The Furies (DIR. Tony D’Aquino) So, there are these seven women and seven monsters. The women are tasked with staying alive, while the monsters attempt to kill them. This plot could either be attached to a self-aware bit of amazing cinematic trash, or it could take itself too seriously and fail. Tony D’Aquino’s The Furies falls firmly into the latter category.
By: Addison Wylie With recent horror anthologies, it seems as though the first instalment serves as an extreme experimental period. There’s a foreboding feeling of failure when making a project that draws in different visions from all over a filmmaking pallet, but horror nuts who are true to their craft will let their audacious attitudes plow through anything resembling an obstacle. This was a clear example for the V/H/S series – an easy comparison to…
By: Addison Wylie My most anticipated movie of 2014 is one I’ve already seen, but has yet to make a widespread appearance in theatres or on DVD/VOD. I want to recommend this excellent indie as soon as it shows its bloody face. Found screened for horror hounds at last year’s Toronto After Dark. It left the audience – particularly me – shaken and disturbed. The low budget flick about a sibling who discovers his stoic,…
By: Addison Wylie A high school ditzy clique suffers fatal injuries. The clique are brought back from the dead using Wiccan rituals, leading the ragtag undead to seek revenge. Yes, that premise is rote. But, when it comes to telling a story that simple, I imagine it’d be hard to screw it up. Surprisingly, the minds behind All Cheerleaders Die unfathomably do so. How do you do it? How do you mess up a movie…
By: Addison Wylie Lloyd Kaufman has proven with Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1 that you can go “back to the well” and resurrect a bawdy riot that was started more than two decades ago. The filmmaking ringmaster returns to Tromaville to continue the story of plagued teenagers who are slowly mutating due to exposure of toxic waste. The nasty nuclear power plant (which was stationed beside the high school) has been torn down,…
By: Addison Wylie Antisocial is middle-of-the-road fare, which I’m sure director/co-writer Cody Calahan doesn’t want to hear. He wants his film to act as a commentary for how immersed we are with technology and social media. In order to drive home the social satire, he and co-writer Chad Archibald use networking devices as a means to drag the living to a state of infection. Tech junkies start to hallucinate and graphically bleed out of the…
If you’ve been keeping up with my writing at Film Army, you would’ve been more than acquainted with our coverage of this year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival. The festival which focuses on bringing hardcore genre films (short and feature length) to eager audiences has been stronger than last year but still hit-and-miss. While gems like We Are What We Are and Big Ass Spider! had audiences glued, other horrors like Silent Retreat and Septic…
By: Addison Wylie It’s always a bad sign while watching a movie when you realize the first three minutes are probably going to be the best moments the film can offer. Machete Kills kicks off with a trashy trailer for a third Machete film – appropriately titled Machete Kills Again…In Space. The insane trailer shows audiences which characters have returned and what battles ensue, essentially giving away spoilers about the film you’re about to watch….
By: Addison Wylie Here’s a fun social experiment: try describing the premise of Jacob Vaughan’s Bad Milo to movie goers and see how long it takes for each of those people to give you a skeptical glance or laugh out of nervousness. It’s because Bad Milo is an odd movie with an odd set-up. On the surface, it’s Office Space with a dash of Gremlins mixed in with a rough night after some bad Taco…
By: Addison Wylie Remaking Sam Raimi’s horror cult classic The Evil Dead comes with a price. Much like the film’s killer Book of the Dead, such a task has consequences. The Evil Dead set a bar for low-budget horror when it crept into theatres in 1981. Some claimed it was one of the scariest films ever made while others were too busy howling at the screen. It was a film that obviously left a mark…