Jessabelle 2014 Quick Review

Jessabelle 2014 Quick Review

Jessabelle 2014 Quick Review

Jessabelle 2014 Poster Image

Jessabelle 2014. After barely surviving a horrific car accident Jessie Laurent returns home to Louisiana to stay with her father while she recuperates. She discovers three old VHS tapes left to her by her late mother. They soon reveal that Jessabelle is being haunted and if she wants to survive, she will need to go down a dark path.

I saw Jessabelle about a year ago and what I remember most is how really, really good it was until the end. It wasn’t a bad ending, it didn’t ruin the movie. Just wasn’t the happy ending I was looking for. I would be interested in hearing what others think about it. Great story, good acting, creepy, scary with a solid spooky atmosphere.

The acting was good with a lot of character actors you’re sure to recognize. I don’t recall a bad actor in the bunch. I have Jessabelle on as I write this review and was just reminded of a few of those character actors. The story was strong. There’s a real mystery here. The best ghost stories have them. It’s all about the who and they why. These are the kind of supernatural tales I love the most.

Jessabelle Bathtub Scare Scene

The locations were beautiful. It’s supposed to be set in Louisiana but was filmed in North Carolina. I’ve been to Louisiana several times, never noticed Jessabelle wasn’t really filmed in Louisiana. Still they managed to capture the feel of Louisiana. Jessabele’s father’s house she works as creepy but not over the top. The outdoor scenes don’t disappoint either.

Everything about Jessabelle is well done. If you love a good ghost story, I think you’ll love this one. If you’re looking for some teens have sex and get killed, this isn’t it. Looking for a solid story that is creepy and scary. Watch this. Side note, there’s nothing wrong with horror movies with teens having sex and getting killed. Just saying, if you’re mood for one of the few horror movies that doesn’t involve that, this would be a great choice.

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Deadgirl 2008 A Not So Quick Review

Deadgirl 2008 A Not So Quick Review

Deadgirl 2008 A Not So Quick Review

Deadgirl 2008 Poster

The Deadgirl centers around two less than popular high school kids who find a girl chained to a bed in the basement of an abandoned mental hospital. They soon discover that she cannot die.

I didn’t hear about “Deadgirl” until a few years after its release. It sounded creepy and haunting. The person I know that had seen it said it was really good. One of the best horror movies he had seen in a long time. Yesterday I started to write an article for Bad Horror Movies titled, 7 Underrated Horror Movies You Need To See. I was so sure that I was going to like Deadgirl that I added it to the list. Doing so because I really thought it was going to turn out to be an underrated horror movie. One of the reasons I had put off watching Deadgirl was because over the years I had to come to learn that the person who recommended this movie to me is an asshole. However, I had seen this movie on a few lists of must see’s so I was hopeful.

This afternoon, I made a huge salad, fake crab, chicken it was spectacular. Seriously, I made the best salads. Anyways, I sat down in my recliner and hit play. I was so excited. Been waiting years for to watch this movie, it was going to be disgusting, offensive and it would make me think and question my very existence! Five minutes in, I was starting to feel like I had been duped. Thirty minutes in, it so disappointing, I wanted to turn it off. Thoughts of calling the person who recommended this turd to me and telling them that they have no taste in movies at all, flashed through my head.

Every expectation I had for Deadgirl was not met. Yet in order to explain I have to give away a spoiler, it’s not a huge spoiler because the tagline for the film was, “You Never Forget Your First Time.” So, if you haven’t figured it out yet, these kids find a girl. She cannot die. They keep her chained and rape her daily. There is no way it wasn’t rape. Their rationalizations were ridiculous. Please don’t think that I was like offended and that’s why I didn’t like Deadgirl. I wasn’t. It’s just that I didn’t buy what these kids were selling. Hell, under the right circumstances I would have hit it. The dead girl was fine, in a hot zombie girl kinda way.

This is the problem with Deadgirl. They tried to sell it as some sort of dead erotica with a “what would you do?” theme and it failed. The biggest reason it failed, is that you have to give a shit about at least one the protagonists. The two main kids, were fucking douchebags. One was a coward, the other was a rapist deviant that literally got off on treating the dead girl badly. From killing her multiple times or rather, attempting to raping her and humiliating her. The only fucking likeable person in Deadgirl, was the dead girl. Deadgirl should have been about the dead girl. She was the most fucking interesting character in this movie and yet, the story really didn’t have much use for her other than a prop some of the kids acted around.

Instead the writers seemed to have thought that this was some kind of look into what two high school rejects would do with a girl that couldn’t die. For that work, at all, you need to make at least one of the fuckers interesting, or at the very least, likeable. I just didn’t buy into Rickie’s character. He didn’t like the idea of his friend, JT (Noah Segan) raping the dead girl. Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) was supposed to be the likeable guy. Well, he was a fucking coward and an idiot. Nothing to like about him, at all.

There was a scene where Rickie gets his ass kicked by the boyfriend of the girl he likes. The ass kicker is “the jock” so of course, he’s also an asshole. If you’re gonna have a “jock” in a movie, he’s gotta be an asshole I guess. I think I was supposed to feel bad for Rickie when he was getting his ass kicked? I didn’t. Mainly I was torn between wondering which one of these dumbfucks I hate more.

For more than 90 minutes I sat through this terribly shallow pile of crap looking for a reason to like it and not finding one. This story had so much potential to be a true darkly erotic and horrifying tale. Instead its attempts at having any kind of death was just embarrassing. You know that really dumb friend you have? The one that every once a while has what they think is a really deep thought? And, you’re thinking to yourself, “Jesus dude, I like pondered that once when I was 9 for like a minute and moved on.” Everyone in this movie was like friend. Well, except for the dead girl and the dog. Both had more depth than all the other characters combined.

Who is going to like this movie? Shallow people that get off on rape. People that are just pretending to actually contemplate, “is it really rape if she’s dead?” So, for the shallow people. I’ll give this movie a slightly better rating than it deserves. I justify this simply for the actress, Jenny Spain who played the dead girl. She did manage to make being dead look hot. I thought she did a wonderful job with her character, with what limited time she had on the screen.

Oh and one last thing, the acting was fine here. I do not mean to take away from that. I thought for the most part all the acting was at least okay. The special effects were more than decent. It just really fails at the story level and even a bit at the direction. Just so many missed opportunities here.

One more last thing. Shallow people, this is for you. I am not dissing you. We all have are shallow moments. If you happened to like this movie and don’t consider yourself to be a shallow person. It’s possible you’re not. I would love to hear from you. Your reasoning’s for liking this turd would be fascinating to me. Maybe you could even get me to see this movie in a different light? And, if you like this movie, good. We all like different stuff and I am glad you found something you enjoyed. As for me personally, I just don’t see it. So who knows, maybe I’m the one being shallow?

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Demonic 2015 Quick Review

Demonic 2015 Quick Review

Demonic 2015 Quick Review

Demonic 2015 Poster

Demonic is the story of 20-somthings that are documenting a haunted house investigation. Things go badly and the police are called into investigate. The detective in charge discovers a sole survivor and calls in a psychologist to help. As they unravel the mystery of what happened they soon discover there are darker forces involved.

The other night I watched Demonic and I enjoyed it. The person I watch it with didn’t. Of course she’s much older than I am and thought it was too much of a teenager’s horror movie. I was shocked by this. Even though the movie deals with a bunch teens and twenty-somethings getting killed, it’s not about that. It’s much more than that.

Demonic takes place in the now but there’s a lot of flashbacks and found footage type stuff but this isn’t a “found footage” movie. I enjoyed it because it wasn’t your typical kids do dumb things and get killed horror movie. This had grownups in it. Demonic wasn’t the story of said kids getting killed, it takes place, for the most part, after they’ve all been killed. This is a story of the Detective investigating the murders and the psychologist whose been brought in to interview someone who could be the sole-survivor or the killer himself. The story that unfolds is a mystery, that becomes a ticking clock, that becomes a supernatural story. How can that not be interesting? why would anyone not enjoy that? How could my mom not like this?! er.. I mean, older mature women I watched this movie with.

The acting was fine in Demonic. There weren’t really any standouts except for Maria Bello but she’s pretty much amazing in everything she does. For me, the star of this movie was the story, the direction and the cinematography. It wasn’t overdone or visually stunning, but it captured the mood without overdoing it. There’s a time and place for visually stunning film making. But, sometimes it can be a distraction. Demonic blends seamlessly between the present and the past. There’s never any confusion with that regard and it allows to comfortably lose ourselves in the story.

There’s not a lot of gore but it’s got a couple of jump scares, it’s got a creepy old house, and an interesting story with some twists and turns along the way. It’s a solid movie, the problem is that it’s hard to find in the states unless you have a hacked dvd player that can play most regional coding. But, if you get the chance, it’s well worth the watch.

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Buy Demonic on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

NON-USA FORMAT Reg.2 Import – United Kingdom

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The Abandoned 2015 Quick Review

The Abandoned 2015 Quick Review

The Abandoned 2015 Quick Review

The Abandoned 2011 Poster

The Abandoned is about a young woman trying to get her life back in order. She takes a job as a security guard during the graveyard shift. It’s her first night working in this beautiful old building. But, the more she learns to about the buildings dark past the further down the rabbit’s hole she goes.

Let me start by saying that I saw an excerpt from a review of The Abandoned by the Roger Ebert website and all I can say is that the person who wrote what I read was full of shit. In a nutshell, they loved the first hour of the movie and thought the ending ruined it. Now being someone that is constantly shitting on movies for having shitting endings, I could understand their feelings. However, as a person that has seen this movie, I know for a fact that the ending works well. I didn’t read the interview, I just read description for the article that turned up doing a Google search for “The Abandoned 2015”

Okay, let’s talk about what this movie has going for it. The acting, great. The story, interesting. The setting, perfect. The atmosphere, creepy and believable. The screenplay, well written. The ending, thought provoking and I didn’t see it coming. No one really does anything too stupid. At least nothing stands out that I recall. I try to give a movie at least a few days after seeing it before I review it. I want it to sink in. If I still feel strongly about it after a few days, then it’s a good movie. This is a good movie. It’s not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen but it’s got a solid creepy atmosphere, a couple of good scares, and above all it’s a good ghost story. It’s because it’s a mystery. It’s not just about creepy scary shit, it’s about why the creepy, scary shit is happening.

Louisa Krause is completely believable in her role as Streak. She’s strong yet fragile and stands up well to Jason Patrick’s character Cooper who is somewhat of a verbal bully at first. He is the other graveyard security guard and has been there from the beginning. He has no desire to get to know the new guard, Streak. Patrick’s character could have easily been simply one dimensional but it wasn’t. Krause’s character could have been annoying and unsympathetic. Both these actors took their well written characters and made them better.

If you’re looking for a solid ghost story with an actual story you’re going to enjoy this. It’s also got a twist at the end. I wish I could tell you more about the ending but I don’t want to ruin it. I think almost anyone that enjoys a good ghost story will like this as well as anyone who likes a good mystery.

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6 Horror and Sci-fi Shows I lost Interest In

6 Horror and Sci-fi Shows I lost Interest In

6 Horror and Sci-fi Shows I lost Interest In

There are actually more than 6 horror and sci-fi shows I lost interest in but these are the top that have been on my mind lately. Though I’d like to make it clear that any show featuring aliens or monsters in it I consider them to be part of the horror genre.

There have been so many times I have started to write a post like this. Sometimes it’s because I saw someone’s post on social media mentioning a show I had lost interest in and it made me want to tell the world why I don’t watch it anymore. Other times it’s because a show got cancelled and I wanted to rant about what I believe really killed the show.

What I came to realize is that it’s mostly the same thing time and time again that causes me to lose interest in a show. Below are the 6 shows that stand out the most to me at the moment. As you will see, for the most part each show made the same mistake.

6. Lost
I didn’t start watching Lost until the first season came out on DVD but I was hooked on it! The first few episodes were riveting, fascinating and a pure joy to watch. Then around the middle of season 3 it started to lose its way and by the final season, it was just so wrapped up in its own bullshit that it was completely laughable. I still watched it to the bitter end but it became grueling.

Lost seemed to start out as a story about a people tapped on a mysterious island. There was something fucking huge and scary in the forest and there were Polar bears too. This made the show magical, scary and a lot of fun. Then the Dharma Initiative came along and ruined it. I didn’t think Dharma had ruined it at first. But, it did. Instead of them being some strange organization with answers to the islands mysterious nature it was just a tool take us further away from islands mystery. Then there were the Others. Another dive down the rabbit’s hole of nonsense.

So much potential to create something amazing and fascinating and instead it got turned into fucking weird show about conspiracies and corporations and two immortal guys in the last season that seemed to control everything and then it all ended with a big, “WTF was that about?!” A good show that lost its way because it got too wrapped up in its own mythology.

5. Supernatural
I know, I know, how can anyone not like this? Well, it’s easy. I gave this show about 4 and a half seasons and I just couldn’t take it anymore. It started off so strong. Good scary stories that were interesting. However, it very quickly became silly and lacked any kind of sophistication in its storytelling. It committed the ultimate sin in my eyes. Supernatural became more about the backstories and the characters than about the content. Once that happens it turns into a soap opera and I don’t like soap operas.

In the beginning it told really fun and haunting stories. I don’t mind the occasional backstory but that’s all the show became about. It got lost in its own mythology and never seemed to come out of it. Instead of the leads investigating and solving supernatural shit each week it turned into a never ending story about the brothers and the ghosts and demons took a backseat to the storytelling.

Instead of a show about two brothers fighting evil each week it became about long drawn out stories about their dad. About being stuck in Hell. It lost its focus of telling really good ghost stories and instead became a show about two brothers and everything else took a backseat.

Supernatural became a show that was no different than any teen drama. What I mean by that is you could plug the two brothers into any other teen drama and they would fit. It just as easily could about two brothers struggling survive in a world of competitive weight lifting or mixed martial arts. If you replace the ghosts and demons with Baseball or football and it’s pretty much the same show. That’s the problem. And, because of that, I stopped watching it.

4. The X-Files
I own every season of the X-Files on DVD. I have seen every episode and many of them I have seen twice. I love the idea behind the show. But, again, this is another show that lost its focus. It was a great show about investigating some really fun and creepy shit. Aliens, monsters, ghosts all kinds of fascinating stories. I liked the character’s back stories. I didn’t mind the occasional dive into them. Those stories can make for a good arc. But, when they never get resolved and go on season after season with bullshit conspiracies that never lead anywhere, I grow tired of it.

The X-Files all too soon became about Fox Mulder’s search or his sister and government conspiracy crap. It ruined the show. The only reason I kept watching was because at least every once and a while they would offer up a great standalone episode about some weird shit and Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would go all Scooby Do and solve the mystery or not solve it and leave some doubt. Either way those few and far in-between episodes were always fun and always interesting.

When they recently came out with another season, I was thrilled! Couldn’t wait! I barely made it through the first episode. It wasn’t interesting. It started out in full on Alien government conspiracy bullshit. I have all those epodes saved and I plan on watching them but I am in no hurry. The first episode gave me no reason for me to look forward to the next episode.

3. Stargate SG-1
I loved this show so much. I don’t have it all on DVD but my kids do and I have borrowed it many times. That being said, it too turned into a soap opera. It’s a whole show about having this amazing Stargate that can take them to the most amazing places and yet they spend way too much over season dealing with the fucking Goa’uld. They were the most boring, insignificant characters ever and season after season was about having to fight off these moronic, immature and pathetic fake gods. Drove fucking nuts.

It eventually got the point where I considered just skipping episodes that dealt with the Goa’uld but I didn’t, just on the rare chance I might need to know about this turd of an episode in a future episode. Such an opportunity for them to explore the galaxy but instead they kept writing stories about the fucking idiotic Goa’uld. Those episodes were so boring and they really kept that show from becoming the next Star Trek. Sure SG-1 was successful but it won’t have the longevity that Star Trek did. We won’t be talking about it 40 years from now.

2. True Blood
I have read several of the books and love them! I really enjoyed the first season of the show. In fact, I managed to stay with the show up until about halfway through season 4. It just seemed to be getting so ridiculous. It’s been so long since I watched it, I can’t honestly list the exact reason I stopped watching it. All I can really say is that it just seemed to stop capturing the heart and soul of the books.

When a show or movie is based on a book, I expect there to be some changes. You just can’t put everything that’s in a book onto the screen. I loved the first season of True Blood and it deviated in many ways from the book. For example, as I recall, Lafayette dies at the end of the first book. He didn’t die at the end of season 1. I am okay with that. TV shows need to do their own thing to keep it as fresh as possible. I get that. As long as the can capture the spirit of the show, I am happy. It just seemed to me that True Blood had lost its way.

I plan to finish watching the remaining seasons of True Blood someday. But, there’s a whole lot of other shows I will go through first.

1. The Walking Dead
I never read the comics. I was never big into comics. They always bored me. What sold me on The Walking Dead originally was that Frank Darabont was involved. With the exception of The Mist, I’ve loved everything he’s done.

I was okay with the series at first. I tolerated their ridiculous cliffhangers because I always wait for the first episode of the following season to come out before I dive into the previous season. I even stayed with the show when Frank Darabont departed the show. I was hooked.

But, over the last few seasons, it seems to me that the show has become more about dicking with the viewer’s emotions instead of telling good stories. I fucking hate cliffhangers but as mentioned I can tolerate them as long as the story promised is completed. Season 6 of The Walking Dead didn’t complete the story. They promised a conclusion that never came and then left us all to wonder in fucking disgust as to whom just met their tragic end.

The writers tried to defend their bullshit manipulation by saying it was never about who Negan killed with his bat. I believe it was Scott M. Gimple who tried to say the ending was about coming full circle with Rick’s storyline. That was such a fucking hot, steaming pile of bullshit. They advertised and teased us all season long with the reveal of Negan and who dies at the end of his bat and left us fucking hanging.

To make us suffer through that 80 minutes of slow building doom and then fade to fucking black leaving us with no answer? It was nothing more than hearty “Fuck You!” to the fans. I can appreciate a good cliffhanger. I hate them, but I can appreciate it when it’s done well. This wasn’t done well. This came off like they had no idea who to kill off so they decided to take a few months off and think about it. I call bullshit.

Sadly, I will probably still turn back into the show next season though I know I shouldn’t. But, I’ve invested years into these characters now and the best I can hope for is that the writers do something to make up for that steaming fucking turd they laid for us with that season 6 finale.

Sure dragging storylines out can keep a showing on the air for a longer time. But, in most cases it doesn’t. People grow tired of that shit and it kills the shows. If you’re going to turn your show into a soap opera, then kindly wrap it the fuck up at the end of the season so you can then start a new next season. Heroes did that at the end of the first season. They started a storyline and they finished it at the end of the season. Then the left us with a tease into the second season. Very well done. Of course the show kind of went to shit after that but they nailed that first season. That’s how you do it.