Dir - Ryan Zaragoza
Overall: WOOF
It is a shame that the twist in Madres, (Mothers), is based on an all-too-real and concerning issue that was largely suffered amongst ethnic women in the 1970s and then again decades later. That is because the full-length debut from director Ryan Zaragoza terribly stages its agenda within a moronic supernatural horror context that is as hackneyed as they get, full of unintentionally funny moments on top of insultingly cliched scare tactics that do everything in their power to undermine what should have been handled with some semblance of respect. The seventh installment in the Welcome to Blumhouse series plays by too many rules; generic scary music that only shuts up for a jump scare, freaky nightmares of screaming specters, arbitrary spooky things/hallucinations, a minor key nursery rhyme played on a baby's toy, ominous ravings found in a creepy old house that some city folk move into, a gaslighting husband, a hysterical pregnant wife, a weird cryptic local lady, an understaffed hospital that is allergic to turning any lights on, etc. This is not to say that this is a travesty since the filmmaker's hearts seem to be in the right place, but sometimes it is all too apparent that getting your message across via a horror framework just so that people will see your movie, (Since who goes to see independent dramas with no star power nowadays?), is just destined to fail.
Dir - Jean Campbell Hogg/Joshua Carver/Adam Collier/Joshua Dickinson/Amy L.Feeley/Jane Gull/Tony Roberts/Deveril
Overall: MEH
Several British filmmakers with few if any full-lengths on their resumes all join forces with the low-budget anthology movie The Haunted Hotel. Shot quickly and on location at the Great White Horse Hotel in Ipswich, Suffolk, it begins with a Charles Dickens quote relating to the real life setting which was an allegedly and famously haunted one that seems ideal fodder for a horror film. Broken up into eight segments with a different cast and creative personnel in charge of each one, they naturally vary in quality and tone, yet the whole thing predominantly leans on the lighthearted side. Bouncing non-chronologically over a hundred and fifty-year time span, none of them properly convey the decade for which they are set due to the mediocre and digitally-shot production, (plus the fact that the hotel's decor hardly changes throughout), but this is forgivable under the modest means for which it was made. Nearly all of the stories are predictable and concern people interacting with those who they or at least we the viewer are not supposed to know right away have passed on, but the more interesting ones skew this formula. That would be Joshua Dickinson's "The Writer" and Deveril's "Housekeeping", with the closing "Devil Inside" by Toby Roberts being the only one that is not comedic in nature. The whole collection is more dopey than either scary or funny, but it is mediocre enough to suffice.
Dir - Ruth Platt
Overall: MEH
A full-length expansion of her 2019 short of the same name, Martyrs Lane is low-key and atmospheric, yet it suffers from a lumbering plot that sticks exclusively to a child's point of view and never becomes that interesting in the process. Though Platt cannot help but to indulge in some sudden nightmare jumps and there is technically a creepy kid in Halloween make-up, she still manages to skew her set pieces from the norm, presenting everything in a dour yet intimate fashion that does no rely on incessant music or unintentional schlock. Instead, everyone behaves seriously, too seriously maybe as there is little to nor humor or joy to the proceedings in place of a dreary narrative that meanders without providing any necessary hooks. Since the entire movie revolves around her perspective of her mother's emotional illness and the identity of the friendly ghost kid that starts showing up once some trinkets are found, it is a good thing that Kiera Thompson does a fine job as far as child actors go, even though she is still delegated to being unrealistically stoic which is usually the only thing allowed for youngsters in horror movies. The mystery reveal is far from surprising for anyone paying attention and the ending is anti-climactic as well, which is actually in keeping with the overall lackadaisical presentation though.
No comments:
Post a Comment