Reviews

This movie was a fantastic collage of historical fiction with little breadcrumbs of actual history to tie it all together. We get to explore the history of a Djinn who gets on the wronf side of many people.

Hearing Idris Elba aurate is quite the treat. Combines with fantastical set pieces has me quite enjoying this.

Until we reach the final arc of the story where Tilda's character finally makes her wishes. Despite knowing how many times the Djinn has been trapped and tortured because of love, she wishes for him to love her like he loved the people in his stories, regardless of his own feelings and expressed desire to release his shackles. She goes from knowledgeable explorer to captor, rapist, and torturer in a day. It's only when she sees him actively being harmed and dying does she send him away so that he can continue to return and be tortured until she dies of old age.

What a horrid woman and horrible ending.

I wanted to love this game so much. H. H. Holmes is such a fantastic serial killer to incorporate into a immesive game. Unfortunately, it's not 5 minutes before that immersion is broken by horribly written dialogue attempting to be "old timey". If it was just the dialogue in the intro piece, I could forgive it, but then we're introduced to a group of some of the most unlikable people to exist. That's fine in a horror movie since it lets you enjoy the killer more, but playing a game of "pick the line that makes you cringe the least" or having the group split up over and over giving you no agency is not enjoyable.a Of course, maybe the main story could redeam it and have an amazing killer, right? Wrong. This game was constantly glitching out. From cutscenes just stopping, QuickTime events working for one person but not my co-op partner, clipping objects, camera randomly zooming in so far you can't see, characters just turning invisible (even during their death scenes). It's just too much.

Then you have absolutely no closure from an unstoppable Jason wannabe.

The only real positives were the setup of the house, the saw-esc kills, and the fact that you can save the dog.

Smile is an extremely frustrating movie that I truly wanted to enjoy, but just couldn't ignore the blaring (literally) issues and poor choices.

One of the strangest part of this movie is how it completely ignores how the real world works and pretends as if only Aethists exist. It's clear almost immediately that the antagonist is a possession with many of the same symptoms, yet it's not mentioned once and they never go to a church or seek out a priest. Everyone who brings up anything that isn't psychological cause is just labeled as crazy.

When it came to costuming, effects, and gore, the creators went well above and beyond what I was expecting and, with one exception, one of the best parts of the movie. The mind horror aspect is very well done and pretty clear what's happening early on and an clearly choreographed ending for those in the audience paying attention.

The biggest gripe that I have with the movie is how insanely annoying out protagonist, Rose, really is. She's a neurotic compulsive liar who lacks of critical thinking and the most unbelievable part of the movie being that she's somehow a doctor. It'd be totally understandable thst she's fraying at the edges by the end of the movie, but she's like this before the plot even really begins. This level of incompetence prevents any kind of sympathy as it makes it easier when they inevitably die, but the plot puzzle of the movie ensures she's gonna get someone which shifts her to selfish at best and murderous at worst. At one point it looks like she figured out the obvious solution to the puzzle aspect of this genre and had a path forward only for her to throw it away for no reason.

The sound of this movie is weirdly polarized. Every sound that builds atmosphere and tension while making your skin crawl was outstanding, but the balancing and editing were horrible. Conversant overuse of overly loud sounds to emulate jump scares because the actual jump scares simply can't hold up on their own break any kind of immersion and grates. Several points in the film, the sound goes from silent to blaring so loud it's causing ear pain.

Overall, this one was not enjoyable. I might watch it again to make fun of the more over-the-top parts, but never as a scary movie rewatch.

Barbarian starts off with one of the best opening acts i have scene in a horror movie in such a long time. The hints and nudges about what we are going to see along with the atmosphere and awkward silly dialog provides a great juxtaposition. Too bad it's all shown in the movie's trailing.

Starting on the second act, the movie feels like it tripped in production and start going down hill. Shoving a #metoo storyline down our throats to setup a thoroughly dislikable character is boring and a decade too late to be relevant. He honestly feels like he's only her to force the slightly less annoying MC to stick around for the plot. Along with another political train wreck sniping at police in such an unbelievable setup that breaks anything left at immersion, we head towards the final act of nonsense.

The reveal of the true horror going on here, a serial kidnapper and rapist taking women to his hidden tunnels, falls completely flat as the monster is just a geriatric man who quickly dies. This took what waz horrible terrifying aspect as we never knew for sure and put words on it, making it easier to separate. Combining it with our monster being a multi-generation incest baby removes anything close to scary at this point. Then you have a scene where Long throws the MC off a water tower and ypu can't not ask: "what the f is this movie?"

The soundtrack is really well done, but the sound mixing for theater release is horrible: going from silent to piercing hurts. This could have been so much more and I wonder where it went on the tracks or this is what it was meant to be.

Multiverse of Madness is an odd movie that doesn't know what it wants to be and feels as fragmented as the fragments the movie tries to fix.

The Good: The visual effects continue to astound. With one scene in particular going to many different universes, applying many different visual and sound effects was outstanding.

Disney seems to have finally gotten over its squeamishness in the MCU as this movie is much darker with some particularly brutal deaths. It's also beginning to acknowledge that some of the actions of so-called heroes are really not good.

The Neutral: Disney has previous shot movies in such a way that they can easily edit scenes containing anything homosexual put of them for releasing in specific counties. The same filming technique was clearly present here with Chavez's moms being extremely disjointed and easily changed. As of writing this it looks like that isn't happening and the movie will just not be released there.

The Bad: The dialogue in this movie is awful. It often came across as someone writing an MCU fanfic and somehow got their fic as the base script. Some notable bad points: telling the bride you love her at her wedding, a woman can suddenly controlling her power because you believe in them, the entire Illuminati conversation, and many more.

The continued descent into women must be badasses with no character. This was one of the biggest flaws with Captain Marvel and it seems like Disney is continuing the downward trend. Women have to be the same as men and have to be badasses at all times with no real struggle, overcoming adversity, or training to become powerful. If you just believe you're badass you are and any guy without plot armor is just a joke.

The beginning of the modern heroes of meh. With America Chavez being so prominent in this story, the new heroes from modern comics (2011 first appearance) have truly leaked into the core MCU. The problem is that these characters were often written as pure wish fulfilment and lack the foundation the existing powerhouses do. I hope they do better and build these characters more, but right now they're flat.

Plot holes. This is par for the course with Marvel where they give creative freedom and don't proof read for consistency. This movie is riddled with them: how is Strange able to steal powers without using DarkHold? Who is controlling Chavez's powers if they went where supposed to? How would the demons kidnapping Chavez deliver her to Wanda? How was Strange not able to see through Wanda's Hex (within his powerset)?

Political coding. Disney has been doing this for a while and it does nothing but break immersion even when trying to ignore it. The main one I noticed this time was the "Not All Men" campaign. It seemed off-brand at first, but with the public view turning against Disney with the Heard v Depp trial, it could be them trying to become more neutral.

The tyrant heroes. The MCU continues to reinforce the idea that it's okay to be a tyrant and punish people you like so long as you have value for everyone else. The biggest present of this is Strange forcing a street vendor to punch himself in the face for "3 weeks". I get that it's Bruce Campbell and an Evil Dead reference, but it's a messed up thing for a so-called hero to do.

Overall, this movie feels like 1 step forward and 2 steps back. I hope things will improve in the future, but it's really feeling like the MCU is beginning to drop off and rarely returns to the quality of early movies.

This movie is honestly very strange. It's an attempt at a horror twist where there is no killer and the entire story is caused by paranoia. The creators both succeeded quite well and utterly failed and it makes evaluating this movie difficult.

The setting of the movie is established at the mansion of Dave's dad where a group of people are going to have a Hurricane party. Exactly like it sounds, this is where you party through a hurricane. Once you meet each person and this becomes clear, it's fairly obvious that this is a group of 6 mentally deficient partiers (drops to 5 once its clear Greg has prepped for the hurricane) and a girl who has stepped into quicksand without realizing. My biggest problem with these characters is that they are supposed to be caricatures, but they act exactly how many entitled partiers do. Is it acting if this is what the actors would be like in a situation like this?

The ball starts rolling when Dave is found dead with this throat cut. This causes everyone to freak out and think there's a real killer leading to paranoia and suspicion. This leads to various deaths of the rest of the cast until the ending "twist" is revealed that Dave cut his own throat trying to sabre a wine bottle towards his own face. I put quotes in here because it becomes pretty clear that there's no killer as before each death there's incredulous coincidences that happen. Jordan is probably the closest thing to an actual killer as she instigates most of the deaths: getting a knife to hunt down Greg, attacking Greg after he has surrendered, getting a gun, shooting people.

If I ever watch it again, it'll be as a movie to drink to and make fun of.