Anna And The Apocalypse: The Version Of High School Musical That The Disney Channel Rejected

2/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A Scottish highschool finds itself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

I had heard lots of positive things about this prior to watching, however I did not end up liking it. The people I spoke to about this film prior to watching it had left out one key aspect, namely that it is a musical. I really didn’t like that part of the film.

The songs in this film aren’t good. Yes, that is a personal taste thing on my part but every time someone started singing in this film I started to cringe. It felt like a knock off High School Musical clone without the talent, zombies aside. I understand what they were trying to do merging horror and musical elements is a novel idea, accept Sweeny Todd did it about ten years earlier and then there is Rocky Horror so maybe not so fresh an idea after all.

The horror elements are okay but again nothing game changing. For me the best part about this film was seeing Paul Kaye get to have some fun as the evil schoolmaster. Kaye is a tremendous actor, and he was the only reason I kept with the film.

Overall, Paul Kaye is always fun but everything else just doesn’t work.

Pros.

Kaye

It is unintentionally hilarious

Cons.

The songs are Disney Chanel reject quality

The elements don’t come together well

It is cringey

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American Horror Story: Take Me To Your Leader

2.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A group of teens have a run in with aliens and find themselves pregnant as a result.

I very much believe that this season of AHS has been designed to kill the show, as those responsible for it want to move on to better things. Do you remember the time when AHS was actually scary? I do but seemingly those writing the show now don’t. The ending of the episode where all the teens find themselves pregnant is not scary in anyway, it is hilarious at how dumb and contrived it is; worse yet the show seems to want you to laugh.

So far this half of the season feels like the discounted one as a lot of the top name talent of the show doesn’t return and we are left with less than stellar actors filling out the cast. Now that is not to say there is no talent here as Neil McDonough is always a treat, but sadly even he can’t save this episode.

AHS fans have been clamouring for aliens to return since the era of Asylum, and the show has teased them out for so long, yet this is what we get? It goes beyond anti-climactic.

Overall, please let this season end.

Pros.

McDonough

The opening scene is strong

It is hilarious entirely unintentionally

Con.

It is not even trying to be scary anymore

It feels like a joke

They manage to ruin aliens

Ryan Murphy’s influence is slowly killing the show

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Nightbooks: We Need More Of Krysten Ritter In This Role

4/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A young boy, Winslow Fegley, obsessed with all things horror is kidnapped by an evil witch, Krysten Ritter, and forced to write her scary stories.

I enjoyed this film quite a lot, it turned out to be much more narly and hardcore than I was expecting it to be, and it managed to create some great horror visuals over the course of its runtime. In some ways this was more scary than a lot of the adult horrors out there.

The best thing about this film is easily the performance given by Ritter. By now you should all know that Ritter is an incredible talent, but if you didn’t know it for some reason this film proves it to you. She manages to pull off so many different emotions with just her face alone without even the need for words. She captures comedy, sadness and intense anger and rage completely, and manages to make her character both sympathetic and loathsome.

Even the child actors were fairly good, that in and off itself is a big deal as child actors are never good.

Overall, a lot of fun.

Pros.

Ritter

The scares

The ending

The characters

Cons.

The Hansel and Gretel twist was a bit too obvious

American Horror Story: Winter Kills

1.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The vampire like monsters finally meet their comeuppance and the black pills go nationwide.

Why? Why do you kill off your most interesting characters, Belle, Frances Conroy, and Austin, Evan Peters, within the first half of the episode without even giving them one strong final scene? Moreover, why do you keep the boring and unlikable characters alive? It makes no sense. If it was not for Leslie Grossman I would have just turned this episode off.

This program doesn’t even feel like AHS anymore, it feels like a poor imitation. Where once the show had strong writing that all fit together nicely and worked to enrich the whole now we are given plot holes and throw away characters just for the sake of it.

It becomes strikingly apparent during the second half of the episode that other than Grossman none of the actors playing the characters left alive can really act and their wooden performances become all the more glaring thanks to extra screen time. In that vein, the child actor playing Alma is shockingly bad in her performance and becomes almost cartoonishly evil by the end of the episode in a scene that is more than a little bit dumb.

Overall, this first half of the season was a train wreck that has forever tarnished AHS.

Pros.

Grossman

A few interesting scenes

Cons.

The performances aren’t good

The child actor

The ending

It taints the legacy of the show

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Child’s Play: How Not To Do CGI

1/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Chucky is reborn in a new world of tech and online interactivity.

This film is a travesty on multiple levels.

To be bluntly honest with you it took me three sittings to finish this film as each time I watched it I couldn’t stand more than about half an hour of it.

The only reason this film has a 1 is because of Aubrey Plaza as the mum, she is great as always, but she could do so, so much better than this. Honestly this film is just so terrible that no matter how good a performance any of the actors give it is quickly overshadowed.

I strongly disliked the new high tech Chucky. I thought the idea of modernising him and drastically changing what his powerset is to be stupid. It felt like a jaded executive being like ‘oh what do young people like today? Lets make him do that’. I think this film truly sullies the character. Both in terms of personality, as they don’t bring back the original voice actor, and in terms of appearance as he now just looks like an awful CGI mess. Nothing against Hamill of course but he can’t hold a candle to Brad Dourif.

Overall, I am glad this film did poorly enough to kill any chances of spawning sequels, this version of Chucky should be taught in writers rooms so that people know what not to do with the character.

Pros.

Plaza

Cons.

The child actor

Everything about Chucky

The story is dumb and convoluted

It does not need to exist

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We Need To Do Something: Ozzy Osbourne’s Breakthrough Performance

4/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A family find themselves trapped in a bathroom during a freak storm, or possibly a supernatural apocalypse, and have to find a way to escape and survive.

This was an unexpected treat. The reviews weren’t good, so I went into this with low expectations, but I have to say I was blown away. I actually found this film to be scary, which when you watch as many horror films as I do you become desensitised, so to be scared is a sure sign of quality. I found the hand licking scene with Ozzy Osbourne to be the best fright of the film and it stayed with me for days after viewing.

I enjoyed the family dynamic and seeing the characters interact on screen especially as relations began to breakdown and things got gradually to a fever pitch in which everyone was at each other’s throats. I thought all the actors gave good performances but the two I would like to highlight are Sierra McCormick and Pat Healy as they stood out particularly.

I thought the ending was genius as it left things ambiguous as to what was actually going on outside. Ending on the door finally opening and then screams was a masterstroke as it leaves it up to your imagination which is far more satisfying than giving you an answer which has the possibility to underwhelm.

Overall, a horror film that actually scared me, I highly recommend.

Pros.

Healy and McCormick

The ending

Ozzy Osbourne

The scares and the threat

Cons.

A few slow scenes

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American Horror Story Double Feature: Blood Buffet

3/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

This episode explores the origins of the little black pills and shows how each of our titular vampire/monsters fell under their sway.

This was a better episode than the last, but not by a huge margin.

I thought this episode was better as it ditched the main family and focused on the characters that are actually interesting. In that respect Frances Conroy’s character proves to be a very compelling focus for the episode, watching her go from an abused housewife to a powerful woman not afraid to grab life by the reigns was an enjoyable experience and Conroy did a strong job throughout.

Evan Peters on the other hand……. Where to begin with the drag scene, honestly just why? There was no need for Peter’s character to be dressed as a woman, there was no need for him to badly lip sync a song, the whole sequence just felt off. To me it almost felt mocking to those who perform drag. The character hadn’t been stated in any previous point in the show to have done drag to pay the bills in his backstory before, so I wonder why it was forced in here. Honestly, the whole scene is just so poorly done that it is none stop cringe.

Macaulay Culkin gets some fun scenes, and I would say this is the best episode for his character so far as he is actually given something to do and has some agency of his own.

Overall, better but not by much.

Pros.

Culkin

Conroy

The origins storyline

Cons.

Peters

The bad cringe

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Villains: Please Stop Making Tables Turned Home Invasion Films, We Are Done With Them

2/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

After a bank robbery a young couple find their way into a house with a child tied up in the basement, when they stick around to ask questions the homeowners return and take them prisoner.

When you watch horror/thriller films on the regular you begin to notice that there only seem to be about 5 original premises within the genre. The idea of bad people breaking into someone’s house only to find out that the homeowners are actually even worse than them and doing the clichéd ‘tables turned’ twist. This film has been done before and done better.

The generic nature of the premise sadly holds back the acting talent herein. Bill Skarsgard and Maika Monroe are both strong actors and have a number of good performances to their names to back that claim, however here they are given nothing to work with and though they might try their best their characters are ultimately doomed to be forgotten about.

My biggest issue with this film was that nothing shocked me about it. It went through a Don’t Breathe esque list of check boxes, to make sure it could fully tap into the flipped home invasion cliché, and did everything that you would expect, but added nothing new to spice things up or to keep the audience guessing. From the beginning to the end this film is entirely guessable.

Overall, generic and nothing new.

Pros.

The actors are trying

It is watchable

Cons.

It is stale

It is predictable

It is deeply forgettable

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What If: Zombies?

4.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

This was easily the best episode yet. I say that both in terms of the concept and execution. I think many of the other episodes, not all but a large amount, have felt too similar usually because they try and adapt certain MCU films, however this feels entirely different and all the better for it.

I am a huge fan of Robert Kirkman’s Marvel Zombies run and I have been waiting for them to adapt it. This episode does justice to that storyline through and through and does not shy away from pulling some narly twists and reveals. I thought the Wanda reveal was especially good in this regard and I am surprised Disney allowed them to do it.

Moreover, I felt like this episode gave some much needed screen time to some of the smaller characters in the MCU. For all the focus Bruce Banner and Peter Parker get Hope Van Dyne also gets her moment in the sun. Hope has felt like a relatively separate MCU character confined to the Antman films and not given much to do outside of them, yet here she is leading the team and we get to see her interact with the other Avengers which makes for a number of heart-warming and emotional scenes. In that same regard I am glad we got to see more from Sharon Carter in this episode as well. The wider universe does not seem to know what to do with her character having her be a love interest in Winter Soldier and having her be a sub-villain in FTWS. Here they get her right however she is a badass spy and that is all she needs to be.

My only complaint would be that the episode feels too short and cuts off leaving us wanting more. Hopefully season two will come back to this universe.

Overall, the best episode yet.

Pros.

Marvel Zombies

The emotion

The darkness

Highlighting secondary, often forgotten about, characters

The fight scenes and tension

Cons.

We needed more

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Malignant: James Wan Sullies His Horror Master Reputation

1.5/5

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Maddie, Annabelle Wallis, begins to experience visons of grisly murders that seem linked to her early years- which she has now repressed.

Where to begin with this one? This film is hilarious, not because it is funny but because it is so dumb and ridiculous that laughing is the only way you can deal with this film. The biggest joke this film tells it’s audience is that it is a horror film, this is simply a lie. If I had to categories it I would say it was an action horror film with a clear B movie influence and elements of comedy. If you go into this expecting the next Insidious or Conjuring you are wasting your time.

Another fundamental error with this film is the casting of its lead. Annabelle Wallis can’t act. Have we not learnt that by now with The Mummy, Annabelle and King Arthur all being bad films and made worse by Wallis’ inability to be anything other than wooden. However, here Wallis embraces a different style of acting: overacting. It seems someone has pointed out to Wallis that in most of her film roles no matter what is going on her face stays pretty much the same throughout and she has now decided to dial everything up to a ridiculous degree. When her character screams it won’t just be a scream it will be several and she will probably throw herself around a bit for good measure, because that distracts from her poor acting ability right?

The people who wrote this film should have a hard look in the mirror because never in all my time watching films has there been so little logic or even basic sense in a film that I’ve seen. Nothing about this film makes sense, at first I thought the film was trying to be deliberately confusing to throw audiences off, but no it just does what it likes and doesn’t bother having it make sense. Even when we get an explanation of what the villain is, we are still never told how it has superhuman abilities…. It just does.

The villain in this film……… is laughable. It is in no way scary and the reveal is blindly obvious from about ten minutes in.

Overall, this shows what happens when the studios give creatives free reign- they make a mess.

Pros.

It is hilarious

It is watchable

Cons.

It is dumb

None of it makes sense

The ending is awful

Annabelle Wallis needs to stop acting

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