Category Archives: 2 Star Movies

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Review

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Strap in folks because it’s time for another Mad Max film. These never fail to disappoint me because the series is so big and yet the films always end up being super underwhelming. This one may beat the original but it’s still not a film that is going to stack up all that high. The film is very dreary the whole time without any big fight scenes to really take it to the next level.

The film starts out with Max getting punked as his vehicle is stolen and so he makes his way to a town that is ruled by violence! They have the famous Thunderdome where you have to fight someone to the death. Max is tough but these guys have a lot of strength too. There are two factions trying for control here. The first group is the one who actually runs the place, Master who is protected by his bodyguard Blaster. Then you have Aunty who has dreams of ruling the place but no way to usurp the throne yet. So she asks Max for help and he agrees so he can get his car and get out of there. Was that a wise move?

The film’s title of being beyond the Thunderdome is pretty accurate since we don’t spend much time in the ring at all. Max is out of there fairly quick as he becomes a runaway and then bumps into a tribe of lost kids. These kids have been waiting for the prophecy of someone like Max to come and save them. They have images of the old world and what the Earth used to be like and that has basically turned into legendary stories over the years. Max breaks it to them gently and works with them to stop the other villains.

Here’s one of the big problems with the Mad Max films in general, you have no real reason to care about the plot. Most of these characters are as generic as they come and there is no real escape. The whole world has already been completely obliterated and even if you escape one group, another one will find you before long. Nobody is trying to rebuild society or anything. There is no progress of that from the first film to the last. If anything I’d say it’s gotten worse. At least in the first film you would still see some semblances of humanity. Now it’s all empty desert which I’m guessing is due to climate change or something.

It’s a world that has given up on being saved and so you just don’t really care at this point. There are no particularly likable characters here and just about everyone is corrupt. The kids aren’t evil yet of course but you doubt that they will be able to become upstanding citizens when they do grow up. Assuming they even live that long with how rough things are. The Mad Max universe is like if everyone was forced to permanently be barbarians until the end of time. As if time never actually moved forward because well it can’t. Without someone trying to change things then we will forever be stuck in the era.

It’s a setting that didn’t work the first time and it doesn’t work now. The film is super grim and while this one is less explicit than some of the other titles, it’s still rather painful. Nobody has a good quality of life here and I can’t think of any real happy scenes here. It goes without saying that Max very rarely smiles but unless you count evil smiles, nobody else is really smiling either. So as the viewer…what is left for me? Not much……not much at all.

The special effects aren’t anything to write home about and I can’t think of any good themes either. The big fight between Blaster and Max isn’t even good because it’s really just a lot of jumping. The way it works in the ring, you use any weapon that you get and you are on a harness so you can jump around a lot. It means there isn’t a ton of actual fighting going on. This is good for Max because it’s made very clear that he wasn’t going to last long in a straight fight against such a built guy. On the other hand, you still could have had some good choreography and martial arts if you really wanted to. Unfortunately the film did not want to do that and so that means there weren’t even a bunch of great fights here.

Then I’m not typically a big fan of kids in these things either and this didn’t exactly change that. The kid mean well but they can’t really fight or anything so they’re not all that helpful for the most part. They help with sheer numbers and back up Max by the end but I definitely could have done without that whole plot. Look, in a film like this I can usually at least jump on the movie having a bunch of animal violence, fanservice, or other issues but at least there’s something to really dive into.

Part of the problem with this film is there aren’t even a bunch of topics to tackle like that. There’s nothing you’re super invested in getting into because the film is just boring. The next Mad Max has more to jump into because it’s a much worse film but the Thunderdome? There’s just not much point to it at all. The whole film should have been about the Thunderdome, at least then we would have a tournament even if my hopes would be extremely low. I have serious doubts that the film would really be able to deliver with the big fights here.

Overall, Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome is definitely not very good. It’s not as crazy as some other titles in the series to be sure but it’s just so boring. You just really don’t care about anything and this has to be one of the blandest dystopia worlds that I’ve ever seen. Give me some high tech devices or something at the very least. I want a cool character or something. Maybe throw in some witty banter? We get absolutely nothing like that. There’s seriously not a single interesting thing about the movie so skip this at all costs.

Overall 2/10

Kingdom of the Spiders Review

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It’s time for a story about evil spiders so you know that this is going to be intense. Spiders do not hold back and I can tell you that from experience. I personally don’t think they’re quite as scary as the movies would have you believe but then again I’ve never come face to face with one of those huge ones in real life. I’ve only been around the smaller variety. This movie is a pretty intense thriller through and through with a really solid ending but the characters are not amazing and there is some serious plot armor here.

Okay so the story starts off with Rack messing around. He’s probably the best doctor in this small town in part because he’s the only one. When a horse dies from some venom randomly he’s kind of puzzled but calls in an expert. Diane shows up and explains that it was a spider bite but Rack doesn’t take her seriously for a moment and keeps flirting with her. He’s also busy flirting with another girl but gets mistaken for his dead brother which ruins that moment. Rack just wants romance! So he keeps trying with everyone but what the town really needs is for someone to focus because the death count starts to increase. Even the farm dog gets murdered which the film added as a little punch to the gut for any viewers who were hoping for a high quality experience. It turns out that Diane was right and an army of spiders are approaching to destroy everyone, all around the world. They’re going to destroy everyone Rack loves, starting with the people in the town. Can he stop them?

Now while I give Rack a lot of grief for being a completely patronizing, irresponsible jerk, things wouldn’t have changed much even if he took the threat seriously from the start. The reason comes down to a numbers advantage, there are millions and millions of spiders running around. They can tank fire by going underground and they can run really fast. Short of nuking the area or something like that you are not going to defeat them. The mayor wants to use some strong chemicals but aside from the fact that it would end up hurting a lot of humans as well, the spiders may be immune because they are mutant types.

So the town was always doomed. What was a bit surprising is that we actually see a large part of the fight onscreen. Usually you see the aftermath or something but no we see the spiders jumping people and taking them down. It’s a little hard to buy at face value but the film does put in some work to make it a little more plausible. For example, one bite is enough to seriously start to paralyze you and if you hit the ground then you’ll die right away because of the endless bites. So your best bet is not to get hit at all or to get bit once while running and the adrenaline will help you out.

It’s pretty tragic if anything seeing everyone get taken down though. The climax gets surprisingly violent with everyone being eaten alive. Even the mayor/sheriff had a bit of a grisly end there. I don’t know why people were trying to stop his car though except to doom them all. Like those people are already dead men walking so at least let this guy escape right? Ah well I suppose that wasn’t in the cards. Now the film does bend this law a bit though which is where the plot armor comes in.

So as I explained if you are bitten then it’s game over. You can just throw in the white flag because there is no getting away from this right? Wrong! Rack gets bit a ton of times and then hits the floor. By everything we’ve seen in the film that means he is dead and yet somehow he gathers up enough energy to recover and rejoin the rest of the cast. The scene made absolutely no sense and was completely annoying. You can’t just have plot armor like that for no reason. If they said he was a poison expert or something and was already immune for the most part then that would be fine but there’s no reason he should be alive here. I just can’t accept that.

It doesn’t help that he’s such a bad character too. The guy doesn’t take anything seriously and having more than one romance plot in the same movie is always a massive thumbs down. This guy’s not loyal nor is he trustworthy. You would not want to be paired with him because ultimately he’ll just see you as the next romance partner. It’s why Diane ended up being disappointing as she quickly ended up liking him anyway. There was no reason for that.

It’s too bad because the idea of trying to shelter in a house while spiders try to break in from all sides is pretty tense. The film just doesn’t execute particularly well. Any film with animals attacking you is likely to be a dicey one as that can quickly go into animal violence but it doesn’t need to happen. Why even have the dog appear at all? It’d be nice if the spiders had not gone after any animals and were just shredding the humans. They shouldn’t have any beef with the other wildlife right?

All that aside, the ending is really good though. It makes for a solid cliffhanger and is like something out of Resident Evil. The true horrors still await the main cast and you know that they are not in a good spot. I would argue that they aren’t quite doomed yet though. Given that the spiders are small I feel like you should be able to just make a break for it. They can’t bite you through your sneakers and if you run hard enough none of them should be able to climb up your pants. The tough part is just finding out how widespread these things are. If they go on for too long then you will get tired and eventually die but if not, then you have a chance. A sequel would have been very interesting here.

Overall, The Kingdom of the Spiders makes for an intense thriller but ultimately it made too many mistakes to get a passing grade. Having better characters would have gone a very long way to be honest because then you’re more invested in seeing the characters do well and overcome the audience. Without that it just feels like you aren’t going to be quite as engaged with the whole adventure and I wouldn’t really recommend this to anyone. It’s an interesting premise….but that’s not enough to save it.

Overall 2/10

Jeopardy Review

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So this is one of those rare noir films that I really didn’t like. The plot was a little suspect from the jump and then the execution basically went the way that I was hoping it wouldn’t. By the end of the film you’re going to be pretty annoyed and not even the ending can help you feel satisfied here. Definitely a film you want to avoid at all costs!

The film starts off with Helen getting ready to enjoy a nice vacation with her husband Doug and their son Bobby. It was going to be a lot of fun but unfortunately her husband gets stuck under a bunch of wood and high tide is approaching. If he can’t get out in time then he will drown. There aren’t any supplied at the hut so Helen has to try and find some people to get a rope but they are in the middle of nowhere and time is ticking. She bumps into a guy named Lawson who offers to help but what she doesn’t realize is that he’s a wanted murderer and has no intentions of saving her husband. What can she do?

As you can guess Lawson is basically a grade A jerk who is just in it for himself. He’s a full antagonist here and basically spends the film blackmailing Helen into having an affair with him. So in order words he’s completely taking advantage of her and it’s some of the scummiest behavior you can do. Helen feels like she can’t say no to his advances or her husband will certainly be dead and this guy relishes the power that it gives him. The film would already be dead on arrival at this point because such a plot is just absolutely terrible.

Where the film sinks even lower is by not even portraying him as a full villain. Later on he starts to play the mind games of how Helen actually likes him and then she wavers and starts to feel like this too. Even by the end she is willing to run off with him as gratitude…..what? This guy was totally going to ditch Doug and the fact that he helped at the end doesn’t mean she should suddenly ditch her husband like that. The ending is awful but this whole plot was handled poorly. The film needed to condemn Lawson as being 100% in the wrong and a total psychopath. Not try to make him sympathetic and lonely by the end. I wasn’t buying it one bit.

Unfortunately that romance is a massive part of the film so there’s really no getting around it. To call it an uncomfortable romance would be an understatement and you’re rooting for the cops to show up and blow the guy away already. That would have been a super satisfying ending and I’d have been cheering. Instead the film takes a very cautious approach to how it all ends. My view is that he got taken out but I would have liked it to have been clearer.

The film ends up dragging a whole lot due to all of these scenes so this feels like a very long noir title. In part this is probably also due to how small the cast is so a lot of the scenes are filled with dialogue. That would work with likable characters but falls flat otherwise. We needed more action here to distract from the story like a few gun fights or something. Maybe even some long chase scenes.

So while Lawson is the worst character here, Helen also loses a lot of points. Obviously I’m not deducting points away from her when she was basically being forced to stick around or her husband would be destroyed. Where she falters massively is in how undecided she is and how she doesn’t condemn this guy for being so awful. Helen actually seems worried about him and feels bad for Lawson when there is no reason too. So yeah stockholm syndrome hit her real fast.

The best parts of the film are really centered around Doug and Bobby. Even while Doug is close to drowning and knows that he’s in a lot of danger, he keeps up a brave face for his son. He tries to prepare Bobby for what’s about to happen so he can stay safe as the tide comes up. It’s got to be tough not to start panicking when you’re approaching a slow death like this but Doug never loses his resolve.

He easily has the most fortitude out of all the characters and sees the big picture right from the start. He also tries a few plans to get out from under the rubble but ultimately there was just too much wait so it simply wasn’t possible. Bobby doesn’t do great here but he’s a little kid so it’s not like you can blame him much. He does try his best like making a coffee for Doug even if it doesn’t come out well. So at least the effort is there.

Overall, This is a pretty awful movie. It’s basically about stockholm syndrome but there are so many better ways that it could have been handled. I feel like the movie underestimated just how bad the scenes made Lawson look. He was completely irredeemable, not just some misunderstood soul who’s been out of luck. I think a remake could definitely execute on this premise a whole lot better but in the meantime definitely take a pass on this one. The Noir genre is chock full of much better films all around so pick one of those and you’re set. This one is better left forgotten.

Overall 2/10

The Thing Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited 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 time to look at one of the most iconic horror movies out there. It’s definitely really intense all the way through with a lot of tension and intrigue the whole time. Ultimately it does fall flat due to some unfortunate animal violence and a monster design that leaves a lot to be desired. The film has a core premise that could work if we could get a redo on this someday with a future remake.

The film starts off by introducing us to MacReady and a group of researchers in Antartica. It’s a rather isolated place but these guys are used to it. One day a nearby squad seemingly goes insane as they try to murder a dog and so the heroes take them out. Did the cold weather get to them? No, it appears that a monster is afoot and it can shapeshift as the person it is controlling. This means that any one of the heroes or even more than one are currently aliens in disguise. Is there any way to find out who the culprits are or will distrust doom the squad right off the bat?

There are a lot of suspects here as there are quite a few characters. Additionally just because someone isn’t being controlled in one scene doesn’t mean that he won’t be taken over later on. Any time a character leaves the screen for a prolonged amount of time you have to consider that he may have been compromised and that’s a very dangerous proposition for the other characters. The alien is definitely impressive as it allows the subject to perfectly keep his personality and reason so by all accounts you can’t really tell externally. Additionally the alien is still plotting your death all the while.

So it’s like a live action adaption of Among Us in some ways. I would even say the intrigue is stronger than Invasion of the Body Snatchers which has a similar premise. Having the characters be stuck in Antarctica is a good idea as well because it means there is really no escape. So either you end up taking out the aliens or you get consumed. There are no other options here and the movie keeps this tension up all throughout the movie. So why did it fumble in the end?

Well the main thing here that ends up hurting is of course the animal violence. The Thing starts by murdering most of the dogs and then absorbing the others. One of them ends up getting shot as well and of course they’re all trapped within the cage so when the Thing shows up they can’t even escape. The whole thing’s pretty depressing there and the film should have just had The Thing taking the humans over from the jump. That would have been a whole lot better and then you’d avoid this landmine entirely. The whole scene with the dogs is pretty explicit.

Then you have the creature design as well which isn’t as cool as it needed to be. It’s a slippery mess of tentacles running around and it almost looks like it’s in pain the whole time. It has a cool looking dinosaur mode near the very end but for the most part it just looks like a way less impressive version of Biollante. Give me a more solid monsters to get behind. His attacks were impressive but even then the effects make it look more gross than impressive. It should have looked a whole lot more impressive.

The characters tend to be on the better side though. MacReady is the lead and he knows when it’s time to get serious and stop playing games. He takes command towards the end by force and it makes sense since he actually has a plan while the others would just keep on fighting and not getting anywhere. Considering that the alien is around as well, there is no real time for democracy here. You either take the lead or you end up going down. Using dynamite as a hostage was a great idea since nobody could try and blow him up at that point.

Childs is someone who gives MacReady a tough time for most of the film. Mainly because he also knows they can’t trust anyone and he got some really strong circumstantial evidence that made him really distrust MacReady. I couldn’t really blame him there because the evidence did look pretty bad. Childs is quick on his feet and does pretty well otherwise. Blair is the character I didn’t like because he completely cracks at one point and only makes things worse for everyone. He’s extremely annoying as a result. I do wonder if maybe it’s just that he was being controlled from the jump but I don’t feel like the movie was really implying that. It would have been interesting but that’s more of a baseless theory.

The film is able to juggle a fairly big cast pretty well by giving each character their own full personality and keeping them memorable. So even as the bodies begin to pile up there are enough characters around to keep everyone scrambling. It also makes the place look even more empty and remote as more and more characters keep falling. If you’re claustrophobic then this movie will be extra intense for you and certainly you won’t be thrilled to go to Antarctica after that.

The ending is definitely pretty excellent. Naturally I do suspect one of the two characters in particular based on some events that happened near the end but keeping it open ended is part of what makes this an effective way to close out the movie. I can’t help but think that a full on sequel would really be a lot of fun though. Have the creature get loose in a major city or something with everyone scrambling to stop him. That would just be so much fun right? It would be more of an action than a thriller at that point but it would work.

Overall, The Thing is a movie where I can definitely see how it’s really well liked. There are some things to enjoy here like the tension I keep talking about and the mystery angle. Not being able to trust anyone is definitely a good way to keep you engaged the whole time. Ultimately the film just went too far in trying to be disturbing as well with the design and the dog scenes which prevented this from being a smash hit. My advice would unfortunately be to give this film a skip, they should have just had the alien jump in as a human from the jump and that could have really gone a long way.

Overall 2/10

Final Destination 2 Review

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

I’ll admit that the poster for this film really goes hard. That said, there’s still not really a lot to this series and in many ways it’s just retreading ground from the first title. The heroes have made Death mad and now he is going to systematically take them out one at a time. What can some humans do against a being who transcends dimensions? Well they will need some teamwork if they want to at least try and delay the inevitable.

The film starts off with Kimberly heading off with her friends on a big trip. They’re all delinquents who have no respect for the law and seem like terrible influences. They’re ready to do drugs and as much bad stuff as they can but the group perishes in a tragic pile up involving tree logs and a lot of explosions. Kimberly then wakes up in the car right before this happens. She attempts to stop the car early so she won’t be in the pileup and succeeds however her friends still blow up. Instead she managed to save a few strangers and now they are all being targeted by death. Can they possibly survive this malevolent force or are they all doomed?

Well of course we know the answer should be the latter based on the prior film but we do seemingly have a weakness for death now. You can actually end a death cycle by creating new life. Of course it would take a long while to quickly create a baby so they have to find someone who is close to giving birth. The plan is highly risky though because this is just their guess based on vague wording from a guy at the morgue so there is a massive chance that this is all cope from the heroes. Still it gives them something to try for and we get other retroactive rules in place here to shake things up.

The film is at least trying to make this a deeper dynamic which I can respect but it really doesn’t change a whole lot. Death is still going to mess everyone over in different ways as always and that happens right on queue here. Interestingly Clear returns for this film as she survived the first one but I’m not buying it. Basically she is in a padded room so there is in theory nothing that Death could use to destroy her. That is her logic but remember Death can do anything. So when she’s eating her safe yogurt he could still make that get stuck in her chest and she dies. He could have the air vents stop working so she suffocates in there, etc. I choose to believe that the only reason she survived so long is because Death was just toying with her as he does with the rest. He wanted her to feel good just so he could flip that later on.

Perhaps he respected her determination. A lot of explanations work here but yeah nothing is going to stop Death so easily. I would say that on average the murders are a bit more violent here but I’m sure it’s probably debatable. The scene of a guy getting torn apart by flying objects was definitely intense while the explosion deaths aren’t as violent since it’s all fire. I would say the characters are a little better here than in the first one. They may take a while to believe the main heroine but that’s all for valid reasons. You don’t have any of them randomly getting upset at having their lives spared.

It’s probably why taking the old friends out of the equation was such a good move here. They only appeared briefly but were super annoying the whole way through. Even with that, the problem with this film once again is that it feels like there’s just not much point to it. No matter what the heroes do, death will come for them eventually. There isn’t anywhere you can go where you can hope to avoid it. That’s just not happening and so you can choose to hide in a cell and just survive like that as long as you can, or go about your business as normal and eventually die. Either way, your options are fairly limited.

While the body count is higher than in film 1, we got to have more survivors for a longer period as it’s the climax that really started to speed things up. Interestingly the very last scene of the film is played a bit more as a comedic moment rather than a dark twist even though what is happening on screen is pretty sinister. Perhaps that wasn’t the intent but with the crazy music playing it certainly felt like that. A “here we go againnnn” Magic School Bus kind of moment all around.

After a while the real question is, how do you fix this film/series? As it stands it is really just a compilation of people getting murdered in crazy ways as you try to wonder who will be next. The plot itself barely matters as it’s really just a back drop for this. So I think again you make this part comedy but if you really want to make this more of a horror, lets tone down the shock value deaths a bit and give some tangible goals here. Like if you survive for one week then death will let you go and you can await a normal demise. That would give some incentive to the characters for them to survive. It wouldn’t be quite so hopeless at that point.

Overall, Final Destination 2 is mainly concerned with being bigger and more explosive than the first. It certainly succeeds on that but when you get past the fluff there still isn’t a whole lot here. The ending is a bit bizarre but at least it’s a little funny so I get that. I actually think this franchise would be significantly better if it didn’t take itself so seriously. Imagine this film as a dark comedy, I actually think it would work extremely well even if that’s not likely to ever happen. Ah well, lets see how the next film goes. Also I missed having the cops get a really big role in the film. Sure we had the one cop who was helping the heroine out but the first film had the FBI, CIA, and more conspiracy stuff like that. That’s what I want to see, lets just embrace the craziness.

Overall 2/10

Final Destination Review

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

Final Destination is a film that I dare say is a bit iconic. Just about everyone has heard of this film at some point or another. It’s got many sequels and the concept is unique. You basically have to try and watch out because anything can turn into a cause of death and that’s the basic plot of the franchise. Beyond that it’s not going to go down as a great film or anything but it’s an interesting one.

The film starts off with Alex being a little paranoid as he gets on a plane for a school trip. He’s looking around a whole lot because everything looks real suspicious but then this comes to a head when he dies in the plane along with the rest of the school. He wakes up back in the plane a few minutes before the explosion and realizes that this was all a big vision. So he makes a scene and gets thrown off the plane with a few other students while everyone else dies in the explosion. Death isn’t a fun of this though and decides to go take the survivors down for the count. Can they overcome death?

Now the main problem you may guess right off the bat here is that of course there is no real way to beat death. In the end all of the heroes will die at some point so the question is really if they can get death to leave them alone for a while. The short answer to that is….no. Death is a very petty and very determined figure. He intends to stay on their tails until he has taken them all down and will bend all of the rules to make this possible. That means manipulating liquids and objects to place them in positions to choke or murder the characters straight up. Death isn’t interesting in playing fair or doing anything like that. No, it’s just here to cause unimaginable damage.

The heroes discover some rules here like Death has to try and murder them in order. If an attempt fails then it moves onto the next person before eventually repeating the cycle. The cycle never ends though so it’s only a matter of time before it’s your turn again. So the general plan Alex has is to try and delay the murders as long as possible but in the end that’s all he can do, just delay them. Ultimately they will catch up to him and then it’s curtains.

As a main character Alex is fairly decent though. His natural paranoia mixed in with the fact that he now has visions of the future makes for an interesting character. Naturally the other characters don’t tend to believe him until it’s too late but at least Alex keeps on trying. He’s a very determined guy who is really just trying to do his best.

Most of the other characters aren’t quite as reasonable. The one who takes the cake in that regard is Carter though. The film makes him as over the top as possible. Alex literally saved his life and yet this guy has 0 gratitude and wants to fight Alex for no real reason. He listens to crazy music as he drives by and is basically a cartoon villain. By the end he actually gets a character arc which I was noy expecting. I figured he would just die early on as the typical jerk character. Even so, he was a little too far gone so I still didn’t care for him by the end.

The main heroine Clear took a while to really support Alex but at least she still handled it all very logically. She heard Alex out and even when she didn’t agree with him, she wasn’t going out of her way to be mean about it. So Clear gets some credit there at least and ends up lasting a while because she was really vigilant the whole time. The rest of the characters went off to do their own things and it doesn’t go well. Again you can’t really blame the others though and to an extent even if they agreed with Alex, there wasn’t much of a plan at the beginning. They would have still died in some way or another with death watching them.

Again that goes back to the futility of the whole thing. As much a the film seems to want you to think that you can evade Death for a while, I take it more as Death just toying with them. He likes to mainly use liquids to set off the traps but other times he can lock windows and such. It’s clear that he can use any ability as needed and warp reality so at that point it’s still a losing battle. It’s an issue I have with this film like I did with the Grudge. When there is absolutely no hope of winning then it takes away a lot from the movie because you just can’t get as invested. It simply isn’t possible to get involved because the heroes just don’t have a ghost of a chance.

Naturally the film can get fairly violent with some of the deaths. Others aren’t so much violent as they are disturbing like the one friend who gets hanged in the bathroom. The idea is that these are all ways you could theoretically die in real life if you just have bad luck or are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death is just speeding things up a bit. So the film as a whole ends up being rather depressing as there is no time for any happy moments. Outside of the opening scene getting ready to board the plane…yeah there is no time for positive moments. The heroes are just running from one danger to the next. Each death attempt they dodge only brings them closer to the next one which is just depressing.

Overall, This is one of those movies where you might be tempted to watch it for the novelty but overall I’d say to give it a skip. It’s really just about trying to get as many creative deaths in as possible and that’s not enough to support a whole movie. The film can be rather violent with a bunch of annoying characters running around. There is no hope to escape their destiny so in the end it’s all a futile endeavor. I at least did enjoy the brief appearance from the guy at the morgue. I like the idea of someone at least knowing what’s going on and just going through life knowing that nobody else has this knowledge.

Overall 2/10

Dead of Night (1977) Review

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Uh oh it’s time for one of those horror anthologies. I have to admit that a lot of times these aren’t exactly up to snuff. Why is that? I don’t even know tbh but there has to be a logical explanation. It’s possibly because there just isn’t enough time to make every story solid or it’s also just that the odds of a story not being very good keep on growing larger. Either way this one doesn’t break the trend and ends up falling under its own weight.

The first story will take you for a loop because there’s nothing particularly scary about it. A guy named Frank ends up getting warped to the past. His car is stolen by some random people and even when an elderly couple urge him to report that the car was stolen, he decides not to. The whole short is as if he’s in a daze and you the viewer are wondering what’s going on. Is this all building up to some kind of zombie showing up and things going crazy? Nah he eventually finds himself in the present and he needs to repair the same car again. The whole thing went full circle and well…that’s it. There’s not really a climax or anything.

Frank tries to see what they remember about the past events but the owners don’t remember anything so did the whole tale even really happen? At the very least he should be supremely confident in his car repair skills. Who knows maybe he can master the ability and travel through time more in the future. So this wasn’t a bad story, it’s easily the best of the 3 but I have to admit that it’s just rather pointless. Like nothing really happens, there isn’t a lot of danger and you’re just left wondering what they were going for with this one. I guess it has a Twilight Zone kind of vibe but without the payoff.

The next story is more of a classic horror. So Alexis is being terrorized by a vampire that comes to her room and bites her at night. By the time she wakes up all traces of him are gone and her husband Gheria does not believe in vampires. Still, it’s hard to refute the evidence of bite marks on her neck every night so he calls in his friend Michael and they will say up all night to get to the bottom of this. Can they stop the vampire though? The short definitely has a pretty big twist up its sleeve and I can’t say that I saw it coming. The twist is effective and reshapes all of the events. So I give the short full marks there but ultimately this is a vampire story so it’s not going to fare too well.

You’ve got a lot of blood sucking going on here and it’s definitely the most violent of the 3. One guy definitely gets stabbed through quite a bit and ultimately most of the characters don’t really have a happy ending here. It’s actually a pretty dark ending no matter how you slice it and you didn’t have very many good characters. The only solid one here would have to be the butler by the time it was all said and done. If you love vampires then you’ll like this special but otherwise there’s really not much to it.

Finally we get to the 3rd special which is the longest by far but it really ends up dragging a whole lot. A Mom is grieving because her son ended up drowning and she decides to try and use dark magic to bring him back to life. Well it seems like it worked because Bobby shows up but he seems a little shadier than usual. He talks as if he was a grown up and begins getting scarier and scarier. Finally he throws off the charade and basically announces that he plans to destroy her. Can she fend off this child or will it be too much to put her kid back in the grave once more?

This one really feels like it goes on forever. At first Bobby is just being disrespectful and petty like not eating and intentionally trying to make his Mom feel bad. Then he keeps on escalating with trying to murder her and going crazy. We do get a twist about Bobby but it ironically still makes Bobby look really bad since he would have been complicit in this. At one point she lands a solid double tap on him with her gun but needed to press the advantage. Obviously it’s hard to be attacking a kid like this but then you need to get out of there. She briefly tried but his cosmic abilities kept on preventing the exit routes from working. You have to double down and keep trying or take him out.

The only scene that was amusing was when she called her husband and he kept repeating what she was saying. It then turned out that some reality warping or at the very least voice mimicry was at work here. For how long were things being manipulated? It’s hard to say. Either way she was on the defensive here and the underdog since he probably has a lot of abilities but it still makes for an annoying segment the whole time. I can’t take this kid seriously as a villain even if he may have super powers. None of them seemed to increase his weight or raw power so just throw him around or tie him up. Yes it’s a horror so that probably wouldn’t work but you have to give that a try.

Overall, This is definitely an anthology that I would say is worth giving a full skip. The only segment that’s any good is the first one and even then it just feels aimless the whole time. The vampire one is basically just going through the motions and the last one dragged on forever. You can do much better than this title if you want some scares and it’s another example of the limitations of the anthology setup. Ultimately any story with potential will end too quickly and any annoying story will end up dragging on. It’s a scenario where you can’t win and ultimately you’re just not going to have any real fun with this one.

Overall 2/10

Insidious: The Last Key Review

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The main insidious thing about this film is the sharp drop in writing quality. One thing the series was always good for was some pretty solid writing and lines as the heroes dealt with the crazy villains everywhere. This one almost felt like a B movie with the writing and not in a good/funny way. Just in an annoying eye roll way and ultimately it misses the boat really quickly. It’s telling that the spookiest scene is at the very end which ties into the first film.

The movie starts off by giving us a look into Elise’s childhood. She grew up in an abusive home where she was especially picked on by her father for being able to see supernatural creatures. Unfortunately Elise could not help herself in continuing to mention them and getting beaten as a result. Eventually she ran out but did not take her brother Christian with her so he still resents her to this day. In the “present” (Still before film 1) she gets a call from someone who lives in the house she grew up in. He’s being haunted and needs some supernatural help. Elise calls in her teammates Specs and Tucker since it’s always safest to move as a group Elise decides not to call in her teammates Specs and Tucker because she needs to handle this on her own since it’s so personal. They ignore her so the 3 head in to the house. Can Elise solve this spirit case or will the fact that she has no offensive abilities at the ready come back to haunt her?

Elise is confident and talks a good game at times but the extent of her plan seems to just be to try and talk the ghosts down. She doesn’t do much else and so honestly you get the feeling that she got lucky a whole lot of times. She may as well be a rookie instead for all the good she does here. Her memories of childhood keep spooking her throughout the movie so it’s not like the villain has to do much. When Keyface (At least that’s what he is called on Wikipedia) shows up he’s able to beat her with extreme ease. She may as well have just been some random person.

So I can’t say I liked Elise very much in this film. She just felt completely out of her depth and wasn’t making logical moves the whole time. Then her partners Specs and Tucker are the worst. Pretty much every scene with them is just poor attempts to flirt with two teenagers who are just trying to mind their own business. It gets worse when a traumatic event happens to one of them and they continue to flirt with the other. They have no tact and no class. The humor is incredibly off putting and really poorly handled. I haven’t seen a comic relief character this bad since possibly Transformers 2 which has to really take the cake there. I’m probably forgetting some films but the point is…they were brutal. And unfortunately they appear a lot.

I guess maybe the writers thought the film was too scary so you needed the comedic duo to lighten things up every few minutes? The problem being that this film isn’t even all that scary. Again, the first and even second Insidious films are way scarier than this one. This one also has too many other fighters running around the playing field. For example we actually get a real life villain where the film temporarily becomes more of a thriller as the heroes have to take him out. Then we go back to the supernatural stuff.

When we finally go into the other side where the spirits reign then things start to get back into their normal place. That’s really a lot more like it but it’s pretty late in the game by then. It’s also not like that’s going to suddenly fix the writing. Spending more time on the scares and showing off the villain would have been a really good idea since the non supernatural stuff drag the film down.

Lets look at the non supernatural stuff for a minute here. We have a guy who was murdering a bunch of women and stuffing them in an abandoned tunnel. Very grim dark for no real reason. Elise’s abusive father also turned out to be a murderer on the side and did something similar with a poor lady who was in there. You can question why she didn’t make a run for it when the door was unlocked and the kids were around but the point is really that the film was desperate to make things as dark as possible here. Adding all of these women who were getting murdered in the past doesn’t add anything to the film as we already knew the other characters were pretty bad. It’s more shock value than anything else.

We always see these evil ghosts running around and haunting someone so it’d be nice as a change of pace to see some of these victims show up and start claiming their revenge. They certainly should have regrets so why wouldn’t they become powerful spirits too right? Why do only the evil ones get to have a lot of power in the afterlife? It should be a little more balanced by that point. Ultimately Keyface ends up being a little underwhelming as a result because he gets so little screen time. It just feels like he barley gets to appear. His ability to turn off your voice is a little scary I’ll admit but it comes at the expense of his effectiveness.

Because he has to turn your voice off first, it takes forever to actually murder anyone. He easily should have destroyed Elise and then the other girl who he caught since he had plenty of time before being interrupted. Yet he wasn’t able to finish the job. This lets us have some emotional moments at the end of course but it really comes at the expense of this villain’s credability.

Overall, This was definitely a very weak Insidious film. The visuals are still fun and there are maybe a small handful of spooky moments but ultimately it really lost the point of this series early on. Insidious is about dealing with demonic threats from the other side and learning how to subdue them. Having a whole long tangent about abusive fathers and actual serial murders is completely jarring and out of touch with the supernatural. It’s like making a Paranormal Activity film where the heroes are spooked at night but during the day are taking on Jack the Ripper. Stick to the supernatural stuff and you could really have an intense movie. You can add some of that stuff for a quick origin but it should never be such a major part of the movie. Also you need to drop the comedy duo, their scenes were just completely cringe and not even remotely entertaining. They realllllly hurt the movie every time they appear.

Overall 2/10

The Empty Man Review

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

Okay so straight up this is a pretty bad movie however I do give it a point for actually having an ending that makes you really think long and hard about the movie. Way I see it there are 3 ways you can interpret the ending. I’ll explain my interpretation at the end and I think it makes the most sense. Is there a “canon” ending? Well maybe the writer will say but out of film stuff doesn’t count so the way I see it you have to come to your conclusion and just roll with it. Each of the 3 paths appear to have some holes but I could pretty much do an editorial just on the ending. Of course that does mean you have to make it that far.

The film starts off with a group of climbers scaling up a really snowy mountain. It isn’t easy but they have been making consistent work up there. Unfortunately as they’re getting ready to go back down, one of them starts hearing things in the distance. Then he really starts to loose it and now the others could be in danger. Is it just a lack of oxygen right now or is there something more sinister at play? One thing’s for sure, they can’t let their guard down!

Being stranded on a mountain like this with no real way out is a pretty tough situation to be in already so then when you throw a crazy guy it really goes through the roof. Maybe spending 2 hours on here could drag a bit but it’s rare to have a horror movie on a mountain. Crazy stuff for sure….but this isn’t actually the movie. It’s a pretty effective fake out though since this intro portion goes on for quite a while. It ultimately does tie in with the rest of the film though and honestly it’s really effective. I thought the opening part was handled extremely well so it was time to start falling after that.

In the present we have an ex cop named James who is still traumatized over some tragedy that happened to his family. It’s told to us through quick seizure moments so you get most of the details but the exact scenario is something we don’t find out about until later on. I can say that it makes him look awful though so his character basically can’t be recovered by the end. There are just some things that you don’t really come back from and this is definitely one of those. Unfortunately that’s just how it goes.

Well his friend’s daughter went missing one day so James decides to find her. He runs into a whole conspiracy involving a death cult that believes in the Empty Man. A being made up of pure maliciousness and negative desires over the course of human history. Summoning him appears to be rather easy, you just think about him and blow on a bottle. Well James isn’t afraid of any ghosts and does this just to spite the creature. The rest of the legend says that you now have 3 days to live so James has to find the girl and quickly before this is all over.

In some ways this film is 50% mystery and 50% horror. A whole lot of the movie is about James trying to find leads so he talks to all of her friends, infiltrates the cult, etc. There are some scenes that are actually pretty scary though like when he finds himself in an empty field late at night with hundreds of zombies. Mobs are very scary and if you’re not scared of one then you should rethink that. There is virtually no way to survive one because you’re getting hit by hundreds of people at once which means they are virtually bullet proof. James wisely tries running as fast as he can.

Because this is part mystery there are a whole lot of twists and turns. I’ll be avoiding those until the spoiler part of the review of course because if you know things beforehand then it’ll definitely alter your experience. It will cause you to look at scenes differently but your first time in you probably want to go in without as much knowledge as possible. The actual mystery is pretty compelling but also very ominous since the victims are also kids so you figure this is going to be dark no matter how it plays out.

The Empty Man’s actual design is not really that scary. I would have handled it differently because it’s basically a normal dude in a cloak. You never really see much of him but he’s just not that scary and is basically only going after really defenseless people. When a gun is pointed his way he immediately jams it just in case so I wonder how strong he really is. He is probably a cosmic reality warper if I’m not kidding myself though. I don’t think the humans have much of a shot against him but like in the Grudge nobody even tries to fight back which is annoying.

We have the cops around but they don’t really do much here. They basically figure they can’t help out much and only really get involved once the body count starts to rise. Even then they don’t do a ton. The random cult leader is probably more important although the film was a little too content to give this guy a long boring speech that wasn’t needed. The intent is probably to spoon feed us just what the Empty Man is exactly and what he symbolizes but it’s not that hard to comprehend. We didn’t need a log speech about life itself from this guy except to remind us that cults are crazy and we knew that.

Okay now it’s spoiler time to talk about the ending. Skip the next 7 paragraphs if you haven’t seen the film yet.

Okay so basically James confronts the girl who went missing in the beginning and she explains that the cult actually generated him from their thoughts. They created him as the next vessel for the Empty Man since the guy from the intro’s body was finally giving out. The whole bottles thing was nonsense and everything is completely controlled by willpower itself. As best you can say that the bottle was merely the conduit but the power was in their minds all along. James tries to call his friend and she doesn’t remember him anymore. He was summoned 3 days ago which were the only days of his existence and so in the end he runs but the monster goes inside of him so he murders the old man and embraces his fate as the Empty Man. That’s basically the events of the ending so there are 4 ways to interpret this.

Explanation 1: James literally did not exist before the scene in the restaurant where he ordered something for his birthday. His memories are all fabrications from the cult. This includes his cheating affair, the family dying, etc. All of these are false memories and they basically brainwashed everyone in the area in order to pull this off. That’s why cops think they now him, the cult guy saw him before, etc. They have no real limit to their powers after all so why not right?

This is possible sure, but I don’t think it’s likely. It causes a whole lot of suspension of disbelief mainly because we’ve seen so many people who knew James from back in the day. Either they were in on it or their memories were being altered. But then why bother with all the theatrics? The girl at the end mentioned that they needed fear to truly activate James in the end and so they had to slowly break him but if they could manipulate the entire city and then some to keep altering the memories, that doesn’t really make sense. It’s way too convoluted a plan considering their abilities.

Explanation 2: It was all a dream. None of it actually happened and James himself does not exist. The entire film is taking place entirely in his psyche as he was created in the visualization and the whole film is basically just a metaphor for his struggle to fight against the Empty Man. In the real world he actually was the Empty Man murdering all of the teenagers and committing all of the crimes during the movie. It’s why when we flashback to the cult summoning the Empty Man we see that it was James in the shadows. Booo this explanation is pretty awful tbh and doesn’t make sense. Any “it was all a dream” scenarios are pretty boring if you think about it because then the whole thing was pointless. So not really discussing this one much because personally I just don’t like it. Not saying it isn’t a valid theory or anything but it would be supremely underwhelming.

Explanation 3: James was basically a normal guy until 3 days before the events of the film, the girl and her cult friends drugged him and stashed him in their basement. They then ran the trial experiments on him and turned him into a future Empty Man vessel. It would explain why he was seen by the Cult before and also why the cops recognized him. It would also explain why we kept seeing the empty chair every time he thought about his past. He was actually trapped for a while and then they released him into the wild with their memory alterations and of course removing his memories of being there. Mainly the part that doesn’t make sense here is the girl saying she created everything if the events actually did happen prior to being kidnapped. So that does help theory 1 more than theory 3.

Explanation 4: Okay so this is the one that I’m on board with and in some ways it’s very close to theory 3. Everything James knew prior to the film did happen. He lived a normal life and everything. When the crew “conjured him up” 3 days ago, it was simply activating him in order to be a host. She telepathically created a backstory for him to break down his psyche like causing him to cheat on his wife with the friend and then causing the accident. The accident actually happened but the affair was a fake memory and she had the friend under the spell the whole time. That’s why she didn’t remember him in the final scene because the villains let the mind control go. Both things would be pretty easy to maneuver without anything being much of a stretch. He eventually got broken due to the mindgames here and of course in the end he succumbed.

The main points against this one of course is that the cult leader had seen James before he said which doesn’t tie in with what James knows. You could say he was kidnapped at some point and indoctrinated as a sleeper agent but it doesn’t really match up. Additionally this doesn’t really address the girl’s speech about creating him with the exact backstory he had. Her just manipulating things from the shadows wouldn’t really explain that at all.

That’s it for the spoilers! So yeah a lot to dive into there. Regardless the ending is very memorable which is good. Would have been nice to have had more of a struggle or something but it is what it is. I do think the film’s dialogue scenes tend to be rather solid. While I did not like James by the end, at least I like how he always has an attitude with everyone. He has no time for all the nonsense and there’s a good amount of back and forth dialogue here. The mystery angle keeps you engaged all the way through with the horror angle and violence just holding the film back. Why did we need to see more dead animals? I feel like horror films just can’t help themselves and keep shooting themselves in the foot.

Honestly if the film had just leaned on the mystery angle and cut out a bunch of the horror stuff it would have been way better. Keep the atmospheric horror of course and the mind controlled cult but you can cut out all the stabby scenes and the more disturbing flashbacks. You’ll still feel a lot of tension and the imposing doom coming to the characters without being overindulgent and just wrecking the whole thing. Toning down the violence a bit would go a long way here.

Overall, The Empty Man is the kind of film that will keep you talking and theorizing for a long while. I have to give the film credit for that because it’s not really easy to pull that off. Still, in the end it’s a pretty bad film that falls into most of the horror tropes. You have the random animal violence that has no business being here. The dark shock twist to make sure you don’t like the main character too much. Virtually every character is massively unlikable with all of the kids falling to peer pressure immediately. Once we get into the human torture trials you know the film is just trying to hit you with everything. I think you could actually pivot this into an interesting action thriller for a sequel based on the ending but if you keep this as horror I don’t think it’s going anywhere because it’s another case of the humans not being able to do much. I’d say maybe they should have kept the whole film on the mountain but honestly that probably wouldn’t have worked very well. It would have dragged.

Overall 2/10

Where the Wild Things Are Review

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This is one of those movies that didn’t have a lot of potential since the main character is just a kid but even then it went lower than I expected. One of the big problems with the film is really that it gets really boring. For the most part I want to say that nearly every film has something really engaging in it. Something that you can sink your teeth into and have a good time but that wasn’t the case with this one. You’re just waiting for it to end and a big reason for that is the annoying main character.

The movie starts with Max building a snow castle but he is bored by himself. He tries to get his sister and her friends to play with him but in the process they break his snow castle so he cries for a while. He decides to embarrass his mother next and then runs away from home. This is where he falls into the land of the monsters and decides to be their king. Fortunately none of them are even remotely smart so they don’t mind working for a kid but is this really the life that he wishes to lead?

Now you may have suspicions on if this is really happening or not but I won’t spoil that for you. All I will say is that the film really does feel aimless for almost the entire run which is really my problem with it. Look, the monster designs aren’t even that cool when you really think about it. I personally didn’t find them scary but I also didn’t find them interesting. It’s like a bad episode of Barney but without the wholesome messages the whole time. Sure, you sort of see what they’re doing as these monsters help Max to see what a jerk he had been but it’s soooo drawn out.

Also, it really hurts that they made Max as unlikable as possible. It’s hard to really be sympathetic to him when he’s causing all of these problems. For example when the kids broke his igloo, sure that wasn’t very fun but it was part of the game and they didn’t realize how bad it was. At least one kid turned around so you know that he knew they went too far but ultimately he left. Max was a little too dependent on them there and should have just kept on keeping on. He got to play with the others for a bit so that should have made him happy.

Then later on his Mom tried her best to help him out and he rewards this by biting her and being a general pest while her rebound boyfriend was around? Nah that’s a really bad look and I’d argue that he never gets much better during the course of the film. With the monsters he tends to be very slow on the uptake and only survives because the creatures aren’t very smart.

It makes for a bit of a cringeworthy kind of film. You have a hard time watching the movie with a straight face. Now granted, I can absolutely see this being fun when you’re a young kid in some instances but I wouldn’t recommend this to a kid because it can be a little intense. The opening scene with the dog for example sets a really bad example. I also thought the dog should have shown up more later on because for a while there I was nervous that he died or something.

That’s not the case but it was a horrible way to open up the film. Worst scene there by far and it shows that Max doesn’t even have any basic common sense. You don’t run around with a fork while terrorizing your pet. That’s just not done and makes him look so bad. So with a main character like Max then you’re just not going to get very far with this film. Additionally for the vast majority of the film he is the only human character. You can’t banter off of the monsters so that means he has to try and hold the whole film by himself which is basically impossible. Trust me he is not up to the task at all.

I think if you really wanted to succeed with this plot then you needed more of a true main villain. An evil king running around and then you have his mom, sister, and the friends all appear as figures within the dream. It would be something more like Narnia for example with maybe a mix of Alice in Wonderland in there. The idea of a kid trying to run away from his problems into a fantasy world is nothing new. It’s been done many times before and done quite well I might add. This one doesn’t work though because it doesn’t have that focus and everything takes so long to happen. I’ve gone into the pacing a lot because it’s just so absolutely critical.

The monsters here are all just really annoying. They are easily tricked and barely serve a function beyond just being convenient figures for the main character to manipulate. Put him in a world with almost any other kind of creature and that would be game over. Mix it with the rather grim setting and they don’t stand out at all. Maybe if you couldn’t have the world be bright, at least make the monsters have bright costumes or something. I think that could have worked out a little better. The film’s chronic issues wouldn’t be fixed so it’s not like this would turn everything around but it would be a start.

Overall, This film had the issue of having the deck stacked against it from the start. Having a kid as the main character rarely works and certainly not one this unlikable. The story takes forever to move and even by the end I wouldn’t say that it ever got really high tier or anything like that. Eh there’s just not much of a reason to watch this one so stick away and just watch a more engaging picture. You’ve got options out there.

Overall 2/10