J*A*S*M

I liked the concept, I think it’s interesting, purposeful and stimulating. Hausner sticks to it so fiercely and persistently that at least half-way through it was already a soul crushing experience. And this despite the fact that I got the funny irony towards those useless human beings drowning in their own imaginary existential crises. Her previous film, Lourdes, was fun from beginning to end, but this one hurt.

After watching Ted Geoghegan film résumé so far (he’s credited as scriptwriter for several horror films of dubious quality), I didn’t have much trust in his directorial début, but We Are Still Here is actually really good. After all the Insidious, Sinister and The Woman in Black, this is an example of how to make a haunted house movie that will be at least interesting. At the beginning, the film relies mostly on the atmosphere, delivered by the good cinematography (Hussain is an experienced horror cinematographer), and the interesting contrast between the cold snowy exteriors and the warm colours of the interiors, including the scary cellar with some sort of portal to hell. The second positive aspect are the characters, they feel alive – finally a horror movie with protagonists that aren’t top models, but normal, ordinary people that you can worry about. The third positive aspect is the almost unexpectedly intense climax that blends several horror sub-genres. We Are Still Here made me happy and, unless the next six months are extremely good, I think it will end up in this year’s TOP 10.

Solidly made, but this time unfortunately it’s an utterly uninteresting safe bet. The first one laid down the rules and introduced us to the Further and the second one expanded the story in an interesting way, but the third instalment just follows the path set by the trend in ghost/exorcism movies and doesn’t have anything that I didn’t already see in the previous two episodes, and better. For Whannell’s standards, the script this time is woefully unoriginal and unsurprising. Lin Shaye is still great, but she alone is not enough for a higher rating, especially if she lacks the support of the other stars, who unfortunately deliver weak performances. The demon is also great, but we don’t get to know much about it. The film is chock full of jump-scares – unfortunately, I must add, because they always erase any signs of an atmosphere. And the worst is that they go nowhere, the demon shows up, says Boo! and then leaves. Throughout the film I never felt that the heroes were in any sort of danger, that the creators will really let the demon kill them. A barking dog doesn’t bite. That’s probably the biggest complaint for a horror movie.

Infobaden is a lot of fun in written form, but as a show on Stream it’s weirdly tortuous and lacking a punch. The unconvincing introductions are particularly harmful to the jokes (most of the reports have pretty good ideas, even if at least some of them are recycled from the written texts). But the funniest thing there is actually the crawl bar in the lower part of the screen.

What to do with a horror film that’s not scary? What to do with an exploitation flick that’s not unsettling? What to do with a comedy that’s not funny? What to do with a satire that doesn’t hit the target? A simple answer: don’t watch it. If anything, it should be acknowledged that each episode of The Human Centipede is different, and Final Sequence takes things in a self-parodying and satirical way. Six unfortunately (for me) is on a different humour wave than I, so the comedy lead by the overly dramatic performance of Dieter Laser felt incredibly cringe-worthy (really, some of his screaming deliveries made me feel almost sorry for the creators), and he also lacks the intellectual capacity to deliver a non-banal and non-shallow satire about the socio-political situation in the USA. Or at least he didn’t show it in this film.

Blomkamp the director trying hard to compensate for the incompetence of Blomkamp the screenwriter. Chappie is nice to look at, it has some good moments, but when you start thinking about it… :-( When you take the stories of each of the characters away from the plot, their behaviour is well… a stupidity race with a photo finish. Every single one of the blokes in there do the best they can to excel in this discipline.

God bless Hostel! A wannabe cool (no, it’s not cool) and tough (no, it’s not that tough, either) teenage exploitation flick with lobotomised characters. LaSardo is on the verge of parody, Sara Fabel is way further, as well as the final twist.

The money spent on this film could have been used for something more useful, like, for example, providing Marcus Nispel with long term psychiatric care.

From a wide range of sources of inspiration they didn’t manage to put together a compact whole. There’s a little of Event Horizon, a little of The Thing, a little of Solaris, a little of Aliens, a little of Pandorum… and the count doesn’t end there. Taking inspiration from older works is a common thing in sci-fi and in itself that wouldn’t be a problem. But Infini, despite its unquestionably good craftsmanship and beautiful visuals, is unable to draw the viewer into its world (at least in my case). Watching it was such a fragmented experience, I was always telling myself in some scene “yeah, this is good, I’ve seen this…” I was unable to get into the story, the film kept me at arm’s length all the time.

Arnold fans probably won’t be very happy with this atypical role for him in an atypical film, but I think he managed it well. On an emotional level it works mainly because nobody speaks too much (which is good, especially for Arnold), everyone goes around broody and sad, suffering in silence. The plot is basically non-existent, it’s just a moody 80-minute farewell to a daughter. Anyone willing to get in the mood, will enjoy it. 7/10