When Blood Hits the Screen - DVD Releases for Tuesday, October 2nd 2007

Ahh, it’s fucking October. FINALLY!! This is the month when horror fans ’tis the season by watching copious amounts of fright films until that fateful Halloween night. Once it’s over, we depressingly get up, throw away the rotted pumpkin and mope around for another 365 days, wearing nothing but a robe and a frown. (I’m assuming that I’m not the only one who does this.) This October, we have a pretty great lineup in DVD releases, particularly for those of you into the indie-horror genre. So hold out your goody-bags and hope that none of these titles have a razorblade hidden in them.

Plot:
A man who specializes in debunking paranormal occurrences checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel. Soon after settling in, he confronts genuine terror.

Opinion:
Check out our review HERE!

Plot:
Urban Exploration. The practice of investigating areas not designed for public use. But strange things can happen in the dark, closed-off areas of history beneath the streets of Moscow, and what started as a way for Nate (Daniel Caltagirone) to escape his grief quickly turns into a journey that forces him to confront it head-on, with nothing less than his eternal destiny hanging in the balance. Featuring Music from The Crystal Method.

Opinion:
A Horror/Thriller with music from the Crystal Method? Sure!

According to a popular magazine, the 58th spookiest place in the world is the Ashbrooke Barn in the small town known as Blood Creek. Local legend states that if you perform a specific ritual in the barn and the old house up the road, you’ll see visions of Zeke Ashbrooke, a farmer who went mad and hung himself, his wife and children. Rumour has it that Zeke’s wife - now known as The Dark Lady - still roams the woods of Blood Creek. This summer five young campers will venture to Blood Creek and accept a dare that could cost them their lives.

Opinion: Sounds like your typical b-horror fare. Some reviews praise it for its low budget accommodations, while others totally bash it. I suppose we’ll see!

Plot:
The vampire comes to England to seduce a visitor’s fiance and inflict havoc in the foreign land.

Opinion:
I hear they also made a book out of it.

Plot:
A Sci-Fi entertainment show investigates an alien abduction in rural england, in Jake West’s bloody b-film.

Opinion:
This movie was fucking hilarious. Check back this week for our review!

Plot:
On a flight from Los Angeles to Paris, a mad scientist on the run from the CIA is transporting a coffin containing the body of a colleague infected with a genetically modified virus. While the 747 crosses a violent thunderstorm, the instability of the aircraft allows the corpse to get out of its container. The flesh-eating zombie quickly starts to spread the virus, infecting many of the passengers which now will have to fight for their lives stranded in the air with no way out…

Opinion:
Originally titled “Plane Dead,” this movie has been getting lots of praise. Check back this week for our review!

Plot:
Every town has a local legend. Not all of them are deadly. Headed to Miami to celebrate winter break, a group of four college students from New Jersey take a detour into the bowels of rural West Virginia. There, the unwitting friends uncover a grotesque legend that stains the fabric of Rolling Glen, a sleepy backwoods town: the legend of Ray Williams, a black truck driver from Maine, on his way to Texas to make a delivery, brutally beaten by a band of locals after stopping off in town for a drink, his body left for dead in an empty cornfield and never found. They learn of crooked sheriff Earl Taggart, who helped acquit the locals involved in the attack, and who still lords over the small village with an iron fist. Fifteen years later, whispers of the Williams incident still float through the tired walls and eaves of Rolling Glen. As the four friends quickly find out, some believe Williams still roams the woods on the outskirts of town, surviving on the slaughter of wildlife. Others claim to have seen Williams in person, a looming figure with a ghostly white visage, purportedly a makeshift cast to mask the scars and wounds left from the merciless assault. They have a name for Williams now: Plasterhead. Soon, the four friends find themselves holed up in an abandoned farmhouse, mired in a macabre web of terror. Sheriff Taggart will do anything to keep the truth buried: the truth that Plasterhead is frighteningly real. As these teens will soon learn, true evil has no face.

Opinion:
This movie was a decent little b-horror flick that could’ve been a lot better. Review up soon!

Plot:
During a bitter family feud, Jodie Hatfield, (Amy Manson) and her boyfriend Ricky McCoy, (Bradley Taylor) decide to leave town to avoid being found out, but are soon caught in the act. Wanting vengeance, he seeks out the monster Pumpkinhead, and resurrects it seek revenge on the family. Despite being warned away by the ghost of Ed Harley, (Lance Henriksen) his vengeance plan starts out, and the Hatfield family is soon under siege by the powerful demon. Not accepting the legend of the creature and believing their arch-rivals are the real cause, the two families attempt to go to war, only to be stopped when Pumpkinhead attacks the Hatfield house. Putting aside their differences, they band together to stave off the creature before it’s vengeance pact is completed.

Opinion:
Oh Pumpkinhead…you gave your name to a great indie hip hop artist, so for that i’m grateful. As for your sequels…well….

Plot:
Hip-hop meets horror in this wildly unpredictable urban tale directed by Kamal (Jerky Boys) Ahmed. An up-and-coming white rapper Rapurious (Robert Oppel) tempers his music career and a shady past with a steady dose of mind altering drugs. But when his dealer gives him something special, the blond dreadlocked singer soon has a series of murderous hallucinations. Are they really tricks of the mind or is Rapturious really committing these blood-splattered crimes? With a wicked supporting cast including horror film maven Debbie Rochon and Joe Bob Briggs, this slick and stylistic urban tale twists and turns until the demonic truths are uncovered!

Opinion:
While I’m no fan of the Jerky Boys (were prank calls on CD really that funny?), Ahmed’s “God Has a Rap Sheet” was an intelligent and non biased film with different cultures, races, and religions clashing. Seeing him do a horror might be a very interesting thing.

Plot:
All the elements that make the Species franchise a favorite with horror and science fiction fans – a sexy young woman with alien DNA, and the mass slaughter she leaves in her wake as she searches for a mate – are present in the series’ fourth entry. Lovely Swedish actress Helena Mattsson is the girl with the genes from outer space this time – she’s a college professor suffering from blackouts who discovers that the source of her illness is the result of her scientist uncle (Ben Cross, lending a serious note to the proceedings), who created her from a mix of human DNA and the same alien soup that gave life to Syl (Natasha Henstridge, who does not appear in this film) from the first Species. From there, the pair head to Mexico to stop the rapid decline of Miranda’s health; the cure, however, unleashes her voracious extraterrestrial side, which stops at nothing to find a partner for procreation. Budgetary issues are the main downfall of The Awakening – the basic premise delivers what the Species series promises, but both script and special effects are undercooked to the point of confusion and/or laughter. However, viewers who expect nothing more than the B-movie thrills of Species 3 should be amused by this picture’s low-watt sex and violence.

Opinion:
Honestly, did anyone watch the first two installments of species for any other reason than seeing Natasha Henstridge do it alien style? I never saw the third, but I’ve heard some good things about the 4th, in that it’s just fun and entertaining b-horror. Stay tuned for a review!

Plot:
Samuel North (Nathan Mobley) escapes from Hell to find the person who murdered him, but a team of invincible bounty hunters called REAPERS are sent from the Netherworld to bring him back.

Opinion:
Sounds like “What Dreams May Come” on acid. I’m in.

Stay tuned for next week’s DVD releases, and also check back for daily updates including the above releases.

Bring a Survivor’s Guide

The major downside to being a film critic is when an extremely nice person asks you to review their film and you end up disliking it. It’s really difficult to bash a movie that was made by someone with great passion and care for the genre. Unfortunately, such is film criticism, just as is filmmaking. In this case, I’m talking about Joe Francis’ low budget slasher, ‘Survival,’ a movie that spends far too much time singing in tribute to the films that inspired it and failing to find a voice of its own.

The film centers on a group of college friends who are out in the woods for their annual camping adventure. En route, they pick up a hitchhiker (a la ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and drop him off a little down the road. Soon, one of the girls steps on a rusty nail and the hitchhiker, Rufus, makes another appearance. He offers to bring them to his house so his father, a doctor, can help her out. Of course, the entire family is crazy and our protagonists have to try and make it out of the woods alive, all the while trying to act their way out of a bag.

I know they say ‘imitation is the highest form of admiration,’ but there’s a thin line between inspiration and directly mimicking that ‘Survival’ fails to notice. First off, the hitchhiker scene is easily reminiscent of ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and that’s okay. But the fact that Rufus constantly plays with razorblades and even speaks like Edwin Neal takes it a bit too far. Then it starts to get a lot heavier on the references. Rufus starts to suddenly look and speak like Otis from ‘House of 1000 Corpses.’ He even goes so far as to cutting off a face and wearing it, sticking his tongue through the lips just as Otis did. Also, his name is Rufus. Do any of you remember a certain character in ‘1000 Corpses’ named ‘Rufus Firefly?’ I do. They also have the crazy father in this film who conducts strange experiments on people which turn them into violent, dead-brained maniacs. His name is Dr. Richard Belial. If you need me to spell out ‘Dr. Satan’ for you, then you might as well stop reading now. When Rufus taunts the victims in the film, he imitates their screaming in the exact same fashion as Otis Driftwood and Baby Firefly do in ‘1000 Corpses.’ I know something as simple as imitating someone crying could be an extremely generalized example, but it’s a dead on impression.

As for the style of the film, it borrows from others as well. When you shoot something on video, there’s not a lot you can do to fix that. It’s going to look like video. Filters are added to ‘Survival’ to give it a scratchy film look in the vein of ‘Grindhouse.’ Hell, it even opens up with the 70s ‘Main Attraction’ clip and features a ’scene missing’ insert as well. That may have worked for ‘Grindhouse’ but not on a low budget digital video film. It also delves further into the Rob Zombie school of editing by adding slow-motion or freeze framing on particularly ‘tense’ parts.

The special effects department is lacking as well. I know that for a film shot on barely over 1000 dollars, it’s hard to create a lot of fancy effects, but I put more effort into my last Halloween make up than they did in most their scenes. People are constantly bashed in the head, and they implement the ‘bloody head’ bit, but there’s never a wound, just red smears over smooth skin. There is one particularly impressive FX setup in the aforementioned nail-through-foot scene. Had they used this creativity more often, the film may have succeeded a bit more.

As for the characters, acting, and dialogue; it’s all pretty mundane. The actors use the word ‘fuck’ like it’s going out of style and any anger or screaming comes off as forced and uninspired. The dialogue was so predictable that I seriously said at least five lines before the characters did in the film, with classics such as ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘damn, no signal!’ I know I can get picky about shit, but the fact that Rufus is supposed to be a simple backwoods guy but walks around with his tattooed arm sleeve featuring Misfits and Black Flag logos sort of takes me out of the movie. It also doesn’t help that the actor playing Dr. Belial (Rufus’ father) is only seven years older than him in real life. It definitely shows.

On the technical side, it’s unfortunately no better. The shots are jumpy, daylight changes in between takes, the audio peaks when characters scream, some dialogue is nearly impossible to hear, and the camera goes out of focus quite a bit. All of the sound effects sound like they were taken from ‘Streets of Rage 2,’ which include the all too familiar ‘fake punch’ sound as well as some bad ’sloshing’ during a skin-slicing scene. Almost all of the attacks are executed without sound or even a focused shot, so you can barely tell what happens. Punches are landed five feet away from the face and no camera-trickery is used to fix this.

‘Survival’ is definitely a good example of a ‘first effort.’ It has its fair share of flaws, but that’s what filmmaking is about. You learn from your mistakes and you bring that knowledge into your next project. Remember, just because a film is low budget doesn’t mean it has to look low budget. There are plenty of ways to spice up a film no matter how low your production costs may be. Regardless of whether or not I liked the film, I completely admire the fact that these guys are doing what they love to do. Once they find their own niche, I think they’ll be able to come into their own as filmmakers. Until then, I hope they keep on surviving.

The Hidden Message: I still love you, Joe. Don’t hate me. Oh, and the opening credits were awesome.

Misty Mundae is H O T…. Hot!

I took one look Misty Mundae’s incredible ass on the cover of Tony Marsiglia’s film ‘Chantal’ and I couldn’t wait to pop it into my DVD player. Marsiglia shot the film on 16 millimeter and picked a cast of hot women to populate his masterpiece.

The film follows Chantal (Mundae) as she arrives in Hollywood where she intends to make it big within the week. After searching for a room she soon figures out that things are not going to be as easy as she thought they would be. She finally settles into a nasty hotel room that she paid for with what little cash she had between her cute breasts and most of the clothing in her luggage. That’s right folks a creepy hotel clerk that has lots of trouble breathing and even more trouble acting likes to smell women’s clothes, so he takes her luggage as payment. And if that wasn’t enough poor Chantal gets suckered into a bad situation with a washed up security guard and a fat slob who, since they could never get a woman that didn’t have to be inflated first, try to trick her into bed. The sad thing is that this is as good as it gets for our hero because right after that she gets involved with a group of really hot lesbians that like to have sex with and take photographs of really hot girls. I thought that this would be a good thing but Chantal didn’t find munching box as rewarding as the other ladies.

Now Misty has some skill and pulled off the role with style and grace (and she looks great naked). Also Julie Strain was on hand and as always looks really good without her clothes on as well. In fact most of the ladies in this flick looked great and showed that they were talented actresses, but the guys in this flick didn’t quite hit the mark.

The cinematography had that 70’s washed out look, which I dug, but the camera bounced around a little too much for my taste. For a low budget flick that took the time to shoot film instead of DV it should have looked much better.

If your in the mood for a tits and ass flick that peppers in a little violence and bad acting then ‘Chantal’ is the flick for you, but if your looking for a good movie I’d look elsewhere. This was not a killer film, but Misty Mundae is definitely a good actress with a killer body.

Charlie Brown’s Killer Ten: Summer Movies of 2007

Because you didn’t ask for it, we’re going to give it to you…an entire feature section dedicated to the opinions facts that are the thoughts of Charlie Brown. If you choose to disagree with him, keep your mouth shut. We once made fun of his alligator skin boots and he ripped out our eyes. What we meant to say was: “Those are the best boots in the entire world. You are a god (in Canada).” Can we have our eyes back now? So without further ado, enjoy Charlie Brown’s first Killer Ten: The top 10 Summer movies of 2007! Take it away, Mr. Brown!

1. The Monster Squad DVD– I bought a bootleg copy off of this classic on ebay years ago. When this special edition was announced my life was put on hold and I have been counting down the days to its release. This is a MUST have for anyone born in between 73 – 85.

2. Transformers – What can I say? I hate Michael Bay…HOWEVER this is the perfect summer movie. I don’t care that they fucked with the designs of the robots and/or cars; this looks amazing and gives me goose bumps just thinking about it…or thinking about Megan Fox. Autobots roll out!

3. Grindhouse – Planet Terror was good, cheap fun with tons of gore and an awesome cast. Eli Roth’s “Thanksgivng” trailer kicked ass, as did Edgar Wright’s trailer for “Don’t”. Death Proof was so much better than most people give Tarantino credit for…and the return of Kurt Russell was very welcome.

4. Superbad – Seriously, this movie made me cry I was laughing so hard. “we cockblocked McLovin.”

5. Hostel 2 – I think people either like or dislike Roth’s films based on if they like Eli Roth. I think he is passionate about what he does and people make fun of him for that. I loved the back-story on the organization and I loved the point of view from someone who wasn’t intended to be a victim. Three cheers for R rated horror!

6. Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix – It was good. Not as good as Prisoner of Azkaban but good nonetheless. You’ve already seen it so you don’t need MY ramblings.

7. Ghost Rider DVD – I know this movie hit in the spring, but it came out on DVD in the summer…so it counts… YOU hated this movie. I loved it. It was awesome. Watch it again and stop being jaded…I mean really, what do you expect when the plot revolves around a biker who has a flaming skull for a head and stars Nick Cage?

8. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters – Ok, I love the T.V. show but I thought anything longer than 15 minutes of this craziness would be too much…That said…I was dead wrong, the movie is fucking hilarious and we get to find the origin of the Aqua Teens…sort of.

9. Reno 911:Miami DVD - Again, I expected very little from a T.V. show that I love being stretched into a feature length film but damn this movie was awesome. It was great to see the gang being able to use profanity, nudity, and Lt. Dangle has inspired my next years Halloween costume….am I the only one who finds Deputy Clementine Johnson hot?

10. Spider-Man 3 (1/2 of the film) – I didn’t like Spider-Man 3, I thought Venom was wasted, it felt like Raimi was just fulfilling a contract and Toby is a douche bag…however this made the list just for the Sandman transformation scene. It was heartbreaking…and finally more than 2 minutes of Bruce Campbell screen time in a spidey film.

All in all, the summer was full of HUGE sequels, HUGE releases and HUGE, HUGE, FUCKING HUGE HYPED UP SHITTY REMAKES (Halloween?) At this point, I think I am done having ANY faith in remakes…unless it is a remake of Transformers starring Charlie Brown as Megan Fox’s scooter, yeah, I went there.

Remake Posters Posted

I’m no fan of remakes, but i have to at least give the marketing departments for the upcoming updates of “One Missed Call” and “Terror Train” credit for bringing SOME appeal to the films. Check ‘em out.

I have no hope for “One Missed Call.” Takashi Miike’s original was creepy, effective, and surprisingly a bit moving. The remake is PG-13, the phone ring is different, and it just looks overall bad. Think I might be wrong? Check out the trailer for yourself and decide.

As for “Terror Train,” I wasn’t really a huge fan of the original, so perhaps this remake may do for this film what “The Hills Have Eyes” did for its original.

All in all, neat posters.

Sources: Bloody Disgusting and Shock Till You Drop

Mediocre Monster Movie causing Mayhem for Multiple Muscle Men

I threatened you with it, and here it is, Charlie Brown’s review of the 2 for 1 Argento package: Demons 2.

The film starts out with a ridiculous spoken word deal where some creepy dude sums up what happened in Demons (part one) in about three sentences’ok’then we cut to a bunch of cakes (?!) for an apparent birthday party for our hostess; Sally (Carolina Cataldi-Tassoni). (Seriously?) ‘next we meet our partygoers, a bunch of weirdos who are all heading to Sally’s high-rise apartment’couple that with some of the locals who live in the building (a pregnant couple: George (David Knight) and Hannah (Nancy Brilli) ) and a group of crazy, and I mean fucking nutso body builders (led by Bobby Rhodes: the pimp who died in Demons 1 is now a gym instructor named Hank) and the usual run of the mill upper middle class residents! After Sally has a freakout about her wardrobe, she notices the strange film playing on cable that night’guess what movie it is? It’s a documentary about what happened in Demons part one (except for the fact the movie within the movie looks more like the movie that the crowd watched in part 1, with our creepy voiced guy at the beginning of THIS movie explaining what happened in Demons part one). Whew, does that even make sense? If it doesn’t’.well..honestly it doesn’t make sense when you watch it either, let alone listen to me babble and attempt to explain it, so give me a break. Anyway as the party ‘rages’ the kids all sort of slam dance to Panic by The Smiths, some dude answers the phone, Sally has yet again ANOTHER freakout, and then someone gets scared by a dog that looks like Benji. After Sally ditches her party, she goes back to watch the movie on TV, a demon comes out the TV to attack her, she turns into a demon, kills her friends, thus beginning the spread of the demon disease through the building’you can guess what happens next, everyone is trapped in the building fighting the demons off or becoming one of them, and there is some fucking crazy fight scenes involving the demons and the weight lifter gang’. oh and Benji turns into a monster’blah blah fucking blah’it is what it is.

What’s fucking weird about this film is the way it cuts from Demons 2 and the movie that is playing within the movie. In the original it was very obvious what was the movie within a movie, and what was Demons, however in Demons 2 it’s all murky and there is no rhyme or reason why they show as much footage of the movie that is playing on TV as director Bava does. It just confuses the viewer’I mean, seriously, are they watching the movie from Demons part 1? Are they watching a documentary? Are they watching my home movies? I have no fucking clue. Do you?

Personally, I think Demons 2 would have worked way better if they had not acknowledged part 1 at all. Almost as if part 2 was happening simultaneously at the same time as part 1, because the logic that part 2 happens after part 1 doesn’t make sense. Part 1 ends on a pretty apocalyptic tone’we are led to believe that the demons are everywhere and NOT just contained to a small movie theater, yet in part 2, (other than the crazy movie within a movie) the world seems fine’

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible movie, I guess it’s a decent companion piece, but it is almost shocking that Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava came up with this after how successful they were with part one. It’s sad, and I am the first to love a decent sequel, but this one just doesn’t hit the mark like part 1 did.

While it’s not as gory as part 1, the effects are decent, the demon blood seems to be able to melt everything (bricks, pipes, TV’s, etc), there are demon kids, dogs, punks and Bobby Rhodes gets a ton of screen time! The score is less 80’s metal but not as effective as part 1, I mean I like The Smiths and The Cult but Dead Can Dance can go fuck themselves’you will almost miss the random inserts of Motorhead and Billy Idol in part 2, maybe Argento had less to do with this one, although his daughter (a very young Asia Argento in her first full length movie) IS in the film, so who knows.

I can’t really recommend this to anyone, but at the same time, it’s not the worst movie/sequel I have ever seen. It’s just sort of disappointing compared to the magic that is Demons (part 1). I hate to continually compare part 1 & part 2 over and over, but I feel it is my duty to you my faithful readers to give you the straight dope from one horror fan to another. Awe, I’m sweet.

Charlie ‘You’re all muscle and no brains boy’ Brown

Joker’s Wild

Chances are most of you have already seen the picture above. This was one of the first pictures released of The Joker (played by Heath Ledger) from Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film “The Dark Knight,” which follows his 2005 blockbuster hit “Batman Begins.” I noticed fanboys on the message boards were complaining about how they ruined The Joker by having him wear face paint and hair dye as opposed to his pale and odd demeanor being caused by a fall into an acid vat. Woopty doo, nerds. Last time I checked, Christopher Nolan wasn’t doing the whole fantasy thing with his take on Batman. It definitely worked for Tim Burton’s two Batman efforts and “Batman: The Animated Series,” But I personally think Nolan’s style will be more than sufficient. Regardless, I came across this picture the other day and it definitely wowed me. If any of you think that this won’t be effectively creepy and would prefer the cartoony look, then you can cry about it and boycott the movie all you want.

If you still feel like crying about it, how about you dip your head into a vat of acid and see how it turns out?

Source: X-Boards

Meeting Your Deadline

I think it’s rational to say that movies affect different people in different ways. You can never fully trust another person’s opinion on something because it may mean a lot to you and nothing to them or vice versa. Show a popular high school football player ‘All About Lily Chou Chou’ and see if he can identify with the subtle themes of loneliness and misunderstanding. Chances are he wouldn’t be able to tell you what the film was even about. Have some optimistic virgin watch ‘The Rules of Attraction’ and see if they care enough to identify with drug-abusing sexual characters that are made to be generally unlikable. I don’t know if it’s because I suffer from depression, but I’ve always liked things that are extremely sad or disturbing to my emotions. I guess I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that something so trivial like a song or a movie could shift my emotional plates so drastically and even go as far as ruining my day. Regardless, I wouldn’t change it for the world. Aside from a few emergency room visits and witnessing a few deaths firsthand, movies and music are some of the few things that make me feel alive and horribly understood. Such is the case with Jonathan Dueck’s psychological-horror/thriller ‘Final Draft.’ If I weren’t the type of person that I am, I probably wouldn’t have liked this movie. I probably would agree with most people on the internet who say it’s ‘too slow’ and ‘not scary.’ However, I’m not like that, and I found this movie to be an extremely well crafted look into loneliness and despair. ‘Final Draft’ may not be frightening to most, but if you can relate to the film’s protagonist, you may find yourself haunted in more ways than one.

James Van Der Beek plays Paul Twist, an uninspired screenwriter whose depression over his past prevents him from reaching his full potential’or any potential for that matter. His computer is covered in dust and he spends most of his time moping around his pad or having coffee with his friend David (Darryn Lucio, who wrote ‘Final Draft’), an actor who made his big break in the movie adapted from Paul’s first screenplay. David is a good friend to Paul, but a straight shooter as well. He tells Paul to stop dwelling on his ex-wife and his past and to try and do something useful with his life, particularly by returning to writing.

Over coffee, Paul tells David of a dream he had that previous night involving an incident he witnessed as a child, which resulted in the accidental death of a circus clown. As the clown was dying, Paul (who thought it was part of a slapstick routine) continued to laugh. Now he found himself convinced that the clown had come back to haunt him as an adult for mocking his death. Blown away by the story, David insists that Paul turn the ‘vengeful clown’ scenario into a screenplay. Still uninspired, Paul can’t bring himself to write anything until David tells him that he pitched it to a studio executive who was very interested in adapting it. Unfortunately, he has only 18 days to write it. Believing that this could be the turnaround that he desperately needs, Paul forces a reluctant David to lock him in his apartment until those 18 days are up. He promises that by then he’ll have a finished script.

Paul still can’t bring himself to write anything until he sees some old photographs from his past. Using his ex-wife, his brother, a high school bully, a jealous friend, a pin up girl, and David, Paul is able to emote his frustrations and pent up feelings about them into his screenplay. In the story, each character is attacked by the dead clown and killed in a fashion that makes it look like suicide. Everything is going fine until Paul starts to experience cabin fever, resulting in his characters and problems coming to life before his very eyes, adding a heavy blow to his already declining insanity. Soon, both the screenplay and Paul’s life begin to spiral out of control.

It’s hard to write a short synopsis for this movie, which is ironic because it’s a fairly simple plot. What makes it so detailed is Paul and his personality. From the beginning of the film, we can tell he’s not completely sane. He’s not crazy by any means, but like anyone with depression or a strong attachment to their past, it always seems like his mind is elsewhere. We know he’s not really being stalked by a dead clown and that when he sees his ex-wife in his apartment screaming at him; we know that she’s not really there, but it’s these metaphors that make the film so powerful and effective. For instance, how many of you have thought about someone you’re angry with and you make up certain scenarios in your head, even practicing aloud what you would say if these events were to really happen? I still do that, but watching Paul take it one level higher by having heated arguments with pictures and figments of his imagination really sink into your head. How much would it take to push any of us that much farther to insanity?

The film is very competently acted, specifically on Van Der Beek’s part. If I didn’t already know how great of an actor this guy was, I’d swear he had more skeletons in his closet than Ed Gein. Lucio’s script is smart and moving and it would appear that he has had experience with depression as well. I don’t believe any Average Joe could write such strong metaphors and troubling scenes without ever having once graced misery with his company. The direction does great justice to the script and the editing is near superb, using quick and clever cuts to blend Paul’s insanity and reality into one living nightmare. All in all, I would certainly recommend this film to anyone who has the patience and understanding of what the story is trying to accomplish. The last frame of the movie will either make perfect sense to you, or you’ll completely misinterpret it as a stereotypical horror movie ending. Put it this way’if you find yourself laughing at the clown in the final shot, then you misunderstood his act as well.

The Hidden Message: ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone.’

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