Tag: Madame Web

Immaculate (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A naive nun joins a remote convent in Italy, discovering they’re harbouring a dark secret.

I have three horror reviews to write this week: this, Late Night With The Devil, and The First Omen. I was going to review Late Night With The Devil (LNWTD, pronounced La-new-ted) first, it’s the most critically acclaimed of the three, and I have the strongest opinions regarding it. But after seeing seeing Immaculate I have to do this first. Not because my feelings towards it are particularly strong, or because I have anything important to say. I’m just not sure how I can put this and The First Omen reviews next to each other, I haven’t seen TFO (Tee-foe) yet, but there is a definite worry that they will be treading similar grounds, and I don’t want to repeat myself. Plus, if I think of any jokes after posting this, I can just use them in the TFO review. The upside of repetition in cinema.

Now onto Immaculate itself. It’s received a lot of praise, particularly for Sydney Sweeney’s performance. I’m not entirely sure I agree. The final third, she is superb, a cinematic slice of delicious cheesecake. But for most of it? She appears kind of bored. Like I said, the final third where she has the hardest stuff to do, she’s great at. But the standard conversations with others? Doesn’t feel real, with one exception. Her interactions with Sister Gwen (played by Benetta Porcaroli) are incredibly sweet and I wish I could see more of them. Sadly, Gwen is killed relatively early on. Her body is discovered in the closing section and this is filmed like it’s supposed to be a surprise. Not entirely sure it is though. The last time we saw her she was being tortured, and then she didn’t appear again for (in film time) about 6 months, obviously she’s dead. It would be a bigger shock if she wasn’t.

There is a distinct lack of surprise in Immaculate. You can pretty much plot what’s going to happen based on the synopsis, all the twists and turns are more like slight veers to the left to the left. Sorry, went a bit Beyonce there. The final third is batshit insane and I am all for it, but the lead there just isn’t that exciting. The people you expect to be shits turnout to be shits, turns out there is a massive conspiracy where the church is impregnating young nuns without their knowledge. Which is a bit stupid when you think about it, there must be millions of women who would willingly consent to that, so going after unwilling ones just seems like you’re setting yourself up to be the villain. I kind of wish that the blood they used for the procedure turned out to not be from Christ at all. There’s not a single moment where there’s any doubt that that is his blood. That’s a lot of faith. Biblical relics are not that well preserved and catalogued. There are 21 churches which claim to have the foreskin of Jesus, and that means at least 20 of them are wrong or lying unless he had 21 penises (which I think they would have mentioned in the book, but it would have meant they’d have to change the title from The Bible to The 21 Dicked Man, which won’t sell as well). So the odds that they would have the correct artifact are quite low. I do like that the film discusses how their methods are more likely to create the antichrist (and it’s implied that is what happens). But the scene where they discuss that does have someone say “If this is not the will of God, why does he not stop us?” and this is treated (even by TVTropes) as a “gotcha”. So if God allows something, this means he supports it? I think the residents of Germany in the late 1930s would have a few fucking things to say about that. As would the residents of cities hit by tsunamis and earthquakes, and people who had to watch Madame Web.

As I said, the final third is superb, and it has one of the strongest closing scenes I’ve seen since Knives Out. It’s a slow slog to get there, but it is overall worth it. This won’t end up being my favourite film of the year, not even close, but it is one I will tell people to watch if they are fans of the genre. It’s very low on jump scares, relying more on tension and atmosphere. It’s directly brilliantly (with some pretty good music choices), and I’m glad to see the horror is mostly from humanity rather than demons (which usually results in scares which are just “thing jumps at the screen but it turns out to not be real”). I do want to see a sweet friendship-based road trip dramedy starring Sydney Sweeney and Benetta Procaroli though, they bounce off each other very well and it would be a shame to waste that chemistry.

Madame Web (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: Cassandra Webb is a New York City paramedic who starts to show signs of plot convenient-clairvoyance.

I was supposed to watch this a week earlier, but I was unable to go down to the cinema due to a random bout of sickness. Now I’ve not only recovered from illness but have managed to catch this at the cinema I can finally say…

I miss the days when I was ill.

Going to start by saying this; Madame Web is not as bad as Morbius. Morbius had absolutely nothing going for it. MW at least has one GORGEOUS shot, sets something up for the future (which now probably won’t happen), and ends with a Cranberries song. I mean, the rest of the film is dogshit though.

I actually went into this knowing it would be terrible. I don’t think that affected my viewpoint though. I mean, I went into Ghostbusters: Afterlife having only seen negative reviews, and that won me over. Conversely, I went into Wolf expecting it to be great and that………was not. It wasn’t just the early reviews that caused me to think this, it was the trailer too. The trailer said absolutely nothing about who this character is, or why we should bother paying for a ticket to see her movie.

I don’t get how Sony decided that THIS was the movie they wanted to release. They picked the screenwriters of Morbius FFS. How does that make sense? “Hey, these two people wrote one of the worst movies of all time, let’s hire them again”. The plot is DUMB, the dialogue is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and the characters are badly written. It feels like it was written by AI; nobody speaks or behaves like an actual human. Nothing really has consequences. Cassie is thought to have kidnapped the children, so she has to hide out with the teens to avoid suspicion. All standard so far. But there’s not really a reason for people to believe that. There were witnesses to the police being attacked by the villain, and all it would have taken was one of the multiple police officers on the scene to radio in “It’s a man in a Spider costume”. At least one person would have seen the villain get off the moving train too. They also would have seen him pace down the train whilst angrily staring at the teens. The kidnapping (which happens during working hours), is later reported in that day’s newspapers. You know, newspapers are famous for 3pm printings and distributions, everybody loves picking up a newspaper on the way home from work instead of in the morning. That’s such an easy problem to fix too, just show it on a TV screen. It only seems to be done via newspaper so the film can get a daily bugle reference in.

Usually when I’m writing a script I go through one draft where I delete the names and see if I can figure out who is who just by character actions and dialogue. You could not do that with MW. Characters change personalities from scene to scene, going from nervous and bookish, scared of drawing attention to themselves, to dancing on the table in a diner (completely sober).

The song that woman is dancing to? Toxic by Britney Spears. A song which wasn’t released until January 2004, in a film set in 2003. Why is it set in 2003? No idea. I’ve heard rumours it’s so they could tie it into the Andrew Garfield films, then the Tom Holland ones, then realised none of those timelines work. I’m not entirely sure I would believe that, but it would back up the absolute clusterfuck that is this movie. It being set in 2003 adds nothing. I suppose you could argue it means that you can use Uncle Ben as a living character. I mean, him being Uncle Ben adds NOTHING, if anything it makes Spider-Man a worse character, as it means he likely based himself on the supervillain from this film. All the 2003 setting adds is weirdness, especially in terms of music. It’s not just “that song wasn’t out yet”, it sometimes goes too far the other way, using too many songs from the 80s and 90s. I don’t think many radio stations in 2003 would play the 1987 Tiffany song I Think We’re Alone Now early in the morning. It doesn’t feel very 2003, and unlike the Spider-Verse soundtrack, it doesn’t feel very New York. Except for a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song near the start, it’s the most generic soundtrack outside of royalty-free music. That’s not the most offensive part of the audio though; it feels like a lot of Tahar Rahim’s dialogue was rerecorded in post-production. Sometimes it’s not as noticeable, his mouth being obscured, but then there are some times when the dialogue doesn’t match his mouth movements at all. That’s not just bad, that’s a failing grade at film school.

MW doesn’t even have the decency to look good, it overdoes the swoopy 180 shot. Some of the action scenes are incomprehensible in terms of staging and choreography. That being said, there is one PERFECT shot; a car quickly drives away, turning as it does so. The shot is a standard “snow gets kicked up into the air by a speeding tyre”, but with broken glass. It looks absolutely stunning and may be one of my favourite shots of the year. But other than that? It’s like a glass of cloudy lemonade left for four days; it’s murky, it’s flat, and it’s ugly.

So that’s established that the script is shit, the directing is shit, and the sound is shit, what of the performances? Sydney Sweeney, Isabella Merced and Celeste O’Connor are good and I would like to see a full-length Spider-Women movie featuring them (just with a different director and screenwriter). That’s actually my main takeaway from this; it was a trailer for a film that will now never be mad. I don’t know how much Emma Roberts was paid but considering her level of stardom it was undoubtedly too much for how little she’s in it. Adam Scott is fun, but again, isn’t in it enough to really be memorable. So, no issues with casting there.

Dakota Johnson is fucking terrible though.