movie-o-meter

Freakdog (2008)

Release Date: August 22nd, 2008

Originally titled Red Mist, it’s about some guy, with the nickname of Freakdog, who’s almost killed by some doctors and one of them tries to revive him with an experimental drug that just gives him the power to possess anyone’s body. It’s starring Arielle Kebbel, so I thought it might be ok, but it wasn’t. Avoid at all costs.

100 Feet (2008)

Release Date: August 14th, 2008

This was an interesting ghost story. A woman who killed her abusive (cop) husband in self defense is on house arrest under the watch of her dead husband’s former partner. Every time he comes in to check on her, she has more bruises, so he thinks she took the fall for the real murderer. He doesn’t find out until the end that her husband’s ghost has been showing up to beat her. It’s not super scary, not a very good horror movie. It’s alright.

The Burrowers (2008)

Release Date: September 9th, 2008

Actually widely released in April of 2009. It’s about a group of white Westerners going in search of some other white people who went missing. They blame a Native American tribe, who eventually teaches them that their people have been taken by the Burrowers, a species that drug their victims, bury them STILL ALIVE, and then wait for them to begin decomposing before they eat them. I thought it would be good, because it was really different, right? Like what other movie have you heard of being a Western AS WELL AS horror? Basically none. But it was not good. I couldn’t even finish it. First of all, the Burrower creatures looked like second rate Men in Black aliens. They apparently fully reveal them later on in the movie, but the glimpses I saw were just blurry background shots. It was really disappointing. The acting wasn’t bad, though. And it at least doesn’t beat around the bush about how awful white people were toward Natives, and vice versa.

April Fool’s Day (2008)

Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Low budget, soap opera acting, and a stupid script made this direct-to-video movie horrible. I haven’t seen the 1986 original, but it has to be better than this. A rich girl who’s a terrible bitch gets off on pranking people in her friend group in horrible ways, and then she takes it too far, someone dies, and someone else is out for revenge. Scout Taylor-Compton from the Halloween remakes is in it, which is weird, and yeah she’s the most famous one. I wouldn’t suggest watching this one.

Day of the Dead (2008)

Release Date: April 8th, 2008

A loose remake of the movie from 1985, which was about the military dealing with the zombies. This one is about the military being unable to contain an outbreak that’s quickly spreading through a small town. It’s starring Mena Suvari and Nick Cannon.... Of all people. Mena Suvari used to be so great in the 90s. Remember American Beauty? (Shitty movie.... Cult classic, though.) It’s horribly acted and the zombie sequences & makeup both suck.

Deadgirl (2008)

Release Date: September 6th, 2008

A TERRIBLE horror movie about boys who use zombie girls as sex slaves and weapons. These two friends find a zombie girl strapped to a table in some abandoned building, and one uses her for sex at the other one’s protest. The other one gets some other friends involved, eventually there’s a living girl that’s tied up.... It’s just bad. Who thought this up? 

Amusement (2008)

Release Date: October 9th, 2008

Actually released in January 2009 in the US, it’s a horror film in 3 parts that come together in the end. The first part is a girl and her boyfriend driving down the freeway in a convoy, something I had never heard of until seeing this movie, and then this one gets really complicated because it leads you to believe the truck driver is creepy when it’s really the Jeep driver.... Anyway, the girl is abducted. Second story is the “giant clown statue” urban legend. Girl is abducted. Third story is about a girl and her boyfriend going to an old hotel to look for a friend that’s missing....Girl gets abducted. In the end they’re all 3 old friends who have been abducted by a psycho who was a sociopath as a kid that they made fun of. It’s bad.

The Eye (2008)

Release Date: February 1st, 2008

I think Jessica Alba is a terrible actress and this film is further proof that she was hired for her looks alone. This is YET ANOTHER American remake of an Asian horror film, and it’s also not a good one. A blind woman receives an eye transplant and can suddenly see spirits. She eventually learns that her donor was someone who killed herself because she had the same visions and couldn’t save people from dying, and Jessica Alba realizes that’s her new purpose. Awful.

Prom Night (2008)

Release Date: April 11th, 2008

You know what, I really like this movie. A girl whose family had been murdered by a psychopathic teacher who was obsessed with her has moved on with her life, and is now attending the prom with her friends. The same night, her aunt and uncle, who she now lives with, and the local police learn that the homicidal teacher has escaped from prison, or wherever he is, and they decide to let the girl stay at the hotel where the prom is happening. And everyone dies. I am probably one of the only people to enjoy this movie, it’s a remake of an older movie so of course nobody can think it’s good, and it’s a teen slasher flick so there’s another strike against it. But it’s dark and exciting and the script isn’t awful. I liked it. 

Mirrors (2008)

Release Date: August 15th, 2008

Kind of scary. This ex-cop takes a job as a security guard at a burned down former department store. He starts seeing weird things happening in mirrors, and discovers that the department store was built on top of an old hospital. Story involves demons and a girls reflection ripping its jaw open, therefore doing it to her also. It was messed up. The movie is alright, and the ending isn’t a twist, but close enough. I wouldn’t warn anyone against the movie, but I don’t see an interest in seeing it again.

One Missed Call (2008)

Release Date: January 4th, 2008

Another film that was a remake of an Asian one. It’s about people who die after receiving voicemails from themselves dying in the future. It’s not like their future self calls them to say “hey, we die today,” it’s that they get a voicemail of the last thing that happens to them. Some little girl’s spirit does it, I don’t know. It’s not very good. I’m surprised I hadn’t seen this before, but I had forgotten about it after it was released and I couldn’t go see it. Also, Ariel Winter plays an evil child.

Splinter (2008)

Release Date: October 31st, 2008

Horror movies should never be released actually on Halloween. What a juvenile mistake. I thought I knew what this movie was about, but apparently not. It’s somewhat of a zombie movie, where a fungus-like parasite reanimates corpses by eating their blood, fusing body parts together to make gigantic monsters. Also, severed limbs attack on their own. The entire movie is set at a gas station, and the cast is like 6 people. Total. That’s the kind of movie this is. It’s also super low budget. Like, alright I get it. You wanted to make a “different” zombie movie, but did you need to pull plot points from Idle Hands AND Power Rangers?

Shutter (2008)

Release Date: March 21st, 2008

One of the rare mainstream 2008 horror films I‘ve never seen, it’s about a newlywed couple in Japan for the photographer husbands job. They’re driving down a country road one night when they hit a girl, but can’t find her body or even any blood. They start seeing lights in all of the husbands photographs, as well as spooky occurrences and premonitions. The longer the movie goes on, the more devastating it becomes. Like.... It’s not what you think it is, but it’s still a horror movie all the same. It could have been done better. It’s a remake of a Thai film from 2004, also called Shutter, that I’ve never seen. This one wasn’t highly entertaining or scary. Just kind of like an unraveling mystery.

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

Release Date: July 19th, 2008

This had the most potential out of any horror movie I’ve seen..... The most wasted potential. Bradley Cooper plays a New York photographer who wants to catch his big break, and a famous gallery owner is going to help him, only if he delivers “raw images” to her, so he goes down into the subway and gets photos of a gang trying to assault a woman, and he saves her. She gets into the subway and is immediately killed by someone else. Bradley Cooper’s character continues going into the subway or out on the streets at night to get pictures for this gallery owner, and in doing so, launches his own investigation into the people who go missing on the subway. And it shows this other guy just brutally murdering whoever is on that subway train late at night, and you’re into it, and it’s a mystery. And then the HUGE SPOILER twist is that the people are murdered so these alien lizards can eat them and don’t come onto the streets and kill everyone else. It’s idiotic.

Cloverfield (2008)

Release Date: January 18th, 2008

I saw this for the first time a couple of years ago. I still have mixed feelings. I think the actress who plays Beth, Odette Yustman, is SO pretty, but her character only shows up in the beginning and the end as the damsel in distress. A group of people try to escape Manhattan when a giant alien creature attacks it, film courtesy of a handheld camcorder. We were expecting a sequel for years, and instead received a movie called 10 Cloverfield Lane, a non-sequel that’s just next up in this weird little franchise. This movie would have been better as a regular one, not a trendy found footage trash one.

Quarantine (2008)

Release Date: October 10th, 2008

The American remake of the Spanish movie REC, from 2007, it’s literally the exact same thing, but in English. It’s a found footage film, they go into an apartment building, there are zombies, they’re locked inside by the government to contain the problem, they die. The end of the movie, the end of my review.