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Movie Reviews

Haunted Maze (2017) – Review

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I won’t waste your time with the obvious. This movie is bad. The acting, the production, and the lack of story is all sloppily put together and falsely marketed as a movie. Don’t watch this movie, even if you like making fun of terrible movies, there is nothing here for you. Most of the time if you can’t hear what is going on, you can’t see. I found this movie accidentally thinking it was something else and I hate myself terribly for having to watched it.

Now I will dig a little deeper into why Haunted Maze doesn’t work. The protagonist, if you can call them that, are unlikable and have no presence in the movie. You are quickly introduced to the protagonist who’s only defining characteristic is that they are teens. At least, they are what the director thinks teens are. It is a really poor depiction and it doesn’t help that they all have the acting ability of cardboard. If you get passed the poor acting and terrible dialogue, they are all assholes. None of the protagonist are likable and I instantly wished for the killer to do the great service of erasing them from this movie. Horror movies need a least one good character. A relatable essence that people want to see succeed and survive. Here, you get a brief introduction to a group of friends who really shouldn’t be friends and I would argue that their toxic relationship is more dangerous than the killer clown.

Now the biggest issue with the movie is the villain of the film. It is clear early on that this was a film that started with a concept and a movie was made around it. Worse yet, it seems that the film is a collection of unrelated ideas put together without any clear goal or story in mind. There are too many plots in this movie and none of them are resolved. This also means that this movie doesn’t have a solid flow as it will jump from scene to scene hoping for connections that aren’t there. Worse yet, the plot points this movie feigns to have seem to be quirks that come across lame.

The biggest quirk in this movie is the villain. It is clear of the bat that the actor who plays the killer clown is trying his hardest. He easily delivers the best performance out of the whole cast by far. It is not good enough to merit the watch, but I will give him that credit. That said, this is the worst killer clown you can have chasing you. He fucking talks in rhyme. Why does he talk in rhyme? That is never addressed. In fact, none of his character is explained. There is no rhyme or reason why he has to be a clown when nothing in his past suggest this as a logical personality. He is a killer just because and that instantly makes him such a flat villain. A good villain needs to have a motive, goal, personality outside of just a quirk. There needs to be a reason for him to act the way he acts and him being a killer clown because it is a horror movie frankly isn’t enough. You get tired of this clown so quickly because he talks so much but never once explains why he is hunting teens.

Some might argue that the traumatic experience from his past is reason enough to create believable motive as well as form his personal identity, but this movie brushes past this explanation so quickly and makes such a wild leap to killer clown that it doesn’t work. Had they done like in the first Halloween movie and shown a traumatic childhood, events and actions that suggest that he was leading down the killer clown path, or even made his father a killer clown it would have given the clown a little more depth. I don’t use names because honestly, it is so generic of a concept it doesn’t matter. With out this basic level of character development, there is no reason to care about the villain. With out any motive, any depth, the villain isn’t memorable. Think about all your favorite villains. Even those in slashers extend more than just a quirk and blood-thirst. You work because you understand the motive, they have weight and feel real because they have flaws and goals.

This is too much thought and analysis for a movie that was done with way too little thought. Honestly, you won’t get passed the first five minutes because of how badly everything is done. I did it so you don’t have to. Skip it like your life depended on it!

 

Movie Reviews

Xane: The Vampire God

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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

Castle in the Ground (2019) Review

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This journey of addiction is one that should not be overlooked. The movie begins with introducing Henry, the main character, who takes care of his sick and dying mother. It seems that his life now revolves around the care of his mother as he often will skip out on social events to be by her side. I would argue that this is his own addiction as it seems that he chooses to let his care take priority over everything else.

It is in this introduction that you learn about his mother’s own addiction to substances as she starts to ask for more and more medication. You are also introduced to Ana, who moves in across the hall to disrupt the routine that he has established with his mother. Ana is new, exciting, different and it provides him a nice change of pace. It is only after his mother’s death that Henry’s relationship with Ana starts to develop. And through this friendship, so does his fall into addiction.

This movie does a great job depicting the loneliness of addiction. I would argue that Ana and Henry aren’t really friends but more using buddies. The same would go for Ana and the people who come by because although they hangout, the only tangible connection they hold is the pills they use to get high. Ana goes even as far as to guilt the people around her in order to receive her next score. Addiction is an incredibly selfish and lonely disease. Once Henry becomes an addict, he stops praying and begins to isolate from anyone from his sober life. Once deep into his addiction, the only people who are in his life are those who have gotten him into trouble. It seems he also becomes addicted to this life because despite having chances to live a normal life, the addiction won’t let him.

Instead, like the other addicts in the movie, he is forever chasing the last high before he can get his shit together. When they finally hit bottom, most addicts do, you can feel the desperation, loneliness, selfishness, and pain of being too deep into an addiction. They no longer care about real problems, nor the consequences of their actions as long as they can get high just one more time.

This decent into the madness that addiction is definitely worth the watch. It is a little slow, but I thought the pace was perfect. It is a good movie adaptation of addiction and how easily someone can fall into it.

Movie Reviews

Vivarium (2019) Review

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Vivarium is an incredibly underwhelming movie with a decent cast and an ok story. The movie is about a young couple whose house search lands them to a neighborhood they can never escape. It is here that they are given a child to raise. Being trapped slowly begins to take a toll on the couple’s relationship and, well nothing really happens.

After they are settled in the house and are given a child to care, they sort of fall into the motions rather quickly. Each person has a task they must complete for whatever reason, and it incredibly boring to watch. Each day starts with dealing with breakfast, but each time they change the scene ever so slightly to show that the situation is taking its toll on their relationship. The problem is, it doesn’t matter. It is so boring that you stop caring about watching people doing chores. I wish they did a better job at creating more tension and hopelessness. It doesn’t feel like that they are trapped here, instead it just feels like you are watching a couple take care of a kid when they don’t want to take care of the kid. Yeah they get upset with each other and they become unexplainably obsessed with whatever task the aliens programmed them to do, but this doesn’t create the tension nor does it create the creepy tone this movie needed to be successful.

The biggest issue with the movie is that the plot doesn’t make sense.  There is no reason for them to be there, there is nothing to explain why they are there. Nothing to explain what the aliens are doing. It seems that they had a concept for a movie, but it was never fully fleshed out to create cohesive story. They get to the neighborhood and start doing chores and dying because reasons. They add a lot of scenes for the sake of adding a creepy seen, but they add nothing to the film. They go as far as heavily suggesting that aliens are behind the whole plot, but they never do anything with them. It is incredibly difficult to talk about this movie because of how shallow of a plot it has. Clearly most of the budget was used to create this weird suburban prison because so much time is spent showing how creepy this world is, but so little time is spent on the actual plot of the movie.

The worst part of the film is the foreshadowing. In the first five minutes, the movie goes out of it’s way to summarize the rest of the movie. A cuckoo takes over a nest and now this new mama bird is tricked into raising the parasite. Oh and Jessie Eisenberg buries the babies for whatever reason. There is no reason to watch it passed this point because the rest the movie is a more drawn out and boring version of this scene.

I wanted to like this movie. I have seen some cool culty creepy movies about suburbia that have always been my favorite but was instead incredibly disappointed. I wish they did more with the aliens. I wish it wasn’t so drawn it out and they actually acted like natural humans who were trapped rather than robots programmed to take care of this alien kid. I wish they had spent a little more time explaining how anything in this world worked so I can understand the severity of their situation. Instead you get chores the movie and I don’t recommend this to my worst enemy. Skip it.

 

Movie Reviews

Blue Story (2019) Review

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Blue story is a movie about two friends who are torn apart by gang violence in England. The movie starts off with a Rapman’s rap narration of the negative effects of gang violence. You are introduced to Timmy, the protagonist. Timmy has to go to school in a different postal code, where he forges a deep bond with Marco and others. Although life seems to be perfect for the protagonist, gang life seems to creep in its ugly head to disrupt everyone’s life. Now, because of where each friend lives, they become enemies.

This movie takes on a serious topic, but does a poor job presenting it. This is a shame because the film goes out of its way to deliver an overbearing anti-gang message which I feel is incredibly ineffective. There are bits of dialogue where they awkwardly deliver this message. Even the lyrics are blatant in this effort. This type of hand holding is insulting because it suggests a distrust in the audience to make their own conclusions that gang violence is bad. I wish that instead of constantly telling me that gang violence is bad, they would spend the time showing me how it is bad.

My biggest issue with this movie is the overbearing narrator. This movie feels more like a Rapman music video with bits of plot added as filler. Rapman is always present and ruins a lot of tension in the movie. Now, I have always had an issue with narration in movies because it feels rather lazy. Why can they not just show me? In this movie, Rapman is constantly there, telling you things you already know in a way that doesn’t really fit the tone of the movie. Had they leaned into the idea and made into a rap opera; his presence might feel a little less overbearing. The movie doesn’t even establish what type of impact rap has to do with gang violence save for a small quick mention about getting views on Youtube. Because if feels so alien, there is no real tension in the movie and even when serious events unfold, you can’t take them serious because of Rapman.

If you take out all the redundancies and the narration, this movie wouldn’t fill an hour. A movie that spends so much time telling you how big of a problem gang violence is doesn’t have enough of a story to fill an hour and that is incredibly telling of the quality of movie this is. I wish that instead of using this cheap gimmick spent more time creating deeper characters and showing the negative effects of gang violence on the character’s lives. Instead, you won’t care about any of this movie.  None of the characters stand out in particular and none of the scenes are as charged as you would expect a movie like this should be. I would even argue that it is incredibly comical in how it portrays gang life. It’s a shame because you can tell that the actors in this movie try incredibly hard for a movie that, frankly, doesn’t deserve their effort.

It’s not a horrible movie by any means, it just isn’t effective in what it seeks out to do. There isn’t any real reason to seek this movie because there are a lot of movies out there that do this better.

 

Movie Reviews

Little Red Necro (2019) Review

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This wild ride of a movie leaves more questions than answers as it tries to take on a bit too much with its little budget. It is difficult to put this review into words because I am still unsure as to what I have just experienced. But I will try to explain it as I understood it and pick apart its flaws from there.

The movie takes place in a war-torn London. A war against an evil cult of Italian monsters in an undisclosed amount of time in the future. The story centers around the mysterious disappearance of the main character, a mother dealing with the loss of her family and a mysterious presence that is haunting her. There is also a superhuman killer on the loose.

This movie lacks focus. With its small amount of space and resources, it attempts and fails to create a large world. This movie has too many plots. As a result, a lot of them are left unresolved and are distractedly pointless. The war plot adds doesn’t affect the story and could have been left out honestly. There is also a plot about a cult that is confusing as all hell because it is never clear what their alignment is. Are they evil or the heroes of the story? There is also a infidelity plot that seems to be added to provide some drama. Unfortunately, this weaved around the killer’s rampage is incredibly distracting. As a result, there is no real tension as you jump from scene to scene. You will constantly be working hard to peace together the fragments of plot given to you through lazy exposition that seems to be added to connect all the gore.

It seems the movie started with a costume design, or a group of them. A plot was then written around these designs. This hurts the movie because these designs make little sense and don’t look good. The movie jumps from monstrosity to monstrosity trying to create this world full of monsters, but none of them are memorable. None of them look unique, and instead look like cheap copies of each other. Some are incredibly gross for the sake of being gross and their presence doesn’t feel important to the film. They add very little as they are destroyed by the main monster of the film.

Unfortunately, the narrative doesn’t read coherently, but rather like introductions of multiple stories en medias res. You will jump from a barely audible and unenthusiastic conversation with the main character and her friend to a gruesome murder. It feels as if the plot is left secondary in this movie as you can tell most of the effort goes into the murders because of how muted they are in comparison. Scenes with the main character are hard to understand because she sounds so far away, I didn’t understand who she was or why she was there except for the random bits and pieces that were written. In contrast, murders are loud and accompanied by gallons of blood.

Everything about this movie is over the top and cheesy. Body parts explode, the smallest cuts release the flood gates, and the acting doesn’t help much either. It is hard to take this movie serious, and as a result, all the big reveals are muted. This movie is rich with big reveals as they try to connect the plots together, but they do so poorly. I wish they had instead focused on one idea and one plot point and worked on developing the big plot a little more. It could have helped with the tension if instead of boring conversations of infidelity, they focused on creating the lore for the main monster of the movie.

The biggest issue with he movie is the main monster. They do a poor job creating this monster’s lore. You do get snippets of exposition relating to his lore, but they are incredibly cryptic. You do not see much of the monster in throughout the movie. Instead he is an unstoppable mysterious force and it makes the movie kind of boring. Without too much explanation, his intentions seem to be tied to the narrator’s diary. This kills the tension in the movie as every kill is explained by some girl’s edgy journal entries. You learn early on that he is unstoppable as he kills people easily. Even villains set up as somewhat competent are destroyed comically with a single punch. This makes the movie a bit boring as there are no stakes or any semblance of tension. If nothing hurts the beast, why should I care about the bad ass looking villain he is about to face off against?

I can’t tell you the importance of the film’s name, that is never addressed. I also can’t recommend this mess of a movie because even though there is a lot happening, it has no substance. It does a poor job at explaining anything so by the end of it, you will be trying and failing to understand what the fuck you just sat through. It honestly feels like someone made a bunch of monster costumes and pieced them together with poorly written dialogue. If you like incredibly cheesy horror flicks akin to things like Thankskilling, you might get a good laugh at the goofy monsters and over the top special effects. Other than that, there is no reason to watch this wild ride of a movie. You aren’t missing anything important.

Movie Reviews

Awoken (2019) – Review

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This movie does the viewer a great service by informing the viewer the type of movie experience it will take him on in the first 5 minutes; it’s going to be a generic, slow, painful journey of a movie. Hopefully you didn’t pay for it or seek it out as a brief and cheap thrill to your otherwise boring day because there are better way’s to spend your time. This film hits every generic cliché before the movie even begins to gain any kind of traction as a form of entertainment.

Awoken starts, as these movies often do, in the past. A cheap and predictable jump scare later, it cuts to a bored main character in class. I don’t know why the main characters in these movies seem to know in a class that is extremely relevant to the plot, but here we are, in an incredibly foreshadowing lecture that kind of spoils the movie. Not that you should stick around for the rest of it anyways. It is also here that you learn, through lazy exposition, that the main character is orphaned by some mysterious event that will constantly be alluded till its lazy reveal. And of course her obsession to cure her brother’s insomnia is the driving force to the plot of the movie.

A bit hole in this movie is that everything about this girls life is written to make the plot work. Were she not a sleep scientist, having her life directly effected by the villain of the movie, or even been a sleep major, this movie could never happen. Were she a poetry major, for example, her brother would never be put in the hands of the demon. She wouldn’t even know which demon to research as even this seems to be handed to her as a way to move the plot forward. I understand that there is no such thing as a sleep major and I am leaving a lot of details extremely vague, but I want to break down the movie to its basic elements to show how incredibly generic and forced this plot is.

This movie clearly didn’t have enough plot to the movie. It seems to lazily movie from one moment of gore to the next to achieve shock. You see someone hang themselves because reasons and then it quickly tries to move to the next scene. There clearly wasn’t enough plot in this movie because when you aren’t watching gore, you get to watch the main character work on a failed relationship that existed off screen. If that doesn’t sound exciting to you, that is because it isn’t. There are so many failed attempts at creating character depth in this movie, but all the characters are forgettable. This is mostly because they try to create this depth through exposition dumps. The best part of the film is a weirdly placed Settlers of Catan reference, but that isn’t reason enough to watch this movie.

This movie is without any real substance. There are so many holes in this movie that it doesn’t make sense. The parts that do make sense are done lazily and are rather boring. If you are a horror movie buff, you can find this concept done better elsewhere. This movie is so incredibly predictable that it becomes a chore to watch. Don’t pay for this movie, we can’t keep supporting these generic cash grabs for the sake of a movie date. We need content, narrative, and depth and this movie offers none of that.

Movie Reviews

Aladdin (2019) – Review

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The recent trend of rebooting past series a modernizing them leaves me a bit uneasy. On one hand, it is nice to see a new generation experiencing media that was formative for my cultural identity, but on the other hand it is easy for greed to make such unique ideas come out incredibly generic. I also understand that it is easy for nostalgia to create an unfair bias against a movie that would otherwise be considered good. I will not be comparing the movie to the original but instead be focusing on its own merits. Because of this I will not go into too much plot summary since most people should at least be somewhat familiar with the plot of the movie.

The movie starts off as a framed narrative that sets the tone for the rest of the movie. The narrator of the story is Will Smith, and if you haven’t figured it out, this is a Will Smith movie. Now I am not saying that Smith is a bad actor, he is not, I am saying that his overbearing presence seems hurts the movie because most of everything else doesn’t fit the tone. My biggest issue with the recent reboots is the star studded cast. Seems like most of these movie’s cast people not because they fit the roll, but because it will give the movie more name recognition. Unfortunately, this movie is hurt by it’s star.

Will Smith as Genie isn’t a bad choice by any means. Some of his delivery is solid and his singing is good enough to be in the movie, but they make his presence suffocating. They are really trying to get the most out of Smith for what they paid for. Because of this, there is an uninteresting love plot between Genie and the handmaiden that only comes to light because the plot demands it. Some of the songs are modernized so that Smith can have a solo and while sometimes it is ok, they ruin it by adding rap to it. I know Smith had a career as a rapper and I have nothing against rap music, I like it, but it is a problem when an otherwise great song has its rhythm halted because they want to reach the teens in the audience. I can honestly say that this movie is all about Genie and less about the forbidden love story that they keep cutting back as it is remembered. While he isn’t the worst choice for the Genie, I would have liked it better if the focus was on the story instead of Genie shenanigans.

Because of his overreaching presence, the main characters feel like supporting characters. Any of the character development, as little as there is, is kind of briefly mention and that really hurts this movie. This is a movie that is meant to be about breaking out of traditional roles and labels and becoming the truest self. These big moments are rushed because they spend so much time on unnecessary filler. When Jazmin finally fights back and when Aladdin finally accepts who he is, it doesn’t feel as big because there was little in this movie to show them working for that. Sure the musicals numbers suggest that the plot is moving in that direction, but this is the equivalent to an exposition dump. It really does hurt the narrative when the journey to character growth is summarized in song instead of having meaningful scenes that show the growth. I would have rather they removed some of the Genie scenes and Genie’s love interest and replaced it instead with scenes with the actual main characters.

The movie feels incredibly stiff because most of it is shot on green screen. I am not a huge fan of CGI because some of it looks ugly, and this movie has some ugly scenes and that was a huge distraction for me. Some scenes lose their effect as a result. For example, the carpet ride looks cheap and the actors look incredibly uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel magical nor does it feel like they are making any sort of real connection. It is feels like two people standing in front of a camera, swaying occasionally for effect.

In closing, this movie isn’t anything remarkable. It is put together like a bunch of Genie sketches with only the thinnest amount of plot to move you to the next Genie scene. If you have kids, this isn’t the worst movie you will have to sit through. It is honestly one of the best if not the best Disney live action ones I have seen so far. It’s fun enough to watch, but it probably won’t be remembered.

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

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.