IrateTyrant

This movie continues a trend of many modern horror movies, where they aren't scary, they're merely unnerving. It's like a thriller with horror aspects meddling in it. Quite frankly, it's pretty boring until the late third act when things start to ramp up during the climax. I wanted to like it. I didn't. The Australian accents are also annoying. The young lead actor is also better than Sally Hawkins who only needed to phone in an anguish-ridden performance. Grapefruit, dude, get me outta here. Plus, the animal cruelty scenes completely drew me out of it and made me hate it pretty much completely.

The Empty Man definitely stretched itself a little thin with too many influences toward its plot and subplots. But overall, it was a great movie. The first sequence, while amazing by itself, barely played into the rest of the movie at all. Then, the final sequence barely had anything to do with what we had previously watched throughout the movie. Nonetheless, it made it somehow very interesting to watch, even if it seemed somewhat superficial. I'm not much of a horror short enthusiast, but I did see the director's AM1200 when it came out and really liked it. As many good ideas that went into this movie, I'd really like to see the director's future work, a lot.

Weapons was so surreal to see with a group of friends in a packed theater. Everyone I was with absolutely loved it, no dissenters. After a lengthy discussion afterward in the parking lot, it became clear that the only complaint was about what was either a red herring or an interesting use of symbology that linked the film to Sandy Hook. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but after the symbology, the film pretty much ends up abandoning political or social overtones about school shootings. The reviews I've seen have really done a great job of avoiding spoilers. The only trailers I saw avoided spoilers as well. However, I will say this: the film seems to be an allegory for if there was a school shooting that was covered up because of some unbelievable and supernatural forces that were actually behind it. The plot twist couldn't have topped Barbarian, obviously, and didn't try to. The writing in this is amazing with juxtapositions and a Rashomon-style telling of the story. The cinematography and editing were amazing, too. There were scenes with beautiful camerawork as well as extremely effective jump scares. Julia Garner was so good. My parents were both educators until they retired, and my mother was an elementary school teacher, so this was very relatable to me, and I definitely had to recommend it to her (even though she's not a real horror fan). There was some talk afterward about how the children running looked like Anime-style, but now that I looked into it, it's based off the "Napalm Girl" photo from the Vietnam War, which is so effective. Some of the scenes of the running were absolutely wild. When I saw Barbarian, I had no idea it was directed by Cregger, or anything about the script. Immediately afterward I looked up his next project. I said to myself "Weapons sounds like an arthouse movie, good for him." I was right, and yet this is blockbuster material. It combines larger-than-life cinema with homebrewed moviemaking. Somehow, it was even better than Barbarian. Wow.