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samemckee
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American Horror Story (2011)
shocking and amateur
REVIEW FOR SEASONS 1-3
Watching the first 3 seasons of American Horror Story is like going through a really lame haunted house. Except every time a jump scare doesn't land, the director comes out and kicks a pregnant dog.
Good job, man. Truly an auteur of horror.
It's astonishing how many people enjoyed this show considering how it fumbles every single hot topic it brings up. It seems like Ryan Murphy mistook shock for horror here. When you bring up topics like forced ab*rtion, self h*rm, gay conversation, inc*st, s*xual assault, school sh**tings, religious trauma, forced bleach enemas(?), drug abuse, eating disorders, Adam Levine, historical serial killers, etc. You have to take great care to JUSTIFY their presence in your narrative. Can the topic be removed from your film without anything else being effected? Then it probably has no right being there.
I'm not saying these topics are completely off limits either. Some films use these concepts to make something truly horrifying and purposeful without feeling exploitative (The Skin I Live In, Climax, Afterschool, Oldboy, Requiem for a Dream, Martyrs, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Swallow, Poor Things, etc.)
Every hot topic AHS brings up is completely inconsequential and only exists to shock the audience. Or, worse, they completely fetishize them.
"Oh no, my HOT SEXY boyfriend is a school sh**ter!! Maybe I can redeem him..."
"Oh no, a man is being s*xually assaulted. But he secretly LIKES it. Hell, he DESERVES it "
"Oh no, those tweens are self-h*rming together. They're such a beautiful broken couple "
It's disgusting, but it's also the only thing worth talking about in the show.
The writing is UNACCEPTABLY BAD. Every scene either ends with a death or an insult, and every other scene is a stale screaming match. They do absolutely nothing with the concepts they're given, even in the "better seasons".
Coven doesn't establish any interesting rules or ideas to the witch lore or voodoo lore. It just spends 4 episodes redeeming a literal real life murderer.
Asylum is a mish-mash of completely incompatible ideas. Aliens but also Demonic possession but also asylum abuse and gay conversation therapy and cyclical trauma also here's three different serial killers and- Stop. A compelling story is more than just a handful of novel ideas. Also, get Adam Levine out of here.
Murder House was nothing but scenes of boring characters with no motivation arguing over nothing, broken up by edgelord "horror" moments. Also, nearly every song on the score was stolen from another property, so that was weird.
It's just really REALLY boring.
You'd think the character writing would improve season to season, but no. Every character is a cardboard cutout with no discernable motivation or arc. Nothing is compelling about them aside from a pretty outfit. It's as if Ryan Murphy created each season for the "aesthetic" but forgot to add the characters, story, and horror. Because the biggest sin of the show is how PAINFULLY UNSCARY IT IS. In a post Mike Flanagan world, this show fails on every front. Flanagan provides a few scares per episode without it feeling too forced. And even when Flanagan's drama starts to stagnate, at least he gives you interesting visuals.
The cinematography is awful. They think shoving in a million dutch angles and sweeping shots is enough to give the show a style, but it just looks amateur.
The editing is also Bohemian Rhapsody-esque. "If we cut really quickly, it'll look intense". It's just jarring and unappealing.
The only thing this show has going for it is it's performers. They are given some of the worst CW-tier dialogue, but they polish the turd pretty well. Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson, and Lily Rabe always bring a much needed air of professionalism to the show.
The practical effects and make-up are actually quite impressive. They use every opportunity to make something effective and ambitious, and they succeed. I have no notes, good job guys.
But I keep coming back to one question; if this show was released now, what would people think? Could a show this toothless and tasteless exist in today's world? Can a show get by on farming real life issues for surface level shock if the characters are hot enough?
And then I remember 13 Reasons Why already exists. But at least that only got 4 seasons, not 12+
K-12 (2019)
goo goo faux-gaga
I'm not opposed to the idea of stitching a bunch of music videos together to make a movie. I can excuse the fact that all the acting is bad. She's a first time director directing dancers. I can also excuse the fact that the story doesn't start until 75% through. I get it. It's a Frankenstein's monster project. That's why none of the songs contribute to the overarching "story". It wasn't written as a concept album, it's a collection of random pop songs. (If you want a better example of this, check out Daft Punk's Interstalla 5555.)
I can excuse all of that.
But I can't excuse 96 minutes of "se*y infantilization". This whole "goo goo ga ga look at how se*y I am" shtick was played out on Crybaby, now it's genuinely concerning.
And that's every scene.
Every character is cosplaying as a toddler in this film and it always feels creepy.
The crazy thing is, I could STILL excuse all of the creepy stuff it it was in service of something.
Is it a statement on how little girls are expected to mature faster than boys?
Is it a statement on how we all crave our youthful years?
Is it a statement on how men see women?
No. It just isn't.
As soon as you look closely at what the "film" is trying to say, it becomes clear that it isn't trying to say anything. It's trying to be bright, stylish, and edgy, but it just falls flat.
The location scouting was pretty good, that's all i have left to say.
Girl really thinks she's Lady Gaga lol.
Smile (2022)
if you've never seen a horror movie, you'll LOVE Smile
Completely devoid of originality. At any given scene in the movie you can tell which movie they're trying to rip off (although it's mostly copying The Ring and it Follows) so the tone of the film is completely schizophrenic with no consistent style or personality of its own.
It also doesn't help that the only "original" scare of the movie boils down to "hey that person suddenly has a derpy smile" (which comes off as humorous most of the time) There's also jumpscares. LOTS of jumpscares. None of them feel impactful or shocking at all, but at least there's a lot of them.
But the biggest crux of this movie is its characters. There are none. Smile's idea of "character development" is either giving a character a funny one-liner and cutting away immediately; or giving a character a dead relative that they feel sad about. Halfway through the movie, my family tried to name a single character trait from any of the characters. We couldn't come up with a single one. It's hard to feel scared of a movie when you don't care if any of the characters live or die.
Without the marketing budget and the INSANE amount of praise this movie is getting, this would be another Truth or Dare.
I promise every person reading this review will forget this movie existed after 6 months.
The Mountain (2018)
I mean... I guess?
(i'm going to structure this review so that you have the same feeling that I did while watching this movie)
The mountain is great at
times?
(inconsistent inconsistent)
It struggles to maintain a consistent theme, often
rambling rambling thematically?
I understand the value of "show don't tell" don't get me wrong?
(Depressing psyclops)
But, there is a science to the abstract.
(Kauf Kauf)
Charlie Kaufman's work is a great example. (Eternal Sunshine, Adaptation, Being John Malcovitch) He gets pretty WEIRD and abstract, sure. But
(HELP HELP I'M FALLING?)
He makes sure to lay down a simple groundwork first, so the viewer doesn't get too lost in his interpretation interpretation.
THE MOUNTAIN DOESN'T HAVE ANY GROUNDWORK, UNFORTUNATELY. NOTHING IS SET IN STONE. THERe isn't one set theme that you can latch on to. Because of this, the whole film feels wrong
WRONG WRONG KRONK
It's hard to tell what was an intentional choice from the director, and what was just an inconsistent detail.
It's a shame, because the movie was great at times. And I did understand some of
END OF REVIEW
Uzumaki (2000)
The worst way to adapt Junji Ito
I wouldn't consider myself a die hard fan of Junji Ito, but I really wanted to enjoy this movie. But, it's not a good adaptation, or a good movie.
The editing is obnoxiously bad (it does that stupid, thing where it digitally speeds up footage in post.), the sound design is really ugly, and (while normally it's hard to judge acting in a foreign language) the acting is TERRIBLE. Honestly, some of the scenes are so uncomfortablely bad when they're trying to be scary.
It chooses random segments from the comic to adapt, but they aren't fleshed out. And it never seems like a cosmic catastrophe, as much as a few weird random events.
It's not completely terrible though. The practical effects are great, the gore was really squeamish, and many of the shots look great. Also, I think the addition of the detective character was interesting. There were a few subtle scares here and there that I really liked. The movie looks really gross. Which is a good thing for a movie like this.
Overall, despite some good things, I walked away from it disappointed.
(Also, random side note, it was WAY hard to find! Not on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon prime! Obviously this didn't detract from the score or anything. I'm just saying.)