Alien vs Hunter

You know it's bad when the poster is far, far better than the film.

I've seen a lot of bad movies, but Alien vs Hunter isn't so much bad as it is irritating to watch.  Also, it's really bad.  With a blatant disregard for continuity, the film tries to tell the story of a small group of hapless folk who get caught between a giant alien spider and the gun-toting tin man who's hunting it.  It succeeds for the most part, but the film so poorly made, it's hard to see the bigger picture.

"Well, it's made by The Asylum," you would say.  "What did you expect?"

"Not much," I'd admit.  "But I would, at the very least, expect the DOP to be able to frame a shot."

I'm not talking incompetency, like what I experienced watching Playback.  I mean the people who made AVH are incapable of filming and editing a movie.

"Uh, didn't you just watch a movie?  A movie they made?" you would ask.

"No, what I watched had the shape and form of a movie, but had the look and feel of a failed experiment."

Leaving aside the fact that all The Asylum movies suffer from bad pacing and worse timing, AVH is so badly written as to make you wonder how the script was greenlit.  Take for instance the sequence in which Lee and friends go to Valentine's place.  Valentine has powerful communications equipment and it's Lee's hope they can use it to contact the military.  When they get there, no one makes mention of any satellites or radio transmitters. Rather, Val breaks out his telegraph to contact his...militia buddies?  Or there's the scene in which everyone leaves the house--unarmed--to watch the aliens skulk around the front yard.  Exactly nothing happens for a couple of minutes and then they all go back inside.  And let's not forget the time when Valentine decides he'd rather hunt the aliens than protect his daughter.  We're supposed to believe he's being noble but it's just another inexplicable turn in a long series of incomprehensible events.

I understand that AVH is a low-budget movie with low-budget goals and expectations, but there's just no excuse for writing this bad.  Also inexcusable is the film's total lack of regard for vectors and geography.  I mean, how does a guy standing perpendicular to his quarry manage to shoot him in the back?  As for the film's weird claustrophobic look and feel, it's the result of shooting everything in badly-framed medium shots and close-ups with improper and ill-timed cut-ins and -aways.

It only takes one person to write a bad script, but a lot of people came together to fail at AVH.  I simply cannot, for the life of me, understand how this film was made.  Who read the script and thought, "Yes! This is just the AVP rip-off I've been looking for, with none of the compelling action or characters seen in those other films!"?  Who watched the dailies and said to themselves, "Sweet Jesus, this is just the look I'm looking for, with everyone's heads all cut off above the eyebrows!"?  And who was it that watched the final cut and declared, "Goddamn! This is exactly the kind of movie I was hoping for, with all the stilted dialogue, awkward editing, and stalled plots that only The Asylum can deliver!"?

"That's rather harsh," you'd say.
"Yeah, but so was watching this film."

Bloody Murder

I think I might have finally hit the bottom of the barrel. Bloody Murder is, in every conceivable way, a ripoff of Friday the 13th. Not an homage. An homage has style, is well crafted to pay tribute to its inspiration, and respects the genre. Bloody Murder has no style, is badly written, and fails in its attempts at cleverness.

The film begins with a pregnant couple running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. The husband is chased and killed by a chainsaw wielding maniac in a hockey mask. Next, a group of teens arrive at Camp Placid Pines to assist Patrick in preparing the camp for summer. Soon people start disappearing and Julie suspects it has something to do with a kid who drowned at the camp decades ago. Some of the other counselors insist instead that legendary psycho killer Trevor Moorehouse is murdering everyone.

It's not a bad premise, but this film is so badly written that nothing that happens actually makes any sense. For example, camp begins in three days but the movie takes place over five days and no campers ever show up. I guess maybe I could pass that off as inattention to detail, but how do you explain the following: the phones stop working and Julie imagines the phone line running into her cabin is cut. This would not affect the phone in the camp office, but that one's out, too. To make matters worse, the phone line into her cabin is working again the following day. Julie never told anyone the phones were out. That's not lack of attention, that's just plain bad writing.

And then there are the characters themselves. Jason and Doug (I think it's Doug, though it might be Brad--I've forgotten already) hate each other. Why? Because they used to race against each other in high school until Jason blew out his knee. What? Unless it was Doug's fault Jason was injured, which by the way it was not, Jason really has no reason to hate Doug. High school sports rivalries only go so far. I have never in my life come across a worse reason for conflict.

And the guy's name is Jason. Frigging Jason. No shit, one person even says "Jason will show up when you least expect him." This, thankfully, doesn't happen. Proving the writer can't even follow through on his lame attempt at setting up a scare.

Scares. There are none. Perhaps owing to a meager budget and a lack of skilled effects people, all the deaths are half off-screen. I mean, you see people die, but you don't see the stabbing happen. Furthermore, no one ever jumps out at you, and no one ever really gets stalked.

I could go into more detail, outlining each flaw in the script, but I just don't have the energy. The point is Bloody Murder is a perfect example of how badly you can fuck up a good thing. Where Friday the 13th had a tight timeline, likable characters, and a surprising and believable ending, Bloody Murder takes too long, is populated with stupid and/or completely uncessary cast members, and makes no sense in the end. Where later Friday the 13th movies capitalized on the magical and legendary aspects of Jason Voorhees, Bloody Murder attempts to set up a similar masked villain but fails entirely at creating a plausible and meaningful character.

This movie is total crap.