The Year in Horror (2016) – The Worst of Times

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2016, B.C. Butcher, Bunni, cinema, Darkweb, Dead 7, Den of Darkness, film reviews, films, Ghost Team, horror, horror films, JeruZalem, Martyrs, Movies, Paranormal Sex Tape, The Before Time, The Boy, The Final Project, The Forest, Voodoo Rising, worst of 2016

There’s no denying that 2016 was a great year for horror cinema but every coin has two sides. Before we get to the very best that the year had to offer, it bears taking a look at the other side of the coin: the very worst of calendar year 2016.

Out of the 179 horror films I screened in 2016, I classified 40 of them as terrible: of those 40, I’ve managed to whittle the list down to the top 15 offenders, the group of 2016 horror films that I would classify as the “worst of the worst,” at least based on what I screened. Bear one thing in mind: none of the films on this list committed the sin of being merely humdrum, dull or average: this were overachievers, in the same way that the top 20 films overachieved. In that spirit, then, I present you with the 15 worst horror films of 2016, in no particular order. View at your own risk.

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The Forest

This came out at the beginning of the year and set the tone for the worst that 2016 horror would offer: glossy visuals, lame jump scares, loud musical stingers, zero genuine frights, unlikable characters and reckless squandering of great concepts/locations. There’s something so generic and processed about this lifeless story of a woman investigating the disappearance of her sister in Japan’s legendary Aokigahara Forest that you might feel as if time has stopped if you’re unlucky enough to sit through it. While there were certainly gems to be found in this year’s crop of mainstream, multiplex horror films, The Forest was most certainly not one of them.

JeruZalem

Found-footage nonsense that somehow manages to make a Biblical apocalypse in Jerusalem as interesting as paint drying. Loathsome characters run around the city, fleeing from angels, demons and any semblance of common sense possible. This reminded me of As Above, So Below, which is definitely not a compliment.

The Boy

Even without the astoundingly terrible “twist,” The Boy would proudly represent the nadir of mainstream horror in this calendar year if it didn’t have so much competition. This was the kind of goofball thing that began as a head-scratching concept (a naive young woman is hired by the kind of sinister old couple that belong in House of the Devil to babysit their young son, who happens to be a wooden doll), devolved into dumb Blumhouse jump scares and then came full circle to a resolution that is so howlingly stupid, I fully expected the cast of SNL to jump out and start doing the robot.

The Before Time

Another dead-on-arrival found footage film that would be casually offensive if it weren’t so thoroughly inept and forgettable. Irritating reporters head to the desert, uncover evil, yadda yadda yadda. Like most of the film’s on the list, this was an absolute chore to get through.

Martyrs

Proudly taking the title of “Most Pointless Remake” from Gus van Sant’s shot-for-shot Psycho redux, this American redo of the classic New Wave of French horror gut-punch manages to bleed all the power, intensity and repulsive beauty from the original, leaving nothing but a hollow shell and the basic story beats. The original Martyrs might not have been everyone’s cup of tea but the remake isn’t even a cup of warm water.

Abattoir

I fully expected Darren Lynn Bousman’s Abattoir to be one of my favorite films of the year and yet here it sits on my least favorite list. What went wrong? The film starts with a fantastic concept (a genteel madman, played by the formidable Dayton Callie, goes around and “collects” various rooms that have hosted terrible crimes in order to build the ultimate haunted house) and then works as hard as it can to destroy any good will garnered from said killer idea. At the end, we’re left with a piss-poor imitation of John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness when we could have had a completely new, totally cool horror franchise for the new millennia.

The Final Project

Another found footage film (notice a trend here?) that details the exploits of a group of obnoxious film students on a haunted plantation. The lack of scares wouldn’t be a problem if anything else in this worked. As such, though, we’re pretty much left with video cam footage of a bunch of young jerks goofing around, followed by some cheap, dollar store effects.

Bunni

No-budget dreck about a mama’s boy and his killer mama feels like a bad student film (the lighting, in particular, is atrocious) and does nothing in its relatively short run time to alleviate that impression. I’ll be honest: I could elaborate but that’s just about what this particular situation calls for…short, sweet and to the point.

Ghost Team

Painfully unfunny “comedy” that features people like Justin Long, Jon Heder and Amy Sedaris (who really should know better) mugging their way through a tissue-paper-thin haunted house story that isn’t so much Scooby Doo as Scooby Dumb. As bad as the films on this list might be, there were few that I disliked as immediately and intensely as this waste of resources.

Darkweb

This film satisfies a very small but, I’m sure, extremely dedicated niche market: those folks who revel in the humiliation of Danny Glover. If you harbor some sort of pathological hatred for the esteemed actor, Darkweb will be like manna from heaven. For anyone who doesn’t want to watch poor Danny Glover shout, flail his arms, cuss like a sailor and generally act like a complete idiot, however, this pathetic Hostel clone will offer nothing more than odd ethnic stereotypes, unconvincing performances and some truly goofy setpieces. Awkward, to say the least.

B.C. Butcher

Impossibly stupid Troma goof about a Cro Magnon killer who targets a group of cave women, this features Kato Kaelin in a loincloth diaper, which should tell you all you need to know. The only redeeming feature to this mess is that it clocks in at under an hour, which is pretty faint praise, indeed.

Dead 7

Asylum-esque horror-Western that features former members of ’90s-’00s-era boy bands fighting zombies in a post-Apocalyptic setting and is about as convincing as a kindergarten presentation of Glengarry Glenn Ross. I’ll admit that I’m not the target audience for something like this and I did, for a time, try to keep an open mind. At the end of the day, though, this is in the same wheelhouse as the Sharknado movies and there’s only so much intentional stupidity I can take.

Voodoo Rising

Many films that I screened in 2016 shared similarities with Voodoo Rising: amateur actors struggling to deliver lines in a convincing manner, an inability to propel the story forward in a timely fashion, a tiring familiarity that telegraphed every single “twist” and “turn” in the narrative. Few films managed to double-down on these failings with as much conviction as this one, however, earning it a spot with this esteemed group of peers.

Den of Darkness

The “den” in the title refers to a Girl Scout troupe and the “darkness” refers to the hysterical blindness that has befallen the den mother after one of her college-age (?) charges accidentally falls off a cliff. The house she moves into might be haunted or her shithead husband might be trying to gaslight her. If you have any doubts, after reading the above, that Den of Darkness is a truly terrible film, let me lay them to rest: it is a truly terrible film.

Paranormal Sex Tape

This bears the distinction of being the first film in years that I haven’t been able to get through without judicious use of the frame-forward button, so at the very least you know this left an impression. Only nominally a film, this is actually a loosely edited series of walking scenes, broken up by really bad softcore porn and non-actors improvising awkward “dialogue” that makes Ed Wood read like Chaucer. I have no idea what it was about, a fact that I doubt would have been clarified had I managed to watch every one of its 70-some minutes.

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The 31 Days of Halloween (2016): 10/15-10/21 (Part One)

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31 Days of Halloween, B.C. Butcher, cinema, Darkweb, Field Freak, film reviews, films, Flight 7500, horror films, Movies, October, Swiss Army Man, The Channel, The Devil's Dolls, The Good Neighbor, The Last Heist, When Black Birds Fly

Since the third week of October viewings featured 21 films, it seems prudent to break the list up into two chunks. This was a pretty varied week, all in all, featuring not only some of my favorite films of the season but also some of my least favorite. In that spirit, then, I present the first ten films screened during the week of October 15th through the 21st: the second half will follow shortly.

Darkweb

Astoundingly bad film that’s sort of a brain-dead take on Eli Roth’s Hostel, albeit one that hews a little closer to the original Most Dangerous Game source material. There’s really nothing to recommend here, unless you happen to be a fan of bad filmmaking (the performances and dialogue almost reach Ed Wood levels of absurdism) or want to see poor Danny Glover completely humiliate himself in one of the worst star-level cameos I’ve ever seen in a cheap-ass genre film: his character spends the entirety of the film yelling, gestulating wildly and shouting “Fuck!” from a TV monitor. I think I can speak for us all when I say that he’s way too old for this shit.

The Last Heist

Thoroughly entertaining, if rather run-of-the-mill, action-thriller about a bunch of crooks who break into a mob-owned bank and run afoul of a dour serial killer (Henry Rollins, in a fantastically realized performance) who’s just trying to get home with his suitcase full of eyeball trophies: can’t we all relate? I was a huge fan of director Mike Mendez’s Big Ass Spider but this one didn’t get me as fired-up, although it’s still the furthest thing possible from a bad film: full of great performances, well-staged action sequences and just enough gore to edge the needle into the “horror” side, you could do a lot worse than this.

The Channel

Simply terrible, zero-budget nonsense that seems designed purely to prove the theory that Christian horror films kind of suck. This tale about a teen who flirts with the dark side (via those terrible “rave dance parties” and Ecstacy pills, of course), gets into a car accident and brings back the spirit of a dead girl is just flat-out awful, no sugar-coating possible. Full of so many cliches, amateur performances and poor filmmaking (the color timing, for one, is just wretched) that it’s impossible to ever become invested in the trite storyline, this bears the distinction of having a distinctly Christian angle but that’s pretty much its only distinctive feature.

Swiss Army Man

An easy candidate for one of my favorite films of the entire year, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Swiss Army Man might sound unpleasant on paper (a suicidal castaway comes upon a dead body and uses it in a multitude of ways to survive) but is simply magical, in execution. Rarely have I encountered a film that hits such heady highs between ridiculous slapstick comedy (think Weekend at Bernie’s but much weirder), devastating drama and soaring joy: it’s like riding an emotional rollercoaster, with each new loop and development charging through you at maximum velocity. Essentially a two-person show (for the most part), everything would collapse if the performances weren’t top notch: good thing that Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe bring two of the year’s very best to the table. While Dano is simply superb, able to bring equal measures of awkward sweetness and genuine darkness to Hank, Radcliffe is nothing short of revelatory as Manny, the corpse. Relegated to playing dead for the entire film, Radcliffe still manages to make Manny a completely alive, vibrant character: his gradual awakening to the world is truly beautiful, something that seems a little hard to comprehend in between the non-stop farting and boner-compassing.

Saying too much about this absolutely delightful piece of filmmaking (the craft of which, by the way, is equally stunning) would be to ruin shee delight and I’ll never be a party to that: suffice to say that Swiss Army Man is one of those truly beautiful films that could actually change your life, if you let it, and we’ll leave it at that. The Daniels (as they’re collectively known) have instantly landed on my “future must-sees” list.

Flight 7500

The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu’s latest, Flight 7500, comes with an intriguing premise: a captive audience of travelers on a red-eye flight must figure out what mysterious force is killing them, one by one, as their luxurious tomb hurtles turbulently through dark skies. It’s a pretty interesting, creepy idea, which makes the tedious result even more disappointing: despite being competently made, there’s no spark here, whatsoever, and the film’s numerous plot holes constantly threaten to swallow audience interest whole. The film’s big twist also serves to handily deflate any tension that came before, making the whole thing even more silly, upon closer reflection. Not terrible…just terribly dull.

The Good Neighbor

More drama than horror, in execution, Kasra Farahani’s The Good Neighbor edged its way onto this year’s screenings by virtue of its premise: a pair of pretentious teen shitheads (ably portrayed by Logan Miller and Keir Gilchrist) decide to fuck with a cantakerous, old neighbor (ably portrayed by James Caan) and convince him that his house is haunted, in order to gauge his response. As expected, his response is not what the two guys expect and tragedy ensues. Despite solid performances and execution, this ended up being a bit trite and heavy-handed, by the end, a fact not aided by the film’s frequent courtroom cut-aways. It’s always nice to see Caan in anything, especially at this stage of his career, but this is just okay, no matter how you slice it.

The Devil’s Dolls

A prime example of an indie film’s reach exceeding its abilities, The Devil’s Dolls (nee Worry Dolls) has a fantastic plot but rather unexceptional execution and decidedly iffy acting. A notorious serial killer is gunned down by a heroic cop, who takes the dead guy’s possessions, including a box full of ‘worry dolls,’ as evidence. The cop’s young daughter gets ahold of the dolls and turns them into necklaces, which she sells. Problem is, each of the dolls is actually cursed and causes the owner to commit terrible acts. Our hero cop must now race around the town, desperately trying to stop a vicious killer who’s already long dead and gone, as his innocent daughter becomes more and more possessed. No matter how you look at it, that’s a logline with a tremendous amount of potential, all too little of which makes it to the screen. The kills are graphic and energetic, which will be a plus for the gorehounds, but the performances range from decent to vein-popping. In a hit-or-miss year, The Devil’s Dolls definitely wasn’t one of the worst but it would be a helluva stretch to call it one of the best: file this right in the middle and be done with it.

Field Freak

Much better than I initially feared but still pretty far from my cup of tea, Stephen Folker’s Field Freak is one seriously silly film. This tale about a writer who moves his family to the country only to encounter insane root beer vendors, crazed beaver exterminators and the titular Sasquatian monster is always manic and over-the-top but that seems to be by design. As someone who loathes self-aware dreck like Sharknado, I’m far from an expert on this type of film but Field Freak, at the least, was a fairly painless watch. If campy isn’t your thing, however, this will probably wear out its welcome rather quickly.

B.C. Butcher

As someone who grew up on Troma films, I’ll still freely admit that seeing their logo before a film always gives me pause: will this be one of the outrageously offensive, amazing ones or one of the cheapjack, shitty ones? Without a doubt, B.C. Butcher is Team Shitty, all the way. Painfully amateurish and proud of it, this is nothing more than an opportunity for folks to make a film, pure and simple. When your “movie” features Kato Kaelin as a curiously metro-sexual caveman with an odd obsession with his own ass and I still can’t be bothered to even care, well…what can ya say? The most this warrants is a shrug and a “You got me again, guys…good one.” Extra negative points for the impossibly tedious nightmare sequences, which really hit a new high (low?) in Troma’s search for the most obnoxious film-viewing experiences possible.

When Black Birds Fly

Proof positive that you never, ever judge a book by its cover, When Black Birds Fly might be rough, technically, but it packs more wallop and imagination than most “professional” films. Written, directed and animated solely by mad genius Jimmy Screamerclauz, this is a little difficult to describe but I’ll give it the ol’ college try. Imagine a version of Hellraiser, influenced by The Wizard of Oz, that also doubles as a Biblical allegory for the story of Adam and Eve, animated in the glitchy, occasionally unwatchable style of first-generation computer game cut-scenes. Still confused? Sorry, kids, but that’s the best I got: this howlingly insane film is an experience, in every sense of the word, one of those things that you strap yourself into and just hold on for dear life.

Despite being physically nauseated by the style, at first (absolutely no lie), I actually warmed to the film quite a bit, once I got used to it. Still, this is extremely strong stuff, the kind of material that would be absolutely unthinkable in a live-action film (think extreme Japanese manga, as a reference), full of revolting violence and truly bizarre sex. Perhaps the closest one can get to staring right into the hideous maw of insanity and still emerge, relatively unscathed. Color me thoroughly impressed and more than a little unsettled and freaked out. There really isn’t anything else like this in the entire world, for better or worse.

Keep your eyeballs peeled for Part Two, coming soon!