ORBzine - April 2007 Movie Reviews
Blood and Chocolate
In a picturesque city in central Europe,
a clan of werewolves are ruled by Olivier Martinez (S.W.A.T.).
One of them, teenage free-runner
Agnes Bruckner
, wants a better life.
Ms Bruckner falls for an American boy. Unfortunately, the werewolves do not approve. Things go from bad to worse ...
Golden Child
Eevil Charles Dance (
Alien 3
) kidnaps a mystical young boy, the title character.
Charlotte Lewis
and James Hong (
Big Trouble in Little China
) recruit Eddie Murphy (
Bowfinger
) to rescue the boy.
Murphy is the same wise-cracking asshole he plays in all his 1980s films. But he is very toned down here - less swearing and violence. A more family-friendly version.
The Reaping
Hillary Swank
is a miracle debunker, a Mythbuster.
She investigates bogus miracles, and uncovers con-men.
As a girl-power type, she has a sort of
Lara Croft
thing going for as well.
Swank's friend, a priest, sends her to the Deep South where a river has turned into blood. This also happened in an episode of American Gothic , which is exactly what this town is reminiscent of. Local man David Morrissey ( Walking Dead: Season 3 ) helps her.
The film is made up of lots of bits from far better films. It is predictable and cliched. For example, her sidekick is the token non-white character - what are the chances that he makes it to the end of the film?
Ginger Snaps Franchise
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)
This is a prequel, filmed after the first two films but set over a century earlier than them.
As a result it does not fit directly into the chronology, but who cares?
Ginger ( Katherine Isabelle ) and her sister arrive at an isolated Canadian trading post some time in the 1800s. The place is besieged by werewolves, but the real danger is within.
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004)
Set shortly after the original,
the sole survivor has been committed to a girls reformatory.
Her only friends are a hunky orderly (the school bully in
Smallville
) and a young girl (
Tatiana Maslany
) who is also an inmate.
Ginger ( Katherine Isabelle ) is gone, but she can appear to her sister in visions.
Another werewolf is on the prowl. He can smell her, and he wants to mate.
Cabin Fever Franchise
Cabin Fever (2003)
A bunch of college students head off for a big weekend together, out in the woods.
The perfect setup for a low-budget horror film,
one that has been used so many times that it is the biggest cliche in Horror.
However, this is a fresh and original take on it.
The area around the cabin is contaminated with a flesh-eating virus -
and worse than that, the students fall foul of the local rednecks!
Eli Roth , now regarded as protege of Quentin Tarantino , is now famous for the Hostel series. This is his low-budget debut, as much like Blair Witch Project as anything - more obscure, but with a greater legacy!
Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009)
This takes off where the original ends.
None of the original cast return, but it is that kind of story.
The exception is the local Deputy,
a sleazy little overacted creep named Winston,
who comes out with a lot of pseudo-Tarantino drivel.
However, this does add a certain lightness to an overall dark film.
The infected water is now being bottled and sold. A batch ends up at the local High School, where it is Prom Night. Yes, at High School it is always Prom - just as in Chinatown it is always Chinese New Year! However, despite the cliché that is actually quite well done. The teenagers are well-written and the cast do a great job of bringing it to life - so to speak. Unfortunately, someone has sent in a clean-up crew with NBC suits and automatic weapons.
Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014)
There is an outbreak of the deadly contagion
at a Housing For Humanity project in Latin America.
The US military-industrial complex gets involved,
and takes the sole survivor (Sean Astin -
Lord of the Rings
) to a secret lab on a nearby island.
He is apparently immune, like Typhoid Mary,
and the scientists want to use him to find a cure.
Unfortunately he is unhappy at being a guinea-pig for their experiments.
Nearby, some American tourists are planning a wedding. The Groom and his buddies head off in a speedboat for a bachelor party. They end up on, by incredible coincidence, the same island as the secret lab. By this stage, the inevitable outbreak has started.
Cabin Fever (2016)
Five tweenagers from the Big City go for a weekend in a
Cabin In The Woods
. If this all sounds familiar,
it is a generic setup for the majority of horror movies.
But this film takes it a bit further.
It is a direct remake of a film that came out only thirteen years prior.
This is a completely unnecessary remake of a movie that basically was not all that good to begin with. The tweenagers are virtually interchangeable, with Gage Golightly as one of the girls. There are a couple of changes. The first is the re-casting of creepy Deputy Winston as a female ( Louise Linton ). Yes, the dialogue is the same but the gender is flipped - and it works! The second change is not so good. The N-word reference, the high point of the original film, is gone. Remember that it was judged so vital to the script that the writer-director could not get funding for many years because he refused to cut that line out.