Tag: horror

Dead Sushi

  By

★★½
“A fishy tale”

Perhaps I just expected more from the combination of martial artist Takeda (High-Kick Girl, Karate Girl) and Iguchi (Mutant Girls Squad, The Machine Girl). While this has its moments, it falls well short of the best works of either star or director, delivering neither the action nor the insanity, of which I know both are capable. The set-up is fine. Takeda plays Keiko, the daughter of a sushi master, who leaves home after being told by her father she’ll never amount to anything. She gets a job working in a Japanese hot springs inn, and isn’t much good at that either.

A pharmaceutical company are having a get-together there, but Yamada, a disgruntled employee is also in attendance. His invention which rejuvenates dead cells was successful, but had side-effects, for which he was blamed and arrested. So he has taken revenge by using his creation to animate the sushi being served to the company. Oh, and this is not only infectious, transmitted by the sushi’s bite, it makes them capable of flying. And breeding. It is, of course, up to Keiko and a few hardy allies to fend off the killer delicacies.

It’s mostly the stuff around the edges which is effective here. There’s a little egg sushi, looked down on as inferior by its fish-flavored relatives, who becomes a valuable ally to Keiko. Oh, and it sings. Yes, folks: adorable, singing sushi. You’ll never eat nigiri again. Some of the lines are also ludicrous enough to make me laugh out loud; here are a few examples.

  • When you hurt a sushi chef’s pride, his next dish is death!
  • Sushi has a pecking order too.
  • It is my duty to tell the boss we are under siege by man-eating sushi.
  • The sushi are mating!

However, there’s not much in the way of escalation or progression. Once you’ve seen one plate of attack sushi, you’ve more or less seen them all. About the only other thing the film has to offer isn’t until the end, when Yamada turns himself into a gigantic man-tuna and there’s a battleship made of fish eggs. While I will admit to not having seen either of those before, the imagination seems very sporadic otherwise, though I did like Keiko’s briefly-used sushi-nunchaku. This being a Noboru Iguchi movie, we do get multiple fart jokes, of course.

Takeda’s talents are also sadly underutilized. I don’t know whether Iguchi couldn’t be bothered to get anyone decent for her to fight, or if it’s more that the concept allows limited scope for karate to blossom. With the attack sushi being largely CGI, there’s only so much flailing at thin air anyone can do. Iguchi regular Asami has a supporting role here: while she has shown some solid action skills elsewhere, it’s indicative of something, that she and Takeda look to have about the same level of fighting talent. I was certainly hoping for better from Takeda, and the film in general.

Dir: Noboru Iguchi
Star: Rina Takeda, Kentarô Shimazu, Takamasa Suga, Takashi Nishina

Wreck

  By

★★
“If you go down to the woods today…”

I cannot, by any standard, call this a good movie. But was I amused? Yeah, guess I was. It really needs to embrace the idiocy of its central premise – a Bigfoot-like creature roaming the woodlands of suburban London (seems like Swindon, to be precise). This is apparently something to do with fracking, though quite how is never made clear. Into the creature’s territory arrives Sandy (Dean), a courier for unpleasant mob boss Mr. West (Loyd-Holmes). She and colleague Jimmy (Gilks) have been ordered to deliver a briefcase, with no doubt left as to the nasty fate which awaits should they fail. But their car crashes, leaving Jimmy dead and Sandy with her leg trapped under the vehicle. She then has to survive in her crippled state, fending off not just the monster, but also those who are keen to separate her from the case.

Let’s start with the creature, which is the finest you could come up with, given five quid and a roll of blue plush fabric. Really, it looks like a pissed-off refugee from Sesame Street. And that’s before it gets set on fire: the beast then looks more like an under-cooked turkey on the rampage. It is, of course, completely impossible to take seriously. So, despite some energetic gore, this doesn’t work at all as a horror film. As a survival thriller, it’s a bit better. I liked Dean’s performance, in little things like leaving her boss’s office and seeing a stripper performing – the look of “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” was palpable. 

The script, however, has too many flaws to succeed. For example, the way Sandy’s leg is immobile until necessary to the plot. At which point she not only frees herself, but is able to gambol about the forest like an armed gazelle. Or the way the monster spends much of the film defending Sandy, by attacking those who pose a threat to her. Chris said sardonically, “I think it’s in love with her”: this is a much better explanation than anything the film was able to provide. Sadly, no Swamp Thing-like romantic subplot ever arose, another example of the movie not going full speed ahead with the potential of its premise.

I was reminded of Hostile, which also had its heroine trapped after a car accident, menaced by monstrous creatures. While that film had plenty of weaknesses, it did at least put some effort into its scenario and monster; here, there’s precious little past “because Bigfoot.” However, at barely an hour long before the closing credit roll, it can’t be accused of particularly outstaying its welcome, and while you may largely remember this for the wrong reasons, you will remember it. As the saying goes, “If you watch only one British sasquatch movie this year… Wreck is probably going to be it.” I don’t exactly see this starting a trend that’ll prove me wrong.

Dir: Ben Patterson
Star: Gemma Harlow Dean, Ryan Gilks, Ben Loyd-Holmes, Tony Manders

I am Lisa

  By

★★★
“Another packet of Ginger Snaps”

Lisa (Vaganos) is a young woman who runs a second-hand bookstore, but has fallen into the bad books – hohoho! – of local bad girl Jessica Huckins (Anello) for some reason, who makes poor Lisa’s life a misery. There’s little Lisa can do, because Jessica’s mother (Halliburton) is the local sheriff and is fiercely protective of her daughter. The feud between Lisa and Jessica escalates, until it topples over into extremely violent unpleasantness. Sheriff Huckins orders Lisa’s near-dead body to be dumped in the nearby forest, as food for the local wolves. However, after only slight nibbling, she is rescued by a mysterious woman, and nursed back to health. Returning to town, she opts to lie low with best friend Sam (Seward), only for Lisa to notice she’s not the same person she used to be. For example, this former vegetarian now has a fondness for raw meat, and is considerably less passive, deciding to take the fight to Jessica, her pals and, eventually, to Sheriff Huckins.

I’ve seen werewoman movies before. Indeed, I’ve reviewed a few here before – most obviously Werewolf Woman, but also When Animals Dream, Blood Redd and The Big Bad. I’ve also seen plenty of revenge films, to the extent there is a dedicated tag for those on the site. But this is probably the first movie which is both. Such innovation is almost enough on its own to get through the running time, even if it’s inevitably going to be compared to the wonderful Ginger Snaps, and be found wanting. Bonus points here for skewing so thoroughly female, with the five lead characters all women, and it’s also clear there’s a lot more going on, of which Lisa is unaware. The opening scene proves this before we see the heroine, with the sheriff gunning down another werewolf and proclaiming “I guess we gotta find another.” Given this, it is a bit difficult to grasp why Jessica’s cronies are so surprised by subsequent events.

The script is rather undeveloped in some of the other directions it seeks to explore. For instance, it opens with two quotes, one pro-revenge, the other anti. Yet there’s never much sense that Lisa’s vengeance is other than justified, and it appears to have a relatively minor impact on her psyche. Well, compared to turning into a werewolf, anyway. It also took me a while to get into the head of the main character; Lisa as savage predator is considerably more interesting and engaging than Lisa as vegetarian bookshop owner. Obviously for budgetary reasons, the actual transformation is very restrained – not much more than claws and contact lenses. I guess it’s good enough to get the concept over, if you don’t look too closely. The restraint elsewhere is a bit disappointing, and harder to explain: I never got the sense Lisa was overtaken by, or surrendered to, her newly-found feral nature. However, it still makes for an interesting watch, even if the central character is more werepekinese than -wolf.

Dir: Patrick Rea
Star: Kristen Vaganos, Jennifer Seward, Manon Halliburton, Carmen Anello

Torn Asunder, by Michael Todd

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

Katie Maddison is just your average chemistry college student, until she gets kidnapped for use by a Satanic cult, intent on summoning a demonic entity. Fortunately, she is saved from a fate worse than death, and is rescued just in time by a group of warriors known as “The Damned”. However, by that point, said demonic entity – going by the name of Pandora – has embedded herself inside Katie. The good news is, it’s less possession than symbiosis, with Pandora largely happy to chill and pass snarky comment. Though her presence acts as a supernatural power-up, enhancing her host’s strength, speed and healing abilities. The fact Katie is not under control of her dark passenger gets her an invite to join the group on their mission “to protect the uninformed from reality.” As their creed goes, “The sheep can sleep at night, because we don’t.”

The glaring issue here is the complete lack of threat the scenario presents. There are plenty of hints that Pandora is a powerful demon – perhaps even one of the “Seventy-Two”, the top echelon of Hell’s denizens. Yet, in this volume, she proves to be an entirely benign presence – or, as mentioned, very helpful to Katie in her new career. There’s certainly nothing which justifies her telling Pandora, “You are seriously one of the evillest people I have ever met.” She’s a bigger threat to others of her own kind, even helping Katie exorcise a lesser demon from one of her colleagues. Now, I suspect she may be playing a long game – this is an eight-volume series, so virtually everything here is going to be a long game. But combine the demon’s inaction and the relative ease with which the Damned take out virtually every other hell-spawn they meet [the only significant injury suffered is closer to suicide by demon], and you’ve got something in desperate need of additional peril. I would settle for simply extra challenge, since Katie breezes through everything with hardly any apparent effort.

Going by the notes at the end, it’s not quite clear how much Todd actually wrote, of what seems a collaborative effort. He says he was the creator and main script-writer, but “I’m not the person who was responsible for turning the script into the longer story.” Still, his name is on the cover, so he gets the blame. Debra Dunbar showed how demonic possession can be handled in an entertaining way, and Todd [perhaps better known under his Michael Anderle name, for the Kurtherian Gambit series] could learn a lot from Dunbar. Both in establishing your Satanic presence, which here comes over as little beyond a slightly more foul-mouthed version of Paris Hilton, and then in creating a credible threat for your protagonist. Instead, it plays a bit like an entry-level tutorial for a video-game, and certainly falls rather short of the “Supernatural Action Adventure Opera” touted in the book’s sub-title.

Author: Michael Todd
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 8 in the Protected by the Damned series.

Cheerleader Karate School

  By

★½
“Uffie the Poverty Row Slayer”

When I first put this on, and saw it was only 41 minutes long, I thought there had been some kind of mistake. 41 minutes later, it was clear the mistake had been all mine. Additionally, I was now thoroughly grateful for the abbreviated running-time. A feature length edition would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and may be forbidden by the Geneva Convention. This blatant Buffy the Vampire Slayer knock-off is missing only two things: a budget, and everything else.

Keegan Fox (Dobozy) has just moved to the town of Denton, Texas, with her mother who is separated from her husband. Barely has she arrived at the new school before trouble finds her, Keegan becoming involved in a brawl between two other pupils, Tyesha (Adams) and Fi (Covina). The fight ends just after an unexpected surge of energy comes out of Keegan, but not quickly enough to save her from getting put in detention. She discovers her school-mates are part of the titular group, being tutored in martial arts by a local sensei, and keeping the town safe from supernatural baddies. One of whom has just shown up, sporting long, curly hair and a white shirt – basically the absolute cliché of vampire Eurotrash. A good first test for Keegan’s new-found powers then.

Though I’m not prepared to swear 100% to any of the above, because roughly half the dialogue here is flat-out inaudible. Seriously, this is the worst audio I have heard in anything with supposed “professional” aspirations, in a very long time. There are conversations where one side is adequate, and the other sounds as if it were recorded through a mattress at the bottom of a well. It’s so thoroughly inept, this sole aspect is sufficient to overshadow any positive aspects. There is no way you can possibly enjoy a show when you are perpetually adjusting the volume on the remote and/or rewinding to try and make out what was said.

Not that the other aspects are great shakes. The pilot episode tries to introduce too many characters beyond Keegan, and as a result, most of them have little or no impact. The sole exception was “social media guru” Brice (Christine Rejcek), who is more interested in getting Instagram likes and creating hashtags than defeating dark forces. #PerkyChicksAndRoundhouseKicks. This was an amusing idea, particularly compared to the rest of the script which largely seemed to be ideas stolen from other, better shows. Of all the girls, only one (maybe two at a stretch) even look as if they’ve ever been in a fight. If the safety of the world really depended on these five, we are in deep trouble.

It’s entirely explicable that this never went further than the pilot episode (which is now on YouTube, should you have forty minutes with absolutely nothing better to do). From what I can see, the creator has switched to the medium of comics, and ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund it earlier this year. Makes sense: sadly, this is a case where going back to the drawing board makes sense.

Dir: Bj Lewis
Star: Summer Dobozy, Timylle Adams, Gabriella Corvina, Kalei Lozano

To Your Last Death

  By

★★★
“Death does a do-over”

Miriam DeKalb (Lennon) and the rest of her siblings are estranged from their arms dealer father, Cyrus (Wise), after their exposure of his dysfunctional nature ended his political career. Which is why it’s a surprise when they are all invited to his company’s headquarters. It doesn’t end well, with most of them murdered. and Miriam – found at the scene with an ax – tagged as their killer. However, she gets a second chance when visited in hospital by a mysterious figure called the Gamesmaster (Baccarin), who makes Miriam an offer. She’ll get to go back in time 24 hours, knowing what she does now. Will she be able to do better? For the GM runs an event on the astral plane (or somewhere), in which entities bet on the outcome of humans given a second chance at a pivotal moment, and Miriam is her latest subject. So can she change the outcome?

This is an interesting, if obviously entirely contrived scenario – not least for the Gamesmaster reserving the right to come in and tweak things, should she deem things not being sufficiently interesting for her players. For example, she arbitrarily decides that Miriam is not allowed to leave the building and contact the authorities. Effectively, it reduces the heroine to a piece on a board, whose actions and the resulting outcomes are constrained: there is no true “free will” to be found in this case. I also found the animation style somewhat off-putting: it looks very much the same approach as Archer. Particularly when people were talking, I found the mouth movements incredibly distracting, and it made me realize why most animation tends to keep it simple.

However, there is also a lot here that I enjoyed, not least the (literally) full-blooded approach taken. This is unashamedly gory and hard-R rated stuff, including Cyrus’s devices to dispose of his treacherous offspring, which appear to have strayed in from the Saw franchise. For instance, to handle a daughter with a fondness for cutting herself, she is strapped into device with a scale. This requires her to shed a certain amount of blood every minute, or her head will go snicker-snack. Chainsaws and axes are also put to enthusiastic and energetic use, by the heroine and others.

The story, too, ends up going in ways that I didn’t expect. Rather than being able to save her siblings in the do-over, they end up being perhaps the biggest threat to Miriam’s survival the second time. It’s from guaranteed that her go-around will end in a better situation than the first. Certainly, the pacifist scruples she espouses going into the evening – which largely caused her to reject her father and his business – prove to be utterly unsustainable, which is always nice. The message appears to be: sometimes violence is not just the solution, it’s the only solution, a philosophy which is certainly different. However, I can’t help wishing this had been a live-action gorefest; it’s one case where being animated definitely dilutes the impact.

Dir: Jason Axinn
Star (voice): Dani Lennon, Ray Wise, Morena Baccarin, Bill Moseley

Savage Creatures

  By

★★★
“Vampires vs. Zombies”

Is it possible for a film to try and cram in too much? This might be guilty of that, being simply too full of ideas. It begins with a serial killer mother and son pair, who are also cannibals, to boot. They think they’ve found their next victims, when they pick up a pair of young hitchhikers, Ursula (Steadman) and Rose (Brown). However, the psychos are in for a shock, because their targets are actually a pair of vampires, centuries old. But, wait! There’s more! Weird meteorites have landed on Earth containing alien creatures, that devour human souls. Those they infect turn into aggressive, zombie-like creatures, that can only be terminated by destroying their pineal glands. And I haven’t even touched on Father Cooper (Travis), and his “nun with a gun” associate, Sister Gigi (Smith, right).

You certainly can’t fault this for its inventiveness, and some of the ideas work very well. For example, the soul-stealing aspect of the aliens fits nicely with the vampires; they’re immune to this, because they have no souls. The two leads have good chemistry, exhibiting the easy rapport you’d expect, from people who have known each other for hundreds of years.Yet, they both have their own traits, and feel like individuals. It’s perhaps this angle which feels most pushed out by all the other stuff, and it is a bit of a shame. The idea of vampires dealing with an alien invasion or the zombie apocalypse is strong enough to carry a film. All the other stuff piled on top, feels kinda superfluous, operating as a series of distractions, rather than adding dimensions to proceedings. That’s especially true, given the relatively short running time of only 75 minutes. 

Ursula and Rose provide a no-nonsense response to their predicament – or, more accurately, series of predicaments. Their fangs are far from their only weapon; indeed, they’re not much use when it comes to destroying pineal glands. Semiautomatics work much better, and the pair wield them with some enthusiasm. For a low-budget entity, the technical aspects are pretty decent. The model alien which gets dissected with cutlery by our heroines (technically, one of them; the other has a bit of a weak stomach) being a particular highlight. 

The other main issue is a lack of escalation. Rather than plot threads being developed, they get replaced. As a result, we reach the end, and almost nothing has been resolved. The aliens are still invading, as the vamps hit the road again. They don’t even seem too fazed by the thought of their food supply being zombified. After all, as one of them points out, there are enough blood-banks in the country to keep them going for a good century. It’s one last piece of invention, in a film that hardly needs it. Yet it seems churlish to complain about too much of that, and this remains a pleasant slice of energetic horror/SF, powered by two heroines with whom it’s fun to spend time.

Dir: Richard Lowry
Star: Victoria Steadman, Kelly Brown, Greg Travis, Kannon Smith

Mrs. Serial Killer

  By

★★★
“The anti-Dexter.”

This is the kind of film which I’d say was enjoyable, rather than being good. Indeed, if you want an illustration of the difference between the two, this movie is a good example. Sona Mukherjee (Fernandez) is the wife of respected doctor, Mrityunjoy Mukherjee (Bajpayee). But their life is upended when the bodies of six, formerly pregnant, unmarried women are found on their property. Sona believes her husband was framed – possibly by police inspector and former boyfriend Imran Shahid, (Raina). She takes the advice of a dubious lawyer, who suggests that if the serial killer was shown to be still active, that would prove her husband’s innocence. So Sona kidnaps another expectant young woman, Anushka Tiwari (Khan) to provide a seventh victim. Only… well, Sona is a bit crap as a serial killer, and Anushka is a feisty little thing with a black-belt in taekwondo, pregnancy be damned.

I’m tagging this as horror and comedy, on the basis that it shouldn’t be taken seriously in the slightest. I’m fairly sure this approach is quite intentional, though with Bollywood, it’s rarely possible to be entirely certain. But there are just so many ludicrous elements, not least the central premise, that it definitely works best as a parody of lurid potboilers. For example, Indian police have apparently never heard of DNA testing, and feel that one body is pretty much as good as another. It’s also possible to trigger an immediate, devastating asthma attack, by crushing up flowers in your hands, and then blowing them in your target’s face. I thought that kind of thing only ever worked in a professional wrestling ring.

That all said, I still enjoyed it, not least for the way everyone takes it Very Seriously. It’s at its best when Sona and Anushka are facing off, the “killer” initially trying to convince her victim she has been captured by a man – an aspect as poorly considered as the rest of her plan. The contrast between the two make for amusing confrontations, such as Anushka spitting back, mockingly, “Trying to scare me with your psycho stare? I can do better. Here!” I was disappointed that they ended up taking a back-seat during the final act [for if her husband was not responsible for the six corpses… who was?] It’s still no less lurid, combining operatic music and disco lighting, in a basement festooned with a plethora of IV drips, for no reason beyond it looking cool.

It all ends in a final twist which makes about as much sense as the rest of it i.e. not very much. I won’t spoil it, but will tell you, it does not provide what I actually wanted to see, which was Sona and Anushka teaming up to go all Natural Born Killers on the real perpetrators. That would have been too much to hope for. Yet I can’t deny I was still amused enough, and wished Lifetime TVM were more like their South Asian counterparts.

Dir: Shirish Kunder
Star: Jacqueline Fernandez, Manoj Bajpayee, Mohit Raina, Zayn Marie Khan

Wrecker

  By

★★
“Runs out of road.”

This falls victim to the Spielberg Effect. By that, I mean, that any movie directed by Steven Spielberg will inevitably become the yardstick by which future entries of that kind are judged – typically, unfavourably. Killer shark films will be compared to Jaws. Holocaust epics to Schindler’s List. And the genre of movies in which drivers are menaced by unseen truck drivers? Expect comparisons to Duel. And in this case, they are entirely warranted. I guess if you’ve never heard of Duel, this might just pass muster. But you would still be better off watching it, than this lame imitation, which has a nice car (a Mustang) and some lovely scenery (I’m guessing Canadian). That’s all it can offer though.

Gal pals Emily (Hutchinson) and Leslie (Whitburn) are on a road-trip, when they go off-route – never a good idea to take a road labelled “Devil’s Pass”, but that may just be me having seen too many horror movies. On the resulting stretch of road, entirely deserted except when conveniently necessary for the plot, they become increasingly concerned about the repeated presence of a tow-truck, pulling a car, which appears to be stalking them. After a number of alarming incidents, they are driven off the road by the truck, and Emily gets knocked unconscious. She awakens, to find Leslie gone. Driving to find help, she is stopped by a police-car, only for the officer to fall victim to the truck. But at least Emily now has a weapon, in the shape of the cop’s gun.

This kind of thing can work. Spielberg’s not the only one to prove it; The Hitcher (the original version) also occupied similar territory, with an almost supernatural figure menacing a driver, for no real reason. That succeeded, however, based on Rutger Hauer’s villainous charisma. There’s nothing like that here, with the villain entirely unseen; the closest we get to any personality are glimpses of Satanic regalia dangling in the truck. That’s not exactly a lot on which to hang your movie.

The main problem, however, is a script which is ludicrous when it isn’t being entirely contrived. The notion that a Mustang – which we are shown can reach over 120 mph – could not simply zoom away from a diesel tow-truck if necessary, is the most obvious, yet perhaps not the most idiotic element. The ways in which the two women, and indeed, their pursuer, behave, are the kind of actions which would only be carried out by characters in a horror movie. Anyone sensible would seek sanctuary in the nearest busy area, and stay there until help arrives. Our couple do visit such a spot, in the shape of a diner, only to leave it after lunch and resume their journey, because… because the film demands they do. If you’re not able to tolerate such things, you’ll have to hope that the Rockies and an American classic sports car provide enough entertainment. For the plot and characters aren’t going to offer much.

Dir: Micheal Bafaro
Star: Anna Hutchison, Drea Whitburn, Jennifer Koenig, Michael Dickson

Bit

  By

★★★½
“The Lost Girls”

There are times when I am bracing myself, going into a movie. Here’s the synopsis for this one: “A transgender teenage girl on summer vacation in Los Angeles fights to survive after she falls in with four queer feminist vampires, who try to rid the city’s streets of predatory men.” Given my long-standing aversion to message movies, this seemed like 90 minutes of my worst nightmare. What had I let myself in for? But this proved to be surprisingly accessible – even for those of us who are neither transgender nor queer, and are enrolled in the Camille Paglia school of feminism.

It reminded me of We Are The Night, about a similar group of female “party vampires” who embrace a newcomer to their ranks. Though as the tagline above suggests, I guess both movies owe a large debt to The Lost Boys. To be honest, if I hadn’t read the synopsis, I wouldn’t know the heroine, Laurel (Maines) is intended to be transgender. There is discussion of some previous trauma before she leaves home after graduating, but it’s never her defining characteristic. Her new pals are relentlessly feminist, to the point of misanthropic. According to their leader, Duke (Hopper), the prime directive is: “You never, ever turn a man. Men can’t handle power. They have it already, and look what they’ve done with it.”  Yet her own handling of power is highly questionable: she admits to using it for “indiscriminate” killing, and compares their group to terrorists. By the end, Laurel is openly challenging that unbreakable rule – as she should.

Their two performance are the glue which holds this together, in particular as it depicts the slowly developing conflict between Laurel and Duke. The script also plays a part, revealing the truth about Duke’s origins and powers – and the more we learn, the more questionable the leader becomes. Yet there are also moments of dry humour, which stop this from becoming a grim fairy tale. For instance, Duke telling Laurel, “The first rule of Bite Club…” When this triggers little more than a derisive snort from the new recruit, one of her lieutenants pipes up, dead-panning, “Juggalos was taken.” This kind of thing fits in: I suspect in such a scenario, the vampires would not take themselves entirely seriously.

The flaws tend to be when the film does occasionally topple over into self-importance. The worst offender is probably Vlad, the master of their species. While the film opens with some snarky comments about Twilight, his performance is far more hammy than anything delivered in that franchise. There’s a badly underdeveloped plot about vampire-hunters, which is little more than “Boys are stupid”. I could also have done without a soundtrack which appears to be the writer-director’s iPhone on random, or the gratuitous Death Valley Girls concert [I can only presume they’re pals of his, given some free publicity in the movie]. All told though, this was considerably better than my prejudices would have had me believe going in. The lesson here appears to be, don’t judge a film by its synopsis.

Dir: Brad Michael Elmore
Star: Nicole Maines, Diana Hopper, Zolee Griggs, James Paxton