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Reviews
Free Fall (2014)
Terrible acting with an even worse plot
I'll begin with a couple of positives for this film, and there aren't many. Firstly it is shot quite nicely its a nice film to watch and the soundtrack and editing is also pretty well done. That's it though.
At the beginning we see Jane (played by Sarah Butler) sparring with her partner in her house, doing a few punches and knees to a pad he is holding. I mention this because later in the film this is very important when dealing with assassins.
The entire first half of the film is set in Jane's office where she sits at a computer screen (touch screen may I add to make it look even cooler) pretty much the entire time where she discovers some fraudulent activity has taken place within the company she works for. Alarmed by this she spends even more time at her computer to make sure what she has discovered checks out.
She then informs her co-worker Ronald (played by Ian Gomez) about this discovery, who informs her they should take it higher to report it. However, in true plot twisting style, Ronald is in on this whole shenanigans and instead of reporting it, he calls in "the muscle", namely FRANK (D.B. Sweeney) to sort out this mess and shut her up.
Now FRANK being an assassin, is having an off day, not only does he let a woman beat him up so she can escape, he also misses her from about 10 yards with a gun containing seemingly infinite ammunition. Jane then gets in the elevator where she stays for the entirety of the second half of the film. The lift is disabled because Ronald presses one wrong button so Jane is trapped in there. Things turn worse for FRANK as he realises he cant get to her, so he kills the security guard and smashes Ronald's head in with a bar because he's being annoying. After another session of shooting at Jane in the elevator with another 15 bullets, FRANK misses with 14 of them, yes that's right, he still cant hit Jane even putting his gun in the elevator where she runs from side to side. He finally manages to hit her with one bullet, however this doesn't kill Jane, it merely grazes her and at the end of the film gives her magical powers. FRANK is now in serious trouble because his gun which contains about 50 rounds of ammo has finally ran out.
He realises he needs to call in the elevator expert to open the lift and get Jane out. The elevator guy arrives, FRANK lies to him saying Jane is saying crazy things because being locked in the elevator has made her go mad. The elevator guys believes FRANK and starts to get her out, he then sees an empty bullet shell on the top of the elevator and realises FRANK really is a naughty man. He tries to escape but FRANK having that assassin intuition realises he's on to him, FRANK then beats him to the ground and pulls out a knife, at this point you think its game over for the elevator guy but for some reason FRANK decides to stick the knife into the top of elevator guys shoulder that merely grazes him. Another fail for FRANK.
Finally the movie comes to that classic end battle between good and evil. Jane v FRANK on top of the elevator, where else. This is where the first scene I mentioned becomes really important. Frank the Assassin v Jane the slim beautiful office worker. No content right? right? WRONG.
In a amazing turn of events, Jane suddenly becomes MMA's Ronda Rousey, pummelling FRANK with punches, kicks, knees, at one point she even climbs the elevator pulley and does a spinning roundhouse to finally knock him off the top of the lift to fall to his imminent death. It is tense, you really do not know who will win the fight, but eventually after gasping for air it is Jane MMA champion who comes out on top.
A fitting end to a truly appalling movie.
Malcolm McDowell plays Thaddeus Gault, the owner of the company and the man behind the whole fraud thing and there's a half hearted sub plot going on between Jane's partner and her co-worker over a meal in a restaurant.
Terrible
Insidious (2010)
Dreadful, truly one of the worst
I don't really know where to begin with this movie. It has been one of those movies that I never got around to watching and then completely forgot all about it. Well recently I finally got around to watching this film and I have to say by the end I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
Laugh because the movie was absolutely shockingly atrocious, or cry because I'd wasted a part of my life watching this garbage that I will never get back.
20 minutes in to the film I thought that it was going to be really good, The story was set really nicely and then I was just waiting for all hell to break loose.
Well it didn't, what followed was an hour of utterly ludicrous loud noises aimed to scare the living daylights out of you by having a really low volume for the dialogue and then hitting you with 1000 decibels of noise. It got old very very very quickly. At first I thought it was just me imagining noises being more loud than usual in a horror film, but I realised that was the only weapon this film had up its sleeve. The storyline turned into something that even a few days later I still chuckle to myself about. The effects were some of the worst seen in film since the 70's and the scary things in the film were so terrible they actually made you laugh.
Basically the entire film was over an hour of trying to deafen you by playing over the top loud noises when something scary was supposed to be happening and masking the fact that what you were actually seeing was not scary but funny. If you play the supposedly scary parts of this film without the sound you will literally burst into laughter about what you are seeing.
People are reactionary on here and review things straight after they see the movie which is understandable. However, it has been a few days since I watched this film, so I have had time to think and evaluate this movie with a clear mind and I can genuinely say this was one of the worst horror movies I have ever seen, and one of the worst movies in general, I truly don't understand the hype surrounding this film on here and how well regarded it is and the director.
I have read the second installment of this joke film follows the same concept of loud noises to create cheap scares so I will definitely give that one a miss, how they can make 3 of these things says everything about Hollywood and $$$$.
Annabelle (2014)
Outrageous this only has 5.7 rating, brilliant horror.
I have recently gone through a phase of watching a few horror movies that I never got around to watching, which includes Insidious 1 and the Conjuring.
I am lost for words how anyone can rate Insidious as a brilliant horror movie, I guess it is a sign of the times that putting excruciatingly loud noises when something supposedly scary is on the screen into a film means it is terrifying. That is Insidious all the way through, it is not scary at all, it is a cheap and pathetic trick to scare the audience, you watch those scenes without the sound and they are laughable, Insidious is a joke film yet scores so highly on here because loud noises scare people.
I thought the Conjuring was much better than Insidious but still both do not come close to Annabelle. John Leonetti did a better job with this film than James Wan could ever have dreamed of doing.
The tension created without the need for outrageously loud bangs sets this film apart from all the tiresome and clichéd films that have come out recently. The sewing machine scenes, the oven scene and the lift scene alone created more tension and horror than any loud noise can create, it was executed perfectly. Even the scenes where nothing happened but you were expecting them to were done perfectly.
Sure the film isn't perfect, but as a horror it is beautifully paced and the tension is built up brilliantly. It is easily one of the better horror movies I have seen in the last 5 years. I do not usually watch lots of American horror films because I find them all very similar, similar stories, similar scare tactics so I tend to watch more Korean, Japanese and French horrors but I was pleasantly and massively surprised with how well this movie was done.
I would highly recommend this movie to anyone and I put it way above the horror movie comparisons on here such as Insidious and Conjuring, its not even close, this is way better. The fact this film has such a low score really says to me either there is something really dodgy going on with IMDb film ratings or people really do have no taste in real horror movies only the cheesy and ridiculous loud noise/cheap scare ones that are in abundance these days.