Rec - A review with spoilers.

As I have stated many many times, I love me some zombie movie. Sure, the last few have been terrible, even from the master of the genre, George Romero. As I stated in my review of Diary of the Dead, Romero has lost his touch and directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, the two men credited for this film, may be the answer to my zombie loving prayers.

Rec is, first off, a Spanish film and thus you will be forced, if you don't know Spanish, to read while you watch. I generally dislike subtitled films because it has the habit of pulling you out of the movie as you read. Rec manages to solve some of that problem with its new broadcast format. From the outset, you start to feel as though you are watching news footage instead of a movie. The subtitles feel as though they are part of the footage and thus they become almost acceptable.

The film opens with an attractive young reporter filming a story about local firemen and their daily duties. This opening footage really does set the "news" like feel of the movie as interviews are done and characters are slowly developed. This section of the feel may seem to drag on for some but it is needed for what is to come later in the movie. The first person perspective always gets a bit annoying in any film and you are locked into seeing only what the camera sees, which has its ups and downs. A multiple camera view, for this film, would have ruined it though and I am glad the directors stuck with it. After a few minutes of boring, the film starts to pick up and we find our characters in a small apartment building where an older woman was screaming. Its here where the movie starts to become a horror flick, and a good one.

Things in the apartment building quickly start to spiral out of control and you begin to understand why everyone is freaking the fuck out like they are. In rapid fire Spanish, its hard to keep up with EVERYTHING that is being said during some parts and you begin to read so much you wonder if you are missing things. Quickly, the body count starts to rise, the police show up and lock down the building for no reason, as far as the oblivious tenants, firemen and tv crew are concerned. We, the audience, know better. Rec takes the path of "the less you know, the better". The cause of the lock down is explained and once things really start going to shit, a handy doctor comes a long and tries to explain what is occurring. Rec then goes on to become a full on zombie movie but where the characters have no where to run.

It is a different spin on an old story, one that works very well. In typical zombie films, the heroes are on the run in the big world. Here, they are locked in an apartment building where they know no one, they have no idea how to escape. Cops to the left of them, zombies to the right. While they never show anyone trying to escape by breaking out of a window, it is clear that if anyone tried it, they would be shot. Of course, towards the end of the movie I began to wonder why the fuck they didn't at least try it. You start to feel for the trapped characters and the directors do a good job setting the pace and ramping it up and slowing it down when needed.

I have only one problem with the film. Its ending. Of course everyone dies, thats expected. Its a damn zombie movie. Its the explanation of where the virus came from and its not totally understood. The film suddenly runs off course and into the religious. Possessed little girl, a mystery man who recorded some vague stuff and creepy fucking sounds. At this point, you would expect our heroes to understand, its not fucking safe ANYWHERE in that apartment building. As they explore the final apartment, slowly learning where this virus spread from and that some one knew about it, you start to wonder whats going to get them and the result felt...wrong. You see the camera operator filming and a little boy, I assume, reaches out and screams, breaking the camera and plunging our last two heroes into darkness. From there, you never see the little zombie kid again, though a larger, nastier threat quickly presents itself. What we can only assume is the possessed girl makes her appearance and it feels very J-Horror to me. She stumbles in the darkness, reaching out with some hammer trying to find where the noise came from. Our heroes hide and start to make a break for it but are caught and bingo. End of film.

Up until the end, it was classic zombie goodness. Even going off into the religious as the cause was ok with me. At least we knew where the outbreak came from. It was the zombie boy, again I am guessing you don't get a good look at him/her/it, in the attic that made me wince. It was the, now grown, possessed/zombie child that has been stumbling around in the penthouse for years. Thumping around, making noise but never being found. Questions, such as how in the fuck the dog was infected in the first place are never answered. Why the police and military didn't send in a fucking special forces team to kill everyone and burn down the building are never answered. A lot of logic seems to be missing at points and in my opinion, if you are making a movie based in the real world about zombies, have people react accordingly.

But these are minor gripes over a nice little zombie film. I highly suggest everyone pick it up and check it out. Because lets be honest, Hollywood is so stretched for ideas, this will be remade in the US before to long.

Aliens vs Predator 2: A DvD review

I saw this movie in the theaters but wasn't doing this yet, so since my love for Aliens and Predator are unmatched, my long time lust for them to be combined was great, only to see the first film totally suck and the second...well you will see how I felt about it in a minute.

AvP2 starts off where the first ended. We see our B.A.M.F. (bad ass mother fucker for short) Predator from the first film on the table and dead. After a moment, the chest burster that busts out of him is obviously a hybrid. I tend to call the opening of this film the "No more fucking around" opening. We quickly see a ship of predators being fucked up by the Predalien (an Alien and Predator hybrid, remember I am a huge geek). Escape pod jettisons from the mother ship and and crashes back on Earth.

Cut to the forest where the ship crashed and a father and son off hunting. They find the crashed ship and quickly face hugged. Its rare in a movie is a child killed, much less in a fashion as gruesome as having a chest burster eat its way out of the child's chest. So things quickly move forward with what I am sure the director thought of as good character development. We see a mother, Kelly O'Brian, ( Reiko Aylesworth of 24 fame) returning home from war. There is also our male hero, Dallas Howard, (Steven Pasquale of Rescue Me and Six feet Under) returning from what we have to assume is a stint in jail. The writer obviously wanted to set up another Ripley and Hicks clone from Aliens. A tough as nails woman and a gruff but kind hearted bad ass male to lead the movie. I will get back to that later though.

So we have some character development and we see our B.A.M.F. predator hauling ass to Earth. Now, we have to assume that this Predator is a king or the leader of some kind of clan. We also can figure out that his son is one of the Predators that was fucked up by the Predalien. Our BAMF Predator quickly goes about dispatching any proof of aliens or the Predator ship. Search parties are dispatched looking for the missing father and son and one of the cops is popped by the BAMF Pred. Things in town quickly start turning to shit in the quiet little mountain town and the BAMF Predator starts hunting down the aliens and the Predalien.

That is going to be the end of my spoilers. The director is a fan of the franchises that spawned this movie and you can tell. He re-creates a number of famous scenes from the films. Its a nice nod to the fans but to be honest, they are forced. The alien close to Ripleys face in Alien 3 being one of the more obvious ones. Even the APC evac in Aliens is done but its no where near as excellent. Its at around the 45 minute mark where things start to fall apart. Things for the town are going from bad to worse but its done in very rapid succession. One of the bigger questions, at least for me, is how long it takes for a little alien baby to be created. In Alien it takes at least a good number of hours before we see the baby alien hatch. Here, the first two aliens hatch in what seems like a very limited amount of time and as the movie goes on, the aliens seem to hatch quicker and quicker. This could have been solved with better pacing by the director but its like he wanted things to go to shit quickly but it just took way to long. In Aliens, for example, the last colonist doesn't have its chest burster come out till the marines are already there and located them, which makes me think it had to have taken days.

Thats not the worst part though, not by a damn sight. Oh no. Some how, our Predalien is capable of impregnating pregnant women with a half dozen or more chest bursters. What. The. Fuck? I swear to Christ that this was done for the single purpose of making more aliens and its a fucking terrible idea. I have to think the director KNEW the pacing was going to fucking suck and had came up with this terrible fucking idea. This is really the biggest problem with this movie. The pacing was just God awful and totally ruined the film. Which is awful because the rest of it is pretty bad ass.

The Predator is actually a bad mother fucker this time around and instead of being bitched out by a couple of aliens, he ruins them. He tears through aliens like tissue paper and his only foil is the Predalien. The action scenes are wickedly done with enough gore to take care of most peoples blood lust. Humans and aliens are ruthlessly dispatched by the Predator, the aliens and the humans get to kick a little ass to boot. Reiko does a good job playing the bad ass Ripley clone and protecting her daughter, a Newt clone. The acting isn't amazing but its decent enough for this type of movie. The Aliens look good and sound pitch perfect. The Predator looks great and even the Predalien doesn't look all that bad. Hell, the douche bag of the film gets his face melted off, its awesome.

The only real real problem for me is the Predalien being able to stuff a shit load of eggs into pregnant women to hatch a fuck load of baby aliens. Its a fuck bad idea and I'd like to punch the writer and director in the face for letting this into the film. Bad pacing can, and will, always fuck a movie right up and this is an excellent example. Go into this with a blank slate and its a fun popcorn flick.

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

I have been a fan of George Romero's work since I was a kid. From Night of the Living Dead to Land of the Dead, which was pretty bad. Georges calling card has always been his social commentary in his films. It is always under lying and never the main point of the film but its there and obvious enough that people will pick up on it. In Romero's last outing, Land of the Dead, the social commentary was strained underneath the need of making a blockbuster film. I mean, the mans name is forever linked to zombie films, the guy fucking CREATED the genre! Thus, every film the man makes is supposed to be awesome, but his latest films have been less than impressive, much less actually good. Land of the Dead was a tolerable zombie flick and the social commentary was obvious and never explored beyond "The rich stay rich and poor get poorer". The film follows a group of college film students as the world comes to an end. Right from the start of the film, it is said that "what you are about to see is the film we made". You should know, or at least get a bad feeling in your stomach, from the title of the movie that this movie is supposed to be, The Death of (wait for it) Death. Awww yea. The Death of Death. Wicked. I should have walked out then and there.

Diary of the Dead attempts at taking shots at the internet age that we live in. He repeatedly reminds us that the only truth you can find is on the internets and the main stream media can not be trusted, even when they are telling you that the dead are walking. This movie doesn't feel like a Romero film at all or even a film that should be released into theaters. The entire things stinks of a straight to DvD release, from the camera work, the acting, the production value and the directing. I have to assume that some studio head decided to give this movie theatrical release only because Romero wrote, directed and had his named on the title and they were banking on that drawing the Romero faithful to the theaters. Yet there here we are, paying $8+ to get into a theater to watch this hunk of crap because we love us some Romero.

I honestly don't even know where to start trashing this movie. Its bad, from start to finish. There are tolerable moments but the majority of this film is terrible, even the damn zombies! I mean fuck! Excuse me for going on a mini rant here but Romero knows what he is doing when making a zombie movie. Even the zombies in his older films are more realistic than the ones in this. Its like he couldnt get a budget for make up, or even special effects. Its just awful. George should know better than this. Which is one of the reasons Diary doesn't look or feel like a Romero film. Its almost sad to watch really.

Ignoring the fact that Romero is sullying his good name by trying to make films and keep the indie feel that he once mastered, Diary is a failure. From the characters trying to make internet speak sound cool, to the terrible ideas that they take, the shitty camera work, the terrible direction...I mean just...really. Every fucking aspect of this movie. Bad. All of it. Bad. Terrible. Awful. I mean, in this film the characters are downloading and uploading to the internet for the sake of "telling people the truth". They ignore the fact that the internet isn't some magic thing that just exists. Servers? Bah. The internet isn't housed on servers, that require power or people to maintain them. The tv stations stop broadcasting, cell phones dont work, power is out but fuck me the internet still works. Right. Or lets look at the fact that people are STILL BOTHERING TO UPLOAD SHIT ONTO THE FUCKING INTERNET WHEN THE DEAD ARE WALKING THE FUCKING EARTH!!

I mean fuck. Suspension of belief is one thing but when you are basing your entire film on the internet being the end all be all of truthiness, thanks Colbert, then at least know the limitations of it! I can't stress just how fucking bad this movie really is, and it honestly does hurt me to say it. I love Romero and I wanted this to be another classic, instead it should not exist, or at least be a dvd extra on The Ultimate Romero Collection. I can think of a few ways this film could be better. Hire better actors for one, get a fucking budget so you can use blanks instead of CGI bullet effects or how about not filming it like its a fucking documentary and just have it be a movie about survivors learning what is going on.

So don't pay to see this film. Don't even rent it. Hopefully this will drive the message home to Romero and he will retire and let other film makers take up the mantle of zombie films.