In 2006, unofficially-crowned Worst Director of All Time Uwe Boll made an action-fantasy video-game adaptation (of the Dungeon Siege games) called In The Name Of The King. It cost $60million, starred Jason Statham and Ron Perlman, and boasted supporting turns from Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds. It made less than $14million and has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 4%. Now, six years later, he’s made a sequel. Super.
Matt Smith (yes, Doctor Who) and Eva Green (yes, Eva Green) made this in 2010. Originally called Womb, it had to be rebranded as Clone for the UK DVD release. The story of a woman who clones and gives birth to her dead boyfriend, you’d think this would be amazing sci-fi, or at least amazingly bad, but in fact it’s just a beautifully shot, but painfully dull story, lacking the gross factor, the sci-fi factor or even the moral debate about the concept of cloning factor. Matt Smith is great though.
Ball-achingly slow, utterly pointless and with a completely inexplicable ending, The Paranormal Incident is a glossy, shining example of exactly what not to do with $3million and a camera. You could have made some really nice, 1080p HD hardcore porn with that sort of budget; it probably would have been better-scripted, better-shot and better-acted than this steaming pile of puerile garbage.
A Tarantino-style Spanish romp which veers wildly between harrowing violence and hilarious gutter-humour, Neon Flesh is by no means a comfortable viewing experience. With a shining cast and a cracking soundtrack, this totally classless 100-minute bloodbath, against the odds, manages to strike just the right note; Neon Flesh is an unusual portrayal of poverty, parenthood and perversion that affects you far more by the end than you thought it would in the beginning.
A genuinely disturbing, if slightly hokey psychological horror from the new iFeatures digital filmmaking scheme, In The Dark Half beats the odds predicted by its micro-budget to produce a sensitive and finely detailed exploration of a particularly toxic grief, the claustrophobia of small-town life and the sheer scope of the power of denial.
In 1986, one of the reactors at the Soviet nuclear power station near Chernobyl failed, resulting in the worst nuclear disaster of all time. In 2012, a director so phenomenally irrelevant he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page made a film which not only trivialised the Chernobyl catastrophe but also had the gall to be trite, poorly made and awe-inspiringly boring. By the end of Chernobyl Diaries you will be begging for the sweet, scabby embrace of a radioactive mutant Ukrainian. And it’s not often we say that.
A stunning performance from newcomer Gretchen Lodge saves the occasionally misjudged but undeniably disturbing Lovely Molly ; a tale of one woman’s descent into madness at the hands of demons past and – unfortunately for our Mol – very much present. The scares may be patchy, but when they hit, they fester.
Piranha 3D was the surprise hit of 2010, blending knowing references to its glorious B-movie heritage with a truly unfeasible supply of boobs, blood, boobs, fish, boobs, Christopher Lloyd and boobs. Can its long-awaited sequel work the same schlocky magic? …No, no it can’t. Piranha 3DD is exactly as bad as we expected its predecessor to be.
Do you remember that bit in The Woman in Black where Daniel Radcliffe inches his way along a darkened corridor, holding onto an axe and kerosene light for dearest life? Well, Silent House is that scene, only spliced to a hundred more like it. Whether you have seen the original film or not, this is one of the most effective frighteners you will see this year, elevated by a fantastic central performance and a gimmick that essentially serves the traditional found footage format its marching orders. It’s just a shame about the ending.
Snipe London
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