28 Days Later 2002 (Danny Boyle)

28 Days Later 2002 (Danny Boyle)

Stars: Cillian Murphy, Alex Palmer

Score: 89%

These zombies are lean, mean killing machines. Faster than Romero's classic walking dead 28 days later monsters are infected with "Rage". Turning humans to zombies in seconds. 

Danny Boyle shows the awesome sights of a deserted London, a real spectacle of the apocalypse. Combined with information from characters the audience is left to construct their own ideas of how Britain was overrun with the 'Rage' virus. A lot of the fear of this film is created through speculation of events.

The film quite seriously draws out questions of humanity. Is it really "just people killing people." A particularly gory moment is when Jim gouges out  

Fight Club 1999 (David Fincher)

Fight Club 1999 (David Fincher)

Stars:Edward Norton, Brad Pitt

Score:94%

Both a criticism and celebration of masculinity. The narrator (Edward Norton)  looks to  (Brad Pitt)Tyler Durden as an anarchic role model and takes on his nihilistic view of life.

The film is gritty and displays the male primal lust for violence. This acts as an outlet or breakaway for the narrator from the stagnant regime of office work. People who have seen this film before will understand it's mastery in foreshadowing.

My favourite scene is where the narrator beats up 'Angel face' a relatively handsome blonde character. The audio makes the scene brutal and the narrator is dubbed over declaring these nihilistic statements of "I want to breathe smoke"

There are lot's of messages in Fight Club, there is a sense of anti-capitalism. "We work to earn money to buy shit we don't need." There is a desire for everyone to be equal "you are the all singing all dancing crap of the world." There's progression from rebellion against societal expectancy that turns to terrorism. The film can be seen as a critique of totalitarianism, where people's humanities are blurred. The narrator has to remind others that when Bob dies "his name was Robert Paulson."

The Descent 2005 (Neil Marshall)

The Descent 2005 (Neil Marshall)

Stars:Shauna MacDonald,Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid

Score: 96%

This film was brilliant, an all time favorite and one that I have watched several times. First of all this film, to me, celebrates the power of women particularly in horror. Often overlooked but in a lot of horror, women are potentially equal to men. The Descent uses women as both the 'damsel in distress' characters and the 'prince' that saves them. The Descent shows that the lead character does not need to be male to fight monsters.

Another great thing about this film, and indeed quite a few British horrors, is that the characters think for themselves rather than following stereotypes to the letter. Because of the more independent characters it becomes more difficult to speculate the order that they are going to die. This makes the film more exciting and more of a thrill.

The Descent released it's monster at the right moment, not too early or too late. What I love about the creepy humanoid killers are that they are not invulnerable. This again adds uncertainty, as the women are able to fight off a proportion of the monsters. There are plenty of gruesome slaughters both of the women and of the creatures.

There is great effort made to keep the lighting in the caves focused rather than widespread, so only the monsters are revealed. This adds to the claustrophobia and restricts the characters and audiences vision and therefore security. Immediately when crawling through the caves, before any monsters show up the film has thrown some of the audience off-balance and left them ready for a scare.

My name is Dave

Dave's Film Diary

Hello, my name is Dave and this is a collection of reviews on films I have watched. I will be blogging regularly from now on and will include the date of any posts I make. Some posts will not be dated as I will be submitting a lot of content all at once from past reviews and past movies. 

If you have an IMDB account you can see all the films I've rated here http://www.imdb.com/user/ur38753761/ratings?ref_=nb_cm_5_yrt

Available to everyone I have an incomplete list of horror films and short descriptions of each movie.

http://www.imdb.com/list/hpwkVSMvJa0/