I've been busy...
Deadly Blessings <---Helpful link to full thoughts
After her husband's untimely and mysterious death, a woman and her friends encounter a lot of strange incidences that may or may not be involved with the creepy religious sect down the street.
This is one of Wes Craven's earlier directorial works, and also stars Ernest Borgnine and Sharon Stone, in her first major film appearance. It's...alright. The acting is fine, the movie looks good, and you can tell that Wes got a couple of good ideas that he repurposed for later projects. It's a bit of a slow-burn, with a lot of time spent watching the ladies sitting around
fretting, but everything manages to come together at the end. Or at least it does until the last couple minutes when they add on that bonkers ending that almost sours the whole thing. Oh well. Still a decent watch.
Intruder <---Helpful link to full thoughts
The workers at a grocery store are going through the process of closing up and re-stocking for the night. But instead of quiet monotony, they slowly end up stalked and killed by a mysterious killer.
Okay, this one was much better. It's a pretty standard slasher, but it's well put together, with increasingly bloody kills, and a nice sense of style that includes some very creative camera angles. The only downside is that it's not very mysterious and most of the male characters have interchangeable personalities and are all wearing flannel shirts, so good luck telling them apart from one another. But it's still plenty fun and a little silly in places. So if you like slashers *thumbs up*
Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Gruesome deaths are occurring around the city and it's up to one detective to figure out the motive for the killings.....which he soon comes to realize may or may not be connected to him.
So last year I watched all of the Saw movies, so I figured I may as well continue with the rest of them. This one is technically a stand-alone, but it still follows the same general pattern as the others, just from more of a police investigative angle. Gory deaths, investigation, more gory deaths, "twist" ending, and then it sort of ends on a cliffhanger. Tomato, tomatoe. The only real difference is there is no Jigsaw here, it stars Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, and it's really easy to guess the "twist". It's well done and all, but it's really just more of the same.
It's Alive
A man takes his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby, but what comes out of her ends up being a monster that kills most of the delivery staff before running (crawling?) off. The man then makes it his job to track down his offspring and destroy it.
An old classic that I hadn't seen yet. It has a lot of good, creepy moments, but I was a little surprised how cheesy much of it was, and I'm not just talking about the creepy, mutated baby.
That was surprisingly handled very carefully. But a lot of the dialogue was cringey as hell, and I was surprised how quickly everyone not only jumped on the "well, I guess we have to kill it" bandwagon, but just how blasé everyone was about it. I mean, I get that there was a reason for that, but the fact that they never even offered another option just made their point feel a little forced. Fun movie though, just...odder than I expected.
Disappear Completely
A sleazy tabloid photographer who specializes in taking photos of victims death scenes, stumbles upon much more than he bargained for when he sneaks into the home of a dying senator and unknowingly takes a photo of something he wasn't meant to see. As he slowly starts loosing each of his five senses, he begrudgingly realizes that he's been cursed, but no matter how hard he tries, all of his efforts to combat it may be in vain.
This one was surprisingly good. It's a Spanish horror/thriller from 2022 that I had never heard about. It's a bit of a slow-burn that slowly builds and builds until the end, when the main character has to make a very important decision. Looks good, sounds good, nice atmosphere, very well acted....just all around very well done. Definitely recommended, unless you're looking for a lot more action in your move.
Streaming on Netflix
The Open House
After a family tragedy, a boy and his mother move to the remote lake house that their aunt is trying to sell, in order to get away for a bit. But as strange things start happening around the house, it becomes more and more evident that someone may have snuck past the realtors and is now hiding out in the house, slowly tormenting the two of them.
Aaaaaaand we go from a good Netflix movie to a
bad Netflix movie. This is the type of movie that you finish watching and immediately wish you could get the last 90 minutes of your life back. To be fair though, it has a good concept, looks good, and has some fairly good acting. But they completely bork all their goodwill in the last 20-25 minutes with a crap-tastic ending. Which is a bummer, because it does start off very good by building up the tension and stringing along some interesting plot threads. But then it's like they either had
NO idea how to connect those threads, or they suddenly ran out of money and were forced to end production, because NONE of those thread pay off. At all. I mean, they go NOWHERE. And it's not even like it was one big thing they forgot about. No. It was a bunch of stupid little things that they imply will somehow be important, and then just drop without ever addressing. It's honestly infuriating. For example, they make a big deal about this broken step in the basement. You see the kid break it, you see the camera linger on it's pointy-ness several times during the movie, and so you totally expect someone is going to trip or fall through that thing eventually but...Nope. Nadda. Nothing. They literally spent several minutes worth of screentime focusing on it, only for it to be absolutely meaningless. And that, dear friends, is basically the whole movie in a nutshell. Lots of focus on things that you
think are going to be relevant, only for the movie to forget about them. And of course it doesn't help that climax itself sucks, with several points of it making absolutely no sense. So the story bites, and you should just save yourself the time and skip this one.
Streaming on Netflix...you've been warned.
