(2006)
Dir - Lucky McKee
Overall: MEH
Lucky McKee's next full-length directorial effort The Woods follows his fantastic, quirky breakout May and is one of the countless horror films to use the "orphanages/boarding schools are inherently creepy" motif. Sadly, it does so in a highly conventional, bog-standard manner where teenage bully dynamics, romantically flowing music, a parody-worthy montage of a spooky old legend that is of course true, lots of floaty whispers on the soundtrack, and characters being unnecessarily cryptic are all played in an equally boring and serious manner. Speaking of serious manner, it is highly unusual to see Bruce Campbell here in a minor, straight man role, but he does get to puke up green goo and a bit of a tree branch for chuckles. Narratively, obvious connections can be drawn to Suspiria as far as the bare-bones premise goes, but the supernatural occurrences in David Ross' script are not particularly strange enough to warrant their arbitrary nature. Coupled with the very generic presentation, everything in effect seems half-baked and far less atmospheric than it should be.
(2007)
Dir - Adam Wingard
Overall: WOOF
An ugly, abysmal, and thematically incompetent debut from director Adam Wingrad and writer/producer E.L. Katz, Home Sick apparently took six years to be released because somebody must have owed someone a favor in that it did not take SEVEN years to be released. Shot on what looks like half the budget of Andrew Jordan's notorious anti-masterpiece Things, it inexplicably features Tom Towles, a cameo from Bill Moseley, and not so surprisingly Troma "star" Tiffany Shepis, yet everyone else on board are people who you have rightfully never heard of. While Towles and Mosely seem to be enjoying themselves for the half day that the production was able to hire them, everyone else on screen gives unbearably insufferable performances which at least seem appropriate due to the asinine material that they have to work with. The whole thing is as tonally askew as any from a first time filmmaker, simultaneously going for disturbed, David Lynch weirdness, SOV splatter, and heavy metal skuzz. With top-to-bottom awful characters who mug, scream, mope, and chew the scenery, its demon psycho killer whatever story-line is pathetically plotted, answering none of the questions that it raises in place of allowing everyone to rant and rave like cartoon characters instead.
(2008)
Dir - Matt Reeves
Overall: GOOD
The post Paranormal Activity found footage resurgence was in solid swing a year later when director Matt Reeves, screenwriter Drew Goddard, and producer J.J. Abrams utilized the framework for a "giant monster destroys a city" story in Cloverfirled. Historically speaking, such Godzilla styled movies are inherently boring when the skyscraper sized beast is not on camera, mostly due to the fact that the bulk of the running time revolves around scientists and military personal standing around and discussing what is going on, (or in the best case scenario) also going out in the trenches to deal first hand with the destruction. A wise move was taken here to exclusively focus on the "out in the trenches" part, catching an intimate view of a possible Lovecraftian entity showing up out of absolutely nowhere and turning Manhattan into a chaos-ridden no man's land within mere moments. As is often unavoidable, the found footage presentation begs the question as to who is editing all of this and presenting it in such a user-friendly, three act structure, but despite T.J. Miller's mostly obnoxious, comic relief cameraman, the simplistic drama between the young, attractive, upper class characters is tolerable due to the amount of riveting, heart-racing set pieces that keep taking center stage.
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