2008 – Horror Ghouls

Mirrors (2008)

Posted on August 16, 2024August 31, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

We start off with a security guard running through a subway station, and upon entering a room and seeing his reflection in a mirror, he starts freaking out and begs for his life. This doesn’t end well, as his reflection takes a shard and cuts its own throat, and the same thing happens to him. Then we move over to the life of Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) who is a suspended police detective on mandatory leave from the New York police department after a shooting that went terribly wrong. Now, he works as a security guard and will start working at the Mayflower, which is a luxury department store that was destroyed by a fire five years earlier. And of course: the building has a vast array of mirrors still standing from when the store was open. How convenient. On his first night of patrol, he notices eerie things like how the mirrors are covered with handprints which seems to be from the other side of the glass. Couldn’t be anything suspicious about that, right? He also finds the wallet of the guard we saw in the opening scene, who he was told had killed himself. Inside the wallet is a note saying “Esseker”. He starts seeing more and more visions, and Ben becomes convinced that the mirrors play a part in what is happening here. And when his sister is also killed by her own reflection, Ben is fueled by rage and fear for his family’s safety, and becomes determined to figure out the mystery behind the mirrors and the mysterious note in the previous guard’s wallet.

Mirrors is a supernatural horror film from 2008, directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, Piranha 3D, Crawl). The film is based on a South Korean horror film from 2003 called Into the Mirror, and it was originally supposed to be a straightforward remake until Aja was brought on board to read the script, which he then wanted to change as he was quite dissatisfied with the particulars of the original film’s story. Thus, Mirrors only includes the basic idea involving mirrors. It was shot in Romania, most of it in Nicolae Ceausescu’s unfinished Academy of sciences which is located in Bucharest.

Abandoned places and spooky mirrors is of course a fine setup for a horror movie, merged with a protagonist who is troubled, divorced and having an alcohol problem (funny how those things always go hand in hand) we are left with what will inevitably not bring much new to the table, but at least it will offer some good creepy atmosphere and a mystery that keeps you intrigued enough to keep watching. Another plus is that there’s some really effective scenes, especially that of the sister’s death. If you watch this movie with some of the directors other gorier and grittier movies in mind, however, this one’s very different. There’s none of the really gritty vibe which can be found in High Tension for example, or any abundance of gore like in the incredibly gory Piranha 3D. This one’s a different meal, and Aja’s movies does indeed come in varied forms, you can rarely expect the same thing over and over from him. Which is not a bad thing.

Overall, Mirrors is a nice supernatural horror film where Jack Bauer, uhm, I mean Kiefer Sutherland plays the role as the alcoholic ex-cop pretty well. The best part of the movie is when everything is still a mystery, as the creepy vibe does diminish a bit once the supernatural goings-on are revealed, but this isn’t exactly uncommon in mystery-fueled horror movies. I have also seen the original movie this one was based on, and this is one of the (rare) cases where I actually prefer the re-imagined version. This is probably largely due to this movie being a re-imagination rather than a remake.

A sequel, called Mirrors 2, was released in 2010.

Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
Country & year: USA, 2008
Actors: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Arika Gluck, Amy Smart, Mary Beth Peil, John Shrapnel, Jason Flemyng, Tim Ahern, Julian Glover
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790686/

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

Posted on March 29, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Leon is a photographer who is totally over the moon when the famous gallery owner Susan is willing to take a look at his work. This soon ends up as quite a blow to his ego, however, when she criticizes him for not being bold enough with his pictures. Despite being let down by this, he decides to take more risks when photographing the city, and goes on a search for the most gritty shots he can find. One night, he takes pictures of a group of men behaving threateningly towards a young woman, and ends up rescuing her as the guys just decide to beat it due to the security cameras nearby. Leon is satisfied with both his heroic deed and some possibly successful photographs he can use, but the next day he discovers that the woman he rescued went missing the same night. So, what to do? Well, the only responsible thing someone could do in a situation like this: he goes to the police and delivers the photographs he took from that night. The result is that he is practically just being scoffed at, which makes Leon even more intrigued. He starts his own investigation and discovers that there are numerous reports of people that have gone missing under similar circumstances. His investigation leads him to a butcher named Mahogany, and Leon suspects that this man is a serial killer that’s been killing subway passengers for many years.

The Midnight Meat Train is a horror film from 2008, based on a short story by Clive Barker by the same name. The story was written in 1984, and is included on the first volume of Books of Blood. The movie was directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, and while getting fairly positive reviews, it was only given a very limited theatrical release and ended up quickly on DVD. Barker was, naturally, quite angry with Lionsgate because of this. The movie certainly didn’t get the theatrical run it should’ve had, but nowadays it’s extensively available on both physical releases and several streaming sites.

As far as the comparisons go between the short story and the movie, the original story portrayed Leon as a bored loner in a city he used to idealize before moving there (and realizing what a shithole it actually is), while in the movie he’s got a girlfriend and a passion for photography. While I personally prefer the original story’s premise more than the movie’s, I understand how the change was necessary when implementing a bit of detective investigation. While you get a lot of things spoiled already in the opening scene, where you get to know that the title implies exactly what you’ll get, it still manages to offer enough suspense and feeling of mystery throughout. The gore is aplenty with some really visceral scenes on board the “meat train”, where guts, eyeballs and severed heads are flying around the screen like it was supposed to be a 3D production. A jolly good time indeed! The only slight disappointment for my part is the ending, which seemed rather underwhelming compared to the original story.

The Midnight Meat Train is a gritty and atmospheric horror film, well acted and with some very effective gore scenes (although the CGI effects are a little bit outdated in some parts, but overall decent enough). It stands well together with the other Clive Barker adaptions, like Lord of Illusions.

Director: Ryûhei Kitamura
Writer: Jeff Buhler
Country & year: US, UK, 2008
Actors: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Vinnie Jones, Roger Bart, Tony Curran, Barbara Eve Harris, Peter Jacobson, Stephanie Mace, Ted Raimi, Nori Satô, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805570/

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Posted on February 20, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Now, time for some J-splatter horror insanity to make your hair wet n’ sticky. Director Yoshihiro Nishimura had primarily worked as special makeup effects supervisor on numerous films since the early 1980s. After working on The Machine Girl, he was asked if he wanted to direct his first full-length feature for the American distributor Media Blasters. The result was a remake of his earlier student film Anatomia Extinction from 1995. Like most people in the Asian movie business, he worked fast and furiously and completed the film in only two weeks, and with some pretty amusing results.

We’re in a futuristic dystopian Tokyo where the police force has been privatized, and the city is now an out-of-control violent gore-zone. Tokyo is also being threatened by a scientist under the name “The Key Man” who, with a key-shaped virus, injects people around the city and turn them into mutants called “Engineers”. It’s even worse than it sounds and there seems to be an army of them that spreads like banana flies. So, who’s here to save the day? Say hello to Ruka (Eihi Shiina), the most skilled, cold-blooded and dangerous of the special police squad of “Engineer Hunters” who slices her targets in half with her blade like it was just a regular day. The actress behind Ruka is the same shy and quiet lady we saw in Takashi Miike’s Audition. Yes, that lady. She’s also deeply traumatized after witnessing her father, who worked as a police officer, getting his head blown to pieces like a big watermelon by an unknown assassin. The motive? Who knows. She deals with the pain by some self-mutilation while she’s obsessed about one day catching the one who killed her father.

And good luck with that. We get invited on a crazy, red-soaked journey where blood pours endlessly out of wounds like garden hoses, an effect that gets pretty old after a while as it gets overused to death. The use of blood was so messy and all over the place that the cameras had to be covered in plastic. So in that regard, the film surely lives up to the title.

It also has to be pointed out that Tokyo Gore Police is not to be taken one bit seriously. The film has a zany manga vibe in the same style as Meatball Machine and The Machine Girl, where we have silly fight scenes filled with video game logic and some other, bizarre, mind-bending WTF moments. There are many highlights and unique scenes here that include a cute mutant girl whose half body is formed like a hybrid of a snail and the mouth of a crocodile that chews some poor guys’ dick off. We also have a mutant guy with a big elephant trunk as a penis which he uses as a machine gun. A chair urinates on a crowd in a fetish club. Yes, really. And there’s much more. Also watch out for a minigun that shoots fist knuckles. To amp up the madness all up to eleven, the film is sprinkled with some spicy satire aimed at Japan’s extreme trend of suicides. The most notable is the cute, colorful billboard commercials around the city where pre-teen girls in school uniforms joyfully promotes the new hot thing on the market The wrist cutter. Kawaii! Only in Japan, as we say.

And of course, the big question is: Is this the goriest film ever made? No, but it’s certainly on the top ten list. Tokyo Gore Police is overall a fun watch, but drags somewhere in the middle. It’s wild and experimental, which mostly works best as a creative showcase of old school special effects.

Yoshihiro Nishimura was planning a sequel at some time, but that doesn’t seem to happen. Anyway, he’s had a pretty fruitful career as director since TGP and made films such as Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl and Helldriver, which also seems worth checking out.

Director: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Writers: Kengo Kaji, Maki Mizui, Yoshihiro Nishimura
Original title: Tôkyô zankoku keisatsu
Country & year: Japan, 2008
Actors: Eihi Shiina, Itsuji Itao, Yukihide Benny, Jiji Bû, Ikuko Sawada, Cay Izumi, Mame Yamada, Ayano Yamamoto, Akane Akanezawa, Tsugumi Nagasawa
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183732/

Tokyo Gore Police Trailer from Derek Lieu on Vimeo.

Gutterballs (2008)

Posted on September 23, 2022September 17, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In this little 80’s throwback slasher and rape/revenge-flick Gutterballs, we spend time in a bowling hall with two groups, getting ready for a bowling contest. But the plan for that night goes down the toilet when a fight escalates. The individual that stands out is the unhinged Steve, a sadistic bully with some serious anger issues. He screams desperately for attention in every scene, spews out a world record list of obscenities, one of them being over 600 fuck-bombs (yes, someone actually tried to count them). I wouldn’t recommend the drinking game for obvious reasons, but at least we have some other use of colorful words to play with such as cunt, bitch, motherfucker, whore, pussy, etc…

The plot and the boners thickens when Steve and his group of friends gang rapes Lisa, the girl whom left Steve for some other guy in the other group. The next night the two groups hook up again in the bowling hall to start over. Lisa is still there, that poor girl, but reserved behind some, big dark sunglasses. And when the bowling-match is about to settle, a mysterious, unseen player by the name BBK is shown on the score monitors. They soon learn that they’re being terrorized by a killer wearing a bowling bag over its head and using sharp bowling pins to penetrate the victim’s private parts.

THE MOST OFFENSIVE FILM EVER, many calls it. Well, at least it’s far from being boring. But yeah, it’s hard to not agree that the characters are a bunch of insufferable fucks performed by the bottom of the barrel actors from Troma, and you can’t wait to see them get brutally killed. And let me tell you, Gutterballs doesn’t disappoint in that aspect. Some dude gets his head crushed by two bowling balls, another’s head gets blown to smithereens by a shotgun, we get a nasty close-up castration, sodomizing, face melting and even more. The most memorable scene is the couple getting killed while having a steaming 69 in the bathroom. Sadistic and perverted fun ~~for the whole family~~.

Writer and director Ryan Nicholson has since the mid 90s primarily worked as SFX artist on titles such as Ghost Rider, Stargate, Transformers, X-Files and the list goes on. Special effects is clearly his main focus, but despite the film’s limited budget, he also manages to lit up the bowling hall with the use of neon light to enhance some of the 80s atmosphere. He followed up with the sequel Gutterballs 2 for his cult-followers in the underground horror movie community, and also made films such as Dead Nude Girls. Sounds fun. Gutterballs seems to be his most approachable film for the masses, and if you like raw, trashy and silly 80s slashers like Intruder, Chopping Mall, Savage Streets and Troma in general, this one will surely please you.

Writer and director: Ryan Nicholson
Country & year: Canada, 2008
Actors: Alastair Gamble, Mihola Terzic, Nathan Witte, Wade Gibb, Candice Lewald, Jeremy Beland, Trevor Gemma, Nathan Dashwood, Scott Alonzo, Jimmy Blais, Danielle Munro, Stephanie Schacter, Saraphina Bardeaux, Dan Ellis, Brandon Dix, Ryan Nicholson
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1087853/