El monstro del mar! (Review)

El monstro del mar!

El monstro del mar! (2012)

Directed by Stuart Simpson

Did you ever want to see the Suicide Girls take on a sea monster?

Well Australia has got you covered. Because in Stuart Simpson's El monstro del mar (translated to Monster of the Sea) you'll just see that. And that's pretty much it.

Monstro goes into the way back time machine to give us a throwback to B-movie monsterpalooza where a quiet seaside town goes under attack by 3 hot Aussie vixen pussycat kill kill killers as they battle a tentacle rape octupi.

The movie starts off as From Dusk til Dawn style as our 3 tatted up, goth femme fatales lay a Venus fly trap for some man fodder. They party hard, booze it up and sniff those lines. They meet a young girl (another Aussie hottie) and her grandfather but secrets lay deep in this beach town. Soon locals are slaughtered and much blood is lost.

The CGI monster is slightly above your SyFy original movie but the buckets of blood and gore is unrelenting. Kudos to Simpson and his team for going all out. But hell the tentacles are pure laughable as are the death scenes. It's definitely intentionally "bad", with ridiculous carnage of serpent arms vs man.

But do I buy into the "it's so bad, it's good" formula? Well too a point I do. I'm all for seeing our 3 whores from hell Beretta, Blondie and the hottest of all Snowball go swimming and acting badass but without a real story or any interesting scenes of fun, it also becomes outright boring. It's fairly predictable and generic as they come.

If you want to see Aussie Suicide girls battle sea monsters, this will be your favorite movie. I liked the eye candy and the fairly cheesy monster mash gore. But clearly it's the same as watching a Skinemax action movie. Pick your poison.

Rating:
1/2

Check out the trailer.

The Shortround: Home

It's another edition of The Shortround. Up this week a zombie rom com from Australia courtesy of Cameron McCulloch called Home. I wouldn't exactly call it a ha ha rom com more like a sad rom zom. Here be the basic plot.

Tells the story of a lone surviving woman, stuck in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the undead, trying to hold on to the last of her humanity.

the jaded viewer says: This 11 minute short is without any dialogue. Starring an unnamed woman who lives deep in the woods, we see her life consists of repelling zombie attacks and a nostalgic longing of the man she's lost. It's a pure vignette of zombie lore, probably a lost story in the great zombie uprising. As she checks the perimeter, it seems the zombies are getting closer on her home and all hope seems to be lost.

With one final night approaching, she pretties up her face, puts on a wedding gown and makes her now wedding night memorable with her man...her dead husband. It's quite an end to an interesting short.

Home is clearly an exercise in the zombie genre for Cameron McCulloch. We've all seen every zombie story variation so really nothing new is that shocking or surprising. It's an interesting concept in Home by taking hopelessness and amplifying it to the max. The silence is clearly sad as it is creepy. What really is there to say when your surrounded by the undead who are rapidly closing in? What do you do in your final moments when you actually have time to prepare?

I like how the short closed, I just didn't like anything else. At times it resembles a fan made film complete with friends and families playing zombie. With such a minimal budget, there is not much in gore or splatter and with any zombie movie, this is pretty much the money shot.

Home is an interesting take within the zombie subgenre of rom zom. I've seen better (Alice Jacobs is Dead comes to mind) and I've seen worse. When somebody can tell a zombie story I've never seen before, I'll make sure you all know. Until then I'm going home (pun intended!).

After Dark Horrorfest 4: Lake Mungo (Review)

As I mentioned before, I'm reviewing all the After Dark Horrorfest 4 movies on UGO.com. I've made up a hub for all my reviews. Keep checking back as it will be updated once the reviews go live on UGO.com.

Here's a little excerpt from my review of Lake Mungo.

"I must admit, Lake Mungo was not on my must-see radar when reviewing the After Dark Horrorfest movies. But this is the hidden gem beneath the proverbial sand of the eight films. I was exceptionally surprised at how great the movie was and amazed that it didn’t slowly evolve into a cheap Paranormal Activity gimmick. The trailer and poster are very misleading and you may be convinced you’re seeing a midnight movie set to deliver jolts of jump scares.

I am here to say jump scares be damned."

Read the rest of the review by heading to UGO.com.