Cara Moore

The Scary Movie series started off a series of "Movie" movies about other movie genres. Most of them follow the same formula; make a series of ridiculous parody skits of popular movies featuring impressions of famous people, then string all the skits together with a core set of characters to loosely tell a story. The humour has dated terribly on Disaster Movie, so if it was unfunny in 2008, it's even more unfunny now. Of course these kinds of movies have their fans, which is why they kept making them, but any one watching today will struggle with the dated pop-culture references. It is like watching a time-capsule of who and what was popular back in 2008, referencing things like Facebook back when it was a new thing "uh everyone's on facebook now!" but it also has a very distasteful representation of Amy Winehouse guzzling down gasoline, just a few years before her death from substance abuse. This movie (and most of the other "X Movie" movies) is totally out-classed by earlier classic movie parodies like Hot Shots! and Airplane! both of which are much older but have held up so much better with time than this garbage.

This is going to end badly. I don't recommend this movie. Like, at all. So, I'm writing this as I watch the film. We have a sheriff and deputy in a small town, crazy hobo, teens on a road trip that get lost, a horror movie nerd, a small town dinner, enough horror cliches yet? Then there are strange things happening, foreshadowing? Well, there is a lot of foreshadowing going on, fracking, climate change, animals acting weird, zombies. It seems like the biggest setup ever, yet I'm wondering if anything is really going to start happening in this movie. Some movies have a slow build up, but a rewarding payoff... still waiting for the payoff. It's around 45 minutes in and I'm realising that this movie is paced terribly slowly, with a lot of characters getting set-up for slaughter, eventually. Review time: OK, this movie could have been better if it didn't waste time setting up so many horror cliches that aren't really funny. Sure, the director has seen a lot of horror movies before, so has your audience, stop trying to show-off and commit to trying to entertain us. The dry, low key reactions and breaking of the "forth wall" by our main characters reminds me a little of Zombieland or Shawn of the Dead, but is no where near as amusing. Sadly, despite the long set-up, it's just another forgettable take on the zombie genre. I think the only highlight is Tilda Swinton, even if her katana wielding character is derived from a certain "The Walking Dead" character. My advice, skip this movie. If you haven't seen Shawn of the Dead, watch that instead. Heck, even if you have seen it before.

Basically it's 2 goons trying to capture puppies. The story is simple enough for kids, Cruella wants the puppies for their fur, offers a large sum of money to buy them, but she is clearly dishonest so the family refuse her offer. Cruella hires two incompetent goons to steal the puppies instead. As I said, it's a simple story, so while it's fun to watch especially if you love the puppies, it's also a bit bland and is full of cliched tropes which makes this movie very average for a Disney movie. I'd recommend the original animated movie over this.