jurasikpaul Reviews

Butchers Book Two: Raghorn (2024)

A bit of good, but a bit of a miss...

[5/10 · 21 March 2024]

Not bad, but not good either, it started good, but kind of ended like a wet fart. The director start a lot of thing he doesn't really uses, he sets up things that never happen and that kind of leave you frustrated and telling you "what? That's all?".

But I think that the biggest problem is the main character that... Isn't one really, like I said before, the director set you up for something with the main character and it really goes down as he makes it (talking about the role) plain and basically invisible, the main character must have two flat lines and has the presence of a white toast with nothing on it, which makes the role a bit of a "why?".

The thing is I think that all the problems of this movies serve one thing, but that's just a supposition on my part here, that all these set ups and scenes or actions that never comes bring you to one thing "the message", yes, sorry to say it, I won't spoil too much, it's not really present apart from the simple fact that the movie has no point if not for it, and that makes it a miss, because if the director had focused on fulfilling what he set up instead of letting everything go for "the message" it could have been a real nice horror flick.

Shaky Shivers (2022)

Boring and fastidious...

[2/10 · 30 November 2023]

Not everybody can be "Tucker and Dale vs Evil" (which was a very good horror spoof, a classic), this one is boring and fastidious.

It start a bit with the same premise, a funny duo of idiots launched in a horrible situation and you have fun seeing them stumbling along.

The thing is that Tucker and Dale were funny and lovable, those two never made me crack a smile once... I'm sorry, the actresses were not bad actually, it was the writing or the direction, or both... the funny scenes were just not funny, and the whole film end up boring as hell.

The small budget and effects are not a problem, they go with the style, on that part is no problem, but I just end up not having laughed or smiled once, just bored to hell and asking myself why I bothered.

Renfield (2023)

Mindly amusing but too preachy...

[6/10 · 12 October 2023]

A nice gory comedy, mindly amusing when Aquafina is not on the screen, but slightly too preachy, it would have gain to dial down the moral lesson and give a bit more of Dracula (Nicolas Cage), who had far too less screen time as he should have.

But I must say that the biggest problem in the movie is Aquafina, I will not even say her character's name because Aquafina only knows how to play Aquafina, she has absolutely no range of acting because she simply doesn't act, she's herself from A to Z and she stick out like a sore thumb, particularly at the start of the movie.

So in conclusion, a decent comedy with gore and fun, if you can pass Aquafina...

Slotherhouse (2023)

A fun surprise.

[7/10 · 7 October 2023]

A pretty fun surprise to be honest, an original gore slasher with a furry killer, though it could have used a bit more gore and blood I think, but still a nice light horror movie with good quality and good acting.

You could be annoyed by the little bit of PETA moral lesson, but it's fairly light and only gently shoved down your throat from time to time, fairly dosed between a few furry murders. And honestly, with the dose of social justice crammed now a days in every movie, it's really fairly light, this movie is really made to entertain first and foremost.

A good time with friends, junk food and beers! ^^

Carnifex (2022)

Preachy modern horror.

[3/10 · 30 January 2023]

Not that bad, fairly well filmed and with pretty nice sight of the Australian bush, but it suffers from the modern need to preach you to death, to the point that it just get insufferable.

So first you have to go through literally half the movie getting preach mercilessly about ecology and the evil of human, 45 minutes of characters walking in the forest giving you life lessons and guilting you to oblivion. Without counting the also very modern need of writing every male character as a goofy caricature unable to do anything but be a joke (it could have passed fairly in this movie if not every male character were not just simply useless without exception).

Then comes the usual bad writing of lazy horror, with the final 30 minutes, where every character becomes dumb for no reason, running around in the dark and forgetting they are professional who should know how to handle a situation involving a predator. And of course the predator himself which literally a scene after being describe as an ambush and stalker predator (and behaving like one), suddenly decide to become stupid and pursue the main characters like any dumb generic predator.

In the end, like I said, nicely filmed, but lazy writing suffering from the modern tropes of having to preach you instead of entertaining you.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Simply a gem!

[10/10 · 3 November 2022]

Watch this movie not knowing what I was going to see, just went blind for the cast... and boy did it knock me on my ass! One of the best surprise I ever saw, a great western and a great horror movie, just proving you can mix any genre when you have good writing. This movie had everything to be right and did everything right, the cast of actors is just perfect, the acting is perfect, as well as the characters and their writing; the soundtrack and ambiance is perfect; visually stunning and with the good old dirt of the old west everywhere; and just plainly good writing and directing.

I know I sound like a fan boy, but this movie is just that, a gem, proving that when you have good writing, even a simple story can transport you, the characters writing and acting keep you always interested; the dark and hard old west ambiance keeps you on the edge; and the gruesome horror gives you the kick of adrenaline to finish you after the tension of the movie have build up enough.

Fair warning though, when I say gruesome horror, again, I'm not kidding, this movie is not for the faint of heart, most of the movie is great characters and acting and the horror is sparse, but when it comes, "It comes!" and doesn't dwell on shyness.

In conclusion, if you like western, horror or simply good movies, you can go blindly, be keep in mind that the movie is very graphic.

Slayers (2022)

Fun but really lame...

[3/10 · 21 October 2022]

It's a mildly fun movie to watch, but better do it with friends and beers (and no brain) because it's not really not good, it fail short on nearly everything and end up with such a week ending that it leaves you really disappointed. Thomas Jane is maybe the only thing good, but even him can't save a movie and you can feel that he knows it as he act the bare minimum (but still better than the rest), the gore is really weak for an horror movie with vampire and blood, the action laughable, the scenario tries too much for not so much in the end, all the influencer gimmick is just easy and weak, the sound and soundtrack are horrible.

In conclusion, it's bad, but kind of gently watchable and inoffensive, it's a mild horror movie with weak acting , writing and gore. So to watch half drunk for the laugh.

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Flat crap...

[2/10 · 17 October 2022]

It's just a flat crap that try to surf on every actual trend possible to get its audience and it just fall short on every other aspect, it's just superficial, two dimensional characters with only a stereotype stamp on their forehead to get its own viewer with some extra weak sexualization, as if they wanted to tell you "hey! Look it's sexy!" but didn't have the balls to assume it, so every sexualize moment feel as if it was written by a twelve year old. In the end it's just boring, every character is flat and you can't feel any empathy for any of them, which make their incoming doom and death flat as well. One thing fun though, it's the final joke at the end, which strangely end the movie as if it was laughing of it's own crappiness.

In conclusion, it's flat, joining a long line of poorly written horror flicks quickly forgotten.

Deadstream (2022)

A nice horror fun!

[7/10 · 16 October 2022]

A nice moment of horror fun, find foutage type of horror movie, which for me doesn't start with a plus, I generally hate Blair Witch type filmed movies, but this one was quite fun and well filmed. Joseph Winter, the main cast, was good in his role and play a good part of the fun of the movie. The movie play a lot on tropes, which comes generally with the comedy type of movie, using them as much as showing that they don't take the viewer for chum. For the horror part, it's pretty classic, with maybe a bit too much play on the jump scare, but at the same time it kind of goes with the theme of haunted house.

All in all, it's fun enough and good enough to give a good time, it's not revolutionary, but it's also not the basic horror flick.

It Came from Below (2021)

God awful sound!

[3/10 · 16 October 2022]

Pretty basic and wouldn't probably be that bad if we could actually hear anything. I don't know what they thought or did when they made this movie, but from start to finish you simply cant hear half of what the actors are saying over their background noises or soundtracks (the accent is not really helping either), and that's just plain stupid and exhausting. All this quickly make you not care about the plot after half an hour because you simply don't want to bother anymore trying to hear anything, leaving you just waiting for the killing and running to start, which reveal itself be pretty disappointing and weirdly done even more so when you can't understand the plot for the reason explained before.

So my advice if you still want to try it (you shouldn't, it's bad, but to each his own), you should look for some subtitles to be able to follow what the actor are actually saying.

The Revenge of Robert the Doll (2018)

Dreadful and pointless!

[1/10 · 15 April 2022]

Absolutely dreadful and pointless, everything is bad in this movie, the script, the actors, the makeup, the plot, the realization, nothing to save (well, costumes are not that bad, but it's kind of sad to be the only thing passable in a movie). Literally all the first half of the movie is useless and with absolutely no relevance to the second half, it could have been cut without losing anything to the plot.

Soldiers of the Damned (2015)

Unwatchable

[2/10 · 16 January 2022]

The violent shoving of the full unit of "nice" nazi who hate SS is just an horrendous joke that really brushed me the wrong way, and they insist so much on it that it just quickly become ridiculous. It's as if they couldn't assume to have nazi as "heroes" so they made them "nice" nazi so people don't feel guilty rooting for them.

And of course as always you have soldiers unable to keep their cool even while just walking in the wood and follow orders like, well, soldiers... That always annoy me to no end because it's just ridiculous.

Add the bad writing and bad acting and you have a perfect storm for a really bad movie, nothing to do with budget, it's just bad, with more budget it would just have been a bad movie with more special effects.

REC (2007)

So badly written!

[2/10 · 8 January 2022]

Interesting on paper, but this is so badly written that this is laughable and cringy... every character is a caricature and every situation is a "good" reason to get them worse and worse.

The problem with the movie is that they put you into a very realistic feel, but then write every character to be a stupid caricature of the worst you could see, every institution and members representing them have stupid and unrealistic behavior (meaning cops (inside and outside) and firefighters). And every event in the movie to keep pushing every character down hill, pushing them to become stupider and even more unrealistic.

This movie could be shown as a teaching tool to cops, firefighters, journalists and people everywhere how to not act during a crisis, because each decision they make is always the worst and stupidest one...

Hostile (I) (2017)

Bad on every level!

[2/10 · 21 December 2021]

Bad acting, the main actress is just not convincing, even more so during the post-apo scenes.

The half-assed flashback are just so ridiculously useless they take more than half the movie and could have been made more useful or intense wrapped up into two short scenes giving you only the necessary to illustrate an intense moment, but at this point they are just a basic romance with caricatural characters.

A lot of of stupid mistakes and badly written scenes and dialogues to fit what the director wanted, without thinking about simple logic.

A bad mix of two genres, horror and romance, for a boring movie.