No Room In Hell

Well the fourth one of these things is upon us…. oh goody. For those of you who missed the first three, After Dark Horrorfest is a film festival of sorts that places eight unrated horror films in theaters across the country. Sarcastic tone aside, Horrorfest tends to be a mixed bag.

When I first heard about the concept of eight unrated Horror films coming into theaters I was pumped, pumped enough to race to the internet and find a theater near me that had was hosting Horrorfest. Unfortunately, my choice of movie was poor, a piece about zombie miner children called Wicked Little Things (2006). Maybe I went into the theater with lofty expectations about what shocking material an “UNRATED” horror film might bring. Other than a couple little-more-gorey-than-ususal kills, the film was pretty weak on all fronts.  The plot was typical: the zombie children aren’t evil, but they just want revenge on the evil rich owner of the land, and the direction of the children made them comical enough to produce audible laughter  in the theater; they ate flesh, but they didn’t run like demons or sulk about like Romerian zombies. Instead, they kinda briskly walked like the Seven Dwarves did with pick axes slung over their shoulders in their famous “Hi-Ho Hi-Ho” musical number, but it doesn’t work when “it’s off to eat flesh you go.” It’s just awkward looking.

The cliched plot and silliness singled handedly put a pick axe in my interest for After Dark Horror films for a while. I let about year go by before I started catching them on DVD, SyFy, and Fear.Net, discovering that if you sort through the garbage, the tonally awkward, and the cliched crap then there are some pretty damn good films involved. The Hamiltons (2006), which I picked as one of the best of the last decade – for reasons I can’t even sink my own fangs into – came from the first Horrorfest. On the other hand, there was Crazy Eights (2006), Dark Ride (2006) and Penny Dreadful (2006) that were all…well, dreadful.

Regardless Horrorfest will be in limited theaters the weekend of Jan. 29, and if anything can be learned from the history the eight films should be a handful of crap, cliches, and confusing dribble with a gem or two mixed in. Choose wisely.

For theater and film information hit up Horrorfest’s official site at www.horrorfestonline.com