NEW MOON REVIEW

  Okay horror fans, we just have to get over it. Just because there are vampires and wolves in this movie, it is a love story plain and simple. You cannot expect anything else from this movie. If you do, you will be greatly disappointed, not that you weren't disappointed with Twilight. To be fair, I went into this movie with an open mind, but it still did not work for me.

  Throughout Twilight, we had to watch Bella and Edward fall in love with each other. Back and forth they went with the whole "I love you but we can't be with each other" drama. One minute they can be together, the next they can't. Really driving home the love story thing. Well, history repeats itself in New Moon. We started off with this struggle again, and Edward decided it was best that he leave Bella. This time his absence gave Jacob and Bella a chance to form a bond. However, just as it was with Edward, it became another game of "I love you but we can't be with each other." Too much drama, not enough blood I say. Bella learned that Jacob was a wolf so she ultimately must decide between being with a vampire or a wolf. What a choice!

  Let me move this forward and discuss two things. The first being that this movie, even this whole saga, was just not for us horror fans. It was for teenage girls, women, and anyone that read the books. Horror fans do not want to see a story about a girl that has to decide between two guys' love. But there were vampires and a pack of wolves. It should be a the battle of vampires vs. werewolves. No sorry, it just was not. It was just drama, drama, drama! Stephenie Meyer has taken a shot at us all by making a joke of our beloved vampire. A vampire that sparkles in the light, give me a break. Vampires don't sparkle they burn. New Moon wasted no time in hitting us horror fans with this again as the story opened in one of Bella's dreams with Edward sparkling again. The movie takes another shot at us when Bella's friend puts down zombie movies after they walked out of the theatre. You ruined our vampire and then take a shot at zombies, not cool. Also, notice I refuse to call Jacob a werewolf. When "Wolfman" comes out, watch that, and tell me what the difference was between a real werewolf and this fraud Jacob. A shape shifter that was a wolf, please!

  The second thing that I want to discuss is the movie itself, which is what I am here for after all. As you may have expected, there are many things that I did not like about this movie. Yes, there actually was a movie stuck somewhere in between all of the scenes of Jacob or Edward without their shirt on. A movie with a bunch of half naked women running around doesn't make for a good movie, and neither does one with half naked guys running around. I guess Jacob was just trying to save money on clothes considering he tears through them everyday running with his pack of wolves.

  If you look past their naked bodies for one second, you would realize what a bad movie this was. Apparently, a lot of fans wanted New Moon to be more like the book, and they got their wish. I could see how this works as a book, but you have to make certain changes to make it work on film, which they don't. Let's start with the bad dialog, and the awkwardness between characters. To me, something just did not feel right when Bella talked to Edward or Jacob. It was just strange. It made me wonder if it was just bad acting, the dialog, or both. Speaking of the characters, can someone send out a search party for them? Most of the movie was just Jacob and Bella, with a little bit of Edward at the beginning and end. Give the audience a chance to breathe, and let there be some more interaction with characters other than those named Bella, Jacob, or Edward. Every time Bella saw her father it was two sentences, and he was gone again. The Cullen family was there at the beginning and that was it. The only one you see again was Alice. In a book, it works if you focus so heavily on a character like this saga does with Bella, but in a movie it does not. You need to see the movie from more than one perspective the entire time. I know it would have been different from the book, but they could have shown what Edward was doing while being away from Bella. They could have shown Jacob running with his wolf pack.

  I was disappointed with the action scenes in Twilight, but had hopes of seeing something more in this one. I set myself up for disappointment again because I forgot this was about a love story, and not the action that was supposed to come when you have a movie with vampires and wolves. The one scene that the wolves actually fought a vampire was all cut up. You see a piece here and there, which really amounted to nothing. You get to see a lot of the wolves running, but so what. Let's see them fight. I mean, you make them all big, mean, and scary for no reason if you don't see them fight. Then there was the whole drama of Bella and Alice racing to save Edward from revealing himself to humans. It was over in two seconds. They had to show us a plane to prove that they flew to Italy. What they didn't swim there? And watch out, Alice and her racing down the street in a Porsche, and passing like two cars. Wow, exciting! By the way, if you want an example of a scene that was shot poorly, that was it. Look at the background while they were driving. It was so fake that it was ridiculous. Then we got to watch Bella run around the town to find Edward. The slow motion was the only thing that made it suspenseful. If not, she would have just run over to him, and that would have been it. No... she saved him ohhhh! And if you were waiting for a big showdown between Edward and Jacob, forget about that too! Just a lot of talk and no action. Dam love story!

  This movie was not for us horror fans. We really have no business watching this, but we may have ended up seeing it because our significant other, or our lady friends wanted to see it. So when we see it, we are insulted by what they have done to our stories of vampires and werewolves. This whole saga was really a love story that just happened to use vampires and wolves. While it may have made for a great book, they really needed to do a better job of translating that to film. If I were rating this for the love story, I would probably give it 5 dozen roses. However, this is a horror site and I can't rate this movie with even one pool of blood if there isn't even a pool of blood in the movie. So I give this movie 0 pools of blood.

  HorrO

THE FOURTH KIND REVIEW (spoiler alert)

Spoiler Alert: Includes discussion of whether or not the movie was real

  The story of this movie centers around psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler and her video taped sessions with patients. The patients were having problems sleeping, but were not sure why. As the movie goes on, you see documented footage of what was supposed to be the real Dr. Tyler and her patients along side the regular movie. Apparently in this part of Alaska, there were suspicions of alien activity, and this was what Dr. Tyler feared was happening to her patients. As the movie goes on, the patients are no longer the only ones affected by the alien activity.

  Getting right to it, this movie presents two important issues to discuss. First, did the movie create enough buzz to get people interested? Good or bad, I think this movie did create some buzz. For me, right after watching it, I wanted to know how real this story was. I did the usual searches on the Internet, and read several articles and reviews of the movie. Even if you decided not to see the movie but saw the previews, I think they pushed the story in a way that got you to do the kind of search that I did. Sorry to say, from everything I have read, the story behind the movie is bogus. 

   I could see how people would be mad that the movie portrays itself as real, but was just another Hollywood movie. Putting that aside, I liked the unique way they decided to approach the movie even though it was fake. How many movies start off by having an actor/actress explain to you this movie was based on real events before the movie starts? I know, but she was just lying to us. Still, it set a different tone for the movie. I mean, how many movies have you seen that start off saying something on the screen such as, "the events you are about to see are based on real life events,” and the movie is just as fake as this one? Yes, it did disappoint me that it was not “based on real life events,” but I did not let it change my opinion of the movie. 

  That leads me to the second issue here: was this movie any good? As mentioned, I read other reviews of the movie, and I looked at some comments from people that saw the movie. Most of those opinions, including the reaction from the audience where I saw the movie, were that the movie was bad. I did not get the feeling that a lot of people liked the movie. Maybe it was that after the movie pushed for you to believe that these events were real, the audience just could not buy into it after seeing the film. 

  Well, I have to disagree because I happen to like the movie. I liked the movie for several reasons. The first one is, as I said earlier, the unique way that they went about presenting this movie. I bought right into them saying this was a true story, and kept that frame of mind the whole time. To me, that is what made the movie good. If I doubted the truth to this movie from the start, I could see how it would have sucked from that point of view.

  The second thing I liked was how they showed what was supposed to be documented footage of the real events the movie was based on. Again, that was a unique twist on how to show a movie. It was different to see what was supposed to be documented footage shown at the same time as the scene was being acted out for the movie. I particularly liked the scene early in the movie where they split the screen into four parts, two showing documented footage and two showing the movie. I know some people hated this and compared it to shows they have seen on TV, and said the documented footage looked worse than the movie itself. I'm sorry; I liked it, and appreciated the different point of view the movie was trying to show. Yes, the footage went static, but that was the point. It was an added element to show that the aliens were in control of the person and recording devices at the time the footage was being taped. 

  Another thing I liked is that the footage actually did freak me out a little. I know, you are thinking, "what a sucker, he fell for the movie and got scared. No wonder why he liked the movie!" Oh yeah, well how many people were scared by Paranormal Activity. As I said in that review, I liked how they tried to scare you, but the movie never really freaked me out. I also mentioned in that review that one of the things that could scare you is if you believe in that kind of thing happening (ghosts for Paranormal, aliens for this movie). Even though I believe in ghosts, Paranormal never really got to me. Some of the documented footage in this movie got to me such as, what the policeman saw outside the house, and all the screaming that the people did while being hypnotized. Does that mean I believe in aliens more than ghosts? I do not know, maybe. I am sure most people will say Paranormal was better, but you can read my review of the movie to see my major problem with it. 

  Yeah, maybe you thought there were holes in the story, the documented footage was terrible, or that they went so far in trying to prove that this was real that you never bought into it, but I liked it. Real or fake, I give them credit for trying to give us a story in a different and unique way. I liked how they came right out and told you it was real, and tried to back that up with documented footage throughout the movie. I may have fallen for it, but I know you fell for Paranormal Activity. I give this movie 3 pools of blood.

HorrO

THE BOX REVIEW

  So an unusual box is delivered to your door, and several hours later an equally unusual guy shows up to give you a life altering decision. Your choice is to push the button on the box and receive one million dollars, or do nothing within 24 hours and return the box. Oh, but there is a catch of course! If you push the button, someone who you do not know will be killed. What would you do?

  This was the decision that Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) was faced with. To make the decision complicated, she just found out that she will no longer receive a teacher discount for her son to attend school, and her husband was denied a promotion at work. A caring mother and overall sweet lady, she struggles with the decision with little help from her husband. If she said no, then there would not be much of a movie, so lets move on.

  If I had to describe this movie in one word it would be “weird.” It kind of reminded me of something Stephen King would write. While it was weird, it was not the kind of weird that made for a bad movie. The weirdness was necessary to make everything in the movie work; from the box to Norma’s disability, and from the mysterious murder to the water portals. And do not forget the source of all the weird: Arlington Steward.

  He was the man, or vessel as he said, that delivered the box, and set everything in motion. Everything about this guy was weird, starting with a piece of his cheek missing from his face. I thought it was rather interesting how they showed his face at different angles. Sometimes you could barely tell there was something wrong with his face, and other times they showed a perfect shot of his disfigurement. Obviously, they knew the audience would be staring at it so they changed it up every time they showed him. I thought this was shot well, as was the whole movie.

  Back to the weirdness. As mentioned, Mr. Steward was a vessel controlled by some outside force. That outside force also gave him the ability to control peoples’ minds for a short time in order to watch Norma and her husband. At times, it seemed like half the town was watching them. Anyone he controlled was called his employee. They would give a creepy stare to Norma and her husband when they were watching them. One scene I particularly liked (which had plenty of weird) was when Norma and her husband were in the library. Neither knew the other was there as they searched for answers to explain the situation they were in. Once her husband found a clue, five employees (with that creepy look on their face), started to follow him as he tried to exit the library. He walked into a large study area and as he passed the people studying, they would simultaneously all turn and give him that stare. To make the weird point again, just see how he eventually exited the library, and tell me that was not weird.

  As Norma and her husband were faced with a decision to make at the beginning of the movie, they are faced with an even tougher one at the end of the movie. Without giving anything away, let’s just say things come full circle. They got themselves into this mess by pushing the button, and now they faced the true consequences of their actions. The ending brought some suspense, and it made you feel for the situation they were in. You feel bad for them because they were in a tough position, and the movie does a good job of portraying them as good people.

  A lot of weird things were explained as the movie went on, but that still did not take away from the weirdness. Basically, all the weird added up to another movie that proved that when humanity is given the chance to do the right thing, it will do the wrong thing. Remember, you have a choice to push the button, or just give the box back, and the wrong choice comes with consequences. Although it was a weird movie, I think it was still worth seeing, so I give it 2 pools of blood. Oh yeah, and if you were wondering, I probably would have pushed the button too! 

  HorrO