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brycebclark
Reviews
The Void (2016)
Waste of time and money with nothing original to add to the genre
I have to write this review without the benefit of punctuation and periods because my keys are gone but I'll be as brief and concise as possible
If you're satisfied by repetitive and tired gore with even more tired monster design and cliché dialogue with incoherent plot development and crackpot theology that has absolutely no basis in anything religious or palpable and is finally dependent on using every horror trope imaginable to deliver on nothing - boy this film is for you
I'll save you almost two hours and tell you that it begins as a slasher horror film which then incorporates odd elements of 'the thing' and disintegrates entirely into a 'demonic?' occult film that makes no sense and substantiates on nothing because the writers were either too blitzed or lost in their own writing to wrap up this confused and redundant mess and so instead deliver a half complete pile of garbage - literally every idea in this film is like a fraction of a whole -- there is no substantiation or wholesome development with any of the characters' their relationships' the cult religion' the monsters' the delusional episodes' the fact that people can come back from the dead' -- it's just a bad acid trip made into a terrible though well produced film
I gave it a 2 out of 10 because of the ending especially which sealed the coffin on my wasted time with this gross monstrosity -- if you want to make a film just invest in decent writing (so there is at least some consideration given towards logic) for the love of god -- most of the characters are just meaningless blood bags waiting to be popped -- even the main characters -- I wouldn't watch it again unless you paid me for the pain
Rogue One (2016)
Disney does it again
Stupified characters with nonsensical motivations that can't be ignored no matter how hard you wish to neglect them.
For example, why does Gaylen confess when the Empire is about the kill the engineers, kill the very men who non-conflicting assembled the Death Star for the destruction of innocents? He should have enjoyed seeing the Empire destruct their personnel, as he so masterfully played his hand to stifle and destroy their intentions. And, additionally, he designed a critical flaw in the Death Star to explode and destroy the hundreds of thousands of people on-board, to begin with; what would he care if a few engineers died? Why does he feel guilty about the death of what are essentially sci-fi Nazis? Because Disney wants to impose its simplistic and dumb morality for a 'family friendly' b-rated, blockbuster that has little grounding in reality and is such a contrived and overacted, unfounded piece of garbage that it holds little integrity on its own. Just give me a job writing scripts, I'll give you a better narrative and more character integrity than this hack-job catastrophe.
Gokseong (2016)
Epic film with minor hiccups
I think the most annoying features of the film were the erratic and irrational behaviors of the protagonist, the film's tempo (which often seemed to torque and stall in awkward segments.) The incoherence of the plot was also frustrating (what the hell were the 'zombies' about, why the boils, and how did the cop's nephew find the devil?) with the overdrawn suspense (kind of tying into the weird tempo.) It seemed like they were trying so hard to force in as much superstition to the plot without much explanation that it just became an unbelievable, bizarre smorgasbord of unpredictable but goofy shock. All that aside, I really enjoyed the film and I think it did something new and needed for the genre.
Busanhaeng (2016)
It wasn't flawless but still thoroughly enjoyable
Overall, the plot and development of the story were engaging throughout. There were only a few forgivable occasions when the verisimilitude and consistency of dialogue, characters, and story were waning. To be completely fair, I really enjoyed the suspense kept throughout the entire film. The cinematography and editing captured the chaos of events really well and the deaths were neither predictable nor overdone. In the end, the protagonist reconciles his prior shortcomings and the film ends full circle.
My only grief is that I wish they would have saved more characters, allowing each group to find their own way out the train station after the separation (which would have been more realistic) instead of killing everyone immediately and leaving just the daughter and girlfriend as the focal point (which is the standard but so very typical.) I also wish the writers and director would have explored the night-blindness of the monsters in an open urban setting (imagine if you had discovered that these monsters were absolutely blinded in darkness; why would you not have shared this with everyone and made your escape plans to accommodate that huge advantage?) There was huge potential with that, so I am slightly disappointed it wasn't utilized more significantly. But, in total, I think the film managed a 7/10.
On a side note, I'm expecting some of these negative reviews are biased against the film for being of Korean origin. Also, the subtitles can suck.