Tag: 3 out of 4

The best documentaries deal with the hardest of subjects. I think we can all agree that we don’t need to see too many more musician/celebrity documentaries, or even worse, documentaries based on specific movies or fandoms. I have seen enough to last me a life time, but they keep chugging out.

when a documentary comes out that is about some seriously bad and shady shit, then you know that documentary is important and actually might be worth a watch.

So, what is An Open Secret about? Well, a sex scandal in Hollywood. Which doesn’t sound like news. But this is an underage sex scandal. I am talking about pedophiles in Hollywood, forcing child actors to get involved with older men sexually, in order to get jobs, get references, get big in the game.

Yeah. That is some serious stuff, with pretty serious allegations. And yet, still, when I first heard about the issues years ago, my first thoughts weren’t surprise or shock. No, it was a more fucked up acceptance. Kind of like a “Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense to be happening.” Not implying that it is a good thing, just noting that I can see it happening and that I would probably believe any reports.

And despite rumors over the last few years, former child actors speaking out, actual cases against producers and directors, and of course people who went to jail for kid sex issues, the topic is still barely discussed and documentaries on the subject (like An Open Secret) are practically buried and ignored.

This isn’t a joke line, this is a serious line.

I honestly don’t even know what to say in a review like this. The stories of these actors, most of which are not big names and didn’t get to make it big, hearing what they went through scarred them in their teenage years for the rest of their lives. Being told that if they didn’t comply, they wouldn’t get work. Being told that they can’t go against all these powerful people. And to think this is just talking about teenage boys in Hollywood, when clearly it is happening on the other side of the gender pool as well.

The biggest name mentioned in this film is of course Bryan Singer, director of The Usual Suspects and like, half of the X-Men related films. Now, he isn’t specifically called out as someone who took advantage of kids, but he does interact with a lot of people who were in the group talked about in the documentary.

And shit, this is a hard subject. It is best to just watch the documentary and see for yourself. I think the narrative started to fall apart a little bit by the end. It just started to lose my interest at the point when they should be making their biggest points and driving the whole thing home. But the beginning and middle are quite well done.

Watching it won’t make you feel better about it. In fact, it will probably make you feel conflicted about Hollywood and the movie industry in general. But you have to take the good with the bad, even if dealing with the bad is hard.

When the first poster was released for Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, I felt like my life had changed.

It looked amazing. I wanted to see the film right then and there. The tagline was just four words and felt like the most brilliant thing ever.

But the poster came out in February with the movie not coming out until early June! What a torturous few months it has been. I’ve had to watch three superhero films before I could see a potentially life changing film. But I guess that the date ended up being a good one. It is the real start of the Summer films (because counting May is stupid), and hopefully the film would have enough party in it to last me through the months of excessive blockbusters and explosion heavy films.

This doesn’t mean that I will go in praising it no matter what of course. Just look at X-Men: Apocalypse, my most anticipated comic film of the year, and it left a disappointing taste in my mouth. Going in excited means it is very easy for it to crash, that is all I am saying.

How they were able to get an Adam Levine hologram for this movie I will never know.

Ever since Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) was born, he was dope. He could play the drums at 1, he could make the mad rhymes, and he had the best two friends ever: Lawrence (Akiva Schaffer) and Owen (Jorma Taccone).

They made the group The Style Boyz and their hip hop music was everywhere. It inspired tons of modern groups. Lawrence made the lyrics, Conner was the front man, and Owen made the fat beats. Then Conner gets to real, too big, gets his own verse on a song with another artist and does his own solo album that sells a shit ton. And this documentary is about the release of his second album, his world wide tour, and his relationship with his girlfriend, Ashley Wednesday (Imogen Poots).

It is also about the rise and fall of being a popstar and how it can be hard to fall when you were up so damn high.

Tim Meadows plays the manager, Sarah Silverman the publicist, and James Buckley/Edgar Blackman the yes men groupies. Chris Redd is Hunter the Hungry, an upcoming rap superstar, and Joan Cusack is Conner’s mom. Also a shit ton of cameos, of artists playing themselves mostly.

I hope my future groupies will make sure I never leave the house looking like that.

Going into Popstar, I actually didn’t even know it was going to be a Mockumentary. And I love Mockumentaries, one of the rarest genres out there, so it was definitely a nice surprise. And since I have gone out of my way to watch quite a few recent pop tour documentary films (Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber 2, One Direction, Justin Bieber 3) I was very familiar with the current summer concert line up types of film. Early on in the film, it is was quite clear they were sort of parodying Justine Bieber: Never Say Never film (and the title is similar too, obviously), going to extremes with his backstory and even including Usher!

Add in the fact that we got original The Lonely Island music, with a shit ton of cameos and outrageous humor, you are left with a pretty dang funny feature film. So many quotable lines, plenty of vulgar language and we get an actual human penis in this film. Not a prosthetic dick and not even for a quick flash. They earned their graphic nudity rating.

My favorite scenes actually are where they parody that strange TMZ show where they just badly gossip in their office. They parody it only a few times, but man, I practically laughed nonstop.

If I had complaints, I would say it started to drag a bit near the end. That is kind of disappointing, given the film is under 90 minutes, The film isn’t surprising with the direction it takes, we practically know how it will end, so getting to that point just takes its time.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is start to finish over the top comedy and a great release in this season of blockbusters, sequels, and cinematic universes.

Cmz

Thanks to South Park, when I read the title of this documentary, I can only think of the Weiner Song from their Game of Thrones episodes. However, while watching that television show, I barely recall seeing any weiner, so I really don’t get that joke.

And that is how you write an intro that has nothing to do with the documentary in question, Weiner.

If you recall, Anthony Weiner was a congressman who has an amusing last name and of course got in a sexting scandal that forced him to resign. What you don’t know about him is everything that happened before and after that.

He was actually a congressman for years, and there are quite a few videos of him on the floor yelling and telling it like it is, speaking for the lower class citizen. He was probably a hero. Until we saw his bulge.

But the documentary covers that time in his life in the first few minutes, with news clips, as it is the popular way of doing things these days. This documentary is about Weiner trying to reclaim his fame, to rise back to the top, and run for mayor of his home city, New York City.

Heh heh heh. Weiner.

If you like behind the scenes of modern politics, then this is the type of documentary for you. But also, if you wonder how a campaign can start, become successful, and then crash and burn due to a scandal. What? You mean the sexting scandal from years ago? No, I am talking about the new one that happened early in his campaign.

No don’t worry, he wasn’t stupid enough to continue that sort of thing years later while running (I think). This happened after he resigned, before he got his problem under control (according to him), and also involved a real picture of his penis. Full on man dick.

And what makes it even more uncomfortable is of course that he is married. His wife, Huma Abedin, well known fundraiser and campaign worker for the Clinton family. A family who went through their own sex scandal although in a bit of a different situation. Huma had forgiven Anthony, and they worked through it with counseling, but bringing up the past can be very hard. She is just a person and she has emotions as well.

I found Weiner to be a very personal and informative documentary. I learned a lot about the man, the things you don’t hear in the New York Post headlines. It wasn’t too long, it explained everything that went down, and it felt real.

We can learn a lot about Weiner, and you can learn more about it from watching. Just remember, the newspapers want catchy headlines, and if you only know about a person from the news, you are probably going to miss a lot.

The Lobster is weird. That is the only thing I knew about this film going into it. I only know that because that is what everyone says about the movie. And if everyone says something is weird, then it must be weird, and that excites me.

The Lobster also came out in Europe and everywhere else in the world like, last summer/fall. Seriously, everyone has seen this movie but US. It was already released on their DVDs I believe before it came over here to theaters.

That made it really tempting to just watch it online, but I am happy to say I held out and wanted to see this movie in theaters, knowing only it was weird and slightly foreign. Let’s do this!

“Only foreign people run through fields like this,” he said, maybe racist-ly.

The Lobster takes place in a near future setting, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and the world is different now. Or at least this unnamed city is different.

Basically, if you aren’t with your family as a child or currently in a relationship, then you are wasting space. The world doesn’t need loaners. It isn’t as safe with them. They aren’t being productive members of society. David (Colin Farrell) is now single after his wife left him for another man.

This means that David has to go to The Hotel. He has to leave all of his possessions behind, except for his dog. The Hotel stay is only temporary though. If he doesn’t find someone to love and marry in 45 days, someone who shares a trait with him and can live with him for a few weeks without major issues, then he can move back into the city.

Oh yeah, what happens if your time is up and you don’t find someone to love? You get turned into an animal of your choosing for a second chance of life. Yay!

Also featuring the Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), the Limping Man (Ben Whishaw), the Lisping Man (John C. Reilly), the Biscuit Woman (Ashley Jensen), a Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia), the Nosebleed Woman (Jessica Barden) and her best friend (EmmaEdel O’Shea).

As for people not named after physical traits, we have a maid (Ariane Labed), hotel manager (Olivia Colman), her husband (Garry Mountaine), and the Loaner Leader (Léa Seydoux).

Bet you can’t figure out what David would want to become.

Hey! Did you read my intro? If not, The Lobster is a weird movie!

I haven’t seen any of the other films by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, but everyone is telling me I basically have to see Dogtooth if I liked the absurdness of this film. It is clearly done by a director who knew what he wanted for absolutely every moment of the film and put a lot of effort into the message.

The acting is a strange thing to talk about, because everyone on purpose tends to be emotionless and straight faced, as if they are walking talking dating profile pages. It took awhile to get comfortable with, but it produced some of the hardest laughs in the film. Sometimes I laughed due to pure jokes, sometimes due to the awkward moments, and sometimes to keep myself from crying at the darker parts of the movie.

The Lobster does seem to drag a bit though. Most notably when David leaves the Hotel. In the forest we meet interesting characters, but it just feels repetitive and, honestly, I don’t fully understand the reasoning behind all of the rules. The two hour film feels a half hour longer. The final scenes are interesting at least and say a lot about the world they are living in.

If you can make it through the forest, you can make it to the end of a pretty good and unique movie.

2015 (which feels like a long time ago), had a few horror comedies all released in the span. You know, October-ish.

There was Cooties, the only one I ended up watching, that didn’t blend its horror and comedy well enough to warrant a rewatch ever.

There was Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, which I didn’t see, still haven’t seen, so I am not sure why I brought it up.

And Freaks of Nature, which didn’t even get a theatrical release as far as I can tell. And of course, I decided to watch it before Scouts Guide, because it has my second favorite character from Sky High.

This movie unfortunately doesn’t have Bruce Campbell.
I unfortunately say that about most movies I see.

The town of Dillford is a strange place. Here, and maybe elsewhere in the United States, humans, vampires, and zombies live in peaceful coexistence. Sure, there are things that bother people, and you have bigots, but for the most part they can live and not kill each other.

That is until the aliens come. Because a fourth entity can only mean trouble. Everyone begins to fear the other side, and soon, all out chaos erupts in the town, with friends fighting friends and no one knowing what the aliens are up to. It is up to three teenagers to save the day. Who I will talk about so I can tag a lot of actors.

Dag (Nicholas Braun) is our human hero, and a bit of a lame dude. He is super in to Lorelei (Vanessa Hudgens), but she just uses him to store weed in his house. His parents (Bob Odenkirk, Joan Cusack), think he smokes as well (like them!) but no, he doesn’t.

He used to be good friends with Ned (Josh Fadem), a smart guy. Ned is pissed off at his family (Ian Roberts, Rachael Harris, Chris Zylka), who are into sports and meat and hate smart kids. So eventually he decides to say fuck it, and let a zombie bite him. Less pressure that way.

And then there is Petra (Mackenzie Davis), a girl who was called a slut despite never really having sex. And she thinks she is about to have sex with a Edward Cullen looking dude (Ed Westwick), but he actually wants to make her a vampire. And well, screw it you know. He wants to be with her forever. Well, let’s just say he is a dick.

Also featuring Denis Leary, Mae Whitman, Keegan-Michael Key, Patton Oswalt, Pat Healy, and Werner Herzog.

Gotta get those website clicks somehow.

For a straight to DVD, probably low budget, comedy horror, I found myself laughing way more than I expected. It was never scary, because horror just means “has vampires and zombies in it” sometimes. And that is okay. Clearly this is a movie not meant to be taken seriously and provide a good time.

And damn it, it does. While also giving me the necessary high school angst that is necessary for movies set in that age group. Sex scandals, bullies, sports, drugs, and teachers being dicks. We get all of that plus zombies and vampires! And sure, an alien or two.

There isn’t actually a whole lot to say about this film as a whole besides it being a good time. Our leads are okay, in particular I am becoming a decent fan with Mackenzie Davis. I’ve seen her now in two movies with a lead, the other being That Awkward Moment, and enjoyed the crap out of her characters. Her side characters have been fine too. Out of everyone in this cast, I hope she breaks out soon.

Braun, you are a funny dude too, but keep to the smaller movies. You thrive in them.

I want more silly movies like that. Let’s make a sequel folks. But you know, more horror tropes.

As a big man, I would like to think I was an expert on big splashes. It kind of just comes with the territory. Now, my belly flopping days are definitely over, as any attack to my stomach has me keeling over, but there is still a lot of back and ass available to turn your regular pool into a tidal pool.

That being said, I had no fucking clue what A Bigger Splash movie was about going in.

From the cast, it looked weird. From the director, it looked foreign. From the quick synopsis it looked pretentious.

However, had they told me there would be dancing, I would have watched it even sooner!

In this world, you would have heard the name Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton). She was a big time rock superstar and world famous. Man could she sing. You just won’t hear a lot of that in this film, because she had some vocal problems and had to have some surgery. So now she is staying in a nice villa in a small island village in Italy to rest and get away from it all. She is staying with her long time boyfriend, Paul De Smedt (Matthias Schoenaerts).

This vacation is perfect for gratuitous amounts of sex and just being naked. But then they get found out. An old friend, Harry (Ralph Fiennes) figured out where they were staying. Old friend meaning producer and former boyfriend of Marianne. Despite his outgoing personality and awkward party past, they invite him to stay in their house. He also brought his 22 year old daughter, Penelope (Dakota Johnson), whom Harry just found out even existed.

A troubled past, the vacation setting, and not really knowing everyone lead to some very awkward circumstances. Especially when characters feel the past has not yet been fully settled.

Also featuring Corrado Guzzanti as a police officer, who looks like an older Italian Michael Shannon.

Shit, even I’d be willing to eat outside if ti looked like that.

First thing I learned is that A Bigger Splash is not just some weirdly Italian original film, it is a remake of an actual Italian film from 1969, La Piscine. Typical Hollywood, always remaking shit. (This is a joke, because this is not a Hollywood movie and no one fucking knows about La Piscine.)

Secondly, look at all the naked people. There are four famous people in this movie, and you will see them all. Some more than others. I got to see Ralph Fiennes’ Lobby Boy, if you catch my drift. I feel like everything Dakota Johnson has been in lately involves her just being naked half the time. It is almost ridiculous. If you hate the site of a naked body, you will not want to see this film.

Thirdly, Fiennes danced incredibly and I wish it was more of the film.

Those are all the weird points I had to make. If I had to talk about the movie itself, I would probably mention that the cinematography is gorgeous. And by gorgeous, I of course mean the setting. But also the camera was just straight up weird and all over the place in the film, almost a fifth main character.

The acting is top notch. The situations are awkward. The soundtrack and sound effects were on top.

I think my biggest problem is that it just felt so incredibly long. It is a little over 2 hours and the last 20-30 minutes seem to drag. Based on this type of movie, after the climatic events, I expected almost every scene after it would be the last. But no, it kept going and it really brought down the film for me.

You would be hard pressed to find a weirder movie this year, that also takes place in a realistic setting with realistic circumstances.

One of the main reasons to become a film reviewer is the search for the perfect film. Sure, many contenders exist, but for every person it is their own unique quest.

I for one think that the perfect film already exists, and it is called O Brother, Where Art Thou?, so the perfect film is no longer my goal. I have to get more specific now. The perfect musical. The perfect super hero film. And of course, the perfect film for the geologist in your life.

Geologists in films are all over the place. Usually they are buffoons but sometimes they can be bad asses. My two most recent good Geologist performances have to go to Adam Scott in Piranha and Paul Giamatti in San Andreas, but both arguably bad films.

So why don’t we have a well acted geologist in a well acted film? I don’t know. America has failed. We have to turn to Norway. We have to turn to The Wave (or Bølgen) to see if they can do better.

Yep, this is 100% scientifically accurate. I can confirm that this is a wave.

Geiranger is a small Finnish village right in a fjord. It is a mountain village with beautiful scenery and a giant coast. And of course, it is a dangerous place to live. No real crime of course. This is a happy place, no one is mean in Norway. But should the plates shift too much and a landslide occur, then it will cause an enormous tsunami that would wipe out most of the village in mere minutes.

That is why it is important for them to have people watching out for them. People like Kristian (Kristoffer Joner). He is good at his job, monitoring squiggles and minor movements. He is so good at his job, that he has been offered a better job in a bigger city working for an oil company. Heck yeah!

And so he is about to move out of Geiranger, his home for many years. He has raised a family here. His wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) works at the hotel. He has an older boy Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and a little girl Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande). But they are ready to get out and move. Until some movements start to worry Kristian. He doesn’t want to jump the gun, but with the water table dropping, he has to do more research. He was supposed to take his kids on the ferry out, but he made them stay just to get more research.

Which is bad, because shit is about to go down. Large mass is about to go down. Down into the fjord. A tsunami. And once it starts they will only have about 10 minutes to get everyone up the mountain and in shelter.

Laila Goody, Arthur Berning, and Herman Bernhoft also play geologists and Thomas Bo Larsen and Mette Agnete Horn as a couple of hotel guests. Of course, also, Fridtjov Såheim as Arvid the Geology Boss.

Fuck your hotel. This wave isn’t some bitch ass tourist. It is here to stay!

Yay Kristoffer Joner! The man who can play a geologist and seem like a normal person, like a hero. So the criteria for a bad ass geologist was definitely met, as it was just a guy who wanted to protect his friends and family.

But how about the science? For the most part, the science was also accurate and not exaggerated. A nice plus that they could keep the thrills and excitement up without going “Hollywood” with it.

But the crew themselves were a bit disappointing. They shouldn’t have had to wait til the last moment to issue the siren to warn the town. Ineptitude for the sake of moving the story along. Not that they don’t seem like competent workers, it is just that if they have one job, they should know what their numbers mean.

The movie is well shot with good practical effects. The story itself isn’t new at all either. It doesn’t mean the movie isn’t good, just not entirely groundbreaking material. Heh heh heh.

Also, I thought Ane Dahl Torp did a fantastic job.

Nice guys have gotten a lot of bad press lately. And that is because of the “nice guys” trying to take advantage of women by befriending them and expecting sex and berating them and being not nice people. So calling someone a nice guy is a pretty big insult.

And The Nice Guys movie happens to be coming out the same day as The Angry Bird Movie, what a whirlwind of emotions!

Fun fact, if you look at the last names of the leads of this film, you will realize that they are also, in fact, birds, making this seem like something more than a coincidence.

A gosling is a baby goose, for those uninformed shitters out there!

Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a private eye, raising his daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), alone. He mostly works sex jobs and things involving the porn industry, and screwing over old ladies into getting paid for working cases. Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a hired muscle, paid to beat up stalkers, people messing with young women or daughters, just creeps in general.

And life is good for them both in the late 1970’s. That is until Healy is paid to beat up March, for “stalking” some chick named Amelia (Margaret Qualley). Except March wasn’t even looking for Amelia. He was paid to find Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio), a porn star who died a few days earlier, but whose aunt swore she saw her later.

Everything seemed to be going great after the beat down, until Healy headed back home and found two thugs (Beau Knapp, Keith David) trying to kill him. They too are looking for Amelia, whom Healy hasn’t seen in quite a few days. Something bigger is going on with this girl, and if he wants to feel safe at his home, he has to find her. So he might as well get some help. And he only knows why investigator who has any sort of luck finding her. You know it.

And then some shit goes down.

Also starring Kim Basinger, Yaya DaCosta, Matt Bomer, Jack Kilmer, Ty Simpkins, and Hannibal Buress as a giant killer bee.

Don’t stare. I did just fucking say a giant killer bee.

Ever here of this guy Shane Black? He actually wrote/directed Iron Man 3 and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, while also writing a bunch of Lethal Weapon movies and more action things. He loves action, and now he has written The Nice Guys, which has been in development hell. Him and his buddy, Joel Silver, a producer, have been just trying to write and rewrite it for years, and eventually they got the actors involved and made it as quick as they could.

And to Mr. Black and Mr. Silver, I would like to say, hey, thanks for keeping up the faith.

The Nice Guys was a hilarious movie. Gosling and Crowe have an incredible chemistry despite their age differences and in general very different film history. The comedy and timing between them as practically perfect. And even better than their characters had big flaws, not just strange stereotypes. After watching them in this film, I practically demanded a sequel, but the theater worker claimed he had no control over that.

The only other person worth noting is Angourie Rice, who plays the daughter, and was in the very terrible Walking With Dinosaurs. She was basically a third member of their group and really tied the film together. That also means that that for the most part, the rest of the cast weren’t really notable. And there are some decent names. Bomer felt robotic, Basinger/DaCosta didn’t feel natural, and Qualley as Amelia was forgettable.

A great action comedy for the leads and one that I hope spawns a future movie. It is still a film worth watching in theaters, but equally a good idea to watch with a group of friends at 3 am on a Saturday morning.

Michael Moore hasn’t made a documentary in six years. His last one was Capitalism: A Love Story back in 2009. Way back then, I didn’t have a movie review website. I was just a regular guy who watched movies. C:ALS was my first Moore documentary, hearing a lot about him growing up (thanks to Team America: World Police) and a lot of bad things thrown his way. So I watched all of his documentaries at that point in a single day.

And you know what I realized? I realized that the documentaries weren’t bad. Sure, Moore could be a bit of a jerk. And no, I didn’t agree with everything he said. But he also made a lot of great points and he tried to put them out in an entertaining way. Not all documentaries have to be super serious.

Either way, with all of the bad things going on in America, I am just surprised it has been so long since a new documentary. And when I heard this one was called Where To Invade Next, I again just made assumptions about the documentary and rolled my eyes. Every time I thought they would be terrible, and every time I have been wrong.

I figured this one would be about the wars in the middle east, why they are bad, and you know, the stuff I already knew. I don’t care about another war documentary.

But Moore fooled me. Instead this was a documentary about himself “invading” other countries, for the most part, European/English speaking places, in order to conquer them and steal their best attributes. And you know, steal them for America, which is what we do in wars or something.

I can’t make a joke here, because I have looked just as ridiculous in this pose.

So where do we go? Welllllll…

We go to Italy, where they have great work benefits, vacations if you get married, 8 weeks of vacation a year, and double pay in December. Then France, where the school cafeteria is actually good, lunch is class where your food is served, you have courses, learn to eat with style. In Finland, their school system is now the best, and they don’t even do homework, and sometimes only go to school 3-4 hours a day!

Speaking of school, in Slovakia, all of college is free. Even for foreigners, meaning Americans. Most people protest when there is a tuition increase, in America, we just say okay.

In Germany, there is free health care and spa vacations from work (for free) if you are too stressed. Hell, they even have a big middle class and workers serve on the board of directors!

Portugal got rid of outlawing drugs, and drug use went down. Norway has prisons that are like isolated communities, with your own house or room and very nice basic needs to survive. In Tunisia, the government funds abortions and in Iceland, women have led for a long time and are seen as great leaders thanks to progressive views. Things are very stable in Iceland (politically and socially, not economically or geologically).

And that is the crux of the documentary. A lot of foreign countries, most of which are super white and some that speak English well, have a lot of great stuff going on. Stuff that should happen in America, the wealthiest country. The land of the free. But certain rich people don’t want this to happen, and we then have a lot of problems.

Some of this you would have heard before and some of it is new. It is still an interesting thing worthy of discussion. But you know, Moore is still a dick.

Hush little reader, don’t say a word. Because talking to yourself at the computer is not considered normal.

Netflix is becoming quite an amazing place for horror movies. Since it’s number of top tier well known films is constantly dwindling, it has to fill the masses with unheard of sequels and indie films. And there are a lot of indie and B-level horror films out there.

That is of course where I found Hush, a horror movie that sure, is technically just another home invasion story, but with an interesting enough story behind it to keep it fresh.

We like keeping things fresh here at Gorgon Reviews. Fresh, tasty, and full of surprises.

Like suddenly showing up at your house on a Tuesday night!

Maddie (Kate Siegel) is just your average woman. She is living on her own in a cabin in the woods. Not like, super woods, she has neighbors close by. She just wants personal space and is a writer, which explains why she wants to be alone. She is really good at figuring out multiple endings for her books, but has a hard time committing to just one. Oh, and she is deaf and mute. Pneumonia got her when she was 12 and left some damages on her body.

Basically she isn’t your average woman. She is SO CLOSE to finishing her second book too, she just has to commit to and ending. Speaking of endings, her neighbor Sarah (Samantha Sloyan) who came over for a visit totally just died at her door. She was banging on the door, but Maddie couldn’t hear it. Turns out there is some mad man (John Gallagher Jr., yes him) is just traveling around killing people.

And now he has found Maddie, not just an easy kill, but someone he can have fun with. He can cut off the power, slash her tires, so she can’t escape or “call” for help. Not only that, he can sneak around the house and she will have no idea where he is if he breaks a window, or climbs up the stairs or whatever.

But Maddie is smart and properly paranoid. She won’t be an easy kill she refuses.

Also featuring Michael Trucco and Emma Graves.

Not even the stereotypical black lady in the audience could warn her right now.

Hush was different. Hush was unique. Hush even had subtitles.

Thankfully our lead can read lips, so there can be some extra dialogue in the film and not complete silence, but we also get subtitles during sign language portions.

When it comes down the basic elements Hush was scary. On the edge of my seat afraid of what would happen next and how the events would unfold themselves. It is also an extremely simple story. It isn’t bogged down with unnecessary elements, only about 80 minutes long. We have a small cast of characters with only two being important to the story. But there are no wasted moments and everything is building towards the finale, so it is really well written.

Now, I don’t need to know every little thing about a bad guy’s motivations, especially in horror, but our killer does leave me wondering just what is going through his mind. Why is he in those woods, why is he killing? As a viewer, we aren’t privy for this information, seeing most of the film from Maddie’s mind set.

Hush is a very interesting and relatively quick horror to check out and easily one that I can recommend.