Reviews

I really liked this & not quite sure why folk are whining about it being slow or boring.

If you want a highly trained assassin slicing and dicing her way through everyone who ever wronged her in high octane fight sequences or hillbillies being picked off one by one via increasingly gory means - it's already been done to death.

If you want a highly intelligent, traumatised woman getting justice for her wronged friend via careful plotting & delicious manipulation, you're in the right place.

As a survivor myself, I love a good female revenge film, but do tread carefully if you feel you're likely to find this triggering (everything related to what the protagonist is avenging is largely implied, but still - be careful)

You're probably well aware from reviews that the ending is something of a shocker, but I saw it coming - again, probably because of my own experiences of the long aftermath of sexual assault & related mental health issues.

The (obviously intentional) flimsiness of the handcuffs used in the big showdown & the final 'eff you' via text confirmed for me that this was less 'I Spit on Your Wedding' and more along the lines of 'Thelma & Louise' - a kamikaze mission to get justice, escape a stagnant existence, end years of crippling depression & (if you believe in that sort of thing) see her BFF again.

It's definitely one to watch a few times as there's so much to process, but I thought it was wonderful.

I enjoyed the first couple of episodes of this, but then things got more & more daft.

You honestly get better suspense & coherent storytelling in a made for TV afternoon thriller film for stay at home mums & pensioners.

I know it's based on a book, but I found it a bit similar to 'Your Honor' in the sense that there's a definite point where the storytelling quality plummets.

Back during the Hollywood writers strike, a lot of TV programmes went massively downhill as it seemed studios just dragged randoms off the street to finish storylines - similar seems to be happening now with the impact of the pandemic.

Anyway, back to this series. The ultimate premise/big reveal of what was going on was pretty silly, but then I thought it was pretty messed up, ethically.

It uses the 'gay people are psychos' trope & you end up with a white dude literally controlling a black woman.

It just made me feel icky, to be honest & it's 'Fleabag' all over again - everyone raving about how earth shatteringly amazing it is & I found it mediocre at best

So many things to choose from

• dusty old horror tropes & clichés galore
• multiple unintentionally hilarious moments
• cast had zero chemistry & seemed there against their will

I had to take a break after Barbara Hershey revealed a shrine to Damien that any 13yr old BTS fangirl would be proud of. All she was missing was a load of Hello Kitty plushies & some fairy lights.

Speaking of said clumsy shrine, i was half expecting a Cockney geezer to swagger on-screen & hang around the background, demonstrating the various objects like a Price is Right girl, winking & shooting finger guns at the audience as if to say 'yeah, this trike 'ere was 'is when eee was little, so yeah, eee's that Omen kid, but bigger'

Oh and then there's the Bobby Ewing in the shower 'it was all a dream' episode - a trope commonly used when a show's writers have run out of ideas, but normally years into its run (Google 'Bouncer's Dream' for my fave example). It happened within a few episodes of Damien.

It could have been so much better.

I misunderstood one scene with the nuns, thinking they'd zapped Jesus' spirit into some dude (was actually just a standard exorcism) & we'd have Jesus Vs Antichrist in a homoerotic shirtless wrestling in the rain situation, just something for the wine o'clock randy mums, but nah.

I think the only redeeming feature of this car crash was how one of the main characters was in a gay marriage & had a kid & no big fuss was made - he just happened to have a husband, not a wife. Sadly they still employed the 'kill your gays' trope (another Google search for you) so they pooped the bed on that one.

In a word - yikes.

On trikes.

I mean it was ok, but it basically boils down to 'The Hunger Games' meets 'Cabin in the Woods' except it's set in an office & the tributes are bored suits

The whole 'normal people thrown into a kill or be killed scenario by an evil 'Wizard of Oz' all seeing big bad' thing has been absolutely done to death, so this is just another in a long line of samey fare.

I wondered at one point if it was going down the 'Circle' route.

When the voice from above commands 30 deaths, the company boss starts categorising people into folk with kids (deemed worthy of life) & the near-retired folk (deemed easy prey as they're in the autumn phase of life anyway).

When he realises there's not enough easy 'socially acceptable' kills, he starts scanning the room, spotting a Muslim lady, a camp gay man, an obese lady & a lady in a wheelchair.

I figured 'ahh, so it's 'Circle 2' then' where game players have to start revealing their inner darkness & prejudices to justify kills - I was technically right, as both the Muslim lady & obese lady were murdered not long after this scene, when small gang of middle aged sociopaths desperately starts gunning anyone & everyone down to hit 30 deaths

But yeah - it's just a poor man's 'Mayhem' which has way more fun, way more creative use of office supplies as weapons, etc.

One bit that really annoyed me was the sudden WTF moment when the plucky young employee on her first day at Belko looks set to be the final girl - until she isn't

It would have been so much better if she had won, but they did her (and us viewers) dirty by setting up a 'ooh she's so brave & resourceful & she's doing everything right!' narrative, before we're startled by what I can only describe as a huge 'eff you' to viewers courtesy of the director. I'm assuming the intention was dark humour, but I certainly didn't interpret it that way

Even the ending is the same as 'Circle' /'Hunger Games' franchise- where it's revealed that this whole affair was merely stage one & lone Belko survivors across the globe look set to be in another setting as victors vs victors.

Decent way to pass the time, but all in all it was just pretty lazy film-making really

Thought I'd give this a shot as I love Lily Rabe & it's a decent psychological thriller with all the usual twists & turns that come with the genre.

Reviewers moaning about the ending & how far fetched & dumb the explanation/big reveal is clearly don't have any experience with psychosis/psychotic breaks - I once ended up in the nuthouse after work stress triggered psychotic mania & I was 100% convinced there were snipers after me because I was actually a secret princess. What the lead character went through is most definitely plausible IRL.

"What would happen if your mobile phone killed you?

How can a mobile phone have an agenda and kill people?

Why not just take the battery out? "

Truly an awful, awful waste of time - it's like they made a chimpanzee watch Cronenberg body horror classics mixed with 'Saw'. Said chimpanzee was then put in a room with a laptop open to Word, it then peed on, pooped on and threw at the walls.

The laptop was retrieved and whatever garbled Word document survived became the script for 'Wounds'

Really disappointed with this series, especially given the BBC version sucked too. The cheesy Tom Cruise film version is light years better than both and I can't abide him.

It's essentially Black Mirror's Metalhead with evil robot dogs chasing people and killing them off, but spread over eight agonising hours, hence I imagine Charlie Brooker is looking forward to a nice lawsuit payout.

While we're not watching Metalhead 2, we're subjected to tedious, lengthy discussions about the various characters' failed relationships, long silences while staring off into the distance and general ennui - it is a French production after all.

They seem to have nicked the big reveal in World War Z too, in that the only people the dog robots couldn't care less about have genetic disorders (blindness due to a faulty gene, product of incest/muscular dystrophy).

It's been renewed for a second series which is mind blowing as the finale was incredibly daft and I laughed at the very end.

I loved the TV series based on The Mist, but it wasn't renewed, see also Firefly. Day Five is another that was a lot of fun (mystery plague where if you fall asleep you die), but that one got binned too.

I will admit the first episode was fun, but purely because the start of most apocalyptic films and TV shows are exciting.

As others have said, this episode covered the issue of illegal immigrants, ICE and the brutality of the deportation process.

I knew straight away that she was an alien and I had to laugh at how bluntly the plot covered illegal aliens through the use of aliens from outer space - a primary school kid could come up with a more creative and interesting use of metaphors.

My biggest issue is that the housewife, her kids and her friends all dress in full on 1950's clothes, but it's never explained and it wasn't a crucial plot point (part of me thought that perhaps it was a 4400 scenario and she'd been beamed into space in the 50's, returnng to earth a few years ago, but nope)

Truly awful

I'm getting increasingly fed up now.

Again, we have hillbilly white people treating other races badly - that's three out of the first five episodes of this reboot that bludgeons this trope home cack-handedly.

Racism has no place in our world, those of us that are decent human beings respect and support everyone. We don't need to be repeatedly barked at like this. Where are the episodes covering hate crimes against LGBT+, the disabled, etc?

Basic upshot is that white people take over everything, not caring about existing indigenous people, now aliens are going to take over. Dear me.

I saw elements of 'Cabin in the Woods' in this, including the blatant rip off of the final scene where a character says that maybe it's time for someone else to get a chance to run things, except there's snail people who come down in tiny pink stars, not giant evil gods.

I wouldn't be surprised if the source material was one of L Ron Hubbard's books.

The concept of being able to turn back time is used far too often in fim and TV, ('Groundhog Day', 'Happy Death Day', etc) but it started out quite interesting in this episode.

I first thought 'ok, so what we have here is a psycho state trooper with a machine like focus on the mum and son, like yer lad in 'Terminator 2', so maybe the mum and son battle him with the help of the other diners?'

I also thought, 'ooh cool, she knows the lottery numbers! nip down to the shop and buy a ticket, win, sweet! Her son can now afford Harvard, Yale, maybe just go straight into a self funded film making project'. Or perhaps it'll go down the 'Billionaire Boy' road of greed, going mad with power, etc'

Then, after the pie scene, I thought 'ok, his wife must be dead, perhaps in a hit and run involving a middle aged lady in a fancy car, therefore he's on a rampage'.

Sadly, it was a not very subtle 'hillbilly backwater white people don't want POC in their town anymore' storyline. It's been done so many times before, harking back to the much more subtle 'Night of the Living Dead'.

Racism is horrific, gun happy cops disproportionately target POC - we know this. 'Replay' just seemed unbelievably preachy and kind of OTT. Three of the first five episodes of this reboot cover racism, clumsily - I'm waiting for episodes that cover hate crimes against the disabled or LGBT+ community.