Azrael (2024)

Streaming Service: Shudder
Movie Name/Year: Azrael (2024)
Genre: Horror, Action
Length: 1h 26min
Rating: R
Director: E.L. Katz
Writer: Simon Barrett
Actors: Samara Weaving, Vic Carmen Sonne, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Johhan Rosenberg, Eero Milonoff, Sebastian Bull, Rea Lest, Phong Giang, Katariina Unt
 
Blurb from IMDb: In a world where no one speaks, a devout female-led community hunts down a young woman who has escaped imprisonment. Recaptured, Azrael is due to be sacrificed to an ancient evil in the wilderness, but fights for her own survival.
 

Selina’s Point of View:
Azrael is an interesting flick, mainly because of the minimal dialogue.
 
Any film with minimal dialogue has a great deal more to accomplish than a normal one. In normal movies, there’s always something going on. Even if the characters are just sitting together, they’re talking. They’re engaging with each other and the audience. Then there’s the exposition. Nobody wants a ton of it, but it’s useful to have, especially in flicks where the setting is not the world we’re familiar with. Minimal dialogue films have to compensate for all of that with more riveting visuals and a story that speaks for itself.
 
I read some summaries of Azrael before I watched it, so I knew what was going on. I’m not entirely sure someone going into it blind would have come to the same conclusions, but the story would still make some kind of sense to them. They would pick up either Walking Dead (2010-2022) vibes, with the various not-so-nice camps, or catch a cult vibe. Both would fit. I kind of like that there’s room for interpretation.
 
The only issue someone might have while watching would be the various moments that sayings popped up on the screen. If they were interpreting something different, that would absolutely take them out of the moment. Even for me, knowing what it was about, the screens of writing slowed things down and took me out of it. Aside from the first explanation, the director should have just trusted his actors and setting to tell the whole story and his audience to not need handholding.
 

Speaking of actors, I love Samara Weaving (Ready or Not, Mayhem, The Babysitter). She is a modern goddess scream queen, and I will never be able to go on quite enough about her. Of course, I’ve mentioned before that one of the reasons I find her so mesmerizing is her scream. It portrays fear, sure, but there’s a primal rage in there that cannot be ignored.
 
So, how is she in a movie where her character has no voice?
 
Weaving taking this role that prevents her from using her most iconic feature, was a great idea. It allowed the rest of her acting prowess to take over. I was never bored when she was on screen. I understood her expressions and felt her pain in the silent, breathy, screams. She presented herself as no less scream queen, even without her voice.
 
I liked Azrael. It was different and dark. Everything I love in a post-apocalyptic flick.  

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 71%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 59%
Metascore – 52%
Metacritic User Score – 4.0
IMDB Score – 5.4/10
 
Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 3.5/5
 
Movie Trailer:

Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies (2014)

 

 

Streaming Service: Amazon Prime

Movie Name/Year: Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies (2014) 

Genre: Horror, Action, Comedy 

Length:  1h 31min 

Rating: Unrated 

Director: Cody Knotts 

Writer: Cody Knotts 

Actors: Roddy Piper, Jim Duggan, Matt Hardy, Reby Hardy, Shane Douglas, Adrienne Fischer, Taya Parker, Shannon M. Hart, Ashton Amherst, Michael Cichowicz, Matthew Rush, Thomas Rodman, Kurt Angle, Lienn Swearingen, Drew Ripepi, Camera Chatham Bartolotta, Cody Knotts, Dante Bartolotta, Andrew Clovis, Michael H. Richmond, Dana Winn Madar, Cody Michaels, Brandon Graver, Ryan Mitchell, Ryan Reign, Thomas Schreckengost, Marcus Mercante Staley, Chris Taylor, Sylvester 'Bear' Terkay, Richard John Walters, Frank Yuvan Jr., Randy Allen, Jennifer Blaze, Tom Bradley, Dirk Cunningham, Jason Scott Delzell, Ryan Edmonds, Scott A Miller, Rob Stanley, Joseph c Walker Jr., Mike Walker, Larry Whistler 

 

IMDb Blurb: Famous Wrestlers are pitted against hordes of undead when they unknowingly walk into a death trap. 

 

 

Cat’s Point of View:

I’ll be honest, I don’t think I even knew that Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies even existed prior to a month or so ago. It’s not entirely surprising, considering the movie is a little on the obscure side. Though, it was a little unexpected, considering how big a fan I’ve been of the late, great "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (Adventures of a Pizza Guy, Portal to Hell!!!, The Green Fairy) ever since I was little. My dad introduced me to ‘wrasslin’ in the 80s, and Piper was one of my all-time faves.  He used an accent, wore a kilt and a leather jacket, and played bagpipes. His character was so much fun and really put the entertainment factor into the Sports Entertainment production.

 

The quote "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum." Is something that has embedded itself into pop culture. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve heard it repeated or paraphrased in various productions as well as just in general. It was a line by Piper’s character, Nada from They Live (1988). Whether someone knew Roddy Piper from wrestling or not, he left an indelible mark on us all through his love of entertainment.

 

 

It was a different quote that caught my attention regarding Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies. A good friend of Trust the Dice, who goes by BasementJer of The Basement Bookers blog, gave us this recommendation:

"Alright, peeps 'Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies'?  Cheesy, yes. Laughable, definitely. But hey, it's wrestlers vs zombies! What else do you need? Just mindless fun, piledrivers, and Shane Douglas being...well, Shane Douglas. This ain't Shakespeare but the late great Roddy Piper was damn good not bad considering his part was originally written for Mick Foley, worked out better in my opinion."

 

 

Honestly, I don’t think I can sum up this movie any better. Jer just distilled the essence of the experience watching Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies right there. It was absolutely nutty and just as corny as you would imagine. The film plays into all the stereotypes and wrestling tropes – from goofy and dim new talent to backstage infighting.  Power bombs, elbow drops, and wrestling tropes, oh my!

 

All told, there were some real gem moments of hilarity amidst the face-palming and eye-roll inducing ones. I think the setting of the decommissioned prison was also a brilliant touch, and am saddened that the castle-like structure has since been torn down rather than repurposed somehow.

  Though, I think I got the most from seeing Piper on the screen again – even if it was bittersweet, given his passing in 2015. 

 

 

He wasn’t the only well-known wrestler involved, however. "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan (Legends of the Mid-South Wrestling, The Axeman of Henderson County, Midnight Massacre) and his trusty 2x4 made a valiant appearance, as well as “hardcore-wrestling legend” Matt Hardy (The 99, Impact Wrestling: No Surrender, AEW Dark: Elevation). Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Angle (Chasing Molly, Emergency: LA, The Epidemic) was even on board for this crazy escapade. I had a giggle when he unleashed one of his signature moves. Of course, as Jer mentioned, Shane Douglas (Hardcore Homecoming: November Reign, Ultimate Death Match 3, House of Hardcore 37) was continuing his well-known role as a heel.

 

Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies is a movie where the sole purpose of its existence is entertainment value. It’s not meant to be a super serious zombie horror. This is the very sort of film you get a bunch of friends together and turn the tropes into drinking games or just laugh over popcorn with.

 

Of course, it helps if you know something about wrestling to really get the references and the characters involved. I am not sure anyone unfamiliar with professional wrestling would get quite as much out of it. I still had a blast experiencing this movie, and am glad I gave it a shot.

 

 

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – None

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 19%

Metascore – None

Metacritic User Score – None

IMDB Score – 3.2/10

 

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 4/5

 

Trust the Dice: Parental Advisory Rating – R

 

P.S. - If you'd like a little insight into how this movie came to be, I ran across an interesting article with an interview with the writer/director. You can find it here.

 

Movie Trailer:

Anthology - Revisiting Personal Cinematic Landscape

I’ve been sick for a few weeks, which is why these articles have been a little slow to come out, but I’m finally on the mend.
 
Moving on.
 
One of the things that have happened since the first time I wrote about my personal cinematic landscape was the pandemic. Say what you will about that time, but it felt pretty apocalyptic when it was going down. I’m from New York, the city that never sleeps. During that time, it slept. The streets of Times Square were barren, the sounds of the city quieted, and even the food trucks went on their way. Reports of deaths mixed with the sour tone of conspiracy theorists telling the world that our vaccines had tracking chips in them. People faced the fear with everything from a strange game where astronaut jellybeans killed each other in secret, to splattercore books (a genre I didn’t even know existed until then), to video chatting, to straight-up denial. I kidnapped my mother so that she wouldn’t be alone for, what was supposed to be, a couple of weeks but it stretched into almost a year.
 
I’d seen some scary things before COVID, but that was the first time it felt like the apocalypse could be more than just something that happened twice a season on Supernatural (2005-2020).
 
The pandemic definitely altered the way I view films in the apocalyptic genre.
 
I’m not entirely sure I still agree with the list I originally gave. Although I enjoy Zombieland (2009), I don’t think it’s really altered my cinematic landscape the way I once did. Same goes for This is the End (2013). They’re good films, but my take on apocalyptic movies would be the same without them. At least now. World War Z (2013) also doesn’t feel like an addition to the apocalyptic genre to me, but more of a flick to consider where adaptations are concerned.
 
World War Z, the book, is a compilation of various tales of people entering a zombie apocalypse. It’s set up as a kind of case study. None of the characters in the film are ever even seen in the book. I think the flick shows an interesting way to adapt that kind of novel. Instead of telling a story already told by author Max Brooks, the creators opted to add another to the anthology. From an adaptation stance, I think that’s brilliant. From an apocalypse perception, however, it’s basic zombies.
 
Cargo (2017) is the only film I originally listed that would still be a part of my apocalypse landscape today.
 
So, what apocalyptic films DO alter the way I view the genre?
 
I’ll start with the one that that means more to me now than it did before the pandemic: 28 Days Later (2002).
 

Watching that film in the aftermath of COVID gave me chills. Seeing London as empty as Times Square in 2020 was much more harrowing than it had been before. There’s a certain hollowness, a hopelessness, that grips me when watching that scene now. It’s the embodiment of what an apocalypse feels like, and it puts me on my heels as I watch the rest of the events unfold.
 
The zombie aspects are better than in most undead movies (fast, easier infection, etc.), but it’s that overall feel in the beginning that reflects something I’ve now actually felt. It allows me to relate on a deeper level and creates a more frightening experience.
 
There’s something to be said for pulling from real situations for a horror film. It makes the impossible seem more realistic and terrifying.
 

Then there’s Train to Busan (2016). Although it came out before 2018, I only saw it after my original articles were put out. It instantly became one of my favorite zombie movies. It also opened me up more to Korean cinema, which is where I prefer to find my horror these days. The story of a not-so-great dad taking care of his daughter and redeeming himself as the world turns to rot is one that tugs at the heart strings and absolutely destroys me by the conclusion.
 
Without Train to Busan I’d have seen maybe half the apocalyptic films I have by now. Most of them I watched because this one Korean zombie flick opened my eyes to them. Without it, my taste for the sub-genre would be much more basic.
 
The last addition to my personal cinematic landscape for the apocalypse sub-genre is A Quiet Place (2018).
 

I had to choose between three options for this spot because they all felt like a possible entry for the same basic reason. The other options were Bird Box (2018) and Blood Quantum (2019).
 
In all three films there’s an entire group of people that are unaffected by the subject of the apocalypse. In Blood Quantum, indigenous people have a quality to their blood that keeps them from being infected with the virus. While in A Quiet Place and Bird Box it’s a disability that protects people from invaders.
 
I decided to choose A Quiet Place for this article because it’s the one that does it best. I almost put it in the minimal dialogue category, but there’s actually quite a bit of talking that happens. The majority of that conversation just happens to be in sign language.
 
The idea of an entire group of people being protected from an apocalypse was relatively new to me with these films and, as it turns out, it’s an idea I really love. That idea that something can protect a person that’s completely out of their control – whether it’s heritage or a physical issue – is something that I feel gives a lot more depth to a story. I see it done more now, and I do tend to gravitate toward those plots when I see them. If A Quiet Place wasn’t as amazing as it was, it might not be something I looked at all that hard in the future.

Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

  

Streaming Service: STARZ

Movie Name/Year: Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

Genre: Action, Horror, Comedy

Length:  1h 39min

Rating: R

Production/Distribution: Columbia Pictures, Pariah, Columbia Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Pictures Filmverleih, Sony Pictures Releasing, United International Pictures (UIP), Universal Pictures International (UPI)

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Writers: Dave Callaham, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick

Actors: Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Zoey Deutch, Bill Murray, Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Thomas Middleditch, Dan Aykroyd, Jesse Eisenberg, Luke Wilson, Avan Jogia, Victor Rivera, Victoria Hall

 

IMDb Blurb: Columbus, Tallahasse, Wichita, and Little Rock move to the American heartland as they face off against evolved zombies, fellow survivors, and the growing pains of the snarky makeshift family.

 

 

Cat’s Point of View:

I absolutely loved Zombieland (2009). Everything about it was glorious. It was one of those rare blends of horror comedy that just worked. It also had a little of the feeling that it was a graphic novel come to life. It took a whole decade for the sequel to release, but it was well worth the wait.  When we put together our Top 20 article for October 2019, this movie was near or at the top of the list for both Selina and I. 

Zombieland: Double Tap is one of the good examples of what a sequel should strive to be. It honored the original and expanded the story without being redundant or phoning it in order to cash out. 

 

We got to see all of the primary characters again with their roles reprised by Woody Harrelson (True Detective, Midway, The Man from Toronto), Jesse Eisenberg (Now You See Me, American Ultra, Vivarium), Emma Stone (The Croods, La La Land, Cruella), and Abigail Breslin (Final Girl, Scream Queens, Stillwater). This is, in fact, my favorite of Harrelson’s. 

Zombieland: Double Tap also introduced new characters played by Zoey Deutch (Why Him?, Rebel in the Rye, The Outfit), Avan Jogia (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shaft, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City), and the kickass Rosario Dawson (Luke Cage, The Mandalorian, Clerks III) among others. 

There were callbacks to the first movie that fans would definitely appreciate and get a kick out of, and the story stayed true to the themes established in the first Zombieland. Though, it brought a fresh perspective with more information on the zombies and insight into the characters. It gave us a what came next perspective that everyone craves from a sequel. 

I was also glad to see that Zombieland: Double Tap retained its devil-may-care attitude about how the characters moved through the apocalyptic landscape. The dark and twisted hilarity laced throughout and it didn’t take itself too seriously. I also really appreciated the little homages here and there to other staples of zombie cinema. Zombieland was inspired by Shaun of the Dead (2004), after all. 

 

This is exactly the sort of movie that probably makes critics pull out their hair and roll their eyes. However, from an audience fan perspective, Zombieland: Double Tap was just a fun ride from beginning to end. It was one of the few movies where I barely even noticed the passing of time and wasn’t even tempted to fidget on my phone while I was watching. 

I would recommend Zombieland: Double Tap to anyone who enjoyed the first movie. If you haven’t watched the first one yet - my suggestion would be to do that first. These 2 films would make a great double-feature movie event with friends. I know I’ll enjoy watching these movies for years to come. My family and I have already watched them both several times. 

 

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 68%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 88%

Metascore – 55%

Metacritic User Score – 6.5/10

IMDB Score – 6.7/10

 

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 5/5

P.S. - There is a special modification to the Columbia Pictures intro to the movie as well as a post-credits scene.

 

Movie Trailer: