Long-time readers may recall I wasn't too thrilled with the last movie that had Guillermo Del Toro's handprint on it, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  It wasn't bad, but something about it never clicked.  I wanted to see Mama, but never bothered in the theatres, in part because of that (Even though Del Toro was only producing) and because the trailers made me cringe just a little bit, and not in a good horror way.

Which makes me SO pleased that after watching the DVD, I so enjoyed it!

The story is about a man who one day snaps and kills his co-workers and wife, and while taking his kids away to escape capture, he crashes deep into the middle of a wintery nowhere.  He finds his way to a shack and uses it as shelter for himself and the kids, but it's not long before something attacks and kills him.

Cut to several years later, when his twin brother, who never gave up searching, finds the cabin, and the kids, still alive and having gone a wee bit feral over all this time in the woods and no other human interaction.

Note the 'human' part of that sentence.  Because while the kids were left out there, they were not alone.  Whatever killed their father took care of them.  A something that follows them back to civilisation to watch over them, and something that they call Mama.

The plot unfolds quite well from there, with a lot of good creepy moments and scares, in that definitive Del Toro style.  He may have only produced, but you can tell he had his hands in this.  In good ways, and bad ways.

Del Toro's style is often quite terrifying, but also has this tendency to switch in an instant over to something more...whimsical.  And that is located here as well, sadly enough.  It doesn't ruin the movie, but the occasional silly or cute look to something we are supposed to be afraid of undercuts things just a little, in those few moments it happens.

Fortunately, it only happens when we're supposed to be sympathising with the creature, seeing its human side, both figuratively, and literally.  So at least it makes sense thematically, and makes it more palletable.

Most importantly, the movie actually ends with a satisfying ending.  Something that can be so rare in hrror these days.  It's not necessarily a HAPPY ending, but things are resolved, and explained adequately enough, and you are left with a sense of closure and hope.  I'm all for ambiguous endings, or sequel baiting, but these things have become so prevalent in horror movies, you almost forget what a legitimate *ending* is!

Probably the biggest problem is that the movie may not have the most original elements to it.  You will find many familiar tropes.  But they are put together in a new way, with its own style, that you can almost forget that nagging feeling of familiarity it sometimes has.

The cast is great, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau doing a dual role of the brothers, and you really feel his pain at losing his family so many years ago, and the hope at rebuilding it again.  Jessica Chastain as his girlfriend who gets put in the unenviable position of trying to take care of the kids when she doesn't want to also puts in a way better performance than such a role would normally receive.  Even the kids aren't annoying.

Mama was a real treat to watch, both from a storytelling point of view, and visually.  Even on his bad days, even on a movie Del Toro just sneezed at, the movie has a distinctive style that is entrancing.  It may not be the most original horror movie, it may have its own quirks, but those are also its charm, and I think it works.

Is this one awesome too?

Pffffahahahaha, not really.

Agent Beetle is...special.

It is a very independent, very low budget movie, and almost every frame of film shows that to its fullest.  The plot revolves around a cop who goes undercover as a criminal so he can be injected with a serum that gives people insect-like abilities.

Just how insect-like those abilities are can be highly questionable, but eh, whatever.  I can roll along with the plot device.

Dan Garret runs around...wait, what?  Dan freakin' Garret?  So, Agent Beetle is THE GOLDEN AGE BLUE BEETLE!?

What the what??

Yep, they've adapted the golden age Blue Beetle into a modern story told on the cheap.  The plot is simple and straightforward, it does nothing original, and is so simple that the 80 minute run time is highly padded.

Long scenes of people walking around, extended fight scenes I can forgive because of the content, but then there's a nearly five minute scene of a bikini pagent that is there for no purpose, other than to drag things out, and boobs.  One of our villains walks into the club, watches the thing, then leaves.  No real point, no real dialogue.  Whatever.

The sets are downright laughable, if they can be called sets.  Half the movie takes place clearly backstage at a theater.  I recognise those curtain setups all too well from my days in drama clubs.  Seriously, the evil mastermind scientist's office has black curtain walls?  Yeah, no.

When they're not backstage at the Apollo, I'm pretty sure the rest of the sets are just various other rooms in the theatre.  They have that distinct blandness of no set dressing and waiting for the cast of Cats to walk in at any time.

Much like you would expect from a movie that LOOKS like it was filmed by the crew of a college film project, the acting is about on the same level.  Everyone is stiff with little emotion, going through the motions, and with such bland, unoriginal dialogue, it's no surprise.

Uninspired is the watchword for Agent Beetle.  The best thing I can say about the movie is that the opening credits look bloody amazing.  They blew their effects budget on those, I suppose.

But since this is Trisk, being a bad movie does not mean it's not a fun movie, and this movie is just so crazy, so silly, it is mindnumbingly fun.  It is a blast watching this silly, pointless plot wind down every cliche path you'd expect, the actors stumble through their scenes, and how the lack of sets is like something right out of a Rob Liefeld background.

Agent Beetle may be a bad, dumb movie, but...we kinda love you anyways.  I had a blast watching it, even if I shook my head the entire time.

It goes without saying, but just in case...there be spoilers beyond this point.  Run away now if you don't want to know stuff.

Every time I walk out of a movie, the first question I get asked is, "What did you think?"  As is the norm, I suppose.  I normally have a quick, one word answer.  Not so much this one, and I can't *quite* put my finger on it.  I *did* like IM3.  But I would probably stick it down amongst my least favourite of the IM movies.  Which is not a bad thing.  As I say, if you're rating a group of good things, someone is gonna come up last, right?

If Iron Man was a 10, and IM 2 was a 9, I would give IM 3 a solid 8, or 8.5.  So it's really JUST trailing the pack.

First up, some random stuff I did like.  LOVED the opening.  So many movies start with that semi-pretentious quoting of something, and this movie undercuts that instantly.  Which is so perfect for the tone of Iron Man.  It tells you *immediately* who Tony Stark is, before you even see a frame of him on screen.  Also, it sets up the running gag of quoting people, usually for comedic effect.

RDJ is back as Iron Man/Tony Stark, and if you loved him in the first two movies and Avengers, well, then you get more of the same here.  In fact, you get a bit more Tony than Iron Man, so that's good for some people.  In fact, he even gets to play a bit more with emotions this time, and is given a bit of a character arc to work through.

The villains were good, and I quit enjoyed the movie's take on the Mandarin.  There were some very good twists in the story with him, and AIM, and a few other characters.  I legit did not see a few of them coming, and that's always a good thing.

Ben Kingsley...  Well, he's Ben Freakin' Kingsley.  I don't need to say anything about him at all.  He brings such gravitas to the role, and then some.

I absolutely loved, LOVED Pepper getting to wear the armour, and some serious contributions to the action.  Her moments of stupid in the second movie ALWAYS sat poorly with me, and were my biggest complaints with IM2.  This was a bit of service in rectifying those moments, IMO.  She still had a bit of damsel in distress, but they at least had her not be an idiot staring at an about to explode robot.

Finally, a movie that did not culminate in the bad guy wearing a suit of armour all his own to fight Iron Man!  That drove me up the wall, that Whiplash needed to do that in the sequel.  Just because Tony wears armour, his villains don't all need to wear armour as well.  The movie DID put some of the baddies into metal forms a few times, but they were not the main goal of their plots, more diversions than anything else.  I appreciate this so damned much.  The Extremis abilities really worked as a good counterpoint to Tony's armour.

Now, for the bad.  Don't worry, it's not that bad!

Was the humour...off, for anyone else?  It felt like it got a little goofy at times?  Tony being Tony was fine, but something about anyone else trying to be funny didn't quite work.  Justin Hammer had a little bit of that awkward humour in the second one, but it felt more prominent here.  I dunno.  Maybe it was just because this movie had a darker tone in its narrative that made the gags stand out all the more.

The first act felt a little slow, but I'm not too perturbed by that.  After the mind-blowing craziness of the Avengers, the movie kinda needed to take a breath, and it's always good to give the characters a chance to breathe.  But you do sometimes get antsy waiting for the action to start in an action movie, yeah? ;)

I mentioned Tony's character arc, and while I appreciate the attempt, I felt it was a little weak.  He's having a crisis of something, and he's having anxiety attacks!  They give some reasons in the form of gods and aliens, but it felt REALLY glossed over, and I never really bought into that side of the storyline.  "I fell through a hole in space...AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! *flails and hyperventilates!!*"  It felt like it needed more thought put into it, and more time spent building it up.  I like that Tony was affected by the Battle for New York...I just didn't buy into it.

Also, the resolution to it was equally as hasty.  "Well, just build something!"  "OK!"  If you're going to take time to slow the movie down and build character, go for it.  Don't start, then rush through it in the end zone, guys!

I do wonder what it is with trilogies ending with the hero seemingly hanging things up.  Yeah, I'm looking at you, Dark Knight.  That was an odd way to end this movie, with Tony almost getting rid of all things Iron Man.  I know it won't last, and it does have that bit of coming full circle, and completing his growth begun in the first film...but with more movies to come, it is a weird place to leave the character.

I also wasn't a huge fan of the kid, but it still gave me some good laughs, so the good outweighs the not so good there.  Also, it gave us time to get to know Tony, and develop him in ways the previous movies never quite got around to.  He really starts to come out of his playboy tropes at last, with this movie.

So, for the most part, I enjoyed it.  It's flawed, but it's more Iron Man action, with the same smart writing for Tony, with a solid plot, and stuff for everyone to do.  They don't make the mistake of overloading the movie with characters, stick with the few mains and the villains, and more sequels need to remember this.  You don't need all the same characters back from your previous two movies plust six new people.  It's a good way to tie up the Iron Man trilogy for now, and is a good action movie with some solid attempts at humanising Tony Stark.

And of course, stay through the credits for your usual surprise.

In the shadow of Avengers, I don't think anything would have been truly satisfying 100%.

Like most random movies, it was the trailer of this that caught my eye.  I saw the name, it sounds sciencey, and there's always fun stuff there, so I watched the trailer.  That was decent, and looked well made, AND there was the bonus of John deLancie!  Yep, Q from Star Trek: TNG wandered into this.

That was really all I needed to put this over from a strong maybe to a gotta see.

Cloned is about a trio of young adults heading off to a camping trip in the Adirondacks of upstate New York, to spend one last fun night together before one of them gets shipped off with the armed forces.

Once they make their way to their remote island, they find a home there.  One thing leads to another, and mostly thanks to a storm they take cover indoors.  The owners of the house return in the morning, chasing off their trio of Golidlocks.

Then things take a turn for the worst when the trio stumble upon a pair of dead bodies; duplicates of the people chasing them.  When the clone owners have the kids try and dispose of their originals' bodies, they are fortunately saved by more clones, their own clones.

So yeah, that is one lengthy set up.

Once the clones enter the scene, things really pick up.  The movie is nicely paced, with spending a good chunk of the first act introducing us to the three kids, then that opening twist that could have just as easily been a home 'invasion' gone wrong that then introduces clones, that then introduces MORE clones...  Yeah, fun stuff there.

The thing with the clones is that they're faster, stronger, smarter, and basically better in every way.  And they all know it.  They see themselves as superior, and want to be the ones to live, replacing the inferior originals.  Usually, it's the clones that are inferior, so it's a nice change up.

The actors do a good job of making the originals and clones different.  That can be a VERY tricky thing for actors, and they do a great job.  You never get confused about which is which, unless they want you to be confused.  Their personalities are distinct, and unique, so basically each person is playing two different characters.

Problems begin to arise when the plot tries to give us backstory, and I don't think it quite achieved that part of storytelling.  They drop bits and pieces here and there, and the narrative never really clicked.  I would've liked a little more time spent with the exposition, but when that takes away from the main focus, that does become problematic.  So it wasn't exactly my favourite way to get the story out, it's understandable why it went that way.

But the cast definitely carries the story through, and it is a fun journey watching both group fight for survival.  The originals wanting to live to continue living, and the dupes wanting their chance at life because they feel they're better.  If not for the clones being a bit homicidal, you can almost feel for them.

Naturally, the clones have the advantage, and since they are clearly on the stabby side, you want the originals to live.  But being the underdogs, the question becomes how, and will everyone make it out alive?  They find some good ways to make it believable that the originals can win, mostly due to being more knowledgable of the world than the clones.  The clones are smarter, but more naive in a way, and less aware of treachery.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone gets out alive, and the movie has a very nice, very dark twist to it, that both really wowed me at just how twisted it was, and made me shake my fist at the screen.  Overall, Cloned was a solid little movie that was a fun ride.  It ended up being very light on the John deLancie, and there's never really any threat from "The Recreator" like the back of the box warns, but oh well.  Taken for what it is, it's worth watching.

Whew, I made it through the entire review without mentioning the clones were created from DNA samples aquired via the home's septic system and were thus pooplicates.

...Shit.

So, the wheel turns, and we come back around to...Zombieland being made into a possible series!  Go figure.  At Amazon, of all places.  But hey, if they get the tone correct, it's all good, right?

Right?

Well...  How can this feel so wrong and so right at the same time?  I really think the main problem here is the cast.  Now, there was NOOO way they were going to get the movie's cast back, clearly.  And other properties have transitioned well enough from movies to tv with a changed cast, like Stargate.  But Zombieland has SUCH an iconic cast, that it is tough, at least with this first episode, to get over that.  I hope that lessens as time goes by, because I would really hate to be constantly bothered by that.

Because really?  This was good.  This was GOOD.  This was, quite frankly, more Zombieland.  If you were to read the scripts, or if these were two separate chapters of a book, you would go, "Ah, yes.  These are two parts of a whole.  These are both of a piece."  I would be hard pressed to find someone who loved the movie that didn't at least like this, and at least be willing to give it a chance.

The cast is not bad, not really.  But yeah, hard to get by not having Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and the rest.  And it's been awhile since I saw the original, and I know Tallahassee was never the sharpest blade in the scabbard, but did they dumb him down, or is it just me?

I get they're going for comedic effect, and it's like Randall getting a slight IQ downgrade between the Clerks movies and animated series and whatnot.  It's funny to have a guy that's clueless.  And the guy playing Tallahassee was pretty good, and the way they wrote him suited the actor's protrayal, so it all works in the end.

They also did a funny bit opening the episode, which was maybe a little on the slow side but it's easing you in I guess...  But they open up with a joke that ONLY works because they recast the role.  The whole joke is, you don't know the guy, but if you knew this was Tallahassee, FL, then you would know that was who that was!  That is so meta, and pretty brilliant, and a great way to say, "Yes, we know they're not the same actors, live with it."

Little Rock came off as a poor man's Chloe Moretz to me.  And that's not a bad thing.  She was probably the closest to the original actress, in my head.  But being compared to Moretz is a plus, in my book.

I don't really have much to say about Columbus and Wichita, but they did decently enough.  Columbus as our returning narator works well enough, and isn't terribly jarring, which is a plus.

Aside from Tallahassee being dumbed down, Wichita's casting throws me the most.  She is SO different from Emma Stone, but she delivers the lines well, as some decent awkward chemistry with Columbus, and is pretty funny.  So it's the most distracting, but she does a good enough job of both making the role her own, and feeling at home at the same time, that it almost works.  And will surely grow on me if this goes to a series.

But the biggest question I have on the plot side of things...who the fuck is keeping OnStar going in the zombie apocalypse?!  That's almost crazy to me, and almost demands having a story told just to explain the hows and whys, before my suspension of disbelief snaps like a rubber band.

But in short, this is good, VERY good.  Especially for a pilot, and one that has such expectations breathing down its neck.  It hits all the right notes, and has the same tone as the movie.  You get that mix of humour and horror that the movie excelled at, and knows when to switch between the two.  It gets right what it needs to get right, and the stuff it gets wrong can be ironed out.  No pilot is perfect, and while the cast is different, the story remains the same.

Definitely worth checking out, and giving Amazon your feedback.

What we have here is a mix of horror and comedy, much in the same vein as Shaun of the Dead.  It has that dry British wit, and some great effects, and some very off the wall humour.

The movie opens up with our titular clown, Sitches, banging a girl shouting, "Fuck me, clown!"

Much like Father's Day, just that mere description kinda gives you an idea of what you're in for here.

This is the story of Stitches, a clown who is accidentally killed by the mischief-making of a group of eight year olds at Tommy's birthday party.

Eight years later, when Tommy has finally put to rest the demons of having seen a clown die with a knife stabbed into his face at his last party, he agrees to throw another birthday party when he turns 16.

This event calls forth the corpse of Stitches to enact his entirely appropriate revenges upon each of the kids that fucked up his day, in ways that were surely handed down from the ironic punishments division of Hell.

What that transpires is about 45 minutes of the clown stalking through the party, killing everyone in his way, and basically having a laugh of it all.

LOVED this movie, plain and simple.  It never takes itself seriously, obviously, but it still is insanely bloody and brutal.  Even so, that violence remains purely in the realm of cartoon violence.  One of the kids gets killed by a bike pump being shoved into the back of his head, and getting his noggin inflated until it explodes.

Ross Noble plays the clown, and oh my god, is he hilarious.  Stitches comes from a long line of surly clowns who hate their job, but have nothing better to do.  And his demeanor does not improve upon his rise from the grave.  In fact, he seems more perturbed that he's been woken, than being killed in the first place.  He is grumpy, not very nice, and just wants to get this over with.  I love this take on a clown, and having a bad guy only going through the motions so he can be done with this shit, is a fun twist, and seems like something that would only appear in a British movie.

The movie is very satisfying, in so many ways.  Many of the kids grew up to be little shits, thanks to the traumas of watching a clown bite it, so you are so pleased to watch them get what's coming to them.  Plus, the bad guy actually gets taken out in the movie, which is ALWAYS a plus, and there's even room left for a sequel, if they want to do one.  Which I would welcome.  They even manage to fit in a little bit of coming of age story tropes for Tommy, as he recovers from his birthday clown death, and struggling to overcome.

It hits all the right notes of horror and humour that you want this movie to have.  It hits a few tasteless notes, but even with those, this is such a fun movie, with some great writing.

Definitely check this out!

But instead, I am going to talk about a movie starring the female lead of TW, Crystal Reed!  Who was *easily* the highlight of Teen Wolf's first season for me.

Crush is the story of Bess, who has (That's right!) a crush on her schoolmate, Scott.  Scott also has a friend who has yet another crush on him, but she's a bit more open about it than Bess is.  Bess is your typical quiet, shy, loner girl, who doesn't know how to interact with people half the time, let alone guys.  I can kinda identify with her, really.

There's also another guy who has a crush on Bess that is just as unrequited as all the other love in this movie.

Things quickly take a turn for Basic Instinct territory for the teenager demographic though, when Jules starts to be targeted by some other girl crushing on Scott.

HMMMM, who could it be??

Surprisingly, the movie doesn't go the obvious route.  In fact, Bess is a little too obvious, so it becomes a question of whom it is messing with Scott and everyone else.  It's good to have the twist to the plot, but at the same time, it comes just a LITTLE out of nowhere with a character who could have used a little more build up before the reveal.  Once the true antagonist is revealed, Bess sadly falls by the wayside for FAR too long in the movie.

The creepy obsessed stalker genre of film is a tried and true cliche, and this movie doesn't really do anything THAT new with it, but it does hit all the right notes.  It's surprising that there aren't more movies like this, especially with the advent of technologies that make it so, so much easier.  It's usually the adults that are the stalkers, but there should be more teen stalker movies.  Their bodies are all messed up, hormones are everywhere, and our brains are still developing, so getting a little crazy makes sense.

It's also a nice twist that the girl they are setting up to be the stalker, KNOWS she's bad at this, she knows she gets obsessive, she knows she's awkward and all those bad things.  It's a nice thing to have her be incredibly self-aware.

Crystal Reed is easily the best actress in this, giving a performance that is all the more powerful if you're familiar with her other work.  I am SO used to seeing her being confident and kicking ass on Teen Wolf, that to see her playing the part of this shy, quiet girl, the absolute opposite, and she does it SO well with the way she speaks, the way she carries herself...this girl is already quite a talent, and she should have a long, amazing career ahead of her.

The rest of the cast is pretty solid too, but they all do what they do, and do it well enough.  Crystal just knocks it out of the park, perfectly.  Another good thing is that almost everyone in this movie exhibits a bit of that stalker mentality, good and bad.  We all have those moments, we all check out the Facebook page of the person we like.  It all depends on where we draw the line, where we stop, and how far we take things.  They could have explored those ideas a little more.

Crush ends up being a decent enough movie that doesn't quite try hard enough to be original, but it's fun, it's at least trying to carve out a new niche, and has at least one great performance worth watching, even with a few flaws.

And for the hardcore horror fans?  Leigh Whannell from the Saw films puts in a small role.

So it's great that I finally get to look at one of their movies, the newest release, Father's Day.  No, this is not a sequel to their other infamous holiday movie, Mother's Day.  Not even close.

If anyone is going to do a grindhouse homage, it should be these guys.  The blood, the gore, the sleaze...all of that are hallmarks of both grindhouse and Troma.  This is a good fit, in theory.

The movie is about a killer who likes to go around killing fathers, hence the name of the movie.  He is being hunted by a priest and the son of one of his former victims, amongst others.  But it's mostly about Father John and Ahab.

Part of the movie concerns Father John's quest to find Ahab, then his reintroduction to society and finding his sister whom he abandoned is now a stripper, and culminating in a final battle with the Fuckman, who keeps things gory while they're doing their thing.

Yes.

The bad guy of this movie is called The Fuckman.  Also known as Chris Fuckman.  And the Fuckmanicus.

That kinda sums up the movie right there, doesn't it?  This does not take itself seriously, not in the slightest.  The movie is downright insane at times.  The dialogue is bizarre in a good way, with Ahab trying to sound wise and insightful, but you know it's bullshit.  And the other characters know it's bullshit.

I loved watching this.  I knew going in this was going to be grindhousey, just by being Troma.  I was not disappointed, and the quality of humour while still maintaining a sensible story was a welcome change of pace from some grindhouse homages that are just gibberish.

The final act where the characters end up in hell trying to find the Fuckmanicus and end its threat forever maybe gets a bit too cutesy and referential, but on balance things work out.  You don't expect things to be serious, so it's not a jarring tone, just maybe a bit too much during a proper climax.  I could've done without a slave Leia and Jedi homage that was SO on the nose, as well as a slam on the Hollywood movie meat grinder being a bit much.

Actually, nevermind, I kinda liked the slam.  It was maybe just the wrong place for it.

I especially loved the lengths they went to, to make this seem like a late night movie found on some cable access channel.  It has bumpers to lead into it like you would expect, and a great cheesy trailer for another movie that doesn't exist but I want.  I love silly things like that, in these sorts of movies.

This might be my favourite Grindhouse homage right now.  Drive Angry, Hobo with a Shotgun, now this...it's a good time to be a Grindhouse fan!

Where ELSE are you going to see maple syrup being used as a weapon against a demon from Hell?

I didn't really expect much from this.  It looked like a fun little thriller, with a few moments of cringeworthy filmmaking from the trailer, but it had a few actors I like *coughcoughBenBrowdercough* and the premise seemed fun.

And you know what?  This was a LOT of fun.  It's far from perfect, and those cringes are certainly there, but most of the flaws came from strange choices in directing and editing, as well as maybe a story that gets a little TOO murky for its own good.

We have six students at Crestview Academy being hauled in for eight hours of detention to make amends for their crimes against the school.  What were they?  Why are they all there?  Well, those mysteries all unfold over the course of the movie's 90 minutes.

Almost immediately you see the Breakfast Club parallels, and almost immediately the movie smashes those expectations.  It was very smart to start off with someone saying NO, we are not going to bond and become best friends, none of that coming of age BS here!  It was a refreshing change, and the movie delivers on that promise.

How?  Well, the dead bodies start piling up fast.

Once the bodies start dropping, and talk of a curse goes around, the mysteries deepen beyond the students, and we get flashbacks fleshing out the backstory and mystery.  And this is my biggest problem.  The flashbacks were almost too sudden?  Too similar to what we were watching in the now.  You need a little more...something to signify a change in time period than an editing cut.  It felt like I was missing something, until I realised it was a flashback.  Once you get the language of the film though, you can follow along.  But it was a dangerous gambit to just jump cut to another time period, that I'm not sure paid off, and could throw some people too far out of the narrative.

Aside from clear cues, the story does unfold very well, giving you piece after piece of the larger puzzle in a very satisfying fashion until the end.  What an end.  The movie piles up twist after twist, and for the most part they work.  Just when you thought you've figured out the plot, the movie twists AGAIN with another reveal.

They went maybe one step too far during the credits, but it's not a deal-breaker.  It just felt a little too tacked on and not really part of the story.  Maybe just because we had had so many twists and masterminds behind the plot already, it was that straw that drove a hatchet through the camel's back.  Also, they mentioned a few times that some exposition got left on the cutting room floor to tighten things up, but I think a BIT more exposition was needed for this movie.  The plot is convoluted, and while you get the gist of it, I think the story could have been delivered with a bit more depth, clarity, and finesse.

The student characters are pretty much cast very well.  They're not quite cliches, but there's enough familiarity that you can recognise them.  There's a jock, but he's not quite JUST a jock, as you can tell instantly.  There's the Bad Girl, but she's got depth to her, etc.

So, with a few stylistic points aside, and the typical level of acting for a low budget movie with a few exceptions, this is a fun ride.  It's a unique premise, with fun, unique characters and a well thought out story.  The delivery was lacking, but it got the job done, albeit with a sword instead of a scalpel.

I am one of the people that have experienced seeing these creatures.  It's long haunted me, and stayed with me, so when I heard of a movie about these creatures, I was a mixture of intrigued and terrified.  Because of my personal connection, I am drawn to the ideas, but at the same time, due to my personal experience, it makes my skin crawl and makes me crap myself.

Naturally, I watch the movie, because it's just a movie, and I like confronting my fears.

Now, with all that out of the way...how was the movie??

Ehh.  It was okay?

The trailer probably had most of the creepy bits, so I was nicely prepared when I finally saw the film.

Much like the Milla Jovovich movie, The Fourth Kind, this film tries to bolster its fiction with the idea that they are going to be dramatising real events, and show you interviews with the 'real' people involved.

They did a fair enough job, but the fakery becomes pretty clear, pretty quickly, and just feels like a waste as we see some things in two different ways, with different actors playing the same part; the one in the movie, and the one in the supposedly real footage that is in theory, the real person.

Once you glom onto the fact that it's all just a movie, you start to wonder why they're doing this, when they could just tell a story, or go the route of making it ALL seem real.  Going halfsies and try to do both makes it fail on both.  The only time such a thing works is if the real footage IS ACTUALLY REAL.

So, ignoring that stuff, the movie is about a radio personality in the vein of Art Bell, but without the fame or listener numbers.  One night he gets a call from someone being tormented by the shadow people, explaining how just learning about them makes you susceptible to them, and now Charlie Crowe is at risk.

When the caller is found dead, the mystery deepens, sending Crowe on a quest to get to the bottom of things.

The story is pretty solid, and the acting is top notch.  Dallas Roberts, who did a great performance as Milton Mamet on Walking Dead this past year plays the lead.  Charlie is a bit of a bastard, obsessed with work, a bit of a neglectful father who wants to try and care, but...  And the tale they're telling unfolds well enough.  But the extra footage of interviews is ultimately unnecessary, outside of the footage that actually kicks things off.

I *love* the idea of memetic monsters.  The idea that just knowing about a monster, once its in your head, you're doomed...  That is terrifying to me.  The old gag about telling someone to NOT thinking about pink elephants, and then that's all they can think about.  That's real danger there, and how do you fight your own thoughts?

This, THIS is the movie that The Apparition tried to be, with their whole promise of monsters coming to get you once you think of them.  In fact, the plot of Shadow People and Apparition are very similar, and this one is very much the better movie, even with the storytelling flaws.  The idea is much more fleshed out here, and the movie is much more satisfying, with a true conclusion, as far as it goes.

I also really like that the movie duels with the ideas of whether or not this is something mystical, or something scientific, and the answer ends up being very satisfying for BOTH options, leaving you to make up your own mind.

If not for the silliness of trying to sell the movie as half real, this would be a decent flick, but it has that big stumbling block that turned me off.  Other people might be of a different mind though, and the actual movie is worth seeing.  If you liked the Fourth Kind, then this is a must see, and if you want a movie that's not your normal fare with good acting, go for it.  There are worse ways to spend your Saturday night.

J