Change Your Image
talentest
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Deadbolt (2024)
Because Calling It "Door Chain" Would Just Be Silly...
Its professionally filmed, has believable dialogue for the most part, acted well enough (even if some choices were a bit much), has moments of levity, does just okay to hide it's limited budget, with a pretty unmemorable score except for some strange clicking/knocking cue that sounds too much like a sound effect every time that it gets confusing, and...
Well... Its fine. The movie's fine, its fine enough... it's competent enough... until it's not. Then for anything good the film may have had in it's favor is totally gone once we get to the last quarter of the movie where it speedrails into Lifetime Movie territory.
It tries to introduce "fake out suspects" except they don't work when the movie gives most of it's screen time to just 3 people. And the red herrings didn't quite sell since we never get to really see the varying effects of the protagonist on her meds, off the meds, having missed a dose, or whatnot.
Aside from some restless sleep and hearing noises (that other characters have confirmed are real) she is pretty much the same level of antsy, scared, happy, sad, calm, or curious throughout the film.
But the biggest Lifetime Movie culprit is the usual bonkers 3rd Act:
...The villain Batman's in and out of locations, the protagonist loses sight of someone and just darts her eyes rather than turn her head like a normal person, the checklist of evil deeds are called out for the villain to confirm, and normal things the protagonist did just fine only minutes earlier are suddenly rocket surgery to figure out (like how to open an unlocked door to leave*).
*I swear I rewound that moment like a dozen times and still can't understand what reason there was to suddenly not be able to open the front door.
OTHER HEAD SCRATCHERS:
-- The girl would have smelled the ungodly stench that dead rats give off long before she accidentally grabbed it.
-- In a particular scene, the roommate snaps at a girl for taking so long to arrive and then to geez call 911 already (when she could have done so herself at anytime earlier).
-- Who's dead body is that in the freezer? Why is there a dead body in the freezer? She has pink hair, I don't recall anyone with pink hair in the film.
-- Girl backs herself up toward the fridge when she already knows from an earlier scene that there is a hole in the wall behind it where the villain could jump out from.
-- Why are movie final girls always such LOUD mouth breathers?
Lastly, this movie had the added effect of making Google think I had a drug problem.... Because when I went to look up what the side effects were to withdrawal from alprazolam (the medication the protagonist is taking), it first auto-corrected my search into just the "side effects of" using the drug. Then when I reiterated "withdrawal from", instead of showing me relevant results it offered me a 3-digit suicide crisis line to call along with some help sites to seek treatment.
Thanks movie. ;p.
Paradise Cove (2021)
How Hot is That Homeless Hippie Woman Huh?
This was such a chore to finish. Rather than scrutinize the story, I'll just touch on what I find incomprehensible...
1. THE SQUATTER: Why does everyone in the movie insist that this old hairy homeless hippie woman is somehow "hawt"? The wife is jealous for some dumb reason, the contractors all lust after her, her fellow homeless friends call her "queen", and the husband fantasizes about her and even lets her tug his chub in one scene...
...When realistically being homeless for as long as she has been she'd be rocking a 1970s merkin-style, crab infested bush, with yeasty vaginosis smelling like rank vinegar and expired milk, sporting armpit and leg hair that hadn't had a shave in years, with perpetually un-wiped swamp@ss, and the funk of never using makeup, perfumes, or soap to try and mask her moldy musk.
...And just to clarify, this is not a commentary on the actress - at all - I am strictly talking within the context of the story in the film. There would be an ungodly stench that permeated around her like a bubble- a fart bubble everywhere she went and had been. It is inconceivable that these characters would be collectively lusting for her crust, or the women envious of her dog matted looks, or the denizens of the town be so reverent to her existence.
2. WHERE THE SQUATTER SQUATS: She lives directly under their house. They know this, we know this, every character in the movie knows this. The entire plot/conflict of the movie revolves around the fact that this couple can't seem to rid themselves of this person living under their house... However...
...Right after CATCHING HER burning all of their money on a grill, the movie cuts to the couple knocking on their neighbor's door with the Sheriff asking for her whereabouts. WHAT?! She lives under their house. The husband literally had to push her away when she was burning their cash. The movie even cuts back to her under their house as usual about to murder yet another guy.
...But then, at a loss for what to do, with the mystery of where on earth she could possibly be right now left unsolved, the sheriff parts. If only they had thought to look under the house.
3. SQUAT like the couple's insistence on doing fertility treatments during the 2 weeks of renovations, or insisting on taking on a renovation project during their month of fertility treatments...
...And Bree's ability to murder in broad daylight right under their house to no one's notice, the conveniently built ventilation duct she uses to get in and out that they installed themselves, and the sloppy editing at the end of the movie like the filmmakers were ready for this clusterchuck to be over already and had the characters fast-travel from location to location with no sense of how.
4. THEN DIDDLY SQUAT, no resolution in the end regarding any of the many murders, the sheriff, the uppity neighbors, or where the couple goes on from here, nothing. It just abruptly cuts to credits...
...Oh but wait there's an after credits scene? (FYI, I explain it in the "Crazy Credits" section if anybody is curious and missed it).
Yeah this was dumb.
My Mother's Stalker (2019)
Its Like They Tried to Make a 2D Film Out of Live Action
It's flat, the image is flattened. The cinematography here is just horrendous with most of the movie filmed without any or very little depth of field, giving it that faux-green screen look you can't help but notice.
This is achieved by the filmmaker insisting on practically every scene having the foreground, middle-ground, and background all kept in equal focus; which completely flattens the image.
It is not how our eyes work. It is not how professional photography looks. It is not what you would see in any professional looking films.
I'd bet money that the movie was mainly (or all) filmed on actual locations, but given the shoddy camera focus a lot of it only looks artificial and green screened.
As to the movie itself...
Honestly I'm a few days removed from seeing it and have mostly forgotten it. I guess read into that what you will. I do remember some ridiculousness though with the directing as well, like:
Actors who are supposed to be dead being posed like they are just taking a nap (with no blood, or injury, or awkward contortions)... Scenes brazenly staged with actors telegraphing every intention with no nuance or subtlety... Characters that appear from just off-camera to the surprise of those in-camera...
...But seriously, pay attention to the way dead people appear in films Dave DeCoateu has worked on. They're always just napping.
................ MY RATING SCALE ................
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
Lie of You (2019)
Obvious Plot Twist is Obvious but Oblivious to Her...
I had intended to list out all of the many gripes I was accumulating with this film, but by the end the idiotic characters just miffed me way too much to want to bother.
The movie is very disarming in how it is presented as it almost lulls you into thinking you're watching a smart auteur movie. With its professional crisp cinematography, overall atmosphere, the ambient soundtrack, deliberate editing, a suitable enough cast, and actors making choices.
You'd never imagine the characters here to be such ignoramus dimwits.
Watching it you'd be forgiven to believe the main protagonist lady was sharper and smarter than usual since the movie really wants to give us that impression... Much of which is really the actress's doing who honestly succeeds in looking like she's always putting the puzzle together behind those eyes of hers...
Except she isn't. She's not. As new scenes and developments build on top of old ones and the movie continues to chug along toward the end, we're left to discover that she hasn't grasped onto anything. The only certainty she knows and acts on is "I don't like that Hannah lady." Every single other twist, surprise, sabotage, backstab, and reveal all come as a OMG shock to her.
Just one example:
She hears the nanny's suspicions that her husband may be seeing someone in NYC, then in the next scene her husband tells her he has to leave on a surprise "work trip" to NYC for a few days, and then the very next scene after that her work rival Hannah also tells her that she is going out of town for a few days having just made last minute plans to NYC...
The look on the wife's face says she is suspicious...
...But nope.
She literally pieces NOTHING together the whole movie. Not until her husband finally drops an obvious plot twist bombshell on her with about 20 minutes left to go in the movie. The sudden realization dawning on her leaves her so shellshocked that the movie (literally) time jumps to...
2 WEEKS LATER.
Now the cast of idiotic characters are all happy and acting as if the credits were about to roll, despite everybody knowing that the movie's villain is still out there and was never caught. And in those 2 weeks, no one has taken any precautions, added any protections, involved police at all, or ensured that their baby and nanny were somewhere safe instead of being left home alone. Nothing. They've done nothing...
Then they're all blindsided and somehow shocked when the psycho lady returns and kills some people and steals their baby. If only they could have foreseen something like this happening.
................. MY RATING SCALE .................
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
Winner (2024)
And Loser... An Ultimately Pointless Experience
Holy wow was this bad. It might be apropos that the movie both opens and ends with the main character sitting on the can (as if the movie is intentionally making a turd sandwich).
Every character in this is despicable. Especially the main lead who is the absolute only person onscreen in the entire film. Even if you might think she doesn't really seem so bad, just wait... just you wait... The silly voices and goofy hats may be annoying, but "despicable" really is the apt word to apply to everyone seen or heard in this movie.
Overall the whole thing just has the feel of a bad radio show. The voice acting is blatantly staged with everyone taking turns speaking at all times, careful not to step on anyone's lines or grunts or outbursts. Every person she talks to over the phone even sound like they're all in the very same sound booth right next to each other.
There's even a strangely shot scene of the main character having (what sounds like) separate conversations with multiple others over the phone, except it's not a conference call and it's all filmed within the same conversation within the same continuous shot.
There is also very little fluctuation in the audio mix to help differentiate varying levels of sound. A prime example being the phone call with her brother who is supposed to be running around inside of a "loud" dance club, except his voice sounds exactly as clear as every other "phone call" in the movie with zero background noise until the brief minute he says that he left the bathroom and we hear music playing at half the volume you would hear when you're put on hold.
Now I'll add ONE POSITIVE:
This movie is not intended as a comedy, but there is this one line that almost made me do a spit-take. It had a set-up and punchline baked in, which may not have been intentional but (if like me you didn't notice the push handles on the back of her chair earlier) after spending 20 minutes of the movie wondering why the main character is never shown standing you begin to deduce that maybe she is paralyzed.
Which she confirms during an argument with her brother (the set up) to which he claps back with (the punchline) telling us how it happened:
"You're the one who were twerking on an eight foot rigging!"
Again, this is not a comedy. But that was hilarious. Even if the movie is dead serious about it every time it mentions it.
................. MY RATING SCALE .................
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
Do No Harm (2012)
And It Started Off So Well...
First the POSITIVES:
I found the lead actress (Deanna Russo) to be effortlessly alluring in this film. Maybe it was the eyes, or the smile, but I found her captivating. Also the imagery and contrast of colors used in the suicide scene was beautifully shot and staged (despite the subject matter). I even found the depiction of her depression to be believably effective and it even had me well up a bit to tears...
Then it nosedives. I can't pinpoint the exact moment that it did, but it did, and when it did, it did it with a faceplant. It feels like they switched out screenwriters halfway through or something.
Now the GRIPES:
-- Her former doctor calls in her current boyfriend to gaslight him into thinking that the woman is stalking her. What?! And he kinda believes her, with no evidence presented?! This lady he has known for all of 2 minutes!? The guy doesn't ever think to question "How exactly" does this doctor know who her boyfriend is? Sounds immediately like the doctor is the one doing the stalking.
-- And the STUPID LIFETIME MOVIE TROPE of everyone in the protagonist's circle calling her delusional for suspecting her obvious stalker of stalking and then defending the stalker's actions over their friend or loved one.
-- And the other STUPID LIFETIME MOVIE TROPE of incompetent police detectives. They want to suspect the person who discovered the dead body rather than do actual detective work like... 1) check call logs to find out that the last person the dead doctor called was the psycho doctor... 2) listen to the tape recorder message which would verify the protagonist's theory... 3) or check her alibi, see if she owns a gun, find out what possible motive there could have been to kill him, ect.
-- And the other, other STUPID LIFETIME MOVIE TROPE of people behaving like modern technology either doesn't exist or operate as if the movie takes place a decade earlier: Rather than use a smartphone a detective wants to go find a bookstore to look up words -- Rather than use cell phone towers to triangulate the location of the best friend, they just ask the protagonist. I guess this also falls within the 'incompetent police' trope.
-- And the other, other, other STUPID LIFETIME MOVIE TROPE of people always turning their back on psychos they already suspect of killing people. Which makes way for the trope of the magic acting syringe (that poisons, knocks out, or in this case paralyzes).
-- And the sister/cousin trope to the one above of characters freely accepting drinks from psychos they suspect of killing people (and never noticing that they're the only one drinking).
-- And the final STUPID LIFETIME MOVIE TROPE I'll mention is just how Loony Tunes whacky the last 10 minutes always become when the thus-far calculating villain suddenly acts like their in a cartoon.
The movie gets 7 Stars for the first 30ish minutes and 3 stars for the rest... So that averages out to a 4.
Killer Body Count (2024)
Was That a Buddy Christ I Saw?
I had a whole more nuanced and thought out review I was making notes for while watching this, but about 45 mins in the film began to lose my interest and then it went double time in the last act to not try and get it back.
I also started watching this under the thought that this was a horror movie, not catching on that this was more of a snarky horror until part way though. When seeing the main character quickly 180 from being traumatized about seeing a boy being killed and then gaslit to seem crazy (for being the only person in the small cast to notice that 1 of the only 4 boys is missing) to creaming her shorts suddenly at the boys naked shower fun time scene.
So I added "comedy" to it's IMDb genre for others to be better aware going in.
And it's with scenarios like that, the movie goes from interesting to incredulous with tonal shifts that hiccup throughout the movie from any one scene to the next.
The main contributor to the jarring shifts in tone is how it has the cast (but mainly the lead actress) play their emotional moments with effective seriousness, displaying anguish and glassy eyes, but then the next scene is some ludicrous (comedy?) scenario -- usually involving those very same characters who were just being emotional -- that is in stark contrast to what happened before.
- ONE MORE EXAMPLE: -
And then a scene later it's devastatingly dramatic again when the main girl discovers a secret room with heartbreaking yada yada.
And no part of any of that example is ever played for laughs, which is what makes the "comedy" aspect so odd, or awkward.
What is the audience supposed to absorb from the story with such massive swings like that? Because of the dramatic scenes, the sudden goofball comedy is more jarring than funny; and because of the intermittent cartoonish campy bits the switch to serious emotional moments are just too awkward to invest in.
And by the end the movie just seems to have triple-downed on the absurdity with a bunch of stabbed, beaten, bleeding, traumatized, and injured people suddenly all at max health running around like the Avengers.
Props though for the DOGMA nod if that really was a box of Buddy Christ figurines in that one scene.
.................... MY RATING SCALE ....................
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
The Perfect Student (2011)
It's Perfectly Stupid...
Whoever wrote this movie obviously didn't even pretend to bother making any of the law, crimes, police procedure, and the timeline of the murder itself make any sense as it just skips over anytime those instances pop up. It is impossible not to notice how the film skirts out the way of details or specifics or how things happen at every turn. Like...
1. THE ARRESTS: Twice people are arrested based on nothing other than a character in the movie points and says "that person did it, whatever it is.". No evidence is ever presented because none are ever collected. Just a girl says that someone had an argument with the dead girl and a Professor calls a detective to say only "I know who it is and I'm on my way to confront him."
2. THE SUPPOSED MURDER: The dead girl herself... How did she die exactly? How did they know it was murder? What was so concrete about Jordan's guilt that everyone the world over just knew she was guilty? Crucial elements essential in stories like these: the manner of death, the time of death, clues or evidence to indicate murder, and a crime scene are all non-existent.
...The only mention the movie makes of victim's manner of death is in one scene as disembodied speculation from gathered news media: "Police suspect foul play", "I heard she drowned" and "She was apparently drunk and decided to go swimming". And that is it.
...Yet somehow the police know immediately that it was murder and that Jordan did it. Why? Because they were roommates, the girl who was actually hanging out with the dead girl that night said that they had an argument, and Jordan attends a course in Criminology (same as the dead girl). Nothing else is offered for the audience to follow.
...I had to restart the movie 3 times because I kept thinking I was missing something, but nope... No evidence of any kind is presented, no mention of witnesses, cctv, no theories as to how or why she did it, no talk of a weapon, blood, prints, DNA, fibers, or clothing because the movie never tells us how she was "murdered" or why they even think it was murder, no definitive manner of death, and the detectives even say that they can't think of a motive for her to have done it.
...But it's enough that she is formally charged and everybody except one person in the movie is assured that she did it. And this one outlier is suddenly detested by others for even entertaining the possibility of her innocence.
3. THE PREPOSTEROUS ENDING... The contents of a yellow envelope that was first introduced near the start of the film but not opened until near the end of the film instantly informs the Professor as to the truth... It's the answer sheet to the midterms with a note saying it belonged to Jordan that was delivered before the start of the movie... that means Jordan really IS guilty of murder! ...OK?
...And the detectives already know now too because of some cyber forensics nonsense. So its just a race to see who can get to Jordan first, the police coming to arrest her or the CRIMINOLOGY teacher who insists on being first just cuz.
4. THE ATTACK: In hindsight is ridiculous. How could the killer have known that the victim would be doing her "walk of shame" at that time of night (instead of sleeping in till morning) and through the football field (to be prepared to kill the lights) and then why corner her high up on a stairway?
...If the girl did drown as suggested and that indeed was the killer's plan then why go through all of this trouble of having to lug her body down the stairs, back across the football field, and back over to the beach where she started to kill her there when she could've just done it there to begin with?
5. MISC... No actual detective work is done by detectives. Homicide detectives show up in response to an escaped home intruder. The innocent kid runs for no reason, then is arrested with no charges given. Jordan's sudden character shift into becoming a sultry villainess in the presence of her teacher after she believes she is free. Even the logistics of Jordan's ultimate plan isn't thought out in any way that makes her look smart or cunning.
This whole thing was just so, so stupid.
A Stranger's Child (2024)
People Are Strange, When You're Strange...
Noting down anything STRANGE as I watch:
-- STRANGE that the movie opens with credits running over random shots of a city at night and an unseen person driving a blue car... then it cuts to "ONE YEAR AGO"... Nothing was established or shown during those opening credits so why didn't the movie just start at 1 year ago?
-- So no mystery as to whether or not she took the baby, the movie must be about "Why?" then.
-- STRANGE how she remembers every single thing in her life down to the lock code for her door and security code for the alarm, but not whether she experienced a miscarriage or gave birth, or raised a child for 3 months or picked one up a week ago?
-- STRANGE, lots of small world coincidences in this metropolitan city. The wife gets amnesia from a car accident on the same corner her husband died a year earlier from his accident involving a girl that used to be friends with her in high school until her brother pumped and dumped her... but hold on, the brother had been having a secret affair with that same girl during the time she was involved with the accident that killed his sister's husband (who was also his best friend)... And now the wife has her baby... who may in actuality be her brother's baby.
-- STRANGE that she seems to remember her old high school friend perfectly fine except earlier in her V. O. narration she said that she didn't know her (when her brother was watching the couple on the news video).
-- STRANGE how the neurotic psychotic husband seems to have so much free time on his hands to micromanage and abuse his wife when he's not out attempting murders. Isn't he supposed to be a surgeon? Aren't doctors like notoriously busy. Also you'd think he'd be more cautious about hurting his hands with all of that abuse he's dishing out.
*** vague SLIGHT SPOILER-ish, maybe ***
Well I guess the ending answers why some of those coincidences happened since that street corner ended up being a sort of nexus point for everyone involved. So those coincidences become more like conveniences then.
-- STRANGE, still doesn't explain how a certain someone also ended up on that same corner ahead of everyone when they were the last one to leave and had no idea where anyone was going, or that THAT corner was where people's paths would converge, or that the moving truck had any connection what-so-ever with anything, or why this person even stood in the path of the one vehicle when they were chasing after another one...
How could this person have known they wouldn't've been run over?
And STRANGER, still.
So... I don't really feel any which way about the movie. I thought the actor (Clayton James) who played the psychotic husband was extremely effective in conveying a constant unnerving presence in every scene he is in. The character may be a bit too one-dimensional with no nuance to his emotions, but he really nails it at being intimidating.
Also a part towards the end did make me laugh out loud -- when a woman just starts immediately firing a gun wildly to kill someone without any further context before jumping straight into committing to murder. Good thing for her she was a lousy shot.
Deadly Invitations (2024)
"I trusted you." "Sounds like a you problem."
This movie gets kind of aggravating as it lumbers along mainly for the inane machinations of the daughter character. So hearing that (above) dialogue when it happened did let out a much needed laugh from me.
With how so very on the nose the villain had been the entire movie and never giving the girl any reason to trust him (yet she does anyway), just hearing the rebellious and gullible dumb dumb being called out for it was cathartic. It alleviated enough frustration that I even chose to write this review.
My GRIPES while watching:
-- 1. Big coincidence that the mom and daughter happen to move in right across the street from a neighbor that is somewhat involved with the same secret club killing people movie plot that the mother ends up investigating.
And that the she already had an interest in them beforehand (as revealed by the mural of pictures in her closet from their move-in day and that she bugged their home within only minutes of meeting them) ***
-- 2. Mr. Smile tells the girl that SHE CAN get close to the club owners because she is NEW and they like her, but also that HE CAN'T because he is NEW so they don't trust him yet.... Okay? So SHE CAN because she is NEW, but HE CAN'T because he is NEW. And this reasoning somehow makes sense to her.
-- 3. The daughter, who is uncooperative and horrible to her mother, loathes her as being paranoid and conspiratorial because of her investigation efforts into these 'influencer deaths' -- even when she is aware that she is actually right -- yet puts her trust in a guy she's only known a few days whose even more paranoid and conspiratorial as he refuses to even give us his name or take off his mask.
-- 4. The daughter attends these secret parties every single night and the mother is never curious about where she is? Nor thinks to follow her even once? I thought them moving was in part to try and keep her from those kinds of influences.
-- 5. The mother overhears her daughter secretly telling Mr. Smile about her mother's meeting with some woman, and then after they are both attacked it NEVER occurs to her (or to anyone for that matter) the obvious connection there?!
The daughter even invites the guy that just tried to kill her mom over for some 50 Shades of Grey time, still having not connected those dots (unless Smiles being bad is supposed to be a surprise later on for the audience, despite the movie not really hiding it). ***
-- 6. And the daughter's last act of genius at the end climax makes her my nominee for the 2024 "Darwin Award".
*** ADDENDUM: I'm aware that 1 & 5 are re-contextualized by surprise reveals toward the end, but I wanted to leave my initial impression as stated since it did have an influence on my overall experience with the film. ***
OVERALL:
Its ultimately like a Lifetime movie with many of the usual tropes you see in those: Mysterious offscreen deaths, over-stressed mother/wife, rebellious-just-cuz daughter, a nosey neighbor, red herrings, drugged beverages, many people going unconscious (and often), incompetent cops, mystery villain reveal, a climatic rundown of each of the villain's evildoings throughout the film, and the 'in a hurry to end the movie already' ending.
(Only missing are the 'someone wields a kitchen knife', 'the murdered the best friend', 'how about some tea', and 'you should get some rest' tropes).
=====
UPON RE-WATCH (slight vague spoiler from the first 10 minutes)...
....Some convenient coincidences around the neighbor's role in the film just really don't hold together on second watch once you're aware of everything.
....It would've worked better if she wasn't a neighbor at all and didn't draw any interest in them until AFTER seeing the daughter at the club... and then she meets the mom... then she bugs the house... then she talks cryptically on the phone to whomever about how "She'll work out perfectly."
....That would've made the outcomes opportunistic rather than the "boy were we lucky y'all happen to move in where you did, when you did, how you did, and on the day right after an accident happened coincidentally where and how your husband died, and that you'd investigate it for us, and that you had a dumb young hot daughter who would most likely stumble her way into the very seedy club we wanted her to" way it is now.
Deadly Sibling Rivalry (2011)
Double, Trouble, Toil And Smother...
All things considered, both of the twins seem to have walked away from the car crash relatively fine for the most part. Which is nonsense given the severe injury we see that one of them sustained and with the movie taking place over the course of only 5 days. Really she should've be dead as a ruptured femoral artery would have bled out in mere minutes.
Especially with how long it must've been before help arrived (given the time it would've taken for one twin to undress the other, undress herself, and switch their outfits right down to a pair of hoop earrings all while the dying twin is unconscious).
Yet about 4 days after waking from a coma she is up and active, running around, fighting, and rock repelling with no pain, limp, or ache to speak of on any part of her body. And the other twin only had a little boo boo.
On another note...
After the comatose twin wakes up with amnesia and the daughter says to everybody in the room that she could prove which one is her mom, I naively thought the movie was going to do something logical like pose some questions. Maybe not to prove that the twin with no memories IS her mom, but to absolutely prove that the twin with all of her memories is definitely NOT her mom -- and thus proving the other one is by default.
She could've just quizzed her with stuff that her mother should know and her aunt wouldn't:
- Publicly verifiable things like the names of schools she's attended; teachers she had a hard time with; pediatrician; family trips; her dad's middle name or birthdate; her parent's anniversary; her mom's SSN...
- Or personal questions like any of her childhood firsts, or favorites...
- Or even throw her off with lies her real mom would call her out on like having tattoos or supposed secrets...
- Or she could simply just sing that one song that only she and her mom knew -- the same one that she heard her humming in her coma that clued her in in the first place
Some POSITIVES:
Charisma Carpenter is very pretty to look at (blessed with symmetrically defined features as if sculpted by an artist) and like Sarah Michelle Gellar will probably never really look her age (except maybe back when they were 20). And she does a really good job differentiating between the twins, with her performance at least. The hair and costume departments didn't even seem to try.
Also the idea of having the daughter discover the truth by hearing the comatose person subtly hum was a really great touch.
...
Well I guess that was it for the positives.
................. MY RATING SCALE .................
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
Dying for a Baby (2019)
10 Reasons Why This Thing is a Comedy...
1. The two "WHERE'S MY BABY!!!?" scenes. In the opening she drops her head onto her husband's stomach to cry; then a replay of this scene near the end has her resting her head onto his crotch as she nestles in for a nap. Obviously two entirely different takes were used, but this isn't FIGHT CLUB, there was no reason to.
2. THE CAR ACCIDENT: Except for a single shot of the collision where small businesses are in the background, every other shot show that both vehicles are clearly driving in a residential neighborhood where the speed limit is like 20 mph, so homegirl shouldn't have been driving so fast in the first place...
...Also the pregnant lady's car is seen approaching a clear as day STOP SIGN with a sign attached that says "ALL WAY" on it. As in it's a 4-WAY STOP... Both cars were supposed to stop at that intersection.
...That means the movie's heroine sped through a stop sign in a residential neighborhood causing the accident that caused the antagonist to lose her baby that she even blames her for ("I'm so sorry your car skidded through that intersection.") and is actually the one at fault for everything.
3. CARTOONY ACTS OF VIOLENCE: -- One lady slips on her own spilled smoothie and cracks her head on a kitchen counter...
-- Another woman gets hit on the head by a comically-sized rolling pin and then finished off with a jumbo sack of flour dropped on her head like it were an anvil...
-- A pint-sized crazy woman knocks a man twice her size out of commission with a (literal) pimp slap and a shove...
-- And this next one is the funniest...
4. ...HOW THE BFF IS KILLED: This woman stops a crazy lady from driving off just to tell her that she overheard everything nefarious this lady was talking about doing in the movie and she intends to go tell the main characters on her. Then she walks away, feeling proud, and is immediately run over by the crazy lady's SUV.
5. HOW THE CRAZY LADY pops up from off-camera to intercept a hug meant for someone else.
6. THE ESCORT: Her old granny-age mom suspects the crazy lady's fake husband to be a hired escort because she recognizes him... from... a friend... of hers... who uses those type of... ahem, services.
7. BUT SUDDENLY THERE'S A NEW BFF: Having already gotten over her BFF's recent murder she reacts to her mom's assertion with this WTF line, "I think I would know if my CLOSEST FRIEND'S husband was lying about who he really was, let's not (to) mention an escort."
8. AFTER GIVING BIRTH IN HER SLEEP: She wakes up and hops outta bed with the prowess of a well-rested athlete and goes in search of someone, anyone, but only finds a whiff of 'nothing to worry about' gas in the air and her unconscious husband that she helps lumber outside before either crying on his stomach or napping on his crotch (depending on where you are in the movie).
9. FAKING CRAZY: What was the point of switching her medical file to try and make her seem crazy? That entire scenario accomplished nothing and lasted for all of 2 minutes in 1 scene, and then she leaves the hospital with no trouble to go do something her character could have done the night before.
10. THE OVER THE TOP EVIL VILLAIN CLIMAX: "Why do you get to be a mommy? I want to be a mommy!"
Although in her defense the main character DID cause all of this by speeding through that stop sign and hitting her car which caused her miscarriage. Even if the movie would rather you didn't notice.
Terrortory (2016)
The Only Thing Worse than Bad is Boring...
I was trying to update items in the 'parental guide' section, but nodded off twice (despite being otherwise wide awake) and kept getting lost whenever I rewound the movie to try and find where I dozed off at since EVERY SINGLE story segment is "people hiking through the woods in daylight".
Everything looks and sounds the same.
I ended up just giving up once the clown showed up, but I'm positive I missed some stuff due to how insistent the film is in putting me to sleep against my will.
.................. MY RATING SCALE ..................
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
Offline (2012)
Convenient... Inconsistent... Coincidences...
Quite easily one of the stupidest movies I have seen.
Putting aside the obnoxious editing, poor direction, generic dialogue, the music always building but never reaching a crescendo, and the overall early 2000s look for a movie made in 2012, the story and the villain are maybe the dumbest part.
INCONSISTENT COINCIDENCE propels everything that happens:
- 13 YEARS LATER, the cyber guy they hire to find the cyber stalker both happen to be the very same guy? -
- AND he is also pretending to be handicap for who exactly? And for how long? And why? -
- IT'S ALSO only due to the ideas and actions he brings to the table that even lead the police to finding her in the first place. Well if he could do that and always knew how, and is the only one to even think to, then what was he waiting 13 years for? -
- ALSO he seems to hack with ease whenever he is in his wheelchair, but then cut to him in his evil stalker hoodie and he struggles to input his own password to access the very same work screen he was just working on at the police station. -
- WHY is he doing double duty? The work he does for the police perfectly fulfills his stalking efforts. Why do the same work again home alone? -
- AND WHILE ALONE he still wears his cyberstalker disguise even though no one can see him... and talks like Dr. Klaw from "Inspector Gadget" even though no one can hear him
CONVENIENCES:
- CONVENIENT he could suddenly move into an available apartment right across from her...
- CONVENIENT there was some electrical issue that prompted the landlord to grant him access into her apartment...
- CONVENIENT she requested him to meet at her apartment and not someplace else...
- CONVENIENT they never ran into each other with how often they're shown being in and out of their apartments...
- Also CONVENIENT that she never noticed any of those huge spy cameras latched all around her apartment in plain sight
However most ridiculous might be everyone going gaga over a bunch of still life paintings of ordinary flowers and paying over $10K for them.
Accidental Switch (2016)
Everything That Happened Happens Only So The Movie Can Happen To Happen
I'ma just bullet point out a list of ridiculousness:
NO ONE BOTHERS TO COMMUNICATE effectively:
- The bad guy could've just called the airport about his lost bag like she did and he'd have gotten it back without issue (instead of calling her directly pretending to be an aggressive TSA agent)...
- Or when the mother is concerned that someone's been in her room and the ex-husband asks her what is she not telling him, she makes no mention what-so-ever about the luggage mix-up along with the aggressive unknown phone call inquiring about the bag in her possession...
- Or once the mother learned that the airport had already recovered the bag, she could have either gone to retrieve it again or inform the bad guy of where it was to go get it himself and leave her daughter alone...
- Or why did the bad guy even bother to kidnap the daughter and kill the dad in the first place? He could've just confronted the mother directly once he learned who she was and where she was staying. Had he done that he would've learned that first night that the bag was just downstairs at the front desk. -
THE INCOMPETENT COPS:
- Who immediately dismiss the mother's story because they received a phone call from someone claiming to be her ex-husband just HOURS EARLIER... yet somehow, upon learning that her ex-husband has actually been dead since last night (so there's no way that was him who made that call) the cops now suspect HER of his murder?! -
- What about the phone call they received "ONLY HOURS AGO" from someone claiming to be the dead ex-husband? They're not suspicious about whoever that was posing as her dead ex? Or why? No suspicions, at all, to the imposter's motives for calling ahead only to tell them not to believe anything his ex-wife might say? -
THE SCAVENGER HUNT around town:
- What was the point? And when did he set all that up? Didn't he just fly into town the night before like she did? -
- There's $50 Million in that bag... wouldn't getting it back ASAP be his only concern? Not whether or not she arrives at some random destination at some arbitrary time (lest he kill her daughter which would only ensure he'd never get his $50 Million back). Who knows what matter of things could happen to the bag while he has her running around town like a nut? -
- It's also really convenient how she could always just happen upon the secret phones hidden at these huge locations (like the Museum and an Aquarium) within a city she is probably unfamiliar with. -
Ultimately everything that happened happens only so the movie can happen to happen.
...... MY RATING SCALE ......
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video Junk
- 2. Utterly Terrible -- 3. Really Bad -- 4. Mediocre --
- 5. Just Okay/Average -- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining (with Shortcomings) --
- 7. Very Entertaining/Good -- 8. Incredibly Good -- 9. Exceptional/Great --
- 10. Reserved for my own Personal Favorites.
The Sweetheart (2018)
It Was The Final Act That Won Me Over...
I don't know if its just that for the past month I've been binging far too many of these "Seducing A, Dating A, Married A, Stalked By A", "Wrong, Deadly, Killer, Good, Fatal", "Family Member, or Occupation" "In The Suburbs" movies, but this one really surprised me. Pleasantly surprised me in fact.
Typically the way this story goes in every other incarnation of this plot is mom's psychotic new beau gaslights everyone into thinking the main protagonist is out to get him, succeeds in sabotaging her credibility with her friends and her schooling, frames her for something, needlessly spree kills half the cast associated with the family in some way without the mom ever even batting an eye, and then somehow the bad guy evil-genius his end scenario, monologues with a gun, and is only finally taken out by some surprise gunshot from a character who has been opposed to the protagonist the whole movie until now.
This movie does none of that (except for the attempted sabotage with her medication). I was very much NOT enjoying the film and annoyed by just about everyone (including the daughter) UNTIL... Until the moment the daughter talks to her dad after she concludes that her mom's new boyfriend just tried to kill her.
Suddenly, I am engaged.
A protag capable of connecting dots?! Resourceful enough to gameplan, execute, and avoid the usual cliched pitfalls of these type of films (i.e. Bad guy suddenly appearing out of nowhere, bad guy conveniently within earshot of key dialogue, bad guy able to supervillain random acts of plot in his favor).
Every time the movie deviated from what typically happens I was even more in:
-- When she locks and barricaded her door -- ensured that any conversation about the bad guy happened while she was far from him -- created the "family movie outing" scenario; told her dad to NOT act impulsively and get himself arrested...
-- When the movie refrained from having the bad guy suddenly and randomly appear outside after her best friend plants a tracker onto his car -- and even the end (aside from the bestie parking her car out in the open on the one road leading to the bad guy's house) with how it utilized the youngest sister.
So despite my praise, my rating is entirely for the final 40 minutes of the movie. Because the plot itself is pretty ludicrous, honestly. Like this con man had a history of targeting single older women who meet untimely ends thus leaving him with their riches... So how does scamming a woman his same age, with kids, and potentially in the midst of an expensive divorce work out for him?
My Daughter's Ransom (2019)
Auto-correct Woulda Been Helpful
This lady could've really benefitted from having her auto-correct turned on for her texting. Or maybe even try texting people earlier at ANY POINT (using that not looking trick her daughter showed her) since the bad guy could only see what she pointed her hat at.
She makes almost zero effort to signal for help at any moment; no hand signs, no mouthing words, no darting her eyes, not even when she draws "H-E-L-P" in the sand does she nudge the guy next to her to look down.
And I don't know if this is a fault of the lead actress or of the direction from the writer/director but why does she not ever display any tears or anguish when being forced to say things she doesn't mean? She was far too compliant with no struggle or resistance to be believable. The director could have at the very least spritzed her face to make it look like she was having trouble with her forced words.
*edit: Having just seen the ending with her "last confession" video it doesn't appear that the actress can actually cry so... I guess that explains that.
...... MY RATING SCALE ......
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video Junk
- 2. Utterly Terrible -- 3. Really Bad -- 4. Mediocre --
- 5. Just Okay/Average -- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining (with Shortcomings) --
- 7. Very Entertaining/Good -- 8. Incredibly Good -- 9. Exceptional/Great --
- 10. Reserved for my own Personal Favorites.
Killer Ending (2018)
Literally Gets Worse With Every Scene
With how terrible the outrageously overacting is, combined with the playground-level soap opera dialogue, and the ridiculous casting you'd think this were a self-aware parody. Except it's not. Or it's not meant to be.
THE CAST: You have a cast that all look about the same age playing middle-age parents to middle-age children, a hulking bodybuilder with long shaggy hair we're meant to believe is a college professor (who later turns into a special needs "Doofy" from "Scary Movie"), a captive daughter making the oddest facial expressions to display panic, a villainess who villains with the subtlety of a cartoon, and I guess Emmanuelle Vaugier doing what she can with what's given.
THE RIDICULOUSNESS: -- The pair of detectives who show up to work the missing daughter case are ALSO the detectives working the homicide case of the deaths in the film.
-- The daughter is abducted by an intruder who is already inside of her small dorm room AFTER she answers a knock at her door made by that same intruder.
-- The Doofy professor secretly photographs everyone WHILE standing out in the open.
-- Even the villainess blonde stands out in the open across the street of a diner the author & detective are in, staring as if she can hear their conversation.
-- The author thinks to coerce the kidnapper into moving her daughter to another location of her choosing (with a live feed camera set up identical to before).
I know this is melodrama so it is meant to be exaggerated heightened drama, but wow does this movie make no effort to be watchable.
Terror Train 2 (2022)
The Killer's ID is Utterly Ridiculous...
Granted the killer in the first one ultimately turned out to be an elderly grandmother, so maybe the killer in the second one is really on par. I'm jumping straight into spoilers on just this one topic since I don't really have much else to say about the movie...
SPOILER: So the identity of the killer turns out to be...
Tinkerbell...
A 5 foot nothing, 92 pound influencer in a fairy costume. When we see her in the end, wielding the knife she had been using the whole movie to kill everyone, the blade is over half the length of her entire arm. She is unequivocally the tiniest and shortest person of any scene she is in.
Yet somehow... SOMEHOW... when she is dressed up in the lizard monk costume she's suddenly taller than everyone else in the cast?! This is most flagrant in the scene in the hallway when she (donning the lizard monk costume) is following Merry and then walks past Alana, both of whom she now towers over. Jean-Paul, the guy she is pretending to be dressed as, is one of the tallest people in the movie. Up there with the actors for Xndr and the Prez.
(Speaking of the Prez, man did that guy just totally disappear from the movie all together after that magic performance scene half way through the film. No death scene, no reappearance at the end, he's just gone like all he did was film a cameo.)
Anyhow, the killer turning out to be the size and weight of a blow-up doll with a knife taking down 6-foot dudes is just asking too much of my disbelief to suspend.
..................... MY RATING SCALE .....................
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
Intensive Care (2018)
"My God that's my house" ...seconds later... "Where are you?"
Of the gajillion moments in this film that had me face-palming and throwing my hands up, it's the exchange that occurred at the 67 minute & 50 second mark that finally made me blow my top with the sheer, maddening stupidity of every character in this movie.
The scene starts with the lead woman getting a video call from her psycho stalker in which she recognizes his location and says, "My God that's my house." Then... My God, then she engages him in conversation with befuddlement like she STILL hasn't grasped that this guy has been behind everything the whole movie (the murders, the sabotage, the hacking, the break-ins) despite having already made that conclusion a few times by now in earlier scenes.
She checklists the deadly events of the film as he 'evil-genius' explains how and why he did them. All to her shocked bewilderment (again, despite scenes having already shown her figuring things out just minutes ago).
And then, astoundingly, less than 2-minutes into this exchange she asks him, "Where are you?"
Seriously?!? "Where are you?" She goes from 'That's my house' to 'Where are you' in the matter of 100 seconds?!
She knows that her sick mother is at home, the same home that she recognized the stalker is currently calling her from. The same stalker who had just admitted to murdering her best friend, his previous girlfriends, a guy she met earlier, and got her fiance fired.
Yet she finishes the rest of this scene trying to respectfully plead with the guy to go find psychological help.
That scene is merely just one of many like it in this film and I still have another 17 minutes left to go. Sigh.
*edit: WTF?! Literally another 2 minutes later this entire conversation happens again when she calls her sick mom, shocked to learn that there is a mysterious male nurse there with her now. The woman asks to put him on the phone and... to her shock and horror... discovers that the nurse is actually... her stalker! And he's in her house!!
The very same stalker who had just video called her only minutes ago from that very same house. And once again she kindly pleads for him to seek mental help.
That's it. I'm done. I don't care how it ends. These back-to-back scenes have already killed too many braincells.
Multiversal Rewind (2017)
This is a Kid's Amateur Home Video. No, seriously, it is.
How in the huh did this kid's home video movie make it onto streaming services like Tubi and Amazon?! These are just some of the many strikes against this:
It's not even a feature length at less than an hour -- And it tends to repeat the same scenes over and over verbatim...
The poster shows two grown men when the actual video stars two children who are barely 13 acting as if they are adults (like how kids play pretend) -- There are zero proficient actors in this...
The sound quality is atrocious; difficult to hear absolutely anything -- The VHS-like video quality is literally (not figuratively, but literally) like an early 2000s 360p movie poorly enlarged (not upscaled) to a 1080p...
And there was obviously no money spent on anything so how it can justify that $500k budget is beyond me.
My guess would be this "movie" was ACTUALLY in fact written and filmed by children, starring those same children pretending to be adults, shot around their neighborhood in the early 2000s, using their parent's old camcorder that somehow got released to streamers in 2017 being treated as if it were a real film (because no one had actually watched it).
Festival of the Living Dead (2024)
"Why Are They Running?"
A line spoken by one of the characters in the film and also one I too had to ask. The film is intended as a sequel to the original Romero "Night of the Living Dead" but some of the zombies here can sprint and run on occasion. Just a strange creative choice on part of the filmmakers.
And while I do have some gripes with the film, there really is a lot to like here. It's filmed great, it's lit well, acted and casted well, has great make-up and effects, is never boring, moves at a near constant pace, and even the music (while not my taste) is not distracting or annoying. The Soska Sisters obviously know how to craft a professional-looking film.
However... I do have some gripes:
...Is there like a mandate nowadays to write horror movies around unlikable characters? My God. I have such a hard time believing any of these friend groups in these movies were ever actually friends with how hateful they are when they bicker.
...That added to other tired tropes like: cars crash stupidly or breakdown for no reason, no cell service, one close friend is a selfish douche who gets everyone killed, another friend acts like a crippled invalid that needs to be constantly assisted in all things she could do by herself (standing, running, hiding, shutting up), half the movie consisting of characters calling out someone's name "Kevin!", "Ash!", "Kevin!", "Ash!", "Kevin!", "Ash!", "Carl!".
...And OMG, the stupid melodrama of the main girl -- amid a zombie kill spree -- suddenly struggling to shoot the zombie version of the douchey boyfriend she just broke up with for wanting to let her little brother die. She waits forever too, til he's about close enough that the headshot she administers spatters his zombie infected blood all over her face.
And all this while a zombie infected psycho is holding her little brother hostage until she comes back. Regardless of which she is in no hurry, having zero urgency for this entire segment of the film. The only time really this whole movie where she abandons her pleasantly affirmed, formidable, and no BS-self in place of tears and wandering about.
The last thing I'll say is -- which is not a criticism but an observation (and something I actually enjoyed) -- with the colorful nature of a number of the zombies (given the music festival providing for an assortment of costumed undead) FESTIVAL just seems to be more in line with THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
Chemical Peel (2014)
How Are These Girls Friends?!?
This movie is a chore to get through so I'm just going to list my gripes play-by-play as it goes on...
My GRIPES:
Firstly, they picked a girl with the most overt crazy-eyed resting bwitch face ever to be the "happy" bride centerpiece of this friend group. How or why they are friends with this chic, much less going out of their way to throw her a party, is confounding. At least Regina George in MEAN GIRLS knew how to smile, laugh, and feign interest in her girl friends. Practically every word out of her mouth is either abrasive, offensive, obsessive, or insulting.
A turned-over train accident/gas explosion is the cause for everything that's happening, localized to only the surrounding Valley... so why is the TV suddenly malfunctioning like it's Max Headroom doing the news? Why do the satellites suddenly lose connection? How does that make all communication with cell towers and the internet go down? Aren't internet cables buried underground?
Wait, the landline does work? But because the line to emergency services is overloaded they don't bother to try calling ANYONE else? Anybody living or even existing outside of the small area of town being affected by the fog? It's 2014 when this came out, the majority of people I communicate with don't live within 10 miles of me.
A girl slow walks outside (fully aware of the toxic fog) without any effort to wear protection, a mask, a scarf, goggles, gloves, or even real shoes - only her rubber ducky PJs and foofie animal slippers.
Another girl stupidly tries to perform mouth-to-mouth CPR on a clearly dead infected girl just moments after she vomited out half the blood in her body, getting the infected muck all over her lips.
Yet another girl is being chemical burned alive from the running shower she chose to take and (not only is her response time slow to recognizing the pain) she makes ZERO attempt to step out of the bathtub she is entirely not trapped in to get away from the water.
OK, dumb girl just reached in with her bare hands to turn off the shower they see had just dissolved their friend to death.
Sigh.
Yeah I'm only an hour in and still have another half an hour to go so I'm gonna quit jotting down every gripe I have and just finish the movie and be done with it...
...30 minutes later...
And the literal last 90 seconds are just a needless and stupid way to end this movie.
Embodiment (2016)
Was 5-Stars... Until That Absurd Ending Happened...
It had me.
I was thoroughly engaged.
I was all in on getting behind the wheelchair dependent Sterling as our protagonist.
Even though it's only a short, I was still hopeful to see some comeuppance for the outright hateful female classmate of his... hopeful to see a glimmer of what kind of relationship would be teased at the end with the cute and kind schoolgirl... hopeful for some kind of karmic catharsis regarding the relationship between the garbage uncle, Sterling, and the escort.
But... turns out by the end... Sterling was never the protagonist. His sleazy uncle apparently was (since it is his character and only his character that carries any sort of arc).
This short film lost me with those final few minutes. The guy who is terrible to his sister, his nephew, his escort, and what seems to be to most people in general gets rewarded in the end by driving his car into this kid and inheriting his heart to replace his bad one.
Not only that but the escort he was just manhandling, who swore she was done with him, is now about to hop on the uncle's new heart healthy erection in "honor of Sterling"?!
And the uncle even says it with all sincerity that he is about to do this deed "for Sterling": to selflessly bang the woman he prevented Sterling from enjoying for himself and even killing him which insured that.
The actors all did well and the "all five senses" scene was a real highlight, but wow did that ending really kill my enjoyment and any chance of a recommendation.
One and the Same (2021)
This Was Exhausting...
Convoluted, meandering, and tedious to say the least. If not for the movie description used on here and TUBI I'd have no clue that the underlying plot was about reincarnation as it is NEVER stated nor clarified in the film. It is only ever alluded to, then explained to characters offscreen, before returning to them astonished having fully accepted everything. Seriously, every single character with any awareness of the "Next Life" (reincarnation tracking) program handles it with the same vagueness/offscreen acceptance.
The meandering comes in the poor way the film is paced. The first and third acts follow a 21 year old girl (named Lola) who discovers (I assume) she is the (alluded to) reincarnated spirit/soul/electromagnetic energy/cosmic transference of a murdered black teenage boy (named Robbie) - whose flashback story is told in the hour long second act with its own 3-act structure.
How things happen and why things happen are never explored, only ever alluded to with ominous pronouncements of "they", "other side", "when the time comes", "it's her", "she knows" nonsense. Included within these nebulous allusions is the dots to connect an implied surprise reveal towards the end: that Lola is the daughter of the guy who murdered her past self (as Robbie) who was conceived from raping her mother. We are only to assume that maybe the timing of Robbie's death somehow coincides 9 months after the rape on the day Lola was born.
This kind of storytelling is just tedious when every aspect of everything is unspooled in this very same way.
More GRIPES:
A Black man arrested for killing an armed intruder in his own home after being attacked. Then he is interrogated as if he conspired as some part of it (his own attempted murder).
A teenage girl enters the home of a known murderer, unarmed with no plan, and tells him she is going to kill him.
After having been stabbed by said murderer and knocked unconscious for a spell, she screams upon waking up, which her mother (downstairs at the front door) does not hear for some reason.
The murderer was released after 20 years for good behavior - convicted of killing a kid, despite also being linked to an armed bank robbery where his partner is killed, an armed home invasion where his partner is killed, an attempted murder of the kid's father and even stealing his truck - and that's not to mention his father is also missing (because he killed him too). Yet he mentions that the Next Life program recruited people like him from being on Death Row.