"The Girl Next Door"

Jack Ketchum is one sick man. "The Girl Next Door," based on Ketchum's book but ultimately inspired by the brutal torture of a 16-year old Sylvia Linken by the woman she had been staying with in Indiana. This is considered to be one of the worst crimes ever committed in Indiana.

As far as the film...

It focuses on "Meg," also a 16-year old whose parents had just passed away in a car accident which also severely injured her little sister in the process. Now they are forced to stay with their Aunt Ruth who is clearly psychotic and gets all the neighbor boys (and girls, even) to turn against Meg by means of just blatant and horrible, horrible torture.

For the record, this is one of the sickest movies I've seen, much worse than "Megan Is Missing," which I have blogged about a few posts pre-dating this one.
As a side note, I don't think anyone really enjoys (while I do think it interests people such as myself)movies like this, so I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about me or anyone who watches movies by Jack Ketchum (which are all extremely disturbing and gorey). It's just having the realization that while things like this might haunt some people to their very core, things like this happen and it's real and we shouldn't blindfold ourselves to tragedies in this world just because we're afraid.
David Foster Wallace once said, "...good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." While Wallace said that in relation to his writing and others' writing, it applies to all forms of storytelling, as well as film-creating.
Back to the movie, it's all told from the point of view of a local neighborhood boy who witnesses what's happening to Meg, but is scared (understandabley) to stand up for her or to get help, until it is too late and Meg succumbs to all the torture she has endured and dies of blunt force trauma as well as malnutrition.
Very reminiscent of "The Woman" (the movie in which my first blog focuses on, check it out below!) also by Ketchum, and of the book "A Child Called It" by Dave Pelzer which I read in secret, because my mother despises stuff like that and movies like this too, when I was about thirteen. This film gives a disgusting peak into the world of extreme child abuse and also even adolescence as a whole.

 I would so tell any of my horror-loving gore-devouring friends to check this movie out, but hey it's not for everyone and that's okay too. It's sick, sad and wrong...but whoever said the world was right, huh?

"Chernobyl Diaries"

The one good thing I can say about Chernobyl Diaries: Jesse McCartney was not as horrible of an actor as he usually is. But...that's about all that's "shocking" in this not-so-horrific horror movie.

It's sad too because there's so much to work with here! Scripted by the same writer who wrote Paranormal Activity, the movie Chernobyl Diaries falls short of expectations of what a good, scary movie should be like, but also of any post-disaster film that's based on a true event.

The main story line is predictable and we've all seen it a zillion times:

Group of college-aged adults go somewhere secluded to find that it isn't so secluded after all aaaaand they all end up dead.

A little more specifically, these kids are going to see the city of Chernobyl, or what's left of it to take pictures and just basically check it out. They take some ho-dunk tour given by a local man with a shitty van.

Good plan, right?

Here's a clip of the tour guide finding something he didn't expect to in a supposedly abandoned building in Chernobyl:

Well, he shows them around and who would of thought...he ends up dying leaving them to fend for themselves in this not-so-abandoned chemically infested wasteland of what used to be Chernobyl.

The biggest downfall of this movie besides the constantly overused plotline is the disappointing and almost nonexistent images of the "mutants" that still reside in the town. Even now I am researching for even just one photo of them or a short clip and there's none to be found.

This is the only picture I found and it's the only inhabitant of Chernobyl that we didn't get to witness her face.

In the movie, the only shots of the mutants were very short, sparse, and in the pitch dark. Disappointed doesn't begin to describe my feelings when leaving the theater after seeing this one.

Prometheus

A little clip for your viewing pleasure:

I'm not really sure how to feel about this one.

Effects: Awesome, epic, sick, impressive. The storyline? Not something to brag about.

Prometheus is a ship where all these brainy-scientists are summoned to find our (being the human race) "makers," if you will.

They find where they used to be and are disappointed that they're too late and their makers aren't going to be able to answer their questions. Though, there are bigger problems. Not only did these life forms create us, but they also created these alien squid-like creatures. Here you can see one of them growing in a character because he drank some of their black goo!:

Sick, right?!

Anyway, like I said, I'm still unsure about my overall rating of this one. I'm just going to put it this way: If this movie were a food that I ordered; I wouldn't spit it out or regret trying it, but I wouldn't order it again.

Here's a long trailer I found to be impressive.



Arachnophobia

This is way less gore-filled than my usual choices, but John Goodman was on the list of actors, so I had no choice but to check it out.

It's definitely creepy, you can see for yourself why in this long trailer that basically shows and tells the whole movie in one 2-minute video.

John Goodman is funny, as usual. The spiders in the movie are strangely real-looking so that was surprising for a movie as old as Arachnophobia, which was released in 1990.

The story is, predictabley, about a young family who moves from the city to a rural area where they are in this big, country house. The dad is terrified of spiders and, to nobody's suprise, has to have an epic battle with the queen spider in the end of the movie to save his family, himself, and the whole town.

There's the classic "hot girl in shower smiling and washing her hair like it's the best time of her life" scene, which is no surprise in any movie anymore....

All in all, a fine movie, John Goodman is obviously the best part of the whole thing, and not to spoil it, but he's pretty much the under-appreciated hero throughout the whole film, so, kudos, John.

To wrap it up, here's a 2:59 minute video about the The Top 10 Most Venomous Spiders In The World to get your skin crawling, if it hasn't already yet! :)

"The Shrine"

From writer/director Jon Knautz comes "The Shrine." Knautz is also the writer director of "Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer" which I haven't seen and honestly...I don't really care to see. Anyway, I'd say Knautz did a fine job with "The Shrine."

Even though the beginning mirrors a lot of other horror movies, kids going to a strange country where they don't know the language or their way around, there's a shockingly unique storyline once things pick up.

Throughout a good 3/4 of the movie I (and those watching the movie with me) assumed that the locals were the "bad guys" so-to-speak, trying to make the three Americans leave their town and threatening them with knives and what not.

Eventually they say they'll leave, which of course there's that one girl in the group that doesn't know what's good for her, and forces the rest of the group to stay, and they're just kind of wandering around the woods when they see this:

It's like a gargoyle-statue thing but it's eyes are inverted and deep, deep red, almost black. Anyway, they stumble upon this in a deep fog that surrounds the whole middle of the woods. The two girls in the group make some serious eye contact with the gargoyle and that's when "The Shrine" proves to be a decent horror film. I really don't want to give it away because you should definitely check this one out. Like I said, the beginning's a bit less impressive then I'd like, but give it a chance.

Since I'm really trying to convine anyone who's reading this to see the movie, here's some more information on the plot, actors, and whatever else.

"Megan Is Missing"

Trailer!

The above trailer basically tells the complete storyline of the movie, but even if you know the overall plot, I'd still recommend this one.

The acting in the beginning was so bad it was humorous, but I quickly got past that, because it's just how old people think young girls actually act, while it's barely half-true, I can deal with it.

Basically, the movie shows these two best friends in the early teenage years experiencing relationships, parties, family issues, and other things that are introduced to us coming into adulthood. Eventually one of the girls meets a "cute guy" online and they talk for sometime before deciding to meet up. They do, and that's the day she goes missing.
The other friend knows that her friend, now missing, had had plans with the "cute guy" from online right before nobody had heard from her again, so she tells the police. After that, said "cute guy" gets in contact with the non-missing friend, bullying her and threatening her so she will stop drawing attention to her missing friend's situation.
Eventually, the second friend is abducted by this man, who we find out was never a "cute guy" but a sadistic internet predator, and the movie plays out in that both girls are brutally raped and murdered on one of the girls' video cameras.

If you go here and click "ENTER" and then "MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR" there's a written statement by the director of "Megan Is Missing" about his intentions on creating this film, which only took like eight days to make, surprisingly enough. It's basically a mash-up of several cases of child abduction by use of the internet all in one eye-opening movie. The end of the movie, like I previously stated, is pretty sick and graphic, especially when you know that no instance of the film was made up, it all came from real cases; it's hard to take.

"The Ward"

Even though I was a little surprised by the plot twist in "The Ward," directed by John Carpenter, the movie in general left me with an unimpressed feeling.

I understand the "Multiple Personalities Disorder" spin in the end of the movie...but it doesn't add up.

Alice Hudson has all these other personalities, which is a fine idea, but it doesn't explain why they are the way they are, and that's stuff I was interested in.

Her psyche created these other characters, i.e. Kristen, Emily, Sarah, Zoey and Iris, but how did they develop the traits they did? The psychiatrist just told Alice that she was really Alice Hudson and all of the other characters she thought she knew, were really all in her mind, and there was no more elaboration.

Right when I realized that there was a "ghost/zombie" character in the movie...I was a bit more intrigued. Immediately after seeing the Grade-C-botch-job-excuse-of-a-zombie, my intrigue faded.

The only thing that could have saved this film was some badass graphics, or disgustingly cool make-up. Not surprisingly though, neither of those things were present throughout "The Ward" and all the viewer is left with is a curiousness about "Multiple Personalities Disorder" and a hankerin' for some good ole-fashioned gore.

Here's a link for the trailer, though I'm not sure it's worth the one minute, forthy-three seconds of your life.

"The Woman" Possible Spoiler!

Recently, I watched "The Woman", released in 2011 and directed by Lucky Mckee. Now, usually, I feel as though I can get the feel of a movie pretty easily. You know, where it's headed sorta. But this movie pretty much shot down every guess I had in regards to the twists and turns of the storyline.

Basically, it focuses on the capturing of this feral woman, who turns out to be from a family of cannibals, by this well-to-do Southern family man, Chris Cleek. He takes her down to an underground shed area and hooks her up so she's in this sort of "Vitruvian Man" position. Throughout the film, Mr. Cleek cleans her up, with the help of his timid, fearful family.

It's the end that reeeeeeeaaally got me though. The father, Chris Cleek, turns out to be abusive and the family becomes fed up. The teenage daughter releases the Woman from her restraints and it's on from there. The woman jumps on the mother and rips her face off...with her mouth. All the while, the teenage daughter watches it all.

I'd have to say that thee most awesomely awesome moment of pure awesomeness of the whole film is when the Woman goes straight up to Mr. Cleek and goes straight through his chest with her hand to pull out his heart, look in his dying eyes, and take a bite out of his beating heart like we would an apple.

Of course, there are a few holes in the overall plot of the movie, but the sheer disturbing, disgustingness of it makes up for it. Well, to me, at least.

I hope I didn't give away too much of the movie if you haven't had the chance to see it yet. I'd recommend it to any horror movie finatic such as myself.


Watch the trailer here!