Watcher (2022) - 4/10
An American woman (Maika Monroe) moves with her husband to Bucharest and believes that a stranger is staring at her from the apartment across the street. It's like Rosemary's Baby combined with Rear Window, but with a lot less suspense and plot. It's about paranoia and isolation and drives the latter home by having half of the dialogue in Romanian without subtitles so that we feel as isolated and stare as blankly as the main character, waiting for translation. It's a very slow burn, which I don't necessarily mind, but it has to slowly ramp up and pay off and this does neither. It's also entirely predictable and the lead character does some of the dumbest things, like stalking the person that she thinks is stalking her... while she knows that there's a serial killer loose in the neighborhood. Granted, it wouldn't be much of a movie if she stayed in her apartment all day and just ignored the creep, but still. At least the acting is good from Monroe, who's like a budget Amber Heard without the craziness.
Razorback (1984) - 5/10
A huge wild boar rampages around the Australian Outback, carrying off women and children. Crikey. It's described as "Jaws on land" and one of Australia's better horror films. A New York reporter travels to the Outback to do a story on kangaroo hunters and meets a legendary razorback hunter, which is suspiciously similar to the premise of 1986's Crocodile Dundee. There's no humor, though, unless you count an Aussie saying, "Canadians are Americans, aren't they?" I suppose that that's like us confusing New Zealanders for Australians. At one point, our American Canadian hero climbs a rickety windmill and spends the night, which might've inspired a scene in Tremors, which was neat. There isn't a whole lot of swine action, though. Probably because it's easier than filling a whole movie with attacks from a hardly seen monster, half of the plot revolves around two crazy brothers who look and sound like villains from a Mad Max movie. At least we see the pig equivalent of Bruce, tusks and all, in the end. It was still a little disappointing that there wasn't more of him, though. On the bright side, the film is well paced and has pretty good cinematography for a horror film, so I can't say that it was a boar.
The Lost World (1960) - 5/10
An expedition visits a secluded plateau to investigate the existence of dinosaurs iguanas with horns glued to them. Irwin Allen's remake of the 1925 silent classic is one gorgeous CinemaScope film. The jungle sets really come alive in color. I'm a bit of a sucker for these color widescreen films about expeditions to strange lands that were popular in the 60s. I was enjoying it right up until the "dinosaurs" that were promised turned out to be iguanas, monitor lizards and baby crocodiles. Talk about a letdown. Apparently, Allen wanted to use stop motion to create dinosaurs like the 1925 version, but the studio wouldn't give him the budget, so a trip to the reptile and hardware stores was all that he could afford. It would've at least helped if the characters simply referred to them as monsters or beasts, but they repeatedly call them "dinosaurs," which was laughable and kind of ruined the film for me. It's too bad because this could've been a classic and a worthy remake if it had had a bit more of a budget.
Let's see... since I'm on a roll, what else have I watched in the last month that I've been too lazy to review?
Ambulance (2022) - 6/10
Two bank robbers (Jake Gyllenhaal and someone whose name is even harder to spell) make their getaway in an ambulance... with a bleeding cop who should've died several times already and a first responder who's as good at keeping him alive as she is attractive in the back. This ridiculous plot is actually somewhat believable compared to some of Michael Bay's other movies. It reminded me of 1990s blockbuster action films in a good way. There's a heist, a shootout, a very long car chase that feels like something out of a Grand Theft Auto game, shots where the camera is just quickly circling characters as if the cameraman is drunk, helicopters, explosions and more. It's so Michael Bay.
Black Snake Moan (2006) - 5/10
A rural Southern man (Samuel L. Jackson) finds a half-naked, white trash girl (Christina Ricci) on the side of the road and chains her up in his house in order to "help" her... because chaining a stranger to a radiator shows that you care. It's sort of like My Fair Lady if Henry Higgins were a poor, black Southerner and Eliza Doolittle were a slut with a sex addiction. It doesn't make sense and I get the feeling that the plot was just an excuse to see Ricci in her underwear (and occasionally less) for half of the movie... not that I minded, of course.
X (2022) - 5/10
In the 70s, a bunch of young people rent a guest building on a Texas ranch from a very old couple in order to shoot a porno, obviously without their permission. The era and the premise are the most interesting things about it. Other than that, it's a rather standard slasher that was obviously inspired by The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre. Director Ti West captures that 70s horror feeling like he did the 80s horror feeling in The House of the Devil, which I liked. It's never boring, either, but it's a bit predictable, unbelievable and not scary. It's more of a fun slasher where you enjoy watching the young folk die. I guess that, considering that it's A24 and has really good reviews (95% at RT), I was just expecting something a little more original.
Memory (2022) - 5/10
A hitman (Liam Neeson) refuses to kill a teen girl and suddenly becomes a target of both his employer and a cop (Guy Pierce), but is hampered by progressively worsening memory loss. It's a bit hard to buy a plot that involves a deadly hitman who forgets where he put his car keys. Still, it could've been worse had it not been for very capable direction by Martin Campbell, who did Casino Royale, among other big films. That elevates it ahead of several of Neeson's other recent action films, but not quite to the point that I enjoyed it or would recommend it except to the biggest Neeson fans.
Apparently, June was a month of mostly 5/10s for me. Maybe I subconsciously gravitated towards films that I suspected that I wouldn't like (or dislike) enough to review afterwards.
