stannoone Reviews

The Happening (2008)

Intriguing premise, poor execution

[2/10 · 30 October 2022]

This might be one of those cases when a movie is "so bad that it's good". Or not. Cheap drama, overly dramatic music playing when it's completely unnecessary, characters without any depth... Come on, the protagonist is a biology teacher who is worried about bees disappearing, but doesn't believe that the plants could be the perpetrators? And the story is just all over the place, too. It's a truly stupid film. The premise, however, that plants could suddenly start poisoning humanity and make humans commit suicide, is quite interesting and could be worthy of a better execution. Maybe a remake could be made, but the screenplay should be improved upon by a lot. This could be transformed into a decent disaster flick.

The Man from Earth: Holocene (2017)

Blasphemy for blasphemy's sake

[1/10 · 19 April 2022]

Some atheist filmmakers trying to discredit Jesus Christ, the Bible, and Christianity. What's new? The only religious character in this story is painted as a fanatic. A guy claims to be Jesus, and people start to want to build a sect around him. Really? And the filmmakers are asking for the audience to sponsor them. This film is outrageous and pathetic, even more so than its prequel.

Fear the Walking Dead (2015–2023)

Despicable characters

[1/10 · 29 April 2018]

In just six brief episodes, season 1 has made me despise each and every one of the main characters. Dysfunctional families, human imperfections, and distrust of the authorities aside, (spoiler alert) to my mind, directing about two thousand hungry zombies towards a military hospital base just to "save" (i.e. get out) three family members is a bit much. Although as a film scholar, I may understand where the writers might be going with this dark undertone, as a spectator, I would not want to watch a zombie flick which makes me root for the zombies. Actually, I could see that going well in a comic series, but not in a dramatic one. All in all, I take this to be an intentional agenda, a creative strategy on the creators' part, and as such, I give them credit for making such a bold move; however, presently, I am not planning to continue watching past the first season.