Deadly Friend

 

Deadly Friend is about a genius-level teenager who revives his best friend (and crush) as a cyborg after she is accidentally killed by her abusive father. Of course, when this happens, she isn't quite right. Starting things off with the positives, this movie has what might be one of my favorite kills in any horror movie ever. If you are at all familiar with this movie, you probably already know what kill I'm talking about. If not, I'll just say it involves a basketball. I also actually really enjoy Kristy Swanson as the titular "deadly friend." I think she does a solid job differentiating who the character is before and after her death. I really do feel like these are two completely different people. I also like the movie's ending. In a movie like this, I wouldn't want the main character to get a happy ending, and really, he doesn't. I won't necessarily spoil exactly how and why though. But, this is far from being one of Wes Craven's best movies. I think there are some pretty major pacing issues. At times, the tone doesn't entirely feel pinned down. Part of that could come from the fact that Wes Craven originally intended this to be a slowly paced, more cerebral, gothic romance. But, he was forced to add in more blood and gore. So, it doesn't entirely feel like these two elements always go together. I actually wonder if the original intent would have made for a better movie. It might have actually fit the sort of Frankenstein story better. Judging what this movie is, I think it's one of Craven's more middling efforts.  

5 / 10 

You Should Have Left

image source

This movie is a whole lot of "what the fuck-ery." It centers on a man played by Kevin Bacon, his much younger wife played by Amanda Seyfried, and their daughter. The three of them move into a house together, and weird things start happening. I really don't know what to make of this movie. The scares feel very hit and miss. Sometimes, you get a lame fake-out jump scare. Sometimes you get something that's built on atmosphere. The three main actors actually work well in their respective roles, especially Kevin Bacon. The movie has a plot twist that simultaneously feels like it's unpredictable and obvious at the same time. It's a situation where I knew there was going to be a twist, and I had two guesses as to what it would be, if that makes sense. I think the first two thirds could have been handled quite a bit better. It feels like the filmmakers wanted the movie to have a sort of slow burn effect. Instead, a lot of it feels like it just kind of meanders and then the really crazy shit happens. This is the most effective part of the movie. That third act is where a lot of the "what the fuck-ery" I mentioned really comes into play. The first two thirds kind of offer glimpses into it. While I did enjoy that last half hour, it's not amazing. It doesn't really make up for the first two thirds of the movie. The first two thirds also don't quite feel like they mesh with that last half hour. While I didn't really hate the movie, I don't know that I particularly liked it either. This is a movie with good enough parts that doesn't quite measure up to a very effective whole.

5 / 10 

Dolittle

image source

Dolittle stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Doctor Dolittle. He has to go on a journey to find something when the queen of England falls gravely ill because his home/animal sanctuary is on the line. Formulating my thoughts is surprisingly difficult. However, I will do my best. I don’t like this movie, but I was honestly expecting it to be much, much worse. Nothing about this movie made me outright angry. I just think it was too bland and uninteresting for that. I should note that I didn’t really think any of the acting was up to par. Even the usually reliable Robert Downey, Jr. wasn’t very good. The plot is weird to me. It feels like it’s trying to jump from plot point to plot point, and I just don’t care about any of it. It’s honestly pretty predictable as well. As soon as Michael Sheen shows up, I know he’s going to be the villain. A lot of the humor feels kind of out of place. OK, I don’t really have any more to say. Dolittle is bad in a bland way, despite a pretty bonkers ending. I don’t recommend it, and I think that’s that. 

4 / 10 

The Grudge (2020)

image source

The Grudge follows several different people as they encounter the titular grudge and the ghosts involved. This is a movie I was somewhat curious about, but I was skeptical to. This movie is a horror movie being released over the first weekend of January, a month that is pretty much reserved for movies that studios have little faith in (with some exceptions here and there). What’s interesting is that this movie really isn’t a remake. It’s sort of a spin-off that takes place in the same universe as the 2004 remake. The actors all feel like they are game. It helps knowing that most of them already have proven talent. Some of the gore is alright, too. I kind of appreciate that this movie is willing to go for that R-rating in an otherwise PG-13 franchise. The biggest problem this new Grudge movie suffers from is that it doesn’t really offer anything else that’s all that new. It offers the same style of scares as before. The characters don’t really feel all that interesting. They aren’t shallow by any means. For whatever reason though, I don’t particularly care. In the end, this movie doesn’t really seem to have a reason to exist, other than to just make another Grudge movie because there might be some nostalgia. This comes across as though they had about three or four possible ideas for a movie, and they squished them all together in one movie. It makes things feel jumbled, and hard to keep interested in. This is a movie I would best sum up in one word: mediocre. 

4 / 10 

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

image source

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 

Girls with Balls

image source

So, not too long ago, I came across a movie on Netflix called Girls with Balls. The film is about a volleyball team that finds themselves being hunted for sport by a bunch of rednecks when their van breaks down. Based on that title and premise, I was legitimately intrigued. Let’s just say that the movie was something of an underwhelming experience for me. For a horror comedy, the horror didn’t work that well, and the comedy never really landed for me. I didn’t really find any of the characters all that interesting. It felt like the development was paper-thin. This is something of a catch-22 for me. There have been a lot of movies like this where I have been fairly lenient on characters not having much to them. I feel like part of my issue is that there really isn’t anyone here that I particularly like. This film is technically a foreign film. It’s dubbed into English. At first, this was something that really distracted me, mostly because I could just tell. Some of the character motivations feel like they just come out of nowhere, or that they could have been handled better. In the end, it feels like Girls with Balls was just a movie that didn’t seem like it really knew what it wanted to be. I would still say give it a chance, if only because your experience with a film like this may legitimately differ from my own. Even if I personally wasn’t a fan, I could actually see how someone else could be. 

3 / 10