RELEASED: June 21st 2019 DIRECTED BY: Lars Klevberg WRITTEN BY: Tyler Burton Smith PRODUCED BY: David Katzenberg & Seth Grahame-Smith MUSIC BY: Bear McCreary STARRING: Gabriel Bateman, Aubrey Plaza, Brian Tyree Henry, David Lewis, Carlease Burke & Mark Hamill
Full disclosure, I’ve never watched any of the Child’s Play/Chucky movies before this one. But I feel like this was a bad place to start, because this is a very weird film.
Child’s Play follows Andy, a young kid (played by Gabriel Bateman) living with his young mother, Karen (Aubrey Plaza), whose birthday is coming up soon. Low on money, Karen manages to acquire a faulty ‘Buddi’ toy doll from her workplace, which names itself Chucky, and becomes more and more violent and possessive as their relationship develops.
RELEASED: April 4th 2019 DIRECTED BY: Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer WRITTEN BY: Matt Greenberg & Jeff Buhler PRODUCED BY: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Steven Schneider & Mark Vahradian MUSIC BY: Christopher Young STARRING: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, Jeté Laurence, Hugo and Lucas Lavoie & John Lithgow
I’m not a huge follower of Stephen King’s works. I’ve read the first few chapters of The Dark Tower (need to get back to it) and seen 2017’s It (overrated), 2017’s Gerald’s Game (excellent) and of course 1980’s The Shining (iconic). With those in mind, I found Pet Sematary to be better than It, but not quite as good as Gerald’s Game or The Shining.
Pet Sematary follows the Creed family as they move from hectic city life in Boston to the Maine countryside (because where else would they go? It’s a Stephen King story). Once there, they are greeted by a beautiful house sheltered by a vast forest, which contains the mysterious ‘Pet Sematary’ – a place that, according to their new neighbour, Jud, has the power to bring things back from the afterlife…
A bit later than everyone else, but I finally got round to seeing Glass. The Unbreakable review will follow at some point, I’m sure.
RELEASED: January 18th 2019 DIRECTED BY: M. Night Shyamalan WRITTEN BY: M. Night Shyamalan PRODUCED BY: M. Night Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock, Ashwin Rajan & Jason Blum MUSIC BY: West Dylan Thordson STARRING: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clarke & Charlayne Woodard
Rejoice! This movie wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be. It was actually kind of enjoyable. But also, like Split, pretty stupid.
Set two weeks after the events of Split, Glass sees David Dunn, now known as the Overseer, on the hunt for the super-powered serial killer known as the Horde. However, before the two can settle their differences, they are caught by the authorities and taken to the mental institution housing terrorist Elijah Price, the infamous ‘Mr. Glass’, where they are presented with the possibility that they are not actually superpowered beings, and their ‘abilities’ are all in their heads.
RELEASED: January 20th 2017 DIRECTED BY: M. Night Shyamalan WRITTEN BY: M. Night Shyamalan PRODUCED BY: M. Night Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock & Jason Blum MUSIC BY: West Dylan Thordson STARRING: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus & Bruce Willis
I’ve never particularly been a fan of this series. Prior to Glass‘ release, Unbreakable and Split were amongst the only three M. Night Shyamalan film’s I’d seen (the third being The Village) and none of these films had left a lasting or favourable impression on me.
However, with Glass now in cinemas, I decided to go back and explore the prior films, starting with Split (because I seem to have lost my copy of Unbreakable and Split is on Netflix).
Split sees three young girls abducted by a man named Kevin Wendell Crumb. Crumb has dissociative identity disorder, and some of his split personalities have united to kidnap these girls as a tribute to an oncoming twenty-fourth personality, who is known only as ‘The Beast’.
The Last of Us was one of the main reasons I bought a PlayStation (alongside Spider-Man, obviously). For years, people had raved at me about how good it was and how it was a shame that, as an XBox player, I would never get the chance to try it. Well, times have changed, and I’ve finally played and completed The Last of Us. Does it reach the high expectations set by my friends and gamers around the world?
RELEASED: June 14th 2013 DEVELOPED BY: Naughty Dog PUBLISHED BY: Sony Computer Entertainment
RELEASED: October 19th 2018 DIRECTED BY: David Gordon Green WRITTEN BY: Jeff Fradley, David Gordon Green & Danny McBride PRODUCED BY: Malek Akkad, Jason Blum & Bill Block MUSIC BY: John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies
STARRING: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Virginia Gardner & Nick Castle
I’ve never used to be a fan of horror movies. When I was younger, I didn’t see the appeal, but in more recent years, I’ve tried to catch up for lost time, taking the ’31 Days of Horror’ challenge both this year and last. Through that, I watched the original Halloween for the first time last week. I thought it was fine; Michael Myers was creepy, the story was conventional by today’s standards but interesting in how it spawned multiple slasher tropes.
Jump forward to this week (or forty years later, depending on how you look at it) and Halloween has returned to cinemas for the eleventh time. This new movie ignores the events of every film bar that 1978 original, and sees Michael Myers, having spent those forty years back in captivity, escape once again and return to Haddonfield for another killing spree. Standing in his way is PTSD-ridden ‘Final Girl’ Laurie Strode, who has been training in the interim for a final showdown with ‘the Shape’.
