A Kindertrauma Look Back At 2009!

HOME VIDEO…

REVAMPED CLASSICS

My lifelong dream of seeing 1981's MY BLOODY VALENTINE in its uncut form came true thanks to LIONSGATE, ANCHOR BAY gave fans the gift of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME complete with its original score, and SCORPION ENTERTAINMENT dusted off the criminally overlooked slasher SILENT SCREAM and decorated it with a plethora of worthy extras. No doubt about it, the DVD gods were generous in 2009.

TRUE MIND BLOWERS

Hey, at least buy my brain dinner before you have your way with it like that! The Spanish language [REC] scorched retinas with truly horrific imagery while dispensing mounting cinema verite style hysteria, EDEN LAKE supplied the most depressing ending known to man, and MARTYRS was a hand grenade aimed at your very soul. I thought I had seen everything but I'm still searching for the socks these three blew off my feet.

STRAIGHT-TO-DVD NO LONGER MEANS CRAP!

I can't stop watching or singing the praises of Norway's COLD PREY, the U.K.'s THE CHILDREN effortlessly breathed new life into our favorite pet sub-genre, and SPLINTER conjured up memories of vintage JOHN CARPENTER. Movie theaters better step up their game if they want us shut-ins to walk away from the boob tube.

THE WORST OF HOME VIDEO

OFFSPRING squandered decent source material and made it almost laughable, yet WRONG TURN 3 screwed the pooch in just such a way that the poor pup is still having trouble walking straight. Sorry WRONG TURN 3, you win at being the biggest loser.

THE BEST

TRICK ‘R TREAT proved that some times positive hype can be pinpoint accurate. Let's hear it for an undebatable instant classic that made many of the theatrically released movies released this year look paler than the Pillsbury Doughboy in comparison.

TELEVISION BEST AND WORST

TRUE BLOOD's bite may have been a bit uneven in its second season but who cares when MICHELLE FORBES is shaking it on screen? Critics and audiences may have turned their noses up at HARPER'S ISLAND but anyone smart enough to stick around for the finale knows that the slasher as miniseries concept was an innovation that really worked. Man, I wish there was a second season to look forward to!

On the other side of the spectrum lies the SYFY channels CHILDREN OF THE CORN retelling. The 1984 version left nowhere to go but up, yet somehow this redundant redo found a way to burrow itself deep into the soil.

MOVIES!!!

WHO WOULDA THUNK…THIS AIN'T JUNK?

SORORITY ROW's final reveal sucked like a dirt devil but the rest of it played like a flashy, slashy tribute with surprisingly decent kills. JENNIFER'S BODY, when it wasn't talking your ear off with annoying dialogue, delivered an engrossing bird's eye view of a once symbiotic relationship on the brink of implosion. THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT out maneuvered its dated source material left AND right and is it wrong to kind of sort of love its crazy out of place microwave epilogue?

MANY HAPPY RETURNS!

Only a pick in the mud could deny the in-your-face charms of seeing Harry Warden resurrected in MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL rewound VHS nostalgia while reminding us all how much we missed not only MARY WORONOV but (who knew?) THE FIXX, and Norway's DEAD SNOW pelted us with a new rendition of the long thought dead Nazi zombie film. Screw the future, what has it ever done for us? The past is where it's at!

SOPHISTICATED KID FLICKS!

CORALINE (in 3-D or otherwise) spun a dark fairy tale that warned of the results of selling your soul for the false idea of perfection. Think of it as a sort of kiddie version of THE STEPFORD WIVES and an inevitable starter kit for future goths. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE confronted childhood feelings of social disconnect and populated its fantasy world with monsters battling a lifetime's worth of neurosis. Both films steadfastly refused to dumb down their vision based on their assumed target audience while loudly preaching that most timeless of kid flick mantras, "There's no place like home."

FEED YOUR HEAD!

These aren't your granny's zombie films! PONTYPOOL married GEORGE ROMERO and ERIC BOGOSIAN with H.G. WELLS serving as justice of the peace. Communication and language itself stood accused of being responsible for the modern brain dead mob. Extra tip of the hat for supplying the year's best tagline with "Shut up or die." DEADGIRL's (s)icky premise spoke volumes about the darkest side of human sexuality with its "nothing to lose" outsiders discovering an even more injured creature than themselves to objectify and exploit. The living dead have been begging for brains for decades, in 2009 they got them!

MAYBE IT'S ME

Try as I might, I had a difficult time falling under the spell of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY; the film that others claimed kept them awake at night put me right to sleep. I dug GRACE's early nods to ROMAN POLANSKI but I thought the second half suffered from the cinematic equivalent to S.I.D.S. Don't go be me though kids, ROB ZOMBIE's critically burned at the stake HALLOWEEN 2, which tenaciously insisted on looking at the slasher sequel through grandiose art house goggles, left me smiling like a doped up jack-o-lantern.

NOT WITHOUT MY MOTHER!

Say what you will about ROB ZOMBIE's sophomore venture into Haddonfield, Illinois, for better or for worse, at least he remembered to bring along all of the franchise's major players. 2009's FRIDAY THE 13TH made the critical error of throwing momma from the train right after the opening credits! The result? A needlessly heartless re-slash!

SOMETHING WE CAN ALL AGREE ON

I've noticed that THE UNBORN sunk to the bottom of many a year-end list for 2009 and I could not agree more. Usually I pride myself on being able to find at least one redeemable quality in a movie, but this aptly titled abomination resisted all such efforts. Some claim it was written by DAVID S. GOYER, the guy responsible for BATMAN BEGINS (and somewhat more impressively DEMONIC TOYS), I'm not sure if "written" is the right word… "excreted" perhaps?

A WELCOME RETURN

Horror legend SAM RAIMI proved that mainstream success hasn't made him such a big-shot that he can't get his hands dirty (or covered in vomit) with the classic upon arrival DRAG ME TO HELL. The story may have been D.C. comic simplistic but thanks to SAM's virtuoso touch, a refreshingly "thems the brakes" ending and a scene stealing goat, I honestly never even noticed it was PG-13. SAM, you've been wasting yourself on guys in tights!

BEST USE OF COYOTE UGLY ALUMNI

Sorry MUMMY III: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, but we're having a hard time swallowing a British accented MARIA BELLO. On the other hand, we had no problem at all believing that we could catch something contagious from PIPER "Jersey" PIRABO in CARRIERS. Pipe down and don't bellow MARIA, PIPER wins by a landslide!

KINDERTRAUMA FILM OF THE YEAR

How could any movie be more kinder-tastic than ORPHAN? Think about it, tykes in trouble, a kid who kills and no matter how hard it tried to be taken seriously it just always ended up reeking of campy trash.

Look in the mirror ORPHAN, you're Kindertrauma's sister from another mister! While we're on the subject let's hand out an official traumatot award to ISABELLE FUHRAM for her beyond awesome Natasha Fatale "Hello Dollink" delivery and astonishing ability to keep a straight face while interacting with PETER SARSGAARD.

BEST ALL-AROUND HORROR FILM OF THE YEAR

O.K., maybe ZOMBIELAND wasn't the scariest film of the year but it was funny, it was thrilling and it miraculously had characters that you actually wanted to spend time with rather than strangle. Plus you know a movie's heart is in the right pace when it simultaneously damns clowns AND salutes man's greatest creation, the Twinkie. You'd simply have to be a zombie yourself not to love it.