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Poltergeist (1982)
Aged pretty well and still deserves its reputation
I watched this for the first time in years recently. It's funny how well this movie aged. Steven Spielberg often strikes me as the film equivalent of music producer Trevor Horn: things he makes are often marked by a certain glossy artificiality and obvious studiocraft, dusted down with stardust and childlike wonder, engrossing but as inauthentic and unconvincing, in their way, as Mr. Rogers's studio set. There's always a sense of effort, usually at "spectacle" (in scare quotes, just like that) and in Spielberg's case, usually some cloying emotional content, which there are traces of here although it's manageable.
So it's always been funny to me to call this a "horror" movie, which almost requires grit rather than gloss and authenticity to generate scares. But, Tobe Hooper directed, and if nothing else just about anything Tobe Hooper touches is going to have a few brilliantly scary scenes. I will say the visual effects that (mostly) seemed so dazzling at the time look much cheaper and faker today than I remember them being. It's a movie about the supernatural, but it's more a family drama/action movie of sorts (Spielberg, go figure) than a horror movie.
Actually, watching it again after so long, it struck me, it's a pretty unique movie. It owes debts to movies that came before but really resynthesizes things in a manner that was novel for the time, and probably still is today. It was worth the rewatch, but probably not another one soon. Still, it hasn't totally aged out, and deserves its rep.
Immortal (2019)
Strong performances turn lightweight writing into a good movie
Anthology horror. Not that well written, mostly just stories leading up to an often predictable "gotcha" or "suprise" twist and not plot-driven enough to bother follow the narrative any further than that to explore what happens, but suprisingly alright, mostly due to a reliance on character instead of gore and a pretty good cast turning in strong performances. Dylan Baker is the bright spot of the first and worst of the four stories; Samm Levine turns in the most solid acting I think I've ever seen from him; and Tony Todd ("Candyman", I've seen him a million times but never caught his name) turns in a touching performance as the husband of a terminally ill woman. Each story is slightly better than the last; overall I actually liked it.
Probably worth six stars, but I'll give it an extra bonus star for rising above the source material, and my expectations of this kind of movie, so well.
The Dark Tapes (2016)
There is nothing good about this movie.
As a horror movie fan, you have to learn to stomach bad movies and look for the good in them, because there are a lot of bad horror movies out there. You wind up sitting through anthology films (gack) or identically-tedious found-footage films (retch). Even so, rarely do I just turn a movie off halfway through because I just can't believe sitting through any more of it would be less boring than virtually anything else I could think of to do with my time.
I turned this one off halfway through.
The two worst conceits amateur horror directors rely on, anthologies and "found footage" tripe, exacerbated by truly lame stories, stilted acting, and the most amateurish (lack of) production values I've ever seen. Ok, your video editing software has a "video camera messing up" preset. Ok. We've seen it now. Move on.
Seriously. There's just nothing in this movie worth watching at all. Watch anything else.
Would You Rather (2012)
No plot. Just 90 mins of a millionaire cackling at acts of sadism for no explained reason. That's it.
I don't know if I've ever given a movie just a single star before. But this is easily the single worst movie I've ever seen. I wish I could give it the 0 it deserves. Somebody must have bought votes because I cannot believe a film with literally no plot beside people torturing each other got 5.7 stars organically.
For no reason that is ever explained, a millionaire with a very annoying cackle invites financially desperate people over for a "Game" that might solve their financial problems, only to discover the "game" is he gives them choices of two horrible, sadistic things to do to themselves or each other, and they must either pick one and do it, or his butlers kill them. (Apparently there is some sort of employment agency where you can hire an entire household staff who have no problem with killing for you for no adequately explained reason.)
Also, apparently if you give a good person a gun and tell them they can have money if they kill someone else, they'll just go ahead and shoot them in cold blood, rather than using the gun to kill her captors and free both of them. That's the kind of "logic" this movie operates on from start to finish.
Really? The idea that desperate people will do horrible things for money if you help it along by threatening to kill them if they don't is an observation worth making an movie to make?
Then there is a final needless cruelty at the end when it is revealed that the Final Girl's brother in need of surgery, the entire reason she went to this "game" in the first place, randomly decided to kill himself while she was doing it. No, I'm not ticking the "spoilers" checkbox, because for it to be a spoiler, you have to care about the charactes and what happens to them, and these aren't even characters, they're two-dimensional meatbags used to only be shown suffering as entertainment, devoid of any plot or even any logic beyond that. Nothing about this even makes sense. Nobody in this movie ever does anything for any reason. It's all just a set up for watching sadism for its own sake.
Even "Funny Games", which was deliberately designed to be so vacuous and pointlessly violent that it was actually intended to drive people to walk out in it, had more of a plot and more plausibility than this movie does.
Adding to the complete inability to create any sort of entertainment is the bizarre stunt casting that perpetually reminds you you're watching a movie. "Look! It's Ricky from 'Trailer Park Boys' in a horror movie! It's Crab Man from 'My Name Is Earl', even still with the same funny haircut! It's adult film star Sasha Grey, wisely being given a total of about 3 words to say in the entire movie because she's such a bad actress she can't even be murdered by a butler convincingly!"
I hope whoever was involved in making this garbage is ashamed of themselves. I can't imagine what sort of person thought this up and imagined it would be entertaining, let alone actually went out and made it.
Todd and the Book of Pure Evil: Monster Fat (2010)
An extended "fat" joke that plays really poorly
I'm really enjoying this series but this episode is one long "fat joke", the "humor" relying on thinking it's funny to think fat people are disgusting and miserable. Do you think that's funny? You'll find this a scream.
I can't imagine who thought this was a good idea. I wouldn't have believed something like this could have gotten made in the 1980s, let alone in the 2010s.
This couldn't have been made about any other minority or demographic, because obese people are the last people who it's still totally acceptable to publicly make fun of on TV just for being themselves.
I'm not "offended", it's just that stupidity and uninspired lowbrow attempts at ostracizing, bigoted tropes are boring, they're lazy and unoriginal. Who thought this was funny, was this written by a third grader? It's just not entertaining. Could they really not write something a little better than this? Hopefully the rest of the series, which until now has been great, will go back to aiming a little higher than this.
American Hell (2014)
Plotless
Two stars because Hannah Fierman chews the scenery, she's always great. Also, one guy wears a cool mask.
Other than that, there is nothing in this short except violence. No plot, just violence.
Ok, I have 400 more characters to fill about how plotless this movie is. So let me say: there is no story, just violence. This brief cinematic experience contains virtually zero percent narrative, only violence. This is just several minutes of a brutal crime spree and nothing else. That is to say, there is no sequence of events in this film besides the following: criminals show up and commit violence.
The Sacrament (2013)
The least creative director working in modern horror strikes again
For those who found the merely derivative "House Of The Devil" to be too original, or whose complaint about the Jonestown tragedy is that they weren't there to be entertained by seeing it, this paint-by-numbers retelling of the Jonestown story should satisfy. My guess would be, Ti West overheard someone talking about Jonestown at the next restaurant table over, jotted down notes and said, "Ok, that can be my next movie." He then brought it to the former least creative director in horror, now the least creative producer in horror, who knew an uncreative thing when he heard it, and boom, the least creative horror movie ever made was born. They had to strip a few ideas and some of the logic out of actual events, but that's basically it.
So if watching the violence of the Jonestown massacre is your idea of entertainment, enjoy, this is the Jonestown massacre, presented as entertainment. The only question is why they even changed the name of the compound to "Eden Parish" instead of just calling it "Jonestown". That seems like an odd single detail to add creativity to when you're otherwise just making a rote retelling of tragic events intended as some form of entertainment for somebody or other.
+1 star because they guy who is a precise duplicate of Rev. Jim Jones, even down to the sunglasses, is kind of entertaining in how he literally brings nothing to the roe but a documentary reproduction.
Oh, also, it's a "found footage", with conceits like people who remember to keep the cameras running and pointed at subjects of interest even as they're running for their lives through the woods, hiding from nearby gunmen, etc. Which is great, because that idea hasn't been totally overdone.
Dashcam (2021)
Did they just try to put everything annoying they could think of into one film?
I'm 20 minutes into this, and ordinarily I wouldn't dream of reviewing a movie without watching the whole thing, but this is unwatchable and I am done.
The first 20 minutes consists of:
- an incredibly annoying, entitled millenial
- who works as a gig economy app-based delivery driver
- and blathers on endlessly without saying anything
- in a high-pitched, whiny nasal voice that draws out everything into an extra syllable
- and who is also a COVID denier
- which you can tell from time-wasting, unnecessary scenes of her refusing to wear a mask in a store with a "masks required" sign, and getting kicked out, which I guess is supposed to make her look cool or something
- and who constantly complains about masks besides that, in case we missed the point
- and who is wearing a hat with a slogan on it from a politician who posted video of racist slogans on social media
- and complains she will be "executed" for wearing the hat
- while livestreaming herself constantly
- as she keeps trying to improvise rap on-camera
- "rapping" lyrics about "libtards"
- and whines constantly things like "bee-yotch" and "suck it, bro"
- sometimes using an annoying voice-changing microphone for absolutely no reason
- played by an actress playing herself
- filmed exclusively in a jumpy handheld cellphone camera
- with an endless feed of little text scrolling up the side of the screen
- which she somehow manages to perpetually hold in front of her even when she's running or falling
- and, so far, after over 20 minutes, no hint of plot at all besides what I've just described
It's like they tried to cram every possible annoying thing about modern life into the first 20 minutes of a single movie.
Attention, future film makers: that's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that.
The Watcher (2022)
More well-acted, expensively-produced, terribly-written Ryan Murphy trash
Seems like Ryan Murphy realized after the last, oh, 5 or 6 out of the 10 seasons of "American Horror Story" that people were hip to the title and knew not to bother watching, so he started releasing seasonal "miniseries" without the AHS brand but essentially the same thing: well acted, well-produced, contrived, trashily written garbage, with "twists" you can see coming a mile off and absurd contrived characters whose overwrought behavior stretches the bounds of credulity. I was actually about 5 episodes into this, scratching my head about how something with such a talented cast could be such an unredeemable pile of soap-opera garbage in terms of plot, when I finally noticed Murphy's name in the credits.
Please, Ryan Murphy, go back to calling the new seasons "American Horror Story" so we know from the outset not to bother hoping for better.
After Midnight (2019)
This romcom sucks
Set in a strange alternate reality where remote southern backwoods are entirely populated by Brooklyn hipsters with trilby hats and bicep tattoos, this short's-worth-of-plot-stretched-to-feature-length shows a hipster couple living in a big old house in the remote southern backwoods, when she suddenly disappears and he begins being visited nightly by an unexplained monster. To stretch this to feature length, we're treated by very lengthy passages of what hipsters seem to find most entertaining: hipsters having very long conversations examining their relationship, and bantering at their hipster dinner party. Finally it ends with what I suppose is supposed to give the whole thing some kind of metaphorical meaning, omitted here to avoid spoilers, but like the reason for the monster's origin or behavior the film just never even bothers to explain it. I do give them credit for not overextending their reach, they stuck to what they knew they could do well, so it sorta works, in that it's not a completely unbearable watch like some hipster indie horror films, like that one with Sunil Mani. Ooops, did I say that last part out loud?
The Mist (2007)
One of most ridiculously bad horror movies out there
This is one of those movies that is so bad it makes you wonder who's responsible.
Who thought it would be "dramatic" that a grown woman would unbelievably take 90 seconds to figure out how to get a lighter to light while flying monsters attack, or that a man unbelievably struggles mightily to reach a gun on the hood of his car that's clearly within his reach? Who finds it "dramatic" that people unbelievably snap at each other and get mad over innocent comments for no real reason, or unbelievably decide en masse to listen to an obviously deranged religious nut's raving that a monster attack is the wrath of god due to, among other things, man landing on the moon, or even more unbelievably decide they believe her that a human sacrifice will solve the problem, other than to create unbelievable "dramatic tension"?
It's frustrating that the movie has a few points that show that somebody involved has a real sense of how to write a horror movie. A few very passing moments are really great. No spoilers, but the scene in the pharmacy is truly spectacular grand guignol, and it has, considering what a truly goofy movie it occurs at the end of, one of the darkest endings I can recall. So why is the entire exercise mostly so ridiculous? Sorry, I think it would take more than a single night of even the worst monster-attack-holed-up-in-a-supermarket for ordinary citizens to start chanting for a blood sacrifice.
Black Summer (2019)
Like Walking Dead, except with guns instead of plot, character, or dialogue
What this series gets right is recognizing what made The Walking Dead such a colossal failure: while Walking Dead often wasted precious screen time on plot, character development, or dialogue instead of guns, here, the creators wisely did away with all that. Black Summer's creators understand what a good show consists mostly of: guns! People creeping around ready to shoot their guns, people shooting their guns, and... uh... I guess that actually covers it, pretty much people either about to shoot, or shooting. What more could you ask for?
And these aren't just any guns. Apparently set in an alternate America where there are no handguns, but where every citizen has already been issued an assault rifle, because everybody in this show is constantly waving around at least one great big huge, long, rock-hard peni^h^h^h^h military-grade semiautomatic rifle. (Even the kids.) No wimpy .45s, Saturday Night Specials, or similar cuck microweapons in this ultra-manly, tough-as-nails zombie apocalypse! Only the biggest, strongest, most powerful guns on TV! Also no wimpy plot, drama, dialogue, ideas, or anything else that would take time away from all the guns.
There's some zombie and looters too, I think to give people something moving to shoot at. I gotta be honest, once the plot gets that cerebral I start to lose interest. But I know for sure there's a lot of guns! More guns than, I think, any other show on TV. That's why it's such a great show.
Occasionally you see a character carrying a shotgun, or winchester-type rifle, instead of a real AR-15 type gun. Oh, well, no show is perfect. It's actually pretty rare that this show has a lame moment like that.
Certainly it has way more guns that that wussy Walking Dead show, where characters talk, and have names, and some of them have weapons that aren't even guns! I think I even saw a Walking Dead episode where there was a scene where a character was walking around and I didn't see them carrying a weapon at all!
Fortunately you won't find any of that kind of wussy nonsense in Black Summer. In fact you won't find anything at all in Black Summer, except a whole lot of people with great, big, hot, rock-hard guns.
Swearnet (2014)
I don't understand the bad reviews
Either you think these guys are funny, or you don't. If you do, this is funny. Is it the most hilarious movie ever? No way. Is it lowbrow humor? Totally. But does the idea of watching the guys behind Trailer Park Boys goof around for 90 minutes sound like it might be potentially entertaining? Ok, if you go into it expecting nothing but that, this is probably at least as good as you expect. The plot is incidental, you don't see a movie like this for the story. I laughed out loud several times. It takes some adjustment seeing Mike Smith play himself instead of Bubbles, but once I got over the novelty he probably had the most funny lines of the three of them. Or at least, the most creative curses.
House of the Dead (2003)
The most gloriously bad movie I've seen in years
I am not a fan of "so bad it's good" movies, I generally just like movies that are actually good. But every once in a rare while, I see a movie so hilariously, over-the-top godawful that it's actually entertaining. It's hard to believe this wasn't specifically made for MST3K or the golden days of USA Up All Night. From the overuse of "bullet time" in an action sequence so long that it actually outlasts the rap metal song that accompanies it, to the model-looking raver girl who can apparently do kung-fu in heels, to the inexplicable random cuts to video game screencaps in the middle of action scenes for no reason that's ever given, to the completely non-uniform zombie makeup (as if they'd just told all the extras "show up in zombie costume"), to the fact that there isn't even a "House" in this movie despite the name (it's set almost entirely outdoors in the woods on a remote island), virtually everything about this movie is a cinematic mistake, from start to finish. And that level of failure is just not something you see very often. It's really kind of spectacular.
Here's all you need to know: if you've ever been scrolling through some streaming service, looking for a braindead, lousy, fun movie, and came across a horror movie with Clint Howard top billed, and you realized that could be exactly what you were in the mood for - this is movie is the exact glorious, steaming pile of total garbage you were hoping that movie would be.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
Yet another unnecessary, poor attempt to cash in
I'll admit, the first 10 or 15 minutes kind of seemed like this might be the rare actually entertaining attempt at a rehash of the glory that was the original. That lasted until the first murder, which had me howling out loud with laughter at how stupid and unbelievable it is. I won't describe it but it's the silliest thing I've ever seen try to be scary.
And from there, the movie commits an even worse sin: it just gets boring. You know the deaths are coming, and they come, like ducks in a row. The film sets them up, and knocks them down. And that's it.
I'm not surprised to see in the "trivia" section that this went straight to Netflix after disastrous test screenings.
Halfway through, they bring back the heroine of the original, now an old woman, I suppose as some sort of Sarah Connor-type character. I dunno. That's as far into it as I am. I don't even know if I'm going to finish watching it.
You can't just take a couple of the tropes from a classic movie, tweak the setting slightly, and dispense with most of what made it great. Otherwise you end up with something like this. Netflix should have known better.
Seven in Heaven (2018)
Probably my favorite-ever movie that doesn't make any sense
I actually like this movie. Of all the movies I've watched that make no sense at all, where things happen for no reason and nobody's behavior is ever explained, it's probably my favorite. That's really saying something. It sorta seems like, they got 99% of the way to making a really cool, fun teen sci-fi movie, but then, the editing guy was drunk and just ruined it at the very last minute. You can tell that if it had made sense, it would have been a really cool movie.
Plus, either way, it strikes a personal note with me, as when I was in high school, Gary Cole was my guidance counselor, and I never knew when I saw him whether he was going to try to help me or run me down with his car.
28 Days Later... (2002)
Not just one of the greatest horror movies; a great movie, period.
I will never forget that afternoon. I had been working overnight and into the next day cleaning up an IT mess at the office. By four in the afternoon I was exhausted and on my way home, and while waiting for the bus I decided I was a little wired in that way you sometimes are after an all-nighter, and decided to go take in a bad horror movie downtown to unwind before heading home. I knew nothing about 28DL except for having caught a glimpse of the commercials and figured there was no way a good zombie movie would ever come out in 2002. A brain-dead, terrible horror movie was exactly what I needed.
Hooooooooooo was I wrong. I was fully unprepared for it to be not just a good horror movie, not even just a good movie period, but an absolutely stupendous one.
There are a few horror movies that transcend the horror genre and are must-see films for any film buff: Rosemary's Baby. The Exorcist. The Shining. And 28 Days Later.
Danny Boyle at the time was know primarily for Trainspotting, which probably deserved the accolades it got, although personally it wasn't a favorite of mine. But this... this was like he took all the work he put into making Trainspotting clever, and funny, and memorable, and redirected all that effort this time into one single goal: telling a good story. And this is a masterpiece of storytelling, in a way so few horror movies even bother to be. Horror movies tend to be an exercise in nothing but shock or scares, and plot and character take a back seat. But Boyle has no problem spacing out the horror sequences with moments of poignancy, beauty and emotional depth, as well showing as a more profound understanding of what makes horror work than most genre directors. The scene where he returns to his parents' house has some zombies in it, sure, but they only arrive after the true horror of that scene, which I won't risk having to post a spoiler alert to detail but I'm sure anyone who has seen it will remember that scene's incredibly quiet gut-punch forever. Then there are the quietly poetic interludes like the long minutes of Jim wandering a surreally empty London, the quiet overnight interlude in the ruins with the feral horses and Jim's surreal dream of running sheep, the dozens of rainbuckets sitting empty on Frank's rooftop showing why they can't stay in his apartment, or the image of Hannah running down the dark mansion halls in her red dress during the climactic sequence... it's very easy to forget how much of this film is not zombie action at all, just good old-fashioned movie storytelling. In fact, despite the some very memorable conventional horror scenes (like Jim's strange first encounter with the infected, before it is revealed to him what has happened) not that much of the screentime of this film is really horror scenes, and not that much the horror in this film comes from zombies. In many ways the "zombie infection" is just a backdrop to provide a setting for the deeper horrors in this movie.
The reason I give it a 9-and, I'd have given it a 9 1/2 if that was possible-is the open-aperture camerawork for the action sequences, which was more of a cheap, flashy concession to "ooh, look what we can do" technological novelty than a good cinematic decision. It was faintly interesting at first glance, but not up to snuff with virtually verything else about the film, not even really neccessary, and hasn't aged well, even ignoring how quickly it became an overused cliche in less original zombie movies made in the shadow of this one.
But that is the sole flaw, and a minor one, in one of the all-time great horror film masterpieces and really one of my favorite films, regardless of genre. This film is the result of an expert filmmaker at the top of his game, setting out to demonstrate that a great director can make great art in even the least-appreciated genre, and unquestionably succeeding. This is a really, really great movie.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Scarier than fiction
In this terrifying true life story, two inventive filmmakers make a cursed horror movie which, although definitely pretty decent itself, casts a foul spell that forces every lazy, terrible wannabe horror director who see it in the next 25 years to say "Hey, I could do that too" and copy it with their own inferior, deathly dull, derivative "found footage" horror attempt. Millions of bored viewer hours are wasted not being scared, Netflix is overrun with dreadfully dull "horror" films, and, in the end, the entire horror genre is nearly destroyed.
Will the horror genre survive this dreadful curse? Nobody knows the end of the story. Stay tuned.
Bug (1975)
A masterpiece without peer!
THIS IS IT! You found it-the one, the only, the inimitable BUG-the single greatest cinematic achievement not just in the admittedly crowded field of mid-20th-century apocalyptic giant insect sci-fi horror film, nor even just in the sci-fi or horror film genres, but in human motion picture history writ large, unto itself. The unrelenting cinematic greatness that Bug doles out in heaping helpings to your uncomprehending cerebellum-line after line, minute after minute, scene after scene, shrieking burning head explosion after shrieking burning head explosion, without pause from the opening preacher's sermon to the closing descent into the stygian bowels of the earth itself-simply cannot be adequately conveyed within the constraints of this forum. It has to be experienced firsthand.
The mere fact that this is one of the only opportunities in American cinema to see a woman's head get set on fire in the Brady Bunch kitchen set would likely be foremost among the draws of virtually any more ordinary film it might appear in. But Bug is no ordinary film. Even something that would obviously be the highlight of most movie-goers' entire seasons is here only the very most trivial, the most trifling footnote to the veritable cavalcade of entertainments bestowed upon the fortunate viewer of this inestimable apotheosis of thrilling human visual storytelling endeavor.
To say any more would both unfairly rob the viewer of the opportunity to fully experience the unfolding of this stunning film firsthand, and, necessarily fall short in the effort, because words simply can not suffice.
Bug. There is no substitute, no other film experience that can compare. Be glad that it exists. See it. Experience it. Love it. On the rarified mountaintop of cinematic achievement, Bug stands alone.
If you disagree with a single word of this review, you should know it was written by my 7-year-old self. And my 7-year-old self knows a whole BUTLOAD about movies. You are not likely to prove him wrong.
(At the time of submission, Bug is, happily, joyously, streaming on Netflix, improving the collective human experience of life on earth just that little bit.)
Save Yourselves! (2020)
Ugh. Save yourself, or at least, 90 minutes of your time.
Technically well-made enough, I suppose, but this is the kind of movie that I hear made Sundance and wonder what the standards really are at that festival. A couple of exactly the sort of unbearable hipsters you don't live in Brooklyn because you're afraid you'll meet spend like a half hour arguing about their relationship (because that's the sort of escapism you want in a movie, sitting through arguing about a relationship for 30 minutes) before heading up to a friend's cabin, while the world is invaded by alien poofballs who drink all the alcohol and kill everybody, because, movie, apparently. The couple tries to escape, a woman they could have just given a ride to steals their car and leaves them behind for no reason, they find a baby, stumble around in a hallucinogenic stupor because of a gas the poofballs decide to emit instead of sticking around to kill them (because, movie, apparently), find a pod on the woods which encircles them and lifts them into space, and, the end. Huh? Why is this even a movie?
EDIT: I see from the "trivia" section that the writers cooked up all kinds of backstory that they didn't put in the movie. There's a lesson there. Guys, you have to put things IN THE MOVIE, otherwise, they're not in the movie.
The Executioners (2018)
Why make a movie like this?
Even if there was some reason to make yet another torture porn after decades of talentless typewriter and camera operators (I'm not going to call the writers or filmmakers, because they're not) remaking the same exact piece of garbage over and over again for decades, this would be an exceptionally pointless rehash of the formula. I Spit On Your Grave did it better 40 years ago, and that movie sucked. At least "Funny Games" had the terrible idea of trying to make a movie that audiences would walk out of. This doesn't even have that much o an idea behind it. 100% garbage.
1st Summoning (2018)
Where have I seen this before?
In this first-person-perspective "found footage" account, a crew of young hip filmmakers sets off to explore a local legend after first interviewing a bunch of colorful townspeople. I assume that by the end, they all get killed by the Blair Witch, but I don't know for sure, because I turned it off. I'm not sitting through another one of these.
Even though I watched less than 10 minutes of it, I feel it's totally fair giving it 1 star as a whole, because any film that recycles that many Blair Witch cliches in the first 7 minutes (including explaining the camera catching expository interactions between the "filmmakers" by having one of the characters say out loud near the beginning, "Never stop filming, you never know what you'll catch") deserves 1 star, period. People need to stop making these movies. Or at least invent some new cliches. It's been 25 years, guys.
Rocketman (2019)
Please stop making stupid people famous
I didn't need a documentary to know these kinds of people are out there, and nothing about this film makes them any more noteworthy. Why would you give these people exposure?
There's nothing endearing or enlightening here, nor anything that merits the kind of look at these people that this film takes.
On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who thinks a quote from the Bible that "faith is the proof of what you can't see" somehow "proves" that whatever you care to think is true, as one guy smugly propounds the midst of all this idiocy, then you'll probably think these people are geniuses.
Vile (2011)
The literal definition of "torture porn".
How much do you like watching people torture each other? That's how much you will like this movie, because that's all it is. A group of people spend the length of the film torturing each other, bookended only by some brief claptrap about scientists needing to "collect chemicals produced during pain" for no given reason.
Do you love watching people hurt each other? Then you will love it. Do you hate watching people hurt each other? Then you will hate it. That's what this movie is.
+1 star because I like Maria Olsen even when she's just got a cameo in garbage torture porn.
Willow Creek (2013)
The Blair Witch Reject
Apparently Bobcat Goldthwait saw "The Blair Witch Project" and said, "Hey, I could do that!" And he couldn't.