directed by steven kostanski and jeremy gillespie
cave painting pictures
The trailer for this movie made it look SO good that little likelihood existed for it to live up to the promise, but with that being said, The Void was still well above average. A look at one man’s experimental approach to an afterlife, wrapped in a siege flick, it disappointed me a bit in that at a certain point the threat of zombie archetypes loomed. That fate was avoided, and its metaphysical mumbo-jumbo also saved it to a degree. Certainly a suspenseful movie, I must detract a few points for evoking reminiscences of Jacob’s Ladder, and also for reminding me a bit too much of the Thomas Tessier novel Finishing Touches. It is, however, entirely possible it purposely provoked such meditations.
why did i watch this movie?
My brother texted me a link to the trailer, and I was sold.
should you watch this movie?
With the caveat that the second half didn’t deliver enough of a payoff for my tastes, yeah, I could recommend that. It is an entertaining enterprise, for sure.
highlight and low point
Suspenseful frights abound, and a high WTF factor carries the momentum. My quibbles about certain revelations along the way may be peculiar to me, but I was hoping for something a little less … fantastical, I guess.
The last couple Asian horror pictures I’d tried to watch I never finished, as the Japanese one (I do not recall the title) was just too confusing and the Korean one (The Second Coming) was too low-budget for its rather standard haunting-ghost malarkey, but I decided to try this South Korean production because the premise seemed straightforward enough given the genre conventions. That premise? Medical students have to dissect a mysteriously marked female corpse, and suffer the consequences. OR DO THEY. The Cut is mostly worth the effort, though it was not as creepy or frightening or mysterious (or confusing, or repugnant) as the best of the style. Mainly it reminded me why I have enjoyed other movies of its ilk, and that I still may. Perhaps a tad mainstream in execution overall.
If you try, you can find the claim that this chunk of tripe was a precursor to the slasher craze or some such nonsense. What it IS is a convoluted bit of inanity that doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t really bother to try.
One of them ol’ rape-revenge flicks, this Canadian turkey produced by Ivan Reitman boasts a rape scene that I wasn’t even convinced had happened, so effectively was it portrayed. Almost every character in this exercise in pointlessness is extremely annoying, ranging from the drunken hicks through the egocentric urbanite to the loutish, subnormal thugs. Seemingly random events meander on and on until the interminable harassment scene begins, and it’s all formulaic. The justifiable homicides, once they eventually start, more or less come out of nowhere, which is a nice touch, and some are fairly creative as well. Overall, however, if you actually for some reason watch this garbage, you’ll wonder why they bothered making it. Or if they knew. 
More recent than the majority of the movies that will be discussed here, this offering is mainly psychological in effect, both for the characters and the audience. Set in the trenches of World War I, it very effectively conveys how miserable an experience that must have been. Besides the basic nature of trench warfare, wherein one is essentially fighting blind in claustrophobic conditions, it is cold and raining throughout almost the entire running time of the movie. This actually had a negative effect on the film’s verisimilitude, as I found myself thinking how unpleasant it must have been to act in it, thereby removing me from my immersion in its intended reality. Anyway, after a nighttime blitz, confusion ensues. By the time things get sorted out, you probably will have guessed the SHOCKING TWIST long before they get around to it onscreen. A pleasant surprise anyway, this one, as i just kind of stumbled across it while looking for more schlock to watch.
Ya know, I could swear I saw a capsule review of this one that claimed it was at LEAST as good as Halloween, a true forgotten classic of the genre and … yeah, no. Not really. Kinda dating itself in that not a whole lot of action takes place – killings or anything else – Unhinged is mostly an atmospheric study of some creepy people in an old house in the middle of nowhere, where three young women wind up secluded after a suspicious auto accident. (At least, I gather it was to be perceived as suspicious, in the fine cinematic tradition, but I couldn’t actually tell what caused it.) The SHOCKING TWIST ending in this one is not all that shocking, and neither is it all that plausible, even for a movie of this sort. This information probably should not come as any sort of surprise to you. 
This early faux snuff film (initially screened under different titles in 1973 and 1975) is a chore to sit through, honestly, mostly due to the dialogue and the “experimental” camera usage. The story of a ne’er-do-well jailbird who decides to become an auteur filmmaker, and to utilize, uh, excessive realism – either to show up pretension in the movie world or just because people are jerks and deserve it, man – Last House boasts recurring scenes as well as at least one scene that goes on for way too long. Even for a fairly short film, elements of this one drag. The lead actor/director’s performance is eerily reminiscent of Meat Loaf’s as “Eddie” in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, however, and if people still use “samples” in their music or multimedia, one of his repetitious rants would make a great one.
SPACE RATS From Outer Space 