Dir - M. Night Shyamalan
Overall: WOOF
While M. Night Shyamalan reserved the type of unintentional Troll 2 style bad/uproarious for The Happening, (which until The Visit was the worst possible film he could make), this one is just godawful in all the lowest ways. Within the first ten minutes, you are on such unstable ground so quickly that you find yourself praying for a miracle that it cannot possibly be as bad as you think it is going to be. It is indeed worse though. The fact that this is done in the found footage style alone is beyond a mistake. Every single shot of the film is distracting with every offender the sub-genre has to offer and Shyamalan beats you over the head with how absolutely clueless he is as to what actually makes this style work. There are a barrage of pathetic explanations why the movie within a movie is edited and framed like a completed, "real" movie, just as much eyeball-rolling foreshadowing, and worst of all, atrociously unfunny and forced attempts at comic relief. If you hate kids in horror movies, oh Nelly, watch out for Ed Oxenbould whose character gets to indulge in not one, not even two, but THREE rap sequences. It is all so staggeringly sloppy and overdone, and the film derails so, so consistently that by the time Shyamalan is trying to "scare" you with disturbing and even gross-out moments, it reeks of desperation like none of his other way off the mark movies ever came close. It has been said many times by now but seriously, he cannot sink any lower than this can he?
Dir - Todd Strauss-Schulson
Overall: MEH
The Final Girls attempts and often succeeds at at number of its goals to send-up the 80s slasher films that even the people who love them would admit where all terrible. Well actually, it does a better job with its other story elements, particularly the concept of reuniting with the fictional character versions of your loved ones. On paper, this is basically a The Last Action Hero and Sleepaway Camp sandwich, with a heavy emphasis on self-awareness. From what the blooper reel title credits imply, the script was heavily embellish with add-libs from the cast and these are equally hit and miss. Adam DeVine and especially Angela Trimbur steal the movie with their exaggerated caricatures of stupid, horny 80s slasher bait and there is certainly no shortage of laugh out loud moments between them. Sadly though, an opportunity was missed to make this appear far more authentic as the PG13 rating is an observable detriment and not at all suiting to the gory, nudity ridden exploitation films it is making fun of. It looks more like a high-definition fairy tale than a dated VHS tape with only one scene featuring a tiny sprinkling of noticeable blood. Also, the film fails to tighten up the plot that regularly glosses over its own very minimal amount of rules that it sets up. The entire universe it exists in is hardly fleshed-out and by the ending, we are no closer to understanding what is supposed to be happening. The movie has so much emotional weight that it cannot be tossed off as a "who cares it's just a stupid movie making fun of stupid movies" excursion, not convincingly at least. So though it tries to have its cake and eat it too, it is nowhere near a failure and certainly worth a gander for anyone wanting a less successful but still fun The Cabin in the Woods type of fare.
Dir - Sean Byrne
Overall: WOOF
This is another unbelivably awful yet preposterously well rated modern horror film that comes down to the absolutely fucking terrible script by writer/director/guy-who-thinks-using-the-most-obvious-metal-songs-with-the-words-"evil"-and-"demon"-in-them-for-his-Satanic-horror-movie-is-awesome-when-of-course-it-is-actually-incredibly-lame-and-cheap-and-thinks-a-father/daughter-team-of-metalheads-would-flash-the-horns-at-each-other-on-her-awkward-first-day-of-school-to-make-her-feel-better-is-something-anyone-would-ever-do-ever Sean Byrne. So there is a crazy guy who kills his parents in a house and then hides out very safely at a hotel close by for long enough for said house to go on sale, go down in price, and get moved into again without anyone catching him with the same single outfit on. He also has plenty of money at his disposal as well as his parent's car which no law enforcement officials are able to track down even though they come face to face with him after getting a noise disturbance call at his hotel. Artist/zero percent body fat/greasy/fake tanned/fake tattooed/never showers/covered in grime/shirtless/metal dad gets lost in his Satanic paintings when he moves into a house with an evil wall, then getting positive attention from an art gallery owner whose name is literally the Jewish translation of "devil" and whose secretary likes to hang out alone in the perfectly empty, movie-lit gallery looking like a glamorous, evil fashion model. Also there are only two scenes with them and then that is enough of those people. Then dirty metal hippy douche gets shot at least twice and immediately falls unconscious, only to regain superhuman strength to show the audience he is not dead so he can save his daughter in a fake CGI fire that would have suffocated he, crazy killer guy, and his equally un-showered metal kid to death within seconds. Is this Sean Byrne guy fucking twelve?
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