Reviews

After reading a lot of the negative reviews here for the movie, I wasn't expecting much. However, I was interested in seeing what the young Romero could offer, and this is one of my favorite subgenres of horror, so I decided to rent it from Netflix. I was happy with the rental.

I watch a lot of low budget, direct-to-DVD horror films, and many are painfully bad. This wasn't one of those. Even though it had a low budget, the film looked good for the most part (the setting was beautiful), the acting was very good for this type of movie, and it had a few good gore scenes. I'm guessing those who gave it such a bad review don't watch a lot of B-grade horror. Because, this stands out from the rest of the pack in a positive way.

Now to the film's weaknesses -- Let's start off with the major problem: the script. We get absolutely nothing new here. This story has been told countless times, and sometimes much better (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Although, if you're a fan of the "demented country family preys on innocent folks" subgenre, you'll definitely want to check this out because Romero gives us a competent picture that's nice to look at.

Apart from being derivative, the script has a few more weaknesses too. Character development was lacking here in a major way. We learn woefully little about everyone involved. It would have been nice to know a little bit more about the characters so we could care more about them.

Also, the driving force behind the family's motives wasn't explained well. While most watchers will be able to get a rudimentary understanding of what's going on, a more fleshed out explanation would have been welcome.

And, the twist ending wasn't twisty at all for anyone who's seen more than a handful of horror films. That was poorly done.

Still, though, comparing this movie against other direct-to-DVD, low-budget horror flicks, I've gotta recommend it. It's worth watching when you've got nothing else to do.

I'm interested to see what Romero Jr. does next, and that's a compliment.

One of the worst movies I've seen in quite some time. It's like a trippy, supernatural film noir.

The director (Jane) decides to go ultra-stylized here, trying to capture the style of those old noir films. It comes off extremely cheap looking, annoying, and distracting. In fact, I'm still a little confused about the tone of the film. I thought it was a really unfunny comedy most of the way through it. (That's how bad it is.) But when I read some other comments here, I guess it wasn't supposed to be a comedy...I don't know. Just horrible.

The story is nothing original. Mix in a little Lost Highway, Rest Stop, and Wind Chill. Add it to a 50's noir film, and this is what you get. Only this is much crappier than the above films, and they were pretty crappy.

The ending here is really confusing, in a bad way.

Ugh. I just finished watching this and I'm still so upset I can't articulate everything that's wrong with this pile of garbage. Just skip it.

I'm a big horror fan. I have about 200 horror dvds in my collection. I have been reading a lot about this movie, and I was excited to finally see it! It's been getting quite a bit of publicity in horror mags and on horror sites.

Well, all that buildup -- and no release :( What a letdown.

Let me say that the killer is pretty awesome looking, even if the look isn't that original (Dark Ride?). With the right director and right script, Babyface could have been terrificly scary. Here, though, the director fails to build any tension or suspense. When we finally do see Babyface, his scenes feel rushed, and he's not menacing at all.

The story was nothing original. (Have you seen last year's Carver? If not, check it out. The story is very similar, but that movie is much better --and more brutal-- than this.) But, even though the story isn't bringing us anything new, it had potential to be good. But no! No scares, and a clichéd twist that any horror fan could see coming from the get-go.

Ho hum. This wasn't a horrible movie, but it will disappoint any horror fan who's hoping for something special. If you're okay with mediocrity, you have nothing to lose by watching this.

I'm a huge horror fan, and I tend to watch most dvds I can get my hands on.

This straight to DVD "prequel" of the original film should please most horror fans. It's not a great movie, and you'll likely forget it not long after watching, but it's entertaining enough if your expectations are low.

It has good acting and a big-budget look. I didn't know much about the plot going in, so some of the twists towards the end were a little unexpected for me. It doesn't have much at all to do with the original Messengers.

The plot is a little goofy. But I think it gives this B movie some of its charm.

I was really surprised by this one. As far as direct to DVD films go, this one's much better than average. It has pretty good acting and production values. I'd say it's comparable in quality to Joy Ride 2, if you've had a chance to catch that one.

Since it's a prequel, the conclusion is mostly foregone, but the writers did offer up a few nice twists that keeps this from being a waste of time.

Not a lot of gore. It (thankfully) skips most of the torture porn conventions, and mostly offers up a nice companion piece to the first movie. If you liked the original Vacancy, give this one a chance.

I loved both of Neil Marshall's other films, so I was excited to see this one. I'm disappointed to say it was a bit of a let-down.

I had heard a lot of negative publicity about this movie, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. And I thought the first 30 minutes or so were great. Surely all the naysayers were wrong, right? Nope.

As soon as the script introduces the main villain, Sol, things go downhill fast. He is such an unoriginal, derivative, silly character that you can't take him seriously for a moment. From this point on in the movie, everything we see is an odd mishmash of ideas and scenes from better movies. I lost interest quickly.

There was a lot of blood and gore, but it didn't seem to add anything for the story. I seemed as though Neil Marshall said, "Hmm, let's splatter this scene up here with some guts. I have a few fanboys out there who will like that." Overall, you can do worse than watching Doomsday, but you can do a whole helluva lot better too.

I'm surprised at all the glowing reviews here. I'm a huge fan of horror films, and I've been especially fond of some of the new French horror films being released over the past few years, but this one really missed the mark for me. I suppose my biggest gripe with this movie is that it was just plain boring. We've seen everything here a million times before. There were just no surprises and nothing fresh. I wanted to shut it off and go to bed, but I decided to stick it out. For that, I at least got to see a cool scene with a saw towards the end that was pretty neat, but it still didn't make this film anything more than average. This film borrows very heavily from Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hostel. TCM is my favorite horror film ever, while I despise Hostel. I think the tone and look of Frontiers is so similar to Hostel, that it turned me off to the movie early on. And the story doesn't deviate too much from the classic TCM plot. I also really didn't like the acting from the lead during the last act. Sure, she had experienced a lot of brutality, but the zombie-like shaking and convulsing was a little over the top for me.

Meh....it's not a horrible film, and if you liked Hostel, you should give it a shot. But I definitely won't be watching it again anytime soon.

Wow, this one's bad. Real bad. I guess it's a horror/comedy hybrid, but it fails on both fronts. The writing here is just really weak. The script jumps all over the place. When I saw this on the shelf at the video store, I thought "what the heck?" I might be getting another cheesy classic a la Chucky or Leprechaun with this one, but it was nowhere close. I'm really not putting much stock in the Dimension Extreme branding anymore. They're churning out too many stinkers. The one bright (?) spot in this movie was the acting. I thought both the leads did a good job with the material they were given. I expect to see more from the actress who played the sister.

Brutal. Scary. Filled with tension.

I rarely use those words to describe a movie, especially one that's Straight-to-Video, but they're fitting here. I rented the Unrated *grisly edition* from Netflix. Boy was I in for a surprise.

The premise is rather typical: A group of campers meets up with some nasty company in the woods. But it's the movie's delivery that's not so typical. This film was extremely gruesome. Some of the violence was so realistic and so graphic, that I had to turn my head away from the screen at times. I'm not really a huge fan of scenes of torture, but if they're well done, I can appreciate them. I think the level of brutality in Carver blows both Hostel films away by far.

The dialog was snappy and fresh. The acting was passable. I did however, think the cheap/grainy camera used to film the movie was a bit of a distraction. It looked really cheap. This movie could have been excellent on a bigger budget.

If you like movies like Wolf Creek, Hostel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Wrong Turn -- and if you can appreciate independent horror made on a low budget -- you'll really love this.

I'm a little torn on this one. I think the last half of Zombie's, which is a straightforward remake of the '78 version, improves upon the original, which was pretty overrated in my opinion. But the first 30 minutes of Zombie's version left a bad taste in my mouth. I thought it started off way too violent, and the characters used so much bad language that it seemed unnatural and ended up being distracting.

Also, I just didn't like the addition of Zombie's lengthy backstory. I think Carpenter did it right back in '78 when he left a lot of Michael's history to the imagination. I liked how in the original Meyers came from a seemingly normal family. Here in Zombie's version, though, his family is so messed up, they drive him to becoming a killer.

I think the acting in Zombie's film is better. Scout Taylor-Compton plays Laurie Strode much better than Jamie Lee Curtis ever did. Malcolm McDowell's okay too as Loomis, even though Zombie saddles him with some unfortunate hair for the first half of the movie. And Zombie's wife does a good job, even though I wish her entire storyline had been left out of the film.

Another problem is that Zombie made Michael a little too big, almost comically big. I liked that he just seemed like a normal-sized guy in the original. It made him more scary to me.

If you liked the original, you might want to check this out. But I didn't quite like it enough to recommend it

This was by no means a great movie, but it was enjoyable.

The production values were low and the performances at times suffered from overacting -- especially by Danny DeVito. But, the film had a little bit of heart, and I couldn't help but smile at times.

Neve Campbell is so beautiful here; I can't understand why she's not more famous. She just radiates and lights up the screen every time she is on here.

Kathy Bates was great, as always, but I found Ron Livingston's performance to be a little stale.

If you're looking for a lighthearted movie to help you waste away a Sunday afternoon, this is it. Just don't expect too much and you won't be that disappointed.

Even though I had never heard of this movie before, the DVD case caught my eye at Blockbuster the other day, so I decided to rent it and give it a shot. I'm very glad I did.

This is a creepy little movie that's pretty involving, and it moves at a fast enough pace that you're never bored.

The acting is good all around, and even though it borrows heavily from The Blair Witch Project, I didn't feel The Hunt was a copycat movie. It has its own unique angle.

I really enjoyed this, and I am recommending it to all my friends. If you're a fan of science fiction or horror, you should really like this.

I just rented this from the local video store this weekend. I really wasn't expecting too much after reading a lot of the bad reviews on here. I'm pretty critical of horror films myself.

But wow, I actually enjoyed this. I thought the first half was pretty creepy and scary, although it lost a little steam towards the end.

Sure, the characters do some stupid things at points, but I think that's true in the majority of horror films.

I wish the director would have left out the hallucination scenes. Those were pointless, and they distracted from one of the scariest/most tense scenes in the film.

The ending was okay, but could have been done better with just a little bit of tweaking.

Overall, this isn't bad for a weekend rental. I enjoyed it, and will recommend it to friends.

Even though it was critically slammed, I enjoyed The Hills Have Eyes remake. I thought Aja added some style, and for the most part, I cared about the characters and hoped the family would survive to the end.

All the elements that made the first Hills remake successful are missing here. First off, I'm sorry Mr. Craven, but your script here sucks. You did not give us any sympathetic characters, unless we're supposed to like the anti-war soldier who calls the president a "liar". Everyone else is a generic throwaway horror character. Next, there's no real plot at all: Soldiers go into the mountains/caves and are picked off one-by-one. It seems like you stole a lot from the far superior flick, The Descent, but this movie turned out like it's lesser cousin, The Cave. Where The Descent seemed fresh and scary, THHE pt 2 seems like it's just going through the motions.

The gore is rather minimal here. None of the splatter was unique to this film. It's all stuff we've seen before. The rape scene just seemed exploitative to me. The mutants were dull and not scary . And the movie as a whole was very predictable. If you've ever seen a horror film, you can probably tell who's going to make it to the end of this movie after the first 10 minutes.

If this would have been straight-to-video, I don't think I would have been as disappointed. But I expect more from feature films.

When I read the summary of this video, I thought it sounded a bit like Cabin Fever, which I considered a fun time at the movies. So, I rented it.

What a mistake. Sickness House is a VERY low-budget affair. It seems to have been filmed with the same type of basic video camera that is used to film most children's birthday parties. The lighting was horrible. But worse than all of that is the acting. Just atrocious! It was actually laughably bad.

The basic premise of the movie is that a group of people meet at a wealthy couple's home for New Year's Eve. A virus that causes black marks (which look like they were applied with a magic marker) to appear on the party-goers, makes the revelers go crazy. They start having hallucinations in which they see this strange man walking around. I couldn't quite tell if he was wearing goggles or if his eyes were missing. The special effects were Baaaad. But, this virus also causes them to turn on each other.

Skip this one folks. It's a big waste of time.

In the past 10 years, I've probably seen more than 200 movies at theaters. This is the first movie that I've ever walked out on. 45 minutes in, I couldn't handle the torture anymore. This is the most unfunny piece of garbage I've ever seen. Although, I did get a good chuckle when about 50% of the audience had left before the halfway mark.

It's hard to meet the minimum post-length requirement for this movie, because there isn't much to say about it.

I didn't find any of the gags clever. Nor did I find them funny. I did think some of the set designs looked okay. The casting directors also found someone who looked surprisingly like Jack Black, although sadly the script didn't give him anything funny to do.

Just avoid this. It's not even worth a rental.