by jellydonut25 » Tue Nov 27, 2018 12:45 pm
Been watching some movies:
Christopher Robin - I'm a bit of a Pooh apologist, so I found enough to enjoy, but this does commit an awful lot of the sins of nostalgia-wankery and tearsploitation that drive me nuts. 3/5.
Terrified - This has been getting a lot of buzz on Shudder. It's acceptable, but there's so much time spent on discussing what is happening and what the apparitions are, and not a single second spent on WHY and it just kinda comes across as a bunch of spooky imagery without a real idea holding it down. 3/5.
The Domestics - Mad Max meets The Purge...not as good as that sounds. Definitely lots of plot holes, but I had an okay time with it. 3/5.
Pyewacket - A girl summons a demon to kill her mom because her dad died and her mom tells her that she wishes the daughter were dead (either too or instead...I dunno). It can't quite always maintain its dread, but there is some cool stuff...I really like this one moment where something happens to a character, but it's off-screen and never explained, but it just ruins that person and they are terrified beyond speech. I like the IMPLICATION of something so terrifying it can't be explained. It gets good towards the end. 3.5/5
Cam - A camgirl gets her identity stolen. This has been getting some buzz too but I found it BORING. It's 90 minutes but felt like a solid 14 hours. 2/5.
Satan's Slaves - Indonesian horror movie about a family being tormented by their convalescent mother and then her ghost. Really quite good. 4/5.
The Witch in the Window - I really liked this one. Not scary, but a nice character piece about a father and son growing close and bonding. It could have felt rushed, since it's only like 75 minutes, and to a certain extent I thought one or two elements could have been given more time to breathe and be properly wrapped up, but it focuses in on the relationship so much that it doesn't matter. 4/5.
Overlord - REALLY good. A shame this isn't doing better, because you hear "Nazi zombies" and you just basically by default expect "Wolfenstein," and some day I really would like to see a really weird, goofy, over-the-top Wolfenstein movie (oh and a GOOD one, by the way...I know there are exploitation movies out there with Nazi zombies). Overlord though seems to have said to itself "Yeah but what if someone took that premise seriously?" It's not a bad idea in a world where we've recently had some outright comedies about Nazis zombies in recent years, even though it's not how I personally would have approached it. It's one full of some pitfalls, and though Overlord doesn't quite sidestep all of them, it does manage to be both a solid war movie and a solid horror movie and a somewhat slow burn while also being briskly paced without ever feeling like those are incongruent ideas. Some of the performances are a little too...scenery chewy for something that plays it a little more straight, but Overlord won't disappoint for anyone who thought it could be a fun idea based on its premise. 4/5.
The Night Comes for Us - So violent it'll make you wonder if John Wick and The Raid movies are for babies. Awesome action and just enough of a story and heart to keep pushing things along. I loved this. 4.5/5.