Movie Review – Page 128

American Poltergeist 2

So here we are. Another American poltergeist movie. Let me start out by saying the concept behind this one is not as good as the 1st one which weirdly came out after this one. Yes, poltergeist 2 was actually released prior to 1 and the movies are in no way connected. It was also called The Poltergeist of Borley Forest. Tho knowing all this does explain why the video work and acting seems to be done by a bunch of students, I would like to think no professional would change the name of their movie after release and make it seem like a Sequal to a movie that released a few years afterwards. All that being said the story of a spirit following a teenage girl home after she walks under a noose in a haunted forest at a keg party is rather interesting and the movie itself is not bad. If you don’t mind what appears to be an indy film under bad management definitely check it out. Thanks for your time and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

From The Dark (2014l

Every so often picking horror movies off Netflix completely and utterly bites me on the ass and I stumble across a movie so bad I feel like it will never end. This is one of those god forsaken movies I never should have watched. A couple on a trip in the middle of nowhere in the country of Ireland gets stuck in some mud and attempts to find help. What they find is an old country home with a man in need of help. Now everything about this has potential,especially if you happen to enjoy Irish lore and scenery. Sadly what it ends up being is a badly shot movie that some parts are so dark you can’t really see whats going on, even if it was just someone washing their hands. The acting itself feels stiff and the creature hunting them all night is not at all believable as a creature and seems to simply be some guy that’s a bit crazy. I truly can not recommend anyone watch this movie. Thanks for reading and may the gaming gods guide you to glory.

Viral (2016)

So i picked this movie randomly off Netflix, like I do most of my horror movies. For once I have to say this worked out in my favor. The story goes like this. A family has just moved to town, dad is a biology teacher at the local school his daughters attend as usual. Mom is out of town for whatever work related reason and as you already knew I am sure, one sister is more party hard than the other and one is the typical girl next door that happens to have a crush on the boy across the street.

As usual in these movies the typical high school things happen that leads to a best friend being dead at the hands of whatever is killing everyone, this time its parasitic worms that have suddenly started turning people into what can only be described as mindless drones to feed the before mentioned worms.

Despite all the usual suspects and cliches in the movie it was actually very well done. The pacing and acting were both done fairly great , the sounds were right where they should have been and the visuals were down right creepy and wiggly at times. My biggest issue with the movie is the cliffhanger ending with no real reason to suspect a follow up. As always thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Alien Abduction

alien abduction

Honestly I was not sold on another footage movie with a shaky camera and some annoying family. But anyway, here I am, watching another one staring Katherine Sigismund,Corey Eid and Ripley Polanski and directed by Matty Beckerman. The movie starts off with a family camping in North Carolina in some mountains known to be home to a bunch of extraterrestrial activity that runs the gambit from weird lights to strange creature sightings and of course rumors of alien abductions. The visuals aren’t as bad as one would think they would be for a movie mostly made up of home movie footage as its happening. It was also pretty nice touch that is done from the sons perspective that many times someone has to remind him to stop filming things, for example a dead animal found the morning of the second day. I didn’t find the movie to be the most interesting thing in the world, but it did a pretty good job at being both creepy and entertaining which honestly is all i ask from a movie. It had its flaws, mostly the same one all these movies have with flickering cameras and being overly dark. They aren’t hard to look passed tho and its absolutely not the worst film in the genre. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Diabolical 2015

The Diabolical

The Diabolical stars Ali Larter, Arjun Gupta and Max Rose, directed by Alistair Legrand is a movie about a widowed mother attempting to protect her children from strange things in her home. Yes, I am well aware that this seems to be a pretty standard movie plot. However, i’m not going to bash this movie for it. This movie actually reminded me that while many stories are done to death brought back to life and beaten to death again, sometimes that story is done well. The movie doesn’t spend a ton of time setting up and gets right into the meat and bones of the story which is a nice change of pace and has plenty of good but not blatant foreshadowing to to the multiple twist at the end, some veteran movie buffs will see coming a mile away, but even at that it is very well done.

The visuals are pretty nice as well, nothing overly gory but enough to get the message across while keeping the story itself realistic while the sound helps paint a nice picture of the struggle this family is facing. The troubled young boy still coping with the loss of his father and the creepy little sister he is over protective of while as cliche a you can get re both well played. Now I admit my first thought here was great, another kid with psychic powers or accidentally conjuring ghost. I found myself at time questioning if this was even what was going on and by the end of the movie there is a clear picture of what is going on and I would be more than happy to say its worth checking out. Thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Preacher Six Preview

preacher six

Full disclosure/disclaimer, Savior Gaming is in no way shape or form affiliated with this movie or anyone on their staff. Everything within is strictly my opinion that was not asked for and I am receiving no money or other compensation from its creators…Unless they want to hook me up with some free swag,a hoodie or shirt would be sweet.

Now that this formality is out of the way, here is a quick trailer I found on their website which i will post a link to under the video.

http://www.preachersix.com/

Now it is story time. Probably about a year ago, when Savior Gaming was nothing but a dream of a guy that enjoyed the occasional stream on Twitch with friends, I made the Savior Gaming twitter page. Not long after I was followed by a man named Kyle Hester who for some reason looked familiar. So I checked out his page saw he was an actor and followed him back. Now as many of you know I always thank my followers for following me, and Mr. Hester was no exception, but to my surprise he replied basically saying hey thanks. Never really tried to sell me on his project that I only learned about later. Eventually the movies twitter page followed me and it seemed pretty cool so I checked the movie out and discovered something amazing. This group has thrown their heart and soul into this project and is very responsive to their fans and followers. Now I don’t expect anyone besides me to remember this and I doubt many will care, but its still an interesting fact.

With all that being said Preacher Six seems to be exactly what it sounds like. A horror movie involving a holy man fighting evil, 6 bullets at a time.

Preacher six-2

One last thing before I go, this movie seems to be the epitome of a crowdfunded with a lot of people from a lot of places donating what they can or just spreading the word so please, if you have the means support their efforts, I have placed the link for that below.

https://www.gofundme.com/preachersixarkansasshoot

As always thank you for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star wars: Rogue One

I did not go into watching Rogue One: a Star Wars Story with the enthusiasm I’ve seen countless others go into with; I couldn’t help but think “I already know how this is going to end? What’s the point of seeing a two hour movie about something I was perfectly content with knowing in a sentence of exposition from the Original Star Wars movie?” Seriously, I never wondered how the rebels got the plans for the Death Star, I just knew they got them and the people who got them died doing it…but we live in that kind of world anymore. No more mystery, every little thing has to be delved into and exploited…I’m sorry, it’s a sore topic but kind of relevant in that, while not a terrible movie, it isn’t great either.

The story begins with our heroine, Jyn Erso as a little girl hiding out with her family from the clutches of the Galactic Empire. Jyn’s father, Galen, is one of the Empire’s greatest scientific minds in charge of developing the infamous super weapon : the Death Star. Her mother is murdered by the main villain (sorry guys, you get less Vader in this than Joker in Suicide Squad), her father taken by the Empire, and she’s brought up by a man named Sol, a guerrilla leader fighting his own war against the Empire…Ok, here’s where I cut the bullshit and maybe hurt some feelings: With the exception of K2SO, I didn’t really have a complete connection to any character in this film. Our main protagonists, Jyn and Cassian, were passable. Many of there companions had cool traits or even the beginnings of a cool story behind them but I can’t tell you there names. For our main villain, couldn’t tell you his name, just that I wish Vader finished his ass off on the landing platform. Speaking of characters while we’re at it, they have a lot of CGI restorations of actors in there youth or plain old not with us anymore. Moments of there rendering are fine but in the case of some of Tarkin’s dialogue or Princess Leia’s reveal, the skin looks kind of like plastic, which is a bit jarring. For positive’s, the action scenes are pretty damn sweet. The final 20 minutes are the best finale I’ve seen to a movie in a little while and are on par with Avengers-level awesome to behold. The moment that steals the show is Darth Vader’s three minute rebel massacre; if the prequels tarnished your image of Vader’s cold, angry, fearsome exterior, this scene will bring it all back to his rightful place. Overall, Rogue One is overrated as hell but worth a redbox rent; just Youtube the Vader finale and tell me that isn’t jaw-droppingly bad ass.

Twilight

Once upon a time, Torsten V was a 18 year old emo kid who actually found Twilight a fascinating book with a cool story and decent characters. Back then, I only had read a couple books on my own and I was in a bad place in life and, OK, the excuses are piling up on me, aren’t they? Well, Torsten V grew up, read more books, and learned the truth about Twilight- it sucks. Twilight is the story of boring ass Bella Swan who moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad. Forks is a small, rainy, boring town. She goes to school and there she sees the Cullens for the first time, a group of overly pretty, rich, pasty kids that are adopted siblings of the town’s Dr. She has Bio with Edward Cullen, a dude that looks at her like she hasn’t showered in week and hauls ass away from her the second the bell rings. Two days later, he talks to her and seems interested in her ordinary life. Couple days later she’s almost crushed by a skidding van (if only that’s how it woulda ended.) In a flash Edward appears and shoves the van back with ease, denting the side of it with his bare hand, disappearing into the distance again. Through her own personal investigation, Bella discovers Edward is a vampire, and how could she be safe with him- oh I forgot to mention it’s a love story.

Ok, I’m not going to 100% crap on the book. Yes- the characters are meh at best. Yes- the villain really has no meaning to the overall narrative and is more tacked on than Rhino at the end of Amazing Spider-man 2. Yes- Bella is a shallow character with no real past and willing to hurt her poor dad for a guy she met like a month prior. And YES- these novels are not particularly well written; no where 50 shades bad though. I will say the first person perspective is done believably; Bella is written to be a 17 year old girl of average intelligence, and that I can believe unlike other stories I’ve read in this perspective where the speaker and the character don’t match ( I once read a book told through the voice of a middle school drop out who reasoned shit and spoke like the bastard had a Phd. That kind of bullshit.) And debatable as it is, some of the vampire lore is interesting. I actually think it was cleaver to have there beautiful appearance aid in luring their natural prey. I like the idea of vampires building a lifestyle where they aren’t monsters and I feel like restructured it could lead to some good plot threads. As for the movie…you ever hangout with your friends, grab a pizza and some beer and watch a shitty movie for laughs? I bring you the twilight movie as a prime example. The effects suck, the acting sucks, the action at the end is just funny, but I admit the score is good. In fact the soundtrack ain’t bad, and I’m not even into that kind of music really. So did the twilight series murder vampires? Eh, it didn’t kill it but it stated the virus that did. May the gaming gods bring you glory and beware sparkly emo people…sigh.

Phantasm

I will never look at jawas the same again…Phantasm is a cult late 70’s horror movie about a kid named Mike who saw too much. Mikes a normal kid who’s had it rough, his parents recently passed away and for now he lives with his older brother Jody, who besides dealing with his new responsibilities and the death of his parents, is dealing with a friend’s death too. Mike shadows Jody and his best friend Reggie as they attend the funeral. Suddenly Mike sees something disturbing during the funeral procession that none of the adults seem to see; the elderly undertaker lifts the casket out of the hearse and carries it under his arm like it was nothing. And he knows he was being watched. Mike tells Jody what he saw but Jody just assumes his little brother was just pulling his leg. Mike almost believes him until the nightmare, which provokes him to visit the mausoleum of the cemetery; only to be nearly killed by a mysterious blade-pronged floating orb. But even that deadly sphere is nothing compared to the Tall Man, who has it out for Mike and his family…

I fell in love with Phantasm at the tender age of 18 when I first had the pleasure of watching it. It’s not a slasher movie, or a ghost movie, or a even a creature movie. With a simple premise of a kid seeing something bizarre grown ups don’t believe, the movie blows up into a wild mix of compact inter-dimensional zombies, a killer flying ball (that has one of the greatest kills I’ve ever seen in a horror movie), other worlds, a bad ass villain whose almost immortal and immeasurably powerful, and a great ending that makes you wonder what the fuck you just watched. Angus Scrum as the Tall Man is intimidating as hell, wearing a eerie grimace as he slowly walks, rarely speaking in his deep, gruff voice. I love the keyboard score with the suburban atmosphere and the use of darkness. It may not be hugely action packed but visually it’s interesting and the plot is just strange but original. If your a horror fan in the making and your tired of the staples of conventional horror, definitely check it out. May the gaming gods bring you glory and beware the Tall Man…oh god beware the Tall Man!

American Poltergeist

american poltergiest

Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother 40 wacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. No, this movie this movie isn’t about Lizzie Borden exactly. This takes place over 100 years later when the house is left to a woman that married into the Borden family and searches down her step daughter, the last of the Borden blood line. Its a pretty interesting concept that sadly doesn’t really come out well mostly because of laziness, not sure if that laziness came from writers Nicole Holland and Mike Rutkowski or directer…well Mike Rutkowski. Much of the movie involves actors staring off into space until something happens or possessed killer standing there with a ghost behind her back until the ghost raises an arm with a knife and the possessed woman attacks. In another scene a crowbar is used to bust into a room yet the very next scene shows the door is undamaged. It was a strong concept with some pretty bad follow through. It is also full of haunted house cliches just piled onto each other many times simultaneously. One scene has spinning clock hands and flashing lights leading into the eventual revelation to the others that one character is adopted and that is why her brother is actually safe. The topping of this shit show for me was the horrible sounds of hitting widows with axes and a crowbar and getting a weird thudding sound when they don’t break, I assume because of the demon that is stalking them but suddenly won’t come into the house and finish them off. As always thanks for joining me and may the gaming gods bring you glory.