One of my cousins was visiting this weekend and he's an independent horror film maker, so we picked up a few indy horror films to check out while discussing the business and some of his current projects.
Shallow Ground -
A town is literally packing up and leaving after a damn gets completed when a young man covered in blood shows up at the police station. This is especially disturbing to the sheriff as he believes the boy to be a murderer who jilled a girl years ago that the sheriff feels guilt over.
This movie starts off really promising. Lots of creepiness and gore in the credits and the young man who plays the kid covered in blood is just freaky. The story starts off very odd and compelling with several unnatural events that will get you excited about where this story is going.
Then we get to about midway through the film and anyone with an IQ over 100 will start to get annoyed. My list of complaints is endless. The writers had such a GREAT concept here and blew it big time. The film just becomes lazy writing, cliches, and lapses in logic towards the end.
For example: 36+ people go missing in a single year and the sheriff gains the knowledge that there is a serial killer on the loose, yet NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!! No task force, no FBI, no continuing investigation, NOTHING.
I was so prepared to give this film a big thumbs up until the second half when I witnessed an 80 year old firing 2 shots with a bolt action rifle in less than a second. That's enough to make Lee Harvey Oswald cry "Second Shooter."
3 out of 10.
Despite the low rating and horrible writing, I still recommend horror fans give this a look. There is a lot of cool stuff here, it just gets ruined by a lot of dumb writing.
When a Killer Calls -
Just like the recent "When a Stranger Calls" or whatever that movie is named that is based on the opening from the old Carol Kane movie in which "The calls are coming from inside the house!"
Another poorly written pile of crap. Lots of problems here from bad acting to a complete lack of knowledge of police procedures to a ridiculously stupid and forced storyline.
Not worth anyone's time.
1 out of 10.
Bigfoot -
It's Bigfoot in Northeast Ohio.
As humans cut down a forest they begin taking away Bigfoot's habitat forcing him into the suburbs.
This is like an Ed Wood film. You'll find continuity mistakes everywhere. Worse though is the acting. The lead, Todd Cox, puts in the worst performance I've ever seen. Even worse is the writing which makes me wonder if Bob Gray (the writer, director, producer, and co-star) ever bothered to read through the script after he wrote it.
For example, one scene has Todd leaving his friend's house where his daughter was staying the night. As he drives away, he sees Bigfoot. He mumbles a "What the hell was that?" and then drives away. Apparently, he doesn't love his daughter enough to take her away from the 8 foot monster. You might think he didn't realize what he saw, but it's revealed in the next scene that he knew what it was and spent the night researching it.
The dialogue is actually not bad, and had there been good actors it wouldn't have seemed so fake. There are still some classically funny lines though. Even some scenes are funny like a scene in which a hunting party becomes the hunted. That scene is preceeded by a homage to Jaws, at least that's what I think it was and if I'm right, it was pretty cool.
Believe it or not, I'd like to see more from Bob Gray despite Bigfoot being so bad. He's got the dialogue down, he just needs better actors and needs to pay more attention to his storylines. If he was willing to say his movies are "tongue-in-cheek horror", he might have a good future there.
A final note is that the actress Liza...something, I forget her last name, did a pretty good job.
3 out of 10.
Edited By Leisher on 1150725642