It’s the spooky season, so I’m going to go over EVERY NEW 2019 HORROR MOVIE I’ve seen this year, including the recently released Netflix movie Eli
Wounds
I’d give this 0 stars if I could, maybe something in the negatives would be more fitting. Its befitting of grades the people don’t use, like F- or a G maybe.
If more people see this movie it could honestly hurt Armie Hammers career and Dakota Johnsons, they’re acting is atrocious here, but I blame that more on the direction.
Wounds is dull and lifeless, Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson star in this and I know I’ve seen them act well before, so it must be the horrible direction.
Director/Writer Babak Anvari has only directed one thing before this (Under the Shadows) I haven’t seen it, but it must have been alright because it helped him get this movie made with the reputable stars and decent effects budget.
I thought Glass would keep the spot as the worst movie of 2019 but Wounds has easily taken that spot. Easily. Wounds is absolutely lifeless, and pointless, and unintelligible. I must warn you not to waste your time.
This Movie follows Will (Armie Hammer) a despicable human being who works at a bar. His girlfriend Carrie (Dakota Johnson) is a student, somehow these two have a lot of money, a beautiful house, brand new truck, this bar must pay well. Will is an alcoholic who drinks and does drugs from morning till night, works drunk and no one bats an eye.
A fight occurs in the bar, and one of the regulars gets a nasty wound on his face from a beer bottle. During the fight a phone is left behind, somehow a college kid just left it. The phone starts getting phone calls and texts that are creepy, there are pictures on the phone of severed heads for some reason which is never explained.
And then honestly nothing happens, the phone call Will gets somehow affects him and Carrie, but it affects Carrie more. She starts looking up things about the occult online and staring at a picture of a tunnel on her screen, sending Will pictures of the house saying she’s scared, etc.
Will’s life, which was never really stable to begin with, unravels and the movie is more about that than it is a horror movie. It has a few “scary” moments, but they feel out of place in what is essentially a drama. Wounds fails as a drama though because it’s characters are so unlikeable and lifeless you don’t care about what happens to them.
Wounds brings up scary stuff but it doesn’t go anywhere, the movie ends leaving you wondering what happens next but not caring enough. On top of everything, the first half of the movie revolves around this phone, which is receiving texts and photos that we are supposed to be reading, and even on a 50 inch TV I could barely make out the texts that are essential to the story and pictures which I think are supposed to be scary?
I’m so mad at this movie for existing, I’m mad at Hulu and Netflix for distributing it, please skip it.
There’s maybe… Maybe some deeper meaning here about relationships but I couldn’t care any less.
Grade: F
If you want spoilers so you can skip it, here they are.
The movie ends with Will going to the guys house who was injured during the bar fight at the beginning, some how this guy (Eric) is integral to the plot. He won’t go to the hospital so his wound is infected now. He had no contact with the phone, which Will has lost somewhere along the way but he calls Will saying he has a present for him. Will shows up, the guy has no idea what he’s talking about and wants Will to leave. But then finally tells will to look in his nightstand. The phone is in there, Will calls the number that called him earlier, the sound of static and screaming Kid Rock fans are heard and then Will sucks some sort of thing out of the wound and into him while cockroaches cover the lens so we can’t really see it and then the movie ends. STUPID.
Anyways, please just skip this movie I beg of you
The Wind
IMDB Description: A plains-woman faces the harshness and isolation of the untamed land in the Western frontier of the late 1800s
The Wind is a mix between a horror film and a Western, it follows a woman named Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard) who lives a lonely existence with her husband on the prairies in the late 1800’s. Lizzy and her husband have moved there hoping to basically colonize this area, but it’s a slow process; when they finally get neighbors Lizzy is less than thrilled and the ghosts of the prairies begin to invade.
I honestly don’t know who I would recommend this film to, it’s neither an entertaining Western nor a scary horror film. The best part of The Wind is the character Lizzy and the acting of Caitlin Gerard, she spends most of the film alone, acting among a small room or desolate land. It just isn’t enough though to make for an entertaining enough movie, you’ll most likely find yourself enjoying one of the most interminably boring movies of 2019.
Grade: D+
Satanic Panic
IMDB Description: A pizza delivery girl at the end of her financial rope has to fight for her life – and her tips – when her last order of the night turns out to be high society Satanists in need of a virgin sacrifice.
Satanic Panic is 100% an entertaining ride, you will never once be bored, if you’ve got a few friends over you’ll probably enjoy this ride from start to finish. It isn’t funny enough or scary enough to really urge anyone to watch it but you won’t be bored.
Satanic Panic has a lot of interesting aspects, Rebecca Romijn is having a lot of fun here and newcomer Hayley Griffith is sweet and entertaining. The practical effects are fun, including moments with Romijn’s husband Jerry O’Connell. I really enjoyed a lot of the moments between the main character Sam (Griffith) and her friend Judi (Ruby Modine), it was actually a highlight of the movie for me.
Satanic Panic is fun, but it’s the equivilant to a fast food cheeseburger, you won’t be thinking about it much the next day.
Grade: C+
Trick
IMDB Description: A no-nonsense detective tries to track down a mass murderer named Trick, who is terrorizing a small town
Trick has all the makings of the next slasher franchise, but it’s too formulaic to be realized as such. Trick takes a note out of almost every horror franchise’s book, Halloween, Friday the 13, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc. but it’s still really entertaining.
Omar Epps, who you’ll recognize from House, brings some credibility to this film but he’s the cliche of the tired old cop who will do everything to stop his killer. Trick is a cliche, but it is an entertaining watch at Halloween time nonetheless with some scary kills and thrilling moments.
Grade: B-
Sweetheart:
I may be the only person in the world championing Sweetheart, but mostly because not many have seen it. It isn’t streaming on many platforms, besides rental on itunes, and it hasn’t been advertised to really any degree.
When a young woman name Jenn (Kiersey Clemons) is shipwrecked on a small island, she is forced to learn to adapt to life alone on this island. She assumes she is alone, but she soon learns that every night a monster comes to shore.
This movie is very simple, but it’s so much fun. Clemons is one of our brightest young actors, and she definitely brings something to this role, especially having to act alongside no one for most of this movie.
Sweetheart has a few moments of complete and utter dread that I won’t forget, it’s freaky and you really put yourself in the shoes of the main character. I enjoyed this movie immensely, at the moment it’s in my top ten. I don’t want to say any more as I’d get into spoilers so I’ll just leave it at that.
Grade: A
Eli (2019)
IMDB Description: A boy receiving treatment for his auto-immune disorder discovers that the house he’s living in isn’t as safe as he thought.
Eli, which was just recently released on Netflix, is a pretty standard horror film, and I don’t really have much to say about it but here it goes. The movie stars Charlie Shotwell as Eli, Kelly Reilly (Flight, True Detective) and Max Martini (Fifty Shades series) as his parents, and my love Lili Taylor (The Conjuring, Six Feet Under) as Dr. Horn.
The movie has a few scares, some interesting ghost-like horror, it would probably have been more effective in the theaters, but I probably wouldn’t haven’t ventured to the theater to see this one anyways. Eli isn’t necessarily bad in anyway, but it’s just a little tedious and repetitive, and nothing horror fans haven’t seen before. The movie trope of a character uncovering something, and no one believing them is so tired and frustrating. So in this movie, Eli spends the entire movie uncovering secrets, but guess what… no one believes him. It’s just tiring.
The last 15-20 minutes where the twist is revealed and everything begins to happen, are entertaining, and I didn’t see it coming. It’s not a bad use of your time, but I doubt you’ll remember it in a week or two.
Grade: C+
Ready or Not (2019)
IMDB Description: A bride’s wedding night takes a sinister turn when her eccentric new in-laws force her to take part in a terrifying game
This is a fun movie, one of my favorites of the year. It’s darkly funny, tense and interesting with entertaining characters. The ending is wild, and while the movie isn’t entirely scary it’s thrilling and feels like an old fashioned slasher film from the past
Grade: A-
Midsommar (2019)
IMDB Description: A couple travels to Sweden to visit a rural hometown’s fabled mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.
Midsommar is a curious puzzle of a movie, I’m not entirely sure who will enjoy this 2 and a half hour mystery horror. It’s creepy, it’s odd, it’s psychedelic, and honestly I’ll never forget it. It’s a slow burn, very reminiscent in both tone and subject to the 1973 film The Wicker Man. In the end, part of me wishes the story could have been maybe a little creepier, a little shorter, but it’s a very effective story, building to a climax much like director Ari Asters previous film Hereditary
Grade: B+
Crawl (2019)
IMDB Description: A young woman, while attempting to save her father during a category 5 hurricane, finds herself trapped in a flooding house and must fight for her life against alligators.
Crawl knows exactly what it is, a creature feature, and it doesn’t try to be anything smarter than that. It’s thrilling, tense and fun, definitely worth a watch. Spoiler Alert: The Dog survives, so no worries!
Grade: B-
Pet Sematary (2019)
IMDB Description: Dr. Louis Creed and his wife, Rachel, relocate from Boston to rural Maine with their two young children. The couple soon discover a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near their new home.
I’ve yet to see the original Pet Sematary, and I know this movie has split a lot of people but I for one enjoyed it, I found it to be wonderfully spooky, and wholly enjoyed the end of the film.
Grade: B-
In The Tall Grass (2019)
IMDB Description: After hearing a young boy’s cry for help, a sister and brother venture into a vast field of tall grass in Kansas but soon discover there may be no way out…and that something evil lurks within.
In the Tall Grass borders upon the silly, a premise that seems a bit odd, and I can see it isn’t working for some, but it drew me in, I was entertained and interested in figuring out the mystery behind the tall grass.
Grade: B-
Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
IMDB Description: While babysitting the daughter of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a teenager and her friend unknowingly awaken an evil spirit trapped in a doll.
Annabelle Comes home is a mix between Creation and the original. It has some scary sequences, it plays out a bit like a horror version of Night at the Museum, where everything inside the Warren’s home has been unleashed, it’s cool but ultimately this is setting up more prequels/sequels. Comes Home feels quite long even with an hour and 40 minute run-time. It takes a long time to get going, and you feel it because it doesn’t have a lot of scares until the last half hour. Most of the “spookiness” in the first hour are taken from better ghost stories, bumps in the dark and Poltergeist-like scares. Comes Home feels too clean, almost too PG-13 at times, much like Scary Stories to tell in the dark, it seems like a movie young teens would find scary but horror fans will feel like they’ve Seen much of this before.
Grade: C-
Child’s Play (2019)
IMDB Description: A mother gives her 13-year-old son a toy doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature.
Another horror remake, unfortunately I found this one to be a little too polished, silly, and goofy, with a tone they can’t get right. The look of Chucky himself is odd, and doesn’t quite achieve the same scariness the original did. Although, horror fans like myself will get a lot out of it, it has some pretty great kills and gore, and has some very entertaining sequences.
Grade: C+
Escape Room (2019)
IMDB Description: Six strangers find themselves in a maze of deadly mystery rooms and must use their wits to survive.
Escape Room is a popcorn horror film, a bit cheesy, over the top, very unbelievable, but you’ll never be bored, you won’t really hate it, and you could do a lot worse.
Grade: C
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
IMDB Description: On Halloween 1968, reclusive Stella and her two friends meet a mysterious drifter, Ramón, and uncover a sinister notebook of stories.
The movie was very subpar for me, the characters were unlikable and the story seemed quite vanilla, while it handled the scary sequences pretty well, including one I really enjoyed, the rest of the movie was so bland and boring. You can’t help but compare it to IT and it doesn’t hold a candle to that.
Grade: C+
Ma (2019)
IMDB Description: A lonely woman befriends a group of teenagers and decides to let them party at her house. Just when the kids think their luck couldn’t get any better, things start happening that make them question the intention of their host.
Ma is actually entirely entertaining and a fun time, the movie employs a host of veteran actors to bring this little horror movie some cred, like Octavia Spencer, Luke Evans, Missi Pyle, Juliette Lewis and a weird Allison Janney Cameo. This is a fun movie to watch with friends while having a drink, and one you shouldn’t take too seriously because it has plenty of plot holes, goofs and Silliness, but it’s better than many of the horror films I’ve seen this year.
Grade: C+
Us (2019)
IMDB Description: A family’s serene beach vacation turns to chaos when their doppelgängers appear and begin to terrorize them.
Us is a good movie, there’s really no denying it, unfortunately it just wasn’t my cup of tea. It’s well acted, well mad, entertaining, but unfortunately I found it utterly too unbelievable, I couldn’t buy into the story, I felt as if there was a point in the film where you either hop on board or you get left behind. I was left behind, and I never recovered. Not a thing about Us worked for me, the humor, the scares, the twists, sadly this one missed the mark for me, but I can see why others have enjoyed it so.
Grade: N/A
Haunt (2019)
IMDB Description: On Halloween, a group of friends encounter an “extreme” haunted house that promises to feed on their darkest fears. The night turns deadly as they come to the horrifying realization that some nightmares are real.
I don’t have a lot to say about Haunt, Its not great, it’s not bad, the characters are unmemorable but it has it’s scares, and it’s better than last year’s Hell Fest. It’s worth a watch for horror fans, you could do a lot worse.
Grade: C
The Hole in the Ground (2019)
IMDB Description: A young mother living in the Irish countryside with her son suspects his increasingly disturbing behavior is linked to a mysterious sinkhole in the forest, and fears he may not be her son at all.
We’ve seen this sort of story done before, and I don’t really feel like this story has anything new to offer, it’s a mystery you’ll want to watch become uncovered, but sadly it’s a bit too tedious and boring, and hard core horror fans might find this a bit of a snooze fest.
Grade: C
Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
IMDB Description: Tree Gelbman discovers that dying over and over was surprisingly easier than the dangers that lie ahead.
Happy Death Day 2 U is a very curious film, and I applaud it for taking the chances it did. The original Happy Death Day is a horror movie, the sequel is barely one. The writers took what happened in the original and bring us a drama/comedy/thriller with horror aspects. Horror fans will displeased, and I think fans of the original would be displeased, as this movie is such a departure from the original. I wasn’t a huge fan of the original, but I enjoyed it for the most part, and I think that made me enjoy this one a bit more. The best part of this sequel is the emotion behind it, I don’t want to give spoilers but for a movie like this to make such bold choices, and go places no one was expecting, I have to give them huge credit. That being said, in the end the movie isn’t great, it’s not funny enough, it’s not scary enough, the characters aren’t entertaining enough, I can’t recommend this sequel, it just didn’t meet the mark.
Grade: C-
The Dead don’t Die (2019)
IMDB Description: The peaceful town of Centerville finds itself battling a zombie horde as the dead start rising from their graves.
Writer/Director Jim Jarmusch made one of my favorite movies of 2013 Only Lovers Left Alive, so I was pretty excited for this zombie comedy he made. The Dead don’t Die is honestly just a bit too odd, and hard to really sink your teeth into. The characters are wonderfully well developed, and brought to live by incredible actors like Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, and more. The humor is really hit or miss, and one joke involving a song goes on far too many times. The movie is amusing enough to keep you entertained, and the zombies, and gore are good. The movie is sadly just to silly, and by the time aliens become involved and they break the third wall, you’ll be over it.
Grade: C-
Brightburn (2019)
IMDB Description: What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero to mankind, he proved to be something far more sinister?
An interesting idea that just isn’t executed effectively enough, the direction and writing is pretty poor, much of Brightburn is just cheesy, and feels too amateur. The movie is enjoyable enough despite how poorly it’s made, the scares and gore will leave horror fans happy, but I can’t give this movie a pass.
Grade: D
Itsy Bitsy (2019)
IMDB Description: Based on the centuries old poem, a family moves into a secluded mansion where they soon find themselves being targeted by an entity taking the form of a giant spider.
That Description right there doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I don’t remember them once bringing up the Itsy Bitsy Spider poem, nor do I remember the spider being an entity of some sort? It may have happened as I had checked out, this movie is a bore, not scary, and the spider effects are far too cheesy to work.
Grade: D
Polaroid (2019)
IMDB Description: High school loner Bird Fitcher has no idea what dark secrets are tied to the mysterious Polaroid vintage camera she stumbles upon, but it doesn’t take long to discover that those who have their picture taken meet a tragic end.
A silly premise is only made sillier with a tired script, bad acting, bad effects, and not a scare to be had. Skip this one, although I’m sure you hadn’t even heard of it till now.
Grade: D-
The Curse of La Llorona
The Curse of La Llorona is a boring, un-scary, boring, lifeless, boring movie. I love Linda Cardellini but she can’t breathe any life into this.
Too bad they (barely) connected this to the Conjuring Universe. Another bad film added to the catalogue.
Grade: D-
It: Chapter 2 (2019)
The highly anticipated It: Chapter 2 arrived last week, the first film in the series was a runaway hit, becoming the highest grossing horror film ever and attracting viewers of all ages.
The sequel picks up 27 years later, as the Losers club has grown up and (mostly) moved away from Derry, Maine, finding successful jobs, lives and significant others. When it becomes clear that Pennywise the clown or “It” has returned, the group must make good on the promise they made 27 years before and come back to fight the evil.
I haven’t read the book nor have I watched the 1990 version, so I’d been anticipating the end to this story for quite some time. Sadly Chapter 2 can’t stick the landing, it fails to rekindle the magic of the first film on almost every level.
My review will get a bit spoiler- filled from here on out.
The story reunites the group, now as adults, and we lose something in the transition. The young kids were funny and had a group dynamic that was delightful, in chapter 2 we have a group of sullen grown ups, haunted by demons from their past. It’s hard to fault the film for this, but if the characters could have regained some of the wittiness and comrade of the younger generation, the film would have been much more rousing.
The group may have been able to muster some of the old charm if the script didn’t work so hard to separate them, sending them all on individual journeys to find their macguffin… I mean token.
I wasn’t attached to these characters like I was in the original, and thusly felt little to no emotion for them, and the climax of the film relies heavily on you feeling something for these characters.
The tone of the movie is horribly out of sync, and ultimately it bludgeoned me into a bored submission. As a horror fan, Scares are few and far between, I went with a friend who was quite jumpy though. The movie relies less on tension and more on loud noises and CGI heavy sequences. The climax is so silly, Pennywise just seems to wait for the group to do everything in their power to stop him. IT seems to have all this power over the town but allows the group to gather what they need to bring him down.
For the second time this year, James McAvoy acts his balls off in a not good movie (Glass being the first), Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader and James Ransone stand out as well, while Bill Skarsgard makes another terrific performance as Pennywise,Unfortunately we don’t get enough of him.
Chapter 2 is huge disappointment, it’s never boring but that’s not really a compliment. IT’s an overlong mess. I think I’ll just re-watch the original and pretend it ends there.
Grade: C-
Glass (2019)
2017’s Split was a welcome surprise from director M. Night Shyamalan, who’s had a strained relationship with fans after missteps like The Last Airbender and After Earth. Split (and 2015s The Visit) seemed to have put him back on a path reminiscent of his early successes.
It’s no surprise anymore that David Dunn cameos at the end of Split, Bruce Willis’ character from Unbreakable who has superhero like powers, that are uncovered thanks to Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr. Glass. In 2000’s Unbreakable, where Mr. Glass has bones that break like… Well, glass. He has a theory that if he is this fragile, there must be someone out there with the powers opposite of his, and he finds that in David Dunn (Willis).
This connects with 2017’s Split in that James McAvoys 24th personality “The Beast” has supervillain like strength and now, in 2019’s Glass, it’s seemingly up to David Dunn to stop the Beast from harming more people.
Glass seems to try and find a middle ground between Split and Unbreakable, split being a horror/Thriller and Unbreakable a more straightforward Thriller/Drama. While most fans of Split, and there are a lot, will most likely be hoping for more scares and Thrills, and any fans of Unbreakable will have seen Split and would come to expect it in this sequel, instead, it completely botches any horror elements and offers us a completely boring character study. The first hour plus of Glass is a tedious, plodding and boring introduction to characters you already know, and other characters you either won’t remember and don’t need to remember.
*SPOILERS BEGIN NOW*
I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a film with such terrible direction, the “Final Standoff” being the worst culprit, actors seem to not know where to stand, there isn’t a lick of tension, Sarah Paulsons character is literally yelling her evil plan at a drowning character. The three great actors in this movie seem to make it work, McAvoy is amazing as he was in Split, while Paulson and Jackson come out unscathed, trying their best. the rest of the cast are directed into giving uneven (taylor-Joy, Willis) too bad (Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard).
Once Split was a success, it’s quite obvious Shyamalan didn’t know how to handle that, he quickly scrambled together a lackluster script rife with plot holes, and Universal let him as Split made over 250 million on a 9 million dollar budget.
The script is weak and dialogue often laughable. The characters are put into a mental institution that can afford 100 state of the art cameras but can barely afford proper staffing, and the staffing they can afford have almost zero training, as they inexplicably enter dangerous characters rooms alone, leave doors ajar, and allow characters to easily switch out their medication for Tylenol.
The script consistently alludes to a tower being built, the world’s biggest tower, it is brought up but ends up being a silly red herring, unnecessary of a mention.
The worst part is that it’s set in the real world but it’s less believable than any Marvel movie. Things fall in to place by sheer chance, with a completely laughable ending, while characters we’ve grown to like have unceremonious endings.
Shyamalan has good ideas, but this is proof he needs all the writing (and directing) help he can get, and really shouldn’t be given total control of a big budget/idea film again, as he can’t handle the pressure. There are brief moments and ideas here that show this movie could have been something but it’s executed so poorly and is quite possibly one of the biggest let downs I’ve seen.
Grade: F
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