I'm old enough to remember the original Hellraiser (1987). That was a true horror film. There were horrible people, doing horrible things. It left you feeling really quite disturbed about the worst aspects of human nature.
The follow-up Hellraiser 2 (1988) managed to recapture a small part of that. But after that it was downhill fast. The sequels were nothing but parodies.
Well, for some reason, Hulu decided to remake it.
Shamefully, the film fails on nearly every level. It's not well written (terrible dialogue) and poorly acted. There's little horror and you simply do not care about anyone or anything happening in it. It doesn't give you a reason to care either. The Cenobites are not scary, or grotesque looking... they just look like cheap make-up and some bad CGI.
Like the later Hellraiser films It has more in common with trashy slasher flicks than anything else. Poorly done ones at that.
As is common today they gender-switched the main role. Did it add anything? Nope. In fact, I keep hearing about what a good performance Jamie Clayton was as The Priest. I don't know what they were watching. There isn't a performance, it's literally all make up and some lines read out flat. Look at the originals: Pinhead's character is all about small, slow movements and looming dread. He's literally an overwhelming threat and you are the prey. Not in this one though.
Or look at the secondary villain. In the original it's Uncle Frank, who is an awful person who fully deserves his fate. Even in the end as he's pulled apart by the Cenobites... he's drawn to it, and much as he tried to run he still wants what the Cenobites offer. In this new version... there's none of that same grimy, disturbing look into subcultures. It's all clean, boring and badly acted.
Watch Hellraiser (1987) and Hellraiser 2 (1988) and stop there. They did it better on much smaller budgets.
I didn't realize this was a Predator movie the first time I saw the poster and thought this was some random horror movie but the positive buzz certainly didn't pass me by so here we are again. After watching it I'm certainly... shocked?
From the get go this did very little to pull me in, be it the CG animals, one-dimensional plot or the the selfish attitude of our heroine. Now obviously one can argue how much that all matters when the action is good but it didn't really scratch that itch for me either... the Predator fighting with the animals was certainly entertaining but random guys biting the bullet with mostly offcam/unclear CG gore not so much. Would have been nice if they showed some wits when they fought him at the camp but somehow him going invisible is enough reason to lower their weapons and start talking to each other. She saw how the camouflage works multiple times in action already..?!!
What all those scenes, and the movie poster for that matter, certainly established, is that our protagonist has little to worry and that a showdown was coming but I would never have predicted the amounts of bullshit that would contain:
- Somehow becomes a baller and expert in alien technology. Knows when the Predator is coming, takes her magic herbs to immediately lower her blood temperature (but is not shivering and still standing up) and is in the Predators path who obviously doesn't see a standing corpse right in front of it or notices her moving out of the way...
- Never used the gun but knows the right angle to shoot and remove his mask (betting on this being a weakness when this did little to stop it before).
- Gets to conveniently escape for the n-th time and has enough time to finish up some traps (which the Predator even hit on some random tree lol).
- Gets hit to the head twice from the shield that cut through the Predators limbs, spear and even stone but is unscathed.
- Can easily remove a fang attached to it's face to save herself just in time.
- GPS dog that always magically reappears is ready to bring her the tomahawk...
- Manages to sit on top of the Predator and even pull him into the bog with a tiny rope and a much much smaller statue.
- The Predator obviously submerges immediately, but little does it know of her the grand plan to have him placed at that exact LOS of the mask in anticipation that he is gonna fire from his gun (despite not having had his mask for the whole time) while he is already targeted by the laser the entire time... b r a v o. Obviously that one shot was also enough to kill it.
...
Honest to god - how does a movie with such a contrived finale get so much praise, or even leave the script writing phase??
The movie is not bad, but Kevin Hart is just terribly annoying. And why does he have to emphasize race? "Why are you asking a black man to steal a police car". What does that have to do with it? Later in the movie "I am boiling that white woman". Why is race at all important?! Stop referencing if its not important. Not everything is about race.
Kevin Hart seems to permanently play the exact same character who just does not stop talking and tries to be funny by just talking too much. Which it is not. Too bad. It is the same as Melissa McCarthy who also can only play 1 single character and is also absolutely never funny with her one-liners.
Could have otherwise been a fun movie if it had a different actor in it.
Woody Harrelson did kill it and is the only thing saving this movie.
Kaley Cucuo her role is so tiny that its hardly worth mentioning.
Story itself is kind dumb and 13 in a dozen. Or perhaps 15 in a dozen. You see the plot "twists" coming 5 miles away.
Anyway. I could smile a few times and it was fine having this movie play while I was reviewing some document for work.
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.
Even with the soapy melodrama, occasional bad acting and a considerably lower budget (probably 2% of the budget of this show per episode): Arrow managed to create better characters and more visceral, memorable and coherent action scenes in its first 2 seasons compared to this show. I’ll even go as far to say that it looks better, despite using incredibly basic set ups and filmmaking techniques. Getting Hailee Steinfeld was a great choice, but her character isn’t leaving a very strong or likable impression. In comparison, Joss Whedon managed to make you care about Clint’s character within 15 minutes of screentime. Well, enough to make you care as a side character.
Moreover, this feels like a studio giving their impression of a Marvel Netflix show, like Daredevil or Jessica Jones, but it doesn’t understand what makes those shows good. It’s so tame and uninspired. It seems to aim for 80’s cheese at points, but even those old action movies had some bite to them (despite how silly they could get). The comedy is mostly flat out lame and cringy, with the role playing scene probably being the lowest low of the entire MCU so far. The recent Marvel projects have had such a weird shift in terms of comedy. They used to be great at making mass product films that were at least a little bit clever and subversive. It’s no surprise that a lot of people who worked on Community also work behind the scenes at Marvel. It’s like they fired those writers after phase 3 ended, and hired the Friends team instead. Their quality control is spreading very thin.
Omg, this episode is hilariously terrible. How is it possible to make something this terrible?
First of all, why the hell is Barry their father? Afaik their still themselves and "Nora" is the Speed force, a primordial force of nature who's been reborn, they even say that in the episode. So, again, why is he their father? Just because I create my dinner doesn't it's my child. Stop it, it's terribly cringe.
Second, how is Psych faster than Barry? He's literally a speedster supposedly faster than anyone, yet he's caught every damn episode, at this point you might as well take away his powers for good.
And third, why the f*ck does Barry need a stupid, sappy ass speech ever goddamn episode? God, just rehashing the same trash every episode, just do something different, just give us something good. The most exciting thing that's happened the last 4 seasons, apart from Barry meeting Justice League Barry was Frost vs Flash and him turning evil.
This episode was just so awful that I was laughing the entire time because of the stupidity of the episode with them being "family" even though they literally never met each other. I must say I did quite like Psych tho, he adds a much needed dynamic to the show other than the feel good, extremely nice characters of the show.
Honestly, if it wasn't for the Flash being one of my favorite superheroes of all time since I was a kid, I would've stopped watching this a long time ago. I sincerely hope this show ends for good at the end of this season, Grant is a great actor and deserves better than to waste away on this God awful show.
