The Ferryman (2007)

Clearly one of the points of watching terrible films is mocking the movie's writers extremely inane ideas. Every once in a while, though, the law of averages throws a curveball and spits out a movie with a decent plot twist. Sadly, one bit of cleverness was pretty much all The Ferryman had going for it. The Ferryman takes place on a boat, taking three couples (with extraordinarily dull mid-life crises to sort through) to a vacation on the islands off of Australia. On the very first night of their trip, they pick up a stranded sailor (John Rhys-Davies) , the sole remaining survivor on a ship dead in the water. After wooing the ship's women with some charmingly misogynistic banter in a poker game, he proceeds with the movie's First Kill and getting knocked overboard. The man's death, though, was not done by a normal weapon, but by a brass dagger of sorts that brings him back to life, albeit with the soul of the sailor inside of him. The movie then kicks off, as pretty much everyone gets killed in a not-fun gory fashion. By far the low point of the film is the pitiful torture of the boat's resident dog, despite it being key in the development of the sailor's evilness, it was completely unnecessary. The movie's twist (at least for gullible people such as myself) comes late in the killings, as the First Kill's wife is about to be knocked off herself--but is saved at the last minute by the sailor (who never died, but was just knocked overboard). It turns out that the movie's magical knife doesn't just infect the body it stabs with the sailor's soul-it switches the souls of the bodies of the stabbed and the stabber. And thus our minds are blown.

Kill Meter: 4? 5? Death ambiguity is unacceptable in group horror films. If your body dies, do you? Let the priests answer that one, we are all agnostics here goddamnit.

Quote: I saw how you looked at me on the dock. You wanted to kiss me.

Grade: F. My surprise at the movie's twist would bump the film to a D- (respect must be given where it is due) but animal violence is unacceptable (unless it is against a Sasquatch or some other merciless man-slayer).

Lesson: Too many. First and foremost is the oldest lesson of all: NO BOATS. Second, if a movie stars someone you know, be wary of pretentiousness. A known movie star can occasionally be a plus (See Casper Van Dien in Skeleton Man), but it can also mean that a movie aspires to something deeper. Lastly, another lesson we have sadly been forced to learn again and again: non-American group horror is the worst.

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Haunted Boat (2005)

Haunted Boat commits the most grievous sin a cheap horror movie can: taking itself too seriously. A quarter of the way into the film, the characters have a mind-blowingly vapid metaphysical discussion. "I choose to believe in what is around me. We all create our own universe." "Wow, Christina, I didn't know you were so smart!" This conversation, reminiscent of the ones between Plato and Socrates, turns out to be the most important part of the film, which centers around a college-aged group taking their friend's boat to Catalina Island. They never make it. The first death is the movie's high point: the boatowner, who has a bad heart, is peer-pressured into swimming, and consequently has an apparent heart-attack and drowns. The movie only goes downhill from there. The pointlessness peaks when an incredibly creepy man (pictured), whose parents are doctors, shows up in a rowboat and helps one of the girls, who is seizing and vomiting. After he helps her out (she had eaten worms to help her lose weight), he simply leaves. The entire sequence takes 15 minutes and after the fact nothing has happened. Sadly, this is foreshadowing for the movie's ending. By the end, the lone surviving Christina, driven to despair, decides to hang herself. A passing boater saves her before she dies, saying "Why is she alone out here on this boat?" And it is then we learn the movie's secret: there never was a group of friends, only a lonely girl's delusions. The movie ends with Christina joining her imaginary cohorts on yet another enjoyable ocean cruise, smug in its belief that the viewer has been blown away. It is easy to prove incorrect the movie's driving philosophy: if it were true that humans could simply create their own universe, I would have no recollection of having seen Haunted Boat.

Kill Meter: 0. Seriously, no one dies. Jesus.

Quote: "I am not staying onboard with an epileptic!"

Grade: F

Lesson Learned: No boats. Also, though it sounds grisly, body counts are important. What happens, when, at the end, you learn nothing really happened? Lastly, even if we can't find one on our own, we don't need a horror movie to give us a worldview.

IMDB Link

Desperate Souls (2005)

If you are able to endure this movie for longer than 30 minutes, I suggest long sessions of therapy. I have never witnessed such an atrocious amount of garbage. This movie takes you on a flat-railed roller coaster ride of idiotic acting, and a plotline so revolting, so abhorrent; that the directors of this movie may have, accidentally, created the ultimate torturing device. The movie encompasses a group of teenagers on a camping trip. Little do they know, their campsite is near a gate-to-hell created by some ancient druid book. All but one member of the campers are possessed when they unwarily step into the perimeter of the demon gate; hence, the 85 minutes of pure viewer anguish. I would write more, but reminiscing about this movie is the equivalent of taking a hammer to the skull.

Kill meter: medium (enough people die, but the characters are so bad it’s hard to care)

Grade: F

Quote: "Guns don't work on them. Don't worry, I have plenty of tools in the back."

Lesson learned: Any movie written or directed by Chad Archibald or Philip Carrer stay far far away from. Canadians cannot make bad American horror.

IMDB Link

Skeleton Man (2004)

Horror movies require an absence of logic. This is a necessity for a movie that runs on its characters' idiotic decision-making and otherworldly plotlines. Skeleton Man, though, takes logic by the throat, breaks its neck, and pushes it off a mile-high cliff. The meat of the film begins with a group of undercover soldiers sent into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest in an attempt to locate the survivors of a top-secret mission; the purpose of which is never explained. The soldiers then learn, the hard way, that their fellows-in-arms were killed off by a (very, very cheaply) cloaked skeleton on horseback. Of all the fantastic group horror monsters we have witnessed, the Skeleton Man is by far the most badass. First, he is invincible. Literally thousands of bullets are shot into him and gigantic explosions occur around him, to no effect except that of holes in his garb. Second, he somehow hides a very impressive armory within the confines of his cloak. By the end, Skeleton Man manages to kill using a spear, sword, bow and arrow, war hammer and a tomahawk. Third, as long as he is on his horse, he can apparently phase in and out of existence wherever he wants. Lastly, and most importantly, he kills indiscriminately, sadly stopping short of killing leading star Michael 'What is wrong with my voice?' Rooker and the lone surviving girl. Making the characters unlikeable may have been purposeful: their deaths were cheered. The movie is incredibly strong until the last 15 minutes, when Rooker somehow believes he can kill the Skeleton Man by blowing up a chemical plant on top of him. He is, we learn, thankfully wrong. The last scene is that of Skeleton Man atop his horse, riding off into a dense fog, searching for more unwitting victims.

Kill Meter: Unbelievably high. Skeleton Man destroys everything in his path. Two end up surviving, but one has the feeling they could have easily been killed if not for Skeleton Man toying with his prey.

Quote: "It'll blow up everything within 50 yards."

Grade: B-

Lesson Learned: An amazing killer can carry a movie, but somewhat dynamic group members are a necessity.

IMDB Link

Sasquatch Hunters (2005)

Before I get down to business, I feel it’s necessary to mention this was the third Sasquatch movie my friends and I have watched in a horror format. The first two were a dismal triumph of acting and in-depth plotline. However, Sasquatch Hunters looked promising. The plot entails a group of rangers and scientists searching for fossils of an unknown mammal in a wilderness setting (Where else would a Sasquatch dwell?). The camera work was shoddy and unrefined; however, the camera made up for it’s lack of clarity by focusing on a well-endowed pair of breasts for a good portion of the movie. Nevertheless, not even the breast romp could save this film from spiraling out of the sky and exploding in horrendous disappointment. Out of a group of eight people four survived, which is an utter mortification of genuine group horror films. Not only that, but two of the survivors held no merit in the film itself; they were ripe for the kill. This high survival rate seems to be an unmitigated pattern in horror movies involving Sasquatch, leaving the viewer sordidly let down.

Kill meter: four (not including the ones killed outside the group)

Grade: D+

Quote: “What’s an elephant man?”

Lesson learned: If you want to enjoy a good group horror film. I suggest staying away from anything involving a Sasquatch.

IMDB Link

Preamble

Whether you are the type who enjoys being creeped out or feels the need to vicariously murder, horror movies in all likelihood speak to something deep in all of our psyches. Let psychoanalysts deal with that. We are writing this to confront a much more important issue: what is the perfect horror movie?

Thanks to the hundreds of millions of people with varied interests and unnecessary cash, studios are seemingly willing to give money and a camera to anyone with a third of a half-baked idea and a couple of good-looking friends. This excess of creation is by no means a good thing for all movie-watchers, but for my friends and I there could not be a better scenario. We have been blessed enough to witness the greatest horror sub-genre of them all: the group horror.

At its most basic, the group horror requires only two simple elements. First, as the name implies, a group is necessary. This group can be anyone: scientists digging up an ancient burial site, teenagers camping, or college friends driving on a backroad, to name a few. Second, a murdering thing of some sort must set itself upon the group. This killer could be any number of things. A ghost out to kill those who disturbed its body's burial site. A disfigured man who preys on unwary travelers. An enormous snake created by a science experiment gone wrong. The beauty of the genre comes from both the flexibility and rigidity that the above framework provides.

Group horror films are best enjoyed with 1-3 other people. Whenever the group that will be getting killed is clearly defined, everyone watching should choose a character they would like to be. Characters left over may be assigned to other friends not present, or simply left to die unnamed. Then, and most importantly, everyone individually decides which characters will die, which will survive, and the order the deaths will happen.

The purpose of this site is to document and review all of the group horror films that we view. As we do so, we will attempt to uncover the specific rules that make the perfect group horror.