Movies
Tales of Halloween
Neil Marshall's latest looked as if he would hark back to his earliest successes, but instead of a moody and dark horror film, we get an action flick with some creatures running amok. That still could've been a lot of fun, if only Mashall had been a half-decent action director. Sadly, he is not. When Sinclair's jet crashes in enemy territory, she flees to a suspicious-looking bunker. Far below the ground, she finds a secret facility where strange creatures are kept. Her arrival awakes them and though Sinclair manages to escape the bunker, it won't be long before they follow her outside. The action scenes are loud but uninteresting, most of the actors are pretty terrible and too often the creatures look like men in cheap rubber suits. The film has its moments though. The sequences below the ground are moody and the horror gets quite graphic. It's not enough to save the film, but at least it's something.Read all
Neil Marshall doing Hellboy sounded like a lot of fun. It's clear the film was supposed to be a lot of fun too, with some very gratuitous gore, plenty of juicy bad guys and in-your-face comedy. But none of it really sticks, and the result is a badly shot action flick with terrible performances and cringy comedy. Hellboy gets summoned to help a group of British hunters to kill a trio of giants who are ravaging the woodlands. When they draw near to their prey, the hunters turn on Hellboy, saying he can't ascend the British throne. Confused, Hellboy follows a trail that will lead him to his real parents. The CG looks shoddy, which is a shame as the monster designs are actually pretty cool. The action choreography is poor, the comedic timing is completely off and the soundtrack is cheesy as hell. And when the ending tries to go completely over-the-top, it still feels like a poor Devilman rip-off. This should've been fun, but it wasn't.Read all