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I love how the Friday the 13th series manages to be so formulaic yet everyone's got different favorites. My votes are for 3 (because despite the silly 3D stuff, it's the only one that has ever actually scared me) and 6 (the director went on to make the Lifetime classic Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life). As someone who likes the Halloween series much more - enough to actually enjoy Halloween: Resurrection - it kills me to say that the Friday remake looks a lot better than the Halloween reboot ended up being. Before the new Halloween came out, they were saying that it would be used to restart the series and they would be making more in that direction. Are they actually working on another or are we being spared another adventure in the Life and Times of Generic White Trash?
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Dec 30, 2008 22:31
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 13:23 |
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The movie was a little bit of a let down. It felt like a '90s Scream/Urban Legend style movie that occasionally paid homage to '80s slashers. The 3D stuff was fun and kept it from being a complete disaster but if you don't have a theater showing it in 3D, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they really enjoyed something like the Black Christmas remake. The biggest disappointment was the lack of variety in the kills. Aside from the great stuff like the eyeball popping out toward you and Tom Atkins' jaw flying off the screen, most of it was just guessing which part of a character's head the pickaxe would hit this time. By the time Megan and the housekeeper were killed, I was actually glad they kept the deaths offscreen. I don't mean to be totally negative because the 3D stuff is the main attraction and that delivered, but I went in expecting to see a stupid movie and managed to leave surprised by how dumb it really was.
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Jan 16, 2009 23:31
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The last half hour really does ruin Silent House. Through the first 2/3, I kept wondering why it received such bad reviews because it was way more tense than I expected. It was even better than other recent home invasion movies like Ils and The Strangers. The "one single camera shot" gimmick was impressive and used effectively. It heightened the suspense without being obnoxious and while you don't have to be Houdini to find the hidden cut tricks, it wasn't blatantly obvious. Then the last third completely changes the tone. The suspense is all gone and they left so many hints that the twist out of left field isn't even a surprise. Using such a serious subject to shoehorn a cliche crazy person gleefully getting revenge ending seemed like bad taste too. I really want to praise the first hour because they did a lot of great things but the way it switches from a decent light thriller to something resembling a scummy PG-13 I Spit On Your Grave combined with the most overused low-rent cliche twist turns the movie into a miserable experience.
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Mar 12, 2012 11:50
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It's hard to imagine a movie less ambitious than Paranormal Activity 4. It doesn't resolve anything from the previous movies and it doesn't care to explore anything that it brings up. What's the point of stuff like the demon picking up Alex and making her float in her sleep? I dunno but didn't it look cool??? It wouldn't be surprising if the cheap "something harmless pops onto the screen out of nowhere" scares outnumber the haunted house scares. Why bother focusing on marital trouble between the parents in the first half hour when the only payoff is to use it as weak excuse for the wife to not listen to the mysterious things the husband experienced? If Robbie isn't Hunter, who is Robbie and what is he doing there? The movie really is just filler killing time until they decide to wrap up the series. With that said, there are some things to enjoy. Alex and Ben are easily the most likeable characters in the series. The scares are mostly just more of the same stuff we've seen in the first 3 but some of them are still effective on a visceral level like a theme park haunted house attraction. The stuff they do with Kinect is pretty cool. The bubble bath baptism was a fun way to indoctrinate Hunter into possession or whatever the cult is doing. There's nothing overtly awful about the movie, it's just too lazy and content to keep hitting the same notes.
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Oct 20, 2012 04:58
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Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is great. It continues the trend of odd numbered Paranormal Activity Movies being good in a big way. There is an ocean of subtext to swim through. All the ritual "getting to know the characters while they goof around" scenes are loaded with weighted talking points like healthcare, immigration, and the negativity of anonymous online comments. This movie is like Spring Breakers in that there are a wide variety of themes to chew on (it's not as good as Spring Breakers but has the same appeal). In a genre full of homoerotic films, this might be the gayest horror movie since A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2. A huge portion of the film focuses on Hector being closeted. First he draws the dick on Jesse's face as he sleeps. Hector has no idea what to do with the girl after they leave the party. During the climactic scene, Hector goes into a closet for a while and momentarily escapes trouble as the antagonists lose interest. Then when Jesse spots Hector, Hector reluctantly goes into another closet, but this one "takes people to dark places" and ultimately causes his demise. There aren't as many of the franchise's trademark haunted house gags but that works in its favor after Paranormal Activity 4 was so stale. The suspense scenes all work well and this series' experience in stretching things to the outermost limits of dramatic tension is very effective in the Simon game scenes. The Mexican gangster cartoonishly blasting witches with a shotgun might be the most fun thing out of all 5 movies. The ending ties together the previous movies in an inventive way and overall the whole movie is such a great breath of fresh air for a franchise that was starting to need one badly.
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Jan 5, 2014 15:52
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 13:23 |
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sticklefifer posted:Wait, since this is an unnumbered side story, does that mean PA5 is going to be good or suck? Maybe they'll give the next one a subtitle and spare us a semantics debate. It will be interesting to see if they still rush the next one out in October, the opening weekend gross of this one isn't too hot (it's declined to the neighborhood where they ended the Saw franchise) and IMDb lists the next as still in pre-production.
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Jan 6, 2014 01:43
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