The Final Girls- A slasher homage/parody where a girl and her friends are magically transported into Camp Bloodbath, a movie that her mother starred in back in the 80s and must figure out how to survive the movie using it's own rules. It pokes fun at all the typical slasher cliches, while moderately clever with some interesting visuals it's kind of a let down as it doesn't seem as fully realized as it could have been with just a bit more effort. It's still a fun little movie with a great cast.
Piranha 3D- A remake of the Roger Corman and Joe Dante "classic" that knows exactly what it is, dumb shlock of the highest order. Copious amounts of nudity and an unbelievable amount of amazing gore comprise a majority of the film. A fantastic cast that includes Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Adam Scott and Jerry O'Connell all completely committed to the ensuing ridiculousness. A movie far more clever and funny than it has any right to be, I have to commend Alexandre Aja for nailing just about everything. The spring break party on a lake setting is perfect and used to great effect in what might be the largest and most complicated gore scene ever shot. I've seen this a few times since it's release and it never disappoints. Even Eli Roth making a cameo couldn't detract from my enjoyment.
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Versus- This is 1000% anime bullshit, as close to a live action one as possible. An unrelenting 2 hour onslaught of gunfights, martial arts, zombies and all kinds of other crazy ass nonsense. Like some sort of mashup of The Matrix, Evil Dead and every Tranatino movie filtered through a wannabe Takashi Miike, while completely lacking in any of the real artistry, depth and edge of Miike's work. I have to give it credit though, the sheer persistence as an exercise in over the top cliched bullshit is commendable.
I saw this way back when it first came out on DVD here and the new wave of Japanese extreme stuff was really hitting it's stride. It was laughable then and still is but somehow it's actually aged better than I thought it ever would have. I think that's because it is such a product of it's time. Nothing makes any sense and to be fair it doesn't need to, shit just happens because the director thought it was cool. Some of it is and some of it falls completely flat but there's so much of everything all the time that it kind of evens out. It is still undeniably enjoyable regardless of all of it's many short comings. It's just nowhere near as cool as it thinks it is.
My only real complaint is that I wish it had been a little more interesting visually as far as locations and lighting. There are only a couple shots in the entire movie that use dynamic lighting or don't take place in the extremely drab forest and they really show what the director is capable of but I assume because of budget and easy of access 99% of the movie looks exactly the same and at over 2 hours that become a bit boring.
