Doghouse – On DVD now

This British horror comedy twists the classic ‘battle of the sexes’ scenario to the extreme. We begin with Vince, soon to be divorced whose friends decide that what he needs to cheer him up is a lad’s weekend – booze and birds and testosterone. The group of friends take themselves off to the isolated village of Moodley where they hear that there are 3 women for every man – what could go wrong?

Unfortunately the village isn’t all that they expected as the female population has been affected by a classified military experiment that has turned them into flesh eating zombies – feeding off the men and guess who are now on the menu.

I came to this film with not many expectations, the only thing I knew about it was that Noel Clark and Danny Dyer are in it and it’s a British zombie film. I suppose that should have meant that I had nothing to loose by watching it which I guess is just as well as this film disappointed on many levels.

The male vs. female premise was flimsy and crude to say the least, for me I cannot understand why you would feel sympathy for a bunch of misogynists, admittedly some of the characters are not – token gay guy for instance but they are few in number and largely underdeveloped. As for the portrayal of women from the outset – even before the group hit Moodly they are portrayed as screaming harpies only good enough to be called ‘slag’ or ‘Candy’ and when in the village there are so many more stereotypes it just gets really boring.

The script to largely borrows from the superior Shaun of the Dead, or numerous other zombie films but falls short of being funny. You are much better watching Shaun or Zombieland – at least they deliver the undead and humour. Noel Clarke is also wasted in this movie - he deserves so much more.

All you are left with is a lot of gory effects and the loosest possible storyline – if that’s your thing by all means watch this film.

Director: Jake West

Cast:
Danny Dyer – Neil
Stephen Graham – Vince
Noel Clarke – Mikey
Terry Stone – Sgt Gavin Wright
Christina Cole – Candy

For the official website click here

Zombieland – on DVD now

Take four mismatched survivors of a Zombie invasion in the US, add lots of guns, lots of blood (and guts) and above all lots of humour and there you have the main ingredients in Zombieland! Firstly you have Columbus (Eisenberg) an awkward shy loner with phobias, who is overly cautious he teams up with Tallahassee a gun totting wise cracking zombie slayer on a mission to get the last Twinkie on earth. The two are joined by Wichita and Little Rock and the foursome head off to LA.

What is it about Zombies that makes them the prime ingredient for horror / comedy movies, first there was Shaun of the Dead and now Zombieland. Its gory, touching, silly and laugh out loud funny. I love the references to Columbus’s guide to survival and although it occasionally gets cheesy the rest of the film more than makes up for it – including the ‘surprise’ celebrity cameo that everyone has heard about.

Harrelson is great as Tallahassee – hes like a young Dennis Hopper with a southern accent and very big guns and he plays the complete opposite to Eisenberg – who plays the sensitive geeky guy perfectly. The film has a great script and if you can stomach the gory Zombies and cartoonish violence it’s a film well worth a look.

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

Cast:

Woody Harrelson – Tallahassee
Jesse Eisenberg – Columbus
Emma Stone – Wichita
Abigail Breslin – Little Rock


For the official website click here

Dead Snow – Out on DVD now

A group of medical students go on holiday to an isolated log cabin in the mountains. While at the cabin they discover a box under the floorboards full of World War II Nazi gold. A battalion of Nazi zombie soldiers who are using the mountain as their base aren’t happy with the students taking their gold so they decide to hunt them and eat their intestines!

Excuse me if you have heard this before…there’s a group of young students isolated in a cabin when they start getting picked off one by one they decide to split up to try and get help for the others and in doing so surprise surprise they come to a nasty end.

Ok, so this is a B Movie, it is low budget and more of a disappointment is that it does nothing original at all. Its like a tick list of stalk and slash horror movies, group of medical students - check, one of the student doesn’t like blood – check, there’s a weird local man who drops in to fill everyone in on the spooky local history – check, have only one of the students knowing the way out – check, have a couple of the students die nasty deaths after having sex – check and so it goes on.

It’s not all bad though; the deaths are suitably gory and the blood runs all over the student group. The Nazi’s themselves were a complete disappointment though, the make up is 2nd class, they sporadically act like zombies – one moment they are stumbling like traditional zombies and the next moment they are sprinting across the snow. I found myself laughing at the zombies from time to time as they just looked like a bunch of bouncers, covered in talcum powder, hanging around waiting for a nod from the chief bouncer dressed in a weird uniform

There’s nothing original about this movie although it’s also not all bad, just don’t expect too much!

Directed by Tommy Wirkola

Cast

Vegar Hoel – Martin
Stig Fride Henriksen – Roy
Charlotte Frogner – Hanna
Lasse Valdal – Vegard

Click here for the website