Change Your Image
thalassafischer
1- I hate this film and give it the lowest rating with a severe sense of purpose.
2- This is merely unwatchable and I really dislike it.
3- Pretty bad, I have my reasons, and I'm annoyed you like it so much.
4- Meh, this is the kind of thing basic cable buys as filler flicks.
5- Watchable but not good.
6- Average okay but flawed.
7- Good solid film, acknowledge the work done on this film, recommended.
8- Very good, I really like this and would rewatch it again.
9- Excellent movie, almost perfect
10- My favorite movies
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Estigma (1980)
Visually Stunning, Too Bad About the Plot
Estigma a.k.a. Stigma in English (and that's as in religious stigmata, not social taboo) would have been a masterpiece had it been silent. The language dubbing is some of the worst I've encountered and I recommend that you watch it in Spanish even if you don't speak Spanish. The plot is so ridiculous it won't matter.
But the film is GORGEOUS - it's exactly what I look for in old horror movies. The settings are superb. The eerie darkness and gloom coloring the entire film is haunting and shadows are used artfully in a way that can only be accomplished in the old 70s style with celluloid.
I even liked the Victorian twist at the end, but the whole sub-plot with the 30 year old woman enabling the teenaged axe murderer then having the audacity to hook up with him only served to remind me that at the end of the day this is Eurotrash cinema.
Holocaust 2000 (1977)
Awesomely Bad!
This poor man's version of The Omen somehow escaped my radar until right now, despite it being right up my alley - you know, the alley filled with gold curtains and olive green settees.
The main flaw here is that Kirk Douglas is a disgustingly old 61 and looks every second of it next to the 19 year old college student cast as his love interest. But I think Holocaust 2000 wanted to drive home that his grotesquely greedy CEO character was pure evil.
I definitely thought this flick was closer to the truth about global warming and climate change than its comparatively iconic 70s antichrist thriller and I very much appreciated that angle. About half of the stars here are for apocalypse accuracy and the rest are for crystal chandeliers.
Alone with You (2021)
Disturbing, Strong Acting
I thought Alone with You was sufficiently disturbing because the main character is so confused and seems to be slipping in and out of a dream state. Of course, I know this is NOT how mental illness works - it would never be this detailed of a hallucination, nor go on this long, this movie is more of a vivid nightmare. If you can accept it as a vivid nightmare, it's really unsettling.
The situations that Charlie faces are all ugly - cheated on, rejected, trapped in her apartment and can't get out, and that horrific scene with the cat I could have totally done without.
Still, I would have given this movie a higher rating if there were some kind of explanation or sense of reality by the end. As it stands, Alone with You is totally surreal and open to interpretation.
Also, Charlie - the main character - is obsessed with this ugly, mean girl named Simone, that's one of the most irritating things about the movie. Her girlfriend (or rather ex-gf....or dead gf?) is weird looking and has a selfish, abrasive personality. So that makes the whole thing even yuckier, I wondered if that was intentional or if I just perceived the characters that way.
Amulet (2020)
I Don't Understand the Low Rating Here
Amulet is a slow-burn, truly creepy, thinking person's horror film. Perhaps it's just too arthouse or subtle for the average horror fan, and too gross for the average fan of indie dramas. I suppose it is a bizarre mix of sub-genres in this beautiful film that I personally thought worked really well.
Carla Juri is amazing as the seemingly naive and overly religious adult daughter who behaves more like a repressed, obedient teenager than the 30-ish age range she actually is. I want to see this actress in more things because it's an unusual tension to pull off so well.
Alec Secareanu also gives a fine performance as a deeply traumatized military veteran from somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Lord of Misrule (2023)
People Do Not Act Like This
We have a vicar who rarely acts very religious (except in church) and drops F-bombs casually on multiple occasions. Her spouse seems like a bitter atheist and will not pray with her. I mean, they seem more like an average mismatched couple - one theistic, one not - than AN ACTUAL VICAR OF A CHURCH and her husband.
People get angry and then calm down within seconds. They don't have much respect for the vicar and treat her more like a random crazy woman than anything else. The children even start chanting in a vulgar way, gleefully, without a hint of fear or embarrassment at acting that way in front a church pastor.
I feel like Lord of Misrule is a patchwork attempt to mimic other, older horror movies. Like mixing 1970s The Wicker Man with 2000s Silent Hill and a random urinating scene like the original version of The Exorcist.
Lord of Misrule does have atmosphere and lovely folk horror aesthetics yet the writing and character development are significantly wanting.
Quill (2004)
Informative and a Bit Sad
Quill is a very instructive documentary-like film about how a guide dog for the blind is trained to work and why certain dogs are chosen while others are not able to do the work. The director intentionally chose a curmudgeonly, clueless middle-aged blind man to illustrate mistakes that can be made during guide dog training on behalf of the handlers. I would definitely show (or at least recommend) this film in a class about Animal Assisted Interventions or Service Animals at any educational level.
On the other hand, Quill is intentionally made as sad as possible, with a dramatic illness and death of the blind handler before a satisfying ending where the old dog dies a natural, peaceful death at 12 in the home of the volunteers who fostered him and socialized him (a real thing) for the first year of his life before he was old enough to be trained. YMMV.
The Pope's Exorcist (2023)
Good Story, Terrible Execution
I do not care about the mother, daughter or son at all. They had about 30 seconds of character development. A lot of dumb references to the original Exorcist movie from 1973 were incorporated quickly and poorly (you're all gonna die, neurological exam, writing on stomach, et al.) before the exorcist was mysteriously called in - how? There's zero explanation on how word traveled to Rome from Castillo, Spain in like...a day...back in 1987 before there was widely available Internet. Not exactly the sort of thing that would have been on the television news.
The story is worth telling but everything is so heavily CGI'd up that the atmosphere borders on trash despite the Mediterranean location. How does this rate so high on Rotten Tomatoes? Please, someone tell me.
Animal Control (2023)
Can You Stop Memorizing My Arms?
Animal Control is an ensemble cast of eccentric characters who all have serious boundary issues. Lovable Shred is a little too interested in being friends with his handsome-but-aging work partner, ex-cop Frank who is so bitter and hateful he gives Basil Fawlty a run for his money. Green card chaser Victoria literally wants to sleep with everyone - male or female - and boss Emily is so needy and awkward that she just wants the entire office to like her. Patel is so self-centered he's the only person with the potential to keep his nose in his own business regarding his ever-growing family but he talks non-stop about his vasectomy and his amateur interest in real estate. Templeton is the worst of them all, committing what is obviously sexual harassment and borderline stalking, but this is barely registered by the rest of the staff who already hate his guts because he's such a fundamentally terrible human being.
You'll either love it or hate it. It's kind of like Parks and Rec...but with rabies.
V/H/S/85 (2023)
SO Much Better if You Don't Pay Attention
I know this is going to sound really bizarre but V/H/S/85 is totally creepy if you put it on a TV "in the background" while you're doing other things, because many of the scenes are genuinely surreal or disturbing if you just randomly look up now and then. I started watching this movie with the sincere intention of watching it closely, like I would with most films, but it just wasn't solid enough in the first vignette to capture my interest. Maybe if I had turned this flick off impulsively I would have given it a much lower rating, but instead I just let it play and wow what an unsettling ambiance this style of film making creates.
I think it helps that I'm old enough to remember 80s television but also young enough that I was a child at the time, so there's something a bit jarring about seeing clips of real commercials blended in from almost 40 years ago that I had half-forgotten. This technique ups the authenticity factor but not if you pay attention too closely.
The Banishing (2020)
Title Does Not Compute
The Banishing is a supernatural haunting film that is fair to middling in atmosphere. It's not bad. The complexity of the characters' life stories adds a layer of intrigue, there's a mystery in simply figuring out how their background falls into place in the context of the story.
Interesting points are raised about violent misogyny in religious cults, cowardice in the face of evil, and the last rise of fascism (because we're experiencing another one now). The themes addressed in this flick made my rating go from a 6 to a 7, in all fairness. I agree with the conceptual viewpoints even if the execution is a little meh.
See Know Evil (2018)
Touching and Informative
Davide Sorrenti was, in some ways, a nepo baby, having met stylists, models and photographers through his mom and older brother who moved before him in the fashion world. But lifelong challenges to his health and his natural gift for a melancholy documentary aesthetic shaped his art briefly into something that is still moving to behold.
I think there's also some important information included here that corrects the mass media trend towards criticizing so-called "heroin chic." I can say as someone who was a young person in the 90s that it never looked that way to me - I never liked Kate Moss or especially got into the particulars of how certain images reflected the drug world. The photographs often struck me as a form of Gothic romanticism, kind of a Neo-Victorian revival of the street urchin and/or the vaguely tubercular vampire look.
As people interviewed in this documentary point out, Davide's sincere love of photography was reflected in empathetic, captured moments in time of real life on the street, and how he reveled in seeing the essence of a person - including their flaws - in his photography. I honestly remember this aesthetic as being heavily linked to grunge, which is a philosophical antidote to the corporate capitalist, power-mad 80s.
Highly recommended if you're interested in art or photography from the era. Davide seemed like an awesome person, though I had no idea who he was until this documentary. I had only seen his famous photographs, which is fascinating and perhaps troubling - that Davide Sorrenti's art is not always recognized as being his.
Infinity Pool (2023)
A Point That Did Not Need to Be Made
Rich people can get away with murder as long as they can pay for it. Well, gosh dern it Opie, you don't say?
That's the whole point of Infinity Pool. In a capitalist society where worthless soulless people who aren't especially brilliant (and are in some cases quite stupid or just mentally ill) can have loads of money, horrible people do as they please because the poor suffer so much due to capitalist inequality, they'll take the money they desperately need in return.
The problem with Infinity Pool is that it keeps making this point with the repetitive echo of sickness and sociopathy with no apparent solution to the problem (guillotines, anyone?)
The Infinity Pool seems to deaden the criminal each time they're copied. So by the time they're doubled a few times they're just inhuman monsters.
I feel like this movie was made for sociopaths and psychopaths to enjoy. There was no other point to it. I stopped watching about halfway through and good lord do I hate Mia Goth.
Unwelcome (2022)
Annoying
Unwelcome is supposedly a horror comedy but I've got a feeling that the parts which I found disgusting, nerve-wracking or annoying were the filmmaker's idea of "funny." Gross bathroom jokes, mean ignorant bullies, and blatant sexism dominate the script offering the effect of taking on the characters' day-to-day stresses and hassles with home repairs and obnoxious neighbors. This is not my idea of humor and it's also not scary at all. If it weren't for the adult themes and language, the horror aspects are more or less like a children's or young adult novel with gremlins. The husband is beyond unlikable (the old patronizing husband/boyfriend who doesn't believe his wife/girlfriend trope who mansplains to her why she's hormonal and/or seeing things) and the wife isn't likable enough to sympathize with to the extent necessary to keep me interested in this movie. Maybe it's just me.
Smile (2022)
Surprisingly Creepy but Could Be Better
I found many aspects of Smile much more disturbing than expected, which gave it a great foundation for a real adult horror movie. The premise seemed goofy to me, like something designed to scare teens who believe in urban legends, but the greater concept when executed carries some weight ...at least for the first half or a little more of the movie.
I thought too little was made of Rose's killing of the cat, Mustache. That wasn't a minor incident, it wasn't like she accidentally wrapped a dead rat or some roadkill for her nephew: she MURDERED HER PET and gave it to her family as a child's birthday present. Her fiance and sister seemed upset with her, but not to the degree that I thought the situation warranted. I honestly found it weird that Rose was allowed to run around and gather investigative info about her condition even for as long as she did.
The underlying theme of suicide, murder and madness being passed through trauma is legit but I'm sorry I think the movie kind of fell apart the longer it went on. The fact that she left her mom to die was seriously messed up too, I think more should have been made of that as well. There's a real pattern here with Rose killing off her loved ones, no matter how passive-aggressive her role.
By the time we got to the big confrontation in her childhood home with the giant demon I was like "oh my CGI." I can very much see how that scene looked pretty cool in theaters, much more so than on a smaller screen at home but overall it seemed like the sort of thing that will scare older children and teens more than adults.
I also cared so little about Rose by the end I didn't care about her dramatic speech to her ex-boyfriend. Lots of great build up in this flick for a disappointing anti-climax.
End of Term (2021)
BBC Cop Show? Failed Art Student?
The aesthetics of this film are not great for a flick ostensibly about artists. Everything is quite manufactured and middle brow, nothing screamed talent to me - perhaps the idea was to make fun of people who major in art who end up peaking senior year, never to be heard from again. End of Term is not "atmospheric," I felt that they couldn't even get the setting right. The artist-turned-serial-killer's house looked about twenty years old and nothing special; and the students had terrible taste in decor for such "creative" minds.
Otherwise it looks and feels like a slow moving cop show filmed by BBC TV. It has that Channel 4/PBS sheen. I only kept watching for the mystery factor, at least they managed to drag out the particulars of the plot to keep the audience guessing. But it wasn't an especially fun ride. Forgettable, not recommended, but I've seen worse.
Marrowbone (2017)
Great Movie, Very Weak Ending
I was hoping for a complex ghost story and instead got something else that is entirely different. Marrowbone is atmospheric, touching and dramatic. The acting is great and the story is intriguing. The mystery unfolds in a very gradual way making for an absorbing viewing experience.
However, I have to agree with psychiatrist at the end of the movie. I find it appalling - disgusting really - and misogynistic to confine the intelligent, sensitive character of Allie to a sick man like Jack in the middle of nowhere. Of course I felt sorry for him and had deep sympathy for him. But the idea that she should marry him was utterly repulsive. Seriously.
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)
The Main Character is Unbearable to Watch
Call me crazy, but I like horror movies where I (at least somewhat) like
or empathize with the main characters; that is one of many reasons why I prefer atmospheric giallos or religious and supernatural 1970s horror over the flashy slasher flicks of the 1980s. While Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things is from all the way back in 1972, and definitely has some truly oogie atmosphere with the dead people at the cemetery (that's what the meager three stars are for) the "director" character is a complete narcissist. He's the kind of guy who cuts people off when they speak to him at work or school, and/or who increasingly loudly talks over his girlfriend when he doesn't like what she's saying. In my head he became "Uhm, acktualllly...." guy less than halfway through this poverty-level low-budget groaner.
I see that this is a cult film, I was hoping it might be amusing, along the lines of Andy Warhol Presents Blood for Dracula from 1974... but naaaahhh.
The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
Weird Evangelical Hallmark Horror
If the Hallmark Channel made a horror movie, this would be it. Undue attention is given to an annoying Evangelical family - complete with an angry toxic masculinity dad - and the daughter is perhaps one of the most un-charismatic young actresses I've had the displeasure to behold.
Ellen Burstyn is back as a kind of granny New Age writer - still firmly unbelieving, of course, as if - but rightly Regan has gone No Contact from her narcissistic mother, who spent her life capitalizing on books about Regan where Chris has supposedly become an "expert" of exorcists. While maintaining her agnostic ways. My eyes could not roll back in my head far enough.
The dialogue, oh the dialogue, it's so terrible. The writing is just so, so bad.
I did try to give this movie a chance. I really told myself that I wouldn't expect it to be The Exorcist or even Exorcist III but the Blumhouse just cannot manage to make a good horror film. Normally when I see Blumhouse, I run, knowing some soulless tripe meant to entertain tweens is about to unfold.
The beginning actually wasn't bad. It's just the rest of this unnecessarily long terrible movie that's nearly impossible to sit through.
The Exorcist (1973)
Psychological Drama on Faith and Parent-Child Relationships
As an adult watching The Exorcist it is easy to see how the author of the novel, William Peter Blatty, insisted it wasn't horror as a genre. The human relationship with God is reflected in Chris MacNeil's god-like devoted, desperate love for her "lost" child who had been over-taken by an evil demon - even as Regan violently attacked her, spat obscenities and generally caused destruction all around her, Chris as a mother only had her child's best interest at heart. Conversely, Father Damien's guilty abandonment of his sick and senile elderly mother reflects the human guilt of a Christian or other theistic person who is lacking faith. It's the principle symbol of The Exorcist: lost, evil humans lured by Satan still fiercely loved by God and the modern human's guilty, doubting relationship to an ancient and seemingly ineffectual God. And within that primary theme, a battle between good and evil play out.
I think given this context, it is unsurprising that 21st century young adults born into atheism are not frightened by The Exorcist and rather see it at best as Blatty originally intended it.
On the other hand, William Friedkin obsessively crafted an eerie atmospheric film thick with misery and darkness. While I'm not as frightened of this film as I was as a young teenager, Regan's demon make-up is still one of the most terrifying faces in horror. For all of their big talk, I don't think even the most jaded horror fan wants to wake up next to the life-sized stand-in mannequin of "possessed Regan" now on display somewhere in a museum. There's something primitive about the angry, carnivorous expression with glowing eyes befitting a large wild animal and the incongruous, bitter chain smoker's voice emitting from a child's mouth.
And if that doesn't scare you, just know that nine real-life deaths were associated with the making of The Exorcist, and an actual serial killer was accidentally chosen for a minor role in the hospital scenes, only apprehended several years later to director Friedkin's shock and surprise.
Agnes (2021)
Have the Critics Lost Their Minds?
I was hopeful when I read critical reviews that were stairways above the average viewer opinion. I thought oh this will be great, but weird - not mainstream. Well, Agnes is not great.
One critic had the temerity to compare this dog and pony show to The Love Witch. As if! If only the director of this sad little film had half the talent of Anna Biller.
Agnes has its moments - but it's just that, disjointed moments. There are some cool scenes here and there. But in general this indie flick tries too hard but constantly misses the mark. I got what they were going for...but they never quite got there. Why pretend we can see what we can guess the director imagined? It's their job to make it happen.
It did not happen.
De lift (1983)
Diametrically Opposed to Everything I Want
The Lift is extraordinary in its depths of disappointment. Or at least that's how I felt anticipating a deliciously haunting tale of Early 80s high rise horror. This piece of garbage is nothing of the kind, instead it's some neon-bathed minimalist aesthetic featuring lots of levers, gears, pulleys and primitive computer technology. It is the opposite of what I was expecting, here I am hoping for some ghosts, demons and/or ancient curses accented by heavy dark wood, maximalist Mid-Century antiques cluttering up a dusty old 19th century elegant hotel-cum-office-building...and got some loser mechanic having an emotional affair with a morally bankrupt journalist while surrounded by all that is corporate, ugly and man-made. Yuck. Then to add insult to injury, the plot ends up being some hokey 1950s Blob-esque "mad science."
The Accursed (2021)
Nothing Special
Come for the promise of some Eastern European feminist witchcraft, end up staying for some middling pseudo-70s atmosphere.
The Accursed is boring and the presentation of magic and mysticism is the kind of thing you'd find in old children's books not adult horror films. The mix of Practical Magic style goofiness with a murderous family curse make for strange and ultimately incompatible bedfellows.
I don't hate this movie as much as some reviewers because the aesthetic is okay and the acting is decent for people handed a script that contains fairy tale spells and animate, sentient creeping vines.
The Hopewell Haunting (2023)
Pretty Good For What It is
First I want to commend the film makers on their stunningly accurate portrayal of how rural Appalachian people behave, especially old people. There was an eerie backwoods realism to The Hopewell Haunting, all the way down to the illiterate but nice young husband with what appeared to be an intellectually disabled wife. As creepy as it totally was, that this disabled woman did not say a word for the entire film and was led around like a small child or an Alzheimer's patient, even that icky detail was on point.
The haunting screams are also genuinely disturbing.
The plot itself is fair to middling. I would have appreciated a clearer backstory as a conclusion to the film. It honestly bugged me that two - possibly three - of the characters were in their 70s yet not one of these old men had any clue about this ancient murder in their own hometown where they'd lived for their entire lives.
The Exorcist: Untold (2023)
Good for Fans and Completists
I thought this documentary was a mixed bag. Some scenes are completely unnecessary and make no sense in the context of the story that is being told, while other aspects of the production are truly interesting and enlightening.
There's a lot of discussion of what goes into making a great enduring film like this, including perfectionistic direction by the overbearing Friedkin and hyper-editing (similar painstaking attention to film editing also made the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre an enduring masterpiece). Other context given is how The Exorcist was filmed on location in Georgetown, D. C. and New York City and this gave the filmmakers a lot of indie-style freedom removed from the Hollywood formula that churns out numerous mediocre movies.
Knackningar (2021)
Social Commentary Film, More Sad Than Scary
This is marketed as a horror film on Shudder but instead it is just a slow-burn art house drama about Molly, who has apparently lost her wife or girlfriend in a terrible accident in the past year, and is now a middle-aged woman on her own who has recently exited a mental institution where she resided following the trauma of her partner's death. This is all insinuated via flashbacks but there's strong evidence that a real world tragedy has occurred that triggered Molly's nervous breakdown.
She is not too excited about being back out in the "real world," and seems more depressed and apathetic than anything. Her therapist prods her over the telephone to "do what she used to do" so Molly in the absence of her life partner showers, applies make-up, and puts on a dress just to dance alone to her favorite music with a drink or four in the solitude of her low-income apartment. She attempts activities like taking walks, buying fruit, and various other little things to feel alive again. But what preoccupies her more than anything is a persistent knocking which all of her neighbors in the apartment building deny is happening. It gets to a point where Molly is threatened by her landlord, the police and even the local psych ward that her behavior is out of line due to the extreme actions she takes to free an invisible woman whom she is convinced is dying alone somewhere upstairs.
It turns out that all of these people - mostly men - gaslighted this poor struggling woman, and indeed, after Molly gets drunk and sets the apartment building on fire the emergency crew discover a young woman chained and hidden in a male neighbor's apartment.
This film says important things both about the social invisibility of single women approaching menopause, as well as how individuals suffering from mental illnesses are infantilized and ignored. There's really no horror other than the real-world monstrosity of modern society.