I feel like changing the name of this series from “shitty reviews” since I feel like it might be giving people the wrong impression and maybe I should be including the series name in the title. Unfortunately, I’m drawing a blank, and near-literals don’t feel correct. Quickies? Opinion Time? Experiential Assessment? I don’t know. How’s “The Movie Report”? I guess that means the other part of this is “The Music Report”? Hmm.

Anyway, have some capital letters!

horror in the high desert 3
I’ll compare this one to music. You know when you’re a fan of a genre of music and you discover a local band does that specific genre of music, but they’re new and deliver albums that are kind of a mess? So sharing that band with others feels a bit off, unless you know that person also really enjoys the genre? This franchise is on par with that. It’s fine, because I really like horror, but if I didn’t I would find these movies pretty frustrating. At this point I’m invested in the story and am curious to know where it goes, if anywhere, but… yeah. The ending made me think of The Happening, so there’s that.

the beyond
Found footage style sci-fi. Earth is dealing with a mysterious alien thing and it just so happens there’s an astronaut-related advancement going on at the same time, so “we” end up sending astronauts to investigate. It was very watchable and the IMDB rating is mean.

kinds of kindness
Three compelling stories featuring mostly the same people playing different characters going through some fucked up shit. Each story is odd and leads to the protagonist hitting some emotional wall in an otherwise very frustrating situation. It’s definitely interesting.

longlegs
I spent a lot of this one thinking about how in Con Air the guy is getting released from prison where he will then promptly celebrate his daughter’s birthday on July 14th. There’s a scene in it where the alpha prisoner reads the daughter’s letter and puts on a voice, saying “mah birfday is joo-lie fo’teenf” or whatever. As soon as I heard one of the kids in Longlegs was born 7/14, I heard that mocking voice the entire time I watched this. That said, this was a fun horror movie, especially if you’re already aware of the many Nic Cage tropes and are basically waiting for the entirely unnecessary scenes where he has a dramatic outburst and makes it weird. This got compared to Silence of The Lambs early on, but don’t go into it expecting that. It’s a loose comparison.

a quiet place day one
A fresh take on the franchise to the point that it felt like a separate idea from the first Quiet Place movies. A lot of movies and TV shows that take place there over-focus on how special New York City is, but the specificity this one had felt less like old news. Characters were all solid. No bad ASL. Plenty watchable.

trap
I know the main guy here from my teen years seeing The Faculty, playing a key good guy character in that movie. His pretty face nice guy dad vibes lead to a willful deception early in this movie before the “…oh” moment strikes. The typical M. Night elements are there but they’re layered under a better plot than some movies. I really liked seeing a movie that so realistically covered the experience of seeing a big venue concert. It’s still a movie with a bit of fibbing to carry forth the plot, but great job with that.

immaculate
Do we need more nun, possession, devil, cult, evil forces, religious horror movies? Absolutely not. But I watched this, and it happened. It was a little better than some from this entire genre of awful, but it’s still what it is. I asked tarot about it before I watched it and it effectively gave me a shrug, “yeah it’s a devil baby movie, I don’t know what more you want me to say here”.

oddity
Too slow. I had to restart it three times to finish it. There are select pieces – the fucking mummy thing? – that might have struck me had I not been bored already. I think this movie is meant more for an audience who doesn’t normally watch horror, who are more into creepypasta and campfire stories about the creepy ghosts oh no not the creepy ghost yep that’s the whole story here’s a flashlight under my chin for emphasis. Maybe I just don’t like ghost stories.

the deliverance
A fairly realistic depiction of a family dealing with dramatics at home that takes a turn for the looney. Some religious propaganda vibes near the end, sort of like in the sense of AA selling god on folks. Glenn Close says some funny things if you need a dark laugh. Got me thinking I haven’t seen The People Under The Stairs in a while, so, there’s that.

the bikeriders
I was expecting to be reminded of my dad (a pre-and-post vietnam biker) when watching this, and sure enough, I thought of him the entire time. The core message of folks being what they are – that regardless of specifics, they don’t change – hit me hard. Personal takes aside, it was a quality movie.

the substance
One note: “jesus h christ”. What I wrote immediately after still stands: “Do you like body horror? Are you a masochist? Do you wish David Cronenberg would personally show up to your house to tell you a bedtime story worthy of boobie nightmares? You will like this movie. It nailed the genre and went the fuckin’ distance. If you can handle gore, do it.” I may punish myself watching this a second time in the upcoming months to ensure I didn’t just need a two hour vacation from my reality that day, but I think it was my favorite movie this year. If you wish the tv show Physical would turn into the movie Freaked and had a NIN soundtrack, go for it. Styrofoam cup and “Fiddle Faddle?” this whole thing.

humanist vampire seeking consenting suicidal person
I’ve been putting this one off a while because I was trying to avoid romance. Oh, wait, cool, no romance here. This has a target audience of teens/college-aged, but it works outside of that context. I liked it. Someone compared the vampire here to being demisexual and that’s a pretty good take. If you liked the movie Fido, you’ll get something out of this, and vice versa.

chime
“WTF?” I had to look up what the hell I watched afterwards. The atmosphere of this short movie is great, but the logic is MIA. Having read other people’s words, maybe that was the point and I was looking at the movie at a surface level, but the initial scene and title puts off sonic pandemic vibes so that’s what I was expecting. Maybe it was more general nonsense all the things. I still don’t know. I did notice the background of one scene being weird but couldn’t pin why.

And all caught up for the moment. Will I spend the next month inhaling horror movies like I did the last one? We shall see.