I would have loved it if it weren't just another stupid zombie flick...

Campy dialogue. Ridiculous plot. Absolutely no scientific validity to things like launching yourself into the air with a bazooka and surviving, let alone being able to fire a machine gun attached to a stump of a leg. There was tons of things about this movie I really liked, even loved. Yet I didn’t love it. In fact, I was glad to finally have it be over. And why? Because it was another stupid, lazy zombie flick.

I just can’t get into zombie movies. They bore me to tears, and make me feel ripped off. There’s no real thought put into a zombie movie. Gas, toxic chemical, weird voodoo or something of that sort is turning people into flesh eating, mindless fiends that are only stoppable by cutting them to pieces, shooting them to pieces, or otherwise reducing them to goo. If you get bit, you’ll become one, too. Mankind is doomed. Whatever.

There’s no cool villain to root against. Often we get pointless deaths just to provoke some kind of a reaction from the audience. Barring that, the movie relies on lots of splatter to get a reaction. I’ll give Planet Terror nods to that. There is plenty of gore for the sake of gore, which is another lazy fallback that makes me yawn.

This movie frustrated me to no end because it has cheese all over it. A go go dancer calls herself Cherry Darling and wants to be a stand up comic, yet gets insulted when people point out her name sounds like a stripper. Then when she loses a leg she cries “How am I going to be a stand up comedian now?” That’s just beautiful! Then as she’s walking around with the leg from a table as a prosthetic, the renegade soldier ordering her around calls her “Peg.” Priceless! There is a ton of cornball dialogue and character interaction that make me laugh, but then it all went to rot when I had to deal with the damn zombie/people turning into zombie scenes.

Plus, the story drags. Maybe it flowed better in the shortened double feature version, but the full length just keeps going and going and going with lots of diversionary scenes with secondary characters just meant to fill up time. Yes, they’re interesting, but the movie could have been over at least half an hour earlier, and I wouldn’t have been disappointed.

I do appreciate the uniqueness of how this movie blends 70’s stylings with modern. The costumes are full-on 70’s, the cars are sweet classics, but then we have people text messaging all over the place. It gives the whole thing a surreal feel. The addition of little details like “missing reels” and the simulation of old projector film adds to the right atmosphere.

The cast all do great in their roles, no matter how scattered and small they may have been. Naturally Rose McGowan steals the show, between being “I can’t help but hate her” beautiful, and having the right delivery for her cheesy, cheesy lines, and being able to shoot at people with her leg and make it look believable. There are tons of cameos, as well, including Bruce Willis and Quentin Tarantino.

If this just wasn’t a zombie and gore for the sake of gore story, I would be a happy camper. However, it is a zombie and gore for the sake of gore story, so no matter how many cheap laughs it gave me, Planet Terror will never be a movie I watch again, let alone own. If you love Robert Rodriguez movies and zombies and gore, you’re in for a treat. If you’re like me and demand a little bit more from your cheese, you’ll be disappointed, and a little nauseated.

Tags: gore for the sake of gore, Grindhouse Presents Planet Terror, movie review, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, zombie movie, zombies

Hour long setup for a whole lotta gore for the sake of gore.

At least it’s not zombies. That’s the only thing I can say positive about The Descent. Otherwise it’s just another ‘gore for the sake of gore’ horror movie, this time featuring ravenous cave creatures that are mostly human, a little bat, and all ugly.

Okay, another difference between this and boring zombie flicks is this makes you sit through about an hour of set up where the characters emote about one character’s tragic loss of her husband and child, and how they feel bad they didn’t stick by her during the tragedy when she needed them the most, but hey, why don’t we just get drunk and go spelunking to make up for it? Then we have to watch these women find a cave entrance, maneuver themselves deeper into it, let one of them have a panic attack when she gets stuck, and then have everyone else get all pissed off (rightfully so) as they realize the gal who coordinated the trip decided to take them into uncharted and dangerous territory.

Finally when things begin to happen, it’s nothing more interesting than cave creatures that want to make them into meals. Yes, it’s horrifying. Yes, it’s bloody and gruesome. Yes, it would be a horrible way to die. But it’s nothing original, even with the albino humanoid creatures who stalk their prey by sonar like a bat, and can crawl all over the cave walls and pop out of any place the director thinks will make you jump.

Through it all there is still all this angst among the characters as one of them finally realizes through her dense fog of grief and anti-depressant medication that her dead husband cheated on her with one of her friends. That it’s the friend who decided they all needed to wander around a cave that no one ever made it out of alive before, well, that’s just icing on the cake, since you need at least that much to get any kind of emotional connection with these characters.

Maybe I went into this with the wrong expectations, and that’s why I’m so thoroughly unimpressed. But my expectations were so low it only would have taken a few good lines, one sympathetic character, or anything original in the horror vein to make me sit up and take notice, instead of grab another cup of coffee to try and stay awake. I see the rave reviews of this, and I just don’t get it. Is it because the main characters all have British accents? Is that why other people think this is a class act of a horror movie? Or is it the long, drawn out setup before you even get a glimpse of the cave dwellers? All I saw was a bunch of tripe better suited for a ‘chick flick’ about how someone gets their groove back than the backbone of a horror movie. Then all I saw was gore for the sake of gore, cheap tricks to try and make me jump, and an ending that just made me roll my eyes and say out loud, “Well, that was just stupid.”

This is definitely a movie I won’t own on DVD, or watch ever again. I was curious about it because of the hype, but now I know that The Descent is just another movie that didn’t live up to it. I need more than just ‘beastie wants to eat me while I cry about my feelings’, and The Descent barely even delivered that.

Tags: creature feature, gore for the sake of gore, horror, horror movie, not so original, The Descent