Change Your Image
corymeyman
Reviews
Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)
Very Unique Anti-Horror Horror Movie
This movie is up there with Cabin in the Woods and Shaun of the Dead. I feel it belongs in a completely different genre as the both of those films are more just adding humor to the tropes of a horror movie, where this one turns it 180 by making heroes out of the "villains."
While I can't say it was the first movie to do this, it makes a comedy horror all the much better by taking a very old trope and reversing it. Even better is the constant escalation of the events from a normal day to a massacre.
I think Alan Tudyk stole the show on this one, but most of the actors did a great job. Anytime I meet a new friend, I usually judge them by how they react to this movie.
The Donner Party (2009)
As Usual "Based on" Means "We used one Real Thing and Went Overboard with It."
The issue I have with any recent movie in the last couple decades is they put "based on a true story" while not even trying to follow any of the actual events.
It's along the lines of the story writer reading about the Revolutionary War, and then involving jet skis and aliens in the timeline, and then claiming it was "based on a true story." Although I'm sure there are many earlier examples, "A Perfect Storm" is the first one I remember. Essentially, the only thing they knew about the boat was that it sank out at sea after losing radio contact. Somehow they turned that into an an over 2 hour movie. None of anything in that movie was verifiably true other than the names and possibly the characteristics of the people.
This movie is worse, because it had a somewhat rich source of information from the survivors in which to try and follow the true story. Basically none of that was even touched on. The entire movie was "hey, some people might have been cannibals," and then they made a villain.
If you are looking for something that will actually tell you what the Donner Party was like, do not watch this film. I'd suggest a documentary instead. Otherwise, this film is about as true to the source as "Cannibal: The Musical," and that film was more enjoyable.
Army of the Dead (2021)
Blockbuster Price, Random Nephew of G Romero Script
I normally love zombie movies. A 5 star review is just for not sucking at it. This movie spent dozens of millions to essentially make the idea of what an beginning filmmaker would produce if they had access to unlimited funds.
It's not horrible, but it's bad enough to give a less than 5 star review. I'd say equivalent to getting a soup you love, and the only real good comment you can say about it was that it contained some of the ingredients you like and it was warm.
The daughter of the hero was meh, Dave Bautista was meh, and I'm about to go off on Tig Notaro. They (according to the press) spent more than a million to digitally add Tig into the film to replace a Chris D'ella after he had some allegations about him. Don't know him, don't care, but Tig sucked past the first 4 minutes of her acting entrance. Judging from the script I doubt Chris whatsisname could have done better. She had a good intro followed by the rest of the film as someone who literally had no dimension other than "I just read my lines off this piece of paper and have an unemotional face." Either way, adding a mill or two to the cost was not worth it by far.
Essentially this move added nothing to the zombie genre, the actors either did a bad job or weren't given a good script, and the ending was predictable and definitely not as cool as it could have been (The ending having multiple possible outcomes, the director led to one of the more sad, predictable ones}.
Inwood Drive (2020)
Wanted a Serial Killer Documentary. Got a Guy Who Mismanaged Paperwork Documentary
There's nothing serial killer about this guy. He performed legal abortions. No court would arrest him for it.
The only illegal thing he did was not file paperwork on time. I mean, if you're into that type of a movie, it's right up your alley then.
The funniest part of this was that the pro-life people interviewed were so happy in telling you how they purposely screw this guy by gaming the system. First, they are unhappy an abortion clinic is near a church. The next 30 minutes is pretty much about how religious stuff and how they didn't like all the violence and shootings involved near abortion clinics. (The irony here being that the shootings were from the anti-abortion side who shot at doctors)
So rather than just pray the office away, they used a large pro-life political group to help change the laws so the doctor had to have a backup physician. Just so happened he got assigned the physician who was trying to shut him down in a previous legal matter (color me surprised). Then after the same large group spent multiple hours pouring over all his documentation, they found a couple papers that were filed with the state department a few months late. They literally said they then went to this backup physician and said it would be a shame if everyone knew they were backing this abortion clinic doctor who was neglecting his duties. Essentially admitting to blackmail, as they should have just submitted it themselves without trying to coerce someone, but hey, I'm not a lawyer. Needless to say, the physician who already wanted the doctor shut down backed out which effectively shut down this man's practice.
Later after the doctor died, they found a ton of fetuses in jars and such in his basement and car. Mind you, this was all completely legal as there was no statue at the time about treating fetuses as human remains in Indiana until a few years after this incident. Most reliable sources point to him either keeping the jars because of his documented hoarding issues, or that he just wanted to save money by not having to dispose of the remains.
So essentially this movie is 70% Christian babble talk about how much they don't like abortion (yeah, we got it, you've made your point clear for the past 40 years), about 20% how they legally coerced and gamed the system to get an abortion clinic shut down, and 10% talking about a guy who the movie was supposed to be focused on, who wasn't a serial killer, just some guy who didn't file paperwork on time.
So if you're already anti-abortion, you can skip this movie, it only tells you the same stuff you already believe and has almost no storyline. If you're pro-choice, skip this movie, for all the reasons listed above. If you're on the fence about abortion, this movie will also stink.
Unplanned (2019)
A Movie which is less of Movie than a Tool
This movie is just one of those many movies made for a prebuilt christian fan base to eat up and show their youngsters to reinforce their beliefs. Much like "Heaven is for Real" and others, it really just proactively changes "facts" to suit its needs. You can still slap on "Based on a True Story," while changing everything but the basic idea. Take "A Perfect Storm" as an example. All they really knew about the members of that ship is that the boat was lost to a storm and the basic characters of the people aboard the ship as told by their families and friends. That's about it. The thing that made "A Perfect Storm" better than this was cast and it wasn't trying to shove "good" christian values down your throat by distorting facts.
You can tell how this movie grossed the amount it did based on the positive reviews on this site. "I showed this to my daughter since she was giving herself away to her boyfriends," and "I plan on giving these away as christmas presents." No seriously, people said both of those. Could you imagine getting this as a christmas present? Talk about an awkward and unwanted thing you'll throw in the trash as you leave the house. These movies are only bought in bulk by churches and people who just feel the need to spread their view of the world and give this dvd to all the "harlots" in their life. Then you have all the "viewings" in which church groups will flock to it as a group to watch and then discuss it later.
Essentially you just have only christians watching this, thus despite the fact it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy, they already believe abortion is wrong so this is just some weird kind of gore fetish they have watching an unrealistic depiction of a 13 week old fetus getting removed. Non-Christians who get this as a gift either throw it away directly or politely accept it and then joke about it later. But meanwhile, despite the fact it was either thrown away or sitting dusty on some shelf by the dozen in a church, it was paid for, and results in revenue.
It's got less than 60% approval here and in RT, The only reason it is that high is because most non-christians immediately don't watch the movie, so the reviews are skewed by either non-christians hating on it, or zealous christians singing its praises. I scrolled through about 100 reviews and I didn't see one positive review that didn't mention how it was a useful tool for teaching daughters or that it somehow personally changed their own views on abortion. All of them were pretty much "I hated abortion already, and now I have something to torture others with my views," reviews.
Anywho, back to the actual movie. It was coherent, the acting wasn't horrible, and filmography was alright. I would have marked it higher for just production value, but don't feel it would be right to do so based on the misleading content.
Barney Burman's Wild Boar (2019)
Great Costumes, Decent Actors, Bad Horror
Let's start out with the best part and probably because Barney is a cosmetic artist. Great pig costumes. Good costumes all around actually, but the pigs were awesome for a movie of this caliber. The setting of the scenes and filming were really good too.
The actors were good. For what I consider to be a normal horror, you can't expect AAA actors, and that's part of what makes horror so good. Not gonna blame them for the story because that falls upon the writer.
---Spoilers, kind of, but this is where the movie fails---
The storyline though, blech. It really falls into the current horror movie cesspit which is a one-and-done show where the "bad guy" wins despite watching the protagonist overcome every obstacle up until the end. Every recent horror I watch is just a series of the victim trying to escape, getting really close, and then despite their efforts getting killed at the last point. It's annoying. Freddy gets killed in like every movie, but he always comes back. Frankly, all the good horrors have a villain who gets killed at the end. It's alright to have a villain win at the end sometimes, but it's pretty much 100% of the time now with any movie I watch. I don't get what the pull is for directors to get to a point where they have a full good movie, and then go "hey, let's erase all that character development and kill them instead." Like that is shocking. It's literally what the last decade of movies has been doing.
Lastly the stop animation at the end and beginning; what was that about? Was the director just showing off their skills? It really didn't add anything to the film, and felt pushed into it.
Overall, movie was decent, but like most movies in the past decade or so, you just get a sense they did a horror to make a horror film, and checked all the boxes like a machine.
Ditch Party (2016)
School Shooter Exploitation at Its Worst
The only horror here is the obvious ploy to use school shootings as a tool to sell video. I'm not a justice warrior out to be enraged about touchy subjects. But the story line was pretty much that concept on the wrong side.
I flagged this review as containing spoilers, but anyone within 10 minutes of watching it has already figured out 99% of the film. Essentially an obvious outcast of a young man decides to kill a bunch of people in his school. He creates a "Ditch Party" which involves the people he dislikes the most in the school to go down to the basement that apparently "no one knows about" to keep them hostage.
Besides the fact it is obvious that the killer is the one who invited them to the basement, none of the teens seem to understand it was a set up. Meanwhile you learn the outcast killed dozens of teens upstairs and kills anyone who tries to leave.
The climax involves the teens actively letting an enemy with a rifle and pistol into their safe place. At this point I was really hoping the shooter would kill everyone in the room for being so insanely stupid, but no such luck. You then have to listen to another 20 minutes of diatribe from the angsty teen about how no one likes him and ignores him. Meanwhile you have to try to hold back the feeling that maybe the reason everyone ignores and dislikes him is because he's a complete schmuck who goes out of his way to be annoying.
Then he shoots himself. The only redeeming part of the movie. As the credits start to roll, they try to make up for this shoddy ploy at capitalizing on current tragedies by putting a brief note that says "nearly half of all suicides are related to bullying or being ignored by their peers." Like that makes up for the dumpster fire that is the rest of this movie. Thanks for the social lesson, but the entire movie made me loathe the enemy and then you try and make me feel sad he shot himself? Anyone who watches this will want their time back.