The Preposession of Hannar Grace

Another exorcism movie? No, not really. But a horror movie certainly.

Hannah Grace was possessed and they tried an exorcism... and she straight kills the priests. Well, that's different. Cut to later, a police officer is now a morgue attendant on night shift, and one body that is delivered is one Hannah Grace. However, she's not quite as dead as it seems, and as she kills, she gets better. But who would believe that?

So... this is actually quite a good horror movie. Although the dark night time morgue is an easy set, it is well used, and this has one of the key components that I love: atmosphere. This sets it up, plays with it in ways that is inkeeping with the universe, namely motion activated lights, so it gets creepy and effectively.

And people aren't stupid. They call for security when weird things are happening, and there is better reasonable doubt than "I can't believe this for the plot to go forward".

This all said, this isn't some big budget production piece. But it is quite effective with what it has. Definitely check it out if you have the chance.

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Enconter

It's a movie with a Hemsworth name attached to it! And that's about the biggest point going for it. Too bad it's a lesser Hemsworth.

A space pod falls from space. Rather than turn anyone into a plant that wants to take over the world, or give out space tech, it helps a cripple man walk again and relive memories of his ex-wife and dead child. Fortunately, the FBI are aware of these things (they seem to be dropping all over the place) so send out two not very good agents to track the new one down. But in the end, all the seed wants it to take a piece of everyone, and be loved.

Wow, this was rubbish. I'm sure in someone's mind there was great sweeping character moments, but what we get is just pablum and hogwash. And the FBI agents couldn't agent their way out of a paper bag.

(Not to mention that what happens at the end is that they are minus one character and plus another character, and you know the government ain't just gonna let that ride.)

No-one in this is acting in a believable way, but that's okay because none of the actors bother to commit to their parts, clearly realising they are just in this for a paycheck. The movie looks terrible, and if this was done over a weekend, I wouldn't be surprised.

No doubt they are relying on the Hemsworth name to get some recognition, but it's not worth it.

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Captan Mar-Vell

Yeah, it's the latest movie. Most likely a lot of you have already seen it, and otherwise have made decisions to see it or not, so don't let me stop you.

However, rather than talk about the plot, I'm just going to get into it. I will need to discuss one or two elements, but nothing that spoilery, but feel free to skip if you want to. And the fact that this is a female lead movie isn't a problem, although it may lie at the heart of the issue.

The main issue I have with this movie is that... at no time did I get the sense that Captain Marvel was in any real danger. She just acted competently at every moment and always seemed in command of what was going on, that the threat level of the scenes were way down. Even when she just turns up on earth, and has to deal with our backward environment after having been raised Kree, and with Kree technology, and no point is there anything that's hard for her to deal with. (You can excuse that by saying she was trained to deal with all sorts of things, but even to the extent of being able to randomly adapt bits of previously unknown earth electronic components?)

And so while we have big set pieces and such, and yes there were 'punch in the air' moments, but I didn't really feel like any of them mattered. She just ramps up her abilities to deal with whatever, so... I wasn't bored or anything, but this movie didn't feel like it really had anything to say or do, it was just generic.

Coming back to the female part, was this because Marvel, in an attempt to correct for not having a female lead, swerved into having her be too competent? It didn't feel like her gender mattered at all, so this could have been any person in the role and it would have been just the same. Not that, off the top of my head, I can think of any particularly feminine things that should matter to the plot, but again this is just so generic that why did they bother with this as their female lead movie when nothing else about it stands out?

As said, you've either seen, or made up your mind about this. I'm not saying this is a bad movie, or that this is the downfall of Marvel, and certainly not saying that female lead movie is a bomb, just that... there's nothing particularly noteworthy to this movie aside from that female lead that makes it worth watching.

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Leg End of Hollow Weenie Jack

I really should not watch Andrew Jones' movies. Although I don't realise they are by Andrew Jones until it's too late. Such as with this one.

The movie opening titles starts with clips from far better movies, such as Nosferato, Night of the Living Dead, Dracula, etc., as if to say "hey, this movie is going to be as epic as those ones were". Not even slightly. A man accused of murder has his case thrown out of court because of bad procedures, so a group of townies decide to take matters into their own hands, and kill him, after first dressing him up to look like a scarecrow because... we need a costume for the bad guy. One year later, one of the guilt ridden members kills himself over the grave and up comes the dead guy, now with supernatural powers of not being noticed, despite being in a stupid costume, and being able to keep his clothes clean despite the death he causes. Slip into standard 'killer hunts them down' fodder, and we're done.

Was this movie shot over the weekend? It looks like it was shot over the weekend. If they aren't all first takes, I'd like to know what happened that they had to reshoot, maybe someone tripped over something. And the sound mixer gets his own credit... when the sound mixing is terrible! That may seem like an odd thing to call out, but I had to continually adjust the volume up during the too quiet talking scenes, then get my ears blasted as we switched to a music club.

This guy is prolific, so good that he's living his dream. I just need to stop getting caught up in them.

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