Reviews

If Encanto was a person they would be the type to state the obvious and answer questions nobody asked. The film is not so much defined by it's plot and characters but by its use of metaphor. A literal magic family has a non magic member is pretty much the plot. So much time is spent defining the family dynamics and so little time on world-building that I find myself lost and confused as I watch despite the very literal expositional opening song and I say literal hear because there is a line in the song basically saying "we have a lot of exposition to get through so we are going to sing it".

It has around a two hour runtime but I felt very little happened. I owe the hype to the concept which tells the viewer that even if they are an ostracized nobody they are still "special in their own way" which I guess is respectable message for a kids movie though I do find some of the discourse around the film more.intriquing than the film itself.

The setup is great: a cam girl gets locked out of her account and watches as an exact double continues doing shows. Excellent.

But where does it go? Nowhere...

-No real supporting characters that are developed enough to add any real value to the narrative.

-No real development after the initial conflict. Reasons are teased at but, at the end of the day, nothing really develops. Why tease at some entity copying girls and stealing their accounts? Why bring up the death of the other cam girl only to barely connect it to anything else?

-Illogical Character. Why can't she say she was hacked? Why can she not easily prove to people that she's being hacked and that someone who looks like her took her account. It should be easy no? She has videos!

-No real meat. Aside from the character wanting to get to number one on the site the other point of interest was the family who didn't know that she was a cam girl. This could have been dug into more but instead it wasn't really referenced or resolved in any way.

If you want to see a movie about issues in the entertainment industry and the sexual objectification of girls that has a psychological aspect with a sparse plot and ambiguous ending see Nicholas Wending's "Neon Demon".

You know the type of that I'm talking about. Multiple interviews interspersed with B-Roll and reenactments. The ultimate answer of what happened is obvious from the first episode provided you are familiar with mental health issues and bipolar type 1 in a real way and not in the fake glamorized way in which it's portrayed on television.

If you've seen en episode of forensic files you know what it's about already only they stretch it over four episodes.

I hardly ever rate below a 6. 6 is average and most movies are, in fact, average except for the bad ones which I give 5 and the absolute ones which I give 4.

This, however, gets a 3 because despite its technical proficiency I view it as a wasted opportunity to make work that matters and talk about things like mental illness in a real way. Anything Elsa Lam wrote about on her Tumblr is leagues more insightful than seeing these cringe internet sleuths talk conspiracy. The final slap in the face comes at the end when they admit that they were wrong the whole time.

Now that would be a documentary worth seeing. A conspiracy minded guy who made a bunch of videos about his views on a topic and then is categorically proven wrong and forced to look at this views in light of new information.

We see the daughter doing some swim relays early on and then afterwards she gets a call from the sister saying to check on Dad and the dialogue is laughably bad.

Sister: Did Dad call you?

Daughter: No. Why would he call me.

Sister: Oh yeah, that's right. You two are fighting ever since the divorce and Mom decided to go to Paris with the other guy.

It's an estranged family subplot we've seen before and from the initial setup you know there's going to be a lot of little inappropriate moments cutting through the action

"I'm mad at you Dad. But I love you too" "I know Daughter"

"Your Mom deserves to be happy daughter. It's not your fault it's mine"

"I"m angry at you Dad but I also love you"

Trite.platitudes about family togetherness in the midst of family estrangement.

All I can say is if I had a daughter and we were going to be eaten by gators the last thing I would be discussing is the family dynamics in clear an concise expositional tone that lays it out oh so neatly.

And of course because the Daugher's the swimmer there's that cliched speech from the Dad:

"You know that thing you have done your whole life that I supported you in and you don't know whether you're good enough? The swimming thing?"

Daughter, "Ah yes. Swimming. That thing that I do at the start of the movie and is like, my whole character?"

Dad: "Yes. That thing. That swimming thing. I need you to do it now at the climax of this movie. I need you to swim over to the boat and save me and the dog. This is the point in the movie where the thing that tore our family apart, your swimming, saves us. I need you to do this for the sake of the movie Daughter. This is where the family subplot that we spent all that exposition on comes together with the very real danger of the gators and everything gets wrapped up nicely. You can do it daughter"

Daughter: I don't think I can do it, but I will do it.

And she does it and everything is great but then there's a little hiccup and we have the extra little horror denouement that is so common to all horror movies.

So basically you should watch the movie. It's a good little hour and forty minutes. Super derivative. Boiler plate writing but the art decoration and the overall effort put into the craft make the film quite watchable.

Good idea. Bad execution. Characters are depicted together after they were established as being apart in the last shot/scene. A campy ugly mess that looked as though it was made by highschool students.

Structurally sound until the third act and then its all downhill from there. The female characters are dumb as rocks. Mark does a good job playing the creep. At least I now understand all those refernces to people beating their own chests...its from this movie.

Also I could do without hollywood sexualizing teens with actors in their early to mid 20s.

Only its goosebumps and it has Jack Black. Paced well right up until the end. Why the subplot with the Ghost Girl? Its extraneous. Also just end it at the school. Theres no need for the carnival set piece. I get that its a reference but the story doesnt need it.

Basically once the parents discover that vampires are real you have to wonder why the boys go to the vampire lair in broad daylight the very next day. The cat is already out of the bag and a better writer would have found a way to wrap the film on the night the head vampire tried to gain entrance to the apartment as opposed to the protracted ending we got.

Some subtextual parallels between the human servant and the young boy being indoctrinated into gang life and obvious parallels between vampires moving in and gentrification but nothing to heady.

Goonies + Hood Genre Film + horror but it never quite evolves past the various sources its referencing.

Everything seems good to go but the film sets up too many threads and pays none of them off. Second to third act transition is clunky. Why do all the characters start killing one another? Did the oil guy kill the enviromentalist? The main protagonist has this sort of "nice guy" attitude which he is criticized for in the closing villain monologue but its never a flaw that holds him back in the narrative so its like...okay...sloppy cliched writing. The hero and villain are foils of one another.

Average. 6 out of 10. A minor distraction from life if you want it.

Setup was great but once the second and third act rolled around it felt like scenes were missing. Love interest dissapears for the last third. The fathers absence is never felt because he and the sons dynamic was never established. The sons ability to talk to his ghost mother didnt feel like a payoff because it was never fully established and the love interests back story seemed way more intresting than what was teased on screen. Still an enjoyable film overall.

The setup is fun to watch. The ending is nonsense. So there really was a corn god and Issac was right? Does this mean we should be happy the adults were killed. I dont get it.

Strong start. The middle drags. The ending almost makes up for the lack of exposition and the general unfocused quality of the second half. For a horror film the acting/writing/effects/plot are more than passable and the creature effects, Ive read, were largely practical.

Its rare to get this type of quality from independent horror. The flaws and abstract treatment make it a 4 to 6 out of 10 for most people but John Carpenter fans and people who are familiar with the neo classical horror of the 70s and 80s will like.

If youve ever played with a real one you know that the novelty wears off in about fifteen to twenty minutes. Its the same thing as with this movie. The setup is standard and everything you expect. You think to yourself that there is a possability that something might grow even if it is cliche and by the numbers but there isnt even that. Most of the characters could be cut and the plot wouldnt change in the slightest. Also it has a bad case of late second act exposition where every strange happening is explained in a ten minute conversation with a newly introduced character. Pick any supernatural film from 2001 to 2018 and you have a good chance of getting a film that basically matches any storybeats present in Oujia.

If this type of film is your thing look at James Wan. By now he probably has three or four trilogys covering this type of material.

How many times can Mike escape? How many times can we see an unsuspecting teen say, "see, nothing's there" only to get killed seconds later. Curtis playing the 60 year old Strode almost certainly would have fractured a hip at some point during this movie. Are we supposed to enjoy seeing the investigative journalists die?

Its fun to watch if you like Halloween or slasher films. Its a "paint by numbers affair" to be sure. Seeing the good doctor don the mask after killing the cop was rather unexpected but there was the requisite running through the woods scene and a number of contrived sequences. One surely must wonder how someone dressed as Mike on halloween could walk around Haddonfield unfettered for much of the film. Granted this film ignores all sequels so it is, perhaps, plausible but the audience cant help but laugh that someone as conspicuous as Mike wouldnt be picked up by the authorities right away.