Week three here for free!
Don’t forget, each week I’ll give a quick rundown of what I watched and thought of them, usually on Sunday is when I post those. But if you don’t want to wait a week, I’ll also be posting my thoughts in tweet form over at: https://x.com/CPeachfuzz
(And check out Week Two.)
The Substance: Man, this movie is so heavy handed and on the nose. This was the one I had the highest expectations for, but there were a few things I missed beforehand that should have given me pause. Like for example who wrote and directed it. The plot is so paper thin that they had to fill time by slapping in fake out dream sequences. A tell for any horror movie that’s weak on content. If they hadn’t though, it would just been the director filming closeup shots of a gyrating crotch for 2 hours. Speaking of the director, I’m not sure she’s ever met a man in her life or has ever been to LA, as the opening shot is of a Hollywood star on the walk of fame getting made and like our actress, the toll the years take on it, including a snowstorm. You know, all those snowstorms that plague LA. She also doesn’t seem to know what TV shows Americans watch either as apparently workout TV show is the only job an aging famous actress can get in this town. A job I don’t think even still exists outside the 90’s. The Substance process was also confusing as it wasn’t properly explained that the person that comes out of you, is still you. She constantly acts as if the other person isn’t her, but a different person altogether. She’d switch bodies and act surprised, not only the state her house is in, but the state she is in. Huh? Also, the medical procedure they expect you to do yourself is also ridiculous. Do you know how to tap a spine? I sure don’t. Or properly stitch someone’s back up? The humor in this movie is also weird and unbalanced. Earlier, we overhear a casting director say it would be better if she had a boob on her face instead of a nose, then later she grows a boob on her face, get it! SKIP!
Daddy’s Head: I liked the trailer, it seemed to have some creepy elements, but man is this thing boring. And doesn’t make sense either. I guess there was just a thing out in the woods that didn’t have a face, so it uses faces from other things like a dog or the boy’s dad… I wasn’t sure if this thing landed here on earth or was just there. I’m guessing it landed, since there was this whole scene of a fire in the woods that went nowhere. And I guess the structure the creature hangs out in was built by his dead dad, as you see building plans later on. Another issue is it starts with the boy grown up, thinking back on what happened. So, you know nothing too bad happens to him. I guess the bigger mystery is what happens with him and the stepmother. But honestly, I don’t really care. The dog and the family friend seem to be the only ones that get hurt. The dog got hurt after it tried to hurt the creature, and I guess the family friend got frightened and fell down while running away. SKIP IT!
Alien: Romulus: I was really impressed with the first half of this movie. It looked great, set things up perfectly, but then it just became a generic Alien movie. Not just one movie, he somehow managed to cram every single Alien movie of this franchise into this including Prometheus and Alien Covenant. It was like he took snippets from each movie and recreated them into his fan film. There were two really terrible moments in the film, one was when the android character for no real reason other than they said it in Aliens, shoots an xenomorph on the face and says in a weird way, “stay away from her, you… bitch”. It was so bad I’d advocate it to be removed from the movie. It did some good moments like the zero G scene with all the acid blood. Why they had her dressed like Ripley, I don’t know. Memberberries, I guess. Oh god that ending. If you’ve seen Alien Resurrection, then you might know what I’m talking about. From the trailer, while everyone was freaking out at how great it looked, I noticed how kind of generic it seemed. Like it didn’t seem to be showing us anything new, only more of what we know. And I was right, that’s exactly what this movie was. It was competently made, doing a fine job mimicking Ridley Scott, but everything once they get to the space station just felt so meh. I guess, a meh RENT.
Hold Your Breath: Aside from possession movies, the worst type of horror is the obvious crazy lady who turns out to be crazy movies. They are somehow literally all the same movie. Kind of like paint by numbers in a way. Female lead? Check. She’s always single. Check. They’re either away and never seen, dead or divorced. Check. Usually, like say 90% of them have troubled kids. Check. And they have delusions and/or dreams about an evil entity. Check. And the big reveals at the end of these movie is also all the same, revealing she was crazy this whole time! Wow, what a shocker! Since these movies do very little to hide they are crazy from the start. This had so much promise, and a perfect setup for something really interesting. It’s set in the 30’s during the dust bowl, a time when there was a severe drought in the US. Take that setting and add a killer on the loose, it writes itself. They introduce a drifter character that leads absolutely nowhere. They set him up like the true story of The Villisca axe murders, where a drifter hid in a house and took an axe, killing the family as they slept, and just hopped on a train, never to be caught. Again, perfect setup for a horror movie. And they squandered it. Crazy mom obsessed with dust, loses her mind, and tries to kill her kids. The end. It sucks. No supernatural elements whatsoever, as these films always tease it, but never deliver. SKIP IT!
Woman of the Hour: A true crime story I think everyone has heard of at least once, right? About the real-life serial killer that went on the Dating Game? It’s a fascinating story, however I don’t know exactly how you tell it as a movie since the whole Dating Game aspect is only a small section of it. And nothing happens, other than a serial killer won. My main complaint about the film is I guess how it was told. They also seem to have added a few untrue elements, like a witness showing up to the taping and recognizing the killer on stage. I don’t remember that ever happening. I guess to maybe add some kind of tension during the whole Dating Game scenes. They also maybe fibbed about the post show meet up the two had. I just remember her saying she didn’t want to go anywhere with him because he seemed creepy, I don’t know if they actually went to have drinks afterwards like in the movie. And I very much doubt that parking lot scene ever happened. The film wasn’t bad, I wish they focused more on the killer. Hell, we don’t even see how he got himself on the show. RENT.
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