Category Archives: 2 Star Movies

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later 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 quite telling that the last Halloween film was so intense that this one almost felt a little tame in comparison. It’s still super violent and everything so don’t get me wrong but it’s not being quite as crazy as the last one which is definitely appreciated. You’ll still want to give this one a pass but it does at least try to go back to form with the originals and I would even say that it succeeds at this.

The movie starts out by explaining that Laurie faked her death and is currently living in peace with her son John. She is still deeply traumatized by the whole incident but she is trying to slowly move forward with her life. Her son John thinks that she isn’t moving fast enough though as she still doesn’t let him go away on big school trips and he just feels like he’s trapped. Still, his friends say they’ll have the town to themselves now so John is eager to have fun there. Perhaps Laurie’s fears are not unfounded though as it appears that Michael Myers has returned once more. Can he be stopped or is it already game over for the main characters?

The setup naturally means that things will be in Michael Myer’s favor this time as the town has basically been abandoned since almost everyone went on that big school trip. There are only a few stragglers left behind including the main characters. As you can expect Myers goes to work on these guys fairly quick. Now what you may be wondering about is what happened to the school security? For once they actually have a fairly decent setup here because there is a big gate that prevents anyone from getting in.

This is where the movie has its most cringeworthy moment. So Michael drives up to the school and then hides inside. So the guard Ronnie, decides to…open the gate to check out the car? That’s completely messed up and shows that even if you have the best security systems in place, someone can just mess it up by dodging protocol. I mean jus think about it for a few minutes. Why are you opening the gate? If the guy is in the car and Ronnie clearly thought that he was, then the guy can just speed on through. There seem to be no other guards so you’re just dooming everyone.

Ronnie is the comic relief character of the film but even then this is a little out of bounds. It’s the kind of “Horror movie decision” that I haven’t seen in a while. It used to be a big thing about horror characters always making the wrong decisions to the point where it became a meme but usually you don’t see such blatant examples of it anymore. Ah well, I still like Ronnie but that had to be the worst writing moment in the film.

One thing that holds the film back is the rest of the characters are mainly annoying. So John is in a clique with 3 other characters who decide they should mess around a ton since the adults aren’t going to be around. They love their dark humor and being edgy so it’s the perfect situation for them but of course Myers shows up and throws a wrench into that plan. The characters also don’t have much of a heads up because one of them already loves fake jump scares so by the time that he is out of the way, the others are caught off guard.

It’s not like they would have had much of a chance either way tbh, but it’s still an annoying way to go out. John is rather irresponsible too and while he may have a point about Laurie being overprotective, it doesn’t give him clearance to just do whatever he wants. He went too far and should have just told her about the party. The reason he didn’t is because he knows that he is going to be doing crazy stuff there. That’s why he’s being secretive.

As for Laurie, well it’s hard to blame her for being so shaken up after what happened. Who wouldn’t be right? The whole ordeal was absolutely crazy and the fact that he’s back just makes all of her fears even more valid. I thought she did a good job of fighting back against him here. The most annoying moment is when Ronnie stops her as she’s beating Myers up. Cmon now, this guy is an insane mass murderer, why are you going to stop her like this? In this case he thought that Myers was already dead but in that case there should be no problem with continuing right? It’s all just a bit much if you ask me.

Myers is not a henchmen anymore since the last film doesn’t exist here which is good. He’s still just your basic psychopath but at least he doesn’t work for anyone this time which is a big upgrade. It was always weird to have him play second fiddle to anybody so at least this feels more like the real guy. That said, there’s not much character to him beyond just running around and murdering everyone so I wouldn’t say that he stands out or anything.

As always the film is mainly just held back by how incredibly violent it is. Everyone is bumped off in increasingly violent ways as the body count rises. It may feel less violent than the last one but it’s all still relative and this is the kind of thing that will always doom a slasher movie. It eliminates a lot of replay value because you don’t want to be seeing all of that violence.

Overall, Halloween is pretty much the same as it always was. The plot isn’t anything more than Michael Myers showing up to destroy everyone which is what he does in every film. If you’ve seen one film then you’ve seen them all and there is no reason to watch this one. It never gets past all of the usual slasher film cliches and there isn’t much good to say about it. Aside from Laurie, everyone is written to be unlikable or not very good at their job so the whole task is real easy for Myers. One day maybe we can get a Halloween film that is more atmospheric than violent but I have my doubts.

Overall 2/10

The Wolfman 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

Oof, this is one of those films where you figure that it’s not going to be good from the start. It’s going for the ultra violent route to the Wolfman mythos and in the meantime you also have a romantic rebound going on which never helps anything. I think there are parts of this story that can be a little interesting but at the end of the day there isn’t much going in its favor. I’m not a big fan of the setting for starters and beyond that there aren’t many good characters. The film is also very mean spirited which doesn’t help anything either so it becomes a bit of a wash.

The movie starts with Lawrence coming into town after his brother was brutally murdered by something. Everyone has their own theories but it was either a wild animal or..something supernatural. Lawrence takes care of business but he ends up getting bitten and now he is doomed to be the next Wolfman. In an old town where everyone is superstitious, that’s not a good thing. Additionally Lawrence has little to no control over this transformation either so he could really end up hurting someone. Can he find a way to either stop his transformations or get out of town?

There is a lot of mystery in the air throughout the film but at the end of the day there isn’t much Lawrence can do for most of it. When he’s not being assaulted by the villagers or manipulated by Sir. John, he’s being strapped to a chair and tortured by the doctor. That had to be the worst scene in the film by far. So this doctor decides that he will use shock therapy to save Lawrence and the way he does this is to continuously electrocute him until Lawrence can feel his mind slipping away the entire time. Lawrence can barely focus or even think rationally by this point so he starts hallucinating.

I should mention that the film loves its fake jump scares and hallucinations. Get ready for his mind to play tricks on him in rather violent ways. I suppose that’s the best way to escape the actual pain in the real world but I still feel like this whole sequence had no purpose being here. Of course he will end up murdering this guy viciously in his Wolfman form but did we need Lawrence to go through all of that? I personally don’t think he deserved it.

Not to say that Lawrence is a great guy or anything but it was all so extreme…much like the rest of this film. You will be hard pressed to find a Werewolf film more violent than this one. They really wanted to show people getting ripped apart and eaten alive. One poor guy is basically hung up with what’s left of him for the world to see and that guy at least had some experience with werewolves. The whole movie felt rather mean spirited and even the dead couldn’t know peace.

So at the start of the film Lawrence’s brother was brutally murdered and his fiancé is the one who was pushing for Lawrence to arrive so that he could help out. She must be in a lot of deep distress over this tragedy right? Well…she falls for Lawrence rather quickly and they have a romance. How could this possibly happen? Rebounds are bad enough as it is but this one had two reasons for why it should not have happened at all. The first is fairly obvious which is that she’s now going out with the guy’s brother. You never rebound with family, that’s just awful. The second is the circumstances of the brother’s death which you think would add some extra time to how long you wait before entering another romance.

So the romance here was particularly bad without a doubt. It really hurt the character of both Lawrence and Gwen. I can’t say that I liked either one of them by the end. Gwen doesn’t do a whole lot beyond the romance either. Then for Lawrence, well he goes through a lot for sure and I can’t say there are many things he could have done differently but he probably should have dashed out when he had the chance.

John is the most interesting character because he’s rich, aloof, and a little odd. He knows how to use a gun and isn’t afraid to threaten the entire town with it. You can tell that nobody’s going to be messing with this guy that’s for sure. As the film goes on he gets shadier and shadier but is ultimately the character who adds the most to the movie. At least he always takes over any scene that he’s in. Then we have Inspector Francis but I feel like he’s fairly generic. The guy basically admits that his skills aren’t great so he waits at the pub until the Wolf makes his next move. The location of the pub is quite convenient for him and all but he’s still not putting in a lot of the work personally. I expected him to have a much more active role in all of this.

I at least enjoyed one exchange between him and Lawrence where they traded insults during the entire conversation. Neither one of them was going to back down in the slightest and it was nice to see. It ended up being a stalemate but I always like it when a character doesn’t meekly just take the insults or anything like that. Lawrence wasn’t going to take it and the Inspector has a lot of experience on his end.

Overall, The Wolfman doesn’t really add anything to the mythos. Instead I would say that it’s one of the weakest installments in the series. It’s ultra violent without much reason behind this and the story is fairly basic. You could tell that the story was not the highest priority for the writers compared to just making this as gory as possible. There really isn’t much reason for the film to exist at all. The torture was also gratuitous and all the shock value moments just serve to weaken the movie. I would absolutely recommend giving this one a skip. You’re better off with just about any other film about a Universal monster and considering that Dracula is around, that’s saying something. There are some worse films out there to be sure like Frankenstein but it’s best that you don’t seek those out either.

Overall 2/10

Grease 2 Review

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Sometimes a movie will at least start out good and you see the potential slowly get squandered away but this time you could really say that the movie was no good right from the start. It immediately feels very weak and is just ripping ideas off of the first one. It’s not subtle about doing this either and so it’s just weaker than the first film in every way along with a historically bad song thrown into the mix. You’ll definitely want to skip that one as quickly as possible.

The film starts off with everyone heading back to school and a lot of singing has taken place. It’s been a while since the events of the first film but things are more or less the same with how you have the gang of guys and the gang of girls who are all supposed to pair up. Well, Stephanie is through with this and breaks up with her counterpart. She wants to be with someone dashing, someone who is like a true mystery man. That seems like it’ll be difficult though and then a new transfer student named Michael appears.

He’s a nice guy who he doesn’t quite fit in with the gangsters. The thing is that he likes Stephanie and wants to find some way to get her to appreciate him. She doesn’t give him a chance normally so then he decides to become a superhero. The cool rider of her dreams. All it takes is a leather jacket and a helmet to cover his face. Now Stephanie can’t get enough of him. Should he keep up the deception so that they can get married or will he have to come clean and risk it all?

There’s not a ton of plot here though as that setup is interrupted a whole lot by a ton of random songs and characters messing around. There’s almost no focus here and as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the gags and such are directly ripped from the first film. This one doesn’t have any real originality and it shows. The songs are also much weaker. In particular the reproduction song has to stand out as one of the worst songs of all time. I don’t recall hearing a song in any movie that was quite this bad.

The scene goes on forever too and goes well beyond the point of the teachers appearing to look incompetent. This guy should have been fired right out of the gate. The principal also doesn’t really get any big hype moments the way that she did in the sequel. She is around for this movie but doesn’t do a whole lot beyond just glaring and standing around. Feels like a true waste of her character in the meantime. Of course that’s basically the case for anyone here. Frankie returns but her role is so small that she may as well not have returned. She really doesn’t add anything to the story.

Right off the bat the romance is really bad here. Stephanie is super mean to Michael throughout the entirety of the film because he’s just too nice and she wants someone who’s a delinquent. It’s quite telling that she fell for Michael in his alter ego form immediately. That’s because the romance is super shallow. She’s not falling in love with the person but the ideal/mask behind the guy. Nah that’s not a good look for her at all. So by the end you definitely aren’t rooting for them to get together.

I think the film could have done something good with her character but it was squandered. She just comes across as too mean. Also, one of the big drama moments here is that she is given an ultimatum that if she won’t date one of the other gang members then she has to stop wearing the gang clothes. She seems sad about this…but just toss it? It should be a no brainer since she has already decided that she doesn’t like any of those guys. Being in the gang never seemed too important to her either so the whole thing was a bit odd.

As for Michael, well I’ll give him some props for being determined but should he really want to try to date someone who can’t stand him? The level of aggression here was really something so even if he can trick her into liking a different form of his, it doesn’t really seem like a good deal at all. He would always have to be on guard and even if later on she liked the normal form as well, you may have doubts on if she really likes him or just the superhero form.

There’s just a lot of reasons not to care for the romance. I suppose at least you will care more about them than the side characters who really have nothing to do here. It seems like after the main characters left in the first film, the gangs have gotten extremely weak now. It’s actually played for laughs how they now get picked on by a rival gang. Come on, that’s disgraceful. So they’re getting picked on while in their own home turf and they are still more determined to stop the cool rider than the other gang? That’s why they will never be in first place, their priorities are all mixed up.

Michael certainly learned fast too since he was able to easily out speed both gangs and pull off incredible jumps. This guy was a living legend after only a day or two. At least this will buy the rest of the gang some time to finally get good but it’s not like any of them are likable enough to root for anyway. Then in the girl gang the only one with a big role is one character who wants people to stop treating her like a kid. In a better movie this could have led to a lot of very emotional moments and big character beats but in this movie it was just there as fluff. It ultimately doesn’t get all that important as the movie just dashes to the end.

If you take away the musical aspect then this could be better but unlike the first film I wouldn’t even say there is a whole lot of potential here. At least the first film had quality dialogue, an interesting setup, and just a lot of promise. This one wasn’t trying hard to make a plot right from the start so even if you take away the awful songs, it’s not like it would be positive. I would still take that as a consolation though.

Overall, Grease 2 is one of those ultimately lazy films that figures it can strike lightning twice without having to actually do anything. It’s just an extremely weak movie all around and it’s probably for the best that they hadn’t made a third one right after this. I would say to stay far away from this one. Even if you’ve seen the original and liked it, you’ll want to avoid Grease 2. It’s possible that liking the original would actually make this one feel even weaker since you’ll have seen what it could have been like.

Overall 2/10

Dolls 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

Dolls is one of those films where you figure the main characters are going to be doomed but the question is…how doomed? Will they be able to put up a fight or are they doomed right out of the gate? In the end I wouldn’t say the Dolls are the strongest horror villains as the humans can put up a fight but it’s fair to say that they’re still a solid threat. This is a horror film that’s mostly going through the motions, I wouldn’t recommend it but the novelty of evil dolls is always intense.

The movie starts off with one of the meanest families getting stranded as their car goes in the mud. You have the stepmother Rosemary who can’t stand her husband’s daughter Judy and makes no secret of this. Rosemary wants to send her off to boarding school and insists on being mean for no reason. Then you have David who is so desperate for Rosemary’s attention and devotion that he will basically grovel and will take her side against Judy’s every time. Finally you have Judy who has dreams of the parents getting eaten alive by her teddy bear. So these 3 have a whole lot of issues but at least they have a place to sleep now.

See, there’s an abandoned mansion owned by a senior couple named Gabriel and Hilary. They don’t mind having company for the night. The family is soon joined by the two hitchhikers they nearly destroyed while driving to the mud patch as well as a guy named Ralph who is being manipulated by those two. Ralph seems like the only decent adult here so will he be able to escape the wrath of the dolls or is it too late? One thing’s for sure, nobody is going to be having a very peaceful night here.

Now you may be wondering…how can you lose to a bunch of toys? Well, in some cases it’s really the surprise factor. When the toys have already stabbed you before you’ve begun to fight then it’s difficult to do much. For example I wouldn’t say Rosemary had much of a fighting chance from the jump. As the meanest character in the film you figured that the movie was definitely going to cook something up for her. Being mean pretty much never pays in a horror film. Often times nice characters will die too but they tend to get off a little easier at least.

Then for Isabel and Enid, they’re petty thieves who don’t mind stealing from old people so of course things aren’t going to go well for them. Isabel’s death goes more into the surprise factor but Enid plays this one quite horribly. Okay so you’re outnumbered by the toys but you do have a flaming weapon plus you’ve had time to adapt which is more than most of the other characters got. So now you can plan a proper counter attack and start taking these guys down right?

Well, she unfortunately forgets the basic rule of combat which is that if someone is pointing a gun at you then you need to get out of range. She already knows that the toys are real so why stay in front of them like this? I thought the scene was a bit annoying because she had already taken down so many of them, only to freeze up at the absolute worst time. That was not the way to go about things, not at all. Big mistake on her part and it cost everything.

As the only real decent character here, Ralph’s a solid guy to root for. He has to deal with a whole lot and he’s a bit too naïve at times but at least he means well. Ralph does his best to protect Judy and while he is really slow on the uptake, it all eventually makes sense to him. I did think a scene near the end wasn’t handled well though as it comes across almost as if Ralph was trying to instigate the villains to attack him. Just go away while you’ve still got your life in tact. Why are you trying to make this into a bigger deal? I thought that was nearly a big miss for him so he got lucky…in that scene at least.

As for Judy, well you can cut her a lot of slack next to the other characters because she is still a kid. I’d say that has to count for something after all and she does try to talk to the toys a little. She did well in evading her father as well since that nearly got tricky for her. She does apparently lie a lot which is part of what makes this situation tougher for anyone to believe her so I like to think that her lying days are over now.

As for Gabriel and Hilary, I thought they were fairly interesting. They’ve certainly got grand ambitions but I wouldn’t say they are perfect ones. For example, if you’re trying to go the sympathetic route with them then shouldn’t they have more control over what the dolls do? They nearly bumped someone off who wouldn’t have been on their hit list all because the dolls have such a mind of their own.

By the end of the film it’s left fairly vague on exactly how this works. I assume the toys are on semi automatic where they work to accomplish the old couple’s goals but have some personality and control over themselves. If that is the case, I’d say that Gabriel and Hilary need to tighten the reigns just a bit or it’s going to go against their goals in the end. It sort of defeats the purpose if they’ll just destroy anyone who goes into the house. It’s an interesting dynamic though so it could be interesting to learn more about the villains some day.

At the end of the day what holds this film back is what holds most horror films back. It can be quite violent. Most of the deaths are definitely trying to be as gruesome and painful as possible. These dolls are absolutely not the kind of villains to give you an easy death. In part this is because of the size but expect to be shot and stabbed numerous times before going down. Each death takes forever and the way one of the girls dies is particularly gruesome as it’s like she is early on in the process of being a toy and so it all looks off with the eyes and everything.

Overall, Dolls is not really anything special in the slasher/horror genre. I dare say the dream near the beginning should have been real as it would have been such a crazy start to the adventure and would have switched things up. Realistically it wouldn’t have helped the score all that much though. I did appreciate the twist ending as it reminds you that some cycles are not too easy to break or stop. Things will just keep on happening over and over again. If this is your kind of film then you may as well jump on it but otherwise you can probably guess whether you’ll like the film or not right from the poster.

Overall 2/10

The Stepfather (2009) Review

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Man, the Stepfather was big enough to get a whole trilogy and then a remake? I’d never have guessed since you don’t see this guy brought up in the same breath as the horror legends like Jason or Freddy. Now those guys have withstood the test of time. This movie plays out like the others so you can sense all of the plot threads from the jump but the important thing for a film like this is always in the execution. Unfortunately I would not say that it succeeds in this. This film doesn’t really have much going for it and will end up being forgotten in the end.

The movie starts with Grady getting a shave and preparing his new guise as he gets to work on murdering another family. The guy has been unstoppable for a while now because his charms are so unbelievable that people just want to marry him right away. He only goes after families that are missing a father though as he aspires to have the perfect family. Well, he meets Susan at the supermarket and they quickly hit it off. They get engaged very quickly and Grady figures he has the perfect setup here as nobody suspects him. Well, Michael returns from military school and immediately distrusts Grady. What can the villain do now?

I did think that early on there wasn’t much of a good reason for Grady to be suspicious at all. We get the ominous music and all as Michael peers down the stairs and shoots looks at Grady but you just don’t really get it. Sure, you get that in general Michael isn’t happy to have anyone around right now but Grady helped get him back into school and even promised he would help make sure Michael isn’t sent off to military school again. Take away the shady music and as the viewer you would think he is doing all of the right things.

So I didn’t think the suspicion was all that earned initially. Of course as the film goes on then Grady gives him a lot of reason to be nervous and upset but it definitely takes a long while to get there. As a character I’m glad that Michael’s a little older so he can actually fight but I wouldn’t call him all that likable. It feels like he’s always trying to start a fight and is awfully defensive about everything. He’s rather annoying the whole time.

His girlfriend Kelly doesn’t really get much to do here. You could take her out of the film and not much would change. She tries to at least keep Michael from making a lot of mistakes like spying on Grady or digging into the past which makes sense since it all seems crazy from her point of view. Ultimately she isn’t able to stop him though and both of them have to really brace themselves for the climax.

I wouldn’t say Susan is a very likable character here either. As always she falls hook line and sinker for Grady to the point where she will not let anyone even think about looking into his past. She doesn’t find anything particularly suspicious about him and just goes with the flow the whole time. I think that would be admirable if they have been together for years and the trust is completely there but everyone has a super valid point when they mention that she doesn’t know much about him. He shows up out of nowhere and suddenly she trusts him 100%? It’s all just way too fast and part of what’s hard to buy about these films is how easily Grady is able to show up and get married each time. Cmon now.

At least the ex-husband Jay does decently well here as he suspects the guy and finds out the lies pretty quick. Unfortunately he isn’t too smart in how he handles the follow up. Look, if you’re talking to someone and the guy just walks out of there then you should probably be careful about following him. He’s clearly not afraid to lie to his family so what else do you think he might do to keep his secrets? The whole scene with Jay is rather tragic too since he gets the longest death with nobody to help him.

Finally you have Grady but there isn’t much to say about the guy. He’s just insane the whole time and forgets his identity really quick. Instead of it being a moment of genuine confusion like in the original, here it’s just played off as this guy being off his rocker. In fairness, the guy is completely insane so that tracks well enough. There’s just not anything interesting about him, his goals aren’t anything special. Additionally he’s just too insecure. He murders anyone who even thinks about starting a rumor on him which just makes the whole thing more suspicious. I dare say that it would have been smarter to keep everyone alive since it’s unlikely that they would do anything more than talk. Was the old lady really a threat? Really??

Overall, The Stepfather is a film you’ll want to void. I wouldn’t say that it has any particularly interesting characters and it’s as predictable as possible. The violence has been toned down from the earlier installments which is good at least but everyone’s still getting bumped off. Dying through suffocation is always a rough way to go out. It would be nice to change up the formula one of these days and have a new villain show up to stop Grady and make his presence known as an alternate villain. I think something like that would potentially be very interesting. Either way I’d recommend giving this one the skip, it’s not going to do anything for you.

Overall 2/10

Stepfather III 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

You can tell that the writers stopped caring with this one but I can at least give the poster some props. It’s one of those images where it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on at first. Is it a knife, shovel, or a candle? If the guy bleeding, just blasted someone else who’s bleeding, or is it the rain? Is he looking sad, mad, or glad? The more you look at the poster, the more it changes. I know what you’re thinking though, it’s bad when you have to start complementing the poster!

Okay so Jerry survived yet again because he’s just that powerful. He runs over to a plastic surgeon who agrees to give him a new look and doesn’t question how dangerous this situation is. Jerry murders the guy afterwards and heads to a new town. There he meets the desperate widow Christine and quickly marries her. This time he is sure that he’s found the perfect family but he will have to deal with her ex-boyfriend Mark, her ex-husband Steve, and his mistress Jennifer. Can Jerry defeat all of these obstacles? Man that’s a lot of people here.

Okay so the first big issue with this film is that it seems like Jerry’s character doesn’t make a lot of sense here. Yes the guy is insane and all but at least he did have his vision of a perfect family. Every little thing that goes against his values would set him off and his view of a perfect family was a bit warped but he wouldn’t sabotage it himself. Now we have a subplot where he is cheating on his wife with the new neighbor. Really? That doesn’t make any sense. Yes he would look for his next targets as he’s ending the current arrangement but he never actually makes a move until that’s happened.

Also…having an affair in the same small town where everybody knows everybody? No disguise or anything, he just drives on over there. Of course he’s caught but the whole thing is so obvious that it doesn’t work. Jerry was a master strategist who evaded the cops for years and had plans for his plans. You can’t expect me to believe that he would suddenly be making rookie mistakes like this. Of course he ends up blaming Jennifer for tempting him and tries to turn it all around but it doesn’t change the fact that he made the errors here. He’s the one ruining the perfect family concept and it goes against his character. That’s really his only gimmick as the villain so if you toss that aside then there’s not much left.

Meanwhile it is almost funny to see an ex boyfriend and ex husband in the same movie. I feel like that’s really rare at this point. The ex husband is lucky that he doesn’t stick around since I thought he was doomed. Of course Jerry makes quick work out of the ex boyfriend but that almost felt like a bit of satire with how the guy just shows up to get bumped off. It’s not played out that way but what are the odds right?

This guy wasn’t that smart or good with his reaction times either. Don’t just stand there and get pounded like a sack of toast. Meanwhile I wasn’t a big fan of Christine either. Naturally she is tricked rather quickly and the whole wedding was rather quick. She ignored everyone’s advice that she was going too fast and just kept moving along. Now everyone may have seemed like they were just being sour grapes but the warning bells were there. Like Jerry laying hands on one of her sons when he was playing video games. The way she found out may have been rather dramatic but she overlooks it so quickly.

Then we have the affair going on and she lets herself be manipulated a little too easily. Her plans are always thrown away and she is never able to stay one step ahead of the game. In this film Jerry left a lot of clues that something was not right and she didn’t pick up on them. Then you have Father Ernest who was at least helping the kid try to crack the case here but unfortunately that didn’t work out. Ultimately Jerry did sniff that plan out quick and unfortunately the roads were deserted. Unfortunately there wasn’t anything Ernest could have done there so the whole thing is just tragic for him. He didn’t even make any mistakes necessarily, he just didn’t drive quick enough.

As for Jennifer, well she was moving rather fast but at least she didn’t know that Jerry was married. Again it does continue the trend of everyone being so desperate in these films. It’s like nobody is content to just be alone and happy, you always gotta be looking for the next rebound. The romances here are all rather weak but that was probably obvious from the jump. This isn’t really the film you’re looking for when trying to find a quality romance.

Now while the film is definitely not good and the writing for Jerry didn’t work at all, there is one positive I can say about the film. The soundtrack is actually surprisingly good. I dare say I would even call it great. There are a lot of tunes that sound like they’re from the 90’s X-Men show. The music is definitely more comic book movie material than your average horror fare. I was surprised whenever a good tune would show up and it happened several times. Perhaps even though the budget was lower they were able to spend more on music or they chose these to save money and they just ended up being really good. However they pulled that off, it definitely worked for me.

It doesn’t save the film of course though as it still suffers from all the usual horror pitfalls. Aside from the writing being sub par you’ve also got to deal with the over the top violence that is always around. Everyone gets bumped off in rather brutal ways. The surgery scene at the beginning is also very graphic and so the movie is trying to put in as much grit as possible. It should have stuck to the Matrix effects like in the first murder where it’s like the guy was phasing out of existence with a lot of clones and tremor effects. Instead we just go back to normal murders after that and that never helps a film out.

Overall, Stepfather III is a film you should certainly skip. In a way I’d probably say that this beats the first two and ends up as the best in the trilogy but that would be due entirely to the soundtrack. After all it’s similar to the first two but they didn’t have good music. Jerry betrays his entire character here but in a way it shows that he was always a villain with no morals so that may not be a bad thing. He’s so bad at covering his tracks that it buys time for the main characters as well. It’s a bit ironic that the final movie would end up being the best one as usually it tends to fall off but it’s not like it matters much since the gap between them is fairly small anyway.

Overall 2/10

Stepfather II 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 for the Stepfather to return for another adventure. How did he survive his wounds from the first film? Well, I guess you could say that he’s just built different. Nothing’s putting him down, at least not right now. Unfortunately this movie is more of the same and so there’s not much good to say about it. It’s your classic slasher film with everyone making some questionable decisions.

The movie starts off with showing us that Jerry is now at an asylum. At least he’s not being allowed to run rampant around the world but it’s a very small consolation at this point because the therapist in charge of him isn’t really the cautious type. He is quickly convinced to let Jerry have his way around the place and gets promptly bumped off. Jerry has to look for a new widow and that isn’t hard either. Carol is very eager to get together with him and the two hit it off. Will she be able to realize what a phony he is in time or will it all be game over for her?

Right off the bat it feels like the film is winking at us a bit. This therapist was just way too trusting. Seriously he got fooled this easily? All it took was Jerry playing on the guy’s ego a bit and he was twisting him around with ease. The guy should have seen this coming and even telling the guard to leave the room was a bit much. You knew the guy was doomed either way but he made it all so easy on Jerry.

Meanwhile I wouldn’t say that Carol looks very good here either. Her friends are right that Carol barely even knows this guy. Sure, most of them are happy either way but this is why you shouldn’t go on the rebound so quickly. Every guy is going to try and appear normal at first, that part’s obvious. It’s why you gotta take it real slow. Now I’m not saying that you have to take a few years but at least enough time to hopefully really get to know him. The rebound shouldn’t be considered automatic though, like Carol doesn’t absolutely have to find a new man. Maybe she’s happy on her own and that’s completely okay.

It’s why I still find Jerry’s whole gimmick to be annoying because it resides on the assumption that he will find someone who wants to marry him at every town. That feels like it should be a stretch and yet it ends up working out for him every time. It shouldn’t be so easy. Jerry himself is just as insane as always. He does lay on the nice guy act rather thick but I guess everyone just eats it up. It’s too bad he’s saying every line ironically since the whole family message could be rather decent if it was coming from someone else. It just loses all of its weight when he’s saying it.

Matty is Carol’s best friend and you feel bad for her since Carol immediately turns on the lady. You’d think Carol would appreciate how hard Matty was working to try and make sure that everything was good. Instead Carol basically threatens to terminate their friendship. Matty is nice enough where she still keeps on going with the investigation but ultimately makes the mistake of going to Jerry directly about this. When you’ve already proven that someone is lying, why not go straight to the local authorities or if you don’t think they’ll take the stolen identity angle seriously, then tell Carol. Force the issue or make a big stink about it throughout the neighborhood so everybody knows. Confronting the villain one on one is not the way to go about it.

Yeah Carol made it hard on her which is why Carol’s not a great heroine either but this still wasn’t the way to go about it. Todd actually got along with Jerry well enough in this version so the act actually could have worked but ultimately Jerry made too many mistakes and it came back to bite him. Todd was able to step up when it was crunch time. Then you have Phil who shows up to get absolutely wrecked right away. Again, this didn’t make Carol look great since she seemed willing to jump ship and go back to Phil only to rebound with Jerry once again when that guy mysteriously vanished.

The worst part is that Phil didn’t seem like he was going to be a great guy either, he was just going to be better than Jerry and that’s not a tall order to fulfill. Jerry does a good job of covering his tracks but the victims really make this easy on him the whole time. There are a lot of ways to explain their disappearances each time because they ended up meeting with Jerry 1 on 1. You know that eventually things will work out but it always takes quite a while to get to that point.

The film’s fairly violent as you would expect and follows the usual horror formula. Everyone gets bumped off over and over again here. Sometimes it’s almost out of nowhere like a random driver showing up and getting taken out. This time around Jerry even starts to throw in some one liners when he takes the characters down. That was definitely different as I don’t really remember him doing this much in the first film. Maybe he did and I forgot but I don’t think that was the case. This would then continue into the next movie.

Overall, Stepfather II has no real good excuse to get Jerry back onto the field so the whole opening scenes are as contrived as possible. In general the film only barely works because it’s all such a big stretch. Then it stumbles for the rest of the duration anyway with Jerry not being a very interesting villain. Yeah we know he’s crazy but at least in the first film he’s trying to have some kind of plan which is to have a perfect family while here he’s letting everything get in the way of that. It’s almost like he’s sabotaging everything on his own. Just don’t give out so much information that could be easily traced to show that he’s lying. He’s almost better off just claiming amnesia with some of the lies he’s telling here. He should also quit naming such small towns where everybody has heard of everyone. Start saying New York City or something since nobody would be able to verify that so easily back in the day.

Overall 2/10

Copycat 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

Copycat is one of those films where you know it’s not going to be so good right from the jump. The question is will it rise to mid status or will it just be bad? Well, in this case it never ended up recovering and this is probably a film you aren’t going to be checking out a second time anyway. It’ll just fade away into obscurity.

The movie starts with Helen giving a lecture on the various mass murderers of the day and how you have to be scared because right now even some of the classmates could be evil. Her doom and gloom speech is a big hit but unfortunately one of those murderers was in attendance and attacks her. The guy murders one of the cops but is ultimately captured. Unfortunately the experience scarred Helen for life and she can no longer leave her apartment now. She is completely trapped.

This gets a little intense for her when she reads the news and sees that another mass murderer has appeared. This is her specialty but it’s not like she can go out there to take names and find out what’s going on. Helen is given little choice in the matter though when the villain sends her a threatening message. Monahan and Reuben are the two cops who will be helping her out here but can any of them take down this new villain? One thing’s for sure, they need to keep their guards up at all times.

I’ve noticed that these mass murder mystery films tend to put the main character in a rather difficult spot so they can’t help too much. At least it happened twice which is enough to make me raise an eyebrow as bone collector did the same thing. Since Helen can’t leave and is racked with fear that limits what she can actually contribute to the case. Considering all of this she actually does rather well in looking at the clues and helping out. You feel bad for her too because you figure one traumatic experience is enough for a life time and yet she’s going to have to go for a second one now.

I thought she was a good character though. Helen is tough and talks back to the other characters while also keeping up her boundaries. She only allows her friend Andy to see any moment of weakness within her. To everyone else she at least tries to keep the image up the whole time. Her friend Andy means well and looks after her but you get the feeling that he is doomed from the jump.

In these films just about everyone is doomed for being too close to the lead. Usually as soon as a character appears you know they could be next on the chopping block. The villain here doesn’t have any special powers or anything like that but at the end of the day he does have the element of surprise and that’s hard to fight off. Certainly it’s difficult to combat that on short notice at least.

The villain here is one of those psychotic kind of characters as you can probably guess. It’s also hard to call this a murder mystery to the extent that the film isn’t really giving you a chance to find out who the murderer is for the most part. I suppose the mystery is more about finding him before he bumps someone else off. Unfortunately the tricky part is that it takes a while to find a pattern or any leads so the body count here is already rather high.

I liked the two cops on the case though. Monahan does her best to manipulate everyone and shows that she has what it takes as a cop. Her approach to everything is rather by the book which isn’t a bad thing but the film uses that against her at one point. She ultimately gets off a shot just like how the manual said to do but in the end it wasn’t enough. I blame everyone else at the scene far more than her though because she still did her part.

At one point I almost started to wonder if she was going to end up being a villain in a twist or something but I’m glad the movie didn’t go in that direction. As for Reuben, he’s a good partner. Helen even tries to give him some romance tips at one point although I think it’s a little dicey to be thinking about how to make a move while there’s a serious threat on the loose like this. Ultimately Reuben may be a quick shot but that doesn’t mean he’s super safe.

The villain from the opening scene: Daryll, sticks around for the film and that was unfortunate. We already have one psychopath in this film, did we really need 2? Any scene with this guy in it is super annoying and drags on. I don’t think they should have even given that creep much attention. I suppose they were desperate for leads but that’s when you get someone on the inside to rough him up a bit. That may be easier said than done of course but it’s just a shame that Helen had to work with this guy even for a minute after what happened.

The movie’s stinger for the sequel is also really weak. It doesn’t make you hyped for a possible sequel at all and is just a groaner. It could have done something, almost anything more interesting than that. I would have no reason to believe the sequel would be any better than this film. In fact, there is even the chance that it would just be worse in the end depending on who the main villain is.

Overall, There isn’t much to like about Copycat. It’s your run of the mill horror/slasher title. It’s really gritty and by the time the heroes come around it’s always too late. The victories here feel hollow as a result and nobody is ever prepared so they get bumped like it’s nothing. The writing isn’t anything special and this film is really one of those dime a dozen horror titles. I would recommend just steering clear of this one. It doesn’t even have anything super entertaining to talk about or that at least would make it stand out. I suppose I won’t forget the scene with the random criminal at the police station because of how random it was. Whatever could go wrong for the heroes certainly did each time.

Overall 2/10

The Stepfather 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

This film plays out just like you would expect it to. It’s a dime a dozen horror/slasher kind of film where everyone is too oblivious for their own good. There was one scene which was an interesting subversion but on the other hand the whole scene felt really annoying and stretched my disbelief to the max so I’m not sure it was a great tradeoff. This film doesn’t do much right tbh, I suppose at least it reminds you on the dangers of rebounding. It can always get a little dangerous.

So the movie starts off with Jerry murdering a family and then running off to his next disguise. Basically his gimmick is that he will take on a new identity and marry a widow who has a kid. They’ll then live a normal life until he gets bored or upset and then he takes them out before repeating the process. What you have to understand is that for him to do this so often, a lot of people are just marrying him real quick. We don’t know how many times he’s pulled this off but it’s heavily implied that the scene we saw in the beginning of the film wasn’t the first time.

With the current family he is able to quickly get on Susan’s good side but her daughter Stephanie is a harder sell. She doesn’t like Jerry and isn’t happy about having to get used to him. Jerry needs to win her over quickly because he wants a perfect family and so if that doesn’t happen then she will have to go. Stephanie didn’t like Jerry from the start so unfortunately nobody takes her too seriously when she starts to say that he might be shady. After all that may just be sour bananas right?

It’s just a little hard to buy into the fact that all these widows are so desperate that they’d marry Jerry right away. During the film there’s a quick scene where he’s already starting to get his next life all set up and immediately after a few seconds of flirting it semes like he’s got his next victim all picked out. Cmon now, the film’s going to have to work a little harder to make that seem even slightly realistic. It’s an interesting gimmick for the main villain to have but it’s not too practical.

Now the whole film there is a guy named Jim who is on the case. This paragraph and the next 4 will have big spoilers so skip them if you haven’t seen the movie yet. I just have to dive in here because this character was just so bad. Whew……this guy was really bad. SO here’s what happens, he’s the brother of the last girl that Jerry took down for the count. He has follows the guy across the state and has narrowed his search down to a few people left. Finally he gets a definitive lead and knows exactly who he is looking for. So Jim goes to the house and yes he brought his gun with him. Jim sees that the door is open and everything is awful quiet. Okay that means Jim is ready right? He takes out his gun and just starts popping off??

No, Jim walks in and starts to look around. That’s when Jerry tries to sneak up on him but the door is so old that it makes a noise so Jim sees him. “Is that you sir???” Jim basically asks and Jerry just grins. “Long time no see Jim”…..and you figure Jerry is out of ideas and options because there’s nothing he can do. Jim has the gun and there is no element of surprise. There is absolutely nothing that Jerry can even hope to do in this situation. It’s all curtains, roll credits. Except…..that’s actually not what happens here.

See….Jim…..forgot to take his gun out of his pocket. Why…..I can’t even….what’s even worse is that Jim’s pocket is closed with a zipper and it gets jammed. Noooooooo

This is one of the most contrived moments I’ve seen in cinematic history. So Jim starts fumbling with the zipper while Jerry walks over and murders him. That’s just embarrassing. That’s not only awful writing in what was already a terrible movie but it makes no sense. Clearly the idea here was to subvert your expectations since the entire film has Jim running around looking for Jerry so you’re expecting the big payoff. No instead he gets neg diffed (Defeated with negative difficulty) and wastes his gun.

You need the full context here. Jim already knew what the guy looked like, he knew his address, and he knew that the guy just quit his job in the current alias which means he is about to murder his family. Jim’s the one who connected all of these dots earlier and even warned the cops. So he knows exactly what to expect and the door was open plus the house was eerily quiet. Why didn’t he already have his gun out? Why use a pocket with a zipper so you can’t take the gun out at a moment’s notice? Man………

Okay that’s it for spoilers. So back to the film, Jim’s a pretty awful character and I don’t need to talk about him much. Jerry’s bad which is pretty much automatic as one of those random serial killers. It’s not like there is any interesting motivations to his actions or anything like that. He’s just one of those lunatics so you’re waiting for him to get his at some point. He just tends to get lucky that his opponents are either not very smart, have 0 IQ, come in with no plan, or forget their own stories. He gets a lot of breaks here.

You’ve got the therapist Dr. Bondurant who seems decent at times but then tends to fumble. I appreciate that he’s proactive and tries to meet with Jerry but then he quickly starts making easy mistakes. Being obvious about his questions, forgetting his lies even though he just needs to bluff his way through 10 minutes, etc. This guy should have done way better and the way he goes out is just awful. Look, if you’re going to die anyway then at least try fighting back, jump out the window (They’re on the ground floor), tackle, do something. Instead he’s still trying to say that he’s not lying while he’s being stabbed. At that point nobody cares, certainly not the murderer. You need to fight back instead of hoping that he’ll stop.

As one of those films where you know Jerry is evil from the jump, it does always make for an interesting perspective. You get to really backseat drive the main characters here and their decisions feel even worse this way. I like the idea though even if it doesn’t do anything to save the film here. Stephanie is okay but unfortunately she did make it tough for anyone to believe her with how she never even gave Jerry a chance. I think she should have made a bigger deal about Jerry’s random episode in the basement but realistically almost anything she did would have had her get murdered anyway so I’m not sure it would have done much. At the end of the day when you’re a kid there’s not a whole lot you can do.

The film can be quite violent so you’ll want to give this one a pass if you’re not up for that. It definitely limits the film’s potential from the jump but in this case you also had to factor in the writing. Jerry also gets the family a dog and right away there were a lot of red flags. Now, the dog does escape initially when Stephanie gets home but I don’t recall the dog appearing after that in the ending. Did it survive or not? It’s hard to tell and at least from my recollection it didn’t feel definitive. I like to imagine that he did live for that result but the film was treading on very murky water there.

Overall, The Stepfather is a movie where the plot is hard to buy right from the start. Nobody is ever helpful in trying to take him down and if anything they’re just getting in each other’s way. There are no true standout characters and the film just doesn’t have much of a soul to it. If any of the characters were even remotely tough then you expect that they would have been able to do more here. It’s also why you probably want to really take your time in a relationship before you get serious. Not sure how much it would have helped in this case but to an extent I like to think the cracks in Jerry’s façade would have started to appear. It’s not like he’s the best actor with how he forgets who he is once in a while and even uses the wrong names in random conversations. He’s not all there so it’s not like he’s some kind of genius mastermind.

Overall 2/10

Punisher: War Zone 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 time for the return of the Punisher but this one isn’t quite able to match the first one. It goes all in with making the Punisher a rather imposing figure who takes down everyone in his way but along the way it forgot the charm of the series and doesn’t focus as much on how he helps people on a local level. This film is one you’ll ultimately want to end up skipping.

The movie starts with Punisher taking down a group of villains as he always does but this time he ends up taking out an FBI agent as well. The guy was undercover so Punisher figured that he was one of the villains but that was not the case. Now he feels like he should retire out of guilt but his partner Microchip convinces him not to do that. At the very least he tells the Punisher that he needs to finish the job by taking out Jigsaw first since that villain ended up surviving. Punisher agrees so he’s back on the streets to murder the villains but will he really be able to take out Jigsaw and his brother Jim?

The interesting part about the movie is that it would be over before it began if this version of the Punisher wasn’t so sadistic. Usually the Punisher goes around just shooting everyone as a quick death. He dishes out the punishment which is lethal for these villains and that’s the end of it. Only this time instead of doing that he tossed Jigsaw into a machine that crushes glass so it would slowly shred the guy to bits. Usually that would work but not in this case. The Punisher just seemed to be enjoying the show a bit too much here as he was even watching until some other villains attacked and he had to deal with them.

It’s clear that in this version the Punisher really enjoys his work to the point where he goes all in on this. You’d almost think he was a super villain as well with some of the scenes here. There’s another moment where he beats one guy up, then tosses him to the ground where he is impaled by spikes, then he breaks the guy’s neck/slashes it with a final fall. It’s all so extra and unnecessary that when the Punisher lands you could easily photoshop him with Michael Myers or someone like that and nobody would bat an eye. That would absolutely be a villain’s intro.

Now, I would always argue that the Punisher is a villain in all continuities. He murders all of his opponents and while they are villains, it’s still murder. Characters like the Punisher are always interesting as a what if since you can imagine this to be how things would go if Batman or another hero would murder their opponents. Ultimately it may result in safer streets and probably does but the cost is too high. So while it’s an interesting idea, we’ve still got to keep in perspective that if the heroes were here they would have a duty to take him down.

At least what still makes Punisher a decent character is he does have an honor code and doesn’t go after innocents or anything like that. When you see him just taking out the villains it’s fun enough but anytime you have to resort to torture or really taking it to the villains then it can be a bit too extreme. For that reason I much preferred the Punisher as portrayed in the earlier film. He seemed to have a lot more of his humanity and he was still punishing his opponents but very somberly and without getting into it.

Now if the Punisher’s scenes are that violent, you’re probably wondering what the villains do. Well, they don’t hold back either and you have people being eaten and ripped apart. The film’s absolutely as edgy as you would expect and it’s all really over the top. It’s the level of violence that would doom any film right out of the gate. You’ve got to have some restraint with scenes like this. Establish that the villains are evil and we don’t really need to see the rest. It would have made the film a whole lot better.

There’s no real reason to like Jigsaw as a villain. The guy is your classic mobster who wants a shot at greatness and will do anything for it. He betrays allies and just keeps on moving up. The guy is rather insane although you would expect most villains at his level to be insane since they probably crack on the way up. His design after getting torn up is certainly gruesome.

Then his brother Jim is even worse. That guy is completely off the walls and even talks like he’s looney. The scene of him being a cannibal is disturbing and you know that ultimately he won’t be taking the Punisher down. This guy is good against people who won’t fight back but a gun will take him down like all the rest. It’s not like any of these villains are bullet timers after all.

Paul is the main FBI agent trying to take the Punisher down. You can see why he’s so frustrated since the local cops all seem to support the Punisher and even the guy at the head of the taskforce isn’t particularly cooperative. The reason for this is fairly clear as everyone is rooting for the villains to be taken down. The city seems extremely corrupt so they’re probably tired of every villain just getting in and out of jail. This makes Paul’s job of avenging his comrade a lot tougher.

Paul’s a good character though and one of the few that you can root for all the way through. He does tend to get in the Punisher’s way but it’s very understandable from his perspective. Then you have Microchip who is a good partner to the Punisher. He knows exactly how to make that guy tick and what sets him off. You need someone like that to have your back and get the ammo ready. Punisher wouldn’t be able to function nearly as efficiently without him. The guy should probably carry more guns with him though so that he isn’t picked off.

While the movie is mainly devoid of humor, there is one scene that was pretty fun. You’ve got 3 athletic villains who are running and jumping across the roof while a really fast paced happy song is playing in the background. You can see how it’s all going very well for the villains but suddenly one of them explodes and we cut to Punisher with his cannon. That was the best scene in the movie by far. It works in showing that the Punisher is absolutely not playing around here and also in how fast the tone changes. It instantly goes from being a happy moment to a really intense one. The scene also helped to enhance the film’s overall soundtrack since the music there was really good.

Overall, Punisher: War Zone will definitely remain in the shadow of the first one. It just doesn’t really improve on much while falling below on a lot of areas. I would say the only area where this one wins is in showing the Punisher off as more of an unstoppable force. You can see why the whole city fears him and one scene shows how he has already taken down hundreds and hundreds of opponents. That was a great moment without a doubt. The film just can’t get away from its tendencies to make every scene as violent as possible. Show don’t tell is a rule that it takes too literally and that can often be what takes a film down for the count.

Overall 2/10