Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)

I may have lost count, but I am pretty sure this must be about the seventieth Hellraiser movie, and it is time for writer Gary J. Tunnicliffe to step up and direct, after doing such a sterling job of almost destroying the entire series with his work on the script for the previous outing.

Two detectives, who also both happen to be brothers, Sean Carter (Damon Carney) and David Carter (Randy Wayne), are investigating crimes committed by a deranged serial killer. They don't seem to realise that this is the work of Pinhead (played this time by Paul T. Taylor) and his main assistant here, The Auditor (played by Tunnicliffe). To try and help things along, the two male detectives are joined by a female, Christine Egerton (Alexandra Harris), and things start creeping towards an ending you can see coming a mile or two away.

I think (not completely sure though) that this is a Hellraiser movie written AS a Hellraiser movie (unlike so many instalments on the series that were just movies with Pinhead and cenobites shoehorned in). There are some times when it doesn’t feel Hellraiser-y enough, mainly because so much of the plot feels like a standard serial killer movie, but the horror aspects are very effective throughout.

The one thing I know for certain is that, perhaps due to such a low bar being set the last time around, this is a much better film than the last one. The plot is slim, although Tunnicliffe certainly tries his best to make it feel a bit weightier, and I will admit that there are a couple of really good ideas here, and the use of the demonic entities allows for some excellent set-pieces.

The cast are a mixed bunch. Carney and Wayne are a couple of poor leads, although Harris does a lot better, making the men more tolerable whenever she is sharing the screen with them. Tunnicliffe is enjoyable as The Auditor and Taylor is a worthy successor to Bradley as the most iconic of the cenobites. Having said that, he apparently tried to give a different interpretation of the character, yet it feels very much like he was playing things safe by trying to imitate the best person to forever be associated with the role. I can take or leave everyone else, although I think it is worth mentioning “the jury” as a highlight.

I am as surprised as anyone else might be to say that I quite enjoyed this. It works for fans of the series, and it also works as a fairly stand-alone horror flick. Tunnicliffe has almost done enough to make me forgive him for the previous Hellraiser movie he created. Almost.

6/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Yule Love It: A Christmas Movie Christmas (2019)

I knew that I had to see A Christmas Movie Christmas as soon as I saw the trailer for it. The plot is simple, yet potentially wonderful. Two sisters wake up to find themselves IN a Christmas movie. That's it. And it means you can have all of your comforting tropes, yet also have some laughs at their expense. In theory.

There were warning signs, however. First up, this is a film directed by Brian Herzlinger. He has moved on to make a pretty decent career for himself, certainly in the TV movie world, but film fans, like myself, who had to put up with his relentless spamming and childish behaviour on IMDb back when he was trying to get people to see his first movie, My Date With Drew, will always react badly to seeing his name. If you want to know how to make friends and influence people then study the behaviour of Herzlinger back between the years of 2004-2005 and do the exact opposite.

The second warning sign was that this was written by Brant and Kimberly Daugherty, a newly-married (at this time) couple who also give themselves main roles in the movie. I expected the worst, considering how the two might be working while wearing the rose-tinted glasses of honeymooning lovers, but also figured that I already tolerate enough extra sweetness in my Christmas movies anyway so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

You know what? It wasn't so bad. Although that doesn't mean the movie was really good.

Lana McKissack plays Eve, and Mrs Daugherty is her sister, Lacy. Eve LOVES Christmas movies. Lacy does not. Both must navigate their way around some very typical plotting when they find themselves in one, with no idea of how they got there or how they can get back to reality. Lacy starts to connect with a handsome man who is also a dab hand at baking cookies (Paul, played by her husband). Eve is drawn to a young man named Dustin (Ryan Merriman, best known to film fans for his role in Final Destination 3, although it's worth remembering that a decade has passed since then). But complications arise in the shape of Russell (Randy Wayne), a pop singer who looks exactly like Eve's real-world partner, Chad, and Noele (Addy Stafford), a woman who sweeps in under the pretence of saving the traditional Christmas festival, but who is mainly there to be an obstacle on the path of true love between Eve and Dustin.

Although there's nothing here that is painfully bad, there's nothing here that's as good as it should be either. This should have been a lot of fun, a way for everyone to have their Christmas pudding AND eat it, but very few scenes make the most of the premise. Most of the blame must lie with the script, with Mr & Mrs Daugherty often casting aside the meta potential, and comedic potential, in favour of Christmas movie moments you can get from at least a hundred other, often better, movies. A couple of details work well, and the whole premise is all part of the fun, which is worth bearing in mind, but this could have been a lot funnier, without having to lose any of the sweetness.

As disappointed as I was with the script, it turns out that I didn't really have much to fear from the Daughertys, who both do well enough onscreen. Perhaps they are given a bit more attention than necessary, and you get a few shots that linger just a tad too long on them, but they do fine. McKissack and Merriman are better, however, and deserving of the lead roles. The former has a sense of glee and enthusiasm throughout, at least until things start to look like they could fall apart, and the latter is a standard nice guy for this kind of plot. Wayne and Stafford both do well in their roles, although it's a shame neither was given a character who would provide more of a threat to the proceedings, and Brigid Duffy is a delight in her small role as Gram Gram.

As director, Herzlinger does the basics required of him. He may now have a film career spanning fifteen years, but he still seems to approach material in a way that feels like he wants to get everything done without any fuss. There's no attempt to add anything to make his films stand out from the pack, even though I realise that can be hard to do with the Christmas TV movie restrictions in place.

A Christmas Movie Christmas should have been good fun, especially for anyone who has seen as many of these movies as I have (and I know there are more of you out there). Sadly, it's just okay.

5/10

Buy The Muppet Christmas Carol instead.

Hold Your Breath (2012)

Over in America, this horror movie was touted as the first theatrical release from The Asylum. Most people who know me, and my dubious taste, will know that I have quite a love-hate relationship with The Asylum. They made Transmorphers, the first movie I ever gave a lowly 1/10 rating, but they also gave me dumb fun such as Mega Piranha and the infamous Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. I keep defending them, despite their business model built around "mockbusters" and SyFy Channel movies, and people keep telling me off for it. Well, it's not going to change, especially now that they're starting to take some more risks and put out some more original product (which, contrary to popular belief, they have been doing for some time - it's just that the mockbusters get the press, so to speak).

Hold Your Breath isn't really that good, but it has one or two decent death scenes and might be okay for a rental if you have enough beers beside you. Part of me knows that this film just isn't good enough while another part of me wants it to do okay, just well enough to encourage the company to keep trying. Perhaps if they keep trying, they'll make something good enough to surprise us all.

The plot is standard horror 101. A prologue shows viewers a nasty murderer being put to death and then things move forward to a bunch of pretty young things all heading away for a weekend trip. Apparently, there's an urban myth that while passing a cemetery you have to hold your breath. If you don't do it then any evil, restless spirit can enter you and make you do bad things. Can you guess what happens as the group drives past a cemetery?

Directed by Jared Cohn, and written by Geoff Meed (who himself directed the absolutely awful The Amityville Haunting), this starts off badly, picks up slightly after the main titles and then proceeds to slide, slowly and surely, back down to the bottom of the pile. The concept of the evil spirit taking people over and turning them into evil killers isn't that bad, it was done well in the likes of Shocker and Fallen, but in between numerous average scenes The Asylum end up shoehorning in a lot of poor, and unnecessary, CGI.

The cast is a real mixed bag and I'm not going to pretend that I cared enough about everyone onscreen to stop them from blurring into one big potential murder victim. Katrina Bowden is the best thing onscreen by a country mile, though Steve Hanks also does well with his role. As for the others, Seth Cassell may stand out slightly from the others, but Lisa Younger, Jordan Pratt-Thatcher, Brad Slaughter and Randy Wayne could all get together and rob me at gunpoint and I wouldn't be able to remember a thing about them. It's not that they are terrible or completely nondescript, it's just that they're not given any material to help differentiate themselves from one another. ANY of the men and women onscreen, for the most part, could play any of the other men or women.

I'm not bothered by the fact that the film doesn't supply the horror genre with a memorable new villain, I don't care that the script is pretty clunky and preposterous and I don't even mind that the characters aren't all that likable. What stops me from rating this film as even an average horror are the many moments that just feel lazy and careless. It's not THAT hard to make a generic, uninventive horror movie. To make one that doesn't even stand up well alongside OTHER generic and uninventive horror movies is never good. And that bothers me.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Hold-Breath-Blu-ray-Katrina-Bowden/dp/B009T43QC2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1365214997&sr=8-2&keywords=hold+your+breath