X Moor (2014)

A £25,000 reward offered by a local newspaper brings documentary makers Matt and his girlfriend Georgia to the remote North Devon moor in a bid to capture the fabled Beast purported to be a wild cat, like a panther or a puma on film.

Some of you may remember the famed "Beast Of Bodmin" from the 70s - around this time livestock were indeed found ripped to shreds and a large cat-like creature spotted. Although it was most probably an exotic pet that got loose or was simply let out to the wild.

X Moor is based on modern day sightings of this and a couple of American crypto-hunters set out to try and find it and capture it on film.

Sadly though **spoiler alert** this isn't a monster movie as it's soon revealed that "the beast" is simply a psychotic killer that like to stash bodies in the woods. Along with his creepy daughter what follows is the couple's escape from the killer while finding that not every corpse has had it's last breath.

I was a bit let down to find that the film took this path as, being from the area and the time I had quite an interest in the Bodmin Beast and wasn't really into the fact that we had to follow this storyline instead.

Not a bad put together flick, we've got Lance Hunter from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and that bloke that plays "Mr Sanny-Man" from Phoneshop in the cast doing an OK job. For a slasher it's slow and kind of lacks any suspense or indeed logic. A movie about the actual beast would have been better.

3/10 Masks

Robert The Doll (2015)

It's.....The doll!!!

Advertised as "Before Annabelle, before Chucky...there was Robert!". Although this feels like one of those rip-off films you might find on sale at the Poundshop, like "Iron Hero".

The story, once again based on a "true" story of a haunted doll, follows the same template as said previously mentioned films.

Strange creepy looking doll comes into the house, starts chatting to the kid of the family, people start getting killed, blah blah blah...

I mean it's just awful. I understand someone somewhere saw Annabelle and said "but that's just ripping off the story of Robert...we must correct this at once! Man the cameras!" Sorry guys, you got beaten to it, we've already seen this film only better.

When the main spooky ghost of the movie looks like Gabbo from The Simpsons it's even laughable -however the two actors playing the parents (Lee Bane and Suzie Frances Garton) are actually really good in this despite appearing in this prop-up disaster of a film. Sort of like sellotaping a Rolls Royce flying lady on a Go-Kart.

Avoid at all costs. So bad it's just bad.

1/10 Masks

The Curse Of Downers Grove (2015)

Another film touted as "horror" when in reality it isn't at all. Allegedly based on a true story (there is no proof to back this up) it centres around the town of Downers Grove where each year a school kid suffers a horrible death.

The town refers to it as a curse and our story centres around one high school girls esoteric musings over it.

After wounding a football player after an attempted rape she then has to put up with him exacting revenge on her friends and family.

So the main villain of this flick is said football player and his friends who are not afraid to get pretty violent. Our heroine however has other plans.

So it's not a horror, it's not as far as I can tell based on any actual events. It is a gritty teen-thriller with a few odd moments, Summed up it was OK for a Sunday afternoon drama but in the ranks of the horror genre it needs to stay way away.

4/10 Masks

Altar "Alt: The Haunting Of Radcliffe House" (2014)

Yeah....OK, lets check the plot.

A family move into a house to restore it, notice some odd spooky goings on, the locals are too scared to go there, there's a satanic history, the wife finds a hidden room with scary stuff in it,  the husband starts to act strange over time...

Basically everything about this film you've already seen in one form or another and as soon as the plot starts to form you know exactly what's going to happen and when.

Nicely made film let down by it's total lack of originality.

3/10 Masks

Lost After Dark (2015)

It seems that where as "found footage" is certainly the bane of horror films these days, there is a new trend emerging for the new age and that is the retro-horror.

Manic was a remake of the classic slasher with full 80s feels, then we had Headless, the lost movie from the 70s, Rob Zombie loves his retro feel, Tarantino has his grindhouse and although not a horror we can't ignore the amazing Kung Fury.

Lost After Dark is a homage/lost 80s slasher film, supposedly from 1984. Now, I'm not sure if this is a way to pay tribute to the classics or just a way to be purposely lazy and cliche. Either way whatever Lost After Dark was doing they made a perfect job of it. The attention to atmosphere and style is immaculate.

We have everything that you might expect - a group of teenagers, who fit all the stereotype roles perfectly on a road trip when they break down and find an old creepy house.... what can go wrong?

Well they have sex and smoke that's the thing you don't do in these situations less you get all hacked up!

As a tribute and in fact as a film on it's own it's great-paced, filled with amazing deaths and ticks all the boxes when it comes to the characters - the way it's played almost without any hint of spoof or lampoon just makes it better.

Should this trend for these sort of films continue then I guess we'll get sick of them but for now it's great.

7/10 Masks

The Pyramid (2014)

Have seen this one advertised on and off but as it looked a bit cheap and uninteresting I decided to skip it until now, when a friend of mine recommended it online.

So as you can imagine the film takes place in a pyramid, during an archaeological dig in Egypt and with little persuasion a team which as luck would have it includes a camera man, end up exploring the deep hidden tunnels of said pointy building.

As it's a horror they are useless and stupid and end up getting stuck and of course they are not alone because as we all know pyramids are famous for housing long buried ancient monsters.

A little let down that it wasn't a scary mummy to be honest, the film world has had it's fill of vampires, werewolves and zombies, there isn't enough sea monsters or mummies.

No, what hunts them is a series of scary Egyptian C.G.I nasties the awful animation of which Egypt has not seen since The Rock turned into a giant scorpion.

All in all it's not a bad movie, the plot has it's charms, the "found footage" is minimal and there's enough shocks and gore to hold your interest.

Aside from the terrible C.G.I there is one other factor that either ruins or saves the whole thing. This is the inclusion of James Buckley, best known for playing Jay on the TV show (and films) The Inbetweeners. You can't see him in any other light but as Jay. Fwiend?

5/10 Masks

Extinction (2015)

Here's the thing. For some reason a great deal of critics didn't enjoy this movie but me, I thought it was awesome.

Here's why - it's not a fast paced one it's not epic, also thankfully it's not found footage.

Extinction draws influence from various sources. There's a great deal of "I Am Legend" about it - last few people on earth struggling to survive while threatened by flesh eating mutant-zombies.

Add to this "The Descent" - where the beasts evolve yet are blind and rely only on hearing to hunt.

Finally season with a dash of George A.Romero style - where we never find out how or why these zombie creatures came to be, yet the focus of the movie is the human interaction between the isolated survivors. In fact there are elements (and I'd even lay money on a wink) to almost all of Romero's classics.

Our main guy, the doctor from Lost and his neighbour were attacked by the first wave of zombie-mutants nine years previous to the film's main setting but since then (adding into the mix the neighbours daughter) they live metres from each other not speaking as something happened between them to cause an unforgivable rift. They live in isolation, leaving only to hunt or scavenge. The daughter has never gone further than the fence surrounding her house.

This all changes when the mutants that the survivors had believed to be wiped out, but have just been waiting and growing stronger, start to approach their stronghold.

What follows is a human story set in a zombified environment, as more is revealed we start to understand just why the two men live as they do.

Great gore, great jumps, some feely scenes and a fantastic cast.

Blink and you'll miss it moment:  a brilliant touch near the start where our hero is riding through the frozen, abandoned town. He passes a cinema that was showing "At The Mountains Of Madness". A movie adaptation of this H.P Lovecraft classic has been in the works for a while now, maybe we will be seeing it sooner than we think.

8/10 Masks

Fear Clinic (2014)

When the cast includes Robert Englund it could go one of two ways. Nightmare On Elm St or...Zombies vs Strippers.

Sadly, Fear Clinic edges towards the latter. I had to watch it twice as the first time round I felt that I kept missing things and that the plot was hard to follow. Second time round I realised that it was just that the film wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention.

Which is a shame as the plot was quite good - Englund plays a doctor who finds a way to cure patients of their fears and phobias by constructing a floatation tank that allows them to virtually live out their fears and confront them.

Predictably - it doesn't all go to plan. This coupled with an underhanded deal carried out by a pair of bungling criminals (one played by Slipknot's Corey Taylor) ensures that Fear Clinic lives up to it's name.

Now I'm not sure if it was the pace, the editing or the cast but even with the face of Freddy Krueger present, nothing thrown at me by this piece stuck. Even on the second watch.

It could be that a re-edit could sort this movie out, as is it just feels messy and confusing which is a shame given the potential.

3/10 Masks

We Are Still Here (2015)

This movie was made as a homage to the late great Lucio Fulci (probably best known for the infamous Zombie Flesh Eaters) which may explain why it is set in 1979 and is quite slow to kick in. It may also be why the acting was so wooden, possibly on purpose.

We Are Still Here breaks no new ground but is altogether a pretty decent film, apart from the questions I had for it at the end.

A couple who have recently lost their son move into a new house in a new town which happened to be the setting for a history of corpse looting and town vigilante justice.

Voices are heard and things go bump in the night so the wife, believing that it may be her deceased son trying to contact them enlists the help of her long standing clairvoyant friend. Quite obviously though,  it is not.

An evil that the town knows and fears lives there and is granted a sacrifice when it raises it's head.

There are a few quite decent jumps and some wonderful deaths along with possessions and a town wide conspiracy that comes to a climax at the end. Although not before a few people have had their heads squashed like melons and their torsos torn open.

The film did suffer slightly from sub-par acting and I couldn't help feeling that it could have gone much better with some more experienced thespians in the seats (unless this was to give it the 70's video nasty vibe, in which case well done). Also, when the premise of the film is revealed I was left with the questions: why did the nasties kill all those people then, and why they didn't just do what they did at the end in the first place.

Anyway - great gore and charred corpses ripping people apart, let's not spilt hairs.

6/10 Masks.

Private Number (2015)

One of those films that you have to think to yourself - when everyone involved in the making of this film read the script, why did no one say "it's good...but..."

Private Number follows the tale of a writer struggling with both alcoholism and his second novel who is plagued by mysterious spooky phone calls and scary visions that begin intensify.

When he starts to get the local police involved it's revealed that there was a serial killer that they never caught and our writer starts to investigate.

In essence, Private Number is a great movie - the characters are genuine and believable, the plot intensifies, there are a number of great scares, you have ghouls as well as a whodunnit and also the human element that drags you in to the situation.

However....

There's a plot twist, and that twist is one that you'll get about halfway through the film which means by the time it comes it gives the whole film a different tone and well, it ruins it.

Up until that point it was great, but why didn't anyone stop that ending.

5/10 Masks.