Ed's Review Dot Com

Blumhouse Productions, Chapter One Films,

Kevin Bacon, Radha Mitchell, Lucy Fry, David Mazouz, Ming-Na Wen, Paul Reiser

The Taylor family comes home from the Grand Canyon bringing something back! The family consists of the Father (Kevin Bacon), and the Mother (Radha Mitchell) and two children, anxiety ridden drama queen Stephanie (Lucy Fry) and autistic son Michael (David Mazouz). An ancient curse has befallen the family causing havoc and destruction unless the find out the cause of the curse and rid themselves of it before it’s too late.

This is a solid horror film with surprisingly good acting from all the major characters. I expected, walking in, a cheesy B horror movie with no budget and no special effects. That’s not what i got. Surprisingly, the acting was good, the effects were really well done, and the suspense was on point. What is holding this movie back is the fact that there are only so many horror films to write and it’s really, really hard not to look like a rip off of something else. The plot of this film has been done many times over. Still, I enjoy a good horror film, and this one satisfied me. I did not run out screaming it’s praises as the best film I’ve ever seen, but it was exactly what I wanted. The suspense was real, and the story made sense. There was a general feeling of dread over what would or could happen to this poor family that grew and built up until the end. Meanwhile, there was some good old fashioned scares that came from things you didn’t expect heightened by a loud sound at the right moment. I typically call these cheap scares, but in this case they worked, although I’m not sure I could put a finger on why. There are a lot of haters out there toward this film, mostly because of the similarity to other films of the same genre, but I don’t see how this could be helped. I enjoyed the film, I admit to it’s flaws, but I didn’t really case as I had a good time and that’s all that mattered. If you’re a fan of horror, then this is not a bad investment of your time.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Blumhouse Productions, Chapter One Films, Lionsgate,

Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Donald Glover, Evan Peters, Sarah Bolger

Frank (Mark Duplass) and Zoe (Olivia Wilde) lead a team of researchers who have developed a formula that can bring the newly dead back to life, to allow medical teams to have more time to save someone’s life who dies on the table. They test it on a dog and it works. But they broke quite a few rules and are about to lose the rights to the discovery as well as the grant for their research. But the serum has an unexpected side effect that brings down the wrath of Satan on the team in this Horror film from Blumhouse and Lionsgate.

This is a pretty decent horror flick. Not exactly a zombie film, but in the same genre as a number of mad scientists who can bring folks back from the dead, all the way back to the original Frankenstein. It is about a 6 on the 1-10 scale where 10 is the most horrifying, and 1 is a mild kids movie. It has it’s moments, and it’s a relatively well done feature. Certainly the leads, Mark and Olivia, do a decent job of carrying the movie. Olivia especially makes a good transformation from her original character to the end of the film where everyone has lost it. The story has some rather rich (for this type of film) back story on why the things are happening which kind of caught me by surprise. It’s fast paced and quite suspenseful, and I have no problem with that. The only real complaint I have with the film is that it’s a bit derivative of so many other movies, and there wasn’t a really unique twist in this story. You could have predicted how it will go by looking at the cover. Still, I did enjoy it, so I think it’s worth a rental if you are into Horror films. I can mildly recommend this for fans of the genre.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog