Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
While I was watching The Lazarus Effect, I had a rough idea of what I was watching from recalling the trailers, but my perception of the movie was coloured by other movies, specifically Event Horizon. If you’ve seen both movies, you might think I’m crazy – but I didn’t say it was a fair comparison! Part of me was hoping it would be thematically similar to Event Horizon – a flawed horror movie, but one of my favourites – while the other part of me just hoped it wouldn’t suck.
What is it with these “best of lists”? In my quest to watch and review the “best” horror movies of various years, I’ve watched a couple of clunkers recently from these lists. The Atticus Institute, written and directed by Chris Sparling isn’t a bad movie like The Hallow, it’s more of a great-premise-executed-poorly movie, like It Follows. I can’t get my mind around movies that are badly written like The Hallow, because it makes me wonder how a script like that gets green lit in the first place – in the case of movies like The Atticus Institute, the vast potential of the premise is wasted by a script that never really gets going and continues to plod along without hitting any kind of great heights of characterization or, indeed, horror.
If Southbound feels like part of the V/H/S franchise, the reason for that is not just the obvious anthology format, but the fact that some of the same talent is involved. Roxanne Benjamin who wrote/directed the Siren segment of this movie was a producer on the first two V/H/S movies, and David Bruckner, who wrote/directed The Accident here also directed Amateur Night in the original V/H/S. In terms of production quality, freed from the stifling “found footage” format, Southbound is a step up, allowing a much broader storytelling scope. Side by side, the V/H/S franchise is the ugly sister. It’s a neat coincidence that I watched this back to back with Carnage Park last night – while vastly different, the American southwest setting tied them together.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 