Change Your Image
plotkinsj
Reviews
Moon Knight (2022)
The acting was the only good thing.
I wanted to like this but it was just so so bad. The acting was the only redeeming feature. It just made absolutely no sense- and that's not because of their interesting story-telling method. It didn't make sense because so much was left unexplained, and what was explained contradicted logic, reason, and what was already established. Not a single character was redeeming or interesting except the villain- who also didn't have a clear backstory. It had so much potential with the personality disorder, the Egyptian mythology, and his Jewish roots but none of it was explored adequately. It was just plot hole after plot hole after plot hole. Not even unanswered questions- just pot holes galore.
Black Mirror: Loch Henry (2023)
The Worst Episode to date.
This was by far the most predictable episode in the series. While it wasn't disturbing, like Crocodile and the pilot, it was just not enjoyable at all based on how utterly obvious everything was. It was dripping with so much heavy handed foreshadowing we called it immediately and even called out each device that would be used later in the episode! Just a real train wreck from beginning to end. The acting was nothing remotely special, the dialogue a bit clunky- it was like it was trying to be a cliche horror movie which.. why would you want to do that ever let alone in an episode of black mirror. Even the cinematography was lacking. I can't give it 1 star because it was a full story- but 2 is probably generous anyway.
Hideout (2021)
Poorly acted, edited, and written
There were so many continuity errors in the writing, editing, acting, etc. It's not even worth expanding on this. It's just so very bad. Clearly this was a first movie made by friends who wanted to try out everything they could all in one picture. The camera angles alone made it seem like they were taking a film class at the same time and each day learned a new technique they tried exploring. There isn't a single redeemable thing I can say about the movie so instead I'll leave you with this- if you are going to force yourself to sit through this travesty, pretend it is a recipe for lemonade on one of those cites that give you the cook's life story before getting to the actual recipe. As soon as the old woman starts talking about lemonade- the rest is that story.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)
Decent Acting and... that's it
I'll start with the reason this didn't get zero stars, aside from the fact that zero stars isn't an option. The acting was decent. Now that that's out of the way, do not waste your time with this movie. It's like the director went out of his way to make this artistic as possible, and didn't care if he knew about art or not. The chair motif is short-lived, nonsensical, and easily overlooked. The intentionally long camera shots, just lingering on a scene that was just left by a character, clearly trying to fill you with dread of seeing something happen, are over done, take up the majority of the movie (as the whole thing would be five minutes if you cut the shots where nothing at all happens), and add nothing to the ambiance that was intended. Lastly, I am all for ambiguity and ambiguous endings, but in this case we're supposed to come up with the entire story ourselves. Nothing is given. Not a single clue as to what the heck is going on. It's the kind of movie you struggle to finish without falling asleep, and then when it's over you yell at the credits "that's it?! What did I just see?! How much of my life did I just waste?!" Sitting through the whole movie should be the new cinnamon challenge. You're left with a dry mouth, uncomfortable, and you wonder what has become of your life you're able to waste your time with something so stupid.
PS- the narration... just why? It wasn't poetic, it didn't add to the mood, it didn't make a solid theme... why?!
Into the Dark: Crawlers (2020)
Recycled Garbage is still garbage
After watching this movie it was late so I didn't want to write a review. I twisted and turned in bed about how absolutely horrible the writing was, and how this could have ever been made into a movie. I though of the thousands of issues with it. Finally I was able to fall asleep. But I just woke up and my first thought was about how awful that movie was!!!
So I won't put everything here since I'm trying to remove that travesty from my mind, but here are some of the highlights.
The best part of Crawlers, by far, was the opening credits. The music was cool, and the animation was even cooler. It set it up to be a fun movie. I wasn't expecting much, but at the very least some laughs, scares, etc. I got none of that. The money spent on the opening credits was the only money that appears to have been spent on the whole film.
Each character is an archetype that is trying to break the mold of their archetype. They are all as flat as can be. The ways they are trying to break their molds are nonsensical. For example, Aaron, who knows his frat brothers are jerks and also knows his friend drugged and raped a girl but did nothing about it, spends the whole movie trying to convince the victim that he's not a bad guy. How does he do it? By apologizing once and moving on. Every relationship is trite and stupid.
There is not a single nuanced idea of joke or character. If you want to make a crappy B movie, that's great, but you need something new. There was not a single novel thought that went into this. It's like the writers saw some cheesy horror films, picked out lines, characters, and plot points, and put them into a mad lib. The writers even inadvertently set up some cool twists I was expecting (maybe she wasn't raped at all since she only remembers losing consciousness and waking up in a strange place- so maybe she is actually the queen alien. Or maybe the new girl isn't a new girl from NY after all, but an alien.)
The rules set up in this universe don't even apply half the time. Sometimes the Crawlers (which, why is the movie called Crawlers if there is no reference to crawling or calling the aliens Crawlers?) become perfect copies complete with inorganic material like the clothes of the person their copying... even though they needed to ingest DNA to copy them. They are intelligent enough to talk and retain the memories of their victims, yet they aren't smart enough to check on their hive when an alarm triggers that someone is there? The C4 put directly at the base of the tiny hive, which where the hell did it come from since it wasn't in the asteroid that the spooks took away thirty years ago, somehow causes chain reaction explosions on their whole drive? The hive was directly above the party which had ronhave been set up. Nobody thought to look up at any point at the glowing mass leaking green goo down below? The final confrontation with the copy had them wasting a ton of time figuring out who is real. They both have a "bite" so why not just tell them to reveal the bite and see what color the blood is? If they wanted to take over ever body, then why bite and kill more than one person? Now they're someone new and the other person is just dead to the world making an invasion by that process impossible. Hey conspiracy theorist Mom, maybe decide if it's actually too late or not before being irrational. It seems super easy to defeat them and the invasion seems very poorly planned. A worldwide outbreak from this group of aliens seems far more improbable. Speaking of the group of aliens, "they must have grown to human size" is not a good enough explanation. Plus, how many are there and how could you have researched them? And if they're here what did the government take away? How did the frat guys go from a bar with a copy, back home and see the original upstairs thinking they were with him the whole time?
Everything about this movie short of the credits was terrible. Yet I stayed, despite the stilted dialogue, huge plot holes, eye-rolling quips, etc. hoping for a twist which never came.
Simply terrible. And I thought The Happening was bad!
Nine Dead (2009)
One Redeeming Quality- MJH curses a bunch
The acting was absolutely terrible (sorry Melissa, but you're still acting like you're on ABC family). The script has characters change emotions and ideologies on a dime showing that there actually is no motivation behind anyone's actions. I forced myself through the entire movie waiting for some big twist which never came. And the kicker is I still feel like half the characters in there did not deserve what happened to them at all. Then the movie just suddenly ends.
Curvature (2017)
If you love time travel movies skip this one.
The entire movie makes absolutely no sense. This isn't a "you just don't get it" kind of complaint. I get it too well. If the whole point is she is her future self, then how does her past self (the one she thinks is her future for a good portion of the movie) know the entire future? Her past self's entire plan revolves around her future self acting in a certain manner... and she knows exactly when different things will happen which are unrelated to her. It's just such sloppy writing. Time paradoxes are one thing, but this can't even get a singular timeline correct! That's saying nothing about the acting. The male lead needs to be in a Disney channel original movie.