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codybyrns
Reviews
Arcadian (2024)
A swing and a Miss
I can't understand why anyone would want to watch a movie with so much camera motion and shakiness. Was this supposed to be an intentional movement towards a survivalist POV? At one point, near the end, the camera actually falls over and records a wall. It very much makes no sense why they would try and rub the theatrics to a blister.
Many are comparing this to "A Quiet Place", but I'm thinking this is more similiar to Peele's "Nope." There are scenes that beg for more answers with this creature's movements and actions. The species in "A Quiet Place" didn't have much backstory either, but at least they had a singular "what's it doing?" moment and not thirty like this movie. The scene with the creature in the bathtub with, believed to be, a body encased in itself like a cocoon? What in the world was it doing? Eating them? Becoming them? The creatures face during that part resembled a cow in some way, which makes me start to think there is some sort of mimic-like / shapeshifter stuff going on. The face has very tiki mask qualities to it. Who knows. I'm just spinning wheels.
All and all, it has a decent creature, decent suspense, and dread. It is low scored for the camera-work, lack of any backstory/explanation about this post-apocalyptic world, and the dialogue was quite bland. For characters who have spent 15 years together in this reality, they had zero emotional connection that would ever make me think they were family.
Night Swim (2024)
uhhhh....what?
So many questions.
They certainly had a good thing going at the very beginning with the Rebecca disappearance. Her getting snatched up was eerie and suspenseful. There was build-up and tension with every action she took in the water! Then, we get to the other 90% of the movie...
boring and dramatic.
They spent a whole four minutes explaining a very vague backstory to the "wishing well." It grants you a wish, but it doesn't bother to tell the wisher the bad part of the deal? What is the point of having a cause and effect scenario when nothing is ever explained?
I have so many questions for all the plot holes:
1. Night Swim? The dad makes his wish (if that is what we want to call falling into the pool and surfaces with a baseball) during the day. The dad gets possessed during the day. The son gets his quick scare during...the day. I would say there is equal parts day and night happening in this poltergeist-like story.
2. Rebecca lures Eliot to the filter and grabs him which gives him quite a scare. The girl was not a blonde and yet the hair was blonde coming out of the filter. That's beside the point. My question is why Rebecca is perceived to be a manipulation tool at one point and then is the helper during the finale with the quarter trick for the mom and son? How is this girl getting away with that by the way? Does the magical spring just allow its captured souls to aid those whom are next on the list to be snatched?
3. Why is the pool water playing with everyone? Why isn't the wish pretty much simultaneous in its actions? Father makes wish, kid should die, right? WRONG!! Father makes wish, whole family gets to experience a little dose of terror, father gets possessed (for no real reason by the way), and then days llater the kid will be snatched. Why not make the wish conclude after the first couple hours? It would create less drama for the spring to have to deal with. The more the cursed wishing fluid plays around with people, the better the chances it gets sealed up for good under meters of dirt. If it were smart, it would just do the deed back to back which would make the parents not suspect anything supernatural was happening.
I don't know. I have so many more concerns for this movie. It could have been great not seeing the "monster spirit" of the well as a 50+ year old bald fat man snatching kids, lol. Sends other vibes that the well is just into children.
The Lake (2022)
Eggs and a whole lot of unusual!
So the film special effects are not that bad as we start on a good note. There are a lot of different textures to the creatures which is a little hard to keep up with. Are we looking at something big? Something human size? Sometimes it is just hard to tell what you are going to see next.
A lot of the scenes, you'll notice, are straight from two Jurassic Park movies. The larger Mommy-like creature appears to be very photogenic in one of the scenes because it is 15 minutes of it just staring into the window of a much smaller truck (similar to Jurassic Park 1 where the kids are in the jeeps and have to stay still).
I have a huge issue with the overall storyline. The eggs pop up randomly in the movie. You never really can tell if you are seeing multiple eggs throughout the film or just one. The characters' dialogue and background are very clumsy at best. It was hard to watch some scenes because the director kind of threw in emotional conversations at really odd times. Like times in which you probably shouldn't be discussing personal issues. There are large human-like creatures killing dozens of people in this village and you want to talk to your daughter about why she is acting out in school?
The kid disappears near the beginning of the film then shows back up randomly (with a sudden understanding of what the creature is and how to act around it I might add) later on in the film. There are two scientists that are in the film maybe four times. They have access to hospital records, the commander of the police force is their best bud, and they offer to help "in any way they can". The two seem to be doing some sort of research on the lake but also seem like super spies.
Overall, it wasn't the worse film. The creature looked pretty neat which is more to say than many creature feature films.
The storyline, dialogue, ambiance, camerawork, and music, all need some work.
Triangle (2009)
A lot of hold onto but means well
The whole movie is basically an example of the Sisyphus cheating death story that was mentioned by one of the characters earlier in the movie when they are just boarding the ship. Rolling a rock up a hill just for it to come tumbling back down again. We have Jess stuck in a similar loop that always ends in the same way no matter how she goes about it. I rated the movie a seven solely because of the plot holes being captured halfway through the movie. We come to realize that there around three Jess' running around at any giving time. One is usually getting on the boat, another has just knocked off the hooded Jess into the ocean, and the third is kind of observing both acts and has to make decisions in order to conclude the cycle somehow.
From the first time we see Jess come aboard, viewers get to witness both cycles of Jess' decisions as that second Jess. She sometimes chooses to save a character or two and sometimes she doesn't get the chance to. That decision changes Jess #3 in the loop into either a crazy throat slashing Jess or quickly into the masked Jess out for murder in order to see her son.
My explanation into why the story plays out this way goes like this:
Jess was in a wreck that killed both her son and her. She gets the opportunity to cross over after her death but chooses to embark on a loop that ultimately allows her to hold her son once more AND teach her former abusive self a lesson. The character playing Death, the cab driver, approaches her after every concluded loop to basically ask her if she is ready to cross over or make the decision to start the loop over again. Death asks her to come back as he "keeps the meter running" but Jess always chooses to regain the loop. My guess is the memory wipe starts as soon as she passes through the entryway to the marina and where she bumps in to Victor for the first time. She doesn't seem to remember Victor which is why I think it all begins again at that point.
Throughout the movie we notice a lot of inconsistencies but the movie still holds strong in a way that leaves your mind going nuts with anticipation. I can not seem to get over the fact that a lot of objects show themselves as multiples in this story (dead bodies stacking up, seagull carcasses, Jess' neckless, etc) but why aren't other things disappearing or being used up as the loops continue? Shotguns, ammunition, the jumpsuit just seem to restock by themselves. The room's mirror seems to wipe clean just so she can write on it again in blood. The bodies she disposes of scene to scene but other things seem to reset on their own. The ending of the movie is also a mystery. It is obvious the movie resets back to the beginning but how are there seagull carcasses being piled up over time but no wrecked cars or the bodies of Jess and her son? Just some interesting things to think about. I apologize to go into so much detail but movies like this get my brain turning. If you think like me you would catch the Sisyphus correlation quite early on ;)
Prey for the Devil (2022)
Great for some, blah for most.
The overall acting is actually pretty good from start to finish. What I had issues with is the lack of drive for the movie. There just seemed to be nothing in it that made perfect sense. Each scene, each problem, each dramatic moment between the characters started and then was quickly extinguished. I felt like there wasn't a moment when I really was pulled into the back story. We have the Vaticans archaic rules of engagement that are still super biased. We have "the heroic lucky" main character. And, we have the odd tension between every other character. The Church hates her for trying, loves her for taking interest, hates her for trying to do good, loves her for succeeding where they have failed. A lot of back and forth that I wanted to try and understand.
It wasn't bad but definitely could have been more than what it was. They rushed a lot of side story, tension, and action in this film. The graphics and imagery was also a little washy. Pretty good scenes here and there, then, you get hit with a hilariously put-together scene of CGI garbage.
Major cons: Rushed plot, undesirable storyline, and typical Church bias that you see in every movie like this.
Major pros: Acting and most imagery.
The Stranger (2022)
Arranged pace to create a brilliant thriller
I mist say that this movie had some moments where the timelines were a tiny bit confusing however the chaos gave birth to something incredible. The justified approach to this dark film created pure tension inside my head. Moments where I thought I was going to go insane trying to figure out how it would end. Would there be a confession? Would there be a rightful ending to the tragic story of a young child? The pace, every so motionless, just built up so much emotion and hate for the situation that was unfolding around both character's eyes. I could see the stress and hopeless feelings that "Mark" had to endure as he was being tossed around physically and mentally. It was certainly a nail-biting film that left me not knowing why people do the things that they do to others. It makes me feel compassion for the heros that live behind enemy lines month after month just so a family can finally find their peace. Very good film and one I will watch again one day.
The Reef: Stalked (2022)
Here we go again...
Yet another open water/shark movie with unrealistic shark behavior and TERRIBLE acting! If you can think of the worst decisions a person can make in the situation these girls were in, you'll watch them be acted out in this movie.
1. Paddling for three days should have been their first first noticed bad idea because everyone sucked at paddling.
2. When the movie got to the point where time was of the essence, the characters literally couldn't have been any slower. The second island got farther and farther away with every stupid decision these girls made.
3. Another movie where, somehow, the characters get knocked off the boat MULTIPLE times because they think to stand up or get close to the surface expecting to see the shark staring right at them to say hello. The shark is swimming around for lord's sake!
4. By far one of the worst parts of the film was the "we gotta trap and drown this shark". Not sure where the kayak went that they attached to the shark with the lured hook, but it just disappeared! Not sure why they wanted to detach two of the three vessels that didn't have holes in them? That whole part of the film was just poor writing. The worst type of writing actually.
5. And to my favorite issue with the film. Why does everyone that gets knocked off their boats end up 50ft away from it??? Why are these girls resurfacing 10 seconds later with life jackets on? They are falling less than 2 ft into the water from the boat and somehow just magically appear a football field away? With a life jacket on, their body wouldn't have even completely been submerged! What a load of bologna this film was.
Didn't watch the last 15 min because I was yelling at my phone.
Orphan: First Kill (2022)
I Had Some Questions..
Okay, so without giving any info away, I had some questions towards the beginning of the film. I liked the sequel/prequel and it had a lot of good acting! There is just some things I cannot get out of my head which kind of lead the film down a wrong path.
If someone is lost for years and is found to be reunited with their family, in another country, wouldn't there be mandatory fingerprinting? Just for family validation? It has been YEARS since a kid was missing and we just take a random child off the streets with facial similarities and fly her to another country? Where is the passport? Possible bloodwork to make sure she is safe to leave customs without diseases ? I mean, come on!! This isn't how the system works at all which makes the start of the film kind of questionable. I could understand some give and take if this is happening within one country but an international issue for a missing child, possibly ubducted? Nah, missed some key paperwork on it there.
Kateo (2022)
Owwww
This movie definitely has non-stop action and unrealistic situations (like a guy holding onto the side of a plane, unrealistic)
I don't know how you pull someone, that has lost their memory, into this intense of a mission. This dude just complies and knows how to operate everything! Way too much flashing and CGI-play.
Rogue (2007)
My head hurts from hitting it so many times
Okay....for those that watched the movie and wanted to come to the reviews to find out if someone else was screaming at the TV, this post is for you.
1. Sam Worthington's character (Australian hill-billy croc know-it-all) stated that the croc had a den nearby which is where it would be after each attack but, humorously, his body is the only other one found in the den near the end of the movie. Where did the other bodies go? Surely that croc did not ingest counting (whoever shot the flares off, hillbilly #2, dumb dumb with a tropical shirt on, Dundee Australian husband, and bottom half of Worthington).
2. Obvious head bangers with the rope across the water scene. Lady is brave enough to ask, "can I go first, I just want to get home" and FREEZES halfway across the rope while she was under the same pressure the entire time?? Like what??
2 1/2. The dumb dad thinking that pushing his daughter across the rope was a smart idea. Viewers you know exactly what I was yelling at my TV.
3. Michael Vartan's character (magazine article writer) had the brilliant idea of catching the croc with a giant aluminum hook and thought he could, somehow, assist the length of the croc getting caught by placing his body in between the tightness of the rope and a huge BOULDER! The creature had enough power to break the knot or jerk that rock (with the guy attached) right into the water. It could have done that within the first 5 second.
4. The odd moments throughout the entire movie in which nobody gets along, nobody works together, nobody thinks logically, and everyone is naive to the fact this creature has a brain! Kate literally tells the entire party on the boat that these beings have mastered their hunting techniques over 20 million years!! So this is the moment we think the croc isn't mirroring our actions and learning our habits? *brain explodes*
5. Okay last one on my list. By far the worst part of the movie was the battle scene at the end. The, titled, "animal hater" of this movie thinks sliding down what is obviously the crocs den to get the pupper even though moments before he was about to give up all together and was resting at the base of a tree (rolling his eyes when he heard Kevin barking again). All of a sudden this dude has no fear and doesn't realize he just entered the croc's home??
5 1/2. Twenty seconds after the croc falls asleep the guy thinks it is okay to start moving!?! In a hallow and echoing cave? Against a creature that can feel vibrations through its' skin?? Keep in mind he hides himself and Kate maybe 6 meters away from the mouth of the croc! This dude did not think about having to drag her bleeding body back through the slippery channels he slid down like it was a slide in a water park. All doing that while not waking the croc up?? Oh my gosh it was hard to watch it all unfold. Plus she was bleeding out the entire time and his pauses to "think" would have destroyed every chance of her surviving if this was a real scenario.
I say Nay!! But hopefully readers shared the same eye rolls as I did!
The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020)
Not what you would expect!!
I understand the off reviews HOWEVER!!! This movie goes right along with the first one, it has comedy, it has gore, it has family feud/love/heart, and above all, it has this poetic sense of realization at the END! If you enjoyed the first movie, you'll love this one. Ignore bad reviews! This one cracked me up more than the first one and it also has so much more emotion into the twist. It sums up the "why" of the first movie. If you are someone that has watched the first movie and ever wondered "why would someone care for someone so much and then try and kill them?" This will have the answer. Ladies and gentlemen, just enjoy the movie and know it isn't just a Scary Movie plot, this has actual feelings involved...along with that funny gore we all love!!