here are my choices for the worst horror films of 2012. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts!!
I think I say this every year, but WOW there were a lot of genre stinkers this year!! And of course I don’t include an SyFy Originals on my list. I just don’t think it’s fair to put a SyFy Original on the Worst of 2012 list. It’s like betting someone $1,000 that you can make them laugh and then putting on the Special Olympics. Of course they’re gonna laugh!!
But here’s my list of the 10 Worst Horror Films of 2012. As you know, my time in 2012 was severely limited. My job became retarded and sucked up most of my time, and there were other circumstances that prevented me from doing as much writing as I would have liked. As a result, I haven’t even reviewed a lot of the films on my Worst of 2012 List!! For that I apologize. But it came down to no wanting to waste time reviewing the truly shitty films I watched. But have no fear; I still have my notes and all these films will be reviewed in 2013. There’s also only one film that you’ll also find on Deggsy’s list. It looks like we both saw our own special shitty movies this year. Please let me know what you think about my list. Is there a film on it that you really loved? Was I completely off the mark on another film/ I wanna know what you think!!
So here’s my list in alphabetical order. There was just no way I was going to be able to rank these numerically. They all truly suck out loud.
AREA 407 (my review):
I think the “407” here refers to the amount of reasons one could come up with why you shouldn’t watch this boring piece of dreck!! Wow this was boring. It has a great set up to be a really fun creature-terrorizing-plane-crash-survivors flick but it completely pisses it away. The characters are all annoying, whiny, pussies; the plot plods along like it was winning an award for making a full length feature out of a 10 minute short, and there’s absolutely no tension, scares, conflict, or anything else here to get, keep, and hold your attention. Top this off with the L A M E S T and laziest creature ever put on film and you’ve got yourself a 90-minute time waster. Deggsy included an image of the “creature” on his list (check it out here).
CROWSNEST:
Take a bunch of terrible actors and actresses to play a bunch of unlikable, douchy characters and add to it a plot you’ve seen a thousand times before and you have CROWSNEST. Oh yeah; almost forgot … lets make the whole thing a found footage flick. Fuck me. This 84-minute “film” couldn’t end fast enough. It felt like I was watching a three hour epic!! Hell; I’d have rather re-watched THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS a second time that watch five minutes of CROWSNEST (and I hated TDKR). Five friends go on a road trip; one decides to film the entire trip with his new camera; they come across an inbred family of redneck cannibals; and they all die. The execution on this one is horrible. The five main characters are all extremely unlikable and they fight amongst themselves constantly. And the main plot point here? Beer. That’s right; one douchetard travels 50-70 miles out of the way in order to buy cheap beer from a place he found online. Really? How much extra did that cost in gas money? This is just a horribly executed film no matter which way you slice it We even get the standard “found footage shot” of the camera laying on the ground on it’s side as the cameraman is dragged away screaming. I hated this film and took a nice long shower after watching it.
FREAKSHOW APOCALYPSE (my review):
This is, simply put, an unwatchable film. If you were to grab your best friend, buy a cheap 1998 camcorder, and decide to go out and make your own film, YOUR film would be 100% better than FREAKSHOW APOCALYPSE (the full title is FREAKSHOW APOCALYPSE: THE UNHOLY SIDESHOW). An unnecessarily complicated plot that is executed in an incomprehensible manner and in which all the “actors” and “actresses” are members of the real life Squidling Bros. Circus Sideshow is what your in store for with this cinematic abortion. It’s one thing to go out there and make this shitty, unwatchable film, but it’s a whole other thing to try and distribute this to the public by charging between $15-$20, depending on where you buy it. That just ain’t right. Avoid this one at all costs!!
GHOUL (my review):
I’m a huge fan of the network, Chiller TV, but they really shit the bed on this made-for-TV movie!! I never read the source material (it’s based on Brian Keene’s novel of the same name), and I can’t imagine that the novel is as boring and candy-ass as this TV movie. Three young boys start noticing some weird shit happening around town and they trace all the odd occurrences back to the cemetery. STAND BY ME; THE GOONIES; the beginning of IT … just take your pick of any coming-of-age genre flick and you already know the story here. There’s the doe-eyed good kid, the troubled kid from an abusive home that is good deep down, and there’s of course the fat kid. There’s nothing in this screenplay, written by William M. Miller, that distinguishes this film from all the other coming-of-age flicks you’ve already seen. And to make matters worse the plot is horrible!! Unless you get scared by the average Scooby Doo mystery, I know you’re gonna be very unimpressed with this one. This GHOUL has no edge and no teeth; it’s just flat and boring!!
MEN IN BLACK: THE DARK WATCHERS (my review):
Talk about horrible executed movies!! MEN IN BLACK: THE DARK WATCHERS suffers from having too much style and no substance. A group of female UFOlogists go out in search of a UFO, find one, and then lose four hours of their lives (coincidentally we lose 90-minutes of our time). The women then start developing black rashes and start transforming into … I have no fucking idea what they were transforming into. All of writer-director-editor Philip Gardiner’s films feel like really shitty music videos that get some additional dialogue thrown into them to make them a full-length feature. Apparently the filmmakers or producers or distributors have changed the title on this one since I watched it. It’s now titled, DARK WATCHERS: THE WOMEN IN BLACK. Maybe they needed to change the title after all the negative early reviews this one got?? Skip it.
NIGHTSCAPE: DARK REIGN OF THANATOS:
This film had high hopes. High HIGH hopes. It creates it’s own mythology and a very rich backstory but suffers from the cardinal no-no in filmmaking — it’s fucking boring!! Good lord was I bored. For 95-minutes I was waiting (hoping) for something interesting to happen. Never got it, but eventually after what felt like 17 hours later the sweet kiss of the ending credits rolled and I was released from this bloated, self-aggrandizing fantasy-horror flick.
SEVEN BELOW (my review):
Let the concluding paragraph of my review speak for itself here:
Bottom line, folks, is that SEVEN BELOW is a fucking disaster. It breaks all the rules of “good filmmaking”: boring, unfleshed out characters; a slow, plodding pace; and a plot that’s a rambling, muddled mess. Sure the acting is decent enough, but the actors have nothing to work with. Trust me, you would never see such a boring, ridiculous plot coming outta the indie horror scene!! Definitely skip SEVEN BELOW.
This pretty much says it all. Starts off interesting enough and quickly derails with shitty characters and a meandering plot. An absolute train wreck.
6 DEGREES OF HELL:
I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but 6 DEGREES OF HELL is a fucking train wreck!! Another ridiculously convoluted plot that goes nowhere, is confusing, and has absolutely no pay off whatsoever. There’s all this supernatural shit happening on screen with absolutely no coherent explanation. In the opening scene we get a look at a haunted house attraction that I thought was going to play into the plot. You know; every room housing a different real life supernatural horror. Nope. The only thing horrifying here was how this film got picked up for distribution!!
TIED IN BLOOD (my review):
TIED IN BLOOD is the reason why I’m not a fan of the ghost story sub-genre!! This is a terribly boring story of a psychic who really can contact the spiritual world. He’s hired by a man to find out what really happened to his family. He had to leave on an over night trip and came home to his entire family being slaughtered. The man thinks the culprit was a ghost. I think the true culprit here was boredom. The entire production felt as though we were watching a play being performed. The level of acting was sub-par and there was no action to speak of. I felt like someone who saw some local (very) amateur stage production of a play really liked it and decided to film it from the audience one night. This never feels like a film. And the ghost “effects” are some of the most embarrassing and amateur ghost effects you’ll ever see.
V/H/S:
Some may be surprised to see this one on my Worst Horror Films of 2012 list, but have you actually seen V/H/S?? It’s tedious and just terribly made. There’s definitely some talent associated with this horror anthology. David Bruckner, the director of one of my favorite films of the 2000’s (THE SIGNAL) directed an entry here and it seems he forgot all about filmmaking. But he’s not alone. It felt like all the contributing director’s were already working on their next projects and just put in a very half-assed job on this one. The wrap-around story is made up of characters I could care less about. They were douchebag guys who sexually assaulted women and who acted on their most base impulses … and these were supposed to be the main characters?? None of the stories had any edge or anything interesting in them. Most were too short to have any kind of character development and most stories were completely forgettable. Thinking back I can only recall 2 of the stories in the anthology. And those reports of people getting up and running out of the theater during the Sundance screening of V/H/S … I don’t know what the fucking cut of the film those people were watching, but V/H/S could easily air on the SyFy Channel and fit right in!! Blech!!
So what do you think of my list? Have you seen any/most/all of these turkeys??
Stay Bloody in 2013!!!
Filed under: Blog Special, Horror Lists, New Posting
