Yeah, that sounds right. Bunch of campers in a cottage, warned by a weird old man of Nazi's hording gold from the local town? Awesome zombie flick, and I don't usually like zombie flicks. Well, I did like Zombieland too, but that was more of a comedy - it did have Bill Murray.

Yep that's it.

Over the weekend I watched City of Ember (also with Bill Murray) and Mystery Team.

Jason: We are mature and legitimate detectives.

Kelly: What the hell is that smell?

Duncan: I drank dog urine.

Haha look at Jordy in the back with his hand out!

He just wanted to belong

Jason was really ripped. Just saying

Women

Haha women always find something positive to say!

i just watched season 2 of little house

I know I'm way behind the times, but I just saw The Hangover last night. It is hilarious!!! I can't wait until The Hangover 2 comes out.

I'm going to watch Carrie later this week.

literally JUST got back from watching Paranormal Activity 2

Saw To Have and Have Not, Bogart/Bacall. Couldn't stop watching it! Really good old movie.

I just watched the movie My Soul To Take in the theater, thinking it must be good since it's by Wes Craven, and this is his first full-length original screenplay in 16 years and they're showing it in 3D. I thought, a horror movie in 3D! Dang! There must be something really good in store for me inside.

Eh, wrong! Though I didn't exactly hate the movie completely, I can't say I liked it either. And it's not just me, even some people I know who are none-too-choosy about horror movies hated it.

The story is on the silly side, and the basic premise is not exactly inspired: Seven children are born in a small town at the exact moment a serial killer (stage actor Raul Esparza) maybe meets his demise, and 16 years later murders start happening again. Plus, the movie wants to have it both ways—with the whole “is the Riverton Ripper still alive or did his soul duck into one of these babies?” idea—and it doesn’t pull it off. The plotting is clunky and rife with holes. These holes, however, are often amusing. I mean, did our hero, Bug (Max Thieriot, Chloe), just happen to have a lot of feathers on hand to whip up overnight the film’s elaborate condor costume (don’t ask), or did he run out and denude a few turkeys?

It gets worse—or better, depending on your taste for screwiness. Why does the Ripper look like a shabby Rob Zombie? He looked pretty presentable when he was seen in the prologue. Speaking of the prologue, why is he harder to kill than the love child of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers? There’s nothing supernatural going on at that point—or is there? There’s a plot twist that you’ll see long before it reveals itself, but when it does, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll burst out laughing—or at least be seized by unseemly giggles. What you’ll make of a strange re-working of the mirror scene from Duck Soup (1933), I can’t even guess. We can throw in that the retrofitted 3-D is so lame that it might as well not be there, which really makes the “special event” admission surcharge seem like a cash grab.

So why am I kinda sorta not really recommending, but mildly defending this movie? Well, as noted, I had fun with it. I was entertained. I wasn’t repelled by it as I have been with so many recent horror pictures. That may, in fact, be why so many horror fans are trashing it—it’s out of step with the times. It’s not nasty for its own sake. This isn’t the Craven of Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977)—or their non-Craven remakes. It’s more Craven in “local legend” form and without the postmodern snarkiness of the Scream franchise. If anything, this movie’s greatest weakness may be that it’s too sincere—and too silly to support that.

Also in its favor is the fact that I actually liked the characters. I thought they were reasonably well drawn, and I got the sense that Craven himself liked them. I’m intrigued by his creation of Penelope (Zena Grey, In Good Company). She first appears like the teenage version of Piper Laurie’s Margaret White from Carrie (1976), but her Jesus-freak demeanor turns out to be more complex than that and she’s actually sympathetic and weirdly likable. It feels like Craven has made peace with his repressively religious childhood. It’s too bad he kills her off fairly early—but then, he wastes no time killing off most of the cast, robbing the film of much in the way of suspense.

The place where Craven errs the most is in his villain. The Ripper is fine as a tortured psycho of the multiple-personality-disorder kind in the prologue—at least till the “can’t kill him with a stick” biz kicks in. But the later Rob Zombie version is just plain weird. He is like a cheesy funhouse creation. In fact, he practically jumps out and says, “Boo!” I won’t say it’s not funny, but I will say it’s not very scary—except maybe the first murder, which comes so out of nowhere that you’re apt to think it’s a dream-sequence gag, only it’s not. Still, it’s not enough.

In my opinion, the only highlight of the film is the freaky bird costume, presented in a school biology class, that actually vomits and defecates upon its audience. It'd be nice to think the director were self-aware enough to recognize the obvious parallel.

Since when did Craven automatically mean good? Hills Have Eyes 2 1985, Shocker, Vampire In Brooklyn .....

Well, he doesn't have a perfect record, but he has given us a lot of good ones.

In case you didn't know, My Soul To Take broke the record for worst performing 3D movie! haha

Oh, I know. While watching it, I kept thinking where the need for 3D was. It certainly beat The Last Air Bender!

Don't get me wrong there are Craven movies I like. The original Hills Have Eyes is one of my favorite all time horror films.

Well, that was exactly my point. Though I know not everything he has done or would do, would be considered a masterpiece of the genre, he has made good ones before. Through this line of reasoning, I equate that the probability of him producing something noteworthy is higher than those names I have not heard of.