Tag Archives: 2020

Movie Reviews, movies

Movie Review: Love and Monsters (2020)

3 Comments
Source

Love and Monsters is a lighthearted movie about surviving the end of the world. If you haven’t seen it or are thinking about it, think no more. Go watch it! This cheesy fun movie is a delight and you can watch it on Amazon if you have a Prime membership.  

Humans are once again the catalyst for the world ending events that drive the narrative of this film. Animals have mutated because of the radiation, killing off most of the human population. The survivors now live scattered across the globe in small colonies. The movie focuses on Joel, an average guy who is incapable of taking action. Joel freezes at the sight of danger and as a result is left to cook and repair stuff for the colony he lives in. Joel is done waiting around and decides to venture out into the monster infested world to find his long lost girlfriend. Will Joel find the strength and courage to survive in a post apocalyptic California, or will the monsters make a meal of him? 

Love and Monsters is a lot of fun, especially if you are a fan of Zombieland. It shares a similar style, but not as edgy. It is light hearted and cute, but there are real dangers lurking around the landscape. I loved the monster design, and each monster encounter was thrilling despite the overall tone of the movie.  

Joel is played by a fantastic actor who brings this movie to life with his quirky nervousness. It is fun to see his character develop as he faces and overcomes adversities. He is also has some amazing chemistry with every actor he interacts with, including the dog. Joels charisma and chemistry with his costars create the tone necessary to make this movie work. With narratives like this, you need a lead with enough charisma to drive the plot and make the audience care.  

As far as stories go, its fine. You’ve seen movies like this before but it’s done well. It is a little cheesy but the cheese gives this movie its charm.  

Series Reviews

TV Series Review: The Wilds (2022)

Leave a comment
Source

The Wilds is a modern reimagining of the novel Lord of the Flies. While it isn’t a direct adaptation, the show expands on themes explored in the novel. The show focuses on a group of girls who are stranded on an island and are forced to survive its elements. The island will test the girl’s resilience as well as a lot of their resolve. Will they survive this strange new world, or will it be too much?

I liked this show more than I thought I would. The acting is great, the story is fun, and the suspense is killer. The series is structured as interviews recounting the girls’ time on the island. Each girl represents an archetype of the female identity, but each is unique enough that they are more than the personality trait they represent. It was interesting to see each girl overcome their own hurdle as they adapted to life on the island.

The show will jump between different narratives as it pieces together what happened on the island. The show constantly jumps between the present, the island, and each character’s backstory in an almost formula. You get a scene of the interview that will cut to an event on the island which will further cut to the back story. I liked this structure, but it does get a bit tedious towards the end. The back stories are fine, but it definitely feels as if they are pandering for sympathy. As a result, pacing can become an issue, but it is never unwatchable. 

The Wilds explores themes like gender roles, mental illness, personality, and ethics as it shows the complications of building a functioning society. For the most part, it is well done, but there are moments where the show reaches for explanations. The show is a bit cheesy and it leans more on the fantasy side, but it makes for a good story. I found great difficulty pulling myself away from this series because of how invested I was in the narrative. You should watch this show. Check it out on Amazon if you have a Prime membership. 

Series Reviews

TV Series Review: Utopia (2020)

5 Comments

Utopia is an appropriate pandemic thriller that I believe everyone should be watching. It has tension, suspense, action, John Cusack; what more can you ask for? I have not seen the original British version, so I don’t know how this compares. Instead, I will be basing this review only on the American version, streaming now on Amazon Prime.

Utopia is about a group of nerdy, regular people who stumble upon a huge conspiracy. Someone has weaponized diseases and is using them against people. Through a series of comics, this group of average Joe’s pieces together clues that will hopefully save humanity. I love that this show isn’t about extraordinary people destined to save the world. These protagonists are flawed. Although they are smart, they are not highly trained and, for the most part, are frightened about the whole situation. I am excited to see how this group grows as they continue to deal with adversity.

I don’t want to get into too many specifics because the mystery that shrouds this show is what makes it fun. Utopia does a great job of keeping the audience guessing. Every new clue or new bit of information adds to this fun and exciting experience. I can’t wait for season 2.

If you love tense and exciting mysteries full of action and conspiracy, check out Utopia! I am confident it has a little something for everyone. Watch it on Amazon Prime!

Movie Reviews

Xane: The Vampire God

Leave a comment

This is a terrible movie, hurt by its artistic choices and horrible acting. But I will be focusing on the failed anti-hero that is Xane.

For context, Xane travels back in time to stop himself from killing the Caine, the vampire king, and save the world. The problem is that because of time-travel, he has created a new timeline and must work harder now to save the world. Time travel creates a lot of holes in the plot that they will of course fill with poor reads of exposition. The other problem with time-travel is that it creates a hero’s journey for Xane that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because his actions in this timeline will create a paradox loop where he is always traveling back in time to stop himself in order to fix a terrible outcome he creates. I should mention that the reason he goes back in time is because he lives in a future where he has destroyed everything because he can’t die. It is based on this fact alone that I can’t call him a hero because he is only trying to erase his deeds rather than try to fix them. Instead, his journey is a little bit more selfish and self-serving rather than the righteous one the film suggests he is on.

The film does a terrible job establishing vampire lore, specifically when it comes to powers. This is bad when the story’s main plot points are these vampires. Vampires who aren’t the main three look like normal humans with dried red paint bleeding from their eyes. They are slow and have no real presence in the movie save to remind the audience that this is a vampire movie. Xane on the other hand is incredibly overpowered to the point that it makes him uninteresting. He can travel through time, has super strength, and is immortal. He is a generic, but poorly done edgy anti-hero who never faces any real consequences. If he doesn’t succeed in whatever he is trying to achieve, what is to stop him from resetting the loop at will?

Action heroes work because despite their superhuman feats, there is always a chance of getting defeated. This moment of hubris is essential in character growth because it makes the hero more relatable. But it also creates an opportunity to grow as a character as they have to overcome an adversity with something other than god given talent. In this film that is all but stripped from Xane because there is nothing really to give him adversity. That and his journey doesn’t really count because of time travel. Even in movies where the hero seems to incredibly superhuman, like John Wick, you get to see exhaustion take its toll, giving the story tension because there is a chance that the hero might lose.

In short, don’t make your character’s overpowered. Even Superman has kryptonite.  For a hero’s journey to be effective and hero be able to earn his title, he must have to not only work for it, but the journey has to matter. Sure, there are examples where the hero is overpowered and it works, but there was still a defining flaw that humanizes them. I would argue that there can’t be a perfect all-powerful hero because there needs to be this drama and obstacles that she has to overcome.

I put way too much thought into a movie that shouldn’t be worth this much effort, but I honestly got so bored that this is where it led me. I wouldn’t watch this movie unless you have fun making fun of bad movies. There is a lot of dumb dialogue and interesting choices that make it impossible to take this movie serious.

Movie Reviews

The Invisible Man (2020) – Review

Leave a comment

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

The Wretched (2020) – Review

1 Comment

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.