Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: COLOR OUT OF SPACE

The new film from Richard Stanley, his first since being fired as the director in the middle of production of the awful Island of Dr. Moreau film with Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando in the mid 90s, COLOR OUT OF SPACE is masterful in its atmospheric tension, cinematography (the word color is in the title, duh), and probably the best body horror I have ever seen since John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing and some of David Cronenberg’s best work. Unfortunately, the acting and dialogue get in the way from it being a true masterpiece of sci-fi horror based off a H.P. Lovecraft story. When you hire Nic Cage, you are really taking a major gamble. Is he going to go full Nic Cage and deliver an weird, yet beautiful performance like he did in the recent revenge film Mandy or Leaving Las Vegas (for which he won an Oscar), is he going to just show up and read the dialogue for a paycheck like he does in more than half of his direct to video films nowadays, or is he going not quite go full Nic Cage, for an uneven yet fascinating performance? Thankfully, it was not option two, but unfortunately, it is option three. But I’m not necessarily blaming Nic Cage for this. I blame the script and I also read that Stanley asked Cage to basically do his performance from Vampire’s Kiss. Yeah…don’t do that. Let Cage be Cage. You either go full Cage or you don’t. Sometimes you can get a happy medium like the National Treasure films, but mostly you are clamoring for more Castor Troy on acid.

Color Out Of Space is about a family that lives out on a rural farm after the wife has a mastectomy, and one night a giant meteor hits their land. This is no ordinary meteor as it glows a very bright and ominous pink/purplish shade and then the next day it is gone after being struck several times by lightning. Then strange shit starts to happen. Body horror type proportion of shit. The second half of the film is much better than the first, with visuals and amazing horror elements to tell the story and less of the hackneyed dialogue and strange acting that plagued the first half. If you like David Cronenberg body horror films like The Fly, or crave some of that awesome body horror practical effect work like in John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, then this film is certainly right up your alley. Whether you like this or not is if you can appreciate all the weird stuff in it. For example, if you liked the really weird ending to Alex Garland’s Annihilation with Natalie Portman and still love that film as I do, then you’ll really like this film, and only the human acting and dialogue is going to maybe keep you from thinking it is a true class act in horror. There are some gorgeous shots in this movie, especially when everything gets all light pink/purplish. But the main thing to devour is the body horror. There is some really fucked up shit in this film, NO CHARACTER YOUNG OR OLD IS SAFE, so if you are looking for something with a Hollywood ending, look elsewhere.

I would love to see director Richard Stanley direct a 100% solid screenplay, one that he didn’t have a hand in writing except for maybe atmospheric descriptions. Get him away from dialogue, because the more you hear the word alpacas in this movie, the more you’ll cringe. We do get several brilliant displays of Nic Cage going full Cage in this movie, but it isn’t FULL Cage, which was somewhat disappointing. And you can’t blame Cage for this let down this time, blame Stanley, who asked Cage to basically copy mannerism by mannerism of his performance in the cult classic Vampire’s Kiss. And I think the story was supposed to have his father character be somewhat sane and relatable at the beginning of the film before shit hits the fan, but Cage’s weird acting doesn’t make any of that transition quite clear. When we first see Cage, we notice something is off. If Stanley would’ve told Cage to be just National Treasure normal at first or family man loving wise like his performance in…well, The Family Man, and then go full Cage once shit went down, it could’ve been one hell of a show. Unfortunately, the dial is always set at 9 in this film, when it needed to be a 1 or 2, and then straight to Spinal Tap 11.

There are other people in this movie to, and they do an okay job, its just that the realistic dialogue in this is incredibly lacking. But then again Richard Stanley got to do his entire uninterrupted vision for once with this film, and that always has to be commended. If any of what I described to you sounds….well…strange, I can guarantee you that this film isn’t for you. This film is for movie geeks and freaks like me, that study shit like this over and over again to see what went incredibly wrong or what went incredibly right. This film stayed somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and when the visuals did the talking, it hit the incredibly right end of it several times, especially the body horror shit, that I can’t get out of my mind and will likely have nightmares about in the future.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE LAST THING HE WANTED (Netflix)

“WHAT…IS…HAPPENING?!?” I screamed out this phrase about four or five times while watching this new contender for worst film of the year…that’s right, even worse than the awful remakes of The Grudge and Fantasy Island, and you want to know why? At least I knew what the fuck was going on in those movies, even though in the end I ultimately didn’t care for either of them. I had no idea what the fuck was going on in THE LAST THING HE WANTED until one critic decided to do some extra do diligence and publish an entire article explaining what was going on. And it took me awhile to find that article! (will post it on both my Facebook page and Twitter for those interested, fyi I read said article AFTER I had finished the movie to relax my lost brain). And the background of U.S. history not explained isn’t the only reason why I had no clue what was going on. The editing was choppy, the cliched dialogue certainly didn’t help, there was too much paranoia, too many back stabbings, and some key important events were not shown that just enhanced said confusion. It seemed to me that this film should’ve been about a half hour longer and it already clocks in at just under two! It is all even more disappointing considering the fact that writer/director Dee Rees last film, Mudbound, another original Netflix film, was freaking fantastic. This is a movie that you absolutely need to go out of your way to avoid if it hits your Netflix queue. It is one of the most absolute wastes of time I experienced, even more so than my pick for last year’s worst film, Cats.

You are probably wondering whether or not I can explain the movie to you…I can! But by way of borrowing and giving credit to IMDB.com and Wikipedia: “The story centers around Elena McMahon, a reporter for the Washington Post who quits her job covering the 1984 Presidential Election to care for her father after her mother’s death. In an unusual turn of events, she inherits his position as an arms dealer for the U.S. Government in Central America which makes her lose the thread of her own narrative and thrusts her from byline to unwitting subject in the very story she’s trying to break.” Adapted some from fucking novel I’ll now never read. Look, if you want to know what is going on just a little bit BEFORE you start to watch this movie (if for some reason you are still interested in checking it out after my scathing review) know this: You need to know some of the background of the layered and complex history of the United States and its shady intervention in Central America during the Cold War. To borrow also from the article I’m about to post in the comments of this review: “the United States government was providing millions of dollars of military aid to the El Salvador government during the Salvadoran Civil War, because the El Salvador government was considered a Cold War ally. This means the U.S. directly contributed to the many civilian murders and human rights violations committed by the El Salvador armed forces.” So once you know all that, and combine it with the combined IMDB and Wikipedia summaries of the movie itself, maybe you’ll enjoy the film more?

But see, here’s the thing, if you want your audience invested in the movie, you can’t just assume the viewers are going to know that part of American history well. Yes, you’ll probably need some beginning scene that combines a montage with old archived footage with some background narration (possibly the protagonist), telling you what’s what. And yes, you might not want that because every other new movie that is released does that, but you know what? In a world where everybody is staring at their phones obsessing over social media posts, the likely hood they are going to use those mediums to search American history during the Cold War in the 1980s is slim to fucking none. To tell you the truth, it is cliched, yet a necessity in a movie like this. But what makes my observation even more confusing is that THE FILM STARTS AND ENDS WITH FUCKING NARRATION FROM THE PROTAGONIST!!! (BTW, I haven’t heard of an opening narration so bad since the original theatrical cut of the first Blade Runner films in the 80s) ARE YOU MEANING TO TELL ME THERE COULDN’T HAVE BEEN A SCENE OR TWO ADDED TO TELL US WHAT THE FUCK WHAT GOING ON?!? I know there are stupid people out there that probably still wouldn’t get it after being fed the info with a silver spoon in their mouths, but when you have critic after critic after critic tearing this movie apart because they had no clue what was going on, and then I don’t get what was going on until I found an obscure article telling me what apparently the filmmakers thought I was already supposed to know…you know your movie has a giant problem.

And the giant problem is that I just didn’t care what was happening on screen because I didn’t know any of the stakes. It is just Anne Hathaway being depressed, mad, paranoid and running for her life for two hours, with Ben Affleck in what is just a glorified extended cameo where you can tell he just did it for the paycheck with his blank stare, phoned in performance. Oh, and it has Willem Dafoe for two scenes playing Hathaway’s father, where it should’ve been three or four, with a proper conclusion to his character than just “blind or you’ll miss it” dialogue explaining what happened to him. It’s all just a stupid, awful, boring, confusing mess. And the ending is laughably dumb with a slow motion shot (you’ll know it when you see it) that lasts way too long and had me laughing my ass off (I was well fed up with the film by then to the point of laughing hysterically). Why did Netflix purchase this film to stream on its platform knowing how bad it was? Whatever film festival is debut in January, the reviews were all terrible, does Netflix really have all that cash to waste on a project like this? Maybe it’s because of their relationship with Dee Rees and her successful Mudbound movie a couple of years ago? Who knows, but this film should’ve never seen the light of day unless there happened to have been extensive re shoots where audiences could figure out what the fuck was going on the entire two hours. The last thing I wanted was to watch a film as bad as this. Should’ve trusted the other reviews on this one. Do yourself a favor and trust mine.

Diane’s Delightful Movie Reviews: EMMA. (2020) (No Spoilers)

Hi there! This is Zach here really quick with my two cents (I usually do this at the end) before you read my wife’s review of EMMA. (2020), an opinion that you probably should pay more attention to more than mine, which is to say you should take mine with a giant ass grain of salt. Why? Because I thought it was only okay. I almost fell sleep throughout the first half until a dance ball in the middle of the film peaked my interest until the end credits. Not only that, but would you really trust the opinion of someone who A. Hasn’t read or seen any direct adaptation of it like the 90s Gweneth Paltrow version and more importantly B. halfway thru the film leans over to his wife and says, “I’m bored, this is too much like Clueless.”? Yes, I now know that Clueless was a modern adaptation of Emma and that it’s pretty damn stupid, ironic, yet funny that I didn’t know that shit before the film even started. Me being a movie fanatic and all. Even after knowing that fact, for me, this new version is still a passable, quirky, one time watch adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, where if I ever wanted to re visit the story again while being entertained, I wouldn’t watch this, but would just put in the Blu Ray I already own of Clueless. I thought the acting here was excellent, especially from Anya Taylor Joy and Mia Goth, and I liked the quirky humor, more the 2nd half than the first, the first half I felt tried a little too hard to yell at you how quirky it was. Ultimately though, I was a little disappointed. But it is far from a bad movie and won’t even touch my worst list of the year. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, period pieces are usually a big hit or a big miss from me. The recent Little Women was a big hit for me, this is one of the rare times it was somewhere in the middle. Okay, time for me to shut my big mouth and time for you to read a female’s more observant, honest perspective (yet much shorter than my reviews, which may be a good thing) of this adaptation, especially if you have any interest in seeing it at all:

Emma was cute, witty, and at its heart, had a good story. At first Emma is the character you want to hate. She is a spoiled little rich girl who thinks that everyone is her business and is too influential for any one to tell her off like she deserves. Through the movie she grows, eats her words and learns to put her friend’s needs before her own. It is a lesson in humility that many need to learn.

The romance factor is delightful. In a time when no one gets to afford love and most marriages are financially motivated Emma is able to find love in an unexpected place. In all, if you like period pieces or cute love stories, this one is for you. It entertained me because I love that sort of quick witted humor that is so subtle that if you blink you might miss it and think it’s boring. (cough cough Zach).

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: GUNS AKIMBO (no spoilers)

I think that there really needs to be a discussion soon, one that extends globally and also lengthy in nature, when it is appropriate to separate the “art” from the “artist” especially in those cases where there are other “artists” that are involved in the same project, that literally had nothing to do with the other “artists'” crimes, awful tweets, awful behavior, what have you. I mean, am I going to stop watching SE7EN, one of my all time favorite films, just because Kevin Spacey is in it? No, because even though he did some pretty awful stuff, his performance in the film is still fantastic, one of the greatest twists of all time layered in his scenes, and Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman and David Fincher did absolutely nothing wrong. I think it is safe to say I definitely can separate the “art” from the “artist” in that way. Then you’ll ask me if you can separate Michael Jackson and what he allegedly did, from his music. When his music comes on the radio, I do jam out to it, I’m not going to lie, but I’m also not going to lie and say that I wish that he didn’t allegedly do those things that he’s been accused of every time one of his masterful songs comes on the air. It also isn’t just his music if you look at it a different way. There are mixers, producers, songwriters, etc. etc. etc. that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the awful shit that Jackson allegedly did that don’t want their work on it wiped out from existence. Now while I’m not a sports fan, over the past several weeks after Kobe’s death, I’ve been able to understand how a lot of Sports fans have been able to separate what he “allegedly” did with his performance on the basketball court, helping lend a hand to his team that won several championships. What I’m trying to say is that there is always someone else involved in this “art” that doesn’t deserve to have you wipe it away from existence just because one guy or gal seriously fucked up (murder is another issue entirely). I mean, are you going to ban ALL Miramax films because Harvey Weinstein was a producer on all of them? Fuck no you are not.

So that lengthy paragraph leads us to GUNS AKIMBO, whose writer and director named Jason Lei Howden has got into hot water lately for some racist tweets and also accusing innocent people of crimes, I don’t know, I kind of glossed over the info because all the articles on him and what he did recently are long and I can’t devote my time to reading article after article on why I should be disgusted with this guy and not see his movie. From what I read, yeah, he tweeted awful shit and accused innocent people of awful shit. But I still wanted to see this film, not only because the premise was kind of cool, but because of the two main actors involved, Harry Potter himself Daniel Radcliffe, and awesome bad ass in every role she gets Samara Weaving, whose been on a roll with great roles such as her star stealing turns in The Babysitter and Ready Or Not. I’m not going to boycott a film just because the director is an asshole. Now if everyone involved in the film was an asshole, yes, not seeing it was probably a huge probability. Now going out of your way to try and persuade people boycott the film is an entirely different story, one that I’m not going to get into here. My point is this: I was able to go into this film and separate the “main artist” from the “art” and in doing so I had a fun time with two great performances by Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving. And to be fair, even though I had a fun time with this film, I think Jason Lei Howden is a very mediocre director. The first 15 minutes of this film are almost unbearable editing and loud noise wise. Also, way too much CGI blood splatter throughout the entire thing. Imagine Michael Bay with a second dose of acid added on to the first. Granted after the first 15 minutes the camera slows way the fuck down to be enjoyable, and there are some good and clear shots, but Howden has a long way to go (don’t know how much longer after the crap he’s pulled) if he wants to be even considered a half way decent director. Luckily it is Radcliffe and Weaving that make the movie and them alone.

The premise is that the movie takes place a little info the future and there is this underground, videogame like, real murder club called Schizm that pits two opponents against each other while the world watches via live stream and whoever murders the other first, wins. Daniel Radcliffe stars as Miles, an unsuccessful programmer for this awfully dumb game app that spends his night trolling the trolls on the internet. One wrong comment though gets him a visit from this bald tattooed asshole, who knocks Radcliffe out, bolts a gun in each of his hands, and pits him against Schizm’s ultimate bad ass, Nix, played by the fantastic Samara Weaving. He has a limited amount of time to figure out how to kill Nix before she kills him, because with the world watching and almost every movement from him tracked, there is no hiding. That’s the best description I can come up with. There are some twists and plot developments along the way, and there are more stakes for Miles to survive for that I don’t want to spoil here, but you get the gist. And I bet you can guess the outcome to everything, it is very, very predictable. If the writing and directing duties were given to a more capable director, this thing could’ve been fantastic, but with all the manic editing and sometimes just being too loud, the mediocre film is only elevated, again, by the performances of Radcliffe and Weaving.

Daniel Radcliffe needs better and larger roles where he can use his American accent. He is a much better actor when he has to don an American accent, and the reason being because if any English comes out of his mouth, I just unfortunately can’t get his Harry Potter typecast image out of my head. Thankfully, he is American in this, and his whole Harry Potter persona is completely washed away. And even though the film is fun yet only okay, it is easily his best performance, outside of Harry Potter, to date. Samara Weaving, playing a cocaine fulled kick ass female that blows away the competition, is another fantastic performance to add to her resume. She is definitely a character actor, and is chameleon like with any role she takes on. I laughed along with her character constantly here. In fact, the dialogue in this movie is very basic and sometimes a little too over the top, but Radcliffe and Weaving actually make it all work and somewhat elevate everything from page to screen. Everything else about the script and some aspects on screen are lacking, including but not limited to: the editing, the CGI bullet wounds and blood shots, the balance of tone, some good shots, but then some quick manic ones where editing was used to cover up the lack of coverage. The aspects of mediocrity of the film, fortunately this time, can be blamed on writer/director Jason Lei Howden. If this film was masterful in regards to the aspects just listed, my little way of boycotting him because of his actions would be to not give him fine praise. Thankfully, all the faults showing through the film are his and his alone. Karma.

Anyway, I used my wife’s free birthday ticket at Alamo Drafthouse to see this, but you can now rent this movie on any on demand service and watch it in the comfort of your own home. Based on the performances alone, I recommend giving it a looksie. If you read up about the writer and director, maybe you can find it within yourself to separate the “art” from the “artist,” but I do understand if you can’t. Realize though, that there are more things that make up a film than just being the writer and director on it. I simply cannot punish those who had nothing to do with whatever the asshole is being accused of. It is just not right. Like I said, there needs to be a conversation about this, rules to be established as well how we can separate all of it. Maybe the film should’ve been delayed and they did a couple of re shoots to stick someone else’s name on it? Maybe not give the writer/director credit at all and just put the Alan Smithee title up there instead as a way of separation? Who knows, but we need to figure out something soon or it’s just eventually going to get to boycott this and boycott that for really small and stupid things (not saying this thing was small and stupid, just saying that it might get to that point). Anyway, I’m not going to put what the writer/director did for those that are curious, you can easily Google the son of a bitch to figure out what he did. I’m not doing your homework buddy.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) (No spoilers)

When Universal’s Dark Universe failed with Tom Cruise’s reboot of The Mummy, I thought that was it in terms of us ever seeing new movies with those famous Universal monsters that came out a long, long time ago. A little bit after the cancellation of the Dark Universe however, Blumhouse productions revealed that it had tapped writer/director Leigh Whannell to oversee a reboot of The Invisible Man. The catch is, it was not to be affiliated with the Dark Universe whatsoever, was going to be its own thing, with no ties to any other films. That was promising to me, and the fact that it was going to be the creator of the Saw films next film after his high successful and fantastic Upgrade movie. I got leery though afterwards because Elizabeth Moss was tapped to star. I was thinking, “oh no, seriously, we are going to have an invisible woman now so that the film can be woke for all audiences?” Little did I realize how fucking wrong I was. Whannell successfully turned the invisible man from a mere insane murderous villain that was so because of side effects of his creation, into a terrifying son of a bitch monster villain. He crafts a story that uniquely ties in themes inspired from the #MeToo Movement involving domestic abuse, but those messages aren’t fucking shoved in your face every two seconds. It all blends together seamlessly, ultimately giving the viewer a hell of a terrifying ride, with a fantastic one woman show performance from Ms. Moss, and probably one of the most shocking moments in recent horror movie history, on par with the decapitation moment in Hereditary, that you’ll want to experience with a respectful audience in a packed theater, just so you can hear the loud gasps and then the shocked silence.

Another thing to keep in mind when going to see this at the theater, is that there have been a lot of complaints that the trailer to this movie reveals basically the whole thing. I can tell you that it does not at all, especially that fantastic shocking moment I just mentioned. Yes, it does reveal the crux of the story, that tells of a abused woman able to escape her psychotic boyfriend, learning that he has committed suicide, and then seemingly still stalking her where she thinks her ex has found a way to fake his death and become invisible. But it doesn’t reveal any of the juicy well earned jump scares. Or any of the couple of small twists, or the fantastic well conceived ending. The movie has a solid three act structure (beginning, middle, end) with absolutely no obligatory scenes setting up any universes or any potential sequels. In fact, I recently heard that Leigh Whannell had to tell Universal no when they wanted him to add a couple of scenes on to the beginning of the film before Elizabeth Moss’s character leaves her ex with a scene so tense that it will have you digging your nails into the armrest, leaning forward in your seat. They wanted to add scenes showing some of the abuse that Moss suffered at her boyfriends’ hands so that the context of her escape would seem more clear. Universal recently said that they are glad that Whannell said no and stuck to his guns, and I am too, having the movie start out with her escape was engaging, brilliant, and masterful, and adding scenes at before that would’ve ruined everything. OTHER STUDIOS, THIS JUST PROVES THAT YOU NEED TO STOP MEDDLING WITH DIRECTOR’S VISIONS, THEY KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE DOING!!!

This film also has the best way of handling all the horror elements combined with the invisible special effects: using the less is more. Hollow Man, thankfully, this is not. Instead of there always being some kind of atmospheric interference showing us where the invisible person is (and how “dope” their special effects are”, such as rain or a heavy amount of dust, Lannell makes shit scary by just having the camera settle on an empty space. He does this for minutes at a time, making you dread that something could happen at any moment. And while he sometimes delivers on that dread, other times he gives you blue balls, which in this case, is a good thing. When he holds back and delivers a hard blow out of nowhere, you get less jump scares but they have more impact and are EARNED, none cheap. THAT is the way to do jump scare horror my friends. It is an incredible thing here. And whenever the Invisible Man is revealed, he is only done so in mere glimpses, the camera not wanting to show you where he is for that long. In Hollow Man, director Paul Verhoeven it seemed wanted to show Kevin Bacon in a green screen suit for every second that ticked on by, so you could praise the special effects, hear his voice, know his presence, “see his acting,” and as you know, that didn’t work out so well reception wise. There is only one or two words that the invisible man says the whole time here, and the actual human that plays the invisible man is probably seen as himself for a total of 5 to 7 minutes out of a 2 hour and 10 minute run time. The less is more works here so well, I couldn’t praise it anymore if I tried. Leigh Whannell, his third film as a director after Insidious 3 and Upgrade (if you haven’t seen Upgrade you are a moron), is really starting to hone in his craft here. We already know he’s a terrific writer, having done masterpieces such as Saw and Insidious, but as a director he flexes his muscles all he can here, and it shows and pays off in spades. I cannot wait until he directs again.

Elizabeth Moss is the frightened victim here, and while there are other actors in it such as Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, and Harriet as two friends and a sister that help her after she leaves her abusive ex, the movie really is a one woman show. Moss has to constantly act terrified and tortured to no one acting in front of her, and she is absolutely terrific. If the Academy Awards wants to start recognizing fantastic horror performances after their giant missteps with Lupita Nyong’o and Us last year, they could give her a nomination at the end of this year. She is that good. Her, combined with the fantastic camera work, the solid structured story, the fantastic invisible effects (the times where they do show it), several fantastic fright, and a truly “HOLY FUCK WTF” moment mid way through the film, easily makes me put it at the top of my 2020 favorite film list thus far. It’s a solid, solid, solid, solid, entertaining as fuck movie. It really makes me wish that they had asked Whannell to come back and do Spiral (aka Saw 9) that comes out in May as I know it would’ve been nothing short of masterful (I have a feeling it is still going to be pretty good though). Now that he signed a two year exclusive deal with Blumhouse after the box office success of The Invisible Man though, I know he is EXACTLY where he needs to be. If you have any reservations about seeing The Invisible Man, please don’t, don’t leave that seat in the theater empty, as I promise you’ll have a helluva good time. Hopefully I have made my praise as visible as it could possibly be.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: COME TO DADDY (On Demand)(no spoilers)

No, I’m not reviewing porn. I’m not talking about cliched sex positions or those kinds of money shots. COME TO DADDY is a horror film that stars Elijah Wood that sort of switches genres exactly half way through the film and then once more right at the very end. And it completely works. The film is also gleefully violent. I can stress it enough: VERY…VERY VIOLENT. There are gruesome stabbings combined with some good ol’ fashioned body horror they will make you scream out while watching or at the very least cringe a little bit on your couch. It’s a short and quick 95 minute film that is engrossing from the very beginning, and never lets up. It has a couple of secrets up its sleeve, and even though I guessed what was going on at the beginning, narrative wise it still makes for an interesting feature, and the little secrets of just how violent it is just keeps on giving until the last scene. You don’t get many movies like this anymore, nice little film that stick around an hour and a half, that don’t contain many cast members or locations, nice low budget stuff. It feels refreshing comparing it to all the superhero, sequel, reboot, remake, re-do, soft reboot mess we get nowadays. It’s very rare to hear the phrase “less is more” with films nowadays. But that is exactly what this film accomplishes.

The premise without getting into any spoilers, because some of the fun of this is discovering what is happening on your own even if you guess correctly, is that a man in his 30’s, played by Elijah Wood, get a letter from his father, who he hasn’t seen since he was 5 years old, asking him to come to where he currently lives so that they can reconnect. Once he gets to his destination (which is right at the very first 5 minutes of the film) things just keep getting weirder, and weirder, and weirder, and then once the couple of twists and turns happen about mid way through the film, things just keep getting gleefully bloodier, and bloodier, and bloodier. And I had a massive amount of fun with it all. I think I’m been getting a good dose of Elijah Wood lately. Just last week I watched another little film with him in it that was barely in theaters called Grand Piano, which co-starred John Cusack and co-written by Damien Chazzelle before he got famous with Whiplash and La La Land. Like this, that is a short 90 minute film with limited locations and the premise was that Wood plays a great pianist that when he starts a new concert appearance after being absent from the limelight half a decade, he opens his music and what is written on the page chills him to the bone, “you play one wrong note and you die.” It was basically Phone Booth, but “Piano Booth” but it was pretty damn entertaining for what is was, and I was more than happy to had only spent about $3 on VUDU to own it.

I blindly spent about $9 on this (because A. good reviews and B. you can see it limited at the Alamo Drafthouse right now and they’re ticket price is $14. Seriously, why would I come to a theater and watch it once than save $5 dollars, gas, a probable headache being around other people, and I can just own it and watch it cheaper in the comfort of my own home?) and I’m more than happy I did. I would definitely check it out again. Especially for the comedic and bloody second half. There is a character in this that calls himself a Tittyholic because he is obsessed with boobs. If that makes you chuckle, then you are in for a smile or two. And the only reason why I easily guessed what was going on, and why you probably won’t, is because I saw a certain name in the cast list that I was familiar of, and since this person hadn’t shown up yet, I knew there was much more to it and easily started to piece shit together. The writer/director Ant Timpson hasn’t done much, he has produced a bunch of indie shit like Turbo Kid and wrote and some segments for The ABCs of Death films, but other than this, this is his first big (for him) sort of project. But it’s very well filmed and he gets a fantastic performance out of Elijah Wood. I heard he is also good in the remake of Maniac, which I’m probably now obliged to check out. Elijah Wood probably knew that Lord of the Rings would be his epic peak with his Hollywood career. Instead of keeping up the franchise game he’s been in a little or this and a little of that, but really small independent projects, and it is some of the best work he’s done. I hope he keeps it coming (pun to this movie intended).

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: FANTASY ISLAND (2020)(one marked spoiler paragraph)

What…in the actual fuck…happened with FANTASY ISLAND (2020) that made me so badly wish that my fantasy be my eyes being gouged out and my ears cut off so I wouldn’t have to endure the movie any longer? Add to that an extra fantasy to wipe my memory of its existence after it was all over. Never, ever have I’ve seen a great concept to a feature film, let alone one from an old television show, be so terribly fucked up in its execution. I mean, where to start? This will mostly be a spoiler free review with one big marked spoiler paragraph trying to explain why half of the shit that happens plot and twist wise doesn’t make any fucking sense. The main problem of the movie is this: it didn’t know what it wants to be. Someone in a different review, I believe it was on JoBlo.com pointed out that, while the movie was marketing as a horror/thriller take on an old television show that was the exact opposite, the movie isn’t scary…at all. Then the movie tries to switch gears and genres several times, but never quite fully becomes those genres. It tries to become an action film, but fails miserably at that. It tries to inject some drama into the affair, epic fail. And at one point it even tries to become…a comedy. I’ll let you guess which of the genres it failed the worst at. I’ll give you a hint…I laughed at parts you weren’t supposed to laugh at. Combined with a last minute twist that is so ridiculous that when you look back on scenes beforehand you’d realize it didn’t make any sense, Fantasy Island is a disaster…at Frye Festival like proportions.

If you live under a nostalgic bridge, you should know that Fantasy Island was first a very popular show aired in the late 70s and finished in the early 80s. It starred Kahn errr…Ricardo Montalbahn as Mr. Roake, who, along with his small person sidekick Tattoo, ran an island where literally anything you desired could become true. There was no limits to your imagination. That show, from the few episodes I’ve seen, I was born in 1986, mostly mixed comedy and some drama (a little dash of the supernatural) with a little dash of adventure, and (from what little I saw) mixed those genres really well. The islands visitors fantasies were grand and imaginative, but as you could guess, they wouldn’t go quite as how they pictured things, but then again, it limited itself to comedy, drama, and some adventure. This film, at first, tries to do milk the one untapped resource that the television show never represented: horror. And, pun intended, it does so horribly. Instead of just sticking to horror, the real problem with the movie is that it changes its mind constantly throughout the film what it wants to do with the source material. And it does so because it feels like what they were doing previously wasn’t working. They are correct, and in that case, while they were writing the damn script, they should’ve just given up and threw it in the garbage, knowing not to mess with what came before. That or hire writers that were actually up to the task of bringing something meaning full to the big screen. Nope, they had to endure, and what they thought would be the perfect mixture of all genres you can think of (a la the recent Parasite, seriously, if you haven’t seen Parasite yet you are a moron), ends up being a Frankenstein monster of different pieces that are duct taped to a whole with absolutely no stability whatsoever.

In this incarnation, a bunch of contest winners are flown to the island with dumb cliched fantasies of their own. Lucy Hale wants revenge on a childhood bully, Maggie Q (why the fuck is she in this? she’s better than this) wants a do over on her life by saying yes to a man’s proposal she rejected 5 years before, Ryan Hansen and Jimmy O. Yang do the dude bro thing (they are brothers by marriage in this) and just want to “have it all,” and finally Austin Stowell wants to enlist in a war in honor of his late father. There is no Tattoo (yet, I have expected him to be an exact opposite of the Tattoo in the television series and be some tall, lurking muscular monster), but Mr. Roarke is there, played by Michael Pena, the one and only small good part about the movie (his performance). Needless to say, this movie being marketed as a horror/thriller version of the television show many grew up watching, their fantasies turn into nightmares and thus turn into nightmares of the audience actually sitting through the below mediocrity the movie itself represents. And if you think this is just my opinion, you should’ve been at the theater my friend Kim and I, went to. Everybody was laughing at parts that we weren’t meant to laugh at, with groans after it ended yet sighs of relief that we were finally leaving the theater after that torture.

***BEGINNING OF GIANT SPOILER PARAGRAPH** The movie ends up trying to throw one too many dumb twists and turns into the affair to hide the fact that their ultimate villain twist doesn’t really work so well when you think of the scenes that came before that contained him/her (I’ll reveal who it is in a second). The first several twists, other than that the fantasies aren’t what they are cracked up to be) have the film trying to be too much like Inception, where there are fantasies within fantasies, on top of different fantasies that were started before the guests even arrived to the island. It turns out that all these different people share a connection to each other where they all were either there or had to do with one fateful night where an apartment complex caught fire and claimed the life of one of its inhabitants. Can you see where this is going? Well, in case you don’t, those new guests of the island are actually part of a fantasy of someone who arrived there before them, wanting revenge against these people because they all had a part (albeit accidental) in that person’s death (a male) who died in this apartment complex fire. They at first think it is his mother that is exacting her revenge for the death of her son, and that mother is the main female concierge on the island, right hand woman to Mr. Roarke, but it turns out it is just Lucy Hale, all because she didn’t get to go on a first date with a cute guy that had asked her out when nobody would give her the time of day in high school because of her bully. I SHIT YOU NOT. Lucy Hale’s character (by the way, I can’t ever see Lucy Hale as a villain, she’s just so darn effective at being tiny and cute, and that is most of the characters she plays, and the fact that she was nice when I met her in real life) claims she was acting the whole time, but scenes from the beginning of the film, mainly the ones that show her getting ready and reacting to torturing her high school bully, end up making this twist not make one lick of fucking sense. It is never explained on the television show how the island is able to grant these wishes come true, but the movie horribly does. Straight out of what looked like the abandoned third act set of Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides, in the middle of the island is a magical rock that water hits it, and then the water is put into the island’s drinks, and the water is able to read your mind and fulfill your fantasy…AGAIN, I SHIT YOU NOT. And for my final what the fuck, it turns out this whole movie is basically a PREQUEL to the television series because Mr. Roarke, at the end of the film, decides that the island won’t be a place for revenge, but for redemption of character and only happy and heartfelt fantasies will take place from then on (this is after Lucy Hale’s character has been thwarted). One of the guests stays behind, Jimmy O. Yang’s character, because the island will fulfill your fantasy forever, as long as you stay on the island, and his brother dies near the end of the film, but his fantasy is for him to be alive and go live his life on the mainland, so Ryan Hansen magically is alive again on the plane heading home with the rest of the survivors. Mr. Roarke wants to give Yang’s character a nickname, so he goes by his brother’s nickname for him, Tattoo, because Yang has a tattoo of the word ‘Tattoo’ on his chest near his left nipple…do I ever need to repeat myself on the I SHIT YOU NOT??? **END OF GIANT SPOILER PARAGRAPH**

The movie doesn’t work on any level. In the end it plays out like a shitty higher budgeted SciFi Network original, but almost bad on the scale of any Sharknado movie you’ve seen. All the more frustrating because the low indie Blumhouse produced this, which has produced great horror films such as Get Out, and while this film is gorgeous to look at (it was actually filmed on Fiji Islands), it’s just so damn awful in its execution I can’t even recommend it on either a “so bad its good” level or if you took it as one big goofy comedy and just laughed at the entire thing type affair. I don’t know who thought to ultimately green light this (probably Jason Blum) but whoever did needs their head examined thoroughly. In the end I should’ve seen all the signs. First, it wasn’t screened for critics, which is a bad thing in its own right, but even with that, there are usually Thursday night late shows if people want to get ahead of the weekend crowds. There were NO Thursday late shows, which just screams cover up. Now it has less than 10% on Rotten Tomatoes…which usually you take that site with a grain of salt, but with this film it is very much warranted. I was actually looking forward to this, because the team that wrote and directed this, also wrote and directed Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, which at the end of the day, the mythology in that movie was so juicy yet bat shit crazy it became a guilty pleasuure, so bad it’s good film for me. I was hoping this would be on the same level, but it isn’t even near the same continent, let alone the same island.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

Back when SONIC THE HEDGEHOG was supposed to release November 2019, I wasn’t going to see this movie. It just looked like a conventional kids film with Jim Carrey getting enough Red Bull and pills in him to get back to his over-the-top zaniness we haven’t seen since Bruce Almighty and the rest of the 90s. Plus, that GOD AWFUL Sonic design (seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?). It is one thing to change the design of costumes from a comic book series, to little tweeks here and there from book adaptations, but someone thought it was in their best interest for them to completely overhaul Sonic’s design from the game and turn him into…I’m still not sure what that was. I wasn’t the only one to complain about it. But then the release was postponed until February 2020, because Paramount and the filmmakers got so much damn backlash they knew that if they didn’t change the design that the film would cement itself into being complete box office bomb. But lo and behold, they changed the design, and it just finished out the four day President’s day weekend, finishing in the mid 60 million dollar range domestically, way higher than they projected with the re design. In my opinion, no way would it have cracked $30 mil domestically if they hadn’t had changed it, and considering that the public was told it only cost the company $4 million for the redesign, I’d say that it was a great decision. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite, and combine that with a T-Mobile Tuesday $4 ticket to see the movie anytime I wanted, I saw it late at night, telling myself that even if I got a headache watching it, I at least saved about 6 dollars. Turns out, the movie isn’t that half bad. I even had a little fun with it.

I’m not saying it’s the greatest video game adaptation in the world of all time, I’m just saying I enjoyed myself a bit (especially when finding all the Easter Eggs within since I was an avid player of the game when I was little) and realize it could’ve been much, much worse. And the redesign definitely helped in that decision. Before the movie even started, I needed to get my brain into the right mindset. That this is probably going to be a film mostly for small kids that have never played a Sonic game in their life, and probably a couple of adult jokes in there and a shit ton of Easter Eggs to keep the rest of us entertained. Me readjusting my mind set definitely helped as well. But the film is a little more than just that. It was actually pretty funny with some sight gags and kid jokes as well, it had several really cool and fun slow motion sequences a la X-Men Days Of Future Past, and Jim Carrey and James Marsden actually looked like they gave a damn. That is one bullet point in any kids movie that you have to check off, otherwise it wasn’t a good movie to begin with: whether the adult actors involved actually seem like they wanted to be there. I always think of Paul Giamatti in Big Fat Lair as a very good reference point (no matter what you think of that movie, he gives it his all). And that’s what James Marsden does here. He has to interact and talk to mostly something that isn’t there and he completely pulls it off. Anyone that tells you that James Marsden is not a good actor because of his “shitty” portrayal of Cyclops in the X-Men series is full of themselves. In those films cases, they just didn’t really give him anything to work with other than being jealous of Wolverine the entire time. Here, he is the main human star, and even though his arc is a very cliched one (a home is where the heart is one that’s been done a thousand times), the arc is a complete one, and he makes it believable.

Now let’s get to Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey is probably the most over acting celebrity that has ever lived, but he somehow has that ability to make that over acting believable and most importantly, make it work in the context of the film. If you think pulling off that fine line of zaniness is easy, you don’t really know Jim Carrey or his filmography. Go back and re watch the Ace Ventury films, Dumb & Dumber, Liar Liar, fuck, even watch Cable Guy, the man is quite brilliant in what he does. And if you still doubt me, go back and re watch his more serious stuff like Man On The Moon or The Truman Show, the fact that he can go from zany to sane-y within the drop of the hat shows the range of one of the best entertainers in the business. Here, is no different. Jim Carrey is back in top form in Sonic, making me smile in each and every frame that he showed up in, making me laugh out loud with his antics the first time I think since Bruce Almighty. I think I’ve had one of the biggest laughs of the year in a dialogue exchange with James Marsden that involved a breastfeeding orphan joke, I shit you not. While he looks nothing like Dr. Robotnik (if you’ve seen any trailers and TV spots, that changes by the end of the film), he does a pretty good job representing the over-the-top villainy you would think would come from a character like that out of that video game. Carrey has said that most of the dialogue on the page didn’t end up making it to the screen, and that a lot of it was improve. Could’ve fooled me, he makes everything he does or said feel like it was written beforehand, even a out of context yet funny dance sequence he has in his trailer mini lab type thing. If you’ve always been a Jim Carrey fan, this is definitely a must see on his filmography.

Now, as you know, the Sonic The Hedgehog games don’t really have a plot other than Sonic saving his little woodland creature friends from these hostage capsules and then ultimately defeating Dr. Robotnik and his insane brand of war like vehicles on both land, sea, and air. This is the part of the film that fell flat for me. Instead of coming up with a delicious plot set in Sonic’s home world (which is shown at the beginning of the film, and it looked wonderful), we get another one of those “fish out of water” stories where Sonic ends up coming to Earth to be “safe” and shit. Then he runs into his “protector”, a cop played by James Marsden. Yes, it literally almost rips off the first Transformers movie when it comes to its narrative structure. Alas, after an accidental surge of his power that leads a large area of the U.S. being wiped out of their power temporarily, the Government hires Dr. Robotnik to track down the source of the giant EMP to make sure it isn’t a terrorist attack or something. Dr. Robotnik knows better though, and just wants to capture the creature in order to harness its power…because reasons? Maybe take over the world? It doesn’t really mention that thank God. Anyway, the script and plot are my biggest complaints of the film. It’s been done and done and done many and many and many times before. I wish that screen writers didn’t use Earth as a storytelling crutch and we could get a video game adaptation one day that takes place on the Alien/Mysterious world that character comes from. I understand they make it Earth so that we as humans have something to relate to, but come on, enough is enough, we all have the ability to expand our minds a little to be able to connect on another level.

But other than two other weird parts where they stop at an empty gas station, but when Sonic looks out his window two minutes later there is a noisy and loud Biker Bar next door (but it leads to one of the cool slow motion sequences so it is forgivable) and obvious Olive Garden product placement, the movie is a little fun. I was entertained throughout the short 95 minute run time and I enjoyed seeing Jim Carrey do what he does best. Oh, and the Easter Eggs. There are so many Easter Eggs in this from the videogame it was such a treat picking out even the most elusive and abstract references the filmmakers decided to shove in there. Now while Sonic still looks CGI as fuck, the redesign helped me coax with that problem, but the real magic and what makes him relatable is the great voice work by the funny and great Ben Schwartz. He makes Sonic his own and sounds what I feel the character would sound like if he had a voice in the video games. Overall, this is just a great fun family film to take the whole family too. If you are an adult, seeing this by yourself, and are going nit pick the movie like I almost ended up doing before I let my mind breathe before it started, you probably aren’t going to like it. Kids are going to LOVE this. LOVE IT. If all this money and decent reviews gets Paramount hyped, hopefully it doesn’t go to their heads and they spend their time concocting a sequel that is filled with more love and devotion than this film was (which after the redesign, you can tell that their love grew). And if you manage to catch a blink and you’ll miss it familiar face that is covered by a mask at the beginning of the film, and then manage to stay for the mid credits sequence that really teases what’s to come (and I expected but it was no less fun seeing this sequence go down), you might be able to see a little light at the end of the speed tunnel of a sequel that could possibly blow the original out of the water. I hope so. They just need to take their time with it, and not rush it, even though telling a movie called Sonic The Hedgehog to slow down is pretty damn ironic.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: TIMMY FAILURE – MISTAKES WERE MADE (Disney+)

TIMMY FAILURE: MISTAKES WERE MADE, the new original film that debuted on Disney+ that past week, is in the same vein as Troop Zero that debuted on Amazon Prime last month (oh hey they both start with a T too!). What that means is that it is a cute, passable, one time watch kid film that will make you pine and ache for the better kids films you grew up with back in the 90s/early 2000s (and arguably Big Fat Lair being the last of the greats). Seeing that you are my age reading this, you might now even have a little tyke the same age when you starting watching all that garbage decades ago, and if so, take comfort knowing that he or she will enjoy this much more than you ever will. It’s quirky, it’s weird, it has a life lesson in there about growing up that will go over kids heads, and you know what? That’s okay. I’m giving it a mild recommendation because it doesn’t treat the audience (both big and small) as if they were idiots, something I am afraid will happen to me when I see Sonic The Hedgehog tomorrow (place your bets!). I think the oddest thing about this whole endeavor is that it was written and directed by Tom McCarthy, who has won a damn Oscar for writing Spotlight, and whose other films (such as Win Win, The Station Agent, has received critical acclaim. But then again, he’s also written and directed one of Adam Sandler’s worst films, The Cobbler and is responsible for the so-so screenplay of the recent Christopher Robin. Timmy Failure is more in the Robin camp than the Cobbler thank Christ.

The movie is about, and I’m just going to borrow from IMDB.com on this one, “An 11-year-old boy who believes that he is the best detective in town runs the agency Total Failures with his best friend, an imaginary 1,200-pound polar bear.” It isn’t as zany as it sounds, and I feel like if it went full zany, it would’ve been The Cobbler disaster like proportions. In fact, the treatment of the imaginary polar bear is done quite well and looks quite good considering it is a straight to Disney+ feature (about as good as the effects of the live action Lady and The Tramp). The film ultimately works well because of the quirky of the character of Timmy, and his weird verbal exchanges with his real human friends, his angry teacher (played by the great Wallace Shawn), the school counselor (played by the great Craig Robinson in a role that showcases more of his talents than just weird comedy like The Office), his mom (Ophelia Lovibond, Elementary) and the meter maid man his mom is dating (Kyle Bornheimer, Casual). The only thing that kind of bums me out is that I was hoping for more kid like detective adventures than the one we got. Like real smart yet kooky detective work from the boy. It started out fine when he took the case of a stolen back pack, but then the movie mixes in too much of the boy outlandish imagination involving Russians and a Chinese classmate and several times it crossed the lines of silliness. Thank goodness for those little doses of reality when he snaps out of it than more than made up for the too much silliness at hand. When doing research on this film, there are like 7 books in this series, and maybe this is a pretty faithful adaptation of the first one, here’s to assuming that there is more actual detective work in the other books and if those get made for Disney+ in the future, that they are adapted correctly.

The movie really is a hit and miss type of affair, because you get really well constructed and funny scenes involving Timmy and his friend entering a bank with fencing masks on but then you get a weird damn dam school field trip adventure after, that while having a couple of pretty funny sight gags (especially the last one), it didn’t really work for me in the context of what was going on. The movie truly shines in its last act, the last 30 minutes, when Timmy goes on a little adventure with the meter maid man his mom is dating. The exchanges between the two are light heartened, convincing, and fun and I look back on the entire film and wish that the whole hr and 40 minutes was devoted to those two just solves little insignificant kids cases. Oh well, maybe in the sequels? The newcomer that plays Timmy, Winslow Fegley, is actually quite good. He rides that fine line of being a cute kid with quirks that feels realistic than getting into over-the-top unbelievable territory. He’ll have you chuckling every time he uses the phrase, “Mistakes were made.” I think I’ve said what I needed to say about this film, other than that Disney+ is the perfect platform for it, because it wouldn’t have been seen by anybody in the theaters other than the fans of the novels, and it is better than a lot of the ‘original movies’ that Netflix has to offer. Somewhere right in the middle. Ultimately passable, a mild recommendation, but completely forgettable.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE LODGE (no spoilers)

One giant way of knowing that you love a motion picture is if you still love it even if you correctly guess the entire outcome of a film. I guessed early on correctly what was really going on in THE LODGE but even as the end credits started to roll I was still deeply invested in everything that I witnessed in this fantastic no cheap jump scares, atmospheric, and disturbing horror movie. If it seems like I harp and ridicule most wide modern audience horror films nowadays (like the recent terrible The Grudge reboot) its because they deserve to be torn apart. The only thing those kinds of film are good for are to elicit cheap jump scares for dumb tweens to get their temporary orgasmic kicks of reality escapism while trying to avoid the real horrors of the world. Movies like this don’t represent real horror that well. They don’t have themes, messages, or contain anything beyond the fact that “this thing jumped out at me with this loud musical crescendo so it made my heart jump into my throat and since its not happening to me in real life combined with the fact that it in no way could happen in general (be that the cheap scare is the pop up of a zombie, vampire, ghost, or whatever the fuck), this is the exact shit I need to escape reality for an hour and a half to two hours.” No…fuck you. You don’t know horror films you amateur fuck. True horror films are something like this, Hereditary, Midsommar, and even though I didn’t care much for them, films like It Comes At Night, The Witch or The Lighthouse because they don’t produce many jump scares (if any at all) they seep into your fucking mind and make you fear that you could wind up in a situation like that, because they provoke a real sense of reality. If you didn’t like ANY of the films I mentioned above, YOU. DO. NOT. KNOW. HORROR.

As you can see my review is going beyond just the film I saw last night and basically just filler because I don’t really want to about The Lodge much. Well I do, but I want to talk about it privately to people that have actually seen it. And it’s not because it was bad and I have a bunch of jokes why it sucks or anything like that, it’s because it is best to go into this film completely and utterly fucking dark. Don’t even watch a trailer to it. I really don’t want to say anything about it beyond the fact that it deals with two kids that are trapped in a big cabin/lodge place out in the middle of bum fuck nowhere with a woman that is to be their new stepmother. I don’t want to talk about how it gets to them even ending up in that situation. I don’t want to talk about the back story of the new stepmother to be. I especially don’t want to talk about the ending. I don’t want to talk about how it deals with mental illness even better than that boring Horse Girl movie on Netflix that I just reviewed that was a slog to get through. It’s better not knowing anything at all about this movie other than the title and the synopsis that I just gave that was as generic as I could come up with without giving anything away. I can only talk about several things, one is giant praise, one is a minor complaint (my only one about this terrific film), and one is about the acting.

Let’s start off with the minor complaint: the two kids have a father in the film, who sets up this “spend Christmas family time together” at this lodge/cabin so that way they get to know their future stepmother. But after a very short time at the place, he goes off on a work emergency for several days. And yes, they do set up that he’s a very busy man at work before he just deserts his future wife and two kids, but it felt like a forced plot convenience just to get the three of them alone for the horror to start to happen. There could’ve been better alternative solutions to get the father out of the picture such as maybe going into town for supplies but then a blizzard just suddenly comes in and he’s stuck there for several days (the blizzard happens anyway but the work is still the excuse). If I was a father with my two kids, and wanted to spend family time for them to get to know my future wife, there is no way in fucking hell I’d ditch them for several days for my job. I would want to be in on that wholesome family time so I would make sure everything at my job can be handled so that it could survive on its own a week, and I would ESPECIALLY NOT LEAVE MY KIDS ALONE WITH SOMEONE THEY HARDLY FUCKING KNEW. ESPECIALLY when you learn early on in the film the background her character went through when she was younger. No fucking way I’d leave them alone. That’s the only part of the film that felt outlandish and sort of stupid to me. Easily could’ve been rectified with different ideas, but this is mostly forgivable due to the rest of the film being so damn good.

Which gets me to the giant praise: UTTERLY FUCKING FANTASTIC MOOD, ATMOSPHERE, AND DISTURBING IMAGERY/SITUATIONS/IDEAS. There are maybe one or two earned jump scares throughout the film, and literally no other cheap jump scares in sight. This horror film is meant to dig deep into your mind, where you are thinking about it at night, days after you see it. It is meant to get under your skin and make you afraid that something like that could happen to you. It’s so very, very, very, very well done, and the only thing I could compare it to nowadays is that it felt like a more somber & depressing yet more realistic take on themes presented in Hereditary and Midsommar. Albeit this one is definitely more religious than the other two…but in a good way. The acting is the last bit I will say about the movie with praise without giving anything away. While Alicia Silverstone (yes, Cher from Clueless) and Richard Armitage have small yet effective roles, this is a three person show that consists of the Riley Keough, Lia McHugh, and you may know the great Jaeden Martrell from his main role as Bill Denborough in the new Stephen King IT movies. The perfect performance in this goes to Riley Keough, playing the loving, yet shy, yet may be truly disturbed new stepmother to be. It is another horror acting performance that you will eventually put down in the “All Time Great Horror Roles” alongside other recent performances such as Toni Collette from Hereditary and Florence Pugh from Midsommar. She’s just that good, especially in the final act. All right, that’s it, no more, I’m done.

If you don’t enjoy films like this, or you won’t even give them a chance, and want to stick to your dumb cheap jump scare silly ‘horror’ films, then why bother even going to the movies, because you are literally getting zilch out of watching those films. It’s like you are buying and eating a cheesecake from Walmart, when in reality if you just made the effort, and drove a little further, you could pick up a fresh delicious piece from The Cheesecake Factory. I enjoyed and loved almost every bite here. The film was written and directed by a Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, and I’ll admit, I am not familiar with them or their work, but I plan on checking out some. They do a great job with both duties here and hopefully they stick to this genre, we need more of it to flush out the cheap shit. I’m really surprised that filmmaker Ari Aster had nothing to do with this film. Because if Hereditary was a great horror representation of Fall, and Midsommar was a great horror representation of Spring or Summer, then The Lodge is a great horror presentation of Winter. If Ari Aster had anything to do with this he’d be only one film away from completing a perfect Horror Season Solstice Anthology. Alas, his name isn’t anywhere on this and it is just a great film to watch with the other two: Midsommar a perfect appetizer, Hereditary the main course, and then finally The Lodge as a sweet, sweet dessert.