Tag Archives: 2020 movies

Movie Reviews

The Invisible Man (2020) – Review

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I am not the hugest fan of Blumhouse because they usually disappoint. Because of this, I went into this movie expecting to hate it. I am honestly surprised at the result of this, it performed far better than I thought it would.

Cecelia runs away from her abusive and controlling husband, and this film shows the aftermath of this break up. As she begins to achieve normalcy and stability in her life, she gets news that her husband is dead. It is only when she begins to believe that she is finally free Andrew, he rears his ugly head, hell bent on destroying any peace Cecelia thinks she has. Now, Cecelia must survive as she tries to convince those around her that her invisible ex is ruining her life.

The Invisible Man takes the uncomfortable topic of domestic abuse and presents it respectfully. It isn’t brushed off as exposition, nor are there aren’t any scenes of abuse to add shock value to the movie. Instead, you get most of this story from Cecilia herself. The way she acts in the beginning of the film, scared and distrusting of everything, alone is enough to sell this narrative. Elisabeth Moss delivers a brilliant performance as you can honestly disturbingly believable. She isn’t a superhero victim with bruise makeup on. You see the fatigue take her over as the movie progresses. The way she dresses, acts, and even talks are in direct reaction to the amount of stress she comes under because of Andrew. What’s more, she starts to grow from these adversities which is something cool because when the climax arises, it isn’t because of some sudden burst of dumb luck and valor like traditional slashers, but she has finally had enough and wants the harassment to stop. This is one of the few movies where everything prior to this actually matters and contribute to the Cecilia’s character growth. It is an rare concept to find actual character development in slasher films, usually it devolves to a monster chasing stereotypes of people till the final brawl.

But this movie is without it’s flaws. Some of the interactions are awkward and there are scenes in this movie that exist just to move the movie to the next plot point. The story isn’t incredibly original and some of the science and logic are thrown out the window in order to make the plot work. But these can be easily overlooked as this movie is still enjoyable.

If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend checking it out. Especially if you are a fan of thrillers. Watch this because you like scary movies. Watch this because you want the suspense to grip you till the very end. Watch this movie for Moss’ performance!

A word of caution however, the movie deals heavily with the topic of emotional and physical abuse and if that is a trigger for you, skip this movie.

Movie Reviews

Radioactive (2019) – Review

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This pretty unremarkable biopic leaves too much to be desired. This film focuses on the re-imagining of the life of the renowned Marie Curie. It follows her as she must navigate through both her personal and professional life. Unfortunately, the film takes the life of such an interesting person and makes it rather boring.

This is a film without much focus, and unfortunately it does hurt the narrative. It jumps from scene from topic to topic as if it were a college presentation on her biography. As a result, the experience becomes a dull one because the scenes little depth to any of parts of her life. Scenes will either mention adversity as a lazy exposition, like her sister mentions that they don’t like her because she is polish. Instead of showing a hatred and unfair treatment she receives, you get scenes like this where she doesn’t seem phased. A lot of what this movie tries to get across were the amounts of hurtles that she was forced to jump over because of her sex and race. These scenes should be frustrating, tense, seemingly impossible so that when she finally is able to succeed, it is satisfying. But this film isn’t able to create any of that and so when she finally does succeed, you are so bored it doesn’t matter.

The tension in this movie is incredibly lacking. I never for once feel like there is any real urgency or threat to her success. When she gets denied repeatedly and even when she is getting sick from the radon, the scenes play out a little too hopeful. This wouldn’t be a problem if the scenes were meant to be hopeful. What is worse, any scene that is able to achieve some semblance of tension are ruined with scenes of future inventions that were only possible because of her work. The movie often times will shift from serious scene, like when she is dealing with the loss of her husband, to a more hopeful scene of the future of her research. This break of tension becomes tedious and annoying as it interrupts the narrative. I do applaud them for trying something different, but this is just filler. I would have liked it better it were left as text at the end of the movie and instead these scenes were replaced with actual content.

It is a shame that this isn’t a better movie because Rosamund Pike is truly wasted in her role. Most sense in this movie don’t allow for her to show her true potential. When there is so much lazy uninspired conversation, needless sex scenes, and a lack of tension, it can be easy to dismiss her performance as Marie Curie. But this shouldn’t be the case. There is a scene that comes to mind when she is looking down at the open casket of her late husband and she breaks down, you can see the frustration and the pain of losing someone so important to her in just this short scene. Even though it was lazily established throughout the movie that she loves her husband absolutely, it is in this scene where she makes you believe it. This scene alone is why I don’t dismiss this movie completely. But it is only a small part of the movie and in the end, not really worth the watch unless you want a quick summary of her life without having to look it up on Wikipedia.

In the end, maybe watch this movie if you want some background noise while you work. It isn’t engaging or interesting enough to maintain your attention but maybe you will learn something. If that isn’t your interest, this isn’t a very good movie and you can skip it.

Movie Reviews

The Wretched (2020) – Review

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The Wretched is the generic monster movie that you probably never heard about because it is so disappointing.

The movie starts off the same as all these movies tend to, a dark and stormy night 30 years ago. Pop music thunders over a yard littered with children toys suggesting shit is about to go down. One of my biggest issues with this film is the amount of filler it has, and this is opening is shameless filler. Clearly, they didn’t have enough of a story to make a movie, so now you get pointless scenes that add little to the plot. There is no context to the monster’s motivation. The people lured and killed in this movie are not related to the present-day victims. In fact, this event is never mentioned again in the movie, suggesting it’s role as padding. It wouldn’t have been a problem if it was used as a way to introduce the monster, it’s powers, where it came from, why it was killing, how it infiltrated the house. Simple clues to help build the world and the monster instead of going for a scene you have come all too familiar with at this point.

The real story takes place in modern day in a lake town where a troubled teen, Ben, spends his day working at the local marina for his dad and spying on his neighbors. A huge part of his character is spying on people. All seems normal until one night he hears something walking on his roof. He instantly knows that there is something amiss. It is here when he makes it his life’s mission to hunt down this witch because the plot asks for it. He goes straight into witch hunter mode without having any definitive proof. The rest of the movie is bits of Ben hunting down the witch and filler.

I will say it again, this movie is mostly filler. There is a pointless forced romance, a bully plot that gets forgotten, something about mind control, and the most boring party you will ever go to. They try so hard to make Ben a real person that they forget that it is a monster movie. At the marina he works with the love interest of the movie whose only character trait is that she is smitten by Ben because of reasons. I don’t know why horror feel the need to force a relationship in these movies. I for one came to this movie expecting monsters, not lazy awkward flirting between two teens. The writing in this movie isn’t great so a lot of the dialogue is awkward, as if written by aliens so when these teens flirt, it is boring and uncomfortable. They could have taken this plot out of the movie and it wouldn’t matter, that is how little value it has on the movie.

Of course a horror movie of this genre wouldn’t be complete without a party, and this party is incredibly boring. They should have had more energetic people, or people who have actually been to a party. People stand around and play drinking games as they try to push forth to the next plot point, the bully plot everyone forgot about. I don’t know why there is a bully plot in this movie. I don’t know why they added a lot of this movie, maybe it was a way to connect with teens. This is what teens do right? Sit around, drink, and be assholes for no reason. This movie tries to do too much, and a as a result it achieves little what it does.

It is a real shame because what it does well, it does really well. The few scenes that have the witch in it are terrifying. Not because of jump scares, there are a few of those, but because of how gross it is. The sounds she makes, the vile dripping from her body, and how she moves all show the truly wasted potential of this movie. Had they focused on developing the witch, having her chase the protagonist and the other teens with her vile decomposing body, this would have been a better movie. Unfortunately, they abandon this early on and give the witch the most inconsistent rule set I have ever seen.

The issue with magic in movies is the balance that is forced on its user. Usually this is when magic works for some people and not for others. This witch has a whole lot of useless powers that only make her less threatening. She can control minds, but only of those adult men that are legal age who she has whispered to. She can take over other people’s bodies, communicate fluently in English, but only women that she has killed. And these bodies have varying time limits to them as they rot over her real body. This is where the movie loses traction because it isn’t scary to watch a human woman chase hunting children when you have seen her true more terrifying form. I wish they had made it a monster movie. It would have made more sense to have a blood thirsty monster hunting its way through the community instead of a witch who has evolved to have the most inconvenient hunting abilities you will ever see in a movie. They are successful in making the most terrifying driving force of this movie and make it boring.

This is definitely a movie you skip because it does too much wrong. It doesn’t follow up on plot points it works hard to suggest are important. What it does well is left forgotten equally forgotten. If you like making fun of bad movies, you might be able to pull some material out of this one. But if you are looking for a thrilling scary movie,  look elsewhere. Sorry this was a long one, but there was so much to say about this movie.