John Carpenter's The Ward (2010)

Okay, so far we've reviewed films with creatures and vampires. Let's move on to the delicate subject of ghosts. I say delicate 'cause I can count with one hand the movies that I consider good involving ghosts or hauntings. I decided to give The Ward a try because, well, it's John Carpenter and I'm a huge fan of 1982's The Thing. Big time.

The story is dated somewhere around the early sixties. It starts with this little lady in her pijamas running wild and burning down houses. She's found by police officers who immediately take her to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. We're talking about Kristen, who's brought to life by Amber Heard. Here's the first boo for this film: the girl can't act for shit. I mean, I know she kind of starred Drive Angry, but come on, the movie is so cheap you don't even care if the actors actually act. But an actress that can't act for shit is definitely not what you want as a star in a psychological thriller.

"Oh, how I wish I could act!"

So, we're stuck with bad acting right from the beginning. But, hey, maybe the story will be good enough to see beyond cheesy faces, right? Wrong. We've all seen it before. Once in the psychiatric ward, Kristen meets the rest of the girls of the loon house. We have Emily the chain-smoker batshit moron, Sarah the vain and slutty-ish, Zoey the five-year-old and Iris the artist. Fun. The idea of having these bland excuse of characters being haunted and hunted by a mischievous girl ghost (Alice) was what kept me watching at this point. You won't let me lie about the fact that if the characters are not enjoyable, at least their horrid deaths will be.

BLOODY HELL YES!

Wrong again. There's nothing fun or enjoyable in the way these chicks die. Alice appears every now and then to take a girl into the lobotomy or electroshock room and play with the tools in there... in the most boring way possible. And as it is obvious already, nobody believes these poor batshit women about the ghost, so the only option is to break out.

But Alice catches up with them, as expected. I would tell you more about the reason of this hostile apparition, but I wouldn't want to ruin the first twenty minutes of the film in which you'll be able to tell for yourself. You'll go through and hour and such of eternal boredom to be kicked right in the face with one of the most expected and shitty plot twists I have ever seen. I bet the whole production thought they'd be so cool to enlighten us with their twist. Maybe they even thought they'd made cult material. Honestly, I would've rather been attacked by flesh-eating ants for and hour and a half than watched this piece of shit.

Don't be angry, Amber.

What to expect?

Bad script, even worse acting, a shit ton of crossfades & self-loathing for actually giving this film a chance.

Hellnation's Rating: 2/10

Stake Land (2010)

Okay, here's a tricky one. Stake Land pretty much narrates the journey of Martin, a simple boy that just lost his family, and Mister, a rogue vampire hunter and badass, to the New Eden supposedly located north towards Canada. A vampire epidemic has brought the world to a complete disaster and now the few survivors of the V-Apocalypse struggle to stay alive from both the vampires during the night and a group of religious extremists during the day.

During the first ten minutes of the film, we're illustrated with Mister's complete ass-kicking ability to kill as he saves Martin from the vampire that decided to pick the boy's family for a nice midnight snack. Horror fans wouldn't let me lie about how delightful it is to see a vampire that doesn't look like the latest male top model in vogue. Stake Land vamps are a good mix between rotten and more rotten.

We start off with the right foot: blood, a little bit of gore and ass-kicking. Unfortunately, that's one of the three or less kicks you'll get from this film. In my opinion, the movie falls flat trying to make us all notice how sad and shitty it is to be a survivor of such event. Mister takes upon his personal task to train Martin into a badass hunter as they travel through a couple of human reserves, save one or two lives, kill a couple of religious extremists, add up to Mister's fang collection, become hostages to the religious extremists, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for scenic, pseudo-deep post-apocalyptic movies where everything's sulky and shitty. But the pacing and storytelling of this film is something you'd expect from a movie like The Road and not from one titled Stake Land, where the clichéd main character, evil guy and plot twists seem to have been written either by a beefy thirteen year old kid or worse, M. Night Shyamalan.

(Insert clichéd dialog about The Valley of the Shadow of Death here.)

Somewhere along the way, Mister and the kid end up picking up a pregnant girl, an old nun and a former marine. We are forced to these dull characters for too long just so they could be disposed in a matter of seconds. Still, Stake Land is a good movie to kill time with. They really put an effort to characterize their vampires and the world surrounding the almost lacking story is admirably developed.
 

Yes. It's a motherfucking train barricade.

What to expect?
Lot's of scenic sequences, a little blood every now & then, bright day shots & extremely dark night shots, a whole lot of nothing topped off with a plump little cherry of more uneventfulness. Oh, and this:

Who's been naughty?

Hellnation's Rating: 4.5/10

Primal (2010)

Let's start with a nice, low-budget flick from down under: Primal. The storyline is as basic as a group of friends throwing themselves deep into the Australian wild to investigate a series of ancient paintings upon the entrance of a dark cave where, you might have guessed it already, an ancient evil lurks. As it is also expected, this evil is quickly awaken by the claustrophobic Anja upon entering the cave with her friends when she cuts her arm -then consequently bleeds on the ground- as she has a panic attack.

But don't hasten yourself, everything remains calm for the friends to show us their poor and clichéd character development. We have Anja the claustrophobic, Mel the slut, Chad the sad excuse of a man who also happens to be Mel's boyfriend, Dace the alpha male, Warren the comical relief and Kris the chickenshit filler girl. All is swell and the friends don't seem to mind that in the forest around them dwell creatures that look like this:

So they party midly. And the slutty Mel does slutty things like skinny dipping in a pond nearby in the middle of the night, just to come out of it with plenty of leeches savouring her slutty goodness. Next thing we know, the poor Mel is running a high fever and spitting out her teeth. There is an attempt of her friends to take her to the nearest town for help but for some reason, the ants around the area have a sweet tooth for car tires. Stucked in the deep jungle, the friends have to wait out and unfortunately for them, Mel wakes up in a little bit of a bad mood.

She's gone primal. After this point, the movie moves on to a faster pace of the crazed-up blonde going after anything with a pulse to feed herself and, well, the mysterious cave. Even though the low-budget can shine through certain parts of the film, Primal proved itself to be quite enjoyable. It's vicious creatures at its best. I did find the uselessness of certain characters to be exhasperating, but at the end of the movie I realized that's what kept me watching. And we have to admit it, he looks kinda scary:

What to expect?

Fast-paced storyline, loud & vicious creatures, wild & weird sex, cheesy special effects, blood and one of the biggest douchebags in horror history: Chad.

"I made a boo-boo so now I'm crying."

Hellnation's Rating: 6/10