13 Eerie
Overall Recommendation
Overall Recommendation?
So… Really uneven movie. Not horrible by any means, not bad at all, really good in some regards, and fucking redline adrenalin in others; this is an experience. I’d even suggest watching this one without reading the review notes, because that first zombie attack changes everything. Up until that moment, you’re watching a bunch of semi-talent flail through pretending to be students and such. You’re almost questioning why you chose to watch this. Isn’t there another movie about swamps that we could be watching, you think to yourself. And then suddenly, that first attack goes down and you’re scared and looking away and the movie is too loud and the screams are too real. The actors are still kinda annoying, and you find yourself rooting for them to get killed, but when they do, they bang out such an electrifying performance that you wonder if the sleeper stuff you saw earlier was just to hustle you. That’s why you never bet on zombie movies. I really enjoyed this, and what little I’d change probably comes down to editing. Things were just a little bit lean here and there, and overly padded this way and that. There were small things, like I nit-picked, which unfortunately stand out, but this is all minor when measured against the reason we watch these films. Me, I believe that the most frightening thing imaginable is another human being sizing you up as a potential meal, and this does a great job portraying this- but now those other humans are dead, much larger than you, and also convicted criminals. Ahem. Convicted rage-filled criminals. There’s so many reasons to watch this and so few to avoid it.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- On a boat, then on a bus.
- Teacher dickhead hates us all and the hired help is a stoner.
- Playtime with corpses.
- Holy shit that was disturbing and I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.
- Zombie Frogger with a big blue bus!
- Things were put in the budget to be destroyed. Let it be so.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
The zombies were life sentence prison inmates (that’s how the movie describes them) who had chemical experiments done on them that killed them and turned them into zombies. That much we’re told repeatedly. In reality, the zombies are fucking ferocious and terrifying. They’re big and red-eyed and withered and muscular and leathery and angry and hungry and fucking vicious. They take a long time eating various parts of your body but they don’t kill you, and then you reanimate. There’s no talking or love of brains here. There’s just ultra-violent zombies in prison jumpsuits. “Rage filled DNA creature”, I think the quote was.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Graphic gore. Lots of graphic gore. A bus and a shack. I know this sounds insignificant, but they bought a bus and a building with the sole purpose of running the bus into the building. And then rolling the bus and lighting it on fire. It felt… like a well measured recipe coming together. The special effects here make the fucking movie. I mean that. Because half the time you hope the actors weren’t paid anything. The other half the time tho, when zombies are zombie-ing… Yeah. It gets pretty wild. It’s really well shot, in that they do a great job of presenting the zombie in the most frightening manner imaginable. There’s dedication and talent hard at work here, make no mistake. I’d say 2/3 of the crew knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
Well, I think a bus is a damn fine weapon. There were all sorts of other interestings, like the scalpel and the weathervane and the baby food jar bombs, but… Running a zombie over multiple times with a bus is just classy.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There really wasn’t any of that. No hands. Well… as I type that I realize that the lauded “smashing through the floor” probably is a massive hand call-out in it’s own regard. They’ve homaged the original video. That was pretty awesome.
That was new!
That was new!
The absolute ferocity of the attacks was stunning. I loved it. There were new weapons, but… you know, who really cares at this point. The lead female’s aggression was lovely. A heroine who fights back is good, but one who sprints at the zombie with a scalpel is the best. A huge first here was also the zombies breaking up through the floor. However… doing it twice… you know… It was AWESOME the FIRST time.
Review Notes
Review Notes
I mean, it’s a red raft thing with a put put motor.
And there’s a body.
Bodies all over the place.
Bodies smell bad, I’m learning.
None of them have life-jackets on. Shame.
No-one is wearing any real colors. It’s an odd, noticeable choice.
They’re making me cold, for some reason.
And they have enough camping gear for two people. There’s seven of them.
A dead raccoon? Pretty sure that’s not scientific.
Putting a body in the car…
“Death is an exact science.”
I want a big blue bus.
Scully cap is a twat.
I want a big yellow abandoned bus.
He got blue on him.
And… it’s very very quiet there.
Lotta blue bus driving around…
Tomkins is kinda a twat.
Why can’t he make eye contact with anyone?
Swamp! There’s swamp! I’m stoked! SWAMP!
“This is gonna be like a day trip with Charlie Manson”
That is an artfully distressed shack.
Oh! He’s smoking a reefer! A doobie!
As spilled chemicals melt the spilled communication equipment!
Now he burned his hand on the chemicals!
So… kick everything. That helps.
The bodies are on loan from the morgue? That’s not how these places work. The body gets placed and remains rot. That’s how the whole fucking science thing works.
Oh. A dead rat. Wow.
This guy got cameras all over the place. Why?
Oh. A dead cat. Wow.
Why is he treating this like a military operation?
So, they’re making a big deal about this chemical crap on the radios. It’s like X-files black oil.
And all the cameras are labeled as cardinal direction (NESW) “Perimeters” when they’re just showing the different corpse sites. Dumb.
They brought 60 lbs of beef and 3 huge chickens to this? They’re going to study corpses AND have a bacchanalian feast?
Ooh. The beef is dripping red. Wow.
The soundtrack is minimal. Like, an organ grinder monkey on fentanyl.
Scully Cap dives right under the bus.
“You picked the worst place to die!”
Mr. Hair is really into playing this role. Totally ad-libbing the whole thing using what he remembers from CSI, but still. At least he’s trying.
DE- SO-TOOOO.
“Maggots. That’s our first line of investigation.” Hair says this with such sincere determination. We have found a MF CLUE, ya’ll!!
Evidently, maggots grow exactly 15 millimeters per week. See, I know something about millimeters. No, not really, actually. I just have a passing familiarity with them from being a machinist for a couple of years. And that maggot was EASILY 16 millimeters.
It’s like this movie is full of people who are actually angry at each other for being in this. I honestly feel like the teacher HATES the actors playing his students. I may also just be really high. I mean, I am. But that… You know…
Now 2/3 of the bacchanalian feast meat has gone missing.
Poison in the water supply.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Two of my chickens. Are. Missing.”
Nice! Back on the reefer! Jerry (Larry), I like your style.
Ok. Now I kinda like the music. It’s creepy.
Why the fuck is he up in the bus spilling crap?
Skully Cap appears to know what he’s doing.
And how do you pass a coin from lying under a bus to a guy standing inside the bus with just reaching out your arm a bit?
“Here I am playing nursemaid to a bunch of college boy jerk-offs. I should have stayed in jail.”
Jerry (Larry) found a body.
I like graffiti.
Jesus the teacher is a twat.
Oh! The corpse done took a breath!
Oh, that zombie is alive and UGLY. Nice!
Hair thinks he got jokes. Blah blah blah margarita.
This guy is the best professor? No. I disagree.
An internship? Playing with corpses? In undergrad?
Corpse is up and shambling.
Oh! Jefferson (Larry) made a run for it and ate shit!
Damn, everyone is falling down.
The professor of perpetual scowl (PPS).
That zombie is fucking scary looking.
So many shrubberies… Can’t get through…
Thorns, too?
Oh… fuck. This is genuinely terrifying.
Fuck! Can’t watch! Too graphic! Goodbye fingers!
Holy fuck. This is fucking nuts. Crazy intense. I’m twitching and looking away…
Scully throws a hissy fit like only a short man can.
Oh, shit, she’s not dead.
Red everywhere.
Time for some abandoned shack first aid!
Lotta red.
I think you may have just locked yourself in with a zombie.
My dog is snoring.
Ahh… a rage fueled DNA creature escaped. That’s what this is.
Well, the walkies aren’t working and throwing them on the ground isn’t going to help.
If you keep throwing the chairs on the ground then they’ll stop working too.
Oh! Generator is failing.
The zombie is eating the SHIT out of that rotted corpse.
“Yeah, well, what worries me is you being a moron.”
Dammit, I want shortbread cookies.
PPS is loosing his SHIT.
I guess I know what word I’m going to over-capitalize today.
Zombie waking up…
Fuck! I hate scalpels!
This is one fucking GRAPHIC movie.
I love her aggression- Charge the zombie!
Are there three zombie creatures now? Or rather, two?
Larry is freaking out, man…
I believe in following instincts too. Time to bail!
I would kill for shortbread cookies.
“You’re all over-reacting, all right? It’s very common when dealing with real corpses for the first time.”
Dude, you’re on an island. You’re not going to walk your way out of this.
Jesus, that’s a huge zombie.
Correction… that’s TWO huge zombies.
Eating. Eating. So much red eating.
I’m having a hard time tracking which zombie is which. But they’re all scary.
Not sure what gardening implement that is, but it’s a classic usage of it.
Oh. Going to pause it here to mention the weird idiosyncrasy I have regarding zombie movies and popular culture zombie milestones, because I want to give this movie props for being the first I’ve encountered that has shown this scenario so well. I, to this day, cannot watch Micheal Jackson’s Thriller video. I’m scared to death of it. Everything about it. I can listen to the song itself, but I have a hard time when Vincent Price starts his thing. I hate and fear everything about that video. The final house assault, where they’re busting up through the floors? I’d rather fight a fucking bear armed with a turkey drumstick than this zombies-through-the-floor thing. It scares me. This fucking movie scares me.
Beaker of acid to the head!
Did she just use a bit of scrap metal to…
Oh, this is fucking gross. Zombie girl goes HARD.
Zombie girl goes down.
This whole science lab thing is a bit silly… Kill that zombie while you have him.
Zombies can climb.
Not sure how she did it, but she exploded the zombie’s belly with two baby jar chemical bombs.
Why not shoot the head the first time?
Why barricade yourself inside and fortify the shack if you’re just going to go outside to chase down the first fucking zombie you see?
PPS is screwed.
I want pepperoni and shortbread cookies.
I was science girl, I’d grab some blankets and weapons and get back up on the roof.
I would NOT go outside. That just went very poorly for PPS.
I would also NOT yell at and taunt the zombies.
Well, that didn’t work. Thank god for hammers.
When making molotovs, one avoids dousing one’s own hands with gasoline.
Oh, it’s all going to hell.
Dripping red…
Fucking floor again…
Nice! Head kicking!!
Well… could have ended better.
I’ve got pepperoni. I’m happy.
Damn, Hair has the survival instincts of a lemming. (That’s not true about them, you know. All made up.)
Like two hobbits scattering through the night woods.
Scully can hotwire a bus?
“No ticket.” (Ok, I just added that in because I wanted to.)
What the fuck? She shot Hair? HA!!!
Big blue bus!
Don’t stop! MORON!!
Well, I guess a huge bus is a good weapon. I mean, it was as long as it had a functional transmission.
And a windscreen.
Fuck’n A. Bus crash. Fuck’n A.
That was awesome.
Why does Hair get to be a hero? He’s an idiot.
Scully looks a bit like Lars.
Fuck gates and fuck berms!
Ok. Maybe berms should be treated with respect.
No, I most certainly do NOT want to watch knee surgery that involves a chunk of wood.
“Ok, we’re going to do this on three. Ok? One! Two!” (quickly pops knee back in)
Earth Shattering Kaboom! And she doesn’t even look back. What a bad ass.
Enter some old funky farm house relic thing.
Paino and bathtub. Winning combination.
Ok, this hide and seek shit is getting old.
Weather-vane. Ok. Never seen it before, but… eh…
“Daniel has lost a lot of blood.”
“What happened??”
“I shot him.”
Why are we discussing the fine points of the plot lead-up?
And the zombie has the keys.
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings’ end…” or rather “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” They’re the same math. Things end, things begin. I’ve just participated in an ending. The best little Poo-Dog in the whole world is gone.
But it’s strange. The grief is cut with freedom. The sorrow is thinned through potential. There’s time again. The world is not scored to the soundtrack of constant panting. My world has lost a color. I have lost the color purple. I’m sorry, Whoopie, but this got nothing to do with you. I have nothing but time and a routine. Time to grow anew.
Time for Swamp of the Ravens. “This Euro-Zombie Will Tear At Your Flesh!” (Capitalization theirs) What is a Euro-Zombie? I know what Euro-Trash is. I’m having trouble imagining the offspring of the two, especially when I try to envision the swamp. I may be geographically ethnocentric about the topic, but as far as I’m concerned, swamps are an American invention.
And like Bourbon, only certain states are able to have swamps. Other states can have mud, and mud-bogs, and… uh… slimy places. But swamps? Swamps are in Georgia. And Florida. Places that have alligators or crocodiles (I know that it’s one or the other yet I don’t care which) and mosquitoes the size of hamburgers. Water moccasins. If there’s no water moccasins, it’s not a swamp. It’s a muddy, slimy puddle.
I kicked my wife a couple nights ago. I was sleeping. She was sleeping. It was the perfect time. Really though- I was dreaming that I was back working in the adult store, but it wasn’t the actual adult store I ran… And I was working with a co-worker who I liked, but it wasn’t anyone real from the old crew. We were behind the counter doing something mundane, like sticking price stickers, or counting in inventory, when a short homeless guy with crazy energy stormed through the doors, banging them open to the degree of a die roll to determine if they took damage.
The short guy was stocky, and had short curly grey hair all around his head, but his actual crown itself was bald. He had grey stubble. In hind-sight, he looked a bit like Flea, but… with a squashiered head. He stormed up to the counter waving a folded up newspaper at me, yelling that he didn’t like the news and that we needed to change it. I’m not great when it comes to talking through unexpected, context-less delusions with someone acting aggressively, so I just watched him as he realized I wasn’t doing anything- so then he threw the newspaper at me.
It glanced off the counter and fell back on the floor in front of him. I said that he could hardly expect me to read a newspaper that was on the floor, now… could he? He reached down to pick it up, and as he rose, I saw that the paper was cut and defaced like the newspaper articles on the walls of serial killer “my big secret plan” rooms. Faces were cut out, words and sentences were scribbled madly across. I wouldn’t have been able to read much if I wanted too. It was the literary daily version of two thousand dollar artisan pre-shredded jeans, yet imbued with extra evil. More evil than normal designer jeans.
He waved this evil newspaper at me again, almost like I could have it, and as I reached towards it, he spit at me. I don’t know if he hit me or not, I know I felt none on my skin, but the moment his face relaxed from the effort, clarity ran through his eyes. I don’t know what he saw, but I heard myself say calmly “Ok. Now you’re going to get hurt.” He turned and ran, and I ran after him.
We were outside, running down the sidewalk. He was a few steps ahead of me, and not a good runner. He tripped and fell and rolled and was kneeling, pushing himself up again, when I caught up with him, and without pausing my momentum I soccer-punt-kicked him in the face at full run. This was the kick that woke my wife up.
“What the hell?” or something like that, but… subdued and accepting, not really alarmed. For better or worse, this isn’t a completely new event in our household. I am violent in my dreams. I lay there, wondering if I should have tried to kick that guy’s head off, wondering where exactly I just kicked my wife, hoping that she wasn’t hurt. I waited a second, then said- intentionally laying on the sleepy accent “I was dreaming”. But I think she was already back asleep. Ok. What? Swamp of the Ravens. No, wait… sorry. Swamp Of The Ravens. There we go. Lets watch some euro-zombies. Or something.
Ok. A dead guy getting lowered down in the rain to a synth track.
He’s got red on him.
In pajamas. I think this is going to be important.
Some wet guy puts him in a stretcher.
And then it’s flashlights.
Now we’re in a yellow van.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this before.
I do like vans tho.
AAANNDDDDD… Yeah. I’m cancelling that run. I have seen that movie, and I’m pretty sure I’ve even reviewed it. See, there just isn’t much zombie in it. There’s far more boob-nuzzling. I do believe there may even be dead boob nuzzling, but… that’s not what we’re here for. Time to figure out some WTF.
13 Eerie. (Six forensic undergrads embark on a scientific expedition to a remote island that was once used as illegal biological testing grounds for life-term prisoners.” Well, as usual, I have a couple of bones to pick. A couple of heads to kick. I do not believe that you can declare “Forensic corpse studies” in undergrad. At least, not the run-of-the-mill lite-beer and bong-rips normal person schools.
I’m not trying to be culturally ethnocentric or anything- that kind of thinking is small-minded and wrong- but I’d think that “studying rotting bodies in the woods” is more of a Masters program level thing. I think in undergrad, if you show too much interest in dead bodies you probably don’t continue on with undergrad. I never went that route, thank god. Did just about everything else I was capable of conspire to hinder my progress? Well, maybe. But I never got caught playing with dead things.