Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead: Dead Snow is back, and it’s funnier, slicker and grosser than its predecessor.
Following straight on from the first film, which saw a group of friends’ holiday into the mountains go all deadly, when they inadvertently awaken a battalion of Nazis, Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead sees lead character Martin in hospital. His arm, which he had sawn off with a chainsaw, has been replaced with SS soldier (and all-round terrifying badass) Herzog’s arm. And the arm is evillllllll.
Mike has to disappear from the authorities, who attribute the deaths of his friends in the previous film to him. With Herzog’s arm on hand (fnar), escaping is one hell of a lot easier and Mike manages to track down his enemies in an old museum. Realising they are making a new army of Nazis to take over a town, fulfilling an old prophecy from their non-dead days, Mike has to put a stop to them. By raising a bunch of Communists from the dead and calling in The Zombie Squad - a crack team of zombie killers from America - to fight Herzog’s troops.
As my friend pointed out to me at the end of the film, Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead is a film about Nazis becoming zombies and zombies becoming Nazis, with a bit of communism thrown in. He’s completely right, and therein lies its beauty; it’s a ridiculous headtrip of a film but for the first showing of Saturday, a perfect movie.
Dead Snow 2 managed to keep all of the things that made the first Dead Snow funny, but has refined itself to a pretty slick operation of a film. I won’t spoil the ending for you obviously, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing a Dead Snow 3 at some point in the future. Penny Reeve.
Starry Eyes
Starry Eyes: The psychological horror, Starry Eyes, from the writer/director team of Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer was the second film of the day. Alex Essoe stars as Sarah, a young woman living in LA hoping to become an actress, while paying her bills by working as a waitress at the Hooters-esque Big Tatas.
It is clear from the beginning that Sarah is a bit too obsessed with becoming a star and she is clearly ripe pickings for been taken advantage of by old creepy producers.
Essoe is great, and really very convincing at every turn – her character goes through a lot of emotions and phases and she hits the mark on all of them. There is, perhaps, too much time spent on the build up, but at the same time it was building the tension and mystery nicely, with her strange auditions – and eventual requests for more - with Astraeus Pictures for the film Silver Scream.
Starry Eyes is a haunting and often rather brutal spotlight on the price of fame - or, more aptly, the price for fame – with a central performance that holds it all together firmly. Harry Wilding.
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Housebound
Housebound: Mayhem knows how to balance their schedule, mixing things up so that you don’t end up too desensitised to a particular genre and, ultimately, don’t get bored. Well, I assume that’s what they’re doing and it isn’t all by accident... After the dark and gore-y Starry Eyes, it was time for some comedy horror from New Zealand. Peter Jackson may be the man most people think of when it comes to New Zealand and films, and although he’s not made a decent funny horror movie for far too long, Housebound fills the gap he’s left quite nicely, thank you.
At its heart, a haunted house story, Housebound’s central character is Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly), a young woman who is a sulky petty criminal with a chip on her shoulder. Placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet for eight months, Kylie is less than impressed at her sentence. Made to live under the care of her mum and step-dad for this time, her mother is one of those that rattles on incessantly, plus she’s also convinced that the family home is haunted - something that Kylie cannot be bothered with. Until, with nothing better to do with her time other than give buckets of attitude, strop and swear, she starts to discover that her mum might not be so cracked after all and that something about the house isn’t quite right.
With the help of the security guard in charge of her ankle bracelet, Amos, - a rather loveable character who believes in the spirits himself - Kylie uncovers the dark history of the house, including the story of a teenage girl who was stabbed to death with a carving fork. Some spooky events later – a talking teddy, a loner possum-skinning neighbour, a ¾ scale Jesus, creaking doors, an old dental plate appearing from nowhere in the basement – and they’re all determined to solve the ghostly mystery.
O’Reilly is hilarious as Kylie, she’s got the mardy teenager thing down pat and her delivery drives the humour of the film. All the characters keep on the right side of caricatures to stop the film losing the comedy and horror balance. It is a great film that’s well shot, well written and there are laughs from the opening scene of Kylie trying to break in to an ATM, until the last. And don’t worry, there is blood and gore for those that like their horror bloody. Ali Emm.
Starry Eyes and Housebound were shown as part of Mayhem Film Festival on Saturday 1 November 2014 at Broadway Cinema.
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