Horror: The best and worst
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Monday, 29, Oct 2007 03:32 The Worst.
Wolf Creek
 | A sorry off-shoot of the worrying recent 'horror porn' trend, the real-life origins of this Aussie/UK production's plot isn't enough to prevent audiences from rooting for the bad guy, so irritatingly stupid are the female leads. While the infamous 'head-on-a-stick' moment is as stomach-churning as anything in an Abel Ferrara shocker, it's a joyless, illogical waste of time. |
The Devil's Rejects
 | Seemingly made by a man with no feelings for actual human beings, Rob Zombie's follow-up to his equally execrable House of 10,000 Corpses succeeds in only disgusting the viewer, supposedly intended to comment on media portrayals of violence, yet managing nothing other than using largely-forgotten 70s rock to soundtrack 90+ interminable minutes of wholly innocent people being tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered. Who is this film meant to appeal to, and why haven't those who enjoy it been committed? |
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
 | The nonsensical title notwithstanding (surely it should be 'the summer before last', or has the killer no concept of time?), this formulaic, forgettable sequel seems to have been assembled on a conveyor belt, so utterly predictable is its premise. Holiday in paradise goes wrong? Check. Cloaked killer able to catch up with victims by simply striding purposefully? Check. Jennifer Love Hewitt involved in wet t-shirt scene? What do you think? |
Silent Hill
 | Imagine being forced to watch someone play a reasonable videogame. Boring, right? So why the generally superb writer/director Roger Avary decided that audiences would be keen to sit through two staggeringly dull hours of watching player A (Radha Mitchell) walk along corridor B into building C is a mystery. Sean Bean's attempt at an American accent is hilarious, and though the sinister town does admittedly look quite misty at times, it's anything but scary. |
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
 | After one of the biggest box-office successes of all time - a shooting budget of less than $40,000, a gross of over $248 million - greedy Artisan studios managed to transform an eagerly awaited sequel into an incoherent, rambling mess, with a high gore quota completely alien to the original's superbly sinister psychological horror. Worst of all, it breaks one of the most important rules of the genre - it's much scarier if we don't see the object of the protagonists' fear. |
Manos: The Hands of Fate
 | Featured in one of the funniest episodes in geek TV classic Mystery Science Theater 3000, this shockingly terrible movie would have fitted snugly into the oeuvre of Ed Wood, but for the fact that this monstrosity was directed by a fertiliser salesman from El Paso, Texas. Honestly. With a plot that never even bothers to make sense, 'actors' who appear to have wandered in from a local asylum and a budget so low as to be laughable, it might just be one of the best 'worst' movies ever made. |
Jaws: The Revenge
 | Probably the most shameful production in Sir Michael Caine's otherwise distinguished career, this sub-par sequel swaps logical plotting for a story entirely ludicrous and frequently incomprehensible. Seemingly just an excuse for director Joseph Sargent - no Spielberg by any stretch of the imagination - to shoot in the Bahamas, the film uses the insane premise of a special connection between the Brody family and the murderous shark, an horrific attempt at a Caribbean accent from Mario Van Peebles and some of the worst dialogue in movie history to slowly but steadily drive audiences to drink. |
Anaconda
 | Even a young Jennifer Lopez doing a lot of running can't save this modern-day B-movie from total and utter ignominy, so senselessly silly is its plot. A National Geographic documentary crew find their boat hijacked by Jon Voight's nutso hunter, intent on capturing the titular deadly snake. And then there's lots of biting, screaming and some amazingly dodgy special effects. Ten years on, it's clear what the movie's fatal flaw was - if you're going to feature snakes, they have to be on a plane. |
Child's Play
 | With one of the most ridiculous premises ever committed to celluloid - a dying criminal uses voodoo to transport his soul into a children's doll - the film's cast a dark shadow over the career of Brad Dourif, with his fine work in The Two Towers as Grima Wormtongue and as tongue-tied Billy Bibbitt in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest overshadowed by his voicing of the psychotic plaything. Spawning four sequels, it's a depressing, soulless 87 minutes. |
The Grudge 2
 | Alright, it's another sequel, but this uninspired flick - director Takashi Shimuzi's seventh Grudge movie - manages to reach unprecedented heights of abject rubbishness. For no apparent reason other than setting the film in the US instead of Japan, the eponymous curse is transformed into some form of communicable virus, and logic is soon tossed aside in favour of a stultifying mess of lots of carbon-copy characters seeing dead people before popping their clogs. And as characters throw caution - and indeed, sense - to the wind and venture into a house they've been told will kill them, you realise that only by continuing to watch the film could you be as stupid as these people. |
To see InTheNews' ten best ever horror films, click here
Lewis Bazley
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