Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

Guillermo del Toro is a big fan of the original TV movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. He apparently loved the film so much as a child that it inspired him to create his own horror films. After years of making his own excellent, original films, he decided to go back to the beginning and co-write and co-produce a remake of the film that started his love affair with horror and fantasy. The director's chair is filled by first-timer Troy Nixey, who was hired by del Toro on the basis of a short film he sent in to him.

Very similar to the original, the remake has two main differences. Firstly, there is an opening scene set in the house in the 1800s that sees painter Emerson Blackwood (Garry McDonald) attempt to get his child back from the creatures, only to be dragged down into the fireplace by them. Secondly, there is a new character: a young girl, who becomes the focus of the creature's attention. Ten-year-old Sally is played by Bailee Madison and moves into the large mansion with her father Alex (Guy Pearce) and her father's partner, Kim (Katie Holmes). Sally is the one who opens the grate of the fireplace in the basement and unwittingly sets the creatures loose and is the one they try and take.

Having a child become the focus of the creature's attention is an interesting move. It's a pity that it doesn't work. For starters, the metaphor from the previous film could have been turned into one about parents not believing children and making us wonder whether she really was seeing the creatures or if they're the product of her imagination, driven to despair after being sent away by her mother to live with her distant father and his girlfriend. Instead, we're told right up front that the creatures are real. There's no subtlety or hint of delusion: she's sane, they're real and the adults are morons. There's the usual cranky old caretaker who warns them not to open the fireplace but he's ignored. Secondly, we know all along that she's in no real danger. She's a little girl in a horror film. When was the last time something bad happened to a little girl? Anyone?

In contrast to the original, the creatures are not actors in laughably bad masks, they're all CGI. They're not laughably silly but they aren't in the slightest bit scary either. They're like rats crossed with goblins and about as scary as toast popping up from a toaster. If you don't like rodents, you might find them unnerving. Otherwise, you'll just wonder why people don't stamp on them or pick them up and throw them away.

Just like the original, there are irrelevant characters, namely the psychiatrist (Nicholas Bell) and Charles Jacoby (Alan Dale), and pointless scenes. In particular, the dinner party. The dinner party in the first film was a small gathering of friends before the half-way point. In the remake, it's greatly expanded and moved to the final act. Alex and Kim entertain Charles, in the hope that he will be impressed by their restoration work on the house which will lead to them being featured on the cover of a magazine which means they can sell the place for a big profit and recoup Alex's losses and avoid bankruptcy. Got all that? Good. As Alex wines and dines Charles and a dozen other nameless people, Sally pursues a creature to the library, determined to get photographic evidence of it with an old Polaroid camera. Once inside the room, the creatures lock the door and attack her. She takes lots of pictures but none of them look like they will come out clearly and all her efforts seem to have been in vain. That is, until she squashes one of them between two bookcases and its arm falls off. Success! She has incontrovertible proof! Not just its lifeless body, trapped between the two pieces of furniture, but also its newly detached limb. So, when the library door bursts open and her father and his guests come rushing in, full of concern for little Sally, do they see the body of the creature? Well, no. Does she at least show them its severed arm? Uh.... no. She just gives her father one of the pictures, which is far too blurry to see anything. Then the guests leave and she's put to bed, her father still refusing to believe her. Seriously, that's exactly what happens and it's completely fucking stupid. She has proof of the creatures' existence less than ten feet behind her but no-one notices and she doesn't tell anyone either! It's not even like she accidentally kills the creature, she deliberately squashes it and looks at it as it's arm falls off and lands on the floor. We even get a close-up of the bloody thing hitting the ground!

That's just the most egregious example of several gaping plot holes. Combine them with the pointless characters and scenes that should have ended on the cutting room floor and it sounds like this film's worse than the first one. Not quite. It still feels entirely pointless but there's no denying that the film looks absolutely superb. For starters, everything's bigger - the CGI, the house, the performances, particularly from Bailee Madison. It's just a pity that it's all wasted. It doesn't even have any good scares, something you'd expect from a horror film written and produced by Guillermo del Toro. In fact, the biggest (and probably only) jump in the film was given away in the trailer!

So, what do we have? A pointless remake of a laughably bad 1970s horror film. It's bigger, full of lavish sets and a wonderful, grand old house. The performances are much better and it's directed competently. Unfortunately, it's not in the slightest bit scary or even unnerving and the chance to make us wonder if what Sally's seeing is real or just a fantasy is wasted. It's riddled with plot holes and groaning under the weight of pointless characters and scenes that should have appeared only in the special features. It's an improvement on the original, but just barely.

4 out of 10.

Underworld 4: Awakening (2012)

Continuing the trend from the previous film of simplifying the storyline, Underworld 4: Awakening goes one step further. So, what's the plot? Errr, there isn't one. Seventy-eight minutes after it begins, the titles start rolling and you'll be scratching your head wondering what just happened.

Set shortly after the events of Underworld 2: Evolution, humanity has become aware of the existence of vampires and werewolves. In typical human fashion, they decide that the best response to this revelation is to exterminate them. It goes well, with both species driven to the brink of extinction and Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and Michael (Scott Speedman) captured. When Selene escapes from the research facility she is being held in twelve years later, she begins suffering from visions and discovers that they are not Michael's, as she had assumed, but her daughter Eve's. Eve (India Eisley) is a hybrid and managed to escape, freeing her mother. They run into a vampire, David (Theo James), who takes them back to his coven where his father, Thomas (Charles Dance), berates him for bringing a wanted fugitive and a hybrid child to their safe house. They're attacked by werewolves and then they go on the offensive against the corporation that locked Selene up for all those years.

For the first twenty-five minutes, the film doesn't really go anywhere. We're filled in on the purge against vampires and werewolves and then Selene escapes, proceeding to wander around for a bit. After she meets Dave and her daughter, they go to the coven and things stall again. Then the werewolves attack and there's a big fight. Once it's over, we're more than two-thirds of the way through the film and pretty much nothing has happened. Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea) and his son, Quint (Kris Holden-Ried), are introduced as perfunctory villains and Selene gets help from friendly human detective Sebastian (Michael Ealy), but really, at this point, who cares?

Kate Beckinsale is her usual growling, ice-cold self and Charles Dance adds a sense of gravitas to the proceedings but the main bonus is that Scott Speedman doesn't technically appear on screen. Michael's roughly two minutes of screen time comes through use of a stand-in and a digitally-created likeness of Speedman. Thank goodness for that.

Scott Speedman's absence aside, there's really nothing else memorable or exciting about the film. There's no plot to speak of, no great fight scenes, no interesting characters, no reason to watch it at all. Underworld 4: Awakening is bland, boring and instantly forgettable.

4 out of 10.

Underworld (2003)

I was so excited when this film came out in 2003. Vampire Kate Beckinsale in a skin-tight leather outfit fighting werewolves... how could it suck!?! Well, it did. Badly. The second one was even worse and I've never seen the third one (I started to watch it a couple of years ago but I was too tired so I turned it off and went to bed). But, with the fourth one recently released on DVD, I decided to watch and review them one at a time. Up first, well, the first one.

Vampires and werewolves (or lycans, as they're known in the series) have been at war for centuries but now the vampires are seemingly on the verge of victory. The "Death Dealers", vampiric assassins, are hunting the last few werewolves down and Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is among their number. When the werewolves' leader, Lucian (Michael Sheen), takes an unusual interest in a human (Scott Speedman), Selene grows suspicious and defies the leader of her coven, Kraven (Shane Brolly), by awakening her creator, the vampire elder Viktor (Bill Nighy). Once the human's importance is revealed, the two sides are drawn into a confrontation that could change them forever.

I may have been a teenager back then but I could probably have written a better film myself. The first major flaw with the film is the fact that the vampires are massive pussies. I mean huge, wimpy, pathetic pussies. The werewolves are massive, muscular beasts and the vampires just hiss a lot. Whenever there's a one-on-one between some vampire and some werewolf, the vampire gets eaten. Probably the best example of this is towards the end of the film when a vampire and a werewolf square off in a partially flooded room. The werewolf changes and the vampire gets out his weapon: a pair of pathetic-looking whips. I mean, what was he going to do, tickle the werewolf to death? Well, no. One of them gets stuck and he gets eaten. Serves him right. This brings me to the second major flaw: the weapons. The film was billed as "vampires vs werewolves". A more accurate description would have been "people with guns shoot each other (oh, and they just happen to be vampires and werewolves)". It's a huge disappointment. These two classic horror species face off and the best they can do is fire guns at each other. Lame. The final battle ends up just being a load of people shooting at each other. The third major problem is the acting. Shane Brolly, who plays the vampire Kraven, has all the acting ability of a slightly damp umbrella and he ruins every scene he's in. Kate Beckinsale's not bad, although to be fair she just has to pout a lot and look good in a catsuit. Scott Speedman has essentially disappeared since starring in the first two Underworld films and based on his performance here it's not hard to see why. Bill Nighy overacts to compensate for almost everyone around him being useless. Michael Sheen isn't bad either but as a centuries-old werewolf leader he's just not convincing. Sophia Myles is beautiful but doesn't have enough to do in a role that should have been expanded. Everyone else either hams it up (Erwin Leder, I'm looking at you) or is just plain awful. Oh, and Kevin Grevioux has a really weird voice. He's a massive 6'2" werewolf and he sounds like somebody kicked him in the balls.

Anyway, flaws to one side, the film does actually have some positives. The backstory is incredibly detailed and very well worked out. The story of how the two sides came to be at war is also nicely done and a pleasant surprise. It also looks suitably dark and gothic. Ultimately though, good backstory and nice scenery mean naught when the plot's not good enough and the acting stinks. Oh, and at two hours and thirteen minutes, it's much too long.

Depressingly disappointing. A waste of a good idea and badly acted to boot.

4 out of 10.

Piranha 3DD (2012)

Piranha 3D was un-fucking-believable and one of my favourite films of 2010. It was one of the most consistently fun and enjoyable films I've seen in ages and I had high hopes for Piranha 3DD. I honestly never thought I would see it at the cinema. After having its 2011 release pushed back indefinitely, I assumed I would have to watch it at home. When it got a cinema release, I was delighted. By promising to double everything from the first film, how could they possibly go wrong? How many times have I said that? I will learn my lesson eventually.

First things first, it's not terrible, it's just terribly disappointing. The story's pretty simple: marine biologist Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returns from university to the water-park that she and her step-father, Chet (David Koechner) co-own. He has built a new "adults only" section and replaced all the lifeguards with strippers in the hopes of boosting business. Maddy meets her ex-boyfriend Kyle (Chris Zylka) and her friends Shelby (Katrina Bowden), Barry (Matt Bush) and Ashley (Meagan Tandy). That evening at the lake, piranhas kill Ashley and her boyfriend and attack Shelby and her boyfriend, with one of them swimming inside Shelby's vagina (can you guess what's going to happen with that one?). The next day, Maddy and Shelby are attacked by piranhas as they sit on the pier at the lake. Maddy kills one of them and she, Kyle and Barry take it to Carl Goodman (Christopher Lloyd), who tells them that the piranha from Lake Victoria have travelled through underground rivers and lakes and man-made pipes and sewage systems. Attracted by the chemicals in the water, the piranha are moving closer to the water park. On the day of the park's grand re-opening, David Hasselhoff appears as a celebrity lifeguard and the piranha close in...

The ingredients are all there: returning characters Carl Goodman, Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) and Drew Cunningham (Paul Scheer); hot young actresses; ridiculous bad guys; brilliant cameos and over-the-top gore and nudity. But, where Alexandre Aja expertly blended all the ingredients in the first film, director John Gulager of the Feast films can't get it quite right. The film takes too long setting things up and there are four separate instances of a pair of people being attacked by the piranhas as they venture into the lake. When things finally kick off and the piranha attack the water park, the carnage simply isn't there. People get out of the water too quickly and what could have been an orgy of violence turns out to be more like a dry-humping of violence. I mean, they even manage to mess up a penis-biting scene! The ending is incredibly sudden and the whole thing lasts barely seventy-five minutes - an extended credits sequence with outtakes from the film lasts about ten minutes.

The best thing about the film is easily David Hasselhoff. He's fantastic, really funny and pokes fun at himself and his role in Baywatch. Danielle Panabaker and Katrina Bowden are fine (although if you're wondering whether Panabaker finally survives a horror film, you'll have to watch and find out) but the other characters just fall flat. David Koechner's villain just isn't sleazy enough and neither Chris Zylka not Matt Bush have enough personality. They should have given Deputy Fallon more screen time too. The ending sets us up for Piranha 3DDD but whether it will actually get made remains to be seen.

All in all, a really disappointing follow-up. When David Hasselhoff is the best thing about your film, you know you've gone wrong somewhere.

4 out of 10.

Black Death (2010)

With the premiere of the second series of Game of Thrones only days away, I decided to re-watch the first series, planning to watch one episode a day for ten days, finishing the day before the new series started. I ended up watching all ten episodes in four days and needed to do something to satiate my appetite. Short of watching the series again I had no idea what to do. Then I remembered that I had the film Black Death to watch. A medieval horror-action-drama starring Sean Bean, I thought it would be perfect to fill the gaping hole in my life that is yet to be filled by new episodes of Game of Thrones. It was only after I'd watched it that I discovered that it starred two other GoT actors: Emun Elliott, who played Marillion, the minstrel who had his tongue cut out after singing a song about King Robert and Carice van Houten, who will play Melisandre in series two, a priestess and adviser to Stannis Baratheon. Incidentally, I'll be doing a summary of the first series of GoT pretty soon. Now, on with the film...

The year is 1348 and the bubonic plague is sweeping across England. Young monk Osmond (Eddie Redmayne) works in a monastery with his secret lover Averill (Kimberley Nixon). When the plague reaches the monastery, he sends her away for her own safety and remains at his post, bound by his vows. When Ulric (Sean Bean), a knight acting on the orders of the local bishop, arrives and asks for help in locating an isolated local village, Osmond, who knows how to get there, sees a way to escape the monastery whilst not breaking his vows. Ulric explains that the village has been untouched by the plague because a necromancer has made a deal with the devil. With the approval of the Abbot (David Warner), Osmond joins Ulric and his men, Wolfstan (John Lynch), Swire (Emun Eliott), Dalywag (Andy Nyman), Mold (Johnny Harris), Griff (Jamie Ballard) and Ivo (Tygo Gernandt).

Along the way to the village, they come across some villagers who are preparing to burn a woman they suspect of being a witch. Osmond insists on freeing her and Ulric does so, before killing her himself, saying that the villagers would have killed her anyway. Then, Griff starts coughing up blood and it is revealed that he has the plague. Osmond hears his last confession and he is executed. One morning they are attacked by a gang of outlaws and Ivo is killed whilst saving Osmond's life. Finally, they reach the swamp that the village is hidden inside. The village, a suspiciously quiet place with a majority of women puts them all on their guard. A man called Hob (Tim McInnerny) welcomes them and when they tell him they are travelers seeking refuge, he offers them refuge for the night. At a meal that evening, they meet Langiva (Carice van Houten), who shows Osmond Averill's body, telling him they found her several days ago. Later that night, Osmond wanders away from the village and spies on Langiva as she performs a ritual and Averill rises from the grave. He rushes back to the village but he is too late as Ulric and his men have been drugged.

They wake in a caged pit in the ground that is half-full of water. Hob and Langiva offer the men freedom if they renounce god. They refuse, so Dalywag is executed. They offer again and Swire says he will renounce god. He renounces god and is apparently freed but is in reality taken away and lynched by the villagers. Osmond is the next to be taken out of the pit but he is not executed. He is instead taken into a house where he is shown the apparently resurrected Averill. Left alone with her, he begs forgiveness and kills her. He then takes her body outside and strikes out at Langiva with a knife but the villagers overpower him. The defiant Ulric is then taken out of the pit and tied between two horses and slowly stretched. He again refuses to renounce god, angering Langiva and Hob. He asks for a moment to speak to Osmond, allowing Wolfstan and Mold the chance to cut their bonds with Osmond's dropped knife. Ulric has Osmond open his shirt, exposing lesions on his chest. He laughs as he tells them that he has brought the plague into their village and they will all die. He is torn apart by the horses and Wolfstan and Mold then break out of the pit and attack the villagers, most of whom flee. They slaughter the remaining villagers but Mold is killed by Hob, who is then knocked out by Wolfstan. Osmond goes after Langiva, whose disembodied voice taunts him, telling him that that Averill was not really dead, that she was drugged and then buried alive so as to convince him that she had been resurrected and that he was the one who killed her. As the film ends, Wolfstan and Osmond go back to the monastery. Wolfstan will take Hob on to the bishop and Osmond takes over from Ulric, hunting down and executing women he suspects of being witches and that no-one knows if he ever found Langiva or if he was just seeing her guilt in the eyes of the accused.

I had fairly high expectations for Black Death but it missed them by a considerable margin. Sean Bean phones in his performance and although there are some nice historical touches (the group's cart being pulled by oxen and the plague doctor's costume for example), the whole thing's very ho-hum. Their journey from the monastery to the village is really dull and the events that punctuate it (the suspected witch, Griff's execution and the run-in with the outlaws) are predictable distractions from the storyline. Also, try as it might, I couldn't help but be reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail at several points: at the beginning when the plague strikes the monastery I half-expected the guy pushing the cart of bodies to start shouting "bring out your dead!", when they encounter the woman about to be burned at the stake I was waiting for Osmond to bring out his larger scales and ask the villagers "what do you burn apart from witches?" and when they reach the mostly-female village I was looking for a plaque on the entrance declaring that they were entering "Village Anthrax". Humourous and accidental comparisons to Holy Grail aside, this film has few redeeming qualities. Even the gore, which could have been considerable, was almost non-existent. Director Christopher Smith is much better than this, having previously directed Creep, Severance and Triangle. Black Death is hopefully just a misfire in his otherwise sterling record.

A drearily dull effort which did nothing to fill the Game of Thrones-shaped hole in my life.

4 out of 10.

Apollo 18 (2011)

"Found-footage" horror films have become a sub-genre of their own. They're nothing new, of course. The original found-footage horror was 1980's Cannibal Holocaust and the most infamous is 1999's The Blair Witch Project. It wasn't until 2007, however, that the genre really took off with Paranormal Activity, Diary of the Dead and REC being unleashed onto an unsuspecting audience. They were soon followed by Cloverfield, Quarantine, REC 2, Paranormal Activity 2 and 3, The Last Exorcism and Troll Hunter as well as countless others; some brilliant, others utter bollocks. Now, the genre moves into outer space with Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego's first English-language production.

The story goes that after Apollo 17, the final public mission to the Moon, the US Department of Defence instigated another, secret mission, Apollo 18. So far, so conspiracy nonsense. After landing on the Moon, the pair of astronauts down on the lunar surface discover a Soviet lander and things start getting weird - their communications go down and something attacks their rover and, hilariously, their flag. Clocking in at only one hour and twenty-six minutes, and with ten minutes (!) of credits, the story is over in about an hour and a quarter. And thank goodness for that!

Nothing happens. For long, yawning, vacuous stretches of time, absolutely nothing happens. If this was intended as a metaphor for the vastness of the universe and the isolation and loneliness that astronauts can face in the great emptiness of space, then I doff my hat to the director. But I doubt it. After what seems like an eternity, something finally happens and they discover the Soviet lander. Make a note of that scene for it's the only one that made me jump, although I knew it was coming. Then, nothing happens. There's some stuff about rocks and suddenly one of the astronauts has an alien spider in his suit. Apparently the alien spiders hide themselves as rocks, in a plot twist that's as dumb as a bag of them. More things fail to happen, then they finally decide to leave. That's about it.

If you want an exercise in how to make a seventy-six minute film with about fourteen minutes of interesting footage or you want a lesson in how not to build tension and create atmosphere, watch Apollo 18. A good idea for a promising little horror film was unfortunately wasted.

4 out of 10.