Tag: Horror

Movie Review: POSSUM – If you’re going to create a feature from a short story, be prepared to add material. If you don’t, you end up with this.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews3 Comments

In the end credit roll for Matthew Holness’s Possum, you see in the fine print that it was based on his short story of the same name, published in the anthology The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease.  Weird that the source material would be buried in the credits and not shown during opening titles, as it is in most cases.  I haven’t read the short story but I’m going to track it down now that I’ve seen the movie.  I suspect it’s not going to be all that different from the movie, because even though it has a running time of an hour and a half, there’s perhaps only about half an hour of story.

Continue reading “Movie Review: POSSUM – If you’re going to create a feature from a short story, be prepared to add material. If you don’t, you end up with this.” →

Movie Review: BRIGHTBURN – how they managed to make this horror movie take on Superboy is beyond me – but I loved it

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While I’m a sucker for the Marvel movies, my personal favourite movie about superhumans is 2012’s Chronicle, a movie that appeals to the side of me that sees the crossover potential of the superhuman in fiction, and not keep it limited to the kind of material that’s been pounding the cinemas for decades now, and now Brightburn, a modestly made indie movie produced by Guardians of the Galaxy‘s James Gunn has cemented itself right by it.

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Movie Review: US – Jordan Peele’s follow up to Get Out is doing big business, but I found little to like.

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The review title says it all, doesn’t it?  Consider that a tl:dr, if you don’t want to read a dissenting opinion, but if you’re curious as to why I seem to be in the overwhelming minority when it comes to this movie, plough your way through.

I’ll say at the top that I wasn’t a great fan of Get Out either.  I thought the hype and critical praise for a mostly just good movie was startling.  My own daughter, whose opinion generally aligns with mine on horror movies, was one of those people who thought Get Out was fantastic, and I approached it with some excitement, as someone who generally feels let down by most movies in the genre.  It happened with Get Out, and to an even greater degree with Peele’s sophomore work, Us. Continue reading “Movie Review: US – Jordan Peele’s follow up to Get Out is doing big business, but I found little to like.” →

Movie Review: PET SEMATARY – The 2nd attempt to film Stephen King’s best novel makes a lot of changes, but few of them work.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews9 Comments

I am a child of the 80s, and just like whichever decade your teen years were set, that is the era that defined me.  Part of that period in my life was where my affinity for the horror genre evolved, with the books of Stephen King maybe the largest single element.  Throughout that decade, with no internet to make things easy, I devoured not just his books, but also news of his books.  Each time I went into a book shop with the intent of picking up his newest release, I left in a hurry to get home to crack open the cover.  I remember calling the US telephone operator from my bedroom in Scotland around 1987 or so and actually getting the number of King’s Bangor mansion, but there was never an answer each time I called.  All this is to tell you that I was a big fan of King, to preface the review of 2019’s Pet Sematary.

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Movie Review: BIRD BOX – this Sandra Bullock movie is so bad I wished I’d brought my own blindfold.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews4 Comments

So yeah, you know how this review is going to go down based on the title.  No major reveal here, so it’s kind of like the movie itself!  I actually hadn’t heard of this movie until a few weeks ago, and the trailer and accompanying article didn’t exactly set me on fire.  It seemed too much like A Quiet Place for my liking, and that was a movie I mostly disliked.  Now most places you will read about it are indeed referring to it as “A Quiet Place … for eyes!”.  Not only didn’t I like Birdbox, I hated it!

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