Category: Movie Review

Annabelle: Creation (2017)

Annabelle: Creation is a great example of a solid movie that is a horrible origin story that was never needed that I don’t think anyone asked for. The movie itself is perfectly fine. It involves a group of girls and their caretaker who happens to be a nun, being taken in by a doll maker, Sam Mullins and his wife Esther, as orphans. Years earlier they lost their 7-year-old daughter and they felt now is the time to open their home.

The movie starts off much like most, girls being girls running around the big house, picking on the little one, getting used to the place, being told not to go into a room and of course going into the room and unleashing a ghost. So maybe not so much girls being girls or even kids being kids but a movie being a movie.

From here it is a steady trip of things slowly escalating from bad to wore. The movie is rather newer so I don’t want to spoil things too much. The movie does a pretty excellent job of making things tense and suspenseful while not relying too much on cheesy jump scares and the little girl getting hit by a car is disturbing not for what it shows or does, but for what it doesn’t show and how it does it.

My issue comes when it comes time to explaining how Annabelle came to be in a doll. See this whole explanation takes place in about a 3-6 minute time period in the movie. After the explanation is done there is no real touching on it again either. There is also a twist ending that makes no real sense in the capacity of the franchise in my opinion. They just seemed to try to sneak an origin story and twist ending into a movie that didn’t need both and to me hurt the movie. Regardless it was a fun movie, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Child’s Play trailer 2

I’m pretty sure the reason I’m invested in this remake, much like many of us are since the epic reveal, boils down to two words: Mark Hamil. I was all smiling at the end hearing his version of Chucky and I think he’ll steal the show. I’m interested how Chucky can now control tech almost Watch Dogs style. Other than that, it looks decent but I have some fair hopes. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Silence (2019)

The Silence is a 2019 horror movie from Netflix and follows the trend of don’t make noise or you will die. It is actually quite similar to A Quiet Place except The silence is based off a 2015 book by Tim Lebbon. The book goes into more details about certain things but all in all the movie does a pretty good job explaining some things, but we will get there.

The movie starts by showing some miners busting through a wall and unleashing what appears to be some bats. These bats quickly swarm and kill them and thousands are released into Pennsylvania. We are then introduced to the Andrews family, most notably Ally (Kiernan Shipka) who lost her hearing in a car accident and Hugh (Stanley Tucci) which this may be the first time he hasn’t played at least a semi-gay man that I have seen. I mention this because he does that amazingly so I wasn’t sure how I would feel seeing him here as a straight man in a serious role, and he played his part amazingly as did the rest of the Andrews family.

The ancient bats quickly start terrorizing the eastern seaboard and even the military is powerless to do much. Entire cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are quickly overrun and pretty much everyone killed.  This isn’t explained great on how this occurs with a few thousand bats escaping a cave but they do show that they reproduce very quickly when they kill, to the point in a few days there are millions of them.

They, of course, can’t see and hunt off the sound everything makes, and there is plenty more going on. The movie isn’t getting great reviews but I can’t see why. The acting and script are solid, the movie does what it wants to do quite well and there are no glaring plot holes or defects with some pretty tense scenes as well. I can only assume people are just tired of the formula which I honestly understand. It is worth a watch, but if you are tired of movies like A Quiet Place and Bird Box, this may not be for you. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Apollo 18

Apollo 18

Starting off I have to say I’m pretty sure this maybe one of the most ambitious found footage horror movies I’ve seen. I can’t say I ever saw one that left the confines of planet earth, going to the moon.

The Apollo 18 mission was the last supposed manned mission to the moon. Officially it didn’t happen; the movie tells us what really happened. Three astronauts journeyed up there and while two landed to surface. All begins well as they collect what appear to be harmless rock samples. Small things begin going awry but questions arise when they find the remains of a Cosmonaut ship and the ravaged bodies of the astronauts. It starts appearing that something is alive on the moon, lurking in it’s dark craters, beneath the rocks. Millions of miles from home, isolated, a lone survivor has to try escaping from his mysteriously infected comrade the horror of our moon…

What the movie does really well is feel period appropriate and I have to admit it’s blended well with stock footage to mostly feel authentic. I like the utter silence and tension in the creepy atmosphere. The acting is solid enough and the sound is solid. I feel the creature aspect hurts the movie on a few levels, mostly because how the hell does a living thing survive without food, water, or any vegetation whatsoever? I think it should have dealt with the psychological aspects of the intense claustrophobia and isolation. What also kills the movie is the pacing, it takes a real long time to build for not a huge amount of pay off considering the movie alludes to the ending in the opening anyway. In the end, it isn’t terrible but you aren’t missing too much if you skip it. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Addams Family trailer 1

As a kid I loved the hell out of the Addams Family and the movies that came out in the 90’s, but I have to admit I was kind of bewildered that we were getting a animated movie in 2019. While I like the opening of the trailer, I wasn’t too impressed with the rest of it. I think there is talent in the cast but I’ve never been a fan of this kind of animation. I giggled at the Pennywise joke I have to admit it. I would find myself watching this just because of how much I liked the original, but I don’t have really high hopes. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Young Adult (2012)

Young Adult is the story about a woman trying to get back a man from when she was younger. The one problem is that man is now married, with a daughter. Hey, why let that get in the way tho right?

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) decides to go back to her home and win back Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) She also has a huge drinking problem, she is technically at some stage of drunk for most of the movie and if she isn’t she is about to be or is just waking up from a night of drinking. Along the way, I would like to say she makes new friends and learns life lessons, but she seriously mostly just drinks a lot and sleeps with people while trying to wreck a marriage. The movie isn’t great but it isn’t bad, and most importantly it is fun.

The aspect of her writing a book is also a pretty nice touch, and I didn’t even mind that there was no real ending because there didn’t need to be. I didn’t get the ending I wanted, I got the ending I needed and that is few and far between in movies these days really. Give this one a watch, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Alien Warfare (2019)

Alien Warfare is an interesting movie. I don’t always mean that as a compliment either. The story is so stereotypically painful I almost think they did the whole thing on purpose as a joke to see if it could be done. The movie is a navy seal team is sent to investigate a top-secret base that is hiding something. I say that because of the President and CIA not telling them what they were hiding despite the fact that they were supposed to secure, instead just telling them if it is there they will know it when they see it.

Of course, the team has a wild card member that happens to be someone’s brother, and their father was also was a Navy Seal and oh yes, both the brother and father got someone killed on a mission because they are a hothead. Despite the fact that everyone disappeared, one scientist survived and knows a lot of things about, you guessed it the alien artifact that was found, the government messed with, and got everyone killed except for this one that happened to be in the one room that would save her.

Aliens are of course super advanced and can teleport but don’t kill any of these guys, and they are far too stupid to see they aren’t trying to murder anyone they just want their giant black rock looking device back. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I will say this. Don’t watch this movie. It isn’t very good. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Pet Sematary 2019

p sem ellie

Pet Sematary is what made me a Stephen King fan as a little kid, making me feel uneasy in the fact cemeteries are always a two minute walk away from everywhere I’ve ever lived. The story means a great deal to me so I was a bit irritable when the remake was announced and hinted in the The Dark Tower . But if It (2017) was any indication, I was willing to give it a shot knowing that it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the story I knew. Was I right to be worried?

The Creeds are a normal family who move into a picturesque farm house in the middle of the country. Lewis is a Dr who wants to slow down and spend time with wife Rachael and kids spirited Ellie and baby Gage and Church the cat. While exploring the back woods, Ellie stumbles upon a creepy procession of kids in animal masks going to bury a dead dog in the Pet Sematary, where kids have buried there pets for generations says Judd Crandall, the Creed’s neighbor. Much the like original Lewis is being warned by the ghost of Pascow who he tried to save to avoid the Sematary, or rather what’s behind the dead fall. Some barriers were not meant to be crossed…

I give this remake credit, it does play with your expectations of either the original or the novel and that’s where it’s strongest. It was a huge mistake I believe to ruin the big twist that sets it apart in the trailers; I’m not going to spoil it but I actually really like how it turns out. The performances are really good but the girl that played Ellie I thought was fantastic and I hope to see more of her. The new imagery is cool but somehow feels close to the original. I warn people, do not go in expecting a A to B adaptation but more of a what if type of scenario. A few times the pacing was off throughout all three acts, sometimes dragging but other times feeling a little too fast,  and there is a WTF moment involving a cow I’m sure Savior is going to bring up in his review that made us laugh. while I’ve heard others say there was too much exposition, I feel too much of Judd’s backstory was cut out and the Wendi-go stuff  was mostly irrelevant. Overall, Pet Sematary is a good remake and a good, solid horror movie I recommend to all needing a good scare this spring. May the gaming gods bring you glory and remember…sometimes dead is indeed better.

 

Shazam!-2019 (Savior)

Everyone is going to give you a big long post about How Shazam is really Captain Marvel. It is a long story that is only interesting to uber-nerds and fans of the legal system. So long story short, long before Marvel existed Shazam was Captain Marvel, DC sued the creator, eventually, DC ended up with the trademark for the story of Captain Marvel (Shazam) and Marvel copyrighted the name Captain Marvel for their character. Around 2012 DC changed the name to Shazam became most people that was his name anyway.

Anyway, as for the movie. It is an origin story for Shazam and how Billy Batson got his powers. In his case, he got them from a wizard in need of a champion before his powers were gone to fight the seven deadly sins that escaped when Dr. Thaddeus received their powers when he was pissed The Wizard decided he wasn’t worthy years earlier.

The movie looks pretty good, is well acted and is quite funny. Watching Billy and his brother Freddy figure out his powers is great and happily, the best parts aren’t given away in the previews. There is even a nice cameo from another DC hero.

I also enjoyed the fact that they know the type of character they have, and the history he has with DC and embraced it. I don’t want to spoil it, but it was a pleasant surprise. I do have a couple complaints tho. First, there were a couple spots that the CGI looked a bit cheap compared to the rest of the movie, most notably with the seven deadly sins. My biggest issue is the movie is over 2 hours long and it feels about 30 minutes longer than it needed to be. The ending just dragged for me and it isn’t that I didn’t enjoy it because the ending was good, it just felt like the dragged it on longer than it needed to be just to make the movie longer. It was, however, one of the best DC movies I have seen. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Chernobyl Diaries

chernobyl diaries

I’m a huge sucker for movies about mutation and messed up crap happening to the human body- such that a book took 16 years and counting of my life somewhat on the very subject. But there are some ideas, some stories that I swear no one really thinks of the basic logic behind them. Case in point- who in the fuck would randomly visit the site of Chernobyl as a casual tourist stop? I know many horror movies take a leap of faith of some kind to get going but I think a group of young Americans saying “let’s visit Chernobyl”- site of one of the world’s worst nuclear incidents and still well contaminated to this day is stretching it.

Essentially that’s the plot in a nutshell: four friends are traveling through Europe and before hitting Moscow, one of them meets a old Russian soldier named Yuri that offers to show them sites many don’t get to see- the ruins of Chernobyl. The group, with Yuri and two other tourists goes and sees the vast, abandoned landscapes and deformed fish in the streams, but it seems they ain’t alone. Can they survive being hunted while being hit by the radioactive fallout?

While there are good pieces, as a complete product this movie is just silly. I liked the scenery and feeling of tense isolation. I liked the deformed fish in the stream and the WTF jump scare with the bear ( oh yes, that’s a thing.) That’s about it. The plot is ludicrous and I couldn’t feel shit for the characters because they were dumbasses to be in that situation in the first place. The movie is piled thick with jump scares and shaky cam whenever something does happen, but it’s not a found footage film. I can’t recommend this unless you are drinking or you need a bad movie night but stay away from it like its radioactive otherwise. May the gaming gods bring you glory.