Source

IT Welcome to Derry Episode 2 keeps the same energy from the first episode and honestly it might be even better than what we got last week, this show is not messing around with anything at all. Right after all those kids got killed at the theater last week the town tries to move on super fast by blaming the easiest target they can find witch is the black projectionist Hank, because of course they do, this is 1962 Derry and they need someone to pin this on real quick so they can all move forward like nothing happened, the police chief knows damn well this guy has an alibi but he gets pressured into arresting him anyway by two racist ass councilmen who just want someone behind bars weather its the right person or not, and his daughter Ronnie is pissed as hell because she tried to do the right thing by helping those kids escape and now her dad is getting screwed over for it witch just feels wrong on every single level you can imagine, the whole situation is just messed up and shows how terrible people can be when there looking for someone to blame instead of facing the real problem witch is a killer clown running around town eating kids. I wonder if at some point Ronnie would embrace evil and get carry away because I honestly though she was going to tip over at school when she was arguing with Lily.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19244304/
• Platform: HBO MAX

Rottentomatoes Rating

Source Pennywise is still out there terrorizing both Ronnie and Lilly with some seriously messed up nightmare sequences that didnt made me feel that scary for myself but for Ronnie, the Lily one was more terror but Ronnie could easy get eaten, like these are not your typical jump scares, these are psychological torture sessions that mess with your head and I was not ready for any of it at all, Ronnie gets attacked by her dead mother crawling out of what looks like a placenta sack on her bed with glowing yellow eyes trying to pull her back in with the umbilical cord still attached, the whole thing plays on her guilt about thinking she killed her mom during childbirth witch is just insane to watch and super messed up because not only she is getting all this trash talking from her dead mother of how SHE, Ronnie killed her but then she pulls her back into her "belly" but its an actual monster trying to eat her, Pennywise knows exactly were to hit people were it hurts the most and he does not hold back at all. Lilly has this completely fucked up vision at the grocery store were pickle jars start moving around on there own trapping her in this maze of shelves that keep reorganizing, then she sees all her dead friends faces on cereal boxes with Pennywises name written on them saying great taste because he eats kids witch is dark as hell and then her dad shows up as this pickle creature thing covered in goo and its just disgusting, its nasty and will probably flashback next time you eating pickles, the way HBO is using practical effects here is just top tier stuff, like you can tell they spent serious money on making these scares look real and not some cheap CGI nonsense that looks fake and takes you out of the moment completely.

Source

Source

The show also brings in the Hanlon family witch is super important because Will is Mike Hanlons dad from the movies so we know this kid makes it out alive at least, Leroy the dad finds out the military brought him to Derry for some secret weapon project that uses fear as a weapon and they need him because he has no fear after getting brain damage in combat during the Korean War witch sounds completely insane, General Shaw tells him they are looking for something buried under Derry that generates debilitating fear in people and could theoretically kill someone on the spot witch is obviously Pennywise or at least parts of the meteorite that brought him to earth millions of years ago, his wife Charlotte is dealing with racism everywhere she goes in town because its 1962 and people are terrible, she sees kids beating up another kid in broad daylight and nobody does anything about it like everyone just walks by and ignores it because Pennywise has this whole town in some kind of trance were everyone just ignores the bad stuff happening around them like its completely normal, the butcher even says boys will be boys and its just gross how people turn a blind eye to everything, there son Will is getting bullied at school for being the new kid and for being smart as hell, he is into science and telescopes and space instead of sports witch his dad Leroy does not really understand because Leroy is more of a throw the ball around type of guy but Will does not care about that stuff at all and I love that about his character, the military subplot is wild because it adds this whole other layer to the story that I was not expecting at all, like I thought this was just going to be about kids fighting a clown but now we have the government trying to weaponize Pennywise to win the Cold War witch is the dumbest plan I have ever heard but also super interesting to watch.

Source

Source The kids are also starting to form there own version of the losers club here and its nice to see new characters after losing so many last week, Will and Ronnie end up in detention together and they bond over being outsiders and you can tell these two are going to be close friends by the end of the season, the way they talk about science and feeling like they do not fit in just feels real and not forced at all witch is hard to pull off with kid actors sometimes but these two nail it completely, Rich shows up to and he seems like a cool kid who plays drums in the marching band and has a crush on Marge, I also like how the show sometimes breaks the scene for example at school while Rich is talking to Will, another kid randomly throws a smoke bomb in the hallway as a prank and its funny as hell watching him just smile and eat his empanada while chaos unfolds around him and then tells Will to RRRUNNNN!!!, there is also this whole thing were Lilly is trying to fit in with the popular girls but they keep making fun of her and its just typical mean girl bullshit that happens in every high school ever, the queen bee Patty is super manipulative and gets her friends to laugh at this one girl for having a crush on some kid named Scotty and then turns around and makes fun of Marge for wearing the same sweater two days in a row, like who cares about that kind of stuff when kids are getting murdered by a clown but I guess priorities are different for some people, Lilly ends up getting manipulated by the police chief into basically snitching on Hank even though she did not mean to, he threatens to send her back to Juniper Hill witch is this asylum were she was sent before after her dad died and she clearly has trauma from that place, at the end of the episode she gets sent back there anyway witch sucks because she was trying to do the right thing and it backfired completely.

After two episodes I am giving this a solid 8 out of 10 because the scares are brutal and creative in ways that most horror shows would never even attempt, the acting is great across the board especially from the kids who are carrying a lot of the emotional weight and not just screaming and running around like idiots, the story is building up to something big that I can not wait to see play out over the rest of the season and its not easy to pull off this type of prequel shows because you usually know were everything is going, this is how you do a prequel series for real, it respects the source material but also adds new stuff that feels fresh and not just a retread of what we already saw in the movies, Alien Earth tried this too but was not as good as Welcome to Derry. HBO really spent the budget on this show because it looks like a movie not a TV series at all, the production value is insane and you can tell they did not cheap out on any aspect of the show from the costumes to the sets to the practical effects everything just looks expensive and polished, the opening credits are also incredible with this animated postcard style showing all the horrible events that happened in Derry over the years from the Paul Bunyan statue to the Bradley gang shootout were Pennywise was hanging out a window with a gun witch is insane, if they keep this quality up for the remaining episodes this could end up being one of the best Stephen King adaptations we have gotten in years and I would even say that not even the movies had this kind of impact, I can not wait for episode 3 to see were this all goes and if the kids finally meet Pennywise face to face or if they keep teasing us for a few more episodes witch would be fine by me because the buildup is working.

Cover image edited in canva; the image was taken from the following source

Source

I guess this post is going to fit perfectly for a day like Halloween, not that I plann for it but this is a series I wanted to take on now that The Conjuring franchise is done, well who knows because the other day saw some articles saying now they planning to run a few spin off. The Conjuring came out back in 2013 and it pretty much reminded everyone that horror does not need to rely on blood and guts to scare the shit out of people, this is the fifth movie to watch in chronological order on the story, James Wan was fresh off Insidious and decided to go all in with this one, the whole thing got rated R just because it was scary, no nudity, no over the top gore, just pure tension and that freaky atmosphere that makes people jump out of there seats. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ed and Lorraine Warren, these paranormal investigators who actually debunk fake haunting before they go full exorcist mode on the real stuff, I liked that angle because it makes them more believable, not just some random ghost hunters looking for attention, in fact there are scenes on the movie where they explain this to a couple who said there was something at their house and it was just the wind in the attic. The thing is these two have amazing chemistry together and you can tell they care about each other as a couple in the movie, there relationship is probably the strongest part of the entire movie and the entire franchise, its the main reason I kept watching because the Perron family they were sweet but did not really grab my attention the same way Ed and Lorraine did, Wilson has this charm to him even when hes doing exorcisms and Farmiga plays the clairvoyant wife with such grace that you believe everything shes seeing is real to her. The opening with the Annabel doll is supposed to set the tone but honestly I found it a bit weak compared to what comes later, those two girls telling there story about how the doll moved around there apartment and left creepy notes everywhere should have been more scary but the acting felt off and it did not land for me like it should have, still the doll design is nasty looking and I get why it became its own franchise even tho I think Annabelle is actually the weakest part of this whole universe.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1457767/
• Platform: PRIME VIDEO

Rottentomatoes Rating

Source The movie has this very familiar formula where the Perron family moves into a creepy old farmhouse in Rhode Island and things start going south real quick, there dog dies on the first night which is always a bad sign, clocks stop at exactly 3:09 AM which we find out later has something to do with the witching hour and when bad stuff went down on that land, doors slam on there own, bruises appear on the moms body over night, the basement smells like rotting meat and gives off this energy that makes you never want to go down there ever and by the way they didnt even knew there was a basement because the entrance was cover up, big RED FLAG moment right there but you know how stupid scary movie victims can be. Director James Wan knows how to build that tension slow and steady until it hits maximum freak out levels, the first half drags a little bit but thats kind of needed for these types of movies, you can not rush the buildup or else the scares do not have the same effect, its like let it build up the tension so when they hit actually freak you out, enough signs but not the entire story at once. One of the best scares is that hide and clap game where the mom is blindfolded playing with her youngest daughter and you see these hands come out from inside the closet door and clap, its such a simple idea but it works because the demon is literally toying with its prey before executing perfectly. Another scene that really freak me out was when one of the daughters wakes up in the middle of the night and sees someone standing in the dark corner of her room, the corner is so dark your eyes start playing tricks on you and you swear you can see something there even tho the movie does not show you anything clearly but she sells it so good, then the girl gets her feet grabbed and pulled which is probably peoples worst nightmare, you can be awake and I swear the moment you feel something landing in your feet, damn bounce from bed like a spring or just tuck your feed inside the bed like its holy territory.

Source

Source The whole backstory about Bathsheba Sherman is where things get realy interesting for me because aside from the scares they start to build up this entire story and they have to figure the why of things, she was this witch who lived on the land back in the 1800s and sacrificed her own baby to Satan then hung herself from the tree in the backyard cursing anyone who would ever live there, its heavy stuff and the movie does a good job making you believe this history is real, there is this scene where Lorraine sees her daughter on the water that scare her to death. From what I could find on ther ineternet the Warrens have a controversial history and lot of people think they were just frauds who took advantage of family going through tough times but putting that aside and just enjoy the ride because Wilson and Farmiga make them so likable that you want to root for them. Across the movie you fan fee that the scares are not cheap jump scares with loud noises, James Wan builds atmosphere and a story to follow, when Lorraine is outside hanging sheets and the weather suddenly changes and one of the sheets blows off revealing Bathshebas ghost standing in the window staring at her, that whole scene is chilling and it happens in broad daylight which makes it even creepier because your supposed to feel safe during the day, thats what Hollywood horror stories have teach us. The practical effects for the possession scenes are really solid, when Carolyn the mom gets fully possessed her face looks so painful and raw with veins popping through her skin and her eyes all dead looking, the makeup work here is fantastic and way better than if they had used CGI.

Source

Source Getting close towards the end is where everything goes absolutely crazy, this is when Carolyn gets fully possessed by Bathsheba and tries to kill her own daughters, Ed has to perform an emergency exorcism without the church permission because theres no time to wait, they tie her to a chair and cover her with a white sheet which becomes this creepy visual as she coughs up blood all over it and then the sheet rips revealing the witches face mixed with Carolyns, its disturbing as hell. The chase scene through the basement when Carolyn is crawling through the walls going after her daughter April is one of the most tense moments in the whole thing, having your own mother hunt you down while possessed is such a messed up concept and the movie really leans into that fear, the camera work here is great with shots that make you feel like your right there with them running for your life. Ed finally gets through to Carolyn by reminding her of her family and her love for her children which breaks Bathshebas hold on her partially, its a bit cheesy, I know, with the whole power of love saves the day thing but it works in the context of this movie because its always been about family from the start, the Warrens have there daughter Judy who they protect, the Perrons have there five daughters who they would die for, so having that be the solution feels earned even if its not the most original way to end an exorcism.

My only concern with this movie is that I could see certain scares coming from a mile away which killed some of the tension for me on first watch and the ending felt kind of abrupt like everything just wrapped up too fast after all that buildup, I would have prefer if they had to do something more critical or if Lorraine had some sort of power to get into Carolyn mind and help her from the inside and not just "remember the love for your family", one minute Carolyns possessed and trying to murder everyone and the next minute shes crying and hugging her kids and everyone fine. Also that Annabelle subplot with the Warrens daughter back home felt forced like it was just a commercial add for the next movie in line and the CGI on the rocking chair flying too dark for my taste but I guess its because they didnt want to show anyone else than the doll so who throws the chair?, those are minor complaints tho because overall The Conjuring does its job incredibly well, its one of those movies that makes every little sound in your house feel suspicious after watching it, you start sleeping with the lights on and making sure your feet are within the bed perimeter, it reminds you why horror does not need to be blood, loud noises and sex. For me this is a solid 8 out of 10 for being creepy without going into cheap tricks, there is this massive franchise behind this movie that has been hit or miss that I still enjoy.

#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #horror, #conjuring, #jameswann, #patrickwilson, #verafarmiga, #haunted, #ghost, #possession, #exorcism, #supernatural, #scary, #thriller, #demon, #witch, #bathsheba, #warrens, #paranormal, #farmhouse, #annabelle, #atmosphere, #tension, #family, #investigation, #cursed, #2013

Posted Using INLEO

Posted Using INLEO

You Burn Me

Source

This fkn season men, WHY??, on one hand you got some really cool stuff happening but on the other hand I am so damn tired of watching them get stuck in the same situation over and over again, the whole boat catching fire at the end was so predictable I could see it coming a mile away, like seriously we are working on this boat all season and then boom it gets sabotaged right at the end because we still got another season to milk out of this thing. Fede finally getting what was coming to him felt good but the fact that his mother just let him go after saying he needs to face justice really pissed me off how corrupt they all are but hey its the apocalypse too, I get that is her son but come on you knew better than that and it messed everything up even worse. The stuff at El Alcazar with all those walkers dressed up like jesters and kings was actually pretty sick, I was locked in during that whole sequence because they got creative with it and the way Daryl and Paz infiltrated the place felt tense even though the setup was a bit too convenient for my taste, like nobody checks the back of that truck and they just hand them masks so they can hide there faces which made it way to easy but whatever I will take it. Justina getting saved and that whole moment where she hugged Daryl was sweet as hell, you can realy see how much people care about him at this point and it makes sense after everything he has done for them, she was about to get killed by that creepy dude who picked her at the ceremony and Daryl just kicks the door down and slits his throat which was brutal but needed. There is also that moment when Daryl talked about always running away even when things are good, that speech was solid but then I start thinking oh shit are they gonna make him stay in Spain because I cannot deal with that, we need to get back to America already and wrap this thing up properly, the guy has been running his whole life and he finally admits it out loud which is growth but also makes you wonder if he will ever just settle down somewhere. And the ending with the reveal of Codron showing up at the end has me curious but also worried they are gonna drag this out even more, seeing him pick up that Rubiks cube at the beginning was a nice touch and connects back to Laurant from the previous seasons which in my opinion where the best of this spin off, I dont know what they were thinking with season 3.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13062500/
• Platform: PRIME VIDEO

Rottentomatoes Rating

Source Carol and Antonio getting captured again felt repetitive as hell, like how many times are we gonna do this same thing where they get caught and need to be rescued, I know its a finale and you need tension but come on find a new trick already. The whole public execution thing with the walkers was pretty intense though, Fede had them chained up with dead bodies attached to them and walkers coming from all sides which was gnarly, watching them fight with there hands tied was stressful but then Daryl shows up with the sniper rifle and starts picking off Fedes men one by one which was satisfying. The moment Justina walks into town and tells everyone the truth about her uncle was great, she basically turns the whole community against him in like two minutes and suddenly everyone is on Daryls side which felt like a nice payoff after all the crap they been through, Fede tried to play the victim card saying Daryl destroyed there relationship with the Alcazar but nobody was buying it anymore. I still think they should have just killed Fede right there instead of locking him up because you knew he was gonna escape and mess things up again, like his mom literally breaks him out of jail at the end and he shows up to burn the boat which is exactly what I expected to happen, dude could not just take the L and move on he had to get one last shot in.

Source

Source The Alcazar stuff was probably the best part of the episode even though it felt rushed, seeing the king and queen of Spain get eaten by walkers within like five minutes of meeting them was wild, Daryl releases all those dressed up walkers during the ceremony and chaos breaks out instantly which was fun to watch. Paz finally getting her revenge was cool, she had those flashbacks of the prince abusing her back in the day and then in present time Elena stabs him to save Paz which parallels the past in a good way, the fact that Elena chose Paz over her husband and decided to leave with her son was a big moment and I can tell provides lot of satisfaction. I am glad Paz survived and gets to go live in Barcelona with her girlfriend and the kid because she deserved a happy ending after everything. The action at the Alcazar felt like they were trying to cram a lot into a short amount of time, walkers everywhere, people screaming, Daryl saving Justina and all the other girls, it was chaotic but in a good way mostly, I just wish they spent more time building up the king as a villain instead of killing him off so quick because now we dont really have a main bad guy going into next season unless Fede sticks around.

Source

Source Daryl's conversation with Justina on the motorcycle was one a sweet moment like they both find a moment of peace at last even though things where not done yet, he talks about feeling like he lost something and wanting to give her and Roberto a chance at having a real life even if he doesn't think it will happen for him, he also talks about why he does all this and it was because someone has to do it someone has to be the good guy and was the right thing to do aside from him been reckless, its a rare moment of vulnerability from Daryl that actually felt earned. The flashbacks with Merle telling him to run away as a kid adds context to why Daryl is the way he is, he has been running from things his whole life and now its become a habit he cant break, every time he gets somewhere good he hears a voice telling him to leave and he doesnt know how to ignore it anymore. I like that they are addressing this because its been a problem since he left the Commonwealth and nobody has really talked about why he would just abandon everyone like that, in fact he asks himself how the fuck it all started and why did he left in the first place, when did he end up on a ship and then in France, turns out its deeper than we thought and has roots in his childhood trauma which makes sense for his character. The fear that when he gets back home he will want to leave again is real and I hope they explore that more next season, Daryl needs to figure out how to stay put and actually build something instead of always being on the move.

The ending with the boat burning down was frustrating but expected, like I said earlier I knew something was gonna stop them from leaving because we got one more season to go, Fede escaping jail and showing up with a machine gun was so obvious that I called it the second they locked him up, I knew it could not end for him that easy. Now that boat fire was something else, actually a bit unbailable but Im not expert, probably they had gas bottles inside for cooking or the old wood was so farmable that it basically starts exploding and destroyed the whole thing, I am not sure how bullets alone would cause that much damage but I guess there was fuel involved or something, watching Daryl and Carol stand there as the boat burns was dramatic but also felt like they were milking the moment. Codron watching from a distance sets up his return next season which is great because he was one of the better characters from the French seasons, having him back in the mix will definitely make things more interesting and hopefully he knows where they can find another boat or a way to get home, the dude traveled from France to Spain somehow so he must know something, if Im not mistaken he was the one who told them at first the tunnel to Uk. Overall this episode had high points but very low points too, the action was good, the emotional moments felt earn most of them, but the repetitive plot and the predictable ending kept it from being great, I am curious to see how they wrap everything up on the next season but also ready for this show to end so we can finally get that reunion that get all spin off together.

#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #daryl, #dixon, #walking, #dead, #finale, #season, #episode, #boat, #spain, #carol, #justina, #fede, #alcazar, #walkers, #codron, #paz, #antonio, #roberto, #review, #chaos, #rescue, #fire, #trapped, #emotional, #action

Posted Using INLEO

Source

I watch A House of Dynamite over the weekend, I thought I had put out this post early this week. Honestly I dont know how some are calling this Netflix best movie of the year, for me this movie makes me feel mostly frustration being completely honest. The thing is this movie starts so damn strong with all these government people are trying to figure out what the hell to do when a nuclear missile gets launched at the United States and NOBODY knows who did it or why it happened in the first place. Maybe like the first thirty minutes was intense as fuck, director Kathryn Bigelow seem to know very well how to make you feel the pressure and the chaos, like you are sitting right there in the room with Rebecca Ferguson and Idris Elba, and all these other people who are about to lose their minds. The cast is absolutely loaded too and may be why I was expecting way more, you got Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Basso, Tracy Letts is there being all serious, Moses Ingram also shows up for a bit and honestly everybody is doing solid work, making it feel believable and scary as hell. But then somewhere around the middle, the movie does this annoying thing where it keeps jumping back in time, to show you the exact same events but from different peoples point of view, for me it just killed all that momentum, they spent so long building up in the beginning. I understand what Bigelow was trying to accomplish here, showing how all these separate groups of people who are dealing with the same crisis, at the same exact moment but it just made me start losing interest real quick because I kept waiting for something new to happen and nothing like we are running in circles, just the same stuff over and over again, from slightly different angles.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32376165/
• Platform: NETFLIX

Rottentomatoes Rating

Source The whole setup is pretty straightforward when you break it down, a nuclear warhead gets detected mid flight, heading straight for Chicago where like ten million plus people live and work, and everyone in power has maybe eighteen minutes to figure out if they can stop it, who launched it?? whether they should blow somebody else up in return??. Rebecca Fergusons character Olivia Walker works the room trying to get answers and figure this whole thing out and shes basically our main eyes into this mess for that first chunk of the movie, shes got a sick kid at home, who needs to see a doctor but she also has to get to work, because of how important is her job on this entire situation. This is where things work out at first because you can tell how she has to make decisions based on her family and everyone else, you cant be selfish here because they all might get evaporated, while shes trying to do her job and save millions of other families I cant stop thinking how does that feel as anyone else mind would be split in two sides when it comes to who is first, her family or the rest of the city??. I do not think the government would tell regular people that a nuke is about to land on a major city because that would cause total chaos in the streets. The movie does a good job making you think about that kind of stuff, like what would really go down if this scenario played out in real life, would we even know until it was too late or would there be some kind of warning, that most likely would be too late and still create total chaos.

Source

Source The problem starts when the movie goes over half an hour in, and things are getting really tense, like they want to start to recicle the scene, because the missile might actually hit, and people might actually die, and then boom it cuts to black and jumps back to the start of the same time period, but now we are seeing it through different characters eyes, at different levels of the government, in different locations. All that tension just evaporates instantly, it stops being as interesting as it goes along because you kind of feel like you have been there and done that already, you know exactly what is going to happen, every step until a certain point, because you literally just watched it happen twenty minutes ago. The movie never really spends enough time with any one specific characters to have some proper character building and make you care or root for them, so by the time you get to the final thirty or forty minutes, you are just going with the flow, waiting for it to end, I watch this with my wife and that was her very first critic after the movie ended. It honestly feels like this would have worked way better, as a thirty minute short movie or maybe just a different structure entirely, if the whole thing was just that first segment, playing out in real time without jumping around, I probably would have loved it, because that part was very well done with tons of tension building until that cut to black moment. Instead we get this back and forth time jump thing and I know Im starting to rant but Im so disappointed, three separate times I had to watch the same story play over, from the Pentagon, then from some general trying to get intel on the missile, then from the president played by Idris Elba trying to make an impossible decision. I have always thought jumping back and forward in time on a movie makes it interesting but they just abuse this hack, because this usually comes with awesome discoveries or hidden details about the characters decisions, but this time it does not make up for how repetitive and drawn out it all feels.

Source

Source Now the ending, that was fucking disappointing, after everything that came before it the movie just kind of stops, it does not end it just stops and showed directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it was a very big WTF moment for me like where the rest go?? thats how we are ending this thing??. It wraps up and was so unsatisfying that leaves you with nothing, no resolution, no payoff, no emotional punch and that is not something you expect from Kathryn Bigelow, because I remember her because of the best endings in movies I have seen is Zero Dark Thirty, where the final moments are absolutely perfect and leave you with such gratification. Instead we just get an ambiguous cut to black, where we never find out if Chicago gets destroyed, we never find out what the president decides to do about retaliation, we just see some FEMA person played by Moses Ingram, arriving at some nuclear bunker in Pennsylvania, which I guess means something bad happened but who knows. The movie needed way more suspense in that final half hour. There are also way too many characters crammed into this thing for how short it is, making the movie splinter too much, by the end I felt like I did not really know anybody in the story, because we never spent enough quality time, with any single person for them to stick in your memory. I look this one up and it seems that both Noah Oppenheim and Kathryn Bigelow agree on this ending on purpose to "force" the discussion about nuclear weapons and everything in between, but honestly WTF this is not a documentary, you want to push that kind of message and spark that kind of conversation do it with other type of material, I fkn hate it because everything started so good.

A House of Dynamite had a great formula from the start, a stacked cast doing great work, a terrifying premise that feels so good with real life problems given the world we live in today, and a director who knows how to build tension based on her previous work. But then it shoots itself in the foot with this repetitive structure that drains all the energy that is has generated for the first half hour and an ending that feels like they just gave up or ran out of ideas or as some articles online mention they did it on purpose to spark up a conversation of Nuclear Weapons proliferation, I wanted to love this movie so bad but it just could not stick the landing, I honestly thought I was about to watch something special with Rebecca Ferguson calling the shots. If you got Netflix and you got some time to kill, I would say give it a watch because its not terrible and Bigelow does not make movies very often so its worth watching he work, but go in with lower expectations than you normally would for Rebecca Ferguson and maybe you will not be as let down as I was. For me this sits somewhere in the middle, not good enough to recommend but not bad enough to tell people to skip it entirely, its just kind of meh, which is probably the worst thing a movie about nuclear war can be. I am giving it a six out of ten, maybe a seven if I am feeling generous, but damn I really hoped for so much more from this one.

#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #netflix, #bigelow, #thriller, #nuclear, #missile, #chicago, #tension, #government, #crisis, #ferguson, #elba, #disappointing, #repetitive, #structure, #ending, #frustrating, #momentum, #pentagon, #president, #norad, #retaliation, #ambiguous, #timeline, #characters, #review

Posted Using INLEO

Posted Using INLEO

Source

Task Episode 7 drop like two weekends ago but for me this was such a good series that I didnt want to pass on and the ending did cut a few corners but over all felt very good. The action was there, Grasso got his redemption shot with Jason, Maeve finally gets to leave with the kids and THE MONEY, Tom forgives Ethan but something about it all felt a bit off. Like the show started so damn strong with all these threads connecting between the characters and by the end it felt like we were watching two diferent shows that never realy came together the way they should have. The first half of this episode was packed with enough chaos, watching Perry try to work up the nerve to kill Jason with that fish gutting knife but couldnt do it because he loves him like a son, even tho Jason is the reason they are in this mess to begin with. Vince telling Perry to take care of Jason or else, Mike and Vince planning to frame Grasso as some unstable cop who lost his mind, Arin's body floating up with Perry's wallet chain still in her hand which was so stupid on his part like come on man you been doing this long enough to know better. The whole thing with Grasso visiting his sister and finding out he went dirty just to pay for their moms care and get his sister a safe house away from her ex, that gives you a different perspective of him because you realize this guy wasnt some evil bastard from the start, he was trying to take care of family and got in too deep, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat and all that shit eating him alive from the inside.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28013708/
• Platform: HBO MAX

Rottentomatoes Rating

Source

Even though this is probably the second most intense episode I think there were certain moments that were handle a bit poorly. Aleah has been set up as this incredible shooter, they call her bullseye throughout the whole show, they even make a point of showing her shooting patch on her vest, and then when it comes time for that big heroic shot to take down Jason who was holding Maeve hostage, they give it to Grasso instead. I get it, Grasso needed his moment to come full circle after being dirty this whole time, but honestly how in hell after loosing that much blood and that white gasper looking he comes crawling his bleeding ass from his jeep all the way to the back seat of Jasons car just to pop him in the head and yeah that was badass and I did not see it coming at all, but its just too hard to believe. Aleah barely got anything meaningful by the end and that sucked because her character had so much potential, she even gets totally man handle by this Tattoed biker that was there just for shocking but did his job, I though she was done during that fight. The whole standoff scene was tense, Tom and Aleah rolling up to Maeves place, finding Grasso bleeding out in his car barely able to roll down the window to warn Maeve that everyone coming for her, Jason taking Maeve hostage after she dug up the money from the chicken feed, Harper being a kid who never stays in the damn car like she was told, all of it worked awesome but again Grasso was almost dead so I would have preferred Aleah be the one taking the shot.

Source

Source The Tom family stuff with Ethan and Emily also felt like it took over too much space in these last episode when honestly the most interesting parts of this show were always about Robbie, Perry, Jason and Maeve, this is the part that felt like to two different shows but I get they were trying to keep some mistery and surprise about Tom life choices like getting hammered almost every night. That was the heart of everything and we got pulled away from it to focus on Tom forgiving his son which yeah it was emotional and Mark Ruffalo absolutely killed it with that courtroom speech, talking about how Ethan was a sick child with voices in his head telling him to do things, how the medication helped for a while until the pandemic caused shortages and the voices came back angrier, how Ethan killed Toms wife Susan but there was also so much joy during the good times. Ruffalo delivered that monolog like it was actually happening, telling Ethan he forgives him, he loves him, when the day comes for him to be released Tom will be waiting to welcome him home, that such a great performance but still felt totally disconnected from the main action, but again I get it they wanted something emotional on the show and make Tom look like the hero he was for everyone.

Source

Source The way they wrapped up the dark hearts stuff also felt kinda rushed and convenient with Vince shooting Mike in the head instead of shooting Grasso first even tho Grasso had a gun in his hand and Mike didnt, like what kind of tactical decision is that when you are there to kill both of them anyway, it just seemed backwards to me and only happened because the plot needed Vince to die so Grasso could have his redemption. Jason stabbing Perry after finding out what he did to Arin, that whole scene by the river with Perry naked trying to wash himself and then getting gutted by the person he was trying to protect, it was tragic and well acted but we never got to hear Perry actually explain himself to Jason, we never got that conversation about why he did what he did or how he was protecting Jason from Vince this whole time, so it felt incomplete like we were missing a piece of the puzzle that would have made Perrys death more satisfying or at least more understandable from a character standpoint. Then Tom letting Maeve keep the money by zipping up that bag and walking away, telling Kath later that wisdom is knowing what to overlook, that was perfect because Maeve and those kids deserved a shot at a new life after everything they went thru, Robbie died trying to get them that money and Tom knew it would be wrong to take that away from them just to close a case that was already a mess. Seeing Maeve pack up the car with Harper and Wyatt, taking a picture of the house as a reminder of her dad and uncle before driving six hours away to start over somewhere new with a million dollars hidden in the trunk, that felt earned and hopeful in a show that spent most of its time being bleak and heavy.

Still a very very solid show overall, popularity over RTT jump drastically in the last episodes although those are just numbers, I just wish it kept that same energy from the beginning all the way through instead of getting a little draggy for a few episodes. The performances were incredible across the board, Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelfrey and Fabian Frankel as Grasso all brought some of the most solid performance single episode, the script was sharp and grounded in reality most of the time, the way it handled themes like guilt, forgiveness, family, the traps people get stuck in when they live in places with no opportunities, all of that landed really well and made you think about these characters as real people dealing with impossible choices. I would give it somewhere around an 8 out of 10 because when it was good it was really damn good, those first four episodes with Robbie and the task force investigating Billy's murder and the shootout in the woods, that was some good tv series I watched this year. If they do a season two with Tom and a new task force like they been talking about, I would definitely watch it because this show proved it knows how to build tension and create characters you actually care about, it just needs to stick the landing better next time and not lose sight of what made it special in the first place.

#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #task, #hbo, #finale, #review, #grasso, #mave, #redemption, #jason, #perry, #ruffalo, #ethan, #forgiveness, #aaliyah, #bullseye, #standoff, #thriller, #crime, #betrayal, #family, #guilt, #violence, #hospital, #confession, #money, #revenge

Posted Using INLEO

Cover image edited in canva; the image was taken from the following source

Source

IT Welcome to Derry just dropped its first episode and this thing surprised me in many many aspects. HBO really threw some serious money at this thing because it does not look like your regular TV series at all, it looks and feels like you are watching another IT movie, the production value is insane and you can tell they did not cheap out on this one. The episode show us a group of kids trying to figure out what happened to this missing boy named Matty, and things get dark real fast, you got these two air force guys dealing with their own stuff at the military base while the kids are running around Derry trying to solve this mystery and Pennywise is obviously behind all the creepy shit going down so two "seperate" for not plots. The episode for been the first one is very brutal, like they are not playing around here, multiple kids get taken out and I mean killed not just scared or injured actually dead. One of them was funny as hell too and I was pissed when that happened because you get attached to these kid actors fast, they are all really good, the whole theater sequence where everything goes to hell is intense and the special effects work better than I expected definitely better than IT movies in my opinion.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19244304/
• Platform: HBO MAX

Source The opening scene is absolutly nightmare fuel, this kid Matty is at the movies watching a musical called "The Music Man" and he sneaks in because apparently his home life is trash, you can tell something is off with this kid right away because he is sucking on a pacifier and he has a black eye. He runs out of the theater trying to get away from Derry and this nice looking famly picks him up saying they are going to Portland but something feels wrong from the start, the mom calls the daughter a whore the dad makes weird coments about vasectomies and the little girl is sticking her fingers in raw liver trying to make Matty smell them which is gross as hell. Then things go completly insane, they keep driving in circles back to Derry even though they never turn around and the mom starts giving birth to this mutant baby thing with wings that looks like it came straight out of hell, the whole family is laughing and the moms swinging this thing around by its umbilical cord sprinkling blood all over the windows. Its one of the most disturbing things I have seen on TV in a long time and it sets the tone for the rest of the episode, you know right away this show is not messing around when it comes to gore and killing fkn kids, I thought they were going to tame it down, they are going full horror and I love that they committed to it. The scene ends with Mattys pacifier flying out the window into the sewer which is a nice callback to Georgies boat in the first IT movie, you know this kid is dead or taken or whatever Pennywise does to kids when he grabs them and it happens in the first ten minuts of the show.

Source

Source Four months later we meet the rest of the kids and they are basically the 1960s version of the Losers Club, you got Lily who is the main girl and she has some serious trauma because her dad died in a pickle factory accident which sounds ridiculous but the way they show it is actually really messed up. Then theres Phil who is obsessed with aliens and thinks the military is hiding something at the air base, Teddy who is a quiet Jewish kid getting ready for his bar mitzvah and dealing with family stuff about the Holocaust and later we meet Ronnie who is the daughter of the guy who runs the movie theator where Matty went missing. These kids start having visions of Matty calling out to them from the sewers and drains, Lily hears him in her bathroom which is exactly like what happened to Beverly in the first IT movie, Teddy sees this horrifying lampshade made of human skin in his bedroom which connects to his fear about concentration camps, and they all realize something is seriously wrong in Derry. The show does a great job making you care about these kids real quick, they feel like actual people not just horror movie victims waiting to die and the actors playing them are all solid, you can tell they put effort into casting kids who could actually act instead of just finding random child actors who look the part. The whole mystery around Matty keeps building and the kids decide to go to the library to research what happened, they find newspaper articles about other disappearences in Derry and you start seeing how this town has a pattern of weird shit happening every few years which lines up with Pennywises 27 year cycle from the movies and books, they dont go into specifics of this cycle but its something I learn from watching the movies, would be nice to re watch after Season 1 is over.

Source

Source The final scene at the movie theater is where everything goes to hell, I enjoy it so much because they really send it and it works so well, even tops out the first horror scene in the car with Matty. The kids go back to watch The Music Man because they think Matty was trying to send them a message and at first its just them sitting there feeling guilty about not being better freinds to him, each of them start crying for it. Then the movie starts and Matty appears on screen with that family from the beginning, he starts talking directly to the kids blaming them for what happened to him and then that mutant baby bursts through the screen and starts killing everyone. It grabs Teddy and bites him, it tears Phil apart in the air and rips off his little sisters arm while she is screaming for help, the whole thing is brutal and gory way more than I expected from a TV show and it happens so fast. Only Lily and Ronnie survive and Lily is left standing there holding the little girls arm like some kind of nightmare, its a dope ending for the first episode because now you know nobody is safe and any of these characters can die at any moment, I really thought it was going to be more build up before we start dishing characters. Most shows would have kept these kids alive for at least half the season to build up their stories but Welcome to Derry just kills them off the rip and makes you get worried about who is going to make it, I was not expecting them to go that hard but I respect the hell out of it. The special effects in this scene are really good too, that baby creature looks terrifying and disgusting and the gore does not look cheap, you can tell HBO gave them a real budget to work with and they used it well, even though the scene is very dark you still se a lot of the killing and the baby bat monster too.

Overall this first episode is way more than I expected from an IT prequel series, it respects the source material while doing its own thing, the scares are actually scary, the characters feel real and the production quality is way higher than most TV horror shows. I love that they set it in the 1960s because it gives them room to play with different time periods in future seasons, Im not a Stephen King Universe geek but I do know Dick Halloran from The Shining and the Paul Bunyan statue that terrorizes Richie in IT Chapter 2. The show is all in to be disturbing and violent which is what IT should be, this is not some watered down network TV version of the story, definetly not of kids at least under 15, its a real horror show that scares you with very dark stuff. I am very excited to see where they take this and whether Lily is going to end up in a mental hospital because nobody will believe her about the mutant baby killing her friends, at least thats what appears from the trailer, the setup for the rest of the season is strong and if they can keep this level of quality going it will be one of the best horror shows in years. 9 out of 10 for me, if you are a fan of IT or Stephen King or just good horror in general you need to watch this.

#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #horror, #pennywise, #derry, #stephen, #king, #prequel, #hbo, #series, #clown, #scary, #episode, #review, #matty, #kids, #theater, #military, #mutant, #baby, #losers, #club, #shining, #turtle, #gore, #brutal, #terrifying

Posted Using INLEO