Theatrical Review: Blair Witch (2016)

"Not as good as expected, but not as bad as it could have been."

(aka All Out of Time)

Release Date: September 16th.

Country: USA.

Rating: R.

Written by: Simon Barrett.

Directed by: Adam Wingard.

Starring: Callie Hernandez, James Allen McCune, Corbin Reid, and Valorie Curry.



Love it or hate it, The Blair Witch Project (review HERE) changed the Horror landscape in 1999. It wasn't the first Found Footage movie ever, but it was certainly the first to capture the attention of audiences on a massive level. TBWP was an Indie movie that went on to gross $250 million worldwide on a budget of $60k, which made it one of the most profitable movies of all-time.





A year later they came out with Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, which got way more hate than it deserved.



And now here we are with a new Blair Witch sequel in theaters,and we have to say that it's probably the 2nd best of the series. Yeah, we liked part 2. Critics be damned!

20 years ago, Heather Donahue disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while on the hunt for the Blair Witch. When her little brother James sees a video online that he thinks has a glimpse of her in it, he and his friends set off to Burkittsville find her. Why he thinks she'd be alive after all that time and still living in the woods is beyond me, but I suppose it's possible.

THEY'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

James and his crew track down the people who uploaded said video, and they all head into the woods together. Just like in the first movie, eerie things begin to happen when they set up camp for the night: there are stick figures hanging in the trees; rock piles in front of tents; creepy cries and noises come from the darkness; and people disappear. Yes, the Blair Witch is still there, and she's still not very friendly.

OR EVER.

Unlike the first movie... well, there are some plot points that we can't spoil for you here, but suffice it to say that things get really weird and none of it is explained all that well. Or is it?!?

NO, NOT REALLY.

Blair Witch was a fun ride to take. It had its share of scares and tension throughout, and a truly harrowing scene involving a tunnel, and it left me wanting more... if only to get answers to the questions that the movie's crazy plot twist left me with.



Look, love it or hate it, The Blair Witch Project took a very simple premise and executed the hell out of it. It felt real, and if you were able to let it pull you in and accept it as such, it delivered some genuine terror. This sequel though was a mixed bag. On one hand it played almost exactly like TBWP (at least to a point), and it did recapture some of that original magic; on the other, it tried to do its own thing and add something... unexpected... to the whole mythology, and I'm honestly still not sure how I feel about it. I like what it had to offer, for the most part, but I think that it complicated things a bit much, and hence it didn't do much business at the Box Office.



It was cool to see Valorie Curry show up in this one too. She's the goods.

VALORIE CURRY IS THE CUTE ONE.

Ok, so what in the hell was with that twist?



***BEWARE SPOILERS!!!***



Time Travel? They're stuck in a time loop? Alright, that's interesting enough, but how about cluing us into why, and how it's possible, or even what the point of it is. And what was the creature? Word from the writer himself is that it WASN'T the witch, but "something" else? Elly Kedward? A goblin? A Jim Henson puppet?



Why did they have to go and make it so ambiguous? The story is pretty simple: There's a witch in the woods, and she feeds on those stupid enough to trespass on her land and disrespect it. Why fuck that beautiful premise up by adding time travel to the mix?

EVEN HE'S CONFUSED!

Why was this movie so much like the original? For a while there it felt like a remake with the way that it hit so many of the same beats and unfolded in the same way. Not sure if Wingard and Barrett were trying to recapture the magic of the original or what, but it really felt like a "re-telling" with a crazy plot twist thrown in at the end to make it its own beast.

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT'S GOING ON!!!

Barely any gore in this.

PLENTY OF MYSTERY THOUGH...

And even less nudity.

SO MANY LOVELY LADIES, SO LITTLE SKIN.

I liked this sequel, although not anywhere as much as I liked the first movie. Where TBWP shook the foundations of the genre when it was released in 1999, Blair Witch seemed to be content with aping its style, and adding in a bizarre plot twist to make it play more exciting. Or at least that was probably the intention, anyway.



I say it's worth seeing, just go into it with an open mind. 



C+



Blair Witch is in theaters now.

Oh those witchy women...

VOD Review: The Neighbor (2016)

"The Neighbor is pretty much The Collector 3, minus the collector. And most of the gore."

The last time director Marcus Dunstan teamed up with the way-underrated Josh Stewart, we got two entertaining and thrilling movies: The Collector (review HERE) and The Collection (review HERE.)



Both were great Home Invasion Thrillers, and now we get The Neighbor which feels a lot like those films in its mechanics. It has a different plot of course, but it's Josh Stewart once again trapped inside of the house with a twisted killer, being forced to use his wits to escape and save the day.



Duntsan and Stewart pull of that premise so well together though that we don't even care how familiar it all feels. Bring it on.

John is a career criminal who works as a Coyote for the local crime boss. He's been saving his money so that he and his girlfriend, Rosie, can get the hell out of their backwater Mississippi town and start a new life that won't end with them dead or in jail. Of course when his boss catches wind of his impending departure, he is none too pleased, i.e. he threatens to kill them if they try to leave.

AS IF SAYING "I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU LEAVE" WILL SOMEHOW MAKE THEM WANT TO STAY?

As if that wasn't enough drama for John to have to deal with, he and Rosie have a shady new neighbor to deal with. Troy (The Neighbor) isn't exactly an upstanding citizen himself, and after he forces his way into John's house and forces him to drink a beer with him, they come to the understanding that both of them have secrets, and that they should stay out of each other's business...

...WHICH WOULD BE FINE AND WELL, IF ROSIE WEREN'T SUCH A CREEPER.

You see, Rosie likes to spy on their new neighbor with her telescope, which leads her to witness a murder on his property, which leads him to kidnap her and lock him in his basement with his other whores. John figures this out and breaks into Troy's house to find Rosie, but instead stumbles into something that spells doom for them all.



An attempted escape from the Boom Boom Room ensues.

THAT'S NOT HELPFUL AT ALL.

As we mentioned above, The Neighbor has a lot in common with The Collector movies: the director; the male lead; the color scheme (Dunstan loves playing with reds and blues); and the plot, which involves a nice normal guy (who is a tiny bit of a crook), creeping around in a Serial Killer's lair in an effort to stay alive, and rescue some poor, Innocent, potential victim. That's alright by us, because we really liked The Collector 1 & 2, and even though The Neighbor isn't quite as gory as twisted as they are, it's still got the air of tension that made them so special, even if it's not "quite" as good. 



Intensity is the order of the day here, and it works well. 



Josh Stewart is a guy who has been around for a while now, and he's had some small roles in some great movies and TV shows, but is still a bit under the radar. He's a great actor, and we love how the films of Marcus Dusntan allow him to take the lead and shine. He's got a humble, southern boy charm about him, and he really needs to be the lead in more movies. Alex Essoe's character felt like more of a plot device than anything, but that's because she killed it in Starry Eyes, and just doesn't have a ton to do here other than play the victim. She has her moments towards the end though.



It's comedian Bill Engvall that really owns this movie though. For a funny man, he plays menacing extremely well, and he made Troy a truly memorable villain. Kinda wish that he had more time towards the end to flex his twisted muscle, so to speak, but he was really good with what he was given, and that was enough for us. Mostly. 

JOSH STEWART ALWAYS LOOKS HIGH TO US.

There's plenty of violence towards the end, but most of the movie is more of a cat-and-mouse type of Thriller than it is a visceral shocker.

STILL, GUNS ARE FIRED, AND LIVES END.

Not that kind of movie.

SHE'S HAD A ROUGH DAY.

"We all got our secrets."

BOY, AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH.

Some people are going to call The Neighbor a Home Invasion flick that is average at best, which is true to a point, but we enjoyed it a lot more than that. Maybe it's because we dig Josh Stewart so much, or how we really like the way that Marcus Dunstan constructs his movies, but there was just something compelling about the story and its characters, even if it was a bit too formulaic and familiar.



If you liked The Collector flicks, and are cool with revisiting that same type of world, only with a bit less twisted violence throughout, then you'll probably like The Neighbor a lot too.



B



The Neighbor is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

Alex Essoe is in this, and she's still got those dreamy, starry eyes.

Blu-ray Review: Event Horizon (1997)

"Hell in space."

(aka Do You See?)

Release Date: August 15th, 1997.

Country: USA.

Rating: R.

Written by: Philip Eisner.

Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson.

Starring: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs, and Sean Pertwee.



It's always amazed me how much critics hated this movie, and how audiences didn't respond to it at all, when it was released back in 1997. Now, a lot of critics are stodgy old bores who can never seem to truly enjoy a movie unless it's set in 14th Century England, so I don't tend to give a shit what they say about most Genre flicks, but Event Horizon is not anywhere near the piece of shit that they all made it out to be. In fact, it's one of the coolest Horror flicks to come out of the 90's, and one hell of a good time.



So screw them. 

Space, 2040: The Event Horizon, a deep exploration starship, disappears on its maiden mission to Proxima Centauri. Where did it go, you ask? Hell, but we'll get to that later.

AH, THERE SHE IS.

Space, 2047: The rescue ship Lewis and Clark is sent to Neptune to answer a distress signal, which unbeknownst to them is coming from the Event Horizon, which has suddenly reappeared out of nowhere after 7 years. The ship's creator, Dr. Weir is on board, and he's determined to find out what happened to his baby and bring her home.

DR. WEIR IS AN ASSHOLE, BY THE WAY.

When the crew of the Lewis and Clark boards the Event Horizon to get her back on-line and get some answers, it comes alive, and all hell breaks loose, literally. Like we said above, the ship went to hell (or a really hellish alternate dimension) when it disappeared, and it brought something back with it. Do you see?



Hell on Earth in space ensues.

OH YES, WE SEE.

Event Horizon is one of those movies that we loved when we first saw it in theaters back in 1997, while it seemed to be hated by everyone else. Now, that's not because we're so enlightened that we "got" what a great movie it was, and everyone else was missing the boat, but because it just spoke to us in all the right ways. And because we got it and they didn't, because "they" have shitty taste, and we don't.



Yes, it's a bit melodramatic and over-the-top in the acting department at times, and it's not very scientifically accurate, but it was a bloody, exciting ride that sucked us in and made us hungry for more.



It's packed full of bloody & gory scenes and disturbing imagery; it's got a likable cast, most of whom meet their ends in nasty ways; it's suitably creepy; the ship looks fantastic, as do the glimpses of Hell that we get; and it just doesn't ever let up on any of those things. It's a disturbing Haunted House story set in space. What's not to love about that?

PLUS, LARRY FISHBURNE. HOW AWESOME IS HE?

Did we mention that Dr. Weir was an asshole?

KILL HIM!

This movie was cut pretty heavily when it first came out due to test audiences complaining that it was too gory and violent, which makes no sense, because it's a frigging Horror movie, but I digress...



Point is that somewhere out there (supposedly) is a bunch of footage that would make for a pretty gnarly Unrated Cut, but due to the fact that the studio didn't give a shit about this movie after its poor reception, we'll probably never see it assembled into anything watchable. That's a damn shame.

WAS IT RAPE? WE MAY NEVER KNOW...

Even though a lot of it is shown in quick flashes, there's plenty of blood & gore throughout this one to keep most Gorehounds happy.

I MEAN, THAT'S A LOT OF BLOOD.

There's some nudity in this one, but it's not of the sexy variety.

POOR GIRL DIED HALF-NAKED.

Event Horizon looks pretty damned good in this 2:35:1, 1080p/AVC transfer. The special effects look a bit dated in parts, but overall this is a gorgeously shot movie with some great VFX that really shine in crisp detail on this disc. The Dolby TruHD 5.1 audio track complements the visuals perfectly, making it even more of an immersive experience than it already was.



Special Features:

• Audio Commentary with Paul W.S. Anderson


• The Making of Event Horizon (SD, 103 minutes)


• The Point of No Return (SD, 8 minutes)


• Deleted/Extended Scenes (SD, 10 minutes)


• The Unseen (SD, 7 minutes)


• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 2 minutes)

Overall, for under $10, this is an excellent catalogue title that should be a part of any Horror Fan's collection.

POOR BABY BIRD...

Simply put, Event Horizon is one of the best Horror movies of the 90's, and one of our favorite fright flicks set in space. It's eerie, disturbing, gory, and all kinds of exciting, and even though it's attained a bit of a cult status over the years, it's still severely underrated.



If you have yet to take a ride through space and Hell with the Event Horizon, you should rectify that omission now.



A-



Event Horizon is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

Along with its Demons, the Event Horizon was also populated with a few Angels.