Reviews

One of the criticisms levelled at Status Quo was that they were a band who created a career on just one song. Same with Statham. He plays the same character with the same need for a tube of Strepsils in every film he's in. This time he has a really bad accent as well. He's always very fighty as you probably know only too well, which just about sums up the entire story. Semi-Transatlantic fightiness. That anybody can actually behave like this in the real world is actually beyond credibility. So it's therefore literally incredibly fightily badly spoken. And, of course, the distinguishing mark is that he keeps bees.

So there's Doc. I have no idea if he's a goodie or a baddie, but he does horrible things to people. Then his daughter gets kidnapped. So he's the goodie? But then he goes and kills more people. By this time I don't care at all. No character development, no understandable storyline. Then he threatens the kidnapper that if they lay a finger on his kid he'll kill them. But he kills everyone anyway. Then there are tranny singers. Still no idea what's going on. Ooooh, and people drop the f-bomd three times every syllable. Everybody Doc runs in to gets shot in the head. Doc's still looking for his daughter. Is it the end yet?

Well this is a weird little film. The acting is stilted throughout, the conversations sounding unusual and forced. The whole screenplay is broken into pieces, with little vignettes of moody landscapes, and a constant soundtrack of doomy noises. Whether all this is designed to be unsettling, I'm not sure, but the overall impact is that it's impossible to get any kind of emotional involvement with the main characters at all. And with the constant weird noises from the get-go, far from building tension, it just normalises it. On the whole, even though I watched the whole thing hoping it would all of a sudden make sense, I was left with the impression it wasn't a story worth telling.

OK, right from the off I'm rooting for The House.

Given the sheer annoyingness of the teens heading for a break... the constant vocal fry of the girls who sound like a lake of frogs... and given the spoiler in the first 3 minutes as to what 'Margaux' is capable of... I'd really like to see every one of the ensemble gathered in one room and despatched as gruesomely and quickly as possible.

Then I'd crack open a bottle of bubbly, high five Margaux, and it'd be tea and medals, and everyone home for an early night.

Teenagers who mimic frogs, and embrace up speak as if they're being tentative about even the most trivial things, deserve all that they get. Just a shame you have to wait for the film to drag on.

This isn't badly acted, and if you're into graphic violence, then it'll tick that box. But in terms of a valid story, it's vacuous.

We don't get to care about any of the characters. There's no purpose to their deaths apart from a kind of 'Lord Of The Flies' vibe, which William Golding did far, far better.

In the end it just seemed to be an excuse to watch some heads exploding, and innocent people being executed without cost.

The denouement about it being a 'social experiment' seems like a cheap excuse for the previous hour and a half's carnage, but ultimately I was left feeling almost entirely unsatisfied, and don't feel it deserves more than a 3 for the blood and guts.

He can squeeze people's HEADS! He can survive gunshot wounds to HIS OWN HEAD! He can't deliver dialogue any more realistically that any of the other characters. He's a tiny, reincarnated Ronnie James Dio, but without any talent. Now he's squeezing another head and the film has suddenly gone greyscale. Now his eyes are orange to show he's a bit crazy. Now he's stabbing a lady in the eye with a pencil FOR NO REASON AT ALL. Now he just got all cross with a bearded man and killed him by pushing him very hard against a door. How this film scores a 7 must mean that a) every single viewer is a 60s acid casualty or b) they were watching something entirely different. This is a Terrible Film. Just... Terrible.

What a deeply unpleasant bunch of people inhabit this town. Pretty much every single character can't complete a single sentence without punctuating it with the f-bomb several times a syllable. Their interaction with each of their companions gives the word 'shallow' new depths of meaning. And when the Robot Santa begins his reign of axe-fuelled mayhem, you find yourself hoping that every one of the cast are gathered in one room so the slaughter will be quick and thorough, and we can present Robot Santa with a well-earned cup of tea and a medal for rescuing us from such a vacuous bunch of idiots.

Although this was written after X, and was intended to be the backstory of Pearl, I think it exceeded X in every way.

Mia Goth is an absolute find, and inhabited her character with absolute belief and conviction. The character development was relentless, and by the end, her monlogue just left me transfixed.

Although there is less gore that X, and considerably less sex, we were left with the unmistakable feeling that we knew something about Pearl's demons.

The film is beautifully shot.

I was left feeling that I'd watched artists at the top of their game. Pity that X doesn't have the same impact, but if you just watch one film this month, watch this. 9/10.

I'd never seen this release. I can't actually believe it's scored so high, as basically it's just an hour 40 of stabbing and screaming. Stabbing. Screaming. More stabbing. In the end I just turned it off as I didn't really care whether the protagonist or victims lived or not. A couple of the murders were taken from the original film (being stabbed up a wall and left), but it had none of the dread and menace of the first film. As this was made 15 years ago, anybody who was ever interested in Halloween movies will probably have already seen it. But just in case you haven't, do yourself a favour and simply rewatch the original. It's better in every way.

OK, I've watched this so that you don't need to.

Rather than review this on here, I'd encourage you to chase up Mark Kermode's rant. Not only is Kermode on sparkling, witty form, but he also tells you all that you need to know about why you shouldn't watch this. And let me just qualify that: ever.

Kermode said: "It's not just bad - it's eye-wateringly awful. There are scenes in this that Tommy Wiseau, who made The Room, would have said, 'I'm sorry, that's actually not up to snuff - we're going to have to take that out ... This is not cinema; this is something so staggeringly self-regarding. I've seen a lot of very bad performances, but this is in a stratosphere of his own."

This review doesn't contain spoilers, because they would add nothing to what is already spoiled beyond repair.

Is it acted well? Check. Is it beautifully shot? Check. Is it a story that draws you in? Again, check. It should have everything going for it. My one problem is that I'm not drawn sympathetically to one character. Not one. That doesn't make it bad by any means. It just means I have to search for reasons to keep watching, because were they all to die in a plane crash... it wouldn't be a loss,

I like this show. I like the format.

Just slow down, Ben. You talk so fast the one word just melts into the next, and before you know it yougettotheendofthesentencebeforeIcanhearyouproperly. It's just rude, and I can't hear that fast!

Adil Ray's mechanical, maniacal delivery just ruins an otherwise decent game show.

His over-the-top laughter at the most mundane of comments, his entirely samey presentation, down to the same phrasing show after show ... his artificially trying to ramp up the tension as the show proceeds ... makes this almost unwatchable.

Do yourself a favour, ITV, get someone half-decent instead.

Why don't they just beat the shizz out of her at the first chance? I'd just be very cross. Instead, the two main characters seem to have no intention of putting up a fight. Stupid is as stupid does.

Flippin'eck, you'd think all the men in this had two brain cells each. One brain cell was out to lunch and the other one had gone looking for it. They can barely communicate beyond breathy grunts, and have the vocabulary of a struggling eight year old. Lots of moody staring into broken mirrors. It's a shambles, but that's being unfair to shambles.

So, in virtually the first shot we see an aircraft landing, supposedly in the USA. Clearly it's a Ryanair plane. The idea that you could fly Ryanair for a trans-Atlantic crossing, and would actually PAY to do so, even though Ryanair don't cross the Atlantic, is to stretch the imagination much too far. It's bad enough flying local. You're welcome.

It's OK.

But you know when you see one thing in a movie and it really grinds your gears ... and once you've seen it you can't unsee it?

It's Soleil Moon Frye's neck. The way she walks/talks/sits ... it's constantly bent over on one side. I'm sure it's *supposed* to look alluring, but all it succeeds in doing is give the impression that she needs to be fitted with a neck brace, because she's lost all muscle-tone in one side of her neck.

Stop it, Soleil. Just ... stop it.

The story is unremarkable, and the protagonists don't really have a tangible chemistry. The acting's OK, the script's OK. It just didn't give me the feels.

I actually turned this on half way through the film, which probably precludes me from an objective assessment.

However, having watched the second half of the movie, I'm very glad that I didn't watch the first half.

Watch Tom & Jerry for 10 minutes. It's a whole lot better.

I thought this was dull and predictable. The acting's OK, but it just turns into a monster movie with a shallow plot. I wasn't convinced by the reasoning behind the story, and there were too many over-used ideas to make it original in any way.

This is an odd one. I watched it through because of the story, it being an unusual take on alien encounters.

Sadly the acting is quite wooden, the script written to be recited rather than communicated. It tells the story, but in a verbose way. The entire first scene is pretty much just verbiage for half an hour.

This is a pity as the story is intelligent. I just wish it had been scripted and acted in a more realistic way.

This is, amongst other things, a thoughtful presentation about consumer greed. Winsome performances all round.

I was prepared to give this a go. I consider myself reasonably able to discern good from bad. This was bad. Pretentious chaos that had no discernable merits. This is a film equivalent of The Emperor's New Clothes. I'm not at all sure what I just watched, but it was naked, devoid of anything worth saying.

If you look in an encyclopedia for something along the lines for 'Writing a script in Kindergarten'... there's a picture of this film. The lines are delivered just like they're being read. The plot is thin. A poor excuse for some violence.

The script let's this down. It's simplistic and wooden, with no depth to the characters offered. Yes, we know that rape and assault is horrible. And we know that revenge is supposed to be sweet. But this film offers nothing new, and has little to say.