Movieline Online

Before he reinvigorated Universal Studios’ with his action-adventure take on The Mummy in 1999 (and proved a flick could open big before the official summer movie season), director Stephen Sommers did a dry run with the underappreciated Deep Rising , a tongue-in-cheek giant monster movie about a cruise ship under attack by an oversized squid. With obvious references to Ray Harryhausen stop-motion classics combined with a screwball comedy sensibility, the film established a formula that served the director well…until the well ran dry on Van Helsing . Still, there’s some appeal to this kitchen-sink creature feature that stars Treat Williams as an Indiana Jones-style mercenary who gets stuck on the ship with some bad guys with guns. But all the bullets in the world can’t stop the tangle of tentacles that seem to have dragged every living passenger to their doom…except for Famke Janssen ( X-Men ) who makes for a lovely and lively comic foil. The CG effects were supervised by stop-mot...

The beautiful thing about horror and science-fiction is it allows filmmakers to make a “message” movie without being so blatant about it. Movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Dawn of the Dead bury their agendas in subtext that doesn’t interfere with the surface level enjoyment of the genre. But They Live actually disposes with the subtext entirely and puts its political commentary front and center. Sure, there’s some gunplay, aliens and one wicked mano y mano brawl, but mostly this is director John Carpenter’s condemnation of Reagan-era consumerism disguised as an action movie starring ex-wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. A good-natured drifter (Piper) stumbles upon a group of guerilla fighters operating out of a homeless shelter. Their goal? Wake up the sleeping masses to the people that are really running this country: Aliens! These bug-eyed invaders have covered their tracks by hypnotizing us with TV signals and subliminal advertising. We can only see them for what...

Successful movies pull off a delicate balancing act of meeting and defying expectations. Too predictable and things get boring…too bizarre and audiences get uneasy. It’s easier to play things safe; that’s why most major motion pictures follow a pattern. But the direct-to-DVD market has a little more leeway. That’s how you get films like Airborne , which will earn very few “thumbs up” but at least doesn’t take you on the same ride you’ve paid full price for so many times before. On a late-night transcontinental flight from London to NYC filled with only ten passengers, things are getting mysterious. The flight attendants are acting squirrely, folks in coach start disappearing, and it all has something to do with an ancient Chinese vase stuck in the cargo hold. From the pictures and description on the box, one would might expect zombies or a virulent parasitic outbreak…or both. But Airborne doesn’t choose any of those options. To reveal more would ruin part of the guessing game...

Survival stories are a reliable Hollywood staple. Man against the desert. Man against the Arctic. Man against…the sauna?! That’s right, in 247º F three yahoos get themselves stuck in a steamroom thanks to a fourth yahoo who’s passed out drunk upstairs. Apparently this was based on a true story, but I don’t blame any of them for not stepping forward. It’s not the kind of accident that will earn you much sympathy. However, it does make for a surprisingly engaging movie. Four mismatched friends hook up for a good time at their uncle’s cabin. After a few beers and some skinny dipping it’s off to the custom-made sauna for some relaxation. But minutes stretch to hours when the door refuses to open. Ideas are tossed around, arguments ensue and finally panic sets in as the heat continues to rise. For a direct-to-DVD title, 247º F is way above the curve. It’s situation, while implausible at first, becomes genuinely frightening and invites viewers to play the “what would you do...

Halloween 3 spent most of the past 30 years being despised by a fanbase that simply couldn’t understand why in the name of holy hell Michael Myers wasn’t onscreen killing more teenagers. The plot concerning some sort of Celtic apocalypse involving robots, Stonehenge and Halloween masks is admittedly ridiculous. But it’s also so gloriously convoluted and preposterous that it makes the movie stand out in a field of cookie-cutter slasher sequels that pride themselves on being as un original as possible. Producer John Carpenter gambled on audiences looking for something new…and lost. The original idea was to make a different scary movie each year with the Halloween moniker. However, this wasn’t exactly clear when Universal advertised the film back in ’82. Fans responded by making it the most reviled Halloween film in the series, which got quickly back on the monotonous Michael Myers track soon afterward. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and shot by long-time Carpenter collaborator D...

Horror movies rely on stupid people doing stupid things. And you can’t get much more stupid than signing up for an “extreme tour” of the Chernobyl disaster site. Not only is the residual radiation a potential health hazard, but those rabid dogs and leftover nuclear mutants are a bitch! Produced by Oren Peli, the Paranormal Activity mastermind, at least we should be thankful that Chernobyl Diaries doesn’t use the found footage approach, opting instead for a more traditional scary story format as stupid teens and their tour guide are stranded in the radiation zone after dark. Soon, shadowy figures emerge from the rubble of the surrounding town and drag our characters to some off-screen hell. Or maybe everyone is just in the basement drinking vodka…I’m not really sure! And that’s the real problem with the film. The setting is unique, unusual and more than a little creepy (with one jump scare that’s guaranteed to do its job). But there are no ground rules laid out. We don’t kno...

Let this be a lesson to all aspiring filmmakers. After you’ve finished your low-budget horror masterpiece do not forget to add the little copyright symbol in the credits! That minor mistake cost George Romero and company the bulk of the profits from the original Night of the Living Dead , which ended up falling into public domain and filling up bargain bins for years on VHS and DVD. Obviously, losing out on all those millions must have rankled Romero to no end. So much so that in 1990 he reshot his original script (with longtime make-up vet Tom Savini behind the camera this time) for purely financial reasons. Before anyone jumps in to argue, “that’s no reason to make a film!”…actually it’s the reason pretty much every film is made. At least Romero was honest about his intentions, and, as remakes go, this new version of NOTLD is a respectable do-over with just enough new twists on the material to make it worthwhile. The set-up is the same: three men, three women and one soon...

Universal Studios is sitting on a cash cow of classic monsters and they know it; Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, all with trademarked make-up effects just waiting to make someone a fortune. But to date, no one has found a way to crack the safe. 2004’s Van Helsing was supposed to do the trick, combining all the famous faces for one big monster mash. But when it crashed and burned at the box office, everything went back into the vault. Now we have Werewolf: The Beast Among Us , essentially a direct-to-video sequel to Van Helsing but without all the overhead costs (like expensive Australian actors). Instead Ed Quinn leads a team of monster hunters into a small European hamlet – which oddly enough seems to accept accents from any country – plagued by a string of werewolf killings. Young Daniel (Guy Wilson) volunteers to protect the town and impress his girlfriend and winds up in the thick of the furry battle. There’s nothing about Werewolf that is pa...

No offense to anyone who enjoys the films, but I consider the Saw franchise one of the crowning achievements of crap cinema. So I was all the more surprised when the director of Saw 2 – 4 , Darren Lynn Bousman, came up with the movie that actually impressed me: Mother’s Day , with Rebecca De Mornay. That was two years and three films ago (the guy is nothing if not productive). Now we have The Barrens , starring True Blood superstar Stephen Moyer as a dad trying to reconnect with his broken family during a camping excursion in the New Jersey wilderness. Don’t worry, it’s not a drama. At least, I don’t think so. Trouble is The Barrens isn’t really sure what it’s about either. There’s a third act twist that explains Moyer’s dramatic mood swings and strange hallucinations of a Jersey Devil stalking his family. But there’s a second twist that after that that makes everything even more confused than before. And how to explain the strange 5-minute cameo from Shawn Ashmore ( X-Men ...

Serial killer movies are a hard sell as “entertainment” these days unless they’re wearing a hockey mask or returning from the dead. The perpetrators of child abductions, torture and shallow graves are a little too top of mind to be much use as escapism. That’s what makes Jennifer Lynch’s Chained such a hard movie to recommend, despite being an excellent piece of filmmaking in general. Vincent D’Onofrio turns in another unforgettably transformative performance as a Bob, a slovenly cab driver (with a lisp) who drags certain female passengers to their doom at his isolated home. One passenger also brings along her 9-year-old son, who the killer chains to the wall and treats as a houseservant, forced to clean up after his murderous nocturnal activities. Yet as the boy becomes a man, Bob feels the urge to pass on his knowledge from father to son. Lynch (the daughter of famed director and all-around weirdo David Lynch) has been relatively unproductive since drawing a firestorm of criti...

The Cabin in the Woods has had more praise heaped upon it by mainstream critics than pretty much any horror film in the new millennium. Yet most of that praise is earned in the final twenty minutes of the movie - which is likely the best final twenty minutes of any post-modern horror film in history. What comes before is a whole lotta set-up and genre clichés designed to be upended by Joss Whedon ( The Avengers ) and Drew Goddard’s clever script. They’re necessary, but a bit of a slog to sit through. However in this case, patience is its own reward. Headed to an isolated cabin for a weekend of beer, sex and debauchery, four college students unwittingly awaken a family of zombies who proceed to do what zombies do best. If you want to go into Cabin “spoiler-free” then stop reading right now. (pause). Ok, for everyone else, we quickly realize that our victims are being “controlled” by a small army of government workers prodding these sacrifices towards their predetermined fate....