Tag: Bad CGI

Terrifier

As of this writing, Terrifier, the 2016 gorefest from filmmaker Damien Leone, has a critics/audience rating of 63% and 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. This flick is polarizing, and it really turned some people off.

A spinoff of a segment from Leone’s horror anthology film All Hallow’s Eve, Terrifier follows Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), a mass murderer who sets his sights on a pair of young women who are wrapping up a night out on the town during Halloween.

Tara and Dawn (Jenna Kanell and Catherine Corcoran) are regular, everyday urban twenty-somethings who just want to drive home, but need to sober up a bit before one of them gets behind the wheel. It’s too bad for them, then, that Art the Clown happens to be out and about looking for some victims. Halloween is the perfect night for Art, as his creepy regalia isn’t out of place, although it garners a lot of side-eye. Continue reading “Terrifier”

Whistle

Whistle, the 2025 horror film from writer Owen Egerton and director Corin Hardy, is something of a throwback. The conceit of a cursed object whose use brings unexpected, and sometimes ironic, death was a more common theme in horror of decades past. Paired with a cast of teenagers, films like this have been a rich breeding ground of explorations into coming of age and the sudden salience of one’s mortality. There’s a reason most of these films have young protagonists. Done correctly, these flicks give the young’uns serious chills. Done even more correctly, there is plenty of bloody mayhem for the gorehounds among us. Continue reading “Whistle”

Moonbase

There is the nucleus of a good movie in Moonbase, the 1997 sci-fi thriller from director Paolo Mazzucato and screenwriters Brian DiMuccio and Dino Vendini. It doesn’t score high in the originality sweepstakes, but it is one of the vast breed of films that could be summarized as, “Die Hard on a…” In this case, it’s Die Hard on the moon. There is a band of bad guys with a charismatic leader who invade and occupy a confined space. They hold people hostage. There is one unlikely hero that can save the day. Well, at least, this flick teases the one hero. What viewers get is more of an ensemble effort, but that’s just a small detail. It’s the big stuff that dooms this flick. Continue reading “Moonbase”

Dark Descent

The first time I saw Dark Descent, the 2002 direct-to-video feature from writer/director Daniel Knauf, I thought it was one of the worst pieces of garbage I had ever seen. It was showing on the Sci-Fi Channel not too long after its release. By that time I had a long relationship with bad movies, but nothing like the scale and familiarity I have today. I remember a film with awful CGI, cheap and drab sets that would make Roger Corman blush, and a pace that was deathly slow. All this remains true, but in comparison to the bottomfeeders in the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index, this flick is a gem. Continue reading “Dark Descent”

Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments

Movies tell stories. No shit, right? But, besides the story told up on the screen, there is the story of how a movie gets made, and that story, hidden from the audience, can have its own elements of inspiration and perseverance. That’s the case with today’s flick, Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments, filmmaker Erica Benedikty’s magnum opus from 1995.

Shot on videotape with a robust budget of 250 bucks Canadian, Phobe follows an interstellar cop or soldier-type who is hunting an escaped alien killing machine in and around the area of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Benedikty, a part-time employee of Cable 10, a local cable access channel, managed to convince her bosses to let her use the channel’s equipment and facilities to make a movie. She enlisted friends and family as cast and crew, convinced local businesses to let her shoot on their properties, and, over the course of a year, made her movie. Continue reading “Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments”

Skin Trade

This flick was close, oh, so close, to not making the cut for Shitty Movie Sundays. We have an informal slogan here at SMS: Not every shitty movie is bad, but every bad movie is shitty. Skin Trade, from 2014, is not a bad movie. It’s better than mediocre. It’s damned entertaining and on occasion dips its toes into being good. It’s a cheapie action flick that one has to actively scan for its failings. It’s the ersatz stuff that sealed the deal. The poor CGI muzzle flashes and blood spatters; the poor CGI backgrounds in driving scenes; the poor CGI explosions and fire. Yeah, it was mostly the poor CGI. It was a symptom of this flick’s low budget and the willingness of the filmmakers to take shortcuts. I wouldn’t say that it doomed this flick to a spot in the Watchability Index (because inclusion is an HONOR), but a little more flexibility in director Ekachai Uekrongtham’s budget would have worked wonders. Continue reading “Skin Trade”

Submarine

It’s been a while since Shitty Movie Sundays has featured a film made in the 21st century. But, sometimes we feel the itch. It’s not as if the 20th century has a lock on bad movies. The digital age has removed many of the barriers to making a movie, and independent auteurs have responded.

Today’s flick is Submarine, a new release from screenwriter C.M. Wright and director Max McCall. Submarine is such a new release that, as of this writing, its IMDb page still has it listed as an upcoming film, under the title Submarine of the Deep. That title stinks, so it’s a good thing it was changed. The bad news is, an improved title does nothing to make a movie better. Continue reading “Submarine”

Rippy, aka The Red

Once upon a time, way back in the 1980s, I had a calico cat named Rippy. She got that name because the day she was brought home, she ripped up everything in sight with her claws. She was never a contented kitty, running away twice in her short time in the household, with effect the second time. I never saw her again, but I always kept an eye out in the neighborhood for a surly stray with a mean set of claws. What does that have to do with Rippy, the Australian monster flick from 2024? Not a damn thing.

Directed by Ryan Cooman from a screenplay by Coonan and Richard Barcaricchio, Rippy tells the story of a small town in Queensland, Australia, that is being terrorized by a giant, red kangaroo. Continue reading “Rippy, aka The Red”

Homicycle

I’m pretty sure Brett Kelly isn’t the best auteur from Ottawa, Ontario, but he’s certainly the most prolific. As of this writing, Kelly has directed thirty-nine features, with a smattering of shorts thrown in for good measure. Alas, this profligacy has not equalled quality, but that’s never been a concern at Shitty Movie Sundays.

Three Kelly-helmed pictures were released in the year 2014. According to IMDb, Homicycle is the best of them, with a 2.7 rating out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t even have a rating. Yikes. So, what gives?

Homicycle is bottom feeding filmmaking. It’s the kind of flick that regional filmmakers crank out for a few thousand bucks and hopefully, maybe, find distribution with some garage-based company. In this case, Camp Motion Pictures here in the States. These films won’t make anyone involved rich, but they just might cover the mortgage until the next financial quarter, when it becomes time to make another. Continue reading “Homicycle”

Black Cab (2024)

Who doesn’t like Nick Frost? He’s a big, cuddly teddy bear. Which makes him an ideal antagonist in a horror flick like Black Cab, where Frost’s unnamed cab driver turns from being a part of society’s background, into a troubled couple’s torment.

From this past year, Black Cab comes to viewers via director Bruce Goodison, from a screenplay by David Michael Emerson. Frost and Virginia Gilbert are credited with additional dialogue.

Synnøve Karlsen plays Anne, a twenty-something urbanite who is engaged to Patrick (Luke Norris), a philandering shithead whom audiences will despise even before they pick up on the duo’s dynamic. After a dinner with another couple that runs well into the night, Anne and Patrick hail a cab and Nick Frost pulls up in his clanking, sputtering, stinking, diesel-powered UK black cab. The couple begin arguing in the car over whether or not they are still engaged, and whether or not Patrick is moving back in with Anne, when Frost mentions that he recognizes Anne from an earlier fare. He picked her up outside the maternity ward at a local hospital. Anne’s pregnancy is news to Patrick, who responds by being even more of a dick. Continue reading “Black Cab (2024)”