These are just a few of the movies that i watched in 2018 that i would rather be able to say truthfully that i have not seen. But considering there is a best of list, its only right there is a worst of list.
Director Hèctor Hernández Vicens
Starring Sophie Skelton, Johnathon Schaech, Jeff Gum
Rated R
Score 0/6
A small group of military personnel and survivalists dwell in an underground bunker as they seek to find a cure in a world overrun by zombies.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline is considered to be one of two remakes of Romero’s original 1985 film Day of the Dead, with the first released in 2008. Day of the Dead: Bloodline, isn’t a remake, its entry in Netflix has it categorized as a reimagining. The word reimagining is a very dirty word when it comes to filmmaking. When you were a child how many of you got hit in the back of the head or had your mouth washed out with soap when you swore in front of your parents? To all of the film executives out please the next time somebody utters the word reimagining when they are pitching a movie call security and have them escorted from the building. Movies that are ‘reimaginations’ deserve nothing but contempt because it breads lazy film making and that is just what director Hèctor Hernández Vicens has demonstrated what he is capable of. I suppose according to the ‘rule of 5’ I should cut him some slack considering that Vicens’ filmography shows that this is the second feature film that he has directed. But right now, I did hold any hope for his directing future and I don’t have any plans to revisit this movie.
The acting was bad and was at the level that you would expect from most soap operas, but I suppose that is the best you can expect when the writing team behind the movie seems to have more experience writing for Television rather than Movies. I suppose the only person who came close to giving a decent performance was Johnathon Schaech who nailed the creepiness level for his character. That being said there wasn’t much character development throughout the movie.
Director Harold P. Warren
Starring Tom Neyman, John Reynolds, Diane Mahree, Hal Warren, Jackey Neyman
Score 0.5/6
A family gets lost on the road and stumbles upon a hidden, underground, devil-worshiping cult led by the fearsome Master and his servant Torgo.
Writer/director/producer/actor Harold P. Warren was an insurance salesman (later a fertilizer salesman) from El Paso. He made a bet with visiting location scout Stirling Silliphant (later an award-winning screenwriter) that he could make a popular horror film on an extremely minimal budget.
From what I have read Manos: The Hands of Fate was shot with a hand-held camera that could only record 32 seconds of film at a time. It was also shot without sound; all the lines were dubbed later.
I think that it is kind of interesting that there could be a question as if Manos: The Hands of Fate can be considered to be a feature length movie with a runtime of 70 minutes. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the British Film Institute, a feature film runs for at least 40 minutes, while the Screen Actors Guild holds that it is 80 minutes or longer.
Manos: The Hands of Fate is one of those fabled bad movies. Now to be perfectly clear Manos is not just every garden variety bad movie, this is a legendary bad movie. Well, that’s the impression I have always gotten when I’ve heard friends talk about it. This movie has some serious problems odd acting choices, the emotionless delivery of dialogue by the voice over artists, to many cuts throughout the movie and the compositions of the shots throughout the movie left me thinking ‘you really did not need to do that’. Though I found myself liking the music throughout Manos and the character Torgo was kind of interesting. The character struck me as a combination of Igor, Gollum and the puppets from the original Thunderbirds series from the 60’s.
I’d like to be able to say Manos is just a bad movie and be done with it, because it would be easy. But here’s the thing, its not a garden variety Bad Bad movie. Manos is more of a boring bad movie and it is not painful to watch, this also could be a possible cure for insomnia. If this was a longer movie with the chance to cover up some of the glaring plot holes it could have been an ok. But all I can really say with any degree of certainty is this is a bad student movie.
Director Rob Cohen
Starring Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten
Rated M
Score 1/6
Thieves attempt a massive heist against the U.S. Treasury as a Category 5 hurricane approaches one of its Mint facilities.
I really don’t remember seeing any trailers for The Hurricane Heist Online or in the cinema and I only really became aware of Hurricane Heist after reading a review for it on Jason’s Movie Blog. I should have taken his advice and skipped it. But then again, we all know I am a sucker for punishment.
As a director Rob Cohen doesn’t have the kind of name recognition that would cause the name of one of his movies to spring to the front of my mind. It was only after I looked at his filmography that I actually realised that I have come across his work before and the only actor involved with the production that I knew immediately was Ryan Kwanten.
I got the impression that Hurricane Heist did not know what kind of movie that it wanted to be. There where times that the movie’s action sequences where over the top and that it wanted to become a big loud action movie, and a couple big explosions would have been welcomed but for some reason the movie just lacked the courage to take the leap. The Hurricane itself didn’t seem to pose any real danger until the final act of the movie.
However, Hurricane Heist’s biggest sin and this might prove to be a lesson in storytelling for the filmmakers. A main villain’s death during the movie’s climax shouldn’t cause people to laugh.
Director Jose Montesinos
Starring Nicola Posener, Evan Henderson, Isaac Reyes
Rated TV-14
Score 0/6
Sandy’s past transgression, with her fiancé ‘s best friend Roman, comes back to haunt her when he becomes their best man. Roman is mentally unbalanced and determined to make Sandy his own bride.
The next few movies that are going to be featured will be filed in the Why did I watch this? Oh yeah, I said I would file. As it is the first movie watched in the Festival of Mysterious Insanity: Here Comes the Pain.
Possibly the only good thing that I can say about this movie is that to my knowledge this movie has not been officially released in Australia, because the best I can figure the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification has nothing about this movie. If I come across movies featuring anybody involved with this movie, please let it be many years from now after I have forgotten having watched this movie.
Nightmare Wedding was a nightmare to watch. The bride and groom played by Nicola Posener and Isaac Reyes at best gave meh performances. The polite thing to say would that this was a cliched and predictable telemovie that has aspirations of being considered as a bad soap opera. Parts of the movie’s climax reminded me of a WWE story-line. Specifically, the marriage of Triple H to Stephanie McMahon. The WWE had better writing and not once did the thought of ‘oh those poor actors’ enter my head.
Now to Evan Henderson who played Roman who clearly is the poorer film studios’ Ryan McPartlin or to keep Mcpartlin out of this comparison we can say that Henderson is the insert random blonde actor option. Henderson’s portrayal of Roman had little or no development throughout the movie so there is a freight train of Roman’s motivation delivered in the final ten-minutes of the movie. But the biggest insult of the movie was the ultimate fate of Roman, which came across as we clearly did not have the money option.
Director by Ace Hannah
Starring Lorenzo Lamas, Debbie Gibson, Vic Chao
Score 0/6
The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea.
Okay, the first Mysterious Insanity is closed. Those of you who might be wondering it did not kill me, but there was pain. So much pain. Why did I by a total of fifteen DVDs enough for two more Mysterious Insanities? Oh yeah, I know why. I’m an idiot.
Chris Ridenhour’s score drew me into the movie at the beginning. It gave me the hope that the filmmakers where actually trying to achieve something that tolerable. Did they achieve that? No. As you would expect the wheels started to fall off the little red wagon that it is formerly known as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus about five to ten minutes into the movie. Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus had bad acting, bad dialogue, missed opportunities for good dialogue, an approach to the plot that really made the story more about the humans then the giant sea monsters and soured my opinion of Lorenzo Lamas. When I was younger I watched his show Renegade.
Now I suppose considering that ‘movies’ released by The Asylum are B-Grade or more realistically D-Grade movies it was only to be expected that what ever could go wrong would go wrong in regards to what was delivered to the screen. But it would seem that when it comes to Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus it seems that writer/director Jack Perez might have used the Pseudonym Ace Hannah.
Director Darin Scott
Starring Danielle Savre, Rob Mayes, Michael Beach
Rated MA
Score 0/6
A brilliant billionaire named Carl Durant is experimenting on bull sharks, which soon rebel to cause havoc for a group of scientists.
Why oh why was this ‘film’ ever made? If somebody would care to explain it to me, I really would appreciate it. Now to make things perfectly this is not a direct sequel to the 1999 original directed by Renny Harlin and is what I regard to be a ‘faux sequel’ and to be perfectly blunt a cinematic bullet. I would also like to add the last memorable monster movie/creature feature that I’ve watched Proteus, was released in 1995.
This is one of those movies that you’ll find yourself yelling at the screen and perhaps even rooting for the sharks.
I really hope that I don’t come across director Darin Scott’s work again, there wasn’t any memorable performances by any of the actors involved with this movie. In the spirit of fairness, I hope that they get a chance to prove themselves in their future endeavors.