It used to be that I was a big fan of vampire movies. I think the first one that I ever saw cast George Hamilton in Love at First Bite, which made no sense. The man who insured his tan was a vampire? It was more a comedy than a horror film. It probably isn’t relevant, except perhaps the makers of this film were similarly influenced, and that is why they named their film what they did (George Hamilton, The Hamiltons, I don’t know).

Regardless, I’m starting to think that whenever I see a film dubbed “the thinking person’s horror film”, I should run the other way. Let’s face it – horror fans don’t want to think. I really don’t consider myself a fan of blood and gore, but I also don’t want a complete snore-fest either, and that’s really what I found here, along with most of the other movies from the 2006 After Dark Horrorfest.

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Overall, the movies of the 2006 After Dark Horrorfest weren’t that great, but this one wasn’t bad. Now I realize that the movies weren’t big-budget films, but that’s okay. Movies don’t have to cost a lot of money to be good. To say it another way, just because they cost a lot of money doesn’t mean that they will be any good. They might be horrible.

In this case, we see a few friends at a funeral, and after, they decide to drown their sorrows and make what – by most estimations – would probably be a bad decision. They dance on some graves to celebrate the fact that they are alive. Why would they do this? Because they were told to do so. Not directly, mind you, but because while they were mourning the death of their friend, they found an envelope at the grave, and upon opening it, they were told to “dance upon graves and celebrate life”. A poem of sorts. So they did. It wasn’t written to them – someone had just left it, they read it, and that’s what they did.

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I’m really a bit of a sucker for any apocalyptic tale. Perhaps the fact is that I just know we’re done for one of these days anyway, or maybe I’d like to hear the tale of the underdog who manages to scrape through in such circumstances. Then again, maybe I feel like I’ll never have the chance to experience the Old West, and it’s about as close as I might get – though it would be at the expense of a great deal of our society to get there. Not saying that I’m the one who’d be able to save the world or anything. I just find the stories more interesting than a Utopian future is all.

Nonetheless, this one focuses mostly on a generally reluctant hero – Theo Faron (the typically under-rated Clive Owen), thrust into the role of bringing the world back from the brink of destruction when he becomes the protector of a pregnant woman. This is significant because she is the first such instance in years, and while a single pregnancy may not save the world, it does offer some amount of hope.

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In 1978, George A. Romero released Dawn of the Dead as a follow-up to his 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead (the forerunner of all modern zombie films).  While Romero gets a writing credit for this movie based on his original 1978 screenplay, and there are definitely some similarities here, it’s not the same movie.

Directed by Zack Snyder, and still taking place in a shopping mall as the zombies start to make their presence felt throughout the world, there is a definite shift over thirty years.  Where the first film left you to do a bit more interpreting, and was a bit more on the psychological side, this one is a bit more a sign of the times, and gives you a lot more action to work with while you watch the affect of being cooped up as the world crumbles.

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I’m going to take a bit of a departure on this one, and say that if you’re looking for a plot, go elsewhere, because there isn’t much.  Deep in Slovakia (actually, it might be just inside Slovakia, we never really know), a group of ultra-rich people do what ultra-rich people do – they get together and create for themselves what they can’t find anywhere else: A warehouse where they can kidnap and ultimately maim and murder wandering teens who would not be missed if they go missing.

Did you follow me?  I hope so, because it isn’t really much to work with, and it really goes downhill from there.

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This was – I believe – the first of the films I took in from the 2006 edition of the After Dark Horrorfest. From what I understand, this was also incidentally voted the fan favorite, and it later saw a theatrical release all its own, in addition to the original release along with the other Horrorfest films. But I digress, because that really doesn’t have much to do with the movie itself.

A brief introduction on a farm shows us a peasant family sitting down to eat when their dinner is interrupted by a truck carrying two infants. Suddenly the story jumps forward forty years to meet a woman, who has been summoned to Russia by a notary claiming to have found her long-dead parents at the farm they once owned. On the steps to the office, she bumps into someone, but doesn’t pay any attention to it, as most of us wouldn’t. Pay attention, though, because this is important. During her meeting, she is informed that there are no other living heirs and she sets out to claim the home of her parents. She has a guide, who appears to be the only person willing to visit the farm at night. Also pay attention to the truck, because it looks an awful lot like the truck in the opening scene.

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On another indeterminate day, sometime after the original Clerks ended, Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) is headed back to the Quick Stop. Only today is a little different than another day, because as he lifts the door to the store, he sees something different inside. Fire. Lots and lots of fire. At first, he can’t believe it, so he simply shuts the door.

Then he lifts it again, verifies that it is indeed fire, and he calls 911.

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Penny Deerborn (Rachel Miner) doesn’t like cars. I mean she really doesn’t like cars. Through a series of flashbacks in the movies, we find that she was in a horrible wreck when she was younger that killed both of her parents (at least, they appear to be her parents). So her psychiatrist, Orianna Volkes (Mimi Rogers) is helping her through the process of conquering her fears.

Orianna has written at least one book on the subject (we see it several times as events of the night unfold), and she is helping young Penny to come full circle. To conquer her fears by confronting them. So they are taking a ride into the mountains. It appears that the mountains might be the place where the wreck happened, but that may or may not be important. What is important is that Penny simply doesn’t like being in cars. She gets sick just riding along with the door shut.

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We first meet Arden (Toni Collette) in the opening section, titled simply The Stranger, as she struggles to care for her abusive mother in what appears to be a rather run-down home. As Arden takes a walk, she comes across something rather unexpected in the field – the body of a young woman. For reasons known only to her, she takes the necklace the girl is wearing, and on returning home, she calls the police.

For a completely unexplained reason – perhaps because her mother wants to continue abusing her all by her lonesome – when she finds out that the police have come, Arden’s mother is furious with her. I’m not sure exactly what Arden was supposed to do. Perhaps she should have just left the body in the field to rot and continue to be abused by her mother. I don’t think it was really explained, and we are just left to figure out why her mother is so hateful. Maybe you can explain it if you have seen it, but I certainly didn’t get it.

In any case, this sets the tone for the rest of the film.

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Just as Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) comes home to visit his wife, he is met by a few less-than-upstanding citizens who want to cause trouble. Unfortunately for them, Poe is an Army Ranger, which means that they probably aren’t in the best position when it comes to a fight.

So when they decide to ambush him outside the bar, Poe gets the best of them. But when all is said and done, and one of them ends up dead on the ground, it is Poe who gets the short end of the stick. All he was doing was protecting his wife, but since he is trained as a deadly weapon, he ends up in prison.

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