Change Your Image
dougjmaggi
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Shûmatsu no Valkyrie (2021)
Brainless, time-filler, mediocre fighting, plotless
Trying to find a good anime these days is getting really tough. They are. And this series... is no exception to that rule. It starts out in a packed colosseum of gods and goddesses, where we find out they are there to vote whether or not to end humankind or let them live another 1,000 years. No backstory, just right in for everyone to vote, then interjects someone on humanities side. That was it for the plot, now it's on to senseless boring fights that are almost as full of filler and Dragon Ball Z, but with less actual action. In 3 episodes, they've only gone through a few rounds of attacking that might translate to 90 seconds of actual fighting? I'm utterly bored at this point, and decide to see if the subs for Japanese translate to the same as the dubs, which they don't, but not horribly so. The god overseeing it all in one scene says that this is the most excting thing ever and it's really turning him on, while the dubbed version is just saying he's so excited more or less, so cleanup for the overly sensitive moms I guess. Oh yeah, they also seem to be borrowing from some other well known anime in places, like the obvious reference to Attack on Titan in the attack on city scene in E1. Not going to waste more thought on this, nor on watching the rest of it, hope you don't either.
Devil in the Dark (2017)
Forgot I was watching a horror movie
Two brothers, now all grown up, and they don't get along? What better way to spend time together, than a Hallmark Channel brotherly deer hunt, with the country brother, and the big city slicker brother. 40 minutes in and I was tired of the same old overdone quips about not being in the cities any longer, no fancy coffee and email, being out in the real world again, crap from brother to brother. Didn't feel it was worth finishing if they had to fill time with unoriginal sibling rivalry. Camera work, was good, great outdoors scenes, no real story to be told, dragging this on so I can get to the character limit to make my review like the time I spent watching this, quick to finish.
Flowers (2016)
Soap opera of mental patients
I watched the first two episodes, and it was just so... disjointed. It's like a soap opera, but their cast is entirely made up of all the inmates at a phyc ward commons room. Everyone is doing their own thing, talking to themselves and the voices in their heads, talking at other people who are so enthralled with their own demons, but nobody is aware of anything around them. I'm used to British comedy having some form of insanity, John Cleese's character being ignored by his wife or someone else while he rants on, but this was just too chaotic and obtuse. Too many characters in scenes, all trying to do their own thing, while also being present at a party or event going on.
The Fall of Usher (2021)
20 minutes was enough
I watched about 20 minutes of it, slow, dull, the way the guy narrates it simply doesn't work. I dislike not finishing a movie, but I just felt that I couldn't be bothered to continue on with it.
Zhou (2022)
Very nice horror/curse movie, horrible dubbing!
I mainly came to say, the dubbing, at least on netflix, is simply atrocious. I'm not expecting the lips to line up or anything absurd like that, but the voice "actors" have no emotion, they sound like they are reading it out of some rough script, never having seen the movie, or even know what it's about. You 100% can NOT watch this with English dubs.
Nice combination of first and third person perspective from that found footage style, not overly shaky but just enough where it doesn't feel choreographed. Creepy rural ceremonies, not too much gore for folks who aren't blood bath fans.
Kûsen Madôshi Kôhosei No Kyôkan (2015)
Predictable cookie cutter magic action anime
One thing these types of anime never lack, is predictability. It's your standard, fighters with hidden strength that just needed a little coaching to be the best in class. Someone is in danger? Oh, time for me to break out my hidden talent and save the day, but first I have to yell really loud to tell my opponents that I'm going to now power up my attack so they should hold still for 10 seconds while I get them in sight... It's fine for a turn your brain off and stream on another screen while gaming, but it has nothing original to warrant your full attention. Towards the end I was hoping that there weren't many more episodes because it was just getting dull, lack of interesting fight scenes, no character depth.
The Devil's Tail (2021)
Didn't know it was an anthology to start this off
Yeah, so first off, neither the synopsis nor the video trailer said this was an anthology, which might be how they get people to actually watch it since most if not all horror anthologies really aren't done well enough to get someone to watch the whole thing. This one is no different, and I wouldn't have finished it if I wasn't "watching" it while playing mobile games and browsing the internet at the same time.
The stories don't seem to have any common connection beyond how people can be cruel. The only bit that really would fit into a horror movie would be the burnt guy from the trailer, so if you've watched that, then you've seen all the scary bits that the film had. The acting was mediocre, except for the nurse who was horrible. I honestly don't know what this was supposed to be about, if it even had a story behind it.
This isn't horror, I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't that... Maybe some art student can contrive some far fetched idea what the artist wanted it to be like people do with modern art. Time is better spent rewatching Kitchen nightmares as that's scarier than this by far.
Crimson (2020)
Internet celebrities with no life who try to make a movie...
Clicked on it for a horror movie, what I got was rich kids showing off things they bought with their internet fame/parent's money, a lot of non-acting and poor acting. Was there a script, who would even know. Tagging this with "horror" is a travesty to the genre.
Woe (2020)
The writer must hate people with sensory sensitivity
Long, boring, nothing interesting ever happened, and the WORST part of it all is the annoying noises, all the time... The guy never answers the phone, or people banging on his door, the flies and bees, the constant cacophony of endless, annoying, pestering noises. I didn't have a sensory issue before I watched this, I think it gave me one.