A Dark Song

I just didn't give two Shits about anything going on here. The scene with the smoking man was 100/10 and if we could have stayed in that direction I could have at least gone with a 2/4. But nope, we sunk the ship further with that ending. 

1/4

The Devil All the Time

Soooo was UnPleasantville already taken as a title? Really fascinating look at everything ugly about religion. And we can all agree that the real devil all the time was the person who created that spider scene AmIrite?

3/4

Dracula 2000

It goes for the jugular but ends up feeling defanged and lifeless.

1/4

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

In the end, it's hard to make apes that fascinating especially when you feel like the movie was written by one.

2/4

Deliver Us from Evil

The only evil on display here is the screenplay,  rarely has an exorcism felt as watered down or so unimaginative. 

1/4

The Dark Knight Rises

There's definitely tons of va va va voom here and the newcomers more then hold their own, but unfortunately there is too many of them, too many subplots, and too many flashbacks. It needed to be a miniseries as opposed to a feature length film.

2/4

Devil's Due

Ironic that the whole thing is shot on a handheld camera because the whole movie feels like it's missing reels. Or any type of comprehension over what is scary.

0/4

Django Unchained

Think a movie about slavery is impossible to have fun watching? Check your thinking. Django Unchained is bloody, talky, hillarious, bizzare, long as fuck and completely fun to watch. Quentin Tarantino took another blast from the past and made it his own masterpiece (see Inglourious Basterds for further proof). He's the shit.

Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx as Django, an angry slave hellbent on getting revenge on those who abused and sold his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). He soon gets an opportunity to get some bloody satisfaction when he meets Dr. King Schulz (Christopher Waltz), a doctor turned bounty hunter who is out for blood. Their journey leads them all over the United States, ending with the two venturing into Candyland to save Broomhilda from her master; Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his loyal house slave; Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).

If Django were a drink, it would be the lovechild of a Monster, Rockstar, and Full Throttle. There's so much energy on screen you would swear it could explode. Django Unchained is such a party you would swear you were watching a movie about a lighthearted subject as opposed to slaves getting beaten and sold across the country. Tarantino's trademark is taking dark, somber subjects and adding a spin on them that makes them fun for the audience. This is the history lesson you wish they would have had you learn about in school.

For being 165 minutes long, Django flies like a plane. With all the talking, repeating, and possible opportunities for endings that aren't taken, Django never overstays its' welcome. The movie could have been an hour longer and I wouldn't have cared.

It doesn't hurt that all of the actors are in on the fun. Even in the least humorous situations in the movie, you can tell everyone is having a blast. Foxx gives his role a badass, yet likeable quality that makes you root for him. Christopher Waltz displays why he won that Oscar fair and square, his character deserves a movie of his own; his performance and characterization are full of life. DiCaprio nails his part as well, going from charming, to menacing, to charming, to asshole all in one movie, delivering the goods with every part of Calvin Candie. Candie is easily one of my favorite villian's of 2012; he's one you love to hate to love. Samuel L. Jackson is hillarious also. Like DiCaprio, there's nothing likeable about his character but the actor behind him gives it so much heart and flavor you wanna like him.

Comedic lovers and gorehounds can all bond with Django; it brings both. Scenes with the bagheads and some of the later murders are gutbustingly funny. To speak about them would ruin the fun. Only in a Quentin Tarantino movie would someone stop the killing just to deliver some offcore, bizzare humor and nail it. Django is bloody as fuck also and I loved every minute of it. Even though the main characters are chained, nothing about Django Unchained feels restricted or confined. It's an outrageous blast.

4/4

Dark Skies

Aliens, possessed children, abductions, and Keri Russell repeatedly slamming her head into a window. How can you go wrong? Dark Skies will provide the answer. Not only is it flat-out terrible but it's also as fun as getting probed. Where did it go wrong?

One possible answer could be the threadbare plot. Keri Russell & Josh Hamilton star as Lacy & Daniel Barrett, two parents who are coming to the conclusion that things just aren't....right. Whether it be based on strange break-ins at night, everything in their house being arranged, or their youngest child constantly seeming to be visited by an extraterrestrial being. Little clues like that convince them that something is wrong.

After that brief summary, absolutely nothing happens. These must be the slowest aliens in the history of mankind. It's a 97 minute movie and they only really kick into action within the last 10 minutes. For the rest of the time, the audience is faced with obnoxious loud noises, repetitive wide-eyed, open-mouthed scares, and tedious false alarms that lead into absolutely nothing.

I felt the leads' performances also fell quite flat as well. This is quite the alarming situation and you never really get the feeling that these characters are in genuine panic and alarm. And if they don't care, the audience is quite unlikely to give any fraction of a shit. The tension never rises or even begins and you're left watching a movie that feels half-assed from the word go. Add on a lackluster, clichéd ending that suggests the incredibly ghastly notion of a sequel, and you have a movie whose essence should have been abducted before it dared to be shown before the human eye.

0/4

The Devil Inside

What is it about? In 1989, Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) murdered three people in the process of having an exorcism performed on her. She is then whisked off away to Rome by the Catholic Church in order to help her. Her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) wants to find out what happened to her, so she goes off to Rome with her director friend Michael (Ionut Grama). While there, they meet up with two local priests named David and Ben (Evan Helmuth and Simon Quarterman) who want to help them cure Maria's mother, but must do it without the church's consent considering how they are on exorcisms.

The good: The Devil Inside actually gets off to a good start. The opening scene of the aftermath of Maria's killing spree is quite chilling. You don't see how she killed the three people which lets your imagination run wild as to how she did it, adding some fright to the scene. I'm glad they didn't show these murders occur onscreen. It really does look like an official crime scene that you would see on the news. Chilling.

Suzan Crowley's short, but effective performance as Maria will leave a mark as well. Though she doesn't get a ton of screen time, she dominates the scenes that she is given. The creepiest scene in the movie is due to her performance when dealing with Isabella in the hospital.

The Devil Inside is quite a short movie actually. Running a time of 87 minutes is something I greatly appreciate. In fact, I would almost say that I wish it was a bit longer. Though I will save those complaints for the part of this review where I bitch my ass off about what sucked in this movie.

The bad: The performances are a big problem in this movie. Every single other performance besides Crowley's is absolutely flat. Scenery outshines and is more captivating then anything these actors are giving in this movie. The performances are half-assed and the screenplay is flat. You really don't give a shit if any of these people live or die.

Despite airing a lot of demonic scenes on the preview, The Devil Inside is actually quite slow. About 3-4 exorcism scenes occur, and granted I did appreciate those, the rest of the movie is ridiculously boring. Nothing happens except bland commentary on the camera as if this were an episode of Real World where the cast came back from the dead. It's not interesting in the least when someone isn't twisting their head around or chanting "Connect the cuts".

THAT FUCKING ENDING. OMFG. LAZIEST ENDING EVER. Sorry about that. But literally, I can almost guarantee that no other movie in 2012 will end worse than this one. It starts getting interesting as the climax raises but then it drops. It would be as if a rollercoaster would be winding up on the biggest hill possible only to reverse slowly and take the riders back to the exit. What a waste of a potentially good finale. It just...ends. Talk about dead.

The lowdown: The Devil Inside is a big disappointment. It has some cool scenes and has one good performance but that's not enough to overcome the lack of originality, interest, excitement and ESPECIALLY a good finale. This movie deals with the spirits ironically enough, that is how I would recommend you to watch this movie. With a good spirit or two that generally follows you around like a puppy after consuming as much alcohol as possible.

2/4

Dream House

The plot: Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) moves into a new house with his wife; Libby (Rachel Weisz) and their two children; Dee Dee and Trish. Soon after moving in, their daughters begin to see a strange man lurking around, and after some research, Will finds out that the previous owners will all murdered by someone in their family; Peter Ward. Will begins to think that Peter Ward is back to get his family and the rest of the movie is about his discovery about Peter Ward and who the man lurking around is once and for all.

The good: There's very little redeeming here, so I'm going to have to start grasping at straws.....oh, Naomi Watts (who plays the Atenton's neighbor) and Rachel Weisz perform well here with the bare, minimal material they are given. Seriously...about 20 minutes total of speaking time for the both of them. Way to take the good things and squish them like a family of bugs.

The bad: Oh boy, where the hell do I start? Listing the number of things wrong with this movie is like listing how many rocks are currently residing in the United States. Well, for one...the preview is totally misleading. It makes Dream House look like a scary, entertaining horror movie. The joke is now on you if you believed that shit. Dream House is easily one of the dullest and least chilling horror movies of 2011. Not one scary thing happens and you're more likely to give yourself goosebumps by cleaning underneath your fridge.

Daniel Craig is also a big reason why I feel this movie drowns. He delivers such a bland and monotone performance. His voice never changes and there's never any sense of danger or peril in the way he behaves. Even in later (supposed to have been) emotional scenes where he finds out the true discovery of Peter Ward (which isn't surprising in the least if you have watched the trailers) lack any sort of emotion or passion at all. It's as if we're watching a movie about someone two days after they received a lobotomy.

And the twist? Well, I'll ruin it for the two people on Earth who haven't seen the trailer. HE IS PETER WARD and his family is all dead. Yeah, big surprise. Even if you haven't seen the trailers, the clues to this discovery are about as difficult to find as the clues in an episode of Scooby Doo. Plus, this twist has been done several other times in better movies with better finishes (The Uninvited, Shutter Island, The Others). At one point, someone even looks at "Will" and says, "He's back!". How is that not obvious? After he discovers this, there's another lame twist about who else has insidious intentions, but by that point you don't really give a shit considering the 90 minutes of soap opera disguised as a horror movie that you've been forced into watching.

Logic is another aspect of good filmmaking that takes a flying leap out the window here. If Peter Ward was innocent and they had no proof to lock him up, why was he there in the first place? What made them think he did it if there was no proof? Why didn't anyone else investigate the crime to see if he wasn't guilty? Why would people who were trained to work with crazy people allow someone to make up an entire other life with completely different names? Why did it take him 5 years to get out? Why didn't someone else tell him that he was Peter Ward? Seriously, the people in this movie act like such idiots just to get the plot to barely move from beginning to end.

The lowdown: Dream House is an absolutely terrible movie from start to finish. It's dull and thrilless, the main star is someone with the urgency of a potato, the twist is easy to figure out, and it's been done so many times that the neat twist started many years ago by The Sixth Sense has now been flattened to a pancake thanks to movies that take the formula of a ghost horror movie and flush it down the cinematic toilet. Next time anyone involved in this movie decides to make another horror movie of equal quality...just say the butler did it.

0/4

Darkness Falls

Bad horror movies are like the plague. You try to avoid them as best as you can. No one looks forward to having any experience with them. And despite this, both will always find a way to get in contact with you and fuck up a bit of your time. And by that comparison, I introduce Darkness Falls, a terrible, terrible, terrible movie.

Darkness Falls has a pretty simple premise. Evil tooth fairy haunts everyone in the town where she was murdered, attempting to hunt down all of the residents in the darkness. Mainly Kyle Walsh (played without an ounce of personality by Chaney Kley), his crush Caitlin (Emma Caufield from Buffy) and her little brother Michael (played by who gives a fuck, he sucks). The first 10 minutes or so is pretty effective. Kyle watches his Mom get killed by the evil tooth fairy. Watching a family member die right in front of your face has always been a terrifying idea to me. Darkness Falls then flies off the track soon after.

Even though the previously mentioned beginning is good, Darkness Falls does absolutely nothing beneficial after. There's no twists, there's no future plot advancements, hell there's barely even a climax. It's just about 80 minutes of Kyle running around and having no one believe his story until another threadbare character bites the dust right in front of their face. It gets old really quickly.

Darkness Falls is about as productive as a fattie in a marathon. It literally is 90 minutes of absolute nothing. There's barely any story, you don't really know shit about the characters and even less about the ones that pop up for 2 seconds before getting dragged away by the tooth fairy. The murders (which you can see coming about 2 planets away) mainly occur offscreen and the special effects are less than impressive due to how frequent you see the tooth fairy. She goes from slightly creepy to just flat out ridiculous based on how many times you see her towards the end. Nothing left to the imagination in this movie at all.

Darkness Falls is a giant ball of bullshit. Absolutely no merit at all. I would rather rip out every tooth possible and throw myself into every dark corner available rather than watch this bullshit one more time. Can't wait for the evil Easter bunny movie. Hoorah.

1/4

Dead Silence

Super fun to watch even if nothing about it is even close to super.

2/4