Reviews

Bedeviled is not the greatest of horrors nor is it the worst. It's pretty standard fare really, there's nothing new or unique about it really with little to make it stand out from the rest of the teen-starring horror movies. This doesn't mean its a terrible film though.

Bedeviled does suffer a little from pacing issues. Mr. Bedevil spends the movie terrorizing a group of teen friends, but each time he comes to scare the s**t out of one of them, he lets them live. He then decides to kill half of them off in one go, albeit seperately.

The antagonist of this movie, Mr. Bedevil is your run of the mill supernatural entity that feeds of fear. One might think he (and the film) are an allegory or warning about becoming too reliant on technology and smart phones, but to be honest Mr. Bedevil doesn't actually need to be a smart phone app; he could have worked just the same as a supernatural entity that just hangs around in our world. He manifests people's fears, but the phones aren't really a part of that.

Despite the film being about a being that feeds on fear, the 'monsters' and Mr. Bedevil himself are a little comical. To us there's nothing really scary about the pregnant woman, granny, the clown(s) and especially not the mishapen teddy bear (the most comical of the fear manifestations). Thsi fact unfortunately stops the film from ever being truly creepy. Mr. Bedevil has a bit of a deformed Jokeresque look to him, but his bulging, sideways blinking eyes kinda spoil it.

The acting in this film is pretty much what you'd expect from a bunch of unheard of young actors, although Jordan Essoe does turn in a great performance as Mr Bedevil (although only when he's talking to his victims via the app).

As with a lot of horror film there are a few head-scratching decisions made and unrealistic things happening. The most obvious of the unrealsitic things is the posting of a sex video on social media, neither Instagram nor Facebook would allow a sex video to be uploaded. When listening to a recording of one man's investigation into Mr. Bedevil, why TF would you sit right next to what is quite clearly a dead body under a sheet?

There are a few other things that don't make sense - Gavin stamps on a mobile phone (presumably his so that Mr. Bedevil can't get him), yet in the next seen he recieves a call from Mr. Bedevil pretending to be his girlfriend. The fate of Samuel Price - Mr Bedevil kills through extreme fear, so why does he appear to have been killed from a physical wound and who covered his body with a sheet (also what was he filming on the camera if he was recording his findings on very old tape?) Mr. Bedevil also seems to mark his victims with the symbol of his app (a V in a circle), but we're only shown it on Alice and Gavin, so you wonder what's the point.

Although the final girl survives, the unhappy ending where it's revealed her mother has also downloaded the Mr. Bedevil app is rather predictable.

This is an average horror film and if you've got nothing to do for an hour and a half, then Bedeviled will fill that gap nicely, just don't expect too much from it.

I might be biased because this is one of my favourite films of all time, but Jurassic Park is one of the greatest family adventure films ever. It looks as good today as it did twenty seven years ago. I don't know how Steven Spielberg does it, but somehow he makes films that never look dated. There were a lot of changes made from the book, but this is one of those times when that is a good thing. While I greatly enjoy the book, there are times when it is dull, when it gets too sciency. It was written as a book for adults, but the decision to make it more kid friendly was a great idea. One of the biggest character changes was John Hammond. In the film he creates the park to bring joy to the children of the world (and adults). He wants to wow people and give them memories that will last a lifetime. The John Hammond in the book is much less likeable, his main goal with Jurassic Park is to make money. Also, you know, you can't have Dickie Attenborough playing an a-hole. This film has a stellar cast, with my favourite being the oft sarcastic Ian Malcom (Ah, now eventually you do plan on having dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right?) Naturally the stand out stars are the dinosaurs. What makes them (and the film) great is the fact that 90% of the dinosaurs are done with physical effects, animatronics and models. They were spectacular in 1993 and still are in 2020. Some may think that the movie is a little slow to start with, but it's certainly worth the wait, with non-stop action for a lot of the film. The most memorable scene being the T-Rex attack on the tour cars. It's just a shame that the river scene from the book never made it past the concept stage. Overall Jurassic Park is an astrounding film that will continue to delight audiences for many, many years to come. There are four (soon to be five) other films in the series and while I enjoy them all, none will be able to surpass the jaw-dropping original. It truly is a film like no other.

I didn't know what to expect when I watched this film (I'd only vaguely heard of it), but I was pleasantly surprised by it. It's has subtle comedy in it and does not rely on toilet humour like a lot of modern films. Instead it relys on ordinary people in odd situations, the repetition of one line by different characters and fourth wall breaks. For a zombie movie, the gore isn't high. Yes there is some gore when the zombies eat people, but when the zombies are hacked apart or shot there's no gratuitous gore, but black smoke/dust instead, which makes a nice change. It has an interesting take on what causes the zombie outbreak (the Earth being pushed off its natural axis by polar fracking). The zombies retaining small parts of their former lives and repeating one or two words associated with that life adds to the comedy. It even pokes fun at people becoming zombies by being on their phones all the time, by having a bunch of zombies still trying to use their phones. The rather random and inexplicable scene of Tilda Swinton's character being whisked off by aliens didn't spoil the movie (though it easily could've done). The fourth wall breaks were used just the right amount, with the best one being Adam Driver and Bill Murray's characters talking about reading the script. The Dead Don't Die isn't a laugh a minute comedy horror, but it was something different and overall an enjoyable film (especially if you don't expect too much).

It would appear that M. Night is one of those one hit wonders. He had great success with the Sixth Sense (which is a great film), but since then he has had some real turkeys like The Village and The Happening. The Visit is another that falls into that category, though it's not nearly as bad as The Village. The film keeps you guessing, which is one of the only good things about it, you're left wondering what's going on with Nana and Pop Pop. Unfortunately with a lot of this sort of thing, what you imagine might be going on is much better than the revelation of what is really happening. Like when horror films only give you glimpses of the monster and the full reveal is disappointing (I'm thinking Jeepers Creepers here). Nana's bizarre behaviour has you wondering if she's possessed or some kind of alien, but the truth is rather dull. From one piece of clothing found in the basement, we're led to believe that Nana and Pop Pop are mental patients, however this just leaves you with questions, not least of which is how did the two escape? Also what kind of idiots share personal information with mental patients? The actual grand parents told the imposters that not only are their grandchildren are coming to visit, but they tell them exactly what day they're arriving and what time. Unless of course the real grand parents simply tell the mental patients that their grand children are visiting and then the mental patients escape, take their place and then arrange the full details of the trip? Seems unlikely. Also, for mental patients, Nana and Pop Pop are convientiently lucid and 'normal' a lot of the time. Overall, the Visit, like a lot of Shyamalan's films, could have been better. A good film premise, but let down by the revelation/twist toward the end.

This 'found footage' film is a waste of your time. Nothing happens for the majority of this film, leading up to an anticlimatic end. One random dude pays another random dude to film him for the day and makes up BS stories about his life (he's dying of cancer, he's making a film for his unborn son, he put on a wolf mask and raped his wife). He develops and obssession with the guy filming him and briefly turns into a stalker, before luring the camera man out and burying an axe in his head. Films done on hand held camera are getting very tired and this film adds absolutely nothing to the genre. In fact Creep being a 'found footage' film is almost entirely unnecessary and doesn't help the film in any way. The characters in this film are two dimensional and woefully underdeveloped. The camera man spends 80% of the film behind the camera (obviously) and we learn practically nothing about the man, so it's hard to care about him. The guy being filmed makes up so much crap that we don't know what to believe. Near the end he sends one last video to his new 'BFF', where he admits he has problems and doesn't know how to deal with them, therapy doesn't seem to work and he claims he just needs someone to talk to. This is done in an attempt to make us feel sorry for him, but the ending to the film undoes this as it's revealed he actually enjoys being a stalker/murderer. This film is a slow burner which fizzles out at the end. The stalker part of the film is too short and poorly done, making the whole film feel a bit pointless. The stalker says he really cares about his camera man, but there is very little to make us care about this film.

This is yet another horror that fails to deliver. It was passable until the twist/revelation near the end, which only served to harm the film. The three ghost stories are pretty standard horror film fare - the ghostly child in an abandonned institute, a demonic entity on a deserted stretch of road and the ghost of a woman who has literally just died (during childbirth). Unfortunately due to the nature of the story, these ghostly tales have no conclusion. For the most part the film focuses on Professor Goodman, who spends his life debunking the supernatural and proving psychichs to be frauds. A fellow dubunker challenges him to investigate three supernatural incidents, confident that he will be shown that the paranormal is real. Goodman is encouraged to re-evaluate his career and his firm belief that the supernatural isn't real. Goodman and the audience are treated to three flashback stories from three very different people (a nightwatchman, a teenage boy and an upperclass twit). Even though the story tellers firmly believe they encounter the supernatural, all Goodman has is stories, with absolutely no evidence. He returns to the older debunker to tell him he still doesn't believe in the supernatural. At this point the film gets weird and the focus of the story randomly shifts. The old debunker turns out to be the upperclass twit (played by the brillaint Martin Freeman). He tears down the walls of his old trailer like they are somekind of paper backdrop (this was very WB cartoon-like). Martin's character berates his about his choice of career before the film goes off on a bit of a tangent. We are treated to another flashback story where we learn that in his youth, Prof. Goodman didn't help out a young, simple lad who was having an asthma attack after being encouraged to go deep into a dark tunnel by a bully. The story goes from focusing on Goodman re-evaluating his life and career to focusing on his guilt over the death of the young lad. Though this is very brief because its near the end of the film. After we find out about Prof. Goodman's guilty secret, the detrimental revelation happens - we discover that he's actually in a coma after a failed suicide attempt and that everything was in his head. We discover that the three people he met are actually people that work in the hospital. We are left with several questions - why did he commit suicide? Was it the guilt over the death of the young lad or was it because he felt bad that he spent his life debunking the supernatural? Why did his comatose brain take the people that work in the hospital and turn them into people who claimed they had experiences? Was this his brain working through mixed feelings about his life? We will never know.

This anthology of holiday horror films is much like the curate's egg, parts of it are good. Let's start with the good: Valentine's Day - a bullied school girl presents her teacher crush with the hacked out heart of her bully. Halloween - three, young, internet porn 'stars' get torturous revenge on their douchebag, mysogynistic employee. Christmas - A father steals the latest VR headset from a man having a heartattack. It then reveals this to his wife and reveals to him she killed her boss. New Year's Eve - A murderer goes on a date with his next victim, but discovers he's chosen the wrong woman; she is a murderer too. Now onto the bad: St. Patrick's Day - Nine months after a one night stand, a woman gives birth to a giant snake that she bizzarely doesn't find horrifying. Mother's Day - A woman is kidnaped by a 'fertility cult' and impregnated by a random man. Nine months later the baby is born, except it appears to be a fully grown adult. Father's Day - A young woman follows long ago recorded directions from her estranged father, wandering randomly around a seaside resort, until she finds him in an armchair in a doorway. He appears to be from I Am Legend. Easter - A young girl is afraid of the Easter Bunny breaking into her home, as well as the return of zombie Jesus. Waking up in the middle of the night, she encounters the freakish Easter Bunny Jesus, who forces her to take his place in doing whatever TF it is he does. With all four of the poorly written stories, I was left asking WTF? What was the point of those stories? What were they trying to say? The Easter one was especially weird, with its Easter Bunny-Jesus hybrid that produced live chicks from the nail holes in his hands. Me thinks they were tyring too hard. My advice? Skip over the bad stories I mentioned.

This is one of many horror films I've seen that can't decide which sub-genre it wants to be. For the most part this film is about the strange occurances that happen around grieving mother, Annie. Things happen in such a way that the viewer wonders whether the paranormal happenings are real or whether they're in Annie's head as she loses her grip on reality. A small part of this film is that Annie is the daughter of a woman who was part of a mysterious cult, wanting to find a host for their demon King Paimon. Hereditary should have either stuck totally with the haunting of the house after the death of Annie's mother and daughter or it should have been about Annie find out her mother was part of a cult. The two story parts don't work together. The biggest problem this film has is that the devilworshipping cult (which is apparently what the strange goings on are all about) has far too small a part in the overall story. The explanation that the cult have used the body of Annie's son, Peter, as a host for their demon master is crammed into the last couple of lines of the film, which makes for extremely bad story telling and leaves you with a ton of questions. There are some moments of questionable behaviour e.g. your son seems to have a stroke, then smashes his face repeatedly into his school desk, so you patch up his nose, take him home and just put him to bed. There are also some unintentionally funny moments e.g. when a floating Annie cuts her own head off (possibly with cheese wire) or when said freshly decapitated body floats up into the treehouse or the random appearance of naked people, like their waiting for a swingers party. Toni Collette gives a great performance as the grieving Annie who seems to be losing her grip on reality, but she cannot save this confused and rather poorly written film. Hereditary is far from 'One of the best modern horror movies', as I've seen others refer to it. I will say this - the final scene does have some lovely music. And finally - what exactly about any of this was hereditary?

I really wanted to like this film (I absolutely love Alexandra Daddario), but this was yet another film with a disappointing twist.

Alexis, Val and Beverly meet Mark, Kovacs and Ivan at a gig and bond over their love of rock and metal. They all head back to Alexis' house, where the three boys are drugged. When they come to, they find themselves tied up in a room that looks like it's the lair of a satanic cult (satanic cult murders had been reported on the news). Alexis, Val and Beverly reveal that they actually hate rock/metal and are deeply religious and have been murdering people in a satanic ritualistic way in the hopes that it'll drive people to God, more specifically to Alexis' father's church.

What follows is a bog-standard thriller, where the boys fight for survival and the crazy girls try and finish what they started. None of it is particularly new or exciting. The holier-than-thou attitudes and arrogant and ignorant beliefs of Alexis and Val are annoying and make the film a chore to get through.

This film perfectly portrays people who give religion a bad name - those who use it as an excuse to do heinous things. Alexis and Val (encouraged by Alexis' father) believe that breaking one of the commandments is okay as long as you're doing it in God's name. They are narrowminded and judgemental and are the sort of people who genuinely think that rock/metal is satanic. They're the sort of people who actually believe that are hidden messages in metal songs that you can hear if you play them backwards. They are intolerant of anyone who does not share their religious views.

This film would have been more interesting if the girls were part of a satanic cult. Better yet, if the 3 religious girls had been faking the satanic murders, but had actually, accidentally 'Summoned the Darkness'.

This film started out great, with the masked Trick, killing a bunch on teens at a Halloween party. He's badly injured and taken to hospital, where he makes his escape, despite being shot multiple times by the police and falling two storeys out a window. He disapears into a river and is naturally presumed dead.

The following Halloween someone who for all intents and purposes seems to be Trick returns and goes on another murder spree in a town just down the river from the first Halloween killings. He then turns up a third Halloween and kills yet again.

The fourth Halloween is when most of the story is set, with Detective Denver and Sheriff Jayne determined to put a stop to Trick once and for all.

The twist in the plot is where an enjoyable slasher flick gets disappointing. For most of the film we're tricked into thinking Trick is a rather endurable killer, who won't stay dead (much like Michael Myers). It is then revealed that there is a small 'cult' of Tricks who are working together (because they like killing) and are trying to make it all seem like the actions of one supernatural-ish killer).

Ignoring the twist, this slasher flick is quite enjoyable for the most part; it clearly takes inspiration from the Halloween franchise (a masked killer murders people every Halloween), though it never feels like a rip off. The changing of the mask every year and the 'personalised' Trick or Treat knife were a nice touch.

I personally would have enjoyed this movie more if the killer had been Myers-esque and had disappeared mysteriously at the end of the movie (despite appearing to be dead). The ending with the three main characters going off to hunt down the 'cult' of Tricks, who wanted to expand, didn't quite work for me.

When I heard about this movie, it had the hype of a video nasty, the sort of film that gets banned in many countries. I don't know if this film ever was banned, but if it was, then they have seriously low tolerance for horror films. The premise of this film is unique, I'll give it that, but it fails to deliver beyond that. Basically a mad, German scientist wants to create a 'centipede' from humans after trying it out with dogs. So he kidnaps a man and two women and stitches them arse to mouth, thus making his 'centipede' (dodecapede really). This film had the potential to be a great body horror, but despite clearly wanting to be a gross-out horror, it's a little too clinical. The bodies were joined 'perfectly' by a skilled surgeon, which removed any chance of him creating a malformed 'creature'. Things could have been much more gross and repulsive and would have made for a better film. Before I saw it, I was expecting a deranged man in his cabin in the woods, who creates an abomination of grossly fused human bodies. The choice to have a skilled surgeon working in a clean surgery in the basement of his remote house took a lot away from the film (although this way of doing it was more realistic as there's less chance of infection etc in a clean surgery). As the two women spend their time surgically attached to an arse and the guy at the front only speaks Japanese (if I remember correctly) there's no room for character development. The sicko doctor is already as developed as he's going to get (I can't for the life of me remember if it's explained why he does what he does). The cop that tries to come to the rescue is generic and has no backstory at all. This movie has a rather bleak ending (everyone dies), the cop and the doctor kill each other. The middle girl dies (can't remember why, possibly due to an infection), the guy at the front slits his throat when he realises there's no escape, and the poor girl at the back is left to die of starvation because she can't free herself of the other two. I would not recommend this film to anyone really (if you really want to watch it to find out how bad it is, then be my guest). There are far better horror films out there (especially if you want a gross out horror)

Itsy Bitsy it far from the worst horror film I've ever seen, but it's also far from the best.

The biggest problem this film has is that it focuses too much on the family drama, which should have been a subplot - there's too many of the mother's flashbacks to a car accident that claimed her son's life. She has a pill popping problem and it's not clear it this was the cause of the accident or vise versa.

The creature part of this feature is a spider goddess or avatar of a spider goddess that is out for revenge (though it's unclear what the family has done to deserve it).

Despite being a large spider goddess, it doesn't seem to have any special powers (aside from being able to conviently disappear when necessary).

The film could have focused a lot more on the spider goddess and the mythology and the tribe that worships her, but that's all sadly lacking. Also for a spider goddess, it dies in an awfully normal and easy way.

The fact that the giant spider is done with practical effects is actually one of the good points, meaning we're not treated to a terribly rendered cgi spider.

Sadly I don't think this film will ever become a classic creature feature.

Bite had potential - woman gets bitten by bug, then slowly begins to turn into one, but it fails to deliver. The writing is nothing special, the acting mediocre at best and characters make head-scratching decisions. The film also relies too much on the slime and aqua beads, making it seem whatever Casey is turning it more Aquatic than insectoid. Casey discovers a large, bad and weeping insect bite and decides not to go to hospital, instead she rings her GP and waits for a call back. She has no concept of wound care, dabbing ointment on a bite that's basically a hole in her leg, before scrubbing it with a cloth. Her fiancée gets unwittingly infected and pees blood, but doesn't seem overly concerned about this. He finds out she slept with someone else at the bachelorette party and then immediately decides to screw the friend who brought him the bad news. My fiancée and I were practically shouting at the screen over these weird decisions. By the end Casey's apartment was covered in eggs (like aqua beads) and what looked like cobwebs (she wasn't turning into a spider) which only added to the confusion. All in all I don't think I'd recommend this film. I saw it on a list of horror films that were difficult to watch (supposedly due to its grossness), but if you're a seasoned horror fan, like me, Bite will no doubt dissapoint and confuse rather than gross you out to the point of switching it off.

This film doesn't quite know what sub-genre it wants to be. It starts out okay with the two main characters solving clues to find the location of the escape room called Paranoia. Paranoia starts out as a series of escape rooms mixed with a bit of saw, but they soon add in plain old murders with screwdrivers, which doesn't fit in with the escape room theme. We eventually discover that Lucas was chained up in the basement, as a child, by his mother with punishment as a way to increase his brainpower or intelligence or something like that. He escapes from his imprisonment and kills his mother with a screwdriver. We then find out that Lucas set up Paranoia himself, in the old mental hospital where he was a patient, and killed the other participants (though its not clear if the escape room was just in his head and he just murdered them). This film would have been better if there had not been a mixture of sub-genre, though I don't know if that's the fault of the screenwriter or the guy who wrote the novel (I'd never heard of it, let alone read it). In short there are better escape room and slasher horrors (with a twist) out there.

I was not expecting much when I started watching this film, but was pleasantly surprised. Sexually abused teen zombie Mina befriends blinded and kidnapped Alex (who has a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome) after she kills his kidnapper. At first the two do not get along well, but the more Mina looks after Alex the closer they become and the more Mina regains her humanity. Despite the themes of terrible abuse and gory brain eating, this movie still manages to tell a sweet story of two teens finding comfort in each others company.

Let me save you some time: Do not 'go into' this film expecting it to be about a man with a nightmare inducing spider-puppet that kills people. If only it was, it would have been much better. Instead this film is a bleak and depressing story of a man with a traumatic past, who spends the entire film trying to forget or 'get rid' of this trauma, which is represented by his spider-puppet. The fact that the spider-puppet mysteriously keeps returning to Phillip is indicative of this. The film is repetative in a lot of places, especially of Phillip opening his bag to look at his monstrous puppet. Not a lot happens really, we see news reports of a missing school boy and are led to believe that Phillip might have been involved. Other than that the main character spends his time trying to rid himself of his spider-puppet in a number of scenes, where we're confusedly left wondering if it was all in his head or not. At the end of the film is a poor executed plot twist, where we find out that grubby Uncle Morris abused Phillip when he was younger and that he is the one that kidnapped the school boy, though we don't know why.

This film had great potential as a real horror movie - the Possum Man story that features is intriguing, though not explored enough. The horrifying spider-puppet with its mannequin head that looks like Phillip is terrifying and would have been so much better as the real monster of the film that came to life to kill people. Sadly this is the way it goes with too many horror films these days.

First off, (for those who don't know, (I was one of them) 'Screamer' videos are those once popular internet pranks where you complete a maze or watch a short video, then a horrifying face pops up on your screen accompanied by loud scream, which scares the s**t out of you.

There could have been a good, Ring-esque plot to this film - somekind of supernatural entity uses the Screamer videos to kill people. The writer of this film, howeverm, didn't have such a great idea.

Weirdly for a horror film, the weak sauce horror is confined to the last 15 minutes of the film. 90% of this movie is nothing more than a in-house mockumentary, with interviews with the members of staff at an internet company (what they do exactly is unclear, at least to me).

The company is sent a couple of Screamer videos featuring the same woman and after reading comments the staff figure out there's a good chance she's a woman who went missing a couple of years before. So they decide to become investigative journalists (still no horror up to this point).

After some investigation, computer hacking and rewatching the first video. The staff talk to the woman who submitted the video, who sounds like she's in an abusive relationship with someone called Francis. They realise the first video contains the grave of Jack the Ripper suspect Francis Tumblety and decide there's some sort of hoax going on.

With the home address of the woman who sent the video, the staff decide to pay her a visit and demand an explanation (which is where the horror finally comes in).

The horror and scares in this film are very weak. When the killer finally does appear (in the same mask he wears in the Screamer videos) and takes out the main characters nothing is really shown because the whole film is done with handheld cameras and phones.Its a lot of build up to not a lot.

What I disliked most about this film is that there's too much mystery - too many unanswered questions. Like, who is Francis and why does he kill people? Why has he kidnapped a young woman and had somekind of weird relationship with her for two years rather than just killing her? What was the point in including Francis Tumblety's grave? Was the killer trying to emulate Jack the Ripper? Was he actually somehow JtR? Why did Francis make Screamer videos? If it was a way to lure people in, then it was a poor way, the only way the staff were able to find his home was through computer hacking (most people can't do that).

This confused film is 98% mockumentary, 1.9% slasher flick and 0.01% supernatural horror (Francis chases someone outside his home to kill them and at the same time seems to be in a closet killing (or not) someone else).

The film ends with Abbi (member of staff) in a new Screamer video, which again begs the question 'What's the point of the Screamer videos?'

I wouldn't really recommend this film unless you really want to watch a 'horror' film and have nothing else to watch.