Reviews

This movie touch element of ethics like I have never seen before !

A man, feeling responsible for his wife's death, decided to subvert the funding of a project he is working on to bring her back, thus playing 2 companies.

The movie presents elements of ethic, law and technology by asking very tough questions :

• What is it to be human
• If we succeed at making AI, would it be the property of a company ?

• If you make copies of AI, are they individuals ?

As the main character creates more elaborate version of his late wife, we see that each of them have feelings for him and hope to be made whole. They feel distraught at the sight of the new model. Some try to runaway, other to commit suicide.

I would have given a 10 if not for the ending which sort of undermine all of the movie.

But it's still a good subversion of expectation.

This is not an horror movie ; it's a satire of vampire movie and buddy cop movie.

It's a self aware movie that plays all the tropes really well.

The story is about a self-loathing vampire hunting down terrorists. Other than that, he's a wise cracking, gunslinging vampire one-lining puns left and right will killing the bad guys or beating down the cop.

The cop is doing as much monologing as a detective in a film noir. He reminds me of Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson's character in Lethal Weapon). He's got as much punishment in this movie as any superhero in a Marvel movie. In other word, you need suspension of disbelief to enjoy the ride.

The terrorists are stereotypical, and they even says so in the movie : their plan to get to the place they want to blow up is to look like terrorist and claim they're being singled-out by islamophobic border patrol. The second part of their plan is to get bitten by the vampire in order to be able to blow themselves up over and over again.

Let's be honest... It's not a cinema masterpiece, but it does not deserve a rating of 3 ! My guess is that people had other expectation, such as a serious horror movie or something like that.

But it's not... It's really a buddy cop movie where one of the guy is a vampire. I put a rating of 10 to offset the misinterpretation of that movie, but it's more like a 7 :

• Lethal Weapon as a rating of 7.6 and it was a big blockbuster
• The budget was smaller, so it goes with the special effects
• The acting is top notch : Brad Dourif is amazing as always ! The actors are having fun with the script, no performance seems forced
• The pacing is ok, the editing is ok
• Their does not seems to be to many inconsistencies, or they can be excused because the movie is self-aware (such as who's keeping track of the vampire to inform the cop in the beginning of the movie ??)

Again, another movie that requires its characters to be abysmally stupid in order for the plot to progress...

The military knows the infected have a hierarchy and can communicate, even when cured. There are leaders and followers... and yet, when it is time to process the cured to reinsert them back into society, they decide not to manage that...

A military sergeant goes alone... by himself... to arrest one of the cured's leader... Of course the good guy must put the handcuffs on himself before the bad guy... God forbids he could have help.

The mother leaves the security of the military installation after a new outbreak, even though she and her brother-in-law have a plan...

And so on and so forth...

People make decision for the plot to happen... it's time we move up from there.

I am confident we are less "movie illiterate" then we were a few years ago.

This movie is not bad at all, I get what they wanted to do with it, they simply did not have the budget to show it on screen.

Therefore, you sort of have to extrapolate it.

This movie is still better than Underwater, which is more of a monster action oriented movie than a Lovecraftian one. This movie is more slow paced.

A career driven woman in the oceanic field wants to be chosen to be the diver for an eccentric Dr / Millionaire. She gets the job but wreck the equipment following an encounter with a Lovecraftian entity below the surface.

The experience is traumatic enough that she blanks this out of her memory, but the fact that she cannot explain what went wrong down there gnaw at her, so she investigate her suit.

She discovers an egg and decide to sneak it back home, to further study it and bounce back from this failure.

The creature ends up contaminating her with something, and she start feeling a connection to it, becoming oblivious to the the danger it represent, perceiving it like her child in need of protection.

As the creature grow, she keeps feeding it, her humanity always slipping. She can communicate with it a little bit.

I'm leaving stuff out, but I get what they were going for. You just can't make anything happen with no budget. For reference, this ~90 min was 12k£, and I have seen short movie with 4 times this budget.

It lack a little bit in the narrative department and would have beneficiate from 1 or 2 rewritting. For example, the movie sort off happen to the main characters as opposed to them taking action, but in a sense, it works ok in Cosmic Horror as we poor humans are completely oblivious to our lack of agency. But you get my point I hope.

So... go into this movie while managing your expectation and enjoy the ride.

The movie in and off itself is not bad. During WWII, crazy nazis got their hands on the remain of Lucifer, went all mad then offed themselves. The Americans got their hands on it afterward, and same thing happened.

The remains got buried until the some crazy scientist acquired it and decide to clone Lucifer, with the "how-to" from the "Book of Souls".

That's what is explained to us at nealy 2/3rd of the movie. This movie is telling over showing, unfortunately. But not everything is explained. It seems to be in the future, not sure if they are on Earth or elsewhere. It is not explained how they got the book, nor how they linked the book to the remains, how they transported the remains to the lab while avoiding the fate of the nazi or the Americans, how they discover the remains, why they decide to go the cloning route, who the lead scientist is and how he got the money to buy the remain, who did he by them from... you get my point by now, I'm sure...

Otherwise, it's just people in full-body costume running around and getting shot at by stereotypical mercenaries with the infinite ammo cheat on. People screaming.

The camera is shaky, to say the least; you won't see much of what is going on. Also, everything is shot at an extreme close-up. My guess is that they wanted to generate a mood of claustrophobia, but it falls short.

Nothing is lurking either and the cover is misleading : the creatures looks nothing like an H. R. Giger ripoff. It's more like the costume from the Army of Darkness (the pit scene at the begining).

The movie is not bad, it just really not good.

I took movie analysis classes in college and I remember they tought us the notion of offscreen to convey certain emotion, atmosphere, mood, or to advance the plot, etc.

But this movie takes this way to the next level.

There is a storm at the begining; it sort of happen, well, you guessed it, offscreen. The boat is shipwrech offscreen. They arrive at the deserted unmapped island... offscreen.

The guy who is suppose to rescue them... offscreen.

The characters fight for their lives offscreen, they get out of our field of view and die offscreens. The gore happens offscreen and they just shows the creatures hands bloodied afterwards.

The main fight at the end happens ONSCREEN !! But it's dark and you won't see much...

Plus things don't make much sense. Why would the creature get Peter (Justin Baldoni) only to let him go while he is unconscious ?? Why would Liz (Jewel Staite) return to the dens of the creature in a cave, during the night as she does not even have a weapon. I know it's cliched, but if they had added a scene where she tries to gather her ideas to formulate a plan verbally and out-loud, at least we could have had a reason.

Plus the creatures don't make much senses as well. They already killed enough people to get by a few days. Why kill the prisoners ? They also clearly have a society with arts, and they are intelligent enough to make knots and they use other tools, so they should understand rots I believe.

Also, the cratures look like Uruk'Hai and the creatures from the Descent had an illegitimate hairy child... It does not fit their own in-movie genesis that this is an offshoot of humanity.

They also talked about cannibalisms, but you don't see this. They are another species of great ape, like chimpanzees, but walking on 2 legs and wearing make-up and using weapons, but they have claws, fangs and the stout of a bat, and they are blind like one as well.

They clearly have an highly develop sense of smell but a tiny bit of sap from a tree in one of Liz's hand and they become blind like a covered in mud Arny in Predator. Then, Liz cover herself up in the stuff but they are able to guess approximatly were she is ?? Why ?

In the end, why does she shoot the radio ?? Why didn't they try another frequency to talk to someone ? Why did Liz shoot the radio in the end instead of taking it with her on the raft ? Why did she drop the gun before going on the raft ??

How did Liz lose her pants ? AND WHY DID THE ALPHA CREATURE TRIED TO GET HIS CLAWS DOWN HER PANTIES ????!!!!!

Make no sense at all... Oh, one last thing... The movie came out in 2009... Twilight came out in 2008 and New Moon in 2009 as well. That is why Kellan Lutz is on the poster. He just dies halfway, offscreen too...

First of all, this movie as an extremely slow pace. So readied yourself for a 2h45 min movie.

The imagery is beautiful and I really enjoyed the original score. The issue with it is that it's trying to be artsy at time. The shower scene with Rebecca (the main female lead), is one example : she is preparing to take a shower while looking at her reflexion in the mirror, than she is in the shower and blood start dripping on her, than she is back in front of the mirror, than she imagine walking back to the ballet she just watch, than she is in the shower again.

It was a bit too much, as this happen several time.

For the score, it is reminiscent of Wojciech Kilar, who composed the soundtrack of Bran Stoker's Dracula. A LOT !!! I would listen to this soundtrack while doing other things. The choice of piece is also a bit over the top sometimes, too dramatic for my taste in some scene. It is more to create atmosphere than for theme.

I like the fact that everything is grey, the colors are really neutral, which makes the blood pops out more on screen.

The vampires are clichéd... A LOT ! Fangs out, hissing, laughing at human misery, blood dripping from their mouth. They are also sexuallized, which goes along the line of victorian era vampire litterature. But they are also stuck in the past, like sending letter sealed by wax, classic tailored dress, etc. Oh, and the vampire is from Eastern Europe. Caleb even as 2 brides (as Dracula had 3...)

The characters are also clichéd, typical villagers who issued veiled threat, complescent priest, etc. It would work great in a parody but the movie takes itself seriously.

At least, the actors give themselves to their role. That I respect ! It just the way they were written. The acting is ok, but I was often left wondering how were characters feeling about stuff. The translation is way off. I would have like an original version with subtitles.

I would have prefered a more nuanced approach. For example, with all the vision the main character has, they could have played with her mental state but they did not set the table for this. The villagers could have been excessively nice instea, up to the point of creepiness.

One thing have don't understand is how they know that Caleb is the villain with just their hallucination ? It does not work. There should have been concrete evidence at some point instead of characters just saying : "Oh, this girl dissapear ? Let's go to Caleb's house because he's more dangerous then we think..."

What makes absolutely no sense at all is the dissapearance of people, sometimes whole groups, and not attracting the attention of anyone nor anything. I get it : it is to convey a feeling of powerlessness. In this univers, the law cannot protect you. Fine. But a whole group of young ballerinas ?!?!?! Nope !! They would have posted on instagram that they were going to Timere. One of them would have mentionned on social media that they were going to meet Caleb, etc... No way would there families have left that slide by.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Coming from a literary background, it was interesting to see the use of the narration.

I gave it a 6 because its seems like an excellent student project, or an inexpensive B movie and also because some of the element of the story don't make much senses.

We follow the young Scarlet who started off a bit like an "edge lord", but I started to like her character when she met the Witch. She showed great maturity and seemed like she could be someone's genuine friend.

This compare to some lines of dialog threw me off when she apology to the Witch for being such a horrible friend to her. I really did not get that : she refuses to use the power the Witch is offering her ; she does not want to be the Witches friend for what she could get from her.

You really get the vibe from the Witch that she is up to something but then you are lulled into a sense of false security when years passed and nothing happened. Knowing it was a tale, I kind of expected her to be one of the good guys.

The things I dislike were the element of urgency in the end. Why was it so urgent for her to pass the curse as soon as possible when her predecessor took 36 years to do so ? (The movie was released in 2014 and the Witch stated she was cursed in 1978.)

Also, why is everybody out to get Scarlet while any other person could have been "it" ? Scarlet's favorite professor, Greg and the Witch are all out to get her but another kid got away in the past...

Why did Greg lied about Meghan's suicide ? What was the point ? I believe it was to make Scarlet upset but Scarlet should have known better that Meghan would commit suicide after 2-3 days of her roommate disappearing... I believe it would have work better if Greg admitted to murdering Meghan because she was getting closed to something, no ?

How did Meghan found the cabine without being invited to it ? Just this break the rules set in the movie. I do have an hypothesis, but I'm not sure... I think it's because Scarlet did not embraced the power of the wand and is not in full control of this aspect of her life because she refuses to even try to pass the curse. I think it shows when she tried to reach out to her father but could not reveal herself to him. (But then again, it is just an hypothesis...)

Another thing I did not like is how everybody seemed to have used the wand in this freaking town ! When Scarlet breaks it and everyone just drops dead... Ok for Julia, Greg and the Professor, but many random people in the street ?!? Really ?!?!

I really like how they make fun of "the Wand" in-movie ! "It's just a twig..." I thought it was meta and fit really well with the narration. I also like the interaction between Scarlet and the Narrator. I think it would have been great to see a little bit more of that. It could have been the "Red Mage" alluded to in the english subtitle... because yeah ! The subtitle are different at some point then the character's dialog !! Greg and Scarlet have a whole segment of the movie that got remove where they talk about the Red Mage and how Greg just knows a little bit about it, just enough to be really scare and to know that Scarlet does not want to know more, that she should just pass the curse and move on with her life.

I wish we knew more about the tree, the Red mage, the Curse as well ! What was the price that no one wants to pay ? What is this cumulative interest about the curse ??!!

Last but not least : the dream sequence. I really thought they were going to let us down with the "lame" reveal that Scarlet is just a new transfer english major student who was writing a short story. When she go out of her room to introduced herself to a group of students who introduced themselves back as being Meghan, Julia and Greg, I just got the creepiest of vibe from Scarlet ! I really though she was the biggest stalker in the world ! But then, she wakes up from that and find herself at the cabin were she broke the wand ! I really like how the "it's just a dream" trope was reversed on it's head like in Descent, 28 Days Later and Repo Men.

To me, it was a big "f*¢k y0u !" by Scarlet to people who manipulated her to contract the curse as she just wiped out a millennial religion, everybody that got involved with the wand, and allegedly had magic dried up from the world. I just wish they could have shown the shift in Scarlet's attitude.

All in all, if you manage your expectation, I am sure you will enjoy this movie. Understand that it is a movie with a limited runtime. I think it would have work better as a mini-series to show the evolution of the character and explained a bit more about all the "wibbly wobbly sorcery-wimey stuff" because they did a wonderful job at getting me interested in the reality they created !

The story is pretty simple : bad guys into rape, invade home, torture and kill the inhabitant than proceed to robbing them. They get into this house where the father is a scientist working on zombies for a big corporation. He sets the zombies lose in his house to get the bad guys dead but gets infected. One of the bad guys is having a guilty conscience and help the mother and the eldest kid escape while the youngest is hiding. Pursuit, fight, death follow suit which jump start the zombie apocalypse.

This is a movie that is searching for its own identity. The thieves describe in the synopsis are more the criminals from "A Serbian Film" : they are forcing couples into conjugal rape while making there children watch. The one that is having a conscience and is not into this just does a 180 degree at the end... After getting back to save the mother a second time around, he simply decides to rape her. He than grabs a rock and smash her skull to smithereens for absolutely no reason...

The mother seems to forget about her kids rather quickly. She jumps out of a moving vehicle to go back to the house, but she forget about him after facing the first obstacle. Also, she trust a complete stranger when he tells her he saw her eldest kid get away but does nothing to inquire as to his whereabouts nor the general direction he went. She's just cool with it... And yes, that stranger is the rapey murderous dude from earlier...

Beside A Serbian Film, there is a lot of elements of the movie reminiscent of Resident Evil. The zombies are being developed in someone's basement. The scientist uses the zombies to try and save is family, there is a serum that precipitates some mutations from the virus that William Birkin, I'm sorry I meant John Pontecorvo, inject himself, there a company special task force that eliminate people, and there is an outbreak in Raccoon City...

Well, it's not mentionned Raccoon City but still... The locations and movement is one of the main issue of the movie. You see slow moving zombies forcing the characters to change there path, but just moment before they were far ahead of them and kept the distance by running. Even in the house, I was having trouble to grasp the distance between 2 places and the general disposition of the rooms.

With the spacial incongruity, the erratic behaviour of the character and the things they borrowed from Resident Evil, we are presented an uninspired movie that brings nothing to the genre.

First of all, my review is biased by my expectation at a close adaptation. I do understand it would have been extremely difficult to pull. I was hoping for the theme of the short story to be respected.

Alienation : In the original story, everything that happen turns to ashes, the only good thing that can happen to a character of the story is if nothing happen. The Colors falls from the sky and protagonist gets a bit of notoriety than it turns to gossiping and abandonment. This is shown a tiny bit in the movie when we see the character of Nicholas Cage somewhat lost during his interview as well as his interaction with the officer at the end.

Ignorance : There is no one who is educated that bother to help them, no one knowledgeable to explain what is going own and to offer a possible solution. The character are completely on their own. On the other side, in the movie, the girl knows of witchcraft and owns a copy of the Necronomicon. She cast spells to help. There is also Chong who knows things, and share is knowledge in the end.

Isolation : The family being consumed by the Colors is on its own, in a remote farm. No one is there to help them, no one wants to go that far to help them. It is a trip to go there and the officers need to be guided there by the narrator. This is really hard to do in this day and age. That is why I consider the movie pulled it off rather well ! The isolation is shown by difficulty to travel from place to place, the Colors rendering this simple act dangerous by the mutated trees. There is also the issue with remote communication being affected.

Powerlessness : In the story, plants, insects and animals touched by the Colors turn lush with life and vigorous, than get consumed by it and die while in the movie, they mutated and acquire predatory traits and increased aggressiveness. It is as if the Colors as an agenda while in the book, it appears more to be a victim of circumstance as well. My understanding of what happened in the book is that the Colors fell on Earth and then consumed something from living things from its surrounding and left Earth when it was readied.

Also, in the story, once the Colors touched us, we are aware that something bad is happening to us, that something is taken from us be we cannot do anything about it but remain in complete apathy, wait for our ineluctable demise. Even though the characters seems to stop being themselves in the movie, they are not powerless as they start fighting to achieve some sort of agenda by the Colors. We have a diametrically different energy from the characters, specially from Nicholas Cage.

Indifference : In the story, nothing indicate whether the Colors an intelligent life form or if they consider us intelligent. There is no attempt to establish communication with us nor if they have an agenda. They are just here and need to use something we have, something we need in order to return to space. In the end, the officers and narrator simply run off from it as it leaps from the ground to the trees and into the night sky.

In the movie, the Colors communicate with the little kid, they lure the oldest brother, they share vision with the girl, they mutated all living things they come across. They acknowledge we exist and they seems to want to subdue us. In Cosmic Horror, Humanity's existence does not matter what we do or what we want. Those of us following entities are just deluding themselves. We are either not acknowledge, toys or tools to be used and discard. It is the polar opposite of Classic Greek Art where humans were the central measure of the Universe.

Therefore, the themes are alienation from your community, ignorance and lack of understanding of your circumstance, isolation, powerlessness from what is happening, indifference from the Creature that simply needs to consume. Of all of those theme, only isolation is well carried (and it is no small feats !).

All in all, it is an extremely difficult story to realize and maybe a theatrical released movie was not the proper medium. Should you manage your expectations, it will be a very enjoyable movie.

Nicholas Cage's energy clash with some of the ambiance of the original story. I would have love to see him in a story where a character lose his sanity rather than a change in the character to cater to his play still. I think Christopher Heyerdahl would have be a better fit for the original ambiance of the story.

I was pleasantly surprised with this show. In college, I took literary creation classes and this show reminds me of an imitation process. In this, the student took a short story and followed the structures and patterns but still make it is own. It is not a bad thing, it allowed us to grow and improved as writer.

In this show, I saw the story of the biblical fall from grace of humanity. Refaat, the protagonist, is Adam. He has no doubt as he is full of certainty in science. He does not know any better. Even though, he always do the right thing, putting everyone else's happiness before his own.

Maggie is Lilith, Adam's first wife, the "one that got away". She is also a "red head", like some depiction of Lilith. She speaks her mind. As Refaat never told her how he felt about their relationship, she did not bother to stick around past what she deemed appropriate. Her sensibilities are her own. When they were both in college, she dated another man who wooed her first, Louis C. Ferrer (Lucifer).

Compare to her, Huwaida can never hope to match her. Huwaida is Eve, made to love him. She does what she is told. Even her engagement was arranged by Reda, Refaat's sister. She only grow as a person once Refaat put an end to there relationship, believing she is the one the tarot predicted would die, and also, after eating of the "forbidden fruit" (the flower that cured her). She even mentionned having met a new person, and she even affirms she and Refaat would probably not work out in the end.

Like I mentionned, Louis C. Ferrer is Lucifer. He is the one who abandonned is medical studies to become a "snake oil merchant". He hold a tarot deck which he uses to predict the future; therefore knowing of the Good and the Evil. He "corrupted" Maggie away from Refaat, refering to some stories of involvement between Lucifer and Lilith. Maggie really enjoys those games but Refaat does not want to partake in this. He as to fall though, in order to save Huwaida's life. He gets a reading, thus acquiring the knowledge of Good and Evil while on the quest for the flower (forbidden fruit).

Even though she is not Divine, or Godly, Shiraz is still akin to God in this story. She invites all the kids to play in her Garden. Even when she gets hurt, she just stand up and start laughing again, her wounds healing immediatly. There is no Death in the Garden and everything is provided (like the drinks and the jello). She help Refaat throughout the story without him acknowledging she is there. She refuses to talk to him because she was "trap in the basement" (which is something a like to think is like a refusal to accept one's own Faith). Even after Refaat "rekindle" is Faith in God, making peace with Shiraz's ghost, there are rules she must follow and once she breaks them, she as to leave Refaat alone. Even when she tries to convince Refaat as a child to jump over the roof, and he falls to the ground, Refaat is not hurt. His brother is though... This makes him limp and forces him to work with their father, which in turns allow Refaat to go to England for his studies. Thus, we can say that 'God' works in mysterious ways".

The Black Pharaoh's represent Death. Before him, no one dies in the story. It is this shadow of Death that cast doubt in Refaat, thus leading to his Fall first by getting a tarot reading by Louis, and than sending him on the quest for the flower. This flower being in cave, you have to get the permission to enter. As Refaat dynamites the entrance, he did not get permission, which is why acquiring the only remedy for Huwaida is the "forbidden fruit".

The game played between Louis and Refaat are for his immortal soul. The labyrinth / mind imagery represent its intricacies. Refaat does not understand what is so precious about it but Shiraz tells him it's the most precious thing he has and must never lose it. The ending leaves Refaat with this questioning as we, Humans, will never get an answer as to why Gods does what it does and why the Devil is so interested in us.

All in all, I find the show very well done. If it was the intent of the author to represent the Fall of Man from this stand point, I consider it a success ! I will watch the story again and do hope for a "round 2" between Man and the Devil !