Day 1: Dead Cert

Dead Cert

You Think You Know Shitty Moves? Think Again.

What is a Dead Cert? A death certificate? A concert by the Grateful Dead? While the name of the movie may be a common turn of phrase in the Queen's English, the incomprehensible accents make it impossible to tell if it was even used in the movie. The accents were so thick at times that I honestly think they're not speaking English, but Stereotype. I'm reminded of Austin Powers asking his father to speak “English-English”.

Dead Cert is a movie about fighting undead creatures amid the seedy criminal world; or at least that's what they want you to think when you look at the advertisements. Instead, Dead Cert is really 2 separate movies in one: 3/4 of the movie is focused on underground fights, a strip club, Romanian gangsters, and drugs. The viewer needs to make a serious effort to get through the first half, watching unlikable characters plod along in what feels like a generic, gritty gangster movie and not a horror movie. On top of that, it's hard to get emotionally attached to characters when you don't know or care to remember their names. By the time anything starts to really happen, you're cheering for the monsters to kill them just so you don't have to see them anymore. The constant line running through my head while watching is “WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH HORROR?!”

Dead Cert FINALLY picks up in the last 35 minutes, where it actually becomes a horror movie. It closely resembles From Dusk Till Dawn thanks to the vampire strippers attacking the customer plot line. The special effects are passable at best, but at this point, I'm just happy to seem some fangs. There are some lopped off limbs and spurting blood that help you forget about the first half of the movie. The movie does deserve some props for a giant crucifix-to-the-head death and a creative way to dispatch the head vampire baddy.

I was greatly disappointed to find out that this movie had absolutely nothing to do with breath mints. I was hoping for a cool, refreshing dose of horror and was left with the taste of aluminum foil. Maybe Dead LifeSavers or Dead Jolly Ranchers would have been better. The only thing that saved this movie from receiving a 1 is the decent last half hour. I think if they focused more on, you know, actual horror, this movie might have been enjoyable. While I still don't know how they chose the title, I'm dead cert I wouldn't recommend it. Fangs for nothing.

What a way to start off this project. If the next 364 movies are like this, I'll lose my mind.

4/10