All Eyes

Not a great film nor a stinker. Allen who had a podcast until a bad mistake got him off the air, follows people with strange ideas. A letter was written to him by a man whose late wife was a devoted fan, offering $25K to come out, as he knows there is a monster in the woods. The man, Don, is quite eccentric. And that really is the greater part of the movie. At one point, Don disappears, it seems there may be a monster, and Don has heavily boobytrapped everything, and those get triggered. And every time the red light goes on, traps are triggered, and some of them are quite clever. And they are deadly. There is some comic relief and also tension. And is there really a monster?

It's a small movie, for sure. But I really liked it. The nicest aspect is its originality. You haven't seen this story before, it's not a rehashing of two dozen movies you've seen before. It can be read as a metaphor of human pain and loss, but you are trapped by the narrative from start to finish. It's a nice small flick!

At the moment I'm writing this review, it is scored 5.4. It pretty much reflect what it does worth. I personally put a solid 6 on it. I found it entertaining and fun. Don't think you'll get great special effects, here, people flying all over the place, explosions, explicit gore, Godzilla-like creatures crushing cities, etc. Yet, it's well shot, the photography is nice with deep colors, it is well played through and through, and at the risk of revealing too much, you have a decent mix of heartfelt moments and action. A very decent film.

For reference, I score 6 for entertaining; 5 for entertaining with reservations; 7 for VERY entertaining movies.

All Eyes (2022) is currently available on Tubi and comes highly recommended by Edward Delgado. The storyline follows a podcaster who decides to interview an eccentric old man who claims to have a monster on his farm. Is the old man crazy or is he telling the truth? The podcaster is about to find out the hard way.

This movie is directed by Todd Greenlee (Home with a View of the Monster) and stars Jasper Hammer (Lucky), Ben Hall (Minari), Danielle Evon Ploeger (The Pale Door), Nick Ballard (The Stunt Double) and Laurie Cummings (What Josiah Saw).

Hammer and Hall are really good in this. They reminded me a little bit of Bacon and Ward in Tremors. They had great chemistry and back forth through various conversations and circumstances. It does take a little while for this to get going as the first action/kill sequence isn't until there's about 35 minutes left in the movie...but that scene is awesome and catches you completely off guard. It's one of those movies that's super slow and then goes to a sprint out of nowhere. Everything that happens in the house at the end is tremendous and you find yourself thinking, "if it was me what would I do?" There's definitely some surprising, unforeseen circumstances that keep your attention and the movie well paced. The ending was smart and fairly clever in terms of how everything is positioned.

Overall, this isn't a masterpiece but it has enough unique elements and worthwhile characters to make it worth a watch. I would score this a solid 6/10 and recommend seeing it once.

This is very different and much better than I had expected. The monster is sort of a McGuffin for the story of two damaged men.

The two principal characters are well-written and well-acted. The plot keeps the audience off-balance and unsure whether to laugh or recoil. I really couldn't predict where it was going, unlike most low-budget horror.

Criticisms: The writers didn't seem to know how to end the story, so it kind of limps along too long after the denouement. There is really only one secondary character, the podcast producer, and her acting is very weak. But the focus is on the two main characters, which are great.

The most disappointing thing about this film is that we didn't get more time with Don.

If you let yourself be entertained and don't think too hard about it, this film won't do much to interfere with your enjoyment. Lots of truly bad horror films insult your time and break the experience. This film sets out to be a "bad" horror film from the get go, and it does that very well. It has campy moments, a basic plot, low budget production and absurd "super serious" moments that will crack you up at how silly it all is.

It does feel about 10 minutes too long though. Part of that issue is that the main character portrayal (both acting and writing) struggles to carry the film to its conclusion. The Don character pretty much stole the show here (and the guy in the intro). So this film does end up with a typical horror movie final act, sadly. You'll be itching to finish it right about when it does decide to finish. You can even skip the epilogue and it wouldn't detract much from the experience.