Reviews

What an episode!

We learned that the husband got his lover pregnant.

We learned that the kid in England being bullied has 3 older brothers.

And we got to see an alien for half a second in this show that's supposedly meant to be about an alien invasion.

Amazing how bad this show has been so far.

I watched the first 3 episodes and I don't know, it feels very long and drawn out, like when Bilbo says to Gandalf "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread" that's how this show felt after the first 3 episodes, like they didn't have enough main story to fill all the episodes so they used a lot of padding to bulk out the runtime with scenes that felt like they either didn't need to be there or were way longer than they needed to be, or both. I think in the first 3 episodes there was maybe 10 minutes of actual alien stuff, and that's being generous - opening scene & corn field in first episode, space station and troops in sandstorm in Afghanistan 2nd episode, mysterious things falling from sky 3rd episode (not counting news reports playing in the background on televisions) - but while there wasn't much alien action there sure was a lot of marital drama action between the wife who graduated Harvard medical school but sacrificed her career to have a family and the husband who she just found out has been having an affair and was planning on leaving her that very week, we probably got a good 40 minutes or more of the two of them being cold with each other, thank goodness because aliens invading Earth is so boring we really need our main protagonists to have some interesting marital problems to make it exciting for the viewer, that was sarcasm by the way in case you missed it.

So we're 3 episodes into a 10 episode run, hopefully these first 3 episodes served like the first act of a movie does by setting up the world and characters and next week we'll start getting into the 2nd act with a bit less focus on school bullies and cheating husbands and more time spent on those pesky aliens from outer space and their shenanigan's.

My score might go up or down depending on how future episodes go but after 3 episodes I give a 6/10 - good, not great, has potential but nothing special about it so far.

At least if it turns out to go nowhere I can always watch reruns of Falling Skies.

UPDATE - after Ep4 I dropped my rating down to 5, I'm going to give this show one more episode and if it's as bad as ep4 was then I'm done.

... is that filmmakers keep thinking that if they cast 30+ year olds to play 20 year olds no one will notice.

This film isn't scary at all, just lots of scenes of people yelling at each other. It's 30 year old actors playing 20 year old college kids who act like they're 10 year old children imitating toddlers.

And the characters are written to be dumb as well. An example is that their car breaks down in the middle of a snowy forest, and they sit in it until it's dark before 2 of them decide to go look for help. Makes sense doesn't it? While they're gone the rest sit in the car running the heater until the battery goes flat and then light a small candle to keep them warm while constantly complaining about how cold it is. Not once does anyone suggest huddling together for body warmth, or using some of the textbooks inside the vehicle as kindling to try and get a fire started outside, a fire that could not only keep them warm but also attract any would be rescuers to their location. Nope, instead they just yell, fight and complain. Riveting stuff. They were so dumb and unlikable that it made me look forward to seeing them get killed off one by one, but surprise surprise the kills ended up being a disappointment that lacked any kind of creativity or originality.

Zero tension, dumb and unlikable characters, no scares, boring kills, it's a failed attempt at making an even slightly engaging horror flick.

So at the top of this page are the tags, Action, Sci-Fi and Thriller describing this movie. Nope. There are zero sci-fi elements outside of the pandemic angle, no action unless a gun being fired in a movie automatically turns it into an action film, and thriller, well it's closer to a thriller than it is a sci-fi or action film, but I'd class it more as a drama. While the pandemic does play a role in the story it's used mainly as a plot device to get the main character to go back to the small town she grew up in. You see this is a film about a small town girl who fled from the small town with her boyfriend, possibly because of an abusive Father and/or family (it's never really clearly explained we just know she doesn't like her family for some reason), and after leaving became a semi successful actress who because of the pandemic now has to go back to that small town and spend time with her boyfriends family, who she doesn't get along with, while also trying to avoid running into her own family who she definitely doesn't want to see. A few people do get shot and there is a foot chase at one point and a little bit of cat and mouse, but don't let that fool you this is a drama more than a thriller or action film.

It's shot well, looks nice and the acting is fine, it's a well put together movie. The biggest problem for me was the script, the film dragged for long periods during the first 2 acts where it felt like nothing important was happening, and a lack of character development outside of the main character meant that by the time the 3rd act arrived and things did start happening it was hard to fully understand why people were acting the way they were, I think a bit more time spent fleshing out the antagonists and exploring the dynamics between the lead and her estranged family would have helped a lot with this.

I gave it a 5 because it's a well made film, but because of a script that lets it down I can't recommend it as a film worth your time watching.

I've got to say, the opening scene of the film I quite enjoyed, characters being dumb and getting eaten in a pretty cool set piece, it was a bit of fun, but overall Jurassic World is very disappointing thanks to a plot that is totally ridiculous. It takes itself way too seriously when the plot is like something Dr Evil from Austin Powers would dream up, "Let's collect and sell the dinosaurs to the bad guys of the world so they can use them in their armies!" What? That is the plot for your film, are you being serious with me? One of the dinosaurs being auctioned the auctioneer goes "and this one paleontologists called natures tank because of it's armor", and the villains in the room ooh and aah as they start bidding their millions of dollars, and all I thought was, have these guys never heard of human made tanks that have guns that kill things like natures tanks? The main bad dinosaurs gimmick is that you point a laser at something or someone and the dino will kill it, that's right, it's essentially just a land shark with a laser on its head, Dr Evil would be pleased.

And I'd also like to say, if dinosaurs are worth so much to these people to use as weapons, why don't they use lions or elephants? They're readily available, and judging by what I've seen in circuses can be trained to do things even without being genetically engineered. Surely a trained lion is just as deadly to a human as a trained dino is? Not to mention that owning a dinosaur would bring a bit more attention down on you than owning a lion would, oh well, to hell with logic, this is Jurassic World after all.

I know I spent a lot of words just going on about one thing, but it's the entire plot of the film and it's just so terribly bad and seemingly not thought out at all.

Apart from the visual effects there's really nothing to praise about this film, it looks good, it's directed well, the 2 lead characters are as good as they were in the first film, that's about it for the positives. On the negative you have supporting characters that are either completely forgettable or overly annoying, and when I say annoying I mean think of the most irritating comic relief character from a Michael Bay film then times their annoying factor by 10, that's how annoying this one character is, he makes Jar Jar Binks seem not that bad. The main bad guys motivation, well his entire character really, is that he's rich and wants to be richer, that's it.

The annoying thing is that the film started off quite well posing the question, what ethically should we do with dinosaurs if a natural event is going to wipe them out? In the original Jurassic Park the characters discussed the ethics of bringing these creatures back to life while in this film they were asking should we save these creatures we created from a second extinction? The moral dilemma was worth exploring and quite intriguing, unfortunately the conversation about it lasts for about 2 minutes before it's off to the island to fight dinosaurs and volcanoes and action action boom boom explosion. It was an opportunity missed.

I understand that it's a summer blockbuster about dinosaurs, but just a little bit of depth to the movie would have been nice for the people in the audience over the age of 9.

If you've watched the trailer then you know that this is a well made movie, it's directed well, got some good acting and the effects are decent, so I'm not going to talk about those things, what I'm going to focus on is the story because that is what let me down with this movie. Spoilers ahead.

So the basic story is a young girl, Barbara, is dealing with a crisis at home and her way to deal with it is to retreat into a make believe fantasy world full of monsters, overcoming obstacles in that fantasy world help her deal with things in the real world.

As I watched this movie I was reminded of A Beautiful Mind with Russel Crowe because the young girl in this movie can't distinguish between reality and fantasy either. The premise of the movie is nothing new, we've had films like Bridge to Teribitha that were similar, but where the children's actions in that movie felt endearing in this movie Barbara's actions are worrying and disturbing, and this is my biggest gripe with the film, Barbara is a 13 or 14 year old girl who, among other things, scratches rune signs on the walls at school to protect people from monsters and carries a weapon in her bag to fight monsters with, and she's just too old to be behaving that way without raising some red flags, of course it's only the audience who gets to see most of this behavior so no one else in the film really gets to see just how deep she is living inside this fantasy she has created for herself. Once I realized that the monsters weren't real I spent the rest of the movie wondering if Barbara was suffering from a serious mental illness, she wasn't, but her behavior would have made more sense if it turned out that she was.

It's a movie that I recommend if your children watch it to sit down with them afterwards and talk about the best way to deal with problems, because the message from this movie, although rather simple, I can see being very confusing for children to understand from the muddled way it is handled and delivered to the audience.

If you look at my other reviews you'll find that if I see a bad movie with fake glowing reviews then I love to rip it apart with an honest review of my own, so I looked at the reviews here for this movie, thought "Aha, fake reviews" and started sharpening my knives, but after watching this movie I am pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong. This movie was really good.

The story was good, the characters were believable, the world that it took place in was very interesting, the CGI effects were pretty good for the budget, as were the practical effects, and the acting for the most part was great, even Kellan Lutz was good and I can't normally stand the guy.

The only negative thing about this movie for me was some of the fight scenes on the ground utilized a lot of quick cuts and shaky cam, which was jarring as the rest of the movie is directed and shot really nicely with some great action scenes, a dogfight between 2 ships being the standout one for me.

Overall it's a great bit of sci fi to spend a couple of hours with, it feels like a movie with a much larger budget than what it had.

I would definitely watch a sequel. 7/10

Time for a review from someone who has been a member of IMDb for longer than a week and has reviewed more than one movie, unlike all of the reviewers so far that have given this movie great reviews on here....

You know, a skeptic might think that some of those reviews could be bogus.....

Anyway, this movie isn't overly terrible and it isn't great, but after watching it I couldn't recommend it to anyone else to watch. It's just forgettable and bland with nothing to make it stand out from every other similar movie in the genre. It's one of those movies that you watch today, it's forgotten by tomorrow and you never think about it ever again.

There IS NO TWIST like some of the reviewers claim there is, and for the ones screaming "Wesley Snipes is back!" yes he is, for a grand total of around 15 minutes in this 90 minute movie. The cgi effects are adequate but don't expect movie quality, they're more in line with something you'd find on a lower tier TV show.

I was disappointed, I watched this for Wesley because I wanted to see Snipes kicking some alien butt, instead all he did for most of his quarter of an hour screen time was either stare creepily at the kids in the cabin or sit down and deliver exposition to them.

Apart from the lack of Snipes 2 things really ruined this movie for me, firstly, the acting was pretty bad by the 5 college aged kids that were the main focus of the film, in fact it was terrible in places, especially from the blonde guy who was the lead. Secondly, none of the kids characters were developed, at all. To put that into context, the female lead character, if you asked me what kind of person she was all I could answer would be that she's normal and has asthma, apart from that she has no personality, and the sad thing is that I know more about her character than I do 3 out of the other 4 because at least I know she has asthma. Just zero character development, I don't know if they're good, bad, brave, shy, dumb, smart, catty, bullies or what, they're just all blank slates who aren't very good at acting, which made it really hard to care about whether they lived or died.

Even though it's not totally terrible I still wouldn't recommend this, even if it's on free TV there are better ways to spend your time, like cleaning the oven or doing your taxes or digging a hole just so you can fill it in again. 4/10

Let me say first that I've never heard of and have no knowledge of the source material for this movie, so this review will be based on it's merits as a standalone film, I'm one of these people who doesn't think that you should have to read a book or have any prior knowledge of the source material to understand characters motivations and actions in a movie, movies are their own entity and therefore should be judged so. Now that that's out of the way, onto my thoughts on this Japanese zombie flick.

So it's another zombie movie and it's one of the better ones that I've seen. I like zombie movies that actually show us the apocalypse happening with the zombies taking over, and this film does that, it doesn't show news footage or a montage or anything, it shows our main protagonist on the ground experiencing society fall around him as the zombies overrun the city, and it's really good to watch, probably my favorite part of the entire movie.

The production values are also very good, the practical zombie effects are well done as are the cgi effects. If you're a fan of gory deaths and watching zombies heads explode then this is the movie for you. It's not a cheap looking movie at all, you can tell that some real money has gone into making this.

The story is nothing special, pretty straight forward with standard horror tropes and nothing new for anyone who is familiar with the zombie genre, it does introduce a very intriguing plot line involving an infected schoolgirl, but for some reason the plot line is put on the back burner and never really expanded on or revisited for the rest of the film, I'm guessing they're saving it for the sequels if they get made.

I only have one real complaint about this movie, and it's kind of a big one so I'm going to write lots about it. I found the main protagonist to be very unlikable. I found him to have no redeeming qualities at all. He's a bit of a down on his luck nerd, which is fine, you can be dorky or a lovable loser like Shaun in Shaun of the Dead, but this movie is just over 2 hours long and it isn't until 14 minutes before the end that our main protagonist actually does something heroic, once Shaun realized what was happening around him he became the hero and started whacking zombies on his way to save the woman that he loved, he was a normal guy who showed he was selfless and heroic. For the first hour and forty six minutes of this movie our main protagonist hides from danger, cowers in corners, cries, lets other people die due to his inaction, lets other people kill zombies attacking him because he is incapable of doing it and just generally does stupid things, the only zombie that he kills in that first hour and forty six minutes is one that he kills unintentionally. He has zero charisma for a protagonist, and for me even his big hero set piece at the end of the film wasn't enough to redeem his cowardly and stupid actions of the first 104 minutes. During this time he does imagine himself being the hero, he imagines himself getting his gun and shooting a zombie, which makes it even more infuriating when he snaps out of his daydream so he can jump back into his inaction.

As a viewer I'm confused if I'm supposed to root for someone who is a coward just because they dream of being the hero? I mean his cowardice gets innocent people killed, how am I supposed to like him? Maybe you will but I didn't.

Even though I didn't like the main protagonist I still enjoyed the world that the movie introduced us to and would probably watch a sequel if one was ever made just to find out more about the schoolgirl who appears to have some kind of special power.

I give it 6 cans of cat food out of 10.

Not so bad it's good, but so bad that if you want to laugh like you've never laughed before then watch this show. Dumb people doing and acting unrealistically during the time of the apocalypse. The fact that it's meant to be a drama and the actors deliver their horrible lines with straight faces makes it even funnier to watch, it is very reminiscent of the movie The Happening, another "serious" movie that is laugh out loud wet yourself funny.

If you played a drinking game and had one shot of alcohol every time you shook your head at the stupid way that people act on this show then your liver would be dead inside of a week.

But there are some good points.

The show looks good, the production values are right up there with shows like The Walking Dead, it doesn't look cheap, the effects look OK for TV and it has a good premise for a TV show.

The story is there's some kind of apocalypse happening, it appears to be both natural and supernatural, crazy stuff is happening everywhere, there's meteorites falling out of the sky and viruses turning people into maniacs and people who appear to be possessed by demons and who have superhuman abilities roaming the Earth, it's like something Stephen King would write, and handled well it would be very intriguing. The problem is that 2 episodes in and it is very clear that this hasn't been handled very well. The main problem is the characters, they appear to have been written by Fred the office intern during his lunch break, and Fred appears to have no idea how humans would act in a crisis.They're so stupid and disconnected from reality that it's near impossible to relate to them as real people. Everyone is so calm at all of these crazy things happening around them and they act like everything is normal. For example, in episode 2 an attractive teenage girl who was kidnapped by a flying possessed person and who has seen people she has known for years turn crazy and murder people, who is then told it is a virus that is affecting lots of people, is later left alone on a seemingly deserted country road and decides to have a sleep during broad daylight in a bus shelter within plain view of anyone walking or driving past, behind her is a forest which is a nice place to hide her pretty blonde head from the crazy homicidal maniacs, but nope, better to sleep where they can easily see you.... stupidity at it's finest, Darwin would be proud. Maybe the character is in shock and not thinking clearly or maybe it's just horrible writing, I'll let you be the judge, but I will quickly add that this is just one example of people doing stupid things in this show, and I could write dozens.

If the show didn't take itself so seriously then it would probably be a whole lot more fun to watch,but they do take themselves seriously, way to seriously, and it's horrible and funny all at the same time.

I rate this show 4 and half pigs out of a farmyard. --------------

And if you are contemplating playing a drinking game while watching this show then I suggest you have a sober spotter with you to make sure that you don't die of alcohol poisoning halfway through the second episode.