Artemis Fowl

 

"I'm Artemis Fowl, and I'm a criminal mastermind." I wanted to highlight this line from near the end of this movie. I want to highlight it because none of Artemis Fowl's actions really make this line feel earned. There were a lot of other things in this movie, very few of them being good. For example, the special effects are shoddy, at best. I have no idea what kind of performances Josh Gad and Judi Dench were giving. The action felt small scale. There were only a couple of locations in this movie, mainly Artemis's house. The villain has no dimension to her. She feels like a complete afterthought (probably because Artemis Fowl himself is the main antagonist of the book). The one character I actually did enjoy was the Holly Short character. She had a backstory that actually helped you to understand her drive, her motivations. The pacing is quite poor too. I feel like a lot of the film's plot beats are rushed, just so this movie can fit into an hour and a half time frame. Overall, there was very little about Artemis Fowl that worked for me, and I could honestly see why Disney dumped this onto their streaming service rather than delay its theatrical release. If you do happen to come across this movie on Disney+, just go ahead and skip it. 

2 / 10   

Once Upon a Time at Christmas

 Two serial killers dressed Santa and Mrs. Claus wreak havoc on a small town while the police try their best to stop the killers. So, I was warned going in that this was going to be bad. Maybe that's why it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I mean, is it even fair to pick on a slasher movie for having subpar acting? Where this movie truly works for me is actually in the story. How the two killers work is actually kind of clever, and it legitimately took me a little while before I really understood where the story was going. Parts of it were predictable, of course. Aside from the acting, a lot of the dialogue is also pretty bad. The one actor I genuinely enjoy in this movie is the actor who plays "Santa." The man hams it up to just the right level for me. The characters are pretty thin. They aren't unlikable per se, but, most of them don't really do much to stand out for me. Yes, this movie is bad. But, I found it to be pretty enjoyably bad. If you are fan bad movies, and of off-kilter Christmas movies, there are honestly a lot worse you could go with. 

6 / 10  

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

 Let's talk about the biggest liar in the Friday the 13th franchise, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. As anyone who has ever seen this movie has undoubtedly pointed out, Jason does not take Manhattan. He takes a boat for 90 minutes, and farts around in New York for the last fifteen minutes. I have seen this movie a couple of times. Each time, one of the things that sticks out to me is that I just don't find it all that fun. More than anything, I find it kind of boring. Kane Hodder does play Jason in this movie, and is one of the very few things about this movie I actually genuinely like. I should also say that a couple of the kills in this movie as well. These are just a couple of things that actually work for me in a movie full of stuff I just find stupid. For eaxmple, I hate all of the stuff with Jason as a kid. The final girl in this movie is actually one of the least interesting final girls in the entire franchise for me. Yes, she has a backstory. If this movie were better written, I probably would have cared more. Overall, Jason Takes Manhattan is one of the least popular, and least liked, films in the Friday the 13th franchise, and for good reason. 

3 / 10 

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare

Can one truly call Freddy’s Dead a good movie in any sense of the word good? No. Yet, I have something of a soft spot for this flick. I can’t entirely put my finger on what it is. It isn’t a movie I have childhood nostalgia for. I was in my mid to late teens when I watched it for the first time. I really think Robert Englund is in top form as Freddy, as per usual, even if he was a bit too comedic. For the most part, I did also find the kills to pretty creative, something I would expect out of a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I think the main issue with this film is that it’s a whole new cast of characters taking Freddy down. It isn’t really a plot point that had been established in previous films. And yes, I do think that’s a pretty major problem with this movie. However, I actually do like the new characters we spend time for the most part. Kind of adding to that point a little bit, I do get that Freddy was the star of the show at this point. But, having completely new people be the ones to kill him for good almost makes his death feel a little empty. The special effects can be pretty laughably bad too, especially the dream people. The last ten to fifteen minutes incorporate 3-D, and it really comes off as an afterthought. So, yes, Freddy’s Dead is a legitimately bad movie with a ton of problems that are pretty tough to ignore. But, I do see this as a personal guilty pleasure, and an enjoyably bad movie to watch around Halloween. I know I’m in the minority, but I don’t really care.  

6 / 10

The Pool (a.k.a. Swimming Pool)

A group of "high school students" break into a closed down pool for a graduation party. I'll be honest, if you've rad any of my past reviews, you'll know I tend to be on the forgiving side of a lot of slasher movies. This... is not going to be one of those cases. I like a couple of the performances, namely the performances by a young Isla Fisher and a young James McAvoy before either of them really got big. There's at least one kill in the movie I think is genuinely entertaining. A couple of scenes are directed decently enough, I suppose. Isla Fisher's character in the film is only in two scenes. The backstory given to this character feels more interesting and thought out than the backstory given to the actual final girl. Okay, even by slasher movie standards, most of these characters feel incredibly stock. A couple of them are also really hard to tell apart from one another. Literally, three of the male characters in this movie have similar build and short black hair in a buzz cut. The killer's costume also looks stupid. It doesn't look like the costume I would expect out of the villain in a slasher movie. It looks like a costume worn by a lame supervillain. 

 But, this movie commits what is perhaps the greatest sin a movie can commit. It is just plain boring, especially in the first half. I've already mentioned that I don't particularly care about most of the characters. So, that probably doesn't help that much at all. Even as someone who is a bit of an apologist for cheesy slasher movies, I can't bring myself to recommend this. It really isn't worth your time or effort. 

4 / 10 

Headless Horseman

 
Headless Horseman is 2007 made-for-television movie about a group of college kids who find themselves stuck in a small town where the townsfolk offer them up to the Headless Horseman as part of a ritual sacrifice. Is this movie good? No. It is, however, my kind of bad. It has sort of an 80s slasher feel to it, and that is usually something that is going to appeal to me on some level. It has the quality of acting you would expect in both a slasher movie, and a made-for-television Sci-fi channel movie. It is noticeably low budget. The costumes and sets look cheap and fake. The CGI is awful. The gore effects are pretty inconsistent. Sometimes, it's clear the blood is digital. When you have those moments, it looks really bad. When I can tell the blood is not digital, it tends to be among the more impressive effects in the movie. The characters aren't very deep. Again, I don't really care about that in a slasher movie very often. I do, however, think they were mostly pretty likable. If you are a fan of cheesy, bad, dumb movies, then I would recommend this flick. I can't guarantee it's going to be your kind of bad. But, I also can't guarantee it won't be either. If you're not into this kind of movie, then I would say to skip it altogether. 

5 / 10 

Fantasy Island

Where do I begin? Hm. This was written and directed by the same people behind 2018's Truth or Dare. I think that should speak to this movie's overall quality. For much of the running time, this felt like it was going to be nothing more than a generic horror movie put out by the Blumhouse machine. However, the last twenty minutes actually gave me exactly what I wanted. This is a movie that offers up a couple of different twists. Neither of them really work. The first one feels like it was kind of just made up on the spot. The other is so indescribable that I just sort of screamed "What!?" when the credits started to roll. Naturally, I won't give spoilers. I will say that I actually do think the cast works well enough. Michael Rooker is probably my favorite part of the movie, and there honestly wasn't enough of him. A lot of the dialogue is laughably dated. One of the lines in this 2020 movie is two characters sharing the line "YOLO," something that hasn't been said unironically since probably 2013. If the whole movie was more like the climax, I probably would have recommended this as a fun kind of bad movie. Judging the movie as a whole, It's mostly just generic, and really not worth your time.

2 / 10    

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

 

The Human Centipede is a movie I have only watched once in my life. It's one of those movies where I watched it, felt like I got it, and felt no need to watch it again. Two young women break down, and go to the nearest house looking help. The home belongs to a rich doctor who ends up abducting them, and then stitches them together with another man to create a "human centipede." When I watched this film, I wondered to myself whether something like this was the director's fetish. This isn't a movie that is overly explicit. However, the idea is one of the few things I can think of that actually disgusted me while I watched. If there is one bright spot to this film, it would have to be Dieter Laser as the villainous doctor. He is the one actor I think understands the kind of movie he is involved in. The rest of the actors in the film are just bad, coming across as though they were plucked off the street and told they were going be in a movie. Overall, this is one of those movies I watched out of morbid curiosity when I was in high school, and immediately wondered what I had gotten myself into. No, I did not like this movie. No, I would not recommend this movie. 

2 / 10  

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

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Yesterday was Friday the 13th. So, let's talk about what may be my least favorite of the Friday the 13th franchise, A New Beginning. In the fifth film, Tommy Jarvis has grown up into a twenty-something teenager. He's being sent to a half-way house because he has spent the better part of his childhood institutionalized after killing Jason Voorhees. Before too long, bodies start dropping. This movie has a pretty mixed bag when it comes to kills. It's clear that most of them were neutered, even if a couple of them are still fairly effective. It also doesn't entirely help that the nudity is increased. Yes, nudity is important to the Friday legacy, but the gore and the kills are the reason fans keep coming back. The worst thing about this movie is that it's just inconsequential. The movie's whole purpose to pass the torch of serial killer from Jason Voorhees to Tommy Jarvis. That isn't what ends up happening with the franchise, which just renders this film utterly pointless. I could point to mediocre acting, but that's already kind of pointless. The characters mostly uninteresting, as well. A lot of them are killed off almost as quickly as they are introduced, The killer reveal at the end is pretty awful too. There are plenty of red herrings that actually work better than the character they actually chose for Jason's interim replacement. It should also be noted that his motivations don't actually make sense in the context of the story. Just in case someone reading this hasn't seen Friday the 13th Part V, I won't give away the film's killer reveal. I just think it's important to note that very little about Part V works for me. In a marathon of this franchise, Part V really sticks out as the one you can easily skip and lose absolutely nothing. 

3 / 10 

Cats

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Cats is based off of the popular broadway play. Normally, this would be the point where I would try and describe the basic plot of the film I review. In the case of Cats, that’s kind of hard because I’m not entirely convinced this film actually had a plot. This is a film that seems to just go from scene to scene without much of an actual throughline. I guess it’s kind of there, but it feels incredibly weak, at best. The film tries to have some humorous moments. None of them actually land. There’s this uncanny valley when it comes to the effects. Sometimes, they looked okay. Sometimes, they just looked horrifying. The acting is hit and miss. Some actors were alright. There were a couple of performances that surprised me. Those were that of Taylor Swift, Ian McKellen, and Judi Dench. In Swift’s case, it’s because she really wasn’t that bad. It helps that the movie honestly limits the singer’s role to her actual strengths. Dench and McKellen kind of gave off the opposite effect, especially Ian McKellen. He just feels completely lost throughout this thing. It is the first time I think I have seen him in a movie and felt that he was truly awful. I also have mixed feelings about the music. The songs are actually pretty good, but they pretty much come from the original broadway musical, so I can’t really count that as a positive in this film’s favor. I also have to mention the fact the dance sequences don’t feel nearly as impressive. It would be one thing if I saw the dancing performed by trained actors as opposed to CGI creations. Overall, Cats proves to be one of the most misguided and baffling bad movies of the year. 

3 / 10 

The Lion King (2019)

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From a technical aspect, the remake of The Lion King is stunning. It’s beautiful to look at. Yet, the film just feels hollow, almost like an imitation of something better that came before. I think the Disney remake this reminded me of the most was Beauty and the Beast. Yeah, I didn’t really like this movie very much. Don’t get me wrong there are good things about the film. The voice actors do an admirable enough job. I’ve already mentioned the film’s visual effects. At the same time, I feel like the attempt to make the film look more realistic is also one of the film’s biggest hindrances. The original made the characters emote. You could understand what they were going through. Here, their faces are blank slates. What makes it even harder for me to feel any real attachment to this remake is that some of the original film’s biggest moments come across as though they have less weight and impact. The musical numbers feel restrained here, like they are being held back. The stampede scene doesn’t have the same ominous feeling because it lacks the scale and the shadows. For the first hour of the film, it’s just the original movie beat by beat. At that point, some changes come in. They’re fine, but they don’t really stand out too much. Now, I don’t normally like to compare a remake to its original. The problem is this film doesn’t do enough to stand out and be its own thing. The thing that makes it so strange is knowing how little this movie deviates, despite being a half hour longer. Overall, this isn’t the worst movie ever made, but it’s still pretty bad.

4 / 10 

Halloween II (2009)

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Here it is, the last film in the Halloween franchise I have to review (for now). I said in my review for Halloween: Resurrection that there was another film in this franchise I hated. This is it. It's almost difficult for me to say exactly why. The main thing is, I absolutely hate the direction that Rob Zombie takes the Loomis character, turning him into a caricature of an unlikable asshole. I also have similar problems with Laurie Strode as a character. She doesn't really feel sympathetic to me. In no way do I want to sleight the performances, as I actually think Malcolm McDowell and Scout Taylor-Compton do the best they can with they are given. It's just the way these two characters are written. It's so interesting because I actually think the Bracketts are a lot more likable in comparison. Okay, they aren't perfect. But, with these two, the Rob Zombie-isms feel a lot more toned down in comparison. Once again, I have to give props to Tyler Mane as Michael Myers. Though, I have to ask: Did we really need to hear him talk? It feels like that just takes some of the scariness out of the character. Again, that's not on the actor who plays him. I think that's a lot more on Rob Zombie's writing. The dream sequence stuff is weird, and doesn't really feel right to me in this movie, and in the universe of Halloween that Zombie has set up. I think the big thing for me is just that this is a Halloween movie. If this were some random slasher movie that Rob Zombie decided to make, I probably wouldn't have such a negative reaction. It works better for me if I just look at this as a Rob Zombie movie because he has a distinct style whether you like it or not. I almost appreciate that he does his thing with this movie. That's why I think I hate Resurrection more. This movie has more ambition to it. There's a bit more creativity in what Rob Zombie sets out to do. That doesn't mean I enjoy this, but it's one where my thoughts have changed ever so slightly. 

3 / 10 

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

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Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is the final part of what Halloween fans dub the thorn trilogy. The film kind of takes what Halloween 5 sets up and doubles down on it, for better or worse. The film follows Tommy Doyle (played by Paul Rudd in his first film role) as he teams up with a young single mother, Kara Strode (played by Marianne Hagan) and doctor Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance in his final film role) to put a stop to Michael Myers. Starting things off with the positives, Donald Pleasance once again proves to be the best thing about the film as a whole. Some of the kills can be creatively fun (one involving a fuse box truly stands out to me). George P. Wilbur is the first actor to play Michael Myers more than once, and he adds some solid brutality to Michael Myers as a character that I like. Then there’s everything else. While I like Paul Rudd fine enough as an actor, he’s honestly pretty bad in this movie. Some of the editing in this film is pretty bad, and there are moments that are honestly pretty difficult to make out. I also don’t like the direction they take the Jamie Lloyd character. Part of the problem for me is that she’s played by a completely different actress. J.C. Brandy is fine enough, but she doesn’t hold a candle to Danielle Harris. You can also see on screen that the producers, writers, and director all seemed to have very different ideas, making the final result a bit of a mess. Overall, my final thoughts on The Curse of Michael Myers feel very similar to my thoughts on Halloween 5. I don’t really have strong enough feelings to like it, but I don’t have strong enough feelings to truly hate it either. It’s mostly just kind of generic. I recognize that this is a bad movie, but I wish it was a little more entertainingly bad on the whole.

4 / 10 

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

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Out of all of the movies in the Halloween franchise, I feel the most conflicted towards Halloween 5. I have seen this movie multiple times. Yet, every time I see it, I like it less and less. It feels like, all of the flaws just seem to shine through more and more. There are elements to this film I like (namely the performances by Danielle Harris and Donald Pleasance). I also quite like the ventilation scene near the end of the movie. I have mixed feelings towards the Tina character. A lot of fans absolutely hate her. I just never cared about her one way or the other. I should also note that I don't particularly care for Michael's mask once again in this film. It looks like an alien. Ellie Cornell as Rachel feels like she's underused. I should also note that I don't like that the film kills the character off so early. I don't like the addition of the two bumbling comedic relief cops. The comedy surrounding them just doesn't hit for me. The addition of the man in black doesn't really work for me either. The film was written by director Dominique Othenin-Girard, as well as Michael Jacobs and Shem Bitterman. I bring up the writers because, supposedly, the man in black character was added as a solution when they wrote themselves into a corner, and I think it kind of shows. Halloween 5 is not a god-awful movie by any means, but it is definitely one of my lesser favorites in the franchise.

4 / 10 

Wishmaster

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An appraiser played by Tammy Lauren accidentally unleashes an evil djinn that has been trapped inside a gem stone for centuries. I feel like this film is a treasure trove for horror fans. The movie includes cameos from the likes of Kane Hodder, Robert Englund, and Tony Todd. I love the film's practical effects, especially when it comes to the film's gore. Andrew Divoff really shines as the villainous djinn in this movie to me. Every single time he's onscreen, he's just having the time of his life. I also think it's creative to have the antagonist be an evil genie that twists words when someone makes a wish. One thing I will say is that I think the term "guilty pleasure" really applies to this film. I really enjoyed it, especially the aspects I just mentioned. However, the film has a lot of problems. For example, some of the dated CGI looks pretty rough. As much as I love the performances by Divoff, Englund, Todd, and Hodder, Tammy Lauren in the lead is pretty bad. A lot of her delivery feels very stiff. Overall, Wishmaster comes off as an entertainingly bad, cheesy film that seems to know exactly what it is and relishes in what it is. I recommend this film to fans of bad horror movies that just want something to laugh at, and be entertained by.

6 / 10 

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

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I think it's safe to say that Jason Goes to Hell isn't exactly the most beloved film in the Friday the 13th franchise. I do have some level of respect for this film, which seems a little weird. It is a movie that tries something incredibly different for the franchise, even if that's a risk I can't necessarily say pays off in the end. This film portrays Jason as more of a demonic parasite who uses people's bodies as hosts for his spirit. Yep, this is that kind of movie. Is it even fair to criticize the acting? Slashers (with a few notable exceptions here and there) aren't known for having stellar acting. I feel like this is a point I have brought up numerous times, but I also don't know that it really matters. The biggest criticism I have towards this movie is that Jason really isn't in it, at least in his more well-known form. Because of this, Kane Hodder feels pretty underutilized. So, his presence feels missed. Some of the characters are kind of cool, but they feel like they belong in a completely different movie. I also like the ending that teases Freddy vs. Jason (which came ten years later). The kills are pretty cool, especially if you watch the unrated cut of the film. In the end, Jason Goes to Hell has some bright spots, but is still very much so one of the weaker entries in the franchise. Part of me honestly wonders if I would actually like this movie a lot more if it were a standalone film, and not linked to the Friday the 13th franchise.

5 / 10