J*A*S*M

Certainly better than I expected when the next Saw was announced (the best since the sixth installment), but at the same time not so good that I understand the surprisingly high ratings across film databases. It benefits from the fact that Jigsaw's main antagonist is an incredible bastard, and that the film thus breaks slightly from the existing template by making Kramer and his sidekicks the protagonists. It would have worked better, though, in my opinion, if this approach had come right after the first original episode. It's too late now, especially knowing all that's been (and will be) going on, and this is really an unplanned padding made out of necessity after the creators eliminated the villain too soon, driving the series into a dead end in which it has hopelessly sunk deeper and deeper over time.

Not enough horror, a lot of failed comedy. The humour basically follows one single line: the heroine walks around wondering about "things" happening in the 80s that she finds inappropriate from today's perspective. It's funny the first time, maybe the second time, but not the twentieth or thirtieth time. And most of all, it makes the heroine come off as an insufferable over-sensitive cow. The horror dimension is toothless, the sci-fi dimension makes do with admittedly ripping-off Back to the Future without adding anything of its own. The film thus offers only the bare minimum, and as such is watchable ... but not to actively recommend it, that's for sure.

Wow, that was a piece of shit. Totally ridiculous. I was expecting some major conceptual twist, like it's all a simulation, because nobody could invent a world with such stupid rules, where such absurd things happen without logical motivations. And there’s none. Whether it works any better in the book I have no idea, but I'm convinced that this world is not the right stuff for the film medium and would have made directors other David Slade break a sweat. The film doesn't just have a problem with the rules of the fictional world, but also in the interactions of the characters – at times it feels like they've forgotten what happened in the previous scene. I guess there was a lot of editing, or the script was written by an asshole.

The plot is certainly nothing ground-breaking, it follows a template, unsurprisingly, as far as the identity and motivation of the villain and the development of the relationships between the characters are concerned. But it fills the “comedy slasher” box pretty much perfectly for me. It invites comparison to Totally Killer, released a week ago, and from that, Seminar comes out as “Totally Winner”. It has sufficiently fleshed out characters and fine chemistry between them, a high body-count and gritty and varied kills. I also enjoyed the directorial creativity, with the wit often coming not just from the dialogue, but also from the framing or editing. It's well done. Probably the most enjoyable genre surprise of the year (admittedly, there weren't many).

That's how I imagine “something terribly harsh and uncompromising” can be conceived by someone who has otherwise spent a lifetime making weepy and weepy dramas. Yeah, , really, if it hadn't run a monstrous 155 minutes, I'd recommend it as an unintentional comedy. Poor Maika Monroe, how did she get that way?

Admittedly made for less money, but by a huge margin the best Poirot by Kenneth Branagh. Intimate, elegant, understated, atmospheric. Where the Orient Express and  the Nile are overwrought and digital of, the beautiful mysterious residence in Venice makes do with playful camera angles, and without any CGI gimmicks. The horror overlay a nice bonus, oddly enough it holds up throughout the film, it wasn't just a trailer attraction.

Pretty meh in the end. A rather skillful genre exercise with the most bland looking alien you can imagine. The interchangeable trauma subplot shouldn't have been there at all, or should have been in a more ambitious film. It just stalls the flow and then downright kills the finale. I also rated last year's Nope by Jordan Peele with only three stars, but the creativity of the execution of those traditional UFO/ALIEN themes was completely different there. 5/10 (almost at **)

This franchise is pretty stale already. The decent craftsmanship keeps it watchable, but otherwise it's a show of creative confusion and futility - we've seen it all, we know it all.

For four fifths of the running time, this was the best horror flick of the year. Beautifully atmospheric, like a walk through a visual horror gallery where pretty much every shot has something going on for it. A weird mum, a weird dad, a weird house; poor boy. It feels like a bizarre, psychotic nightmare about monsters in the family that you can't wake up from. The whole thing is so out of step with the logic of everyday life and behaviour that I felt it had the makings of a future cult-classic with a legion of fans who will return to it fondly. Unfortunately, the ending kind of throws a wrench in the works, and many moments suddenly don't work as they should. Maybe it needed more money for visual effects, or a more experienced editor, I don’t know, but by the end I lost that feeling of full immersion, and in the moments where there was supposed to be a terrifying climax, it was hard for me not to grin in amusement. Not to mention that the hitherto appreciated “dream illogic” becomes, well, just stupid illogic as the story progresses. And please, for the next time, the monster shouldn’t have a long expository monologue.

Teenage horror for adults, painful both physically and psychically. The characters act like morons at times, but thanks their good portrayal, you understand why they act like morons. Excellent stuff, no wonder A24 picked it up at Sundance. Only the ending could have had a better build-up.