relax1977

If you're looking for a "so bad it's good" movie, keep looking. This one is just bad. Nothing redeems it, it's just a terribly acted poorly written story and it goes on for way too long. Not entertaining in the least.

OK so this won't apply to everyone but if you grew up in a certain kind of Evangelical Christianity - the type where every once in a while a "cool" speaker with a casual outfit and an allegedly dark past would come tell you about how Satan lurks in all the things you love - then this movie will seem weirdly familiar. From watching the trailer I expected a rock 'n roll horror movie, what I got was... something else entirely...

Firstly, this is not a horror movie, not even a little bit (there is some decent to good rock in it though). It's basically a sermon about the perils of moral Rock 'n Roll decadence, although much like most of those sermons it does a way better job of making sex, drugs & rock 'n roll seem awesome than in warning you against it.

I'm not using allusions to sermons lightly here. The movie both starts and ends with the same kind of out of context, industry insider quotes to make it seem like the devil is real, runs music and everyone involved knows it. Furthermore the movie has continual infodumps on the illuminati and how Satan supposedly controls everything from rock to hip-hop to Apple Computers. But unlike a sermon, there's not actually a point to any of this. Despite heavy handed character names like "Johnny FAUST", there never seem to be real stakes. Selling out to Satan is... sorta bad maybe? But maybe also no big deal? And maybe nothing matters?

I would say this is like a Chick Tract with more graphic nudity and drug use but honestly a Chick tract has way more punch to it!

This movie seemed like it would be great. Concept seemed interesting and I love pretty much every actor in this movie so how bad could it be? Well, turns out it can be pretty terrible.

Firstly it moves so slow. Every scene seems to drag on forever. The movie feels 3 times longer than the actual run time. It's dreary. It's uninteresting. It's hard to care about the fate of any character.

Basically if you love a good scary movie or if you love any of the actors in this movie, do yourself a favour and go watch something else. This movie didn't deserve the talent it wasted, don't let it waste your time as well.

This is the kind of movie that tends to end up with a bunch of 10 star reviews from people involved with the movie and a bunch of 1 star reviews from people who watched it expecting a 10 star movie. This is not a 10 star movie BUT if you watch it with an open mind, it's surprisingly good! The acting and dialog is pretty much exactly as bad as you'd expect from a low budget movie like this but the concept and the story itself surprised me with how good it was. It rather reminded me of a good short story, they didn't over-complicate things, didn't over explain things, they just told a good story with minimal special effects and maximum horror.

I'm not kidding about the low budget BTW, you could remake this entire movie using nothing but a half dozen of your friends, a rented warehouse and the assorted junk from your attic! Basically this movie showed what can be done with if you have an interesting story and nothing else.

Basically it was pure elegance in its simplicity! Big budget movies could learn a thing or two by watching this one.

The Babadook was almost the perfect horror movie. It is well acted, well written, well directed etc. It builds the tension slowly, it builds it well and it never relies on cheap tricks and jump scares. It's perfect... or it would have been if not for the ending. It's not that it was bad, it's just that it was, well, odd. On the positive side, I definitely did not see the ending coming but on the downside, I didn't think it was a very good ending either.

Still a really good movie, still absolutely worth watching and still worth recommending to anyone who loves their horror movies scary instead of silly. And hell, maybe you might actually like the ending!