DARK
RIDE
(Review)

Bolstered by the interesting The Abadoned (review in Archive: May 2007), I came at my fourth After Dark Horrorfest title, Craig Singer’s Dark Ride, with a smidgen of hope that this would at least be better than J.S. Cardone’s Wicked Little Things (review in Archive: April 2007).
No.
Such.
Luck.
If I had seen this as a double bill alongside Wicked Little Things, I would’ve right then and there changed the title of the affair to the “After Crap Horrorfest.”
But, onto the details…

There’s a perfunctory prologue set in the 80’s, which sees a pair of frizzy-haired twins (Brittney and Chelsea Coyle) get murdered in a dark ride. (And as early as this, there is no attempt at all to make our first view of the film a memorable one. No move to grab hold of our attention the way Wes Craven did at the start of Scream, or Hideo Nakata, in Ringu. This is a painfully standard opening that serves simply as the switch that starts the film’s clunky narrative engine, and nothing more.)
The opening titles then offer a montage of newspaper clippings, filling us in on the aftermath: 14 other bodies are found on the premises, the killer is put in a mental institute, and the ride is closed.
Flash forward as the millennium turns, and it seems that the dark ride is about to open up for business again.
We’re then introduced to five college students set to go off on a road trip for spring break. One unstable hitchhiker later (Jen, played by Andrea Bogart), and they’re off to the infamous dark ride of the title, a pamphlet for its impending opening apparently found by Bill (Patrick Renna, from TV’s Boston Legal; genre fans may remember him as the vampiric pizza delivery boy, Ronnie Strickland, in the hilarious X-Files episode “Bad Blood”) in a gas station rest room.
They’re off to the dark ride because a) they want to save money, so they decide they’d like to spend the night there; and b) because Bill argues that everyone says their generation doesn’t do anything and is doomed. “So let’s do something,” he says, with the earnest conviction of the damned and the completely insane.
Yes, let’s! Let’s break into an amusement park ride where at least 16 people were killed, so we can prove to all those naysayers that, dammit, our generation is not doomed! That we have significance!
Why is the average (or, in this case, far-less-than-average) horror movie populated by morons?

Naturally, bad things happen at the dark ride, though it does take some time before the blood starts to spatter. And when the “thrills” kick in, they are, appropriately enough, of the funhouse variety, mechanical and ultimately meaningless.
More to the point, this entire movie smacks of pointlessness. There doesn’t seem to be an ounce of creativity or intelligence in the entire production, and the blatant transparency of the tale Bill tells is vaguely insulting to the audience; any horror fan worth his salt should spot the “twist” coming a light year away.
And when you suddenly drop a gratingly annoying “Two weeks earlier” flashback in the midst of the proceedings without an apparently good reason, you just have to throw up your hands and the towel. (The baby, the bath water, and the kitchen sink too, while you’re at it. And throwing them in the general direction of Craig Singer’s head would be good. Now that’s entertainment!)

I apologize. I don’t normally advocate violence (or mash up my clichés), but Dark Ride was really just a lame excuse for a horror movie. It’s jostling with Plane Dead for Worst Movie I’ve Seen This Year Thus Far.
And as for the After Crap (oops, I mean After Dark) Horrorfest score card, I hoped it wasn’t possible, but this is actually worse than Wicked Little Things.
(Wow. I’m looking back at that last sentence, and I can’t believe I actually typed that.)

Well, I’m at the halfway mark of the After Dark Horrorfest*, and the score is 1-3, in favour of the “What were they thinking? Can I have my money back?” School of Horror Films.
When will the madness stop?!

* The other four Horrorfest titles are: Jason Todd Ipson’s Unrest; Richard Brandes’ Penny Dreadful; Mike Mendez’s The Gravedancers; and the Butcher Brothers’ The Hamiltons.

Parting shot: To any Sopranos fans, Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s in this one.

(Dark Ride OS courtesy of toxicshock.tv.)

PLANE
DEAD
(aka FLIGHT
OF THE
LIVING
DEAD)
(Review)

A preliminary word: Plane Dead is set to be released in the U.S. under the title Flight of the Living Dead, a title I much rather prefer since it has that Shaun of the Dead vibe going for it. I thought to myself before watching the film, that if I ended up liking it, I’d refer to it in the review as Flight, and if I was less than ecstatic with it, I’d use Plane Dead.

Review proper: Plane Dead is the story of Concord Air Flight 239, which, in passing through some turbulent weather, is subjected to the outbreak of an engineered virus which kills the infected, then re-animates them as blood-thirsty, flesh-hungry zombies.
Yes, it’s Zombies on a Plane.
Now, I may have had certain reservations about the entertainment value of Snakes on a Plane (this was, after all, still possible in the realm of reality, and in the post-9/11 world, getting some yucks from a planeload of civilians in jeopardy is a tad questionable in my books), but having a zombie outbreak on a commercial airliner was safely in the zone of make-believe, so I had high hopes for this one, hopes that came crashing down soon after take-off.

When the first laugh your film elicits is purely unintentional—cop Truman Burrows (One Life To Live’s David Chisum) bonks himself unconscious, his head gash later leaking blood that looks suspiciously like grape jelly—and the zombies take their damn sweet time to start chowing down, you know you’re in trouble.
Toss some patently fake shots of planes zipping around, some bad sound effects and editing, a completely thrill-free script, a bunch of sad-a$$ zombies, and some uninspired directing by Scott Thomas (producer on TV’s horrible NightMan and the early 90’s X-Men animated series), and you have, hands down, the worst film I’ve seen thus far this year.
This doesn’t even fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category. It’s just “plane” bad. (Sorry.)

It’s sad to see Erick Avari (Heroes’ Papa Suresh) slumming in this bargain basement production, just one other thing we can blame Sylar for. If that maniac hadn’t iced Papa Suresh, then maybe Avari would have been too busy and not been forced to endure the humiliation of playing Dr. Bennett, the slimeball responsible for the virus.
Kevin J. O’Connor’s also here, as the prisoner Burrows is transporting to France. O’Connor was a lot of fun in Stephen Sommers’ neat creature feature Deep Rising. He was annoying though in Sommers’ follow-ups, The Mummy and Van Helsing. He isn’t very funny either in Plane Dead.
The rest of the cast doesn’t fare much better than Averi and O’Connor, and it’s pretty difficult to find anyone who seems to be having fun in this one.

It’s all sad and shoddy, the sort of production where nothing quite masks the low budget it’s all operating on. You can’t even be distracted by good performances or good storytelling.
I’ve mentioned the thrill-free script. Well, it also displays a distinct lack of creativity and flair in getting its story across.
There are a bunch of Pentagon sequences, which serve as nothing so much as awkward expository devices, as the military and government types conveniently discuss the whys and wherefores of the virus.
It is also here among these scenes that the one chillingly serious note in the entire film is played: that if the virus is loose on Flight 239, that it should simply be shot down to prevent the contagion from spreading. It’s a serious note though that gets lost in the achingly bad film it finds itself in.
Not a shred of tension can be found anywhere in Plane Dead’s running time, no sense of danger or anxiety. Just knuckle-headed goings-on and mediocre zombie splatter you’ve all seen before.
And just when you think things can’t get any worse, just after a zombified Papa Suresh sticks his face in the camera, the end credits start scrolling to a horrendous song entitled “Don’t Blink,” written and performed by one Bill Grainer.
Sweet mother of God.

It’s a film like Plane Dead that makes the current zombie cinema craze a bad, bad thing. Ironically, their tag line says it all: this is a flight you really wanna miss.

(Plane Dead OS courtesy of horror-movies.ca.)