Saturday Scream Queen: Aryana Engineer

This Saturday's Scream Queen is more a Scream Princess at this point. Aryana Engineer is an a Candadian child actress of Iranian/Scottish descent. She was born partially deaf and can use sign language as effectively as she speaks English.

Her skill with sign language led to her gaining her first film role at the age of six, appearing as a young deaf girl in the 2009 horror film "The Orphan". She  most recently appeared in the just released "Resident Evil: Retribution", basically playing herself... as she might be if she was in a world where the T-Virus started turning people into murderous zombies.

In addition to her film roles, Engineer has appeared in television ads. She will hopefully continue to develop as an actress and in a decade or so, she will appear here as a full-fledged Scream Queen.

Did they leave out the story?

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez, Bingbing Lee, Aryana Engineer, Boris Kodjoe, Johann Urb, Shawn Roberts, and Oded Fehr
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

After years of opposing the monster-creating Umbrella Corp, Alice (Jovovich) is finally captured with no hope of escape... that is until she receives help from an unexpected source. But between her and freedom are clones of her old allies... and her old friend Jill Valentine (Guillory), now a remote-controlled slave to the Red Queen--the artificial intelligence who has now taken complete control of the compajny and all its bases.

After the two most recent installments in this series, I had cautious high hopes for this one, hoping that it would would continue the upwards trajectory in story quality and innovative action that we saw in those two films.

Unfortunately, it was not to be so. This installment in the series returns the "Resident Evil" film series to its computer gaming roots by (to borrow a phrase from Joe Bob Briggs) not featuring much story to get in the way of the plot, and by featuring even less character development.

Instead of being called "Resident Evil: Retribution", it should have been titled "Resident Evil: Run Away!" because all we really have here is Alice and/or other characters running from one zombie fight to another zombie fight, and ultimately to the film's conclusion which sets up another sequel. Basically, this feels like an interlude between "Resident Evil: Afterlife" and the next movie in the series instead of a movie that was made to enjoy on its own.

That isn't to say there aren't some good scares and plenty of the zombie-killing action in the flick... I would just like to have a little more story along with the mayhem. Jovovich once again shows herself to be the Queen of Green-screen Fu--and the final showdown in frozen northern Russia is quite exciting, but the film really needed more of a story that four lines written on the back of one of Paul W.S. Anderson's business cards.

Big-time Jovovich fans like me may enjoy this film and not mind the outrageous ticket prices that you have to pay even at matinees now. Big-time fans of the computer games might enjoy this film and likewise not feel like they could have spent their money better--I don't know, as I've never played the computer game.. Anbd if you simply can't get enough of 3D movies, perhaps you'll find it worth the money as well. Those who have come to this film series through the previous films, or who are fans of zombie flicks, can safely wait until it's a cheap home rental, or until it shows up in second-run theaters... or even skip it entirely.

Bonus Scream Queen: Milla Jovovich

The Bonus Scream Queen... not just for Independence Day anymore!

Milla Jovovich makes a special Friday appearance as she returns for a third time to the Saturday Scream Queen series in celebration of today's release of "Resident Evil: Retribution".

Born in the Ukraine, Jovovich moved with her parents to the United States at a young age and she was an internationally renowned model by the time she was 13. She soon found even greater success as an actress, emerging as an equally familiar face to fans of action films, horror films, and quirky indie pictures alike.

While almost every film fan knows her as Leelu from "The Fifth Element" (1997), she is most famous for starring as the supercharged zombie killer Alice in the "Resident Evil" series. Click here to see reviews of the entire series, as well as all of Jovovich's past Saturday Scream Queen appearances.

You can see more of Jovovich in Shades of Gray's "The Milla Jovovich Quarterly" series, and in posts at Cinema Steve. (In case you can't tell, I'm quite a fan.)

Other horror films or thrillers starring Jovovich are "Ultraviolet" (2006), "A Perfect Getaway" and "The Fourth Kind" (both in 2009), and "Faces in the Crowd" (2011).

Chuck Norris Fact: 'Hellbound' is blah

Hellbound (1994)

Starring: Chuck Norris, Calvin Levels, Sheree J. Wilson, and Christopher Neame

Director: Aaron Norris

Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A bizarre murder sets a pair of renegade Chicago police detectives (Levels and Norris) on the path to stopping the herald of Satan himself (Neame) from creating Hell on Earth.

As a concept, "Hellbound" must have seemed like a winner--Chuck Norris taking on then left hand of Satan and spin-kicking him right back to Hell. Unfortunately, the execution is severely lacking in Chuck Norris's only horror film.

For a mid-1990s buddy cop picture crossed with a horror film, this is a surprisingly sedate and predictable affair. It's almost as if the filmmakers couldn't bring themselves to embrace the wild potential of what was here and what they delivered is a collection of half-baked buddy cop cliches, a romantic interest for Norris to ill defined that the viewer barely cares that she is going to be sacrificed to Satan.

The film's cast doesn't help matters any. They were working with a mediocre script and they did not rise above the material. Calvin Levels, as the smart-mouthed comic relief sidekick to Norris's man of action, is so annoying you will find yourself wishing that he will be whacked, Sheree J. Wilson is once again a damsel-in-distress, but she phones in the performance of an already weakly defined character. Christopher Neame is sufficiently creepy as the demon walking the Earth, but he is under-utilized. And star Chuck Norris is... well, he's Chuck Norris. He is actually better here than in other films, although even he is let down by the half-hearted nature of the film with a less-than-apocalyptic final showdown between him and demons.

Unless you are a huge Chuck Norris fan, or haven't seen more than one or two buddy cop-style pictures, you won't be missing much if you take a pass on this movie.

Saturday Scream Queen: Michelle Rodriguez

Born in Texas, but raised in the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, Michelle Rodriguez has made a career out of playing tough women who might just as well kick your ass as say hello. She is perhaps best known for her recurring role as Letty in the "The Fast and the Furious" film series (which she returns to next year, despite her character being killed off in the fifth entry"Fast & Furious"... maybe they're adding street-racing zombies to the mix?

Speaking of zombies, Rodriquez has racked up a few horror credits since her film debut in 2000. Her second major role came as a zombie-killing cop in the original "Resident Evil" film in 2002, she traded punches with vampires in 2005's "Bloodrayne" while fearsome beasts sought to devour her in 2006's "The Breed".

Rodriguez returns to kill more zombies in "Resident Evil: Retribution", the latest installment in the videogame-inspired zombie action movie series which will be in theaters this coming Friday, September 14.

'Slices of Life' is interesting but flawed

Slices of Life (2011)
Starring: Kaylee Williams, Jack Guasta, Toya Turner, Thurston Hill, Deneen Melody, Galen Schloming, Helen Alter-Dyche, and Judith Lesser
Director: Anthony G. Sumner
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love anthology films. There's a sense of fun about them that you don't get with other kinds of films--each segment is like a new movie and you never know what you're in for... and in the best of them, the framing sequence offers a little bonus story that may or may not tie in the others. Anthology films are like Forrest Gump's box of chocolate in every way.

Which brings me to "Slices of Life", a film I first watched early last year but never finished writing the review of for some reason. The initial notes and my memory both indicated that the film started weak and finished strong.

And sure enough, I my notes and memory were correct. The film is uneven in quality, but, ultimately the good outweighs the bad, making it a fun viewing experience if you can look past the sections where the ambitions of the director and special effects crew overreaches their budget and forgive some of the weaker actors for their transgressions.

Like the best anthology films, this one features a "bonus story" by way of a framing sequence that connects the other segments. A young woman (Kaylee Williams) wakes up on a lawn in front of a motel, not remembering who she is. The creepy owners insist she works there and that a trio of sketchbooks filled with elaborate drawings are hers. The girl paging through the sketchbooks are what leads us into the three stories within the framing story. These bridging sequences get creepier as the movie unfolds, and together they earn Six Stars.

First up is "Work Life: W.O.R.M.", the weakest of the three tales. In it, an unpleasant and isolated office worker (Jack Guasta) unleashes a nanite computer virus that turns all his co-workers into murderous zombies. He spends the rest of the segment trying to fend them off as he is chased through the building. While this could possibly have been an interesting and amusing cross between the cyberpunk and zombie genres, it ends up falling flat because writer/director Andrew Sumner chose to replace clever storytelling and characterization with a string of meta-references. Just like merely referencing other movies doesn't make a comedy like "Disaster Movie" funny, neither do wink-wink references to oher sci-fi and horror flicks make "Work Life" scary. It rates a generous Four Stars.

Things look up after that false start, however. With "Home Life: Amber Alert" Sumner delivers a tale of a very pregnant cop's wife (Toya Turner) who finds herself haunted by the ghosts of children who have been murdered by an elusive serial killer.  The way the hauntings are presented is quite scary and this could have been the best segment in the film, and certainly better than what is featured, if Sumner perhaps had trusted in the fact he had a powerful story here and refrained from engaging in cheap and predictable tricks as it built toward it's finale. What he probably thought was improving the segment actually undermines it, dispelling the atmosphere of dread that had been building with clumsy melodrama and unneeded gore. The segment also suffers from the fact that Thurston Hill gives a terrible performance that is made to look worse by the fact that Toya Turner is rather good in her part. This segment rates a low Six Stars, because of the way Sumner drops that ball toward the end.

The best episode of the film, "Sex Life: Pink Snapper", is the third and final story. It's a cleverly constructed tale that interweaves seemingly unrelated events involving a couple on the run (Deneen Melody and Galen Schloming). It's a story where the characters who are ostensibly the heroes of the piece are not exactly conventional and the villains are not at all what they seem to be. The segment draws its plot threads into a clever payoff that is just as creepy as it is satisfying due to the mixed feelings that viewers will have about the sort of poetic justice that is embodied by the fate of the various main characters.  The acting here is also more solid, with the entire cast giving a good accounting of themselves, and Deneen Melody being especially excellent as a heroine that's intentionally hard to like. This could easily have been a Seven Star segment if not for the fact that Sumner once again either didn't have faith in his story, or wanted to show off his horror geek-cred by tossing unrelated horror tropes into the segment. Yes... we all known Countess Bathory was a horrible, evil person, but did throwing references to her into this story doesn't add as much as it detracts because of its unnecessary randomness, and it drags the segment down to a rating of Six Stars.

When those ratings are averaged out, and Sumner's habit of mistaking horror cliches and references to other horror movies as story telling is taken into account, the entire package ends up rating a solid Five of Ten Stars.

"Slices of Life" is one of the better low-budget horror anthologies of the direct-to-DVD set. If you like the genre and the anthology format, I think you'll enjoy it. Sumner might also be a talent to look out for; if he had a little more faith in his material, I think he could deliver some excellent horror movies.

Saturday Scream Queen: Sienna Guillory

Sienna Guillory's parents encouraged her to express herself artistically as she was growing up and this lead to her decision to become an actor. Her mother had been a model, and Guilllory supplemented her acting income with modeling jobs, gracing many magazine covers and working for such high-profile brands as Armani.

Guillory's acting career has consisted of a mix of television and film projects, most of them historical dramas. However, she's also appeared in a number of horror films, such as "Superstition" in 2001, "Perfect Life" in 2010, and the slated-to-be-in-theaters on October 3 "The Wicked Within".

And, of course, Sienna Guillory has also portrayed the character Jill Valentine in the zombie-action films "Resident Evil: Apocalypse", "Resident Evil: Afterlife", and "Resident Evil: Retribution".

"Resident Evil: Retribution" will be in theaters on September 14.

In celebration of the PAX convention

This weekend, the PAX game convention takes place in Seattle. Here's a computer game-themed short film from Drew Daywalter to remind all you out there to be careful what you play....

Polydeus (2011)
Starring: Timm Sharp, Karl Herlinger, and Hunter James
Director: Drew Daywalt
Rating: Six of Ten Stars



There will be lots more of Daywalt's shorts to be seen here during the 31 Nights of Halloween celebration in October.

Saturday Scream Queen: Bingbing Li

Bingbing Li's star has been in ascendance both in her home country of China and internationally since her award-winning film debut in the 1999 drama "Seventeen Years". She is presently one of China's most popular actresses.

Li's horror resume is rather thin, as her career has comprised mostly of period pieces of the action/adventure or romantic variety, but she did have a spectacular turn as the iconic evil sorceress Woman with White Hair in 2008's "The Forbidden Kingdom", a cinematic tribute to Chinese mythology has its been translated to the big screen for the past 50 years. That year, she also starred in "Linger", as a woman who is visited by the ghost of her boyfriend who died three years earlier.

Next month, however, Li officially is added to the ranks of horror movie actresses, as she joins the line-up of zombie-killing beauties of the "Resident Evil" series in the role of the shadowy corporate spy Ada Wong.

"Resident Evil: Retribution" opens across America on September 14, 2012. Be sure to go and check out Li in glorious 3D. Meanwhile, come back here next Saturday for some bits of information about another of the Scream Queens who will be making sure the zombies stay dead this time.

Saturday Scream Queen: Kaylee Williams

Kaylee Williams is an up-and-coming actress who was born, raised, and still lives in a suburb of Chicago. She has chalked up a number of appearances in short film, and is rapidly adding features to her resume as well.

Noteworthy film appearances so far include "Cut" and "Zombie Babies" (both in 2011). She is also seen in the framing sequence for the excellent "Slices of Life" anthology horror movie from 2010, which I watched last year and never posted the review for. That will have to be rectified this coming week.

Williams is currently involved with eight different film projects at varying stages of production, all of them horror films. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more of her around these parts. (At the very least, I'll see if I can feature some of her shorts during the big 31 Nights of Halloween event coming up in a few weeks.)

Saturday Scream Queens: The Faces of Tomie

One of the few truly creepy comics book series is "Tomie" by Japanese writer/artist Junji Ito. It relates tales of its title character... a mysterious teenaged girl who all men become oobssesed with--so obsessed that they will kill anyone who they think stands between them and their possession of her, including Tomie herself. But no matter how gory and apparently final Tomie's death, she reappears again and again, always bringing madness and destruction to those she interacts with.

With the promise of blood and gore and a sexy girl at the middle of it all, it should come as no surprise that the "Tomie" comics have been become a long-running series of movies. While Tomie is always an exact copy of how she looked before--even when there are multiples of her running around at the same time, due to the way she regenerates from bits of her previous body--no actress has so far played her in more than once.

This post covers the first seven actresses to tackle the roll of the Girl Who Always Comes Back.

Miho Kanno: (Tomie, 1999)
In 1993, Miho Kanno rocketed to stardom as a J-Pop singer at the age of 15 when a musical group she was in won a national contest in 1993 and became a regular feature in variety shows. By 1994, she had launched a successful career as an dramatic actress with starring roles in television movies and series, and stage work followed shortly thereafter. In 1997, she posed for a "photo art book" titled NUDITY... and it became a Top Ten national best-seller in Japan.

Kanno was the first actress to portray Tomie, and she remains the biggest star to tackle the role. It wasn't her first horror movie, however. In 1995, she played a teen charged with defeating magical evils yet who yearned to just be a normal girl in "Eko-Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness". In the same year she played Tomie, she also appearred in the horror film "Hypnosis".

Kanno has left her pop-singer days behind her years ago, but she continues to be a busy and popular dramatic actress in Japan, with an ever-growing list of television, stage, and film credits to her name.

Runa Nagai (Tomie: Another Face, 1999)
Runa Nagai is primarily a model who specializes in "photo art books" which are collections of pictures of girls and young women in various states of undress. Given her main line, it is only natural that she should be cast as the supernatural temptress, Tomie. (And one of the story-lines in the anthology film in which she starred had Tomie becoming involved with a photographer, so perhaps there's some meta-referencing going on.)

Nagai had a handful of film and television roles during the early 2000s, with her biggest role being as Tomie in "Another Face".

Miki Sakai (Tomie: Rebirth, 2001)
Born in 1978, Miki Sakai got her start as a professional actress in the acclaimed drama "Love Letters" in 1995. Throughout the 1990s, she was very successful at playing "the girl next door"-type parts, so perhaps the reason hers was a Tomie performance that many rank among the best there have been so far--she had a good-girl veneer with the monster lurking beneath.

Sakai continues to be a popular actress on Japanese television, mostly appearing in comedies and lighthearted mystery made-for-TV movies and series, but "Rebirth" remains her only horror role thus far. The closest she's come have been a couple of dark thrillers made for theatrical release in recent years.

Nozomi Ando (Tomie: Forbidden Fruit, 2002)
Nozomi Ando got her start at the age of 17 with a lead role in the monster-fest "Gamera 3," in 1999 and she's been kept busy with roles in horror films and thrillers ever since.

Aside from her turn as Tomie, other noteworthy roles have been a teenaged demon-hunter in "Sakuya: Slayer of Demons" (2000), the love interest of a werewolf Ronin in "Werewolf Warrior" (2004), and a hapless college kid stalked by a demon deep within a forest in "Gurozuka" (2005).

Rio Matsumoto (Tomie: Beginning, 2005)
This actress can be said to have something in common with Tomie. She began her career in 1994 as a child actress and model, but retired from the business in 1999 because she wanted to attend high school as a "normal student."

Then, in 2002, In 2002 after her graduation from high school, she rose from the ashes of her past career, reborn and reconstituted like Tomie, or, to use a less sinister example, a Phoenix. Since her second debut, she has returned full-bore to modeling and acting. She has had recurring roles in numerous television dramas and appeared in several action films. "Tomie: Beginnings" is so far her only foray into horror.

In 2007, Matsumoto branched out into fashion desig with a line of wedding dresses. She continues to divide her professional life between acting, modeling, and fashion design.

Anri Ban (Tomie: Revenge, 2005)
Born in 1985, Anri Ban was 20 years old when she became the 7th face of Tomie. It was her first role in a horror film, but she had already appeared in key roles in several mysteries and action-oriented dramas.

The only other horror movie on her resume is "Woman Transformation" (2007) in which she plays one of three women who gradually transform into demons, but she has been featured in numerous mysteries since making "Tomie: Revenge".

'Tomie' Double-Feature

As I've previously mentioned, I'm a big fan of Junji Ito's "Tomie" horror comic book series. I keep watching the film adaptations of it when I come across others in the long-running series, even if it's a little like Charlie Brown and Lucy's football. More often than not, these films have been disappointments, and I've yet to see one that captured the feel of Ito's original work completely. (But I've yet to see them all... so there's still hope.)

Prevkously, I've reviewed four of the "Tomie" films here on Terror Titans. Today, I'm offering up two more--the very first in the series (which is so awful I originally posted the review to Movies You [Die Before You] See) and the prequel that was helmed by the same director six years later.

Tomie (1999)
Starring: Yoriko Douguchi, Miho Kanno, and Mami Nakamura
Director: Ataru Oikawa
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Junji Ito created one of the few truly scary comic book series I've read--"Uzemaki." His other famous series Tomie is almost as creepy, although you'd never know it from this astoundingly boring movie adaptation.



"Tomie" is the tale of a teen girl who is the center of violent love triangles where everyone involved ends up dead, including her. And, yes, it's plural, because Tomie is so evil that even death cannot stop her--her body always regrows, even from dismemberment, into an exact replica of when she was at her most beautiful... and then she goes looking for more victims to seduce and lead to destruction.

"Tomie" is an awful movie in every sense of the word. It's slow-moving; it fails to take advantage of nearly everything that was truly creepy in the original source material, so it starts boring and it stays there; is filled with drab characters having inane conversations; spends too much time with characters talking about how horrific things are instead of showing the viewer the horror; and has gore and special effects so awful that Ed Wood is embarrassed on the filmmakers' behalf. Finally, the film seems to assume that the viewer is familiar with the Ito comics series, which is an unforgivable sin in my opinion.

The only reason I suffered through it until the end was because I wanted to review it for here and because I kept thinking it HAD to get better.

"Tomie" would have been a One Star movie, except the actors seem to be doing as good a job as can be expected with the awful script they're working with. I still recommend that you avoid this one.

There are at least six other Tomie movies that have been made since the release of this one, and this is one series where the films get better as they go. Sort of... the series has been hit-and-miss.


Tomie: Beginning (2005)
Starring: Rio Matsumoto, Asami Imajuku, and Kenji Mazu
Director: Ataru Oikawa
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A transfer student (Matsumoto) brings obsession, murder, and madness to a Japanese high school. Only Reiko (Imajuku) stands unaffected by the horror... or does she?

"Tomie: Beginning" is a little misnamed, at least it was for me. It raised expectations that it doesn't deliver on--this isn't the beginning of Tomie and she remains as mysterious and alien at the end of the film as she is at its beginning--but rather a prequel to the very first "Tomie" film, by the director who made that first film, and he was more on the mark with this outing.

"Tomie: The Beginning" has its title not just because it's a prequel--that reveals the circumstances of how Tomie's head came to be in that grocery bag at the beginning of the first film--but also because it's based largely on Junji Ito's first "Tomie" short story. By staying close to Ito's work, Oikawa managed to correct the error of his first outing where he completely failed to capture the ever-growing oppressive mood and expanding darkness and circle of madness that ripples outward from where-ever Tomie appears. Also unlike the first movie, Oikawa also manages to stage some absolutely creepy scenes, such as the one where the entire homeroom class confronts Tomie in the woods with predictable results, and one where Reiko confronts a second Tomie that has grown from bandages soaked with Tomie's blood. There's also a very nice scene that effectively transmits the mood of Tomie at the center of her maelstrom of madness, with Reiko as the only island of sanity remaining--that, together with the scenes in the woods, are the most impressive moments in the film, as well as some of the most effective translations of Ito's graphic stories into motion pictures.

Unfortunately, Oikawa hewed a little too closely to Ito in this case. The main story, told in flashback, begins literally with the moment Tomie arrives in the classroom. The mounting chaos and horror and madness for the characters would have been more effectively conveyed and more impactful on the audience if a few minutes had been spent showing us how they were all typical teenagers leading typical lives. The in media res approach works for Ito's stories because we usually have a convincing narrator tell us that "we were normal kids" or we get to see glimpses of life without Tomie to contrast against life with her. Oikawa didn't give the audience any grounding in normalcy, and the movie is weaker for it.

I haven't said much about the actors in the film, because there isn't much to say. They all do fine jobs in their roles, with Rio Matsumoto providing one of the best Tomies yet. With this film, she is the sixth actress to play the part, continuing the tradition of a new Tomie in each film. (Even she is replaced for the seventh installment in the series, also written and directed by Ataru Oikawa and shot back-to-back with this one.)

If you like Junji Ito's "Tomie" comics, you will probably enjoy this film. If you're unfamiliar with the property, this might not be the best introduction to the Tomie series, despite its chronological placement. "Tomie: Replay" or "Tomie: Another Face" are far more friendly entry points to the uninitiated, in addition to sharing the honor with this one as being among the best in the series.

Saturday Scream Queen: J.C. Brandy

J.C. Brandy is an actress and musician who got her start in the horror genre in the mid-1990s by playing the adult Jamie Carruthers in "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" and a role on the "Kindred: The Embraced" television series.

Brandy is a self-described horror movie fan, but her career has consisted mostly of guest shots and bit-parts on various detective and drama televisions series. She can, however, also be seen in horror films "Devil in the Flesh" (1998), "What Lies Beneath"--barely, as the member of a band (2000), "Comedy Hell" (2006), anthology film "Prank" (2008), "The Victim"--barely, as a possible murder victim (2011), and the forthcoming "Tormented Souls", slated for release in 2013.