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Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Black Water: Abyss (2020) in Movies
Aug 22, 2020
I don't know how I've never seen Black Water, but I saw the trailer for Abyss and it caught my eye so I'll be going back to check the first one out as they're usually better.
When Cash finds a cave while out searching for two missing hikers he invites his friends to explore it with him. Deep in the cave system they come upon a cavern, as they look around they're suddenly hit by a torrent of water and become trapped by the rising water... and they might not be alone.
Where to start... I love creature features, at this point that's common knowledge, but there are some that make me a little sad. Black Water: Abyss might be one of those. It has all the potential but somehow it wasn't engaging, perhaps it took itself a little too seriously?
It suffered from excessive length, or rather the perception of length as it had a runtime of just 1 hour 38 minutes. It felt a lot longer. 98 minutes would be a perfect length for this sort of film but this dragged on and on.
There's a tried and tested formula: group gets trapped, there's peril, group have to escape, most die or at least get maimed. 47 Meters Down, Deep Blue Sea, Crawl... I won't go on. It's a simple story that so many films before have done, it shouldn't have been hard to recreate.
The actors are all good. Luke Mitchell (Blindspot) and Jessica McNamee (The Meg) were both faces I recognised and their previous roles sat positively with me. They play Jen and Eric who are a happy couple on the surface but the tension builds, they work well together. Anthony J Sharpe as Cash givens off some heavy Murdock vibes, the slightly crazy character did lighten everything a little but I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing in the long run. Our other couple are Yolanda and Viktor (Amali Golden and Benjamin Hoetjes), they're made to be the opposites of Jen and Eric seemingly one particular line of dialogue in the middle. They didn't have the same presence but that wasn't really necessary.
CGI crocs. I'll give them some credit for the fact that there were a couple of shots where I couldn't say if they were CG, real or practical. For the most part though I wasn't excited by what I saw, there was a lot of eye and snout shots or just ripples in the water. The bigger shots were chaotic and mainly obscured by fast motion and water, when you do get a good view it doesn't gel with anything around it, the colourings in particular seem to be inconsistent with the light inside the cave.
There are a lot of leading shots that should help with suspense, but somehow don't. They're typical off-set characters with open space that make you think a croc is going to jump out, classic right? But it seems like they made a concerted effort to combat predictability by putting a few of those shots together and not using the first one for the scare... which had a negative effect for me. Part of the fun of these films is that you know something is coming and you can get a gratifying win from guessing what's going to happen, after a few thwarted attempts at that it became really frustrating and less than satisfying to watch.
Despite a lot of disappointment this isn't a bad film, swapping some of the drama for more action and giving the viewers a few "wins" would have easily made the runtime a bit more bearable. I did get a solid laugh out of it towards the end, perhaps it missed its calling as a comedy.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/08/black-water-abyss-movie-review.html
When Cash finds a cave while out searching for two missing hikers he invites his friends to explore it with him. Deep in the cave system they come upon a cavern, as they look around they're suddenly hit by a torrent of water and become trapped by the rising water... and they might not be alone.
Where to start... I love creature features, at this point that's common knowledge, but there are some that make me a little sad. Black Water: Abyss might be one of those. It has all the potential but somehow it wasn't engaging, perhaps it took itself a little too seriously?
It suffered from excessive length, or rather the perception of length as it had a runtime of just 1 hour 38 minutes. It felt a lot longer. 98 minutes would be a perfect length for this sort of film but this dragged on and on.
There's a tried and tested formula: group gets trapped, there's peril, group have to escape, most die or at least get maimed. 47 Meters Down, Deep Blue Sea, Crawl... I won't go on. It's a simple story that so many films before have done, it shouldn't have been hard to recreate.
The actors are all good. Luke Mitchell (Blindspot) and Jessica McNamee (The Meg) were both faces I recognised and their previous roles sat positively with me. They play Jen and Eric who are a happy couple on the surface but the tension builds, they work well together. Anthony J Sharpe as Cash givens off some heavy Murdock vibes, the slightly crazy character did lighten everything a little but I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing in the long run. Our other couple are Yolanda and Viktor (Amali Golden and Benjamin Hoetjes), they're made to be the opposites of Jen and Eric seemingly one particular line of dialogue in the middle. They didn't have the same presence but that wasn't really necessary.
CGI crocs. I'll give them some credit for the fact that there were a couple of shots where I couldn't say if they were CG, real or practical. For the most part though I wasn't excited by what I saw, there was a lot of eye and snout shots or just ripples in the water. The bigger shots were chaotic and mainly obscured by fast motion and water, when you do get a good view it doesn't gel with anything around it, the colourings in particular seem to be inconsistent with the light inside the cave.
There are a lot of leading shots that should help with suspense, but somehow don't. They're typical off-set characters with open space that make you think a croc is going to jump out, classic right? But it seems like they made a concerted effort to combat predictability by putting a few of those shots together and not using the first one for the scare... which had a negative effect for me. Part of the fun of these films is that you know something is coming and you can get a gratifying win from guessing what's going to happen, after a few thwarted attempts at that it became really frustrating and less than satisfying to watch.
Despite a lot of disappointment this isn't a bad film, swapping some of the drama for more action and giving the viewers a few "wins" would have easily made the runtime a bit more bearable. I did get a solid laugh out of it towards the end, perhaps it missed its calling as a comedy.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/08/black-water-abyss-movie-review.html
Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Labyrinth in Tabletop Games
Sep 29, 2020
You know what’s super fun? Rediscovering one of your favorite childhood games. What’s even better is if the game itself lives up to your memories from when you were younger. Labyrinth is one of those games for me. My siblings and I played it a lot throughout our childhood, and it’s recently come back into my life. So does it still dazzle me after all of these years? Read on to find out!
Labyrinth is a game of tile placement and route building with a modular board in which you are trying to navigate the maze to collect various treasures. To setup the game, shuffle the maze tiles and place them randomly on the empty spaces of the board. There will be 1 tile left over. Shuffle the treasure cards and split them evenly between all players. Players may only look at the top card of their stack at a time. On your turn, you are trying to get your pawn to the tile showing the treasure from your card. You do this by shifting the board and creating new pathways through the maze. Take the extra tile, and add it to a row or column, effectively shifting the entire line in one direction. Once you have shifted the maze, move your pawn as far as possible along the open pathway. If you reach your treasure tile, flip over your card. You now look at the next card in your stack, and on your next turn will begin moving towards that tile. If you don’t reach your treasure tile, that is fine. Just try to set yourself up to reach it on your next turn! The game ends once a player has flipped over all of their treasure cards and returned their pawn to its starting position.
I loved Labyrinth as a kid, and I still love it as an adult. The gameplay is pretty engaging, and now that I’m older, I can appreciate the strategy required of the game way more. One of the most fun parts of the game is the act of shifting the tiles. It’s just fun to watch the rows shift, creating new pathways and trapping opponents in dead-end routes. Not just that, but the amount of strategy you need for success is crazy! You have to be thinking several turns in advance, trying to figure out how to shift the randomly set-up maze to your maximum benefit, while also trying to anticipate how your opponents might shift the maze as well. There really is no down-time in Labyrinth, and that keeps it exciting for such a simple game.
The one thing I do not necessarily like about Labyrinth is that you are only allowed to look at your top treasure card at a time. Sometimes you spend several turns getting to a treasure tile, just to look at your next card and realize that you passed through that tile several times on your way here. I guess it would probably make the game easier overall if you could see all of your cards at once and decide your path from there. Not that I necessarily want an easier game, it can just get frustrating sometimes when you have to be traveling back and forth across the board for every single card.
Labyrinth is definitely a game that I will keep in my collection forever. It was a childhood favorite of mine, and I still love to bring it out with my siblings for some good nostalgia coupled with brain-burning strategy. I can’t wait to have children of my own so that I can play this game with them as well. Just because it’s an old game, doesn’t mean that it’s a bad game! Give it a try if you haven’t, because I think you’ll love it. Purple Phoenix Games gives Labyrinth a twisting 8 / 12.
Labyrinth is a game of tile placement and route building with a modular board in which you are trying to navigate the maze to collect various treasures. To setup the game, shuffle the maze tiles and place them randomly on the empty spaces of the board. There will be 1 tile left over. Shuffle the treasure cards and split them evenly between all players. Players may only look at the top card of their stack at a time. On your turn, you are trying to get your pawn to the tile showing the treasure from your card. You do this by shifting the board and creating new pathways through the maze. Take the extra tile, and add it to a row or column, effectively shifting the entire line in one direction. Once you have shifted the maze, move your pawn as far as possible along the open pathway. If you reach your treasure tile, flip over your card. You now look at the next card in your stack, and on your next turn will begin moving towards that tile. If you don’t reach your treasure tile, that is fine. Just try to set yourself up to reach it on your next turn! The game ends once a player has flipped over all of their treasure cards and returned their pawn to its starting position.
I loved Labyrinth as a kid, and I still love it as an adult. The gameplay is pretty engaging, and now that I’m older, I can appreciate the strategy required of the game way more. One of the most fun parts of the game is the act of shifting the tiles. It’s just fun to watch the rows shift, creating new pathways and trapping opponents in dead-end routes. Not just that, but the amount of strategy you need for success is crazy! You have to be thinking several turns in advance, trying to figure out how to shift the randomly set-up maze to your maximum benefit, while also trying to anticipate how your opponents might shift the maze as well. There really is no down-time in Labyrinth, and that keeps it exciting for such a simple game.
The one thing I do not necessarily like about Labyrinth is that you are only allowed to look at your top treasure card at a time. Sometimes you spend several turns getting to a treasure tile, just to look at your next card and realize that you passed through that tile several times on your way here. I guess it would probably make the game easier overall if you could see all of your cards at once and decide your path from there. Not that I necessarily want an easier game, it can just get frustrating sometimes when you have to be traveling back and forth across the board for every single card.
Labyrinth is definitely a game that I will keep in my collection forever. It was a childhood favorite of mine, and I still love to bring it out with my siblings for some good nostalgia coupled with brain-burning strategy. I can’t wait to have children of my own so that I can play this game with them as well. Just because it’s an old game, doesn’t mean that it’s a bad game! Give it a try if you haven’t, because I think you’ll love it. Purple Phoenix Games gives Labyrinth a twisting 8 / 12.
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Bob Mann (459 KP) rated People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan (2021) in Movies
Aug 20, 2021
Good jokes, most of which land (1 more)
Enough David Brent/Partridge moments to make you cringe
As a PJDN virgin, I still laughed a lot!
It’s brave then that such a relatively niche UK TV show should have a go at ‘jumping the shark’ onto the big screen. Would fans like it? And, just as importantly, would newcomers to the characters, like me, be able to enjoy the film as a standalone entity? The answer to the last question is a qualified “yes”.
Positives:
- It well-surpasses the “6 laugh test” for a comedy. There are some scenes that I found extremely funny, with others that rated highly for me on the David Brent / Alan Partridge scale of cringiness.
- I’ve seen comment that the story is "silly" and “unbelievable”. But having experienced the crazy clash between English and Japanese culture first hand, it strikes me as very true to form! The way in which the Japanese music execs try to stylise the ground as a ‘boy band’ (“Bang Boys”!), which Grindah greedily goes along with, is a nice satire on the music industry asserting its brand over musician’s art.
- A subplot of a love story beween the inept Steves and the cute Japanese translator Ishika (Ayumi Itô) is nicely done and strangely touching.
- The good news is that you don’t need any previous experience of the characters to get fun out of the movie: you can jump right in. That being said though, I’m sure fans of the series will get more out of this than I did.
Negatives:
- While the ending was uplifting, I was itching to know what fallout (or success?) there was from the event we witnessed. Perhaps if its a box office success (unlikely I think!) then there will be a sequel.
Summary Thoughts on “People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan”: IMDB is littered with disastrous reviews of British TV shows that have tried and failed to make the leap from the small screen to the big screen. “On the Buses”; “Are You Being Served?”; “Steptoe and Son”; “Please Sir”; “Love Thy Neighbour” – the list is endless. They are mostly all horribly unfunny. Even the great “Morecambe and Wise”, although showing occasional moments of brilliance, struggled to fully land any of their three big-screen outings.
The ‘go-to’ of many of these efforts was to “go abroad”: take the well-loved characters and put them into a ‘bigger’ and stranger pool. So “People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan” was following a well-trodden path here. It’s a tribute to the team and their TV-series director Jack Clough, in his feature debut, that they pretty much pull it off.
I’d like to agree with Kevin Maher of “The Times” that the movie is full of “Japanese stereotypes… drunken businessmen, passive giggling women etc”. But having travelled extensively on business in Japan, it seems pretty close to the mark with its observations to me! More importantly, the film never seems to be particularly derogatory or disrespectful of the culture. For example, they take their shoes off too much!
Key to its box office success will be whether or not it can attract an audience outside of its niche TV fan-bases. As a member of that sub-group, I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one, but I actually did. It was good fun, and if you want a good laugh at the cinema – a pretty rare thing – then I’d recommend this one, even if – like me – you haven’t seen the original TV show.
(For the full graphical review, please check out onemannsmovies on the web, Facebook and Tiktok. Thanks!)
Positives:
- It well-surpasses the “6 laugh test” for a comedy. There are some scenes that I found extremely funny, with others that rated highly for me on the David Brent / Alan Partridge scale of cringiness.
- I’ve seen comment that the story is "silly" and “unbelievable”. But having experienced the crazy clash between English and Japanese culture first hand, it strikes me as very true to form! The way in which the Japanese music execs try to stylise the ground as a ‘boy band’ (“Bang Boys”!), which Grindah greedily goes along with, is a nice satire on the music industry asserting its brand over musician’s art.
- A subplot of a love story beween the inept Steves and the cute Japanese translator Ishika (Ayumi Itô) is nicely done and strangely touching.
- The good news is that you don’t need any previous experience of the characters to get fun out of the movie: you can jump right in. That being said though, I’m sure fans of the series will get more out of this than I did.
Negatives:
- While the ending was uplifting, I was itching to know what fallout (or success?) there was from the event we witnessed. Perhaps if its a box office success (unlikely I think!) then there will be a sequel.
Summary Thoughts on “People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan”: IMDB is littered with disastrous reviews of British TV shows that have tried and failed to make the leap from the small screen to the big screen. “On the Buses”; “Are You Being Served?”; “Steptoe and Son”; “Please Sir”; “Love Thy Neighbour” – the list is endless. They are mostly all horribly unfunny. Even the great “Morecambe and Wise”, although showing occasional moments of brilliance, struggled to fully land any of their three big-screen outings.
The ‘go-to’ of many of these efforts was to “go abroad”: take the well-loved characters and put them into a ‘bigger’ and stranger pool. So “People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan” was following a well-trodden path here. It’s a tribute to the team and their TV-series director Jack Clough, in his feature debut, that they pretty much pull it off.
I’d like to agree with Kevin Maher of “The Times” that the movie is full of “Japanese stereotypes… drunken businessmen, passive giggling women etc”. But having travelled extensively on business in Japan, it seems pretty close to the mark with its observations to me! More importantly, the film never seems to be particularly derogatory or disrespectful of the culture. For example, they take their shoes off too much!
Key to its box office success will be whether or not it can attract an audience outside of its niche TV fan-bases. As a member of that sub-group, I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one, but I actually did. It was good fun, and if you want a good laugh at the cinema – a pretty rare thing – then I’d recommend this one, even if – like me – you haven’t seen the original TV show.
(For the full graphical review, please check out onemannsmovies on the web, Facebook and Tiktok. Thanks!)
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated The Mercy (2018) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
“With shroud, and mast, and pennon fair”.
It’s 1968. Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle“; “Magic in the Moonlight“), an amateur sailor and entrepreneur based in Teignmouth, Devon, is inspired by listening to single-handed round-the-world yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester and does a a crazy thing. He puts his business, his family’s house and his own life on the line by entering the Sunday Times single-handed round-the-world yacht race. It’s not even as if he has a boat built yet!
Lending him the money, under onerous terms, are local businessman Mr Best (Ken Stott, “The Hobbit“) and local newspaper editor Rodney Hallworth (David Thewlis, “Wonder Woman“, “The Theory of Everything“). With the race deadline upon him, Crowhurst is pressed into sailing away from his beloved wife Clare (Rachel Weisz, “Denial“, “The Lobster“) and young family in a trimaran that is well below par.
But what happens next is so ludicrous that it makes a mockery of whoever wrote this ridiculous work of fiction. Ah… but wait a minute… it’s a true story!
It is in fact such an astonishing story that this is a film that is easy to spoil in a review, a fact that seems to have passed many newspaper reviewers by (Arrrggghhh!!). So I will leave much comment to a “spoiler section” that follows the trailer (which is also best avoided). This is honestly a film worth seeing cold. What can I say that is spoiler-free then?
Firth and Weisz make a well-matched couple, and the rest of the cast is peppered with well-known faces from British film and (particularly) TV: Andrew Buchan and Jonathan Bailey (from “Broadchurch”); Mark Gatiss (“Sherlock”, “Out Kind of Traitor“); Adrian Schiller (“Victoria”; “Beauty and the Beast“).
The first part of the film is well executed and excellent value for older viewers. 60’s Devon is warm, bucolic and nostalgic. In fact, the film beautifully creates the late 60’s of my childhood, from the boxy hardwood furniture of the Crowhurst’s house to the Meccano set opened at Christmas time.
Once afloat though, the film is less successful at getting its sea-legs. The story is riveting, but quite a number of the scenes raise more questions than they answer. As stress takes hold it is perhaps not surprising that there are a few fantastical flights of movie fancy. But some specific elements in Scott Burns’ script don’t quite gel: a brass clock overboard is a case in point. What? Why?
And it seems to be light on the fallout from the race: there is a weighty scene in the trailer between Best and Hallworth that (unless I dozed off!) I don’t think appeared in the final cut, and I think was needed.
All in all, I was left feeling mildly dissatisfied: a potentially good film by “Theory of Everything” director James Marsh that rather goes off the rails in the final stretch.
This was a time where morality and honour were often rigidly adhered to – British “stiff upper lip” and all that – and seemed to carry a lot more weight than they do today. So some of the decisions in the film might mystify younger viewers. But for the packed older audience in my showing (Cineworld: this needs to be put on in a bigger screen!) then it was a gripping, stressful, but far from flawless watch.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to pay my respects to the film’s composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who shockingly died last week at the ridiculously young age of 48. His strange and atmospheric music for films including “The Theory of Everything“, “Sicario” and (particularly) “Arrival” set him on the path to be a film composing great of the future. Like James Horner, another awful and untimely loss to the film music industry.
Lending him the money, under onerous terms, are local businessman Mr Best (Ken Stott, “The Hobbit“) and local newspaper editor Rodney Hallworth (David Thewlis, “Wonder Woman“, “The Theory of Everything“). With the race deadline upon him, Crowhurst is pressed into sailing away from his beloved wife Clare (Rachel Weisz, “Denial“, “The Lobster“) and young family in a trimaran that is well below par.
But what happens next is so ludicrous that it makes a mockery of whoever wrote this ridiculous work of fiction. Ah… but wait a minute… it’s a true story!
It is in fact such an astonishing story that this is a film that is easy to spoil in a review, a fact that seems to have passed many newspaper reviewers by (Arrrggghhh!!). So I will leave much comment to a “spoiler section” that follows the trailer (which is also best avoided). This is honestly a film worth seeing cold. What can I say that is spoiler-free then?
Firth and Weisz make a well-matched couple, and the rest of the cast is peppered with well-known faces from British film and (particularly) TV: Andrew Buchan and Jonathan Bailey (from “Broadchurch”); Mark Gatiss (“Sherlock”, “Out Kind of Traitor“); Adrian Schiller (“Victoria”; “Beauty and the Beast“).
The first part of the film is well executed and excellent value for older viewers. 60’s Devon is warm, bucolic and nostalgic. In fact, the film beautifully creates the late 60’s of my childhood, from the boxy hardwood furniture of the Crowhurst’s house to the Meccano set opened at Christmas time.
Once afloat though, the film is less successful at getting its sea-legs. The story is riveting, but quite a number of the scenes raise more questions than they answer. As stress takes hold it is perhaps not surprising that there are a few fantastical flights of movie fancy. But some specific elements in Scott Burns’ script don’t quite gel: a brass clock overboard is a case in point. What? Why?
And it seems to be light on the fallout from the race: there is a weighty scene in the trailer between Best and Hallworth that (unless I dozed off!) I don’t think appeared in the final cut, and I think was needed.
All in all, I was left feeling mildly dissatisfied: a potentially good film by “Theory of Everything” director James Marsh that rather goes off the rails in the final stretch.
This was a time where morality and honour were often rigidly adhered to – British “stiff upper lip” and all that – and seemed to carry a lot more weight than they do today. So some of the decisions in the film might mystify younger viewers. But for the packed older audience in my showing (Cineworld: this needs to be put on in a bigger screen!) then it was a gripping, stressful, but far from flawless watch.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to pay my respects to the film’s composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who shockingly died last week at the ridiculously young age of 48. His strange and atmospheric music for films including “The Theory of Everything“, “Sicario” and (particularly) “Arrival” set him on the path to be a film composing great of the future. Like James Horner, another awful and untimely loss to the film music industry.
BankofMarquis (1832 KP) rated FIRESTARTER (2022) in Movies
May 21, 2022
Commits the Biggest Film Crime - It's Boring
Sometimes, I watch a movie, so you don’t have to.
I watched the remake of the Stephen King novel FIRESTARTER, so you don’t have to.
The current “leader in the clubhouse” for the worst film of 2022, FIRESTARTER is based on the very good Stephen King novel that was published in 1980 and was made into a pretty cheesy, pretty ‘80s flick in 1984 that made Drew Barrymore (fresh off her work in ET) a bonafide movie star.
No such luck in this one.
Produced by Blum House, Directed by Keith Thomas (THE VIGIL) and adapted from King’s novel by Scott Teems (HALLOWEEN KILLS), this version of FIRESTARTER was dead on arrival, with a weak script, mediocre directing and less than stellar visual effects, consequently making a film that is the worst sort of film…boring. It doesn’t even have the ambition to be “so bad, it’s good”, it is just plodding and mediocre throughout.
But, at 1 hour 34 minutes, it is mercifully short, so it does have that going for it.
What it also has going for it is a “game” Zach Efron as “Firestarter’s Father” and he elevates the scenes he is in to something that comes close to watchable. And when Sydney Lemmon is along as “Firestarter’s Mom” the screen comes the closest to interesting. But the rest…”meh”.
Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays “Firestarter”, Charlie McGee - the young lady who can start fires with her telepathic powers - and she is “just fine”, but she does not have the star power or “it” factor that Barrymore brought to the proceedings previously. She is just not a compelling enough presence on screen to save this turkey. I don’t blame her, I blame the weak Direction by Thomas and the limp script by Teems.
The only other character/performance that sparks some interest in this film is Michael Grayeyes (TOGO) who plays a Native American tracker with his own telekinetic powers who is put on the trail of Charlie by the mysterious Institute (a shadowy Gov’t agency that chases after various “special” people - mostly kids - in quite a few Stephen King novels). Inexplicably, this role was played by an aging, pony-tailed George C. Scott (obviously chasing a paycheck) in the 1984 film. Grayeyes succeeds more.
But these glimmers of competence only aggravates more when the film bogs back down in cardboard villains (what has happened to your career, Gloria Ruben) and exposition spouting scientists (what a waste of Kurtwood Smith) and less than spectacular action sequences that, mostly, consist of Armstrong screaming while a wind machine blows her hair back while sub-par CGI flames engulf the screen.
And…adding insult to injury…the "guy in the asbestos suit” (a mainstay of any film involving fire) does not even get a day of stunt pay! It’s like going to see a Tom Cruise Mission Impossible film and Cruise doesn’t do some sort of crazy stunt!
After the success of IT, PART ONE in 2017, there was a renaissance, of sorts, of adaptations of Stephen King works and even though PET SEMATARY (2019) was pretty decent and IT, CHAPTER TWO and DOCTOR SLEEP (2019) were okay, THE DARK TOWER, the TV remake of THE STAND, LISEY’S STORY and now FIRESTARTER were all terrible, so maybe we’ve seen the end of this phase of King adaptations (I doubt it, but one can hope).
Save yourself and hour and a half of your life and skip this Firestarter. Instead, revisit the 1984 version - it plays like an Oscar-winner compared to this turkey. Or, better yet, read the original Stephen King work - it is the best of all of these.
Letter Grade: C- (and I’m being generous)
3 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis).
I watched the remake of the Stephen King novel FIRESTARTER, so you don’t have to.
The current “leader in the clubhouse” for the worst film of 2022, FIRESTARTER is based on the very good Stephen King novel that was published in 1980 and was made into a pretty cheesy, pretty ‘80s flick in 1984 that made Drew Barrymore (fresh off her work in ET) a bonafide movie star.
No such luck in this one.
Produced by Blum House, Directed by Keith Thomas (THE VIGIL) and adapted from King’s novel by Scott Teems (HALLOWEEN KILLS), this version of FIRESTARTER was dead on arrival, with a weak script, mediocre directing and less than stellar visual effects, consequently making a film that is the worst sort of film…boring. It doesn’t even have the ambition to be “so bad, it’s good”, it is just plodding and mediocre throughout.
But, at 1 hour 34 minutes, it is mercifully short, so it does have that going for it.
What it also has going for it is a “game” Zach Efron as “Firestarter’s Father” and he elevates the scenes he is in to something that comes close to watchable. And when Sydney Lemmon is along as “Firestarter’s Mom” the screen comes the closest to interesting. But the rest…”meh”.
Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays “Firestarter”, Charlie McGee - the young lady who can start fires with her telepathic powers - and she is “just fine”, but she does not have the star power or “it” factor that Barrymore brought to the proceedings previously. She is just not a compelling enough presence on screen to save this turkey. I don’t blame her, I blame the weak Direction by Thomas and the limp script by Teems.
The only other character/performance that sparks some interest in this film is Michael Grayeyes (TOGO) who plays a Native American tracker with his own telekinetic powers who is put on the trail of Charlie by the mysterious Institute (a shadowy Gov’t agency that chases after various “special” people - mostly kids - in quite a few Stephen King novels). Inexplicably, this role was played by an aging, pony-tailed George C. Scott (obviously chasing a paycheck) in the 1984 film. Grayeyes succeeds more.
But these glimmers of competence only aggravates more when the film bogs back down in cardboard villains (what has happened to your career, Gloria Ruben) and exposition spouting scientists (what a waste of Kurtwood Smith) and less than spectacular action sequences that, mostly, consist of Armstrong screaming while a wind machine blows her hair back while sub-par CGI flames engulf the screen.
And…adding insult to injury…the "guy in the asbestos suit” (a mainstay of any film involving fire) does not even get a day of stunt pay! It’s like going to see a Tom Cruise Mission Impossible film and Cruise doesn’t do some sort of crazy stunt!
After the success of IT, PART ONE in 2017, there was a renaissance, of sorts, of adaptations of Stephen King works and even though PET SEMATARY (2019) was pretty decent and IT, CHAPTER TWO and DOCTOR SLEEP (2019) were okay, THE DARK TOWER, the TV remake of THE STAND, LISEY’S STORY and now FIRESTARTER were all terrible, so maybe we’ve seen the end of this phase of King adaptations (I doubt it, but one can hope).
Save yourself and hour and a half of your life and skip this Firestarter. Instead, revisit the 1984 version - it plays like an Oscar-winner compared to this turkey. Or, better yet, read the original Stephen King work - it is the best of all of these.
Letter Grade: C- (and I’m being generous)
3 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis).