rrffppnnkk Reviews

Scream (I) (2022)

User Reviews Attain Meta Singularity

[7/10 · 13 October 2022]

It's a really good Scream movie. Made in the right spirit: fun, grisly, loads of postmodern thrills, spills, and winks. Funny while still keeping the horror intact; self reflexive without sacrificing emotion.

I wonder whether people slating the movie for being too knowing/self aware A) have seen *any* previous Scream movies, or B) realise that their misguided fan-rage nudges them beyond irony and into full blown ridiculousness?

Like...you know the stuff in the movie about toxic fandom? Yeah. That. Ya miss it?

Perhaps the next sequel will be a super meta-parody based wholly around IMDb one-star reviews. But then, that might require a self-awareness on the part of weirdly angry IMDb users that they simply do not possess. The franchise might break from the meta meltdown. The very internet itself may never recover.

Imagine it: a movie about online toxic movie fans made in response to toxic movie fans' user reviews of a movie making fun of toxic movie fans.

They could call the next sequel Scream 1/10. And Ghostface's identity? Why, hundreds of incel-adjacent young chaps, of course - collectively apoplectic about misunderstanding the very essence of the franchise that has confused them so thoroughly.

I mean, I'd probably still watch it. I feel that Wes would be proud.

The Fanatic (2019)

It's terrible.

[2/10 · 10 September 2020]

Look, there's no way around this: The Fanatic is terrible. It's offensive, meatheaded, and callous. I get why people mention it in a similar bracket to The Room, but no - The Room has its significant, myriad faults, but it isn't truly mean spirited, like this. The Fanatic is charmless, juvenile junk. The movie the high school bully would make. While still in high school.

It's *exactly* the film you might expect from a man who used to make terrible fratboy beerbong music, sport a backwards baseball cap, and shout homophobic things while wearing oversized shorts. I mean, it is a special kind of bad, so maybe it's worth watching. But it's a long old hour and a half, I'm warning you. Its meagre gawp factor - specifically John Travolta throwing himself heroically into this mess - wears thin very quickly.

It's terrible.

Through My Father's Eyes (2019)

Revealing portrait of Gary Stretch

[2/10 · 25 August 2020]

Through My Father's Eyes: The Gary Stretch Story is an insightful look at director, producer, songwriter, boxer, actor, model and poet Gary Stretch. Using both weirdly echoey archival footage and extensive testimony from the interesting supporting cast of Gary's life, including Dana White, Gene LeBell, and women's MMA fighter Ronda Rousey, Through My Father's Eyes: The Gary Stretch Story eschews basic documentary-making competence in favour of Gary Stretch, and the results are there for all to see.

Cruel Peter (2019)

It's too dark.

[2/10 · 25 August 2020]

The film is too dark. Not thematically, not figuratively, but literally *visually* too dark. Everything is too dark. It is so dark that it should be called 'Dark Peter.' The nighttime scenes are too dark; the daylight is too dark; interior and exterior shots alike are equally sodden with a filter of synthetic dusk-like gloom.

Perhaps the grader deliberately made it so dark to hide the plodding story, or the lugubrious tone, or the somnambulant editing. It was nice to see characters using BSL - a shame their doing so was obscured by a permanent shroud of (presumably) unintentional murk.

If you like looking at the world thru tights, or sunglasses at night, or a tea-hued gauze, you might enjoy this. But, even then...

The Daughters of Fire (2018)

Extraordinary Achievement

[9/10 · 17 July 2020]

This is the real deal. Its poetry is bold and unapologetic; its craft lithe, assured, and completely realised. Its themes and ideas are conveyed with fierce cogency. It takes a complex question - essentially: can pornography be truly empowering to women? - and essays it with a verve that gave me the giddy rush of seeing an at-his-peak Godard for the first time.

It is intellectually thrilling, but emotionally moving, too. It dances along the fine line between the intellectual and the base with a daring grace. (Is it pornography? Is it meta-pornography?)

The Daughters of Fire is formally inventive and philosophically incisive in a way that should embarrass Haneke for his hollow edgelord bloviating, or Von Trier with his juvenile provocations, would that they had any shame. Yet, this film is (at time of writing) pretty much unheard of, invisible. (But sure, tell me again that cinema isn't institutionally sexist.)

This is the first time I can truly say I watched a movie with *zero* concession to the male gaze. I'm a man, and this film was not made for me. And that is both the most refreshing thing about it (to me), and why my thoughts on it, and this very review, are joyously irrelevant.

I expect many men, should they bother to watch it at all, may feel threatened by this film and write reviews that attempt to belittle it in various ways. ("I'm not threatened, it's just really badly lit", etc.)

They shall have their tantrums. This film will prove resilient. If films can be important and meaningful to the world - and of course they can - then The Daughters of Fire is as significant as they come. (No pun intended.)

It's an extraordinary achievement. Given the film's radically ambitious aims - to examine representation of (queer) women's bodies, paradigms of female pleasure, and the integration of eroticism, pornography and poetry into a structurally feminist worldview - it's bordering on the miraculous how great it is.

Above insight, catharsis, and joy, the greatest feeling a film can leave a viewer with, I think, is gratitude. I felt it after watching The Daughters of Fire.

10x10 (2018)

So bad. So, so bad.

[2/10 · 11 January 2019]

Imagine a film that uses the side-alley scrap from They Live as the template for its structure. Now take out all the humour. And all the suspense. And all the fun. And all the will to carry on. Congratulations, you have 10x10. Woeful, truly.

The Strangers (2008)

A poor film

[2/10 · 18 October 2017]

Woman runs and falls for no reason, hurting ankle

Baddies are there, then suddenly vanish as if they were supernatural — but they are not supernatural (this happens many times)

Main characters relentlessly stupid

Could understand maybe one in eight words of the bloke's dialogue

Camera can't sit still

"Someone got in the house" "Nobody is in the house babe" Er now would be the time to insist that someone was in the house and that you know this because whoever it was moved the smoke alarm

Not being shown baddies' faces once their masks are removed is a cringey conceit

Bad film in all the ways

Don't Let Him In (2011)

A review for purely selfish reasons

[1/10 · 30 May 2015]

I don't take any pleasure in sticking the boot in on a film so woeful, but I have to write this purely for selfish reasons. See, what keeps happening is this: I see a film called Don't let Him In listed, and it captures my attention. So, my interest piqued – I enjoy even below average horror films, mostly – I look at the synopsis. And I think, "Sounds good." So I set it to record, and look forward to watching it. Then, when the mood takes and I have the two hours set aside, I sit down to watch it. Get a few snacks ready. A drink. Lights down. And then I play the movie.

The first few seconds are fine. But then: a vague gnawing in my stomach. Not the good kind of edginess a decent horror might give you; rather, an uneasy feeling that I'm an idiot who doesn't learn from previous mistakes. But I'm unsure, and keep watching, hoping vainly that maybe I'm wrong. But the opening sequence ends, and I see that shot of houses. And it sinks in. The dread and discomfiture spread through me. Then, the next shot of the house. I'm still not absolutely convinced, but in my heart, I know. Then the killer blow: the shot – THAT shot – in the kitchen. The skewiff, seemingly rushed framing. The ropey sound recording. The stiff acting from miscast people who seem unsure about what they're doing. I can't ignore the truth anymore: I've been here before – several times. Because, like my own private horror movie, this keeps happening to me.

I keep recording Don't Let Him In, having forgotten that I've seen it, and that it was – truly – one of the worst things I've ever sat through. And I seem to block it from my mind (that perfectly generic title is so easy to separate from the film it belongs to) and forget that it ever happened, and record it again, and sit down to watch again, and I am swamped with anger and disappointment. I stop the film as the girl is doing her best to act like someone coughing in bed, and delete it, promising to never let this happen again. A few months later, I see a film listed called Don't Let Him In, and think, "Hmm, that might be interesting..." So: enough. This ends, now, here. As said above, I take no satisfaction in trashing these folks' movie, which I'm sure they worked hard on. Plenty of others here have gone into the details of what makes it so awful (as well as some shameless shills giving it 9 and 10...seriously: at least try and be cleverer about lying on behalf of your friends/employers), so I won't do that.

All I want to do is say to myself: Please. Remember. You have seen the British horror film called Don't let Him In. You gave it 1/10 on IMDb. Learn. Stop forgetting that you've been here before. See the warnings earlier. Recognise the title. Do not set to record.

Make this the last time. Burn the title into your mind: DON'T LET HIM IN. You can't keep doing this to yourself.

Here's hoping.

Bad Meat (2011)

A shame

[4/10 · 23 November 2013]

This film is clearly unfinished. It builds story, setting, and characters well, and the tone of it is great — fun, schlocky gore. I was surprised at how enjoyable it was... and then it just peters out and stops. It isn't an enigmatic or deliberately open-ended climax — it merely hasn't been completed. Whether this was a screen writing problem or a production thing I don't know, but in simplest terms: there is no third act to speak of.

It's a real shame as what's there is good, solid, trashy horror. Frustrating, and a real waste. It's a bit of an affront to release it and present it as a finished piece, to be frank; it's especially galling to see it was funded by the UK lottery/Film Council.

If it were completed I reckon it was on for a 7/10. The annoyance of sitting through it only to be cheated out of a properly finished story makes me want to give it 2/10. So: 4 it is.

Possession (1981)

Interesting but marred by theatricality

[4/10 · 30 September 2013]

SPOILERS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOW:

There are some vivid and distinctive scenes in this film: the scrap in the restaurant; the shooting of the detective's lover; the bits with the creature. Unfortunately these parts are undermined by the screeching histrionics of many of the domestic scenes, with Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani getting very am-dram and silly at every opportunity. In particular, the guy playing Heinrich is woefully theatrical; the director apparently prides himself on his toughness with "difficult" actresses such as Ms. Adjani — a shame this approach didn't extend to this bloke.

The standout scene is Adjani wigging out in the empty subway like she's auditioning for a Cradle of Filth video. Had the director used some restraint on the performances throughout, scenes like these might have carried more weight. As it is, it all ends up feeling a bit Kate Bush (I like Kate Bush fine, but there's a time and place).

It's a worthwhile watch with some cool ideas, but all the screaming and shouting ultimately makes it feel silly rather than creepy.