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Reviews
A Classic Horror Story (2021)
Waste of time.
There are many classic Italian horror movies you could watch. This is not one of them. I went in hoping for a giallo homage but instead got a derivative boring slog. Go watch a Lucio Fulci film instead.
Xtro (1982)
Great fun!
Thoroughly entertaining! The creature design is original, and the effects show a creative use of the limited budget. If you like low budget sci-fi schlock, this is one of the most entertaining ones out there.
The Curse of Halloween Jack (2019)
Lazy Halloween cashgrab.
This movie is boring and dumb, but also baffling. Set in Dunwich, Britainmerica, it mostly serves to remind viewers of other, better movies about towns haunted by the memory of a halloween murder spree. The movie refers to the Halloween series, in a failed attempt to make itself look like an homage, rather than an unambitious cynical cashgrab. The characters are flat, the costume of the murderer looks bad and the effects used on his voice are corny. Nobody is good at their job or basic decision making. The "terrifying Jim Jones style cult" is neither terrifying nor Jim Jones like, it's just silly, though admittedly pretty based apart from the murdering the world thing. The police can orchestrate a giant occult coverup, but lack peripheral vision or spacial awareness. The soon-to-be victim teens are utterly forgettable and interchangable, and the deep dark secret that is hinted at is predictable and lame. No good kills, terrible effects, terrible acting, but a wide variety of inconsistent accents. Watch this if you want to feel good about Halloween 5 by comparison.
La noche de los mil gatos (1972)
Not nearly enough cats.
Apart from not delivering on the promise of 1000 cats, this movie also neglects to give us plot, pacing, or continuity. A good third of the movie is helicopter flights, another third is the same clips of about 30 cats played over and over again. The remaining third is the actual movie, but the plot still manages to drag somehow. The only thing that made watching this movie somewhat tolerable was that the copy I watched had the audiotracks edited to evade copyright detection. So the villian sounded like Xerxes from 300. I recommend watching cat people (1942) instead.
Mirage (1990)
As empty and boring as the desert it was filmed in.
The premise of this movie sounds pretty good. A bunch of desperate people being hunted in a hostile landscape with nowhere to hide. Unfortunately, nothing comes of it. All of the characters are jerks. And not in an interesting way, where you're eager to discover their inner demons or past traumas. They're just boring and obnoxious. And this wouldn't be so bad if the movie didn't insist on spending an excruciating amount of time with them. I think this is supposed to be character developement, but there's nothing there to develop.
The killer is barely in the movie. And when he is, he is not scary or menacing or compelling. He's just kind of dorky. He keeps sneaking up on the protagonists in a flat, empty landscape. They try to imply there's something supernatural going on, but this is never really explored. There's several "dream" fakeouts, the kills are unremarkable, and most of the deaths are the result of the character's stupidity rather than the actioons of the killer. The editing is confusing, and bits of the story that would make the plot easier to follow are just skipped over in favour of the "teens" running around and goofing off.
The reveal at the end is not foreshadowed in the movie in any way. But rather than this making it a surprising or interesting twist, it just feels tacked on. Basically the killer is a random incel wandering the desert rambling out his manifesto and killing attractive people who wander over there to make out. This seems to happen surprisingly often. The main girl fumbles through several opportunities to kill him, finally lucking into it more than anything.
The movie tries to hint that Crissy, the final girl, was the killer all along. But the rest of the story makes it pretty clear that wouldn' make sense.. It's a lazy, dumb end to a lazy dumb movie. Watch The Hitcher instead, you'll have a better time.
Pentagram (2019)
Worse than my low expectations.
The most entertaining thing about this movie is watching 30-something British people pretending to be American teenagers. Otherwise it's just 4 unengaging idiots messing aimlessly about. What if the sactifice scene from "the convent" was played straight and stretched out into an entire movie? The demon effects are lame, the plotholes are enormous, and none of these smartphone owning "teenagers" ever think of googling anything. A giant waste of time and dignity.
The Dwelling (1993)
Very boring
This movie isn't even "so bad it's good." It's just terrible. The acting is bland, the only actual actor being the guy who played Robin back in the 60s. And he looks embarrassed to be here. The cult-related content is more of an afterthought. The vast majority of the movie deals with our incredibly bland lead handling the minutia of moving to a new city. The effects are subpar, the soundtrack is almost comically dramatic stock music. LA has never looked emptier or less exciting, the one note of accidental comedy being the movie's idea of an "underground nightclub."
Towards the end the female lead is possessed by a demon, but it's exactly the kind of lame, low rent demon you'd expect from a cult that uses a shitty apartment as their temple.
Watch "night of the demons" instead.
Follow Me (2020)
Somebody managed to make a less realistic Hostel.
This movie is surprisingly boring. It's clearly inspired by Hostel, with it's premise of young Americans going to the former USSR looking for adventure, and being captured by sinister Europeans. And like with Hostel, the protagonists are utterly unlikeable. But this movie has more plotholes, less interesting gore, and far weaker effects. The acting isn't great, but the cast isn't given much to work with. Watch it if you're streaming it, but not worth paying for.