The Dyatlov Pass Incident/Devil's Pass (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Future Films

Runtime: 96 mins

Format: Imported DVD

Plot: A group of film students go on a trek to investigate the true life mystery of nine Russian skiers who befell an unexplained death while skiing in the Russian mountains in 1959. To this day, their deaths have been one of the most bizarre unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.

Review: The Dyatlov Pass Incident (Or simply Devil's Pass as it's been renamed in America according to IMDB) is a fictional movie using real events for its backdrop. The real life event known as The Dyatlov Pass Incident is quite possibly one of the most spine-tingling, creepy, horrifying, and mysterious incidents to plaque the Fortean world, and to top it all off it still remains 100% completely unsolved to this very day.

I first heard about the real-life event on an episode of the excellent Mysterious Universe podcast a couple years ago and instantly had to go online and read up on it as much as I could, and suffice to say, the things I read pretty much kept me up all night, terrified; short version is that in the 1950's a group of experienced Russian skiers went missing and when a search party found their camp site, they discovered that the tents had been ripped open from the inside, the skiers were all found at various distances away in bare feet and only half-dressed, some with broken ribs, others with skulls crushed, one missing her tongue, and none had any external injuries like bruises or cuts – only internal ones with no external impact points to have caused such injuries. Some of the bodies also had slight levels of radiation coming from them, with all of this culminating in absolutely no solid answers. Various speculation includes mundane explanations such as an avalanche and false mass hysteria, while others include some more interesting reasons such as secret military testing or having been attacked by another group of people, right to some more 'out there' things such as aliens/UFOs, angry spirits, and savage Yetis, and the really weird thing is that oddly enough almost all of those have at least someinteresting evidence to back them up, but all also have noteworthy detractors for them as well. The really curious thing to it all though, and it only adds to the mystery, is that the majority of hard evidence discovered for this case has been deemed Top Secret and Classified by the Russian Government and has never been released to the public, with the one sole researcher to publish a book on all this having died shortly after in a questionable car accident.

Now that is just a very quick summery. One article in particular that I found, this one right here, gives a very in-depth and thorough look at the event and I highly recommend going and reading that before watching this movie...hell, even before continuing on with this review. It's a bit of a long read, but wellworth it and it's almost a Must-Read in order to fully understand my anticipation and eventual feelings on this movie. My only issue with it is the author of that article states his own personal opinion as fact in a few instances, and I disagree with that practice pretty heavily. Other then that though, it's a very engaging read. Also, if you want a much shorter (albeit still decently long) article, Mysterious Universe has their own up right here, but I still recommend going to that first article at some point as well because it is much more thorough and has been updated with some extra and newer information since the time of the Mysterious Universe article.

Ok, so you got that done now? You're back and ready for the rest of the review? Ok, good. Hopefully you're just as captivated by that as I was and now you can see why I was so interested in this whole affair, and it's something that ever since I started reading up on it I've been saying deserves to have a really good, well-made, creepy-as-hell movie made based off of it, so I got pretty damn excited last year when I heard that one was actually being made. However, as more and more news came out on it, I got a little bit disappointed when I read that it would not actually be a movie based off the event itself, but rather a fictional story set within modern day that just uses the incident as a backdrop. I was still excited because I figure some really good stuff can still be done with that, but it wasn't quite what I had been hoping for. Add to that, it's also found footage as well. Now, I love found footage horror flicks quite a bit, but there are some movies I feel don't need the treatment and would be perfectly fine (if not better) as a traditionally-shot movie (The Dinosaur Project was one such movie), and this was one that I initially thought the same thing about when reading this news. Finally, the last bit that had me worried was that it was being made by Renny Harlin, a mostly-action director that I'm not a big fan of outside of Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Deep Blue Sea, and the terribly underrated Cutthroat Island, especially since his only other forays into horror were the abysmal Exorcist: The Beginning and the forgetful Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. (Side note: I do believe this is by far the longest intro I ever wrote for one of my reviews...)

Despite my growing doubts though, I should have trusted in Renny Harlin's self-professed obsession with the original mystery, because he did a pretty good job (well mostly, but we'll get to that in due time). In this fictional follow-up we have a group of university film students who are interested in the original mystery going to Russia in the middle of winter to shoot a documentary and walk the same route the original team did in the 50's, trying to recreate some of the events that led to whatever happened to them back then. Of course, as you can probably guess, they find everything they go there looking for, plus tons more, and it is not exactly a good thing for them. These central characters are all played by mostly-unknowns, with most of them having little to no previous acting experience. Because of that, their acting leaves quite a bit to be desired and is outright bad in a few key scenes that would otherwise be creepy if not for the bad acting taking you out of it.With that said, they're still serviceable enough most of the time and where they really shine is that they all seem to have genuinely good chemistry together; Even when the characters are arguing and fighting, these actors all play quite well off of one another, which also helps bring some much-needed comedic levity to the whole affair just before the shit starts hitting the fan and it becomes a non-stop edge of you seat spook fest.

Most of that spook action comes to us via a slowly growing sense of uneasiness, starting with some electronic malfunctions, escalating to strange footprints around their camp site, going a bit further when they find a severed tongue, and then only getting more batshit stranger from there, topping it off with one awesome scene in particular of a nighttime avalanche where both the visual CGI as well as the audio SFX for it were great, realistic, and quite frankly pretty damn frightening. Actually, even removing the avalanche scene and looking at just the snow-covered wilderness, snow in general seems to always add an extra level of atmosphere and tension to a horror movie and I'm not really sure why. Even in not-so-good ones it manages to raise the atmosphere up a couple notches, especially if the snow is currently falling in said scene (I'm still waiting for a Friday the 13th movie set at Crystal Lake during the winter – I think that would be pretty damn awesome to see). It also helped that this snow wasn't just some sound stage or fake snow set up in someone's backyard property, oh no, the movie was actually filmed out in the middle of the Russian wilderness in the middle of winter (though sadly not at the actual location of the real events, I believe), which means real snow which in turn means it was genuinly cold for the actors when they were filming, so you can actually see their breath in most of the scenes which makes things more authentic and portrays the cold that much more realistically, and something most movies set in the snow tend to overlook because it's usually just fake snow.

Where the movie lost me however, was when it started to rapidly fall apart toward the end and they kind of leave the whole mythology of the real incident behind to go off in their own direction for the remainder of the movie, at which point it did several things I didn't really like: First, it took a very sharp and unexpected turn into some kind of weird badly-CGIed monster movie that popped up out of nowhere and didn't even have any sort of hints throughout or build-up during the movie to get to this point, they just randomly threw in some very bad CGIed monsters for the sake of it. Along those lines another aspect of this last bit that I didn't like is that, along with these monsters, they also threw a lotof other random things at you out of the blue and expect you to just buy it. Somehow this movie manages to touch on weird mutant monsters, The Philadelphia Experiment (another classic mystery that I love quite a bit, just not randomly shoehorned into this movie), The Mothman sightings of Point Pleasant, time travel, teleportation, weird silvery warp hole thingies, and a few other things I won't go into, and the movie jams all of that into the last half an hour, all entirely out of nowhere, to the point where they totally left behind the entire point of the movie and almost never even touch on the actual Dyatlov Pass Incident again, coming across like Renny Harlin ran out of time on the script for the movie so decided to randomly toss in the third act of another completely unrelated movie script just to give the first some form of third act. That last half an hour really doesn't feel like the same movie as the first hour, at all, and to top it off it also feels like he forgot to somehow tie all that wackiness back into the actual Incident that the movie is based off of because it pretty much doesn't even come back around to it anymore after that point.

Adding to all that, I wasn't that big a fan of their ultimate explanation for the original Dyatlov Pass Incident. Then again, when you've been obsessed with a 50-year old mystery like this, I suppose no matter what explanation they went with it probably would have been a let down either way and couldn't possibly live up to that kind of expectation pressure. Still, the direction they go was a bit of a pretty sharp turn and a giant leap into a totally unexpected direction. A direction that, as mentioned previously, randomly included monsters that looked like they could have been birthed by Golum from Lord of the Rings, and done so by very distractingly bad CGI.

I still want a movie about the actual original incident itself at some point. A movie version of that, I imagine, would be something akin to Event Horizon, but out in the middle of snow-covered wilderness during a snowstorm. With that said, I was actually pretty impressed by how faithful 80% of this movie was to the original events (or at least what we know or theorize about them). Sure, there are some details it fudges a bit and takes some liberties on, and some others they rush through or skim over a bit too quickly for my tastes, but for the most part it mentions just about all the major (and even some of the more minor) aspects in some capacity, delivering a frighteningly uneasy and intense little horror/mystery flick. It also acts as a great intro to those wanting to know a bit more about the real event, and it shows that Renny Harlin really is a fan of the original mystery as he proclaimed during a recent interview, leading him to want to do a movie about it.

However, it's that other 10% that brings the movie down quite a bit as that final half an hour makes the movie quickly go from being an amazingly effective, tension-filled, atmospheric movie to just plain silly as it devolves into a CGI-fest monster flick and kind of shoves a whole bunch of weird random things right into your face and then beats you over the head with them, leaving behind all the uneasy creepy subtlety that made the rest of the movie up to that point so strong. In addition to that, the ending doesn't even match up with the beginning at all; The movie starts off with the news covering the search teams trying to find these missing kids and then eventually finding this footage and playing it, yet the way the movie ends it totally ignores all that and, well, not to spoil anything but its kind of impossible for anyone to have found this footage, or at the very least in the way that the beginning of the movie implied anyway.

While The Dyatlov Pass Incident played in Russian theaters and is out on DVD now in various places of the world, it's actually due out over here in Canada and the U.S. under the name Devil's Pass on August 23rd for a very limited theatrical run and (while not yet confirmed) probably a VOD release around the same time as well, since that seems to be how these limited theatrical runs tend to go this day in age.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident (Or Devil's Pass) is certainly worth checking out, especially as a ' Dyatlov Pass Incident 101' for the real event. However, personally, if you're the kind of person that doesn't need everything explained for you then I'd say you're better off turning the movie off around the hour mark or shortly after (whenever the main characters get chased off into an abandoned underground bunker) and just assume the camera footage cuts off there. What you'd be left with is a MUCH stronger and far more effective movie then the one you'll be turning off a half hour later. While I was watching I was planning on giving this movie either an 8/10 or a 9/10, but what the movie very quickly descends into was just a total slap in the face and made me outright hate everything after that first hour.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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The Bay (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Automatik Entertainment

Runtime: 84 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: On July 4, 2009 a deadly menace swept through the quaint seaside town of Claridge, Maryland, but the harrowing story of what happened that Independence Day has never been told - until now. The authorities believed they had buried the truth about the tragedy, but a reporter has emerged with footage revealing the cover-up and an unimaginable killer: a mysterious parasitic outbreak. Told from the perspective of those who were there and saw what happened, The Bay unfolds over 24 hours though people's iPhones, Androids, 911 calls, webcams, and whatever else could be used to document the nightmare in Claridge.

Review: I love found-footage horror movies, so I try to watch any and all new ones when they come out, but The Bay specifically I had been anticipating pretty heavily after hearing some excellent word of mouth on it out of last year's TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). While it took me a bit longer to get around to it then I would have liked, luckily I was able to catch it recently on DVD, and suffice to say 80-odd minutes later I found myself thinking twice about going for that next glass of water...

In The Bay, an entire small island town during a 4th of July celebration weekend gets infected via the drinking water by small parasitic creatures that eat you from the inside out, mutated to a larger size due to the Government-tampered water supply, and we watch as the fun-loving celebrations slowly descend into panic and utter chaos.

What struck me almost right away here as a pretty ingenuous twist on the overdone found footage genre, was that it actually wasn't so much a found footage movie in the traditional sense as it was a fictional documentary that incorporated found footage elements within it. It has a survivor of the events, after the fact, going back and making a documentary on the events that befell this small coastal town, since the Government and mainstream media have been failing to report on it, and she's making this documentary from edited-together footage of this event from all sorts of different sources – home video cameras, security footage, police car cameras, news broadcasts, recorded phone conversations, webcam chats, 911 calls - just dozens upon dozens of different sources, most of which are professional and thus that means very little shakey-cam stuff for those of you who get headaches or motion sickness from that sort of thing.

Because of this approach, with footage from various multiple sources, both of the event itself as well as small signs leading up to it that hint at something not quite being right, the movie ended up being very creepy (even more so then most other found footage movies that are only from the POV of a single camera) because you start getting a sense of dread even before the characters realize anything is happening. You're given an uneasy suspenseful feeling right from the get go, and while the majority of the movie is a bit of a slow burn, it uses that time very well to slowly, but steadily, increase that feeling of unease and confusion. The movie, and by extension it's creepy factor, is helped along even more-so by the fact that the mutant parasitic creatures that are the cause of everything here – the Isopods – are actual real-life creatures that actually can get quite large in rare cases (seriously, Google Pictures that shit). Even though the movie itself is fictional, the horrific events depicted in it could very easily actually happen, making everything within all the more spine-tingling.

The biggest drawback that keeps you from getting fully invested however, is that aside from the reporter that's narrating the movie, there's not really any main characters to latch onto as everyone else is mostly just background people in various footage, but none really get any significant screen time. Hell, even the reporter lady herself wasn't in a whole lot of the actual 'found footage' stuff, and was completely absent from the final 20 minutes or so.

To be honest, I actually could have done with less of her present-day webcam chats with her boss, as well as her constant narration of everything happening on-screen, because that stuff sort of removed some of the tension by A, breaking it up and cutting in to take us out of what's happening in some otherwise really intense and creepy scenes, and B, outright spoiling things that were to come later on that would have been more of a surprise and more shocking had we not been expecting them. I would have preferred her to have a much stronger presence in the 2009-set footage and just cut out more, if not all, of her present-day webcam chat stuff.

I also wasn't a fan of the fact that there's no real climax to the movie - The movie builds the tension really well, culminating in a very creepy sequence where a family arrives to the town late in the evening only to find it empty of celebrations and dead bodies strewn all over the streets and no idea as to what's going on, but in terms of story structure it doesn't build up to anything at all and it kind of just...ends... and it leaves you feeling like the movie was over before it had even reached the final act.

Those few things aside though, The Bay is a highly enjoyable and quite creepy found footage movie, that acts as a bit of a refresher to an otherwise stale subgenre. This is one that I look forward to re-watching every once in awhile in the future, although it certainly will make you quite paranoid about ever drinking tap water again...

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Barrio Brawler/American Brawler (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Asylum

Runtime: 92 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: A struggling martial arts teacher must compete in an illegal underground fight ring in order to save his brother from a crime boss and reunite with his family.

Review: Barrio Brawler (Or American Brawler as its actually called on Asylum's official website) was among the recent screeners that Asylum sent me for review. It's due out in select theaters tonight (joining Hold Your Breath as being among the select rare Asylum flick to make it to theaters), and it's due out on DVD and BluRay at the end of August on the 27th.

Now when it comes to B-Movies, it's no secret that my favorites are killer animals, Mega this vs Giant thats, mockbusters, and horror or sci-fi flicks, none of which this one is, so I was a bit out of my element with Barrio Brawler, but since Asylum was kind enough to forward me a copy of the screener, the least I could do was give it a shot and do up a review on it. With all that said, I ended up being thoroughly entertained by it. I mean, it's no Sharknado, Atlantic Rim, Transmorphers, Nazis at the Center of the Earth, Age of Dinosaurs, or any of those types of mindless fun summer popcorn style movies, but it's not trying to be. It's much more of a low-key drama, focused more on its characters, with their own personal trials and tribulations as opposed to giant CGI monsters wrecking havoc through some unfortunate cities.

Oh, and MMA martial arts. Lotsof MMA martial arts. And the really surprising thing? It's all excellently well-shot - In a lot of movies like this, especially in the cheapie Direct-to-Video market, martial arts fight scenes are done with a combination of super quick-cuts and trick photography mixed with the occasional decent shot of actual talent. In Barrio Brawler however, the camera mostly just stays on nice still and lingering shots while the talented martial artist actors go to town on one another in extremely impressive, violent and just all around brutal fight scenes; If you're any bit queasy on physical violence, this movie is not for you, but if you're fine with it, this movie will have your eyes glued to the screen for fear of missing even a single beat of a fight – even three seconds could be enough to miss a half-dozen kicks, a couple punches, and a somersault through the air.

Another aspect that was quite interesting was having an older person as the central character. Not to say the actor is an old fogie, but normally for movies like this its a teenager or someone in their young to mid-20's in the main role, so it was refreshing to have a movie not scared to focus on a bit older of a main character, especially one that got moves like Jackie Chan crossed-cloned with Tony Jaa. It also helps that, despite this being his very first movie, the dude has some pretty decent acting chops. Now, it's nothing to write home about and stop the presses for, but considering what the movie is and what it's aiming to be, and for someone with no previous acting experience, the guy handles his own pretty damn well. Actually, I believe all the actors in this one are essentially unknowns (this is their very first movie for most of them as well), and while some are pretty stilted and rough in the acting department (mostly the more minor characters), some of the others were surprisingly good. But then again, people don't watch a movie about underground MMA fight matches for the acting, they watch it for the fights, which as I mentioned above, are well worth the price of admission alone.

With a movie like Barrio Brawler (or American Brawler, or whatever they end up going with in the end), there's not a whole lot I can really say on it – Most of the actors are good, with their characters having been decently-written, and while the plot is a bit thin, overly-predicable, and has a few slightly-longer-then-necessary exposition scenes in the first half that drag things out just a tad too long, it's still serviceable enough for the real reason people are watching this, and that's for the amazing, albeit very intense and quite brutal, MMA fight scenes. 

If you're lucky enough to live in an area where this is playing at a nearby theater (starting tonight!), I highly recommend it as I can imagine the fight scenes would look even more spectacular on the big screen. If not however, be sure to pick up your DVD or BluRay copy on or after August 27th when it hits stores. 

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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Fatal Call (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  Zingraff Motion Pictures

Runtime: 94 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: Mitch meets the beautiful and seductive Amy at a happy hour and begins a tantalizing romance. Before long, Mitch learns that nothing is as it appears and, unable to trust anyone, finds himself on a nightmarish roller coaster ride as he is accused of murder, and has to run from the law in addition to a mysterious stranger out to kill him.

Review: Fatal Call was among the second group of screeners that MTI Home Video sent my way, and while at first I was a bit cautious of it (just because direct-to-video action movies tend to be a bit bland to me most of the time – I'm much more of a monster, killer animal, sci-fi, horror, or mockbuster kind of guy), I then saw who was starring in it – Danielle Harris, the beautiful and unbelievably hot horror scream queen that has been in countless horror flicks and always brings her A-game. That alone turned me right around on this one and had me excited to start watching it.

And as expected, she gave her performance here 100% as she played exactly the kind of girl that you can just fall in love with right off the bat, but then begin to slowly start to not trust anymore, bit by bit. Hell, even knowing that things aren’t quite right with her, she's still adorable enough that I'd probably still marry her, hahaha. And even though she plays many different 'versions' of her character, the real shocker with her is that she actually smokes in the movie! I know, I know, on first glance that doesn't seem like a big thing at all, but in all honesty I found it rather refreshing to have a character smoking in a movie these days. Not that I'm pro-smoking, because I'm not, but its no secret that Hollywood has shied away from having characters smoke in movies in the last decade or so, and while I'm not personally pro-smoking, there's no point in Hollywood trying to hide the fact that people do smoke, so its refreshing to get a movie that's not scared to have one of its leads be a smoker this day in age. It's actually a minor detail that I wish the later Die Hard sequels had brought back to the John McClane character, but I suppose that's neither here nor there in this particular review.

The cast also includes Jason London, who is quite accustomed to these low budget direct-to-video flicks, as the main lead and kind of the 'boring every man' sort of character that meets 'by chance' Danielle Harris' character at a bar one night and pretty much instantly falls in love with her, gets her phone number, and a day or so later gives her the title phone call that then sets in motion the events of the movie that proceeds to spiral his normal boring everyday kind of life right out of control and into a deadly cat-and-mouse game that, even if he survives, may leave him with not a whole lot to return back to. And the person (other then Danielle Harris, that is) that Jason London is caught in this game with? That would be none other then Hercules himself, Kevin Sorbo who, much like with Danielle Harris, is always a joy to watch (well, in anything that's not Season 5 of Andromeda – ye-ouch). What struck me as different with him this time however, is that I'm used to seeing him play the good guy hero character (Hercules, Andromeda, the Walking Tall remake sequels, Never Cry Werewolf just to name some), so it was a really interesting change to see him playing a creepy methodical assassin-like killer, who only gets even creepier once his true identity is revealed later in the movie; With his role in this movie, Kevin Sorbo went from being a guy that if I saw him crossing the street in front of me I would run up and shake the hand of, to someone I would probably cross the street to avoid as quickly as possible, haha.

Lastly we have Lochlyn Munro (Freddy vs Jason, Scary Movie, Charmed) playing one-half of a detective duo that, when together with his partner, form a very hilarious Abbott and Costello-like frenemy couple that despite being partnered with one another, seem to dislike each other, often with hilarious results and played up with some great chemistry. Granted, he's hardly in the movie (only three scenes, I belive), but every time that he is, I knew I was in for a really good funny scene to lighten the mood to this otherwise pretty serious thriller.

What I didn't like though was the framing device. It starts off with, and constantly cuts to, Jason London's character running like a frightened rabbit through parts of the city while bruised and bloodied, obviously running away and trying to hide from a mysterious figure that is soon revealed to be Kevin Sorbo trying to kill him for reasons currently unknown until much later in the movie. During this over-long and drawn-out chase scene we keep flashing back to the various events leading up to this night, which is where the bulk of the movie takes place. The main thing that bugged me about structuring the movie in this style is that it removed a lot of the impact that some of these scenes were meant to carry, simply because we just didn't yet have the background information or experience required to make some of those scenes tense and impactful, not to mention that it also made sections of the movie a bit confusing at times and I found myself going back and forth trying to figure out if the scene that was currently happening was one of the flashback scenes or the over-long framing chase and by the time I figured it out, it was switching back to the other again. With that said, on the flip side I did kind of feel that it added a bit of extra mystery to the movie as it went along, in terms of how Jason London got from there to here.

The biggest issue I have though isn't really an issue with the movie itself so much as it is with the DVD cover art. As you can see with the picture at the top of this review, the cover would lead you to believe that the movie has non-stop balls-to-the-wall explosive action, and that's very misleading as there's almost no in-your-face action beats at all. While there's some good tension throughout and a couple minor chase scenes scattered around, the majority of the movie is a straight-up thriller mystery. Now I'm not saying a thriller mystery style movie is a bad thing, as it's clearly not since I love those kinds of movies and as you can probably tell from the review up to this point, I've enjoyed this one quite a bit, but I just want people expecting lots of action to know that the cover art for this is very misleading in that regard, so try not to go into the movie being influenced by and expecting what the cover shows. In addition to that, something else it misleads you on is in regards to Ms. Danielle Harris - she may play an intelligent, manipulative, and evil bitch, but she in no way partakes in any of the action in the manner that the cover art shows, so don't go in expecting her to be running and jumping around in tight leather, guns a-blazin' and explosions going off around her, because that couldn't be further from the truth.

I can't really talk a whole lot about this one since so much of it hinges on mysteries and uncovering the truth behind what's going on, that to talk much further or into any greater detail would just start ruining the movie. As it is, there's already a few things I had to spoil in order to talk about anything, but I tried to pick and choose the more obvious twists to mention or the ones that happen pretty close to the beginning. As for all the various twists and turns that populate the movie that I haven’t talked about and spoiled, well some are actually quite genius and had me pretty excited when they happened, while a couple of others were terribly-obvious and you can probably see them coming from really early-on if you're paying even half-attention and that seemed thrown in just for the sake of another surprise twist as opposed to any actual story-related reasons. So much so, actually, that by the end of the movie this thing pretty much had just as many twists and turns as any of the direct-to-video Wild Things sequels.

In short, it's probably nothing I'd re-watch, mainly because most of the enjoyment to be had with it comes from all the twists and once you know how it all ends it kind of makes it difficult to sit through again, but as a one-time watch, if you like a nice low-key, suspenseful, thriller mystery that's well-acted and has the always-lovely Danielle Harris in it (although admittedly, has just a few too many twists for its own good), then you can check Fatal Call out when it hits DVD late next month on July 23rd, however if you're looking for an explosive non-stop high octane action movie like the cover art portrays then you're better off moving onto the next movie on the shelf because this one couldn't be further from that style.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Crime & Investigation

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Fox Crime Asia

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SYFY HD Asia

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Bio Channel Asia

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Universal Channel Asia

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FX Channel Asia

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itv choice

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Warner TV Asia

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Natgeo Adventure Asia

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MTV Asia

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KIX Channel

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Thrill Channel

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Sharknado (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Asylum

Runtime: 88 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: When a freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, thousands of sharks have no trouble terrorizing the waterlogged populace, but then when the high-speed winds also form tornadoes, nature’s deadliest killer rules water, land, and air.

Review: I know a lot of people love shark movies, but personally I'm just getting sick of them at this point, because the B-Movie genre is just getting over-saturated with them these last few years – they've become the easy go-to B-movie monster and I've gone on plenty of rants in the past about how we need to move away from them and give some other animals the spotlight. Luckily it seems that is finally starting to happen, seeing as how we've been getting plenty of good spider and dinosaur movies lately and a few less shark ones. Likewise, it's no secret that I'm just not a fan of Asylum's natural disaster movies. I give each one a shot, but I seem to find them all too similar to one another to really be of interest anymore and I also find that those are the ones that seem to have the laziest writing and the laziest acting and pretty much the laziest everything and I can't really muster up any interest for them anymore. 

With that stuff in mind, you can probably see where I'd be super cautious of Sharknado, a movie that combines both those genres into one movie – however, even I can't deny how damn eye-catchy and attention-grabbing that awesome title is, and when Asylum sent me a screener of Sharknado to review...well, I have no qualms in admitting that I was actually pretty excited to sit down and spend an hour and a half with this flick when I got home from work.

And boy, what a fast hour and a half it was! The movie started with a bang and never let up, only getting more and more insane (in a good way!) as it went on. It moved at such a quick pace that it was over before I even realized how much time had actually passed, and let me tell you – Sharknado doesn't waste any time at all. I was expecting the main event of the movie, the promise of the awesome poster art's flying sharks bringing down destruction onto a city to happen in the final 20 minutes or so as things often do in these movies, but I couldn't have been more wrong. It opens on a scene of sharks swimming in the ocean and getting picked up by the massively strong winds of a gigantic massive hurricane (Hurricane David, actually – which could be a coincidence but I'm willing to bet it was a nod to David Rimawi and David Michael Latt, the two main head honchos of The Asylum), which was directly followed by a scene of a fishing trawler getting caught in the whipping, whirling, teeth-gnashing shark-filled hurricane on its way to making landfall, and before the movie hits the 20 minute mark the hurricane and its army of hungry pissed off flying sharks has made landfall and rains destruction and chaos down, starting with a beach and its resident bar and boardwalk, and moving further inland from there, so literally from the opening seconds the movie has jumped right into its main plot and only escalates – no beating around the bush with this one!

Oh, and yes, the movie comes with just as many WTF moments as you would expect a movie called Sharknado to bring to the table; We have scenes of sharks flying in through windows, high winds knocking a Ferris wheel off its holdings and rolling down a street while at the same time sharks are falling down from the sky around it and trying to munch down on people, one of the sharks being knocked out by a bar stool being used as a bat, sharks swimming through a flooded Los Angeles and viciously attacking cars and chowing down on pedestrians, a shark shooting up into the air from out of a manhole only to get blasted mid-air by a shotgun blast, the main cast breaking into a hardware store and arming up on guns, chainsaws, and homemade explosives to battle the shark infestation, and of course the actual title mash-up itself of swarms of sharks being tossed around through the air by three giant F5-category tornadoes with all the damage, destruction, death, and fun moments of campy cheese that you would expect from such an amazingly unique sight!

The only part of these scenes that I found a bit iffy though, was during the flooding of Los Angeles, the water level as to how much of the city is flooded at any given time seemed to change from scene to scene. In some scenes the water was half-covering vehicles and deep enough for fully-grown sharks to be swimming around and playing Jaws in, while in other parts there's hardly any water (or even none) covering the streets, and certainly nowhere near enough for sharks to be fitting into. In addition, toward the end when the characters are trying to throw some bombs into the middle of the tornadoes to make them dissipate, both the people in the helicopter flying towards the tornadoes, as well as the people on the ground shooting up at the flying sharks, got waytoo close to the tornado – seriously, they were all pretty much inches away from these gigantic F5-category tornadoes and their hair wasn't even so much as blowing around, much less them getting sucked up into it, which is what should have happened being so close to the funnels. But hey, just some minor nitpicks in an otherwise uber-cheesy and just plain fun portion of the movie.

None of that cheese though would really be worth a damn if the special effects were utter crap, but thankfully they're not. There are a few weaker moments for it scattered here or there, but for the most part it's certainly above-average for the usual Asylum fare, though about on-average with the best of their 2013 selection (such as Age of Dinosaurs and the upcoming Atlantic Rim). Much like with 2-Headed Shark Attack they used practical effects for close-ups of sharks munching down on people and some of the shots of their fins moving through the water, but CGI for the wide shots as well as for the shots of sharks either swimming underwater or being whipped around through the air, and both types looked pretty good most of the time. Another part of the effects that certainly deserves a mention here is that the storm effects in the first part of the movie, as it approaches from the distance, were very well done. In retrospect that may have even been real storm footage that was just seamlessly integrated, or perhaps they actually filmed in front of an approaching storm, but if neither of those are the case then those dark skies and thick foreboding clouds were really well done CGI moments that had you almost feeling the humid winds approaching.

Another thing the movie surprised me with a bit was that it does a good job of very quickly establishing all the characters and making you care for them enough so that you're actually a bit sad to see them start getting offed. As I said above, the movie is in full-swing of its insane unique plot by 20 minutes in, and already by that point it has you feeling like you know the main cast and makes you genuinely care about what happens to them. And don't necessarily assume you know who will survive and who will die, because the movie has a knack for throwing some potential curveballs in there in that regard. I suppose that's also just as much a testament to the strong acting as it is the writing and directing as well – pretty much everyone here shines pretty brightly and never did take me out of the moment with any bad acting, which is made even more surprising by the fact that many of the characters are played by Unknowns that have very little previous acting gigs. 

Of course there are a few decent-sized names here as well, as there normally are in Asylum movies so they can slap their names onto the cover art. We have Ian Ziering as the main lead, most known for his voice work as lead characters on the classic animated series' Biker Mice from Mars and Godzilla: The Series, with Tara Reid playing his ex-wife that he does not get along with well at all. Sadly, Tara Reid is not aging all that well. She still looks beautiful with enough make-up on, but all those TMZ-reported-on nights of drugs and parties has not been so kind to her, making her look far older then she actually is. Admittedly though, she was a bit better then I was expecting her to be with this; I was totally expecting her to be nothing short of a painful trainwreck to watch and listen to, but thankfully she isn't. Hell, even though her line delivery is pretty bland most of the time and she may not be the best actor this movie has to offer, I'd still say she turned in a better performance here then she did in Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark almost ten years ago. In addition to them, there's also John Heard playing a hilarious comedic relief character that's an old drunk who is a regular to Ian Ziering's bar that jumps in the car with them when all hell breaks loose, and Jaason Simmons from Baywatch playing one of Ian Ziering's friends and not nearly as much of a womanizing asshole as I was initially expecting him to be, and actually turning out to be one of my favorite characters in the whole thing.

And sure, most of these actors play their roles and act their way through all these insane shark-related situations pretty straight-faced, but sometimes playing things straight-faced in an otherwise really cheesy movie just adds to the cheese, in my opinion!

As I mentioned at various points earlier in my review, Sharknado may have a couple iffy parts here and there that made me scratch my head probably more then I was intended to as opposed to embracing it (changing water levels of the flooded city, characters getting within inches of a strong tornado with no repercussions, a couple minor shots of CGI that wasn't quite up to par with the rest), but the good far outweighs the bad, and with buckets of cheese just oozing from every pore of screen time. I never thought in a million years that if you took the two sub-genres that I'm utterly sick of, and combined them together into one movie, that it would result in a damn good time and just the revitalization I needed to feel for both shark movies as well as natural disaster flicks. Honestly, a movie like this is almost above review, because you get exactly what you expect a low budget movie called Sharknado to give you; If you love the title, you'll probably love what the movie has to offer, and if the title is something that makes you groan instead of laugh, then you're probably better off just staying away because the movie gives you all the cheese you would expect out of that title. Between Age of Dinosaurs already being out and Atlantic Rim coming out soon, followed shortly after (hopefully) by Sharknado, it looks like Asylum has a damn fine summer for 2013, with hopefully just as fine of a rest of the year to follow.

As to when you can expect to be able to add Sharknado to your home DVD and/or BluRay collections, sadly no release date (or even trailer for that matter) has yet to be announced, however if I was to take a guess I would place my money on late-July/early-August sometime, but that's nothing more then my own speculation. I do know however, that it will be airing on the SyFy Channel as one of their SyFy Original Movies and is currently set to air on the night of July 11th. As soon as a home video release date is announced though, along with a trailer, I'll be sure to edit this part of the review to include them.

In the meantime, enjoy another picture! (July 10th Update: Trailer added below picture now!)

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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CBS Drama 1

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Infinity

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Atlantic Rim/Attack From Beneath (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: The Asylum

Runtime: 85 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: When monsters suddenly appear from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a special team of military deep-sea pilots must take control of giant robots to combat the new threat.

Review: The Asylum is one of my favorite low budget production companies, as I've often said in plenty of my previous reviews. I had really high hopes for their line up of movies this year, especially after watching Age of Dinosaurs which I felt was their all-time best movie to date and can't gush about it enough. But then 100 Degrees Below Zero came around and I have to be honest in saying I really really did not care for that one much, and even though I had been anticipating AE: Apocalypse Earth quite a bit, that one too fell a bit short of expectations. It was still decent, but nowhere near as amazing as I had hoped it would be. 

Which brings me to Atlantic Rim, Asylum's upcoming mockbuster of Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming CGI slugfest Pacific Rim (admittedly, I believe Asylum is changing the name of their Atlantic Rim to Attack From Beneath, to avoid the usual legal troubles they find themselves in these days with their mockbusters. Also, it can currently be found on IMDB under the name of From The Sea). This was another one I've been highly anticipating, based off just the amazing trailer alone, and the one movie in the last few months I feel could potentially be just as good as Age of Dinosaurs. While Atlantic Rim (aka Attack From Beneath) isn't due out until July 9th, Asylum was kind enough to recently add me to their screener list and lo and behold, this was the first one sent my way to review! Suffice to say, I was so excited to check this one out that I canceled my plans for the rest of the night and within minutes of receiving it, I had it opened up and ready to be watched.

With this one, well, you can pretty much guess what the plot is just based off what movie it's mockbusting – giant monsters appear from under the ocean and the U.S. Military employs some giant robots piloted by trained solders to combat them as they come out of the ocean and start attacking cities. Now, what struck me almost right off the bat as a nice change of pace from the usual Asylum fare, was that this one had a rather large ensemble cast. Normally if we get four or five main main characters in one of these things, that's a good day, but in this one we have quite a few: Most notably we have the well-known rapper Treach playing as one of the Mech pilots. Alongside him we also have David Chokachi (from tons of SyFy Channel Original Movies and other Asylum flicks) as the leader of the Mech pilots and kind of a loose cannon, always getting himself in trouble with his superiors and kind of doing whatever he wants. He actually sort of reminded me a bit of a mix between Bug Hall from Arachnoquake and Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man role (for multiple reasons, one of which I'm sure anyone who has seen The Avengers will be able to pick up on during the climatic fight). Jackie Moore, who was also in another Asylum flick, the found footage horror movie 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck, plays his girlfriend that's also in the military alongside him and is the third of the Mech piloting trio. Her role, and the way she portrayed it, actually reminded me quite a bit of Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica – only thing missing was a scene of her smoking a cigar and beating up a superior officer, hahaha. All three of these people also had excellent on-screen chemistry with one another and you never doubt even once that these three are all best buds with one another.

Other then the Mech pilots themselves, there is also the always-entertaining Graham Green ( Jacob's father in the Twilight movies and one of John McClane's fellow cop co-workers in Die Hard with a Vengeance) and in this movie he plays the role of the leading Admiral in charge of everything and was, simply put, a total joy to watch. While everyone did excellent with their roles and the acting from everyone was pretty much above-average for what you would expect from an Asylum movie, it was Graham Green that had most of the best lines; it was always hilarious seeing him chew out his subordinates and having them have to reply simply with 'Yes sir'. Hell, every other line from his mouth was hilarious, especially with his total straight-faced delivery, and he owned every scene he was in, chewing the scenery and spitting it back out like it was stale tobacco. Sharing some of the screen time with him was also Nicole Alexandra Shipley (from Asylum's semi-recent 12/12/12) as one of the main computer techs that works in direct relation with the Mech pilots, and Nicole Dickson in her first acting role playing the part of a NASA scientist that works with the Admiral on the new Mech project (Actually, its called Project Armada in the movie, but for the sake of the review I'll just be referring to it as the Mech project). She was probably the weakest in the movie in terms of acting, but she was surprisingly still not too bad considering it was her first role ever. That about covers it for the main characters – like I said, a much larger cast then usual, plus there are also still quite a few smaller roles throughout, such as one played by regular Asylum director (including of this movie) Jared Cohn as a fighter jet pilot that leads a squadron of jets against the giant monster during one of the earlier action scenes when the monster first makes its appearance while it crawls out of the ocean and proceeds to wreck havoc on a city.

And wreck havoc it does! Quite a bit! Actually, between monster attacks on various cities, occasional mechanical issues with the giant Mechs, and of course the action-packed Mech vs Monster fights, there is pretty much almost always something good going on, action-wise, and when we do get a few minutes of downtime it's wisely used to help establish the characters with some good characterization moments, and then it's never too long before we're thrusted back into some awesome action stuff again. As a matter of fact, I was quite surprised with just how realistic some of the characterization and character-specific beats were such as one scene where, after first finding out about and fighting a monster, David Chokachi's character, when face to face with his friends again, excitably relayed what happened during the fight just like a little boy would when talking about the newest episode of whatever show he and his friends are into. Personally, For Little Jeffrey back in the day, that would have probably been either Gargoyles or Power Rangers.

And speaking of Power Rangers, another thing I loved about this movie is that for a couple scenes after the main Mech trio fought off a giant monster, they get out of their giant robot suits and go through areas of the partially destroyed city to help those trapped or injured in the rubble caused by their fight, and the character played by Treach goes off to help the Red Cross out with fixing up people badly injured and all the other stuff they then have to deal with... which is something the Power Rangers never once did, that I can recall. With them, they fought off a monster and then always left right away to celebrate, thus leaving the city officials on their own to deal with half their city being destroyed (and on a regular basis, at that) – for shame, Power Rangers, for shame! 

Actually, I mention Power Rangers in this review quite a bit because I was reminded of the show pretty often throughout the movie. Hell, each Mech had lights on the outside of them, as well as interior lighting in the cockpits, that were all a certain specific color to each Mech; One was Red-themed, one was Blue-themed, and the third was Green-themed, and to add on top of that each one had its own unique Mech-specific power weapon! With those color designations, combined with special power weapons, matched up with giant monster-fighting robots, I was actually expecting some Power Rangers references at some point, and I have to say I was a a bit sad that we didn't get one. Also, this movie would have been the perfect opportunity for Asylum to bring on an old Power Rangers alum into their ranks, like perhaps Jason David Frank (Tommy from the Mighty Morphin' days). Seriously, how friggin' awesome would it have been to see Jason David Frank, the original Green Ranger, piloting the green-themed Mech in this movie?

But I digress. Kind of went off on a side-tangent there, hahaha. Back to the character stuff: It was nice to get a military leader in one of these movies that's not just all gung-ho about nuking the enemy creature in question and is actually against such a plan. So many times movies like this end with the military guy in charge essentially saying 'screw it' and dropping a nuke on the creature as an easy out, but not here, my friends, not at all! He's not only 100% against such a plan, but he actually has to put in a good effort to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen. As a matter of fact, all the characterization in this movie was more attention to that then Asylum normally gives in their movies and it was all much appreciated. For instance, there was also a little love triangle subplot added in between the three Mech pilots. Seems not only are two of them dating, but the girl had actually cheated on him while drunk a few weeks back, with the other one. It was an interesting subplot that added a bit of tension between the characters for a while, however it ultimately ended up being a bit pointless since it doesn't ever really get resolved at all. They're in the middle of dealing with it when they get the alert that New York City is being attacked by the Mother of all Monsters essentially, and they have to leave to go partake in the big climatic battle, and the movie never returns to that subplot anymore after that. Would have been nice to get some form of conclusion to that, but oh well. Just a minor nitpick.

There's actually a couple of other nitpicks I have with this, that I may as well get out of the way now. The first of which is that I would have liked to see a scene or two of the Mech pilots learning to drive and control their giant undersea Mechs. There is a point later in the movie where their Mechs get an upgrade to their hardware and there is a quick re-training scene of them having to learn how to use this new technology, and I suppose by the point we meet everyone at the beginning of the movie they're already familiar with how to pilot and control these things (after all, the movie can only be so long so they can't really waste time with stuff like that), but it still would have been nice to see, but it's far from a deal breaker. As I said, it's only a minor personal nitpick.

The next issue though is slightly bigger then a nitpick, though again not quite a deal breaker. In the second half of the movie, when the much-larger second monster makes itself known and begins its assault on New York City, we only ever see that one monster yet all the characters keep referring to it as 'them'. Anytime anyone talks about that monster, they keep talking about it as if there are way more then just that one, yet we never once see any of the others, so I'm unsure if there were supposed to be tons of other battles happening across the city but just all off-screen, or if it was some kind of dialog error, or what the deal was but it made the last 20 minutes or so a bit confusing as to what was going on with the monster and if there were more or not.

Over all though, since I liked this one quite a bit, I don't really want to end my review off on a downer negative note, so I'll bring things back around to the positive side in mentioning the excellent CGI effects work here. Seriously, this movie had astounding CGI and way above-average for what we've come to expect from Asylum. Be it the wonderfully-designed killer monsters or the giant Mechs themselves, or especially the city-destroying CGI brawls between the two, everything in this movie in terms of the special effects looked excellent and everyone at Asylum should pat themselves on the back for a great job well done! 

Atlantic Rim (Sorry, I mean Attack From Beneath) would make a great summer double-bill with Age of Dinosaurs, as both movies encompass the best that Asylum has to offer and both have truly insanely chaotic, awesome, and fun third acts. I know Asylum doesn't really do sequels anymore, but out of all of their movies that deserve one, this is the one I want to see a sequel to most. In addition, I find most of their best movies are their mockbusters, so its sad that they seem to be doing them a lot less and less as time goes on. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next two years they stop doing these ones all together. I mean, I can't blame them seeing as how its just leading to legal issues after legal issues these days, but its still sad to see them declining, so it's all the more important you get out there and support these mockbuster titles. 

As mentioned at the top, Atlantic Rim, AKA Attack From Beneath gets released on July 9th, so be sure to pick up your DVD or BluRay copy that day and help support our favorite B-Movie company and make sure they know which kinds of movies we want to see most!

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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