midnightmosesuk Reviews

The Wages of Fear (2024)

A Remarkable Film

[4/10 · 29 March 2024]

Unfortunately,I have never seen the original film but I have watched Sorcerer many times and it is one of my very favorite films. I'd even go as far as to call Friedkin's version among the greatest films ever made. So it was with great interest that I noticed that there was a new version on Netflix.

What I watched was a truly remarkable film. Somehow they managed to depict the transportation of an enormous amount of nitroglycerin in two unstable trucks with danger all around them and made it boring. It's dullness is nearly miraculous given the story they were using.

The problem here was that they missed the point. It was never about the the nitroglycerin, or even the hazards along the way, it was about the characters driving those trucks and how they struggle against the odds. Where, if they lose, they're dead. Simple. In this remake one of the main protagonists blows himself up to save a poor village from being destroyed by a oilwell fire. I felt not even a flicker of emotion, it was the death of a paper thin character in an uninspiring film. I've had more exciting visits to the lavatory than this film and I eat plenty of fibre so those visits are very boring indeed.

Please, go watch Sorcerer and see how it's meant to be done. You'll thank me later, I promise.

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

Stop me if you've heard this one before....

[5/10 · 7 January 2024]

There was a brief musical craze back in the 80's called Stars on 45. In it records were released which used small excerpts of famous, popular songs, all linked together over a disco beat to make a three minute record. It was a cheap cash grab at best, recycling old songs to make something new with the minimum of effort. This is basically what Rebel Moon is.

While watching this Zack Snyder film I started spotting the different parts of other films. There's a bit of Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven, Dune, more Star Wars, Battle Beyond the Stars, John Wick and others. All spliced together like a Stars on '45 record.

It's every bit as good as it sounds.

The Conspiracy of Dark Falls (2022)

Dark Falls Flat

[2/10 · 7 December 2023]

I'm willing to give most films a chance. I've sat through some real duds from beginning to end with no complaints just so I can talk about them with a bit of authority in these reviews. I see it as the only fair way to really judge a film. This time I just couldn't do it. I tried my best but I just couldn't manage it.

It was the acting, it was appalling. The badly written dialogue was delivered with all the liveliness of a dead fish. I'm sure they're all very lovely people and I wish them all the very best for their futures but, for God's sake, please don't become actors. Work in film, if you must, but stay behind the cameras.

Not worth your time.

The Ghost Galleon (1974)

Dead in the water.

[5/10 · 6 December 2023]

I'd never heard of the Blind Dead series before I saw this film this evening and then checked out it's entry on IMdB. Apparently it's the worst one in the series but, as I haven't seen the others, I can only comment on this one.

This film is very much a product of it's time. The women run around in bikinis all the time, the men are all mustachioed and macho and the whole vibe is of sleazy exploitation.

Some of the actions of our main protagonist are completely unfathomable. The first thing they do on boarding an unquestionably haunted ship? They all go to sleep. The very last thing I'd do. They don't search the ship together until long after they board the cursed vessel. They don't leave one of their team to stay on the main vessel to call for help if needed. They don't take any tools with them to break open crates. Etc...etc.... I could go on.

The undead Templars were quite effective and the scene of them rising out of the sea was quite well done but, other than this, a typically sleazy Italian 70's film.

Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders (2022)

Dangerous Lame: The Monotony Murders.

[4/10 · 5 December 2023]

I watched this on a whim, it was on Netflix (not always a sign of quality, let's be honest,) and I thought it'd be a bit like a rip off of Knives Out. As it opened I thought I'd been correct in my assumption but, as things progressed, I discovered it was just another psycho killer film. It wasn't even very original as it seemed to borrow very heavily from Saw in the way some of the victims were dispatched.

The shame of it is that if they'd just expanded and concentrated on the whole H. H. Holmes aspect of the film it might have been far more interesting. Yes, it might have turned into an escape room film, but trying to find their way out of an extensively booby trapped mansion with a maze of corridors, it may have been more exciting than what we ended up with.

The twist ending was not really that much of a twist. As usual with this kind of thing, just pick the person it's least likely to be and bingo. There were a few things that puzzled me though. Why introduce the game to the plot only to ignore it for 99% of the film? Why did the bad guy allow themselves to be killed if he was in on the whole thing? Or did I miss the point here? I may have done as I'd started to do a sudoku when that happened.

It's not an awful film, it's just not a very interesting one. A 4 out of 10 from me. Uninteresting.

Dark Passages (2021– )

Krapid.

[4/10 · 29 November 2023]

I have only seen one episode of this short series on Amazon Prime and that was the first one about the "Krepid" Apparently, the Krepid are a race of beings that were created before mankind and had the power to alter their DNA at will. This allowed them to shape shift into other forms. They also, so the episode states, had the power to influence the minds of lesser creatures, i.e. Us. They had a bit of a falling out with their god, Baktiotha (who has a name that sounds like a hand gel), and were all but wiped out except for a very few. Those few were forbidden to contact humans unless the humans were already aware of them so, by reading this, you're now a target. You're welcome. Seeing as the Krepid eat humans like we eat hamburgers, it led to a lot of trouble for them.

I have looked and there are no other references to the Krepid on the internet apart from this show. This leads me to one of two conclusions. Either the Krepid are very good at hiding or the whole story is utter BS. I'm calling it all BS.

Zipperface (1992)

Zzzzzipperface.

[4/10 · 23 November 2023]

There's someone killing S&M prostitutes in a small Californian town and the police are having a hard time catching him. A recently promoted female detective is on the case and, despite the fact she's just there to fill a quota, she's trying to take him down.

I have to say that the killer looks pretty cool. Very intimidating. But, as for the rest of the film, well it's all a pretty lame affair. We have as much trouble finding Zipperface as the police do in this film because he very rarely makes an appearance. The rest of the runtime seems to be fairly boring kitchen sink drama.

So, as a cop would say at a crime scene. "Move along folks, nothing to see here. Move along."

Just Call Me God: A Dictator's Final Speech (2017 TV Movie)

The Death of a Dictator.

[7/10 · 23 November 2023]

The premise of this is a reporter and her cameraman enter the palace of the dictator of an obscure eastern European country who, in the middle of nowhere, has built a huge auditorium with a pipe organ. Suddenly the dictator appears and guns down everyone except the reporter and an organist. From there a the play unfolds into an examination of power, the media and how history remembers it's monsters.

John Malkovich gives a wonderful performance going from evil to vulnerable, comedic to shocking. In spite of yourself you can't help liking this dictator just a bit.

The reporter who plays the foil to the dictator interviews him and becomes drawn to him but, ultimately, hates what he is. Just as news media loves the world's villains as they are draw to their channel/magazine/news paper.

Well worth a watch.

The Matrix Resurrections (I) (2021)

Lana, your film is already dead.

[5/10 · 7 November 2023]

If you were to ask me what my top ten films were that'd be a difficult question for me to answer. I'm kind of fickle about what I like and dislike, it depends on my mood. But, that being said, there's one film that will always be in my top ten, no matter what I feel like, and thats The Matrix.

Damn! That's a good film. It gave us something that we'd genuinely never seen before, with characters that were worth rooting for, villains we loved to hate and, at it's core, a love story for the ages. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at that film, the special effects were...well...special. Very special. The action scenes were some of the best ever put to film and still are. Top notch acting, clever writing and it had layers of meaning too. If you felt like digging a bit, it was deeply philosophical.

Yep, I like the first Matrix film.

But, do you hear that? That is the sound of inevitability. In this case the inevitable two sequels and, in those cases, it was just about diminishing returns. We'd seen the first film and we weren't going to be as surprised anymore, we knew the score. That's not to say the next two Matrix films were bad, they were superior action films, but they didn't have the mojo of the first film. The final film of the trilogy, probably the worst of the three, did manage to tie things up satisfactorily, and that was that. At least we thought.

Now, please join me for a little analogy. Humour me here. I like yoghurt. I have it every morning. My favourite flavour is cherry and, when I get to the bottom of my cherry yoghurt, I always want a bit more. So, I get my spoon and I scrape away at the bottom and the sides of my empty cherry yoghurt pot, and I try to get just the tiniest bit more out of it. I scrape and I scrape until there is just the smallest glob of cherry yoghurt on the end of my spoon. When I eat it, it tastes of the cherry yoghurt but, it's ultimately unsatisfying and hardly worth the effort. The Matrix 4 is just like that empty pot of cherry yoghurt.

When I heard Warner Brothers were making another Matrix sequel I could swear I heard the distant sound of yoghurt pots being scraped, only the label on that yoghurt said Matrix flavour. Someone had decided that there was still some scrapings left in that empty pot, and that's exactly what we got, we got the scrapings of the previous three films. And it wasn't even full fat Matrix. They tried to capture the full flavour of the original film but it was just too thin and unsatisfying and very disappointing. What they should've done was to back to the fridge and open another pot, started totally fresh with some bold and unexpected new ingredients. Try to get the element of surprise and excitement back into it, but if there's two things that Hollywood lacks these days it's imagination and originality. "Why try something new when the old recipe was so popular? Besides, there's the tiniest smidge left in that pot, it'd be a shame to waste it."

Lana, there was nothing much left in that pot. Your film was already dead and Jesus himself couldn't resurrect it. I'm so sorry. Let me know where I should send the flowers. I reckon you should start afresh, I know you still have the mojo. Let's open a new pot.

The Black String (2018)

Better than expected.

[6/10 · 23 October 2023]

You know the deal with Amazon Prime Video, let's say that the quality of the films on offer aren't exactly going to set the world on fire. When I watch something on this platform I often find myself wondering "why the hell am I watching this crap?" But every now and then Amazon Prime throws up a decent movie and The Black String is one of those rare occasions.

The main protagonist is a lonely, sex-starved liquor store clerk. He has little in his life except his drawing and his job. One night, in desperation, he calls a "sexy singles in your area" hotline and, as luck would have it, hits the jackpot by going out on a date with an actual sexy single (and she IS sexy.) His luck continues when he actually gets to have sex with the sexy single, to him it's nigh on miraculous.

His luck runs out however when he wakes up to find her gone, leaving him with a very nasty rash. An STD? That quickly? Believe me when I say, he's going to wish it was an STD before the end of this film.....

The Black String is one of those ambiguous films where the protagonist is either the genuine victim of a conspiracy or simply as mad as a lorry. It doesn't make it easy on the viewer as every event could be interpreted either one way or the other. Even with the very downbeat ending it can be interpreted either way and, incidentally, the ending is very downbeat indeed.

It's actually not a bad film. It kept me entertained, the story was good, the acting decent and it held my attention throughout. There was very little gore, except for right at the end, but it wasn't gratuitous in any way. So, it's well worth a look.

Superterranean (2020)

One man show.

[5/10 · 22 October 2023]

I have a sort of system when it comes to assigning stars to a film. All films, in my view, start with five stars. If I find it vaguely entertaining I might add a star. If it's quite enjoyable it might go to seven stars. Likewise, if a film is not so good the rating may go down to four or three. The truly awful get two or even one. For me, five stars equals "meh".

Superterranean has it's good points. The bleak Scottish landscape is beautiful but unsettling to look at and is well shot and the fact that this is all done by one man is impressive. However it's all kind of dull and not a lot really happens. There's some stuff about Cairns and faeries and cabin fever, I can't really remember. I doubt I'll remember anything at all about it by tomorrow.

Not bad enough to turn off but not good enough to be entertaining. Can I recommend it? Maybe, if you like rocks you'll get a real kick out it.

The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)

Usher, Usher, they all fall down.

[7/10 · 16 October 2023]

This limited series is horrible. Not horrible in the "not worth watching" sense, no. The characters are horrible people, they find themselves in horrible situations and die horrible deaths. It gets very gruesome at times, it very much earns that 18 certificate.

After The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and now The Fall of the House of Usher it's be becoming clear that anything with Mike Flanagan's involvement is quickly becoming event television. Even people who don't like horror can appreciate the film makers craft on display here. Mr Flanagan is a great storyteller, just as Edgar Alan Poe was, he has effortlessly transformed Poe's stories into modern horror stories which, though they may not be entirely accurate to the source material, captures the gothic sensibilities of the original tales. It sags a bit occasionally, some of the flash backs seem a little long and unnecessary, but I get why they're there, the deal with Verna is vital in understanding why everything is happening. It's when the saga flashes forward again that the story really zips along.

So, worth a look if you like to see horrible people doing horrible things and dying in horrible ways.

Disenchantment (2018–2023)

The final swan dive into a sea of wokeness.

[6/10 · 13 September 2023]

Ah, Disenchantment. I was with you for most of the way. I enjoyed your irreverent humor, your in jokes, moments of genuine suspense and peril but especially those surreal situations that inevitably used crop up in a fantasy animation. I was, ironically enchanted.

But your final season thoroughly disenchanted me. It seemed like a headlong rush to tie up all of the loose ends and the quality suffered as a result. And then there was all the gay weddings. Two actually. I'm not opposed to a bit of representation but it all seemed a bit "shoe-horned" into the story. There was no indication that Sorcerio and Odval had been in a relationship up until that last episode and all of a sudden they're being declared husband and husband? No, it didn't seem to fit, only put there as a nod to wokeness. You didn't need to do that really.

Still, like all good fairy tales, everyone lived happily ever after (mostly) and the final scene of drawing up the drawbridge actually made me a little sad. I was sorry that you didn't live up to your full potential but you had some good moments.

Like a smack upon the bum-bum you were a fun but bittersweet experience. And just a bit disappointing.

Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986)

It's not Biggles and it's not clever.

[4/10 · 13 May 2023]

I remember watching this back in the 80's the first time around and, just this afternoon, I watched it again. My reaction to the film then is the same now. What the bloody hell was that all about?

It's utter nonsense, whoever came up with a time travel angle to the whole thing should've been fired. From a cannon preferably.

There is the germ of a great boy's own adventure lurking deep within this film but, for some reason, the writer decided to shoehorn in a time travel angle and an American. Both were no doubt included to increase the commercial viability of the film but were quite unnecessary really. A great story set during the first world war about a search for a German secret weapon would've been enough by itself, but I guess that wasn't enough for a generation raised on Star Wars, Back to the Future, The Terminator etc.

Not very good but it may provide a bit of 80's nostalgia.

The Invention of Lying (2009)

Would I lie to you?

[6/10 · 8 May 2023]

I'm a bit of a Ricky Gervais fan but it's taken me forever to get around to seeing any of his films but, I thought, the time had come, so I started with his directorial debut.

The Invention of Lying is pretty tame by Mr Gervais' standards in fact, despite its title, it's a very wholesome film indeed. It's set is in an alternate world where lying is completely unknown, people are brutally honest and tell the truth no matter how hurtful or damaging it is. People are told they are fat, losers, scruffy or stupid and, though it's true, there is nothing to cushion the emotional blow. Speaking of fat losers, Ricky is playing such a character. Everything in his life is self destructing until suddenly, out of the blue, he discovers he has the ability to lie.

I am an atheist but I can understand why, on face value, a lot of Christians may become offended by the film. During the film Ricky Gervais' character accidentally creates a religion very similar to Christianity whilst comforting his dying mother. There's a lot of satire directed at the Church and, for that fact, many other organised religions. But, I think anyone who is offended by this are not thinking this through. Where did Mark's ability to lie come from? Where are the ideas for his lies coming from? Could it be that God is making his presence known to a society that doesn't have any spiritual side to it? That the lies are in fact, themselves, lies and are actually the truth? Was the invention of lying, in this case, an invention of man or God? Is Mark Bellieson actually a prophet?

I admit I found it funnier in the beginning of the film with some terrible insults being made to Ricky and his resigned expression as he soaks up the abuse. Not bad overall but not as funny as we know Mr Gervais is capable of.

Take Back the Night (2021)

The supernatural mistake.

[4/10 · 1 April 2023]

Very mild spoilers ahead.

I'm not going to reiterate the plot here, plenty of other reviewers on here have described it far better than I could.

I just don't think this film worked, introducing a supernatural element into it worked against any message it might have been trying to impart to it's audience about sexual assault and the treatment of women after the fact.

If a woman says she's been assaulted by an actual monster of course people are going to be skeptical. Let's be honest, even with the best intentions in the world, at best the police and your friends are going to think you're confused, at worst that you're lying your arse off or mad as a lorry. Making the attacker supernatural just makes the disbelief a legitimate response to the horror the victim went through.

If it was an actual real man it would've worked better. Then the disbelief would be unjust, the use of her past against her unfair and her behavior that night irrelevant.

Anyway, written by lesbians, performed by lesbians and directed, presumably, by a lesbian. Make of that what you will. The patriarchy remains untoppled.

Behemoth (2011 TV Movie)

Deep Underground Massive Bore = DUMB.

[4/10 · 17 March 2023]

In the town of Ascension things are not so good. There's a rumbling in the mountain and plumes of CO2 and all kinds of geological naughtiness happening. Something very big and very grumpy is waking up beneath the mountain and it's been listening to a Greta Thunberg speech.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. The location is beautiful. Some of the photography of the mountain is lovely. It's the sort of place you'd never grow tired of looking at if you happened to live there. I wish I did.

Unfortunately, in this film, the town is full of idiots. There were times I sat there grinding my teeth with frustration as one problem after another was presented to the protagonists, each with an obvious solution, but the answer always seemed to elude them. In one particularly frustrating sequence a professor is stuck in a cafe which has fallen into a sinkhole. "We must find a way out", he says and then checks the doors. I'm sitting and watching thinking "go up" but it took the professor about 15 minutes to work it out. Remember, that was a professor.

The effects were pretty shoddy and the creature looked like a cross between Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors, an octopus and a peanut. The hero eventually takes it out with some kind of superpowered rocket launcher which, to be honest, really didn't look up to the task.

Now, all this stuff sounds vaguely exciting. Believe me, it isn't. The story plods along at a slow and very predictable pace. In fact, just by reading it's description you can probably work out the entirety of the film before you even start watching it.

Don't be dumb enough to watch this. Find something better.

On the Line (II) (2022)

I regret watching.

[3/10 · 6 March 2023]

It isn't very often a film makes me angry. When I usually watch a bad film I kind of shrug and chalk it up to experience. If I had known exactly what kind of film this was going to be and the stupid ending they had waiting for me, I certainly wouldn't have bothered with it. I watched it through to the end and now I'm really pee'd off. I have buyers remorse and I got the film for free.

I enjoyed the film during the main part. It wasn't anything special but it was a reasonably good thriller with some pretty tense moments. Then, the finale. It was a cheap shot, like being punched below the belt in a boxing match or ordering something from Wish. It was just lame and of poor quality. I felt cheated.

Don't bother with it. If Mel Gibson hadn't been in it I would've given it one star. I like the guy but, after this, my patience is wearing thin.

Almost Mercy (2015)

See Emily play.

[6/10 · 4 February 2023]

I've read the other reviews here and this film seems to be very polarising, there's a lot of people who don't like it but there's a lot who do. I can understand why, it's not what you'd call a straight forward horror film. It's more of a drama with horror elements.

The film is set in a relatively small town which, despite it's picture postcard looks, is rotten to the core. There are pedophiles, crooked cops, snarky teachers, high school bullies, unfaithful spouses and rapists. All in all it's a town full of a-holes. In this town, living very grim lives, are Emily and Jackson. They are subject to the very worst aspects of all of the above and, eventually, one of them snaps. And when they snap, they really go big time.

About the first two thirds of the film are fairly blood free, with a couple of notable exceptions. That doesn't mean they're horror free but, I guess, it depends on what you class as horror. The terrible treatment of the two main protagonists is actually quite horiffic. Emily is raped (off screen,) which is covered up by the police and the school principal. Jackson is also raped, at least that is heavily implied, by the Catholic Priest of the church where he serves as an alter boy. Their home lives are marred by parents who behave appallingly towards them both and school life is plagued by hostile teachers and bullies.

There's a bit of misdirection here, which I thought was quite clever. It's intimated that Jackson is going to carry out a school shooting, a very popular American pastime. He's certainly made out to be the crazier of the two. But, when the chips were down, he wimps out and then gets promptly arrested. And justifiably so. However, this seems to be the trigger that sets off Emily, and she proves to be far better at wholesale slaughter than Jackson.

When I say the blood begins to fly, it really does. Emily descends upon all the people who've treated them both so shoddily for so many years like an avenging angel. She slices and dices her way through them with her axe and pistol with such obvious enjoyment that it's almost infectious. Eventually she completes her revenge, saves Jackson, and then spends the rest of her life locked up in a facility where no one dares to upset her. It turns out she was crazy enough for both of them.

This film reminded me of some aspects of a few others. Heathers comes to mind, Donnie Darko and any number of films about high school bullying and politics. But, in other aspects, it entirely it's own thing. The voice over is fine, it doesn't get annoying and the actress portraying Emily does well in the part. Some have said on here that the violence is a part too light hearted and even cartoonish but, I'm my opinion, it's being portrayed through the unreliable eyes of Emily who is, undeniably, mad as a hatter. This is her point of view and she just thought all this slaughter was massive fun, of course it's going to seem a bit skewed. It did bring up some very serious topics like the effects of bullying, how badly rape victims are sometimes treated, the long term effects of abuse on a victim and the trauma they suffer. All very serious subjects.

Anyway, I enjoyed it more than average, so I scored it a 6/10. It's worth a watch. I would have scored in 6.5 but, well, things don't work that way 'round here.

Mandrake (2022)

Bored.

[4/10 · 27 December 2022]

This is going to be difficult. I have to use 600 characters to say how dull this film is when it can be summed up very easily in just 17 characters, "this is a boring film. So, by necessity, there's going to be a lot of padding, five hundred and eighty seven characters worth to be very precise. I could try using a longer word for dull, like tedious for example but it's only three characters more than dull. I wonder what the longest word I can find meaning dull? Hold on, I'll look it up....wearisome, that seems to be the longest word meaning dull. Unless you know better. So, I think that's about 600. That's good enough.

Glass Onion (2022)

Benoit Blank

[5/10 · 27 December 2022]

I was very much looking forward to seeing this new chapter of Knives Out. The trailer looked intriguing and I was expecting another well written mystery with plentiful plot twists. But that's not what I received. This film barely passes muster. But why?

Benoit Blanc is basically sidelined in his own film by another character, Andi. It's they who do the leg work, gather the clues and begin to unravel the mystery. Benoit has little to do during the majority of the film. Even at the end, when some modicum of justice is served, it's not he who really administers it, though a small act on his part results in the destruction of a priceless and irreplaceable art work. Unforgivable. It reminds me a bit of Mad Max: Fury Road. Nominally it was a Mad Max film but, what it actually turned out to be was a Furiosa film with Mad Max tagging along for the ride.

And, on that subject, does anyone really believe that the French government would loan the Mona Lisa out to a private individual, no matter how rich or how many safety assurances they make? Never in a million years. It's far too important to France and the entire world to take any kind of risk with it. Nope, not buying it. Sorry.

Finally, hints that Mr Blanc is gay. Why? Wasn't it enough that he was both a great detective and a good man? His sexuality was not important in any way in this film, why introduce this to the plot? I'm assuming it's for the same reason that Benoit is upstaged in his own film by a black woman, to score those political correctness brownie points.

How about, and this is a wild idea, we have a film about a great detective who happens to be a black woman? I haven't seen one of those yet.

Why doesn't anyone have the confidence to do that but, instead, use other properties to act like a Trojan Horse for the film they should've made? Do they have no faith in a female lead? What's going on?

Smile (V) (2022)

Sosij Bacon and Eggs

[6/10 · 22 December 2022]

Please excuse immature title, I couldn't resist. Made you look though.

I was quite surprised by this film, I expected something far less effective. A lot of recent horror films have become very formulaic with jump scares and an insipid, instantly forgettable plot. Smile, though it does have those jump scares, boasts some quality performances and has an atmosphere that really sticks with you for a long time afterwards. It's not the first time this main conciet has been used, the sinister smile, but here it's used to genuinely disquieting effect.

One thing, apropos nothing really, I did notice and, perhaps it's just me, but I was struck by how much Sosie Bacon looks like Jim Carrey. Watch it again and think "Ace Ventura" and in some scenes you'll be struck by the likeness. It kind of took me out of the film a bit, I kept imagining her saying "alrighty then" in tense moments.

Tales of the Unexpected: Number Eight (1984) Season 7, Episode 5

Not one of the best but....

[6/10 · 14 December 2022]

Tales of the Unexpected was starting to run out of steam by this point, the episodes were nowhere as clever as the earlier seasons. This episode is typical in that the plot twist was obvious from the very beginning, so there were no surprises for me at the end of this episode. But there is a redeeming factor in this episode in the person of Brad Douriff.

In Number 8 he plays an unhinged hitchhiker who may, or may not, be a vicious serial killer. Brad Douriff exudes genuine menace and lends the episode some real tension. When he has his impromptu "party" with the two women in the diner there's a genuine air of threat. His performance lifted this episode from mediocre to interesting but, sadly, even he can't save it entirely.

Slapface (2021)

Ambiguity

[6/10 · 8 December 2022]

Ambiguous endings. I don't mind films with ambiguous endings but sometimes they just don't work and leave me feeling deeply disatisfied. Spoilers ahead.

In Slapface the young protagonist appears to befriend a witch. This witch becomes very protective of the young lad to the extent of killing anyone or anything that appears to threaten him. The film presents us with three options:

1. The witch is real.

2. The witch is imaginary and the boy is responsible for the violence.

3. The witch has been summoned into reality by the boys grief at the loss of his parents.

If the witch is real why did it disappear after the boy apparently killed it?

If the witch is imaginary, how did a young boy kill an entire police station of armed officers?

If the witch was summoned by the loss of the mother, why was it so hostile to his brother? Surely it'd recognize it's all a part of the same pain?

I wanted to settle on a meaning for this film but, because all of the endings were implausible, I just couldn't. There should be plausible conclusions for us to focus on.

The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire (2002 TV Movie)

Mediocrity my dear Watson.

[5/10 · 23 November 2022]

I've always enjoyed a good Sherlock Holmes mystery, my favorite portrayal being by the late, great Jeremy Brett. I was also a fan of Max Headroom back in the day and have a bit of a soft spot for Matt Frewer, so my curiosity was piqued when this was suggested to me as a film I might enjoy.

Sadly, the whole thing was a bit of a disappointment. Matt Frewer certainly looked the part but, just like Benedict Cumberbatch, he's just not a very good Sherlock Holmes. In particular, his English accent is, quite frankly, risible.

As others have pointed out, the actor playing Dr. Watson (Kenneth Welsh) was pretty good, but his portrayal was unable to save this very mediocre film.

Still, all that being said, it wasn't unentertaining, despite a lot of historical inaccuracies.

So, five stars it is then.