I watched Heretic the old school way by watching it at the movie theater. I had some mixed opinions about this movie, although I did generally did enjoy it. The story is about two female Mormon missionaries who go to a man’s house to convert him to Mormonism only to find a little too late that he doesn’t have the best of intentions. Spoiler alerts below so be warned.
After watching the trailer I thought there was going to be a supernatural component to the movie. In fact, I thought that Mr. Reed, played by Hugh Grant, was going to be some sort of demon or at least someone involved in the occult. The movie played on that concept, teasing it throughout the movie but never actually delivering on the supernatural. After watching the movie, I thought it would have been a better movie had they gone that route instead of having Mr. Reed as a psychopath playing a very elaborate trick on them.
The movie was slow at times, particularly around the middle of the movie. It makes up for it by building in tension as the movie goes on, and it had a nice build up. It also delivers on the buildup with a decent ending. I say decent because although there was good drama in that ending, there was a bit of Deus Ex Machina to the ending or at least a lack of believability to it. The characterization and acting was pretty strong, and Hugh Grant as the refined villain worked. So, in the end this movie was a bit of a mixed bag, but there was more good than bad, so I would give it something like three out of five stars if I was using that type of rating system.
I enjoyed the first Smile movie. It had a cool premise, and generally the execution was good too. I purposely didn’t look at any of the reviews before watching Smile 2, so as not to have any bias before watching. I was really disappointed with the sequel, and then bewildered to see the glowing positive reviews of the movie afterward. It made me wonder if I was missing something. Spoiler alerts ahead, so beware.
My biggest problem with the movie is that I had no idea what actually happened. Whereas the first movie had a significant amount of hallucination, Smile 2 was one big hallucination. And what really killed the movie for me was the ending. Although it wasn’t a bad ending in itself, it rendered the entire movie meaningless. Basically nothing that they showed in the movie actually occurred. And I have no idea what took place. It made the movie pointless.
It’s not like the entire movie had nothing good going for it. There were some good scares, some good scenes. My favorite was the part where all of the dancers attacked the main character, but just like the rest of the movie, that likely never happened. You can’t have a movie that is almost entirely a hallucination, but that is what they chose to do here. This is not a movie worth watching, even if I’m in the minority.
The new Salem’s Lot is yet another disappointing adaptation of a Stephen King story or novel in a long list of them. I feel more often not they get Stephen King wrong. Many of the reasons are the same for these failures and the most prominent being that they didn’t stay true to the original source material, and where they veered away and did their own thing is where the plot went awry. This is particularly true with the ending of the movie. Spoiler alerts present so if you don’t want to get spoiled skip the next part and for that matter skip the movie. It’s not worth watching.
The folks behind this movie had this brilliant idea that the vampires, including Barlow the head vampire who has been alive for centuries, would all stay in the trunks of cars at a drive in movie theater during the day instead of this massive mansion that could be protected and fortified as is done in the novel. This is stupendously absurd. All it would take is someone to go during the day to the drive in movie theater with a crowbar, pop open the trunks of the cars (including the one Barlow was in), and kill all the vampires. And the brilliant protagonists thought it would be a good idea to this just as the sun was setting. It’s not believable that a vampire could have lived centuries and be so idiotic. In addition, the dialogue and much of the movie was just cheesy. This was a weak adaptation that is not worth your time.
I’ve watched a string of horror movies in the theater lately including The Watchers, Longlegs, and Trap. I’ve enjoyed each of these to a certain extent. They were all in the category of good not great. Speak no Evil eclipses each of these movies without question. There was a lot that I liked about this movie, but what stands out at the very top of the list of what makes this movie a winner is the performance by James McAvoy. He is without a doubt on the short list of my favorite actors these days. He is fantastic in every movie I watch him, and this is no exception.
The movie has a really nice build to it. In this movie, the Daltons, an American family, meets a British couple while on vacation, and they invite the Daltons to their country home. There are immediate warning signs, but Paddy, played by McAvoy, and his wife explain them away. However, each incident gets more alarming. It culminates when their son, who can’t speak, warns the Daltons that this family is not what it seems. Then the craziness really starts, and the movie delivers on the nice buildup.
This is a well written movie that has great tensions but no real scares. In that sense, I’m not sure it’s really a horror movie. It’s more of a mystery thriller but regardless of how you classify the movie, it’s well worth the watch.
This was a book that I really wanted to like. The opening prologue was really strong and promising, but unfortunately there were too many things that held this back from being an enjoyable novel. The first was the writing style, which I generally don’t think worked. It was meandering and not at all tight. It was also overly long. Horror works best in a shorter form, making it more hard hitting with chills. The longer it goes, the less effective horror generally is. In this case, there were long stretches of not a whole lot going on. This book could have used some serious editing and reduction in length.
Another issue was the characterization. By and large, I didn’t find the characters to either be compelling or easy to root for. The worse character was Maddie, the main character’s mom. Whenever she was on the page, I had a strong urge to forward past that section. Finally, the longer the story went, the more convoluted the plot became, supporting my thought that this book was too long.
On the plus side, there were some interesting concepts in this novel, and the prologue was good. Other than that, there is not much that I can offer as far as positives in this novel. Therefore, I would recommend skipping this one.
