The Roost

The Details:
Directed by: Ti West
Runtime: Argentina:80 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival) / USA:80 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Certification: UK:18 / Argentina:18

The Review:
"An unheralded horror gem...Displays a raw talent reminscent of early George Romero and Sam Raimi." -Fangoria

"One of the best, if not THE best horror flicks of the year." -Bloody-Disgusting.com

"A creepy, old-fashioned 80's sleep-over movie, with the perfect blend of blood, screams and scares." -Eli Roth, Director of Cabin Fever

"B is for BORRRR-IIIIINNNGG." -bisforbrains.com

Now that I have my initial childish remark out of the way, let's get serious.

"The Roost" involves a group of uninteresting twenty-somethings (surprise surprise) on their way to a wedding. They wreck their SUV (surprise surprise) and seek help at a creepy house in the middle of nowhere (surprise surprise). The house has a barn out back full of bats, and after 43 painfully drawn-out minutes we find out the bats somehow turn people into zombies. WHY? Because zombies are hip right now, haven't you noticed???

Now I could have easily forgiven the extremely typical scenario, the awful acting and the complete lack of thought process by every character if this movie would have at simply ENTERTAINED me. That's right. To put it bluntly, "The Roost" is not entertaining. Here's why:

Wolfhound

The Details:
Directed by: Donovan Kelly
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Language: English
Unrated Version.
Runtime: 86 min
Studio: New Concorde

The Review:
When you run a movie review site such as this one, you're bound put yourself through a relentless amount of torture every now and then. But that's the risk we at b4brainz are willing to take.

Wolfhound has something to do with an American writer that has just arrived in Ireland. He's staying at his late parents humble ol' abode in order to garner some inspiration for his next novel. Problem is, he's brought his wife and kids along with him...bad idea buddy, haven't you ever seen The Shining? His wife is a sporadic bipolar nut-case, which sounds exciting written down but it's really not. The kids are...kids. There are a number of mangy dogs lingering around the supposed-to-be-beautiful-but-we-never-get-to-enjoy-it Irish setting. But the crusty canines are more than what they seem: through Michael Jackson music video style transformation they can morph into virulent voluptuous vixens!

The wolfbabes seduce the writer, and through some kind of insanely-overactive woman's intuition his wife IMMEDIATELY knows he cheated on her. Then they fuss and fight, spend plenty of time hating each other, bicker bicker bicker....yawn. It turns out the writer is also a wolfhound, and in order to find his true spirit he has to have some supposedly "kinky" sex with them. Sound exciting again? Nope! If the director seriously thinks this boring shit is "kinky," his head would explode if he were to spend a mere 30 seconds looking up "BDSM" on Google. Eventually there is a nonsensical showdown between the writer and another male wolfhound. We find out everyone in town is a wolfhound. Credits roll.

Conjure

The Details:
Directed by: Matt Busch
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color

The Review:
I feel like my patience has just gone through the most painfully rigorous test imaginable.

For those not in-the-know, Conjure is a horror flick from the "Rock Star of Illustration," Matt Busch. Even if you've never heard Busch's name, you have more than likely seen his work on everything from Star Wars to The Crow to The Lord of The Rings. Being an artist myself, I truly admire his incredible talent and style. This movie on the other hand is an entirely different story.

The plot is a thrown-together (literally, watch the extras) cluster-fuck of mammoth proportions. Matt runs across an old photograph of a castle while wandering through a graveyard. It was "calling his name," so he took it and decided to paint it. After beginning the painting, he and his foxy-wife-with-an-attitude, Sarah, begin to have strange experiences. They hear slowed-down and reversed voices, beverages slide across tables, you know, the usual. They eventually get sucked into the painting and wake up in front of the creepy old castle, and that's when the movie really picks up...uhhh...not really.

Dream No Evil (Now I Lay Me Down To Die)

The Details:
Director: John Hayes
Runtime: UK:84 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Mono
Certification: USA:R / UK:15

The Review:
THE DEAD WILL RISE AGAIN...

...AND RIDE HORSES...

In a surrealistic horror setting, a young Preacher's assistant goes mad and becomes lost in a fantasy of her own creation. The woman, Grace, creates a world in which her either dead or missing father is present, quite loving, and lives with her on a fabricated ranch. In her mind, Grace's father will stop at nothing to protect his daughter's best interests.... including murder. Stars academy award-winner Edmond O'Brien as Grace's father.

That's a quick summary of the plot and I dare not go in any further. In fact, the best thing i can say about this horrid piece of work is that the summary ends up sounding quite good. Avoid this movie like you would avoid a swarm of bees; if you see it on a store shelf run away screaming and flailing your arms... and then jump in a pond and use a straw to breath with until you pass out and hopefully you will forget you ever saw the box.