Watched some new shit recently, emphasis on 'shit'.
Abigail - Felt like two franchise movies combined into one. The first half is the original movie that kicks off the franchise that people actually like, being an interesting movie about a kidnapped girl turning out to be a vampire that then massacres her kidnappers. But then you have the second half of the film, which feels like a later franchise sequel where they've clearly ran out of ideas, so the plot is that there's an even eviler vampire and now Abigail and the protagonist have to team up to killer the eviler vampire. Overall it's entertaining at least. The girl that plays Abagail is decent and clearly having fun with the role, and Dan Stevens is always good. Reminded me of Malignant with its constant genre and tone shifting.
In a Violent Nature - First and only film I've watched at 2x speed. The killer was good, a nice throwback to your basic '80s slasher, and the yoga kill was almost good enough to make up for the rest of the kills being generic and bland. What kills the movie, though, is the pacing. I like the idea of a methodical, deliberately paced slasher film... but this movie fails at it. There's a thin line between a deliberate, methodical pace and a slow, boring, ponderous pace, and this film smashes through that line and clambers far into the latter. When you have like a 10 minute scene of your killer slowly walking all the way around a lake to retrieve something he left on the other side of the lake, then it's time to rethink the way you're making your movie. Also, the script largely sucked and the practical effects were awful. Every decapitated head looked like something an 8 year old made with cheap plaster in arts & crafts class; I've seen people defend this as a deliberate homage to older slasher films but any old half-decent slasher had better practical effects than this.
Trap - The basic concept is great -- a serial killer trapped in a concert and trying to escape could've made for a good cat & mouse Hitchcockian thriller. Unfortunately, M. Night Shulamalum largely turns the film into a commercial for his daughter's music career. His daughter also can't act for shit, ruining the film even further. Josh Hartnett is at least pretty good as the psychopath hiding in plain sight. I didn't hate it but also not something I'd recommend.
by Brian Yuzna which might just be the first live-action depiction of tentacle rape.
