Category: Film

Attack of the Garbage Bag Men! I mean Giant Leeches!

I was reading some of X-Entertainment’s old movie reviews the other day, which were, if you weren’t already aware, the inspiration for this blog. You really can’t find writing like that any more. Even DinoDrac doesn’t have that same tone. But that’s what time does. The internet is a much different place than in was in 2002. Thoughtfully-written websites and blogs are gone in favour of mindless Tweets and Facebook statuses. Luckily, things tend to stick around forever on here.

Reading those old reviews sparked my will to write, and my initial inspiration was to write a big long blog post about why I don’t watch movies any more. But that very quickly became a huge mess of partial thoughts and poorly-described neuroses. So I burned it down and tried to create a shorter, point-form version of it. That ended up in pretty much the same boat, so I axed it as well.

Then I had a flash of brilliance: Why not actually just watch a movie and then review it?

The problem was where to start. The frightening truth is that I haven’t watched about a quarter of the movies I own. There was a lot to choose from. But it had to be something reviewable. And by that, I mean corny and easy to make fun of. I figured that I’d already set a precedent, so I might as well try something else from the Roger Corman box set.

And that’s why you’re going to read about Attack of the Giant Leeches today.

Continue reading Attack of the Garbage Bag Men! I mean Giant Leeches!

Ninja Turtles 2014

tmnt2014I saw the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. It’s not a good movie, but I liked it. I walked out of the theater with that excited feeling you get after seeing an action movie, and the rest of the crowd seemed pretty content as well.

More than anything, this movie has made me realize how much I hate nerds. No, this movie is not going to win any awards. It’s not deep. It’s not artsy. But it was never supposed to be. It’s a summer action blockbuster. It’s not supposed to make you think, it’s just supposed to be fun. So shut up, nerds, and just friggin’ Enjoy A Thing.

I may be a little biased, of course, so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway, while my overall opinion on the movie is “I had a good time,” there were plenty of things that caused my nerdy self to squirm.

First thing: Splinter. I don’t mind the new physical design, but what’s the deal with his voice? I understand that he’s not a Japanese man-turned-rat here, but he just doesn’t sound very Splintery. And doing an Italian accent? Yeesh. Also, what even is going on with his tail? Can it just extend and retract at will? Because that’s what it looked like. And that’s just stupid. I don’t care if he’s a mutant or not. It’s dumb and is probably the thing that bugged me the most.

I also didn’t care for Shredder’s suit. The gauntlets covered in retractable blades are one thing, but the fact that they shoot out and then fly back into the gauntlets? That’s a bit too silly, even for me. But I get it; if I were eight years old, I would be over the moon for a Shredder with gloves that shoot boomerang blades. If fact, it’s probably something I doodled in a schoolbook back when I was that age.

It also feels Shredder almost seemed like he was shoehorned into a movie where he didn’t really belong. He wasn’t really the big bad ninja crime lord that we know and love, he was essentially just the muscle for the real villain of the film. He had absolutely nothing in the way of character development. Yes, his inclusion made for some good (and characteristically brutal) fight scenes, but that could have been accomplished by making the Foot Clan actual ninjas rather than your run-of-the-mill private army. I know you’re modernizing it for the Call of Duty generation, but… is that really necessary? My point is that Shredder would have better served as the main villain of the inevitable sequel.

You know what? Karai should have been the ninja boss of this movie. She was there the whole damn time, but she didn’t really do anything. And it would have worked perfectly, too. Turtles warm up on Shredder’s apprentice in the first movie, and then move onto the main main in the sequel. It practically writes itself.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles suffers the same problem as the live-action Transformers movies: too much reliance on humans when people are there specifically to see the titular non-human characters. I don’t give a rat’s patoot about Megan Fox. Sure, she can pal around with them, but she should not be the main character of the film. On the other hand, that did allow for Will Arnett to have plenty of screen time, and that’s never a bad thing.

The whole chase/mountainside scene that formed the middle of the film was completely unnecessary and out of character for the franchise. It just felt really weird. It took me a while, but I’ve realized that Ninja Turtles is actually just a classic James Bond flick in disguise. I could go into detail about how I came to that conclusion, but that’s another post. It’d probably be longer than this one, even.

So what’s good about it? The Turtles are great, it’s just that they don’t get enough focus or characterization because it’s gotta be all Megan Fox all the time in this one. And I don’t care what anyone says, I like the new designs (they’re just a little too tall). I love that Donatello wears glasses, and I never thought that I’d like Raph as a massive bruiser as much as I do. The fight scenes pleased me to no end, aside from Splinter’s extendable tail and Shredder’s overblown hardware. It was funny; a very good percentage of the jokes made me laugh out loud. Karai was in it. She didn’t really do anything, but she’s established at least. Maybe she’ll have a bigger actual role in the sequel.

At the end of the day, though, I enjoyed it. Like I said at the top, it’s not a good movie, but it’s fun enough if you just take it on its own terms. If you’re looking for actual good TMNT media, check out the Nickelodeon cartoon or the current comic series. The former is excellent and the latter is outstanding. Seriously, go get you some of that. I love that comic.

On sleep and moving pictures

Back at work today after another week of vacation. This one was an especially grueling return, as I unintentionally developed a habit of staying up until 3 AM and sleeping until around 11 during my time off. This is not good, as someone who normally sleeps from 11 PM to 6 AM. Needless to say, I had a rather difficult time staying awake at work today. By noon I’d downed three cappuccinos, which is one more than I usually drink during the span of an entire workday.

Why was I staying up so late, you ask. Mostly because of computer games. See, I don’t have a clock in my basement, and if my phone is too close to my PC, it causes a weird disruption in the speakers, which then emit some really annoying staticy beeping noises. So all I have to tell time is the computer clock. Which is covered up while playing games in fulllscreen. When I don’t have any plans, I tend to not worry about time as much, and so I’d often end up playing a game until I started feeling tired, and when I close the game and check the clock: oh my goodness! It’s three in the morning! I didn’t realize I’d been playing for so long.

And that’s why it’s better to play console games.

Or something like that. The point is, that I wasted another week of vacation. But that’s pretty much all I intend to do with them anyway. It’s not like I have any money to go away with, so I just enjoy loafing around at home for a week. Makes me happy, at least.

I did watch the first two Gamera movies, though. I own the 11-movie set (which is only missing the 2006 reboot), and so far so good. They’re pretty short too, running an average time of about 80 minutes. That’s actually a good thing, as you really don’t want a lot of padding in your kaiju films. Basically you just need a set-up, the villain monster doing its thing, and then the good monster showing up for a beat-down. It’s a good time to be had by all, as long as you can see the beauty of two guys swiping at each other while wearing goofy rubber suits.

gamera

It’s pretty reasonably priced on Amazon, so if you’ve got a thing for classic kaiju flicks, it’s quite a bargain. And really, how can you not love Gamera? Godzilla is the king of the monsters, sure, but Gamera is so innately lovable. Maybe it’s just because I’ve got a thing for turtles.

I also watched a lot more TV than usual, finishing off the episodes of Portlandia offered by Netflix, and the first two seasons of Seinfeld. The latter is well-known, and still one of my all-time favourite TV shows. Portlandia you may not have heard of. It’s a sketch comedy show that pokes fun mostly at hipsters, but also other wackos like overzealous feminists and hippies. It’s usually pretty funny, and occasionally even hilarious. Definitely a good watch.

I guess that’s about it. I could go into greater detail about my video game adventures, but that’s what the Monthend Wrap-Up is for.Now I’m just going to struggle through the next month of work while I eagerly anticipate my next and final week of vacation time.

Filler time: Articles for grown-ups

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me: I’m a child living an adult’s life. I appreciate a lot of things that people my age aren’t supposed to, if advertising and demographics have anything to say about it. Marketing is all a big load of crap, anyway.

I guess the point is that I don’t have any ideas in my head at the moment, and I don’t have the gumption to type up the weekly Dark Souls entry. Wait, no, that’s what I wasn’t supposed to say. I’m supposed to make it seem like I’m doing something inspired.

Anyway, I type about a lot of goofy things that are emblematic of childhood. Cartoons, Nintendo games, candy. If you scroll up from the bottom of the article list, you’ll see that it takes a long time to get to anything very grown-uppy. Or at least, that’s my interpretation of it. So that’s why today, I’m going to link you to a small selection of old articles that stand out as somewhat more mature among the sea of childish crap that I’ve written.

28 Days Later (2003) – The first movie I ever reviewed, and it’s a scaaary one. Probably because it’s one of the first (if not the actual first) movies with fast zombies. So it turns a kind of slow, tense staple into something much more fierce and immediately frightening. Please note that I have not watched this movie since then.

Catherine (2011) – Undoubtedly a truly mature game, as it deals with many very grown-up themes. Also there are boobies and monsters, but the heart of the game is literally about growing up, accepting responsibility, and figuring out what you want to do with your life.

Chicken Wings (2005) – Chicken wings are undoubtedly a fun finger food, which is pretty child-like, However, wings are most prominent where? Bars, that’s where. Kids don’t go to bars. They’re also one of the staple foods of sports-watching, or so I’ve been told, and sports-watching is a pretty grown-up kind of thing.

Mate1.com Hates You (2006) – To date, still the most popular thing I’ve ever published, if fan e-mails are anything to go by. Mate1.com, if you’re not already aware, is an online dating website. Those are most definitely not for children. It’s not really for anybody, as far as this article is concerned.

Remembering the Cottage (2007) – Yeah, it’s an article entirely about childhood memories, but that in and of itself makes it kinda grown-up, right? I mean, kids don’t reminisce. You have to be old and at least a little world-weary before you really understand nostalgia. Some might say that I’m not old enough to say something like that, but I respectfully have no comment.

True Crime: Streets of LA (2003) – The first video game that I wrote about that earned an M rating from the ESRB. I guess that’s all I really have to say about that. I haven’t written about a lot of games that feature non-laser guns.

Phlegm and stuff

I’ve been suffering from a rather debilitating bout with a common cold for almost a week now. It’s been nothing but snot and stuffiness for me lately, and also it’s a Man Cold so it’s much worse than a cold really should be.

The “upside” to this whole business is that I took Monday and Tuesday afternoon off work to recover. I don’t like taking sick days, and I always feel guilty about them, but they do have a sort of weird appeal to them. Maybe it’s because of all the fake sick days I took in school (which I don’t feel bad about in the least), but a sick day to me is a day where I can do anything at all and not feel like I’ve frittered away a day off.

I know that maybe that’s hard to understand, but I can’t really explain it any clearer. It’s weird, and I’m weird. We all know this, so let’s just move on.

While I was feeling like a horrible pile of yuck, Monday was a pretty great day. I slept in, watched cartoons with breakfast, and drank litres upon litres of hot lemon tea. I also watched a couple movies, which is not something that I’d ever currently do with my free time. At least, not without a handheld video game dividing my attention.

In an effort to pare down my Netflix queue a little, the first movie I watched was Devil’s Pass. Unlike video games, I don’t usually read movie reviews before I watch them. If I had, I might have assumed that Devil’s Pass was garbage and skipped it. I thought it was alright, though. It’s a found footage movie, which is already something I’m not a fan of, but I’ve seen a lot worse than this one. The movie’s plot boils down to a group of stupid college kids who go out on an expedition into some Russian mountain range, where nine hikers mysteriously died in the 50s. The fun part is that the movie’s lore actually happened. Read up on it here. I love when I get a fun little history lesson mixed into my movies, so I found that part of the flick really appealing.

The less fun part is pretty much the rest of the movie. The kids are dumb (obvi), the actors aren’t great, the special effects are amateurish, and the whole found footage business is handled as stupidly as usual. Also the story ends up being really awful and totally winds in on itself in a way that makes the idea that anyone actually found the footage literally impossible. Huge plot hole there. So huge that I have no idea how it wasn’t addressed at all.

Also, since you don’t how who/what the antagonist is until the last 15 minutes, you’re constantly wondering just how supernatural it’s going to end up being. At one point in the film, a couple of bodies scurry past in the background while the characters ramble on, and I thought that it was a dead giveaway that the bad guys would be abominable snowmen. This was not the case. So if you’ve been eyeing up Devil’s Pass on Netflix or whatever and hoping that it’s a movie with yetis in it, it’s not. That was probably my biggest disappointment.

The other movie I watched was Guillermo del Toro’s classic monster movie, Mimic. I’d never seen it before, but the promise of a movie about giant man-eating bugs was more than enough to interest me. The fact that it’s a movie about giant man-eating bugs that has no reservations about murdering children on-screen? Well that’s something that I just have to watch.

Mimic was awesome, and that’s coming from someone who only half-watched it because for the first half of the movie I was engaged in a Google search for pictures of Gemma Atkinson‘s boobs (she was in Devil’s Pass).

Anyway, it was a pretty typical monster-slasher, but that’s exactly the kind of movie I love to watch, so how could I complain? It had a pretty lead, really cool bug monsters, and a sassy black cop. What else do people even want from a movie? No, I’m serious. I don’t understand why you’d want to watch anything that doesn’t have at least one of those elements. Or Muppets.

Tuesday afternoon, on the other hand, was a huge bust. I basically just went home early and slept the rest of the day’s working hours away. I might have felt at my worst that day, since I got up and tried to soldier my way through a work day instead of just getting the rest I needed. The good news is that all the extra rest I got that afternoon seems to have worked a small miracle and I’m feeling so much better than I did yesterday. Still like crap, but functional crap, at least.

Or maybe it’s because I started shotgunning Buckely’s that night. I guess that could have made a difference too.

Also I played a lot of Doom on my Xbox over the last few days. It’s… Just as great as I remember it being. Modern FPS games really are just crap when you put them side-to-side with the classics.

X-Mas Gift Roundup: 2013 Edition

Hey, so Christmas happened a while back. Maybe you’d noticed? I sure did, because I got a freakin’ amazing haul of gift this year, and you know how much I treasure material possessions. So obviously I want to brag talk about them on the internet.

I don’t really have any sort of screed to come in on, I just wanted to note that I haven’t done an X-Mas gift round up since… 2007!? Holy cow! That’s even farther back than I’d thought! Man… that was a pretty great Christmas. Looking back on those pics, I can even remember it pretty well. Yeah, I was so excited that morning that after The Unwrappening was over I fell asleep while watching Bender’s Big Score.

So, uh, let’s just get started then, yes?

Continue reading X-Mas Gift Roundup: 2013 Edition

Halloween 2013: 5 Best Horror Movies

Welp, it’s Halloween today, and pretty much the only thing I’ve done in the spirit of the season is watch a whole buttload of horror movies. Most of them were absolutely terrible, and sometimes that’s the appeal, but once in a while there’s one in there that I feel was legitimately good. Those movies are the ones we’re going to talk about today.

What’s going to separate this from anyone running down a list of their favourite horror movies is my single criteria: I must have watched the movie for the first time this October. So all of these are new to me, and

Curse of Chucky – I love me some Chucky series, but I was a little worried about this one before it came out. It’s a direct-to-DVD movie, which is usually enough to confirm that a movie is going to be baaaaad. I was also under the impression that it was going to be a reboot, and reboots are dangerous territory.

Curse of Chucky is not a reboot. For the first half of the movie, it could be. The Chucky doll looks new, and there are no ties to the previous films. And then one of the characters notices that Chucky’s face has a layer of latex on it that’s covering up all his scars, proceed to peel the latex off, and BAM ITS THE CHUCKY WE KNOW AND LOVE.

And then, AND THEN the events of Curse all end up tying back into the very first Child’s Play and then Jennifer Tilly shows up right at the end and it all fits together and it is damn glorious. Unlike the two previous films, Curse is not a horror-comedy. It sticks to straight-up horror, and I like that they decided to go back to basics. Also, Curse has the best, most amazing post-credits scene ever filmed.

Curse of Chucky is absolutely the best direct-to-DVD movie I have ever seen, and it’s a fantastic sequel to a series that was having an identity crisis. Easily the best horror movie I’ve watched this season, and maybe even one of my favourites of the year at large. It’s creepy, it’s surprising, and it’s a big love letter to fans of the series.

Fright Night (2011) – I’m also a huge fan of 1985’s Fright Night. I mean, who isn’t though? It’s one of the legit best horror movies ever made. So you can understand why I didn’t really want to see the modern remake. But it was $5 at Wal-Mart and with a price like that, I figured it’d be worth the gamble. Oh man, you guys.

The remake of Fright Night is great. It’s pretty much exactly what I like to see in a remake: it’s got a lot of the same elements as the original, but mixes everything up enough that it’s its own movie. Kind of like how a good cover song works. If you know Fright Night well, you’ll have a good understanding of the basic plot of the movie, but it throws enough curveballs at you that you’re going to be shocked at least a few times.

It’s a really good thrill ride too. In the original, Jerry is a fairly passive vampire. He comes after Charley that one time, but mostly he’s just like “hey mind your own business kid.” In the remake, he is the most bad-ass vampire I have ever seen. 2011 Jerry Dandrige does not mess around. He will stalk you, he will threaten you, he will blow your mother-loving house up. It is magnificent, and I am so very sad that I hesitated to watch it for as long as I did.

World War Z – I think the theme of this list so far is “movies I thought would be bad but then they really weren’t” and World War Z is probably the most fitting for that title. You watch the trailer, and you see the wacky zombie tidal waves, and you think that it’s just going to be utter garbage. In fact, if I hadn’t gotten it as a free rental from Redbox, I probably still wouldn’t have bothered to watch it.

The thing you have to understand is that while World War Z has zombies in it, it’s not really a zombie movie. You could more or less sub in any kind of global disaster and tell the same story: Brad Pitt doesn’t give two craps about saving the world or finding a cure or anything, he’s just doing what he has to to keep his family safe.

So then what separates it from other, less great apocalypse movies like, oh let’s say 2012? Brad Pitt helps, that’s for sure. I mean I love John Cusack, but there’s really no competition. World War Z is also paced really well, and I dare say that using zombies as a disaster makes the situation much more interesting. The movie is very tense and interesting from beginning to end, and it’s absolutely more of an action/drama than a horror movie, but I’ll keep calling it horror so I can justify putting it on this list.

From Hell – This is a movie I’d never even heard of that Wifey picked up because it was cheap and it has a young(ish) Jonny Depp in it. It’s a slasher that gives an identity and motive to Jack the Ripper. But it’s not really about Jack, it’s more about the prostitutes that he kills. And also a detective that solves crime by having psychic visions while wasted on opium.

It all sounds a little silly, and it is. It’s very silly if you stop to think about it. But it’s a fairly enjoyable movie to watch. I especially liked that it’s a somewhat unique variation on the usual slasher formula. You know who doesn’t like it though? Alan Moore. The movie is based on a graphic novel of his, and apparently devolves his fine story into a goofy whodunit. I haven’t read said graphic novel (and probably never will), but the movie version worked for me, and that’s all that mattered.

Christine – You know the episode of Futurama where Bender becomes a were-car? Apparently that’s also an old horror movie! Well, not really, but I can’t seem to separate the two in my mind despite the fact that all they really have in common is the theme of homicide by automobile.

It’s based on a Stephen King novel, which is usually a good thing, and has a pretty good story and a handful of great characters. What really impressed me about Christine though, was the special effects. At one point, Christine (who is a haunted car), is completely destroyed. Shortly after, she magically restores herself, and the scene looks so friggin’ good. Like, these practical effects from 1983 are considerably more convincing than most of the computer-generated effects in current movies.

The only thing that really bothered me about the film is that there isn’t even a hint of an explanation as to why the car is haunted. I suppose that’s a fairly common omission is movies based on Stephen King stories, as they’re typically more about the characters and how they deal with the situation than the situation itself. Still, it’s a pretty great movie, and despite the difference in popularity between the two, I think it was way better than Carrie.

Pew pew pews

Podcasts are not a thing I typically do. It’s hard for me to justify spending up to an hour and a half just listening to people ramble on about stuff, and it’s nearly impossible to really absorb the content of a podcast while doing something else. At least, that’s how it is for me. I have found that work is a great time to listen to podcasts, because my job is mostly numbers, and it’s easy to listen to what the people are saying in my ear while I muck around on my spreadsheets or whatever.

Obviously, the bus rides to and from work are a great time for this as well.

I have made a point to listen to the new Retronauts every week, because I really like the three regular hosts, and I think they do a very good job of covering a lot of video game-related topics that I’m already pretty interested in, or will interest me enough to hear people ramble about them for so long.

Last week’s episode was about fan translations, and while I’ve already played a few of the games that they highlighted on the show, I did take it upon myself to try out a few that I hadn’t already touched. I’m not trying to hock video games today, though. What was really important about this show was the guest stars: Chris Antista and Brett Elston

These dudes run another podcast called Laser Time (well, Brett guests on Laser Time, and hosts VGMpire), which I decided to look into for no real reason at all other than I was kinda interested in listening to another podcast. I hit the damn jackpot here too, because I ended up loving Laser Time.

Apparently a lot of people involved work in the video game industry, but the podcast isn’t about video games all the time. Or even most of the time maybe? I’ve listened to five episodes so far, and four of those have been about movies. In fact, I’d wager to say that it’s more about retro stuff and pop-culture in general than video games. This is the X-Entertainment podcast that never existed.

I should mention that it’s also pretty consistently funny. And when it’s not funny, it’s educational in a pop-culture sort of way. I love it, and I’m fairly sure that I’m going to have burned through all the back episodes by the end of the year if I keep listening to them at the rate I have been.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, maybe go check that out. I’ve already provided a link to the main podcast page, but if you poke around on the website a bit, you’ll notice that there are a few other podcasts hosted there. Maybe one of those will resonate with you if Laser Time doesn’t.

Insidious: Chapter 2

There isn’t any easy way to say this: I was a little disappointed with Insidious: Chapter 2.

It’s not that I thought the movie was outright bad. No, it was decent enough; it certainly held my attention for the duration. What I have a problem with is that it’s not the movie that I was expecting/hoping that it would be. Which I suppose is kind of a petty gripe, because as a sequel it’s actually quite good, so take that as you will.

Insidious 2 begins right where we left off at the end of the first movie, so there’s really no way to describe the plot of the flick without letting slip at least some minor spoilers for the first one. So I guess you’re gonna have to deal with me being all vague and mysterious. This will not go well.

The story picks up with the family dealing with the fallout of the events from the first film. Everyone’s all shaken up, and while they thought that their biggest problem (being haunted) was solved, it quickly becomes apparent that it was not. Well, it was, but it wasn’t. Now they’re being haunted by different spooks. And when the identity of one of those spooks was revealed, I slapped my head so hard because OF COURSE. DUH.

The promotional materials for the movie (like the poster above) will lead you to believe that the movie is about the baby being haunted or possessed or something, but really that’s all a lie. There are a few baby-related scenes, but really the baby has absolutely nothing to do with the actual plot. And if she was supposed to, they certainly did not get that point across very well, because I have no idea why they even bothered with the baby scenes.

All in all, Insidious 2 is more of a murder mystery than your typical paranormal horror flick. I think that the best way to describe it would be Scooby-Doo meets The Shining. Only it’s less dumb than the former, and not nearly as scary as the latter. But it’s a pretty apt description, and the more I think about it, the more fitting it seems. What disappoints me about this is that the movie spends almost all of its time figuring out who the antagonist is and what their motivation is instead of providing us with more of the dreamland shenanigans that I loved so much in the first movie.

In fact, when it comes to the otherworld at all, it’s used even less than it was in the first movie. Again, it only really comes around in the third act, and this time it’s not as full of creepy, surreal imagery. Now it’s… complicated. I won’t get into it in detail, but the story ends up folding in on itself and interweaving with a few scenes in the first film, which is all really cool for a while. And then you realize how weird it is that somehow being in the otherworld allows the characters to actually affect the past. What? Yeah, it’s… it’s not great, especially since they don’t make any effort to describe how this is even remotely plausible or ties into the rest of the established lore.

I want to say that I’m being unnecessarily critical here, because I wanted to just turn off my brain and enjoy the ride, but man, I’m sure that there’s a better way they could have resolved the scenario here than shoehorning in some time-travelling bunkus. I can easily gloss over a minor plot hole or inconsistency here and there, but this one just made no damn sense. Fans seem to be trying to make a case that there is no “sense of time” in the otherworld, but it still seems like a bunch of malarkey to me.

Another thing that stuck out to me is that while the first movie was straight up dramatic horror, part two here has a rather generous helping of comedy relief. I’m not sure it was necessary, but most of the jokes are pretty good so I’ll let it slide. Also, like the first film, this one’s mostly devoid of glaring special effects, except for one scene near the end. In contrast to the rest of the movie, where everything looks very natural, this one bit really stands out. It’s short and fairly inconsequential, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

In conclusion, I did like Insidious: Chapter 2. It wasn’t as good as the first one, and that whole time-travelling bit was annoying, but overall it satisfied. The atmosphere was pretty much what I’m looking for in a horror film, and while it was a bit too big for its britches, I thought the story was pretty good. I just preferred the relative simplicity of the first one. A third film is confirmed to be in the works, and while I’ve got my fingers crossed that they’ll go back to the unsettling distorted reality theme of the first movie, I’ll make sure not to go into it expecting that.