Eight Films To (Not So Much) Die For

For the past month or so, they've been airing commercials for something called "Eight Films to Die For," a three day film festival of undistributed horror movies. Honestly, it sounded like a good time, but, like most fun things, I didn't think it would come anywhere near The JVL.

But, turns out, it did. Unfortunately, I found out about it on the last day of the festival. Fortunately, they were airing encores on Monday and Tuesday. And this is how I was able to see two of the films.

The first film I saw was Rinne (or Reincarnation for those of you, like myself, who don't speak Japanese). Rinne is the newest movie from Takashi Shimizu, who apparently got tired of having made The Grudge roughly six times, and decided to make something new. This one tells the story of a movie crew who begins shooting the story of a notorious murder at what appears to be a haunted hotel. (Actually, it isn't so different from The Grudge at all.) It's pretty standard shit. The best thing about the movie, though, was that I think I was the only person that knew this movie would be in subtitled Japanese. ("Oh, this isn't in English?" was heard throughout the crowd.) If you don't like subtitles either, not to worry: It will be in English when they remake it as a Rachel Bilson or Alexis Bledel vehicle in a couple of years. I can't wait.

The second movie (and I should call it the "#2 Movie," because it was pretty close to shit) I saw was Dark Ride, about a bunch of dumb kids who hole up in an abandoned dark ride that was the scene of a number of murders years earlier. It's really not very good. It has a ridiculously convoluted plot, in which a number of coincidences conspire to get a number of dumb kids killed; screenwriting at its worst. And why is this movie called Dark Ride, as a dark ride is a funhouse that you ride around in a little cart on tracks. This place is just a number of spooky rooms connected by a bunch of hallways...with no tracks. Dark Walk may have been a more appropriate title. Its one saving grace was that it gave a funny new meaning to the term "giving head."

All in all, not a very good experience. Instead of Dark Ride, I wish they would have encored Wicked Little Things, which is not only a Zombie Movie, but a Kid Zombie Movie, where all the zombies are children. That's oh so wrong, but oh so right, all at the same time.