The Eight Films To Die For films...

[BTM]

So.. been working my way through most of these from Netflix.  What's interesting is I remember when the festival was first advertised I went to the website to see if there was any showings near my area (think the nearest like an hour and half drive away or so.)  Seriously wanted to go as I thought it'd be cool to hang around fellow horror/b-movie lovers, but didn't really have much money (and had to work that weekend.)

In retrospect, I guess that's fortunate.

To be brutally honest.. several of these films are mediocre at best.  Certainly not the "films too scary, too graphic for a theatrical release".  Sure as hell doubt they were "defying the system" by releasing any of these.

Here's some mini-reviews...

Penny Dreadful - haven't seen.

The Gravedancers - okay, great premise, but they didn't do enough with it.  There are three ghosts, but for all the backgrounds details they put in, very little is done with (or the other, living characters).
   
The Abandoned - pretty pointless really, although it did have some interesting ideas with the "zombies" bit nothing much came of it.
   
The Hamiltons - so, so... pretty sure most people will predict the ending.  Find it really odd the family goes from having a lot of internal strife to suddenly being all buddy buddy in the end (course, maybe that's how a real family is, I dunno..)
   
Reincarnation - haven't seen

Unrest - pretty much a clichéd ghost story, oh, but the film supposedly used REAL corpses. 
   
Dark Ride - haven't seen.
   
Wicked Little Things - for some reason I have an odd fascination with "killer kid" movies, but still, this took WAY too long to set things up with very little pay off.

Interesting, reading Wikipedia and it says there were two bonus movies shown for only one day.. Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror and The Tripper

May have to look the latter up..

What did you guys think?  Any of you actually make it to the convention?

Still kind of wish I could have gone, despite the mediocre films just for the social atmosphere...

[Torgo]

I've always seen these for sale at the local Best Buy.  Most of them just looked like your basic direct to DVD horror fodder that had nothing special to offer.

[Joe the Destroyer]

I've only see three of them...

Dark Ride- I enjoyed it.  It was a nice throw back to the 80's splatter films.

Reincarnation- Being the third installment of the J-Horror Theater, I was pretty psyched for it.  I felt a little disappointed, especially since it didn't measure up to Premonition/Yogen.

Wicked Little Things- Dull, boring, and cliche.  I was able to predict every scare scene exactly as they would happen.  The only thing I didn't predict is that the crazy old man didn't die. 

[Joe]

was gonna go but i ended up not going, the only ones i really wanted to see were gravedancers, snoop dogs hood of horror and the tripper.

[Joe the Destroyer]

Since that last post, I've seen more of them:

Penny Dreadful- You know, I want to make a joke about how dreadful this film is, and how you shouldn't waste a penny, but it's just not coming out.  Maybe something like, "Don't waste a penny on this dreadful film."  Anyway, it's well acted, at least on the protagonist's part, but much of the film drags, not to mention that the ending sucked, mainly because it felt like the writer couldn't decide on how to end it and just decided to be lazy.

Gravedancers- I highly recommend this one.  For all the kitsch that ensued, it was still a fun film.

Unrest- Dull, boring, somewhat tame tripe.  Well, there are some who enjoyed it, but I felt it tried to hard to get away from being a typical horror film by not having true death scenes. 

[onagro]

Hood of Horror is the only one I've seen.  It is an anthology-style movie with a few slightly interesting stories. 
1st: Snoop Dogg's character is in an anime sequence where he is a gangster who goes to hell for somehow gunning down his little sister in a drive-by (that's what I gathered anyway) This sets up so he can collect the souls of the other characters.
2nd: Daniella Alanso gets a paint can that kills people whose name she crosses out or paints in graffiti.
3rd:A rich couple takes advantage of a family in the ghetto to make a reality show and some weird stuff ensues including an exploding chihuahua and someone having a little too much caviar...
4th: Another gangster's life is reviewed by the people he has wronged before going to hell. 

All in all, I could have been much better.  Snoop Dogg needs to hire better writers.  I'll admit the only reason I watched it was for Daniella Alonso and Sydney Tamiia  

Also, my friend saw Penny Dreadful and wished he could erase his memory of it!

[Sister Grace]

The whole 8 films to die for was such a disappointment, i waited and waited for these to come out. I never really did see what was 'so shocking' or 'so scary' about them. The second year was even worse than the first year in general. However, I really really enjoyed Frontier(s). The human element to it was really good. Also, Borderland is a great movie, but mostly because its based on actual events ( i remember reading them in the papers) and having spent some time in border towns, i had a 'sense' for it.

[WingedSerpent]

Nightmare Man is good if you like some skippy outfits with your horror.
I want to see Unearthed and The Many Deaths of Ian Stone.

but don't belive the hype that these were movies "too scary" for audiences.  I've seen much worse movies released.