Scary bears and mediocre zombie things...

We decided against seeing this film at the cinema even though it was quite hyped and we were in our super duper horror watching period when it came out.  Now it has come out on DVD and we have watched it!

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

The plot is simple, a group of friends decide to go on an adventure to the nuclear disaster town of Chernobyl. Weird things start happening and they lose their guide and car. There's something lurking in the darkness, something mutated from the nuclear disaster.

This review won't be very long because it's the first one in a while and it was quite a while since we watched the film. There's one word that can describe this film: mediocre. It's all through a watchable film but it's definitely nothing special, it has a couple of scares but in a horror you want a little bit more bang for the buck.






Here's a picture of a bear that's somewhat related to the film.

Grade:







~ Chris

We withdrew some money...

...and watched ATM.

ATM is a film I've seen a trailer of somewhere, either in the cinema or some DVD, Aim doesn't recall seeing anything about it but we (I) decided we should give it a try anyway.

ATM

The basic plot:
Three people go in an ATM hut, neither me nor Aim has ever seen a building like that before but maybe they actually have them in America. There they get trapped by a hooded man, that at first just stands there and watches them, they get freaked out and holes up in the hut. Later the guy kills a man that is out walking his dog in front of them and they realise that they're in mortal peril. His attempts to lure them out/kill them in the hut continues as they try to think of a way to escape.

My thoughts:
The film is...meh...and quite unsatisfactory, it gives no reason for the hooded man to do this and the acting is really awful. Furthermore there's tons of pointless dialogue and a romance that makes Twilight seem like Romeo and Juliet.

The idea for the film is good but it leaves much to wish for. A higher pace, a better insight to the hooded man, better acting, and less crap dialogue.

That the script was written by the guy that wrote Buried first struck me as quite the surprise but when I come to think of it, the dialogue of that film wasn't the best either. It was better delivered by Ryan Reynolds though. I also see the similarities between the two films and that the writer has drawn inspiration from his own work. Although if you're going to watch one of his films go with Buried, take my word for it.

And now for what you have all been waiting for...
will it get a tongue?

Nope, I can't recommend this film even though I liked the basic idea of it enough to watch it after seeing the trailer.

~ Chris

Yet another ASDA film...

Yes, we found one more film on the ASDA top seller list. This time it was:

Babycall

It's a Norwegian film starring Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (who we had recently seen in Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which we will review very soon).
IMDB describes the film as following:

"After a baby monitor picks up another channel, Anna begins reliving the nightmare she'd recently escaped."

I would say that the film is a bit more complicated than that. The baby monitor is not as central in the film as this might indicate. Don't get me wrong it does play a vital part in the film although in what I would consider a sub plot.

If I were to summarise the film in a sentence it would be something like this:

"Haunted by her past Anna moves to a new place, she becomes friends with home-electronics salesman Helge while her psyche falls apart."

The film is ultimately scary, not in a jumping out of your seat and choking on your cheese curls way but in a more clever way. It gets you thinking what traumatic things can do to a person and gives you goosebumps when you finally get what has happened. Although...with that said the film holds out on everything until the very end and you sit and guess what really is going on, which ultimately becomes quite annoying.

Being Swedish I can also tell you that the dialogue is a bit strange from time to time. That could maybe be because it was a Norwegian writing the script. I don't see any reason why the main character would be Swedish when it's a Norwegian film, every other character in the film is and speaks Norwegian even Anna's child Anders.

The acting is through-out the film good with some really low-marks, especially in the scenes with children.

Don't get fooled by the slow pace of the film, it's really worth it in the end. Also don't reject it because it's not in English, subtitles are available.

Grade:

~ Chris

And the award for...

The suckfest film that inspired us to start our blog goes to...none other than...

Grave Encounters (2011)

That has to be worth an applause. We found this film on the Asda top DVD-chart and thought we'd give it a try. That was a mistake, it was only a waste of time and all the DVD is good for is as a frisbee disc.

Grave Encounters was written and directed by "The Vicious Brothers" and when I saw that my sucksense started tingling. If someone doesn't want to put their name on something, but rather use something like "The Vicious Brothers", there has to be something wrong with it.

The plot is simple and could have been so much better. I won't go into details but here's the set up.

A production crew that works for a ghost hunting show gets a tip about a disused mental hospital that is supposedly haunted. They decide to lock themselves in and spend a night recording things. Mysterious paranormal activity starts and it rapidly gets worse.
(It's a good start and it gets you interested but it's been done before though, like everything else in this film, in for example 1408*.)

I have a feeling that the writers/directors were trying to stuff this film full of stuff from horror films that they like. Even though the base plot is simple and worth so much more than this film they manage to screw up royally. There's too many characters none of them really memorable and there's too many different "scary" ideas. The film is such a jumble of things and they're so poorly executed that I was laughing through long parts of it. I have to admit that there was one or two scenes that made me jump a little but those were cheap scares.

Is it worth watching then?
If you have nothing better to do and have watched every other horror ever made, then yes. If I ever had to chose between this film and any other horror ever made, I'd pick any other horror ever made seven days a week.

Grade:

~ Chris

*Horror film from 2007 based on a Stephen King short story and directed by Mikael Håfström.