Quick synopsis: Someone steals Nicholas Cage’s pig.
This……..this was unexpected. From that synopsis, and from knowing what else Nicholas Cage has been in this year I expected it to basically be John Wick but sillier. This is completely different. For a start it’s much more nihilistic, it doesn’t really have a happy ending, it’s just super depressing throughout. It’s also lacking in action/fight scenes. There’s a scene where he walks into a fight club and you think it’s going to be a “kick ass and take names” style action setpiece. Nope, it’s just him being punched in the face by chefs he’s criticised in the past.
It’s a good summary of this film, bleak, dark, and hits hard. It’s genuinely one of the most intimate and personal films you can hope to find this year. Nicholas Cage is actually really good in it too. He has a reputation for his performances being over the top and containing more scene-chewing than that scene in Willy Wonka where they eat the scenery. But in this, he’s incredibly subdued. He’s performing like a man who has lost everything and genuinely just wants to be left alone to wallow in his sadness.
That’s the word that sums it up: Sadness. From the colour scheme through to the story and the characters, it’s all just so sad, but in a cinematically beautiful way. The ending in particular is just someone playing an audio tape and it’s one of the most hauntingly beautiful things you will witness all year.
So yeah it’s a weird film, but one I think you’ll be glad you see.
Quick Synopsis: An interpol agent attempts to track down a jewel thief. In reality it’s much much more complicated than that.
Disposable. That is probably the best way to describe this. Don’t get me wrong, at no point while watching this will you be bored, you will be thoroughly entertained throughout, and if a sequel came out you will watch it. But will you NEED to see this film again? Probably not. It’s good at what it does, but you’ve already seen everything it does before, it brings nothing new to the table. Ryan Reynolds does his usual shtick, and gets partnered with a violent stronger person who he initially disagrees with and you wonder if they can trust each other before true friendship wins. Blah blah. I’ve seen it all before. It has the usual twist and turns and they are surprising, but again, they’re not new.
The film can’t even rely on the action scenes to carry it through. They’re too video-gamey. You know how back in the days of Tony Hawk’s games the levels used to be designed in a way to be skateable, so the fences and rails would all be placed in a way that was designed with the video game playability in mind first before realism, that’s how this feels. It’s like the world was designed in such a way for action set pieces, so there’s no sense of realism or weight to the scenes, which robs them of any tension. Although let’s face it, you’re not going to get much tension in a film starring Ryan Reynolds and The Rock anyway as you know that the studio is aiming for a franchise, so they’re going to keep both alive.
It has some good parts. It’s very funny. The story has more twists and turns than a roller coaster, and Gal Gadot is funnier than she’s ever been (outside of her Imagine video obviously).
It’s hard to feel too disappointed, but it’s also hard to feel too pleased. It’s hard to feel anything. It’s popcorn movie. Sometimes that’s all you need, sometimes that’s all you want. It’s going to be a success, but I don’t think it will be anybody’s favourite film.
Quick Synopsis: Hah, like you’re watching this for the plot
I went in with low expectations. Everything I had heard about this was negative. If I saw an article online about it it was how it was a disgrace and never should have been made. These articles were backed up by the lack of advertising I seemed to see, I don’t recall seeing a trailer at the cinema for it at all, the only pre-release marketing I saw was the car doing a display at a local shopping centre. I actually went in on my own because I didn’t want to drag anybody else to a disappointing film.
That was a mistake, I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I’ll be honest, it has a different energy from the 80s films. Those were madcap quick ones, they had the SNL energy which a lot of comedies had back then (the influence that show had on 80s American comedy movies cannot be understated). This does have an 80s energy, but a different one, it almost seems Spielberg-ian. The warmness, the sense of adventure, the incredibly likeable characters, it’s all wonderful and very lovely.
I wish Paul Rudd was in it more, considering how he was heavily mentioned in the pre-release things I did see, it’s disappointing how small a part he plays in it, especially since his character has such obvious chemistry with some of the other cast members. His chemistry with Callie (played by Carrie Coon) is the main focus when it comes to his character, but he has a really interesting dynamic with Phoebe too. Of all the characters in this, his definitely seems the most underdeveloped and wasted.
I kind of expected that if there was going to be comedy, it was going to come from him. Nope, most of it comes from two other characters. Podcast, played by newcomer Logan Kim is an unexpected highlight. Really this film belongs to one person and one person only. A character who I watched and thought “wow, this is a REALLY good performance, that character could be an insufferable know-it-all but whoever is playing them is doing a really good job of making them likeable”. Then I saw the closing credits and figured out why, it’s Mckenna Grace. I genuinely believe she’s the most talented young performer in the world at the moment. She’s normally relegated to “Young version of the main character” in films like I Tonya, Captain Marvel, and Scoob. But when she is given the chance to lead a film she is incredible. The best example of this is Gifted, where she manages to outshine Chris Evans. Important note: she filmed that when she was NINE YEARS OLD. If she picks the right projects I genuinely believe she could end up being the most acclaimed performer of this generation. She completely nails every part of her performance here and delivers some of the biggest laughs, and some of the weirdest jokes I’ve seen. They’re deliberately bad but also still kind of funny, but definitely weird. There’s one in particular which stood out because I’m still not entirely sure if I dreamt it or not:
“How is a hamster like a cigarette? They’re both harmless until you put them in your mouth and set them on fire.”
There’s also a delightful moment where she makes a geometry pun (which did just remind me of this and this tbh) and then when asked if it was intentional says “yes, that’s why I winked”. It’s delightfully awkward and cute and I loved it.
Now onto what I didn’t love. Theoretically, you could go into this having not watched the originals. It does a really good job of catching you up on the universe and the events of the first two films (the 2016 version goes curiously ignored). The story itself does a good enough job of that. But there are some directorial choices that won’t work for newcomers and are just kind of embarrassing to long-time fans. There are too many REALLY unsubtle references. One that stood out was when the camera focuses on a twinkie for a good five seconds or so. It being in the car was enough of a reference, the camera focusing on it for that long is just embarrassing and is basically the director saying “Hey, I’ve seen the original!”. Like, we hope so considering your dad made it.
The directing is the weakest part, it has the right amount of heart needed, but it’s lacking a sense of playfulness and fun that I feel would help it. It’s in an awkward stage where it’s not directed in a playful enough manner for the comedy, but also isn’t dark enough for the horror elements. He nails the emotion though, especially at the end. I didn’t expect to hear tears in the cinema during a Ghostbusters movie, but there we are. Also, stay around for the two credits scenes. Very fun.
Quick Synopsis: Annie Clark (a.k.a St. Vincent) is having a documentary made about her by her friend Carrie (best known from Sleater-Kinney) and is asked to disappear into her alter-ego to make the film more interesting in this mockumentary/concert film.
This was an interesting idea. I like mockumentaries, and like them even more if they’re not comedies. If they go dark, even better. Also, I love the music of St. Vincent so this should be ideal for me.
A strange film that makes no sense, but in a way the fact it makes no sense makes perfect sense. I was all ready to talk about how it should have been less creepy at the start. About how it should have fooled you into thinking it was just a standard documentary about St. Vincent before hitting you with the weirdness. That would make sense from a film-making perspective to lure people in. But then I thought about it, they allude to the fact that this has been edited and made from what they captured for the documentary, and if the events actually happened to this character and they wanted to tell people about it, they would lead with the weirdness wouldn’t they? Plus, by the end, Annie Clark has morphed into her alter-ego of St. Vincent so she would see no problem with exposing the weirdness of herself.
For the first half of this film, I was fully on board with what they were doing. I was interested and wanted to see what happened. But then it got a bit “too” weird and it became more about the weirdness than the narrative. Now I like weird, but what I will always love is a good story, well told. And this film is so focused on becoming a weird experience that it is lacking the storytelling aspect of it in the second half where it just becomes almost like a student art film.
It started to lose me when the St. Vincent character started to take over. The personality shift is a bit too jarring. She goes from 1-100 way too quickly when it should have been gradual. One minute she’s giving free tickets to someone because she is too awkward to say no, and the next she’s making a sex tape with Dakota Johnson. The aforementioned scene with the free tickets is delightfully awkward though, the interviewer getting her to apologise to her girlfriend for her. It’s delightfully awkward and helps tell you a lot about the character.
Might be a weird thing to state about a mockumentary, but it feels like it lacks truth. It’s like they wanted to delve deep, perform an emotional autopsy, but then shied away at the last second. Like there are times where it feels like the film is just a way for the actors to really discover who they are as people and do an emotional deep dive on themselves, really exploring their personalities. But when it comes close to really exploring who they are, it decides not to.
On the plus side, the performances are perfect throughout to the point where there are times you forget you’re not actually watching a documentary. The characters aren’t quite perfect though. Both characters feel incredibly selfish and stupid in how they react to each other. There are two scenes that follow each other, one is where Annie is hosting an obviously fake scene for the documentary. Carrie then derides that for being too fake, and then takes her to go see her father in prison “so I can get real emotion from you”. Just makes them seem incredibly self-involved and selfish.
If you are a massive fan of the artist you may get more out of this, but if you’re going in not knowing too much then it might feel lacking. You probably will love the music though.
Is it possible I’m wrong? I mean, it happens often but usually in a different way than it is for this. Normally with horror films I end up bored and disliking it, but everybody else loves it. This is the opposite, I watched it the first chance I got, and I was amazed throughout. I was watching it and just kept being amazed at what I saw, I loved the plot, the deaths, the universe. I loved the continuation of the story, especially how it felt more like a part 2 than a sequel.
And then I went online and saw all the negative responses to it. A lot of people dislike it. I feel this is another Psycho 2 situation. I prefer that film more than the original because it did something different with the typical formula. It felt like a natural progression of the story and characters, it felt like a real examination into “what happens with this character after that event?”. This felt very similar. It’s an examination into, not so much how characters react to the situation, but how society and a town reacts. It feels more like a psychological study than the first one does (well, technically the second one, but you know what I mean). As much as I do love Halloween (2018), it doesn’t really do much new. This does, with this you feel the horror isn’t just the people on camera at any time, you feel that the horror is going through the whole town. The whole thing feels like a natural progression that leaves me very excited for the next stage.
The main cast is mostly the same, there are a few new additions. I’m not sure whether they were in previous ones or not (the only ones I’ve seen are the two called Halloween), I think one of them is the character who was played by Paul Rudd in one of the earlier ones. In this one he’s played by Anthony Michael Hall, best known from his appearances in many John Hughes movies back in the day. He is weirdly terrifying in this. His heart is in the right place, but from the moment you see the look in his eyes when he says “Evil dies tonight” you know some awful shit is going to happen. That’s what this film does well, it creates a sense of tension that the whole thing feels like a powder keg, and you can see multiple potential sparks that can set it off. You’re never quite sure when it’s going to happen, but you know that when it does it’s going to be big, and it’s going to be awful, and it is.
It does have an issue with “awkward middle film” syndrome. Because you know there’s a third film happening there are certain things which lack tension. You know certain characters will survive because they have to be in the third film. It does pull off an insane third act though, featuring some absolutely BRUTAL kills. That’s to be expected though if you just look at the bodycount. Michaels kills A LOT in this film, and some are more horrific than others. There’s one in particular which says a lot about who Michael is in this film. Sometimes in these films he’s been known for his efficiency, he goes in, kills, leaves. In this there are moments which are basically cold-blooded torture. He’s not killing to achieve anything, he’s killing just to kill. There’s one in particular which is just harrowing to watch, he stabs a woman with a light fixture then, whilst she’s still alive, he grabs her husband and stabs him to death multiple times as she watches. It’s vicious, it’s horrible, it’s……evil.
That’s what Michael is in this film, pure evil. He’s not someone you can root for (which happens a lot with long-running franchises), he’s just pure evil. There are times when the townsfolk aren’t much better, the moment they chase a random person to his death is particularly bad.
So yeah, that’s it. Everybody else hates this film, but I like it. So who are you going to trust, people who do this for a living and know what they are talking about and are familiar with the entire history of the franchise, or me? The answer is simple
Quick Synopsis: A captured bank robber (Nicholas Cage) is tasked with retrieving a Governer’s adopted granddaughter/sex slave in this Japanese-inspired western horror. At one point his testicles get exploded.
Is Nicholas Cage picking films based almost entirely on how fucking strange they are lately? I mean, I’m all for it if it produces stuff like Willy’s Wonderland. That was fun and strange and a one of a kind movie. This was, I dunno. I should like this film, it’s an interesting mesh of genres (western and horror/sci-fi), both of which lend themselves to going weird and out-there. But I just didn’t mesh with this for some reason. I think it’s because when I was watching it all I could think was “I would much rather be playing this and experiencing it that way”. When you do a mash-up of genres like this does you need to do it in a way that highlights certain things from both genres which best suit the story you’re telling. The story should be driving the genres, but this feels like it was done the opposite way. It feels like they got the genres, made them into cars, drove them into each other and then made a script based on the result. The film itself is too surface level, there’s nothing underneath the obvious what you see. No meaning, no deep beauty to it. It feels so in debt to its stylistic forefathers that it doesn’t seem to have an identity of its own. Outside of “modern Japanese western” it’s incredibly flat and one dimensional. Visually it’s not that exciting either. I mean, it’s got a lot of colours, but they just don’t POP. If you look at a film like Blade Runner and how they use colour it’s a visual delight. In comparison this just looks like a Lite Brite a few minutes before the batteries die.
I really don’t have a lot to say about this, because there is nothing to say. I won’t remember this film for too long after I saw it. Maybe this is partly because I watched it at the “wrong” time. I feel this is supposed to be watched with friends while drunk, cheering and hollering at the screen. I watched it on my own in the middle of the day. But I watched Come True in a similar situation and that pulled me in.
The issue is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with this film (although Bill Mosely’s performance seems kind of wrong, he never feels like a character who is in control of the situation, he always looks too nervous and jumpy), there’s just not much I could find to particularly be too invested in. It just exists. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a big mac, fine in the moment, but I would never really go out and hunt it down except if I was drunk. A film like this should not be quite as boring as this one is.
Quick synopsis: No, I’m not summing up this up. It’s too stupid, watch the trailer.
I’ll start off with the obvious. This is not a good movie, for most of it it’s not even watchable. Fundamentally it suffers the same flaw as the first one where the general concept isn’t buyable. It’s not like Toy Story where you can imagine toys coming to life. There is no anchor of reality to ground yourself in. We know the reality of babies, everybody alive was at some point a baby, so there is no truth to the lies this film tells. This specific plot doesn’t work either. So they have to become babies again to infiltrate a school, right?
1) they need to be babies.
2) Why does it have to be them?
I’ll answer both of those questions: because we, the audience know the main characters as babies and we need to see them like it again. It only happens because this is a film, more specifically a sequel. This film establishes that Tims daughter Tina is a boss baby too. So why didn’t she do it? She wouldn’t need a special potion that turns her into a baby briefly, she already is one. She has all the connections, and she already knows what to do and what to look for etc. The film says her real mission was to bring the two brothers back together. What do they care? The brothers are initially brought together by a faked voicemail, but it’s so obviously fake that it wouldn’t actually fool anybody.
Now onto the biggest issue I had with this film: it takes place a MUCH longer time after the first one than most sequels (I’d estimate about 20 or 30 years after). Instead of focusing on Tim as a kid again. We are introduced to his kids. This means that the returning characters have completely different characterisation, because they’ve aged 30 years since the last time we saw them. So really we don’t know these characters. This goes for the relationships between characters too. It’s based on his relationship with his brother. But it’s completely different from the last time. Because the last time we saw these characters they first met and had a frayed relationship, then started to get on with and love each other. This takes place when they are estranged. But we never got to see them in a decent relationship really (except for like 10-20 minutes at the end of the first one). So the entire thing is based on relationships and a past which we haven’t been privy to. It’s like we’ve missed the back story we need.
There is some consistency for the characters, but it just makes the film worse. Tim is still talking to his toys and imagining them coming to life. That made sense in the first one because he was a child, and that’s what children do. But now he’s an adult, so it just comes off as kind of weird. He has kids and yet still has the mentality of one. This is what happens when you have a sequel featuring characters who are the same, but are at fundamentally different stages of their life.
It signposts the jokes way too much. There’s one in particular which you can guess about 3-4 seconds before it happens. It doesn’t try to subvert it in any way, it plays the joke completely straight. The original film was released 4 years ago, so the audience who enjoyed the first one would have matured, but this film hasn’t. It’s like it’s aimed at people who only discovered it in the last year. 4 years is a very long time in childhood. The difference between a 5 year old and a 9 year old is immense in terms of taste and likes.
Now onto the good. Jeff Goldblum is perfect in his role. Kind of. His voice is perfect for the character, and it looks perfect for him in still images, but he moves in such a jerky way (think standard annoying youtuber) that it is distracting and weird. It also does that thing almost every film does with holograms where it makes them glitchy and broken. No matter how much of a genius a character is in a film, they can never create holograms which actually work. The movement doesn’t match his voice either, he has the voice of someone who either stands still, or paces back and forth, not jump around all over the place. Also, his character is not a boss baby, just a baby who is intelligent, so why does he have an adult voice?
Other things on the plus side: the line “they’re going to send in the Baby Seals” made me laugh a lot. And there’s a musical interlude which is sweet, creative, and incredibly heartfelt. It’s everything the rest of the film should be but isn’t. It’s almost Pixar-esque. Such a shame the rest of the film doesn’t come anywhere near.
Quick synopsis: Ridley Scott directed film about the events leading up a duel between Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) after Jacques is accused of raping Sir Jean’s wife (Jodie Comer).
I had heard mixed things about this. Some people had said it’s incredibly boring and muddled, some have said it’s an incredibly powerful piece of cinema. In my opinion it’s a mixture of both. It’s an incredibly powerful piece of cinema, that’s quite boring in parts. There are moments where it goes on too long, the ending in particular probably could have been trimmed. As it is the final shots are Jean and Marguerite riding out slowly on horseback through a crowd as Jacques’ body is stripped naked and strung up. It then skips forward and we see Marguerite sitting in a garden happy with her child. We’re then told she lived happily (well as happily as a woman could in those days) for another 30 years. So did we really need to see her in the garden? It’s not even mentioned on the wikipedia page for the film, that’s how unessential it is.
There are also a few moments I feel could have been longer (which in a film that’s 2 and a half hours long, is not something I thought I’d say). There’s a moment where a character essentially punches someone to death. The film cuts away just after he stops punching. Personally I’d have left it for a little bit longer so the full weight of the moment lingers with the audience, you would get a chance to sit and be truly f*cking horrified in what you’ve just seen.
That’s most of my criticisms of this film. They’re not “this film did this badly and it should feel bad”. It’s almost all personal preferences. All the flaws are “yeah that’s not right TO ME”. There’s one moment which I think exemplifies this. The rape itself. We first are aware of it from Jean’s POV, where he comes home and is told by his wife what happened. We see nothing. We then see it from Jacques’ POV, and it’s pretty clear that he did rape her. She’s a little bit more flirty than she is when we see the reality, but not enough that a normal person could justify it. That’s because we do see it. If the film stayed at looks which could be seen as flirtatious, made it so her looks back as she ran away had a more seductive air to them, then cut away as soon as the bedroom door closed, we would have a moment of ambiguity. We would wonder if it did happen as she said it, especially if they played up the pregnancy angle and made it seem like people would know the child isn’t her husbands. It would also mean that when we did see the truth, it would horrify us more. As it is we’re sitting there mentally comparing it to when we saw it play out earlier. We’re not lost in the moment, we’re thinking “okay, last time we saw this scene she stayed still, but this time she moved quicker”. Again, personal preference, and not a direct criticism of the film.
The way they this film is shown is unique, it’s really interesting to see how different people view certain events. There are a few moments where I would have liked to have seen from different angles but are restricted to just one. Not needed, but it would have been nice to get the truth about certain events we see.
It may be set in 1386, but there are some moments which are depressingly relevant in modern times. There’s a moment where people say that it’s impossible to get pregnant from rape, that a woman has to orgasm for pregnancy to occur. An idea that is, yes, woefully outdated, but also one that American lawmakers still believed in 2012, actually let me rephrase that: one that American dickheads still believed in two-thousand and fucking twelve because they’re cunts (for those asking why I didn’t censor that, but I did censor f*cking earlier I should clarify what the house style is for swear words: whatever I feel like at that particular moment is the rule).
So in summary, I feel you probably should watch this, but there’s a high chance you’ll be bored shitless. But you should admire parts of it.
Quick synopsis: A Korean family move to an Arkansas farm. I’m really underselling it.
Confession time: I nearly deleted this off the list of films I need to watch this year. Actually there’s no “nearly” about it, I did delete it. I just felt might not be for me. Might be too “arty” and slow. Only added it last month when I thought I’d give it a shot. I was a minute in and thought “I immediately regret my decision”, the decision to delete it, I mean. The fact I denied myself something so beautiful as this for so long is not great. I can’t even explain why the opening is good. It’s literally just the family driving to a new home, no dialogue, just soft music playing. But there’s something about it that’s just so damn cosy and warm that you immediately love it.
I can’t really go into the plot, mainly because it’s not important. There was one character point that made me panic about how the film was going to end, that it was going to get really depressing and bleak as it went on. It didn’t do that. There are moments of emotional frustration, where you just want to grab the characters by the shoulders and start shaking them until they realise what they should do/say. But the character moments aren’t “well I need to do this for the story to develop”, they are believable mistakes for humans to make. This is probably because it’s a semi-autobiographical film, based on the upbringing of writer/director Lee Isaac Chung. It’s a deeply personal story and one that’s told beautifully.
It says a lot about people too. There’s a moment where the family go to church. The other adults are really friendly, and the other kids are kind of dicks (the phrases “why is your face so flat?” and “I speak koraen: jing jang ying low” are both spoken). But then it twists it almost immediately and the kids start getting on once they’re corrected, something as simple as “my face isn’t flat”. Whereas the facade the adults are putting on starts to slip and they start to feel really disingenuous and condescending. It’s incredibly smart and so well done.
It’s not perfect though. The sister character could have been fleshed out better. It feels like if you took her out then it wouldn’t effect the film at all. She’s the only character who doesn’t seem to have their own arc and agency within the film and I had to check she was actually in the film and I didn’t get this film mixed up with another one. But nope, she’s in it, just really ineffective.
It’s weirdly difficult to talk about this film because it didn’t feel like a film. You weren’t sitting there focusing on the story or the acting. You don’t so much watch this, as experience it. It reminded me very much of Nomadland. Which is good, as I loved that film. I should probably do them as a double bill at some point. They’re both really good films with similar colour schemes.
All of this was a long way of saying, watch this film.
Quick synopsis: Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren help a man suspected of murder who claims he was possessed by demons.
It would be unfair of me not to preface this with the knowledge that I am not happy with the very existence of this film. Fine, you can do schlocky horror films about demon possessions, but this is based on a real event. And not just “these people claimed their house was haunted, here’s what happened”. It’s a murder. Someone died, there are people in that town who remember that event. The victim probably still has living relatives so to trivialise the murder seems super sketchy. It’s presenting as fact the notion that the murderer was possessed by demons. I’ve had similar issues with these films in the past. They uncritically present the “yup, what this family said was definitely true” side without exploring whether they were in fact bullshitting or not. Fun fact, when someone called the Warrens out on their BS, they responded the problem with the skeptics is “they don’t base anything on God”. That’s their default position, so it’s already coming from a place of bias.
So, what about the film itself? This is technically only the third, but there has been numerous spin-offs too so it’s more like the 8th. I have seen all except the last Annabelle film, and I can barely remember anything from them except for bits and pieces from the second one (probably because I reviewed it). I remember enough to say that these films have no idea about escalation, every single case is presented as “the most deadly they have ever seen”. This has happened a lot now and I’m starting to get bored of it. There doesn’t seem to be an endgame, it’s all the same thing again and again.
This film itself? It’s not great. As I’ve said, I can’t remember too much of the previous ones, but this has been the worst of the main series by a long way. Part of it is the directing, this is the first of the main three not directed by James Wan (who was probably busy with Malignant), so it’s lacking the one thing you can normally depend on for this franchise: a slick style that glosses over a lot of the cracks the series has.
Without Wan’s directing to distract you, the flaws are more apparent. It’s just not an engaging story. It’s muddled with no clear idea of what the focus is. It’s also weirdly frustrating at parts. Shying away from things you actually want to see. The murderers lawyer points out that claiming demonic possession as a defence is a stupid idea, the Warrens tell her “come to our house for dinner and we’ll show you the evidence, we’ll prove it to you that demonic possession is real and dangerous”. It then cuts to the courtroom. So we don’t see what convinced her. What a fucking cop out.
There’s another moment which was a little odd. The film has a doctor utter the words “Yes it was a heart attack, and not a mild one I’m afraid”. Something about that line seems weird and I can’t put my finger on it. It just feels like it’s downplaying it somewhat, a really weird sentence that sounds wrong somehow.
There’s a moment where they go straight from “we need to find him, he’s in danger” to Blondie. I was going to criticise the use of Blondie as the segue as it was an incredibly bad use of it and ruined a tense line. But the director makes up for it by using it for a REALLY good jump scare, bringing the music WAY down until the character is approached and bringing it up again. Masterful and shows what the director can do. But then they use it in another scare and just slow it down, and it’s not as effective. There are some good directing ideas here, but not enough to sustain it to the end.
And lets talk about the ending. They convince the court of the possession so the guy only gets manslaughter. Everybody cheers. We then get text telling us what happened and it’s like “Yaaay this person who definitely killed someone got released after serving only 5 years, and didn’t receive any medical help.” This is supposed to be a happy ending. Knowing that a killer is now living a happy life is not a happy ending to me. Especially since the “he was possessed by demons” robs him of taking any responsibility for it.
Troubled Productions 