Dir - Jim Mickle
Overall: MEH
The borderline terrible Stake Land directly proceeded Jim Mickle's much better We Are What We Are remake and even unfortunately got a sequel in 2016. Mickle and co-writer/actor Nick Damici initially envisioned the film to be a webseries and wrote forty, eight-minute scripts before a producer unwisely advised them to fuck all that and just make it a full-length movie. Seven, additional mini-prequels were made and released online at the time, but all of this points to the fact that much was left out of the actual film. Several characters and sub-plots emerge and get glossed over and at the same time, the plotting is tedious. Everyone goes from point A to point B to point C, (camping, mingling, killing vampires, and repeat), with vague motivation and a downright miserable tone permeating through everything. Worse though, there are random, schlocky moments full of the most generic, hokey dialog which makes the movie spontaneously morph into B-rate, straight-to-DVD level tripe. Combining awful, lazy religious themes with so many things that we have seen so many times, it is equal parts Mad Max, The Grapes of Wrath, John Carpenter's Vampires, and Zombie Land, sans all of the humor and with boatloads more ugly grit.
Dir - André Øvredal
Overall: GREAT
The highly praised, well-respected Norwegian export Trollhunter, (Trolljegeren, Troll Hunter, The Troll Hunter), is deserving of its reputation as a premier horror outing from a country that has produced fewer than most. Utilizing the often tired found-footage format for another trek into the woods, this time it is to encounter Norway's most iconic fairy-tale creatures. Thankfully, writer/director André Øvredal plays his cards more competently than others in the over-worked sub-genre, utilizing a modest budget and pleasantly passable visual effects that are on par with any well-funded Hollywood production from the time period. The plot is not perfect and there may be one or two questionable routes taken, but a mostly convincing job is done to keep the cameras rolling and slam home every character's motivation enough so that when huge portions of expository dialog are given to us, none of it takes us out of the experience. This is something that is often a problem with hand-held camera horror films and it does not hurt that the cast is exceptionally strong here with Otto Jespersen, (a known Norwegian comedian who is anything but gut-bustingly funny here), being particularly solid.
Dir - Pang Ho-cheung
Overall: GOOD
Writer/director/producer Pang Ho-cheung's Dream Home, (Wai dor lei ah yut ho), is inconsistent in some respects yet hits more than it misses. This is most prominent where the over-the-top gore and murder sequences are concerned; gore and murder sequences which would easily make Dario Argento stand up and applaud. Though the horror-comedy moments work to a tee, the narrative itself is thin and executed confusingly. Half told in flashbacks, such moments ultimately derail the otherwise hyper-violent pace, confused further by present day sequences that seem non-linear and take extra work on the audience's part to put together. While the zig-zag structure is not as huge of a detriment as one would think, the tone suffers with the majority of time being spent on such a somber and serious back story. Main protagonist Josie Ho's aloof performance is also tricky to pin down as she zombies her way through things, though her inevitable "cracking psyche" scene is well-deserved. Not for the squeamish or for those who are unequipped to decipher a labyrinth-like plot line, but it is a nasty, Hong Kong Falling Down variation that provides the inflated housing market crash with a sure-fire, feminist anti-hero and again, plenty of nauseating violence.
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