tobridges Reviews

Invitation (2003)

An awful, garbled mess.

[6 June 2024]

W...t... actual...f.???

Guy poisons his friends and tells them they will receive the antidote if they spill all their emotional baggage and secrets. Except that there is no attempt made to explain how this random group of people know each other or what their allegedly terrible secrets have to do with each other. No explanations are offered aside from vague references made in passing. Confusing flashbacks abound. They do nothing but muddy the "story" even further. In the end only one secret is revealed and explained in any detail and it turns out to be a real snoozer. Frustrating and pointless experience. Hated this movie.

Speak No Evil (2022)

Please let me spoil this movie for you...

[23 September 2022]

...to spare you the maddening experience of watching it

Are you ready for it?

A Dutch couple finds naive parents who have one child, lures the parents to their home, kills them, and, presumably, sells the child. After cutting out the child's tongue, of course.

Sounds like an awesome premise, right?

Except that the parents make absolutely no effort to resist. None. They don't put up a smart, hard fight and still fail. They just don't fight at all, choosing instead to whimper, blubber, and slobber while a stranger carries their child off into the night

Finally, like the good little victims they are, they do as they're told and go meekly to the chopping block for their executioners . And if you're anything like me, you'll be happy to see them go.

Now, fans of the movie will say those of us who hate it simply don't get it, that the movie is a bleak satire of polite society. Ok, sure, it certainly is that.

But the whole point of a story is to watch the characters face a challenge, STRUGGLE to overcome that challenge, and be forever changed by that struggle, regardless of whether they win or lose. A story where the characters just passively exist and make no attempt to overcome is a pointless story.

I hope reading this helped save you a little time and frustration.

The Black Water Vampire (2014)

ALL the nope

[11 January 2022]

Paid 5 bucks to see this because I'm a huge fan of found footage. Also, because a reviewer on one of my favorite horror sites called it a "hidden gem."

After seeing it, I have no idea what the actual frack that reviewer was thinking.

The movie is exactly what everyone else is saying: A terrible rip-off of Blair Witch. And no, I do not mean an homage. It's literally Blair Witch, but with poor acting, dull, repetitive dialogue, and a rubber vampire costume.

The first two-thirds of the movie was tolerable, if boring. But the final third devolved into nothing but screams and running. Ended with zero explanation of the questions raised by the story.

And the final scene? Laughable.

Waste of time and money...both on my part AND on the part of the movie-makers.

The Unholy (2021)

Worn-out Sky Daddy vs Basement Daddy story

[7 January 2022]

If someone were to ask me to say something positive about this movie, I'd say "well...it has Jeffrey Dean Morgan in it."

The rest would just be awkward silence.

Trust me, if you're a horror fan, you've seen this movie. Several dozen times, probably. And almost every one was done better than this.

It's as if the writer made a list of all the most threadbare religious-horror movie tropes he could find and randomly assembled them into a script. And then just in case there was any subtlety hiding in the script, he hunted it down and bludgeoned it to death with a bunch of heavy-handed Christian moralizing.

But like I said, at least there's JDM.

The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan (2018)

Worth watching? Like found footage? Then yes...very much yes

[16 December 2021]

Great little found footage gem. Not really horror so much as a creepy mystery with some horror elements. Does a nice job of building tension all the way to the end.

Ignore the reviews that say it left questions unanswered. All the clues are right there for everyone to see. No spoilers, but pay attention to the interviews that Leah does with people from the town. Those are not just filler...pay attention because they explain everything, especially in retrospect.

Loved the story and thought the acting from the two leads and most of the supporting cast was really solid.

Sensation (2010)

Ruined for me by one early scene

[21 February 2021]

Huge fan of Domhnall Gleeson, and his dad, for that matter, but one scene early in the movie turned me off so much, I just had no interest in finishing it.

Character inherits the family farm. He's clearing the place out so he can have a hooker come round and give him his first sexual experience. He apparently doesn't like the family kittens...and drowns them in a bucket.

Love dark comedies and usually, the darker the better. That bit, though, I just couldn't get past.

Figured I'd leave a heads-up for anybody who might feel similarly.

Outside the Wire (2021)

Just...bad

[22 January 2021]

A partial list of annoyances, minor and major, in this movie:

1) A Marine NCO referring to a bunch of deployed Marines as "maggots" like they're still recruits....in 1967.

2) Same NCO calling Marines "soldiers." The Army has soldiers. The Marine Corps has Marines.

3) Main character running out of ammo during a fight...and simply throwing his weapon away.

4) The Marine and his sidekick on foot in a hostile area diddy-bopping through an open field like they're out for a morning stroll.

5) Bad guy enters a rebel camp, casually boosts himself onto a truck, and sets up a shooting position completely unnoticed while rebels pass back and forth.

6) At 100 meters, said sniper manages to hit everything but his two targets. He also has a tattoo that helpfully identifies him as a bad guy once captured.

7) Repeatedly referring to Ukraine as "the Ukraine."

8) The whole movie is about preventing a nuclear attack. The main character explains this within the first few minutes of the movie. Those are the kind of stakes no one is likely to forget. But just in case, the main character recaps the stakes about every 5 minutes.

9) The secondary main character has the emotional maturity of an angsty 14-year-old and breaks down into tantrums often. This is exactly who we would send on a mission to save the world.

10) Service members who regularly interact with locals on urgent missions have zero language training.

11) Marines 16 years in the future have gear and uniforms older than what the military currently uses.

12) Since 1990, we've had missiles that could fly hundreds of miles and go through an open window, but in 2036 our super-advanced robotic soldiers use the "spray and pray" method.

13) A bank in a deserted section of a war-torn city is still open and staffed by dozens of employees.

14) Bad guys use rifles that can destroy armored robots, but won't penetrate a particle board table.

15) The US builds and deploys a robot that can pass for human and has highly lethal skills -- and probably cost several billion dollars -- but then lets it basically run around unsupervised, doing whatever it wants.

This is all in addition to the generic storyline and painful, stilted dialogue that others have already mentioned.

Movies like this are an insult to their audiences. Do yourself a favor and pass on this one.

Locked Down (I) (2021)

Not a caper movie

[16 January 2021]

If you're looking for a movie about a heist, keep looking. Although it has a few caper-ish moments toward the end, it's really just a rom-com that uses the caper as a means to move the will-they, won't they plot forward.

That's not to say it's a bad movie. Hathaway and Ejiofor are both good at what they do and have a natural, easy chemistry here. The Zoom scenes are good for some laughs. And there's a hedgehog who may or may not be an opium addict.

It just isn't a Covid's 11, so keep that in mind.

Cold Ground (2017)

Not werewolves, not Bigfoot. They're...

[20 October 2020]

....

....

...giant mutated bats. The clue is in the cave when she stumbles upon a bunch of normal bats. That's when you realize the monsters themselves have extremely bat-like features (the pointy ears, the Dracula fangs, etc). Then there's the scene where the woman's being chased through the woods, where we see one of the creatures flare its arms like wings. And while they don't fly, their sudden jump onto their victims can be described as a "swoop" of sorts.

Oh, also the screeching, which is a much louder version of the noise bats make.

So apparently the idea is that they originated in the caves and through the bacteria/virus (hahaha) or the uranium mining or something, they evolved into those monsters.

That being said, the movie was pretty bad for all the reasons articulated by the other reviewers.

The Unraveling (I) (2015)

NOT a horror movie

[5 May 2018]

I don't usually do reviews, but this one annoyed me enough that I at least wanted to warn those who might get suckered by the description. It is not a thriller and not a horror. It is pure psychological drama about a drug addict. It is glaringly obvious very early on where the plot is headed. I hoped that it wouldn't end up being that silly...but yes, it did. If you like dramas about addicts, it's worth a watch. But if you're looking for scares and thrills, pass it by.