J*A*S*M

Waz is an average dark thriller that focuses mostly on the detective investigation instead of the fate of the victims (something unusual these days). The poster, reminiscent of Saw and Se7en, is not misleading advertising, it does give a pretty accurate idea of what the film looks like. It doesn’t reach the quality of either of those two films, but nobody could really expect that.

A bit worse than the original Colombian soap opera. The first episode was a torment, but I tried the second one and, surprisingly, it didn’t have such a terrible effect. The biggest issues are the very poorly portrayed main characters and the lack of natural humour (even the original telenovela had more than this “comedy” Czech adaptation). Overall, it’s naive and silly, maybe some people will like it, but I won’t be watching any more episodes. 10%

It’s been really long since a film annoyed me so much that made me wish I would fall asleep. Under Surveillance managed just that. Bad actors, forgettable direction, no blood, and I can’t judge the plot because it lost me after 20 minutes (and I won’t rewatch it). Someone could say that only films that have been watched in full can be reviewed, but those 70 minutes made me suffer enough and I’m giving it a Boo!

A barely average representative of the genre “the American countryside under the attack of a monster”, whose biggest problem is that it takes itself very seriously (unlike Feast or Tremors). The entire second half takes place in the dark, which, together with the frantic editing, makes the action sequences incredibly confusing. The story is stereotypical to the tee and the characters are insipid and uninteresting, the only thing that is at least a little good is the monster, it works pretty well while the only thing you can see from it are the extremities, but the moment the creators show it in full, all that impression goes to hell. As a result, my rating is a mediocre 40%.

The Rage or the complete opposite of a film with artistic value. If you fancy a very bloody and trashy take on the adventures of a mad scientist, go for it, but you will have to accept the things that are typical for films like this: poor performances, cheapness and bad special effects (the human mutants were alright, the bird mutants no so). This is the kind of film were I could justify a diametrically different rating (there are many reasons to give it a Boo!), but I believe that fun shite is better than boring shite, and The Rage belongs to the former, hence the two stars (for a moment I considered three, but that would have been too much already).

A pretty mediocre horror western with an unsurprising script that is quite messy at first. The creators spiced the film up with an incredible number of shots that are slowed-down almost to a stop (likely to highlight the urgency of a moment), and they use that so much that whatever positive effect it could have becomes zero. And believe me, when that slow-mo is used almost ten times a minute, it becomes very annoying. In 2007 there was another horror film released with the same name, so watch out.

An averagely bad redneck slasher that follows a very well trodden path from beginning to end, without delivering any surprises or leaving the realm of the average. It’s a copy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of Wax and Wrong Turn that takes elements from all of them, but does a worse job. On top of that, the murders are not original at all – though the killing of the first redneck is such a misguidedly funny affair that is at least fun. Lake Dead is nothing but derivative teenage slasher that won’t piss you off, but won’t give you anything, either.

That was quite some bullshit… Some amateurs on a trip to the woods decided to make a horror film. They put together a script with all the clichés you can imagine and them some, included a few shots of wild animals (about four in total) and added a mass murderer so people wouldn’t get bored. The attempt was very unsuccessful and you will get terribly bored.

The plot and some of the details are average, but the music! This love story of two people really impressed me.

This is a film that failed to meet even my almost zero expectations. Most of the time I couldn’t understand what was going on. Maybe that was due to my less than perfect English, but I’d wager that the creators’ intention was to make some artsy horror and they couldn’t handle it. I could forgive the lack of a plot, but not the performances, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything worse than what these actors perpetrate here.