Category Archives: 1 Star Movies

Sixteen Candles Review

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It’s time to look at one of those films that tries to do a lot of things and ends up not doing any of them well. The humor’s all a miss, the characters are weak, and the plot isn’t particularly interesting. That’s not a mix of elements that you want to have in your film and yet here we are. I’m afraid that this is a film that you will want to avoid, but it does remind you how rowdy school can get.

The film starts off by introducing us to Sam. She is ready to celebrate her 16th birthday, but unfortunate it has been completely overshadowed by the family wedding happening the next day. As a result nobody even remembered that it was such a big day for her. No worries though, the audience won’t forget because she whines about it for the duration of the movie. Sam runs off to school where she embarrasses herself by filling out a risky note and by mistake giving it to Jake. Sam then decides to at least go to the school dance, but this may not actually work out in her favor.

There’s not really anything good about this film and that’s always pretty unfortunate. Right from the start there’s quite a bit of language and so you can tell that the writing was not particularly good. It’s used as a crutch for the humor and the humor isn’t any good either. That’s already a pretty big strike against the film. Slice of life comedies/drama titles really depend on the writing to be good since otherwise there isn’t any other hook that the film brings to the table.

Then you’ve also got the annoying characters which doesn’t help matters. Samantha spends most of the film complaining and digging herself into bigger and bigger trouble as the film goes on. She seems a bit shallow as she only likes Jake for his looks. She literally knows nothing else about him. Then while she does fend off the advances of Ted for the most part, she doesn’t escape the interaction with her dignity intact.

The rest of the side characters are no better. Ted is definitely an awful character. He’s overly pushy and also isn’t afraid to take advantage of someone who isn’t in their right frame of mind. Any scene with him just drags on and on with no end in sight. Then you’ve got Jake who is the main guy. He’s not much better than the others as he basically gets ready to cheat on his current girlfriend. He is ready to move on from her as soon as the next person is available so he is hardly a very sincere guy. Hopefully Sam is ready for when things don’t go well.

There’s also a comedic subplot about the wedding going on, but there’s nothing funny about it. It’s all super exaggerated and a little on the gross side as well. The film tries to make both families look pretty bad throughout the exchange to the point where you are no longer sure if there is anyone to root for. It’s also definitely a little odd that the families didn’t meet until the day before the wedding or how the groom and bride didn’t know much about each other. I guess it’s convenient this way though.

Naturally there is a ton of romance here even if almost none of it appears to be genuine between the characters. It’s just everyone trying to increase their social standing by getting together with someone. It’s seen as a badge of honor in this film’s community and naturally that raises even more questions. Or it would if you actually cared about the film by that point. Most likely you will already have checked out by now. There isn’t anything to hold your interest here. You’ll just be waiting for the film to wrap its run time up so the disaster will have ended. I forgot what score I gave the breakfast club, but this one is definitely around that film’s level. In a lot of ways both films are pretty similar.

I suppose the only thing that works for the film is the crazy array of sound effects and strings of music. I figured it was just the channel trolling, but the movie decides to be bold with a lot of sudden sound effects everywhere. Characters constantly react literally (Like when a light bulb effect plays after a thought) and we even get some horror music. This part actually works a bit at least. If anything it’s a shame that the sound guy probably worked harder on the film than the rest of the staff.

Overall, I’d recommend staying away from Sixteen Candles. You’ll be cringing hard almost from the start of the film. I’d say that the premise was good, but it really wasn’t and the execution definitely didn’t do anything to help improve that film. Just stay far away from this film and you should be fine. If you want to watch a funnier film that still has some drama involved, I’d recommend checking out Groundhog Day. At least that one has a bunch of jokes that land and a time travel plot that holds up today.

Overall 1/10

The Visit Review

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It’s time to look at a film where the villains are senior citizens. That’s always gonna be tricky to pull off because these guys don’t exactly push fear into the hearts of many. There was a recent film about a lady and her basement that I remember getting mocked for similar reasons. Either way this film’s definitely getting a thumbs down but at least the found footage aspect wasn’t as obnoxious as it could have been. Likely because the main characters were kids.

The film starts off with their Mom explaining that she ran away from home a long time ago. She then had kids before the guy ran off and now she’s with the rebound. Well, the grand parents have decided that they want to see the kids at long last and the Mom lets the kids know they can go if they want too. The kids do want to go so they can ship the Mom and the rebound character together. However, they quickly notice that the grandparents are rather off, once night falls the Grandma acts like a monster and the Grandpa is always vanishing into a suspicious shed. Maybe they should have stayed home after all.

Right away the film reminds you that this is a horror film through the bad writing. Tyler is incredibly annoying even compared to most kid characters. He’s only 13 but already sings rather edgy songs and has quite the potty mouth. His character was doomed from the start to be honest. Tyler gets a football related sob story which ties in at the end but by and large the character just doesn’t do much more than be around just to fill out the cast. I can’t stress enough how annoying and bad he is. Almost every line Tyler has is guaranteed to make you cringe.

Becca is certainly a lot better. Her origin story involves not looking at mirrors and that part was done pretty well as you may even notice this early on. Of course even if you do you most likely won’t attach any real significance to this until the twist occurs. Becca can be a bit too trusting and probably should have helped Tyler alert the mother sooner but for the most part Becca is pretty solid. I do think she definitely should not have tried pressuring the grandma into answering a question about her mother a second time after being completely rejected the first time. The grandma had such a violent reaction that risking such a response again is asking for trouble.

Naturally the main characters are kids so they have a bit of a better excuse as to why they make so many mistakes compared to the average main character. For example I definitely would not go into the oven since that’s basically signing my death warrant. There is a lot of tension there beneath the surface as the character may have been pushed in had she refused, but at least you could try to make a break for it. Once you’re in the oven then it’s all over. Also, opening the door after dark when they know the Grandma is dangerous was incredibly risky. She came super close to making it to their room in time and that would have been an unfortunate way to die.

Naturally there is a twist about the grandparents. It’s a good twist as there are cinematic clues you could fall back on from earlier in the film. Noticing them at first may be difficult, but after the twist they become obvious. It does remind me why I immediately thought the plan wasn’t a good idea on the Mom’s part. I don’t care if the grandparents want to see her or not, they’re her kids so she gets the final say. She absolutely should have gone with them to make sure that the grandparents were legit.

The film does get onto the violent/dark aspect towards the end. Most of the film is fairly tame by horror standards as all the bodies and slashes don’t start factoring in until the end. Unfortunately it also adds in a gross aspect which was wildly out of place. That part alone is enough to destroy the film’s score had it been high by this point anyway. It just goes to show that a horror film can rarely resist the urge to add something like this as opposed to staying classy.

Overall, The Visit is definitely not a quality film. It mixes the classic horror tropes with kid protagonists. I can tell you right now that this is not a winning combo. Tyler is annoying with his constant rapping and the villains aren’t scary. They’re only powerful because the main leads are kids which is more annoying than anything. The only other character who appears, a neighbor, acts incredibly naive and not very smart with how she handled the situation. It does continue the trope of horror supporting characters not being much smarter than a sandbag though. There was also the teenager who got beat up by an old man….but that’s just so crazy that I don’t even need to go into that. I also think the rebound subplot wasn’t great either since it seems like the Mom moved on awfully quick. The kids still remember the old father so it can’t have been too many years ago. That plot barely appears but is still something worth noting. If you want to watch a film with a bit more tension, go watch the original Pokémon film.

Overall 1/10

The Graduate Review

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It’s time to look at an old film about an affair. I haven’t seen too many home wrecker films and the ones I have seen like the Home Alone sequels don’t really focus on that part of the plot. As this one puts that at the front of the plot, it was doomed right from the start. After all, you can’t really root for a lead like that.

The film starts with the lead heading home after finally getting his bachelors degree. Right away you can tell that something is off with the lead as he doesn’t want to talk to everyone and keeps running away. It’s played partially for humor but even so the lead’s being overwhelmed by everyone happens too soon. You’d think that he could have at least bluffed through it for a while. Instead he tries to spoil the party for everyone. Eventually he is caught by Ms. Robinson who suggests they have an affair. The lead knows she is married but decides to go through it anyway. Then he starts to like her daughter and now he wants to try and marry her while dodging Ms. Robinson’s threats.

As you can see from the very premise, this film didn’t really have any potential. There’s just no way that a film like this could be good since there is no way for you to possibly root for Benjamin. He never even tries to deny Ms. Robinson as everything he says isn’t convincing in the slightest. As I mentioned he also handled his opening scene terribly as he gets upset at all of the guests for no reason. Why couldn’t he have just played along at least for a bit? He isn’t a motivated lead and just gets himself into more and more trouble.

Then his attempted romance with the daughter is just as bad. Naturally he shouldn’t be trying to get together with her and he didn’t even take the time to break up with her mother before starting. Then he follows her to the school and pesters her until she agrees to marry him. Benjamin has no tact and you’ll probably cringe at the ending. It’s a pretty sad ending for everyone involved and I’m going to say that there was a lot of plot hax in the scene. There’s no way that Benjamin should be able to overpower such a big group the way that he did. They should have knocked him out right there.

Naturally with a plot like this one there is quite a bit of fanservice to bring the film down with. You’ve also got some pretty terrible writing to worry about as well which doesn’t do the film any favors. If anything it just helps it sink further and further down the food chain. None of the characters are written well or even realistically. At that point all you’re left with is a sinking ship and I don’t recommend going down with it.

At least the song was fairly memorable with the Darkness bit being a meme recently. It’s a pretty reasonable tune although I’m not sure that I can really give the lyrics a whole lot of credit here. At the very least they weren’t as annoying as you may have suspected so that’ll have to do this time. Having even just one memorable song is still more than most can say.

On an unrelated note, I did like how the food looked. The amount of fries that the main characters got was pretty impressive. They definitely don’t give you that much nowadays unless you pay quite a bit to the store. If only we could have had more scenes with food then maybe the film would have had less time to dig its own grave. There’s not really any one thing that could have saved the film, but something that would have helped would have been a different main character.

If the main guy is going to be an antagonist anyway then he may as well be a confident one. Benjamin keeps on stuttering and acting timid the whole film which is always super annoying. It’s the film’s terrible way of trying to show that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he certainly does. He’s just putting up an act and it’s one that is a little too obvious to actually work. Also, it’s not as if there is any kind of justification for what he’s doing. He’s just trying to wreck someone’s family and he never actually feels any guilt over it. By the end of the film you get the startling impression that he doesn’t actually regret anything or even that he sees himself as the villain. He’s just happy to keep on going and probably wouldn’t change a thing.

Overall, This film isn’t particularly long, but it sure does manage to drag on and on anyway. I’d advise taking a step back and considering a different film over this one. You’ll be glad that you did and it’ll save you a whole lot of time and effort. There’s nothing good about this film from the writing to the “humor” to the terrible plot. A film like The Graduate just never graduated to the level of cinema that you would expect to see. As such it hasn’t aged well and I’d make the case that it was never even a good movie in the first place. It was dead on arrival.

Overall 1/10

See No Evil Review

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It’s time to look at one of those terrible shock value films. The very premise of the film tells you all that you need to know about it’s quality and potential. There was never really a chance that this could be a good film and so you’ll have to be ready to endure this experience if it happens to be on.

The plot involves a girl named Sarah who used to be an expert horse rider but then she had an accident and lost her sight. She is trying to get used to this situation and finds herself back in the home that she once grew up in. Just as life is getting back to normal, her family is murdered by someone and Sarah must now try to figure out how to stop him while blind. Get ready for a lot of scenes where nothing happens.

Right away you can see why this plot is no good. There is no realistic way that someone who recently became blind, the lead is still getting used to this new way of life after all, is going to do much against such an accomplished murderer. She needs a lot of plot convenience and the villain making all of the wrong moves to survive. The villain had numerous chances to destroy her but failed to do so. Due to who the culprit ultimately was perhaps he decided only she would be spared but it’s a huge stretch since that doesn’t seem to bother him much at all later on. I also don’t see how the villain left anything at the house considering that it was in an obvious spot and really couldn’t be missed if you can see. All in all, I wasn’t buying it.

Then it seems like the movie was filmed while everyone was finishing up a sprint because the characters are constantly out of breath for no real reason. Scenes like this feel like filler for sure. Then you’ve got numerous scenes which are basically just the heroine crying or panicking. Scenes like that don’t advance the plot and get real repetitive real fast. At most a scene like that should happen once but after that it’s time to take charge and get out of this situation. There’s nothing particularly fun about the film. We do get scenes with happy music to try and show how oblivious the lead is but those scenes are just being intentionally morbid.

Then to keep you guessing on who the villain is, most of the characters are just mean or unlikable. Some are downright criminal. You’ve got the groundskeeper who seems to be a threatening guy who doesn’t like other people and resents that a horse died because of the main characters. Then you’ve got the right hand man of the main guy who keeps taking dirty looks at the main characters and in general has a bad attitude. There’s also the two people from this little pop up trailer who don’t mind kidnapping and possibly murdering people to get themselves out of a situation. Although, despite the many red herrings I do think the film tipped its hand on who the villain would be. In these kind of edgy films it’s not enough for the villain to be a mass murderer, he has to be depraved as well. As a result, you will be able to deduce who it is from that fact. There’s only one character who appears early on that has this trait.

Back to the premise, Sarah is way too adept at moving with high speeds. She’s practically skipping through the house and of course we can’t forget how she is still able to ride a horse while blind. You’re going pretty far on a horse so bumping into something is basically inevitable. These things were done to give her a fighting chance but even then she realistically doesn’t stand a chance.

Naturally this film is on the violent side so watch out for that. It’s nothing too crazy but everyone basically bleeds out and there are quite a few dead bodies on the scene. It’s mostly for shock value again as I can’t stress enough how the villain’s plan doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m still having a hard time figuring out why he didn’t finish the main character along with the others. Or at least finishing off Barker so he couldn’t warn the lead. I understand the motive but the guy seems like he really didn’t think things through.

Then we’ve got the romance plot thrown into the mix. The main guy does nothing wrong, in fact you could make the case that he’s one of the best characters in the film. He seems nice enough and he looks out for Sarah. He even does try walking her home a few times only to be stopped by her. The film just makes sure that he isn’t around to help until the end so he doesn’t play a big part for a while. I don’t think we really needed to add so many plots to this film especially since the happy contrast doesn’t work since you already know what has happened at the house.

Overall, See No Evil is definitely a film that you will want to stay away from. It’s as overly dramatic as you can get and never does anything to make itself stand out in a good way. The film is rather dark and violent the whole time so when the film finally ends there isn’t much of a triumph. Most of the characters are already gone so they can’t take part in the ending. I definitely recommend avoiding this film and watching something else for thrills, like Mission Impossible.

Overall 1/10

Exorcist II: The Heretic Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be a lot more negative.

Who here remembers the dumpster fire that was the Exorcist? Well it ended up getting a sequel. That’s pretty unfortunate in and of itself but then this film is so scattered and nonsensical that you have to wonder how it ever made it past the production phase. This film certainly didn’t do much right, but then again what would you expect? Lets take a look at the Heretic.

The film starts with Lamont getting ready for a new mission. The church wants him to check up on Regan to see what the situation is. However, they don’t want to be bothered with the specifics so if there’s anything wrong with her then Lamont needs to ignore that and give them the okay. Essentially sending him is just a formality and they want him to be aware of this. Lamont isn’t okay with this, but then demons possess him and tell him to destroy Regan. He can’t resist their influences. Can anyone live through this?

Well, one big issue here is a similar one from the first film. The priests look super weak here. The demons seem to have all of the power at their disposal while the heroes can’t do anything. If even the priest is getting mind controlled with ease then what hope do the other characters have? None, that’s what. The demons basically just toy with the main characters a lot until they grow bored and allow themselves to be destroyed. It doesn’t make for a particularly engaging synopsis I must say.

Regan actually seems to be doing a much better job of resisting the demons than the people who came in to help her. She only gets possessed when the heroes put her in the telepathy machine which allows her to see the past. How such an invention even came into being is quite suspect on its own so lets pretend that we didn’t see that. The scenes of them mind melding are pretty boring and every time the characters use this ability it ends up backfiring anyway. Why would they want to open a portal for the demons to come through?

Then you’ve got the annoying subplot where Lamont is going crazy. He starts losing his grip on reality such as when he imagines a scientist to be an old monk with some interesting powers. Naturally he dies by getting stabbed in this vision. Then he gets to ride through Africa where a swarm of locusts destroy everyone. That was in the past and it ends up tying into the film by the climax, but at that point you’ll have seen the same clip so many times that you will be bored out of your mind. If it’s one thing that this film loves, it’s stock motion. You’ll see the same recycled clips many, many times over.

The film shouldn’t have tried to keep going back to the past to explain the present. There’s just no point to it. Then you’ve got Regan’s psychiatrist who tries her best to help the kid, but naturally a demon is a little above her pay grade. Unfortunately she is travelling with an assistant who is highly susceptible to the demon mind control. Although as already pointed out the demons can mind control whoever they please so things wouldn’t have changed a whole lot otherwise. She was effectively just the fall person this time. Still makes for an annoying character though.

As you can probably expect the film is pretty violent as well. It’s not quite as gruesome as the first film where it was just hard to look at any of the characters, but this one’s still no good. You’d want to avoid it on this alone, much less everything else. None of the characters are any good with the exception of Regan who isn’t great either since she can be rather vague and scattered. It’s hard to trust her because of how she acts even if she does mean well.

Then we have the villain Pazuzu who isn’t particularly memorable. He’s basically just a very generic demon who is willing to do anything to get the last laugh even if it means degrading himself. There’s nothing interesting about him at all. The demon has absolutely no character and is basically just a waste of time. Couldn’t the writers have at least given him some kind of interesting sub-plot or character motivations? Nah…I guess I can’t say that I was surprised.

Overall, what I can glean from this movie is that it didn’t need to be made. There was no reason for an Exorcist sequel and the movie writers knew it. That’s why there is barely a plot here as the demon just wants to rise and fight but doesn’t even know why. All it does is try to make the Church look bad with how the cross and spells never work on the demons. They always just end up laughing. The film could have gone for an interesting Venom route where the original demon has grown attached to Regan and wants to protect her from other demons, but that’s too clever for this series. We also don’t need to humanize demons like that anyway so it may not have worked either way. That’s just more evidence that in general this film just should have been a reboot or something instead. Give the franchise a clean slate and maybe even improve on the original. It’s certainly possible and I think that would have been the optimal route. So, if you want to see a good horror film I’d suggest checking out something like Ghost Busters instead even if it’s basically more of a comedy film.

Overall 1/10

Halloween 2 Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version of the film would be more negative.

Well, it looks like the sequel to Halloween has finally arrived. There’s only so much that this film can try to do to be good. From the start you know that it’s not going to be good, but can it at least be entertaining? Well, I’ve seen worse horror films so I’ll give it that, but this is still one of those sequels where you just shake your head. Myers has also grown a lot more powerful over the course of a few minutes as he suddenly becomes just about invincible here. Why is he bullet proof!?

The film takes place seconds after the first which is impressive. It’s an underrated approach and a super cool one if you ask me. I always like when the story picks up immediately like this. Basically, Michael Myers escaped capture last time and he decides to go right back to his goal of murdering everyone in the neighborhood. The cops have to try and stop him, but they can’t seem to save everybody. It looks like Laurie is going to have to save herself as expected. After all, when everyone else fails then it’s time to just do it yourself right?

Most of what I’m going to say here could be applied to the first film or any film in the series. That’s because Halloween follows what I’d consider to be the typical horror film outline. The only trope it seems to avoid is the animal violence one which I will give it some props there. I’m glad it was able to do that at least. The first thing dragging the film down is naturally the over the top violence. Naturally everyone meets pretty grim ends at the hand of Michael Myers. Most of the characters don’t even put up a fight or they go down without making a sound. (Rhyme intentional) Given that he has super strength and such at least it’s a little more believable than in some of the other films. Still, the body count in this film is incredibly high as nobody seems to have a way to communicate and he just takes down the whole town one at a time. It’s scary just how many people he gets and the cops never even find out about it.

Then you’ve also got horror trope #2, the terrible characters. All the characters seem to care about is getting past the friend zone. Two characters decide to hang out at a hot springs when they’re supposed to be on duty and looking after the patients. Then they can’t even tell when the other character has been bumped off. It’s also just an excuse to get a fanservice scene in since horror films seem to need that. There’s also the pointless emergency staff guy who keeps on flirting with Laurie throughout. The plot doesn’t go anywhere and I don’t even really get how the guy died. Sure, he tripped, but why would he die from that? Perhaps part of the scene was cut for the TV version or something but if there is no more context to that scene then this guy’s just a joke. He should have been written out of the film.

Laurie’s a reasonable character here. In fact, she’s the only reasonable character. She realizes very quickly that nobody else here is even remotely competent so she escapes from the hospital to try and save herself. Of course the other characters give away her hiding spot and drop the gun. If I was Laurie I’d definitely leave this town and never come back. Sam talks tough and he has a gun so he’s better than most of the characters, but he still isn’t the smartest of the characters. He plugs Myers 6 times and the guy doesn’t go down. What does he do in round 2? He shoots him 4 times. Look, if you think that this guy is basically unstoppable then you have to do all that you can to stop him. Trying to walk over and take his knife away isn’t smart so Sam is smarter than the policeman, but then go for a head shot or something. Do whatever it takes to make sure Myers stays down. Then Sam just goes back into running mode and his gun jams. Well gee…that’s just bad luck now.

Finally we’ve got Myers, but he isn’t even a character in this film. He’s basically just a zombie that is going around murdering people. I don’t think he got a single line here so maybe the film is trying to hint that he is basically dead by this point. Maybe the 6 bullets did finish him off and he is a zombie. Then again, I forget if he talked in the first film. Maybe he just can’t talk. Either way there’s not much to his character. The rest of the characters in the film just exist to die so you feel bad for them. In slasher films like this one only the main character tends to live while everyone else dies. It’s a rather tragic existence for the whole town, they were just outgunned.

There’s just nothing positive to say about the film. It’s not fun to watch and I dare say that it might be more over the top than the first film. Although I think the first film had animal violence so it was probably still worse than this film. The only positive I can say for this film is that it avoided the big 0 by avoiding the animal violence. Even then it was fairly close, but I think a 1 is reasonable. The film also isn’t particularly long so at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome quite as drastically as you might fear. Imagine this going for 2 hours? Now that would be really brutal!

Overall, Halloween 2 doesn’t try to do anything particularly clever or unique. It’s basically just a rehash of the last film. If the last film was a good movie then that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but there’s just nothing particularly good here. It’s a pretty mean spirited film where the villain has the edge throughout. Surprisingly there isn’t even a stinger here so I suppose the heroes can finally get a little peace at least. It’s a silver lining, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’d highly recommend avoiding this film as much as possible. Just stick away from it and you’ll be the better off for it.

Overall 1/10

The Shallows Review

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It’s time to look at a pretty recent shark film. These films are super risky in general because sharks lead to animal violence which is something that you typically want to avoid in a film. They also tend to take place at a beach which results in a considerable amount of fanservice. It’s a losing combo if I ever saw one and this film was not able to escape. If anything it might be the weakest shark film.

The movie starts out with a teenage girl heading off to a beach by her lonesome. The original plan was to go with her friend but that plan tanked when the friend was a no show. Now Nancy will have to try and have fun alone. It’s going well for her at first until it gets late and the Shark shows up. She manages to escape to a little rock in the middle of the ocean but with the tide coming in soon it won’t be high enough to defend herself for long. If anything it already isn’t and the shark is just ignoring her for some reason except for when she goes back in the water. Nancy will have to think of something because if she doesn’t get back to land to warn the others, who will?

Well, let’s talk about why this film had issues. We’ll get the beach locale out of the way first. The film makes sure to remind you of its target audience by zooming in on the main character quite a lot. The film is certainly not being subtle here and you should always be able to make a good film without fanservice. All it does is distract from the plot which is typically what you do when the plot is no good.

Then the film can also be rather violent. A large chunk of the film is just the main character yelling and being in a lot of pain. The scenes are way too dragged out and most of them could and should have been cut. It also takes away from her battle with the shark if she is barely even strong enough to stand. Finally we have also got the animal violence angle. A Whale dies early on which was pretty tragic. Then we have the main character trying to hitch a ride on his body, scratching him up in the process. Throw in a bird who broke his wing (Going for some obvious connections here with the lead’s injury but the plot was still unnecessary. The bird lived at least which stopped this from being a 0) and the actual shark and you’ve got yourself a proper train wreck.

Unfortunately the main character was also not particularly likable. She comes across as rather naive and makes mountains out of molehills. Nancy’s conversation with her father at the beginning of the film just seems rather odd with the lead trying to pick a fight. It’s hard to judge with no context at that point but since the film didn’t want to go into it all that much I don’t have a real reason to root for the heroine there. Then she also isn’t particularly nice to the bird that is sharing the rock with her. She flicks water at him and also doesn’t offer him any food when given the chance. If anything it seems like she only helps him at the end because she had gotten rather bored. Not the most charitable reason to help. If she was a better character that could have at least helped the film a little bit, as it is there wasn’t much to help it’s case.

As far as special effects go I think the film did a pretty interesting job with how it showed the phone calls and various objects as if they were virtual reality. It’s a pretty strong effect that stands out so hopefully you like it since it will be impossible to avoid. I think it was a good effect and also gave the film something unique to do beyond the usual. The music also isn’t bad. You probably won’t remember it by the end but it fit well with the scenes.

Overall, The Shallows is definitely one of those films that you should avoid. That being said, it does play out just as you would expect it to. This means that you can effectively tell if you will like the film or not from the trailer. I’d certainly say that it is reason enough to skip the film. Shark films just aren’t particularly ready to make a positive name for themselves and until they take place in space with robot sharks I doubt they will be anytime soon.

Overall 1/10

A.I. Artificial Intelligence Review

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It’s time to look at a rather unique Sci-Fi film that balances a bunch of genres, but mainly focuses on the drama aspect. Unfortunately it suffers from being an overly long, melodramatic film that makes quite a few mistakes. It doesn’t make for a particularly engaging watch and the whole time you will just be wondering where Skynet is. When you watch films with humans worrying about the robots becoming a threat, you look forward to seeing the robots take over. Instead the film is mainly just the humans picking on the robots for a long while with no real payoff of any kind.

The film starts with a couple deciding to adopt a robot kid in place of their real son who is in a coma. This definitely didn’t seem like a reasonable move right from the start. At first you think that this might make sense because you presume their son is dead. (Still a terrible decision as the wife even mentions that it’s like trying to replace their original kid since they bought a robot that looks exactly like the son) but when you find out that he’s alive then the whole thing gets real messy. The worst part is that the husband is the one who decided to get him and once the son gets back he immediately turns on the robot. Breeding robotic kids already seems like a super sketchy business to be honest. Well, the family abandons David so he goes on a journey to find out how to return home, but it could be difficult.

In this world robots aren’t able to fight back against their human oppressors so the humans use this as an excuse to beat them up as much as possible. The robots hopefully can’t really feel pain, but it’s still pretty dark and gruesome to be honest, much like the rest of the film. The whole film just comes across as rather disturbing and very dreary. There is never really a moment where the film feels hopeful or even fun. It’s just a very dull experience where the characters are stuck in a dystopia that they can’t hope to escape. You’ll definitely feel bad for David, but the problem is that he isn’t even an enjoyable character.

David may be an A.I. but he still isn’t very smart. Since he was programmed to be a kid that may serve as an explanation for this, but he doesn’t even know his robotic limitations. He He attempts to eat food when dared to which causes him to shut down and then he doesn’t even know common sense. He shouldn’t even be able to lift a pair of scissors since you’d think that it would register as a weapon and his self defense mechanism doesn’t seem very great to be honest. He also comes across as very ungrateful at the end of the film as he is mean to the beings who find him and is always sulky. Kids can’t really hold their own film and I suppose this still applies even when the kid is robotic.

David meets up with another robot who helps him learn the ways of the world, but that guy isn’t great. His character gimmick is that he is a robot who provides pleasure for the Earthlings, but that doesn’t work out well either. Naturally some other humans don’t like this so they frame him for murder and send him to the robot circus where they are all blown up. David doesn’t even feel bad about ditching this guy which tells you all that you need to know about him. There are no good characters in this film, that’s something you’ll learn very quickly. If you count inanimate objects, which you probably should because once you go into robotics the distinction starts to get a little tricky, then the Teddy Bear is reasonable. He’s another rather dark character with a morbid sense of humor but at least he won’t be backstabbing anyone like the other characters. He seems like a really random character at the start, but by the end he fits in well enough.

The end of the film gets really crazy. I won’t go into detail, but the jump does take us 20K years in the future to see how the Earth ultimately turned out. It’s definitely the optimal timeline if you ask me even if it does seem like the inhabitants probably aren’t having too much fun at this point. I guess you can’t win em all right? At least there shouldn’t be much crime at all anymore. It’s not a great ending or anything, but I guess I can appreciate how out there it all is. Throw in some big fight scenes and maybe the film could have been saved.

At the end of the day, this movie could have been better if it wasn’t so disturbing and creepy the whole time. If you’re going to do a story about Androids and what it means to be human, you need to do it in a better way. I don’t think it works very well if the main android is a kid because then it isn’t able to really handle the themes properly. It just doesn’t work at all and the alternative is to have a film like Terminator where the robots decide to take over the world. Having a twist like that during the second half of the film would have been absolutely amazing. A shame that it didn’t go that way right?

Overall, I would not recommend A.I. While it is a step up from complete flops like 2001: A Space Odyssey, it reminds you why the Sci-Fi genre is best when it doesn’t try to hard to be super deep and emotional. Mixing those two genres just doesn’t work very well so you need to focus on the action aspect or just being a light hearted adventure in the future. Emotional films like this one would likely fail either way, with or without the Sci-Fi angle though. If you want to see a film that just tries to be a Debbie Downer at all times then by all means go for it. Otherwise, I’d suggest just watching Terminator Genysis instead and reminding yourself why these robots can be dangerous and will eventually wipe out humanity.

Overall 1/10

Leprechaun Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a horror slasher film with the antagonist bumping off everyone he runs into. It’s definitely a tried and true formula for failure that many franchises have gone for. I can’t say that Leprechaun did anything to try and save the genre, but I suppose I will give it some props for at least embracing the fact that the film was never going to be good and making everyone over the top. If a film is going to be bad it may as well have some fun moments right?

The film starts off with a drunk guy beating up a Leprechaun and stealing his gold. Unfortunately it seems like the guy may have cheated so the little villain wants his gold back. The drunk guy doesn’t care about this though and locks the guy up. A year passes and some new people are moving into the house. The heroine doesn’t like the place right off the bat, but the neighbors convince her to stay. Then the Leprechaun is let out of his box and the heroes start to get murdered left and right. Can they learn how to fight in time to stop this guy or will it be curtains for them? Either way their days may be numbered.

As I said, the film is very by the books. If anyone who isn’t one of the main characters shows up, he/she is doomed. We have the greedy store owner who tries to talk tough to the Leprechaun and he is quickly destroyed by his own toys. We have the overconfident police officer who immediately starts to make fun of the Leprechaun’s size and he is done away with. The villain really didn’t like him though and makes his death the longest by far. Then we’ve got other guys running around, but you get the basic idea. Even those who survive don’t get away without a few bites and scratches.

Of course the film is super violent as you would expect. They make sure to throw a bunch of blood in every possible scene to the point where you may wonder how much of the budget was spent on the paint. That’s already going to limit the film’s possible score, but that’s not its only weakness. There is also the fact that the writing is very lackluster. Good luck finding any remotely good lines in this movie. The characters panic a lot and none of them are very smart. They don’t really know how to fight and even figure that splitting up is in their best interest. Hint…it’s not.

As far as the Leprechaun goes, he isn’t a very intimidating villain. Of course that is likely intentional, but you almost want to snicker whenever he is on screen. The characters seem to get this inclination as well, but it never goes well for them. The villain has some basic magical abilities like teleportation and telekinesis, but his abilities are very weak unless he is with the gold. Even once he is back to full power the guy never seems very impressive. Shotgun bullets will put him down for minutes at a time. Judging by how effective they are, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few shots at once would put him down for good. Either way, his regeneration isn’t amazing. The guy has some basic super strength as well, but it is rather inconsistent throughout the movie. He’s a step below some of the cooler designed monsters like from the Grudge, but higher than the normal humans like good ole Jason.

Tory, Nathan, and Ozzie are the 3 main characters. Tory likes to be in high class places where the area is already clean and she doesn’t have to fix it up. Naturally this place in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly her style, but she tries to work with it after a while. She isn’t a terrible character and the film actually avoids going into the romance trap for the most part. She is rather easy to manipulate though as when Nathan tricks her into staying at the house. Tory could have been a lot worse which is probably the nicest thing to say about her. Nathan is your typical male lead. He’s fairly well built so naturally it’s more of a shock when the Leprechaun is able to overpower him. Nathan actually does try to fight back though which is a welcome change of pace from everyone else here. He was actually winning his initial confrontation with the Leprechaun even without a gun and once he had it then the match was over. To write him out the film had him get caught on a bear trap to limit how well he could fight. Ah well, he was still doing good for the most part beyond that.

Then we have Ozzie who isn’t very smart at all. He convinces the cops not to come to the house by calling since he always calls for fake incidents. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway though since the Leprechaun would have just switched his voice like he did later on. Ozzie also managed to swallow the coin somehow which is still rather hard to believe which causes the Leprechaun to not be very happy. The kid who hangs out with Ozzie is a little more reasonable. He points out that nothing can stand up to a 57 Magnum. Still, he is annoying beyond that and seems to think that even in the midst of a monster destroying everyone he should keep a few secrets. This kid needs to get his priorities straight.

Overall, Leprechaun is not a good film. There are some films that are terrible but enjoyable and this is not one of them. It’s not as bad as some films where the whole duration is unbearable as this film isn’t terrible 100% of the time. Still, it’s brutal and graphic enough to wreck any of the decent scenes in the film and the lack of quality writing hurts it as well. It’s safe to say that I don’t recommend this film and I’d sooner recommend watching Inspector Gadget if you want to see toys used as weapons. This film just has to get the hard thumbs down. Maybe the sequels will manage to beat it, but I can’t say that I have high hopes for the films in general.

Overall 1/10

The Black Cat (1934) Review

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It’s time for a big team up between the big horror actors of the old days, Karloff and Lugosi. Although in the actual movie they are going up against each other with two travelers being caught in the crossfire. Suffice it to say, we’re in for another old school horror film where the main characters are terrible and the villains spend more time bantering than actually doing anything. We’re definitely at the right film.

So the film starts off with Peter and Joan taking a train for their honeymoon. It’s all going well until a mysterious man shows up and asks if he can share the room. Peter already gives off some red flags since he isn’t intelligent enough to refuse. Once the couple appears to be asleep this man, Vitus, attempts to get a little too comfortable with Joan. Peter wakes up and glares at Vitus but doesn’t do anything reasonable like kicking this guy out of the car or even becoming big time enemies. Instead he decides to forgive and forget. One thing leads to another and the couple follows Vitus to the mansion of Hjalmar. The old man is a big time enemy of Vitus since he stole the guy’s daughter and murdered his wife. Vitus has come here to get revenge while Hjalmar wants to take Joan since she is the reincarnation of the late wife and he aims to use her vessel as a way to bring her back. It’s all pretty twisted and clearly we are watching two villains go at it. It’s hard to pick any one of them to root for.

This film is fairly dark and not in a natural atmospheric way, but in an artificial gritty sense. Characters are tortured both on screen and off screen. Vitus’ family certainly gets the short end of the stick since they are all murdered by Hjalmar. The ending is even someone getting skinned alive. You can tell that while this is an older film, it’s not one of the classier ones. It’s going for the shock value scenes and it takes away from everything else.

Alas, it wouldn’t be a terrible horror film without an animal showing up in some capacity right? Well, Vitus is afraid of cats so the other villain always uses this against him. Vitus will destroy the cat but it just comes back for more since it has 9 lives. As a result, not only is the scene terrible but it’s pointless. The cat phobia never actually does much and at the end of the day it’s just a random excuse for the film to bump off a cat. Pretty disgraceful if you ask me.

I suppose the writing is decent although you will have to stretch your disbelief to its absolute limit. The whole point of Vitus coming over is to murder Hjalmar and he has dozens of opportunities to do so. In fact, his subordinate is an inside agent working for Hjalmar. He is Hjalmar’s only minion so the two of them can beat the old guy easily. Instead Vitus is constantly content to simply watch things play out and just go with the flow. There’s no narrative reason for Vitus to totally disregard his actual mission for 90% of the film.

As for Hjalmar, he is just as bad. He already murdered the first two people he was with so now he wants Joan even though it’ll probably just be to murder her at some point. Considering that he never poisoned them or anything the same question about waiting rears its head. Why not just destroy them right away or in the dead of night? It’s his house and the main characters are gullible enough to actually go to sleep at night. They’d be easy pickings.

We also can’t forget to talk about Paul and how terrible he is. He gets knocked out several times and never puts much of an effort. The only time he is finally able to air up the nerve to do something he manages to shoot the guy who was trying to help Joan. Clearly he isn’t good at reading body language but I can’t honestly say that I was too broken up about the whole thing since Vitus is basically still a villain in my book. Paul just comes off as really incompetent. Even after seeing how shady everyone is he decides to leave Joan by herself while he sleeps in a room way down the hall. He was just accepting this until Vitus came over to switch rooms. What this means is Vitus would have been in the room next to Joan and since the connector isn’t locked he could have gone to her room whenever he liked. Did I mention that Paul was terrible yet? You get the idea of why this guy was so bad. He doesn’t even understand a threat when it’s being blatantly said right in front of him.

Unfortunately Joan is no better. Not only is she fainting too much, but she gets possessed rather easily. I can’t blame her for falling off the rails after this since Paul lets the villains inject her with something while she asleep. Joan just never seems like a real character during this adventure. She ends up being in a state of shock throughout the movie instead and lets everyone else make decisions for her.

While the premise of someone going to get revenge may sound good on paper it’s clear that the execution is just off from start to finish. Subtle banter between the villains is a decent concept even if they are really trying to destroy each other. At the same time, it just gets unrealistic if it goes on for too long. We could have also been given a motivation for why these two are to be locked in combat without going full tragedy. Considering that Vitus basically knows for a fact that the other guy is guilty you’d think he would make a move of some sort before he is put in a bad position. You just end up questioning the characters quite a bit here. The highlight would be the Chess game. I definitely wasn’t expecting such high stakes for a mere board game, but if that had to be the case then Chess is naturally the perfect pick.

Overall, This definitely isn’t a good film and the other Black Cat films I’ve seen seem to have had more quality. The actual Black Cat in this film certainly doesn’t get the respect he deserves. What really buries this film in the long run is the fact that it is too dark at times and there is nobody to root for. The main characters certainly aren’t very smart and make all of the wrong choices while even the villains don’t seem to think things through. The polite banter that I like from these films only hurts it in this case since these characters should be doing something as opposed to doing nothing.

Overall 1/10