Reviews

... but it's never fully realized.

There were many things that could have been good - the patient "doctor" echoing the things he hears from the real doctor and making him his underling in his imagination was interesting and the style of several snippets too but even with these, more positive, aspects, I found issues in the execution. Like, why make that quick smash-cut to emphasize how he pretends to be the doctor? Was that needed? Do you think the audience is that stupid? Let it be an Easter Egg where people can discover more and more echoed behavior on repeat viewings. The snippets/ segments were also so very short - it's an almost 2 hour movie with lots of main plot and SEVEN small segments... It's just too much, you don't get invested in each story with so little time for each - and it doesn't help that most of them are incredibly generic, either.

Then there are the things that just were never really good - the dialogue didn't seem amazing, and I am pretty sceptic about the mental health system aspect. Of course, I've never been to an institution for the criminally insane, but it still seems a bit harsh and counter-intuitive for people who have mental issues. The doctor was a horrible doctor - I doubt any psychiatrist would consistently treat his patients as he's apparently done. Last but not least, the title was a dead giveaway that the doctor would be patient number 7 - after seeing him with the first patient, I knew that yep, that would definitely be it.

The last thing, that was probably the biggest issue, was that it wasn't really scary. It might have been if the overall level had been higher (and some of the mentioned issues had been fixed - like the too short segments) but it was more thriller than horror.

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All in all, it's not horrible - there's potential in there, the acting isn't bad and the cinematography was okay but nothing really special. I probably won't watch it again, but it was fine for a lazy Sunday watch.

Favourite segment: The one with the girl who wanted to bury her friend.

Award: Fakest looking tree in existence in Alfie Allen's segment. Seriously, WTH? Also, dullest wooden stakes to ever be used against vampires. Buffy would be disappointed.

I've been looking forward to this movie for quite a while but aside from the teaser from after Days of Future Past, I've kept myself from the trailers, so I went in not really knowing to expect.

What I got was slightly disappointing. I think the movie had the elements of a good movie but it didn't really come together. I think some of its main problems, contributing to this, are:

1) Too many characters. It was great to see many familiar and beloved characters - I love Storm, Nightcrawler, Angel and so on - but the consequence was that they got almost no screen time, especially as Mystique, Xavier, Magneto and Jean Grey/ Scott Summers got a big share each. This gets to the point where I had trouble empathizing with the characters because they had no screen time: Magneto's family? Who gives a hoot, we knew them for like two seconds (the girl's powers were interesting - I was pretty mad they killed her off so quickly for that reason alone). Havok's death? Whatever. It was given little reaction on-screen and while we knew him from former movies, it wasn't like he had tons of focus in those either. To be honest, I just didn't care about the characters in this one.

2) Not striking the balance between what the audience think they want and what they actually want. The worst offender is Mystique- screen time. I like JL fine, I like Mystique fine, but they've really just showed her in there and turned up the screen time even when her part in the story isn't really interesting or meaningful. Many will probably disagree with my other borderline offender: Quicksilver. I love EP as an actor, I love Quicksilver as a character, but he is very powerful in this universe so it feels a bit forced that he doesn't just mow anything and everything down. His role in this also felt a bit forced, evidenced in that it went nowhere in the end. Like with Mystique it feels like it's mostly an audience/ money grab ("the" Quicksilver scene was still the best in the movie, of course, but everything else about his role felt pretty meh).

3) The script felt clumsy at many points. For example, I know we have to introduce characters and the audience have to get to know them in short order, but it felt forced a lot of the time - Jean's introduction got on my nerves especially. Storm's wasn't really any better (in general I think she got an undeserved nerf and we never got to see her use her powers in any awesome way - another issue when there are too many characters. The big ending battle was long but no one really got to shine).

These things combined with things like Apocalypse/ En Sabah Nur spouting off endless clichés and the effects not really being great most of the time (my sister's hypothesis was that the budget was blown on Quicksilver's scene - I'm inclined to agree) ended up giving me a movie that wasn't really BAD, it just wasn't up to the standard that the first two set, making it disappointing.

It had elements of awesomeness but it never came together in the way I wished it would. I would still see it again and will probably see the next one (even though I'm not a big fan of Jean and Scott and this one sets them up to have big roles in the future) but I probably won't see it in the theater as I did with this.

(Also, Sophie Turner is a fine actress, but I could not see her as Jean in this - all I saw was Sansa).

This movie is a little weird.

First weird decision is that the movie starts off with having the viewer read the "legend" that makes up the main premise of the movie - this immediately got a groan from me. If you expect people to read, the movie that comes afterwords has to be amazing to the nth degree. A below-average revenge-porn horror is not that.

The second weird decision is making the above-mentioned 'legend' part of the premise - the main character was already a super-soldier lady who almost got away based on her own skills and showed herself more than competent. I can't help but feel that I would have cheered her on a little harder if it had just been her, one-woman'ing it up on her quest for vengeance (not that the possession changes that a huge deal - it's kind of hard to see to which degree she's possessed). Of course, that would have made it even more of a 'Grave' clone. It also didn't help that the 'legend' part was done so badly - Ayiana's costume was horrible and she spoke English when performing her little ritual (extremely jarring).

Third weird decision is the pacing - there is pretty much no tension built at any point in the movie. It goes nothing-action-a bit of tension-action-nothing-action. The only real tension seemed to be when main lady was running from the villains after they killed Fiancé Guy but even that was quite short - what should have been the main focus, killing the villains, was completely unsatisfying and boring in the end with no tension or variance.

On the formal side of things, acting was pretty bad. I didn't believe her, her fiancé or the villains for a second. Dialogue was pretty bad - the obnoxious villain sidekick was painful to listen to and all the others were almost as bad. Sound effects were pretty bad - gun shot sounds stand out as particularly mediocre and meh. Visual effects are very meh as well; it's often very obvious that the weapons don't make contact or cut aways are used to avoid using effects.

Most egregious of all, though - and absolutely the funniest - is when Fiancé Guy talks to his bro over FaceTime. It's a still-image with normal (way too high quality, no options displayed) video imposed on it. That was the moment I knew what kind of movie this would be and I laughed and laughed.

About the only things that seemed likable were that the relationship between the lovers was portrayed nicely (if acted somewhat sub-par) - light and humorous - and the strong female lead. She was clearly the one in the relationship associated with more "masculine" traits and the fiancé in turn showed some more "feminine" traits which made them seem like more substantial characters instead of the usual cardboard cut outs.

In short, if you want rape-revenge horror, go for 'I Spit on Your Grave' - if you want possessed revenge horror, go for 'Savaged'. Neither were high art but both much better than this.

I actually very much enjoyed the first part of the movie - it did very well in setting up a really creepy atmosphere with good effects and lots of promise. I just don't think it delivered very well on that promise.

As I see it, this movie could have gone a lot of ways but decided to go safe, shallow, mainstream exorcism story - don't think too hard, very little background or logic to it, 'just trust me, this is totally a good enough explanation' I can almost hear the movie say.

My biggest issues is with the really run-of-the-mill choices - the wife is pregnant, the main dude is an atheist but with a 'special gift' who is converted... It used to work, that pregnant thing - it used to heighten my empathy with the person and make me care but it's been done so much that now I just think "Not another effing pregnant woman in a horror flick!" It's as if we can't empathize with the woman unless she's got a bun in her oven and that's freaking insulting to me.

As an atheist myself, I actually don't mind supernatural horror - it's my favorite horror genre. It got insulting though, when the movie actually tried to get deep and philosophical with it - oh, look, they mentioned the problem of evil and the very next split second it's just handwaved as if it's not a huge problem and as if there aren't 3 million other problems with religion. Choose a route here: Either you address problems with religion and then have an actual conversation about it or you stop addressing it entirely - this halfway thing is insulting. It makes me think the character is a moron if it takes that little to convince him. Yeah, there were other factors contributing but not enough that it would make a normal person shift over so completely so quickly. Why not just make him a very soft Christian to begin with? Much more believable.

My next biggest issue is with the choices that make no sense. The way they focus on Jane biting Sergent, you'd think it'd have some sort of relevance. No. When the wife and kid get kidnapped, does the story do ANYTHING with it? No, wrong again. It was just really non-sensical and pointless. The same can be said for abused wife's death right before the climax - why? No reason except kicking up the death tally.

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My conclusion: It's an alright watch if you're in the mood for a rather mindless horror flick with good build-up and atmosphere. The last half of the movie is somewhat disappointing if you think too hard but otherwise almost decent. The effects and scares are the strong point over the actual storyline, though.

Let's start out with the good. It was pretty entertaining, I'll give it that, and I wasn't bored at any time during the movie - the format of several smaller horror movies with a wrap-around narrative works quite well, especially as many of the ideas showcased in the V/H/S franchise aren't brand, sparkling new. It simple provides a new twist and keeps the viewer from losing interest in plots quite similar to things they've seen before.

The acting was fine - I have nothing to say here. Didn't notice any really obviously bad acting.

Scares were good. I felt tense through much of the movie and jumped a couple of times. All in all some of the main pillars of a good movie are set.

However, there were also flaws. My first and biggest gripe is costumes. The sort of devil/ demon thing from the cult snippet looked extremely goofy up close (and a little goofy from far away). The aliens in the last snippet also looked so weird - and not in a good way - that I really couldn't take it seriously. Make up on the various breeds of zombies and zombie-like creatures was good, however.

But that is actually my second-biggest gripe: The zombies (or zombie- like creatures). Really, they had to be in 3 of 5 segments?! And don't get me wrong, I love zombie movies over all other movies, especially if done right, but having them in a movie that (I thought) was supposed to showcase a variety - like the first one - is simply overkill. It fit well in the bike guy segment - after all, it was the central plot - but then it also showed up in the cult one (and it was creepy, granted, but still, we had just seen zombies!) and then AGAIN at the end of the wrap- around. I began doubting whether the segments were really separate because the different zombies looked pretty alike and acted much the same way (except maybe for the end one, though it was hard to tell). That was a big minus to me.

The plots were a bit hit and miss. The first one felt a bit too rushed and like it was missing something (it was probably just as well that it didn't go on longer, it didn't feel like a very deep idea, more a throw- away thought), the second one was alright though to me it didn't seem super innovative (enjoyable, nonetheless), the cult one was pretty awesome and the alien one... well, I had trouble taking it seriously but I like the idea of new, modern takes on alien abduction. This one suffered a bit from some seemingly inconsistent logic, but it could be interesting. I liked the wrap-around fine (though it was a bit weird that the PD would just watch a tape while the girl lay dead beside him at the end).

Generally, I am optimistic about this franchise - I really, really like the format of this series (and hope it will become more popular and we may get some other movies like it, showcasing different ideas) and would look forward to another. I think I'll watch the first one again too, but this didn't really hit the target for me.

This movie had quite a lot of problems that resulted in a pretty bad movie overall. It's starts with a rather weak premise ("what if the world suddenly ran out of gas?") and goes downhill from there. As for the premise itself, I hope that people don't actually think this is what would happen - it is pretty far out. Though it would undoubtedly make life a great deal more difficult, there's no reason to think it would be this extreme - and that's ignoring how extremely unlikely it would be for the whole world to run out of gas entirely over the course of a year.

The next problem in this movie is logic - as in there is none. Characters behave very illogically all the way through, from the (not unknown before, but still annoying) way that Ford feels the need to look at the person who says his name (for seemingly no reason either) at the beginning, even though he was holding a killer at gun point, to the way they take in a complete stranger even though it's been established that people kill each other for resources ("but she doesn't look like a killer"), to the way the redhead takes down all the cannibals in the finale.

Dialogue is also extremely lacking - it just doesn't flow right, it sounds stilted and fake. Characters are cliché in the worst way - and to top it off, the acting is pretty bad as well, making it a pretty much all-round bad movie and definitely not up to par with other alternative "after-apocalypse" movies.

If you want to see something similar to this but much better done, go watch "The Day", a 2011 post-apocalyptic movie that also involves fighting for your life against strangers.

If something had actually happened. for a movie of 1 hour and 35 minutes, there's surprisingly little in the way of story or plot. Now, at first I was actually excited, as I think most good horror movies are masters of building up the anticipation - 30 to 45 minutes of build up isn't inappropriate, but this movie felt like it was straight up 1 hours and 35 minutes of build up.

It almost felt like they had too much time to show the characters (pranking and having fun with each other, mostly, which became old real quick) and their relationships and too little time to resolve the ghost plot. It had the makings of a (bit cliché, but hey) storyline that, with careful execution, could have made for a nice horror flick with more subtle horror compared to all the splatters that are out these days. Instead, we got almost nothing.

This movie left me with so many questions and just kind of a "huh?" feeling - I like when everything isn't answered or when things aren't stated directly on screen - when you have to think a little bit - but this is seriously taking it way, way, WAY too far.

Instead of feeling like the movie set up some expectations and rules and then satisfied these, it just felt...

Inadequate. Very, very inadequate. And confused, and kinda hollow. Terrible disappointment.

In spite of my pretty low rating this is actually one of the movies I've watched pretty often. It has a certain predictability to it that I find kind of funny.

The characters are very stereotypical and have their stereotype behaviors and cliché remarks that most people who have watched just a couple of horror movies can recognise. Combined with acting that wasn't quite that good it makes the persons not quite-so-impressive - except for maybe the police who in spite of their cliché-ness are not quite as incompetent as police usually is in horrors.

The effects of the GAME were actually surprisingly good compared to what I had imagined - especially seeing as the game was actually pretty believable if you don't count the start-incantation. It could be a real game. However, effects that are great in a game aren't really that scary in the movie's reality. Most of the live action and the things that happen there aren't very scary. Direction didn't help it - it wasn't all that great.

One thing that really creeped me out - and I have no idea why - was actually the music. The game music with the intervals of violin-like sounds kinda spooked me, as did the buzzing. On the other hand, that was pretty much ALL that I found creepy.