This is Fright Night all over again. 30 minutes of vampires that are so explicitly coded as gay that "subtext" would be the wrong word. A plot that comes in to distract from the much more fun stuff the beginning promised. A third act that's just boring action nonsense. At least Fright Night's final act has less annoying characters who do things that make some level of sense sometimes, here everyone behaves stupidly and the vampires are so unthreatening I'd trust myself to kill them half-asleep and with a hand tied behind my back.
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Synchronic 2019
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #10
Disclaimer: I went into Synchronic with a bias. I added it to my Hooptober list knowing full well that I've struggled with the directors in the past. While I find The Endless inoffensive enough (although not even close to "good"), Spring is pure misogynistic garbage and easily one of my top 5 most hated movies of all time. (This review sums up the reason I hate it so much very well.)
After a prologue that…
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Night Terrors 1993
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #9
If a movie has great visuals and a couple amazing scenes, I can often forgive weak characters and plot. This is undoubtedly what's going on here. With the nightmare scene that leads to the third act, the set design of the evil lair, and the incredible sex scene in the tent... the question isn't so much why I liked this movie, the question is why I didn't love it. And it's simple: The last half…
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Dracula 3000 2004
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #8
The only excuse a movie would have to be this bad is that it's a friends project done over a holiday trip or something. Based on what I can find this is not at all the case, and the production values are clearly too high for that.
It literally looks like they forgot to write a script and just had a vague idea as to where things were supposed to go and a couple of…
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The Harbinger 2022
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #7
For years we've been struggling against Covid-19 and with the pandemic. While it's easy to think of those as the same issue, the truth is that one is a sickness that can have a range of negative consequences for the inflicted and loved ones, and the other is an interconnected web of complexities ranging from politics, medicine, the press, behaviors, lockdowns, and of course, Covid-19 the disease itself. While one is unpredictable and maybe an…
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Girl Unknown 2023
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #6
I love this title. "Girl Unknown"? Who is she! Tell me about her! I wonder what happened!
The answer is nothing.
Nothing.
And more nothing.
Two people are having an extremely tense conversation with extremely high stakes at a park while we get filled in on the irrelevant backstory from one of them. Nothing goes anywhere.
I bring up the fact that I like the title to try and be nice because there's nothing else…
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Raging Grace 2023
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #5
Joy, an undocumented immigrant, gets a job where she has to live full-time in the house of her employer and decides to bring her problem-child along with her... in secret. This is such an unbelievably stupid move for anyone to make that it requires an enormous justification. I think we need to believe in Joy's utter despair before reaching this point but nothing we see warrants this move, especially confusing to me is that housekeepers…
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Tiger Stripes 2023
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #4
This one takes a little while to get going, much of the first half hour had me wondering if anything more interesting would happen. But then... it does. And quite an interesting thing indeed.
Without going into much detail, this is one of those movies where something extraordinary happens as an obvious allegory for puberty. While I love these in general, movies where people experiencing an estrogen-full puberty become enraged especially resonate. There are two…
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Tales from the Crypt 1972
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #3
As with most anthology movies, this is a little hit-and-miss. Thankfully none of the stories is downright bad.
One of the lower point comes with the extremely unmemorable "Reflection of Death", which is thankfully very short.
"Blind Alleys" is the other low point, as it widely overstays its welcome, especially featuring in the same film as "Poetic Justice", which is the other story with a truly despicable villain, but where "Blind Alley" gets boring in…
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Perpetrator 2023
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #2
My favorite thing in Perpetrator is "Pure", the Matte Blvck track played during the party scene. That's not to say that there isn't more here that's good, maybe even great, but leaving the theater I needed to hear more from this band, and an album later... the music has completely overshadowed the movie, which is way too messy for its own good.
I spent much of the runtime wondering which plot I should be clinging…
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Nightman 2023
Vanessa Júpiter's hooptober x #1
Nightman looks good, is well-paced, and builds tension enough where it needs to. While I wasn't particularly fond of the acting, the only aspect that I really think suffers is the chemistry between the leads (or lack thereof,) which could be argued to serve a point since it's the story of a marriage in crisis.
What keeps this from being "basic but decidedly above average" is that Evil is presented as a nearly supernatural characteristic.…
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Skinamarink 2022
Strike 1: The "look under the bed" scene, that has different camera movements to most of the rest of the movie and more engaging things actually happen, and yet somehow still manages to feel as empty and void as everything else.
Strike 2: The face jumpscare, that solidifies this as a long series of Nothing interspersed with the occasional mildly uncanny image, some of which have annoying loud noises attached to them.
Strike 3: While we near the end of…