Yesterday I was going to watch Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead so I would have something to review for here. I put the disc in…and nothing happened. I ejected the disc, checked it to make sure it wasn’t dirty or cracked and put it back in. This time it got spit back out at me with the message disc error. I tried once more, just to test the third time is a charm phrase, and still nothing. I tried a different movie just to make sure it wasn’t my DVD player, and it actually played. I’m not sure why, but every once in a great while I will run across this problem. Since I had the house to myself today, I tried the DVD player in the family room to see if this movie would play there. Since I am writing a review for it, it obviously did play. I have been a fan of the Wrong Turn series so far. I enjoyed the first and second movies a lot, so I was hoping that this third movie wouldn’t drop the ball. As everyone knows, you don’t always get what you want out of life.

Wrong Turn 3 starts off with a group of friends river rafting. They stop in order to make a camp for the night, when they are attacked by Three Finger (Borislav Ilev). One of them, Alex (Janet Montgomery), manages to get away. The movie then shifts to a prison where Chavez (Tamer Hassan) is planning on getting out, but not by waiting for his sentence to be done. The warden has caught wind of this plan, and has decided to move Chavez to another prison. Nate (Tom Frederic) is one of three guards that will be doing the transport. Just in case Chavez does manage to make a break for it, they have decided to include an undercover officer on the bus. They end up with six prisoners in all for transport. The bus of course is making its way through Three Finger’s home turf. He makes his move, and causes the bus to crash. Everyone lives, but one of the guards is quickly killed, and the other injured, which leaves Nate to try and deal with six cons. Well five actually, since one isn’t a con.

Wrong Turn 3 could have been a good movie I believe. When I realized they were going to throw in prison guards and cons, I thought that this could make for some interesting action sequences. These are not your average Joe trying to survive after all. Not all cons, or prison guards for that matter, would be able to make it of course. Maybe it would have been that film, but they had to throw in a truck full of money. Now instead of being worried about just making it out of the woods alive, the cons are always bickering over who will carry what, who trusts whom, and junk like that. I guess it adds more tension, but isn’t surviving enough tension already? Three Finger shows up once in a while to take someone out, but we don’t see him much until towards the end. One of the problems is that there are story lines started that never go anywhere. The undercover officer story does nothing. Three Fingers has a son that is killed by a con, so you would think he would be mad and go after them that much harder. This seems to be dropped quickly. It is almost like they weren’t sure which direction to take the plot, and ended up going nowhere. I guess I am sounding rather harsh here. The plot wasn’t all bad, but I wish they had just stuck with one direction and simply gone it. Throwing different genres together, or switching up the plot isn’t always a bad thing. As long as it feels natural that is. With Wrong Turn 3 is was just starting to get annoying after a while. Added to an already bad plot, the last couple of minutes of the movie had the surviving characters making a complete 180 on their personalities, that the movie tried so hard to establish.

The effects range from good to bad. The second movie in this series is one I remember the effects from, since there were a lot of good ones in it. It is too bad that this sequel couldn’t follow in that. There are places that turn out pretty good though. The worst offender is when a guy gets cut into three pieces. This was done by CGI when they fall apart, and it looks so bad that it isn’t funny. Another bad spot isn’t really a special effect, but they turn it into one. While they are still on the bus, we get to see out the front window while two of the guards are talking. What makes this an effect is that it is above and beyond obvious that the front window is a blue screen effect. We see a stretch of road with a curve coming up. Cut to close ups of the two guys, and then cut back to the window. Same road, same curve coming up. This happens a third time as well, but the driver never makes a turn. I didn’t think that happened in movies anymore. The acting wasn’t too bad from the guys. I couldn’t really place it, but something seemed off with Janet Montgomery’s performance. Tom Frederic does a pretty good job with the lead role. You can also find Gil Kolirin, Christian Contreras, Jake Curran, Tom McKay, and Chucky Venice.

I guess it was going to happen sooner or later. You can’t keep making sequels and expect everyone to love them all. At some point people will either get tired of them, or script writers can no longer keep it interesting. Sometimes it happens with just the first sequel, but not always. I try to give what I think of as a bad movie either a one or two star rating. The movies I feel could have been better get the two stars. I guess every movie could be better, but my one star reviews are ones I feel are just a total loss and waste of time. Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead (I have no idea where the sub title comes into play for the movie), falls into a two star rating. Even though it is bad movie in my opinion, it is still one that can be watched. To my surprise, there are a few people that seem to like this sequel over the second one. I don’t know what they see different than I do, but to each their own. If you are like me, and feel a need to watch every sequel if you have watched the original film, then by all means give it a go. For everyone else though, even though it isn’t really connected to the other movies, I would say give it a pass.

2 out of 5 Still trying to figure out how a face got sliced off

The start of a new year seems to be when they unleash remakes on us. Last year with The Univited being one of the first for the year, as far as horror movies go anyway, it happened to be a remake. I didn’t know this at the time I went to see it though. Mostly because I had not watched the original film, and there was a title change for the remake. So far this year we have already been treated to two remakes. First, The Wolfman, which opened two weeks ago, and now The Crazies. This happens to be a remake that I was looking forward to, well actually I was with both of them. If I had missed it, no big deal, but I am glad they are remaking some older movies, instead of newer ones like Let The Right One In. I don’t really see the point of remaking a movie just so we don’t have to deal with subtitles or dubbing. That just makes me think that because Hollywood can’t cash in on a film, they will simply remake it so they can. Anyway, I’m getting way off track here.

In a small farming town a plane has crashed near by. What the plane was carrying has now infected the drinking water of this small town. As you can guess from the title of the movie, it makes people go crazy. The Sheriff of this small town, David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), is expecting twins with his wife (Radha Mitchell). This will be the first children for them. Things start off normal enough for this little town. It is opening day for the high school baseball season, and just about everyone in town is there. Russell (Joe Anderson), David’s right hand man, notices a man finding his way onto the field, and he happens to be carrying a gun. David is forced to shoot the man when it appears is about to shoot at him. His wife, who happens to be a doctor, is also starting to notice that some people are acting strange. One of the people she sees goes home that night, and sets fire to his house while his wife and son are trapped inside. When David decides it is time to ask for some help, he soon finds out that the town has been cut off from the outside world. Phone lines are not working, the internet is also gone, and cell phones are unable to find a signal. Then the military show up and start rounding up everyone. David’s wife gets taken away after they check her for the virus, while David is supposed to leave the town. David swears though that he isn’t about to leave his wife behind, and heads back into town.

I admit that I wasn’t a very big fan of the original movie that was directed by George Romero. Maybe the message was lost on me, since I don’t believe government is out to get us at every turn. Many feel that this message was lost to current director Breck Eisner. Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times had this to say about The Crazies: “ But if Romero’s chaos-fueled original, pockmarked with troops-versus-civilian shootouts and bureaucratic bickering, was intended to mirror a fractured society’s uneasy pulse (think: Vietnam), Eisner’s loud, squishy and jokey redo simply reflects other movies, including westerns, disaster flicks and zombie creep-outs. (Eisner and writers Scott Kosar and Ray Wright play up the infected-as-undead element a lot more than Romero ever did, oddly enough.)” Sometimes when I read professional movie reviews, by that I mean they are getting paid to write it, I have to wonder if we watched the same movie. All movies have their loud, make you jump, music and sound effects now. Well, almost all of them do. It has become something of a staple. Squishy and jokey? There are moments that come across as that, but I found this remake to be a pretty serious movie actually. It isn’t like they were trying to make it a horror/comedy. It may not have the troops-versus-civilian shootouts like the original (basically it is done in one scene), but I wasn’t looking for a scene-by-scene remake anyway. The core change, from what I remember anyway, is that the original made it seem like that maybe the government knew more about this, or they were testing it possibly. I could be wrong on that since it has been nearly four years since I watched it. Here it is more of an accident that the government knows about, but they didn’t set out to test it. I actually liked this version of the film a lot better. There are some problems though. The pacing could have been better. It gets off to a quick start, but starts to slow down a little past the halfway mark. It does pick up again, but you would think the slower section would be closer to the start. My biggest complaint wasn’t about the movie itself, but with one of the characters. As I said, David’s wife is a doctor. In one scene a person gets hanged, but they get to the person pretty quickly. They find the person dead, but does the doctor try to bring the person back to life? No she just cries over the person. I was sitting there thinking, “You’re a doctor! Shouldn’t you be trying CPR or something?” I realize it might not have done any good, but at least try!

To my surprise there wasn’t as much gore as I thought there might be. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, and there is some to be found after all. Lot of people getting shot down, and one guy likes to run people through with a pitch fork. The effects are good, there’s just not a lot of them. The acting was very good. I thought that maybe Timothy Olyphant was too young to be the sheriff of a town, but he is just one of those people that looks younger than he is. He will be 42 this year. There were times I thought his acting could have been a little better, but I still enjoyed him in the lead role. Joe Anderson was great. I’m not sure if he would have done better in the lead, just because the material was different for the lead than it was for his character. Radha Mitchell plays well off of Olyphant. Danielle Panabaker also has a good sized role as well.

The Crazies manages to create some very tense moments. I would like to have seen some more scenes where they highlighted the unpredictable nature of crazy people, but this story was about those seemingly unaffected by the virus. There is a car wash scene, that will make you think twice about getting your car washed in one of those drive through ones ever again. For anyone that doesn’t feel this movie has a voice, like they keep saying the original did, then they need to stop by a message board to see that it in fact does have one. There is a lot of talk of how the military handled things in this movie. They of course are killing people from their own country, so I can see why people are complaining. I’m sure some of the people in the military would be against this as well. If I was sitting on the outside of this though, and knew that there was a virus that could not only spread to me but the entire world (it wouldn’t be hard with how quickly we get around anymore), I would feel sorry for everyone in this town, but glad it was being contained. That being said, how do you contain a virus that is in the water? If you are planning to go see The Crazies, you should for sure. If you weren’t sure if you should or not, trust me, go see it.

4 out of 5 All those fields would drive me crazy

I meant to go see The Wolfman on its opening weekend, but things didn’t really work out that way. I was going to go yesterday, and things didn’t work out that way. So I pushed it back until today, and things actually worked out for me for once. I am glad I got to go, and was surprised to see that it was still playing on two screens. I can’t say I had a good time at the movie though. I picked the time when there was a group of three teenaged boys there who were acting like little boys. One wasn’t too bad while there, and one was the worst of the three. The middle guy was somewhere in between his two friends. Flipping open your cell phone and acting like you are calling someone when they ask to have them turned off, laughing at every little thing in the movie even if it wasn’t funny, and stomping your feet when going back to your seat is well…very, very annoying. You should have seen all the popcorn on the floor around them. After the movie I went to go eat and ended up at the same restaurant as some of my friends, so I ate with them. You take the good with the bad sometimes I guess.

Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is returning home to England, after being in New York, because he got a letter about his brother’s death. His brother’s fiance, Gwen (Emily Blunt), sent him the letter, but he isn’t looking forward to being home again. Things with his father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), aren’t the best. Lawrence believes that his father killed his mother. We are shown that she killed herself, but Lawrence still blames his father for her death. He is sent by his father to identify his brother’s body, and discovers that it has been ripped up pretty badly by something. Lawrence finds a medallion and decides to take it to some gypsies that are near by. Before he can find out a lot about it though, people from the village show up to take care of the bear that the gypsies have. They feel it is the cause of the recent attacks you see. They are quickly proven wrong though when the werewolf attacks. Lawrence does his best to help kill it, but gets bitten instead. Everyone seems to know that he is next to become the beast.

With any remake, it is hard not to think back to the original film. In this case though, the original film is nearly 70 years old. The Wolfman is still set during the same time period as the original film, which I was glad for. You can expect some modern things though as far as film making goes. The transformations are CGI style, and perhaps more importantly there is actually some gore to be found. You can see places that will remind you a lot of the original film, and at times of other werewolf movies as well. The good news is that I liked this movie. The bad news is that I didn’t like it as much as I hoped I would. There are a few minor plot points that get changed early in the film, but these didn’t bother me all that much. For the most part it stays true to the original film. However, they do throw in a big twist that isn’t in the original, and it is one I didn’t actually care for at all. Another thing that I didn’t like was that there seemed to be a lot of jump scares. Someone said there was just as many in the movie Daybreakers, but I sure don’t recall them. I’m sure there were some jump scares in Daybreakers, and the reason I probably don’t recall them very well is because they were few and far between each other. There were just way too many in The Wolfman. Maybe I noticed them more because the guys I talked about would make a big deal out of them, but I eventually just ignored them. Plus I’m not the only person to complain about the number of jump scares, so that makes me feel better at least. At times there was a jump scare followed quickly by yet another jump scare. That is how bad it was getting. Despite this I still enjoyed the movie. One thing I was surprised by is people complaining about the sub plot of a love story. I didn’t see the big deal over this, since it added a love can conquer all type story line.

Even though some people didn’t enjoy the special effects, I thought they did a really good job with them. I was reading an article in the USA Today paper about the special effects for this movie. They had a talk with Rick Baker, the main special effects person, who also had a small part in the movie. Baker talked about how he wanted to keep the look of the wolfman the same, but with one difference. It always bugged him that in the original movie, the ears stayed human. I’m sure you can guess that the ears are now pointed. The transformations were done in CGI. Baker says this is something he didn’t want to do, but director Joe Johnston wanted it done that way in order to save time. As much as I hate CGI effects, I have to admit they weren’t all that distracting this time around. Some of the other animals are also done via CGI. As I said before, I am glad they threw in some gore effects. With the Wolfman using his claws and teeth to kill people, it only makes sense to include these kinds of effects for today’s movies. The Wolfman could have been a lot more gorier than it turned out, so I am surprised that people were saying it was too much. The only real complaint I had with the gory effects were the beheadings. They were taken off very cleanly, which doesn’t make any sense to me. He was using his claws in order to do this, not a sword or something, so why would there be a clean cut? That isn’t the only body part you will see go flying. The acting was also pretty good. Benicio Del Toro does a very good job in the lead, and I liked him even more once he transformed. Hugo Weaving has an interesting character that is also well acted.

The start of the film could have been better, because it felt a bit rushed to me. They could have developed the characters a little better as well. I know I keep coming up with bad things about The Wolfman, but the truth is I walked out feeling entertained. Sure I had plenty of problems with it, but that just means I didn’t fall in love with the movie. As much as I want to love every movie I go to watch, I know that isn’t possible. As long as I leave a movie feeling entertained, I might feel slightly disappointed depending on the movie, but I am still happy at least. The Wolfman could have been a lot better than it was, but it is still a good movie. I think I read where it made over $60 million on its opening weekend, but dropped off 65% on the second weekend. It is a shame it isn’t doing better, as it would be nice to get the werewolf movies going again.

3 out of 5 At least he was a werewolf only once a month

I was going to head out to the theaters today, but I overslept. Since I didn’t want to pay for the higher ticket price (it is already too high for the early shows I think), I decided to just review the movie I watched Friday night instead. I will hit the theater tomorrow, and will have another review up for here then. If you are wondering what it is, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that it will be the remake of The Wolfman. Last year I did a challenge for my main blog, where I picked nine sub genres in horror movies and watched nine movies in each. Restless Souls was a movie that I was going to watch for my haunted houses sub genre. As it turned out though, I ended up not needing it. I picked a couple of extra movies for each genre, or tried to anyway, just in case a movie or two didn’t fit into the genre I wanted it for. I needed to get a movie back to Netflix to get the next movie I needed, and since I was behind on reviews for here, I figured I would watch and review it for here instead. I wished I had picked a better one, but that is how it goes sometimes.

Restless Souls starts off with a married couple heading to their honeymoon. They are still in their wedding clothes, so that tells you how quick they left. When we meet them, their car is stalled. They decide to head for a house that is near by, but discover that no one is there. Because it is raining outside, they decide that it would be best to just spend the night there. They find a room, with a working bathroom. The husband decides to take a shower, while the wife gets ready for bed. While the husband is in the shower, his wife joins him. But we still see her in the bedroom, so what gives? The wife feels someone rubbing her shoulders, even though we see there is no one there. When she turns, thinking it is her husband, she must see someone we don’t. There is no reaction to no one being there. Anyway, the wife in the shower just ups and disappears suddenly, again without much of a reaction from the husband this time. He walks in to see his wife with someone else. He can’t actually see her though because the sheets are over them. As he comes towards the bed though, the figures under the sheets disappear. His wife is gone. A group of four paranormal investigators then show up in order to try to find this guy’s wife.

Even though Restless Souls is listed under horror on both Netflix and IMDb, it isn’t much of one at all. There is a haunted house with ghosts, and even the devil himself. This is actually nothing more than a soft porn movie though. They use every trick in order to get two people to have sex. Nothing is shown of course, except for a lot of topless scenes and one frontal nudity scene. I have nothing against nudity really. I enjoy seeing it as much as the next person, unless the next person is the type that doesn’t believe in nudity outside of the bathroom and bedroom that is. I also am not against sex scenes, as long as they are done well, and have something to do with the plot. You could argue that sex doesn’t add to a plot outside of porn movies, but I disagree with that. So you see, I’m not knocking Restless Souls because it has a lot of nudity and sex in it. I’m knocking it because I wanted a horror movie, which it does claim to be, but got a horror movie within a soft porn movie. The extended plot is that a Civil War general makes a deal with the devil in order to win the war. Obviously this didn’t work out as planned. The deal was that the general would find a virgin for the devil, who would then get the woman pregnant. The woman the general married in order to give her to the devil, turned out to be not so pure. So the South ended up losing the war after all. For whatever reason though, the devil decides to give the general more chances to find that virgin, even though the general is now a ghost. I don’t know how many chances he got, but I found it a bit of a stretch that in all the years since the Civil War, not one virgin ever came into the house. It was like they took an idea from a movie, combined an idea from another movie, and then threw in soft porn.

Since the whole idea behind this movie is to turn people on, the only special effects are those of the ghosts. There is no gore or anything like that. We don’t want people getting distracted after all. Outside of making people walk through walls, disappear or just look ghostly, look elsewhere for special effects. As far as the acting goes, I can’t say that I was giving it my full attention to be honest. Once I discovered I wasn’t really watching a horror movie, I wasn’t really paying it a lot of attention. I was watching, but I just didn’t care. The acting wasn’t bad really. It wasn’t like they were just putting a day in and going home, or making it seem like they were reading off cards. The acting may not have been great, but at least they tried to put some effort into it. One thing I found kind of funny is that the DVD says that this is the first movie for Laura Palmer. It describes her as an up and coming actress. What is funny about this is that when you look up the movie on IMDb, you will discover that this isn’t the first movie for Laura Palmer. In fact her real name is Sage Kirkpatrick, who has been in more movies than what was listed under her other name of Laura Palmer. Now that I think about it, isn’t Laura Palmer a character name from Twin Peaks?

 I can’t really call Restless Souls a bad movie, as much as I hate to admit it. There are plenty of good looking guys and women to see, with plenty of nudity to go around. We don’t really see any of the guys nude, but that is fine. Restless Souls is an okay movie if you are into soft porn. I admit I have watched more than this movie for this genre, but only when I couldn’t find anything better to watch at the time. I have been told I should not knock a movie because it wasn’t what I expected it to be. I agree with that statement to a certain extent, in that if the plot of a movie turns out to be something I wasn’t expecting, then I shouldn’t hold it against the movie. But when everyone, everyone being Netflix and IMDb in this case, tells me this is a horror movie, then I expect a horror movie. The plot is set up well for the genre it actually falls into, more so than horror anyway. Two things I didn’t get about the plot at all though. One was why does it have to be a virgin? I understand she is supposedly more innocent and pure, but a baby is a baby. The other thing I didn’t get is that the devil would possess a guy in order to have sex with the virgin. We eventually see the devil in his true form, and he looks human but with tail and horns of course. So I didn’t really get why he had to possess someone. Maybe they are implying the devil has no penis? Anyway, if you are into the soft porn genre, give it a look. If not, don’t waste your time with this one.

2 out of 5 Glad to know I’m safe from the devil

I was starting to feel better last night, so I decided that if I was still feeling better today then I would take in Daybreakers. I’m still sick, but I no longer feel as run down as I have been the last few days. I noticed that the early movie started before noon, so I figured there would be very few people that would show up that early for a movie that has already been out for a week. I ended up being the only person there, so I didn’t have to worry about making the person next to me sick as well. Daybreakers is a movie that I first heard about on the blog The Horror Section. The trailer was posted, as well as a small blurb about it. I can’t say that the trailer impressed me all that much. I wasn’t even going to bother going to the theater to catch this movie, but it has been a while since I have gone to the theater. In the end, I’m glad I decided to go.

Vampires rule the world. It has been ten years since the virus that turns people, and animals, into vampires was first discovered. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) works for a company that is trying hard to find a blood substitute, but so far nothing has been working. Humans and animals are both in short supply. They are looking for a blood substitute because once a vampire is no longer able to feed on pure human blood, they start to mutate into something that looks more like a bat than anything else. Animal blood alone isn’t the answer, as this only slows down the mutation process. When Edward accidentally comes across a group of humans, things change. Edward never really wanted to be a vampire, and he believes that harvesting humans purely for their blood is the wrong thing to do. When he meets Audrey (Claudia Karvan) and Elvis (Willem Dafoe), as he likes to be called, Edward discovers something that could change the vampire race forever.

I went into Daybreakers not expecting much at all. In truth, the only reason I went to see it is so that I could review it for here. This isn’t always the best approach when watching a movie though. Sometimes that mood of indifference can be hard to overcome. The longer that Daybreakers went though, the more I found myself actually enjoying the story. The mix of sci-fi, it is set roughly ten years into the future, was a nice touch. Things like car windows going completely dark, with several cameras to show the driver the way during the day time so the vampire doesn’t burn. Buildings are more adapted for night, now that there isn’t much need to be out in the sun light. It isn’t much, but this added touch of sci-fi separates Daybreakers from other vampire movies. Those that have already watched this movie seem to be split on where they stand. The cure that they end up discovering was something that I really enjoyed. I would not have thought of it myself. Some people see it as stupid though, but I think it is because it goes slightly against vampire lore that people are so against the cure. What I liked most about Daybreakers was the characters they gave us. The vampires aren’t presented as cold and heartless, as they are in many other movies. Of course they see themselves as the better of the two races, and are starting to see humans as nothing more than food. The film opens with a teenaged girl writing a note, and then going outside to wait for the sun to rise because she doesn’t like the fact she will always remain a young teen. Edward still cares what happens to the human race, and still very much loves his younger brother (Michael Dorman). I know this isn’t a new thing as far as vampires go, but I was glad to see it. The cold and heartless vampire has its place, but a world full of them would be overkill.

The effects are pretty good. There are spots where it is a tad CGI heavy, but they keep these effects simple enough to where they don’t look bad. The subsiders, this is what the mutated vampires are called, look really cool. They are probably the scariest thing about this movie, as they just have that really creepy look about them. The effects are somewhat limited to the subsiders and vampires exploding, or catching on fire, until towards the end of the movie. Some of the final sequences have a lot of blood, and even some body parts, flying around. With a cast that features Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke and Sam Neil, one would hope for some decent acting at least. The main three do a great job with each of their roles. Claudia Karvan was good, but has a small role really. I also liked Isabel Lucas as Sam Neil’s movie daughter.

The biggest complaint I have been seeing for this movie is why the vampires aren’t breeding humans, or even cloning them. I have never done any research on cloning, but I don’t think it is something they can do in order to get results right away. The movie never tells us how long vampires have been the ruling class. They have obviously been in power long enough to change some things. We do learn right from the start that humans were given a chance to be farmed for their blood, and as expected they refused. So why did the vampires not try to do something until now? For all we know, they did. Just because it isn’t talked about doesn’t mean it never happened. Plus, even though they are vampires, it doesn’t improve how smart they are. I’m sure that vampires didn’t become the dominate race overnight. I’m also sure that they didn’t start to think about gathering up us normal humans until it started becoming clearly obvious that there just wasn’t many left. Even though we outlaw hunting certain animals, it still happens. The same can probably be said if the vampire government outlawed hunting humans, it would still be done. The fact that not enough had been done doesn’t surprise me at all. Daybreakers ended up being a fun movie for me. There were a few minor things I didn’t care for, like when a vampire exploded it would sometimes cause damage and sometimes it wouldn’t, but they weren’t things that just completely ruined the movie for me. It was the end of the movie that sold it for me completely. If you haven’t checked out Daybreakers yet, I suggest giving it a shot.

4 out of 5 Would you want to be immortal?