Reviews

The Empty Man largely went unnoticed when it hit cinemas in 2020, not surprising as a raging pandemic was in full effect & the world wasn't quite ready yet to sit in a darkened theatre for 2.5 hours & be bombarded with an atmospheric slow burn horror that does more for HP Lovecraft fans than the Slasher Kids the initial trailer was aimed at. Great then that in 2021 via Streaming services this excellent little movie is finally getting some well earned recognition. As always the genre that has the longest legs is horror. How many great horror movies flew under the radar only to re-emerge years later as 'Classics'?. Think John Carpenters 'The Thing', Another Lovecraft inspired movie that is now regarded as a benchmark in the 'Sci-Fi Horror' field & thats just the tip of the iceberg. It's true to say Horror fans will never let good movies get away from the general public & in the case of 'The Empty Man' this is already the case & a well deserved one at that. Not a classic yet but the potential is there for sure.

It's easy to see though why those that did brave the cinema (Not that many to be honest) were a bit confused, this is not a Friday night date movie, more one for fans of off-centre Indie horrors like the awesome 'It Follows' or 'Mandy', The Empty Man is full of ideas & be it long, is well thought out & paced slowly enough for anyone to get to grips with it's many concepts. Firmly placed in the realm of 'Cosmic Sci-Fi Horror' a genre represented & pretty much created by HP Lovecraft, you can tell the director is slightly obsessed with all things 'Cthulu' as the movie has all the trademarks. Metaphysical beings, weird cults, ideas & entities human brains lack the ability to comprehend. All of this centred around a career best performance from James Badge Dale (Like Hereditary before it, this is an award worthy piece that will get completely ignored by all in that arena)

The Film is in part a Noir-Like Mystery as Dale goes about trying to solve the dissapearence of his neighbours daughter who's only parting words are written in blood on the bathroom mirror 'The Empty Man Made Me Do It' this eventually leads him to a Crazy Cult who dance around Fires at night & whisper unintelligable ramblings into peoples ears, completely normal right? All the while suffering terrible nightmares & guilt around the death of his wife & son in an apparent car accident. On the surface It's a pretty normal set up but the movie has many tricks & traps along the way & for that reason a second watch is pretty much essential if you want to pick up all you missed first time around. It's a clever thinking person's film & for that reason might not be everybody's cup of tea but if you give it a chance, The Empty Man will have you firmly in it' grasp so don't be put off by that.

The Film starts with a lengthy opening sequence as a group of Kids venture into the snowy mountains of the Himalaya's & stumble upon a cave with a rather creepy looking skeleton inside. This was criticised by some when the film opened for being 'Too Long!' but in hindsight is absolutely essential to the story & like most of what follows, is perfectly paced & beautifully shot (The movie has some inspired moments of camera work that feel similar in tone to the previously mentioned 'Hereditary' & 'It Follows' but have their own stamp of weirdness on it) This prologue sequence really sets up the movie in the best 'What The Hell?' kind of way & certainly delivers on the chill factor & i'm not just talking about the snow.

Overall 'The Empty Man' is one of the best horrors of 2020. It took the Director 4 years from page to screen & you can really tell this is a labour of love for him. It's a shame that the combination of Fox selling to Disney, a pandemic & a misleading trailer all led to it flying under a lot of people's radars but at least in 2021 this chunk of Lovecraftian gold is finally getting the audience it deserved. If your looking for basic linear 'Conjuring' type chills this is not going to float your boat but if you are a fan of dark 'Lynch' like madness without going too far left of centre this will tick every box. Worth watching for James Badge Dale's performance alone. This is 'The Wicker Man if re-imagined by Lovecraft, & if that doesn't make you want to watch it, nothing will. So... watch it & join the Cult of 'The Empty Man'.

Mike Flanagan has slowly been building an impressive CV over the last few years, from the low key but superb 'Absentia' to the likes of the more well known 'Oculus' and the ridiculously underrated 'Ouija Origin of Evil' which to those who gave it a chance delivered some of the finest shocks this side of the decade despite that silly title. With his new project Flanagan points his attention to the old dark house with his re-imagining of the classic book 'The Haunting of Hill House' no easy feat as Robert Wise's 1961 classic is beloved by many and as such lends himself to more critical scrutiny than one would probably like. However the good news for all concerned is there is very much definately nothing to be worried about. If anything Flanagan has improved & enriched the tale way more than anyone could have conceived. Given Flanagan's almost impeccable record in the genre it will come as no surprise to those who have already ingested the man's previous back catalogue that similar motifs & his clever use of non-linear time lines are in full effect in this show and one must keep a keen eye as their are so many tricks & rug pulls along it's long spiral staircase of a story that a second watch will almost be a given if you are to really catch everything the camera is throwing at you. Given that this is primarily a tale about family & the secrets they hold a little too close to their hearts, initially the show is a slow build with gentle nods to the terror that awaits, this is where Hill House succeeds greatly, characters are developed early on through present day & the past and this combination of growth from child to adult only adds to greater connect for the viewer and like other great character driven shows before like 'Breaking Bad' for instance the story flows out of these people in subtle but near pitch perfect notes. The cast do a fantastic job of keeping the show grounded enough as to not let the horror when it does come feel hokey or out of place. Each arc is explored with great detail and where the show succeeds again is placing each jigsaw piece of their story exactly where they need to be for every terrible thing that happens to them to actually mean something by the end. The house itself is a huge gothic rollercoaster of a building & the director uses impressive static long shots & slow pans for you to fully grasp the magnitude of it's wood, bricks & mortar, a character very much of it's own fleshed out across the episodes like any other.

EP 5 onwards is where the House really starts to let fly, Flanagan has already established enough with his use of camera & story hints that from then on in it's a masterclass of tension & technique. Hill House itself literally starts to come alive before your eyes. But for every horror trope their is a curve ball, for every expected jump scare their is a heartbeat, it's a clever mish mash between what you are expecting and what you are actually given and to this end the show keeps viewers eyes glued to every shadow & every corner of the house which keeps tension at a level pretty much unmatched by any other Horror TV show in memory. Of course Flanagan is a film director so this cinematic appproach was to be expected but the Actors & Crew again also do a wonderful job of keeping everything so insanely effortless. Has any TV show in memory looked this good, again only 'Breaking Bad' and maybe 'Twin Peaks' has such a acute aesthetic of cinema as to blur the lines almost to a point where their isn't one anymore. EP 6 is an excellent example of this, told in 5 long cuts across 2 time lines against the backdrop of 2 storms, a bold & brave approach but one that absolutely works especially in the sorroundings of this old dark house, utilizing wide & long tracking shots that give the house an eerie & cold nightmare like feeling, it wears it's influences on it's sleeve from the original 1961 movie to Kubrick's 'The Shining' to Video Games like 'Resident Evil' & 'Silent Hill' but all tied up in something very unique and all very much it's own entity. It's a beautiful episode of TV and all the more satisfying that it comes from a genre that most people turn their nose up at, Despite Horror's so called renaissance in 2017, their hasn't been a film this year in the genre you could actually call 'a classic' but with 'Hill House' despite it's home being on the small screen, we finally have one. Who knew that the best horror film of 2018 would be a TV Show?

That being said their are some mis-steps, more like miscues that this viewer found a little out of place. Songs are placed in to some moments & scenes that clearly don't belong there, more so in the final episode where you would be forgiven in thinking you've stepped in to an episode of 'Dawson's Creek' rather than an internally dark horror opus. I can only assume this was to draw a mainstream audience to a more conventional close than what a Flanagan movie would usually end on. However it woefully draws you out of the horror & with a voice over that clearly is at odds with the chirpiness of it all. Something this creepy, despite it's emphasis on emotional family drama should always end on something a little darker to compliment what has come before and this does not succeed. But that being said maybe some will find some horror in the dulcit tones of mellow indie rock.

'The Haunting of Hill House' is essential viewing, a lot more than a horror show, it's a family drama played out in the shadows, a nightmare that drags you in and never let's you clearly wake. Beautifully shot & staged, an extended thrill ride that at it's core plays like a symphony orchestra on halloween night. Mike Flanagan has once again proved that at the top of his game their is no one working in the genre right now quite so on the money about what really keeps us awake at night. in summation, Watch it! you will not be dissapointed you did, well maybe at bedtime when the lights go out & your house really starts to come alive.

Looking at how the world of superhero movies today has evolved from it's first steps, the early attempts before cgi like 'Captain America' and the Corman 'Fantastic Four' to the signs of possibility laid out by the first Blade movie (For me the pre-cursor to the modern age of SH franchises) all the way up to the giddy heights of 'The Avengers', 'The Dark Knight' & 'Winter Soldier' pretty much the blueprint that all SH movies should be judged against, it seems strange to me that anybody can walk into Josh Tranks 'Fantastic Four' and come out feeling anything but betrayed. 20th Century Fox's cash grab attempt to hold on to the rights of characters they care nothing for is at best an embarrassment to snigger at when you have had a few & at worst perhaps the most inept movie to come from a big studio since, well..ever! To sum up this movie is almost nie-on impossible in a small review here, it's probably best just to read the spate of negative reviews, The first 10 or so on here should be sufficient enough for you just to get a handle on what Fox has cut & pasted together & called a movie. As a betrayal to loyal comic fans & cinema goers in general, Fox has managed to create a film so bad & so blatantly unforgiving in it's awfulness that anyone with half a cinema brain will simply just be picking there jaw up from the ground after the final painful reel (If you thought the Electro-Spider-man face off in ASM 2 was bad, wait till you see Dr Doom's few scenes in this) Of course the blame game & excuses began even before the first audiences started tearing it a new one. It's all well & good to play around & tinker with characters & stories from an original base but if you are going to do it with characters beloved by millions the world over you better make it fresh & relevant which this new rendition, sadly, is the exact opposite. It's highly unlikely that Trank finished this movie by himself, it does have the feel of 3 or 4 different movies strewn together in the same way young Reed Richards pieces his time displacement device in the opening scenes, a bit of junk from this yard, an old car battery, a line of dialogue from that movie, an idea from that Fox exec etc etc. The end result is like watching tumbleweed, it just goes on & on, never going to any one place, sometimes even travelling without moving. If Chronicle showed us anything it's that Trank has a grasp of this genre & has vision, there is nothing here on show that displays any of this and it's far more believable a story to think that the studio that looks at there comic franchises as green machines only took control of it long before the director had any chance of fully forming his take and as such we will probably never ever really know what this was. Much like Alien 3 and David Fincher, a saga more famous than the film itself, Fantastic Four 2015 will always be remembered as a jumbled mess rather than something great to finally put to rest the old 'They'll never make a good FF movie' myth. No doubt the blame game will continue as much as the bad reviews until it's finally forgotten about and dug up for an Empire magazine dissection 20 years from now. Will Trank be given this kind of opportunity again? or have Fox killed a promising career? the proof is in the final product & if he is given a chance at redemption i sincerely hope he manages to shirk off the negativity that this pile of steaming (insert your own word here) has garnered him. To understand the anger that's directed towards this film one must go back to the first 100 issues of the FF, a run of stories so immaculately formed by Lee & Kirby that reading them today it astounds that no one has had the idea of actually adapting them for a modern audience. My guess is that's the FF movie that everybody wants to watch. Sadly for now it seems the real fantastic is still in the 60's comics rather than anywhere on screen so, 'Will anybody be able to make a good FF movie?' it continues.....

Wow, i was once prescribed valium for insomnia but it didn't work, i tried everything, herbal tea, Chinese medicine, Zopidone or whatever that stuff is called. Anyway all of that could have been avoided if i had just had this film at hand. Perfect remedy for peaceful relaxing sleep. Now the writer of this film probably thought that some of his ideas would look really cool once they got round to shooting them but seriously sometimes it's just best to look at the end product & shelve it. The Ritual is a bad movie! Awful Film School style visuals, mind numbing sound, terrible script, over long sequences of nothing in particular or interesting. Snap shot editing that feels clumsy & again like a 14 year old film wannabe threw his hand in. Skull masks don't make a film scary & dropping little homages to older, much better horror films does not make your film any cooler if the idea is crap in the first place. This wants to be edgy but ends up looking & feeling all wrong. If you need a film to help you sleep, wack it on but other than that seriously don't entertain the idea of watching it for real, its a mess.

This is a Warning!!! Do NOT watch this film!! if you are browsing IMDb for found footage horror & stumble upon this film, you'll see the score & think 'Maybe' 'it might be OK' do not fool yourself into thinking that the score is wrong or you would like to make up your own mind. This is Grange Hill horror. The acting in my first school play was far superior. The ideas for films you have whilst sitting on the toilet are better, Uwe Boll movies have more intelligence, you could make a movie on your old N95 Nokia phone & it would look like The Exorcist in comparison to this. Don't kid yourself into thinking 'it could be so bad it's good!' it's not! honest!! please do yourself & the world a favour by heeding the words of the film itself, the clue is in the title. 'WARNING' 'WARNING' WARNING' It's too late for me friends, i can't get my 80 minutes back, but there is still time for you. Help the world, bury this film deep, deep into the heart of the sun & pray it never returns. You will thank me later, i promise.

Having Watched this on the bounce after 'Howling reborn' this movie seemed much better than it actually was. Having re-watched it after exorcising the Quite nauseating howling turkey, it now occurs to me that this film is about as enjoyable as drinking your own urine whilst being buggered by a fat sweaty homeless man who hasn't showered his whole life. There is absolutely no point in discussing the plot as it's quite obvious that the scriptwriter has done a william burroughs cut up technique with the first 3 movies and re-hashed the same lines in different order. The casting exec has chosen a lead actor that has a distinct inability to read a line without looking like he's standing on the stage like a six year old at a nativity play. The rest of the cast do lots of head scratching and quite literally look like they don't know what the hell kind of movie they have signed up for. Pinhead looks like a constipated Grandad who is trying so hard at sounding like Doug Bradley that the concentration is making his pins fall out. It's like a group of 15 year old fanboys have got together and thought if you repeat the words 'Flesh', 'Pain', 'Pleasure' over and over again, you've got yourself a hellraiser film. Are their any redeeming qualities? Actually their isn't. And if your one of these people who reads all the reviews and thinks 'i'd like to make up my own mind', this is one of those times you should listen to your conscience, No good will come of it, the world will be a better place for you not watching it, trust me, please!

It's Bad, Really Bad! Think about all the sequels that followed The original and ONLY good movie in the series and set your expectations a thousand times lower and even then it's far worse. I don't review a lot of movies because their doesn't seem much point as most things get covered and said by other people but having just wasted 1hr 40mins on this pile of stinking Werewolf excrement i think it's my duty to warn you away from this. But here's a tip, if you want Hellraiser Revelations to seem like a good film, watch this first. Seriously bring back Bruno Mattei or Herschell Gordon lewis, at least their crap movies were funny. This is about as low as the genre has ever got, so low you can't even see it. But that said, this will probably appeal to pubescent 17 year old girls who spend most of the day dreaming about robert pattinson, blogging to people who don't give a crap and wishing that they glowed in the sunlight. Horrid!!