Saw VI (2009)

I've often wondered if the Saw franchise is going to turn into another Friday The 13th series with an astronomical number of sequels. I need to state first and foremost, I am a fan of the Saw franchise. While all the movies have not been great, most have been entertaining. The 4th has probably been the most disappointing to me. It was way to complicated to make much sense with all the same screen flashbacks and way too much information. I liked the 5th one fairly well, but none can compare to the original or even the 2nd one. It was the games and obviously the results of the games that made the movies interesting. However, there was a perverted sense of reason and judgment that Jigsaw threw in to almost make it morally acceptable... almost. Tobin Bell as Jigsaw is a refreshing serial killer. Not your typical killer who is only satisfying his own lust for blood, but claims he has never killed any one... the games do the killing.

I saw on FEARnet.com that Saw VII has already been approved before Saw VI has even been released. It does make you wonder what more they can do to make the series meaning and not just a bloody bunch of games. There has to be a purpose behind the games. Justice, no matter how perverted must be the reason someone dies in the Saw movies. We have gone to all the Saw movies at the theater and have watched most on DVD after they have been released. I'm sure we will continue the pattern because we are fans. Check out the trailer below... it does look promising.

Director:
Kevin Greutert

Cast:
Shawnee Smith
Tobin Bell
Costas Mandylor
Tanedra Howard


Jigsaw...

The evidence has been destroyed, the truth buried with the dead. And now, Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) has emerged as the heir to serial killer Jigsaw's bloody legacy. With the FBI closing in, Hoffman must set into motion one last grisly game. And in the end, Jigsaw's grand scheme will finally be revealed. Five-time Saw editor Kevin Greutert helms this shocking installment of the horror franchise.






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The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

As an avid Netflix member, I really appreciate those in my "Friend's List" who send out notes and reviews from a various range of movies. I tend to send notes more on horror related films because that's what interest me. However, Tina and I watch a wide range of movies, with horror being our favorite genre. The thing is, when you look at a movie in the "At A Glance" section on Netflix, you get a look at all the reviews of that movie from NF members. It really helps me understand just how many opinions and differences there are in the minds of the average movie watcher. Some love this movie and others hate it and yet others are somewhere in the middle.

In my opinion, this movie has a lot to offer in the ghost/haunted house genre. After we watched the movie, we watched all the interviews from the actual family members, neighbors, and paranormal investigator's who lived through this ordeal. Over all the movie was fairly close to the actual events. Of course Hollywood is going to sensationalize the events, but generally it seemed close to the "true" events. The acting in this movie was good with Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner doing quality work. The characters were believable even it you don't believe in the actual events. I for one do believe that there are forces (demonic) all around us and things like this could happen. The movie itself was very creepy and has a fair amount of tension in it (which I love). As the synopsis below states, the family moves to a house in Connecticut to be closer to the hospital their oldest son needs for his cancer treatments. It doesn't take long before bizarre things to begin to happen. Since the home was a former mortuary the dead's spirits have not left. The haunting of the family begins in earnest and all members of the family are touched by the spirits. Watching the interviews in the special features really showed just how freaked out these people really were. While there are skeptics (neighbors) interviewed who didn't believe, I tend to be a believer. There would be not point or anything to gain from making up such a story, at least not at the time. I don't know if the family received compensation from the books or movies. In the haunted house genre, this movie is well worth a watch. Check out the trailer below and give this movie a shot!

In this supernatural thriller, the Campbell family's move to Connecticut takes a mysteriously dark turn when a series of shocking paranormal events reveals that their inviting new home is a former mortuary with a sordid past. Based on a true story, this terrifying tale stars Virginia Madsen and Martin Donovan as the well-meaning Campbell parents, Kyle Gallner as their cancer-stricken son and Elias Koteas as the enigmatic Rev. Nicholas Popescu.


PG13: For some intense sequences of terror and disturbing images.

Length:
102 minutes
Director:
Peter Cornwell

Cast:
Elias Koteas
Virginia Madsen
Amanda Crew
Kyle Gallner
Martin Donovan
D.W. Brown
John B. Lowe
Sarah Constible
Ty Wood
Adriana O'Neil
Matt Kippen







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Friday The 13th (Remake)...

I have never been a fan of the 80's style mindless teen slasher horror. This movie and the original fall into that category. There isn't a purpose behind it other than to kill all the "bad" kids and let the "good" kids survive. Some T&A and plenty of killing... that's about it. I have seen almost all of the Jason movies and they are all about the same in my mind. When we were watching this the other night, I kept thinking how campy and boring it was. My wife loved the original as a kid and saw it many times. However, after the movie she made the "campy" comment about watching it now as an adult. That leads me to my point of it being mindless. As a kid we are scared and excited about the "horror" of being chased by the likes of Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers, but as an adult we need more thought behind the story. Something we can grab hold of and some substance. This remake featured mostly unknown actors and for the most part they will never have a career in film. Average acting and boring story line filled the screen. In most of these type of movies, the kids do and say things we as "normal" people would never do or say. Why do they always run upstairs or into places they can't get out of? Am I being to picky that I would want some smart... maybe common sense thinking in a horror film. I don't think that is too much to ask for. I have to say that I liked the Zombie remake of Halloween much better than this remake. I could rant longer concerning this trend of one remake after another, but what good would it do. I have said several times the Hollywood is lazy and can't seem to come up with an original thought for quite some time. It's just too easy to remake money makers in hopes of making more money. That's a shame. There are many talented people out there that are not afraid to imagine the unimaginable. Where's the Ray Bradbury's of our day??? Watch this if you liked it as a kid or young adult, but don't expect anything new from it.

Check out the trailer below...

Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker and Aaron Yoo headline director Marcus Nispel's chilling remake of the classic 1980s slasher-thriller that spawned a legendary horror franchise. Ignoring the warnings of the locals, a group of teenage camp counselors takes on the job of reopening Camp Crystal Lake -- on Friday the 13th no less, and raise the ire of Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears), a masked, homicidal maniac.

R For strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, language and drug material

Length:
97 minutes
Director:
Marcus Nispel

Cast:
Jared Padalecki
Danielle Panabaker
Amanda Righetti
Travis Van Winkle
Derek Mears
Aaron Yoo
Julianna Guill
Arlen Escarpeta
Willa Ford
Ryan Hansen







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Vampire Movies... 100 Years In Film...

To say that vampires in film are a critical part of our film heritage would be an understatement. As I was reading many sites on the history of vampires in movies, I was pleasantly surprised to see how important of an influence the genre really has been. I have printed several key points from Wikipedia concerning the subject just to prove a point... OK, probably several points. The first thing that caught my attention was that Dracula has been the subject of more films than any other fictional character... that is a huge statement. Considering there have been so many movies of all topics over the last 100 years, to realize that Dracula had that much influence over our film culture was quite surprising to me. There is also an interesting article by Morgan Bell where he develops "theories" as to the deviant, sexual, and immoral nature of the vampire. He tries to understand why we "fear" the vampire. Good article and if you're interested here's the link to copy and paste: http://www.helium.com/items/695177-exploring-the-vampire-in-cinema. I can see his point on many levels and maybe that is why the vampire still scares us today, because he is a character that we don't understand and we fear what we don't understand.

I have and always will be a traditionalist when it comes to the "undead". As a kid, I loved the old vampire movies. I didn't see Dracula as a sexual being. I was more impressed with his superhuman strength, turning into a bat and a cloud of smoke, and his ability to control his victims. It's not to say that I haven't enjoyed movies like Blade when the vampire is a daywalker. I do appreciate writers and directors adding a few twist to their work... the problem is that it's not possible for a vampire to go into daylight. It's also not possible for a vampire to have sex and children. They are dead. Therefore, a dead person cannot procreate. The Vampire survives off the drinking of the blood of his victims. That doesn't mean he has blood in his veins. Therefore it would be impossible to have sex. The only way to "create" more vampires is for a vampire to "change" a human into a vampire. There have been many ways this has taken place in film over the last 100 years, but my favorite is by bleeding the human of his or her blood and when they wake up as a member of the undead, they must drink the blood of their master to fully change.

Vampire of the Coast (1909) (the first silent Vampire film)
I saw that the first vampire movie was Vampire of the Coast (1909). I really haven't been able to find out much about it, but it was probably a silent short. More importantly, it means that we have had 100 years of vampire movies and have seen the evolution of the genre evolve into quite an interesting art form. Are there moral questions to be answered? Do we really fear or hate things and people we don't understand or are different then us? In many cases the answer is yes, but when it comes to vampires... I love them! Thanks for 100 years of fear and entertainment!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Vampire films have been a staple since the silent days, so much so that the depiction of vampires in popular culture is strongly based upon their depiction in movies throughout the years. The most popular cinematic adaptation of vampire fiction has been from Bram Stoker's Dracula, with over 170 versions to date. By 2005, Dracula had been the subject of more films than any other fictional character.

History
The earliest cinematic vampires in such films as The Vampire (1913), directed by Robert G. Vignola, were in reality 'vamps' or femme fatales deriving inspiration from a poem by Rudyard Kipling called "The Vampire", composed in 1897. This poem was written as kind of commentary on a painting of a female vampire by Philip Burne-Jones exhibited in the same year. Lyrics from Kipling's poem: A fool there was . . . , describing a seduced man, were used as the title of the film A Fool There Was (1915) starring Theda Bara as the 'vamp' in question and the poem was used in the publicity for the film.

A genuine supernatural vampire features in the landmark Nosferatu (1922 Germany, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau). This was an unlicensed version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, based so closely on the novel that the estate sued and won, with all copies ordered to be destroyed. It would be painstakingly restored in 1994 by a team of European scholars from the five surviving prints that had escaped destruction.

The next classic treatment of the vampire legend was in Universal's Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. Five years after the release of the film, Universal released Dracula's Daughter (1936), a direct sequel that starts immediately after the end of the first film. A second sequel, Son of Dracula, starring Lon Chaney, Jr. followed in 1943. Despite his apparent death in the 1931 film, the Count returned to life in three more Universal films of the mid-1940s: House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) both starring John Carradine and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). While Lugosi had played a vampire in two other movies during the 1930s and 1940s, it was only in this final film that he played Count Dracula onscreen for the second (and last) time.







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The Killing Gene...

This was a very well made psychological (gory at times) thriller. When a movie really interest me, I tend to watch all the special features on the DVD after the movie. There were several that I watched including the making of the torture scenes and comments from the directer, producers, and writer. I like to do this for the simple reason, I want to know if I took the movie the way they intended me too. I "got it" on this movie. Stellan Skarsgard plays the enigmatic character of Eddie Argo, a veteran police detective who has a few skeletons in his closet that make him difficult to completely figure out. The character is very complex, but yet seems to be so transparent. We think we know him, but do we really? Searching for a serial killer who takes two hostages at time and tortures one until that one succumbs to the pain and kills the other hostage. The reason... revenge. The serial killer is targeting a local gang who brought unbelievable harm to the now serial killer. The point of the killing is to see how much pain a person can endure before they will kill someone they truly love. This leads to all sorts of moral dilemmas. I truly believe I would die before being forced by pain to kill my wife. At least I would think I would be honorable enough to do that. The movie has an interesting story line and quality acting. It has elements of Saw, Hostel, and the like, but I thought it was darker, not only visually, but mentally as well. It made you think while entertaining you. Really good movie and I highly recommend it!

There are a couple of things that I should mention concerning the film... for one it is visually dark throughout. This can make it difficult to see at times. Also there are many twist to it that you may miss if you really don't pay attention. This movie will make you think... there is a moral overtone that cannot be ignored. The question seems to be, "Would you kill the one you love to save yourself from death"? Sorry to say that I could not find a trailer for this movie. however, it is still worth a watch!



Stellan Skarsgård
2006's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (in which he plays the undead pirate Bootstrap Bill).

Synopsis:
Well worn by years of gangland brutality, veteran detective Eddie Argo prides himself on playing by the book. However, loyalties wane as he and his new rookie partner, Helen, find themselves entangled in a string of violent and horrific killings that are targeting a notorious local gang, forcing Argo to revisit a case he would rather forget. In the midst of mounting terror, the calculating killer stays focused on the ultimate goal--coerce Argo to pay for his previous mistakes and answer the ultimate question: would you kill the one you love to save yourself from death?







Length:
104 minutes
Director:
Tom Shankland

Cast:
Stellan Skarsgård
Melissa George... Played Josh Hartnett's wife in 30 Days Of Night.
Ashley Walters
Paul Kaye
Selma Blair
Peter Ballance
Lauren Hood
Tom Hardy
John Sharian
Sally Hawkins






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