I know video game content on here has been lacking and I am sorry. So I am back and try to make more content and review more games.
Went game hunting today and found some cool horror games to add to my collection. So here is my first video game pickup video for our Youtube channel. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please feel free to do so, I will start doing more gameplay videos and reviews on there.
Aspiring screenplay writer Wesley Pennington obtains the position of a runner for a low-budget zombie film. Being at the bottom rung, Wesley is commanded to do everything without hesitation or question no matter how big or small the task. With the production already plagued with a slew of problems, the film’s cast and crew come under attack from real life zombies that swarm the forest location. Wesley, along with a handful of lucky survivors, rely on their zombie film knowledge to flee from the flesh feasting fiends, living in their very own zombie apocalypse movie.
Rare is it to come across New Zealand horror now-a-days and when the opportunity presents itself, one must jump at a viewing with great enthusiasm. New Zealand horror has been known to be eccentric and fun, while also being gory and smartly scripted. From the early prevalent work of Peter Jackson (“Brain Dead,” “Bad Taste”) to lesser known cult favorites (“The Locals,” “Black Sheep”), the tiny New Zealand horror catalogue has made an everlasting mark in a heavily saturated American and European market. Guy Pigden’s written and directed 2014 horror-comedy “I Survived a Zombie Holocaust” takes it’s place rightfully so next to niche brethren, elucidating that horror and comedy in an extremely over saturated genre can and will still be an effective and entertaining movie.
Simply taking the premise of a horror movie being overwritten by another horror movie and using it’s tropes to poke at itself, while also jabbing at the film industry’s detached reality that ultimately devours itself, conquers being just another run-of-the-mill zombie comedy. Pidgen sharply appoints an ensemble cast to go along with the wanton story, working side by side again with Harley Neville in the socially awkward Wesley Pennington role. The rest of the main characters are purposefully stereotypical, fine tuned by Jocelyn Christian, Ben Baker, Reanin Johannink, Mike Edward, Andrew Laing, and Simon Ward. The character comedy mimics Peter Jackson’s “Brain Dead” with developing persona’s through various types of characters such as Wesley’s nerdy-awkwardness, Reanin as the prissy spoiled actress in Jessica, Mike Edward as an egotistical and closeted gay body builder actor in Adam, and the overbearing, frustrated, and desperate SMP played insanely intense by Andrew Laing.
The gore is very similar to Jackson’s early nineties splatterfest film. Lead special effects supervisor Timothy Munro had worked under the modern era thumb of Peter Jackson, including box office blockbusters films like 2005’s “King Kong” and 2012’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” Did this influence the effects team to explore the gore written in the screenplay pages in “I Survived a Zombie Holocaust?” I would say so. We’re talking about splitting heads in half, viscera spilling out from the waist side, limb detachments, and more sanguinary bits and pieces. The gore is sound and not as exploitive, as maybe “Brain Dead” comes across, smoothing out and around a well-balanced zombie comedy.
“I Survived a Zombie Holocaust” has faint issues of pacing that slow down between scenes, toning down a smidgen of my praise for Pidgen’s film. But the 38 Production’s freshman film goes above and beyond of being just another likable zombie comedy. The jest upon the horror community is well played and well received while also being a gory homage to an established horror community in New Zealand. “I Survived A Zombie Holocaust” has been released in the UK courtesy of distributor Matchbox films. However, I can’t comment technically on the audio and video quality due to the screener being a streaming link and nor can I comment on the extras as there are none. What I can comment on is that “I Survived a Zombie Holocaust” makes a killer first impression in the new era of Kiwi horror and will be at the top of the list for one of my favorite at home feature releases of the year!
Local geologist Kristian, of the small lake side town of Geiranger, and his family pack for their start of a new life in the big city where Kristian has offered a new job. But when seemingly insignificant activity in the Åkerneset mountain that surrounds the nestled Geiranger displays on first alert’s monitors, Kristian fears that his beloved town will be washed away by the possibility of an 80ft tsunami created by a mountain landslide. Unable to leave town, Kristian stays one more night; a night in which a landslide occurs, creating a massive Tsunami heading straight for the heart of Geiranger and Kristian only has 10 minutes before impact to alert the town and escape with his family.
Norwegian’s 2015 natural disaster-thriller “The Wave” aka “Bølgen” is a landslide victory for director Roar Uthaug. “The Wave” funnels disaster into a single locality where as Hollywood tends to doll up and glossy disasters films, Roland Emmerich’s “2012,” Steve Quate’s “Into the Storm,” Brad Petyon’s 2015 “San Andreas” starring Dwayne Johnson just to name a few, that hyper peril the catastrophes into a global event. The focus becomes too spread out and the parlous state is diluted amongst the characters if the catastrophe is affecting everyone in the world. To pinpoint an area or a region isolates the drama and the thrills resulting in more of an impact upon the characters. On a global scale, characters can escape with ease because the space is vast and non-constricting, but in Geiranger (which is also a real place with the same very real threat), a fortress of mountains loom over the town, higher elevation is safe haven, and the possibility of escape is not so easily achievable.
Academy Award winning The Revenant star Kristoffer Joner plays the heroic lead in Kristian who fights and claws his way through disaster and destruction. Joner isn’t bulky like Dwayne Johnson, but has a more down to earth appeal that’s more appreciated than Hollywood’s grander is better ideal. But like the “San Andreas” conquerer, Kristian is a family man trying to save his wife and two children. Joner’s Kristian reminisces a much older disaster film involving a small town with a Mount St. Helens explosion. “The Wave” story has Kristian with inklings of forthcoming disaster and his fears are put aside in the interest of tourism. The 1997 Roger Donaldson film “Dante’s Peak” compares very similar with Pierce Bronson’s Harry Dolton has the same concerns, but the town leadership ignores the facts and only has dollar signs on the mind. When disaster strikes, both Kristian and Harry stay behind to save whomever they can.
The cast rounds out with a enormously talented cast in “Dead Snow’s” Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, and Fridtjov Såheim. Their working dynamics are accomplished by their individual challenges due in part of the threatening tsunami wave and the second half of obstacles that comes post-event to where Kristian and his wife Idun must now stay alive to find each other through a girth of destruction from high elevation to sea level. The script is penned by John Kåre Raake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and I praise their storytelling in creating worthy characters and developing the plausible cataclysm on paper.
The special effects rival the big boisterous effects of Hollywood. The menacing tsunami means business on screen was created under the supervision of Pål Morten Hverven and splayed on the natural blue hue heavy and tone setting cinematography of John Christian Rosenlund. Usually, giant waves in Hollywood just can’t cut that CGI feel. Uthaug’s wave crests with such realism it’s frightening and to experience our characters at the moment of impact makes you never want to go in the water again – forget about giant man-eating sharks, its giant killer waves you have to worry about. Uthaug puts the viewer right in the path of an immense wave, capturing all the fear and intensity and the breathtaking aspects of simulating a dire situation.
Magnolia Entertainment releases the Norwegian disaster flick in Theaters and On Demand. Magnolia courtesy sent me a screener link so I am unable to comment on the video and audio quality. Also, there were no extras included in the screener as it’s solely a feature. “The Wave” washes over Hollywood’s big budgeted calamity films that’s been released over the past decade and will have you holding your breath from start to finish and long after the wave has subsided.
Here’s another trashy public domain horror movie that’s free for you all!
The spawned from hell biker gang, Satan’s Sinners, ride the dusty roads of west coast America in search of pure virgin women for their master’s ever growing domain. As they wreak hellish havoc along the way, they ride upon newly wed couple Nick and Bobby Sue, stealing the beautiful bride away from her loving husband and leaving him for dead on the side of the road. However, the Lord works in mysterious ways as divine intervention in a form of a boorish Cowboy, who may or may not be God himself, resurrects Nick from the dead again and again to save his wife from the ultimate damnation – Satan’s beautiful virgin slave. Armed and clueless, Nick finds help wherever he can, whether by the prideful local sheriff or the alcoholic priest who performed Nick’s marriage, to stop the bikers and to reclaim Bobby Sue.
“All Hell Breaks Loose” is one of those indie films that’ll fly under the radar of the indie film circuit, scraping and clawing at the surface and trying to create a name for itself. At face value, “All Hell Breaks Loose” is a hell of fun, devilishly entertaining, and so relaxed that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, those film’s qualities are the complete antonym to a box office money maker or a breakthrough independent golden nugget. I get why money won’t just flow in, though. Director Jeremy Garner’s name won’t ring any bells and has dabbled more in the special effects field than the director’s chair, which I thought his 2009 special effects work on “Melvin” was fantastic, and the screenwriter Jacy Morris, under the pen name The Vocabularist, is also an unknown with only this film under his belt. There’s strike one. Secondly, the lead actor isn’t a big name; Nick Forrest name might seem similar to “Shaun of the Dead’s” Nick Frost, but, sadly, no. But Nick Forrest plays his character of the dimwitted, pee-wee hero character well enough for be recognized and respected. The last, and final strike, is film’s recognizable headliner – “Danger” Ehren McGhehey from “Jackass” fame.
Garner’s film doesn’t need to prove one damn thing to anybody. The horror-comedy story is simplicity thats surrounded itself with undying love, badass demon bikers, and God’s wish-washy methodology; there’s no symbolism or underlining message that suggest otherwise and there’s not much explanation here or there about the particulars of the Satan’s Sinner’s mission or why in that particular region they choose to run amok. Viewers looking for an untamed experience will just want to see the Bikers dish out violence and pain and see Nick die a horrible death over and over again. Even though Garner didn’t dip his hands into conducting the effects for his Sophomore film, Izzy Combs, Ray Kelley, and Steven Strop team up to pull off some amazing lunacy with the limited budget effects that get gory without being over-the-top and ridiculous.
Aside from a pipsqueak-to-a partial demi-god hero in Nick Forrest and “Danger” Ehren portraying a demon biker with an Elvis Presley obsession, the rest of the cast, like the Satan’s Sinners, is a motley crew of talent ranging from twenty years of B-movie experience in Todd Robinson to a slew of undiscovered actors, especially in the biker gang with Hunter O’Guinn, Joshua Lee Frazier, and Tommy Hestmark with leading lady Sarah Kobel Marquette as the damsel in distress while being undressed.
Wild Eye Releasing summons from the underworld “All Hell Breaks Loose.” The unrated, 92 minute feature might have cheesy and cheap DVD cover art, but the entertainment value speaks volumes. The release contains bonus features that contains an informative director’s commentary, a couple of deleted scenes, and trailers. Overall, give “All Hell Breaks Loose” a chance or two or three, just to be completely sure that you understand that what you’re about to see will be utter chaos that’ll make the Waco, Texas shooting look like a little girl’s tea party with her favorite stuffed animals.
