Change Your Image
layofthelastsurvivor
Reviews
Call Me Miss Cleo (2022)
Quick and lazy documentary
Parroting the other low reviews, really missed the mark. Almost no direction or attempt at trying to build any kind of interest. Just snagged the low hanging fruit.
Hard focused on some weird tangents and glazed over the interesting parts. Just hopped over the actual crime and lawsuit bits in little spurts as fast as possible.
The biggest thing is they really skipped over the people that got taken advantage of for the sake of trying to make you feel bad for her. If it was really that bad of a scam, they probably could have dug about and found at least a few victims to interview right?
We get zero of the victims perspective (besides a few tiny secondhand stories) or how they felt. If there were so many documented complaints and you spoke with prosecution post trial and settlement, you probably could have gotten at least 1 or 2 to speak. Having someone who spent a lot of money/time on the hotline and how they view it today would have been an interesting counter view.
This doc just has a very clear target audience. I'm just being honest. You might like this if your black, lgbtq, or both, but you also might feel like they hard pandered to that demographic as a way to make a lazy documentary off of a nostalgic figure.
There's for sure a super interesting story here about that industry and Cleo's personal story intermingled. It's a really interesting cultural phenomenon. Unfortunately, all this doc amounts to is a "We love Miss Cleo" party.
Plus, the editing is poo.
The Color Rose (2020)
Great start, horrible finish
The movie synopsis sounds super interesting but the movie is wildly different from it. The laziest thing you can do in a film is exposition dump. Still, I kind of digged it in this movie.
I have no complaints on the acting, the actors made it somewhat entertaining along with the cinematography that others have mentioned.
The problem is the damn plot. There's no suspense or scare factor. It's a drama with off screen deaths. It's twist is predictable, but thats not that bad. The story just doesn't make any sort of sense. Its all over the place. It just progressively gets more convoluted and dumb as it goes. They had a basic premise planned, girl gets scared and terrorized by her friends and dies, other girls start dying, girl comes back as murderer. Then they just slapped random crap onto it for whatever reason. Like unnecessary subplots that are just there.
It would have been totally fine to have her just scare them as some sort of ghost, just do easy creepy stuff like leaving roses places for them, leaving messages like the sins on the desk, anything remotely suspenseful. Then it's fine to have them disappear as long as there's a tiny bit of build up, but nope. Let's just have a random dude who happens to worship Satan and for some reason is like "oh this girl who is presumed dead is going to blackmail me? Well better help her kill these other girls then." Until he shoots her in the end, which he could have done at any moment. Side note, he's apparently a chemist as well as the mortician, because he has like paralyzing agents and chloroform for days.
It feels like a movie with every good part cut out of it and all the setup left in. Not to mention the sins aspect is just plopped in there and I'm pretty sure "death by chest gunshot" was not on the punishment list for sloth, but who cares I guess. I'm pretty sure I blinked and one of the girls died and I missed it, because one of them I genuinely don't know what happened to, but she was gone for the rest of the film.
If your looking for a TV quality drama with murder in the background, then you might like it. Story is still hot garbage, but the first 20-30mins are interesting at least before the disappointment starts.
They're Inside (2019)
Its the jean shorts of found footage
Main villian wears jean shorts. That's the scariest part about them. The girl one is just terrible, all around terrible and didn't even need to be there. It may have been better if her character didn't exsist. I don't want to feel like I could beat the villian, yes one of them, the girl doesn't count because she's about as scary as an angry pomeranian.
The sister dynamic I did like. Movie works better as a drama/thriller thing, it actually gets worse when the "horror" starts. The acting of the main cast, excluding the budget serial killers, is passable and has some good moments.
Like everyone else has said, it's the strangers but way worse in every possible way. They even stole the ending shot from the strangers and injected a giant monolog that I remember none of. All of it culminates in possibly the most atrocious, just accept it, ending. I'm only leaving a review because of how trash that last 20 minutes was. It's a 2 for that wet dog fart they forced on their audience.
Why didn't you just make the sister go nuts and murder everyone? Just make the current villians just innocent weirdos that add to her breakdown. She would make a more compelling villian because we would see her slowly start to go unhinged. Plus, we wouldn't have jean shorts and miss forgettable boring up everything.
The sister v sister thing would be interesting. It would add alittle suspense as to who would survive and who out of the two should survive. All this gets set up between them and it goes absolutely nowhere. All the building blocks were there.
Pass on this one, it just makes you irritated that it's so dumb.
Afflicted (2013)
I really enjoyed it
I was pretty surprised by this one. I'd avoided it cause I thought it was another demon possession type of movie so it was a skip.
I just generally enjoyed it. I've always thought vampires were alittle on the lame side, not really something that could be scary. They did a pretty good job of actually making it creepy, I would have liked alittle more of the Rec style starving vampire stuff.
I liked the two main characters, they're pretty believable. There are some story sections that your kind of left questioning a bit, but if you just leave it, its a pretty fun experience. The cinematography is great, has some neat tricks. The make-up, stunts, and locations are pretty awesome. It's got a bit of a Chronicle vibe going on for a bit as well which is neat.
What helped me was going in totally blind to the movie, not having any expectations made it way better. It's a pretty straightforward story, but you never lose track or get confused by what's going on. It has a few little twists, one of em I was surprised by, the other you see coming from a mile away.
Overall, it was just a really fun movie to watch. Its well made and held my interest the whole way through.
Mr. Jones (2013)
Horrible cinematography
I love this genre and can usually forgive alot when it comes to it, I totally thought this would be better than it really is. Hell, I even thought Red Woods was a 6 and the storyline is all over the place, but the camera work is amazing so it's way more watchable.
Its really visually just dark and not scary in the slightest. It's just a mix of As Above, So Below and Blair Witch. Super mediocre. The acting is good though and the sound design is nicely done, I know it's found footage, but it wasn't enough to really distract me from the movie. You can tell that there was care and effort put into the movie, which sucks that the cinematography is horrible.
The self cam thing is unnecessary and annoying overall, why would you even need that for a nature doc. It's the super amateur-ish cinematography that drags this movie down. Oooo scary dutch angles and creepy quick cuts. You don't have to switch angles every second. It's alot of unnecessary shots for the sake of trying to be artsy but it drags everything down. It's not increasing tension or helping to portray an emotion or feeling. I has no reasoning. let your audience see the cool visuals and prop design for a moment. Stop showing me the dudes face every two seconds when nothing has really happened for him to react to, its not adding anything to the scene, its just breaking any tiny bits of tension your trying to set up.
Go watch Afflicted, Hell House llc, Rec, Last Broadcast, Be My Cat, The Conspiracy, Creep, The Good Neighbor, even The Poughkeepsie Tapes, all of em are better than this. They're Watching was even a more fun experience overall, even with its super cheesy effects ending.