Piranha 3D is a horror movie bar mitzvah. It turns boys into men, cleaving their lives into two distinct periods: Before Piranha 3D, a time we shall refer to as The Darkness, and after Piranha 3D, also known as The Awakening. Now that I have thankfully awoken in its glorious elysian fields of excessive gore and outrageous nudity, I never want to return to horror films that require fewer than 800,000 gallons of fake blood spilling forth from 500 bikini-clad extras. Anything less is an insult and, frankly, a malicious waste of my time.

Read my full review over at Cinematical.

[Model Home Teaser from Nicholas Brill on Vimeo.]

She’s the one in the kitchen.

Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic, 2010
Written by Aleksandar Radivojevic, Srdjan Spasojevic

---

A SERBIAN FILM has only been shown around the world a handful of times, but I have no doubt that you’ve heard about the film.  Its rarity certainly hasn’t hurt its early reputation as being a film that cannot be unseen, a film so shocking that it might technically be illegal for it to be shown in the United States.  So the first question anyone has about the film is likely going to be whether or not it is as shocking and extreme as they’ve heard.  The short, easy answer is yes.  Yes, it is.

It’s been a good while since I’ve seen SERBIAN FILM and I still can’t scrap its images and ideas out of my mind’s eye.  I’m honestly not sure I ever will be able to.  Saying that will only galvanize more people toward wanting to see it for themselves, and I understand that instinct, but I personally have absolutely no desire to ever watch it again.  But before I get to precisely why I’m fine with only having seen the film a single time, let’s talk about what Srdjan Spasojevic’s directorial debut is about.

Milos used to be a porn star.  He’s done everything he can to break from that decadent world and be a simple father.  But virtuous money isn’t easy to come by, particularly when he is still widely considered to have the best dick in Serbia.  His ability to get hard and stay hard is legendary, which is precisely why an underground porn director named Vukmir wants him for this next masterpiece.  Vukmir refuses to tell Milos what kind of a porn movie he’s making out of fear that it’ll render his performance inauthentic, a contractual caveat that gives the star cause for concern.  But the money is just too good.  And thus begins Milos’ hellish odyssey.

Hey, guys.  Remember me?  I used to run a site called HorrorsNotDead.com, but then I got paid to write about movies elsewhere on the Internet and totally abandoned my baby to the wilds.  Yeah, I suck.

The only benefit of me rarely updating HND is that everything that’s on the main page currently happens to be about movies I really liked.  One of them I even love.  It’s a little Australian flick called THE LOVED ONES that, for whatever God forsaken reason, cannot seem to find distribution anywhere outside of its homeland.  It’s about to come out down under, though, so a trailer for the film has finally been released.  Trouble is this trailer shows way too much of the movie.

Wayyyyy toooooo much.  To the point where it makes me want to elbow whoever cut the trailer together in the face.  So, my plea to you is that you do not watch this trailer.  It’s currently being hosted on every horror blog under the sun, which means they either A) haven’t seen the film and thus don’t know how many great gags are revealed in the trailer or B) have no respect for their readers and don’t give a shit if they lessen someone’s viewing experience when they don’t have to.  I can only assume that Bloody-Disgusting falls under category B, seeing as they’re quoted in the trailer and yet still gleefully shared the spoiler-packed thing earlier today without so much as a “Personally, I really think this trailer gives away too much”.

But since I’m breaking my month long radio silence just so I can tell you to NOT watch something, I think it’s only right that I also add some other new content to HND.  So, as soon as I hit publish on this bad boy, I’ll be starting up two reviews that I’ve been sitting on for far too long: A SERBIAN FILM and THE LAST EXORCISM.  My laziness shall eventually pay off.

UPDATE: I actually did what I said I was going to!  A SERBIAN FILM Review!

Directed by Michael Cuesta, 2010
Written by Dave Callaham

---

Dave Callaham’s script for TELL-TALE can hardly be considered a strict adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s original story about a murder who smothers an old man in his bed and then buries the chopped up body in the floorboards of the old man’s estate.  He thinks he’s gotten away with the crime only to discover that once the police arrive to investigate he can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart through the floorboards.  Convinced the police can also hear the ever-increasing pounding, the killer, driven insane from paranoia, confesses his crime.

Here’s the pitch for Callaham’s story: “What if instead of burying the heart in the floorboards, it was inside someone’s chest!”

Okay, so it’s a little more complicated than that, but I’m guessing that’s what most people who write off this surprisingly solid thriller are going to say.  What actually happens is after Terry (Josh Lucas) receives a life-saving heart transplant he soon discovers that his new ticker booms like a subwoofer in a nightclub whenever he approaches certain strangers.  When he gets near them his head throbs in sync with the pounding of his heart and a nearly uncontrollable anger begins to take him over…

Just a heads up that yesterday I noticed an instant re-direct when trying to access HND that sent me to some script kiddies’ phishing attempt to get me to download some kind of malware scanner.  I’ve looked into it and believe I’ve found the problem – some kind of mass php exploit on shared-hosting services – and fixed it, but if you ever see anything strange on the site, please let me know ASAP; peter ATSYMBOL horrorsnotdead.com, it’s easy to remember.

And don’t download anything it asks you to.  But you knew that, because if you were an idiot you wouldn’t be on a site as awesome (and as infrequently updated) as this.

Thanks.

Directed by Samuel Bayer, 2010
Written by Wesley Strick, Eric Heisserer

---

When Platinum Dunes, the production house created by Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller, first came into being, it took on the father of modern horror films, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s safe to say everyone expected it to be a total failure given who was involved; when it turned out that it actually wasn’t too bad of a film, fans were justifiably surprised. A few mid-level misfires later, Platinum Dunes raised their aim at iconic horror franchises even higher, bringing back TCM’s director, Marcus Nispel, to tackle Jason Voorhees. Again people weren’t expecting much, so it was another pleasant surprise that 2009′s Friday the 13th turned out to be a thoroughly entertaining, respectful recombination of the cabin-in-the-woods slasher. From there the studio didn’t even bother to go back to lesser franchises, they notched their crosshairs as high as they could go; Freddy Krueger.

Fast forward twelve months. The main thing anyone will want to know about A Nightmare on Elm Street is whether it is, at the very least, a worthy remake of the original Wes Craven film about a slain pedophile who resurrects in the dream world to kill teenagers in their sleep. The short answer is a resounding yes. Samuel Bayer’s film is the best remake in the Platinum Dunes stable; Jackie Earle Haley is an excellent successor to the original’s Robert Englund; and Freddy Krueger isn’t just scary again, he’s the most disturbing he’s ever been. The long answer is, of course, a little more complicated and requires plenty of qualifiers.

Read the rest of my review at Hollywood.com!