Swound website.

First things first – that description makes writer/director Jake Kennedy’s effort seem like it might be a decent prospect for some visceral thrills, but that’s sadly not the case.

Kennedy’s first mistake is to take that directorial tenet of horror – don’t let the audience get bored – a little too much to heart. Fast-paced is one thing, but Days of Darkness moves its plot along with the frenzied, desperate speed of The Plot Bits in a porn movie, as if it’s embarrassed to be spending time exploring a story or working on its characters when it could be making more use of the dozen or so extras they thoughtfully employed as a zombie horde. Even the cuts are often weirdly-rapid fade-outs before the last line of a scene has quite finished. Half right, then – but the filmmakers have more to be embarrassed about than just plot and characterisation.

Back stories are dispensed with in seconds, which is actually a relief, given the brain-manglingly stereotypical nature of our companions for the ninety minutes: an ex-soldier hard nut who takes charge; the son of a preacher who thinks it’s all straight out of the Book of Revelation; the irrational middle-aged man with a shotgun who takes the second-rate Captain Rhodes from Day of the Dead role, threatening every single member of the cast with execution throughout his sixty-minute rant. Minus points, too, for a really unpleasant streak of homophobia masked beneath the auspices of religious fervour, as said religious nut job attacks Simon The Token Homosexual first with the words of the Old Testament and, later, with a big knife in the head.

The most lovable character, whom we shall call ‘Ginger Woman’ (the film doesn’t deign to offer us many names, except for ‘Slasher’ the car dealer, of whom Kennedy seems inordinately proud – slashes zombies and prices, y’see), is a potty-mouthed, feisty porn actress who claims to have ‘fucked 8,000 men, 2,000 of them in the ass’ the first time we meet her, and later demonstrates the art of spitting in a man’s face from a clear twelve feet. Classy gal.

The pièce de résistance of any zombie movie, though, has to be the zombies themselves. These ones are created by aliens whacking parasites into crotches left, right and centre, but that’s barely relevant – they’re shambling, Romero-style brain-gobblers all the same.

The catch is that they’re some of the worst zombies ever committed to film – at least Return of the Living Dead and its third-rate cousins attempted some effects, or went for the threat of numbers with some CGI or more than twenty extras. The zombies here are marked out by nothing more than a slight snarl and a smattering of blood round the face: they’re more like an infestation of rednecks with nosebleeds than a relentless undead menace. No rotting flesh, red eyes, pointy teeth, bits falling off or other discernible zombie features. The fight scenes, then, are a turgid progression of terrible actors hitting even worse actors with spades.

The compound in which our intrepid heroes hole up is a warehouse and three fences, sometimes menaced by up to SIX OR SEVEN slow-moving idiots-with-nosebleeds at a time. The tagline of the movie goes ‘Two Billion Zombies. Eleven Humans’, which is a little rich, but I guess ‘Almost Twenty Zombies’ doesn’t have the same ring to it, and we’re not dealing with the kind of filmmakers who would fear the might of the ASA.

There is unintentional comedy to be had, though. Our hero Steve Turner’s (think low-rent Jake Gyllenhaal) first encounter with a zombie is spectacularly inept. Drawing out a tiny pen knife that wouldn’t get a stone out of a My Little Pony’s foot to tackle an unknown is one thing, but when it’s attached to your car keys and you subsequently lob it off a verge, you have to ask questions.

Even funnier, in a tragic sort of way, is the fabulously terrible continuity error which says everything that needs to be said about the care with which this was put together. One of the characters escapes the compound in a 4×4 to fetch help, which is then seen in the parking lot of the compound for the remainder of the film. Amazing.

Utterly defunct of tension, horror, memorable scenes, and not even enough redemptive comedy value to make it worth a watch, Days of Darkness truly is one of the worst zombie movies of recent years. And I’ve seen Island of the Damned and Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town.

Extras
You can choose to have the audio in stereo or surround sound for EXTRA TERROR, and there’s a trailer, which is worth watching if only for the impressive editing that makes the main feature not look like an absolute crock.

My review of Days of Darkness for Den of Geek.

Here’s the short version for the uninitiated. Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) is the super-rich, super-intelligent playboy genius behind global weapons giant Stark Industries, selling weapons to all and sundry in an opening sequence that’s more Lord of War than superhero movie. Kidnapped by terrorists who attempt to force him to build them a big pile of WOMDs, he builds an iron suit to facilitate his escape. Vowing never to fuel the global arms industry again, Stark builds a swish super-suit to help him fight crime wherever it rears its ugly head.

So far, so predictable, and the warlords who kidnap Stark are tiresomely paralleled with mysterious cave-dwelling Al Qaeda types, replacing the Cold War stylings of the original: Favreau stops just short of chucking a towel on the lead terrorist’s head and calling him Osama. And – guess what? – the top brass at Stark Industries, drunk on wealth and an insatiable mania for flogging guns, turn out to be the REAL VILLAINS of the piece. Naturally, Stark ends up falling for his beautiful assistant, the one woman who truly understands him, and the final face-off is between Stark (representing truth, justice and the American Dream) and his erstwhile colleague Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), who represents THE EVIL WITHIN US ALL, because he’s dressed in a giant black robot suit. It’s almost suprising that the DVD package doesn’t come with a free ramrod emblazoned with the stars and stripes at one end to help you ram the point down your own throat as you watch.

The film’s at its best when it undercuts and subverts its own overcooked ponderousness. Downey Jr. is effusive throughout, rattling through the dialogue and peppering it with wisecracks and super-caffeinated ebullience, though the original Stark’s lifelong battle with alcoholism is apparently overlooked in favour of a charming rake-cum-scientist. Even in solo scenes, he’s bouncing off the scenery (sometimes literally), arguing with his robotic minions and even taking on a bit of light slapstick. Obstreperous fire extinguishers and overenthusiastic CPU voices offer a couple of smart, genuinely funny moments that bring this closer to being a brash, bright, effective comic book action movie. It seems odd to be offering praise to what are effectively props, but when Gwyneth Paltrow is on such characteristically bloodless form as Pepper Potts, you take your laughs where you can get ‘em.

Iron Man also picks up plus points in its use of models for some of the key action sequences instead of the cartoonish, insubstantial CGI effects that give the action sequences in something like Hulk a flimsy, unsatisfying feel, like they’re taking place in a parallel universe in which physics works differently, or make entire sections of the Spiderman trilogy feel like you’re watching an extended video game cut sequence. Instead, the key set pieces here feel chunky, satisfyingly destructive, and refreshingly old-school, like in the eighties when they used to fling actual cars at each other instead of spending three months drawing it on screen first.

A couple of nice action sequences and two or three snappy one-liners, though, aren’t enough to justify the two-hour running time, of which more time is spent hammering us with painfully obvious moralising than thrilling us with relentless action. Depressingly predictable and a wasted opportunity on the whole. It’s a comic book adaptation, so I’m not expecting Proust, but I draw the line at Andy McNab.

First appeared on Den of Geek.

You can see my head for about 0.1 seconds in the trailer here, but if I were you I’d just enjoy the film.

The Ring. Utter toss.

favourite movies. Take The Ring, a particularly fine example of ruining a masterpiece in the process of diluting it for a more mainstream audience. It throws in all sorts of inexplicable and pointless devices (isn’t that the horse from the Lloyds TV ads? What??), waters down the complexities of what wasn’t even a very complicated story in the first place, and then, for the coup de grace, spoils one of the greatest sequences in horror movie history (you know the one I mean), by interspersing it with a CAR CHASE. Yeah, thanks. The source material is one of the greatest horror movies ever made, and the result barely passes muster as a low-rent B-movie.

I’m not even convinced by the argument that these films put the original in front of a wider audience

- sure, some people might check out the original afterwards, but the vast majority won’t. Look at the latest packaging for the original movie, which is now debasing itself as ‘the original movie that inspired The Ring‘. Even worse, it also ‘inspired’ a whole load of other J-horror remakes, which also led to a piss-weak version of The Eye, and now they’re even working their way through the B-list J-horror stable like One Missed Call (see 2003′s Chakushin ari). As a side note, isn’t it depressing that Blockbuster (and possibly others) not only brief their staff to warn customers that a film they’re renting is subtitled (oh shit, is it? I’ll put it back then. Don’t want any of that foreign muck. Where’s Phone Booth?), but even subtitle warning stickers on their DVDs?

So it was with some trepidation that I approached Funny Games (or Funny Games U.S. to give it its full title), even though it’s a shot-by-shot remodelling by Michael Haneke of the incredible original, not least because it features queen of remakes Naomi Watts, who played her part in ruiningThe Ring and pouted her way through THREE HOURS of monkey nonsense in King Kong. And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Taken in isolation, it’s actually a great film, and it’s excellent to see some of the Haneke trademarks like long, unbroken sequences conducted almost in silence, and total bleakness come through in a more mainstream movie. What’s more, it goes some way to showing up those tawdry horror-porn peddlers like Eli Roth up as the amateurs they are.

Naomi Watts is excellent throughout (and was specifically requested by Haneke), and it’s good to see her stretching herself in something interesting after the big-budget remakes maligned above. Tim Roth vascillates between a decent performance and hamming up his Mr Orange face (lots of wounded growling). The ten-minute, single-take post-torture scene is brilliantly executed, as in the Austrian version. Where it falls down, if anywhere, is with Michael ‘face of Emporio Armani’ Pitt as torturer-in-chief Paul, who frequently translates the brutal, impassive politeness of his character into something wooden and stilted, rather than harrowing and menacing. Arno Frisch in Haneke’s original puts on an fantastic performance that’s genuinely unsettling, and predictably his shoes are the hardest in the film to fill, and this is ultimately the biggest let-down for me. But in demonstrating that the film’s as relevant now as it was ten years ago, and bringing something properly disturbing into the mainstream, it’s a real success.

What’s next? Jack Black killing his entire family in The Seventh Continent U.S.? Benny’s Video set in Dawson’s Creek…?

However, I can now confirm that Cloverfield is terrible, but in that really frustrating this-could-have-been-great-but-they-fucked-it-up way*. Here’s a list of What Is Rubbish About Cloverfield:

1) The High-Def Yet Slightly Shaky Camera: Amazing how the camera work, shaky though it might be, is astonishingly high-definition throughout, as if they’re carting around an enormous studio camera instead of a crappy handheld. Plus an array of boom mikes to pick out all the salient dialogue through the background noise, and sharply pick out all the carefully-edited spot FX. Behold its artful shakiness, which shakes just enough to be disorientating but remarkably keeps still just so you see all the important things you need to see.

At one point, they get some fake blood on the lens as if to acknowledge this very point and make it more real, but they wipe it off so that it’s LIKE NEW, with no dust, saliva, smears, cracks or stains of any kind despite being in a WAR ZONE.

2) The Isn’t It Lucky They Got Just Enough Footage To Explore All The Main Plot Points: Fortunate, isn’t it, that they happened to have the camera on when they happened to bump into the chief of army operations who happened to talk about how they’re going to waste the whole of Manhattan using a particular military code word that we may or may not hear later on. And of course that they stopped in front of enough TVs and TV stores to record the headlines from news bulletins to keep us updated.

3) The Ooh, A Fake Government Documentary Film Bit: Topping and tailing the movie with a ‘TOP SECRET US GOVERNMENT FILM’ screen does not help your case when you follow it with POUNDING TITLE CREDIT music and a list of actors. At least The Blair Witch Project tried.

4) The Completely Irrational Love Must Conquer All Danger Impetus: How shall we get them to head right back into the war zone where the monsters are instead of fleeing for their lives like any sensible citizens? Simple – get the most pig-headed fratboy among their number to receive a text from his erstwhile flame, causing him to venture back whatever the cost, ‘cos, y’know, love conquers all and he might get some action out of it. And obviously his friends follow him into certain oblivion, because the only thing stronger than love is Hollywood Friendship. I’d have run for the hills.

5) The We’ve Run Out Of Ideas So Let’s Do A Depressing Ending ending: Killed off most of the cast? Done your big helicopter crash set piece? Faced down the monster eye to eye? Been attacked by little tiny monsters in the subway? Better just end the film immediately by chucking a load of rubble over the last two then. After all, a crushingly-depressing ending worked for Night of the Living Dead, Ring and, ahem, Kingdom of the Spiders.

6) The On The Fly Rapid Editing Choices Made By Panicking Cameraman: Seemingly, some seriously quick-thinking, on-the-go editing was undertaken by our noble cameraman, who until two hours ago had never held a camcorder. Why else would you cut to starting to film yourself running away as fast as you can from mortal danger, or cut back into the action when there are mortars flying past your head and tiny monsters biting your ankles?

7) The Let’s Waste The Seeing-The-Monster Scene Twenty Minutes Too Early Bit: About 20 minutes in, on the telly. Big grey thing with fangs and gawky arms. Twenty-five minutes in, it’s accompanied by little crawly pseudo-Facehugger aliens on another news bulletin. Completely wastes the ‘aagh the monster’ money shot, and ruins the unveiling of the tiny crawly monsters.

8 ) The Better Have A Gory 28 Days Later Style Bloodbath Bit: Didn’t we mention that being bitten by one of the crawly monsters makes you explode in a miasma of blood and flesh? No? Better explode a cast member then not mention it subsequently, then.

9) The Fleeing From A Colossal Monster, Why Not Enjoy A Cool Mountain Dew Product Placement. Enough said. Yuck.

10) Let’s Face It, This Might As Well Have Been An Old Monster Movie Script You Bolted The Shaky Camera Bit Onto To Tap Into The Social Media Zeitgeist Thing. The whole progression of the film, what they see and do etc. follows your bog standard horror film formula so closely that there’s no suggestion the screenplay was written around the innovative camera approach – rather that the latter was shoehorned in to make a bad, paper-thin film tolerable.

Basically, a good idea ruined by massively ham-fisted execution throughout. And don’t even get me started on how all three of them, plus the camera, survive completely unharmed from a helicopter crash.

*see also Exhibit B: Creep and Exhibit C: The Descent, two films that start off with potentially excellent premises for a horror movie, then tail off into rubbish monster schlock, tedious cat ‘n’ mouse games and an unrewarding and frankly dull payoff to finish.

Plus a couple of interesting things to read:

- Marina Hyde on Nike’s insidious pursuit of an anonymous Olympics blogger.

- A fantastic set of photos of disassembled household appliances.

- Clay animation zombie movie.

- An excellent exploration by Stephen Fry into the horrors of dancing. As a confirmed non-dancer, I couldn’t have put it better.

- Alice’s video diary of Sunnyvale’s recent gig in Glasgow.

Is it me, or is linking this to horror movies just the sort of attention-grabbing bollocks that gives proper socio-scientific research a bad name? Whip up some specious line relating to an aspect of pop culture that’ll get you headlines, slam in a Pantene Pro V-style ‘science bit’, and hey presto, there’s your grant sorted for getting your university’s research department in the papers.

The Telegraph go on to say that ‘the findings may explain why it is that over the past 35 years people have had wildly different reactions to the classic horror film, The Exorcist.’ That, or the fact that over 35 years, popular culture, the boundaries of acceptability and what is considered extreme, and not to forget special effects have changed almost beyond recognition. Reactions to extremity in movies are influenced by such a massive range of things – context, state of mind, company, simply how many of the damn things you’ve seen before – that this just seems like lazy journalism.

Not exactly the same, but this is related to that school of research that states the bleedin’ obvious ‘cos they know it’l get in the papers, especially in August, when there’s precious little political news, senior journos are off sunning themselves and the overworked interns grab any old research. It’s second only to the Christmas season for tawdry research ‘n’ survey PR hits.

People get more drunk at weekends. How you look can increase your chances of being bullied at school. Gamblers are less successful when they’re drunk. Seriously, who commissions this shit?

Here’s the download link – the promo code is ‘graves’ (woooo, spooky).

In other news, in looking that imdb entry up, I have discovered that the third film on my bargainous horrortastic DVD, Horror Hotel, is the latest horror ‘classic’ to be remade. Are studios so desperately short of ideas that they’re now remaking third-rate horror movies and calling them a remake of a ‘sixties cult classic’ knowing full well that almost no one in their target audience will even have heard of said B-movie, let alone seen it. Still, at least if they get around to remaking Dark Star it might have some decent effects*.

*Note to any studios reading this: DO NOT REMAKE DARK STAR YOU BASTARDS.