One Piece Film: Red Review

Posted on November 5, 2022 by dreager1

“The hierarchy of the One Piece franchise is about to change” Well this film definitely pulled it off. Eventually every great franchise has its definitive movie. That one installment that you feel will never be surpassed. Some do this multiple times like Dragon Ball Z (Original Broly movie, Resurrection F, Dragon Ball Super: Broly) but most will at least do it once. Justice League Crisis on Two Earths, Bleach: Hell Verse, Avengers Infinity War, Spider-Man 3, the original Mortal Kombat, Transformers G1 the movie, etc. Well this has finally happened with One Piece as it’s hard to see this one going down. Film: Red delivers on every front from action to music and it gets a massive bump in the theatrical experience. It’s a film that you have to see as soon as possible and it’s relatively new audience friendly so you can jump in and have a blast.

The movie starts out with a bunch of people yelling for help and they’re sad because the world is going to the pits and nobody is there to help them. The world is in the great pirate era after all so villains are everywhere and the government is so completely corrupt that you can’t really count on them to help you out either. Well, one girl has a dream…a dream of world peace! Her name is Uta and this is her story. In the present she has invited all of her fans to an island so that they can see her sing in person. Throughout her career she has only sung virtually through the cameras so this is a big deal. Just about everyone has come to watch her songs and 70% of the entire planet will either be watching her on TV or on the island. She almost literally has the world at her grasp and now she can try to achieve her dream. Is the dream really possible though?

Luffy is glad to see her because they used to be childhood friends until she mysteriously vanished one day. There’s a lot of questions about where she went and why she vanished but there isn’t much time to ask her at the concert. Things take a turn though when she announces that the concert will never end and she’s not letting anyone off the island. Is it even possible to have a never ending concert and how will this bring about world peace? All Luffy knows is that he needs to stop Uta but it won’t be easy as she has grown tremendously powerful over to the years to the point where there are few on this planet who can challenge her. He will have to go full force because if he can’t defeat her then he will never become King of the Pirates!

Right off the bat I can say that the movie absolutely delivers on the big songs here. One of the things the movie was getting a lot of hype for was how many songs it was going to have. Instead of calling it part musical I’d call the film part concert. Even as the battles are going you will usually have some kind of song going. It really helps to pump up the scene. One of the villainous songs sounds like something out of Lost Song and then you’ve got a ton of really peppy songs like in Sword Art Online. Hearing these in the full Imax settings was excellent. My ears were still ringing long after the film had ended and I was back home. I don’t think I’ve heard a movie with such loud decibels before but it’s perfect for a concert film.

You really felt like you were in one and that’s why the theater experience is a good boost to the film so I recommend seeing it in that setting at least once. The songs will hold up even after that though and I look forward to finding them online to listen to. Meanwhile the animation is also the best that it’s been in the series. It’s not surprising as One Piece’s animation grew quite noticeably better during Wano. And if that’s how good the show looks you can only imagine how good the movie would appear. They didn’t hold anything back here and every scene really shines. The colors are bright and there is a ton of movement in the fights.

Everyone looks powerful here and it also helps to really show just how powerful Uta is with her being able to block so many hits. In general I also liked the way her powers worked. Yes it seems incredibly broken but why shouldn’t there be a Devil Fruit that is this good? Eventually someone needs to have the best fruit out there and why not have hers be the best one? Because I think it’s fair to say that no other fruit can compare. It does have its own weaknesses of course but in most scenarios you figure that she will be able to defeat her opponents without a problem. The power levels in the film were all handled really well so I don’t have any issues on that front. I did find it a little funny that some randoms would actually challenge Luffy though. He’s one of the emperors now, would they actually try to challenge Kaido or Shanks? I feel like Luffy doesn’t get a lot of respect right now, maybe he just looks too young?

People who start their One Piece experience with this film may find Luffy to appear a bit on the weaker side but he is holding back for almost the whole film so he doesn’t really get to cut loose. That’s probably one difference compared to the previous films which is that Luffy doesn’t get a lot of action. It helps the movie avoid the usual power level concerns though. Keep in mind that Luffy is already Top 10 in the verse by this film so if he was having trouble with anyone then that would be hard to really make sense of. This way that isn’t really messed with.

Luffy also looks great in general here. He handles things very maturely and also does his best to respect Uta’s wishes even if they disagree on things. When she starts talking about how she doesn’t like pirates and how he should stop being one, he just walks away instead of trying to talk her out of it. He’s just not planning on having an argument and is ready to walk away. Perhaps confronting her would be best but they’re both super determined characters so he probably realized that it wouldn’t amount to anything. He also just doesn’t want to fight her since they’re still friends.

Luffy will fight his friends if he has to like when he took Usopp down but for the most part ever since then he tries to handle things peacefully like when Sanji would try and attack him. So it’s a solid character moment here and Luffy ended up fighting when the time was right. His best film appearance is likely still in Stampede but overall he has looked great in quite a few of the movie and this one would be near the top as well.

Uta also looks great here and is an excellent film original character. Film original characters usually have had a negative rep over the years although recently it hasn’t been much of an issue. That’s because they tend to be rather annoying and hold the cast back but that isn’t the case here as Uta is close to being the main character and a lot of the film is about her dream. We get flashbacks scattered throughout the movie on her childhood and what led her down this path. It’s all really emotional stuff and her plan is actually a very interesting one.

Make no mistake, she is a villain here and has gone off the deep end, but I do appreciate films where the villain is following their own sense of justice. It’s much easier to follow a villain who is at least trying to do the right thing and has strong ideals than one who is just evil for no good reason. (There’s a place for those villains too of course) Uta can handle herself in a fight and also really thought things through here. She had a strong plan that was nearly unbreakable so you really can’t ask for much more than that. It’s fair to say that she was the greatest threat to the planet in terms of sheer numbers and I’m not sure any future One Piece villain will top that.

At the end of the day Uta was by herself for many years aside from the old guy at the kingdom and she never lost hope. She just kept fighting until she got to her own answer on how to achieve world peace. It wasn’t the right answer perhaps but at least it was one. Now the film got a lot of hype for Shanks showing up but of course you shouldn’t expect him to do a lot here. It’s a fairly small role for him but it’s still nice to see the guy. He does leave an impact in his few scenes and you can tell that he is powerful. I have my doubts on if he could really take on Luffy right now but either way he is in the upper ranks.

I did disagree with Shanks’ decision to leave Uta though. You can watch the film to see how that all plays out but at the end of the day I think he needed to trust Uta to choose her own future a bit more. He may have thought himself to be doing something noble but I did not agree with it. It was not the right thing to do imo. It’s also nice to see his crew even if they don’t look as impressive as the Strawhats. Personally I think Luffy’s crew is easily the most powerful in the series by this point.

They get their own subplot on finding out a way to try and stop Uta but for the most part they aren’t as big a focus. You get to see them get some action and all though so everyone uses their special abilities. Zoro continues to prove why he is Luffy’s strongest fighter during this as several characters even react when he does his ultimate attack. Even Yasopp was impressed and that guy has seen Shanks fight up close and personal. Zoro was also the first one to react when Luffy’s crew was attacked and I appreciate that. You have to defend them right away. I give Bartolomeo similar credit because he was the first one to step in and try to help Luffy when he was nearly captured while a lot of other characters just froze.

There are a lot of guest stars here so be on the lookout for them. Some like Katakuri should have gotten a bit more to do if you ask me though. You almost wondered what the point of Katakuri was here since he didn’t end up adding much to the fight. It was still nice to see him though. Oven and Brulee were some of the more random ones initially but it did help to make the film feel a bit more ambitious. Having the canon characters show up to fight will do that to a movie.

The film does ultimately resort to a giant CGI monster as the final boss though so that still seems to be a curse in the anime movie industry. Why can’t we end with a humanoid battle? So many of them love the giant monster at the end and it’s just not as exciting. The movie’s top notch animation makes the most of it but having Uta as the final boss herself would have been a lot of fun. I’d say that would have absolutely been the best way to go here.

This movie has a ton of replay value either way. The pacing is really fast, I remember being surprised when the film goes to the present and we see that Luffy and the gang are already at the concert. No time is spent on them travelling there or an opening montage to set up. They’re just ready right from the jump and we get into the singing. It probably happens within the opening 10 minutes and things just keep escalating from there. The film doesn’t take many breaks either. We get some lore and flashbacks but always very briefly until we jump to the next big scene. The film is just really high energy and that fits in with the series always being a colorful adventure.

Fans of the government/navy who have lasted this long will probably be fine but if you’re someone who was on the fence about if they were good guys or not will want to step back here. They look so evil that it’s almost funny. They basically figure at one point that they should sacrifice millions of people to take one character down and you can probably guess who. At that point it’s not even cracking a few eggs to make an omelet. You’re destroying the whole farm for one. They just have no justification at this point and seem to just be trying to murder people for no reason. Kizaru was ready to destroy people without a second thought and the pirates have to stop them. Yeah the government definitely appear to be the true enemies here which is why anyone working for them feels complicit after a while. Just look at how they serve the Celestial Dragons who are still as evil and petty as they come.

Overall, One Piece Film: Red is excellent and one of the top anime films. I’m confident that it will be remembered as a big game changer for a long time to come. The writing is just excellent and set up a really great rivalry/friendship with Uta and Luffy from the jump. They have a better dynamic than most of the Strawhats to be honest. I can see why she was an instant fan favorite in the franchise. They should really drop Brook off the crew and replace him with someone cool like Uta. I wasn’t a fan of the way the film ended which is the only sour spot there but it’s not a horrible ending or anything like that. (After all, that would have kept this from being the best One Piece film) It’s just not how I would have done things, I would have gone with a slightly different ending because all you need to change is one thing. The scene after the credits is pretty fun though as one character gets re-energized. If you haven’t seen the film yet then it’s definitely time to change that.

Overall 9/10

Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam Review

Posted on October 30, 2022 by dreager1

It had been many years since I saw this one so it was nice to check it out again. The special really holds up quite well though as the animation is still very good and we’ve got some good fights here. Who wouldn’t want to see Black Adam take on Superman right? It’s one of those heavyweight battles you’ve got to see. Now in terms of power levels I do have some issues…but lets dive right into this.

The movie starts by introducing us to Billy Batson who is still doing his best to be a nice guy but it rarely seems to pay off. He gets beat up for his troubles and has been bounced from foster home to foster home. Clark Kent wants to interview him and this may be at a good time since Billy was starting to get disillusioned with everything. There isn’t time to finish the interview though as Black Adam shows up and immediately tries to murder Billy. Clark transforms into the mighty Superman in order to battle him while Billy learns about great power and what it means to be a champion of the people. Will a brand new Shazam and experienced Superman be able to stop Black Adam?

This is definitely one of the best portrayals of Billy Batson that I’ve seen. Fans of Shazam will appreciate his portrayal here as he’s a good guy just trying to do the right thing. Billy is courageous enough to defend the homeless guy from a bunch of bullies and doesn’t back down from those bigger than he is. As Shazam it takes him a little bit to get used to his powers but once he does then it’s off to the races. Ultimately he avoids taking things too far and listens to Superman even when it’s a stressful moment.

This is Shazam as a super capable hero and he looks really good throughout. I also appreciated Superman here as he has a lot of great lines. This is Superman at his best, a protector of the innocent and guardian of the planet. There’s a certain reverence to him here and I like that he is super experienced at this point and knows how to handle powerful opponents. This works great as a first meeting between the two with Black Adam and Superman initially gauging each other’s abilities. It was also nice that Adam just broke in and started fighting right away. No trash talking or anything, just going right into the action.

For the animation, it pops out as I mentioned. The colors are a little less sharp than something like the DCAU but we get a lot of solid hand to hand. It’s rare to see Superman actually engaging in combos like this as his strength is usually enough but against an opponent of similar strength it makes sense to handle the fight like this. The movie did a good job with that even when it was the 3 of them fighting. They would use their aerial momentum to keep on swinging and things like that. It was just nice to see. I can’t say that the soundtrack was as memorable unfortunately but you don’t really notice because of how hype the whole thing is.

Now I did say that I had some power level concerns so lets get into this. Superman just looks too weak here. Yes, Black Adam is powered by magic, but Superman routinely takes his eyes off of Black Adam leading to sneak attacks. I also thought Superman should have leveraged his experience more in the way that he fought. Like one tactical error was grabbing Billy and just taking a lot of shots when he should have instead tackled Adam away from the area. Superman just letting himself get buried by the giant tower was another miss.

While I’m sure Superman was holding back initially, after a punch or two he should be able to tell that Adam is strong enough to take the hits and then go all out. I just don’t see Superman being completely overwhelmed the way that he was here. Make no mistake, the fight was not close. Without Shazam there Superman would have lost rather easily in this movie without dealing much damage at all. Even if Black Adam could defeat Superman (And my money is always on Superman) it would be after a long hard fought match. It would be relatively even as opposed to a one sided massacre.

Still, I did like seeing the two heroes combo him. It made for a fun fight and I do think that Adam is one of the strongest DC villains out there. He makes for an excellent opponent to Shazam in the mythos and that guy does have a lot more experience so you can see why he would typically have the edge in their confrontations. The more Shazam fights the closer their battles will be though. To date this is easily one of DC”s best stand alone projects out there. It’s very short at less than 30 minutes so there is no time for fluff. We just jump right into the action. There isn’t a lot to say beyond that, just that it’s great all around so you really shouldn’t miss it. Power level issues very rarely hurt a film as you have to go out of your way to make things too crazy. I can buy into Superman having an off day or this just being a weaker portrayal of him. Maybe he just fought someone under the Red Sun and so his powers are weakened. Enjoying the fight is the most important part either way.

Overall, The writing is fantastic and it really helps to support the great fight scenes. When you grab 3 of DC’s strongest characters you know that things are going to go well and this movie does not disappoint. I highly recommend everyone to watch this one and with Black Adam the movie just coming out a few weeks ago, now is a good time to revisit this one. It’s also interesting seeing Adam as more of a pure villain as opposed to being more of a Punisher type character. This one took being banished rather personally and seemed to already be evil before that. Admittedly an evil Black Adam like this one is the version of the character that I’m the most used to but his character has been more nuanced for quite a while now. It would be nice if DC ever went back to these individual specials like this again. Not instead of the full animated movies of course but in addition to them like how they used to do it.

Overall 8/10

Black Adam Review

Posted on October 22, 2022 by dreager1

It feels like this movie has been coming out for so long that you almost started to wonder if it was really happening. Well at last it’s here and the movie definitely lives up to the hype. With top notch action, a solid story and a good group of characters you’re definitely going to be pleased here. I would put it in the top 3 DCEU films just under Man of Steel and Batman V Superman while knocking Justice League off the 3rd spot. You could say that the hierarchy of the DC universe really did change.

The movie starts off with showing us the past of Kahndaq as its King turned crazy with power and enslaved his own people so that they could find him jewels of incredible power. One kid didn’t like this and made a brave stand which resulted in the wizards transporting him away to gain incredible powers. He then stopped the King but it took everything he had and the destruction was massive. 5000+ years later in the present day, the country is once again ruled by terror as Intergang rules now. They’re up to their usual tricks of looking for powerful artifacts. The Crown of Sabbac is their objective and the only one standing in their way is Adrianna.

She is trying to locate the crown first so that she can hide it and works together with her brother Karim and their friend Ishmael. In trying to find the crown we see that Ishmael is a traitor and Adrianna is forced to summon Black Adam from the void to protect them. He defeats the evildoers quickly but is unsure of what to do. He’s been gone for so long that the world doesn’t feel like his. Still, he won’t let the country stay oppressed for long and prepares to fight. Unfortunately the aggressors have help as the Justice Society is summoned to stop him and put this country back into being oppressed by Intergang. If Adam doesn’t stop them quickly then all hope will be lost.

Right off the bat one thing I liked about the film is how fast paced it is. After that initial flashback to the old days, you can bet that there was going to be a lot of action. Just about every scene has someone getting absolutely devastated in combat or a lot of explosions galore. Considering that the film is 2 hours, that’s a lot of good content around every corner. The fights are a lot of fun and Adam’s speed is handled well. It almost looks like teleportation with how quickly he can move and it’s why nobody appears to be a match for him. If he could just keep on attacking while moving at that speed more freely then even the final boss of the film and characters who seemed to last for a little bit like Hawkman wouldn’t have a chance.

The visuals are top notch here and I also liked the soundtrack. Now I won’t say that every tune was a winner here but for the most part they were all solid. I liked Adam’s main theme and when it played you knew that things were about to get real. When a movie looks and sounds good then it’s already starting on a good note. Could the rest of the film capitalize on this? I’d say that it did without a doubt. The movie has some good humor as well mainly thanks to Amon (Adrianna’s son) giving Adam a lot of ideas and him doing his bet to meet them. The movie’s humor style works really well with how serious and stoic Adam is at all times. You should crack a smile a few times.

Now a big thing here was that the Justice Society would not just be appearing but also getting a decent role. Would their scenes just make you wish Adam was around or would they do good? Well, they made for fun supporting characters. The film did have to try hard to make them appear to be any kind of match for Adam though because you get the feeling that he could crush them all in an instant if he actually wanted to. None of them are remotely in the guy’s ballpark after all.

Strength aside though, they look absolutely awful at negotiating. They are given two different opportunities to try and talk Adam down and use the worst possible ways to do it. “Kneel or Die” is not a phrase that just about any character would appreciate so that being the first impression here is a massive miss. I was wondering if the helmet was mind controlling Dr. Fate when he flew in and said this because it seemed so out of character. This isn’t really hinted at so I guess it was just him but it was an odd scene.

Then later on the Society are given another chance so Hawkman promptly ruins it by saying “We’re here to negotiate your peaceful surrender” when the whole idea was supposed to be just to talk. So power levels aside, I can also see why Adam found these guys to be really annoying. I wouldn’t trust them to be heroes at all and it’s clear that they had let this country alone to fend for itself for ages. While Adam couldn’t know that they are just lackeys working for Waller, that probably explains why they didn’t come sooner. I’m guessing they just wait until the government tells them who to fight.

I don’t doubt that they are heroes but they are bad at reading the situation and that didn’t help matters here. They just fumbled the ball so the whole time you are rooting for Adam. See, Black Adam is the kind of villain you can root for here because he’s still protecting people and has a very clear honor code. He’s not going to go after anyone who is keeping to themselves and not hurting anyone. He only punishes the wicked and does so without any mercy.

It’s why characters like the Punisher are always appealing because they keep the villains off the street permanently. So they aren’t heroes but they make the world a safer place and for people living in those areas, they can’t afford to be picky. It’s easy to see why they would side with Adam here. At long last they have a protector and their country won’t be so easily messed with anymore. It opens up a lot of possibilities for the whole area in the rest of the DC Universe. It’s sort of like Atlantis, Wakanda, or Latveria now where it’s an independent area with its own setup.

Picking fights aside, Hawkman is a fun character. He’s just super annoying with how he’s picking unwinnable fights the whole time. His baseless confidence just doesn’t work in this case and always wanting to fight reminds me of Hawkgirl there but usually she wasn’t matched up with someone outside her league like this. Hawkman seems to be the leader but isn’t a big strategist. Still, at the end of the day he is a tough fighter and I liked his determination.

Atom Smasher is the rookie here and he almost felt a bit like Deadpool with how he’s always joking around and having fun. This guy is still a hero and all though. I thought his attempts at humor weren’t nearly as good as the jokes around Adam but he tries. I always thought turning big wasn’t a great power since it just makes you a huge target but he does decently well for himself. His role is fairly small though. Likewise Cyclone doesn’t do a ton of fighting here but her wind powers are nice to have. If she can use her genius to build some kind of robotic suit to protect herself while fighting then I think she would have a good set up here and could really go to town with her wind abilities.

Dr. Fate is really the heavy hitter here and he had the only attack from the Society that actually seemed to hurt Adam. Magic always has a lot of uses and its power can be quite impressive so he makes for a good addition to the team. He doesn’t take things quite as seriously as Hawkman so he actually has some fun with all of this. I really liked the voice that he uses as Dr. Fate so it’s a shame that he didn’t use it more. This guy was a lot of fun though so I can see why everyone likes him.

As for the humans, they were okay. I didn’t care for the villain Ishmael though. He’s just your average guy who wants to be super strong. It’s all well and good that he has these elaborate plans and all but he’s just not very interesting at all. Karim is the comic relief guy here who does his best but is always in over his head. I give him props for coming out to help in the climax though and not backing down. He may not be the best fighter but he still tries his best.

Then you have Adrianna as the main heroine here and I was glad that she always had Adam’s back. When the Society tries to convince her that he’s a menace she doesn’t believe them and defends Adam every time. That’s good loyalty because he’s done nothing but help her by this point in time while the Society hasn’t done much of anything to help out. If anything they get in the way with all of their meddling and destroying half the city trying to stop him.

Finally for Black Adam himself, I was a big fan of the character. He’s very no nonsense with how he goes about attacking the villains. He’s portrayed to also be fairly quick on the uptake. He takes things literally but not to extreme lengths like Drax and while modern things may be foreign to him, he doesn’t suddenly act dumb with new concepts. His character has a lot of nuance to it and even to the end he is making the right calls. As a result he makes for a very good main character and someone you can root for here.

So I didn’t really have any issues with the film. If we want to get into really minor things, occasionally it felt like they had to nerf Adam a bit in order to keep the Society competitive. Based on his opening showing in terms of speed there is no way Hawkman or the others could come anywhere close to even landing a hit on him. They’re just way too slow. I used the excuse of Adam not being able to fight while moving that fast which we could use if we have to, but that really is an excuse since I don’t think anybody actually buys that. Still, the movie did show that none of their attacks did any damage aside from Fate’s so I can let that slide.

It’s also interesting seeing the Society effectively seem like antagonists for a good chunk of the film. It reminds me of how the Avengers went off the deep end during the AVX comic series. I like to think the League would have handled things better which is why Waller didn’t call them in. That or she knew they wouldn’t listen to her and would cause a lot of chaos. It’s always tricky balancing superheroes with a broken country like this because you do wonder where the heroes have been. There is no excuse or reason big enough for them to have abandoned this place for over 20 years so inevitably the hero is going to look bad in this kind of circumstance. I don’t think there would be any way for the Society to win back people’s trust after that.

Naturally the film does have a scene after the credits so you’re going to want to check that out. It’s definitely a real important scene and again it makes Adam look really good with how he handles this. Now, one character here needs to be handled carefully because he’s not the kind of guy who just takes orders. He may follow them if they’re good orders but he’s nobody’s lackey. It’ll be interesting to see where this plot goes and of course I’m hyped to see it. It was a good way to end things off.

Overall, Black Adam is definitely a film that you need to watch as soon as you can. It even throws in some twists and turns for you as it really goes back to the original DC days of Man of Steel and Batman V Superman with the incredible battles and intense story. Like those it can feel a bit darker at times and there’s a lot of grey here as the characters even call the Justice Society out for trying to draw a line between good and evil real quickly. You’ll have a good time here whether it is for those big power displays or also as you weigh in on if Adam is doing the right thing or not. With the country in ruins like this should he keep taking everyone out or should he try to adopt some kind of justice system and make things work out in a more legal way? It’s a lot to make you think but at the end of the day you’ll be glued to your seat the whole time. To answer your big question, I’d still put Superman as the most powerful being in the DC universe but Adam is solidly ahead of Shazam, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and every other member. The next DC films are going to have a lot to live up to as this one set the bar very high again.

Overall 9/10

Halloween: Resurrection Review

Posted on October 22, 2022 by dreager1

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 uncut version would be more negative

Halloween has returned and you can bet that it is just as gruesome as ever. It suffers from all of the usual issues such as a weak cast, over the top violence and characters making the worst decisions possible. I wouldn’t say that it is the worst film in the series as it still ends up beating two of the prior ones but it’s all relative in the race to the bottom. The movie’s quite short at least so it’s over in a flash.

The movie kicks off with explaining how the ending of the film didn’t have us watch Laurie destroy Michael and instead he tricked her by swapping masks. This may sound a little crazy because it is but I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes. A few years pass by and Myers attacks Laurie again but she handles herself well and defeats him. Unfortunately she decides to go in close to try and remove his mask as if this was Scooby Doo and so this allows him to turn the tables and destroy her. He’s now ready to go back home but it turns out that a group of teenagers are filming a spooky reality show in his house. Myers figures that it’s time to take them all down.

Right off the bat it is annoying that Laurie would make the mistake of underestimating Myers by getting too close like this. The film tries to blame it on her feeling guilt so she had to make sure that she got the right person but it didn’t matter in this instance. Whoever was behind the mask was clearly trying to murder her so take him out and then worry about whoever is behind the mask. That would have been the best way to handle this and then she would still be around. Definitely a shame.

The security here also seemed pretty bad. This is evidently a bit of an insane asylum with the patients behind bars so how is it so easy for the guy in the clown mask to keep escaping? It’s treated as if this was a normal thing and you’d think that they would be a lot more serious about it. The guy may seem harmless but is he really? He’s a little too interested in the murders so I have my doubts on that one.

Once we get to the main cast we’re reminded why nobody tends to like the horror casts all that much. While there are a few exceptions, the characters always seem to be super annoying and as a result as unprepared for the dangers ahead. They throw in so many fake jump scares and cry wolf to the point where nobody believes them when the danger is actually real. That’s on them when everyone is slow to react when things really happen. I’d also say that going to the Myers house is in really bad taste. I’d say the same is true of picking someone older, but someone who (seemingly) just died 3 years ago and the victims are still fresh in everyone’s memories? Yeah this is definitely going to be an exploitative scary show.

The guys here are only interested in booking up with the girls while the main girl’s friend just wants to be famous. The main heroine Sara is really here out of peer pressure which is a common factor as her pen pal Deckard goes to a party for the same reason. They need to learn to just say no to going places where they don’t want to be and it will absolutely help them out later in life. You can’t let peer pressure just toss you around like that. It’s not a good idea in the slightest!

As mentioned the film is fairly short at around an hour and a half and it feels short so I guess that’s good on the pacing. On the other hand, while usually you could at least expect to be engaged in the human scenes when Myers isn’t going around murdering everyone, that isn’t the case here since the characters are so bad. That puts you in a rather tough position because there is nobody to really root for here. I guess I would go with the head of the show Freddie.

The guy may be the head of this operation and so he’s really the one getting everyone into trouble but he can fight and gets some good lines against Myers. In fact I would go as far as to say he gets all of the best scenes. I liked seeing him glad Myers on and actually land some really good hits. Wishing him a Happy Halloween was really intense too. You just know that he better get as far out of the country as possible because if Myers gets back then he will absolutely be holding a grudge here. He’s not really the forgive and forget kind of guy.

If the film did something right here it’s that the characters actually fought back against Myers more. Laurie took him out early on, Freddie got multiple victories against him and that’s good because he is just a guy with super strength. You should be trying to push him around because of you can take him out at least for a little bit then you’re all set. It may backfire but it’s better to go down with a fight than not at all.

The death scenes aren’t quite as brutal as in a few other films as they don’t tend to be as prolonged but make no mistake, the film is still intensely violent and one of the reasons the movie won’t make it to the big time. There is still quite a body count here before the film is over as nobody is safe from his rampage. At least we still have a solid soundtrack as always. The Myers theme is iconic at this point and for good reason. It’s very distinctive and has that spooky kind of feel to it as well so it just works really well.

There’s just not much more to say about the film though because the writing is just that bad. Just think about it for a minute, it’s actually hard to make all of the characters this bad. Freddy is the only silver lining here as everyone else is absolutely out of their league and not doing much to make themselves likable characters. If they would quit it with the jump scares and all then maybe they would finally be better than average but that’s too much for the Halloween series.

Overall, At least the movie is short but this is one that you will want to skip. It really doesn’t do anything to add to the Halloween mythos and is instead a film that you will forget right away. It’s easy to see why people didn’t like this one although I can’t talk as much there since I haven’t liked any of them. At least we always have the iconic Halloween theme which is still a classic. That theme holds up well to this day which is quite impressive. You can’t say that about every theme.

Overall 1/10

Body Snatchers Review

Posted on October 15, 2022 by dreager1

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

Time for another Body Snatchers film. This one doesn’t really take the concept as far as it could have gone though. There isn’t a whole lot of focus on the actual alien dopplegangers running around until near the end and by then the film is almost over so it’s more about running and shooting. I would have liked to have seen the humans have to walk among them a bit more, use some strategy and all of that. It felt like we missed out on a pretty hype amount of potential scenes there.

So the film starts with Steve and his family heading over to a military base to run some samples. Steve is part of the EPA and it seemed like their might be some health issues over here. Little did he know that the issues run deeper than he could suspect. The base is slowly being taken over by aliens who are kidnapping the humans in their sleep and replacing them with an alien body double. A guy tries to warn Steve’s daughter Marti inside of the bathroom but considering how crazy he looked and how he had a knife, the guy just seemed insane. Once the heroes start being picked off, they have to wonder if it might already be too late.

One thing that the film does really well is the dialogue from the alien version of Carol. While Steve looks horrible during this whole sequence, she starts talking about how there is no place to hide. The aliens are everywhere already and the instant he falls asleep it will be game over. She makes a solid case for why he should give up. This is usually where the guy would yell about friendship, determination, how he’ll fight to the last breath, etc. Instead he doesn’t do any of that and falls into her arms. It was quite embarrassing really but the speech was given in a good way. The film made the speech actually appear to be rather creepy which isn’t easy.

Lets talk about Steve though and why he’s such a bad character here. The guy just doesn’t take any hints and he’s not very available for Marti. I’d say he was right to chase the military guys off for letting Marti drink and missing curfew. That’s certainly reasonable and it’s not like it was hard to get home at 12. I’d never want them to see Marti again either. Where he falters is in not taking any time to connect with Marti here especially since he went on the rebound so quickly. Then after being told about how people are acting differently he takes no steps with that. Maybe he could have at least connected the dots that Carol was a bit different.

Additionally, he absolutely falters at the end of the film. So by this point he knows about the aliens and all of that so he needs to get back to his family. What does he do? He sits down and begins to cry. This is not the time for that! We don’t see how the scene ends but presumably this is when they grabbed him and took the guy out. There’s a time to get emotional and all but this wasn’t it, not by a longshot. It just made him an easy target and in the end that was game over.

Meanwhile Carol was taken out rather quickly so there’s not as much to say about her. She and Marti didn’t get along but you can blame a lot of that on Marti as well though since she wasn’t trying to keep an open mind for any of this either. It’s really a mixed bag with both parties not doing so well here. Marti never grew on me during the film either. She lets bad influences corrupt her rather quickly. There’s no way she should be drinking yet and staying up past curfew is just asking for trouble. She’s also easily fooled by one of the aliens into looking back and giving away her position and takes a while to make a decision near the end.

Marti is not the kind of main character that you want in your corner. Her younger brother Andy also isn’t quite old enough to help much at this point either. So even though he can see the aliens…what’s he going to do about it? Nobody will believe him anyway and that can be annoying. I also have to question a few scenes with him like how he actually escaped the school of aliens. Surely they could catch one kid right? That whole bit seemed like a poorly written way of trying to alert the rest of the characters.

Jenn may not have been a good influence but at least she had some character. It would have been nice if she could have done more once she found out that her mom was acting strangely though. Her character just sort of vanishes after that. Tim is the standout character here. The guy is jumped by a bunch of the villains but keeps his cool and also does well in hiding his emotions. The guy is a soldier and that training really came in handy here. It was nice to see a character who wasn’t panicking or cracking under pressure like that. He should have been the main character to be honest.

The way the creatures take over the humans is definitely interesting with how the worms slowly get you. Why don’t the aliens just handcuff the guys once they are in the process of turning though? I assume they have a hive-like mind so they know when this is in process but if not it would be easy enough to coordinate. As soon as the character is asleep and the process has started, have a few aliens run in and just pin the character down. That way if they wake up there is still no way to escape. Given how this happens several times you’d think that would be an option.

You certainly feel bad for the humans who notice and are unable to escape though like one army guy who fights off several aliens before being taken down. He did good to last that long. The initial period during the alien attack is always the most hectic so if you can survive that then your odds of survival increase. It’s why this would really be an excellent plot for a whole TV show. It’s the kind of story that can really keep going and be really exciting for 10 seasons. Of course you want to be careful with pacing but there’s just so much you can do and it’s why the plot is golden.

Now because of the length of one movie you know that the movie can’t do everything with it but I still feel like it didn’t do much. I like the intrigue of not knowing who has turned and so more scenes of the characters just existing and living out the day before the grand climax would have been really good. I’d like a strategy session with the heroes where they think about next steps and things like that. The film’s just too short to get into all of that.

I also like to think there should be a more visually interesting way of making the clone than using the little worms everywhere. It’s sci-fi so how it works doesn’t really matter (I assume the worms transmit the energy or something) but make it cooler like a ray or something. The time it takes to make a clone also seems inconsistent with some taking forever like when they grabbed the main girl but other times it’s really quick like when the Dad was taken. There are time jumps in the film so you could say that a lot of time had passed I suppose. It’s probably one where you could do the math and see if it really adds up.

I really liked the scream that the aliens do when they have caught somebody. Now that’s eerie. The movie really nails down a lot of the horror elements of what would make an alien invasion scary. In some ways it’s scarier than a Xenoomorph invasion because at least there you know who to blast while here you have to be careful about friendly fire. Especially the longer the invasion goes on since people will be pretending to be like the aliens in order to survive.

Overall, Body Snatchers has a great plot but finishes before it can be fully executed. We don’t get a lot of scenes for the intrigue of exactly what this means for the Earth. The story is focusing on a small area which is fine enough but then I want to see them reacting. The way the body transfers go is also a little on the gross side so they should switch that method up in the future. The obligatory bath scene will also make you shake your head since it has no relevance to the movie. Nobody is seriously falling asleep in the bath at a time like this. Cmon now. The movie could have used a better main cast too since the family wasn’t likable and you’re just waiting for the army guy the whole time. If you really like the plot then it may be worth checking this one out in order to see it in action but otherwise you’re better off checking out one of the older versions.

Overall 3/10

Christine Review

Posted on October 14, 2022 by dreager1

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 may remember Christine as the bully from Carrie but the name is a coincidence. This car has been a demon for a very long time and is around to dish out the pain. The movie is about how corruption spreads fast and you have to be careful who you hang with or you could be in trouble. The main guy’s friend is annoying with how quickly he goes on the dark side though.

So the movie starts by introducing us to Arnie who has had a rough time of things. He gets picked on, has really strict parents, and just doesn’t have a high opinion of himself. Well, one day he finds a super beat up car that looks like it’s on its way to the scrapheap and decides to buy it from this shady old guy. His friend Dennis tries to convince Arnie not to do this but he does anyway. Miraculously Arnie is able to make this car look brand new and all of a sudden he has become an overconfident school delinquent. Dennis sees that Arnie is getting worse and worse but what can he do about it?

I’d say that Dennis is definitely put in a really tough spot here. There’s only so much that you can do as the best friend. He’s not family and it’s not like he’s an adult figure so his best bet is just trying to reason with Arnie as friends. Unfortunately that guy is so far off the deep end that it’s really tough to do so. Dennis is a stand-out character for trying so hard. Additionally, Dennis did risk his life in stepping in when the bullies had Arnie outnumbered 5 to 1 and disarmed the guy with the knife.

It was a great scene for him and he really didn’t lose faith in his friend until the end. Dennis really did everything he could. Meanwhile you can basically flip everything that I said for Dennis for Arnie. That guy was annoying on every front. Look, he definitely did have a tragic origin story, I can’t argue against that. The bullies scene was really rough and knowing that he has to go through things like that at school is tough. It’s also easy to see why he has so much self doubt.

The main issue is once he gets the car Christine and suddenly does a 180. If the car is going to mess with his mind, I’d like to see it be gradual so that we know Arnie is actually fighting. Instead the guy goes crazy almost immediately and starts taking this out on Leigh, his parents, and everyone around him. He stops being sympathetic real quick and at the end of the day he chose the car over everyone else. How much of that was mind control and how much of that was really him is the question that the film leaves you with.

It’s hard to say but I’m always big on willpower. If you didn’t produce then that’s game over. So Arnie letting himself be turned evil like that was just bad. Especially when he turns on Dennis who was always in his corner. Beating up on the bullies and taking them out? Yeah that’s rather intense but you definitely see how it could happen. Once he started driving crazy on the highway and acting hostile towards Dennis then things were really crazy. Likewise with taking such a hard stance with Leigh after she had nearly just died by choking in his car.

Arnie’s pretty bad but then I’d also say that Leigh should have completely cut ties with him after the first incident as well. Don’t go back to him after that no matter what he says. Following him into the garage led to another blow-up since the car was his top priority and even after that she’s trying to save him. Perhaps she was extra perceptive that it was the car messing him up but realistically that’s not the first thing that you would think of. She was rather easy on him.

Another character who suspected the car awful quickly was Rudolph. He’s a detective but a rather odd one. I don’t see how anybody could jump to the supernatural conclusion too quickly but this guy seemed to suspect it right away. He was asking a whole lot of questions about the car and how it was fixed so quickly but I’m not even sure what he was getting at. It felt like he had to be hinting that he knew the car was supernatural but that’s really a headscratcher. How he could possibly have jumped to that conclusion (Even if it was correct) is a bit beyond me there.

Props to him being a great detective I suppose. He was a nice character though and I would have liked to have seen more of him. As for Christine, well she’s evil from the jump so it’s not like you can reason with her. She gets jealous quickly and is always ready to exact lethal revenge. If she hadn’t gone after Leigh then you could have at least tried to paint her as a more sympathetic character trying to protect her owner but since she is possessive like that, then there’s no shot. Of course she did the same thing in the past to the previous owner’s family so she was just always like that. I’m cool with the film not going any further into the past because I think it actually makes things more scary to know that she was just randomly an evil, sentient car as opposed to some long backstory about how she turned out that way.

The film isn’t quite as violent as the average King title. The car does take some people out for sure but usually not in super gruesome ways. The violence at times is more implied than shown explicitly. One guy gets rammed to death for example but whereas in another film we would see every moment of that for a drawn out period of time, it’s not quite as intense here. Christine is in general a bit of a mean spirited film though with the average bullies running around and causing trouble. They really go all in by attacking a second time and then you have Arnie’s boss who is rude to everyone for no real reason.

The romance here is really on the weak side for obvious reasons. The relationship with Leigh and Arnie was never going to work out with him being on the dark side and all. I really hope the film wasn’t gunning towards a rebound later on but I’ll choose to believe it wasn’t since it ends pretty quick. I was expecting a different romance plot to continue but the other girl pretty much got completely written out after the opening scenes.

Overall, Christine isn’t really a fun film to watch but at least it’s fairly tame so I wouldn’t say that it’s too bad. There just aren’t very many happy moments and with Arnie being corrupted immediately, you can’t even root for him to really be saved by the end. If you really like evil cars then that might be enough to push it over the edge for you but otherwise I’d say to skip this one. Meanwhile one character nearly chokes to death here and it reminds me why I have to eat so slowly at Jumbo’s pizza. The cheese is so thick that I swear it’s a choking hazard so I always warn people about that when I recommend the place. Top 2 pizza in the whole world but definitely an intense one so don’t take big bites.

Overall 4/10

Carrie Review

Posted on October 14, 2022 by dreager1

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

Carrie is a very well known movie. I’d wager that every horror fan has heard of it at some point or another and so you generally know the climax before actually watching it but the rest of the film is the adventure. Unfortunately I can safely say that this film is definitely not going to rank at all. Right from the start the movie begins on a low note and doesn’t really let up from there.

When a movie starts with an extended fanservice scene at the showers you know that you’re going to be in for a looooong ride. The whole first scene may introduce how Carrie was brought up in a way where she doesn’t know basic facts but it’s probably one of the worst ways to go about it. The bullies are everywhere and taking names as expected and you’re ready to move onto the next scene. Carrie was bullied so thoroughly here that she was traumatized and at home her abusive mother Margaret blames Carrie for this since Margaret has very crazy views on the world and sin.

Out of all the girls who messed with Carrie, the only one who feels bad about this is Sue and she wants to find a way to make it up to Carrie. So she has an idea, she’ll convince her boyfriend Tommy to take Carrie to the prom and pretend to like her. This will in theory get Carrie’s confidence up and allow her to make friends which will buffer the impact from Tommy leaving Carrie to go back to Sue afterwards. This plan is anything but full proof however it’s the best that she’s got and Tommy decides to roll with it. Little do they know that the main bully Christine also has plans of her own for the prom to try and wreck Carrie’s life once and for all.

The whole town is very mean spirited that’s for sure. The only two really decent characters here appear to be the teacher Miss Collins and Sue. Tommy’s okay as well I guess but very weak willed and probably should have said that the plan was not a good one. At the end of the day he just listens to Sue’s ideas without really throwing his own views into the mix and that was a big mistake. I didn’t think the plan was very well thought out at all because no matter what, someone is going to be feeling real bad by the time this is all over.

Lets dial it back though and first we’ll talk about what didn’t work for the film. Obviously the fanservice is the big issue right off the bat and destroys any momentum from the outset. Not to be stopped there though, the film even throws animal violence as the villains slaughter a bunch of pigs in order to get the blood they’ll need for the plan. It’s yet another edgy moment in what I would call a very edgy film. The movie didn’t even need to go that far because things were already really dire and a lot of other traps would have worked without the animal component.

Then we have the crazy mother where all of her scenes are definitely real sketchy. She’s always trying to drill fake lessons into Carrie’s head and mess with her further. It’s rough as Carrie is trying to do the right thing in not talking back to her but in the end that just results in her having to give in. Margaret’s just way too far gone at this point for anyone to help her out. Considering that Carrie has powers and is seemingly in control of them when she wants to be, Margaret is lucky that she’s still around at all.

We can’t forget about the bully Christine who is basically around just to try and make Carrie’s life as miserable as possible. I liked that the teacher actually stood up to her though. A lot of the time it seems like the bully gets away with everything but here Miss Collins actually took a swing at her and forces Christine to run off. It’s one of the rare times where the teacher actually got a complete victory over the student which is incredibly rare.

Billy is just as bad for going with the plan. I wouldn’t even say he was coerced into it, the guy was thrilled to help out. They had a very toxic relationship from the start that’s for sure. All of their scenes are painful as well and you’re waiting for them to get bumped off but they actually lasted a bit longer than you’d expect. In the end all of these bad characters and scenes add up to make for an awful movie though. You can’t really go back to back scenes without something bad happening. The film rarely gives you a chance to actually be happy.

Take Carrie for example, she is doing her best to have a fun life but you know that trouble is around every corner. I don’t blame her for saying no to the prom at first because in 99% of the cases she would be right that it was a trap. It actually wasn’t this time but it very well could have been and why put yourself in that position? Then Margaret was pressuring her from the other end so Carrie ended up going and the whole thing didn’t work out. Even in the brief moments in the party where she was having a good time, you knew that it couldn’t last.

Carrie was a good character though and I can see why she would blow up at the end though. After a while it was just too much. Too bad she couldn’t target only the villains though but by then her headspace was a little too cluttered. It’s ultimately what ended up turning her into more of a villain rather than ending things off with an anti-hero development. A part of me thought that Sue would end up turning into a traitor in the end so I’m glad that this didn’t happen. While I didn’t like the plan, at least she was trying to be helpful so I can give her that. Likewise for Tommy but then he loses all of those points when he actually does have an affair with Carrie.

He may be doing Sue a favor but cheating wasn’t included in that. He’s still her boyfriend after all so you can’t really cross that line without making things into an issue. Finally Miss Collins was definitely the best character here. She took charge and kept a level head. Considering that she was dealing with so many troublemakers, I’d say that she did a good job in keeping them all under control. By the end she may have made a mistake in how things were handled but from her pov it is easy to see how she would make that mistake. The party was really hectic and she couldn’t let any bullying go on over here. It was just game over there and she had a grisly end even though she tried being helpful.

They did a good job with the fire effects here. The climax felt like something out of a thriller film with explosions everywhere. The film also had a suitably ominous soundtrack going on for it. So on a technical level I can give the film some props there but at the end of the day it’s just too relentlessly depressing for all of the characters involved. The film would need a lot of clean up before I could say that it was ready to be a good film. Maybe throw in the government and some kind of subplot about tracking Carrie down and the origin of her powers. I wasn’t a big fan of the writing so you could also change large parts of the script and scale down Margaret’s scenes.

Overall, The cast here is very weak which mixed in with the rest of the film’s issues made this one an easy L. You’ll want to avoid it even if the film does have a fairly legendary reputation. There just isn’t a lot of fun to be had here. The whole town may not have been on Carrie’s side but ultimately there was nobody to rescue her from her home situation or help out at all so they may as well have been. Carrie really was all alone for most of the day and ultimately this ended up catching up to her.

Overall 1/10

Deep Rising Review

Posted on October 14, 2022 by dreager1

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 a movie about survival with a little mystery thrown in for good measure. The movie’s got a fairly interesting premise although I wouldn’t say it makes the most of this and a fantastic ending but one that likely won’t be followed up on. So the movie’s in a rather interesting space there but it does have its moments. You’ll just walk away feeling like it left a lot of meat on the bone.

The movie starts off with John and his crew carrying a bunch of shady characters on their boat. John runs an operation where he will take you and your people/belongings to wherever you want. He won’t ask questions as long as he gets his money and so a lot of crooks love this. This particular group is really shady but it’s all going good until John’s partner Joey decides to make trouble for all of them. It’s only the first in what would soon be a whole lot of issues from that guy. Now all of the good will is lost and the heroes know too much so they’re taken aboard the cruise that the villains were going on. There’s just one problem…all of the passengers have vanished somehow. John needs to think of a way off this boat and fast or his group will follow suit.

The villains are led by Hanover as their version of John. This guy is after something within the ship and it’s clearly important because even the disappearance of everyone on the ship isn’t enough for him to turn back. Definitely a massive tactical error on his part to be honest. This is already such a strange situation that you shouldn’t want to get anywhere close. Of course with the ship they had been using already busted by this point, he was between a rock and a hard place.

What I appreciated about the film is how petty this guy is in addition to being evil. There is one moment later on in the film where he is given the option to go out painlessly or try to attack one of the heroes again. Naturally he goes with the latter and I haven’t seen a villain that determined in a while. It definitely shows what kind of man he was even to the bitter end. He was the most interesting villain by far though and had a good dynamic with the heroes.

I already mentioned that Joey causes a lot of trouble and he definitely does get real annoying in this movie. Why would he have to check on what the villains brought on the ship? The whole point of the agreement is that everything is kept secret so the drivers don’t have to know what’s going on. Joey put the whole crew in danger and without any payoff. Okay so the heroes know that the villains are carrying nukes. What are they going to do about it? Sometimes it’s best not to know. Of course the best option would be to not drive these guys in the first place but since they’re already doing that anyway, then it becomes an issue when Joey is putting them in a bad spot like this.

Joey also wastes a grenade later on during clutch time and doesn’t come up big at any points. He’s always got something to say and while this can result in some good lines once in a while, on the whole he just wasn’t very good and I wouldn’t say that he was a big success as the comic relief either. He’s a character that you just wanted out of the way as soon as possible that’s for sure.

Now John was a good main character though. He took a lot of big risks when needed in order to help his crew and stood up to the villains. It’s not like he’s a fighter and he was heavily outnumbered but John wasn’t going to let one of his guys get beaten to death. I appreciated his courage there and throughout the film he is good at improvising and turning losses into wins. He’s the kind of guy you could definitely look up to and a large reason why the film works well enough is directly because of him.

There is also Leila but she actually doesn’t get a lot to do from the main 3. She misses out on the full adventure because she has to stay on the other ship to work on repairs while everyone else goes aboard the cruiser. You can imagine that things don’t go great for her. I would go as far as to say that she’s pretty much a wasted character. I didn’t think that her role really made a difference in the story to the point where you could cut her out completely and nothing would really change. That’s never a good thing for a character.

By far the worst character here is Simon though. He’s one of those traitors who just wants a lot of money and is willing to destroy a ton of people in order to get his big pay day. The guy continues to get worse and worse as the film goes on. It’s pretty crazy just how awful this guy is. He lasts a long time too so once he is around you can expect him to betray the heroes over and over again. If there is a way for him to make the adventure harder then that is what he’ll do.

Meanwhile you also have a thief named Trillian running around the ship. She’s an interesting character. I tend to like the classic thief types. She has some skills but ultimately picked off a bit more than she could chew with this cruise. They have an impressive amount of security measures in place and it’s clear that this is the kind of boat you would be on if you want to be safe. You know..not counting the monsters but that’s not exactly the cruise’s fault. Trillian helps out a lot during the battles and knows how to use a gun so I appreciated that. She contributes a ton in getting the heroes out of a bad situation.

In general the movie had some good humor at times and the pacing was good. I liked the mystery and intrigue of how everyone vanished. Of course you know it involves a monster if you’ve seen the trailers or read the synopsis but if you went in blind then that would really be a compelling angle to be wondering about. The monster itself doesn’t appear for a while but once it does, it actually does get a good amount of screen time. This isn’t one of those films trying to hide the monster the whole time, when it shows up its ready for a lot of action and to claim some big wins.

It’s not the most impressive monster design but either way it’s not a creature you would want to fight in the ocean. That would put you in a bad spot because it’s so strong. It would be nice if it was fully bullet proof though. I feel like making the eyes vulnerable takes away from the giant monster experience a bit. I also would have liked the film to play around with the empty cruise a bit more. Have the characters wonder more about what happened here and slowly get picked off. That was some of the best scenes in the film so stretching it out a bit longer before they found survivors would have been fun.

The movie can get a little violent at times. This creature isn’t holding back after all. I wouldn’t say that it ever gets into Alien territory or anything like that but there are definitely big kills in the film and the monster isn’t afraid to really make the humans suffer.

Overall, Deep Rising is a reasonable monster movie. More films should try this mystery dynamic as it has a lot of potential behind it. It’s just a shame that we’re not getting a sequel because the ending was perfect. I think it would have ended up leading up to a sequel that would have been even better than the original. I would have had really high hopes for that one and I think it would have absolutely paid off. Ah well, either way if you like films with a little creature action and survival themes then this is a good one to check out. It’s on the fence on if I would really recommend it to someone but you can tell more or less if this is your style of movie. Picture Alien but a bit lighter with more banter and a comic relief character at the ready and more of an escape option since they aren’t trapped in space.

Overall 5/10

Annabelle: Creation Review

Posted on October 14, 2022 by dreager1

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

Annabelle was so big that she got an origin story which is impressive since that doesn’t seem to happen very often unless you’re a really big character. I guess that fits the bill for her at this point though, she has earned that reputation. The film pretty much plays out as you would expect but in this case almost all of the characters are kids so there isn’t a whole lot that they can do against Annabelle. The film could have used a few more grown-ups to try and make the fights more interesting.

The movie starts with Samuel and Esther losing their kid Annabelle in a tragic hit by a car. Many years later they’ve decided to open up their home as a shelter for a bunch of kids who are homeless after the orphanage was removed. This group is led by Sister Charlotte and the place is quite large so they’re happy here. Samuel is rather withdrawn and his wife Esther never allows them to see or talk to her but…well it’s a place to live. The main problem is that strange things begin to happen here.

The main kid is Janice and she has a tough time walking due to illness so she has to use a cane everywhere. Naturally since you’re watching a horror film you know this puts her at a big disadvantage right out of the gate. She is told that the whole house is good to walk through except for one closed door. You are not to go in there under any circumstances but of course Janice does go in there and opens up the door which had been locking out the evil demon for a long time now. Annabelle is now on the loose and she wants to take over Janice’s body. Can this kid stop the demon or is it game over?

That’s the question which limits the film’s potential a bit when you think about it. Of course the kids can’t do anything against Annabelle. Even the adults are usually rather helpless against such a threat but with the kids it just feels a little too one sided. In general kids are rarely very interesting characters in film so I prefer when they take a back seat. Having them here 24/7 as the leads wasn’t the best idea if you ask me.

Most of the kids are also just annoying. You have the classic bullies who are mean to Janice because she can’t walk properly like they can. Janice only has one true friend in Linda but the others are as petty as possible and you can expect that they won’t be doing very well against Annabelle either. I at least liked Linda who had Janice’s back from the start. Her best moment is definitely when she decided to take charge and ran outside with the doll in order to throw it into the pit of no return. It was a brave thing for a kid to do and took a lot of guts considering the powers it had. Things almost got dicey for Linda since she sure was taking her time closing the lid but that was a good moment.

As for Sister Charlotte, she did well in what was a pretty lousy situation all around. There’s only so much she could do with the orphanage being destroyed and I’m sure it was a lot of work to find a suitable house that would work for everyone. The owners may not have been the best people around but at least they did have a place for the group. Charlotte also did her best to keep the kids in line, they just didn’t make it easy on her.

Samuel has to be one of the worst characters here and of course the same is true of Esther. They absolutely knew about the demon and yet they decided to open this place as a shelter? I don’t care if it was purified several times, the demon was still around which is why the door was closed. Allowing the kids into the building was negligent. If you absolutely wanted to atone and do good by the world, at least find a way to get the priests to completely destroy the building or the demon within the doll. Sealing it away isn’t actually removing the problem.

Then Samuel is also completely oblivious to what’s going on. I feel like it’s intentional but when Janice and the others start talking about weird things happening, he doesn’t seem to care. “Samuel, your wife visited us in the middle of the night!” “Gee, I don’t think so, she’s still in her room….” Samuel knows well and good that she was in the room which means that it was the demon or some kind of supernatural thing going on. By the time he’s actually ready to help it’s way too late. I also thought he was rather cold to the kids for no reason. If he’s still torn up about the past then perhaps inviting the orphanage was not a good idea.

Likewise, Esther is just hiding out in her room the whole time. You have to at least meet the kids, this just makes the experience a little creepy for them. The doll mask seemed to cover her face rather well so just use that and meet up with everyone. Otherwise she really isn’t doing anything to help the cause and is just holding the experience back. That said, I still wasn’t expecting her end to be quite so violent, Annabelle was not holding back here.

In general I wouldn’t say the film is super violent though. Moments of Annabelle shredding everyone is typically rare and the film has a ton of build up. Things don’t really start happening until it’s nearly time to end. We do get one barfing moment from the villain which is always a rather crude way to take possession. I prefer going with the smoke method personally or something like that.

We do get to connect this to the first ending in a way similar to Rogue One so that was interesting. Of course you feel bad for the new characters even if you do know what is going to ultimately happen to them. It’s the kind of twist ending you’re expecting though and even if you haven’t seen the first film it would work in that sense. I did like that we got to see more of Annabelle’s true demon form here though. It certainly looks intense and could probably hold its own movie in that form as well. Now that’s a figure that you wouldn’t want to have to fight.

The special effects in the film are pretty solid. There’s a lot going on and it’s always visually interesting. More so than the movie at times but that’s how it goes. It’s definitely one of those futile movies where the characters never have any shot at directly stopping the villain and just have to try and survive. I think the movie would be more interesting if the characters could be aged up so they could at least try thinking of plans. That’s a staple of the big horror movies even if the plans usually don’t work out. You at least want to see the characters trying some options but that doesn’t really happen here.

Overall, I thought this was a little better than the average horror film and the kids could have been worse. Linda gets a lot of props for actually trying to help out and take Annabelle down. Janice gets considerably less points here because it felt like she kept on adding to the trouble by going where she wasn’t supposed to and all that. You do feel bad for her since she can’t just run and escape the way most main characters could though. The film’s a slow burn but with kids as the focus it’s not as engaging as it could have been. I’d say this is a safe skip.

Overall 4/10

Carnival of Sinners Review

Posted on October 13, 2022 by dreager1

This film has the original French title La Main du Diable and a more directly translated title but since this seems to be the main English title it’s known as, I figured I’d role with it. I haven’t seen too many French films but the ones that I’ve seen usually have very intriguing premises. This one is no exception as it’s effectively a take on Pandora’s Box and how greed will doom you right from the jump.

The movie starts with everyone enjoying a nice dinner at a hotel until they hear some shooting outside. Shortly afterwards a mysterious guy named Roland shows up and he’s missing an arm. The guy is rather defensive about it as well and he’s carrying a box. The guests all wonder what’s in it but don’t want to mess this guy and go about their business. A few cops even show up asking about a man in black before rushing off. Roland doesn’t seem to be the one they’re looking for but the whole thing is suspicious. Just then, darkness enshrouds the room and when it lifts, the box is gone and a few guests were attacked. They remand answers from Roland and he decides to tell them a very grant story.

See, Roland was a painter who wasn’t very talented at his craft. Despite this, he had a lot of confidence, so much so that he asked out a girl named Irene. Unfortunately she wasn’t thrilled with his paintings either and began to ridicule him quite cruelly. Roland was depressed but then the chef Melisse said that Roland could buy his magic box for a single penny. It would grant him all the skills he could ever need and make Roland a living legend. The whole deal was fishy and inside of the box was a moving hand but Roland was desperate and made the deal. Unfortunately it’s like a chain letter or a pyramid scheme and Roland was the last one.

He does get the talents and skills so that wasn’t false but he has to give the Devil his soul. The only way around that is to pay him the money back but it doubles each and every day. The Devil is also fully willing and able to cheat at this game in order to make things tougher for Roland. You can bet that this won’t be easy and Roland must hurry or all is lost. The plot itself is so unique that it takes a few paragraphs to really get it out there.

We can blame all of this on Roland though. He absolutely was aware of the main stakes in how fishy this was when he saw the moving hand. Also, why would this guy be so willing to sell the magic box for a penny if it was so good? It’s all so obvious and yet Roland still tries to go for this. It’s one of the biggest sucker moves that I’ve seen in a long while. You even have a guy named Angel telling Roland not to buy the box because it’s cursed but he doesn’t listen.

Roland makes a lot of bad choices throughout the film though like when he keeps going after Irene. She made it perfectly clear that she didn’t like him throughout the constant insults and was through with him. She only changes her mind after the box because now Roland is skilled and making a lot of money. Now that we’ve established that she’s only here for the money, you’d think that Roland would realize this but that doesn’t happen. He’s just so happy that she’s with him that he overlooks all of this. Then as the stress continues to grow he realizes that he made the wrong call but it’s way too late for that.

He lets his emotions run wild with him all the time and comes across as way too desperate. If he wants to be a great artist that’s fine but then he should not want to take any shortcuts. Where is the satisfaction if you are getting all of your skills from a box? It’s clearly not his own abilities so that should take away from the happiness. The worst part is that Roland has several opportunities to give the box back, the devil even gives him one chance to mess with the guy but of course Roland makes the wrong move either way.

The movie could not have made it any more obvious to Roland through a variety of characters that he was on the wrong path but he persisted anyway. This guy was extremely annoying the whole time. Then you have Irene who is definitely as mean as can be. I still found her less annoying than Roland though because he should have been the one to get out of there instead of just taking it the whole time. He was courting misfortune the whole way.

Likewise, Melisse was crooked in passing the buck onto Roland but Roland should not have fallen for it. Melisse just wanted to save his own skin at that point and he certainly succeeded. If you think about it, almost everyone is an antagonist here. Then you have the Devil who is obviously the biggest villain around. He is all about manipulation, the whole thing is just a game to him. Of course there is no way to beat him flat out as he has all kinds of powers while these characters are only human. The best way to win the game is not to play at all which is a lesson that Roland could have used. The Devil gets quite a bit of screen time as he mocks the lead and messes around a lot. I thought he made for a very intense villain.

The writing is on point and the pacing for the movie is good as it all goes by rather quickly. The only weak part here would be the romance and of course as a result, the main character as well. I also did miss the present time a bit. I know ultimately that was just a way to set up the flashback but the whole time I was ready to see what they’d think about all of this and how it would go. Unfortunately, by the time the movie goes back to the present it is almost over so there isn’t a lot of time for them. That’s why most of the film is set in the past which makes sense but another 15 minutes or so would have been really good.

Overall, Carnival of Sinners is a rather intense film. It’s mainly scary in the sense that the main character has to slowly come to the realization that he is doomed. He bit off more than he can chew. There aren’t big jump scares here or anything like that. The Devil is not fighting him mano a mano or summoning giant monsters. He’s winning with superior financial resources and a debt that keeps on growing. It’s a very unique way of putting despair in Roland’s heart. I’d recommend this film so long as you don’t mind watching a film with subtitles. (Unless you know French of course!)

Overall 7/10

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