Friday the 13th (1980)

Friday the 13th

IMDB rate: 6,5

Genre: Slasher

Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Kevin Bacon

Finally people, I watched Friday the 13th. This is the first time ever that I've watched a Friday the 13th movie, for a change I haven't even seen the remake yet. I'm planning to first watch all the Friday the 13th movies and after that I'll watch the remake, and after that compare the two! But well, that might still take some time :). I did see Freddy vs. Jason by the way, but well, that's a bit different. 

I liked the movie, while watching it time flew by. I wouldn't say it was a particularly impressive movie, but it certainly was a fun watch. I'm not really sure what I exactly expected from this movie, I knew some things about Friday the 13th, but still it was different from what I imagined. Not really sure if it's better or worse though. Something that I am a bit disappointed about was the fact that I already knew who the killer was thanks to one of my favorite slasher movies Scream. Thanks for that spoiler Wes Craven ;). 

Here's my small spoiler, but I think if you're somewhat familiar with the concept of Friday the 13th you have your expectation of who the killer is, that being Jason, but with knowing thanks to Scream that it was actually his mother who was the killer in this part it spoils something I wouldn't have seen coming if I didn't knew it already.

It's funny that Kevin Bacon is the only actor who grew big after this movie because he's definitely not one of the better actors in Friday the 13th. I actually liked every other actor better than him. Adrienne King is a good main character for this movie I think, she was simple and not one of those extreme screaming girls. What I did miss though was a bit more character depth, like there's something mysterious about Adrienne King's character, but you never get to know what it is. There's just missing something.

At first I was surprised how quickly the people died in this movie, in a term of early in the movie. But then I realized that the time just flew by while watching this movie. It's funny because I wouldn't say that I thought it was an incredible movie, but I still had a very good time watching it. It was definitely more tensive compared to what I expected from it. 

Something that I didn't like a whole lot was the make-up. When someone got killed the make-up was way too obvious. She skin color changed quite some bit when someone died, it was very grayish making it too visible. Another thing that I didn't like was when they killed the snake, this is because it wasn't a fake snake, they actually killed a snake for that scene which is definitely not necessary. 

After watching Friday the 13th for the first time I can honestly say I liked it, it wasn't the best movie and definitely not the greatest slasher either but it's definitely a good watch. Can't wait to see the sequels and I'm hoping to learn more about Jason. I mean, with 9 sequels (Freddy vs. Jason and the remake not counted) you may expect some stories about him, right? It's pretty funny actually that this movie led to 9 sequels and that Jason became such a big thing, considering he's not even in this movie. Or well, he's in the movie but not in the way you know him. 

My rate: 7/10

The Walking Dead: Season 5, episode 7: Crossed

This review is NOT spoiler free!

I always put a spoiler warning first in front of TWD reviews but I am wondering with each review why I'm still doing this, considering nothing new actually ever happens. Yes, you might read a bit of disappointment in that sentence which is not really strange after the last couple of episodes. If you're following each one of my reviews of TWD episodes you might know that I liked the first and second episode, everything after that was unfortunately rubbish. 

The story did finally follow all storylines again, after 4 episodes of separate stories. It's nice to know what's happening to each separate group at the same moment, instead of watching an episode about someone you don't give a shit for and having to wait a few episodes to know about the person you do care for. Even though there was a lot going on with following 4 storylines, it was still not interesting enough to make me excited for next week's mid-season finale.

In this episode Glenn, Maggie, Abraham, Rosita, Tara and Eugene are still stuck on the road with Eugene being knocked unconscious. Abraham is being silent and stubborn and doesn't want to say a thing, because he's disappointed in Eugene. Meanwhile, Glenn, Tara and Rosita are looking for water. While doing this they talk, Rosita finally says a few words again and that's about it. Abraham is also finally speaking again after Maggie confronted him. Yay, this was so exciting.

In the church are Michonne, Carl, Judith and Father Gabriel. Judith is being a cry-baby (hah!), Carl is being tough and tries to learn Gabriel how to fight. He doesn't want to and eventually escapes the church, we don't know why.

Beth is in the hospital, trying to save Carol. She's doing something she's not supposed to and she seems to feel really badass about it. There's even mentioned by the leader Dawn that she's tougher than she looks. Truth is, Beth is still an useless character, who is not interesting at all.

Daryl, Rick, Sascha, Tyreese and new guy Noah are going on a trip to try and save Beth and Carol. While trying to do this they encounter a few cops from the hospital. Shit's going (not really) down and eventually Rick and his group have these cops captured. In this meantime Daryl was in danger for two seconds, but that didn't excite much because you know they wouldn't kill Daryl of very easily since he's the favorite of practically everyone. The cops somewhat helping them explain how the hospital's leader (Dawn) is like. But then they're not nice anymore and one of them knocks Sascha unconscious and runs away. /Sarcasm I did not see that one coming, at all /sarcasm off.

Honestly, I couldn't care less who dies next episode at this point. 5 bad episodes in a row is definitely not cool. I'm pretty sure that the next episode will be exciting though, every mid-season finale is exciting. But even though it might become exciting, I just couldn't care less at the moment after 5 horribly boring predictable episodes. Perhaps they should all die and end this bullshit because I can't imagine they will ever reach the awesomeness of the first season again. At the moment the only thing that's not predictable about next episode is who will die, since that could be everyone.

I'm starting to grow tired of this show :(.

Werewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012)

Werewolf: The Beast Among Us

IMDB rate: 5,1

Genre: Werewolf

Starring: Ed Quinn, Ana Ularu, Guy Wilson, Stephen Rea

In all those years of watching horror movies, I haven't seen many werewolf movies. I've seen the Twilight movies *shame*, and there's werewolves in them but well.. that's of course a poor attempt at not only creating werewolves, but at creating a movie as well. I've seen werewolves in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I've seen them in Underworld and in Blood & Chocolate. But well, Buffy is a TV show, I wasn't a big fan of Underworld and Blood & Chocolate was a pretty shitty movie, so it's fair to say that I never got a good look at a nice werewolf movie. Unfortunately I can't say that Werewolf: The Beast Among Us changed anything about that.

Here's what it's about: 

In the Nineteenth Century, when a werewolf slaughters the dwellers of a small town, a group of bounty hunters commanded by Charles arrive in town and negotiate a higher reward. The apprentice of medicine Daniel, who is the protegé of the local doctor, joins the group and provides information about the beast that is intelligent and kills not only on the full moon, but also on the previous and the next days. Soon the gypsy leader invites Charles and Daniel and explains that in the solstice, the wolf-like creature will be able to control his transformation at will. Therefore they have only two days to discover who the beast among them is and destroy it.

The problem with this movie is that too much is going on, things are getting very confusing easily this way. There's a shitload of character who all wear the same sort of clothes making it terribly difficult to follow who is who, the shitload of names isn't helping exactly either. This immense bunch of characters are by the way not very interesting either, they're plain people who you can only judge by the lame characterising dialogue they have, with judge I mean that it's only going as far as 'this guy is okay, this guy is mean and this guy is weird'. Not one single character has some depth that could make him or her even slightly interesting, too bad really.

The storyline has many problems with it, it's absolutely ridiculous that when one man acts a bit weird (he had a seizure) and people think he's becoming a werewolf that everyone around him gets shot as well. Also, what's up with putting in silver teeth to go bite a werewolf? Such a lame scene, and it didn't even work which is even worse. At the ending of the movie there is a sudden introduction of a new monster which makes things very confusing.

The acting is nothing special actually, Stephen Rea was the only one who gave a believable performance, and he was also the only likable character to be honest. Other than that, Ed Quinn and Guy Wilson neither were believable enough to deliver such big roles. I was also a bit skeptical about the special effects, the werewolves didn't look good most of the time, there were times when they looked reasonable (more in dark scenes), but they mostly looked just fake.

Werewolf: The Beast Among Us was unfortunately not a great werewolf movie either, and I guess my search for it shall continue a little bit longer. Suggestions are welcome, of course. The movie contained a few jump scares, but unfortunately were quite predictable. It's not a very scary movie either. I must admit that I was glad when the movie was finally over, since it seemed to last for ages. Definitely not one of my favorite movies. It did have a nice poster though.

My rate: 4/10

Mercy (2014)

Mercy

IMDb rate: 5,1

Genre: Possession

Starring: Chandler Riggs, Dylan McDermott, Frances O'Connor

A few weeks ago I watched Mercy on Netflix. I had no idea what it was about since I just clicked the first movie I saw. The poster was somewhat questionable, but it seemed decent enough. The cast existed from Dylan McDermott who I liked pretty much in the first season of American Horror Story and Chandler Riggs who I don't like a whole lot in The Walking Dead, but they were familiar names so I thought I should give it a go. Mercy is by the way based on the short story Gramma from Stephen King. I haven't read it myself unfortunately, but perhaps I might come across it someday.

Mercy is about a grandmother who is very ill and her daughter who takes care of her along with her two sons. While around the grandmother weird things start to happen which leads to the suspicion that she has mystical powers.

The first thing that I noticed about this movie was the horrible sound-mixing. I had to turn up the volume almost to the max to be able to hear what they were saying. The most horrible thing about this was that the music and special effect sounds were way too loud this way. So the voices were almost silent, while the effects were way too loud. This is something I hate incredibly much. Perhaps it's done on purpose so that people will turn their volume up, making the special effects sounds incredibly loud so that people will scare from that sound rather than from the happening on screen itself. If this is the case it really would be a sad attempt at making a movie, considering they need high sound effects to scare the people.

The story seems to be kinda random, it doesn't really fit together. It's as if the story is all over the place. The beginning is already very weird where the grandma has some sort of episode where she seems more possessed than sick, although the family seems to react fairly neutral to this episode of strangeness. In my opinion there's too much going on in this movie. There's a brief scene where we can see a cut on the arm of one of the brothers that was apparently caused by the grandma, this is just thrown in to shown how 'dangerous' the grandma is and has no further use at all. There's also a storyline about her husband that killed herself, and also about her tripling children where two out of three are a bit crazy. Oh, and an imaginary friend. They try to tie these lines together but in my opinion they fail miserably at it.

Not a big fan of the acting either. Chandler Riggs is pretty much the main character but I think he's no good actor at all. I'm not a fan of him in The Walking Dead but at first I thought his character was just annoying, but after seeing this movie I can honestly say that I don't think he's a good actor. Dylan McDermott plays a fairly small role in this movie, and his storyline makes the thing even more weird. His acting wasn't too bad, but his role was too small to really notice him.

The movie was also pretty dark. Not in the amazingly shocking way, but in the way that the lightning was terrible. When the predictable scares were finally pushed aside the movie was going to a somewhat interesting part, but when hell broke loose I could not see a thing from what was happening. There were a few shadows moving and some terribly mixed sounds going on, but I have no idea what was really going on because it was simply too dark to see.

Mercy isn't a good movie at all. It's filled with soft speaking voices, loud special effects and terrible lightning on parts that might've been somewhat interesting. The acting of the main character was not very good and the character weren't interesting at all. The story was not logical at all, at one point where they attempted to tie the lines together they fail so miserably at it that you actually don't really know anymore what the hell is going on.

My rate: 3/10 

Fright Night (1985)

Fright Night

IMDB rate: 7,1

Genre: Vampire

Starring: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse

First time seeing the first Fright Night movie. I had already seen the remake some time ago, and if you're interested in reading about it, I placed a link at the bottom of this page. Normally when I watch a movie on Netflix I just click the first one I haven't seen yet, but for some reason I kept skipping this movie. I enjoyed watching the remake, but watching an original movie after watching the remake is always somewhat different, because instead of 'upgrading' the movie, I somewhat 'downgrade' it for myself. Of course, this is just nonsense since it's not being downgraded at all, it's just the first and original take on that specific movie. 

I enjoyed this movie quite a lot actually, perhaps even as much as I enjoyed the remake. If I'm comparing the two I wouldn't say the remake is an exact slight upgraded copy of the original, as with the Carrie movie. I think they're both different enough to call the Fright Night remake a worthy sequel. I say Carrie because I was incredibly bothered with how much it was an exact copy of the original, without making the bad parts better or something, I didn't enjoy that remake at all. 

I think both remake and original have it's own charming things about it, as well as their own less good stuff. For example, I did not like this (Evil) Ed at all. I thought Stephen Geoffreys acted terribly and his character was annoying and loud. I liked the Ed in the remake though, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse. While I liked Anton Yelchin as Charley in the remake, I liked William Ragsdale a lot as well. Colin Farell was a good vampire, but Chris Sarandon in the original gave a much more serious look to it, which was even better in my opinion. I'm also more of a fan of Peter Vincent in this version, because an older man is way more suiting for that role, plus he's an amazing actor. I did not enjoy the fake grey color of his hair though, but that's just a side note. Would've loved to see more of him though.

The turnings in this movie have a lot more of uniqueness to it compared to the remake. The werewolf and vampire transformations were pretty good looking considering it was done with just make-up, in this time it's all a lot more easy since everything can be done with a computer. Both look great of course, but it gives me a bit more respect for the first version. 

What I like most about the Fright Night movies is that Jerry never denied towards Charley that he's a vampire. This movie doesn't have a build-up that lasts way too long, it goes straight to the point, which I like. Something specific I liked about the remake was when Charley tried to show someone what he meant about Jerry being a vampire and that something actually happened that showed that Charley was right. In most movies nothing happens at those moments and I love that Fright Night didn't participate in that standard.

It's perhaps a bit strange to compare the remake to the original movie instead of the other way around, but I can't help it that I often see the remake before the original movie. I just grew up in the wrong time, I guess :). Loved this Fright Night, loved the remake. Both great movies, equally enjoyable. 

My rate: 7,5/10

Interested in reading my opinion about the Fright Night remake? Click here!

The Walking Dead: Season 5, episode 6: Consumed

This is NOT a spoiler free review!

Well, it's getting a bit standard to say but *yawn* what a boring episode, again. I'm getting a bit tired of this actually, sometimes I think it's better to just watch the first episode, the eight episode, the ninth episode and the sixteenth episode since those are the ones that really matter, and are often pretty good. Everything in between is mostly just.. boring. 

The thing that's causing this high boringness of those episodes is the episode count in a season. In season 1 there were only 6 episodes and it was a brilliant show. Every episode was interesting and exciting. The second season was still okay with a total count of 13 episodes, there was a small amount of less fun episodes, but they weren't boring episodes. From season 3 on they started to have a standard of 16 episodes, meaning they need to have actual material to fill 16 episodes with, which I don't think they have. Sure, 16 episodes will bring in more money, but is it really worth risking losing your viewers  for that? It's just a fact that these creators don't have enough material to keep 16 episodes exciting, and I think it will eventually chase away a lot of The Walking Dead viewers. 

To be honest, I think I'm mostly still watching this every monday to avoid the internet spoilers about these episodes. Every monday I'm watching it over dinner, and while it's fun, it's not that I'm still excited about watching it that day. It's not like Game of Thrones for example, where I can't wait till the next episode comes out and I'm watching it the second I am able to. 

This episode is finally giving answers to the ending of the third episode where Darryl came out of the bushes with an unknown person behind him. It was a pretty predictable answer to be honest, after seeing the fourth episode I already figured who it was and I was right about that. The episode wasn't very exciting, it followed Darryl and Carol but they hardly spoke and the few things they said were hardly relevant for the story. It also contained a couple of flashbacks to what Carol did after leaving the prison, but they just weren't interesting, since it still told us nothing new. 

They did find out where Beth is and now Carol is trapped there as well and I guess that the next two episodes will be about rescuing both. Perhaps it doesn't even end in two episodes, perhaps they let us wait again until february for the mid-season premiere. Thing is, I'm not really interested in what happens next. I think someone will die and I'm hoping it will be Beth, since she's causing a lot of shit every season. 

Please Walking Dead, just stop making 16 episodes every season, you just can't live up to it. Keep the episodes exciting by keeping it simple. Less is more! In all seriousness, it better be good again soon, since these boring episodes are just bullshit and somewhat a waste of time. 

Charmed [Season 1-8]

Charmed

Season 1-8

IMDB rate: 7,1

Genre: Supernatural, Tv Show

Starring: Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, Shannen Doherty

It took awhile, but I've finally finished all the Charmed episodes. When I was young I already watched a lot of them on television, but I missed a lot of episodes back then. All the Charmed episodes are on Netflix, and I had a great time watching them all over again. Small fun fact: I was such a big fan of Charmed when I was younger that I made a tiny offline website through Microsoft FrontPage (I think it was FrontPage), since FrontPage was discontinued in 2003 I couldn't have been older than 10 years old when I did this :'), even back then I didn't have a life :P. Charmed is often being compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, mainly because it was being aired around the same time (Charmed ran from 1998-2006, while Buffy ran from 1997-2003).

As you might know, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is of course mainly about vampires and sometimes demons. Charmed is more focusing on witchcraft and demons. Personally I enjoyed watching Buffy more than watching Charmed, this is because Buffy contained a few outstanding episodes and it was interesting almost every episode, while in Charmed there were only a few excellent episodes and some episodes were pretty boring. Perhaps it isn't right to compare the two shows, I think it's more of a personal habit since I grew up with both shows.

First a bit about the characters.
Prue Halliwell: The oldest Halliwell sister, played by Shannen Doherty. At first I wasn't a big fan of her, her character seemed very bitchy and she was no fun at all. Even though I wasn't a big fan of her at first, she somewhat grew on me. I was actually a bit sad when she died, even though I knew all along that she wouldn't survive the ending of season 3. I think her character reflected Shannen Doherty herself a bit too much, since she was written out of the show after season 3. It was pretty obvious that her contract stopped, because often when family members of the Halliwell's die, they are able to being summoned back as a ghost. But after Prue's death we never saw her again, not even as a ghost. Even in flashbacks she was being cut out. That's something which is a bit of a shame, since it would seem logical that you would see her once or twice again after the third season. I wouldn't say that Shannen Doherty played the role bad, if Prue really was that bitchy she did a great job. I'm just saying that she didn't seem like a nice person at all.

Piper Halliwell: At first the middle Halliwell sister, but the oldest sister after Prue's death. Piper is being played by Holly Marie Combs and in the first three seasons she was definitely my favorite. At first she was a bit insecure and cute, but still pretty fun. After Prue's death her character became a lot more serious. Also, the relationship problems with Leo became somewhat boring after awhile, but this is more about a change of writing, which I will come back to later. Holly Marie Combs is a great choice for Piper, in the first three seasons she portrayed the role of insecure person very good. After season 4 her character became more independent, she became a businesswoman and a mother, and she still played very convincing. Loved her.

Phoebe Halliwell: The youngest sister at first, but after Prue's death she became the middle sister. Phoebe is being played by Alyssa Milano and her character is definitely the most fun one. She's daring and adventurous but serious at times as well. It's not just her character that was fun, her entire appearance was nice. Unlike Piper she changed her hair every season, which made her a bit less predictable compared to Piper. What was predictable though is that Phoebe was always the one that turned evil or turned into something different, it just became annoying in the end. Alyssa Milano was a great choice for Phoebe, I think she is a decent actress and it's sad we don't really see her often anymore in other shows or movies.

Paige Matthews: The youngest (half-)sister of the Halliwell sisters. She is being played by Rose McGowan. At first I thought it would be impossible to make it logical that there was another sister out there, but it actually fitted the story very well. In season 2 or 3 there was an episode about their mother who had a relationship with their whitelighter, with as result that in season 4 there was an option open for where the half-child came from. Paige's character is a lot like Phoebe I think, although I don't think that she was ever really fully appreciated in the family. Rose McGowan is a great actress and I liked her a lot as Paige, although her character was pretty standard after awhile. She's always making sarcastic jokes and well, eventually it just became predictable.

Other big characters include Leo (played by Brian Krause), Darryl Morris (played by Dorian Gregory) and Cole Turner (played by Julian McMahon). Darryl was season 1-7, but for some reason he wasn't important enough anymore to appear in the last episode. Pretty stupid really since he played a big part in previous seasons.

I already quickly mentioned the change in writing after a few seasons, this happened because Constance M. Burge (the Executive Producer of Charmed) stopped writing the episodes. At first the focus was on the witch heritage and the sisterly ties, but when Brad Kern took ofter that part the focus became more and more about sexy outfits and relationship problems. It's pretty sad actually that this happened because I think that that change made this show 'just another one of those relationship shows'. It became pretty annoying after a while that Piper and Leo again have relationship problems, again breaking up and coming back together and again are arguing about nothing. Also, Phoebe's boyfriend Cole was a pretty amazing character at first but then they made him evil again, and then good again, and then evil again. So standard and predictable. Phoebe's search for love was pretty lame as well, especially since it was suddenly very hasty that she met someone and married at the end of the show.

Even though I wasn't the biggest fan of Prue's character, I thought the first three seasons were the most fun ones. Not just because of the writing problems, but also because things weren't as predictable in those seasons. It was just fun and simple. The fourth and fifth season was pretty good as well. From the sixth season though the show became a bit boring sometimes, also there's this big thing going on with Avatars and Leo and it's just confusing after a while. The last season shouldn't have happened in my opinion, the Charmed Ones are in hiding at first and they have changed their appearances for the outside world. Thing is, as if demons wouldn't think it's strange that again three sisters/cousins and a husband/male character moved into that same house. A bit unbelievable. Adding up the Billie/Christy part, not a good season at all.

In most cases the last episode of a show is the most amazing one, and while I wouldn't say the episode was bad, it was just way too sudden. The entire season they have this Billie character who found her evil sister, Billie became evil and suddenly they're the most powerful creatures on that planet. Then everybody dies and then everybody lives again and suddenly everyone lives happily ever after. They shouldn't have done all of that in one episode, the build-up could've been much better.

I thought Charmed was a fun show to watch. The special effects aren't very good and not every episode is interesting, but still I had fun watching all eight seasons. It's somewhat comparable with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although Buffy is definitely better. It's not a great show but if you're out of things to watch, go give Charmed a chance :).

My rate: 7,5/10

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

The Purge: Anarchy

IMDB rate: 6,5

Genre: Survival

Starring: Kiele Sanchez, Frank Grillo, Zach Gilford

I might be the only person around who actually liked the first Purge movie. I thought it was a great idea for a movie, to have one day where people could do whatever they wanted to do. Sure, the first movie lacked a lot, but it was still entertaining and it contained very good acting. The second movie is good as well, in my opinion it was even better than the first movie. 

The second Purge however is a lot more like what people actually expected from The Purge. In the first movie you'd follow one rich family who would try to survive to night, this all is set in their big and fairly safe home. The problem with this approach is that you have no idea how bad The Purge actually is, since you're mostly watching a family hide from the intruders and defend themselves. In the second movie you can watch how stuff is going down in the big city, in the streets. So no safe home this time, which gave an interesting perspective. 

Here's what it's about:

A couple are driving home when their car breaks down just as the Purge commences. Meanwhile, a police sergeant goes out into the streets to get revenge on the man who killed his son, and a mother and daughter  run from their home after assailants destroy it. The five people meet up as they attempt to survive the night in Los Angeles. 

There was an interesting addition to this movie, this being that rich people hired other people to kidnap poor people. This is because they wanted to kill random people, without them risking the danger of going into the streets to search for people to kill themselves. Also, some poor people sell themselves to be killed for shitloads of money so that their families have some money for the future. I thought it was a great addition to the storyline since it seems pretty likely that this could actually happen if the Purge was real. 

With these innocent people on the streets you get a great insight in how the Purge actually works. Some people are on the streets because they want to kill one specific person, while others are on the streets to just randomly slaughter people. The innocent group of five we follow is trying to seek shelter until the Purge is over, and while doing this we see people who have set traps, people who actually chase them around town and people who kidnapped them to drop them with rich people. It's brilliant to see how crazy a city can get when they have the ability to murder everyone they encounter. 

I thought the acting was less good compared to the previous part. Lena Headey, Ethan Hawke and Rhys Wakefield did an amazing job in the first Purge movie. I must admit though that I disliked the acting of the children greatly in that movie. In this movie I was especially annoyed by Kiele Sanchez and Zach Gilford, they didn't act well and their entire character was just annoying. Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul all did great jobs though, great characters as well with some good chemistry. 

I thought The Purge: Anarchy was a great follow-up for the first The Purge movie. It was great to both see a home invasion and the street terror of The Purge. It's a solid sequel which actually gives new insights in the concept of 'purging', instead of just continuing the concept of home invasions. I liked it a lot.

My rate: 7/10

Interested in reading my review of The Purge? Click here!

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

The Taking of Deborah Logan

IMDB rate: 6,4

Genre: Possession, Mockumentary

Starring: Jill Larson, Anne Ramsay, Michelle Ang

The Taking of Deborah Logan, or in short The Taking popped up on Netflix this weekend. I didn't really know what it was about but the rating on Netflix and IMDB seemed to be decent, so I gave it a watch. 

The Taking is a mockumentary about an Alzheimer patient, and it shows the progression of the illness. At first I was a bit bummed out that it was another found-footage movie, since there are so many of those already. But for a found-footage movie it started out pretty decent. 

At first the movie feels like a true documentary about Alzheimer, it shows pretty good what the disease causes and that it affects the people around them to. You've already read in my genre section that this movie is about possession, which gave a pretty interesting input at first. The character Deborah Logan (played by Jill Larson) is the Alzheimer patient and every time she has one of her 'episodes' you think that the way she behaves is because of the Alzheimer. When the movie progresses you are getting doubts though, is this really just Alzheimer or is there more going on?

The movie is a lot like Paranormal Activity, only this movie had a more interesting story going on. The Alzheimer gave a nice perspective to what was going on. It actually made you doubt if things where happening because of Alzheimer or because of the possession.

Unfortunately, about halfway through the movie becomes just another one of these typical found-footage movies. When Deborah was clearly being possessed the story became choppy and somewhat lame at points. The scary moments are pretty much all off-screen meaning we can't actually see a thing of what's happening. During these moments the camera decides to get fuzzy or something, so when something should be on screen, it's being somewhat censored. Pretty disappointing really, because the movie started off pretty good. 

I liked the dialogues in The Taking, mostly because the camera dude was sarcastic as fuck. This guy is finally someone who knows when something scary is about to happen, he knows his movies. "Of course the light's don't work", "standing still in the dark, nice..." or "Damn white people with their fucking basements and attics". It lightened up the mood a bit. The acting is decent, Jill Larson does a great job at playing the unstable Deborah. Her appearance is great as well, since she can be flattering looking at her good times, but can seem very scary as well on the characters bad times. 

The Taking of Deborah Logan started off promising, but unfortunately took the familiar way. It was scary at the beginning and it had some nice refreshing parts, it's just the ending that really bummed me out. It was standard, lame and nothing we haven't already seen before. The scary parts are never really on camera, and when they are things are shaky as hell. It's really as if someone else made this film halfway through it, everything promising became standard again and the nice build-up was just for nothing really.

If you're not a big fan of the Paranormal Activity movies this movie isn't something that you would like, since it's pretty much the same concept. But if you don't hate those movies and like a nice twist to the storyline I think you won't hate this movie. In that case, give it a try!

My rate: 5,5/10

The Walking Dead: Season 5, episode 5: Self Help

This is NOT a spoiler free review!

Another episode of The Walking Dead, and yet another episode that wasn't very interesting. It wasn't a boring as the previous one, but still.. not very entertaining either.

This episode was about Abraham and his crew who are trying to get to Washington because Eugene claims to know how to solve the world as it is. In Abraham's crew are Tara, Maggie, Glenn, Eugene and Rosita which aren't the most interesting characters to be honest. Tara is just there to make a lame remark once in a while, Eugene is talking smart stuff that no one understands and this episode might have been the first one where Rosita actually spoke more than two sentences. The only one with a bit of a story are Glenn and Maggie, but their role isn't very big anymore the last couple of episodes, so their contribution to this episode wasn't much either.

Abraham and co. are on their way to Washington but their bus breaks down. This is still only 15 km from Rick and his group. They kill some walkers, seek shelter and find a new bus. In this episode we learn a bit about Abraham's background story but still not enough to really know him. He scared away his family apparently, got depressed, saved Eugene and here he is. He's being a pretty big dick to everyone who stands in his way to get Eugene to Washington which is getting somewhat annoying since it happens every episode. 

Because Abraham is being a dick, Eugene eventually breaks down and says that he lied to everyone, he doesn't know what caused the apocalypse and he doesn't know how to fix it either. This stops the fight and this also pretty much stops the episode. It was a pretty big bummer actually, since the viewers were counting on him being the big savior, but apparently all these episodes spending about it were... well useless actually. Eugene does still claim though that Washington is the best place to survive, and that they should still head that way. 

This episode was pretty boring. It was Abraham's background story, a bit of zombie fighting and Eugene's big confession. The Eugene confession was actually the only thing interesting about it and in my opinion they shouldn't have paid an entire episode on this since it was just not worth it. 

I'm hoping next episode will be better again, in the previews we saw Darryl and Carol going on Beth's mission. We already know about this that Darryl got back alive with someone else and that Carol ended up in the same hospital, so I'm hoping they still have some exciting stuff for next episode since we already know a lot about it. 

Stitches (2012)

Stitches

IMDB rate: 5,7

Genre: Clown, Comedic, Slasher

Starring: Ross Noble, Tommy Knight, Gemma-Leah Devereux

I've had my eye on this movie for quite some time already, reason why I never watched is because I'm quite terrified of clown movies and I was waiting till someone else was around until  I watched it. I like movies where clowns are in, they have an amazingly scaring potential in my opinion. I loved the clown part of Amusement, the creepy clown in Cabin in the Woods and of course It. I even made a 'clown' genre section so people could easily find some clown movies to watch. The one thing I'm a bit bummed about is that I've never seen an entirely amazing clown movie so far. The Amusement part is fun, but it only lasts one scene and the rest of the movie sucks ass. The movie It is nice as well, but it has a runtime of 3 hours and the ending was slightly disappointing so still not an entirely good clown movie. 

I was interested in Stitches because it has an amazing poster, it seems scary as hell. Unfortunately Stitches proves once again that you shouldn't judge a movie by it's cover (or poster). It was terrible. I wouldn't say it was as bad as Killjoy, but it's pretty close I think. 

There's incredibly much wrong with this movie, for starters the acting. I've never seen people act this rubbish. The kid is scared to death of clowns, yet he doesn't seemed scared at all. He rather saves all of his buddies (who are all pricks by the way) than himself. 

It's not just the acting that makes this movie incredibly unbelievable, it's also the characters. They're a bunch of pricks, all signed to basic characteristic treats (the obvious gay guy, the womanizer, the prick and his douche-bag girlfriend), and that's where it stops. There's no development in them at all, they're uninteresting and I couldn't care less if any of them would die. 

Their dialogues goes as far as their personalities, the gay guy only making 'OMG' remarks, the womanizer is only commenting at woman's body parts and the prick is only threatening the main character, who's never saved by his friends by the way. It's just standard bullshit that gives no insight in anything whatsoever. 

For some reason they tried to make Stitches a somewhat comedic movie, but it just fails so hard at it. The jokes aren't funny because they're out of context the entire time, also because the dialogue itself was already bad the jokes just go unnoticed in terrible dialogues. The humor goes as far as ripping off penises and tying them to balloons, and making balloon animals from spines, it's just childish and not funny. Also, WHY kill the cat?!

Stitches is meant to be a dark comedy but honestly I thought it was a terrible movie. Bad acting, terrible characters and rubbish dialogues. There's a shitload of blood in it, but it's just too overdone. Someone gets a missing part, everything around gets splattered with more blood than the human body can hold. This all is done in useless slow-motion effects, which is more annoying than anything else. Stitches is a horrible movie and I wouldn't recommend watching it. However, it does have a 5,7 on IMDB and people often gave positive reviews about Stitches. Perhaps it's just not my taste.

My rate: 2,5/10

The Exorcist (1973)

The Exorcist

IMDB rate: 8,0

Genre: Possession

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair

This hasn't been the first time that I watched The Exorcist, I've actually watched it quite a few times already.. difference is, the previous times I didn't watch it sober :). The first time I watched The Exorcist I watched it because my dad thought it was the most frightening movie he'd ever seen, although he was quite young back then. Anyway, a great reason for me to watch it, because what can be more scary than a movie of which your dads afraid of? 

I wasn't scared when I watched The Exorcist for the first time, simply because I grew up in a time where these movies were nothing compared to what I was used to. This doesn't change the fact though that The Exorcist was a great movie to watch. I must admit though that while watching The Exorcist for the first time I drank quite a bit of alcohol, making it a slightly laughable experience when Regan walks down the stairs upside down.

I watched the extended version of the movie, meaning there are a few added scenes where you can see the demon flash by. The spider walk scene is also added in this version. The spider walk scene is definitely a great addition to the movie, the only problem with it was that the scene seemed unfinished after that. There's no reaction about it whatsoever and for some reason it's the only scene where she's out of her room. The strange part of this is that she is tied to the bed the entire time, but that moment she suddenly wasn't anymore, the moment after that she was tied to the bed again. What I did like in the extended version was the statue (?) of the demon slowly appearing besides the door, it gave a very creepy vibe.

What I admire a lot about this movie is the make-up, it's pretty scary to see a little girl that messed up. What's making this more scary is the voice. The voice is not Linda Blair's own voice, but I actually hardly noticed since it's synchronized pretty good. Linda Blair plays the young Regan incredibly well. What's of course the best thing about this movie is it's dialogue, which I can imagine was pretty shocking at that time. "Your mother sucks cock in hell" is just one of these memorable quotes. Thinking that all these bizarre scenes were acted by a 12 year old makes it even more amazing.

The Exorcist is definitely not a flawless movie, it has quite a few continuity errors actually. Doesn't change the fact that it's a brilliant movie to watch, and I somewhat wish I could be there in 1973 when it was first released to feel the true terror of this movie. I think The Exorcist is an excellent movie, perhaps it's not a perfect movie for this time anymore, but I can imagine it was a jewel at the time it was being made. Loved it!

My rate: 8/10

The Walking Dead: Season 5, episode 4: Slabtown

This is NOT a spoiler free review!

The fourth episode of this season was definitely one of the lesser enjoyable ones. If you follow my TWD reviews you know that I was quite impressed (against my expectations btw) with the first three episodes. The fourth episode however was not very impressive. 

This has a very clear reason, which is the return of Beth. For those who don't know Beth was kidnapped and for a few episodes she disappeared. Now she's back and we get to know her story. Apparently some people tried rescuing her from the zombies and took her to some sort of hospital. At first it seemed pretty normal, almost as if the world hadn't end, but of course this is never the case with this show. To be honest I didn't really get what was going on in this episode, it was all kind of confusing. 

Beth was taken to this hospital where she was cured by a nice looking doctor. Then a woman shows up who's being a bitch. She's bitch-slapping her and stuff, saying she now owns them. Anyway, she got a real anger problem. The doctor appears to be a selfish bastard that kills to be more important. Oh, and there's a raper cop. This cop does get killed though in this episode, which is pretty much the only thing that I admire from this episode, since that scenario would become very predictable else wise. 

The most bothering thing about this episode is of course Beth herself. Most annoying character from TV history I suspect. Thinking she's tough, while she's just an irritating useless person. It's not just that it's a terrible character, she's being played by a terrible actress as well, Emily Kinney. Her emotions don't show at all, and when they do, it looks very fake. Because of this it's terribly hard to connect with the character. 

It's true that the creators of the show try to give Beth a bigger role, but it just doesn't bother me anymore. To me she'll always be that one useless character that can't emote and is just boring as fuck. Melissa McBride's character Carol got out of that, but I find it very hard to believe that they can pull off the same thing with Beth.

The episodes wasn't very interesting, it was slow and things were predictable. I liked that the raping cop got killed off immediately, but that's about it. We don't know much about this place yet, but I'm not sure if it will lead to an interesting story ever. What I am curious about it how Carol ended up being there as well, and who was with Daryl at the end of the previous episode. I'm slightly disappointed in this episode, but there's still enough yet to come, so I'm pretty interesting with future episodes.

The Maze Runner (2014)

The Maze Runner

IMDB rate: 7,4

Genre: Adventure, Post-Apocalyptic

Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter, Kaya Scodelario

This time not a horror review, but a review about a movie I saw in the cinema recently, The Maze Runner. I actually had no idea what this movie was about, I took a quick glimpse at the IMDB page but decided not to watch the trailer since often the trailer spoils everything awesome. I actually haven't read the book yet, but I'm definitely planning to, this mainly because I hope it clears up some confusing parts of the movie. At the moment there are 5 books, so I'm expecting that there will be just as many movies. I'm pretty interested in reading those books actually, since the movie was pretty interesting as well.

Here's what it's about:

Thomas wakes up in an elevator, remembering nothing but his own name. He emerges into a world of about 60 teen boys who have learned to survive in a completely enclosed environment, subsisting on their own agriculture and supplies. A new boy arrives every 30 days. The original group has been in "The Glade" for two years, trying to find a way to escape through the Maze that surrounds their living space. They have begun to give up hope. Then a comatose girl arrives with a strange note, and their world begins to change. There are some great, fast-paced action scenes, particularly those involving the nightmarish Grievers who plague the boys.

I thought it was a nice movie, I really enjoyed watching it even though there are quite a few flaws. First of all, the boys say they've been there for 2-3 years, but if only one boy arrives at The Glade once every 30 days, it would mean there are 38 boys tops. Since a lot of them died according to them, it would mean there should be even less people. Also, when Thomas walked into the maze, why not just wait at the gate? Even when that part of the maze would change, they could run away to the end of the path I would think. Instead they just walked around the entire night with the possible danger of encountering a Griever. 

These things are pretty questionable but I was able to not look into it too much, simply because I quite enjoyed the movie itself. The Glade itself is a pretty impressive looking place with big gray walls surrounding a green field, the maze itself is even more amazing looking because you can almost feel the closeness of it. The effects are made incredibly well and the action is quite good. The Grievers look awesome as fuck, making those maze scenes even more amazing. 

The cast young but excellent. Dylan O'Brien plays Thomas, and I was quite impressed with his acting. I knew that Dylan O'Brien plays in that werewolf show Teen Wolf, but I always thought it would be a terrible show so I never payed any attention to it. Because of my assumption I figured he wouldn't be the greatest actor either, but he was quite good. Side note: pretty attractive as well :). Thomas Brodie-Sangster plays a smaller role, but nevertheless quite amazing. I have never seen Love Actually, but I have seen him in Game of Thrones where he's amazing as well. I can go on forever, but the cast is pretty solid. It's young and more impressive than I expected them to be.

The thing that bothered me most was the ending, it was confusing and just seemed choppy. It's like there's still a big part missing from the storyline to make it all seem logical. I suspect that most of it is being saved for the sequel though. By the way, when the girl came up in the elevator, was I the only one that thought she would be in a massive group rape? Since they're all young teenage boys, stuck there for quite some time already... 

Even though the movie had a few flaws, I really enjoyed watching it. It's slightly comparable with The Hunger Games, which I love by the way. The Maze Runner is entertaining and definitely worth a watch. 

My rate: 7/10

The Walking Dead: Season 5, episode 3: Four Walls and a Roof

This review is NOT spoiler free!

Again, a bit late with my review. I'm sorry but I was very busy with school. The third episode of season five wasn't too bad I must admit. Compared to the previous two seasons it's actually not too bad at all so far. It was again an episode with quite a bit of action and good action I must say. 

Season 4 was pretty much one big build-up towards the whole Terminus thing and to be honest I expected that the Terminus thing would go further a while in season 5 as well. It actually ended with this episode and that's something I'm pretty happy about. If you've read my rant in my previous review, you know that I was quite afraid they will take profit of this for way too long, but luckily they knew when to stop with this storyline. The whole Terminus thing took 4 to 5 episodes perhaps in total, 2 from the previous seasons and 3 from this one. And that's not too bad, I think. It's also because there was a break from a year between the second and third episode that made it bearable. When these 5 episodes would've been in one season it might've become boring, but now it was timed quite good I think.

At the end of the second episode we saw Bob being captured by the Terminus people, or the Hunters as they call themselves. The Hunters are a group of cannibals who happened to be eating Bob his leg when he woke up. I already said this before but I think it's pretty awesome to have a group of cannibals added to The Walking Dead. It would've been quite unbelievable that there wouldn't be one group of sick people who didn't go that road. Cannibalism is something pretty disturbing and I thought it's a nice addition to the show. I already expected this, we all did, but Bob was indeed bitten by a zombie, meaning the Hunters were eating tainted meat. 

It would've been quite interesting to see if the tainted meat would've had any effect on the people. The meat was being cooked properly, but unfortunately we don't know if they would've gotten infected as well. This is because Rick and his group are pretty sick of all shit going down and they took justice in their own hands this time, and quickly as well. In most seasons you see them hesitate when they capture the bad guys because you can't just kill a living human without reason, but I'm glad that's over because it means the Hunters were dealt with once and for all.

That's pretty much the main storyline in this episode, and in my opinion it was pretty interesting. The more tiny story lines of this episode included Abraham wanting to go to Washington, which he eventually did. This means that Glenn, Maggie and Abraham's crew left the group, but I suspect that they will meet again sometime. It was also about Tyreese overcoming his fear of killing, which he did eventually. He's quite a cute character actually, since he probably looks the most badass compared to the rest, but he's the sweetest. Always walking with the baby and stuff, very cute. 

At the end of the episode we got a glimpse of what might come in the next episode, and perhaps the rest of the season. Darryl and Carol got back, we saw Darryl in one piece but he was being all mysterious about Carol who was in the bushes. Unfortunately the episode stopped here so we'll have to wait till next episode to know if something was wrong with her. For those who don't know yet, they were chasing the car that took Beth away, and I expect that the rest of the season will be about those people. We did see a glimpse of Beth in the next episodes' trailer, meaning she's still alive. It seemed like she was in a hospital of some sort and things were messed up. I'm actually quite curious where the show will continue to go after this. What's a bit strange actually is that Maggie just left while her sister hasn't been found yet. 

The third episode was quite good, it dealt with the bad guys and showed some perspectives of the human nature. It also made me very curious about the next episode. I think so far this season is better compared to season 4. It's still too early to really tell though.