Cheap Thrills follows two estranged friends (Pat Healy, Ethan Embry) from high school that accept increasingly strange and dangerous dares for money from an affluent stranger (David Koechner) and his wife (Sara Paxton). Cheap Thrills Review I'm a little disappointed in myself for coming across this gem relatively late in the game. A horror comedy with a dark soul, it's hard to gauge the depth at which Cheap Thrills wished to attain, yet it finds itself with more life lessons than laughs at the end of the day. Ethan Embry brought himself back into my heart with The Devil's Candy, so this was an easy choice to watch for me. The rest of the cast felt awkwardly pieced together, but the finished
Us follows a family of four that goes on a vacation to the beach. Their first night soon turns into a fight for survival when disturbed and violent doppelgangers are intent on killing and replacing them. They must try to survive their evil twins and find out who or what exactly they are. Us Review Us is one of the first great horror romps of 2019 and has already solidified itself as a top-10 finalist for the year. Despite some disappointment in the fear factor and a few originality weaknesses in the plot and concept, Us excels as a follow-up piece to Get Out with social metaphor abounding in a tension and humor-filled story. The flawless nuance and foreshadowing is soon to become a signature
Love, Death & Robots is a Netflix original anthology series of intense scifi animated shorts, ranging from the perverse to the abhorrently violent and darkly comedic. Love, Death & Robots Review This Netflix series was one of my most anticipated pieces of entertainment in the early goings of 2019 when it was first teased by name-dropping director/producer David Fincher. And this series did not disappoint in the slightest. Although I am not completely done with the anthology of animated scifi shorts, I was so excited to write a review for something that impressed me with every new story, both in style and concept. The series kicks off with this futuristic bloodsport that features human-contro
Captive State follows a young anarchist (Ashton Sanders) and an alien-loyal detective (John Goodman), as they navigate a near-future Earth that exists in a political climate in which the world was invaded and now controlled by a powerful alien race. Referred to as the uncontested global legislators, the aliens have integrated human government and technology to control the populace. With the human race essentially divided between those that embrace the ruling aliens and those that oppose them, the anarchists attempt to give control back to humanity. Captive State Review I love original indie scifi flicks. These are often the most terrifying movies of the year, tackling political, sociological
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich follows a down-and-out comic book store owner (Thomas Lennon), his girlfriend (Jenny Pellicer), and his best friend (Nelson Franklin), as they attend a convention centered around the history and lore of the Nazi puppets. Soon they are in a fight for survival, as dozens of the evil puppets begin killing the attendees. Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich Review As is the case with many franchises birthed in the 80's and early 90's, the subsequent films have generally suffered the fate of most low-budget sequels. More often than not, the franchises even began to satire their own predecessors. Puppet Master is no exception, long ago giving up any inkling of taking
He's Out There follows a mother of two who becomes stranded in a rural cabin with her children when a masked killer begins to stalk them outside. He's Out There Review As I've mentioned time and time again, the slasher genre is one that is most prone to becoming stagnant. A person murdering people with a sharp object is the most easily predictable formula from scene to scene than most any other genre. You know when someone is going to die, when they will escape, and when the killer will meet his demise at the hands of the sole survivor. With this predictability in mind, He's Out There is not special. Nearly every scene is a paint-by-numbers trope. It's such a mundane trudge, that it's hard t
Down follows a man and a woman that become stranded in an elevator over a long holiday weekend. As they learn more about each other, their awkward romance devolves into a fight for survival. Down Review Another entry in Hulu's Into the Dark series, Down is nothing more than a fairly traditional and predictable thriller set in a location that is deceptively unoriginal. The elevator has been done before: The Lift, Dark Floors, Devil, and of course the aptly named Elevator. Of these, Devil is by far my favorite, and Down would be found soundly in third or fourth. It just settles in. Its pacing and writing is more than bearable, giving some decent moments of the haphazard social experiment and i