Genre Variations, & System Adjustments

April 4, 2012 | By | Add a Comment

"Mmm... the other white meat..."

Sorry about the conk-out – the websites & blog are back online, but it might be a day or three before the domains are propagated by search engines. (In Inglaisio: main index page urls may not load, but if you Google the site or load from an existing hyperlink, the site should pop up.)

Now then.

Now live are a quartet of horror-ish reviews for specific genre splinters, each done fairly recently:

Contagion [M] (Warner Home Video) had Steven Soderbergh taking a crack at the virus thriller, and it almost works. Great cast, plenty of globe-trotting, and some inventive montages that compress clichés we’d normally see dragged out in traditional super-bug thrillers, but with so much more room to play, what’s left isn’t so interesting.

The Dead [M] (Anchor Bay) has the Brothers Howard and Jon Ford transposing a zombie outbreak to Africa, with some striking results. Not a new twist, but a good one that nevertheless upset fans wanting more gore, more action, more of a traditional zombie storyline. Everything’s been pared down to the essentials, and the first half is absolutely riveting.

Frat House Massacre [M] (Synapse Films) is the second collaboration between director Alex Pucci and writer Draven Gonzalez, and the DVD offers 20 more minutes of gore, rabid nudity, sadism, and whatever else was shorn due to its offensive nature (like maybe the villain micturating on a corpse). Sometimes it’s a tongue-in-cheek poke at the classic seventies slasher film (the primary story takes place in 1979), and other times its Grand Guignol, combining sex, violence, and blood in various combos.

Gurozuka [M] (Synapse Films) is a J-horror from 2005 and has a lot of earnest skill in crafting some very creepy situations for a pack of film club babes heading into the woods for some fun celluloid antics until a masked killer from the past emerges with a Big Knife. Yôichi Nishiyama’s shock is flawed, but genuinely creepy.

There. That’s four, with three more reviews of a Sinatrian nature to follow.

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Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

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Category: EDITOR'S BLOG, FILM MUSIC

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