themick-88033 Reviews

Clinical (2017)

Bah! Humbug!

[5/10 · 25 December 2021]

Clinical starts off intriguing. The two leads (Vinessa. Shaw and Kevin. Rahm) do a good job as traumatized psychiatrist and disfigured car accident victim seeking help. We get flashbacks of events that lead both of them into their current state as PTSD sufferers. We feel empathy for these characters. They are having a miserable Christmas holiday.

For the first hour of the movie the action is brief and scares tantalizingly short. That's okay with me. I love a slow burn IF the action can build in a logical way and deliver a shocking payoff. Clinical doesn't do that.

Dr. Mathis and Alex reveal their mental and physical injury side by side, It seems a bond will form between them. Alex gets more demanding of her time and the doctor grows uneasy continuing to treat him at her house. We know their is something connecting the two and we want to know more about it. The disturbed and violent Nora (India Eisley) is the key.

As events progress, they make less and less sense. The last part of Clinical degenerates into the typical psycho-chasing-woman-around-the-house gore fest. We've all seen that too many times. I almost blacked out rolling my eyes at the screen.

Clinical has a nice set up. A story that promised and intelligent exploration of trauma and memory ended in disappointment. 5 out of 10, sorry.

A.M.I. (2019)

Hey, you look a little old to be in high school

[3/10 · 2 November 2019]

For a B movie I think this film is brightly lit, professionally shot, and moves at a fairly swift pace. The audio wasn't great, I had to turn my sound up to hear the dialogue clearly. The premise is timely, we are all increasingly dependent on our phones and AI is slowly taking over all of our lives. Ok, enough of the compliments, folks.

The dialogue is dumb and very thin. The lead actress, Debs Howard (Cassie) is an attractive woman but looks wayyyy too old to be in high school. Her performance is wooden and that's a problem because she is in virtually every scene and has to carry the movie. We don't get enough story on the her character to really care about her. We don't know learn enough about her illness, her relationship to her mother, her bond to her best friend and alleged boyfriend to really care about how things end up. I wound up cheering more for the creepy boyfriend, Liam, just because he was so over the top in his creepishness.

What we get is the usual revenge fantasy deaths of a bunch of unlikable people. I kept watching out of amusement. How dumb are things going to get? Answer, very dumb. If you are into the one-by-one killing off thing you might find this film entertaining. There are attempts to at humor in some of the death scenes.

The bottom line is that this film is not scary and not deep on any psychological level. It might have been better if they played things totally for laughs, like in the amusing last scene, but taken as a straight horror movie, bleh!

If by chance your phone ever starts telling you to kill people it's time to get a new phone.

Lady Psycho Killer (2015)

Should I be laughing?

[5/10 · 2 October 2019]

I thought this might be an interesting teen comedy/horror movie and it starts out very promising. A sweet, virginal, college freshman (Kate Daly) trying to complete a life's experience assignment in psychology class discovers her lust for killing while also falling in love. It sounds like quite a way to come of age and, played the right way, could make for a laughable, wicked, underground hit. Ron Jeremy is fun for the all-to-brief time he is on the screen.

Slowly the film takes an exit from fun into the world of seriousness. Despite some well-known, menacing actors (Michael Madsen, Malcom McDowell, Daniel Baldwin) the movie degenerates into a typical hack'em up, blood fest without much to laugh about. The lead actress is very pretty but doesn't generate a lot of sympathy for her character. We neither root for or against her as she cuts and slashes her way through the film and her relationship with her mother (Meredith Heinrich) seems stilted and doesn't go anywhere.

To sum it up, there isn't much comedy in Lady Psycho Killer and there isn't enough suspense to qualify as a real horror movie. It is stuck somewhere in between. I give it a 5 because for a lower budget movie it had decent production values and looks acceptable. I didn't find this movie awful, I just slowly lost interest.