Posted inArts & Culture

Sadako 3D

This time, that creepy, crawling girl with the stringy black hair known as Sadako (Ai Hashimoto) comes not through TV sets, but computer and smartphone screens. The cursed VHS tape is now a cursed video clip of a live suicide, and anyone who views it immediately kills himself or herself. Well, anyone except pretty, young […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Texas Chainsaw

“This is the true sequel,” Texas Chainsaw asserts. To prove it, the first three minutes serve as a Reader’s Digest encapsulation of the original before picking up right where it left off. Leatherface (Dan Yeager) and the surviving members of his Sawyer clan come under siege by an angry redneck squad of vengeance. In the […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Tormented

Instead, I got what amounts to a feature-length commercial for said Shock Labyrinth. Also in 3-D (if you have the proper player), Tormented opens with 10-year-old Daigo (Takeru Shibuya, who acts primarily by blinking) putting a gravely injured rabbit out of its misery, much to the horror of his fellow classmates and his mute older […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

Lately — and all too quietly — the Indomina label has been releasing some excellent packages of Asian action films I’m afraid otherwise would go unseen by North American audiences: True Legend, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame and now, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. Apparently a sequel and/or semi-remake of 1992’s […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Sector 7

Also reminiscent of everything from James Cameron’s The Abyss to Stephen Sommers’ Deep Rising, but with multiple mentions of feng shui, the Korean sci-fi film takes place on a real-life ocean drilling rig, where work is on hold due to a stuck drill bit. Nevertheless, tough girl Ha Ji-won (Tidal Wave) is determined to find […]

Gift this article