Nathan Palmieri

500 Days of Summer wannabe. Jarheads wannabe. The movie takes on too many aesthetics and story-telling styles, and what you get is slivers of things you’ve not only seen before, but have been done better in other movies. The story is everything we’ve seen before, and it’s slowness and predictability make it... very underwhelming. Ultimately this movie tried too hard and you can feel it from the first vague line about trees. Tom Holland did great tho, but not the breakout he was maybe hoping for.

Save your $20. This movie is unimpressive, boring, and predictable. THE STORY: Poorly written and not scary. Kevin Bacon has a dark past that becomes the root of the film. Like, the film is completely centered around the death of his past wife and whether or not he caused her death. Yet... none of this ever really shown or worked into the script, besides a couple lame 2 second flashbacks. It’s so weakly alluded to, that we don’t really care about it until it becomes the “big twist” and climax of the film. THE SCARES: Really nothing too scary about this film. Some random old guy whispering in a little girls ear. A couple lame jump scares. A haunted house that warps time, but that’s never really that scary. There’s never a reason to be scared, because we don’t know what we’re supposed to be afraid of until the last 5 minutes of the movie, and by that point, it’s already resolved. Also, can we talk about the super cheesy/low-budget looking effects? The scariest part of this movie was how predictable it was... and I suck at predicting movies! IN CONCLUSION: I feel like this movie had potential, sounds like it’s based on a book that was really good. But it really misses the mark in a lazy, uncaring sort of way. This director is know for some great work, and had a great cast. Him and Kevin Bacons previous duo “Stir of Echoes” was great. Unfortunately, this movie could have been awesome, but it sucks. Save your money and wait til it’s free, then maybe you’ll enjoy it more.

This movie was terrible. The story line was insanely predictable and boring. The acting was cringe worthy. The movie relied on the little boys’ use of the F word and some (not even funny) sex jokes for 100% of its humor. So... if you think it’s funny to hear a middle schooler say the F word then this movie will be hilarious to you because there is hardly any comedic depth past that. Another thing that bothered me is that there is no consistency to the characters innocence. In one scene the joke to the audience is that they don’t understand basic sexual terms, and then in the next scene they candidly use those same terms having a full knowledge of what it means. And then the script flips it back and forth. So is the joke that they’re innocent little boys? Or that they’re raunchy little dudes? Pick one please, and stick to it. I think the main thing that bothered me about this movie was the high rating. The only thing I can think of that boosted this movies ratings are the “2019” political themes worked into it. The boys are shown being taught consent and “no means no” at their school, then they’re shown asking for consent before a kiss, etc. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s the only way I can see this movie drawing positive critical attention. Honestly it’s a terrible movie. It’s a lame comedy with a poor script and bad acting. If you watch the trailer you’ll get the only laughs this whole movie has to offer.

The plot feels like they were coming up with things as they went. The twists were disappointing and carried little weight because of how poorly developed they were in the past two films. Instead of thinking of a clever storyline with an epic ending the writers stuck with what they knew (weapons that can blow up a planet) and just multiplied the quantity to make it more... epic? “Now there’s a million of them!!!” This movie flip flops so many times it’s hard to feel any emotion towards it. Chewbacca dies.. wait no he didn’t! C3PO loses his memory.. psyche! Rey dies, of course not, she is brought back to life! There were too many cheesy moments that just didn’t make sense. Lando finding a whole army of resistance pilots in 5 minutes... Rey adopting herself into the Skywalker family just because... she wants to? Too much cheese man. That being said Driver and Ridley did a great job. Their scenes together were the only parts of the movie that were awesome. Special effects were great. This movie needed more organization and simplicity and it would’ve been better.