movie review
Movie reviews for horror fans; from gruesome bone-chillers to dark horror thrillers, a showcase for frightful films that seek to entertain and to terrify.
Love and Monsters movie review
Start writing... Joel Dawson is an unlikely hero for a dystopian flick. He is lovelorn, unsure of himself in nearly every aspect, he has hardly any survival skills for post-apocalyptic life, can barely handle a crossbow and to top it all, he freezes in the face of danger. When such a person decides to undertake a week-long journey in a world full of murderous monsters, things are bound to get interesting, albeit somewhat predictable.But, lead actor Dylan O’ Brien has just the right amount of charm to keep the audience invested in Joel’s story. He fumbles, stumbles, literally falls into ditches but doesn’t lose heart and picks up a few lessons along the way – such as “not to settle, even if it’s the end of the world” and that good instincts come from making mistakes.South African director Michael Mathews’s Love And Monsters is perhaps the most lovable creature feature to have come out in a while, and that’s what makes it refreshing. There are enough monsters on the prowl, but there is no cloud of somberness hanging over this story. Joel was 17 and enjoying a beautiful summer date with his high school sweetheart Aimee (Jessica Henwick) when the world as he knew it came to an end, in one fell sweep.An asteroid came hurtling towards earth and humans tried to fire a rocket to destroy it. But while they managed to blow up the asteroid, the chemicals which emanated from the missiles turned insects and birds and sea creatures into enormous murderous mutants that wiped off 95 percent of the population, including his parents. Survivors like Joel were left to retreat into underground bunkers called “colonies”.Seven years into this holed up existence, everyone’s life seems to have fallen into a pattern, with some even managing to find romantic partners in their locked-down existence. But Joel remains a heart-broken loner, who keeps himself busy maintaining a ledger of sketches of the monsters he hears of, and notes down their strengths and witnesses. His other pass-time is trying to connect with Aimee’s colony on radio. After numerous failed attempts, he finds success one fine day, and hears her voice after seven years. Not long after, Joel makes an uncharacteristic resolve to undertake a journey of 85 miles to go see her.With no survivor skills, zero sense of direction – he doesn’t even know which way is west – he sets off, fueled by nothing but romantic naivete. The journey, needless to say, is eventful. A lot happens – many close shaves with drooling monsters, and a couple of friendly ones too; whimsical survivor friends Clyde (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt) who take him under their wings until they must part ways; an empathetic robot Mav1s who lends him a patient ear in the last 15 minutes of her battery life; and a friendly dog he names Boy, who becomes his loyal sidekick.Besides the monsters, there is one thing that ties them all – loss. Among the quieter and tender sequences in the film is one where he shares his vulnerabilities with Mav1s, sitting outside a ghost street surrounded by glow-in-the-dark jellyfish floating in thin air – Mav1s calls them ‘sky jellies’. The gift of the moment isn’t lost on Joel. “It’s kinda nice when nothing is trying to kill you”, he says. The director uses humour well in the film and particularly so in this scene, especially when the robot lists down the possible outcomes of Joel’s journey, from best to worst, with the exact amount of cheerful optimism.Even as the film is set in an imaginary world, Mathews looks at romance from a realistic lens. Love does not conquer all and grand gestures can be grand only in your head – these are messages the film appears to carry. In planning his lofty move to sweep Aimee off her feet, Joel forgets to account for the powers of time that can change circumstances and people, to the point of no return. And in the last act of the film we also learn that while mutant monsters cannot help themselves, it’s the humans that ought to be feared the most.At one hour, forty-nine minutes, Love and Monsters is crisp, witty, sensitive, and self-aware storytelling, that’s not typical of creatures-features. Thanks to an earnest and lovable performance by lead actor Dylan O’ Brien, the film manages to remain light-hearted without turning frivolous. Jessica Henwick as Aimee delivers an impressive performance as a strong-minded girl on whom her colony depends for sustenance, and who cares for her ex but isn’t in love with him anymore. She brings out Aimee’s complexities in a few short scenes. Michael Rooker as Clyde carries the gravitas of a wise old man while Ariana Greenblatt’s Minnow is chirpy and entertaining. Shot in the dense forests of Queensland, Australia, the film’s cinematography is lush, and the CGI smoothly blends in, making it a well-crafted product. The monsters may be slimy and drooling but none too grotesque to watch.
By Zarinabanu Zarinabanu5 years ago in Horror
Movie review
Start writing... The characters of In the Earth are living through a pandemic that may or may not be our own. Some aspects of it are familiar, while others aren’t at all. When scientist Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) arrives at Gantalow Lodge, he is greeted by two men wearing face masks and a figure in full protective gear who, with routine efficiency, sprays him down next to a spot labeled “Disinfection Point.” The building is a vacation site that has been requisitioned during lockdown as a base for some research projects being conducted in the surrounding woods, and the unsettling emptiness of this usually bustling space is recognizable even as the barrage of medical tests Martin is immediately subjected to is not. But what really resonates is the skittishness of the characters, the way their conversations have a rustiness to them and the rhythms of their interactions are a little off. They aren’t just out of practice after a stretch of isolation — they’ve learned to instinctively distrust the proximity of other people.In the Earth is the latest contribution to the small questionable canon of COVID cinema, having been shot by writer-director Ben Wheatley quietly over 15 days in August of last year. Movies so far have struggled with how to tell stories about life lived under the shadow of a virus, but one thing In the Earth is unusually good at is summoning a sense of shared but unevenly distributed trauma across its small set of characters. Martin, we learn, has suffered significant personal losses because of the pandemic and comes across as someone whose personality has been eroded by long stretches of grieving in solitude.He’s bumbling, a city-boy scientist who reluctantly embarks on a two-day hike to a research site in the company of the far more competent park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia). But his unassuming oafishness feels as much like the result of his having gone numb as it does any of his innate inexperience in the field — he lumbers like someone whose limbs are still asleep after they have been slept on awkwardly. It doesn’t take long for circumstances to demand that he snap to attention, as the pair encounter an ominous abandoned campsite, get attacked in their tents at night and then encounter a man named Zach (Reece Shearsmith), who provides a reminder that contagion isn’t the only reason one might have to be wary of strangers.Wheatley is one of those filmmakers whose reputations have outstripped their bodies of work. His sophomore breakout, Kill List, about a soldier turned soldier of fortune who takes a job with occult elements, is still the only one of his films that is wholly successful. In the Earth is positioned to be a return to form after the disaster that was his adaptation of Rebecca for Netflix last year — a scrappy production made while the world was on pause. But after its evocative introduction, In the Earth ends up in comfortable, disappointingly underdeveloped territory for the director, incorporating some of Kill List’s folk-horror undercurrents and A Field in England’s psychedelia while borrowing freely from The Blair Witch Project. Both Zach and Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), the out-of-contact colleague Martin has been trying to locate, turn out to have been in the woods too long. The two are trying to communicate with what they are convinced is a spirit in the forest, maybe related to the mycorrhizal network connecting the plant life underground, or maybe related to a man in the past who was accused of necromancy and used his mystical knowledge to transfer himself into a stone that has a hole bored through it.
By Zarinabanu Zarinabanu5 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'In the Earth'
To say I didn’t care for director Ben Wheatley’s take on Alfred Hitchcock’s incredible masterpiece, Rebecca, would be an understatement. Not only did I write a lengthy negative review, I then wrote a second scathing take on the movie in the form of a numbered list of everything wrong with the movie. So yeah, me and Ben Wheatley are not on the same page. I felt the same wearying feeling about his breakthrough feature Free Fire starring Brie Larson, though I wasn’t inspired to chronicle my disdain as I did with Rebecca.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Horror
Top 5 Horror Movie Monsters
So who loves a good horror movie? I do!! We have so many good horror movie monsters and everyone has there own favourite, however we are going to look at who comes out on top based on kill count throughout their respective movie franchises.
By Jordan McGlinchey5 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'The Unholy'
The Unholy is a wildly frustrating movie. The film is quite good in so many ways and quite silly and impossible in others, thus why it is so frustrating. Star Jeffrey Dean Morgan is so interesting, effortlessly charismatic and has that kind of shambling, messy, handsomeness where going unshaven could be lazy or a legit fashion choice. Because of Morgan’s appeal, I wanted The Unholy to succeed. Sadly, the silly is too silly for the movie to survive.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Horror
