Day 19: High Lane (2009) 1h 30m

I had a realization while watching this film.  You know what would make a great horror movie?  To just have these continuous moments of suspense and fear, but then everyone survives.  It would be along the lines of Hitchcock but just no Norman Bates on the other side of the shower curtain.  Just a thought, mainly because I feel like if someone made this idea it would suck.

The French film High Lane started by making me feel like it might just be a sense of survival against shitty odds.  A group of people attempt to go mountain climbing but find the path has been closed.  Being a bunch of idiots they attempt it anyway which leads to a lot of close calls up until they find some weird insane guy, that only screams, on a mountain top.  Anton the insane keeps trying to kill them.  Everyone dies.  I feel no remorse for any of them.

As with a lot of horror films, High Lane seems like they had an idea to start with (the mountain climbing) and reached a point where they realized they couldn't make it into a full film and threw in the insane guy.  I was so disappointed by this film I actually watched another one after it in hopes of it being a pallet cleanser...

I give High Lane 1 mountain climbing clip out of 5:

Day 18: Exit To Hell (2013) 1h 21m

Remember when everyone forgot that grindhouse style films existed until Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez made people remember?  Then everyone promptly shit their pants for the visual style and we had a giant influx of films attempting to be Planet Terror or Death Proof?  Remember that?  The thing that made the original grindhouse films endearing was the fact they were scripts that were probably written in a weekend, low budget, and sometimes poorly acted.  People forget that and in attempting to emulate the nu-grindhouse style end up creating shit.  Exit to Hell actually did a good job of avoiding this.

The hub of this film is the town of Redstone; a lost town in the desert of wherever U.S.A. off highway 69.  It's mostly creepy shirtless redneck people with assorted weapons, a gas station, and a sheriff that drives a car that would make Mad Max jealous.  People making a getaway to Mexico after committing violent crimes seem to end up stuck here where they pay for their deeds.  Hence the tagline "justice is served."

I'm pretty sure that Exit to Hell knew that they weren't going to make something Oscar worthy.  So rather than going toward the professional route they hit the gas and jumped up over the top.  It feels influenced by the nu-grindhouse technique while also pulling from something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Implementing a bizarre cast of characters mixed in with young sexy criminals and throwing in car chases, some four-on-the-floor rock n' roll, gore, and cannibalism make this movie worth a watch.

I give Exit to Hell 3 coming attraction screens out of 5:

Day 17: Curve (2015) 1h 21m

I like to research and learn about things.  The down side to this is that sometimes you find out things that are kind of disappointing.  For starters, 2015's Curve shows no box office return, which means this went straight to DVD.  Digging even further (possibly digging my own grave) I found out that this movie was green lit in 2007, and during that time had two previous leads cast.  What happened to them?  No clue, but it took eight years for this to come out... it probably should've stayed locked up somewhere.

The Curve really comes across as two films in one.  Our main character is in the process of moving to be with her fiancé and has some car trouble.  A sexy hitchhiker shows up and fixes her car so she offers him a ride.  It seems like she's gonna hook up with him and starts to drive to a motel when he starts saying gross stuff about his huge dick.  It ends up he's a scumbag creeper and is going to kidnap and possibly sexually assault her.  In an attempt at survival the girl drives her SUV straight through a curve and off a cliff.  She gets trapped and he ends up taunting her on and off during days of her being stuck.  Apparently when he isn't there he's been at a cabin murdering and torturing some family.

I think that this film probably had the main plot of her being trapped in the car but they weren't sure how to make it work.  Enter the creeper.  Overall I wish he wasn't in it.  His scenes pretty much ruined the movie.  Not that this movie was great to begin with.  There are also a lot of leaps of logic.  The only part I got really excited for was when she woke up to a bunch of rats in the car and I was hoping she'd start singing and it'd be like some fucked up Cinderella type deal where they would free her and kill the scumbag.

Needless to say, that didn't happen.

I give Curve 1 curves ahead road sign out of 5:

Day 16: Spiders/ Spiders 3D (2013) 1h 29m

I recently completed a playthrough of the 2016 version of Doom.  Being a fan of the original two (and kind of liking the 3rd... kind of) I knew exactly what I was expecting.  Imps, Pinkys, all sorts of hell demons.  You know how it works.  So why am I bringing up a video game on my horror film blog?  It's because as I approached the final level I knew exactly what boss I'd be facing: The Spider Mastermind!  A giant cyber demon spider monster that was brought to mind by the "queen" spider in this film.

Also, yes, I know.  Spiders don't have queens.

Spiders (or Spiders 3D if you watch that shit in the third dimension) is one of those horror movies that seems like it wants to be a good film, but if it embraced the cheese factor of it then it could be amazing.  Our plot runs as thus: the former U.S.S.R. had a space station with these creatures that just happen to look like spiders on it.  A part of the space station crashes from space and into the NY subway.  Eventually the military is brought in as well as a Russian scientist that was working on the project and they begin collecting the spiders to continue with the original plan.  We're stuck with an upper level subway security person and his ex-wife/current public health doctor/scientist/Shannon Dorhety impersonator.  So space spiders escape, and giant queen spider attacks the city... etc. etc.

There were shots in this film that reminded me of Them! or The Giant Gila Monster and I wish that they would have gone down that road.  Like I said above, as a cheesy movie this would've been great and adding a camp factor on purpose would make it fun.  They didn't though, and instead blew an estimated $7 million on trying to make a polished turd.

I give Spiders/Spiders 3D 2 Queen Elizabeth I paintings out of 5:

Day 15: The Abandoned (2015) 1h 26m

When you're movie production company is named C Plus Pictures I know you're not bringing your A game.

You know what?  I sat here for about 20 minutes trying to write this next paragraph, but it's not happening.  This film was okay but pulled too many horror tropes: jump scares, ghosts of children, shady old state hospital practices, and the "shocker" of a St. Elsewhere style ending.  The more that got revealed the more my interest waned.  Writing this review about the damn thing couldn't even keep my interest.

I give The Abandoned 1 sad Yoshi out of 5:

Day 14: Para Elisa (2012) 1h 15m

Have you ever heard the Patton Oswalt bit about his TiVO?  I feel that way with some of the movies Netflix puts in their horror listing when I'm counting to the number I rolled.  It seems that since I enjoyed some of the foreign horror films I've watched on this blog that Netflix has the idea that I must like all foreign horror.  "But you like the horsee shows! NO TiVO! BAD TiVO!"  Bad Netflix!

Para Elisa comes to us from Spain and revolves around a spoiled shit of a college girl whose mom won't lend her 1000 Euros for a trip with her friends because the mother had just paid for her to take a trip to London.  Her drug dealer boyfriend sees a poster for a babysitting job, calls the number, and hands her the phone.  She eventually goes to find out that the girl she is supposed to baby sit is a grown ass woman that the mother has completely fucked up in the head.  After being drugged, our leading lady wakes up to realize that she is not meant to babysit, but to become a living doll for the daughter to play house with.

This movie wasn't for a horror fan.  This is more for the vanilla movie watcher that wanted to watch something scary.  Yes, the premise is kind of fucked up and the mother/daughter relationship is bizarre but it really didn't keep me invested in the film.  In addition, a leading character that I instantly did not like (as obvious above) really gave me no one to root for.  Plus, you see the ending coming way to early.  I know that's a constant complaint I bring up on here, but I want to be surprised.  Just once.

I give Para Elisa 1 creepy doll out of 5:

Day 13: Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) 2h 3m

What happened?  Where was I?  I watched this film while I was home sick from work and it sent me into an over-analytical spiral where I tried to really understand certain scenes in this movie.  That's partially true.  The other part is I had a lazy/busy period where if I wasn't doing something I wasn't going to do something.  Sorry, shit happens... or doesn't.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus isn't a horror film.  It was under the list of horror films in Netflix which is how I ended up rolling it, but this movie is much more of a drama with a supernatural element.  Written and directed by Spike Lee, and based off of the 1973 film Ganja & Hess, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus follows Hess, a researcher of African cultures, studying a ritual blade of the Ashanti people.  After his assistant has a psychotic episode and stabs him with an artifact, Hess comes back from the dead and has a need for blood as his primary sustenance.  Hess isn't quite a vampire in the traditional sense, but represents more of an evolution or mutation of man based on the esoteric practices of the Ashanti (as stated early in the film).

There are some plot points that I found really well done in this film.  For one, if blood has been tainted by alcohol or disease then it can't be ingested.  When Hess does one of his first kills it is with a woman he picked up in a club.  After he vomits from her blood he finds HIV medication in her purse.  Panic sets in and the next set of scenes is Hess at a clinic getting a tested.  Aside from the blood drinking, the rest of the scene felt very real.  This is part of my over analyzing of this film, but I wonder if this was meant to almost be a warning of the very real threat of HIV/STD's.  The scene ends with the nurse telling Hess to wear a condom, to which he says he will, but as the screen goes black we just hear the nurse say something to the extent of "yeah, they always say that."

My only criticism is there were a few scenes I wasn't quite sure what the purpose was.  A lengthy lesbian seduction and sex scene happens and it felt out of place.  That's my only real complaint.

Since this wasn't really a horror movie, I don't feel like I can give it a regular rating on here.  If I were going to give it one the I would give it a two out of five overall.