Tag: Horror

Movie Review: PYEWACKET – It’s too bad the title will put a lot of people off, because this indie horror is a terrific watch.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews3 Comments

Yeah, so that title.  I can’t stand it, and I think it will put people off from giving the movie a fair shot.  Look, even I find it off-putting, and I know what it means! But the vast majority of people who see the title won’t.  It’ll just be a funny title that sounds like it could be some kind of slapstick comedy involving people getting hit in the face with custard pies and getting whacked on the behind with a paddle.  But of course, I’m British and grew up with these kind of vaudevillian shenanigans on the Beeb, so there you go.

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Movie Review: ANNIHILATION – interesting, but an ultimately ponderous and pretentious exercise from the writer/director of Ex Machina

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews6 Comments

There was no way I was going to miss this movie – for two reasons, actually.  The first being that my daughter usually beats me to the punch on new releases and I needed to see this one before she did just cuz.  The second being Alex Garland.  Now, I haven’t seen most of Garland’s work, but I liked Dredd a lot, despite it mostly being a RoboCop movie in disguise,  and I flat out loved Ex Machina., which was, if memory serves, my favourite movie of 2015.

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Movie Review: VERONICA – if you’ve successfully ignored the clickbait headlines, good for you. PG-13 scares at best, and few of them.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews4 Comments

Is there anyone who doesn’t fall for clickbait?  Probably not.  Most of the times, they’re easy to identify and pass over.  So and so “destroys” someone else’s political argument, some device or food is the “Only Thing I Ever Needed”.  And I’m a huge fan of browsing creepy old pictures on Pinterest that are described as things that will “Haunt Your Dreams Forever” – you know, this kind of stuff.  Generally written to increase traffic by people who copy rather than create, these headlines have permeated the world of online article writing, and mostly serve as penny-click advertising revenue.  But like I said, who hasn’t clicked one?  My mistake was being curious about the descriptions of Veronica, currently available through Netflix, as being the scariest movie of all time.

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Movie Review: THE RITUAL – Good, but feels like a mashup of other movies, and the ending is a lot weaker than it should be.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews3 Comments

Literally, everyone I knew who had seen Netflix’s The Ritual urged me to watch it.  Not one person had anything bad to say about it – I was planning on watching it anyway just from catching the trailer, which intrigued me, but mostly because while watching that same trailer, I felt I was seeing a few already familiar movies.  I finally got around to viewing it, and it turned out mostly as I expected: good, but far from great, for a  number of reasons.

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Movie Review: THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER – a cold, odd, and austere movie, but fascinating from start to finish.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews4 Comments

As obscure as the source of the title for this movie is, it’s also a major spoiler for the largely inexplicable events that happen in the second half, because I expect that some people would approach the movie by Googling the meaning of it.  In that respect, it’s too clever for its own good.  I waited until after the movie ended to do it, and you should too.

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