Geoffrey Eble

One of Martin Sheen's best movies. If you're an action junkie, you might not like it. But if you like to travel and you're a people person you will, whether you're religious or not.

A disgusting, vile, perverted movie with some beautiful cinematography that started out in kind of a promising way!? 50s rural vampires, with a beautiful 200 year old, female vampire menace next door?! What's not to like. Well, the rest of the movie, that's what, as it turns out. There were some kinda fun things about it, like the murmuring twins, the harpoon used in the whaling Dolphin's (her name, right?) ancestors were "into" (not a saying back then, fyi) and the bucolic, rural setting. Even the strange kid main character is kinda weirdly cool. It's not a big deal either way, as for me, horror movies are mostly to laugh at. But, when the movie veers into unfunny perversion, self-immolation, and the kid taking home a dead baby to idolize, instead of reporting it to the police, the movie starts to end up in a place very different than where it was headed at first, which frankly, was merely disturbed and uninteresting. The other f up was asking the audience to believe that mostly level headed little Seth, who was striving mightily throughout to save his brother from the clutches of the vampire, didn't give a shit about his best friend Kim, as he watched the real monsters of the movie abduct him to a certain grim fate. At least not enough to report the abduction to the sheriff! Later in the movie, he laments that all his friends were dying, but he didn't care enough to stop it. Huh? Bizarreness in and of itself doesn't always guarantee a movie to be of interest. This had plenty of that, and it's not all bad, but morphing this oddly original vampire movie into a paean to the supposedly extreme angst and pain of childhood, where a child is a victim and the real killers don't get f'd up, when the kid could have stopped it at any time, wasn't the best move.

2 stars is pushing it for me. I don't generally like Rotten Tomatoes' rating system, preferring audience scores, but I can see how it only got 16% on RT, haha 😆. Even the IMDB score is less than 50%, which is being generous. I mean the movie is kind of a joke, really. Its main premise is obviously that being pretty is shallow, but the movie itself is so shallow, poorly written and developed that you can't take it remotely seriously. And reading the book wouldn't help, because the basic themes are stupid. I mean, #1) a utopian flower is this society's power source? That's silly, being polite, idiotic if you're not. #2) how can you consider there to be two different societies when the only difference is the age of the people? #3) how, exactly, does 'being pretty' solve all the world's geopolitical problems? How does that obtain and fairly allocate natural resources. Do you think the Russians care about that? No, only teen girls who feel it might be so stigmatizing that they can't function would have such a ludicrous idea. #4) where are the parents? Where do the 'uglies' come from. I know there are some ugly babies, 😆 but are they all really that ugly from birth? Do they reproduce asexually somehow after being prettified, or do it the old fashioned way, then abdicate any parental responsibilities for their >ugly babies< for life. Maybe that's the joke of the book and this movie, who knows! 😄 I knew there'd be a point where the tired YA genre fad in fiction and movies would reach a place of ridiculousness that would mark its end. This movie and unfortunate book series (yuck, there's more than one? Uuggley!) may signal the beginning of that end.

I'd have rated this series 3 1/2 stars, but they don't have that option, so 4 it is. I understand many fans found this 'woke,' because it has mainly female characters, like the 2nd Captain Marvel movie, but I kinda liked it! Reading some of the obsessive/compulsive, minutia detailing negative reviews was kinda funny in itself. Many of the 'true fanboys' want to be seen as Star Wars afficionados, but then reading through their numbered points, many were either false, didn't actually understand the significance or meaning of certain scenes and events and misrepresented the original films!? That was weird, reading reviews by 'experts' and finding they were actually clueless about much of what they claimed. There are some parts that are far fetched and some things I don't like about it, too, the humorless, green skinned, baldo Jedi leader, for one. However, I think it evokes the overall feel and style of some of the best original films and sequels. The cinematography and some of the imagined environments are good. The story's a little on the dark side, but the main characters convey some genuine, heartfelt emotion and what Star Wars movie doesn't have a bit of dark side to it? So, overall I thought it was a better than average effort. Not great, but good/okay.

I was gonna rate this movie at 3 stars until I just saw it had a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes. So its confused mediocrity was prolonged for more than two hours! Usually, a movie has said what it has to say in 2 hours or less. Only 'serious' art movies or some blockbuster franchises deserve more time. This one doesn't. The actors are likeable enough, but the only quantum of solace for viewers is that there probably won't be a sequel.

Meh. With a C movie ending. It has some decent action sequences and a passable plot, in general, but the protagonist as her older iteration is so unlikable at times as to make the movie almost unwatchable.

Kind of a frustrating film. It has some great elements to it, it's realistic, the sparse acting is good, the mostly desolate scenery is where the actual Meek's Cutoff traveled and it has several points of historical accuracy. Unlike another reviewer stated, the route was actually used somewhat extensively for at least a dozen years after this initial attempt. It was the most direct route to the southern Willamette Valley saving 130 miles and the tolls required to travel down the Columbia River route on the main Oregon Trail. Contrary to her uninformed opinion, it would have been easy to become temporarily lost in this area, as it was little traveled prior to this first crossing. For western history buffs, it's a good watch. The ending was abrupt, but I actually like it upon reflection because it definitely conveys the wildness, potential danger, uncertainty and the sometimes life or death stakes of early westward migration into unknown territory.

I'm only rating this a one because there's no way to rate it a zero! The movie proceeds at the most plodding, pedantic pace in the history of cinema! It's like the viewer experiences some kind of extreme, relativistic time distortion where what normally might take place in 2 or 3 minutes takes ten. The editing is horrible, the movie dwells on scenes excessively and draws them out to a degree of absurdity that's laughable. The script is 4th rate, with some seriously awful writing. It takes what could have been an interesting premise for a sci-fi movie and completely ruins it. So skip this one. Don't watch it. You'll be glad you didn't. Note: There are better actors to play the President of the U.S. than Steve Tyler!

This movie, reminiscent of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers but standing well on its own, is one of the few movies I've seen enough to know most of the lines in the entire movie. A truly great adventure.

The reason why most critics didn't particularly like this movie is it isn't the typical flashy, mindless, 'superheroes save the world from aliens with their superpowers' fare. But audiences rated it much higher on IMDB. (6.6 out of ten or something). It's almost its own sub-genre in film (aliens control the world still populated by humans) although there are a few TV series that explore the subject. In tone and setting, it's more like Attack the Block, but more complex and not goofy at all. The movie is a little too somber, perhaps and somewhat oblique, as it doesn't delve into the alien's technology, their attack on our planet or how they came to be in control, but it's worth watching.