[book - review] Dracula unbound (1990)

Like many, I'm fascinated by the sensual and violently primitive figure of the vampire, even if I'm not a big lover of Stoker's book.
Over the years I had the chance to read many books about vampires, some truly masterpieces (Carmilla of Sheridan LeFanu, The Vampire of Polidori) some enjoyable (Kalogridis' Diaries of the Family Dracul or the Anita Blake's series) and then some really horrible (one word... sparkling) to finally find this one.

As like the previous book from the same author I reviewed (Cryptozoic) an alternative theory (that's funny, a new theory about a imaginary character) about vampires' existence is proposed but this time is plausible, it has a logic that goes beyond the book's plot... more, it would be even believable in our own reality!

The characters are well described, sometimes even extremely and the storyline is catching with just some low points now and then.

A book for both lovers of true vampires and sci-fi.

[movie - review] Halloween - The Beginning (2007)

Finally i got to see this Rob Zombie movie.
You know, I'm not so keen on remakes (okay, i hate them!) and this matter even regarding an artist i really like, both for his music and cinematographic production (House of 1000 corpses and The devil's rejects are two hell of movies!) and there are so many bodies in the sea of horror that i have always found a good excuses to avoid it.... but than it happened.
Truth to say, Rob didn't just made a rip-off of one of the most important and iconic movie of the last 40 years but he tried to expand the story going somewhat deeper into Myers' childhood to open a window for us to see how and, maybe, why everything's started.
The first part is all about little Michael's troubles within the family, at school and with other kids but also shows an already kinda of rotten soul who enjoy killing little animals. Was Michael a mind-weak victim, a mere product of what he had to suffer? Or it was a ticking bomb who was just about to explode, no matter what? Hard to say (not only for a work of imagination but it would have been also in reality) what's matter is that now we know something more about a legend as MM really is.
Honestly I didn't found that part that interesting or like something I needed to know... Michael Myers has been (and still is) an incarnation of pure evil, a charismatic presence, a towering concetrate of destruction... This is what our minds, hearts and guts needs to know about him!!
Usually I really love to learn something about the past of the villains that populates our microcosm, I'm eager to see from which pit of hell he/she came out, watching how things decay but Myers ...He is a presence that need no presentation, it's like the boogeyman that lives in your closet : you don't need to know why or what it is to be scared as shit. Michael Myers IS.
Apart from that the movie is enjoyable, with the classic old-style photography and direction that is Zombie's trademark but is clearly way below the grandeur of the original Carpenter flick (maybe this was useless to say).
The cast isn't bad and there are more than one known face, many of them from the previous works of  Rob (Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, William Forsythe, Ken Foree, Leslie Easterbrook, Lew Temple, Danny Trejo) plus other big names like Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif, William Forsythe and Udo Kier.
Probably the biggest "defeat" is for McDowell, that even with a more complex and deeper character lose his comparison with the original Dr. Loomis portraied by the great Donald Pleasence while the new Myers (Tyler Mane, Troy and X-men) is kinda of anonymous.

[movie - review] Cold Prey II (2008)

I saw recently the first one and found it really good so I was really after this one.
The big question in my mind was "which road the director will follow?".
To clarify, the first one ended in a way that was clearly an opener for a sequel, but what's left open was how the hell this would happen?
It would follow the path of Jason, creating an immortal killer? Or trying to create something more realistic?

I'm not here to say which way it has been followed here, it's enough to say that they have chosen correctly (for my tastes) and this second episode (at the moment it's a trilogy, still missing to see the third one) kept the great things that made me love the first one.

This time Jotunheimen is just a cumbersome presence and the Hotel has been replaced by an hospital... but the creepy feeling and the anguish is still high, thanks to the storyline and the great work made by building up atmosphere and sense of anticipation.

The plot isn't absolutely something so original but it's solid and even if you will surely guess so many things it won't disappoint you how the story unfolds itself.

The director of this sequel is Mats Stenberg (this is his first work) while the main actress is still Ingrid Bolsø Berdal and her performance is greater than before.

(gifs aren't mine)

[movie - review] Cold Prey (2006)

I love Scandinavia... I'm mad about their culture, history and mythology from when I was really a small kid.
And I've been in Norway, I've been on the Jotunheimen and I found everything simply awesome.

Recently I discovered also a really interesting and lively movies scene (Troll Hunter, Let The Right One In, Dead Snow... talking about the firsts that comes to my mind).
And now this Cold Prey.

A group of friends found themselves trapped in an old abandoned hotel after one of them had a bad accident with the snowboard... trapped because they're hunted by someone.

The white, cold and immense Jotunheimen is a perfect place for a thriller/horror like this the big, creepy hotel the movie is located. Both of the become main characters of the story.

Roar Uthaug and his teams of writers created a solid story (even if not that mind-blowing... you'll guess everything from about the start) and directs a movie where the tension is always high on level and where there's a balanced amount of violence and blood.
It's clear that the main inspiration behind the evil character comes from movies like Halloween (and its Michael Myers) and from Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhee. The hunter in Cold Prey is a good one, but there's no match at all against those two legendary horror icons, especially on the charisma level.

All of actors performed at a really good rate. Between them, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (that will be in Chernobyl Diaries) and Tomas Alf Larsen, already in Troll Hunter.

[movie - review] Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

It was 1986, and i was 10yo... I can still remember when the news struck on tvs and newspapers. How they were talking about what happened, about the radioactive cloud that could hit everywhere, the poor people that have died and the ones who will die soon because of radiations.
Probably 10 years isn't enough to fully understand the magnitude of a disaster like this one, surely not right away but it have left a strong footprint on the time being.
With the passing of time Chernobyl never completely faded away from our minds (i guess it did from who's in the control room, but that's another story) and stories, legends started to blooming over the years.
Let's face it : the place,it's history,all those voices around it,the secrecy that seems to cover everything, is like a wake-up call for the imagination of people and horror history is full of stories where mutations, holocausts and the fall of society is builded up on some nuclear mayhem and Chernobyl fed them well enough.
Without going too back in time I can easily remember a good first person shooter located there (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) and now this movie, that tells us the story of six tourists (plus a local guide) on an extreme tour in the city of Pripyat, where workers of Chernobyl's reactor used to live and that has been left in great hurry, leaving everything behind and changing it into a ghost town.Obviously things turns into nightmare (it's an horror movie!) and our heroes should fight to survive.

Bradley Parker (at his first try behind the camera after have worked as digital artist in movie like Fight Club, xXx and Lake Placid) direct a movie where, at least, not too many gender stereotypes are presents, apart the dualism good brother (Jesse McCartney/Chris best known as singer but with some movies and tv series in his story, like Greek) and bad unstable brother (Jonathan Sadowski/Paul tv-movies face but that also has been in 2009 Nispel's Friday the 13th) but that lacks where a movie with a location like that MUST have its strongest point : atmosphere, eerie sick suffocating atmosphere!
The attempt to build it up over the first part of the movie fails for the most, so the rest of it suffers for that ... and for the fact that things seems to happen a bit too quickly or, better, not enough things happen before the end is upon us (that is too much easily predicted too).

The faulty direction is also the reason why the characters seems so flat even if decently performed by the cast.
Between them we can find Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Cold Prey I/II ,movies that clearly Bradley Parker missed, because they're full with a shitload of things his movie lacks), Nathan Phillips (Snakes on a plane, Wolf Creek) and a couple of actors more accustomed to tv series (Devin Kelley - The Chicago Code) or as character actor (Dimitri Diatchenko - bad russian guy in some movies or tv series episodes) but blame isn't theirs to share, they all did a pretty decent work on screen.
Closing, this is surely a missed chances to create a good flicks and all the blame is on the director and his writers, but I can also say that i saw many worst movies around and that you can find some amusement too here.
Giving it a try won't hurt.
(gifs aren't mine)

[movie - review] Antiviral (2012)

Some little spoilers are present

Is it the single sick mind that rot society from the inside?
Or is society itself that is sick, and infects every single one of us on different levels, as a virus can infect someone while being inactive on some others?

While society is driven by few people (the Powerful) it's sure as hell that all of us are conditioned by it and many also crave to be as the people who society put on covers, on the big screens.

So there are people that dress exactly like their idols, who change the colour of their hair, start drinking something because the star advertises it on tv. There are people who undergoes surgery to become like the star who they're worshipping.
Obviously over the entire history of cinema many directors filmed their personal manifest of complaint and Brandon Cronenberg did the same with this one.

In the movie society has reach a sick level of mass-media mania : people goes to clinic to have injected the same illness their favourite stars have... Even worst, they want to eat meat grown up from celebrities cells!

Within this sick sad world a young seller, working for one of the biggest company in the business, fell finally into it's own mania, driving the whole society to the ultimate madness...

Brandon Cronenberg, obviously son of David, filmed a slow movie (it reminded me the rhythm of his dad's Spider) but not boring, far from that. The aseptic look of some scene well contrasts the dirty things people are doing it it.

Fantastic performances by the main actor Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men : First Class, The Last Exorcism) and a short part also for the great Malcom McDowell (I really need to state some of his works?!)