Reviews

Incredibly silly. This collection of goofballs descend to 30,000 feet (or something) and discover an HP Lovecraft-style monster that waves at them, which one supposes is supposed to be menacing, and emits some painful noise, and then... well it's kind of hard to tell. The whole thing is supposed to be horror/sci-fi but it's closer to... I don't know... roommates in a dorm fighting. True to form, there is a trick ending which I won't go into it but you will definitely not be surprised by it. There's no real explanation for how they get to that trick ending, do they just throw it in there because, well, movies like this are supposed to have trick endings. Tip: watch it on your computer and use the right arrow to skip ahead.

This is a standard brand B horror movie. It's really not much worse than most of the other standard brand be horror movies, but it seems to generate a lot of hatred on this site. Yes, the acting is amateurish for the most part, they lay on the blood and gore really heavy, the Maniacs sidekick is hilariously overdone, although she is rather sexy, and the special effects are cheesy. Probably, the biggest ham of them all is the guy who plays the mayor. Outlandishly overdone, or maybe a tribute to the mayor of the original Jaws movie. Anyway, if you're watching it for free on some streaming Channel with ads you can appreciate the unintentionally comic aspects of it as well as the intentionally dramatic ones. And you'll figure out the gag long before the characters in the movie do.

Some reviewers are trying their best to be kind to this film, but it's undeserved. The script is so format, so trite, that it's embarrassing. And the lines are delivered in the most standard way, as if the actors learned by watching awful movies. So much of the emotional delivery is unwarranted, or at least doesn't flow naturally as if real people were talking. It's stilted. It's unreal. It's hamming it up like crazy. My sense is that good acting really couldn't help this script but better actors could have tried. It's frustrating because the script could have been doctored and the actors could have worked harder (or casting might have gotten better ones) because the sets, cinematography, and even the story was not so terrible--it was the execution.

Sophie Kargman has written/directed a little masterpiece. The editing, music, sound effects, and the occasional very long take, keep you riveted to the movie. Kiersey Clemons plays the true crime podcaster with tremendous care, she's doing some very odd things very matter-of-fact-ly, very calmly. The twists and turns make it impossible to say much about the plot - indeed, you'll have the most fun watching if you know nothing about it. I found myself wondering a few times, now that I know that, where are we going? Oh...there! The arcs and the lively editing, music, and sound effects kept me glued to the screen, saying what? At times, and laughing a few times.

This film generates a lot of hate but it's not so bad. It is teribly format and there are so many ananswered qudestions and loose ends but ... it's a made-for-tv movie that has to rein in the blood and gore and doesn't care about things making sense, For example, Susan does say something about her stepfather (not much) but because of the very limited backstory we don't really get why the film called The Stepdaughter. The way she answers questions it's as if she's trying to get caught in lies. But... Andrea Roth is extremly dishy and it's nice to see her runnning around and the ranch setting is really beautiful, so it's not too bad a ride at all.

I really enjoyed the first few episodes, weird prison town surrounded by shapeshifting monsters every night. Cool. But as I progressed through the 10 episodes I kept waiting for some explanations, some clues to what was going on... and nothing. Just more weird, unexplained things popping up, one after the other. I got through season one and the auto play went to Season 2 episode 1 and I said no thanks. I'm not going onto season two unless I read a review with a headline like, "Finally! ___ explained." Or, "Now it all makes sense," which would be nearly impossible considering all the plot elements they threw in this mix.

Amateurish in it's script, acting, and sound design. The story is stale, even with some attempts at a twist or two. Australia produces some quite good cinema, but this is not one of them. Hokey, slow, dull.

Post apocalyptic world with cannibals. Pretty standard stuff, but watchable. It's slow going, though.

This looks like an attempt at farce and absurdist comedy but is too confused and doesn't make sense, even in its own world. One moment it's trying to be Oscar Wilde and the next, Rocky Horror but for all the overacting and deliberately stilted language if fails. What it does have is engaging visual appeal; the costumes and sets are stunning, as is the lead, Alice Eve.

Part confusion, part stupid, part silly, part dumb...put it all together and you've got 85 minutes of "how did this get made?" and "did they write a script or just make it up on the fly?" On the plus side, there's the beautifully striking Jenny Boyd and the equally beautiful Cambodian setting. Otherwise, it's a kind of salad of horror tropes in a mix that doesn't add up to a coherent plot.

This seems like a it's going to be a good film, Sophie Turner is terrific as the delicious young thing and Dylan McDermott does a fine loner-with-a-past. The setting of the motel is sufficiently interesting, the kind of goofy neighbors are perfectly played... but it goes nowhere for 114 minutes. Things happen that add up to nothing, and then something happens which takes about nine minutes to unfold and it's good-- it just took so long to get there! If you want to drink in the scenery, have fun. Or, go 10 minutes in and skip to 104 minutes and save some time.

Has the feel that they made this up as they went along, saying whatever came to mind, staging what they felt like doing, and care not a whit about whether it made sense. If you like making your own meaning out of this abstract mess, have at it!

The notes say it was shot in five days or something but it really looks more like they shot it in two. "Found footage" is always a difficult gag and this one is not convincing at all. Add to that a warmed over cult thing done so well in the 1970s "Wicker Man" that it makes you wonder why they bothered. No fault of the cast, who make the most of a lot of slowly walking around and silly cult tropes of hippie witch rituals. I don't want to include a spoiler so I will just say the actions earlier in the film make little sense when you get to the end.

If you're a fan of the cheesy holiday horror movie this is the ideal example. It's got it all: some good acting, a lot of amateurish acting, subdued gore (mostly in close up so as not to be too gross), puns, comic moments, a low budget, silly premise, cannibalism, knives, cleavers, guns, vans, and a spunky heroine. Thoroughly enjoyable, again: for the connoisseur of this genre.

This is enjoyable to watch because it turns the home invasion on its head. I can't say much without spoiling it, so I won't but suffice to say it's not what you expect and it does it really well.

A lot of walking around to suspenseful sound. This is not a spoiler, but the woman running for the car is coming from the wrong direction. Stuff like that. No motivation, no reason, no sense. This is not a spoiler: who was running the 8mm camera? Who write this stupid dialog? Why? Why? Why?

From the description you might thinks this is some kind of uplifting film about getting by in hard times. It's not. It's a character study of a class of people who have pretty much given up and don't even realize it. To be fair, society has no use for them either, and they live week to week in a budget motel in Florida with no prospects for the future. It's bleak but fascinating as their lives slog along, a successful mom working in a diner, a guy who thinks things will be better in New Orleans, and the central figure, a petit-crime type and occasional hooker and her adorable, pre-criminal kid. You get the impression that the mom's childhood was much like her kid's and the cycle will repeat.

Don't expect plot - there isn't any. It's a series of vignettes that drive from point to point along their hopeless lives. It's captivating and you want to look away, but it's hard not to watch. Part of my reaction comes from the fact that this is such a true story. Early on, I was a social welfare examiner in New York and had to deal with people like these characters and this film could be a documentary. Many of my clients would say they've had it with us and move to Florida to start a new and successful life and they usually returned within a year to resume the same life as before. They were at once, maddening and heartbreaking in real life and the director and actors in this film capture that so well. You'll find yourself with a mixture of anger and empathy.

You have to be old enough to remember the McMartin pre-school trial and the ridiculous hysteria of the 1980 satanic cult frenzy to appreciate this movie. If you do, and you like witchy horror, it really works.

Make no mistake - this is a low budget film with very little, very cheesy SFX but OK presentation, some reasonably good acting, and a bit of schlock. One odd point of interest is the spiritualist is played by an accomplished deaf actor so that adds a kind of interesting spin ("I can hear the other side and they can hear me"). Also the woman who plays the mom is quite good. It feels longer than it is, a sign of pacing problems but it works well toward the end when the relaxed pacing is used during tense scenes. The effect is quite good. The twist at the end is surprising and really works.

This is a really interesting film. Parts of it follow the usual tropes of the rom-com, two people who don't like each other that much will eventually fall in love... Other parts are deeply dark, with two people on the run in a desperate attempt to get away. And the most interesting part is a subversive message about what white people might expect from black people when confronted with all manner of violent to casual racism. This movie plays genre roulette with the viewer and I cannot say more without spoilers, so go see for yourself.

This seems like a cheap knockoff of Game of Thrones (and it is) with nothing to recommend it, not even so bad its good... until... Queen Helle meets the hippies. Then it's a riot! Loved it: Monty Python meets Jackie Chan meets The A Team meets Game of Thrones.

OK, a low budget horror film shot in Bulgaria. It has some production values and mediocre acting, but that's not the worst of it. The lines sound like a table read of the first version of the script. The lines desperately need editing - they're stayed and stale and some don't even make sense in the context in which they're delivered. Such un-natural lines make it sound like it was badly translated from another language, which might actually be the case.

This movie looks beautiful, the forest is breathtaking, the actors are appealing, the plot is kind of "Deliverance" with a bit of magical realism. But the dialog and pacing are terrible. There must be 20 minutes worth of a character walking, shot from behind in medium close up. Just walking! And I suppose, thinking, but how would we know. There's a lot of characters staring at each other for a long time, saying nothing. There is some interaction and some action (warning: a couple of scenes are brutal) but there's so much non-action. Much of the dialog is stilted, it's true none of the characters are native English speakers but I found myself saying "people don't talk like that" lots of times.

The film should end a few minutes before it tries a twist ending which makes little sense. I wonder if it was an afterthought. Should have been a no-thought. Bottom line: bring a crossword puzzle, or avoid altogether.