Reviews

Coming from a huge amount of love for the original series, I am horrified what this show and the runners have done to the legacy of Justified.

The characters are awful. The dialogue is child like. No more wit or intrutige written into the subtext. Everyone is a cartoon.

The show is racist and another example of double standards with anti-white overtones throughout.

The editing is poor and the music is cheap and poorly fits most of the time.

The villain is a joke. There is no real plot or interesting material covered as the episodes roll on like we would have been treated to on the original show.

This is writing by events. And then this. And then that happened. And then this happened. The style of writing that for 2 decades the great show writers have said not to write like this.

I'm not going to even cover the daughter character. A waste of screen time and another example of nepotism affecting movies and shows. Givens character is also lacklustre in this show. The material is very very thin.

3/10 awful experience, slobberered with incoherent plot writing and meandering wokeness.

Look, the story is crap. We just revisit the same thing from the previous installment.

The CGI looks very poor, about 10 years dated in my opinion. The animations on the cats look unnatural. The rendering looks simple and is missing the subsurface scattering of skin, they look like they are just rubber puppets.

The acting/direction is poor. Phoned in performances from all. 20 minutes into this film and I'm dreading the watch. This is worse than the first Avatar film.

In this movie I'm very disappointed in the creativity (there is none). Nothing new in this 3 hours of a waste of time. Just a gimmick about water.

4/10 below average cash grab that looks dated and revisits the same plot as last time.

The intro sequence was poor, lazy exposition dump from a trio of characters that we never see or hear from again. It's like a scrolling title card from a B movie.

After 10 minutes of some stuff with Joel and his kid, we see a zombie. The show is literally a copy and paste of The Walking Dead without anything that I was expecting from a mutated fungus infecting the people of the world. They have depicted everything as just zombies.

Within the first episode there is an inexcusable time skip of 20 years. The show is now disconnected and boring, compared to what I was enjoying with the main guy and his daughter.

The next problem is a bunch of political nonsense and annoying characters take over in the first episode. The worst of all is Ellie, how did this actor get this role? She can't seem to act and it makes the scenes awkward for the others. Another issue for me is the character is shown as an annoying brat and is a hard 180 turn from the daughter character we met earlier.

In my opinion a whole season should have been used for the pandemic spread period, and then next season move time on a bit. The way HBO did it creates a whiplash effect because the time skip content is so poorly written and acted.

4/10 below average writing and presentation that misses the mark set from the source material. In my option worse than Black Summer and The Walking Dead, even with all the flaws I noted on those.

I am that rare someone who genuinely doesn't enjoy the 'Lord of the Rings' Peter Jackson movies, apart from the 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. I have to say I find the 'Ring of Power' series to be a refreshing and solid effort made to bring the rich story and lore alive. Sorry to all the modern fantasy nerds, but Tolkien is king and is and always will be better and more successful than George Martin; Game of Thrones and the books it has come from for me will always be an unfinished and overly complex mess that has flopped. Done on that topic.

Back to LoTR, my issue with the 'Two Towers' and 'Return of the King' movies are that they are too gloomy, with too much filler content with pointless characters, and they basically removed nearly all of the magic from the lore. You have wizards who don't perform any magic. You have too much walking about. Too much fixation on dull 1 dimensional characters like the steward of Gondor. Yawn. It's rather dull and meandering. The conclusion isn't that interesting apart from the ring and Gollum's end. Then a bunch of eagles fly in and save everyone. I really don't like those movies, whereas 'Fellowship' creates some intrigue and has some joy in it.

Anyways next up we had a mixed reception to the Hobbit trilogy of movies, people had felt the thin book was dragged out over three entries and it didn't have enough content to make it work. I disagree, having watched them before I started the 'Rings of Power' series. Just a quick comment here, I loved them. They introduce some magic, a whole host of interesting characters, and a conflict between 5 nations all descending on the lost gold within the mountains. I rate all three movies there higher than 'Two Towers' and 'Return of the King'.

Now then we have arrived at 'The Rings of Power', a beautifully shot and well made show with excellent characters and I love the cast. The music is excellent, truly, where every piece is written for the race of characters, the setting, the mood, the plot that is unfolding. It makes 'House of the dragon' look like an amateurish cash grab (which it is) when they reuse old music from 'Game of Thrones'. Eww.

The imagery is masterfully composed, I can't tell what is CGI, what is a set, and where the blending is happening. I'm very picky on that, so if I'm happy then you can be sure the visuals look seamless. The magic is terrifying and well represented. The characters by costume and visual look the best from any fantasy show/series I have seen. Same with the Orks, they are truly the most grotesque and disgusting I have seen an Ork made to be. They are almost vampyric by visuals and behavior. They burn in the sun, which is linked to the plot and the plan that unfolds.

In the plot, it seems to unfold slowly at first. There are a lot of characters in this series, and I will tell you now the show gets better and better each episode. It is a tightly written and produced show with 8 episodes that cover the creation of Mordor, and is only the tip of the iceberg of what I think they will show us in the coming seasons. The main character is Galadriel, the troubled war veteran who has a dark side. She is a complex Elf character that drives the plot forward by brute force, and there are very interesting twists and turns along the way.

The harfoots are very cute and endearing, and are troubled with the man who fell from the stars. Another excellent plot line that is developed carefully. The plot-line with Isildur is another one I liked a lot, the son of a captain in a hard industrious city. He struggles to find his place, but watching this man become what he is supposed to become is really endearing for me. Sort of like the Luke Skywalker role in 'A new Hope'.

9/10 a beautiful entry in the Silmarillion lore and fits nicely with the Hobbit/LotR movies. In my opinion Amazon has created something that has the potential to surpass them. The show deserves to continue, and I look forward to the next season.

I absolutely fell in love with this movie from the first intro scene with the synthy tones and footage similar to the first film, through to the story development and action, and the high stakes heist style mission and conclusion.

The entire movie is a well thought out and very well delivered action movie with some character development for Maverick and some heartwarming stuff as well as he overcomes some unfinished business lingering from the original movie.

There are some nods and throwbacks to the classic movie, and I admired them all. The romance segments were kept short and neat this time around, giving some growth and redemption for our hero without dulling the sharp storytelling.

After watching I was smiling from ear to ear. Another shout out to the action here, as it is nothing short of spectacular. There is nothing like it, with the air to air combat being of a level not filmed before in my opinion.

9/10 loved the characters, loved the production, loved the action, loved the heist style story, and loved seeing Maverick on his last mission for the navy.

Casting was a disaster it seems, not confident to go with new actors, not bold enough to put money down for great known actors. It's a mixed bag, along with the delivery of lines and the scenes in general come across very flat and uninteresting.

Of course a big part of that is the script which is frankly disappointing, given all the time and learning from the complete unmitigated disaster of the last 2 seasons of 'Game of Thrones', it seems the HBO are part of the problem here and it wasn't just David Benioff and D. B. Weiss who were the issue with the script writing department and plot planning in the previous show.

In this case the desperation was obvious by the title cards, and the marketing stuff, that keep reminding the viewer that this show is ~150 years prior to Daenerys Targaryen. Not prior to the events of GoT., but prior to Dany. Specifically Dany. The character that they screwed up the most in the entire show. So let's go through this for a second, in GoT the Dany plotline was poorly handled, leading to a terrible ending and a waste of a character that annoyed most of the fans (especially the Dany fans).

Why is house of the dragon linked to GoT, and why Dany in particular? I thought it was obvious that people don't want to be reminded of that disaster any more, along with the disappointment of the waste of the other characters such as John (aka an actual true Targarian and heir and king).

But it gets worse. For some reason the show blows its load in the first minute by having a dragon fly around the place with a rider on it. Zoom in and play some of Dany's music from the previous show. Like seriously? Playing Dany's theme tune from another show... in this show, which has nothing to do with her or GoT. Frankly it was not only stupid but insulting to the audience.

I realise now they (HBO) still think they did a good job on the final season of GoT, and that they think the Daenerys character was well written. Mind you, it wasn't even the 'evil' Dany music they reused here, it was the benevolent one. The one they always did to uplift you and tell you how good and great she was. Hah. I get that this story is about a bunch of Targs who are going to fight and kill each other to be King/Queen, so did HBO get that? I don't think they understand what they are even doing here.

So back to the first episode, it is incredibly dull. Lots of boardroom talk, boilerplate speeches and dialogue. No character development, no characters that are relatable or likable. A palette of dull multi-colored faces that have no connection or coherence for the time period or the material at hand. Great for the actors, but with terrible application.

A waste of money to make, they should have remade the final season of GoT into 3+ more seasons and not chosen a poor spin off.

4/10 a boring soap opera for people who really don't like fantasy, and a far cry from season 1 to 4 of 'Game of Thrones'; but not as offensive as the later ones.

'Day of the Dead' was an insufferable mess that was somehow sold as a zombie horror show, and it was terrible; released last year by Syfy. A year later, Netflix makes their attempt at a Resident Evil thing, and squeezed this turd out. They made the cast even younger than the 'Day of the Dead' show, and the story more meandering. I only mention it because they are so similar: aimed at small children? For what should be an 18+ zombie horror series?

Besides all that, I never imagined it possible to make the Resident Evil franchise worse than the last few episodes from the Paul W. S. Anderson series of movies... and yet here we are.

An insufferable and borderline racist cast enter the series, and seemingly have nothing to do with anything from the canon. The average age of the cast is about 14. The plot topics are teenage bullying, and random petulant angst.

The show has some production value dotted in places for the large monsters, but the zombies look worse than that from 'The Walking Dead'. Mostly this comes across as another dangerously written piece of garbage, that serves as a woke exercise in burning money.

2/10 since I gave 'Day of the Dead' 3/10, this is worse. Much worse.

Robert Eggers impressed me with 'The Witch' (2015), and I thought 'The Lighthouse' (2019) was a work of genius; whilst maybe not for all, it was an interesting character study with lots of themes and novel imagery to sink my tired movie fanatic teeth into.

'The Northman' was nothing like these movies, almost as if the company that paid for the production demanded to make it more mainstream; and that's exactly what we got. A derivative movie along the lines of the Vikings TV show (circa the later seasons, not the inspired first season), with a host of poorly cut together low effect production values (acting, music, sound design, costumes).

The plot is some kind of cut & paste job of Hamlet, but it seems something a little off with how the protagonist is suddenly an older man with one mission on his mind: to get revenge on the people who murdered his father and stole his kingdom. What did he do for the last 20 years? Wait a minute, this is the plot of 'Conan the Barbarian' isn't it? With Conan we got the sword and sorcery feeling with lots of stuff packed in, and the main characters looking buff and fit, and pulling you along for the ride. Actually in direct comparison I thought the costume design was awful in this film, and everything just looked wrong and felt cheap. The scenery was OK, but no effect to show you the beautiful unspoiled Scandinavian landscapes.

I was disappointed with the presentation of the protagonist as well, as some sort of wandering hobo; never mind that he gets a job working in the King's own keep having direct access to simply exact his revenge. Seems a bit thin right? How did this get dragged out to 2 hours 17 minutes? I have no idea, but it might have something to do with the wafer thin love interest character they shoehorned into the picture with the mystery and deftness of a sledgehammer to the face. I get it, Anya Taylor-Joy looks kinda pretty; you wanted to plaster her face onto the front cover. At least write some depth into the character and make it a bit more interesting and tied to the plot somehow?

Other notes, some scenes were included involving hocus-pocus stuff, nothing really interesting or linked to the main story though. Just something for Eggers to flex a little but these scenes to me came across as art student grade, and nothing really interesting enough that had an impact on the plot (compared to the Lighthouse, for example). The sound design was actually very sub par, especially the music of this film. The ambiance is very flat, including dry hum-singing by Nicole Kidman like it's supposed to be interesting or evocative or something, but it just doesn't work for me. The music was so generic it was a let down.

On another point, Nicole Kidman looks like Odo from deep space nine at this point, and offers the worst performance I have ever seen from her. Part of the issue is the ever changing accents of the cast, sounding like from all over Europe, even by the same actors the accents change over the runtime. It would have been easier to go the route of just acting in American-English since nearly all of the actors are Hollywood bred, or be a little more interesting and go with an all out Norwegian cast or something like that with authentic actors.

This film really was a drag overall, and the marketing was particularly grating. Having been jammed down my throat that it is "scary" or fits into the "horror" genre. Please what on earth are you people talking about, this is as horror-esque as The Wizard of Oz (I'd wager less so since that movie had some creepy themes such as mind control, dual personalities, memory programming, creepy witches, dystopian oligarch hierarchy, and other weird crap).

5/10 an average, overrated, over marketed failure that seems to have corrupted Eggers with mainstream Hollywood money. Forgettable movie and a massive missed opportunity. I'd rather watch Conan the Barbarian again.

This film retcons the entire trilogy whilst stealing scenes from the first film and mashing it with an agonizing and tedious 'story'. This is a disaster and I have no idea how this was green lit.

The two Matrix sequels were a mess, but at least had the original characters and some new and weird characters to latch onto for the run time. In the end they were seen as failures in the continuation of the original but some of the action made up for it.

In this movie we have a rehash and redressing of some characters with some incredibly dull dialogue. The take away is this movie was a messy and rushed cash grab with absolutely no redeeming qualities apart from a few scenes here and there.

2/10 I hated everything about this movie and these people who made it should be ashamed of themselves. I'm sure they will follow the modern tone deaf trend for their box office failures and blame everyone under the sun other than pointing the finger at themselves.

Terrible show, I was bored to tears. I failed to understand what kind of show this was. It's not a zombie survival horror, that is for sure.

I've noticed a pattern where people say to watch a new show passed the first episode; so I was thinking is this something connected to the old style 'pilot' episode format on how shows were made decades ago? Are we still doing that? Is that why the first episode of new shows are so bad, because of poor ideas/budget/constraints? If so, then I have an easy suggestion for publishers, networks, and show runners: MAKE AN EFFORT.

Seriously, re shoot, re cut, do whatever it takes to make your first episode the best it can be. You got your show green-lit, you got the budget. Make an effort and fix your pilot. My strategy would be fix it after shooting the rest of the season; then take what you learned and make episode one light a fire under everyone's ass. If you don't get me by episode 1, I probably won't use my time to continue watching. That is the reality here.

A good show has a FIRE first episode, and penultimate episode; with the season finale wrapping everything up and setting up small parts of the following season (or future ideas). That is the cash money setup of successful shows. If the show has a long episode count format, then give a good uplift and effort in the middle part of the season as well; the rest falls in to place.

3/10 very poor series.

They took the interesting idea from the 1995 movie, and made it better.

The characters are first and foremost the main reason why this is enjoyable and why the film works as a jungle adventure. The four teens are taken out of their world and dropped into the Jungle as recreated in the form of a video game simulation. The Jumanji game box updated itself, presumably with the same magic that allows it to create a world of its own.

The actors did a lot here to play as the 'game' characters as if played by the younger cast. The nesting of characters inside characters was very clever and allows some real exploration of the young characters and the predicaments of being stuck in the game.

The visuals are excellent, the action is paced out well and the plot is unravelled as a simple action adventure, but with the character work between everything it is very entertaining. Also very funny, a lot of the material is delivered excellently and this had a lot of very funny moments.

I can't speak to the older film, it was one I watched as a kid. Anyway, this is a clever rework of the material and I think they did an excellent job. Something that a lot of modern movies lack is 'soul', but I have to say this film has it in spades. The ending was moving.

8/10 excellent escapism in the style of classic adventure such as 'Indiana Jones' but set with some interesting concepts and twists with modern technology.

The concept is a mashup of 'Atlantis: The Lost Empire' and 'Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle', The former being a Disney animation, the latter an excellent reimagining by Columbia (Sony) of the old Jumanji movie.

So we get very poor action sequences that don't fit the characters. The plot is wafer thin, and padded with so much pointless action it is exhausting. The use 7 cuts minimum to convey a simple scene, sometimes more than 20. It is horrid, like how Wes Anderson does his films now.

The jokes do not land, at all. The writing is very poor and they can't make any of the material work. The pacing is rapid fire and the scenes that should be held on to are sped up.

The visuals are the worst part of the entire piece, the background looks like poor quality CGI with the characters and foreground stuck on in the cheapest way possible; the same issue they had with 'The Witches'. The Colours and illumination never match up. Neither do the camera angles. Everything is nauseating and ugly. I haven't felt this nauseated since 'Cats' from 2019.

Disney sank lower than last year's awful and disgraceful 'Mulan' movie remake. And that says a lot because I hated how that turned out, as did anyone with a functioning brain.

Disney has absolutely no idea anymore how to make a movie, let alone write a script; they even lost the technical competency to produce or direct a movie any more. They seem to not know how to do the basic tasks to produce a sequence of scenes that don't look like a disjointed mess.

2/10 the worst film I've seen this year, and one of the worst pieces of crap I have ever watched (I gave Mulan last year a 3/10 for much the same issues and they somehow made a worse film.)

I love this show, I watched it several times through and through and you get a lot of value because of the high episode count per season as well as the mind boggling 15 seasons run.

This show has a lot of style and makes a case for itself by focusing on horror, as well as the interwoven character play form the main ensemble who get more and more wrapped up into a bigger story each season that follows.

There are a few issues, such as the pretty poor seasons 6 and seasons 12, which I am struggling to enjoy. However even in those seasons which I don't admire so much, there is progression in the characters, there are loads of fond 'monster of the week' style episodes (more on that later), and there is a plot that continues from the season before it, to the season afterwards.

The original book series had enough material for the first 5 seasons of this show. That's how it was planned out and made. Because of high demand, they continued the show. Purely for love of the cast, love of the themes in the series, and love of the audience. That is great, because for me this show is very entertaining with a mixture of witty humour, clever dialogue. Interesting monsters, and a demonic / Lucifer fallen angel plotline running throughout the entire thing.

The high episode count per season means there are a lot of monster episodes, which are more closed off to the main plot of each season, but are written well enough to lampshade as to why and seamlessly fit alongside the other episodes. These are not filler, but more a breathing room to let the story simmer while we get more horror/ghost stories/supernatural lore and backstory. This is one of those that has done this very well, barring maybe 3 episodes that the viewers hated and rated very low. Aside from those, the entire run has an impressive following and is well received (I'll get to the final episode in a minute). There isn't a single other show that has an impressive episode count with such high quality cinematography, settings, choreography, that this show has.

The acting is consistently very good in this show, only a few times I might have had a second thought; but particularly all the difficult work was handled expertly and they did a very good job convincing me to suspend my disbelief with all the supernatural elements in the show. My favourite characters being Dean, Bobby, Castiel, Charlie, Garth, The Trickster (Gabriel), Lucifer, and Jack, and Jo (from the early seasons). And even beyond that a large number of supporting characters were excellent and original and enjoyable as well. So many stories, and plots in 15 seasons, that I just want to watch the whole thing all over again.

The tonal shift after season 5 was a tad odd, but the show runner and writers need to create new material out of nothing. The new stuff they added over the seasons 6 to 10 were brilliant and staggering in scale. They did well there. Season 7 is one of my guilty pleasures, though maybe a little different to the rest of the run. Seasons 11 to 15 go even more nuts with the grand plot, and wrap in some complex character work with the 'Chuck' character. Seasons 11 to 12 try a little too hard to make the show a bit more action style, and I'm glad they dialled this back. In my opinion the final 3 seasons, of 13, 14, and 15, are excellent and some of the best in the entire run. The development of the Jack character is one of the best I have ever seen in a show and takes 3 seasons to bloom. The final season wraps up all the new plot lines and ends very well, with the penultimate episode.

The final episode is written more as a goodbye to the fans, and is a little disconnected from the rest, but the final farewell was touching and emotional. I was unsure about this at first, but really this was the only way the show was going to end, but I wish they upped the quality of the vampire hunt in the last episode, it came across as a bit limp and throw-away.

10/10 because of how enjoyable it is, how self aware and humble it is. A few poorer written episodes here and there (usually hand held camera style), and the removal of Crowley from the show in season 12 was a big fail idea (Mark Shepard stated he would have loved to continue the run). So it loses a few marks here and there, might be almost a 9/10, but otherwise this show is my guilty pleasure and I love the entire cast and the production team who made this, and made it good enough for so many years.

For me this hurts a lot to write, since 'The Sopranos' is my favorite show and something that I highly regard in terms of filmmaking, writing, and acting. I've seen the entire run maybe 10 times. I was excited when I heard this movie was in production.

So how does it fare, in two words: It's terrible.

Let's expand a little, some of the good parts. The casting is strong of many of the characters (but a let down for many others). The little winks and nods to the younger versions of characters we love and know are fun. The costumes and sets are great, and some of the period music too. The movie starts in the 60's and then skips forward.

That's it, I'm sad to say; the rest is negative. The starting period feels like it is both too long in screen time, and then the time skip puts it all to waste. The 60's period is half filled with black people rioting and stealing crap, burning the city to the ground. The characters get one or two lines each, apart from Dicky (of the movie title) and his father.

This plot closes out quickly and we see Tony Soprano's father get sentenced to jail time (they show a re-shot scene of the funfair arrest from the series); they didn't show the reasons and build up to why. This is also counter to the story in the show which shows Soprano coming home before the dinner was cold (i.e. No arrest). So this is mind boggling what kind of writing error this is and retcons the plot???

We have some unknown black characters that take up a lot of screen time and have nothing to do with anything, I'm imagining this film was made to boot-strap a 5 part show on HBO about black gangs except without the subtlety and care to attention from 'The Wire', and make everything about race; I think I'll pass. What is worse is now the Italian mafia are now politically correct and aware of 2020's style racial politics. Black people freely walk into the headquarters of the Newark mafia above the pork store, fist bumping and hugging the Italian mobsters (they would have been violently racist and probably at least pulled their guns out on sight).

This is as absurd as Electronic Arts making half the soldiers in their latest World War 2 first person shooter game from men into women. This is insulting to those who fought and lost their lives to fight the Nazis for our freedom. However in this movie, we have to sacrifice the characters for the sake of wokeness and PC nonsense that has nothing to do with a period drama. The believability of the characters goes out of the window.

In Sopranos terms, with would be like taking the entire 'gay' plotline from Vito and deleting it because showing him being ostracised, and running/hiding, and later tortured and killed for being gay as 'too offensive'. Then instead, have him profess his love for Sil so they have a gay love affair; both divorse their wives; and then get married to each other with the blessings of Tony Soprano. The absurdity of this is self-evident if you know the characters. Fiction is a story told through the prism of the characters, not from political viewpoints of the publisher/network. Well if they didn't show the story how they did, we would have no idea how horrid it was in the Sopranos world; would we? Censoring plotlines, and muddying up the presentation does not make it better; it just makes it woke style virtue signalling, and factually incorrect, and breaks the delicate suspension of disbelief.

Next up in my complaints; the time skip introduces nothing interesting. Some black people doing terrible poetry; Dicky was around the Soprano house while everyone waits for Johnny to come back from jail. More new black characters enter the film, no idea who they are and what this has to do with 'The Sopranos', a series about the Italian mafia.

Some more irrelevant stuff happens, like teenage Tony Soprano stealing things. Goofing around. It's all very mundane. Can't say much about Michael Gandolfini, they didn't give him many lines; and half of the time when he does talk they edit so much gaudy music around it you can't hardly hear him say anything at all.

One or two facts about Dicky make it out in the film, not very interesting really and not worth the wait. Especially since they sacrifice the integrity and memory of the series for it. Some other events happen such as the death of some important characters.

The best segment of the movie is the Tony played by the young Galdolfini, guidance counselor and mother scenes in the school. This had shades of 'The Sopranos' in it. And here is the issue. The rest of the move is garbage with bad characters and no plot. BLM style stuff won't cut it for a gangster movie. So this is a missed opportunity where they should have based the entire piece around the teenage Tony Soprano, with the mafia world swallowing him into it, and taking us through all the influences to him via the characters we didn't see in the show (as well as the younger versions of those we know). With more screen time and a focussed story, I feel that Michael Gandolfini would be a breakaway star from this film. The plot about Dicky and the guy who plays him are very poor, but that's what we got.

2/10 a disastrous watch for a 'Sopranos' fan; for anyone else who never cared for it, this might be a 1/10 as an irrelevant film about no period or group of people specifically, presented in an OK visual style but no story whatsoever.

The worst editing in any movie that I have ever seen in my life. I guess there is value for that, as a learning tool for students of film making.

This movie as the final part of the series is the worst of them all, and such a far cry from the humble beginnings of 'Resident Evil' from 2002.

3/10 worst of the RE series of films.

M. Night Shyamalan released a movie in 2008, titled 'The Happening'.

In his story an invisible force, characterized as the wind moving over plant life, is breathed in by people and they go crazy and suicidal. The movie focuses on some key points that are interesting. Is there a pattern for who is susceptible to the forces, and what can you do about it. The former is hinted at by the introduction of colors and the link to moods, the implication seems to be the type of person you are, morally perhaps, is an indicator of how you will fare in the death wind. The latter is left unanswered, as a warning really, that you can't mess with nature. In this piece of science fiction, nature created a way to cull the human population down, read into why as you want.

Now then, 'Bird Box' is essentially the same; save a few points which are interesting maybe. The death wind pollon is replaced by some creatures of some kind, one character claims they could be demons. It will never be confirmed in the run time, but the indication that you 'see' the creature and then you go crazy and kill yourself.

The second novel aspect is the split timeline, at first from a later point in the disaster (I'll call this after); then as flash backs at the precipice of the calamity (I'll call this before). The after pieces are awful, simply put. This point in the timeline is years past the onset of the creatures. The case here is weak, the walk around the wilderness is lame.

The before point in the timeline is the better part in my opinion; more akin to 'The Happening' and shows the interesting parts of a story such as this. Which is clearly, the struggle to find out what is going on, and then the observational study of how people would cope with a novel black swan event that is killing most of the world. So the clash of the timelines is what makes this film not work. The journey of the group is far more interesting than the aftermath.

Now then, why does 'The Happening' sit at as an average film with a rating of 5/10 and this is above average with 6.6/10. Is marketing? Is there something that works better here? I could be the group of characters works better than just two characters and a kid like in the happening. And yet half of this film is almost the same setup, with Sandra and two kinds who are blindfolded in the wilds. On contrast, the casting in 'The Happening' was very poor.

The story takes a lot from Darabont's 'The Mist', which is the same kind of horror movie though one that I think is very well-made and at the top of the pile for survival horror.

5/10 an average production with some interesting things but the afterwards timeline is very poorly written and nonsensical. I gave 'The Happening' a 6/10 as above average for the originality but it had a lot of shortcomings.

The plot is less complex than 'Escape From New York' but stuffed with so much random filler. Everything else is even worse from the acting to the visuals; leaving you with a confusing and insulting mess.

3/10 an insult to Japanese culture.

Reminds me a lot of 'Trick 'r Treat', with a clever interwoven set of smaller stories.

The cinematography is great, really hands down well done on that. The acting was convincing and I liked some of the costumes. The audio presentation and music were also excellent, nothing over the top but very fitting and an excellent sound track. There are some jokes too, I found this funny at times.

Some tales at the start are classic horror/slasher but as the film plays out more and more of it starts to get strange and had me stumped trying to predict where it was going. This film has some clever writing in that regard.

7/10 enjoyable watch with lots of excellent visuals and some throw backs to classic horror.

Movie is about someone who can count cards at blackjack, and then spends the length of the film playing poker.

Too many scenes with loud and garish 'metal' music; too noisy and does not fit the slow burn film making.

Other misgivings include some quite boring visuals, nothing special at any point in the film. The acting is adequate but nothing special.

The plot is as dry as my wife's burnt pancake mix accidentally left in the waffle iron for 30 minutes.

Final complaint, like most productions from 2020 onward, this entire movie is plastered with a disgusting filter that somehow makes US casino's look dull, dark and dingy. I hate this fake dull/dark coloring crap that has just plagued cinema now.

4/10 The movie is dull.

I like this one, and I'm glad Shyamalan is still at it.

The story is written as a horror, and I like that. In a lot of moments we felt the dread that the script was building up to. The mini reveals along the way are clever and push the enigma along.

The story revelation at the end was very welcomed to alleviate some of the dread, in a classic Shyamalan way.

The other reviews complaining about this movie are a bit weak and overly harsh in my opinion. Sure some acting was a little off here and there, but the spectacle of the cast aging and other story events make up for it.

8/10 a well made film, visually speaking, with some good story points and great execution.

I'm fed up with modem shows looking like a brown/grey visually blurry mess, with garbage post-processing filters plastered over the image making everything look super dark and super bright. Do these directors and visual directors even know how illumination and colour works in the real world?

The acting is over done, the drama is pathetic. Oh look everyone is a miserable and a disgusting wretch, does that make it enjoyable to watch. No it does not.

On top of the pathetic visuals, the characters mutter and swear curses every second sentence. Personally, I'm fed up with the amount of swearing and God/Jesus related cusses and other foul pathetic language written by the completely mentally devoid script writers of hollywood.

What on earth has happened to HBO. I just did a rewatch of the excellent 'Chernobyl' and it was masterfully made, and script wise was perfect.

I've had enough of this utter ugly dross and I won't stand and witness it any more without stating my opinion on it.

1/10 miserable garbage, try again and cut out the filters, the foul language, the disgusting grey/brown visuals, and the miserable over-dramatic story writing.

Amongst a lot of really poor movies of late, this one sort of stands out by default. The cinematography is very beautiful, save for some segments which are almost completely pitch black. The camerawork is very well done and there is no shaky cam garbage in this film, thankfully.

The music is excellent and accompanies the visuals very well. The acting gets the job done though nothing breathtaking.

It is a tale of fear, I imagine, and other things interwoven into the subtext. But I think it merits more watches to figure out what this movie is really about.

It is a long film, and some will find it slow. However this is something to be enjoyed; it has some creepy parts, some ghosts, some magic and some witchcraft, though not too much action in this one. There are some twists in this one, so make sure to watch it all the way to the end; or don't bother at all.

7/10 an interesting take on an old poem; worth a watch.

The first movie was well shot and had a new take on the monster survival genre. I didn't think it was the best movie out there, but it was fresh with good acting (considering the child actors).

In the second offering it feels like a rush job. The decision to show some 'before the end of the world' scenes was alright, but a wasted opportunity. One day the monsters just appeared. Nothing interesting made of the reveal. Then we fast forward back to where we left off from the first film.

Backtrack some old footage from the first film, and then move on like it this movie is a TV series or something. Was a little boring at this stage. The introduction of some new characters was a good idea, but they were flat and uninteresting and added nothing to the story.

Nothing, it seems, was new or developed. Just the existing knowledge from the first film on how to mess up the creatures to get an advantage on them.

More could have been done to this story, I was underwhelmed.

5/10 Average movie, way less interesting and unique than the first. Adds nothing new.