by admin | Oct 5, 2016 | Good Horror Movies, Movies, Reviews |
The Sighting Quick Review
The Sighting takes place a year after seven local students are murdered at a lake house. Two recent high school graduates decide to drive up from Michigan to Canada. They take a shortcut and soon discover the terrifying truth behind one of the worlds most popular cyptids.
I want to start by saying The Sighting is one of those movies that I am glad I didn’t give up on. The Sighting opens up and looks like it’s going to be a found footage movie. I am just not a fan of them and really have to be in the mood for one and I am almost never in the mood. Thankfully, it isn’t. Also, one of my pet peeves is when characters do stupid things. There’s more than a few characters doing stupid things in this movie. However, the movie begins to redeem itself towards the end.
One of the things a movie can do to help win me over is to surprise me. The Sighting did that. It actually tells a story. It gives an explanation of one of the oldest North American urban legends. A lot of the dumb things the main character Travis, played by writer directer Adam Pitman does, later begins to make sense or maybe it doesn’t? In any case, it goes from a simply stereotypical creature feature to something a little more interesting and I loved that about The Sighting.
I am not going to blow sunshine up your ass and say this is an amazing movie. It’s not but it’s good if you give it the chance. The Sighting has a very low rating on IMDb and that’s a shame because it’s actually an above average movie. Halfway through it admittedly I wasn’t happy with it but I felt that was almost intentional on the part of the writer. Like Adam Pitman is setting the expectations low so you don’t see the story twist coming. It makes the second half a lot more interesting. When you realize that it’s quite possible that not everything is as it appears to be.
It’s got some nudity. Not much but as a lonely, creepy middle-age man that loves boobs, it put a naughty smile on my smile on my face. I’d like to personally thank Jasmine John for that. Not a lot of gore but what’s there is well done done well for the most part. I think if you give the movie a change you’ll like it. It’s not a crazy teen movie and it’s not an academy award winner. It’s a solid movie with an original story and that makes better than most horror movies out there.
by admin | Jan 1, 2015 | Bad Horror Movies, Movies, Rants, Reviews
Bigfoot The Lost Coast Tapes…
“Sean Reynolds, a highly acclaimed investigative journalist (who strongly believed in paranormal phenomena), destroyed his career when the most watched episode of his reality show, based on paranormal phenomena, turned out to be a hoax. Sean saw a news report on a “Bigfoot Hunter” (Carl Drybeck) who claimed to possess the body of a dead Sasquatch. He believes Drybeck is a phony and decides to create a new show that reveals people’s paranormal claims as hoaxes. Sean assembles his old film crew and heads to Northern California’s “Lost Coast” to meet with and interview Drybeck. Obsessed, Sean is staking his comeback, his life and the lives of his documentary film crew on proving Drybeck’s claim to be a hoax.”
– Written by Chevez Frazier
My review here is pretty simple. It’s stupid. For the sake of just venting I will try to explain why to call this movie shit, is an insult to shit everywhere.
It’s a found footage movie that shows now nothing. The filming eventually just becomes nauseating when everyone is just running with cameras in scene after seen. There’s some shots of the Bigfoot darting across the frame in a several shots that were not interesting, scary or all that suspenseful. And, for all the flashlights and camera lights it’s always conveniently dark in every seen that something is about to happen in. As for the acting, it wasn’t too bad. But, the characters didn’t make sense. Some characters are in complete denial as to what’s happening around them. Others say one thing and then do another. It’s just hard to follow the logic.
Hunting Bigfoot. Stands in a field at night, alone, surrounded by candles meditating with nature spirits. This is what smart people call, “Natural Selection”.
Our main character Sean Reynolds played by Drew Rausch I guess made a deal with some guy who claims to have either killed or found a body of a Bigfoot. Somehow Sean is the only one willing to pay this mountain man dude “Carl Drybeck” (played by Frank Ashmore) the cash to see the body. But, they don’t go see the body. For some reason they arrive, are somewhat forced to give up their cell phones and wear hoods on their heads on the drive into the woods. I can almost accept the absurdity of that. But upon arrival they have little cabins, to stay in, there’s still no Bigfoot body. They have dinner, and are told they will see the body tomorrow. It’s just ridiculous. They for some reason had made plans to spend 7 days with this creepy mountain dude? It made no sense at all. You drive there, you document the body and pay the guy. You leave. End of story. But, noooo. For some reason they are planning to draw it out like The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults.
I don’t know if this is supposed to be a ghost story or a Bigfoot story. It’s really neither. There’s some spirits, that seem to be bad, the Bigfoots, Bigfeet, (I don’t know what they correct nerdism is here) seem to be good but we’re never really sure. Everyone in this film starts off almost tolerable but the more the film goes on the more idiotic some of the characters get. Watching those idiots on Finding Bigfoot, not find a fucking Bigfoot every week is more interesting than this movie.
Best friend just blew his own face off. Picks up the camera to show how sad he is.
Had I read the synopsis above by Chevez Frazier it might have helped me to understand the motivation of the main character. I wondered how he gained all that info about the main characters background that I obviously had missed. Maybe the chewing of my popcorn was too loud and I missed the key character notes? But, I had a suspicion he just wasn’t someone on IMdB that liked the movie and decided to write a synopsis. I scrolled down the list of producers for the film and he’s one of them. That’s why his clarity of characters is strong.
As for the poor bastards having to watch this. The character lists is pretty simplistic. You have the ego maniac director/host that is funding the project and is part skeptic and part douchebag. There’s his friend / video guy who is pretty much all douchebag. There’s the ex-girlfriend of the director/host. She’s the attractive girl who is very spiritual and into possibilities of things. Then there’s the stereo-typical nerd who is so stupid he can’t even hold a boom mic without bonking people on the head and standing in the frame. The only really interesting character was the one black guy “Curtis” played by Japheth Gordon who was smart enough to back out of wanting to spend 7 days in the woods with a bunch of white people. He knew all too well, the black guy always dies. Sadly he’s only in the movie for just long enough to suggest that the nerd takes his place as the sound guy.
That girl there in the back on the phone, never says anything. She never looks up and is only camera for about a minute. She’s the second most interesting character in the entire film.
This movie tried hard to be something different. I hate to shit on it because there was obviously some talented people working on this and sadly it just came off as muddled with bad character development. I don’t know if it was the writing or the directing that made this a bad horror movie. What I do know is that this could have been a really interesting movie if they lost the found footage idea and just spent more time telling the story properly.
Cast of Characters:
Drew Rausch … Sean Reynolds
Rich McDonald … Darryl Coleman
Ashley Wood … Robyn Conway
Noah Weisberg … Kevin Lancaster
Frank Ashmore … Carl Drybeck
Rowdy Kelley … LaRoche
Japheth Gordon … Curtis
Sweetie Sherrié … Latonya
