Internetghost Reviews

The Sadness (2021)

The shock value was starting to get boring.

[3/10 · 16 June 2022]

The Sadness is one of the most overhyped films of 2022, let's just cut to the chase. All of the talking points about how gory it was, depraved, shocking and such made me yawn, but I still went in without judgment because I wanted to be fair, but I was ultimately right about my apprehension.

Let's talk about the gore first, it's overdone. There's only so many times I can see literal fountains of blood and excessive rape scenes before I start to roll my eyes at the obvious attempt at shock value. The thing about shock value, it has to have a point. At least when South Park offends people, it has a purpose. Not here, the script feels like it was written by an edgy 16 year old after reading their first creepypasta. It's that lifeless, pun intended.

The script, as I just mentioned, is wafer thin. These characters are so boring I didn't even remember their names, not that I cared, because they only existed to die. The bleak and hopeless ending where nobody lives doesn't work because I wasn't invested from the very beginning. The origins of the virus are also a blatant imitation of 28 Days Later, only lacking everything that made that movie good. The obvious social commentary on COVID-19 made me roll my eyes, as it felt pretentious. This movie doesn't give a damn about social commentary, at its core it's just concerned with being as needlessly disgusting as possible, so the themes are never realized because of it. Besides, who in the world wants to be lectured to about the pandemic during an escapist movie experience?

Overall, o give this movie a D. The practical effects were impressive I must admit, but everything else about this movie fails. I hate it, and I'll never watch it again. That's not the sign of a good movie.

Train to Busan (2016)

Not Worthy of the Hype

[4/10 · 20 August 2020]

Maybe it's because of the excessive hype surrounding this supposedly groundbreaking zombie film but I was disappointed with this. This film feels like an unofficial World War Z remake in South Korea and not in a good way. There's really nothing in this film that separates it from others of its kind. It may be South Korean but it definitely feels like a typical Hollywood blockbuster.

First big problem with the film are the unearned attempts at drama and tears. It's extremely melodramatic with too many attempts to touch your emotions and pull at the heartstrings, and it doesn't work because these characters are flat and disposable. They barely get any character development and are mostly just stock characters: the corrupt capitalist businessman, the dumb teenagers, the annoying kid, the hobo who speaks about the end of days, the damsel in distress, and the everyday man. They're the most one dimensional horror characters on the face of the earth who only exist to fight zombies and get eaten. I think it also says a lot that many of the positive reviews here only praise the cheerleader for being hot and not because she's a compelling character.

Plus I found the "don't be selfish" aesop to be forced and poorly executed. It'd be one thing if the lead character had to learn over the course of the entire film to be more selfless and help other people as part of his path to become a better person but no, that little character arc is dropped in an instant. instead we get a hate sink character in the businessman who's presence beats us over the head with how selfishness is wrong by having him do increasingly despicable things just for the sake of it. He's not a character, just a token attempt at inserting forced and contrived conflict into the story.

How to fix this? Cut down on the melodrama and remove the corrupt corporate executive and tramp characters. They're both annoying cliches (the homeless and filthy looking freak speaking about the end of days and the apocalypse has been done to death). Let the zombies be the villains for once in these movies instead of using that dumb "maybe humans are the real monsters" cliche.

Terrifier (2016)

This movie made me want to punch my own Television.

[1/10 · 8 November 2018]

Where do I start? I guess I'll get straight to the point, this film is a steaming pile, it's a seriously strong contender for one of the worst horror films I've ever seen in my entire life. I stand by my statement when I say that nearly all of the positive reviews on this site are the cast and crew trying to promote this abortion.

I watched this so you don't have to (please for the love of god don't), but I watched this for free and I still want my money and time back. The film opens with this extremely awkward attack scene where Vicky, the sole survivor of the Halloween massacre, attacks and mauls the newscaster interviewing her to death for mocking her disfigured face, and that's it, it has no relevance to the plot and it's just an excuse to throw in some more gore, and the gore effects aren't even good, this has to be some of the fakest looking blood and guts I've ever seen in a slasher, and all of the kills are accompanied by this really bad electronic music that adds no mood or atmosphere to any scenes, it's seriously one of the worst music scores I've ever heard in a horror movie.

Next is the acting and characters, oh boy. I'm sure these actors are nice people in real life, and they look like they're having fun, but they really need to ask for a refund from whatever acting school they graduated from because this is some really amateurish and flat acting, not once did I ever believe that they became their characters and they even suck at looking scared. Their characters aren't any better, this is one of the worst scripts I've ever encountered for any movie, period.

These stupid characters have hundreds of opportunities to kill this deranged clown but they knock him down once and they just run off, giving him plenty of time to get back up and try again, and this clown, contrary to even negative reviews praising him, is not scary in the slightest. There's only so many times you can see a deranged and bloody clown with a toothy smile to the point where you're desensitized and it's not frightening anymore.

Last but not least are the production values, there's not a single set and everything appears to have been filmed on location, which is okay I guess but everything else is an inexcusable fault. The lighting is incredibly over saturated to the point where some scenes looked too bright or the actor's faces looked like they were smeared in Vaseline, it's really that bad, and that's not even mentioning the extremely bland and basic cinematography. Every single shot is flat and uninteresting, there's no memorable scenes or shots to remain in your nightmares.

So yeah, this film is painful to endure and absolutely clueless on how to create horror. It can't even be enjoyed as a guilty pleasure because the gore is so cheap and fake looking (newsflash: buckets of fake Walmart blood doesn't constitute as horror) and it's not bad enough to be good. I give it an F.

The Blackcoat's Daughter (I) (2015)

I think my expectations were too high, or this movie just missed the mark.

[4/10 · 5 July 2017]

The Blackcoat's Daughter, originally titled February, was a film that received quite some buzz during it's initial screenings at film festivals back in 2015. It eventually got a quiet release in limited theatrical screenings in February (of course) 2017 before its home release.

As a connoisseur of horror films, I was intrigued (even though I dislike Emma Roberts) especially because despite its derivative themes of demonic possession, the film apparently does new things with the formula. Bought it day one and I have to say I was kind of disappointed.

In a boarding school, students Katherine "Kat" (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton) stay behind during school break while the other girls leave with their families. Kat's parents don't come because they are deceased while Rose intentionally gave her parents the wrong date, she suspects that she might be pregnant and doesn't yet want to face her parents about it. The third girl, "Joan" (Emma Roberts), is a mystery as she gets off on a bus stop and is implied to be an escaped mental patient as she removes her hospital bracelet in the bathroom. She is soon picked up by an elderly couple (James Remar and Lauren Holly) who mention that they are on their way to the boarding school.

Watching the film I was underwhelmed because it is hollow and has no soul. It's plenty creepy with looming hallways and dark spaces but there's never anything here that's actually frightening. Kat is orphaned and as a result is supposed to be metaphorically raised by darkness because she summons a demon in the boiler room after Rose taunts her with a story that the nuns are satanists and worship demons. I never once got the indication that Kat was lonely, sure she looks gloomy but she's like that for the entire movie even before we find out what happened, she never grieves her parents and never looks lost and desperate. She has no character arc or any semblance of a personality. It makes it hard to believe that she'd befriend the demon out of loneliness as a result, the demon itself also doesn't have a threatening presence. I never got chills of dread about the demon or what it's capable of, it isn't unnerving and almost feels like a plot device threaded thorough the film so that the movie can exist.

Rose is equally as uninteresting and hollow. Her entire character is just her hanging out with her boyfriend and interacting with Kat for a small conversation. I understand why she stayed behind but the problem is that I know it but I don't feel it. Rose never once looks anxious or panicked about the possibility of being pregnant, if you didn't catch it the first time you would probably never pick up on it. There's also never any friction or tension when she is with her boyfriend over the fact that he might have gotten her pregnant. She has no arc and never becomes involved in the plot as anything more than another plot device. In the third act she finally has her period, much to her relief, and is suddenly killed by a possessed Kat after she also murdered the nuns, and offers their decapitated heads as an offering to the demon before she is blasted with a shotgun by the police and sent to an institution. No resolution, nothing, her death carries no meaning because she never had any either as a character.

This leads me to my next point, the "big" twist in the film is that "Joan" is actually an older Kat after she escaped the asylum and has returned to the town 9 years later to return to the boarding school and is actually picked up by Rose's parents who are heading to the school to place flowers at her grave. The glaring problems with this twist is that it's pretty obvious. Joan/Kat is never in the same scene with the other girls and exists in her own subplot completely separated from the boarding school. While Joan/Kat is showering, we can see a shotgun wound on her shoulder where Kat was shot before the twist is revealed, she also looks extremely similar to Kat in terms of hair color and facial appearance. The dead giveaway is that in the diner scene with Joan/Kat and Rose's father, he reveals that their daughter Rose died 9 years earlier and shows her a picture of her before Joan/Kat heads to the bathroom and starts to giggle before we see the driver's license of the woman she killed and stole it from, who was named Joan Marsh.

The film clumsily ends with her killing the parents in their car before decapitating them and taking the heads to the now closed down boarding school. She again offers the heads as a sacrifice in the boiler room and yet nothing happens. She walks out in despair and starts to cry uncontrollably. The point you were supposed to get was that she is lonely and wanted the demon back, because she was exorcised by a priest before she was institutionalized and wanted it to stay with her. There's no raw emotions to this scene because we never got a sense of desperation or loneliness from Kat, the exorcism scene is the only time in the whole film she expresses her attachment to the demon. With no emotional knowledge of the situation there's no impact.

This film reminds me of Proxy, both have loosely attached events with a scattered plot messily clashed together with no semblance or fluidity to it. The few redeeming qualities I saw are the eerie and beautiful winter setting, the unnerving music, and the cinematography is somewhat creepy. But otherwise this movie is soulless and has no weight attached to it. It's forgettable. I still recommend you check it out if you're curious, just temper your expectations because it isn't as good as you'd hope it is.

Chappie (2015)

An obnoxious and irritating movie to watch.

[3/10 · 31 July 2015]

To get this out of the way I went in with no idea what this movie was about, I didn't watch a single trailer, read a synopsis or watch any previous Neill Blomkamp so I went in with an open mind and I still didn't care for this movie. The concept is interesting, a robot that begins to think and feel for himself is a great opportunity to ask questions about humanity and consciousness, unfortunately this movie didn't understand what to do with it's potential. None of the characters felt like actual characters that grow and develop, everyone felt like a convenient plot device walking in to say expository dialogue or move the plot forward, the gangster characters were so annoying that I was actually cheering to see them die. The pacing and story structure is incredibly awkward and doesn't have a good flow from beginning to end, it doesn't have a good understanding of it's themes and therefore they feel undeveloped, the characters are always in contrived situations and are not well developed as an ensemble, besides Chappie not a single character feels like a protagonist or antagonist, I even liked Hugh Jackman's character and he was supposed to be the villain I guess, also Sigourney Weaver is severely underused in the film. In short Chappie is pretty Crappie. My Grade: D+

Pixels (2015)

It's the type of movie that embarrasses you.

[1/10 · 31 July 2015]

Every single moment of this movie embarrassed me, there only a few redeeming qualities in this filth and that was the admittedly eye popping visuals in terms of the arcade games and the charming performance of Peter Dinklage from Game of Thrones, that is where the positives end for this waste of film. This movie has no idea what it wants to be or who it's target audience is because it plays out like a typical Adam Sandler vehicle just with video games added in so he can cash in on gamer's nostalgia for arcade games. None of the jokes were funny and were underwhelming, Josh Gad annoyed the crap out of me, there is absolutely no love put into this movie and is the very definition of a missed opportunity, there is so much that could have been done with the concept yet the potential was disposed of just so that Sandler can continue to steal our money with predictable idiotic humor that isn't even witty, sarcastic, clever, or self-referential or even a shred of respect for the classic games put on display. I felt embarrassed for the talent that was wasted for this film such as director Chris Columbus, Michelle Monaghan, Sean Bean, and Peter Dinklage, they deserved better than this. In conclusion I hated this movie, it had massive potential but instead massively disappointed me. In short don't see it at all, you have much better choices in theatres right now. My grade: F