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justinlozowski
Reviews
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
Take a dying franchise and make it worse
There is no redeeming quality of this movie. Just a dying franchise reboot starring "the beautiful people" and make them all act like pre-teens. There is ample source material, none of which was applied. And then they took main characters, did a pallette swap (IYKYK), and then flipped them on the head. Avoid this, you're not missing anything.
Star Wars: Squadrons (2020)
A great concept devoid of polish
This game took me back to the x-wing vs tie fighter days on PC. A graphically superb game, but that's where it ends. The story is one dimensional on both sides, the characters are flat and boring (except Wedge, he's a legend) and identity politics ruins an otherwise mediocre experience. This game could have been so much more, and ends up being so much less.
Spectral (2016)
Pleasant surprise
Caught this one surfing Netflix. It was a really good movie, despite some cheese. Interesting, original premise with some ok use of science. Overall a good flick.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
GET OVER HERE!
Mortal Kombat is back, and in a big way. The locations and set pieces look amazing, the story is simple and steady, the fighters look great and the action is on par with other films of the genre. My only peeve is that the movie gets slow at times, but this original take on the beloved franchise is definitely well worth it. Ignore the haters that say "there wasn't enough this" or "the story was trash!" Its setting up something bigger, and I think the next few films (Joe Taslim signed up for 4 movies 😉,) so I think the next movies are going to be epic. And Scorpion finally got his due. Awesome, awesome movie.
Kamera o tomeru na! (2017)
Unlike anything you've seen
It starts off grainy, poorly acted and.... odd. Like things don't make sense. After the 36 minute mark, it all starts to come together. And the third act, complete organized chaos! One of the most clever films I've seen. Highly recommend for the third act alone!
Confessional (2019)
Not horror, not a thriller. It's just... not.
Yet another movie premise squandered away on a silly plot, bad acting and a twist you can see coming from a mile away. This one rehashed dull threads of movies past with a cast of fresh "pretty people" all somehow connected to the deaths of two people on campus. Complete with God awful camera angles that don't match the scene, with each actor turning to face each camera as they switch between shots. Nothing more than a lazy revenge mystery that doesn't even qualify as "mystery" as it is blatantly obvious within the first 20 minutes who is behind it all. Hard pass.
The Dark and the Wicked (2020)
Another supernatural let down
Starting off, the movie had a pretty decent premise: supernatural entity wants dads soul, tortures family. But it goes off the rails from there. There's so much that doesn't make sense: why does it take years to kill the father but everyone else literally in seconds? Why does it take so long for the siblings to come to terms with what's going on? Why does every movie like this feel it needs to move at a snails pace? So little pay off for so much invested time.
Z (2019)
Horror cliches matched with terrible writing
I'm not going to lie, this movie had a good idea behind it: imaginary friend is evil, manipulates the kid, horror ensues. Unfortunately that's where the good ends. There's almost nothing else good about this movie. Its a mix of terrible cliches, bad writing and worse sound. The mom looks lost and drugged almost the whole time; the god awful sound mixing; the glimpses of what Z actually looks like; the husband who stares incredulously at a bunch of toys turning on by themselves with the "well, this is odd" look on his face. I mean, the list goes on and on.
Poorly executed horror tropes and extended scenes of characters speaking in hushed voices only serve to draw out the movie between the few scenes that have any actual impact. After about 10 minutes, I had to turn on the captions just to understand what they were saying. The music was too high and not balanced at all with the audio.
The worst part of this movie, to me, was the missed opportunity, where early on the husband and wife are talking about seeing "Z" but.. gotcha! The husband was just joking around, while the wife was serious. To me, that avenue would have been infinitely more interesting to explore than the same old something-supernatural-is-happening-but-there-HAS-to-be-a-rational-explanation direction. It would have made for a better, or at least more interesting, ending to the movie, because the ending that was written is trash.
Overall, I wouldn't waste my time again if I could take back the hour and a half I lost to this garbage heap. If supernatural is your thing, check out Indonesian or Korean horror.
Nong Hak (2016)
Lacking horror, but a good story nonetheless
I've been getting into international horror a lot more lately, as Asian film makers have a lot to offer to this genre. Sadly, this film really isn't one of them. Description set aside, there really isn't any horror in the film. It does, however, have a fresh plot, good acting and pacing, and does a great job at creating a tense, awkward atmosphere between its characters. The build-up to the end in the third act seems a bit clumsy, but is forgivable because I genuinely wanted to know what happens at the end. A good find, but definitely not horror.
0.0 MHz (2019)
Korean horror done.... Ok
Korean horror usually involves a ghost of some sort, in a decrepit building, and it is angry. This film is no different, but it enters with that exact idea. Yes, the premise of the film is recycled, but that shouldn't detract from a watch. The acting is pretty decent, and the cheesy CGI was passable given the budget. The camerawork was more or less on par, and the characters were fairly interesting. My only gripes are the slow pace (as is usual with about 90% of asian horror films), drawn out suspense sequences and a very dull ending. Give it watch if you have some free time. Not awesome, but not disappointing.
The Taking (2014)
Great build-up, only to be let down.
This movie had promise. It starts off with an atypical found footage intro: college students doing a thesis, they want to record it, you know the rest. They choose an elderly woman with early onset alzheimers disease, and things take a turn for the worse very quickly. The first half was a very well-built setup, with good atmosphere, excellent acting and simple yet effective horror movie tropes. The second half, however, fails in its attempts at keeping the terror and tension high. Poor character judgement, loud bangs unconnected with whats going on to maximize jump scares, long bouts of nothing happening lead to more eye rolling and boredom than actual scares, and a cliffhanger that was very much not needed. Which is a shame, because this movie had a really well put together and original premise.