Class of 1999 (1990) 1h 39m

To the best of my knowledge, when I graduated high school in 1999 no one was in punk gangs and none of my teachers were murderous war robots.  My principal was also not Malcolm McDowell.  If he was then I would've been bugging him all the time to tell me about being in the Tank Girl movie.

Banana in the front, party in the rear.

Class of 1999, despite coming out in 1990, explains that in 1992 youth crime became such a big issue that by 1997 all major cities had schools that were basically just gang territories.  The gangs all dress punk as fuck, wear spandex pants, and may be too into Rufio from Hook.  Cody is released from prison just in time to return to his school where there are going to be three new robot teachers stepping in to help control the chaos.  Wanting nothing to do with his old gang life, Cody tries to keep his head down until he sees the gym robot murder a kid.  After that another robot murders his friend.  It's then that these robots begin to go AWOL and attempt to hunt down and kill Cody since he discovers their secret.

This film is a dystopian cluster fuck.  It's like 1983's Suburbia and Terminator 2 drunkenly jerked each other off in a bar bathroom and this was the product of their combined shame seed.  This film is the equivalent of what old men in the 80's mentally saw when they viewed slightly unsavory youths walk by their house.  Then that man would have some sort of wet dream about being a robot and spanking them in class while making eye contact with the other students... because that's a thing that happens in this movie.  There is also some sort of punishment the robots can do named "rap knuckles" which I really just wanted to be something hip-hop related, but then realized it meant to nun wack their hand.  I'm stealing Rap Knuckles though.  That's gonna be the new mixed tape fire I bring!

I give Class of 1999 1 preschool graduation image I grabbed off of Google out of 5:

Hungerford (2014) 1h 19m

I don't know about you, but if I were an alien planning some sort of invasion I don't think that I would start in a small UK town.  The idea of starting low key in a suburb is good; less people to notice, easy to take over an area quickly, etc.  I just don't feel like picking somewhere on a large island would work out well in the long run.  Unless it was Australia and then you learned to weaponize the hellscape of fauna that exist there.  You know, this is all if I were planning an alien invasion...

Hungerford is set in the UK, where a film student decides to film every aspect of his life for an entire week.  It just so happens that this week is the one where a parasitic alien race decided to start invading the Earth via his small town.  Armed with cans of deodorant, an axe, and a camera, our film student and his flat mates all set out to secure a love interest while attempting to fend off these alien brain slugs.

This movie felt like it was a really long trailer for a video game.  The ending came and I felt like I needed to pick up my PS4 controller to help them fight off the invading hoard.  With that in mind, Hungerford does toe that Shaun of the Dead line.  It just lacks the humor and charm that Shaun has.  I think they realized this too during filming because there is a mention of Shaun of the Dead by name.

Hungerford is a bit slow and we're given a lot of shaky cam footage which gives us zero visual content.  Otherwise, Hungerford is pretty solid.  By the end, it satisfied me enough to be pleased but left me open to wanting more.  I doubt that sequel will ever come, but I'll throw in a few bucks to a Kickstarter or whatever if they announce it.

I do want to address that this movie sent me down a huge personal research spiral because I couldn't remember what movie, TV show, book, comic, or video game had a similar type of alien.  Something that was invisible until the connection was broken, slug-like, and controlled the host through the back of the neck.  The closest I found was 1994's The Puppet Masters but that's not what I'm thinking of.  For some reason I keep thinking it might be in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that feels wrong too.  So if anyone knows what I might be thinking of (as that's not vague at all) please hit me up on Twitter @30daysofplight or e-mail me at 30daysofplight@gmail.com because it's driving me insane!

I give Hungerford 3 Eldritch Parasite MTG cards out of 5:

Gantz:O (2016) 1h 35m

Here's something new to the 30 Days of Plight.  I've covered live action films of manga/anime with the Netflix Deathnote film, I talked about the anime inspired Castlevania series in my Choice Cuts, but now we get a CG film based on a manga/anime.  I just need a legit video game movie to pop up now.  Maybe one of the three Resident Evil animated films... which I own on blu-ray... shut up!  I like them!

Gantz:O is like watching an hour and a half video game cutscene (I'm looking at you Kojima!).  After Kato is stabbed and killed by some psycho in the train station he wakes up in an apartment with four other individuals and a large black orb known as the Gantz.  In this version of Japan some people die only to resurrect as part of a game where they battle real life monsters in order to gain points.  If a player collects 100 points in a round then they are granted a "wish" where they can get a special weapon, bring back a dead teammate, or be set free from the game and never have to play again.  Kato needs to survive, not only for himself but for his younger brother he cares for.

This is my first exposure to anything Gantz.  I knew of it, but never what Gantz's plot was.  After watching this though I definitely want to check out at least the manga.  I was afraid the use of CGI was going to detract from the film.  Luckily the CGI is just lifelike enough that your mind is kind of tricked into thinking it's live action.  This is in opposition to other similar films such as Advent Children.  Keep in mind though that Gantz:O is years later than Advent Children so technology has only improved.  The creature design for Gantz was impressive, with a great collection of creatures inspired by Japanese mythology with parts swapped out like custom action figures.

I will say that certain plot lines get confusing with this, especially when it comes to the very end.  I had to look up interpretations online but this just left me with more questions as this timeline apparently takes place after Kato's second death and he has no recollection of his prior time in the game.  These elements don't detract from the movie though and even the ending part could be read as set-up for a sequel.

I give Gantz:O 3 Onna Nue 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:

Honeymoon (2014) 1h 27m

Don't confuse this with Honeymoon (a.k.a Luna de miel) that I talked about on Rank & Vile last month.  This is the other movie named Honeymoon, or one of the maybe dozen films named Honeymoon.  I just have access to these two.  Truthfully, I got the better end of the deal with this film as opposed to what I subjected Quincy and Ryan to.

Honeymoon takes us to a lakeside cabin in the woods.  Just married, and looking to get away from the city, Bea and Paul plan to spend their honeymoon swimming in a lake and having tons of sex.  It's too cold to swim but Paul is apparently ready to go all the damn time.  Our couple has a strange encounter with a childhood friend of Bea's and the friend's wife warning our duet to get away from the area.  That evening Paul wakes to find a naked and sleepwalking Bea somewhere in the woods.  Bea's behavior becomes strange, Paul becomes paranoid, and this honeymoon has become a horror moon!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  That's a terrible joke, I'm sorry.

 This film tries hard to pull an ace out of its sleeve, but in the process of doing so it fucks up and shows its hand too early.  I was taken in by the plot and the development of Bea's changes but as we get information everything starts to point toward one explanation.  I'm not gonna say it's aliens, but it's aliens.  I was hoping for some sort of lycanthrope or cryptozoological creature, but I got gross things I can only describe as cervical huggers.  Pretty much the whole third act of this film is a let down, or a beam down... am I right?  I'm not, I'm sorry again.

I give Honeymoon 2 Ancient Alien memes out of 5:

Pod (2015) 1h 16m

Hey.  We haven't sat down in a while and talked about a good tin-foil hat style movie.  What happened to those kind of films?  I feel as though that plot has just vanished from existence recently.  Maybe it was the government getting too worried about us getting close to flat earth lizard people working for the Illuminati and running the world's governments while the Greys prepare to enslave humanity!  Did I miss anything there?

Pod revolves around a set of three siblings.  After receiving a strange message from one of the brothers, the remaining two siblings fear for the brother's mental stability and drive out to check on him.  What they find is a crazed man talking about being experimented on while he was in the service and that he has captured one of the "things from the pod," which is locked in his basement.  Is this man losing his grip on reality?  What's in the basement?  How did he fire off a bunch of shots from a bolt action rifle without using the bolt? *cue X-Files theme*

I have two complaints which I'm going to throw here first because they're brief.  First is the initial dialog between one brother and the sister where he informs her about the message. This is the most uncoordinated five to ten minutes of script of the film.  It felt bumbling in the way a play goes awkward when an actor forgets the order of their lines and the scene is a mismatch of dialog.  It could've been much shorter and to the point as opposed to this drawn out hostility.  Second, I'm not entirely sure what the point was meant to be in regards to certain character development points.  Why was the sister drinking so much?  Was the scene with the guy she just slept with leaving and her drinking to show that she's not as straight laced as the one brother?  If so, why is she such an emotionally lose cannon in the film?

Those few things aside, after that awkward scene, I really liked Pod.  While I could tell where things were going to go most of the time, it would occasionally swerve into the other direction just enough to leave you a bit freaked out.  The creature looked great when we get the reveal and was this great mix of alien/cryptid/undead design.  The acting from the military brother and the sister were fucking stellar.  The brother's manic behavior and later the sister's breakdown and crying actually resonated with me.  What can I say?  I was entertained... except for about five minutes where I got distracted on my laptop with the Ryan Gosling not eating his cereal video, but that's entertainment in itself.

I give Pod 3 Dana Scully rolling her eyes out of 5:

Evolution (2015) 1h 21m

Evolution is a movie.  I watched it.  That pretty much sums up how I felt after I finished this film.  It wasn't as if the content left me confused or that there was too much to process, it was just a thing that exists in this world.  Much how you come to see newspaper headlines that you see and know that exists but it doesn't effect you.  It's like strangers on the sidewalk.  Perhaps they acknowledge each other but for the most part brush right past each other and continue on.  Some other metaphor goes here to make it a trilogy.

Evolution is actually a foreign film.  The dialogue, all in French, is minimal.  This film seems to rely more on visual story telling.  A boy is swimming in the ocean and sees a dead body among the coral.  This appears to be the early catalyst to let the boy know that things aren't as they seem.  Ignoring the fact that everyone there is either a weird pale androgynous Tilda Swinton woman or a young boy that has to take medicine (yeah, every single boy) we're never quite sure if this is set on Earth or even in the present.  We just get a lot of life and death imagery laced with the color red and star symbolism to accent key moments.

This film once again toes the line of horror.  It's really more of a sci-fi/thriller type deal with one straight up nightmare fuel scene.  I can't go into it unfortunately because it gives away a lot of this movie and truthfully, while it didn't impact me that much, I don't want to disuade someone else from seeing it.  This just wasn't what I was looking for at the time and that probably colored it that way for me.  I might rewatch it at some point if someone says they want to watch it and I'm there, but all in all it was just a film I watched.

I give Evolution 2 starfish out of 5:

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Day 20: The Diabolical (2015) 1h 26m

The funny thing about rolling dice to pick what movie I'm going to watch is that sometimes you get something good, and sometimes you come up craps.  After watching the movie I previously reviewed (High Lane) I was hoping to get a decent pallet cleanser.  This time, lady luck was on my side.

The Diabolical focuses on a single mom and her two children.  An entity of some sort randomly appears in their home and causes all kinds of fear and havoc.  One of the kids believes that it might be the spirit of their deceased father.  Over time more and more of the plot unravels including a laboratory that wants to buy/threatens to foreclose on their home and someone close to them is tied in as well.  I'm not going to plot heavy on this one because aside from the sci-fi section at the end, this movie was pretty good.

A lot of the visual effects were great.  The figure that keeps appearing through the house looks frightening as fuck.  There's an early scene where we first see him and there's just a featureless face that he suddenly rips into and tears a film away to show the real face underneath.  It went from "Oh, that guy is rad looking," to "holy fuck!" that fast.  Every time he appears in his grotesque form it's always a good creep out.  My personal favorite being the one involving the dryer.

The "twist" part of the ending you see coming a little bit before the reveal if you know what to look for.  Also, as I said above, the sci-fi tie in element toward the end elicits more of a groan than a gasp.  Overall, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so I do recommend The Diabolical.

I give The Diabolical a solid 3 fake ghost photos out of 5: