J*A*S*M

A solid vampire tale without any ambitions to do anything in any untraditional or peculiar way (for that, I recommend the one last year from New Zealand). But in spite of it (or actually, because of it) the result is a very easy-going but also very nice, watchable and likeable film. I had fun and I laughed.

This experience is hard to describe, but the predominant impression is something between fascination, interest and facepalm. The closer it gets to the ending, the worse things are. The beginning is not too shabby, though, McDonald delivers a pretty creative and scary picture, which unfortunately crumbles in his hands after some time. The moment it switches to… well, actually, I don’t know what that was exactly, some sort of dream reality, perhaps?… you loose the bearings of the plot and the rules that apply to it. On top of that, there are so many approaches at play and they could result in anything from a brutal home invasion or a poetic feeling, to a bizarre surrealist thing, but all those things together are actually weird. In any case, Hellions has a couple of interesting scenes and the film is worth watching to make your own opinion. It’s certainly one of the most interesting new things around, even if I’m far from an explicit compliment.

I want to believe that things will work out with time, but the first episode was quite bad. I don’t mind that it’s a copy of foreign formats (where else can you learn but from American late night shows?), but the worst is that, from the first to the last minute, it grinds terribly and all the conversations feel artificial and fake. I would get rid of the games and give more space to Hezucký… and I would also allow Mareš to improvise a bit more. More interesting guests wouldn’t hurt, either. It also needs an audience that would react more lively (either spontaneously or with the help of cheerleaders, but certainly not prompted by the host). I think Leoš Mareš is one of the few Czech hosts that can handle this format, and hopefully he will get there. In any case, better than Genzer and Suchánek.

What the advertising sold as a run-of-the-mill stalker thriller it’s actually an ambitious and smart psychological drama with only hints of the genre elements of thriller and horror (the film probably has the ugliest jump scare of the year). Even after the end, the film is a fable with lots of empty spaces that could be easily filled with fairly different versions of the events, which makes for post-viewing debates. Certainly, a surprise from first-time director Joel Egerton, I hope he’ll get back behind the cameras soon.

The rating is relatively low, but it doesn’t mean that I want to scare people away from this compilation of stories (or rather, a series of shorts, some of which are less than a minute long). Some of the stories are really good, for instance "The F*cking Creepy Kid In Apartment B" has a great idea. Basically, it’s something like The ABCs of Death, but cheaper, and everyone will find something to their taste, but as “film” proper it can’t really be rated.

A film like this, which in a predictable way arrives at a predictable conclusion - though without a single stumble or hesitation in execution - can’t be 105 minutes long. It really doesn’t work, it’s almost unwatchable. The ideal run in this case would be slightly more than 70 minutes, and I would give it as much as 4 stars, because Macneill does have talent, which he shows in many scenes. Unfortunately, he also shows in many scenes that he doesn’t have the script to justify their existence.

Lost After Dark in itself isn’t very interesting or good, but as a homage to the silly slasher movies from the 1980s was surprisingly likeable. It’s well made, fairly entertaining, with an original alteration in the order the death of each of the characters, as other reviewers have pointed out.

Decent horror-mystery snack. Keating wanted to make something like an episode of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits or The X-Files as a feature film, and pulled it off, I believe. The question is whether it’ll be enough for the audience. For me, this time it was. This young director has, I hope, many films in his future to hone his unquestionable talent with some true gem. At times, Pod is nicely atmospheric and paranoid to scary, but also somewhat unfocused, there are scenes that feel like from another film and pulled me out of the experience. Oh! And Lyla, played by Lauren Ashley Carter, is probably the biggest cow in the history of filmmaking.

Unfortunately, I’m not Turbo Kid’s target audience and I have to rate it lower than it would objectively deserve. Actually, I even had to convince myself to give it the three stars. A splatter fest from a post-apocalyptic alternative past, where bizarre characters on wheels chase and kill each other in various fun ways. Thumbs up for the music, thumbs up for the style, thumbs up for the character design (the best is the villain with the iron mask and rotary saws on his hands). But what is all that good for when the personalities of most of the characters pissed me off? (Most people here complain about the titular Turbo Kid, but he was the only one I could bear, actually. The one I hated, though, was his died blonde girlfriend). And I’m also not into like that kind of over-exaggerated brutality. But if you are into the 80s, I guess you’ll like this style a lot better.

Especially in the first half, Sweet Home screams in its hopelessness. Whenever the plot needs to move forward or get complicated, one of the good guys drops something, or stumbles on something, or their phone rings drawing the attention of the villain. And then there is the exaggerated score, which ends up being counterproductive. Shooting mostly in English wasn’t a very good decision, either, the Spanish actors don’t speak it very convincingly (assuming the English-Spanish BluRay is the original version and not dubbed). At times it’s also unintentionally funny. But as a plus, it has pretty good technical values and there’s the respect-worthy boss in the last act. In this case, I a have a bit of a sugar rush and I’m giving it at least three stars, even though reason tells me that it should be less.