There have been two horror movies so far that have used the conceit of the killer board game, and they both were released in 2009. Isn’t that crazy!?! One was The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond, the other was Open Graves. Both movies star a pretty respectable cast. The film I saw first was Echo’s Pond and it was awful. That set the stage for my super low expectations going into Open Graves.

The film stars geek obsession, Eliza Dushku and Mike Vogel. Vogel is famous for a brief appearance in Cloverfield and the Texas Chainsaw remake. The film is about a killer board game that kills it’s participants and grants a wish to the victor. That is about as simple as it gets. I had Open Graves for a while before I finally popped it in to watch and I regret not watching it sooner. I was taken completely by surprise. Open Graves is a nice hidden gem with a nasty streak a mile wide.

The film opens on scenes of torture in the 1800s for no particular reason other than to shock and titillate. These scenes have no bearing on the plot and don’t really add anything to the movie other than to convey to the audience what type of movie is coming. This is what’s great about Open Graves. The movie is particularly nasty. The victims are really murdered to death in this film. We have people skinned alive, picked apart by crabs and burned to death. While not all of the effects are practical, enough are that they’re very satisfying.

The movie is set in a coastal town so we get to enjoy plenty of scantily clad young people including genre star Eliza Dushku, who is in fine form here. Her role here reminds me of her turn in Wrong Turn. She plays the headstrong young sleuth trying to survive to the final scene. We don’t get anything more from her but bikini shots but that isn’t anything new. Mike Vogel is also entertaining as shy surfer, Jason. He reminds me of Cam Gigandet, (Priest and Pandorum) a similar Hollywood pretty boy who is much more annoying and feathered. Jason is likable and it is easy to root for him throughout the movie.

What we have with Open Graves is a sub-par gore thriller. The vehicle for the slaughter, the Mamba game has players drawing cards that predict their impending death in a horrific vague fashion. The mayhem is caused by the game so death comes Final Destination style. This means that we know a character will die, but we don’t know how it will happen. Sometimes the results are awesome like when an injured character gets mutilated by sea crabs, but other times deaths are laughably bad like when a hoard of CGI snakes appears out of nowhere to attack a character. Include ghostly CGI images of murdered characters and we have a serious misuse of computer effects.

Fortunately this doesn’t ruin the movie but it does take you out of the movie at times. What saves things is the atmosphere of dread and doom that builds throughout the movie until the finale. This is what the best horror films do and here Open Graves succeeds

Final Score: 3 out of 5 Shellys!

Not in seven years have I seen something so beautiful that is ultimately so boring (I met my wife 7 years ago). But that is the best way to describe Baz Luhrmann’s new spectacle, The Great Gatsby that finally gets its release after being pushed from the December schedule last year. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton, The Great Gatsby is ad adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel and it comes to the big screen with all the glitz and glamour of a Luhrmann production.

As most graduating classes can barely read Dr. Suess’ Hop on Pop without sounding out the words, I will assume that most have not read the novel surrounding charismatic Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) who throws lavish almost impossible to digest parties much to the awe of his neighbour, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire). Gatsby has a hidden past and may not be the noble that he professes. And when Nick’s cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) appears, the once not-so-great Gatsby is confronted with the ‘where I am is not where I came from’ dilemma as their prior relationship adds bubbles to the froth.

Luhrmann can never be classified as ‘understated’. That is like saying Michael Bay directs indie films. Luhrmann like to overwhelm his audience with awing visuals, lavish costumes music and dance numbers. Sometimes the mixture works (see Moulin Rouge), but most occurrences lead to an excessive exploitation of our senses that could leave you starry-eyed but also empty of any substance behind the wonderment. When asked about his new feature Luhrmann was quoted “…The novel wasn’t set in a period called the ‘Minimal Twenties.’ It was called the ‘Roaring Twenties.’ So it had to roar!” The Great Gatsby does indeed roar.

DiCaprio is finely cast as the film’s lead and Carey Mulligan shows why she is one of the best young working actresses in the industry today. But some of the lesser characters get lost in the glitz including Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke. Maguire is ok. But his 38-year-old voice still sounds like nails running down a chalkboard and the less he has to say in the film, the better the film gets.

There may not be the market for The Great Gatsby in today’s climate to recoup the $150 million price tag that came with the adaptation. Watching rich people do rich things isn’t exactly something that middle-America might flock to in droves in today’s economic uncertainty. But if you are so inclined, you will be treated to what can best be described as ‘spectacle over substance’. The Great Gatsby is much slicker than the Robert Redford adaptation of the 1970’s, but the this updated version still lacks the power of Fitzgerald’s novel and is more like the sensation of cotton candy that tastes good but dissolves so quickly you can hardly enjoy the experience.

The perception of clowns has been viewed as negative for quite a while - at least as long as I've been alive. My hatred of the painted happy performers goes back to when I was a young lunatic at an age of 8, when my father took me to a Ringling Brothers circus knockoff that came to our town in the Summer of 1981. We managed to get front row under the big top, and I was a little nervous when I saw all of those harlequins spill out of their compact car and engage the crowd in hijinx. But it was the moment of MY interaction with one particular mime that has cemented my contempt for the white-faced jokesters ever since.

His name was Cheerio, and he rushed towards me with that big old stupid smiley face and grabbed at my Happy Days Fonzie t-shirt by both sides of the rounded neck, and proceeded to shake me with such a force that I felt that my fillings would come loose, all the while emitting that deep, echoing, maniacal laughter that can only be likened to that of a certifiable mental patient. Needless to say, the joyful jesters that so many have come to love have raised my ire all my adult life, warranted or not - but enough about my childhood circus trauma, on with the show !!

Something about a good killer clown movie, oddly enough can pull me in and glue my eyes to the screen while multiple instances of carnage are displayed at the hands of the merrymakers. "Stitches" doesn't take itself too seriously, as it has quite the blend of humor meshed in with its graphic gore scenes - while the kills are over the top, they are creative and are a welcome sight to a gorehound.
Our story follows Stitches (Ross Noble) - a scummy perverted clown that makes his bucks by performing at kids' parties. His latest foray into the world of brat-entertainment will not be without incident, as he is tormented endlessly and accidentally killed by a group of spoiled, malcontented 11 year olds. We pick up with the story 6 years later when Tom (played by Tommy Knight) is preparing for his birthday bash at his home while his mother is away. Every subsequent teen character that we are introduced to that will be attending the party are the same group of rag-tag punks that sent "Stitches" to his grave years ago, and due to a face-painting on an egg ceremony done by Stitches years ago when he joined his clown troupe (no, I'm not making this up), it is used as a sort of resurrection device to bring him back from the grave and take revenge upon those who ended his life.

The full-on stereotypical cast is installed - the nerdy lead, the slutty popular girl, the misunderstood emo-chick who secretly loves the nerdy lead, and the bully who everyone hopes will die a painful, disgraceful death (and boy, does he !) Deaths are extremely graphic (and humerous) at the same time, with dialogue that is simplistic, and sarcastic in nature. Atmosphere is dark, with numerous night & graveyard scenes to entertain scene-lovers. Overall, the movie is just dumb fun with a violent black-comedic fusing that will have people cheering "Stitches" every bloody move - good for a rental or a cheap buy if you can find it - watch on and enjoy !!

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How many ways can you find to describe a turd of a movie ? Does the idea of someone that obviously feels it's audience must be completely devoid of common sense annoy you as an avid horror movie fan ? Is there a place for a movie that has done nothing other than piggyback itself on the shoulders of a classic title, for no other reason than getting it's name out there in the vast annals of the zombie cinematic catalog ? If you for no good reason want to waste 85 minutes of your time, please feel free to get your mitts on Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection, and then shame yourself for doing so.

I tried to stay away from all advanced press about this movie before it's release so that I wouldn't have been swayed into not checking it out....now I wish I had done a little bit of legwork before renting this total waste of time. At first glance, we have the makings of a very low budget film, almost as if someone enabled a movie-making App on their IPhone and shot away, attempting to install some grain into the celluloid in order to make it look as if it was filmed many years ago....colossal fail #1. Secondly, anyone that has been exposed to the zombie phenomenon could tell you that if a member of your family has been bitten, they are pretty much as good as dead - now I know that a certain level of grief could set in...but the last thing that should be done is to run the person a warm bath, cradle them in your arms, with their teeth aimed directly at your jugular, telling them "it's all going to be okay"...catastrophic mistake #2.

Also, the self-preservation qualities of the characters in this movie were one step below a group of crap-flinging chimps in a cage..actually I take that back..I'd take my chances with the chimps. In an instance, one of the survivors has no qualms about sticking his double-barreled shotgun through the mail slot of his front door, blowing the face off of an individual that hadn't identified if he was a zombie or not, but later on this cold-blooded killer couldn't protect himself against a group of moronic, cell-phone filming British youths, driving 3 mph past them in an attempt to get away from their violent advances....and boy, did he pay for it.

One of the characters in the film is good old Grandpa, a bible-passage spewing fossil that couldn't get out of his own sickly way for the first 30 minutes of the show, but after his undead-transformation, he apparently adopted some ninja-like stealth properties, because NO ONE could seem to get out of his way before he starting biting the hell out of them. The gore is Wal-Mart quality, and the acting is High-School level AT BEST. I could literally tear this movie down on a cellular level, but I don't feel the need to offer much more to a film that felt the need to rip off the name of quite possibly the GREATEST zombie movie of all time, and hope to ride off into cinematic glory...and where the hell does the Resurrection aspect come into play ?? Sorry, but these apocalyptic flesh-cravers should have stayed dead and buried, with absolutely no hope of resurrection - steer clear of this one !!

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster in the Ukraine suffered a catastrophic accident on April 26th, 1986 that released excessively large quantities of radiation over much of the Western USSR and parts of Europe. 31 deaths were reported and thousands of residents were systematically driven from their homes and were never allowed to return, creating a virtual ghost town that has stood vacant for 27 years - now come on, if THAT isn't a killer recipe for a horror movie, then what is ?

The only problem has been that to this day, the radiation levels have been so high, that prolonged filming of any sort has been prohibited by the Russian government - in fact the only movie to film even remotely close was Return of The Living Dead 4:Necropolis (the crew literally shot a few hundred yards away from the blast site.) Director Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity) opted to go the safe route and stick to filming in locations in Hungary & Serbia, merely using modeled mock-ups of Chernobyl landmarks, and shooting at an abandoned Soviet Air Force base and underground tunnels used by the Nazis in Belgrade.

The story follows 6 American tourists and 1 tour guide deep into the belly of the radioactive beast - while on a European vacation, Chris and his girlfriend (and future fiancee) Natalie, along with their friend Amanda, decide to roll into Kiev to visit Chris's brother Paul, a cocky adrenaline junkie that can't seem to sit still for even a minute. Paul decides to surprise the group with an organized "extreme tour" of the Chernobyl accident zone and surrounding area. The tour is run by former Russian military soldier Uri, who packs up our happy lot of unsuspecting Yanks, along with two Aussies who come along for the ride, Michael & Zoe.

Uri's original plan to drive the tour van into the Exclusion Zone is thwarted by soldiers at a checkpoint that claim there will be no admittance due to "maintenance" being performed today. Deterrance is not a word in Uri's broken English dictionary, so he opts to take the tour group into nearby Pripyat via a leakpoint that is far off the beaten path, a colossal mistake that will haunt the group for certain. As many sights that can be seen during the day are viewed, including hollowed out buildings, lakes with mutated fish, and one jump scare in particular that I'm fairly sure NO ONE could have seen coming. As the day begins to turn to dusk, the group returns to the tour van to find that the engine has been seriously screwed with, so Uri sets off to find some help, and as I am fairly sure as you people can guess, we have reached Point A of our list of serious problems.

Uri goes missing, gunshots are heard, rabid dogs on the prowl....and when our tour organizer is finally located....or parts of him are...the situation becomes slightly more dire. Not to be the one to blow up the remainder of a far too- short movie, the obligatory checklist of horror movie formula does come into play - sudden noises, objects moving in the dark, scary shadowy figures - yep, this movie has them all..and it can get a little tedious. This in hindsight is what I believe to be the lynchpin that most fans of survival horror are not able to support much longer. While the acting is rather stale ( after watching 5 minute of Paul's character, I wanted to punch him repeatedly in the throat) - the savior of this movie is the atmosphere and its conjoining scenic display.

What acts as a beautiful (yet depressing) backdrop of the Chernobyl Power Plant and it's surrounding unpopulated neighbor of Pripyat, can also be employed as a reverse claustrophobic tactic - while you can revel in the openness of space, you almost get the feeling like you're being closed in without any hope of breaking free. Scares are at a premium in this film, but oddly enough, I found it not entirely necessary to employ them to an excessive amount here - one needs to simply look at the entire situation as a whole and take that as your catalyst. The movie builds to a somewhat enjoyable finale that wraps up any loose ends and makes perfect sense as to what exactly is going on in the Exclusion Zone - so if you are willing to take the tour to Chernobyl...fork over the dough and hop into the van...but please..if your tour guide says he knows a shortcut, I'd recommend turning around and opting for a safe vacation like Disney World.