"The Ruins" anything but, "April Fools Day" a joke

Hey, guys. I know I'm on various shitlists for not posting any birthday pics yet, but I assure you, they are coming. Combined forces of a week on jury duty and the difficulty of compiling decent pics from various drunkards have held them up a bit.

Anyway, just wanted to take a second to pass on two things:

First, The Ruins is kinda awesome. There's not much to it, but what is there is done exceedingly well. I don't know if I'll get around to a full review, but let me just say that the ads are horribly misleading (they really low-ball it as some cheap, disposable teen slasher when in reality it has a solid pedigree and is much more serious and complex that it appears) and that it's worth checking out. Really, any movie that can make me legitimately scared of a few morning glories is aces in my book, and the performances of all four leads (although Shawn Ashmore gets the least to do, really) are really, really solid.

See what happens when you cast actual actors in horror movies, Hollywood? Which brings us to ...

The bound-to-suck direct-to-video in-name-only "remake" of April Fool's Day sucked even harder than I ever could have imagined. It sucked the paint right off the walls. It sucked a golfball through 200 feet of garden hose. It sucked me back to 1987.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, even ENTERTAIN the thought of wasting any money on this, even as a rental. It's cheap, bloodless, scriptless, ugly, and has the plot of about 150 Christopher Pike young adult horror novels like Chain Letter and Slumber Party and shit. It's atrociously acted, atrociously directed (although to even suggest that there was a director present - let alone 2 "Butcher Brothers" - is a slap in the face of everything I understand about the filmmaking process) and makes Dave DeCoteau's worst film look like Lawrence of Arabia by comparison.

At its core it's supposed to be a "whodunit", but it's more of a "whothefuckcares". I'd call it "Diet Dynasty" or "I Know What You Did Last Prom Night" but either would be an insult to the references. I guess to call it The Disney Channel Presents Cry_Wolf is probably the closest thing I can come up with. It is nothing short of 89 minutes of direct-to-video abortion and I BEG you not to waste your time.

Trailer Fabulous: Bad Biology, Shutter, The Ruins

Okay, this is absolutely NSFW and far more explicit than anything I've ever posted on this site, so be very careful about clicking the below preview for Frank Henenlotter's first film in 16 years, Bad Biology.

I love Frank's movies both because they're playfully sick and because they seem to feature hot naked men more than they rightfully should (particularly Brain Damage, which is one of my all-time favorites), and this movie is no exception. Prepare yourself for some hot shitboxes, lots of trim, and a few bathtub babies.

Next up we have the trailer for the US remake of Shutter, a clever Asian ghost movie from a few years back that I enjoyed (despite some J-horror cliches that are way past their freshness date) mostly because of a slight twist in the end that I didn't see coming. No idea if the American remake will pull the same trick, but it's worth a look...

And last we have the trailer for The Ruins, which I'm only including as an example of how NOT to sell a horror movie. I saw this trailer in the theatre and laughed, because it looked like a knockoff of Turistas made for the Sci-Fi Channel. But it's actually got some great selling points that are totally missing here.

For one, it's based on a novel by and has a script by Scott Smith, the author of A Simple Plan. Right away this tells me that it's not a throwaway teens-in-peril script. For another, it stars Shawn Ashmore (X-Men, 3 Needles, Wolf Girl), Jena Malone (Donnie Darko, Saved!), and Jonathan Tucker (TCM remake, The Deep End), all of whom have some degree of cred, particularly in genre films (and gay films). You'd never know any of these actors was in the film because you never see a face long enough for it to register, giving the impression that they're cutting AROUND the actors (which is never a good sign).

And lastly, it's directed by gay filmmaker Carter Smith, whose short Bugcrush has disturbed gay film fest viewers all over the place and who has collaborated with gay novelist Dennis Cooper (The Sluts, Frisk) on a film script. Needless to say, I'm checking this one out DESPITE the trailer below...