Reviews

One of the most overt pieces of propaganda I've ever seen.

Not sure why Gerard Butler keeps putting himself in movies that glorify the ideals of Americanism. This one specifically has a very dignified portrayal of the US Military, with the only critical representations being one war-mongering bureaucrat and a few anti-russian sailors. There is no depiction of systemic problems with the military like the ones we know of from whistleblowers. And there is definitely not a single person who advocates for peace with Russia, the film opens on a spy mission in the Arctic where an American submarine is stalking a Russian one in the Russian arctic for reasons not deemed important enough to explain. We get three very noble and respectable military leaders all resolving the situation that those pesky Russians couldn't on their own.

All of that without tackling the absurdity of the plot.

For some reason there is a submarine battle right before there is a Russian coup d'etat. And one team of Navy SEALs settles the coup aspect while a random guy is promoted to captain a submarine that is deployed to find the first submarine that was covertly stalking a Russian submarine in the Russian Arctic. They connect the two coincidences and have the submarine win the battle then go save the SEALs and stop the coup.

It has American supremacy-savior vibes all over it all the way through in a way that is so overt and gross to me that I was distracted from the fact that it is actually a competently made film.

I wish I wasn't so aware of propaganda so I could enjoy films like these like my dad does. But I also wish more people were more aware of the military propaganda so less of it is made.

Now obviously the only reason Saw 2 and onwards exist is because horror franchises sell tickets and generate more money for the studios so none of them really compare to the original. But this one is a significant drop off in quality from 2-5.

The scenes that aren't torture porn are edited so weird that it makes it difficult for me to sit through. Plus the death labyrinth is shot with so many different colors this time that it makes it a little bit worse. Thinking back at how drastic the camera work, editing, and color palettes were almost makes me queasy. This one survives almost exclusively on the brutality of the opening and closing dismemberment sequences. Also there is almost no explanation for the opening people and it just goes to show how much of a mess this one was.

Also going hard on the Jigsaw vigilante nonsense in this one. A few films ago they switched from Jigsaw victims being poor people, addicts, and depressed people, to more elaborate immoral folk. Culminating in the targets for this film being a health insurance company. Kind of a quick shift in morality from John Kramer but I guess despite the convoluted revisions the studios actually have no idea what they're doing with that character and his ethics.

Nothing about Hoffman and his relationship to John or Amanda makes sense. And the investigation and FBI are cartoonish in their silliness and helplessness in the face of this guy they know is a killer. U serious film.

This one really feels more like a B-movie to me and I guess that makes sense from the sixth installment in a franchise that never needed a second one. It only exists for visceral carnage at this point.

First of all, I'd like to announce that this is the first film in the franchise that I can 100% say I do not remember any part of at all. I know I stopped watching because of the gore and torture and how as a youngster I found it both uninteresting and vile. As a child my brothers and I were all avid horror enthusiasts and I guess the fifth Saw is where I drew the line on mutilation. Seems kind of arbitrary in hindsight but here I am like 15 years later.

When Strahm says "Jigsaw never makes mistakes" in reference to one of his traps being seemingly outsmarted, I found it extremely funny because obviously that character never saw the original film. Adam was completely screwed because his key was lost and he had no chance, and Lawrence got out of the trap despite not murdering Adam and his family survived because Tapp happened to be in the vicinity to save them. Jigsaw obviously makes mistakes because if he was perfectly rational then he would not be a serial killer.

And so we get the rest of this film.

The five people involved in the death puzzle this time were all involved in a mass murder and cover-up in their efforts for money and drugs. They are all perfectly fine members of capitalism and the violence that it demands for its existence. Yet apparently they are all put in this labyrinth because they sentenced eight unhoused folks to a death by fire for the land needed for real estate. Jigsaw apparently dislikes that these bougie folk killed eight people labeled as junkies and yet in most of Jigsaw's murders he targets people also labeled as junkies. Apparently the infallible John Kramer has contradicted himself as he disapproves of this murder of eight unhoused folk and yet his history tells us that he approves of their torture and then murder. Perhaps it is tied in the convoluted morality lessons he was attempting to teach Hoffman. Perhaps Jigsaw disapproved of those eight murders because they weren't given a chance to mutilate themselves or others in order to survive a torture chamber and forever change their outlook on life. Perhaps that is how John Kramer moralized himself out of that conundrum but that whole mess of logic then brings up the question of how his games are any different than the game of capitalism. As far as we know, there have only been two survivors of Jigsaw's games. Strahm and Amanda. Both of which were put back into the games to die anyway. The only person who might have survived is Gordon but his fate is ambiguous. These chances at redemption for all of the people Jigsaw chooses all end in death. Even when they win and Jigsaw says their lives are changed forever, they still get thrown back in and die anyway. Jigsaw only makes mistakes. Strahm is wrong. Just because he thinks up elaborate plans for death doesn't mean he is a genius, and the fact that an FBI agent thinks so highly of the guy is pretty damning for that character. A character we are apparently supposed to root for even though he killed an innocent man in the previous film.

(Also there was no reason to kill off Amanda other than the idea that she can never be redeemed because she is an addict and not a cop.)

This franchise's relationship to morality is tenuous at best and its logic is incredibly shaky. The more they tried to build out the genius and morality of John, the more it all fell apart. This is the problem with ad hoc rationalizations.

I don't really care if they try to explain how Hoffman created the last puzzle or if Kramer did and just let Hoffman do the voiceover. I don't really care for any meaningful resolutions to these films or the franchise because the more they glorify a weirdo as some genius the more disgusting it gets. And that gets paired with meaningless violence and gore on the part of Jigsaw and for audience pleasure. That is really all this franchise is, despite its pretentiousness. Torture porn.

Honestly one of the most interesting sequels I've ever seen. Borders on Evil Dead II (1987) with how much it improves the previous installments, which is the biggest hurdle that any sequel has.

The original Saw film was a thriller story with a twist ending that involved an immoral doctor and just some random photographer. It was an elaborate game that also involved a hospital orderly and the rest of the doctor's family. But it was very mundane compared to the rest of the series (plus the victims figured out a way to survive without obeying the twisted rules). With the second film, we got a more elaborate plan and the victims were all citizens of the underbelly of society and it was a lot more people and also involved Jigsaw to be in police custody. We got a lot of backstory for John Kramer and this film was pretty independent from the first one, with the only connection being Jigsaw and Amanda. None of the victims, plot points, or victim profile were the same and the film ended with yet another twist as an abusive cop gets abducted because he can't control his aggression. The third film attempted to connect the two films and make Amanda more involved than she was in those films, all while testing yet another doctor who cheats on her spouse and the spouse who neglects his family and hyper focuses on vengeance for a lost child. Yet another twist ending but this was the film where the lore mixed in with the intricate plans of Jigsaw.

This fourth film kept on that path laid out by the third and further connected the second one to the third.

This film has the SWAT guy from the second trying to find the abusive cop from the second. Apparently the SWAT guy is a very obsessed cop that desperately tries to save everyone (which is in contrast to real life cops) so Jigsaw wants to teach him that not everyone can be saved and only those that want help deserve help. A complex idea that isn't really explored much but at least it gives reason behind all of this serial killer's actions, alongside all of the backstory we get in this film as well. Jigsaw died in the last film so of course this one has to exist parallel to it or else that twist ending would make no damn sense, and it still doesn't because that guy being tested got a tape recorder that implied he would be recruited to do future murders but is immediately killed in this one. That is a pattern because the investigator from the second immediately died in the third, probably because they couldn't think of an interesting continuation to a cliffhanger. Of the three previous films, the third was my least favorite but this one actually makes that mess of a movie better by making everything more convoluted and seemingly genius.

For the character of John Kramer, I do not believe in the concept of genius or the great man theory so what they turned him into is a bit annoying to me but this is a make believe movie in a make believe universe so I can indulge. This guy is an engineer who intricately designed all of these murders and accomplices, in who knows how long because time in these movies time is fluid (or just an illusion as John says), but his victim profile and targets are all over the place. I assume in future movies it all gets retconned into being connected but as of this film it is all seemingly random. The victims are mostly just generally seen as not upstanding citizens. The first film has a doctor that cheats on his wife and a random photographer. The second film is people who were framed by an abusive cop. The third was a man and a woman who were both depressed. This was a cop that actually seems to care about people and actual nasty people like abusers and rapists. The morality of Jigsaw is all over the place when it comes to people he thinks need to value life. Also in the first film he was doing all of this because he has cancer and is bitter that others take life for granted but in this one they threw in a miscarriage and a vendetta against lower class people because of it. The more they continue with the convolution the messier it gets. But the constant in all four films is how Jigsaw taunts and kills police, which for me is kind of justice for the subjugation they impose on the rest of us. That is a sort of wicked concept because the films are being moralistic in that they use the killing of cops as a clearly bad thing so people don't empathize with the killer for killing undesirables but it has the opposite effect on me.

And of course this thing ramps up the gore and violence. There is so much dismemberment, torture, and murder on display and it doesn't shu away from anything at all. Pure unashamed disgusting vile torture porn and I find it difficult to sit through because it feels absolutely unnecessary. Almost as unnecessary as the erratic editing and camera work. I don't think there is a single shot in the film lady's longer than 3 seconds and it feels pretty exhausting at times, and I have no idea why they do it even for the investigation bits where things are supposed to be slowed down. And why does it seem like these films are getting more and more green?

This film is a strange case study because it makes everything so much more convoluted for no reason and creates the genius of Jigsaw. It makes the third film better but because still separates itself from the events of the best one, the original. I remembered the part about finding an accomplice because Amanda couldn't have done all of the stuff alone but I definitely didn't remember anything else about this thing. It does everything right for a sequel because it justifies its existence and doesn't do any damage to previous good installments. But it also just exists in a realm of absurdity so the ceiling for this film is pretty low. Not really that excited to continue in the franchise to see how much worse it gets and which convoluted story elements get dropped for no reason other than terrible decisions to leave them unresolved in this one.

Also nothing about the final test or the accomplice cop makes sense and I am already kind of annoyed at the thought of them trying to ad hoc it.

This film I remember the least of the three I've researched so far, but I do remember bits and pieces of it. The silliness and convoluted nature of the resolution did not stick in my mind.

I think this one is the most violent and disgusting in the franchise up to this point. No idea why people like the gore and torture so much. I'm not squeamish at all but that doesn't mean that I want to see fictional people get fictionally tortured. This is the first film in the series that actually put John as the protagonist, though pretty much all of these films so far have been drenched in moral ambiguity. The first film didn't show much torture aside from the doctor sawing off his foot but this film made sure to show us the dying moments of everyone getting brutally murdered and almost all of the deaths are shown in full with none of the staple fast forward and chaotic jump cuts.

Aside from the color in this film, it also feels the most like a polished product. The original was obviously a debut and so it had quite a bit of moments that felt unique in terms of how they were shot for that kind of horror thriller. Lots of chaotic camera movements, speeding up and slowing down, montages, and just general uncomfortable angles. The second film had all of that but also a few more standard wide shots mixed in as well. Then this film was quite a bit of professional feeling shots of Angus Macfayden walking through the halls or Shawnee Smith doing random things. But there still is that chaotic feel to it and this film also looks the worst (and not in a good way) and I think it's because of the color in some scenes.

Of course my main takeaway from these films so far has been the plot and ongoing storyline throughout. In the first film John puts his own doctor and a photographer that is following him in a bathroom chained up to die unless they find a way out, all while a former cop thinks Larry is the Jigsaw murderer who killed his partner. Turns out in that film John is playing dead the whole time in the room and the guy that was helping him was also a victim in one of his sadistic games. I don't remember if there was a good reason for Lawrence, other than his adultery, to be in that room but I know Adam was just an innocent bystander. The next film was almost entirely separate from that one with the only returning characters being a former survivor, this time back in another game, and John (who finally gets a last name in the second film). This time the cops have John in custody but they are also in his lair watching another game unfold, this time with one of the cops' son participating with people that he put away (presumably by framing them). At the end of that film it is revealed that the former survivor (Amanda) is in on it and the game was already finished and the son was alive in a safe while the crooked cop forced John to leave and take him to the scene only to discover the game long over and be trapped in the original film's bathroom by Amanda. This film attempts to explain why Amanda decided to help John Jigsaw Jingle Heimer Schmitt while also telling us that she was heavily involved in the original film's situation. It's all very confusing and messy retconning. That is not to mention that Amanda's been doing puzzles on her own and they're unwinnable, with one of her victims being another cop from the second movie. And also the main people in this film's puzzles are married without Ananda knowing so it is testing her again for the third movie in a row because John doesn't like that her games are rigged, but after she fails John is also still testing the other two innocent people that have been playing his game the entire movie and they fail too. John apparently knew Amanda was rigging games and then tested her again while also testing two other people and knew she would fail so his presence was also testing the other two people and they also failed so the ending scene is the only survivor being set up to be the ringleader in the next film.

It is entirely too convoluted to make any sense and it is just doing that for the sake of the twist endings. Not inherently stupid and actually they almost do a good job with it. Just seems like they keep trying to outdo the previous films in terms of gore and in terms of plot twists. While also trying to make sense of the nonsense from the second film's plot twist.

There is also a running theme in this series about how Jigsaw is dying and wants his victims to appreciate their lives more. He feels that all of them are in some way wasting their lives and wants to teach them that they should behave better in their lives. The only problem is that some of his victims aren't really all that immoral, like Adam in the first movie and Daniel in the second. I just don't agree with the premise being that people do bad things because of moral failure and the more these films go on the more it seems that is the message they are trying to push. I know that is the ideology of the killer but there is no presentation in these films that counters that worldview. It is just bleak torture where Jigsaw always wins with more and more convoluted plans.

The confused morality and confused stories of these films is starting to take hold. That along with the thirst for more graphic torture. It's all trending downward but this isn't a terrible quality movie yet.

Victor Salva is a vile little man and I cannot watch this in a vacuum divorced from him. I usually get pushed away from movies tied to people so outwardly despicable but it just so happens that the memory of my sister is also tied to this one. She used to torment me and my brothers by singing the song to us in the most terrifying way possible, and that makes this film a classic to me.

The first half of the film is really really good. The only misstep from that part is the dead bodies and how I can't tell if they're supposed to be mannequins or not. But this one largely does a decent job of being unique. Trish isn't the clueless female character that plagues 80s horror and this isn't a typical cliche movie with couples getting murdered. This is a film about a brother and sister driving home from college through the country roads. Out there away from the cities is so bleak and ugly that it feels like you're in another world where you could get lost and never be found. So of course these kids run into trouble and their only hope of survival is the sheriff's office and they are inept just like in real life.

Mostly everything after the Creeper eats that cop's tongue is sort of just meh. The costume for Creeper is a little plastic-ey and everything that everyone does is silly. Trish really is like the only person in this film with any brains.

I feel like most of the silliness and shortcomings in this film comes from rewrites late in production and budget constraints. The beginning is really well done but it eventually mellows out and I was just waiting for it to end. But the final scene is still creepy even if it does just look digitally murdered. Also just Salva probably didn't know what to do when he panicked in his rewriting process. Unfortunately that guy is behind this film.

The memory of my sister terrifying me with the song still fills me with dread when I anticipate Creeper. She really makes this film better in my head now that I'm an adult and can actually sit through horror films again.

Love you Daphne.

I really don't feel like unpacking this mash up of a film. Rob Zombie took his realism remake of Halloween and turned it into a punk film that is kind of divorced from the entire concept of the original.

Mr. Zombie clearly injected his punk lifestyle into this one, as opposed to the previous film that just had hints at it. Here everything is shot so ugly that it looks like a deliberate attempt at punk aesthetics, plus the overtones with Laurie and everything involved with her new life after killing Michael Myers.

Which brings me to the absurdity of this film's existence in the first place. I didn't really touch on how Loomis died in one scene and then he was alive right after or how Laurie was dragged away screaming and then the next shot she is passed out in Michael's arms. Quite a bit of content unity errors in the 2005 film but this one follows that film directly. But that film ended with a shot of Laurie traumatized from the cycle of violence because she shot Michael point blank in the head. Then this film starts with all of the first responders apparently being aware that Michael was shot point blank in the head. And that gun would literally blow a giant hole in a person's head. Yet Michael survives and not even a scratch. Rob Zombie sort of abandons the realistic version of Myers that he built up in the first film to make him magically survive him getting his skull blown open. Does he want realism in his serial killer story or does he want supernatural nonsense?

The other thing that was hammered down our throats in this film is Rob Zombie's opinion about therapy and mental health. In the first film Loomis starts arrogant and annoying but by the end you think he actually cared about saving people. Then in this film he is even more of a selfish celebrity because reasons and Laurie's therapist is apparently not helping her through her trauma. The filmmakers want us to believe that at least these two social workers do not help people and only profit off of suffering, but the film also doesn't offer an alternative to mental healthcare. It is a sort of contrarian nonsense that probably stems from Zombie's punk background and distrust of professionals (which is something I somewhat agree with but not in this case). And for a punk movie, the police in this film are surprisingly portrayed in a generally positive light. They are largely competent and not all that despicable, an incredibly surprising depiction giving Zombie's apparent disdain for the establishment.

Then there is the nature of evil that was explored in the first film ambiguously but in this film Loomis outright says evil is created by society. And so the film is about Laurie's descent into madness which is driven by the professionals' failures in her mental health rehabilitation. She is apparently turned into a killer because Michael keeps bringing the violence to her and nobody cares enough to stop it until it's too late.

I feel like I unpacked this mess of a punk rock Michael Myers fan film, but I am really tired after all that. So much work for such a disappointing theme. I also don't listen to music nor do I care much about punk culture that much so this film is definitely not for me.

After the first film was a huge success, the producers immediately wanted a sequel for the following year's Halloween weekend. After they were presented with Darren Lynn Bousman's script for another movie, they decided it was a good fit for a sequel and brought in Leigh Whannell to help with rewrites. And then we got this film.

Apparently the script from Bousman was a less violent version than the one he originally wrote but still more violent than Saw (2004). The fans wanted more gore and more torture so this film added a little bit of it. The studios and producers caving to the audiences of early internet era adults spawned the entire torture porn genre and this film was the start of it moreso than it's predecessor. It is a genre that I don't really enjoy and one that has very little good installments. This film being a mix of the thriller genius from the first and the torture extravaganza of the rest of the series is an interesting point in film history. I just actually have no idea why they shoehorned this script into the Saw universe.

The motivations of John from the first film were a little vague. He put people in death traps to make them appreciate life and have them stop taking it for granted because he had cancer. In this film, the only person that survived his sick game decided to follow in his footsteps because reasons. Then she is put into the death trap again with a group of people who are all former prisoners but the twist is that one of them isn't and is only in there because his dad is the crooked cop that put them all away. So the cop is also playing the game but then maybe nobody in the game is taking their life for granted and is only there to torment the cop and his son. We never find out because we learn very little about any of them. But then the third twist is that this sick game is already over by the time the cop learns about it and he gets trapped in the bathroom from the first movie in this convoluted plan to get him to walk into this trap. It is all such a silly story when you think about and it really only is that silly so that we get a like 3 twists in the ending after an hour or so of torture. And it's all wrapped up in a nice little recap montage because apparently the filmmakers thought everything was so convoluted that they felt the need to spell it out to us in the end before giving closing the movie the exact same way.

It is a decent thriller with a very silly plot. I only think it is interesting because it is a transition from the first installment to the torture porn that the series started.

As a kid my brothers and I would watch all kinds of scary movies and this franchise was one that really bothered me. All of the gore and haunting settings really made me grossed out more than scared and that has always stayed with me. Even though I stopped watching these films after about the fourth one, I still really didn't like any of the ones I had seen. Coming back to this one I definitely expected it to be good considering it kick-started a franchise and a whole disgusting sub genre. And it was probably better than I anticipated.

I decided to rewatch this because of the new one and also because it is October and so many people love these films. Just from word of mouth the reputation of the first one grew as it was less grotesque than the other installments. That and as I started to really get into movies I learned that James Wan is like the guy for so many modern horror hits so I was excited to rewatch this film someday.

I remembered a good portion of the plot of this film as well as the chilling ending. I didn't remember any character names and I didn't remember that Adam was in that room for no reason at all. And I also didn't have the context that though this film isn't as gross and gory as it's sequels, it is still far more gory than most horror that came before it. And I also didn't remember it having such similar vibes to Se7en (1995).

This film is actually pretty compelling. James Wan knows how to make thrillers and it is actually pretty interesting to see how he uses suspense to drive this plot and the horror more than he uses horror cliches like jumpscares and brainless characters. This is actually a really well done film and it's a feature film debut which makes it all the more impressive. And the script is written by Wan and Leigh Whannell in their first script, and it is a great script with an ending that is completely shocking and unpredictable. If all of the Adam character plot holes were not plot holes then this film would be even better.

I love that they followed up the short film that secured them funding by making one of the most profitable horror films made. Now time to dive into the same mistakes that all production companies make with the horror genre: the franchise.

When you go through trash horror films it is often you find films like this that are so poorly made around a concept. This one is pretty nonsensical but not on the level of Halloween 6 (1995) stupidity. Instead this one is just built upon a reasonable premise of media exploitation of tragedies, only it seems like Rosenthal forgot how to make movies.

I never liked the silly characterization of Michael Myers. They never should've made a Michael Myers sequel and instead went with the anthology concept. Because they will just endlessly revisit him and make him even more invincible and yet still always find a way to make surviving his rampage an inevitability. The more movies about him the more absurd he gets. No direction they ever took the character was interesting, including Halloween II (1981) where they retroactively made Laurie his sister for no reason other than to make everyone feel stupid for thinking random stalkers exist because of the culture men grow up in.

With this film they brought Myers into the 21st century with internet exploitation commentary. It is an interesting concept and one that has obviously existed for a long time (see the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre) so I can see why a movie with that concept was gaslit. What I don't understand is what went wrong along the way. They cast Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks and then everyone forgot how to make a script interesting or how to get good performances out of actors. At times this film feels like it wants to continue the campiness that was pioneered with Friday the 13th (1980), sometimes it feels like it wants something funny with most of Busta Rhymes scenes, sometimes it just wants to showcase the unstoppable force that is Michael Myers, but at no point does this film recreate the frightening slaking sequences that made the original so amazing. I almost don't know what went wrong but then I remembered I do.

Moustapha Akkad desperately needed to keep the Michael Myers cash cow going. And so another installment was inevitable. Everybody else with a brain wanted this series to end, including Jamie Lee Curtis. So in the H2O movie they had a definitive ending but they filmed a cop out anyway because that's what horror films do. The true horror of this genre is that the franchises never end.

This one rivals the Paul Rudd one for worst in the franchise but it's just splitting hairs at that point. I think I even disliked this one when I watched it the only other time as like a 10 year old or something.

It's so silly and so short and not really like the original film much at all. Plus this one isn't connected to the previous three disasters and there is a definitive ending to the character of Michael Myers. Such a jarring departure from the rest of the franchise and I do not remember it being this way at all. I kinda like it but it also continued the stupid characterization instead of the metaphor of The Shape.

So where the original (and the third film) felt pretty original this one does not. The 80's movies felt like they took a lot of influence from Friday the 13th and this film feels like it added to that with some Scream influence. It's like a big mash up of familiar horror franchises but it also just completely abandons the original, other than the characters. Scream and Friday The 13th had a bit of campiness but what made the only good Michael Myers movie good was the suspense and the anticipation aspect. The haunting music and the atmosphere combined with a stalker who turns violent was what made that film great. And every single other installment (except the third Halloween) just forgot about all of that and instead built a franchise around the character instead of the vibes. So this film (still with Moustapha Akkad on the production team) abandons everything about the 4th, 5th, and 6th movies to go back almost to the beginning and just make a similar mistake.

Unfortunately they couldn't bring Donald Pleasance back but they did get Jamie Lee Curtis. So they added Josh Hartnett and LL Cool J in this re-attempt and a third installment. This film doesn't take place in Haddonfield and it doesn't involve anybody actively trying to stop Michael. Instead it has Laurie running away from him and everybody else is pretty much just fodder. How Michael finds the exact location across the country and is so impervious to everything is just treated as serious (or is it?) and all of the teenagers are dumb again but this time Laurie gets her revenge. I don't know if this movie is going for campiness or not but it's all such an unserious situation that I have to assume they're going for campiness and not actual horror.

I just think this is a bad attempt at copying other horror franchises and a bad decision with the direction they took this story. So I still think they should have made any other installments in any Michael Myers timeline and just went for an anthology for a film franchise that is so vaguely named.

At first I watched a Spanish dubbed version of this film without realizing until Paul Rudd started speaking in Spanish. Then I turned it off and went to sleep. Now I found an English version but apparently it was another one of those silly fan hyped movies that losers think is good. This movie is bad and it makes all the other ones worse, even the bad ones.

The previous film in the series, the fifth film, was pretty scattered in everything that was happening but it doubled down on the supernatural nonsense introduced in the fourth film. Not only that but the fifth also referenced a cloaked mystery guy that was not explored at all which added more confusion to an already bad film. In this one we get a more fleshed out version of that guy and the psychic stuff happening with Jamie. It is all ancient druid cult stuff and Michael Myers is given a full backstory that explains all the evil in him and why he does everything he does. It's all because of this cult that chose his family to be a blood sacrifice, except in 1963 he only killed his sister and not the rest of his family. Really this is like a perfect conclusion to the idiotic idea that was introduced in the second film, that Laurie was coincidentally related to Michael Myers. This film completes the dumbing down of the metaphor from the first film, and the only good one in the series. The Shape was portrayed in that film as the violence of men and stalkers and the threats they pose to women and the people around them. But progressively over all these movies, with the exception of the third, they eroded that idea and made the women dumber and dumber along with everybody else in the town. And now apparently everyone was so stupid and Michael was not a metaphor but genuine evil because of this cult that plagued this town and the entire community.

It is also not lost on me that this druid cult ruined this franchise and the town just like the cult following of Michael Myers, the symbolic character from the original, ruined the franchise and contributed to the dumbing down of horror films. That is an unintentional metaphor that this film creates, and it is very damning to this film and almost every production decision made one Carpenter and Debra Hill sold the rights.

I really don't like this film because it continued the nonsense from the previous Myers films, so it was almost doomed from the start. Not only that but it made the nonsense worse.

While this film isn't all that bad, it isn't great either and having to endure such a mediocre movie for almost 3 hours is painful. Know your role.

All of the references to bad endings makes me think that is some sort of reference to Stephen King but I have never read any of his books, and also he looks terrifying in his cameo. So I don't know if Billy becoming a writer is supposed to be a cool Easter egg or something but it's just kind of meh. Also the fact that so many of these characters end up becoming rich and successful is so annoying, but that is the white men that end up having stable careers so it's forgivable. What isn't though is that Eddie knows so much about the codes and regulations but the storm drain stuff from my last review is still present but there's no need to rehash that here.

The characters in this film are so much more boring than their child versions from the last film. The only exception is that they got Bill Harder to play a grown up Finn Wolfhard and he is so much better at comedy so his jokes are not as annoying and the deliveries are better. But everyone else is pretty much just being silly and annoying, especially for grown adults who can interact with the rest of the world now and communicate the situation. Even if Mike is the town crazy that shouldn't matter because all the others aren't. Also it's incredibly wack to culturally appropriate Indigenous Peoples and then say they didn't do their own ritual correctly (Ritual of Child is also so funny to those in the know). The aforementioned jokes and all of the comedic elements mixed with the modern horror elements really kept the tone continuously shifting which just made the movie feel so much longer.

I may have just talked myself into lowering the rating on this film but not by much. It is nothing special and just really overstayed its welcome. A movie that absolutely did not justify its runtime and also a sequel that didn't justify its existence.

This film continues again with the absolute stupidity that was the characterization of Michael Myers, except they change his characterization despite this being a direct sequel. They saw the garbage that was Friday the 13th and decided to inject that into Michael Myers.

In my review for the previous film I mentioned how they went away from the cerebral concept of The Shape and instead grounded Michael Myers to more tangible concepts: the supernatural. In this one they sort of abandon the idea that Michael is just evil in man form and they go back to him being a man with uncontrollable murder urges. But they also bring back more of the menacing stalking from the original.

I can only assume they didn't like the feedback they got from the 4th film and abandoned going their own unique direction. It seems they tried to do more of what made the first so terrifying but also inject so much of the stupidity that all of the other 80s horror franchises were doing. In that vein, this feels so close to a spoof like the entire Friday the 13th franchise but they messed up the formula somewhere.

All of the murder victims are completely stupid and act in unnatural ways. Like the filmmakers either didn't know what teenagers were like or just liked depicting teenagers as brainless. Also Loomis is completely erratic. At times you think he has gone insane by how he treats this little girl, while at other times he seems to be trying to help Michael by putting everyone in such stupid situations designed to fail. Then there is the mystery guy with bells on his shoes that gets no explanation because stupidity. And finally you get Jamie who is sometimes psychically linked to Michael, because of how stupid the ending of the fourth film was they had to try and explain it, and most of the time is actually doing things a frightened 9 year old would.

This film really only exists to generate more money on the back of a franchised character. Why else would they have a second straight movie where an entire police precinct is destroyed.

Aside but the comic relief cops are not funny at all, it's just annoying.

The only bright spot in this movie is how they brought back some of the vibes from the original. Other than that, the decision to continue on this stupid path with more stupidity is demonstrated to be a really bad decision. The more of these I watch the more I liked the third one and the idea of an anthology.

Six years after the third film attempted an anthology and ten years after the success of the first Holloween film, comes this one trying to ride the wave of enthusiasm for Michael Myers. In my review of the original I explored what made it interesting and how the least interesting part of that film was probably the characterization of The Shape. Unfortunately, Moustapha Akkad and the studio execs disagreed and wanted a franchise cash cow in the same mold of much of the rest of the horror genre.

I want to reiterate that I really wish Hollywood let John Carpenter and Debra Hill turn Halloween into an anthology series. The fourth one was set to be a ghost story, and if it kept with the cerebral themes in contemporary settings and tales that 1&3 had then I thinkthat film would have been a good one.

This one follows in the footsteps of the second installment and almost completely abandons the amorphous stalker theme and elements from the first, and instead ramps up the family violence nonsense that the second one introduced.

The Shape is dead, all heil Michael Myers. Why does Michael want to kill his family? Nobody knows. When did he become a supernatural being? When the studios decided to abandon the thematic elements in the first and wanted to ground the concept of the Shape into the body of a Michael Myers. When did everyone get so stupid in these movies? When all of the other horror films in the 80s started making the characters stupid.

After the attempt at an anthology was received with negative reviews and yearning for more Michael Myers, and after so many other 80s horror franchises got started and run dry, Moustapha Akkad bought the rights to Michael Myers and decided to follow suit with every other horror studio. So we get a nonsensical continuation of a character that wasn't supposed to be taken literally, so now he just gets more supernatural and his victims get more cartoonishly helpless. He even slaughters an entire Sheriff's office full of military grade weapons. Nothing can stop Evil in the form of Michael Myers. So it stands to reason that Dr Loomis and the town Sheriff must abandon the people Michael is hunting and Michael must magically know what Jamie looks like and where she is at all times.

The only actual entertaining parts of the film are when you can forget the plot and the characters and the studios and you can listen to the theme song or you can watch these little girls try to escape this masked anonymous stalker. Those ten or so minutes carry this film almost to a watchable level. And then it ends with more stupidity.

Reagan era movie reviewers be like: "Halloween III manages the not easy feat of being anti-children, anti-capitalism, anti-television, and anti-Irish all at the same time."

Anthology was a great idea and this film has pretty good roots that unfortunately happened to go way off the rails at some point.

The concept of making Capitalism the villain in a horror film is a great idea. And from what I understand about the 80s and Reaganomics, the commodification of everything and corporate greed was promoted very much. Even to the point of pushing a town square into a commodity hellscape and calling it a mall. So it makes perfect sense that Halloween being turned into a holiday where everyone must go buy costumes from big companies and give away corporate candies is the setting for a horror film from this time.

In this one, the majority of the run time is driven by suspense about what big costume is hiding and why they killed a man who found out industrial secrets. It is a slight deviation from the slasher elements used in the original Halloween but then it loses the plot completely.

From the beginning of the film there were hints that something supernatural was going on but the third act goes bananas with it. Not only are the killers just giant toy robots that follow the orders of the greedy capitalist, but it also turns out the greedy capitalist is a witch and is planning to kill massive amounts of people for an ancient witchcraft Halloween sacrifice. And also they got a rock from Stenehenge to this tiny Irish-Anerican town, even though Stonehenge is not in Ireland and the rocks had nothing to do with plot until the end when they use magic powers to spawn bugs and snakes (which I understand some people think are scary) and then fire laser beams and disable the robot toys. Like I said this film lost the plot.

Everything about how this company was using a communal holiday to push profits and doing sneaky murders was interesting and cool, especially for a horror film. But they added in the supernatural nonsense for no reason and it did not vibe with me at all.

I saw this film was on Netflix and I was going to revisit the first one but I couldn't motivate myself to do so. I finally sat down and watched this one for only the second time in my life, and honestly it's reputation makes it seem worse than it is.

I understand that people younger than me are emotionally attached to this version of Spider-Man but just like with the Star Wars prequels, that doesn't mean this was ever a good movie.

Sony dumped Sam Raimi and his Spider-Man and very quickly tried to create their own cinematic universe. Where the first one felt like it was vaguely setting up a whole universe, this one is very overt with their intentions. Sinister Six and future battles are teased, including with ending the film in the middle of a battle. They involved Electro and Harry Osborn as villains in the same movie for no reason so both characters are not well done and they're both defeated pretty unceremoniously. They also crammed in Peter's struggles with Gwen and that stupid promise he made to her fascist cop dad, culminating in her death. And of course because there is so much going on that that is just glossed over and Peter is fine after a couple of the fake out endings. Oh and there's more investigating of Peter's dad in here.

So many things done so poorly in this film but at least they got the melodrama right. The reason this film resonated with so many kids was because of how they handled Peter and Gwen Stacy. Even though Peter gets over her loss pretty quickly, in cinematic time, the loss of her was very powerful on the kids who watched this version of Spider-Man.

Also it doesn't look as bad as all of MCU garbage that we've been subjected to over the years. But it does look pretty bad at times.

This one wasn't as bad as I was expecting and might even be better than the first one in the Garfield run. But it is definitely not good. I got bored multiple times and this film is entirely too long. Plus all of the problems I glossed over before. Ultimately just a forgettable attempt at Sony's superhero universe.

Worse than I thought it was going to be before I watched it but better than I thought it would be from the opening 30 minutes or so. It doesn't go super stupid and stays in the realm of campy while maintaining the fun vibes it was going for. It's definitely not my type of movie but apparently it was John Carpenter's. Certainly a shift from the other films of his I've seen that are almost 20 years older.

The vampire lore has been around for who knows how long and this one is at least one that doesn't rehash Dracula but in a worse way (like Francis Ford Coppola's) and I can respect that they went for their own thing. It is a shame that they kept the Catholic aspects of Dracula though.

For New Mexico, this film is definitely missing quite a bit of diversity and the women in here really do not exist other than as sexual objects and outlets for Mr Baldwin's character's violence.

The guys in this film weren't cool and the vampires weren't that scary. I guess the 90's were a different time where 50-year-old white men were cooler and goths alone were scary. James Woods throwing around one liners gets annoying real fast and the Catholic Church employing vampire hunters is more silly than cool.

Either way this film exists and it isn't the worst thing in the world, but I will probably never watch it again. At least it was under 2 hours.

I've seen only a handful of Branagh's movies before this and his camera work is much better now than it was here, and it was also better in his debut. I really have no idea why he decided to do that in this film. The creative decisions he made are okay and this film is decent and inoffensive.

The camera is constantly moving and much of the sets look regal and not gothic at all. Everybody speaks English in an English accent, but they are all annunciating so I can actually understand most of the dialogue in this one. The filmmakers also kept in a great deal of the story from the book except Creature is less menacing in the second half of the film than he was in the corresponding parts of the book. Also Creature is less naive than he was in the book and isn't as great of a learner. I understand this is a film so they had to cut some stuff out but I think they could have humanized him more and shown how he feels for the family in the woods and then his rejection by everyone he ever meets, I feel like that tragedy was really well done by Mary Shelley but this film cut it short. Most of the stuff involving Dr Frankenstein is less interesting to me and yet they kept in a great deal. I also think the parts involving the voyagers in the North Pole was unnecessary as the book only uses that as a way to make the tale seem outlandish, here it only serves as literary accuracy and for a cathartic ending that I don't remember being in the book.

Much like with Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (1992), these filmmakers went for a very literary accurate film. I would not have done so because the novel has much more time to spend on world building than this movie does. But I do think that what they do translate to the film is done pretty well. Creature is not depicted as a bumbling oaf like in most adaptations, and he is sort of sympathetic. Branagh and the crew also seem to understand this novel better than Coppola understood Dracula, because the themes are mostly kept and there is no weird distortion of the spirit of the story (at least in my opinion). Though I guess this is a bit easier because the title mentions Prometheus so it is kind of difficult to overlook that.

Really I just think this film is a novelty for the fans of the novel. It isn't particularly stellar as a work of film and it doesn't exactly capture the attention like an exciting new adaptation would. It is okay, nothing more.

I first watched this when it first came out because the cast had such star power then. I remember now why I wasn't so eager to revisit it. It isn't a bad movie but it isn't great either.

It obviously centers on Enola Holmes to confront the feminist movement and oppression of poor people that doesn't really happen in Sherlock Holmes stories, and even explicitly condemns that fact in the film. That was probably my favorite part as well.

Though this film actually talks about politics, and doesn't just hide it in their tacit endorsement of the status quo, it is the politics of liberalism and nothing all too revolutionary. I do not know anything at all about the women's movement of Britain so I don't know what creative choices they made in the representation of that here. But Eudoria's subplot and her being portrayed as a dangerous person and almost villainous in her actions is pretty annoying considering how the film largely does get the criticisms of the era correct.

Also I said it then and I still believe it: Henry Cavill was not a good choice for Sherlock Holmes. He was Superman and the Witcher and one of the hottest commodities in film at this time and that is probably the entire reason he was cast. It is not a good choice.

It isn't bad, just leaves a little to be desired and the investigation stuff largely takes a backseat. Interesting choice but makes it a little bit less fun. Decent movie.