Syfy’s “Z Nation” S1Ep6 ‘Resurrection Z’ review

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 20, 2014

The time has come to have one of the main characters to be killed in action. Episode six ‘Resurrection Z’ delivered as the ideal, soul-sucking episode to kill off a major character since Harold Perrineau’s Hammond character in episode one. The writers of “Z Nation” are not just slapping together a splatter fest of zombie carnage mayhem; instead, ‘Z Nation’ is taking a cue from AMC’s “The Walking Dead” by actually creating and developing characters wroth the sight of our eyeballs. Developing beyond the point of can’t standing it, that when a series nixes a character, in a very public, gruesome, and dramatic way, the show becomes more compelling and real. I won’t mention who got the axe to prevent spoilers for those people who want to catch it On Demand, but I’ll say that that one of our surviving heros will not be making episode seven.

The episode itself consists of good underlying tone that good people will always be naive to their surroundings while the religious nuts will ruin your day by gun toting a AK47 with a deceptive plan in mind. Religious factions have always played into the zombie apocalypse before ‘Z Nation’ had ever introduced “Jacob” and his flock of suicidal crazies who happen to overrun the good guys compound to punished the non-believers of the resurrected. While I give props to a well thought out plan to infiltrate the good guys compound, I found that the fruits of the labors becomes way too easily nullified by Murphy’s Messiah rant.

Murphy has been the character to develop a lot the last two episodes. We find that Murphy is either an extreme sympathizer of the misunderstood Z or he is slowly transforming into one of the undead proving the antibody strain is ineffective. Murphy is immune to zombie affections and he has some sort of mind control over them making Murphy the ultimate guy to be buddy-buddy with in a zombie overrun world.

While we move on without one of the survivors, lets not forget the objective and lets not forget that “Z Nation” won’t tone down the bloody show; instead, the show will continue to get bloodier with each episode, the feelings will become even more twisted, and overall feel of the show will put your head in a vice and your eyeballs will pop out. You’ll enjoy every turn of the vice handle loving the pain the “Z Nation” brings to television.

Trapped in a Tomb of Evil! Day of the Mummy review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 11, 2014

Too few and far in between does a current release for a horror film about mummies comes out. Right off the top of my head, I can only recall Universal’s remake of The Mummy trilogy and Sands of Oblivion. I’m sure if I really thought more about this I could come up with one or two more films about mummies. When I was contacted to screen and review “Day of the Mummy,” a little piece of me couldn’t wait because the mummy genre is the neglected red-headed step child that the public doesn’t like and production companies just don’t know how to market Egyptian crypt keepers. Exploring “Day of the Mummy” was exciting at first but my finds remind me again why being dead, wrapped in bandages, and buried in an ancient tomb can’t catch a break in cinema land.

Well-experienced and notorious Egyptologist Jack Wells is contracted to joins a group of archeologist in a Egyptian desert where a hidden tomb of an infamous and cursed king named Neferu is supposedly buried. Jack’s intentions are not to locate the tomb, but rather recover the Codix Stone that was buried with Neferu. When the team locates the cavernous tomb, a collapse of the cave’s structure traps them inside a tomb that doesn’t exactly hold a dead, mummified King. Their search brings them face to face with undead King seeking human parts to devour and regain strength. Now their only hope for survival lies in the hands of the treasure hunter Jack Wells.

“Day of the Mummy” big named actor attached to the project is Danny Glover. Now, Glover isn’t the Indiana Jones type Jack Wells. His character Carl is a wealthy collector of the finer things and hires Jack, played by William McNamara, to bring back the Codex Stone for him. Glover’s role is a bit odd as he only interacts with Jack through a technology advance pair of wearing glasses that has built-in microphone, video camera, and satellite reception. I’ve known the Lethal Weapon and Predator 2 actor to be more of an interactive professional with other actors and actress around him. For Glover to play an isolated role with no one else in a scene with him takes his stardom away from the movie. He might have been better being the lead character of Jack Wells.

Speaking of the hidden video camera glasses, the film’s perspective majority plays through the eyes Jack Wells. The effect comes off like an adventurous amusement park ride rather than a found footage film where the you explore a cave and strap into a hydraulic seat and give whipped around while a movie screen plays through the action. Part of the adventure amusement park ride feel is due to Carl’s in-screen image that pops up inquiring about the diamond every so often. The only thing missing from this ‘ride’ is the 4-D effects. Now, this perspective makes the film naturally unique, but also takes a bit of maturity out of the plot. Yeah, the film profane dialogue tries to spark life into, but the first person effect can be more effective if a more grotesque view of events comes across one’s sights.

The sophomore film of director Johnny Tabor deserves to be recognized as a fair attempt at a genre that doesn’t spark any life into audiences. One thing that would have helped would have been to fill in the plot holes. The reason the team of archeologists venture to Neferu’s tomb was the result of a recovered video of another archeologist who found the tomb before them. The question is, how did the video get recovered in the first place once the first archeologist disappeared? How is Carl’s satellite feed still working in a sealed cave? Questions like these are annoying and baffling even if the logic is skewed just for the sake of a interesting story.

Along with Glover and McNamara, the cast rounds out with “The Black Water Vampire’s” Andrea Monier, Brandon DeSpain, and Robin Steffen, and along with Eric Young and Michael Cortez. A fine cast with loads of talent behind them, but Tabor’s mummy film entry lives up to others in which fall short of horrifying and thrilling. The hopes of fresh air are stiffened with mummified rotting remains of the past. The perspective is unique and welcomed, but could be fine tuned sieze an opportunity to scare the pants off audiences. The wait continues for a mummy movie to resurrect the floundering, most likely currently defunct, genre. “Day of the Mummy” is an interesting and entertaining ride non-the-less. Image Entertainment’s release hits retail shelves October 20th on DVD in the UK.

American Horror Story: Freak show… freakin’ hell

Posted by charlottekenvyn1994 on October 10, 2014

American Horror Story: Freak Show
Season 4 Episode 1 “Monsters among us”

Evan Peters as Jimmy Darling.
The scene in which he pleasures an ordinary housewife with his lobster-like hands.

American Horror Story hit our screens after a largely anticipated return. We were quickly introduced to Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) and the other characters. Jessica Lange performs brilliantly and it was a surprise to find out that she isn’t just fame-hungry. She’s paraplegic and fame-hungry. Evan Peters is back with lobster hands, playing Jimmy Darling. We meet the very likeable Bette and Dot Tattler (Sarah Paulson). The relationship between the two is funny and very entertaining to watch. We see Ma Petite played by Jyoti Amge, who is actually the smallest woman in the world – claiming a Guinness Book of World Records title. Providing the terror in the first episode, and possibly the title, is Twisty the Clown (John Carroll Lynch). If killing an innocent couple isn’t enough, he also keeps two young children locked up and terrifies them to the point of torture. “There’s a big story that explains the clown and what he’s doing that’s based on an urban myth we uncovered” revealed director Ryan Murphey. It is the fourth season that will explain to us what we are eager to know about Twisty, so stay tuned.

Kathy Bates comes across far too tame playing the bearded lady. Her acting skills are capable of providing a more sinister and malicious character… but this could be exposed throughout the season. We will meet Angela Bassett next week who is Desiree Dupree, the three-breasted lady (and according to her a “full-blown hermaphrodite”). We are also yet to meet con artist Maggie Esmerelda (Emma Roberts) and strongman played by actor Michael Chiklis.

Erika Ervin, Jyoti Amge, Evan Peters and Mat Fraser (Amazon Eve, Ma Petite, Jimmy ‘Lobster-hands’ Darling and Paul the illustrated seal).

We know from the previous seasons to expect; brutality, rape, seduction, distressing scenes of violence, racism, discrimination and so on. Sensuality and seductiveness has always been a huge part of the show which has interested us, the mature audience, because of its candid approach. I have never had any issues with the previous scenes of this nature, sure I’ve been like “what the hell” during rape scenes but it’s never disgusted me to the point where I feel nauseous. That is until now. Prior to watching this episode I generally perceived that the freaks were ostracized from the “normal” townsfolk. I wrongly assumed that the freaks would be considered vermin, and that even making eye contact with one could result in receiving the cold shoulder from ordinary people living in the area. What I see instead is quite the opposite. In one scene Jimmy Darling, who has lobster hands, can be seen pleasuring regular women with his deformities. Women are literally lining up to pay for this. We see him moving his lobster hands towards the woman’s sex, leaving absolutely no room for doubt that he is prostituting his deformed hands. This left me feeling slightly bewildered more than anything because I just cannot believe that that many women, if any, would be sexually intrigued by this man with lobster-like hands. The moment of nausea smacked me in the face when we see Elsa Mars watching a video reel. A young woman enters threatening to expose all of the shenanigans happening behind the scenes at the freak show. It soon becomes clear that the young woman was willingly high on opium and whilst she was so, she took part in a sex orgy with the freaks. This is the most unsettling scene American Horror Story has offered us to date. Pepper getting excited like a child in the clip intensified my feeling of horror and I was left feeling utterly shocked. If the programme continues to show these depraved acts, which I’m sure they will, I’m not sure how much my stomach will be able to handle.

Jessica Lange and Jyoti Amge (Paraplegic and world’s smallest woman)

Horror Short: Happy Halloween

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 6, 2014

Here’s a little horror short from director Adam Green (“Frozen” (2010), Hatchet) and starring Shawn Ashmore (“Frozen” (2010), ‘The Following’) and Brea Grant (“Halloween II” (2009)). Everything seems normal between a husband and wife chatting over Skype on Halloween night until the truth comes out and a turn for the worst is revealed!

This Evil Island is More Like a Luxurious Resort: “Zombie Isle” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 5, 2014

When I first read the title “Zombie Isle,” the first thought was the popular survival horror game “Dead Island” where you can take on a horde of bikini clad, thong and thong wearing, tropicana-sippin’ zombies with various melee weapons. Sounds blood thirsty enough to be turned into a movie, right? Well “Zombie Isle” is obviously not the same brainchild from the people behind the “Dead Island” video game. One could only help and what happens to high hopes usually? High hopes are usually squashed and sure enough “Zombie Isle” was a big bust for not only meeting my expectations of being like the “Dead Island,” but for also being one of the many sheep in the undead genre.

A group of university students and their teacher embark on a field trip to an uninhabited island to study the habitat. When they split up into groups of two, all hell on the island is unleashed and the students succumb as meals for the zombies that inhabit the uninhabited island. Not only do the flesh eaters swarm the island, but a mad Nazi doctor looks to replace the brain his deceased love into one of the bodies of the gorgeous girls trespassing on his island.

“Zombie Isle’s” plot is, first off, way too scattered to fully explained how this island became ground zero for possible Nazi or U.S. Army experimentation – it’s not really explained. The Nazi mad doctor has a syringe he injects into the neck of the dead bodies to awaken them into flesh eaters. Nobody knows how he got to the island and no one really seems to ask. Also, the doctor keeps a giant three headed mutated zombie chained to a tree. Again, this all goes unexplained. Half the characters gets rip to shreds in the first 15 minutes of the film and that makes caring for characters really difficult.

On the positive spectrum of “Zombie Isle,” the gory schlock really is potent. Zombies scooping out brains with their hands, stomachs being ripped open and disemboweled, and brains being munched on. With the gory and the blood, the parodical nature of the film, especially with the two dimwitted hotties, can kind of keep us awake at times; as for the rest of the duration, watch your eyelids become heavy and heavier. The zombies themselves do a good job. Hell, even the three headed mutant zombie has a certain ghoulish charm to it even though it’s obviously fake and goofy cladded, but with director Robert Elkins’ use of cigarette burns and faux faulty-like film strips the creature is hidden behind the throwback grindhouse cinematic style. The cast consisting of Crystal Howell, Tony Jones, Apryl Crowell, Kyle Billeter, Davids S. Witt, and Jonathan Moody are seemly a tight-knit group of people who’ve worked on films together before. They feel comfortable in what they’re trying to accomplish, but their really is no depth in their personas.

On a technical note, the dialogue audibility is absolute crap. One minute you can hear the characters fine and then the next you’re turning up the volume. Constantly I was fiddling with the controls to find a ideal setting and just wasted my time and energy. Also, the soundtracks is very repetitive and drowns out most of the dialogue as well. The sure signs of low budget filmmaking and not making use of something better than to just repeat soundtrack audio. The foley sounds of squished heads and knocks to people’s dome pieces might as well come straight out of a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon.

“Zombie Isle” heart and soul likes with the gore effects not leaving the film to be an empty shell. The characters are the empty shells and the production kind have been better along with fine tuned story in which the parody could have stayed as some of bits were smirk-able. Surprisingly, no nudity for a zombie film with a bunch of university students, but that doesn’t give the film low marks at all. With that being said, “Zombie Isle” releases this Tuesday October 7th, but if you must venture into an overplayed genre, there are better zombie films out there that won’t leave you stranded on an island.