Aliens: Zone of Silence (2017) 1h 19m

 

Oh found footage films, we meet again.  Only this time you're on Netflix due to an inside job.  This is the directorial debut of Andy Fowler, also known as the Director of VFX for Netflix itself.  Yes, this film is on more streaming platforms than just Netflix, the fact that this was a direct to streaming production and had no theatrical release gives you an idea of what I had to deal with here.  So why am I'm being such a cranky bastard with this film?  Journey with me, into the zone of silence...

Based off of a real location in Mexico, Aliens: Zone of Silence follows a woman as she tries to find her brother after he disappears while searching for aliens for his YouTube channel.  Similar to the Bermuda Triangle, the Zone of Silence has issues with magnetic fields and the breaking down of mechanical instruments.  Lucky for our leading woman, she has the help of Goose, an ex-communications officer in the military that seems to have his own command station at his house.  They're able to keep in constant visual and audio contact except for times when the aliens are around.

This movie should be called the White Woman: Slog of Boring.  It's just a bunch of camcorder, GoPro, and computer screen shots that were so uninteresting to watch that I listened to this movie more than I watched it.  It reminds me of the night shots of Blair Witch only they're mostly in a tent or in the daytime so it takes away the suspense factor.  Also, Goose is the worst physical actor I have seen in a while.  There's a section where he's supposed to be having this inner panic of what to do since he lost contact with the woman and it was painful to watch.  Side note:  Don't name someone Goose in your film, it makes me think of Top Gun.

We never see the aliens.  Instead we get the fake hand of a grey pushing on the side of a tent.  The final shot we get looks like someone took a picture of Jesus and/or Mary statues and then put a bunch of vapor wave video filters on them.  That's cool with the kids, right?  We can make this ending relevant to youth culture, right?  Fuck off!

I give Aliens: Zone of Silence 0 photos of Goose from Top Gun out of 5:

Blood Valley: Seed's Revenge (a.k.a. Seed 2) (2014) 1h 18m

FUCCCCCKKKKK! It was too good to be true!  Such a strong start to this Cut and suddenly I'm faced with Blood Valley: Seed's Revenge.  I couldn't even find this film on IMDB until I did some research and found out that it's on there as Seed 2.  Is there a Seed 1?  I don't know.  I don't give a fuck.  Fuckin' baby's first horror movie here sucks hard enough for two!

BV:SR (which sounds much cooler in that format, like some anime with mechs) starts with the first huge ass credit being Uwe Boll!  If you're not familiar with him, he produced a bunch of terrible movies based on video game IPs with almost no fucking knowledge of the content of the games.  Blood Rayne, Alone in the Dark, Postal, House of the Dead, Far Cry... How did he make all of these?  He exploits a German tax credit so that if the film didn't recoup he gets to write off the film!  So he produced BV:SR.  Apparently he also did produce Seed which I just saw while looking up his IMDB.

BV:SR takes place in the Nevada desert where a bachelorette party gets stranded on their way back from Las Vegas.  They get attacked by rejects from The Hills Have Eyes and Taxes Chainsaw Massacre and it ends up the bride from the group betrayed them all from the start.  That's it.  Tons of fake blood, nudity, poor attempts at graphic shock, three uses of the same chest stab prosthetic, and every "violent" thing being a quick close-up shot of a wound following the initial action.

I wasn't kidding when I called this baby's first horror movie.  There's no style to it and a lot of the directing makes amateur mistakes while trying to prevent you from noticing other glaring problems.  It's also edited and put together out of sequence which makes it feel disjunct as opposed to thrilling or artistic.  Apparently BV:SR had a $1.2 million budget.  I don't know how unless they spent most of it on the RV because that shit was swank.  Seriously, 98% of this film takes place in the middle of the desert in fuck all USA.  I could've made this film with my cell phone, a couple of straws, two gallons of fake blood, and some pizzas to feed my friends while we fucked around in the desert.  I've taken shits that are more shocking and terrifying than this film could even imagine!

I give Blood Valley: Seed's Revenge (a.k.a. Seed 2) 0 copies of Iron Maiden's Powerslave out of 5:

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Carnage Park (2016) 1h 30m

I feel like the person that wrote the description for this film was given a couple of blurry .jpgs and told to "figure it out."  It made it seem like this was going to be a mix of vigilante justice and survival instincts.  The actual movie was more of a broken wish for grindhouse goodness and a clown's tear in the lonely desert.  You figure out what that means because it just came to mind when thinking about this.

Carnage Park's main protagonist is a woman kidnapped during a bank robbery.  After a very Tarantino/Reservoir Dogs intro where one robber is driving the car and the other is shot in the backseat yelling about how he is about to die, they both end up dead.  The former is killed by a crazy most-dangerous-game-esq sniper.  The sniper then sets up the kidnapped girl to hunt her in the fuck-all California desert.

I seriously thought this film was over at three different occasions before it actually ended.  I found myself wishing that each time it would have.  They drop the grindhouse flow by the end of the first quarter of the film with only smatterings of it coming back.  They have the Tarantino beginning but then end it very Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Add about an hour of just a woman wandering in the desert and that's all this film was.  I got up and dropped a deuce and just left the film playing because I knew I wouldn't missing anything of merit.

I give Carnage Park 0 Mr. Pinks out of 5:

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Fairlane Road (2016) 1h 32m

 

Johnny Depp's "Tonto" make up should never be copied... ever!  Not because it's iconic or anything like that, but because it looks like shit and is probably offensive to Native peoples.  With that image in your head, a woman definitely ends up with similar shit on her face toward the end of this film.  So buckle the fuck up because we're taking a ride down Fairlane Road!

We start with a man going outside and falling to his knees while dragging his oxygen tank.  He goes to screen but it ends up being a phone ringing noise that comes out instead.  Jumping to our main character (of whom I didn't even bother to remember his name, and don't care enough to hit my IMDB bookmark to look up) we find out that he has a shitty mom that convinces him to go take care of his uncle (the man we saw at the beginning) for the weekend while his nurse is away.  Fuck this phone mom with a rusty manhole cover, she sucks so hard.  So our guy drives out to take care of his uncle who doesn't really want him there.

Eventually we found out that his uncle is less his uncle and more of his actual dad.  Not only that, but he came home drunk, knocked down his then pregnant (and alive) wife, and on the way to the hospital ran over a Native girl and left her by the side of the road.  Oh, also, because he was drunk and not paying attention that accident caused his wife to hit the windshield which lead to her death.  The mother of the Native girl was coming back for revenge and after finding out that uncle-dad did have offspring, she causes Jack (the uncle-dad) to accidentally kill his son.  We're then treated to the same intro sequence again only we get the scream instead of the phone ring.

Moral of the story:  Don't be a scumbag drunk?  Do a better job of keeping your kids away from the curses of Native people?  Don't watch this film?  Yeah, the last one.  Fuckin' ignore this shit's existence.

I give Fairline Road 0 cacti that phone mom can jam in her can out of 5:

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