It’s a Dog-Evil-Dog World. “White God” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on September 11, 2015

Lili and her mixed breed dog, Hagen, are best friends and are inseparable. When Lili’s mother and stepfather travel to a three month conference in Australia, she is dropped off to live with her humdrum father who takes a special disliking toward canines, especially mutts. After Lili and her father get into a heated argument about the friendly Hagen, her father forces Hagen out of the car and leaves him at the side of the road to defend for himself. Hagen goes through a series of misfortune adventures: being chased down by merciless dog catchers, being abused to train for a dog fighting circuit, and narrowly escaping being euthanized by a local dog pound employee.

“White God” is a hybrid film from Hungary by director Kornél Mundruczó. Part canine drama and part vicious animal thriller, “White God” is equivalent to the string of 1980 films where the day of the animal comes to snout and man takes an unwanted step down from the dominance hierarchy. With stunning cinematography of Hungarian landscape and an uncanny look at two terrific animal actors, “White God” deserves to be one of the top foreign films in the United States and one of the better movies to be have been released from Hungary in the last few years.

Mundruczó, who also had a pen-ship hand in the screenplay, tightrope-walks that fine line between drama and horror and with familiar collaborating co-writers Kata Wéber and Viktória Petrányi, “White God” is no different. The story molds Hagen, the leading dog actor, into the displaying of a human personality and expressing human-like feelings. Hagen, a once lovable, dependent, and faithful companion to 13-year-old Lili, is forced to defend for himself, learning that the real world is nothing like the cozy comforts of his adored Lili who catered to his every whim. When Hagen reaches that breaking point of when enough is enough, he becomes the “Rise of the Planet of the Ape'” Caesar to “White God,” breaking free his fellow mutts, constructing a ruthless canine army, and seeking vengeance on all who took advantage or mistreated him by severing their throats from the rest of their necks. The film quickly becomes bloody with mauled bodies and the sharp turn from a sad “Marley & Me” to a “The Breed” thriller, proceeding with a smooth transition without much notice.

Luke and Body, the two unwanted mixed breed dogs that were adopted to play Hagen, are well trained, delivering emotion that told the downfall story of Hagen and expressing a physical acting style very rare in animal actors. The production company also adopted from the pound a record breaking 274 dogs for the final scenes, a massive undertaking that shouldn’t go unnoticed. The same kind of enthusiasm can’t be said about the human actors. The young and beautiful Zsófia Psotta portrays an unsympathetic, robot-like Lili and she’s suppose to be heartbroken and devastated by her father’s rash decision to discard Hagen; instead, she dissolves back into her normal mundane routine after a few feeble attempts to locate Hagen and adhering to her father’s commands with prompt attention. If my father scraps my loved pet to the curb, I would be insanely mad for months, ignoring him until he couldn’t take it. There also must be a Hungarian law or code about mutts as their fondness in the film is on the lower end of the totem pole and where tenants must pay a fee for owning them or put them down for a single bite on hand. Many other countries do have an out of control mutt population problem and “White God” feels about right when concerning that system of controlling the mutt population.

“White God” doesn’t claim to be an intense when-animals-attack horror movie, but serves as a beautifully blended sub-genre film, shot and edited with the intention of classing up, and slightly educating, an issue that warrants attention of an unwanted dog’s mistreatment. I wasn’t able to cover the DVD or Blu-ray release as Magnolia just provided, very generously I might add, a streaming link and with streaming links, the quality wasn’t up to par and didn’t include any extras. “White God” feels like a PETA over-executed attempt to make cruelty to animals a horrifying act that will cost you your life in the end.

Evil. On Repeat! “Blood Punch” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 30, 2015

Milton was a mild mannered, bright young man with a promising future in chemistry until he was busted for conducting a meth kitchen on campus grounds and ordered to attend a drug rehabilitation center. With a little over four months left on his sentenced term, a fast-talking, drug-selling beauty Skylar walks into his life and offers a get-rich-quick scheme to Milton that involves partnering up with her and her psychotic boyfriend Russell. The challenge is to cook up a large amount of Meth within 24 hour window for an all around bad guy named Archer. Before lovestruck Milton can make choice in the matter, he’s dragged into the precarious undertaking located at an isolated cabin in the woods where the trio’s fate takes a turn toward an endless course plotted for blood, death, and various treachery.

Finally, a B-movie horror with a novelty story that continuously inflicts old school thrills, gratuitous violence, and black comedy. A sheer guessing game for the character outcomes from the beginning to the rolling of the end credits, which, in this loop-upon-loop story, covers possibly every single last fate that could be bestowed upon them. “Blood Punch” stands as this generations’ even darker version of “Groundhog Day.”

The cast and crew deliver on both sides of the spectrum. The lead actors are all native New Zealanders, who have previously worked on prior projects together, embodying vibrantly into their roles with precision and passion. Milo Cawthorne as Milton has a persona similar, in physicality and in acting, to Jesse Eisenberg; a slender built and facetious individual whose smarts can and will obtain devious potential in order to come out on top. I prefer Cawthorne over Esienberg because Milo is well less pompous. Milton’s chemistry with Skylar is of a stellar black and white origin. Skylar portrayed by “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” child star Olivia Tennet embarks on the daunting task of being chain-smoking wench whose had to grow up quick from, at least, the age of 12. To round out the dynamic cast and to add a contrast character to Milo is the muscular and handsome Ari Boyland as the loquacious and psychotic Russell; Boyland’s frighteningly impulsive and insane, making him a great adversary to the logical Milton.

The person who wrote these characters and the person who directed these characters would assumably be well versed in the horror or dark comedy frame work. The overall intrinsic mayhem of “Blood Punch” is synonymous to a genre experienced writer and director. However, “Blood Punch” is oddly unique and not just on bonded paper but also for whom the director and writer are and their attributed credits. Director Madellaine Paxson and writer Eddie Guzalian are experienced, long time writers of children television series and films. Yes, at the helm is a crew that wrote and directed a bloody, foul-mouthed, carnage-soaked film also worked on projects like “Kim Possible,” “Power Rangers R.P.M.,” and “Lilo & Stitch: The Series.” “Blood Punch” is their first horror film together and completely knocked it out of the park; perhaps, due in part to their creative imagination when the majority of theirr work is animation where basically anything goes – just ask Wild E. Coyote. Paxson has such an eye for the littlest details that almost every scene, which were well edited together, stood on their own without any support or exposition. The ongoing debate about time and time warps will be an agonizing one, but Paxon and Guzalian wrap our characters’ timelines in a detailed manner, which nearly through me for a loop – no pun intended.

Even if being a film released from 2013, “Blood Punch” lands near the top at being one of my favorite movies released this year on DVD courtesy of Midnight Releasing. The 16:9 Widescreen presentation is near amazing with a flawless, colorful picture, comparing well against a Hi-Def release. The stereo 5.0 mix works well with the soundtrack and ambiance tracks, but can overcome the dialogue track only by a little. Extras include deleted scenes, outtakes, and test footage. “Blood Punch” is 107 minutes of pure, unadulterated roller-coaster thrills where there’s no waiting in line to jump right back on.

Layers of Fear. First impression review

Posted by EvilGamer on August 29, 2015

Since this game is still in early access and not yet finished, I will wait til it is a finished product then do a full review.

Layers of Fear is a first person horror game that came out in early access on Steam. You play as a insane artist who walks through his own mind to discover what happened in his life.

After playing what is available in the game, all I can say is that this game has some GREAT potential. Layers of Fear has to be one of the most unique horror games I have played in a long time and I will go into detail on why I loved it.

Gameplay: The game is set in a first person perspective . There are no enemies and no combat, you simply walk through the area and move on, kind of like a haunted house attraction. I will say the gameplay is heavily inspired by P.T. So if you’re familiar with P.T. then this won’t feel all too different.

Graphics: The game’s visual are just flat out amazing. There is just so much detail in the environment, so much that it got me to looking and admiring the surroundings before moving on. The game runs on the Unity engine, which surprised me because I thought this game ran on the Unreal engine. This game is by far the best looking horror game I have seen on Unity and should be a great example on how to use Unity to make a game.

Atmosphere: This game has so much tension and that is how it should be. Every hallway I walked, every corner I turned I was very cautious and ready for what was coming. The game can even make you paranoid, which is good since this game is meant to be psychological horror. I just always felt like something was watching me.

Performance: Since this game is in early access, there are some performance issues. The game has a very choppy framerate. One area you will be at 40fps then the next area it will drop at 12fps. Even with the framerate drops, it is still very much playable so If you meet the system requirements then you shouldn’t have a problem. Just make sure to be patient until they optimize the game a bit more.

So there is my first impression of Layers of Fear. I highly recommend the game to any survival horror fan and I can’t wait to see what the developers do next.

Layers of Fear is on Steam for $9.99.

Below Us Doesn’t Live Evil. “Above Us Lives Evil” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 18, 2015

After the tragic and accidental death of their young son, Richard and Doreen escape from their painful memories by moving to a quick-sell, rundown house with their two children, Jen and Ben. The house holds a unfathomable mysterious past with the previous family disappearing without a trace, leaving many of their possessions behind in the house’s desolate rooms. Ben, who hasn’t spoken much after the untimely death of his twin brother, encounters humanoid creatures in the attic at night when they roam the house. Ben becomes unsuccessful communicating about the horrifying creatures to his parents and even his older sister, shrugging his warnings off as a sign of his continuous grief. When Richard and Doreen leave Jen and Ben home alone in order to go to all night work function, the creatures descend from their attic abode and seek to devour people they can get their hungry hands on.

“Above Us Lives Evil” is the freshman film of Jason Mills circa 2009 and transpires to be a visually interesting piece of creature feature horror cinema even though the story is a bit undercooked and the acting more than often feels like watching a robotic cluster, monotonously reading the script line-by-line. The story opens ambiguously enough with a glum looking man, sitting in his car with a young boy laying motionless at the foot of man’s front bumper while Doreen cries hysterically over him and another boy, Ben, stands in tragic shock over the dead body of his brother. The opening only connects the rest of the story by the segue of the family driving, moving away antagonistically from their tragic past, but the melodramatically written opening needs being revisited, perhaps in the third act, but doesn’t make a reappearance, missing the opportunity to explore deeper into the family’s separation, and becomes sorely adrift from the rest of story’s girth.

The story continues to plug along of a supposedly grieving family, starting a new life in a new home where we’re informed by the strange neighbors that the previous family just up and vanishes. That sums up the complete backstory revealed of the previous inhabitants. Similar types of voids also rear their ugly little heads. The development upon the creature’s existence isn’t forthright nor is there any explanation into their background, making their existence to be fixtures of the house. These human devouring beings could have been born in the house and lived in that house since the beginning of time for all we’re led to understand.

The Canadian based produced film stars 30 year old Vancouver native Nicola Elbro as the eldest sister Jen. Nicola maintains a solid performance throughout to pull off this low key creature feature and with a little elbow grease added on, I can see Nicola moving from low budget features to the major leagues of horror Hollywood. However, the rest of the cast shares similar generic performances that painfully lead us by the hand, as if we’re not-yet-ready-for-horror-movie toddlers, through the exposition of everything that could have been just simply implied. Even though being one of the more experienced actors on this project, Robert Duncan’s monotony only suffers more drastically from his dimwitted, excuse-ridden character as Nicola’s father Richard. Richard neglects his children’s immediate needs and fears, dismissing them as if they’re too young and naive to know how the world works. Combine everything said here about Richard and he becomes the worst character amongst the rest of underdeveloped characters and there are quite a few.

The creatures had more personality with their caveman-like gaits and ghastly limber appendages, chasing down quickly disposable characters (which inconsequentially are also the main characters). Jason Mills and his relative Simon and Johnny take on “The Strain” resembling creature roles; the Mills’ lanky builds added that extra something to the overall appearance of the creature. Jason Mills took the creature look and ability a bit further with the adjunct mandibles that cover the snake-like tentacles; the construction of this achievement is a mixture of practical effect and CGI. Usually, I’m not a big fan of CGI, but Mills strategically, and successfully at that, obscures much of the creature, hiding the full overlook in the shadows, in the quick cuts, and in the low-light. Many of the effects are obscured; the special effects team mainly uses slight CGI and a bucket of blood or two to create their desired creature attacking effect. Most of the attacks are implied or too far in a long shot, creating the allusion of vicious creature film.

The Sector 5 Films and Chemical Burn distributed home DVD release technically suffers. Digital interference plays havoc, graining certain portions of night scenes while also causing digital waves on other night scenes. The loss of frame rate during other night time moments result in an awkward slow motion. “Above Us Lives Evil,” much like the creatures, should store itself in the attic until ready to descend for blood and to be more captivating with the characters. Jason Mills and Nicola Elbro show promising attributes that can contribute to the horror community and while their contribution may not be with this particular Jason Mills film starring Nicola Elbro, I’m sure we’ll see more of the two in the near future either on another collaboration or separate projects that could, and probably should, begin to turn some heads.

Movie Magic Evil Waters Down Real Evil. “House on the Hill” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 8, 2015

Based on the true story of serial killers Leonard Lake and Charlie Ng, director Jeffery Frentzen (Black Dahlia) chronicles the speculated portions of Lake’s and Ng’s homicidal and psychopathic murders. Their murderous spree involved kidnapping young women, enslaving them, and eventually murdering them while also targeting their own relatives and friends, and even seizing the opportunities to abduct whole families. After Lake served in the Marine Corps, he met Charlie Ng and by the 1980s, the two men had constructed an isolated house where innocent people were brought to be tortured, ransomed, and eventually their demise at the hands of their materialistic and deviant captors.

“House on the Hill” is the Jeffery Frentzen directed and co-written with Nicole Marie Polec film that semi-documents the tragic events of Leonard Lake’s and Charlie Ng’s serial killing spree of the 1980s and incorporates actual footage of Leonard Lake speaking about his disturbing views on the world such as enslaving women and being prepared for the inevitable world apocalypse. Most of Frentzen’s movie is embellished as, like the majority of serial killer documentaries, most of what is unknown of Lake will never see the light of truth of what really happened on his ranch. The legend behind Lake and Ng states that there could have been as few as 11 murders or as high as 25; Frentzen attempts to showcase the latter by adding many fictional victims into his film to be representatives to those unknown victims who were never discovered or whose bones were severely untraceable.

However, some of the facts that are true, that we do know about Lake, didn’t quite make the cut because of Frentzen’s x, y, or z reasons. In the film, Lake’s wife is named Cat played by Rachel Devlin (Zombie Nation), but in reality Lake’s wife name was Claralyn Balazs aka “Cricket.” If Lake’s wife name is clear, why go with “Cat?” Also, Lake had constructed a bunker in the backyard of his ranch, but “House on the Hill” has a separate, well-locked shed in the backyard. Simultaneously, Frentzen’s movie has consistent filming errors that even the untrained eye can catch. Continuity glitches that are obvious (Naidra Dawn Thomson’s bra strap is in various positions between takes on a particular scene) and obvious props that are in more need of a convincing sell from the actors and to be well edited to not give the impression of false intentions. Lastly, the overly generic title doesn’t specifically speak much upon Leonard Lake and his accomplice Charlie Ng. “House on the Hill” title has no curb appeal and no real bite to entice viewership.

What I did find pleasurable about “House on the Hill” was the leads’ acting. Canadian actor Stephen A.F. Day and first feature film actor Sam Leung do an above mediocre performance of Leonard Lake and Charlie Ng. They manage to show and sell having no empathy when committing terrible acts, managing the ability to embody the evil within a killer on screen. Barring Frentzen’s epileptic editing and use of tints, lenses, and over exposers, I still was able to see the good in Day’s and Leung’s performances without the editing hoopla that attempted to make the events more dramatic, shocking, and traumatizing.

I’m a little disappointed in the distribution of this film. Not only does the jejune title leave a bleak taste, but the DVD cover doesn’t quite represent what is being sold here. On the cover, there is a dirt pathway leading up to a two story, mansion-like structure sitting on top of a hill and seemingly decayed and abandoned. On the DVD backside, a meathook pops right out at you along with a female victim strung up by her arms, screaming toward to the sky. Meathook does not make a credited or on screen appearance nor does the house in the film look like the mansion on the DVD cover. What is even more disappointing, and what I have to comes to term with every now and then, is the heavily edited cut in which “House on the Hill” was released. The DVD cover states, “Warning Explicit Content,” and does show some intense moments containing blood and torture with implied rape. ‘Some’ being the key word because I’ve seen more explicit content on the local evening news. This might be due in part of the post-production censorship which most noticeably focuses on covering up any and all nude scenes. Olivia Parrish’s topless scene was crudely censored by being blurred out and awkwardly cropped to show a low-resolution image, a forced zoom in, of her neck up as she’s being molested. The same cropping censorship goes against Laura Hofritcher’s topless scene as well during her torturous scene.

The North 40 Production film and MVD and ITN distribution DVD release doesn’t score to well for this reviewer. I’m able to look past the editing techniques, post-production effects, and unbalanced audio, but being a writer and a firm patron of freedom of speech, the censorship of the nudity and potentially the bloodletting has my blood boiling. However, even though Leonard Lake and Charlie Ng may have not been extensively covered on the silver screen or on entertainment television, I am glad Frentzen told partial of the notorious story and was able to tell his rendition of the unknown accounts.