Gruesome Fun
Added 11/19/2009
Perkins 14 is another entry in this year's batch of After Dark Horrorfest films and one of the better ones. Patrick O'Kane plays Dwayne Hopper, a member of a small tourist town's Sheriff Department. Ten year's earlier, Hopper's son Kyle was kidnapped from his bedroom, the last of 14 child abductions that went unsolved. The pain of losing his son has driven Dwayne to alcoholism and torn his marriage apart. As Dwayne checks in for the night shift, he finds that a mysterious man named Perkins is locked up in the jail. As Dwayne talks to him, he becomes convinced that this man may no something about the child abductions.
Against orders from his superiors, Dwayne investigates the man's home to find numerous dank, dirty, but empty cells in Perkins' basement. He also finds a library of video tapes, all showing the torturous treatment the children received at the hands of Mr. Perkins. Now you're thinking that this may be one of those cat and mouse type thrillers where the cop knows who the killer is but does not have any legal evidence to charge him with. Will the cop go against his superiors to get revenge on the man who took his son? Ah, but here's where Perkins 14 tosses us a curve ball. It's a tale of revenge to be sure, but not the cop's revenge. As mentioned, Dwayne found only empty cells. Those children, now teenagers, tortured and turned into feral, drugged up beasts, have been set loose on the small town in a rampaging, "28 Days Later" style, attacking everything in their path and devouring their prey.
Director Craig Singer's quick change of direction from taut thriller to zombie-style action was surprising and well disguised. There's gore-a-plenty as bodies are literally ripped to pieces leaving the bestial kids to wrestle over pieces of entrails. It culminates with a standoff in the town's police station as a small group of survivors tries to survive the night.
Perkins 14 is not without its drawbacks. It's hard to imagine that a small town could be overrun by a group of 14 people, even if they are animalistic. Rather than try to remain hidden in their homes the residents of Stone Cove seem all too willing to venture out at night and make themselves easy targets. And it seems as if the Sheriff's office only has about three guns...go figure. The women in the film, and I mean all of them, are guilty of overacting, particularly Mihaela Mihut, who plays Dwayne's wife, Janine. They end up distracting the viewer from the plot and you're soon hoping they become the next meal.
Singer also directed the 2006 After Dark Horrorfest entry, Dark Ride, and while it's not a classic, Perkins 14 is certainly better than that earlier effort.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Good Intentions Aside, This Film Should Never Have Seen The Inside Of A Movie Theater - The Worst of 2009's "8 Films To Die For"
Added 10/10/2009
Here we have one of the few truly interesting concepts from the Afterdark series. The setup goes that, 10 years prior to the film start, this man Perkins has kidnapped 14 children and raised them in kennels in his basement - we assume he conditioned them to essentially be his army of killers. One of the parents of the kidnapped children happens to be a police officer who comes to suspect the man in his jail cell is the kidnapper, and through a series of events, accidentally sets these 14 psycho killers loose upon the small town to wreak havoc.
As I said, the setup is very interesting. It's a shame, then, that director Craig Singer (who also helmed the abysmal DARK RIDE from the first Horror-fest) could not find an interesting story to tell with such fertile ground. It's hard to really decide where the blame should go. The film is largely shot well, and the acting is, at worst, average for a horror film. So who to blame? I would begin with the writers. The dialogue itself is not particularly bad, but it is the plotting and pacing that cause the film to suffer. The film spends exactly half of its running time getting to the point of releasing the killers - while the first half is interesting in a slowly-building tension sort of way as the cop and kidnapper engage in a "Hannibal Lector" style dialogue, it goes on entirely too long, and as such we aren't given nearly enough time to invest in the aftermath of the psychos being unleashed. A better director would have accomplished the first half of the film in about twenty minutes.
As for that second half, being rushed and probably working with a limited budget, we have to glean from radio calls that the mayhem is going on city wide, because we never really see it. These 14 psychos from the title actually amount to about 5 psychos on screen, and they largely only attack our main family of characters. Within about twenty minutes of the escape, the characters are already holed up inside the city jail, where the remainder of the film plays out. And at this point, the viewer has never really gained any compassion for any of these characters, who are predictably one-dimensional. You have the typical goth-daughter, the cheating wife, and a doofus of a father, none of which elicit the slightest bit of sympathy.
Now, when I say doofus, I mean it! This father/cop is a terrible character for a protagonist, who makes some of the dumbest choices in the history of horror. He relentlessly puts others in danger for no good reason. Early on, he sends an off-duty officer to check out the kidnappers house with NO BACK-UP. Later, he leaves a civilian in the back seat of his police cruiser, which he just got finished telling the audience can ONLY be opened from the outside! Not long after, he allows another civilian to go to the bathroom all alone when the psychos have invaded the jail. Near the end, he actually sends his wife to go fetch the keys on the other side of the psycho-filled jail while he remains in the locked room with the shotgun. And in the most incomprehensible move of all time, actually locks his daughter in a jail cell and in the next scene literally hands the keys to one of the psychos!!
But he's not the only doofus - other characters repeatedly stand by and watch friends and loved ones being attacked and devoured without even attempting to help - including a police officer who simply stands dumbfounded, shining his flashlight at one of the bloody murders happening just three feet away from him!! One character even allows a psycho to slowly approach her, strip her of the shotgun she was holding, and blow her away with it. Why she didn't fire on him the moment he entered the room . . . .?
It's this kind of idiocy on the part of the characters that thoroughly sink the second half of the film. What could have been an effectively intense final act along the lines of a film like 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, instead falls into just one excuse after another to showcase an extreme amount of gore. The filmmakers seem only to revel in trying to gross out the audience (including one groaningly poor effect of a psycho crawling away from his severed legs - you can clearly see the board the actor is laying on being dragged away from the prosthetic legs).
Seeing as how this film did not get a wide release, I would be interested to see a more talented director and cast pick it up. The idea of conditioned killers, one of which is the son of the protagonist, could make for a very interesting psychological thriller. But PERKINS 14 is not that film - avoid at all costs!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
TERRIFYING, AND VERY, VERY DISTURBING
Added 5/11/2009
Perkins 14 is a taut, fast-paced chiller that delivers the goods compared to most of the bargain basement junk that passes for horror these days.
Victims are slashed, impaled, mutilated and bludgeoned to death but it's not a slasher movie.
Victims are torn apart and eaten but it's not a zombie movie.
What it is about is Perkins a physcopath who has kidnapped 14 children and kept them for 10 years locked in cages in his basement where he has abused, starved, and drugged them out of their skulls, and he has videotaped each one showing the stalking, kidnapping and abuse of each child.
Kyle, one of the last kidnapped is the son of the local sherrif named Dwayne Hopper who is wracked with guilt over the fact that he gave up too quickly trying to locate his missing son. Hopper also has an adulterous wife and a goth-light daughter who has the type of boyfriend you wouldn't invite over for Sunday dinner with Mom & Dad. The cages are accidently unlocked, Sheriff Hopper kills Perkins and then the carnage begins to escalate in a series of brutal and gruesome killings.
The father-son reunion towards the end is both heart-breaking and
horrifying. The movie is left open-ended for a sequel and I hope they never do make one. A sequel is unneccesary and would just be a rehash and pointless to try to "improve" the original.
The movie is really a 4.5 rated movie bacause of a few lapses in logic but I opted to rate upwards rather than backwards because the movie took me by surprise and has more thrills and chills that some movies that try to pass themselves off as horror.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Okay horror flick.
Added 4/19/2009
This movie had an intersting premise, but it could of used a little more action. And the ending was kind of weak.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Interesting!
Added 4/8/2009
I'm a big horror fan, but maybe I've become a little desensitized to and a bit tired of the same old canabilistic frenzy that goes on in a lot of them, but I was most interested in the mystery of how these Perkins 14 creatures became what they were. I like this one enough to say I would dust it off one day and watch it again. Not the best of the After Dark set, but not the worst.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Some good ideas and moments, but mostly poor execution makes for another Less-Than-Stellar collection.
Added 10/10/2009
For the third year in a row, horror fans find themselves watching a set of 8 movies for no other reason than that someone distributed them in a group together. At this point, it seems more than abundantly clear that these "8 Films To Die For" are never going to be the elite horror experience, or the most extreme, or anything else special or unique. They're just 8 movies no one else wanted to distribute (for good reason, as it turns out).
This year's crop is slightly better than year 2, though none of them rank with the overall competence of last year's BORDERLAND, or the chills of the first year's THE ABANDONED. If there was a consistent issue this year, it was that each of these (for the most part) had a very interesting concept, but were just executed poorly. As I think on each one, I can tell you at what point the movie shifted from promise to disappointment, like a roller coaster that climbs and climbs to what seems like a wonderfully great drop to come, only to find that the top of the first incline is the end of the ride!
Another consistent theme seems to be "let's compensate for a lack of imagination by just having everyone die in the end!" With one exception, these films all end terribly. Perhaps now and then it is appropriate and interesting to end with tragedy, but such an ending has to be earned. And these films mostly do not do so. If you are going to end on a dour note, you need to at least give me a good reason!
Finally, giving a real ranking of "best" to "worst" is difficult because each film at some point has a major detracting factor - but I will do my best . . .
8) PERKINS 14: I'll start with the worst, because that's pretty easy to pick out. This film was hyped as the one "created by fans." Story, actors, etc . . . were all submitted and voted for online by fans. The story of 14 kidnapped kids raised as animals in cages and sent out for mindless killing was interesting in concept, but horrible in execution! So-lame-you-can-see-the-prop effects, bad acting, and terrible writing, and stupid characters doing stupid things sink this puppy.
7) SLAUGHTER: Tight, tight contention for last place. This one would be in the bottom save for a somewhat well done final third. This one concerns a girl moving out to a farm with another woman she barely knows, only to become wrapped up in a sinister plot for revenge. The film's death knell is it's excruciatingly boring first 45 minutes. The filmmakers must have thought their slow build of disappearing victims would be more interesting than seeing these people killed off. They are wrong - replacing potentially good kills with "girl bonding" does not a horror movie make! And, even with some good "table turning" in its final act, the last turn of the table is so ridiculously bad, I was laughing even during the unnecessarily grim final shot.
6) DYING BREED: Getting a little better. This one looks fantastic, and the actors are fairly likeable, at least in the first half. Typical fare of twenty-somethings being chased in the woods by hillbilly cannibals. The first kill is a real shocker, and one of the later ones involving a bear trap is very effective. But, as with PERKINS 14, the stupidity of the characters when the killing starts tanks the film in its final act.
5) VOICES: Asian entry is heavy on both blood and mood. Kim's family and friends keep trying to kill her. Good camera, creepy atmosphere, and perhaps the best score of the 8 films - the weakness here is, after the third or fourth attempt on her life, it becomes achingly predictable - EVERYONE is going to try to kill her, and she's always going to be saved at the last minute by someone we didn't even realize was there.
4) AUTOPSY: Perhaps the most "fun" of the set. This "horror-hospital" fare has five tweens trying to escape a hospital staffed by psychos working for a mad doctor trying to keep his wife alive with live organ transplants. Unflinchingly gory, but in a fun way, this one never takes its ridiculous premise seriously, which is what saves it. The only thing keeping it from the top spot is some very poor editing near the end, and a completely tacked on and nonsensical final shot.
3) THE BROKEN: Lena Headey sees a double of herself driving down the road, and begins questioning her own reality. Mixed fillings about this one. Loved the concept, loved the mood. The atmosphere was effectively creepy and cold. Huge Lena Headey fan. Had some good creep-outs, particularly in the final act. The problem is pacing - at first, the slower pace feeds the atmosphere. But after thirty minutes, you can't help but start checking your watch. By the time things pick up again, you've lost a lot of interest. The characters are never really fleshed out, and while you know WHAT's happening by the end, you never know WHY. Also, the film cheats by skipping a key moment at the beginning to try to have a twist at the end. However, by doing so, it only makes the twist that much more predictable. Still, from a purely production value point of view, it easily stands above the other entries.
2) BUTTERFLY EFFECT 3: Arguably the best film of the set. Very interesting story, top production value and effects, fine acting, solid ending (the only really happy ending in the group). Travelling back in time to try to discover who killed his girlfriend, our protagonist inadvertently turns a single murder into a string of serial murders, and has to try to set things right. The one thing keeping THIS one from the top spot is, aside from some inappropriately gory kills, this movie is not remotely horror.
1) FROM WITHIN: Comes closest to hitting all the targets. Good production, good concept, good acting, good pacing, VERY creepy and chilling, and unlike BUTTERFLY, it IS a horror movie. A town is plagued by apparent suicides, but there is a sinister plot behind them all. I can reluctantly call this the overall best - my only reservations are the glibly stereotypical portrayals (both of the religious, and the pagan characters) and the fact that most of the best scare effects are lifted from other, better movies (GRUDGE, RING, EMILY ROSE, etc . . .)
Let's give a little more credit where due:
BEST SCARE: toss up between a good jump-scare in AUTOPSY, and a very chilling moment involving the father and his double in THE BROKEN.
BEST CRINGE-MOMENT: The clunky hand-drill to the head in AUTOPSY, definitely - though the teeth pulling in SLAUGHTER had me turning away as well.
STAND-OUT ACTORS: can't really say anyone was "best actor," but I liked Melanie Vallejo in DYING BREED, Jessica Lowndes and Robert Patrick in AUTOPSY, and Lucy Holt did well in psycho-mode at the end of SLAUGHTER. But I'd say Jenette Goldstein probably steals the show as psycho nurse in AUTOPSY - love when Emily pushes her to the floor and she screams "YOU GOT ME DIRTY!"
GORIEST MOMENT: Oxygen Tank to the head and face in AUTOPSY, ala IRREVERSIBLE.
BEST OPENING: VOICES had the creepiest opening, though it had nothing to do with anything else - SLAUGHTER had the most intriguing opening - AUTOPSY had the best opening credit sequence.
All-in-all, I had fun watching these movies, but I don't think a single one of these warrants a purchase, and CERTAINLY not the whole set!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Very Dissapointed
Added 4/28/2009
I bought the first 2 and enjoyed them. They advertize,"This set will scare you to death". They bored me to death. I think there was 1 decent one. They are mostly killer thrillers. There was nothing HORROR about them. It should be HORROR FEST.Get it? Don't just take a bunch of crappy old movies and put them together for the sake of selling them. I am reluctant to buy next year's horror fest. You let us down, big time.
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
|
terrible fest
Added 4/27/2009
I have been a fan of the Horrorfest films since they first came to theaters three years ago.This year proved to be very disappointing.The only film I did like had subtitles and lacked a credible ending.I suggest that in the future the filmmakers allow the characters the opportunity to have a chance for survival and not have them totally hopeless.I know its a horror movie but if I sense that everyone in the movie is going to be killed,what is the point in watching it.
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
|
