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GODZILLA (1998)

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Godzilla– 1998. Roland Emmerich – USA

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…I don’t want to spend too much time on this one… It’s just kicking a guy when he’s down. More importantly, there’s nothing to say. Godzilla is crap. It serves no purpose, but to be the far, shallow end of the Godzilla franchise’s grading scale… With any luck, this will always be the worst Godzilla film.

I has almost no connection to Godzilla, save for  name, and the fact that it’s about a giant, lizard like monster, attacking a city. By this token, Gorgo and Reptilicus are as close to Gojira as Godzilla is. What a foul stench this one leaves….

THE PLOT- Do I have to? A radioactive iguana attacks New York. Turns out he’s laying eggs there and building a nest under ground, because this “Godzilla” reproduces asexually. Wonderful. A good chunk of the film features Jean Reno and a bunch of losers being chased around by baby Godzillas, because this shit-fest wants to rip off  Jurassic Park more than it does the actual movies it’s supposed to be based on. How embarrassing.

The Godzilla redesign is also just awfull, but to be fair, I remember when this movie was released, and I expected them to drastically rewrite the book when it came to Godzilla’s physical appearance. I think that was a sign on the times, people expected it. It’s good that Gareth Edward’s 2014 reboot stuck with a design a lot closer to the classic Godzilla, because that’s the ultimate case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

It’s even bad enough to be noteworthy! It sucks ass, but it lands right on the “who cares” level of film assessment. Really, the name “Godzilla” is the ONLY reason this thing didn’t end up being forgotten by now, because beyond that, there’s nothing here.

It’s worth mentioning that Toho was so repulsed by this piece of shit that they acknowledged its existance within the timeline of Godzilla proper just so that they could assert that this was NOT Godzilla, and then they friggin’ killed this stupid thing in Final Wars.

F

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Death Factory!

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Death Factory ~ 2002, Brad Sykes

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On the off chance that any of you hate yourselves, or feel guilty, and want to cause yourselves some sort of anguish, I’ve got good news; there is a company called Brain Damage Films, they exist, they are a real thing, and they have got you covered, big time. One 90 minute Brain Damage movie is the mental and psychological equivalent to nine months in a P.O.W. camp, I promise, watch one, and you’ll have a terrible, terrible time. These movies are just the worst, and if you have some weird need to punish yourself, for really any reason at all, Death Factory is on par with an evening of beating yourself in the face. The difference is; with Death Factory, all your scars are inside, on your soul and brain. That’s going to be convenient when you go into work the next day and won’t have to explain to your boss what happened to all of your teeth.

THE PLOT~ This movie opens, like every Brain Damage movie I have ever seen (All two of them), With some lame nerd guy trying to hype you up for this horrible, horrible movie that you’re about to watch. He’s like, the mascot of Brain Damage, I guess, he dresses like an old school punk and speaks at the very bottom of his register, it’s really pretty embarrassing. Anyway. He summarizes the movie in what he hopes is an exciting way. He’s sort of like a bargain basement Crypt Keeper, except that he’s totally unlikable, and he probably has to pay for sex (When we all know the Cryptkeeper can get anyone he pleases.) Anyway, he’s here. Then the movie proper begins…

Death Factory is the very definition of generic, straight to DVD horror, and it is as bland as dry toast. The only thing this movie has that it can hope will differentiate it from the unending sea of scratched up, second hand DVDs left in apartment closets after weirdos get evicted is that it sucks a little harder than average. The premise is as such: Over and over, people continually break into an abandoned chemical factory, only to be murdered by a “Monster,” which is really just a goth chick with metal leg braces and blades strapped onto her hands. Apparently, this “monster” is an ex-employee who was mutated by exposure to biological weapons. The movie really overplays just how “mutated” she is, because as I’ve said, she doesn’t look mutated in the least. Right now there are eleven kids that look exactly like her employed at your local Hot Topic.

The main group we follow into this paint-by-numbers horror movie scenario is made up of people visibly in their 30’s (or older) playing college kids, and the film ends with a twist ending so banal that not even well known “twist ending” fetishist M. Knight Shyamalan would find his fancy tickled. It’s bad, and I don’t think this movie was ever intended to be watched, actually. I present this theory; Death Factory was made with the express purpose of filling shelves at Hollywood Video, it’s filler; it’s background decoration. They never dreamed anyone would actually rent it… But they were wrong, because me and my friends totally did. What fools we were.

All of the characters in this Death Factory are horribly written, directed and acted. Often, their behavior makes no sense whatsoever. For instance, at the begining of the movie, a couple breaks into the “factory” so they can find somewhere exciting to fool around. It’s the girl’s idea, by the way, that’s important to know for later. So, while in the midst of gettin’ down to business, the male spots this horrifying “mutant” peeking in at them, so he reacts to what he sees, like anyone would. This just pisses the girl off something fierce, she cannot believe how out of line he is for reacting. His momentary fear and surprise caused by being startled in a weird, scary place where they aren’t even supposed to be is apparently more than she is able to tolerate, so she yells at him and storms off, utterly incensed by his behavior, and even refuses to let him accompany her. “I just need to be alone!” She yells. Right, so she’s totally insane. What human would act like that?!

And it isn’t really her fault, she is the way she is because she’s been written by dummies, and it doesn’t end there. All characters in Death Factory suck in their own, stupid way, whether it be the 40 year old white woman who plays a college aged Latina, the dirty metal-head who would never be caught dead hanging out with a bunch of squares in real life, or the black man who plays a humiliatingly stereotypical black man. His portrayal is actually embarrassing enough that at first I thought he should be ashamed to have represented African Americans in this way, before I realized that the white actors should be no less ashamed for portraying white people the way this movie required them to. Really, no one escapes involvement with Death Factory without taking on a sizable chunk of bad karma. If reincarnation is real, these people will cruise into the next life as some kind of parasite that lives inside of anuses.

Another awesome Death Factory fact: Holy shit, this is NOT a factory. At no point, ever, in this movie, does the setting appear factory like in the least. These are just dilapidated bedrooms connected by unfinished, plywood hallways. What, every room in this factory is fully furnished with at least one couch and multiple chairs? This factory had a very avant garde “no machinery/shit load of couches” philosophy in regards to factory design. Why even call this Death Factory? So many questions, Brain Damage…

Also, Ron Jeremy plays a small role in this film. His part? A Drunken, stumbling hobo who dies right away. Yes, with everything Ron Jeremy has on his resume, I wouldn’t really start to feel ashamed until Death Factory. Why did he take this job, actually? Had he fallen on hard times? how hard could times actually be? Did they even pay him? No, Ron Jeremy. This isn’t worth it. Couldn’t you just start banging ventriloquist dummies or something? I refuse to believe that there wasn’t less demeaning work available to him.

Brain Damage addresses their viewer (viewerS? Could there be more than one?) as “gorehounds’, so you would expect them to at least deliver on the gore with their crappy little videos, and more or less, they do. I mean, it’s no-budget gore, but it’s in there. In this case, that adds up to maybe a few Halloween store props and a ton of fake blood that can just be caked on top of woundless flesh, and nothing more extravagant than that. They for sure try to milk it for all it’s worth, though, these shots drag on and on, and Brain Damage is not stingy with that fake blood. They really splash that shit on there. Expect to linger on shots of people writhing in gross, red goo for what will seem like an eternity, but anything more complicated than that is simply outside the budgetary restrictions of Death Factory… Which doesn’t really matter. It sucks left right and center no matter what, and more, or less graphic violence was never going to be Death Factory’s salvation. The best thing this movie could do for humanity is to be forgotten and promptly excluded from all written records. Oh, shit, why did I review it?

The Hollywood Video joke I made before actually isn’t far off, actually. Little Direct To Video studios like Brain Damage, or The Asylum, were primarily dependent on Video Store traffic in the last decade. With no talent associated with the project to bring audiences in, and nothing of merit in the production to warrant a word of mouth reputation, 100% of the demand for this movie was just people browsing who saw it on a shelf of their local video store and thought “What the hell?” If they rented it, they might have watched it, but they don’t rent it twice. Just being on the shelf at all was an example of Brain Damage’s business model succeeding, but now, those shelves are gone, and these movies are fighting to remain relevant in an era of vending machines, streaming video, and even shorter attention spans. I’ve seen plenty of Brain Damage’s products offered up by Netflix Instant View with the stink of desperation upon them, so I think the plan is to hope for a similar phenomena on a digital shelf, but we’ll see if it works out for them.

I hope it doesn’t. What they do is not art.

F

GHOST ADVENTURES!

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Ghost Adventures ~ 2004, Zak Bagans, Nik Groff

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Most people have probably seen The Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures. Right now there are countless documentary style ghost hunting shows smeared crudely across cable television time-slots, and Ghost Adventures is identical to them all, save for one crucial factor that sets it apart; it’s host; Zak Bagans, the single biggest dumb-ass in the entire world.

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Zak Bagans is a big, strong man, he’s not afraid of any ghosts. Don’t believe me?! Well, then, how come he has that ugly, dumb ass T-shirt he bought for 80 dollars? If he’s not a strong, big man then how come his hair is so spikey?!

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“What douche bags?!??!”

Yeah, that’s right, Zak Bagans isn’t about to let any ghosts insult his masculinity, and if he perceives one to be doing so, he will overcompensate, hard and fast, and confront that ghost (or big empty room) in the most childish way possible, and then you’ll see. Then everyone will see. “Do you even lift, bro?” He’ll cry out, before retreating into his tanning bed. (Actually, Bagans quotes aren’t normally worded that well.)

But I digress… Let’s get back to point; Perhaps you are aware of the show, but I’d wager that less of you are aware that before Ghost Adventures entered production as a regular TV series, there was a full length Ghost Adventures movie. Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your asses.

THE PLOT- Ghost Adventures follows intrepid douche bag Zak Bagans and two other humans who can somehow tolerate him on a ghost hunting road trip for the ages; armed with cameras and a staggeringly low combined IQ, these big, brave men will stake out various locales thought to harbor lost souls and fearlessly document their attempts to prove that they aren’t afraid of things, and are totally cool and bad ass.

Here’s the truth; I believe in Ghosts, and I love shit like this, but when these assholes do it, it’s just humiliating. Literally, this is a man who tries to prove himself by physically confronting ghosts… First of all, there are almost definitely no ghosts wherever Zak Bagans is, meaning he is trying to physically challenge a damn hallway. It’s so, so extreme how much of an idiot this guy is. Secondly, if ghosts ARE real, and he DOES find one…. I mean, you guys, it’s okay to run from a confrontation with a ghost. It doesn’t mean you’re weak, Zak, you’re not impressing anyone. It’s a damn ghost. You can’t punch it, and if you did, what in the hell do you expect is going to happen next? No one in the world has ever made such a fool of themselves. What are you going to do the day a snarling phantom from hell lurches out of a corridor and tears your damn throat out? Please, God, PLEASE let that happen to Zak Bagans. PLEASE, let the first, undeniable piece of video evidence be a damn ghoul eviscerating the shit out of Zak Bagans on his own f’ing show. I’ll never ask for anything ever again.

 0Seriously, I would never ask for anything ever again. Give me this one thing… Kill Zak Bagans….

Of course, Douche Bagans aside, the biggest issue with shows like this is that the hosts always present their findings as being invaluable, cut and dry proof of the paranormal, when for all we know, this shit is fake, top to bottom. It just can’t be treated as scientific evidence. It’s too easy to hoax this sort of thing, and Bagans has a clear motive to do so, after all, those spray tans and Crest Whitening Strips aren’t gonna pay for themselves.

So, assuming it’s not faked, what of the findings? Well, they’re fine. Nothing that’s going to change anyone’s mind, and nothing definitive. In the hands of another “team,” this might have even been kind of neat, just a fun little ghost hunting doc. However, no shadowy form at the end of a hallway can pull the focus away from the real star of this show; the dim witted blundering of aforementioned metrosexual simpleton Zak Bagans. The man is just a fucking fool. His narration made me laugh out loud more than once. For me, Ghost Adventures isn’t about ghost hunting, it’s about the clownsmanship of this truly remarkable individual, the Superman of idiots; Zak Bagans. He is legend.

Actually, the film being made early in his ghost hunting career, the Zak Bagans of the Ghost Adventures movie is sort of like Zak Bagans Light. Yeah, he’s the least well spoken person to ever narrate anything, and yes, you can tell by looking at him that he’s just not very smart- but as the years go by his buffoonary becomes much more pronounced and extreme. Regardless, if you’re going into this movie hoping to see a moron on full blast, you won’t be disappointed.

The movie’s problems aren’t limited to Bagans, surprisingly. The craftsmanship is truly bottom of the barrel, with the editing being particularly horrid, but all aspects technical are feeble and sometimes cringe-worthy. It’s also supposed to be a documentary designed to prove the existence of the paranormal, but the movie has no integrity whatsoever. The crew frequently refers to “how they feel” as evidence for paranormal phenomena, and the interviews are a complete disaster. Bagans blatantly baits or leads most of the interviewees into saying what he needs them to say, and most of them seem crazy to begin with.

So, how do we judge this? As a movie? Totaly blows. As an achievement? Totally blows (Though they got a show out of it, so that’s SOMETHING.). As a documentary? Totally blows. As evidence? Laughably inadmissible. F, F, F, F, fails all around. Now; as a hilarious record of the half cocked, cave-man browed, chest poundings of an over-eager dumb ass with a need to prove to himself that he isn’t a whimpering little bitch? Well, on that front, Ghost Adventures is a real slam dunk. I like it, actually- I mean, it sucks ass, but it’s pretty funny. However, it’s not supposed to be funny at all, and if Zak Bagans ever “read” this, he’d probably just skip to the end, so let’s give his movie the grade it deserves, otherwise he’ll get confused and become confrontational.

F

TANK GIRL

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Tank Girl ~ 1995, Rachel Talalay

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THE PLOT: In the future, there is no water. A group of dummies goof around and who gives a shit. Also, our lead character has sex with a mentally retarded kangaroo monster.

Basically, it’s a world where you act as stupid as possible, and everything works out for you anyway, except for when it doesn’t, but that’s only ever just a set up for things to work out even more so a little down the road.

Tank Girl is a movie tailored to appeal to the Generation X kids of yesteryear, a youth culture that, if Tank Girl is to be believed, was fully devoted to being a stupid asshole at all times. I hope Tank Girl was as wrong about it’s audience as it was about absolutely everything else. It can safely be said that this is one of the worst movies of all time.

I’m not an expert on the Tank Girl comic book, although I have read some of it. From what I’ve seen, this is a terrible, halfway style adaptation, and halfway isn’t enough. The Tank Girl comics that I’ve read operate by a frantic, near surrealist style of logic, suggesting that the storytellers are “too cool” to obey the laws of traditional narrative, and can’t be bothered to “make sense” when they’re having so much fun just doing whatever they want. The film tries to capture some of that energy, but it doesn’t have the guts to go all the way, so they end up trying to capture non-traditional narrative style logic from within the confines of a very traditional narrative. How does that wash out? Not well, what we end up with is slapstick and cartoon logic in enough of the mix to dissolve any sense of danger or realism when every other aspect of the production is trying to go the opposite direction, and they try to split the difference with uninspired gags that are the furthest thing from funny. The Tank Girl comic is successful not because of WHAT they do, but HOW they did it, and the how is something this film doesn’t get right. Surprise surprise, it ends up not working, and you have an inexcusable piece of shit.

Ugh. It’s just so awful. Tank Girl (The character) knows but three ways to respond to any given situation; 1. Act like a moron. 2. Act like a moron, but somehow people around you manage to die (fighting) 3. Act like Bugs Bunny (and also still a moron.) Are we, the audience, supposed to think any of this is funny?

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F

(Special note: Still better than Sucker Punch.)

Ninja Turtles….

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ~ 2014, Johnathan Liebsman, USA

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When I went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I knew that it was going to be terrible… But the fact is, I could never be prepared for it to suck this badly, or in this way. I’m not even sure I can voice this clearly, but let’s give it a shot…

To be clear, I was among the many, many jaded former fans who were repulsed by early screen shots of the new Ninja Turtles, given that they are so damn hideous, but honestly, we have bigger problems. If the worst thing this movie had in it were lips and nostrils and an over the top pile of knives called “The Shredder,” I would have felt way better walking out of that theater. Now, after seeing the movie, I could not care less how the Turtles look. Who, to put it plainly, gives a shit? Did you see that film?! Don’t. If I listed what was wrong with this movie, the Turtle’s redesign wouldn’t even crack the top 5,000 flaws hammered into your brain and soul throughout the unmercifully lengthy run time of this satanic hog-orgy. I’ve already decided I was going to use much more R rated language to describe this, I can’t feel like I’ve been honest if I keep this PG-13.

So, the first thing wrong here is that this is, more than probably, the least engaging movie I have ever sat through. Is a Michael Bay movie funny? No, no it isn’t, but you at least can see and understand where the “jokes” are. Typically, these movies are made to be very bland, very universal, and very unobjectionable, so you get the same kind of humor that you might hear at a family reunion. No, it’s not really funny, but the jokes are easily spotted and if you don’t have a bad attitude you can understand why other people are laughing, and maybe even fake it yourself. That’s not happening here. From the beginning, I found myself confused by how flat, dis-interesting, unngaging and bland (even for this kind of film) the language, characterization and humor was. This isn’t a Michael Bay movie, it’s a Johnathan Liebsman movie, which is basically Michael Bay Jr… And you can feel it. This is what happens when you accept something so profoundly lackluster and insulting as Michael Bay, eventually they even water THAT down, and you get THIS. The writing is just embarrassing.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE:  Let’s try to help this movie… SOMETIMES the Turtles are funny enough. Everything else isn’t even one dimensional. Is zero dimensional even a thing? I feel like this proves that it can be, under extreme circumstances.

About the Turtles… Remember the turtles of yesteryear? Well, forget them, because evidently they were too boring, so they’re gone. These are basically The Hulk, with a shell. They’re fucking bullet proof. “Only their shells are bullet proof!” So? Nobody seems to be able to hit the rest of their bodies, so in effect, bullet proof. Also, they have super strength. Why? Because clearly that’s the only way a movie can be entertaining. Remember when you’ve seen entertaining movies before and the characters weren’t super strong, or bullet proof, or eight foot tall monsters? Michel Bay doesn’t remember that, not at all. The degree of scrutiny applied to this movie’s script while in development had to be bellow kindergarten level. What is a table read like when Michael Bay is your producer? I imagine he stands the entire time, guzzling vitamin supplements, ceaselessly curling a ten pound weight and shouting things like “AWW, TIGHT, BRA, THAT’S HELLA FUNNY.” Also, he’s probably chewing gum and is definitely not paying attention. America is an overly-medicated society, but Michael Bay proves that adult attention deficit disorder is a real thing.

Here’s an interesting point we should talk about- at a time when a black Captain America, a black Flash, and a female Thor are making headlines, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seems to be trying deliberately to go the other way. This movie is WHITE. It feels like they wanted as few non-whites in it as possible. Two asians, no ninjas, anything non-Caucasian is limited to only the minimum allowable number of token minorities. The Foot Clan you know and love from prior Ninja Turtle adventures is now just a terrorist group, they carry guns and have no idea what the hell karate is. Splinter is now Tony Shalhoub, definitely not Japanese, and he learned the martial arts from a book he found in the trash, and then he taught the turtles. Here, go find a “teach yourself kung-fu” book and try to teach yourself. Then, challenge a traditionally taught martial arts novice- just make sure your will is in order beforehand because he/she is going to stomp the shit out of you so hard you will actually disappear from the memory of the universe, you will simply cease to be, because the idea that you can train yourself and others from a book with absolutely no instruction and then possess any level of proficiency is so stupid that I am insulted it was even considered for inclusion here.

AND THE SHREDDER…. The entire movie, Shredder is such an afterthought, he amounts to nothing more than a thug, and absolutely not the film’s real villain. The really bad guy in this movie is Eric Sacks, played by William Fichtner. Throughout the movie, I constantly felt like some secret regarding The Shredder was only moments away from being revealed, but then it never happened, Shredder is never adequately explored, and his role and inclusion feels murky and unfinished. In fact, the movie clearly seems to be heading for the reveal that Eric Sacks is in fact The Shredder, but it then establishes that he isn’t. The truth is that there is more going on here than the uniformed might think, and this ties into my point above about a lack of diversity. I guarantee, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that initially, William Fichtner’s character Eric Sacks WAS going to end up being The Shredder. Part of how I know this, is because in early interviews, multiple cast and crew members, Fichtner himself among them, it was confirmed that William Fichtner WAS The Shredder. “Eric Sacks” even sounds like an appropriately Anglo-Saxonized version of “Oroku Saki,” the Shredder’s name in traditional Ninja Turtles cannon. However, after this word came out, fan backlash kicked in, mostly to the tune of “Wait, the Shredder is some white guy? Why? Why are there no Asians in your damn karate movie, Michael Bay?!” Shortly after this, reshoots commence, and suddenly, William Fichtner isn’t the Shredder anymore, and instead there is a super tacked on, badly smoothed out Shredder character crammed into the film, and the hope is that we just buy it and don’t notice. Nice try, Michael Bay, but not everybody can be a white guy.

Maybe the worst part of this shit show is Megan Fox’s April O’Neil. Now, Megan Fox isn’t a great actor, but the problems we have here are not her fault- this comes right down to the writers. April O’Neil is the central character in this film, and there is a predictably generic “it’s a small world” attempt to tie her in to the Turtles origins by placing her in the laboratory where they (and the newly white Splinter) were created, by her father, when she was a child. That would MAYBE fly, if the movie didn’t also want her to be a sleuthy, gum-shoe style reporter who would constantly work to unravel the mystery of who, what, and how these mysterious turtles could possibly exist. The key to a good mystery isn’t having your detective slowly piece together “Oh, yeah, I remember now, it was because of me!” It just can’t be both. April O’Neil can’t logically be involved in the way that she was with the turtles origin and still constantly struggle to piece together the very origin she was a part of, it’s just not good writing. Even worse, after she remembers, she just forgets again and Splinter has to re-explain what she just pieced together. Basically, the Megan Fox April O’Neil has a severe learning disability. That’s the only way her character’s actions makes any kind of sense at all.

So, there is, out there, a desire to just be happy and enjoy this movie, and this is wrong. If you want to argue with the overwhelmingly negative critical consensus that this movie is horse shit incarnate, then you’re wrong, and you should feel deep, deep shame. Let’s look at some of these arguments:

  • It’s a Kid’s Movie! : So what?! I’ve seen kid’s movies before, they don’t have to suck like this. That is not an excuse for this sham.
  • “I just want to enjoy my Ninja Turtles!” : Hey, bud, I liked the Ninja Turtles too, but it’s not enough for something to just be called The Ninja Turtles. It also has to NOT suck really hard. Here, do you like Spaghetti? If I feed you vomit and garbage but it’s called Spaghetti, are you going to get mad at people who act like your “spaghetti” is gross? Logic doesn’t follow, friend, you’re eating garbage and vomit. That’s what this movie is.
  • “You’re just mad because it’s different!” : Yes, exactly, I’m mad because it’s different in one key way, before, it wasn’t really, really, really horrible, and now it is. That’s a change that I do not support.
  • The old Ninja Turtles was dumb, too!: It wasn’t this dumb, and you know it. We all know it.

I’m just sick to my stomach thinking about this.

F-

 

Avia Vampire Hunter!

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Avia Vampire Hunter ~ 2005, Leon Hunter, USA

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WHOA!! Talk about slumming it… This is a grotesquely incompetent production. Let’s start at the beginning… So, I have no idea how this movie wound up at the top of my Netflix queue. It somehow arrived at my house unannounced, and I have no memory of having ever heard of it before. All in all, I am beginning to suspect paranormal intervention. Then I watched it. Wow. This thing is an epic turkey.
Avia Vampire Hunter is a remarkably boring and generic story about a woman who has devoted her life to hunting vampires because they “killed her baby.” …Okay? Mostly, her hunting amounts to wandering around parks and neighborhoods wearing budget conscious Matrix cosplay and carrying a ninja sword she bought of Amazon for 60 dollars. Sometimes she finds cheap, plastic skulls or other Halloween Store decorations laying around. On rare occasions she might use her flashlight. Every once in a while she manages, somehow, to find vampires, and then she kills them in a clumsy, slowly acted, badly choreographed fit of bellow average ninja fury. Your neighbor kids are probably making a movie that will surpass this in quality as we speak. Also, she apparently falls in love with a cop pretty much instantly early on in the movie, and at some point the movie tries to establish some sort of tension by floating the idea that maybe Avia is actually crazy and vampires don’t exist. That subplot remains very brutally underdeveloped.
There are a couple points we should probably talk about individually here. Let’s break it down:

  • MUSIC ~ First and foremost, Avia Vampire Hunter has the most hilariously inept use of score that I’ve ever seen in a movie. Yes, including Birdemic. This one wins out over Birdemic in this category. The music sounds like the editor clearly just bought a ton of public domain (I hope) music by different composers and jammed it in there with all the grace and subtly of an occupied porta-potty tumbling end-over-end down a long staircase. There is a valiant, if not completely insane effort to add suspense to scenes of Avia wandering about mindlessly by using the most suspenseful music available to man. The end result is equally comedic and pitiful. Who did this, and how is it that they didn’t know better?
  • VAMPIRES ~ This is the closest I can come to actually complimenting this shambling ambulance crash of movie- some of the vampires are creative looking. Others look like your typical mall goths. There is some variety here, but for some reason there is included in this film a vampire troop decked out in bloody blindfolds with Rick James hair and long sticks stuck onto their fingers (I think they’re supposed to be finger nails.) I don’t know why these are in the movie, or why they have bloody blindfolds, or really anything else about them, but in this sea of mediocrity and recycled cliches, these stand apart as slightly more imaginative, so I thought they deserved a mention, whatever the hell they are.
  • ROMANTIC SUBPLOT ~ The romance between Avia and Lieutenant Whocares (May not be his actual name- I don’t remember, and it’s just not worth a trip to IMDB to find out) is handled so, so terribly. They basically fall in love immediately despite their every interaction feeling skeezy and bleached of any form of humanity whatsoever. Toward the end of the film What’s-His-Name is informed that Avia might be insane, and finds himself under pressure to arrest her for murdering humans who she believes to be vampires (The movie never clarifies if she really is crazy or not)… When I say “put under pressure,” he’s not really put under any sort of pressure at all. Some guy just mentions it to him the same way a frat boy might say “Stay away from that chick, bro, she’s bad news.” This seems like it’s going to be a major plot point, but then he really doesn’t do anything. He acts like he has to, and then he just doesn’t. One gets the impression that writer/director Leon Hunter clearly tried really, really hard with this movie, even if his effort was totally fruitless, so this feels like a weird thing to establish and then completely fail to explore. Are we supposed to accept that Detective Whocares just decides to take her word for it? This is all part of the staggering stupidity with which Avia Vampire Hunter is so generously endowed. Also, it’s really hard to critique Avia Vampire Hunter without launching personal attacks against it’s director, come to find out. I’m trying, though.
  • TONE ~ This is the most damaging quality found in the fibers of Avia Vampire Hunter. It takes itself really, really seriously. If Leon Hunter had his way, this would not be a fun popcorn flick, this would be a heavy, emotional action piece which volleys between deep canyons of human drama and exciting sequences of sword play and horror. Frequently we are treated to scenes which are meant to show case the talents of our lead actress as she grapples with her inner demons in a struggle as heated and desperate as any Rick James vampire battle ever could be. Of course, no one in this movie can act, so in the end we would have been treated to a better acting tour de force had Hunter just filmed some shoes or a can of tomato sauce for a while. Really anything would have been better. Avia just looks like an idiot trying to wrap her mind around some simple concept she just saw on Sesame Street, but this movie so badly wants for her to be Meryl Streep yanking at your heartstrings like crazy. For all it’s effort, none of what Avia Vampire Hunter tries to do in establishing emotion lands at all, and the movie ends up being less authentic or emotionally hard hitting than say, Ernest Goes to Camp, or a McDonald’s commercial. That wouldn’t matter, but the effort is so apparent that this failure feels particularly devastating.

In closing, Avia Vampire Hunter is unforgivably terrible. Everything about it sucks. One time my mom accidentally filmed the inside of her pocket with her cell phone while she walked around the grocery store, and she asked me to help her delete it. I did, but before I removed this footage from her cellular device I was treated to a movie which bests Avia Vampire Hunter on every conceivable plane of human accomplishment.

Special note, this movie is still better than Sucker Punch.
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