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gaz-gerrard
Reviews
A Night in the Woods (2011)
It's like that deja vu thing all over again...
If you get the feeling you've "seen it all before" when watching this movie, it's because you have. It's The Blair Witch Project. Same plot. Same character dynamics (one girl, two guys), same found footage style, same 'locals giving the background behind the evil that will ultimately befall the group', same directionless running around, same screaming, same distant calls for help...
The only difference is that, instead of swapping between film camera and video camera, it's been brought up to date by switching between camcorder footage and mobile phone footage. And that's it. I can only imagine that they got funding for this movie by pitching it to some rich recluse with nothing better to do with his cash. That or someone really thought that what the world of horror needs is a remake of The Blair Witch Project but with worse weather and worse acting.
Prometheus (2012)
Looks great, but that's it.
I am a huge fan of Alien, and Aliens is OK for what it is, but everything linked to the franchise since then has been awful beyond words. I was hopeful that this prequel - no matter how much they tried to make it stand alone - would go some way to getting back to the awe and inspiration of the first movie. Sadly, it doesn't - not even close.
It looks good. The effects are excellent, the scenics are inspired and the designs - from costumes to the spaceships to the planets - are breathtaking. And I'm afraid that's it. The plot lacks any genuine direction, leaving more questions at the end than answers, and has more holes in it than a string vest. The stellar cast struggle to give their one-dimensional characters any semblance of depth, to the extent where I really couldn't care who died or how.
Overall, the film doesn't have enough action to sustain fans of Aliens, lacks the foreboding atmosphere of Alien, and probably stands alongside Alien vs Predator and other such drivel as 'watchable providing you're not paying any real attention'.
Stoned Dead (2006)
Aspiresto be a b-movie, but only achieves a Y?
You know how sometimes movies are so bad, they're good? Well, this one isn't. It's so bad it's awful. It's done on a low budget, that's fair enough, but that doesn't excuse acting so wooden that tree preservation orders got slapped on it, sound so poorly recorded you'd think a rattlesnake got mixed up with the boom mike somewhere along the way, and plot holes so big you could get an aircraft carrier through them without touching the sides. The film was made in 2006, but everything about it screams 1980s, with a repetitive synthesizer soundtrack that must have been found on the cutting floor of a discarded episode of Magnum PI. The best thing about the entire film is the song at the end that recaps the plot, which manages to rhyme "mission" with "commission" on a regular basis. It's the sort of song that would score zero in the Eurovision Song Contest, but it's the highlight of the movie, and one that will save you the bother of having to actually watch it.