Hell Fest (2018) Review

AKA a boring film with a boring premise, boring characters and…nope, f**k this, I’m too bored to even write a witty intro.
0.5/5 Screams.

MATURE CONTENT & SPOILERS AHEAD

Oh, Netflix, what would I do without your constant influx of mediocre-at-best horrors? Hello, all, happy end of Summer (it won’t stop bloody raining here). I’ve been MIA due to my laptop kicking the proverbial bucket, twice just to toy with me. We can take a moment of silence later.

Due to the premature departure of my Lenovo, I had the joy of watching this trashy film on the 2×4 screen of my phone. But, honestly, I’m unsure a high definition seventy inch would make this film any better to experience. It’s lazy, uninventive and poorly conceived. The main thing that deeply just pissed me off about this movie is that it’s been done one hundred trillion times, there is no credibility and nothing new. It’s just yet another identical teen slasher. This begs the question…what the bloody hell is the point? What is the point in rehashing every other sub-par teen scream that doesn’t even bother to make the gore worth staying for. What a waste of money.

Speaking of unoriginal content, within the first three minutes of the first scene we’re hit with our first cliche. Really I should have spent the duration of this film just counting the cliches. ‘It’s not funny’, I feel like I should have tried to play teen scream bingo dialogue, why do these teens always come across so hard done by and thus are made to seem superficial in their emotions. I hate it when all films do this, utilise stereotypes about adolescents in order to somehow diminish their status or intellectual worth. And, of course, the bloody nursery rhyme whistling. At least this scene had the advantage of being so early on that I had hopes it could translate into some meta-commentary which – it didn’t. Or if it did it was used as a poorly constructed excuse for why this film suckssssssssss.

other first impressions:
!!! The lighting is so dark, the saturation needs to be hella turned up ladies and gents
!!! Boredddd
!!! No real gore, no interesting foreshadowing and sluggish, dull tension building
!!! Is that the girl from S3 of ‘Thirteen Reason Why?’ … nope, never mind.
!!! The young girl looks like Naomi Campbell pre-botulism
!!! A very easy watch, if it manages to grab your attention for five minutes then congratulations, you have the attention span of a fruit fly with narcolepsy.
!!! The villain’s mask is fairly eerie, I’ll give them that

‘Pop goes the weasel’…lucky bastard, shoot me too. Seriously, writers? Three hetero-normative couples? At least killing off the love interest first was an interesting choice and the final girl being alone on the ride compared to the two couples is relateable on a deep level. It says a fair amount about the film that I got past the halfway mark and knew one out of five of the protagonists’ names. Also, why the heck make this film an 18 certificate? There’s hardly any gore or violence, the ennuculation scene was the only real piece of gore. Surely the only thing to strive for with this sort of B horror flick is to make it bloody, make it stupid and light, make it the kind of gross, ‘Wizard of Gore’ shit that preteens watch on Halloween. But this doesn’t even bother to do that! It somehow manages to completely ignore all the audience brackets it should be marketing to.

Main character: “We’re going to Spain!” ha, ha, haha – Nah, baby, you ain’t. At the worst you’;; becomes a very maroon ice cream sundae and at the best you’re going to need some serious therapy. I do like the hair drying scene though.

Lastly, before I go cry into a pillow that this was an hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back, even the continuity in this film is shite. When the MC is on the toilet and the camera cuts from bird’s eye view to something else, then back again. One frame shows that the toilet paper holder has paper on it, the next shows and empty roll. Boooo. Plus she doesn’t even pee whilst on the toilet, got a UTI, hunny?

Final note in my notebook: ‘Ugh’.

Little Evil (2017) Review

AKA a ‘Little’ bit boring. Evil? Really? He’s like a frigging puppy at the end. And…and…and this film got 92% on Rotten Tomatoes?…I just…what?
1.25/5 screams

SPOILERS AND MATURE CONTENT AHEAD:

I had somewhat high hopes for this movie. I remember it being released and the trailer looked promising, but it has sat in my ‘WatchList’ for over two years so, read into that what you will about the premise and the trailer. Honestly, anything was going to be better than the 9 minutes we gave ‘Scary Movie 3’ which was utterly, holy, yawnably (is that a word?) crap. Just pure crap. So anything, anything had to be better….right?

First impressions: the parallels in both the colour schemes and the dialogue are initially pretty interesting. For example; the mother shouting “Time out” and the husband latterly stating “I want a divorce”. Both of these statements have huge impact behind them, yet they’re stoic, to the point, blunt – short sentences with fists behind them. I thought this was clever. Moreover, the colour schemes were very well thought out – visually pleasing. Dark at the start, bright and cheerful afterwards. Everybody’s clothes are plain, unadulterated. There’s something eerie about that, to be honest. Maybe that’s just me. Lucas, throughout the film, is coloured darker than everyone around him. Whether it’s clothing, clouds behind him etc. This sort of breaks when he’s at the fair with the step-dad. Even his eyes seem brighter, thus by comparison the beginning looks far darker than you think.

Seeing Adam Scott being genuine and not saying something sarcastic and deadpan is strange, I keep expecting there to be a punchline but that expectation never really comes because this film, frankly, is not funny.

The shift in pacing every now and then is effectively jarring.

Quotes that did make me laugh:
~ “I just love the smell of an old nunnery”
~“God never gives you more than you can handle” ~ NO NO NO, I cannot stand this quote – Just, no, I’m sorry if you put this in your film with serious intentions I will hate it. -_-
~ The therapist is hilariously accurate: “I see…Hmm” ~ also the Newton’s cradle is very effective for building the tension.
~ “The way they’re paying teachers these days i’m not surprised”

There are little meta hints of connections to ‘The Omen’, ‘The Shining’, ‘Poltergeist’ and, I think (please correct me) ‘The DaVinci Code’. You get points if you can tell me the links between these films and ‘Little Evil’ are.
-The Omen: Lucas’ hair and clothing, the camera focuses sometimes, direct eye contact.
-The Shining: the two (blonde) twins in blue dresses, the puppet seems to be a variation on Tony
-Poltergeist: communication through the TV – darkness except from static, focus on clowns
-The DaVinci Code: The man lacerating himself with a whip ~ self-flagellation

The worm scene was pretty gross, I’ll give the film that. Question: Why the hell is there a fully operational bar at a children’s sixth birthday party? I know kid’s parties suck but jesus, at least hide it in a water bottle of sumthin!

“Want to play?” did make me jump. But the humour throughout the film is very hit and miss, almost like it was added at the last minute – they just thought about ripping of somebody else’s story but adding a few shitty comedy scenes. Also, the wife is sooo dumb.

My overall impression: boring, so boring I was just waiting for it to end. Eek, sorry Rotten Tomatoes – we’ll have to agree to disagree!

So, i’m leaving horror-comedies alone for the time being (after I publish my review of ‘Cockney’s Vs Zombies’) phew! What binge should I do next? Let me know what you think in the comments or tweet me! I like a good twittering.

Movie Review: The Perfection (2019)

AKA ‘Well that came out of nowhere, didn’t it?’
4/5 screams.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I thought i’d get this review out of my system whilst I can still remember my natural reactions to this latest release of Netflix’s homegrown horrors. Funnily enough this was one of the films that made me realise how much I wanted to start this blog. So, manners remembered, thank you Richard Shepherd for your inspiration. After ‘The Babysitter’, ‘Annihilation’, ‘The Open House’, ‘Before I Wake’ amongst others which compile the very mixed bag I had my doubts but tried to go in with an open mind anyhow.

Despite initial concerns about the ambiguous premise and trailer, on one Sunday morning I wrestled in bed with a delightful hangover. Downing orange juice like there was no tomorrow and cuddling into a fort made of pillows, I saw this film pop up on Netflix. I looked the trailer up in my fugue and, in hindsight, I now have very mixed feelings about the scene they chose for the promotional video. I think it was a very clever hook and certainly gripping but it was also such an important crux of the whole twisted journey that I think it may have been worth keeping it back in the arsenal. But maybe that’s just me.

One thing I loved about this movie was how multilayered its sub-genre identification is. Half of it was this shadowy, psychological thriller yet there were elements of body horror in there. The latter part of this artistic, paranoid tapestry even morphs into a revenge film. Instead of, as discussed in my review of ‘The Shrine’, getting lost in the chaos of different tropes it instead picks and chooses very certain and deliberate themes from each sub-genre without muddying the tone.

Honestly the atmosphere of this film is superb. Erotic, tense, bloody, twisted and oh so moody. The reds and beauty of the colour scheme transforms it into something elegant and wrong, something you know you shouldn’t be loving but you really are.

We can’t talk about ‘The Perfection’ without talking about the acting. There wasn’t one character I didn’t believe and didn’t have some sort of relationship with, even if it was revulsion or fear. The sexual connection in the beginning between the two female protagonists is beautiful and sensual and perfectly delicate. Now that is a sign of fantastic writing and production. The cherry on the cake was the music, these stunning eerie violins and cellos, you can almost taste the anxiety of being perfect in each piece.

Then, before I stop gushing over this film, the ending was an absolute grenade to the guts. I didn’t see it coming in the slightest, it was messy and perfectly balanced between shocking visuals, disgust and sympathy yet distracted by how stunning the music is.

Seriously, if you haven’t seen this film go and watch it now – it’s this darkly witty, sharp, sexy and stunningly captured expression of desire, abuse, self-esteem and even, somehow, morality. So clever. I plan on watching it again over the coming weeks and possibly doing a video review.

So what did you guys think about ‘The Perfection’? Do you agree with me or do you think it was trying too hard to be different, trying to be a piece of art rather than a film? Let me know in the comments.

Otherwise, don’t scream, see you next time.