Dracula: Voyage Of The Demeter (2023) - Movie Review

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these on here, but we’ve got another preview screening to get through today (thanks again to StudioCanal for reaching out and letting me attend)… and this is an interesting one. After dealing with some Dracula fanfiction over the past twelve months, between the god-awful The Invitation and the pretty goddamn good Renfield, we now have a specific adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel. More specifically, the chapter ‘The Captain’s Log’ which, in context to the rest of the book, is mainly just an interlude to explain Dracula shifting from one place to another so that the bigger story can continue.

Freaky (2020) - Movie Review

Over the last handful of years, once he stopped contributing to the perpetually diminishing returns of the Paranormal Activity series, writer/director Christopher Landon has been establishing himself as one of the better horror-comedy filmmakers working today. We can argue about the merits of Scouts’ Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse until the actual apocalypse rolls up, but his recent trend of ‘___ but it’s a slasher flick’ high-concept features has proven quite effective, between the Groundhog Day flip in Happy Death Day and the booster shots of Back To The Future Part II in its sequel. And that trend carries with his latest, a slasher makeover of the classic body-swap comedy Freaky Friday.

The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020) - Movie Review

Okay, after what happened when I tried this last year, I want to make sure I get it right this time. So let’s take it from the top.

The latest release from mediocre action director McG wouldn’t even cause a blip on my radar usually. After 2017’s The Babysitter, a surprisingly fun slice of splatstick horror, I’m willing to give the man another chance. Or, rather, yet another one, since when I tried out Rim Of The World in good faith, I found myself questioning why I ever bothered to give him the benefit of the doubt in the first place. The Babysitter is still an amazing flick, and rewatching it in prep for this follow-up has proven (for me, at least) that it holds up to repeat scrutiny, but maybe it was just a fluke and the only truly great thing McG has ever directed. But now that the sequel is in my hands, I really, really hope it holds up.

Fantasy Island (2020) - Movie Review

Jeff Wadlow just continues striking out these days. I mean, when trailers for this film first reached cinemas, as soon as I saw this guy’s name attached, my expectations for it nosedived pretty much instantly. I’d say the dude is in the middle of a slump, but to be honest, I question if he even had a high point in the first place. Between True Memoirs Of An International Assassin, Truth Or Dare, and even his earliest feature-length outing with the embarrassingly twee Cry Wolf, he gives the impression of someone desperately trying to find his niche through attempting just about anything he can get his hands on, only for the end result to truly bring out his ‘master of none’ status. And oh boy, does that come to a head with his latest.

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) - Movie Review

 

A lot of things have come to define the Cloverfield franchise: Ingeniously vague marketing, a tenuous connection to each other and including individual films that stand out so strongly on their own that it’s enough to make said tenuous connections feel like a total non-issue. It’s a loose-knit anthology series that, even with only two prior entries under its belt, has helped cemented producer J.J. Abrams as a cinematic figurehead. And then this film happened. Well, that winning streak had to break eventually.

The Boy (2016) - Movie Review

William Trent Bell, just so we’re 100% clear on this point, is one of the biggest hacks in Hollywood right now. Starting out on a pretty sour note with Stay Alive, one of the more laughable video game movies out there, he then made a return a few years with The Devil Inside… wow, even mentioning that film nowadays is painful, let alone the prospect of watching it. Undoubtedly one of the single worst found footage movies ever made, which is no easy feat considering its woeful competition, it was also one of the most bafflingly marketed films in recent memory, encapsulated with an ending that is about as bass-ackwards as you can get for any cinematic production. At the time of writing this review, I have yet to see his third release Wer but, to put it bluntly, I don’t need to to know that this has a very high probability of being godawful. I’d normally say that I welcome the opportunity of being proven wrong… but let’s be real here: That ain’t happening this time around.

The Angry Video Game Nerd Movie (2014) - Movie Review

After a show has been running for long enough, whether it’s from the fans or from the creators themselves, the idea of turning it into a movie will always crop up eventually. Take, for instance, the Simpsons Movie which had had been the development/rumour-driven stage for over a decade before it saw the light of release to a wide opinion of “Eh, it was alright.” There are plenty of approaches that can be taken translating from small to big screen. You could make it just an extended version of a standard episode, only with a bigger budget. This can work well in translating from one medium in another by keeping the series content intact, like with the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 movie, or it can bore audiences to death because it utilises a plot that has to be stretched to all hell to make it feature-length, like with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This film, on the other hand… well, the show itself doesn’t have that much of an overarching plot to build on so it can’t really go with the straight translation route. I don’t even think there is a specific name for the route that this film took with its writing and, if I’m being honest, it’s a film I’m still trying to figure out even after having seen it. Why? Well, let’s get started and I’ll show you.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) - Movie Review