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The Visit (2015)
The Visit (2015)
2015 | Horror, Mystery
This movie, and I can't stress this enough, spends way too much time on the young kids budding rapping career. Not convinced I ever want to watch 13 year old white boys rap, let alone 3 or 4 seperate scenes of it...

Anyway, The Visit is pretty good (if you ignore the whole rapping part - not sure if I've mentioned that yet). It has a minimal yet great cast, some solid creepy moments, and a surprisingly grounded twist from the notoriously inconsistent M. Night Shyamalan.

Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould are likable as the two leads. The framing device of them filming a documentary about their estranged grandparents is a natural explanation for the 'found footage' camera style.
The stand out though is Deanna Dunagan as the grandma. Christ she is unsettlingly creepy, even when she's being kind. Her contribution to this film really lends the narrative as a whole, a huge help of tension. The slow burn nature of it is fantastically realised, and presents the audience with a decent mystery plot, and a chance to try and unravel what is really going on before the inevitable twist hits.

The twist itself is simple yet effective, and is certainly an "oh shit" moment, but unfortunately it leads to a final act that feels a bit over the top and silly. It shifts from an atmospheric creepy chiller to a sub par horror trying a little too hard to pack in the scares. It's a shame because 80% of the runtime is genuinely engaging!

Despite the lackluster ending, The Visit is a solid POV thriller that is head and shoulders above a huge chunk of Shyamalan's back catalogue, and is decent enough way to spend 90 minutes, except for the 3-4 minutes spent with the kid rapping...
  
Antics in the Forbidden Zone by Adam and the Ants / Adam Ant
Antics in the Forbidden Zone by Adam and the Ants / Adam Ant
1990 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Following on nicely from “Just What I Needed”, I went to see my Dad in Florida and he had the 12” of “Stand and Deliver” which had “Beat My Guest” on the B-side. “I was into rap at that time, Run DMC and that kind of stuff, so for a ten-year-old it was ‘What the fuck is this?’ I was blown away. I was floored by the riff and “Beat My Guest” has the ultimate guitar riff, it’s so badass. I was into the make-up as well because I was into KISS too, so I thought that was cool. I was mesmerised by the whole look. “My Dad was always one step ahead of me. I remember being with him in Michigan once, we had this cottage we’d go to with my grandparents and he joined us one year, which was really fun. He was looking in the paper to see who was playing in Detroit - which was two hours away - he found out The Dead Kennedys were playing in some tiny little club and he left to go and see them. “I remember thinking my Dad was the coolest, I was ‘What the hell does that mean? He’s into some weird shit.’ He taught me everything. He spoke to me about music, but he doesn’t play music. I acquired a lot of his records when my parents split up, he gave me that Adam Ant record and I was bawling on the plane. “The next time I went to visit my Dad I’d discovered more Adam and The Ants and I wanted to talk to him about all of these other songs I’d heard, but he was already onto the next thing, which was Devo."

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Hear Nothing, Say Nothing, See Nothing by Discharge
Hear Nothing, Say Nothing, See Nothing by Discharge
1982 | Punk
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Discharge do write short pop songs. They're like punk rock haiku. I love Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing and still listen to it regularly. To me it's not only a great punk rock record it's also a very psychedelic record, which may not seem normal to most people. Of all the records I ever listened to while tripping on acid, this is the one that sounded the best. You'd think with the lyrics and the cover that it would be a scary proposition. It was more like getting wrapped up in the sound. The guitars sounded like they were in a hall of mirrors, there are so many layers bouncing back and forth. You can almost kind of view the whole record as one long song, or a piece with these little movements. I've obviously thought about it way too much while tripping on acid! From that era - the early 80s - I was really into Discharge, Crass, Zounds, some of the other Crass bands, but a lot of the other stuff like Peter And The Test Tube Babies seemed really dumb to me and weak. I didn't get into Oi! bands. They'd tend to have these dumb singalong choruses and chanting and the guitar parts always seemed to be like ""the box"" - a four-fret pattern. Of course I loved a lot of the earlier UK punk rock bands. That's a problem with these lists where you have to think of thirteen albums. I can't fit The Damned in there, I can't fit Pere Ubu. I could but I'd have to take something out and all these records are equally important to me. It's like choosing between children or favourite grandparents!"

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