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Carson1004
Reviews
Terror Tales (2016)
Terrible Tales! The real terror is sitting through the whole two hours.
Wow!...... I mean just wow! I saw the cover on Amazon so me and some friends said, "hey lets check it out." Well at least we had a good time laughing our butts off and making a drinking game out of it. Drink every time you hear audio fuzz. Drink every time you see an over exposed shot. Drink every time someone says a really cheesy line without bothering to actually act at all. I think a little intoxication is what it would take for anybody to enjoy this student film, except student films don't drag on for two painful hours or beg for attention with the gratuitous advertisement of has-been celebrities. Seriously though, these two hours of mediocrity will really test one's endurance, patience and attention span. This film is lame. Super boring. Super dragged out. Cheesy! Cheesy! Cheesy covering all over one cliché after another! Not good cheese. If this movie was food it would be like cheap and rubbery kraft cheese on top of basic white bread. Even in my first year of film school I learned basics such as setting the white balance, not crossing the vector line, proper shot composition, setting up lighting to create the proper mood instead of just having everything washed out without any contrast. You can't even blame a small budget on these short comings. The audio sucks but it wouldn't make up for the schlocky and contrived dialogue even if you could hear it all correctly. Nor would it build any suspense or any actual scares. Makes me wonder if this was meant to be an actual horror film. If so then Combs really doesn't understand that horror is a challenge because it requires buildup, intensity, some fake outs here and there, and other nuances of mystery and suspense which would require a certain finesse and artistic execution. Terror Tales has none of that. It seems like all the footage is just randomly put together without any concern for the overall pace. Which brings me to the editing which is especially amateur and lacks any rhythm or cohesion. The most artistic point of interest Terror Tales has to offer is early on with the Christmas Carol-esque demon. I enjoyed the look and feel of this character and thought the link between him and the rorschach blots was clever. Why couldn't the rest of this movie make even an attempt at doing some more clever and stylistic things like that? The 80s bit did look 80s, a feat which normally wouldn't be all that impressive, but due to the blandness of this project I'm willing to give Terror Tales any praise I can scrape up......which I think that's all of it. Then the last portion of this train wreck just plain sucked. Sorry but I'm lost for a better word. But at least it was our laughing high point. The acting is pathetic for the entire runtime, but this exorcism bit at the end takes the cake. We all about had split sides when the preacher knocks himself out after purposefully running into the wall....why? Don't ask, we don't know either. Hey buddy, hasn't that wall always been there? Ding ding ding! First place Razzi award goes to the "faithless preacher". Everyone else including the "celebrities" ties for second. Only one who really "acted" was Laurene Laundon as the psycho mama. Woefully her performance is made tedious thanks to the excessive and unnecessary fatty minutes of uninspired cut and paste editing that bloats this entire feature. Then we have zombies and ketchup looking blood at the end, not that the film is savable at this point anyway. That train left in the first half hour. I think Jimmy Combs would do well from a few film classes or even a beginner's book on the subject of film making. I feel Terror Tales is a vain attempt by a giddy fan boy rather than a disciplined filmmaker.
Elves (2018)
Funny, entertaining, definitely low budget
The cover caught me and I like the idea of killer elves. The movie, unlike High Octane's customized cover, lacks rich colors, depth, or masterfully created killer elves. This film stars a lot of white walls, campy acting and a contrived plot. It's a solid attempt but has the feel of a beginner indie film for sure.