Released: July 2019

Director: Alexandre Aja

Rated R

Run Time: 87 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Picture

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Cast:
Kaya Scodelario: Haley
Barry Pepper: Dave
Morfydd Clark: Beth
Ross Anderson: Wayne
Jose Palma: Pete

In the genre of horror, there are many different sub-genres.  We have slasher movies, torture movies, rape/revenge thrillers, and the supernatural.  Horror is also one of the most flexible and adaptive genres in film, despite what many people would think.  You can have horror comedies like Ghostbusters and Army of Darkness while still having full-on horror flicks like The Descent, Final Destination, and Wishmaster.  There is one sub-genre in horror that I’ve loved since I was a kid:  The creature-feature.  It is a tried-and-true form of horror that goes all the way back to the 50s with films like Tarantula, Them!, The Blob, and It Came From Beneath The Sea.  These are regarded as classics within the genre, and rightly so.  Over the course of the 70s and 80s, we began to see more films like Jaws, Leviathan, Deep Star Six, Piranha, and many others.  One of my favorite all-time creature features was Tremors from 1990.  It was scary, funny, and it did everything right.  There are a lot of films in this particular field that are really good, like the ones that I just mentioned, and it’s also loaded with some really awful movies like Sharknado.  Well, this summer, we ended up getting a new creature feature that despite decent reviews, got pushed to the side:  Crawl.

Crawl begins as professional swimmer Haley gets a call from her sister, saying that she hasn’t heard from their dad, David.  Haley decides to go check on her father because of this.  Meanwhile, the town is about to be hit by a Category 5 hurricane.  She finds her father in a crawlspace beneath their old house, but they aren’t alone.  They are hunted by a couple of bloodthirsty alligators, so they have to fight to survive not just the storm, but the savage beasts themselves.  That’s it.  There is absolutely nothing more to the story than that, and you know what?  That’s just fine.  You don’t corrupt business or military to create tension in a film.  All you need is an environment that is as threatening as the creatures themselves.  The entirety of the film is set beneath a house during a massive hurricane that brings the attention of some really hungry gators.  Is it realistic?  Not particularly, but the film isn’t trying to be super-realistic.  If you’re looking for a monster movie that’s realistic and has some message about the nature of humanity, move along.  You’re not finding that here.  Again, that’s a good thing.  The film trims most of the unnecessary fat but keeps the bits that make these movies worth watching in the first place.  In fact, the end credits of the film start at the 83-84 minute mark, so the movie doesn’t have time to get bogged down with pointless bullshit.  There are some elements of characterization here and there, but they are superficial at best.  Don’t come for the story.  There’s really nothing there.

In Crawl, our main characters have to fend off not just alligators, but they have to survive a massive storm as well, so this movie is a bit of a mish-mash of genres as it were.  It’s a disaster/horror/thriller all rolled into one.  Haley and David, our main characters, aren’t the best written characters, but they come across as pretty likable people.  I actually dig the semi-antagonistic relationship that Haley has with her father, David.  To me it lends a bit of humanity to the goings-on that actually makes the audience care more about these two characters.  All the other folks in the movie are strictly gator-bait.  The acting is really good here with Kaya Scodelario playing Haley and Barry Pepper as David.  Kaya was a good pick for this role as she gives the character a tough, never-back-down quality that another actress may not have been able to convey.  She’s absolutely fantastic.  Barry Pepper is also an amazing actor and his performance here is spot-on.  Again, the characters aren’t that deep, but the actors give them enough to make them very relatable.  Of course, you have to have a token pet to keep from becoming gator food.

If you learn anything about Crawl’s director, Alexandre Aja, it’s this:  Aja’s films have a tendency to be extremely violent and bloody.  They’re violent, but not without purpose.  That kind of makes Crawl a bit of an anomaly.  The film is definitely bloody and violent at times, it’s just not to the same degree as Aja’s previous films.  It’s pretty restrained in that regard.  Don’t get me wrong, though, when the carnage does hit, it’s brutal.  People are literally torn to pieces here.  It’s creature violence, so it doesn’t necessarily carry the same kind of brutality as human-0n-human violence.  The gators in this film are not of the mutated or weaponized variety.  They’re  hyper-realistic and exaggerated in their behavior, but they’re still just animals, so you really can’t hate them for what they do.  One thing you should know going into this film, is that the alligators are completely CGI.  Normally, I’d bitch and moan about fully digitized creatures in movies these days, but the gators are really well done.  They’re extremely detailed, right down to the scale.  Yeah, their movements are extremely exaggerated, but the idea is to make the situation that much more intense.  It really works.  Some of the more gory moments do utilize practical effects and I absolutely appreciate that.  Not only that, the storm effects are absolutely incredible.  As I mentioned before, realism isn’t a factor here.  A category 5 hurricane does a hell of a lot more damage than what you see in Crawl.  Still, it makes for an exciting and thrilling sequence of events that just don’t let up.

Crawl is a film that doesn’t do more than what it sets out to do.  It doesn’t waste time with interpersonal relationships(mostly) or some kind of grand revelation about the world.  No, Crawl is about simple a film as you can get.  It’s more about thrilling it’s audience with intense sequences of scares and gory moments.  In that regard, the film absolutely nails it out of the park.  It’s definitely one of the best creature features that I’ve seen in a long time.  I don’t think it’s as good as 1980’s Alligator, but it’s definitely a good movie in its own right.  In fact, I think Crawl is to Alligator as The Shallows is to Jaws.  They’re not better, but they are worthy entries into a sub-genre that’s seen a lot of crap over the years.  It’s really amazing to see a film like this that is so unpretentious and honest about what it wants to deliver.  I really can’t think of many downsides to the film aside from people doing some stupid things in the film, but that’s standard for movies like this.  It’s a hell of a good time, and it’s a shame that it really didn’t get the attention it deserved.

My Final Recommendation:  See you later, alligator.  9/10

Released: October 2019

Director: Rolfe Kanefsky

Not Rated

Run Time: 97 Minutes

Distributor: ITN Distribution

Genre: Horror

Cast:
Tara Reid: Tess Berryman
Richard Greico: Douglas Winter
Jessica Morris: Gina Wilson
Alex Rinehart: Kim Katlin
Robert Donavan: Father Gregory Mendale
Lukas Hassel: Dylan Wilson
Zachary Chyz: Louis Wilson

The indie film scene, despite the quality of some of the films, tends to be a bit of a haven for different kinds of movies, especially if they’re made on a shoestring budget.  Back in the day, in order to get audiences to see your indie film, you HAD to have a distributor, no matter what.  These days, all you need to distribute your film is basically an online video service like Youtube or Vimeo.  If you got lucky, you could distribute your films through Netflix, Hulu or Amazon.  What I really love about the indie film scene is the ability for people to tackle something original.  You don’t see a lot of originality in big-budget blockbusters these days.  Certain kinds of movies work better with a smaller budget than they do with a bigger budget.  With horror movies, the small budget forces the filmmakers how to approach effects and story content.  Most theater chains will not take movies with extreme violent and sexual content.  But with the indie scene and direct-to-video releases, you can really let loose as long as you’re not actually violating any laws.  Some of my favorite horror movies of all time are indie movies: The Terminator, Evil Dead, Hatchet, and Revenge among others.  Well, we got ourselves another indie horror film for you today:  Art of the Dead.

Art of the Dead follows an architect, Dylan Wilson and his wife, Gina as they purchase a set of seven paintings from a local art gallery.  Each painting is supposed to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath, Pride, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, and Envy.  When the paintings arrive at the Wilson family’s home, bizarre things start to happen.  Gina begins to act very strangely after staring into the painting of a goat, Dylan’s teenage daughter, Donna, starts getting jealous of a fellow classmate, and Louis, the son, is getting frustrated by being accused of not putting any passion into his paintings.  As it turns out, the original artist who created these paintings, sold his soul to the devil so he could live forever through his art.  The one man who knows what’s going on, Father Mendale, enlists the aid of Louis’ girlfriend, Kim, so they can save the family before things get worse.  There aren’t a lot of movies out there where artwork is the main cause of terrifying and tragic events.  Art of the Dead takes a unique approach to the supernatural genre by infusing it with literal artwork.  The idea of a painting that’s possessed or cursed is really bizarre concept, but it actually works for this film’s concept.  It works better than it has any real right to.

From a visual standpoint, this film looks pretty good.  It’s a gory movie, but thankfully, the effects are mostly practical and what CGI there is has been kept to a minimum.  It’s actually rare to see that in a movie like this or in any modern theatrical horror flick.  Most times, filmmakers opt for CGI blood and forego any practical effects at all.  There are effects companies out there that still use prosthetics and gallons of fake blood for the films.  The concept of the film is very interesting.  Each painting represents a particular Sin out of the Seven Deadly Sins.  The painting that’s supposed to represent Lust basically turns Gina into a very promiscuous woman, even though she normally isn’t.  Wrath makes Louis get angry easily and lashes out at anybody who criticizes his work, Gluttony sees a worker consume so much that he literally bursts, and Greed has Dylan trying to make deals that will net him more money.  As you can see, each incident represents a particular theme.  The only other movie that I know of that dealt with the Seven Deadly Sins was….well….Seven.  The overall execution(pardon the pun) is very competent.

The acting, though, is where Art of the Dead kind of goes off the rails.  It’s not that the performances were awful, it’s just that they ranged from being undersold to oversold.  They either didn’t do enough to sell the scene, or they went over-the-top.  Certain sequences were fine with the over-the-top aspects.  Seeing Dylan go bonkers was certainly amusing, but a lot of it was just really bizarre.  I really did like Alex Rinehart as Kim and Robert Donavan, however.  Alex gave the character this nice “girl-next-door” vibe but also didn’t make the character an idiot either.  Donavan plays Father Mendale, and he’s the closest thing you would’ve gotten to a real hero character.  This character had a history with these paintings and tried to warn the family about artwork’s history.  He was fairly convincing in the role.  Honestly, I did a bit of a double-take with Mr. Donavan, because he looked kind of like Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad.  Tara Reid, though, is Tara Reid, and she’s only in the film for a total of about 8 minutes, despite her credit as a producer.  I never really cared for Tara Reid as an actress and Art of the Dead doesn’t convince me otherwise.  I have nothing against her personally, I’m just not impressed with her work.  Overall, the acting is passable, but there’s nothing award-winning here.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot here with a title like Art of the Dead.  You would expect, rightfully so, that a film like this would just come across as a cheap throw-away fright flick.  What we ended up getting is something surprisingly good.  There’s nothing ground-breaking with what you’re seeing, but this is definitely leagues beyond what a lot of indie filmmakers are capable of doing.  There’s definitely a lot of effort put into this film, and it’s a bit smarter than I initially gave it credit for.  This is very much an old-school kind of horror flick in the vein of something like The Evil Dead.  I think if you look at it from that perspective, you’re going to have a good time.  For those enjoy gore, sex and the supernatural, there’s plenty here to satisfy you.  It’s not without its issues, but I think the good outweighs the bad.  It’s worth checking out.  The film is currently available on DVD through retailers such as Walmart and Amazon.  It’s also available on Video on Demand through Amazon Prime as well as Comcast Xfinity InDemand.

My Final Recommendation: I’ll never look at art the same way again.  8/10

Los Angeles, CA — October 13th, 2019 —  ITN Distribution, Inc. is proud to, Inc. is proud to announce the North American release of Rolfe Kanefsky’s film ART OF THE DEAD, an engaging and entertaining supernatural horror film starring Tara Reid (American Pie series), Richard Grieco (“21 Jump Street”, If Looks Could Kill), Jessica Morris (“One Life to Live”), Lukas Hassel (The Black Room), Robert Donavan, Alex Rinehart (The Black Room), and Tania Fox (Puppet Master: Axis Termination).

WATCH THE TRAILER

The DVD release rolled out on October 1st, 2019, in stores nationwide, including Walmart, and online at Amazon.com. It’s currently available for purchase or rental through VOD channels, such as Amazon, Comcast Xfinity InDemand, Charter, Cox, TWC, and Brighthouse.

Art of the Dead was produced by Sonny Mahal and Michael Mahal who wrote and produced the horror-comedy film Party Bus to Hell and directed by award winning filmmaker Rolfe Kanefsky of There’s Nothing Out There (recently released by Vinegar Syndrome on blu ray), Nightmare Man, Party Bus to Hell and The Black Room fame.

FILM LOGLINE:

A collection of paintings unleash horror on an unsuspecting family corrupted by the seven deadly sins of greed, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, pride, and wrath.

FILM SYNOPSIS

When wealthy businessman, Dylan Wilson (Lukas Hassel), purchases a collection of seven paintings from gallery auctioneer Tess Barryman (Tara Reid, American Pie), he has no idea what horrors he has unleashed for himself, his wife; Gina (Jessica Morris, TV’s “One Life to Live”), his college son; Louis (Zachary Chyz), his teen-age daughter; Donna (Cynthia Aileen Strahan), and his two little kids. Only Father Mendale (Robert Donavan) knows what evils lurk inside this deadly art and the history of Dorian Wilde; the artist who made a pact with dark forces when he created these paintings that represent the seven deadly sins. Now, anyone who comes in contact with these pictures are corrupted by Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Greed, Envy, and Wrath! It’s up to Father Mendale and Louis’ girlfriend; Kim (Alex Rinehart) to save Dylan and his family before they are all destroyed by the art of the dead!

 “Art of the Dead” received 5 out of 5 stars from ‘Depthinfilmreview.com’ and is the film ReelReviews.com calls “trippy” and “visually arresting.”

“Art of the Dead is an acid trip.” “7 out of 10.” – HorrorSociety

About ITN Distribution, Inc.

ITN Distribution, Inc. (ITN) is a leading independent film distribution company that specializes in genre and star driven independent films for limited theatrical release, television, PPV, cable/satellite/telco VOD, TVOD/EST, SVOD, AVOD, ancillary and home video in the domestic and foreign markets.

https://www.itnfilms.net/

For the longest time in the film and entertainment industries, woman were not taken as seriously as their male counter-parts.  These industries have been dominated by men since the beginning of the 20th century.  In most cases, female characters were generally expected to be side characters that didn’t do much aside being damsels-in-distress, looking pretty, or being completely evil.  Over the past 30 or 40 years, the pendulum has been swinging the other way, although not as far as some would have hoped.  That being said, there have been a lot of female characters that have been extremely memorable, and for the right reasons.  There have been a lot of influential women in the industry over the years that have shaped and changed the industry into something that was once been dominated ONLY by men, not just behind the camera, but in front as well.  In my opinion, there is no bad time to celebrate women’s contributions to cinema.  For this post, I’m going to discuss some of the most bad-ass female characters to grace the silver screen.  Lead characters or side characters, these women have thrown the doors open on what women can accomplish in this industry.  Ladies, this one’s for you.

Starr Carter(Amandla Stenberg)The Hate U Give

Being bad-ass isn’t always about how well you can beat somebody up or the distance you can shoot people from.  Sometimes, it’s all about standing up for what’s right and confronting the evils of society.  Amandla Stenberg plays Starr Carter, a black female student who was a witness to a police shooting.  Over the course of the film, we see Starr go from being distraught to somebody who became the face of a movement.  While The Hate U Give is based on a book, it plays out like something that’s ripped from today’s headlines.  Amandla’s performance is one for the record books.  This particular scene has Starr confronting a fellow student who doesn’t realize that she’s racist.  Starr is bad-ass because she’s a girl that’s willing to confront issues that have plagued the African-American community for decades.

Hua Mulan(Zhao Wei)- Mulan: Rise of A Warrior

I picked this version of the story over the Disney animated film, because I felt it better represented the legend of Hua Mulan.  The story of Mulan was written centuries ago in China and concerned a peasant girl who took up her father’s sword to defend her country.  The story is really good because when it was written, women were expected to be subservient and obedient.  It was part of the culture.  While Mulan is not an actual historical figure, as far as we know, she may have been modeled on women that defied cultural norms to fight for their homeland.  This film shows a peasant girl that defied her father’s will to rise in the ranks of the army and become a general.  The movie definitely has a lot of action, but at its core was a woman that wanted to defend her family and country against a growing threat and succeed.  You really don’t get to be more bad-ass than that.

Maleficent – Sleeping Beauty

Maleficent is one of the greatest female villains of all time and certainly one of Disney’s most notorious.  If you’re going to be a villain, you may as well go the distance, right?  This character is so evil that when she’s spurned by the king and queen, she puts a curse on their child.  Now, one would think that would be cowardly, but she shows up with not a care in the world and manages to scare the soldiers enough that they don’t dare approach her.  Yeah, she’s evil, but she actually succeeds in carrying out her curse, to a degree.  Obviously, she’s thwarted by the fairies, but still, you have to admit the audacity of a villain to walk in and curse a royal child with death in front of the parents and just disappear without a care in the world.  Maleficent is bad-ass and she knows it.  She even turns into a fire-breathing dragon!  How freakin’ awesome is that?

Leia Organa(Carrie Fisher)-Star Wars

Leia Organa is an important character not just in Star Wars but also in cinema in general.  George Lucas took the princess-in-distress trope and turned it on its head.  Leia is quick-witted, good with a blaster and a take-charge kind of woman.  The moment you see her in the original, you know she’s bad-ass.  Over the course of an entire trilogy, she becomes even more bad-ass, even when she eventually falls for Han Solo.  The late Carrie Fisher took what could’ve been a typical princess role and opened the door for more women to take on roles that had them do more than just stand around looking scared and waiting for somebody to rescue them.  Leia Organa is one of the greatest female characters of all time and we have Carrie Fisher to thank for that.

Ellen Ripley(Sigourney Weaver)-Alien Series

Leia Organa, as a character, may have opened the doors to women trying to break out of the typical female stereotype, it was Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley that took the next step.  Introduced in Ridley Scott’s Alien in 1979, Ellen Ripley quickly became a character known for her tenacity, quick-thinking and general bad-assery.  Sigourney Weaver and Ripley quickly became the face of the Alien films, at least until Alien 3.  I don’t count Resurrection because that just feels like a different movie.  No movie shows Ellen Ripley as a bad-ass more so than James Cameron’s Aliens.  While the character was struggling with what happened in the original film, she’s recruited to head back to LV-426 to investigate the disappearance of colonists that had set up shop there.  Not only is Aliens one of the best science fiction sequels of all time, it also gives Ripley a more emotionally charged arc that has her fighting back against the creatures that killed her crew.  Again, the character was take-charge type and put up with shit from NOBODY.

Sarah Connor(Linda Hamilton)Terminator 2: Judgment Day

While the original Terminator saw Sarah Connor as a helpless victim trying to avoid being killed by a murderous machine from the future, Terminator 2 takes the character and turns her into a warrior woman.  While bad-ass in every sense of the phrase, I picked this particular scene for a couple of reasons.  It shows the character on a mission to kill the creator of Skynet, only to realize that she’s a human being and not a Terminator.  The moment Sarah realizes what she’s about to do has her recoiling and backing away before she ends an innocent man’s life.  This moment shows the character both at her most bad-ass and her most vulnerable.  This scene also marks a turning point in the film in which the characters go on the offensive against Skynet.

Hai Phuong/Than Wolf(Veronica Ngo/Hoa Thanh)-Furie

Now, let’s get into some serious fisticuffs.  Furie is a Vietnamese action thriller that has the character of Hai Phuong tracking down her daughter that had been kidnapped by human traffickers.  Sound familiar?  What separates this film from something like say Taken, is that the lead AND the villain are both women, and both are very bad-ass in their own way.  Hai Phuong is a former gang-member trying to protect her daughter, and Than Wolf is a human trafficker intent on selling Hai’s daughter to organ traffickers.  It’s an emotionally packed story that has some serious heavy-hitting action.  This battle between the two characters is awesome because both actresses do their own fighting and it’s brutal.  It’s an awesome action film.

Sofia(Halle Berry)John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

In the world of John Wick, hurting a dog is pretty much a death sentence.  Never mess with an assassin’s dog.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Halle Berry’s, but she really steals the show during this part of the film.  The character of Sofia used to be an assassin, but ended up managing one of the guild’s hotels in Casablanca when John Wick shows up.  What I really love about this scene is seeing Halle’s character go into full-on murder mode.  What’s even better, is that she has two German Shepard dogs with bulletproof vests that she uses in these fight sequences.  Sofia is pretty much on equal footing with John Wick in terms of combat capability.  She’s one of the few characters in these films that could go toe-to-toe with John Wick and possibly come out on top.  She’s not in the film for very long, but boy does she make an impression.

X-23(Dafne Keen)Logan

I was honestly not expecting the character of X-23 to be as savage as she was in Logan.  Should’ve expected it, though, given that she was created using Wolverine’s DNA.  Essentially, she’s his daughter, and like him, she’s got a temper and mean streak to match.  It was actually very shocking to see a little girl just slicing and dicing grown men left and right.  The movie itself was phenomenal and Hugh Jackman was amazing as always, but Dafne Keen’s X-23 almost steals the show, she’s that good.  I honestly would love to see a spin-off film with X-23, which is ironic considering Logan is a spin-off in and of itself.  Daphne Keene is one to watch out for if she ever takes up the claws again.

There are definitely a lot more amazing female characters out there.  These are just some of my favorites.  It’s absolutely incredible to see so many amazing female characters showing up.  While there have been strong female characters over the years, we’ve really begun to see them show up in the last decade.  I can’t wait to see more.