Screenhead

Lions Gate and Massify are linking up to create a partnership aimed at finding the next great filmmakers.

We all know who Lions Gate is, but you may not be familiar with Massify, the world’s largest online film production network.  The Lions Gate Incubator Project, LINC, gives Lions Gate access to Massify’s huge talent pool.  They’re already getting a project ready for launch within the next few weeks, a “high-concept, male-driven comedy short” that will be developed into a feature length production later.  Here’s the word from Lions Gate:

“There is a revolution of new ideas in filmed entertainment online,” said Curt Marvis, President of Digital for Lionsgate. “We intend to be at the forefront of accessing this enormous and largely untapped source of fresh talent and original new voices. Just as we are always looking for ways to monetize our content in a broadband environment, we are equally committed to using new media platforms as a source of new content. Massify’s large and talented community of filmmakers make them an ideal partner to bolster our online initiatives.”

Smart move for Lions Gate–they need to find the next Saw before someone else does, and the More of the Same plan you’re seeing at places like Universal just doesn’t seem to be holding up.  After all, GI Joe STILL hasn’t made its shooting budget back yet despite having sold a hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of tickets at last view, whilst the dirt-cheap Paranormal Activity took in a whopping hundred-plus on a shoestring.

Popularity: unranked [?]

One of the single most terrifying concepts in the world is evil children.

Children epitomize–or at least are supposed to epitomize–the concept of innocence in the world.  And the thought of something turning children into murderous sociopathic little monsters is chilling beyond all reason.  The thought of having to defend yourself against children inherently makes your mind rebel.  Children are to be protected, not to be protected FROM!

And that’s exactly the trope that’ll be riding us in The Children, last, and ultimately best, of the newest round of the Ghost House Underground series.  Lions Gate sent a copy on and it’s a downright peach.

Basically, it’s about what I said–it’s a family Christmas celebration, and all seems about as normal as can be when the kids, for reasons that are utterly unexplained, turn into murderous psychopaths.  And they’re utterly gleeful about the transformation, too.

What follows is about an hour of harrowing, terrifying mayhem as the children go from normal fun loving tykes to monsters that make the children from Village of the Damned look like an ad for Romper Room.

Frankly,  I cant remember the last time I saw the “killer kid” trope played this well.  Orphan?  Nah, not hardly.  These kids would eat that crazy little tot ALIVE.  It’s a whole new standard for killer kids run amok. They’re devious, they’re careful, they plot like…like…well, probably like ROMULANS, I can’t even get them an earthly equivalent.

And when you put these horrendous little child nightmares in a blender with some oblivious adults and one rebellious teenage girl who gets the picture WAY before anyone else, the end result is a horror flick on par with some of the greats.  Granted, the explanations as to WHY this all is happening is flimsier than wet tissue in a windstorm, but hey!  It’s still pretty creepy!

The Screenhead Ten Scale’s already pricing shotguns and hands up a whomping eight out of ten for being some pure-T horrendous horror filmmaking, guaranteed to scare just about anyone.  Watch this on a winter night with someone you love and watch them hit the birth control.

Popularity: unranked [?]

So we’re back in with another round of Ghost House Underground’s newest releases, and this time we’re tackling The Thaw, which Lions Gate dropped me a copy of.

The carcass of a woolly mammoth is exposed in a polar ice cap, and a team of researchers–okay, more like a bunch of college kids and their ecology professor–heads out to excavate and investigate.  But what they’ll find buried in the ice is a whole lot more than science.  They’ll find a parasite thought long extinct, and the students have only two, equally horrible, options remaining to them:  either establish a quarantine that will kill them all, or set loose a pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen.

I know, sounds freaky, doesn’t it?  And by itself, it definitely is.  The only remaining question, of course, is how well does it WATCH?

Okay, first off?  This sucker’s going to be REALLY heavy handed with its eco-trippy crunchy granola we’re-all-killing-the-planet-by-breathing message.  I mean REALLY heavy handed.  It’s like the new gold standard for smug.  If you hate environmentalism excelsior then this movie will give you hives.

Second, it’s just INCREDIBLY awesome that they got THE Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) from The X-Files involved.  I’m prepared to forgive a whole lot of preaching for that little cameo, and it’s a good thing too, because they will do a LOT of preaching.

Third, global warming is weak sauce science at best, and no one can conclusively prove this isn’t part of a normal cycle so NYEAH.

Anyway, the end result is a movie that’s actually got a few good scares on it, but also couches those scares in a lot of environmentalism nonsense.  It’s hard to be scared when you’re bored, and it’s easy to get bored when you’re being preached at relentlessly by a movie.  They had a wonderfully scary idea–pandemic movies are great fun because they’re often survival horror-based and, let’s face it, anyone can get sick.

There is a pretty good twist ending that’s actually a really nifty surprise, even if it too is heavy handed.

The Screenhead Ten Scale agrees with me that this might have been scarier if it weren’t so ham-fisted about its message, and thus gives it a six out of ten.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I am NOT a huge fan of Jack Ketchum’s work.  Ever since I saw The Lost–in which only I really lost, about ninety minutes of my life and a sinking feeling that someone somehow was making a living at writing torture porn–I looked at pretty much everything he did with a sinking suspicion.

So when I settled in with a copy of Offspring, one of the newest parts of the Ghost House Underground collection, which the folks at Lions Gate sent my way, I wasn’t expecting much good to come of it.  Were my suspicions met?  You’ll find out directly.

First, the plot.  We’re going back to Maine, a land that Stephen King pretty much managed to convert almost singlehandedly into the horror capitol of the world.  But the town of Dead River is playing host to a secret that even King might have had a hard time swallowing–a clan of flesh-eating monstrosities that propagates seemingly entirely by abduction.  And when the local sheriff is forced to step in and deal with them, he’s reminded all too clearly of the last time he took these killers on.

This one is, somewhat, different.  In fact, “graphically screwed up” might be a better term.  In fact, if you want to get an idea of what it’s like, imagine Clan of the Cave Bear intermingled with The Hills Have Eyes.  And you’ll be mostly horrified, but at the same time, you’ll be so catastrophically weirded out by the whole thing that you’ll scarcely know what to think.  Watching these dirt people tear apart actual humans and eat flesh is…well…it’s not the kind of thing you’ve seen lately, I guarantee that.

It’s graphic, it’s violent, it’s grotesque in the absolute…but it IS unique.  And that definitely gives it at least a point in its favor.  But the sheer horrendousness of the content leaves it difficult to recommend.

It’s downright painful to be looking at a movie that’s the most unique thing I’ve seen in a good while, but have it be so thoroughly repugnant that it’s tough to recommend.  It’s really just painful.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shares my consternation and hands The Offspring a thoroughly confused five out of ten.  It’s too unique to not bear mentioning, but it’s too downright vulgar to encourage anyone to watch.

Popularity: 1% [?]

So Lions Gate has brought up a bit of that old retro horror with the rerelease of The Gate, now out on DVD. And as always, the question we’re out to tackle today is, is it worth your rental dollar?

The plot is a little convoluted, and basically requires you to suspend disbelief like no tomorrow.  But after an old tree is pulled out of a suburban family’s backyard, it’s left a whole lot of trouble in its wake.  Like a load of fairly valuable geodes.  And a reeking pit in the backyard that just happens to be full of demons.  TINY demons.

And now it’s left to the kids of the suburban family to take on the horde of tiny demons that have burst forth from the hole in the backyard.

See, this may sound just plain old loopy to horror buffs of the modern era, but this kind of thing happened ALL THE TIME in eighties horror flicks, especially ones that carried that malign PG-13 rating, the rating usually reserved for half-baked slasher flicks today.

And frankly, it IS loopy.  How do we discover what’s going on under the surface?  Simple–the characters learn about it from the album cover of a heavy metal band from “Europe”, and more than likely, from Finland.  Because as we all know now, thanks to Metalocalypse and the various Lordi incursions, Finland and metal go together like peanut butter and jelly.

The farther in you get in this thing, the steadily more insane the whole thing gets.  In fact, it’s like that loopy uncle of yours that lives in the attic and won’t stop screaming about how the government’s putting mind control suicide chips in the flouride in the water–it’s absolutely insane, and yet at the same time, it’s also entertaining in a creepy sort of way.

If you’re up for a history lesson, then The Gate will provide it.  If you just want a creepy and fun little movie with some occasional scares, then The Gate will provide that too.

The Screenhead Ten Scale can’t help but give due props to this piece of the past, and thus issues a seven out of ten for being fun, even if absolutely looney.

Popularity: unranked [?]

In what may well be the single most ominous portent at the theaters in quite some time, apparently the only thing standing between us and Blair Witch 3 is Lions Gate.

See, they own the movie rights right now, so it’s their call as to whether or not the project goes anywhere.  But the current word is, that if it does actually go to a movie, that the original cast will be brought back (it’s not like they’re doing anything anyway except maybe Josh Leonard who occasionally shows up in direct to video horror but usually does at least a passable job, credit where credit is due), and they will continue on as if all our fondest dreams had come true and Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows never actually existed.

Sigh…if only…

While I have to admit that the thought of a third (really second) Blair Witch leaves me somewhat cold, I suppose it could possibly be good if done properly, but I don’t imagine it likely.  But the success of Paranormal Activity will likely not be lost on Lions Gate, and a shot at Paranormal Activity cash will be plenty welcome in a down economy.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Seriously, it will.  This sucker is likely to kill you unless you have several years of horror watching experience, like yours truly.  Newbies, know this–this is going to be some of the strongest horror out there, and the interesting part is, it’s not going to depend on blood and torment to get there.

This is horror as it should be, ladies and gentlemen–and when a young couple attends a booze soaked, drug addled New Years Eve party, it’s going to go badly, BADLY, wrong for them.  Actually, it’s not the party that’ll go wrong so much as it is the drive home.  It will be the commute from hell, ladies and gentlemen, and it will do horrible things to your mind and your way of life.

First off, the cover alone will give you nightmares if you live in a state that’s prone to getting snow.  Gigantic snowplow chasing you, snow all around, young girl clearly wearing little more than a light jacket and street clothes, possibly dead cell phone in front of you–this is a Michigan nightmare if ever you’ve seen one.

But this is merely where the horror STARTS, not where it ends.  Because by the end of this movie, you’re going to watch a couple of young people do horrendous things to one another and be utterly convinced they’re merely trying to ensure their own survival.  This is positively unbelievable stuff.

And I might have been content to write this off as another, albeit fairly decent, horror flick until I got to the very end and watched in terrified fascination as Dead of Winter presented to me, in the purest of terms, the single saddest ending I’ve ever seen in a horror flick.  I got misty-eyed.  You have any idea how hard it is to get teary-eyed over the ending of a horror flick?  That takes some doing, and they did it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this achievement in horror one of its all too rare ten out of tens for being pure, unalloyed horror with no significant problems that I can spot.  If you want a scary night, just wait for a good snowfall, turn down the heat about five, ten degrees and slam this sucker in your DVD player.  It will be purely unbelievable.

Popularity: 1% [?]

There is a very short list of actors that I keep on hand…actors who I can count on to deliver an excellent performance no matter how bad the rest of the movie around them is.  This list includes luminaries like Tiffany Shepis, Brad Dourif, Jeffrey Combs, and William H. Macy.

Also on that list is Lance Henriksen, a man who can be counted on, and his skills will be sorely tested in the mixed bag that is Necessary Evil.

This one pits a budding journalist against a sprawling pharmaceutical corporation who’s deeply at work on something that turns out to be a lot more sinister than anyone wanted to give it credit for.  But the journalist and the corporation have a lot more history together than anyone was aware of, and over the course of the movie we’ll discover just what that history is.

Once again, Lance Henriksen will turn in an excellent performance, even if the rest of the movie around him is quite a bit more hit and miss.  See, the really weird thing about this one is that sometimes, it’ll be fun and entertaining and a little scary.  Other times it’ll be weird, hallucinatory and downright incoherent.  The ending might well be the most entertaining part of the whole thing, even if it does sort of kick up the foreboding a skosh for a possible sequel not too far down the line,  an announcement which hit me with a whole busload of mixed feelings.

And that leaves me with one big problem–recommend or not.  Well, I’ll be honest with you–you can do a WHOLE LOT better than this.  But you can also do plenty worse.  And Lance Henriksen fans like myself will be more than happy to know that he’s STILL good.

The Screenhead Ten Scale washes its hands of the whole mess and awards Necessary Evil a five out of ten for averaging out to purely mundane.

Popularity: 1% [?]

As in two more than one.  As in one more than two. As in why are they even bothering?

Look…I know Martin Lawrence’s career is pretty much as dead as a goldfish when you get it home but do we seriously need yet another guy in a fat suit and horrible accent?  Isn’t the whole cross-dressing black guy thing pretty much owned by the nonstop array of Madea movies that Tyler Perry continually grunts out like so many golden eggs of dubious origin?

But to show Fox’s committment to blasting Lions Gate out of the water in the black guys dressed like elderly fat black women subgenre, they’ve brought in Randi Mayem Singer to handle the script.  The hilarity in that decision comes in the fact that Singer was the previous writer of…brace yourself…

MRS. DOUBTFIRE.

You can’t see me right now, and that’s probably a good thing, because my gravitas would be SO smoked by the fact that I spent the last three minutes rolling with laughter.  I now understand ROFL.  But this really is fun news, even if the movie won’t be quite so much fun.

I’m giving two to one this goes direct to video!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Today we’re talking Chaos, released to Blu-ray thanks to the folks at Lions Gate, and are you ever going to be surprised by this out of nowhere cop thriller.

Chaos brings us a gang leader, played by Wesley Snipes, who takes a whole host of hostages in a bank and is faced with the recently suspended Detective Connors.  Connors is joined by Ryan Phillippe to take down the gang before they can pull off an even bigger heist…but is everyone playing on the same side?  It’s just going to be pure chaos by the end of things.

Chaos is just loads of fun.  Wesley Snipes still makes a terrific villain, and Jason Statham is almost as good a good guy as he is a bad guy.  It’s a little bit confusing in some parts, and will take a lot of concentration in some places to follow completely.  There’s plenty of action and people chasing other people around with guns, and plenty of good old fashioned plotting.  Not to mention a nice little twist ending.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale rewards Chaos by handing out a seven out of ten, a solid score for a solid movie.

Popularity: 1% [?]