Maria Takacs – Google

Themes of: death of a parent, death of a child, child labor, religion, greed, slavery, racism, pedophilia, murder, with minimal violence/sex. While the movie raises these subjects, it glosses over how the characters deal with such matters and how quickly their lives go back "to normal." The movie is written through the eyes of a smart but naive 13 y/o who is deciding how to view the world. While it isn't "Anne of Green Gables," I feel the movie was worth my time.

I love this movie! Two of my favorite genres--westerns & sci-fi/aliens! For those who say the premise is not plausible, I ask, "why can't aliens have visited the Old West?" Are aliens only allowed in movies set in the post-electronic age? The cast is a great bunch--brooding, ornery, wicked--meeting up with other-worldly things that are even more brooding, ornery, and wicked than they could ever hope to be. The main actors do as fine a job as they have done in other acting categories. Do not be swayed into not watching this movie by those who say it is not good; watch it, and judge for yourself! No, it is not perfect, but I have never seen a movie that is!

I liked all the flowers; they were pretty. The story was a decent work of fiction and a nice work of propaganda for Christian conversion. I did not like the premise it tried to sell me, so I was continually disagreeing with the reasoning given throughout the story. Just the fact that "the Shack" is a beautiful cabin in the woods should have clued me in about where the story was heading. No amount of simplistic explanation or attempts at justification about what happens will ever convince me that each person was acting out their personal horrors but not once was it mentioned that FREE WILL and personal choice in our lives is the biggest factor. I liked all the flowers; they were pretty.

While I understand some of the points made in other reviews, the movie is NOT a documentary; accuracy is often sacrificed in this type of genre. I found the movie enjoyable enough to watch it all the way through. It had enough "jumpy" moments to startle me a little, but not so scary that I will be having bad dreams tonight. One person's experience with eating disorders/autism/cultural or religious beliefs is not every person's experience. Who's to say that some practitioners of certain "arts" don't take a bit of this and a bit of that? Today's world can be very homogenized. And, again, this is a work of fiction, NOT a documentary. What bugged me more, actually, was how the accent of the Australian actress playing the daughter kept popping through.

The premise is that an all-boys school goes co-ed in 1963. Straight off it is bothersome that the series theme song, "Wild Thing" was not released until 1965. There is nothing really new or fresh in the writing: boys jockeying to be top dog of the class, bullying the frail and obese, and now 11 girls thrown into the fray, hated just for being there, not only by their male classmates but unwanted by most of the faculty who use each opportunity given to let their feelings be known. The first season has eight episodes, and I am starting episode three. If the show continues on its current track, I will not be watching from episode four on.

While I may be several decades older than its target audience (I'm going to guess tweens and younger), I enjoyed this movie. Enough fright to keep older kids interested but not too scary for younger ones. *NOTE: Hints of spoilers, but not really ... I think most people would agree that Krysten Ritter has made some fun and interesting character choices in her career. Here she plays the witch, Natacha, with psychopathic expertise without going too over the top. By the end, I did feel SOME empathy for her character's plight--what do you do in a situation when there are NO GOOD CHOICES? The self-acceptance moral was not too in-your-face preachy. Winslow Fegley as Alex (maybe a young Patton Oswalt?) and Lidya Jewett as Yazmin made me want to help them get out of that wretched apartment only to realize that perhaps it was not the worst place they could have been? And all of it sprinkled with candy-colored rainbow death and a bedeviled unicorn! Don't believe me ... ? Watch and see!!

It was a struggle to get through the first two episodes; episode one just would not get to a point to somehow grab me so I would continue watching. I only continued because I know that shows from other countries have a different pace than those from the U.S. The acting is pretty good, but the overall pace of the episodes is SO SLOW! The whole thing could have been done in four, not eight episodes. There are really only two special effects that are repeated in various iterations for 95% of season one.