Tag Archives: horror movie review

Kagemas, Movies, Reviews

Kagemas: A review of the IT remake

Leave a comment

Introduction

I was given this for Christmas, so I’m going to give it a review for Kagemas. If you don’t know by now, I really despise the Stephen King novel IT. That said, I don’t necessarily hate the miniseries, it was imperfect, but it still had some charm since Tim Curry gave an otherwise banal character, a personality. I’m reviewing the remake of IT. Is this a good remake or is it a bad remake?

Plot

You don’t know by now this book is about a group of children, who are haunted by an evil clown. The clown claims to be Bob Gray, but also uses the name Pennywise. One by one the children are tormented until the clown decides to come and eat them. What sounds like a promising premise, is ultimately destroyed by piss-poor writing, and this movie is no exception, because it’s ultimately two hours of the novel’s greatest hits mixed with a little bit of “fresh” material.

Characters

The characters are the whole group of kids, a Motley Crew, if you will, of strange bullied kids. All boys and one chick, but it’s hard to tell each one of them apart, as in the novel, since each one is basically the same character with just a slight flaw and or slight idiosyncrasy that sits there and makes them “different.”Ultimately none of these kids are relatable to you. They are nothing like when I was a kid, this was true of the miniseries as well, but the kids are acting the made up for the lack of relatability and it was believable that the kids in the miniseries were friends. Here it just seems like actors. By the end of this movie, you will hope Pennywise wins,that’s not what happens, as if you didn’t already know and that is a very big let down.

Style/ effects

Nothing really new that set it apart, typical Maine from all the Stephen King movies with the brick architecture, the Mills buildings and everything like that.

FX are dated as all hell, from the headless kid on the stairwell, that look and moved like terrible stop motion. The leper from the book, he looked creepy as hell, but also moved like a shity skeleton from Jason and the Argonauts. I get it, new IT is based in the 80s, but do we really need a stop motion reference to Nightmare on Elm Street part 3? Although I do like the poster that was in the background. The biggest question is how are these kids supposed to be scared of these no-name things including the very horribly produced female like ghost Creature From The Conjuring movie like that? All of them were banal no name ghost, shit ghost. You could have included David S Pumpkins to round off the whole non branded, lame “scary” characters thing. Warner Bros owns the rights to Nightmare on Elm Street and Jason from Friday the 13th? So the fact they didn’t treat this like the novel and updated with the new monsters that would hunt children’s youth back then, is a missed opportunity.

The ballons were CGI, except in close ups. The FX were dated as hell. It seems like WB didn’t care, they just wanted to the cash in on this and hopefully make some money and they ultimately did. There’s nothing wrong with making money, but you know what, if you’re going to sit there and take a franchise like this that for most people, is beloved even if I hated it, you could at least put some fucking care into the goddamn fucking creation of this. Warner Bros could not even make the DVD well. The DVD has two of them, one just for bonus disc the other for the movie. I don’t know if they are trying to be retro or they’re just lazy and incompetent but the case is flimsy as hell. I can push on it and nearly destroy the DVD. Even though FBI warnings are retro as fuck, and Sound quality sucks. There’s just so much wrong with the presentation and production.

Acting
Acting is mostly decent, there’s nothing overly bad here whatsoever. I would like to add in the fact that, regardless of people’s reviews or fandom, Pennywise is not as good as they like to claim. It is not a horrible interpretation, but it is far from Tim Curry, and this is not the Heath Ledger version of Pennywise, there’s definitely room for improvement in the better actor could bring more to this role.

Subtext
Read my book review on this and then you realize at the end, I had nothing more to say on this, other than the fact that it would seem to me, that the subtext is this group of kids are really a bunch of murderers, that invented Pennywise, in order to deal and cope with what they did when they were kids. That subtext, is slightly more visible in this movie that I think they meant to.

Conclusion
I really hope WB learns from the mistakes of this DVD as well as the mistakes of this movie because there’s a second part coming out in 2019 and I am so not looking forward to it. I may not be the biggest fan of this franchise, but I did grow up reading Stephen King and enjoying his books. At the end of the day this was a blatant cash grab, updated to the late 80s and what it gave us was bad effects, all right acting, no real connection to the characters, poor writing and nothing really new to write home about. It is an abysmal failure of a movie, but it made money, so in Hollywood that means it was a stellar success and you are going to sit there capitalize by pumping out Stephen King movies. In 2019 besides IT part 2, we’re getting a remake of Pet Sematary, another mediocre movie based on a Stephen King novel. I personally would avoid this and any of the remakes of his flicks, as none of the originals were even that good. The books are better. If you’re going to sit there and waste time just go read the book. I give this movie

2 out of 5 stars.

Postscript:
For a company that said it wasn’t going to do the child gang fuck because it was “going to far.” They sure had no problem putting a teen in her skives and letting boys gawk at her, which seems just as bad. Not to mention, Hollywood is ass kissing the me too movement but there was two non consensual kisses in this. I guess that is why I review them and they make them, because they are clearly people who have their shit together./sarcasm

Reviews, TV Shows

Netflix’s The Haunting Of Hill House Series Review

Leave a comment

INTRODUCTION

Just got finished watching Netflix new series The Haunting of Hill House. Let’s dive into the finer nuances of the show and see if it’s worth watching.

PLOT
The story focuses on a family that used to live in Hill House, but have now become an estranged family, since their time there. This is nothing like Shirley Jackson’s original 1959 novel, but it is an interesting concept nonetheless.

CHARACTERS
It mostly centers on a family of six, which spent a summer at Hill House. To the series credit it does try to develop the whole family through flashbacks and modern-day storytelling, woven throughout the whole series. Ultimately, though, the series fails to develop the characters will enough for us to care about. They focus too much on the pitfalls of the family and how they become broken as opposed to developing them well-rounded.

ACTING
The acting in this series is actually pretty good, considering it’s a Netflix original, which usually lends itself to be pretty terrible, with the exception of 1922. The weakest point is one of the younger siblings, who becomes a heroin addict, while the strongest acting happens to be the director’s own wife who plays a lesbian. The children actors are also fantastic. Regardless it’s believable that they are real family regardless of time frame they are in.

STYLE
The style of the show was nothing to write home about it looks exactly like everything on television at the moment, so it doesn’t stray from that particular aspect and offers us nothing new in terms of visuals.

SUBTEXT
The show is essentially about family and I think Hill House has become an analogy of how easy it is for things to go south in an instance and change the lives of everyone involved. in this case, it is the possible mental illness of the family.

CONCLUSION
Why the show does somethings correct it fails overall. This show could have been better as a one-off movie instead of a one-off series because if they decide to do a sequel, I have no clue where they’re going to go with such and I don’t know if people are even interested in anything past this. The scares are unoriginal and lame with the exception of one. Story itself is okay minus a few things here and there was just don’t really make sense. At one point the lady playing the lesbian comes up from having just going down on her lover and you can see gash juice on her chin. No straight character, with the exception of Comedy has ever had a scene where where she has come up with cum on her chin. The fact the girl is a lipstick lesbian makes me think the scene was put in only to entice men to watch it. otherwise there was no point to the scene. The build-up to the end just was not there nor was there any tension throughout and the ending wasn’t very satisfactory. Although it was bittersweet and a decent tie up of the whole story.

3 out of 5 stars.

Kagemas, Movies, Reviews

Kagemas: Christmas Presence Movie Review

Leave a comment

INTRODUCTION

I’m reviewing another movie that is a Shudder exclusive, called Christmas Presence. Shudder has way better original content than Netflix does, but is this one of them? Short answer is no, it is not.

PLOT

An assortment of friends spend Christmas together at their well to do gay designer friend’s house. A spirit or ghost of some type inhabits the land. Bedlam ensues and people are killed leading to a dumb ending. Think Evil Dead with Hill House and you have this pile of dung.

CHARACTERS

Not well developed. 3 out of 5 characters are LGBT, we know this, cause they tell us and the characterized aspects are black and white, very unrealistic to those of us who have known LGBT people. Flamboyant gay man is flamboyant, the lesbian is a dude, the bi character is a straight male perpetrated fantasy, the black straight chick is angry and her beta cuckhold husband is in love with the bi white chick. Also, the gay man is in love with the bi white chick. The male lesbian is dating the bi white chick and the straight black chick is jealous of her. I’m not joking about any of this. The bi white chick also rants about the media and the treatment of LGBT as more of an alt-lite voice. This implies that leftists really have no clue on how to support diversity or show LGBT people as they truly are. Did I mention how they let us know how gay these characters are but the only kiss is between a gay man and the bi women?

ACTING

Alright, but it is not believable that any of these twats are friends for even a second.

STYLE

It looks cheap and indie, as opposed to Summer of 84, that feels big budget and could be released into theaters. The effects are decent, but nothing cutting edge or new.

CONCLUSION

This movie is not the worst movie ever, it is better than some of your old school, run of the mill, B flicks. You can watch it without cringing and maybe you might enjoy it, inspite of the flaws. That said, this movie is not for me.

3 out of 5

Movies, Reviews

Kageoween: Devil in the Dark Movie Review

Leave a comment

INTRODUCTION
     The poster looks like a cross between Donnie Darko and The Knights of Ni from Monty Python, but this is a serious movie. It’s a character piece, dealing with the trials and tribulations of family and strain that the past can cause, that sees two brothers, reunited after 15 years, on a camping trip, that results in supernatural horror.

CHARACTERS
     I like this trend that I seeing when picking movies for reviews. A lot of them are old school in storytelling, with putting suspense and storytelling at the top of the list. This movie really works to establish a bond between the two main characters and showcase a rift between brothers that could start to mend during a hunting trip.

     From the first frame, we’re thrust into two brothers so fraught with tension, you could cut it like a knife before you’re even 15 minutes into the flick. One brother is more than hinted at as being a leftist, with his conspicuous Che Guevara shirt as he shoots pool with his friends at a bar, the flashback to childhood and his anti-hunting stance, his inability to let his childhood die and a line about his deceased father thinking he was a homosexual. The other brother is straight, family man, with hunting in his blood. They shy away from making him a full on conservative, though. The typical brotherly divide will make up a majority of the movie and it is believable that these two are brothers.

ACTING
     The acting is kind of weak in the beginning, with the flashbacks being the best, but by the time we get into the middle of the film, it seems as if both actors have found their bearing and are more than comfortable with their characters. The rest of the cast a decent in their roles with little to complain about, for the short amount of time they’re on screen.

STORY
     There is only so much you can do with a story about two brothers going into the woods on a hunting trip, even with supernatural elements, but this did very, very well in regards to character building. Sadly, it kind of fails in the suspense category. While they built up characters well, they missed a lot of opportunity to really amp up the tension and give the characters a battle. It never seemed like their lives were in jeopardy for us to ultimately care about the climax. At one point, the younger brother falls and breaks his arm, but this would have serviced the movie better, earlier on. The older brother moves from barley skeptical, to scared with little to be scared off, minus a cave filled with deer antlers. The movie reminds me of a standalone X-Files episode, where the editor forgot to add in footage of Mulder and Scully to round it out. I’m not sure what the creature is, but clearly it is after the youngest one, for unknown reasons. Also, there is this weird false finish a few times, which seems more like no one was paying attention to continuity as opposed to a part of the story, especially with the younger brothers arm, now fine.

     The climax was a cliché and a bit of a letdown, as they both get away too easy, but at the same time, it leads to a weird twist, that is just kind of there, before ending abruptly, leaving more questions than answers.


VISUALS
     This movie looks great, it is lit well. This isn’t filled with anything fancy, short of a few crane shot, giving us a wide eye view of the beautiful, but eerie forest. Not too much to write about, it.


CONCLUSION
     This movie despite its flaws, has charm and merit to the story. It could of use a bit more friction from the antagonist of demon, ghost, thing a bob, whatever the hell it was, to build up the suspense and give our desire to care about these characters getting to safety. Ultimately, this movie does the opposite of what most movies do and develops the characters too much and leaves the tension building on the cutting room floor. I think making this a horror movie was a mistake, as it might have worked as anything but. Overall though, another nice throwback to older films, when the audience who enjoyed them didn’t have ADHD and could pay attention to story.
This gets a 3 out of 5.