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Reviews
Faye (2021)
I refuse to accept this movie actually happened
In a time when even the worst movies have decent production values Faye manages to look like it was filmed with a camera phone and no post-production. Faye seems uncertain of its genre at times: Lifetime Movie with random cuts of Jerry Seinfeld-style interludes, then a pinch of psychological horror seemingly as an afterthought. The only horror in Faye is the direction, the sloppy editing, the weak story and the acting. I doubt Faye even had benefit of a script.
Sarah Zanotti who plays the character of Faye unfortunately lacks the charisma and acting chops to carry a film; and it doesn't help that most of her dialogue feels improvised. We don't care about Faye or her struggle: She's annoying, self-pitying and unsympathetic. Faye also feels like it was originally an off, off Broadway stage play of a boring one-woman dialogue that closed its first night and never should've been made into a film. Some stories don't need to be told.
Director Kd Amond appears to have made the artistic choice of using the natural overhead fluorescent lighting of Faye's getaway cabin rather than a lighting rig and diffuser. This gives Faye an unprofessional home-movie look. Faye is a slow-moving endurance test that makes you quickly lose interest in her and you don't care how the film ends, you just want it to stop. Faye is dialogue driven and has almost no action (unless a book falling off a shelf gives you nightmares). There is a conveniently placed Ouija Board, lots of wine consumption, guilt-ridden confessions, a large helping of self-loathing, drunken tirades aplenty and spooky F/X that look like it was designed by a ten-year old.
Ultimately, Faye is an extremely boring time-waster and is one of the films I gave numerous chances to complete but deleted from my hard drive without a second's regret.
Even for the most hardened connoisseur of cinéma de merde, Faye is a hard pass. Your time would be better spent making a snowman out of mashed potatoes.
They Turned Us Into Killers (2024)
I can't believe I'm actually reviewing this film
Truth told, Scout Taylor-Compton is one of my guilty pleasures. Her acting is mediocre at best and cringeworthy enough to throw-out your neck at worst. I adore her anti-Hollywood aesthetic and white-trash tattoos and unashamedly watch anything she is in. With They Turned Us Into Killers I finally had my Scout Taylor-Compton limits pushed, however. This is by far Scout's absolute lowest point and makes her leaked sex tape look Oscar worthy.
They Turned Us Into Killers is the sequel to Room 9: a film that at the time of this writing has a solid 2.0 IMDB rating. They Turned Us Into Killers isn't so much an actual sequel as a retread of Room 9, only with worse acting and pacing. They Turned Us Into Killers is mostly filler, flashbacks and unused footage from Room 9 and plods along so slowly it will work your last nerve. The dialogue and exposition are so redundant I thought the same scenes were repeating or that my file was corrupted. I'm convinced there was no script and 99.9% of this movie was improvised and all first takes used.
In a time when there is free video editing software to tweak your movie into a somewhat watchable film, They Turned Us Into Killers manages to look bad, has terrible lighting, editing, "acting", scenery, and a three-minute plot dragged to feature-length. In fact, the same barn interior seems to play a few different locations without ever once being dressed differently.
Taryn Manning must've owed someone a lot of money to appear in this cinematic masterpiece because she delivers her lines like she had no direction, no notes, no motivation, had no idea where she was and had never acted before. And my dirty little secret Scout, well, she's just Scout and does what Scout does in horror movies: screams, runs around, rolls her eyes and overacts. The rest of the cast must have been picked up at the local Walmart at 3AM and worked for cheese sandwiches.
At 1 hour and 26 minutes I felt like I was watching a really bad three-hour epic and kept checking the runtime hoping this movie was almost over. After 5 separate attempts to finish this film I had to turn it off to preserve my sanity and moved it to the recycle bin. Right now They Turned Us Into Killers has a generous 3.7 IMDB rating, but with more viewings I'm certain it will dip below Room 9's envious 2.0 rating.
Skip it and work on your Origami instead.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)
Well deserving of its 2.9 IMDB score
Winnie-the-Pooh and friends have recently entered public domain so it was only a matter of time before some filmmaker jumped at the opportunity to cash in. Unfortunately this auteur was Rhys Frake-Waterfield.
Pooh and Piglet have resorted to a feral state after being abandoned by Christopher Robin so now they hate all humans and no longer speak. And yet for their rejection of humanity they still manage to dress like Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part 2.
Make no mistake: this is Winnie-the-Pooh in name only. Because of Disney's copyright to the characters look, Winnie-the-Pooh and murderous side-kick Piglet look exactly like what they are: two big actors in rubber masks. Pooh and Piglet look like any other masked killer from countless slasher films so its a little off-putting when characters believe they are actually seeing human-animal hybrids instead of two goons in Halloween masks. There wasn't even CGI to add some life to Pooh and Piglet's features. Also, there is no Tigger or Owl, and Eeyore's fate is left to the viewer.
For a dumpster fire Blood and Honey looks like a real film and not a backyard VHS camshow, even though the sets are mostly mediocre and repetitive and the pacing can be slow as chilled molasses. Blood and Honey should've been a 5 minute short, not a full-length feature film. It quickly devolves into a women-in-peril, isolated million dollar cabin in the woods scenario where Pooh and Piglet hunt victims in the forest and kill in unimaginative ways. The actresses are mostly eye-candy but talented enough to have deserved better than this film. There is nothing new here we haven't seen already, and done much, much better.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey might make for a good popcorn night if you're high AF and like a good cringe with friends. I was high and still found Blood and Honey a struggle to get through. Thankfully they are making a sequel so I know what happens next. View at your own risk.