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Hops and Box Office Flops: ‘RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY’
Itchy, but Not So Tasty Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is the seventh live-action iteration of the storied video game franchise. Sadly, like its predecessors, it fails to live up to the legacy of the series. Yes, folks, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is yet another uninspired video game adaptation. But unlike the Paul W.S. Anderson saga, this at least sticks close to the source material. Raccoon City is a reboot, carrying no connection to the insipid six that came before it. In fact, it is essentially a narrative retelling of the first two games. In principle, that sounds like a good idea, but there’s a reason there were two of them.…
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Hops and Box Office Flops: ‘THE HAPPENING’
It’s Crappening The Happening is a cinematic travesty. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, it has zero in common with some of his finer work. For one thing, it lacks even the hint of a twist—a hallmark of his better movies. It’s also painfully stupid. Boasting Mark Wahlberg as high school science teacher Elliot Moore. Yes, you read that right; he’s a science teacher. The Happening is little more than a premise. What happened if the trees starting infecting people with a toxin that would rob them of impulse control? That’s the movie. Nothing comes of that. There is no resolution whatsoever. If you’re a viewer of this movie, you don’t necessarily care anyway.…
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Hops and Box Office Flops: ‘END OF DAYS’
Satan’s a Choir Boy Compared to Arnold End of Days was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s triumphant return to the big screen after a two-year hiatus. Suffice to say, it was an odd choice of comebacks. End of Days centers around Satan’s quest to bring about, well, the end of days by consummating his relationship with the woman destined to be the mother of his child. It certainly has action scenes, but it’s more religious horror than anything else—unfamiliar fare for Arnold. The fisticuffs and shooting it does contain are a little underwhelming, as are its scarier elements. Basically, the film has an identity crisis. So despite my love for it—which I admit is rooted deeply…
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Hops and Box Office Flops: ‘CLUB DREAD’
Naughty Cal Club Dread—Broken Lizard‘s follow up to Super Troopers—is a riff on 80s slasher films; and it boasts a cast of characters that are eclectic, dumb, horny, and ripe for the picking. This, of course, is anchored by the Broken Lizard crew. There’s Dave, the drug-addled DJ (Paul Soter); Putnam, the buttoned-up tennis coach (Jay Chandrasekhar); Sam, the chief of the Fun Police (Erik Stolhanske); Lars, the smooth-operating new masseuse (Kevin Heffernan); and Juan, the promiscuous dive coach (Steve Lemme). Their characters here are wildly different from their respective turns in Troopers, and not all are created equal. There are a few swings and misses in the bunch. That is entirely forgiven, though, by…
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Hops and Box Office Flops: ‘EVENT HORIZON’
Brain Dead Space Event Horizon was Paul W.S. Anderson’s follow up to Mortal Kombat. At the time, he was highly sought after. In the wake of that movie’s success, he was offered the sequel to MK and even an X-Men film, amongst other things. Wanting to veer away from PG-13 fare, Anderson settled on Event Horizon. The basic premise of the film is that a salvage crew is dispatched to secure the titular ship, the Event Horizon, which has been missing for seven years. What they find is not something they will ever un-see, even if they don’t need eyes to do so. Why? Well, in the ship’s journey through the pockets of space, it took a detour. As…
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Hops and Box Office Flops: ‘THE VOID’
Right Next Door to Hell From the directing team of Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski—the latter of which helmed indie hit PG: Psycho Goreman—The Void is a tension-fueled ride that relies heavily on practical effects and pace to maximize its sense of dread. It works. And it is worth your investigation, especially if you are a fan of Lovecraftian horror. Those inspirations are quite evident. The Void involves a cult, a small town, and the cosmic terrors that lie outside our consciousness. That conceit isn’t all that original, but its execution is what sets the film apart. From its ominous opening onward, Gillespie and Kostanski build an uneasy atmosphere—an uncertainty akin to what lurks beyond.…
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REVIEW: Willy’s Wonderland (2021) – The Best Movie Ever
This is a spoiler free review. I’ve been a fan of Five Nights at Freddy’s since Markiplier and MatPat started flooding YouTube with jump scare footage. The indie horror games created by Scott Cawthon played a huge role in reviving the childhood horrors of Chuck E. Cheese. Animatronic horror has seen a revival as a result, with a prominent example being The Banana Splits Movie, which reintroduced the Hanna-Barbera characters as serial killers. The most recent addition to this weird subgenre is Willy’s Wonderland. I saw the trailer for it a while back was intrigued, but it wasn’t exactly on my radar until I saw a clip from the movie…