Hood of Horror (2006)

NIGHT 9

       "Man, go f*ck yourself. N*gga!"

Hood of Horror (2006), sometimes known as Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror, is an anthology horror film that is a cross between Tales of the Crypt (1972), Creepshow (1982) and  Tales from the Hood (1995. 

The story presents three "urban" African American-themed stories spun together with a framing story starring a fictional Snoop Dogg, in his new job as a "hound of hell." 

One thing I can say about this movie is that it is an interesting concept. This is why I was curious enough to check it out, and I can't say I was disappointment it was actually very interesting in the end.

I really didn't care for the stories presented here, but then again I'm not really the target audience so I'm not sure how much my opinion really matters at all truthfully. I liked the concept of the first story "Crossed Out," which was probably my favorite but I felt the morals trying to be presented were very muddy to say the least. I feel it could have been done a lot better. Likewise I felt the concept of "Rapsody Askew" was an interesting choice for the film, but there really wasn't a whole lot to it. One simple twist and then you're yawning through it. Most of the stories felt like there really just wasn't enough content to them. The movie is 88 minutes, but you factor in the added gore and sex, the long opening titles, the ten-minute rap music video they called credits and there's not much real content in the film.

The other reason the stories stunk was their gratuitous amounts of added gore and sex, they really seemed to go over board in these departments. And it weighs down the stories, feels unnecessary as they do it, and not to mention is highly unrealistic!

The framing story here is also down right terrible. I think(?) what they're trying to be clever and point out a parallel between the hood and purgatory? But it's all very heavy handed and not well pulled off. Why was the dwarf Satan? Because it'd be funny? Why was the dwarf vomiting all the time? Same reason.

The acting in this film is across the board terrible. I don't know who thought Snoop Dogg could act (probably Snoop?) But even the actors who can act like Jason Alexander and Billy Dee Williams end up in these very cartoony roles that are just plain silly.

Even though I don't listen to much Rap or Hip hop I must admit I thought the soundtrack to this film was quite good! Probably the worst song was Snoop's film tie-in but I'm willing to let that pass. I actually don't know why more films don't use Hip hop soundtracks, it can be very cinematic and definitely set a mood just as well as anything else.

I also really enjoyed the opening animated sequence, which was a collaboration by Madhouse and Titmouse, two of the best animation studios in the industry right now. I wish this was on a better film, but at least it improved the film, and gave a little more weight to Snoop's "acting."

Hood of Horror (2006), did not grab me at all. But I found it interesting to say the least.

2/5 Stars.

Happy watching!




This review is part of my 2014 run of 13 Nights of Macabre Movies! Tune in tomorrow as I review another different take on the anthology horror film, tomorrow I review the fully animated, French film Fear(s) of the Dark (2007).

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House at the End of the Street (2012)

"I like the way you see things... I like the way you see me."

House at the End of the Street (2012) is poorly reviewed horror film that is a little confused about what it’s trying to do/be. Elissa and her (newly?) divorced mother just moved away from their previous home in Chicago, into a house somewhere (?) in the woods, they find an house that’s apparently really cheap because next door, years ago a little girl killed both her parents then went missing. Elissa soon discovers the girl’s brother still lives in that house and is treated like crap by everyone in the town.

The film has a good twist, not a great twist mind you, and nothing that hasn’t been done before but it’s at least decently carried out. And although it’s not written well but I also appreciated the attempt to build up and develop the back story and characters.

I found the acting of the two leads to be pretty decent. I really like Jennifer Laurence and this is her first attempt at being a scream queen, I think she did pretty well, but the poorly written script holds her back quite a bit. I was actually really taken by Max Thieriot’s performance as the surviving brother Ryan. He really showed a lot of great subtlety and some good range with very little dialogue. And the two of them have some really decent chemistry onscreen, that’s probably what I liked most about this film. (Pretty bad if I'm saying this and we're only in The Good!

The camera work/editing is interesting, it does some interesting things which I appreciated but often they landed too far off the mark and just seemed like “let’s do this" or "it’ll be cool if…” decisions rather than decisions with any meaning behind them.

The worst thing about this film is it’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer to the skull. House at the End of the Street takes place in a world where people just blurt out things randomly to move the story along, no build up, no reason, no attention to how people actually talk and almost worse there’s many times during this film where people just kind of walk into other peoples houses and do whatever they want. Hey filmakers, I don’t know if you know but… THE WORLD DOESN’T WORK THIS WAY, and it’s also super distracting. Script falls back on a whole lot of horror film clichés (including jump scares, reason-less shakey camera, torture porn settings, serial killer-isms etc.) like so much so that it really just loses itself. A majority of the film plays out closer to a drama that’s just shot like a horror film then the last third of the movie is stuffed full of horror clichés so much so that it’s actually amusing how unoriginal it is. This just all adds up to really lazy writing.

Also negative points because the film builds you up to believe that it’s going to have some profound message (or at least something to say) about bullying and picking on people but then it just drops all that and turns the victim into another faceless psycho. Yay.

Another big problem I had with this film is it just feels like it was trying too hard to be clever, this film attempts to build a “new” Norman Bates or Jason and someone somewhere must have thought that would be a profound thing, the rest of us can see through that.

Sorry to say there’s really nothing I could find magnificent about this film, unfortunately it’s another case of trying too hard to be more than it is.

House at the End of the Street isn’t a horrible movie, but it’s not great either. If it just tried to do it’s own thing more, I think it would have been a lot more successful. Learn from this horror movies, you can’t find success copying what others before you did. 2/5 Stars.

Happy watching!





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Wolf Town (2010)

DAY 27

"Hey guys, I just saw a wolf."

Wolf Town (2010) is about a boy who likes a girl and in order to try and win her affection he invites her (and her boyfriend and his friend) out to an abandoned ghost town. But they quickly find out why the town was abandoned... because the town is populated by killer wolves.

The good thing is anything I EVER make will be better than this film.

Worst thing about the this movie is how bad the story is. It's not an interesting premise even remotely! On top of that it's poorly written, horrible dialogue and very very weak characters. Everyone is struggling in this movie to figure out what to do... pretty much the whole movie. Nothing interesting or smart ever comes up. No one decides to attack the wolves until the very end. It's just bad. I guess I would be a little weirded out if I ran into wolves who could cut the starter to a car or steal purses... but come on, really now?

And if you actually make it to the end? So after an hour plus of trying to figure out what to do... what is the final solution? Kill all the wolves (except one) and casually walk away. The most undramatic uninteresting end to a movie ever.

Even the direction and acting in this movie is really atrocious. Sorry to say there's not really any good reason to watch this movie.

I kind of find it magnificent they actually used real wolves for this film.... not well but they did!

Wolf Town (2010) is would be very educational if you wanted to know how not to write/direct/shoot/make a movie. So bad it's funny... so there's that? 1/5 stars.

Happy watching!







Please don't buy this film, don't waste your money. But if you are really desperate for a laugh or two you can buy it here:

Jonah Hex (2010)

DAY 26

"Get lost or get dead."

Jonah Hex (2010) is a (kinda) horror western action movie loosely based on a comic book character. Jonah Hex almost died once, and as a result he can communicate with the dead.

Props to this movie for using real prosthetic on Jonah's face (and later his bullet wounds), could've looked a lot worse if they tried to do it in CG. And for what it's worth I liked Jonah's special ability, even if it wasn't used in the coolest way... I liked the idea behind it. I was surprised that this is actually not something from the comics but invented for the film!

Overall the direction and especially sound design in the action sequences was pretty entertaining. I found it caught my attention and kept me interested when usually I don't like action scenes at all.

First and foremost this film has a TON of exposition, and I mean PACKED! The film starts with 6 minutes of backstory and exposition shoved down your throat! The movie's only 80 minutes long! You could have taken the time to show us that backstory and it could have only take 20 more minutes! He'll meet characters along the way then they'll bring up how they know each other and talk about things just to establish that they exist in the most poorly written way ever! This would be fine if it happened once but this happens literally every time someone is introduced. If I ever watch this film again it'll be with a stopwatch in hand, in order to find out what percentage of this film is just bad exposition! (Spoilers: it's a lot!)

The story in this movie is really not all that interesting. There's really not much more than the fact that he's after John Malkovitch's character, who by the way really must be the most boring and uninteresting antagonist ever seen on film (or at least near the bottom of the list). But it's not just for his own personal revenge for some reason the U.S. Government wants him and hires Hex to do a job that he already wanted to do?

It's hard to get a good feel for how this world works, yeah I get the spiritual or undead, magical aspect of it but then the weapon technology isn't integrated well at all... that and the weapons are supposed to be really clever I think? But end up just coming across as really really dumb. They don't make sense, they aren't cool and they are revealed in a way that they're supposed to be really cool... which just makes them look worse.

I'm a fan of one-liners but this movie overdoes it! Everything that comes out of Hex's mouth is a poorly written, "trying to be cool" one-liner. It's bad. And it's not just his character, probably whatever is left of the script that's not bad exposition... is bad one-liners, from everyone! Also it's obvious that Josh Brolin has a hard time talking under the facial prognostics which makes his dialogue pretty hard to understand sometimes... why didn't they just dub over it? Seems like a pretty normal practice. You can't even understand his bad one-liners!

Thank god there's little CG in this film, because when it's used it's very bad.

Two magnificent things about this film, one how did a script this bad ever get green lit? Second it's sad that the amount of really amazing actors that are in this movie couldn't overcome it's really bad script. I mean if Josh Brolin, John Malkovitch, Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon couldn't save this script, nothing can.

Jonah Hex (2010) is a pretty mindless movie, but the direction is passable and the some of the characters are almost interesting enough to warrant a watch... let's just say it's not the worst movie I've ever seen. 2/5 stars.

Happy watching!







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An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

DAY 13

"The injury on your leg, it was not from a dog. It was... from a werewolf."

I thought I'd continue my werewolf streak with one of the many less than good werewolf movies, but tried to keep it connected with a very less than fantastic sequel. An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) is a spiritual sequel to the classic, An American Werewolf in London (1981). Course it's about as loosely connected as a movie can be. An American Werewolf in Paris is about an American named Andy and his two friends, all daredevils and skirt chasers who are having the time of their lives traveling Europe together. All goes well until they get entangled with a pretty girl with a lot of problems.

Ummm... well it actually didn't have any giant gaping holes and followed through on everything it set up, which based on some movies I've seen that is something. I also applaud this film for not just being a rehash or exact copy of the original. It actually tries to improve on the original, even if it doesn't and the additions are kind of dumb (more on that bellow.)

And not that it hasn't been done before, but I liked the coven of werewolves' plan to lure American tourists into a free party then eat them.

The biggest flaw of this movie is how horribly written it is. It really seems like things are just thrown in, and barely anything in this movie connects to anything else. The dialogue is really bad, and all the characters are very one dimensional. Almost every scene in this film is so uninteresting! And the worst part? The film ditches the previous' beautiful blend of horror and comedy in favor of some of the worst comedy you've ever heard. They even slip in some slapstick for no apparent reason!

Pretty much everything about the werewolves in this movie is bad. Unlike the original they opted to switch to full CG for the wolves, which really doesn't hold up at all. I really didn't like the werewolf designs at all. First of all it's obvious they only had one model so all werewolves look exactly the same (confusing). Up close the wolves look like some kind of a strange hairy gargoyle, and from a distance they really look like gorillas. As I said before they tried to advance the wolves from the original, but unfortunately the changes are almost all bad. They make the wolves NEED to eat human hearts for some reason? They continued the illusions of the inflicted from the original but very poorly: they had one ultra-realistic nightmare that's really ineffective and for some reason the inflicted don't just see the people they killed they can see anyone who has been killed by a werewolf... which kinda misses the point. This was a lazy convenience for the script that doesn't help the mythology at all, it takes all the interesting parts of the inflicted seeing the dead and throws them out the window. One of the later plot points is a serum that can instantly transform an inflicted person into a werewolf. What is in it? Moon juice? Yay science!

And the worst addition of all, is they make the werewolf infliction reversible. This takes out all the suffering and pain and horrible parts of being a werewolf out and in the end what does it add? A happy ending? Really, really, really lame.

There's next to nothing magnificent about this film, but I thought the camerawork and cinematography was pretty good (for the most part).

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) is about as good as a direct to video film. It really feels like they had a mediocre script about fighting werewolves (something somebody thought we needed more of) and then tried to link it to the most popular werewolf movie in recent history. So if you like bad CG werewolves battling, and not much else... this is your movie! 2/5 stars.

Happy watching!







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