Tag: Horror

What a month for horror. And to think it is September, not October.

It came out a two weekends ago and is smashing September box office records, which just means that people love being scared by clowns or feel nostalgia from the previous TV adaption.

But then we get mother! just a week later. Which advertising for has been all over the place. One thing for certain, we know it is a Darren Aronofsky film, so we can expecting something fucked up and hard to explain.

Or not?! mother! is getting a wide release and has a huge star attached, maybe this will just be a run of the film horror movie. Schyeah, and maybe David Lynch will make a straightforward film as well.

And maybe this wall is just a wall and not a metaphor about bees or some shit?

This film is about a woman (Jennifer Lawrence) and a man (Javier Bardem), living in a house in a field on their own. She is slowly rebuilding it after a fire some time in the past, and he is a poet who hasn’t written in awhile. They are both always working and their love is straining, but they are alone and they are alive.

And then a man (Ed Harris) appears at their door. He is old, sickly, and he thought their house was a bed and breakfast. The poet is a generous person and lets him spend the night, despite being a stranger. And the man is sickly and coughs throughout the night, but in the morning he is fine. And also in the morning, his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up at the door. Huh, he didn’t mention anything like that, and now there is two of them. The poet is still generous, and fuck it, who cares what his wife thinks? They can stay too, because they like his work and he likes their approval. But house guests who make themselves at home can be quite annoying.

Especially when their sons (Brian Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson) come over as well, arguing about estate and will disputes, and one son kills the other in their house. Holy shit, these are terrible guests.

Things get worse from there as more and more strangers enter their home, making our “mother” feel more distant from her husband, but that is all just the vaguest details I could get out about this film. Because in reality, it is a lot stranger, darker, and twisted than anyone should expect.

Oh, and of course, Kristen Wiig. Can’t forget about her.

“And no one is fucking using coasters!”

I wish I could have just sat in the theater after mother! and just reflected on the experience that unfolded in front of my eyes. But it was late and I had to rush home to pass out, needing sleep before work.

Days later when finally writing this review, it is still fresh on my mind. Partially because of the graphic nature and story in a story that it told. And partially because I knew that this film would have a hell of a shit storm from the regular movie going community. This is not the sort of film that should have gotten a wide release and marketed as some sort of home invasion horror. It is an art house film and it is being exposed to people who are going to expect something completely different and be upset about being bamboozled.

Like it or hate it, those are the only two options people will have from this movie. Anyone who said they thought it was okay is probably just lying. Despite its polarizing attributes (Which again, are going to amplify to the negative), people WILL be talking about it and remember it for a long time. That is not always a good thing, because being infamous for being really bad or gross doesn’t make a great film.

But in all honesty, this is a pretty great film. It did incredible things inside of a one location suit. It should make the viewer feel claustrophobic and a whole lot of other emotions. It should leave the viewer thinking and change their perspective on a few things. Or it will just be considered some strange torture snuff shit and have people walk out of it, especially when it ramps up even further near the end.

Good on Jennifer Lawrence for doing a project like this. She breathed hard and panted her face off in this film to make us uncomfortable, and it really worked.

This is part of Fantasy and Sci-Fi Week at Gorgon Reviews!

Fucking finally. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. It has final in the name, so there will be no more without a reboot, those are the rules. Ignore whatever happened between Saw: The Final Chapter and Jigsaw, those guys are liars, they totally won’t be liars here.

If you read my long milestone review on Resident Evil franchise, there is a common problem with the films. Each film would end with a cliff hanger and a goal! Okay, fine. But the next film will either ignore the cliff hanger and have it resolve off screen and ignore the “goal” set by the previous film. It was especially egregious in films 4 and 5, where they decided to go a completely different route, creating their own excuses that were shit for changing the plot. It was fucking stupid. Although sure, the second film continued after the first where you would expect it to, so that is the only one that really felt connected.

Anyways, if that happens again, I might flip my shit. Also another reminder, one stuntman died during filming of a scene, and a stuntwoman had a shit ton of injuries, 2 week coma, and had her arm amputated off. Holy fuck, that is bad. That is not a good start to a movie, especially a movie no one asked for.

But that’s okay, because at least Milla was able to dangle on her own.

At the end of the last film, Alice (Milla Jovovich) and crew had to head to Washington, DC, ready to take on giant waves of zombies at the White House. Wesker (Shawn Roberts) sent them there and was a good guy now, after being a bad guy.

Well this film begins with a backstory, which is different than backstory from previous films, and then jumps over the other films to bring us to now. Which is actually in DC! But some time has passed. Alice is now alone again, for reasons. Also apparently Wesker turned on her and the crew and is a bad guy, again. Seriously, all off screen pre-movie, they were like, lets make him bad again and do none of this DC plot, and let’s put it in a new direction, again. Fuckers.

So after some fighting with a goddamn zombie dragon creature, Alice gets contacted by the Red Queen (Ever Anderson, real life daughter of Jovovich and Paul W.S. Anderson) and gets an earfull. Apparently the Umbrella Corporation developed an antidote before this whole outbreak thing occurred. They wanted the world to fall to ruin, yes like a Biblical flood, then they would release the antidote into the air, killing anything with the T-Virus inside of them

The Red Queen wants Alice to get to the cure before the last human settlements are wiped out. She has about two days. And of course, the cure is at the bottom of The Hive facility underneath the now wiped out Raccoon City, where there are going to be some zombies, and fucked up shit inside. Hooray!

Also featuring Iain Glen, Ali Larter, Eoin Macken, Fraser James, Ruby Rose, William Levy, and Rola.

At some point in the franchise, the zombies just become Alice’s biggest fans and always follow her around town.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is a bad movie on almost every front.

First of all, it continues a story only in name, because it literally once again, tells a different story than the previous film implied. Characters have different motivations suddenly. Characters who were at the end of the last film are now gone and not mentioned. The entire backstory is changed at the beginning, just so they can do different things with this film. Yet at the same time, this is just another film where the goal is to go into an underground bunker, do a thing, then escape the bunker. A nice giant open world long fight, implied by the end of the last movie, would have been great.

There is technically action in this film, but good luck figuring it out. Even scenes of very little important are cut so rapidly I found myself barely watching the movie. It was hurting my head and eyes. It is one of those ways to cover up good action scenes by having quick cuts and to hide stunt actors. No good amount of choreography, just cut cut cut with flashing lights and confusion.

Acting is weak. The plot is extremely weak, with twists you can definitely see coming. There is nothing profound about this film, even with Biblical elements. You will just find yourself waiting for it to be over.

HOWEVER. Guess what! It is never over. It. Is. Never. Over. This movie ends on a cliffhanger. The story isn’t over. This is probably not going to be a final chapter. Meaningful conclusions are bullshit. Sure, the story seems like they finally finished the Umbrella Arc. But you know as well as I do that if there is another movie within a decade that there will be Clones or something of the important people, another hidden sect, and a story that just won’t die.

Like zombies.

This is part of Fantasy and Sci-Fi Week at Gorgon Reviews!

Look, I am a big fan of all of these classic board games being turned into movies. Clue is the golden standard, and that was over thirty years ago. So why not a movie about the board game Life?

The good news about Life is that it is so expansive of a game, you can basically make it about anything, as along as it involves growing up, getting a job and family, a career, and eventually retiring. Anything could happen to you in between that. You could win a Nobel Prize! You could play the stock market. You could just not at all do anything worth while.

As long as you don’t set it in a fantasy realm, or in outer space, or anything like that, it could count as a movie about the board game.

What the fuck is this? Is this in Millionaire Estates?

Aboard the ISS, we got a lovely crew of people, crewing around, doing science, being astronauts. They grab a probe returning from Mars, hoping to analyze some soil and maybe see if they can find life. And guess what! They do! A tiny tiny microorganism, but it is life not from Earth. Hooray science!

Everyone is stoked, the world is stoked, some kid wins a contest and names it Calvin, big celebration, we are not alone! But maybe w should be alone?

Things start to go wrong on the space station. Calvin starts to grow, Calvin starts to show intelligence, and Calvin needs to eat to survive whatever he can on the ship. And you know who that means.

It means these people! Hiroyuki Sanada, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds.

The poor ISS gets destroyed and fucked up in so many different movies.

Obviously this has nothing to do with the board game, that is just a joke, but this film still has a shitty title. Life is too vague, has certainly been a title before, and isn’t as ominous as they had hoped.

I first avoided this film because it came out on my birthday, and everyone knew that Power Rangers was the bigger story there. Also despite having actors I knew in it, I thought there was not way it would be a good film.

And guess what? I actually did enjoy it. Sure, on the surface, it is basically just the movie Alien, but with a different Alien and not in deep space. Actually, it is extremely similar to Alien, including having people ignoring quarantine rules in order to doom everyone. However, we don’t get a badass female protagonist, we just get people continually sacrificing themselves for the greater good of humanity.

Despite its lack of originality, I still enjoyed it. The ending had me very tense and on the edge of my seat. The acting from Gyllenhaal and Ferguson was decent enough, and Sanada’s character made me feel incredibly sad.

I would say objectively it is not a bad thriller/horror film at all. It does get a bit messy at points, a little bit confusing not being familiar with the layout or everything they are talking about. There are plenty of worse films out there that won’t scare you, so might as well give Life a shot.

So many January films, so little time. In January, most of my reviews were of Oscar quality films, trying to catch up before the Awards ceremony of everything that would be nominated. So I missed a lot of January releases, and to be fair, a lot of them didn’t even have prescreenings.

The Bye Bye Man had a prescreening, it just wasn’t worth me leaving my house for.

January horror films can be some of the worst things to sit through. For some unknown reason, they really want to make January the second scariest movie after October. They really don’t have to try that hard though, given the quality of the movies that come out in that month.

It would be hard to find someone that isn’t scared of how bad things like I, Frankenstein are.

Yeah, still not as scary as The Legend of Hercules.

A long time ago, some weirdo with a rifle decided to kill his friends and family in a small suburb, then he killed himself. He kept saying “Don’t Think It, Don’t Say It.”

Now lets fast forward to the now times. A group of kids in college, ready to take over the world. We got Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and their friend John (Lucien Laviscount). They get a house together off campus, you know, for college things.

Eventually, Elliot starts seeing some weird things occur with a coin they find in a night stand. This night stand is something they just bought in a sale and brought over to furnish the place. It is full of strange writing, erratic, “Don’t Think It, Don’t Say It,” like a crazy person.

Blah blah blah, a seance happens in their place, from another friend (Jenna Kanell), and things get even more trippy. The friends start to hallucinate, thinking of this Bye Bye Man fellow (Doug Jones), with a dog, and train sounds. Just acknowledging his existence is enough to get him to mess with your life, and so the more people you talk to about him, the more people who will die or get killed. Hooray!

Also featuring Carrie-Anne Moss, Erica Tremblay, and Michael Trucco.

This part is amusing if you imagine Abe Sapien from Hellboy coming at you instead.

You know what, if I was just analyzing the plot, or the acting, or the characters themselves, this would be an easy 0 out of 4. But I was intrigued by one, and only one aspect of the movie. The camera work was top notch. The opening scene really sort of drew the viewer in, with a few longer takes, having this random guy take a rifle and shoot his family and neighbors.

I really enjoyed the opening, which had a tragic moment happen in the bright sunlight, it felt fresh. And when it got modern, the film got darker. More scenes took place at night, or with tinted lenses to really give that…modern edgy look or whatever to them. Because now we are dealing with college students, living on their own, party party! The film got notably uglier, but the camera work was still pretty decent from my point of view.

And yet, that is the only positive notes. As I already said, plot bad, acting bad, characters bad. Tone was bad too. Mythos for The Bye Bye Man was all over the place. It really made writing the whole movie quite easy when you can just say the characters hallucinate whatever with extreme detail to get them to do anything. It feels lazy.

Also our star, Douglas Smith? Honestly, he has such an uncharismatic face, it is annoying to watch him for most of this film. Which is mean. I don’t hate you as a person Douglas Smith, but you don’t match the role that you were given.

This film is an easy pass, but it will probably have thirty sequels, because YOLO.

Havenhurst came about on my radar because, like at least 50 reviews on this website, my flashdrive was left at home and I needed something.

But I will admit I liked the name. It could technically be considered a calming or warm sounding place, but at the same time, the opposite of all that. It brings up the idea of a haunted house, thanks to those double H’s. It could really draw up some fears of isolation or claustrophobia.

Then again, the main draws for me for this film were the short run time and the fact that I recognized a lead. I am but a simple sheep, at the end of the day.

Havenhurst harks homeless hotties and heinous harbingers of hazard. .

Jackie (Julie Benz) loooooves her alcohol. In fact, she is an alcoholic. But she is trying to get beyond that, going to those meetings and getting her life back on her feet. Thankfully, there are many opportunities for her.

One of them is Havenhurst, a hotel/apartment esque building that offers homes and rooms for those working on recovery. They can stay there as long as they need, unless they return to their vice, whatever it is. Then old Eleanor (Fionnula Flanagan) will evict them, no questions asked, and they are on their own to make mistakes, never again to return.

Well, Jackie had a friend there, Danielle (Danielle Harris), but she went missing. She might have been evicted and gone somewhere else, but she hasn’t seen her in so long she suspects maybe some foul play.

The hotel seems to change over time, some of its hallways, and she hears screams occasionally. Thankfully she has a foster kid sidekick (Belle Shouse) and a cop friend (Josh Stamberg) to occasionally have them listen to her theories.

Also featuring Toby Huss, Douglas Tait, Dendrie Taylor, and Jennifer Blanc-Biehn.

“Oh no a bad guy, get him little girl!”

Havenhurst opens with a death of a character. Sometimes horror films take awhile to get scary, Havenhurst said no, death first, then plot, then more death. The death just felt silly though, without context, putting me in a mood ripe for making fun of the film. It doesn’t help that this film attempts to maintain some levels of mystery so that the viewer can sort of play along with our hero, except that right away we know that yeah, there is some murders afoot, so she isn’t crazy.

And a film has an uphill battle if it wants to maintain some suspense while also basically letting the viewer know a whole lot more than the characters. Usually mysteries are from the point of view of the protagonist with a few teasing moments.

I am annoyed at how un-seriously I took this film. Because when it revealed a bit more information (in a pretty silly way), I loved the idea they presented. Again, it was presented in a bad way, in more ways than one, but the connection to American lore was top notch.

Havenhurst has below average plot, acting, thrills, and more. Thankfully it is short and we can all move on from this film.

Every year, the world is seemingly blown away by a new art-house horror film that really drives into our subconcious. Every year there are arguments about this new art-house film actually being a horror film, or some sort of thriller drama instead. And every year, I write a review of one of these films, and have to talk about the films of the previous years that fit that bill.

But I will save you some time. Last year we had The Witch and I LOVED The Witch. It felt evil to the core, it felt authentic, and it drove the genre to new places.

And now, It Comes At Night is hoping to be the new art-house horror that everyone is talking about. So what do you think? Do you think it will truly be a horror, or more of a dramatic thriller? Do you think it will have a lot of critical acclaim but no one will watch it? Will the meaning behind the whole thing cause internet debates for a long time?

Yeah, probably.

Ah cool, a mask man and some duct tape. Horror staples, for sure.

Set in a year that is like our own, in the future or the past, lives a family, on the edge of disaster. The world is different now, there isn’t any technology that is not battery powered. And the family is about to bury the grandfather (David Pendleton). Paul (Joel Edgerton), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and their 17 year old son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) are survivors in a world with not a lot of people. Their grandfather has the disease, so he has to be put down, burned, and buried to protect their lives.

They live in a boarded up house in the woods with a lot of strict rules, and their dog, Stanley. But soon after the death, a stranger comes to their door in the middle of the night. His name is Will (Christopher Abbott), who claims he was only doing it thinking the home was abandoned. He needs water for his wife (Riley Keough) and child (Griffin Robert Faulkner), who are many miles away, waiting for his return. And Will says they have food, animals for eggs and milk, to trade for water.

Or it is all a lie, and he wants to kill them. Who knows.

Sarah wants to bring the family to their house, have more people to defend the place, live in harmony. It is a big trust exercise. What with the virus, the creepiness at night time, and people who just make their world a brutal place to live in.

Travis just wants to stop having nightmares and waking up in the middle of the night.

Sometimes they call the entrance to their house L Street.

Oh I feel so terrible, so dead, on the inside. I rarely due this, but here is an exact quote for what I put on my comment card. They have us fill out quick thoughts so the studios can get initial reactions before longer reviews come out.

“I feel so empty inside 🙁
Great acting, great story, and a never ending sense of dread. Fuck”

And that is still how I feel, days later writing this review. Are there scary moments? Yeah, a few. But most of the horror comes from a personal level, deep deep down inside of you. You know what is PROBABLY going to happen, so there isn’t a lot of surprises. But still, to watch it unfold in front of you just builds the tension and of course, the dread.

Dread is this movie’s official review word. If you don’t want to feel dread for prolonged periods of times, then don’t watch this movie. If you want an emotional experience that will rock you to your core? Then watch It Comes At Night.

I have never been one of those geeks super into the Alien franchise. After all, that shit is scary, and I didn’t watch horror for the longest time.

I can understand the appeal, but after Alien and Aliens, the only other film in that series I have seen was Prometheus, so there is that. Allusions and references will mean nothing to me.

So I am not excited to go into this film, but I am a bit excited it isn’t just “Prometheus 2” or anything. Because I want my scientists to be smart and not watch the opposite of that. I do want nice scares as well. But mostly, I want a shit ton of Danny McBride.

I hope this isn’t Danny McBride.

Alien: Covenant is set about ten years after the events of Prometheus, aboard the ship named Covenant. It is a colony ship, with a ship ton of bodies on board while asleep. There are also hundreds of embryos frozen and about 15 or so crew members to run the thing if problems arise or when they get close to the new planet. Lastly, they have a lovely robot helper to run their ship while they sleep in Walter (Michael Fassbender), who is totally different than David from Prometheus!

Sure enough, some bad stuff happens, their voyage gets stopped, they have to make repairs, and their captain dies! Oh no! Now Oram (Billy Crudup) is in charge, and he wants them to get back on schedule asap before more bad stuff happens. Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is the new second in command, and she was also in a relationship with the captain so she is pretty upset. Tennessee (Danny McBride) is their pilot/tech guy or something and Lope (Demián Bichir) is some sort of head of security, maybe.

While doing repairs, they received a faded distress beacon from a place not too far away, and according to scanners it is ALSO a perfect planet for them to live at. They decide it is their duty to check it out, saving them 7 years on a different awesome planet would be sweet. Once they get there though, spores, aliens, a lot of problems. But hey, they also meet David, so we get to find out what happened after Prometheus. Ain’t that swell?

And here is a bunch of the crew actors! Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, and Nathaniel Dean. With maybe, MAYBE, about 2 minutes of screen time for James Franco.

Front chest bursting is so 30 years ago.

Alien: Covenant is a film that wants to explore some pretty deep questions in a hypothetical setting. It wants to talk about Rogue AI. It wants to talk about where we came from (like Prometheus before it). It wants to talk about the next stages of evolution for beings. It wants to talk about what it means to be a creator of life, a mother, without necessarily giving birth in the traditional sense. It wants to play on human emotions at the loss of a loved one (because straight up every crew member is apparently in a relationship with another crew member). A lot of good discussions and themes can arise from this film, some of which is subtle and some of which is blasted across the screen into your faceholes.

But you know what Alien: Covenant does not feel like? An Alien movie. Oh, we get a least one Xenomorph in this film, but it kind of sucks. It is defeated easily, with the smaller aliens seemingly posing a bigger challenge. And this movie isn’t scary. We got some gross scenes? Yeah, a bit, but I have seen a lot worse. We have some people flipping their shit of course. And we have a lot of crew members make terrible decisions over and over again, a big problem with Prometheus. But I never really felt scared. I never really felt the tension.

The best elements from Covenant would fall under the Drama Genre, which would be fine if that was the goal of this film, to make it a drama. This is a franchise known for changing its genre between films, and it could have really fucking worked (although, admittedly, people would probably still be disappointed). But it still tries to hype up its action and horror moments which for the most part just fall flat.

The best part of the movie is Fassbender and Fassbender, including the best scenes where he has to act with himself. I probably said something similar in the last movie about the “best parts”. But the twists feel obvious, McBride isn’t even used as a comic relief, it is setting up for a future movie (which I will note I have no idea where it really wants go with), and above all, just not as good as most people would have hoped.

But hey, Ridley Scott wants to make like, six more of these, and he is super old, so I guess that is what will happen.

Even though it is February, I still barely have any films from 2017.

So finally, here is something that came out in January 2017 that I am reviewing after the fact, so that I can get more than 1 or 2 new a week only. That’s right, now I can begin catching up to the year we are in. And normally, watching January movies means only one thing: shit.

Split is a film that broke that mold. And I have been told by many people that The Autopsy of Jane Doe is also worth the effort and won’t be a shit.

So here’s to hoping it isn’t shit. And some parts of me are hoping it just a really in depth look on how autopsies are performed.

Taking out body parts, looking for weird shit, creepy dead bodies, that is what I need.

Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) is an autopsy-mitrist, getting old, but still quite excellent at his job. His son, Austin (Emile Hirsch), he is training to take over. Austin is getting pretty good at it too, but he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life hanging out with dead bodies.

He has a girlfriend (Ophelia Lovibond) and they plan on moving away together, leaving his dad behind. He hasn’t told him yet of course, but eventually he totally will!

Then the Sheriff (Michael McElhatton) brings in a new body, a young girl. She was found partially buried in a house with no identifying marks, so she is just called Jane Doe (Olwen Catherine Kelly). There were more bodies in the house, but it looks like they were killed trying to leave. The sheriff says this body is a priority, they need to know the cause of death by the morning, so it is going to be a long night for the Tilden’s.

Of course, while performing the autopsy, they find a lot of weird shit. Abnormalities in her body, strange features. Then, of course, bad stuff starts to happen to them in the laboratory. Power flickers, radio goes haywire, next thing they know, they are locked inside and it is not looking good for any of them.

“What did you say?”

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a film that wants to keep things very simple. We have a small set, a small cast, and a simple plot line. No added in exorcisms or anything, just a dead body terrorizing a few people. Something to make you feel claustrophobic and a bit worried about dead people.

Perfect for horror enthusiasts. For me? A regular guy? I thought it was a bit dull. I wouldn’t say anything is bad, but given the space and foreshadowing, most of it just makes sense. I didn’t find myself surprised let alone scared.

It is still a good effort. The problems are more with me than the film itself. It isn’t like it has bad acting or shitty camera work. It just didn’t end up being the film for me.

Clearly it just didn’t have enough autopsy jargon.

Would You Rather came out a few years ago, and is pretty strange title to randomly show up on my reviews. I mean, I have been pretty consistent doing things from the current year or year before, and rarely two years prior. But Would You Rather came out in 2012, straight up 5 years ago, which is theoretically the end of my always shifting bar for reviews.

And honestly, I watched it because I really wanted to. I needed a psychological horror, and I discovered this one with plenty of actors I knew. I don’t know if this went into theaters, or straight to DVD, or what, but it exists and I really haven’t heard people every talk about it.

So watching it was for an itch. Reviewing it? Well, it was worth talking about. And I am weirded out that the title doesn’t have a question mark. Even though sure, the three words are the beginning of a question and not an entire question, it still feels strange without it.

“Kind of like a dinner with only three courses,” – Rich version of myself.

Iris (Brittany Snow) lives alone with her younger brother, Raleigh (Logan Miller), who also is dying. He needs good insurance and a blood marrow match for a big surgery, or you know, he is going to die. And Iris can’t even get a job to help maybe pay for it. Life sucks. But Iris’ doctor, Dr. Barden (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), knows something that might help.

You see, there is a rich dude, Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs) who runs a charitable foundation. They want to invite Iris to a dinner, and afterwards there will be a game. The game will have one winner, and the winner will get what they need monetary wise for everything to be wonderful again. And she is desperate, so she goes without giving her brother the specifics.

Long story short, they have to play a game of Would You Rather. But not only do they have to choose (and have to choose in 15 to 30 seconds), but they have to do the task. And they involve violence, and pain, and have a good chance of killing people. Oh joy. And if they try to back out, they die. Only one winner, and one survivor.

Iris quickly makes two friends in Cal (Eddie Steeples) and Lucas (Enver Gjokaj). The other contestants include Peter (Robb Wells), a gambler from Vegas, Linda (June Squibb), a woman in a wheel chair, Travis (Charlie Hofheimer), an Iraq war vet, Conway (John Heard), a skeptical old man and former alcoholic, and Amy (Sasha Grey), an evil looking hot girl.

Also featuring Bevans (Jonny Coyne), a very skilled manservant, and Julian (Robin Lord Taylor), the sun of Shepard.

This party is poppin’!

I wanted a psychological thriller, and really, I got only a bit of one. The first round was relatively lame, but still, it started off the game immediately with pain. Less on the mind game side, more on the torture side. The second round was…well, also just various torture, with more death potential, and more focused on being mean. The third round there was no subtly, but basically a task for every person that could kill them. And the fourth round had some mind games, thankfully.

What I am getting at is that this film scratched the surface of a good film, but couldn’t really deliver. Too many of the eight people died “outside of the game.” The would you rathers were never really that fun or exciting. The characters themselves excited me a bit, but never enough to fully love the film.

And let me just say that there was a moment that had me somewhat shouting at the screen, because it was going to be terrifying and gross. My wife had to come and check on me to make sure everything was okay, causing me to quickly shout at her to not look, it would be terrible. And then the film didn’t even show the terrible act, it cut away, no CGI or props or anything. It would have been a defining moment.

The film also had a weird subplot with the doctor character, and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE PURPOSE WAS. I might have missed it, but I think it went nowhere. The ending was also pretty predictable.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter, if you check it out on IMDB, says it came out first in 2015. Shit, it must have been in the festival game for a long time.

Because today (March 31, 2017) is its actual release date, at least in this area. Maybe part of it is that it is a foreign film, from Canada! And you know it is indie, because it has a VOD release on the same day as its theatrical release.

But I digress. The real important thing I want to talk about is that this film used to be called February. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is definitely a better title, so if anything, it has props for that. And naming it after a month, and releasing it in a different month is super weird.

These poor girls have been waiting patiently for this movie to release for almost 2 months thanks to the title confusion!

This story is about a few girls and a really nice Catholic school. We have Kat (Kiernan Shipka) who is having weird dreams of car crashes, and Rose (Lucy Boynton), an older girl who is afraid she might be pregnant. On an extended break in February, both girls find themselves stuck at the school, neither having a ride home from their parents.

Kat has no idea where her parents are (but assumes they are dead). Rose admits that she “accidentally” told them the wrong date, because she wants to tell her boyfriend about the pregnancy first if she is indeed pregnant. So they are sent to stay with caretakers near the school, because they cannot just live there forever. Rose doesn’t take good care of Kat though, leaving her alone and telling her ghost stories.

But we also have to talk about Joan (Emma Roberts)! She is a weird girl, alone, seemingly homeless. And she gets a ride from strangers because of how cold it is out. Linda (Lauren Holly) and Bill (James Remar) decide to pick her up because Bill says she reminds her of someone. What is her mysterious story and how is she connected?!

Also, demons!

And she is screaming into bloody hands. Or eating bloody stuff. Or maybe some spicy cheetos?

First of all, let’s just say I don’t have any clue why this movie is called The Blackcoat’s Daughter. I might have missed it. It could have been in a story Rose told. But I don’t know. I would have understood why it was called February at least.

The film itself is very tense and slow. It takes awhile to realize how the girls are connected and the why, but it has some great reveals. The death scenes, unfortunately, feel very realistic. They are not glorified in violence, but they are graphic and still shocking. I was definitely at the edge of my seat by the end.

At the same time, it still was a bit confusing. It was also a little bit too slow at points in the middle. It has an okay story and some decent frights, it just takes awhile to get there.

Roberts/Boynton aren’t the strong suits here, even though I watched it for them. Shipka does really shine in creepiness. It must be those intense Mad Men eyes of hers.

Overall, The Blackcoat’s Daughter has a small scale story, but it offers some real thrills. It just didn’t overall do it for me as a movie and had me lost in a few places.