Some 4chan moments.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
Creepypasta Movies 2
A while back I wrote about some movies based on creatures centered in tons of Creepypastas. Well I watched some more, and here they are.
Fathom (2013)
Directed By Justin Jones
Written By Alexander Crews
I want to mention that the director did a lot more than direct. He's also credited as the editor, and steadicam operator. Alexander Crews is listed for cinematography as well as writing. I think it's really cool that these guys successfully have their fingers in several pies.
So this is a short film, running at 8 minutes. It focuses on a older gentleman who has been searching for Slender Man for ages after Slender Man took his sister and left only her shoes. After a lifetime of research he's not found a way to get to the Slender Man. Instead the Slender Man comes to him and offers him a way to see his sister again.
This is probably the best Slender Man film I've seen. Most are trash (thus they're not hard to beat), but this one is quality. Unlike most junk on YouTube, the audio is level, the camera is steady, and the acting is good.
Now it's not quite cinema quality, but it's very close. The only thing I'd say keeps it from being cinema quality is the Slender Man's costume. It's a dude on stilts with a white face mask and gloves. This is a practical costume which is probably done for budget reasons. I understand this, and it seems like the crew did too. And to try to enhance the costume there's an electrical interference effect, which is a nice touch. Colour grading is great too. All around it's a really well put together film. Would not be surprised if Gearmark Pictures starts having stuff widely in theatres in my lifetime.
Slender Man (2011)
This one sucks. Would not recommend anything beyond the first minutes 43 seconds. The guys screen with the camera zoom is hilarious! And same with the detective's chin scratch.
So Detective J is concerned for his brother once kids start disappearing. However his brother, Brian, doesn't like him. This is because after their father was murdered J left him and his mother. He tells J that he'll be safe, but Brian finds that he's being stalked by someone in a weird mask, and nearly everyone he's come in contact with ends up dead or missing.
Eventually Brian wakes up in the woods and gets attacked by the masked person. Mask guy reveals himself as a classmate of Brian's who has snatched Brian to use him as bait to meet Slender Man. Brian escapes the kid but then runs into Slender Man. Fortunately he knows Slender Man's "weakness" and pulls out his cellphone.
When Brian comes to again he's in his brother's car at the school. J tells him his teacher has something important for him so Brian heads into the school. J says he'll wait in the car. However he never comes back. It seems like the masked kid wants revenge.
To be continued? No thanks.
This is the typical kids-with-a-camera quality video. It sucks. Tripod. Please. Or just stick a camera on a chair to keep it steady. But no. And then there's spelling mistakes. I'm not very good a spelling and my professional work goes through a lot of people to check that. Why didn't anyone screen for quality before releasing this video?
Screenshot from movie
Acting is not very good. Camera quality isn't that great. Cinematography isn't great. Slender Man costume is meah. The list goes on. All that being said, movies that suck like this made by a group of little kids are great first steps. My opinion, as harsh as it may seem sometimes, comes from a motion graphics and editor background. I like to see kids try, even if that means failing, because trying and failing is better than never trying at all.
And that being said, I don't think this was made by a group of little kids. I think it was made by young adults. There are simple errors that could be avoided, like spelling.
As of today there's over 1 million views. Likes and Dislikes are almost 50/50.
Butchy Kid Videos
SHOCKING SLENDER MAN VIDEO on Butchy Kid's YouTube
Butchy Kid Videos does tons of funny little videos. They're "sighting" of creatures like Slender Man, Bigfoot, Wolfman, and more. Very funny stuff. Would recommend.
Fathom (2013)
Directed By Justin Jones
Written By Alexander Crews
I want to mention that the director did a lot more than direct. He's also credited as the editor, and steadicam operator. Alexander Crews is listed for cinematography as well as writing. I think it's really cool that these guys successfully have their fingers in several pies.
So this is a short film, running at 8 minutes. It focuses on a older gentleman who has been searching for Slender Man for ages after Slender Man took his sister and left only her shoes. After a lifetime of research he's not found a way to get to the Slender Man. Instead the Slender Man comes to him and offers him a way to see his sister again.
This is probably the best Slender Man film I've seen. Most are trash (thus they're not hard to beat), but this one is quality. Unlike most junk on YouTube, the audio is level, the camera is steady, and the acting is good.
Now it's not quite cinema quality, but it's very close. The only thing I'd say keeps it from being cinema quality is the Slender Man's costume. It's a dude on stilts with a white face mask and gloves. This is a practical costume which is probably done for budget reasons. I understand this, and it seems like the crew did too. And to try to enhance the costume there's an electrical interference effect, which is a nice touch. Colour grading is great too. All around it's a really well put together film. Would not be surprised if Gearmark Pictures starts having stuff widely in theatres in my lifetime.
Slender Man (2011)
This one sucks. Would not recommend anything beyond the first minutes 43 seconds. The guys screen with the camera zoom is hilarious! And same with the detective's chin scratch.
So Detective J is concerned for his brother once kids start disappearing. However his brother, Brian, doesn't like him. This is because after their father was murdered J left him and his mother. He tells J that he'll be safe, but Brian finds that he's being stalked by someone in a weird mask, and nearly everyone he's come in contact with ends up dead or missing.
Eventually Brian wakes up in the woods and gets attacked by the masked person. Mask guy reveals himself as a classmate of Brian's who has snatched Brian to use him as bait to meet Slender Man. Brian escapes the kid but then runs into Slender Man. Fortunately he knows Slender Man's "weakness" and pulls out his cellphone.
When Brian comes to again he's in his brother's car at the school. J tells him his teacher has something important for him so Brian heads into the school. J says he'll wait in the car. However he never comes back. It seems like the masked kid wants revenge.
To be continued? No thanks.
This is the typical kids-with-a-camera quality video. It sucks. Tripod. Please. Or just stick a camera on a chair to keep it steady. But no. And then there's spelling mistakes. I'm not very good a spelling and my professional work goes through a lot of people to check that. Why didn't anyone screen for quality before releasing this video?
Acting is not very good. Camera quality isn't that great. Cinematography isn't great. Slender Man costume is meah. The list goes on. All that being said, movies that suck like this made by a group of little kids are great first steps. My opinion, as harsh as it may seem sometimes, comes from a motion graphics and editor background. I like to see kids try, even if that means failing, because trying and failing is better than never trying at all.
And that being said, I don't think this was made by a group of little kids. I think it was made by young adults. There are simple errors that could be avoided, like spelling.
As of today there's over 1 million views. Likes and Dislikes are almost 50/50.
Butchy Kid Videos
Butchy Kid Videos does tons of funny little videos. They're "sighting" of creatures like Slender Man, Bigfoot, Wolfman, and more. Very funny stuff. Would recommend.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
7500 (2014)
7500 (2014)
Directed by Takashi Shimizu
Written by Craig Rosenberg
Image from IMDB
Words of advice: Don't waste your time.
This film (if you want to even call it that) is poo. A friend of mine sent me some reviews about it before its North American release on Dread Central and Bloody Disgusting. Both are very negative, to my dismay. But... they are also right. As Dread Central put it “Craig Rosenberg (The Quiet Ones) weaves a tale that would be better suited to the length of a Twilight Zone episode… a Twilight Zone episode from the more recent incarnations of the series and not a particularly good one, either.” Too true.
So in case you haven't heard of the film before, here's what I knew before getting into this. A few years back I hear about this film 7500. A horror film about a haunted flight on it's way to Japan? I'm so psyched! At this time in my life I am about to fly to Japan from the US myself. What timing! Unfortunately the release date is pushed. The move isn't released. Bummer. Fast forward and I'm still waiting for this film a year later. Again, release date is pushed. Finally fall 2014 it's released! Heck yeah I'm watching this. I've literally been waiting for this film for years. Now I've seen it and am sure glad that while I was waiting, I was doing other things, like having a life. I don't know what this film was originally intended to be, but it has ended up being garbage. To top it off, why release it now? CBS Films put it off so long already, why not another year so recent tragic aviary wounds can heal a little? With that last comment in mind, perhaps that is the reason that 7500 got released in plenty of other places before the US.
Now let's get less personal.
Time to board the plane from the US to Japan. It's only going to take a scant eight hours (my flight was maybe double that so no idea where they flew out from). But in spite of the short flight time, the plane is doomed.
On the plane there's a newly wed couple made up of a neurotic germaphobic woman and her well-mannered husband, goth chick, some punk kid who made it on with a carry-on full of stolen cell phones, a girl going to visit her boyfriend, some dude with a creepy old wooden box, a mom and her daughter, two flight attendants, two random dudes who work on the plane but only appear twice, and two couples going for the dream trip to Japan. There are a few more people but they didn't really seems to matter, and they also seem to randomly disappear throughout the film.
A couple hours into the flight and the group hits a bit of turbulence. The plane seems to make it through ok, but one passenger (the dude with the weird wooden box), has some sort of panic attack or seizure or something and DUN DUN DUN dies! There seems to have been nothing the two flight attendants and paramedic passenger (part of the group going for the dream trip) could have done.
Needing somewhere to put the body, the captain tells the flight attendant to move all people from the upstairs first class to regular seats downstairs so the body can be stashed there. There's only a few people on this flight from the US to Japan in total, nevermind the negligible number that was flying first class, so everyone that's inconvenienced gets over it fast.
Then shortly after, there's more flight troubles! The plane starts to plummet down from the sky. The oxygen masks fall. Baggage in overhead compartments rebel and rain down on the passengers below. Girl-going-to-visit-her-boyfriend is thrown around with her pants down in the lavatory while trying to take a pregnancy test. Luckily the captain somehow gets control back and the flight continues. Seems like everyone is ok. But then weird gets weirder. Punk kid with stolen cell phones decides to swipe the dead guy's Rolex and take a selfie upstairs, but something goes wrong. And he winds up missing. To top it off one of the flight attendant sees a jet out the window flying pretty close. She calls the captain to ask for what to do about the missing punk kid, the now missing body, and if he's seen a jet. Look for the body and no, no jet is the word.
The few passengers that remain decide to snoop through the dead guy's stuff to find and clues as to why things are going south (group composed of paramedic from before and his friend girl, and newly weds). Inside the wooden box they find an animatronic death doll that the dead dude was delivering for a client. Fortunately at that moment goth girl is there to talk about shinigami and how some people's spirits after death need to let go before they're able to be taken away by death. The gang also convinces a flight attendant that she should look at his checked luggage below for more clues. For whatever reason, she does, and she does it alone. That doesn't end well for her, though, when a pale hand reaches for her from his luggage.
Last remaining flight attendant then gets taken in front of the gang by something that pulls her into an overhead compartment.
They flee back downstairs and find girl-going-to-visit-boyfriend has once again tried to use the restroom for her pregnancy test, and is now dead with her pants down. What a way to go.
In the cockpit the pilot and copilot are dead too! What's going on? Well a conveniently timed news transmission comes on the plane's TVs to explain just that. Apparently when the plane dropped the second time everyone had actually died on board and the gang just hadn't accepted it yet. The plane had been on auto pilot this whole time and would crash into the water in a few hours. The jet outside was there to look inside to see if anyone may have survived. Nope.
Paramedic and his friend girl end the flight in an embrace, newly wed husband seems to be ok with it, and crazy wife is the only one left. She's taken by force by a ghostly hand in the trash, as the movie's last ditch effort to spook the audience with a jump scare. The end.
Dumb, I know. It's also one of those plane movies on a mysterious airline that takes off even though a flight is less than half full, and everyone has leg room. The aisles are wide enough for people to walk up and down at the same time, seats are wide and the cushions aren't worn in. The galley is spacious and passengers can just hang out there. Where does an airline like that exist? Why is it so hard for movies on airplanes to keep it real? It annoys me...
To top it off, the film's website doesn't even seem to have anything on it but a trailer. Maybe you can figure out the navigation, but if I have to spend more than a few minutes to find a button to take me to wallpapers or a site's homepage, then the site sucks. And at the time of this blog entry, the trailer is blocked on Youtube.
Screenshot of the official trailer page that I tried to access in the US from the link on the official movie website. G4? What? Right now you can watch the trailer on IGN's channel though. Weird...
Anyway, this film stinks. Don't do it.
Directed by Takashi Shimizu
Written by Craig Rosenberg
Image from IMDB
Words of advice: Don't waste your time.
This film (if you want to even call it that) is poo. A friend of mine sent me some reviews about it before its North American release on Dread Central and Bloody Disgusting. Both are very negative, to my dismay. But... they are also right. As Dread Central put it “Craig Rosenberg (The Quiet Ones) weaves a tale that would be better suited to the length of a Twilight Zone episode… a Twilight Zone episode from the more recent incarnations of the series and not a particularly good one, either.” Too true.
So in case you haven't heard of the film before, here's what I knew before getting into this. A few years back I hear about this film 7500. A horror film about a haunted flight on it's way to Japan? I'm so psyched! At this time in my life I am about to fly to Japan from the US myself. What timing! Unfortunately the release date is pushed. The move isn't released. Bummer. Fast forward and I'm still waiting for this film a year later. Again, release date is pushed. Finally fall 2014 it's released! Heck yeah I'm watching this. I've literally been waiting for this film for years. Now I've seen it and am sure glad that while I was waiting, I was doing other things, like having a life. I don't know what this film was originally intended to be, but it has ended up being garbage. To top it off, why release it now? CBS Films put it off so long already, why not another year so recent tragic aviary wounds can heal a little? With that last comment in mind, perhaps that is the reason that 7500 got released in plenty of other places before the US.
Now let's get less personal.
Time to board the plane from the US to Japan. It's only going to take a scant eight hours (my flight was maybe double that so no idea where they flew out from). But in spite of the short flight time, the plane is doomed.
On the plane there's a newly wed couple made up of a neurotic germaphobic woman and her well-mannered husband, goth chick, some punk kid who made it on with a carry-on full of stolen cell phones, a girl going to visit her boyfriend, some dude with a creepy old wooden box, a mom and her daughter, two flight attendants, two random dudes who work on the plane but only appear twice, and two couples going for the dream trip to Japan. There are a few more people but they didn't really seems to matter, and they also seem to randomly disappear throughout the film.
A couple hours into the flight and the group hits a bit of turbulence. The plane seems to make it through ok, but one passenger (the dude with the weird wooden box), has some sort of panic attack or seizure or something and DUN DUN DUN dies! There seems to have been nothing the two flight attendants and paramedic passenger (part of the group going for the dream trip) could have done.
Needing somewhere to put the body, the captain tells the flight attendant to move all people from the upstairs first class to regular seats downstairs so the body can be stashed there. There's only a few people on this flight from the US to Japan in total, nevermind the negligible number that was flying first class, so everyone that's inconvenienced gets over it fast.
Then shortly after, there's more flight troubles! The plane starts to plummet down from the sky. The oxygen masks fall. Baggage in overhead compartments rebel and rain down on the passengers below. Girl-going-to-visit-her-boyfriend is thrown around with her pants down in the lavatory while trying to take a pregnancy test. Luckily the captain somehow gets control back and the flight continues. Seems like everyone is ok. But then weird gets weirder. Punk kid with stolen cell phones decides to swipe the dead guy's Rolex and take a selfie upstairs, but something goes wrong. And he winds up missing. To top it off one of the flight attendant sees a jet out the window flying pretty close. She calls the captain to ask for what to do about the missing punk kid, the now missing body, and if he's seen a jet. Look for the body and no, no jet is the word.
The few passengers that remain decide to snoop through the dead guy's stuff to find and clues as to why things are going south (group composed of paramedic from before and his friend girl, and newly weds). Inside the wooden box they find an animatronic death doll that the dead dude was delivering for a client. Fortunately at that moment goth girl is there to talk about shinigami and how some people's spirits after death need to let go before they're able to be taken away by death. The gang also convinces a flight attendant that she should look at his checked luggage below for more clues. For whatever reason, she does, and she does it alone. That doesn't end well for her, though, when a pale hand reaches for her from his luggage.
Last remaining flight attendant then gets taken in front of the gang by something that pulls her into an overhead compartment.
They flee back downstairs and find girl-going-to-visit-boyfriend has once again tried to use the restroom for her pregnancy test, and is now dead with her pants down. What a way to go.
In the cockpit the pilot and copilot are dead too! What's going on? Well a conveniently timed news transmission comes on the plane's TVs to explain just that. Apparently when the plane dropped the second time everyone had actually died on board and the gang just hadn't accepted it yet. The plane had been on auto pilot this whole time and would crash into the water in a few hours. The jet outside was there to look inside to see if anyone may have survived. Nope.
Paramedic and his friend girl end the flight in an embrace, newly wed husband seems to be ok with it, and crazy wife is the only one left. She's taken by force by a ghostly hand in the trash, as the movie's last ditch effort to spook the audience with a jump scare. The end.
Dumb, I know. It's also one of those plane movies on a mysterious airline that takes off even though a flight is less than half full, and everyone has leg room. The aisles are wide enough for people to walk up and down at the same time, seats are wide and the cushions aren't worn in. The galley is spacious and passengers can just hang out there. Where does an airline like that exist? Why is it so hard for movies on airplanes to keep it real? It annoys me...
To top it off, the film's website doesn't even seem to have anything on it but a trailer. Maybe you can figure out the navigation, but if I have to spend more than a few minutes to find a button to take me to wallpapers or a site's homepage, then the site sucks. And at the time of this blog entry, the trailer is blocked on Youtube.
Screenshot of the official trailer page that I tried to access in the US from the link on the official movie website. G4? What? Right now you can watch the trailer on IGN's channel though. Weird...
Anyway, this film stinks. Don't do it.
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