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Abstract Forces Gearing Up For I AM ALONE Zombie/Reality Movie

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From the visionary team behind PEOPLE OF EARTH comes I AM ALONE, a Horror, Found Footage, Reality style Zombie film looking for funding during the pre-production faze.

SYNOPSIS: Jacob Fitts television host and survivalist, with his crew Producer Adam Levine & Cameraman Mason Riley set out to shoot another episode of their popular survival show, I Am Alone. Episode 113 takes us deep into the Colorado Rockies where Jacob will be left alone for 7 days while his team sets off into town to capture footage and shoot interviews. Within hours a viral outbreak spreads rapidly across the globe. Unaware of this outbreak, Jacob, isolated continues shooting his Television show. As day one comes to a close Jacob is attacked and bitten by an infected person. As the virus spreads through the town Mason and Adam have to fight the infected to save their own lives. With the CDC monitoring the outbreak they pick up Mason and all his footage and bring him back to base for questioning.  Reviewing Mason’s footage the CDC tries to piece together why the virus has taken longer to transform Jacob. The CDC forces Mason to relive the events of the previous days through his footage to learn more about the virus and Jacobs survival.

NOTES: The Kickstarter Campaign begins April 28th, 2013. All support is welcome! For all of the details including an epic Zombie Walk in Colorado on May 3rd, 2013, visit the MAIN MOVIE PAGE.

The Aztec Box Coming On Halloween 2013

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SHORT SYNOPSIS

Four college students dig up an ancient Aztec relic in their own backyard, only to discover a dark force that is attached to it.

 

LONGER SYNOPSIS

Following a strange, cult-like incident, police recover home video footage from a residence in Riverside, California.

The footage starts as we see Nick and Darren film themselves as they attend a South American history class at UC Riverside, California. We learn that they are actually film students and are filming themselves for practice to prepare for an eventual career in film.

Nick has a girlfriend named Karen and Darren has a girlfriend named Liz. All four of them move into a house in Riverside as their apartment lease expires.

Nick and Darren attend a Modern Television class, where their professor tells them their class assignment is to create a Reality Show filming their daily life.

As they setup cameras, they notice strange occurrences around the house,  such as lights turning on and off, strange sounds during the night. They seem to be coming from the backyard.

Liz, Darren’s girlfriend, decides to plant a lemon tree in the backyard of the house. As Darren starts digging through the rough soil with a shovel, he discovers there is something buried in the ground.

They dig out a wooden crate, open it, and discover it contains an ancient Aztec human sacrifice container.

 

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

The Aztec Box is written, directed and produced by Serge Bronstein.

The following is an excerpt from an interview:

Q: What inspired you to write “The Aztec Box”
A: I have always liked ancient history and have always been interested in film. One of the reasons for creating this film as the fact that, in my opinion, there are very few good movies produced by Hollywood nowadays. As a kid, I loved watching Indiana Jones, and one of my favorite shows on TV is Pawn Stars. Even though it’s scripted, I loved how it teaches the viewer these little historical stories. In my film, I wanted to involve some ancient mystery, but also make sure that it is plausible, believable and tied into actual historical events. The Aztec Calendar was all the rage in 2012, so when I started writing the script in early 2012, I picked the Aztecs over the Egyptians.

 

ABOUT THE CAST

Nick Uzarski – Nick plays … Nick, the main character in this film. Nick is a native Californian and enjoys surfing and basketball.

Brisa Freitas – plays Karen, Nick’s girlfriend. Brisa is originally from Brasil. She loves yoga and bellydancing. Brisa has an extensive theatre background and is currently living in New York.

Suziey Block – Suziey plays Liz, the antagonist of the story. Suziey is a striking brunette and a veteran actor and director. Suziey starred in Entrance – a suspense film about a barista in Los Angeles stalked by an unknown admirer. Suziey is originally from Michigan and currently resides in Los Angeles.

Hans Hernke – Hans plays Darren, Liz’s boyfriend and Nick’s best friend.

 

CONTACT INFORMATION

Serge Bronstein – https://www.aztecbox.com/site/contact/

V/H/S Review

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Plot: Hired to steal a rare VHS tape from a secluded house, a group of petty crooks breaks in and discovers a corpse surrounded by TVs and stacks of tapes. Now they must watch each horrific and bizarre video as they search for the correct one.

Review: Is it possible to be immediately turned off of a horror movie you may ask, the answer is yes! And then you know you have to suffer through 2 more hours of atrocious handheld camerawork that looks like it was filmed by a 5-year old. V/H/S is an utter mess from start to finish.

A touch on the story; there are 6 different shorts with an anthology scenario that ties together in one basic theme. The overall concept has a group of annoying, bratty, loud and dorky teens breaking into an apparent abandon home to track down a VHS tape for an unknown perpetrator. While they’re there, they find an abundance of tapes and start to play them when the film breaks away to an approximately 20-minute short which has some strange occurrences and killings.

I must say V/H/S was extremely hard to get through; the camerawork is some of the worst that I have seen in a found footage movie. You have gobs of shakiness, twirliness, out-of-frame shots, dizzying in-and-out focus, and speedily jumbled shots and moreover it never stops! There may be a total of 10 minutes of still footage, and that is only one of the shorts where they are video conferencing via a computer, all the rest is unbearable.

The sound is as pathetic as with the video. Squeals, scratches, tininess, thumps, hollowness are the norm in V/H/S. The filmmakers tried to keep it authentic by having it sound like the dialog was coming from the crappy mikes that are on low-grade video cameras. They nailed that for the most part, but I did notice in several situations they added a touch of background and mood music which blew the whole concept up in smoke.

The thing that ticks me off the most is that some of the shorts in V/H/S had a great story arc and could have been amazing if filmed conventionally. For example; after a night of young male adults partying, this leads them to bringing a strange-looking chick back to their motel room for some gang sex-capades, but this girl turns out to be a sort-of vampire-like beast with super-human powers. There were some excellent practical’s, a throat-slit scene was one of the best I have ever seen shot. Suffice it to say a few highlights don’t make up for the poor choices made to keep this in the stupid cam shots.

Before the ratings and recommendations, I have to point out that the editor did a mind-boggling array of work, not his fault I assume, as the filmmakers wanted it this way, but the VCR tracking lines, fuzziness and constant blinks like a videotape in the uttermost poorest quality, which was NEVER like that in the day as I grew up on VCR’s, both, Betamax and VHS, was, and is, a total bummer.

On concluding V/H/S; it is one to dismiss as if you never heard about it. You can get it on VOD or Streaming if you so desire for $9.99 with a DVD date coming out later this year. Believe you me, if this is the way horror movies continue to be filmed, I just might be throwing up petitions and sending them out to studios to stop making films in this style. It does not make it feel more real, PERIOD! Get off the Paranormal Activity bandwagon and make HD movies, who the hell wants to watch the poorest of video, balls-low VHS quality in these days of time when we have 1080p High-Def, and 4k right around the corner!

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Meadowoods Review

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Meadowoods Cover PosterMovie: Meadowoods
Year: 2010
Studio: Monterey Media
Director: Scott Phillips
Stars: Michael Downey, Kay Ethen, Kerry Goodwin
Language: English
Length: 88 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Thriller, Found Footage

 

Plot: When three very warped college kids plot to torture and murder a randomly chosen fellow student, they craft an elaborate, ghoulish killing chamber and keep a video diary to chronicle their bloody exploit. But as the pals proceed with their ghastly plan, the violence they unleash threatens to consume them as well.

Review: In the long and tiresome list of horror movies that have adopted the handheld scenario, Meadowoods, is just another one in the ever growing line of failed movies that have tried to capture the fame that The Blair Witch Project received, and more recently Paranormal Activity.

The storyline is kind of ridiculous. You have 3 college buddies who want to be “known” for something. They live in a small, uneventful city and want to make their mark on society and be famous, or infamous, depending on your outlook. They decide they will document a murder on film, then shelve the video and release it in their old age.

I am not a backer of these style films. With Meadowoods, you get the shaky cam constantly with cut off heads, dizzying fast movement camera clutter, out of frame video, in-and-out focus, and many sky and ground shots with weak dialog in the background. On top of that, the Director felt the need to go back-and-forth between interviews and footage of the 3 friends concocting this plan of murder. Albeit with pretty lame acting and unexciting characters.

There is a positive to this movie, once the plan starts to unfold and unravel, it does get quite freaky, and there is a twist that most viewers wont expect. Still though, that is over an hour into the movie, and by then you are completely out of the flick. Put simply, Meadowoods should be avoided. Chalk it up as another crappy handheld horror film.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 06/24/2012
Rating: 2/10
Recommendation: Avoid		 Trailer: Watch
DVD: Overstock
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook

Evidence Review

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Evidence Cover PosterMovie: Evidence
Year: 2011
Studio: RynoRyder Productions
Director: Howie Askins
Stars: Ryan McCoy, Brett Rosenberg
Language: English
Length: 73 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Found Footage
 

Plot: Four friends embark on a camping trip to an isolated wilderness to shoot a documentary one of them is making. On the first night the group hear blood-curdling cries and see unexplainable shadows surrounding the camp causing them to question whether they should leave. Suddenly the night takes a terrifying turn when one of the group goes missing and the remaining three realize they are being brutally hunted… but by what?

Review: Well, where should I begin?  With the past success of The Blair Witch Project and the most recent success of the Paranormal Activity series, the found footage film is alive and well…which most of the time sucks for the horror fan.  Let me be honest here, I am not a huge fan of the found footage sub-genre, but occasionally there is something worth writing about.  And Evidence just might be that “needle in a haystack”, if I do say so myself.

It is your basic run of the mill story about a group of friends that decide to take a camping trip.  One of the friends decides to make a documentary film about his best friend and his first time “roughing it, in the great outdoors.”  It does start out giving you that feeling of…”I’ve seen this before.”  Well folks, not for long.  This movie is not like anything you have watched in the past.  I really don’t want to give too much away about this film, but damn do I want to.

The initial opening act of the film deals with some very cool characters that are very easy to connect with, which is mainly due to the fact that they are likable in a sense.  The film does have a few slow spots, but the characters keep you into the film.  But hey, once this thing gets going…boy does it get going.

In the second part of the film, we start to get to the good stuff.  The friends start hearing things and seeing some strange things that peak their interest, and make them want to get the hell out of the woods.  In Evidence, you actually get to see some of the strange goings on before it is balls to the wall in the third act.

The third act is an act all unto itself, and that might just be an understatement.  Talk about a twist to the end of this film.  I think it has more twists, ups and downs, and insanity than a roller coaster.  The things at the end of this film, I have never seen before, and I have been talking about this movie all day.  I can’t wait to watch it again, and look for things that I am sure I missed.

Evidence will affect you that is for sure…just be prepared to see things that you haven’t seen before.  Give this movie a chance, even if you’re not a fan of found footage.  You might just be surprised at this little movie.  You won’t be disappointed…I know that I wasn’t.

Check out Land Of The Creeps with myself and GregaMortis and “Help Keep Horror Alive.”

Reviewer: Haddonfield Hatchet
Date: 04/05/2012
Rating: 7½/10
Recommendation: Buy		 Trailer: Watch
DVD: Amazon.uk
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook