Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2009
Written by Rodolphe Tissot, Olivier Volpi, Sylvain White, Gilles Paquet-Brenner

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When I’m feeling lazy, I like hang out on the couch, drink beer, and watch movies. At those times I have no desire to do anything to advance the quality of my life in any way, and my creative juices are certainly not flowing. The difference between me and director Gilles Paquet-Brenner is that when I’m feeling worthless and indolent I don’t decide to make a movie. At least that is the impression I’ve come away from WALLED IN with, because not one frame of the film suggests anybody involved in its making gave a damn.

Mischa Barton “stars” as a recent college graduate who is the youngest in a family of demolition experts. Her first solo assignment for the family company is to plan the demolition of an old apartment complex in the middle of nowhere, due to be destroyed because the “government” has “ordered it.” The building was designed by an eccentric architect, who made it a habit of burying people alive in the foundations of his creations in order to increase structural rigidity. Something about an ancient Egyptian myth, I think.

WALLED IN also features Cameron Bright (Nicole Kidman’s tiny love interest in BIRTH, who, by the way, isn’t getting any less creepy), and Debra Kara Unger (who isn’t getting any less plastically-looking). Although both of them outshine Barton by quite a bit, this is like saying Brett Ratner is a better director than Donald Petrie.

Directed by Grace Lee, 2007
Written by Grace Lee, Rebecca Sonnenshine

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Mockumentaries as anything other than comedy are damn near impossible to get right. A self-serious mockumentary, as with a horror movie without scares, is a recipe for disaster. Alas, AMERICAN ZOMBIE avoids failure on an epic level (something another recent zombiementary, THE ZOMBIE DIARIES cannot claim), but it is too worried about appearing realistic and legitimate to actually entertain. One of most appealing aspects of documentaries is experiencing that which would be unbelievable if it wasn’t true. If a “documentary” is inherently fictional and it doesn’t appeal on a visceral level, the question is begged: What is the point?

I think the “point” is that it’s easier to make a mockumentary than a traditional narrative film. Or at least it’s easier to make it professional-looking. And that is certainly one of AMERICAN ZOMBIE’S strong suits – it looks and sounds like a real documentary. The acting is solid, the cinematography is very documentary-like, and the zombie-infected world it creates is relatively believable. As a genuine documentary it may have been informative and enlightening. As a mockumentary it’s completely and utterly boring.

Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, 2002
Written by W. Boyd Ford

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As a thirteen-year-old there wasn’t much more exciting for me than spending the night at friend’s house and getting to rent whatever the heck we wanted to because his parents didn’t care. I wasn’t overly sheltered as a child when it came to R-rated films, but most hardcore horror movies were off-limits, probably due to the likelihood of both nudity (in the movie) and nightmares (in my head). Therefore, the opportunity to rent whatever I wanted was one of the more exciting times of my young life. Even though this is how I discovered movies like THE SHINING and EVIL DEAD 2, a vast majority were terrible, and worst of all, most were devoid of gore and gratuitous nudity.

What am I going on about? Well, if instead of going to Blockbuster to rent a horror movie I instead was giving a couple hundred thousand dollars to make a movie, the result probably would have been very close to BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL U CAN EAT.

Directed by gore legend Herschell Gordon Lewis and written by the cast driver of BUG and WAITING (no, really, the driver), BF2 is a sequel thirty nine years in the making that was released thirty years after Gordon Lewis’ previous directorial effort. His prior films are unseen by me, and perhaps this is cause for a notch to be taken from my Horror Card, but if it is any consolation I now plan to check out more of his work, because BF2 is delirious fun.