The B-Movie Shelf

It's been eight years since the opening night tragedy of Hell House, LLC and still many unanswered questions remain. Thanks to an anonymous tip, investigative journalist Jessica Fox is convinced that key evidence is hidden inside the abandoned Abaddon Hotel - evidence that will shed light on the hotel's mysteries. She assembles a team equally hungry for answers with one goal: break into the hotel and discover the truth. REVIEW: Hell House LLC 2: The Abaddon Hotel was easily one of my most anticipated movies of the year. The first Hell House LLC is one of my favorite found footage horror movies, possibly of all time. The level of fear, unease, and tension that movie portrayed was just unreal, so when I heard a sequel was coming this year it instantly moved to the top of my anticipation list. Well. What a gigantic disappointment Hell House LLC 2: The Abaddon Hotel turned out to be. This is right up there with The Houses October Built 2: Hellbent as one of the mos...

Five years after an unexplained malfunction at a Halloween haunted house attraction causes the death of 15 tour-goers and the staff on opening night, a documentary crew travels back to the scene of the tragedy to find out what really happened.  REVIEW: I know I'm in the minority, but Found Footage is one of my personal favorite sub-genres of horror, and among those Hell House LLC is easily one of my top favorite Found Footage horror movies of the last few years. It's a bit of a slow burn at times, but in this case it uses that slow burn wisely, letting us get to know and like the characters, something that, in my opinion, is very important to a Found Footage movie. Plus that slow burn is not without its moments of fright scattered here and there either. Some of my favorite creepy moments come during those parts of the movie, like the moment with that tall clown mannequin turning its head at the top of the basement stairs, and the whole strobe light test run...

"Found Footage" of a lost military expedition to the jungle that spends several days under attack by an unknown extraterrestrial force, eventually coming to a discovery that exposes the shocking origins of life on earth. REVIEW: As far as Found Footage movies by The Asylum goes, Alien Origin from 2012 is probably their best one, although it’s still far from perfect. This one is surprisingly well-acted, and where almost every other Asylum-made Found Footage movie takes place in a single house or building, this one is wide open with quite a large scope spanning a town/military base, jungles, cave systems, half-crumbled Mayan temples, and more. I really loved the visual variety to the set pieces. I also really enjoyed the uneasy creepy feeling and tension they portrayed quite well whenever there was a quick glimpse of the UFO, or when they find the skeletal remains of an alien in the caves. My one big complaint though, and it does bring the score down for me...

Lost Tapes is a Faux-Documentary TV show that depicts traumatic scenarios where people are attacked and/or killed by mysterious, dangerous, deadly, savage, and ferocious paranormal cryptids. Review: I've never hid the fact that here at the B-Movie Shelf we love us the found footage genre. Sure, there are some big stinkers to come across , but when done right, that style of filmmaking can be effective as hell, plus cheap to produce, so everyone can win. A few years ago I previously reviewed Season 1 of the B-Movie-esque found footage TV series Lost Tapes and, despite a few clunker episodes, overall I really enjoyed it. Now, having been put out by Animal Planet of all channels, you can assume correctly that the episode-to-episode budget on this show is pretty minuscule, which means hardly even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it glance (if even that much) of the creature-of-note each episode, but luckily most times they make up for that by at least having some good tension-fil...

Like with 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , and 2014 this is my Annual list of my personal favorite B-Movie releases of 2015. I know it's SUPER late (Like, two years late), but I had actually given up on doing reviews for awhile and then when I got back into it I kind of forgot all about this list. Now, there is still plenty of movies from that year that I haven't yet seen, plus it's been a couple years after the fact now, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself and what I could dig up that came out that year. Also, this list is solely based off what has hit home video formats and Video On Demand services in 2015, so movies that aired on TV stations like Lifetime or the SyFy Channel that year, but never came out on DVD, BluRay, and VOD services until 2016 or later, does not count for this. I want this as a list of movies that you could potentially pick...

Five film students are producing a documentary about the local zoo when suddenly the animals go berserk: The reason is a light ball flying by in the sky and crashing in the horizon. Convinced that they've just witnessed a meteor crashing, the students follow the trajectory to document the event with their camera. In a forest area they discover a burned crater. Since it's too dark to film they decide to spend the night in their van. The next morning one of them is missing. The remaining students find first a trail of blood and then the torn up pieces of what used to be their friend. Soon they realize that something is hunting them - something that's not from this world.  REVIEW: Found Footage horror movies is a sub-genre that gets a lot of hate from almost all sides, but personally I can't get enough of them and I love doing reviews for them. Unfortunately, it's also the sub-genre that you really have no idea whatsoever what you're in store for...

A trio of friends go hiking deep in the woods, to an area with a horrible and mysterious history. What should have been a peaceful camping adventure turns to a trip into terror as collective paranoia reaches fever pitch and it becomes clear that there is a much darker force at work in the ancient eerie surroundings. REVIEW: Even at only 82 minutes, A Night in the Woods felt overly long. Actually, the part of this Found Footage movie that moved along the fastest for me was the first chunk, where we're being introduced to our various main characters and having them sight seeing around the English countryside. You know, the 'boring' filler stuff. Once they actually get to their campsite in the woods and hunker down for the evening, that's when I started loosing interest because characters were acting out-of-character to how we were shown them as previously in the movie, and doing things that made no sense whatsoever other than to just move the story along. ...

A journalist explores the disturbing links behind her friend's sudden disappearance, an ominous government research program, and a disturbing radio broadcast of unknown origin. REVIEW: So I figured for Halloween this year I wanted to do up a review for one of the creepiest movies I've seen in a long time, and it didn't take me long to realize that the movie I'd pick would be Banshee Chapter as it is, without a doubt, one of the scariest, most tense horror movies I've seen in years.  It's filmed partially Found Footage style during moments, but mostly it's done in the traditional regular style. While I love both on their own, I usually hate it when a movie switches back and forth between the two styles in the one movie, such as with [Rec] 3: Genesis, The Pyramid, and Extraterrestrial , and I much prefer a movie just sticks with the one style or the other, but here with this one it didn't really bother me at all as I was just so invest...

Deep in the Amazon jungle a research team lead by a respected Professor strive to protect vulnerable and endangered species, but when their guides abandon them they soon realize they are in the hunting ground of prehistoric apex predators. REVIEW: Those that are familiar with my review work know how much I love Found Footage flicks, in addition to how much I love dinosaur flicks, so suffice to say I was pretty excited when a screener copy of this new dinosaur-themed Found Footage flick fell into my lap for early review. Some of these, like Area 407 , are absolute crap while others, like The Dinosaur Project , actually turn out pretty fun and decent. So where does Extinction, aka Extinction: Jurassic Predators, fall in that list? Sadly, while there's some stuff to enjoy here, it probably should have just stayed extinct. One of the biggest faults of Extinction I feel, is that it just goes on for way too long. B-Movies should be kept short and sweet. Longer runtime...

Three young conspiracy theorists attempt to uncover the mysteries of Area 51, the government's secret location rumored to have hosted encounters with alien beings. What they find at this hidden facility exposes unimaginable secrets.   REVIEW: Oren Peli should be a familiar name to most people reading this review. He’s the mastermind behind the Found Footage frightfest that is the original Paranormal Activity, in addition to the short-lived but fun ABC Channel Found Footage horror TV show The River, and the god-awful Chernobyl Diaries. Back in 2009, shortly after the first Paranormal Activity came out in a wide release, Oren Peli set to work on another similar type of movie, only instead of covering a haunted house and the demon-tormented couple living in it, this new movie, the generically-titled Area 51, followed a group of teenagers that, after one has an abduction experience, decide that they’re going to sneak into the top secret and heavily-guarded Area 51 ...