Reviews

Unlike others, I actually liked this second Becky installment a bit better than the first. 14 year old sociopathic teen taking on four hardened criminals is taking the Home Alone concept a wee bit too far for me. Still, it was mostly enjoyable, aside from the excessive teenage screaming by Becky.

The actress is pretty great in both - that's never the problem for me with these two.

So nice to see Stifler playing a very hard badass. Nice bit of anti-typecasting effort by Scott.

While equally fantastical and unrealistic, at least Becky is now older, wiser and has been hardened a bit, even training in survival and kill skills.

OK. It's a movie. I can buy that.

Overall, reasoanly executed could of films, but I rate this one a tad higher.

As for the offer to join the CIA [which, again, was the complete wrong intelligence agency to use, shame on the writers for such a basic error: Homeland Security, FBI or even NSA would have been far more accurate choices]. The ending was easily anticipated.

Would I watch a third and final installment of plucky, psycho/sociopath Becky as she terminates the group behind those key coordinates?

Yeah, probably.

But this time, leave Diego out of it.

Never heard of this film and it seems few others have as well given the lack of reviews here on imdb. Which is a shame because this little film about redemption after a lifetime of crime is worth a viewing. Populated with actors I have never seen before, everyone comes through with taut, genuine feeling performances, backed up by dialog that feels real as well.

This is no over the top cartoon movie about dangerous people doing dangerous things with cheesy dialog and Fast & Furious fantasy stunts.

Garland Scott turns in a very strong performance as a recently released felon who makes a deal with the authorities, snitching on his former criminal associates in return for early release and a new identity. But Scott's character has a deep sense of devotion to the wife and child he left behind and he risks it all to go back to his old neighborhood to reunite with his family, all the while being hunted by those whom he betrayed. Scott plays the strong, silent type throughout, capable of instant violence yet tempered by a still decent heart.

As I mentioned in the title, this film to me does have some similarities with the excellent Ghost Dog Way Of The Samurai which featured the breakout performance by the great Forrest Whitaker. Both films are quiet films, avoiding excessive music and score accompaniment which actually lets the actors and movie breathe a bit.

Technically, the film is similarly low key, shot with competence instead of cinematic trickery.

The film is far from perfect. But what is there is an old story competently executed and definitely worthy of a viewing.

I give it strong 7.

Even the fight scenes feel phoned in here. This film is the far lousier, less competent across the board, evil clone of the still meh but far superior movie Lockout with Guy Pearce, Peter Stormare, Maggie Grace and others.

In other words, Lockout had actually good actors as well as far superior production values and...gasp...story!

Plus you get to watch Guy Pearce channel his badass wiseass self for the whole movie. And Maggie Grace looks nice.

Sorry Scott - strike this one from your filmography immediately.

As is often the case, the wildly varying imdb reviews fail to hit the mark. Dead Night is a fairly well-shot, supernatural horror flick containing some better-than-low-budget visuals, creature effects and gore. It's just that the production team forgot one key point when making a film:

It's the story, stupid.

Not going to dissect Dark Night here - a couple of other reviewers have done a pretty good job there already. Still, for me, this is certainly not a "9" but is equally not a "2". The criticisms about the near complete lack of a storytelling narrative are not unfounded. This is a film that desperately needed a singular storytelling voice.

The truth then, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. This one gets a pretty strong "5" from me for the look and feel alone. Plus a few non-cringeworthy performances.

Oh, and Barbara Crampton does a fine job as well.

Tons of cogent and inciseful reviews of this film here - no need for me to add anything else on the disservices this film does to the masterpiece original novel and Truffault's excellent adaptation.

So instead, I will focus a bit on the actual cinematic elements of the film.

Visually, the film is a mixed bag. Some occasionally excellent dystopian-esque imagery gets lost at times in some over-the-top Blade Runner homage, this time replete with emojis, digital flames on buildings and live chat feeds during news broadcasts. Not a fan of that last as it screamed "Hey! I'm being relevant and hip!" The set designs are occasionally interesting and for the most part the overall look of the film is your fairly standard dystopian style. Nothing exceptionally noteworthy but generally inoffensive.

The performances are also a mixed bag. Shannon is as compelling as he usually is. I particularly enjoyed his moments of "private" introspection - the inner conflict he actually does feel comes through pretty well. Jordan is a fine actor and he continues to build his chops though to be perfectly honest you'll have to ignore his first 15 minutes on screen as they are fairly cringe-worthy. For that I blame the director...The rest of the cast is adequate though some of the "Eel" rebels are a bit over the top.

Others have said it best here - when you blatantly title your film after one of the greatest pieces of modern fiction ever written, well, you damm well better deliver the goods. All of them and at the very least, the main concepts. This film reminds me of book review essays written by people who read the Cliff's or Monarch Notes (Monarch Notes at least were significantly more meaty) synopses instead of the actual source material.

Again, as another reviewer noted, had the film been titled something like "The Fireman - based on Fahrenheit 451" it would have been deserving of at least a 6 star rating here from me.

As it is, they clearly bit off way more than they could chew and are paying the price for an awfully incomplete remake and film adaptation.

Meh film - read the book, watch the original film and take a look at one of Bale's earliest works, Equilibrium, instead.

5 stars out of 10 - they did it to themselves.

Wow...just wow. Every so often I come across a film that actually screams out for me to give it my lowest imdb rating of "3" {which is as low as I go while still trying to give a bit of respect for the work people undertook}.

Yep...this one gets a "3"! And boy do I wish I could go lower than that. But no, I will stick by my own guidelines.

Let's get right to the bottom line: this "film" is, no joke, nearly a shot by shot, sccene by scene ripoff of the modern classic Blair Witch Project. Honestly.

They changed the location {Europe! Just like Chevy Chase did}. They added snow to a forest! They changed the gender of the creepy local to a guy and made him a total ditcher guide!

Pretty much everything else is directly ripped off from BWP, including a tent confessional from a guy this time when things start going sideways.

The only thing missing was a ripoff of Heather's fear snot...

One could not possibly find a more effective way to waste one's time while watching this god-awful piece of garbage.

Team Devil Complex: seriously...polish up those CVs...don't ever foist such crap on the world ever again, at least not until you go to night film school.

There. I said it. Thus far as of May 2018, The Devil Complex is the absolute worst movie I have had the displeasure to watch this year. And there have been a few stinkers but none so far that has prompted me to write a warning review.

Don't. Please...for the love of god...DON'T WATCH THIS DRECK...You're welcome...

Imdb user rushknight has beaten me to it with a spot-on review of this ludicrously bad piece of film. I will simply augment their review with this list of this laughably horrible film's lowlights:

• Agonizingly terrible overacting across the board: check

• Unbelievably inept and inconsistent sound editing and audio levels: check

• an awful MTV style video piece thrown in during an "action" scene: check

• pointless insertion of grainy, shaky CCTV footage for absolutely no reason: check

• laughable amounts of close-up teen angst scenes intended to but failing miserably at displaying emotion: check

This one clearly gets my minimum rank of "3". And that's being generous. The UK has produced quite a few superlative horror films in recent years. This is absolutely not one of them.

rushknight: well-played review.