Monday Movie Review - TROLL HUNTER

If you don't get HD-NET TV, then do.  Once a month they spotlight an upcoming horror movie before it hits theaters.  And in June I got to see TROLL HUNTER.

It takes place in Norway, and features three college movie makers who are investigating (and filming) the recent rash of bear attacks on the general population.  They track down one old, grizzled man whom they believe is responsible for killing the bears, which are a protected species in their country.

Instead what they discover is far more appalling and mind-blowing.  The man is really a governmental appointed Troll Hunter (papers to be filled out and all!), and he's busy tracking down the enormous creatures who have escaped their usual habitat.

To say that the effects in this movie are phenomenal are understated.  There's not a lot of gore, but the film goes after you psychologically.  What really sold this movie to me is that I didn't know the actors, which makes the "seeing what they're seeing through their camera's eye" all that more believable.  Note there are some slow spots, but that's because the high action scenes leave you with your adrenaline pumping.

My recommendation? 

Monday Movie Review - TRAIN

A group of American college athletes are over in Europe, participating in some games.  The night before they're supposed to head to another country via railway, they go on a bender and end up having to take an alternate train, since they missed their original departure.

What they don't know is that this train has no intention of letting them arrive alive at their destination.  They're young, they're strong, and that means they're perfect victims for a group of crackpot doctors to kidnap, torture, and ultimately use their body parts and organs in a weird donor-transplant scheme.

There is one lone female who survives, and it's through her eyes we see all the carnage inflicted upon the college students. 

Think "Midnight Meat Train" with a female hero.  Think of any mad slasher/serial killer who chops up countless victims, while a single teenage girl manages to elude his clutches, only on a train.

I have to admit, the gore is pretty spectacular, but the biggest problem sticking in my craw was the fact that these people would slice open and extract organs from their still-living victims without any kind of sanitary containment whatsoever.  The walls are grimy, the slabs are caked in dried blood, and the whole place reeks of filth, and we're supposed to believe these organs are being placed in other people, and those people survive?

This movie also has places where it drags, but all in all it would make for an okay viewing on a lazy weekend.  That's why my recommendation is that you: