(2000)
Dir - Brian Yuzna
Overall: WOOF
Pure, unmitigated, gleefully gross-out, wackadoo garbage for the sheer sake of it, Brian Yuzna's laughable, filthy, ultra-violent, extreme-metal schlock-fest Faust: Love the the Damned is a shamelessly neanderthal-brained adaptation of Tim Vigil and David Quinn's comic book character of the same name. There is not a solitary ounce of subtlety anywhere in the proceedings. Mark Frost in the lead seems to be going for some kind of over acting award, crossing his eyes, constantly slipping his accent, and bouncing between inexplicably silly Nicolas Cage via Jim Carey mannerisms like someone desperate to gorge on every ounce of scenery at his disposal. That is all before he even turns into a rubber suit-wearing Wolverine/Batman/Spawn hybrid that would rather implode than stop making "Somebody stop me!" one-liners. Elsewhere, B-movie regulars Jeffrey Combs and Andrew Divoff seem downright restrained in comparison, even though their and everyone else's dialog has got to be parodying every lame action/horror hybrid movie that come before to warrant its atrociousness. Just to make sure it crosses even more "Satan, blood, fire, and yelling" cliches off the list, the soundtrack by Roadrunner Records is full of groove, industrial, death, and nu metal bands making the pathetic attempt at bad-assery even more embarrassing. It was made for bad movie night that is for damn sure.
(2008)
Dir - Pieter Van Hees
Overall: MEH
The debut full-length Linkeroever, (Left Bank), from Flemish filmmaker Pieter Van Hees is technically well made, well acted, and has a consistency grounded tone, but it falls short of its would-be eerie potential. While the occult-themed components are certainly sprinkled throughout, they are routinely glossed over to the point of bare minimal importance. Because of this, it barely feels like it isa horror film for large portions of it, that is until its rather abrupt genre shift in the final ten minutes. While this is not problematic on paper, the whole thing comes off awkwardly clumsy under these circumstances. The puzzling clues simply do not appear all that menacing, so there is not a slow-boil type dread built up. When then movie does finally reveal its true motives, it is both confusing from a narrative perspective and very jarring in how rushed the final moments come off with questions left unanswered just as quickly as they are raised in the first place. There are many other films of a similar nature that take a more naturalistic or even "gritty" approach to such material heading in this direction, but Van Hees fails to provide enough if really any suspense here and that is a ultimately a bit of a shame.
(2008)
Dir - Bruce McDonald
Overall: GOOD
The phrase “jump the shark” is used primarily to describe that moment where a television show takes a sharp or even subtle turn in an ill-advised direction that never again steers it back to what originally made it work. Bruce McDonald's nearly faultless Pontypool does the horror movie equivalent of that exact same thing. The first two thirds of the film, all hyperbole aside, are astonishingly well done. The level of mystery the film ominously builds up is increasingly strange, plus the unsettling set pieces are captivating in a way only very few genre films are ever able to achieve. This ends up being the movie's downfall though as McDonald unfortunately builds up so much to a would-be satisfying conclusion that he insurmountably cannot deliver on such a thing. It comes so close yet ultimately, so far. What is great here is unbelievably great, so much so that it bypasses the enormously disappointing last chapter. The discussion afterwards may be unavoidably tied into what went horribly, horribly wrong, but for many, that may be a worthwhile price to pay for how profound of a near landmark it could have been.
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