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XyloJW
Reviews
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor (2023)
Not as good as the original, way better than the other sequels
I loved the original Hell House: great scares, reasonable characters, great premise. The other sequels lacked all of that.
This one delivers on the great scares. Great tension, effective use of jumpscares. The premise and characters are okay here. Not great but not egregious. There's a couple eye-roll moments where they try too hard to tie it into the original (the music now has lyrics? What?).
It sounds like I'm really down on it when all I have good to say about it is the scares, but really, the directing is great at ratcheting up the tension and then hitting you with a solid moment of horror.
I'm knocking a half point off though for the very last scene before the credits, which felt like a weird retcon that didn't need to be in the movie at all.
Cryptid (2022)
Tedious Arguing: The Movie!
Up front I'll say, watch the first scene and notice how much the sheriff and the journalist go back and forth pointlessly arguing, and see if you can take a whole movie of that. It's watchable, if you're desperate.
I'll start with what the movie gets right. They do a good job not showing the monster and building suspense (if it ever paid off). The cinematography isn't bad. Sound and music are serviceable. The acting, well, I'm going to be very generous and assume they were doing the best they could with a bad script. The premise, a monster that attacks every autumn rainstorm, is interesting.
The script though. Almost every scene goes on 10-15 lines too long. Every time someone says something, someone argues with them about it, they go back and forth on it, and then they end up doing what the person said in the first place. It happened a dozen times throughout the movie. It got so grating that one character at one point says to a clerk "Keep the change" and I said to my wife, "Are they going to argue about this to?" And YES! The clerk says "Are you sure?" The guy says "Yeah I'm sure" and walks off, and then runs back and says "Actually I do want my change." This feels like it was intended to be a joke or a callback to someone saying "keep the change" to the clerk earlier. Except by that point, the CONSTANT pointless arguing about every single detail had worn us out. Every scene is tediously padded with nonsense. It's not funny, it's not enjoyable, it's just tedious!
Additionally, the plot is just pointless. There's a monster killing people. Are the protagonists of the story trying to stop this? Not really. They're journalists who want a story. Are they trying to save people by exposing this? Not really. They're trying to make ends meet, as we are repeatedly told the guy is desperate for his big break. The result is that we have zero stakes in whether this guy figures out what is attacking people or not. This guy could do absolutely nothing and the sheriff would probably have handled it without him.
Terror Train (2022)
Hey, it's not bad
It's basically a shot-for-shot remake of the original. And the original wasn't bad. It wasn't one of the all time greats, and this isn't either. But if you're looking for a horror movie to put on at night, you could do a lot worse than this.
Acting is all good here, sets, sound design, costumes, special effects. No one really drops the ball and screws it up. And just like the original, it's got all the same twists and turns that may be predictable but not boringly so.
I have to have 127 more characters in this review, so I'll just say I guess Jaimie Lee Curtis was too busy to do a cameo here.
The Andy Baker Tape (2021)
Genuinely and surprisingly good
With so few ratings, I was positive this was a case of fake reviews pumping up the score. But I'm glad I gave it a shot, because it deserves a decent rating. A tense thriller with good writing and acting.
The slow reveal that Andy is maybe a little unstable was well handled. My wife and I had a few "that was a really weird reaction he had," moments that nicely set up things later in the movie.
The tension is well handled and built up over time. A couple light hearted moments keep it from being boring.
The biggest downside: The color balance made everything orange and too bright. I get that it's found footage but even a YouTube video looks better than that, and at a certain point looking good is more important than being realistic.
After Midnight (2019)
As a horror fan, I loved this movie, despite not having a lot of horror
This movie really roped us in with this mystery monster thing. We started out trying to figure out what's going on with the monster, but as the movie went on, we spent more time trying to figure out what was going on with the characters' relationship. We were fully wrapped up in their lives and had almost forgotten the monster.
The writing was great, the best friend character was genuinely funny, and I appreciated that everyone at least seemed to be authentic, no exaggerated southern drawls or caricatures, for a movie set in Florida.
I'm going to be seeking out other movies by the filmmaker now.