theandreaceregini Reviews

V/H/S Viral (2014)

You tried. Thrice. Now it's time to stop...

[5/10 · 14 September 2019]

First segment, "Dante the Great": some loser magician finds an enchanted cape and turns basically into God. But the cape is hungry! Out of all the stories from all three V/H/S movies, this is probably the one I enjoyed the most. Mostly because it's the one that doesn't belong. Vote 7. Second segment, "Parallel Monsters": man meets self from another reality, swap lives for 15 minutes, immediately regrets his decision. Very good one, ruined by the giant demonic penises. Yeah. Vote 6,5. Third segment, "Bonestorm": the most annoying piece of short cinema I've ever encountered. I don't want to talk about it. Vote 3. Average vote 5.5, decreased to 5 because of Bonestorm. Now please, don't make more V/H/S movies. Pretty please.

Godzilla (1954)

What a beast of a movie

[8/10 · 14 September 2019]

And in a fit of pure madness, I decided to watch each and every entry in the Godzilla saga, willingly ignoring the fact that we're talking about no less than 33 movies. Just finished the first one and I already feel like nothing will ever manage to even get close, in terms of both narrative value and quality of high-end entertainment. Gojira is a monster movie where the real enemy is not the monster itself, but what it represents: pure, ghastly, undiscriminating devastation. And boy, is there destruction in here...

It (I) (2017)

Decent on its own, BURIED by the 1990 miniseries

[6/10 · 13 September 2019]

What a weird, weird, weird movie! Here's a series of unordered considerations. 1) Moving the setting 30 years forward from the late '50s to the late '80s was a good choice: most fitting music, clothes and generally a best ambiance for the whole story. 2) NOT ENOUGH HENRY BOWERS! He's supposed to be a literal human devil, an oppressing tormenter... but what we got here is an edgy kid with a hair. 3) Why does everything looks so cheap and fake? How is it possible to have a 2017 movie with WORSE special effects than a 1990 miniseries? Worst offender is obviously the CGI department, with some parts being more suitable to some indie videogame's cutscene than a 35 million dollars Hollywood production. 4) Storytelling calls another comparison between this movie and the 1990 miniseries, and the movie loses again (deeply). There's no match: this is a series of scenes attached together, more than an actual movie; and this feels very wrong given the fact that the original material - one of the best novels from King - manages to build a unique and coherent narration even if it's divided into many different chapters, settings and time periods. This movie is just... things happening after other things, followed by other things already reasy to leave space for another set of things. It's generally enjoyable but it's also... unthrilling. It's like they were too busy following online tutorials for Adobe After Effects to care about giving the script a soul.

Veronica (I) (2017)

Not the best movie by Paco Plaza

[6/10 · 11 September 2019]

This movie starts in a way that makes you think "holy ****, this is going to be PacoPlaza-awesome!" and then proceeds to betray your hopes and dreams, slowly turning into the average hollywood demonic possession movie where nothings make sense anymore and everything just... happens. I love the setup and the interaction among Veronica, her siblings, her friends and the blind nun that happen during the first half, but I honestly coudn't care less about the "young girl entering puberty" metaphor that permeates the second half. Also, the closure felt a little bit forced: "based on a true story, can you believe it?! Are you scared now?". Well, not really really. 6-

Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

Reboot of the Living Dead

[5/10 · 11 September 2019]

Return of the Living Dead saga leaves the '80s, enter the '90s, and boy: does it TELL! Completely different entry, both in style and tone, linked to the previous chapters just by a tiny detail, the presence of the infamous Trioxin compound. Everything feels different; no more zany survivors trying to escape the hoard of undead (there's no hoard at all, just a couple of infected people), comedy tags replaced by tender love moments, and last but not least the worst change of them all: while the in-universe canon established in the first movie that reanimated corpses are in constant pain and seek human flesh to soothe it, now they apparently seek pain to stop the constant hunger. Ok but not ok. Honorable mention for a 24yo Melinda Clarke, not only beautiful to look at but also capable of decent acting.

Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

Unfriended: Dank Web

[6/10 · 11 September 2019]

One of the most successful review for this movie is titled "Exactly what you're looking for" (sic). I have to slightly disagree. Yes, there's the same kind of narration from the first one - events are told from one of the character's laptop desktop's point of view - and again here there's a bunch of kids getting owned while online, but what I was expecting was another supernatural tale about some kind of weird ghostly creature and what I got instead was an edgy over-simplification of the dark web and its intrinsic perils. Dude, hackerz can hack your PC! Man, hackerz watch everything you do! Pal, hackerz are listening right now! Be aware, hackerz are kidnapping and selling your daughter to other hackerz! Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the whole movie - both its more disturbing and less serious parts - but too often it felt like a caricature of the average conspirancy thread posted on some low-quality online bulletin board.

Return of the Living Dead II (1988)

Return of the Yawning Viewer

[5/10 · 9 September 2019]

Disappointing experience. First of all, it's supposed to be a sequel but two of the main characters from the first movie come back in totally different roles and that was very distracting: I've spent the first 15 minutes wondering whether it was really a sequel or maybe some sort of weird reboot, a la Evil Dead 2. But the main problem is another one, and much much worse. The problem is that they took away everything that made The Return of the Living Dead great (witty dialogues among well-written characters, convincing zombies, splatter & gore...) and the result is an ordinary and quite boring movie about whining and unpleasant human characters constantly crying and yelling while a bunch of suddenly stultified undead chase them around. Yawn.

Area 51 (2015)

Area 4.5

[5/10 · 8 September 2019]

Quite disappointing, was expecting much more. Too much time dedicated to presenting the characters - that are as tedious at the 50-minute mark as they are at the beginning of the movie - compared to the actual action that only gets slightly interesting in the second part of the last act. Guys, dark corridors and empty rooms are creepy, ok, but enough is enough! A note: IMDb doesn't currently allow users to rate movies using tenths so I must clarify: my displayed rating of 5 is actually a rounder 4.5

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

A movie with a brain. Got it?

[7/10 · 8 September 2019]

Wow. So this is what happens when a movie about zombies is written by someone who a) likes what they're doing and b) actually knows how to write for the big screen. Everything is perfectly dosed and mixed: comedy, tension, gore, action, music, character interaction... even the mandatory nudity part is incredibly spot-on, useful to build the character of Trash and way more tasteful than many other examples of mandatory nudity sequences (and this is saying alot, since what we're discussing here is a girl dancing completely nude in a graveyard!). This movie creates a narrative universe with a set of rules and surprisingly - for the genre - remains coherent to them from beginning to end, building a tense story that may be not the most original but certainly never stops to be enjoyable as hell. The Return of the Living Dead is, in my opinion, on the very same level of George Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead: different tones, of course, but the very same narrative strongness.

Unfriended (2014)

A smooth user experience but the app crashes while closing it

[7/10 · 7 September 2019]

I am so hecking mad at this movie. Not because I didn't like it but because I loved it and then it decided to retreat into the credits with the stupidest and insanely illogical ending. Imagine listening to a new awesome song you just discovered, but they made a mistake recording it and the last solo is off-key. Imagine munching on a chocolate ice cream cake, savouring each and every bite out of it, and then you drop the very last bit on your shirt. Imagine spending a decent friday at the office, and then at 4:58PM the boss finds out those reports he was expecting are not ready yet. Well, this is what this movie felt like, and all for the sole sake of giving the audience a last, cheap, intruding, tacky, "shocking" jumpscare no one was looking for. I am so hecking mad.

V/H/S/2 (2013)

Bad, BAD, GOOD, good

[6/10 · 6 September 2019]

Slightly better than the first one, mostly because they listened and decided to cut the number of segments from five to four, shortening the playtime and thus intensifying the experience as a whole. First tape, "Phase I Clinical Trials": an unoriginal ghost story with very little inspiration and a disappointing finale. Vote 4,5. Second tape, "A Ride in the Park": would a zombie movie from the PoV of the zombie itself work? Well, maybe, but certainly not like this. Vote 4. Third tape, "Safe Haven": the higher point of the whole film. Scary, gory, intense, surprising. Vote 7. Fourth and last tape, "Slumber Party Alien Abduction": a group of youngsters of various age get chased by frigging aliens. You wouldn't believe this, but I enjoyed it way more than I expected. Vote 6,5. Average vote: 5.5, upped to 5.9 because "Safe Haven" was really good and the chick from "Phase I Clinical Trials" was cute.

V/H/S (2012)

Could have been worse (but also much better)

[5/10 · 4 September 2019]

I feel like the only way to review this anthology film is to rate its individual stories, and this is what I'll do. So, here it is. First one, "Amateur Night": a group of idiots go clubbing and come back to their room with a couple of girls, one of which is VERY peculiar. Enjoyable and satisfying, it's always a pleasure to watch hateful characters get what they deserve. Vote 7. Second segment, "Second Honeymoon": a couple go for a road trip but they're not alone. Slow and underwhelming, the pace of the whole movie would have GREATLY benefited by having this sequence removed from the final cut. Vote 4. Third story, "Tuesday the 17th": four friends go hiking in the woods but one of them is hiding something important. No idea what they tried to do with this one, a total and utter mess. Vote 4,5. Fourth one, "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger": girlfriend senses a presence in her new apartment and asks boyfriend for help. Refreshing and captivating, probably the best of the bunch. Vote 7. Fifht and last segment, "10/31/98": frat boys look to have some good time at a horror-themed party, find no party but alot of horror. Not great, not terrible, very good visual effects. Vote 6. Average vote 5.7, lowered to 5.4 because majority of the cast was really bad at acting.

Slender Man (I) (2018)

More like Boring Man, amirite?

[4/10 · 1 September 2019]

An obscure urban legend too absurd to be true, continuous references to the power of social media sharing, twenty-something actresses portraying high school students... I'm pretty much sure they tried to pull a "The Ring for Generation Z" and the result was this thing. Boring, predictable, not really compelling in any of its parts, with a sole exception: Joey King and Annalise Basso being part of the cast. Too little.

Upgrade (2018)

A lot of quality for a medium-low budget flick

[7/10 · 1 September 2019]

I divide this movie in three parts. The first 20 minutes made me feel. You get to know the main character, he looks like a cool guy and then BAM: girlfriend killed and life ruined forever. Hit me quite hard. Then the actual movie begins, and I greatly enjoyed everything in it: wicked anarchist villains beaten to a pulp by an upgraded main character in a over-violent but well-deserved vengeance spree? Hell yes. Alas, the whole story carries an underwhelming morale: "Humanity good! Technology bad! Artificial intelligence very very bad!" and after that the movie ends, making the last 10 minutes of it pretty disappointing overall. Loved the acting by Logan Marshall Green while the character of Eron (autistic and mysterious tech genious who can talk to machines but doesn't know how to relate to people) was too much of a caricature, borderline ridiculous.

The Ward (2010)

Came from the girls, stayed for the... well, girls (but also the plot)

[6/10 · 30 August 2019]

Listen up kid, I won't lie: I watched this for the booty. A movie starring Amber Heard, Danielle Panabaker and Lyndsy Fonseca, all together? Count me in, don't care what it's about (a reasonably enjoable psycologically horror with a twist: nothing electrifying but pretty and likeable).

Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

Highly enjoyable sequel

[7/10 · 30 August 2019]

The first movie absolutely NAILED it, instantly earning a place among the greatest in the Time Loop genre. Time for a second chapter; how could they even hope to keep the narrative on the same, brilliant level of the previous one? My fear was they would choose the easy path and basically release a carbon-copy sequel. Never been so happy to get proven wrong. Yes, they offered the same story... but they elaborated so much on it! I'm not ashamed to say that the first 25/30 minutes of this movie make the most enjoyable piece of film entertainment I've had in a very long time: revelation after revelation, we find out they're dealing with freaking parallel realities now. Wow. The pace of the movie slows down a little after the first act but the story never loses its allure, until the unexpeted, cheesy, over-the-top post credit scene, which is in my very humble opinion the PERFECT way to end the saga. Please don't make a third movie, it would be impossible to top what it's already been done.

Happy Death Day (2017)

Expected nothing, got everything

[8/10 · 29 August 2019]

Hot blond sorority girl lives the vapid, easy college life she thinks she deserves, where everything is owed to her and everyone's there just to be a supporting act. Someone doesn't agree with all of this and kills her. How boring and generic, right? But then the real movie begins, and it's a BLAST. Think of Groundhog Day meets Edge of Tomorrow meets I Know What You Did Last Summer, with just the right amount of horror, mystery and comedy, all mixed up in a clever and tense script where there's no place for the lame, useless vulgarities you'd expect from a movie about hot teenagers. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of cleavage and beautiful girls but they only serve the plot, not the viewer's libido. And it shows: I usually manage to figure out the identity of the killer midway through the movie but this time I failed. Hard. Twice. Kudos to the writers, to the actors (Jessica Rothe's expressiveness is side-splitting) and to whoever came up with the concept of the ugly baby mascot, immediately acquiring Modern Horror Icon status in my book, along Saw's Billy and The Conjuring's Annabelle.

Truth or Dare (I) (2018)

Gen Z Horror is a joke

[6/10 · 28 August 2019]

You can't expect movies made for dumb youngsters not to be dumb, I guess. Watching this was not a bad experience... but surely it was not a good one. Everything was just so... dumb. The premise? Dumb. The whole chain of events? DUMB. Each and every decision ever taken by any character in it? Very dumb. The characters themselves? Well they're all dumb youngster so... AND WHAT ABOUT THAT DUMB FACE THEY MAKE?!? Take the dumbest Snapchat filter ever created and still it's not as dumb as the dumb face from this dumb movie. Boy, I sure hope "dumb" is not a banned word otherwise I doubt this review will ever see the light.

Incident in a Ghostland (2018)

The only ghost here is the spectre of the story that could have been

[5/10 · 28 August 2019]

I gotta say it: I chose this movie because I thought it was a horror movie starring Isabelle Fuhrman. You can imagine my surprise when I realized it had nothing to do with ghosts and, on top on that, Isabella Fuhrman was actually not part of the cast. But, I'm not the kind of person who turns a movie off 25 minutes through it and so I kept watching. Boy, was that a bad decision! I understand the charm of the so-called "torture" genre; fictional sadism can be cathartic, even liberating: look at those poor people suffering, so glad it's not me! And those p.o.s. behaving like animals? Can't wait to see them get what they deserve! But even the most brutale of the stories must carry some redeeming quality, a hint of morality, an excuse for the average, normal person to sit still 70 minutes watching two young girls beaten and abused without feeling bad. That's not what happens here. This movie is 20 minutes of setup for a psicological horror, then there's the "epic", "unexpected" "twist", followed by literally 70 minutes of two girls beaten and abused. That's it. Why are the bad guys doing that? Well, just because. Should we feel bad for the girls? Well we are certainly *supposed to* but how can you be sorry for someone who do nothing but SCREAM NON-STOP in EVERY scene they're in? Finally, is the moment of the bad guys' defeat satisfying? Nope, just a handful of bullets shot by a deus ex machina dressed as a cop. Underwhelming, at least. But I have to admin including a cameo from Howard Phillips frigging Lovecraft himself was unbelievably, unbelievably brilliant. Now someone PLEASE tell me that I was not the only one believing the lady on the cover was Isabelle Fuhrman. Please. Thanks.

Cell (I) (2016)

A good call, ended abruptly

[7/10 · 27 August 2019]

This movie felt like it was composed by two separate projects, put together by chance in post-production. There's the real movie, a better-than-average zombie flick with a cast of respectable actors giving their best, a series of very well written plot points (the initial attack, how the girl joins the group, the whole private school segment) and a story original enough to keep me interested for 80 minutes. And then there's... whatever that end was. No more interaction among the actors, a painfully visible green screen room, no dialogues, bad lighting, rushed "action": basically a 10-minute long unskippable cutscene from an old videogame, that completely and utterly demolished all the tension built until that point. I want to make it clear that I didn't dislike the ending as a narrative resolution: to me, the fate of John Cusack's character makes perfect sense and I even liked that. What I hated was how it was brought on screen. It's like they ran out of money with 10 minutes left in the movie and they had to come up with a new ending on the spot.

It Follows (2014)

Slow-burn horror at its best

[7/10 · 26 August 2019]

This movie is pure suspence from its first scene ("what is she even doing?!?") to the very last shot ("it's behind them, isn't it!"). Honestly, I don't remember being involved so much in a horror movie since... well, since a very long time. Like, you actually CARE about the characters' whereabouts, and you genuinely want them to survive their fate. Girls are very pretty too and that certainly helps... A special credit goes to the casting director: each and every actor and actress is spot-on perfect in their role. Only complaint: I found the "last" battle against the curse (the pool scene, just to be clear) a little bit contrived and not as effective as it could have been, but that's easily forgiven. Will look for similar movies, ready to be disappointed: it's very unlikely I'll be able to find something better within the same genre.

Bird Box (2018)

A very good premise, ruined by bad characterization

[6/10 · 24 August 2019]

Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike this movie. It managed to keep me interested from the very first scene to the end, and I particularly appreciated how both the indoor and the outdoor sequences felt believable and... well, right: "This is how people would probably behave if something similar happened IRL", I found myself thinking more than once during the film. "People are stupid and do stupid things under pressure", that's OK. What I HATED is how the characters were typified. The old grumpy racist man! The whiny weak fat woman! The otherwise useless youngster that are only there for the token sex scene and then disappear! The relentlessly brave love interest! Quite tiresome at times.

A Quiet Place (2018)

Beautiful to look at, a nightmare to make sense of

[5/10 · 24 August 2019]

No dialogues, only a handful of actor and actresses involved, just two locations to hold all the major action... every production choice for this movie leads the viewer to pay more and more attention to the quality of visual/sound effects, and to how the story actually unfolds before their eyes. And while sound mixing and special effects are genuinely great, the plot is so full of holes that's almost distracting: did they really spent more than a year without ever addressing the feeling of the father towards the daughter? Why don't they live near the river's waterfall, since the water noises are intense enough to keep the monsters away? Why THE HECK are they having A BABY, in a world where stay SILENT is key to survival? Why don't they just keep a corn grinder activated 24/7 somewhere far away from home? The finale does not help: "dude, monsters that are attracted by noise have only one weakness: noise! Lmao".

The Silence (II) (2019)

Starts with a bang, ends with a whimper

[6/10 · 24 August 2019]

This movie had everything you'd like to find in such a story: an unbeliavable but coherent opening, weird enemies, characters that are not that deep but that are all lovable (except for the grandma: we can't get rid of the "old whining woman slowing down everyone" trope soon enough) and even a mysterious man in black showing up mysteriously to spice things up. Then you check the time and realize there's only like 20 minutes remaining and start to wonder how the heck they'll wrap everything up before the end credits start rolling. The answer is very simple: they hurry up and squash every plot resolution in the last two sequences. It's a shame because a number of storylines deserved a better development (how they handled the whole Flock of the Hushed affair was borderline criminal) but the authors decided to focus on family interactions instead. Comprehensible, but disappointing.