Tag Archives: Horror

Tombs Review

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It’s time for another horror anthology. The author is definitely really good at making everything really spooky here and you already know this title will not be any weaker in that regard. The stories do tend to get quite dark and violent at times though so I would caution the younger readers around this one. You are unlikely to find very many manga that surpass this one in the scares department.

There is a wide variety of stories to go through here so lets dive right in. First up we have a spooky story where a couple drives into a town where gravestones seem to be put in the most random of places. They’re even in the middle of the road. They run over a girl and quickly hide her in the trunk but this is only the start of the misfortune that is going to happen. They find out that in this town, you are supposed to leave a person wherever they die. That may not bode well with how they ran over someone and then hid her eh? Her body continues to get weirder and weirder while also getting to be very heavy. I’m afraid that the end is nigh for these characters.

Naturally it’s hard to feel too bad for them since they did run someone over. Yes, that was an accident but hiding her body and acting like they hadn’t seen her is really bad. As a result the whole family is wondering where she is and they’re all getting really nervous and stressed out. It’s super selfish and basically evil to hide such a massive fact from the others. Now I’m not saying they deserve a gruesome end and lets just say the fates for most characters in the town is pretty gruesome, but they certainly weren’t innocent either. It’s definitely a very ominous story with how weird the whole setup was.

The next story is one of the weaker ones. So one day a girl starts having more and more trouble speaking. It’s a bit odd but the family figures it’ll get back to normal soon. Instead, her tongue becomes a slug and just keeps on regenerating. So not only can she not talk but she basically can’t eat or anything. I’s just such a gruesome fate and the family tries everything but hurting the slug seems to hurt her as well. We naturally do have a bit of a twist ending here but it wasn’t really my cup of tea. It definitely got the creepy factor down though because merging with an insect like that would definitely be very eerie. You’d absolutely have to feel sick after all of that.

In another story, and one of the only ones that has a happy ending, a guy keeps hearing his name being called at night. He looks out the window and there is a lady outside asking him to come over. He refuses of course but then she keeps trying to get into his room. He tells his parents but they don’t buy it and the house seems too far away for her to reach. Gradually her voice gets closer and closer though as if she is nearly at the house. If the boy doesn’t leave soon, then she will reach him and that’s probably not a good thing with how demonic she looks.

This one may have felt a little ordinary next to some of the other stories as it isn’t absolutely crazy but it’s still scary. You’re supposed to be safe when you’re sleeping by your bed so the idea that anyone would be able to get to you in the dead of night is terrifying. Sometimes it’s the simple fears that hit the hardest. Also why you can’t let yourself get gaslit. If you know that somebody is outside your window, stay prepared and ready.

In the next one we have what I would call more of a classic ghost story. So a girl gets invited to this abandoned house to hang out with some other girls. It’s like a clubhouse you could say. Thing is…they all seem absolutely psycho and dangerous and unfortunately it is the kind of place where you aren’t supposed to leave once you join. There is also another group on the floor above, only these are all boys. The girl quickly regrets going here at all and the parents even say not to go. It used to be a really dangerous place back in the day and everyone died. So as you can guess, these seem to be their immortal spirits.

This one’s not bad but perhaps a little bit on the unspectacular side. Usually there tends to be more of a twist outside of the ghosts angle and this one didn’t really have that. It’s really just about the ghosts which isn’t as scary. You could also absolutely say that this is just because the author has set a really high standard with how scary the other stories are. That would definitely be valid.

After that is the smallest story by far and possibly the weakest. I just wouldn’t say it’s scary so much as weird. So there are a bunch of giant fish and weird creatures that wash up on a small island. When the villagers cut them open, they find people inside and surprisingly the people are alive. They are traumatized but beyond that there are no other weird effects. So…how did they get in there in the first place? Like I said, it’s more weird than scary. Maybe I missed some kind of subtext in this one but either way I would say it’s okay. It’s just not going to wow you or anything like that.

After that is the best story in the whole collection. There exists a large tunnel right outside of town and whenever you go near it, you start to hear a loud humming sound. It’s really weird and so kids like to explore around there sometimes. Then people slowly start disappearing and the main guy doesn’t even want to go there anymore but he finds himself unable to stop. In the middle of the tunnel is a group of FBI type agents running weird experiments. Hmmm..the guy wisely runs off and escapes for ages but eventually returns. Huge mistake but it seems like he wasn’t really in control of his body so he wasn’t really able to do anything about it.

This is one of those stories that is perfectly unnerving because there are so many questions. Why is this tunnel in particular so weird? Why do people just vanish inside it and start to turn into ghosts? It’s all strange, unnerving, and most importantly scary. Particularly since there seems to be no escape as the whole town was decimated and the more anybody gets close to check things out, the more the body count will continue to rise. Yeah this is the real tunnel of doom that’s for sure.

After that we cut to a town where a bunch of ladies are gossiping. There is a rich lady in the area who is rumored to have murdered her husband and then she even put a big statue of herself in the park. Naturally nobody is particularly happy about this and it comes across as arrogant. This lady invites the women to her house though and things get dicey from there. I think right off the bat part of the scare factor here is that most of the story feels like something that could happen.

Now, obviously I would recommend not going to the house of someone who is supposed to be crazy. I know the ladies outnumbered her but that still seems like a super bad idea. Never approach a villain unless you absolutely have to. It’s only asking for trouble there. We do delve into the supernatural as the story goes on though. Mainly it reminds me of the classic Wax Museum movies. Definitely a rough one and the moral is to definitely keep your guard up and you probably shouldn’t be gossiping so hard either. It’s got a bit of a dark ending although the villain definitely dug her own grave you could say.

After that we have a story where little mothballs of sorts appear and tell your biggest secrets to people. They are born out of secrets and yell them at max volume. So one guy decides to try and capture them all to have a monopoly. Naturally this becomes an obsession and he starts to really go crazy. This one didn’t really feel like a horror but I guess the scary thing might be about people learning your dark secrets. This guy definitely had some really awkward ones for sure. The whole thing felt a bit mean spirited though for all parties involves. Especially rough for the main guy to find out that his girlfriend may have liked the other guy back as well. Not a whole lot to say about it though. Living secrets is an intriguing concept but I was waiting for some kind of a twist.

Finally we have the blood village. A doctor is called to go to a small village to help out and for some reason everyone there looks beautiful one day and then drained as a zombie the next. They all seem to have significant blood loss but aren’t dead. It seems like the whole village’s blood is linked to the land itself so everyone is functionally immortal but doomed to basically be tortured every other week. It sounds like an absolutely terrible existence and if you stay for too long then you’ll be caught up in it as well.

This is definitely back to horror vibes because imagine being stuck to a village where your blood will be drained the whole time. That’s got to be really rough. You could surprisingly make the case that it has a bit of a happy ending though. Things worked out a whole lot more peacefully than I would have otherwise guessed. I was definitely surprised and the main guy was someone with a glass half full approach.

As always I have to give a thumbs up to the art here. While I wouldn’t want it for a battle shonen, it is absolutely perfect for horror. It just looks off in all the right ways and you can feel the atmosphere through the pages. The author has good range where you can always tell if someone is possessed or just lifeless in general. Yeah the art is a big reason why the whole thing looks so effective and it balances out the stories well.

Overall, Tombs is definitely another really intense collection of stories here. As with any anthology there will be ups and downs here. It can get quite violent and dark to be sure but at the end of the day it does deliver in scaring you quite a bit. This is a horror anthology so you should absolutely only be reading through it if you really want to be scared. I think it can be hard to hit the perfect balance of being scary without getting too grim and horror isn’t my top genre as it is so the deck tends to be stacked against this series. It also seems like mission impossible to get through one without any animal deaths. I would say that none of the stories are quite as twisted as the most twisted ones from the first collection though.

Overall 4/10

Dark Gathering

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Dark Gathering is about a guy who got cursed a while back and evil spirits are constantly attracted to him. He’s made it his mission to just avoid all spirits but that doesn’t work for long and a little girl appears who hunts spirits. Perhaps she can help him overcome his fears. The series is off to a good start so far and manages to tackle the classic spirit hunting business in a new way. I’ll have a review for this series as soon as it is finished.

Overall 7/10

Frankenstein Created Woman Review

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This poster is massive clickbait. The film is definitely not going in the direction of Frankenstein creating another monster. He does dabble in the souls business though and causes a whole lot of trouble. In the end this turns into a super annoying revenge thriller and so much time is spent on the villains. There is not a satisfying conclusion here and so in the end I have to give the whole production a massive thumbs down. It was just not in a good spot and I was not surprised since Frankenstein is rarely any good.

The film starts off with Hans’ father getting executed and he grows up with the reputation of being the son of a convicted criminal. Hans helps Frankenstein out in the lab, another guy who has been ostracized by society as a whole. Hans does a pretty good job of following the doctor’s lead and helping out when possible. He also liked a lady named Christina who helps her father out at the tavern. Unfortunately she is often picked on and harassed by the locals. One day Hans defends her and fights back so they get revenge by framing him so he is executed as well. Christina bumps herself off so Frankenstein revives her and puts Hans’ soul inside of her. What Frankenstein didn’t realize is that the spirit of vengeance demands blood! The ghost of Hans is now telling Christina that she must destroy all of the oppressors who framed him for death. Can she destroy them all before the cops catch up?

The 3 bullies are terrible characters so you’re totally cool with them being bumped off in painful ways each time. They really didn’t do much to convince you that they deserved anything better. That being said, this is still not helping the movie much because the whole thing is focused on a ton of negativity. It’s a shame how nobody was doing anything about this. Even Christina’s father was not really doing anything to defend her. I don’t care how rich these guys are, you can’t let them mess with your daughter like that. That’s just awful and you really can’t stand for that. The father was one of the worst characters as a result. Not the absolute worst since those 3 still have to take that but he was pretty bad.

I thought Hans could have done a much better job of defending himself to the judge too. You could at least say you weren’t at the scene of the crime if you don’t want to expose the relationship with Christina. Mentioning the relationship probably would have been a good idea though when death is the alternative as she doesn’t want him dead either. Dying definitely ended up breaking down his psyche with how crazy he got later on.

Also, the revenge is slightly less satisfying with Christina allowing the villains to have their way a bit first. Sure, she knows she will have the last laugh but I’d have preferred a much more direct approach where they don’t have a chance to really get any kind of quick victory. They just didn’t deserve to have any kind of positives here. I’m struggling to think of any real likable character in this movie to be honest. Frankenstein’s assistant Hertz knows a lot of dark secrets and never tells anyone. This is portrayed as him being a good friend but instead what it tells me is that he will always look the other way and that is absolutely not a good idea. When people are doing evil things, the right thing to do is to expose them. So yeah Hertz is compromised.

Also while Christina is really the victim of a lot of this, it doesn’t help that she murders herself twice. You feel bad for her and would have hoped that the film could have given her some kind of a happy ending. The whole thing just feels so mean spirited, like there is absolutely no hope out there. That’s really a big downer for the film as a whole. I wouldn’t say it really had any particularly happy segments, at least none that lasted for any real long period of time. Even Hans and Christina finally getting together couldn’t last because the villains were yelling through the window the whole time. That romance was a bit too rushed though and wasn’t needed.

So the movie is bogged down by lots of heavy violence, some fanservice, and generally being more of a depressing picture. Frankenstein makes for a good villain but he doesn’t appear as much as he should. I like that he’s the only character who can talk tough to everyone. Generally he isn’t afraid of anyone and has a really confident demeanor to him. This guy just keeps on going and it’s quite brilliant. You just can’t forget that he’s super evil here. At no point should you think he is sympathetic or heroic because he makes it clear just how many people he is willing to sacrifice for his experiments. He doesn’t even hesitate to let Hans get executed after all.

Overall, This is one of those films that goes all in on the shock value and doesn’t have much else to offer. This town would be absolutely dreadful to live in with pretty much all of the inhabitants being evil. They look forward to executions and look the other way when crimes are happening. None of these guys would be your friends and would backstab you in an instant. It’s also still weird to watch a Frankenstein film that doesn’t even have the monster at all. I suppose you can always do movies with just the scientist but the monster is typically the big draw. It’s why the poster had the girl version but that design never happens either. Instead this is more of a possession slasher movie. Either way it’s not like the movie would have been much better. I’m sure it would still be terrible so my best advice is to stay far away from this film. You really don’t want to get mixed up with this series. When you see Frankenstein in the title and particularly if it’s a Hammer film, run far away!

Overall 2/10

Return to Glennascaul Review

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It’s always fun to check out a short because the film makers get to really test their skills. Can they really tell a complete story within the time frame or is it going to be all messed up and cluttered? Fortunately I can say that they did succeed with this one. It manages to be a pretty fun story all the way. I wouldn’t call it all that scary but the experience would still be unnerving overall. It had a good atmosphere and the short keeps your attention the whole time.

The short starts with a guy driving through the roads until he comes across a guy whose car seems to have stopped working. Naturally our hero is a gentlemen and tells the guy to hop in. The guy starts to tell him a spooky story of what happened here and it is definitely something to shake up most people. The hero puts on a brave face but based on how the short ends, it did get to him in the end. It was a pretty fun way to end the short I’ve gotta say. Really helped to end things on a high note.

To the story itself, so this guy bumped into two ladies who needed a lift. So he stopped and took them home. They invited him inside for some drinks and he lost track of the time so the guy dashed off around 2AM. Unfortunately for him, he actually forgot something so he heads back but the place looks deserted and completely different from what was there before. He visits the owner who explains that those women died ages ago. So what happened, did he enter the twilight zone? Is reality just some kind of messed up simulation??? There are a lot of questions and yet there are absolutely no answers to any of them. This guy is lucky to get away with his life after the ladies start talking to him as random voices.

So it’s going for that spooky vibe but the reason I’d say it’s more unnerving than scary is you don’t really get the feeling that the ghosts are actually hostile. Now mind you, they certainly might be but it’s hard to really say. They may have just wanted some company and they don’t really seem to understand how their situation works all that well either. After all, they probably wouldn’t have let him leave so easily otherwise right? The main guy even seemed to like the younger one so that could have been her chance to go back to humanity or pull him to the spirit realm. It’s hard to say either way what would have happened there.

But yeah I choose to believe nothing malicious was going on there. I just didn’t get those vibes at all. Not all of the ghosts are evil so in a way that actually makes a lot of sense either way. My first guess if I was the guy would be that I just got the directions wrong on the way back though. Seems more likely than ghosts but knowing the names and hearing about the past owners would definitely shake things up a bit. He’ll definitely think twice before stopping while on a drive at night though.

Overall, This was a fun story. It’s like a little preview at something that you can picture happening. Perhaps with a slightly less supernatural twist but for the most part, still going through most of these events. The writing and pacing are both good which is super important for a story like this. If you were to mess up on that then this would feel underdeveloped or too rushed. Instead it manages to be a pretty fun story and it’s also one that would probably not work as well if it was full length. In that way, the story made the most out of its format. The short length also makes it an easy re watch. At the end of the day it skates by on just being a fun little short and it didn’t need to be anything more than that.

Overall 7/10

Shiver Review

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It’s time for a horror anthology in manga format! Now that’s definitely a twist if I’ve ever seen one. I will say that the series definitely does have that spooky vibe the whole time. The stories each do a good job of exploring different fears and really being on the unnerving side. It’s a very disturbing collection and not one I would really recommend to the average manga enjoyer. It can definitely be a little too violent and disturbing but it is probably the most unsettling title you’ll ever read.

The first story is a fairly low key one. So this one guy has a record and his friend always come by to listen to it. She wants to borrow it just for a while but he refuses. He’s just super into the record and doesn’t want anyone to have it. So she promptly steals the record and accidently murders him for it. From there, everyone else wants to hear the record as well and so she continues to be chased. There’s just something about the record that makes you want to hear it. The record was apparently recorded by a famous singer after the singer had already been dead and this seems to have the power to force other corpses to keep on singing as well. There is no escape.

Definitely a spooky story right out of the gate and also why you probably shouldn’t steal stuff. People can go absolutely nuts about their possessions even in the real world. Not something you should die for of course, that’s just where the real horror comes in. I would say this one is scary more for the fact that everyone is hunting you than the actual record though. The record itself is ominous but it seems like you’ll be okay if you let it go. The shop owner lived all these years after all. You just can’t afford to hang onto that thing.

After that we have a story with holes. I remember hearing about this phobia back when I was looking into making homemade cheese chips since quite a number of recipes had a warning about this. I guess holes can be unnerving and I won’t say it’s easy to look at. I don’t think I have the phobia per say but I was making sure not to stare at the characters too hard to find out. Basically this one guy has a next door neighbor who is filled with holes. She seems friendly one moment and then scary the next. He mainly avoids her but this holes disease appears to be contagious and there is a mysterious gardener around. Lets just say this one is even harder to avoid because it’s all happening right next door to the main character. The odds of getting out alive are super slim.

It doesn’t help that his friend is way too greedy and trying to find things out. This just puts them in more and more danger. Half the time in any event it pays to mind your business. If someone is in trouble then of course you gotta help but otherwise it’s not good to be nosy just to be nosy. Particularly with an illness that you don’t really know anything about. I guess he had reason to think something nefarious might be going on but definitely didn’t pick the best routes to uncovering the truth.

Then we have one of the more straight up violent stories. One guy is weirded out when he opens a fashion magazine and there is a really ugly girl inside. Why would she be a model? She looks like an absolutely insane horror jump scare type of monster. His friends who are filming for a movie think it would be brilliant to hire her though. So they pick her up and drive everyone to the forest for the shoot. They can all see that she is no conventionally attractive but don’t seem to be taking it quite as serious as the lead. Maybe they can’t really see her complete fangs and the fact that she’s almost 10 feet?

One thing you will continue to notice as you read through the stories is that the characters rarely act rational. They are all super strange and weird which is part of the horror. So for the main character it makes him/her have some doubts. Maybe the scary stuff is just in the mind? In this story that definitely plays with his head enough to the point where he actually still goes to the forest with the others. Then when the monster starts to actively eat people, it takes too long for him to even try and make a move. Ultimately things do not go well and the story is definitely one of the scariest ones because once they are in the forest you know there is no way out.

After that is definitely the most interesting story and the one they ought to make a movie on. It starts off with a girl hanging herself and then another guy follows suit. The weird thing is after they do this, their large heads appear in the sky like balloons. These balloons begin to spread and soon even people who are alive have their own giant balloons in the sky. These balloons are actively hunting down humans and taking their heads off. If you murder a balloon, you end up destroying the person whose face it was representing. You see the issue already right? You can’t actually destroy these things without ending the human race.

So as the weeks go by, more and more people are defeated. There is no way to go outside to get any food and it’s also just a depressing silence once you are the last ones around. As always some characters look pretty weird with how they just run off to get bumped off but I guess you could say the pressure finally got to them. The main character actually lasts quite a long time but at the end of the day it’s pretty much inevitable that everyone would fall. In a way you could also call this an alien invasion kind of plot. There is just so much more potential here to make it a really long story too.

Next up is a story about marionettes. The main character grew up in a family that relied on these puppet shows for money and stability. Ultimately this went on to an unhealthy degree and the father died after a while and the two songs went their separate ways. One day the main character’s brother returns but he’s a bit off. He has decided to no longer move on his own and instead he has servants who move his limbs for him. How? Through puppet strings. He is married with a kid and that had to be an interesting process. The main character thinks this is all super strange but unfortunately his little sister is super into this and ends up joining the group. You can imagine that this is not good for your bones when you aren’t moving them for so long and sure enough, that is the case but there is also a supernatural presence at work.

This was a pretty good story and definitely another strange one. My only problem and it’s a big problem is that I didn’t like what happened to the main character’s friend. In a lot of these stories it is all about karma and such but she really did nothing wrong. I don’t see why she had to have such a violent end. It felt completely unwarranted to me and just too radical. Ended things on a bit of a sour note there.

Then we have a story about a painter. He’s the best at what he does but one day a lady shows up and explains that she is the most beautiful in the world. So he decides to paint her and thinks he did a good job but she laughs and runs off. The problem is that her beauty is other worldly and now he can’t live normally. He is obsessed with her and runs around trying to find her. Thing is, everyone who draws or paints her ends up dying and he is no exception. He will be the one to finish her off first though.

This is one of the weakest stories. Not much of a hook or climax here and the characters just seemed a little too crazy unprompted. I guess I don’t really see what was so scary about this one except the general horror of meeting a girl who is so beautiful that she takes over your mind. It just felt more on the mean spirited side and desperately needed some kind of a twist about the girl being a demon or something. That could have helped big time.

Then we have a story that is definitely really scary. This one guy has a condition where he is experiencing “Long Dreams”. The dreams get longer and longer every time he goes to sleep. The first time he was asleep, he lived out several weeks, then this turns into years, and eventually he is sleeping for decades. He can’t keep track of what is going on in the real world and the doctor isn’t making much ground. Will he ever end up being okay?

This story is scary for the guy dreaming to be sure. After all if you are stuck in a nightmare then you’re really sunk. What if you die in the dream as well? There are a whole lot of possibilities and none that are particularly good. There is also no way out since you will eventually fall asleep no matter how much you try to resist it. There is just no going against your physical limitations there. I’d also say it’s something you can picture to an extent. Less dramatized of course but a scary situation all around.

Then we have a story about the ancestors curse and it’s the worst one. So this one girl got amnesia somehow so she doesn’t remember her fiancé or anybody. He tries to jog her memory but nothing works so they figure they will take things slow. He takes her over to his place and the whole time she is wondering what could have been so scary that she got amnesia. Well, it’s because his father’s head is connected to a bunch of other heads that go on for generations with no real end. His son will be taking over the family business and needs a descendent right away.

It’s definitely scary although I don’t see how you would get amnesia from that, much less getting it twice. The story itself was quite forced and it definitely has the meanest ending of the lot. Not really something that you want to see here. You were hoping the collection would end with a bang but the strongest stories had already passed by this point. The next one isn’t all that much better either.

The final main story is about a family with an oil addiction. They just can’t help it, they’re always drinking oil and so their bodies are starting to mutate. The main character refuses to do this but her family isn’t giving her much choice and gives her oil while she’s sleeping. She should run away immediately but sticks around too long and the cycle keeps continuing. This story is definitely going for the gross factor as everyone is slimy and the whole town is basically being hit by this. There is no escape to be had by that point.

It’s just such a weird story. I wouldn’t call it scary either to be honest unless you tend to think that gross things are scary. Either way this would definitely be more of a mis for me. There is a super short bonus comic at the end about a girl getting ripped apart but that story was also in bad taste and could definitely be skipped. I’m telling you, the final stories were not trying all that hard!

The art isn’t bad, it’s got a very simple look to it without too many details but it works well for the horror vibes that they are going for. The characters definitely look very memorable the whole time. So I wouldn’t change anything about that. The writing is solid and I would just say the author can sometimes go a little too far with the stories. Tone them down somewhat and there would be a lot of potential here. The ideas themselves are definitely very unique after all.

Overall, Shiver is a pretty scary anthology. I would say it nails the horror genre in ways that would be very difficult for any other title to match. It does feel rather unsettling the whole time. That said, it can just be a little too violent and some areas are much too mean spirited. Horror titles in general have a lot that they have to try and avoid after all. There are many ways in which they can fumble and ultimately I would say this title should be counted among them. If you are going to read it, definitely read at night for maximum impact.

Overall 3/10

Oujia: Origin of Evil Review

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When you have a movie about Ouija, the odds of it being good are super slim to none. There’s just not much you can do with this demonic board game and of course the whole premise tends to revolve around a bunch of annoying characters deciding to play it because they’re bored. Not a particularly good idea and things tend to spiral from there. This one does not try to shake up that formula in any way which is too bad. It’ll not go down in history as one of the all time greats.

The movie starts with Alice doing a spooky seance for an old man who wants to know if his wife would approve him doing a pretty bad transaction. Alice may not have powers but she does know how to scam people along with the help of her two daughters Lina and Doris. Ultimately the scam doesn’t go too well as they scare him a bit too much and Alice ends up not accepting his money. Ever since her husband died, she has had to take drastic measures in order to take care of her family and one of these measures was to become a professional scammer. She has everything set up around the house and she even decides to buy a Ouija board. The problem is that it comes with a free demon and this thing is now messing with Doris. Doris is now exhibiting supernatural powers but also becoming more sinister and violent. Can Alice do anything about this?

The two girls go to school where we have Father Tom at the ready so at least he has some spiritual defenses but unfortunately as it would usually appear, his powers aren’t as good as the villains. He’s basically defenseless when it counts. It’s too bad because he is a nice guy and definitely the best character in the film. He does his best to keep everyone in check and also doesn’t break his vows to start a romance with Alice who can seem a little desperate at times. He stays true to himself but ultimately isn’t a huge factor.

Alice is doing her best but at the end of the day I can’t cut her much slack for the scamming. Scamming is really a serious thing. It is one of those crimes that preys on the weak and that makes it even more dishonorable. It also takes her a long while to get with the program that these changes to Doris are pretty bad and have to be stopped.

Lina learns this earlier but in general is also a huge troublemaker so I wouldn’t say that she is a great character or anything like that. My first big gripe with her is how she keeps causing a ton of trouble and breaking the rules when she already knows that her mom is in a tough spot. The least she could do is be on her best behavior but instead she’s constantly flirting with a boy from school, breaking curfew, sneaking out the back, drinking alcohol, etc. Her rebellious phase came in a very big way and it’s definitely disappointing.

Then we have Doris who is super easy for the demon to manipulate. The instant she was talking about invisible friends and stuff the other characters should have shut it down but the sad thing is that it all would have been futile anyway. No matter what she could have done, the demon would have still overpowered her anyway. I will say that the movie does a pretty good job with the CG though. Whenever Doris is possessed she opens her mouth like a huge yawn but they really stretch it out. Think like when Goku was yelling while being crushed by Vegeta. Her mouth gets absolutely huge. Then you also have the possessed eyes although that’s more standard.

The movie’s effects were surprisingly good. I also liked the demon’s design. It looked like a fierce threat and something completely other worldly. That’s about the extent of the credit I can give to the film though. Beyond that like I said it’s just your average horror title. The humans are absolutely outmatched, the demon doesn’t really have much of a weakness, and so there’s nothing to really get invested in. When you know that all of the characters are completely doomed then that takes some of the enjoyment out of the whole thing.

With more likable characters you could at least try something but again, they were all super annoying. That one guy who was trying after Lina was just way too much the whole time so you don’t feel as bad for him as you could have. The whole whispering into the ear trick that the demon does is also a bit on the silly side. Alice’s husband has the idea to staple the villain’s mouth shut but that’s not even a good plan because it involves you needing to be strong enough to overcome the demon in the first place. You need incredible amounts of plot armor for that to even come close to working so it’s barely even a plan at all.

Why can’t he just possess an object or a person and help fight the demon? He is apparently good enough to mess with a little doll so he can affect the real world to a small extent. He’s just got to do a whole lot better than that. I also think Tom should have called the Vatican to send an exorcist over as soon as he knew that something was wrong with the daughter. How much more proof do you need once she is writing in other languages and acting so crazy? He decides to go to the house first and let them know…which is a terrible idea. He knows that she has supernatural powers now so how would that possibly help?

Overall, Ouija definitely has a swing and a miss here. It wasn’t a particularly enjoyable film and one of these days they need to have the heroes fight back a little more. Of course that would mean not having the demon possess a little kid this time. I feel like it usually tends to be the kids but if you pick an adult then we can have some fights. Give the demon some form of a weakness or limitation so that the fights can matter as well. As long as we’re stuck in this cycle, the films will continue to stumble their way to the finish line.

Overall 2/10

Curse of the Black Widow Review

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This has to be one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen. The tone is absolutely all over the place, the soundtrack has 0 consistency, the plot is super convoluted with a ton of twists, the main character looks like Vince from WWE, there are tons of crazy facial expressions, we have a surprising amount of world building for no reason, and there is even some sequel bait. This film just could not calm down and while it starts to get a bit tiring by the second half, I just have to appreciate the ambition. I actually think there was a ton of creativity here and a whole lot of possibilities to make this into a great film. It couldn’t quite get there and I have my share of issues but it was better than I was expecting.

So the movie starts off with Mark at the bar having a bunch of drinks when a beautiful lady shows up and asks for one of the men to escort her to the car. Specifically she only wants one of the guys so Mark goes back to his drink wishing that he was selected. He would quickly change his tune though as they hear yelling and when he heads outside, the guy has been murdered and the lady is nowhere to be seen. It turns out that her name is Valerie and now she is a suspect in the murder. Mark is hired by a lady named Leigh who explains that she was the guy’s girlfriend. The police suspect that she is behind this because her excuse of not showing up to meet her boyfriend as planned was one of the flimsiest that we’ve heard. Basically the rain was too hard. Mark decides to take up the case and he’s about to fall into a whole conspiracy of craziness.

Okay so the first thing that will stand out here is the strong soundtrack. You have a lot of really fast paced jingles and the movie is generally going for a very energetic vibe. Things are just popping and it really doesn’t match the scary vibe the movie is going for. Yeah sometimes the film will get a little quiet and it will try to get ominous but by then it’s just way too late. I liked the music though, it may not be all that fitting most of the time but it does liven things up which is always cool.

Then Mark also has a ton of facial expressions all the time with a bunch of zoom ins here and there. He is visibly shocked by just about everything and doesn’t even know the basics about spiders. This guy doesn’t seem like he would be a particularly good detective and I can imagine him getting emotionally involved with all of his clients. He seemed a little too eager to take up Leigh’s offer after all and then later on he starts to get a bit jealous at the dance. He doesn’t strike me as a very upstanding guy and is someone you’d probably be better off avoiding the whole time.

Still, he does have that obnoxious kind of personality that lets him strong arm anyone who gets in his way. He has a lot of connections and even members of the cops are ready to help him. We learn about the women who are able to turn into spiders and have super abilities among other such legends. He is really hard pressed to believe any of it for a good while but finally comes around after the proof is truly undeniable.

I liked the chief of police, Gully. Yeah he doesn’t always make the best decisions and probably keeps the situation a little too tight lipped but what I can respect about him is that he doesn’t back down. Mark can bully most of the side characters along to his whims but not this guy. No sirrrrr, Gully is here for the long haul and gets the final say. That’s the kind of guy you want in charge of the investigation.

Now, another area I have to give the film props in is with the subplot at the house where you have Laura and a kid. This plot randomly showed up near the beginning of the movie and had nothing to do with anything. Then wayyyyy later on it returns and still seems to be out of place. They’re talking about secrets, Leigh is involved, etc. It’s only by the end where we get a machine gun styled swarm of twist after twist. The plots end up converging but it took so long that I actually started to think that the film forgot about it. Yeah that would be crazy but I did start to really consider it.

Honestly, the film would be better off without any of that anyway. It’s the weakest part of the film by far. I preferred to have this mysterious lady going around bumping men off for rejecting her. That’s a much scarier premise than having all the family drama and learning everything about the past. I don’t want to know more about the character, I want to just focus on how to stop her. We have this one guy who easily seduces the lady and every scene with him is absolutely painful. You’re just rooting for someone to transform into a spider and eat him already.

Also the film gets some kudos for having the first guys to actually have some class. It feels like in almost every film, the guy will buckle immediately if a pretty woman so much as talks to him. Doesn’t matter if he’s married or engaged, he just starts blubbering like a fool and cheats immediately. Not the case this time! The first two girls actually turn Valerie down which is why they are absolutely crushed. I appreciated the resolve there. Would have been nice if they could fight too but let me not get greedy. It was just a nice change of pace to see.

Also this is a better vampire film than most vampire titles and that’s even without having any kind of vampire in it. We still had the blood sucking but it was generally not on screen and the way it was handled with the tendrils was way better than biting the neck. Spiders just have a more pleasant way of going about things.

Overall, Curse of the Black Widow is an absolutely wild ride. It’s crazy just how much is going on and it’s all so rapid. Even with that, the second half does drag on a bit with all the exposition and twists. I super did not care about anything that was happening there and wanted to go back to the mystery. That’s what they should have focused on and the movie would have been better off for it. At the end of the day I wouldn’t recommend the film, it made too many mistakes. Still, it was considerably better than I expected and you see so many missed opportunities that it hurts, but you can feel the ambition. The movie took a wide swing and while it missed, it was a fair effort.

Overall 4/10

Corridors of Blood Review

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This is one of those films that will make you shake your head. The characters make a lot of dicey decisions but in particular the main character really doesn’t look very smart at all. You’ll have a hard time believing that he is a scientist of any sort. He just keeps on making so many wrong turns that you definitely have to put a lot of active blame on him. Without him, the villains would not have gotten nearly as far as they did.

The movie starts by introducing us to Thomas who is known as the greatest surgeon in the business. This guy can handle operations very quickly which minimizes the pain to the patient. Still, he is not satisfied. There has to be a way to knock the patient out before conducting a large scale operation and he is determined to find this path. He experiments with a bunch of drugs and formulas to try and get the timing down but doesn’t use any assistants. So he drugs himself and the side effects are rather strong. He bungles his way into Black Ben’s hideout where the guy steals his notebook and forces a partnership. Thomas will now need to team up with these crooks in order to continue. Is this really worth it?

Naturally the goal of inventing anesthesia is a very good one. I can’t imagine going through most operations without something to knock me out. Pain on that level is just scary to even think about. It’s pretty rough seeing the people yelling on the tables as they’re chopped up. So you sympathize with Thomas but he doesn’t act much like a professional with how he runs tests on himself without anybody around to document the effects. That’s why you have more than one person in general. You need someone who can witness what is going on and give you an unbiased account of the events. Additionally, you can’t trust your own recollection or memory since at times you will be completely under. Trying to do this on his own was a fool’s errand from the jump.

Then even that might not have been so bad if he could lock the doors or something until he was completely sober. Instead he wanders around outside and gets into trouble. The whole scene of him getting pickpocketed is super embarrassing. Then even once he’s in his right mind, it was rather easy to convince him to help out. Thomas figures that trading the lives of a few people and some dead bodies is worth it for science but it’s a slippery slope. Naturally these villains continue to get worse and worse.

So I didn’t like Thomas in the end. He ended up just giving the villains too much leeway. His son wasn’t much better with how he didn’t even try to think of any ideas. His wife probably could have warned Thomas more as well on the risks involved with the science, but she isn’t a scientist so I put the least amount of blame on her. In the end, the best hero by far was Inspector Donovan. Finally we had someone with a little sense around here. I was glad when he pointed out that the time to act was now. He busted through with his men and really made short work of the villains.

The inspector didn’t appear much in the film but was definitely a scene stealer if I’ve ever seen one! As for the villains, they’re all rather annoying and super smug the whole time. Resurrection Joe is randomly one of those guys trying to attack women out of the blue and it was the kind of scene we definitely did not need in this film. It certainly set the stage for how morally bankrupt the villains are but we already knew that. I don’t get why the girl kept on working there after that. Throughout the film she half heartedly asks what’s going on and the others just give her the runaround, victim blame her, or just tell her to get lost.

Meanwhile Black Ben’s girl is just smirking and laughing the whole time. She really doesn’t do much beyond that and unfortunately the main character just takes it the whole time. Black Ben is also one of those smirking type figures who always knows that he’s in the lead. Once the chips are down though, he folds like the rest. Definitely not much to these villains, I’d almost have preferred if the surgeon had a Jekyll and Hyde situation with the drug although I suppose that would be a tad generic so maybe this is for the best.

In the end, most of the troubles in this film felt really forced. Take Thomas’ failure near the beginning where he tries to drug someone but the guy wakes up early. It sounds to me like Thomas never experimented on anyone other than himself which is a dangerously low sample size. Surely he could have tried with his son and everything. Also, why not strap the guy down just in case? Even if to prevent him from moving in his sleep. Like I said, the guy made bad decision after bad decision over and over again.

It felt like the writers sort of had the outcome planned but weren’t sure on the steps to get there. So it’s like this was written backwards to allow for this to happen when it should have been done in order. So the writing’s not very good and I can’t say many positive things about the pacing either. It was a team effort that led this film to fail so everyone played their part.

Overall, Corridors of Blood is a film that I would not recommend. I was certainly not expecting a movie about inventing anesthesia so that was interesting but it could and should have been done so much better. This feels like a B grade crime thriller at best and it forgot all of the thrills at home. You should definitely skip out on this movie, it doesn’t really have anything to offer you. It will quickly be forgotten within the pages of time, never to be seen again.

Overall 4/10

Gretel & Hansel Review

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It’s time for one of those slow boil films. Sometimes those work out really well and other times you feel like they forgot to really have a finisher. Unfortunately this one veers to the latter. I think there were some decent ideas here but ultimately it is heavily limited by the colors, landscapes, and general decorum of the film. There’s not a whole lot of fun things to look at and when you’re stuck in a bleak environment for too long you start to get a little bored. This film needed to lean a bit harder into the horror or have the character be better fighters I’d say.

The movie starts with Gretel being offered a job but unfortunately it is quickly apparent that her boss would be a creep and so she declines. Her mother is so upset that she throws Gretel and her little brother Hansel out of the house. She forbids them from returning or she will murder them. So the duo run and run but the forest is much too vast and they are nearly destroyed before being saved by someone. This guy basically tells them to stay strong and do their best. He recommends a nearby house that might be helpful. They head over and it is run by a witch named Holda who seems reasonable. Perhaps this will all work out….but something just doesn’t feel right.

The movie’s mainly focusing on the “doesn’t feel right” angle which is where the pacing really starts to die out a bit. As a viewer you know immediately that Holda is evil so you’re ready to get on with it but instead the main characters have to just play their roles for a while. Gretel continues to learn witchcraft from Holda without making any big moves for a while. This can be just very dragged out at times. I was even glad to have a dream sequence after a while to break things up. Holda’s younger form is definitely a lot more intense even if the twist about the food is quite a bit gross.

Holda actually looks like a threat here compared to in the present where she looks so old. We also do get a very brief action scene near the end of the film which looked pretty good. Generally speaking I tend to enjoy blue flames quite a bit even if the classic red ones look more impressive. More of the film should have had cool spells and fire attacks like that. This would have really made things more impressive and would have been a credit to the film if you ask me.

I also did like the very ending of the film as Hansel heads off for his destiny while Gretel continues to work on her own abilities. It feels like the ending to an action film with the characters each deciding to get stronger. That’s actually pretty interesting but you can’t just save that for the ending. The movie should have definitely made some waves earlier than that to really make a difference.

Hansel is pretty young so I won’t be too hard on him but for the most part he’s just a bit annoying and not really very helpful. Gretel does a better job of things as she is basically sacrificing herself the whole time to protect Hansel and buy time for a plan. It would have been nice if she could have put up more resistance directly but I know that would be ultra risky.

The film was at its best before the characters made it to the haunted house. I liked the run-in with the random stranger who was giving advice. Part of why the scene worked so well is because we know absolutely nothing about the guy. He just shows up out of nowhere and you don’t even know how much you can trust him. Like everything else in the forest, there are no easy explanations. I would have taken the whole film in the forest over the house. The film knew how to have a good mystery and that’s why going to the house was a mistake because then it changed more into an escape kind of film.

It also goes back to the backgrounds like I mentioned earlier. The house is rather dreary and the witch is just very old and doesn’t feel much like a threat. It’s not the most engaging backdrop for a film like this and there is no real variety. Everything is very old timey including the food so that doesn’t even look very appealing either. There is nothing to visually catch your attention and since the plot is already intentionally moving slow, that won’t change things up either. What that means is that you’re effectively caught up in a cycle with no real way out.

This film needed some explosions or something. It may not have fit in with the film’s tone but it’s just one idea there. If anything, the backstory we learn through flashbacks may have been more interesting. You had the little girl with powers who was quite sadistic and then the witch trying to turn the tables. There were some good twists in there and it was an interesting origin. That whole part, while brief was more interesting than the main plot which means something definitely went wrong.

Overall, Gretel and Hansel set up a very interesting outside world and squandered all of it to go inside the cabin. It may be what people expected since that’s how the old fable goes but the film just didn’t land on the execution. It had a good mystery vibe at times and solid lore but that was not enough to carry the film. At the end of the day it committed one of the big errors a film could make which is that it was boring. For most of the run you just don’t really care what happens. They probably should have aged the kids up a bit or chosen a different setting. Change this to a full action thriller instead and at least we would have some good action scenes. In the meantime I would definitely say to give this one a skip.

Overall 3/10

Brahms: The Boy II Review

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You know that feeling when the opening credits start to play and you realize that the film is not going to be very good? It’s a rough feeling because it’s like the film made some massive mistakes in the future but the scenes haven’t happened yet so how do you know this? It’s just a gut feeling after years of watching the cinema and I’m afraid that the film could not surpass this. All of the characters act insanely illogical and it’s not even in an intentionally absurdist way. It’s just in a plain old poor writing way and that’s tough to beat.

The film starts off with Liza’s kid Jude being super annoying and pulling pranks to scare her. She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t appreciate this but he doesn’t care. Well, one day the whole crying wolf thing doesn’t go well because an intruder actually is in the house and Jude does not give Liza any kind of heads up. She is defeated by the attackers and now has some severe PTSD. They move in with her husband to a more remote location in the forest area to hopefully help them move on. Jude has been unable to speak since the incident but unfortunately he finds a doll named Brahms underground. This doll may be more than meets the eye and Jude quickly starts to get corrupted.

So one of the many problems here is of course how weak willed Jude is. He immediately allows the doll to take him over without a fight which is pretty annoying. He just follows the doll’s evil rules without any kind of pushback. So much for freewill eh? Not cool and later on he even says that he tries to keep the doll happy so it won’t hurt the others. Wouldn’t a better idea be to tell the family so they can prepare themselves? I also don’t really buy this excuse since Jude was directly the one being crazy a lot of the time.

Jude also should have been talking to the parents instead of only talking to Brahms. So yeah I didn’t like the kid and he was pretty annoying and getting in the way the whole time. Meanwhile the parents take some of the blame as well. When Jude starts talking about how they can’t have any guests anymore, they should have been more serious about telling him that he doesn’t make the rules. They should have taken away the doll a whole lot sooner as well. One instance is when Jude makes some creepy drawings about his parents being murdered. That should have been game over for Brahms instead of not really doing anything about it.

Liza and Sean just didn’t take things seriously in time. None of it feels realistic in the slightest, how are you going to let this kid be so disrespectful and crazy the whole time? Lets ignore the supernatural angle because for now it doesn’t matter. Even if it was a normal doll, it’s clear that it is having a negative effect on Jude so it should be removed. That’s basically the end of the story there. If the doll returns after being buried and burned then that’s tough but at least they’d have given it a good try so I wouldn’t really have complaints there.

The side characters are also annoying like that random cousin who is cartoonishly mean. He basically shows up just to mess with Jude and start a fight. Things don’t go well for him but the whole thing felt pretty forced. then you have the gardener/neighbor Joseph who is rather shady the whole time. He looks worse as the film goes on but yeah it does seem like a security risk to have someone who can randomly walk onto your property at any time. You really can’t let your kid just be hanging out at that point.

The film also can’t avoid the easy pitfall of having animal violence. The dog gets murdered and you’re shaking your head the whole time. Another red flag that the parents ignore in part because they have no proof it was Jude and in part because they’re just not ready for this. The film brutally attacks your intelligence the whole time. The worst part of this is that by extension it makes Brahms look rather weak. For the most part he’s not pulling off any great feats the way that Chucky would. You feel like the parents could have buried him again and if they did it right away then they would be good. After all, that’s how they found him last time. Instead that’s just not what happens here.

As far as horror stinger endings go, I would also say it was on the weak side. It was more about checking off boxes than actually creating a really interesting cliffhanger which was disappointing. I don’t think there’s a whole lot you can do to make this a great series at this point. Films about evil dolls can work but you need to do something more with it. You can’t just have an evil doll and then call it a day. That’s not going to do anything, so you need a hook in addition to that. Maybe making Brahms able to turn his owner into a doll, transforming reality, etc.

Overall, Brahms: The Boy II is definitely a pretty bad film. It’s annoying the whole way through and the parents put up with way too much the whole time. It’s less scary and more so just tiring to see the characters constantly not knowing what to do. Brahms should be more active in a future film so that he is actually causing a lot of damage and talking. Having him just do things off screen at best isn’t good enough and possession is something you can do with any villain so it’s not much of a doll gimmick. I would definitely say to give this film a skip, there’s nothing that it’s really got to keep your attention.

Overall 2/10