South Korean writer/director Bong Joon-Ho’s Gwoemul (The Host) is almost as good a political satire as it is a horror film. Inspired by the true case of a US military facility dumping formaldehyde in Seoul’s Han River, The Host shows one potential repercussion, “Monster Attack!” Monsters and political jabs aside, The Host is at its heart a story that puts an off-beat family’s love to the test with a catastrophic event.

Park Gang-Doo (Kang-ho Song) is a bored, thirtysomething, single-father who works at his father’s snack shack on the banks of the Han River. His father is the hardworking Park Hie-Bong (Hie-bong Byeon) and Park Gang-Doo’s siblings are Park Nam-Joo (Doona Bae) a pro archer and a former activist, now alcoholic businessmen, Nam-il (Park Hae-il). Life is simple until a gigantic tadpole-like creature (created by a US military incident) emerges from the Han river and takes Park Gang-Doo’s daughter Hyun-seo (Go Ah-Sung). What follows is the story of a dysfunctional family trying to stay together in the midst of chaos. It’s comedy, horror, and adventure rolled all into one.

Despite The Host being a monster hit in South Korea, it came out of nowhere for me. I remember seeing a random commercial for it on TV in March 2007. Not often that I see foreign movies advertised on local programming, especially foreign monster movies. I had to go, so I went with my brother and my dad to the Neptune Theater in Seattle (now a concert venue) and fell in love with this movie. Not only has it become one of my favorite horror movies of the 2000s but one of my favorite movies in general. It combines my love of monsters with a good character story, which is something I’ve been waiting for in a Godzilla movie for years. At this point, it doesn’t even matter if Japan ever gets a giant monster movie right, their neighbors beat them to it.

It ate the bones!

If there’s a movie that so embodies its title, it’s Slither. Writer/director James Gunn’s 2006 science-fiction-horror-comedy is a skin crawling smorgasbord of slimy space worms and blown out insides. Throw in geek heroes Nathan Fillion as the town sheriff and Michael Rooker (a Walking Dead fav) as the film’s infected baddie and you have an instant cult classic.

Set in the sleepy town of Wheelsy, South Carolina, things take a turn when local car dealer Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) encounters a meteorite and becomes infected with a slimy parasite. Grant Grant mutates into a hideous slug-like monster infects a woman named Brenda (Brenda James). Brenda swells up into a gigantic amorphous blob of a person and gives birth to hundreds of infectious slug offspring. After that it’s up to sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion) to rally the townsfolk and fight off the intergalactic invasion.

Slither is one of the grossest movies I can think of that got a wide release. Then again, I wouldn’t expect anything less than a former writer of Troma films. James Gunn combines puke-yer-brains-out gore with blue collar folkiness to create a blood-soaked love letter to B-movies. Gunn was said to have been influenced by the gory B-movies of the late 70s and early 80s. In fact, Slither is more or less Night of the Creeps (1986) in better packaging. The influences are all there but the product feels fresh.

If you’re looking for a great late-night movie to watch with a couple a chums and a few brews, this is your flick. It’s films like this that make me wish drive-ins still existed.

“There’s something I need to get off my chest.”

It’s been awhile since I’ve written a positive review. Just leave it to the “Grandfather of the Zombie” to raise my spirits like a corpse from the grave. This was a big deal to the horror community when this came out. A new installment to the Dead Trilogy? Just as the original Star Wars trilogy was the holy trinity to Hollywood, the Dead Trilogy was the same for the B-Movie world. Did we need another one? I think Romero proved we did.

Land of the Dead presents a future where zombies have taken over but the real problem lies within the people. The people of Pittsburgh, PA have been split between two communities: the rich live in a prosperous, zombie-free community called “Fiddler’s Green” while the poor live in the slums across a river and swarming with zombies. The city’s ruler Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) has sponsored a zombie kill-mobile called “Dead Reckoning” to do patrols through the slums. Simon “The Mentalist” Baker plays the commander of Dead Reckoning Riley Denbo who has mixed feelings with how Kaufman legislates. Things get out of hand in all out class war (with zombies) and also John Leguizamo is there as an assassin.

Almost twenty years passed before production started on Romero’s fourth installment. Romero had worked on a script years back but it wasn’t until the new millennium that he had realized how culturally relevant this story had become. All wrapped up it’s a witty and dark piece of action/horror that turned out to be both a critical and box office success. Though I can’t say much for the films that followed, Romero’s legacy is intact nonetheless.

That’s one way to get ahead

The Descent has its following, it even holds an admirable 84% on Rotten Tomatoes but it’s all lies. Maybe I’m two hung up on the end, or maybe I’m the only one isn’t afraid to speak the truth? Either way let’s take the plunge and unearth the grimy deep that is The Descent.

The Descent tells the story of a group of five adventurous women that go spelunking in a cave in the Appalachian Mountains. After being trapped in the cave by collapsing debris the group must not only find a way out, but face off against a predatory species of goblin-like under dwellers. I love the premise, simple but uniquely scary. The Descent is kind of like CHUD except with better monsters seen more often that are everywhere. I like the first half okay but it doesn’t take long for this to descend into mediocrity.

Most of The Descent is your run-of-the-mill haunted house bullshit but in a cave. What’s that noise? (Insert character’s name screamed over-and-over again). A bunch of characters that blur together get picked off in a movie where we can’t see anything. The effect of spooky monsters living in a dark cave really only works half of the time. The rest of the time I’m struggling to tell exactly what I’m looking at. That’s okay, but it’s the ending that really gets me.

Major Spoiler: Go to next paragraph to be safe
The ending of this movie pisses me off something fierce. The spooky cave monsters eventually wittle down the women to one survivor. Does she give up? No, she fights for her life, escapes the cave, finds a car and begins to drive. This whole sequence goes on for about ten minutes. Yay, freedom!… Wrong! Because the next scene is the same woman waking up, still in the cave. It was a dream, a fucking dream. How cheap is that? Why piss off the viewer that much? Does anyone like that? What. The. Fuck.
Spoiler End

The ending to The Descent really sinks the whole experience for me. Hallucinating and dreaming are two of my most despised storytelling techniques. I despise those because they’re too easy. I like to be challenged with real conflict. Why must you be s cruel Neil Marshall (writer/director)? Because of that I’ve never cared to see any of his later films. Though I do recommend Marshall’s 2002 werewolf flick Dog Soldiers. At least that gave me something to believe in. Here my hopes and dreams are sunk.

Down, down to Goblin Town!

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” For years that’s been my attitude towards Rob Zombie. Often, I’ve disparaged  Zombie’s gory oeuvre and yet I’ve spent a great deal of time delving into his nauseating and relentlessly cruel films. I think it’s because Zombie loves a lot of the same things I love. Whether it’s classic monster movies, Alice Cooper, or Halloween, Zombie feels like he should be my kindred spirit.

Maybe it’s time to stop bickering and accept as a horror fan that Rob Zombie is a part of my world. I mean, he seems like a cool dude, laid back in interviews with a wit as dry as bones bleaching in the sun. And I at least appreciate his visual style. Whether it be the grindhouse look of his films or LSD album artwork. I even think his music is fun in kind of an off-kilter way. Who doesn’t love a lyric like, “Dead I am the rat, feast upon the cat 
Tender is the fur, dying as you purr!” He’s a talented artist in many respects, and yet I hate his films.

For those who don’t know, The Devil’s Rejects is a sequel to Zombie’s film House of 1000 Corpses (2003). The best I can describe House of 1000 Corpses is like if The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was shot in a spookhouse and then sluiced through a steel grating. On the surface that sounds like a compliment, but it’s not.

House of 1000 Corpses has none of the nuances of a film like TCM. Rather House of 1000 Corpses is non-stop visceral violence with no breaks in a blanket of loud characters incessantly swearing and screaming. Some might argue that horror should never stop making you uncomfortable. But House of 1000 Corpses makes me uncomfortable for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable because it’s scary (it’s not) it makes me uncomfortable because it’s annoying. Characters constantly yell and cackle like cartoon characters. They spout, juvenile dialogue. There’s no sense of pacing. The violence just kind of happens with little build-up or suspense. It’s an onslaught on the senses without any real weight behind it.

The Devil’s Rejects is a similar film although in a different style with more breathing room. It’s less avant-garde and more 70’s road movie. Like if Easy Rider had psychotic clowns. There isn’t much to the story. The murderous Firefly Family (who were also the antagonists in the first film) leave the confines of their said house of corpses to go on a killing spree.

On the lam from the cops are Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) who despite their unique looks are all essentially the same maniacal character. The cops are lead by Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), who in many ways is as equally brutal and violent as the psychos he’s pursuing. That’s another big problem with this flick. I have no one to root for. It’s all a parade of violence with no center. Everyone is despicable.

Instead of rattling off other reasons I don’t like this film, let me think of something I do like. Even if I’m not big on the characters I do see merit in the performances. Bill Moseley being my favorite as Otis. I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Moseley a few years ago and he was just as enthusiastic and animated as the off-the-wall characters he plays on screen. I also met Sid Haig but he was just so old. He didn’t say much and spent most of our interaction hacking up phlegm and making old man noises.

I’ve never truly understood the appeal of this movie, just like I’ve never truly understood the appeal of Rob Zombie. Yet, he has his die-hard fans. Even Ebert and Roeper gave this movie two thumbs up, go figure. It certainly has its place in horror history, I’m just sad it will never have a place in my heart.

Everybody loves a clown.

I think I’ve seen enough of Eli Roth’s work to decide that he sucks. I’ll give him points for being an adequate actor, but as a writer/director he brings virtually nothing new to the genre. Take Hostel, it’s essentially Saw without the traps, twists, or interesting characters. What does it have? Violence, and lots of it. People criticize Saw for being senseless torture porn but if you’re looking for the culprit, look to Hostel.

Two douchey college students are traveling through Europe when they stop off in Slovakia. Delving into their hedonistic pleasures, they hook up with some chicks and get drugged. One of the douchebags wakes up in a dungeon-like setting where he is then tortured by a Dutch businessman. In searching for his friend, the other douchebag also becomes a victim, but he ain’t giving up, not this year. More or less it’s your typical cat-and-mouse kind of hack ’em up movie.

It pains me that Roth’s ideas are good in theory but executed in such an unimaginative way. Inspiration for his film Cabin Fever came from a personal experience where Roth contracted a skin disease, that sounds cool but it was handled on screen in the most predictable, by-the-numbers format imaginable. Hostel is the same thing, Roth got the idea after hearing about countries where you could pay to shoot people. Doesn’t that sound compelling? Yet he does nothing with it.

Filmmakers are supposed to push boundaries and discover new ways to present themselves. They are artists that live to create something special. Though as far as I’m concerned, Eli Roth is just immitating what others before him have already done, and not even doing a good job of that. I don’t get his appeal and I have no interest in ever seeing anything else by him ever again.

It gets me so hot!