The Pack Movie Review

Trailer :here

The Pack is a 2015 Australian horror film directed by Nick Robertson and starring Jack Campbell and Anna Lise Phillips.

The film begins with a farmer going to check on his flock of sheep. He gets killed by wild dogs. His wife is also killed. They are roaming around the countryside in a pack. Meanwhile, a family are in financial trouble. The mother, Carla Wilson(Phillips) is a vet and her husband Adam(Campbell) is a farmer. They have a son, Henry and a daughter, Sophie. The bank manager pays them a visit telling them that they will have to vacate their farm. Adam refuses to sell. The bank manager goes off, but he pulls over at the side of the road to pee and he end up meeting the gang of vicious mutts who tear him apart. I don't think he will be missed.

The family lose power and Adam goes to turn on the generator. His dog runs off. He looks for it. There are eyes watching him. Is it the pack of dogs looking for another snack? Of course it is! Adam realises that the canine gang are out there and he runs back to his house with the dogs on his tail. Carla calls the police. The dogs begin to batter on the front door. They are determined to get at the family. Adam shoots one through the door with his rifle. He opens to door to see if he hit one, when he gets attacked. Carla whacks one as a police car comes. The cop looks around and guess what? He ends up being the dog's next meal. Adam decides to make a run for his truck. He says that he will come back and get the rest of the family. He makes it as far as the truck and he drives up to the house. He tells them to get it, but he gets attacked and crashes the truck before they can go.

Henry and Sophia hide in a closet in the house as Carla protects them. She looks for any dogs. One comes into the house. Carla traps it in a room. Adam comes to in the truck. He gets out and he makes his way to Carla's office. Carla is inside the house and she goes to the basement. There is another dog in there. Henry and Sophia get attacked. Carla saves them, Adam sees a dog eating the animals in Carla's vet clinic. He hides and waits for his chance to get it. It attacks him but he manages to put it down. He  is in bits by this stage. He reunites with his family and they decide to go up onto the roof. They run but Carla falls over. She runs back to the house. Henry and Sophie go up onto the roof. Carla distracts the dogs with fire. Adam shoots another one. Carla gets attacked and she faces off with one of the deadly dogs. Adam manages to get a shot and he kills it. The rest of them flee into the woods while their own dog returns. The family seem safe. In a cave in the woods, a dog's eyes peer out of the darkness....

This was a good film, I thought. I liked the idea of the deadly dogs. It was simple, but it worked well.

The cast were pretty good and the film had lots of good scenes with the vicious dogs. There isn't much here that you haven't seen in other creature features, but I enjoyed this one and I certainly recommend it. It is above average so I will give it a 6/10.

Hellfest Movie Review

Trailer here.

Hellfest is a 2018 horror movie directed by Gregory Plotkin and starring Amy Forsyth, Reign Edwards and Tony Todd.

The movie begins with a girl who gets separated from her pals in a Halloween haunted house. A figure approaches her and kills her. Cut to a group of friends who are attending a Halloween event called Hellfest. They are Natalie(Forsyth), Brooke(Edwards), Taylor(Bex Taylor-Klaus), Quinn(Christian James), Asher(Matt Mercurio) and Gavin(Roby Attal). They talk about a girl who got murdered at Hellfest. A strange man enters Hellfest also. He puts on a mask to hide his face. I wonder why?? He bumps into a bitchy girl who annoys him. He grabs a knife and follows her. The friends wander through the different areas. They meet the bitchy girl, who informs them that she is being chased. They think that it is part of the show and ignore it. The guy kills the girl in front of Natalie. She realises that it is not part of the show and she runs off to tell the others. The killer has his eye on her as his next victim. He begins to follow her.

The others are not so sure that it was real. They are in the party mood, so they think that everything at Hellfest is part of the show until Brooke sees the killer stealing Natalie's photos out of the machine where she was with Gavin. Why would he do that? Let's investigate. Brook seeks him out. She doesn't find him. Gavin is wandering off alone also and he wants to get a cuddly toy for Natalie. He ends up meeting the killer who kills him with a mallet. The killer takes Gavin's phone and he sends a text message to Natalie and finds out where they are. Natalie realises that the killer is not alone with his mask. There are loads of employees of Hellfest wearing the same one. It makes things a lot worse for her. As they progress through the place, it gets scarier and more extreme. They get freaked out by the different experiences. The killer is shadowing them. Natalie catches sight of him once again and knows that he is coming.

The killer manages to kill Asher before trying to kill Natalie. She goes to the security guys to tell them, but they don't take it seriously at all. Taylor disappears and the others look for her. She ends up on stage with The Barker(Todd) who is going to execute her with a guillotine(not for real). The others watch as she seems to get killed. The killer is behind the stage and he tries to do it for real, but it doesn't work.

The world's most annoying character eventually gets herself stabbed and dies. She was irritating beyond belief, so it's no loss. Quinn also gets it.  Brooke and Natalie are the only ones not dead at this point, so they run and hide from the killer. There are lots of cat and mouse chases and the movie comes to an end with the two girls surviving his reign of terror. The police come and they are safe. The killer goes home and we see that he is just an ordinary joe who happens to have a daughter.

This was an entertaining slasher movie. I liked the setting of Hellfest and there were some creepy bits. There is nothing that we haven't seen before, but I thought that this was just fun. There is no need to think about it and you know what you are getting. I will say that the group of friends were pretty annoying, especially that Taylor girl and this does prevent you from really caring if they die or not. I certainly didn't care. Anyway, this is an enjoyable slasher movie and I am going to give it a 6/10 because I liked the setting and some of the scenes.

The Rental Movie Review

Trailer here

The Rental is a 2020 horror/thriller movie directed by Dave Franco and starring Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White and Toby Huss.

The movie begins with two couples- Michelle(Brie) and Charlie(Stevens) and Josh(White) and Mina(Vand). They have rented a house for the weekend. They drive up there and they meet the landlord's brother, Taylor(Huss). Taylor seems a little odd. They think he is racist or something. Taylor drops off a telescope. Mina has a problem with him and she doesn't like him. They all have a party and Michelle goes to bed and Josh passes out while Mina and Charlie have sex in the shower. Someone is watching them cheat on their partners. Mina discovers a hidden camera in the shower. She realises that someone saw what they did. Charlie says that they can't call the cops or Josh and Michelle will find out what they have done. They can't find their dog. Josh thinks that Taylor did something to it. Taylor arrives to fix the hot tub. Josh accuses him of taking the dog. Mina tells him that she knows what is doing. He doesn't know what they are talking about. He wants to call the police. Mina tries to stop him. Josh beats him up and knocks him out. Someone is filming this. That person finishes Taylor off.

The group find Taylor dead. They decide what to do. They search the place for cameras. They take the body away. Michelle hears the shower turning off and on. Josh pushes Taylor's body into the sea. Michelle sees the video of Mina and Charlie in the shower. They are being filmed by the unknown killer. Michelle is angry and hurt and she decides to leave. She confronts Charlie and then she drives off. She ends up hitting a tree and she finds a trap that has burst her tyres. Someone comes. Charlie looks for her and he sees a message that she has sent. He finds her dead. He gets hit by someone. Josh tries to break down a locked door in the house. He finds a secret room with cameras and stuff. He gets a text from Charlie's phone with footage of Charlie and Mina talking about what they did. Then he sees the video of them in the shower. He gets attacked by the killer, who has also killed Charlie. Josh dies. The killer chases Mina and she falls off a cliff. The movie ends with the man clearing up all of his stuff from the house. He removes his cameras. The dog comes back to the house showing that it was fine all along. The killer sets up his cameras in another house, suggesting that the killings will start again. He spies on a couple and attacks them while they are asleep.

This film was not very good. I don't know what Franco was trying to do here. It is not a horror movie really. It is more of a thriller with drama thrown in. I found that there were little to no scares and that the movie wasn't very interesting overall. I didn't care for the cast very much and I didn't really care if they died or not. The Mina character was annoying and I was glad when she fell off the cliff. Whatever this movie was trying to do, I think that it failed. It was all over the place and it should have stayed either a drama or a thriller. I found some of it tedious and when something did happen, I just didn't care anymore. If you like thrillers with some drama , then this might be for you. I didn't like it. It wasn't for me. There just wasn't enough in it to keep me interested. The cast weren't particularly great either, in my opinion. This gets a 3/10.