Does Wrath of the Titans ring a bell?

 

9.) Katee Sackhoff: Anyone familar with my Twitter account knows I'm a big Battlestar Galactica fan. So imagine my surprise to see a pre-BSG Sackhoff here. She's only on hand as fodder for Michael. If she was playing Starbuck here, Michael wouldn't be standing at the end.

 

8.) Tyra Banks: Banks plays the assistant of Busta Rhymes' character. Watchering her act is almost as painful as watching her talk show. Disappointingly, she had a death scene, but it was cut out.

 

7.) The webcast plot: The "hook" of the movie was that Michael would kill people on an in-universe camera. So yes: this is kind of a found footage movie.

 

6.) Rick Rosenthal: The director of Halloween II returns to the franchise and shows even less skill than he did there. The way he shoots is bland and the kills are poor.

 

5.) The kills: Even if Rosenthal shoot the kills well, they'd still be boring and derivative. The only kill that was interesting was Tyra Banks' and, as mentioned above, it was cut out.

 

4.) The sequel hook: At the end of the movie, a coroner unzips Michael's bodybag and he wakes up. This was a transparant attempt to make more money. Thankfully, we didn't get any more sequels. Unthankfully, we did get a crappy remake that got a sequel that was one of the worst movies ever made.

 

3.) The retcon: At the end of Halloween H20, Laurie decapitates Michael. At the beginning of this, we learn that that was actually an ambulance worker that Michael traded clothes with. OK, why didn't Michael just kill the ambulance worker? It's a shameless ploy to get more sequels made.

 

2.) Michael kills Laurie... in the first 15 minutes: Michael's quest to kill Laurie has been the driving force of three of the previous seven movies and one of the seven doesn't count. And so, he goes after and kills her. In the first 15 minutes. This is an utterly disrepectful way to end a massive plotline in a successful horror series. This shows how little the makers truely cared about the Halloween property.

 

1.) Busta Rhimes V.S. Michael Myers: Busta Rhimes gave a very annoying performance as an internet entrapeaneur. But, the nadir of his performance, the film, and the franchise (until Michael eats that dog on-screen in Zombie's Halloween II) is when he fights Michael... and wins!!! Granted, Michael was completely ruined during the crying scene in Halloween 5, but still. Maybe that's why they never made another sequel: people couldn't Michael seriously after he got beaten up by Busta Rhimes.

 

I'm finally done!!! Grade: F

 

Next-up: Atlas Shrugged Part II!!!

 

There's only two good things about this. One is Stellan Skarsgard. That's not really surprising considering he's the only actual actor in this. He plays Father Merrin, the role originated by Max von Sydow in the Exorcist. Amusingly, Skarsgard is a hardline atheist in real life. The other is the cinematography by Vittorio Storaro of Apocalpyse Now fame. Insultingly, Harlin described his style as just "red equals evil."

 

Izabella Scorupa is pretty bad as Sarah, the doctor of the expedition. Interestingly, she wasn't in Paul Schrader's version, being created wholesale for this version. This was presumably to add sex appeal. The script for this is pretty dumb. I hear that the script for this and Schrader's version are mostly the same, but that still doesn't excuse it. Fun fact: one of the writers is William Wisher, jr. the same guy who re-wrote Dream Child.

 

Renny Harlin still has no talent for directing. The only one his films that I really like is the least good Die Hard. But, as bad as he is, we have to blame the people who put him here: Morgan Creek. Remember, they wanted bloody violence and that's what we have. In one grotesque scene, an African child is ripped apart by a hyena. In another, a woman gives birth to a maggoty baby. The big problem with scenes aren't that they're violent, but because of how exploitive it feels. It feels like Harlin was going "you want bloody violence, I'll give you bloody violence!" Adding insult to injury, both of those things are rendered with terrible special effects. On the commentary, Harlin defends the CGI hyenas because real ones are hard to work with.

 

A year after this bombed at the box-office, Schrader's version was released. I've never seen it, but this apparantly, Blatty thought the film was "a handsome, classy, elegant piece of work." Grade: F

 

Next-up: The 9 worst things about Halloween: Resurrection!

 

*The worst prequel is Dumb And Dumberer

 

There's one cool death scene in here. And that's Dan's. In the dream, he's on a motorcycle and Freddy slowly fuses Dan with it. It's a pretty cool effect and most of the $8 million budget probably went towards it. Also, it should be noted that this Nightmare On Elm Street is the only one to feature an actual responsible parent. Alice's dad respects her intelligence and doesn't try anything dumb.

 

Stephen Hopkins, future director of Predator 2, Lost In Space, and The Reaping, does a crappy job of directing. His direction shows no visual flair, something even Renny Harlin, director of the fourth Nightmare On Elm Street, had. There's a pretty big plot hole in here. See, Freddy's plan to return is to be born as Alice's baby. If something happens to the fetus, Freddy's plan would fall apart. The solution here is very obvious: get an abortion. She doesn't want to do this because the writers were lazy she wants to remember Dan (he's the father). I'm pretty sure that Dan would like the person who killed him to not be reborn. And it goes without saying that the acting sucks.

 

It's time for another edition of "Re-writes f*ck up movies!" The film has three credited writers (Leslie Bohem, John Skipp, and Craig Spector) and, apparantly, everything Skipp and Spector wrote (except for the line "it's a boy") wasn't in the movie. David J. Schow and William Wisher, jr. did some re-writes and Michael de Luca pieced it together days before shooting began. This can explain the stupidity of the plot and especially the ending that made no sense. I get the feeling that the ending was supposed to make sense, but because of all the re-writes, we ended up with the Gainax ending we have before us. But, the worst thing about the movie is the non-Dan death scenes. Erika's death scene makes no sense. Or, more accurately, the reaction makes no sense. See, while she's being killed, she's at a boring dinner party and she fell asleep. While she's dieing, everyone else doesn't check on her, they just stare at her. But, Mark's death is the dumbest. I could go into explicit detail about it's dumbness, but I'll just say this: it starts with Freddy on a skateboard talking like a sk8r dude and it only goes downhill from there.

 

Dream Child ended up disappointing at the box-office. Seeing the writing on the wall, NewLine Cinema decided to end the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise with one more to send the franchise off. And they choose the worst send-off that they could. It's so bad, that a 9 Worst Thinsg review is in order.

 

But, first, here's the one thing I liked about the movie. When Freddy tells his daughter about his plans to start killing outside of Springwood, she refutes it. In response, he says: "Every town has an Elm Street." It may not sound much, but when compared to the rest of the film, it's one of the best lines ever. It helps that it's the only time where Robert Englund gives a crap about his acting.

 

9.) The cameos: Several famous people show up here and it's distracting. Johnny Depp's cameo isn't too bad because it kind of makes sense for him to be there (the first Nightmare On Elm Street was his debut). Alice Cooper's cameo as Freddy's foster father is weird. But, the worst of all is Roseanne's cameo. She plays a mother whose kids were killed by Freddy. She treats the main characters like her kids. And then Tom Arnold shows up...

 

8.) The make-up: As crappy as some of the other Elm Street sequels were, at least Freddy looked like Freddy there. In this one, almost no effort was put into making Freddy look good. The make-up in the remake was better than this one.

 

7.) Lisa Zane: Billy's sister is pretty bad as Maggie Burroughs/Krueger. When she sees Spencer bouncing around the house she has a look on her face that looks more like she watched paint dry than a teen she's looking after get killed.

 

6.) Rachel Talahay: This is Talahay's directorial debut and it shows. The kills are poorly shot and similar to something someone who never heard of Nightmare On Elm Street would have done. So, it's shocking to learn that she's worked on all the previous Elm Street films in one way or another.

 

5.) Freddy's escape plan: To get out of Springwood, Freddy has to get his daughter to come there. To get his daughter to come, he gives a kid amnesia and sends him out of Springwood. Somehow, he finds himself at the same youth shelter that Freddy's daughter works at. Before he kills the kid near the end, he talks like this was his plan the whole time. His completely coincidental plan.

 

4.) The dream demons: It turns out that Freddy gets his powers from a group of demons. Remember how Michael Myers became less scary when we learned that Laurie was his sister? It's like that. Explaining things is good, but if you're explanation is bad, keep it ambigious.

 

3.) The special effects: The dream demons are rendered in some of the worst stop-motion you'll ever see in a pre-CGI movie.

 

2.) The script: The script for this is just awful. It's main flaw is that it's very comedic and the comedy is really, really, really bad. Adding insult to injury, Peter Jackson wrote a script for this and it was rejected.

 

1.) The Power Glove scene: In one of the dumbest scenes in horror history, Freddy kills a video game addict (played by a young Breckin Meyer) with a Power Glove. Yes, really. I hate it; it's so bad!

 

Apparantly, they tried to get Frank Miller to write Dream Child. This is late '80's Frank Miller (around the time he did The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One), not modern day Frank Miller. So, it could have been good. Grades: Dream Child: D-, Freddy's Dead: F

 

Next-up: The Exoricst: The Beginning!!

 

About the only thing I can recommend about this is the novelty factor of watching two future A-listers in a terrible horror sequel. Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey play a whiney high school student named Jenny and a cyborg, respectively. Since Matthew's last name is hard to spell, I'm going to type his character's name. It's Vilmer Slaughter. Yes, really. Both of them sued to try and supress this movie and I kind of wish that they were successful.

 

This was a very cheap movie. So cheap that they couldn't get Gunnar Hanson to reprise his role of Leatherface. Instead, he's played by Robert Jacks, who scored the movie. So the film's similar to an Ed Wood picture in another way. Of the film's terrible performances, Renee Zellweger's is the least bad. Of course, she's still bad enough to be here. She whines her way through most of her lines. Vilmer is a very annoying character. Although, there is some unintentional comedy when he needs to be re-charges. He's a cyborg remember.

 

Kim Henkel shows little talent as a director. The film looks terrible and has no visual flair. But, far worse is the screenplay. He wrote the first one with Tobe Hopper. Judging from his work on this one, you'd think that he'd never heard of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. One annoying thing that pops up a lot in here is the constant homages to the first one. The dinner scene is ripped off completely, but at least the the re-charging scene happens here. Also, the grandpa is now a mummy. Leatherface ends the movie the same way he ended the first one: swinging his chainsaw in futility. I think they did this because they couldn't think of anything interesting to do, so why not rip-off of the first one. But, the absolute worst thing is Vilmer's death. He and Leatherface are chasing Jenny when a plane appears out of nowhere and hits him. That's not a joke, a plane really appears out of nowhere and hits him.

 

The second Texas Chainsaw Massacre gets a bad rap. It doesn't rehash the first film, Dennis Hopper is good, and it has chainsaw dueling! Grade: F

 

Next-up: Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare!!

 

Before I begin ripping into Blair Witch 2, I have a confession that may very well cost me my respect ariund these parts: I aboslutely love the first Blair Witch Project and consider it one of my favorite movies. But, it wasn't always like that. When I first saw it, I hated. Then I saw it again, and I hated it less, but still didn't like it. Then I saw it a third time, and I thought it was OK then. Then a saw it again and thought it was great. The last time I saw it was a few weeks ago where I decided I absolutely loved it. The sequel, on the other hand, gets worse every time I see it.

 

There's one scene that comes close to brilliance and that's the very first scene. It shows Burkittsville, the town from the first film, overrun by tourists looking for the Blair Witch. It's a funny parody of the first one. The whole movie should have been like this. It should have been about a bunch of idiotic teens going into the woods and dieing of starvation, videotaping themselves so they can be like the first one. After they're all dead, the actual Blair Witch should show up, laugh, and say it an evil voice: "Stupid kids. They make my job WAY easier." But, alas, the film goes in the opposite direction, by being a shameless rip-off of the first one, sans video footage.

 

The first major problem is the actors. They all suck horribly, with Kim Director being the worst. Say what you will about the actors in the first film, but at least you could buy them as teenagers stuck in the woods. The actors in this are nothing more than actors. You don't care about them and hope that they die. Another problem is the ambiguity of the characters. The film tries to make the characters' moral status ambiguious, but they fail miserably. It's obvious that they're killers. And we don't need to see reversed footage to know this.

 

Director Joe Berlinger shows no talent with narrative features. He's good with documentaries like the Paradise Lost series or Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, but he falls on his face with this one. Another major problem is the executive meddling. Artisan wanted to make another Blair Witch while the iron was hot, while Haxan Films wanted to wait and make a good story before making it. Artisan ignored them and went ahead with what we have today. The biggest indicator of the movie's failings, however, comes from a source that you may not have noticed: the soundtrack. There was no soundtrack for the first one and it relied on its creepy atmosphere. The soundtrack for this is loud, sh*tty, and abrasive metal music. It's a good example of the dichotomy between the films. One's quiet and reserved and  makes the film creepier while the other is loud and makes the film silly.

 

Moving on, we have Jaws 3-D, a shameless cash-in with obvious 3-D, bad acting, and the fakest looking shark until 1987.

 

There's one well directed scene and that's the scene where the shark smashes through the observitory window. Sure, it's ruined by the special effects (this is the worst the shark looks in the movie) and the fact that the black guy gets eaten first makes me suspicious of the casting director, but, compared to the rest of the film, it's good for what it is.

 

Dennis Quaid is pretty bad in this. Amusingly, this came out the same year as The Right Stuff, which helped put Quiad on the map. Quaid isn't very proud of this; he once said this in an interview: "I was in Jaws what?" Lea Thompson isn't very good in her debut role. It's still better than Howard The Duck though. The actor playing Sean Brody is terrible. Let's check who he is. Okay, it's John Putch. Oh, he's a director too, let's see what he directed. Atlas Shrugged Part II.

 

Joe Alves direction is terrible. Aside from that one scene mentioned above, he shows no flair for visuals or suspense. I checked imdb, and this was the first movie he ever directed. And the last movie he ever directed. As I mentioned several times in this review, the shark looks terrible. The story for this is terrible. How the f*ck did a 35 foot shark get into Sea World with no one noticing? However, there's an explanation for this: re-writes. See, the film was written by three people and one of the names should stick out: Carl Gottlieb, Richard Matheson, and Guerdon Trueblood. I think you can figure out the name that doesn't belong. The film changed concepts several times. Originally, the film was a parody that involved the shark eating people associated with the franchise, but Spielberg got it shut down. Killjoy. In one version, the 35 foot shark gets stuck in a lake, which makes more sense than Sea World. I'm not goy why I think they went with Sea World, but let's just say it rhimes with loduct racement.

 

The final movie I'm talking about today Jason Goes To Hell, the final Friday The 13th film (for a decade). Unlike the other two movies today, this film goes in a completely different direction compared to the other films in the franchise. However, the new plot is actually worse than the regular FT13th plots.

 

There's one incredibly awesome scene in here and it's the opening one. It shows a comely woman showering when Jason attacks her. However, this is a trap as commandos start shooting at Jason and succeed at killing him. This could have been an intersting idea if strecthed to feature length. It would turn the franchise forumla on its head. Instead of Jason hunting helpless teens, it would be a bunch of commandos hunting a helpless Jason.

 

But, the film doesn't go in that direction. In one of the dumbest scenes in Friday The 13th history, the coroner working on Jason sees that his heart is still beating and his idea is to eat it! What would compell him to do that? This allows Jason to possess him. From here the film turns into a demonic possession movie with some slashing violence thrown in. So, it's a rip-off of The Exorcist III. The film uses the Necronomonicon from the Evil Dead movies. This pissed off Sam Raimi and he demanded an apology from the makers. This doesn't have any bearing on anything. I just think that what Raimi said was awesome.

 

At the end of the movie, we see Jason's true form. And it's a rip-off of the Chestburster from Alien. Seriously, it looks dumb. There's one weird scene were Jason shaves the beard of a man that he's possessed. It only exists to pad time and shows how thin the script is. But, the main failing of the film is the same reason why Friday The 13th: A New Beginning sucked: the lack of Jason action. The thing that made people back in the '80s want to see the Friday The 13th films was Jason. They thought he was cool. He had an awesome mask, he had some great kills, he was nigh unstoppable, and he had a tragic past. Making a Friday The 13th film and not having Jason in it is just dumb. They assumed that it was the brand that got people in the seats, but it was actually Jason.

 

If any of you steals my Blair Witch Project parody idea, I'll be pissed. Grades: Blair WItch 2 and Jaws 3-D: F, Jason Goes To Hell: D

 

Next-up: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation!!!

 

It's a good thing that Hopins didn't leave because he's the only good thing here. As crappy as this was, he's the lone bright spot. He's not as good as he was in Silence or even Red Dragon, but still.

 

Julianne Moore is an ill fit to play Clarice. She's not a bad actress, but she's out of her leagure here. Ray Liotta is crappy here as Paul Krendler. He has a bigger role than in Silence, were Krendler was played by Ron Vawter. I could go into details about his bad performance, but I have a feeling about what you want me to discuss about him so let's get to it: Krendler ets his own brain. It's one of the most jaw-droppingly bad, unintentionally hilarious scenes in history. It made Cracked's 10 Scenes of Brutal Violence Guaranteed to Make You Laugh list.

 

As I mentioned in the intro, the script went through a lot of re-writes. David Mamet is credited as a screenwriter, but all of his material was thrown out. The direction on this movie is very poor. Shockingly, the director is Ridley Scott:a man who should know better. Gary Oldman is horrible as Mason Verger. He plays a crippled child molester with no face. He has no face because Hannibal doped him up and told him to feed it to his dogs. In retaliation, Mason trains giant pigs to eat Hannibal. Why pigs? Dogs would be more appropriate considering what happened to him. The scene where Mason feeds Hannibal to the pigs infuriated me to no end and established that Thomas Harris had turned Hannibal into a Mary Sue. When Hannibal's with the pigs, they don't try to eat him. Ridley tries to explain it on the commentary by saying that it was either the lack of blood, Hannibal not screaming, or the pigs sensing an animal feel to Hannibal that lead to it. In the book, however, it was because the pigs respected Hannibal too much. Yes, really.

 

Brett Ratner directed a better Hannibal Lecter than Ridley Scott. Where is your God now?!? Grade: D-

 

Next-up: Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2!

 

One of the reasons this is actually better is because of director Alexander Witt. Unlike Worthless Sh*t Anderson, Witt doesn't f*ck up the action scenes. We may not care about the characters,* but the scenes are shot competently. Also, making the film better is Sienna Guillery and Oded Fehr who give good performances as Jill Valentine and Carlos Olivera, respectively. Guillery actually put a lot of effort into this movie, watching footage of Jill from the game to get the movement of her right. Shame she gets overshadowed by the personality-retardent Alice.

 

Jovovich still sucks here. Making things worse, she gets a lot more dialogue this time around. And she gets more dramatic scenes too. The film breaks it's own rules with the zombies. There's a scene were a bunch of zombies rise from a graveyard to attack the main characters. It was said in the first film that there has to be residual neural activity for the T-virus to take hold. But, the zombies in this scene have been dead for a while, so no residual neural activity for them. Also, how could the T-virus reach them if they were in their caskets? And if they already had the T-virus in them, why did it take them that long to rise?

 

Mike Epps gives a terrible performance as LJ. He's every crappy ghetto stereotype roled into one big annoying performance. But, again, the biggest of the film's flaws can be laid at Worthless Sh*t Anderson's feet. What he does to Nemesis is horrible. He was a badass in the game and here he gets his ass kicked by Alice in a few minutes. Alice's "God Mode Sue" tendencies start to shine through here. This is mainly because she has the T-virus in her. It turns everyone else into crazy zombies, but it turns the screenwriter's girlfriend into a badass. The film shamelessly rips-off Aliens with the relationship with Alice and Angie. The blandness of their relationship only highlights how James Cameron is superior to all of his imatators.

 

Angie's dad in wheelchair is played by a pre-Mad Men Jared Harris. Grade: C

 

Next-up: Resident Evil: Extinction!

 

*Not Witt's fault, he didn;t write the script.

 

About the only interesting thing about this movie is the Red Queen. She's a rouge AI that's out to prevent the T-virus from spreading to the outside world even if it means killing innocent people. I'm not sure if the film notices, but she's the only thing close to a hero here! While the other characters meander, occasionally fighting zombies, the Red Queen is actively protecting the human race. The film treats her trying to get Alice to kill Rain as an EVIL thing, but Rain's got the T-virus and she could easily spread it.

 

The special effects are crap. This came out nearly a decade after Jurassic Park and it looks nowhere near as good. The Licker looks expecially crappy. The score is pretty bad too. It's just generic metal riffs. Fun fact: the composer for this was Marilyn Manson. This might be one of Milla Jovovich's best perfromances. The fact that she's still in the bad category should tell you about her acting skills.

 

Almost all the film's shortcomings can be laid at the feet of Paul W.S. Anderson. He wrote and directed this piece of crap all by himself, so there's no one else to blame for this. He can't write interesting characters. He can't direct actors. His idea of a villain is actually a better hero than the ones we're given. He can't direct an action scene to save his life. His idea of scary is as scary as a five year old running around in a sheet. He thinks that hair and fingernails grow after death. And here's the kicker: Capcom (the maker of the Resident Evil games) rejected an earlier script by George A. Romero! And his script was actually faithful to the games, Chris being a magic Native American aside. This is especially dumb because Capcom based the Resident Evil series on Romero's zombie movies.

 

As bas as this was, it's actually one of the better video game movie. That should tell you how low the video game movie bar is. Grade: D+

 

Next-up: Resident Evil: Apocalypse!

 

The only good part of the film is Ashley Laurence. She reprises her role of Ashley from the first film. Her performance is good and she makes you care about what happens to her character.

 

The character of Tiffany is annoying. Her actress (Imogen Boorman) is bland and it seems like she only exists because Clive Barker saw Aliens. Clare Higgins (the weak link fo the first film) reprises her role of Julia (sans skin). Her performance is even worse this time around. The gore level is increased and it makes the film cartoony. Instead of shocking us, it's makes us laugh at how dumb it is.

 

The Cenobites are ruined in this film. The start off decent and get a few good scenes, but when Kirsty reveals that they were once humans, they go downhill. They decide to protect her and Tiffany after learning this, making them completely uninteresting. The script is pretty bad. There's a reason for it's suckiness and it's not executive meddling this time. See, Barker wanted Andrew Robinson to return as Larry, but he didn't want to. This, apparantly, forced Barker to re-write the end of the script. But, the worst part of the script is Dr. Channard, played by Shakepearean actor Oliver Smith. He starts out passible, but when he turns into a Cenobite, he gets bad. He starts yelling stupid quips (i.e. "I recommend... decapitation!") and he kills the Cenobites! And he does it with ease. If you're wondering why the villains of the series are killed off so easily, Barker thought that audiences would want to see Julia as the villain of the next movie. Anyone who's seen Hellraiser III knows how well audiences wanted to see that.

 

If you saw a new Hellraiser movie at RedBox, Clive Barker wasn't involved. Grade: D-

 

Next-up: I Know Who Killed Me!!!

 

There's one really awesome scene in here and it's the basketball scene. To explain, Ripley is shooting some hoops when she gets interrupted by Ron Perlamn's gang. After beating them up in a crappy action scene, she throws the ball with the hoop to her back and she makes it. The cool part is that it wasn't special effects: Sigourney Weaver actually made the basket.

 

The acting is pretty bad. Ron Perlman and Brad Dourif are good and Weaver's never bad as Ripley, but aside from those three it's dire. There's only one truely horrible performance here, but that's for the next paragraph. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet shows little skill for directing an action/horror/sci-fi movie. Considering his filmography, it's not surprising. And, like in Alien 3, the CGI aliens still suck.

 

There's only two reasons I decided to review this movie. One: I reviewed an Alien movie last year, so why not review one this year. Two: to show that not all practical effects are good. If you've read any of my recent reviews, you know I prefer practical effects to CGI. So, to show I'm not completely biased, I'm going to talk about the film's abysmal practical effects. ANd by that I mean the infamous newborn. The thing just looks terrible. The scene where it gets sucked out of the ship is just bad. And it wasn't done woth CGI.* Admittedly, the method they used to pull it off is pretty cool. But, it looks like crap on-screen. The one truely horrific performance is from Winona Ryder as Call, the Ash of the movie. Her performance is completely soulless. I know that her character is an android, but her performance is still bad. But, the absolute worst thing about this movie is the screenplay. It treats that characters like idiots, has dumb and terrible scenes (the infamous Ripley clones scene), and is just bland. Shockingly, the sole writer on the film is... Joss Whedon!!!! You'd expect that he'd know how to make a movie like this, but he just bungles it. He's ashamed of the movie as he should be, but Joss can be an egomaniacal dick sometimes because he blames the failure on everyone but himself. He claims that the executives changed his ending so he gets off the hook for that. He's still to blame for the first part of the movie though.

 

Apparantly, the newborn's original design had one major difference.** Grade: D

 

Next-up: Hellbound: Hellraiser II!

 

*LINK: http://www.cracked.com/article_19872_6-mind-blowing-special-effects-you-wont-believe-arent-cgi.html (Scroll down to 4)

**LINK: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Alien-_Resurrection_-_Newborn.jpg (Warning image is kinda NSFW. And fricking hilarious!)

 

Some of the make-up in the movie is pretty good. I especially liked the make-up on the mutant who blended in with the rocks. That's pretty much it for the good.

 

Director Martin Weisz shows little skill behind the camera. Before he directed this, he mostly did music videos. That makes so much sense. The actors are pretty bad too. Jacob Vargas and Jessica Stroup are the worst though.

 

The characters are impressively stupid. The family from the first film did a better job of fighting off the mutants. This wouldn't be so bad, but the characters in this are National Guardsmen! So in Hills Have Eyes land, ordinary family>National Guardsmen. This highlights the sloppyness of the script. Wes Craven wrote it with his son. He should have known better. Also, the film has a MAJOR misogynst streak. The first woman we see only exists to give birth to mutants and then get her head smashed in. The female National Guardsmen don't fare any better. Amber (Stroup) is attacked and is saved by an injured male Guardsmen. The other female (Missy played by Daniella Alonso) is handled even worse. She gets captured, raped, and rescued by a male marine.

 

Still better than the '85 one though. Grade: D-

 

Next-up: The Grudge 2!

 

Before I get into ripping this, let's talk about the good things in this film. That's what I'd say if there was something good about this movie.

 

Natascha McElhone's acting is almost as bad as her parents' spelling. She plays Terry Huston, a researcher for the Departmen of Health. She quickly determines that feardotCom is repsonsible for all the deaths. After determining this, she makes the brilliant decision to visit the website. A lot of supernatural horror films with mundane MacGuffins need to have it be used after we learn it's dangerous. The right way to do this is in The Ring. In there, Rachel's son watches the videotape without his mother's knowledge. It opens up the possibility that more people will get hurt without making the chracters look like idiots. Steven Dorff is also bad. He plays NYPD detective Mike Reilly. He learns from Terry that the website is what's killing people. And because he ate too many paintchips from the police department bathroom he visits the site too!

 

Director William Malone is a massive hack. The only other film of his that I've heard of is that crappy House On Haunted Hill remake, which gets a brief shout out in here. Moshe Diamant and Josephien Coyle's script is terrible. In addition to making the main characters look like idiots, it features bland scare scenes and one of the least intemidating horror villains on record. The villain is Alistair Pratt, or "The Doctor". He's one of the most one dimentional villains in history. Shockingly, he's played by Steven Rea, an actual actor. Why Rea needed to be in this is a mystery to me.

 

I will say this about FeardotCom: it's a little better than Untraceable. Grade: F

 

Next-up: The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)!!!