Five Nights at Freddy’s

So, after The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) reached the astounding heights (for a video game film) of being basically ok, the bar has been raised for Five Nights at Freddy’s.

A bar which it sorta, kinda mostly of cleared.

Because it’s mostly ok. I won’t watch it again because Willy’s Wonderland (2021) exists and watching Nicholas Cage Cage out on possessed killer robots beats watching Josh Hutcherson Hutcherson out on killer robots.

Full disclosure before we properly get going – I’ve never played any of the Five Nights at Freddys games, I’ve never seen a let’s play or even so far as watched a trailer so any nods or easter eggs would have gone straight over my head.

However, strictly as a film I found it slightly confused as to what it wants to be, constrained by its age rating with a soggy mid-section and somehow strangely bland despite having very interesting ideas. It’s also not scary. Which is kind of an issue for a so-called horror film.

On paper the plots fairly simple –   A troubled security guard begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and soon realises that things may not be as they appear. He’s also dealing with the fact that he’s trying to raise a younger sister and keep her out of the clutches of his money-grubbing aunt and trying to climb inside his head so that he can try to solve the mystery of who kidnapped his brother when he was a child because he thinks he may have forgotten a key detail which can lead to justice.

Does that sound like a lot for a film about hiding from killer animatronics?

Because it’s a lot.

I mean they do try to weave them together but they don’t really gel and the payoff seems kind of “We have twenty minutes until this script needs to be submitted so wrap it up quickly!” Either that or they realised that the ninety minutes mark had been passed and they needed to get this over with because they were eighty-nine and a half minutes past the tik-tok generations attention span.

Plus the casting isn’t great.

I know that’s not the main draw of a film based on a video game but the lump of playdough trying it’s hardest to convince us that it’s a traumatised young man who can barely hold down a minimum wage job in order to keep a roof over his and his sister’s head. I mean I can see it working with a better actor but if wishes were horses, then fools would ride.

Also, the age rating constrains what this film feels like it wants to do with itself. Rated 12a this film feels constrained by that. Not that a 12a rated film can’t be scary – Jaws is rated PG as is Watership Down – it got upgraded from a U for reasons that I can’t even begin to understand.  But here? It feels like there’s a directors cut out there with roughly 90 seconds of extra footage that wouldn’t look out of place in a Saw movie.

There’s some other bits and bob’s that I didn’t quite get on with as well. I wasn’t quite sure how fast or how stealthy the robots were supposed to be and whilst I get that the clues in the title, maybe three nights at Freddys would have been enough to get the films point across.

It’s not all bad though, the robots are practical which I liked and there were some moments where thought “This is it, now were getting going.” Only it never quite happens.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with Five Nights at Freddys, but there’s not much right with it either. It’s baby’s first horror movie which can work in some circumstances but once it gets out into the world, I can’t see it having much of a shelf life.

If you want something tepid to keep your eight-year-old happy which won’t do much harm to you then yeah, this will do.

But that’s all it is.

Horror as this will do.

Just go watch Willys Wonderland.

My Score- If Nothing Else

Mad God Film Review

Time was I would say, before watching something that had the smell of the bottom ten about it or starred James Corden “You don’t scare me, I’ve seen Cats.”

I have now updated this to you “You don’t scare me – I’ve seen Mad God!” Before sitting in a corner sucking my thumb and rocking backwards and forwards because I’ve just remembered that Mad God exists and by film is that a tough load to bear.

I mean maybe it’s one too many jokes about how writer, director, cinematographer… Oh film, this should have tripped my passion project alarm long before I clicked play but I just got so carried away with watching someone’s thirty year passion project that I chose to go in blind.

So, like I was saying before I got side-tracked, this film was made by legendary special effects guy Phil Tippet, who –apart from having to deal with decades of jokes about being the Dinosaur Supervisor in Jurassic Park has worked on such little films as the original Star Wars trilogy, Starship Troopers, the original Robocop and so, so much more.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he’s either the second or best stop-motion artist of all time behind Ray Harryhausen and in a close-run race with Nick Park of Wallace and Gromit fame for the silver medal depending on my mood.

But, enough preamble, let’s get onto Mad God, the reason that we’re all here.

It’s horrific.

Not in the this is awful kind of way that gets movies into IMDB’s bottom 100, but horrific as in I physically couldn’t finish this film in one sitting. I got to appoint, realised I’d hit my limits and physically had to stop the film because I’d had enough.

I went back, I finished it but this film is just bleak, miserable, hopeless existential horror. Set in a world without anything even beginning to resemble even the beginnings of hope or redemption we… erm…. We watch things do things.

I mean most of those things are horribly murdering, torturing, eating or pursuing other things but there are most definitely, things doing things in this movie. We, whilst trying to keep down our dinners follow an assassin who is trying to stay alive long enough to blow the whole thing up and good luck to him.

Look, the films going for a whole no dialogue thing which is fine, I didn’t need a Shakespearean sonnet or epic monologue about why this lone assassin is trying to blow this whole place to somewhere slightly less depressing like Milton Keynes, but something to set the scene. Something to show that his mission is important enough that he keeps refusing to help the beings being murdered, tortured, eaten or pursued. But we never get that. He’s got his mission and that’s all he’s going to do.

Which, is this films main weakness, the first half is a relentlessly horrifying assault on the senses, again and again we see things that would be the traumatic height of any other film but here? After a while they just become part of the landscape. Here’s something else being horribly murdered, here’s something else that’s proof there’s no such thing as loving God being horribly tortured or torturing something else for no reason that I could work out.

Maybe it’s me, maybe I’ve taken one too  many Marvel films to the head to understand this work of sheer genius but if I’m watching something and I keep checking to see how long there’s left then I guess I’m out. I mean yes, it’s only 83 minutes long but Wallace and Gromit: The Curst of there were-rabbit is only 85 and that actually is a masterpiece.

Oh, and I would say it all falls apart in the last fifteen minutes but it wasn’t all that there to begin with and those visuals were pretty cool. They didn’t fit with the tone of the first hour but it was nice to know that there was someone out there on as many drugs as I wanted to be.

Look, you can see in every frame that this is a labour of love, some of the images will stay with me forever- whether I want them to or not but that’s neither here nor there. Mad God is a cinematic endurance test that gets boring and that’s it. There’s nothing to hang onto. Nothing to root for or against. It’s got some cool moments and character designs but no actual characters or anything to turn this moments into a film.  

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to find a priest and reconsider my life choices.

My Score- If Nothing Else

Halloween Ends Film Review

So that happened.

Ok, so Halloween Ends is the 13^th film in the Halloween franchise which should have been a straight one and done film back in the 70’s about a silent masked killer slaughtering a bunch of teenagers (who suffer from a terrible allergy to clothes) before probably being shot by Earnst Stavro Blofeld.

It’s kept pottering along with varying degrees of quality for the last forty years and has now allegedly finished with Halloween Ends. And if you think it’s going to be the final Halloween film, then I have a bridge that I’d love to sell you.

And it’s definitely a finish of sorts.

It’s not the finish that I would have gone with, but it’s got some interesting ideas. It doesn’t pull any of them off but they are interesting.

We pick up four years after the worst horror film ever theatrically released and Laurie Stroud has decided to become a Stepford wife despite knowing that The Shape is still out there and liable to return at any minute but whatever. There’s also an interesting thread about how the fear of his return has infected the town, making it a place full of anger, fear and violence where every murder is suspected to be by his hand. Where Laurie is held at fault because she ‘encouraged’ and ‘annoyed’ him.

Which is a really, really interesting idea. It just doesn’t really seem to go anywhere beyond Laurie occasionally getting a nasty comment from someone.

As for The Shape themselves, they.. don’t really seem to do anything. They don’t even seem to want to kill people which to me seems a bit off but whatever, given five minutes any competent screenwriter could have removed him completely from the narrative. Which I actually think might have actually served the story better now I think about it. But that’s neither here nor there.

It’s the films main thread which I think holds the most promise as we witness the decline of an innocent, who, almost through no fault of their own falls into becoming almost The Shapes apprentice which is an amazing idea and builds upon the themes established in the first two movies, but at the same time somehow manages to fall flatter than a jelly baby after an argument with a steamroller.

Mostly its because the love story he’s given as a sort of hope at redemption I just didn’t buy for a single, solitary second. We see him meet his partner and they fall in love quicker than a Disney couple. If it had been an already established relationship, him already struggling with is dark side then I think that it would have been a much better and deeper story.

But you didn’t come to Halloween Ends to get a hint as to how much better that unwatchable Joker film could have been if had been written by someone with talent and not just some talentless hack trying to remake Taxi Driver. You came here for violence and scares and I’ve got one of those.

Quite nicely, this film takes the time to sort of establish it’s killers victims so we at least understand why they have to die horrible deaths from the point of view of our killer but it’s just not scary in the slightest. There was no dread, no slow build up, this film was in such a mess that there wasn’t any time for that. It was just kill and then back to whatever thread the film felt like following at that moment in time.

And I get why people are mad at this film, we want Halloween to be the film where a Shape for no seeming rhyme or reason kills loads of people in graphically different ways but that’s been done 11 other times and this is at least trying something different. It’s not quite pulling it off, it’s a mess with some good ideas, with some kills that could have been good but there was no tension or dread leading up to it, so it’s all just surface level.

I won’t be watching this again when the unsurpassable original is right there but I can appreciate this film for trying something different than shape gets it’s steps in whilst slaughtering teens. It just didn’t work.

That’s all.

My Score – Skip It

Halloween Kills Film Review

MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING- I CAN’T REVIEW THIS THING WITHOUT SPOLING IT.

CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.

MY SCORE- BOMB

READ ON AT OWN RISK.

I’m just going to come out and say it. Halloween (1978) should have been a one and done slasher flick there was no storytelling need to return to Haddonfield but since the franchise is ridiculously profitable (the original made 47 million at the box office of the time- roughly 150 million in todays money – not bad off of a budget of 300’000 dollars) we have to do this dance again, and again and again.

And sooner or later you get to something like Halloween Kills which is the worst type of film there is. Not a terrible film, not a boring film, not a film with no plot or anything else that normally makes critics get out their sharpest pen and most acidic ink but the kind of film that doesn’t need to exist. Where nothing is set up and nothing is achieved. Nobody grows or learns or develops in any way shape or form.

In fact, so little happens in this film that you could condense it into the opening montage of the next one- Halloween, We’re Still Beating The Dead Horse and nothing would have changed. There was no emotion behind this film. I didn’t feel or care for anything or anyone, it was just kill after kill after kill to the point where it was just getting silly towards the end. Michael Myers was never in any danger of being stopped or even mildly inconvenienced by the legions of redshirts that appear to be united by some of demented belief that if they keep letting kill them he’s eventually going to get tired and go for a lie down. Especially since he now seems to have an endurance/healing factor that would make wolverine blush.

And since Michael Myers was never in any danger of being stopped, the film wasn’t scary. Myers is going up against a group of firemen? All gone. An army of vigilantes who keep declaring that “Evil Dies Tonight”? He’ll huff and puff and blow them all down. The marketing seems determined to let me know that this film has the highest on-screen body count in horror history, but so what? Horror isn’t about the quantity of the kills, it’s about the quality. This guy can slice people up like a student going through free shots but it’s just a high body count just grows very boring very quickly.

It’s not what I paid my money for and not what I’m after in this film.

Also, it doesn’t help that out of all the deaths in this film, the only one I’m going to remember is one of the most hysterical deaths I think I’ve seen in many a moon. I mean it felt like it was out of one of those ghastly Scary Movie films that infected cinema about a decade ago and ruined parody films forever. Except here it was so out of place and confusing. It also doesn’t help that this seems to be the only small town in America where no-one seems to own a gun.

But away from the endless slaughter of pointless redshirts, we find that actually, there are some interesting ideas. The idea of a town reacting to having such a monster in it’s midst, about the law breaking down in pursuit of anger and fear, as the loudest voice is followed with no regards to whether it’s leading people into help or harm. The way utterly horrifying events can be downgraded into stories to scare children with, thus removing them from their disturbing origins.

And also, what few characters get even the slightest development wind up dead. Laurie Strode doesn’t adapt, push or evolve in any way, shape or form. Myers certainly doesn’t and everyone else is just there to die.

Ok, look I said I’d try to get away from the death scenes and I am trying, really, truly I am. It’s jus that what few good ideas this film has, the few character’s that I wanted to see stick around are just crushed under the relentless march of death. This is the middle film of a trilogy and it feels like it. But if you believe it’s the last gasp of this particular franchise then I’ll have what your having.

There’s just this sense of going through the motions, but no-one is being moved into a new position for the big finale. I was bored, my wife (who’d never seen one of these films before) was simply confused. And bored. I mean setting a horror film 5 minutes after the last one finished is an amazing idea! The joy of surviving and vanquishing evil being replaced by the horror and dread as you find out that you failed. It survived. It’s still coming for you. The mental and physical exhaustion, combined with your inevitable wounds playing into a sequel that takes place the same night that you thought you’d finally claimed victory.

Except that doesn’t happen here.

Film, you could have removed Myers from this film completely, made him only a myth, a monster perhaps glimpsed by scared, excited, terrified people here and there in shadows and moonlight, as the town rips itself apart, innocent people being killed in the crossfire, each death heightening the fear and paranoia as some confess to their lethal mistakes and others blame the bogyman meaning that no-one is sure where or if he is, forcing innocent people to corrupt themselves, changing their lives forever. I mean, that film is sort of in there, it’s just every fifteen minutes or so, Myers wanders on-screen kills another few people without breaking a sweat and the toddles off again for a Mars bar and a Red Bull and we have to start building the tension up again from nothing.

I mean, what else is there to say? Halloween Kills has some interesting ideas but they get disrupted by this films desperate attempt to maintain the status quo, and it doesn’t so much end as it just sort of…. stops as if it’s decided that 105 minutes is long enough and it’s got other, better things to do (it doesn’t, this film should be 90-95 minutes at most.)

Oh, and did I mention that despite having one of the most recognizable and iconic themes in arguably all of cinema, this film barely uses it? Seriously, this thing misses more open goals then Keir Starmer.

So yeah, Halloween Kills, if your in the mood to watch a load of forgettable, irrelevant idiots try to defeat a blender by jumping into it for utterly pointless reasons then go for it, but if your after a horror film which is actually scary (and being a bit of a boring old traditionalist it’s something I insist upon them being.) Then go and watch the unimpeachable original.

I’ll catch you next time.

My Score Bomb

Night of the Animated Dead Film Review

What the ever-loving film is this?

I genuinely have no idea if this, this… thing is a bad joke, a cash grab, or a drunken bet that got of of control and into the real world. I mean, I’d say that it’s a rights retention project like the 1994 Fantastic Four movie (still the least awful Fantastic Four movie ever made btw) except that 1968’s Night of the Living Dead (arguably the most influential horror film ever made). Is, because of… legal… things is in the public domain. That means that anyone can adapt, remake, or reimagine it with absolutely no payment to the studio, creator, or his estate. So, go nuts low budget filmmakers (N.B. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. Please don’t come after me if anything happens with your remake.)

And whilst I have no issue with people remaking classic or indeed any other film if they can put some kind of unique or new spin or interpretation on the source material but there’s none of that here. There’s nothing… here really.

Focus.

I need to focus.

I’m just so very, very confused. I mean, Night of the Living Dead is arguably the most influential horror film ever made as George A Romero reimagined an aspect of Caribbean folklore to what we understand as zombies today i.e. cannibalistic resurrected corpses who can infect you through biting assuming you don’t get turned into lunch, are relatively easy to defeat in single combat but travel in hordes and can seemingly only be killed by shooting them in the head or destroying the brain.

It’s still influential today and whilst some parts of it haven’t aged terribly well, it’s actually a pretty good flick and sadly it’s message and social commentary are still as relevant today as it ever was. And probably will be for many years.

And the people behind this seem to know that because they haven’t done anything, and I mean anything to improve the film, modernise it or put their own spin on the material, instead they’ve done… nothing to improve on the film (a pretty thankless task as it’s pretty much a perfect zombie movie even today) by say updating some of the dialogue and character’s instead they’ve pretty much done a shot for shot remake which is twenty minutes shorter than the original for reasons I can only attribute to some small amount of mercy from whatever twisted God aloud allowed this to leave whatever dusty shelf it should have rotted on for eternity.

Now, this film isn’t a terrible unwatchable abomination because it’s not well acted. The voice cast is fine and the idea of animating this film is actually pretty a pretty cool one. Imagine this film as an anime or anything other than that creepy bug eyed style that’s taken over western animation.

Instead, this film looks like really insanely bad, cheap flash animation. It was so bad that I thought my laptop was playing up so I deleted it, downloaded it onto my phone and it was still just as bad. I’ve seen better animation on bad YouTube videos from a decade ago! And forgo a horse, my kingdom for all the frames to be restored as I swear instead of running at the normal 24 frames a second, this thing runs at 12-20 as if there wasn’t enough budget to animate enough frames to make this film look like it’s full of animated character’s and not some bits of poorly animated cardboard being manipulated by an unknown offscreen 12 year old.

And whatever the rest of this films benefits might have been, it just cannot get past the fact that the animation is so, so bad that I actually had to watch it in chunks because I just couldn’t handle the animation for more than 15 minutes at a time. Look, If I could finish Cats – twice- then this dross isn’t going to beat me.

Just the arrogance of the studio execs who greenlit this thing baffles me. The original is for free on YouTube and you want to charge £9.99 for this? The restored colour version is £2.49, the 1990’s remake is also available I’m sure. But those films are about creeping horror, dread, social commentary and this has none of that. Within three minutes, the first zombie attack has happened and the pace never lets up until the credits start rolling. There’s no time to learn anything about anybody, allow anyone’s deaths to sink in or affect the group dynamic, or even allow us to see a zombie lurch up behind an unsuspecting victim as it’s all so rushed. Because is they didn’t have enough money for 24 frames of animation a second they sure as film didn’t have enough money for a ninety minute runtime.

So yeah, Night of the Animated Dead is a poorly paced, adequately acted essentially shot for shot remake of one of the greatest horror films of all time with some of the worst animation I think I’ve ever seen.

Seriously- here’s the link to the original timeless masterpiece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA5kk8LB7BQ

And I’ll see you next time.

My Score- Bomb

Spontaneous Film Review

The best horror films always have something to say. 1968’s The Night of the Living Dead was about racism and our inability to communicate (according to the director), 1988’s They Live is about consumerism, and 2017’s Get Out is about racism.

Spontaneous follows in that grand tradition being a horror movie with a message whilst also borrowing some framing from that most accursed of genres- the Young Adult romance genre.

And it’s not like the message of Spontaneous is particularly unique. As the late, great Robin Williams put it “Carpe, carpe. Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” Or, as James Macavoy more succinctly put it “What the f*ck have you done lately?”

Not the most original message in the world but it’s a good one to hear every know and then, especially with the world the way it is. Actually for a film based on a book that was released in 2016 (never read it, never will, the books don’t matter) it seems really prescient in a number of ways.

It’s a simple set-up as most good horror and YA films are. In a town in the middle of no-where High school seniors start randomly popping like water balloons with seemingly no rhyme or reason and as the adults around them react with confusion and fear, we follow seniors Mara and Dylan as they struggle to survive in a world where each moment may be their last.

If your thinking ‘dark comedy’ than your right. The film also has a slight nihilistic tone which fits with it’s world where people just going randomly go pop left, right and center. It’s lead (portrayed by Knives Out’s Katherine Langford) is perfectly cast as our lead who’s just trying to survive in this new world.

And as much as I enjoyed spending time with this film I found myself thinking that this is one of the very few times that a YA adult novel should have been turned into a miniseries as the scenes seemed to flash by too quickly to properly for me to properly absorb them. The films body-count tended to happen to people that I either didn’t or barely knew and as such their deaths had no real impact on me. I get that the first death is for the shock value but after that I would like to at least know their name or a general description.

I mean some of them I did know but they were all one-dimensional and since a lot of the ‘poppings’ happened off screen we don’t even get to see the deaths. Just the mess left afterwards.

And a mini-series would have allowed me to observe this small town descend into paranoia as they try to understand why this is happening, the order, the rhythm, the government trying a failing to help, the relgious side of things happening a innocent children keep dying.

I mean all of that does happen in this film and the leads are like-able but it just feels slightly… rushed. If you were going to make this a film then maybe another ten minutes spent developing the side characters wouldn’t have hurt.

Also, I think the film bottled i’s ending somewhat as after establishing a slightly dark nihilistic tone, then ending was weirdly upbeat and I just kept waiting for that one last twist or jump that just didn’t come.

Aside from that, there’s not much that I didn’t like about this film. It’s not for everybody, despite its central message and it is slightly rushed but on the whole, it’s a fun little time-waster.

My Score- See It

Deep Blue Sea 3 Film Review

The first Deep Blue Sea is (in my humble opinion) the second best shark movie ever made after 2013’s Ghost Shark.

The sequel- 2018’s Deep Blue Sea 2 Deep Harder, is (in my humble opinion) the worst shark movie ever made bar none. It has 0% on RT,and  wasn’t even supposed to be a shark let alone Deep Blue Sea film.

I didn’t much care for it.

And from that bottomless pit,  Deep Blue Sea 3: Deep Hard With a Vengeance has soared to reach the dizzying heights of basically OK.

I mean it’s not a patch on the original, but it’s not aiming to be. Instead, it’s aiming to just be a bit of disposable fun. Which is fine. The original wasn’t exactly Hamlet and I could take a film that knows it’s a bit of fluff as opposed to saying DEEP and MEANINGFUL things about the human condition.

Anyway, -the plot such as it is consists of a group of humans trying to kill some super-sharks before they breed and either kill everything else in the ocean or kick humans out of it-the film wasn’t clear on which and I don’t think it matters enough to re-watch the film since the plot is basically- here are humans, here are sharks, it’s time for a Death Battle!

In the red corner you have erm…. humans. Some trying to do Science, some trying to kill the super-sharks and couple that are pretty much just there to die. And some of the death scenes were fun, some of them were inventive, sadly one of them in the films final third made me burst out laughing which I seriously hope wasn’t the filmmakers intention. Or, if they were trying to recapture that moment with Samuel L. Jackson in the first one then they seriously screwed up.

Because I didn’t care about any of them. For a start, I had no idea who any of them were beyond one or two word descriptions in my notes which is fine when their just their to die, but for the leads? Their generic stories and wooden acting just, somehow failed to ingratiate them into my cold, dead, stony heart.

And in the blue corner (sea what I did there?) You have the terrible CGI. Sorry, I mean the sharks who do shark things such as eating everything and acting in ways that I would have found biologically impossible but maybe super-sharks have worked out how to subvert billions of years of evolution?

Whatever. Beyond the issues of not caring about people that exist only to die, this film just doesn’t have any moments that are tense or suspenseful, the whole film takes place in the daylight which can be scary in very specific circumstances (Check out 1975’s The Stepford Wives or the original Body Snatchers if you don’t believe me.) But here, it’s not scary. There are no claustrophobic moments since the whole thing takes place outdoors. So you can forget people wading through endless half submerged corridors looking terrified. I mean the water isn’t even cloudy! Which is annoying since our scientists have radars that the sharks keep taking out. And that’s should be an easy tense scene. Redshirt goes in the water in the middle of a nice sunny day, overconfident in their technological superiority, sharks take out the radar, a few tense fake outs before they come back to the surface and blam! Sharks stop playing and decide to have dinner.

But no, closest thing we get to a tense scene is erm…. Right at the end? That was sort of tense but apart from that nope. Nothing to worry my fingernails with, which is a shame. I mean there was one moment in the middle that could have been tense or horrifying but it just, wasn’t as it was so rushed. The payoff was mostly there, but the setup was completely botched.

Also, the whole film is on a very, very obvious set which looks like the sort of thing that normally has a stunt show on it three times a day.

I mean some of the deaths were fun, one was very inventive (even if it could have been better), but this is a franchise with neither the right, reason nor imagination to exist. As a timekilling film it was passable I guess, and it’s infinitely better than Deep Blue Sea 2 but lets make this the last one and then go on to other, better things. Such as pretending that they don’t exist and watching the first one for the millionth time.

My Score- Skip It

Fantasy Island Film Review

The trouble when reviewing something terrible that’s already been out for a few days is that – when said film is awful all the good puns have already gone.

For example, were Fantasy Island to be an unwatchable, incomprehensible mess where the central idea is that said Island grants wishes roughly 842% of all reviews will have some variation of ‘my fantasy is to forget this movie/ it was never released/ for it to sink without trace and all threatened sequels to be quietly forgotten about’ then a johnny come lately like me would have to spend the first hundred words explaining why he was using the same jokes as everyone else.

Anyway, Fantasy Island comes to us from my favorite much bestest film studio Blumhouse who have, much like last years Banana Split movie (which they had nothing to do with) has taken a old TV property from the ’70’s that people seem to vaguely remember, give it a dark spin, make sure the budget is low, but not too low and then release it onto the general public.

Mind you, it seems that they didn’t have to do much to this series original premise- whereupon you arrive at a mysterious island, request a fantasy which usually goes sideways, you get rescued, learn your lesson then leave for the next bunch of people who need to be careful what the wish for…

Which is an idea that I could see working… in a truly terrible franchise called Wishmaster (avoid at all costs) and at least those were campy low budget schlock horror, this film just doesn’t know what it wants to be or do.

I mean this 109 minute film has 6… I think fantasies going (Which range from having it all to getting revenge on an old bully to accepting an originally rejected marriage proposal amongst others) on at the same time which is about 4 too many, it’s way, way, way too many characters are at best flat (my personal fantasy was for at least two of them was an accident involving some superglue and an un-watched steamroller), it’s all over the place plot-wise, I never cared about anyone on screen, one second it’s trying for looming subtle somethings not quite right horror but it opens with a screaming running blonde girl which is the kind of cliche I thought horror had moved on from after Cabin in the Woods (the best horror film in at  least the last ten years) which Fantasy Island reminded me of to quite an extent, which just made me want to leave the screening, go home and watch Cabin in the Woods again.

Ok… almost no film is without positives and er… certain younger patrons in my screening liked how many women were placed into itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikinis and… er… it was impressive how utterly bored I was when the unkillable rocket firing zombies rocked up which is- I will confess quite a skill.

This is a film that needed to go all on the gore but instead got held back for some stupid reason and as a result losses what fun it could have had. I mean think of the fun you could have twisting peoples fantasies into nightmares!

The script is awful, moments of pathos, guilt and shots at redemption don’t work because I didn’t care and most of the time had very little idea what was going on, Michale Pena is horrfyingly miscast as our sort of ringleader, the ending made smacked of ‘the pub opens in 5 minutes so lets finish this script up and go.’

Anything else?

Well… It just wasn’t scary. At all. Not even a little bit. I’ve seen kids films that built more effective tension, killed off characters that I cared about and just had better narratives! (Seriously, check out Watership Down if you don’t believe me.)

Oh, and as for the sequel bait at the end? No. No no no no no no.

Did I mention no?

Look, Fantasy Island has potential as an idea. I like the whole be careful what you wish for narrative and had they stripped out 3 plot-lines, streamlined the narrative, actually made the film scary, gone for an 18 rating, put in characters that I actually cared about, completely rewritten the script, gotten rid of the deus ex machina ending or just played up the dark/goofy comedy aspects then this could have been a good film.

But they didn’t.

So this isn’t.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to re-watch Cabin in the Woods for the hundredth time.

My Score- Bomb

Underwater Review

Look around.

Look up.

Look down.

Fix every single detail in your mind for all time.

Because this is the last film to be released under the 20th Century Fox name, before the name was changed to 20th Century Studios by Disney, after their acquisition of Fox and its assets.

Allegedly 200 other films were not so lucky.

But hey, as long as you can now engage in the philosophical debate as to whether or not the xenomorph is now a Disney princess, who cares?

Me.

I care.

Because DISNEY OWNS EVERYTHING and I fail to see how this benefits cinema in the long/ short/medium term

But… dragging myself back on topic and we find that seven miles underwater no-one can hear you be mildly interested. We also find that no problem can’t be solved without getting your female actors to climb out of their seemingly Warhammer inspired diving suits and run around in their underwear for a few minutes. At times it even gets a bit creepy.

Anyway, the plots that old ditty to which we can all sing along to… Humanity went somewhere it wasn’t supposed to go, did something t wasn’t supposed to and now… something has arrived to inform us of our mistake.

And this film knows why were here and hits the ground running- within the first two minutes- Kristen Stuart apparently remembering that being an indie darling doesn’t put Lamborghini’s on driveways and hoping to be in a commercial film that actually turns a profit is Ripley… sorry, Norah, who, whilst trying to brush her teeth (no seriously, that’s how we meet her- dental hygiene is important Dunkers!) is forced to condemn loads of off-screen unnamed people to death and then try to work out what’s going on and get back to the surface.

And there’s your film. It’s really… I’ll be kind and say ‘efficient’ with it’s editing as I get the feeling that this film didn’t have the largest budget ever known to man and more than once our characters seem to have been saved by the power of jump-cut rather than anything they’ve done but the body-count goes up at a fair old rate inventive and tense rate so I’m happy to keep my toys inside my pram.

With the exception of T.J. Millers annoying character I didn’t mind the rest of the people on screen and thankfully Miller doesn’t get much of the films lean 95 minute (including credits) run-time.

I liked that the monsters aren’t explained or even really seen clearly, they and a couple their mates just turn up and start wrecking things which is pretty much all I want from a movie monster.

Never forget that what you don’t know is almost always scarier than what you do.

And that’s about it. Underwater is lean, mean enjoyable thriller that hits the ground running and never really stops or lets the tension ebb away completely. I’m not really convinced that their habitat or Space Marine cosplay suits would be anything other than crushed in a heartbeat in reality or what anyone’s name is but that’s no bad thing in a film like this. It’s not likely to dislodge 1998’s Deep Rising  as my favorite underwater monster movie but it’s a hell of a lot better than a film which was released three years after it was shot has any right to be.

It’s not the send off that this studio deserved or needed but Underwater is a fine film to throw on when you’ve got some mate over and just want to throw something on the background to have a beer or six to.

And sometimes that’s all a film like this needs to be.

My Score- If Nothing Else 

Wolf Review

Soldiers versus werewolves. It’s a very simple premise that is basis of my very favorite film of all time- Dog Soldiers. So, when I find out that a low budget film is being released with this very premise I immediately leap into action and make sure that this film who’s budget is so low that it thanks AirBnB at the end of the credits and hasn’t released a single poster gets it’s moment in the spotlight!

Or…. I had some time to kill before my Screening of Ad Astra.

That works as well.

By the way, given this film has no Wikipedia entry, and barely anything on IMDB I feel like this is truly above and beyond. But, I swore to fly the flag for low budget filmaking and that’s what I’m going to do.

I just wish there was something about Wolf to be worth all the effort that I went to. I mean an 85 minute runtime? Including credits? Different seasons allegedly within a few days if not hours of previous scenes? And I know that this film could have been longer because… I’ll get to that.

Anyway, our brave soldiers are in Scotland and are holding to Dog Soldiers rule of  not breaking radio silence just cos’ they got spooked by dead flying fucking cows. Actually they don’t make any radio broadcasts because it’s 150AD and radios wont be invented until 1895.

Yes dunkers Wolf isn’t just Soldiers versus Werewolves, it’s Roman Soldiers versus Werewolves. No gunpowder, radios, vehicles or anything else that we take for granted. Also, since pretty much then entire film is set outside our troops are insanely vulnerable.

Not that they know it. Our troops are full of bravado, bravery and terrible dialogue until all three start to drain away as they begin to realize that their enemy is not just the locals and running out of wine.

Now, there were some good things about this film- the werewolves are kept off-screen for the vast majority of the film which works because when we do finally see them I promptly burst out laughing. If your budget was that tight then just turn the werewolves into zombies like happened in 1964’s War of the Zombies. It would fit better with the films tone and I mean Colin taught us that you can literally make zombie films for £45. And get that film to Cannes. And a two-disc Special Edition DVD release in the colonies.

But back to our roaming Roman Redshirts we find… not much really. You’ll have sussed out all of their arcs in the first ten minutes and look, when your probably paying scale I get that your probably not going to have a huge pool of actors to draw from but could you at least not hire someone who looks like they learned their German accents from old, slightly dodgy recordings of Allo Allo? Also, i’m pretty sure that the Scots didn’t have French accents from that same episode of Allo Allo.

But maybe my hearing was playing up because some mad genius has created a musical instrument which sounds worse than the love child of an accordion and a set of bagpipes. I mean, I’m sure that it’s historically accurate – half the credits were historical society’s and creator of Horrible Histories Terry Deary was mentioned at least four times in the credits, it also looked amazing, with the finest drone that you can order off of Amazon and the Blair Witch showed that it doesn’t take much to make some poorly lit woods scary.

I have an issue with the fact that most of the separating of Roman from Roman intestines happened off screen and that with the amount of blood and gore that we actually saw on screen I could easily turn this into an episode of Doctor Who. The rules for the werewolves keep hanging as well, sometimes they are too fast to see, always attack in darkness and near impossible to injure… until the last 5 minutes whereupon they decide that it really is time they died and de-power themselves, as well as attacking in daylight (which I’ve seen in no werewolf film ever), being unsure of if they want to kill all the squishy humans, bite them so that they turn into werewolves or turn them into modern art. Did one of our Romans bring the virus from France or was it just a coincidence?

There are flashbacks when we don’t need any, what action there is, is truly shocking and, there is one other BIG thing but it’s truly spoiler territory.

My Score – Fire

*SPOILER WARNING*

This film has the worst ending I’ve ever seen.  In fact, the end credits came up so abruptly that at the end of the credits I was expecting to see a Marvel style post-credits scene with the actual ending in but there was just nothing.

We end with our obligatory ‘kill me before I turn’ scene whereupon our last male character is killed and then all of our female characters decide that women can’t become werewolves out of filming nowhere then decide to head to Hadrian’s Wall to warn the Roman Empire about the werewolves and then the film just ends. With our main female characters (half of whom had very little to no screen time and one who had just shown up in the last ten minutes) deciding that all the werewolves were dead and that getting to the wall was easy peasy dear God what were you smoking lemon squeazy. And that’s the end of the film. With our leads just deciding to walk to the wall. In the middle of enemy territory. With possibly more werewolves out there. And no resources. Because that’s not something that I want to see- Charlies Angels BC with a 15 rating. Yeah, definaltly no audience interest in that.

Wolf is the worst werewolf film I’ve ever seen. No, it’s the worst Horror film I’ve ever seen. It squanders it’s interesting premise and somewhat fun characters, with appalling action, dialogue, accents and the worst ending I’ve seen in any film. Ever.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m off to watch Dog Soldiers again. It’s not perfect but it’s got some cracking dialogue and Werewolves that don’t look like they’ve just escaped from a not very good joke shop.