Horror in the 90s The Unborn

The Unborn (1991) 

Directed by Rodman Flender 

Written by John Brancato, Michael Ferris

Starring Brooke Adams, Jeff Hayenga, K Callan, Kathy Griffin, Lisa Kudrow 

Release Date March 29th, 1991 

Box Office Gross $1.15 million dollars 

The Unborn is part of a special subgenre of 90s horror, the laughable kind. Okay, fine, it's also a movie that wants to tap into the fears inherent in struggling to become a new parent and bring life into the world, but the film is truly laughable in that effort. Goofy special effect babies, over the top, shrill performances, and artless direction render The Unborn part of the Corman Classics, a group of cheap, often quite terrible films that Roger Corman artlessly pumped out of his mass manufactured movie company. While Corman's legend has earned a reappraisal for the careers he helped to launch, we should not forget the huckster Corman was at heart, a salesman crafting and selling faulty products at low, low prices. 

Poor dewy-eyed Brooke Adams has the thankless task of playing the lead role in The Unborn. Adams plays Virginia, a children's book author who has been trying for several years to have a child with her milquetoast hubby, Brad, offering bland support and dodging any blame for their failure to conceive. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, the couple has agreed to see an experimental doctor with a new scientific approach to helping couples conceive. The new method is terrifying and painful involving a dark operating room and large needles. The production design is cheap but the lack of lights, at the very least, does create a sense of the unnatural. 

The special new doctor is Dr. Richard Meyerling (James Karen), a man who has worked miracles for other families, though the nature of these miracles are slowly coming to light. In fact, the family that recommended that Virginia see Dr. Meyerling suffers a tragedy when the daughter born from Dr. Meyerling's experimental procedures begins showing sociopathic tendencies that end with her murdering her little brother while he slept. Other women have ended up before their baby is born and one woman, a new friend of Virgina's, ends up in a coma. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Mayhem

Mayhem (2024) 

Directed by Xavier Gens 

Written by Xavier Gens

Starring Nassim Lyes, Loryn Nounay, Oliver Gourmet 

Release Date January 5th, 2024 

Published January 3rd, 2024 

Mayhem is an ultraviolent revenge thriller out of France. Directed by Xavier Gens, Mayhem follows a Mixed Martial Artist who is just out of jail and hoping to stay out of trouble. Naturally, trouble finds him instead and he ends up going on the wrong after accidentally killing the brother of a drug dealer. He picks up his life in Thailand but as stories like this always go, the past is going to catch up with him leading to a final confrontation and a bloody, bloody end for most of the baddies. 

Mayhem stars champion kickboxer Nassim Lyes as Sam, a reformed bad boy eager to rebuild his life after time in prison. Things are looking up for Sam as he gets out of prison and immediately earns a well paying job on a construction site. It's long hours and hard work but it's also a chance to rebuild his life on the right side of the law. Naturally, if that were allowed to happen then this would not be a bloody revenge action film so don't get used to this status quo. 

In fact, it takes barely a day before Sam's past comes back to haunt him. A drug dealer who wanted Sam back in his employ has sent thugs to kill Sam. As Sam flees through the rugged streets of Paris, he ends up on a construction site where he ends up killing the man chasing and attacking him. This man happens to be the drug dealer's brother. This will force Sam to give up Paris in favor of going on the lam. Leaving behind all that he's known to go to Thailand and try to start over. 

The story then picks up five years down the road. Sam has a wife and has adopted her daughter as his own. They have a baby on the way. They also have plans to buy a home, with money raised by Sam returning to fighting where he throws fights on behalf shady gangster types. Sam's wife may as well have a bulls eye on her forehead, she is not long for this movie. I'm honestly not sure we learned her name. She's here to die and motivate Sam to become the ultimate killing machine. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Bricklayer

The Bricklayer (2024) 

Directed by Renny Harlin 

Written by Hanna Weg, Matt Johnson 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Nina Dobrev, Tim Blake Nelson, Clifton Collins Jr. 

Release Date January 5th, 2023 

Published January 4th, 2023 

The Bricklayer is a remarkably banal and completely terrible movie. The film stars Aaron Eckhardt as the titular bricklayer. Naturally, he's not bricklayer, not really anyway. He does lay bricks and even builds a small wall early in the movie, but his tragic backstory is soon revealed. The Bricklayer, aka Vail, lost his family when they were slaughtered by his former friend, played by Clifton Collins Jr. This caused Vail to abandon the life of a CIA spy in favor of bricks. He believes that he had killed his former friend but now he's found out that he's wrong. 

Collins' terrorist character is back and is now murdering international journalists and framing the CIA for the kills. The CIA needs Vail to come out of retirement and finish the job of killing the terrorist. Naturally, the only person the CIA could possibly team him with is an inexperienced tech wiz who can find information that the rest of the CIA can't because their lazy and jaded and she's young and beautiful. Nina Dobrev is the whippersnapper CIA agent who will pose as Vail's wife as they snoop their way inside the high society of Greece where the most recent murdered journalist was staying. 

The cliches of The Bricklayer move fast and furious. Literally, some of these were made cliche by the Fast and Furious movies. Aside from a hero who enjoys the trade of bricklaying, there is nothing remotely original about The Bricklayer. I mean everything, right down to star Aaron Eckhardt's raspy tough guy speaking voice. In one of the first scenes in the movie, Eckhardt is shot by one of those bad guys who rarely hits anything while firing a needless number of bullets. So, Eckhardt duct tapes his gunshot would shut, and engages in a hand-to-hand fight that would put most MMA fights to shame. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media