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American Horror Stories: Leprechaun (2024)
Slow. Slower. Slowest.
This has to be the worst episode of American Horror Stories, so far. Boring plot. Boring characters. Weak premise. Convoluted mythologies.
The people behind the camera aren't even going for anything creative or edgy here. Too much dialog. Too much distraction. Five minutes to watch a security guard remove his makeup and answer a call? Five slow minutes just walk into the vault? You're robbing a bank, you're not walking through a haunted mansion. Hurry up and get out before someone sees your van. Forced suspense with no payoff at all. That's where the pregnant girlfriend with sick grandma shows up to add even more useless characters, side stories and slow walking scenes that bring more frustration to an already slow plot. She will walk very slowly toward a van that she shouldn't have any fear of since she knows the owner, but it has to be slow and she has to stare at the van curiously for five minutes or else the audience wouldn't know that this is supposed to be scary. It isn't. It's intended for suspense but it doesn't work. There's a very slow pace and the lame jump scares are few and far between. It feels like a PG-13 "Conjuring" movie in the sense that they rely on a few obnoxious characters walking very slowly through the dark to mimic something like suspense for about 45 minutes.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
Fails to capture the whimsical fun of the original.
1- It felt like they wrote four or five different stories hoping that test audiences would help Burton choose a plot, but the test audiences were just happy to be there so they kept everything in it... and nothing worked.
2- I was right about Jenna Ortega. Her acting range runs the gamut from A-B.
It would've been more funny and interesting if Lydia's daughter had turned out to be a Gen Z version of Delia. Someone bubbly, shallow and flakey who's on her phone too much. Ortega was just a cliche and humorless knockoff of Ryder.
3- The comedy felt like someone told AI to write a "Tim Burton movie" but it all landed like a fart joke in a Disney movie. The theater was full of adults and children, but no one laughed.
4- There are canon rules for the afterlife in the original "Beetlejuice" lore that get muddled or ignored in this film. "People who commit suicide become civil servants in the afterlife". However, this film creates an illogical backstory for Beetlejuice and a random new witch character so he shouldn't be working in Juno's office. The shrunken head man is now thirty clones named "Bob" who all work for Beetlejuice? That's a marketing ploy for another version of "minion" plush dolls. Everyone will buy a "Bob" now. Cloning "Bob" was a cheap way to avoid creating more interesting characters and death makeups. The Willam Defoe character is supposed to be an actor who died doing his own stunts and is now a cop in the afterlife for some reason? Makes no sense.
4- Burton used to be a genius at choosing a singular musical artist to theme his films (Harry Belafonte, Tom Jones, etc). The musical parts of this film are just for gags with no sense of comical intelligence or necessity. They couldn't even pay for a real disco classic in the nonsensical "Soul Train" scenes. Aside from Danny Elfman's classic opening credits, the music in this movie fails to contrast the darkness with the same whimsy as the original.
5- The original had a lighthearted ending that made everything between life and death feel balanced and funny for the characters and the audience. This movie's ending was awkwardly dark and gory without any real humor or purpose.
Cerdita (2022)
A creative new story but frustrating.
This movie has an interesting premise that most viewers can relate to and many horror fans would be eager to explore. If you witnessed your worst bullies getting kidnapped, what would you do? Sounds entertaining. Where this movie fails is that the horrific aspects and avenues for its premise are withheld until the very end and replaced by a "tortured nerd" drama for most of the film. Think "Welcome To The Dollhouse" meets "A Cry In The Dark".
The lead character is played well enough to believe. She is relentlessly bullied by both her peers and her mother. She has zero self-esteem and an apparent personality disorder. She also seems to lack a sense of right and wrong. She disassociates and shuts down when confronted by literally anything. Unfortunately, this makes her actions (or lack of) very frustrating throughout the film. Most of her performance in some very vital moments is silent or paralyzed. She does nothing when things are happening to her or other people. She has no response or reaction to questions or interactions. Several times, I got frustrated enough with her character to shout things like "SAY SOMETHING!" or "DO SOMETHING!" at the screen. I suppose this all might've been intended to build tension and suspense. At this point, we understand that this is a coming of age horror story (like "Carrie") and she will eventually find some courage, but even when it seems easy to know what's right and wrong or at least to answer a question she does nothing but sob or stay still. This all drags on until the final 30 minutes when she finally gains some autonomy and courage but, even then, it's slow and hesitant and full of insecure mistakes. At this point, you're shouting "HURRY UP, DUMMY!" at the main character and once again... It's frustrating to watch, but again, that might've been the whole point.
The rest of the cast is good. The mother is great and we can almost understand why she would be so disappointed with a daughter who has no sense of self-worth and lacks even the basic communication skills to stand up for herself or tell the truth when asked.
The kidnapper is cast very well. The actor is quite striking with a impressive presence that I would've liked to have seen more of. We can see how his attention and protection would charm and confuse a teenaged girl with such low self esteem.
Overall, I enjoyed the film. It was a different story in a different place with a different face and I appreciate that. At times, it left me feeling angry at the lead character for letting so much damage happen and not reacting better or faster, but I had to remind myself that she's a teenager. Not an action hero.
Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022)
Is this what the British think of Americans?
Is this what the British think of Americans? Or is it a Covid era fever dream? Is this guy supposed to be str8? Is this girl supposed to have any sexual chemistry with him at all? Is this a festival or a trailer park hayride? Are these southern accents? Who designed this production? The amount of misused American slang is distracting. This festival is undercast and the main cast is overcrowded. There are 15-20 extras that repeatedly shown dancing to no music at all (but I'd be afraid to see what American music these British people would choose, so that's okay). Who are these random voodoo cult people? Jason and Michael Myers taught us that putting cults in a beloved franchise is always a bad idea. Did anyone actually study voodoo before they wrote this?
They spent the entire budget on flame throwing sideshow performers, bad wigs and identifiably American Halloween costumes. There's even a "sexy" costume montage to pretend that our lead actress has any sex appeal or chemistry with her costar. She literally doesn't even look at him in some scenes. He's so weak, annoying and corny that I can't picture him getting anyone pregnant, let alone this girl who treats him like a friend the entire time... She hates all of his ideas and he wants to marry her? Why do British 20 year olds look 30? The bad weather?
We haven't even gotten to the special effects, yet.
The fake scenery and sets lack all sense of atmosphere or realism. The Creeper's hands aren't even done when we first see him. They're clean human hands. The worms he eats aren't even placed into the scene realistically. They're literally store-bought fish bait, dumped on the ground and ready to eat in broad daylight. After 25 years, his entire outfit is magically ready on a scarecrow nearby and his truck is still in the same spot. The original lore of this creature is that he hunts people's body parts to replace his own dying body parts, but in this movie he is basically just using people as target practice while a Creeper cult hunts a boring pregnant girl. I'm only about 35 minutes into this movie and I've written more than enough to explain my rating.
Dashcam (2021)
MAGA Trumpers are "crazy cat ladies" too
Disclaimer: The "actress" publicly claimed that this is her real personality so... fair is fair.
This movie spends a ton of time showing us why we should hate the host. She is obnoxious. She is crass. She is selfish. She is narcissistic, misandristic, misogynistic, repellent and rude and she speaks in a language of intentionally bigoted "trigger" words. Even in the most horrific and unrelated situations, her entire personality is based on being a MAGA and her plan of attack is to spout typical Trump-troll rhetoric at anything that is listening to her, even when she just crashed her friend's car or murdered a bystander.
How Annie has these particular friends in England and the fact that Stretch continues to risk his property and his life for her selfish antics is truly bizarre... She behaves like a female version of a lonely incel who truly hates the world she lives in and she blames others for her own behavior. She gives "school shooter energy". Hating this person is the entire point of the movie.
I gotta say... Once the action starts, the comments on the "live stream" do get kinda funny and it works well with the already cynical and selfish vibe of the whole film. The comments are an entertaining feature for this particular found footage story. It's like watching a bad horror movie with an audience cracking jokes at the biggest idiot on the screen.
There are some smart things about this film that are intended to make the viewer want to see what happens to this awful person in the end. Does she get what she deserves for being the worst possible human being? Come for the horror. Stay for the comments.
The Donner Party (2009)
"Back To The Future" is the only movie Crispín Glover didn't ruin by being Crispín Glover.
"Back To The Future" is the only movie Crispín Glover didn't ruin by being "Crispín Glover". I think Glover was cast as the main lead in this film about desperate cannibals solely to make the other actors look even more miserable. I couldn't imagine being cold and wet and having to deal with Glover's "meth-like" performance for 8 or more hours. It reminds me of how Glover turned "River's Edge" (a teenaged murder drama) into a comedy with his ridiculous energies.
This movie is not only dramatically and historically disappointing (characters and true events are poorly represented, performed, jumbled and/or outright false)... It is also cinematically disappointing. The actual Sierra Nevada Mountains are very beautiful and even the Donner Party survivors said that it would all be heavenly if they weren't dying (very similar to The Chilean Andes Survivors testimonies). This film does nothing to display the isolated beauty or the historic details of their tragic situation. It looks like they filmed it all in close ups somewhere in Central Park, NY during the early Spring. Characters are literally sitting on dirt ground around some pine trees with a dusting of snow when every history book tells us that the Donner Party/The Forelorn Hope was stranded on 6-12 feet of snow.
Costumes, makeup, beards and hair look like a Charles Dicken's Dinner Theater. We see nothing historically happen at night because the actors were all probably back at the warm lodge before 4pm.
Crispín Glover does his best to act as desperate and manipulative as possible and it shows. It's all very desperate and manipulative, but not in a way that fits this historical tragedy.
The Twilight Zone: Meet in the Middle (2020)
Dumbed down for the simpler viewer
Wow! The amount of praise for this lame episode compared to the poor reception for some of season one's most intelligent episodes is very telling.
Modern audiences are much dumber and bigoted than they used to be and you can't stand to think too hard on anything important.
I'll just repeat to fill the space.
Wow! The amount of praise for this lame episode compared to the poor reception for some of season one's most intelligent episodes is very telling.
Modern audiences are much dumber and bigoted than they used to be and you can't stand to think too hard on anything important.
I'll just repeat to fill the space.
Wow! The amount of praise for this lame episode compared to the poor reception for some of season one's most intelligent episodes is very telling.
Modern audiences are much dumber and bigoted than they used to be and you folks can't stand to think too hard on anything important.
The Twilight Zone (2019)
Where are the Latinos?
As progressive as it is, the first Latino character doesn't show up until episode 8... And she's a maid who gets deported. I'm embarrassed for you, Mr. Peele.
As progressive as it is, the first Latino character doesn't show up until episode 8... And she's a maid who gets deported. I'm embarrassed for you, Mr. Peele.
As progressive as it is, the first Latino character doesn't show up until episode 8... And she's a maid who gets deported. I'm embarrassed for you, Mr. Peele.
As progressive as it is, the first Latino character doesn't show up until episode 8... And she's a maid who gets deported. I'm embarrassed for you, Mr. Peele.
Mother! (2017)
I expected another "Rosemary's Baby" but the tables were turned...
I just watched "mother!".
I know I'm a few years late and this movie is a little divisive, but I grew up miserable in (and I grew out of) a very strict religion and I think this screenplay is kinda brilliant.
I had heard things and I was expecting another "Rosemary's Baby" but the tables were turned on the good guys.
The performances reflect the best/worst aspects of these famous Biblical characters as related to modern representation. The setting represents our perspective, safety, danger, discomfort and comfort. Much of what needs to be heard is said in whispers or in the background. Much of what is already known is said out loud.
Earth is the protagonist while God and his creation are the antagonists in this modern re-telling of Genesis to Revelations from the planet's point of view. I liked it. I watched it twice.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Chris Pratt's Superhero Stunt Spectacular
The cinematic integrity of the Jurassic Park sequels have never been solid but this one shows how 20 years of constant superhero and fantasy cliches has left the audience void of perspective and rendered the movie-going landscape barren of any good story telling. Convincing special effects and the intrigue of watching prehistoric animals behave like real animals and not remote controlled movie props aren't important as long Chris Pratt hits his choreography and puts up his hands at the right height as if Dr Strange had a baby with Indiana Jones in front of a green screen.
Instead of giving the audience what we've been waiting for for decades... Watching dinosaurs exist with humans... the plot drags through a storyline that is mostly about giant locusts destroying the planet's crops. Are these new locusts a biological side effect of the new ecosystem that the audience has been waiting to see on screen? No... They're just another evil corporate plan. We get a view of a black market aka "Star Wars Cantina"/"Mad Max Thunderdome" knock off (These new directors love to plagiarize their 1980s movie fantasies on film.) where dinosaurs are sold, cooked or trained to fight in a seedy "foreign marketplace". You know how savage them foreigners are. Not xenophobic at all. The scene essentially neuters any threat or fears that the audience used to be able to enjoy about wild dinosaurs in the real world. Dinosaurs seem to have been commodified, tamed, exploited and knocked down the food chain very quickly in this movie, so where is the excitement? The dinosaurs exist almost like extras or aliens in these strange Obi Wan-and-Chewy-searching-the-underground scenes. I found myself losing my appetite for anymore of this movie halfway through its 2.5 hour run because... It's just not thrilling. It's a poorly written attempt to wrap up some fruitless storylines from the last two films and bring back some familiar faces...
OH WAIT!!! There's still another hour and a half to this movie. Let's keep going.
Queue Chris Pratt's Stunt Show Spectacular! The returning cast seems to slog through these long, dinosaur-less scenes with the same level of mustered nostalgia as a high school reunion. Plenty of corny jokes from Goldblum that are supposed to satire the amount of suspended belief that this movie begs from its audience yet the jokes fall flat because we're not holding any tension that would make comic relief a relief at this point. These dinosaurs are not scary anymore and we already know that no one in this family-friendly stunt show is going to get hurt. Lex's scream worked perfectly during the TRex attack in the original film because we as the audience were scared with her in danger. Jeff Goldblum mocking Pratt's "superhero" persona in the middle of some burning dead bugs exactly doesn't make us laugh. There are several scenes that are just cheap callbacks to the original movie. I guess those scenes are intended to wake up the audience to say "oh yeah! I remember that.".
The new cast literally present themselves like highly stylized animated action figures. They don't even look like real people. They look like comic book storyboards. The original JP purposefully used average looking actors and plain costumes to make the audience feel as if it's all real. Now we have a pilot with perfect makeup and hair that never moves. A random female villain standing around in the ultimate runway fashions who disappears from the story at the end of Act Two. Some corporate dudes in aligátor shoes who act like any pop up character in a Resident Evil game. Dr. Woo's story arch...? I'll just say his character should've stuck to the original novel.
The dinosaur scenes are fleeting and lack engagement or tension. Again, because we already know that all of our heroes have superhuman skills and never get hurt. Again, like a superhero franchise, there's about 9 or ten heroes in this one movie. No one can actually die or else the writers have to get creative. It's nice to see Dilophasaurus again but Chris Pratt's arm ruins the tension of the scene in two seconds. Dinosaurs are somehow remote controlled like a modern Noah's Ark. T-Rex is once again reduced to a lumbering battle with yet another large carnivore when, really, all we wanted was more dino/human interaction like the drive-in scene that was used to promote this film in the first place.
The last three movies in this franchise have exposed the degradation and diluted formula of what we used to enjoy from a special effects blockbuster with some cinematic talent behind it. Movies that didn't dumb down their audience with unrealistic plot convenience.
The original Jurassic Park stayed #1 in theaters for several months when it came out. This concept is cheap to new audiences ever since "blockbusters" became a dime a dozen. There's another CGI theme park stunt show coming out in 3D next week, so who cares? Right? An entire generation has been raised on nonstop nickel serials, reboots and entire universes of superheroes, Pokémon, transformers, galaxies, wizards, wands and dragons.
A classic thriller about dinosaurs and science has become a corny theme park stunt show.
Britannic (2000)
Waste of time.
Did they even study the Britannic before making this movie?
They ignored every historical fact that they could in order to make this insufferable melodramatic "Titanic" wannabe.
No historically accurate characters.
A fabricated method of destruction that is no where near the historical record or other conspiracies.
Wrong time of day for the sinking. Wrong weather.
No historical events portrayed during the sinking. Many inaccuracies.
Terrible set design and effects.
A tepid fictional romance that rivals "Titanic" in its level of disbelief but also manages to sink any of the audience's interest before the ship does.
A "Gigantic" load of fiction. A silly spy romance that the someone decided to flood into a historical event in "Titanic's" successful wake.
All puns intended. Thumbs down.
SpaceCamp (1986)
Watched it as a kid.
I remember enjoying this movie as a kid. It felt like The Breakfast Club meets Goonies meets Lost In Space. I haven't seen it in years. It's very hard to find.
Leatherface (2017)
Costumes and Hair... You had one job.
One thing that will ruin an entire movie for me is if the costumes and hair are inaccurate to a time period.
Therefore, I was taken out of the experience and disappointed very early on. Who graduated school and got hired for these costumes?
The pixie-cut school girl? Flat-figured, straight-haired nurse. Long shaggy mops on men? No curls. No waists. Modern fades and shaved heads with beards on southern cops...? This was 1955. The Eisenhower era. Everyone should look like "I Love Lucy" and "Back To The Future" had an orgy. The costumes for this movie are a huge fail. One star.
Werewolves Within (2021)
Starts clever. Ends cheap
What's starts out as an interesting collection of funny characters ends up disappointing. This was actually a video game?
Don't expect a scary werewolf movie as there is nothing scary about this movie and the only werewolf there is shows up in the last five minutes as a very cheap digital effect copy/pasted over the only character that could not make a werewolf scary at all. No horror or suspense. Most of the characters die off from everything else but a werewolf. I really wanted to enjoy this movie on the same level as other horror-comedies, but someone dropped the ball with the screenplay. There is hardly any werewolf, the "shocking" twist is disappointing and the ending sucks.
Deathcember (2019)
26 short stories for horror anthology fans. Not a bad deal.
I like anthology horror. I like holiday horror. Many anthology movies suffer from being either too short if they're good or too boring if they're long. 26 very short horror stories, some are genuinely entertaining, some are just "good-bad" enough to laugh at... These stories are much shorter than usual in the genre, which manages makes it all bearable. The good stories are artistically efficient and whimsical with some fun twists and turns. The not-so-good stories are mercifully quick to get through.
26 international horror stories that are short and sweet... Not a bad a deal. Pick and choose. Enjoy. It's literally like a box of chocolates.
Candyman (2021)
Defensive and fragile people will get mad. Maybe look in the mirror.
Looking at the bad reviews for this movie makes me wonder if the movie did exactly what it intended to do.
If you were offended, you probably should be. The rest of us enjoyed it.
Beautifully filmed. Well directed. Good music. Good suspense. Adequate gore. Good story. It is certainly respectful to the original film (Which was also about systematic racism back in 1992. Way before some of you defensive and sensitive people started using the words "too woke" as an insult.)
Get over yourselves. Maybe take a look in the mirror.
The Tank (2017)
Starts interesting. Loses all logic.
I really wanted to like this movie. Several actors are recognizable from films and television that I've liked. It's written and directed by women. I enjoy science fiction (if this is based on a true story, the information is lacking). I enjoy isolation and survival stories...
The story and the performances falls off the rails at some point. Several plot points are not explained or resolved and there are many questions left unanswered.
Wolves at the Door (2016)
Tacky and inaccurate.
And that's just the hair and makeup. Who designed the costumes and looks for this movie? The cast of Laguna Beach?
I won't even start on the poor taste of such an exploitative movie... At least Tarantino had enough respect make Once Upon A Time In Hollywood a complete and total fantasy.
Lake Mungo (2008)
Something old. Nothing new. Everything borrowed. Now I'm Blue.
I only watched this because a friend suggested it and I thought it was leaving AmazonPrime in a few hours...
I literally had to keep myself awake through the movie by reading the reviews on IMDB just to try and figure out why I my friend said this was good and why I wasn't enjoying it.
This is a mockumentary and some say that part (at least) is done well. I say no. There is obvious green screen behind one character at some point and the interviews consist of oddly confident actors saying cryptic and suspicious lines that real people would be hesitant to say on camera about their family and friends and real lawyers would prevent a filmmaker from including in a real life documentary. (These cryptic lines never go anywhere.)
The "horror" story is predictable, slow and not even interesting or complicated enough for such a vague ending. The idea that the audience would draw any profoundly scary conclusions from a few pretentious and unrewarding red herrings and some photographs is just silly.
Fear Street: 1994 (2021)
Why the hate?
It seems like there are many terrible people here who have a problem with diverse casting and inclusive storylines and the not-so-clever ways that they express their opinions are like dog whistles to anyone who has heard their language before.
This movie is exactly what it promises to be and it doesn't try to be anything else. I have much more respect for a movie like this, that borrows from other movies and has a sense of humor about itself, as opposed to pretentious films like "Hereditary" or "The Conjuring" mess which steal from others and take themselves way too seriously in the process.
Complaints about the lack of 90s retro-style is strangely contradictory to the complaints about the amount of music. The comments seem to come from a younger generation who have a warped sense of the 90s style or can't handle listening to their songs in a nostalgic movie because it makes them feel old.
Anyone who lived through the 90s knows that the decade was never as extravagantly stylized as the rest of the 20th century. The street fashions weren't extraordinary and haven't changed much since...
There were details that stood out for me. "GAP" style clothing, chunky black clog shoes, baggy sweaters... etc.
I went to high school in the 90s. I had very diverse and inclusive friends and we watched horror movies, spoke in chat rooms and listened to music... a lot.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It was fun.
Crooklyn (1994)
My favorite Spike Lee movie
As a New Yorker, born and raised in lower middle class settings, this is probably my favorite Spike Lee joint. The brutal honesty of everything a child can and does experience is accurate and true. This movie came out when I was 14 and it has become one of the films that I never get tired of watching from beginning to end.
I love the nostalgia of childhood street games, family times and street battles... the music is fantastic with many rarely used but poignant popular songs from the time. You can tell these songs meant something to a young Spike Lee. The original score is touching and demonstrates the various joys and anxieties of a turbulent childhood.
I love the skewed cinematography during the scenes that take place when Troy visits family in the south.
Great performances from the entire cast. There should've been much more Oscar buzz for this film.
Hereditary (2018)
Slow, shallow and typical.
As someone who has lost loved ones and felt guilty about, the internet ruined this movie for me before I even saw it this was exactly what I was dreadfully expecting.
Another lengthy, PG-13 posing as R, subdued example of actual haunted grief through over-used images of possession, witchcraft and demonology.
It's been done many times before.
I know what grief feels like. This was an uneducated and pretentious art-school level of insulting to reality and the horror genre.
Krampus: The Christmas Devil (2013)
Huh?
Is this a Christmas horror film or a wannabe cop drama?
And why does Santa sound like Colonel Sanders?
Sick for Toys (2018)
Ok start. Bad finish
The movies starts with an interesting enough concept. Twisted siblings kidnap "toys" every Christmas.
However, somewhere along the way (after dinner) the story just loses all momentum and any chance to shock the audience any further is thrown out of the window.
Somehow, this routine they've had for years gets thrown off by the most ineffective dinner guest in history and our villains quickly unravel into obnoxious breakdowns and tedious conversations and by the end the audience isn't exactly invested enough to care about the survivor.
Axemas (2017)
This should not have 5 stars
A short story with terrible acting and an awful script and uninspired setting. How did this get 5 stars?