Almost Human (D+)

"An unspeakable terror has come home."

You'll have to forgive me, 'cause it's been a while since my last review. I haven't been watching many movies lately, but over the weekend I pledged to sit down to at least one would-be horror masterpiece. And here it is, dear reader. Are you ready for Almost Human?

Almost Human (the 2013 horror film, not the television series) is sort of a cross between an alien abduction film, an alien invasion movie, and a slasher flick. We never really get much idea who the abductors are, as the flashbacks we see in the film are pretty vague. For all I know it's not aliens at all, but some messed-up government agency that's behind the film's action. My impression is that it's extraterrestrial meanies pulling the strings, so that's what I'm going with.

On October 13th, 1987, in Patten, Maine, Seth Hampton (Graham Skipper) arrives at the home of his friend, Mark Fisher (Josh Ethier), in a state of panic. Seth rants about their mutual friend, Rob, and how he was taken away by a beam of light on the way to Mark's house. Amid all this commotion, Mark's girlfriend, Jen Craven (Vanessa Leigh), comes downstairs to see what all the fuss is about. As the lights flicker on and off, a high-pitched sound seemingly hypnotizes Mark. He leaves the house and is abducted by an alien power.

"He's baaaaaaack!"

Two years pass. In this time, Seth has been blamed for the disappearances of both Rob and Mark. As there was no proof of foul play, he was eventually released from custody. He experiences nightmares and frequent bloody noses, and he doesn't leave his house unless it's to go to his job at a hardware store. He awakens one morning from a nightmare, his nose bleeding. As Seth preps to leave for work one morning, he sees a television report on strange lights and power outages that took place the night before.

Seth decides to pay Jen a visit at the diner where she works. The two haven't seen each other since Mark vanished (there is never any mention of the Rob fellow who also disappeared), and Jen has moved in with her new fiance, Clyde (Anthony Amaral III). Despite the fact that it was Jen who told the police that Seth was responsible for Mark's disappearance, he doesn't really hold it against her as both their memories are fuzzy on the incident. When they talk, he tells her something weird is going on, and that bad things are going to happen.

It's like the Maine Chainsaw Massacre with aliens.

Out in the wilderness, two hunters (portrayed by Kristopher Avedisian and David Langill) come across Mark in the woods, drawn up in a fetal position and covered in slime. They try to help him, but he overpowers them in a lethal manner, steals their clothes, and goes on his merry way. This sets the rest of the film in motion, as Mark returns to his home in Patten and messily kills pretty much anyone that gets in his way. Once Jen and Seth get involved, all bets are off.

I went into Almost Human not knowing what to expect. Even so, I had moderate hopes for the movie. It revealed itself to be pretty rough around the edges. I suppose that's to be expected, as it's director Joe Begos's first feature film. Once the real violence begins, I began to have flashbacks to Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, with its excessive gore, fountains of blood, squishy sound effects, and slapstick attitude towards death. There's not much in the way of slapstick in Almost Human, though things are occasionally unintentionally funny.

Jen and Seth suffer through a really bad alien rock concert.

As far as the make-up effects are concerned, Almost Human's are all practical and competently done, if a bit overboard. One particular effect, which involves an alien rape scene, was disturbing in context, but somewhat silly in presentation. The crew took the gore and alien effects as far as they could, and if the acting were any better, such ostentatious blood and guts might even feel out of place.

Did I mention acting? The movie was likely made on a shoestring budget, so the talent in front of the camera could have been better. The actors try (too hard, sometimes), but most performances fall flat, especially on repeated viewings. No one actor outshines the others. I've seen worse performances, sure, but it's tough to take a movie seriously when you don't believe in the characters or develop any attachment to them as a result.

The cinematography was rough but not terrible. Transitions were well done, though there's occasionally a bit too much back and forth between characters. Flashback imagery is fuzzy, fast, and black and white, so even the general impressions I got were muddied.

Jen's got an axe, and believe me, she's not afraid to use it.

Was Almost Human scary? It was tense, on occasion. Aside from the occasional tension and copious gross-out gore, there wasn't much fright to be had. The score, by Andy Garfield, contributes to the aforementioned tension, and is one of the strongest things about the film. Though a bit heavy-handed at times, it's certainly tense and would lend itself well to a scary movie. Unfortunately, Almost Human isn't all that scary, but the musical queues definitely told my subconscious it was supposed to be.

At the end of the night, I have to say that Almost Human is a lackluster indie entry into the horror genre. It doesn't break any new ground, and it seemed to miss a number of opportunities. It might have even gone for the paranoid vibe of John Carpenter's The Thing if it had taken a different turn early on. Unfortunately, it ends up being a lukewarm film that I can't recommend unless you enjoy gory special effects.

Evidence of a Haunting (F)

Evidence of a Haunting was one of the movies I found on Amazon Prime. As with most of these kinds of movies, I didn't expect much of anything. Good thing, too, or I might have been disappointed.

The meandering story involves a group of paranormal researchers, members of the Supernatural Phenomenon Research Society (SPRS for short). It's filmed in a found footage sort of style sometimes, but transitions inexplicably to a standard style at will. One such scene takes place in a bar where the characters get to know one another better over vast quantities of booze. There's even a camera shot that bounces between two of the female members' boobs for no apparent reason.

The film follows the crew through a number of different hauntings/manifestations. The first involves a family haunted by a malevolent ghost that ends up possessing a little girl. The priest, Father Bowden, exorcises the little girl and removes the apparent demon (which identifies itself as "Persephone"). The group's psychic, Echo, instead insists it was a particularly nasty ghost, not a demon. They wander the house and declare it to be clean before they move on to their next investigation.

The second investigation involves a father and his two daughters. Their house is haunted by a ghost that, believe it or not, reorganizes stuffed animals and neatly folds and stacks clothes in the closet. When they find the source of the spirit in the girls' bathroom, Echo determines that the ghost really likes it in the house and will fight to stay there.

The proud members of the S.P.R.S.

The group decides to remove the spirit, which they determine is a Choctaw Indian medicine man. He's been turning off televisions and folding clothing, so he's got to go. The Wiccan priestess of the group, Shelley, is dragged around the girls' bedroom by the ghost, after which she locates a wooden Ouija board. It's revealed that the Ouija board was mailed to the house by a mysterious stranger, and the two girls opened the package and played with its contents, thereby allowing the ghost into our world.

Against the ghost's wishes, the group chops the Ouija board into seven pieces and burns them, thereby sending the medicine man back to whatever spirit realm he came from. Though the ghost throws some of the investigators around, it's not a particularly spectacular struggle. With the board destroyed and the ghost banished, the group pats itself on the collective back and proceeds to their next assignment by way of a bar.

The final assignment takes place in tunnels beneath a college in Texas. They speak to the groundskeeper, Mr. Henry, who tells them some tales about kids being lost in the tunnels, and about a teacher who had an affair with one of his students. He got her pregnant, then took her into the tunnels in an attempt to kill her. She survived and was committed to a mental institution before living out the rest of her days in Louisiana. Apparently, though, she's still looking for revenge, but you'll need to use your imagination to decide if she gets it or not.

The team allows the groundskeeper to lock them in overnight (after all, what could possibly go wrong?). Using a device that somehow allows them to speak with spirits, the gang waits until the hour of the dead and strikes up a conversation with the evil ghost of the teacher. The action begins in earnest when Rayne is whisked away by the ghost, and the rest of the group goes after her.

"These are our 'we're really seriously totally scared' faces."

The story then splits between the different groups, and there is a first-person "ghost cam" that chases individuals (like in Evil Dead II, only less interesting) intermixed with the occasional found footage POV. As for the end, well... the gang gets whittled down somewhat, but two of them survive (you guess which two). The final scene is highly cliched, and makes about as much sense as the rest of the film (which isn't saying much).

Overall, Evidence of a Haunting is an amateurish entry into the genre with incredibly low production values. It doesn't quite know what sort of film it wants to be. Is it found footage? Is it a ghost flick? Is it about demons? The film has no idea. It's what I'd expect from an amateur production. Looking at director Joey Evans's credits on IMDB, this is his sixth film (out of eight). I almost wonder how his other entries compare to this one. Then I realize that to contemplate such a thing is to court madness.

You'd be better off avoiding this one, I think. If MST3K was still on the air, this would make one hell of a thrilling addition to its repertoire. Evidence of a Haunting is probably the stinkiest stinker I've ever reviewed here (which isn't saying much, but it gives me something to work towards).

Death of a Ghost Hunter (D)

How creepy is that? Not very.

I was fooled on Thursday night. Bored, at loose ends, and craving a little ghostly entertainment, I began to comb endlessly through NetFlix's meager selection. My wife, meanwhile, scanned online (probably looking at the listings on Instant Watcher), making suggestions to which I replied, "Seen it," "That one sucked," or "Not interested."

At some point she said, "How about Death of a Ghost Hunter?" I'd seen it listed in the rotation, but the low-star rating had kept me from picking it out. I did a quick look at the movie's Wikipedia page. The critique that stuck out the most was, "It was praised for being genuinely scary, while others criticised (sic) the poor acting." Genuinely scary but poorly acted? Well, I can use some scary. Quality of acting is relative, right?

Wrong. As the movie started, with its amateurish cinematic techniques and its earnest (albeit ham-handed) attempts at acting, I had to laugh. Was this supposed to be a comedy? Did anyone in the cast have any acting experience at all? I've played Dungeons & Dragons with folks who couldn't act, and they were a damn sight better than anyone in Death of a Ghost Hunter's cast.

Patti Tindall (playing the lead role of skeptical ghost hunter Carter Simms) is a lovely woman, and the quality of her acting was probably the best of the bunch. Still, she really only comes off as genuine in a couple of scenes, and those are painfully few and far between. Her co-stars, Mike Marsh (playing Colin Green, a chain-smoking cameraman), Davina Joy (as the writer/reporter Yvette Sandoval), and Lindsay Page (portraying the very religious Mary Young Mortenson), are all kinds of wooden. Davina Joy loosens up a couple of times, but the other two (especially Lindsay Page) don't come off as believable.

The basic plot is that the Masterson family (mom, dad, son, and daughter) were murdered in their home some twenty years ago. The current owner of the house (a relative of the Mastersons) offers Carter Simms $5,000 to stay in the house for three days and investigate its supposed paranormal nature. He insists on including both Colin and Yvette, who are there to help Carter record it all.

After the three arrive at the home, Mary Young Mortenson arrives, presumably invited by the owner. Her goal is to ensure that Carter and the others don't slander the Masterson name, given they were important members of her own church. Mary is strange and difficult to get along with, and it's obvious from the start that something's not quite right about her.

Scares are few and far between. Well, okay... Death of a Ghost Hunter doesn't really have any scares at all, unless you think ghosts talking backwards is scary. The story of the Mastersons slowly unfolds, and a few clues are dropped as the cast investigates the house--a ghost that names herself as Miranda via EVP, who wasn't a member of the Masterson family; some disturbing polaroids; and a strange box-like mask with a crucifix on one side. The clues aren't really explored until the end of the movie, when everything is given away in a long-winded series of poorly-acted flashbacks.

"It says here we're supposed to act scared. Uhhh..."

As the title of the film reveals, Carter Simms ends up dying. I don't consider this a spoiler, but I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to discover the circumstances of how she passes on. There's at least one gaping plot hole concerning Mary Young and how/why she comes to be involved in the investigation. Sure, she says the owner of the house told her to show up, but didn't anyone think to call him up when Carter discovers she was only given three house keys instead of four? Go figure.

Overall, watching this movie was like staring at a ten car fatality on the expressway, only instead of feeling revulsion or horror, you only feel pity. I couldn't help but watch even though my mind was telling me that whatever they had planned for the finale could not possible make up for the tedium I'd experienced. Sometimes we have to bleed for our art, I suppose.

This is another one of those "watch at your own risk" titles. If you've got nothing better to do but hammer nails into your eyes, you're probably better off going to bed early or watching Honey Boo Boo.

Apartment 1303 (C-)

Apartment 1303 is a ghost story. At least, it's supposed to be. I'm watching it on Amazon right now, and I'm about fifty-two minutes into it. I'm also up way past my bedtime, but it's Friday night on Memorial Day weekend.

Huh. I just discovered it's a remake of a Japanese film of the same name. Typical. But where classic Asian-to-American remakes like The Ring come through relatively well, this one probably should've stayed Japanese. Now I'll need to track down the original and hope it's better than the remake. I can't possibly see how it could be worse.

Anyway, back to the movie. The opening credits were probably the most promising thing about the film. They were moody and relatively well-done, but if I wanted to watch an opening credit sequence, I'd put Se7en on the DVD player and loop the beginning.

Once the actors (and I use that word lightly) show up on screen, though, it gets really tedious. I know they can probably act, but damn if they're not having a lot of trouble getting into character. The performances range from flat to overdone, with no happy medium to be seen. After last night's movie, though, I suppose the acting could be worse (remind me to put up a post about Death of a Ghost Hunter sometime).

Mischa Barton is Lara Slate. Her sister, Janet (played by Julianne Michelle), moves out of their mother's house and signs a lease for a 13th floor apartment without first seeing the place. The girls' mother, Maddie (played by Rebecca De Mornay), is a once-popular musician with an alcoholic streak (and the source of much of the terrible overacting I was talking about). With De Mornay's maturity and prior career, you'd think she'd be the best of the bunch... but it's not the case. I can only assume they brought her on board to lend the film's cast some credibility.

Of course, the apartment is haunted, and the spooks don't wait long before they're using dubious special effect to toss Janet around like a rag doll. Through a series of spiritual events, Janet ends up plummeting to her death and Lara moves into the apartment, both to get away from her mother and (seemingly) to find out what happened to her sister.

Between the three lovely ladies I've mentioned, we also have Emily (the creepy little girl next door), Mark (Janet's undercover cop boyfriend), and O'Neil (the perverted superintendent). Cory Sevier, the hunky guy who plays Mark, is probably the best actor in the film, but it's obvious that even he's struggling to pinch out a convincing role.

Acting aside, there's a fairly good nugget of story in there somewhere. I think. The special effects are mediocre, and the frights aren't really all that frightening. When the ghosts show up, they're either tossing people around, hissing at them, standing behind them in mirrors, or sitting in sinks (yes, really). The action is largely predictable, too, though there was a teeny tiny twist I didn't see coming. I'd love to spoil it for you, but even I'm not that large of a jerk.

As far as endings go, this one stops rather abruptly. I won't complain, but I expected a climax of sorts, even a poorly-acted one. The ending of Apartment 1303 isn't so much a climax as a sigh. A sigh of relief, maybe? Well, that's up to the viewer, I guess. Overall... this one's a stinker. Watch at your own risk, but remember--you'll never get this eighty-five minutes of your life back.