Vegas Zombies

Steve Niles' Remains (2011)
Dir - Colin Theys

Yes, I know this is a made-for-Chiller TV horror flick and I shouldn't expect much – but I did. I've never read Niles' comic this is based on but I know he is a good/interesting scribe and have enjoyed other things he's done in the past. Guess I shouldn't have just expected this to be good.

The whole film is pretty by-the-numbers as far as a living dead scenario goes but it does have one good thing going for it. Well, maybe two, since it does feature Miko Hughes in one of the co-starring roles. He's the kid from Kindergarten Cop who said "boys have a penis, girls have a vagina", if you don't remember. He also was Heather's kid in Wes Craven's New Nightmare and the young, very creepy, Gage in Pet Sematary. The other good AWESOME thing is out of all the cars in the parking garage they try to break out, through a garage door, with a freaking Smart Car! HA!

Honestly, it's been less than a month since I've seen this and I practically forgot about it. Don't bother.

Nightmares and Dreams

Summer School (2006)
Dir - Lance Hendrickson, Troy McCall, Mike P. Nelson, Steven Rhoden, and Ben Trandem

Saw this was coming up on Chiller and it sounded interesting. Turns out to be a very low budget anthology style film about a high school student/online horror film critic (HA!) who spent a weekend watching a few films and is now having nightmares about then while sleeping during summer school. There are some interesting ideas here but much of the movie's pacing is way to slow and makes it easy to lose interest. There are a few nice twists and turns in there however.

A couple of things bothered me. First one segment involving vampires makes this look like they suddenly came out of Hot Topic and that's just lame. Some comedy is attempted in this segment but it just never really works. The other problem I have is with the main kid and general premise. What kind of horror fan, and especially critic, can't watch a few indie horror flicks without having terrible nightmares the next day. Amateurs. Heh.