samhainee Reviews

Dead Like Me: Life After Death (2009 Video)

Still one of the worst movies from a show ever made.

[1/10 · 2 June 2024]

After a recent rewatch of Dead Like Me, I decided to give the wrap-up movie another go, just to see if it was as horrible as I remembered. The answer is, it's worse.

Nothing about the movie lives up to the show. Ellen Muth's voiceover sounds bored right from the start - not in George's characteristic apathetic way, but as though the actress just wanted to get it over with. Der Waffle Haus and Rube are immediately written off with barely a second thought, Mason has become a parody of himself, and Daisy... Daisy Adair - one of the most most complicated characters from the show, brilliantly played with a fragile self assurance by Laura E. Harris has been replaced by a shallow, vacuous airhead who floats from scene to scene, failing to be remotely convincing at any point.

The storyline is ok, and the idea of George and Reggie reconnecting could have been great, but the whole thing just seems like it was written by someone who had only ever read a brief synopsis of the original series and really didn't have much interest in it.

Truly one of the worst follow up movies to a brilliant series to have ever been created, and I'm sure most of the cast are embarrassed to have been involved with it.

The Russian Bride (2018)

A complete fever dream from start to finish

[8/10 · 9 February 2024]

I can see why this film is so polarising, because it truly is bonkers. The story starts out strong, with a Russian mother trying to build a better life for her daughter by marrying a wealthy American man she met through a mail-order bride service.

He's initially charming, but very quickly things start to sour. You think you're in for a slow burn, tense thriller about a woman uncovering some horrific secret, and it does kind of deliver that, but it also has ghosts, human organ trafficking, deranged but dedicated house staff, a giant pile of cocaine, and a final act that blatantly steals multiple scenes from 28 Days Later, soundtrack included.

Heavy spoilers to follow, and I would highly recommend going into this film blind, but some of my favourite elements in no particular order are:

• Nina fishes a bone out of a pot of boiling water bare handed and the film just thinks that's fine.

• Nina puts on a wedding dress so she doesn't freeze to death, is captured and has both her hands shot off, the film then makes a point of telling us that enough time has passed that we've moved from winter to spring, yet she is still wearing the wedding dress. Why? Because this film is The Russian Bride and it looks cool so shut up.

• The maids use of Spanish, which sounds like someone googled "insults in Spanish" and told her to sprinkle some of them in.

• The plot device of having a severely injured dying woman snort an absolute mountain of cocaine and become an unstoppable killing machine. I'm 99% certain that a mountain of cocaine was heavily involved in the writing of this film to be honest.

• Corbin Benson's delivery of basically every line, which is so completely unlike how any human would speak, but also make absolutely perfect sense for the scene.

I'm not sure if I could call this film camp, because camp requires a degree of self awareness, and I truly cannot tell if the writers meant for it to be as funny as it is. Whether they did or not, I was definitely entertained and surprised, which is all we can really ask for.

The Unspoken (2015)

Just about watchable.

[5/10 · 23 December 2023]

This is an interesting idea handled in a poor and predictable way. My favourite thing about it has to be the main villain's accent. For some reason he sounds like a 1950s gangster, "now listen here see". Imagine him in a zoot suit with a tommy gun and it becomes very entertaining.

The rest of the cast are fine. The creepy little boy could easily have been swapped out with a ham sandwich and it wouldn't have made much difference as all he does is stare and vanish, but that's par for the course with this sort of film. The original spooky child of the early 00s, Jodelle Ferland tries her best, but she never really has much to do. She also decided to play her role like a demure Victorian nanny, which is completely at odds with the rest of the film. It's impossible for me to see Lochlyn Munroe as anyone other than Greg from Scary Movie so he's a lost cause. There are other people but they're all bland and uninteresting.

This film also suffers from jumpscare abuse. I'm very jumpy, jumpscares get me, but after the first dozen or so I'd become desensitised to them. Every few minutes there's another piercing screech and a thud, but it's just a cat, or a shadow, or sometimes it's an actual over the top ghost, or sometimes it's just for fun. There's no tension, no build-up, just increasingly ineffective loud noises.

All in all, if you're bored and need something on in the background, this is a perfectly adequate horror film. If you want to be scared or immersed in an interesting story, look elsewhere.

An American Haunting (2005)

Probably not meant to be funny

[4/10 · 7 November 2023]

There are countless scenes of poor Betsy being held up and pimp-slapped around by an invisible force. Perhaps it speaks to my own maturity, but it just kept getting funnier every time it happened.

That aside, this is overall a dull story. The framing device of a modern-day single mother moving into an old house and reading a letter is clunky, and the fact that the present day scenes only exist as bookends just makes them feel disconnected. Perhaps if the film had jumped back and forth between past and present it would have worked better? As it was, by the time it gets back to the present, I'd all but forgotten that I wasn't watching a period piece.

With the period piece, which makes up most of the run time, it feels like they didn't know quite where the story was going, and it drags on and on. The twist ending is pretty obvious, but the director chose to include a sequence of flashbacks to all the times it was foreshadowed, which frankly feels a bit insulting - "See, it's been happening all along under your nose, aren't I sneaky?"

I admit to being scared easily, but this film isn't scary. There's no tension built, nor really any scares throughout, it never seems to get going, and as I mentioned before, the dramatic scenes came across as comical. The soundtrack is melodramatic and the intricate sweeping camera work and shifts between colour and black and white don't serve any purpose.

All in all, this feels like a good idea that needed a lot of refinement and a better director. I will probably watch poor Betsy get smacked up again though, if only to cackle at it.

The Immaculate Room (2022)

Could have been interesting, but just really doesn't have anything to say

[5/10 · 30 September 2023]

I really enjoy single room, character driven stories so thought this seemed intriguing, but it really just doesn't go anywhere.

This kind of story works when you have amazing performances coupled with deep, interesting characters, but that's just missing here. Both the main characters do a good job with what they're given, but they're never really given enough to do. They have a couple of arguments, but they don't really feel organic and then they never mention it again.

Despite being a fairly long film, it doesn't put enough time into developing the characters. Kate seems very put together, until a video message from a relative puts her into a depressive episode for a couple of days, and then that's that. Mikey is an artist who apparently comes from money and had a childhood tragedy which comes up at one point, but that doesn't really go anywhere. Kate's final desperation just doesn't feel earned, and they never quite react to a situation in a believable way.

Even the room itself is completely lacking in tension. The director could have really leaned into the spartan, claustrophobic nature of such a challenge, but that's missed as well. The room is spartan, but it's frequently shot in the wide and comes across as being a warm and comfortable place to be. Other films have done a marvellous job creating an environment that feels suffocating, but it's just missing here.

Overall I'm not sure what this film was trying to say. It seems to touch on issues like jealousy and greed and desperation without ever committing to an opinion. Time passed, events occurred, that was it.