Alex Prakash

The acting in Season 2 alone is so phenomenal it makes most other shows look like school projects in comparison

I’m glad I started watching this series in the era of Netflix, because boy has it been streeetched out. I started watching because the premise was very promising, as were the first few episodes. Then it turned into a soap opera, and now I’m sat here watching Michaela hold hands with some Zeke under the stars while on a hike, oh how delightful. I wish this concept was worked upon by the makers of Sense 8 or Dark. Instead they went for How to Get Away with Murder and chose (copious amounts of) quantity over quality. Unfortunate, really.

This movie would’ve been perfect; the cast, the script, the acting… and then some fool wrote a bajillion unskippable songs into the script. I went in fully prepared to put up with them too, having been forewarned by my friends. “How bad can it be?” I said to myself. And boy did I find out, when after every five minutes of screen time, one or the other (and at times both) actors burst into confusing songs that begged for autotune. Save yourself the trouble, and this movie for pretentious, artsy film-awards; and just read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.

After watching the first part, I thought the concept was wasted on the director. He had reduced something with so much potential to the most distasteful example of why freedom of expression should, perhaps, not exist for ever Tom, Dick, and Harry after all. Then I watched part II. Have you ever paid to go to an improv night at your local pub, only to find that it’s actually “slam poetry night” and the poetry in question is just some pimple-faced, blue-haired, non-binary they/them loudly yelling at the crowds about how no one understands her? That’s how this movie made me feel. Someone needs to stop this director from making any more movies because now no else can do anything with such a fantastic concept, and whatever he has done with it is such a roaring dumpster fire of obnoxious rhetoric and watered-down storytelling that it left me wondering if I am, after all, masochistic for putting up with all of its 110 minutes.

I think most of the bad reviews come from viewers who selected this film hoping to see a horror movie, or a psychological thriller. Fair Play is, by all definitions of the genre, a drama. A beautifully executed commentary on relationships and fragile masculinity. I took off a star just because the ending, while good, did not match up to the relatively very finely nuanced character development otherwise present throughout the movie.

[No spoiler review] Audition (1999) is one of the dullest, most mindlessly gore-y Asian horror films I have ever seen. It drags on and on for an hour and a half, so much that you almost forget it belongs to the horror genre, and then suddenly, in the last half an hour, the director dumps a bucketful of meaningless, ugly and overly sexualised torture scenes on the audience. I love the Asian horror genre; this movie is a shameless insult to it.

The show follows a simple, straightforward storyline with little to no surprises or major plot-twists. However, what's noteworthy is that never have I seen a show with this little a number of likable characters. Apart from a handful of sidekicks, say Athelstan or Lagertha or Bjorn, there is not one main character who I could bring myself to like. Ragnar is your typical Himbo, apart from his moments of cheating, lying, oathbreaking, attempted murder of his own toddler, and many others which make you absolutely despise the series' main protagonist. Floki, his best friend and second lead, is essentially that girl in middle-school who told everyone she's a vampire after watching Twilight. A try-hard who pretends to be psychotic, raging, unhinged yet wise at the same time, Floki sadly ends up coming off only as annoying, attention-seeking, and autistic. The costumes, sets, and scenery are beautiful, however, and it is for those that I give "Vikings" whatever stars I've given.

Never, and I mean it, never, have I seen a horror movie which managed to put me to sleep, and yet, Pyewacket managed to do the impossible. For 70 out of its total 90 minutes of runtime, the movie drags on and on (and on) about an ugh-mom-you-just-don't-understand-me! girl and her excruciatingly boring teenage angst. The movie desperately tries to save itself in the last 20 minutes by unconvincingly trying to turn the plot into some form of crude psychological thriller, but fails oh so miserably. Years and years of watching horror movies across many languages and lores, and I think I've finally found the absolute worse to ever have been made.

I hardly rate a horror movie a full five, but "Last Shift" has earned every one of those stars. Instead of cheap, Halloween-themed jumpscares, the movie relies on slowly building up the spook, and it culminates in a beautiful finale. If you found the ending less than satisfactory, allow me to break it down for you. Warning, spoilers beyong this point. "Sarge" is very well aware of how other police officers have seen haunting visions in the station. He has too, likely. He shoots Jessica to prevent her from killing more innocent men, but is very well aware that she's likely perceiving them as intruders or cultists. "It's not them," he reassures her. When she's down, bleeding, he immediately requests medical assistance. But it's too late. Paymon's thralls, the spirits that still haunt the station, claim her soul as the helpless Sargent watches Jessica succumb to her wounds.

Oh Mike Flanagan, how far have you come. "The Haunting of Bly Manor" is by far one of the most beautiful works of cinema I have witnessed, surpassing the constraints of genre or categorisation. The show makes you gasp and sigh, love and fear. To say that this series belong solely in the "Horror" genre would be far from true. But perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of it all is the series's take on what exactly is a "ghost." What exactly does it mean to long for something so much, be it love or vengeance, that even death fails to do you part. And most of all, what exactly does it mean to remember. The creator's previous work, "The Haunting of Hill House" delivered a disappointing, confusing execution. But Flanagan has outdone not only himself, but most creators and directors across all genres in delivering this absolute masterpiece of what it means to be dead yet caught up in this world.