Reviews

Within the first 2 minutes I knew this was gonna be amateur. One of the main characters has pictures of his family members facing away from him. The pictures are facing toward visitors. I've worked in many office settings and have never actually seen someone face their family pictures away from them. No one does that. For the director to make such an amateur mistake, it means I should lower my expectations.

Lowering my expectations helped like this movie. There were many flaws: the acting (like another reviewer noted, the bald guy talked way too low and was pretty unconvincing). The unsteady swaying cam was also annoying (it wasn't shaking, just swaying all the time). But it was only made for $25,000 and it had around two set locations and 7 cast members. So I have to give it some leeway. The pacing was good. However, they really could have tried harder to increase the tension, suspense, and mystery.

Personally, I give this guys credit because they were interested in making a good movie and did good with what they had. Way too many indie filmmakers seem like they don't care that there's an audience watching the movie. These guys recognized their limitations. As a result, they made a movie that's worth watching for a fan of werewolf horror films. Nothing groundbreaking. But it wasn't a cliché-filled predictable mess like so many other horror movies. It had some gore but no hot chicks get naked, unfortunately. Recommendation: give this one a shot if you have nothing better to do for 75 minutes. It's one of those "Okay. That was all right", shrug your shoulders type horror movies. I'd like to see more from this director as it looks like he could improve with time and better resources.

As one reviewer noted, this is like a Twilight Zone episode stretched into a movie. However, it's actually a mystery/drama movie that could easily air on the Lifetime Channel. There is nothing scary in this movie. Not one thing that in this movie is scary that'll classify this as a horror movie. So if you're looking for a horror movie of any kind, gore or psychological, you won't find it here.

This mystery genre lacks suspense or thrills until the last 25 minutes. This movie was an hour and 50 minutes long. Up until the last 25 minutes, there was no tension, chills, thrills, moody atmosphere, or engaging situations. Nothing happened. The entire movie's story was revealed within the last 25 minutes. That kinda stuff simply does not work for an hour 50 minute movie. At first, I kept saying, "Any minute now something interesting is gonna happen." repeatedly until the 60 minute mark. Then after that, I said, "I don't care what happens. I just feel like finishing this flick because I have a vague desire to see what this is all about." All in all, a totally pointless movie. As another review noted, nothing happens. Not a thing. The characters weren't engaging for me to care about their fate. So what was the point of this flick? I'm not sure even the director knows the point of this movie.

This is not a horror movie. I repeat: this is in no way a horror movie. The only good thing I can say about this movie is the opening scene with the bleached blonde getting entirely butt naked. That's the only noteworthy thing about this movie. I think the director put that scene in there to keep the audience interested. Otherwise, I would have turned it off within 20 minutes. Yes, it was so boring, without the opening nude scene, I'm positive I would have stopped watching 20 minutes in.

At the 30 minute mark, I realized I hadn't seen anything, not one thing, remotely horror related: no suspenseful music, no tense atmosphere, no villain, no one getting killed or disappearing, no blood, no screaming, no running in fear, no victims, nothing, absolutely nothing horror related. I didn't turn off the movie, but I fast-forwarded. I fast-forwarded to the end and still saw nothing horror related. None of the horror elements I mentioned above showed up in the movie at all.

As a result, this movie is mislabeled as a horror. It's a drama fantasy. So if you've been mislead into believing this is a horror movie, either psychological suspense horror with little or no violence, or a gore/exploitation horror, or any other kind of horror, you'll find no horror here. At all.

As far as being a good drama/fantasy goes, it's not. The only thing horror related about this movie is the typical horror plot: unsuspecting young people spend a weekend in a secluded rural area with no cell phone reception so they can have fun with booze, weed, and free sex. The acting is mediocre, at best. The director is flat and uninspired. The cinematography is dull and unimpressive. The dialogue is pathetic (Characters say stuff such as, "Like totally whatever, cakeboy"). And the story is all over the place and nonsensical. Instead of the token black character, we have the token gay character. So there is some heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual sex going on in the movie.

All in all, it is mislabeled as a horror movie. There is nothing horror related in this movie at all. It's a drama/fantasy. But as a drama/fantasy, it fails for all the reasons I described above. Don't bother unless you like wasting your time watching amateur cinema.

Annoying characters that spend most of the time screeching, hollering, bickering, screaming, whimpering, and babbling to the point where you want them to get killed. That's what this movie features. It also features at least six hot chicks and no nudity. The actresses in the movie seemed like the type who, for a few hundred more, would do full frontal. But the filmmaker decided to have them look sexy and not even show the side of a butt cheek. Brilliant.

No gore/exploitation for fans of these kind of horror movies. No suspense, tension, drama, or interesting characters for fans of psychological horror. This movie features many victims but no on screen kills.

The ending: I've seen more than a thousand horror flicks from this century and the last one. I've seen some of the most amateur horror flicks that look like they were filmed on someone's cell. Out of all of them, this one easily falls into my Top 10 worst horror movie endings list. Even that M. Night Shamalamadingdong guy, who is master of uneventful, lackluster endings would hate the ending to this flick.

If you're reading this review, you most likely have not seen this movie. I envy you for that.

Does this movie wanna be a western, giallo, comedy, mystery, or what? This movie fails in every genre. If it's trying to be a western, it fails entirely because the detective's 70s hairstyle, clothes, and mannerisms will completely jar viewers out of the western setting. If it's trying to be a giallo, it failed because most of the movie is nonsensical filler that distracts from the killings. If it was trying to be comedy, I didn't find anything intentionally funny, even by 70s standards. If it's trying to be a mystery, it fails because the movie gets so boring by the halfway mark that I fell asleep. I woke up exactly when the killer was revealed, right at the end. When the killer was revealed, I thought, "This movie is still on?" because by that point I had lost so much interest in the movie I decided to go to bed rather than waste time rewatching scenes I fell asleep during. In fact, I turned it off before the credits rolled.

Boring, boring, boring, even by 70s standards. Boring characters where I didn't care who lived and who died. A western setting that is painfully obvious it's a movie set. And decided lack of tension or suspense in a movie that touts itself as a murder mystery. All in all, if you wanna fall asleep, put this crap on. If you wanna watch something even the tiniest bit memorable, don't bother with this.

Bloodless is basically one of those horror movies that has a good premise but crap execution. The location is smart with a chilling and isolated castle. It's got the usual premise of a group of young strangers forced to fight amongst themselves or work together to stay alive. This could have been made into something interesting but it wasn't.

It has all the usual crap you see in British horror: boring, underdeveloped characters; lame villains; stupid choices; mediocre at best production values; and at the end you'll say, "What kinda crap was that?"

Not worth watching, even if you just want something to help you fall asleep to. This would be a good movie to fall asleep to if it wasn't for occasional screeching from the actresses.

First off, this movie isn't scary. It doesn't have any suspense leading up to the kills, a dreadful atmosphere, or a eerily told story. If you're looking for gore, there is none here. Nothing in this movie is gory. If you're looking for suspense, as I said, it's not here. What is here in abundance is bad acting. Throughout the movie I kept saying, "God, that's some terrible acting." If you want to watch a movie filled with actors who aren't any better than you then by all means watch "Trace."

Another thing I didn't like was the swaying cam. That's where the camera isn't shaking but not steady. It kept jarring me out of the movie because it was painfully obvious the cameraman was tipsy. I don't like watching scenes with people lying in bed and the camera is swaying constantly. But that's the type of stuff I saw. The camera was still for less than 30% of the time. I couldn't get into the movie at all.

Lastly, the kills were too abrupt to be scary. That's what I don't like about modern horror. There's no suspense leading up to the kills where you're tensing up, thinking, "Oh, this douchebag is gonna get it." Instead, they victim just gets stabbed out of nowhere and the impact of his death is too sudden to feel any emotion about it. In this movie, some of the kills are off-screen and the ones that are on screen aren't original, innovative, or surprising. The characterizations are so lame and the kills so boring that I couldn't even muster up the strength to say, "Meh." when someone got killed. All in all, there's no point in watching this movie. No suspense, no gore, no nudity, no interesting characters, nothing.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything the reviewer SomeoneSomewhere said about this film. There is no point to this movie. None whatsoever. Let me start off by saying the first Invoking film was complete crap. It didn't have a wide distribution and the few people that saw it hated it. In fact, people on the IMDb page for the Invoking hated the movie so badly that the last time I was on that page they were gleefully and desperately trying to make the movie have the lowest rating on IMDb. That says a lot because there is total crap out there.

As far as the Invoking 1 and it's sequel, Invoking 2, are concerned, both movies have much in common: terrible acting; annoying and underdeveloped characters; lame villains; utterly lacking in anything scary; the house on the movie cover for the Invoking 1 is nowhere in the movie, and the same goes for Invoking 2, which also features a house on the cover, which is nowhere in the movie; both movies have titles trying to cash in on more popular horror flicks: Invoking one was originally called Sader Ridge but changed to the Invoking to cash in on the Conjuring's title, and Invoking 2's subtitle, "Paranormal Events" was obviously created to cash in on Paranormal Activity's title; and, last but not least, both movies are completely and utterly pointless. I remember a Simpson's episode where Homer is put on a lie detector. The law enforcement agent asks him, "Homer, do you understand the questions I'm about to ask you?" Homer says, "Yes," and the lie detector explodes! That same type of thing would happen to me. If you attached a lie detector to me and asked, "I'll give you $1 million if you can tell me what the point of the Invoking 1 and 2 were about. Can you honestly tell me what the Invoking 1 and 2 were about?" I'd say, "Yes, I can tell you what they were about." and the lie detector would explode!

Seriously. There is no point to either the beginning Invoking movie nor the sequel. Neither of the movies brought anything new, interesting, or innovative to the horror film genre at all. Not once. Furthermore, in terms of story, they have nothing in common. You don't need to see the Invoking 1 in order to understand the Invoking 2. The stories aren't related at all. There aren't any actors in the sequel that were in the first movie; the sequel makes no mention of the story in the first movie; the stories were even set in a completely different location than the first movie; and I you wouldn't know the movies were supposed to be part of a series without the title.

Regarding this sequel, Invoking 2, it's an anthology with 6 unrelated stories. None of the stories are even 20 minutes long. In fact, 2 of them are less than five minutes long. Plus, none of the stories is fleshed out, nor do they feel like they were finished. There were a lot of inconclusive and ambiguous elements in the story that made the stories unsatisfying. I kept saying things like, "Okay, what happened to that guy? How come this woman doesn't have a back story?" The stories ended abruptly and I was left scratching my head and wondering what is the point of telling a story that has no conclusion. What's worse is that many of the stories were pretty predictable. I kept saying things like, "How much do you wanna bet that dude is gonna…? How much do you wanna bet that chick is gonna…?" and it always happened. It is no fun watching a horror movie that features underdeveloped and unlikable characters, zero scares, clichés, inconclusive story elements, and predictability at almost every turn.

Don't bother watching this. Even Scooby-Doo is scarier. There were a few shots of mutilated bodies. But all the kills in every one of the short films was off-screen. Plus, it sucks how this movie had attractive women I thought would get naked (some of them even disrobing) but the movie went the non-nude route with a lot of teasing but no payoff.

All in all, this anthology is 73 minutes long with boring shorts that have no relation to each other whatsoever. If you ever decide to watch this garbage, I'm 100% positive you'll be saying, "I could make a better movie than this even if I spent the entire shoot smoking weed out of a Drano bottle." IMDb please allow 0 star ratings.

The premise: a rookie cop finds herself guarding an old police station all by herself for one night. Is she insane…or are there really ghosts in the place?

The problem: the movie takes place over the course of one evening and there's only one victim. When there's only one victim in the movie, it's hard to get chills because you know a movie is not going to have their main victim get seriously injured or killed until the very end (if at all). Because if the victim is killed or seriously injured halfway through the movie then there's no movie. So in the forefront or the back of your mind, you're constantly saying, "It's hard to feel any tension because I know the victim isn't going to receive any serious damage until the end. So the movie is going to rely on a few creepy moments here and there just to keep the audience interested."

If there were multiple victims, a lot of the stuff that was meant to be freaky could have been freaky because I know that there's a possibility the victim being scared could be seriously injured or killed. But since there was one victim, the stuff I saw was just mildly creepy. But not enough to make me jump or tense. As a result, my eyes were drooping halfway through. Then the clichéd ending came and I thought, "Yep. Big waste of my time."

Plus, I need to add the villains are the typical deranged hillbillies. In the last 20 years, hillbillies have been the most popular villains in horror movies. More popular than vampires, zombies, ghosts, or the Sasquatch. Why are deranged hillbillies so popular? Can we just give them a rest already? Yes, they can be off-putting, but do we need to have them in the majority of American horror movies than come out per year? Geez! What is this fascination with deranged hillbillies in the American horror film industry? I've encountered foreigners who ask, "Why do American films constantly show hillbillies and rednecks in a negative light? What did they do the Hollywood to deserve such a portrayal?" And I have no clue. Their guess is as good as mine.

So that's pretty much it for this boring movie. The one victim will hear strange noises and voices, or maybe see a ghost who appears and disappears, then there might be a jump scare and then she wonders, "Did I dream that or did that really happen?" Or she'll hear a noise, walk into a room, see furniture move on it's own, and then nothing will happen and she walks away wondering, "Did something weird happen or did I just dream that?" Or she might see a ghost, blink or turn away for a second, then the ghost disappears without harming her. This happens repeatedly throughout this movie that's filled with repetitive jump scares, false alarms, and things that make you say, "I could see that coming a mile away." The only interesting thing about this movie is the crazy yet harmless homeless man whose reason for lurking in the old station are never explained. Not once.

This movie made me ask, "What's the point?" This movie added nothing new or interesting to the horror genre. This is a just another horror movie that's trying to get viewers to overlook the clichéd and tired elements of this unscary horror film by having a pretty actress. Yes, she's pretty and you may like her acting. But her character is bland and neither interesting nor engaging. Halfway through the movie I realized I didn't care if the character lived or died. How can I care for the life of such a bland character?

IMDb says this film was released on March 15, 2015. Today is August 4, 2015 and it already has a 2.7 rating. First, let me point out this does not deserve a 2.7 rating. There are way worse movies out there with higher ratings. Way worse. How is it possible that there are worse movies with higher ratings? Unlike other indie film hacks, the filmmakers didn't flood the review sections with bogus 10-star reviews and put up hundreds of bogus 10-star ratings through phony shill accounts. Therefore, I am going to give these filmmakers respect for being honest and not dishonestly have a bunch of bogus ratings and reviews. However, there are positives and negatives about this flick. Negatives: --editing is too choppy sometimes, which make the transitions lack smoothness; --the two intertwining stories should have been fleshed out more. Unfortunately, they were underdeveloped. As a result, the characters didn't have as much life as they could have had. And the story felt disjointed. --too many clichés in this movie had me saying, "I could see that part coming a mile away." --ending wasn't resolved. I don't mind unresolved endings. But the characters need to be truly engaging for me to go with an unresolved ending. It looks like there will be a sequel. --ridiculous human behavior. Seen this in hundreds of zombie movies, books, and comic books. And this one was no exception: characters who do stupid things that make you say, "Do you want to get killed by a zombie? Why would you do something so stupid?" Like in many zombie stories, characters in this movie will be out in the open shouting, talking loudly, making loud noises, or walk or sit around without being alert in case a zombie shows up. Why are characters in this movie shouting, "Hello, is anybody here?" when they walk inside a building that looks deserted by they also know could have zombies inside? A character says he just drove past a horde of a hundred zombies. So what does he decide to do? 10 minutes later he decides to pitch a tent and sleep outside in the woods. What? Why isn't he sleeping in his car with his gun at the ready? And why do characters in this movie sit around in parked cars out in the open with all the windows all the way down? When a character gets attacked due to such stupidity I can't muster the strength to feel bad for them at all. Instead, I can only say, "With all the stupid behavior they display out in the open, I'm surprised they are still alive."

The positives: 1. No shaky-cam or swaying-cam. Shaky-cam is where it's like the cameraman is having seizures. Swaying-cam is where it's not shaking but it's swaying in a way that it seems like the cameraman is too tipsy to hold the camera steady. In both cases, they jar me out of the movie and make the directors seem like amateurs. 2. Not overdoing the loud "BOOM!" jump scare. 3. The actors were good. For many actors it was obvious English wasn't their first language and I felt they did a good job acting in a language that isn't their native tongue. As a result, the good acting made up somewhat for the shortcomings in terms of character development in the story. Therefore, I could emotionally invest myself in the characters to a significant degree. It's just that I would have been able to care for them more if the story had developed them better. And if they didn't behave stupidly at times. 4. The filmmaker managed to do a lot with the limited location. There were only the woods and a few abandoned buildings but the director still managed to make an engaging story with the little he had.

All in all, this movie isn't anything groundbreaking. However, it is nowhere near SyFy Channel level quality in terms of clichés, predictability, and stupid behavior of the characters. They'd have to try way harder to get that low. The filmmaker definitely has potential. I can't deny that. It just didn't work with this movie. Some things were great, such as when he juxtaposed beautiful shots of nature with degrading human behavior. He knows how to be artistic without smothering the audience with pretentious arty-fartsy crap. Thumbs up for that. But other things brought this particular movie down. I believe he'll improve immensely in the future.

Watchability of the movie: the movie has a short scene with a woman being brutalized. If that makes you squeamish then you'd better beware. If you're not squeamish with that (aren't horror movies supposed to make you feel squeamish) then you won't have a problem with it. The gore is little and the zombie kills are off-screen. And the nudity is brief. Overall, if you really want to watch this one, watch it for free and if you have nothing at all better to do. Otherwise, just pass this one by.

Side note: good to see Italian filmmakers going back to genre fiction. Since the 80s, the Italian film industry has been saturated with romance, dramas, comedies, romantic comedies, and romance dramas galore. These films have a small market in Italy and an even smaller market internationally. I want to see Italy go back to their b-movie/exploitation genre film roots. True, their art films and historical dramas made them popular with art film critics. But their b-movies were internationally loved and the world film industry lost out tremendously when Italy abandoned their b-movies. Italy needs to make a comeback with their b-movies. Pronto!

To be honest with you, in terms of acting and writing, this movie isn't any worse than your average horror movie. But in terms of technical quality: sound, lighting, camera work, directing, editing, etc. even the average found footage movie is better. I am not lying or exaggerating.

I am not bashing the director for filming outdoor scenes indoors. I am bashing him for filming them so amateurishly. It was waaaaay to dark sometimes. You have to watch this movie completely in the dark. Otherwise, you'll constantly be saying, "What am I looking at?" I am sure the director excessively darkened the outdoor scenes to mask the fact that they were shot indoors. But it doesn't help if people can't seem much of the time. It also doesn't help when the dialogue makes it painfully clear the outdoor scenes were done indoors. The sound quality for this movie was bad. You could have the loudest speakers on Earth, the sound turned up full blast, your ear pressed against the speakers, and you'll still be unable to hear some of the dialogue. Halfway through the movie, I gave up trying to hear what some characters were saying. Even when they were speaking at normal levels I couldn't make out what was being said.

The sound and crappy lighting make this amateurish movie even more amateurish than it needed to be. Some of the writing was real dumb that would have writers for SyFy channel movies shaking their head, "This top secret government agency *gasp* is secretly running this place." When I heard that line of dialogue I almost immediately stopped watching the movie. The character who delivered that line is speaking after he had gotten his arm ripped off at his shoulder less than 2 minutes ago. This guy has his arm ripped off, they put a towel over his huge wound, and yet he's coherent enough to deliver a long dialogue that lasts more than 5 minutes? WTF? And the movie has seemed to have forgotten about the guy who got shot twice from an AK47 less than 20 minutes and is sitting less than 6 feet away. One character gets shot twice with an AK47 while another gets his arm ripped off up to his shoulder, the main female character only puts a towel over their wounds, and both injured men act as if they fell off their bicycle and landed on their shoulder? It makes no sense. Why isn't the main character screaming for help?

There are a few other technical problems wrong with the movie (like the terrible editing), but I won't go into detail. Nor will I go into the other ridiculous aspects of the writing that would have SyFy channel writers stunned speechless. I'll just go into the two most important parts of a horror movie: the kills and the creature design.

The kills are horrible. The kills are either off-screen or its CGI blood. The filmmaker couldn't even bother to give us fake blood. He had to give us crappy CGI blood.

The monster costume? It's just a puppet head! The movie doesn't show the monster from the neck down at all. Not once. You only get to see the head. And even when they show the head it's for less than 5 seconds at a time. But if your eyes are quick enough you can clearly see the monster is just a puppet head. When I saw the puppet head, my jaw dropped open. I was stunned for 5 minutes. Then I thought, "Maybe it's just a fake-out or something. Maybe that's not the real monster." But then at the end of the movie I saw the puppet head again and my jaw dropped open again. And my jaw stayed open for the remainder of the movie, right through the end credits. And I physically had to close my jaw until after the credits ended. No CGI monster. Not even a dude in a costume. Just a puppet head of something that looks like rabid possum. Wow.

To anyone who is reading this review: if you want to make a horror movie right now. Do it. You'd have to try extremely hard to make a movie worse than Silverhide.

Another poster took this movie too seriously and ended up turning it off halfway through. I wanted to stop watching too at some point until I realized this movie wasn't predictable at all. This is not supposed to be a scary horror movie. I repeat: this movie was not made for scares. It was made for entertainment in the same vein as Tremors, From Dusk Til Dawn, and John Carpenter's Vampires. Like those movies, this one is set in the desert. Also, like those movies, this movie was supposed to be a supernatural action/adventure movie rather than a horror movie.

What's a supernatural action/adventure movie? It's an action/adventure movie with supernatural villains. It's not meant to be horror. It's simply meant to be entertaining. It's the type of movie you put on when you're bored at night, you have beer, you have chips, and you just want to watching an entertaining movie to make you forget your worries. That's why I gave this movie 10/10. It's mission was simply to entertain me and forget my cares and it succeeded.

So if you're home bored, with beer and nachos, and want a supernatural desert movie in the vein of Tremors, From Dusk Til Dawn, and John Carpenter's Vampires, then go with Death Factory. And make sure not to take it seriously.

There are 3 types of movies: 1) movies good enough to watch from beginning to end without fast-forwarding; 2) terrible movies where you can't suppress your urge to fast-forward through them; 3) godawful movies where you realize even fast-forwarding through them would be a waste of time.

Kraptacular...er...I mean Krampus the Christmas Devil is in the number 3 category. I started ff-ing 30 minutes in then by 68 minutes I just decided to turn it off. I just said, "Nah, I can't watch this piece of garbage. I have better things to do with my time, like watch water boil." This movie is the very definition of amateur. It looks like the director got an camera, went to his local roadside bar and said, "Hey guys, I have a camera. Wanna make a movie with me?" They asked, "What's in it for us?" He replied, "Free beer." Then they said, "I'm in." Seriously. I 100% believe that's how it happened.

Acting: homeless people off the street couldn't be worse.

Dialogue: cringeworthy (and that's being generous).

Suspense: none.

Scariness of the monster: looks like they bought it entirely from Walmart, including the mask. Even a junior high kid could make a better costume (and a better movie).

Quality of the kills: even the average Found Footage is more graphic.

This movie is so awful I actually asked IMDb if they could allow reviewers to give a negative or a 0-star rating. Still no reply. But I'm sure if they saw this movie they'd allow reviewers at least to make 0-stars.

Important note to potential film viewers of Asylum (2014): Before you watch this movie, learn about the history of Asylum. It is extremely important that you know the history of this movie before watching this movie.

On the Asylum IMDb message board, posters have provided links to various websites giving the story behind the movie Asylum. For instance, Comedy Film Nerds has a podcast where the original screenwriter for Asylum, Chris Mancini, talks about how After Dark Films managed to completely ruin the movie Asylum. If you go to the website Comedy Film Nerds, make sure you check out podcast 219 for the original story (the actual story starts at 34:20 of the podcast). You can search via the "keyword search" and type in 219. I also read that episode 242 has more information about the story behind Asylum but I didn't listen to that one. So I'll just give a quick rundown of the story of how After Dark Films thoroughly screwed up their own film Asylum: Chris Mancini manages to sell his script to the horror production company, After Dark Films. Then he pitches his proposal to be the director: he shows storyboards; gives information of crew members who are willing to work for a lower fee than normal (some of them somewhat well known); and runs down his idea of how to make the film work on time and within the budget. The After Dark folks say, "Thanks. We'll call you after we've made our decision." A short while later he gets a brief email basically saying, "Yeah, we decided to shoot in Bulgaria and go with a Bulgarian director and Bulgarian crew. I know you wanted it but we're going to do it this way. But we'll keep you in mind for any other projects in the future." That's it. He doesn't hear anything for around a year. Then he goes to a comic con in California and meets the After Dark people. They won't show him the movie, they will show him the trailer, however. He sees the trailer and thinks, "That doesn't look anything like what I originally wrote. But the trailer looked cool, nevertheless. So it looks like everything worked out okay." Time passes and out of the blue the After Dark producers call him up and ask him for a meeting. He says he'll be there. As he's on his way, the call back to confirm if he's going to show up. He says he will. Then, while he's driving to the studio, they call him again and ask if he's coming to the meeting. He's stunned. He thinks, "This is the third time they've called to make sure I'm coming to the meeting. If they have to confirm the meeting 3 times in one day, that must mean they're desperate to see me and something went wrong." He says he'll be there. But before the phone call ends they tell him to meet him at a local bar. Again, he's stunned but he says he'll be there.

When he gets to the bar he asks the After Dark producers what's up. They won't answer him. They continuously evade his question. They tell him to have a drink. No matter how many times he asks, they urge him to have a drink and evade his question. Only after he finishes two drinks do they tell him the truth: the movie is total garbage.

It turns out After Dark Films gave his script to one of their producers, told him to take it to Bulgaria and do what he could with it, and then let him have a free rein. Apparently, the producer completely chucked Chris Mancini's original script and made a completely new one. The only real thing that stayed in the new script is the title. The producer in Bulgaria made a completely unwatchable movie. When the people at After Dark Films saw it they were absolutely stunned. They had a deal with Lions Gate Films for Lions Gate to distribute their films and they couldn't give such an unwatchable movie to Lions Gate to be distributed. So they called Chris Mancini to rewrite it into a comedy. After seeing the unwatchable film, Mancini decides to turn it into an MST3K-style comedy because that's all he can do with the remaining few thousand dollars from the original budget.

So there it is, folks. The story behind Asylum and a little peek at the stupidity that goes on in Hollywood. After Dark Films is an utterly ridiculous film company. They used to have a festival called "8 Horror Films to Die For" but the films were so awful and so thoroughly trashed by the audiences that they stopped doing that festival and now put out fewer films since 2011. Their 2007 film "Captivity" managed to generate so much controversy and hate from feminists that Joss Whedon tried to get it banned from movie theaters. It's amazing how such a company can still manage to run. In fact, it's amazing how Hollywood still manages to run when you hear all the stories of thoroughly inept filmmaking that will make your jaw drop.

As far as the film Asylum goes, you should only watch it if you like MST3K and are willing to watch a movie inspired by it. The other reviewers didn't know about this film didn't know the story behind this movie before watching it. That's why they were completely perplexed and turned off. Knowing the story behind this movie makes it much easier to watch. I actually liked some of the jokes such as them calling Stephen Rea "lesbian Bob Dylan". If you're a fan of MST3K and have beer and potato chips, give this movie a shot. If not, then steer clear of this train wreck.

I seriously tried my best to give this movie the benefit of the doubt. The last zombie movie I saw was Rise of the Zombies. Rise of the Zombies was a zombie movie with incredibly stupid things like zombies that can swim and climb the Golden Gate Bridge with their bare hands. So when I began to watch "Survival" I thought, "No matter what, this can't possibly be as dumb as Rise of the Zombies." I was right. This isn't as dumb as Rise of the Zombies. But Survival is only slightly less dumb.

I wanted to give the actors some credit. For the majority of actors, English is not their first language. And it is difficult sounding authentic in a language that's not your own when you're acting in a movie. However, the script and story were terrible. No matter how hard they tried, the script and story just tore down whatever attempts they made to showcase their acting abilities.

The movie just was a SyFy channel inspired movie. It's got the music, the setting, the story, the script, the extremely stupid behavior from characters, and even a little CGI blood to remind me of a SyFy channel movie. Stupid stuff in this movie just had me shaking my head. A trained former Navy Seal/mercenary sees two handguns and two AK47 lying beside dead bodies. What does he do? No only does he take the handguns without taking extra ammo, he leaves both AK47s. Or how about the mercenary with the AK47 that sees the zombie coming toward him who has plenty of time to shoot deciding to just stand there and get eaten? And how about the fact that the zombies attack our protagonists with machetes and pitchforks? They are supposed to be in some sort isolated forest near a biological research facility in Poland. Where are the machetes coming from? Are there sugar cane trees in Poland now? This movie is a 100 minutes long. If you took a drink of alcohol every time you saw something in this movie that was stupid beyond belief, you'd have alcohol poisoning by the 45 minute mark. I knew this movie was going to be stupid within the first 5 minutes. But I was wishing it wasn't going to be SyFy channel level of stupid. Looks like I definitely didn't get my wish.

This is SyFy channel quality. It's true that SyFy has made worse but still this is something SyFy would air on their channel.

This movie has a plot any horror fan has seen plenty of times before: a person gets an old house. Said person invites decides to spend a weekend there with a group of her clueless friends. People start disappearing one by one. And yes, this particular movie features deranged rednecks. Can someone PM an answer to this question: do horror filmmakers get fined if they make a horror movie set in a rural area that doesn't feature deranged rednecks? It seems like the vast majority of rural horror features deranged rednecks. Sometimes they're deformed. Sometimes not. Sometimes they're Christian. Sometimes not. But they are always weirdos who seem to have little respect for human life.

Another problem: the movie features 4 hot chicks and one dude as the protagonist. Why isn't there any real nudity? We see a brief glimpse of boobs (less than 10 seconds) and a real good shot of the one dude's butt. But the other chicks don't get naked. What's the point of having 4 hot chicks in your movie (with plenty of chances to show them naked) but there's no worthwhile nudity to speak of? Stupid.

Plus, the dialogue left a lot to be desired. Even worse is the acting, which is everything between crap to mediocre.

Another thing, the movie has many clichés: victim will knock the killer out but not make sure he's dead; character disappears and another character will wonder where she went to then another character will say, "She's probably off shopping or something. You know how she is"; victim will be running from her attackers only to find the body of one of her dead friends; characters wanting to split up saying, "I think we should take our chances and try to make a run for it" while the other character says, "No, I think we should stay here and wait for help"; no working cell phones; newspaper clippings to tell the back story; etc.

Moving on: the suspense is lacking. The stuff leading up to the kills didn't feature truly suspenseful music; a tense atmosphere; a sense of danger; engaging camera work; scenes dripping with suspense; or anything that would set a really dramatic mood. The lack of suspense is worsened by the lame kills. Most of the kills take place off screen where fake blood splashes on walls and drips down from the victims' bodies onto the floor. I don't need graphic violence in my horror. But a movie like this that lacks suspense at least needs to show some good kills.

All in all, this is SyFy channel quality. Granted, it's not ridiculously dumb like their other movies (I'm looking at you, Swamp Sharks). But it's still a dumb horror movie rehashing tired clichés. Take away the brief shot of the woman's boobs and the shot of the dude's butt and this movie is all set for an Saturday or Sunday afternoon slot of SyFy.

This movie is torture porn, plain and simple. It's got the usual crap you see in most horror movies these days: bad acting, bad script, victim knocks the killer out but doesn't check to make sure the killer is dead, characters splitting up, no cell phone service, etc. When I was watching this movie I thought, "People aren't even trying to make anything new and engaging with horror movies these days. It's all about rehashing the same junk." And that's pretty much all this movie is: just a rehashing of the same junk any horror fan has seen before. The killer wears a bedsheet over his head. I subscribe to the idea that if you're going to conceal the killer's identity, give him a good disguise or a gruesome face. Don't just give him a bedsheet and a hammer and expect people to be scared.

Without the credits, the movie is less than 65 minutes. And even within those 65 minutes there isn't much to watch. Much of it is just establishing the cardboard characters and their lives and long scenes inside a stripclub. I don't mind scenes of strippers at work. But I get the feeling the director put those scenes in the movie to keep the viewers interested and to pad together a movie that would have been a 30-40 min. short without the stripclub scenes.

All in all, if you've seen torture porn movies before then you know what you're getting into if you decide to watch Cross Bearer. So you only have yourself to blame if you watch it and end up hating it. I tried to warn you by putting out this 1-star review of this movie that deserves 0 stars at most.

I'm not even going to waste too much time writing this review. This is basically an Austrian version of a SyFy channel movie. Don't let the high-gloss cinematography fool you. The technical problems of the movie first: horrible English voice dubbing reminiscent of Chinese Kung Fu movies. You'll have the voice actors stop speaking but the live actors are still moving their mouths. Plus, the voice actors did not fit their live actors. Voice actors who sound like they are in high school or college should not be dubbing for live actors who look like they're in their 40s. The other technical problem: get a tripod. These filmmakers need to get the stupid idea that swaying the camera from side to side throughout the entire movie heightens the realism out of their heads. No movie has ever suffered because camera wasn't shaking or swaying. But every movie that has constant swaying or shaking has suffered. Fact.

As far as the story goes, there are characters acting real dumb and stuff that doesn't make sense. If you asked me to list at least two dozen really stupid things characters did in this movie, I could give you three dozen in one minute. Just goes to show you that SyFy channel doesn't own the monopoly on really stupid horror.

By the way, the creature effects range from mediocre to terrible depending on who you ask.

So if you want a SyFy channel movie with an Austrian flair and horrible Kung Fu movie-type dubbing, Blood Glacier is the movie for you.

Whoa! The user J. Davis must have watched a completely different movie than I did. Perhaps there's another movie called the Wrong House that I can't find. All I know is no one who watches this movie could possibly write the same things he did. Here are some of his quotes: "It obviously didn't have a high production value & you shouldn't expect to recognize the cast but due to it's original plot..." Stop right there. Original plot. Unsuspecting young people getting killed off one by one by deranged serial killers is an original plot? Hmm. This must be the first horror movie J. Davis has ever seen.

"As far as the plot goes they pretty much tell you everything that goes down in the plot summary so I won't get into it much. It delivers a message that applies to every day life, if you go through yours doing bad things of any kind to people you don't know, eventually you are going to get your ass handed to you." I know my criticism of this quote isn't entirely based on the movie. But anyone who is past the age of 18 will tell you there are plenty of who do bad things who never get their ass handed to them. Sadly, that's the way society is. And people watch movies to escape that fact and see justice done for once.

"If you are a horror fan that doesn't mind a low budget you should give it a chance. Once your into it for around 20-25 minutes you can't help but to see it through." Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! 20-25 minutes in you can't help but see it all the way through?! The only person who could honestly say that is someone bound and gagged with his eyelids forced open like Malcolm McDowell from A Clockwork Orange or maybe one of the victims in this movie.

My assessment: awful. The cinematography looks like it was filmed with a 1980s camcorder. Even Birdemic has better cinematography. The directing was terrible. There were way too many unnecessary closeups. The director is extremely addicted to closeups. At least half the shots in this movie are closeups. Also, there's this lame scene where the villains have bound their victim with a chain and it has all these pathetic effects with shots intertwining, the lighting and colors changing, slow-mo sound effects, lights flickering, and the camera jumping. I know the director wanted to make that scene seem trippy. But it just came across as being annoying.

The acting...hmmm...let's just say I could go to my local bar and grille and find better actors. Plus, I feel as if I could write better dialogue even if I was drunk. The sound was amateurishly done. It was a little too muffled for it's own good.

The kills: depending on how serious you take this movie you'll find the kills either cringeworthy or laughable. There's this one particular kill that was so utterly ridiculous it left me speechless. It's after the usual, "let's split up" moment in horror movies. It's a total WTF?! moment. If you've managed to make it that far, you'll either turn off the movie to go do something constructive (like stare at boiling water) or you'll have a difficult time picking yourself off the floor with laughter.

The villains aren't scary in the least bit. The woman looks like your average suburban soccer mom. The guy with the crew cut looks like the guy at your local tattoo parlor. And the main villain looks like some ex-bass player in some washed up heavy metal band that nobody has ever heard of. When I saw the villains, I facepalmed and said, "These spare change budget horror slashers don't even try to get a scary villain." It seems like this is one of those camcorder horror movies made for fun that you see in those $5 horror movie combo packs. Apparently, this was made for $10,000? Wow. I wonder what the director did with the other $9,000 because it looks like he only used $1,000 to make this movie.

So there you have it, folks. If you're looking for some dumb camcorder horror movie that looks like it was made for 1000 bucks, this is your movie.

It seems like horror movies these days fall into 3 categories: good or excellent (less than 5% of all horror movies per year); "I've seen worse" (30% of all horror movies per year); and utter garbage (the remaining 60-plus% per year). This is one of those "I've seen worse".

The entire movie is a mishmash of different horror movie elements you've seen in plenty of horror movies before:

1. deranged redneck family. 2. unsuspecting yuppies are stuck in a rural area with no cell phone reception. 3. decent actors wasted on a terrible script and poorly developed characters (although the kid was annoying). 4. long torture scenes where the victims are bound and gagged. 5. "BOOM!" jump scares whenever we see a shadow. 6. the heroine is pinned down by the villain but then finds a conveniently placed weapon nearby to defend herself with. 7. despite the fact that she's been through a physically trying ordeal through mud, blood, and grime, the heroine's hair, makeup, and nails are great. 8. the victims will knock the killer out but never make sure the killer is dead.

I was just shaking my head throughout the entire movie, constantly saying, "Wow...this is reeeeaaally generic...at best...". It's never a good sign when I start fiddling with my phone out of boredom. But I was doing that throughout the movie. Before I knew it, the movie was virtually over and everything seemed to be okay. Then the lame twist ending came around and I thought, "Well, unnecessary and mediocre twist endings are the norm these days. So why am I not shocked by this." I think the only interesting thing were the villains' masks. Why were they wearing them? I understand they wanted to keep their I.D.s a secret, but they could have chosen better masks. The masks are stuffy and hard to see through. In real life, any killer wearing those masks would have ripped them off in frustration.

All in all, this is a forgettable movie for someone looking to kill time. After watching it you'll think, "Well, I didn't hate the movie. But I have no desire whatsoever to watch it again."

I saw this back in 2012. I found it boring and forgettable. Indeed, I did forget about it until today on the horror boards people were talking about this movie. So I remembered it. I remembered it was lame. And I decided to make this review.

First off, I'd advise you to watch the trailer. If I had watched the trailer before seeing the movie, I highly doubt I would have watched the movie. I am not a fan of that type of low budget cinematography. I reminds me of those bad movies from those crappy $5 horror movie combo packs from Walmart. There's just nothing inspiring about this cinematography.

I also disliked the acting. To put it mildly, the acting was terrible. The actors have virtually no acting experience prior to this movie and it shows. There was this scene where the mother, father, and two brothers are in a garage and the father is being abusive. The acting was so awful I was squirming in my seat. I just wanted to stop watching the movie at that point. I kept with it as a favor to a friend who was lamely trying to score with a chick who was close to someone involved with the production. So he didn't want to be rude and leave her like that. But watching them was a trial. The guy who played the dad was horrible. He looked like he wanted to laugh sometimes. And he just couldn't act at all. The other family members were bad too. But the dad was so awful they actually looked half-way mediocre whenever he was around.

The movie didn't get any better after that part. If you watch the trailer, you'll hear the kid's voice narration. Unfortunately, his narration is throughout the entire movie. His narration is really annoying because his narration sounds stilted and it is painfully obvious he's reading it from a paper as he goes along. I don't expect any Oscar winning narration from the kid but--geez--listening to him really decreased my viewing experience.

Last, but not least, the scares. Is this a horror movie? It has to be categorized as one. But horror fans will object to this because there is neither anything scary about this movie, nor does it bring anything new to the genre. As others have stated, it is much more of a drama-type movie. There is nothing really suspenseful for fans of psychological horror. There isn't a chilling atmosphere. There is little sense of danger. There is no mystery.

For fans of gore, there isn't much of that either. Most of the deaths are off screen. That was a huge letdown. Plus, when there is violence, it isn't strong as you'd expect in a gore horror. For example, the movie will show someone hitting someone else. The camera will stay on the person doing the hitting, you hear the sound, but never see the hit connecting. Instead, you'll see the person getting hit spitting phony blood out of his mouth. I think that's what the movie really relied on to keep the audience interested: the phony blood. But the blood wears off after a while when you realize that's all there is.

All in all, if they took away the serial killer aspect; tightened the script; gotten better actors; and polished to cinematography, this would have been a decent drama. It's the new thing with indie films to use their low budget as some sort of marketing gimmick. The gimmick is as worn out as phony shill reviews on IMDb. I'd advise everyone who is thinking about watching this movie to check out trailer and read all the reviews before seeing this movie.

My friend Mike looked at me and asked, "Wanna come over to my house Friday night? We're gonna have tons of booze, play games, watch stupid horror movies, and even try a Ouija Board." He had me at "tons of booze." So I showed up Friday night but I skipped the card games because I suck at poker. I went downstairs and 10 people were about to watch a movie. I asked, "What movie are we watching?" and sat down. The guy next to me shrugged. "I think some Sasquatch movie." I thought he was talking about some Sasquatch documentary. But as the opening credits came on I saw the words "Midnight Releasing" and I said out loud, "Oh s***." Everyone laughed at that. But they should have known it was no laughing matter.

Midnight Releasing is a production company that is notorious for putting out horror movies so garbage even Uwe Boll would be unable to watch. I went to their website once and checked out their trailers. It was just one piece of garbage after the other. I shouldn't have watched this Night Claws movie. But I thought the booze would make it tolerable. It didn't.

Immediately, when the movie began we're shown the obligatory "young people having sex in a secluded area" scene. During the sex, the inevitable girl stops the sex because she heard something part, where the guy says, "Probably just the wind". Followed by "There it is again. John, go into that creepy dark, forest and check out that terrifying sound" part.

Although the movie already started downhill, it goes further downhill by the minute. The acting is atrocious. Plus, a lot of the voice work for the outdoor scenes sounded like it was post-synchronized in an indoor setting. Plus, the script was bad. Unnecessary scenes and people arguing with each other because the writer thought that was necessary for the plot, or something. The regular stock characters in horror were there: the bimbo; the selfish jerk who acts aggressively to everyone for little or no reason; the deranged redneck who knows about the creature; the violent redneck who wants to do whatever he can to kill it; the old, guttural-voiced sheriff who relies on some scientist to inform him on the creature; and the plethora of random people who are just thrown in to increase the kill count.

The special effects is stuff any guy off the street could do. There's this one scene that is extremely dark but it's clear that it was filmed at daytime and darkened with a filter. In this scene, they build a fire. But it's painfully obvious the fire is computer-generated. The computer animated "fire" looked like Super Mario Bros. graphics.

There actually isn't any gore in this movie. For a monster movie to lack gore, that's truly awful. I'll just stop here. To be honest, this is the type of movie only for those horror fans looking for a horror movie where it's obvious the filmmakers just wanted to make a stupid horror without any thought to being scary, original, suspenseful, or innovative. It's clear everyone involved with this movie knew this movie would suck. And if you watch this movie, you'll know it's gonna suck within the first 10 minutes. 1/10 stars from me only because a zero rating isn't allowed on this site.

*yawn* Oh, you're here. And you're reading my review because you're wondering if this movie is worth watching. Well, if you're a horror fan, you've already seen this movie. The movie jumps from one cliché to the next every five minutes. You'll already be predicting what happens in the movie when you're 1/10th of the way through. You won't even need to read the screenplay.

Synopsis: Basically, we have your clichéd horror flick where the yuppie chick has decided to move out to a house in a rural area to "get away from it all". This is one of those small town horrors where the townspeople are aware of the demonic entity. But instead of talking to the protagonist they act cryptic, standoffish, and frightened with the usual "I've said too much already" type of behavior you see in these movies. There's also the obligatory grizzled redneck who knows a lot about the demonic entity. He acts shifty, scared, and distant. And, instead of telling the woman from the get-go about the demonic being, he decides to wait until after she's been haunted to break the news to her. These rural horror demonic ghost type of horror movies always have these townspeople who know about the local demon. But it's never explained why they continue to live in a town possessed by a demonic being.

What's equally perplexing is why these yuppie women continue to stay in these demonic houses after they experience strange things? The main chick hears noises she shouldn't hear; she sees the reflection of people walking behind her and catches ghostly visions staring at her but disappearing when she blinks; things crash and break abruptly; etc. And all she ever says to these occurrences is "Huh. That's funny." and then continues to live in the house as if nothing important is happening? There are also a plethora of other clichés that bombard the horror fan: newspaper clippings to tell the back story; character says, "Don't leave me" and other character says, "stay here. I'll be right back. Everything will be okay." after they hear something strange out in the dark woods; guy goes out to check after hearing strange noise; etc.

Other clichés I didn't like: swaying cam, where the camera isn't shaking like the camera man has seizures but the camera isn't steady either (apparently, tripods are too expensive to buy these days); annoying "BOOM!" jump scares; and the inappropriate music at the wrong time. I'm really tired of this amateurish junk that gets passed for film-making in the indie community.

By the end of the movie, I lost count at the number of clichés I saw. The only thing that made me stay awake was the scene with the chick who came out of the rain. That scene made me raise my eyes and say, "Whoa. That came out of nowhere. That was a pleasant surprise." I gave this movie 1-star because the filmmakers didn't flood the review section with phony shill reviews like you see on so many other indie film reviews on IMDb. So congratulations on that. Everything is was a waste. I've seen everything in this movie. It wasn't suspenseful for those who like atmospheric horror with little to no gore. Nor was it gory enough for the gore/exploitation fans. Without the nudity, this movie would be PG-13 horror.