The Five Worst Horror Flicks of 2013

Before we move on to my top 10 films of the last year, I feel that a little air clearing is in order.  I need to get my thoughts about these five cinematic atrocities out of my system so I can get back to being positive.  2013 was by no means a bad year for horror, but there were certainly some flicks that just plain pissed me off and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let my loyal and beloved readers wander into these pitfalls uninformed, now would I?  I would never do that to you.  So, here are 5 shitty movies that I watched so you don’t have to.  Cellmates, I present to you The Five Worst Horror Flicks Of 2013.

#5 - Texas Chainsaw 3D

For the record, I did enjoy the way Leatherface was portrayed in this flick.  He was exactly what I would imagine an older Bubba Sawyer to be – a wiser, slower, and more deliberate killer.  It made perfect sense.  Unfortunately, that’s where the “making sense” stops.  In the interest of brevity, I’m going to skip the acting non-skills of pop stars and the much touted but completely unsatisfying cameos and get straight to the two most glaring, unforgivable screw-ups.  The movie opens with a scene that supposedly takes place shortly after the first TCM flick ends.  That would make it 1973.  Then we flash forward to “20 years later.”  That would make it when, class?  That’s right, 1993.  Yet gas is almost 4 bucks a gallon and people are using Facetime on their iphones.  That would make it 2013.  Maybe the “20 Years” was a typo.  Nope.  We saw the heroine as a baby in the first scene, so in that case she would have to be 40.  She’s obviously in her mid 20’s though.  If they were playing at some kind of time shift nonsense it would be stupid but semi-logical.  In actuality, it’s just plain ‘ol sloppy writing that should have never made it out of the first production meeting.  That may seem like a nitpick, but when it’s the entire setup for the flick, it’s kind of a big deal.  Inexcusable.  Then Leatherface runs through a Carnival full of people and doesn’t kill anyone.  Read that last sentence again.  Need I say more? This flick earns its place on the list for blowing an opportunity for one of horror cinema’s all time classic bloodbaths and assuming that no one in the audience could do math.

#4 - Dracula 3D

It really does hurt to put this one on the list, ‘cause I do love me some Dario.  I remember being psyched when I heard about it.  But, just like The Misfits, Argento continues to drag his legacy as a master and innovator of the craft through the mud.  Where to start with this one?  Maybe the fact that it took four screenwriters to pen crap like “I am but an out of tune chord in the divine symphony?”  Or we could discuss just how awful the CGI is.  That credits sequence where the camera is zooming around an animated village looked like it was lifted directly out of Tenchu: Stealth Assassins for the PS1.  That’s right, Rikimaru, bitches!  I can’t imagine how bad it looked in 3D.  Then there’s the godawful acting.  It’s like they just said “Keanu Reeves was great as Harker!  Go find us a Spanish version of him.”  It also seems that working with Argento these days drags other greats down, because the score might be the worst work of Claudio Simonetti’s career.  Even Rutger Hauer looks like he’d rather be anywhere but on that set, and he’s what I was looking forward to the most.  The only things that keep it from being a total loss are the ample glimpses of Asia Argento and the gorgeous Miriam Giovanelli in all of their undressed glory and a completely batshit scene where Dracula turns into a giant praying mantis.  Yes, you read that right. Dracula 3D makes the list for making me weep for what could have been.  Can you imagine the badassery of a Dracula flick directed by the Argento of the early 80’s?

#3 - Apartment 1303

There are very few things I dislike more than American remakes of J-horror.  I’m not big on J-horror to begin with (I love Japanese gore flicks but their ghost movies don’t do it for me), but in American hands they’re atrocious more often than not.  I haven’t seen the original, which I’ve been told is a bottom of the barrel Grudge clone.  The remake, however, is about as bad as it gets.  All of the clichés are here; from the creepy kid as harbinger of doom to the wet-haired, jerky CGI ghost to the “young woman in peril must figure out what happened to the last young woman in peril” setup.  There’s no creep factor at all.  No gore.  No scares.  That’s the problem, there’s just nothing to this movie.  Well, there is the unintentional comedy of Rebecca De Mornay’s performance and Julianne Michelle’s hilarious lip quiver thing whenever she cries, but that’s about it.  It’s just a paint-by-numbers generic ghost rehash.  Apartment 1303 makes the list as a recipient of the “Cold Creepy Feeling” award for boring me to tears.

#2 - Embrace of the Vampire

This flick is number two in more ways than one.  You knew we weren’t gonna get through this list without a remake, and this may be the most unnecessary remake of all time.  The main purpose of remakes is to draw casual horror fans in with name recognition, but how many casual horror fans (aside from the Mr. Skin aficionados with a hard-on for Alyssa Milano) even know that movie exists?  Why remake it?  Just… why?   As for the movie itself, it reminded me of those commercials I see for CW dramas; slickly produced but utterly vapid.  The boring cinematography refuses to make the most of a quite picturesque backdrop.  It does that irritating “oh, things are speeding up so something scary must be about to happen” thing that insults the audience’s intelligence.  The vampires look hokey.  Do I need to mention the CGI?  The vampire lore is slightly interesting, but comes into play way too late to save the proceedings.  Hell, even the ample gratuitous nudity couldn’t save them considering they’re all dime-a-dozen anorexic starlet types.  I know that it’s a matter of personal preference, but if you’re gonna watch an awful flick just for the boobs this year, make it Dracula 3-D.  That’s your public service announcement.  This flick is an absolutely braindead exercise in tedium.   Embrace of the Vampire makes the list for sucking more than all of its on screen vampires combined.

#1 - The Purge

Sorry folks, but this is gonna be one angry rant.  How in the name of green dystopian hell do you take a premise that damn good and make a movie this damn bad?  Let’s put aside the fact that the main idea here is completely implausible.  If THAT’S your quibble with this movie, I fear that you have missed the point.  So much fun could have been had with a night of lawlessness, but all they gave us was a mix tape featuring the dumbed-down greatest hits of Straw Dogs, Panic Room, The Strangers, and a dozen other much-better home invasion flicks.  I’m normally pretty forgiving of horror characters doing dumb stuff.  Sometimes it’s necessary.  Not only did the things the characters in this one did not make sense in comparison with what an actual person with an IQ higher than their handgun caliber would do, they didn’t even make sense for the characters as written.  I lost count of the times I thought “there’s no way they’re gonna…” immediately before they did.  Stupid and predictable is a horrible combination.  Anyone that used the word “suspense” without preceding it with “not a shred of” when reviewing this obviously has never seen a horror movie.  There’s even plenty of shaky cam during the action sequences just to make sure we can check off almost everything on my “things I hate about modern Hollywood horror” list.  I think writer/director James DeMonaco had two goals with this film; beat the audience over the head with ham-fisted social commentary and see just how many times a character can be held at gunpoint and saved at the last second.  Seriously, I lost count of how many times they re-used that one.  Oh, and any flick with a 3 million dollar budget and Michael goddamn Bay listed among the producers that tries to pass itself off to the horror press as “the little low budget indie that could” before its release can kiss my ass.  Michael Bay's name should be considered a massively offensive expletive.  In fact, his name should just be a multi-use replacement for ALL expletives.  The Purge makes the list for being a predictable, dumb as Bay, suspenseless, nutless piece of Bay that squandered a Baying fantastic premise and made me want to beat Ethan Hawke, who I usually like, with a Baying crowbar.  What the Bay were they thinking?  Bay this movie.  Bay it up it’s stupid Bay.

Review: Texas Chainsaw 3D

One criticism often hurled at horror fans is that we take out favorite franchises and characters too personally.  In a lot of cases, that’s true.  Normally I don’t fall into that category, but the Texas Chainsaw Massacre flicks are the exception.  I’ve talked many times on this blog about my deep relationship with the saw.  After so many years as the resident chainsaw wielding maniac at various haunted house attractions, I feel like part of the family.  In fact, Netherworld’s current saw crew (I’m so proud of my two apprentices) have been dubbed Ralphus, Lila, and Cletus Sawyer.  Yep, I’m a Sawyer, so I take my family’s cinematic legacy seriously.  So, did our first foray into 3D have teeth?

Synopsis: “Lionsgate’s TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D continues the legendary story of the homicidal Sawyer family, picking up where Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic left off in Newt, Texas, where for decades people went missing without a trace.  The townspeople long suspected the Sawyer family, owners of a local barbeque pit, were somehow responsible.  Their suspicions were finally confirmed one hot summer day when a young woman escaped the Sawyer house following the brutal murders of her four friends.  Word around the small town quickly spread, and a vigilante mob of enraged locals surrounded the Sawyer stronghold, burning it to the ground and killing every last member of the family – or so they thought.  Decades later and hundreds of miles away from the original massacre, a young woman named Heather learns that she has inherited a Texas estate from a grandmother she never knew she had.  After embarking on a road trip with friends to uncover her roots, she finds she is the sole owner of a lavish, isolated Victorian mansion. But her newfound wealth comes at a price as she stumbles upon a horror that awaits her in the mansion’s dank cellars.

Let’s start off with what this flick did right, which ironically is also one of the things the flick has been catching a lot of flack for; Leatherface himself.  The portrayal in this film is a spot on logical progression of the character from the original film.  While still brutal, twisted, and violent, this is a much more sedate Leatherface. I’ve heard a lot of people bemoan this shift, but it makes perfect sense.  Twenty (maybe forty, but I’ll get into that later) years have passed since Sally, Franklin, and the crew encountered the Sawyers.  Leatherface is much older now.  He’s not going to be the frenetic, almost spastic butcher that he once was.  He’s a little more tired, he’s learned his craft better, and (dare I say it), he’s matured a little.  He no longer just goes running after his prey, he exhibits slightly more measured stalking techniques.  He also sports a pronounced limp due to his chainsaw injury in the first film.  Having personally chased people with a chainsaw on a bad wheel, I thought showing the toll this took on him was a great realistic touch.  Family is a big deal to Leatherface.  He’s dealt with the loss of his entire clan over the years, and recently buried the last living relative that he knew.  That’s gonna devastate the big guy.  They even threw a couple of new touches into the Leatherface lore that added a lot, especially one particularly brilliant one involving him donning the iconic mask.  All of these things add up to a very different Leatherface, and I applaud the filmmakers for what seems like a lot of thought being put into the character, even if that seems to have taken up all of the thought for the whole writing process.  Again, I’ll get into that later.

A lot of the criticism I’ve seen is based around the fact that the story takes Leatherface in an anti-hero direction rather than making him a simple killing machine.  To these people I ask, “have we been watching the same TCM series?”  That’s what Leatherface has always been!  He’s a character that should elicit some compassion from the viewer.  There’s always been an element of the victim in his story.  Leatherface isn’t a morality killer or a revenge killer or a thrill killer like your average machete/razor glove/butcher knife wielder.  He’s always killed for his family.  In his head, he’s helping provide for his kin, protecting them, and fulfilling his role in the family unit.  He has always been shown to care deeply about his loved ones, although they abuse him more often than not.  To different extents in the various TCM films, he’s always been both a villain and a tragic character; like King Kong, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, or Frankenstein’s Monster.  That’s why I don’t understand why people are up in arms about him being portrayed in a sympathetic light.  The character hasn’t changed, the identification point has.  In all of the previous films, the audience’s lot is thrown in with the victims.  In parts of this movie, The Sawyer family is portrayed as the victims.  With the identification of the audience placed with The Sawyers, how could Leatherface, a man who is willing to kill for his family, be anything but a hero?  If you miss the old bloodthirsty maniac Leatherface, I fear that you weren’t paying attention to any of the other movies.  In my mind, Leatherface is dealt with perfectly in TC3D even if that mask did look pretty wonky.  Kudos go out to Dan Yeager for a stellar performance.  I always knew Yeager was a brutal monster.  No, wait, that’s Jager that’s a brutal monster.  Nevermind. 

Unfortunately, that brings me to my main problem with the movie.  It just doesn’t feel like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie.  Part of this is that there’s no crazy family…just Leatherface.  This is a statement that may be surprising coming from me considering the kinship I feel with the character – Leatherface alone does not a TCM flick make.  It’s the whole family.  From Drayton and Choptop, to Alfredo and Tex, to Vilmer and Darla, the series has always been about the Sawyer clan.  Hell, Leatherface is following orders from another family member in EVERY SINGLE other film in the series.  Without the rest of the family, it just doesn’t work.  It changes the whole tone of the film.   The singular killer works for a slasher flick, but the TCM movies, contrary to popular belief, are NOT slasher movies.  They’re backwoods horror.  The terror has always come from the cast of characters that lurk out past where the paved road ends, not a single person.  That’s the main reason TC3D doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the TCM series; it’s essentially a slasher flick.  Even the almost universally hated TCM4, which most people consider an insult to the series (but I dig), followed certain formulaic elements.  A group of teens ran afoul of an insane family.  There was an inescapable gritty, grimy atmosphere.  Not only was this missing the family, but it was just too slick, too clean, and too pretty to be a proper TCM flick.  There was a little grit here and there, but it was relegated to Leatherface’s lair.  The air of depravity didn’t permeate the rest of the flick like it did in the other parts of the series.  I get that it is happening in a different canon than 2-4, but when the audience has grown accustomed to a certain style and aesthetic being associated with a title, it’s best to give it to them.

My other problem with the flick is that the storytelling is just plain sloppy.  The most glaring problem is the timeframe of the flick.  Bear with me folks, this is gonna get a little confusing.  Yes, this is a slight spoiler, but it’s only the first five minutes of the flick, so get over it.  We start with a shootout at the Sawyer house in which the family is slaughtered, then flash forward “20 years” for the main story of the movie.  Here’s where the can of worms opens.  It appears as if the first scene takes place shortly after the events of the first film.  Leatherface is wearing his “Pretty Woman” mask that he had on at the end of TCM 1.  This would place the events in 1973.  Twenty years later would be 1993.  There are a few incongruities there.  The first one I noticed was gas being 3-something a gallon.  Second, smartphones become a major plot element.  This would indicate that the “present day” action is taking place in, well, the present day.  That just doesn’t work because of our heroine.  She was a baby in the opening scene, meaning that in 2012 she would be pushing 40.  Yet she doesn’t look a day over 25.  So, if she’s in her mid 20’s in 2012, then the opening shootout happened in the early 90’s.  The problem with that is Drayton Sawyer.  In the shootout scene, he’s middle aged, just like he was in the first movie, albeit played by a different actor.  If 20 years had passed between the events of TCM1 and the shootout, he would be in his 70’s, which he obviously isn’t.  Is any of this making sense?  I’ll answer that for you…HELL NO it doesn’t.  The timeframe just doesn’t add up.  Either they thought the audience was too stupid to notice (which, sadly, many of them will be), or that’s just the epitome of sloppy writing.

That’s not the extent of the awkward scripting either.  In that shootout scene, there are a bunch of members of the Sawyer clan present that we’ve never seen before.  The Sawyers are huge on family values, so it would stand to reason that if they were having a family dinner at the end of TCM1, we would have seen these guys, or at least heard them alluded to.  So, why are they there?  Oh yeah, they needed there to be a Sawyer baby.  That’s fine; just explain why all those guys weren’t there before.  Do the “present day” characters fare any better?  Well, I know it’s ridiculous to expect the chainsaw fodder to act intelligently, but for the love of Nubbins these might have been the stupidest characters in any horror movie of the last decade or so.  Remember when I did the Horror Movie Darwin Awards?  Nearly every character in this flick easily qualifies for one, collectively AND individually. When it comes out on DVD, I may have to do a special round of awards.  In an astonishing show of “how do you screw up a setup that perfect” stupidity, Leatherface ends up in the middle of a carnival, chainsaw in hand, and it ends up being about one minute long and largely non-eventful.  How you take a setup that almost guarantees an epic bloodbath and make it a throwaway scene is beyond comprehension.  It did include one sight gag that make me laugh pretty hard, but it was about 3 or 4 years too late to really be timely.

Aside from my one big acclamation and my big ol’pair of quibbles (is it just me or does that sound vaguely dirty?), the flick is a mixed bag.  That’s most obvious in the effects.  There are some excellent practical effects, which is to be expected with KNB on the case.  I know the flick had to make cuts to get an R rating, so I’m hoping for even more splatter on the DVD/Blu-ray release.  As good as the practical effects are, the CGI effects are equally bad.  I mean, there are some truly AWFUL CGI moments, which sadly includes whatever gore they didn’t let the masters handle.  As far as the much-ballyhooed Bill Moseley performance as Drayton Sawyer goes; his cameo, as well as those by Gunnar Hanson, Marilyn Burns, and John Dugan, is fleeting and unsatisfying.  Besides Leatherface, the other main strength of the flick is Alexandria Daddario.  She gives the well rounded breast…I mean best well rounded performance of the younger contingent of the cast.  She just may have a future in horror.  She can pull off both victim and bad girl.  Plus she’s real purty and has big boobies, which has never hurt anyone’s career.

Random Thought #1:  Speaking of which, there’s one scene in the flick that is the worst nudity tease EVER.  Double sided tape is my mortal enemy. 

Random Thought #2: Hand of the Almighty by The John Butler Trio finally made it onto a film soundtrack.  I love that song.

So, now we come to the difficult question, do I recommend it?  That’s a tricky one.  If you are the type of person that is gonna get your knickers in a twist over the franchise rules not being followed, you might want to skip this one.  There are enough hints of the original to keep you interested, but this isn’t going to satisfy hardline TCM fanatics.  Aside from some serious story missteps, it is a pretty good dumb fun horror flick though.  It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be, but it wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it might be.  I’m gonna give it 6 Chainsaw Bisections out of 10.  Nathan says check it out.  It may my least favorite of the series (not counting the remake), but the saw is still family.