mlwcsc Reviews

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

One of the best horror/comedy movies out there

[9/10 · 27 March 2024]

Probably my favorite horror/comedy movie. It takes a bunch of horror stereotypes and twist them in an interesting and, for the time it came out, fresh way.

The movie is at the same time a parody of the horror genre and a love letter to it. It has so many references and nods to other movies and genre tropes that you need several viewings to catch them all.

The characters are typical stereotypes, while at the same time managing to divert expectations.

If you want to dig deeper, which you really don't have to to enjoy the movie, you can also view it as a comment on society and the media consumer.

Split (IX) (2016)

Not the best movie, but not the worst either

[7/10 · 27 March 2024]

This movie, was not the best movie, but also not the worst.

As others have mentioned McAvoy really shines in the role(s) of the split personality character and without his stellar performance the movie would likely rank a lot lower for me. He manages to portray the different personalities in a way that they actually feel like different people and not just a person acting like different people, which is often the risk when an actor has to act out a character with multiple personalities.

Other than the main "characters" of McAvoy the movie only has a few characters that get any significant screen time. The "main" girl, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, is somewhat interesting, but is outshined by McAvoy's character(s) to a degree where it just doesn't really feel sufficiently fleshed out. Then there are the two other girls, that mostly seem to exist to serve as a contrast to the main girl. The movie doesn't really give them distinct personalities and their role in the story is pretty minimal, which is also highlighted by their pretty casual and mostly off-screen demise. Lastly we have the therapist, which is really the most interesting character, aside from McAvoy's. The characters obsession, or maybe idolization is a better word, of DID is done rather well done and makes good sense in-universe. This obsession causes her to make some rather stupid mistakes and miscalculations, but where sometimes in Shyamalan movies, characters do stupid things for no discernable reason other than to move the plot along, her mistakes actually make sense for her character. I guess technically the main girls uncle is also a recurring character, but really I consider him more of a plot device to further her character than an actual character in his own right.

But what about the twist? This is an M. Night Shyamalan movie, so you would expect there to be a plot twist since he seems to include those in all his movies (whether it makes sense to or not), but I honestly can't tell what it is supposed to be in this one. Is it that the main protagonist was abused? Because that seemed rather obvious to me from the beginning. Was it that "The Beast" was going to spare her because of it? Because that was communicated extremely clearly if one simply listened to what was told of the "philosophy" of "The Beast". Or was it simply the credit scene showing the connection to Unbreakable? Because if so that isn't really a twist in the movie as such.

Lady in the Water (2006)

One of the worst "serious" movies I've ever seen

[1/10 · 27 March 2024]

This is one of the worst movies "serious" movies I have ever seen. Now some movies can be so bad that they're entertaining, but this is definitely not one of them.

The movie tries to be clever by using misdirection and false clues, but it does it in a way and to an extent that what it actually accomplish is a complete lack of internal logic. Some people are tricked into thinking that this is clever, thinking that one just has to be smart to "catch" it and for other movies that might be the case, but in this movie there is no cleverness to catch, there is no underlying logic, there is simply bad writing and random nonsensical twists and turns for their own sake.

Then there is the internal lore or rules of the world the movie takes place in. We are not fed these in a clever way, but rather have two characters that for some unfathomable reason chose to give the information to the main protagonist in small chunks throughout the movie in a way to ensure that the main protagonist, and therefore also the audience, never really has all the relevant information. Why the characters chose to reveal the information in this way is never explained in a satisfying way. They have no motive for doing so, other than as a badly used way to advance the plot.

Of course it the fact that we are not given all the rules of the world doesn't really matter since the movie is insanely inconsistent in applying them. At some points the movie tries to cleverly get around its own rules, but in reality it does so with the logic and intelligence of a young child. At other times the movie simply forgets its own rules or straight up ignore them.

Moving on to the characters. Oh the characters. One common treat that all the characters share is that they are unrealistically accepting of the supernatural when told of it. Throughout the movie characters simply accept, often off screen, the fact that the supernatural exist, without any proof, simply based on the word of the main character. There is a single instance of characters briefly questioning it, but they are quickly, and again without any evidence, convinced to get with the program.

Of course the characters gullibility might not be so surprising when you take into account that, in order for the plot to work, all the characters are mind-numbingly stupid. If any of the characters had been just slightly more intelligent than a potato then the plot would have been resolved much too quickly for there to be made an entire movie out of it. In the movie their failures are presented as things going wrong because "the pieces are not in the right place" or some such nonsense, when in reality their failures are based on the characters acting like complete morons.

I could go on and go into details about how M. Night Bad Writer has a character with the sole purpose of letting him display his disdain for the critic profession or how he has cast himself in the role of the self-sacrificing intelligent hero of the story, but honestly I have already given this movie much more attention than it deserves.

The Last of Us: Left Behind (2023) Season 1, Episode 7

By far the weakest episode

[6/10 · 27 February 2023]

This episode just seemed like a lot of time wasted. I get why they wanted to tell the story, but it just didn't have the impact it should have had to justify using the majority of an episode on it.

I think a good thing to compare it to is episode 3, which I thought was great. This episode however lacked two of the things that made episode 3 great. It lacked the emotional involvement and it lacked the stakes.

Because you knew pretty much what the outcome was going to be based on the hints they've given previously in the show, it was hard to form any type of emotional connection to Riley. We knew she was a firefly based on what Marlene said in the first episode and based on the hints Ellie dropped along the way the rest of the story was pretty predictable. That is also why this story, unlike Bill and Frank's, lacked stakes. You wouldn't have known going into episode 3, that Bill and Frank were dead, but Riley's fate has been pretty much spelled out from the second Marlene referred to her in the past tense.

Now you could say that the point of the episode is to give some more backstory to Ellie and to give some insight into why she is the way she is, but I would argue that it doesn't really tell us anything we don't already know from the hints dropped along the way.

Now I am not saying they shouldn't have included the story, but it should have taken up a lot less screen time. I would personally have had the episode been more of a mix of flashback scenes and scenes of Ellie desperately trying to safe Joel. To be fair, they did do this to some degree, but they could have done a better job tying the two together and switching between them. The way they did it they didn't really manage to connect the two stories for me.

Lastly, the ending of the flashback part of the episode would, in my opinion, have been a lot more impactful, if they had actually followed the story to the end, rather than cutting it where they did. The most important moment, the moment that could have done the most for showing and explaining the character development of Ellie and they left it out. Now as far as I remember the DLC for the game ends the same way, but they've shown that they aren't afraid to stray from the source material, so giving us the scene of Riley turning and giving us the scene of Ellie realising that she was going to survive could have easily been done and to me it would have potentially made the episode a lot more impactful.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Good comedy, less than stellar plot

[7/10 · 8 July 2022]

To me the comedy of this movie landed pretty well, but that's unfortunately all that really did.

Lets start with my biggest issue, Jane Foster. I think it says a lot that my absolute favorite moment of the movie was when she died. The character just fell completely flat. Her motivation, her arc, it just felt sorta forced and every conversation between her and Thor felt cringe to the point of being uncomfortable. She didn't really add anything of value to the movie in my opinion.

Then there is Thor's "arc". I believe the movie was supposed to be a relatively deep journey through his emotional reawakening and him coming to terms with his past heart break. The issue is that, as mentioned, the scenes with Jane just felt off. Also they've spent the last several movies making Thor a funny character and their attempt at mixing his funny side with a deep emotional act just doesn't work at all.

Then there is the villain. Well, when we got the first scene introducing him, I thought "hey, this might actually be a pretty good villain", but then, sadly, he completely stalled for the rest of the movie until his big moment at the end. It just felt like a waste of potential.

Now you might ask "but if there is so much wrong with it, why are you giving it a 7?", well here is the thing, even with all the issues, I still found it entertaining. I laughed...a lot. And that is really what I was expecting. I didn't come for a deep emotional journey. I came for the good humorous side of the MCU and that part of the movie, as I said in the beginning of the review, landed.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

I so wanted this movie to be good...

[3/10 · 17 February 2022]

I so wanted this movie to be good. I so so so wanted it. Being a fan of both the games and the (progressively worse getting) previous film franchise, I was looking forward to seeing a fresh take on Resident Evil and one that followed the story of the games as well.

But man was I disappointed. It was just a bad movie. Not Resident Evil: The Final Chapter bad, but pretty bad.

There were a few good things and I'll start with those since I believe in giving credit where it is due. Firstly, the settings were on point. They had recreated many of the places and the scenes from the first games and it looked pretty damn good.

Secondly, Neal McDonough. He is just such a great villain.

Thirdly, the references to the games, and really I think that is the only reason why this movie has as many good reviews as it has, because there were a lot of them. A constant stream of little nods and Easter eggs that people familiar with the games will have picked up on and appreciated and probably the only reason why I don't rate this movie a 1. But sadly that is all much of them are, minor nods that accomplish nothing in the greater scheme of the movie. The licker, the keys and a ton of other things that were clearly only included to please the fans of the game, but where included in a way that they had a minimal impact on the story of the movie.

But sadly that is all the good things I can say about it and the bad far outweighs the good. Lets start with the zombies. Now I gotta say, the zombies is a weird place to try and save money in a zombie movie, but I am convinced that half the zombies in this movie where just random people they had picked up off of the street and told to do their own makeup. They looked bad. They looked amateur school project bad. And then there is the directing of the zombies, because not only am I convinced that they did their own makeup, I am also sure that most of them were just asked to act like they thought zombies would act. I mean how else do you explain the completely inconsistent way the zombies acted throughout the movie...oh and the talking...god damn talking zombies...

But lets move on to the next bad thing, the characters, or rather lack of them. Most of the characters were sadly one dimensional cutouts that, if you didn't have the name to associate them with the characters in the game, might as well just have been "cop 1-x". Now not all the characters were but, but too many of them for a film with such a limited main cast.

And lastly, the story. It was a pretty faithful adaption of the first two games, with some changes. But it just, didn't work. I'm sorry, it just didn't. The flow of the story was off, probably partially due to the fact that they did the story of multiple games in one. It also had scenes that should have had a lot of weight and importance being rushed over due to having to cover a lot of ground in its limited playtime, causing certain important plot points to basically go unexplained. Now if you assume everyone who is watching the movie has played the games, then that isn't that much of an issue, but if the movie is supposed to be able to stand alone, then that is just really bad. A great example of this is that the movie barely explains what Umbrella is. It only lightly touches on the virus(es), hell I wouldn't be surprised if some people left thinking it was chemicals in the water supply that was causing the issues in town.

In conclusion. I really wanted this movie to be good, but it just wasn't. I would say it was a valiant effort, but honestly, it wasn't. To me it mostly seems like someone saw the success of the later games and figured that since it has been some years since the last franchise ended, there was money to be made by making a reboot.

Aftermath (IV) (2021)

Just not a very good movie...

[2/10 · 14 August 2021]

Ok, let me begin with the good, because the movie actually isn't all bad. The acting is alright and the character work and suspence building is actually not that bad, but sadly it completely fails to deliver in the end. The reveal and the climactic scenes are just completely lackluster.

Other than the ending being bad the movie also has issues, throughout, with the characters reacting completely unrealistically to the things that happen. I know I said that the character work wasn't bad and it wasn't in the parts relating to building up the characters and making us understand their relationship and such, but whenever something scary or unexplained happened their reactions were just unbelievable. And that goes from everyone from the main characters to the "cop" and I put "cop" in quotation marks because he is so unrealistically bad at his job that it would have made more sense if the reveal was that he was behind everything all along.

Overall I have to say that this movie just isn't worth the time watching, so if you want my advise, find something else to watch.

Host (II) (2020)

This was actually pretty good

[8/10 · 5 August 2021]

The shortened runtime was a stroke of genius, because, while I liked the movie and found it entertaining, by the end it was close to becoming a little stale.

The initial parts of the movie and the build up was very well done and managed to build up suspense. The climax however kinda let it down with an overreliance on jump scares. It wasn't too bad, but a bit more slow building horror and a few fewer jump scares would have improved things.

That said, despite the overreliance on jump scares it actually got me a few times despite watching it in a well lit room.

One thing however that kinda broke my immersion was the characters observing masking and social distancing rules while they are being terrorized by an evil spirit. That is just unrealistic writing. But it is a small thing, so I can let it go in what was generally a really enjoyable movie.

Apollo 18 (2011)

Blair Witch in space

[6/10 · 31 July 2021]

This movie was alright. It wasn't great, it wasn't a masterpiece, but it was entertaining enough.

It is shown through a number of cameras that the astronauts have brought with them, so it is a different take on the found footage genre. It works pretty well most of the time and gives the movie some of the same suspense that made Blair Witch a success.

That said the movie is not on the level of Blair Witch. It has a relatively well done slow build, but the climax leaves some to be desired.

Overall it was an entertaining enough watch, but probably not a movie I will go back and watch again.

Peninsula (2020)

Well this train derailed...

[3/10 · 31 July 2021]

So I am not going to compare it to the first one. The first movie was one of the best zombie movies of the modern era and measuring against that will almost always leave a movie wanting. Instead I am going to just look at this movie in a vacuum.

So overall, this is not a zombie movie. This is an action movie that just happens to have zombies in it. I would argue that you could basically take the zombies out of this movie without having to change the plot all that much.

The main conflict is humans vs. Humans. The main threat is humans. The zombies are for a large part basically reduced to an environmental hazard.

Many of the characters are shallow and their motivations and backgrounds are left unexplored.

Now lets look at the action, because there is a lot of it, and I mean A LOT. There is so much action that the movie pretty much drown in it. It is not well paced going from action piece to action piece with little to no character or plot development in between.

A large part of the action consists of driving sequences and lets be honest that market is pretty saturated with movies that did it better than this one. To put it bluntly, it gets kinda tedious.

In conclusion, if you just want a dumb action movie where you won't need to use your brain, then this movie might be for you. Otherwise I would give it a pass.

Ready or Not (I) (2019)

Funny, silly and entertaining

[8/10 · 29 July 2021]

The premise for this movie is quite frankly, dumb, but the movie is fully aware of this and doesn't shy away from the silliness of the whole thing.

This movie has gore, it has humor, just don't expect it to be really scary, because, at least to me, it never really was, but it also didn't need to be.

It is funny, it is silly and it is entertaining.

Black Christmas (2019)

It's just not a good movie

[2/10 · 29 July 2021]

I don't know if this movie is trying to make some sort of statement or if it is trying to be clever with its plot or what the point is, but whatever the point is, it is missing it.

This movie is just bad. There is not much else to say really. It's just bad. The plot, if you can call it that, barely makes sense. The "twist" isn't clever, it is just dumb and nonsensical.

The death scenes aren't scary, they aren't impactful, they're just...bad.

It's bad and it isn't bad in the way some movies are bad where it becomes entertaining.

Blood Red Sky (2021)

I have had it with these MF vampires on this MF plane!

[7/10 · 25 July 2021]

As many other reviews describe this is largely a movie of two parts. The first part where it sets up the action and gets the different characters into position is pretty well done and the beginning of the second part where things go south is also quite good. Unfortunately the movie then takes a turn for the worse and the last part of it really is a lot less enjoyable than the opening. Still worth watching, but could have been so much better, if the ending had gone a better way.

Horizon Line (2020)

Realistic, no. Entertaining, yes.

[6/10 · 21 July 2021]

I don't understand the many people that are giving this movie. Is it a masterpiece, no. Is it terribly realistic, hell no. But it is entertaining.

Child's Play (2019)

A so-so movie

[5/10 · 18 July 2021]

Let me start off by saying that this does not hold a candle to the original movies. The new "Chucky" just isn't as good as the previous incarnation. That said, having it be AI gone wrong is a fresh modern take on the whole thing and using the AI aspect throughout the film certainly adds something to it.

But the movie failed to become more than mediocre, never being really scary and also failing to be really funny.

Jeruzalem (2015)

This movie was alright

[6/10 · 17 July 2021]

It wasn't a masterpiece of a movie, but it was entertaining.

It went with a different slant on the found footage genre going with smart glasses rather than a video camera. That alone scores it some points with me as it is much more believable that a character keeps wearing smart glasses than carrying around a video camera.

The story builds pretty well. We are introduced to the characters and watch them move around the city, while there are some subtle (and some not so subtle) hints that not everything is as it should be.

Eventually all hell breaks lose and we get the running around that you'd expect in this type of movie. We also get some of the familiar tropes like "Oh no I dropped my camera" (glasses here) and "oh no they're malfunctioning".

To me what really lets it down is that the balance between the intro part of the movie and the action part of it seems off. We get from "all hell is breaking loose" to the end of the movie much too quickly. I think it would have benefitted the movie to either cut some of the character building or alternatively increase its runtime to give more time for the second half of the movie.

Also the whole angle with the main character's brother did not work for me at all.

The ending was sadly also kinda...eh.

But overall I was entertained.

Willy's Wonderland (2021)

The FNAF movie we never got

[7/10 · 17 July 2021]

Obviously don't go into this movie expecting it to be serious. It is dumb, it is silly and it is definitely entertaining.

Cage's character is...weird and never really explained. My advise is to just not think too much about it and just go with it.

The animatronics are largely on point, being different enough to not blend together and most being strange/creepy enough to work (a few of them kinda fell flat for me, but it is what it is).

What keeps this movie from getting a better score from me is the rest of the human characters. The problem is twofold. Firstly, they simply don't really add anything to the story for the majority of the movie. In my opinion the movie would have been better off just leaving out the teenager subplot and focusing on the main storyline. Now I get why it was there, they needed bodies to kill, but it could have been accomplished in a better way. Secondly, and I don't know if it was the writing or the relatively inexperienced cast that is to blame, but the people just didn't work. They just seemed unrealistic and not in a fun caricature kind of way, but rather in a "this is badly written" kind of way.

So overall an entertaining movie, with a good (albeit borrowed) premise, but it was weighed down by some of the acting and subplot.

Fear Street: Part Two - 1978 (2021)

Better than the first one, but...

[8/10 · 12 July 2021]

I agree with the others that say that this one was better than the first. There was however one thing that really hampered my enjoyment of the movie and that was the fact that it spoiled its own ending. Not only did the first movie pretty much explain the ending of this one in details, but in case anyone had forgotten about that, this movie starts out with one of the first scenes recapping it.

It is often pretty obvious which characters are gonna be the ones surviving in these kinds of movies, but it is something entirely different to actually know not only which characters are gonna survive, but also have a pretty good idea of how they're gonna survive and that ultimately the evil is gonna win since it is the same evil as in the first movie, which takes place after this one.

To go into more spoiler details, we're told only one of the sisters survive and we're told she survives by dying and then having her heart restarted. We also know that the final attempt at vanquishing the evil is going to fail because we know that the body isn't where they expect it to be because we have seen where it is in the first movie.

These things unfortunately means that there aren't really any stakes in the movie, because the outcome is known from the beginning.

Battleship (2012)

A decent action flick if you survive the first 15 minutes

[7/10 · 8 July 2021]

If you go into this movie with the right expectations then it is a good bit of fun. You just have to be ready for the cheesiness, be ready for the clichés and be ready to suffer through the first 15 minutes or so which are, and I kid you not, probably the most painful movie experience I have had for a very long time.

But if you can handle that, then once we have the unbelievably bad introductory act over and done with, you get a pretty decent action movie with some pretty good CGI.

Fear Street: Part One - 1994 (2021)

A good bit of fun

[7/10 · 2 July 2021]

This movie was entertaining. Nothing exceptional, but a good bit of fun. Don't go into it expecting a masterpiece and you will probably have a good time.

Cadaver (2020)

This movie could have been great

[5/10 · 6 June 2021]

This movie had a pretty interesting premise and with a bit better execution, I believe it could have been a pretty great movie.

In a post apocalyptic world in which food is scarce and the streets are dangerous a family is invited to a dinner theater. Now that in itself is pretty strange, but since the characters themselves remark on the strangeness it doesn't really take too much suspension of disbelief to buy it.

The show, is not a stage play, but rather a performance that takes place everywhere in the hotel in which it is set with the guests free to wander around and discover it for themselves. Now part of the premise for the show is that you can recognize who is guests and who is actors based on the guests all wearing face masks.

From here it is really quite simple, as the night progresses both the characters and us as viewers slowly begin to suspect that something more than a play is going on, but how much of it is real and how much of it is really just part of the play? That is really the main plot of the movie. Is it real or is it all an act and for a while, the movie actually does a pretty good job of making you doubt whether it is all really just an act or not and if it had just managed to keep that going closer to the end, it could have been a pretty good movie.

That is, if it had avoided the plot holes, the strange character decisions and the absurdity that unfortunately sneaks its way into the premise along the way. It just really starts to fall apart with the hotel suddenly being absolutely riddled with secret passageways and a ton of bad guys in butchers outfits running around. If the movie had just kept it simple and maybe even ended on a swerve, showing that the entire was actually just an elaborate act, then it would have been a much better movie, but alas.

Shadow in the Cloud (2020)

This movie doesn't know what it is

[4/10 · 6 June 2021]

So I see that this movie has received rather mixed reviews with several people absolutely hating it and other people shaking their heads at the people that hate it and calling it a good bit of fun. Personally I understand both points of view.

The thing that I believe is causing the many bad reviews is that this film has some rather major tonal shifts. It starts out playing as a relatively straight forward war movie with a mysterious female passenger suddenly being added to a flight at the last moment and all the conflict that would cause.

Then we get a bit into the movie and the gremlin is introduced. Now if you weren't prepared for the gremlin to be a big part of the movie, that would likely throw you off quite a bit, but not enough to really ruin the movie. I mean a war movie on a plane with a gremlin, alright.

But then we get the next tonal shift. It turns out that the female passenger isn't, as the movie largely tries to make you believe, a secret agent, but rather a blind passenger and the mysterious package she was carrying was actually a baby in a box...that's right a baby...in a box. Oh and the father? One of the airmen on board the plane. So here we have a few scenes where we suddenly have an emotional subplot where we learn that the woman is fleeing an abusive husband and is fearful for her life.

So alright, they just added some drama to the war movie, alright, but nope, we get another shift and now it is suddenly 100% cartoony action for the rest of the movie, including people climbing the outside of the plane, an enemy plane exploding and throwing someone back into the plane, oh and of course the plane flying upside down for a bit.

These tonal changes would very likely cause a lot of people to experience a severe case of whiplash and, if someone had actually gotten invested in the early bits of the movie where it seemed to take itself semi seriously, make them really dislike the second half.

Now if you can get past that then the movie is still kinda meh to be honest. The cgi is so-so, especially the parts outside the plane and while some of the action is alright, there really isn't enough of it to justify the movie.

The one thing I will say is pretty spot on, is the acting of Chloë Grace Moretz. She honestly does a pretty darn good job with what she is given and it kinda left me wondering what the heck she was doing in a movie like this, because honestly, she should be in better movies.