After Dark Horror Fest!

Out this week is the new After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films to Die For. The nice thing about the Lionsgate series (which runs for a week in theaters around the country to make way for its DVD release) is that it’s a good way to package horror films culled from film festivals that might not necessarily find an audience, or a proper release. And while last year’s selections were a lot stronger, I still support the enterprise and look forward to eight more films to die for in my future...

Mulberry Street: It takes place during a heat wave in Manhattan when a rash of rat bites transform New Yorkers into mutating zombies. Director Jim Mickle does a lot right with a low budget. The leads are anachronistic and interesting -- an aging Latino ex-boxer, a black gay friend that lives upstairs, a soldier daughter back from Iraq with the facial scars to prove it... but the 28 Days Later herky jerky camera work sometimes robs scenes of scares which is a problem with a movie that depends on it. And laying on all these political subtexts like Hurricane Katrina, neighborhood gentrification, etc. eventually bogs the film down in a depressing way. Most of my friends really loved this film though so I may be the cheese stands alone here.

Unearthed: Basically, a monster is unearthed by archaeologists in a New Mexican desert town and it’s up to an alcoholic female sheriff and Native Americans to do battle with it. Director Matthew Leutwyler neuters the color palate to such a degree that it’s a washed out dark mess to watch. When it’s a monster movie and it’s too dark to see the fucking monster you’re in big trouble.

Borderland: Three dudes (Brian Presley, Jake Muxworthy, Rider Strong) head to a Mexican border town to party and unfortunately cross paths with a santaria devil cult run by a crazed leader who uses the blood of gringos to smuggle his drugs across the border because the blood supposedly causes the supply to be “invisible." The final showdown with the cult (Sean Astin plays one of the bloodthirsty apostles) is outrageous and gruesome. Director Zev Berman doesn’t pull any punches with this savage shocker. This is my personal favorite film in the series this year.

Tooth & Nail: A post-apocalyptic chiller by writer/director Mark Young about a group of survivors holed up in a Philadelphia hospital who come under attack by hordes of Mad Max-like cannibals. With Rider Strong, Rachel Miner, Robert Carradine fighting off mutant killers: Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones, etc. Not too bad for what it is, with a few nasty surprises and splattery deaths.

Crazy Eights: Like The Big Chill -- for crazies. Six friends (Traci Lords, Frank Whaley, Gabrielle Anwar, etc.) reuinte for a friend’s funeral and follow a map left to them that leads them to a trunk hidden in an old country barn. Inside the trunk are items they left inside when they were kids, plus the skeleton of an unknown child. They end up trapped and locked in an old abandoned cavernous house which they discover was the institution where they were raised and experimented on as children, and are tracked down one by one by a vengeful spirit. Director James Koya Jones leaves more to the imagination here, and the results are slow and unscary.

Lake Dead: Three sisters (and not Chekov’s) get a call to alert them that a grandfather they never knew existed has died and left them a remote country motel. They load up their (white) friends in an RV and head for this motel from hell which has hatchet-wielding mutant brothers and a lot of sick family secrets to reveal. Director George Bessudo’s low budget horror offering is full of bad dialogue, cheesy gore and unintentional laughs. But hard to hate after two six-packs of beer....

Nightmare Man: There isn’t enough beer in the world to make this stinker scary. A girl has bad nightmares about the evil entity emanating from a horned African fertility mask she sent away for. So her boyfriend drives her way out into the country, runs out of gas, and leaves her stranded with the mask in the trunk of the car. She’s eventually chased (by her boogie man) to a remote house where two couples are playing “Truth or Dare” and suddenly there’s a whole lot of killing going on. Director Rolfe Kanefsky obviously knows his audience -- the girls are busty and topless often.

The Deaths of Ian Stone: Big budget British sci-fi thriller about Ian Stone (Mike Vogel) who keeps waking up into assorted different lives -- hockey player, office guy, junkie, hospital patient, but like in Groundhog Day, the story always ends with his death at the end caused by these morphing, deadly “harvesters” who materialize in a black sooty cloud with knifelike arms. A girl (Christina Cole) who keeps repeating in different scenarios holds a key to the power he may have over these frightening wraiths. Jamie Murray, who played the psychotic “sponsor” Lila on the last season of Dexter, even shows up as a force to be reckoned with -- appropriately named Medea. Not half bad.