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Miserable Marnie & The Shut In (2013) Review

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miserable marnie and the shut in reviewSynopsis: Miserable Marnie Strauss (17), a lonely teenage girl, lives alone with her reclusive mother, Matilda in a small town. She dreams of nothing more than to befriend the popular girl, Spencer, but the feeling is not mutual. After a cruel prank breaks her spirit, Marnie embarks on a violent rampage, exacting revenge on all who have wronged her with the help of her new friend, Crystal.

Quick Review: Right off the bat the intro to Miserable Marnie sets the tone for the rest of the movie. The music, the colorful tones, the photography all announce a creepy  little tale of teenage angst.

For an indie movie, Miserable Marnie puts a lot of effort into its style and the acting is above par as well. Special mentions to Ray Wright and Suzie Vincent who play Marnie and her mom respectively.

Unfortunately, this all make it more painful when, midway into the movie, Miserable marnie turns into a predictive high school revenge plot with mostly subpar acting from the rest of the cast and weak practical effects.

While I can’t recommend Miserable Marnie to everybody, I believe Colton David Coate is a director to watch in the future, when he can work with a more polished script and higher budgets.

My Rating: 5/10

Director: 

Origin: US

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Contracted (2013) Review

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Contracted reviewSynopsis: A young lesbian is drugged and raped by a stranger at a party and contracts, what she thinks is, a sexually-transmitted disease – but is actually something much worse.

My Quick Review: Contracted is an exhilarating piece of viral horror and one of the best surprise of the end of this year.

Not everybody will enjoy the movie for what it is and there are indeed many negative reviews online for Contracted.

Many people won’t be able to see past some of the incongruence of scenes involving Sam’s doctor and the cluelessness of her mom and friends.  If you look at the surface it feels like poor or lazy writing so that the movie does not end up after 10mn with our heroine in the emergency unit.

But I like to think that those scenes were more of an allegory to condemn the current medical system and the social world we are living in, where people tend not to interact or pay attention to one another, as much as they just gravitate around each other.

I might be giving Contracted  more credit than it  deserves but even with that being said, I enjoyed every minute of this journey into physical decay (similar to the movie The Fly in many aspects). Najarra Townsend is awesome in a very difficult role where the whole movie relies on her overall performance.

I also loved the ending which was quite a surprise to me, an interesting twist  that gives everything that happened up to this point, even more sense.

My Rating: 7/10

Director: 

Origin: US

Click Here to Watch Contracted Online Now

The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill (2013) Review

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The Paranormal Diaries Clophill ReviewSynopsis: In 2010, a documentary team was assembled to investigate the legend of the Clophill witches and to try and uncover the truth behind the paranormal events. What followed during that long weekend at Clophill was a terrifying journey into the unknown.

My Quick Review: Clophill is a UK entry to the Fake documentary genre and, despite some lengthy exposure, it does the job.

While watching Clophill you feel like you’re watching one of those Ghost chasers show, and this is actually not as bad as it sounds. The documentary crew seem genuine enough and the location is an actual infamous haunted ground.

If you’re into paranormal stories based on real places/events, you should be able to enjoy Clophill and get yourself immersed in the story. And this is probably the only way you will be able to feel some jolts towards the end when there is a cresecendo in the ghostly happenings.

It’s a pity that the filmakers (who are behind the Zombie Diaries movies) felt they had to add some family scenes (in the beginning and at the end) to give the movie more meat and bring even more scares towards the end. Those scenes are the weakest and fell very staged.

The documentary part works as a creepy investigation of the paranormal and will satisfy a niche audience. For most horror fans though, the lack of scares or genuine horror will have them turn off their tv way before the movie ends.

My Rating: 5/10

Director: , 

Origin: UK

Open Grave (2013) Review

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open grave reviewSynopsis: A man wakes up in the wilderness, in a pit full of dead bodies, with no memory and must determine if the murderer is one of the strangers who rescued him, or if he himself is the killer.

My Quick Review: I had forgotten about Gonzalo Lopez Gallego, the director of Open Grave, despite him being the man behind El Rey de La Montana, a very exciting thriller with some awesome POV shooting scenes. The problem is that since that movie he also directed  Appollo 18, one of the worst found footage of recent memories (according to critics, so maybe I should go and watch it to make my own opinion soon).

The early scenes in Open Grave are gorgeously shot and demonstrate all the technical ability of Lopez-Gallego. What could have been another variation of the “strangers waking up in a locked place” genre ends up quite elevated by the direction and a story that shows some originality.

To say more about the story would spoil the fun and I’d suggest to stay clear of any trailer or promo materials if you wanna enjoy Open Grave to its fullest.

There are only 2 main issues with the movie: the pacing is a little bit off at time,  there are some lackluster scenes when I did have a look at my watch. And the script, while entertaining, keeps the cards too close to the chest and prevents us, the viewers, to be totally concerned or involved with the characters (who are not being helped by poor dialogues). This is a case of keeping the viewers too much in the dark.

Open Grave has been out in Europe for a few months now and will be stateside in early January. It’s the perfect little thriller to start 2014 in style.

My Rating: 6.5

Director: 

Origin: US

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In The Mouth of Madness (1994) Review

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in the mouth of madness reviewSynopsis: An insurance investigator begins discovering that the impact a horror writer’s books have on his fans is more than inspirational.

My Quick Review: It feels so good to watch In The Mouth of Madness almost 20 years since I first watched it in theater.

Back then I was a teenager and already a big fan of Horror Movies, and John Carpenter was the Man, the Master of Horror who had yet to make a bad movie (I’m not considering Memoirs of an invisible man to be a Carpenter’s movie). In the Mouth of Madness was fascinating to my younger self and I have to say it hasn’t lost much of its impact with me after a second viewing.

This is indeed Carpenter at his best and while the film is a blatant homage to horror writers such as Stephen King and of course HP Lovecraft (whose work heavily influenced the creatures introduced in this film) it also fits well with 2 of his other monsters/apocalypse movies, The Thing and Prince of Darkness.

Carpenter relies heavily on practical effects and makeup (highly appreciated in an age of everything digital) and succeeds in creeping us by giving us a feeling of uneasiness thanks to some truly nightmarish visuals (The old guy on a bicycle, the husband handcuffed to his wife ankle, the arm creeping outside Sam Neil’s asylum room, the  painting…).

if you’re a fan of Carpenter or Lovecraft or just an old-school horror afficionado, you can’t afford to miss In the Mouth of Madness, one of the most underrated gem in John Carpenter’s career.

My Rating: 8/10

Director: John Carpenter

Origin: US

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