Dead Snow (2009)

This low budget Norwegian zombie flick shouldn't really work, but it does. Filled with every single horror movie cliche and trope, it's one of those films that are ridiculous in a good way. The story revolve around a group of medical students on holiday in the remotest part of the Norwegian wilderness they could find.

The characters are the biggest cliche of all, from the deadlocked women who looks like a predator, the quintessential attractive blondes, to the fat film geek guy - who is the source of many a horror movie reference during the film.

After the unlikely group settle in, the not so unlikely drunken party starts, a party which is soon interrupted by a knock of the door of the cabin...The knock is the local weirdo with a scary tail to tell. The man proceeds to tell the group about the legend of a lost Nazi battalion whose evil presence remains on the mountain.

Well it doesn't take long before the man's fears are realized, and the group soon start dropping like flies, and it drops to a few remaining to survivors to face the ravenous army of Nazi zombies. The group of remaining characters, one resembling Ash from Evil Dead, with an amputated arm and chainsaw combo, dispense with the zombie horde in more and more over-the-top and super gory ways.

The special effects are pretty convincing for such a low budget indie film, and each zombie death is more original and mega gory  than the next. Dead Snow is good old-fashioned comedy horror fun. A little indie gem which is up there among the best comedy horrors that I've seen.

Dead End (2003)

On Christmas Eve Frank Harrington (Ray Wise) is driving  his family to his in-laws for Christmas and decides to take a shortcut. Things soon start to go wrong, as the road they are on seems neverending and they are terrorised by the ghost of a young woman.


The film is described as a 'horror thriller' on its IMDb page, but to me it seemed more like a comedy, mainly due to the hilarious antics of Frank Harrington himself. With constant over-the-top reactions and wise cracks, Ray Wise is hilarious in this film. With his dum daughter, annoying son in-law and crazy wife nagging him all the way, he soon starts to crack up.


The family members soon start disapearing one by one, and the last you see of them are their faces stuck to the back window of a mysterious black hurse which drives past them in part of some morbid death ritual.


The film feels like a horror version of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. By the way they are set up, even the scares seem like they are meant to be funny rather than scary. Dead End isn't to be taken seriously as a horror, even if that was what the director intended.

At The Devils Door (2014)

So, the film starts with a young girl and her boyfriend hanging out with a bunch of devil worshiping weirdo’s who talk her into playing a game of “keep your eye on the cup”, the result of which will decide  whether or not she has been chosen to be possessed by the devil. 

Needless to say, the girl wins and is told by one of the cult members to stand at a road junction and say her name and the devil will appear.  She is possessed and forced to do evil things, but eventually kills herself. The devil’s spirit remains in her house and tries to find a way back into the souls of whoever lives there.

The rest film is set some thirty the years later (present day) and follows a real estate agent trying to sell the possessed house. Things take a bit too long to get going for my liking with practically nothing happening for the first half hour. The scene when the real estate agent discovers that she has just been talking to the ghost of the girl who committed suicide in the house, is just ridiculous to me.
The natural reaction would be to get the hell out of the there, but she follows the girl around the house. I mean she’s just asking for trouble.

The evil spirit passes from person to person during the film with some great shock scares along the way. The scenes where the sisters each search the house in the dark with torches are really creepy – I was just waiting for something to jump out. I found the scene with the girl standing in front of the mirror the creepiest of all -  with that sinister voice.

Altogether, this wasn't a bad effort. It slowed down and dragged in parts, but there were plenty of scares and creepy moments; and the ‘floating in the air’ possessions scenes were very convincing. This film brings something different to the possession sub-genre.

Final Destination 5 (2013)

In my opinion the Final Destination franchise is the worst series of horror films released in the last 20 years, beating even the many crappy Saw sequels, and the fifth installment of this terrible franchise is the worst yet. Now, pretty much all aspects of this film are bad, but let start with the acting. The two main characters and best friends Peter 'eyebrows' Friedkin (Miles Fisher) and Sam Lawton (Nicholas D'Agosto), really do take the biscuit with some of the worst acting I've ever seen. Not only is their line delivery shocking, but Peter Freidkins eyebrow prevent the viewer from taking him seriously at all (you will understand when you see them.)

The inevitable far-fetched and ridiculous deaths start happening right from the start. When Sam and Miles embark on a work trip with their colleges. Whilst sat on a coach in a traffic jam, Sam has a premonition that the bridge they are on will soon collapse. .


Just as he starts warning the group of their imminent deaths, the bridge starts to crumble beneath them. Luckily enough, however, the main characters all survive, while a bunch of extras die when the bus plunges into the river below.  The rest of the film plays out the same as previous four installments - with death hunting down the annoying characters and eventually catching up with them in increasingly ridiculous ways.

The paycheck wasn't bad, so I don't give a fuck!

There's practically no plot. Just a showcase of stupidity and bad acting in-between the death scenes. I actually enjoyed the death scenes, not for the special effects or gore, but because one of the annoying characters had been killed. The final scene in the kitchen is a showcase of all the things that make this film terrible: the terrible acting, ridiculous script, and predictable deaths. The only highlights:  the crappy actors eventually die, and Tony 'Candyman' Todd's cameo.

I really hope they don't make any more of these films. I wouldn't even categorize this crap as cinema. Stay well clear of this, or you'll regret it.

Oculus (2014)

As it was partly a WWE production, I was initially skeptical about Oculus,but it turned to be pretty good. Also, as a Doctor Who fan, I was also looking forward to seeing Karen Gillan on the big screen, I wasn't disappointed.

The film has a twisted roller coaster of a plot, that I didn't really understand fully on the first viewing. The story plays out in two different time periods: present day, and 11 years earlier, and swaps between them as the film progresses. The plot involves siblings Tim and Kaylie, and starts in the past with older Tim shooting a his younger sister (told you it's a twisted plot). Tim had always blamed his shooting his sister on a mirror in the family living room, which he claimed had some kind of dark power. In present day, older Tim is released from the nuthouse, and is met by his sister Kaylie, who he apparently didn't shoot in the past at all...

The story doesn't make sense at first, but slowly unravels, so stick with it. Kaylie tells Tim that she has purchased to strange mirror again, and wanted to performed a little experiment to find out what happened 11 years earlier. So, if Tim didn't shoot his sister who did he shoot?... He shot his Dad.  After the evil spirit of a woman came out of the mirror and drove his parents insane, his dad attacked him, so he was forced to shoot him. While Tim was locked up, Kaylie did some research on the mirror, and discovered that everyone who has owned it in the past has either disappeared or been killed.

Who said starbuck was dead..

The film continues swapping between past and present, showing us how Kaylie and Tim's lives play out in both timelines. Once you find out that the mirror has the power to create illusions and can convinced people they aren't where they really are, you will be able to figure out whats really happening (mostly).

Backed up by a great soundtrack, Oculus is a mind-bending ghost story with plenty of tense scenes that will have you on the edge on your seat. There are a few shock scares in there as well, one of which made me spill my beer, lol. As well having a complex and compelling plot, the cast were great too. Karen Gillan was great as Kaylie (I'm looking forward to seeing her in more films). It was also nice to see Katie Sackhoff in a film again, I've been a fan of her's after first watching Battlestar Gallactica.

Most people will watch Oculus and think I doesn't make sense. I thought the same thing about Donnie Darko the first time I saw that, but after a few viewings, it became and still is one of my favorite films. So give it a chance.

Tremors (1990)

Tremors is a classic B-movie monster movie, and one of my all-time favorite films. Set in a small Nevada town called perfection, the film mostly revolves around to local handymen, Valentine McGee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward). The two soon realize that the residents of the small are not alone in the baron dessert valley, when they discover a giant thirty-foot-long underground worm. 

Ward and Bacon suit their characters perfectly, Ward being the grumpy old redneck and Bacon the cocky young cowboy wannabe. My favorite character, however, has always been Burt Gummer (Micheal Gross). A local gun enthusiast who had previously been mocked by the towns folk for his lifestyle, soon becomes their lifeline. My favorite scene of the whole film is the one when one of the Graboids breaks into Burt's basement, and he, and his wife Heather kill it with a hail of bullets from their sizable gun collection, with Burt eventually finishing the creature off with two blast of his Elephant Gun.

Burt and Heather Gummer

The practical special effects in the film were groundbreaking at the time and still look convincing to this day. You won't see any CGI in this film, which is a refreshing change, there's nothing like good honest practical effects. The only film that I can really compare it to in terms of practical effects is The Thing (1982). 

The film is a mix of comedy, monster movie, and western. - an unlikely mix of genres that works perfectly in this case. The comedy in the film comes from Val and Earls constant wisecracking, and also the over-the-top reactions and statements of the crazy gun-nut Burt. As well as comedy, the film has some genuine 'make you jump' moments - which are well-timed and put together. Everything happens at a brisk pace, maintaining the tension throughout - hence the 90 minute running time. 

Tremors is a quick, fun, action comedy horror, which has cemented its place as one the best monster movies ever made (in my opinion).