Category: Movie Reviews

Earlier this year, I watched Dead Alive aka Braindead for the first time. Before that, I had only been familiar with director Peter Jackson as the mind behind famed Hollywood blockbusters like Lord of the Rings and King Kong, movies which I enjoyed for what they were and can’t fault them that much. My exposure to Dead Alive taught me something important though, it taught me that Peter Jackson doesn’t need more of a budget, he needs LESS of a budget because Peter Jackson with a budget gives us good blockbusters. Peter Jackson without a budget gives us Dead Alive and the subject of our review today, Bad Taste, a movie about aliens attacking a small town in New Zealand.

That up there was pretty much the plot. Aliens attack a small town in New Zealand, and some of the boys show up to help fight them off, absurdly gory action schlocky horror commences. Like many of Peter Jackson’s works, Bad Taste deftly combines multiple genres, blending action, comedy, and horror, freely switching between each genre, sometimes even during scenes. What unites the movie is the sense of fun that Jackson brings to it, not only as a director but also as a writer. And actor. And Producer. And the Special Effects guy. Okay, so Jackson did almost everything, which makes me love it even more. Bad Taste was a labor of love, and you can see that from every lovingly rendered explosion and gore shot, every silly alien design and absurd plot point, these are all to entertain and Bad Taste accomplishes that amazingly well.

It’s tempting to say that Bad Taste is a dumb movie. After all, the gore effects are completely over the top, the jokes are often juvenile, and most of the film is prolonged gunfight sequences. That would be a quick judgment though, because when you move beyond the low-budget limitations, you can look at the writing and see a plotline that is quite unnerving and wouldn’t be out of place in a more serious movie if handled slightly differently. When I look at that in combination with the startling lack of dependence on the three-act structure, I get a picture of Jackson as someone who knew, even then, exactly what his limitations were, what his skills were, and how he could maximize entertainment value even with all those limitations in mind. If that isn’t a reason to watch a movie, I don’t know what is.

I like to highlight the smaller movies as well here, so after a cult classic that launched a career, he’s a movie that no one has ever heard of, Dark Breed! After astronauts return from a secret space mission carrying alien parasites among them, its up to a no-nonsense former astronaut/cop/veteran to bring them to justice and save the world in the process. Most of this world saving is accomplished through ultra schlocky gunfights and explosions on the docks of…somewhere. But hey, at least Jonathan Banks is here! You know…Mike from Breaking Bad. He was in movies sometimes.

Even though this is an intensely schlocky movie, Dark Breed has some charms to it. It’s pacing is pretty good, and I appreciate any movie that has near constant gunfights, car chases, and alien possessors, even if everything else is pretty uneven. What really captured my attention here was the ending, which was completely shameless. I guess they figured that over an hour in everyone had stopped watching, because when the alien monsters finally hatch, they look exactly like the Predator, making the entire climax a laughable ripoff that somehow didn’t lead to immediate lawsuits. Even with that this isn’t the most enjoyably bad movie, though. This isn’t something that I would recommend seeking out for a dedicated ‘bad movie night’ but if you put it on in the background during a party you could cheer when something explodes and not pay attention when anything else is happening.

Before Vin Diesel was leading his own franchises and voicing tree aliens in Marvel movies, he broke into the industry by playing the anti-hero Riddick in the sci-fi action horror film Pitch Black, a character so popular that the first movie’s title was retroactively changed to The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black just to make sure you knew this was the one that had Vin Diesel. Now that Vin Diesel is his own brand, let’s take a look back at where he came from and see if his first foray into space measures up to some of the later adventures he’s now known for.

In a far-off future, a series of catastrophic coincidences results in a transport ship, carrying a series of colorful characters, crashing on an inhospitable desert planet. Among these passengers are infamous murderer Riddick and his handler, who cuts a deal with Riddick by promising he will free Riddick if Riddick helps them get off the planet alive. As this ragtag group explores, they come across an abandoned mining facility, and a horde of bloodthirsty alien monsters waiting to eat them alive when darkness falls.

A lot of Pitch Black is fairly pedestrian, especially the criminally underdeveloped cast that never has anything to do because almost no one is written with a character beyond a broad stereotype. Keith David is completely wasted as ‘the Arab’, a character completely defined by his all-encompassing devotion to the Muslim faith, who only ever says stuff about Allah’s will and never has much to do. Even when it tries to craft interesting characters it gives up almost immediately, especially with the pilot and Riddick’s captor. These two characters have interesting concepts but never grow into what they could be, which is the problem of the whole movie. Everything is mostly competent, barring some weird moments where the screen gets an orange or blue filter, but that keeps this from being either an actual good movie or a fun train wreck, which are the best two types of movies. Without Vin Diesel’s charismatic performance, I doubt this would have made much of an impact. But! If you are a Vin Diesel fan, this is essential viewing, because he is doing all the heavy lifting here.

After the explosive and over-the-top nature of Slither, we’re bringing it down a few notches today with a lower-key film, Alien Abduction. Aside from its thrilling and unique title, what got me interested in Alien Abduction is that it’s a found footage movie, and even though I love that subgenre I haven’t watched one of those in a long time making this a bit of a return to form. The story of Alien Abduction is pretty simple, a real shocker for a found footage movie, and it concerns a family on vacation in the hills of North Carolina who happen to come upon a strange phenomenon that may or may not be related to Alien Abductions. But I mean, come on, it’s a movie, it’s gotta be aliens.

With every found footage movie we also need the explanation for why someone would still be filming even after horrors and scares pop out, and Alien Abduction is no exception! Here in Alien Abduction the camera operator is Riley, an 11-year-old Autistic boy whose object of fixation is his camera…which is a pretty good excuse! Riley is a fairly realistic portrayal of a functional autistic child, and seeing the movie from his perspective does add a lot to the experience. It’s unusual to compliment the cinematography of a found footage movie, but the choice to have a child be filming means that every shot is angled slightly upwards, which makes everything seem a bit more threatening. The standard shaky cam and heavy jump cuts are here, and they do detract from the experience, but there’s an idea in there that I really enjoy.

While there is a lot I liked about Alien Abduction, it also definitely had a ton of limitations, the most glaring being the aliens themselves. I don’t mind the concept of going with the old-fashioned Grays, you know, the naked ones with pale skin and huge heads, but they just don’t look that good here, they look like guys wearing alien costumes. The shaky cam and hard cuts help hide it, but it took me out of the movie a bit to see that, especially when some of the other effects were pretty decent. While this definitely isn’t a movie for everyone, if you don’t mind a lower budget and think that found footage films are interesting, this may be worth a watch. I’ve certainly seen worse movies, and as this is the director’s first feature, I think we can cut a little slack. Available on Tubi.

Before he became synonymous with superhero movies and joined up with DC to head their cinematic universe, James Gunn humbly emerged from Troma Entertainment, the birthplace of everyone’s favorite New Jerseyite, the Toxic Avenger! Between all this superhero stuff, Gunn’s directorial debut would be a bit different, a horror-comedy about alien worm monsters that attack a sleepy southern town populated by a quirky cast of characters who really don’t want to get wormed.

Our main characters here are Grant Grant (not a typo) played by Michael Rooker, and his wife Starla Grant, played by Elizabeth Banks. Before you ask, yes, it actually is an important plot point that there is a massive age difference between those people and it partially sets up the conflicts between their characters. Speaking of worm monsters, the basic plot here involves Grant Grant getting infected by one of these worm monsters, where it slowly changes him in an incredibly disgusting way reminiscent of The Fly. Slither’s most interesting feature may be how open it is with everything that influenced it, wearing all of that on its sleeve, which I really appreciated. The inspiration for lots of moments is obvious, with some references to 80s horror movies, comedies, and even manga/anime series (I 100% guarantee that Gunn read Parasyte and loved it). As a horror comedy directorial debut, I don’t have a problem with that, especially because the characters and writing are otherwise quite good. The characters feel like real, albeit quirky, people who are experiencing a bizarre situation, and their relationships are fun and interesting, grounding even these absurd sequences.

Absurd is putting this mildly though, as the sheer amount of over the top gore and body horror was enough to warm my heart. The lovingly rendered explosions of flesh and gore were truly inspirational, and some effects sequences were so awesome that I don’t want to spoil them at all. While Gunn has largely moved beyond this type of movie, it’s still a fun reminder of how enjoyable silly space monster movies can be. If you can stomach it, you can watch it on Tubi, for free!