C.H.U.D.

Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller. Or, if you prefer, Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal.

Wow, where to even begin with this one.

I caught this one on Netflix a few weeks back. It kept creeping into my Top 10, so I figured what the hell. Going into it, I expected something equivalent to The Toxic Avenger, with Citizen Toxie being shallowly replaced by equally absurd, low-budget, 80s-style monsters. What exactly was the fascination with toxic waste back then? Big globs of oozing, green-glowing barrels with skulls and cross-bones on them? Yikes.

Anyways, this flick turned out to be a complete surprise. And dare I say it, a pretty damn good one. It certainly had the B-movie aspect of, well yea, cannibalistic humanoid monsters living in the sewers. But the build-up to it, the colorful characters, their lives and problems, were definitely more interesting than I was expecting. There's Cooper, a photographer and young husband. He and his wife are dealing with typical young couple stuff, like living in an apartment and starting a family. Meanwhile, his photography subjects -- homeless people from around the city -- ask him for help with weird things going on in the subways, where they live. Then there's 'The Reverend', a one-man soup kitchen, who also gets involved with the strange occurrences. Lastly, we have Bosch, a cop whose wife, like so many others lately, has disappeared and is presumed dead. He is forbidden by his superiors to investigate any of the missing persons, but becomes increasingly desperate and defiant as the mystery unravels.

The monsters themselves are relatively unimaginative and are not particularly scary, out of context (like when one tries to break into Cooper's apartment). It's more of the idea that there's malevolent creatures living under the city, perhaps just a few feet from that subway platform, hiding in the shadows. But overall, I would say the monsters are the least terrifying part of the film. What I found particularly disturbing was the state of New York City in the '80s. Holy shit, what a dump. In many ways, that alone was enough to make this a horror movie; just watching the characters walking around dark, deserted city streets.

In the end, it's the interesting characters that make the movie watchable, and give it an unexpected but appreciable depth.

As for the drink-o-meter: you could definitely watch this bad boy with a drink in hand. It's equal parts dumb and entertaining. So have a drink that's equal parts gin and...I don't know, radon, so that it glows in the dark. During the movie you can decide if that burning sensation in your throat is the alcohol or the ionizing radiation hollowing out your esophagus. On second thought, just use an energy drink. Though I can't promise it'll be any healthier.

World War Z

In Part Two of my two-part Big Budget Movies That Came Out Last Summer But I Had Too Much Dignity To Bother Seeing Them But Last Weekend I Got Bored And Watched Them As A Way Of Putting Off Studying For My Midterms series, I will be discussing World War Z, possibly the most big budgety and putting offety of the bunch.

The film stars Brad Pitt as an action hero who spends the entire movie running away from the action. It is based on the Max Brooks book ("max brooks book" - say that three times fast) of the same title, but the only thing it has in common with the source material is that both stories take place on earth. So if you're thinking about seeing it because you enjoyed the book, you will most certainly be disappointed. It'd be like...seeing Iron Man 3 and expecting it to be anything like anything that's good.

So much burning city, and his badass hair is perfectly still. Good attention to detail.

The great tragedy of this movie is not the misuse of the source material. It could have been a great film, providing you cut out the completely moronic story, the atrocious dialogue, work up better CGI zombies (or, god forbid, hire a few extras), etc. I think the best and worst decision made by the filmmakers was the PG-13 rating. On the one hand, this toned down the shock value which has basically become the cliche of the zombie horror subgenre. If you want excessive gore and not much else, watch The Walking Dead. No seriously, do it; it's pretty entertaining.

On the other hand, the rating forced the filmmakers to come up with more interesting ways to build suspense and scare audiences. Some attempts were pretty lame, like when the greatest scientist in the world trips and blows his own head off five minutes into the movie, leaving the world-saving up to Mr. Pitt. The end result, therefore, falls more in line with a film like 28 Days Later, where the tension and anxiety comes from the non-stop pace.

The movie's weakness is that it may have been written by children. The plot is so contrived and goofy that I was laughing out loud at most of it. We have a zombie apocalypse happening, humanity is doomed, and the world-saving gets put on hold to show us Pitt's wife and children picking bunk beds and looking scared, even though they're in no danger whatsoever. The film is a jumble of exploding set pieces swarming with CGI, like a Roland Emmerich disaster movie. And all of it is based on a very thin plot involving a cure that only Brad Pitt can find. And when he does find it, the sexy badass...well, it's kind of a letdown.

And I have to revisit the shoddy effects work on the monsters. Remember the zombies (or whatever they were) in I am Legend? They just looked so damn fake. Even for the close-up scenes at the end, the filmmakers somehow thought CGI would be more effective than a real woman on the table or a real man staring down Will Smith. When it comes to humans, CGI just does not work for close-ups (hey, this seems like a good place to plug another piece I wrote on post-mortem CGI doppelgängers). Well, WWZ is almost as guilty. Even from the trailers you can get an idea of how phony the monsters look. Of course there's going to be some amount of CGI when you have thousands of zombies swarming over a city at top speed. But with the budget this movie reportedly had to work with, zombies flipping over buses and building a rage-fueled pyramid shouldn't look so awful.

In the end, the movie delivers what it promises: a movie. And if all you want to do is watch a movie for movies' sake, then this movie is for you. Movie, movie, movies. Have I used the word 'movie' enough? Okay, movi-...getting on. If you want to be critical about it, the movie is pretty shitty. But for what it's worth, it's take on zombies is refreshing, albeit a bit shy of original. Here's a drinking game to keep you motivated.

I don't really remember how our drink-rating rules work. So I'm going to give this one an 8. 8 beers. Meaning you should drink 8 beers just before you start, so that, periodically, just as you're beginning to wonder why you're watching this movie, you have to get up and pee and come back thinking it's interesting again.