V/H/S 2

Director: Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener et al (2013)

Starring: Lawrence Michael Levine, Adam Wingard, Jay Saunders

Find it: IMDB

Don't worry - I'm not about to make that stupid "shouldn't they have called it Betamax or DVD?" joke (although I sort of already did, in saying that I wasn't going to). The videos return in V/H/S 2,  a sequel to the popular, not-shit found footage portmanteau horror film. The deal is roughly the same, although it's less misogynistic, and the bookend story has changed. In search of a missing girl, two private detectives binge-watch the video cassettes found at the suspected kidnapper's house. Freaky shit ensues. And also, the most snot I've seen in a horror film since The Blair Witch Project.

Where the original V/H/S had a cool concept but flawed execution (only one or two of the stories were actually any good) all involved seem to have brought their A-game for this sequel. There are six short tales, including the main story, and most of them are incredibly impressive. It gets the weakest out of the way first, with Phase I Clinical Trials being a fun, jump-scare inducing wee ditty about a fellow who gets a video camera implanted into his dodgy eyeball. It's not long before the camera starts picking up a little more than the minutiae of daily life. It's a shorter, louder version of The Eye, with a random bit of sex in the middle. From there, the film picks up pace, and never stops to look back. A Ride in the Park is a fun twist on the usual zombie shenanigans, Slumber Party Alien Abduction is a loud, upsetting oddity (the camera on the dog's head is a clever idea) while Safe Haven might just make the most intense use of found footage I've seen since [REC]. Everything else is very good, but I could quite happily have watched a feature length version of Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahanto's segment.

V/H/S 2 is a vastly improved sequel to a film that wasn't too shabby in the first place. Gory, fast paced and genuinely disturbing in places, it's inventive, exciting and gratifyingly nasty. Where the original movie was a likeable oddity, this follow-up makes me think that there might be real life in the format.    

The Dinosaur Project

Director: Sid Bennett (2012)

Starring: Natasha Loring, Matt Kane, Richard Dillane

Find it: IMDB

"The best dinosaur film since Jurassic Park!" goes most of the promotional material for The Dinosaur Project. Well, maybe, but it's also the only dinosaur film since Jurassic Park. And even that's presuming that we're not counting Jurassic Park's own sequels, since even Jurassic Park 3 is 

better than this one.

Dinosaurs are spotted near an isolated African rainforest, so a film crew heads out to investigate. A documentary maker, his sinister best friend, a disposable film crew and his horrible son all pile into a small aeroplane and head off in search of dinosaurs. The creatures try their best to hide ("doyouthinkhesaurus?") but when the plane crash lands deep in dino territory (which also happened in Jurassic Park 3) the crew find themselves dangerously out of their depth.

It looks and sounds a bit like the Land of the Lost movie from 2009, except no-one in it is as good as Danny McBride (people rarely are) and segments of it look like a Paranormal Activity. It's not as bad as Land of the Lost (hey, that 'best dinosaur film since Jurassic Park' might actually hold water, if the former had actually been a proper dinosaur film) but it's not particularly good either. The 12 rating doesn't hurt the film, although it may have been responsible for the Dinosaur Hunter's horrible son's prolonged screentime. He's like Jeff Goldblum's annoying daughter in The Lost World, but without Jeff Goldblum to counteract how boring and annoying she is.    

Grumpiness: Dissipated. 

Monsters and Troll Hunter did this sort of thing so much better. Dinosaur Hunter is a cute adventure action film with some good - but rarely outstanding - dinosaur action. Best dinosaur film since Jurassic Park? Well, maybe, but there wasn't that much competition.

The Devil Inside

Director: William Brent Bell (2012)

Starring: Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quartermain, Suzan Crowley

Find it: IMDB

Seeing a movie on the big screen with a large audience, can vastly improve the moviegoing experience. It's been suggested that my indifference to Insidious was because I saw that on a tiny television screen, alone. And thanks to its audience, I could've sworn blind that Spider-Man 3 was a good movie. In the case of The Devil Inside, the entire audience were laughing their collective and individual arses off. I laugh at most horror, but this is one of the few times everyone else in the room has joined me in a cheeky LOL (the other times usually having something to do with a Night Shyamalan).

The Devil Inside starts off pretending to be a documentary (with talking heads and everything) and then descends into being the Paranormal Activity rip-off it is at heart. Isabella Rossi (Andrade) and documentary maker Michael (Ionut Grama) travel to Italy to investigate a crime her mother committed years ago, during an exorcism gone wrong. Isabella's priest friends determine that Mother is still possessed. They invite her to join them in a series of unauthorised exorcisms. Meanwhile, the funniest demonic horror movie since Repossessed.

There's a scene in which one of the priests baptises a baby 'John Thomas'. Calling your newborn son John Thomas is only marginally more acceptable than calling it Richard Head. And during the possession scenes, there's some brilliant swearing. But demonic swearing only works if your movie is actually scary. And since The Devil Inside is fairly incompetent in its horror, the swearing just comes across as hilarious filth; the sort of thing you'd see scripted in a Todd Phillips movie.

There's some nearly scary stuff (all in the trailer, mind). Suzan Crowley does bug-eyed well. I even jumped once (at the cheapest scare, involving a dog). And Italy looks nice. The Devil Inside is essentially a found footage version of The Rite, rite down to an act of violence committed upon an unsuspecting child. But beyond its two fairly impressive exorcism scenes, the rest of the film makes little sense. The last quarter has the urgency of [REC] without any of the scares and too much predictability. It becomes completely manic, over the top and incredibly implausible. There's demonic transference and then there's taking the piss. Kitchen sink transference. It's not remotely believable as a faux-documentary or otherwise, and the ending is just as bad as everyone says it is.

Going in with very low expectations, I enjoyed The Devil Inside. It's a hilarious movie up until you realise that by paying to see it, you're keeping a cynical half-arsed approach to filmmaking in business.

The Troll Hunter

Director: Andre Ovredal (2010)

Starring: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck

Find it: IMDB

Students making a documentary find more than anticipated when the man they're trailing is revealed to be a 'troll hunter'. Keyboard warriors rest easy; he's after the other type of troll. Fairytale Trolls roam the Norwegian woods and countryside, looking for Christian men to munch upon. Hans (Jespersen) is part of a government conspiracy, ensuring that the Trolls stay within their designated areas. It's like Men in Black meets Cloverfield.

It's films like Troll Hunter with which the found footage subgenre shines. I have little interest in seeing middle class people being scared in their own homes, or in snotty kids being chased around ugly woods by unseen Blair Witches. I want to see the Moon (even when it's as half-arsed as Apollo 18), jungles full of cannibals and above all, I want to see Norwegian Trolls eating men dressed in tin suits. Fairy tale Trolls, that is. Although I would definitely watch a movie about a killer who hunts people that go around talking shit on Internet message boards. The Dark Knight Rises looks whack, does it? How would you like an axe in the face? It'd basically be The Punisher, except his victims are mostly children and me.

The locations are breathtakingly beautiful. Landscape fetishists should take great joy in Troll Hunter. It's certainly better than crappy old New York in Cloverfield. And then the Trolls appear, and that's incredible too. They look too unreal to ever be scary (like something out of that old PS2 game that nobody played), but there's a fairytale quality to the dodgy CGI that somehow befits the film. You won't quite believe it when you see it, but you'll really want to.

As our intrepid filmmakers follow Hans the hunter (think Quint from off've Jaws) on his travels, they encounter a number of Trolls, all beautifully designed and great to watch. The standout sequences see a Troll hiding under a bridge (how very Billy Goats Gruff), farting in a cave and a thrilling final bit with the biggest Troll of all.

Unfortunately, there are a few too many scenes which see the cameraman running through pitch-black forests, huffing and puffing like a paedophile in the kids' section at Primark. There's a character introduced too late into the film that slightly upsets the status quo (apparently Rossi was really unhappy with it) and the ending is a trifle predictable. Atheists will come away feeling smug though (oh, we come away feeling smug about everything) and it really is a beautiful film. Where the Blair Witches and The Cloverfields and the [RECS] have you feeling terrified to go back into the woods/New York/Barcelona, Troll Hunter will leave you disappointed by the lack of real Trolls there. Also, it has 'Teddy Bear's Picnic' on the trailer, and that gives me a warm feeling inside. Aaw.

Apollo 18

Director: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (2011)

Starring: Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen, Ryan Robbins

Find it: IMDB, HorrorTalk review

There's a reason we've never gone back to the Moon. That reason isn't Transformers, apparently. Relocating The Blair Witch Project to our Moon, Apollo 18 sends a gang of unsuspecting Astronauts camping up there. What they find is more Paranormal Activity than Wallace And Gromit; less a grand day out and more screaming and being pulled into dark craters. Are you shitting me, Apollo 18? If Aliens taught us anything, it's that violent monsters and creepy creatures are more likely to get people up there poking about, not less.

Despite my never having really been a fan of found footage films ([Rec] and the odd cannibal piece aside), I was eager to see Apollo 18. The thought of a horror movie set on the Moon is an intriguing one, and the found footage bit works here, since there's largely a reason to be dragging around cameras and it's a cool way to see the environment. It sounds the part too, all crackling communication systems and R2D2 beeps. It's nicely acted by its cast of unknowns. But it's the job of an actor in this sort of film to be sort of an everyman, so they're all nice but forgettable, other than their various nasty fates and rubbish characterisation.

Unfortunately, whilst the presentation is good, the story and everything else is over familiar and predictable. It alleges a 40-year cover up from NASA. But you'd think someone (not least the 400,000 people it takes to put an operation together) would have noticed a honking great spaceship being shot up there. NASA aren't happy either, stressing that the movie and its bad science is "not a documentary." They were however, fine with Michael Bay's Dark Of The Moon. Mind you, Rosie Huntingdon Whiteley's acting was so bad there that I don't suppose you're in any danger of anyone thinking that's she's a real actual person.

I enjoyed it, although it's not particularly scary and not at all suspenseful. As space horror goes, it's certainly better than Red Planet or Mission To Mars, but falls well short of the standards as set by the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Duncan Jones's beautiful Moon.

Ultimately, the most disappointing thing about this film is that no-one at any point says "Houston, we have a problem." I was on tenterhooks the whole 75 minutes too, waiting for that.