Goatman

This had to be some student project but even if it was, they clearly didn't learn anything. Most of the beginning was just nonsense where they male fun of Fox news. It wasn't funny. Most of it wasn't funny at all. The shots were done so poorly it looked like a bunch of children filmed it. There was no need for the excess character building because regardless of their stories you don't care about the characters anyway. We didn't even finish it. We got to the point where they showed the goatman for the first time and it was such a hideous joke I couldn't take it seriously anymore. Just don't watch it. It's awful.

This book was given to me as a gift by a well-meaning close relative.

I do no want to alienate the person who gave me this book, and he likely won't be aware of my comments here, but the author of this tract appears to be a fatuous, overprivileged grifter who cheated the Wellcome trust for the money that he spent creating this masterpiece. Without detailing the book's deficiencies in the discussion of philosophy, design, ethology and animal anatomy/biomechanics, I recommend that you not buy it, and if you have a copy, send it to the Wellcome Trust with an invoice for its shipment and proper burial.

Right, well I can't claim to be harboring much of any expectations to this 2023 horror movie titled "Goatman", as I sat down to watch it without ever having heard about it. But I was suckered in by the movie's cover/poster and the fact that the title was actually interesting enough.

Writer and director Trey Murphy delivered an absolute dumpster fire of a movie here. The storyline in the movie was pretty straightforward, and points for that. But it all just fell apart under some very boring and slow paced narrative, and the fact that the acting performances were so wooden and rigid that the forest, in which the movie was shot, was jealous of the acting performances being more wooden than it was.

The dialogue in the movie was rather poorly written, and even worse so delivered on the screen by the actors and actresses.

The character gallery in the movie was bland and pointless. And I have to admit that I can't even name a single one of the characters, if you were to ask me. They were that forgettable.

And then there were the special effects, make-up and prosthetic effects. Well, they were special. And points awarded, at least, as they were trying to make a satyr-like creature. But it just came off amateurish and not particularly interesting or scary.

As for "Goatman" being a horror movie? Forget about it. There was nothing scary here from writer and director Trey Murphy, unless you consider a movie that is more of a high school project than an actual movie as being horror, then by all means.

This is not a movie that I would recommend horror fans to sit down and watch. You're better off not wasting your time, money or effort here; some of us did, so you don't have to.

My rating of "Goatman" lands on a very generous one out of ten stars.

Working on a news story, a reporter and her team head into the local woods with several locals to check on the whereabouts of a local legend involving a mysterious creature killing all who enter the woods, but they soon come face to face with a different but far more dangerous threat.

This was a rather fun genre effort that does have some slight issues. One of the better aspects of the film is the generally likable setup that features some intriguing elements. The main setup of the news crew trying to come up with a means of looking into the legend that haunts the area and heading into the woods to get their story is a solid enough idea, and with the backstory of the creature's presence in the area coming off just in-depth enough to provide the kind of proper setup for this type of film. As well, there's the backstory about the crew coming into play as well giving off enough of a general setup that the film comes off well enough for what it is. This proves to be the perfect way to get a series of solid confrontations with the titular creature and the backwoods family that they come into contact with. These range from the decent shock encounters like the ambush on the teens who resurrected it with the Ouija board, the various deaths doled out by the family, or the final means of how they escape the woods bringing about the gory aftermath for practical effects which are fun enough to keep this going. There are some big issues with this one that holds it back. The main drawback with the film is the dull first half which doesn't have much of anything going on during a majority of this section. Mainly consisting of the exploits of the group preparing to start their search, the vast majority here plays out in an endless stream of sleazy come-ons by the producer that wouldn't fly in any way, shape, or form that is repeated often enough to be a complete turnoff with all the repetition in play. On top of that, it tends to just wander around the woods with the group talking about the different sidestories involved here which just comes off incredibly lame with the repetition of these scenes going nowhere. Also, there are banal and uninteresting attempts at social commentary on the nature of the media in how they disseminate the news to others by portraying the studio as heartless souls more concerned with corporate sponsorships and how they trick the public for the sake of providing entertainment that doesn't need to be there due to being so cliched none of it matters. These become the main detriments at play here.

Rated Unrated/Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Yeah, I thought this was going to be a real movie.

OK, I admit to being April Fool'd.

There is NO WAY anyone would have actually scripted or played in this movie without being in on the joke. So if you watch it, you too can consider yourself pranked.

I can only hope this was simply someone trying out their equipment, and some REALLY stupid actors, to make sure their camera and sound system worked ... hopefully so they could later create something that people actually wanted to see. As it was, they created something so bad that I am the second, but likely not the last, viewer to be warning you to not waste your time.