Happy Thanksgiving!

With all the cooking and family and good will, I definitely need a day to recuperate. Hope you all had awesome Thanksgivings! See you all on Monday!

Darkroom (2013)

Number Rolled: 16

Movie Name/Year: Darkroom (2013)

Genre: Horror

Length: 80 minutes

Rating: R

Director: Britt Napier

Writer: Michaelbrent Collings

Actors: Kaylee DeFer, Elisabeth Rohm, Christian Campbell, Tobias Segal, Steve Stanulis

Michelle got herself into trouble. Enough trouble that she feels the need to seek out a rehab center. Upon release, she takes up the therapist’s suggestion to find a job at Darkhouse, a modeling company, as their gofer. That business, however, isn’t quite what it seems.

It sounds like a pretty overdone storyline and, going into it, that exactly what I thought it would be. I wasn’t completely wrong, but the movie still reached and, in some cases, exceeded my expectations. For a B movie (one that’s not even acknowledged on Rotten Tomatoes) to have that kind of acting is very rare. I was impressed with pretty much every actor that crossed the screen.

As far as the story goes, it wasn’t particularly original, but it wasn’t a bad take on the recipe. In fact, there were a few hardcore horror rules that “Darkroom” broke; it’s for that reason that I really wound up liking the movie. It’s very difficult for a director/writer to follow a recipe and still come up with something that’s relatively unpredictable and engrossing.

It wasn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows. In the beginning of the movie you learn a lot through flashbacks. I don’t mind flashbacks if they’re approached properly. The issue is that the transitions were so horrible that I couldn’t tell what was going on, or what part of the timeline the movie was on, until the next scene had already transitioned in. There were also a few continuity errors, one of which was a scene that, even after watching the entire movie, I don’t understand in reference to the plot. I believe it was an attempt to be abstract, but the rest of the film wasn’t – which just made it confusing.

Netflix’s Prediction for Me – 2.5/5

Overall Opinion – 3.5/5

P.S. This movie does not seem to exist on Rotten Tomatoes.

Movie Trailer: 

The Host (2013)

Number Rolled: 88

Movie Name/Year: The Host (2013)

Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Length: 125 minutes

Rating: PG-13

Director: Andrew Niccol

Writer: Andrew Niccol, Stephenie Meyer

Actors: Rachel Roberts, Shyaam Karra, Brent Wendell Williams, Jhil McEntyre, Jalen Coleman, Saoirse Ronan, Diane Kruger, Stephen Rider, Jaylen Moore, Stephen Conroy, Michael L. Parker, Phil Austin, Marcus Lyle Brown, Chandler Canterbury, Max Irons, William Hurt, J.D. Evermore, Boyd Holbrook, Jake Abel, Frances Fisher, Lee Hardee, Mustafa Harris, Scott Lawrence, Shawn Carter Peterson, Raeden Greer, Andrea Frankle, Emily Browning

The Earth has not just been invaded, it’s been taken over. A parasite species has successfully whittled the human race into an endangered species. When one of the parasites, Wanderer, takes over Melanie’s body, Melanie fights back from inside and Wanderer is forced to see her species through the eyes of a human.

After seeing the trailer I had very high hopes for the movie. I love science fiction and fantasy, both books and movies, and the plot sounded very original. I couldn’t wait to see it. In fact, I almost shelled the $20 to see it in theaters. Now I’m glad I didn’t.

I’ll admit that I haven’t read the book, but that’s because Stephenie Meyer’s writing style is not one that interests me in any way. Completely ignoring “Twilight,” I simply don’t like her word usage or sentence structure. It has nothing to do with her imagination; it’s her technique that makes me not want to read her work. That being said, I think I do need to add her plots and style to the reasons why she doesn’t interest me, because this movie annoyed me nearly as much as “Twilight” did.

First of all, this movie dealt with aliens so, sure, it could be considered Sci-Fi. It should never have been considered Sci-Fi as a primary genre. This is a hardcore romance film. If you were to take the aliens away and replaced them with mind control or schizophrenia, the story would have been exactly the same. The aliens were just a vehicle to tell a love story, not a very good one either. Don’t be fooled by the trailer, every action scene in the movie is nearly fully depicted in it, there are no others.

The acting was good, and I couldn’t fault any of the actors for the issues I had with the plot. They did the best they could with a relatively boring script.

I also had an issue with the ending. There were three of them and as each one happened they became less and less necessary. If the first ending had been the one Meyer stuck with, my opinion of the movie would have been altered. With the second ending, I found myself rolling my eyes a bit, but accepting it. The third, and final, ending was all fluff and annoyed me.

I was disappointed in what I saw. It’s a shame. The plot had a lot of potential.

Netflix’s Prediction for Me – 3.9/5

Overall Opinion – 2/5

P.S. Based on a book with the same name by Stephenie Meyer

Movie Trailer: