Reviews

That second star is for Stephen, who was the one character that made this monstrosity slightly bearable. Not that he's much of a character, but at least his particular brand of idiocy is the sort that draws a grudging smile out of a horror fan. He certainly has the best lines of anyone in the movie. A car in a horror flick that can only go forty miles an hour is a new one on me, and kind of funny.

Also mildly hilarious is the fact that the convenience store is clerked by a Justin Bieber look-alike.

Apart from that, there is absolutely nothing to see here. The gore gets points for being the right color, texture and coming with a minimum of stupid slurpy noises... it LOOKS better than average, but the killer and the director screw it up by not really seeming to understand how a knife is actually used. (But then, I like for the execution in excessive gore to make SENSE if at all possible--helps justify it. What can I say, I'm picky.) People who only care about the blood'n'guts bit will like it well enough.

The plot is virtually non-existent; the heroine, while not unlikeable, has no personality and is impossible to give a crap about; the acting is god-awful even by horror's already-low standards; the characters' decisions are stupid even by horror's already-low standards... and possibly worst of all, the final confrontation with the killer sickeningly reminds one of the one in "The House By The Cemetery."

Nasty... just nasty.

That's right. You heard me.

Almost everything important in this movie happens off-camera. The problem with these "real-life" style horror flicks is that the presence of the camera has to be explained. The only way the makers of 'Infection' could think of to get a "real" camera into their movie was to use the dashboard camera of a police car. The problems with this choice should have been immediately apparent--the middle of a car's dashboard can't follow a principal character around. A police car can't bob and weave through buildings, can't hide in bushes, can't investigate strange sounds in an abandoned warehouse or flee to the roof and fail miserably at trying to escape via helicopter, can't do about 80% of the "required" activity in a successful zombies-are-coming-to-eat-you flick. It's just too limited. Even COPS doesn't rely ONLY on dashboard cameras. Why the makers of 'Infection' thought they could do it is beyond me. You're so desensitized to everything by the time hand-held cameras finally DO come into play toward the end, it doesn't even have an effect.

The "skipping" footage doesn't help matters. For the feed to cut out just when what IS visible starts to get good doesn't make it extra scary, it just makes it frustrating.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of "less is more." Best thing about 'Paranormal Activity?' The power of suggestion. But the power of suggestion ALONE is not enough to carry a good horror film.

Even with an "A for effort," I can only justify giving this flop three stars. Recommended only for those who can't handle the real scares in something like '*REC' or 'Paranormal Activity.'

It's In MemoriAM. With an "A." Seriously, somebody should have caught this. An actor, a tech, an editor, a producer... SOMEBODY. If you can't spell a word, it probably isn't a good idea to use it in the title of your movie.

The movie gets points for containing some truly creepy moments, but the premise is weak--is there something unique about this sort of cancer, that documentation would be of use to posterity? is it a life insurance thing, proof of illness, SOMETHING? anything? any reason at all the cameras are on except to make the movie?--and the last ten minutes undo just about everything. I won't say WHICH iconic horror film this particular movie takes its ending from, but it's pretty much a direct rip. If you're unfortunate enough to go ahead and watch this thing, you'll see what I mean when you get there.

Again, some half-decent weirdness here and there... but overall it's pointless, unbelievable, and generally not worth your time.

Let me start out by saying that nothing will ever, ever, and I do mean EVER top 'Lesbian Vampire Killers' for hysterical horror satire. But 'Killer Pad' just beat out 'Shaun of the Dead' for second place.

The humor in American horror satire is usually limited to slapstick, sight gags and pop-culture banter. Consequently it quickly becomes dated, and the humor loses its edge, leaving its audience to wander off in search of the next fix. 'Killer Pad' actually bothers with a script. The situational comedy is deftly arranged, so that the running jokes STAY funny, popping up in unexpected ways, and often the excuse to bring the gag up again is a gag in itself. The jokes don't need to be propped up by a backstory only one generation will really get; they're funny on their own. And likely to remain so!

The actors deserve equal credit for the comic success of the film. It's difficult to keep a character consistently, genuinely, believably oblivious for more than an hour, and to make the audience genuinely laugh at their idiocy instead of just rolling their eyes and getting bored. They achieve it, though. It's my favorite thing about this movie.

Those who come to 'Killer Pad' looking for shallow, cheap humor and obvious jokes will be disappointed, but for anyone seeking a fresh, fun spin on the "evil house" theme: you've found it. So sit back and enjoy!

I love horror, but I can be a very picky consumer. I like subtlety, sophisticated and psychological scare tactics over pure shock and/or revulsion, and characters I can actually give two shakes about. I don't insist that plots be super-complex, but I expect them to be well executed. Given the numerous times I had seen Dario Argento compared to David Lynch, the reputation his contemporaries have for over-the-top gore and plot holes you could drive a tractor through (charges upheld by what I had seen of Italian 70's and 80's horror so far), I was fully prepared to hate this movie. I EXPECTED to hate it.

I loved it.

Don't pay attention to the film's detractors' accusations of horrible acting. You'll find no Oscar winners here, true, but you rarely do in ANY horror movie. The acting in 'Suspiria' is actually about average for a horror flick. The dubbing process has dulled some of the immediacy and intimacy of certain scenes, but in all fairness the viewer should make some allowances for that. It's a handicap almost all Italian filmmakers had to work with in that era, and Argento compensates for it better than most.

The rich colors, gorgeous sets, creepy lighting and masterful pacing make up for the weaknesses of the dubbing process and occasional lapses in acting ability. (And they ARE just lapses for the most part. The leading lady seems a little confused as to how to move when drowsy, but otherwise gives a decent performance. I can think of only two of the cast who were consistently bad.) The silent characters, unhindered by the dubbing, are thoroughly creepy. The toothless attendant will make you squirm every time he appears.

The gore is intelligently handled, graphic enough to frighten but not ridiculous enough to make you stop taking the movie seriously. I won't quibble over realism because for me the brightness of the "blood" can be forgiven, as it lines up with the surreal colors that characterize the film. It may well have been intentional.

As for Goblin, it's true that they make more banging and wailing noises than music, but it's not an album, it's a soundtrack. And it has the desired effect. So music critics, shut up and accept it for what it is.

What worried me most about Argento before I watched this movie was the persistent David Lynch comparison. ('Mulholland Drive' is one of the few films I found so terribly pointless that I actually walked out of the theater--and I NEVER walk out of theaters; I'm anal about finishing out what I've paid good money for.) I don't know what people who make that comparison are smoking, at least in this case. There is a coherent plot here, decent characters you actually care about, and the scenes actually relate to one another and proceed in a linear fashion. After this, I'll be giving the rest of the "Three Mothers" movies a go, and if they turn out to be like this one, I may just move on to Argento's gialli.

Oh. My. God. This is by far the worst movie I have ever seen. And I mean EVER. (For reference, I have seen: "In Memorium", whose writer and editing was so bad that the title itself is a massive typo; Lifetime Movie Network's "The Unquiet;" "Death of a Ghost Hunter," which I considered to be the worst movie in the universe before I witnessed THIS crime against film; "Hell's Highway", by which I mean Jeff Leroy's 2001 atrocity, not the 1932 classic with Richard Dix; "Psycho Ward," another misspelled disaster; and both "Tomie" and "Uzumaki," which were made all the more abysmal by the fact that their names and concepts were attached to works by Japanese horror maestro Junji Ito. I have also seen segments of "Hard Rock Zombies", the Sci Fi channel's "Piranha" entries, and I just finished "The House By the Cemetery" and "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave".) Like "Uzumaki" and "Tomie," a huge part of the reason this movie sucked so very badly was the massive letdown of the movie itself compared to the movie that was advertised. The synopsis on the jacket is promising. I wasn't expecting miracles, but I figured that the plot would make up for whatever failures of acting or direction might present themselves. Boy was I wrong.

The acting isn't just bad, it's atrocious. If you were to select a random group of 10-year-olds and give them the script, the performance you would get would be more energetic and believable than what this movie subjects its audience to. The costumes are all wrong--the corporate executive that is supposed to be pressuring the doctor to push on with his experiments regardless of the risks is wearing a polo shirt and khakis on the helicopter pad as he circles the doc, half-mumbling badly written bully lines. The performances of the female cast are only marginally better than the male, and unlike most bad horror where the women at least give the impression that on some level they are TRYING to be that god-awful, the performances here are so flat that it doesn't appear they are trying anything at all.

The worst part about the movie, however, is that it becomes apparent after the first fifteen minutes that the two main characters are supposed to be about twenty years younger than the actors portraying them. When they go home for a family dinner the "boys'" father looks about 3 years older than they are. One gets the impression that they are friends or relatives of the people on the production staff who never had a day of acting class in their lives but thought it would be cool to appear in a movie. Given that, I can't even complain about the flat climax and lame ending.

In short, even if bad is your thing, skip this one. My friend, who is a connoisseur of horrid horror, was begging me to turn it off after less than half an hour. It's just that awful.

'The Tin Drum' is so bizarre and stirs up such a mix of appreciation, fascination, revulsion and whatever the best word for "thoroughly weirded out" is that I actually can't rate it. The best comparison I can offer potential viewers is 'Taxi Driver'. (And now that I've said that legions of American film buffs will damn me for a heretic, but it's true.) The central character is intentionally only minimally sympathetic--your fellow-feeling with Oskar (as with the protagonist in 'Taxi Driver') begins and ends with the sense that the world he lives in, a reflection of the world you live in, is a madhouse. Bad things happen to good people and the reverse, innocence is too often functionally equal to stupidity, people are jerks, and life is brutally, cruelly unfair. But the way he deals with it is grotesque, unrealistic and simply can't work. What keeps you watching is a morbid fascination with a single question: "How long can he get away with it?" (Fair warning: "grotesque" in 'Taxi Driver' and "grotesque" in 'The Tin Drum' take very different forms. The WWII setting does not make this 'Life is Beautiful'; the coming-of-age aspect does not make this a charming film. If you're an American and you're not used to the unconventional/off-kilter visions of childhood in some of the films of Europe, this is not the place to start. I recommend Francois Truffaut's films for that.)

Other reviewers have criticized the film for promoting Oskar's attitude and choices, expecting the audience to like him. They're mistaken; I don't think you ARE supposed to like him. It's true that in American film making one is supposed to identify with the principal character(s) and cheer them on, as it were. But it's not a hard and fast rule; 'In Cold Blood' proved that. Oskar's twisted response to the chaos around him is as much a part of the film's social/political/human commentary as the chaos itself.

'The Tin Drum' is based on a book, which I have yet to read but am curious to do, because knowing that I feel like I'm missing part of the picture. People who are familiar with the book seem to know a bit more about what in heaven's name is up with the weirdest of the weirdness in the film. I'd like to be able to claim more understanding of this formidable master work than I can right now.

Some book-based films you're better off seeing before you read the book so that the good things still outweigh the "WTF?! That's not part of the story!" ('Apocalypse Now', 'The Vampire's Assistant') and some films are so intriguing that they lead you to gobble up mountains of original books ('True Grit', 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World').... and some films you just won't fully understand/appreciate unless you know the whole story. 'The Tin Drum', for me, belongs to the second group. But in all honesty, for a lot of people, it probably belongs to the third.