Halloween: Jamie Lee Curtis’ Birth As A Scream Queen

5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, and other residents of Haddonfield are stalked by a mysterious masked killer.

To me, and this might be a controversial opinion, this is easily John Carpenter’s best film. This is a horror film that is firing on all cylinders and gets every little detail right. I think for me the strongest aspect of this film is it’s score, the composing is masterful and the timings are perfect: the non-diegetic sound here really adds a lot to the film and enhances it.

Moreover, this film does a lot with a little in terms of scares. Unlike the newest instalment in this franchise that has been criticised by some as being too violent and bloody, here there is a minimal amount of actual violence but the threat feels even more intense than it does in Halloween Kills. I believe that is because this film put a greater emphasis on the killer stalking and watching his targets then it does on him actually killing them, the thrill is in the chase after all.

Finally, the cast across the board is superb with Jamie Lee Curtis earning her scream queen status with ease here, her performance is incredible particularly the Boogeyman line after the killers escape at the end.

Overall, a magnificent slasher film and one that still holds up as one of the best.

Pros.

The tension

The threat

Jamie Lee Curtis

The score

The ending

Cons.

None

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Jeepers Creepers: If You See A Body Being Thrown Down A Pipe Don’t Investigate It

4/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A brother, played by Justin Long, and sister, played by Gina Phillips, are terrorised by an otherworldly entity as they are driving home from university.

Before I get into this film I just want to address the director. Yes, I know that the director of this film is highly problematic for a number of reasons, if you don’t know them look them up, but I tried to push that out of my mind whilst watching this film and just enjoy it for what it was.

This film and its sequel have always had a special place in my heart, as I grew up watching them. Whether it was as a child or now these films have always managed to creep me out, there is just something about them. From the unnerving car chase to the misadventure down the drainage pipe and everything that comes after this film does a really good job in building tension and creating a terrifying atmosphere. It is nice to see a horror film that isn’t solely reliant on jump scares.

Moreover, as I have previously said in other posts the creature effects on the antagonist are incredibly good. The monster looks both demonic and alien as well as simply nightmare fuel. I also appreciated how this film never really went out of its way to explain the creature or what it is doing adding to the mystery and the tension.

My main gripe with the film really comes in the form of the dumb decisions the characters make. Yes, like in many other horror films the sibling duo here make all kinds of stupid mistakes over the course of the film, worse still the film even draws attention to them and makes fun of them for doing them saying things like how it would be a terrible decision if they were in a horror film. As I have said before calling out bad writing that is reliant on cliches doesn’t suddenly make it good, it just makes it fee lazy as you are admitting that you couldn’t be bothered to fix it.

Overall, this is an underrated horror gem.

Pros.

The creature

The tension

The atmosphere

The ending

Cons.

Dumb decision making

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Night Teeth: Driving Miss Bloodsucker

3.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Benny, played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr, finds himself in the middle of a vampire turf war after he covers his brother’s, played by Raul Castillo, shift as a driver.

I enjoyed this film and thought that it had enough uniqueness to it that it stands out within the vampire sub-genre. It is very stylised and this again helps to give it flair with an almost comic book esque aesthetic, the action again reflects this with a lot of the big fight scenes feeling straight from the page.

Lendeborg Jr is a fine leading man, but he is greatly outdone by Debbie Ryan as Blair, one of the two vampires being driven around. Lendeborg Jr and Ryan have an undeniable amount of chemistry together on screen and their romance is very believable. Moreover, Ryan’s character is also the most complex with her being this killing machine but also longing for more, with the idea that she has been forced or conditioned into this life never too far from the viewers mind.

The two areas where I felt the film was lacking was its villain and its originality. In terms of villain we have Alfie Allen as victor the big bad vampire boss who is making a play for the whole city, now the issue with Allen’s character is that we really aren’t shown him doing very much yet we are expected to believe he is a threat. This becomes a big issue when you get to the final part of the film where he is supposedly super powerful and unbeatable yet we hadn’t got a whiff of that before as it is not well set up. Moreover, in terms of originality, though I said the film is fairly unique it is also quite reliant on past tropes which serve as a disservice to it.

Overall, a strong vampire film that benefits from casting Debby Ryan.

Pros.

Ryan

The romance

Some interesting new ideas

Cons.

A little too reliant on tropes

Alife Allen is wasted

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Only Murders In The Building: Series Overview

3.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Three residents in an apartment building, played by Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez, start a true crime podcast in the hopes of solving a murder in their building

This will act as a review of the series as a whole rather than as a review of a single episode.

For the most part I thought this series was delightful, the characters were warm and likeable, the series really managed to nail the emotional side of their personalities as well helping them to feel like well-rounded characters.

Moreover, the central whodunit mystery is explored well and kept interesting. The answer to who the killer is is unexpected and sets up further questions for the second season to explore. My only issue in this regard is that there are a few too many red herrings and storylines that lead to nowhere during the investigation that start to feel increasingly like the writers trying to fill time, as such the narrative could have feel done with being cut down and maybe even being one or two episodes less.

I think Steve Martin and Martin Short are on good form here as you would expect them to be, it is nice to see Martin in something again as it has been a while and he and Short have terrific on screen chemistry together. Though both men are outdone by Gomez. Selena Gomez is underused if anything in the series but when she does get screentime she often steals the show, there is so much going on underneath with her character and we as an audience get the feeling the show hasn’t even really scratched the surface, she is easily the breakout star of the series.

Overall, a fun murder mystery series that if anything is too ambitious and as such suffers in a few places.

Pros.

The mystery

The characters

The ending

The return of Steve Martin

Cons.

A few too many subplots

A lot of needless characters

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Venom Let There Be Carnage: The Odd Couple Split Up

2/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Eddie Brock, played by Tom Hardy, and Venom, voiced by Tom Hardy, are back and this time they are fighting a new evil symbiote in the form of Woody Harrelson’s Carnage.

I was sorely underwhelmed by this film.

The first was by no means a masterpiece of the craft but it was better than this. The first really cared about its body horror elements and its mature themes and subject matter, this however feels like it is going out of its way to ditch them. The age rating card said there were scenes of horror in this film, and I ask you where were they? I didn’t see them, were they cut? This feels so safe that I don’t see why it didn’t get a lower certificate. Clearly this is being done so they can bring Venom into the MCU.

Continuing on in that form this film feels a lot sillier than the first film and I mean intentionally so, there is far more of the MCU style of humour here and much like with Star Wars it is all the worse for it.

Tom Hardy still feels like he is trying his best but everyone else around him is either underused or just terrible. The near always fantastic Stephen Graham is entirely underserved and is given such a weak part that anyone could have done it, the same can be said for Harrelson’s Carnage. Now I don’t know if Harrelson’s performance wasn’t good or the character was poorly written but there was just nothing to Carnage, the tragic serial killer angle has been done better before and the CGI monster fight at the end has been to. Any actor could easily have taken over the role and probably matched what Harrelson was giving off here.

Finally, the post credits scene is perhaps one of the weakest and most blatant I have ever seen. Going so far as to show us Tom Holland as Spider-Man, and force in a weird scene of Venom licking his face on the screen. In my mind entirely needless.

Overall, don’t waste your money seeing this in a cinema wait for it to come to a streaming platform.

Pros.

Hardy

A few funny jokes

Cons.

Carnage

Why bring back Michelle Williams and then give her nothing to do?

It feels toned down in the worst way

The humour mostly doesn’t work and feels too much like a copy of the MCU

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Chucky: Give Me Something Good To Eat

3/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Chucky, voiced by Brad Dourif, continues his relationship with Jake, played by Zachary Arthur, and further tempts him over to the dark side, encouraging him to kill.

I found this episode to be slightly weaker than the first. This is mainly due to the fact that it is lacking in logic, why would Chucky risk being found simply to kill the housekeeper it makes no sense? Maybe he doesn’t care if he is caught and just wants to kill, which seems to be the implied answer, but even then this would lead to him being destroyed, which means no more killing, so you would think he would be smarter about it.

I am enjoying seeing Jake slowly starting to consider what Chucky is saying, becoming a killer, I think it is a nice fresh angle for the series to explore. I thought the teens were especially loathsome this week when they mocked Jake’s fathers death during a Halloween party, maybe Chucky is right, maybe he is actually trying to help Jake.

I thought the slow building of tension here was done well as obviously these killings can’t keep happening around Jake before he will get held with suspicion, so clearly something is going to happen and I am excited to see what.

Overall, a weaker episode because the logic doesn’t quite line up but it is still a good and interesting watch.

Pros.

The Chucky/ Jake relationship

Building the tension

Questioning Chucky’s intentions

Cons.

The gaps in logic

We need more time per episode

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X-Men Apocalypse: Ripping Up And Ruining Comic Books Over The Space Of Two Hours

2/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Apocalypse, played by Oscar Issac, awakens in the mid Eighties and tries to take over the world.

This film takes a steaming dump all over the X-Men in many ways. Firstly it brings in fan favourite characters such as Psylocke, played by Olivia Munn, Angel, played by Ben Hardy, and Storm, played by Alexandra Shipp and then barely uses them. Worse still in the case of Angel the film just kills him off. This shows almost a contempt to the lore or the universe as Angel is a character that has had a long and storied comics history and has many places to go, not that this film cares.

Likewise, the film had the perfect inspiration in the Age of Apocalypse storyline from the Nineties yet it doesn’t even bother to draw an influence from that, and instead gives us a mess riddled with needless Eighties nostalgia and horribly used CGI. The final battle in this film is one of the worst realised of any superhero film in terms of its use of CGI, it looks visually repulsive.

The cast across the board isn’t very good with two key exceptions that I will get to, the young actors brought in to play the new version of the X-Men are all terrible with no exceptions, Tye Sheridan and Sophie Turner are particularly poor. Jennifer Lawrence clearly doesn’t want to be there and though normally he is terrific here James McAvoy is sorely underused and as such can’t deliver.

The two good performances and the reason this film doesn’t get lower are Michael Fassbender as Magneto and Evan Peters as Quicksilver. I thought the exploration of the father son dynamic between these two characters was interesting, I would have liked to see the film commit to it rather than just dance around the subject but it framed the film nicely. Of course the slow motion scene with Peters is cool to look at, but it is the emotional scenes where his character shines.

Moreover, the scenes with Magneto as a family man, who then loses his family and breaks bad again are very well done and easily become the highpoint of a deeply mediocre affair.

Overall, the clear start of the decline for the Fox X-Men films.

Pros.

The father son subplot

Fassbender

Cons.

Wasting Oscar Issac

The young cast

The CGI finale mess

A weak plot

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The Uninvited: Stop Hating The Perceived Homewrecker, She’s Not Done Anything

3/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The film follows a young woman, played by Emily Browning, who has recently come out of a mental institution returning home again. However, after she arrives she becomes more and more concerned about her father’s new girlfriend, played by Elizabeth Banks, who she begins to believe is plotting against her.

I will admit the twist with this one got me; I was not expecting it. I enjoyed that the film took the cliched trope of the evil home invader and flipped it on its head. Furthermore, I thought that Banks, rather than Browning was in fact the star of the show, as she gave off a real sense of menace and stole every scene she was in.

I thought Browning was okay, but her performance did nothing to elevate the character or the role, and she just became a very generic protagonist.

Something that I thought was odd about the film was the way in which the supernatural elements early on clashed with the thriller aspects of the rest of the film. It seemed this film could not decide what it wanted to be so tried to go for both, which hurt it as the initial supernatural stuff jars against what comes later, though I suppose could actually be read as an early clue.

Overall, an interesting thriller film with a solid twist that is let down by its choice of leading lady.

Pros.

Banks

The twist

Good tension

Cons.

Browning

The supernatural elements

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The French Dispatch: Too Much Wes Anderson?

2.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A series of stories making up the final issue of a well respected fictional news publication.

I have been a fan of Wes Anderson for some time, and for the most part I enjoy his style and his noticeable eccentricities, however, here I find he has gone too far into himself. This film embraces Anderson’s filmmaking philosophy to the Nth degree, serving as a series of barely connected skits with constant movement and a loose connective whole, this is not a good thing as it makes the whole piece very hard to follow.

Each tale and indeed each scene within seemed to jump from one thing to another with such speed as to make it impossible to know what was going on.

Worse yet, of the four pieces the only one that is enjoyable, the first featuring Owen Wilson, is incredibly short and then that’s it we don’t see Wilson again until the end of the film. The other three features suffer from the opposite problem, which is to say they drag on, and on- to the point of boredom.

That is not to say this film is bad there are moments of enjoyment to be found whether that is a chuckle, or a delightfully off beat Anderson character. The best amongst these is Timothee Chalamet’s Zeffirelli. Other than in The King Chalamet has never impressed me in the way he has other people and I have long viewed him as overrated. This film counters that as Chalamet fits in perfectly and easily captures the essence of a Wes Anderson character easily becoming the best character in the whole film, as such I am hoping that Chalamet becomes Anderson’s new muse and the two keep making films together for a long time.

Overall, though there are good elements to the film, it suffers from terrible pacing and a feeling of indulgence on the directors part, it could be said this film is too Wes Anderson for most Wes Anderson fans,

Pros.

Chalamet

A few funny moments

Owen Wilson’s segment

Cons.

Three of the four segments are only okay

The pace is awful

The lack of a coherent larger narrative

Most of the actors are wasted

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Oculus: Smashing Mirrors With The Power Of Boredom

1.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A pair of siblings, played by Karen Gillian and Brenton Thwaites, reunite after years apart to finally kill the evil mirror that destroyed their family when they were children.

I thoroughly enjoyed Hill House however, everything else that Mike Flanagan has failed to impress me. He has consistent pacing issues across his works that make them hard to watch, if I was asked to describe this film in a word it would be slow. There are so many needless flashbacks and asides throughout the film that it becomes distracting and more so irritating.

The horror here is okay there are one or two good scares but there is also an over reliance on jump scares that takes away from the film as a whole. Likewise, the mirror itself is left fairly open ended, it might not even be evil and it might just be the children’s way of coping with their dad killing their mum, this isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. However, it becomes a bad thing when the supposed power range of this mirror becomes all over the place, at one point in the film it can only slightly interfere with electrics and other it can fully manifest itself and attack those around it.

I thought the sole positive about this film was Karen Gillian, Gillian is clearly trying hard to make this work and whilst she does leave an impact it is not enough to save the film.

Overall, a slow and often boring horror that makes you want to switch off.

Pros.

Karen Gillian

One or two good scares

Cons.

It is slow

There are far too many flashbacks and asides

Crippling pacing issues

Not specifying how powerful the mirror is.

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