The Night Stalker
Over the years I've heard numerous incredibly negative things about Ulli Lommel and the real-life serial killer themed movies he's been cranking out without actually ever witnessing one. And now that I have, once is truly enough. Using California murderer Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez as its subject, The Night Stalker never once attempts to get its facts straight by presenting our killer as a constantly blow-pop sucking nutter who enjoys telling us in internal monologue about how much he hates women and how awesome Satan is. Lommel also throws in a bunch of nonsensical deaths which, apart from showing off some of the worst blood squibs I've seen in recent memory and having numerous camcorder level photography attempts at style like using the 'film negative' effect, are nowhere near the atrocious acts the real Ramirez committed. This is truly a slap in the face to the real life victims and their families.

Hit & Run
Take the idea from the "Hitchhiker" story in Creepshow 2, stretch it out to feature length, and populate your film with two of the most obnoxious characters in recent memory and you get the general idea of Hit & Run. It's really hard to feel any sort of connection with your film's heroine when you, as a viewer, wish death on her within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. If you take away the stylized direction by Enda McCallion and focus on the fact the makers of this want you to relate to Laura Breckinridge's callous teenage character (after she's plowed down a seemingly innocent man, beaten him with a golf club AND buried him alive) and the script's constantly stupid forward drive it's easy to see why this was dumped straight to DVD rather than going to theatres like originally planned.

The Telling
Describing this anthology flick, I usually call it the "Keep Playmates Working Movie" since its only real purpose of existing is so that plentiful fake big-breasted, usually blonde, centerfolds can badly attempt to act. Not even the fact all the stories presented wallow in cliché and are completely lazy made me despise The Telling as much as the fact it's a total vanity production with the majority of it filmed at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion - and I question a movie so obviously aimed at that magazine's readership that has barely any naked skin to speak of.

The Unborn
The J-horror remakes continue on with The Uninvited and this piece of rubbish arriving into theatres in early 2009. In the hands of writer-director David S. Goyer, The Unborn is a messy affair trying its damndest to pile on fright scenes and instead delivering a whole slew of dumb, CGI enhanced effects sequences (one, a direct rip-off of the 'spider walk' sequence in The Exorcist), a confused script, and Gary Oldman giving one of the weakest performances of his career. I've never proclaimed to be a fan of Japanese chillers but, compared to their North American counterparts, I'd rather watch them any day of the week rather than suffer through another lame-ass flick like this.

Fall Down Dead
In 2009 there seemed to be a lot of movies that sat on the shelf finally seeing the light of day with Fall Down Dead being one such effort. Shot three years prior (which explains the presence of David Carradine, R.I.P.), this finally stumbled its way to limited release. It would be easy to point at this as a prime example of bad writing as Roy Sallows' script constantly has people doing stupid things, throws in new victims when convenient, and doesn't even use its limited locations and a city wide blackout subplot to its advantage. Any movie that manages to waste Udo Kier as a serial killer who likes carving up women to use their body parts in his morbid paintings is obviously doing something wrong.

Josh Pasnak (Co-Conspirator)

Children of the Corn
I thought this was an odd choice for a remake and it is too bad that the producers didn't think a little harder before going ahead with this one. The original was decent enough but we all know that John Franklin and Courtney Gains as Isaac and Malachai respectively are what made that movie what it was. Why one of the producers decided to direct a remake of his own movie is beyond me especially when his casting of these key characters was off the mark. Daniel Newman has Malachai's look down but is so tentative that he is not threatening and little Preston Bailey as Isaac is woefully miscast and clearly is just reciting lines without any conviction. I can't fault the kid, though, as he was probably 7 or 8 when this was shot. The biggest disaster in this movie, however, is the character of Vicki (Kandyse McClure) who is one of the most horrible protagonists I have seen in recent memory and I wanted her to die within minutes. Not the kind of person you want to hang out with for an evening by any stretch. I almost turned this off strictly because of her. You've been warned.

The Last Resort
I would think that if you are going to base a movie around a kick-ass location such as an abandoned resort in Mexico, you would maximize your use of the creepiness of the location. When I read the cover for this, I thought that the location itself would be worth the price of the rental but director Brandon Nutt inexplicably limits the action to a few rooms and arms himself with one of the worst scripts of the year. Combine this with the world's most boring bachelorette party and an awkward backstory about a hedonistic cult and you have a terrible misfire. Nutt and his gang took what could have been an amazing location and totally wasted the opportunity to give us another useless, misleading waste of money and time that left me angry and unsatisfied. I think he took some lessons from Ulli Lommel in how to bore us to death.

The Unborn
I am so sick of these lame-ass movies that are still riding the coattails of the J-horror explosion that is so ten-years-ago. I could just tell this was going to be a shitshow after seeing the trailer but I was drawn in by Odette Yustman's backside and found myself inexplicably renting this. The end result is what seems like endless scenes of Yustman walking around with the occasional jump scare to keep me awake. I have a soft spot for David S. Goyer from his days with Full Moon, the fact that he co-wrote Dark City, and his writing on the latest Batman films but the guy doesn't have a lot to offer as a director. I felt like this whole thing was a movie I had seen before and didn't like. At least we had a few quick scenes of Odette in her undies but when that is the best thing about a movie, you know you are in trouble. The most disturbing thing was that Gary Oldman was part of the cast. How did that happen?

Friday the 13th
I have always been a fan of the Friday the 13th franchise and have always looked forward to seeing the latest instalment in the theatre. They have never disappointed me and even when Jason went into space, I still dug the recycled plot and the creative kills. In a way, the Friday films are kind of like The Ramones in that even though they did the same thing over and over, it was still cool as hell. That changed with Freddy vs. Jason as the formula was altered and the franchise jumped the shark in a big way. When I heard that Marcus Nispel was slated to direct the reboot of the series, I was a little excited as I thought he did a decent job with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Unfortunately, he totally missed the mark and made a boring slasher flick with some of the lamest kills in recent memory. I don't even remember most of the flick and I remember walking out thinking "that's not a Friday the 13th movie". It is officially the end of an era.

District 9
Let the hate mail begin but I walked out of this one wondering what the Hell everyone was talking about. This is by far the most overrated movie of the year and I was bored silly waiting for it to end. I heard that this flick will change the face of the genre and how brilliant Sharlto Copley's performance is in his first acting role. I have also heard about all of the social commentary subtext, blah, blah, blah. Sorry, folks, I was just wanting to see a cool sci-fi/horror flick with bad-ass aliens but instead I felt like I was watching a movie of the week about apartheid in the disguise of a cool sci-fi, horror flick with bad-ass aliens. In fact, I didn't find the aliens too bad-ass either as the whole thing was melodramatic and I was half expecting Lou Gossett Jr. to show up in his Enemy Mine make-up. Sure, people blow up and all that but at the end of the day, the story and characters didn't touch me at all and it seemed so formulaic and cheesy to me. What a waste of a cool trailer. I will say that had I chosen to suffer through Halloween 2, this would not have made the list but I have learned my Rob Zombie lesson three times now and won't be revisiting him anytime soon.