THE HILLS HAVE EYES by jaiskizzy

a family goes on a road trip, choosing the hot california desert over a nice cozy plane flight. they soon learn their big mistake as the car's tires are spiked flat, leaving them stranded in the capital of nowhere. but that is the least of their worries for the area used to be a bomb test site and they have caught the attention of its mutant inhabitants (not the x-men). it's the carters versus the toxic avenger's relatives! place yeerrr bets!

this remake of an old wes craven fright flick was handled by a dude named alexandre aja who made the great gory film haute tension. mr. aja did pretty well with both films, dishing out more than the usual serving of gore and brutality in mainstream horror. in the hills have eyes, there are finger chopping, broken baseball bat stabbing, and an axe to the head, all that in one sequence only. there's also a nice nasty no-blood scene where a mutant dude sucks a woman's titties while aiming a revolver at her baby. and that is after he rapes her younger sister. and thank you to the dog for doing its part in the battle against mutated murderous monsters. a little thumbs up to the cast for putting a good show with such realism, especially the ones that survived, i think i would have done the same thing given the circumstances. that dude with the glasses and facial hair is one tough mother-effer. bastard won’t stay down.

however, this movie lacks one really important horror movie requirement: the scares. there are literally zero scares. no jumping off the seat or quickening of the heartbeat for me. i liked the movie but for me to enjoy it entirely there should be at least something that would give me goosebumps or make me afraid to sleep alone. i guess mr. aja forgot to include that ingredient. anyways, i liked the way how the simple wrong-place-wrong-time scenario branches off into two perspectives: getting the baby back and defending the base, both still about dealing with the vile creatures, cliffhanging you with alternating scenes. the p.o.v. shots were kinda cool as well, the one where a dog leads the baby's father into the tunnel seemed exactly the way it would look in real life, as if actually looking through the actors eyes and not a camera lens.

a decent horror flick not afraid to be ruthlessly gory the way the others aren't. and stress on the decent. another essential horror movie aspect missing from this one: t&a. the hot chick sunbathing in a blue bikini top aint enough.

the good: the gore factor.
the bad: the absence of good old scares and sex and nudity. oh come on!
the ugly: the nuclear fallout freak family. i am a heartthrob after all.
the score: 7 severed arms.

the skiz.

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STAY ALIVE by jaiskizzy

Beta testing an unreleased video game entitled “stay alive”, some dude and his friends die in the same manner their characters died in the game. As a tribute (what?!) his other friends decide to play the game as well and soon enough they too get killed the way they get killed in the game thanks to the blood-bathing bitch countess Elizabeth bathory!

This movie is a case of good premise, bad execution. I mean really, if you play the game and you in the game, you’ll die for real. How can you possibly fck up a cool concept like that? Apparently someone can and did. First mistake was the poorly written screenplay. Every scene was just badly laid out. The dialogue was flat. Plot holes everywhere. When the dead bodies were turning up, the police were like all over the gamers. Then they’re just completely out of the picture. Also, agent cody banks’ unexplained resurrection. And then there is the senseless back story of the lead. Mistake number two was the bad actors. Not the worst ive seen but seriously, it is obvious that they chose to cast unknowns to fit their tight budget but come on, man, at least get some good people. The last mistake would be the pg-13 rating. Why make a movie and call it a horror movie if it doesn’t have anything scary in it, no blood, no gore, no sex and nudity? And to think the video game in the movie is a horror game. Sheesh. Maybe they should have made the movie about text twist instead.

Now, allow me to point out a couple of good things about this flawed flick. The game controller buzz as a scare effect. That was a nice touch. But they should have used more and properly. I also liked the game itself. They should have made a game like that for real. I’d play it. The movie should have made an impression on viewers that if there really was a game called “stay alive” they wouldn’t play it for fear of actually dying (I guess this wont work on me even if they did manage to give off that effect, Im the kind of person who wants a chucky doll and would be happy to sleep with it). Sadly the only impression it made was that it was not impressive at all.

Oh god how I miss the really good scary movies…

the good: the premise. the game.
the bad: the movie.
the ugly: my face realizing the time and money I wasted.
the score: 3 vibrating game controllers.

the skiz.

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ULTRAVIOLET by jaiskizzy

from the makers of equilibrium comes this femme fatale flick that feels videogame-ish and with a plot that goes something like: in a world you may not understand... there are these hemophages, you see, and they are like vampires and they have superhuman capabilities, and the normal humans want them eradicated. violet is one of them, and so she infiltrates a lab and steals the weapon which will supposedly put an end to the hemophages but it turns out it is just a boy and violet decides to protect him against her fellow hemophages who want him dead. ah screw the plot.

i liked the aeon flux cartoon on mtv. i hated the live action aeon flux movie. why? because it failed to capture the essence that made the cartoon great: good storyline, good action. i mean, isnt that what all action movies should have? if you cant have both, at least pump up the action juice to compensate for the flawed plot (because less action and more story aint gonna cut as a good action movie). that's what ultraviolet did. they avoided the usual mistake of sacrificing the action for plot development. with a plot the viewers wont care about understanding anyway, focus on the real meat of the matter right? the shooting, the fighting, the swordplay, the special effects, and it worked for me. not much, but enough to say that it is a better movie than aeon flux. still there were boring moments that got past the cutting room. especially those that only had violet and six in them.

take for example the matrix. why is that movie so good? great story, great action. even when neo's already doing kicks in bullet time, you're still rooting for him out of care. in ultraviolet, from from the moment violet arrived at the lab to the last battle, i knew she'd win. okay, so the sfx were good, she could change the color of her clothes and hair anytime, she defies gravity and pulls weapons out of nowhere and loads her gun with bullets coming out of her wrists, there were some nice gun-kata, but beyond that, there was nothin connection between violet and me. i didnt feel her pain. it was like, she did all of it because she can. not because she has to. the storyline lacked a lot of weight. (a movie with the same condition would be van helsing). in the end, even when they both discovered they were gonna die soon, even after violet cried over the boy thinking he was dead, even when the ending meant hope, you'll easily flush the movie out of your system. no conversations about this movie will ever occur, but if there were, it will be about some of the action sequences, and it wont last longer than five minutes or branch out into deep debates.

ultraviolet = ultravioleNt? nope. visually-appealing but not very impressive. i didnt even use the adjective "cool" anywhere in the previous paragraphs. sheesh.

the good: action choreography. nice for an american film.
the bad: everything else.
the ugly: violet's bangs.
the score: 5 bladed guns.

the skiz.

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