Meow Mew

The Substance is a difficult film for me to rate. The first three quarters or so are amazing in every way, from fantastic performances, beautifully composed shots, great directing, and effective horror elements that support a compelling concept. The last act of the movie, however, is a complete mess in my opinion. The plot follows Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading star who is fired from her workout show after reaching her 50s, an age when--according to sleazy Hollywood executives--women are no longer seen as beautiful or worthy. Despite being an attractive, mature woman with good qualities, Elisabeth, like many women, is made to feel like she isn't good enough because she isn't a young adult anymore. Desperate to be viewed as lovable and desirable again, Elisabeth accepts an offer of a mysterious back alley drug that promises to use her DNA to create a younger, "better" version of herself. The theme of unrealistic, toxic beauty standards is the foundation of The Substance, influencing Elisabeth, and eventually Sue's, every move. As a young woman, I appreciated the honest, sad, and ultimately catastrophic way this topic was explored, utilizing sci-fi and body horror to illustrate not only how unattainable western beauty standards are for women, but how detrimental they can be both to physical and mental health. The substance itself is a good metaphor for extreme beauty treatments and plastic surgery, along with how people are blind to their own beauty due to societal conditioning, making them willing to sacrifice their genuine selves to become as close to the Barbie doll American ideal as possible. As an avid horror fan, I can confidently say that the body horror in this movie is not only convincingly disgusting but shocking. At first, this aspect is slowly built upon and becomes increasingly more disturbing, however, it's so over the top by the end that it's laughable. I understand that the filmmakers likely intended for the last few scenes to be ridiculous, showcasing how unrealistic and absurd beauty standards are, but it wasn't well executed in my opinion. "Elisasue" is a caricature, a cartoonish monster who vomits up a breast and has Demi Moore's face stuck to her back. I was honestly speechless watching it because it was so goofy. One can argue that everything in The Substance is cartoonish to a degree - a clear satire of the entertainment industry, how predominantly white male Hollywood executives behave, and the life of a celebrity. This argument is true, and it's effective for most of the film, but the ending took it so far that it felt more like a low budget 80s horror flick that's so bad it's funny. The very last scene of Elisabeth's face in a pile of gore atop her star on the Walk of Fame was even stranger and more ridiculous than the previous scene, cementing how off the rails the last act was. Overall, The Substance is a movie with a unique, creative plot, incredible acting from both Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, effectively disturbing body horror, and well executed themes of damaging body standards, self worth, and the toxicity of the male gaze. However, the ending becomes a parody of itself, which may have been intentional but just didn't work for me. I can understand why some people loved the ending, but it was so silly that personally, I felt like it undermined the message of the entire movie and took my rating from 5 stars to 3 1/2, rounded up to 4.

I’ve seen Be My Cat: A Film for Anne on a lot of disturbing movie lists so I had pretty high expectations for how unsettling it would be, but I think it would’ve been better to go in blind since I felt like those expectations weren’t met. There's an interesting main character and scenes that are a bit uncomfortable to watch, but I wish a lot more happened in the movie as a whole. Adrian is an eerily realistic portrayal of a stalker with erotomania. He’s convinced that Anne Hathaway will watch his documentary one day and fall in love with him, even personifying his camera as Anne. The line between Adrian and his character in the movie he aspires to make with Anne becomes more blurred as the film goes on; when Adrian kidnaps and kills a woman, he tells “Anne” he would never do this in real life, and that his character is the one doing it. By the time he kills his second victim, however, Adrian realizes he has become his character and is thrilled. Adrian Țofei’s acting is outstanding and his co-stars also give solid performances. There are some things that break the illusion of realism, though, such as Flory’s torture scene where any real gore is covered by a sheet, and the fact that at least the first murdered actress likely would have been reported missing by her family in real life, leading to Adrian being caught. Overall, this was a difficult film for me to rate. On one hand, the acting is fantastic and the psychology of the main character is intriguing. But on the other, most of the movie simply consists of Adrian's ramblings to “Anne” and aimless arguments with the actresses he hired. These scenes do make Adrian seem more off-putting, but they also make the pace of the movie very slow. I think Be My Cat: A Film for Anne would have been more enjoyable and effective for me if it was a short film since there are really only a few scenes where something unsettling or eventful happens. It’s not a movie I would watch again but I would recommend it to found footage horror fans who are more interested in the psychology of disturbing characters rather than scares and gore, which is more my style.

As Above, So Below is a claustrophobic journey into the Catacombs of Paris, filmed at the real-life location. Although most of the more visual horror doesn’t happen until the last 30 minutes, the characters’ treasure hunt through the maze of ever-changing catacombs was interesting enough to keep me engaged. The protagonist, Scarlett, is a flawed one; she’s foolhardy, selfish, and willing to put her friends in danger in her desperation to finish her late father’s work, finding the legendary philosopher's stone. None of the characters are especially charming or fleshed out, but I appreciate the choice to have a relatively unlikable protagonist since it makes Scarlett feel more real. The performances are decent all around, but unfortunately aren’t enough to distract from some of the very cheesy “scary” moments. I like the idea of the characters’ pasts haunting them, but it isn’t always executed well, such as Papillon being hilariously sucked into a burning car and dragged into the ground with some not so great CGI. Most of the scares towards the end weren’t very effective in my opinion. I probably would have liked it more if they didn’t rely as much on paranormal events and more on the inherent terror of being trapped in an endless cave system. There’s also a pretty corny cult-like group who loves to spookily chant that I could have done entirely without. As Above, So Below isn’t terrifying or impeccably made by any means, but it’s very good compared to most found footage films and overall a decent horror movie.

I didn’t have high expectations for The Last Exorcism because of the mixed reviews, but I’m glad I gave it a chance because it pleasantly surprised me…well, up until the last few minutes which completely ruined the story for me. The acting is outstanding with a particularly compelling performance from 24-year-old Ashley Bell, who plays 16-year-old Nell, an isolated girl living in rural Louisiana with her anti-religion brother and bible thumping father, Louis, who believes her to be possessed. The plot is unique and well written, following a preacher/exorcist, Cotton, who has lost his faith and is making a documentary to expose how he fakes his work. He’s hired by Louis to exorcize Nell but believes that her issues are psychological. This becomes both a point of contention for the characters and for the viewer. For almost the entire movie, they leave you wondering: is Nell really possessed or just sick, driven to psychosis from the loss of her mother, social isolation, and her unstable father’s intense religious beliefs? Although the movie has a lot of exorcism cliches—possessed little girl, creepy contortionist moves, etc—I felt like it worked well for nearly the whole runtime. It lends itself to the belief that Nell isn’t actually possessed but instead is a mentally ill girl emulating what she’s seen in classic exorcism movies. But there are still enough moments of doubt to make viewers debate this, avoiding spoon-feeding us the answer...up until the ending. Rather than ending things on an ambiguous note as to the legitimacy of Nell’s possession, we’re shown members of the local church in satanic red robes chanting around Nell as she gives birth to a demon baby. The baby is thrown into a fire while Nell screams in terror, prompting Cotton to try to exorcize the demon once and for all, but leaving his fate unknown. Iris and Daniel, Cotton’s documentary crew, run away through the forest, but Iris is killed by cultists and Daniel is murdered by Caleb, Nell’s brother. For me, the entire appeal of The Last Exorcism was its realism. Nell wasn’t climbing up walls or levitating, she was simply violent and unstable. The debate over her possibly being possessed was interesting and reflects real-life stories, but the ending that was chosen is the opposite of realistic or intriguing. It’s jarringly abrupt, lazy, and so cliche it’s laughable. An ambiguous ending about Nell’s possible possession would have satisfied me, but this kind of ambiguous ending came out of nowhere and felt like an entirely different movie, leaving me confused and cringing. The Last Exorcism is almost fantastic, and in my opinion is absolutely worth a watch, but I had to give it a 4/5 for that terrible ending.

Although The Tunnel offers little in terms of originality, the performances, atmosphere, and the way the monster is utilized make it a decently entertaining found footage movie. The underground tunnel setting isn’t groundbreaking, but the style along with the set up of this movie is unique. Presented as a documentary, it includes both interviews and found footage of a news team investigating tunnels believed to still house the homeless despite the government’s claims. The mockumentary aspect was well done, but it does serve as a spoiler for who survives. The first half hour of the movie also would have benefited from spending less time on the background of the tunnels and the city’s plans to use them to resolve their water crisis. Because of this, the film starts off slow. The main character, Natasha, is quite flawed, selfishly putting her career above her friends’ safety by tricking them into investigating the tunnels. Some people hate this type of character but I always appreciate this choice since it adds a sense of realism. The other characters aren’t particularly notable other than their hobby of making gross misogynistic comments about Natasha, but the entire cast give solid performances. I didn't find The Tunnel all that unsettling, but my favorite part was the monster and the way the film utilized it. A lot of horror movies make the mistake of showing too much too early which can take away the mystery and scare factor, but this movie does the opposite. The monster is always shrouded in darkness or submerged in water, making only its unnaturally long arms and glowing eyes visible. I really enjoyed this because it allows the viewer’s imagination to fill in the blanks, and the unknown is always scarier than the known. I don’t have high expectations going into most found footage films since the majority of them aren’t great quality in my opinion, but The Tunnel is somewhat of an underrated gem.

Grave Encounters has some great ideas but poor execution. The first half hour or so is a very accurate and funny parody of Ghost Adventures, but unfortunately that’s the only part of the movie I liked. Most of the scares rely on CGI that’s extremely low quality, even for 2011. This is a low budget found footage film so I wouldn’t expect it to have amazing SFX, but this was distractingly bad and made the scenes that were intended to be scary laughable. Practical effects could have made these moments actually unnerving. The acting isn’t fantastic either, especially when one of the characters becomes unhinged after disappearing and being found in a hospital gown. His crazed laughter and line delivery is the worst performance of the movie, while everyone else’s acting is mostly passable. The only “scary” scene that actually worked for me was when Sasha throws up blood and cries for her mom, which was the most humanizing moment for any of the characters. There’s also a scene where a member of the crew is on the phone with his kid, but these are the only real attempts to garner sympathy or add depth to the cast. I just didn’t care what happened to them which lessens the scariness even more. Oh, and no early 2010s movie would be complete without some homophobic slurs exchanged between characters. It was normalized back then, but still not excusable. I went into Grave Encounters with an open mind, but it just wasn’t for me. I think the only way I’d have fun watching this again would be with a group so we can make fun of it.

I was left conflicted after watching this on streaming. Maybe part of what made it special for some people was being in the theater, but A Quiet Place: Day One just didn’t meet my expectations set by the marketing. I really enjoyed the first two movies and one of the reasons why was the horror and action. A Quiet Place: Day One doesn’t have much action - in fact, almost all of it is shown in the trailers. The true focus of this film is on the characters: Sam, a terminally ill woman, her cat, Frodo, and a man named Eric. (My favorite character was definitely Frodo, what a great actor.) While the city is evacuating, Sam decides to spend her last days journeying to get pizza from a restaurant that has emotional ties to her late father. I get what the intention was here, Sam wanted one last moment of happiness before she died of her illness or was killed by the aliens, but the fact that the apocalypse was happening didn’t seem to affect her story very much, if at all. She was still determined to have that one happy moment eating pizza before the aliens invaded, the only thing that’s changed is she has to be very quiet on her way to the restaurant now. Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are fantastic leads whose performances add depth to the film, but the way their characters come together is confusing. Eric follows Sam randomly while everyone else is evacuating; Sam has a reason to not evacuate, but what is Eric’s? His family doesn't live in the city so he's desperate for company in his terror, but it still doesn't make sense to me why he wouldn't want to escape. We get a good amount of information about Sam but almost none about Eric, which made the characters’ connection and emotional scenes less effective for me. I can understand why the storyline appeals to many people, and why Sam’s illness is sadly relatable for some, but I was expecting a survival horror movie instead of a drama. It’s called “Day One” and the tagline is “hear how it all began” which sets expectations for an origin story of the apocalypse. Instead, all we see are the aliens coming to earth and a few scenes of people being torn apart by them. There is no explanation or further exploration into the aliens or why they came to earth, which was really disappointing. If this film had been marketed not as an origin story of the apocalypse but instead as a dramatic character-driven spinoff, maybe I would have liked it more, or avoided it entirely since dramas aren’t my favorite genre. Unfortunately, though, A Quiet Place: Day One really just feels like a very slow, sad side story that happens to take place during an alien invasion.

This movie hasn’t exactly aged well. Transformers is saturated in everything about 2007 culture that appealed to 13 year old boys: explosions, guns, robots, cars, and gratuitous shots of Megan Fox’s midriff. Most of these things aren't inherently bad, but all together they’re…a lot. The plot is practically nonexistent, and that’s to be expected for most action movies, but the many scenes of people shouting military jargon and hacking into various random computer systems are incredibly boring. It’s a nearly 2 1/2 hour movie that easily could have been cut down by half an hour. The main character, Sam, is a great example of a drab and unlikable protagonist. His dorky personality is presumably meant to be endearing but in actuality, he’s just annoying. He’s an incel who complains about his male dog wearing jewelry and talks about getting a girlfriend the same way he talks about getting a car, just another object to own. His courtship of Mikaela (who isn’t like “other girls” because she likes cars) with the help of Bumblebee is framed as comedic but in reality is extremely creepy. He follows her in his car down streets, shouts at her through the window, and won’t take no for an answer when she says she wants to walk home. But of course, this is movie logic, so Mikaela is charmed by Sam’s harassment coupled with Bumblebee’s disturbing desire to help a child get laid…inside of the car, which is Bumblebee’s literal body. Gross. The action is fine, the acting is awful, the chemistry between characters doesn’t exist, and the script is almost always unfunny. But there are a few jokes that still land, in particular a scene where Glen and his cousin destroy their own house trying to escape the cops. Glen and Maggie should have been the stars of this movie. Most of the comedy is very outdated and cringe worthy, though. Some unfortunate “highlights” of Transformers include: Bumblebee p!ssing on a man, a middle aged man calling high school age Mikaela “hot,” racially stereotyped characters, and an Autobot saying Sam wants to “mate with the female.” I can understand why this series appeals to some people who just want to watch a fun popcorn movie; if you can turn your brain off and ignore that Transformers has many moments that didn’t age well, you might be entertained. For me, however, nostalgia and Megan Fox were not enough to make this an enjoyable rewatch.

(To preface, I will be referring to Angela using that name and as she/her considering that the sequels to Sleepaway Camp depict her as a transgender woman, not just as someone forced to live as a gender they are not.) Sleepaway Camp left me speechless, and not in a good way. I was not prepared for how horrendous every aspect of this movie is. The acting is horrible in a distracting and laughable way from every single person other than Felissa Rose, the music is cheesy, the kills are creative but poorly executed and in no way scary, and despite some people's claims that the queer and trans aspects of the story are not offensive, I disagree wholeheartedly. This was 1983, I'd be shocked if the filmmakers were intending to explore queer identity in a positive light. The beginning of the film shows John, a father of two, being killed in front of his partner, Lenny, in a boating accident along with one of his children. We're led to believe that Peter, the son, is killed and that his sister survived. However, it's revealed in a twist ending that Peter was actually the child who survived, and the female sibling was killed. Adopted by Martha, a mentally unstable aunt, Peter was renamed Angela and forced to live as a girl. This is depicted as being the cause of Angela's selective mutism, fear of water, and bloodlust. Although I can understand the writers' idea that the trauma of Angela seeing her loved ones die violently would lead to her being mentally disturbed, the idea that her being raised as a gender she did not identify with would cause her to become a savage killer is ridiculous. Thousands of transgender people are raised as a gender they do not identify with, and this can be traumatic, especially if their parents are transphobic, but it does not cause them to become crazed killers. I can agree with the analysis that this theme is meant to explore the fact that raising a child to be a gender they are not is highly damaging, but as I said, it does not lead to violence. The result of Sleepaway Camp's twist ending simply seems intolerant and ignorant, using the image of a girl with male genitalia as a gross-out, shocking moment. There is also a flashback that shows Angela and her brother seeing their father, John, and his partner, Lenny, share an intimate moment. It then shows one of the siblings reach out to touch the other on a bed, possibly in an attempt to reenact what they saw. Was the implication here that the siblings were sexually involved? I'm not sure since I haven't seen anyone talk about this scene, but the overall idea appears to be that Angela's mental state was negatively affected by seeing a romantic moment between her father and his partner, and possibly by engaging with her sibling sexually. Obviously, there are some homophobic themes here if my interpretation is correct, which is disappointing, but not surprising for the time period. The only positive thing I can say about Sleepaway Camp is that the ending scene, which shows Angela frozen and snarling with her mouth and eyes wide open, is unsettling--not because of the twist, but because of Felissa Rose's incredible performance at just 13 years old. Having said that, Angela's character going from behaving normally the whole movie (other than being mostly mute) to snarling and rabid is odd. What about this particular moment makes her act this way? It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it is effectively strange and disquieting.

Cliche, relatively predictable, and filled with mostly mediocre performances, I Know What You Did Last Summer pales in comparison to the quintessential 90s slasher, Scream, a movie that perfectly embraced camp and executed a well thought-out story with likable characters. IKWYDLS does have some redeeming qualities, such as Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance, specifically her gut wrenching screams as she watches a police officer being killed while entrapped in the back of his cop car. Her presence as a whole was the highlight of the movie for me. Jennifer Love Hewitt also gives a good performance, but Julie doesn't make for an iconic final girl the way Scream's Sydney Prescott does. The characters lack depth and charisma, although I thought Helen and Julie had the potential to be great if they were more fleshed out. The heartbreak of their disintegrated friendship is palpable in a well-acted scene with the two of them in a car, but isn't explored enough to be engrossing. I probably would have enjoyed the movie more if the focus was on them and their relationship. As for the rest of the cast, Freddie Prinze Jr.'s character is just...there. I can't name a single trait of Ray's other than being in love with Julie. The couple's relationship feels hollow, and their reconciliation at the end seems unnatural and vapid. Barry is the film's worst character: an arrogant and violent teen boy who does nothing but verbally abuse his friends and girlfriend. Ryan Phillippe's corny performance doesn't offer any appeal. If the filmmakers intended for his death scene to be tragic, they certainly missed the mark. The story itself is a homage to classic urban legends and 80s slasher films, which I can appreciate. The twist of David Egan not being the one the group ran down wasn't one I saw coming, but it was obvious from the start that the whole thing was a set-up by the killer, specifically that he was the one who actually killed David. The script simply wasn't clever enough to keep me all that interested. The end of the movie is particularly bad, consisting of Julie being attacked by the killer who yet again did not die. This cheapened the entire film for me. In another film, perhaps the campiness of it would have worked, but in this case, it just didn't feel earned. Although I was hoping I Know What You Did Last Summer would be a good summer horror to rewatch every July 4th, I doubt I'll watch it again. The film isn't bad enough to be funny, and it isn't good enough to be genuinely compelling. But, making a masterpiece likely wasn't the filmmakers' intention, and I can see the movie's appeal for huge fans of slashers. Altogether, it's an okay movie with some fun moments. The 90s nostalgia gives the film charm, and the overall tone is lighthearted enough to have a good time watching with some friends, but there isn't much substance beyond that.