Tag: 2 out of 4

I got to see the trailer for Girl Most Likely only once, and that was at an independent movie theater before I saw Fruitvale Station.

And I made plans to wait for it on DVD. Wasn’t an appealing trailer, looked super low budget. It looks like one of those stories, written by someone who doesn’t write normally, but is secretly writing about her own life, and this is a way of telling her story.

Yes, I determined that out a trailer once a few months ago. Shut up.

I said shut up, not hold open your mouth. That is just awkward.

Imogene (Kristen Wiig) is about to have a break down. She used to be considered very bright. She was a great writer. She won a huge grant for $30,000 to write a play and have it performed in NYC. But all of her dreams came crashing down and she has been slowly unraveling, enough to chase her long time boyfriend away. So she tries to kill herself.

Oh. Erm. Shit.

She isn’t too good at it though, so she gets hospitalized instead. Even worse than that, she has to be released from the hospital into a loving environment, which they assume is her home in Jersey. Nopenopenope. Her child hood sucked! She was in a single parent home, because her dad died when she was young and her mom (Annette Bening) was trash. Her brother, Ralph, (Christopher Fitzgerald) had it worse, having some form of autism. He is smart, just a recluse. At least he will be there when she moves back.

Oh, and her mom’s new boyfriend, Geourge Bousche, who talks about spirtuality and is quite mysterious (Matt Dillion). And some dude, Lee (Darren Criss), who she has rented out her old room too. Shit, she can’t even stay in her old bed. Oh well, she just has to survive three days until she can go back to her apartment in NYC. Or if her boyfriend comes to pick her up.

One of the two.
One. Of. The. Two.

Ah, Glee has turned Criss into a boy band member. That was unexpected.

Alright, my original thoughts may have been wrong, but I can’t get that same feeling out of my head.

The main character is a play writer going through a tough time. She has to get out of a slump, and is in freak out mode. Like every movie ever about a struggling writer, the events in the film eventually turn into inspiration, and aww, she is accepted again. That isn’t a spoil, because that is a stupid movie cliche, and it totally happens in this one.

So I feel like this movie of this happening is the third level of realization or something. A movie about a writer who writes a play about her life, and this movie might be about her life too secretly.

I think I am babbling.

This movie had some nice moments, I laughed out loud a few times. It also had a lot of whatever moments, like the first part, and the ending. It was just full of rookie movie mistakes. Things were cut oddly, and it all just felt like a lot of rookie movie making mistakes. Full of jokes that just fell flat.

So overall, it was okay. I enjoyed what they tried to do, and some of the things that were done, but thought a lot of it was just not up to par.

2 out of 4.

If I learned anything about the advertising campaign of Last Vegas, it is that sometimes people don’t like seeing the same ad every fifteen minutes. Last Vegas was produced by CBS Films, so it has the benefit of being advertised on a channel that is watched by the millions during football games every Sunday.

Unfortunately for the movie, I know plenty of people who wrote it off solely on overexposure, a likelihood probably expressed around America.

At least the suits are colorful.

Last Vegas takes us into the lives of four kids who grew up best friends, but into their adulthood, their lives began to veer in different paths.

But Billy (Michael Douglas) is getting married, finally! To a girl half his age! So he wants to invite his old pals to the wedding: Sam (Kevin Kline), who is currently living a sad life in Florida in a sexless relationship. Archie (Morgan Freeman), who is living with his son (Michael Ealy), while constantly on pills. And even Paddy (Robert De Niro), who hasn’t left his apartment since his wife died a year ago and also really really hates Billy now.

Why does he hate Billy? Well, that is a spoiler. But he gets tricked into showing up for the bachelor party / wedding.

Thanks to pension funds and a little luck, the four gentlemen end up having one of the wildest weekends imaginable, while also allowing time to air out their grievances and fix their standing in life. How awesome is that?

Mary Steenburgen plays Diana, a lounge singer who helps create conflict, Romany Malco, their butler-esque character, and Jerry Ferrara, a recurring jerk.

Old dudes, doing young things. Hilarious!

I think I figured out a pattern in new comedies. First we had a group of guys in Vegas with The Hangover in 2009, then a group of girls in Vegas with Bridesmaids in 2011. Another two years later we were given old guys in Vegas, so I expect in 2015, we will get either old women in Vegas, or elementary school girls in Vegas. It depends on if this relationship is linear or a ramping sine wave, respectfully.

Overall, I guess this movie delivered exactly as the previews showed. A lot of old people jokes. Old people jokes are a subset of jokes, where everything is funnier, just because the characters involved happen to be old. So old people talking about drugs, going to clubs, flirting, being hungover. This movie has the bonus aspect of seeing Morgan Freeman do all of these things, one of the more revered older actors currently out there.

But after awhile, it becomes obvious that all of the jokes are basically the same, so it is hard to still find them funny across the entire run time. The movie also took its sweet time ending, with what felt like at least three endings thrown on.

Of our actors, Douglas was not at his best, which is a shame given his last role in Behind The Candelabra. De Niro was also hit and miss in this film. The best two were Kline and Freeman, arguably supporting actors in this movie.

Most of the plot lines for the characters went the obvious routes, so nothing felt surprising. Everything gets wrapped up by the end, the conflict presented isn’t too huge, and it is just a simple movie. It was odd to see E from Entourage, so thin. There were two cameos: LMFAO, an already outdated reference, and 50 Cent, who was a welcome surprise.

If you go into Last Vegas expecting a lot of cheap laughs and some touching moments, then you will overall enjoy it. Not a game changer by any means in the comedy genre, but an okay one all the same.

 

2 out of 4.

Hey look, a movie based on a book! You know. Like most movies.

But this isn’t any book. This is Ender’s Game. A very famous sci-fi novel from the 1980s, that is required reading in some/many schools now! So, that can mean a few things. It can mean angry mobs of book fans when the movie of Ender’s Game turns out unfaithful, or it can just mean a buttload of money.

That’s right. Buttload. Not even getting into the personal thoughts and opinions of the author, Orson Scott Card, but there are 20 separate books/collections/short stories that he has published in this story. Ender’s Game was the first one to get published, but it is now like, the middle book. Jeez.

Apparently his games just involve very large octahedra dice.

In the future, shit is all bad. Big alien force came and killed a lot of people, but a hero was able to think on the fly and saved the day for everyone. Hooray!

Well now, almost fifty years later, the alien forces are building again and the threat of a new attack is high. They have begun to train children to become their new generals and commanders. Due to growing up with realistic war video games, they are not as afflicted by things like morals or death or killing. Heck yeah!

Our hero is Ender Wiggan (Asa Butterfield), third born from his family, and taking a stab at joining the academy. Well, he is good. He just has to march through rank after rank, school after school, to be deemed good enough to eventually, finally, maybe, go against an actual alien fleet. But until then, it is really just a series of…games.

Harrison Ford is a commander, Viola Davis some sort of…officer. Abigail Breslin is Ender’s sister, Nonso Anozie a sergeant, and a bunch of other kids are played by Aramis Knight, Suraj Partha, Moises Arias, and Hailee Steinfeld. Hailee, who of course starred in True Grit and was called a supporting actress back then! Whoa.

Yes of course Ben Kingsley is in this movie. Just in the last third.

I decided to sleep on the analysis part of the review, and not write it all in one sitting like usual. After watching the movie, I still had so many questions. Ones I would bring up here, but I can’t spoil them because I am not a dickface.

I am really surprised this movie was under two hours, because it felt a lot longer. Here is why. Most of the movie is Ender training at consecutive harder and harder levels. He has to go through a fleet academy thing, he has a break down, then battle school, then battle school at the next tier, he has a break down, then battle school leading his own group of “soldiers”, then he has another break down, then he has to go to commander school, then another breakdown, then his final test.

Just. So many god damn tiers. It felt long because I knew that even though the beginning felt super rushed, the ending confrontation with the evil bug aliens would also have to be potentially rushed. So it felt like a lot of waiting to me.

Outside of that annoyance, and certain inconsistencies near the end that really had me confused, I did enjoy many parts of this movie. It dealt with emotions and morals that are very important and need to be discussed, but it didn’t delve on them as much as I would have liked. Aka, it was just quick, like a lot of the movie. Nothing really felt dealt with, and I don’t want to wait for another movie for things to be dealt with. Probably won’t happen. It didn’t make a ton of money, and Thor 2 is next week. Sooo, yeah. Probably going to be considered a flop, unfortunately, because acting was good.

I am sure that if I read the book a lot more would make sense. Presumably a lot was left out, and I hate it if I have to read a book to fully understand what a movie is trying to convey.

2 out of 4.

Oh how I wish Breakout was actually a movie version of the classic video game of the same name.

How cool and abstract would that be? I mean, they made Battleship, which sucked, but why not a game that is actually fun.

That’s right. Here at Gorgon Reviews, we think the board game Battleship sucks. I am sorry to take up space in this Breakout review to spread anti-Battleship propaganda.

Because we got “Action stars” to talk about!

In this movie, Jack (Brendan Fraser) is an…environmentalist/activist? What? Well, he lives in a forested area, way up north. When his daughter Jen (Holly Deveaux) was younger, she made him promise that he wouldn’t let anyone do anything bad to their home. So he said sure and really took it to heart. Little later, he is leading a group of protesters right to the bulldozers, get off our land, raw rawr!

Well, jee wilikers, he gets involved in an altercation and gets put in prison. In fact, he can only get out later if he agrees to serve as an adviser for that same company. That stands against his ideals!

All of this has really nothing to do with the main plot. Just minor character points, that are overblown in the movie.

No, the main plot appears when two brothers, Tommy (Dominic Purcell) and Kenny Baxter (Ethan Suplee) are released from prison and on their way to Canada, to live free from the law. They may have killed a man, and it also may have left Kenny mentally scarred in the process. Things don’t go the way they expect them to, so Tommy ends up killing another guy. Damn. Protecting your brother apparently leads to killing other people quite often.

Well, Jen and her younger brother Mikey (Christian Martyn) see this event happen while they are out kayaking. Sucks. Now Tommy is out to get them too, willing to kill some kids and others in their way just to protect their identity. These guys are really serious.

But it is up to nature boy Jack to save the day!

Basically him versus a guy with a gun and his morally and mentally confused brother is all.

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. I have no idea why they added all that protester stuff to the Jack character early on. Just to make him also a criminal kind of? Even though he was only protecting someone else who was getting hurt? Seriously no fucking idea.

But he is never shown to be bad either, just pissed off at people digging, and I am pretty sure that doesn’t change by the end of the film. It is all just a cluster fuck of extra story that ruins the main plot line.

Which on its own is decent. I liked the acting from Purcell, as protective brother, and Suplee, who is super thin, as mentally handicapped brother. He has a voice that is just very believable, and I guess, kind of just similar to his character from My Name Is Earl. They were great. I loved the tension.

The resolution went as expected, but that was fine. What really ruins this movie is all that extra stuff added on top. Also, I wish it was based on the video game. Shh.

2 out of 4.

I have no idea where I first heard about Stories We Tell. But it totally happened sometime in the last 0-2 years. I think. It was either something I read, or a friend’s post on facebook, or a trailer. Shit I really don’t remember. Which is funny, because this documentary is about memories not being infallible.

Sarah Polley is an actress that really no one cares about. She had a major role in Go, but since then its been mostly random stuff. She has made a project to honor her mother, maybe. She has gathered all of her older siblings, her dad, her parents friends, and others to just tell the complete story of their mother, as they remember it.

The film on IMDB is described as “A film that excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family of storytellers.” We are told that basically their stories will show that not everyone has the complete story, that some people have contradicting thoughts about what happened and the only way to really know is to hear every single angle.

Angle means different person, not where the person is talking from in relation to where you are sitting.

But then I watch it.

And uhh, their stories really aren’t that different. A lot of people mentioning different things, but they are all really similar, so the stark differences we were promised don’t really come up.

I mean, this is no Rashomon, the first movie to have an incident occur, and people retelling it all have different memories, til we find out the truth is somewhere in between. It is now a pretty famous plot device. So we would hope for big differences in order for the time to be worth it.

What inspired this video was that she had heard rumors her whole life that her dad wasn’t her real dad. Surprise, it was true. The real dad knew he was the father, but he didn’t tell people. So that guy had part of the story that others were unaware of. A secret love. Maybe. The last line of the film makes us wonder if it was really that good of a love.

But here is the issue I have. Sure nothing crazy happens overall, this is real life. It is an issue a “Character” in the documentary brings up. People are talking for hours about her mom. This movie is less than two hours long. Sarah herself has to pick and choose what memories get told, leaving still an unstructured half truth of her mother, which is not what she set out to do. It is the exact same thing our mind/memories do, but at an editing table.

I just demand the 60 hour version, is all.

2 out of 4.

I have found the month of October to be pretty disappointing in regards to major horror releases. All we got for a wide release was the Carrie remake. There aren’t even any Paranormal Activities, because the next one got pushed back to January. Yes, I find them pretty bad now, but come on, just Carrie?

That is where the indie theaters step in. They have one more addition to the month, We Are What We Are, a remake of a Mexican film of the same name from a few years prior. Well, same name, but in Spanish.

The religious elements are exemplified in the foreign version, where every male is named Jesus.

The Parker family is a strange family. They mostly keep to themselves, the dad, Frank (Bill Sage), his two daughters, Rose (Julia Garner) and Iris (Ambyr Childers), and their younger brother who doesn’t know much, Rory (Jack Gore).

Doesn’t know much? Yeah, because he is young and hasn’t learned a lot yet. He knows about Jesus. But he hasn’t learned anything about math, or science, or books, or their family secret.

Oooh, a family secret. You can probably figure out what it is. Look at the creepy fucking photos. I mean, I could tell what their secret was just by reading a small plot description and seeing the cover.

Well, they totally do that. But then a big rain storm happens, and it causes flooding. Flooding that might accidentally tear up enough ground to reveal their secret, that they have kept in the family hidden for over a hundred years. I am sure no one in the town is smart enough to figure it out. Oh, except for the wily Doc Barrow (Michael Parks), who doesn’t know he is about to discover a secret that big, but is just looking for his missing daughter, and enlists the help of a local deputy (Wyatt Russell).

That ain’t bean juice there, fellas.

Outside of their family secret, there is not a lot of surprising things about this movie. It is not your standard horror, that is for sure. There isn’t a killer stalking victims throughout, all of the deaths are quick and not built up for tension.

In fact, the whole movie is kind of set up like a regular drama. It moves incredibly slow, with the family just doing their thing, the doctor just doing his investigation, until a confrontation near the end. Because of the downpour, the dad is off doing other things, and so the two daughters have to take part in their family activity for the first real time on their own. So that is a bit awkward and creepy.

I really enjoyed the ending, I think it made sense from the build up. However, the time it took for the build up to occur is what killed me. It is a rather slow moving movie. Even though the payoff at the end is worth it, I still dislike how I wasn’t really scared or completely freaked out until that point. At that point I wanted to vomit a little bit.

But hey, at least we have an alternative scary movie this month in theaters…kind of!

2 out of 4.

Bad Grandpa, Bad Grandpa, Bad Grandpa…

Well, it is presented by Jackass, and I can say I have never seen one of those movies in full, or the TV show, just random skits before that people have gone out of their way to show me. And this music video by Andrew W.K.

I literally have no desire to see people hurt them selves and do stupid things for amusement. Like, none. I am not high brow at all, not in the slightest, it just doesn’t seem appealing to me.

But this movie is different. So much different.

Like, this kid, who was the best part of Fun Size.

The “plot” of the movie is that Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville) is old, his wife just died, and he is stoked. Too bad his only daughter is going to prison, and her son, Billy (Jackson Nicholl), needs someone to watch him and take him to visit his daddy in Raleigh, NC.

But Irving lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. That is far away. Fuck all that noise.

Well he does it anyways, and that is the backbone for this roadtrip film, which has the main goal of just doing ridiculous things and providing shock value to real people and our enjoyment.

And some stunts too.

Or fabricated little girl pageants in Raleigh just to confuse and bewilder people.

In case you can’t wait for the ending, I am giving this a 2 out of 4 for a few reasons.

Yes, it is at times entertaining. Some of the stunts/interactions are really creative. Nice moments. But a lot of the time they feel too far in between, or the joke takes too long to set up (so instead we are just given a lot of diatribe between Johnny Knoxville pretending to be a mean old man.

Speaking of that, this may be the only time I say this in a review but…

This movie has too much plot.

To be more entertaining, we need more skits, more hilarious interactions between real people and the actors. We have a lot of scenes just between Knoxville and Nicoll who in the car talking. And it is all bullshit, all stuff we would expect to see in a real movie, that feels just completely unnecessary in this film.

Similarly, because a lot of these scenes are so detailed, like the pageant, and that machine that crashes through a store window. That wasn’t just random, other people had to be in on it. So some of those other people are in the shots too, doing reactions as if its real, but you know they know its about to happen.

So to recap, this movie would have been a lot more entertaining overall if they just made more of it be real skits and less plot, and reduced the number of people who knew what was going to happen. Here is one thing I learned from the movie: The Guardians of the Children, a bikers gang, is incredibly fucking awesome, and they really believe in their cause.

2 out of 4.

I might have heard of Valhalla Rising a few years ago. Those two words I definitely know exist, so I think I knew this movie existed.

But it wasn’t until it was requested by a friend and found on Netflix did I actually finally get around to it. Here is my knowledge going into it: Violent violent violent!

What? This doesn’t look violent at all!

Valhalla Rising is told in six parts: Wrath, Silent Warrior, Men Of God, The Holy Land, Hell, and The Sacrifice.

Really, that by itself probably serves as an adequate plot outline. Just imagine those sections and vikings and your probably get the whole movie.

Our story is about One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen), the only character who really gets a name. He has one eye, because the other got slashed away. He is also mute. But he is a bad ass warrior. But a prisoner, until he was able to escape and kill his captors. One Eye wants to head home, and won’t let anyone get in his way. What about The Boy (Maarten Stevenson), who fed him as a slave? He can follow, sure. Why not.

Eventually they meet up with some Crusaders, journeying to Jerusalem. Free boat ride.

Oh, yeah, One Eye totally has visions too of the future, and has been using that to decide which path to take, as his visions continue to come true.

Valhalla Rising: Norse and Christian spirituality, combined with violence.

Based on the earlier description, this film is way different than I imagined. In fact, it reminded me of another film I watched recently. Only God Forgives.

Shit. It is Nicholas Winding Refn, the same director of that and Drive. Basically, he has shown to make movies many would consider very violent (but this one didn’t feel that bad), while also avoiding names, having high levels of cinemetography, and slower parts to really draw out certain emotions and feelings.

Basically, it could be hard to watch. You won’t get to simply half ass watching it, or else you won’t get anything out there. Yes, some of the fights and conflicts are violent, but they are not the main focus of this story. It is kind of a story of redemption, but not really, of one mysterious figure.

I think too much of this story is left up to the viewer, and not a lot happens besides it. It bugs the shit out of me. Yes it is pretty, and yes the acting is decent, but not enough happens.

Overall, I liked it more than Only God Forgives, because I understand this one more, but not as good as Drive. It’s on netflix, might be worthy of a watch. It is okay overall, just…I thought it could have been more entertaining in the long run.

2 out of 4.

Movies based on true events are always a tricky endeavor, especially if those events are within the last few years. If they are based on a single person, who happens to be alive, then it can get all sorts of awkward.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks is currently living in the Ecuadorian Assembly in London. If he ever leaves, London is going to send him off to Sweden for what he claims are bogus charges, who are then going to send him back to the US for all sorts of “War crimes.” If you never heard his name, and don’t know who he is, then The Fifth Estate is probably the movie for you!

I wouldn’t describe this as a thinking movie, but there are a lot of thinking scenes.

Despite being about Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch), this film is told from the perspective of Daniel Berg (Daniel Bruhl, who was also just in Rush). Daniel started to work with Julian in 2007, drawn into the idea of Wikileaks, which was a way for whistle blowers to anonymously report wrong doings and keep their identity secret so that they can not face repercussions.

A nice idea. They want to make the world more transparent, allow everyone to have secret information, and protect those that give that information. But what if WikiLeaks becomes more about Julian Assange than the original message? What if they don’t care about protecting lives anymore?

It should be noted that the movie is based on two books that came out in 2011, one written by Daniel, who was no longer with the company, both with a negative bias towards Wikileaks. Because of that, it is hard to say how much of the events in this film are accurate in their portrayal.

Despite their now aggressive relationship with each other, we get to see into the workings of the early years of Wikileaks, their volunteer army, their expansion of servers across Europe, their battle against banks and in the courts for free speech and some of their biggest scoops. It also tells the story up to including the famous Afghan War Diary, its biggest scoop, that was taken from the government by Bradley Manning.

As far as other actors, I guess they are important enough to mention. Laura Linney, Anthony Mackie, and Stanley Tucci all play various US Government employees, Lydia Leonard and Moritz Bleibtreu (from Run Lola Run / In July fame!) play other members of Wikileaks, and David Thewlis the main reporter for The Guardian who is covering Wikileaks.

Bunch of lookers too, but not in the way that phrase normally means.

Needless to say, Julian has gone on record to say he doesn’t agree with his own betrayal in this movie, calls it one sided and a smear campaign against Wikileaks. He has at least one point going for him: If powerful organizations want to discredit Wikileaks and cause it to lose trust in citizens of the world, then discrediting Julian as a bad person is one way to go about it. They mention it in the movie, and he says it in real life a lot.

In fact, the ending of the film is Benedict recreating an interview that was done with Julian, about his thoughts on the film. Sure, it made the movie end weirdly, but encouraged the viewer to do their own research on the subject. Kind of meta, kind of cool.

Of course, Julian also hasn’t seen the film, just read several scripts, so I can’t take his word completely either.

The Fifth Estate definitely makes Julian look like a dick, but also a guy who more or less has his heart in the right place. He wants to make the world a better place, but at the same time he is only human.

I think the main problem with this film is they made this story far too melodramatic that it almost made it seem either over the top, or just no longer real. The film even comes complete with “visual metaphors” because making movies about the internet and data is pretty hard without making it look silly. So there are many scenes of a warehouse, almost infinite in size, with desks and computers showing the Wikileaks army at work. What I am getting at is they still end up just looking silly.

Benedict did an excellent job at acting as always, really doing his best to imitate Julian and also seems to be a fan of the man from interviews. There is a documentary coming out eventually, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, which may give a more accurate portrayal of events. But until then, we are only left with this okay melodrama, about a man and his website.

2 out of 4.

This may not be a popular opinion, but I am willing to say it: The original Carrie is not that scary of a movie. Or at least it isn’t scary anymore.

When it first came out it was probably shocking, sure. Part of the reason it would have been terrifying is not knowing the bloodbath that would occur at the end of the film. There was no internet, spoilers didn’t run rampant, people could watch it and actually see something new.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t know how the original Carrie ends. They might not know the finite details or how it occurs, but they know blood gets dumped on a poor girl, who then takes out a school who bullied her.

So why bother with a Carrie remake in 2013? The only real reason is to either change the story so that audiences won’t see the ending coming or ramp up the creepy details to a new notch in order to make it more of a horror film. You know, give us a different reason to remember her name.

“How do we make Julie look crazy?” “I don’t know…frazzle her hair a little bit!”

Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) came from humble beginnings. She used to be home-schooled, but the state of Maine intervened and forced her to go to public school. Not sure why. Her mom (Julianne Moore) was a perfectly adept teacher. She taught Carrie about Jesus, God, and she even gave her a nice tiny prayer closet under the stairs to “study” in.

Despite the fact that she is a senior in high school, she gets her period for the first time in gym class. Must be Satan at work in her loins. The other girls find her fear amusing, make fun of her, and promptly get in trouble by the gym teacher (Judy Greer). They have two options, put up with a week of grueling physical activity, or get suspended and miss prom. Clearly neither option is ideal, and it must be Carrie’s fault putting these girls in that situation.

Which is why the mean girl (Portia Doubleday) and her boyfriend (Alex Russell) do the whole dump pigs blood on her head at prom thing. That’ll show her.

That’ll show everyone.

Gabriella Wilde plays the nice “mean girl,” and Ansel Elgort her boyfriend.

Huh, she looks cute in red. Really, the reason anyone came to see this movie was to watch the prom scene and see the path of destruction that Carrie would lay in her wake. The rest of the film could be boring, but as long as the prom scene is excellent, the director will have delivered. The prom scene is longer in this version, there are more creative deaths with less hoses, and there is more destruction outside of the school, but miraculously a lower overall body count. Huh.

Basically, this film is identical to the 70’s version in terms of…well most things. Even the dialogue is basically the same, minus the upgrades in time/technology.

The few things that are changed are who lives and dies at the end, one other “twist”, and making the mother a bit of a masochist. Okay, a huge masochist, she loves that self infliction stuff. Basically their attempt at making the film a bit more creepy throughout.

Overall, I would say that this film was a bit disappointing in that it was made so similar to the first film (and maybe the book, no idea on their closeness). It really doesn’t add anything new to the mythology, and was made to upgrade a film literally everyone already knows the plot about. I hated most of the no name actors, but surprisingly I enjoyed Ansel Elgort as the nice boyfriend. He was so good at being kind to a weird red headed girl.

If you are looking for scary movies in theater for Halloween, unfortunately Carrie is your only hope. Somehow, this is the only horror movie the entire month.

2 out of 4.