IMAGINARY (2024 Film Review) - Imagine A Better Film

MEET CHAUNCEY. HE’S NOT IMAGINARY. AND HE’S NOT YOUR FRIEND.

When Jessica moves back into her childhood home with her family, her youngest stepdaughter Alice develops an eerie attachment to a stuffed bear named Chauncey she finds in the basement. Alice starts playing games with Chauncey that begin playful and become increasingly sinister. As Alice’s behaviour becomes more and more concerning, Jessica intervenes, only to realize Chauncey is much more than the stuffed toy bear she believed him to be.

Chauncey monster form was awesome in its design and looked scary. This film however was trying to be a mix match of different films, it felt like. Jump scares are lame. Nothing terrifying here besides Chauncey monster form and big bear form.

Interesting ideas, but it couldn't make it mind up on what it wanted to do. Blumhouse needs more time and effort to their projects, they are a missing way too much by taking on and making so many horrors.

This film mentioned Pixar and Disney's inside out, More than it needed to.

The cast was good, and the story was alright. First half totally different to the second half. Didn't see the twist coming near the end, so that was a surprise. The people with the weird bulging black eyes were freaky, sure. Once they entered Chauncey world it felt like Pennywise and his domain, maybe that's where they were inspired from.

Hey maybe I am being really picky but if they are in an imaginary world then couldn't they just fight back imaging good stuff. Kinda like fighting back against Freddy Kruger. It ends like another Blumhouse film where some fire scares the monster off and everyone's happy and free again and of course we have the typical really fast response from firefighters which is just ridiculous, come on like the house fire literally just started😂 Another twisty end if they feel like doing a sequel.

Overall, a meh film.

3/10

Night Swim - (Film Review) - Yawn Drown

Forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, former baseball player Ray Waller moves into a new house with his wife and two children. He hopes that the backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for himself. However, a dark secret from the home’s past soon unleashes a malevolent force that drags the family into the depths of inescapable terror.

Wyatt Russell was great and so was his character. This film is based on a short YouTube film and yet the short film is much better. The imagery and "creature" was scary sure but other than that this was bad. Horrors released in January almost always tend to bomb.

Overall

1/10

Five Nights At Freddy's - Movie REVIEW

Happy Halloween!

Five Nights At Freddy's is based on the cult hit indie horror game of the same name by Scott Crawthon. It stars Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard among others and was directed by Emma Tammi and David Fisher and produced by Scott Crawthon and Jason Blum. It's the latest horror film from Blumhouse. This is about a security guard named Mike who lost his job and his life is crumbling, and he gets offered a night security job in an old abandoned restaurant akin to Chuck E Cheese in order to keep money flowing and keep custody of his Sister, Mike takes the job. In Freddy's Fazzbear Pizzarea nothing is what it seems as Mike quickly realises as things go bump in the night and come alive ready to scare and kill as animatronics come alive. Will Mike survive his five nights? Or will these pesky killer animatronics claim another life? Find out by watching it in cinemas or home streaming platforms....

Right so off the bat, I know a fair bit of FNAF lore and universe so as a fan, I enjoyed this film, I thought it was good. Yes it could have been better. Less flashback woodland stuff. More Afton. More action. Less predictable scares with more tension and more blood and gore.

This is just the start, and it's delved in deep with a lot of the game's elements. It's not scary. It's got minimal blood. Furthermore, it should have been a 12A rated film if I am honest rather than a 15 because I've seen worse 15 rated films than this.

The animatronics were outstanding, they looked just pure amazing! Lot of fan service with this film too. The film has its quirky nature of the series and the seriousness too.

The score and licenced tracks were great even the fan addition at the end. The opening game like titles were so cool too! Crazy to think this film has been in the works for 10 years and a film similar to it came out before this. Shout-out to Willie's Wonderland which was just a batshit cheap copy of this haha.

Lots of laughs and meme references shouted out during my screening. One woman in front of me got up and said "well that was disappointing I wanted to see a Markiplier appearance and sex scene"😂 some funny shit! I didn't see any fights in cinema nor anyone stealing posters or cardboard cutouts, unfortunately. Had a good time, no alcohol required haha.

7/10

Halloween Ends Review - Deflated Finale

I was so excited and hyped for this film for over a year!

Jesus Christ this left me so deflated, disappointed, dissatisfied and depressed. 

It's taken me a few hours to come to terms with what I have just seen and here are my entire thoughts on this film and this will contain spoilers.

Basically this is set 4 years after the last film and everyone seems to be moving on, but the town is still feeling the effects of Myers and his evil with people coming out of the woodwork committing horrible crimes. Laurie is trying to move on as is everyone, but it's only for Michael to show up one more time. First let me say the new Blumhouse logo at the start mmm chef's kiss. Also, the title screen was lovely too and interesting with pumpkins breaking through other pumpkins. I've really enjoyed this current H40 timeline Blumhouse has given us well until this one emerged....

I was curious and excited for how this franchise was to meet its end and uhmmm well.....hmmm.....wow that's uh.....that's a bad taste in my mouth. So is this a joke and like the real Halloween Films will release soon? Because uhm......urgh. What?!

If I was in the writers room, I'd like to have seen their reasons for all of this film to be honest. I'll applaud the boldness of them for the new ideas brought into this film BUT they were executed poorly. For me this didn't feel like a Halloween film. Jamie Lee Curtis as her final outing as Laurie Strode was great! The soundtrack in this one was not the best of the trilogy in my opinion. On my first viewing of the film, I couldn't hear much of OST of the Carpenters sound, yes there's moment you hear the themes, but this film is mostly dominated by other third part tracks and very little of the OST I felt. Laurie's theme ends is the best on the soundtrack. Transformation, The Junkyard, The Fight, The Procession, Cherry Blossoms themes are also good. The end song choice with Don't Fear The Reaper was a decent shout. Halloween 78,18 and Kills have such great scores and this one was lacklustre and hardly present but of course I write this after only one viewing of the film, so it can be hard to take in all aspects of a film from one single viewing. Sure in the title sequence the OG, classic, iconic theme was there with added synth and bass as far as my ears could pick up. 

I'll give props to the guy who plays Corey too, fair play to that dude. 

The final showdown is the best part of this film. 

Honestly this film disrespected Michael also for me and considering the past two films and James Jude Courtney's take on The Shape because JJC delivered us a scary older version of The Haddonfield Boogeyman, this film's take with Michael is absolutely shockingly disappointing, he doesn't feel threatening or scary at all, and it's a disservice to the character's legacy. Remember we have had Michael disrespected in past films too, and they were bad and sadly this film for me is going to be in with the bad pile. With how the story goes the kills for me didn't convince me or give me much of a reaction because *SPOILER ALERT* it was not Michael doing those sick kills, but it was a basic copycat killer and for me that's not the same and doesn't have the same weight and doesn't do the same thing for me as it would have if it was actual Michael doing the killing.

There's some lovely Easter eggs in here and references to John Carpenter and also seeing the OG Shape at the Halloween party gave me a big smile because Nick Castle is a legend man! Halloween End's title screen's font and colour scheme is also the same as Halloween 3.

*SPOILER ALERT*

The Hawkins and Strode relationship angle was nice. It was also interesting having other people commit crimes or killings when Michael wasn't around and people still blaming him or his evil which seems to have affected the town like a dark cloud that still lingers over it. The people blaming Laurie was also good I will say because even though we had Laurie be more free and not hung up on survival and hunting down Michael and being the Victor of her survivor's guilt in a way, it was cool to see not everyone has moved and some blame her for atrocities as they are convinced she brought him back to their town, and so she should be blamed for the deaths and injuries from Michael. Social commentary again is "Evil is infectious and people will always want to blame someone else and hate others". I'll be honest here the Evil of Michael's eyes influencing others to go crazy or evil or delve more into their evil sides is great I mean we have seen this happen with Loomis and Dr Seratin and even Jamie Lloyd. Michael is evil pure evil, and he has the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes and of course stating the idea of Michael being that pure evil that, the more he kills, the stronger he gets. You know, yes cool that's true I agree, there's always been so much mystery and supernatural elements with Michael and that's just so fascinating to me so to see him act like a shrivelled old man in Halloween Ends sucked! You know the dude is a fucking monster! He's in his 60s in 2018 and Kills films, and he's shrugging off everything anyone throws at him and that should have stuck, and he should not have gone into hiding for me this is all out of character and does a disservice to Michael Myers "The Shape" character. Yes, the brute strength and appearing he does is here in this film, but we mostly get the copycat Michael getting all the kills in even if the copycat goes against what Michael does as the copycat just goes for revenge kills rather than Michael's "if you're in my way or in my interest I will kill you!". We really should have had these OG characters and characters from the past few films face off with Michael and in my opinion they should have all died by Michael's hands except for Laurie, but I'll get to that in a moment. For the big finale film honestly Michael technically only kills one person, the others he's assisted with. It's a shame "The Shape" we get in this film is not the same monster they set up with the previous two. 

*SPOILER ALERT* 

OK look this film should have ended with Laurie and Michael taking each other down that was the only fitting way for this to have ended or maybe have a twist where Laurie puts on Michael's mask as Michael is laid out pinned on the floor, and she kills Alison and then goes for Michael. Either way right we definitely should have had a closing shot or after credits aimed at the Mask and having some breathing. No shadow of a doubt we will get a reboot of the series in the next 10 years because Evil never dies and evil always takes on new shapes. 😉

Anyway, a disappointing and deflating finale to Blumhouse 40th anniversary Halloween series. 

This will be joining the ranks with the bad Halloween films for me personally. 

A sour pumpkin spiced end to the Blumhouse Halloween era.

3/10

What did you think of Halloween Ends?

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Stay Spooky!