Well, so I just saw this movie for the first time yesterday. Almost 40 years after it was released. A bit late yeah, but it never really seemed interesting enough to check out. And what can i say? To be honest, I expected the movie to be pretty bad considering how much praise it gets (usually in horror that's a sure sign it's only trendy to like it somehow). But I never expected it to be this bad.
The characters are just a big mess. The acting is atrocious and the casting choices are very weird. Everybody looks way to old for the role they play, and the dialogues are just some of the worst I've ever heard. My favorite being Laurie saying "was that the boogeyman?" which had me burst out in laughter. Great stuff. Anyway, none of the characters ever sound realistic in any way. And there is NO chemistry with any character and I mean zero. Michael Myers himself is just nothing special at all. The opening scene with him is pretty great tbh (when he's a little kid), but after that, it's all downhill, and we don't get to know anything about him at all whatsoever. He's truly lacking any character whatsoever. He doesn't speak or even have motives. He just goes around strangling people. Yeah very creative.
The story is among the worst I've ever seen. Almost not a single thing makes sense, and it becomes very slapstick at times. It is the perfect example of all the archetypes everybody hates in horror movies like "go randomly into the closet" and "stab the killer and toss the knife away afterwards and sit and wait for him to get up" or my personal favorite "just give him the car". The main storyline itself is extremely narrow and it truly feels random. For like 70% of the movie there are no real interactions of any kind between anyone and some overgrown babysitters just sees spooky things and gets killed in (extremely) predictable and stupid ways. There is a doctor too, but that part is so ludicrous that it almost seems to be for comedic relief. He's sure funny when he breaks out his doomy and gloomy speeches, I'll give him that. Especially when he's peeking on the kids from behind the bush. That was hilarious. The ending is atrocious too. Worst end sequence I've seen in a while. And that brings us to...
The directing is simply awful. Some shots drag out for a laughable long time, so much that it gets really awkward. And there is so much repetition too, and some parts that (I guess) is supposed to be scary just looks very funny. Like the times when Michael collapses. Or when they are being tailed by a car accompanying the "creepy music" for like the 5th time in like 10 minutes. The editing is poor also, like when Michael cracks the car window. And the movie is shot in such a way that not many scares are unexpected. It's a very predictable movie. Like the music will always let you know well before hand when something creepy is about to happen. Which brings us to...
The score is very amateurish and very often plain bad. Yes the main theme is kinda good, but not after you've heard it slapped on like 50 scenes. It starts to get funny after a while to always hear that tune. Not very scary.
Overall, the movie felt like a very bad low budget horror of it's time. But would it have been better back in the days? Hell no. It's a bad movie, no matter what time period it's from. It's just a very trendy movie, and now that I've finally seen it, I can safely say that I wasn't missing out on anything. Phew.
Scale it down, Wes. I’ve been a fan of everything he’s done since Fantastic Mr. Fox, and this is the first one in a long time that doesn’t sit well with me. It’s easily his loosest film since The Darjeerling Limited, and as a result he kinda lost sight of a coherent narrative here. It simply has too many characters, and while they’re all decently interesting, none of the arcs are developed to a point where I felt an emotional pay-off. The postmodern/meta stuff tanks the pacing and adds little to the overall narrative. There’s an attempt to use that layer to give the film a deeper meaning in the third act, but it feels like an anticlimax. The deeper meaning is that there is no deeper meaning, we’re just putting on a show . Ok? Did Rian Johnson have input on this script? Is this Wes trolling the people who claim that he’s style over substance? Add to that that this is one of his films that relies the least on comedy, and I can only conclude that this might just be his weakest screenplay. The reason why I still like it, however, is mostly because of the technical aspects. The cinematography, set design, editing and music are all fantastic and I’m continuously amazed by how this man is able to build a complete, original world for every new film. There’s always enough quirk and detail in the frame to keep the movie alive. The acting’s also really solid, I don’t quite get the complaint from some people that it’s emotionless. While the delivery is as deadpan as ever, the actors add plenty of emotion though the tone and cadence of their voice. Overall, I think he really needs to stop worrying about topping the scale of his last film, because it’s making him lose focus as a director and writer. It’s enjoyable, but for me it’s his worst next to The Life Aquatic.
6/10
Silly and cringe at times, but the good kind, the kind that's mixed in with some clever and genuinely funny comedy. A fun time from beginning to end, I was laughing throughout and the runtime went by quickly. The action sequences are intense and some of the best i've seen this year, my favorite was the animal transforming to get out of the city it was butt clenching and so thrilling. The characters are fun, likable and I like the interactions. Michelle Rodriguez's Holga is my favorite and damn is she good in action sequences, an instant badass.
As a casual D&D player I enjoyed what they did with it. There's this thing when you play a game of D&D where you can pretty much make your character do anything you want to beat whatever the game throws at you. However crazy the idea the player has, all that's required is 1. The game master has to approve that it's understandably logical within his game. And 2. Roll the dices and let fate choose if it's a hit or a miss. They did that a lot in the movie. Some of the things the characters do feel jarring, silly and sometimes hella convenient for what's happening but from a D&D perspective it makes total sense. You think your character conveniently has the object that solves the current problem hidden in his bag, sure just roll the dices.
I hope this gets a sequel!
I felt like they tried so hard to make everything a step up from the original that it ended up just being too much. the art got even more artsy, and while some places it looked really cool, other places it was just very distracting and genuinely looked like mistakes. (I literally went and asked the staff if they were showing us a 3D version by mistake because of just how blurry things were at times.)
Story-wise, I felt like it lost a lot of the charm and succinctness. It again felt like I had to one up everything, but in doing so it lost a lot of what made the first movie special. I really didn't like or get to know any of the new characters. There were quite a few funny moments, but too little banter for a movie with this many Spider-Mans.
Probably the biggest complaint is the complete lack of an ending or even a warning ahead of time that this was just a part one. that probably explains why it felt like the latter two-thirds of the movie dragged so much. there were a lot of action scenes mixed in, but it just felt like standard web slinging chases, nothing really interesting happening most of the time.
I'm not at all sure what the big deal was with this movie, even when it was first released. I suppose expectations for a good horror movie were much lower...and it probably helped if you were toking a joint while watching this. I only watched it because (1) of the upcoming new film and (2) this is one of the few horror franchises I haven't watched in entirety. I did watch the original many, many years ago but remembered nothing about it other than the ending...sort of. Watching it again - sort of for the first time - it was really, really lame. And as someone pointed out, the editing was absolutely atrocious; in one scene (and I honestly don't even know how this made it past the cutting floor), Myers is tailing two of the girls in his (stolen) station wagon, it's mid- to late-afternoon, plenty of sunlight, yet they turn a corner and suddenly the street is completely dark like it's late night with only the porch lights and street lamps to illuminate the scene?!! Seriously? (Right around the 35-minute mark; it was 00:34:45 for the online version I watched.) There were numerous other total disasters throughout the entire movie that just made this absolutely not scary at all. It stopped short of "campy" (because at one time, I think it was viewed as actually being scary) but still...I'm not sorry I watched it (I was bored and now I can add it to my list), but it certainly fell far far short of any expectations of it being even an older "horror" movie. Not sure why Donald Pleasance got top billing for this movie because his role was almost a bit part...and another part of this movie that made absolutely no sense. In all, this was just a movie that left you staring at the screen wondering what all the hoopla was about so many years ago.
Update 09/15/2023 This trainwreck of a movie somehow made its way (proving Redditors have absolutely no taste in movies) to the #1 spot on The 20 Best Horror Movies Ever Made, According to Reddit. I have been working my way from the #20 entry all the way to the top - skipping a select few that either (1) I've watched recently and remember enough that I don't need to watch them again this soon or (2) that I've watched and remember enough even now to know they're not worth my time. Sadly, this film falls into the latter category, although it's been two years since I watched it the last time. This marks the last on that list but as I mentioned, this (along with several others on that same list) prove that my taste in "horror" movies is vastly different than apparently most Redditors, as there is no way this smelly stinkpot would have ever made it on to such a list, and especially not the #1 spot. My previous review still stands and remains unchanged. It may have been good back in its day but it hasn't aged well at all and today, the original Halloween movie is a combination of laughable and horrendous…but certainly not "horror".
A third of what was entertaining to me here is seeing actors who you know are brilliant act bad dialogue badly (and badly act actors badly acting characters badly acting bad dialogue - that's fun).
Another third is Wes Anderson out-Wes-Anderson-troping himself - the movie is one long Wes Anderson parody.
And the other third that works is the actual signature Wes Anderson excellence in palette and soundtrack and set design.
But, like, the actual movie under those technical layers? There was no there there for me, no compelling story or character or idea. It was all very thin.
What I love about other Wes Anderson movies is that the exaggerated technique permits some emotion to be expressed more directly than we'd usually accept. Here there is no apparent emotion. Emotion is deliberately suppressed. The questions of the script are well-trodden questions about what art is for, how we go on, and why we do what we do, and there's nothing fresh in the movie's responses to those questions. No emotion or observation is allowed to hang in the air without an immediate joke. The play-within-a-play is used for the exact same questions about agency and meaning it is typically used for.
For a movie that's this quirky, terrifically little is unexpected.
Still a sensory delight. And there are a number of very funny moments, mainly because all of these actors are geniuses and could captivate me by reading census data, but the comic timing of the editing is also quite good, and the film is stuffed with clever detail.
Without a doubt a visual masterpiece, what I really love is the change in animation style between spider-verses, it's flawless and brings another dimension to the story. Miles and Gwen get so much more development my favorite scene was them sitting upside down on the tower it was perfection. I was definitely afraid of heights in that one while momentarily feeling emotional for what's happening—a weird, but welcome mix! Spider-Punk is my favorite character addition. Awesome voice cast. So much group dynamics. So many Easter eggs and cameos for the fans. They went for something totally different this time around which is admirable.
I can't help but being bothered by a few things though: The Spot doesn't work as a villain for me, never really took him seriously... which maybe is the whole point?! He does bring some unique action sequences though. I was feeling very burned out on the constant introduction of new characters, there's a shit ton of them in the second half and every single time we get that awful unnecessary backstory to add to every one of them—very repetitive and it lost it's magic pretty fast. The movie suffers from being too long, it dragged a lot in the middle and I got bored for a while. Because it's so hyperactively colorful and entertaining all the time and characters all talk at the same time and it's so fast moving (in the second half exclusively) the action sequences become a blur among everything else, they lose their effectiveness. Compared to the first (who in my opinion has some of the best song choices in a movie ever!) this one doesn't even have one memorable song. It also feels like it's missing a third act, I was expecting this to be "to be continued" but it doesn't mean you have to completely erase the third act from the movie.
I loved the first so much but this was just "good". I'll never get tired of Miles, Gwen and Peter B. going on an adventure that's for sure. Still looking forward to Part 2. A Part 2 I hope will be entirely different, just as Across the Spider-Verse is different from Into the Spider-Verse.
