danielramckenzie

What Movie am I describing?

The Devil's Rejects of course.

This film is leaps and bounds ahead of Rob's first work, House of a 1000 corpses. If you didn't know, Rejects is actually a sequel of sorts to 1000 corpses but it is nothing like 1000 corpses. Rejects is an always offending Revenge/Exploitation flick which doesn't delve into the paranormal as its horror predecessor did. Rob Zombie challenges the standard good vs evil plot line to the extreme and is sure to offend thousands of now traumatized audience members who were expecting to see another Boogeyman or Amityville Horror. This is the film which for me cements Zombie as one of the top horror directors and a rival to Japanese cult legend Takashi Miike. The acting is across the board great from William Forsythe to Diamond Dallas Paige, and I'll give a golden star to Sid Haig, Ken Foree and Bill Moseley(who deserves an Oscar). Oh and did I mention it is frickin' hilarious, of course if you're not in utter shock. The musical score is also fantastic and Zombie got rid of those annoying montage sequences. The only complaint I have was with the slo-mos, I sometimes get peeved at the use of slo-mos and this movie uses a ton of them and I fear that in further viewings they will get to me. Rejects will leave you questioning many things, the characters, religion and your own reactions to the film. If you have a strong tolerance level and are a fan of quirky and or horror films there is no reasonable excuse for not seeing this before you die.

Genius.

9/10

This is my first live-action anime movie and I'm wondering if it is the first movie of it's kind. This is an incredibly creative, yet convoluted futuristic war epic apparently remade from an earlier anime film. The effects in some places were really great especially in the fight sequence between the neo-sapien robot army and Casshern. In contrast, the choreography of the fight scenes seemed very poor, even worse than that of Batman Begins. The effects on backgrounds and surroundings don't seem to rival those of Sin City, another movie done against green screens but are nonetheless impressive in detail. The plot of the film is very interesting for the first half but then after a false ending the movie become confusing, overlong and overly-dazzling. Also for a really cool costume and incredible powers the filmmakers fail to portray Casshern as a great hero, whether this was intended or not I don't know but I took issue it.

First off this is the movie that kicked it all off. It was followed by Ju-On 2 , Ju-On The Grudge, Ju-On The Grudge 2, and now the Sarah Michelle Gellar version The Grudge all directed by Shimizu. These movies have since become sort of a mystery due to the fact that very little people actually know there are so many of these movies and that there is an actual order in which they proceed. So I personally decided to buck that trend and watch them from the start. So....

Anyways this movie eerily begins off with a teacher played by Yûrei Yanagi who must visit the ominous home of one of his students Toshio whom has not recently been to school and who's parents have not been able to be reached. When he arrives at the house he discovers the boy is alone at home and his parents are out and about.

This is when the movie flashes back into an almost short story mode where it tells the tale of others who have lived and been in the house and what has become of them. One of the characters being played by Chiaki Kuriyama who has gone on to bigger and better things with Battle Royale and Kill Bill. This movie is confusing and made even more confusing by not being used to watching a movie with all Asian people and subtitles. But from what I've understood these people have all been cursed with The Grudge as is described in the beginning of the movie as

"A curse of one who dies with strong resentment

Accumulates in the place where the dead were while alive, and turns into "Karma"

He who comes in contact with the curse loses his life, and a new curse is born."

After these sequences are finished Shimizu once again returns to the main story of the teacher and his student Toshio. Where we quickly learn what has really become of Toshio's parents. EEK!

These short story like sequences are very frightening and creepy, and it wasn't the limited amount of gore that got me. It was the great direction and incredible use of sound to freak the s**t out of me. I've never really seen any American horror movies made like this one, and it's almost hard to explain even to myself how a movie with such an erratic and confusing timeline could still be so satisfying. Although maybe I'm just ignoring the fact that many of these confusements(is that a word, if it isn't it should be) will be explained in the sequels, which I now must absolutely see.