Month: April 2017

Movie Review: THE SHALLOWS – Blake Lively fails to stand out in a frustratingly annoying shark-attack movie.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews4 Comments

I can’t understand some people’s definition of horror.  Having watched The Love Witch, and found almost nothing horrifying about it, in either execution or intent, I watched The Shallows, which is described in various places as a horror-thriller, or survival-horror.  I admit, I’m a horror purist, but I just cannot imagine a definition of the horror genre so elastic it stretches far enough to encapsulate either of these two movies.  Especially The Shallows.  And I’m not talking about scary movies, because there are plenty of non-scary movies that are clearly horror.  The Shallows is NOT horror, it’s never even close to being horror, and I’m going to put words in the mouths of the writer (Anthony Jaswinski) and director (Jaume Collet-Serra) when I say this was never intended to be a horror movie.

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Movie Review: THE LOVE WITCH – extremely faithful homage to the camp horror of the 60s and 70s, with a great performance from its star.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie ReviewsLeave a comment

I’ve seen some bizarre movies in my time, and I have to say, The Love Witch is up there.  If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone.  Released in November of 2016 it ended up with a domestic box office of less than a quarter million, but I feel it’s going to have an extended streaming shelf life through word of mouth.  Billed by many sites as a horror movie, I’ll tell you that it barely rises to meet that definition.  The witchcraft driven plot isn’t strong enough for it to be considered horror – it’s more of an occult thriller than anything else.

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