n00bMLG Reviews

Pet Sematary (2019)

Sometimes dead is meh

[3/10 · 28 April 2019]

The recent success of Stephen King adaptations must have inspired the creation of this film, I have not seen the 1989 version and I have only just now started reading the book, although I had knowledge of how the book ended. I was decently excited to see this film and it had some potential, but the final product is a serviceable but mediocre horror film that entertains but doesn't truly scare. The biggest issue with the movie is it's very hesitant to commit, the novel covers some very dark themes around the inevitability of death but the film only pokes the themes with a stick. Briefly introducing them in dialogue but not doing much else with them. The movie greatly suffers from being rushed, it never really takes its time to build up to characters or scares and just rushes its way from one plot point to another without giving any of them the time they need. What we end up with is a movie with decent acting, a few decent scares, a very messy third act and a stupid ending. Overall the film is mediocre but enjoyable, if you're a fan of the genre and just want a fun time at the movies it's worth a watch but it won't be one you remember, and it definitely doesn't live up to the legacy of the book.

One other thing I'd like to touch on is the abysmal marketing, the second trailer has to be one of the worst movie trailers I've ever seen, the trailer touches on every major plotline in the movie and spoils basically everything but the ending, it even spoiled the one twist they changed from the book. If that wasn't bad enough they released a third trailer a week before the film came out, and the opening shot of the trailer had major spoilers for the movie. This kind of marketing has sadly become a common practice with a lot of films and it really needs to stop, a film sometimes gets upwards of 3 trailers before it releases, what's the point in seeing the movie if the trailer has all the best moments and ruins all the surprises?

Glass (2019)

Great Potential, Terrible Film

[4/10 · 24 January 2019]

Seeing the Critic scores for this film was disappointing, but then the audience scores were high and fans liked it, it wouldn't be the first time I disagreed with critics so I went into the film wanting to like it, and now I see that the critics were right. The film is a mess, from the beginning you see that this is a film that thinks it's super profound and smart, even though the writing is far worse than the writing in Unbreakable and Split, the pacing is incredibly slow, Bruce Willis clearly doesn't care about the film and it really shows in his acting. Not to mention the confusing cinematography, some of the shots are pretty good while others are awful and will make you sick. The film starts to pick up in the final act and I found myself much more invested once the titular Mr Glass finally shows up in the third act being absent from the rest of the film. I got pretty excited to see the third act, as the three main characters have a really interesting dynamic with each other, I wasn't expecting the action scenes to be great(they weren't, but they were serviceable) but the third act was mostly satisfying(with one reveal in particular) until the big Shyamalan twist, which has to be one of the worst twists I've ever seen. When the only build up to your twist can be misread as a lack of knowledge of a subject in a movie as messy as this one it doesn't work. It has one of the most unsatisfying endings of any movie I've seen, for the last ten minutes of the movie I was just sitting in the theater dumbfounded as to what just took place. The movie isn't all bad, Samuel L Jackson and James McAvoy were amazing in their respective roles(even though the writing was pretty bad at times) and the final act was mostly enjoyable. For some people maybe it is a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, but for a film with so much potential to be so disappointing just makes it seem like a waste. The lesson we learn at the end of this is to never let Shyamalan get ambitious.