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Pickled Pacemaker
Apr 10, 2007
Pickled for longevity.
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Starring: Cilian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Mark Strong

The main plot is that a national guard unit is sent to a remote base in a desert. This base is completely surrounded by rocky cliffs/mountains. The national guard unit comes and finds the base empty (of course) and goes in search of the missing general and scientists etc. This is a unit just out of training and thus very shaky and because of this events take a horrible turn 1.) as they are attacked by the mutants, 2.) as they are being torn apart by the prospect of dying, and such. After a time one of their members is taken and they go into an abandoned mine in search of her on a search and rescue mission where they meet up with the rest of the mutants and gore ensues.

This movie both kicks rear end and sucks completely in the gore department. In the beginning one of the main characters goes to the bathroom in a permanent port-a-potty , the one that has the giant pool of sludge and excressions. There a man emerges and climbs out, much to the surprise of the main character. This man is completely COVERED in shiat, urine, and a whole bunch of tiny, long, incisions all over his body. He dies because of extreme infection. (don't worry thats not a spoiler in anyway). This death is brilliant. It makes you skin crawl as you think about being that guy, crawling through a large pool of poo poo all the while having the said poo poo seeping into your wounds. It also makes you scared about what is in store for the rest of the party. This is also where the movie fails. The first few deaths are wonderfully gory and really get your heart beating, and scared to see how the others die. However after a fashion it just seems the writers just wanted to kill people. The last deaths weren't fun/scary at all, and it really loses all its edge and scariness. It seemed like they had a list of all the characters and a list of possible deaths and used darts to see who died and how. Then they tried, and failed, to piece the deaths into a story.

This then leads to the "bad guys." Right away the make-up is fantastic. They took all the humanity out of the actors completely. These mutants dwell in the cave system in the hills (oh yeah i went there) and pop out to slay the protaganists. Anyway as i said the first few deaths just make the movie great. You really want to see these dudes dead because they slaughter so ruthlessly. That is quickly fulfilled, but after awhile it becomes the same as the other characters. Now it is just who's party is going to run out of killable persons first.

This also leads to some writing flaws. The biggest problem is that there is the run-of-the-mill nice mutant. Thats all nice and dandy but they don't explain why he is nice. he lives in the same caves but he hides from the others and eventually leads the others out. Which just adds to the confusion, why is he there? why didn't he leave? Why does he help the humans? It sounds like one writer was writing that part of the script, then went to a coffee break where another writer ninjaed the script and continued it a whole different way, without writing out the nice mutant.
Also of course there are the scars that move, and cliffs that change shape or disappear completely in one scene. Another pretty big writing flaw is when two main characters are tending the the unfortunate port-a-pottied-to-death man, when they turn around and SURPRISE their rifles are gone and their truck is ablaze. I'm not talking about a little fire, i'm talking about a-loving-blaze with smoke already billowing some 20 feet high. 1.) they would have smelled it 2.) they were close enough to feel the large amounts of heat being put out 3.) these mutants are loving huge, 8-9 feet tall. Now i realize the do blend in to the rocks and such, but this camp is in flat ground they deffinately would have seen the mutants stealing their rifles, and lighting the truck on fire. 4.) now that i think about it i don't know how they set the truck on fire either, oh well.

BOTTOM LINE: if you enjoyed any of the Saw movies, or the first Hills Have Eyes, maybe this is the movie for you. Speaking of which this is totally fine to not see the first movie and see this one. However if you hate gore and are into heavily plotted movies (which is why you went to see a horror movie right?) this is deffinately not the movie for you. I will say though that if you have absolutely nothing to do, it is slightly entertaining and an ok watch, but you should wait for DVD not pay a good $10+$5 for snacks, at the theater.

RATING: 3

PROS: there are some cool death scenes, and parts where you cheer when a bad guy's head is chopped off
CONS: WAY too gory. IF you plan on seeing this movie don't eat for atleast 2 hours or you will lose your lunch (especially the first scene)

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Crown Royal
Jan 5, 2005

shoot her
A huge step down from the remake of last year. The reason that was so successful is because the characters actually had some depth. Unlike most horror films, people could actually find sympathy in the family because they were almost like real people. Plus, it was pretty entertaining. And if you really care so much about them, the death scenes were cool. In this one, you were given a band of annoying army recruits who were so stupid that you could care less what happened to them. I largely disagree with the cool death scenes also. The army person who gets pulled into the hole and has limbs being torn off was kinda original, but the rest of them were lame. I think three or four characters fall to their deaths in the same spot too which was anticlimactic and lame.

Anyway, it was a boring story and everything that worked in the predecessor was stripped away. Never watch this film. Ever.

RATING: 0.5

PROS: One cool death scene.
CONS: Everything else. Total dogshit.

Crown Royal fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Apr 28, 2007

Onken
Feb 12, 2003

ouch my knee
I watched this last night and WHAT A HUNK OF poo poo.

This movie really has got it all, a compassionate bad guy (who just wanders off in one scene and never comes back), a sassy blonde, a single mother, a chip-on-the-shoulder Hispanic, a nerd, token black guy, a drill sergeant yelling FMJ-style insults, lovely Iraq war commentary blah blah loving BLAH.

This movie has got to have THE most infuriatingly annoying cast of low-budget nobodies I have ever seen, you really want them all to die, in fact I was actually furious that the sassy blonde survives. Directing is standard Hollywood stuff, nothing to write home about. Storyline is obviously completely ridiculous.

This movie would normally be a 1 but it gets an extra half point because the gore effects are awesome.

1.5/5

edit~ the OP has copy/pasted the director/cast details from the movie "Sunshine" for some reason, so ignore them.

Onken fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Aug 1, 2007

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