Coffin Baby - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

Before I watched this movie, I noticed from a little online research that it wasn't especially popular.  Actually that's me being kind.  People seem to HATE this movie, thinking it a poor sequel to the remake of Toolbox Murders, so I wasn't expecting very much.

Did I hate the movie on the same level as most other people who submitted their opinions online?  It seems not.  It's an odd one.  There were aspects of this movie which were great!  I loved how it looked, the scene settings, the bad guy looked awesome, the gore was incredible.  Some of the scenes were amongst the most gruesome I have ever seen in a movie.  When I say most gruesome, what I mean is, they look very real.  There is no faffing about and suspense here.  It's in for the kill - pun intended!

Our basic premis here involves a young woman who is kidnapped by a murderer who is responsible for killing her sister.  He holds her captive and makes her watch while he tortures and murders others in front of her in many different adventurous ways.

The plot itself was sadly full of holes and raised many questions which were never answered or addressed.  Some details which seemed imporant throughout the story seemed to have been forgotten and were just left hanging.   In places the acting was a bit 'hammy' and overdone.  I have seen much, much worse though.



Moving on to the positives, the first murder scene in the movie is almost impossible to watch without registering some form of disgust or cowering away from the scene you're witnessing.  It involves a very graphic facial mutilation before the actual murder itself, which had me cringing and thinking I may find it too difficult to watch this movie if there were more of the same.  The special effects, sounds and general way this is depicted all seemed very realistic to me.  So realistic it made me actually feel pretty damn uncomfortable watching it.

Did the gore continue?  Well yes, but I think that particular scene was the one which freaked me out the most.  Another scene starts off quite amusingly where a young black man has got out of his car (egged on by his mates) to move a random trolley that's blocking his way.  Cue our bad guy who is not best amused that his belongings have been tampered with.  An argument of sorts ensues where the young guy is wildly gesticulating at our bad guy.  I was chuckling away when the mood changed very quickly and some more gore is thrown our way.

This theme does continue and there are many more good examples of these effects to keep all gore hounds happy.     There are a couple of rather nasty beheadings (one of which was particularly realistic and not something I enjoyed watching at all) and a woman who is tied to a table and has slices of her flesh cut out and cooked to be eaten while she is still alive.  The killer makes our hostage eat the flesh also and as she is starving, she is unable to help herself.  A man is cut in half from the groin to the head with a table saw... the list continues.

Now, where the movie falls down.  As I said earlier, the plot-line is very weak, there are inconsistencies everywhere, the acting, while it is not the worst I've ever seen is a bit over dramatic in places.  It all seemed to end very quickly for my liking and without any proper kind of justice.  Also a supernatural element that there really was no need for is introduced.  This actually detracted for the movie for me.

All in all, it wasn't as awful a movie as reviews online would have you believe.  I certainly didn't feel like I'd wasted my time in watching it, like is sometimes the case, but I doubt it's going to make many peoples top 10 movie list.

I would only recommend to anyone I know likes a bit of gore and isn't bothered about depth of story.

Who Can Kill a Child - Will's Review

This weeks movie opens with 8 minutes of disturbing real-life footage (concentration camps, victims of Korean and Vietnam wars ect. ) all captioned to remind us how badly children suffer during such things. Grim stuff.

Then we cut to a happy beach scene... Where a dead woman washes ashore - having apparently been stabbed repeatedly, including in her thighs.

This is clearly the feel-good family movie of the year!


Before long we meet out protagonists, holidaying English couple Tom and Evelyn, who have left their first 2 kids at home (the 3rd is still in Evelyn's belly) in order to visit a small island that Tom visited as a child. This island is so small it isn't on the map, yet our stars have decided to leave both the hiring of a boat, and indeed clarifying the exact location of the island, until they arrive at the nearest coastal town in mainland Spain.

You'd think that having gone to the effort of having them spend a day in said town, there would be some kind of payoff to relying on a stranger to point to the bit of the map that should contain the island; but, no, they get there just fine.

Upon arrival the town appears to be deserted but for a handful of children, and it isn't long before we find out why - the children seem to have taken a homicidal dislike to adults.

For some reason, long after Tom starts to realise what is going on, he continues to insist to his wife that the adults have probably just gone to a festival at the next town over, and that everything is fine; Unfathomably, even having seen a girl kill an old man, and then watching the local children use the body as a piñata, he still has his pregnant wife stay the night!

Eventually, they realise that they really are going to have to leave, for reasons I cannot fathom it is only then that they become a target for the children.

The title if the movie is a question asked within the narrative... Apparently the reason the children have been so successful in their adultcide is because no-one can bring themselves to kill a child.

Luckily, Tom is a little more pragmatic than the natives, and has no problem offing the little fuckers once it becomes obvious that its then or him. Evelyn, in the other hand, had me screaming abuse at the screen on more than one occasion.

Sadly, there's also a supernatural element that the film REALLY didn't need - upon finding a small group of
'Normal' children, we see that the desire to kill adults can be passed on by making eye contact (which isn't even the silliest example of the 'infection' spreading in the movie).

At times, I was reminded of the Village / Children of the Damned movies, so it wasn't a shock to see that this movie has also been released as 'Island of the Damned'

I did enjoy the movie, particularly the rather dark ending (the dramatic ending, not the 'sting' which relies too much on the supernatural element) but it does have some fairly major faults; that said, the acting is solid enough, and I did have fun watching it, therefore I will give this one a 'Will Recommends' ... But only just.

Antichrist - Lisa's Review

*** BIG FAT SPOILERS ***

I start this review still a bit gaping mouthed and hope I make more sense to you than I do to myself in this review.  To be honest, I still haven't decided whether or not I liked the movie.  One thing I do know for sure, is that it is not most peoples cup of tea.  I think I got about three quarters of the way through and was on the 'not liking it' camp, but as it reached its climax, I began to appreciate a lot of aspects of the movie.

As the movie starts, it is very clear we're dealing with an arty one.  Now I'm far from a fan of this kind of movie, so I don't expect to make much in the way of sense of the storyline.  I do like how the movie is filmed though, I like the use of black and white.  I like the separation of the movie into several different titled chapters.  In places, I loved the almost musical flow of the script and the beauty of the location.  Alongside the beauty we witness, there is incomprehensible violence and nastiness, which is very difficult to understand.  It is shocking definately and had my eyebrows raised on a number of occasions, which I will go into later in the review.

As for whats going on in the movie.  As we start, the couple who we follow through the movie (they are never named) are making love (all real sex apparently.. we can see why Willem Dafoe has been cast).  As this is happening, their toddler son has climbed out of his cot, opened his baby gate and wandered to an open window.  He climbs up and falls to the ground below.  This opening scene is heartbreaking.  As a mother, I probably found it the most difficult part of the movie as its a constant fear of mine and the sheer thought of anything happening to my son, almost drives me insane.  This made me better understand the mothers actions as the movie progressed.  The way the scene is shot, in black and white and slow motion, with a beautiful piece of music in the background adds to the tragic nature of what's happening.  Its snowing outside and we can better visually see the toddler hit the ground below (although this isn't portrayed in a graphic or bloody way thankfully), we also see his stuffed toy bounce off the snow beside him.  I had a tear in my eye and a lump in my throat.

So, things start to get more than a little odd from here.  We don't ever see the couple discover their son, we immediately move to the first 'chapter' (the opening was the prologue) which is just after their sons funeral.  The wife collapses with grief.   We follow attempted treated in hospital, which her husband is not very happy with as she is not improving, so they decide to go to a cabin in the woods to try to get her better themselves as her husband is a shrink of sorts and thinks he can sure her by exposing her to what has happened.

So they take themselves to the cabin in the woods (called Eden) and what follows is some scary-assed sh*t. There is lots of sex.  She seems to get increasingly more mad (I could understand this aspect as I said earlier as I don't think I'd cope at all with the death of my son, never mind if my carelessness caused it).... however... she moves from a bit f*cked up wanting her husband to be violent towards her during sex as she seems to believe following some studying she was doing before this all happened, that women are fundamentally bad and deserve punishment.

We see all sorts of weird scenes with animals, including a deer with a dead baby hanging out of her (obviously symbolising the mother who has lost her baby), a talking fox who is clearly badly injured and a crow who just won't die no matter how many times its bashed over the head).  Just when I am starting to understand the woman and her grief, the husband finds out that she had been putting their sons shoes on the wrong feet causing him to have deformed feet.  What kind of mother does that?  This woman has obviously not been well in the head for some years, even prior to the death of her child.

As the husband makes this discovery, things begin to get eye-brow raising.  How can I describe this.... she climbs astride her husband, shouting at him the whole time that she doesn't believe he loves her, makes sure he has an erection, then wallops him in the genitals with a plank of wood!!  The pain renders him unconscious and as she lies beside him she looks over and notices he still has a raging erection!! WTF???  I'm sure that's not right??  Not only that, but an erect penis on screen???  This probably shocked me more than any other part of the movie.  I've always been told, you're not allowed to show this on screen.  She then proceeds to masturbate him and he ejaculates blood..  This raises many questions... erect penis?  ability to ejaculate?  blood?  It is a real hand job too!  Nothing prosthetic here.  I did notice, the man is blessed amidst all this confusion.

So just as we're getting over that one, she drills through his shin with one of those hand drills and puts a massive weight through his leg so he can't move.  She leaves him and goes into the forest, throwing a spanner for his leg weight under the cabin so he has no hope of getting the damn thing off. We then see him come to and manage to drag himself out of the cabin.  He hears her screaming for him and hides in a hole (which is where the weird crow thing happens).  She finds him and not content with what she has already done, she proceeds to batter him with a shovel and leave him basically buried alive!  I thought that was it for him, but apparently not.  Overcome with guilt, she drags him out and back to the cabin.

If we were cringing before, it's the ladies turn now.  For reasons best known to herself.. probably guilt, she cuts her own clitoris off with a pair of scissors???  For a woman that seems to enjoy sex and masturbation as much as she does, this was a bit of a wierd move for me.

The weird animals make another appearance, leaving me head scratching again.  He manages to find the location of the spanner, as the crow is trapped beneath the floorboards where he is lay in the cabin and he breaks through to free it.  He retrieves the spanner and frees himself (not before she has tried to kill him with the clit snipping scissors!).

At last, he's had enough and we end the movie with him strangling her (very well shot and convincing) and he burns her body outside and cabin.  As he walks away (with his injuries, i'm not sure how that was possible) and the movie , he is surrounded by loads of faceless women.  I didn't quite get what they were inferring here, but hey, I didn't understand loads of this movie.

In conclusion, I can't say 'avoid' as it is interesting in places, beautiful in others and downright cringeworthy in others, so worth a check out I would say.  Would I watch it again?  Possibly... maybe to see if i could make more sense of it second time around.  I can't quite bring myself to give it a 'Lisa Recommends' but it had its own appeal.