Tag: Horror

A Quiet Place

This review for A Quiet Place has come way later than most of you would expect. But hey, I missed the first screening. And for a movie of this level, I would normally rush off to see it regardless. But I also love my wife.

And this is a movie she wanted to see badly as well. Her wanting to see movies isn’t rare, but she almost never wants to see horror. Her love of the actors involve and the interviews she saw online changed her opinion enough to still want to see it, so I knew my first time seeing it would be with her in our house, once it is on Red Box.

Which was like, a month ago. Vacations yo, they can delay things. And thus even surprising me for when this one finally came out.

Finger1
This is how my students have to walk down the hallway sometimes if they don’t listen to the rules.

We first see our family with the world already ravaged. People are gone and dead. Things have been abandoned. Desolation, ruin, all of the normal signs of an Apocalypse.

Our father (John Krasinski), mother (Emily Blunt), and three kids (Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward) are looking for supplies and no one is speaking. Every time a sound is about to be made, it is stopped and fixed before problems occur.

Based on newspaper articles and television recordings it is clear that some sort of Alien has occupied the planet. They have amazing hearing but poor site. For those who choose to run, play, gossip, they will be quickly found and eaten. A pretty shitty time to be alive.

But this family is doing okay. They have sound proofed most of their belongings. They knew sign language because their oldest, the daughter, is deaf. And the father is spending a lot of time trying to get her an earpiece to let her hear the world.

Needless to say, conflict will be coming to their house. An event, an incredibly loud one normally, is to occur, and they have to find a way to survive the attack that will certainly appear at their door step.

Hush
WE SAID NO TALKING GOD DAMN IT!

What a tense and wonderful film. Directed, starting, and written a little bit by Krasinski, he shows off a powerful movie on his first full feature attempt. Well, first well known movie. Not many people saw The Hollars, despite some nominations [I totally wanted to, I just forgot]. It is at least his first horror picture directing.

A lot of experiences with this film will talk about how amazing it was to quiet an entire theater from any sound, as a joint experience brought on from the films suspense. That didn’t happen in my house, because it is a house with kids, but I still was on the edge of my seat.

A Quiet Place did a great job of explaining the alien back story without feeling stupid. And better yet, we get to stay in the dark like most of the cast about the aliens. We don’t get all of it explained and we don’t need it. The idea of future sequels worries me as they will likely ruin the suspense.

Overall this is a very tense and upsetting movie. As a father, I obviously identified with several of the elements and they struck a bigger nerve but I can see those complaining about not scary enough. Some of the character decisions are incredibly frustrating, and it is another thing to watch kids be dumb. But kids are dumb.

I hope more horror films start going this route. This is an indie horror movie feel that made it mainstream. The more people accept this film then the more they will begin to accept films like It Comes At Night.

3 out of 4.

Unfriended: Dark Web

Here’s a very important fact for this review. I liked Unfriended! Hell, the movie actually scared me. Gotta watch out for that haunted social media stuff.

I loved the concept of the film as well. All from a screens point of view. This has now happened in various other ways. We had the Modern Family episode like that and later this year John Cho is looking through his missing daughter’s computer in blahhhh. As long as it doesn’t become overused I won’t mind it (note, it totally will become overused).

And when I compare this first film to say, Friend Request, one was entertaining, scary, and fun, the other was just a pile of shit. Similar plots. Very different execution.

Knowing all of that, I assume this one will be shit just from the subtitle. Unfriended: Dark Web? It is going to use a real internet thing and turn it into demon ghost stuff or whatever. Maybe the Dark Web itself will matter. But if it doesn’t, the title is shit and the movie would probably be shit.

...Picture in Picture In Picture in Picture in Picture...
Picture in Picture In Picture in Picture in Picture…

Matias (Colin Woodell) has a new computer! It is a nice mac. He didn’t buy it. He didn’t buy it on craigslist. He found it in a lost and found, no one claimed it for a few weeks, so it is time for him to take it, right?

After figuring out the password, it seems to belong to a Norah C. IV, some rich person, because hey, they are the 4th right? Matias is trying to figure it out right before a game night with his friends (Connor Del Rio, Betty Gabriel, Andrew Lees, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Savira Windyani). Well, one of them is in London, and also they all feel lazy so they will just do it over Skype. That is because their game night is lame anyways, and just Cards Against Humanity. They aren’t even drinking, just playing a lame game over Skype!

Also during this time, Matias is trying to reconnect with his girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras), who happens to be deaf.

And of course, Matias notices that the computer is extremely full but he can’t find anything. Long story short? Video files, and assassination for higher on the dark web. Bitcoins, human trafficking, the whole nine yards. And now that the computer is on, the hacker wants his machine back. Or else.

Also starring Chelsea Aiden and Douglas Tait.

UDW
This film is about the sexiest of people.

Well, good news is that the movie involved the dark web! It involved several aspects of it, so the title isn’t just crap. The first movie was about a demonic online spirit. This one was about hackers and bad people in general on the internet. It did not connect to the previous film, even though I figured it might just be the same concept. But nope, they changed things up, that’s good.

However, just like the first film, there are technical issues they are just blatantly ignoring. If they are going to make it one screen and click things, they need to commit to their goddamn concept. Right away our main character puts on Spotify, which seems to lower its volume whenever its relevant to the plot without user input. Amazing! And a bigger deal later on, when our main character begins to freak out and do internet things while on Skype, some times he mutes the conversation, some times he doesn’t. And the times he doesn’t, for whatever reason, all 4+ other people are suddenly quiet until he comes back? It does it correctly a few times, but not all the times, and that just becomes lazy editing and helps kill the experience.

As for the actual plot, they still seem to have some sort of supernatural element. The JPEGing thing, when a hacker is on the screen? That is dumb. That isn’t fun to see. That is not how hacking works. Similarly, how the main hacker communicated they wanted to look as spooky and ghost like as possible.

And yet, if they designed this whole film without any of the supernatural or confusing elements, it could have been a fantastic story. It had great elements. How some of them were taking out, using you know, hacking and actual real story kind of things? That worked really well. But by the end, with all of the reveals and screen shenanigans, it made parts feel cheap, and it didn’t feel like a single screen anymore.

The rating is really for effort here, because it could have been better, it was still captivating when it got going, it also just was a bit shit.

2 out of 4.

The First Purge

Asking most people, they would tell you that they like The Purge: Anarchy, the most, which was the second film. It was good to see it on a city wide basis, but I am also one of the people who really enjoyed the original Purge movie as well. The Purge: Election Year, however, did nothing really for me. It was obvious what they were doing and going for, but the bad acting in it means it wasn’t as impactful as anyone would have liked.

Unlike previous films, I never saw a trailer for The First Purge, so I am going in relatively blind. I did see the first teaser poster though, which was enough to make me laugh and get a bit excited.

Although let’s be clear. This is a prequel. Prequels are generally fucking stupid, unless they can absolutely answer new information in a different light. And if it doesn’t? Well, then prequels are fucking stupid.

Mask
When did he have the time to make this mask? Did they all agree that masks were cool before it ever happened? Was there a crafting party/meeting?

This time, this takes place right after the New Founding Fathers have taken over the government and elected a president. They said they would help come up with a solution to fix America at any cost, as fast as possible.

And this involves a planned social experiment, for 12 hours, to let most average crimes, including murder, be legal. It will be done as an outlet to let out all the anger and aggression. And it will be done on Staten Island, a place with known borders, to see if it works.

Staten Island has a large poor population, so when the vote happened for their place, they agreed overwhelmingly. People who want to participate are also going to be given $5,000 if they survive the night. The rich can just leave the island before hand, the poor will stay and find this life changing, so of course they will do it.

No one really knows what to expect for the night. A lot of killing? Killing early and then people being satisfied and going home? Just a night of looting and outdoor sex? Who knows!

Well, we will have drones, contact lens cameras, and more reporting on the events around the world.

Starring Y’lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Mugga, Patch Darragh, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, and Marisa Tomei.

Protest
Protesting free money and free crime is an uphill battle.

Remember how we already learned that the purge was really a way to help deal with the undesirables? You know, the poor, the colored, the homeless? A way to lower the resources we needed overall? It was implied in the first film and explicitly shown in the second film?

Yeahh, well, they use that as a sort of plot twist shocking moment in this film. Sure, that would be shocking maybe if The First Purge was the first Purge movie, but it isn’t. It is a prequel, and it is showing us shit we already know.

This film was basically almost a 0 out of 4, due to having no point. But it is hard to not root for Noel’s character, despite being a drug lord kingpin, especially when he becomes John McClane near the end, scaling a tower in his wife beater t-shirt and bag of guns. This film also features a lot more people of color as our leads, which is fantastic. The bad aspects are that it just doesn’t offer really anything new. It is full of surprises that aren’t surprising, a bad local villain, and the cringeist scenes between the scientist and the politician. Which scene? Every. Single. Scene. Between them. Tomei just didn’t even give a fuck in this movie for her limited role.

The First Purge is forgettable and now leaves us in a weird position for this movie. Where does it go from here? Do we now do The Second Purge? Or can we just set up future random purge movies in random locations?

Or does anyone care anymore?

1 out of 4.

Hereditary

Another year, another A24 movie hailed as a masterpiece of horror. And yet, there is doubt.

Sometimes A24 overhypes their films. Understandable. And sometimes they advertise things a bit different and piss off a lot of people. Some people have not forgiven them over this. Other people think these highly acclaimed horror films are shit.

But here is something I think most people can agree with. 2017 was a strong year for Horror films. Probably the best in quite some time for the genre. And for Hereditary? Well, it is sure as hell my favorite horror film in at least the last decade.

Doll
As sure as hell that hell is often talked about in horror movies.

The Graham family has had some troubling times. And it all seems to funnel around Annie Graham (Toni Collette). Her mother just died. But like, they weren’t close at all. She was living her last days in their home, but that doesn’t really change their past relationship.

Annie is an artist, in that she designs small dollhouse like arrangements and has a show coming up this summer. She is extremely crafty and can make a lot of things. Her husband (Gabriel Byrne) is trying to keep her life as stress free as possible, but it is hard when there is so much angst in the household.

Angst? Heck yes angst. They have two kids. The oldest, the boy (Alex Wolff) doesn’t get along with the mom and vice versa. They have had an interesting past. The younger, the girl (Milly Shapiro), has an unfortunate look and aura to her. She was the only one close to the deceased. And she has a lot of issues on her own, dark drawings, antisocial, you name it.

But it turns out their family has a lot of secrets. Some that Annie is aware of, and some that are going to come crashing down on them whether she wants them to or not.

Also starring Ann Dowd and Mallory Bechtel.

Girl
“Unfortunate looking” is the nice way to talk about it.

Let’s just compare real quick. Get Out. It Comes At Night. It Follows. Stoker. The Babadook. The Witch.

All fine horror films, or thriller films depending on how you want to argue them. And yes, I think Hereditary beats the list, including The Witch, which is my favorite from that list.

It is so hard to describe the feelings that Hereditary brings up. Given the family nature of the film, my mind went several places I thought it might go, and it didn’t really touch them. It went down a relatively unique path that seemed natural, and plenty shocking. It is definitely a slow movie, until it decides to fully embrace the “regular” parts of the genre.

Because by all means, the end is full on horror movie. We don’t have jump scares to get us to that point. We have unsettling events. Some shocking moments of course, but nothing is cheap, it is all earned.

And acting wise, I will talk about Wolff first. This is probably the best he has ever done in a movie. He was seemingly typecasted in my eyes and this movie will hopefully get him out of those teenage romance dramas. But Collette? Holy fuck, Toni Collette. I have definitely never come close to watching all of her movies, but I can’t imagine her ever better. And she has been in a lot of bad things lately.

Bold statement – Collette deserves acting nominations by the end of the year. She helped carry this movie and elevate it to an amazing status. I cannot see this film not being in the top five by the end of the year.

4 out of 4.

Annihilation

Fuck.

I missed the Annihilation pre-screening, and I felt bad, because I want to support independent science fiction films. Then I found out about all the drama with it and Netflix. Netflix had streaming rights for every country except for the USA and China. You see, Paramount wanted to sort of dump it because they didn’t think it would be successful. So you know, they didn’t put it in any theaters and couldn’t be successful.

The deal with Netflix would be that it had to wait 17 days after being in theater in those two countries before it could be on the program.

Fine, I would just watch it before then and review that bad boy up. And I did!

I just forgot about the review thing. And it isn’t that I forgot to review it. I knowingly just kept pushing it back and back and back, for reasons I will explain at the end. Needless to say, here is a review, two months after I planned to release it.

Dream Team
Blame it on the patriarchy.

For a few years, a shimmering glowing force has appeared in a remote part of the world. It is hard to fathom just what is going on in that area, but it definitely is growing over time. In fact, it has been there for three years, and everyone basically has no fucking clue what is going on. Because no one has ever returned.

Well, one guy did. Kane (Oscar Isaac). He is a special forces member of the Army. He is pretty messed up. He has returned home to his wife, Lena (Natalie Portman), who the story is actually about. You see Lena is also a soldier, or at least she used to be. She is now mostly a professor of cellular biology. Smart and strong.

After some plot reasons, she is brought to one of their bases around this field area, where she meets others who are planning to go in. For whatever reason, communication always shuts off, and they don’t really understand what is going on inside this aura.

But Lena ends up joining a team of all women to go in and hopefully, this time, report back with what is going on. And this vague synopsis is both meant to keep it spoiler free, and also try to recall everything that happened.

Also starring Benedict Wong, Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sonoya Mizuno, Tessa Thompson, and Tuva Novotny.

Crocoshark
She is thinking of getting into animal dentistry as well.

Annihilation, by any standard, is not a dumb movie. Which is one way of calling it a smart movie, but I am not fully committed to that line. It is above average, and after watching it I did have to speculate about it for awhile. So it is a thinker film.

A thinker film with scares, sci-fi weirdness, and pretty darn good acting. It also has a few flashbacks, questions about humanity, questions about evolution, and this one fucking ape scene that is like, omg.

Either way, I started thinking too much about the thinking movie, so I pushed back my planned review. Then I stopped thinking about it, and figured I couldn’t write it at that point because I forgot some information, and that is why we are two months late at this point.

I believe my conclusion to this movie is that I liked it, and disliked it. The ending was interesting, but not at all what I craved. This is a film that really begs for multiple watches, and the theater experience will really add with the sounds this film gives.

This is not mindless entertainment. This is entertainment that can drive your mind to uselessness and eventually forgetfulness. What a strange review ending this has become.

2 out of 4.

Ghost Stories

Ah spooks! A story about ghosts.

This movie is not to be confused with A Ghost Story, which came out last year, which I loved, which was very polarizing, and very indie.

No, this is Ghost Stories! Without the A article and the addition of the letter ´s´ things are quite different now. With this film, this British film, we are promised not one story, but multiple stories!

Maybe it is just two stories, maybe it is a hundred! With plurality, the sky´s the limit.

And of course, if this was called Ghosts Story, then it would be one story about multiple ghosts. Learn your grammar, folks.

Pair
This pair means two of them, although together, they may look like a single pear.

Professor Goodman (Andy Nyman) has a strange name, yes, but he is off to help people. How? By exposing liars! Liars and word thieves. You know, those who claim that ghosts are real, that want to deceive the public, or the ones that claim they can speak to dead loves, or even just psychics in general. Hell, he has a show to defraud them too, publicly, and has gotten himself famous.

He always dreamed of being this sort of researcher. Growing up he watched Charles Cameron (Leonard Byrne) on TV, who did similar things but more old school and subtle. However, he mysteriously disappeared at some point for decades.

Needless to say, sometimes the past comes back when you least expect it. And when it does, sometimes you are given three cases to look over and research, in order to really see if the supernatural exists and your exposing of frauds has been for naught. And sometimes your brain just wants to play tricks on you.

Starring Martin Freeman, Paul Warren, Paul Whitehouse, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, and Alex Lawther (who was in one of the best Black Mirror episodes, Shut Up and Dance).

Face
This hole covers its whole face and doesn´t look too wholesome.

I will give one thing to Ghost Stories. First of all, it is well shot, it is framed, it feels very sexy. The three stories are relatively intense, have their own levels of spooks and frights, but there is something missing.

A reason for these stories to feel more super serious than any other story is very much lacking. And they explain that eventually, but without knowing it ahead of time, it was just a gnawing feeling on me each time. Just like the professor, we aren´t sure why any of this matters.

Like I said, eventually we see why it matters, and that reason ends up being extremely lackluster. The ending of this film is shit. It feels like a prank. Like an edgy high school student wrote it without experiencing anything original in their life. I cannot describe enough how shit this ending is.

And honestly, if it could have just tied the stories for a good explanation and not just gone for some quick scares, it might have been worth something. The rating given is given only because of it still looking quite nice, having some nice moments, and honestly, Freeman was a blast in this movie.

2 out of 4.

Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare

April is rarely seen as the month for horror films. Usually it is the month for sports movies, or dramas, or I guess now super hero movies.

I hope Truth or Dare is successful, but while definitely going strong on the Truth or Dare aspect. I don’t want it to be an introduction piece and then oh no, killer, lets freak out. I need it to last the whole film.

I hope it introduces a franchise of party game horror films. I want to see the follow ups of Never Have I Ever, Spin the Bottle, Suck and Blow, and of course culminating to the film where all the pieces come together: Seven Minutes In Heaven.

Note, none of this relates to the movie Would You Rather, which came out half a decade ago. But they might try and remake it to add it to the fold, with a new, sexier cast.

Face1
I’d like to think part of the audition process for this film was to try and make that face naturally.

Down in Mexico, we have curses, because, Mexico I guess. Some sort of xenophobic nonsense.

Our hero of this is Olivia (Lucy Hale), a good person, she builds houses, cares about the greater good and all of that silly stuff. She planned on doing good things over spring break, but her BFF Markie (Violett Beane) sort of forces her to join them down in Mexico! Last Spring Break before their friend group moves on and gets old and less friendly.

They do things, have a great time, and eventually Olivia meets Carter (Landon Liboiron), an intelligent individual clearly, like her. They are about to leave but they agree to follow him to a cool place to have some more fun. Yay mysteries!

Sure enough, Carter gets the uneasy group to pretend to be middle schoolers and play a rousing game of Truth or Dare. Everyone goes around the circle, doing a dare or spilling their beans, until we learn the truth from Carter. He brought in the group to force them to join this game, to hopefully free himself from its cure. They are haunted now, and if they refuse the task given to them, then they will die. If they lie, they die. And if they refuse to play, well…

Starring as the rest of the main friend group: Tyler Posey, Sophia Ali, Nolan Gerard Funk, and Hayden Szeto. Also starring Gary Anthony Williams, Brady Smith, and Sam Lerner.

Face2
And here is another one for good measure.

You know what can make a good horror film? Believable actors, for one. The situations don’t have to be too believable. I can suspend my belief in a movie for scary aliens, monsters, demons, ghosts, ex lovers, possessed things, invincible serial killers, whatever. Sure. As long as it makes sense in that world. But if they introduce things and seemingly just change things on the go, and give no real fucks about the events? Well, that is shitty.

In this scenario, it takes far too much time for everyone to get on board with what is happening. I think two of the friends need to die before people start realizing that something bad is happening. We just get to watch friends argue and get mad about spoiling each others shit up with the truth. And afterwards? Well, it is mostly friends still being dumbasses as a group.

First of all, this movie is all over the place. With one of the dares that occurs, it feels like a really poor final destination movie, and then never really goes back to that concept. “Why don’t they just all say truth?” Well because they suck. And the movie wanted to add rules later on. This movie plays out the dumb scenario of turning a dare into telling the truth as well, just because. We have characters who over and over again get upset over the truth, but they know that if the truth wasn’t said, their friend would die. But who cares right?

The ending is the lowest point of the film, so its interesting they decide to leave us with a sour taste in our mouths. After a scene where our heroes try and get the upper hand, we find out that it still didn’t work as planned. Then they try one more plan which, as previously established earlier in the movie, won’t do shit for them at all.

I am going to put some spoilers here. The previous Truth or Dare group hoped that by putting new people in the group they would be freed. It did not, it just made it bigger. They still had to do the question just the others didn’t know about it. And despite being merged groups, they only bring up these facts when it is convenient, in lazy writing. For some reason one of them can’t do it if he is alone? Even though they have shown others have to do it when alone? For some reason order only matters for this group, and the others can just be asked when convenient for the plot? It basically shows that the two groups have their own games on it and don’t actually affect each other, meaning adding more people will not buy you any time, because your game is still limited to those players. And yet that is just what our “heroes” try to do at the end. Get more time. With this terrible, terrible, strategy, all they did was fuck over others, while also dooming themselves right after the credits role anyways.

It is just such a goddamn stupid movie. It is never really well established. When they exposition us enough in the film to try and piece it together, it just doesn’t really grok well. The strange face thing wasn’t good, wasn’t scary, and just seemed silly. So many jump scares that were pointless and lazy. And again, it is just very stupid.

I wouldn’t dare my worst enemy to watch even half of this movie. That’s the truth.

0 out of 4.

The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence)

Holy fuck. Today is the day. Today we have reached the biggest milestone yet. Because that is how numbers work, and each review is the biggest number yet, so of course milestone wise, that would increase as well.

Two. Thousand. 2000. Two thousands reviews on Gorgon Reviews!

I have been slacking a bit, mostly because I didn’t feel any inspiration, but my last Milestone Review was when I hit 1750, at the beginning of 2017, with the Resident Evil Franchise review. I figured that every 50 was getting me a bit burnt out, and most people didn’t care when they were that frequent. That is roughly one every 3 or so months. I figure after this one, I will just do every 100 a Milestone Review, to keep it fresh and fun for me.

But this is too much nonsense. I need to talk about the 2000th film. To catch you all up, I used to say that I didn’t review horror films, just to avoid The Human Centipede, which was popular when I first started writing. For my 1000th review, I changed all of that around and opened up the genre.

For my 1500th review, I did the second film, just as the third one was finally about to come out. And it made a lot of sense to me to make sure I saved The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) for when I hit this magical 2000 number, even if I really never wanted to see this film.

With all this backstory, I can say for sure right now that I have no idea what my 2500th film will end up being. I have nothing on the docket right now, but I have 499 movies to watch first before I have to make any hard decisions.

1
Hard decisions, like whether or not I need to make a human centipede.

In the second movie, the original film was just a movie. In the third film, the first two are both movies, and this one is totally set in the real world this time.

This time it is also set in a prison, in some Southwestern state. This is a prison of anarchy, of brutal prisoners, and a staff who doesn’t give a damn. Led by the Warden, Bill Boss (Dieter Laser), who yes, you would maybe recognize as the evil doctor from the first film. Don’t worry, that isn’t our only reunion! We also have the main assistant/accountant of the warden, Dwight Butler (Laurence R. Harvey), who was the sadistic security guard in the second film!

2
there are a few notable new people to the series though.

Don’t worry, this isn’t just a big sausage fest. We have a woman character! Her name is Daisy (Bree Olson). She is a secretary. She also has to give the warden blowjobs, gets generally sexually harassed all the times, is clearly just an object and not a person. And of course she is played by Bree Olson, known for her work in the adult industry.

Overall, this may have been better to be a full on sausage party. Then we wouldn’t have the unnecessary sexual violence against women also taking part in this movie.

3
And this time, the hammer is not his pistol.

Back to the prison. Man, these inmates are really pissed off at everything. In a mini riot, one of them stabs an officer, so the warden breaks his arm. That is the kind of justice they serve here. The prisoners unfortunately cause problem after problem, where the Warden decides on a whim what to do about it. Like random castrations, which he is happy to do personally. Or waterboarding but with boiling water.

Overall, the warden is a fucked up man. He has a jar of cut off Clitorises from Africa to snack on for strength.

4
Look, you came into this review knowing the movie would be a fuckshow.

All of these issues cause the governor of their state (Eric Roberts) to stop on by, demanding that the violence in this prison be put to a stop. It turns out that the prison has also been spending a lot of money, going almost bankrupt in the process, due to all their extra medical fees.

Good old accountant Dwight though has the solution. He has known for the whole film how they can save money, reduce fighting, and be heroes for the state! You see, Dwight is a fan of a certain two films, which are claimed to be scientifically accurate!

He just needs permission to turn the prison into one giant human centipede, and everyone will love them!

5
Do you really want to know where this blood came from?

No! There is no way this is plausible! It is just a stupid goddamn movie!

But Dwight insists. Hell, they even bring the director, Tom Six (Tom Six) of the first two movies (and yes, he wrote and directed this one) to be an adviser over the whole thing. He has ideas for them, as long as he can also observe and see it happen, because hey, seeing his film come to life would be cool.

They have other issues going on with this idea too. For example, prisoners eventually get to leave the prison. They cannot just make a permanent huge centipede. They have to be able to be removed from teh centipede when their time is up, meaning so taking out their knees, or permanently attaching mouth to anus. There are rules, damn it.

Good news, their doctors know how to make it all work, realistically!

6
Just needed a goddamn planning session, to brainstorm this shit.

Needless to say, the inmates were not too thrilled with the prospect of having to eat shit. They decided to show them that this is not okay, and have another riot! In the process, they messed up Daisy a bit too, and she certainly didn’t deserve any of that. She certainly didn’t deserve to be raped by the warden either, while in a coma after the fact.

I can’t even make jokes out of this shit.

But the film can, specifically shit jokes. Because not all prisoners are medically able to join the centipede. Due to weak blood, or constant Diarrheaing. But those aren’t real problems, they are just punishments for other people!

Either way, the 500 or so prisoners get put into the centipede! For those prisoners who have no chance at parole, they are put into an extra special Human Caterpillar, that doesn’t have those pesky limbs getting in the way of some good old fashioned mouth to anus action.

7
Caterpillar picture not included.

The governor shows up as soon as they are finished. He hears their pitch on how this will save them money on food, on walls, on staff, on riot induced hospital visits. Or even punishment based visits. And the governor is pissed. He thinks they should be locked up. They are certainly fired. This is fucked up, this is fucky, this is oh so so so so bad.

And they put poor Daisy in the chain accidentally, but no one except Dwight cares!

Just when the warden is going to go out in a blaze of glory, the governor has a change of heart. He thinks that it is swell and that they are geniuses.

Oh yay! Too bad that the warden still is a literal walking pile of feces, killing Dwight so that he can have the sole credit.

And now he can run his prison on his own, shirtless, firing his gun into the air and just taunting the prisoners with his loud mouth. The. Fucking. End.

Also featuring people like Clayton Rohner, Robert LaSardo, Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister, and Jay Tavare as inmates or doctors.

8
They also have some permanent scars so everyone knows you were once part of the prison centipede.

The third and so far final act to this franchise is over 100 minutes long and manages to do something the other films could not. It is for the most part NOT about a gross human centipede contraption. Seriously, it is over halfway through the movie before the accountant is able to finally tell the warden his ideas. That means we have 50 minutes of a warden just being an overall asshole, to other assholes, and we as audience members just have to take it.

And what is the goddamn point? The other films were terrible for focusing on gross aspects, while being worse than torture porn, and poor acting. This one has the poor acting, and seems to focus on MORE gross aspects, just a more diverse set than previous editions.

This film is strange in that it ends on a mostly happy ending for the person who did this to the people. At no point does this version feel scary, it just feels like a waste of time. Bad guy is comically bad, while doing gross things, until he does a bigger grosser thing, the end.

Oh, but again, this one has one woman character, who is used as a sexual object, beaten, and raped, just for the lols. It is downright terrifying in that manner, especially as it is always played as a joke, which is the biggest shocking points of this whole movie.

The third film in this franchise is indeed, different than the first two. But in the end, it is just a different bad way to waste an evening with. Zero. Fun. Sir.

0 out of 4.

The Babysitter

Generally, if you throw the word babysitter in a movie title, it now seems to allude to sexy stuff. Maybe that is because of the film a decade ago, The Babysitters, about sexy underage stuff.

But The Babysitter still has a similar theme going on. Attractive ladies, people who want to bone them, and sacrifices to the dark lord.

Oh wait wait, that last part is a bit different. Although, ritual sacrifice in film usually, strangely, comes with an air of sexual tension too.

The only film to go against this trend is Adventures in Babysitting, which thankfully, is very unsexy.

Tropes
This scene looks photoshopped.

Cole (Judah Lewis) is too old for a babysitter, and yet, he has one anyways. Seriously, he is now in high school. A freshman, but still in high school. His parents (Leslie Bibb, Ken Marino) sometimes take extended weekend trips to stay in hotel rooms in order to rekindle their relationship, and don’t trust their son alone. And he is a total straight up nerd, not like he would throw a rager.

But Cole doesn’t care too much either, because his babysitter is a total babe. Bee (Samara Weaving) is like a perfect human, with confidence, humor, looks, you name it. She is also down to earth and treats Cole like a real goddamn person, and not some burden. Sure she gets paid to hang out with him, but she seems to be the type to still find him to be a friend.

Convinced by his friend to stay up past bedtime to find out if she ends up having sex with a boyfriend when he sleeps, he instead finds a whole gang of people in his house. Normal, teenage stuff is mostly going on, until one of the group gets stabbed in the head, his blood collected, an unwilling sacrifice.

Holy shit. They are making deals with the devil. They also need the blood of someone pure, which of course means him. This is not how Cole saw his night going. He loved Bee!

Also starring Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Bella Thorne, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, and Doug Haley.

Friends
Best friends, no romance at all? They should kiss.

The Babysitter is a very chaotic film and going for a specific audience: one that just wants to have a lot of fun. And honestly, it does feel like a lot of fun.

The film isn’t that long and it feels like it takes awhile to get to the point. But it is filled with dynamic and fun camera angles, making seemingly (and actually) boring events early on feel a bit more special. This is a throw back to the 80’s in terms of plot, but really it didn’t go 80’s enough. I mean, if you are going to do a ritual sacrifice for power to the devil, can we get a little bit of devil? Come on.

Instead we get upper aged teenagers having to carry out most of the evil deeds. Once this aspect of the film starts, it gets crazy and stays chaotic until the very end. It was highly entertaining, watching them try to get our main kid, dying in horrific ways, while also not just outright trying to kill him back.

I mean, these real people have some standards, you know?

Amell was the most hilarious of the group, totally doing better than many of his other recent works. Maybe it is just because he had his shirt off the whole time, and that appealed to my senses.

The Babysitter takes awhile to get really going, isn’t a great movie at all, but it is very, very fun once it fully embraces its plot.

2 out of 4.

The Strangers: Prey at Night

The Strangers was a really popular horror film a decade ago when it came out and I of course never watched it. Okay, I did see it last week, just to prepare for this sequel, to see why people were excited. There is a lot to like for those who want more realism in their films about people getting killed.

It was terrifying because it was set up as a completely random occurrence, it was something that could ¨happen to anyone¨ and not just people who drank or smoked or whatever. The bad people don´t have some strange backstories, hell, we never get to see their faces. They just torture, kill, and leave.

I watched that movie just to have some context for The Strangers: Prey at Night, and boy howdy, I am surely glad I did that. If I did not see the original, I would have never known just how badly this so called sequel actually was.

Gate
The lady in the back will help her fit through those holes.

This film centers us on a family going through turmoil. No, not people with knives, just teenage disobedience. We got a mom (Christina Hendricks), a dad (Martin Henderson), an older brother (Lewis Pullman), and our hero I guess, Kinsey (Bailee Madison).

Kinsey is a bit of a fuck up. Besides the underage drinking and smoking, she got into some serious problems over the last year and now her parents cannot deal with her anymore. She is going to boarding school, and they are all going to drive her down there. It is the last shot they have to fix her. They are staying the night in a trailer at one of their relative´s resorts, their last night as a family.

Oh, and then they find out that everyone is gone or dead there. And the three masked people are around, trying to spook them, or even kill them, or worse, sell them on the black market. Probably not the former. They just want to kill them for the lols.

Starring Damian Maffei, Lea Enslin, and Emma Bellomy as our masked killers.

Mommy
Fear is imagining the hardworking Hendricks as a boring stay at home mother.

Everything good and wonderful about the first film was thrown out of the window for this follow up.

There was one or so surprises in the sequel. I will give it that. Things that I didn´t think would ever happen did happen, so it gave some nice shock. But that was the only positive.

Instead of regular people getting tortured by seemingly regular people, we instead have a whole family being terrorized by superhuman monsters. They are seemingly invulnerable at times, including one of them near the end that just never stops. Suddenly the guy with the bag head is Jason I guess.

Not to mention their ability to teleport around this trailer park area. It is crazy how they always happen to know which house they are hiding in. They always have someone nearby ready to go, even if they were just at some other place. I am having a hard time typing it, but coincidence central could be this movie. The movie was better when it was a single house because it all made sense then. But a giant resort village? Yeah right.

This film feels like it was not meant to be a sequel to The Strangers, but they changed their mind and said fuck it for some of that sweet brand recognition. Everything that made the first film work was just ignored and left to rot.

1 out of 4.