Category Archives: Horror

Movie Review: M3GAN 2.0

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The original “M3GAN” released in 2022, received a very high 93% on Rotten Tomatoes due to its imaginative new ideas about AI. The new sequel M3GAN 2.0 ratings are only 57%, which most likely ends this franchise at two movies. The reason is the same: nobody thought writing a great script was important enough, because they had fans of the previous movie, and the same idea of throwing special effects to fix a film that once again did not work.

This script, which initially started off well, quickly devolves into a chaotic and nonsensical story. This time, there is a new robot, identified as M3GAN, that appears much more human and is significantly more violent than its predecessor. This robot utilizes much of the stolen technology from the original model and is now being deployed as an assassin to eliminate political enemies. Allison Williams returns as the lead scientist, Gemma, with Violet McGraw portraying Gemma’s niece, Cady. This screenplay is another example of a disconnected makes no sense story resulting from three screenwriters writing one script. How do three screenwriters write one script? If they work separately, like they probably did for this story, the end result is once again a movie that is disjointed and makes no sense.

Most of the last third of this mostly bad movie is all about Karate action scenes and extreme violence that lead to a ridiculous climax that, once again, mostly makes no sense.

Too many promising movie franchises like this one fail for all of these same reasons. I agree with the low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes of 57% and do not recommend this film.

Movie Review: Final Destination: Bloodlines

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The consensus of the overwhelming number of opinions is that the concept behind the six Final Destination movies is absurd – “death finds revenge on groups of people who cheated, violent death”.

Regardless, no one can argue about the high-quality special effects that show the horrific deaths of many people in these films. One cannot help but be impressed with the ideas and creativity behind the deaths and the chain reaction of events that cause these extremely violent scenes.

The sixth installment of the Final Destination franchise, “Final Destination: Bloodlines”, starts in a high-rise luxury restaurant tower where the overloaded top floor, where people are dancing, starts a series of events that cause the collapse of the building and the horrendous, violent death of everybody in the restaurant. This time around, the premonition that prevents tragedy is different, now recurring in the mind of the great-granddaughter of the woman who saved many lives some fifty years earlier in the high-rise tower.

The rest of this story follows the Final Destination paradigm where death finds revenge (in order) of all the people whose lives were saved, this time around killing all of the descendants of the people whose lives were saved fifty years earlier, because they were not supposed to be born – a new insane addition to the Final Destination story. It is all very stupid, but saved in each movie by the creativity and incredible special effects.

While this is a very good horror movie, the 92% Rotten Tomatoes concensus is a bit too high, with my rating 85% and a recommendation mostly for fans of the six Final Destination movies.

Movie Review: Sinners

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The new movie “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan, who plays two roles, Stack and Smoke, in a rare example of one actor playing twin brothers.

This film is set in the Deep South, 1932, Clarksdale, Mississippi, where twin brothers, Stack and Smoke, return home to open a juke joint. There is massive evidence of bigotry, and members of the Klan as Smoke and Stack, throw money around town, attempting to convince people to perform or work at the new juke joint. Much of this is rather slow and boring for most of the movie until the entire story takes a gigantic turn into murdering vampires and zombies and violent battle scenes, until the insane conclusion, making this the strangest turn on a dime story change I have ever seen in any movie.

This movie is both written and directed by Ryan Coogler, marking his fifth collaboration with Michael B. Jordan that includes both “Black Panther” movies (2018, 2022), “Creed” (2015), and “Fruitvale Station” (2013), Jordan’s first movie.

I was surprised that a promising story degraded into something that seemed more like a B movie, and another run-of-the-mill Vampire film. I was also surprised at the appearance of actress Hailee Steinfeld, who seemed miscast in this movie, playing Stack’s love interest.

The special effects, while well done, have been seen many times before, with battle scenes involving the living and the dead, and the various methods of how to kill a Vampire. At this point, enough of the killing of the already dead.

The biggest surprise is the extremely high and wrong 98% rating for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with my rating 75% and only a very small recommendation, because there is nothing new in this story, other than the sudden and drastic change in direction.