A group of kidnappers abduct the daughter of a wealthy socialite and hide out in an abandoned school in the middle of the woods. But feelings of guilt soon overtake the kidnappers, dividing the group and putting their entire plan in jeopardy.

• Starring: Anessa Ramsey, Katherine Randolph, AJ Bowen

• Directed by: Padraig Reynolds

• Runtime: 1 hour 21 minutes

The film opens in a similar vein to movies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with some title cards informing us that back in 1984, several teenagers vanished without a trace. No bodies were ever found. However, no sooner had these unexplained disappearances begun, than they stopped. Until the following year, when the cycle started again. This pattern of disappearances has continued for 24 years.

It takes at least 15-20 minutes before anything interesting to happens.

Rites of Spring is a strange film, almost two different movies playing at once that then come together at the end.

In one plot two girls are kidnapped in the parking lot of a bar by unknown assailants. They are taken to a barn in the middle of nowhere and strung up, tortured, and drained of blood for a sacrifice to a local deity that comes out in the spring. One escapes, crosses paths with a group of kidnappers right in the middle of a ransom plot gone wrong.

The other plot is about the group of kidnappers who abduct the daughter of a wealthy socialite and hide out in an abandoned school in the middle of the woods. The evening doesn't go as planned and their poorly chosen hideout becomes a hunting ground for a mysterious creature that requires springtime ritualistic sacrifices.

A “B” Slasher film yet looks way better than expected.

kidnapping & torture, kidnapping & revenge, a monster, blood, and a little nudity.

Good suspense and overall a great film. Also there's a scene after the credits.

 If you are a horror fan and looking for a slasher/monster hybrid, Rites of Spring is well worth a watch.

 4.5 out of 5 stars

This is a 2010 remake of a 1973 George Romero film The Crazies.

    I did not see the original The Crazies, but what I liked about this remake is, It waited no time to start the action. Right out the gate "Boom" people just started killing going crazy etc.. when movies start off like that you get my fullest attention. It dragged a little bit in certain parts, but for the most part it was enjoyable.


     The two main characters are played very well, by two of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. Timothy Olyphant plays Sherriff David Dutton, and Radha Mitchell plays his wife Judy. They live in a small town in Iowa, where everyone seems to know everyone, and understandably so.

    While Sheriff Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell), try to make sense of the escalating violence, the government uses deadly force to close off all access and won’t let anyone in or out even those uninfected.

    The town is Ogden Marsh, Iowa. Population: 1,260. It's one of those places where the people earn a living and life is simple. In due time, things start to go wrong. Some of the residents act ... funny. At first, it doesn't seem so bad; they space out pretty easily, and maybe they'll repeat something they just said a second earlier. But then, for no apparent reason, they begin to bleed all over, and what's worse, they become homicidal maniacs. What's causing this epidemic of insanity? The local sheriff, David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) and his deputy, Russell Clank (Joe Anderson), have reason to believe that the local water supply is to blame. Maybe it has been contaminated with an unknown toxin which resulted in transforming the infected persons into a vicious belligerent killers.

    While in the middle of a baseball game, David has a standoff with a local who has a history of being drunk, as he stumbles onto the filed with a shotgun. After David has to kill the man to defend himself, David realize something is wrong. This guy was a little crazy. Soon others around town start acting a little crazy too, and before we know it, the Military shows up to put everyone under quarantine.

    The residents of Ogden Marsh are rounded up and taken to a makeshift medical ward, where people are forcefully separated on the basis of whether or not someone has an elevated temperature. Sheriff Dutton's wife, Judy, falls into the second category, and she's taken away despite David's assertion that she's pregnant and prone to slight fevers. She soon finds herself strapped to a stretcher in an area designated for the already infected. Unfortunately, an attempted jailbreak results in some of the crazies escaping, and one of them is headed straight for Judy, a bloody pitchfork dragging behind him.

     It soon becomes a matter of survival, David, Judy, Russell, and a teenager named Becca Darling (Danielle Panabaker) pitted against an illness and a brutal military.

     If you're like me and you haven't yet grown tired of the zombie genre, then chances are "The Crazies" will not disappoint you. Indeed, it's a striking visual achievement, some of the most frightening scenes taking place in cramped, shadowy spaces. I also give the filmmakers credit for creating gore effects that aren't relentlessly campy. There's a sequence, for example, in which a crazed mortician starts wielding a working bone saw, and another involving a crazy and a can of gasoline, is surprisingly chilling.

    The final thirty minutes of "The Crazies" are problematic in that every scene feels like the finale; a resolution is overshadowed by another crisis, which is then resolved before leading to another crisis, and more and more and more than once I was hit with a new turn of events.

    The Crazies is generously sprinkled with truly frightening moments. Yes, it relies on a story that has been told many times before, but does so in an unexpectedly proficient manner: there is no dialogue uttered unless it directly furthers the plot; the gore is aplenty, but never crosses into the realm of disturbing.

• Downsides:
  
  The plot jumps a little too quickly
  Would have liked to see more "crazy"
  A couple scenes were a little cliche
  It's a remake

I will give this one 4 out of 5.

      If you're a fan of Rob Zombie's other films *House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, and Halloween*, I honestly can't see any reason why you wouldn't like this movie as well.

      I thought it was very original and different from all the other Halloween movies. It gave the series a completely different look and hopefully the studio allows Michael to finally be dead. I like how zombie took in the efforts to include ties with the fourth film and the 2nd of the original series. This is one of the most craziest horror films I’ve ever seen in a long time.


      The opening scene, which presents all of the original Halloween 2 as an ingenious nightmare, is haunting. I loved the old Halloween decorations in the hospital and Michael stalking through its gray halls set to The Moody Blues Nights in White Satin. Brilliant.

      A year after the HALLOWEEN massacre, Laurie Strode lives with Lee and Annie Brackett and is an absolute mess, does drugs, and slowly descending into madness. Dr. Loomis has written a new book and becomes more of a spoiled celebrity. Michael is still alive and sees images of his beautiful mother as a ghost, and the younger version of himself. Deborah tells Michael that he needs to kill Laurie so they will become a family again. When Laurie finds out the truth about who she really is, she doesn't care about anything anymore, so she heads off to the Phantom Jam. After partying with Harley and Mya, Michael comes after Laurie once again to have the ultimate family reunion, because family is forever. I honestly think this is one of the best HALLOWEEN films yet!

      Michael himself is also spooky again. He actually yells when he kills people, and this breaking of tradition of presenting him as a mute/silent monster has quite a dramatic effect. If you look closely, you can see a long, straggly beard sticking out from under his haggard mask. Very cool.

      Another thing this film deserves kudos for is that it is the FIRST Halloween movie that actually looks like it was filmed in the Midwest during fall. This fact alone GREATLY adds to the mood and ambiance of the film. The scenes of Myers hiking miles across the Midwest plains to commit murder in the tiny hamlet of Haddonfield are very creepy. They reek of awesome.

      If you love the HALLOWEEN series, and Rob Zombie's directing style, I highly recommend HALLOWEEN 2.

      I’ll give this one 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Yes it is a real movie.

A family inherits a creepy old house in which there exists an ancient evil book. When son Billy opens the dusty tome, he unwittingly frees the nasty creatures imprisoned within its pages. Then they "terrorize" the family.

The good news is that Kari Michaelson is very HOT, particularly in her bath scene, which proves to be the highlight of the film, not only because it gives viewers the opportunity to have a glance at her, but also because it actually displays some level of invention (I'm convinced that it must have been the influence for a very similar scene in A Nightmare On Elm Street).

I probably wouldn't have noticed if the scene didn't keep going and going, with plenty of close-ups on Kari Michaelson removing each piece of clothing slowly, and then continuously getting interrupted by phone calls and the like.  Granted, there was a shark-fin-headed gill monster lurking in the water of the tub, which was supposed to be suspenseful, but was really more of an irritation that kept the camera off Michaelson here and there during her strip tease.  I don't mind the disrobing scene in the least, it's just sort of weirdly placed in what I assumed was a kid's flick.   Also, is it weird that I freeze-framed the screen to see the breast covering bubble bikini that Michaelson was wearing to keep the movie clean?


The special effects are extremely amateurish, but are pretty good for a movie made on a low budget in 1981.

Everything else about the film is bad: the script is utter garbage; the comedy is very hit and miss, with the emphasis on miss; the acting is dreadful.
This film must've been the Scary Movie (2000) of it's day. It has hardly ever been heard of by anyone.

The acting is atrocious, disgusting and every other discouraging word I can say, and the comic-timing is off, off, off! If these two factors had been at least a little bit better, than this probably could have been a nice, worthwhile comedy.

The last 10 minutes is nothing but one WTF after another.

I realize that I can never have those seventy-five minutes of my life back, but you can not even begin to realize the sheer agony that I endured while watching it.

I hear that a sequel was made several years later. I definitely will be reviewing that one as well as soon as I find it.

I'll give this one 2.5 out of 5 stars.

I'll give her 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Rated R for disturbing violent content, some sexuality and language.

Orphan is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra,(House of Wax) from a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson and a story by Alex Mace.

The film stars Vera Farmiga (The Departed), Peter Sarsgaard (Flightplan), Isabelle Fuhrman (Hounddog), CCH Pounder (TV’s The Shield), Jimmy Bennett (Star Trek), and new comer Aryana Engineer

Joel Silver, Susan Downey, Jennifer Davisson Killoran and Leonardo DiCaprio produced the film, with Steve Richards, Don Carmody and Michael Ireland serving as executive producers. Richard Mirisch, David Barrett and Erik Olsen co-produced.

On with the review.

Young married couple Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard) are devastated at the tragic loss of their unborn child, a loss that has taken a toll on both their marriage and Kate's fragile psyche.

When the couple decides to adopt another child they find themselves drawn to Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman),

Almost as soon as they welcome the little girl into their home an alarming series of events begins to unfold, leading Kate to believe that there's something wrong with Esther - this seemingly angelic little girl is not what she appears to be. Concerned for the safety of her family, Kate tries to get John and others to see past Esther's sweet face. But her warnings go unheard.

It was very intense and it keeps you on the edge of your seat. This movie kicks ass. It has a great plot, with secrets that you'll never guess. 

Esther is 9, and is adopted by Jon and Kate, who just lost a child. Once she starts to move in things basically go downhill from there.

The performances I enjoyed the most in this movie were from Aryana Engineer and Isabelle Fuhrman. (the two youngest people in the movie)

Aryana and Isabelle are very cute and they are both talented. I can't believe it, but they truly are amazingly professional for their age. I am impressed by their acting. Both of the girls WILL be VERY famous by the time they are adults.

Orphan opens with one of those truly mortifying scenes that can actually go beyond typical horror into something else, that visceral terror that comes with a catastrophic event. This being the death of a baby, as Kate is about to give birth, sees blood under her gown while waiting in the hospital, and is told her child has died before even giving birth. Then it gets more and more disturbing: her husband John is filming this devastating scene with his camcorder, and he presents the dead baby to her as she's sobbing in tears. The whole scene was very fast paced and twisted.

Then the rest of the plot unfolds but it becomes more predictable, While early on we get a scene with Kate and her little girl Max and how she reads to her at night even though she's deaf.

Overall, I enjoyed Orphan and think it is one of the better horror films I have seen in a few months. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and while it may offer your standard scary movie clichés, the film takes the genre into a new level with certain scenes in it guaranteed to offer some shock value. I loved the much hyped twist in the movie because it is over the top, just like the rest of the film. If you want reality, I would suggest either not seeing this movie, or to stop taking scary movies so serious. 

Body Count: 2.5 almost 3

I’ll give this one 4.5 out of 5 stars

Did you see this movie? Leave a comment.

Teen comedy starring Rob Schneider and Jenna Dewan. After involuntarily over indulging and becoming drunk for the first time in her life, a freshman college girl discovers her sinful shenanigans have been caught on camera by a shoddy video producer. With her scholarship for college coming from an abstinence group who believe in no sex before marriage, it is a race against time and across country as she and her friends attempt to retrieve the potentially damaging footage before it is exposed. 

I've always wanted to see a film that contained this much adult content and yet felt so geared towards being a family movie.

 I really don't know who this movie was made for. The story is so fluffy it seems like young girls were the target demographic, but then there's the raunchy college humor and frequent nudity. We see boobs … lots of boobs.

  A girl, Priscilla (Jenna Dewan), who has devoted her life to chastity and following rules, goes to college on scholarship from an organization that promotes celibacy.

  Priscilla inadvertently gets drunk and is filmed topless at a party by "Chicks Go Crazy" (the movie's fictional version of "Girls Gone Wild"). Priscilla and her new-found college friends embark on a journey to save her reputation and her scholarship by getting the footage back. Along the way she learns lots of lessons about life and love.

Although it has lots of (attempted) college humor, the storyline is that of a typical formulaic teen movie, complete with morals and cliché moments. Sometimes it's rather painful. One scene in particular stands out in my mind, where the main character and a guy who's falling in love with her are listening to the radio and actually break out into song.

Watch if you want.

I'll be generous and give this one 2.5/5

An alright low-budget horror movie.

    After introducing us to Wayne, we meet brother and sister, Nick and Erin. Erin is clearly depressed over a recent breakup, and caring sibling Nick encourages her to get over it by "getting under someone."

A raunchy party ensues, but as the teens drink and screw, dark forces spy on them through a photo lens. And when the party winds down, the teens find themselves hunted by a dart gun wielding, diabolical trapper named Edgar.

    After a well-paced chase and eventual capture, the surviving teens find themselves chained to stalls in a large horse-barn. Having already been made aware of the brawn, we quickly learn that the brains behind the operation is the grandfatherly Wayne, who establishes his dominance over his prisoners in a gruesome scene. Let's just say that gore fans will be pleased, and tongues everywhere will be quiver in fear.

    The story tightens as more and more details come out: Wayne is a player in a human slavery operation. And in one excellently paced and creepy scene, he sells one of the teens to a scary merchant named Amell. Amell inspects the captives like one would a horse or a prized steer, and the coldness of this scene will resonate more with audiences than any of the bloody events that follow.

        Adding an eerie prop, that of a walking stick, Amell makes the merchant an insidious classic bad guy, and like Wayne, this merchant has brought with him muscle equipped with appropriate bondage gear. Methodically, Edgar and Amell's henchman go about their duties, This scene has a chilling feel as nail after nail closes the box around the trembling child.

        "Live Animals" looks uniform and rich. Although much of the film takes place in low light, the details are clear and sharp. Folks familiar with limitations of digital video will find the image pleasing and film-like.

I’ll give this one

 3 out of 5 Stars

The movie starts out w ith the shooting being shown in the beginning and then the rest of the movie happening like a flashback.

The flashback starts out with a young Christopher Wallace rapping in the school yard, so we're shown even at a young age he was influenced by music. Early, we're also shown how protective his mother Voletta Wallace(Angela Bassett) was as all she wanted was a good life for her son.

About 20 minutes in, when we first see Jamal Woolard step in as Christopher a little bit older. We see him dealing with drugs in his room, having to hide plates full underneath his bed as he's still living at home with his mother. He has to hide all the flashy clothes/shoes/gear from his mother, as he's suppose to still be going to school.

Once confronted about missing school so much, we get a great scene from both mother and son as he admits to drug trafficking and choosing the street over school.

When we first see Biggie step up to battle in the street, it was pretty intense, as it was done exactly like the real video of it.

Once dropping the freestyle, its clear to see this kid has talent. Shortly after the street life begins to conflict with chance of making it out he has. He is arrested for dealing right after becoming a father and getting a girl from his neighborhood pregnant.

Once in lockup, Biggie begins to write. Once being released, his friends begin to see he's gotten better as an artist and could actually make some noise in Hip-Hop.
Soon after Puffy comes is introduced and he turns B.I.G. in to the Notorious one we all know and love.

 
For the rest of the movie we see Biggie have to deal with family drama, such as not seeing his oldest daughter enough, go through relationship troubles, back and forth between Lil' Kim and Faith Evans.

We also see him have to deal with success and the highs and lows of the music industry. We are also shown many events re-enacted that were broadcast all over the media when they originally happened. It was great to see how everything came together and how he reacted to many of those situations. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how this one ends, but even when it does, it hits you like you never seen it coming.

The script was great, when making a movie about someone’s life, no matter who the person may be, it's hard to compress someone's life in to 2 hours, but they pulled it off. They writers knew what parts to include and what not too. It was great seeing key parts of his career be added such as The Tupac shooting at the studio with Biggie being blamed and then the confrontation at the Source Awards.

What really makes the ending hit you hard, is that we see Christopher Wallace change as a person near the end of his life as if he knew it was coming to end. Any fan could tell you that death was always on his mind.

One of the final scenes is of Mrs. Wallace riding in the backseat of a car coming from Christopher's funeral. And as the car is driving we see her look out the window and in the street is all of her son's fans, also mourning the loss. This is when she realizes that even though she didn't support what he was doing, others did, and they listened when he spoke.

Some actors didn't look exactly like their real life counterparts like Derek Luke as Sean 'Puffy' Combs or Anthony Mackie as Tupac Shakur. But little things like this were easy to look past as the story hooks you in immediately.

It's a shame he was only on here for 25 years, but clearly he left his mark and will never be forgotten ... not only through his music but now also through this movie.

Christopher Wallace
May 21, 1972 - March 9, 1997

5 out of 5 

"The Uninvited" is a remake of Kim Ji-Woon's South Korean blockbuster hit "A Tale of Two Sisters".

The story begins with teenager Anna (Emily Browning), who has been in a psychiatric facility for the past couple of months, presumably because of her suicidal tendencies after her terminally ill mother dies in a tragic fire. Upon her release, her father (David Straithairn) picks her up and takes her home, but Anna's happiness is short-lived when she discovers her father has formed a romantic attachment with Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), Anna's mother's nurse and caregiver who is now playing the role of soon-to-be stepmom and living in the family home.

Anna's only ally and confidant is her sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel), a free-spirited and rebellious teen who also dislikes Rachel. When Anna experiences visions of her deceased mom's ghost, she comes to believe that the fire that killed her mom was no accident but a deliberate act perpetrated by Rachel. Anna also seems to be "haunted" by three pale children and the siblings' investigations turn up the possibility that Rachel may have been the nanny that murdered them many years earlier.

I’ve seen enough horror movies to guess what will happen in the end, but this one threw me off which is exactly why its great!

The effects are quite ho-hum in terms of scare factor - the crawling entity has been done to death (pun intended) in so many other horror movies, especially in Asian horror, that the effects have worn off for me. The ghost children are pale but not very creepy.

I thought this movie was really good. Not scary but all around suspenseful. It has some twist and turns and a very surprising ending. It maybe predictable to you if you have seen the original Tale of Two sisters as this is a remake of it.

             
The Uninvited is a well shot and supremely paced film ... I recommend that you check it out.

I will give this one 4.5 out of 5 stars.

First off, I was not going to watch this film because I didn't think a remake would be any good but... 

Despite the title of the film being "Friday the 13th," this is NOT a remake of the 1980 classic. It is more of a film based on the first four Friday the 13th films.

I was a fan of the older films and some were better than others, but nevertheless they were classic films that helped shape the way horror films were made. I was hoping that a remake would keep the same magic that the original series had.

This movie was amazing!! It had profanity, drug use, violence, gore, suspense, and nudity. These were the staples of the films in the 80s, so it was good to see that this "remake" didn't wander too far from its roots.

My understanding that the main reason anyone would watch a Friday the 13th movie are blood and boobs. This movie delivers both starting within ten minutes.

The main focus of the movie covers two separate groups of party hungry beer thirsty kids who wind up getting slashed to pieces by Jason Voorhees. The real story line of the film revolves around Clay who is searching for his "missing" sister Whitney. The search obviously leads right to the forest's legendary masked terror. The "remake" is well-done on all fronts, with a solid story threading through rip-roaring horror blood and carnage, and a high level of sexuality featuring a gorgeous female cast. The biggest change is with Jason himself.

The character has been changed. While he's still a machete wheeling figure but it's not the same Jason as was in the previous saga. Jason is faster, more brutal, and less bumbling. He seems to have lost some of that no thought killer instinct that made him such an icon back in the 80s.

I found Jason to be a bit more violent and foreboding in this movie than in some predecessors. The characters in this movie were routine, but still interesting, even the story was good. I am sure there are some people who will complain about this movie.

Here are a few things that I had issues with this film.

#1 shaky camera syndrome. (it is played out stop it)

#2 Jason burns one victim alive. Jason does not torture ... he is a cold, ruthless killer.

#3 Jason does not keep victims alive and hold them prisoner. Again he is a cold, ruthless killer.

#4 Jason shows a lot more intelligence in this movie. Jason is not smart enough to pull off some of the things he does in this movie.


Bottom line … gratuitous nudity, sex scenes (with morality lessons), someone wanders off by themselves in the dark, completely pointless deaths, corny jokes (requisite for fun horror movies), a solid amount of blood spatter and flying brain chunks, good shock/jump scenes, and pretty good special effects. Awesome!!

Why reinvent the wheel? (the reason it's not a 5-star)

Body count 14 (13 of which are killed by Jason).

If you are a fan ... WATCH THIS MOVIE! It will not disappoint at all.

I'll give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.