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Wishmaster (1997)
3/10
The effects are great, everything is pretty bad
12 September 2023
The gore effects on a good number of the deaths are surprisingly effective. There are a few that are creative but weak looking and then there are some that are just boring.

It's clearly a love letter to slashers and mythical monster movies like Leprechaun. A lot of the big name killers appear in the movie in some way.

The biggest issue is the story. It's just not that interesting. A genie needs a woman to make 3 wishes so he can take over the world. So once 2 are made, very quickly once they meet, we know there won't be another for awhile. She also does make 3 wishes but the movie seems to just forget the first one for no apparent reason. The main character is also shown to be pretty smart and knew what she was messing with, but then when she makes her wishes she still words them incredibly poorly so they can be used against her. For example, she wishes for him to "be destroyed" which is a fine enough wish, but then changes it to "shoot yourself in the head" which he easily survives. Why start with a wish that might actually work but downgrade it to something a human might even survive?

The djinn also just isn't a very interesting killer. He's a bit too all powerful and his spells are very inconsistent. They can't lead to some great practical effects but a lot of the time the spell doesn't even reflect what is asked. A character is tricked into say they want to "escape their mundane life" so is put in chains in a water trap...but they can't escape it? So how are they "escaping" anything?

Probably dumb to get caught up on the wording off the wishes but that's what the whole movie was about. Since there is only 1 actual character in the movie I was bored a lot so had plenty of time to think as the Djinn mumbled his lines slowly at people.
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Lake Placid 3 (2010 TV Movie)
1/10
30 seconds are watchable
11 September 2023
Michael Ironside is the best part of this movie and also really underused I know that's what most of you care about so thought I should say early.

The movie's opener where a young couple get dropped off to immediately strip naked and have sex is the best bit without a doubt, solely for one joke where the guy is pulled down between his girlfriend's legs by a crocodile. That's it.

Outside of that the effects are somehow horse than 2's which is nearly impressive. They're still going for the comedy blend so every scene features dozens of cringe worthy attempts at jokes which all fall flat.

The gore effects are embarrassing. The acting is generally pretty bad and it followed 2 in having a large amount of TNA.

The end when they get into town is such a blatant sound stage it's actually embarrassing.
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Lake Placid 2 (2007 TV Movie)
1/10
Nearly a remake
11 September 2023
It's pointless because it's just a remake of the original but with some characters swapped and a lot of girls in bikinis for more victims. One of the biggest problems with it being a remake is it's also still a sequel.

No one believes it's a crocodile at first. No one believes the first movie happened even though it's only a few years later (the original was 8 years prior). The first movie involved 3 specialist agencies, nearly every cop in the town was involved and 2 cops were killed.

The main characters just got swapped. The fish and game guy (Pullman) is now the sheriff. The sheriff (Gleeson) is now the big game hunter/crocodile expert. The specialist (Fonda) is now the fish and game guy.

They introduced a bunch of teenagers just to be eaten and they're just awful. The sheriff's son is there just to have a connection to the dumb teens. He's immediately interested in a girl but she has a boyfriend, that she very blatantly hates and the second she sees the main dude she is jealous of any girl being near him. We seriously went from no connection to near obsession in an afternoon where they didn't even speak to eachother.

Added to the group is a weird stereotype of a black hunter, running around as a man servant and attacking crocodiles with a giant knife. It's weird.

The original was well written and funny enough. This movie really thinks it's well written and funny but it's pretty painful. It's never funny, never even close.

The graphics are also considerably worse than the original. At first it was really cheap, hiding the crocodile entirely and having a lot of deaths or attacks off camera. It looked terrible but it got worse when the crocodile suddenly started appearing on screen. Never looking like it fit in place and more resembling a PS2 game. Lots of glaring issues, like when they blew the head off a gator, its body is just missing in the next shots but there in some. When the guy's arm is bitten off in the first scene, you clearly see he has both arms when he's swimming in the water. They just assumed the water would hide it.

The stakes are very artificial. There are numerous times when the 40 feet long crocodiles will appear standing beside the heroes without anyone noticing. Despite having instant one shot weapons sometimes they just won't shoot or characters throw them down. Characters often just stand and stare at the crocodile instead of moving.

How they treat the characters is odd. The majority are just constantly sarcastic no matter what happens to them. The big game hunter in particular is weird because you think he's going to grow and have a triumph moment to redeem himself, but no, he's just shown as a total loser and idiot the entire movie.
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The Crazies (2010)
7/10
One of the rare good remakes
10 September 2023
I'm not a huge fan of the original The Crazies. The Crazies themselves are more goofy than anything else. It has a pretty weak ending where a "Waaah waaaah" noise could've actually been used actually. The characters are generally all really poor or one dimensional.

This movie fixes a lot of that. The crazies are actually more boring, generic quiet murderers instead of just being "whatever" like the original, such as them suddenly becoming hippies or incestuous pedophiles.

The characters are enjoyable to watch, more realistic and you like them a lot more. It does cut out a huge number of characters though, thankfully including the dad wanting to sleep with his daughter but it also cuts out all of the military/government characters from the first. At first I was unhappy with that since those were the only slightly interesting characters in the original but it does work better in this movie to allow everything to be more vague and confusing like you're actually in the event.

The ending 20 minutes are easily the weakest part of the film. Once it turns into a really generic slasher flick for no reason before we get the "but did the virus get out?!" ending. That ending felt like a studio mandate though for a cliffhanger because it didn't really make sense where in the original the ending was much more clear cut but it was also just dumber.
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3/10
Doesn't live up to the hype
9 September 2023
I've been on a slasher kick recently and realised I'd never actually seen this despite seeing it parodied a fair few times.

It's just very flat. The characters are just nothing which is surprising when there are so few of them. We have the bland boyfriend, the jock boyfriend, the head cheerleader girlfriend and the bland girlfriend. The killer then has no personality. He's not a powerful force of nature, he's a none entity until the last few minutes when they just introduce him as some random dude who wanted revenge.

Since we only have 4 main characters, they needed to just kill off two random towns people and some weird "nice guy" stereotype but all of them are odd. Why kill some random cop if you're only getting revenge on these teens and he's not actually in your way? Why kill the random store worker when you were already passed her and could easily kill the girl you wanted? Why kill the "nice guy"? He had nothing to do with anything. It just doesn't fit with the killers motive of wanting revenge on these 4 teenagers for the hit and run.

So, we have four bland characters who are paper thin and a killer whose motivation is very weak with nothing interesting about him outside of his murder weapon. With a very low body count, barely any gore and pretty mediocre performances from everyone, it just is very forgettable.
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Red Sands (2009)
1/10
It's just so predictable
9 September 2023
The movie feels far longer than it should, especially when basically nothing happens for the full first half.

It really suffers from two major issues: 1. It's so predictable. Even with the start of the movie telling you the ending, you can guess the "surprise" at the end just by having seen a single other movie.

2. They can't write soldiers. It's a standard issue that a lot of low budget horror/sci fi movies face. They just go for the hardest stereotypes imaginable and have them swear a lot and complain a lot. It really gets draining to watch these 7 interchangeable characters talking.

If you're here for a creature like I was, don't bother. It appears very briefly towards the end and looks awful, especially with the dated graphics. The vast majority of the threat in the movie instead are hallucinations related to deaths in the war or issues because of the war (get it, war am bad).
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Scream VI (2023)
1/10
How did it get worse?
7 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers
What is wrong with these movies?

The first 10 minutes gave me hope. They basically called the plot of the last movie stupid (even though it's the same writer) and killed off a multi racial group wanting to carry it on. So, great, they said it's dumb and also killed 1 non-white person (more than the entire last movie).

Fantastic. The movie learnt and moved on from that terrible idea. Instead, they didn't and these deaths are actually a plot hole because the real killers supported the bad guys in the 5th movie so why would they kill their teammates?

Then we get the same awful new characters from the last movie at a party. The black girl with her Asian girlfriend trying to stop a Latino girl from going to bed with a white guy. They then rush to get their muscular black friend to come and beat him up for daring... speak to a Latino girl? I can only guess that's why but then he gets with her in the next scene so...was he jealous? So it's okay those two getting together but not the white guy? She's just as drunk as she was 10 minutes before. Then her sister Sam shows up and tasers him in the balls after the fight is over. Because, patriarchy I guess.

Mix in they introduce another white guy to have woman laugh at for not being attractive. I guess. They then condescend and make fun of him repeatedly and make a point that he's a pathetic virgin nerd and the big black guy is unironically called "chad". Like. Come on and yes they also point that out in the film. He's the punching bag for the entire movie, so much so you expect him to be heroic at the end but no, he's just a pathetic character because he's white.

Because they killed off Dewey in the last movie, they need to find a way to have a police connection in this one so bring Kirby back to life from Scream 4. She was one of the more fun characters in Scream 4 but here she has no personality whatsoever.

When people refer to Sam as psycho, they are just correct. She is a genuinely unlikeable character. That's true for all of them though. Her interactions with ghost face are smug, boastful, cocky but then at all other moments she's stupid. Even with dealing with basically anyone outside of her close friend group she's incredibly smug and condescending. It's not a good sign when I really hope all the heroes die.

The house party scene really didn't help when they were clearly trying to make out that the white guy with the Latino girl was rapey even as she repeatedly argued with them that she wanted to do it, but then it was fine for the black guy minutes later. If they wanted it to seem rapey they could have had him spike her drink but instead him and her just talked, decided to go to bed and then everyone decided to assault him as the girl got upset at them.

I did laugh when this movie randomly had ghostface just kill a bunch of white men in a bodega and then the movie forgot that happened one scene later where they claimed only two people had died so far when it was actually 6.

The twist was so obvious. Do you know why? White people. Yes. Seriously. That's literally the twist. Every white character except the legacy characters in the movie were evil killers. The tough Latino chicks then easily slaughter the white people and then slowly stab an old man to death in as painful a way as possible and smirk and gloat as they slowly torture him to death. Then they smile and cuddle as family.

Imagine being able to guess the killers simply because they're the only new white characters. That should tell you everything you need to know about the movie.

And then guess what? The movie ends the exact same way as 5. The two black twins who were both shown as heavily crippled and left for dead both survived and the movie just shrugs at why they're alive and the two latino chicks survive. The 2 legacy female characters lived.

It literally is the exact same ending as the last movie.

The writer clearly only knows how to write one ending, ignoring that this is just a rip off of Scream 2. It's nothing but annoying characters and hatred of white people. I was stunned when the two black twins just show up again at the end of the movie. I thought they'd actually been a bit different but no. The only non-white characters killed off in this out of 10+ were the random Asian killer at the start and the Asian girlfriend (who is immediately forgotten), I guess in Hollywood it's still okay to kill Asians.
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Scream (I) (2022)
1/10
A movie that hates it's fanbase
7 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers
It's weird to watch a movie that so deliberately dumps on its own fans repeatedly, seemingly forgetting this is the 5th movie in a franchise and people only know it exists because of that fact.

I had heard who one of the killers was already and their "research" to become the bad guy was to go on Reddit and 4chan to read people not liking the new Star Wars movies. And yes, both Reddit and 4chan and "the fans" are called out repeatly in this movie, looked down on for not liking intelligent horror movies enough and liking "dumb slasher movies", whilst being a dumb slasher movie. Imagine if your homework to become a serial killer was "check out people who don't like a movie", it's more than a little insulting.

For a movie that really seems to have a high opinion of itself and a low opinion of its fans, it's weird to see it be just another slasher movie but worse in nearly every way. Numerous fake jump scares that become so predictable I easily guessed when the actual one would come. Genuinely unlikeable characters compared to even the freakish characters of the 90s.

It has repeated speeches trying to mock people for caring about movies, whilst at the same time talking about how important certain movies are and pushing their own messages in the movie. They can't have it both ways.

I knew it was going to be a bumpy ride when they mentioned Terminator Dark Fates and Star Wars as good examples of relaunching series. Especially when they just make Dewey into Luke Skywalker, taking a legacy, well liked male character and turning them into a pathetic joke (but weirdly all the legacy female characters are doing great) but he's a drunken loser who got fired and lives in a trailer. They then kill him in a pathetic way. For a movie trying to be meta about the film industry, it follows nearly every checklist for a modern movie.

They also bring back another legacy male... Billy from the first one as a force ghost to help the main girl out. No. Seriously. The main serial killer from the original is brought back to talk about family legacies and to help guide his daughter to be the hero. It's actually kind of insane, they actually unironically made a Rey Palpatine for this franchise.

As many have said, it does feel like it falls heavily into the "woke" category. It feels very similar to the recent Velma series with it's attempts at meta humour generally aimed at its own potential fanbase. Not including the killers, there are 5 deaths in the movie. All 5 characters are white. The 2 killers? White. So 7 deaths, all white characters.

Outside of the returning heroines from the first 4 movies, the other characters are black twins (both attacked but survive without issue) and the two main girls are Latino (both attacked and survived.) Yes, that does mean out of 6 survivors, only 1 is a male but that's not that big a deal and it's why Scream is such a weird movie to have picked for this insane preaching and judgement. Scream has always been very female driven

It goes far past trying to be a diverse movie or having a subtle agenda. The movie is constantly screaming from its soapbox whilst also acting like you're stupid if you take anything away from movies. It really feels like the writer has a grudge and seeing he was the same writer of the well hated Amazing Spider Man and Independence Day Resurgence, it nearly makes sense.

I watched this as part of a Scream marathon, my first time seeing any of the movies and this one is easily the worst. 3 was bad enough and 4 had a lot of serious issues, but at no point did I want to skip chunks of them.
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Species II (1998)
1/10
Incredibly repetitive
6 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Boobs are pretty cool but they get boring pretty quick as we're on the fifth random generic woman. Once the boobs get boring though, what's there left in this movie?

The two returning characters from the first aren't recognisable. Press went from being a straight forward enough lead who had good intentions to jusy trying desperately to be cool in every scene. Laura's new turn in being totally cool with experimenting on a young girl is just mental.

The alien resistance level just went wild. In the first movie they can be killed by being set on fire or shot. Now they're totally immortal and will come back after having their head blown off. Until it's the end of the movie and they "die" from getting raped or introduced to human diseases (which they would have from just being on the planet).

The movie is just very rapey in general which does mean the tits really aren't very interesting.

The characters are just all stupid as well. The main bad guy escapes because they had one guard on him and he literally just jogs out of the base. The female alien then escapes by just kind of running out the door herself. No one then checks if she is actually dead, leaves no guards on her and somehow she's pregnant (whilst dead) and gives birth as the cliff hanger, whilst also hanging out with another alien no one noticed.

The chase scene through the mall was incredibly slow paced and just makes the characters look stupid as they accidentally miss the alien raping a woman to go annoy some teenagers having sex before the alien decides to stop and hand himself in.

The creature effects at the end were good but dated but the end fight was over in seconds so it's such a small part of the movie I can't give it praise.
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The Blackout (2019)
1/10
Too long and too boring
6 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers
You could easily cut 45 minutes of this and it'd push the movie up to maybe a 3 out of 10.

It's such a boring and simple premise but really takes itself far too seriously, really thinking it's saying something or that the plot is deeper than it thinks it is. The end scene of the alien ship landing is crazy because it is all wrapped up in less than 10 minutes and it was so unnecessary.

Suddenly overnight all of the world apart from a small area of Russia and a few other countries (never mentioned again and saved by Russia) in a perfect circle are wiped out. Everyone just suddenly drops dead and all power fails. The mystery might have been interesting if they actually did anything with it. Instead we get a mission into the dark lands where we get shown there is a super powered survivor immediately. We later learn that it's an alien who they shoot numerous times and he is fine. Just ignore later on that they kill aliens with single shots.

It turns out aliens want to take over earth so are wiping out humans. Pretty clichéd plan but this time they have surviving brain washed humans to attack the rest of humanity. Or maybe they don't since the aliens can mind control normal humans too so could easily just make them all kill themselves, well, except when they can't mind control them because plot armour. The alien power level changes so dramatically that it's crazy when they say humanity is a threat to them.

There's a lot of chest thumping, a lot of heroic soldiers willing to die for the motherland, each main male character is just kind of given a hot, weak female love interest to follow him around and be pointless except for at the end they get maternal and can't kill the alien children as they instantly wipe out the whole alien invasion but let the children live because.... I don't know, women are just mothers in Russia I guess. It's kind of surprising how much this reminded me of Flying Tigers, a blatant American propaganda movie from 1942 that I watched a few nights ago with how they interact with eachother and the women. That movie is 80 years old though.

Lotta people just seem to think this is good sci fi because it has decent special effects and vehicles (the first credit is thanking the Russian MOD) and also that it isn't woke or has a political message. Except it does, it's just military propaganda filled with strong selfless men being adored by hot women in purely support roles and a strong government trying to control the weak willed masses. Usually in these movies the government cracking down on protests would be hinted as bad but here it's not the case at all. It's very blatant propaganda. The VDV also feature as the elite special forces group which is pretty comical given the last year.

Any movie I can't sit through gets a 1 and I ended up fast forwarding through all the combat scenes because they were so repetitive and listening to the exposition dumps at 2x speed.
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Alien Outpost (2014)
1/10
Unwatchable
2 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Full disclosure, I didn't finish it. I started skipping around from about the 30/40 minute mark.

It's an attempt at found footage, playing with the idea of this being a documentary filmed by a small camera crew stationed with a team of (mainly) Americans in a defensive base on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan where the leftovers of giant alien creatures have retreated to after they lost their invasion.

The effects are passable at best and the set is pretty low budget looking but those aren't close to the issues of the movie. The characters are torture to sit through. It's like someone said "The characters in Generation Kill show a disfunctional side of the military, let me teenage son write his version of that." They're all trying so hard to be cool and edgy.

The story is pretty poor too. Thousands of aliens were left behind after the retreat but the aliens on earth have decided to just hang around and instead of evacuating when they get a chance at the end of the film, they get a weapons drop to try and keep mildly annoying the humans in this tiny area.

Because the world is so poorly explained, it is heavily suggested that this is the only place aliens are left on the planet but humanity doesn't care anymore. Instead of the humans going in and wiping them out, they just built outposts around them for no apparent reason. Since it's only in this tiny area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, most people have forgotten about the aliens (you know, despite the massive invasion) and the outposts are understaffed. How? Why? Are the military needed elsewhere? If this is the only threat how can they be understaffed when the entire planet is working together in a joint force? It's like saying the UN ran out for soldiers to cover a 50 mile area. They also just kind of won the war by developing a silly sci-fi magic bullet that somehow beats the heavies (even though normal explosives also kill them). That's it. They also claim that humanities air power easily beat the aliens...despite the aliens being interstellar beings. It's just hand waved away so humanity can easily win the war.

The story is just an excuse to let our gang of heroes be a rough and ragged group who don't play by the rules but are true heroes at heart because of their sacrifices outside the world's view. It screams teenage power fantasy.

Combat sequences are terribly done. The story is nothing. The characters are annoying. The effects are bland. Nothing to recommend.
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The Dead (2010)
3/10
Just too bland
30 August 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Picked it up because I like a good obscure zombie movie and usually go in with pretty low expectations.

The thing about this particular movie is that it isn't bad. It's shot fine enough, it's acted fine enough, the effects are fine enough. For a low budget zombie movie shot in Africa it is pretty solid.

It's main issue is pacing. If it was 70 minutes or shorter it might have helped but the movie really falls into a pattern. Two main characters travel for awhile, stop to check for supplies and zombies appear very slowly. They leave. They travel for awhile then their car has an issue. They get out, zombies approach slowly, they fix the car and leave. Rinse and repeat.

Slow zombies are fine but I think these fall into the category of too slow, especially with the dramatic end reveal that the zombies have somehow overrun the world in seemingly a very short hand.

It's a very slow paced movie and slips right into being boring. The characters are too weak to carry the film. They're both quiet, serious men who are out to find their family. Outside of that they have no real personality and the lack of dialogue is meant to make it feel very serious and stark but it means they barely had any chance to build character.

The ending isn't the gut punch I think they wanted it to be, it just kind of happened. The zombies aren't really a threat at any point in the movie, so the idea that a US military base fell to them is just bizarre when two guys in a beat up car did pretty good against numerous groups. At times they can be surrounded and then just suddenly remember they can fight and instantly dispatch the zombies without any real issue.

The death of one of the two main characters was so poorly done I was assuming it was a dream. They decide to just go to sleep in the middle of nowhere, zombies stumble on them and attack. We see the main character get bitten instantly, there was no tension or suspense to see what happens, it's the first thing they show. It was so poorly done I was expecting it to be a dream because it was such a stupid way to just kill off one of only two characters in the movie. But no, if was real. For some reason they didn't sleep in shifts or sleep in a tree like they do later.

I never really disliked the movie outside of that one scene but I found myself checking my phone a lot especially during one of the many scenes of 5 zombies very slowly walking towards them from 100m away because I'd seen it so many times at that point.

Cut the run time down, have a set piece or two and have a few more characters then it'd have been something better.
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4/10
Incredibly dated
30 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
This was a hard one to score.

I like a good old time war movie, usually not from the 1950s but I thought I'd give this one a shot because I like Mitchum as an actor. Both him and Kerr give solid performances but it's a movie that really does show its age in terms of story telling and stakes. It also really struggles with the old film trope of "women are dumb, weak, pathetic creatures who do nothing but cause trouble for strapping tough men".

It's a contrived story, a marine washes up on a seemingly deserted island after a mission goes sideways but finds that there is only a single other occupant on the entire island, a nun who just happens to be there because there was a single priest on the Island who she had come to help collect but then her boat left her behind. It was very forced to put them together but whatever, I can overlook that.

The biggest issue comes with how the movie had to create stakes. The Japanese suddenly land on the island and the two have to hide in a cave. They're fine to survive because he is able to catch fish... so immediately the stakes are reduced... well, too bad, the movie really shows its age because of course the nun can't eat raw fish because "it's yucky" so he has to sneak into the Japanese camp to steal traditional food for her. This leads to about 10 minutes of "suspense" as they pretend he'll get caught and then pretend he is killed, but we know full well that this isn't happening.

Well, that's sorted and now they have food. Luckily, literally the next day the Japanese just decide to leave the island, this is so they can go down into the camp that night and have a party, where he proposes to her, gets rejected, gets drunk and insults her and... well, it shows it's age again because the nun gets upset, runs into a typhoon, falls over and goes to sleep so she can get sick by the time he finds her the next day... just as the Japanese re-invade the island for no reason. He then has to get her to safety, then sneak into the Japanese camp again to get supplies to cure her...again. The only time this guy has any interactions with the Japanese is getting supplies for her.

It's just so contrived. You know full well that they only had the Japanese leave for that 1 night so they could have a party and relax. And anytime there was any difficulty for the characters to overcome, it was because the nun is just the 1950s stupid weak woman trope who can't eat food 'like a man' and is overly emotional and runs into a typhoon to cry because a man was mean to her so she gets sick. Both of those two scenes lead to the only war aspects of the movie.

It was nice that it was shot on an actual island. It was cool that they got the actual USMC into the movie as extras. Both performances were good for the material. The way he disarms the enemy cannons at the end was unique however in real life there would have been people huddled by the guns and the breach doors wouldn't just fall off with a mild tug. They also wouldn't be on the beach either but whatever. The problem is entirely based on the fake drama, the really bad writing where the woman is more of an enemy than the entire Japanese marine force on the island and the contrivances.
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3/10
Just didn't hold my interest.
30 August 2022
I've never read the book or had even heard of the author before finding this, so this review is based purely on what I got from the movie. Also full disclosure, I got about an hour in before giving up on the movie. I had to turn it off at one point and when I went back to it, I just didn't care enough to finish watching it when I had dozens of other options.

The movie has an odd filming style that didn't make it feel like a movie from 1995, instead it felt like it had been filmed in the 60s or 70s. Long, awkward shots, sets that were very clearly sets. I think the director was often going for something that felt ethereal and nearly dreamlike, which I guess makes sense since the movie is told as a memory. I didn't like the style of the movie at all but I'm sure there are some people out there who would enjoy it just because it isn't your standard film experience.

The main character is such a vacuum of personality. I only saw this a day or two ago and I can remember next to nothing about him. He's a soft child, deliberately so, so much so I was waiting for a reveal that he was gay but at least at the part of the movie I got to, that hadn't happened. It just seemed to fit with the rest of the narrative covering religious con-men, racism and the general sexism of the 1930s-50s in the deep south.

The father was a non-character for how little screentime he had in it except to be a bully who very quickly was disposed off in quite and unceremonious way. The mother as well was very much a non-character, going from pretty bland to 'insane' seemingly at the drop of the hat when the father left the movie. I thought they were really going to hammer in the point that he was the main bread winner and now they were alone, but their living situation never seemed to change except the mother now awkwardly stared at the camera for minutes at a time singing.

The Aunt is the main driving force of the movie as the boy's only friend. A city woman apparently slumming it in the south once her mediocre career as a bar singer ended. It's weird how they display her though, early on she's hated by the father because she dresses 'slutty' to a party and humiliates them in front of the town, allegedly but then for the rest of the movie, no one ever brings that up again and everyone seems rather content with her being around and she seems to become quite a major part of the town of heavily religious people who go to rallies calling out women who sing in bands... which would be her specifically, but no one seems to acknowledge that. They do make the point that because of this 'low standing' she has in society, she is used by men, they don't respect her at all and use her for a bit of fun before dropping her.

I had a problem with timescales in this movie. The boy starts as a child and an amount of time passes before a transition where he suddenly is a teenager and then an amount of time passes before I gave up. The timescale is all over the place which means that the story crawls along at times and then suddenly speeds by. World War 2 is covered in the space of about 2 minutes which is crucial to several characters and probably covers months of time. The 'racism' element shown was a 5 second cut away of the boy being taken to a lynching by his father, and it seriously is gone in seconds. The sexism and religious fear is covered more in depth with a rally but even then the movie is so blunt and heavy handed they make sure to show the religious preacher standing there going "Hahahah, so many suckers, I am going to milk them for so much money, hahahahaha." before going into the sermon. So, WW2 which has massive implications on the entire family is covered with basically one voice over narration but the religious conman scene is a solid 10 minute rally that seemingly has no long lasting effect on the plot.

This isn't the usual type of movie I would go for but I like to try new things occasionally. This was just quite a disappointment. Most movies I drop before finishing get an automatic 1 but I felt bad doing it for this movie because there were some odd elements in it that kept me vaguely interested since I had been originally thinking of dropping it 30 minutes in but the religious conman scene kept my interest for about another 20 or so minutes.
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8/10
Ignore the 2/3 Star reviews.
23 August 2022
A generally solid zombie flick, the characters were memorable enough especially for the number of them that are introduced (because zombie movies so need people to kill). The effects were perfectly fine and the setting gave the movie a much needed twist because outside of the Spanish Civil War gimmick it is quite a run of the mill zombie movie, though well executed.

I've seen people whining that this movie is "woke". It isn't. If you can see my other reviews you'll see I've called movies "woke" before, this ain't it. People complaining about how the fascists are all evil and the Communists are all good guys. That's not even close to how this movie shows it. You literally have Communists and fascists dying side by side. Communists turn on the group, fascists turn on the group.

People complain about a strong female? The "resistance fighter" trope for women in and around WW2 has existed for decades. This isn't even close to a new wokeism. And people complaining about a Muslim (just existing) and hilariously saying he was in the "woke communist team", he wasn't, he was in the fascist squad. Also, despite what people say there isn't a bunch of gay people running around as they claim, the only time homosexuality comes up in this is when they call eachother the f-word as an insult.

It's a good movie. It mixes comedy and action quite well, but I wouldn't really say it's a horror movie outside of the generally solid gore effects.
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The Pyramid (2014)
3/10
""""found footage"""""
5 July 2022
I've never seen a movie try so hard to be found footage but feel equally hard. Movie starts with a documentary filmmaker and her camera man going to an Egyptian dig site during the Arab Spring riots. So immediately they've set up why they have a camera.

Well, a weird Egyptian pyramid is found under ground. The camera dude, the documentary maker, the head archeologist along with his daughter and her boyfriend need to go in to explore. The only reason for the Arab Spring is because suddenly and for no reason they are told they can't dig anymore and to leave, so the characters need to rush in without being prepared and bad things go down.

The daughter brings a head camera, so now they have two cameras to make it feel like a found footage movie and they keep talking about the "footage"...and then it cuts to a dramatic angle of them hiding. Or an angle of the whole group talking from some outside POV. It does it constantly, especially at the end during the action scenes.

It's trying to be both a found footage movie and a traditionally shot movie at the same time. This means both elements fail because they clash. The final encounter with the big silly looking CGI monster would've been so much more effective if it was shot from a found footage POV and it probably would have hidden how bad it looked. Instead because they didn't know how to show she suddenly had a blade from over an hour ago it has to be traditionally shot to remind the audience.

The ending is also remarkably underwhelming. It was pretty obvious how it was going to end...even though we had already had an "ending" that looked like it was going to be fine, the last survivor suddenly has to just escape out of no where to let there be a jumpscare ending to get us back to exactly where we were 2 minutes before that.

The storyline is fine, nothing original or new. A lot of the movie is boring though. The final survivor is easy to guess immediately. The ending is poor. The found footage element is a total failure. The creature effects are pretty poor. None of the deaths are interesting. There's just too many scenes of characters standing around talking about how they need to leave, how they don't want to be there and how they should leave.
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The Owners (2020)
3/10
I kept trying to like this
24 June 2022
This movie is a lot of hard work. It starts poorly, all of the characters introduced are chavs who you would hate to know in your real life.

The first act is quite a boring stretch. I just couldn't bring myself to care as every character just was kind of annoying, constantly talking or screaming. It wasn't enjoyable.

The "nice" character is the most frustrating. He's a very standard trope, the fat loser "hanger on" mate who can never get the girl. He's so incredibly irritating that I was waiting for the shoe to drop in his inevitable twist. I will praise them for only one thing, they kept it going for so long that I was convinced that it wasn't going to happen. When it finally did happen, I really wasn't sure if it was pre-planned or coincidence because it was introduced in quite an awkward way.

The big "event" that happens at about 45 minutes in is a solid enough event, but not really a twist like I feel it's meant to be. The synopsis of the movie and the general acting of the two owners ruins any idea of a twist especially since the reveal is slow paced. Especially since after the 45 minutes mark it takes nearly another 20 minutes before they finally confirm the really obvious twist.

After that the rest of the movie is just a drag. Characters walking around a dark house, sitting repeating the same points to eachother over and over again.

They try and be stylistic, as a character goes more insane the screen zooms into a cramped ratio to make you feel uncomfortable but it didn't work for me. Instead we are meant to be scared of a 90 year old woman wobbling around the place. No one makes intelligent decisions. Characters are in a house full of some type of gas that doesn't seem to effect anyone until the storyline needs it to...but during fights characters will repeatedly have their gas masks pulled off and will forget about defending themselves to put the mask back on even though the gas doesn't effect them at all. It's awful.

There is one final reveal which was decent but it was like the twist I mentioned earlier. I wasn't sure if it was deliberate or not. I also had guessed something similar would be revealed just not in that exact way.

Overall, there are too many slow elements. The reveals are generally all easy to guess even if sometimes they wait until (probably) too late in the film to finally reveal them.

Maisie Williams is the best performance by far. McCoy does a solid performance too but everyone gives a pretty good performance. It's just what they're working with isn't very engaging outside of about a 10 minutes sequence in the middle of the movie that is also somewhat ruined by some of the decisions made.
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Take Back (2021)
3/10
Just pretty bland
24 June 2022
I had just watched Welcome to Sudden Death last night which was pretty campy fun. I saw Michael Jai White was in this too so thought I'd give it a shot.

This movie tries to be very serious. Michael is a huge muscular dude and for some reason they put him in some nerdy glasses and baggy clothing to hide his muscles so he can play a nerdy high school teacher. His wife instead play the action lead and she's totally fine. She's a capable action lead.

The storyline is trying to be quite dark and serious. A woman running from her past accidentally draws attention to herself from stopping a domestic violence incident. The movie repeatedly hammers in interviews about domestic violence stats against women which is played a half dozen times throughout the movie but the storyline isn't about domestic violence at all. It's about sex trafficking.

It's just a pretty slow paced movie that just randomly ends with a very awkward shoot out that only has about 4 people involved because this is a COVID movie. It ends with the main villain just kind of turning and walking away into the desert for no reason apart from letting the confrontation happen out in the middle of nowhere where everyone stands at least 50 feet apart at all times quietly whispering to eachother but they all can hear eachother perfectly.

Slow paced, boring and pretty awkward. Poor production values and really bad editing. You have dead bodies blinking at times. There's a transition to a dude that obviously cut too early to him so he's a freez frame for about 5 frames before suddenly moving. You see the boom mic a few times in different scenes.
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LX 2048 (2020)
1/10
Gave up, too boring.
24 June 2022
Originally I was hovering over the remote at near 30 minutes in. I was already bored with the movie, it's dystopian plot was boring and not very fleshed out at all, the main character was boring and it really felt like a quarantine movie where 90% of the time the main character (who gives a solid performance to be fair) is sitting by himself with a VR headset on talking to himself in an empty room where we barely ever see what he sees.

At exactly the 30 minute mark though, a new character is introduced with a bit of a twist. It was a bit more interesting so I tried giving it more time but within 10 minutes it started going downhill again. The movie relies so heavily on flashbacks. It sets up very little at the start and terms are just thrown at you, then 40 minutes later will explain what the terms mean. It's not an interesting way to tell a story since you find yourself wondering about points and then when you finally are told about them, they're entirely uninteresting.

I got to about the hour mark and then just gave up. There is no reason for this movie to be near two hours long. If it was maybe 80 minutes long I'd have struggled through but another 50 after wanting to give up twice was impossible.

Too many flashbacks, too many scenes with the wife who I'm sure the movie wants to be unlikeable but she wasn't an enjoyable type of unlikeable. Too many scenes of him sitting alone shouting at a VR headset about uninteresting business deals. The social commentary is what your dad would say at the dinner table even in the early 2000s that kids spend too much time on their phones.
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6/10
Actually pretty fun
24 June 2022
This definitely falls into the so bad it's good category...sometimes.

That's the problem with it. Some bits of it are really enjoyable. I hurt myself I laughed so hard at this movie at times. Other times though I was really bored, generally when it was trying to be funny.

I can't remember the original version from the 90s since I haven't seen it in over a decade so I don't remember if the kid was as annoying in the original but I hated the kids in this. If his two kids both died in this movie, it would probably be 2 whole points higher. The villain was also genuinely more likeable than the rich business woman who I'm pretty sure they wanted us to like so that was a real failure.

The fight scenes were sometimes hilariously bad and sometimes pretty solid.

The story is basic. Group of ex-special forces who got ruined because they accidentally killed a few civilians because of bad intel want revenge on the rich business woman because she hired lawyers to ruin them. I don't know why or how or even what her business is. They just want to steal a billion dollars from her and kill her. They never really try to kill her though and setting up all the transfers apparently takes a few hours so they just have to sit in the room with her whilst the rest of the movie happens elsewhere.

The best bit is they make a point that they can't get guns into the arena due to high powered scanners. Now, these guys hack every system and have an inside man. There is no reason why they can't get guns in. Instead they bring in these briefcases which I just guessed their guns would be in...nope, they pull 3D printers out of the briefcases (that were too small for them) and 3D print their guns and ammo. I laughed so hard when they were sitting there doing a dramatic printing and then cleaning scene. Genuinely was so funny. As anyone also knows, you can't 3d print ammo as well but they just hand wave it away.

Fun to laugh at but not perfect because a bunch of scenes go on too long and all the actual comedy scenes are bad.
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Birds of Prey (2020)
2/10
What a cluster.
23 June 2022
Only McGregor and Robbie come out of this looking okay.

I seriously was enjoying the first 20-25 minutes of the movie. Then the storyline started and all the other characters started to be introduced and the movie totally nose dived.

I can see people praising the movie as being a mile a minute entertainment and how it went straight into the action and pulls you along with a crazy storyline. I disagree, the movie has long stretches of nothing, repeated scenes of long drawn out flash back sequences to stuff we can easily guess or are just there because they're trying desperately to squeeze in the backstory for 4 new characters.

I found it a very boring movie. Most of the fight scenes are pretty bad and it's not hard to very quickly notice something a lot of people had an issue with. Whilst a lot of people don't like "woke" movies, which this definitely is, this movie actively seems to hate men. There isn't a single "good" man in the entire movie. The one man introduced as an angel, as the good example of a man...quickly betrays Harley out of no where.

Every villain is a man. Every goon is a man. There are plenty of female cops...but when they invade a police station, all those female cops vanish so it's all male cops being beaten up. There is a single "evil woman" who is a crazy woman who appears for 2 seconds and blows up off screen. They really try and imply Black Mask hates women because...well, I don't know. Harley just said he hates anyone with a vagina even though it's suggested he is gay and his most trusted aide is a woman and when murdering a group of people he lets the little girl live (before changing his mind when she blows snot at him).

Also, because every fight is against men when the Birds of Prey consist of 4 women, 1 of which is in her 60s from looking at her and is 4'8" and the other three all weigh 90lbs each, the fights are terrible for the most part. Where Terminator Dark Fate hired a woman who seems like she's about 6 foot tall and reasonably fit, this movie didn't even try.

Cassandra who is the 10 year old maguffin for this movie is the worst character. She's one step away from screaming about white privilege and the patriarchy with every line.

The movie is sexist which would've scored badly in itself because, well, I'm a dude and when the entire movie seems to hate me I'm not going to enjoy it, but mixed with how boring it was, how none of the characters were even close to likeable, how it just wasn't really funny most of the time, I can't score it higher than a 2.
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1BR (2019)
1/10
Failed at everything it tried.
23 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
So, young girl moves to LA, moves to a new apartment and everything is weird there. There's a very obvious red herring character and I think we're meant to be surprised when it turns out the "nice" but obviously stalkerish guy is one of the main bad guys. It wasn't shocking. They tried to build it up but it was pretty obvious.

She's moved into a cult that live in a small apartment complex. They kidnap her and torture her because...she brought a cat in? Or maybe they were going to do it anyway? Movie never really explains.

The cult is just one of those magic "don't think about this, they're all powerful" kind of cults. They make her cease to exist to the outside world, close all her bank accounts, somehow end all her friendships (they never explain how) and you're just meant to believe this. They even talk about having gone through all her email systems. I don't know how, somehow that's just something these random weirdoes can do. It'd be so easy to explain away but they don't even bother.

She's kept in her bedroom for just over a month where she has to keep a "stress position" which is the least stressful position I have ever seen. She just has to lean against the wall with her hands on the wall. That's it. The movie however in no way shows the passage of time. I only noticed she was there for over a month because I decided to keep track of the days shown on the CCTV footage (only shown 2 times during this) the first being the 9th of March and the last day being the 16th of April. At some point (because of how poorly they show the passage of time) she gets basically crucified, it seems like it was just the last day but since they don't show passage of time I have no idea. They don't show any passage of time on her physically either. She isn't fed, she just gets a smoothie once a day...twice...who knows since they don't show? But she loses no weight, her skin tone is still tanned and healthy, she has bags under her eyes for only one scene once and then not again after. When she's crucified she barely even reacts, her hair is still perfectly well kept, eye brows still neatly trimmed, lips still perfectly moisturised. There is no hint this girl just got tortured for 5 weeks.

She then mysteriously passes the test and is allowed more freedom and is shown that apparently everyone has to go through that by another person showing her the same crucifixion scars. The movie then forgets that point and 99% of the time you see hands, there are no scars, including on the main girl.

She is then kept hostage for another 4 months where she...just kinda sits in her room reading a book and sometimes helping at their homeschool for the 9 kids who never appear outside the homeschool scenes. It's not tense or interesting. It's just incredibly boring. It's either scenes of a quiet monologue over scenes of her eating dinner or sitting in the homeschool, or its scenes of her very passively talking as she is interviewed.

The only way of keeping track of time is awful, you don't see days passing, you don't see any change in the main girl. It is all based on the CCTV date. She is shown captured on 9.3.19, is crucified or freed 16.4.19, is shown getting more freedom 8.7.19 and then later still is given the job of watching the CCTV where it is 2.9.19. Then she is forced into marriage on the 11th of October but her dad also finally shows up to look for her...7 months after she was kidnapped. First time he sees her he is stunned and says "What happened to you?" like there's a physical change, there isn't.

The marriage thing is hilarious. She finally seems happy enough to join the cult BUT they try and make her marry the weird ugly guy instead of the young hot soldier so she doesn't want to be in the cult anymore. It's so funny. It comes across as so shallow and so stupid after 7 months of being held hostage and apparently going crazy enough to join the cult, she's like "Ew that guys weird, I want to leave" It ruined the whole build up they attempted.

It doesn't even make sense why the cult did it. Want to put the two 20ish year old hotties together who spent the most time together? Hell no. Put her with the weirdo, deformed 40 year old who we had to cut the ears and eyes out off because he keeps trying to escape lol

The ending is embarrassingly bad, somehow both incredibly slow and incredibly rushed at once. 1st December suddenly hits, it's the next open day for her old apartment. Her "friend" she hung out with once at the start shows up. Instantly moves in, next scene is them somehow them in her Facebook account posting "I do not want to talk to anyone anymore. Good bye" and apparently that's enough to make no one worried about her. Next scene she's held captive and despite her attacking everyone who goes in, they send in main girl who after talking to her for 20 seconds is immediately rebellious again, kills the leader after the friend is killed, steals his gun and then just kind of...leaves. Like, very slowly. There are dozens of times for them to stop her or shoot her or anything but no one does. She just kind of leaves the building and then stands in the street outside celebrating being free but then it's revealed the cult exist in every apartment complex and then she just runs down the street. That's it.

It's so bad. I watch a lot of really bad movies but this was just so awful. None of the characters were interesting or likeable or anything. None of the "torture" was effective. The numerous time skips would be missed by anyone not paying attention specifically to the time on the CCTV which is often only shown for seconds at a time.
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4/10
Close to a 6/10 until the last act
23 June 2022
The movie as a whole was generally doing okay for the majority of it. I haven't seen a Tremors movie since 4, maybe 5 so I feel like I'm missing a little bit of history when there is a love interest that I genuinely am not sure if she's been in a movie before or if they made up this love interest just for character in this movie. They also keep mentioning a son who I can see on a previous cast list but they also have a young guy always hanging around Burt. I guess the original script was meant to be Burt and his long lost son, hence the love interest but when they couldn't get the son they just made it this random guy instead since he has all the emotional scenes and 1 on 1 scenes with Burt then.

The effects are solid enough for this being the 7th movie in the franchise. The acting is campy and over the top enough with good performances in particular from Gross and Brake.

The biggest problem it has is the third act. Where 3 Shriekers were shown to be a threat earlier in the movie to a group of 10-15 gun wielding hunters, suddenly Burt and his "son" can casually take on what seems like 20 of them with a chainsaw and some machetes. They go from facing 4 Grebloids to facing 1 in basically one move shortly before that. It feels like the second they got to the third act they needed to get rid of all but 1 of the enemy as fast as possible to make it a dramatic 1 on 1 to end the movie.

The Grebloids aren't much of a threat throughout the majority of the movie. Even when a character is told there is a Grebloid directly beneath them in the final act, other characters can just casually walk over to them to talk away without issue. The character can then just walk off. In previous movies Grebloids were a real threat, if one was near you had to get to high or solid ground. In this movie you don't seem to need to worry about them unless you're a bad guy then they'll attack you even if you don't move or make a sound despite the good guys moving and talking.
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2/10
Weirdly boring
23 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
It's weird when I look back at the movie, I suddenly realise there weren't very many actual action moments. There's a fairly big one about 15 minutes in but that's about it until after the hour mark and then a biggish one near the end. I genuinely have no idea why this movie is so long apart from it needed to be to provide lip service to both Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger separately.

Linda at times is totally fine but I'm other ways her character has been ruined. She's an incredibly tough capable woman so them forcing her to rant about how "You're just a woman, you're not a threat, the MAN you give birth to is all that matters!" It doesn't make sense from her when she is so strong and heroic through all the movies.

The action sequences are so CGI heavy and honestly repetitive. The super advanced terminator is meant to be all scary but it routinely gets beaten up in hand to hand combat by either Arnie or the new hero Grace. It only seems to be deadly when fighting police or border agents.

Grace is tall enough to be at least a bit imposing and she's an alright actor and fine with the limited stunts she does but the biggest issue is her character is unlikeable. She's argumentative, overly aggressive, happy to murder normal people and gets lots murdered without issue. It's weird seeing the "human" character be less human than Arnie in T2. She is so overpowered they literally had to give her a limiter that sometimes she gets too hot and has to cool down.

At this point in the franchise, a full reboot would be better than this. By getting rid of John Connor and replacing him with Dani (our tiny, annoying Mexican saviour who don't need no man *finger snap*) it just feels like it's barely even the same franchise. John Connor is as much a recurring character than Arnie as the Terminator. Now we have Dani, who just is poorly acted and poorly written. People liked John because in T1 he wasn't even born. T2 he was a young kid and you saw him bond with the Terminator to make him a good "person". T3 wasn't great. Salvation had John as a competent leader. Gen is...awful and no one considers it canon, not even this movie. Instead of that slow growth as a character, we just get Dani who is already amazing at everything, super brave, super smart, super everything. It's not interesting and it is clearly only there as a "Women do it better" story. I feel if they wanted to do it, just making a new franchise would have been better than getting rid of John and getting rid of Skynet but still keeping it the same continuity, especially since it made everyone's sacrifice pointless since a new Skynet just immediately popped up instead.

They can't even get their own timeline working right. At the end of the movie, Dani goes to see Grace as a kid (she just somehow knows where she is and who she is as a kid despite never even getting her full name). Grace also has a little brother who I don't think was ever mentioned in the flash forwards. But the problem is, they found a child actress who looks a lot like adult Grace...so Dani sees her she's like 8 years old. When the apocalypse hits in about 5 years, she's 8. When she survives for "a few years" before being found by the resistance... She's 8. To make a sappy ending to the movie, they ruin their own continuity so now it looks like Grace just doesn't age and stayed 8 for about a decade before suddenly aging 25 years overnight.
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Portals (2019)
1/10
Few things to be aware of...
23 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
This is an anthology movie, not an actual movie. It's 4 different short films connected based on the overall story of "Alien portals suddenly appear on Earth".

They are all terrible but hilariously they each had potential in their own way but each totally botch their stories. The first "opening" I wouldn't count as a movie. It's about a minute long of very generic 911 calls. "There's something strange." "My neighbour is walking towards some weird thing" etc. Very generic and very boring. There's also an interconnecting voice over by a radio DJ who explains all the exposition...which usually is then fully repeated in the next scene anyway.

1. Is based on an interesting concept. It's during the "invasion' part of the story. A group of kids are in a test when suddenly the invasion starts with all their phones locked in a cupboard. All the phones start ringing one after the other. You can hear sirens going off in the distance. Helicopters. Military jets screaming by overhead. The teacher refuses to let them answer their ringing phones and it's interesting...but then it keeps going. And keeps going. Eventually the teacher leaves them and you think that's it... Then it keeps going. The whole plot suddenly is about an emo girl who...I think it's non-binary? Trans? They never confirm it. They just get upset at being called a girl...so upset that they murder two people. Well, this after first attempting to commit suicide by jumping into a portal that appears outside their classroom. If feels like they were trying to be pro-LGBT but they really fumbled the ball by both showing that the kid wants to commit suicide for being trans and then murdering two people for misgendering them. Also sexually assaults a girl before killing the two people. It's incredibly weird.

2. An interesting but stupider idea. It is weeks after the invasion. Millions of these alien portals(called "doors") have opened. Millions of people are gone and only a few have mysteriously returned (this is never covered again). So all the nations want to study the doors so are now sending volunteers into the doors, even though the millions of people who went in only a handful returned and were "different". This is the most "artsy" of the shorts. Characters stand and stare at rocks and read poetry in their inner monologues. The three "knockers" finally go into one of the doors, the three immediately separate so each of them can have a "vision". It's a couple and some random guy though, so his vision seems totally pointless because we know nothing about him. We keep following the girl until eventually she stumbled on her boyfriend's vision where there are 3 copies of him. She deliberately kills her boyfriend so she can spend time with one of the copies she prefers inside the "door".

3. A guy finds a portal in the woods. Learns to talk to it in 4 days with a speaker system even though the whole world couldn't in 100 days. Becomes friends with it. Invites the girl he has a crush on to look at it, she for some reason brings her boyfriend and that makes him sad. The boyfriend calls the cops for him not declaring the portal, cop shows up, just randomly goes crazy and shoots people then the portal snaps his neck because suddenly they have telekinetic powers. I think it's meant to be an anti-police section but it comes out of nowhere and goes away within seconds.

4. The radio DJ I mentioned earlier is a full blown conspiracy theorist. Invites a Doctor onto his podcast to talk about it and the performance of the Doctor is a highlight as the worst thing I've ever seen. He's meant to have gone insane. It's just mesmerising with how bad it is. The Doctor then scolds the DJ for being a conspiracy theorist and exploiting people for views and then mind controls him out of nowhere and makes him strip. Then the movie ends.

It's such a bizarrely bad movie. It's not funny. It's tonally all over the place because of the different directors managing the different shorts.

Oddly the one theme I saw was cuckolding. First part, the "girl" is upset the "hot girl" she wants is with the only male. The only male then gets upset when the "girl" kisses his possible girlfriend and seems to let it happen. The second, the girlfriend knowingly kills her boyfriend to live with a better hallucinated version of him. The third the man invites his crush to see his portal and she brings her boyfriend which makes him depressed. Then when he gets closer to her, the boyfriend reports them to the police.

It's a weird through line.
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