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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Chop (2011)

   Lance Reed's (Will Keenan) car breaks down and he accepts a ride from a stranger (Timmy Muskatell) who, he finds out shortly after, has a grudge against Lance for something he did years earlier when he was a worthless crazed crack addict.
   I'll start by saying Chop is more of a dark comedy than a horror movie.I really had no intention of writing a review when I sat down to watch it, but I loved it so much that I felt I couldn't pass up the chance to share the craziness I endured.
   Lance introduces himself to the seemingly helpful stranger who has just picked him up but the stranger doesn't bother to offer his name ( his name is never revealed). When Lance thinks the stranger notices, he informs him that he has a glass eye from a childhood car accident.Lance asks the stranger if he will drop him off in town where he can have his wife pick him up and mentions that his half-brother sold him the car that just broke down on him.The stranger asks Lance who's life he would save if he could only save one of them and then asks him if he's ever been shot by a tranquilizer gun, and you can guess how that turned out.The stranger then takes him to a place where he has Lance's brother tied up and tells him he has to kill his brother to save his wife.After Lance kills his brother the stranger shows him pictures he's taken of Lance's wife and brother having sex. As some strange form of torture he tells Lance that he has to go home and pretend he knows nothing of the affair and if he finds out that he's said anything to his wife he'll make sure the cops find his brother's body.
   Three weeks later Lance is having a hard time pretending not to know about his wife's indiscretion and tries to coax a confession out of her.Seconds later the stranger calls and tells him he knows he didn't honor their deal and detectives Williams (Adam Minarovich) and Roebuck (Tamil T. Rhee) show up later to inform Lance that they found the body of his missing brother.The detectives show Lance the pictures the stranger took of his wife and brother that they found in his dead brother's pocket and ask him if he knows the woman in the pictures.Lance's hilariously unconvincing and nervous reaction to their news arouses suspicion and they ask him if he can go into the station soon to give them a DNA sample.Lance tells his wife, Emily (Tanisha), the news of his brother being found dead and her reaction sends him and his old crack pipe that he held onto after getting sober on a search for drugs.Lance changes his mind and returns home to find the stranger in his home posing as a cable man.The stranger kills Emily and a drugged Lance later wakes to find that his left hand is bandaged and missing a finger.Just as he's realizing what just happened, Williams and Roebuck knock on the door and when asked about his finger, Lance blames it on a lawn mower accident.The detectives would like to question his wife but he tells them she'll probably be gone for a while (more like forever). Lance agrees to to show up at the station to give his DNA sample at 3:00 the next day and the detectives discuss with each other that he's probably killed his wife as they're leaving his house.Lance, now at his wits end, pulls out his trusty old crack pipe and starts tearing his house apart after smoking looking for more , going as far as...how should i put this?...um...he gives himself a cavity search (There! I said it! Yeah, my jaw dropped to the floor then I paused it and laughed hysterically, then I had to rewind and watch it one more time.Don't judge me!!).
   After waking the next day with a syringe sticking out of his neck and finding his left hand now has only a thumb, Lance decides to tell the detectives what has been happening.Williams and Roebuck, even though they don't really believe him, stake out Lances house that night and fall victim to the stranger.Once again Lance wakes to find the stranger has drugged him and taken more fingers and he's now left with only two thumbs.When Lance asks how the stranger knew that he talked to the cops the stranger informs him that he has a bug planted in Lance's glass eye.He drugs Lance again and takes him to an undisclosed location where he ties him up and plans to continue torturing him until he remembers what he did to him and apologizes.Lance tells the stranger that he wasn't sure at first and he was ashamed to admit it but he remembers him.Lance tells him the story of how he was having a bad day because he had no money for drugs and he hit him with his car and robbed him, and is still carrying around his money clip engraved with the name "Ray Fielding". As it turns out, the stranger is not Ray and is very irritated by the fact that Lance still doesn't remember him.The stranger looks Ray up and calls him offering to let him chop off Lance's leg to make up for the leg he lost when Lance hit him with his car.Ray (Mark Irvingsen) shows up with his depraved pedophile cousin Jeff (Jeff Sisson) to exact his revenge but when Jeff wants to chop off Lance's leg and have sex with the stump it's too much even for the psychotic stranger so he asks them to leave, kills them when they refuse, then chops off  Lance's leg himself.
   When the stranger later mentions he had a daughter that was taken from him Lance thinks that Tammy (Elina Madison), a hooker he accidentally killed, must have been the stranger's daughter. Again he's wrong and loses his remaining leg to the hooker's lover Stephanie (Malaya Manson) who the stranger tracked down after hearing Lance's story.Lance now fingerless and legless begs the stranger to kill him but he wants to know what he did to him that was so terrible.He refuses to tell Lance what he did stating that dying without knowing will be his final punishment and injects Lance with poison that should kill him in one minute or so.Right before Lance dies he finally remembers and I won't tell you what he did.You absolutely have to watch Chop and find out for yourself.
   So, I know it seems that I've given away most of the movie but I really haven't.There is so much more to it and the laughs are nonstop.Chop was laden with with the kind of sick humor that I crave and take part in on a daily basis (Again, don't judge me!!). Will Keenan and Timothy Muskatell did an excellent job and though there wasn't much gore, the little that they did have to offer was at least quality.Chop is definitely in the top ten of the funniest movies I've ever seen and Netflix's 3.2 out of 5 stars doesn't do it justice.I say it deserves 4.8.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Fido (2006)

   Timmy Robinson's (Kesun Loder) best friend is his family's zombie servant Fido (Billy Connolly). When Fido snacks on one of the neighbors he sets a small zombie outbreak into motion putting the Robinson family at risk of being thrown out of the safety of their gated community and into the "wild zone"  where untamed zombies roam free.
   Zomcon seems to have the zombie problem under control in 1950's town of Willard. After what is referred to as "the zombie wars" were won in the 1940's, Dr. Greiger, the founder of Zomcon, had the city surrounded by steel walls and invented a zombie domestication collar, complete with remote control, to curb the appetites of zombies and allow them to be used as servants.Helen Robinson (Carrie-Anne Moss), embarrassed by being the only family in town without a zombie servant, surprises zombiephobic husband Bill (Dylan Baker) and son Timmy with a new undead addition to their family.Timmy decides to name his new zombie friend  Fido after he gets out and follows Timmy to the park and saves him from bullies Roy (Aaron Brown) and Stan Fraser (Brandon Olds), who later get blamed for the death of Mrs. Henderson. While in the park, Fido, who is not supposed to be out without a leash, is attacked by the Robinson's elderly neighbor Mrs. Henderson while he's trying to retrieve Timmy's baseball.His collar malfunctions when she hits it with her walker and she instantly becomes a meal.Fido's collar returns to working order just before he's about to make Timmy his second course.Timmy does his best to try to cover up the mess Fido has made but when he later sneaks out to bury Mrs. Henderson he finds that she has become a zombie.Timmy and Helen, who has also grown very fond of Fido,try to keep anyone from finding out that Fido is the cause of the now small zombie outbreak but neighbor and head of Zomcon security, John Bottoms (Henry Czerny), figures out that Fido is responsible.John takes him away to be "disposed of" but spares the Robinson's the usual fate reserved for people who's zombies attack of being thrown out into the wild zone.Timmy and Helen are crushed when Fido is taken away but Bill, who doesn't pay much attention to his family, much less Fido, could care less.John Bottoms' daughter Cindy (Alexia Fast) later informs Timmy that Fido is still alive (or undead I suppose) and being forced to work in the Zomcon building so Timmy enlists his neighbor, Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) and his zombie girlfriend Tammy (Sonja Bennett), to help him break Fido out of Zomcon (That's right...I said zombie girlfriend.In his defense she's pretty well preserved...wait, what am I saying?She's still a dead person!Maybe all of these zombie movies are desensitizing me and making me open to the possibility of falling in love with a hot rotting zombie...sorry, I lost it there for a second but I'm back now...I think.).
   Fido was a hilarious movie.This was no B-Horror movie  attempt at being funny.Fido boasted an excellent cast and kept me laughing and entertained throughout the entire movie.Fido, at times, was basically a Lassie movie with a zombie in place of the dog and they played on it as such, down to the fact that the boy's name is Timmy. Billy Connolly did a fantastic job as Fido, without ever speaking a word he was able to convey a myriad of emotions with his humorous zombified  face.He made me love and root for a zombie!The idea of domesticating zombies and using them as servants or slaves was amusing and more original than most zombie movies which tend to pretty much follow the same plot consisting of a handful of survivors trying to make it to some far away destination that may or may not have survivors and provide safety from the undead.Netflix rated Fido 3.9 out of 5 stars but I'll give it 4.9.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Love Object (2004)

   Love Object is a touching love story about a man and his $10,000 silicone sex doll (I'm sorry, did  I say "touching" ? I meant "creepy".). Kenneth Winslow (Desmond Harrington) is a socially awkward copywriter who explores his sexuality with his sex doll Nikki (played by a skanky mannequin). When Kenneth gets the courage to make a move on the human object of his affection, his assistant Lisa, his doll becomes extremely jealous and Kenneth starts to lose his mind.
   As a joke Kenneth's coworkers show him an advertisement for the realistic sex doll "Nikki". Kenneth who has a crush on his new assistant Lisa (Melissa Sagemiller) later orders Nikki over the internet and designs her to look like Lisa.When his doll arrives he doesn't waste any time taking her out of the crate and making sweet love to her (okay, it was more like two minutes of carnal animal sex...two minutes?Poor Nikki.). Through experimentation with Nikki, Kenneth adds several new positions and kinky practices to his repertoire and begins to see Nikki as his girlfriend, even having conversations with her as if she's speaking to him.Kenneth eventually gets the nerve up to ask Lisa out and as their relationship blossoms and he starts spending less time with Nikki she becomes jealous and threatens to tell Lisa about their relationship (??? Wow, she doesn't even speak...I would like to have seen how that scenario played out!). He begins to try and shut Nikki out, but when he leaves her on the couch for the night he wakes to find her in his bed choking him and even comes home to find her with a knife in her hand and slashed pictures of Lisa.Eventually Kenneth can't take anymore of his psycho sex doll's harassment and dismembers her in his bathtub and throws her in a dumpster outside of his apartment building (I loved how he did it in a bathtub as if there was going to be blood...is Nikki really the one with the mental problem here? I think not.I can't believe he would treat Nikki that way...I'm willing to bet she let him do unspeakable things to her sexually without a single protest and he just dumps her for a real girl who probably only enjoys the missionary position!). Lisa later finds the sex doll advertisement in Kenneth's office and freaks out on him when she realizes his "stalker ex-girlfriend Nikki" is actually a doll and that the suit he bought her and the haircut he suggested for her looks just like the "Nikki" doll advertisement.So Kenneth now having blown it with his human girlfriend and his silicone girlfriend completely loses his mind.
   Not a great movie.Nikki was so creepy looking that I find it hard to believe that even the most desperate man could stand to have sex with her...it...whatever.I knew Love Object wasn't going to be a good movie but I couldn't resist watching it.My feelings about this movie are actually very conflicted...I have no complaints as far as the acting goes (except for maybe Nikki, her performance was pretty bland), it was very well acted. I think the creepy looking sex doll who spoke but didn't really speak and moved supposedly but you never saw it, just rubbed me the wrong way.It just left me wondering if the doll was really jealous of Lisa or if he was just insane (probably the latter). I'm having a hard time pinpointing exactly what made me dislike Love Object so much but the fact is I just didn't like it.I will however give it credit for having a totally unexpected ending.Netflix rated Love Object 2.8 out of 5 stars.I say 2.3.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Believe (1999)

   Benjamin Stiles (Ricky Mabe), after being kicked out of several boarding schools, is sent to live with his strict grandfather where he and his new friend Katherine try to solve the mystery of what happened to a ghost that keeps appearing to them.LAME!!!I have absolutely no idea how this movie ended up in the horror category on Netflix.It started out somewhat intriguing and I hung in there because I thought something really interesting might develop, but near the end of the movie I began to realize that Believe was more of an after-school special than a legitimate horror movie.
   Benjamin's grandfather, Jason Stiles (Jan Rubes), doesn't believe the stories of everyone around him that claim to have seen the ghost of a woman around his mansion and forbids anyone to talk about it.Benjamin becomes friends with local girl Katherine Winslowe (Elisha Cuthbert) and they decide to help the ghost they have been seeing find peace and later discover that the ghost is the deceased sister of Benjamin's grandfather.Benjamin and Katherine are prohibited from seeing each other when Jason Stiles and Katherine's great uncle, Ellicott Winslowe (Ben Gazzara), find out that they are friends.That being said...it turns out Ellicott and Jason's sister were in a relationship when she died and the two men had been blaming each other for years for her accidental death though neither of them were anywhere in the vicinity when it happened.
   Okay, so there went my hopes that something sinister happened to Jason's sister.I can't believe I sat through Believe to find out that the ghost everyone had been seeing just wanted her brother and her lover to stop hating each other and blaming each other for her death.Really?This was considered a horror movie?Okay,so in hindsight I realized maybe I should have checked the rating on this movie...I later noticed after watching it that it is rated PG-13...definitely a red flag for me.I wouldn't have wasted my time if I had noticed beforehand.As far as family movies go,I guess it was an alright movie, but I went into it expecting horror so I'm a little perturbed.I wasn't anticipating a sappy life lesson for sure, at the very least I expected the ghost to have been the product of murder or suicide and be hellbent on getting revenge or something.I had all of these scenarios running through my head of what might have happened to Jason's sister..like her brother murdered her because he was in love with her and couldn't have her or something sick and disturbing like that (What?You people already know I'm a sicko! I watch a minimum of five horror movies a week...enough said.)
   I'll be checking the ratings on movies from now on for sure.It was never an issue until now because I guess I just assumed that all horror movies are rated R...wait, what am I saying? REAL horror movies ARE rated R and Believe was not a horror movie just because Netflix seems to think so.I won't be fooled again!!So Netflix gave Believe 3 out of 5 stars which is accurate if you're watching and expecting it to be a family movie, but as far as it's horror movie rating goes it's half a star even though I guess that's unfair because it just ISN'T a horror movie!!Oh well...
   WOW!!!!I just checked out trailer for Believe and it has the nerve to say it's as haunting as The Sixth Sense...I almost fell out of my chair laughing...Can you say delusional?