Siniestro II

A bus load of misbehaving teens find themselves in a sinister funfair, but they are being watched by ... something, or someone.

Tony Todd, who features briefly here, seems to have earmarked himself a career appearing in films like this. Modest productions that occasionally attempt to offer something new. In that, 'The Accursed' partially succeeds.

The usual collection of bratty kids is given slightly more depth than usual, their backstories making them more than the usual cyphers this kind of film usually features. This doesn't stop them from being irritating, but at least they're supposedly meant to be; damaged youths, as opposed to permanently drunk/horny teens.

The setting is what makes this stand out. I find seaside towns, funfairs, circuses and the like incredibly sinister when 'out of season', or, as here, simply abandoned. The funfair setting is quite well utilised. The story has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. My score is 6 out of 10.

It's interesting that this movie has such generally low numerical ratings here, but also several rave reviews. OK, given what a little-seen, low-budget effort it is, the rave reviews COULD have come from friends and family of the production itself (which was my initial suspicion), but having seen the movie, this phenomenon makes a little more sense now.

There is indeed nothing particularly new here. I won't give the "surprise" ending away, but it's one horror-movie fans have seen A LOT of, from ever since a certain low-budget film was made in Kansas in the early 1960's. The story involves a group of disparate students who have to go on a bus tour of a railroad town with their teacher after they failed to turn in a paper (OK. . .). The students are the usual types--the obnoxious jock, the black best friend, the outcast, the slutty girl, the homely girl, the overweight kid--but right away there are some off-beat elements. The fat kid has a hilariously profane grandmother (a cameo by Sally Kirkland, who also produced the film), who tells him to take no sh*t from the popular kids as she drops him off. The homely girls seems to have a strange, perhaps incestuous, relationship with her father. The girlfriend of one of the jocks tells him she's pregnant right before he leaves. The slutty girl rather than being the stereotypical "high-school slut" is actually kind of a sweet, troubled girl who has been taken advantage of by the jocks at her school (maybe some shades of reality there). There are also TWO black guys, and, rounding out their numbers, a deaf girl.

They stop at a visitor's center and meet curator Tony Todd who does his usual thing in an extended cameo and warns them of the legend of "Railroad Jack". Soon after they're involved in a bus crash and their teacher disappears. They take refuge in this this strange deserted carnival sideshow that is out in the middle of the desert for some reason where they are stalked by the creepy, eyeless "Railroad Jack". This is the other strength of the movie (besides the more interesting than usual teen characters),the deserted carnival is genuinely creepy. This is the rare modern-day horror film that actually relies on ATMOSPHERE as opposed to CGI gore and silicone breasts. True, some of the acting is awful (the performance of the actor playing the overweight kid is especially egregious). I never miss CGI effects, but a lack of female nudity can't really be considered an asset to a horror film either. But given there is only one particularly attractive girl here (Hope Jaymes, who plays the vulnerable slut) and she obviously has real breasts (only women with silicone breasts ever seem to do nude scenes in modern-day horror movies) the movie at least doesn't tease you with the promise there will be any.

There is some ill-conceived narration at the beginning and the end, and the end doesn't entirely work. Still, I found this to be refreshingly old-fashioned and off-beat and interesting in places. It's much better than the numerical reviews would suggest if not quite deserving perhaps of some of the more hyperbolic raves. It's worth seeing anyway.

After getting involved in a bus crash on the way home from a field trip, a group of teens find themselves stuck at a haunted amusement park with a deranged, mystical killer killing them off one-by-one and forcing them to find an obscure method of survival.

This turned out to be quite a fun and enjoyable slasher that features a lot of really exciting features. One of the better elements here is the fact that this one manages to get a lot of mileage out of the creepy amusement park setting with the nightmarish scenario of only being exposed to a few select parts of the park and no matter what continually returning to the same area over and over again, all of which just makes this seem more like a dream than anything but frankly adds to a chilling vibe that washes over this section of the film. That this is where the film pretty much starts offing the characters one-by-one in rather gruesome detail is where it starts getting really good, with a lot of rather fun and exciting elements coming into play due to that with a lot of pretty chilling stalking scenes, some decent escape attempts and a series of pretty violent deaths all brought upon due to the killer's use of a pick-axe as the weapon of choice here. It adds up, along with the rather demented killer and innate sense of hopelessness to turn into a rather fine slasher more often than not. While those are the good elements, it still suffers from some pretty big flaws, including the fact that this one tends to employ the exact same gimmick as several other films do right down to the very same mode of killing done here, which is a major plot-point but is nonetheless taken from another film series entirely and rather the back-story of the killer's identity is changed around. That tends to make it feel like a rip-off more so than as an original feature, which wouldn't be as bad if the low-budget origins weren't at play. Being so cheap means that the look of this is very cramped and confined, there's not a lot of big, extended sequences and the make-up effects don't always come off as good as they should. All-in-all, though, this one seems to have more going for it than not.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and hints of child abuse.

Jack the Reaper (2011) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1552423/?ref_=sr_1

This low budget indie is about a group of teens that get stranded in the desert after a bus accident. As they all come to, they look out and see a carnival out in the middle of the desert. Once they start exploring the carnival, they come to find they are not alone. There were many creepy aspects to the film. I really liked the initial idea of being stranded and finding an empty, brightly lit, carnival. And the killer was actually really creepy looking, really awesome makeup. But there was really nothing new that you haven't already seen if you watch horror movies regularly. But it's not too shabby. It starts off slow, but it eventually gets going. There are a lot of silly parts that are in no way meant to be funny, for example, the black guy, Andre. When Andre is running from the killer, he acts like a spaz and its pretty hilarious. There is also a lot of unnecessary story detail regarding the characters that really should have been left out. At the end of the day, this movie isn't great, but its decent. Take it or leave it.

Side Note: Characters who wear sunglasses in the night that aren't blind, should be killed first… ALWAYS!

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Why would you make a film where nothing occurs within the first 60 minutes? I can see that the directors are trying to show the character development, but in a horror film, it should never take this long to show a characters development. It's a slasher script! Get to the slashing! 

The entire 90 minutes was crucial! You could spot the twisted ending from a mile away! The plot was also unrealistic. What group of teenage kids go to a museum what seems to be in the middle of nowhere to study the industrial revolution? Then on the way home the bus breaks down and they encounter a maniac with an pick axe? .. Kill me now! 

It sounds like a regular teen slasher but is really hard to stick with until the idiotic ending. It's like the whole cast was only in it for exchange of Bitcoins... There is no gore or nudity. The only type of blood in this is the blood splattered on the camera, which was clearly from visual effects. It never shows the reaper actually killing anyone and tries to take the slow walking, I'm chasing you scenes from Friday the 13th. 

This is definitely a B-list movie that shouldn't have ever made it to HBO. It should've been on Sy-Fy or Chiller.  Do not waste your time watching this. Life is too short to spend watching crap movies such as this one.