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Saint 2010 ★★★★
A horror comedy centered to one of the most confusing holidays when you are not from these parts. Wether it's the Zwarte Piet issue or the fact that a lot of non Dutch cannot tell Saint Nicholas apart from Santa Claus. Or the fact that a nation whose inhabitants are notorious for their thriftiness have two occasions in less than a month where they go all out on lavish presents. This is set during the start of the 2008 bank crisis, but as a voice on the radio puts it: people spent more than ever on presents.
Being a Dutch movie, we get some of that standard Dutch cheekiness with a scene of students giving each other presents in class (Teacher: Gee, that's the sixth dildo this year. That beats the previous record of five.) and one of the girls takes the opportunity to break up with our lead boy.
So what about the bad stuff? Turns out the holy man from Spain was in fact, a murderer and a thief and now a ghost who goes on a killing spree every time there's a full moon on his day. That's when we get to the carnage and believe you me, there's a good chunk of it. Making this a sort of goresoaked Gremlins.
And a spectacular scene of the police chasing a man riding a horse over the rooftops. For practical reasons, all filmed in CGI now. So sadly, no repeat of the infamous canal chase scene in Amsterdamned.
It's all in good fun and Dick Maas proves he still has the craft that made his work stand out in the eighties with De Lift and the aformentioned Amsterdamned. Sure, the ending is a bit of your typical climax, with a post adventure scene and a bit of sequel bait to cap it off. But it was well done and deserves an attentive audience.
If you enjoyed Maas' previous work, you will certainly enjoy this one.
Grave Encounters 2011 ★★★
As a found footage, it did not really stand out all that much.
Don't get me wrong. The opening scenes had the whole style down of this particular type of “spectacular” reality show. Mythbusters is the first show that comes to mind, but I am fairly certain that there is other more supernatural related programming that they managed to mimic very well.
And then there are the special effects. Seeing them in a found footage is already pretty rare as such and having them as well executed as they are here definetily adds to the film.
So the film has its merits and the third star is deserved. But I have seen this formula better executed in other flicks. Decent, but run of the mill and vice versa. And I can certainly see why people would love this one.
For people who just discovered FF and are starting to dig.
Would You Rather 2012 ★★★
Would you rather is a horror about choices that's easily linked to similar flicks like Saw, The Belko Experiment or even Hounded or The Purge (Pretty sure The Purge: Anarchy had a similar storyline).
I liked it. Sure, it has the tropes of the genre: the self sacrifice, the mad host, the butler who is just as good at poaching eggs as he is at kicking ass, the arrogant, self-entitled son (let's call him Don junior),... but it keeps a solid pace, so I never got bored with it. Even though, it was obvious early on who it would come down to. I also kind of expected the half dead tough guy to make a comeback, but they did not go for that low hanging fruit.
The characters are no Shakespeare, that's true. Then again, normal, levelheaded people do not get themselves into the sort of situation where they have to rely on this type of maniac. So there are only two ways you can go with these characters: either make them the type of sleazebags John Heard does so well, or the sad orphan type character that's supposed to break your heart like with Brittany Snow's character.
The acting? Meh. I thought it was okay for what it was. John Heard and Sasha Grey got characters that suited them and Jeffrey Combs was delightfully hammy as Lambrick. His rejoicing in the suffering made him an excellent villain.
One more thing I would like to mention is the ending. I don't say this very often, but this one was needlessly cruel. I get the all for naught-feel it was supposed to get across. I just doubt wether or not this was really needed. If the writers had gone with Amy as their main characters, it might have worked as a cumuppance. But now? Torture! Huh! Good god, y'all. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
For fans of torture porn and Hunger Games-like survival stuff.
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