Change Your Image
freqeteq
Reviews
The Other Side of Darkness (2022)
LOTS OF 10/10 REVIEWS, IS THIS FILM A FUTURE CLASSIC?
To answer my question in the title of this review, no, no it isn't.
One of my fellow reviewers who scored this film an 8/10 tried to spell the word 'cinematography' and failed spectacularly at it, which kind of works as an analogy for this film. It tries, but it fails, hard.
I'm not going to say much more about it, watch the trailer and that's the quality of movie you're getting. A poorly written and shot budget adventure with some bad acting thrown in for good measure. I was never engaged in the story or characters, nothing felt real.
Good on them for having a go, I respect their attempt, I'm only writing this review because I hate fake misleading reviews on indie films and someone needs to tell the truth.
Invasion: The King Is Dead (2021)
AMAZING!
What an episode!
We learned that the husband got his lover pregnant.
We learned that the kid in England being bullied has 3 older brothers.
And we got to see an alien for half a second in this show that's supposedly meant to be about an alien invasion.
Amazing how bad this show has been so far.
Invasion (2021)
Alien Action & Marital Drama.... (well mostly marital drama so far)
I watched the first 3 episodes and I don't know, it feels very long and drawn out, like when Bilbo says to Gandalf "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread" that's how this show felt after the first 3 episodes, like they didn't have enough main story to fill all the episodes so they used a lot of padding to bulk out the runtime with scenes that felt like they either didn't need to be there or were way longer than they needed to be, or both. I think in the first 3 episodes there was maybe 10 minutes of actual alien stuff, and that's being generous - opening scene & corn field in first episode, space station and troops in sandstorm in Afghanistan 2nd episode, mysterious things falling from sky 3rd episode (not counting news reports playing in the background on televisions) - but while there wasn't much alien action there sure was a lot of marital drama action between the wife who graduated Harvard medical school but sacrificed her career to have a family and the husband who she just found out has been having an affair and was planning on leaving her that very week, we probably got a good 40 minutes or more of the two of them being cold with each other, thank goodness because aliens invading Earth is so boring we really need our main protagonists to have some interesting marital problems to make it exciting for the viewer, that was sarcasm by the way in case you missed it.
So we're 3 episodes into a 10 episode run, hopefully these first 3 episodes served like the first act of a movie does by setting up the world and characters and next week we'll start getting into the 2nd act with a bit less focus on school bullies and cheating husbands and more time spent on those pesky aliens from outer space and their shenanigan's.
My score might go up or down depending on how future episodes go but after 3 episodes I give a 6/10 - good, not great, has potential but nothing special about it so far.
At least if it turns out to go nowhere I can always watch reruns of Falling Skies.
UPDATE - after Ep4 I dropped my rating down to 5, I'm going to give this show one more episode and if it's as bad as ep4 was then I'm done.
Risen (2021)
Starts Ok, Ends Terribly
The final act of this film is one of the most incompetently handled endings I've ever watched. The problem is that films tend to work to a tried and tested 3 act structure. The first act sets up the world the characters and their goals, 2nd act raises the stakes for our characters by way of obstacles for them to overcome, 3rd act resolves the story with either a win or a loss. Not all films work to this structure but most of them do. This film resolved the main plot during the 2nd act which left the 3rd act with nothing left to do, so the 3rd act is just endless exposition told through voiceovers and flashbacks with nothing to drive the plot forward because the main plot has already been resolved, and this amounts to a boring 3rd act for the viewer, there's a revelation about a character in the 3rd act but trust me by the time it happens you're not going to care.
Now the actual story itself I thought was quite interesting. It was set up well enough in the first act to grab my attention, and even despite some dodgy acting in places and the usual pitfalls you get with low budget sci-fi films I was still invested in the film well into the 2nd act because of the story, but then the scene happened where the film should have ended but didn't and the rest of the film after that was a real slog to sit through as it crawled slowly towards the end credits.
I think you could re-edit this film into something quite watchable, cut up the 3rd act and splice it into the first two acts, move around a few scenes, it's never going to be a masterpiece but I think you could easily turn it into something much better than what I just watched.
Willy's Wonderland (2021)
I Don't Know What I Just Watched
First off if you're looking for a plot that makes any kind of sense with well written characters that aren't just superficial stereotypes and who make smart decisions then I suggest looking elsewhere, but if you're looking to watch something that is unlike anything you've ever seen before and is so ridiculous that you can't stop watching then this is the film for you.
Cage is our silent protagonist driving through a small town when a series of events orchestrated by crooked locals leads to him spending the night cleaning a derelict fun house full of animatronic creatures that turn out to be possessed by psychopathic killers. A group of local teenagers aware of what is happening try to rescue him but end up becoming trapped inside as well.
So yes, this is a very B-grade film where Nic Cage engages in hand to hand combat with a bunch of people wearing animal costumes, which would get old very quickly if the film took itself seriously, but thankfully for us the filmmakers not only gave the film a unique and interesting visual style, but they were also well aware of how silly the plot is so they had some fun with it, and although there's no real jokes or one liners in it I did find myself laughing out loud quite a few times at the sheer absurdity of what was happening on the screen, an example is how Cage's character very early on in the film is attacked by a giant animatronic ostrich yelling "I want to feast on your face", so a fight ensues that ends with a Mortal Kombat style finishing move and after it's over Cage goes to the storeroom puts on a clean shirt then goes straight back to his cleaning duties like this kind of thing happens to him all the time.
This is the most ridiculous film I've seen in a long long time, nothing made any sense and I loved every minute of it, it's pure B-grade movie genius.
Las tinieblas (2016)
Who needs answers when you can have fog instead?
I don't mind films with narratives that are a bit vague and can be left open to interpretation by the viewer, but there is a limit, and for me this film went way over that limit. It set up compelling mystery after compelling mystery in the first 2 acts then ended abruptly with no answers to any of them. When the film ended I felt cheated, it was like the filmmakers had no idea how to answer any of the mysteries their film had set up in the first 2 acts so decided to not even bother trying and instead introduced even more mysteries into the 3rd act that were left unanswered as well.
I can think of at least half a dozen plot threads in this film that were left unanswered, and I don't just mean left open to interpretation by the viewer, but unanswered. That's not fun, that's not artsy, that's just plain good old fashioned poor storytelling. It's a shame because the first 2 acts that set everything up were so good.
4/10
The Good Doctor: Frontline, Part 1 (2020)
People giving this a low score because....
... it deals with Covid and most of the reviewers give their reason for their low score because "It's happening in the real world I don't want to watch it on my TV show!"
Let me tell you something, EVERYTHING this show deals with happens to people in the real world, did any of these reviewers ever stop to think of that?From cancer to complications with broken bones to rare blood diseases EVERYTHING you see in the show has affected people in the real world, now they're dealing with Covid and because it's the first time the show has dealt with a medical problem that these reviewers have also experienced all of a sudden the show dealing with real world medical problems isn't ok, pretty selfish thinking from these reviewers I think.
I thought the episode was well done, typically over melodramatic as the show has always been but still an ok way to spend 40 minutes of your time.
His House (2020)
Not what I was expecting
Going in I thought I'd know what this film was about, I mean a film in 2020 about two black refugees going through the immigration system in Britain how can it be anything but what I'm expecting it to be? But I was wrong, and I am so glad I was.
Another reviewer said that this is "woke" and a commentary on immigration, it isn't, not at all. This is not a film about race or the differences in race or the difficulties of adjusting to living in a new country, it's not trying to say anything about the immigration system it's just telling a story that happens to involve new immigrants to a country, saying this is a commentary on immigration is like saying Jaws is a commentary on water safety or Die Hard 2 is a commentary on airport security.
This film is a supernatural horror about the desperate things that people will do to survive and the consequences of those actions, and it's one of the most entertaining horrors I've seen for a while with some genuinely unsettling scenes, I can only hope people don't dismiss it because of a few ignorant reviewers who see imaginary agendas whenever there are black characters leading a film.
8/10
Fishbowl (2018)
Genuine Review By A Real Person
The film felt a lot longer than its 90 minute runtime, and not in a good way. The acting was ok by most of the cast, there were a couple of pretty terrible performances though, but the problem for me was that in this drama none of the characters felt like real people, and I put that down not to the acting but to the writing and directing. I suggest you watch the trailer, and if you do watch it you'll see lots of shots that look like they could be straight out of a commercial for a clothing brand or something with people being filmed in slow motion while posing, this is what a lot of the film is like and it didn't work for me at all. There's almost a surreal dreamlike feel to the look of the film that detracts from the story it's trying to tell, and at the end of the day the story they're telling is a very simple one, but when none of the characters or the situations they're in feel real it makes it very hard to care about anything that's happening to them.
I would not recommend this film as one worth watching and I would not watch another film directed by this directing duo.
Utopia (2020)
Unimaginative Remake
The very first thing you see in the first episode of Utopia are the opening credits, opening credits that consist of a montage of generic stock footage. This opening sequence sums up the US remake of Utopia nicely, unimaginative. It doesn't even feel like the show is trying to have any kind of identity of its own. I wasn't expecting it to be as stylized as the UK version was, I didn't expect them to try and copy what the UK show did, but didn't expect it to be as bland as it is either. A good example of how uninspired the show feels is the music, something that has become iconic from the UK version because of Cristobal Tapia de Veer's score, but here it sounds like music that could be from any number of syndicated police procedural shows, it's forgettable and bland and I doubt anyone will be adding the music from the show to their playlists any time soon. And it's not just the music, everything feels generic like they're doing just the bare minimum to get a scene done instead of trying to create something unique that's memorable and stands out. I think I've seen one interesting camera shot in the first two episodes.
At the end of the day though it's the story that they're telling that's the important thing, so hopefully they explore and expand on the story in new and interesting ways that the UK show didn't, but so far they haven't done that, they've changed certain things and added others, but all these changes have managed to do is reduce the mystery, intrigue and tension that the story in the original was so good at building. If you haven't seen the original I highly recommend it.
I hope this gets better, I want it to get better, but based on the first couple of episodes I'm not holding out much hope.
Witches in the Woods (2019)
The scariest thing about this film....
... is that filmmakers keep thinking that if they cast 30+ year olds to play 20 year olds no one will notice.
This film isn't scary at all, just lots of scenes of people yelling at each other. It's 30 year old actors playing 20 year old college kids who act like they're 10 year old children imitating toddlers.
And the characters are written to be dumb as well. An example is that their car breaks down in the middle of a snowy forest, and they sit in it until it's dark before 2 of them decide to go look for help. Makes sense doesn't it? While they're gone the rest sit in the car running the heater until the battery goes flat and then light a small candle to keep them warm while constantly complaining about how cold it is. Not once does anyone suggest huddling together for body warmth, or using some of the textbooks inside the vehicle as kindling to try and get a fire started outside, a fire that could not only keep them warm but also attract any would be rescuers to their location. Nope, instead they just yell, fight and complain. Riveting stuff. They were so dumb and unlikable that it made me look forward to seeing them get killed off one by one, but surprise surprise the kills ended up being a disappointment that lacked any kind of creativity or originality.
Zero tension, dumb and unlikable characters, no scares, boring kills, it's a failed attempt at making an even slightly engaging horror flick.
The Great Silence (2020)
It's a drama
So at the top of this page are the tags, Action, Sci-Fi and Thriller describing this movie. Nope. There are zero sci-fi elements outside of the pandemic angle, no action unless a gun being fired in a movie automatically turns it into an action film, and thriller, well it's closer to a thriller than it is a sci-fi or action film, but I'd class it more as a drama. While the pandemic does play a role in the story it's used mainly as a plot device to get the main character to go back to the small town she grew up in. You see this is a film about a small town girl who fled from the small town with her boyfriend, possibly because of an abusive Father and/or family (it's never really clearly explained we just know she doesn't like her family for some reason), and after leaving became a semi successful actress who because of the pandemic now has to go back to that small town and spend time with her boyfriends family, who she doesn't get along with, while also trying to avoid running into her own family who she definitely doesn't want to see. A few people do get shot and there is a foot chase at one point and a little bit of cat and mouse, but don't let that fool you this is a drama more than a thriller or action film.
It's shot well, looks nice and the acting is fine, it's a well put together movie. The biggest problem for me was the script, the film dragged for long periods during the first 2 acts where it felt like nothing important was happening, and a lack of character development outside of the main character meant that by the time the 3rd act arrived and things did start happening it was hard to fully understand why people were acting the way they were, I think a bit more time spent fleshing out the antagonists and exploring the dynamics between the lead and her estranged family would have helped a lot with this.
I gave it a 5 because it's a well made film, but because of a script that lets it down I can't recommend it as a film worth your time watching.
6 Underground (2019)
Loud Noises, Bright Colors & Explosions: The Movie
This is a typical modern Michael Bay film, it's all style over substance. Leave your brain at the door and you might enjoy it, I wish I did but I didn't.
I'll give you a quick example of what to expect while trying to explain why I couldn't bring myself to enjoy this film. Opening scene is a 15 minute car chase through a city. Firstly, the vehicle they choose to use as a getaway vehicle is a bright neon green Alfa Romeo that sticks out in the crowd like a sore thumb driving a bright neon green sports car would. Why would anyone choose this as a getaway vehicle instead of a car with a paint job a bit more inconspicuous I hear you ask? Because it's a Michael Bay film that's why, and it's all about style remember? Secondly, every car and bike that crashes during the chase produces enough sparks and fire to rival the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, plus the sounds they make when they crash are the most ridiculous Transformers sounding noises I have ever heard outside of a Transformers movie. And lastly, the bright neon green sports car gets scratched up by another vehicle and the drivers side mirror gets knocked off, but the next shot it's back on again, then it's off, then it's on, and it switches between broken and not broken a dozen or so times before someone decided that for continuity sake we better just stick to one or the other and thankfully they chose to go with the broken one. Pretty sloppy filmmaking really, and this is all in the opening 15 - 20 minutes, and unfortunately I can't turn my brain off enough to enjoy a film like that.
Other things that I didn't like about the film, the overall story is laughable and makes absolutely no sense at all, and when I say no sense I'm not being hyperbolic I mean it makes no sense, from the people he chooses to join his team to the way he recruits them to the missions they do it's all so ludicrous, if you allow yourself to question its logic for even one second then the entire thing falls apart. It's got your typical Michael Bay hit or miss humor along with other "Bayerisms" that we've come to expect from him, like the over use of quick cuts during action sequences, low angle shots of women in short skirts, so much slow motion that if the slow motion parts were at normal speed I reckon the film would be about half an hour shorter than it is, and scenes that are meant to be emotional and pull on your heart strings but because every character has no depth to them they end up having about as much emotional impact as a carpet cleaning commercial does.
What I did like. CGI people getting hit by cars and caught in explosions and thrown around and stuff, it was completely overused but the first few times it happened it looked quite good, especially people getting side swiped by vehicles. Some of the bad guy kills were well done. I enjoyed most of the banter between Ryan Reynolds and the non Ryan Reynolds actors, it was funny and was just Ryan Reynolds being your typical Ryan Reynolds which is good if you like Ryan Reynolds and I like Ryan Reynolds. Who doesn't like Ryan Reynolds? Hugh Jackman that's who, the Canadian fraud.
It really is just a film full of loud noises, bright colors, explosions and little of anything else.
Pet Graveyard (2019)
This isn't an Asylum production?! Are we sure?
So you've written a bad script and you know a bunch of wannabe actors who aren't good at acting but they'll work for free plus one of them has a car you can use to transport your gear in and a sister you want to get to know a bit better, so you make a film and it's bad, so very very bad, the type of film that makes celebrity hidden sex tapes look like they were something filmed by Martin Scorsese, but you've learned a few things in your years working the graveyard shift on the drive through at Big Bills Burgers & Ribs, and one of those things is how to sell terrible products, so you call your film Pet Graveyard in the hope that people will mistake it for the new Pet Sematary because you know that that's the only way that you will get anyone to watch or buy your terrible film, I mean how hard can it be it's been working for The Asylum productions for years, and you've got to do something to get your $80 production costs back on this film because rent is due on Tuesday and your Mom/landlord is not a patient person.
Well it probably tricked some people, not me though, I torrented it because that's what films like this deserve. And after downloading my free copy of the film and suffering through its 90 minute runtime I then decided to do something to give back to society. First I burned the movie to disk and put it in a DVD case using a cover that my daughter specially designed for it that was covered in emojis of what looked like little brown blobs of icecream? It might have been something else I'll have to ask her, anyway, I then I went deep into the forest with just the movie and a shovel and dug the deepest darkest hole you could imagine, then I threw that dvd case and movie into the hole with all the satisfaction of a man who has just thrown a burnt dvd copy of a terrible movie he'd torrented into a hole he'd just dug, and proceeded to fill the hole in with a mixture of dirt and due to a weak bladder about a liter of bodily fluids, and I'm happy to report to you here and now that after 3 weeks and 7 hours 34 minutes the movie has not risen from its grave to haunt me or anyone else.
Worth 10 stars but I only gave it one star because I'm a contrary non conformist.
Skin (2018)
Not Oscar worthy and not cringeworthy, just a solid film.
Some people have rated this a 1 star and others a 10, forget those reviews because those people don't have a clue, this movie isn't a 1 and it's definitely not a 10, it's a solid movie, it's not the best thing ever made and it's not the worst thing ever made, it's just a solid slightly above average film with some great acting spearheaded by an outstanding performance by Jamie Bell.
The story is kind of familiar and formulaic to every other similar kind of movie that deals with this subject matter, you've probably seen this story played out before, our main protagonist starts off with strong prejudices and beliefs which throughout the course of the film he starts to question, it's nothing new, but I didn't find it made his journey any less interesting to watch. It's got some great acting, it's filmed well, like I said above it's a solid film.
I did feel that some of the events in the film were a bit rushed, it felt like it could use a few more scenes to flesh out characters relationships a bit more, especially when it came to his relationship with the gang and 'Mom & Pop'.
Worth a watch.
Starfish (2018)
10 stars if you like random shots and things being out of focus
Another reviewer described this film as pretentious, and really there's no better word to describe everything about this movie. Maybe there's a meaningful story hidden somewhere in there, but to find it you'll have to sit through random shot after random shot of meaningless random things. For example the main character turns on the lights and we get 3 closeups of random Xmas decorations, when she's looking for food in the kitchen we get closeup shots of cutlery and crockery and things that don't add anything to the story mood or atmosphere of the scene, and when I say closeup I mean extreme closeup shots of cups and Xmas decorations like you'd see on Instagram from people trying to sell cups and Xmas decorations, it's so terribly distracting. You'll have shots where the background is completely out of focus then on the reverse shot everything is in focus, the first time it happened I thought it was a mistake but then it happened over and over again and I realized it was by choice and I don't know why, it's jarring and confusing and just like the myriad of random shots it adds absolutely nothing to the scene.
When an author writes a book they have an editor who tells them what works and doesn't work, this film needed someone to tell the director what did and didn't work because this film has ideas in it that used sparingly would have been good decisions, but they were so overused in the film that they instead ended up becoming eye rolling irritations that only managed to distract from what the scene was trying to convey to the audience.
You know when someone discovers a new filter for the camera on their new phone and then every photo they take they just have to use that filter? This is what happens when one of those people makes a movie.
Extinction (2018)
It's OK
The story is quite fresh, I went in not knowing anything about the film so didn't see the twists and turns that it takes coming, which is quite a rarity with movies these days for me. The effects both cgi and practical are well done for the most part, though some of the cgi does suffer from looking like really good cgi rather than something that's actually real. Overall though it's a solid bit of science fiction fare to spend a couple of hours with.
The negatives for me mainly concerned the child characters, they were badly written and it was obvious they were just there as plot devices to make things happen. There are 4 instances in the film where children were used purely because if they didn't do whatever stupid thing they did at that time then no action would have taken place, it's lazy writing 101. Plus they cried, constantly. The youngest one cried and whinged for probably 80% of her screen time and she had a LOT of screen time, and sure that may be the way a real child would behave if put in her situation, but hey, I'm watching a science fiction movie about an alien invasion with spaceships and laser guns, reality has already left the building so it wouldn't have hurt for them to tone down her reactions a little bit to make her less irritating.
There's an exposition dump in the 3rd act that goes on forever and the ending feels a bit anti-climatic (and setting up for a sequel that I doubt will ever happen), but I still gave this movie a 6/10, I enjoyed my time with it I think it's a solid 6 and I might have even given it a 7 if it wasn't for the annoying kids.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Austin Powers 4: Fallen Kingdom
I've got to say, the opening scene of the film I quite enjoyed, characters being dumb and getting eaten in a pretty cool set piece, it was a bit of fun, but overall Jurassic World is very disappointing thanks to a plot that is totally ridiculous. It takes itself way too seriously when the plot is like something Dr Evil from Austin Powers would dream up, "Let's collect and sell the dinosaurs to the bad guys of the world so they can use them in their armies!" What? That is the plot for your film, are you being serious with me? One of the dinosaurs being auctioned the auctioneer goes "and this one paleontologists called natures tank because of it's armor", and the villains in the room ooh and aah as they start bidding their millions of dollars, and all I thought was, have these guys never heard of human made tanks that have guns that kill things like natures tanks? The main bad dinosaurs gimmick is that you point a laser at something or someone and the dino will kill it, that's right, it's essentially just a land shark with a laser on its head, Dr Evil would be pleased.
And I'd also like to say, if dinosaurs are worth so much to these people to use as weapons, why don't they use lions or elephants? They're readily available, and judging by what I've seen in circuses can be trained to do things even without being genetically engineered. Surely a trained lion is just as deadly to a human as a trained dino is? Not to mention that owning a dinosaur would bring a bit more attention down on you than owning a lion would, oh well, to hell with logic, this is Jurassic World after all.
I know I spent a lot of words just going on about one thing, but it's the entire plot of the film and it's just so terribly bad and seemingly not thought out at all.
Apart from the visual effects there's really nothing to praise about this film, it looks good, it's directed well, the 2 lead characters are as good as they were in the first film, that's about it for the positives. On the negative you have supporting characters that are either completely forgettable or overly annoying, and when I say annoying I mean think of the most irritating comic relief character from a Michael Bay film then times their annoying factor by 10, that's how annoying this one character is, he makes Jar Jar Binks seem not that bad. The main bad guys motivation, well his entire character really, is that he's rich and wants to be richer, that's it.
The annoying thing is that the film started off quite well posing the question, what ethically should we do with dinosaurs if a natural event is going to wipe them out? In the original Jurassic Park the characters discussed the ethics of bringing these creatures back to life while in this film they were asking should we save these creatures we created from a second extinction? The moral dilemma was worth exploring and quite intriguing, unfortunately the conversation about it lasts for about 2 minutes before it's off to the island to fight dinosaurs and volcanoes and action action boom boom explosion. It was an opportunity missed.
I understand that it's a summer blockbuster about dinosaurs, but just a little bit of depth to the movie would have been nice for the people in the audience over the age of 9.
I Kill Giants (2017)
More disturbing than whimsical
If you've watched the trailer then you know that this is a well made movie, it's directed well, got some good acting and the effects are decent, so I'm not going to talk about those things, what I'm going to focus on is the story because that is what let me down with this movie. Spoilers ahead.
So the basic story is a young girl, Barbara, is dealing with a crisis at home and her way to deal with it is to retreat into a make believe fantasy world full of monsters, overcoming obstacles in that fantasy world help her deal with things in the real world.
As I watched this movie I was reminded of A Beautiful Mind with Russel Crowe because the young girl in this movie can't distinguish between reality and fantasy either. The premise of the movie is nothing new, we've had films like Bridge to Teribitha that were similar, but where the children's actions in that movie felt endearing in this movie Barbara's actions are worrying and disturbing, and this is my biggest gripe with the film, Barbara is a 13 or 14 year old girl who, among other things, scratches rune signs on the walls at school to protect people from monsters and carries a weapon in her bag to fight monsters with, and she's just too old to be behaving that way without raising some red flags, of course it's only the audience who gets to see most of this behavior so no one else in the film really gets to see just how deep she is living inside this fantasy she has created for herself. Once I realized that the monsters weren't real I spent the rest of the movie wondering if Barbara was suffering from a serious mental illness, she wasn't, but her behavior would have made more sense if it turned out that she was.
It's a movie that I recommend if your children watch it to sit down with them afterwards and talk about the best way to deal with problems, because the message from this movie, although rather simple, I can see being very confusing for children to understand from the muddled way it is handled and delivered to the audience.
Tomb Invader (2018)
"I'm a writer from the paper"
The heading for this review is an actual line from the movie, it's how a reporter introduces themselves before asking someone for an interview, "I'm a writer from the paper", brilliant, just brilliant.
This movie is from The Asylum and if you haven't heard of The Asylum they make knockoffs of big budget movies using as little money as possible, when Transformers came out they released Transmorphers, when Pacific Rim was released they released Atlantic Rim, and now with the release of Tomb Raider we have Tomb Invader.
All the usual suspects that you'd expect from an Asylum production are present in this movie, a cast of nobodies who can't act, cgi that would have looked bad in the 90's, terrible directing and a lousy script, it's just your typical terribly bad Asylum film.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2017)
It may be bad but at least it's only 90 minutes long.
There is absolutely nothing new or interesting to be found in this budget zombie flick.
The story is fine I guess, but the screenplay that tells that story isn't, it's full of poorly written characters in cliched situations full of worn out horror tropes that you've seen 100 times before and done 100 times better.
The acting swings wildly between just OK, awkward, and completely terrible. Some of the actors deliver their lines as if punctuation is a foreign concept to them, there's no pauses or natural flow to the monotone words falling from their mouths. The lead actress does a few voiceovers throughout the film that are delivered so poorly that it sounded like she was reading them for the first time as they recorded her.
When it comes to direction and camera work the action is your typical low budget handheld shaky cam style, it's functional, it does the job and that's about it. There's nothing special or inspired, no shots that make you sit up and take notice. Any young aspiring directors out there aren't going to be rushing out to copy this directors style, if you can call uninspired and forgettable a style. I will say that the practical zombie and gore effects are well done, though variety when it came to how things died would have been nice instead of just zombie death = headshot and human death = bite on neck from zombie.
In the end this is a very mediocre horror film full of poorly written cliched characters portrayed by mostly terrible actors, the various situations they find themselves in have zero tension because the script is so uninspired and predictable that you always know what's coming next. If you're like me you'll be rooting for the zombies after the first 10 minutes.
I give it 3/10
You don't need a lot of money to make a great zombie type flick, all you need is a good script and a passionate director with a vision, for proof of this go watch The Girl With All The Gifts or 28 Days Later that both had similar budgets to this movie.
Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child (2016)
My first ever positive review
If you look at my other reviews you'll find that if I see a bad movie with fake glowing reviews then I love to rip it apart with an honest review of my own, so I looked at the reviews here for this movie, thought "Aha, fake reviews" and started sharpening my knives, but after watching this movie I am pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong. This movie was really good.
The story was good, the characters were believable, the world that it took place in was very interesting, the CGI effects were pretty good for the budget, as were the practical effects, and the acting for the most part was great, even Kellan Lutz was good and I can't normally stand the guy.
The only negative thing about this movie for me was some of the fight scenes on the ground utilized a lot of quick cuts and shaky cam, which was jarring as the rest of the movie is directed and shot really nicely with some great action scenes, a dogfight between 2 ships being the standout one for me.
Overall it's a great bit of sci fi to spend a couple of hours with, it feels like a movie with a much larger budget than what it had.
I would definitely watch a sequel. 7/10
The Recall (2017)
Legit review
Time for a review from someone who has been a member of IMDb for longer than a week and has reviewed more than one movie, unlike all of the reviewers so far that have given this movie great reviews on here....
You know, a skeptic might think that some of those reviews could be bogus.....
Anyway, this movie isn't overly terrible and it isn't great, but after watching it I couldn't recommend it to anyone else to watch. It's just forgettable and bland with nothing to make it stand out from every other similar movie in the genre. It's one of those movies that you watch today, it's forgotten by tomorrow and you never think about it ever again.
There IS NO TWIST like some of the reviewers claim there is, and for the ones screaming "Wesley Snipes is back!" yes he is, for a grand total of around 15 minutes in this 90 minute movie. The cgi effects are adequate but don't expect movie quality, they're more in line with something you'd find on a lower tier TV show.
I was disappointed, I watched this for Wesley because I wanted to see Snipes kicking some alien butt, instead all he did for most of his quarter of an hour screen time was either stare creepily at the kids in the cabin or sit down and deliver exposition to them.
Apart from the lack of Snipes 2 things really ruined this movie for me, firstly, the acting was pretty bad by the 5 college aged kids that were the main focus of the film, in fact it was terrible in places, especially from the blonde guy who was the lead. Secondly, none of the kids characters were developed, at all. To put that into context, the female lead character, if you asked me what kind of person she was all I could answer would be that she's normal and has asthma, apart from that she has no personality, and the sad thing is that I know more about her character than I do 3 out of the other 4 because at least I know she has asthma. Just zero character development, I don't know if they're good, bad, brave, shy, dumb, smart, catty, bullies or what, they're just all blank slates who aren't very good at acting, which made it really hard to care about whether they lived or died.
Even though it's not totally terrible I still wouldn't recommend this, even if it's on free TV there are better ways to spend your time, like cleaning the oven or doing your taxes or digging a hole just so you can fill it in again. 4/10
Ai amu a hîrô (2015)
Good movie apart from one thing......
Let me say first that I've never heard of and have no knowledge of the source material for this movie, so this review will be based on it's merits as a standalone film, I'm one of these people who doesn't think that you should have to read a book or have any prior knowledge of the source material to understand characters motivations and actions in a movie, movies are their own entity and therefore should be judged so. Now that that's out of the way, onto my thoughts on this Japanese zombie flick.
So it's another zombie movie and it's one of the better ones that I've seen. I like zombie movies that actually show us the apocalypse happening with the zombies taking over, and this film does that, it doesn't show news footage or a montage or anything, it shows our main protagonist on the ground experiencing society fall around him as the zombies overrun the city, and it's really good to watch, probably my favorite part of the entire movie.
The production values are also very good, the practical zombie effects are well done as are the cgi effects. If you're a fan of gory deaths and watching zombies heads explode then this is the movie for you. It's not a cheap looking movie at all, you can tell that some real money has gone into making this.
The story is nothing special, pretty straight forward with standard horror tropes and nothing new for anyone who is familiar with the zombie genre, it does introduce a very intriguing plot line involving an infected schoolgirl, but for some reason the plot line is put on the back burner and never really expanded on or revisited for the rest of the film, I'm guessing they're saving it for the sequels if they get made.
I only have one real complaint about this movie, and it's kind of a big one so I'm going to write lots about it. I found the main protagonist to be very unlikable. I found him to have no redeeming qualities at all. He's a bit of a down on his luck nerd, which is fine, you can be dorky or a lovable loser like Shaun in Shaun of the Dead, but this movie is just over 2 hours long and it isn't until 14 minutes before the end that our main protagonist actually does something heroic, once Shaun realized what was happening around him he became the hero and started whacking zombies on his way to save the woman that he loved, he was a normal guy who showed he was selfless and heroic. For the first hour and forty six minutes of this movie our main protagonist hides from danger, cowers in corners, cries, lets other people die due to his inaction, lets other people kill zombies attacking him because he is incapable of doing it and just generally does stupid things, the only zombie that he kills in that first hour and forty six minutes is one that he kills unintentionally. He has zero charisma for a protagonist, and for me even his big hero set piece at the end of the film wasn't enough to redeem his cowardly and stupid actions of the first 104 minutes. During this time he does imagine himself being the hero, he imagines himself getting his gun and shooting a zombie, which makes it even more infuriating when he snaps out of his daydream so he can jump back into his inaction.
As a viewer I'm confused if I'm supposed to root for someone who is a coward just because they dream of being the hero? I mean his cowardice gets innocent people killed, how am I supposed to like him? Maybe you will but I didn't.
Even though I didn't like the main protagonist I still enjoyed the world that the movie introduced us to and would probably watch a sequel if one was ever made just to find out more about the schoolgirl who appears to have some kind of special power.
I give it 6 cans of cat food out of 10.
Aftermath (2016)
The Happening 2.0
Not so bad it's good, but so bad that if you want to laugh like you've never laughed before then watch this show. Dumb people doing and acting unrealistically during the time of the apocalypse. The fact that it's meant to be a drama and the actors deliver their horrible lines with straight faces makes it even funnier to watch, it is very reminiscent of the movie The Happening, another "serious" movie that is laugh out loud wet yourself funny.
If you played a drinking game and had one shot of alcohol every time you shook your head at the stupid way that people act on this show then your liver would be dead inside of a week.
But there are some good points.
The show looks good, the production values are right up there with shows like The Walking Dead, it doesn't look cheap, the effects look OK for TV and it has a good premise for a TV show.
The story is there's some kind of apocalypse happening, it appears to be both natural and supernatural, crazy stuff is happening everywhere, there's meteorites falling out of the sky and viruses turning people into maniacs and people who appear to be possessed by demons and who have superhuman abilities roaming the Earth, it's like something Stephen King would write, and handled well it would be very intriguing. The problem is that 2 episodes in and it is very clear that this hasn't been handled very well. The main problem is the characters, they appear to have been written by Fred the office intern during his lunch break, and Fred appears to have no idea how humans would act in a crisis.They're so stupid and disconnected from reality that it's near impossible to relate to them as real people. Everyone is so calm at all of these crazy things happening around them and they act like everything is normal. For example, in episode 2 an attractive teenage girl who was kidnapped by a flying possessed person and who has seen people she has known for years turn crazy and murder people, who is then told it is a virus that is affecting lots of people, is later left alone on a seemingly deserted country road and decides to have a sleep during broad daylight in a bus shelter within plain view of anyone walking or driving past, behind her is a forest which is a nice place to hide her pretty blonde head from the crazy homicidal maniacs, but nope, better to sleep where they can easily see you.... stupidity at it's finest, Darwin would be proud. Maybe the character is in shock and not thinking clearly or maybe it's just horrible writing, I'll let you be the judge, but I will quickly add that this is just one example of people doing stupid things in this show, and I could write dozens.
If the show didn't take itself so seriously then it would probably be a whole lot more fun to watch,but they do take themselves seriously, way to seriously, and it's horrible and funny all at the same time.
I rate this show 4 and half pigs out of a farmyard. --------------
And if you are contemplating playing a drinking game while watching this show then I suggest you have a sober spotter with you to make sure that you don't die of alcohol poisoning halfway through the second episode.