scheherezhad

Please do not waste your time on this mess, honestly. The dialogue sounds unnatural, the cinematography is amateurish, and the lead doesn't have the chops to carry the pitifully thin story.

Story-wise, the entire thing takes place over the course of a week, but due to the main character waiting until a full hour into the movie (day 5 of her experiences) to change her clothes, there's not a solid sense of time passing. She also seems to have a magic landline phone with a direct connection to Satan, who keeps calling and talking to her on it. The reveal at the end had no sense of surprise, not having earned an emotional response of anything but an eyeroll from the audience.

Listening to people narrating poorly-written creepypastas on youtube is a scarier time than this.

This popped up on netflix when I was looking for new stuff to watch, and I added it to my list. After sitting through the whole thing, I regret it. I don't believe that every movie has to do something new to be good, but this didn't even make it to plain old "good."

The plot is poorly executed, inconsistent, and lacking in character. I didn't form any connection to anyone in the film, so I had no reason to care what happened to them for good or ill. The non-linear storytelling was messy and killed any sense of tension that any scene might have generated. And while I genuinely like found footage horror, I hate when the director doesn't maintain proper POV. Multiple times in this movie, random shots would come in that clearly were not from the characters' cameras and broke what little immersion they'd built.

Overall, I feel like this plot would have benefited much more from a more traditional approach. Disappointed that I wasted my time on it, but it's still not the worst horror movie I've sat through.

This is just poorly done all around. Weak script, bad acting, unlikeable characters making terrible decisions when they can gather enough wits to make any decisions at all. And besides that, one of the movie posters is literally a spoiler!

Honestly, I clocked the entire plot of this movie the moment a custom escape room was mentioned, simply based on having seen Fear, Inc. (which was not an escape room, exactly, but if you've seen them both, you can't tell me it's not the same plot). This obnoxious white guy lead was at least somewhat more tolerable than the main character of that one, though. Besides being utterly unsurprising and therefore holding no tension for me, this movie gave me nothing to connect with in the characters, who were little more than action figures that checked off genre trope boxes to fill out the roster.

Overall, didn't really like it, but didn't really hate it.

There was genuinely nothing about this that necessitated it being about historical figures. They took a few elements of Shelley's life, pasted names on some actors, and trotted them lifelessly around bland sets with a desaturated filter and some whispery dialogue, and you could have told the same story about a woman writing a book in any era for the exact same lackluster effect. Don't waste your time, especially if you're actually looking for horror.

Better than I expected from a very new movie with only 5 ratings and no reviews, but the stories were of variable quality. It had a feeling of being a bunch of shorts strung together instead of being constructed as a deliberate anthology. It lacked any framing narrative, the titling and credits from story to story were highly inconsistent, and it had no kind of buffer from story to story if there weren't credits at the end of one or an establishing shot at the start of the next, which made for a couple of confusing transitions.

My favorite was the fourth story, Exit 7A. It was well-paced and concise, simple but well executed. The first story was one of the strongest, as it gave the simple plot a decent amount of time to develop, but it did suffer from the lead making a hugely stupid decision for no reason and bringing about their own downfall. The sixth and final story was a horror comedy. The dialogue was a little try-hard, but I did find it decently funny overall. Definitely a monster I didn't expect. I found the other three stories pretty forgettable.

On the whole, I didn't feel like I wasted my time on this anthology--it's definitely not even the worst horror movie I've seen in the past 24 hours--but I also only liked half of the stories. YMMV.

Though I no longer keep up with comics, when I did, Teen Titans and the original Young Justice were my wheelhouse, and the Judas Contract arc is a truly fantastic story. Unfortunately, the writer for this movie doesn't seem to have read it at all.

The opening scene was wholly unnecessary, as it had no relevance to the rest of the story, other than vaguely setting up Dick and Kory's relationship. Then the movie wasted so much time on that and on Jaime that the actual plot was an underdeveloped, confusing mess.

IMO, an adaptation of the Judas Contract with such limited run time should have focused mostly on Gar, Terra, and Slade. It would have allowed time to establish Terra as a solid member of the team, her backstory, and Slade's motivations, as well as Gar's crush on Terra, all of which would have created actual emotional impact during key moments. As it stands, the movie that does exist just left me tired and disappointed because I didn't have a reason to care about anyone in it even though I had built-in love for these characters.

(Also, to reviewers complaining about Terra's attitude, are you sure you read the comics? All of the Titans during the Wolfman-Perez run were pretty terrible to each other a lot of the time. I used to frequently catch myself shouting, "why are they even friends if this is how they act???" at my comics and tpbs of that era.)

I'm always looking for horror with good LGBTQ+ representation, so as soon as I saw this in the new releases on Shudder, I put it on my watch list. Having gotten to it today, I was so let down. Aside from the desperately boring and predictable swiss-cheese plot, the thing that most ruined this movie for me was Aaron. The way he reacted to what was happening around him, he would definitely take first place in a Least Supportive Husband of the Year contest.

I really wish there had been more to like about this, but the only positive I could give it is that I liked the interactions between Malik and Kayla. Don't waste your time, honestly.

With as many recognizable actors as I saw in the lineup, I was hoping this might be watchable, but that hope was quickly tanked when the main character, Joe, proved to be so wholly unlikeable. He's a dead weight to his girlfriend, obnoxious, and constantly fails to be funny. His refusal to take the situation seriously ruins any meager amount of tension that might have built. The main feeling I had for the girlfriend and their friends was just pity that they're attached to Joe. This feels like it's meant to appeal to a very specific niche of self-centered white men who wish they could be drunk, jobless college boys forever instead of accepting that they have grown up and have responsibilities.

This is peak lazy character creation: manchild who avoids real world, and harpy wife who constantly nags him. There was nothing comedic about this, and it only barely qualified as horror. I'll give it points for being less "everything about our local infrastructure fell apart immediately" than most other zombie movie I've ever seen, at least.

All these high scoring reviews have to be fake, because I can't fathom how anyone could sit through this snooze fest and call it brilliant. I'd believe it's based on true events, though, if only for the fact that it's incredibly dull. Seems about right for real life.

The older daughter was the only one whose acting was palatable. Everyone else, from the family to the neighbors, was so stilted and bizarre I was honestly surprised it wasn't on purpose for some plot twist.

Skip this mess and use your time for something better, like watching a pot of water boil. I've seen movies before that I thought had no plot, but this was less than zero plot, somehow. It is devoid of plot to the point it sucked everything potentially good out. It's like the writer had a series of ideas for scenarios to put a character in, but no clue how to string them together into something coherent, and no desire to give explanation for anything that happened. The ending was a joke.

As far as the acting, Hammer was mediocre, and Johnson was so bland and lifeless I wondered at times if they'd just had a bored crew member stand in to read lines for Hammer to respond to instead of getting an actual actor. The supporting cast were much more interesting, so maybe it could've been something good from their POV, watching their friend spiral into a breakdown. Unfortunately, that's not the movie that was made, and we're stuck with ~90 minutes of rotten garbage.

At no point in this movie did I ever feel a single shred of tension. Everything was so poorly written that any potential scares were telegraphed far ahead of time, and the characters were so flat and paper-thin I had no investment in a single one of them. I actually kind of forgot it was on because I was doing other things while it played.

I pretty much never end up liking movies about grieving parents who do stupid occult things to talk to/get back their dead children. Has no one in these films considered trying grief counseling before attempting necromancy?

This one in particular was just rather flat. It had the bones of something that could've been good, but in execution, it didn't come near that potential. The parents were some of the less annoying ones I've seen in films like this (maybe because the ones I'm used to are Americans, which instantly makes straight, suburban, white couples ten times more annoying), and they didn't overdo the creepy kid thing, but they also didn't have any depth. None of the family had a personality outside of mom, dad, daughter.

Really wish we'd gotten more world building, because I was much more interested in the fact that the village was still practicing ye olde necromantic ritual in modern times, and the rules that govern the magic.

Just another "boring white man loses his s*** and murders his family" movie. He had no personality, and the people around him were little more than mobile props for his manpain. Would've been at least a little more interesting if he hadn't been the killer.

On the whole, this anthology fell flat for me. There was a lot of potential in the concept, but the telling of the tales wasn't consistent. I love that each piece had its own style, and they mostly carried the spooky tone, but the Melonheads one was terrible. The US has a wealth of interesting folklore and urban legends, but they picked a pretty weak one, and it was hokey rather than scary. I'd much rather have seen an African, Latin American, first nations, or east Asian story instead to add more diversity of place. (Saying these stories are from "around the world" is a bit of a stretch when they're all from the northern hemisphere and mostly from Europe.)

The first and last stories were my favorites of the bunch, with the rest ranging from bad to mediocre. I hope someone else tries the concept again with better execution.

This is just another predictable mess where a woman dies because a man feels entitled to her existence, but with some magical realism thrown on top. Yawn.

The list of problems this movie has goes on and on, with almost nothing good to balance it out. The ending was laughably bad. The girl's secret was obvious by the end of the first scene, and she was given absolutely no personality. The antagonist could be spotted miles away. The tone was all over the place. The sexual content was entirely unnecessary. The only character I actually liked was Glenna, who was woefully cliche but at least made me feel some sympathy.

If you want a good film with magical realism, childhood sweethearts, and a crime being solved, just watch Odd Thomas instead.

But I have to give them points for actually casting a deaf actress in a deaf role, and treating her like everyone else. It's not the worst horror I've seen, by a long shot, but it just wasn't that good. The betrayer was telegraphed pretty early on, since they were the one who somehow had the least amount of personality in a group of characters who all had basically no personality. It's a shame they didn't use all that screen time they spent getting wasted to develop character and plot instead.

The aesthetic was pretty good, though it suffered from poor lighting like so many films these days. I'm tired of so much darkness and desaturation in horror and thriller movies, as it often feels like it's hiding weaknesses in character or set design.

The plot was messy and vague, and too slow paced for something so predictable. Too many potentially interesting elements led nowhere or had only the shallowest of development, and the villain's motivation was so generic and lackluster that he was rather pointless in the grand scheme of things. The other antagonists could have filled that need.

Overall, could've been good but really missed the mark on its execution.

I had no idea that it was possible to make a movie that has zero tension at any point, but somehow they managed it. There was no personality to either of the girls, only "annoying friend" and "more annoying friend," nor was there any sense of character to the faceless antagonist besides the uninspired shorthand of ~spooky occult~ symbols we occasionally see hanging in the truck. There was no one and nothing to root for, other than for the movie being over.

This whole plot shouldn't have even been possible, anyway. My 10 year old, 4-cylinder Kia could have outrun that tow truck, so there is no way that Mustang couldn't. Pathetic excuse for a film, and a waste of everyone's time.

Weak script, terrible dialogue, bad costuming, and mediocre acting at the best of times. The identity of the killer was pathetically obvious, and the reveal uninspired. It also took thrice as long to get there as it should have.

I found the main character smarmy and unlikeable. A few of the side characters were okay, but got very little screen time (which is probably why I didn't hate them, too). Not enough good in the movie to salvage it, so give this one a hard pass unless you just want some background noise while you take a nap or something.

I mostly clicked into this one because of Ron Perlman, despite knowing this premise isn't my jam. And on that front, I was correct. It was a well-acted and nicely produced film, though, and definitely worth a watch for those who aren't terribly bored of the "white guy forced to do bad things" trope.

Bad acting, poor sound design, and weak writing. It seemed like the writer couldn't decide between two or three different things they wanted to do, and just mushed them together into one script, which wasn't even strong enough to carry off one of them. It made the story (what there was of it) often difficult to follow, and the whole mess came across very flat. Visually it was okay, and there was a surprising amount of women and non-white actors, at least.

If I could rate this pile of dung 0/10, I would, and then I'd unsee it for good measure. This film tries to substitute gore, shock-value, and atrocious excuses for human beings in place of anything with substance. Plot was non-existent, characters were less than one-dimensional, and I feel sorry for the cast and crew having to bring this into being.

Not a bad effort for two guys and a camera. Some of the effects got old very quickly, and I'd have liked a touch more plot, but it was a fun film to have on in the background while I worked on some stuff in another window.