Horror Movie Roundup

In the spirit of Halloween, over the past two weeks I took the initiative to see three fairly new horror movies. One is an American-ized remake, one the fifth installment of a Halloween mainstay, and the last something from the legendary mind of Clive Barker.

Shutter
The most terrifying images are the ones that are real.

The movie itself is a remake of a Thai horror film and is an OK watch despite using the now familiar Asian theme of spirits haunting people, yet helping others to find out the truth. What bothered me was the casting choices. The roles aren't actually miscast, but they use a series of C-List actors that you've probably only seen in one thing, and they really stick out at you. This movie starred Charlie from The Mighty Ducks, the Australian chick from Transformers (who had a very hard time hiding her accent, by the way), Roy from The Office, and Matt: the Michael Jackson looking guy from Nip/Tuck.

Having seen The Ring and The Grudge (and others I can't even remember) the whole movie seemed familiar to me, yet was original enough to keep me entertained and guessing. Essentially, a new married couple move to Tokyo for the husband to work as a professional photographer. The first night there, the wife hits a lady with their car -- but no traces of the body can be found. Spirits soon start to manifest themselves in the photographs that the two take. As the hauntings becomes more pervasive (and more real), secrets from the past are unlocked and the couple find that they are more connected with the spirit than previously thought. While the twists might not be all that surprising, the final images of the movie are damn creepy.

5/10, Decent Rental -- Rotten Tomatoes: 7%, Metacritic: 37

Saw V
If it's Halloween, it must be SAW.

Every Halloween, you can look forward to three things: Girls wearing the sluttiest things they can find, children dentists gleefully wringing their hands together, and a fresh installment of the Saw franchise. I'm not going to lie to you: the ending of Saw IV had me extremely confused; I could not tell you what happened in the last five minutes of the movie, as they spliced in parts of the ending of Saw III, and may or may not have included a character that hadn't been seen since Saw II... yeah. That said, everything is explained in Saw V fairly early on so we can continue on to random (well, maybe not so random) scenes of torture.

The movie picks up directly from the end of Saw IV. Despite dying in Saw III, Jigsaw still gets a lot of screen time in this movie as it alternates between a series of flashbacks and current events of the FBI agent trying to figure out the truth of the dirty cop. In turn, all of this is taking place at the same time that a small group of people are trying to escape from one of Jigsaw's games. It's all more of the same: gore, ridiculous torture devices, detective work, flashbacks, and that damn doll thing -- and I love it. As many questions as this movie answers, it opens up the door to whole host of things that can (and I'm sure will) be addressed in the next movie(s). If there is one thing all of the Saw movies teach you, stay the hell away from people with pig masks.

6/10, Solid Rental -- Rotten Tomatoes: 12%, Metacritic: 19

The Midnight Meat Train
"I've got a train to catch."

When I first saw the trailer for The Midnight Meat Train over a year ago, I couldn't help but laugh out loud (that means "LOL"). The trailer itself painted an absolutely ridiculous picture, culminating with the title finally revealed. It looked like a slasher movie taking place in the New York Subway system starring the douchebag from Wedding Crashes. Oh, how wrong I was. Actually it does star the douchebag from Wedding Crashes, but he only headlines the great cast of Vinnie Jones (yes, Vinnie "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" Jones), Leslie Bibb, and Brooke Shields.

Based on a story written by Clive Barker of Candyman and Hellraiser fame (and yes, like every other once hot '80s property they are "rebooting" Hellraiser next year), the story revolves around a New York City photographer who is told that to really capture the city, he needs to follow through and explore the grittier side of the people. It isn't long before his path crosses that of a butcher with a mysterious habit -- entering a subway train in the middle of the night, and killing the people off one by one with a hammer like object. The story seems to have some holes, but once you start considering that there may be a supernatural element to the movie things start to make more sense.

With a limited release in 100 theaters (I originally thought it didn't even make it into theaters), I was eagerly awaiting this movie to come from Netflix. Despite being in my queue for months, the DVD had no planned release date. Luckily for me, I happened upon a post at trusty Screenrant.com proclaiming: "Watch ‘Midnight Meat Train’ Online For Free!" Apparently, FEARnet (of which I used to love watching their On Demand content back when I had real cable TV) has made this movie available for all to see through their website. While this movie is not as ridiculous as I imagined, it's also not as bad as I originally thought it would be. That said, I correctly guessed just about how everything would end a little over half way through the movie. Enjoyable, somewhat gross, original, and with Clive Barker's fingerprints all over the end, I do not feel bad recommending you to watch this movie while it's still available here for free at the FEARnet website.

EDIT: Egad, it seems that they've already taken the movie off of the site. I guess it was a Halloween weekend treat only. Sorry!

6.5/10, Solid Rental -- Rotten Tomatoes: 67%, Metacritic: 58