Je nais se quois

This bears a disclaimer. If I categorize a film as "je nais se quois", that doesn't necessarily constitute a recommendation that it should be watched. In this case, I absolutely don't recommend this film, but I just can't deny... it's a little different.

This is an incredibly psychologically cruel torture porn. I say "psychologically" because in terms of graphic violence or gore, this movie actually extremely mild by the torture-porn-type horror movie conventions. What little graphic violence there is mostly occurs out of frame. I'm hard-pressed to say there's any visible blood in this movie at all.

Interestingly, they make some unusual character choices. There's slight moral ambiguity, one or two characters show various shades to their personalities, and the final girl convention is totally out the window here. The movie definitely goes in its own direction, in a small way.

The very big problem is the basic thrust…

Surprisingly decent zero-budget indie drama that starts like it's going to be a crap thriller but slowly and smoothly transitions to something quieter and more thoughtful. Three friends' relationships with each other and their respective loved ones fall apart after someone dumps a body in their car's trunk while camped in the backcountry and they decide they can't call the police because the car's owner is an ex-con.

It's a small, relatively quiet movie, and it does have a glaring logical flaw and admittedly tough suspensions of disbelieve (how long can you keep a body around in Los Angeles without anybody noticing a smell?), but, it's a hair different, not really something I've seen before, and though some of the acting is bad it's a serious effort that doesn't reach for more than it can accomplish and only seems to get stronger as it goes on, which is a…

Caught this on Tubi about 40 years after having last seen it in the theaters and not remembering a thing about it (In fact, I'm not even sure I saw it in the theaters... I believe I did.) I expected it to be a much-too-1980s corndog, and it was; however, I was pleasantly surprised to find that as the film went on, they put some effort into some odd aspects of it here and there, and in the middle of all the cheese there are a couple of passing images or short scenes that are surprisingly effective.

It reminds me, in a way, of how Tobe Hooper would occasionally take on cheesy projects (Think "Mars Attacks") but, then, because he's Tobe Hooper, would occasionally inject genuinely scary moments in them when you didn't expect them. This was a bit like that.

The plot is that a very 80s kid…

This is a fun movie, in its way. I actually watched it twice because I forgot to review it the first time, but once I realized I recognized it, I kept watching it anyway because I recally kind of liking it, and I kind of liked it again.

An annoying millenial podcaster gets an offer of $25,000 to come interview a charismatically crotchety, dour old farmer, in memory of his late wife, who was a fan. The farmer says a huge many-eyed monster lives in the woods behind his house, and turns out to be wildly paranoid, and has loaded up his property with security cameras and mechanical death traps.

And, refreshingly, it's mostly a character study. This is a horror movie, sure enough, but a whole lot of it is two guys talking—or, more often, the podcaster trying to get an interview, and the farmer telling him he wishes…

Surprisingly alright creature feature. A young man finds an insect-like creature that bonds with him and begins killing people that stand in his way. I know, that doesn't sound very promising, and I didn't expect anything from it. But it was much better than that setup sounds.

It doesn't spend a lot of time on the creature, it's more character-focused and revolves less around scares or violence than around drama and the effects of the victims' disappearances on him, his friends, and the small community. It's far from great, but it's definitely much better than I expected, and stands up pretty well as a movie.

Putting this here so I remember to watch this one again. This came on via autoplay when something I was watching on Tubi ended and I was so distracted by my laptop I didn't notice it until it was halfway through, so I never caught the plot. But visually it's a low-budget but seriously beautiful, dark, dingy black and white. Something about people underground in some sort of dystopia. But, really visually cool, I found it really unique looking all the way through. I gotta go watch it for real.

It's too bad this movie is so poorly done because, because the writing is ambitious and despite a reliance on a lot of cliches it has a little bit of an original story. A pair of garage scientists open a portal to a parallel universe and become embroiled in interdimensional intrigue as their employers attempt to take over the universe and their counterparts on the other side may or may not be what they seem. "Expulsion" refers to a universal rule that if two of the same person are in the same universe when the portal between them closes, one is "expulsed" which is never clearly explain but it involves disintegrating.

Terribly acted, zero budget, all around not very well made, but as I said, that's kind of a shame. The story itself mildly entertained me, in better hands and better acted this could have been something. I thought…

A young man's stomach pains turn out to be a portal to Hell opening in his abdomen from which demons periodically emerge, and he and his wife must run from mysterious people pursuing him. Stylistically like a Giallo flick, if that's your sort of thing.

It's different, I'll give it that. I wouldn't say it's particularly good but neither is it particularly bad. It takes until the third act to really get going but when it does, decent acting and creature design really help it along.

This is a truly odd little movie. Low-budget for sure, with only 3 actors, and hard to call it a very good movie, but, it's definitely a little different in terms of story. Los Angeles is under lockdown for unspecified reasons, and a package of seeds arrives with a delivery of food for three housemates, which, planted in the backyard, turn into a hole in the ground filled with some sort of glop, which, smelling good enough to eat, our protagonists do. Soon they're addicted, one roommate injects the glop and gets caught between dimensions, another has sex with the hole, and soon he goes insane, a twisted flower that produces more seeds grows from the hole, an interdimensional portal appears in the ground below it, and things just get weirder from there. The nice thing is, for such a bizarre plot, things are actually played fairly straight. The lead…

Somewhere in the same universe as Repo Man, Harold & Kumar, and Buckaroo Bonzai is this quirky buddy comedy about two slacker friends on a UFO-spotting camping trip in the desert who encounter other enthusiasts out there. I found it slightly above average, although judging from the extremely low-to-mixed reviews on IMDB, not everybody appreciated the humor like I did. And it probably doesn't rise to the level of those others I mentioned. But I liked it, I found it amusing most of the way through, although it dragged on a bit at the end. It's definitely kind of its own thing, for sure.

Definitely... well... not a flawed gem, but a flawed alright thriller in which a cleaner is paid to clean house for an overbearing rich guy. Saved from mediocrity by the villain, who does a standout performance as the stereotypical possibly homicidal rich asshole—think Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho" with the histrionics toned down to realistic levels. I liked it quite a bit, almost enough to recommend it, except that the plot kind of falls apart through too many tough-to-swallow sudden twists and turns at the end, and leaves it unsatisfying. Still maybe worth watching for the simmering, arrogant bad guy, though, if nothing else. He's memorable, and the slow burn of the first two acts are watchable; the end of the movie is niether, which, you know, you really want them to stick the landing and sadly they don't.

This ambitious indie flick is somewhere in the David Lynch, Guillermo Del Toro, Gaspar Noe triangle of "film is art" highly-stylized productions. A man whose wife and son disappear on a trip to the beach—or is it his mother and his younger self?—leading him to search a desert community for them and become involved with some sort of cult. People turn into lizards, bugs, skeletons, and the entire thing is intentionally dreamlike (and consequently, hard to follow the plot of.)

Nowhere near as good a film as any of the above-mentioned names would have made, and probably not one I can recommend, nonetheless, I admire the ambition, no matter how far short it falls of its lofty goals.

Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmm. Hmmmm.

What starts as a dreadfully slow, very British take on a home invasion/captivity flick a la "Funny Games"—something I'm immediately put off by—turns out, very slowly, to be something a little more... but then, exactly what, is never revealed, which is frustrating.

In 1972, a journalist couple who has been poking around a mysterious military operation our on the moors receives a visit from a very oddly-mannered couple, "Mr. and Mrs. Blair", who want to ask them a few questions, and proceed to brutalize and take them captive.

Honestly, pretty bad movie, and the fact that nothing is explained or resolved makes it doubly frustrting.

But at the same time, the acting is, er, strange enough to be a little engaging. The oddball performances of Mr. & Mrs Blair, as they slowly get stranger and stranger, is somehow a little interesting, especially the actress who…

A father whose daughter killed herself has a coven of witches resurrect her. But the plot of this movie doesn't matter. The whole movie is set apart by being an exercise in creepy mood and cinematography. On that level, I enjoyed it. Stars Chynna Rae Shurts, who seems to star in a lot of these slightly-above-average, slightly-out-of-the-ordinary horror movies lately. Definitely far from a great movie, but, if you want a watchable horror movie and really don't mind a paper-thin-to-the-point-of-almost-nonexistent plot as long as it provides 90 minutes of creepiness, this'll fit the bill nicely. I found it a fun watch, at any rate.

Entirely watchable supernatural thriller. Michelle Monaghan moves her family out to the country, where her young son is bit by a sick dog and subsequently develops an overwhelming thirst for blood. It could have gone a lot of different ways, but well-played with low-key intensity as the family goes further and further to try to keep their son alive and satiated as he slowly turns into a monster. Good performance from the young kid, too, playing the son trying to deal with urges he doesn't want but can't fight. And it has maybe two fleetingly short but kind of creepy moments, which is more than the zero you usually get from movies like this.

I'm rating this a little highly by putting it under "je nais se quois", it's not necessarily anything special, but... it's watchable for sure. It's not crap. If there's a lot of crap to choose from…

This movie is really odd. I will say right off that most people probably won't like it.

This is yet another in the apparently long string of oddly charming, super-low-budget H.P. Lovecraft adaptations. This one, despite being an American production of an American author's story, feels very British, in the way a great deal of it, most of it even, is people sitting in ordinary rooms having mannered conversations, played almost like a very talky, British drama. It's also updated to modern times, but played as an odd hybrid of Victorian-seeming dialog and modern tropes, but again, the whole thing is so mannered, it's only a little strange.

It does eventually go more places than that, but it takes a loooooooong time before it does. But, when it does, it's, well, oddly charming. It has occasional video effects of the kind many low-budget films try, thinking they'll look cool, but…

This is weird. This was actually a pretty ok sci-fi movie, if a little teen-oriented, set in the near future when there are humanoid AIs in daily use but otherwise very much like today, about a young woman who discovers she's an AI, spends most of the movie trying to escape corporate masters who want her captured, her creators/"parents" who keep wiping her memory every time she discovers she's artificial, etc. Don Cheadle and Emily Mortimer star as the parents, which should tell you something... It was pretty good, probably deserving a callout for being above average.

Until... an hour and a half into it, it just stops. It ends in the middle of the story.

There are references online to this being both a series and a movie, I don't know if what I saw was a pilot episode or something. If they'd wrapped it up like a…

What we have here is basically two movies. For the first two-thirds, it's a narratively not particularly interesting but absolutely beautifully shot gothic piece about a murderous family of carnival performers traveling iin the 1930s. This film is gorgeous—every frame looks like an excellent cinematographer put thought into it and if it carried on all the way through to the end I would have liked it quite a bit just for that. I mean, it's seriously beautiful, enough to carry it.

It has some strange stylistic touches, such as carnival freaks in the 1930s who are obviously influenced by having seen Marilyn Manson at some point. I'm pretty sure they didn't have goths yet them. Nonetheless, it held my interest and stood above the pack just for being so cinematically beautiful to watch. It had a dreamlike quality, but wasn't pretentious enough to qualify as an arthouse film. It's…

Kind of like "Mean Girls" but as a monster movie. And Mean Girls was kinda good, and, this is kinda good.

Seriously, this is a funny one, because in some ways it's as dumb as a teen scream horror can get—picture Adam Brody, the world's least believable devil-worshipping bad guy, singing "867-5309" as he sacrifices someone to the devil, and you have a pretty good picture of where this goes in places. But, the thing is, it's really well-directed, and the cinematography is at times great... like when Anita (Amanda Seyfried) is having awkward teenage sex with her boyfriend at the same time as Jennifer (Megan Fox) is killing a boy in an abandoned house, Anita senses it through the apparent psychic rapport they share as old friends—which could be a horribly mishandled conceit, but fortunately it's so underplayed that it works—and she looks up to see a vision of…

This is a little different. This is a terrible, half-baked movie for sure. More black comedy than horror, and completely amateurish at that. A pair of bumbling filmmakers decide to kidnap an unwitting actress because they want to make a fake snuff film but aren't convinced she can pull it off as an actress unless she really thinks she's being abducted and threatened. Needless to say, things don't go as expected.

There reason this isn't 100% complete garbage, though, is that the actress is so full of charisma and so much fun to watch that she basically carries the movie. The filmmakers are bumbling enough to be amiable, too, but Bree Williamson as the actress really chews the scenery as entertainingly as possible all the way through it.

For that, I'm going to stick this under films that have a certain "je nais se quois"... it's easily the…

Here we have something interesting. A horror "mockumentary" that's done so realistically I was unconvinced as to whether it was fake or not for much of the runtime. It's totally fiction, but boy does it look like a real documentary. It's effectively creepy; but then, as things get debunked, reveals them straightforwardly, as a real documentary wood. The performances are 100% realistic.

The story is, an Australian family's daughter drowns, and they believe they are beginning to see her ghost around the house. A medium gets involved, it goes through the kind of complex twists and turns any interesting real life documentary involving a true crime might go through, and it once never gets far enough from believable to break the spell. It's extremely sparing about creepy stuff so when it arrives, it's effective. The photo & video "evidence" for the haunting is sufficiently understated to be legitimately spooky... not…