Abandoned (2015)

Single mom Streak takes a job as a night time security guard at an abandoned high-rise building.  On her first night on the job, she's told that she will patrol the building at regular intervals while her partner - a grumpy middle aged man in a wheelchair - watches the security monitors and communicates over the radio to her.

Before her manager leaves for the night, he makes it clear that no one is allowed in, and if someone does get in, her job is to get them out.  Streak is desperate for this job. She needs this job as she's worried that she's going to lose custody of her daughter and this appears to be her last chance of avoiding this.

This is why it's so crazy when a few hours later, and against her partners instructions, Streak lets a homeless man in to spend the night because there's a storm outside. Argh! Sure, come on in crazy homeless guy and bring your dog too.

As if that isn't a bad enough decision, she is told to stay away from the part of the building where there are no cameras. But she wants to figure out why the cameras don't work and heads into the basement to fix them. While there she hears something behind a padlocked door. What is a new employee to do on their first day? Obey the rules and continue your rounds, or break the padlock off the old door and explore? Streak decides it's padlock breaking time and off she goes.

Oh Streak, don't you understand that they've hired you to keep people out?  Even if someone is in there, the padlock keeps them out. Now she's opened up an avenue for anyone in there to come into the building. And if your employer has a padlocked door, it's not a good idea to break the lock and explore, ever.

Strange things start happening, and Streak sees little kids in the labyrinth behind the padlocked door.  Is it real? Is she crazy?  Will there be a payoff at the end? No, no there won't. The ending will annoy the hell out of you as it's totally unsatisfactory.

Zoombies (2016)

Eden wildlife zoo is opening soon and college interns arrive to help get the place in shape.  They are shown the amazing set up of this new marvelous zoo which includes an app to track all the animals.

A CGI monkey gets a virus and dies. An experimental serum is used to bring it back to life. Oh snap! Things do not look good for our intrepid undergrads.

The students on the internship are the standard characters including a girl with a terrible attitude. How did she even get  this internship?  They do interviews for internships and no one would have touched this girl with a ten foot pole.  She's horrible.

When an alarm goes off, everybody ignores it.  That alarm? Oh it's just that darn researcher who's always setting it off. It can't be anything important.  No, we don't even pay attention to it anymore. No, it couldn't possibly be zombie animals planning to kill all the workers in the park.

Eventually they figure out the alarm is for real this time.  So they lock down the park and wait for SWAT to save them.  Oddly enough the SWAT team shows up on the animal tracking system.

While this is a film by The Asylum, which is not a good thing, it is one of the more entertaining Asylum movies because things happen quickly. Usually Asylum has some crazy plot that could be awesomely ridiculous and fun, if only the movie wasn't idiots standing around talking.  There's some of that in this, but the animals go crazy pretty quickly and then everything is chaos.  There's nothing new about it, and it's not stellar by any means, but it had more going for it than most.  Watch for the continuity issue where the guys tattoo switches arms as he goes down zip line.  (I can't even remember his name at this point).

Darling (2015)

A young woman known as Darling is hired to take care of a wealthy matrons New York home.  When she shows up to start the job, she is warned that the previous caretaker committed suicide by jumping off the roof and the house is said to be haunted. But Darling is game, as what else is she going to do since she'd have nowhere to live if she didn't stay. Also maybe the owner should have mentioned this prior to hiring her.

Darling stares at the camera a lot.  She wanders around the house and stares.  She has what are either flashbacks or hallucinations, which rely on jump cuts and jarring noise accompaniment in an attempt to startle and induce fear. Instead it just induces annoyance at this cliched manipulation.

The movie spends an inordinate amount of time watching Darling.   So if you want to watch a young woman stare emptily, act slightly weird, and not speak much, then you'll probably enjoy this.

The ending is not a surprise and you'll find yourself wondering why anyone - especially someone rich -  would not check references before hiring a caretaker.

Also there is a locked door at the end of the hallway that you assume will figure into the story line at some point.  There is talk that the house may have been the site of Satanic ceremonies, that it might be haunted and that other caretakers have left suddenly or killed themselves.  Yet the mystery of the locked door is never used effectively so it just becomes another dead end which doesn't contribute to the story, such as it is.

The film is in black and white, and while this can be an effective choice when making a film, the lack of contrast in this movie is noticeable. It's as if they shot in color and just stripped the color out. There seems no thought to the contrast, which could have made the film moodier, spookier and more visually appealing.  If you watch films from the 50s and 60s, you can see how lighting is effectively used to deliver tension and mood. This film is far too bright and flat to effectively work.

The extras on the dvd include an interview with the director who seems very convinced that this is a special film and the viewer has never seen anything like this. Yet it borrows heavily from his influences and anyone who watches horror regularly will not be surprised by anything that occurs. Also the use of chapters in a film has to be done carefully to be effective or it comes off as pretentious, which it does here.