Ready or Not (2019)

Ready or Not is the story of Grace (Samara Weaving) marrying the love of her life. Alex Le Domas. (Mark O’Brien) The Le Domas family, however, is the proud owners of a gaming dynasty. It started with a card game made during the civil war and now spans board games and four major league sports teams.

After a beautiful wedding the estranged from his family Alex drops a small detail he never mentioned before. At midnight the day of the wedding, the person entering the family will have to draw one card, and play the game on that card. For example, the man that married a cousin has to play old maid and someone else had to play chess. The rules are always played the way they were traditionally back in the old days of the civil war. This is important for one small reason.

The card our new friend Alex draws is Hide and Seek. So all the doors will be locked for the night, the security cameras shut off and she will hide. She wins by staying hidden until the sun comes up. Of course, she has no interest in hiding that long. Who would? So after she gets bored with hiding and Alex comes to find her and is when she finds out that the game is played because if you don’t pick a card at all you die, and Grace picked the only bad card possible. Hide and seek is the only game nobody wins and it is to the death of the bride or groom.

The movie, however, was not what I expected. From the previews, I saw I was expecting a more thriller-horror style movie and truthfully it is more of a thriller comedy. This isn’t a bad thing, it was just very unexpected to me. The movie was actually really well done and had some great laughs in it. There was never a time I was bored or wondering what was going on. I also appreciated that the story was straight to the point. We got straight to the story and while they were at it they managed to give you all the back story you needed which I feel never happens enough.

The movie is far from perfect obviously but it is a surprisingly fun movie, possibly the most surprising movie of the summer for me. So check this one out when you get the chance. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)

The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a 2015 horror movie about two girls stuck over a holiday at an all-girls Catholic school with something dark and sinister. The movie starts with two girls finding out their parents aren’t going to show up. One because they are stuck in a storm, the other because she lied to her parents about what day to be there.

The movie after that jumps between the 2 girls at school and Joan, a girl traveling alone with a husband and wife that are making their way towards Bradford, where the school is, to leave flowers at the grave of their deceased daughter.

The movie is less interesting than it sounds. It takes forever to get going and even when it does it is never all that interesting to me. The ending also felt like it was tacked on and my girlfriend and I saw it coming around halfway through the movie. There wasn’t anything wrong with the acting or the effects or any of that. I personally just didn’t like the story. By all means, give it a watch, I can’t really say there was anything inherently wrong with it, I just didn’t enjoy it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

3 From Hell (2019)

3 From Hell is the Sequel to The Devils Reject’s and picks up right where that movie left off. The opening is about the trial that takes place about a year after these three miraculously survive and is sentenced to life in prison for multiple counts of murder and numerous other things.

After this, we get bounced to 10 years into the future so we can see a documentary being made. We see how they are all doing, Captain Spaulding has lost a lot of weight for example and Baby is quite honestly frigging nuts, like totally off the deep end insane. Otis, however, is still just Otis.

Speaking of Otis, we need someone to escape to get this movie going and he will be the one to do it. After he murders a bunch of guards and other prisoners the plot to try and free Baby will come into full swing. Baby meanwhile has her own issues with a prison guard named Greta. It is safe to say the two don’t get along. Baby breaks her nose at her parole hearing and Greta tries to have Baby murdered.

This movie is getting pretty mixed reviews and honestly, I don’t see why. The story is solid and the acting is great. Baby nails her role perfectly and Otis is fantastic. I don’t want to give to much away about the story because there are a few bits I didn’t see coming and having seen it as a double feature with The Devil’s Reject made me remember how much I enjoyed the series as a whole. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Devil’s Rejects (2005)

A Rob Zombie movie and a direct sequel to House of 1000 Corpses is the store of the Firefly family and their house being raided by the police. After a grand shootout, mama firefly is caught, a man is dead and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Otis (Bill Moseley) are on the run.

They quickly call their father, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) to meet up at a motel before finding a more permanent safe haven, as they are on the run from Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe)

The movie takes place in basically stages, as Baby and Otis need a motel room and kidnap a group and essentially torture and murder them. The scene is pretty messed up and brutal and really gets the point across about how messed up these 2 really are.

There is also a scene were Spaulding’s truck runs out of gas so he steals a car, so he punches out a woman and threatens to murder a child if when he comes back he doesn’t have a good reason as to why clowns don’t make him laugh.

The movie is honestly quite messed up and demented and contains one of my favorite movie quotes of all time. It is definitely worth checking out, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.  Also, fair warning, the video below is definitely R rated.

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

Evil Dead 2 has been a pretty debated movie believe it or not. It all comes down to the opening of the movie. It starts with Ash back in the same cabin, with an entirely different group of people. Found the same book, but the reading happened in a different place. This has lead to the debate of is it a remake or a sequel?

The answer is actually quite interesting. The short answer, by the way, a remake and sequel simultaneously.  See as it turns out they couldn’t get the rights to their own movie. The way around this was when they made Evil Dead 2 they opened with a rehash of the last movie, and changed it. The same general idea, different actors (except Bruce still plays Ash)

Interestingly enough they did it in such a way that if you skip that intro and pick up where the first movie left off and just play Evil Dead 2 from where the entity hits Ash at the end of Evil Dead (1981) it actually makes perfect sense.

This one, however, is a bit different. It starts with Ash being possessed by an evil as the sun comes up, which pushes it away.  Meanwhile, we discover that the owners of this cabin are about to have visitors that found more of the book of the dead. These pages are being brought to the cabin so they can be read by the owner that Ash discovered mysteriously disappeared.

Like the first movie the charm of this cult classic is that the effects, story, and acting are all about as cheesy as they come. They aren’t cheesy in a bad way tho, the whole thing is entertaining. The best part is Bruce Campbell however, he truly seems to love the role and his fans.

As the movie goes on and everyone meets up at the cabin, we discover the older couple is trapped in the basement, dead and possessed by evil. This evil wants to kill everyone in the cabin and take their souls, while Ash is determined to survive and the new pages of the book are the way to do this. I won’t spoil the ending but I will encourage you all to see it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Evil Dead (1981)

Bruce Cambell as Ash Williams. (check out @torstenvblog coverage Evil Dead ) This is one of those cult classics that most people have either seen and love or seen and hate. I have seen it and love it. What is not to love tho? The special effects are cheesy as hell, the story is almost nonsensical to the point of hilarity and I dare you to watch this and not love Ash.

The movie starts off with our group going to an old log cabin for a weekend getaway. During this night of fun, they discover a book in a basement. Now, most people would be smart enough to not read from the book with a face on human skin in a creepy language but these idiots do exactly that. This releases an evil entity that goes on a killing spree and the dead come back to life.

The movie is on Hulu and is a must-see if you are a horror fan. It resulted in multiple sequels and a TV series and even a game. It can’t be bad to get that kind of results right? Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

A Guy Thing (2003)

A Guy Thing is a 2003 romantic comedy that did not do well in the reviews and admittedly, I get it. The movie is fun, the acting was great but all in all the movie itself is pretty mundane. The movie is pretty standard, mangoes to a bachelor party, man wakes up with dancer, man hides it from the soon to be wife. Said man finds out dancer is soon to be wifes cousin.

There are some fun moments of course, and Jason Lee and Julia Stiles are always a joy to watch and they have some great chemistry. The issue is the script is just pretty dull and the story itself is just boring. I love the actors in this movie, some of my favorite movies involve them. This movie however just wasn’t all that enjoyable to me.

I won’t say don’t watch this movie, many of you will probably enjoy it. I simply did not, and that made me pretty sad. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

St. Agatha (2018)

This is another one of those movies I regret watching. Mary who is pregnant runs away to a convent for help in the 1950s. These nuns, however, are psychotic. They are abusive, fanatical and even worse, those aren’t their worst traits.

The movie is also about an hour and 25 minutes of pure boredom followed by 20 minutes of an interesting horror movie. Aside from that, it is just a long slow ride to find out pretty much exactly what you suspected the entire time anyway. There aren’t any real twist and turns or surprises to be found here.

That isn’t to say the movie is purely bad. The acting is well done and as far as period pieces go it was well done, even the telephone they show looks like it was ripped right out of the time period. The problem is the story itself is just honestly, not fun to watch.

After all this tho I can honestly say I won’t deter you guys from watching the movie. This is one of those films I feel like just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean you guys won’t. So give it a shot, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

1st Summoning (2018)

1st summoning is a movie about a group of filmmakers investigating a town and the rumors that if on October 6th at exactly midnight if you perform a specific ritual you can get an answer to any question you want, for a price. So they pack their gear, hop in their camper and drive there, interview some town members and a priest and head to the warehouse.

The issue is, the movie sucked. There is no nice way of saying it. The movie struggled between trying to be a sort of mockumentary and a legitimate movie about them making one.  The characters themselves make no damn sense, the priest is creepy as hell and sets the plot up nicely but then he is just gone. The one female character is basically made out to be kind of a slut because she dated two of the 3 guys in the group. She constantly disagrees with the idiotic ideas they have, only to do it herself anyway.

The movie is also boring for 90% only to get exciting at the very end, and then never be explained how or why things happened. There is also a necklace that again, never explained in any capacity. There may or may not be a demonic element, or it could just be human interference. You are just left to figure it out with no real info and for no real reasoning. I was actually glad this movie ended. There is no real reason to watch this, Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Idiocracy (2006)

Idiocracy is the movie about a guy that is average in every possible way that is subject to an Army experiment gone 100% wrong. When the man in charge gets arrested for trying to run a prostitution ring the base is shut down and the project is lost, for about 500 years.

When Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) wakes up with his fellow experiment victim, Rite (Maya Rudolph) he discovers a world where being completely average would make you the smartest person on Earth.

This seen kind of explains it all really. Brawndo is basically Gatorade by the way. The entire movie actually comes across as sort of a warning. It was funny in 2006 when I first saw it, but now it seems like more of a warning. The performances are great and the movie is hilariously funny but not in the traditional laugh out loud funny.

Most of the funny parts of the movie come from recognizing that many of these people are kind of realistic but in a greatly exaggerated way. Nobody is actually this stupid, but we all know that guy that just doesn’t get it.

The movie is well written and if you have Hulu is worth checking out this cult classic. It is far from perfect obviously, but it is thought-provoking and interesting and one of those hidden gems. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.