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BillyJessup
Reviews
The Girl from Plainville (2022)
Just Watch "I Love You, Now Die"
I have always been a bigger fan of documentaries rather than reenactments. For those of you who agree with that statement, just watch the HBO documentary "I Love You, Now Die." I started this and then realized how pointless it is to watch people re-enacting a story and there being "events that are dramatized" (as per the statement in the opening first episode) when you can just watch the real deal. Similar to The Dropout, where you can just watch The Inventor documentary about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
The whole point of this review is: if you're more into that way of filmmaking, I want to make sure you know that exists as well. This isn't the only way to get this story.
La casa sperduta nel parco (1980)
Deodato Did More Than One Of These??
A worthy flick to fast-forward through to the nudity but that's about it.
If Deodato has done more than these in the same vein as this one, let's make it easy and save ~90 minutes of your existence:
- Crazies find unsuspecting victims.
- Crazies eventually act on sadistic urges. Violence and sexual pervasiveness ensues.
- Remaining victims find way to escape/save themselves. May or may not include all bad guys being whacked as well.
It sounds like I may be describing every horror movie that's every existed, but here's the key difference: these movies just aren't good. If they are all similar to this one, the whole draw is female nudity. That doesn't carry a movie...just go to xvideos or xhamster and save yourself a lot of time if that's all you want.
Anyone who considers this guy some kind of 'unappreciated genius of horror' or something of the sort needs to go handle their business on one of those sites and then revisit the real world. Anyone over 14 will think these types of movies are gimmicky junk.
Fear Street: 1994 (2021)
To Debunk The Overly-Dramatic...
I inhaled every RL Stine book back when. Owned all the original Goosebumps. The Fear Street books I didn't own I got out of the library (I for some reason remember a book about a killer snowman so vividly).
A - 'the characters don't bring 1990's vibes'...what does that even mean? Are they supposed to say 'cool beans?' Reference The Smashing Pumpkins? Everyone who says this has no context behind it...just this weird, vague statement. If someone told me that I wasn't acting like I was 'in 2021', I wouldn't even know what that meant. I need a tiktok account I guess?
B - yes, Firestarter is from 1996. Most movies or shows have songs from that era or year but don't rely exclusively on them...so I think a bad precedent was set by having the first 4-5 songs from 1994 and everyone expected that to continue.
C - 'woke' nonsense...cut us a break. Whether the main characters are two girls or not, how does this matter? Zero relevance, just some homophobic nitpicking. Nothing about it being two girls, or a girl and a guy, (or two guys) changed the plot at all.
D - but everyone hates Sam...why did they all protect her??? No. Wrong. No one hated Sam except one character because they broke up, and - in fact - at least one or more of the other characters said to knock it off and stop being a baby. So, no. Incorrect again. She was simply involved in the plan because of who she was and what she had realized. Another ridiculous gripe that doesn't make any sense.
For those debating on whether to watch it, do not listen to these weird reviews which are nitpicking things that are completely immaterial to the storyline and overall plot. It's like saying I hated Halloween because Michael's attire was grey and not black. Get a life. Typical elitists looking to trash anything that isn't stellar. Probably the same people who think A Ghost Story is a modern classic, that artsy-fartsy POS. They already know it won't meet their criteria, so they are watching and reviewing simply to bash it. Yawn.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
Worst of the 3, But That Doesn't Mean 'Skip It'
There have already been a ton of reviews that go in depth, so I won't rehash what they've said.
Overall rating: 6.5/10 (for comparison, I would say 1 and 2 are around 8.5ish).
Biggest issues I walked away with were:
1 - as others have mentioned, that camerawork is so shaky and cuts to so many different angles during the intro. Thankfully, they didn't do that the whole movie.
2 - how is Lorraine now all of a sudden talking to Ed while she is in that alternate trance state? In previous movies he would start yelling for her to come back and then ask what she saw/what happened. How now is she giving him a play-by-play? Didn't make any sense. Total lack of continuity.
3 - If Ed really did have a heart attack during the exorcism of David, given the way the rest of the script played out, I think it would have been better to just ignore that and let the history buffs grovel about it. Meaning: he goes from almost dead to wheelchair to cane to then running through woods/diving to pull Lorraine back up off the cliff, and then not long after that he is slamming a sledgehammer all over the place?? There was no purpose to include the heart attack parts at all. They added nothing to the story that whole miraculous recovery just came off like the writers didn't even care if it was completely illogical (which it was).
Overall, still worth seeing but there are certainly some very large gaps in this one that just come off as sloppy and shoddy writing.
¿Quién Mató a Sara? (2021)
Great Murder Mystery, But Season 2 Audio...WTF?!
A lot of other reviews covered key points so I'm just here to point this out. What in the world happened between seasons?! I hope someone from the company that dubbed this sees it. In season one, everyone had a specific way they talked. Alex was very direct, Cesar was very proper for the most part, Lorenzo was very direct but also very professional, Rodolfo was a bit looser.
Fast coward to season two and it's like a YouTube video sooof about poor translations. The audio and subtitles don't even come close to matching, and everyone drops f bombs in every other sentence. That does NOT fit the characters at all. One scene, Cesar says in the subtitles 'they couldn't endure that.' Sounds like the way he talks. Makes sense. The audio? 'Those f-- p--ies.' What the heck? That's not even close. And some of the variances completely change the meaning of sentences. Netflix needs to tell this company to get it together or pull their contract. Beyond terrible.