Ignition Press released a comic a few months ago called The Beauty, written by Jeremy Haun. I was unaware that there was a series before this one from Image Comics. I am enjoying the book from Ignition Press so I was intrigued when I heard that Ryan Murphy was adapting it to a FX series. The first three episodes dropped this past week and there will be a weekly drop on Wednesdays after that.
There is a virus that is transmitted sexually. When you get the virus, you become beautiful (in a horribly painful and gross way). Admittedly, there are some people who just explode in a big bloody mess. Not sure the difference at this point.
Evan Peters stars in the show as Cooper Madsen. The show also featured Rebecca Hall, Anthony Ramos, Ashton Kutcher, and Jeremy Pope.
FBI Agents Cooper and Jordan were investigating the mysterious deaths of several super models, including one that went crazy, killing a bunch of people before she exploded in a bloody splash. Meanwhile, out-of-shape and pathetic young man named Jeremy went to a plastic surgeon with the hope to make himself more attractive. The plastic surgeon worked on him, and it seemed to be successful. Jeremy went to a club where a group of women gave him some attention. However, they were just scamming him for free drinks.
Jeremy, in a rage, went to the surgeon’s office with a gun, killed several staff members, and threatened the doctor. The doctor, however, had another suggestion and hooked him up with a mysterious woman. Jeremy and the woman had sex and Jeremy wound up transforming into a more handsome, in shape person.
This series has a lot of body horror in it, and that is not one one of my favorite types of horror, but I am interested in the series so I will certainly be giving it a chance. I have been disappointed with Ryan Murphy lately (hated American Horror Story: Delicate and Grotesquerie). I did love early AHS and American Crime Story, so he has a hit-or-miss run for me. We’ll see how this goes.
In honor of Martin Luthor King Day, I scheduled Spike Lee’s film Bamboozled for the Genre-ary. It was quite the satire.
According to IMDB, “A frustrated African-American TV writer proposes a blackface minstrel show in protest, but to his chagrin, it becomes a hit.“
The idea of this movie was used recently in the film American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright. The thing is that this was so much more satirical than I ever expected.
Damon Wayans played Pierre Delacroix, a highly educated and uptight TV writer whose pitches were being rejected by his boss, Thomas Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport). Delacroix decided to provide a protest by presenting a minstrel variety show embracing all of the negative stereotypes associated with blacks. He intended on the show being rejected and leading to his own firing to escape the contract that he signed.
The problem was that the show became a huge hit by the public and the critics. Delacroix became enthralled by the success, losing himself in the racism.
There are so many shocking moments throughout Bamboozled that it is a difficult movie to watch. It is a powerful dismissal of the manner of television and its portrayal of African-Americans over the years. Admittedly, Bamboozled is not subtle in its satire, which may make it too cartoonish at times.
The ending was extremely tough to watch as everything came to a head. The idea that this movie had times that were difficult to watch was clearly done on purpose. It was meant to shake up the idea of racial stereotypes and racism inside the entertainment industry as well as throughout history, and Spike Lee definitely reached that level.
This is one of those movies that I enjoyed, but will probably never want to watch again. I do think it is a worthwhile show and some of the big ideas are necessary to today’s world.
I liked this movie. I want to start off with that statement. However, my star rating may not be as high as it might have been.
I went to the XD theater at Cinemark to see the film today and, when I got there, I saw that the heat was not working in that theater. They had a sign posted that anyone who wanted a refund could get it, but I decided to give it a try. After about ten minutes, I was regretting my decision. It was really cold. I looked to see if there were any other possible showing of the movie and there wasn’t any until later in the afternoon, so I was fairly stuck.
By the end of the movie, I felt as if my body was so cold, it wasn’t working properly. That was an exaggeration, but I was shivering and shaking. The environment of a movie can affect the enjoyment of a film, and this is probably a lesser review than I would give The Bone Temple than one where I was comfortable.
I do believe that I enjoyed this more than I did the last 28 Years Later from last year. This movie featured more with Dr. Ian Kelson, played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes. We also followed the exploits of Spike, who would wind up being called Jimmy through most of the movie, played by Alfie Williams. Williams, who was born in 2011 making him 15 this year, does a fantastic job with this role, having to provide a lot of emotional moments and he had a lot of the story arc on his back.
Spike was picked up by a group of Satanists led by Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), who inducted Spike into the group he was leading. Jack O’Connell was sensational in Sinners last year and he brings the same energy to this movie.
The film, though, was dominated by Ralph Fiennes, giving a tour de force performance, not only when the Jimmies crossed his path, but also working in an attempt to save the life of the gigantic alpha he named Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). Without spoilers, the scene with Iron Maiden’s song was absolutely breathtaking.
The tension and suspense was ratcheted up throughout the film with some confrontations being expertly filmed. Directed by Nia DaCosta, 28 Years Later is a solid installment of this franchise.
When I scheduled Superbad for the comedy Genre-ary, I was really not looking forward to it. It has typically been the type of movie that I hate. I was pushing it off as long as I could.
And then…
I really liked this.
I’m as surprised as anyone.
According to IMDB, “Two co-dependent high school seniors are forced to deal with separation anxiety after their plan to stage a booze-soaked party goes awry.”
I found this surprisingly entertaining, with some excellent writing and witty dialogue. The lines were sharp and hilarious and the situations were over the top, and yet not so much that you roll your eyes.
Jonah Hill, who I have never been a big fan of, was really great as Seth, and he was actually quite deep in this loud and obnoxious character. Historically, this is the type of loud character that irritates me, but, for some reason, this was much better than other films with the same type of character. Hill had great chemistry with Michael Cera, who played Evan. His balance against Hill’s loudness worked well.
The film was also debuts of both Emma Stone and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Both actors had solid characters and I do think Mintz-Plasse’s run as McLovin was easily the best running joke of the film.
I do think it was too long. I would have liked to have seen about 10-15 minutes trimmed from the film as the middle dragged on a bit. However, the ending of the film was truly charming and hinted at more than just surface story.
The most over-the-top aspect of the film was the police officers, played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogen. I liked them, but there may have been too much of them over the course of the film. Some of these scenes would be the ones I would trim, but they had a wonderful scene near the end of the film with Mintz-Plasse, as that relationship had been built up during the middle.
This is the style of movie that I usually hate. Crude. Drug and alcohol jokes. Sex jokes. It just goes to show you that a film that is intelligently written, with strong characterization and plot that is legitimately funny even without the crude parts, can still be entertaining and well done. With quality, any style can be fun.
I remember being unbelievably shocked with how much I enjoyed Greenland back in 2020. I think it even won the Year in Review Award for the Best Surprise (That is called the Gomer). I had not expectations that a Gerard Butler end-of-the-world film would be good at all, and I loved it.
Which meant that I had more expectations for the sequel, Greenland 2: Migration. While it was not a bad movie, the sequel was considerably lesser than the original and has several problems.
John Garrity (Gerard Butler) had gotten his family, wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis), to the bunker in Greenland just before the comets struck the earth. This movie started by letting us know that the comets wiped out 75% of the human race and destroyed much of the planet. However, the bunker that they had been living in for the last five years was beginning to crumble and the survivors had to scatter to try an escape the dangers of the environment.
They had heard rumors that the impact crater of the original comet was a location where life had sprung forth and that it was where people could restart their lives. John and Allison decided to attempt to find their way to the crater, which was in France.
This was a much more common post-apocalyptic film than the original one was. As the family worked their way toward France, the surrounding were the typical backdrop you would see in The Walking Dead (without zombies) or The Last of us (without any creepy critters). The idea that humans would be the worst things about a post-apocalyptic world is once again at the center of the themes of Greenland 2.
I kept feeling bad during the film for Nathan as it seemed like there would be no young girls his age for him, but the film nicely took care of that.
There were some good moments in the film, though many of them felt too coincidental or forced. Everything kept happening to this family on their trip. Still, it could have been much worse. It is nowhere near as good as Greenland, but I did not hate watching it.
Primate is a new horror film out in January where a family, who had a pet chimp, gets mauled by it after the chimp, named Ben, gets rabies.
That was about all the story of the film.
There are so many slasher movie tropes in this movie. A group of young people are trapped in an isolated house with their crazed chimp, and the chimp murdered many of them, in very gruesome and gory ways.
We had so many slasher movie tropes here including: cell phones not charged, stupid choices when faced with any decision, car issues with keys, a killer that can make its way around the house easily, the isolated house, and a group of characters that the audience would like to see killed off.
All this was in play in Primate.
The chimp looked pretty good. It was basically a practical effect and the kills were very gory that made sense. There was one involving an obnoxious boy in a bed that was specifically brutal.
Slasher movies always are tough for me because how stupid the characters always seem to be. That bothers me, but if you can get past that, the film was okay. It is certainly a simple film, but that is not a bad thing. It succeeds in what it sets out to be, without being anything deeper than that.
It does have a lot of tension in the execution of the chimp stalking and attacking its victims. There are a lot of white knuckle moments in the film which provides a great mood for the audience.
If you go to see Primate, go in expecting a tense film without anything resembling a plot or deep character depth. It has some fun, gory kills and a good looking chimp.
This block of four episodes went into deep details about Tahiti, a magical place… or at least, what it truly was.
The information Coulson was able to ascertain about the mysterious magical place showed him some of the horrors that he went through to bring him back from the dead. He learned that he was dead for several days, not several seconds as it had been told to him. We saw the horror-scape imagery of them working on Coulson’s brain, implanting memories to help him forget the time of his resurrection. That image was truly horrific.
We are introduced to John Garrett, played by the awesome Bill Paxton, whom will become a major issue later this season. Garrett was Ward’s former SO and he came to the Bus to take control of the prisoner, Ian Quinn. Coulson did not want to give him up because he had shot Skye twice, leaving her for dead.
The whole Skye gamut was rough as the team tried to find T.A.H.I.T.I. and hope to find a way to save a dying Skye.
Several tense moments. Several of these episodes, especially T.R.A.C.K.S., played with POV and would go back to different groups of the agents, showing what they saw during the same time frame. It was a clever episode that ended with Skye getting shot.
We learned that the drugs that were created to save Coulson (and eventually Skye) came from the dead body of a Kree, hooked up to a machine inside T.A.H.I.T.I.
I’m still finding more and more times where Ward’s actual Hydra roots came in conflict with what he did. I do not remember much about these episodes, but the questions about him actually being Hydra is absolutely not being hinted at yet.
The team is bonding all the more with every episode. Next episode will be the one to feature Lady Sif, as we saw Lorelei arrive in the post credit scene of episode 14.
The Genre-ary continued today with The Jerk, a movie that, when I was compiling the possible list of comedies for the Genre-ary, I realized that I had not seen the entire film. Of course, I had seen parts of the movie. The “The new phone book’s here” scene is iconic. However, I could not recall much of anything else, so if I had seen it as a youth, this would be like a whole new movie.
And, as I said, I did not remember most of this movie, telling me that I had not seen the film all the way through.
Steve Martin is one of my favorite comedic actors, especially recently with his turn as Oliver on Only Murders in the Building. I was a fan of his from the early 80s with his song King Tut and some of his other films such as Roxanne, Parenthood, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Little Shop of Horrors.
In The Jerk, directed by comedy legend Carl Reiner, Martin played a slow-witted, innocent guy, Navin, who was raised as a poor black kid in a sharecroppers family. That very idea, considering Martin is as white as a person could be, was hilarious. It also was not as insulting as I first thought it might be.
After discovering his own life rhythm, Navin left home to try to find out who he really was. He then embarked on a wild ride that found him becoming a huge success and losing it all.
Martin’s performance reminded me of an actor who is always loud and over the top. I typically am not a fan of this type of role, but Steve Martin brought something extra to it that made it enduring. I can only guess that this film was an inspiration to actors such as Jim Carrey, Kevin Hart, Adam Sandler, and Chris Farley, as they all have made a career of the loud, obnoxious type character that Steve Martin was showing in this film.
The film’s title is not accurate to me though as Navin was not really a jerk, but more of a simpleton. There was an innocence about him that helped make him appealing to the audience.
The film featured several other actors in important roles including EYG Hall of Famer Bernadette Peters, Carl Reiner (as himself), Bill Macy, Mabel King, Richard Ward, M. Emmet Walsh, Jackie Mason, Dick Anthony Williams, Catlin Adams, and Dick O’Neill. Several of these key character actors add a perfect flair to the cast, playing off the ridiculousness of Martin’s Navin.
The Jerk is a classic and I am happy that I finally did take the time to watch the entire film. The plot itself is a little lacking, but it is more of a comedy sketch to see where Navin is at any time during his life.
January is here and that means that it is time to start our annual tradition, the Genre-ary. We have done Sci-fi, Musicals, Documentaries and this year, we will be doing comedies.
I wanted to start off with one of the top comedy duos who I watched a lot as a child. I know there were great comedy duos/team like the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, but Bud Abbot and Lou Costello were my favorite ones.
Of their list of movies, I picked out one I did not remember at all called Who Done It? Bud and Lou get themselves involved in a murder investigation on the set of a radio broadcast of a murder mystery show.
Much like most Abbot and Costello movies, the plot is tangential to the comedy of the film. The comedy comes from the slapstick of Lou Costello physically throwing himself around, bashing his head into things and flopping his body around. There are also plenty of word plays and puns throughout. This film even goes as far as to include some allusions to Abbot and Costello’s most iconic bit, Who’s on First.
You are not waiting for a lot of sense to be made. It is truly ridiculous. But the lengths Abbot and Costello will go to get a laugh is really impressive. It seemed that their very presences would make the other characters around them be dumber, in a good way.
This film also included Mary Wickes, who was Mary Lazarus in the Sister Act films as well as Emma Allen in White Christmas. Her distinct voice and facial image made her stand out among the craziness associated with Bud and Lou.
The film was fast-paced, tangent-inducing, slapstick fun. Yes, Lou Costello was loud and acted in a chaotic, if not insane, manner. It all added to the fun of the pair. They kicked of the Genre-ary in a positive light.
My New Year’s Eve routine is out of whack this year because they decided to drop the series finale for Stranger Things tonight. I usually watch Infinity War and Endgame until midnight. I have done that the last five years, but with Stranger Things tossing a curveball, I decided that tonight would be different.
I am going to address the hatred part two has received online, but just for a minute. I thought the last three episodes were really strong and helped set up what is happening tonight. You have the right to hate the show if you so choose. I hope you have more reasons to feel the way you feel beside the fact that Will came out to his friends and family.
Moving onto the finale, the plan to prevent Vecna from crashing the Abyss into the earth kicks off, but it never works out the way things are planned.
Here are some random thoughts:
The way they dealt with the Eleven “death” was great. I really liked how Mike ended up explaining the possible way Eleven survived, but we really do not know. It was a nice way to end the show.
Linda Hamilton was never used to her full potential. She was never really a character outside of a villain. Then, I wanted her to be dead, bigtime, but she did not die.
The Mindflayer showdown was just awesome. It reminded me of the fireworks in the mall in season (two?).
Joyce chopping the head off Vecna? Yes, please.
There were some really tense moments. When Henry overcame his fears and struggled his way into the cave, surprising those kids… man, oh, man.
I think there may have been too much falling action in the episode. Did I really need a graduation ceremony turned into chaos by Dustin? Fun? Sure. But necessary? No.
Murray’s homemade bomb that took out the helicopter? Perfecto.
I was also happy with the fate of Eight, especially with the potential way she helped Eleven.
Eleven is truly a bad ass. The way she dispatched those soldiers was just nothing short of brutal.
The special effects in this episode was just amazing. That gigantic monster in the Abyss looked epic.
Stranger Things is going to go down as one of the most successful Netflix shows of all time. I saw that the finale was being shown in movie theaters across the nation, including in the Cinemark that I usually attend. I was curious (although I was never planning on watching this anywhere but my room) so I went to the Cinemark website to find that the 7 PM show was completely sold out, as was several other showings that they were having. A few of them had just one or two seats available. Even the showing that is scheduled to start at 11:50 PM had just the very front row of seats available. This was in the Quad Cities. I wonder what it would be like in a bigger city like LA or New York.
This finale was a lot of fun for me. It had a lot of excitement and uncertainty. I enjoyed it a great deal and I feel like the Duffer Brothers brought their show to a definitive conclusion, even if I did not get Linda Hamilton killed.
Three more episodes of Agent of Shield, and, if I am being honest, I do not remember any of these. I know I watched this show religiously when it was on ABC, but I do not remember much of anything in them.
I remember Raina, but more during the Inhumans run when she got turned into a cat-like being.
I know I have not watched these episodes multiple times, but, even still, I should have more memory of them than what I do.
The whole Agent Ward leaping out of the Bus with a parachute to save Jemma Simmons was cool, but it made me wonder about his statis as a Hydra agent, which we know will come about soon.
I did not remember Skye’s betrayal of the team because of a former boyfriend from the Rising Tide, but I think I do remember her confession about not knowing her parents or her backstory.
There are plenty of intriguing hints being dropped for these different characters including Coulson’s time dead, May’s traumatic event, and especially Skye.
It was fun seeing Titus Welliver, the Man in Black from LOST, as one of Coulson’s superiors in Agent Blake. I don’t remember what happened to him as a character, whether he died, was Hydra or is out there somewhere.
I guess it is a good thing that I am starting this rewatch because I do not remember much about this series, outside of how much I loved these characters. I am reminded how awesome Fitz and Simmons are, how bad ass May is, and how downright cool Skye (eventually Daisy Johnson) is. I do remember how Ward was the one I liked the least of the crew, and that is still the case.
Of course, above them all was Phil Coulson, who I still state is one of the best characters to come out of the phase 1 MCU.
We are ready to give the list of the Worst Movies of the Year. Or more specifically, the EYG Least Favorite Movie of the Year. These are my opinions and thoughts. It is okay if you disagree with me. I encourage it. In fact, I know there are a couple of films on my list that are high on the Tomatometer. Movies are subjective and what I think is the worst, may be someone else’s beloved.
I should also state that, during the year, I give star ratings to movies. I do not use these star ratings to order them. I do use them to choose the films that would make the list, but I may have a film that got 1.5 stars higher than one that has a 1.2. Movies and thoughts about movies are fluid and change over time with reflection or hindsight. Honestly, if I redid this list in a month, there might be differences.
The list this year is the Top 20. This year has had a lot of movies in the mid-range, from star rating between 2.5 and 3.8 or so. Most of the movies fell into that range. These are the ones that were under that.
I should mention that I have nothing but respect for the creative people who made these films. I may not like the work, but I respect the efforts you have made to try to entertain us.
Here are the Top 20 Least Favorite/Worst Films of 2025
#20. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. I hated this sequel. It is the first of my list that has FRESH reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I still found this dull and dumb.
#19. After the Hunt. Julia Roberts gave her best for this flopper, but there was only so much she could do. It was too long, the story was mixed and it did not make a lot of sense.
#18. Tron: Ares. What a terrible film. Great soundtrack though (way to go, Nine Inch Nails). There are so many problems in this, including the lead performance from Jarred Leto. It did look great. It might be the final installment in this franchise as it flopped hard.
#17. Until Dawn. Great premise. Horrible execution. The story was boring and the killings were unoriginal or interesting. I watched this during the June Swoon and I was happy I rented it on sale.
#16. Screamboat. Here was the horror/murder film featuring a monstrous and brutal Steamboat Willie (aka Mickey Mouse) who entered into public domain recently. This was better than the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey films (but that is a low bar).
#15. Flight Risk. Here is a good example of a film with a reasonable star rating that slipped with hindsight. A terrible and ridiculous performance by Mark Wahlberg. The characters do the dumbest things. This one has slipped down the list onto the Top 20 Least Favorite.
#14. M3GAN 2.0. The first Megan movie was such fun. The second one was far from it. I was so disappointed with M3GAN 2.0. It is too long. Too filled with nonsense. It broke into a song at one point.
#13. Friendship. Here is another one that everyone seemed to love, but I could not stand. It was a comedy with Tim Robinson that was just not funny. I did not enjoy this one at all.
#12. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. This got worse. I did not like the first film that much, and this sequel only got worse. The actors seemed to be just going through the motions.
#11. Love Hurts. I love Ke Huy Quan. Boring and a dumb story. It could not be rescued by the wonderful Ke Huy Quan.
#10. Fear Street: Prom Queen. The first trilogy of Fear Street was so great. This one was horrendous. A sloppy, stupid slasher killer story that was so dumb, almost as dumb as it was disappointing.
#9. Together. A body horror film that most of the critics loved. I hated it. There were a bunch of scenes that were laugh out loud funny, though I do not think they were intended to be funny. It felt so silly that I was rolling my eyes at it throughout.
#8. I Know What You Did Last Summer. One of the worst remakes of the year. What was the purpose of redoing this film? I guess it was sort of a sequel, but the killer turned out to be from the original and his turn made zero sense. It was done for just the shock value.
#7. Electric State. The big Netflix action movie was so bad. The budget on it was reportedly $320 million. It had the Russo Brothers as directors. Yet there were so many problems with this. Characters without depth, various tones, and humor that did not work.
#6. A Minecraft Movie. You know there is trouble when the best part of the movie is the memes for Chicken Jockey. I love Jack Black, but this is just a film with so much stupidity, designs that were poorly constructed and a feel that made it too cartoonish. It was repetitive and dull.
#5. Into the Deep. A shark movie. However, that was the highlight of this film. Dialogue that was so unnatural. Acting that was horrendous. Richard Dreyfuss was in this movie… why? Did he need a paycheck that badly? Another film I did for the June Swoon that made me wish I had not chosen it.
#4. 2073. I found this on HBO Max and it seemed interesting. It wasn’t. It was a weird blend of documentary, post-apocalyptic wasteland and history lesson. It was depressing and full of fearmongering.
#3. HIM. Again, this is not directed by Jordan Peele. Even though they kept putting his name on the advertising, he was not directly involved. This horror/thriller with football players is about as bad as it comes. I hated sitting in the theater watching this.
#2. Star Trek: Section 31. Michelle Yeoh? Why? You won an Oscar. Do the producers have something on you? This is the worst Star Trek anything that I think I have ever seen. This would have easily been the worst movie of the year except there was a film that was historically bad that surpassed it.
#1. War of the Worlds. What can be said about this film that hasn’t already been said? It is one of the most agreed upon worst movies of all time. It did creep its way up to 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, so there is that. Ice Cube deserved better, but his acting against the computer screen was laughable. This was shot during Covid and just now released. They should have let this one stay on the shelf. It was like a giant advertisement for Amazon Prime. Who knew their gift cards were so important? The worst product placement of all time. The special effects were ridiculous. The story was dumb. The characters made me want to root for the aliens.
Back in 1997, a horror film about a giant snake appeared. Anaconda, starring Ice Cube, J-Lo, and Jon Voight, was a terrible movie, but it survived the years and became an iconic cult classic film. In 2025, we now got a meta-sequel to the film starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd which debuted this weekend.
According to IMDB, “Four childhood friends are going through a midlife crisis so they decide to remake their favorite horror movie from the 1990s in the Amazon Forest When a real giant anaconda shows up, they get more than what they bargain for and their comically chaotic movie making turns into a life-or-death situation. The movie that they’re dying to remake? It might just kill them, literally.“
I heard some negative things about the new film before I went into it, which made me nervous because I had thought the trailers looked good and I was excited to see it. The negative comments made me feel much more tentative about the movie.
I can understand why some people might not have been a fan of this, but I enjoyed it a lot. I found this funny, the characters likable and entertaining, and the meta qualities of the film worked so well.
I thought there was a lot of clever writing involved in this movie. The humor is solid. There were a couple of jokes that I usually do not like, but, for me, even those worked well.
No spoiler here, but there was a great cameo in the film too.
There are some negatives to the film too though. I do think it started fairly slowly and the film really took off when the characters get on their boat. I do think that I wish the trailer hadn’t spoiled some of the best laughs in the film because I think it would have been so much better.
I am happy that I liked this movie more than what some were saying. I found it funny and engaging. I do enjoy a film with as many meta jokes and Anaconda falls right into that.
Christmas night saw the second volume of the final season of Strange Things came out with three episodes that will lead directly into the finale, next week on New Year’s Eve.
These three episodes do a tremendous job setting up that finale. We got plenty of answers about what has been going on these last five seasons, and they really fit together nicely. I am impressed with the writing of the Duffer Brothers.
I love the way that they worked the Wormhole into this story, recontextualizing the Upside-Down and what it actually is. The whole moment when Nancy shot the wormhole was so tense and scary with the vacuum outside of it. I loved how Dustin was on the outside of the situation and found the answers in Bremmer’s journal.
Speaking of Dustin, he and Steve went through it in these episodes. They dealt with the way they were treating each other in the first volume and it was extremely dramatic as they handled the deep pain that they were facing.
Jonathan and Nancy dealt with their relationship in a strong manner. The scene where they finally told each other the truth was a really great scene.
I do not like how they are setting up the ending of this with the implication that Eleven is going to need to die for everything to finally be over. I really dislike the sister.
I love how the group is basically back together in the seventh episode, preparing for the big finish. They have not all been back together in a long time, and seeing the team come back together was great.
Vecna truly is terrifying. The use of the redesigned Vecna is really well done and how they use it along with the Henry form. Henry was every bit as scary when dealing with his little cult-like kids. I needed more Dipshit Derek in these episodes.
Max coming back was very satisfying too, as was Will’s admitting about being gay. Both of these moments gave a strength to the ensemble and allowed these characters to show how important they were to each other. It was a lovely way to do this, especially with the Will reveal. Will was still very nervous and awkward during the entire time, hem-and-hawing around the topic. Watching the group embrace him was a beautiful moment.
And we are set up with a crazy plan to save the world and prevent the crashing together of two worlds via the wormhole. A final showdown certainly with Eleven and Vecna (hopefully with Will there too. He deserves to be in the final showdown).
They have actually made me reconsider my New Year’s Eve routine. I usually watch Infinity War and Endgame to midnight, but now, I might have to readjust my tradition.
This was another great year in horror. Not perfect, of course. There is a nice balance between good films and bad ones.
Again, we have not been keeping track of the “Worst” film, but the “Best” is in the records:
Best Horror Movie
Previous Winners: A Quiet Place, It, Don’t Breathe, It Follows, The Conjuring, As Above So Below, Cabin in the Woods, Doctor Sleep, Black Box, Fear Street trilogy, The Menu, A Haunting in Venice, Nosferatu
Runners-Up: Final Destination: Bloodlines was a surprise for me. At this point, I had never seen any of the Final Destination movies (I saw the first one in the October 13), and I loved this new one. The new Conjuring movie, Conjuring: Last Rites, put that franchise to bed (or so we are told). Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a stylish, engaging new version on Netflix. A film I did not expect to like was Dangerous Animals, but it was extremely awesome. It was a shark movie that did not make the shark the villain. So it came down to two choices… and the one that did not make it was Weapons. I loved that movie, but I think it was a little less of a horror movie than the one that turned out to be the winner.
Best Horror Movie
Sinners
Michael B. Jordan starred in this Ryan Coogler directed film. Coogler wanted to do his vampire film and what he did was Sinners. This was a fantastic film and it was something we hadn’t seen before. Jordan played dual roles and he did it so well.
Worst Horror
Runners-Up: Until Dawn was such a bad movie. It was a disappointment as it had a decent premise. Lots of people loved Together, but I hated it. I hated it so much. Fear Street: Prom Queen was such a downgrade from the awesome trilogy from a few years ago.
“Winner”:
That film is not from Jordan Peele, no matter how much the movie wanted it to be true. This football film is truly one of the worst MOVIES of the year… not just horror.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 