Czyl Bauer

My honest and long thought out review with some spoilers because I hope to God you don’t watch this movie too. Be advised that I’m reviewing this despite not completing the film and trying my best to get through the second half on 1.5 speed. When considering the film itself, bravo, bravo! This was a real one. From the acting to the uncomfortable camera angles and the very theatrical horror-break tidbits, the entire thing was done really well. And it pains me to say so because I feel this movie should not have been made. We really get the feeling as audience members that the lead is actually psychopathic - had me thinking many times about how the director/writer could even produce such a film without being a deranged individual. You could probably watch any of the saw movies and still feel less revolted than after trying to get through this. And that’s the thing, this movie wasn’t even all gore, sure there was plenty of bloodshed but it was not the focus and it still managed to disturb me. (By the way, the effects were pretty good- pretty realistic.) Back to the lead’s acting, fantastic! You can really see the organization yet chaos, impulsive yet intelligent, sure yet unsure actions the character takes on his murdering spiral. I never got to the end to understand who this Verg he was conversing with throughout the movie was and frankly, I didn’t care. I decided very quickly that I wanted to get through this as fast as possible before realizing the risk on my sanity was not worth finishing it. Now the difference for me between the three and five stars for this was the why. Personally, unless you get a kick from experiencing such torment from others or relate to the frenzied nature of the lead, why would you like the plot? Why did they feel the need to make a realistic movie with such macabre content? I’d put the uneasy feeling you get from watching this on par with that of watching the Martyrs movie, both which I wish I could unsee. Violence, death, the pure disrespect for humanity and animals, the evil narcissism - unless you cannot empathize with life, how can you possibly make it through this and be okay? If this isn’t enough of a warning for you, there are also very explicit scenes with animal suffering and mutilation that I had to confirm with google that they were faked. You’ve been warned and if you still watch this, you’re either a have to see it to believe it person or a psycho yourself. I’m going to cleanse my mind with some kind happy videos now, thank you.

Let me start off with what’s good (possible spoilers). Taissa Farmigas acting, the incorporation of Saint Lucie, the creature feature, and the two neat instances where the nun manifests from her surroundings. It was not enough to make this a great movie however. I felt like the scare scenes went from 0-100 often, leaving no room for tension to build so you get a bigger and more intense scare. Sometimes the Nun herself was too CGI or something, would remind me of like a hologram on Halloween. I will agree with a lot of other reviews that said it’s hard to follow along with the story because it cuts back and forth from different characters and you don’t really get an explanation of what’s happening until later. I kept thinking we were time skipping. It was just a bit too confusing and forced for me to give it a good rating.

Review here from someone who didn’t read the books. SPOILERS! According to others, the movie did not do the book justice and I believe it 100%. Let me start with the plot holes which was probably a result of switching off from the original story. First, how do people of the town not associated with the guild not notice something fishy about each previous years winner, like how none of them ever appear again? Then what absolutely made no sense was how the boys clearly had a very important role, not let the creature reach the church, then why would they spend so much of the night creating mayhem, distracting themselves with crimes, and picking fights with each other. You’d think if they’re going to try to hunt something down they’d try to be in the most comfortable and movable clothes, not suits, costumes, and masks that restrict vision/agility. Then there’s the question of why would you put the fate of the entire town in the hands of a class of senior boys? (I guess this could be forgiven if you think of it in terms of them being the most gullible of the townsfolk.) Back to the topic of them committing random killings, the point is to hunt Jack and save the town for another year so why wouldn’t they get backlash or repercussions for tearing up the town. The mayor himself calls their night of Halloween horrible and grim, so why would the entire town continue to decorate and celebrate Halloween knowing that many of the boys will die? I could go on, but aside from the story being chaos, the acting was pretty mid. Nothing real special about the filming itself and the costume designs were overly cliche to the point where you just had to roll your eyes. CGI blood was also mid, but I’ll give them points for trying to include gruesome injury details not usually seen and having a decent creature design. In the end, I never fully understood the ritual just from the movie point of view - like why didn’t the people who know the truth just stop living on land where they had to sacrifice someone to save their crops?

(Spoilers Big Time) Okay first, the acting puts a real sour taste in my mouth. None of them have any decent acting except maybe Dommer, he’s good at playing a damaged to the point of insanity character. The female sheriff has the worse acting except for maybe the mother. There’s a lot of cliches like abusive vet grandpa, unrelenting cop, school bullies, basic white chick love interest, the list goes on. It always bugs me when the school staff somehow seem to seek out the one getting bullied as a delinquent but never the ones doing the actual obvious bullying. Characters do stupid stuff too, like dropping weapons in front of the vampire and not listening to people telling them not to go into the shed where the dog was just killed. Also it didn’t make any sense why the vampire somehow didn’t time his hunt correctly and ended up being burned by the sun. The story was pretty simple and unimaginative - just guy turned vampire trapped in some kid’s shed killing off stupid characters one by one. Filming itself was decent and the look of the vampires were more animalistic that the ordinary guy in a suit with fangs, which I appreciated. It wasn’t really scary either, unless you’re a sucker for the couple of jump scares included.

Awesome take on Dracula! The design for him was amazing, the gore was a 4/5 as well as the special effects. Everyone’s acting was on par, and the story was fair overall. I like all of the Dracula lore details sprinkled about but are never explained because you either know about his story or you don’t. While they do not stick to the common lore like crosses, and stakes being a weakness, they also added some odd vampire abilities that I was like hmm never heard of a vampire doing that. Only gave it a four out of five because we don’t like animals dying.