horror-movies

All posts tagged horror-movies

Speak No Evil

Posted by cat2002116 on September 23, 2024
Posted in: Horror, Movies, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I don’t think I’ve seen the original Speak No Evil, but I was intrigued by this one…especially as I really like James McAvoy as an actor. And he definitely did not disappoint in this movie.

I will say that this movie was basically what you see on the tin…or, rather, what you see in the trailer. A couple with their daughter meet another couple with their son while on holiday, and the couple with their son invite the other couple and their daughter to come on holiday with them. Everything seems fairly normal and straightforward, right?

Well…no. Because once Ben and Louise with their daughter Agnes go to visit Paddy and Ciara and their son Ant, things begin to take a more sinister turn. It starts off as fairly innocent enough, with Paddy giving Louise (who’s already stated she’s a vegetarian) some meat to try, and the sheets on the bed Ben and Louise are given having obvious stains on them. These are both fairly mild things when taken alone, but it doesn’t take long before the situation begins to escalate.

I did feel that the tension built really well in this movie. I liked Louise, and even if I thought Ben was kind of weak at times, the two of them had a depth to their relationship that came across really well. I’m not sure if this was deliberate, but it definitely felt like there was some sexual tension between Paddy and Ben. It would have been good if that had been explored a little bit more, as if Ben had been struggling with his sexuality, that would have added more depth to his character, in my opinion.

I didn’t mind the children characters so much, but I did find Agnes to be slightly irritating at times. For instance, I can understand her anxiety, but her reaction of kicking the back of the seat in the car that nearly resulted in a crash absolutely should have been addressed. I also felt that, for her age, she didn’t seem to pick up on any of the clues Ant was giving her that something was seriously wrong between him and his parents. Given that she had enough presence of mind to fake her period when she finally realised something was wrong, the only reason I can think that she didn’t realise something was wrong was because her character was dumbed down. Really, all of them were dumbed down.

I felt that this movie worked pretty well as an action movie, and there were some great cat and mouse scenes towards the end of the movie. But as I said at the beginning of this review, there were no real surprises in this movie. There are no twists and turns, but the actors and the characters they portray definitely make this movie worth watching, in my opinion.

AFRAID

Posted by cat2002116 on September 15, 2024
Posted in: Horror, Movies, Reviews, Science Fiction. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I didn’t actually know much about this movie going into it. I knew it was a horror movie, of course, but I hadn’t seen any trailers of the movie, so I didn’t have any expectations walking into this movie.

I was a bit confused by the opening scene of the movie, as it was clearly supposed to be a computer game, but it was a really poorly made one. Considering what later happened in the movie and that it was apparently set in the modern day…and possibly even later in the future…I was seriously questioning why the computer graphics in the game were so bad.

I did feel that this movie had a lot of potential that, sadly, didn’t come to fruition. It was very slow-moving for most of the movie, and while AIA was an interesting concept…especially considering the existence of Alexa and Cortana and Siri…she just didn’t seem to be as much of a threat as she could have been.

The opening scene, after the surprisingly bad computer graphics, did have some potential. AIA talking to the little girl, telling her that her parents were going to get rid of her, was a pretty scary concept…and the mother trying to find her daughter who’d suddenly disappeared was a good way of building up tension right at the beginning. Unfortunately, that tension was absent throughout most of the rest of the movie.

I felt that this movie would have worked better as a family movie, rather than a horror movie. The relationship between Curtis and Meredith was quite sweet, even though I empathised with Meredith feeling like all she was now was ‘Mom’. I could understand why she found AIA so helpful at first, but the problem was that she went from suspicious, to accepting, to outright rejecting…and it just didn’t allow me to relate to the character all that well. I also really liked the children, but…they didn’t feel like siblings at all. There were hardly any interactions between Iris, Preston or Cal. I know there was the age difference, but most siblings are still going to interact with each other. The three of them just felt like strangers to each other.

Really, for most of the movie, I was questioning…why? Why was AIA considered such a problem? AIA didn’t do anything outwardly suspicious. Yes, as a viewer, I could see that there were situations where AIA was problematic, like when she showed Preston the swatting videos. However, these weren’t shown to the characters, so…why was Curtis so suspicious of everything? Really, it didn’t feel realistic…even when having to suspend my disbelief of a horror movie anyway.

To be honest, this movie would have done a much better job if it had been simply about a family dealing with an AI without the added elements of horror. There was so much this movie could have done, but it was slow-moving, a short movie, and wasn’t actually that scary. I never actually felt like the characters were in any real danger.

If you’re looking for a horror movie, I wouldn’t recommend watching this movie. It definitely gives off more family vibes. Sadly, it was another disappointing horror.

Longlegs

Posted by cat2002116 on July 21, 2024
Posted in: Horror, Movies, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 Comment


So…from a fairly good horror movie to one that, in my opinion, was nowhere near as good as it could have been.

Okay, so this movie was one that I booked in to see at the cinema without knowing anything about it other than it being a horror movie. After I booked it, YouTube then decided to play a trailer for the movie while I was watching a video…and the trailer was really creepy and immediately spiked my interest.

Unfortunately, this was a case of the movie not living up to its potential.

I really struggled to connect to Lee as a character. I had no idea why she’d joined the FBI in the first place…and it was extremely confusing why they had a whole setup to determine psychic abilities. There really wasn’t enough worldbuilding to set up why Lee’s superiors would assume that her intuition would indicate psychic ability.

I struggled a lot with my suspension of disbelief; not just because of the aforementioned ‘she must be psychic!’ but also because it felt like the movie didn’t make a whole lot of sense as a whole. Lee is told about ten cases and spends a whole montage listening to 911 calls and looking at crime scene photos…and when she’s asked to give a report on what she’s learned, she says something along the lines of, ‘Two of the families had shotguns in the house. Eight used knives. And one had a hammer.” And this number added up to eleven. Not ten. There is an eleventh crime scene found, but no one mentions that she’s identified eleven cases and not ten? The series Medium did a far better job when the main character talks about a third victim and it turns out one of the murdered women was pregnant.

Speaking of the FBI, this line made me quite literally roll my eyes: ‘The father’s wounds appear to be self-inflicted, but we can’t be sure until we’re sure.’ I just…huh? What happened to Forensics? CSI? They were on the scene; I saw the jacket saying CSI!

One thing I found strange about this movie was the use of the camera angles. When Lee was talking to Ruth, and later to Carrie Ann, the camera just showed her face and then the face of the person she was talking to. It felt kind of like the filming of the two people hadn’t even taken place in the same location, as there were hardly any scenes showing them in the same shot. I figured Lee and Carrie Ann were seated opposite each other, but both of them were looking to the side, so…who knows?

I was also really disappointed in the titular character of this movie, played by Nicolas Cage. Especially recently, I’ve found that Cage’s acting is very over the top…and while that worked in Renfield and Dream Scenario, it really pulled me out of the movie in this case. Not that that was hard to do.

Sadly, the only good thing I can say about this movie…in my opinion…is that the trailer was pretty good. And that’s it. Unfortunately, the movie did not live up to my expectations…and I was pretty bored throughout.

I wouldn’t recommend watching this movie, which is a shame, because it looked like it was going to be a really good, scary supernatural horror.

The Strangers Chapter 1

Posted by cat2002116 on June 9, 2024
Posted in: Horror, Movies, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Okay, so…horror movie. No one’s surprised, right? I think by now, the majority of people who know me, or follow my blog, know that horror movies are my bread and butter of film genre.

I watched the first Strangers movie, which was actually really creepy and did really well at having the masked strangers just appear in the house, without drawing any attention to that. I felt that this movie tried to do something very similar, but unfortunately, it didn’t do anything different to the original home invasion movie, so there was very little to make it stand out from its predecessor.

I did like Ryan and Maya’s relationship, although a lot of the movie very much felt like a stereotypical horror where the main characters end up in a small town that just has a weird, almost creepy feel to it. Honestly, if I was in that position, I wouldn’t be staying in an airbnb right in the middle of the woods. And the moment someone started banging on the door, I would have been calling the police…because no one who has good intentions is going to be out in the middle of the woods at that time of night.

I originally thought that Ryan having asthma and needing to use an inhaler was a nice touch…but it didn’t really seem to have an impact on him throughout the movie. Okay, there was one cool scene where he used a bottle to breathe into and then used that sound to get the upper hand…but unfortunately, it was fairly obvious how the movie was going to end. Even if I hadn’t seen the previous movies in the franchise, the trailer gave away a lot of what was going to happen throughout.

I was somewhat disappointed because I thought the movie was going to show a bit more about the Strangers and how they interacted with each other. Yes, the scariest thing about them is that there’s no reason why they’re going on killing sprees, but I do think there could have been subtle ways for their personalities to come through.

On the whole, I really don’t think there was much to make this movie stand out from the previous two in the franchise. Most of what happened in the movie had already been done in the previous two movies, and it was fairly obvious where the movie was going. I can’t really say it added a whole lot to the franchise, to be honest.

Imaginary

Posted by cat2002116 on March 22, 2024
Posted in: Horror, Movies, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Obviously, I enjoy horror movies. Anyone who knows me is aware of that by now. Of course, it’s also been difficult to find horror movies that are actually good, as the majority of them don’t have really developed characters and just seem to care about the shock value rather than having storylines and characters it’s easy to care about. So with that thought in mind, my expectations going into this movie were quite low.

I have to say that this movie was better than I was expecting it to be. I did like Jessica as a character, although there wasn’t much revealed about her even by the end of the movie. I guess that did make sense, given that she didn’t have many memories of her childhood.

I will say that, although Jessica obviously cared deeply about her stepdaughters, she did make a couple of major mistakes. For instance, she took a work phone call when she was supposed to be playing hide and seek with Alice. Then, later, she deliberately embarrasses Taylor by telling a guy she might be interested in that Taylor isn’t 18 yet…and he should take her to the mall. Sorry, but despite Jessica trying to claim it was just a joke, it was one of the worst things to do if she really wanted to bond with her stepdaughters.

I will say that one of the things I felt this movie did well was to build up to the danger involving Chauncey. Using Alice’s voice for the bear was an interesting idea, as it sounded like she was talking to herself/doing the bear’s voice, at least until things took a more sinister turn.

The idea of the ‘scavenger hunt’ was an interesting idea, especially as it started out as a fairly innocent list before becoming much darker. In that respect, I guess it was very similar to the rest of the film: everything started out innocent enough, but then it became much darker as the movie progressed.

It wasn’t really a surprise that Jessica had a history with Chauncey, as that was obvious from the very start of the movie. And while the movie did have elements of psychological horror, along with the usual jump scares, I appreciated the fact that there was little in the way of gore and strong bloody violence, as those are far too overused in horror, to the point of becoming desensitised to it.

On the whole, I will say this movie was a fairly entertaining one. I wouldn’t say I’d get anything from watching it again, but if you like horror movies, I would say that it’s worth watching if you’re on the fence.