Ed's Review Dot Com

New Line Cinema, Blumhouse Productions, Management 360,

Ryan Shoos, Pfeifer Brown, Cassidy Gifford, Reese Mishler

A high school twenty years ago performed a play called “The Gallows”. But something went wrong, and a student was killed during the performance. In honor of the 20th anniversary of this horrible accident, the school drama director decides to re-perform “The Gallows” in honor of the student who was killed. A group of students decide to break into the school before the play to destroy the sets to stop the play, but once they are in the school, they find there is no way out, and something evil in the school is anxious to make them pay.

I personally think that there should be a law whereby a warning must be posted in ads, in the trailer, and at the theater when it’s a cheap ass handheld camera “found footage” piece of crap. I am done with these idiotic found footage movies. Damn you Blair Witch Project. If you had not made a bundle, everybody and his brother would not be trying to make a fortune duplicating what Blair Witch did. The cost of production on this thing must have been about 100 dollars. That being said, the story starts out really, really slow, but for the last hour, it’s really frightening. The horror aspect is pretty good, and that part was entertaining. The suspense is killing, and it really does have some great scares, and as a horror film it wasn’t bad. If it wasn’t for the shaky gut spinning camera shots of floors, walls, people’s feet, the camera being dropped, and other crappy gimmicks as opposed to good cinematography, it would be a decent film. But no. They had to go the cheap handheld camera route for the entire film, and I was sick of shaky video after the first 15 minutes. This is how to ruin a decent film. And did I say, I am sick of it? Anyway, if you are not bothered by motion sickness and don’t mind that you can’t see 90% of what is going on because the camera is pointing in the wrong direction, go for it, but I can’t recommend this for normal people with spatial awareness. If they had used a real camera and a tripod and some decent lighting effects, they would have had a winner, but this was just plain bad the way it was “filmed”. No, no, no.

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Camellia Entertainment, Evil Media Empire,

Kathy Baker, Giles Matthey, Roberto Aguire, Robin Williams, Bob Odenkirk, Eléonore Hendricks

Nolan Mack (Robin Williams) is a private bank employee who is a good husband in a loveless marriage of convenience. But his life feels hollow and empty. When he comes across a young hustler he’s strangely attracted to that life, and he tries to help, only he may be just facing his hidden desires and wishes for life. He’s definitely on a very destructive path.

This is a very dark and disturbed film. It’s tragic that this is the last film Robin Williams completed before his death. This is a very depressing role. This film is perhaps a story that should have been told, but it’s sadly just not a very good film. It’s sad that the most compelling reason to watch this movie is that it’s Robin’s last film. What a sad thing this is it. The fact that it’s all about him may be part of why the film depressed me so much watching it. I felt bad after watching it. I didn’t enjoy it. There is a theory that this is the film that drove Robin Williams over the edge. Gosh I hope not. But it was very, very hard for me to watch, and one of the few I wish I had skipped. His performance is excellent as usual, and the character is believable, but it was just so dark and sad.

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Guerilla Films,

Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill, Keith Agius, Luke McKenzie, Berynn Schwerdt, Catherine Terracini, Yure Covich

Barry’s (Jay Gallagher) turns to crap all in one day when the zombie apocalypse breaks out in the Australian bush. Barry’s sister Brooke (Bianca Bradley) has been kidnapped by a bunch of mask wearing military guys who are experimenting on her to find out why the virus doesn’t attack her. They found a hint of a certain secret that makes you immune to the disease, even if you are bitten by the devils. There are some other secrets too in fighting them that they find out along the way as Barry teams up with Benjamin (Leon Burchill) to fight their way through the hundreds of Zombies to try to rescue Brooke and put an end to epidemic.

This is an Australian film, and they did give it a go, I say. The actors worked very hard to try to pull this off, and they really gave their all to the project. Bianca was very nearly killed when a stunt went awry and she was very near a goner, but for a bit of luck. But the desire of the cast is not enough to make it a great movie, and there are some major flaws here. First off, the CGI was a joke. The zombies themselves were terrible. It looks like they went through an assembly line to turn out exactly the same zombie over and over again. The script is lacking and it’s basically pointless with hardly anything to liven things up. They seem to have taken a “lets make a zombie movie” and just run with it without much thought. As a result, they ended up with a really mediocre horror film that is just not worthy. Granted, this is a streaming movie and will likely be on demand and on cable TV as well as on Amazon and Netflix, but unless you are a major zombie fan who has seen every zombie movie and is completely caught up on Walking Dead and waiting for the new season, I’d recommend steering away from this one. Even if you’re a horror fan, this isn’t that frightening, just very predictable. I would skip it unless you fit into the zombie lovers society that I mentioned before. Otherwise you’ll probably be disappointed, as I was. I can give the actors an A for effort, but the rest of the crew is a bust.

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Bron Studios, Gary Sanchez Productions,

Thomas Mann, Joan Cusack, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Linda Cardellini, Tim Robbins, Loretta Devine, Wes Bentley, Alan Tudyk, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Alice Klieg (Kristin Wiig) is quite a bit off. She’s seeing a shrink and taking her meds and trying to live a normal life, but one day she wins the lottery and suddenly has a boatload of money. Alice is a fanatic for daytime TV, and when she see’s a public domain show on a small local station, she fires the shrink, stops taking the meds and buys herself a TV show called “Welcome to Me” which is all about herself. The folks at the TV station know they’re going under so they play along with this psycho lady, but things don’t go well for TV host Alice as she alienates everyone except the viewing public.

There is a quirky movie, and then there’s a QUIRKY movie. This is definitely QUIRKY

movie, that’s for sure. This is clearly written for Kristen Wiig as this looney lady is right in her wheelhouse. It was interesting and mildly funny film, but I think that at the end of Kiristen Wiig’s run on SNL it suffered from too much Kristen Wiig. I’m afraid this one suffers from the same thing, a bit too much of her. She started to get on my nerves after a while. There is a mix of humor and sadness, and it never got a decent balance between the two. It suffers from the inability to decide what it is. This film has a similar feel to UHF starring Weird Al Yankovic. UHF is a cult classic, but Weird knew that he could not carry every scene, so he brought in a bunch of supporting characters which made this such a pleasure to watch over and over again. They could have used that formula in this film too, as the few sideline characters are not used very well, not very funny or dramatic, and mostly a snooze-fest. That leaves Kristen having to carry every scene which is not really fair. I like Kristen and when she’s in an ensemble cast she is fantastic. This just heaped too much on her shoulders. I don’t recommend this one, as I didn’t find it really that special.

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Author: EdG

Emmett/Furla Films, Aperture Entertainment, Grindstone Entertainment,

Jason Patric, Bruce Willis, John Cusack, Rain, Jessica Lowndes, Johnathon Schaech, Gia Mantegna, 50 Cent

Paul (Jason Patric) used to be a mafia hit man, but has gotten away from the mob and is living peacefully as a mechanic. His daughter is in college, or he thinks she is, but he soon finds she has dropped out. Trying to track her down, he finds she has gone with a guy to New Orleans and has dropped out of sight, so Paul has to head back to New Orleans to find her. He soon finds out that an old rival leader, Omar (Bruce Willis) is behind the plot to kill Paul and he sends his best goons out to take him out.

This is not a big budget film by any means. Bruce Willis is in it, but not that much, and though he’s good when he’s on screen, most of the time he’s just a threat. John Cusack is also a bad guy in this film who isn’t bad, but isn’t that great either. Jason Patric has the largest role, but though the movie starts out pretty well, it slowly turns to a crawl. It’s not a horrible film at all, but it’s probably not worth the effort to seek it out. I can say that it’s very predictable, and the ending has no surprises. Also when it should be building up to a big finish it’s petering out to a fizzle. This is available in streaming and on cable, so if it came on, I wouldn’t mind watching it, but I was not overly impressed. Basically a few days after you’ll think of The Prince and can’t remember what it was about. It’s highly forgettable.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog