wormsoftheerth Reviews

A Creature Was Stirring (2023)

Decent movie undermined by a weak ending

[3/10 · 16 February 2024]

The majority of this movie is surprisingly decent for a low budget, one-location film. Aesthetically the house looks pretty good (aside from some weird lighting choices), the actors all perform adequately, and the entire thing slowly builds up into a seemingly layered and interesting mystery.

While not terribly exciting, I enjoyed the slow progression as the scope of the mystery expanded and we see the characters do stranger and more intense things. I felt like they did a good job making every character seem shady to where a variety of major twist(s) could be plausible and applicable to any (or all) of them, and I was genuinely curious to find out how everything was interconnected.

The creature aspect of the movie is done well considering the film's limitations. You do actually see it from time to time and there are some genuinely creepy practical effects used for it. There is some cheesy stuff too (both in terms of effects and scene where the creature is present), but it doesn't ruin it. Honestly, I wish they had just done a straight creature-feature with the creature being a central character/villain instead of the whole "mystery" aspect where you don't know if the creature is real or not, and I would've liked them to cut out some of the various other things going which reduce the focus on the creature and give ol' spiny some more screen time.

All the serious problems with the film come from the ending. The entire thing is very obviously building to a major reveal which should explain all the weirdness that the audience has been witnessing. Unfortunately, the ending fails COMPLETELY.

It feels like they were writing the story as they went and didn't have an ending in mind but thought "eh, we'll figure it out when we get there". Then the time came and they still didn't have anything that could adequately explain things, so they instead opted for something easy and generic which fails to actually line up with anything that was introduced in the movie.

The ending is cliché and a total cop-out. If you like to try to predict twists than you will absolutely have thought of this but likely dismissed it due to how dumb and nonsensical it would be.

The problem is that the ENTIRE movie hinges on the cleverness of the reveal, and the lame reveal actually ruins, or at least makes insignificant, everything else that happened in the movie. When you go back to the scenarios that played out and take the reveal into account everything actually makes LESS sense and gives the impression it was all a bunch of arbitrary stuff that the writer thought looked or sounded good at the time but doesn't actually tie in or interconnect. Instead of tying things up or providing an explanation, it just introduces a bunch of questions and plot holes.

It's a shame about the ending; this was a solid 5-6 for most of its duration, but, as I stated, the ending makes literally every other aspect of the movie worse, so it's impossible to give it a good overall rating. Worth a watch if you've run out of other horror, but don't have any great expectations.

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

Everything wrong with Space Opera

[3/10 · 26 December 2023]

Snyder's Rebel Moon has become the newest addition to my list of the stupidest sci fi movies of all time, finding itself right in between Prometheus and Jupiter Ascending. It is 100% style and 0% substance. Every ounce of production was spent on trying to make a thing that looks "cool" and not one modicum of effort was spent on characters, narrative, cohesion, world-building, etc. There are so many problems with this movie and I'm annoyed that I haven't seen any reviews giving this the brutal scalding that it deserves.

First of all, there is not one single thing in this movie that is unique. I saw a review describe this as a kid dumping out their toybox filled with bootleg action figures and bashing them together, and that's EXACTLY what it feels like. Take the worst, most generic tropes from every Space Opera (Star Wars, Dune, Warhammer, Riddick, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc), combine them and you get Rebel Moon. Every single character, scene, location, encounter, line of dialogue, etc is at best extremely uninspired and predictable, or is a nearly direct copy of something from another movie. For example there is a cantina scene here that is pretty much beat-for-beat the Mos Eisley scene. The motherworld or whatever is just House Harkonen/Imperium of Man/Necromongers, the Gyphon scene is straight out of Harry Potter/Avatar....you get the idea.

The story is painfully stupid and suffers from the same inherent flaw as Justice League. This is another "I'm forming a team" movie where we're thrown into a universe that we know nothing about, and are rushed around to meet the characters who will form the squad at a breakneck pace without ever understanding why or what's going on. We're quickly introduced to each character on some random nondescript world, shown what is supposed to a poignant scene with them (which has no impact whatsoever because we know literally nothing about them) and then quickly move on and the character never speaks more than 2 lines for the rest of the film. It's impossible to care about anything because nothing is explained or connected in any meaningful way. To make it worse, the scenes are often incredibly silly and contrived, take the spider one for example -- the asian lady with swords (sorry, we're told nothing at all about this character so that's literally all I can say to describe her) kills the spider because it has been stealing children. However they say its been stealing children for a while yet only RIGHT NOW in front of our heroes the lady decides to kill her. There are no repercussions whatsoever for killing the spider, so why didn't she (or someone else) do it sooner? Every one of these scenes is exactly like this - completely lacking in logic.

The narrative provides only the absolute bare minimum required to move the characters to the next place so they can find the next guy and we learn nothing of substance in any of these encounters.

The other major problem with this film is that I never got the sense that the writers put any thought into the universe, not do they understand anything about how science, technology, or space work. Similar to the stupidity of Prometheus: no one ever wears space suits or a helmet for some reason, because I guess everyone can breathe everywhere in the universe and every planet is exactly the same as Earth in every way; when people do actually wear "armor" it's the most bizarre, half assed stuff that wouldn't protect you from anything (one in particular is like a half-finished roman cosplay outfit. Yeah very functional for futuristic combat I'm sure!). The level of technology is extremely inconsistent to a level of absurdity so great I'm not going to bother getting into it. There are a lot of throwaway lines that indicate how little thought was put into this universe. At one point the main girl mentions fighting for the empire when she was age 18 and that she "fought on countless worlds". Really, how did you have time to fight on COUNTLESS worlds being that young? Things in space are very, very, very far apart, how did you travel to countless worlds in the span of a few years? Are we really saying this universe even contains COUNTLESS (millions, billions?) of fully populated, habitable worlds in it? How would that even work? How does the empire keep control over millions of worlds, how do people travel and communicate over those distances? Anyway, my point is that there are tons of lines and scenarios in this movie that make it obvious that the only thing that mattered was making things and scenes that "look cool", and nobody cared that nothing makes a single shred of sense if you think about it for more than a second.

Unfortunately, they barely even succeeded at the looking cool thing. A few things do look nice - a few of the Star Wars-derivative locations are nice to look at and a few costumes are ok as well. There is a robot that looks cool and seems important, but then after 2 minutes of screen time is never shown or mentioned again. That said, there is also a lot of horrendous CGI (the background on the moon is laughably atrocious), and a whole lot of scenes randomly going out of focus which feels painfully amateur.

The fights are generally clunky, illogical, filled with "extremely accommodating stunt men" and the comically liberal use of slow motion.

There's more I could say but I'm tired of expending mental resources thinking about this film. To sum it up: Rebel Moon is the worst aspects of Zack Snyder filmmaking, the worst aspects of Zack Snyder writing, and the worst aspects of the Space Opera genre. Watch at your own risk. 1 star for a few of the creature designs and 1 star because my cat seemed to be really into it and only ran away once.

The Breach (I) (2022)

WHY???

[3/10 · 23 September 2023]

What a waste. There should definitely have been enough material here to produce an interesting mixture of body and cosmic horror, even at the budget they were working with. However, the writing is terrible and immensely lacking; as such, it fails to deliver on any level.

Nothing, and I mean literally NOTHING, in the movie is explained. No reason or purpose is given for anything that the characters see, experience, or witness. That combined with the incredibly slow, plodding pace makes it extremely difficult to care about anything that happens. Various potentially interesting things and ideas are introduced, but nothing is done with them.

The viewer is left with a never-ending litany of questions, such as: What was the goal of the physicist? What was his machine supposed to do? What was happening to the "infected(?)"people and why was it happening? Why/how did a "particle accelerator" cause these things to happen? What was the point of the wasp? How did the wasp get affected by, uh, whatever was happening, and why did things happen to the guy who got stung? Why did the scientist guy wear a cultist robe in the one video and what was he even doing? Where did all the creatures come from and why? Why did the house "look older" as the woman pointed out? What was the thing on the wall and why was it there? Why did none of the characters ask any pertinent questions about anything that happened? The list goes on and on.

The dialogue is horrendously lacking. All manner of crazy stuff is going on, yet inexplicably no one bothers to talk about it. The characters are all absurdly, unrealistically stiff and stoic. The dialogue comes in two flavors: utterly pointless or frustratingly limited and vague. Examples:

*silence* "how are you doing" "fine" *silence*

OR

"do you know what a particle accelerator does?" "what?" "it accelerates particles" *silence*

Apparently this was based on a book; did they just get a 1 page executive summary of the book? There had to be an enormous amount of stuff that was left out. I'm sure there were some kind of explanations for things given in the book, why did none of it make it into the movie?

Overall, The Breach is terrible and instantly forgettable. Other than some cool visuals it had next to nothing going for it. Without any kind of explanation(s) than nothing holds any meaning and it's impossible to get invested or care. It's not worth your time, which is a shame because it definitely could have been decent if they provided some exposition about...anything...that happened.

God Is a Bullet (2023)

What the hell is this?

[2/10 · 24 July 2023]

Movies like this make me wonder how it is possible for something to turn out so badly. This had a surprisingly decent cast of actors you probably don't know by name but have seen in other legitimate movies/shows, yet the result is bafflingly bad.

First of all, the plot of the entire movie is...wrong. It's supposedly about a cop who gets a bunch of tattoos so that he can infiltrate a satanic cult. There are two things wrong with that from the jump: it's not a cult at all, it's just a gang. It's largely unclear what they actually DO, but everything they are shown doing is gang stuff (e.g. Criminal activity), not cult stuff (religious or pseudo-religious activity). Secondly, at no point does the cop EVER try "infiltrate" the gang. The whole getting tattoos thing is completely pointless as there is literally no point in the movie where he attempts to join or be friendly with them, in fact it's the complete opposite - he is activity engaged in fighting with them the entire time. The actual plot is: cop and junkie single-handedly attempt to wage war on gang who has satanic tattoos.

Beyond that there isn't much to say about this. I was hoping for an entertainingly cheesy-yet-endearing 90s-throwback "goth" horror/thriller movie like Strangeland since it seemed to carry that aesthetic, but this is just a nonsensical mess which isn't sure what it wants to be. The writing is braindead, the directing is horrible, the editing is so bad that it should be a crime, and every member of the cast gives a terrible performance (for which I blame the director). This movie is apparently based on a book and I wonder if the writer/director was handed a copy of the book with 2/3s of the pages ripped out because it feels like so much is missing. This movie is incredibly choppy, disjointed, and utterly confusing; it's not so much a movie as it is a collection of arbitrary scenes. Nothing is explained and there are no transitions whatsoever. Characters are just at a place, talking to people, etc. And the viewer has no idea how they got there, who these people are, why they're there, why they performed whatever action, what their motivation is, etc. While the editing is to blame for a lot, the writing is equally terrible and nearly every scene is some combination of: sloppy, bizarre, or cheesy. For example: in the opening scene the satanic "cult" all hop out of a van, in broad daylight, acting corny and obvious as hell, to kidnap some random person for reasons that are never explained. WHY? In addition to the plethora of nonsensical "action" scenes, the film is also chock full of incredibly mundane, plodding scenes where characters sit around and "philosophize"-- saying random nonsense which is supposed to sound deep or profound or whatever, which all feels completely removed from whatever was just happening. These interactions feel incredibly scripted and unnatural so I'm guessing they pulled some random lines straight out of the book and threw them in without context. These scenes are never properly set up nor does anyone deliver the lines in a compelling way so they become an absolute slog. Also, why do these movies never just cast random metal/hardcore/goth/alt people, at least for background goons, who already have tattoos and piercings and stuff? The fake tattoos always look so fake and cheesy.

The music in the film is also uniformly atrocious (feels like the generic free music that content creators throw in the background of a youtube video) and it negates whatever mood or tone is supposed to be present.

The only "good" aspect of this film is the violence and gore which is done decently for the budget, but the violence is just as random and arbitrary as everything else. Most of the time characters just inflict random acts of violence that seemingly come out of nowhere and/or are completely ridiculous in method or scope given the current situation.

On the upside, the movie is kind of fun in how utterly flawed it is. It can be enjoyed in a similar manner to something like Birdemic; just drink or smoke and laugh at how absurd everything is. I promise that even piss drunk the movie will make just as much sense as watching it while sober.

I'll Be Watching (2023)

Bland

[3/10 · 8 May 2023]

Not much to say about this one; it's incredibly slow and boring. It only hits the absolute bare minimum required to be categorized as either "sci fi" or "thriller" so don't expect much of either. It tries to present this "what is real?" psychological angle but it goes nowhere and drags on and on without offering anything engaging. The acting and sets are fine enough but the plot is under-cooked and extremely generic. It's the story of a smart house/alexa and it goes exactly how you'd guess (actually the story and expected "twist" is even more dull than you're expecting); my girlfriend predicted the entire plot within the first 10 minutes. Remember The Simpsons "Ultrahouse 3000" episode with the smart house? Yeah, that came out 20+ years ago and explored this concept better and more entertainingly in a short than they could in this entire movie.

There are also various dumb/weird inconsistencies here (the HVAC tech seriously doesn't have an extra...wire...in his truck?) although this is a movie you're going to forget 5 minutes after watching it anyway so whatever.

Also they kill the cat for absolutely no reason so I can't give this a good rating.

Avoid-- not thrilling, not sci fi, not interesting or innovative in any way, just boring.

Black Adam (2022)

DC learned nothing from Justice League

[3/10 · 23 November 2022]

Let me open by saying that I had never heard of Black Adam before this movie, and I'm not terribly familiar with DC characters. As someone unfamiliar with the character(s), this movie was a complete flop. Maybe it's less bad if you have some idea of what is supposed to be going on? The movie has a rushed pace and throws action scene after action scene at you, yet nothing is ever explained and I never felt like I knew what exactly was supposed to be going on. The plot is basically: ancient guy wants a magic crown for...some reason. Then modern day people who are barely explained want it for...some reason. Also, a modern gang that is not explained in any way also wants it for some reason. And then the antagonists who are also sorta good guys want to come lock up Black Adam because, uh, reasons. Cool, great storytelling.

The movie opens back in the ancient times of Khandaq and shows, I guess, the origin of Black/Teth Adam. To be completely honest, I thought we were on an alternate earth and this would eventually be acknowledged and Black Adam would somehow come to Earth 1. The overuse of CGI and the Snyder-style over the top colorization of the film made everything look incredibly fake. This combined with the fact that there were no connections to any real world stuff, I swore this couldn't be regular Earth. Later on we get introduced to the "Justice Society". These were such cheesy, borderline plagiarized marvel characters-- budget storm/jubilee hybrid, budget ant man in a deadpool mask, dr strange clone, and falcon...er hawkman, + fake x-men jet and mansion -- I assumed this was done intentionally as sort of a Deadpool-esque parody because they'd just be quick fodder for Black Adam before he came to real Earth and the real story started. But nope, this Justice Society is seriously the main antagonists (theyre supposed to be good guys but aren't really portrayed as such because black adam has to be an antihero) for most of the movie even though every character is completely bland, flat, and has the exact same powers as a more known hero. Also the gang controlling the city/country is sort of a background threat. They cant seem to decide whether this gang is just small potatoes or is a serious world-level threat. And then there is the really annoying kid who keeps giving Black Adam stupid advice. It feels like they gave him 100 lines but said ok you only have like 3 speaking parts and you need to cram all this stuff in as fast as you can. All of his dialogue is forced and unnatural. The main, actual, villain is not even introduced until the very end of the film and is somehow even cheesier than what we've already seen. I literally laughed out loud at how stupid this devil/demon villain looked. And considering there were only 10 minutes or so left in the runtime, you know all that will happen is an abbreviated fight between Black Adam and devil guy, they will maybe exchange a couple of one liners, and then Black Adam wins and the movie ends. And well, that's exactly what happens. Oh and one of the heroes randomly dies somehow even though they appeared to vastly outmatch the bad guy but I guess that's emotional storytelling or something.

Overall the movie is at best a cheesy action/superhero flick that felt aimed at a young audience, and at worst it is a terrible continuation of the same awful techniques which made Justice League abysmal. I was surprised to see DC make many of the exact same mistakes as Justice League despite how poorly that film was received. Once again we are thrown into a world with no explanation and no reference to the established DCEU, as well as introduced to an entire team of heroes who apparently have a complex history together, yet are not explained or delved into in any way. Most of them don't do anything of value and theyre just sort of there in a scene or two to do some CG or maybe make a quip. Mostly they come off as too corny to be taken seriously. Dr Fate seemed like a potentially cool character and his powers were the most interesting to see on screen, but he was vastly underutilized. They also tried to have an epic emotional scene with him which fell flat considering we literally just met this dude and he probably didn't even have 10 full minutes of screen time. The overuse of CGI on literally everything paired with the "epic" color palettes was nearly as bad as Justice League - it makes everything look and feel super fake and hard to take seriously. The story was not as convoluted as BvS, but it felt just as rushed and was difficult to follow. It was hard to figure out what actually mattered and who was doing what for what purpose. For example: the Lara Croft mom seemed to be important when she was introduced, but quickly fades into the background and plays almost no role in the rest of the film. Speaking of, every character is flat, one dimensional, and is only there to do a thing or deliver a line as required by the plot. The Rock is fine as Black Adam, but the movie doesn't do anything interesting or unique with his character. The backstory and "reveal" is pretty confusing, and the fact that literally no one in this universe has ever previously mentioned Khandaq or Adam makes it hard to feel like he actually matters in the greater scope of things. Although I guess none of it matters anymore since they're rebooting the DCEU. Hopefully that means no more movies like this with the focus being almost exclusively on the overblown Zack Synder style while completely lacking a coherent story and characters. I honestly cannot believe this was a $200 million film, it felt like maybe a quarter of that in both quality and scope.

Unidentified with Demi Lovato (2021)

This is why aliens won't visit us

[1/10 · 24 October 2022]

Just finished watching the hilariously dumb Kesha supernatural show and naturally moved on to this hoping for more of the same level of entertaining trash. Unfortunately, while the Kesha show manages to be so bad and ridiculous that it's really entertaining, Unidentified fails on every level and is supremely boring. Neither the show nor Demi bring anything to the table here. It's immediately clear that Demi doesn't have more than a surface level interest in or knowledge of aliens (and next to none in the paranormal) and as such adds absolutely nothing to any of the conversations or interactions. She/they displays no real personality (other than arbitrarily inserting stuff about their own struggles), and doesn't seem to have any plan or purpose, the result is they come across as a passenger in their own show, just along for the ride. There are no "wow Demi is really off the rails" moments. There are no "wow Demi is really over the top annoying/obnoxious/disrespectful" moments either, just a steady stream of of "Demi is expectedly and unentertainingly annoying/obnoxious/disrespectful" moments. The sister and friend are so prosaic that nothing would be lost if they weren't there. The scenarios are boring at best, and at worst too trite/corny to provide entertainment. It's clear there was minimal effort put into this show - after a single episode they lose sight of investigating Aliens/UFOs and instead we get generic ghost hunting stuff in ep 2 and corny mermaid stuff in ep 3. Even when Demi engages in an activity that should provide particularly juicy/trashy/absurd/ridiculous results, such as the hypnotherapy to recount her, uh, "UFO experience", the results are vapid and void of any level of entertainment. The Kesha show was entertaining because of solid locations + excellent editing which artificially created drama and atmosphere that was over the top & cheesy in all the right ways (combined with the endless cringe and absurdity from Kesha herself) -- Unidentified doesn't even try; there are hardly any re-enactments/dramatizations or moments of drama. Even in segments that are ripe for playing up for dramatic effect (like when Demi is scuba diving and the communication equipment stops working), nothing is done. It's all just incredibly pointless and completely lacks entertainment value on any level.

V/H/S/99 (2022)

Another step back for the V/H/S series

[4/10 · 23 October 2022]

Once again we've got another mixed bag from one of the most inconsistent franchises of all time. The original V/H/S had creative ideas with extremely flawed executions, but it was interesting to see filmmakers explore and experiment with different mediums for horror movies. The series got significantly better in the second installment as the "found footage" format was refined and expanded upon. Sadly the 3rd installment Viral was absolute dogsh!t. The series rebounded somewhat with V/H/S 94 and I was excited for this installment, but it mostly failed to deliver. Overall this is marked by novice writing and sloppy production. It's a collection of amateur filmmakers fumbling with the same mistakes as the original VHS which should have been ironed out of the genre years ago + lack of effort by executives/producers to create a cohesive product. This collection is focused on horror comedy and a mix of pointless, vague, and/or forced 90s tropes which don't add anything. Additionally, being purposefully set in the 90s means the return of awful film quality and the obnoxious, constant camera glitches.

Wrap-around: basically there isn't one. The stop-motion toy solider thing is completely banal and I can't think of a less engaging opening bit. I guess the "wraparound" is supposed to be that the guys in Gawkers are watching the tapes while one of them films these soldiers? Who knows. You see a guy fumbling with a tape for about 2 seconds, yet we get treated to 3 pointless stop motion soldier bits. 0/10

Segment 1 Shredding: I guess this is supposed to follow some kids who are a parody of CKY. They mix in random footage of them doing CKY/Jackass stunts but it had 0 bearing on the actual uh "plot". This is some of the worst found footage horror ever made. Absolutely abysmal, nearly unwatchable camera work and film quality, terrible obnoxious characters, and a completely nonsensical plot. This one dragged on endlessly with no real point. The effects were awful. I was ready to completely give up on VHS 99 at multiple points during this segment. 0/10

Segment 2 Suicide Bid: This was about sorority girls hazing a new girl by burying her in a coffin. It starts to rain so they leave and the coffin floods. This one wasn't great, but compared to the opener it was decent. Somewhat interesting concept and there was good tension when she was in the coffin and it started to flood. Very low budget though and the film quality and effects were pretty bad. 4/10

Segment 3 Ozzy's Dungeon: Whew, things actually start to pick up here. This segment is a parody of Legends of the Hidden Temple/Double Dare. The kids show segment is well done and the humor is well executed without being overdone. However, the second part of this turns into an August Underground style home video gross-out torture porn which was disappointing. It's kind of creative, but it drags on for way too long with too much unnecessary stuff. Felt more like a McKamey Manor video than a horror movie. Thankfully it (finally) picks up again at the end with a cult and demon (kind of like a poor man's Safe Haven from VHS 2) which is rather good but too short - I would have liked the focus to be more on this part. This was the most creative and varied of all the segments, but it needed to be tightened up. 6/10

Segment 4 The Gawkers: In the scope of all the VHS movies this one isn't that good, but for this collection it was one of the best. It follows a group of teenage boys who covertly spy on their hot female neighbor. The boys are obnoxious but extremely believable and the chemistry between them feels very natural. The humor in this one is done well. The segment is short so, despite the small scope, it doesn't lose your interest. The horror stuff at the end is straight forward but done well and is very on brand for these VHS movies. 6/10

Segment 5 To Hell and Back: this opens with some guys filming a cult doing a ritual to summon a demon and they end up being transported to hell. This is the best and tightest of all the segments. It follows an interesting and creative idea that isn't over-explained, and it moves quickly while staying focused. The humor is integrated well and I love how the cult/ritual is never explained so its just these two goofy dudes in NYE outfits fighting their way out of hell which, sans explanation, is hilarious. The sets and location are the most interesting and well utilized of all the segments; the effects are obviously low budget but are the best of the 5. Would like to see these filmmakers in a future segment with a bigger budget. 7.5/10

Overall, this is a weak entry for VHS. It's better than Viral (although that means almost nothing as the bar is absurdly low) but that's it. While some segments are technically more proficient, it lacks the creativity and sense of experimentation/exploration of the original and is all around less focused and less skillfully executed than most of the segments in 2 or 94. You'd expect that with found footage being such a widespread horror genre that these anthologies would get more innovative and artistic over time, but this doesn't deliver much in that regard. It's pretty clear they went with cheaper films by more amateur directors/crews to quickly cash in on the previous success of the franchise without trying to improve upon it or explore new avenues. While not a total flop, this is a disappointment and should not have been as bad as it was. Let's hope they work harder on the next one.

Escape the Field (2022)

Who writes this crap?

[2/10 · 10 May 2022]

It never ceases to baffle me just how bad most movie writers are and how someone could sit back after writing something like this movie and think "yeah that's a job well done". Ugh.

This is such an incredibly bad movie; it's basically a Cube knock-off (actually it's more like a knock-off of a Cube knock-off) that takes place entirely in a corn field and whose writers don't understand any of the things that made Cube a good movie. The movie fails on just about every level; it wants to mimic cerebral puzzle movies but the writers either don't understand the fundamental concepts behind those movies and/or they are just inept. There is no plot here other than "we need to escape", which would be ok if the journey was at least entertaining but it isn't. The "puzzles" and the "traps" are all completely arbitrary. Things only tie into one another on the most basic and forced level. Nothing makes sense and they don't bother to offer any kind of explanations. The writing is braindead. The writers simply don't understand the fundamentals that make a convincing/meaningful puzzle/escape room scenario - in Cube, for example, there are strict environmental limitations which force the characters to have to do certain things, (being trapped in a impenetrable cube where the rooms shifted at intervals so there is no obvious path out nor any way to "cheat") therefore they had no choice but to go from room to room and try to figure out the mechanics of how to escape. Or like in Saw, characters have a story which explains why they are there and generally have specific skills which must be exploited to beat the puzzle(s). Here there are no such constraints, nor skills necessary. They could have just lifted someone up to easily look over the corn to see where you need to go, or climbed the giant tree which is easily visible. Or hell, they have matches (which they used to somehow make a torch which appeared for 5 seconds and was neither explained nor mentioned again) - just burn all the corn down! Or just walk directly through the corn to avoid all the traps which only show up on the paths. I could go on; it's just so stupid and insulting to the audience.

The characters are all 1D and don't matter. The script is infuriatingly unrealistic - nobody asks any questions or tries to figure anything out, they just sort of plod along from random thing to random other thing while pointlessly bickering. They're all equally bland and worthless. No one knows anything, no one's backstory matters, and no one seems to have any useful specialized skills. The deaths are just as vapid; characters get killed in the most boring ways and forgotten about immediately.

The only things that stand out in this movie are those which are super derivative of other movies. Nothing is explained or delved into in a meaningful way. I will admit that a couple of the puzzle elements were decent, but ultimately it doesn't matter since everything was so arbitrary and pointless anyway. Don't think you need to hold out with this one because there is no great reveal or explanation. The end is super lame and CRINGINGLY derivative. Avoid this movie and see any of the myriad Saw, Escape Room, or Cube (even the godawful Cube 2: Hypercube is better than this) films instead. If you have a podcast or youtube channel where you make fun of bad movies this would be a great choice.

Kimi (2022)

Nothing happens

[2/10 · 11 February 2022]

While the trailer made this look like a somewhat interesting film, the truth is that is really isn't. Remember how The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was an interesting thriller about a quirky, unlikable/misunderstood tech girl? Wouldn't it be cool if they did a movie like that but got rid of all the drama, action, characters, and thriller elements? No?? Well, evidently someone thought it would be. (Lisbeth Salander - charisma) + (Rear Window - all interesting elements of a movie) = KIMI.

Zoe Kravitz does a great job playing the agoraphobic tech analyst, but that's about all there is to this movie. It's incredibly slow, almost nothing happens, and the stakes are non-existent. The generic plot is just "something something techbro bad" which you learn in the first 15 seconds and it's not significantly developed beyond that. For the entire first half of the movie absolutely nothing of note happens, we just get some minor character development for the MC; however, even though Kravitz gives a good performance, the character is neither likable nor particularly memorable. The plot centers around her hearing audio of a possible crime in the KIMI software so she tries to report it to corporate. If KIMI was always recording to provide them with analytics, wouldn't they record this kind of stuff ALL THE TIME? You'd think they'd have standard procedures to follow for it. Realistically, since this is a shady corporation after all, the first person she contacted would have just said "sure we'll check it out, no problem" and then immediately deleted it, it would never be spoken of again, and that would be the end of the story. But, because the need to try to force this flimsy concept into a plot, any time she brings this clip up to other people in the company they freak out and act completely irrationally which only makes the MC more passionate about pursuing it. Anyway, that's about all I can say about this film, halfway through we lost interest and pulled our phones out. I tried to stick it out to see where it was going, but about 2/3 of the way in we realized that the overwhelming dullness was becoming painful so we turned it off. Outside of the MC, the other characters are barely there; the viewer isn't made to care about the plot on any level; and there is neither tension nor mystery. Oh and don't worry, the whole first half does nothing but build up her crippling agoraphobia, but as soon as the plot requires it, she is out and about with no problem. Skip It.

The Long Night (2022)

Could have been a good music video

[3/10 · 9 February 2022]

Let's get right to it - this is a bad movie. The story is nearly nonexistent and what is there is the most generic, uninspired cult plot imaginable. The two leads would have made fine side characters in a slasher who get killed off, but they just aren't the type of character who can lead a movie like this. The male lead provides a solid portrayal of the obnoxious rich jockbro archetype, whose purpose is to simply be fodder...but that type of character has no knowledge or skills to lend to this type of story and feels awkward when left in for too long. Scout Taylor-Compton basically reprises her role as Angel Meyers from Rob Zombie's Halloween - a character who is the child of an unspeakable evil that spends most of her time screaming hysterically. However, in The Long Night she is just a forgettable shell of a character and is barely given anything to say or do, despite being the lead. Nothing of any significance happens so I'll leave it at that in terms of the "story".

That said, there were a lot of genuinely great visuals here. The cult looked excellent and there were a number of appealing shots of the cult doing cult things, such as igniting the giant unicursal hexagram symbol on the lawn. This movie seems to take significant influence from 70s cult/psychedelic horror, and the atmosphere was well done. Even though it lacked a lot of aspects necessary for a good movie, many scenes had a strong music video feel and would have worked extremely well in that context. As a movie it completely fails, but if distilled it could have made a great short folk horror film based exclusively around the strength of the visuals & aesthetic without needing to try to incorporate a story.

Scream (I) (2022)

Another Scream movie

[4/10 · 9 February 2022]

The newest "requel" in the franchise is a very "Scream" movie. It's got the good things about a standard Scream movie, as well as ALL the bad things.

Pros: Despite the pointlessness of yet another Scream sequel, it feels like they tried to make this a good movie and pay reverence to the series. One of the upsides of this franchise is that it has had a continuous story throughout without any weird branching timelines or sequels that ignore other movies - for that reason it was pretty interesting to see how the original characters have developed over the years in the same universe. The OGs have great chemistry and work really well together; they still feel like the same characters from the old days, grown up. There is of course quite a lot of meta commentary which has been updated for the modern era (referencing Babadook, It Follows, Hereditary, etc) and for the most part I felt they did a good job with this; it fit with the franchise without being too heavy handed or over the top (cough Matrix 4 cough) and provided some laughs. The movie was shot well and looks good overall. It had a few good kills and some nice shots of Ghostface during and afterwards. The overall atmosphere was more or less true to the Scream series.

Cons: Unfortunately, while I enjoyed this movie in the theater, the more I thought about it the more I realized how flawed it is. The new characters are all paper-thin and completely forgettable. Having the old characters come back is nice, but only Dewey offers anything substantial to the story; Sidney and Gail had minor roles and didn't add anything other than nostalgia. The story itself is lacking and feels like a rehash of bits from the other movies (though they try to disguise this under the veil of "oh but it's meta"). The motives for the killers is really dumb (I mean meta! It's the fandom you guys! So clever and modern...ugh) and feels like a copy of Scream 4, except less impactful because the killers are just random people with no relation to the events of the earlier films. There are no legitimate twists or shocks; I pegged the male killer within the first 20 seconds he was on screen and the female killer is such an unnotable character that you'll forget she was even in the movie up to that point. Once they're unmasked the entire finale goes by the numbers. The other major problem here is that the kills are really weak. There are no creative kills whatsoever, its just Ghostface popping up and stabbing someone. Usually these reboot/sequels will at least step up the brutality & gore, but this instead holds back. The kills are few & far between and the Ghostface scenes are short, lacking any tension/suspense/cat&mouse you'd expect from a slasher. Additionally, this falls victim to the trend of desperately trying to set up a sequel so they barely touch any of the main characters and therefore there is almost nothing at stake; to make it worse, at the end you see some characters who were implied dead are actually alive and well! How is that even possible and why the hell would Ghostface have left people alive? And lastly, they give Dewey a brutal death scene (which was well done and impactful), yet Sidney and Gail are basically untouched, hell Gail gets shot in the stomach but immediately after it's like nothing happened. So yeah - what is at stake exactly when the franchise doesn't have the guts after 5 movies to put any of the main characters in real danger?

Overall, it's an acceptable film...but even with all it's meta commentary, at it's core it's just another by the numbers Scream sequel.

V/H/S/94 (2021)

A pretty solid entry in the V/H/S series

[6/10 · 8 October 2021]

The V/H/S series has always been incredibly hit or miss. The first one, V/H/S, was interesting in that a lot of the shorts challenged (at the time) what the idea of found footage could be and used unconventional cameras (glasses cam, webcam, etc) to provide a different perspective on what a horror film was. While interesting, it didn't always work in practice as those segments had myriad issues (too slow, too much filler, too much obnoxious camera glitching, etc) which kept them from being all that good or entertaining. Thankfully V/H/S 2 significantly improved the formula, and it is still imo the best of the bunch. Things sadly took a nosedive in the highly forgettable V/H/S: Viral, but I'm happy to say that they've rebounded in the 4th offering and V/H/S94 is more or less good all around.

Wraparound story - "Holy Hell" - the idea of this one is really cool, with a SWAT team going into the abandoned compound of a death cult. Unfortunately this is one of the weakest segments due to the extremely poor film quality, cheap effects, and some of the worst acting I've ever seen committed to film which manages to get worse the longer the segment goes on. I would've liked to see a more expanded story as it definitely had potential, but I feel like I never had any idea what they were supposed to be doing.

"Storm Drain" - this one starts off kind of slow and between that and the lame wraparound intro, I was thinking this whole anthology would be a bust. However, this one gets significantly better as it goes along and ends up being pretty good. The sewers provide interesting, dark, and very creepy atmosphere-- vaguely reminiscent of As Above, So Below. This very much feels like what you'd expect from a found footage vhs horror film and I think nails what the series is all about.

"The Empty Wake" - this one also starts off slow as well, most of it is a lady sitting around at a somewhat unsettling wake, but it gets pretty good when it picks up. It's rather short and you get almost nothing in the way of story or development, but there are some cool visuals & gore, and it's suitably creepy.

"The Subject" - holy crap, this one is absolutely INCREDIBLE. This is by far the longest and most detailed of any of the segments, and the film quality is a lot better than everything else. The Subject is on par with "Safe Haven" from v/h/s 2 (the indonesian death cult one) as undoubtedly the best of the entire series...which makes sense as it turns out that the writer/director Timo Tjahjanto also wrote Safe Haven (along with The Raid's Gareth Evans). You get a mad scientist turning people into robots whose secret lab gets raided by the police - lots of really good body horror, violence, and gore. This one gets a little cheesy and video game-y at times, but overall it's incredible - very engaging and well made. Also, by far the least likely to have ever been transferred to a vhs tape lol.

"Terror" - this one had potential, but never fully realized it. You have a group of extremist militia guys who have some kind of secret weapon and are going to attack a federal building. I found this to be entertaining; it was realistic enough while also being suitably tongue-in-cheek. It had a decent build up, but it kind of fizzled out before ever hitting a satisfying crescendo. I think this one needed more time to develop the story and it could have been significantly better; once the "action" starts, it feels like they kind of rushed to end it which leaves you feeling like "oh...that's it?". I will say that this one felt very "vhs-y" and definitely nailed the vibe of what this whole series is about, however it's still the weakest segment other than the wraparound.

Overall, this is an enjoyable anthology. It offers one of, if not the, best segments of the entire film series, and 3 other segments ranging from decent to pretty good. And while the wraparound was quite weak (and generally they always are), it had a couple redeeming qualities. These found footage films aren't for every horror fan, but if that's your thing than it's definitely worth a watch and it's definitely better than VHS: Viral.

The Empty Man (2020)

Surprisingly worthwhile

[6/10 · 26 October 2020]

The Empty Man is such a weird release. I guess it was made by Fox and then acquired by Disney in the merger. Obviously not being "disney"-ish at all they had no idea what to do with it. So it was released out of nowhere with no hype and hardly any marketing. It's based on some random comic/graphic novel I've never heard of...ok, I'm not big into comics so that doesn't say much, however I searched on the net and there were only 3 youtube videos about the comic and each had about 30 views so apparently no one else has heard of it either. I have no idea why this seemingly random IP (horror IP no less) was chosen to be made into a movie. Not only that, but a movie where they actually tried to make a good film. While this film (and how they cut the trailer) has a teen horror/creepypasta vibe, in execution it has more in common with The Void, Apostle, or The Endless in that it explores esoteric concepts, cosmic horror, and is deeply atmospheric.

As others have pointed out, this movie has three distinct sections. The first one takes place in Bhutan and is basically "Group of hikers encounter weird stuff and get stranded". While this was probably a bit long for an opening section, I enjoyed it a lot and it does eventually tie in to the later portion of the film in a significant way. It is very well shot and suitably atmospheric. One of the reasons I decided to check this movie out is because Lustmord worked on the soundtrack and right from the start you can tell. The sound design throughout is excellent and underscores the epic intentions of the film.

The next part is more of a teen horror/creepypasta and focuses around an ex-cop trying to figure out what's going on with local teenagers disappearing. It's very similar to Slenderman with kids getting into this viral meme of The Empty Man causing them to act weird and die for unknown reasons. That's a thoroughly well-trodden premise, but they do a fairly good job with it in this movie. While some parts are a little slow, overall there is enough constant buildup & explanation to keep things interesting and to continually increase the stakes of the movie to keep the viewer interested. As the movie goes on, the cop finds out about the Pontifex cult and from there it veers away from the "teen horror" and focuses on the cult & cosmic horror. The cult, seemingly extremely influenced by Scientology, is executed very well and as the main character explores the cult there are a lot of great creepy scenes. The actual message of the cult is pretty poorly done though and just sounds like a more jibberishy version of scientology with some buddhist stuff sprinkled in which is hard to take seriously even with the suspension of disbelief. While there is good stuff all the way through to the end, the movie does start to go downhill a bit because of this shift in the third act. Whenever the "bad guys" are shown to have a large scale operation with seemingly limitless personnel and resources it tends to introduce too many questions and implausibilities. For one, the cult has tons of members who are all actively not killing themselves, meaning the teens actions earlier now make no sense and thus creating a significant disconnect in the plot. Additionally, I'm a huge fan of cosmic horror and mysticism so I enjoyed that the movie focused on that quite a bit, but I can see how this heavy focus on esoterica might lose people. That said, it moves along well enough until the ending.

I thought the idea used in the ending was excellent, however the way it's executed is...confusing. It sounds cool at first, but when you start to analyze it things don't add up; it makes the viewer question literally everything in the second and third acts and introduces an endless amount of questions and potential plot-holes, much to it's detriment. They should have cut a bit from the middle of the movie and given more time to better explain how the revelation the ending provides makes sense in the greater context of the film.

Overall, this is a surprisingly competent effort to deliver an actual horror movie with atmosphere and substance. It's very long but it kept me engaged and I'd say only 10-15 minutes should have been cut, or at least redistributed between parts. While it has it's flaws and doesn't reach the heights of the few substantive recent horror films like the aforementioned the Void, it's worlds better all the cookie-cutter stuff that plagues the genre. Definitely recommended, though don't expect a game-changer.

The Beach House (II) (2019)

Great Value ver of Color Out Of Space

[2/10 · 15 July 2020]

Honestly there isn't much to say about this one, but having wasted the time to sit through the whole thing I desire the slight vindication of a review. This movie is basically the recent (and very well done) Color Out Of Space if every aspect of it sucked. The Beach House technically falls into the category of "slow burn" due to languid pacing, yet instead of the fire growing into a worthy second or final act, it just fizzles out. Along with the pacing, the dialogue is atrocious & simplistic, and the acting is somehow even worse. The male lead is one of the worst actors I've ever seen, as in Birdemic level. In order to dress up an otherwise bland film, there are a bunch of pretentious "art exhibit" style shots of the sea & water & related things which add nothing beyond trying to fool you into thinking that this movie can't be bland because it's DEEP (spoiler: it's not). The accompanying music follows suit- it's that annoying sort of art documentary noisy drone written by someone who used to write an actual genre of music but has gotten older and pretentious so now they write "abstract" music devoid of musicality because they have evolved past simpleton ideas like "music theory" and "sounding good". Nothing is explained or expounded upon, and so the movie is simply a series of events that just sort of happen arbitrarily, most of them lacking any purpose or connection to other scenes. The first part of the movie is about the two main characters at a beach house (there is some muddled dialogue about what is going on with the house and who it belongs to which makes you think there might be something sinister afoot, but it actually doesn't matter in any way). Other than the girl having to pull a worm thing out of her foot (why? where did it come from? what are the rules of this infection/infestation? who knows!), nothing of substance happens. There are some psychedelic scenes with elements that are sort of interesting, but none of it is given any context nor does it tie into later events so...who cares. Towards the middle of the movie you will have lost interest and inevitably pulled out your phone and started browsing facebook. You won't have committed much of the first part to memory, but it's fine because almost none of it matters, nor does it move the plot forward in any meaningful way. After a while you'll notice something seems to have started to happen which brings us to the climax of the movie. In the final act the couple leaves the house and there is lot of fog accompanied by flashing lights. People start turning into zombies or whatever and we get some body horror which again is a much lesser version of Color Out Of Space. There were some cool and gross ideas, but due to the low budget those scenes are super short and the prosthetics & effects are so obviously fake that they lose their visceral intensity. Also, up to that point the movie was so unimpressive that I just couldn't bring myself to care what was happening. No explanation is ever given for what unfolds, where it came from, or why. The characters crawl around for a while and then the movie is over. The last shot is so terrible and such a perfect example of "we have no idea how to write an ending so just make one character repeat an arbitrary line of dialogue a bunch of times because it makes it DEEP". In the end, this is a pretty bland, amateur film that is neither brainy nor profound. It's not mysterious, it's just written badly and lacked the budget for convincing visuals. The only thing deep is the amount of reaching necessary to describe this as "cosmic" or "lovecraftian". I guess you could say that at it's very core, the fundamental idea here was good, but the delivery was incredibly lacking. Overall, this is typical Shudder trash and the prevalence of this type of movie on the site is exactly why I cancelled my subscription.

Confessional (III) (2019)

Dialogue: The Movie

[1/10 · 30 May 2020]

First, lets get right to it: the ENTIRE movie takes place in a confession booth. Remember that movie Phone Booth? Now, imagine that the only camera was inside the booth and you never saw the outside world. Doesn't that sound like an awesome movie? No??? Well the creators of this apparently though it would be a good idea. While movies like Unfriended: Dark Web and the V/H/S series experiment with new ways to make the Found Footage style dynamic and interesting, Confessional goes for the opposite approach- removing any and all potential the medium has and delivering one of the absolute most barebones "films" in history. I'm extremely hesitant to even call this a film when it fact it's more like simply "Dialogue: The Movie".

Anyhow, since they didn't spend any money on the production of this movie hopefully they spent it on the story? Nope. This comes across as a 13-16yr olds revenge fantasy wet dream. The movie revolves around the character of Amelia who is apparently one small step away from Jesus- all the characters seem to idolize her to the level of a bad fanfic. Everyone loves her the most and is mad at so & so for falling short of loving her enough, or...something. The narrator is forcing everyone to confess and this narrator feels like a blatant and highly self-congratulatory self-insert. The characters are all cardboard cutout level 1-D (macho jock guy, a55hole alt right guy, crazy loner girl, guys roommate, someone's girlfriend, someone else's girlfriend) and act in completely unrealistic ways. They all let someone they didn't know all that well tape their "biggest regret"? Two people meet up and within seconds have sex in the booth? A guy has no reservations about getting sxcked off through a glory hole in the booth? Yes, totally believable things people would do, especially when being in a room watched/filmed by an unknown person! Unsurprisingly, the overall story is pretty straight-forward, generic teen/college drama. Everyone's "confession" is easily guessable within the first few minutes of them talking. Someone is gay, someone is cheating, someone was raped at a party...cornerstones of teen drama and absolutely no curveballs. They even go a step further and make it offensively dumb with the addition of 1 dimensional, heavy-handed, cartoonish "woke" stuff. The problem is that when you include very base-level woke stuff in a movie this bad/stupid, it makes people equate progressive ideas with a stupid ass movie of caricatures shoving their "woke" ideas upon the viewer and therefore not take them seriously. It would be much more effective if the movie was compelling and intelligently brought up progressive ideas in a way that accurately conveyed their seriousness. Additionally, this movie commits the cardinal sin of believing that "convoluted" is synonymous with deep/complex/unpredictable/smart. The movie continually cuts back and forth between the characters, giving them just enough time to talk without saying anything and then cutting away right when they might divulge some plot progressing information. This is done to artificially extend the rather shallow story and give the impression that the confession is going to be much more shocking than it actually is. It takes forever to get anywhere and you'll be constantly bored considering there is no actual visual stimuli- thereby forcing the movie to foolishly rely solely on its obtuse, overly confusing dialogue and storytelling. If you're going to reduce a movie to only the writing, than the writing needs to be exceptionally strong! Anyway, that's more than enough about this one. Terrible idea for a movie style; really low level, predictable writing; 1 dimensional, uninteresting characters; trite twist and complete lack of payoff. If I hadn't already cancelled my Shudder account than I would have after seeing this.

Astral (III) (2018)

Get your Supernatural Occult Horror Bingo ready

[2/10 · 30 December 2018]

Astral is another generic supernatural 'occult horror' film following in the same vein as the plethora of these movies to come out since Insidious popularized the horror potential of the astral realm. As per usual, this rehashes all the familiar tropes: opening scene where a professor explains entire plot of movie, professor tells kids about astral projection but then says its bad for...reasons (here the prof wants them to write a paper on astral projection but tells them not to try it. what!? perfect example of the nonsensical writing throughout this movie), the main kids are all stereotypes whose on screen interactions are perpetually awkward and they would never actually be friends in real life, kid wants to try to do astral projection to communicate with dead parent, kid who seemingly has never heard of astral projection masters it after two tries, astral projection used as a buzzword to really just mean sleep paralysis (sleep paralysis = scary and demons that want to kill you for some reason), kid projects twice and brings horrible god level demon over into the waking world, said god level demon manifests as...nondescript black shadows that slightly unsettle people, astral plane is just a smoke machine in a hallway (bonus: it's only shown for like 4 seconds), kid happens to be part of a lineage where parent had the same unexplained (spooky!) experience, kid visits older seasoned psychic (in this case who literally wrote the book on astral projection), psychic vastly overcharges 120gbp for the most basic reading tarot known to man, tarot for shock value- the reading conveniently involves only drawing cards with "scary" imagery, the seasoned psychic who knows all about occult affairs is a predictably terribly written character and immediately freaks out when something supernatural happens, flashback to the main char as a kid drawing the demon/shadow because OMG NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE. Yeah you get the point. Anyway, even though its all cliches and tropes it wasn't the worst movie ever. However, once it starts getting into the second act and the kid is starting to discover what it happening it just ends. Like, literally in the middle of a scene as it's building the story it just stops and the credits role. So nice job releasing 60% of a movie. Avoid and check out one of the other hundred recently horror movies on sleep paralysis and how it will summon demons to kill you and all your friends, apparently.

Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

Surprisingly good and creative use of the "found footage" genre

[7/10 · 17 October 2018]

The first Unfriended film was creative in how it utilized the sort of "found footage" style of being 100% confined to a character's computer screen; however it was a pretty weak film overall. It didn't explore the potential of that film style, and the supernatural protagonist idea was more ridiculous than scary. That said, Dark Web is a vast improvement in every area. The non-traditional camera style film has been done several times now and as such they had to get creative and push it further. They do a much better job with that here, and there is substantially more going on than simply a Skype session. The characters are more engaging this time. I wasn't exactly identifying with them, but I also didn't want them all to die asap like the annoying terrible characters of the original. The plot is based in reality this time- Matias took a laptop that belonged to an elite hacker who seemingly makes snuff films to sell on the dark web and now the hacker wants it back at any cost. They develop the plot well and the pacing is solid. The very beginning is a bit weak, but it picks up quickly and holds your attention. Most people's only knowledge of the "dark web" is that scary, weird, and illegal stuff lives there and this movie exploits that successfully. There is a twist in the middle which I am on the fence about. The movie is good after the twist and I like where they end up taking it, but I really would have liked to see how everything would have played out if the original story kept going without the twist. Anyway, Dark Web surprised me with how good it was overall and I definitely recommend it for people into found footage (and similar) horror. There is not much, if anything, completely novel here and if you've seen a bunch of these movies than you'll be able to predict a lot of what happens, but it's still done well and enjoyable. My only gripe is that this movie completely relies on the trope of the nearly omniscient hacker villain - he can see everything, hear everything, and be almost anywhere at any time. Apparently he can also drag bodies around a city without being noticed. I realize the film doesn't work without this, but I definitely rolled my eyes a few times. Then again, it wouldn't be very scary otherwise!

Seven in Heaven (2018)

Who thinks this sounded like a good idea?

[2/10 · 17 October 2018]

I was going to write a longer review but it's not necessary. All you need to know about this flick is that they don't do anything interesting with the dimensional travel concept. Nothing of any particular consequence happens when the kids travel to the other dimension, and it's full of awkward discrepancies and inconsistencies. Nearly all questions it raises are left unanswered. The few answers it gives are completely mundane and make you wonder why this movie was even made. Anything they introduce that seems suspicious and/or like will be integral to the plot later turns out to neither be explained nor necessary to the plot. The characters face only the most rudimentary of trials and there is no payoff whatsoever. I'd love to hear how exactly the writer sold this movie. "Ok so check it out- we've got these kids at a party and then they travel to another dimension. The dimension is basically the same but different...somehow. Anyway they basically just run around for a while and are confused and then eventually they come back and yeah. Well...that's pretty much it right there". Wow, doesn't that sound so great? Oh, and a solid 1/3 of this is basically an entirely different movie which covers the rest of the kids at the party. The majority of that part is the cops trying to get into the house and the kids saying no, then every so often they bring the parent of one of the kids to come yell at them- even though none of these characters was previously introduced nor are they mentioned again making it all feel very tedious and pointless. Avoid this. I love this type of movie where the characters and audience are challenged to question reality, but this one doesn't deliver in any way.

Ghoul (2018)

Decent, but nothing new

[5/10 · 27 August 2018]

Overall this series was pretty good - good acting, good production values, the horror elements were done well. But sadly there wasn't anything that took it to the next level or made it particularly notable. Here are my main issues with the film:

• Probably 90% of the cool scenes were shown in the netflix trailer. It hyped it up to be more intense than it was, which leads me to...
• This was too long, they should have either turned it into a full series and fleshed out the story-line, or left it as a normal length film. Despite being so long there was very little development in the story and as such they could have cut out quite a bit to focus moreso on the action and horror elements without negative impact.
• The setting is way too similar to Equilibrium and it didn't particularly add anything to the story; it felt like they were trying to do 2 movies at once- one half is the exploration of dystopian society and the struggle people go through to deal with it. and the other is the possessed guru getting captured. Both potentially interesting ideas, but they don't particularly fit together with what we're given. Maybe if the series was longer they could have tied it all together more effectively. As such, I found myself largely disinterested in the dystopian stuff and was wanting them to hurry it along to get to the horror parts.
• They referenced Djinn in the very beginning (smokeless fire) and I was really hoping they would go hard into occult/mysticism territory but sadly they did not and it was a pretty generic possession story without much depth.

So ultimately, just give the trailer a watch as it contains almost all the good parts of series and spare yourself the filler. That said, I'd like to see more stuff like this but it needs a better and more focused story.

Incident in a Ghostland (2018)

Manage Your Expectations

[5/10 · 26 June 2018]

I've got to open this by saying that Martyrs is probably my favorite horror film of all time. It was the perfect mix of twisted, extreme brutality and unsettling psychological horror. Torture porn with a purpose, if you will. Naturally I was hoping for more of that from Pascal, but sadly that is not what this movie is. Ghostland is more of a "Martyrs for the Annabelle era, directed by Rob Zombie". A fitting comparison would be like how the writers of Saw went from that to Insidious. Where Martyrs was a very unique film, it seems like the influences are too readily apparent here. It's VERY obvious that the director saw some Rob Zombie movies and wanted to replicate that type of atmosphere and aesthetic. Additionally, instead of a unique story Ghostland feels like numerous of horror cliches stuck together and lacking a genuine purpose. Sure it's twisted stuff, but it's all things that horror fans have see before and very little that you don't see coming. It feels like watering down the material to break into the american market. Disappointing to see one of the French masters of the ultra violent do that, but oh well. The psychological element is certainly present, but like I said it's nothing that horror aficionados haven't encountered before. The pacing is also rather slow for much of the film and I found myself losing interest from time to time. Additionally, I kept waiting for a big payoff- either in the form some revelation or a bout of intense gore, but as time wore on and the payoff never came I found each subsequent scene to slowly become less and less impactful. There is nothing here that really makes you think, and it certainly does not stick with you in the way that a film like Martyrs does. So all that said, as you can see if you are going into this expecting another Martyrs than Ghostland will disappoint. However, if instead you compare this to other contemporary horror like The Conjuring, Insidious, Annabelle, the TCM remakes, etc than it does succeed in standing above them. It will probably shock fans of those films. Again, with the Rob Zombie influence this movie features a lot of style and very strong atmosphere/aesthetic. It captures the grittiness and creepiness you'd expect from this kind of horror and hits you with the requisite jump scares. Cliches aplenty are used, but at least they're the more creepy and unsettling ones. The writing is pretty good; there are no dumb/obnoxious teenagers making stupid decisions, and they at least try to make you feel for these characters. There is some violence and disturbing torture, and there is indeed a vaguely interesting twist, but in the end it's really no more daring than a movie like See No Evil or any given TCM reboot which also feature the big, dumb, indestructible, creeper-with-issues cliche. So in conclusion, if you're looking for something that's a step up from hollywood horror than give this a shot. It's an above average horror film that, while not bad on its own, sadly does not achieve the uniqueness or great vision that we know this writer/director is capable of.

Downrange (2017)

Surprisingly bland offering from Kitamura

[2/10 · 11 May 2018]

I checked this because it comes from Ryûhei Kitamura who has done some great stuff in the past like No One Lives, as well as some pretty good stuff like Midnight Meat Train, Alive, Versus, etc. His work is known for having an interesting and/or weird storyline with atypical twists. So, even though the trailer was rather underwhelming I figured he had some tricks up his sleeve and would deliver something unexpected and unique. Well, apparently he's lost the magic because this movie is completely bland. I'd never guess this came from the same writer/director as the above mentioned films. The ONLY positive thing about it is that there is quite a bit of gore (not totally over the top J horror gore like Tokyo Gore Police etc, but definitely in that japanese style) and you get to see a bunch of people get shot which I guess is fairly brutal. The rest of the movie, however, is completely unnotable as nothing actually happens and there is no arc nor development of any kind. There is only one location in the entire film and the bulk of its duration is spent on the kids sitting behind the car with largely pointless mumblecore dialogue and wooden acting. I kept waiting for something unexpected to happen, or for the dialogue to tie into some major event or revelation later on, but it never does. The film is completely linear and there are no twists of any kind. When a character performs an action or a new character(s) shows up, it goes in the exact way you'd think. The end scene is highly underwhelming and you don't learn anything about...anything. You don't learn a single thing about any of the characters so how are you supposed to care about anything that happens? I'm definitely a fan of Kitamura's work but this is a miss and not worth a watch. Very disappointing.

#Screamers (2016)

Why was this made?

[1/10 · 19 April 2018]

OK so I'll open by saying that on paper this movie sounded alright - I saw the trailer and thought "ok another found footage movie about some people trying to debunk a scary video, I've seen a bunch of those so I might as well give this a shot". Unfortunately, in practice nothing about this movie works. #Screamers is a strong contender for worst found footage horror movie ever. This film is predominately focused around the company Gigaler, and it stumbles immediately from the get go. The first HOUR or so of the movie is literally just a guy filming people in the office doing day-to-day stuff and giving background on the company. The weak writing is instantly apparent; despite spending an absolutely inordinate amount of time on the inner workings of company, the writers seem to have no idea what this company does or how one even works. It's like they just threw together some buzz terms they read in an article about google: uh yeah this company does uh...social media...and videos...and, uh, steals people's privacy...somehow. Oh and they have a foosball table because modern tech startup! Nothing about the company makes much sense and nobody seems to do all that much there. Also, why is there a guy filming everything people do? Another issue is the character writing. For example, they hype the main boss guys up like bigtime entrepreneurs who have been at this for a long time and have created a(nother) seemingly solid business, yet at the same time the guys act pretty clueless and like they're still grasping in the dark hoping to find their big break. That big break apparently lies within a couple of short videos that show a girl and then a head pops up with a loud scream jump scare, ending abruptly. Um, weren't these jump scare videos being done like 10 years ago? Five Nights At Freddy's has way better jump scares and it only took one dude to make vs. this crap from an entire film crew/studio. Anyway, back to the dialogue: case in point, when the boss calls the lady who makes the videos it should have been unsettling and introduced some tension / creepiness to showcase the forthcoming scariness that will be associated with tracking down the videos. However, the conversation is super awkward and unintentionally comedic. The boss doesn't seem to know what he is even doing, and the lady sounds bored. That is representative of all the movie's dialogue - awkward and confusing. This is a huge problem being that this movie is 95% awkward, pointless dialogue and a mere 5% stuff happening. Even with all the bad dialogue, they could have made up a bit with the scary parts, right? Wrong. The whole video thing is highly unbelievable. The videos themselves are like 10 second clips with 0 budget that aren't creepy in any way. There is not a single thing about these videos that would get people curious as to who is behind them, especially not enough to physically go after them. In my opinion, they should have dumped all the budget into making genuinely bizarre, creepy videos that would intrigue viewers. Later, there is something about the whole thing being a hoax and the company trying to get publicity by exposing it, which is a decent idea, but I was so bored and off-put that I had lost all interest by then. Also something about Jack The Ripper? Who cares. Nothing scary happens. There are no deaths, no on-screen tension, no spooky stuff, etc. Ultimately the movie is terrible and beyond boring and I would encourage you to avoid at all costs.

Jigsaw (I) (2017)

Jigsaw's greatest hits / pointless cash grab reboot

[3/10 · 31 October 2017]

First let me open by saying that I'm a huge fan of the Saw franchise and would put the original Saw in my top 3 horror movies of all time. Initially I was really hyped because there were rumors of James Wan And Leigh Whannel coming back, but sadly that fell through. After seeing the trailer I had really low expectations for this film and it completely lived up to them! It felt like on the one hand it was simply a "Jigsaw's Greatest Hits" rehash of previous traps, but done in a more bland manner - the chain around the neck that pulls you into a blade trap, the syringe trap, the being buried alive trap, the deadly collar trap, etc. All of these were seen in past movies where they were done in a much more interesting and creative way that was both extremely visceral and (more or less) integral to the plot. The new traps are loosely held together by another generic story of cops (with secrets!) hot on the trail of jigsaw - this was done well in most of the movies, but the cop portion in Jigsaw is like an even worse version of the terrible, awkward Saw 7, if that's possible. On the other hand, Jigsaw felt like a musician who re-releases an old demo tape as a quick cash grab - since this movie is sort of a prequel we get to see a bunch of older jigsaw traps which, as stated, were less good, made less sense, and didn't fall in line with anything the past movies had built Jigsaw up to be (oh yeah and even though this happened 10 years ago, the size and scope of the traps were way bigger and more complex than the things in the first couple movies which were supposed to happen after this, how does that work exactly??). Additionally, the writers apparently missed all 7 movies that happened before this because this one completely goes against all the lore that has been created and built upon. It feels like a watered down reboot which has no real point whatsoever other than to try to milk the Saw name and make a quick buck. Like I said, I am a huge fan of this series, but this movie is at best mediocre and largely forgettable - if this was the first movie in the series I would have never gotten into it. As others have said, this movie lacks everything that made the saw franchise great other than "traps". It lacks the Saw trademarks like muted color palette, quick edits, extremely visceral traps, claustrophobic & creepy atmospheres, actual tension, interesting dynamic characters and unique, compelling story (first 3 for sure, and 4-6 at least tried) with great twists. Additionally, this one pretty much forgets/erases ALL the lore introduced in the previous movies. They've already explored Jigsaw's origins in depth and showed how he got into developing the traps (plus how Hoffman and Amanda helped him build a lot of them, early ones included) and how he developed the philosophy behind them - testing people to see if they have the will to survive and continue living. This movie tosses that out the window, reducing Jigsaw/new apprentice to clichéd moral guys who just kill 'bad people' because somebody mislabeled a jigsaw x-ray (Saw is the king of the retcon but this one fails so hard at it), the traps are both arbitrary and at times unbelievably specific - for example one guy falls into the floor and there is a tape there that specifically talks to that guy...yet there is NO way jigsaw could have predicted that he specifically would find it. The victims are really poorly written; the writing offers some absurdly specific details about some of them while it leaves out the larger background of who these people even are and why you should care about them. The "game"/traps feel too rushed, not giving you enough information on the people and how/why the traps were supposed to test them in a way meaningful to them, which has always been a big component of the traps in the past. The jigsaw character, who normally is the best thing about the franchise is totally devoid of all the things that made him interesting and sadly could've been left out without any real detriment to the film. The new apprentice plot line makes no sense and should have been WAY more fleshed out if they insist on an absolutely ridiculous retcon this huge. As is, it makes no sense and just leaves tiny plot holes such as, but not limited to: every single aspect of the story in relation to the past movies' storyline(s). The characters are all super bland and I've already forgotten almost all of them, cops and victims. I also felt like the reactions of all characters was kind of inappropriate for the situations; the cops never seemed to be that concerned/shocked about victims/dead people, and the victims didn't seem all that genuinely afraid/terrified/confused (not sure if bad acting or bad directing, likely both). This made it hard for me to care about the "story".. Anyway, I could write more but I won't. All you need to know is that Lionsgate had 7 years to develop an absolutely kick ass comeback for the franchise but instead delivered a bland watered down reboot that is too weak for the fans while also lacking anything to hook new viewers. People who hated these movies for being too torture porn aren't going to magically like them because you watered down the gore and got rid of any meaningful story. People who loved these movies will immediately see how weak this one is comparatively. All in all, casual horror fans may find enjoyment, but fans of the Saw series will be highly disappointed. Get Leigh Whannel back in the writers chair or let the franchise die.

The Belko Experiment (2016)

Quite entertaining, yet lacking strong fundamentals

[5/10 · 20 June 2017]

The premise of this movie intrigued me quite a bit - how would they pull off a Battle Royale style film with an entire office? While they hype it as a psychological thriller/horror film, it ends up leaning much more towards the action/horror side - mainly in terms of violence and gore. Plot is mostly nonexistent beyond "a bunch of people are gonna die". Firstly, let me say that overall I did enjoy this movie. The entertainment factor was definitely there. It was shot well, and the action was really good. The characters were believable and the fast pace kept you interested for the duration without any parts dragging or becoming tedious (and helps you to overlook the flaws). It was well done without being cheesy or hamfisted like The Purge series. For action/horror fans who want to see a whole bunch of regular joes go at it, it's definitely worth a watch just as long as you don't expect much beyond that. Which brings me to my next point, the flaws of this movie. One big issue I had is sort of inherent to this type of movie with a large number of characters. While they sort of focused on a few main characters, the bulk of the office was largely never touched upon so we barely know anything about any of the characters. And since this a movie about killin' em all, it's inevitable that there will be some periods of having to quickly get rid of large numbers of people. This happens a few times during which we get to see heads explode in rapid succession and quick camera shots of people getting hacked up or shot; this certainly is thrilling and cool looking, but the problem is that these are all faceless NPCs so their deaths mean nothing and the audience feels nothing. Even when the "main" characters die, you don't feel much because you know next to nothing about them. Beyond that, the biggest flaw in this movie is the lack of psychological elements and the ultimately pointless ending. This movie tries to mirror the psychological elements from films like The Killing Room (2009), but fails. When the voice talks over the loudspeaker you never get any sense of greater purpose; it feels that it exists only to offer a generic "kill people" task and advance the simplistic plot of "kill all the people". There is no rhyme or reason behind the "tests", and I think they could have utilized this element in a significantly more unique/interesting way.

*SPOILERS*

The ending of this movie is a COMPLETE rip off of the aforementioned The Killing Room. The whole "welcome to phase 2" thing. Except that it worked (really well, imo) in Killing Room because they explained what the experiment was, and it ended up being a pretty intense and unexpected revelation. During that film there were only a handful of characters so each one of their actions played a significant role on the outcome of the film. In Belko Experiment, everyone is basically inconsequential and none of their actions have any real impact on anything. In Killing Room, Nick Canon won for specific reasons which were critical to the purpose of the experiment. In Belko, Mike arbitrarily wins and it doesn't seem to mean anything in particular. Anyone could have been the last man standing and the ending would have been exactly the same. The ending is a total cop out; the obligatory "twist" ending where they drop some vague psychological nonsense yet don't explain anything. I can't care about "phase 2" when you haven't told me what or why "phase 1" was. It feels like the writer/directors just couldn't come up with a good idea or explanation so they just said f- it, it worked for this other movie so lets just copy that and call it a day.

Overall the film was entertaining and worth a watch, but I'm disappointed by the lack of substance and psychological angle. It could have been a lot more.