Chad Eagleton – Google

The Baby is a horror-comedy limited series available on HBOMax. The premise is intriguing, a young woman who is not only sick of her friends talking about children but isn’t interested in having any of her own, suddenly finds a child thrust upon her. The catch is the child seemingly has supernatural powers and willing kills anyone who gets in his way. It’s funny. It’s weird. It’s creepy. The problem is the writing flounders about 4 episodes in. Then it’s dead-end plotlines, forgettable filler episodes, and wheel-spinning until we get a whimper of a finale.

This was as bad as I feared it would be. Zach Snyder doesn’t understand either character or story and it shows throughout all the dull four hours. The only time he is capable of making a decent film—and this is not a decent film—is if he can adapt a comic book story directly and use its panels as storyboard. Snyder’s Justice League is nonsensical and absurd. Every moment is so overblown and so pompous, that not a single one matters. It’s like letting your 6-year-old try to write a Wagnerian opera—no scratch that, your 6 year old would at least be cute to listen to.

So Mortal Kombat... I wanted this to be great but it’s not. I love action movies. I love martial arts movie even more. There’s a lot of talent in the cast: Lewis Tan, Tadanobu Asano, Joe Taslim, Hiroyuki Sanada. The trailer looked fun. And I still have fond memories of seeing the original movie in the theatre—also there was nothing better than when we’d have free sparring in taekwondo club to the song Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat) from the soundtrack. Unfortunately, the script is terrible. The tone is inconsistent. Bouncing between grit and gore, bad one liners and catchphrases, and unearned drama. It’s worst offense is how it blows a fantastic opening by then grinding everything to a halt for a good 40 minutes of bad Whedonesque one liners and catchphrases between a lot of info dumping and here’s my “drama” monologues. First-time director Simon McQuoid doesn’t know how to shoot a fight scene. They’re all shot too close with two many cuts to an entirely different angle so there’s so sense of flow or impact. And there aren’t nearly enough of them—the film needed twice as many fights and half as much CGI. Man, no has a knack for bungling a property like Warner Bros. It’s worst fault though is not being a film that stands alone. This movie was made for one reason and one reason only — so they could make four more movies which is why there’s not even a tournament in this one. If you have HBOMax and like this sort of thing, it’s worth a watch I guess. But I would not buy a movie ticket for it.