Showing posts with label pennhurst. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pennhurst. Show all posts

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Hypothermia

Hypothermia (2010)
Directed by James Felix McKenney

Holy moly the monster makeup is horrific in this.
Image from http://turntherightcorner.com/2012/10/16/hypothermia-movie-review/

Husband, wife, son, and girlfriend are on a remote family vaca to go ice fishing. Things start to go wrong when he father, ice fishing vet, somehow breaks through the ice and nearly dies of hypothermia. Luckily his wife and son leave their cabin in the night looking for him.
Though he recovers fine and blames the accident on carelessness, things are much worse.
The next morning s douche bag and his son drive onto, music blaring, the ice with their trailer for some fishing. Immediately the two families don't see eye to eye. However something large passes them under the ice and douche dad wants to team up to catch the thing.
Douche's son drills open a massive hole in the ice anticipating the catch, but the createure ends up nearly catching him.
After pulling his body out from the freezing water, the young ma says it's no fish. In fact the thing has legs. Additionally the creature has cut open the boy's arm deeply and before long the wound looks infected. The family tries to convince douche to take his son to a hispital but he won't consider it until the boy passes out next to the hole in the ice, just in time to get dragged away for good. Douche dad tries to get his son back, but is wounded himself.
When he comes to, douche dad finds his son is gone and the girlfriend has treated his wounds best she can. He however is intent on not resting until he gets the monster that took his son. He leaves the trailer and starts up some machinery, hypothesizing that the vibrations on the ice are how it targets people. His plan is to shoot it dead as soon as it pops out. Unfortunately douche is apparently a horrible shot in the night. He misses all his shots when the thing attacks, and foolishly continues to chase after it in the dark which leads to his demise.
The father and son, unable to help douche, seek shelter back in the trailer after the son has taken a cut to the face. Mom, fearing the creature has venom, tries to suck the possible toxins from his wounds.
Agreeing that the vibrations are attracting the thing, the four decide they will silently hole up in the trailer for the night. As things calm down, the son lays down on the floor. Unfortunately the trailer has built in small holes for ice fishing, and the creature reaches through slashing the boy's throat and killing him.
In the morning the remaining group leaves and the girlfriend confesses how they were going to be married and planned in making the announcement yesterday but things went south. Though they are all grieving the first focus is making it off of the ice. They keep their eyes out for weak spots in the ice as that's the most likely attack spot.
Sure enough the creature breaks through, taking the husband. Not wanting his sacrifice to be in vain the wife pushes the girl and herself on. They're almost to the cabin when the creature appears right at the edge of the lake. The wife, quivering in the snow with the girlfriend, apologizes to the creature for infringing on its territory and tells it it's already taken the most important parts of her life away from her. Something clicks and the creatures leaves them.

 
 
Images from http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/6035/exclusive-clawful-still-hypothermia and http://www.aintitcool.com/node/58875

So above are the various covers. One is really retro B movie looking, while the other is more contemporary. The one to the right obviously plays to the horrible monster costume more, while if you look at the right one then see the film you're probably pretty disappointed.
Now you don't see full stationary shots of the creature much (it's mostly a lot of shaky night shots), but when you do... boy, it's bad. When I saw the creature out of water running on the ice first I kind of didn't believe it was that bad. But sure enough next shot on the surface it was. It basically looks like a dude in a wetsuit.
Aside from that the movie was okay, better than the last film with Michael Rooker, Merle Dixon in The Walking Dead, that I'd seen named Pennhust.
Douche, played by Don Wood, is a really abrasive character and Wood did a heck of a job portraying him. In the beginning the douche is so inconsiderate it's almost comical, but after a while the viewer just accepts the character.
For a movie with a seemingly microscopic budget the talent was good and gore makeup was good. Lighting was almost non existent a few times so that could've used improvement. Audio was pretty clean and clear the whole time. I wonder how quickly the film was shot now that I think about it...
Like Pennhust unless you're a big fan of Michael Rooker or someone else involved in the film, it's not really worth it because of the monster.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Pennhurst

Pennhurst (2012)
Directed by Michael Rooker

Um... Terrible.
If you've watched it and agree with me in this film being poopy, look at it like this: at least the short runtime (little over an hour) means you haven't wasted as much time as you could have watching something like Thankskilling...

For those of you who do not know, Pennhurst was a real Asylum that was ordered closed in the 80's after reports of patients being mistreated (mistreatment varied in severity).
This movie is about a group of kids (maybe about 16) who bust into the asylum to check it out before it gets converted into an 'amusement park'.
As a side note, Pennhurst really has become a sort of amusement park. It's now a haunted house (http://www.pennhurstasylum.com/). Tickets as of late 2012 start at $15.
Anyway,
so kids in the asylum, yup. Their nerdy hipster leader is taking them for a tour and giving a history lesson on the way. As he tells the story about some paranormal investigators that went missing there, the movie delves into that story. For a while you pretty much forget that this is a story (similarly to Are You Afraid of the Dark?) within the story. The story the kid tells is the majority of the movie too, and more interesting then the kids.
So nearly everyone ends up dying in the end of the story, and after the tale is done the kids, still walking around the place, are attacked by the malicious spirits who killed the investigators prior.
Then, another tv paranormal investigative team heads into the asylum. They spot blood on the floor and follow the trail, only to find the bodies of all the kids. They freak out and are then confronted with the same spirit to got the kids. Cut. That's a wrap.



Above, the paranormal crew from the kid's story. Image from http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BOTg3OTE1NzIzMF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjMyNjc1Ng@@._V1._SX640_SY480_.jpg

This film is very low budget. However, in my opinion, the ambient sounds/music is pretty sweet. It's eerie and kind of reminds me of Silent Hill's industrial little loops.

If you like to know stuff about the actors in films too, here's your interesting tidbit about the group above; the woman on the left in the blue is Haylie Duff, older sister of, you guessed it, Hilary Duff, one of Disney's former teen stars. She was also in Napoleon Dynamite.

Also, does the name of the director ring a bell for anyone? It's The Walking Dead's Merle Dixon! Though I did not enjoy the movie, I appreciate that this acting talent also does some producing and directing. I also dig that he was into another part of the horror genre (is in a realm other than zombies). Yes, he's in a horror TV series, but talent doesn't necessarily have to enjoy the pieces they're in. Seems like if he's in a horror show, and makes a horror movie as well, that he probably likes horror.

If you're a Michael Rooker fan than why not? It's only about an hour and 15 minutes.
If you're not, then I don't really think you need watch this film. There's more compelling stuff out there.

***Here's another interesting piece of trivia: Firstly, anyone else remember why Pennsylvania is kinda weirder and creepier than other states?
For those of you who are big Silent Hill buffs, then you know Centralia, the real life Silent Hill. Centralia is an abandoned town in PA with an underground toxic fire still burning... You can do more research too to see more parallels between Silent Hill and Centralia.
Oh, PA, you are an interesting state for some of the wrong reasons...