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Reviews
Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls (2023)
You'll either love it or hate it but if comedy horror is your niche, you'll probably love it
There is a specific level of silly and satirical that a good horror comedy has to hit while still maintaining a good enough storyline for there to be stakes and characters fleshed out enough for you to care about them. It can be a difficult tightrope to walk.
This hits that level right on the mark. That being said, it's not for everyone. It's for the kind of audience that quotes viva la dirt league skits. If your friends just look at you funny when you do this and enjoyed the latest disney star wars shows, this movie probably isn't for them.
The only reason that I'm only giving it 9/10 is that I felt that the ending was rushed and seemed fairly anticlimactic compared to the buildup toward it. There isn't anything specific I can put my finger on, but it just had a different feel than the rest of the movie, as if the ending fell victim to a budget or time constraint.
This movie is an excellent addition to its genre and I hope you are in the group of people who enjoy it.
Evil Dead Rise (2023)
Interesting direction if done intentionally.
The lighting, special effects, and pacing were pretty well done.
The manner in which they created isolation in a city that mimicked the isolation of a cabin in the woods through trapping them on an upper floor of an apartment building was a decent direction to take.
The thing that confused me was that the characters were written so poorly that not only was I apathetic to their plight, but I was actually rooting for the demons to inflict as much pain and anguish upon them as possible. Was that a creative direction, or a failure? If actually a creative direction, I enjoyed the satisfaction of watching the demon do it's thing upon them and maybe should give it a higher rating, but I think that might be giving them too much credit.
That being said, there were a lot of contrivances that itched the brain as so improbable that they just came off as silly. The two most ridiculous being the perfect little hole that the earthquake made which enticed the boy brat to find and steal the book of the dead. That and the aunt being a guitar tech, which evidently meant that she was an electrical engineer that could MacGyver a record player to run on batteries when there was no power as easily as brushing her teeth in the morning.
In summation, it's a standard fun bloody gore ride but if you're looking for something more, you probably won't find it in this movie.