The most recent Disney live-action remake is the classic tale of Mulan. Mulan had a troubled release as it was scheduled to be released just a week or so after the pandemic caused the closing of theaters everywhere. In fact, there were some critic shows prior to the delays.

Then, Disney announced the September 4th release of the film as a premium release on Disney + instead of in theaters.

Mulan (Yifei Liu) is a young girl who, to save her father Zhou (Tzi Ma), joins the Chinese army to protect against an attacking horde, pretending to be a male.

The start of this version of Mulan was just terrible. The first 10-15 minutes of the film really made me worried that this was going to be a total waste of time. There was already a question about the necessity of the remake in the first place, but the beginning of this looked terrible. The choreography was silly. The scenes were childish and ignorant. The scenes with the child Mulan could only be liked by 5 year-olds. It started dead in its tracks.

Fortunately, once Mulan aged and took her father’s place, heading off to the be trained with the other warriors, the film picked up considerably. It stopped being a film whose demographic was toddlers and became a violent story of warriors.

Now, the shape shifting witch Xian Lang (Gong Li) was not very impressive during fight scenes. They all looks too clunky and unreal. I liked how the character developed during the film, but the fights were just not good.

As I said, once Mulan made her way to the camp for the training, the film improved dramatically. The fights were better. The story improved. I was ready to rip the crap out of this after the first 15 minutes of the film, but the remainder of the film was so much better that I’m going to end up recommending it.

And one of my personal favorite moment was the cameo from Melinda May herself, Ming-Na Wen, at the end of the film. Ming-Na Wen voiced Mulan in the original animated film so it was awesome to see Agent May (of Agents of SHIELD) make her short appearance.

The second and third acts made dramatic improvements to the film that save it from being a huge flop. The live-action Mulan is worth the watch.

3 stars 

The long anticipated new film from Christopher Nolan has finally reached theaters after being delayed multiple times because of the COVID-19 virus.  I know a lot of people who love Nolan and his oeuvre of acclaimed films.  I have not found them to be nearly as engaging as most.  I did not like Inception.  The final act of Interstellar really wrecked a film that I had been enjoying, The Dark Knight Rises has so many problems that it simply cannot stand up to the previous Batman films.  Dunkirk’s sound issues attacked by body and threatened to make me physically ill.

Let’s just say the track record has not been stellar for me when it comes to Nolan.

Because of all of this, I approached Tenet with apprehension.  Unfortunately, that apprehension became reality after watching Tenet tonight.  I will take its place among the other films I listed above. 

In Tenet, a man known only as the Protagonist (John David Washington) is recruited by an agency to prevent a Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) from finding a certain MacGuffin.  It turns out that some people are able to move backwards in time with a ability called inversion.  

I’m not going into the plot any more for two reasons.  One, because I do not want to spoil anything from the movie and two, because the plot is so needlessly complicated and convoluted that it would take me pages to explain it with any general success.  Lets just leave it at Tenet is a spy movie with wonky time travel elements to it.

Much like all of those movies that I mentioned earlier, Tenet is a masterpiece of technical marvel.  Some of the shots are amazing and the visuals are awe-inspiring.  There is no doubt that Christopher Nolan is a master director when it comes to this.  It is a shame that he does not seem to have the same precision of skill when it comes to characters.

The fact is that there are no characters in this story that I cared about at all.  I knew nothing about John David Washington’s character and I found little reason to care.  None of the other characters connected to me either.  The film wants me to care about Elizabeth Debicki’s Kat and the connection between her and the Protagonist, but I did not see it.  Robert Pattinson showed up as Neil and I liked him, but I knew nothing about him.  

Don’t misunderstand.  All of their performances were strong.  There was just nothing to them.

I found the first hour or hour and a half of the film to be, at times, dull.  It was difficult to follow and I was paying as close of attention as I could.  The third, however, did really pick up and had some intriguing situations and the story seemed to tie together and it almost pulled it up for me.  Unfortunately, it was just too late.  However, the last half hour to 45 minutes was the strongest part of Tenet for me.

And what the heck was up with that soundtrack?  It was loud and obtrusive, making it difficult many times to hear the dialogue.  The sounds behind so many scenes were not even music.  It was noise, literally.  It was distracting me many times and even caused a throbbing in my head.  After Dunkirk, I have to believe that Nolan intends to make audience members uncomfortable with the music and sound editing to keep them on edge.  I was certainly bothered by it.

There was some tremendous action scenes and they were captured heavily using practical effects.  There is a hallway fight scene that is just extremely well done and should be admired.  Some of the backwards shots are expertly done.  If I would have cared about anybody involved, I may have been even more impressed with them.

Time travel movies are, many times, already difficult to understand and this did not make the ideas any easier.  

Perhaps this is a film that I would perceive better after a second or third time watching it, but I do not expect for that to happen.  

2.7 stars 

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award is programme for youth in Scotland founded in 1956 by Prince Phillip. Part of the programme includes a survival section where the group is left out in the Highlands of Scotland. Sounds like a good topic for satire.

Enter the black comedy, Get Duked! from rookie director Ninian Doff. Get Duked! is very funny and full of stoner jokes, hip hop and some truly wild satire.

Three loser friends are given the “opportunity” to enter the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Dean (Rian Gordon), Duncan (Lewis Gribben) and DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) get teamed up with straight-laced volunteer Ian (Samuel Bottomley) and dropped into the wild with substitute teacher Mr. Carlyle (Jonathan Aris). However, the truth of what was ahead of the four boys was stranger than they ever believed.

It turned out that there were a couple of aristocrats (Eddie Izzard & Georgie Glen) hunting these boys for sport.

There are some really laugh out loud moments here. There is a distinct feel of British/United Kingdom type of humor here so if you are a fan of Monty Python or Mr. bean, this will be right up your path. There is a tone of absurdist humor peppered through he film, but it does not completely delve into parody.

The film weaves together some ridiculous situations into a great comedy with some excellent action and tense moments. I will say that I thought that the film did start a little slowly, but when it picked up, it picked up dramatically. As I was watching the ending of the film, I could see what was going to happen, but, when what I thought about DID happen, it was tremendously funny.

I watched Get Duked! on Amazon Prime today and I had a really good time doing it. In a weekend where there are a lot of new options both in the theaters and on streaming, Get Duked! is worth your time.

3.8 stars

After almost 30 years, the bodacious bros return to unite the world and save reality with one song, this time for sure.  Bill & Ted Face the Music is the third installment in the Bill & Ted franchise and, even after all of these years, this film captures the silliness and joyousness of the original two films.

I just watched Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey this past summer during the quarantine.  I watched them with the expressed purpose of preparing for this release.  I enjoyed the revelry of the films, which seemed to be unafraid to go out of its way to be ridiculous.

Bill & Ted Face the Music is right in step with the first two films despite picking up the action with older versions of Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves).  We see Bill & Ted still pretty much in the same situation as when we left them.  Little had changed for the duo, except their band, The Wyld Stallyns, had seen better days.

When the future came calling once again, Bill & Ted began their travels through time and space to attempt to find the song that fulfill their destiny and unite the world and preserve the timeline.

We had Bill & Ted’s daughters Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving) joining the search, as they, along with Kelly (Kristen Schaal), the daughter of Rufus (the late George Carlin) from the future, who returned to take the mentor role of her father, traversed through time to recruit the ultimate band to play the song.

Some of the scenes are really funny.  Others are totally silly.  None of them are flops though.  The return of Death (William Sadler), who was a standout in Bogus Journey, was welcomed, though I might have liked more interaction between Death and Bill & Ted.

I like the idea of music being able to be what unites us all and the message of unity and togetherness is a welcome one in our current time of divisiveness.

If you are a fan of Bill & Ted, this will be a welcome addition to the canon.  It is fun and engaging in its world of folly.  It is not a cinematic classic, but it is a good time with a movie.  Be excellent to each other.!

3.5 stars

I returned to the theater for the first time since March tonight.

I went back to see the long delayed and seemingly curse film, The New Mutants.  Based loosely on the “Demon Bear” storyline from the 1984 New Mutants comics by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, Josh Boone directed this movie…literally years ago.

Few movies of this size of fan following, (do not doubt that, in the world of comics, this is one of the iconic story arcs in the mutant world) have had the amount of chaos and drama behind the scenes as The New Mutants.  The film has been delayed numerous times, with the first trailers dropping in 2016.

The film had been delayed three years, and it got to a point where there were some moments when I thought that the movie was more of a urban legend, a myth, than an actual physical cinema experience.  Even when they said that The New Mutants was being released on August 28th, I doubted it.  I was unsure that it was ever actually going to be released in theaters.

It is the strangest of situations.  When first announced, I was very middling on The New Mutants.  I liked these characters, but I was not looking forward to it.  However, after the constant delays and the weirdness surrounding the film, I found myself anticipating this movie more than almost any other.

So when the reviews came out the last few days and they were a resounding “meh”, I was sad.  Perhaps that was a good thing, because it was able to manage my expectations, which had become unwieldy for sure, and I came out of it having had a great time.

Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt), after her Native American reservation was destroyed by, what was claimed to be, a tornado, found herself in a specific hospital, being overlooked by Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga).  Dr. Reyes told Dani that she was a mutant and that her powers needed to be controlled.

Dani met four other mutants at this hospital, all with their own life struggles.  Rahne (Maisie Williams) can change into a wolf, Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy) has a real negative attitude, Roberto (Henry Zaga) is a wealthy, arrogant kid, and Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton) is a young man from Kentucky whose father died in the coal mines.

The young teens brought plenty of angst along with them, but it seemed as if the hospital had some frightening aspects to it as well.

There is an argument that could be made that the teen angst and the horror parts of this film did not blend together effectively, and I could see why some would make that argument.  While those elements were clunky at times, this did not distract from my enjoyment of the film.  I thought the young actors did a good job with their characters and their performances.  I knew more about these characters from my background with the comic books so I found the performances richer because of it.

I do think that there was too much exposition among the New Mutants detailing their pasts.  It was simply too many of them that were just telling their back story to the audience.  Plus, because they kept jumping to another character, it felt, at times, disjointed.  However, my own knowledge made this less offensive as many others who may not be as fluent in the world of the New Mutants.

I thought the CGI here was very well done.  The Demon Bear had some moments where it looked off, but most of the CGI was decent.  I liked the look of many of the horror characters in the hospital.  The smiling creatures were very reminiscent of the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and they made a cameo in the movie) and they were frightening.

I enjoyed the use of the mutants powers and they were visually impressive.  Illyana’s Soulsword, the look of Sunspot, the use of Cannonball’s burst… all looked really good.

I found myself invested in the third act of the film and I was surprised in that fact.  And SPOILER the use of the name Essex Corporation (which is connected with Mr. Sinister) was a cool Easter egg for the comic fans out there.  END OF SPOILER.

The current Tomatometer has The New Mutants at 17% and that is way too low.  I will admit that I came in to the movie after hearing negative reviews from Dan Murrell and Chris Stuckmann and that helped bring my expectations down, allowing me to enjoy this more than I thought I would.  Certainly, when comparing The New Mutants to other X-Men FOX films, it is much better than many of them.  It is considerably better than Dark Phoenix, X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Origins.  I’d put it ahead of X3 as well (maybe even The Wolverine).  I am pleased that it proved to be real and that it finally got released.

And it was great to go to a theater once again.  When will I head back again?

3.6 stars

I saw the synopsis of this movie, The Vanished, and it sounded interesting.  So I found it on Vudu today and decided to watch it.

It was original and unexpected for sure.

A seemingly happy family head out to a camping trip in their RV, singing songs and preparing to go fishing.  Paul (Thomas Jane) and Wendy (Anne Heche), with their little daughter Taylor (Sadie Heim), arrive at the trailer camp park, coming across some questionable looking individuals.

As Paul was preparing to head out fishing with his daughter, he is distracted by an attractive woman (Aleksei Archer) who is from a nearby camper.  When Wendy gets back from the store, they realize that Taylor has disappeared.

Panicked, Paul and Wendy get the local sheriff (Jason Patric) involved in search of the woods and the lake for their missing daughter.

There were several red herrings presented to the audience as the police and Paul and Wendy desperately searched for the missing little girl.  The film does a good job of creating an uncertainty of what happened to her.  Jane and Heche do a good job here, but, it was strange because the two of them seemed to be inconsistent with their characters.  They were reacting in strange manners and you could tell that they were keeping something that we did not know.

One minute, Heche was acting strange.  Next minute, Jane was doing something weird.

They were not the only characters who were acting in odd ways.  Sheriff Baker had something going on here too.  I am not sure that we ever effectively discovered what his deal was.  Alex Haydon’s character Alex is another one that has some kind of mysterious underscore to his role.

I do not want to spoil anything, but the ending of the movie is wild and may feel to some that it comes out of nowhere.  I could see where some people may find the ending of this movie a cheat, but I must admit that I kind of enjoyed it.

There are some uneven aspects to the movie, especially the portrayals of the two main characters.  There are tense moments and you are never sure what has happened.  I thought this was better than I expected.  I saw the low Rotten Tomatoes score connected to this film but I thought it was better than that.

3.4 stars 

Chemical Hearts is on Amazon Prime this weekend and it brings a healthy dose of teenage angst and melodrama to the screen.

Riverdale’s Lili Reinhart is transfer student Grace, whose mysterious style draws the attention of senior Henry (Austin Abrams).  Both teens are named co-editor of the high school paper and brings them into each other’s orbit.  Henry discovers that Grace has a tragic past that continues to cause her anguish.

Admittedly, there is not a lot original here.  We have seen other movies handle most of this subject matter.  However, the two leads, Abrams and Reinhart, have a ton of chemistry and bring a distinct rooting quality to the pairing.  Both actors do a fine job and carry much of the story and the script on their shoulders.

The pacing of this film is excellent.  The film has a short 93 minutes, but nothing feels wasted.  There are some side characters that do not receive much development and play a part in the final scene.  That did not feel earned.

Overall, Chemical Hearts is a good, albeit, familiar movie with two excellent young actors in the lead roles.  The success of this movie is squarely on their shoulders and they handle the melodrama of the script in a fine manner.

3.3 stars 

I have the book of The One and Only Ivan by author Mike White in my middle school classroom library so I recognized the title when I saw it was going to be a movie on Disney +.  However, I have not actually read the novel.

Surprisingly, the film starts with a “based on real events” tag so, since this is about talking animals, I immediately doubted that claim.  Turns out, it was the basic story behind the movie that was the true story (as we see in the end credits) and the talking animals part was author’s craft.  That’s fine.

The One and Only Ivan is the story of a gorilla named Ivan (Sam Rockwell)m raised from a little gorilla by Mack (Bryan Cranston).  Mack took Ivan and several other animals and opened a mall called the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, where Ivan was the main attraction.  Among a group of animals that had minor tricks to do, Ivan would come out and growl and pound his chest at the end.

Business was suffering, so Mack bought a cute baby elephant named Ruby (Brooklynn Prince) to amp up the awwww-factor of the show.  Ruby bonded with Ivan and Ivan’s other friend, a nameless stray dog (Danny DeVito).

When Mack’s niece Julia (Ariana Greenblatt), an inspiring artist of her own, passed her old crayons to Ivan and the gorilla showed a propensity to draw.  Through this skill and a promise he would make, Ivan realized that the confines of a cage was not what he wanted for himself or for Ruby.

The story is fairly basic and lacks too much of an emotional punch, outside of a couple of well-manipulated scenes.  Still, the CGI animals are wonderful (especially when compared to works like the dog from Call of the Wild), and there is enough of a connection to the audience to make this a reasonable family film.  There are deeper themes that could have been explored in this, but they do not do so.

The voice and live action cast is stacked.  With Sam Rockwell in the lead role of Ivan, they start off strong.  Bryan Cranston is always great and here he does an admirable job as Mack.  Throw in Danny DeVito, Angelina Jolie, Chaka Khan, and Helen Mirren and you have a great group of actors.

Some of the humor did not work for me (there was a toupee gag that was really out of left field), and the resolution of the story seemed to come about too quickly as well.   It did not allow the film’s conflict to grow much before it was resolved.  Again, that was fine for what it was, but it prevents the movie from going any deeper.

I would not purchase Disney + to make sure I did not miss The One and Only Ivan, but I already have it and I am not unhappy that I watched it.  It is a strong family fare that goes quickly and is worthy of watching on the streaming service.

3.3 stars

This film makes you wonder how long it will be until this is no longer fiction and something like this actually occurs in the real world.

Spree is the story of a 23-year old Spree rideshare driver named Kurt Kunkle (Joe Keery) who is desperately seeking attention for his online blog, Kurt’s World.  He comes up with a deadly plan to make his livestream go viral.

The film looks at the world of online blogging and how these videos seem to be getting worse with every bad idea.  The toxic behavior online continues to grow more negative as the personalities find more horrible things to do, all in the name of followers and internet fame.

Kurt becomes a multiple murderer, escalating quickly as he records his progressively worsening acts,  However, these murders do not appear to be increasing his online status, pushing Kurt to go even further.

Kurt becomes obsessed with stand-up comedian Jesse Adams (Sasheer Zamata), who is much better at the entire social media world than he is.  Kurt is searching for someone to partner with to become an online success, but other people can see the instability he is suffering from, although they may not quite see the level he is at.

Joe Keery (from Stranger Things fame) is our lead character here, and he had a believable level of crazy.  He has had a bad childhood, his parents splitting.  His father (David Arquette) verbally abusive and self-centered.

This film is a dark, comedic satire of the online world which sounded very familiar to the world that I have watched.  The idea that the internet could host such brazenly violence without being noticed is a scary concept.

Most of the characters here are basic, lacking much depth.  However, Kurt has some interesting moments and Jesse complements him well.  Both Keery and Zamata stand out in their performances.

The film is shot almost completely through camera phones, other recording devices etc, much like films such as Unfriended and Searching.  This creates a hectic environment that never ends and it displays the information overload of today’s society.  Spree is a violent and bloody film that can be hard to watch.  It is also darkly funny and ironic.  You may hate this, but you may also see too much of the current world in it.

3 stars 

The super hero genre needs to have new ideas to maintain its run of popularity.  That’s just a fact.  Project Power is a new idea that approaches the genre in a new and intriguing idea, but places that idea in pretty much of a familiar plot.

The film introduces us to a world where anyone who takes a special pill (called power) can unlock a hidden superpower inside of the person for five minutes.  No one is sure what the power would be or if it would be a good power.  It could range from super strength to being bulletproof, or you could explode and die.

Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a cop who is trying to stop the flow of the drug so he teams up with teenager Robin (Dominique Fishback), a young girl dealing the drug to earn money to help with her mother’s health costs.  She supplies Frank with pills and he looks the other way.

However, a former soldier, Art (Jamie Foxx) arrives on the scene, kidnapping Robin, in an attempt to find her supplies.  The suppliers have taken Art’s daughter Tracy (Andrene Ward-Hammond) and he is desperate to find her.

The premise of the film is great.  The idea that this pill gives out a super power for only five minutes is creative, but, even more interesting, is that the superpower may not be a positive thing.  Looking at these powers as something that was potentially ugly was shown in the movie through its CGI and design.  The negative aspect of the pills was played up here and I really like this concept.  I would have liked more of this than what we got.

The performances are really well done.  You have two exceptional actors leading this movie with Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but the real standout here is Dominique Fishback.  She is a troubled teen and her problems lead to her getting wrapped up here and she fits beautifully.  She wants to grow up to be a rapper and she is great when she is showing her skills.  She is filled with emotion.

The problem with the film is that the story itself is generic.  In what could have been a really deep and different tale, the film takes very basic steps.  Art is searching for his daughter.  The villains are completely nondescript and basically dull.  The story is easily the weakest part of the film.

However, there is enough clever writing here and there, and the performances are really good that you can excuse the negatives connected to the plot.  The CGI is used sparingly and looks good.  The action is well directed and feeds the story.  They certainly did not overuse the CGI and the designs are weird.  The film is engaging and entertaining and is a lot of fun to watch.  It is just not the tremendous inspiration that it could have been.

3.9 stars 

There have been a lot of book adaptations over the years, but one of the most adapted books ever has been The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  The latest adaptation has made its arrival on VOD.

The classic story tells us about 10-year old Mary Lennox (Dixie Egerickx), whose parents died of cholera.  Mary was taken in by her grieving uncle Archibald Craven (Colin Firth), whose wife has died and whose son Colin (Edan Hayhurst) was sick.  Mary felt isolated and unwanted until she discovered a secret garden that she believed was filled with magic.

The garden in this film is beautifully filmed and exquisitely displayed.  It seemed to be a mixture of real imagery and CGI but the garden was great.  It had a feel of a character to it and the use of the ghosts from Mary and Colin’s pasts added to the element of magic on display.

Speaking of Mary and Colin, these two, along with Dickon (Amir Wilson), were outstanding.  The kids’ performances were real and compelling, especially Edan Hayhurst, who had a wealth of range for the sickly Colin.  We also got Colin Firth as Colin’s father, but I could have used more from him.  His character seemed to be too inconsistent and he bounced from one level to another quickly.  Still, the ending sequence with the fire was well done and the resolution of the film was moving.

Fans of the classic novel should find this adaptation enjoyable and rich.  There are some deep themes contained in the story and these kids do a wonderful job of playing those out.  The Secret Garden can be a powerful film for the entire family.

4 stars  

I came across this sci-fi/thriller on Amazon Prime this morning and I thought I would give it a shot.

Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots) are a happy couple in search of their perfect house.  They go to see an agency that is selling houses in the neighborhood called Yonder.  The sales agent Martin (Jonathan Aris) takes the couple to see one of the houses, and they discover that the neighborhood is repetitive houses, all green, as far as can be seen.

As they are looking around, Martin disappears and the couple decide to get the heck out of there.  However, they are unable to find a way to leave and their car somehow always winds back at house number 9, the one they have been shown, as if trapped in a maze.

Finding a box of supplies left out front, Tom decides to try something drastic.  He takes the flap off the box and lights it on fire, torching the house in the process.  As they watch the house burn, the couple fall asleep out front. The next morning, another box appears, this time, containing a baby.  They also find that the house is completely unharmed from the previous night’s arson.

Time passes and the baby grows into a young boy (Senan Jennings), but there are clearly some weird things going on.  Yet, there is no way for Tom and Gemma to escape, so they continue with their life.  The passage of time is very odd in this film as we see that this boy is growing at a considerable greater rate than we would expect.  He seems to be copying the behaviors and speech of the adults.  They have not taken the boy into their hearts as a son as Gemma continues to tell him that she is not his mother.

Things only get weirder from this point on as Vivarium follows this couple’s life.  Wondering what the title was a reference to, I found this definition at Dictionary.com: “a place, such as a laboratory, where live animals or plants are kept under conditions simulating their natural environment, as for research.”  This definition certainly places a new thought about what this movie is all about.

The film also begins with the imagery of a bird’s nest with newly born birds being shoved out of the nest, leading to their death by a cuckoo.  The bird’s mother then raise the cuckoo as their own.

Again, pretty spot on with what is happening in our narrative.

I thought the performances of Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots were well done.  They showed the horrors of the situation without going overboard.  The performance of Senan Jennings was stand out though.  The “young boy” (which is the name IMDB gives the character) is one of the creepier performances you are going to find.  He fits nicely into the genre of horror movie creepy kids.

The middle of the movie is a tad slow, but I liked that.  The development we got was well done and frustrating because you just did not understand what was happening at the time.  There were enough clues dropped throughout the film that made you realize that something was seriously out of whack that it teased the audience effectively.

I personally enjoyed the ending of the movie, but if you are the type who gets frustrated about having everything explained to you, then this one may not be the film for you.

There are some extremely relevant themes of isolation and the repetitive of life in this film that may not be developed as much as it could have been, but they are certainly there.

Vivarium is a cross between an extended episode of the Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks.  There are some really weird events and some great performances, especially from Senan Jennings.  Some may not be happy with the ending, but I thought that worked well for the themes that they were using.

3.8 stars 

I may never do another Zoom meeting.

Host is an original horror film from Shudder and it is frightening and nerve-wracking.

We have seen films like this before.  A group of friends online wind up being tormented by some spirit/demon, but there was something particularly creepy and anxiety creating about this film.

Host is only 57 minutes long, but it certainly maximizes the time to create a ton of horrific scares that leaves you uneasy and disturbed.

Six friends are getting together during the pandemic lockdown on Zoom to have a seance, which includes a real life Medium.  Despite a warning not to “disrespect the spirits, one of the friends, Jemma, makes up a story about a boy and opens the door for a spirit to come into their lives.

The film would fall into the found footage genre, directed by Rob Savage.  While we have seen this type of film from Unfriended to Unsubscribe, Host pushes those button that tap into the anxiety of the audience coming from our current situation of the pandemic, that has kept us isolated in our homes for months now.

There were a lot of jump scares in Host, but they did not feel as if they were thrown in the film.  These scares felt earned for the story that they were telling.

The characters were reasonably well-developed considering the fact that the film was pretty short.  They did a great job providing the information in a concise and effective manner.  The script here is tightly woven and entertaining.

The film is short, but it takes advantage of every second to mess with the audience’s nerves.  The feeling of isolation the film creates is effective.  The performances are good and the effects are impressive for what these filmmakers had available to them.  Host is on Shudder and is a great, frightening time.

4.1 stars 

You Should Have Left is a film released this year on VOD.  However, I had heard some negativity about the film so I decided that I would not pay the $19.99 they were asking on Vudu and the other video on demand sites.  I thought that I might come back to it later as the price dropped.  Tonight, the price was much more reasonable and I gave this a try.

Perhaps it is because my expectations were low, but I liked a lot of this movie.  It clearly has its flaws, but this was much better than I thought it would be.

Theo (Kevin Bacon), a former banker, his wife and actress Susanna (Amanda Seyfried) and their daughter Ella (Avery Essex) need to get away from the world.  Theo had a dark past that haunts him and the chance to get away with his famous actress wife and daughter.  They rent a house in the Welsh countryside, and then things start to get weird.

This is in the genre of haunted house horror and comes from Blumhouse.  The recent run of Blumhouse films have not been as rewarding as others.  Directed by David Koepp, You Should Have Left takes that genre and, well, does not do anything really new with it.  Still, the house itself was kind of creepy and had some solid scenes in it.

Kevin Bacon is great with what he has been given.  Young Avery Essex is very capable as well.  Amanda Seyfried is not given much to do.  Because of the lack of depth in her characters, a plot point that is dropped near the end of the second act of the movie feels just completely shoehorned in and was unearned.  It was so out of left field that it hurt the movie that I had been enjoying to that point.

The ending of the film was also too predictable.  It presented a twist to it that you probably guessed way earlier in the movie.  The movie missed an opportunity to do something creative with the end that took advantage of the skill of these actors involved, but it chose to do the typical stereotypical twist.  Much of the final act brought the film down for me.

That is a shame, of course, because there were quite a few point among the first two acts that I had really engaged in.  The acting was strong, especially from Bacon and Essex.  The house had a creepiness to it that could have been something special, but seems to settle for something simple.

I was entertained by the film, which in the end is an important part, but this could have been so much better.  If you like horror movies and approach this with the proper level of expectations, you could do worse that You Should Have Left.

3 stars