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Panic Button Review

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Panic Button Cover PosterMovie: Panic Button
Year: 2011
Studio: Movie Mogul Films
Director: Chris Crow
Language: English
Length: 92 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Thriller

Plot: Four young people win a competition of a lifetime; Jo (Scarlett Alice Johnson), Max (Jack Gordon), Dave (Michael Jibson) and Gwen (Elen Rhys from Season Of The Witch) are heading off on an all expenses paid trip to New York courtesy of the social network site “all2gethr.com.” As they board the private jet, they must relinquish their personal items and take part in the in-flight entertainment – a new online gaming experience. Once airborne the games begin, and it soon becomes evident through a series of twisted tasks, that the passengers are in for more than they dared imagine.

Review: With the increasing number of users year after year using social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, I found the concept of this movie to be a fresh idea, and wondered how they could turn a relatively friendly atmosphere into a horror movie. For the most part, I think they pulled it off.

You have 4 friends on this all2gethr.com social site, really strangers, board a plane heading from the UK to the USA, with a chance to win expensive prizes while airborne by playing these sickening games. You soon realize after Stage 2 of these mind games that the trip has a more grandiose purpose that leaves you on the edge of the seat wondering what this demented person behind this flight has in store for the passengers, and their families and friends.

Panic Button actually shies away from showing the kill scenes. You do get the picture, but the movie flashes the images by so quickly it loses its effectiveness. While this “higher purpose” story does come into play about 60 minutes in, the ending was completely predictable especially when you have seen as many horror movies as I have.

On a whole it was an intelligent story, and very relatable to the younger internet savvy teenagers. Panic Button lets you know just how public everything you do online is, both searchable and traceable. The dark tones with social networks really hits hard and is very true to real life. For me, I would of liked more of a chilling track and more violent scenes shown on camera. The acting was very good, but these characters were generally shady, and I just didn’t “feel” for them. With all that said, Panic Button is definitely worth a watch, get your hands on it, you will be entertained for the most part.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 12/01/2011
Rating: 6/10
Recommendation: Rental		 Trailer: Watch
DVD: Amazon.co.uk
BluRay: Amazon.co.uk
Social Media: Facebook

Grey Skies Review

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Grey Skies Cover PosterMovie: Grey Skies
Year: 2011
Studio: Little Engine Films
Director: Kai Blackwood
Language: English
Length: 82 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Aliens, Sci-Fi

Plot: Kai Blackwood’s sci-fi thriller Grey Skies tracks a group of college friends reuniting for a fun weekend at a rented cabin whose drinking and carousing is interrupted by flashing lights, and the appearance of aliens who seem intent on taking over the planet starting with this house.

Review: I was anticipating a good alien style horror movie when the initial scene happened. It was very scary and left you wondering what in the heck is going on. The opening juts in your face with a creepiness tone and thrilling sets leaving you excited for what is to come. The credits then flash by and you meet the cast of characters that you will come to hate.

A clientele of friends meet-up at a desolated cabin for a gathering and good time. The story is character driven and if the actors weren’t so unlikable it just might of worked, for awhile anyways. When you finally get to the invasion, the director unbeknownst to me played off the aliens by making them blurry with a wobbling picture. I could see this happening once or twice leaving you in suspense, but for the whole film, it is totally weak.

There could have been many jump scenes and outright scares, but instead, we have to deal with actors making stupid remarks, which totally loses all credibility of a frightful movie. I will give Grey Skies some credit though. There is one scene in particular where the aliens are performing surgical procedures that was quite chilling, especially with the instruments that were used. One actress named Annie (Anne Griffin) did hold her own and should have been on screen more.

The ending is poor and makes little sense, which really I didn’t care because the movie had fizzled long before that. The music and sound effects weren’t the greatest either. There hasn’t been many good sci-fi, horror movies in the past decade, and Grey Skies is just another one that ultimately fails. Pass it by and maybe time travel to Alien or Event Horizon.

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Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 11/26/2011
Rating: 4/10
Recommendation: Avoid		 DVD: Redford Films
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Twitter
Official Grey Skies Trailer

Hide Review

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Hide Cover PosterMovie: Hide
Year: 2011
Studio: Brandi Brothers Productions
Director: Jamison Brandi
Language: English
Length: 84 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Slasher

Plot: A high-school cheerleader and her friends become embroiled in a lethal game of hide and seek on Mischief Night, the night before Halloween, even though a statewide curfew has been in effect since a horrific murder just a year before.

Review: I was excited when I popped the DVD in for Hide as it sounded like a current day slasher, and I value the sub-genre highly. It is the category that got me into horror in the first place. But, and this is a big but, Hide simply manages to screw-up the slasher scenario almost on every front.

The whole concept to Hide is one that does work, a masked killer, always a positive, is stalking young teenage girls while prodding them on the phone with obscenities ala Scream. During the final conversations he tells the girls we are going to play Hide and Seek, the popular childhood game. As the charade begins the killer is stalking his victims as he is counting out loud, 1 – 1000, 2 – 1000, 3 – 1000 and so on, until he finds them and ultimately kills them.

As a slasher you expect to see some kills, you see absolutely nothing. Not only that the story goes back-and-forth between many characters in effect losing the tension that slashers bring. The scariness of Hide is basically non-existent. It’s a pity too because some of the characters did have a likability factor but the build-ups were overly drawn out and poorly executed. More negatives include; overused score that got annoying 20 minutes in, then you got a whole hour left with the same music, and the story shifts amongst characters and one of these are filmed in a crappy cinematic style with sepia tones and shaky cam to the point you have no idea what is happening.

Hide is a new DVD release that hit the shelves on the end of October, and I am here to tell you, as a total slasher fan, pass this one by and walk away. The movie is redundant, weak and overall a very poor horror movie. If you are looking for a current day slasher that will scare you, I will throw out a few suggestions for you; Chain Letter and Hatchet 2.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 11/24/2011
Rating: 2½/10
Recommendation: Avoid		 Trailer: Watch
DVD: Blow It Outa Here
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook

Deadfall Trail

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John, Julian and Paul enter the Kaibab National Forest for a three-week survival trip and peyote vision quest. The only items they take with them are a knife, a bottle of water and a garbage bag each. A week into their journey a disastrous turn of events changes everything and the men are forced to ultimately confront the darkest corners of their morality and mortality. Battling the elements and each other, the quest becomes make it out of the forest alive.

Death Hunter: Werewolves Vs. Vampires Review

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Death Hunter - Werewolves Vs Vampires Cover PosterMovie: Death Hunter: Werewolves Vs. Vampires
Year: 2010
Studio: MTI Home Video
Director: Dustin Rikert
Language: English
Length: 92 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Werewolves, Vampires

Plot: When a stranded motorist is tagged by a werewolf in the Arizona desert — mere moments after his wife was attacked by vampires — a werewolf-vampire hunter comes to his rescue and trains him how to fight the creatures of the night.

Review: This is going to be completely a one-sided review because Death Hunter taps into the bottom of the barrel. This is an example of how not to make a horror movie.

Lets get the story out of the way before I go into a vicious diatribe. A couple celebrating there one-year anniversary head out into the desert for a camping vacation. They run out of gas before they reach their destination and come across a strip joint that is the home of a vampire clan. The wife (Shari Wiedmann) gets kidnapped and the husband (Sam McConkey) escapes, but soon gets bit by a werewolf. Low and behold, a mysterious hunter has invented a concoction to stop the man-to-werewolf transformation and tells the husband he is the chosen one. We then get shuffled off to 30 minutes of training sessions, and then the fight to save his wife ensues, hence, a sort-of werewolf hybrid verse weak vampires.

The bads; everything! Death Hunter has extremely poor acting, atrocious CGI, horrible fake sets, outrageously bad music and sound effects, total amateurish video effects, and if it could get more cruddy it does; we get a horror movie that isn’t frightening in the least. This movie is meant to be serious and scary, but it achieves just the opposite.

There is one semi-good computer aided effect when the sensei of sorts, stops the werewolf transformation. It looked pretty good with greenish wobbling effects running through the body. I am lenient of sorts when it comes to independent horror movies, and can usually pick out several positive points in the low budget side of horror, but Death Hunter: Werewolves Vs. Vampires is totally lame and I am disappointed with every aspect of this film. Avoid like the plague!

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 11/17/2011
Rating: 1/10
Recommendation: Avoid		 Trailer: Watch
DVD: Amazon
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook