Film Review: LEGACY (2010)

Ari Larsen (Kyrie Maezumi) has been in her own personal exile for longer than she can remember before her boat makes it back into the peer of her home town.  She’s not back home one day before her sister calls her asking when she would be home.  It seems that Ari has been hiding away from the world trying to process the fact that her father Rick Larsen (Will Wallace) is an infamous serial killer and she made a good bit of money off of her book about having been forced to take photographs of her father’s victims.  This is the set up for director Stephen Savage’s film Legacy (2010). 

It seems that Ari has been hiding away from the world and her psychiatrist that forced her into her personal exile.  Being back home and at her father’s place has forced her to come to terms with what her father did and how it affected her.  She’s also an alcoholic and suffers from debilitating black outs that can sometimes make her violent when she is threatened.  When people around her start dying in the same manner that her father used to kill people fear that a copycat killer surface as well as the possibility that her father may have resurfaced after disappearing for almost sixteen years.

Written by Bob Hasse and Savage the film is a slow burn that’s an atmospheric character film.  The murders are more of background to the escalating mystery of who is committing the murders and the ambiguity that Ari herself may have something to do with them.  The film is atmospheric and moody and is anchored by decent performances that sell the ambiguous nature of the film.  This is less a horror film and more a thriller but it’s well done and has a few red herrings to keep the story flowing.  You can do worse than this film.

Film Review: BLOOD GLACIER (2013)

I was completely surprised by how much I enjoyed the German horror film Blood Glacier (2013), which I have to admit wasn’t on my radar.  I love foreign horror films but there was nothing about this film that made me even curious and then it came across my desk and I put it in on a whim.  Despite its borrowing a lot from other films especially John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) this is an interesting and well done film. 

A group of scientists doing research in the Australian Alps discover a strange fungus that has turned part of the nearby glacier blood red.    It’s not long before the fungus disappears as if it was never there but its effects are devastating as every life form that comes across it goes through dramatic metamorphic changes.  These “new” creatures are both dangerous and aggressive and fascinating for the scientists who believe that they are at the frontier of a new discovery.  It is only Janek (Gerhard Liebmann) who sees the real danger that is to come.  Now he must convince the scientists as well as a visiting party of diplomats to abandon their base and seek out help before more of the creatures show up and more of their team are killed and/or infected.

Borrowing from the Rob Bottin (creature FX for Carpenter’s The Thing) playbook of practical effects over CGI FX this film has a plethora of morphing creatures that are mixtures of other creatures.  The creatures (both on land and in the air) are very well done and the gore FX fly at an alarming rate.  There is CGI FX in the film but they are used in the right places and do not over shadow or distract from the rest of the film.

Benjamin Hessler writes the screenplay and the film is directed by Marvin Kren who knows how to put together an effective horror film.  This is a thrilling and entertaining film that provides enough new ideas to elevate it above being just a simply copycat of other films or a horror film cliché.  If you’re a fan of monster and creature features then I suggest you give this film a chance.