kuner-59029 Reviews

Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995 Video)

90s B-Movie goodness by Albert Pyun

[6/10 · 23 May 2024]

Albert Pyun is a director I've always liked. His reach far exceeds his grasp, which means that even in failure, his films are usually entertaining. His films often go the extra mile to add more themes, subplots and more unique production design beyond what other dumpster bin direct to video b-movies of the time did. You feel the extra effort and extra creativity. Unfortunately, much of his creativity is hampered by low budgets and a a lack of self-control, which leads to self-indulgent scenes like Nemesis 2's opening, which runs for about 25 minutes with the only dialogue being in an African tribal language.

Props for authenticity, I suppose.

Female bodybuilder Sue Price plays Alex, a genetically engineered super human from the future who was hidden by her mother in the past and grew up in an African tribel society. Then an evil cyborg from the future shows up, kills her tribe and chases her for the rest of the movie. That's the plot. She meets a variety of people along the way, treasure hunters, slave traders, mercenaries. There's something about a civil war. None of it matters. Much like the first Nemesis, it's one long chase sequence.

The acting is a mixed bag to say the least. Some performances are hilariously over the top, like the angry tribal guy who appears to be about 2 meters / 6'6 tall and loses a hilarious fight scene against tge 1.5 meter / 5 feet Sue Price (okay, she may be a bit taller).

Kidding aside, while she's not a trained actor and doesn't always emote well, she does a much better job than other female bodybuilder actors of the 90s era like Cory Everson or Rachel McLish. The latter of whom also appeared in an Albert Pyun film (Am I sensing a theme?). She's ripped and ultra pumped here, so if that's your thing, you'll get your money's worth.

Actually, kudos to Albert Pyun for giving the usual action man role to a woman. One of many Pyun-esque choices that just make his films fun to watch. His usual wacky camera angles and big explosions are all here, and some of the stunt work is more elaborate than it needs to be.

The main problems of the film are pacing and narrative thrust. Around the mid point the pacing begins to drag. Things do pick up towards the end again, but the main problem is that the film never really defines the stakes and doesn't give its lead a clear goal aside from surviving. Granted, Terminator 1 was similar with Sarah Connor just trying to stay alive, but that film had Kyle Reese as a bridge to the future, so we always had an idea of the stakes. Nemesis 2 fails to establish any kind of narrative regarding the future, or how Alex would affect the future or even get back to the future. The time travel aspect is never brought up again.

The solution could have been simple. A prophesized meteor strikes in Africa, drawing treasure hunters and other seedy characters to a country torn apart by civil war. Within all this chaos, a cyborg from the future shows up. This meteor is really a time capsule, containing information that humans can use to gain an advantage over the machines (or aliens or whatever) in the future. Alex knows how to open and decode it, but the cyborg is hot on her tail. And so it becomes a race for the capsule, through a war torn hell with shaky alliances and betrayals.

Sadly Nemesis 2 never does some coherent worldbuilding. Nor do its sequels 3 and 4, which are garbage bin crap. But 2 had potential, and I still have a soft spot for it despite its many flaws.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

My brain hurts

[1/10 · 16 May 2024]

Yay, another Godzilla vs Kong movie, a chance to lose shed excess IQ points faster than rapid onset dementia.

The movie starts with Kong on his island escaping some big dogs and killing one in an unnecessarily gory fatality movie. Scares other dogs away.

Kong has toothache after been punched by evil red ape. Goes to humans for dental service, gets big dumb anesthetic injection and big dumb metal tooth from humans. Humans go dumb side story with shamans and mystical stuff my brain dont understand. Boring lady has boring romance with boring australian guy. Also boring mute girl. Movie thinks it's avatar for a while but after long boring time goes back to monsters fighting.

Kong is good ape, red apes bad, except for red baby ape so movie not racist against red apes. Show individual can be good and prejudice bad. Red ape control ice power godzilla with glowing rod. Red ape ride ice godzilla. Real godzilla now with pink energy. Kong roar at pyramids. Pink godzilla climb on gibraltar rock, also roar. Next scene fight at pyramids. Smash pyramids. Glowy moth appear and then friends. Then scene with disco music. Other music garbage, go "braaaah" and "bam baaaaam" all movie, but disco and synthwave tracks fun. Human characters lame. Everyone different accent, can't understand.

Random beach scene with samba music. Maybe in Brazil? Camera turn around, then Red Ape and Ice Godzilla vs Kong and Pink Godzilla. Big stupid. Big fight. Baby red ape show up. Kong steals fatality move from Sub Zero. Kong x Godzilla x Mortal Kombat now.

My brain hurts. But am dumber now. Therefore happier. Next monster movie when?

Sting (2024)

Creature feature with an identity crisis

[3/10 · 16 May 2024]

I like spiders. They freak me out and scare me, and we have some particularly fast obnoxious ones where I live, which will crawl over you at night, but I somehow still like them. They're interesting to watch. And they make great horror film monsters.

Along comes Sting, an underwhelming spider horror film. An alien spider is taken in by the daughter and quickly grows and develops an apetite for other animals and eventually humans.

The film starts like a horror comedy with overacting and wild POV camera angles, only to then get serious again with family drama and then after about 45 minutes go back into horror comedy. While tonal inconsitencies can work if they represent the state of a character's mind (i.e. Clockwork Orange), they don't work in a silly horror film with a paper thin plot. The movie never knows what kind of film it wants to be, and thus undermines both the scares and the jokes. The creature and gore effects are fine. Nothing you haven't seen before. The color grading is decent, while the camera work obnoxiously draws attention to itself.

Sting lacks bite.

Abigail (2024)

Misconceived horror falls apart as the cast dwindles

[4/10 · 11 May 2024]

Abigail starts surprisingly strong. A group of criminals kidnaps a ballerina and hold her at a spooky mansion until the guy who hired them can secure the ransom payment. But oh no, they start dropping like flies, and before long, it turns out Abigail is the daughter of a seemingly supernatural underworld figure, and not so innocent herself.

So far for the premise. Anything to trap a group of misfits in a spookhouse with a monster.

Unfortunately, as soon as the characters reach the house, the movie comes apart at the seams. We get one contrived exposition dump after the next. While the team of hired criminals doesn't know each other's names or backstories, the main character deduces their backstory as a game, giving us a tedious exposition dump on each character.

Exposition dumps like this happen more than once in the film, and are reminiscent of the awful hospital scene in Scream 5.

Melissa Barrera's acting has gotten better since, but she's still unable to carry a film on her own.

The supporting cast does much of the heavy lifting... but they die off fast, including one of only two competent characters. Not that there's much meat to the supporting cast. All except Dan Stevens and the mentally impeded guy are cannon fodder.

Dan Stevens gets the best lines and keeps the film interesting. He's the one character that doesn't always act predictably, and where you're not sure if he's a villain or not - until the movie tells us in another character breaking moment.

The gore ramps up at the end, and the character motivations become more and more contrived. Two characters appear for only about 2 minutes each, further messing up the plot structure.

The film's internal clock is all over the place as well. The kidnappers snatch abigail in the evening, but just a few scenes later bright daylight shines into the mansion. Two scenes later it's night again.

Scream 5 had one of these daytime continuity errors as well (it immediately went from the midday murder the blonde kid to the hospital scene at night). This is just sloppy.

Abigail has some good ideas, but the movie's more interesting crime story is never picked up again, and it turns into the usual bloody chasing and gore shlock. The ballerina gimmick never really plays out, and the final fight is more or less just stabbing and choking. The main character spends most of the finale incapacitated, and neither Abigail nor the other characters still alive carry any sympathy. The entire structure is a mess.

The gore effect are good, the cinematography and lighting are similar to Scream 6. There's one pretty cool stepiece in the basement.

The music is awful. Tchaikovsky would be turning in his grave to see his Swan lake used in this, only for some scenes then to have rap music and autotune garbage.

Nothing really fits together. It's one of those films that gets worse the more you think about it, which is never a good thing. But it may be fun for anyone who really loved Scream 6.

Unfrosted (2024)

Throw s... ugar at the wall and see if it sticks

[5/10 · 4 May 2024]

What a weird film this is.

The film starts charming enough establishing a rivalry between breakfast cereal makers Kellogg's and Post. Seinfeld works for Kellogs as... I'm not even sure what. Assistant to the boss? His character is never really defined and passively spends his own movie in the passenger seat, only once driving the narrative.

The rivalry between two ceral makers had potential for endless comedy, and some of the jokes land well, especially the many word plays relating to food, nutrition, etc.

Unfortunately, about 20 minutes in, the movie loses focus and becomes about the many cameo appearances by various comedians doing their shtick. The narrative is lost in an endless series of increasingly juvenile and ridiculous jokes. For example: In order to defeat Post, Kellogs hires a ragtag group of "genuises", a fitness guy, a meatball chef, a former nazi, a bicycle maker and a 60s IBM computer. The computer comments on the fitness guy "freeballing", not wearing any underpants. None of this has anything to do with the actual story, and the initially fun premise falls apart.

The worst offense is Melissa McCarthy, who shows up in a strange clown costume and for some reason yells most of her lines. She's insufferable as usual.

As the movie progresses, it becomes a cartoon. Amy Schumer's character travels to Moscow to secure sugar, offering Borscht, Crumbs and Vodka based cereals for Russian kids, only for Nikita Khurschev to demand sex from her. Some of the jokes are fantastic, most are idiotic. A scene of Seinfeld being abducted and sent through an alley of farting cows is followed by a scene with president JFK involved in the whole dispute, because he doesn't want American kids eating Communist sugar and... you get the idea. The plot is idiotic.

Perhaps kids would enjoy the loudness and crassness of it, but I doubt they could relate to most of the actors, some who are in their 70s like Seinfeld (even though he looks like early 50s)

This would have worked better as something like Ford vs Ferrari with a bit of extra humor instead of the hyperactive disjointed mess it became.

Monkey Man (2024)

Shaky cam and vile anti-Hindu / Bharat propaganda

[2/10 · 24 April 2024]

The trailer made this look interesting, but as one might have guessed, it's the same old revenge story. A man loses a loved one, rises from the ashes to take revenge against the rich and powerful.

You've seen it all before a thousand times. Monkey Man tries to be an Indian John Wick, but never realizes what made those films work. And so you're left with a story without narrative heft, a plot that would have sufficed for a 15 minute short film, and instead a lot of extremely badly staged action scenes with unbearable shaky cam. This is a waste, since some of the stunt work is decent.

Naturally, with all the current media hatred directed at India these days, this film has to chime in, deride and misrepresent the caste system, and portray the villain as a caricature of the prime minister of India, Modi.

Bigoted and hateful and entirely without substance.

Asphalt City (2023)

A collection of grim, dark, miserable scenes without overarching narrative

[6/10 · 22 April 2024]

Asphalt City aims to give a realistic, unfiltered look at the life of paramedics in America's hellhole inner cities. Scene after scene unfolds with new nihilistic horrors that take their toll on the main protagonists.

Gunshot victims dying, HIV infected heroin junkies giving premature births, children bitten by dogs, gang violence, being cussed out by crazy people recounting their childhood rape traumas...

The film is well shot and acted (except Mike Tyson who sticks out like a sore thumb), which makes these scenes even more impactful. Some of them stay with you, but the question is why? There's little to no overarching narrative, it's just scene after scene of absolute misery.

And maybe that's the point. If so, kudos to the producers for pulling it off.

It's not an experience I could imagine anyone enjoying, but it may have value as training footage for paramedics and ER doctors.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

They don't understand what made the original great

[4/10 · 26 March 2024]

While better than the mopey, depressing Afterlife, Ghostbusters: Frozen Generic Title once again baffles by screwing up what should be an easy concept.

Ghostbusters was not about busting ghosts. It wasn't about Gozer. It was about 3 guys starting a ridiculous business. There was the science guy, the spiritualist / occultist / historian, and the opportunist / con man Venkman. Nobody believed in them, but we as the audience knew they were right.

Frozen Empire wisely does away with the depressed tone of the previous movie but still fails to get the most important thing right: motivation. Why are they in New York? Why are they hunting ghosts? It was barely explained in the last movie, and it's even less plausible here. None of them except Phoebe Spengler seem to want to hunt ghosts.

Beyond that, the movie suffers from character overload. They have the 6 new characters, the 3 surviving original Ghostbusters, Janine Melnitz, the Pakistani guy, the tech guy employed by Winston...

Most of the new adult characters are good. Nadeem Razmaadi is highly enjoyable in his scenes, and Dan Aykroyd is always enjoyable. He's still got his heart in it, and it shows, whereas Bill Murray is in the film for about 30 seconds...

which isn't much more than most Characters. Finn Wolfhard is more or less forgotten halfway through the movie and then shows up again at the end. He has no character arc. Same for his girlfriend from the last movie and the Asian podcaster kid. Both feel tacked on.

Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon's characters barely have anything to do and feel lost in the plot, because they don't have the intelligence to understand any of the Ghost tech.

This is a central flaw of the film. In the original, the central characters knew what they were doing. Here, only the kids seem to understand the technology, but it never works. The "genius kid" trope is annoying. Kids in sci fi comedies work best if they employ creative thinking or common sense, much like Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Imagine that film of Marty was the genuis and Doc Brown was the bumbling idiot along for the ride. It wouldn't have worked.

Ideally the new Ghostbusters movies would have gone like this:

The old Ghostbusters try to build a new team to carry on their legacy - turning it into another business comedy, by showing the pitfalls and frustrations of passing on the torch. They could have been taken advantage of by young people not believing them and just trying to make money or frustrated by Gen Z's lack of work ethic. Or clashed with other eccentric characters who may have the smarts but not the discipline - or who have the motivation, but not the smarts. This could have led to interesting character dynamics in the style of the original.

The most interesting aspect of Frozen Empire is Phoebe's lesbian ghost romance. Their story arc was actually interesting, and I wanted to see where it would go.

The whole firecasting subplot was another misfire. The original wisely had science beat the occult. They didn't need a magical dagger or other macguffin to beat Gozer. Science beat superstition. Here, they introduce a character with magical powers, throwing that theme out of the window.

At least the movie is briskly paced and barely gives you time to think about how stupid it is. Some of the skits are charming, and there are enough jokes to keep you entertained over its runtime. There are also no obnoxious identity politics or lectures.

As a generic fantasy movie, it's fine. As a sequel to one of the greatest comedy films of all time, it falls flat. But it's leagues better than Afterlife.

Road House (2024)

Kind of trash, very stupid, but still enjoyable.

[4/10 · 24 March 2024]

The original Road House was'nt a cerebral film, nor a timeless classic like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future or other standout 80s films of that era. But it had a likeable hero, a classic soundtrack, and an uplifting vibe as Patrick Swayze cleans up the bar step by step.

The remake barely spends time in the actual road house and thereby omits what made the original a classic. Instead, we get a tired recycled plot about an evil property developer - yawn!

The Florida setting had potential, especially in light of the Florida Man meme. They could have done a lot with it, but unfortunately they never do.

Unlike in the original, which depicted a town full of crooks, the locals in the remake can do no wrong, especially anyone not white.

None of the secondary characters here really have much in terms of character arcs. The best I can remember is the one villain who has his arm broken and the love interest having a European accent despite being from Florida, and sounding like she has throat cancer.

The standout is Connor McGregor who plays an exaggerated version of his ring persona and delivers a completely unhinged villain.

He spends to movie wearing a lunatic grin and walking with an exaggerated swagger. The best recurring joke in the movie is him smashing his car into objects instead of using the break.

Unfortunately, the tone of the movie is a mess. Jake Gyllenhaal mopes around as a traumatized hero with a horrible past in one scene, only to crack jokes in another, then suddenly not care and want to leave, and then ruthlessly murder people. We have no emotional anchor in the movie, compared to Patrick Swayze's uplifting good guy.

That is not to say Jake Gyllenhaal isn't fantastic in this film. He absolutely carries the film on his own. Without him, the film would barely be a 2 or 3/10.

The direction is awful. From bad color grading to half the movie being out of focus, with way too many closeups. You barely see two characters in focus on screen at the same time outside of fight scenes.

These are shot with a fisheye lens and a constantly revolving camera. They're disorenting and look fake. It's not as bad as shakycam, but it's a trend that needs to die, along with the heavy use of focal depth blur.

The fight scenes are also scored poorly with generic action movie soundtrack that doesn't even fit the on screen scenes, and then interrupted by jokes.

During a life and death fight after many people have been killed, someone gets their head smashed into a piano and says "that piano is out of tune". It's a funny line and would have been great early on, but out of place at that point in the movie.

As mentioned the Road House location is barely used. We see it early on a few times, each time introduced the same way: a bad song starts playing and then we get shots of a band. It's repetitive. The location also lacks a unique look or coherent geometry. It never feels like a place people would want to go to. The bands keep playing during fights with broken bottles and people getting beaten half to death with golf clubs. None of it makes sense or feels coherent.

Part of what made the original satisfying was the feeling that Swayze slowly but surely improved the place. We never get that feeling here, and the 2nd half of the movie barely even spends time at the Road House.

Add to that the awful camera work, bad pacing, bad color grading and generic unfocused writing, and you have a steaming mess of a movie.

You may get a few chuckles out of it, but overall it's unsatisfying.

Damsel (2024)

Shockingly bad

[3/10 · 12 March 2024]

Another shockingly bad direct to streaming film with bad CGI, cheap sets, computer generated backgrounds and awful dialogues so bad they feel like they were written by ChatGPT.

I allowed myself to get suckered into watching it, due to the comparatively high rating here.

So let's start with the good -The actual story structure itself is logical. Shocking in this day and age. There's a setup, motivations for each character, a twist that actually makes sense and a (predictable) resolution. It's not Madame Web or Thor Ragnarok level stupid.

-The director actually makes use of the environment. Gusts of wind, bioluminiscenct life forms, some scenes have a good texture to them. And the environment is also used in a clever way in a pivotal action scene. Good job!

-Some of the side characters are more fleshed out than they need to be. The prince for example is given little character moments that set him apart of his ruthless mother. I liked that.

-One theme from the soundtrack was decent

-Color grading was good. That's a rarity these days as well.

-The twist with the Dragon's motivation works.

Now the bad:

-As usual with these films, the actors are on tiny greenscreen soundstages, with a few real props and the rest of the background being CGI. The costumes and environment feels small, generic and cheap. A royal wedding takes place with a crowd of maybe 12 people. It looks ridiculous.

-Forced diversity. Naturally, a story taking place in what looks to be medieval England or Sweden features countless African Americans... who did not even exist at that time in history.

Sure, they turned it into a fantasy setting. It's still as stupid as that google AI generating black Nazi SS officers for diversity's sake. Just stop it, you're embarassing yourselves. If you want a diverse cast, set your movie in today's day and age. Or in regions where there was racial diversity at the time, i.e. Medieval Spain or ancient Egypt. Or if you're going to make it a fantasy setting, then make it feel like a fantasy setting and don't just use English and German architecture, clothing and aesthetics.

-The pacing. As so often, this movie is *slow*. But not throughout, which is different from usual. The beginning and end are quite brisk. The slow part is the middle part, where the heroine has to fight for her survival. Unfortunately, it's the central part of the movie, but it's also the least interesting, because the plot grinds to a halt. Yes, we eventually learn of the twist, but for the next 25 minutes that doesn't change the dynamic of how she interacts with the dragon. The chase just continues. Which brings us to

-the writing. Dialogues are terrible almost throughout. The entire opening scene is a clunkily delivered exposition dump. She watches her own father and 3 men get killed by the dragon, when she could have simply stopped it by revealing the truth. A truth she and we as the audience had already been sitting on for a while. When you give the audience information, you want it to advance the plot. This doesn't happen. After the killings, we get yet another chase and confrontation scene between her and the dragon. It takes forever.

And that's the central problem with this story: The middle part is garbage. The setup is great, the ending is servicable, but there is no middle. To make matters worse, all other characters disappear from the plot. It's essentially a one woman survival show. Except this isn't "The Revenant", and Millie Bobbie Brown isn't Leonardo DiCaprio

-The lead actress. She's not terrible, but she's not good either. She lacks the physicality for the role, having absolutely no muscle tone and lacking the agility to convincingly pull off the role. The opening scene shows her chopping wood, to show her as a tough girl. But those noodle arms never chopped wood in their life.

Her acting is hit and miss. Bad during the opening, good in the romantic scenes with the prince, really good in scenes of sadness, terrible in scenes of acting though, good in scenes where she is injured, terrible at the very end (though the script does her no favors).

Much of the movie's acting is hit and miss. Angela Bassett does the best she can with her role. Robin Wright shines as usual. Ray Winstone phones it in, seemingly between drinks, and the guy playing the prince does a fine job.

-The dragon is overpowered. A common problem in these types of films. In an attempt to have impressive CGI shots for the trailer and make it scary, they make the movie monster unstoppable - until the script needs it to be vulnerable. This would have worked better with the dragon not being an unstoppable killing machine.

If one were to condense the middle part down from about 50 minutes to 15, it could be watchable. Certainly better than the usual Netflix dreck.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune, but dumbed down for modern audiences

[6/10 · 7 March 2024]

From my early childhood days, I've been a fan of Dune. I read the book, played the video games (Cryo, Westwood) and came to love the David Lynch movie as I grew older.

Denis Villeneuve is a very talented filmmaker, and after seeing Prisoners and Blade Runner 2049, I was eager to see his take on Dune. He's clearly very passionate about the material, but not in the aspects that inspired previous artists.

Where David Lynch and the games allowed for opulent, fantastical designs, Villeneuves Dune is entirely minimalist in design and mostly devoid of color, shot almost entirely in beige. The costume design feels uninspired and cobbled together, and most of the edgy, LSD trip fever dream aspects of Dune have been removed alltogether. The guild and navigators are never seen, the Baron's homosexuality and grossness are gone, the violence is neutered, and the complicated space politics and backstory are removed entirely. How can you have Dune without space politics??

The new Dune films run a combined 5 hours, but cover less narrative than the David Lynch film does in 3 hours (I'm referring to the extended fanedit, the only version to watch).

Lynch embraced the weirdness and otherworldliness of Dune. His film feels like an opulent lsd trip, with a dream like quality. It also doesn't shy away of starting with a nearly 10 minute exposition dump. This backstory is needed to truly appreciate the story of Dune. The character relations are far more complex, with the power dynamics and scheming between Shaddam, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit and Harkonnen given ample time to be explored. In the new movie you never once learn that the emperor is himself at the mercy of the guild.

Likewise, the Harkonnen feel neutered and incompetent.

As I wrote in the headline, it's still Dune, but dumbed down.

Instead, much more emphasis is given to the Fremen, arguably one of the least interesting factions of Dune. They are arguably more accurately portrayed in Villeneuves movie. Where they felt incompetent in Lynchs version, here they feel dangerous and fanatical, as they should. I also like that they did away with the weirding modules and instead focused on the personal shields.

Now all this may sound like I dislike the new movies. I don't. There's much to love. While I prefer Lynchs more theatrical take, the new movie's more intimate style of direction makes for a very interesting and engaging experience in its own right.

The acting is great almost across the board. The one exception may be Zendaya's Chani, though that may just be because of how the role is written. They made her too "modern" compared to the book, and ending the film on her frown doesn't really work.

On the other hand, Hans Zimmer's score esoecuakky during that scene stands out as one of the best of his career, and should earn him an academy award.

The effects look great for the most part, though here and there things are hidden in the old digital dust plooms.

The editing stood out to me with some very clever scene transitions.

It's a great film, no doubt. But it's not a great Dune adaptation, because it omits too much of what makes Dune more than your average space opera.

Villeneuve's Dune is a fine addition to the canon alongside Lynch's original and the TV Mini-series. All of them are worth watching, and I can see good reasons why each version might be someone's favorite. I am glad to see Dune finally getting the mainstream recognition it deserves.

Red Right Hand (2024)

Career End - The movie

[2/10 · 24 February 2024]

It feels like every week another trashy crime thriller shot in Georgia is released. They all have more or less the same story. Washed up actor plays "Trauma man", a middle aged man with a violent past attempting to be a family man. He doesn't speak much, gruffly grunting badly written lines in a cliché raspy mumble. His violent past catches up to him, he agrees to do one more crime job, but eventually has to do the right thing and take out his former boss when they threaten his family.

Now Legolas has joined the ranks of Kevin Dillon and other 90s actors doing this kind of dreck for a paycheck. Seeing Andie McDowell in this role was a surprise, and it's clear she has no idea how to play a role like this. Her scenes are laughably bad, which is both her fault and that of the screenwriter.

As usual for these films, the color grading is awful, the pace is slow and a generic ambient score makes it feel even slower. And they put a country music song over the end credits.

The accents are all over the place. Why do they keep hiring Brits and Aussies to play southern rednecks?

Every now and then one of these films does turn out to be okay (Mob Land was legitimately fantastic), and this one objectively isn't the worst of them. It's watchable if you're very bored, and there are some decent moments.

But damn is it boring. The writers should hang their heads in shame. Even for derivative tax break dreck the dialogues here are extremely poorly written: ChatGPT could have written a better script.

The Night They Came Home (2024)

A 2 hour social justice lecture with one redeeming factor

[2/10 · 22 January 2024]

One of many micro budget films with a washed up star plastered on the poster, The Night They Came Home pretends to retell the story of the real life Rufus Buck gang.

But instead of a western biopic, what we get are endless musings about race and white-man-bad. The writers did put some nuance into the dialogue though, and it's not as stupidly on the nose as a Disney production or something of the sort.

There are some moments of genuine tension (when they come across a man and his son who they hold an impromptu trial for), and some moments of nuance. After giving a long speech about the injustice of racism to a reporter, once the reporter is gone, the gang breaks out in laughter at the idea of the reporter having bought that cock and bull story.

It is a testament to the actors portraying the gang members, that the ridiculous writing can be brought to the screen at all.

Charlie Townsend as Rufus Buck has genuine talent and will hopefully receive better material in the future.

Production value is nonexistent here, color grading is awful for the most part, and the cheap digital look can make even nice landscapes look terrible. I get better looking shots on my Iphone.

The music is stock music quality as expected.

Danny Trejo has a glorified cameo as narrator so they could put him on the poster, but his scenes just suck the air out of what little narrative there is.

Overall it's quite terrible, but there's talent among the cast.

The Beekeeper (2024)

How not to copy John Wick

[2/10 · 14 January 2024]

The Beekeeper attempts to copy the John Wick formula to the point of plagiarism.

The setup is virtually the same. Statham, playing himself as usual, is retired and extremely dangerous ex-assassin, member of a secret group called "Beekeepers". He get pulled out of retirement over a seemingly minor incident, and the conflict escalates.

A woman he sells honey to (played by the mom from the Cosby Show) commits suicide after having her savings stolen by a scammer company.

He takes revenge for her, but oh no, the company belongs to the president's no-good son (similar to the Russian Mob boss's son in the John Wick original).

He fights his way to the top through many neon-lit setpieces until he reaches the final boss. The end.

However, unlike John Wick, there is none of the fascinating world building, none of the flair, none of the great music editing, much of the acting is awful, and so the whole thing comes apart at the seams. Tonally, the film never hits the mark. Scenes variate between overacted and ridiculous to boring, slow paced and TV series like. Every time the narrative switches to a female FBI agent, the air is sucked out of the movie, and energy comes to a grinding halt.

The use of music is awful. It alternates between Batman knock off cello and contrabass strings, which don't fit at all, to house and electronic in scenes where it doesn't fit either. It worked in John Wick, because it was woven into the story. John Wick was either in a night club, or the music was played on the Assassin's radio station. Here it just comes out of nowhere.

There are a few good kills. The car off the drawbridge early on is excellent. The final boss fight was decent, but not over the top enough to be memorable.

Overall, this is a poorly made film that you will forget the moment you finish it. It's barely watchable, but I deducted points for plagiarism.

Lift (I) (2024)

Not even a real movie, just... content

[1/10 · 12 January 2024]

Another week, another direct to video release headlined by a star past their prime.

I like Kevin Hart as a performer. He has a certain charm and deserves better than... whatever this is.

This entity is borderline unwatchable, primarily from a technical standpoint. The editing is atrocious, cuts set at the wrong part of the music, annoying (and badly done) speed ramps in nearly all establishing shots, bad color grading, overuse of depth of field and focal range blurriness to the point where it looks like some scenes were shot through a lens covered in vaseline.

The sets are incredibly cheap, barely TV level. Anything not shot in venice looked awful.

The story is nothing new, and most of the performances are lackluster, except for the name actors.

Thanksgiving (I) (2023)

There's something wrong about this one

[5/10 · 23 November 2023]

Thanksgiving starts with a fantastic opening scene. The Black Friday shopping mayhem scene is straight out of South Park, with crazed shoppers rampling people to death in gruesome ways over a free waffle maker. That scene is perfectly acted, with all performers giving a spot on impression of awful greedy trash people. That scene has something to say.

The rest of the film starts off as your average "I know what you did last summer" style revenge slasher with an unknown killer in a pilgrom costume stalking and killing the people responsible for the opening scene Black Friday tragedy.

Towards the third act, the movie further devolves into needless, evil spirited torture porn.

A central problem is the main characters, who are a chore to endure. All except the main girl (who seemingly has just one facial expression) and the Russian girl are awful. Especially the males. For a while I wondered if the director / writer were on a dare or pulling a prank by having every single line have the F-word in it. But then a few lines without it showed up. A pity, that would have been more clever than what we got. We are left with intensely unlikeable protagonists, waiting for them to be picked off one by one.

The film barely gives us any hints to who the killer is, what in particular he's motivated by, and in the end pulls a random character out of the hat. The only reason I knew it wasn't one of the teens was that Gina Gershon had a brief appearance and death scene in the opening, so I knew the killer had to be connected to her. Otherwise why cast a name actor in a no name role?

When the reveal does happen, it's ridiculously stupid, and most of all, the needless cruelty and sadism of the killer goes way beyond revenge. In particular one scene involving the centerpiece of the revenge is sickening, case in point being it's something that happened during the October 7th Hamas attack. It's so messed up that it ruins the tone of what should be a fun, scary holiday slasher / horror film. Eli Roth really needs to get his demons under control. Pushing the boundaries is one thing, but missing the tone of your movie is another.

Oddly enough, the gore effects are quite bad. For a movie that goes so deep into gore, I was surprised it didn't look better.

Speaking of things that look bad: the Killer's mask. This is a big one, since a slasher film lives and dies by its killer. The killer here looks boring. Like a low budget V for Vendetta, he's neither scary nor iconic. They must have realized the former, because midway during the movie, he burns his mask for no reason other than he knows he's in a movie and wants to look scarier.

The film moves at a brisk pace, and thankfully the obligatory scenes of characters nervously tiptoeing through corridors with the Killer lying in wait aren't 5 minutes long like in older 80s and 90s Slashers where the narrative ground to a total halt before every kill scene. They throw in a few chase scenes to mix things up as well.

Here's something I'm thankful for: Thanksgiving didn't bore me. It annoyed me with it's nasty characters, it repulsed me with the it's mean spiritedness, bit it didn't bore me.

Had they kept the tone and social commentary from the opening scene, they could have had a real classic here. As it stands, this is a missed opportunity let down by a weak script and a director who's pathological need to shock undermines his talent.

Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)

Watchable, but too safe and falls apart

[5/10 · 1 November 2023]

Another week, another Blumhouse horror film.

Based on a video game series (which I have no played), Five Nights at Freddy's is another 80s nostlgia horror flick. The plot revolves around a closed chucky cheese like restaurant from the 80s where the animatronics come to life and murder people.

It's a great premise, and the film certainly sets up some interesting ideas, and wisely gives the main characer some agency. He's a down on his luck guy who after losing his family cares for his kid sister, but suffers the same mysterious dream every night. Personally, I would have found it more plausible and interesting if the dreams had begun when he started working at Freddy's which would make more sense in light of the nature of the dream and his interactions therein.

Unfortunately, once the female cop shows up, the film begins to come apart. She does not act like a cop at all, being entirely understanding and way too friendly, going for a walk and sitting down with him at the river at their second meeting. Yes, this is (poorly) expained later on, but the writing of their scenes is awful.

The best scenes in the film belong to the lawyer of the protagonist's aunt. He's hilarious. They set her up as a great antagonist, only to drop that entire plotline.

The animatronics are well designed and sufficiently creepy, but the film shies away from violence and never really commits to being a horror film. It seems to be more geared towards kids, especially with the "fun" scenes of partying and playing with the robots, but I'm not sure it really works. Much of the acting is pretty bad (especially the cop), with the protagonist never cracking a joke and wearing the exact same facial expression the entire movie. The second half suffers some real pacing issues, but the worst part is the ham fisted exposition dump that explains the robots. The moment the mystery is solved, you can feel the film deflating as the suspense is all but gone. You instantly know how it's going to end.

Matthew Lillard of Scream fame is there again and does what you expect him to do. It drags on too long, and outstays its welcome, especially once we realize the horror we were promised isn't happening.

A pity. WIth tighter editing and a bit more energy to the main characer, this could have been great.

Shrapnel (2023)

The Mexican Mafia aims worse than Stormtroopers

[4/10 · 26 October 2023]

In many ways, this is Rambo 5 on a budget. It starts out decent enogh. Jason Patric's daughter is abducted in Mexico. But he's a badass ex-marine, and won't give up on her without a fight. So far so good. Up until the first action scene, the writing and acting is pretty strong. The film spends time setting up the Cartel as all powerful antagonists, and they have corrupt cops on their side, too. The acting by the Cartel members and the cops is good. Jason Patric and his army buddy are good as well, but the actress playing his wife is awful.

The first action scene is set up almost like the finale of Rambo 5... and then it all goes downhill.

This film fails at what it wants to be. It could have worked as a gritty crime thriller, but it wants to be an action film. When you make an action film, you have to get the action right. The action scenes are amateurishly filmed, cheaply made, with all muzzle flares, bullet impacts and even the blood cgi. The destruction of the house looks fake, as do the impacts in cars and walls. It's an instant let down. Beyond that, the bad guys have the worst aim of any movie badguys ever. Even Star Wars Stormtroopers don't aim this badly. There are multiple scenes where Jason Patric is right in the line of fire at barely 5 meters apart, yet somehow every bullet misses. Once that first action scene happens, the movie loses all its momentum.

It's a pity, because the setup was done well. Gritty B-movies like this can work, see the recent Mob Land. But for that to happen, directors and producers need to come to terms with their budgetary limitations and work around them. It is better to have less action but done right than to have a lot of action done badly.

Expend4bles (2023)

Barely a movie

[2/10 · 14 October 2023]

The Expendables series has to be the biggest cinematic disappointment of the past decade.

The premise was brilliant. Unite the old action stars of the 80s and 90s and make a *real* throwback action movie with practical effects, real squibs instead of digital blood spurrt overlayers, lots of explosions stars that ooze charisma.

An antidote to the superhero and cgi crapfests.

It would have been so easy to make this work. You have a bunch of old heros. What should your story be? Experience vs youth. Old and smart vs young and stupid. Age conflicts, cultural conflicts, no longer fitting in, not being cool anymore, not being respected anymore... and then proving everyone wrong. It would have been a parable for action movies in general. The old guys did it right.

But instead we got generic plots about dictators or criminals, and just a bunch of faceless goons who get gunned down. The first movie at least had memorable villains, and the second had Van Damme, but that's not what people wanted to see.

What people would have enjoyed is these old geezers living a boring life of retirement, feeling useless and disrespected, until some punks (or gangsters) turn their peaceful town upside down. Basically Death Wish 3. Everyone underestimates the old guys until they bust out the machine guns. Meanwhile they beat the crap out of loudmouth wanna be gangsters and find their mojo again. And teach some youngsters some old values they don't learn in school anymore. Like doing the right thing, standing up for yourself, not giving up, having a moral compass, dirty jokes and so on.

That would have been much more fun than watching a random shootout in an airport in Bulgaria or shooting faceless mers in warehouses. How boring.

The newst and probably final Expendables is the worst of them all. They screwed up every aspect of the film.

The writing is laughable. The action scenes take place in warehouses again, and are mostly cgi. Even the bullet holes in car windows in the background are CGI, and not even tracked properly. You can still see reflections in the glass, despite the glass supposedly being shot through. It's laughably bad. Every closeup action scene is green screen. It feels fake and weightless, and none of the villains have any development. There's no character conflict, it's just fighting for a macguffin. It's the laziest way of writing.

Stallone is barely in it and doesn't even have one fight scene. Statham looks bored, especially during the action scenes. The only good scenes are between him and Stallone. Dolph Lundgren is visibly not well, dealing with cancer in real life. Bless him, I hope he recovers and pulls through. The villain is the guy from The Raid. He pulls off evil well enough, but he lacks any sort of Charisma. Mel Gibson, Van Damme and Eric Roberts in previous movies dominated every scene they were in. Beyond all that, the movie is extremely ugly. The color grading feels digital and fake, and the cheap sets and industrial warehouse backdrops for the action are just ugly to look at. Nothing feels real, nothing has any weight, the action scenes are horribly paced and edited, the one liners during them feel forced and tired and even the blood and muzzle flashes are fake.

This is the worst theatrically released action movie I have ever seen. After this one, I don't see how there could be a 5th. It might be worth watching if you really love seeing Jason Statham murder people or want to be there for what is surely Dolph Lundgren's final appearance in a big budget movie. Sad.

The Equalizer 3 (2023)

A slow, ugly, misanthropic film and a caricature of Italy

[4/10 · 4 October 2023]

The Equalizer 3 is a strange film, so strange that I wonder how it was greenlit in the first place.

The entire film takes place in Italy, and about 85% of the dialogue is in Italian. One has to admire them for doing this. It's always ridiculous in films when Russian or Italian gangsters suddenly speak English with each other. They went for realism in the language department.

However, the rest of the film feels like a slow, horrible, surreal fever dream. Right off the bat the color grading jumps out at you. The colors are so desaturated, they may as well have filmed in black and white. The film opens with a landscape shot of Sicilily, and it looks like some brown-yellow-greyish mess, similar to the movie 300, but without that film's comic book stylings and bursting earthen red tones.

Anyone who has ever been to Italy can attest to it being a very colorful country with usually great weather and the sunlight bringing out popping colors. Here it looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This stands in stark contrast to the harmonious life the film is trying to portray.

The depictions of Italians is a caricature and could be considered racist.

For one, the Film depicts Italy as a crime ridden hellhole run by sadistic gangs that terrorize the people and the police, cut off people's hands, torture them, even bomb the police. It's a joke. Italy is one of the safest countries in the world. Even Germany's murder rate is twice as high. The US's murder rate is 12 times as high!

I've worked in Italy multiple times and had run ins and dealings with the Mafia. They're scum. But not like in the movie.

They portray Italians as tranquil peasants, sitting at cafes and wearing 1950s clothing, sitting there like sheep passing the time, waiting for mafia thugs to come and terrorize them. A scene at a school depicts the children wearing school uniforms. This hasn't been the case in Italy since Mussolini.

The mafia are portrayed as thugs on motorcycles with face tattoos, who in broad daylight loot a hotel, terrorize people (a cop even) in restaurants, and feel more like stereotypical Hollywood Russian mob hitmen.

In reality, the Mafia works almost entirely behind the scenes via corruption. They're invisible. They're not street thugs with face tattoos. They work in city administration, customs, transportation, construction. They mainly syphon public funds away by having controlling interests everywhere and putting people in power on their payroll (or sometimes intimidating them).

In my personal case, our business had to pay bribes to the actual police. Multiple times. They threaten you with some bulls**t code violation and openly tell you they will shut you down for a few weeks and drag things out, so it's cheaper to just pay them.

The Mafia would never lay hands on a policeman or cut the hand off of a chief of police like in the movie. The idea that a crime family can intimidate police is laughable. The police in Italy are as militarized as everywhere else in the world. Just a bit more corrupt. Thugs in uniform. No one in their right mind would mess with them. There's no profit in that.

The mafia has its hands in everything, but they don't go around randomly butchering people, raping their children and other things alluded to in this film.

So all that said, the Italy depicted here is a fantasy Italy, much like the fantasy Sparta and Persia in the aforementioned 300.

I'm not faulting the film for having a fantasy setting, but if you have a fantasy setting, this should be reflected in the tone. V for Vendetta, 300, Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, Braveheart, there are tons of examples of films that distort reality to fit the tone of the story.

But the tone of Equalizer 3 is... a mess. What tone were they even going for?

A political spy thriller involving the Mafia, ISIS and corruption? Too unrealistic and silly.

An hommage to a gritty 70s Italo crime thiller? Too sombre for that.

A sombre drama? The story's too simple and the characters too thin for that.

A Liam Neeson style silly violent power fantasy? Too slow and not enough action.

The film lacks a coherent tonal language. The only thing that is consistent is the violence. This film is not just gory, but sadistic. While movie violence doesn't shock me anymore, in this case it still appalled me. The film revels in people being slaughtered. It's shot in a semi realistic way, but absolutely glorified. Eyes are stabbed, limbs broken until the bones exit the wounds, people are crushed by cars, hacked in the face with meat cleavers... you get the idea. One scene even depicts a killing spree in first person view like a video game. This film has no moral compass, because it presents the violence a human misery in these desaturated, naturalistic colors, while at the same time glorifying it as if it were an awesome video game killstreak.

Despite all the gore, the violence is still played safe. Only men and mostly only the bad guys get it. The scene where the mafia beats up the cop in his apartment in front of his wife and daughter would have been far more effective, if they had forced him to watch them beat the wife or even daughter. But they don't get so much as a scratch. The movie tries to be hard, but chickens out where the violence would actually be shocking instead of just abrasive.

As a filmmaker you have a choice when it comes to violence. You can make it cartoony and fun (i.e. Robocop), or you can go the Saving Private Ryan / Schindler's List route, keep it realistic and shocking, and focus on the suffering to tell a story. This combines the two in the worst way: Focus on the suffering and misery and present it as cool. It's akin to putting Heavy Metal over the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.

Like many modern low budget films, the pacing is extremely slow. Long shots of people walking through halls, entering rooms or exiting cars pad the run time. With tighter editing, it could have been 25 minutes shorter.

These are some major flaws. It doesn't help that the story is stupid, paper thin and unrealistic.

However, the movie does have some undeniable qualities in terms of craftsmanship. Denzel Washington steals every scene he is in. He is supremely talented, and breathes life into his character with many little quips, little smiles, nods, the way he moves his eyes, tilts his head. There's a lot of subtlety going on.

The scene with him and the CIA agent at a café is a highlight in terms of both writing and acting. The dialogue is sharp and full of wit, and Denzel manages to be curteous, unassuming and dangerous at the very same time.

Some of the scenes with him and the locals like the doctor or the policeman are extremely well acted as well. If you're a fan of his, you will get your money's worth. He used to be in a lot of big films, and it's a shame to see him relegated to smaller productions recently. He still feels like he could helm intelligent blockbusters like he did 30 years ago.

Instead we get this.

Ahsoka: Part Five: Shadow Warrior (2023) Season 1, Episode 5

The show is finding its stride, but is still marred by bad writing

[3/10 · 15 September 2023]

After the awful first two episodes I had little hope for this series. However, various reviewers said it had gotten good, so I gave it a shot. It's not good. Not even close. But despite the many shortcomings, this episode had a few good aspects to enjoy.

Hayden Christensen is back as Anakin. He slips right back into the role, although he's lacking some of his intensity from the prequels.

I blame the direction for this. This series is still extremely slow paced, with pauses between lines of dialogue unnecessarily long, endless shots of characters looking at digital backgrounds or taking a few slow steps on a tiny soundstage.

In this episode even more so than the space ones, you really feel how small the production is. They're filming this on a shoestring budget. There's a battle scene which is completely hidden in fog, and the rest of the episode takes place on the usual 10x10 meter locations. It's dismal. Makes the galaxy feel small.

The writing was awful again, with dialogue never exploring any of the more interesting themes or the more complex dynamics of Anakin and Ahsoka's relationship. Instead, we get a dumb line that he's trying to show her that she "needs to live" or somethings stupid like that.

The whale scene was dumb, but admittedly very nice to look at. In general the space scenes in this series tend to be quite beautiful. At least they're putting the money they save on the writing to work somewhere.

Ahsoka: Part Three: Time to Fly (2023) Season 1, Episode 3

Like watching a kid playing with his Star Wars toys

[5/10 · 2 September 2023]

This episode was a step up from the first two in many ways. The main focus was the training scene with Ahsoka and Sabine. It's nothing new and recycles the same old visor and "reach out with the force" nonsense, but the the Droid's deadpan honesty gave it some room to breathe.

On the other hand, the dialogue scenes were extremely poorly written. The "discussion" between Hera and the Republican senators was infantile and illogical.

The episode culminates in a space dogfight scene. Initially just a recycling of the scene in ANH, it gets weird when Ahsoka exits the ship in a space suit and combats fighters with a lightsaber in the vacuum of space. It's something a kid would come up with when playing with his action figures - which is essentially what this series is. It's showrunner Dave Filoni playing Star Wars with his characters.

Don't expect anything clever like Andor, but it's better than trash like Kenobi or Boba Fett or the sequel movies.

The visuals in this episode were a step up and the paceing, while still dreadfully slow, was a bit better.

It still feels like all these series are playing at half speed.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

Was this AI made?

[1/10 · 2 September 2023]

They tried to copy what the spiderman animated movies did with the art stroke style, but wow, does this ever look like dogsh**

The colors, shadows and framerate are terrible. It almost looks that like that old Robin Williams stinker "What dreams may come" with this weird brush stroke filter. There are filters for After Effects which can do a better job than this.

The story is virtually nonexistent. It's an alternate origin story (the 20th by now?) This time the Turtles are young kids, which means nothing is taken seriously, and kids in the audience are bombarded with 90 minutes of awful faces, lame jokes, ugly faces and overacting to reach the usual BS message of "we have to learn to work as a team".

The original TMNT movie actually had a decent message warning kids to not fall for gangs and false prophets. This one just regurgitates the same "you're stronger as a team" garbage that every kids show does these days.

How hard can it be to make a good TMNT movie? They got it right on the first try and never again.

Ahsoka (2023– )

They can't be serious, can they?

[2/10 · 25 August 2023]

After the surprisingly good Andor and the excellent Jedi games, it briefly looked like Star Wars had potential to get back on track.

That didn't last long.

We're back to awful CGI, bad acting, bad choreography, cheapo sets, bad rotoscoping, zero production value and peak wokeness.

In Disney production, you can always tell who the villains are by the race or sex of the actor. If he's male and white, he'll either be evil, greedy or incompetent. If the character isn't white, then they are at most misguided or manipulated, and will likely turn good (like Reva). Which kind of renders their whole cliffhanger concept useless. You know how it's going to end.

As mentioned before the production values are laughably bad.

Rosario Dawson is a good actress, and her performance of Ahsoka is probably the highlight of the series along with Ray Stevenson's brief appearance. However, Dawson is 44 years old and not a peak athlete. When she gets runs or does physical things, especially weighed down with heavy wardrobe, you can tell. She looks like an old woman trying to do fantasy actions tuff. It looks bad, and I felt sorry for her.

Another annoying aspect of recent Disney or Star Wars storytelling is the "hidden planet" trope. From Rise of Skywalker to Jedi Survivor to this now, nearly every plot revolves around finding some MacGuffin that leads to a hidden planet.

It's wearing thin.

Worst of all, however, is the pacing. There is soo much filler. People pause after almost every line, and every scene is preceded by long shots of people exiting starships, slowly walking onto tiny sets, looking at or for objects. This fills up the runtime, which is an effective cost cutting measure, but it's extremely boring. The narrative grinds to a halt. You could watch the series on +30% speed, and it might feel normal.

If you want to fully grasp what's going on, prepare to do your "homework". Yes, that's what Disney calls the myriad of series you have to watch to even understand the plot. You have to watch various episodes of the Clone Wars, Mandalorian Season 3, and Rebels to even know the characters, their backstories and relations to each other.

Maybe they could have used some of that screentime from people walking around rooms or exiting starships to give us some backstory or maybe they could have come up with a coherent plot that didn't need any "homework".

Watching these Disney series has turned into just that. "Homework". Watch endless hours of cheaply produced content that in order to understand more endless of hours of crap.

The trailers tease fast paced, exciting, drama filled space adventure. What you get is people standing in rooms, talking slowly, and a few bad CGI fights that look worse than a modern video game.

Actually let me correct myself. It's not even homework. It's a scam.

Talk to Me (I) (2022)

Insufferable Teens summon Demons Episode 284

[3/10 · 25 August 2023]

Another week, another jumpscare demon summoning movie. This time from Australia, but aside from the accents it looks and feels entirely American. The usual ingredients are all there. A cast of annoying, loudmoth, diverse, phone addicted teenagers come across cursed artifact that allows them to contact the spirit realm and become briefly possessed. In this film it's an embalmed hand.

Naturally the main characters have a traumatic backstory, with their mother having passed in an untimely manner. They end up talking to her, but stay connected to the other side for too long. Bad things happen.

If you've suffered through bad music, bad acting and bad party scenes until that point in the film, you can be relieved. Things do get better, which is a rarity for the horror genre. Usually they start strong and run out of steam. This one is the opposite. It significantly improves as it goes along.

There are some good ideas here, but sadly they're never fully developed or fully explained. The ending is by far the strongest part of the film, but the buildup to it remains virtually unexplained. It's a pity, because there would have been room for a good moral dilemma. Still, the last scene is great and redeems the second half of the film.

On a technical level, the film is competently made. The color grading looks really nice, which is almost a rarity in films these days. The scary scenes are very well filmed and the audio editing is top notch. Audio is the most important aspect of a horror film, and they nail it here. The rotating camera gimmick is fun, but gets overused.

If you can get through the horrible first half, you might get some enjoyment out of this. Overall, I couldn't enjoy it. The teens were just too annoying, and the conflict and plot too trite.