continuumx Reviews

Verotika (2019)

Watch the first segment. Skip the rest.

[2/10 · 10 May 2024]

The first segment is complete train wreck but it's so weird and incoherent that it's somewhat entertaining in a so bad it's good sort of way. It's really bad but it's bonkers enough and has enough crazy stuff going on to have some entertainment value.

After that segment ends, there's just nothing here. There are strip scenes that go on way too long. I don't know how Danzig made watching an attractive woman take her clothes off boring but he did it. There are scenes of someone bathing in blood that go on way too long. Everything goes on way too long. Even normal dialogue scenes fee like they go on too long. One reason is that Danzig doesn't seem to know when to cut. The actor will deliver their line and then...actor waits for him to yell cut....awkward actor waiting for cut....then the scene ends. Don't waste your time watching the other segments. Watch the first segment and then turn it off. You won't be missing anything worthwhile.

Death Rider in the House of Vampires (2021)

Just why?

[2/10 · 10 May 2024]

I will give it a point for some cool visuals and having some real actors even if they are only onscreen for a little while.

That's all the credit I can give this thing. The first 20 minutes or so are irrelevant. You can completely skip them without missing anything. The movie is mostly just boring. It just drags on and on. There is an odd lack of any soundscape in many scenes. For a movie made by a musician, there is hardly any music. Many scenes have almost no sound at all. All you can hear is the dialogue. They are in a fairly crowded saloon but there's no crowd noises at all. There are no footfalls when people are walking. There's just no soundscape at all. I don't know if this was a deliberate stylistic choice or the result of technical problems but it's weird and not in a good way.

This movie is just boring and not worth watching. He was trying so hard to be stylish that he forgot to make a movie.

Old Blood (2020)

Some vampire LARPers made a movie

[6/10 · 1 May 2024]

Well, I'm guessing that's what happened. The way the story lines are structured and some of the scenes play out just feels like a LARP. One of the scenes where some characters discuss their feeding preferences while we see some other characters talking in the background could easily have come from a LARP. A couple of characters even talk about going to LARP at one point. No specific World of Darkness-isms are mentioned. I don't know if that's because it takes place in a different setting or they are (probably wisely) avoiding anything specific to the World of Darkness IP.

This is not a terrible idea in principle. LARPing is a sort of acting. LARPers will usually have their own costumes so you don't need to worry about that. They have their own characters which they have practice portraying. There are some issues though. LARP story lines tend to be a bit incoherent as you have multiple groups of people all doing their own thing to some extent. The story here feels a bit like that. There are multiple story threads all kind of piled on top of each other.

The acting isn't the greatest but it's fine for a low budget indie movie. Day for night is hard to pull of on a low budget and it looks bad here. It's not the worst I have seen but it's not very convincing.

The worst thing about this movie is that it really doesn't have an ending. One of the plot threads is wrapped up but a lot of stuff is just left hanging.

My rating for this one is on my indie movie scale. If this were a studio movie with a budget of millions of dollars, my rating would be much harsher.

The Loch Ness Horror (2023)

It's not Loch Ness and there's no horror

[3/10 · 24 April 2024]

The movie doesn't take place in or around Loch Ness. It takes place in the North Atlantic somewhere. There is a distinct lack of terror or anything at all happening for much of the movie. The monster shows up now and then to eat someone. The acting is really quite bad even for a low budget horror movie. Almost the entire movie takes place on what I think is a cargo ship of some sort. It looks like a very old ship that was turned into a museum. They make sure you never see the side of the ship so it's probably at dock somewhere. There's also a very cheap submarine set. Asylum-grade monster movies love a cheap submarine set. I guess the CGI for the monster isn't terrible for the little screen time it gets. The movie also come with a small side of Alien for some reason.

This is just not very good. I have seen worse but this is just very mediocre and kind of boring for most of it.

The Heiress (2023)

repetitive

[3/10 · 23 January 2024]

First things first. The description doesn't really make this all that clear but this is an anthology. The Heiress character and her assistant (?) Daniel only appear in the bridging segments and mainly serve to set up the shorts.

There are some good things about this movie. The cast is good for a low budget indie movie. Some of the costumes look pretty good for the budget. Where the movie really falls down is in the individual segments. The first one is a little slow but okay. Then it goes to the second segment and it's just the same thing in a different place with different characters. The it goes to the third segment and it's just that again. Then it goes to the fourth segment and, you guessed it, it's that again. Then they do a little sequel baiting and it ends.

All four of the segments are, essentially, the same. Locations and characters change but all four of them progress and end the same way. On top of that, the formula they all follow just isn't very interesting or scary. They all try to build tension by showing us the monster while the main character remains unaware of it until later. It maybe works a little in the first segment but only a little since this is such a time-worn cliche. Then they do it a second, third and fourth time and it doesn't work at all. It just gets repetitive and dull.

#Screamers (2016)

Whatever. Nothing matters.

[1/10 · 18 January 2024]

Remember those screamer videos that everyone hated? Have you ever watched one and thought, "This should be a feature film"? No? Me neither but someone made it anyway.

The movie starts out with some tech bros at a start-up getting one of those screamer videos. For some reason, they become fascinated with it. It will make great content or something. I don't know. There's this whole segment where they investigate the video and find where it came from. I don't know why they even care but okay. This screamer video will make their website or something. Then the movie meanders around for a while. There's something about a missing girl that goes nowhere. They go to the grave of some guy who some people think was Jack the Ripper. That goes nowhere and has nothing to do with anything. I'm guessing they could get permission to film there for free. The movie just meanders around like that for a while. The end of the movie is like watching a compilation video of screamer videos on youtube and makes about as much sense.

Amityville Hex (2021)

The worst Amityville movie yet

[1/10 · 12 January 2024]

I have seen a bunch of these movies that put Amityville in the title to get suckers like me to watch them. I have seen Amityville Karen. I have seen Amityville in the Hood. I have seen all three of Mark Polonia's movies starring Jeff Kirkendall as Father Benna: Noah's Shark, Amityville Exorcism and Amityville in Space. So far, this is the worst of the bunch. It's doesn't even have the funny bad entertainment value of some of the others. First, we get a montage of various vloggers reading this corny Anityville Hex. I guess it's some sort of viral challenge. The rest of the movie is cutting back forth between these characters as they spout nonsense at the camera or do various stupid things very slowly. The acting is terrible even for a low budget movie. There's no story. It just meanders along until it falls on its face and comes to a stop. There's 1 hour and 48 minutes of this tedious crap.

At the End of Eight (2019)

Intense...ly dull

[1/10 · 11 January 2024]

Full disclosure: I only got about half an hour into this movie before I got bored and checked out. Nothing interesting or scary was happening and I didn't want to sit through another 45 minutes to see whatever "he's a killer" twist was coming.

I guess this is supposed to be reminiscent of those Tik Tok challenges. I guess the premise works. The characters seem to forget it immediately though since they seem to feel the need to do things like snoop around that increase their chances of getting caught.

The main problem with this movie is that a lot of it is just people creeping around silently or whispering to each other. I think this is supposed to build tension but it's just boring. At one point, one of the characters hears whispering because, I dunno, reasons. As it gets louder, he reacts as though this is some terrifying thing. That's the scene that the picture on the cover was taken from. Then the whispering stop and the movie just moves on. What was that? I don't know. There's a scene where the characters talk about their motives for doing this for no obvious reason. None of the characters are at all interesting.

The low budget is no excuse for the problems with this movie. It doesn't take a big budget to write a script with interesting characters where things happen.

Alien Shark (2022)

and then they sit around and talk some more

[2/10 · 22 December 2023]

The movie open with a shot of a meteor. Then it cuts to two girls jogging on the beach in their swimsuits. They spot a glowing rock. One of them is compelled to pick it up, gets green glowy eyes and than walks into the water. Then they both drop out of frame in the foot deep water. End scene. I had no idea what the hell was going on. It set the tone for the rest of the movie perfectly. Then we cut to the main character, Aleesha, talking to some stock footage of a military helicopter about how she's on leave. She's about to undergo the most world changing, glass ceiling shattering training ever. We later find out that she is going to Ranger school. No one tell the filmmakers that around 100 women had graduated from Ranger school by the time this movie was made. Anyway, the next big chunk of the movie is mostly the characters sitting around talking or walking around talking. Not a lot really happens. There are some odd vignettes that don't go anywhere or make much sense. At one point, they are walking along the beach and see a woman lying near the water. They go over to see if she's okay. She gets up, gets green glowy eyes and starts walking toward the water. The main character punches her in the face to stop her. She comes to and is confused in Spanish. Then she walks out of the frame and out of the movie. Who was that? What was that about? I have no idea. This goes on for what seems like forever. Then there's a rushed, nonsensical ending that involves fighting an invisible shark and throwing a pipe bomb at a doohickey made from an old digital camera. The day is saved I guess.

There are some entertaining bits here and there. They are few and far between though. Most of it just boring scenes of people talking about nothing.

Blacks & UFOs (2023)

what?

[2/10 · 22 December 2023]

This is an odd one. It says that it is a documentary but there really isn't any documentary footage. It's combination of reenactments, interview footage and informational segments. The way the reenactments are cut together is confusing. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was supposed to have happened or what the timeline of events was. There was a chant. They saw a UFO? Moving stars? Glowing white space aliens? What? The way it is presented is very confusing. There's a lot of general new age stuff about crystal energy, levels of consciousness and so on. There's some of the usual UFO stuff in there like the Roswell Incident and Bob Lazar's claims. There's a dash of Afrocentrism with the Annunaki being depicted as enlightened black space aliens. There's some Van Daniken-esque catastrophe stuff combined with some Nibiru cataclysm stuff which is, perplexingly enough, depicted as having happened in the past even though the animation shows the Earth being destroyed. It's really all over the place. There are occasional lectures about...something? New age stuff? None of this stuff makes any sense and there are some funny gaffes like a guy talking about 18 million year cycles and pointing that a diagram with one section that clearly says 17 million years for some reason. There's another part where I think she is trying to explain persistence of vision and why a series of still frames appears to be moving but everything she says is just wrong. I really have no idea what events this is supposed to be documenting or what they are trying to bring across here.

It's hard to give this a numeric rating but I am going to dock it quite a bit for lack of clarity and focus.

After Midnight (2019)

Not what it says on the tin

[2/10 · 18 November 2023]

This was billed as a horror movie. I watched it as a horror movie. I am going to review it as a horror movie.

As a horror movie, this is boring and pointless. It starts with the male lead wooing the female lead. It then jumps 10 years ahead in time though that isn't really clear until much later because the characters look exactly the same age. She goes off somewhere leaving a vague note. A monster of some sort starts appearing at his door every night after midnight. The middle part of the movie is split between him freaking out because something is scratching his door and him moping because female lead is gone. This goes on for what seems like forever going nowhere in particular. Then the last part happens and it's a romantic melodrama. The horror elements is almost completely dropped only to come popping back in randomly and nonsensically at the very end. Then it ends.

I don't really know how good or bad this is as a maudlin romantic melodrama. I don't like or watch that kind of movie. As a horror movie, this is a dud.

Skinamarink (2022)

What am I watching?

[1/10 · 8 October 2023]

If you are a big fan of dark, grainy panning shots of crown molding and buzzy static, I have the movie for you. I think this is supposed to provoke a feeling of unease. It just made me squint at the screen trying to figure out if something was happening in any of these dark, grainy shots. What is the point of this long shot of the top of a closet? What am I supposed to be looking at here? What are the filmmakers trying to convey with this? Why is this in the movie? I guess that's over now and I'm look at the crown molding again. Why? Is this supposed to be a child's point of view. Does this kid walk around looking up at the top of the wall all the time? Why is it shot like this?

I didn't actually finish this movie. I paused it to go to the bathroom and realized that I still had an hour of this tedium to go. It felt like I had already been watching this for hours. I just didn't want to sit through any more of this.

Horror in the High Desert (2021)

Just boring

[1/10 · 18 September 2023]

The movie opens with the audience learning that some guy who had the habit of hiking deep into remote areas in a desert wilderness has gone missing. Apparently, we are supposed to think that someone going missing after hiking deep into very unforgiving terrain alone is mysterious because he had done it many times before. You would think this would take maybe 5 minutes. The movie spends the first 45 minutes or so on this. Most of it is taken up by faux interview footage of people telling you about spooky things that happened that you don't get to see. Footage of someone sitting on a couch talking about something that happened does not count as something happening in a movie. We actually have to see the something happen. Then someone discovers he had a blog. The movie spends 15 or 20 minutes on people being amazed by this for some reason. Then, an hour or so into the movie, something actually happens. What happens is not scary, interesting or original at all but at least something is happening. You get about 15 minutes of generic found footage running around and then the movie ends.

This is one of the worst examples of found footage movie padding that I have seen. You are 1:00-1:05 into a movie with a running time of 1:22 before anything happens. That's around 80% of the movie's running time. 80% of the movie's running time goes by before anything happens.

Shepherd (II) (2021)

Mostly just boring

[3/10 · 24 May 2023]

I am pretty sure this is trying to be a slow burn, psychological horror movie. It succeeds in spots but it mostly fails. Even in a slow burn movie, you still need to have things happening and some sense of progression. A string of creepy scenes is not enough to hold a movie together. There needs to be a sense that all of this means something and is going somewhere. I did not get that from this movie. A lot of it just seemed there to be creepy and not much more. I will say that I didn't finish the movie so maybe this all comes together later. They pulled about the cheapest shock tactic there is and I was done. I don't care what happened in the rest.

This movies isn't all bad. The landscape and cinematography are good. Kate Dickie is good for what little of the movie she is in. There's just not much to this movie. It's mostly just boring.

The Thing Below (2004 Video)

complete waste of time

[1/10 · 13 May 2023]

You many have noticed that this movie has a great many 1 and 2 star ratings. You may wonder if it deserves such a low rating. You may wonder if the harsh criticisms of it sprinkled throughout many of the other reviews are fair.

Well, wonder no more. It does and they are. Every bad thing everyone has said about this movie is true, The CGI is below Sci-Fi Channel production standards. The Asylum would be ashamed to release this. They story is stupid and makes no sense. The acting is terrible. The ending is obnoxious and predictable. Everything about this movie is bad. Really bad. There is nothing here worth the time it would take you to watch it.

Animal (I) (2014)

mediocre and cliche

[3/10 · 5 May 2023]

The movies opens with some people we don't know getting attacked by a monster. Then it cuts to the usual group of friends doing the usual thing that characters do at the start of one of these movies. They are going hiking into the woods. It will be the last time because the woods are going to be cut down. How poignant. That's not how it works but nevermind. After night falls, they come across a monster. It kills one of them and chases the others to cabin that is just there. There's ways a cabin in these movies no matter how deep in the woods they are supposed to be or how untraveled they say it is.

This movie isn't all bad. The acting isn't great but it's not bad for a low budget horror movie. The creature costume actually looks pretty good. How fast and strong the monster is depends on the needs of that scene with little consistency. It's never explained what it is or where it came from except a vague statement about it being disturbed by logging or something. No one noticed this large. Hyper-aggressive apex predator before? Okay. Where it mainly falls down is character and story. Most of the characters are one-dimensional and disposable so it doesn't make much of an impact when they die. No, not...that guy. He was my favorite character. Whatever his name was. The story is just a string of various B monster movie cliches. It makes the whole thing really unengaging. I tuned out because I didn't care about what was happening. I spent the entire last act just waiting for it to be over.

Forests of Mystery (2009)

Not a movie. Don't waste your time.

[1/10 · 25 April 2023]

I'll get this out of the way right off the bat. This is not a movie. It just stops partway through. There's no ending. It sets up a bunch of stuff but doesn't pay off any of it. There's a fungus or something but that goes nowhere. There's a professor they are working with to do something. There's a research assistant that gets some on her. There's something up with the research assistant but we never find out what. We see some sort of hatchet prop that was definitely not made by the unspecific local Indian tribe but we never find out what that is. There's not just one but two curmudgeonly old guys who tell them to not go down that road. Of course they go out there anyway because movie. They get chased around by a vague monster for a while. Then of the characters says. "That's enough for one day" or something like that and it just stops. There is no ending. It just stops. It's almost like they got 2/3rd of the way through the movie and then ran out of money.

The Rizen: Possession (2019)

Pretty decent but only if you have seen the first one

[6/10 · 20 April 2023]

This movie is listed on Tubi TV as The Facility rather than as The Rizen: Possession. There's no indication that it is a sequel or related to any other movie. I don't know why they listed it like this especially since they also have the first movie. Whatever the reason, it doesn't do this movie any favors. Without the previous movie for context, a lot of what happens in this one just becomes incoherent nonsense. For examples, there are a lot of flashbacks. In some of them you see the actors in different costumes. In some you see somewhat similar looking but clearly different actors. These are the actors from the first movie but it just makes no sense if you haven't seen that. There are a lot of things like that in this movie.

This is a decent sci-fi horror movie but make sure you watch The Rizen first. Otherwise, a lot of this movie won't make a bit of sense.

The Last Vampyre on Earth (2013)

An interesting experiment that mostly doesn't work

[2/10 · 19 April 2023]

This is a difficult movie to review or rate. It opens with Catherine taking refuge in abandoned warehouse or military base or whatever it's supposed to be. She's fleeing from some sort of cataclysm that involves lots of explosions. She find some sort of metal cylinder that looks like it fell through when part of the ceiling collapsed and a couple of corpses. From this cylinder emerges the titular last vampyre looking very much the worse for wear.

This is a very spartan sort of movie. It takes place entirely in one, mostly bare room. There are only two characters: Catherine and The Last. That's what the character is called in the credits. Not a lot happens in the movie. Most of it is these two characters conversing about whatever cataclysm is happening outside and why it's happening. Much of that is the vampire recounting the hidden history of the Earth or, at least, his version of it. He is clearly downplaying the predatory nature of his own kind so it's unclear how reliable of a narrator he actually is. A lot of what he says is apparently supposed to sound deep and profound but is really just a lot of vague new age-y rambling. The vampire himself looks quite different from the usual movie vampire. Apparently, the military spent decades trying to kill him so he looks in terrible shape and can barely move around. I am guessing this was mainly to explain why he doesn't just kill her.

This movie was an interesting experiment but it doesn't really work for the most part. Nothing happens for most of the movie. There are only a few mild scares. There's just these two characters talking. If you aren't invested in the ongoing conversation, there's just nothing here.

Possession (1981)

I don't get it

[3/10 · 15 April 2023]

This is a difficult one to rate. It's not a badly made film. Quite the opposite. I can only rate it based on much I personally liked it which, unfortunately, was not much.

I got the impression that this was a deeply personal sort of film where the filmmaker was working through some very personal issues. In other words, the filmmaker made this mostly for himself. Unfortunately, I am not him and most of what he was doing here was lost on me. All of the characters are stark raving bonkers. Nothing they do or say make any sense. The dialogue is mostly a lot of artsy sounding nonsense. It probably means something to the filmmaker but it doesn't mean a damn thing to me. There are a lot of histrionics and overacting. A good chunk of the movie is taken up by the lead actress screaming and spazzing out. There's a monster or maybe there isn't? I don't know. It's hard to tell what is and isn't supposed to be metaphorical. Maybe all of it is.

In the end, I just didn't get much out of this movie. I usually think people who say, "You just don't get it" are either making excuses for a poorly done, vague movie or falling for obscurantism. In this case, I don't get this movie.

Abominable Snowman (2013 TV Movie)

abominable

[2/10 · 14 April 2023]

I'm not going to bother with the synopsis. The poster tells you everything you need to know. There are some people. They're on a mountain. There's a monster. The monster is chasing the people. That's it. That's the movie. The characters are chased by a terrible CGI abominable snow mutant hamster yeti thing. As for the cast, it's pretty much what you would expect. When your recognizable actors are that guy from that Highlander TV show and Chuck the Technician from Stargate: Atlantis, you know you are going to be in for a time. It has all the usual cliches of movies like this. There's a storm and, of course, they are trapped on the mountain. There's an avalanche because of course there is. There's always an avalanche in these movies. It's so cliche it's not even a spoiler. I stopped watching it about 2/3rds of the way through so I don't know how it ends. I don't care either.

E.L.E (2018– )

Not a movie

[1/10 · 14 April 2023]

This review is for the E. L. E. "movie" on Tubi TV and not for the actual series. If you see this while scrolling around on Tubi TV, it looks like it's a movie but it's not. It's the pilot episode for a TV series. It was obviously not meant to be watched on its own. It's a lot of set-up and ends on a cliffhanger. This is the only episode Tubi has. I can't even tell if any more episodes have been made. I don't know of there even will be any more episodes. It has been five years since this one came out. As a thing to just watch on its own, this just doesn't work at all. Without the rest of the series, this is just a waste of time.

Battle for Pandora (2022)

This movie is really bad

[1/10 · 14 April 2023]

I guess this is a mockbuster of Avatar 2 but the only thing the two movie have in common is that the place is called Pandora. It had the feel of an unrelated sci-fi script that had the Pandora clumsily pasted on. It's pretty clear that the moon of Pandora was originally an asteroid for example. The spaceships look decent but all of the other effects are really cheap and bad. The water effects somehow look much worse than they did in The Abyss in 1989. The alien moon of Pandora is clearly just California with a blue filter. They don't even try to make it look alien. The director seems to believe that shouting=intensity. The characters are CONSTANTLY SHOUTING. Almost every line of dialogue is SHOUTED AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS. The only actor who seems to know that his character is supposed to be in the military or something is Tom Sizemore. None of the other characters are at all believable as either military or scientists. They come across as more like a bunch of teenagers BLURTING out whatever comes into their minds AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS. The plot is stupid. The reveal is stupid and you will see it coming a mile ahead of time anyway. That is if you decide to waste your time watching this thing. I would recommend not doing that.

The Lair (2022)

Okay action movie

[5/10 · 14 April 2023]

The movie opens with RAF pilot Kate Sinclair and her nameless WSO being shot down over Afghanistan somewhere. They are attacked by the Taliban (maybe). Her WSO is killed and she is forced to take refuge in a Soviet bunker that looks a lot like a buried cargo container. Once inside, she finds the plot of the movie.

This is a solidly middle of the road action horror movie. The creature costumes are pretty good for a low budget movie but the CGI blood is pretty bad. I will have to say that Jaimie Barber did a good job since I didn't even recognize him until about an hour into the movie. The rest is the cast is mostly pretty decent. The main exception is the female lead. She's very pretty but not much of an actor. I didn't believe for a second that she was an RAF pilot or even British for that matter. The action scenes are pretty well done and entertaining. The plot is mostly a pile of various tropes cliches but it's serviceable.

If you want an action horror movie where the characters fight monsters, this one is perfectly okay. It's not great but I have seen far worse.

Open Graves (2009)

Evil board game

[3/10 · 11 April 2023]

Handsome American guy is vacationing in Spain when some guy in a shop asks him if he has healthy desires and gives him a centuries old antique board game for nothing. No, sir, I see nothing odd or sketchy about that. He takes the board game and gets the other characters to play it with him. Hilarity ensues. I mean evil ensues. Oh no, you die for real if you lose the game.

So it's an about evil board game that kills people. This would be a tough premise to pull off effectively under the best circumstances. They don't really pull it off here. Eliza Dushku is always good and the rest of the cast is serviceable enough. The dialogue is more than a little stilted and awkward. The plot is a mish-mash of other movies about cursed, evil stuff that's cursed. They way it is set up takes away nearly all of the suspense. There's a fair amount of CGI and it's really bad even for the time. It's bad enough that it kind of ruins the impact of some of the death scenes. The ending is just terrible. I mean throw stuff at your TV bad. The ending alone brought this one from a 5 to a 3.