Once again, the folks at the IFC have sent out an advance look at a chunk of movie goodness in the form of The Shrine. And while The Shrine will be short on sense, it will be incredibly long on horror action.

The Shrine follows, indirectly, a backpacker who goes missing in Europe, and directly, the film crew who goes in search of his whereabouts and eventual fate. Of course, you can pretty much guess that what happened to the backpacker wasn’t anything good, but when you get a look at just what happened to him–and what will likely happen to the pursuing film crew–is going to be a whole lot deeper and nastier than anyone (least of all the aforementioned pursuing film crew) would ever expect.

I’m always fond of anything coming out of the IFC, and while they’ve had their missteps in the past, they’ve also put out a whole lot of prime content. So when The Shrine got started a little on the slow side, I was eager to forgive. After all, this was IFC we were talking about, and these guys knew their stuff.

My patience was rewarded with a delightfully creepy scene about twelve minutes in. Suddenly, this took on a whole new life of gleeful fury.

Sinister, sinister, sinister. That’s the order of the day right here, it’s a constant string of non-stop sinister. Between the sheer amount of time they’ll spend in Eastern European bizarrity, and the nature of what’s going on (that naturally I can’t tell you very much about), there will be a lot of time here in which you feel that something is gravely wrong beneath the surface. And toward the end, that whole “beneath the surface” is going to burst out into a whole and breathing and thoroughly terrible life. Seriously, if you’re watching this thing, and you ever think it’s slow and boring and deeply unpleasant, I’m telling you, stick with it. The last half hour of The Shrine is going to be a hallucinatory hell ride the likes of which have not recently been seen in film. Seriously, it’s going to be the action movie equivalent of The Exorcist.

And that’s what really makes this interesting; this is going to go from slow and sludgy start to a horrendous, action-packed, terror-fraught ending that isn’t going to make a lot of sense, but will be all the more terrifying for the note of confusion it inspires. The final explanation doesn’t do a lot to help, sadly, but even then it’s sufficiently sinister to make it a huge extra blow.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in response, peels itself off the wall and gives the often confusing yet deeply horrifying The Shrine an eight out of ten. It may be slow, it may not do a great job of explaining everything, but man, will that last half hour ever blow your mind.

Vampire movies have always been kind of a strange batch. We’ve had some truly great ones–Salem’s Lot (either one, really, including the sequel), John Carpenter’s Vampires, 30 Days of Night–and of course, a legion of truly lesser pieces. And sometimes, we’ve had some vampire movies that have just been indescribable. One of those titles comes to us via the IFC, who sent out a copy of Vampires.

Basically, three years before the film was released, a company was contracted to shoot a documentary about the vampire community in Belgium. Sounds bizarre on the surface, but they took the deal and dispatched a film crew. Their sound man was promptly devoured. Subsequent attempts actually went worse, if you can believe that, until they sent out just one last crew under what were called “perfectly safe conditions”. Considering that the film is actually dedicated to the film crew–as well as one crewman’s arm–the end result is going to be only marginally better than previous ventures.

Vampires is chilling for many reasons, but the biggest one is that these vampires believe that they’re performing a valuable service to the community. They genuinely believe they’re helping society by kidnapping people and draining them of their blood. Frankly, it’s enough to make you think that  vampire hunters are our greatest natural resource, if these egomaniacal amoral psychotics are actually out there.

And yet, at the same time, Vampires is a real sight to see. This is a documentary devoted to an entirely fictional community, and yet, at every length, it’s believable. This is what you’d expect a movie about vampires to look like, and that’s strange enough in its own right. I mean, seriously–when’s the last time you saw a viable documentary about vampires? And even better, a fictionalized documentary? That’s just what the IFC will put on, and that makes Vampires a really rare and unique find that’s as chilling as it is compelling. It’s even got some funny bits in it that can’t be denied.

It’s hard to believe that a believable documentary about vampires can actually exist, especially given that vampires themselves don’t actually exist. You get an incredible look at their culture, their ceremony, their rules and guidelines, everything. They even do a great follow-up piece keeping up with a vampire clan that was forced to move.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Vampires a full ten out of ten by virtue of its sheer uniqueness. There is very little, if anything, out there that’s like this. This is a beautiful little movie, and vampire fans are going to love this.

So far, I’ve been loving the lineup from the Bloody Disgusting Selects line of movies. They’ve put out some good stuff, as you’ll remember from our reviews of Rammbock: Berlin Undead and Yellowbrickroad. So I was definitely excited to see a copy of Phase 7 hit my mailbox, as they sent one out.And Phase 7 will not disappoint.

Phase 7 follows Coco and Pipi, a couple with a new baby on the way who just moved into a new apartment building, when something bizarre and horrible happens. A virus begins sweeping through North and South America, as well as parts of Europe. And the apartment building finds itself placed under a quarantine. But as the quarantine drags on, and supplies begin to dwindle, not only does the outside world start looking steadily worse, but the inside world doesn’t look much better. Conflicts within and without threaten the lives of everybody in the building. Who will survive the horror?

The really interesting thing about Phase 7 is that it’s an Argentinian horror film. If you can look at your own movie watching career and honestly answer that you’ve seen an Argentinian movie in the last six months–let alone an Argentinian horror movie–and you’re not actually in Argentina, then you get out more than I do.

First off, I want to lodge a complaint against whatever chimp put the subtitles in place. They used white lettering, and in the frame itself. That means that more than once, you won’t be able to actually see the subtitles. And unless you speak Spanish (or possibly Portuguese or the like, I don’t speak either), you’re going to be lost.

But that issue of engineering aside, the resulting movie itself is actually quite good. You remember those opening minutes of Shaun of the Dead, where Shaun’s going round to the shops for a Coke and a Cornetto, and he walks by zombie devastation and doesn’t even notice? That’s a lot like how Phase 7 kicks off, except this time it’s not edged with humor (at least, not so much as Shaun of the Dead was), and that actually makes it a lot creepier. It’ll then seque into something like Quarantine, which was scary enough in its own right, before turning into something much, much different.

And really, much, much scarier to boot. All this is going to take place inside the apartment complex, so it’s going to be both claustrophobic and intensely scary all at the same time, because there are precious few places to hide in a building like this, and putting all those people together in the face of disaster is going to make a whole lot of people turn against each other in rapid fashion.

The end result is spectacularly creepy, with plenty of action and a few good laughs besides, making it actually the best addition yet to the Bloody Disgusting Selects lineup. And the Screenhead Ten Scale responds accordingly by forking over a ten out of ten for this fantastic little import. It’s no Shaun of the Dead, but it’s still a terrific piece. Argentinians, you’ve got reason to be happy about this. And so do the rest of us.

Oh, a doubly good reason to be happy emerges today, folks, as we’ve got a lovely combination of joy coming our way. The combination in question is “Spanish horror” and “the IFC“, by way of Kidnapped. They may call it Sequestrados over in Spain, but for us, it’s Kidnapped, and it’s all kinds of awesome.

Kidnapped follows a family who’s recently moved into a new house. A stressful time, sure, but when the three of them get reasonably settled in, they have a nice family dinner to celebrate. Of course, it doesn’t last long when a group of armed men bursts into the family’s new house and breaks up the celebration by taking the entire family hostage. They’ve come for money, but they’ll get a lot more than that when the family starts fighting back.

You know when you kick your movie’s first five minutes off with a semi-conscious guy with his hands tied behind his back and his head in a tied-shut plastic bag, you know you’re in for something really big and impressive. It’s too unaccountably bizarre not to be impressive.

But it only gets substantially more so from there, and when I say more so, I mean, “more so”. It’s only going to get more violent, more nerve-wracking, and more downright unnerving from its already mind-blowing beginning. It’s easily one of the most aggressively disturbing thrillers I’ve run into in a long time. You could call this horror, sure as you’re born, but that’s almost a misnomer. This is a pure, wild hunk of thriller, and if you want stuff that will keep you up at night, this one should qualify.

I’ve always said that the scariest movies are the ones that feature events that might actually happen to you at some point. While being chased through the woods by an undead juggernaut with a machete and a kill count the size of Texas isn’t too likely, and thus not scary, getting your house broken into by thugs who mean to take your money and threaten your family to ensure your compliance is the stuff of front page news, and thus, is incredibly scary.

The Spanish have already shown their incredible talent for thrillers and horror film, and Kidnapped will not let you down if you’re fond of the scary. The IFC bringing this one into wider release is a development that’s just insanely welcome, and if you want something that will make you cringe in your seat, this is exactly the stuff you’ve been waiting for.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Kidnapped a full ten out of ten for being an intense and thoroughly plausible thriller that will leave you checking your door locks for days afterward. The IFC’s really got a winner with this one.

No, really. You didn’t misread that title. Today we’re talking about Wild Zero, and the folks at Synapse Films sent this out for us to review. The original Japanese rock and roll zombie movie, and we’ve got it right here. And believe me, it’s as weird as it sounds.

Wild Zero joins us with Ace, a Japanese rockabilly fan (I’m just going to stop right here to gently remind you that everything you read in this synopsis WILL BE TRUE, NO MATTER HOW OUTLANDISH OR RIDICULOUS IT SOUNDS. So brace yourselves appropriately, because here we go.) who’s out to see his favorite band, Guitar Wolf (an actual Japanese band) when a horde of aliens invades the planet. This invasion causes a lot of deaths…but not for long, as the victims find themselves coming back to life with a hunger for human flesh. Now the only thing that stands between a planet full of zombies and what’s left of the human race is Ace…backed up by Guitar Wolf.

Yes, that’s right. A Japanese rockabilly fan and a Japanese rockabilly band are going to save the Earth from zombies created by aliens. And it’s only going to get weirder from here.

It’s been my experience that Japanese horror comes in only two basic flavors: chatty and dull, and plain old over the top. Naturally, there’s some subclasses in there, but Wild Zero is definitely part of the Japanese over the top school, and it will show throughout.

If you want an experience that’s wild, occasionally hilarious, and often downright incomprehensible, then Wild Zero will absolutely fit the bill. It’s weird, cheesy, crazy, and deeply, deeply fun. Of course, the converse holds true here too–if you like your movies to make sense and be at least kind of possible even as zombies attack, then Wild Zero is totally not the movie for you. It’s going to be too unaccountably weird for you to get behind. You’ll want to stick to Japanese zombie fare like Junk, which is much more of a Romero-style experience. At least, I thought it was the last time I saw it maybe ten years ago. But I digress.

The long and the short of it is, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives Wild Zero an eight out of ten. Weird it may be, but it’s got plenty of action behind it and a lot of zombie action, plus a few extra laughs and twists that will keep you guessing. It’s a great time, but a very, very weird time.

And we’ve got one more from the folks out at After Dark to bring to you today, one which, once again, they sent out. Fertile Ground isn’t likely to be the dog of the newest block of After Dark, but will it be anywhere near the top?

Fertile Ground joins Emily and Nate Weaver, a young couple leaving the city to go to Nate’s family home out in the middle of nowhere. And in a horror movie, leaving the city to go to the middle of nowhere pretty much ensures a bad time in the offing. And for Emily, this bad time comes in the form of horrible visions and dreams, and for Nate, this bad time comes in the form of a complete change in his behavior. But Emily doesn’t think it’s just bad dreams and a bad mood for hubby that marks the trip to the country. She thinks she might be in the midst of something even more horrible than she imagined.

Thankfully, the creepy and the horror kick off right away. While they do result to that sad, sorry sight that is “miscarriage as plot device”, it turns out that it’s quite necessary. And when you get to that point, you’ve got to take notice.

In fact, this one is head and shoulders above most of the rest in the lineup so far. Prowl had its moments, and Husk was fairly good, and Seconds Apart was too much a disjointed mess to be much use, but Fertile Ground does a magnificent job of packing in the scary. And the creepy. And the blood-soaked carnage, too. Most every tier of horror fan is going to be enamored with this, or should be, anyway.

It’s not every day that you find something that works on a variety of levels the way Fertile Ground does, and packing in all that creepy is definitely a good thing. This is part haunted house story, part haunted person story, and all scary.

It’s actually the best I’ve seen so far, though I still have high hopes for the remaining releases, some I’ve been waiting to see for some time.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Fertile Ground a full on ten out of ten–it’s too creepy, too generally terrifying to be anything but a full score earner. If you want something that will really put a punch in your movie night, this is a great one. And if you can get an actual thunderstorm going in the background, well, that’s even better.

When you start out a movie with a text crawl, you catch my attention most every time. See, there’s this old principle in writing called a “brick”, so named for the old comic strip Krazy Kat. And in same, this mouse by the name of Ignatz was constantly hucking bricks at the titular cat because he was in love with her. And in writing terms, the “brick” is something you use to catch a reader’s attention right from go. That’s what a text crawl often does, at least for me, and that’s why I definitely started off liking Yellowbrickroad, which the folks out at Bloody-Disgusting sent over. Thankfully, they could keep up with what they started.

Yellowbrickroad follows a mysterious story of the town of Friar, NH, which was host to a bizarre incident back in the 1940s. I’ll explain more about that in a minute. But suffice it to say that, in the future, the records behind the incident were declassified, and the coordinates of the town of Friar were released along with them. Now, an expedition is launched to find out just what happened, and the results are more bizarre than most could imagine.

But the title crawl that caught my attention so well? It went like this: “One morning in 1940, the entire population of Friar, NH, walked north up an unmarked trail into the wilderness. Some were later found frozen to death. Others were mysteriously slaughtered. Most, however, were never found. Among the classified records is this audio recording of a lone survivor, conducted at the outset of investigation.”

Creepy? You’d better believe it. A pretty impressive bit of creepy, when you come right down to it. And watching it reveals a pretty well set up affair, with just enough exposition tossed in at just the right times to keep the whole thing moving and sufficiently compelling to hold interest throughout.

Watching these people break down slowly on their expedition, even as we have no idea what’s going on, is especially unnerving, and leaves the whole movie to be a deeply nerve-wracking, chilling experience. It may not have a whole lot in the way of shocks, but this atmospheric chiller is a thing of beauty. Bloody-Disgusting’s really got a winner on their hands with this one. I thought their earlier Rammbock was pretty good stuff, but it was too short. Yellowbrickroad is everything Rammbock was and then some.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Yellowbrickroad a ten out of ten for being a deliciously creepy romp that’s occasionally tough to follow but well worth your time to watch. You won’t be able to catch this until June 1st, and even then in limited theaters only, but man, will you ever want to get your head around this one if you have any taste for horror at all.

Sometimes just looking at a title is enough to sway you toward seeing a movie. And when you’re nose to nose with a movie like Mongolian Death Worm, a copy of which the folks out at Lions Gate sent over for me to review, you can’t help but wonder about it. Sometimes, though, it’s not worth the risk. This is, thankfully, not one of those times.

Mongolian Death Worm–and that really is the title–follows an American oil company out looking for black gold in the deserts of Mongolia, when they stumble across the titular menace. Now, the only thing between the Mongolian death worms and the rest of the world is the survivors of the oil company and a treasure hunter searching for the tomb of Genghis Khan. And putting down the death worms may result in the loss of the very thing he was hunting for.

It’s not a terrible premise as movies go, though we’ve all kind of seen something like this before. You can be forgiven for thinking this just looks like some big Tremors knockoff set in, for some reason, Mongolia. And you’re not too far off, actually, but at the same time, it’s a decently put together piece. It’s got a little bit of humor, plenty of action, and just a bit of horror sufficient to actually make something like a “Mongolian death worm” a possibility.

And the end result really works out; sure, some of the dialogue is a bit of a clunker, and the death worms do indeed look just like Tremors’ Graboids only smaller and slower. But this really doesn’t detract from an overall piece that’s still very watchable, and very enjoyable. Monster movie buffs will have a tremendous time here, and a little good old fashioned treasure hunt certainly doesn’t hurt either.

For a movie that’s actually called “Mongolian Death Worm”, this is actually a lot better than you’d think it is. Sure, it’s nothing great–don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is going to be some kind of masterwork–but you’re not going to have a bad night with this one as long as you go in with your expectations in your back pocket and a big old bowl of popcorn ready to go.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Mongolian Death Worm a devastating seven out of ten–you’ll love the action here, and that little bit of horror will keep things interesting. It’s not the best movie you’ll ever see, but it will do all right.

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a good while now, folks, and the folks out at IFC obliged. They sent out a copy of The Silent House (otherwise known as La Casa Muda) for me to review, and this one will underscore why Spanish-style horror (I say Spanish-style because it turns out this is Uruguayan) is awesome.

The Silent House follows a young woman and her father in 1940s Uruguay, who have recently been somewhat forced out of the house they’ve been living in, as its owner plans to sell it. The young woman–Laura–and her father–Wilson–move into a small cottage, where they start fixing things up, because they’re probably going to be there a while. The house they left was hiding a strange secret, but the house they’ve moved into has something much more terrifying in its place. There’s a noise outside, and it’s getting steadily louder, until suddenly, it’s inside the house, on the top floor. Wilson goes up to investigate…and Laura awaits his return.

The weird part is? This is based on a true story. Of course, that’s an automatic red flag for me, as it becomes a question of just how much of what we’re watching is a true story. I mean, if I wanted to, I could write a movie about a man who gets up in the morning with a craving for pancakes, and when he sets out to make some, gets abducted by aliens who replace his skeleton with a cybernetic body and send him down to ravage New York and say it was “based on a true story”. After all, I totally did know a guy who woke up with a craving for pancakes one day.

Oh, and fair warning–this isn’t something you can watch for background noise unless you speak Spanish. Because it’s entirely in Spanish (at least I’m reasonably sure it’s Spanish–I don’t speak it myself), but it’s got English subtitles, so you’ll be taken care of here if you’re an Anglophile interested in this one.

But regardless of what language you speak, if you speak horror movies, brace yourself because you’re going to have a real winner on your hands here. They really build some great suspense, and then release it regularly with a variety of “loud noise out of nowhere” scares. This stuff is positively weapons-grade horror (which is safe to expect from IFC), and even includes plenty of those strange sort of events that aren’t immediately explainable, like how a body gets moved from one floor to another without anyone noticing.

Seriously, folks, this is a great one to really put the frighteners on someone with (I love that phrase; thank you Peter Jackson and Michael J. Fox), and only adds to my previous convictions that some of the best horror movies on Earth are of Spanish descent. After seeing the horror feast that was [Rec], that was enough for me.

Plain and simple, if you’re in need of a scary movie, for a party or a thunderstorm night or something like that, The Silent House is going to blow your mind open. Profoundly scary stuff here. Oh, and you’ll want to stick around through the credits for one last good surprise.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the absolutely frightening and intensely unsettling The Silent House a full ten out of ten; this is the kind of horror that will keep you up at night.

I Love You Phillip Morris may well have been one of the most underrated Jim Carrey movies ever. With a distribution approach that looked like it was decided via a map of the world and a twelve gauge shotgun wielded by a blindfolded nun at two hundred paces, not too many people got a chance to see this. And though in some senses it’s not hard to see why, it’s still a surprisingly hilarious title. And how do I know? Simple–the folks out at Lions Gate sent out a copy for us to review.

I Love You Phillip Morris follows Steven Russell, a man who, in many senses, is the small town ideal. A good churchgoing police officer, he goes looking for the mother who put him up for adoption. And this kicks off a series of events in which he discovers a few things about himself–he’s actually a gifted con man. And he’s also gay. And both of these are going to get him in a lot of trouble. But they’ll also get him to the point where he meets Phillip Morris, a young man with a kind heart who changes Steven for the better. Well…almost. The rest of the movie will follow Steven and Phillip as they go from rags to riches and back again.

And this is a good chunk of why you didn’t see I Love You Phillip Morris in a whole lot of theaters. Because this movie is not very subtle about its homosexuality–quite the opposite, in fact. Let’s put it this way–you might not have ever wanted to see a naked Jim Carrey have sex with men, even in simulation, but you will here.  A large portion of I Love You Phillip Morris will be intensely uncomfortable.

But another, larger portion will be out and out hilarious. Seriously, this is going to be endless piles of comic glee. It’s hard to hate a movie that makes you laugh so hard, and it’s hard to love a movie that’s as full of really uncomfortable moments as this one is. It’s a strange intermingling of horrible and awesome that’s really hard to pin down.

If you’re prepared to absorb some really frightening moments, some truly awful stuff, you’re going to walk away with this streaming tears from your eyes after some truly magnificent humor. Seriously, the part toward the end where Steven is repeatedly breaking out of jail only to be caught hours or even minutes later is comic gold.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands I Love You Phillip Morris, a blend of horrors and hilarity, an eight out of ten for doing its job wonderfully as a comedy delivery system, but not without deep costs and horrible consequences.