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Reviews
Those Who Walk Away (2022)
Tries to tie itself to LeGuin; Don't buy it.
So for any Ursula LeGuin fans out there, know that this is not an adaptation of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas except in the loosest possible sense. It's a pretty standard scary house / ghost movie. Doesn't really engage well with the themes of Omelas; I'm also not 100% confident they understood the fairly simple metaphor in Omelas. I'm honestly not sure why they name checked it so heavily in this movie.
The movie is...fine. Mostly boring. Not terribly memorable. I think Booboo Stewart is a talented actor who desrves a better showcase than this.
I suspect the fanbase afforded to Stewart by his involvement in a few YA franchises is what inflated the rating, but honestly his fans should want better material for him than this. This simulatenously overwritten and underwritten script doesn't do him any favors.
The 12 Days of Christmas Eve (2022)
For a TV Movie...not bad at all!
So we've all become familiar with the standard Hallmark/Lifetime holiday movie season. Most of the movies follow very familiar formulas, and that can be great, but they do tend to run together after a while.
This one, though, stands out a bit. Part of that is Grammer's performance, he's a perfect moodern Scrooge analog. It's hard to imagine this working as well without him. Another thing that really works here is the somewhat darker take on Santa. Not too dark, don't worry, but I do think there's a bit of a mythic trickster quality to him here that I quite like.
There are a few things that still fall a bit flat. For example, some of the protaginist's arguments with his daughter seem rushed and out of nowhere, and their relationship particularly gets a tad repetitive. But overall this is one of the better tv holiday movies I've seen.
Raven's Hollow (2022)
Sadly doesn't live up tp potential.
I wanted to like this very badly. I love 1800 New England and autumnal settings and gothic horror. The whole setting and aesthetic was right up my alley. Unfortunately, this movie did not live up to my hopes.
The main problem, I'm sorry too say, is the acting. William Moseley is not up to the task of playing young Poe. I believe he's going for the whole 'stoic 1800s Northerner' thing, but he never drops this affect for a moment. He never seems scared or really terrribly affected by the goings on around him. The performance is overall much too flat. He can't carry off some of the flowery dialogue that is clearly inspired by Poe's writing. You never buy that the horrors in this movie turned this clean-cut cadet into a tortured gothic horror writer. He's just not Edgar Allan Poe.
Saloum (2021)
Stunning
I was lucky enough to see this in a local theater, and it was an absolutely fantastic movie experience. It's full of action and sad and unexpectedly funny when it needs to be. This movie experiments and goes in surprising directions and it's just a fantastic time. I highly recommend this one.
The lead actor in this is also just absolutely fantastic. He's an action hero throughout, but the actor really digs into the sadness and darker sides of this character. There's a rich interior life to the main character here, and I commend the actor for bringing so much to this film.
This movie is also beautiful stylistically, there's some inventive design and completely stunning shots. This movie is just fantastic all around.
York Witches' Society (2022)
Is this a fun college bonding movie or a scary horror movie? Somehow it's neither.
This film was a dissappointment. The major problem was honestly the script, everything felt like a first draft.
There is perhaps some potential to be wrung out of this concept, a college 'secret society' that is in actuality a coven. But the conversations throughout the entire first half are stitled and strange. The people don't quite talk like people, there's a scene where one character berates a professor that doesn't connect, and the driving incident that puts our protagonist into the coven deeply contrived. The writing here feels like the worst of 80s sitcoms, only without the jokes.
Yet somehow the second half is worse. The tone shifts, and suddenly the movie wants to be a ghostly slasher film. But it's just so...dull. There are admittedly a few creative kills, but the pacing is so slow and the characters have been so poorly fleshed out that these kills don't carry any emotional weight. As other reviewers have said, it feels like you spend 40 minutes watching people run around in the mist. It felt endless, and yet somehow this movie is under 90 minutes long. And the coven is not so much a coven here as it is a collection of cowering college students. Who wants to see a witch movie where the "witches" don't really do magic?
This movie, more than anything, was boring. It's a real achievement to make magic and witch hunts and slasher kills boring. This script needed serious revisions.