Prey | 2021 Halloween Movies

Netflix has a few foreign films (or series) on their roster this year. Prey is the first one that crossed my path. Despite my German heritage, I’ve never watched a German movie before. It did make me wonder how Germans would handle a horror movie.

Roman (David Kross) is celebrating his upcoming wedding with his friends. The five men have decided to spend the weekend in the mountains. When they begin to hear gunshots, the group thinks there are simply some hunters nearby. Little did they realize that they are the ones being hunted.

This may be the shortest review I have ever written. Prey is a terrible movie. Now I’ll admit that I watched it dubbed in English instead of in the original German language but I don’t think the original language could have made this any better. There is very little plot or characterization going on. The entire plot is literally this group of men being killed. We get a tiny glimpse into why the killer is shooting people but at no point does the movie tell us why these particular men are being killed. The reason we are given makes very little sense.

In addition, we don’t get to know anything about the men in order to make us sympathetic toward them. Sure, murdering people is bad but we don’t get any sense that these particular men don’t deserve it. We get some weird flashbacks of Roman with his fiancée, Lisa (Livia Matthes), but these don’t really tie into what is going on currently. I mean, we do learn a secret about Roman’s brother, Albert (Hanno Koffler), but it feels very tacked on and there are no repercussions to the secret.

It’s just a bad and pointless movie. Don’t bother watching it unless you are having trouble falling asleep. Though maybe you shouldn’t fall asleep to a murder movie.

Malignant | 2021 Halloween Movies

Most of the time, scary movies are far off my radar. I may know some of the movie titles as I browse through the theater listings but I rarely know more than that. This time, however, there was a lot of buzz surrounding Malignant. And I only heard good things. So, for once, I was looking forward to a horror movie. Let’s see if it lived up to the hype.

Madison (Annabelle Wallis) has a difficult life. She has had multiple miscarriages and her husband is rather abusive. When she, once again, loses a pregnancy at the same time her husband is murdered, her life turns upside down. She begins having visions of other murders in town. It’s up to her sister, Sydney (Maddie Hasson), to dig into Madison’s mysterious childhood to find out what is going on.

My least favorite type of Halloween movie is a gory slasher flick. Thankfully, this doesn’t have a lot of gore in it. There are a lot of stabbing/slashing types of murders but it’s nothing too over the top. In my opinion, it’s the perfect amount of scary murdery stuff without organs spilling out all over the place.

However, my favorite part of Malignant is the cinematography. There are some absolutely gorgeous shots paired with interesting camera angles. Sometimes we’ll see an entire scene take place from the ceiling, as if we were crawling above the characters. Sometimes we’ll get a strange angle that makes us question whether what we are seeing is real or fantasy. That is what kept me intrigued.

The plot has been done before. It’s nothing particularly new. I was able to pretty accurately guess the “twist” before it came up. It’s actually the amazing talents of Marina Mazepa, a contortionist who brings the villain to life, that makes the movie special. If it wasn’t for her, there is no way the movie would have been as interesting.

Do I think you should watch Malignant? I think it’s worth watching. Especially if you enjoy the filmmaking aspect of a movie. But if you are looking for good cop-work, skip it. These cops are nothing more than stereotypes. Come for the visuals, stay for the…visuals.

We Need To Do Something | 2021 Halloween Movies

We Need To Do Something is an independent movie release on September 3, 2021. It was available both in theaters and streaming via video on demand. I was able to buy it on Amazon Prime for about $15. (You can rent it for like $7 if you don’t want to buy it.)

The plot for the movie is simple: A family of 4 gets trapped in their bathroom during a large thunderstorm. That’s it. That’s the whole plot. It’s not a lot to work with.

When I was looking at lists of scary movies released this year, Something sounded like it could be an interesting take on family dynamics. Unfortunately, the movie relies too much on the audience’s imagination. There are ways you can make a movie scary without showing the monster but you have to give us something to go on. All we get is family in-fighting, people describing things they see outside the bathroom, and vague flashbacks that might be the reason everything is happening.

And that is where the main problem lies - we don’t know what is happening. We don’t know how many days have passed since the family got stuck. They start fighting VERY quickly. It’s possible this whole movie takes place in 24 hours and we would never know. We also don’t know what terrible things are outside the door. The family is stuck because a tree fell on their house, blocking the bathroom door. (It occurs to me that every bathroom door that I know opens inward so the family wouldn’t have gotten stuck. Let me know if your bathroom door opens outward.) A couple of the family members, mostly the son and dad, make references to things they see outside the door but we only get a few sounds that don’t really match the descriptions and a bloody tongue. It’s not enough to allow us to decide what is actually outside.

On top of that, the story tries to give us a reason all of this is happening. However, they don’t really show us how the actions caused the consequences. Now, I get that this was filmed during Covid-19 so the cast was kept very small and they were confined to a soundstage. But we needed something more. It could have been a newspaper article talking about some of the events that Melissa (Sierra McCormick), the daughter, says happened. She says that one of her classmates died but her parents know nothing about it? That seems unlikely. As it is, we barely know the outside world exists.

To be honest, Something isn’t worth watching. It’s 97 minutes of boring nothingness. There are better ways to spend your time. Like maybe watching paint dry.

Fear Street Trilogy | 2021 Halloween Movies

Way back in July 2021, Netflix released three separate yet highly entwined movies. Based on the books by R.L. Stine, Fear Street Part 1: 1994 came out on July 2, followed on the 9th by Fear Street Part 2: 1978 and Fear Street Part 3: 1666 on the 16th. Grab a snack because this may be a long review.

All three movies revolve around the same basic plot: Every generation, the town of Shadyside is tormented by a series of brutal murders. During the 1994 massacre, a group of teenagers decide to figure out the cause of the curse and end it once and for all. The second and third movies take us back in time to reveal how the curse started, why it has been able to continue for so long, and who is really responsible for all of the deaths.

Part 1 introduces us to our main characters: Deena (Kiana Madeira), a spitfire lesbian who isn’t afraid to stand up for herself or her loved ones; Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), Deena’s ex-girlfriend who recently moved a town over to Sunnyvale; and Deena’s younger brother, Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr), who spends way too much time studying the horrific events of the town’s past. So, most of the town of Shadyside believes that they are cursed by Sarah Fier, a witch who was executed in 1666. Deena doesn’t believe in the curse but starts to change her mind when Sam has a vision on Sarah and starts attracting previous serial killers…who should be dead. After a LOT more murders, they are led to C. Berman - the only survivor of the Camp Nightwing massacre.

This leads us to Part 2. Here, we pick up Christine “Ziggy” Berman (Sadie Sink as teenage Ziggy, Gillian Jacobs as adult Ziggy) as another main character. Ziggy is a bit of a troublemaker, which leads her to being ostracized by the rest of the campers. She gets accused of stealing and being a witch, which results in some Sunnyvale campers trying to hang her. Two camp counselors intervene and Ziggy is sent off to the nurse. The nurse, the mother of one of the previous serial killers, goes a little crazy and attacks camp counselor Tommy (McCabe Slye), the boyfriend of Ziggy’s older sister, Cindy (Emily Rudd). It turns out that Tommy is the next killer and he goes around murdering everyone. Ziggy and Cindy figure out how to end the curse but they get murdered when they try. Ah, but we know Ziggy survives. She only survives because camp counselor Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland), son of the Sunnyvale sheriff, brings her back to life with CPR. But wait, I thought Ziggy was the only….

Onto Part 3! In 1666, Shadyside and Sunnyvale are one village called Union. Sarah Fier (portrayed by Madeira) lives a rather normal life with her father and brother, though she has an uncanny knack with the family pigs. One night, the village teenagers decide to have a party in the forest. Sarah and Hannah Miller (portrayed by Welch) visit a reclusive widow to gather “special” berries for the party. There, they notice the widow has a book of black magic but they do not take the book. Instead, they go to the party, have fun, get hit on by one of the boys, make fun of him, and go have sex with each other. Needless to say, these events result in them being called witches when the town starts to go downhill. (And by “downhill,” I mean rotting food, tainted water, and murder.)

I don’t want to give too much away but we do end up back in 1994 with Deena and things do get resolved. Though the director has expressed interest in expanding the series. So this might not be the end of our friends.

Both my husband and I loved the series. I thought the acting was phenomenal. Considering a lot of the main cast played dual roles, I think they all handled it well. No cheesiness to be found.

I also thought it was brilliant to have it as a series of movies instead of just one. It gave the plot and the characters time to breathe. I normally hate scary or slasher movies. This is the exception. If you are looking for some good Halloween thrills, Fear Street is where to go.

Cinderella (2021)

On September 3, Amazon released a new Cinderella movie on their Prime service. Since it’s release, it has gotten some pretty terrible reviews. But did the movie really deserve all of the hate? Well, I watched the movie just for you…so let’s find out.

The story has the basics of the standard Cinderella story - orphan Ella lives in the basement and serves her stepmother and stepsisters. She catches the eye of the prince, who is in need of a bride. With some help from a magical godmother, she attends a ball, where the prince falls in love with her. At midnight, she runs away, leaving a shoe behind. The prince searches the kingdom for his new love. Happily ever after,

However, this version gives us a slightly feminist slant to the story. There is an underlying plot of how women are basically considered second-class. Ella dreams of owning a dress shop but she is told multiple times that women can’t run a business, Princess Gwen has tons of brilliant ideas for updates to the kingdom but her father constantly tells her to shut up, and even Queen Beatrice is talked down to by her husband when she speaks up on her son’s behalf. There are so many instances of misogyny that it almost becomes the main plot of the film. I don’t know that it is a bad thing. It is a little overbearing though.

The main thing I want to talk about is the music. In this world, people break out into song for little to no reason. And, yes, everyone around them can hear them. Or at least they can most of the time. The problem is the song choice. This movie was written and directed by Kay Cannon, who also wrote all three Pitch Perfect movies, and it shows. She has Prince Robert sing “Somebody To Love,” which fits well in Ella Enchanted, another Cinderella movie. Here, though, Robert looks utterly stupid singing about how hard he works. Yes, I know it is supposed to be sarcastic but it just doesn’t work. Heck, the movie STARTS OUT with the village singing Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” mixed with “You Gotta Be” by Des’ree. It is not good. And it just doesn’t stop. It seems like there is another song every ten minutes. (Please note that it is a 2-hour long movie.)

Despite all of the terrible reviews, there is a good movie hidden in here. If they made this a straight romantic comedy instead of a jukebox musical, I think this would have been a fantastic film. While Camila Cabello does a decent job with Ella, the prize winners here are the women of the royal family. Minnie Driver as Queen Beatrice is pure gold. Pierce Brosnan’s King Rowan would have died in his first scene thanks to the daggers from her eyeballs. Tallulah Greive’s Princess Gwen doesn’t get a lot of screen time but she kills every scene she is in. The only other character that I enjoyed was Prince Robert’s…Scottish friend? I don’t think they even gave the poor guy a name but he is awesome.

Should you watch it? No…I don’t think you should. While the “movie” parts aren’t that bad, there are so many absolutely awful songs that they make it difficult to enjoy the good parts. Go watch Ella Enchanted (on Amazon Prime) or the 1997 Rogers & Hammerstein Cinderella with Brandy (on Disney Plus). You would be much happier with those choices.

PS: Please stop letting James Corden run rampant all over your movie. I understand wanting to cast him because people know his name. But there is NO reason to keep cutting to him every few minutes. It did NOTHING for the story besides annoy your viewers. He isn’t worth it.

LuLaRich - Reviewing The Amazon Docuseries

Halloween reviews start on October 1!

Unless you have been living under a rock, I’m sure you have heard of LuLaRoe. You know, those are the “buttery soft” leggings that “fashionable” moms everywhere wear. The company skyrocketed to popularity only to fall from grace amid scandal. Well, the people that brought us the Hulu documentary, Fyre Fraud, have given us LuLaRich, a four-part docuseries on Amazon Prime, to show us all the gritty details behind the shady company.

In case you aren’t aware of the issues surrounding LuLaRoe, here is a not-so-quick synopsis. The company started with DeAnne Brady selling maxi skirts, that she sewed at home, out of the trunk of her car. When she became overloaded with sales, she recruited some of her friends to help sell the clothes. As the company grew, more consultants signed on and the company began to form a tiered (or may I say, pyramid) ranking of these consultants. The top tiers would make a commission based on the sales of their lower tiers and so on. (Obviously the bottom tier didn’t have commissions as there was no tier under them.) Those top tiers would rake in tens of thousands of dollars per month. I believe some of the top tier consultants got monthly checks for $70,000 or more. While multi-level marketing (MLMs) are not illegal, pyramid schemes are. And this, my friends, is a pyramid scheme.

The issues really started when LuLaRoe had more consultants than an area could handle. It became difficult for consultants to sell their products because there was so much competition. In addition, the quality of the clothing started to go down. Leggings, their highest selling product by far, would arrive smelling bad or have holds in them or the patterns were sewn badly, resulting in the infamous Tower of Pisa leggings or other almost-x-rated patterns.

Eventually, consultants began leaving en masse. LuLaRoe, in an attempt to keep all of their profits, refused to honor the 100% refund they promised their consultants. Bring on the lawsuits!

How does the docuseries do telling this story? Eh. If you already know the story of the company, the series will probably bore you. There are some interviews with Brady and her husband, Mark Stidham, as well as some former employees. We haven’t heard a lot from the people involved with the actual corporation. Those parts are interesting. However, there are a lot of interviews with the very vocal consultants that were in the top tiers before they left the company. I would have preferred to hear more from the people in the lower tiers that lost everything and barely made any money. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who raked in tens of thousands of dollars each month on the backs of other people’s work then sob when their expensive sports cars are repossessed.

Each episode is roughly 45 minutes. If you are interesting in hearing more about the terrible things DeAnne and the company did (trust me, I only scratched the surface), it is worth the watch. However, if you are already familiar with the basics of the story, you would probably do better watching the video Vice put out in 2019.

I write about more than just Christmas movies. Seriously.

For the past three years, I have reviewed Christmas movies. I tend to get so burned out on them that I don’t know what to write about the rest of the year.

In an attempt to fix my Big Time Writer’s Block, I am going to expand the holiday movie reviews this year. Yes, I will still do the Christmas movies. But this time I am going to add Halloween to the schedule. I am going to review Halloween-related movies released in 2021.

Now - the Christmas movies usually have to follow some rules. The big rule is they have to be first released in the year they are being reviewed (no reviewing 2012 movies in 2021). The Halloween movies will follow that same rule. In 2018 and 2019, I only reviewed movies released in December. In 2020, I moved that to every movie released for the Christmas season, which started in November. While I would like to stick to movies released in October, I might not have enough movies to fill the entire month. There are some scary movies that either have already been released or will be released in the next few weeks. So don’t be surprised if you see some September releases in the October reviews.

Another addition is series. There are a few series that have popped up on the Halloween release schedule for 2021. I don’t normally review series as it can take me awhile to power through them. But I think there are a couple of 8-episode series that I could kick out pretty quickly. I haven’t committed myself to watching the series yet. We’ll see how that goes when they actually come out.

I am interested to see how the Halloween movies match up to the Christmas movies. I don’t particularly like slasher films but, then again, I don’t like cheesy love movies either. I really am a glutton for punishment, aren’t I?

Ten Worst Christmas Movies of 2020 | 2020 Christmas Movies

Finally, the time has come. The time that everyone has been looking forward to. My list of the worst Christmas movies of 2020.

10. A Nashville Christmas Carol - Just when you thought that no one could ruin Charles Dickens’ classic, Hallmark said “hold my beer.”
9. Christmas Comes Twice - Poor Tamera. She needs a better manager.
8. The Christmas Listing - Who thought real estate was exciting enough for a Christmas movie?
7. Christmas at the Castle - I wonder how many Scotsmen were offended by this movie.
6. Heart of the Holidays - Your leading lady can’t be both a genius and incompetent. Pick one.
5. The Christmas Aunt - The movie with the dumbest plot of the season.
4. My Sweet Holiday - NO MORE MONTAGES!
3. A Taste of Christmas - There should be at least one likeable character in your Christmas romance movie.
2. A California Christmas - Death everywhere.
1. A New York Christmas Wedding - I still don’t know what the plot of this movie was.

There you have it: the ten worst Christmas movies of the season. The other 66 movies I watched were fairly middle of the road. They were either boring or just OK. I think that the channels should focus less on the number of movies they show each year and pay more attention to airing good movies instead. The Hallmark Channel aired 24 Christmas movies, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries aired 16, Netflix had 11 (plus 4 I haven’t watched), Hulu had 1, and Lifetime outdid everyone with a whopping 34 Christmas movies! Imagine if they took all of the money spent on all of these and put out a handful of really awesome movies. They can still air their back catalog, like they do now, but I think everyone would be so much happier if the holiday movies they offered were amazing instead of intolerable.

Top 10 Christmas Movies | 2020 Christmas Movies

I watched something like 86 Christmas movies this year. There are another 4 movies that I haven’t watched yet. That means there were ninety Christmas movies released between Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Lifetime, Hulu, and Netflix. That is absolutely bonkers, isn’t it? So here are my top 10 Christmas movies released in 2020.

Honorary Mention: Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker - Since this isn’t really a Christmas movie, I didn’t want to put it in the top 10. However, it is definitely worth watching.

10. Spotlight on Christmas - A very cute actress-comes-home story
9. The Angel Tree - How to give back to your community without making it about yourself
8. Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding - When the sequel is better than the original
7. Cranberry Christmas - Proof that marriage is work and sometimes people don’t really want what they think they want
6. Love, Lights & Hanukkah! - Family is family, even if you’ve never met them before and they were raised in a different religion
5. Just Another Christmas - Foreign Christmas films can be better than American Christmas films
4. The Christmas Setup - The best movie from Lifetime, where the main couple is gay
3. The Christmas House - The movie with the gay secondary couple that broke Hallmark
2. Jingle Jangle - A Christmas musical extravaganza
1. Holly & Ivy - The best movie from Hallmark that shows a community stepping up to care for two children

There you have it. My top 10 Christmas movies of 2020. Let me know if you loved or hated any of the movies on my list. Keep an eye out later this week for my 10 worst list. I’m sure everyone is looking forward to it.

The Christmas Chronicles 2 | 2020 Christmas Movies

Back in 2018, Netflix gave us The Christmas Chronicles. The movie was such a hit that we got a part 2 this year. Not only do we get more of Santa and his elves, we also finally get to see Mrs. Claus!

Kate (Darby Camp) is spending Christmas on the beach with her family. Her mother, Claire (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), has started dating a new man, Bob (Tyrese Gibson). Kate is unhappy about the whole situation so she decides to run away. She, along with Bob’s son Jack (Jahzir Bruno), get kidnapped by a former elf, Belsnickel (Julian Dennison), in order to try to get into the North Pole. The kids are saved by Santa but now Belsnickel is attacking Santa’s Village. It’s up to Kate, Jack, Santa, and Mrs. Claus to save Santa’s Village from Belsnickel’s evil-doings.

Sadly, all of the things I enjoyed about the original movie are missing here. The elves, who were really cool in the first movie, spend a lot of this movie doing bad things, thanks to Belsnickel covering them with a potion. Kate is now a teenager and she’s kinda unbearable. She whines a lot and, even though she’s supposed to be a True Believer, she is terrible to everyone who isn’t Santa Claus.

Is it worth watching? Eh, Mrs. Claus is pretty awesome. Santa has another big musical number that is fun. I honestly think The Christmas Chronicles 2 would have been better with different kids or if Kate was teaching Jack how to be a True Believer. Instead, we get a lot of Santa fighting - both with Belsnickel and with the Yulecat.

The movie isn’t completely terrible but it’s not great either. If you really loved the first movie, I would recommend you skip the second. But if your curiosity wins out, it isn’t a completely terrible 2 hours. I just hope there isn’t a third movie in the works.