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sbcjester21
Reviews
Sever (2018)
Pull the Cord on this braindead movie.
Shut up Martha! (repeat 8 more times)
Oh god where do I start? This movie was pure incompetence from beginning to end. I feel bad for the legitimate actors who were performing their asses off, only be be hamstrung by some of the worst writing, worst acting and worst secondary casting I've seen in quite some time.
Let's look at the very beginning. The opening title credits were over 5 minutes long, with absolutely nothing happening. The movie's initial name of "Bone Deep" was obviously changed because someone really likes Se7en and wanted to interject the look and feel into the opening.
The opening scene of Martha's escape was also clearly the director's attempt to steal the look and feel of Terminator 2's escape scene of Sarah Conner. It might have worked had they spent some time working on the fight scenes. And would some practical blood effects hurt? They had the perfect spot to have done it in the sink, and instead went with some very bad CG instead. Someone must've just learnt how to use After Effects and just had to use it.
From there we meet Mindy and "Cord". While Maia Kavchak is very pretty and a serviceable actress, the stiff they rolled in to play her husband wouldn't be convincing as a corpse on the Walking Dead. This guy has less range than a hobbit with down syndrome.
From there this movie is just a plodding exercise in how not to make a movie. The plot, such as it was, was convoluted and pointless. While the acting of the two female leads was inspired, the absolutely horrendous "acting" of everyone else made this almost unwatchable. While the camera work was actually pretty decent, the SFX really dragged it down. Worse was the editing. Done by the director, it was as bad as his acting. Every transition scene carries on far too long. Perhaps he was trying to hit 90m and could only do it by repeating every shot 3 times in a row. And his "acting"... He gives "Cord" a run for his money on who the worst actor of this film is. Thankfully he didn't give himself a lot of lines, but he repeats all of them 9 times each! Shut up Martha! Shut up Martha! Shut up Martha. Don't listen to her Mindy. Shut up Martha!
The ending, when this film mercifully finally put us out of our misery, was as uninspired as the rest of the movie. No twist. Nothing dramatic. I think even the actors were glad they could finally stop coming to set. The after-credits teaser was completely pointless. It literally added nothing to the movie except about 90 seconds of run-time.
I've spent far more time writing this review than you should spend watching this movie.
If for some reason you really hate yourself and watch this anyway. Bring a 12-pack. Maybe you'll get lucky and pass out halfway through.
Spermicide (2014)
The IMDb user rating is highly misleading.
This is obviously a low budget "Hollywood" film. I assume it's probably independent. As a filmmaker myself, there are clear flaws with the movie, mostly in the sound production. However, I think they can be mostly overlooked by the general audience. The acting isn't the greatest and a bit over the top in places, clearly for comedic purposes. The dialog is clunky at times and there were opportunities missed for more hilarious moments. The plot was somewhat predictable but the story isn't particularly complicated. All that said, it was a surprisingly entertaining movie that I found accidentally. It is a diamond in the rough and well worth the time to watch if you're interested in a quality non-mainstream movie. The two leads wrote and directed the movie and they have good chemistry together. It's a shame they haven't done anything else more recently. I would recommend this movie to anyone with a quirky or dark sense of humor and those who enjoy movies that aren't intended for the masses who throw money at crap like Transformers. This is not a turn-off-your-brain popcorn movie. It's well worth the 90 minutes spent watching it.