Expelled Grey Matter

When I heard about the recent version of Resident Evil a thought crossed my mind: "Didn't this happen already?"  I wasn't a huge fan of Paul W. S. Anderson's original series of films but each one was enjoyable.  Definitely not great movie making, but they entertained, even if they had little to do with the games.  They managed to tell a story of sorts and, after they ended, I frequently heard about the possibility of a reboot.  I didn't remember anything about it until Zach Cregger's movie came out this year. What surprised me is that Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was already five years old.  2021 was a year when many movies were still coming out on streaming due to the COVID-19 pandemic and those were by and large films that were already completed before the shutdown in 2020 and the writers' strike shortly afterward.  It is no surprise that a reboot to a series that was more of a cult phenomenon would slip through the cracks, especially one ...

The V/H/S series has been around for 14 years now.  Despite the fact that a number of now-renowned directors have provided shorts for the series it is almost tempting to say that of the 9 movies in the series there have been 9 good segments.  That's exaggerating a bit, but despite the fact that this has carried on from its humble beginnings none of the films up to and including V/H/S/99 have surpassed V/H/S/2 in quality.   We begin the film with a kid making a movie with his army men and see various other flashes of things on the same VHS tape.  After a bit we are introduced to a group of teenagers who film their vandalism and trespassing, in this case going to an old music venue in which a band tragically after being trampled to death by their fans when a fire broke out.  As can be expected the band's ghosts can't wait to play an encore.  Next, we have a woman named Lily (Ally Ioannides) pledging for a sorority in which part of the hazing ritual is t...

The first three Evil Dead films are classics.  It was a disappointment that we didn't get anything new for a while after Army of Darkness , but eventually Ash vs. Evil Dead showed up and for three seasons everything was right with the world. Before that, though, we got a reboot called Evil Dead .  It had some things that connected it to the original films but the humor was missing and the characters were the usual annoying young people that showed up in most 2000s horror.  Then, when we were afraid there would be no more Evil Dead, out came Evil Dead Rise .  It was more on track with the originals but, although it was nice and bloody and substituted an apartment building for a cabin in the woods, it was also underwhelming.  There is something about modern horror that just doesn't work with these movies and that sad trend continues with Evil Dead Burn .  Alice (Souheila Yacoub) and Will (George Pullar) are restaurant owners in a toxic relationship.  One...

I became obsessed with liminal spaces a long time ago.  There was a Stephen King novella called The Langoliers , which unfortunately is better known for an awful television miniseries adaptation from the 1990s.  It tells the story of a group of people on a private plane that lands at an empty airport.  they discover that they have somehow slipped a moment into the past.  The world is empty, everything has an aura of age about it and, worst of all, there are creatures coming that devour that world in order to clean up the remains of the past.  This simple premise has lead to dreams as well as some influence over my photography and storytelling.  I'm sure for many others the disquieting feeling of being stuck in a bland service corridor in a mall or some other place that is in stark contrast to the world around it has had an impression.  A large part of the appeal of the original Dawn of the Dead is that the main characters are forced to live in these s...

Toho didn't have big plans on what to with Godzilla going into the 2000s so the majority of the Millennium Series of Godzilla was dedicated to letting different directors share their vision of what a Godzilla film should be.  This ranged from the silly to the family-friendly to a return to serious kaiju filmmaking with Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack .  Where that film had been successful in taking the whole Godzilla legend in a different direction Toho still preferred a tried-and-true story, so writer Wataru Mimura delivered  Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and with a human plot that was almost a carbon copy of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus , which he previously wrote.    Godzilla (Tsutomu Kitagawa) attacked Tokyo in 1954 and was killed by the oxygen destroyer.  However, Tokyo was soon visited by other monsters.  As a result, a special task force was established in 1966 to defend Japan.  In most cases the mobile MASER v...

We have all fantasized about being able to make a wish and how it would change our lives if they really did come true.  Besides the obvious of trying to find loopholes by wishing for infinite wishes I am sure that, as in most things, the wishes would come down to love or money.  However, despite being willing to talk about almost anything to a million strangers on the internet, most people today won't sit down and have simple conversations with the people close to them.  It's a recipe for disaster and, when a poorly worded wish is thrown in the mix, it makes for one of the more creative horror movies in recent memory. Bear (Michael Johnston) works in a music store and is in love with his friend and coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette).  Problem is he is afraid to reveal his feelings for her as she has never indicated specifically that she likes him.  After rejecting a litany of bad advice from his best friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) Bear decides to keep quiet as usua...