Tag Archives: Blumhouse

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Gallows Act II (2019) Movie Review

October 24, 2019 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

I have to admit: I can’t remember a whole lot about The Gallows, the micro-budget horror film from 2015 that found a massive ROI despite strong negative reaction from audiences and critics. What I do remember is being unimpressed. But the film was financially impressive enough, shoring up almost $43 million on a reportedly $100,000 budget. Certainly enough to warrant the greenlight for a sequel.

From what I can tell, there is no plan for a national rollout of this sequel. The Gallows Act II, directed by the same duo as the first film (Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing), is playing in Continue reading The Gallows Act II (2019) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It

Upgrade (2018) Movie Review

June 1, 2018 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

Leigh Whannell is a known horror screenwriter, having penned the Insidious films and the first three entries in the Saw franchise. His first directorial effort was Insidious: Chapter Three. (No offense to Leigh, but it is arguably the black sheep chapter of the series).

With Upgrade he has, dare I say, upgraded his ability for genre filmmaking. What remains in this gritty, futuristic action flick is Whannell’s penchant for high energy gore and viscera. What is added is Continue reading Upgrade (2018) Movie Review →

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Truth or Dare (2018) Movie Review

April 13, 2018 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

On the last day of Spring Break in Mexico, Olivia (Lucy Hale) is convinced by a man she meets at a bar (Landon Liboiron) to travel to an abandoned and remote convent with her friends. There, the stranger asks them to play an innocent game of truth or dare. One of Olivia’s friends remarks with a flippant comment along the lines of, “What, like we’re in seventh grade?”

Just to be clear, they’re not. The grown adults proceed to play the game in one of the more tonally awkward sequences of Truth or Dare (or Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, an attribution tagged on seemingly due to the success of last year’s Get Out and Happy Death Day). The scene is meant to Continue reading Truth or Dare (2018) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Halloween Horror, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Creep 2 (2017) Movie Review

October 26, 2017 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

Creep 2 is the Patrick Brice-directed follow up to 2014’s Creep, the mumblegore sensation starring Brice and Mark Duplass. In that film, written by the two but perhaps mostly just ad-libbed on the day by them, Duplass plays Josef, a man who hires a cameraman to make a film for Josef’s unborn son.

Of course, there is much more to it than that.

In Creep 2, Duplass is back, and his deranged character goes by Aaron this time around. Aaron hires Sara (Desiree Akhavan), the host and one-woman crew of the webseries “Encounters.” With her Youtube series utterly failing, she is willing to Continue reading Creep 2 (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Happy Death Day (2017) Movie Review

October 13, 2017 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) wakes up hungover in the dorm room of Carter Davis (Israel Broussard). Glibly, she blows him off and leaves to her sorority house, where she continues to brush off people left and right. If you cannot yet tell, she is not a very nice college student. She doesn’t even care that it is her birthday.

She goes to class (she is engaging in an adulterous relationship with her professor), comes home to prepare for a party, and leaves alone to get there. On the way, she is cornered by a masked knife-wielder and killed. But wait… Continue reading Happy Death Day (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, F Movies, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Incarnate (2016) Movie Review

December 1, 2016 Alex Brannan 2 Comments

The exorcism film. Has it ever lived up to its contemporary creator, The Exorcist? Not really. Yet, here we are four decades later still letting Hollywood churn them out like soap operas.

Incarnate, the latest effort (if we can call it that) from Blumhouse Tilt, takes the possessed child angle to “new heights” by providing our exorcist character Dr. Seth Embers (Aaron Eckhart) with an ability to enter the victim’s subconscious during the exorcism. In short, Incarnate is The Exorcist meets Inception, only without everything that makes those films interesting and different.

The wheelchair-bound Embers is executing exorcisms (or “evictions”) in search for the demon Maggie. Maggie has also been searching for him so that she can cause him interminable pain, only it has taken Embers dozens of exorcisms to find her. Horror movies don’t need logical premises, right?

The reality check with Incarnate is that Continue reading Incarnate (2016) Movie Review →