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Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

The Frame

This is an interesting one. It takes so long to get where it's going, but is so passably adequate even before it's gotten there, that by the time it does get there in the third act, it feels like the sudden kick into high gear is a complete (and odd) change in the tone of the movie.

A man and a woman discover they can see and speak to each other through their TVs. The catch: each knows the other as a character in a favorite TV show. For two acts, it unfolds along this premise, with the interwoven stories good for some perfectly enjoyable if not particularly memorable escapism. However, in the third act, they don't just break the fourth wall, they bend it into a moebius strip, and the movie turns from an interesting fantasy/crime drama into straight-up David Lynch territory, as more of the movie is…

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

OMG… We’re In A Horror Movie

This is one of those really bad movies that kind of feels like a group of friends got together and made a movie, but in this case, every single one of them is a huge ham and really into it, so it makes it kind of funny even though it's totally bad.

During a voard game night among a suspiciously diverse group of geeky friends, a guy who violated the superstition of kicking a cat in heat and rolling three sixes on dice throws them all into a horror movie. The rest of the movie is spent doing fourth-wall lampoons of a million different conventions of horror and other genres, much in the manner I imagine "Scream" probably does if I ever had any interest in watching that, except with way worse acting and production.

I don't know if I could ever sit through it for another viewing, but…

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

The Radleys

Pretty decent English modern-vampire-movie-played-almost-as-drama a lá "The Hamiltons". This was pretty decent though. Modern English vampire family deals with internal politics and trying to survive without being found out in a small town. "The Hamiltons" is a little near and dear to my heart to draw a comparison but I think I still like that better as it's a little leaner.

Movie Reviews » WAY too indie

Alone With You

An indie, hipster version of "1408". Woman trapped alone in her Brooklyn apartment has a bunch of surreal, random "scary" things happen to her, and it's all supposed to mean something, but god only knows what. At least the lead actress (who also directs, probably a warning sign) is better at acting terrified than John Cusack.

Note to filmmakers everywhere: the last director who threw a bunch of random shit at the wall and made it stick was David Lynch, and even he had to eventually bring more to the table than that.

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Sorry I Killed You

This movie is pretty sophomoric. Dick jokes (including a huge rubber dildo that appears more than once), insecurity about males being mistaken for being gay, and every imaginable prank that frat boys play on passed out drunk people, plus a few new ones, figure into this "horror comedy" as a group of douchebag friends go to a cabin for a weekend and are stalked as a serial killer. Expect jokes about a douchebag's hand being glued to a nude woman's breast while they're both passed out, and then, because it's a "horror comedy", you can imagine what happens when he pulls too hard trying to get it off.

But, you know what: it has its original points. The key premise is, they're stalked by the increasingly frustrated serial killer, who mostly doesn't get a chance to kill anyone, because they all wind up killing each other first.

And,…

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Ankle Biters (2021)

I can't believe it. Somebody actually made a "horror comedy" that works watchably well as both.

I have never seen a film that is so charming and so grisly at the same time. The four adorable, precocious young daughters (played by real-life sisters, all seeming about 6 years old) of a smitten mother, revealed in the opening scenes as being involved in a very passionate and very kinky relationship, decide they don't like her fiancee and, on a family trip to a sylvan lakefront cabin, decide to do something about it. And, oh my, they do, as the film takes a hard right turn in the middle from charming comedy thriller into more serious territory.

Unfortunately, a flawed gem, marred primarily by a very lazy and gratuitous ending—and I mean just the last two or three minutes, but, a really disappointing out-of-left field "denouement" that is more of a letdown…

Movie Reviews » watchable

The Beyond (2017)

Sort of bombastic, portentious sci-fi wannabe-"epic" pseudodocumentary about humans exploring a wormhole and having their brains transplanted into artificial bodies and finding new solar systems and such. Moderately ok, I guess.

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Beyond the Sky

Surprisingly ok sci-fi special effects thriller, after a slow and cliched start. Filmmaker out to debunk UFO abductions gets more than he expected in the American southwest, but it winds up a little better than that sounds. Kinda weirdly alright, after it finally gets going.

Movie Reviews » watchable

Bored Games

Quirky, kind of fun English film about three couples living in a backyard bunker after the apocalypse when things get crazy. It was billed as a "horror comedy", which typically puts me off, but it really wasn't, it was more of a straight comedy with postapocalyptic horror theme, but played entirely for laughs, not like a horror movie that was so bad they called it a comedy in hopes of salvaging it. I've seen less entertaining films.

Movie Reviews » watchable

Misery

This film is pretty good. A lot of Stephen King adaptations are terrible, even ones of good books, but this one about a writer being held captive by a psychotic fan works due to strong casting—James Caan, Kathy Bates, and a couple of other recognizable if not-exactly-tip-of-the-tongue character actors in the supporting cast.

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Neighbors (1981)

Tough call here. I have a hard time viewing this movie objectively due to the affection I feel for having seen it in the theaters as a kid.

It's not great, definitely far from it, and deeply flawed. Mostly it coasts on the chemistry of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi both playing against type as unlikely neighbors thrust together at the end of a remote cul-de-sac... Aykroyd as a wild man and Belushi as a conservative, but both with the comic chops to pull off what otherwise might have been a disaster on the order of casting Steve Martin as the straight man in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles".

The writing is terrible though. I like the film in spite of it, but, the writing is pretty terrible.

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Misfit

An obese high school girl who is mercilessly picked on is taken in by a serial killer, shown the ropes, and coached to torture her tormentors.

I throw around the phrase "home movie" quite a bit to describe the lowest of low budget flicks, but it has never fit better than hear.

This really looks like someone had a super-8 camera and an idea... and no talent. You can see the "actors"... I'm guessing friends and family of the director... reading cue cards at points. (No joke, two of the actors have the same last name as the director/writer/producer.)

That said, though... funny thing, this is SO bad it's almost hard to dislike. It's like if your friends made a movie... of course it;s going to be bad... but you're going to like it. This is like that.

Only problem, and the thing that keeps me from…

Movie Reviews » watchable

The Domestic

Decent enough African supernatural thriller about a couple who hire the daughter of their deceased housekeeper who makes weird traditional foods and practices whatever the old tribal religion is, and she begins to exert weird control over the household.

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Death On Scenic Drive

Serious swing and a miss here. Beautiful cinematography, and a nice analog synth soundtrack—overall reminischent of "Beyond The Black Rainbow" in those ways, including with lots of saturated lighting ond strong geometric shapes, and lots of long, quiet parts with little dialogue. Visually and sonically, it leans rather poetic.

And: TERRIBLE writing, just the worst excuse for writing I've ever seen.

Basically, a woman goes to housesit a big rural house, and just starts acting weird and turns into a killer for no apparent reason. First she kills the dog, then she kills the neighbor, then she hides and kills the family whose house it is when they return home. Also a weird, satanic-looking man appears and stands in the house late at night when she's asleep, which I guess is supposed to mean something. Oh, yeah, aksi, in the beginning of the movie, when she arrives at the house…

Movie Reviews » watchable

Swallowed

Odd movie starts like a horror flick and becomes a neo-noir crime thriller with minor horror elements. Gay couple agree to ferry drugs by swallowing them wrapped in condoms to get them across a border, unaware it's not exactly a drug.... When one ruptures in one guy's stomach due to a punch in the stomach from a homophobe in a bathroom, they much go to the drug kingpin's house in the woods to try and get the rest out.

Not for the squeamish. Some wrigging stuff, and kind of an anal fixation. But it's not bad, if you are up for the horror elements. It's ok. Probably on the low end of adequately watchable.

Movie Reviews » Trash

Octogames

Absolutely execrable zero-budget home movie ripoff of "Squid Games". A YouTuber decides he wants to give away his channel, so, he has a competition where people play childrens games to win it, and the losers are all shot, because, movie. If we're lucky, nobody involved with this so-called "film" will work in movies again.

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

The Battery

Hmmmm. HMMMMMMM. Hmmmm. Here we have a seriously flawed gem.

This is a "slice of life" zombie movie. Two ex-ballplayers wander around New England trying to survive after a zombie apocalyse. Like a lot of these sorts of movies, this falls within the long shadow cast by "The Walking Dead" but among those movies it's top of the heap. Had it been an episode of the show, it would have been a cult favorite.

It's probably the most realistic of this sort of movie that I've seen. The characters are basically assholes, totally realistic. The movie follows them around and lingers on prosaic details... very long, several-minute-long shots of just them brushing their teeth, stuff like that. But it works.

It does have a narrative arc of sorts, but as a slice of life, it doesn't really come to the satisfying ending I wanted, which makes it…

Movie Reviews » Trash

Aquaslash

I knew going into this it was going to be bad—as if a horror movie about someone putting razor blades in a waterslide at an amusement park could be anything but—but I was fully unprepared for how bad. For the first 50 minutes of this movie, teenagers at a waterpark bicker and argue and pick on each other. Then, an unknown person puts what are apparently the world's sharpest blades in an 'X' halfway down one of the slides with nobody noticing, and we get 20 minutes of so-bad-its-hilarious scenes of people being cut neatly into pie slices as they slide down the slide, and the crowd panicking at the disproportionately immense amount of gore this causes to come rushing out of the bottom. Oh, and, one guy, covered in blood, climbing all the way to the top to tell people to stop going down—because apparently the sound of dozens…

Movie Reviews » Trash

No Solicitors (aka “No Visitors”)

Eric Roberts leads the cast of this Felissa Rose-produced outing, which should be enough to tell you everything. A family of cannibals traps door-to-door salesmen in their basements, harvests their organs for sale, and eats whatever's left over.

Self-consciously bad and relentlessly campy, almost like if John Waters directed a "horror comedy" gore flick. Picture "Serial Mom" with more gore and much worse acting. At least it's trying to be a horror comedy, though, and not just a bad horror movie they're calling a "horror comedy" because they're embarrassed at what a bad horror movie it is. That actually makes it, well, slightly inoffensive, at least to my skewed sensibilities. (Yes: a movie about cannibals imprisoning people to harvest their organs in a basement lab is one thing; but make a bad horror movie and try to pass it off as a comedy out of embarrassment, and I am outraged!)

Movie Reviews » Trash

Get Gone

It's a tale as old as time: a rural family is being ordered off their land by the government and aren't taking kindly to it, and they're all pale mutants due to the water being poisoned or something, and one of them always wears a creepy smiley face mask, and they kill every random group of twentysomething who camps anywhere in the woods nearby.

Practically ripped from the headlines!

Stars Lin Shaye as the mariarch of the murderous, pale, mask-wearing clan, who does really well when this movie makes the mistake so many like it do and in the third act finally gets alright (for what it is, which is to say, something that would have been much better if it was from 1975 than 2019... something about sweet-looking little Lin Shaye cutting off a sheriff's fingers and hissing at him "That's not all I'm going to cut off"…

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Blood River

This southern gothic attempted tale of vampires in a small town is sub-USA-Up-All-Nite level amateur hogwash, the kind of thing you figure someone threw together with a home movie camera and a lot of ambition, and literally nothing else. Right down to the obvious papier-mache corpses and other didn't-even-have-the-budget-to-try totally unspecial effects. And of course nobody in this movie can act at all, all anyone does is stiffly recite lines... where do they find these people?

But, here's the thing, and I always like this: it just doesn't know when to stop. It's ambitious, and obviously the product of someone with a lot of passion. A lot of passion, and absolutely zero talent for filmmaking whatsoever, but a lot of passion. And it just goes on and on and on, long enough to kind of suck you into its weird world of stilted editing and stiffly-recited-from-a-cue-card lines. I ultimately…

Movie Reviews » Trash

Devil’s Domain

This is insultingly bad. It's stupid and broad enough that it seems for all the world like a children's movie, with rubber costume demons, the thinnest possible plot, paper-thin overplayed characters, and basically an overall impression of having been put together by high school students—but it has explicit (if very cheap-looking) gore and heavy sexuality (if all heavy, panting lesbian frottage and not so much as a nipple), and a honest-to-god rape scene.

Girl gets bullied, and the devil, in the form of a woman in an evening gown who occasionally wears a rubber devil mask, decides she likes her, and kills them all in ways that are stupidly broad. Like, one of the popular girls picks on her in school, and a moment later, at her locker, is pushed by a rubber demon hand into a never-explained "Satan-y" place of some sort—which looks like a teenager with a…

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

All Girls Weekend

This is a bad movie. Let's get that out of the way.

First off, this film commits one of my least favorite filmmaking sins: spends half its time on just showing unlikeable people basically just hanging out. It's not even bad pacing; there is no pace.

The acting is, of course, terrible.

In terms of plot, this plays like the mentally challenged cousin of "The Long Weekend". Five high school friends, who don't appear to like each other at all, reunite years later for a camping trip. They get lost in the woods and, one by one, suffer inexplicable deaths by misadventure, often from injuries that would seem to require a bandaid but in this film's world are fatal: a woman stumbles and accidentally pierces her thigh with a branch, which turns out in a under a day to be a mortal wound; a few minutes of another woman sticking…

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Torture Chamber

I think I might be the only person who thinks this is a good movie.

This very Giallo-esque outing is about a severely scarred, burned kid with psychic powers who breaks out of a mental institution and returns to his hometown to torture everybody, where he brainwashes all the towns kids to help him not. Not that he needs the help, though, since he can make things burst into flame just by looking at them.

But the plot doesn't matter all that much. Neither does the often bad, hammy acting (including the odd casting of Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore from The Sopranos as a histrionic psychiatrist.) What matters is that this thing has this sort of outsider-art cinematographic beauty to it, much like the old Giallo films. It's just a cool-looking, atmospheric film.

It's so Giallo-esque that I checked to see if it was made in Italy. It…

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Salvage (2009)

The army descends on a cul-de-sac in suburban England and warns everybody to stay indoors for what initially seems to be a terrorist attack but turns out to be something far more ghastly. One mother must battle her way to find her daughter, who has fled to a house across the street after arriving for a reluctant Christmas Eve visit to find mum in bed with a one-night stand. Along the way neighbors accidentally get killed, people shoot at each other, and it's basically a huge violent mess.

You know, I liked this. There's not a lot of story here, mostly action. But Scottish actress Neve McIntosh is appealing, the guy who played the nasty rec center manager in "Misfits" does well as her one-night stand who winds up having to stay at her place long after he really probably should have left, and somehow this is the sort…

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Exeter (2015)

Slightly above-average "teen scream" flick that I just can't tell if it's supposed to be funny or it's just that over the top. They get into the action quickly as during the cleanup after a party in an abandoned asylum they do the worst possible thing you can ever do in a horror movie: play a children's game, in this case "Stiff As A Board, Light As A Feather", the very worst horror movie childrens' game, and therefore very deservedly spend the rest of the movie with a demonic presence hopping from one of them to the other, trying to kill them off. An attempt to call in a priest for an exorcism ends very, very quickly with the priest wandering into the road and getting hit by their car—this is what I mean by not knowing whether this is supposed to be funny or it's just that over the…

Movie Reviews » Canadian

Death Trip (2021)

Among the worst of the worst and apparently the glaring exception that proves the rule about Canadian horror movies.

Four friends go on a trip to a cabin where, for 80 minutes of its 100 minute runtime, they sit around and talk over each other or party with the townies with absolutely nothing of interest happening, or anything that even faintly resembles a plot. I would have thought this was literally just a video someone shot of a bunch of their friends hanging out for a weekend, except that the acting wasn't that good, and that, in the last 20 minutes, one guy starts to try to kill the others with a hammer for no reason that's ever explained, and they spend the end of the movie thwacking each other in the head with hammers and croquet mallets. I'm not exaggerating. Four friends talk for 80 minutes and then…

Movie Reviews » Trash

They Come Knocking

Cabin in the woods. Teenagers. Not particularly scary normal guy in clown makeup trying to talk in a gruff voice. The most perfunctory, paint-by-numbers pursuit/captivity flick ever.

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

The Final

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…

Movie Reviews » watchable

Isolation (2005)

Irish monster movie about people trapped on a farm with the monstrous results of a genetic experiment to make cows breed grow. Takes a while to get going but actually pretty watchable for what it is, if you're in the mood for this sort of thing.