Doghouse

I was at the first screening of Doghouse in the West End last night, attended by the director Jake West and stars Danny Dyer and Noel Clarke.

Anyone going along to this and expecting anything other than what they know they are going to get are going to be disappointed. This is a laddish Brit-com-horror. In fact its not actually horrific at all as everything is done for laughs. There is no real sense of dread as the whole idea of the film is to maximise the gruesome bits but you know that ten seconds after seeing a bit of goo, someone's going to make a classic one-liner. There are so many gags that not all of them hit the spot, but some are very funny but not all very PC (it is laddish!).

Comparing the original trailer to the film I just saw, I can't help but think that the original film's darker nature has been pretty much exorcised to beef up the humour. The new trailer would also seem to justify the audience the film-makers are targeting.

That said, I came out of the film remembering how I used to go to the cinema as a teenager because going to the cinema was a fun thing to do with mates. Nowadays I so rarely go to the cinema that I don't want to just go and see anything, it has to be something special.

With Doghouse, it really is sit down disengage your brain for 90 minutes, forget about the worries of the world and have a laugh, and then another and another. Don't worry about the plot too much (I don't think the writers did!) and just chill out for an hour and a half.

If you just want a film that is a bit of fun and you just want to be entertained for your entrance fee then this is a film to see. It is no classic and doesn't aim to be, in fact it probably has more in common with the classic "Carry on" series of films than anything else I can think to compare it to. Everyone probably had a ball making it.

After its cinema release it will be a great Friday night film with a few mates, a few beers and the obligatory curry.

Great soundtrack too.

DOGHOUSE is a British stab at the comedy horror genre, featuring a group of guys who go off on holiday to a remote woodland locale and find themselves at the mercy of some zombie-type creatures. It's a film that's more than happy to reveal its inspirations, which here seem to be the likes of horror classics such as THE EVIL DEAD as well as more recent fare like SEVERANCE, which also starred Danny Dyer.

As such, the story is entirely predictable and almost everything that happens has been done before, and probably better. Despite that, it's quite a watchable film, filled to the brim with lots of humour - a lot of it sexist, it has to be said - and gore effects which keep it bubbling along. It's surprisingly entertaining given the pedigree of director Jake West, who has made some real tosh over the years (I'm thinking of EVIL ALIENS in particular).

The cast is littered with familiar faces and more than a few decent actors (Stephen Graham, Noel Clarke) and Dyer plays one of those laid-back, likable lead characters that he always seems to adopt. The special effects and various action scenes are all well-handled, although it has to be said that the actresses playing the various Zombirds are all terribly, embarrassingly over the top (particularly Emily Booth). Still, this is unashamedly adult in tone, which is a plus, and it's a masterpiece in comparison to the execrable LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS!

This movie was actually pretty good, its kind of jumpy, has good FX and has a lot of funny moments.

Here's a little summary about the story:

Some friends want to take a buddy of theirs out for a trip to help him get over a divorce and to show him that not all women are all alike. Once they arrive at an isolated town, they find that all the women are man-eating cannibals and fight for their lives. Its kind of ironic because in our world today, I think that's what most women are. Crazy, greedy, man-eating life forms that you just can't get enough of.

Its in 2nd place next to Shaun of the Dead, well worth a watch!

Typical British comedy horror, Similar to Shaun of the dead. The cast was excellent and a real funny story . Nothing earth shattering but worth watching I added it to my vast comedy horror collection as it's my favorite genre.

Vince (Stephen Graham) is going through the final stages of his divorce and to help him through this period his friends Mikey (Noel Clarke) and Neil (Danny Dyer) decide to take him and a few of the other boys to a remote village outside the humdrum of their London lives to get, in Dyer's own words; 's**tfaced'. However, when they turn up to the incredibly eerie village of Moodley to find flesh-eating, man-hating, cannibalistic women who want to do nothing more than rip out their internal organs and eat them for breakfast, the boys realise they have bitten more than they can chew and must fight their way through a barrage of blood-thirsty women in the most misogynistic way imaginable.

The premise of the film completely reflects the manner in which Jake West approaches this project, with a gleeful nod towards plenty of harmless sexist humour and cheap gory death sequences that are all nice, light-hearted and fun. Neil, Vince and Mikey are all your typical working-class likely lads out to simply flirt with the opposite sex and drink as much as their body-weight, with Danny Dyer in particular needing to place little effort in recreating his Cockney 'laddish' persona (yet again) on the big-screen. While Dave Schaffer's script contains many easy-going humorous gags to keep your attention ticking over while the next axe, gnome or sword heads to try and end the boy's misogynistic ways and eliminate the male chromosome all in one.

'Doghouse' is nowhere near the heights of Pegg/Frost's rom-zom-com-supremo 'Shaun of the Dead', but it isn't the worst film you will see this year. At a short running time of 85 minutes, you'll be cheaply entertained with boys being boys and women being...err, evil, vicious, un-relentless and, well women (just kidding!). This a film you'd probably enjoy seeing more after you've been kicked out the local Pub at closing time and are heading home with your Chicken Jalfrezi in one hand and the DVD in the other.