Patrick Thompson
Conventions
Fri, 10.16.09
11:23 pm

Hot on the heels of my report of last years fest comes news of this years fest. As regular readers of my writing will know the fest is a yearly pilgrimage for me and one I have spoke off my adventures at in great detail here!
Last year Horrothon had a tough time. It was a tough year for horror with finance being almost non existent after the credit crunch and the large scale failures of films like Hostel 2.
This year however it seems like the genre is enjoying a new lease of life. Nothing is more indicative of this than the opening film Premiere of “Jennifer’s Body” the new horror film scripted by uber-trendy Juno scribe Diablo Cody and starring Transformers sex symbol Megan Fox. This film sounds interesting, coming from the director of top notch indie flick Girl fight. Its also the first chance to see Megan Fox acting in a film not directed by Michael Bay so time will tell if we will see her acting chops. Following this will be the long awaited Trick r Treat. This will be Irish fans only chance to see the film unfortunately as it is being sent straight to DVD by Warner Bros.
The big film on everyone’s lips though is the sequel to Neil Marshall’s modern classic The Descent. Though Marshall has passed the directing reigns over to the original films editor Jon Harris he has remained onboard as producer. Not sure how this one is going to pan out but apparently it will follow on from the controversial “American” ending.
On the indie front genre legend Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead, The devils rejects, Rob Zombies Halloween ... and Kenan and Kel!) will be over to promote Serbian zombie flick Zone of the Dead. Paul Solet’s expansion of his notorious short Grace will be screening. This one stars Cabin Fever star Jordan Ladd. Other indies include Black , fest director Conor McMahon’s new one The Disturbed and the world premiere of new film The undying.
On the retro front cheese will be catered for by Samurai Cop and Italian Alien rip off Contamination amongst others. There will be a rare 70mm screening of Gremlins and a screening of Day of the Dead attended by star Joe Pilato.
Fest director Edward King had this to say: “This year there's a good selection of genre films compared to last, which made me think that if there's enough good new films out there to program for this years Horrorthon it made perfect sense to me to do less retrospectives, get loads of new movies and give the audience value for money, especially during a recession!”
So lets bring on the gore! It's Horrorthon 09 and it's good to be back.

Jason Wallach
DvD
Tue, 11.10.09
09:25 pm

Well here we have Sam Raimi’s long-awaited return to the “horror” genre with this tale of twisted revenge. Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown, an upwardly mobile banker with her eye on the Assistant Manager promotion at her bank. Upon asking her boss about the promotion he tells her that he doesn’t feel she can handle “difficult decisions” being as nice as she is… and she exercises her authority on the wrong client. When an old gypsy woman begs her to extend her loan yet another time in order to save her home Christine tells her “no” causing the old woman to place a curse on her wherein she would be tormented for three days by an ancient demon called the “Lamia” who, on the fourth day, would in fact drag her to hell.



Paul Travers from Rolling Stone calls this film, “Horror Heaven.” This is a review that I highly disagree with. I literally had NO expectations for this film and the thought that went through my mind was, “So this is it? This is the big comeback?” Too bad Raimi marks his triumphant return to horror (if you can call this a horror film) with a watered down Saturday Morning Cartoon version of Evil Dead 2. I was not at all impressed or moved by this film in any way. I did not find it great scary fun… it was neither fun nor scary at all in any way. What I saw was a boring retread of every cinematic trick and camera move from Evil Dead 2 – that was done in 1987 and Raimi doesn’t seem to have anything new to offer. I was waiting for the old woman to start screeching, “I’ll swallow your soul!” This film was just a dumb rehash of everything we’ve already seen that he can do including floating possessed people and jerky camera angles accompanied by silly noises and the old flying eyeball in the mouth trick. The novelty has completely worn off Raimi and I forgave you for Army of Darkness but this time you gave us the same tired old crap and not even decent acting – Justin Long plays the boyfriend of the main character so it speaks for itself.



Sorry folks, I gave it a shot but I just can’t get on the Raimi fan bandwagon for this dud. Hardly anything even happened in this film, it’s mostly just talk through unconvincing acting. Please, if THIS is as good as it’s going to get spare us the drudge through a possible Evil Dead 4. In fact I was waiting to see a Bruce Campbell cameo in this film and was mildly pleasantly surprised that the film lacked that possibility entirely.

Oh and Sam… don’t fuck up Spider-Man 4 either, my nuts still hurt from Spider-Man 3… what a kick in the balls that was!