Crawl
Directed by : Alexandre Aja
Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8364368/
Apex predator all day..
Spoilers ahead ..
There's a Category 5 hurricane coming in Florida as Haley's (Kaya Scodelario) sister calls her to check on if she knows the whereabouts of their dad Dave (Bary Pepper) who isn't picking up calls. Haley decides to head in the dangerous weather to his home only to find him lying unconsious in the basement learning he was bitten by alligators. With the storm outside getting stronger and heavy rains sinking the town, she has very less time to get herself and her Dad escape knowing the alligators are hiding somewhere. Its hard not to draw parallels with Jaws, similar kind of arrangement with no option but to fight the alligators, and there's the use of famous dialogue 'son of a bitch' dialogue too. But unlike Jaws, the family drama here is very boring and only derails the narrative everytime they talk about the past or Haley's swim journey. They also fail to properly tell the alligators attack strategy or weakness to make use of. Also, I was surprised how with a heavy hurricane outside, the basement scenes yet were so noiseless. Being a fan of silent scenes, here the horror of background storm/rains noise would had actually served lot better. The alligator scenes do scare you and are tough to watch, specially using group of them attacking together whether its the basement or the store outside. And I must say I didn't expect Haley, her father and specially the dog all ending up alive in the end. The background theme was disappointing, could easily had upped the tension. Crawl is basically a average survival movie that entertains and gives chilling moments when it focusses on the alligators but the rest plot fails to invoke any emotions.
My Rating : 5/10
Drag Me To Hell
Directed by : Sam Raimi
Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127180/
You would be surprised what you will be willing to do, when the Lamia comes for you.
Spoilers ahead ..
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) who is a loan officer at a bank has her eyes setup on the assistant manager vacant position. In order to impress her boss and show that she can make the tough choices, she decides to deny an elderly lady, Mrs Ganush (Lorna Raver) a third extension on her mortgage leaving her homeless. Despite the begging and pleads, Mrs Ganush leaves in anger only to return later at car parking attacking Christine when she was heading home, and then placing a curse to let her burn in hell. Christine very soon learns about the Lamia curse through a fortune teller, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) as he tries to help her with various ideas while she races against the time with Lamia coming to take her after the curse gets completed in 3 days. The movie starts off on a good note, a young boy is taken to a certain lady to get help on the same Lamia curse but she fails in doing so and tells the demon 'we will meet again', which is ofcourse Christine who she will now try to help out. I liked the premise, and Alison Lohman plays the character very well that you can say makes one bad choice of turning Mrs Ganush angry, ofcourse not knowing this lady would put a curse on her and her life would become a literal hell. The torture she goes through in next 2 days, all the tormenting of her mind, smashed around in her home, banging of plates, strong winds blowing the windows, Ganush appearing in different forms, eyes getting stuck out into blood, her mouth often used to fill with gross things (which personally I am not a fan of at all), god the torture felt endless to see. I totally enjoyed the dining sequence where Christine goes to meet parents of her boyfriend Clay Dalton (Justing Long) at his home, and you just know that it will get pretty awkward soon whe she starts hearing those noises again.
The jump-scenes are overused but despite knowing they are coming they do work and scare you. The loud background score helps too in that regards. There are ofcourse some fun scenes (silly to be honest if you ask me), which I am assuming were infact kept intentionally, like the demon dance or Christine bad mouthing Mrs Ganush while heading off to her grave. Justin Long is good in his supporting act and its good they didn't overdo the 'I don't believe your crazy curse theory'. The ending felt predictable the moment Rham told Christine to choose someone to pass the curse on, maybe an open ending would had worked better. Drag Me To Hell is a decent horror film, if not for those gross moments and some unwanted sillyness, I would have given 2 stars more to the film. Its a watchable movie for Christine Brown act specially and the plot that was pretty good.
My Rating : 5.5/10
Directed by : Alexandre Aja
Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8364368/
Apex predator all day..
Spoilers ahead ..
There's a Category 5 hurricane coming in Florida as Haley's (Kaya Scodelario) sister calls her to check on if she knows the whereabouts of their dad Dave (Bary Pepper) who isn't picking up calls. Haley decides to head in the dangerous weather to his home only to find him lying unconsious in the basement learning he was bitten by alligators. With the storm outside getting stronger and heavy rains sinking the town, she has very less time to get herself and her Dad escape knowing the alligators are hiding somewhere. Its hard not to draw parallels with Jaws, similar kind of arrangement with no option but to fight the alligators, and there's the use of famous dialogue 'son of a bitch' dialogue too. But unlike Jaws, the family drama here is very boring and only derails the narrative everytime they talk about the past or Haley's swim journey. They also fail to properly tell the alligators attack strategy or weakness to make use of. Also, I was surprised how with a heavy hurricane outside, the basement scenes yet were so noiseless. Being a fan of silent scenes, here the horror of background storm/rains noise would had actually served lot better. The alligator scenes do scare you and are tough to watch, specially using group of them attacking together whether its the basement or the store outside. And I must say I didn't expect Haley, her father and specially the dog all ending up alive in the end. The background theme was disappointing, could easily had upped the tension. Crawl is basically a average survival movie that entertains and gives chilling moments when it focusses on the alligators but the rest plot fails to invoke any emotions.
My Rating : 5/10
Drag Me To Hell
Directed by : Sam Raimi
Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127180/
You would be surprised what you will be willing to do, when the Lamia comes for you.
Spoilers ahead ..
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) who is a loan officer at a bank has her eyes setup on the assistant manager vacant position. In order to impress her boss and show that she can make the tough choices, she decides to deny an elderly lady, Mrs Ganush (Lorna Raver) a third extension on her mortgage leaving her homeless. Despite the begging and pleads, Mrs Ganush leaves in anger only to return later at car parking attacking Christine when she was heading home, and then placing a curse to let her burn in hell. Christine very soon learns about the Lamia curse through a fortune teller, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) as he tries to help her with various ideas while she races against the time with Lamia coming to take her after the curse gets completed in 3 days. The movie starts off on a good note, a young boy is taken to a certain lady to get help on the same Lamia curse but she fails in doing so and tells the demon 'we will meet again', which is ofcourse Christine who she will now try to help out. I liked the premise, and Alison Lohman plays the character very well that you can say makes one bad choice of turning Mrs Ganush angry, ofcourse not knowing this lady would put a curse on her and her life would become a literal hell. The torture she goes through in next 2 days, all the tormenting of her mind, smashed around in her home, banging of plates, strong winds blowing the windows, Ganush appearing in different forms, eyes getting stuck out into blood, her mouth often used to fill with gross things (which personally I am not a fan of at all), god the torture felt endless to see. I totally enjoyed the dining sequence where Christine goes to meet parents of her boyfriend Clay Dalton (Justing Long) at his home, and you just know that it will get pretty awkward soon whe she starts hearing those noises again.
The jump-scenes are overused but despite knowing they are coming they do work and scare you. The loud background score helps too in that regards. There are ofcourse some fun scenes (silly to be honest if you ask me), which I am assuming were infact kept intentionally, like the demon dance or Christine bad mouthing Mrs Ganush while heading off to her grave. Justin Long is good in his supporting act and its good they didn't overdo the 'I don't believe your crazy curse theory'. The ending felt predictable the moment Rham told Christine to choose someone to pass the curse on, maybe an open ending would had worked better. Drag Me To Hell is a decent horror film, if not for those gross moments and some unwanted sillyness, I would have given 2 stars more to the film. Its a watchable movie for Christine Brown act specially and the plot that was pretty good.
My Rating : 5.5/10
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