Category: Movies

Black Phone 2 takes place four years after The Black Phone and features the same characters and child actors, now four years older. This I thought was really cool, both the growth of the actors and the realistic treatment of the characters in the aftermath of their experience with the serial child murderer the Grabber. Naturally, Finney is scarred, self-medicated, and angry from his kidnapping and imprisonment and having to murder his tormentor to escape. The caring and protective relationship he and his sister Gwen have, however, has also grown. When Gwen begins having the same dreams their mother had about a series of murders that took place at Alpine Lake Camp in 1957, Gwen with Finney in tow travel to the Colorado mountain camp to find the missing bodies and uncover a mystery regarding their mother’s suicide.

Watching Black Phone 2 made me want to rewatch The Black Phone. It looked like it was really good, which it was once I revisited it. The first half of Black Phone 2 is also good and has the same realism and subtle supernatural elements as its prequel. Unfortunately, the second half falls into the common trope many horror movies do where the ending gives up on living up to its expectations and devolves into ridiculousness.

Throughout the movie, Gwen is tormented in her dreams by the perpetrator of the 1957 murders, who turns out to be the Grabber. His spirit has returned from death, and he reveals that he can harm and even kill her in her dreams. Eventually, Gwen overpowers him in her sleep by lucid dreaming. Gwen’s found ability to overpower him in her sleep somehow translates to her having this ability to do so in reality where his spirit has been gaining power from the missing bodies of murdered campers. This leads to Gwen being overpowered and undefeatable by the final fight scene, which also features the Grabber on ice skates and imagery suggestive of a horse-drawn Zamboni.

Alpine Lake Camp also has an identity crisis. The camp and counselors are all constructed as if it were going to be a typical summer camp. One of the camp counselors even has a stereotypical Texas drawl. It’s the dead of winter, however, and it’s miserable outside to the point where the camp is canceled due to road conditions. It’s so miserable in fact that it’s hard to believe the camp is located in Colorado. My friends and I kept wanting to say the characters were in Alaska. It wouldn’t have been out of place for the Texan counselor to say, “I’m just a Texas girl in the wild Alaskan mountains of Colorado.”

I watched The Black Phone back when it came out in 2021. Between then and now, it became buried in my memories among so many other horror movies my friends and I have watched, although I remembered it being really good. When I watched Black Phone 2 recently, my main thought through the whole movie was, “Man, The Black Phone looks like it was really good.” I’ve since revisited it.

It’s a shame that I forgot about it because it is indeed really good. The protagonist, 13-year-old Finney is kidnapped and held in a basement by a psycho, serial child killer known as the Grabber. Finney has subtle psychic abilities that allow him to communicate with the spirits of the Grabber’s previous victims, all of whom give Finney suggestions on how escape the basement. Finney’s younger sister Gwen also has subtle psychic abilities, which she uses to lead the police to Finney’s location.

The film is plausibly supernatural and realistic in a satisfying way. Finney and Gwen’s abilities have limitations and never make them superhuman. The film’s ghosts are subtly horrifying, not screaming, throwing people or objects across the room, or jump-scaring the audience. The Grabber has the sense that his house is haunted, but the spirits never rise up in a ridiculous show of revenge. I appreciate a film that treats ghosts more realistically. Ultimately, Finney escapes the basement and even kills his tormentor by his own cleverness and physical strength in a plausible way. The film’s supernatural elements, while they are key to Finney’s escape, don’t overshadow the story, the characters, or the ending.

Spoilers! Its plot twists are great as well. The Grabber’s brother, who is obsessed with finding the Grabber and even lives in the same house, is briefly entertained as Finney’s savior until his idiocy gets him killed. As another example, Gwen and the police discover a house with a dirt basement unlike the one most of the movie takes place in. This basement contains the Grabber’s buried victims. The audience is briefly led to believe that Finney is dead and buried among these bodies, and the scene of him overpowering the Grabber was a dream too good to be true. This makes it all the more satisfying when Finney walks out of the house across the street, the house with the basement where the Grabber tortured his victims.

I was surprised after I watched Sadako vs. Kayako to discover that’s its considered a comedy-horror. The concept of The Grudge vs. The Ring is a stupid idea that can’t be treated seriously, but this movie felt more like a boring Japanese horror. Half the time, I couldn’t distinguish its intentional comedy from characters making typical bad choices in a horror setting. The rest of the time, comedic characters just felt like stereotypes oddly placed in a horror setting. Namely, a cool bro exorcist and his blind little girl sidekick joined the cast midway into the movie after a fairly typical series of horrific deaths.

All I thought was funny was the terrible, sometimes intentionally so, Engrish subtitles in the copy I watched. During an exorcism, the subtitles enhanced an old woman’s spiritual chanting with Harry Potter spells. “Avada Kedavra!” “Expelliarmus!” “Expecto Patronum!” I wish I could remember some Engrish examples, but you can also watch the copy yourself here:

The creators of M3gan are totally Portal and Portal 2 fans. I had a feeling when I watched M3gan, but after watching the sequel M3gan 2.0, I’m convinced.

The robot villain-turned-ally M3gan has a distortion in her robot voice that’s very reminiscent of the voice of GlaDOS, the robot villain-turned-ally of the Portal video game series. M3gan’s character arc from M3gan to M3gan 2.0 matches GlaDOS’s from Portal to Portal 2, and M3gan singing pop songs inappropriately matches GlaDOS unexpectedly singing the closing theme to both Portal games.

As for the movie itself, it’s great and about as good as I remember M3gan being. Among other satisfying action, comedy, and storytelling beats M3gan 2.0 features, the villain printer company Xenox having super advanced AI is hilarious.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery contains its share of ruthless mockery of Catholicism but also a refreshingly optimistic view of it. The murder victim of this who-done-it, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, runs his church like a cult and shamelessly confesses his numerous sexual sins to his new assistant pastor, the protagonist Jud. Meanwhile, Jud is a devoted servant of God who genuinely wants to realign the Monsignor’s flock. He begins to doubt his abilities and mission, however, when no one seems interested in his teachings and he finds himself the primary suspect in Jefferson’s murder.

These two views create entertaining contrasting imagery. In one moment, Jud and detective Benoit Blanc are breaking into the dead Monsignor’s office and smashing a tiny Jesus statue with a statue of Jesus’ head in their search to treasure. In the next, Jud is selflessly listening to a woman talking through her unrelated personal problems and doubts. Jud’s brief foray into treasure hunting becomes background noise when he remembers what’s really important to him. While most of the film and its murder centers around the hunt for a lost treasure, in the end, Jud returns the treasure to God’s possession where it belongs.

The balance of mockery and praise of Catholicism is nice… and pretty funny.

When Victor Frankenstein kills his benefactor Henrich Harlander by mistake, I expected his death to play a larger part in the story. Perhaps Harlander would somehow become the Creature, or his soul would animate the Creature in bid return for revenge. Nothing really happened though. He was just dead.

During post-movie analysis, one of my friends surmised that Victor killed Harlander as short hand for him being an asshole. She recalled that in the book Victor is emphasized as being an asshole by repeatedly blaming other people for his mistakes. The movie, which was long enough as it was, didn’t have time to repeatedly show the Creature killing Frankenstein’s love interests and Frankenstein painting himself as the victim, so he killed someone instead.

It seems plausible, but still, I missed the significance of Harlander’s death, leading it to feel like a sub-plot that went nowhere. Victor didn’t intentionally kill him, which might have made him too much of an asshole to the audience. The intent seemed to be for Victor to either use the death to play the victim or to show his remorselessness or single-mindedness. There isn’t a character to be horrified by his behavior though (at least about killing someone by accident and not caring that much), so there wasn’t guidance as to how I should feel about it. In contrast, Victor’s treatment of the Creature and Elizabeth’s outrage with him quickly made him look like enough of an asshole to overshadow murder.

When I watched Dog in theaters a few years ago, I realized I have zero tolerance for sad animal movies. It was marketed as a comedy, and some of it may have been funny. Ultimately, I found then entire movie about a dog with PTSD and an incorrigible man disturbing. Sure, the dog didn’t die at the end, but I didn’t see anything to be happy about.

I had a similar experience with Smile a few months later. The first half of the movie was uncomfortable and disturbing. When the protagonist found her dead cat gift wrapped in a box, I seriously considered walking out of the theater. Fortunately, it became a standard, silly horror movie after that, but I wasn’t tempted to come back for Smile 2.

Recently, knowing nothing about the movie except that it was a horror, I went to a friend’s house to watch Good Boy. When the first scene depicted a sad, frightened dog, I wondered if I should leave immediately. Good Boy turned out to be quite tolerable though. The movie depicted a dog’s worst nightmare told from a dog’s perspective. I found it really interesting. And secretly, I wanted to coo at the screen the whole movie, “Look at that good boy!”

So for those of you with a similar sensitivity to animal movies, don’t be afraid to give Good Boy a watch.

Predator: Badlands didn’t feel like a Predator movie. Granted, it’s been more than a decade since I’ve seen a Predator movie. Actually, I can’t remember if I’ve seen a Predator movie. Was it Alien vs. Predator? Was it Alien? Was it something else entirely? Is there a Predator movie? O.o I remember nothing about what I’ve seen of Predator except that it should be scary or at least attempt to be so.

Watching Predator: Badlands was like what I imagine watching modern Star Wars is like. Given that I also have very little experience with modern Star Wars, I’m basing this opinion entirely on The Mandalorian & Grogu trailer I saw before Badlands started. About at the midpoint in the movie, Badlands introduces a cute mascot character. From that point forward, I felt like I was watching a ripoff of The Mandalorian & Grogu: a brooding protagonist, a comedic side kick, and a cute mascot having a space adventure.

Also, there’s a series of shots of the Predator and his side kick walking through fields and over mountains. After the first couple shots, I predicted the next shot would show the Predator walking along a mountain ridge. Lo and behold, the next shot was the Predator walking along a mountain ridge. Hell yeah! I’m watching a Lord of the Rings ripoff, too!

Overall, I don’t know what I watched or what I expected, but it seemed like something else with the Predator brand slapped on it.