Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 16th, 2005
Synopsis
Years after the events of Bride of Chucky, evil dolls Chucky (voice of Brad Dourif) and Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) are dormant and being used to make a Chucky movie, starring in-decline sexpot Jennifer Tilly. (I know: very postmodern already, and we’ve only just begun.) Their offspring (voice of Billy Boyd), of indeterminate gender and gentle spirit, escapes its evil ventriloquist captor, travels to Hollywood and revives the demonic duo, unaware of their psychotic natures. Chucky wants ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 9th, 2005
Synopsis
Christian Bale plays Patrick Bateman, Wall Street dealer and psychotic. He, like his peers, is completely obsessed with surfaces, narcissistic beyond all measure, and about as deep as a sheet of mylar (and his extended exegesis on the music of Huey Lewis and the News doesn’t help make him seem smarter, despite what he thinks). He rapes and murders with impunity, but after all, isn’t that the 80s ethic in a nutshell?
Brett Eason Ellis’ novel, massively reviled by people who didn’t b...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 7th, 2005
Synopsis
Inspired by the Grant Wood painting, “American Gothic” is a 24-minute experimental horror short. Director Carlos Batts explains in his intro that the idea is that the farmer in the Wood painting killed his wife, and is now consumed by guilt. This is conveyed through a collage of surreal images, mixing Magritte, Goth and splatter, with a soundtrack that mixes portentous poetry and death metal/industrial rock. The latter isn’t a completely successful fit, partly because of audio limitations (s...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 27th, 2005
Synopsis
Little Tim is convinced the boogeyman is in his closet. He’s right, and it gobbles up his dad.Fifteen years later, after many years of therapy devoted to convincing him that he didn’t reallysee a monster that night, Tim (Barry Watson) is still afraid of closets and is haunted by terrifyingvisions. When his mother dies, he returns to his home town for the funeral, and decides to stay atthe old house in order to confront his demons. Big mistake.
The basic set-up is no...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 10th, 2005
Synopsis
A demented sculptor kills his girlfriend (Romi Koch) and turns her into a mannequin. At last,he has his perfect woman. But he still imagines her taunting him, and her beauty inspires oneman after another to kill to possess the now haunted doll. The tone is meant to be blacklyhumorous, some effort has gone into the camera work, and there is a subtext here about maleobjectification of women. But Koch’s line readings are so inept, and the storytelling so elliptical,that the ef...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 4th, 2005
Synopsis
Hmmm. How to provide a synopsis for something that makes no sense at all? Here goes.Two decades ago, a bunch of orphans were, for reasons left vague, experimented on by a scientistwho merges them with creatures from beyond (implanting them with some sort ofextradimensional parasite/worm thingy that clings to their spines, as it turns out). In the presentday, the one orphan who escaped the worst of the experiments is Christian Slater, who goesaround digging up rare artifacts...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 27th, 2005
Synopsis
Set for no very compelling reason in 1969, this story sees death-obsessed art student Jonathan Jackson walking and hitch-hiking his way along spooky Maine highway in the middle of the night, trying to make it a hundred miles to where his stroke-felled mother (Barbara Hershey) lies in a hospital. Jackson has such a vivid imagination that neither he nor the viewer really knows what, if anything, we see is real, particularly when he is picked up by a messenger of death (David Arquette), driving...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 4th, 2005
Synopsis
The Amityville Horror (1979) remains one of the most successful haunted house movies ever. Based on a supposedly true story (emphasis on “supposedly”), the film sees George and Kathy Lutz (James Brolin and Margot Kidder) buy their dream home, only to be driven out by supernatural events (little girl makes friends with demonic piggie, blood runs from the walls, and so on). In scenes that have so little to do with the rest of the action they might almost belong to a separate movie, Rod ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 1st, 2005
Synopsis
1863. After a brutal bank robbery, with plenty of civilians brutally slaughtered, a group ofConfederate deserters hole up in an abandoned farmhouse to pass the night before heading downto Mexico. There are already a few problems: the younger brother of leader Henry Thomas hasbeen injured, and two of the other gang members are thinking they should have a larger shareof the gold (i.e. all of it). But they will all soon have much bigger worries, as the house is stalkedby demon...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 23rd, 2005
Synopsis
In 1949, Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård), lapsed of faith and now an archaeologist for hire,heads off to Kenya, where Byzantine church has just been uncovered in a location it doesn’tbelong. The opening of the church unleashes the evil contained therein, which, not content withpossessing a little boy, gradually puts the locals and the British military force at each other’sthroats. Merrin must regain his faith and confront the demon (cue the exorcism of the title).
