Daniel King

The movie is stagnant and tells the same timeframe over and over and over again just from different POVs so.... no story progression... None of the characters progress in any way at all, either so none of that.... The movie tries to be deep, but instead is just incredibly inconsistent in tone and message and in-world logic.... Why do people have visions of Gladys when she's just a regular person using magic to entrance people to somehow cure her of an illness when all it really SEEMS to do is make her illness worse? This film is 100% visuals over any hint of cohesive storytelling. It fails on all fronts in terms of story and logic. I didn't get a single scare because there was no tension because I kept waiting for the next POV to start. And there are so many subplots that go nowhere because of the POV shifts and what happens to characters that it feels like it's just thrown in there to pad the runtime rather than serving the story like they are supposed to. I was seriously disappointed with this film in every front, and I do not expect to see anything else Zach Cregger directs again if this is what he can do. Edit: I just learned that Cregger told the actress playing Gladys had to choose that she would play her as a human using witchcraft to cure her disease or that she was an immortal entity basically trying to make mimics of humans and didn't bother finding out which one she chose..... How do you direct a horror film without knowing your villain or their motivation!?!?!? That's the whole point of having the story in the first place! Horrible method and he says it "Saved" the film.... Sorry, but this film is Gladys herself and beyond saving.

The movie was ok, but just fell so flat. Every single thing that was introduced was setup as a Chekhov's Gun and then used once and discarded. Even when it didn't make sense. For example, the mother, El at the beginning is soldering a tattoo gun together. Then randomly looks in a drawer and is like, "Kassie, you better not have my fabric scissors" and Kassie just throws them under the couch. Never mentioned again. No, "Well you better find them." Nothing. Just there to be a setup for them to be used as a stabbing tool ONCE later. Also, the tattoo gun is used, only once. Every single weapon is used by a main character (antagonist or protagonist) only once. Honestly, every single object or story beat in this film serves as a setup for a one-and-done payoff later and then discarded. I got bored halfway and went, "K. Is this almost over yet?" It has some of the same beats that the classic Evil Dead folks had, but it has none of the soul. It tries to make the absurdity of the originals into something serious and that just doesn't work. It has tropes and clichés galore including, "Tight space must now be filled with blood to potentially drown protagonist, but we know they'll survive and we just want a bad@$$ look of the final girl for the poster as she's covered head to toe in blood now." I could do a full breakdown of this failure, but I'll just leave it where it is for now.

This movie lacks all things basic storytelling requires. It drags on for like 60 minutes at this snail's pace and then 20-ish minutes of actual progress and then 10 minutes of "WTF?". And then it pulls a twist that comes out of left field. I see all these positive reviews going, "Oh man, did not see that twist coming." then it wasn't a good twist. A good twist is supposed to come logically from what you've seen before. If it comes from absolutely nothing, then it's not a good twist. And then there's the dialogue.... Sounds like a BookTok gone wrong. The cursing feels so forced that it's edgy for the sake of edgy and not earned. It's just, "Oh we haven't dropped one in 30 seconds. Time to have Winona or Brianne do it!" And the hints are so in your face about what Kath is going to do at the end that it's not even funny. The suspense is 100% in the musical cues and definitely not in the writing. Even the climax had me going, "Wait. That's it? No fight? No struggle? Just, "Yep! That's the movie!" This movie failed at all the basic things that make a thriller a thriller. Eli was very clearly out of his depth with this. Then there's the acting. I don't see what people mean by getting a great performance from Winona Ryder. I freaking LOVE Winona Ryder and she can definitely carry a film, but this film ain't it. Everybody's acting is so flat and emotionless that I couldn't get any hint of what the characters were thinking. Oh wait, sorry. I'm wrong. I knew what they were thinking because they flat out said every single thought they had! Then, comes the fake-twist with Winona that ends up being a ploy... The thing is that it's meant to be a fake out that sounds smart and acts as a distraction. Except it doesn't work because for a ploy to function it needs to be believable, either to the characters or to the audience, and this film failed that so hard. Also, the cuts! So many cuts! Any time any hint of tension arrives, the music builds up a little and then, NOPE! New scene! Does the cut or even the new scene help add to the tension? Nope! It starts in the most mundane way possible so it needs to rebuild the tension. Yes, stories have ups and downs. But it's supposed to be like a roller coaster. This is more like a roller coaster that starts out flat and then goes up like five feet and then falls again only to gradually go back to five feet up just to fall back down and start all over again. And this happens over and over and over again. That's not tension, it's a failure to launch. So... What exactly is the message/theme of this film? Is it that aging is scary? Death is scary? If so, why is that not prevalent in the film? If your film is going to have a theme it needs to be IN THE FILM. Not just thrown in to pretend it's a plot twist. I wish I could have anything positive to say about the film. I do. But all the actors in it are usually pretty great and they all just sucked in this! I'm not blaming the actors for it, I'm blaming the writer/director. How on earth THIS got greenlit is beyond me. Best to stop now. I wasted about 90 minutes of my life watching this. And now I wish his experiment worked so I could regain that lost youth.

If I could give it a lower rating, I would. This movie has no actual scares, falls into horrible tropes (and not in a good way), and just feels extremely cheap. To say the acting was atrocious is to give them the credit for acting. I've seen elementary school productions have better acting than this. The CGI is horrendous to a fault. There's even a part where the Creeper is eating a brain and it magically disappears from his hand as he's taking a bite out of it. Haha. I'd keep going, but this movie has stolen enough of my time. I won't let it take any more.

How could you have the writing talent of Harold Ramis; and the acting/comedic talents of Jackie Mason, Robert Stack, Randy Quaid, Dan Aykroyd, and Chevy Chase, and turn out this steaming pile of a mess?

I won't lie, I was looking forward to the reboot. But I was seriously disappointed... They keep turning the jokes into nothing but Trump jokes and jokes against other Republican figures, just like every single other comic out there. It is unimaginative and lazy. They didn't do any jokes against Democrats. What happened to when they made fun of everybody? Now it's "follow the comedy trend." And I'm tired of it. If you're going to make fun of politics, make fun of politics. Not just one person over and over again like every single person out there. Also, Yakko is known as the know-it-all that explains everything. Now he can't say anything without Dot going, "I don't need you man-splaining things to me." Like, seriously? Not every time a guy goes to explain something is it man-splaining. The writers for the show are definitely hard liberals, and if you can tell that based off a friggin non-political CARTOON, you have definitely failed as a writer.