The 10 Best B-Movies of 2013

 

Like with 2011 and then 2012, this is my Annual list of my personal favorite B-Movie releases of the last year. There is still plenty of movies from this past year that I haven't yet seen, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself. Also, this list is solely based off what has hit home video formats and Video On Demand services in 2013, so movies that aired on TV stations like Lifetime or the SyFy Channel this year, but never came out on DVD, BluRay, and VOD services yet, does not count for this. I want this as a list of movies that you could potentially pick up yourself or have easy access to legally obtaining. Likewise, some of these movies may have aired on TV in 2011 or 2012, but didn't actually get released on home video formats or VOD until 2013, thus I count them as 2013 movies for that reason.

The following list won't be in any specific order, as I clearly love all of them for them to even be on the list to begin with, so putting them in any kind of ranking order beyond that is a bit moot.

- Age of Dinosaurs is not just The Asylum's best movie to date, it's also the most just plain fun dinosaur movie I've watched in a long time. Never taking itself too seriously, we get tons of fun-filled dino attack scene after fun-filled dino attack scene that plays like a Best-Of compilation of those classic 'Dinosaur Attacks!' cards. Add to that some of the most impressive CGI to come from Asylum yet, in addition to well-crafted Carnosaur-esque practical effects and puppetry, as well as Treat Williams being Treat Williams, and you have a guaranteed shot at a fun time. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here. 

 - Found Footage is an easy genre to tackle, yet many movies fumble while trying. Europa Report may not be scary, or even a horror movie. In fact, it's more of a slow-burn character study drama than anything else, set within the plot of traveling through Space to another planet. But the way it handles the Found Footage aspect is among the best I've ever seen, plus the movie is actually really good and well-made as well. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

- Exceptional CGI special effects and good acting from some familiar faces dominates Spiders, a fun-filled creepy-crawly killer spider flick released early this year. Starts in with the action pretty quickly and hardly lets-up for its entire runtime. If you're a fan of Creature Features, especially giant killer spider ones, this is surely not one you want to miss. Especially once the giant mutant alien spider starts destroying the city - fun times! You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
 
 

 - You didn't think I'd have a Best Of list without the most infamous of the 2013 B-Movies, did you? The cult phenomenon surrounding Asylum's Sharknado is arguably even more interesting than anything in the wacky movie itself. Still, by even 20 minutes in it's pretty easy to see why this obtained it's pop culture status, and that's because the movie is as insanely stupid... and awesome... as it sounds, and B-Movie fans are sure to love every minute of it. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

 - Attack From Beneath, aka Atlantic Rim was Asylum's well-timed mockbuster of Pacific Rim, and while it may have had a teeny tiny fraction of that Hollywood movie's gigantic budget, it's every bit as entertaining. Acting and Effects are top-notch stuff for an Asylum production, and it was filled with a non-stop supply of hilariously-delivered one liners and fun popcorn action scenes involving Power Rangers-esque Mech Robots battling giant monsters. What more can you want in a low budget B-Movie? You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

- Having already hit Home Video everywhere else in the world last year, Grabbers, an Irish monster horror/comedy in the style of Shaun of the Dead and Slither, only hit American VOD services this year. You know you're in for a hilarious good time when a movie deals with a slimy tentacled alien invasion where the beastie of note is allergic to alcohol so the remaining townsfolk have to get totally and completely hammered at the local pub in order to fight it. Why this amazing little gem is having such a difficult time finding proper distribution in America, I'll never know.

- The only Christopher R. Mihm movie I don't yet have a review done for, but that doesn't mean that The Giant Spider isn't a fun movie worthy of a spot in his filmography. It just means, honestly, that I've been lazy. The Giant Spider is a great and hilarious black and white homage to the classic 1950's monster B-movies with the best style of effects seen in a Mihm movie yet. It's super short runtime also means there's very little of the movie where something fun isn't happening. Though due to the massive amounts of references to past Mihm movies I wouldn't recommend starting with this one, but for fans of his filmography, you do not want to miss it.

- After two comedic entries (one of which I loved, one I think is the worst movie ever made), the Child's Play series returns to it's straight-up horror roots with this new entry. It's smaller budget is very much noticeable, but that doesn't stop Curse of Chucky from being a very worthy return to form. Includes good kills, good Chucky lines, loads of tension, and some references to all previous movies, so mix those things with its return to its horror roots, and every fan of the classic movies should be happy with this one.

- Frankenstein's Army is one creepy WWII-set Found Footage horror movie that includes not only an interesting story, well-placed tension, and buckets of blood and gore, but also amazing monster designs worthy of a theatrical movie, with excellent practical effects to bring those designs to life. However, Frankenstein's Army is a prime example of a Found Footage movie that I think could have been even better had it been a traditionally-shot movie instead of Found Footage.

- Not only one of my favorite B-Movies of the year, Big Ass Spider (previously Mega Spider) is one of my favorite movies of the year, period. Well acted, well-done CGI spider effects, a good story, and equal parts hilarious and just plain awesome. Out of all the movies on this list, this is the one that should have had a wide theatrical release because the overall quality and talent on display here is really fitting of that. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.



All in all, another great year for B-Movie fans, and seeing as how a grand total of three of these movies on my list are killer spider movies, it's safe to say that 2013 was the Year of the Spider for me and it was great seeing the shark dethroned for a year (even though there were a couple fun shark titles as well, such as Ghost Shark). And while these are just my personal favorite ten, there are still plenty of other good, fun, worthy B-Movies from this past year that fans can sink their teeth into as well.

Actually, below you'll find three such movies that almost made my list but, for one reason or another, just couldn't quite be included.

 HONORABLE MENTIONS

- Jurassic Attack still has not yet been released in America, other then on the SyFy Channel as Rise of the Dinosaurs. It also has just a few too many minor flaws that add up enough to prevent it from being included among the 'Best of the Best' for me, but it was still one really fun ride of a dinosaur adventure movie that I enjoy re-watching from time to time and that is certainly worth your time if you can land yourself a copy. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

 

 - Another SyFy-aired movie that has yet to be released, Grave Halloween was a big surprise for me as I found it to be far above the caliber of the Original Movies SyFy tends to air. Being more of a creepy, atmospheric, haunting kind of movie, Grave Halloween dealt with the infamous and spine-tingling real-life location of Aokigahara, Japan's Suicide Forest, which is a terribly depressing and creepy location even when not factoring in the ghost legends. However, as much as I enjoyed it as a whole, I do have major issues with a couple parts, including the entire climax.

 - The Dyatlov Pass Incident (or Devil's Pass as it's been renamed in America) has an amazing near-perfect first half that acts great as a "Dyatlov Pass Incident 101" of the real-life mystery that the movie is based around. It's also atmospheric as hell, creepy, mysterious, and well acted. That first half is among my favorite stuff of the year, especially when it comes to Found Footage. But it all utterly comes apart during the second half of the movie, which in turn just about ruins it all for me. To understand further as to why, you can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

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Europa Report (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Outpost Studios

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: An international crew of astronauts undertake a privately-funded groundbreaking mission to search for life on Jupiter's fourth largest moon, Europa.

Review: Europa Report was one of those movies I had heard of and knew about the existence of, but other then it's title and very basic premise, I stayed away from any other word on it because it felt to me like one of those movies that the least you know about it going in, the better it will be.

As for it's plot, anybody familiar with the classic sci-fi novel 2010: Odyssey Two (sequel to the even more classic 2001: A Space Odyssey), will already be pretty familiar with it. In that novel (not the movie adaptation of it, since that left this part out) there's one chapter that talks about Chinese astronauts landing on one of the moons of Jupiter, the ice-covered moon Europa, to search for fresh flowing water to convert into fuel or some such (memory is shaky on that, at best) and of course things go very very wrong, they run afoul of some major issues, and get attacked by a pretty creepy unexpected assailant that had been dormant in the ice. Now I wouldn't go so far as to say that this movie is a full-on adaptation of that chapter of the book, but I will say that at the very least it was heavily inspired by it as there are quite a large number of similarities. Suffice to say, if you enjoyed that said chapter in 2010: Odyssey Two, then you'll more then likely enjoy Europa Report. Another, much quicker way to describe this movie could also be to simply say that it's the 2012 found footage space horror movie Apollo 18, but actually done right.

Just like Apollo 18, Europa Report is also shot in the 'Found Footage' style of filmmaking that we here at Watching Full Movie Online Free tend to love when done right (something that Apollo 18 most certainly was not). This is a movie, especially due to its low budget, that actually benefited quite well from this style; From the tightly claustrophobic but bright confines of the spaceship interiors to the vastly beautiful but shadowed icy Europa landscape, the 'from the camera' perspective really helps aid in making you feel like you're there, exploring with these characters, every step of the way. It also helps that the camera perspective angle, similar to another recent found footage movie The Bay, comes from multiple different sources and isn't just from one hand-held shaky home video camera. With this being the first attempt to send humans into deep space, there's stationary cameras positioned all over the interior as well as exterior of the ship itself, in addition to helmet cams in the spacesuits - after all, they would want everything on such a momentous mission to be recorded and meticulously documented, so it actually makes sense for this movie to be from that kind of P.O.V. Also, again much like in The Bay, the movie itself plays more like a fictional documentary on this mysterious and unexplainable event, with the footage that makes up the 'found footage' part of the narrative being shown throughout this documentary as part of that, mixed in alongside other documentary tropes such as Talking Head interviews, dramatic background music, news footage, and some overlaid narrations. The only thing I don't really like about this approach, is that it very often takes you out of the moment in the actual found footage, after it worked so hard to draw you in, to cut to more of the documentary stuff like the Talking Head interviews and news footage, thus loosing much of the impact that the tension-filled and atmospheric found footage parts would have otherwise had.

Now, I'm no scientist or space travel expert by any means, but continuing on with the realistic way that the found footage approach was incorporated, it also seemed to me like a hell of a lot of thought and extra effort went into this movie to make it as scientifically accurate as possible when it came to the technology, the space flight, and how certain things worked in space and on Europa - all those kinds of finer details seemed quite meticulous and realistic, which if that was indeed the case, then hats off to the makers for going that extra mile. Usually when a movie focuses so much on being scientifically accurate it kind of forgets that it needs to be enjoyable as well, but this one I felt was the perfect mix of the two, which only added to the realism.

Starring in this little sci-fi/thriller, we have Embeth Davidtz, who played the medieval hottie love interest from Army of Darkness, as the lead scientist on Earth in charge of this privately-funded program and is the source of the main Talking Head interview that the movie keeps cutting to, in addition to Dan Fogler playing another respected head scientist, which is certainly coming a long way from his hilariously role of the immature Hutch on Fanboys. Moving onto the main crew of the deep space mission, we have Michael Nyqvist, who is most famous for playing Mikael Blomkvist in the original Swedish version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, Sharlto Copley from the excellent low budget District 9, and Karolina Wydra who played a recurring guest star on the TV shows House and True Blood. There are a few others on the space crew, but that covers all the people that the average viewer would probably recognize and know.

As for those members of the space crew, drifting through the empty void of space for a couple years while they traveled, stuck in such a small and confined ship, it was great (and again, realistic) seeing their mental states slowly deteriorate even before they reach their destination of Europa. Actually, by the point we're first introduced to them at the start of the movie, they're all already at various points down the slope of depression and having tensions growing between them, due to their tight confines and total isolation from society, nay from Earth, for so long. We do end up going back and forth several times during the movie, so we get bits and pieces at a time as to how the events leading up to this point, but it was still a different and quite effective way to start the movie off and introduce us to our main cast.

Some could also complain (and they wouldn't really be wrong) that the movie has a very slow build and thus, could be perceived as boring. I can totally see that, however I didn't personally find that it affected me in that way at all. To me, it uses that slow build masterfully in order to let us grow accustomed to these characters and build an underlying tension that you almost don't even realize is being built until you get to a point where it starts coming to the forefront more. Make no mistake, this movie is very much a sci-fi-set character study first, watching the effects that being trapped on a small ship out in space for years, so far away from home and only with the same few people around, has on a person, and then the movie is everything else second, so don't go into it expecting some non-stop flashy blood and gore horror flick because this could not be the further from that. In addition to watching how these characters interact and deal with the day to day life in such a situation, the growing and continuous sense of awe and discovery throughout the movie, especially once they finally land on Europa, also helped to pass the time for me, as it just gives you so much to feel excited for, almost as if you really were watching a real documentary on such a discovery.

Now I don't want to really spoil a whole lot here since, as I said at the top, this is the kind of movie that the less you know about it going in, the better, but there is one last topic I want to touch on ever so briefly. The one bit of info I tried looking for on this movie beforehand but couldn't find a solid answer to was: Are there any sort of alien creatures in this movie? Well, without spoiling too much, I'll just say that they do indeed find something. But don't expect that to be a driving force of the movie, because it really isn't; Technical problems with the ship, compounded by growing mental issues of some of the crew, mixed in with the usual dangers of long distance space travel and exploring a new planet for the first time take up the bulk of the things that this deep space crew end up facing during this mission. The one mysterious thing that isdiscovered on Europa seems more like an after-thought to please those touchy viewers that need something like that or 'this movie sucks' to them, however that's not to say that it's non-effective, because it very much is. The last little portion of the movie when it starts dealing with this thing, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just as enthralled as I was during any other part of the movie, if not even slightly more-so, but it plays such a minor role overall that it's almost not even worth mentioning.

Yes, the movie is a bit slow for the majority of its runtime, but slow doesn't automatically equal boring, as there were plenty of things happening that fully kept my interest. Add to that some good performances, a pretty realistic approach and attention to detail, a nice sense of awe and wonder, and some truly terrifying nail-biting tension at some parts, and we have another winning Found Footage flick right here. It's only slightly brought down by some aspects of the documentary approach that have a tendency to take you out of the moment at times when I would really have rather just stayed encompassed by the moment. Still, when that's the only real complaint I have with a movie, then it's a pretty safe bet to say it's one damn fine movie. For those who were hoping for Apollo 18 to be much more then it ended up being, Europa Report is excellent at filling that void, just as long as you are prepared for the slower pace and you aren’t expecting some gory edge-of-your-seat non-stop action/horror thrill ride.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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