Ladronas de Almas (2015) 1h 28m

I know nothing about the war for Mexican independence, so I can only take this film as  documentarian fact!  With that in mind, here's my sum up of how Mexico won its independence:  Sisters that use ancient magick killed the Spanish with zombies of their own men.  They then used the treasure of gigantic coins that are the size of my head to establish a government and make a rad flag with an eagle giving no fucks as it sits on a cactus and devours a snake.  I someday dream we will have a flag that cool.  Way to lame it out, Betsy Ross!

I gave a bunch away there, but Ladronas de Almas takes place on a villa in Mexico.  A group of shady men claiming to be rebels roll up and ask for shelter when in truth they're looking for the lost treasure that was carried by missing Spanish soldiers.  When men start vanishing these "rebels" show their true colors only to have to fight off some pretty badass sisters and zombies of dead generals.

This film is a series of peaks and valleys for me.  The overall story was interesting enough to keep me present in the film, but there is an over abundance of time spent focusing on the faux rebels.  I would have liked to have seen a bit more about the sisters and their magick practice.  Maybe they were playing it safe so that when the intensity of the sisters is revealed it hits harder, in which case I have no room to complain because they come out swinging when the turn happens.

The zombies in this film are a good mix of the Haitian vodou zombie and the standard horror film zombie.  We have a creature that maintains some sense of identity and reasoning all while being a reanimated corpse.  You don't see a zombie throwing counters and blocks too often on celluloid so it was a good switch-up.  All in all, if you're tired of the zombie wave that crashed long ago, then this isn't for you.  If you want something a little bit different, and don't mind subtitles, give this a shot.

I give Ladronas de Almas 2.5 maps of Mexico out of 5:

Strayed (a.k.a. Perdidos) (2014) 1h 33m

So close.  So close to finishing this Cut without having to deal with another "found footage" film and instead one more has to sneak in at the zero hour.  My husband and I had a long discussion last night about this subgenre of horror and what has and hasn't worked.  Blair Witch played on the fact that everyone grew up with some sort of urban legend.  Paranormal Activity brought the fright into our homes.  Grave Encounters took the phenomena of ghost hunting shows and had their own twist on the absurdity of them as well as pushing horror to be a bit more extreme.  Most generic found footage just keep taking a group of 20-somethings and putting them in a haunted space.  You know what else had that plot?  Scooby Doo!  And the fucking Scooby gang is way more entertaining!

Strayed (Perdidos) does this same dead horse style plot.  A group of 20-somethings go into a supposedly haunted building to record ghosts.  They vanish and this is the footage found.  The twist here is that we know a Rabbi had to do an exorcism in this building.  The Rabbi also left a Dybbuk just chillin' in that space, which I feel you wouldn't want to leave hanging out for just anyone to find.  Spooky scares happen and I can't read Hebrew to save my life so I have no idea what half of that stuff says.  I couldn't even translate whats on that poster and I spent a good 20 minutes trying and just gave up assuming its one of the 72 names of god.

Surprisingly, Strayed was one of the better found footage films I've watched.  The quick pans gliding by shadowy figures are decently scary but what this movie does that I really like is that the spirit has the ability to manipulate physical space.  People find themselves in hallways that end up looping themselves, rooms will change at any point, and impossible space becomes possible.  In the end though, these weren't enough to save the film from long periods of nothing and poor character interactions.  I would have liked this better if it were a 20-30 minute short film.  This way you get all killer/no filler.

I give Strayed (Perdidos) 1 rabbi clip art out of 5:

Secret of Evil (a.k.a. Secreto Matusita) (2014) 1h 17m

 

Alright, I either pissed in Netflix's corn flakes, or I pissed in my die's corn flakes.  The third option is that neither of those like corn flakes with their piss.  Whatever the case may be, I have my second "found footage" film for the week.  Get ready for some shit.

Secret of Evil (Secreto Matusita) takes place in a haunted house where we get two possible back stories only to find that the cause is a totally different story.  We start by interviewing a man in a mental hospital where he mentions the "owner" while he trashes the room.  Then we get our two stories.  One is about a Japanese family living there and the other being about a couple living upstairs, all of which end with murder.  Our Scooby crew eventually find a letter hidden in a wall with a dead baby and that gives us the true story.  It doesn't change the fact they all die and the ghosts eat their bodies or shove them up their ghost butts or something. If I had, to then I can sum this up as  pretty much the Blair Witch Project only they have a clairvoyant with them and much better tech... and bodies shoved up ghost butts.

I don't know how to talk about found footage movies anymore.  It's mostly a bunch of "what was that?" and "Ahhhhh I'm going crazy with all these ghosts up in here!"  The one thing Secret of Evil has going for it would be that it mainly uses practical effects and camera pans for the spooky elements.  As I mentioned above, this felt too much like Blair Witch to really be a wholly original idea.

I give Secret of Evil 1 El Terrible picture out of 5:

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:

The Similars (a.k.a. Los Parecidos) (2015) 1h 29m

My family didn't get cable until I was in high school.  Prior to that a majority of my sci-fi/fantasy watching were Brisco County Jr. and the random things you got on Saturday afternoon.  Mostly Xena and Hercules unless you got stuck with Cleopatra 2525 (which my husband just sang the theme song to me when I asked him if he remembered the name of it).  Once I had cable I had access to the Sci-Fi Channel (now just Syfy, I think) and their airings of Twilight Zone, especially the New Years marathons which became background staples at celebrations from high school on with friends.  My love of The Twilight Zone runs deep, so when I started watching The Similars I felt that I had found a long lost episode.

Over the course of a single night in 1968, eight individuals find themselves trapped inside of a bus station just outside of Mexico City.  Their small world descends into chaos as the two employees appear to be suffering from strange injuries and are claiming that one of the men there is the devil.  While this is going on we receive updates via radio that the rain outside isn't earthly and is part of some strange world wide weather phenomenon.  The people inside want out, they want answers, and when they get them it's not what they expect.

I loved this film.  It's colored with a grey tonality over it but as everything progresses the color fades from the film totally until the end.  The turns this movie takes are on par with anything I'd see Rod Serling pull.  We even get a narrator voice over at the beginning and end.  I really couldn't find anything bad about this film if I tried.

It does remind me of two specific episodes of The Twilight Zone though.  The first being The Eye of the Beholder (where a woman is getting surgery to become "normal" but it fails and although she looks beautiful to the viewer, her race doesn't look like that and she is the ugly one).  The other is It's a Good Life which I won't go into as it gives some of this film away.  If you're familiar with it then you already know.  And knowing is half the battle.  GO JOE!

I give The Similars 5 TV Guides with Rod Serling on the cover out of 5:

Guest on Rank & Vile podcast Ep: 42 Ol' Petey Ten Dicks

Hey everyone, I'm a guest on this week's Rank & Vile Podcast. We discuss the foreign horror films The Untamed, Honeymoon, and Train to Busan. You can find that on iTunes as well as on Podbean at https://rankandvile.podbean.com/

Scherzo Diabolico (2015) 1h 31m

When we watch a film, most of the time we're engaged in some form that allows us to feel part of it.  Jump scares, the moment of cringe when we get a close up of a needle going in, or the relief you can feel from someone escaping death, these connect us to the screen.  With Scherzo Diabolico, I felt less personally engaged and more like I was a voyeur to our main character's life.  Spying on him while he has his breakdown and develops his subsequent plot.  It felt perverse at moments to see his planning and begin to have that become my engagement with the film.  Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here...

Scherzo Diabolico is a film out of Mexico where we follow Aram, an accountant that, despite his hard work, is under compensated by his manager.  Aram formulates a plot to kidnap his boss' daughter and let the mental breakdown of his higher up lead to the manager's removal so Aram can move into his position.  It works, but the emotional trauma to the girl leads to her finally being triggered and she seeks out revenge.

This film falls under the "thriller" umbrella much more than horror but it was a good watch regardless.  Each character is defined well in their role.  Aram himself is done in such a manner that even if you wanted to celebrate him getting his due recognition you can't because of the layer of scum that surrounds him.  It's not just a greasy film that encircles him, but it's revealed that he is covered in it as the movie progresses.

When I started this review I mentioned that I felt more of a voyeur.  I saw a review on IMDB where someone complained about this movie being non-engaging.  I think it just depends on how you watch this film as to what your engagement really becomes.  I enjoyed it, but odds are I'll probably never watch it again.

I give Scherzo Diabolico 2 day of the dead masks out of 5:

Demon Inside (a.k.a. Espectro) (2013) 1h 33m

Instead of an intro here I'm giving more of a trigger warning.  If you are uncomfortable with scenes of sexual assault/rape then avoid this film.  I'm not saying I'm okay with it but the film pretty much started with a really long and uncomfortable scene of this.  In truth, this film could have skipped it or done it differently to still have this tiny part of the plot happen.

Demon Inside is a Mexican film where our main character is a psychic/tarot card reader that focuses on helping people with her gifts.  After a violent sexual assault, her trauma leads to her being admitted to a facility.  Upon her release she is afraid to leave her home.  It doesn't help that her neighbor is an insane and possibly murderous woman.  We also find out that the man that attacked her was cleared of the charges.

Our psychic begins to see visions of a bloody woman in her home.  After some research she discovers that there was a murder in her building and assumes the person is reaching out for help.  In truth, they're visions of her own future, but you don't find this out until the end.

For most of this film I felt lost.  It wasn't just the subtitles (which were sub-par and occasionally word-for-word translations as opposed to contextual translations), but it was also the story telling.  The whole film was meant to build up a bunch of info that only gets sewn together at our main character's realization that the woman she had been seeing was herself.  They're lucky that I made it that far without falling asleep.

I give Demon Inside 1 bad looking Illustrator demon out of 5:

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Cut 3 begins! Day 1: The Vampire's Coffin (El ataúd del Vampiro) (1958) 1h 20m

With our feet planted firmly on the soil of this Mexican vampire movie, we're back for our third cut!  Also, much like our previous reviews, we ended up getting what I'm assuming is a sequel to the 1957 Mexican vampire film "The Vampire," and if not the story telling is really fucked up.

The quick sum up is this:  A doctor and his girlfriend/wife apparently encountered a vampire while on a vacation that is only spoken about in this film.  She is under her boyfriend/husband's care at the laziest hospital I've ever seen.  Another doctor our hero works with is studying something to do with skin mutations (I can't remember) and hires a goon to go steal the body of the vampire from his tomb so it can be studied.  The goon sees the token vampire amulet on our vampire and sneaks back in to steal it, but in doing so he has to remove the stake.  This brings the vampire back to life (stick with me here...no pun intended) and the vampire hypnotizes the goon to become his man servant in what I assumed was going to become more homoerotic but I'm glad it didn't.  Our vampire finds the girlfriend/wife and keeps trying to put her under his power.  The whole thing leads up to a face off in the shittiest wax museum in the history of forever and the vampire gets speared to a wall.

That wasn't as quick as it could have been.

Overall, this film was a mess.  Being in black and white meant that a lot of the on screen acting was "stage acting" with over dramatic facial expressions by characters not speaking.  Also, they had the effect where the vampire faded away multiple times, but rather than use that each time they chose the turn the camera off, get into place, turn it back on method more often.  The bat was a rubber bat on wires, which I'm fine with, but they would play seagull noises the entire time the bat flew.  There's also a scene where the vampire changes directions in his coffin.

Worst of all though is the broken lore they try to pull with the vampire's reflection.  Every time they show the vampire in a mirror you just see his skeleton.  My fiancé tried to rationalize this point to me by saying that maybe it was showing his current form, since each time he was "dead" in the coffin.  It gets explained to us though as the UV light doesn't reflect off the skin so it doesn't have a reflection... but his bones do?  I feel like this person watched Dracula once, but then tried to remember how the vampire worked in that film and filled in the gaps with gibberish.  GIBBERISH I SAY!

I give The Vampire's Coffin 1 tacky vampire medal out of 5:

Day 17: Archivo 253 (2015) 1h 19m

I was listing things in my head that irk me about "found footage" films, and I think the number one thing that really bugs me is who the fuck finds these cameras or tapes or whatever and survives with them? Most of the films end with a camera falling as someone is getting killed. So why don't the people that "find" the footage get killed too?

Archivo 253 followed the found footage format list bit by bit. We have a creepy location with a abandoned mental hospital where they not only did hydrotherapy and ECT, but exorcisms! We have a group of four 20-somethings that like to go and hunt ghosts. We have a ton of night vision camera footage. There is the obligatory jump scare early on where it was something that isn't supernatural. Finally, when we do see what the evil spirit or creature thing is, it is only for a split second. Spoilers on this, it looks kind of like Gollum from LoTR. I was unimpressed

Actually, I was unimpressed with this whole movie. Part of me wants to like it, but there really wasn't anything to hook me. I've seen a lot of these films. Hell, I saw The Blair Witch Project when it came out in theatres... twice! And Archivo 253 was really just a by-the-book horror film. I crave something new with this sub-genre of horror! Found footage at this point really only works well with things like the V/H/S films where it's a combination of short films put together. That way I don't have to deal with over an hour of your bullshit repetitive plot lines!

Also, what the fuck is the deal with the hair in this film? Did I miss something with the subtitles?! There is a gross fucking cistern full of hair and then their room looks like someone dumped a barber shop trash bag on the floor! Google yielded nothing, so I want it explained to me! Now! I demand it! It's fucking gross! He touched the sewer hair and picked it up! I'm done. Mexico can keep this fucking movie!

I give Archivo 253 1 video camera out of 5:

Day 7: The Brainiac (1962) 1h 17m

Tagged as "the most bizarre horror movie," 1962's The Brainiac is a Mexican masterpiece of b-movies.  This film needs to put on a Luchador mask and become a folk hero for a small village.  It's that kind of movie.

We kick things off on 1661 (or IGGI as the choice of typeface for this info was butt).  A man is being tried for heresy, necromancy, and all the other things that good metal albums are written about.  While laughing off the list of tortures they attempted on him, his hooded judges eventually send him to be burned at the stake.  Before he gets lit up we get to look at a blurry painting of what a five-year-old thinks a comet looks like, over and over again.  He then says that in 300 years he will return to kill the ancestors of the judges and proceeds to call out each of their names, even though their identities are hidden.  From there it's a tiny model of a bonfire that is really close to the camera while the rest of the people are in the background.

Fast forward those 300 years, because fuck history of anything, and another comet is seen in the sky.  A professor and some amateur astronomers look through a super powered telescope to find it.  Then the amateurs go outside with what might as well be a paper towel roll and see the comet ten times as big over the city!  The comet becomes a foam stone on a string and gently sets down outside the city before transforming into a space monster.  Why a space monster?  I don't know.  Maybe our crispy strip from the past was into the X-files.

So he eats part of a guys brain with a snake tongue to the back of the neck, and then turns into a Mexican man.  I feel like this is how certain political candidates see the Mexican people.  You know who I'm talking about.  Eh! EH!

The rest of the movie is a series of awkward transformations and poorly executed Dracula eye lighting.  On top of that, probably 75% of scenes are someone walking toward a photo backdrop.  He also just has a bowl of brains he occasionally eats out of and hides it in the worst places ever!  I don't really get how his powers work either.  It might be hypnotizing but it might be some alien power, maybe it's the CIA, I have no clue.  There is a train of revenge murders and some bootleg proton packs that are apparently flame throwers and that's the end of our moon necromancer from the year IGGI!

I love bad horror movies, so if I were going to give this a rating as far as the artistic merit and storytelling, then it would be a fat round zero.  However, I give this a rating based on what I thought of it...

I give The Brainiac a solid 3 tin foil hats out of 5:

Day 4: Here Comes the Devil (Ahí va el Diablo) (2012) 1h 37m

Returning back to our continent and our neighbors to the south, Here Comes the Devil is a Mexican horror film in which I couldn't give two shits about after watching this.  The pacing was slow and added nothing of suspense to it.  The story was boring as hell.  The acting was fine in it, so I can't fault anyone there.  However, rather than my usual "I'll explain this film so you don't have to watch it," tactic I take with bad films, I'm just going to type up my notes for it so you can hopefully create a better film in your head.  Some of this would make good book titles.  Here we go!

Instant lesbians!
Naked whaaa?
Period
Is this gonna be weird incest?
Did the devil bang her?
Is that the Mexican Captain Spalding?
You can't be a badass w/a filet knife
That's not the same knife
That's not how throats work
Wait. WTF was the point of that lesbian scene?!
If "Lucio" is lucifer, fuck this shit
I wish this woman had a sweet mustache too
Ewww weird satanic incest
Wait, real kids are dead
Party clothes? Church trap?
Did she fart on the fake child?!
Ah, fuck this movie!
Satan can't drive for shit!
Why grindcore now?!

The end.  I don't know why a movie with almost no music aside from atmosphere instrumentation suddenly had fucking metal growling over the credits.  I guess they figured they dropped the Satan ball on the 1-yard line and needed to pick it up somehow to score.

Here Comes the Devil gets 0 devil lotería cards out of 5: