2010 Review: Straight to DVD 2 Pack!

#37: Nine Dead. Starring Melissa Joan Hart and William Lee Scott. Rated R. 1 hour 38 minutes. IMDB Member Grade: 5.2 out of 10. My Grade: F+. The general basis of this movie is actually pretty cool, albeit not very original. Nine strangers find themselves mysteriously held captive in a room, each handcuffed to a pole. None of them know why they are there. Their masked kidnapper comes in and tells them they have to all figure out why they are there and every 10 minutes he will come in and kill one of them randomly until they figure it out. If they figure it out, he will reveal himself and turn himself in and let all the survivors go. Sounds kind of promising. Unfortunately this film suffers from a straight to DVD release and a shitty budget. Meaning this movie has a cast of actors who are really really really bad, and damn near unbearable to watch. I mean most of them make it really hard to even sit through. Even Melissa Joan Hart (the only noticeable person in the film) suffers from terrible acting disorder. Then the storyline is really weak. A cool premise takes a big hit from a poorly executed screenplay. The "reason" they are all there lacks any kind of originality and there's no shock and awe to it. I thought the filmaking aspect was pretty good, at least for a straight to DVD type flick. But overall the movie is pretty crappy which is sad because the idea of the story is pretty cool.

#38: Tell Tale. Starring Josh Lucas and Lena Headey. Rated R. 1 hour 33 minutes. IMDB Member Grade: 5.2 out of 10. My Grade: D+. In terms of over all quality, Tell Tale is a much better film than Nine Dead. In terms of acting, it's considerably better. In terms of filmaking, again there's a huge improvement. In terms of storyline...eh...nothing inspiring about it, meaning it's only just vaguely better than my previous review. Again we've seen this kind of thing before. A man get's a new heart and all of a sudden this man starts seeing images of his new hearts previous owner. A crime thriller then ensues. I think I've seen a few episodes of X-Files like this, not to mention a few other films. I've never been a fan of the concept. To me this movie's story was really boring and I had a hard time keeping with it. I struggled to not turn off the film. On a technical level, this movie works. In terms of acting, and directing...but man the screenplay does not carry over well. Bored to tears. It wasn't awful I guess...but I just could not get into this movie.