30 Days of Fright: May 2012 horror DVD roundup

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Right. Enough’s enough: surely it’s now time to call an end to the seemingly interminable onslaught that is the horror genre’s fascination with the ‘found-footage’ style of camcorder film-making.

Case in point, this month’s roundup features the best and worst of the genre. Starting with the worst, we have Tape 407: The Mesa Reserve Incident. Breathtakingly unoriginal title aside, Tape 407’s main flaw is its complete lack of ideas. Drawing heavily on Cloverfield beastliness and that ol’ Blair Witch running through a pitch-black landscape routine, Tape 407 follows the survivors of a plane crash near an abandoned US desert town. Whilst patching each other up, this group of unlikeables and forgettables slowly realise they’re Not Alone. You know the rest.

Grave Encounters could have been as formulaic as Tape 407. Set in a similarly clichéd scary setting (closed-down asylum this time round), with that same running-about-in-the-dark vibe, the debut from The Vicious Brothers is saved by a witty script and some charmingly unrestrained chills straight from the Silent Hill (the games, NOT the film) book of, erm, silent chills.

Mercilessly lampooning the likes of TV’s Most Haunted, a group of flamboyant charlatans (you get the feeling the siblings Vicious have little time for the likes of Mr Acorah) are locked in said asylum overnight. Faking spooky shtick soon becomes genuine terror as the TV crew realize they should really beware the things that go bump in the night. Executed skillfully, Grave Encounters has enough originality to succeed, unlike War of the Dead, which brims with ideas thrown together with the craftsmanship of an oaf.

A Lithuanian Film Studios production set in Finland, this truly international film sees a band of allied US, British and Russian troops fighting alongside a Finnish resistance member to take down a WWII Nazi bunker. Needless to say, whenever the N-word comes up in horror, there’s some kind of dodgy experiment going on; this time, it’s Nazi zombies. Who knew?

Anyway, this should have been a brutal, bloody romp that you could imagine Sean Pertwee popping up in, but a terrible script and irritating fight scenes leave War of the Dead floundering.

Zombies once again walk the earth with a toothless grin as The Revenant’s Iraq veteran soldier is brought home in a coffin, only to wake up after his own funeral as one of the undead. Starting out as a kind of annoying zom-slacker comedy in the vein of last year’s Dead Heads, The Revenant really comes into its own when the sarky protagonists decide to fight crime with their ‘gift’. As events turn darker, an unexpected emotional punch hits the viewer hard and some biting (sorry for the pun) satire works impressively.

Finally, we come to one of the most upsetting movies ever. Forget your Brief Encounter or Casablanca; The Wicker Tree has broken this old heart. The belated sequel to 1973’s cult classic The Wicker Man (a strong case for best horror ever), original director Robin Hardy returns to the Pagan Scotland of his earlier film for another round of Christian-baiting.

Set in the modern age, Graham McTavish plays the descendant of Christopher Lee’s loony Lord Summerisle, who leads a similar clan of murderous villagers. The new Edward Woodward is Texan Christian rock singer Beth (newcomer Brittania Nicol), lured to the village to convert the heathens.

Original writer Anthony Shaffer’s name is nowhere to be seen, and you can tell. Hardy’s script is horrible: weird, farcical (yet deeply unfunny) scenes combined with some shocking acting (not least in a plain bad cameo from original star Christopher Lee) distil any sense of foreboding to the point of boredom verging on embarrassment. Some decent folk songs fall into the background thanks to an intrusive, manipulative score and, by the end, burning to death really seems like a viable alternative option. Apparently it’s the second of a planned trilogy, may the Lord save us all.

What’s the best horror movie you’ve seen recently? Let us know below…