Reviews

Firstly, thank you for reading this review. Let's start the review part without any delay.

Movie had an amazing and well tamed CG and VFX. The moment you will start watching the film, you will notice the work that has been put together by the CG and VFX team were insane.

Story and Background Build Up:

Movie starts with a simple flashback to build the background of the movie. There was not backstory of the main guy Liu Qi (Played by Chuxiao Qu), how he struggled and how life was hard without a father but shows that he's just some petty guy trying to scroll out of the underground life in the most cheapest way with his adopted sister Han Duoduo (Played by Jin Mai Jaho). He wants to run away from the underground to live up there even though it is impossible for any sort of life-form to survive. Weird death wish. Then there comes Liu Qi who literally has no backstory except for first few minutes of shots where he's a kid and spending time with his father & keeps flexing about how genius he is and suddenly starts driving a car that requires at least 5 years of training. So here's the first half hour of me wandering around what the hell is going on with the characters with little to no depth of it. Also, he basically betrays his Grandpa, stole his id-card to drive off with his adopted sister for good even though he knows that his grandpa will go to jail or rot without that id. But later Liu Qi cries like hell when grandpa died(!?!Wut?) He literally left his grandpa to rot and die in the first place but he actually wants him to live?! Does he care for his Grandpa or does he not?

Then there comes International Space station, where everything's at least 200 years ahead of current technology but Astronauts uses early 1900's space suits for some reason, where helmet glasses are made of sugar-props; breaks easily, they don't have any navigator to control themselves in space (which we have currently) and ropes gets cut-off like your early 90's local cables. I don't know how they survived all this long with that technology where as on Earth, people who were wearing atmospheric dresses to defend themselves, falling, crashing and blowing off of the cliff, house and surface, still had their helmet glass intact without any tear (except for the Liu Qi's grandpa, who's suit received a hole out of nowhere and he died).

At this point, the movie has already passed 1h+ and still fails to attach its audiences to the characters.

Final speech given by Han Duoduo was laughable, only chance they got to communicate globally so that they can bring help, she starts with a stupid personal story and suddenly she drops the story like "F* it, we need halpp". Liu Peiqiang's (Played by Jing Wu) conversation to convince world leaders was beyond laughable, no one will buy that bs specially if someone's a world leader. Comedy and Joke sections were cringe, totally out of sequence and literally damaging to the tension and pace. Those things were so cocky, I felt like whether I was watching the same film or not. To the guy who wrote the scripts; "Brother, stick to the B-films, triple A is still not your cup of tea".

I give character Build-Up and Story a solid : 02/10

Logic, Science and facts :

Movie is built upon pseudo science, so don't expect much but since it was built on pseudoscience, they should have built a solid background story for each important character. So, for the whole movie, you won't understand a single thing, what they are trying to do, what they are saying and what will happen except for the only Logical thing in this film was, Jupitar is made out of Hydrogen. It's a huge risk to make a film built on pseudoscience cause you have to make your own science, logic, math, facts so that people get things since you won't find any information about pseudoscience (it's made up sci-fi story).

I give this section of the film a solid : 04/10

VFX,CG, sound and other special effects :

VFX and CG were cutting edge. If anyone complain about this section, either they are blind or in-denial to accept that there's a creative team out-side of Hollywood, capable of creating even better effects.

Dub section was UTTER CRAP. They really messed up. It was very noticeable that sometime, their voice was not matching their mouth-movements, or they are standing very far, bad weather but their was no jitter or shakiness in their voice but some plain and loud voice. It was hard to believe some people were paid to work on this dub section and pretty sure they were paid pretty well, Alas! I give Special Effects a solid : 09/10 Dub and sound section, a solid : 04/10

Acting :

3 words; IT WAS BAD. REALLY REALLY BAD. EXTREMELY BAD! Everyone acted so bad, they were so stiffed, even when they were crying, they were stiffed. Only one who acted really good for 10 minutes was ever-green Ng Man-Tat and when he died, I knew it the movie is going hell-drain and the only hope to watch this movie ended with his farewell. The foreign people acted like cow-dung, every-time I saw a foreigner, it felt like a bootleg comedy film. This is hard to swallow pill guys; no matter how hard people will try to diversify a film, asians will never look good alongside a white-hollywood hero and those european, american actors will never look good alongside asians. This is just a fact and it makes everything super cringe to watch.

I give section a solid : 05/10 (for Ng Man-Tat, otherwise it's 01/10)

Overall, it was an ok film. A fresh experience if you ask me since only big-budget sci-fi films were coming from Hollywood, this film is actually a new hope; a hope to stop a monopoly sci-fi industry that is ruining sci-fi industry for real. Film has potential. If there's another sequel, I hope the directors take notes from this film, fix the mistakes they did with this one and make it even better by strengthening up the weaker and weakest links.

Watch the film, you will kinda enjoy it if you have enough time in your hand. I watched it with stiffed face just like the actors of this film, had no emotions or expression of sadness or tension while watching this film; I was just watching this film and after finishing it, i said "Ok" and started playing Yakuza 0.

A love story between two worlds, two completely different life forms,The Shape of Water(2017).

There are two types of people for this movie, either you will completely love it or you will completely hate it. If you have patience enough to read my review, you will know on which type I stand my ground.

Basically, it's all about bestiality cause any creature you want have sex with except for human is called bestiality. A mute girl stealing confidential GOVT research subject from a facility with ease, little to no effort, it IS really hard to believe where everyone has access to this place, including low class cleaners.

Story didn't work for me for single moment. A secret research subject that can change the universe or wars between two countries or other important things, since 5 star military personnel were assigned to it and secret agents were involved, things didn't blend at all, specially with the subject importance and easy-peasy lemon-squeezy type of security system. Now you may ask, why was there a secret tunnel behind research subject that leads to all the way to loading dock? Anyone can secretly get in to that tunnel and spy on the researches?! Also why wasn't a single piece of surveillance camera in that long tunnel where as surveillance cameras are seen everywhere except for in woman's locker room? When they brought in the amphibious creature to their apartment, no one noticed it? Also when that creature ran away, also no one noticed it?

There was no effort to find that creature also. Story fell flat here. Either they show Richard Strickland (played by Michael Shannon) in his home or looking at his fingers pushing pus out of this dead fingers or smelling it. A 5 star military person is assigned to this research and ordering some guy with no backup or support to find this creature is beyond laughable.

Also they have readable key-cards to enter in the facility office but simple paper made id card (anyone can fake it if they want) that gets verified by guards to enter in the building that leads to loading dock directly, where anyone can enter the facility through that tunnel without having any readable key-cards? Are you kidding me?

There were many fine moments in this movie but since I didn't like this movie, focused on cons only.

Sorry but I didn't buy its story at all. There were a lot of plot holes, errors from technical to direction and lastly, whole story was faulty at some point. I don't mind watching fictional movies or reading them but one must have to make it believable.

Sex and masturbation scenes were completely unimportant and unnecessary. Also Giles (played by Richard Jenkins) as a Gay man was completely unnecessary. This didn't put a single change or affected the story except for empowering LGBTQ movements in real life, which is nice but not for a movie where director don't know how to use that as a element for the story.

Story : 5/10 Acting : 6/10 Cinematography : 6.5/10 Special Effects : 6.5/10 Enjoyment : 5/10 Character Development : 4/10

Is it really good for winning the Oscar? Hell No! I have no hate for Guillermo del Toro, he is best known for making cheesy stuffs and loved a lot of things that came out of his hands. This movie is not for everyone but made for some special bunch of people who won't find it sick but I did.

My final verdict, I give this movie : 5/10

I don't know how people rated this movie so high where as there are plenty of Korean Movies that are rated very low. For instance "New World (2013)" is 7.6.

Any how, since perspective matters, let's just talk about this movie.

This movie started moderately but the first 10-20 minutes were useless and petty reasons for Hwang Geum-hee (starred as Hae-won) to visit her village after all those years. Director could have given a strong plot like Hae-won visited her village because she saw someone getting killed or raped which reminded her of her childhood village friend Seo Young-hee (starred as Kim-Bok-nam) who was raped in her early age also. This could give a strong reason for Hae-won to visit her village. It even showed at one point that Hae-won saw her friend Kim-Bok-nam getting raped, slightly teased about the situation, so there were plenty of opportunities to use that plot as plot development.

Nudity was completely unnecessary here. Few scenes didn't even make any sense as why it was so important to show blow- job or Kim-Bok's brother in law forcefully have sex with her; naked; whenever her husband was not near. Simple acting and audio based cinematography could have done that even more dramatically here.

The way Hwang Geum-hee (starred as Hae-won) acted in this movie, it really puts me on serious level of doubt whether she has really stood in front of a camera or not. Her acting was so flat, so terrible and so dull, I even wanted to skip her parts. But since lot of movie data base gave this movie high ratings, I still kept watching the movie, hoping for something twisted plot.

Seo Young-hee (starred as Kim-Bok-nam) acted gorgeously. Her level of acting puts Hwang Geum-hee on a shameful slum as they had to act alongside each other in lot of scenes. The gap of acting skills between these two actress were so visible that at some point I thought the caster who selected Hwang Geum-hee for the "Hae-won" role should check him/herself for mental treatment. You can't put a gem alongside a dirty pebble.

In all interviews, the directors said this movie is psychological horror and even renowned database like AsianWIKI said the same thing. This movie is nowhere near psychological horror. Yes there were unstable characters in this movie but this movie does not put you on any sort of mental state; of disturbance. It's just some crime happening in a small village. There's no twist, there's no suspense and there's no dramatic wave of fear.

Still this movie had chances to make it more interesting as Kim-Bok-nam spent her whole life reading-dreaming about Seoul lifestyle and observed how Hae-Won acts as modern city girl. I literally cried how the director missed the chances of making this movie a good psychological horror is when Hae-Won left the village alone on a boat, barely escaping from the murderous intent of Kim-Bok-nam, they could easily showed that the woman who reach Seoul was not Hae-Won but Kim-Bok-Nam. An identity theft and a new life replacing Hae-Won's life definitely could have given this movie a new life but no, they gave a Cheesy 2 bucks hollywood type story or those stupid Indian action films. God knows how Kim-Bok-Nam found police station and why there was only one police in the station, how she found a sledge hammer, how she entered the station from the front door with that sledge hammer and not getting shot (the police had a gun for himself, he shots her later) and why Hae-Won was cuffed in the station. The ending was so cheesy that all those efforts from the crews-members went wasteland of drainage.

Final verdict, director seemed confused. He failed miserably on story focus section. It was utterly absurd that Hae-Won lied to Police regarding Kim-Bok-Nam's daughter's death, who was her childhood best friend, shared everything with each other and then later in the end told police the truth regarding a girl's beat-down that had occurred in front of her, for a completely unknown girl, she told the truth but could not tell the truth for her childhood best friend. This movie was ethically b00lschit and failed to show any sort of ethics but tried intensely. It is hard to believe, these directors, casters, producers gets paid for their job and they can't do it properly.

I give this movie a solid 4. It's an overrated piece of trash. It is really shameful to see this movie on per with "No Mercy (2010) - 7.4" , "Confession of Murder (2012) - 7.1" , "The Yellow Sea (2010) - 7.4" and many more on rating base. I guess it was a great hand trick of *cough*cough*cough*FAKE RATINGS*cough*cough*cough*

Firstly I would like thank those people who read this review from top to bottom.

The show feels quite good if you watch the trailer or the first episode but from the second episode it starts to fall down quite miserably.I know many people are saying that the show is bad and others are going against them,judging them that the people who are giving bad reviews;only watched first 2-3 episode.

I must say,the first episode was great as hell.The story,plot,scripts,production house,crews,actors;all gave a promising upcoming episodes.But here's where it fell flat.

From the 2nd episode,you will start to notice that the director is confused.They show a murderer/rapist;Edmund Kemper,who murdered his mother by cutting off her head and gave fellatio to the dissected head,which he continued with his other victims.But the way everyone talked about Edmund,the whole conversation is quite simple;you won't feel thrilled.At some point you will know it's just some common tea break chit-chat,nothing much.

The 3rd episode is also about Edmund,right now you will feel like the FBI agents will use his methods,tactics and visions to solve murder,serial killing,rape cases.But the 4th episode will make you more confused.Whether the series is about 2 episode co-joined story telling or not as they completely ignores Edmund.

Rest of the episodes are about some killers like Benjamin Barnwright,which consists around episode 4 to 6.Those 3 episodes fell so flat that at some point you might think whether the script or story was written for some 10 year olds or not.There was no twist,no surprise and specially when you will find out whether the end result was righteous or not.

The series is full of unnecessary fillers & failed to develop the characters completely.

The most interesting character Edmund is just a piece of promised trophy just to attract viewers.I will say the director just used him for the misleading trailer.

They show Wendy Carr a lesbian for nothing.If you don't have any plan for developing a character's background,then don't show a small part of it out of nowhere and then suddenly never speaks about it.It's almost for 10 minutes that they show Wendy is a lesbian,FOR NOTHING but just to fill up the time.

Most of the cases that the FBI agents solve,is confusing.They won't tell you what happened.like Benjamin's case.Benjamin,his brother in law and sister were the murderer but Benjamin actually didn't murder his fiancé.They drag this small case for 3 episode and suddenly drops it with no resolution or what actually happened after they were wrongly accused.

Worst of the worst,Debbie is one of the most poor work from the production house.Her character was so poorly designed that you at some point will feel like skipping her parts.From her dialogs to character development,everything is bad.

They show a mustache guy who is suppose to be a serial killer,psychopath;is just there to make fake promises that he will do something in the later episodes.But no,he's just there for 3-4 seconds of screen time with no explanation of what he is or what he's doing actually.

The show will give you lot of inside conflicts between partners,colleagues but in the next scene,you won't find anything whether anything happened in the previous scene or not,the argument vapes away into thin air.

Except for Holden,Bill,Edmund & Brudos,all characters are useless to this series.You won't find any significant differences if you don't even show them in the whole series but alas,the whole series is consist around those rest of the people and they are useless,just imagine what happened here.

Good Side :

Brudos's episodes were great.I wish his case could get some long screen time.Brudos is the guy that will make you feel that the agents are actually meeting a psychopath.

Pecker's case was below average but since his "complain" against the agents is the subject for the whole series and the downfall of Holden's career,I didn't like the ending that happened with Edmund since the whole thing was about Pecker,a director has to be complete idiot not to include Pecker at the end.

Final verdict,if you are guy with lots of time in your hand,then watch it.Otherwise,it's just a confused,spread-ed story and poorly jammed series with misleading title and trailer.It's very simple "You killed him,you are the murderer" type series.It won't make you think or storm your brain for a single minute.The director seemed like a money hungry guy,who was so much into second season that he screwed up the first season by including unimportant stuffs that requires 3-4 seasons to describe.He was confused about which content should be picked the character and which not,which story line should be continued and which one not.

I give this series,5/10.