A not-bad horror-ish, sci-fi-ish movie that plays like an ok episode of a long-form sci-fi TV show. During a solar storm that knocked out cell reception and causes auroras in the sky, a retired priest takes in an Amish girl fleeing her wedding. The whole movie is them talking or arguing in the darkened house. 70 minutes passed surprisingly quickly. Nothing to really recommend here, but, I don't regret watching it.
Ok, this movie couldn't have seemed less promising: "A woman running from her past is trapped between a zombie outbreak and warring militia groups." Great. But it turns out, this is a more of a flawed gem... deeply flawed in some ways but also very well done in others.
Inside of the first few minutes it became apparent this was a little better than that. The acting and dialog seemed good, somehow. Cliche'd ominous background news reports about a viral outbreak are downplayed and handled well for something we've seen so many times before. The couple goes on a 5-day canoe trip and then quickly fall to arguing, and for a little while, this turns into one of those movies that kills time by having a couple negotiate their relationship onscreen for the viewers—my favorite thing—before the canoe capsizes, one's leg is broken, and they must take to land…
This film set low expectations and then came through kinda better than expected. The synopsis, "Lifelong best friends, Maddy and V, find themselves at a remote ski lodge where a group of mysterious wealthy men throw a celebration century in the making" certainly didn't lead me to expect anything great.
And, it's not great. But it was actually kinda good. But the acting is a slight cut above movies like this usually are, and even the particularly hammy performances are entertaining. Some of the dialog occasionally rings true at points, which is nice. The movie is a very slow burn and takes it's time, maybe longer than it should, to get where it finally goes, but I didn't mind that much. And the ending finally ratchets up the intensity nicely, after a long very gradual simmer. I think if I was 14 I'd have thought this was flat-out great.
I've…
A small film, but one I like. Woman contracts strange degenerative disease that causes her body to decay. One of those ones you can't say too much about without giving it away, but takes an unusual spin on some things. Doesn't feel like much as you're watching it, but satisfyingly adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
Wow, sometimes you stumble across an unexpected gem. The setup is a remote pair of forest rangers checking trail cams stumble across a pair of survivalists, initially promising to be a standard backwoods captivity/pursuit flick with no more to commend it than the notably gorgeous digital cinematography (which happily holds up from start to finish). Fortunately it turns out to be something else: a quiet and pretty original creature feature/body horror outing that I bet admirers of both Svenkmayer and Cronenberg would find things to enjoy in, not to mention being consistently well-directed and visually beautiful enough to evoke Lars von Trier's earlier years. One of those horror films that probably pleased a lot of high-minded critics. I have little doubt Roger Ebert would have greatly enjoyed it, and I'm sorry not to be able to read his review of it. I'll remember this one, and watch it again. Also…
Ok, I like this one. What starts out as a very slow, almost dreadfully British film somewhere along very roughly the lines of "Coherence"—turn a normal gathering (in this case a family of unpleasant almost dreadfully British people) in a house into an increasingly desperate situation (in this case the house exits all being sealed from outside and the television issuing increasingly strange commands) and see what happens—gives absolutely no clue for the first two acts as to how far over-the-top it's going to go by the end.
How ridiculous it is, and how uninspired the storytelling and one-dimensional the characters are, is compensated for by the fact that it's not really much like anything I've seen before.
Really, you've got to admire its fidelity to itself. In some ways, it's a decent throwback to '50s monster movies. It decides where it's going to go, and sticks to…
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