the lampreys (which according to Doherty’s character looks like “an anus with teeth”) get into pools, showers, and even swim up toilets!! They are nasty little buggers and Bressack had a blast with the kill scenes. This is definitely a beer and buddies kinda film and I’m recommending it for the sheer fun of it all.

MY SUMMARY FOR BLOOD LAKE:
Director: James Cullen Bressack
Plot: 3 out of 5 stars
Gore: 4.5 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains

LATE PHASES (2014)
A blind Vietnam war vet, Ambrose (Nick Damici) moves into a community for older people to live out his remaining days. But once there he starts hearing stories about people disappearing under unusual circumstances. He then begins to experience some weird things himself. It’s not long before Ambrose realizes a werewolf is terrorizing and killing his neighbors.

Don’t worry, I didn’t spoil anything. Between the picture on the DVD cover and the lazy script, you know it’s a werewolf right off the bat. That’s actually why I watched this one. I love me a good werewolf story. But there was something about this one that seemed familiar. The main character, Ambrose, is handicapped (blind), he knows there’s a werewolf but no one believes him, he believes the werewolf might be the town priest, and Ambrose shoots the werewolf through the eye. My readers well-versed in werewolf movies will have already guessed that LATE PHASES is exactly like 1985s SILVER BULLET. It’s pretty damn shameful, really. The only difference between the two films is that SILVER BULLET was a lot of fun and had a decent looking werewolf. Not here. It’s pretty dumb looking and we don’t even get a semi-decent on-screen transformation (the guy simply tears his skin off to reveal a werewolf underneath).

The cast is decent enough. Besides Damici, who plays his role in old man make up and sounds like Robert De Niro, LATE PHASES stars Lance (1981s HALLOWEEN 2) Guest, Tina (GILLIGAN’S ISLAND) Louise, Tom (THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) Noonan, and indie horror director Larry Fessenden. But in their defense, these actors really didn’t have much of a script to work with. The dialogue is choppy and pretty inane but the worst sin of all is that even though writer Eric Stolze blatantly rips off SILVER BULLET (seriously, this could’ve been promoted as a remake) he manages to make LATE PHASES lifeless and boring. Even to the werewolf movie completists out there I’d definitely skip this one.

MY SUMMARY FOR LATE PHASES:
Director: Adrian Garcia Bogliano
Plot: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Gore: 2 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains

EXTRATERRESTRIAL (2014)
A group of twenty-something friends trek out to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of boozing, drugging, partying, and sex only to have their plans ruined by some nasty aliens.

Sorry (it’s never a good sign when the first thing I do is apologize for the film) for the standard plot summary but that’s exactly what you get with EXTRATERRESTRIAL; a standard alien abduction film that offers nothing new to the sub-genre. Twenty-somethings, a remote cabin, aliens. Really? You’re not gonna throw anything new into this tired old equation? No? Okay, then.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL is written by The Vicious Brothers (Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz) and is directed by Minihan, but the only thing “vicious” here is the tedium of sitting through this film with the déjà vu-like sensation that you’ve seen it all before. And you have … and you’ve seen it done a lot better. Here we’re told the government has known about aliens since the Roswell crash and there’s been a truce. The government lets the aliens occasionally abduct humans and the aliens let the humans “run around down here as though we run the place.” Great truce!! Sounds like something our Congress would draft up.

The aliens are your typical “grey’s,” the same ones you’ve seen since THE X-FILES. The only difference is that these aliens run around in the woods growling like Bigfoots. The aliens get pissed off because one of them is killed by a human. Now the truce is broken and it’s apparently open season for abducting and killing humans. Inevitably we get to see the inside of the mothership and it looks like every other spaceship in every other alien flick. Even the experiments they’re performing are the same old boring ones. Lots of drills, anal probing, things being implanted, and people screaming. On the plus side the acting is completely forgettable. Oh wait a minute … that’s not a good thing!!

Even if you’ve never seen an alien abduction movie before you’re not going to find EXTRATERRESTRIAL the least bit entertaining. A plodding story full of bland actors in a plot done a thousand times before. But at least the ending is completely ridiculous and will have you gouging your eyes out with your Icecream spoon. Oh wait … I did it again. Definitely skip this stinker!!

MY SUMMARY FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL:
Director: Colin Minihan
Plot: 1 out of 5 stars
Gore: 0 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains

Stay Bloody!!!