Quite frankly, I've never really liked Milla Jovovich. Well, she wasn't bad in "Dazed and Confused", but everything from, and including, "The Fifth Element" on, sucked ass. I should mention that the ending of "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" was okay, but only because she burned at the stake. Anyhow, as a horror loyalist, of course I've seen all the "Resident Evil" films and, despite Jovovich's best attempts to steer me otherwise, I find them mildly entertaining. I mean, what's not to like? Zombies get slaughtered. Good enough. The fourth installment, "Resident Evil: Afterlife", was the only new film to come out this last weekend and it won the box office with ease... it was the highest grossing yet for the franchise, but was the least attended. Why's that, you ask? Because it was in 3D and 84% of the theater-goers paid the premium to see it in that format. This Friday, we get "Devil", which was written by another person that I've grown to loathe, M. Night Shyamalan. It's directed by someone else, Drew and John Erick Dowdle, which is great... but it's PG-13, which isn't so great. Anyhow, let's check out the new horror that's out on DVD this week. As usual, you can see the trailers for these films on our Youtube Page and you can click on the titles to be taken to their Amazon Page, where you can read more about them and/or buy them."Mad Ron's Prevues From Hell
" is a classic horror movie compilation and it's hosted by ventriloquist Nick Pawlow and his zombie pal, Happy Goldsplatt. They drape a loose idea around the compilation, as they're entertaining a theater that's filled with Happy's zombie buddies, with the trailers being presented by a drooling, half-wit, cannibal projectionist named Mad Ron. In any case, it's definitely one for the horror enthusiast, as it goes through 47 classic horror trailers.Holy crap, the trailer for "Necromentia
" makes it my pick of the week, for sure. Directed by Pearry Teo, the acclaimed director of "The Gene Generation", the film has been called "Saw" meets "Hellraiser", but better than both... it appears to be filled with gore and erotic tortures, as three desperate men attempt to open the gates of hell and transcend the boundaries of death. Check out the trailer - I'll be picking this one up today.Very rarely can Bill Cosby be tied to a horror film, but it can be done with "Within
". Hanelle M. Culpepper is an award winning writer/director whose career was started after her first screenplay earned her admission into Bill and Camille Cosby's prestigious screenwriting program for African-American writers. The film was meant for the Family Network or something like that, but the trailer looks okay... if you're into PG-13 ghost stories."Bloodwood Cannibals
" is a feature film that's based on the "Hunting the Unknown" web series. "Hunting the Unknown" is, or was, a web series that's based around the exploits of Nigel Thorne, an adventurer that leads a crew to search for mythical creatures, such as the Yeti, Chupacabra or The Mothman. There's a group of characters, including a producer, an associate producer, a videographer, a sound operator and an editor. In "Bloodwood", they come to find a monster in the Bloodwood Forest, but end up fighting a group of feral cannibals. If you get the DVD, it includes the entire "Hunting the Unknown" web series.
", which is available in both Blu-ray and regular def. It's a feature length CGI film, writing by Shotaro Suga and directed by Makoto Kamiya. So, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say it's a Japanese film... and, after further inspection it, in fact, is. It's more based on the video games than the existing films, as the plot revolves around characters from the games. In the film, a zombie attack brings chaos to Harvardville Airport and Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, who fought the sinister Umbrella Corporation during the Raccoon City tragedy 7 years ago, are back. I actually had a chance to watch the first little bit of it and it's exactly what you would expect from an R rated, CGI zombie films. If that's your thing, you should check it out.
", which is a little shocking because I swear that "Pulse 2: Afterlife" JUST came out... they must have shot them all at once or back to back. If you remember, the original "Pulse" was written by Wes Craven and Ray Wright, directed by Jim Sonzero and it was based on a Japanese film called "Kairo", about a computer hacker who accidentally channels a bunch of ghosts and demons through a mysterious wireless signal. "Pulse 2: Afterlife" was written and directed by Joel Soisson and was loosely connected to the first one... "Pulse 3" is, once again, from Joel Soisson and the plot of this one revolves around a girl who travels back to a city populated by the dead in the search of a mysterious internet lover.
" is a film that you and I should probably check out... as I haven't seen it yet, but have heard quite a bit about it. Jay and Mark Duplass are a couple of micro-cinema filmmakers, who went out a few years back and made the indie film "The Puffy Chair", which you probably haven't heard about because it's a sensitive, funny, quirky relationship movie. However, while shooting it, a crew member raised the question, "what's the scariest thing you can think of?". Someone replied "a guy with a bag on his head, staring into your window." And "Baghead" was born from that conversation... they set out with $50K and came back with this, a film that opened at Sundance and had buyers calling them, making insanely inflated offers.
", which won Anthony Falcon, the writer and director, the Festival Recognition award at the Bare Bones International Film Festival in 2007. It's about a guy who wakes up to find his wife missing and a puzzle to solve. He then must reconnect with his life and discover a puzzle of lies and deception about himself, his wife and his family in order to stay alive for the next 40 days and nights... while living through starvation and horror.