It Came From the $5 Bin: Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark
OnDemand - Free (Thank God!)

Directed by Uwe Boll

Starring: Christian Slater (What happened to you, man?)
Tara Reid (Kiss of death)
Stephen Dorff (Really, dude?)

This film is a (very) loose adaptation of the video game of the same name. The game was a reboot of the popular Alone in the Dark series from the early 90s, and was a solid hit amongst gamers. Since the film version was directed by Uwe Boll, however, it doesn't stand a chance. Boll is a frequent director of video game adaptations and three of his films are rated on the "100 Worst Films of the 2000s" - BloodRayne, House of the Dead, and . . . this film.

I wanted this film to be good. I have a soft spot for Christian Slater (mostly because of Heathers and Pump Up the Volume), and I've been hoping that he would be able to make some semblance of a comeback, despite his problems over the years (drug and alcohol issues and a few domestic violence claims). Instead, he's done a string of bad movies and a few failed TV shows.

The flick also stars Stephen Dorff, who I've always found to be a fairly underrated actor. He was in one of my favorite Lifetime movies: I Know My First Name is Steven (check out the book if you can't find the film - it's a true story and very heartbreaking). He rocked as Stuart Sutcliffe in Backbeat. He was awesome as Deacon Frost in Blade (probably his best known role). He even got some pretty good reviews for his performance in the understated thriller Cold Creek Manor. All of these points make me wonder, why is he in this suckfest?

I should have known how bad the suckage was going to be when I saw Tara Reid's name. Casting her in a movie is like slapping a big sticker on the poster that says, "Don't See this Film". She hasn't done a good flick since Van Wilder (and I'm being generous because I like Ryan Reynolds). I'm pretty sure whatever brain cells she hasn't killed off with booze, she's nixed with her repeated plastic surgeries.

Mechanical dinosaurs I can buy, but Tara Reid, Archaeologist? Give me a break, movie!

The plot is ridiculous. Slater stars as Edward Carnby, an agent for Bureau 713, a government run paranormal unit that conducted top-secret experiments on him as a child. Carnby is sent to investigate something paranormal at a museum. He meets up with his archaeologist ex-girlfriend (Reid), they have sex, and then do battle with mechanical dinosaurs. Dorff plays the commander of the 713 unit, who, for some reason, dress in SWAT gear all the time.

Christian Slater in . . . Future War 2!

This flick looks like a Sci-Fi Channel movie, which is a scary thought, considering it cost $20,000,000 to make. I honestly tried to do an in depth plot description, but the film was so lame, I couldn't force myself to reccount the whole thing. (Besides, you don't want to waste your time reading it, believe me.)

Alone in the Dark gets 0 out of a possible 5 Torgos.

It Came From the $5 Bin: Catacombs

Catacombs
OnDemand - Free

Directed by Tom Coker and David Elliot

Starring: Shannyn Sossamon
Alecia Moore (birth name of pop singer Pink)
A bunch of random French actors

This movie had a ton of promise in the beginning. First of all, it's set in the underground catacombs of Paris, which are extremely creepy. There's uber-hip techno music and people are partying like it's 1999. The partying scenes are then cut with a girl running barefoot and screaming like a banshee with mascara streaked down her face (this is foreshadowing for later . . . in more ways than one). She lost, but more than that, there's something chasing after her. Just as she sees the party and runs toward it in relief, a monster comes out of the darkness and the scene cuts to a DJ breaking a record. Then, we see Victoria (Shannyn Sossamon) wearing headphones and awkwardly repeating French phrases. The first line of the film is a voice over: "My sister Carolyn sent me a postcard. All it said was, 'Come to Paris. It will be good for you.' 48 hours after I arrived, she and everyone I'd met were dead." Like I said . . . promising.

WARNING . . . Spoilers for those who just want the gory details (If you're planning on seeing the movie, skip to the end.) . . .

Victoria's trip doesn't get off to a great start, so we can imagine it's all downhill from there. The customs people are . . . well, spiky and kind of French . . . and since she doesn't speak the language, they give her a hard time. We also see a number of pill bottles in her luggage (more foreshadowing), which she explains by saying, "I get nervous sometimes." When her sister (Alecia Moore) picks her up, it's clear there is tension between the two girls. From the beginning, Victoria is set up as the neurotic wet blanket sister, while Carolyn is the free-spirited fun-loving one.

To get her visiting sister to loosen up, Carolyn insists they go to a top-secret underground rave in the catacombs, which of course, necessitates a shopping trip . . . and apparently, a shopping trip montage (complete with obligatory shots of the city). They arrive at the rave and hang out with Carolyn's douchebag friends who get Victoria drunk on Absinthe and decide to go skinny dipping. Afer deciding that she's not quite French enough to handle the whole scene, she wanders away and almost gets lost in the catacombs. Luckily, her sister is there to berate her about how dangerous it is to go off alone. Unfortunately for her, that's the last thing Carolyn gets to do, because she is immediately killed by a hulking man wearing a goat mask.

Now, Victoria is left alone and being chased by Goat Mask Guy. She runs around for awhile and eventually makes her way back to the party by crawling over a wall of human skulls. She is hysterical, but safe . . . at least until the police break in to bust up the party. She tries to fight her way out against the crowds, but gets trampled and knocked out by the thundering horde. The next 45 minutes of the movie is pretty much dominated by our heroine running through dark tunnels and screaming her head off. She runs into another lost partygoer and they try to find their way out together, but every exit is blocked. Things get worse when he falls through some rotted floorboards and Victoria basically leaves him there to die, but not before taking his map.

Final Warning . . . I'm revealing the END . . .

She picks up a mining pick to defend herself against Goat Mask, striking the first person she encounters . . . which, of course, turns out to be her sister's friend who has come back to find her. Suddenly, her sister appears, alive and well, to tell her it was all a prank to make her less scared of everything. Carolyn and her friends have a good laugh at Victoria's expense - that is, until they see their friend dead with a pick axe in his head. Carolyn lashes out at her sister about how pathetic she is, which prompts Victoria to slaughter her and her friends, climb to the surface covered in blood, and calmly take a taxi back to the airport. The voice over from the beginning repeats as the taxi pulls away.

END of Spoilers

I had really high hopes for this movie. I actually like Shannyn Sossamon (or I did until she named her kid Audio Science) and it seemed like the movie had an interesting premise. It starts off strong, but as soon as we're left with only Sossamon to deal with, it turns into an endless, clumsy chase scene and ceaseless screaming, which gets really, really old. The twist ending is lame (forget what I said about Donnie Darko's ending - this is SO much worse.) and it's hard to care about any of the characters, let alone Victoria. You kind of want them all to die.

While the flick had potential and it's painfully obvious they tried their best to make it super cool, it doesn't really deliver. Ultimately, it's a trite, rehash of a bunch of better movies glossed over with a veneer of psuedo-hipster chic. I don't recommend watching it, but if you feel you must, do yourself a favor and just watch the beginning and the end (skip the middle!) to get the jist of the story. Trust me, you won't miss much.

Catacombs gets a 1.5 out of a possible 5 Torgos.



**Editor's Note: Sorry about the length of this post, but I decided to save you from wasting your time, I will give you the option of reading the plot of the film for anything rated less than two "Torgos".

It Came From the $5 Bin . . . Sort of

So, the whole $5 bin thing is a little harder than I expected. Sadly, the $5 bin is a crapshoot and usually filled with sub-par movies that do not meet my bad sci-fi/horror qualifications. Luckily for me, however, OnDemand has FearNet. FearNet's sole purpose is to make horrible sci-fi and horror films available to the general public. The best part? They're free.

Our selections for today are Midnight Meat Train and The Children.

Midnight Meat Train
OnDemand - Free

Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura

Starring: Bradley Cooper
Leslie Bibb
Vinnie Jones

There's a LOT of blood and/or guts in this movie. Admittedly, with a name like Midnight Meat Train, I definitely should have expected the high level of gore. Leon (Bradley Cooper) is an aspiring photographer who has an in with edgy art gallery owner Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields). To get a place in her latest art show, Susan tells Leon he must get three pictures of the "true" New York. After following some thugs into a subway station, he sees them attacking a beautiful woman. He gallantly saves her, but only after snapping a few pictures of her plight. Immediately after the woman steps on to the train, she is brutally killed. Leon reads about her disappearance in the next morning's paper and becomes obsessed with returning to the subway. He notices that the same man exits the station each night and begins to follow him. His girlfriend, Maya (Leslie Bibb), and his best friend, Jurgis, assist him, to their detriment.

This flick is stylish and cinematic. The Asian influence is obvious to those familiar with the genre and the film has a solid cast. The ending was bizarre, and I was a little confused . . . until, I read that the movie is based on a Clive Barker short story . . .then it all made sense.

Midnight Meat Train is a perfect film for gore lovers. Fans of films like Hostel and House of 1000 Corpses will appreciate the violence, as well as the excellent cinematography. The verdict: Watch with a strong stomach.

Midnight Meat Train gets a 3.5 out of a possible 5 Torgos.





The Children
OnDemand - Free

Directed by Manik

Starring: Eva Birthistle
Eva Sayer
Hanna Tointon

I'm not sure if I was particularly fond of this movie because of my hatred and fear of children*, or if it was really that good. (Disclaimer: I know "hate" is a strong word, and I mostly used it for dramatic effect. The fear is real, though.)

The Children begins as a yuppie family arrives at the home of relatives for the Christmas holiday. The youngest boy, Paulie, seems to have a case of car sickness. This seemingly innocuous event sets off a chain of horror. Paulie is a quiet, odd little boy and the viewer is unsure if the strange behavior he exhibits is ominous . . . until the other kids start acting weird, too. Only Casey, the rebel teenager, seems unaffected. The children's unusual behavior progresses from normal-seeming tantrums to outright savagery.

What's so brilliant about this film is that it creeps up on you. Until you are in the midst of the horror, you don't really see it coming. As hard as it is to imagine kids performing these horrific acts, it's equally difficult to rationalize using violence against them. The shock value is huge when compared to the level of gore. The director uses psychological trauma and social taboos to ramp up the terror. The verdict: Definitely worth it. Check it out before it disappears from the OnDemand queue.

The Children gets a 5 out of a possible 5 Torgos.


*I realize that there are some perfectly wonderful children out there. Example: My cousin Becca's children are adorable and extremely well-behaved, and if I could ensure that my kids would turn out exactly like hers, I might even have some. I definitely don't want to offend anyone and I want to make it clear - kids aren't for me, but that doesn't preclude anyone else from having them.

It Came From the $5 Bin: Deadline

I love bad horror and sci-fi movies. I also love the $5 movie bin. Several stores have these (Walmart, Target, even King Soopers). Sometimes you find a few treasures (The Grudge, King Soopers, $4.99) . . . and sometimes you find some straight-to-DVD suckfests. That is the nature of the $5 bin. I've decided to feature some reviews of a few of those films in . . . It Came From the $5 Bin! *cue the violins*



Deadline
Best Buy - $6.99

Directed by Sean McConville

Starring: Brittany Murphy
Thora Birch
Marc Blucas

Kris and I found this film in the Bluray section of Best Buy. The cover looked promising (Brittany Murphy in a tub with a ghostly Thora Birch in the mirror) and it was only $6.99, so we decided to take a chance.

Deadline is the story of Alice - a struggling filmmaker with a crazy, stalker ex-boyfriend. As the film opens, she and her roommate are in the process of leaving their apartment. The roommate, Rebecca, is going to stay with her mother while she has surgery and Alice has been offered the chance to stay in a large country house to finish her screenplay, which is already past deadline. The house is quaint, but huge for one person and Rebecca tries to convince Alice to stay at their apartment, but Alice is frightened that her ex will try to find her there. She chooses to stay in the unfamiliar home, despite its creepy atmosphere. Alice hears strange noises in the night, specifically a woman crying and sounds coming from the attic. When she ventures upstairs, she finds a suitcase with a red dress and a box of home video cassettes. She begins to watch them and discovers they are home movies of the couple who lived in the home before. Alice watches the films as they progress from a loving, newlywed relationship to a possessive, jealous one. She begins to believe she is not alone in the house.

It's easy to see why Alice would get creeped out in a house like that and the husband David (Marc Blucas) becomes steadily more menacing. The plot starts to unravel towards the end, however and the finale is confusing, to say the least. There aren't a lot of scares, just an allover creepy feeling. It's less a ghost story and more a question of reality vs. the main character's sanity.

The film is not that bad . . . but it's not that good either. I can see why it went straight to DVD, but it definitely could have been worse. The verdict: Buy something else, but watch for the movie to appear on OnDemand or Netflix.

Deadline gets a 2 out of a possible 5 Torgos (the iconic character from the world's worst movie, Manos: Hands of Fate)