Dir - James Wan
Overall: MEH
The third installment in the Conjuring cinematic universe and second to find James Wan returning to the director chair, The Conjuring 2 is a similarly textbook example of modern supernatural horror sensibilities for which Wan particularly is a consistent enforcer of. While he surprisingly shows some level of restraint in keeping the jump scares down to a minimum, (at least for him), and the script rather quickly lets every character witness ghostly happenings in a group as opposed to seeing them individually and mentioning them to no one for the first two acts, the film still buckles to many other overused hallmarks. Evil entities follow the rules of there being no rhyme or reason to their mischief and generally only perform their arbitrary tricks when it is in the middle of the night, they are asked to do so by psychic investigators, or when the music gets either all spooky scary or jarringly quiet for another patented psyche-out. Said entities in this case are hardly interesting, (a crotchety old man), or cartoonishly silly and merely shoehorned in there for future franchise inclusion, (the Nun and the Crooked Man). It is conventional to a fault and the ending is borderline ridiculous, but Vira Farmiga and Patrick Wilson's highly fictionalized Warrens do provide a strong, heart-felt undercurrent at least. For shameless popcorn horror, it fits the mold for those who crave such things.
Dir - Yeon Sang-ho
Overall: MEH
In his live action debut, South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho tackles a rather ambitious zombie outbreak film with Train to Busan, (Busanhaeng). While there are moments of humor dashed about, things becomes super dark and ultimately almost unwatchably depressing by the incredibly heartbreaking end. For those expecting a mere popcorn zombie movie, the dizzying action and frantic pace that tries to catch up with the aggressively fast, infected ghouls this round may be misleading in conjunction with the bleak avenues that the movie progressively goes down. It does not necessarily uplift itself from its gimmick, (zombies on a train), and unavoidably features conventional characters and conventional predicaments for them to overcome that are in nearly every other film of the same irk. At the same time though, it is anything but a B-movie production, both in its very fleshed-out, emotionally-fueled script and over-the-top action sequences that are successfully on par for walking (or running in this case) dead movies of the modern era. There is nothing really here that is able to elevate it over the massive burn-out this sub-genre has succumbed to, but for those who cannot get enough, it is as decent as they seem to get.
Dir - Bryan Bertino
Overall: WOOF
A borderline abysmal offering that balances between monotony, miserableness, stupidity, and annoyance, Bryan Bertino's The Monster fails staggeringly. Centered exclusively around an abusive, alcoholic, dismissive, unsympathetic, and all-around dirtbag mother and her traumatized daughter, Bertino seems to be posing a rather direct "Who's the real monster?" question as the simple premise has them fending for themselves on a stretch of road that literally no one ever drives down apparently. Bouncing between flashbacks that become more and more uncomfortable and then the present time-frame which becomes more and more one-note and boring, the end result spins its wheels for the duration. When the emotional payoff is a kid proclaiming "I'm not afraid of you!" while standing up to a huge, ridiculously dangerous creature that kills everything, it practically feels laughable which jives poorly and oddly with how much of a downer everything else is. Worse, Bertino indulges in completely foreseeable jump scares to a criminal level and his characters behave in a way that will both confound and irritate anyone watching. For a film that is technically well made, taking itself so incredibly seriously, and with committed performances, it is a perplexing shame that it gets so much so very, very wrong in the process.
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