Monday, May 23, 2005

The Ghouls (2003) - * WORST 5 *

...Or at least pray to turn on the lights to find the 'stop' button...

Genre: Horror

Starring: Timothy Muskatell, Tina Birchfield

Directed By: Chad Ferrin

Overview: A bit of a ghoul himself, our hero earns his living filming the misery of the seedy parts of the city. He soon finds himself facing flesh-eating denizens in the dark underbelly of the streets.

Acting: Please God, you've got to be kidding. Quite obviously, these are amateurs of the lowest caliber. The female lead was decent, but only in comparison to the poor talentless schlubs she was working with, and sadly she had all of 10 lines. These people need real jobs.
Rating: 3

Cinematography: The digital video approach wasn't interesting or artsy, it was low-budge, and the best scenes were the vomit inducing hand-cam running down the street shots. Maybe not, perhaps it was the ever-present shaky hand-held too-tight angles that did this movie the most justice.
Rating: 3

Script: The writing was filled with cocky characters and childish insults splayed with the word "fuck" for lack of any imagination. It was just one big cock-swinging attempt after another at vying interpersonal dominance. The person who wrote this must be a pathetic sad-sack who thinks the world is filled with people who attack one another for no reason except being better than the other, without any hint of wisdom, burning their bridges along the way. I mean to call your boss and his business shit, and point a gun in your girlfriend's face to win her back all in the same night? This was ridiculous and so unrealistic as to make me wonder what psychoses this writer has. If "write what you know" is this guy's motto, he must be some self-imposed societal pariah living in some dumpster somewhere.
Rating: 2

Plot: The plot carried us through to the end without making us want to turn it off, I'll give it that. Original in it's portrayal of a guy who is definitely worse off than the everyman being the only guy who gives a damn about eradicating freakish murdering zombie-like monsters in the worst part of town, but unfortunately the sub plot was nowhere near developed enough to make it worthwhile to even introduce.
Rating: 5

Mood: The horror flashbacks (which of course were choppy and annoying) did a wonderful job of illustrating the character's haunted fears, granted, however, to think that chain smokers smoke half their cigarette then light up again is definitely a realism killer. As for the underground where the evil hungry ghouls live, it was a stupid short little tunnel that did nothing to frighten. As for the other journalist who gets skinned alive and hung from a hook (yet survives long enough to talk about it) , don't tell us, "They took my skin" because your special effects guy can't make it look like you got skinned. If you can't pull off an effect, don't DO IT. It was so STUPID!!!
Rating: 4

They took your skin? Yeah? They fleeced my wallet!

Overall Rating: 34% (Get This Bad Memory Out of My Head!)

Aftertaste: The best part of this movie was the kid with Downs syndrome doing DeNiro's famous "you talkin' to me" Taxi Driver scene. If you want to see any part of this movie, make it this one. It's offensive and laughable, and does the whole film justice. This sucked and I'm glad I saw it as a "horror double bill" with friends, otherwise it would have been a complete waste of time. Now we can tell other people how great a time we had hating this together.