Midway through SEA OF DUST (now on DVD from Cinema Epoch), two characters make the horrifying discovery that a wounded woman under their care has been hollowed out by the malevolent force they’re fighting. Her empty body is walking around under his influence, empty of bones, organs and, possibly, soul. If you take this idea and reverse it, you will have the perfect metaphor for Scott Bunt’s directorial debut: a movie stuffed full of ideas, but wrapped in a shell almost too flimsy to contain it.
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After Megan and Joe’s infant son dies, their marriage falls apart, driving Megan into the arms of another man. Soon after, Joe’s mother dies of a heart attack. In an attempt to salvage their relationship, the suffering couple moves to Joe’s rural childhood home, but once there, strange things begin to occur and dark secrets from the past are revealed.
So what is it with horror fans and our memorabilia? “Some collectors collect for themselves, some collectors collect to make money, and some collectors collect to impress other people,” says artist Frank Kozik toward the beginning of THE TREASURES OF LONG GONE JOHN, a feature-length documentary by director Greg Gibbs, now on DVD from S’More Entertainment.
Sex and violence. Why do we culturally gravitate toward entertainments that exploit these two facets of the human id? If I could properly explain that, then the mysteries of the human condition would be no more, and FANGORIA might be out of business. It’s just how we’re wired, that primal voyeuristic need to channel aggression and lust through entertainment…and writer/director Darren Ward knows this. For sex and violence are the chief reasons why Ward’s new film A DAY OF VIOLENCE (now out on British DVD) exists.
Remember back a decade and a half or so ago, in the post-RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION days, when every B-list actor in creation was rushing to take part in snarky independent crime capers in the hope that lightning would strike again? More recently, torture-horror became the new vogue; how else to explain the presence of Dennis Hopper, Michael Madsen, Robert Carradine, C. Thomas Howell et al. in an underachieving wannabe shocker like HOBOKEN HOLLOW (previously released by Triumph Marketing, now being reissued on no-frills DVD by Echo Bridge)?
The British TV series BEING HUMAN, whose first season is now on DVD and Blu-ray from BBC Home Video, explores the dynamics between a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf as they seclude themselves in a house together. These supernatural beings just want to live normal lives, but unfortunately, they cannot blend in with ordinary people.
Quoted reviews on the back of NEIGHBOR’s DVD package claimed I was about to watch something gory and brutal—a promise at which I scoffed. I’ve been disappointed before.
It’s never a good sign when a movie begins with opening text to provide viewers with some backstory—and also has a narrator speaking the words. Isn’t that sort of redundant? That’s the inauspicious start to EYEBORGS (out on DVD and Blu-ray from Image Entertainment), a potentially interesting SF take on the war on terror that features impressive low-budget visual FX but is ultimately bogged down by a stagnant script, unnecessarily long and sluggish exposition scenes and a somber tone that works against its Syfy creature-feature premise.