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Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Wormtown

Surprisingly good indie horror about the remaining survivors trying to make it out of a small town in Ohio which has been taken over by mind control parasites. Way better than you think it is from that description. Not great, but definitely very good, and with some amusingly original tropes. I'm kinda impressed. It's a pretty solid watch.

Be warned, though—it's still a horror flick, and not for the sqeamish, for sure. There are a lot of worms in this movie.

After writing the above, I had to look, and this somehow averaged 4 stars on IMDB. That, I do not understand at all. Either a lot of people hated this movie, it was marketed to the wrong audience, or somebody paid a lot of money to have this thing panned. I dunno.

It does have a lot of long stretches that are straight drama, not horror.…

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Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

You Don’t Say!

A young professional woman gets a magic necklace that forces her to star in a 3rd-rate ripoff of "Liar Liar".

A third-rate production, the kind of amateur-hour trash you usually see in the horror genre, not comedy, excepting raunchy sex comedies, which this isn't. The pacing is way too slow, the acting is mostly wooden, just slightly above porno movie quality. The big star in the movie is a two-minute cameo from the actor who played the "Soup Nazi" on Seinfeld. How the mighty have fallen.

But, at the same time... they really tried, so hard that it's kind of charming. The jokes aren't entirely over-broad, almost as if they thought about them for a minute. And the "actors" (amateurs at best) are weirdly likable, the leads seeem like genuinely nice people. And, I mean, they ripped off the conceit of "Liar Liar" so blatantly they actually mention it…

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Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Strangers On A Train

Classic Hitchcock film noir in which two men meet on a train trip, and part ways with one of them believing they've agreed to each murder someone the other wished to be rid of.

Not one of Hitchcock's stronger pictures, if you're just starting out with Hitchcock I wouldn't watch it before, say, "North By Northwest", "Rear Window", "The Birds", even "Rope", maybe even "The 39 Steps"... it's not one of the greats, but even the worst Hitchcock is always going to be reliably above a certain quality. To date, if there's a rotten egg in his catalogue, I haven't found it.

This one is a bit more of a slow starter than many of his, and the setup is a bit contrived, but, this one does build to the kind of climax you can rely on from the Master. Definitely has its moments.

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Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Rec 4

Talk about jumping the shark. Apparently the mediocre-at-best found footage anthology horror series has abandoned the found footage technique for conventional narrative, abandoned the anthology format for a feature film, abandoned horror for action, even abandoned the English language for Spanish.

Why?

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Movie Reviews » Trash

A Cursed Man

Execrable "documentary" in which a filmmaker asks various witchy people to put a curse on him. And then... he starts having bad dreams! OoooOOOooOOOOh! He goes mountain biking and takes a spill and hurts his knee... and then remembers, one of the witchy people mentioned his knees! OoooOOOooOOOooOOh! Cue "creepy strings" background music.

This is about as much a documentary as "Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch" or any bullshit "haunted house investigation" tv series I've seen. Awful. Just garbage.

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Movie Reviews » Canadian

P2

What should have been a crappy thriller is actually saved by unexpectedly solid acting. This is the kind of film a younger Jodie Foster might have been in, in between her more prominent roles. It's not "The Accused", it's not even "Panic Room", but it might be "Red Eye".

A young woman working late on Christmas Eve has car trouble and winds up trapped in her building's underground garage with the increasingly unhinged attendant. That's it, that's the entire plot.

Where this movie breaks away from the pack is the slow and deliberate way the villain slowly metamorphosizes from a bumbling nice-seeming guy to an absolute psycho, and the performances, which require a surprising amount of range and depth for a film like this. Both characters somehow manage to convey some depth and variety of emotion; when the villain tells her, "I like you. I would never hurt…

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Movie Reviews » Bad but I like that it exists

Eaten Alive! (1980)

Here we have an oddity. A low-budget Italian late '70s exploitation flick that throws everything but the kitchen sink: gritty NYC cop flick (including wah-wah guitars and bongoes, '70s cop show music); a jungle cult obviously intended to cash in on interest in Jim Jones and the Guyana Peoples' Temple; more boobs than even I want to see, which is really saying something; and graphic cannibalism. It feels like an attempt to merge every '70s exploitation flick, most prominently the notorious (and also Italian; the Italian filmmakers had a way about them) cannibal flick "Cannibal Holocaust", which is interesting, as this seems like an attempt to cash in on that specifically, but was actually filmed before that was released.

The overally production is so cheezy that it very nearly succeeds at that rarely achieved "so bad it's good" context. It's the '70s, so there's lots of unabashed nudity, and of…

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Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

The Poughkeepsie tapes

Pointless torture porn in the guise of a true crime mockumentary about a serial killer who videotapes all his killings, conveniently for the filmmaker, who now doesn't need to hire a cameraman or cinematographer. Actually not the worst one of these I've ever seen, but that's a very low bar.

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Movie Reviews » watchable

The Beyond (2017)

Slow-starting but ultimately decent hard sci-fi mockumentary about the discovery of a near-earth wormhole, and the transhumanist effort to transplant scientists into artificial bodies for the voyage through. Not that well acted at points, and overall nothing to write home about, but decently watchable.

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Movie Reviews » Honorable Mention

Teeth

This movie has been an odd favorite of mine for a long time. It could have, should have, been so terrible, but decent direction and strong acting performances absolutely save it.

The plot is so ridiculous it's hard to explain. In a suburban town, growing up in the shadow of an often-seen but never-mentioned nuclear reactor, a religious teen, the kind who wears a purity ring and goes around to schools lecturing to the kids about the evils of sex, learns, through a series of horrific sexually violent encounters with despicable men, that she has teeth inside her, and evolves from being vehemently opposed to premarital sex to, ultimately, using it to get revenge. It's an absurd setup, but handled so thoughtfully, and with such a nuanced, wide-ranging, and realistic performance from the lead actress, that it actually makes for a surprisingly good movie.

This was originally mis-marketed…

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Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

The Mollusk Murders

Sub-student-film-quality 45 minute "movie" with actors who can't act, about a woman who discovers she loves eating oysters, which for some reason makes her take men out and kill them.

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Movie Reviews » Favorite

The Front

I love this movie. It's a unique and moving tragicomedy about a writer who fronts for blacklisted writers during the Red Scare. Set in the 50s but done with (at the time) up-to-date '70s fashions. Stars a long pre-scandal Woody Allen, and conducted throughout with his usual nebbishy-but-insouciant tone—but, unusually, not written or directed by him—and also features Zero Mostel in an unforgettable role as a blacklisted entertainer being brutally taken advantage of by uncaring, predatory show biz people.

I really don't have the words to explain what's so great about this movie. It's an incredibly well-written, funny, pointed, sympathetic, stirring, and at moments downright painful look at innocent lives bleakly destroyed by a political frenzy, with a unbelievably strong message. It has one of my favorite closing scenes of any movie ever—although you have to watch all the way through the credits to understand what's so very powerful…

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Movie Reviews » Different, At Least

Shadow (2009)

Ok, this movie is vexing. It starts out as a very tedious pursuit flick: a former soldier biking through rural Europe pisses off asshole locals in a bar by rescuing a woman they're harassing, so the locals chase him and the woman through the woods. Suddenly, the movie changes completely, as a creepy figure who for some reason has apparently built a huge Gothic torture complex in the middle of nowhere captures all of them and spends most of the rest of the movie silently torturing them horribly and graphically, with the kind of creative degeneracy you'd find in the worst torture porn.

I will give it one thing: the cinematography has a couple of exceptional moments. The gaunt torturer has shots worthy of "Nosferatu", and as the movie suddenly shifts into increasing (and totally unexplained) phantasmagoria, there are a couple of eerily beautiful shots here and there.

…
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Movie Reviews » Honorable Mention

The Wicker Man

A favorite classic of mine, a very unique crime/horror flick with a deserved cult following. Edward Woodward as a Christian police detective called to investigate the disappearancec of a young girl on a remote British isle where an ancient pagan religion is still avidly practiced, on the eve of their biggest festival. Villagers wear animal masks, fornicate in public, and openly teach the school children about a pagan view of sex, as the morally outraged Woodward gets drawn into something big and dark. Command performances from all, especially Christopher Lee as the lord of the isle.

What "Dog Day Afternoon" is to crime dramas, this is to horror films: a little dated, perhaps, very much of its time, but just a very well-told-eng story, and different enough, to be entertaining all the way through.

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Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Infinity Pool

A well-made and engrossing but slightly narratively flawed sci-fi/horror mindbender, with video montages that would make Ken Russell proud. It's not perfect but well-enough done to be satisfying for me, despite the occasional cinematic excess or tough-to-swallow narrative turn.

A tourist couple and some friends visiting a foreign nation break the rules and leave the compound, drunkenly killing a local. From there it gets into some trippy territory that's just unexpected enough that I don't want to give away any more than that.

It's not great but it was good enough that it held my attention. The plot was definitely original, if a little too weird to completely suspend disbelief. I did like the way some outlandish ideas were handled, at least at first, with some gritty, matter-of-fact realism.

By the end it goes a little over-the-top but not far enough to ruin my overall enjoyment of…

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Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Not All Movies Are The Same: Dual

I will never understand why they give a movie an English-language description, English title, English introductory cards, English credits, and then, after a very long opening sequence with no dialogue, it turns out to be a foreign-language film.

I don't mind tucking in with a subtitled foreign film, but that's not what I skim the horror section of Tubi for.

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Movie Reviews » Turned it off

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Yet another movie based on the gruesome abuse and murder of Sylvia Likens by the family of a neighbor who was supposed to be looking after her for a few months in the mid-'60s (the other one film being the more biopic-like but equally horrifying "An American Crime".) This one, despite being well-made, is based on a novel that fictionalized the incident, and really amounts to an exploitation flick. It's well-acted enough that the characters succeed in being truly, viscerally loathsome, but it doesn't offer up anything besides that.

It is very rare that I will turn a movie off just for being foul—remember, I'm the guy who loved "Necropath"—but this is just gross. The thin pretense of social responsibility afforded by being very loosely based on a true story doesn't redeem it, despite the addition of a "good guy" neighbor boy character who…

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Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

New Jersey Devil

A family in rural New Jersey deals with deaths in the area and a supernatural threat in the woods. A strangely good bad movie. Clearly a beyond-indie zero-budget production, with more than its share of totally amateur production values, plodding pacing, and wooden acting, this also strangely has moments of good direction, and although the minor characters all seem to be played by non-actors, the leads are actually alright... all enough that I actually sort of liked it, in a non-ironic way. It goes on a bit too long, unfortunately, but, I dunno, for what it is, it actually has its charms, a little.

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Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

Bare Skin

Overwrought and overlong, this is effectively an anthology film. A mysterious therapist calls five victims of horrific crimes in to group therapy. Most of the movie is their flashbacks showing their traumatic experiences, which mostly consist of well-shot but unexplained and difficult-to-believe attacks, kidnappings, tortures, etc., each of which goes on for much too long with too little plot behind them, and mostly featuring poor acting. Eventually the therapist reveals a connection between the five people, which I think is supposed to be some sort of twist ending, but simply doesn't make any sense.

Of all the films I've marked "just don't", this might be the "just don't"-est, there's just nothing rewarding about this. Except the production values and cinematography, which are oddly competent. This doesn't look like a cheapo indie flick, although nothing else about it is interesting. And some sure thought a lot of themselves to make…

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Movie Reviews » watchable

Juice (TV series)

Charming, absurdist, somewhat slapstick BBC romantic comedy series about a young man's struggles with his job, immigrant family, and boyfriend. The second season leans harder into outright surreality, and it basically works. I wouldn't say it's a favorite but I enjoyed it, and would have happily watched another season of it.

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Movie Reviews » watchable

Barney Miller (TV series)

I rewatched the entire series over a couple of weeks, maybe for the first time since I was a kid, and I was plesantly surprised. It has an old-school "Catskills comedian"-type repartee to it at times, and is definitely often a cut above what you normally think of as a sitcom... definitely fairly intelligent writing, aimed at adults. It has its weak, over-the-top sitcommy tropes, especially throughout the lackluster third season and the last, when every criminal they bring in is some sort of two-dimensional, ridiculous caricature (the guy who thinks he's a werewolf springs to mind as a representative third season example,) but by and large most of its 8 seasons justify why it was well thought of. It's not hilarious, but it's often witty and thoughtful. It's pretty amazing, actually, that they managed to make 8 largely-entertaining seasons set mostly in a single room. Not since "The Honeymooners"…

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Movie Reviews » Different, At Least

The Last (2025)

A grave disappointment that tackles a somewhat familiar theme very well until it suddenly doesn't.

A shy, socially awkward man unexplainedly wakes up in Sydney, Australia to find the rest of humanity has vanished. Over time he finds a few other "survivors", and both his story and their interactions are mostly handled intelligently and with realism, and the many scenes of a totally empty Sydney are effective... until the cliches start showing up, and finally, the movie abruptly ends with an totally unsatisfying "resolution" that tries to sound profound but just comes off inarticulate and never explains most of the narrative loose ends that have accumulated.

It's a shame, because for the first 1/2-2/3, the movie fell unexpectedly enjoyably into the watchable category. But disintegrating in the third act into a mass of never-explained "creepy" plot points and contrived conflicts and then ending with basically a shrug that…

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Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

Final Days: Tales From The End times

A bunch of terrible, clichéd supposed horror shorts all set on the day of the apocalypse. Whether it's a zombie apocalypse, a nuclear apocalypse, some sort of pandemic of violence, or something else, it can't seem to decide, and a few of them don't even seem related to the theme. Totally amateurish, and terrible even by horror anthology standards. I think this might be just a bunch of youtube shorts collected together into a "movie". Although that may not be fair, as I've seen much better youtube horror shorts than these.

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Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Clown (2019)

Ugh. Sub-TV-movie-level acting and production, a disjoined opening scene of small town people hunting down and brutally killing people in clown makeup, then 20 minutes of nothing happening as a carful of unrealistic kids discover an abandoned carnival in the desert, I'm not sitting through 90 minutes of this.

Not to be confused with Clown (2014), which I saw a long time ago but haven't reviewed yet, and was bad but reasonably amusing.

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Movie Reviews » Different, At Least

Brute 1976

Reasonably well-made but tediously derivative and narratively meandering "tribute" to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, set in a desert ghost town instead of a Texas farm. Has a touch of The Wicker Man thrown in for good measure. Cool masks, I'll give it that, but that's just about all it's got. Although, one interesting point: it passes the Bechdel test, and in fact it has two named female BIPOC characters who have a conversation about something other than men, as both the last victim and the lead villain of this large ensemble cast are both women—they have a several-minute conversation about war and social issues, at the phantasmagorical climax of the film no less. So, I guess it's got that, too. I suppose that catapults it into "at least it's different" territory, despite how entirely derivative most of it is—albeit just barely.

I kinda feel like Rob…

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Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

No Tears In Hell

Empty torture porn that makes "Funny Games" seem like Dostoevsky. "Based on a true story" slasher pic is just repeated scenes of an improbably handsome "cannibal necrophile psychopath" luring improbably gorgeous "homeless people" to his home and doing about what you'd expect, except sicker. Boring. I gave up about halfway through. Notable primarily for how much every single person in it seems like an actor, and for being oddly well-shot for such a piece of completely unwarranted garbage.

I bet Eli Roth loves this.

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Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

The Stylist

A one-note story that seems like a '90s horror anthology TV series episode expanded out to over 100 minutes. A disturbed hairstylist cuts the scalps off her customers and wears them around the house because, I dunno, movie, I guess.

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