Daily Archives: October 21, 2017

Oct 21 2017

Movie Reviews 101 Midnight Halloween Horror – Night of the Living Deb (2015)

Director: Kyle Rankin

Writer: Andy Selsor (Screenplay)

Starring: Maria Thayer, Michael Cassidy, Julie Brister, Nan’l Meiklejohn

 

Plot: After a girls’ night out, endearingly awkward Deb wakes up in the apartment of the most attractive guy in Portland, Maine. She’s thrilled, but she can’t remember much of what got her there. Pretty boy Ryan only knows it was a mistake and ushers her out the door… into a full-scale zombie apocalypse. Now, a walk of shame becomes a fight for survival as the mismatched pair discovers that the only thing scarier than trusting someone with your life… is trusting them with your heart.

 

There may be spoilers the rest of the review

 

Verdict: Enjoyable Horror Comey

 

Story: Night of the Living Deb starts as Deb (Thayer) is on a girls night with best friend Ruby (Brister), this night Deb finally goes after a guy she wants in Ryan (Cassidy). After spending the night together Ryan tries to get rid of Deb but her trip home turned into a nightmare as the undead have risen.

Deb and Ryan must put aside their difference to rescue their loved ones and make it to safety before becoming the victims of the zombie apocalypse.

 

Thoughts on Night of the Living Deb

 

Characters/Performance – Deb is considered a geeky woman who finds a guy considered out of her league in Ryan, now her geek knowledge will help her fight the zombies. Ryan is a free-thinking son of a rich family, but his own beliefs will change how Deb thinks of the world. The rest of the characters including the family of Ryan who are involved with what is happening.

Performance wise, Maria Thayer is great in the leading role, she is funnier hitting on nearly all the comical moments in the film. Michael Cassidy is good in this role too but in places doesn’t click as well as Maria. The rest of the cast all work well with Ray Wise fitting the style of film very well.

Story – The story is pretty much a routine by the book horror comedy with a zombie background. The idea that our characters know what a zombie apocalypse is does help the story but otherwise the only original angle is the opposites needing to work together. But this is fun and all we need it to be.

Comedy/Horror – The comedy hots for the most part here, we get plenty of pop culture reference and movie lines that add to the comedy too but on the horror, scale the attempts of horror fall into the idea that things are almost comically horror rather than scary.

Settings – The small-town setting shows us just how the outbreak could happen with people not being able to escape if things got covered up.

Special Effects – The film doesn’t use many special effects but the few times it does they are fine.

Final Thoughts – If you like a good zombie comedy that completely understands what it wants to be this is for you to enjoy.

 

Overall: Horror Comedy Fans Watch.

Rating

 

 

Oct 21 2017

Original v Remake – Let the Right One In (2008)

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Writer: John Ajvide Lindqvist (Screenplay) John Ajvide Lindqvist (Novel)

Starring: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Bergquist

 

Plot: Oskar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl.

 

There may be spoilers the rest of the review

 

Verdict: Modern Day Classic

 

Story: Let the Right One In starts as we meet bullied school boy Oskar (Hedebrant) who in secret is looking for a way to fight back against these bullies, he attention is caught when a new family with a young girl Eli (Leandersson) moves in to the same apartment building in the dead of night.

Around this same time Hakan (Ragnar) Eli’s father is seen performing a certain style of murder, draining the blood from his victim. This becomes clear when we see him interrupted leaving Eli having to show her own true colours as she hunts in the dark.

The two meet and become friends, but only at night, when it is safe for Eli to come out but Oskar doesn’t know the truth about Eli yet, so does he know what he is getting himself into with this young vampire? When Eli’s father is taken, she finds herself alone with the only friend in the world Oskar, this brings out the truth and a chance for Oskar to get revenge on all of his bullies.

 

Thoughts on Let the Right One In

 

Characters/Performance – Oskar is the typical lonely school boy who never fits in with the people around him finding himself being bullied by class mates looking for an escape from this world. Eli is also lonely because of the vampire side of her, she desires friendship but the vampire in her prevents that happening. We don’t get too much from the rest of the characters, we have the loyal guardian, the bullies and the neglectful parents.

Kare and Lina are both brilliant in the lead roles making you fully understand the motives they both face, the struggles they are going through and just carry this film effortlessly.

Story – The story focuses on two different loners that are drawn together to help each other solve their own problems. While there is a deeper look at how a vampire could well struggle in the modern world alone which is a huge draw to this movie, we also get to see how one boy handles being bullied with the extreme measurements. This is a slow-moving story that packs a real punch in the second half and is a much watch for the fans of vampire movies and high school movies.

Horror/Romance – Horror side of this film is in the pure violence involved when it comes to the kills or attacks in the movie. The romance side comes from the two young children falling in love with each other.

Settings – We are kept in this small Swedish town for this movie which shows it to be a perfect location for a vampire to hide out as well as being a place where someone could feel all alone.

Special Effects – We only have a few special effects in this movie, which I do feel works to all the levels it needs to in this film to make the terror filled moments work to their full effects.

Final Thoughts – This will go down as a modern classic in the vampire genre, with the final swimming pool scene easily the iconic scene of the movie.

 

Overall: This is a must watch film for the vampire fans.

Rating

 

 

Oct 21 2017

Geostorm (2017)

Director: Dean Devlin

Writer: Dean Devin, Pau Guyot (Screenplay)

Starring: Gerald Butler, Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris, Andy Garcia, Jim Sturgess, Daniel Wu

 

Plot: When the network of satellites designed to control the global climate start to attack Earth, it’s a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything and everyone.


Tagline –  Some Things Were Never Meant to Be Controlled

Runtime: 1 Hour 49 Minutes

 

There may be spoilers the rest of the review

 

Verdict: A Lot of Fun

 

Story: Geostorm starts as we see how the world has been getting hit by natural disasters only a deadlier than ever level, Jake Lawson (Butler) and a team of international scientists create Dutch Boy a space system that can stop storms from being created and it is a system that is working well, but Jake gets axed from the team.

3 years later the system starts to go wrong which leads to Max (Sturgess) to rebuild the bridges burnt with Jake to go into the space to solve the problem with Dutch Boy but when they learn that the problem is more than just a computer glitch and the race to stop the dreaded Geostorm could end the world as we know it.

 

Thoughts on Geostorm

 

Characters – Jake Lawson is the mastermind engineer that has been the head designer of Dutch Boy, the defence against the storm, he is rash with his decisions which leads him to being axed from the program but he is also the only one that could save the day when he learns the bigger picture. Max Lawson is Jake’s younger brother, he is political man that tries to keep Jake in line but ends up needing to make the hard decisions while building the relationship back with his brother. Sarah Wilson is the secret service agent that is also the girlfriend of Max, she is by the book but also knows how to get the jobs needed done. We have other characters that work for the film, the President preparing to open Dutch Boy to the world and a list of people that Jake doesn’t know on the space station that could be working against them.

Performances – Gerald Butler is a good lead and not having a pointless romantic story helps us enjoy his rough around the edges character. Jim Sturgess is good in the film getting a lot of the comedy moments. Abbie Cornish is great as the strong female performance in a role we are not used to seeing a female character in as the strong secret service agent. The performances from the bigger name are fine but are used in the way you are expecting them to be. The lesser known stars do enjoy themselves making a name for themselves in the best scenes.

Story – The idea the world is going to be destroyed by natural disasters and we need to solve the problem before it is too late. The science in this film is something we could look at happening in the future but when it goes wrong what would we do. The idea works for a popcorn Blockbuster film because certain things are farfetched at times. Saving the world from space and from Earth does work to and the idea the brother’s need rebuild their relationship to save the world. Don’t go in thinking you will get an Oscar worthy script it’s just a fun nonsense disaster movie.

Action/Sci-Fi – The action sequences are big cities being destroyed, but for once there is a reason why it is big cities being destroyed. The sci-fi behind this film works because it is something people have spoken about before so I feel it works for the films ideas.

Settings – The settings take us to big cities to get destroyed which does make sense for the film as we have the satellites needing to be over the cities.

Special Effects – The effects are one of the weakest parts of the movie, which is something that we have seen from modern disaster films.


Scene of the Movie – Hong Kong escape.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – The effects are weak.

Final Thoughts – I loved a disaster movie, I can enjoy the nonsense behind them which is entertaining to watch even though it is crazy throughout.

 

Overall: Just fun and easy to watch.

Rating