Cinemassacre's Monster Madness (TV Series) 28 Days Later (2021) User Reviews

Rolfe Sinks to a New Low

[cassandrawilliams-12817 · 1/10 · 5 October 2021]

James has been getting lazier and more entitled for years, exporting nearly all the writing, production and editing of his main series to the folks at Screenwave. It's sad but somewhat understandable. However, with this video he exposed two things, both of which reflect badly on his character and company (Cinemassacre). First, he revealed that he can no longer be bothered to write the scripts for what is billed as his own opinion piece, and only a five minute one at that. This implies he probably does less for his other projects than we previously suspected and that his "reviews" are disingenuous fakes. Second, we now know that Screenwave has absolutely zero quality control, transparency or accountability that they would let this plagiarism get by at all, and then go on to cover it up. In this venture, they deleted comments talking about what happened, then offered no less than 3 different contradictory excuses via Justin Silverman (Cinemassacre producer) plus an unlisted non-apology on an alternate channel by James.

If it was James who plagarized, as many suspect it was, the company cannot fire the only person viewers care about. That means the brand "Cinemassace," if it exists at all in the future, will be an undead zombie. No one can ever trust Rolfe again, including old videos. If it was this new guy Newt, as the official statements have implied, then why isn't he fired already? How is PLAGARISM not a fireable offence? What standards, if any, can Rolfe/Cinemassacre claim to have if they continue to associate with him and Screenwave?

This whole debacle has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt just how little Rolfe cares about his fans or reputation anymore. It exposes the clown show that he has entrusted Cinemassacre's IPs with. It's really sad to see this man, who was once emblematic of the potential for independent content creators in the internet era, to descend to such mediocrity. I really expected better of you, James.

The nail in the coffin for Monster Madness

[Rautus · 1/10 · 11 September 2022]

I remember back in 2007 when Monster Madness started, it was a novel idea to dedicate the 31 days of October to cover various kinds of horror movies, from classics from the 30s or 40s, to cheesy or violent 80s horror, to Kaiju films like Gojira. It was an absolute treat for passionate horror fans made by an equally passionate horror fan.

In 2021, it was decided to resurrect the series and do a whole month's worth of reviews where James would once again share his "thoughts" and "opinions" of various horror movies, this time from across the world. There was only one slight snag, this is modern James Rolfe and, as you would expect, he didn't have the time to write 31 scripts for 31 short reviews, despite him claiming that he was busy working on the scripts, but then this is the same guy who claimed he was "on fire" with the 200th episode of AVGN and we all know how that turned out too. If he did work on the scripts, he most likely, at the very least, wrote a few paragraphs down. The bulk of the scripts were instead written by Screenwave staff member and attention/pity seeker Newt Wallen. Now, it's already problematic that James Rolfe can't even be bothered to write down his own personal opinion of a movie anymore for a short 5 minute video, but that laziness was the least of the problems with the Monster Madness revival when it was discovered that the script for the very first episode of the new season, 28 Days Later, was straight up stolen from an old 2003 review of the film. To make matters worse, little thought or effort was put into even trying to hide the fact it was plagiarized. And James, with his lack of time to check the script, or anyone else at Screenwave for that matter, simply reads what's written in his typical lifeless manner, spouting such golden phrases like "crazed cannibal killers" and "mankind's experiments go haywire resulting in destructive results" without a single care or shred of respect for himself, his fans or the channel.

With a terrible start like that, the rest of the season suffered; including James who had to apparently go full force and rewrite the scripts for the other 30 episodes in case Newt had plagiarized anything for them too.

If there's anything to take from this it's never be a lazy hack and entrust your work to someone else who isn't passionate about the project as you're supposed to be, and if you do, make sure to go over their work to ensure it's of the highest quality, and if not, tweak it to make it so. Otherwise you get a nasty blemish like this episode which will never go away, regardless how hard Screenwave tries to hide it and pretend it never happened.

So, can we expect to see a Monster Madness this year or any other year? Unless James finds the time to write them himself and actually share his actual thoughts on a horror film, and put a little enthusiasm and care into his work, probably not. But maybe that's for the best. Do we really want James to drive the nail even further into the coffin he created for Monster Madness? As sad as it is, it's probably for the best to just look back on the classic episodes and enjoy what we had from a much better era in Cinemassacre. Nothing but good memories there.