the Thing Below: (2004. dir: Jim Wynorski) Co-opting the plot of Alien and moving it to the middle of the ocean, the Thing Below gives us a ship sent by evil government officials to drag some unknown critter up out of the depths and transport the cargo home. They meet with some weather, the glass jar it's trapped in breaks, yada yada. If you've seen a Wynorski film, you know what to expect. Midway in, Glori-Anne Gilbert appears out of nowhere to do a completely gratuitous, five-minute strip-tease. (I love Glori-Anne Gilbert! You'll remember her from the completely gratuitous skinnydipping scene in Wynorski's equally bad Curse of the Komodo.)
In fact, the striptease is probably the best reason to watch it.
Borgman: (2013. dir: Alex van Warmerdam) Annoying Dutch movie in which quirky transients (possibly the devil and his cohorts) teach some rich folks a lesson by murdering them and their servants, then leading their children away to an unspecified fate. The women in question (the matriarch, the nanny) are ridiculously easy to seduce and obsessive once seduced. Yeah, you're going to tell me it's an allegory, right? That I'm not looking at it in the proper light. That in the original language, it's funny!
Whatever. The only really cool thing is the dogs.
Unholy: (2007. dir: Daryl Goldberg) Adrienne Barbeau swept up in occult governmental research into invisibility, time travel, and mind control? It could be interesting, right? Alas, not really. They never delve much further into these issues beyond the naming of them ("the Unholy Trinity", they're called. Spooky!). There's no true twistiness (alright, there's one good twist, but it's not sufficiently satisfying to absolve the bulk of the crapfest), no images so dark and true they gnaw into your underconscious. There's a conspiracy (who's part of it? everyone? you DON'T SAY!), a bestial Nazi behind the whole thing (yawn), and no interesting theories or ideas come forward. No decent dialogue, either, for that matter.
And who doesn't love Adrienne Barbeau? She deserves better than this.
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