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Reviews
Island Zero (2018)
OMG this was horrible
Don't waste your time with this one. It was a good premise, but the execution was horrible. Not sure what I can say without mentioning spoilers, so suffice it to say that if my review stops even one person from watching this movie, it will have been worth it.
Kolskaya sverhglubokaya (2020)
Don't waste your time with this
Wow, this movie was spectacularly bad. I mean, not even "so bad, it's good" bad, just plain awful. If you know anything about science, most of the movie doesn't make any sense. The special effects are some of the worst I've seen. Poorly written, poorly acted, and most of the film is so dark you can't really tell what's going on anyway. There are no redeeming features to this movie.
Relic (2020)
Unexceptional and Pointless
This unexceptional and pointless horror attempts to combine the fear of an unknown and malicious entity with the terror of having to care for an aging parent. It begins promising enough, with a mother and daughter worried about their missing matriarch and her empty house. The mystery of where she's been doesn't end when she shows up at the house unexpectedly, apparently fine and with no interest in talking about where she's been. The movie does a great job initially, ratcheting up the tension and creating a strange, ominous vibe, but it doesn't take it anywhere. There's not much to be afraid of and the climax, if one can call it that feels empty and hollow. I was very disappointed with how this film ended.
Yummy (2019)
Excessive gore does not improve a bland zombie movie
Wow, this movie is so abysmally bad, I'm not even sure what to say. It's not shy about the gore, but that's about all it has. There's no plot, just a bunch of people running around getting chased by zombies. The raunchy humor is at roughly the 8th grade level. It's a basic zombie film, like countless others before it, that brings nothing new to the table. Which is sad, considering how great the genre can be. Consider Train to Busan, 28 Days Later or even the low budget Contracted; they took the traditional theme and made it into something fresh and horrifying. If you've seen as many zombie films as I have, Yummy is a snooze fest, a bland clone of so many others.
The Vast of Night (2019)
Nothing to write home about
So, I fell for the hype that's being pumped out about this movie and watched it. It helps that there's a pandemic going on and many of the shows I follows are being slow to put out new stuff. Atmospherically, the film is gorgeous and the 50's period esthetics are on point. I do have to give them a few props, but I you never see this movie, you're not missing much.
None of the characters were very fleshed out or three dimensional. Most of them weren't even likable. The stereotypes were so strong, I felt like I was watching puppets in a play. The story was thin. Like microns thin and stretched out so long that it was nearly see through. There was a little bit of build up and suspense, but even that didn't really amount to much. It felt so, so much like a old timey radio show, which might have worked, because seeing it on the screen didn't add much to it. I feel that they put everything they had into creating the atmosphere and said screw the rest.
I am a devotee of sci-fi. Avidly watching even some of the most low budget to shows. The Vast of Night barely qualifies for this genre. It touches on a few sci-fi notes, but, wow, there is not much there to satisfy a lover of sci-fi. My advice? Skip it and re-watch something good. Like Primer. Hell, even Wrath of Khan, to remind you of the classics.
Fantasy Island (2020)
Recreates the show nearly perfectly
And by that I mean that it's almost family friendly enough to be aired on prime time network TV. I grew up with Fantasy Island, my family watching it religiously every Saturday night, right after the Love Boat. Usually a trio of vignettes, all of them morality tales in one form or another. This movie recreates the feel of the show perfectly for me.
Which, to be honest, was somewhat of a disappointment. Re-envisioning this as a horror seemed like genius to me, but this was so watered down, it played like a made for TV movie. If you're familiar with the original Fantasy Island, you can guess the oh, so predictable pattern of the movie within the first 20 minutes. Maybe less. There are no surprises, no stand out performances, nothing new brought to the table. Just a stale rehash of standard TV fare. Not the worst movie in the world, but, if you never see this movie, your life will not be the less for it.
Vivarium (2019)
Vivarium - 97 minutes of your life you'll never get back
Vivarium is a bleak, joyless movie that takes a single idea and pads it with excruciatingly tiring scenes to bulk it up to feature length. This could have easily been a short film. The only reason I can think of to have dragged this story out is so that the audience could experience the same slow agony that the main characters do. One doesn't so much watch this movie as they do suffer through it. If I could, through some time bending magic, go back and unwatch that movie, I would.
Just so you have an idea of how my tastes run, I like horror, I like dark and I like bleak. I enjoy listening to dark horror wave synth (look it up), my favorite book is House of Leaves and I count movies such as Cube and Train to Busan as among my favorites. The bleakness of Vivarium doesn't bother me so much as its lack of any excitement or suspense. This movie doesn't have a story arc as much as a painfully slow decline to its unsurprising and inevitable ending, which, by the way, is the only thing that gave me any joy in the regrettable experience that was Vivarium. If you enjoy a lumbering tale of Sisyphean despair, then, by all means, watch it. I, for one, will choose other fare.