nickmrkonja Reviews

Population Zero (2016)

"Julian T. Pinder: A Portrait by Julian T. Pinder"

[5/10 · 22 September 2023]

Go on Tubi and look up the "cover art" of this documentary. It is the most perfect summation of what this documentary is about... Julian T. Pinder, front and center, taking up the majority of the space, and in bold color, wearing his best Bob Dylan costume... And then squeezed into the top right hand corner (superimposed over the heroic shot of Indiana Pinder) are photos of the three boys killed in Yellowstone, taken from a newspaper article in black and white.

I'll be honest, this is one of the most self-indulgent exploitations of a real tragedy that I've ever seen. I made it PRECISELY 23 minutes in to this documentary before I turned it off in utter disgust... Literally, every one or two pieces of interview footage with the parents, detectives, attorneys, etc, is followed up by more footage of Pinder... Looking thoughtfully over Yellowstone's mountains, thoughtfully sitting by his tent drinking coffee, or thoughtfully buying a new hat at the Yellowstone gift shop to look his best on his newest adventure...

He's literally taken a tragedy that affected three families worth of people and interjected himself into the final product every 30-45 seconds. I can understand if he were an integral part in breaking the case wide open and getting justice served, but he's "just there", listening to other people share their stories and their grief, not essential to the narrative WHATSOEVER.

I think of stellar documentaries like Amy J. Berg's Deliver Us From Evil from 2006... Yet another film documenting a series of tragic events that reached so many families over the course of decades... And she took the respectable route, choosing NOT to feature herself in 50% of the footage and narrating the events as though SHE were the main focus.

If you want to learn about the Yellowstone Murders, I suggest looking elsewhere. I wouldn't go so far as to call this documentary "a travesty", but after 23 minutes, when you realize the executive producer is getting equal screen time to the people that lived through these events, it's really difficult not to classify his pretentiousness as such.

Talk to Me (I) (2022)

Truly, the best horror film since The Shining. Hear me out...

[10/10 · 17 September 2023]

I've loved horror for 30 years now, ever since I saw Night of the Living Dead (my favorite horror film) when I was 7. It gave me nightmares that night that I still remember vividly. And I know ever since the late 90's, we've gotten 3 or 4 big studio boilerplate horror movies per year that were "the scariest movie since The Exorcist" that don't even stick with you til you get out of the theater. But I will say with the utmost confidence, this is the MOST PERFECT horror film since Kubrick's The Shining in 1980.

Incredibly, this film DOES NOT rely on lame, interchangeable JUMP SCARES! Every single big budget horror movie since that girl's face in the closet in The Ring has been 70% jump scares, with atmosphere, story, acting, etc all crammed into the remaining 30% of the film...

((Think about the definition of a jump scare"... The score drops out and you get 3-5 seconds of total silence, then something appears really fast and the score comes back in twice as loud... That's not "scary", it's just "startling". If someone jumps out at you from around a corner, do you feel "terror" and "frightened" the rest of the day? No. Your heart only beats fast because it was unexpected and jarring.))

...This film is infinitely more cerebral and atmospheric. The "horror" comes from the situation, the tension, the atmosphere, the stakes, etc as it's supposed to, not just from things popping up behind characters (strangely, where only the audience can see), so all that credit goes to directors Danny & Michael Philippou for having a vision of a wholly original horror film and implementing it perfectly.

The acting, also, really sells the story as well because the characters are realistic and have distinct personalities, not just two-dimensional static cut-outs. Sophie Wilde, specifically, deserves notice because she's the reason that you get so drawn in to what's happening on the screen... Her non-verbal acting is incredible, being able to convey such a wide array of emotions and feelings just by slight changes in her facial expressions.

Giving anymore details than what's already in the trailer would be ruining (in my opinion) the absolute best horror film of the last 43 years, so

I will just point out, when the ratings on IMDB are all either 2-3/10 or 9-10/10, you can guarantee it's going to be great if you're a fan of creative, original concepts with thought put into them, rather than "the #1 movie in America thrill ride feel good coming of age comedy of the summer holiday season" that's out this week because all the reviewers giving low scores most likely want to see more Hangover or Annabelle or Fast & Furious or whatever turd Kevin Hart and Adam Sandler are dropping this month... You know, people that "don't wanna haveta think too much"...

The Last House on the Left (1972)

A great movie with some of the WORST filmmaking decisions ever...

[7/10 · 31 May 2023]

The first time I saw this was at a friend's 14th birthday party, and I remember it sticking with me for a long time. When I watched it again years later, it still had that same bleak impact, but I realized how AWFUL a lot of it was... And that had nothing to do with the storyline. It's clear Wes Craven made a lot of first-timer mistakes, but some are not so forgivable if you've ever watched a SINGLE horror film in your life.

First, and most forgivable, the film falls victim to that early 70's trend of writing a theme song for the film with lyrics about the characters (à la Legend of Boggy Creek, etc). When you're making a film with such heinous content, what on earth makes you think it's a good idea to include a corny song (complete with kazoo) about the vile perpetrators out "for a fun time with two lovely children"? Much less forgivable is the rest of the film's score of cheesy hillbilly style music that TOTALLY KILLS THE PACING OF THE STORY.

And by far the WORST decision is the inclusion of the cartoon-esque sheriff and his dim witted deputy bumbling around and falling down... Right after intense scenes of r**e and murder. My only guess is that Craven thought it would interject some lightheartedness into the heavy subject matter. BUT IF YOU'RE MAKING A MOVIE ABOUT R**E AND MURDER, CUTTING INTO THE FLOW OF THE MOVIE WITH STUPIDITY ONLY DETRACTS FROM THE OVERALL IMPACT, thus making the entire audience irritated and distracted.

Nowadays if I'm ever watching this, I at least fast forward thru the scenes with the two law enforcement morons... I can't stress enough just how GODAWFUL an idea that was.

I also see a lot of people praising the 2009 remake as being superior to the original... Granted, there's no goofy, out of place music or pathetic attempts at slapstick comedy right after brutal scenes of violation... But the remake is WAY too watered down. Even with all its glaring flaws, at least the original retains the IMPACT...

Choosing to have the daughter and Krieg's son to get away happily ever after TOTALLY erases the intense emotional impact (and a lot of the parents' heroism). Which if I'm not mistaken is the entire POINT to making a film about such subject matter.

Wu-Tang: An American Saga: Liquid Swords (2023) Season 3, Episode 8

Thankful there was only three...

[4/10 · 22 March 2023]

I get what RZA and Alex were trying to do with the 3 "allegorical" episodes of the third season, but the fact remains that they completely interrupted the flow of an otherwise excellent season. Especially considering that the seventh episode, GZA's Liquid Swords, came on the heels of one of the best yet, the sixth episode, Shadowboxing.

I can see how episodes like these could have been very interesting... If the rest of the show itself hadn't been so good and engaging up to this point (I did really like RZA's episode from the second season that was done in a similar vein, when he was working on the music for Protect Ya Neck).

But I just can't see how they thought these "allegorical" episodes were a good idea when the question that had to have at least crossed their minds at least once, was "Is there a better way we could've done this".

Always looking on the bright side, me.. at least now, maybe, the half of the fans that hated 8 Diagrams will give it another chance since they definitely can no longer say it's the worst thing RZA has done...

I always dug it.

Titanic II (2010 Video)

1.6 Average Rating...

[1/10 · 25 February 2023]

...Which means there were people that actually gave this 2 stars at some point.

But the only thing MORE shocking than the fact that this movie was actually made is that the 1.6 is based on over 12,000 individual reviews... That means AT LEAST 12,000 people saw a DVD at the store called "Titanic 2" and thought, "I want to watch this".

For the record, I've never seen this, nor will I ever... Well, maybe in 30 or so years when I'm on my death bed, I'll have the sudden urge to know what was going thru Shane Van Dyke's mind when he had the desire to write, direct, and STAR in a movie called "Titanic 2"... Perhaps he was trying to outdo Orsen Welles and "Citizen Kane".

The world may never know...

She Dies Tomorrow (2020)

Great premise, poor execution

[4/10 · 28 December 2022]

This could have been a great short film. And that is the exact reason why the trailer looked so promising... Because all the main points the film itself takes 80 or so minutes to make, could all be condensed down to about 2 minutes. So what we get is a very bloated, diluted, "art for art's sake" movie.

This just seems to be another example of people that love film wanting to make a movie and having a great premise/story idea, but lacking the technical skills required to make that idea into an engaging feature length film... This could be due to still being new to the business, OR they just don't have what it takes (see: The Room).

This is just my opinion, and if there's one thing I learned, it's never to trust critic or audience reviews these days... Because movies like Avatar, The Hangover, and Annabelle end up #1 at the box office and make huge profits, while brilliant films like Amsterdam, Babylon, and. The Night House take such huge losses that you never see another trailer on TV after their first week in theaters.

As for She Dies Tomorrow, I'll just say this... You know you're watching a movie destined for an eternity in Tubi's free catalogue when an actor born in 1965 is cast as the caring best friend of the protagonist, whose actor was born in 1985, and they see that as totally believable...

Or, they just don't care and will work with absolutely anything they can get.

Significant Other (2022)

Why you shouldn't listen to the negative reviews...

[9/10 · 8 October 2022]

I'm seeing a lot of negative reviews from critics calling it a "waste of time", and audience reviews of 3/5 stars. But remember, people tend to dislike things that are different. And this film is definitely different.

As a Shudder user, I see SO many 1 star reviews of films that I LOVE, saying that they're "boring" or "not horror movies" (it got so frustrating, I stopped reading them). I've come to the conclusion that the average mainstream-movie watching person only defines a "horror movie" as one with a monster/demon/ghost/psycho killer, 90 minutes of interchangeable jump scares (usually of the antagonist appearing BEHIND the characters where only the audience can see), and a high body count.

So brilliant films like Garland's Annihilation, Strickland's In Fabric, Benson & Moorhead's Resolution, or in this case, Olsen & Berk's Significant Other, get passed up because they aren't understood, and therefore raves about, by the casual movie-going, mainstream majority.

I loved this film because it had all of the criteria you'd hope for in the ever-evolving horror genre... tension, suspense, atmosphere, a fitting score, and even a twist you don't see coming. Just because there aren't gory kill scenes every 7-10 minutes by some grotesque creature does NOT disqualify a film from being classified as horror.

So if you truly appreciate horror as an artistic form of film art, something that can make you feel unease and suspense while making you think, then give this a shot and form your own opinion. Fans of horror films like Pontypool, Braid, Hereditary, Come True, or any of the aforementioned films will definitely love and appreciate this one.

Color Out of Space (2019)

Kind of like Cronenberg directing Lovecraft...

[7/10 · 1 December 2021]

You'll never see it coming, but you expect it... You hear it, but you keep telling yourself, "It can't be true.. Not this time!"... It's hideous, unrelenting, and so terrible, you'll pull the blanket over your head, it's so unbearable... The family doesn't know what to do because it's unlike anything known to man, many times wondering to themselves, "Is this even possible!?"...

As the movie goes on, it shows itself more and more, louder and more hideous than the last time... Eventually, it stops hiding and starts popping up left and right, over and over, horrifying not only the characters in the movie, but the audience as well... The torment is so intense, so unabashedly cruel, it's a wonder it got past the censors...

Human Centipede and Hostel popularized extreme horror, and up until Color Our of Space, nothing so vile, so revolting, so punishing has appeared on screen... H. P. Lovecraft was way ahead of his time, crafting such cerebral horror, things no one had seen before, but I don't think even the famed author could conceive this horror that's appeared in one of his very own stories...

I suggest watching with the lights on, and watching with a friend... You'll never see anything like it in Heaven or Earth because it most certainly came from Hell... Watch if you dare... Because nothing will adequately prepare you...

For Nicolas Cage's acting. That ridiculous "California surfer" accent is bad enough, but it sounds more like what would come out if someone was imitating it badly. On purpose. And it only comes out when he yells. Like WTF??

I meant everything I said in this review. Watch the movie then read it again.. You'll see that every last bit is dead on... Oh, but the rest of the movie is really good. You just have to get past that one teensy little drawback........

Martyrs Lane (2021)

You can't go wrong with Shudder originals...

[9/10 · 11 November 2021]

IFC was always my go-to for the original, cerebral, and actually scary horror films... But since Shudder hit the scene, they've been dropping equally-excellent horror flicks, and pretty regularly at that.

To be honest, I'm only halfway thru, but I had to stop and get these thoughts out because this film really affects you... You're in for a story that you live right along with the characters, it's so well done. The sense of sadness and loss that lingers at the very beginning will get stuck to your insides and keep building thru the movie, until you literally feel full of emotion and the energy it gives off... Just like me and my need to expel that energy thru writing here...

As the synopsis says, the ridiculously adorable Leah lives at a vicarage (kind of like a boarding house for a church) with her family and a bunch of other "lost souls", as it says... I love horror movies that hit me in some way, whether it be that it scares me, shocks me, or in the case of Martyrs Lane, it really hits you deep down in the feels... Leah is the epitome of a good person. She really follows the church's teachings on how to live a good life (as opposed to most religious people I know that act like just announcing and claiming their Christian status and belief is what it's all about... never really following the actual teachings on being a good human being).

The character is done so well, so real, you feel what she feels when she's hurt or scared. I had a bit of trouble following the story at first (this is why I quit smoking), but eventually, she starts receiving visits from a little girl in an angel costume... the costume is all dirty and haggard, and the little girl looks... Well, I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that you can tell something is "off".

It really starts affecting little Leah's life and the issues she's dealing with. All in all, it's a very well done creepy, tense atmosphere when it needs to be. Somewhat of a slow burn some might say, but there's so much going on to build the story and Leah's character especially, you don't notice that much.

There's such an air of sadness to the film from the jump, you carry it with you into the eerie parts, knowing something is coming. I promise, you will FEEL this movie, unless you have no heart. Enjoy. I can't wait to see the climax this is building towards...

Super Troopers 2 (2018)

Definitely in my top 10 comedies

[10/10 · 23 September 2021]

First off, FORGET ALL THESE NEGATIVE REVIEWS. I looked at some of their other reviews, and these are people that give 10 star reviews to The Hangover trilogy was some kind of comedic masterpiece. That alone discredits you from any sort of authority on originality and adult humor.

Most of the time, comedy sequels are terrible... They just recycle and reuse the "most popular" jokes, and you end up with a second-rate version of the original. Plus, the cast is usually there just for the payday so it's rough watching actors without their hearts in it.

Super Troopers 2 totally broke the mold. There are a few callbacks to the original, but 95% of the film is totally new. Honestly, I laughed way more at this one (don't get me wrong tho, the original is a classic). The main difference here is the style... The comedy is "quicker", for lack of a better word. Think It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia the way the conversations are rapid fire.

I can't praise this movie enough. It's totally new territory with the plot and jokes. It's one of maybe four movies I've ever watched that as soon as it ended, I restarted it and watched it from the beginning again. And actually, now that I think about it, there's a ton more funny moments in this one compared to the original.

I was very skeptical at first tho, given Broken Lizard's track record... Beerfest was OKAY at best, Slammin' Salmon was... meh, and I really didn't like Club Dread at all. So I kind of avoided it for a while after its release because I was afraid it might "tarnish" the original's originality. So I'm happy to say I was dead wrong.

If you're a fan of the original and you haven't seen the sequel, do not wait to watch this. I'm sitting here trying to think of a comedy sequel that was anywhere near as good and I can't... Analyze That comes closest but that's still a very distant second. In fact, just considering sequels in general, this one's up there with Aliens, Magnum Force, Batman Returns, and Evil Dead 2 as sequels that equal the original.

All in all, EXCELLENT, HILARIOUS, & ORIGINAL.

Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn (2015)

If you can go into this with an open mind, you'll enjoy it.

[7/10 · 9 May 2021]

Honestly, if you're here reading reviews, your chances of actually liking this movie are probably going to drop... all I see is people bashing this movie left and right, and what's most frustrating is that it's all the same one or two superficial complaints so they give it a 3 star review...

Okay, yes the graphics look like a cut scene from a PlayStation 2 game. But so what? People played those games and didn't complain and turn them off because of it. For the last 20 years, video games have begun resembling long, interactive movies anyway, so just accept it and move on.. if you sit and dwell and focus on that the whole time, you're just going to make yourself hate it.

Chances are, those people complaining are fans of the Marvel movies or are going to see the new Mortal Kombat, and THOSE are the movies I just can't enjoy because of the CGI. Most of the movie, the heroes and villains on screen aren't the actor, it's some digital rendering of the character. And to me, that's literally one small step above having actual cartoons superimposed over real-life backgrounds. Like I just couldn't take the movie seriously anymore when I see Kano kicking and punching the air, trying to make it look realistic that he's fighting a computer generated 6 foot tall lizard creature that just doesn't look the least bit real.

The voice acting is way better than most of the serious animated movies/shows or video games I've seen bc these are actual actors rather than just voices actors. They just never sound natural to me... And the atmosphere was better than I expected. Even tho it's CG, it is still a film so the fact that they did well with tension, mood, scenery, "camera-angles", etc really added to it... it actually had me feeling tense and uneasy thru most of it.

And most importantly, what people tend to miss focusing on the superficial, is story. If all these scenes were translated exactly into a real life film, this would be an excellent "remake". I guess after getting accustomed to the movies released today, paying attention to story has kind of fallen into the background in favor of "action for the sake of action", mindless slapstick comedy, or simplistic jump scares... tropes without any actual thought behind them. Studios figure the best way to cater to everyone is to go as simple and shallow as possible so as not to "exclude" anyone... so we get our Wedding Crashers', John Wick's, and endless horror remakes without the original feeling and emotion behind them. George Romero had depth and meaning behind the story he told with the original NOTLD in 68, and thankfully, a lot of that is retained here.

Go into this focusing solely on the story being told, and use your imagination a bit like people had to do before the advent of computer special effects, I promise you will enjoy this.

Roman Empire (2016–2019)

Seasons 1 & 2 were great.. Season 3 dropped the ball.

[8/10 · 8 January 2021]

The first two seasons really did a great job hitting all the facts and main events while also remaining incredibly entertaining. Commodus and Caesar were such fascinating individuals psychologically, and I think that's where they excelled... they really touched on where their minds were through it all (to the best of their knowledge) and their deteriorating mental states. Plus, they both had great actors portraying all the main characters, notably Cassius Dio, Commodus, Cleander, Narcissus, Lucille, Caesar, Pompey, and Cleopatra.

Season 3 is where it fell apart. Having read the most about Caligula prior to seeing this show (not to mention seeing the 1979 3 hour porno starring Malcom McDowell), I can say they LEFT SO MUCH OUT. It seemed like all 4 episodes, which is way too short to cover all of his madness, only focused on his bad memories and trying to hook up with his sisters. Oh and then he's killed. So no mention of the ridiculously expensive partyy yacht, or lining the boats across the water and riding his horse the length of it, or his leadingmm troops on ridiculous made up conquests of a pond of reeds or fields of tall grass, or his over the top sex drive that turned the palace into one massive 24 hour brothel. You get my point. Thme most controversial, megalomaniacal, depraved, insane, but at the same time, the most fascinating of the three emperors, one you could ha ve made a 22 episode season off alone, is turned into the most bland, one note, and uninformed. It really is a shame to squander the wealth of information and crazy event after crazy event. The epic Dead mdffñ

The Soul Collector (II) (2019)

Wow...

[3/10 · 30 December 2020]

I absolutely loved this movie, everything about it... the originality, the story, the acting, the tension, the scares... but never in my life, not ONCE, has an ending RUINED the entire movie for me. Every last positive thing about it has just been swept away by real life anger and resentment.

I'm honestly sitting here, so frustrated and furious beyond belief, because of a MOVIE ENDING. Yes, it's directed at the filmmakers for trying to be "different" and "impactful".. it most definitely had an impact, that's for sure... it's ruined my night and my mood. I guess you can say this movie is a true one of a kind achievement for eliciting such actual feelings from the person watching it. Except, I would equate these feelings to the exact same I would have, say, after watching Dane Cook do an entire set insulting and making fun of my mother at her own funeral.

Yes, I know that sounds stupid and ridiculous, but I'm seriously that enraged right now. God, I need a cigarette...

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Words can't describe how much I love this movie.

[10/10 · 21 December 2020]

If Night of the Living Dead weren't such a perfect masterpiece of horror, Return of the Living Dead may have been my all-time favorite horror film. My two passions in this world are horror and punk rock, and this movie has both in spades. Night of the Living Dead was the first horror film I ever saw... I was 6 and it gave me the worst nightmares of my life that I still remember vividly to this day. But it also made me fall in love with horror movies.

I saw Night for the first time in 92.. so it was right around the time that the zombie movie craze of the 70s and 80s died down, and about 10 years away from their second coming (obviously still going today). The 90s brought a terrible drought for quality horror movies, just a handful over the decade, especially zombie flicks. So I wasn't totally desensitized to the concept.

So I gorged on the Romero trilogy for about a year (since I'm from Pittsburgh) until I finally went to the video store to see if there might be another movie made about zombies... HA! I had no idea of the zombie (movie) outbreak of the last 20 years but luckily, Return was the next one I picked up because the cover looked so cool. Again, it was love at first viewing.

I will say that I completely HATE comedy-horror movies. They're trash. There may be one or two quality ones... But a horror movie with elements of comedy.. especially dark comedy.. is totally different. And that's exactly what Return is. It really is a twisted, bleak, and extremely dark movie, but it still has that subtle, indirect humor, the kind that made the first 10 seasons of the Simpsons so great. It really takes brilliant direction to have such a disturbing scene like Spider, Burt, and Ernie (see? perfect. hilarious, subtle, and indirect) listening to a torso describe the pain of feeling itself rot, but then Spider throwing in "I'll bus' it in the damn head!" a second later.

The casting was excellent. James Karen definitely stole the show. He could crack you up just by the way he'd contort his face. Clu Gallagher and Don Kalfa were amazing actors in general, and the punks all dressed and acted pretty on point the way they did in the mid 80s. The soundtrack was a nice collection of 80s punk... The Cramps, TSOL, The Damned, 45 Grave, The Flesh Eaters. AND Dan O'Bannon (who wrote Alien) both directed and adapted the screenplay from a story written by John Russo and Russ Streiner (creators of the original Night).

Bottom line, this was the perfect combination of elements. If you've ever read Russo's original novel for Return from 77 (a year before Dawn was released), you can see who really brought that dark, bleak sense of dread and horror to the original Night since none of the subsequent Romero movies had it. And even though the novel was totally rewritten for the film, Russo's fingerprints are still all over it because in my opinion, Return had that same bleak atmosphere of horror that Night had... way more than Dawn did.

If you're still reading by now, thank you and I'm sorry for droning on.. it's just that these were both my first horror movies and also the first I loved, so I'm a fountain of useless information about all of them. Like any real Pittsburgher should be (eff the Steelers, go Living Dead!). If you've only seen Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, and World War Z, the 21st century stuff, at the risk of sounding like an old head, you REALLY need to see Night first and then Return. Night is my absolute favorite horror movie ever, and the best ever made. This is a close second. Better than Dawn I think, even though they're totally different styles, but I'd choose this if I had to pick. It's funny when it can be, but then it goes right back to twisted, dark horror right after. Much like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the first two Evil Dead movies, it's very unique in this aspect... they're original, very well written, interesting stories, and both funny AND scary.

WATCH THIS.

They Look Like People (2015)

Very unique psychological horror film.

[8/10 · 21 December 2020]

The story was very interesting and original. For a totally indie film, the direction and acting were top notch. I don't want to give everything away, so I'll just mention the few things I wasn't too crazy about... first, as much as I do appreciate and love horror movies that are more cerebral than direct (ala Pontypool), it could have used a scene or two more to reinforce the "horror" aspect of it all. Other than the calls and one sole scene, there really wasn't much else to back that aspect up. Secondly, it is common for indie films in particular to use silence to add tension and depth to the story, but this film overdoes it. It seems like every single scene has 15-30 seconds of silence and characters just staring. In other words, less is more when it comes to that technique. It would have much more impact had there been just two or three instances of silence to really affect the audience, but it loses its meaning when every single scene has one. And lastly, at the cost of having a spoiler, I will just say the ending is very anticlimactic. Again, I've seen enough indie movies to recognize their "artsy" methods, but they could have beefed up the resolution at the end a little more. Or better yet, had a different ending altogether...

**SPOILER AHEAD***

So it turns out that Wyatt had just been hallucinating the entire time.. and the directing style needs a bit of work when it comes down to "explaining things without directly explaining things". This could be the reason the ending was as anticlimactic as it was. I'm a huge fan of not spoon feeding everything to the audience, but they really should have added a bit more to the ending rather than Wyatt just laughing in relief and hugging Christian then roll credits. It just felt so thin compared to the rest of the film. In the majority of movies where you don't know if the main character's paranoid suspicions are real or if they're just going crazy, more often than not these days it turns out that they're right. It's meant to surprise the audience because it goes against the natural and expected. Except they end that way so often anymore, that the shock has all but disappeared. So as this conclusion is now quite rare, my bottom line is that they should have either stuck with this ending but added more to it, or gone the route of his paranoia being founded but tried to do it in an original way... add something to in a Twilight Zone way like HE was the shape shifter and didn't know it, or he pictures Christian turning, kills him, but it turns out he was normal, but the attack still occurs and Wyatt hears them breaking in upstairs. I'm not a filmmaker in any way, I've just seen a few thousand movies, so these are just ideas I thought up in a few seconds.

All in all, a good movie despite what I thought was a bit of a thin and anticlimactic ending. Definitely worth a watch.

The Son of No One (2011)

Totally bizarre...

[5/10 · 19 December 2020]

... and I don't mean the story (which I will get to as well), I mean the entire movie as a whole. I'm now 45 minutes in and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE @!$% IS GOING ON. And it doesn't help having concurrent flashbacks every 5 minutes so now I have two separate timelines in which I cannot understand the plot. Mind you, it's like 2:30 am and I've dosed off a couple times but I've rewound the 2 minutes I missed each time. But it still makes zero sense.

The acting is just as amazing as you'd expect it to be... Al Pacino, Katie Holmes, Ray Liotta (who is totally killing it), James Ransone... all doing a stellar job with their characters. He!!, even Channing Tatum, the 6 foot tall pile of meat and skin with vocal cords is doing a really good job as a cop with past trauma and unease.

BUT, and I could be way wrong because I'm so tired that I had to write a scathing review just to focus my attention enough to wake up some, THERE IS NO COMPREHENSIBLE STORY. Young Channing Meathead kills some scumbag (who he is in relation and why he's trying to get to the kid I don't know), so he talks to Detective Al Pacino and acts crazy to what I'm guessing are his friends in a random apartment with no adults. In the present, adult Meathead has a weird jerk partner Officer Ransone, a daughter that has seizures, and is taking his family to a lake but then is all of a sudden back in the precinct, fighting with an angry suspect and getting yelled at by Chief Ray Liotta for some Zodiac style killer's note in the paper.

So that's what I've pieced together in between lapses in consciousness. I am about to go back to the Detective Pacino scene and start again from there, but I have a feeling it's not going to be much better this time around. I think 5 stars is a very fair rating for a.. "movie" like this, but if it turns out I slept thru the important stuff and it really is a "gripping thriller", I'll come back and change it.

Snowfall (2017–2023)

Good, just a little uneven.

[7/10 · 15 December 2020]

After watching all 5 seasons of the Narcos series, my mind was stuck in that zone. I watched the movies Traffic (alright) and Narc (excellent), but wanted something with more depth, so I started searching for similar series and stumbled upon this. I knew there was no way it could live up to Narcos since it was a) based off true events which gave it a lot of weight, and b) the writing and acting were just phenomenal. But I gave it a try anyway...

I'm on the fifth episode of the first season and what sticks out the most is that the three parallel storylines are very uneven. And by that I mean one storyline is better than the next, and that one is better than the last.

Franklin's story is excellent, total 10/10. It's kept my eyes glued to the screen for every minute. The actors do a great job with their characters, so you really care about and feel for them. I think that what makes this one so great is the fact that all the scenes and events are SO intense, I always want to skip thru the other stories to get back to this one to see what happens next. This is most definitely the icing on the cake because it's been excitement and tension from the jump.

Oso and Lucia's story is good, I'd say 7/10. It's not QUITE as gripping as Franklin's, but that might be because it's a little slower. I'm not saying slow as in boring though, I just mean that because of their endgame, for the time being they're doing a lot of planning while trying to lay low and make deals. So I have a feeling that's going to change real soon once their plans is in action. Still good acting... Pedro did a good job of making me dislike him for being such a scumbag.

And finally, we have Teddy and Alejandro's story. This is where it all started and set the chain of events in motion when Alejandro found Logan dead. This is for sure my least favorite storyline and the one I have a hard time not skipping past since it always starts up right when something is about to pop off in one of the others. So 5 episodes deep, I gotta give this one a solid 4.5/10. One of the main reasons is because I hate Teddy. Maybe it's just the actor, but he is the worst depiction of a CIA agent. Ever. He's obnoxious, whiny, and would DEFINITELY get his partner killed when he's in character during a buy trying to play a criminal. So far, when he's not whining or looking at the ground deep in worried thought, he's complaining and objecting to every move Alejandro is trying to make. REAL shame that Logan dude had to die because this has been pretty lame so far...

Bottom line, Franklin's story is worth the price of admission by itself. I mean, I seriously love every minute of it, it's that engrossing and captivating. But this is only the first season, so judging by the momentum so far, I can tell it's gonna be fire once it gets going. With three separate and simultaneous storylines that are still linked and intersecting at points, I can see that building the story might take a little longer than your average show with only one. Especially if you want it to be realistic, believable, and interesting.

All in all, really good show. Cheers, FX. Another job well done.

Hereditary (2018)

Very good movie, but a biiiit on the overrated side...

[7/10 · 6 December 2020]

...But the only reason I say it's overrated is because people refer to it as though it's the greatest horror film ever made. It really is a great movie, infinitely better than the mainstream, jump-scare-a-thon, no story having horror schlock they put out every year, BUT I just don't think it's the perfect, penultimate movie that some make it out to be.

Having said that, it definitely is a cool, slow burn film. It makes excellent use of the tension as soon as IT happens (anyone who's seen it will know to what I'm referring) and really doesn't let up til the climax... which is an intensely crazy and creative climax, at that (ala The Shining).

The first time I saw it, I was in a halfway house with about 15 or so of the other guys all watching. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have NEVER heard so much complaining in my entire life. Maybe it's the fact that people born as far back as the 80s just get bored when movies have actual stories that make you think...

Like try to get someone in their 20s or 30s to sit down and watch a Hitchcock film or a 40s film noir, and they'll be playing on their phone, bored to tears within 15 mins. It's sad because I grew up with an appreciation for the classics, and therefore, movies with substance, depth, and a STORY. Everyone wants stupid slapstick comedy where Will Farrell once again plays a complete oblivious, buffoon with a heart of gold, or a horror movie where the ghost/demon/killer appears BEHIND the protagonist where they can't see it for about 75 minutes before the anticlimactic climax where it tries to finally kill them the last 10 mins (I never understood that... what exactly is the ghost accomplishing by staring or walking past ALWAYS from behind? These directors need to put some thought into it).

But I digress... very good movie. Not perfect, but very good. Very good acting as well. When Toni Collette is wigging out at the end and spouting all this insane, obnoxious sounding stuff at Gabriel Byrne as he stands there with that "my wife has finally gone off the deep end" expression on his face, I totally started hating her. After all, so much of it was her fault and her extremely unattractive face which she contorts like playdough the whole time makes it so much easier to hate her. Great score, cinematography, and lighting as well... really adds so much to the atmosphere.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

There aren't enough stars in the sky to give this film.

[10/10 · 3 December 2020]

Normal people remember their first kiss, first girlfriend, first job, first car... I remember my first horror movie.

I was 6 years old and, most people over 30 in Pittsburgh where I live owned a copy of Night of the Living Dead on VHS. So naturally, my step father did as well. I watched it, and being so young that I wasn't able to appreciate things like story and direction, I didn't take it very seriously and laughed at the perceived "lack of horror" for most of the movie. I mean, the 80s were still fresh in everyone's minds, so the cornucopia of over the top horror flicks had become the gold standard of what to expect. And although I hadn't seen any at all, I knew in a general sense what comprised one. How? I don't know... I just knew the makeup of one in a general sense. And this definitely wasn't Jason slamming a camper in a sleeping bag into a tree, or Captain Rhodes getting disemboweled and ripped in half by a gaggle of ghouls.

But that night, I had the most terrifying dreams ever, even to this day. And to this day, I remember them so vividly, like they'd been burned into my memory for all time. From that moment on, I was addicted to both the horror genre and this movie in particular.

To me, this is THE most perfect horror film... not just MOVIE, a FILM... ever created. It has atmosphere, constant tension, totally new and unique camera work, characters with actual depth, an utterly terrifying and original premise and antagonist, and most importantly, an actual STORY (for all you millennials, movies back then, even horror movies, had what they called STORIES). And I really believe that Russo and Romero's bare-bones budget did them a huge favor... #1) the film is so much more effective in black and white. It adds a whole other dimension to the terror. And #2) the absence of fancy makeup and prosthetics did the audience such a massive favor, because THE GHOULS LOOKED JUST LIKE US. THAT is what made them so terrifying... they weren't blue like in Dawn and they weren't all skeletal with faces sunken in like in Day... they looked like actual people, except with blood here and there, and maybe some torn clothing. They're much more believable as the recently deceased returning to "life".

I can never say enough about the absolute PERFECTION of this film. It was something so new and original and HORRIFYING. I mean, really think about it... it's 1968, when people hadn't yet become totally desensitized to movie horror and violence, and here comes this horror movie with the bodies of the recently deceased getting up and attacking the living. And not just attacking... halfway thru the movie, for the first time ever, you see these corpses EATING the people. Romero and Russo said when writing the movie, they were trying to think of the most terrifying and appalling act that these things could do... and in my opinion, devouring the living, us, is definitely terrifying and appalling, not to mention probably the worst and most painful way to die. But more than anything else, the scariest part of it all (and really driven home thanks to the lack of makeup effects and prosthetics), is that they really truly ARE, and LOOK like, US.

100,000,000/10 stars. Perfection. Most original, creative, well written, perfectly shot, and most of all, SCARIEST horror FILM ever created. Thank you from the bottom of my heart John Russo and George Romero... you are geniuses among men. Rest In Peace.

Host (II) (2020)

EXCELLENT!!!

[10/10 · 3 December 2020]

There are plenty of horror films that have scary PARTS in them. And there are a good number that are unsettling or disturbing for most of the movie. But Host is honestly the first horror movie I've seen in almost 30 years that was actually SCARY from the moment the "action" started up until the very end. Not since I watched the original Night of the Living Dead when I was 6... my very first horror film and still my absolute favorite... have I seen a horror movie that was perfect as far as what horror movies are supposed to be.

It was a premise that's been in hundreds, if not over a thousand, horror movies... an unseen ghost or demon or entity terrorizing a group of people, so nothing new there. But it was HOW they presented a familiar premise that made it so great. The movie being presented as though you're watching the actual events on a computer screen does a perfect job of making you feel as though you're a part of the story, watching the events transpire in real time. No time lapses or cut scenes, it's one big, long event that you watch play out from start to finish. And what really sets this apart from the 30 other horror movies released each year is the absolutely PERFECT and effective use of tension, atmosphere, and palpable, believable fear from the characters. The casting was so well done because they all interact so naturally, it doesn't even come off as acting.

Some people might be put off by the relatively short run time of about 56 minutes (which is probably slightly less when you account for beginning and ending credits)... I usually don't find short movies to even be worth it, and I may have passed this one up if I had seen that prior to watching it the first time... but I have to say, this movie did such an amazing job of sucking me in and keeping me immersed in what was happening, I didn't notice even AFTER it was over. It wasn't until the second time that I saw the runtime before putting it on.

As I'm thinking about how to compare this horror flick to others I've seen, it really occurred to me that after 30 years and literally hundreds of horror movies that I love so much, this one is without a doubt my second favorite horror movie EVER. My #1 will always be Night because it's total horror perfection for so so many reasons, but Host has beat out countless other favorites (Alien, The Shining, It Follows, As Above So Below, Texas Chainsaw) just for the simple fact that it scared me to the point that, at 35 years old, I had to sleep with the lights on for the first time since seeing Night for the first time. Really. Obviously, Alien and Chainsaw and Shining were ORIGINAL and had INCREDIBLE STORIES, so as far as just being FILMS, they are far superior. BUT, judging solely on the effectiveness and definition of WHAT A HORROR MOVIE SHOULD BE, Host wins out.

The Experiment (2010)

Tension and atmosphere

[7/10 · 3 December 2020]

I don't think I've ever hated Forest Whitaker as much as I do in this movie. They definitely picked the perfect cast to play the guards. From seeing some of these guys in other movies, they always do good jobs playing sociopaths.