Cube (1997) Review

So the other night, my friends were over and we were looking for something to watch on Netflix. We browsed and browsed but nothing seemed to catch our eyes. But then, like a gift from God himself....it appeared. "Hey, have you guys seen Cube?" I asked. "No actually, I have not" my dear friend Luke replied to me. And it was at that moment I knew that I had a duty to show my friends this film because my goodness, is it ever something else. My friends would never be the same after that night; they knew the true terror and confusion and utter befuddlement that came with watching this movie, and they loved every second of it. This is......three-dimensional death box (aka Cube).

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD - GO PLAY WITH A RUBIKS CUBE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE SPOILERS

Cube is one of those movies that has to be seen to be believed. What if I told you that this movie was 5% gory death scenes and the other 95% is.....MATH?! Yes you heard me right, math. Like, numbers and stuff. It's honestly not the craziest thing I've ever seen out of a horror movie, but it's definitely up there. How this movie works is that it pulls you in by killing off two people in the first ten minutes with extremely cool and graphic deaths. And that's it. No really, that's it. Until the climax, you don't physically see anybody die. The Cube is a very strange place, it never explains how the cube got there or what it's purpose is. The whole movie is just a big confusing mess. The only sort of explanation we get is from this one guy in the group of people who happened to be the lead architect for the outer shell of the cube and not even he knows about what the cube is all about. 

To be fair, he doesn't look like he knows much about anything

There's one phrase in that sentence that will be the theme of this movie's plot, and that phrase is "happened to" Here, let me relay the major events of the plot to you in a format that better explains it. These people "happened to" all wake up in a cube together. You've got our old friend Worth, the man who "happened to" be the lead designer of the Cube's outer shell. You've got Leaven, the cute college girl who "happened to" be a math major in a movie where the main threat is a cube of interconnected smaller cubes, some of which are rigged with mechanical traps designed to kill people. The math bit is important because each bridge between cubes has numbers and Leaven uses these numbers to figure out in a matter of seconds a way to map out and escape the cube while avoiding the trapped rooms. Because of course that's how it "happens to" play out. 

BRAZZERS PREMIUM VIDEO - UNLOCK FULL VIDEO WITH PAID MEMBERSHIP

You've got the character of "The Wren", who "happens to" be a world renowned prison escape artist. He's broken out of 6, oops sorry, 7, prisons and now he just "happens to" be here with a group of people who need to escape from a prison. HHHHMMMMMMM FANCY THAT. This character also is one of the two deaths in the movie that are actually cool. You see, we meet this character and then like 5 minutes later, his face gets melted off by acid. Woo, fun!

Pictured: Man after listening to latest Metallica album

This leads me to our next character, Quentin. Quentin is a cop who "happened to" know all about The Wren and his prison escapes, because where else would we get exposition like that? Quentin is also SURPRISE, the lead antagonist of the movie. He seems like a good leader at first, even if he can be a little forceful. Understandable, it's a stressful situation and he just wants to get out. However, as the film goes on, he becomes more and more psychotic and unpredictable towards his fellow Cubees, even to the point of dropping one of them (who isn't important in any way, trust me) down into the abyss of the cube's outer shell from a long long way up. His bloodlust just continues to grow bigger and bigger as he attempts to escape the cube by any means necessary. 

Don't worry, its red paint from the red wallpaper paint on the walls, see?

Our last character is named Kazan (no relation to Kazam, the Shaq genie) and his character quirk is that he is mentally disabled. At first, this seems like a big hinderance to the group because he's constantly yelling and has to be helped throughout the cube rooms. However, this movie teaches us to never judge a book by its cover. You see, turns out that Leaven's system for figuring out the mapping of the Cube was WRONG this whole time! If she could figure out a way to factor the numbers inbetween rooms, that will lead them to the exit; but those numbers are way too big for someone normal to factor out! OH NO! WHAT WILL OUR HEROES DO????? 

RAINMAN TO THE RESCUE!

Yessir, our handicapable friend Kazan just "HAPPENS TO" have the inhuman ability to factor huge numbers down to their base factors in an instant! WELL AIN'T THAT A COINKEEDINK! HOW CONVENIENT! And it's here that I, along with my friends, broke down because this movie is literally just one convenient plot device just thrown in out of nowhere after another. It's just utter nonsense and the fact that all of these people just "happened to" come together in this cube which has hundreds of other cube rooms in it is insane. Alright, let's just get to the ending. 

So Kazan, Leaven, and Worth make their way to the "bridge cube", which is one cube room that is constantly moving around inbetween the inner cube and outer shell, forming a bridge to the one space in the outer shell that leads to the outside world. They do this all while running away from a now fully crazed and murderous Quentin, who literally rips a handle off of one of the steel doors and uses it to stab Leaven. RIP. Anyway, Kazan and Worth make it to the bridge cube right as it arrives at the exit space. At this point, Quentin storms in trying to stop them from escaping, but Worth holds him back right before he can reach Kazan, who is already out. Worth holds Quentin halfway in the bridge cube's escape hatch and in an admittedly cool death scene, Quentin is forced to watch as the bridge cube starts its movement back around the inner cube, taking half of his body with it. We end on Kazan walking slowly into the bright white sunlight of the outside world, not knowing what happens next or what to even expect next. 

This is what zoo animals see when they look up at us looking in on their enclosures

So that's Cube. Is it good? Nah? Is it stupid? Of course it is. Did I enjoy it? Actually yes. This movie is a guilty pleasure and I think it's just got this charm about it that's unmistakable. I think a lot of that has to do with the simplicity of it. It's just a movie about a maze that has some booby trapped rooms inside of it. That's it. No big scary monster chasing the characters through it or supreme overlord changing the rooms to lead them to quicker deaths. It's a movie about a group of people coming together to figure out a way to escape a sci-fi cube prison. Even if the way they figure out that escape is way too convenient, I still think it's kinda cool how they incorporated these math theories into the workings of the cube. Apparently the entire movie was shot on one set and they only made one cube room to film in and just kept changing the color of the lighting behind the walls to make it appear as if they're in a different room. That's actually kinda cool and a very clever way of budgeting your movie. The few death scenes that we actually got to see were pretty gnarly. The one everyone remembers is the intro to the movie, where the guy gets diced up, which is insanely cool, even if the CGI of the trap folding back up after taking him out looked really dated. 

Turn around bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart

I actually like this movie a lot, it's definitely one that I can show to people as a fun little "what the heck is this?" movie if they haven't seen it. It's definitely not a good movie by any means, but I still enjoy it on occasion and it's always gonna be on my guilty pleasures list. I'd say check it out if you wanna waste an hour and a half saying "huh? what? why? ok sure...". I give this movie 3 cubic meters of cubic zirconium out of 10. Give it a watch because who knows? It just might make your guilty pleasure list as well. 

Mmm baby I love the way you carry the 1. Show me some long division and I'll show you MY long division ;)

The Lazarus Effect (2015) Review

Guys, this is legitimately the worst horror movie I've ever seen. I sincerely mean that with all of my heart. I have never seen a more disorganized, nonsensical, completely not scary mess of a movie in all of my days. It's like it didn't even try. It was honestly a chore to make it through this movie. I wanted to turn it off SO many times due to the sheer boredom that comes out of it. It's dull, it's repetitive, it's predictable, it's everything that's wrong with modern horror movies condensed into one giant hunk of garbage. I've been putting off this review for a while, partly because I wanted to efficiently collect my thoughts about this to properly describe why this movie is as bad as it is and partly because I just straight up didn't want to think about it ever again. So without any further ado, this is.........The Lazarus Effect. Ugh.

SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ACTUALLY WANT TO WATCH THIS MOVIE, A DECISION THAT I HIGHLY DISAGREE WITH

Comprised of an all-star cast including Olivia Wilde, Evan Peters, Donald Glover, and Mark Duplass, The Lazarus Effect manages to make even less sense than Memento, if that's even possible. You'd think that with a great cast of talented actors like that, they'd have a good script for them to utilize. LOL WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, THE 70'S? KIDS DON'T CARE ABOUT GOOD SCRIPTS AND WRITING YOUR STORY WELL! THEY JUST WANNA BE JUMPSCARED EVERY TWO SECONDS! THAT'S THE TRUE ESSENCE OF HORROR! 

OH MAN GUYS HER SKINS BURNING IN THE FIRE SPOOKY RIGHT?! RIGHT?!

You can tell that the actors are really trying to do a good job in this, but everything about this movie is just so chaotic and nonsensical that they can't seem to get a grip on the situation long enough to make it work. I guess I should talk about the plot now, right? Cool, let's get this over with. 

Here's how this movie works: Olivia Wilde is married to Mark Duplass. They're both scientists working in a lab and trying to invent a serum that can bring the dead back to life. Okay, two things: 1. Why? and 2. Have you learned nothing from Re-Animator? Those type of things are never good. Actually, this movie could learn a lot from Re-Animator, for one, HOW TO BE A GOOD MOVIE. I ask why they're inventing this reanimation serum because it's literally never explained. They're just doing it right from the start without any explanation, which is a trend you'll start to see in this movie. It's so convoluted that it doesn't even try to properly explain itself. Everything is just brushed off and you have to take it as it is. "Use your imagination you idiots. I don't have to explain my art." - the director, probably. 

"HELP I DON'T BELONG HERE! I'M A GOOD ACTRESS!"

Alrighty, Mark and Olivia are joined by the sometimes comedic, sometimes serious duo of lobster boy from American Horror Story and black dude from Community.By the way, I'm not calling any of these characters by their in-movie names because they're literally the most forgettable characters ever. The thing about using well-known actors and actresses and giving them bad scripts is that if they have no structured characters to make their own, they just look like their actor selves trying to be something they're not and it's highly distracting. Anyway, they make the raise the dead serum and they test it on a dog and it works. The dog is back and kicking, but only for a few weeks before it start to experience violent mood swings. This also results in one of the most hilariously stupid scenes I've ever seen: one where Olivia Wilde is asleep in her bed and the dog just comes into her room and stands on the bed, staring at her. 

He's just standing there......MENACINGLY!

Okay, so the government finds out that they've been experimenting with dead bodies and junk and apparently they weren't supposed to be doing that, so the government comes in and shuts everything down. This is where the movie takes a turn for the worst. They literally break into the government facility heist-style and try to get their equipment back. During this time, Olivia Wilde is electrocuted and dies. Mark Duplass obviously loves his wife unconditionally and would still love her even as a zombie, so he shoots her up with the serum. It works and Olivia is back, but not the same as she was before. She keeps talking about going to hell and she begins to act violently, just like the dog. And here's the kicker. Are you ready for this? No, I'm really gonna need you to sit down for this. SHE DEVELOPS PSYCHIC POWERS. WE'VE GOT A MOVIE ABOUT A FREAKING PSYCHIC ZOMBIE HERE. I sincerely wish that I was kidding when I say that. If that sounds ridiculous and stupid, then congraduration a winner is you, you're completely right, it is. Here's a fun fact for you: THEY NEVER ONCE EXPLAIN HOW SHE STARTS DEVELOPING THESE PSYCHIC POWERS OR WHY THE DOG DIDN'T GET THEM TOO. NOT ONCE. THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND YOUR MOVIE IS LEFT UNEXPLAINED. THAT IS NOT OKAY. 

So Olivia Wilde begins to use her psychic powers to go completely insane and start killing everything in sight. This leads to some of the silliest, most unnecessary deaths I've ever seen. She pushes Donald Glover into a locker and picks it up and crushes it with her mind and, get ready, Evan Peters? That guy who's been smoking an e-cigarette for the whole movie? Well sonny boy have we got an ironic death for you! He's looking at Olivia Wilde's now completely black demon eyes and she goes nuts and makes his e-cig shoot at his face and go down his throat, causing him to choke on it. DEATH BY VAPE. I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THE DAY. 

So Olivia Wilde ends up killing everybody by the end of the movie. The climax of the movie is her chasing the last person alive through the lab while the lights keep flickering on and off because ooooohhhh spooky lights. We also see flashbacks in her head throughout the whole movie about her being in a burning hallway with a little girl and people pounding on a door at the end of it, seemingly burning to death. This is also never explained in the movie. From what I gather, that little girl was Olivia Wilde as a kid or something freaking stupid like that. Now, this whole chase sequence COULD have been an effective scene. HOWEVER, the movie royally screws over any chance it had of this being scary by BLARING OPERA MUSIC DURING THE ENTIRE THING. It's not even creepy opera music either. It's like happy, classical kinda opera. This is because Olivia Wilde's character really likes opera music. You could tell because she was listening to it on vinyl earlier in the movie. So now, when she's chasing this girl and trying to kill her, she decides to turn it up to full blast. You know, for scary effect! 

SHH if we hide in here long enough, maybe the director will hire someone else to do this!

Are we almost done? Actually yes. Olivia Wilde succeeds in killing everyone on the map without dying and with her shiny new Perfection medal in hand, she takes Mark Duplass' body and pumps it full of the serum, hopefully making an army of psychic zombies to overtake the world with. And that's it. You got the bad ending. Would you like to reload your save from before the final boss to see the good ending? 

Alright, this movie was bad. Like REALLY REALLY bad. Granted, I say that for a lot of movies, but this one legitimately made my hope for modern horror dwindle to almost non-existent levels. If this is the kind of schlock that can get a theatrical release while good movies are left to rot in straight to video hell, then I have no faith in this genre surviving long in theaters. Now, I'm not saying that horror movies are going to die out anytime soon, far from that actually. Horror movies are going to thrive as long as people want to see them and over the past few years, people have made it very clear that they're willing to pay money to see crap like this in theaters. These kind of jumpscare-riddled, incoherent, garbage movies will continue to get 15%s on RottenTomatoes but people will still go see them because why not? It pisses me off that this is what horror has become. Everytime a horror movie comes into theaters, you automatically think to yourself "that's probably gonna suck" because we've had such a bad track record with horror movies lately that it's been burned into your brain that horror in theaters = awful. And you know the worst part? That thought is completely correct most of the time. This movie is everything that's wrong with modern horror and I hate it with every inch of my being. This movie holds a special place in my heart as being my least favorite movie of all time at this point. It might not stay like that for long, though. If this is the rate that bad horror movies comes out, I'll probably have another one in that spot by next year. It just makes me so sad to see what my favorite movie genre has become. It's mutated in the worst possible way. It's really quite depressing. Anyway, don't watch this movie. In fact, make a conscious effort to never speak of this atrocity ever again. I give The Lazarus Effect 0 psychic zombies out of 10. It's seriously the worst thing I've ever seen and it makes me sad for the world of cinema. 

If only Olivia Wilde would look at me like that when she's NOT a crazy psychic zombie

Unfriended (2015) Review

SPOILER ALERT: THIS WHOLE REVIEW IS IN CAPS LOCK BECAUSE I'M UPSET AND I NEED TO SHOUT MY WORDS TO CONVEY MY ANGER

THIS MOVIE HAS A 62% ON ROTTENTOMATOES AND THAT IS THE MOST UNDESERVED SCORE I'VE EVER SEEN (BESIDES GRAVITY, BUT I'LL COVER THAT EVENTUALLY I PROMISE). INGENIOUS FILMMAKING MY BUTT. ITS BEING PRAISED AS ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL MOVIES EVER BECAUSE SOMEBODY GOT A FREAKING UNREGISTERED HYPERCAM 2 ON THEIR MAC AND RECORDED THE SCREEN FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF. GET OUTTA HERE WITH THAT CRAP. THIS IS THE MOST UNNECESSARY MOVIE I'VE EVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF SEEING AND I COULD'VE SPENT MY HOUR AND HALF WATCHING SOMETHING OF VALUE BUT NO I HAD TO WATCH UNFREAKINGFRIENDED.

OKAY RIGHT OFF THE BAT, THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT A GROUP OF FRIENDS WHO ARE IN A SKYPE CALL AND THERE'S THE GHOST OF A GIRL THEY BULLIED INTO KILLING HERSELF IN THE CALL WITH THEM AND ITS MAKING THEM KILL THEMSELVES AS REVENGE FOR WHAT THEY DID TO HER. THERE. THAT'S THE PLOT OF THE MOVIE. IF THAT SOUNDS STUPID, WELL BUDDY THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS EXTREMELY STUPID AND I'LL TELL YOU WHY. 

EVEN THE SEXY SCENES ARE BAD OH GOD WHY

THE GHOST TELLS THEM THAT IF THEY DON'T FOLLOW HER GAME OR IF THEY LEAVE THE CALL THAT THEY'LL DIE BUT THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE MOVIE, NONE OF THESE IDIOTS EVER THINK TO CALL THEIR PARENTS ABOUT THIS SITUATION WHICH WOULD BE THE SMART THING TO DO. AT FIRST, ONE TRIES TO CALL THE COPS BUT THE GHOST GETS HER BEFORE THE COPS CAN SHOW UP. AND JUST IN CASE THAT PARENT THING DOESN'T WORK OUT (ALL OF THESE KIDS ARE HOME ALONE ON A SCHOOL NIGHT AT LIKE 10PM WHERE ARE THEIR PARENTS), YOU COULD, I DUNNO, HARD SHUTDOWN YOUR COMPUTER?! THESE KIDS HAVE PROVEN THAT THEY'RE GOOD WITH TECHNOLOGY, ONE EVEN SENDS A FREAKING TROJAN TO TRY AND GET RID OF THE GHOST, BUT NOBODY THINKS TO HARD SHUTDOWN THEIR COMPUTER SO THEY CAN GET AWAY. ALSO, JUST. WALK. AWAY. FROM. THE. COMPUTER. YEAH, IF YOU LEAVE THE CALL, THE GHOST GETS YOU, BUT THERE'S MULTIPLE TIMES WHERE SOMEONE JUST WALKS INTO ANOTHER ROOM AND THEY'RE JUST FINE. JUST LEAVE. GO TO YOUR NEIGHBORS HOUSE OR SOMETHING. JESUS.

OH THE VIDEO IS LAGGING, THAT'S SCARY RIGHT GUYS?

AND THAT'S NOT EVEN THE WORST PART! THIS MOVIE IS BASICALLY JUST TEENAGERS ARGUING AND SHOUTING CURSE WORDS AT EACH OTHER FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF AND SOMETIMES ONE OF THEM DIES. THAT'S LEGIT ALL THAT HAPPENS. IT'S SO BORING. LIKE A BORING EPISODE OF JERRY SPRINGER. SEE, WHAT HAPPENS IS THE SKYPE GHOST GETS THEM ALL TOGETHER AND BEGINS TO TELL THEM AWFUL THINGS THAT THEY'VE DONE TO EACH OTHER SUCH AS CHEATING ON YOUR BOYFRIEND WITH HIS BEST FRIEND AND MAKING A CRAPPY MEME ABOUT IT AND STEALING $800 FROM ANOTHER DUDE AND MAKING ASHLEY DANE (UNRELATED CHARACTER WE NEVER SEE ON SCREEN)GET AN ABORTION AFTER YOU ROOFIED HER AND GOT HER PREGNANT (WUT). BASICALLY THE WHOLE SECOND AND THIRD ACT OF THIS MOVIE IS JUST THESE KIDS CONSTANTLY SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER FOR BEING DOUCHEBAGS AND BOY OH BOY ARE THEY ALL DOUCHEBAGS. EXCEPT FOR THE FAT KID. THE FAT KID IS A PRETTY COOL DUDE. YOU ALRIGHT WITH ME FAT KID. 

REMEMBER WHEN AUGUSTUS GLOOP ATE TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE?

BUT THAT'S. STILL. NOT. EVEN. THE. WORST. PART. ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT. ALL. OF. THAT. THIS MOVIE HAS THE PURE UNMITIGATED GALL TO BE AN UNSCARY JUMPSCARE FEST. THERE IS NO BUILDUP TO ANY OF THESE SCARES. IT'S LITERALLY JUST SILENCE WHILE A WEBCAM IS LOADING AND THE OTHER, NOT-BEING-KILLED KIDS LOOK ON AND THEN BANG! SOMETHING LOUD HAPPENS AND WE SEE ONE OF THE KIDS BEING KILLED. IT HAPPENS 4(!) TIMES IN THIS MOVIE AND IT'S ALL THE SAME EXACT THING EVERY TIME. BUT! THAT'S! NOT! EVEN! THE! WORST! PART! THE END OF THE MOVIE, RIGHT? IT'S REVEALED THAT THE MAIN GIRL WAS THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THE WHOLE RECORDING THAT ONE GIRL AND BEING MEAN TO HER SO SHE'D KILL HERSELF. AND SHE'S THE ONLY ONE LEFT AT THE END. AND THE SKYPE GHOST POSTS A VIDEO TO HER FACEBOOK PAGE WHERE SHE REVEALS THAT SHE WAS THE ONE WHO RECORDED THE SUICIDE GIRL. GOOD ON YA SKYPE GHOST, THAT'LL TEACH HER. SHE'LL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE. EXCEPT NO SHE FREAKING WONT BECAUSE RIGHT AFTER THAT HER LAPTOP CLOSES BY ITSELF AND WE GET A SPOOKY FACE GHOST GIRL JUMPING IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA AND MAIN GIRL SCREAMING SO LOLNOPE SCREW AN ACTUAL GOOD ENDING, WE'RE GONNA GO FOR A CHEAPO JUMPSCARE TO FINISH THIS TURD.

HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING FROM SINISTER? THAT'S NOT COOL, MOVIE!

SO WAS UNFRIENDED ANY GOOD? OBVIOUSLY FREAKING NOT WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ASK THAT? IT'S NOT SCARY IN THE SLIGHTEST, THE CHARACTERS ARE JUST ABOUT THE WORST I'VE EVER SEEN, AND IT'S JUST PLAIN BORING. IT'S BAD ENOUGH WHEN A HORROR MOVIE ISN'T SCARY, BUT WHEN I'M SITTING THERE BORED OUT OF MY MIND FOR THE ENTIRETY OF IT, YOU KNOW YOU MESSED UP. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING GOOD ABOUT THIS MOVIE. I GIVE UNFRIENDED 1 SKYPE GHOST OUT OF 10. HOLY CRAP THIS WAS BAD. I SUGGEST THAT YOU NEVER EVEN THINK ABOUT WATCHING THIS.

The Boy (2016) Review

Yo, this movie is really dumb. Like, you kinda expect it to be really dumb going into it because it's a spooky doll movie and spooky doll movies don't exactly have the best track record *COUGH ANNABELLE COUGH*, but I tried going into this with an open mind and what that resulted in was me still laughing at how bad this movie was along with the 3, yes 3, other people who were in the theater with me. If this movie does anything well, it brings people together to collectively laugh at it. I give you.....THE BOY

SPOILER WARNING: THE DOLL DOES SOME SPOOKY STUFF

So in this movie, Maggie from the Walking Dead once again is forced to put on an American accent, but this time it's even worse because the movie takes place in freaking England so why? But that nitpick aside, Lauren Cohan plays a girl named Greta who is tasked with babysitting an elderly couple's "son" when they go off on holiday. Spoiler alert: they're not going on holiday, they're actually going to kill themselves by putting heavy rocks in their pockets and willingly walking into the ocean? Like, that's a really bad way of doing that but okay whatever. So their plan is to leave Greta with their son, who if you couldn't figure out is a porcelain doll the size of a regular 8-year old boy. His name is Brahms and boy oh boy is he quite the little troublemaker. See, the real Brahms is dead (wait, no he's not, but more on that later) because of a fire over 20 years ago that his parents started in an attempt to cover up the fact that Brahms was a little brat who bashed a girl's skull in. Anywho, the old couple makes a doll of Brahms so they can have something to take care of and he comes with a set of rules that you have to follow, which are kind of implemented in the movie, but not really until the last act so you kind of forgot about them already. But anyways, this doll is kinda creepy but at the same time, it always has this look on it's face like you just lied to it but it knows you were telling a lie.

Oh really, Felicia? 

Alright, back to the story. Greta gets spooked by the doll moving around while she's not looking and some grocery delivery boy gets involved too and they start doing tests to prove that the doll actually moves while you aren't looking and they celebrate when they finally prove it like freaking scientists just discovering a new species of ant or something. So, there's also this subplot where Greta reveals that she ran away to England to get away from her crazy abusive ex-boyfriend who has been stalking the crap out of her over in the States. So he finds out where she's at in England and he goes there and threatens her so that she'll come back to the US with him and then after all that, that's when the climax of the movie happens. Douchebag boyfriend smashes the Brahms doll and then the house starts shaking and then the real Brahms bursts through the wall and he's a grown adult wearing a turtleneck sweater and a mask of the Brahms doll face. He's super tall and gangly and just really really not scary at all. So they have a nice chase scene through the walls of the house where real Brahms has been living all this time, sometimes coming out to move the doll around, and in the end Greta stabs him with a screwdriver and her and grocery boy get away while douchebag boyfriend gets himself shanked in the neck with a piece of the broken Brahms doll. And just before the credits, we see that Brahms isn't really dead, he survived being stabbed somehow and he's in the walls again, gluing the doll back together. One thing I give this movie credit for: it didn't have a cheap out jumpscare at the end like I expected it to. It's just a slow zoom in on the doll's cracked face. I fully expected real Brahms and his burnt up face to jump in front of the screen during it, but nope. 

Lauren Cohan, upon seeing this movie's RottenTomatoes score

So is this movie any good? Lol nope. Imagine every single horror movie cliche you can think of. There's a good chance that all of those cliches are in this movie. It does nothing original. If you've seen any of the Chucky movies, then you've seen this movie, except this movie is far worse than any of those. The characters are absolutely unbearable; every scene where Greta talks to the grocery boy is just cancer. They have absolutely no chemistry. What makes this worse is the fact that the acting isn't half bad. When good actors are given bad scripts, then it's always a recipe for disaster. The scares are extremely predictable, you see them coming a mile away. She slowly looks at a painting on the wall while music slowly builds? Oh, something's gonna jumpscare through the painting. She slowly approaches the doll and turns it's head to the side? Oh, it's definitely gonna move and do a jumpscare. She's in the wall and then she looks through a crack in the wall and we shift to first person view? Get yourself ready for something to run right in front of her face. This is where this movie fails as a horror movie. You know when literally everything is going to happen. A good horror movie is able to build suspense and give you a scare without you knowing when it's going to happen. I'm not talking about a jumpscare coming out of nowhere like the infamous poptart in the toaster from Silent Hill Revelations, I'm talking about something like the ghost on top of the wardrobe from The Conjuring. An already creepy scene where you're expecting something to happen, but it comes completely out of left field and catches you off guard. That is how you do a proper scare and this movie has no idea how to accomplish that. 

Brahms is also sad about Beth, Maggie. You're not alone.

Alright, should you go see this movie? Probably not. It's really boring and really dumb. You've seen this environment before: it's a spooky house with a dark attic and no cell service and it's prone to thunderstorms. This movie MIGHT be scary if you've never seen a horror movie before but for someone like me, I was super bored. The only thing this movie has to offer is that it is laughably bad. If you see it with a group of people, chances are you'll all find humor in poking fun at it. However, that's literally the only good thing about it. Just save yourself the trouble and never watch this garbage. I give The Boy 2 creepy dolls out of 10. Just don't. 

Creep (2014) Review

Well, this is certainly a nice surprise, isn't it? An actual GOOD horror movie in 2014. 2014 was a weird year for horror movies. On one hand, you had big theater releases that absolutely flopped and did horribly like Annabelle, Ouija, and The Purge sequel. On the other hand, there were some absolutely terrific movies that either got very limited theater time or none at all like The Babadook, The Taking Of Deborah Logan (review incoming, trust me, I love this movie), and Tusk (again, review incoming because I love this movie too). This movie falls into the latter of those two categories, with it only being released on video on demand before becoming available on Netflix earlier in 2015. But enough intro, let's look at a movie that actually surprised me by how good it turned out to be: Creep.

CREEPY SPOILERS AHEAD

This film is directed by and stars Patrick Brice, and considering this is his first movie, I'm incredibly impressed. He used great lighting and cinematography to make a terrific found footage movie that makes most other found footage films look like trash. Most of the time, we don't even see Brice. Mark Duplass is the real star of this movie and man oh man, does he ever do a convincing job in this film. The plot is as follows: Patrick Brice is a freelance cameraman and he answers Mark Duplass' ad on Craigslist, which takes him to Duplass' cabin up in the woods on a big hill. There, Mark wants him to document a few days in his life as he prepares for his inevitable death from cancer. At first it seems pretty normal; Mark takes Patrick on a trip through the woods to a spring and they go to a restaurant for some pancakes. But then things start to get........creepy. Mark starts showing his true colors and Partick has to find some way to get away from him for good. 

Hey buddy, you're not gonna watch The Lazarus Effect are you?

That's all I'm going to divulge because you really need to experience this movie for yourself. Of course, with this being a Blumhouse production, there's bound to be a few cliche jumpscares, but for the most part, those stay in the beginning of the film. The second half of this movie is where things really start to take off. Whether it's the amazing tension that's built scene after scene, using only silence and a mildly lit hallway for atmosphere, Mark Duplass' incredible performance, or the weird, unsettling vibe that comes from Mark Duplass wearing a werewolf mask and calling himself "Peachfuzz The Wolf", this movie definitely delivers on it's namesake. I genuinely felt creeped out on multiple occasions during this film. 

JAZZ HANDS! HA-CHA-CHA-CHAAAAA

What makes this movie great is its ability to get under your skin. There's something so unnerving about Mark Duplass' character and until it's revealed why he's like this, he has this weird mystery to him that just puts you on edge. Something doesn't sit right with you from the moment you first lay eyes on him. Combine that with the incredible cinematography and lighting techniques used and you've got yourself one great horror film. The only nitpick that I have is that it did feel a little bit long. There's a third act to this movie when you don't expect there to be one and while that's where most of the best scenes happen, it does feel a bit out of place and unnecessary. 

All in all, Creep is an excellent horror film and if this movie is anything to go off of, I'm definitely looking forward to Patrick Brice's next films. He directed another film in 2015 called The Overnight that I've heard many good things about. Maybe I'll check it out someday. I give Creep 8 weird wolf masks out of 10. If you've got Netflix and you like being creeped out, definitely go check it out. 

Apollo 18 (2011) Review

I'd just like to say before I start this review that the entire time while I was watching this movie, THE ENTIRE TIME, all I could think about was that "if two guys were on the moon and one killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what" meme. It may have ruined the immersion of the movie for me, but whatever, I love that meme to death. It's a real thinker. Just imagine. Two guys on the moon and one kills the other with a rock. Would that be fucked up or what? Like seriously. Anyway, this is Apollo 18.

SPOILER ALERT! IN SPACE! WITH ALIENS!

HOLY CRAP IT"S ANOTHER FOUND FOOTAGE MOVIE WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END

So basically, these two dudes go into space and they land on the moon and plant some machines to try and mess with whatever it is the Russians are doing on the moon because the US found out that Russians went to the moon and did some stuff on it. Then some aliens come out and that's about it. No, really. That's the whole movie. Really boring, right? Ehhhh, only a little bit. 

The aliens in this movie aren't your traditional "little green men", nor are they terrifying abominations with sickle arms and tentacle mouths. They are little itty bitty buggy type things that disguise themselves as moon rocks to get close to their prey. That's.....actually kinda clever. Props, writers. 

So, how this movie goes is that the two astronauts collect what they think are moon rocks the first day, and some of those rocks turn out to be aliens. They find a dead Russian cosmonaut in a crater and a Russian moon lander and then later one of the astronauts (we'll call him Jim) sees a little spider thing crawling inside of his helmet and when they get back to their lander, everything's fine. 

A bit later on, Jim starts experiencing paranoia and starts to go crazy in the lander and when the other astronaut (we'll call him John) examines him, he cuts a moon rock out of Jim's arm. BUT IT WASN'T A MOON ROCK IT WAS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE PARASITIC ALIENS THAT LOOK LIKE MOON ROCKS OOOOOHHHHHH SPOOPS! 

Anywho, Jim and John finally figure out that the aliens are little bugs that look like moon rocks and they're whats causing Jim to go nuts. They try to escape in their pod but surprise surprise, it's broken. They then try to go to the Russian pod, but Jim gets pulled into a crater by an alien. John makes it to the Russian pod and manages to take off right as a fully-alien-controlled Jim is about to break into the ship. Oh yeah, Jim's head explodes here too and it's pretty neato. 

John radios to the closest manned station, but they think that he's infected with moon bugs as well, so they say that they can't let him on. At this point, everything goes bad. Since this is a found footage movie, we have to find some way of killing off the main character. Sooooooo let's have the gravity shut off and then have that reveal that there were moon rock bugs on the ship the whole time and they'll float up into the air and all swarm onto John at once, resulting in nobody being able to control the pod and it crashing into the space station, killing everyone on board as well. Cut to pre-mission footage of Jim having a barbecue with his earth family and that's a wrap folks! 

 

Alright, so what did I think of Blair Witch In Space-errrr Apollo 18? Honestly, the found footage really made this movie incredibly boring. I think if it was shot like a traditional movie instead of the found footage, then it would have been a much more enjoyable film. The acting is okay, nothing spectacular and also nothing to awful. It does suffer a bit from shaky cam syndrome, but that's to be expected considering it's a found footage film. Honestly, this movie had a lot of potential to be a thrilling, suspenseful movie. It just didn't have the right delivery or pacing for it. Everything felt a bit rushed, which I blame the lack of plot for. The astronauts literally finish their mission in the first 20 minutes and are about to go home when all of the alien stuff starts happening. This could have easily been a short film with a mild alien chase scene as the climax and it would have worked a lot better. Some of the effects are neat and I really liked the overall design and concept of the aliens. However, style points only go so far and it's not enough to save this movie from being the snoozefest that it is. I give Apollo 18 4 guys being killed on the moon with a rock out of 10. It's worth at least one watch for the cool aliens, but you'll likely immediately forget about it afterwards. 

Shrooms (2007) Review

Guys, please listen to me. I wanna preface this review by giving everybody out there a message. Drugs are bad, mmmkay? Don't do drugs. Chances are, your experience on drugs will be miles better than this movie, but still, don't do drugs. Just throwin that out there. Tryin to be a good role model and such. Anyway, this is Shrooms, a movie that I'm sure everybody in the stoner community was excited for but very disappointed by.

LIKE, ZOINKS SCOOB! THERE'S SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!

Alrighty, how on earth do I even begin to talk about this movie? Well, for starters, it's a stoner movie. That much should have been obvious based on the title. How do you make psychedelic mushrooms scary, you ask? Well, for starters, you invent a new type of mushroom specifically for your movie that is (very) loosely based off of the real life "death cap" mushroom, which is fatal when ingested. This movie's death mushroom is basically the same as that except with a black lump on top which exists purely for the idiot cast of this movie to make nipple jokes about. 

Don't you understand, Sarah? The ones with the nipples are POISON!

Speaking of the cast of this movie, they're all Irish. Well, not all of them. Only one of them is Irish in the movie, but the entire film was made in Ireland with Irish actors putting on bad fake American accents. The plot of this movie is pretty simple: a bunch of stupid college kids go to a remote section of the woods in Ireland with a local guide, looking for the ultimate mushroom high. In these woods, they encounter a bunch of creepy stuff like backwoods inbreds, a guy with an axe, a feral boy, and a creepy lady in the water. OR DID THEY?! OR WAS IT ALL A HALLUCINATION FROM THE SHROOMS(TM)?! 

See the nipples, dude? That means it's poison. Stay away from the nipples. 

Okay, so basically these characters who I'm sure had names but I've forgotten all of them, go into the woods and the local guide tells them ghost stories about grizzly murders that happened in this area. This freaks out a few of the college kids and leads into our main villain of this movie: actual incarnations of the monsters and killers from the ghost stories. I'm not even joking. 

But here's where things start to get interesting. Alright, are you following me here? I'm about to drop some knowledge on you. Two of the characters are just Jay and Silent Bob, but with different names. MIND BLOWN, RIGHT?! Seriously, one of them is a skinny guy with long blonde hair who never takes off his beanie, and the other is a kinda fat-ish guy with a backwards cap who barely ever talks, that is until his shroom tripping scene, which might I say is THE BEST SCENE IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE. 

Let's divulge into a critical analysis of Silent Bob's freakout scene, shall we? So Silent Bob has a freakout on shrooms late at night and he sees a really pretty girl running into the woods. So, being the college horndog that he is, Silent Bob chases her into the woods armed with only his boxer shorts and his quick wit. He follows her for a while before coming across the best character in the whole movie and quite possibly the best character of modern cinema, THE COW. Yessir, Silent Bob finds a cow just chillin' in the middle of the woods. And best of all? THIS COW CAN TALK! Oh, you expected it to just be a regular old cow that does nothing? NO SIR THIS COW IS MAGIC, SON! To quote the talking cow directly, "That's right. A fucking cow that can fucking talk." Silent Bob has a nice discussion with Madame Cowsley (that's what I named her because she didn't have a name in the credits) before finding a car that is shaking. Now, Irish man had told the group before about people who would drive their cars out into the middle of the woods to "get intimate" inside and if you happened to come across this car, you could roll down the window and stick your willy wong in and get a little slurpy slurp if you catch my drift. Now, Silent Bob sees his opportunity to get his tallywhacker polished and he whips it out and sticks it right on in. After a few seconds of niceness, it's all ruined when the woman inside brings teeth into the equation. Silent Bob's trouser snake is bitten clean off and he falls over on the ground dead. Might I also remind you that this is the first death in the movie, so it's an accurate representation of the silliness to come. 

Hey bud, you gonna eat that grass? (STONER HUMOR, STONERS, THATS YOUR CUE TO LAUGH)

Okay, with that little detour out of the way, how's the rest of the movie? 

Turns out that the one killing all of the kids was just one of their own, on a very good high from the death nipple shroom that caused her to go on a murderous rampage. Yep. Everything spooky in the movie was all the kids hallucinating as that one girl killed them all. She's the only survivor after it's all over so naturally, as she's being airlifted out, she kills the paramedic in the helicopter and slams against the window in a jumpscare because you have to know that she's the killer, don't you? 

That's it. That's the movie. It's really really boring besides that cow bit and at their best, the actors are still absolutely unbearable. This movie had a lot of potential because they could have done a lot with the hallucination stuff. You know, made it a lot more psychadelic kind of scary, like introduced the supernatural into it more than they did. The setting was pretty weird as well. It was like a woods setting one second, and then inside of a school, and then in a clear swamp that goes on for miles. This area is just every area in a horror movie ever. 

Overall, Shrooms is a movie that tries very hard to please its target audience and I didn't watch this movie stoned, but if I did, I imagine that I'd be just as bored, if not more bored. It's just......not very good. I give this movie 2 death nipple mushrooms out of 10. Just don't waste your time, even if you're high. 

Dude, same.