* spoilers *
Three women are attacked, killed, and combined to make a Frankenstein's monster-esque reanimated creature. They wake up disoriented and uncoordinated. After excaping their captors, they cooperate to figure out who did this to them and how they can go back to being three normal women. The three women couldn't be more different. Jennifer is abrasive and inconsiderate. Her boyfriend is cheating on his wife and won't give her the time of day, but she's successful in her job. Ellie is desperate for validation and will put up with so much abuse and disdain just for attention. Madeleine has a lot to hide as a serial killer.
Patchwork has a fresh, wacky concept and three fairly sympathetic protagonists. The story isn't linear and begins with mad scientist attempting to bring the three women in one to life with a glowing syringe right out of The Re-animator. After this fails and he gives up, the women wake up and escape, trying to figure out what to do. As the action moves forward, it flashes back to get to know each of the girls and then what actually happened leading up to their creation. The way the three women communicate inside their shared head is shown by them as they used to look sitting in a room. It's starkly contrasted with how they actually look, limbs going in different directions and twitching awkwardly. The look of them is as you would think: different skin tones and hair color put together with livid scars. The women decide to get revenge on whoever combined them and the people who have wronged them, including Jennifer's cheating boyfriend, Ellie's exploitative frat boys, and the lab workers they saw when they awakened.
Patchwork has some crazy ideas. However, some things weren't as successful as the first half of the film. A romance is forced and weird with all three women not being super into that random guy. The ending gets a bit weird. While I liked the revelation about Madeleine's involvement in the surgery, the confrontation with the mad scientist went a bit too silly even for this story, especially with the painfully bad owlcat hybrid. It's still a fun ride and worth your time if you're looking for something new.
My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins
* Hell House LLC
The Hellhouse Haunt has been succesfully delivering scares for years until 2009 when 15 people die, patrons are panicked, and the public still doesn't have specific answers about what happened. Answers from authorities are vague or intentionally misleading. A documentary crew tries to solve the mystery by interviewing survivors of the night and piecing together what happens. When a member of the Hell House crew produces tapes of everything, the truth will be revealed.
Hell House LLC is a found footage movie that combines first hand videos, interviews, and footage of the documentary investigation to tell the story of this haunt gone wrong. The company refurbished a dilapidated hotel in Abaddon, New York where terrible things are runored to have happened like suicide and satanic cults. Things seem to be going fine until weird things start happening: unexplained noises, objects moved by themselves, crew members sleepwalking, and other phenomena. The events increase in severity while the owner of the company refuses to acknowledge that anything is wrong. The scares are subtle and well built, affecting each member of the team.
I found the film lacking in quite a few places. First, it seems to take quite a bit from The Houses October Built, which was executed better. They had unlikeable characters with some redeeming qualities. These characters didn't. Second, I do not believe for a second that whatever money earned from the event is enough to risk the lives of the entire cast and crew. Third, the scares didn't ramp up enough at the end. They stayed subtle even while people were dying and it didn't seem real enough. The ending is a bit predictable and cheesy. I would probably watch a second movie, but I had too many problems with it to enter it in my yearly Halloween rotation.
My rating: 2.5/5 fishmuffins
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