Change Your Image
PestVolk
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Brooklyn 45 (2023)
Great premise falls flat
The concept of the movie, having some friends come together after the second world war, and the setup of events is great.
Sadly the script and dialogue cannot carry the movie in the same interesting way that a movie like 'The Man From Earth' could.
While the acting is okay, the characters fall flat in their believability because of the dialogue and actions they were given by the uninteresting script.
The CGI and horror sequences were underwhelming, and the only positive result was the ending being at least decent and not a cop out.
Unfortunately the movie itself was more of a slog to sit through than it should have been. With more time in the oven and a better script this had the potential to be a classic. Yet we end up with something completely forgettable.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
Completely wasted potential
Just finished watching and I'm so frustrated.
The first 60% is an absolute 9 outta 10 as far as horror movies go.
The story of being stuck on a 19th century ship with the thing has great potential, the scenery and visual design is great, the actors are interesting enough, the pacing is good and above all else the threat is relatively unique and feels, impressively, like an actual threat.
And then, inexplicably, for whatever reason, the director decided to throw the idea of making a good movie off' a 100ft cliff and set it on fire.
The last 40% of the movie is full of unnecessary, eyerolling scenes, poor laughable scares, the threat becomes a joke and the movie just becomes a machinegun of boring cliché after cliché.
Halfway through the movie I was thinking to myself that this was one of the best horror movies in recent history, genuinely about to rate it a 9.
After finishing, a 6 is the best I can do, and only for the amazing first half.
What an absolute WASTE of potential.
The Nun II (2023)
Nothing to see here. Avoid at all costs.
Even as a big fan of average and below average, 5 out of 10 modern horror movies, this movie was a complete insult to watch.
It's like someone cut the most forgettable scenes from other movies and pasted them together into a soulless cliché void of a new film.
There is absolutely not a single interesting scene, aspect, idea or scare in this 2 hour waste of your life.
The people that created this added absolutely nothing of any value to society or the viewers. It was painful to sit through even when watching it for free.
My standards for entertainment are low but this movie exceeded them all.
Morgan (2016)
No surprises - but does what it does well
I can be brief about this one, were it not for the mandatory minimum 600 characters for posting the review.
If you want to watch something like Ex Machina, albeit with a bit more action and a little less on the thought provocation, you're good here.
Morgan does nothing new or surprising. It doesn't have to.
It sets out to be an enjoyable, completely average scifi flick and it succeeds.
The cast is good, the production value is good, the story is there just to guide the movie along, and that's all it has to do.
For a decent, average, predictable but 'come home from work and throw something simple on the tv and chill' angle it just works.
Just don't expect insane twists, nonstop john wick action or anything crazy.
Hereditary (2018)
The complete destruction of the human psyche
Right off the bat: this is probably not a movie to watch while chilling and joking around with your friends, wanting something like Insidious. This movie is somewhat more of a slow burn; but not a boring slow burn. The movie is absolutely terrifying - but achieves it without easy jumpscares.
If you do choose to invest your attention, you are witnessing what is probably the most true to form horror in modern cinema. Complete discomfort. Disgust. Mental illness. Selfishness. Hopelessness. Increasingly sickly characters driven to and right over the brink of what one could possibly bear.
And a perfect cast drives this journey. Every single role adds massively to the whole of the experience.
The end result is a somewhat paradoxically named.. realistic horror experience that stays interesting all the way through - on multiple views.
Invasion (2021)
A waste of money and time for everyone involved
I'll be pretty brief and to the point.
-The characters are unlikable in their actions.
They are written as dumb, antisocial, boring and infuriating. You're even following the events through the eyes of literal children, who would want to see that for hours on end.
-The alien invasion is beyond dumb.
The invasion proceeds on a snails pace, they send footsoldiers to random houses that have no detection capability and have the visual and auditory senses of an old man and the intelligence of a hamster. If the aliens wanted people gone they could easily do so methodically and in hours. Human warfare technology far surpasses the destructive capability compared the the slow, useless alien weaponry that keeps firing at people point blank and leaving the main characters unharmed. It's a joke. Now of course you can't write a series like that, but the danger has be be an actual danger for any tension and believability to be set on the viewer. These are alien species thousands of years beyond human technology at the very least. You don't do that with Home Alone level villains that slowly pace through a house and are completely useless at detecting anyone.
-The series is BORING and SLOW and NOTHING happens.
Six episodes in and no cool special effects, no epic apocalyptic events, just non stop human drama, crying children,
-Uneducated, poor and dumb writing of events, with some of the worst plot convenient writing I've ever seen.
Sometimes GPS and satellite phones work, sometimes they don't. Events always happen in the most cliché and boring outcome possible. Unrealistic portrayal of army tactics, emergency response, everyone is a complete 35 iq tool except the main characters who always see and do what any sane person would. The support characters are all braindead and are incapable of doing anything without the help of main characters saving the day. Army portrayal is that of complete incompetence and a total mockery to anyone that has ever served in any military system. Soldiers get dabbed on by civilians, all the US command can do is hurrrrr nuke hurrrrr while not being able to get any knowledge on the aliens without the main characters saving the day. The top linguists, mathematicians, scientists, astronomers, engineers, programmers are all completely helpless without a main character laying the obvious out for them.
Creators also didn't do their homework, constant inaccuracies in equipment used, complete mockery and insult to real world science, physics, astronomy, programming and on and on. And this isn't nerdy nitpicking, suspension of disbelief is fine, but this series just makes a complete fool of itself. It's absolutely infuriating to anyone with a triple digit iq.
-This entire series is a massive, laughable, fiasco of putting the saddest poorest staff on a project that should and could have been amazing.
What a complete and utter waste for everyone involved, including the viewer.
Grimcutty (2022)
Target audience is literally 13 year olds
This is a children's movie.
If you're an adult watching this it's nothing but a massive cringefest.
It's not even worth it as a filler one time watch to spend an evening.
It's not scary, half the movie is literally a whiney teen drama about parents taking away phones because social media is bad and kids wanting to be influencers and feeling misunderstood by their parents.
The 'monster' moments fail to build any tension, are incredibly poorly written, the monster can be fought off by literal children and while the cgi is 'good amateur' level, the animation is poorly done and completely laughable making the monster a joke.
With a different target audience and more effort in the actual monster this could've been at least... watchable.
But it's not. Stay away.
Dante's Peak (1997)
Special effects genuinely still hold up perfectly fine
It's unbelievable how watchable this movie is over 25 years after it's release. Usually with 90's movies, even big budget ones, the 90's CGI becomes really obvious, but the effects in this movie still hold up and look incredibly well throughout pretty much the entire movie even today.
If you like disaster movies this is one of the greats. There is never a dull moment and the movie constantly keeps the action going, not relying on a boring windup and a single big budget ending, but giving the audience constant action through nearly the entire movie.
Dante's Peak is a certified 90's classic and you should watch it at least once.
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Knockoff Tarantino without the soul and spark
The production value is great
The actors are good.
The dialogue is forgettable
The story has no interesting twists
There is no payoff
The actors are fine on their own but they just don't have any chemistry together in a scene
Tons of scenes have no follow up or relevance to the plot and just exist to pad the movie to make it seem more interesting than it is
More Deux Ex machina and conincidence than a David Cage and Hideo Kojima coproduction
Scenes are completely unbelievable and unimmersive. The fire spread, the war flashback.
Characters are written in a direction to serve the plot, not make the plot
Just because you put a bunch of well known actors together in a setting with high production value and some 70's hit music and an obfuscated plot doesn't mean you're Tarantino. And I don't even like Tarantino movies that much.
It's pretentious and boring.
Tales from the Loop: Transpose (2020)
Too obvious, too predictable
I like the concept of the series, the science and mystery with episodes having a mostly standalone story but being connected in some way.
But the plot is too thin and the twist shouldn't surprise anyone over the age of 12. It's too obvious and the writers expect you to be blown away or something.
There's also so many other ways to resolve this situation for person B. In a town where everyone is aware of scientific mysteries happening they could have just gone to anyone working the Loop and explain what happened.
And in a town where everyone knows about scientific mysteries and reality bending events happening they would never just scrap the object in question without any investigation.
Stupid, poorly written and the series so far feels like a grade C student ripoff of Black Mirror, a series that actually has pacing, twists and interesting ideas that don't come out of a childrens horror book.
Smile (2022)
Do you like It Follows? Then this is for you.
There is nothing groundbreaking here, but as far as recently released horror movies go this at least above average and mostly keeps momentum without overstaying it's welcome or becoming dull.
A few decent scares, some scares that fall flat, but compared to the average horror movie it at least tries to surprise you which I can appreciate. The plot itself becomes quite predictable but if you're here just for some scare entertainment you could do worse.
Production value is pretty good, acting pretty much serves it's purpose, music and sound is fine.
The premise is decent, nothing too deep or flashy but if you like It Follows or The Ring you'll probably enjoy this.
8/10.
Eight for Silver (2021)
Zero entertainment value
I felt like I was watching 21st century people in costumes pretending to live in the early 20th century. I wasn't immersed at all because of the lack of authenticity of the setting, names that didn't match the people, clothes that didn't match the people, the whole movie didn't feel tailored into something believable or immersive.
The first half is a dull drama.
The second half is an infuriatingly bad, completely pointless slasher flick with horribly bland, dumb written characters, plot holes and just serves as a weak moment to moment thread to make something akin to a movie.
Completely uninspired and a pointless waste of time and money for either serious era-drama enthusiasts or horror enthusiasts.
Antlers (2021)
It's 2021 you can't get away with a script from the 1990's
Good production value ruined by an exceptionally poor script.
The first half is a boring drama, turning away most people looking for a horror flick
And the second half is a beyond cliché slasher flick that ruins the movie for those that thought this was a more emotional, deeper movie.
The characters and decisions they make are inexcusable even for a horror movie.
Why does the young boy keep protecting his father but turn on him in the end? He chooses his teacher over his father all of the sudden but all the other characters he was okay with them dying?
The two police officers are some of the poorest written police I've ever seen in a movie. They never radio in for backup, they just slowly walk into an extremely obvious trap over and over alone. One even sees his partner dead on the ground and doesn't radio in for backup. They investigate a house that smells like death but they just go eh, we'll get a warrant tomorrow. That's not how warrants work. With just cause like in this situation a warrant can be arranged in less than 15 minutes if need be through the phone.
The school director is just as poorly written. Goes into a house, sees blood all over the walls and hears noises but just... walks in to investigate and not call the police? Are you kidding me?
The plot characters including the father and his youngest son don't get killed by the creature, they just get some bruises and turn sick but all the sidecharacters just get straight up gutted and eaten. Why? How can the father ever have survived the first encounter? Getting jumped alone deep in a mine? Same with his kid
For a moment I thought the father actually died and the wendigo shapeshifted into the father for the rest of the movie to trick the elder son, but no that can't be because the youngest son goes through the exact same thing.
I could go on and on but this movie fails on every single front. Trying to set up a deeper movie than just a horror flick but failing that and then proceeding to fail at being above bottom of the barrel 1990's horror flicks.
Avoid at all costs.
Barbarian (2022)
Nosedives after the first half
First half was an okay setup.
Second half was filled with some of worst written characters and clichés that existed only to make the plot work.
The entire city of detroit was full over a convention. Yeah right.
The tunnel system is completely ridiculous. A killer dungeon wouldn't dig hundreds of feet of straight pointless tunnel. I would take a lifetime.
The cops disregarding her claims is completely ludicrous.
Literally all they had to do was take her name and check the system for a missing persons report, or hell even just run her license plate through the system to get her ID. Her car was right there and even rented would still be in her name.
Then there's the complete invincibility of the mother character that isn't malnourished or weak but some kind of hulk that brushes off a spine and leg shattering crash before falling 100 feet on concrete without any problems.
Not to mention how cringingly stupid the hobo gets his arm ripped off scene was, or AJ throwing the main character off the storage tank for 'bait' and the mother just jumps off with her.
I could literally go on and on. If the door to the basement is locked from outside, how is the mother roaming the streets every night.
Why did the mother kill Keith right away.
This entire movie is an infuriating overrated heap of flaming garbage that should've been left in a niche of mediocre movies that no more than a few dozen people will ever see. But here we are with critics somehow fawning over this ridiculous piece of trash.
Feedback (2019)
Home alone + metoo
The premise is interesting and that's where the positives end.
The characters are uninteresting, the acting is mediocre, the ending is unsatisfying, but the worst offender by far is the script.
The intruders are written like Home Alone goons, that's the level of Scooby Doo villain nonsense we're dealing with here.
They lack any solid plan or devotion to see things through after awaiting this moment for 8 years. They get played like children, doubt their own co conspirators over this radiohost and they just fumble around without keeping any control of the situation. They can't fight, shoot, make logical decisions and end up infighting and accidentally shooting each other, getting outplayed and outwitted on every opportunity like some children.
And if you think a father staring at their daughters killer, awaiting this moment for 8 years of suffering, would call the police expecting them to convict this guy instead of shooting him because he's going to literally get away with it, you shouldn't be writing movies, period.
And I'm not going to dive into the numerous plot black holes and plot conveniences.
Worst movie I've seen in at least a year.
Old (2021)
Some of the worst acting I've ever seen
And some of the most unlikable, awful characters ever put in a movie.
Character reactions feel completely unrealistic, they don't suit their roles, dialogue feels unnatural and forced
I'm struggling to get through even the first 30 minutes, absolutely horrid.
Utopia (2013)
non stop plot convenience
It makes you think it's a good show but think about what you are watching for 2 seconds and the entire thing falls apart like it's made of sugar in a rainstorm.
Some of the laziest writing I've ever seen. Everything constantly happens with perfect timing just because the plot wants it to and it makes smooth easy tv.
The villains act like scooby doo villains making some of the dumbest decisions for ez plot conveniece, the characters are extremely dislikeable drumming up forced lines of dialogue and they all have the most unrealisticly dumb skillsets getting them out of any situation because plot convenience.
It's atrocious. It's horrendous.
Spectral (2016)
decent concept, decent CGI, atrocious writing
"could it be foreign stealth technology?"
"No, we at DARPA are the leaders on that in the world"
cue a military scientific breakthrough centuries ahead instead done in the middle of an active warzone in a country with the GDP of a small western city. Even if it was Russian they would've moved the whole facility out of the way before it even got endangered by civil war and the US closing in.
Oh and this nearly alien military technology gets countered by a single man capable of manufacturing literally not yet existing weapon technology for about 100 people in a few hours by himself from scrap.
There's so much more wrong like how they never utilize iron scrap, how these things didnt attack until 2+ months into the conflict with the dam already lost ages ago, and their interaction with the world suddenly being visible everywhere, how slow and dumb they are, how Russia never intervened to secure their new tech that could dwarf the entire world before them, and so, so much more...
people make careers and drive big expensive cars writing this infantile sheite.
Time Trap (2017)
Premise saves this movie
The acting is abysmal, the written dialogue even worse.
The characters themselves and some of the choices they make are written so pitiful and dumb it's just insulting to the viewer.
The only thing that saves this movie is the premise, solely for which I slightly recommend this movie.
#Saraitda (2020)
Script written by a child
It appears decent for about 3 minutes, but it's just forgettable in every way.
The main character is just painful to follow, the movie gets everything wrong that would happen in any real scenario, and the story is just horrendously bad, especially the ending.
The movie uses every cliché in the book and then some.
Zombies react and the plot adapt according to the characters situation, not on their own agenda
It's not scary enough for horror
It's too boring for action
It has too little character or plot development for drama
It's not funny enough for comedy
It's just messy, annoying to watch and boring from start to finish.
The Grudge (2019)
Every horror cliché rolled into one - but done badly
Horror cliché's are bound to occur in nearly every horror movie, but this entire movie is just one long chain of cliché's.
It's like someone edited parts of other movies together and slapped a new title on it.
The scares are painfully predictable, the story is every single horror movie ever, and there are no redeeming factors or unique idea's here.
A horror movie with cliché's doesn't have to be bad and can be quite enjoyable if it's well done.
This movie isn't.