Reviews

There was no Christmas in this movie. Why is it called White Christmas? They sang a ton of non-holiday songs, there was no snow, it was completely unrelated to Christmas. And it was so long, and so slow. It felt like 5 torturous hours.

Intolerable death-by-boredom that plays as well as a 1990s home video of your friends playing D&D in your basement, except you could actually stand listening to _your_ friends.

This is just one of those things that somehow gets on video because someone dug up enough money to pay for that. And it turns up on video or Netflix at just the right time to try and trick you into seeing it by having a title with one of the same words as the title of something that recently went to theaters (Ouija). That trick worked back in the days of VHS rentals my friend, but these days, we can hate you without losing $3 and move on.

I was excited to see the new series The Finder after how much I enjoyed the crossover/pilot episode on Bones, but this series is terribly disappointing. They took out everything that made it good.

At first I was puzzled and thrown off when the episode aired on Bones, I was waiting for Bones and what we got was an episode of some totally different show. But I liked it a lot. The three main characters worked so well together.

The loss of Ike is a terrible blow to the group dynamic. She really fit well with them. I can agree that her accent got a bit grating, but I think they could have re-worked it down some. Neither of the women on the show now have anything to them. They are generic, with low level acting ability, and lack interest. They don't fit, they don't have the chemistry with the other actors.

Also very odd is that Walter's character has changed. I was impressed with him on the episode of Bones, but when I started watching this series I looked up the info on IMDb and I was actually surprised to find that it was the same actor. I actually thought it was someone new. He is not playing it as well as he did before, I think. Something's missing. Sure, he could tone down the paranoia a bit from the Bones episode and likely we'd be happy, but something's so off, it's like his own enthusiasm and chemistry for the show have been shot down.

I'm so sorry to see it go this way. They really had something there, and it's lost now. Particularly in their choice of uninteresting, unskilled new actresses. Overall the energy is gone. I feel so bad for the actors, they nearly had a great show that could have lasted. The way it is now is not something to keep sitting through.

This was at least as good as a couple episodes of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?". Not bad. Not excellent, but not bad. Oddly entertaining was the baffling and near-incomprehensible screen time with Flavor Flav "hosting" at the beginning and end, which seemed to be just rambling that essentially amounted to repetitions of "This is a movie. Know what I'm sayin'?"

The second story was a lot stronger than the first. There really wasn't much to the first, aside from the twist of who they run into. The second story had enough interest to keep you guessing for a bit. Bonus points for Tony Todd in the cast.

I love this movie. I can't understand why so many of the reviews are negative. I ended up wondering, what movie was everyone else watching?

People are saying it was confusing and hard to follow. It wasn't at all. It was a great mystery with several possibilities, which were all great fun to think about as the movie went on. When the end came up, all was made clear. You just have to have been using your brain through this movie to get it.

Then there are also those who say "it's a ripoff of Nightmare on Elm St", and I think, "um, what?" These are the sort of people who say that any movie with a killer animal of any kind is a ripoff of Jaws. Sure, in the endless world of horror certain themes can only be done so many times, but reviews like that are pretty much the same as saying that all horror movies are just copies of all other horror movies.

Perhaps one just has to have an interest in souls, mythologies, and pondering possibilities to enjoy this movie. I am a fan of horror all around, I've seen so many and such a range I couldn't begin to get into it. I've seen plenty of mindless slashers (including the enjoyable ones), and more than plenty of crap story lines I wish I hadn't. This was not one of those, and I liked it.

The acting was good, especially Max Thieriot as Bug. I thought the twists and turns with Bug were fascinating. They gave the option to question whether or not people around him were real, or in his head. Yes, they were real, but it was one of the interesting possibilities I considered.

Overall, the movie was very enjoyable.

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE. DO NOT WATCH IT.

It's too bad the lowest rating here is 1. This thing would be in the negative. Far in the negative.

It is not even a movie. Three idiots went out with a personal video camera. Probably a 12 year old video camera, as any hand-held camera made today takes video and sound several hundred times better than this thing. There are no actors, these people were either friends or randomly pulled off the street. There are no real zombies, and nothing ever happens. The morons in the film did nothing but tell unfunny poop jokes. How in the frickin' hell does something like this get on a DVD, aside from these idiots burning dics on their own computers? I do not know. I really don't. Maybe one of them was a bored rich kid. If so, they should have bought some film making equipment.

I love horror movies. I love bad horror movies. I'll watch piles of B movies that no one else would touch, and some of them I like. I love zombie movies and pick up nearly anything that says "zombie" to give it a shot, thus I ended up with this thing. After 15 minutes or so I gave up and watched the rest on Fast Forward, hoping to see something interesting. There was nothing. I desperately wanted that half hour of my life back.

Another reviewer compared the quality to a wedding video. With cameras today, a wedding video would be much more watchable. Another reviewer said the director's trailer should be toilet-papered. I'm pretty sure there was no director. A 7th grade film project *I* shot with neighborhood kids enacting Lord of the Flies is more watchable than this.

SAVE YOURSELF. It's too late for me, but you can still run from this home video grade school project pretending to be a movie.

Pay no attention to the cover art, there are no spinning saw blades, and I'm not sure who that woman is supposed to be. In any case, if you need a horror movie for New Year's Eve, you could do worse than this one. It is generally enjoyable, and actually stays truer to the New Year's Eve theme throughout the movie than Bloody New Year (1987) which got kind of Christmas-y in the middle. Anyway..

The movie opens on a New Year's Eve party complete with a rock performance of Auld Lang Syne on top of an abandoned office building. 5 people & 2 party-crashers who come along are diverted to a "VIP" party on the 27th floor by text message, where they find strange surprises waiting for them. As they split off to solve riddles, the killer starts picking them off in twisted ways.

The production values are good, and personally I think the acting is not bad. The writing is kind of crap though. The initial character responses make no sense. Upon discovering place cards that insult each of them, they are too excited about digging into cake rather than being suspicious. The dialogue is frequently bad. The characters go nuts rather quickly, and the "guy you now hate" is clearly reaching to make you hate him, going off about everything that is too stupid to go off about.

But overall the movie is enjoyable. The level of psychotic is fun. It somewhat reminds me of the 2001 movie Valentine. If you liked Valentine, you'll probably like Steel Trap.