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Awix (3310 KP) rated Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017) in Movies

Feb 13, 2018 (Updated Mar 7, 2018)

Now, there's nothing wrong in principle with doing an animated Godzilla movie; most of the problems with this one arise from the fact it is largely unrecognisable as such.

Earth is abandoned due to excessive growth in the giant monster population; timey-wimey plot device means the survivors return twenty years later and find thousands of years have gone past and the place has reverted to a primeval state; the ecology is now distinctly Godzillaesque. Has their technology improved to the point where they can stand a chance against the Big G himself?

Reasonable, if somewhat convoluted premise is torpedoed by a persistent mood of nihilistic misery and absence of likeable human characters; Godzilla is largely absent, and mostly passive when he does appear. You want to see Godzilla demolishing Tokyo and fighting other monsters, not mooching about in a jungle, anyway. A good way of catching up on recent tropes in mainstream SF (this is just a nice way of saying the film is rather derivative), some interesting designs, but on the whole this is hard work to watch. English subtitles seem to have been written using Google Translate, which only adds to the essentially frustrating nature of the experience.

Kudos

Steph (468 KP) rated Eldritch Horror in Tabletop Games

Jul 10, 2018

Eldritch Horror

2013 | Adventure, Book, Fantasy, Fighting, Horror

8.2

(12 Ratings)

Tabletop Game Rating

One of my all-time favorites!

Eldritch Horror is a difficult, horror-themed, co-operative board game. You and your fellow teammates play as characters with different abilities and, together, you are trying to stop an elder monster from awakening and destroying the world. If you'd played Arkham Horror, Eldritch is a streamlined version of it. There are TONS of expansions (I have all of them) that really add to the game through different characters, mechanics, bad guys, etc.

I wouldn't say this game was friendly to people who don't usually play board games because of all of the different rules and elements, though because of it's co-operative nature, it's not too hard to teach to people who do usually play board games.

This game has GREAT re-playability. It scales fairly well for different numbers of players, but does not play as well with odd numbers (the difficulty is the same as the even number one higher, but you have fewer turns). Because it's co-operative, you can have some players control more than one character. This is what we usually do if we play with odd numbers. It's challenging to do this, though, if everyone is new to the game.

Kudos

Akward (448 KP) Jul 10, 2018

Thanks for the review! I just got this last week, and you're making me pumped to get it to the table.

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Steph (468 KP) Jul 10, 2018

Nice! Let me know how you like it ?

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Andy K (10821 KP) rated The Exorcist (1973) in Movies

Oct 14, 2018 (Updated Oct 15, 2018)

The best ever!

I remember when I was a kid sneaking into the living room and watching 10 minutes of The Exorcist from behind my mother's recliner when I was like 8. Even that 10 minutes messed me up for a long time as a kid. I would have dreams of my bed shaking and wake up sweaty and exhausted.

Not until I was an adult in my 30s did I truly appreciate the perfection masterpiece craft of the film.

Simple, slow burn storytelling. Not the scariest or goriest film ever made. More the idea of the film, how it transforms a young innocent girl into a satanic, cruel, vulgar monster which is the most visceral.

When it was released in 2000 with the "Version you've never seen" I happened to be working as a projectionist at the local theatre when I lived in Oregon. I always used to go into the theatre itself or turn the volume up while in the projector room so I could listen to it while I was doing other work.

It truly is one of my favorite films and is a tradition now I watch it every single October 31st.

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Acanthea Grimscythe (300 KP) rated The Moor in Books

Jan 31, 2019

The Moor

Sam Haysom | 2018 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, Horror

6.5

(2 Ratings)

Book Rating

The Moor is Sam Haysom’s debut novel and though it seems to have pretty high ratings, I found it to fall short of my expectations. The book encompasses the story of a handful of thirteen-year-old boys on a hiking trip through the moors. During this trip, things go wrong and… well, that’s where it tries to be two stories at once: a ghost story and a creature feature.

The ghost story side of this book is fantastic. It’s written in a way that captures the reader’s imagination and honestly, I could picture the details quite well. What I didn’t like was the creature feature side of the book. The monster that makes up this horror tale should be terrifying, but instead I found it to be one dimensional–in fact, every single time the creature shows up, it’s described the same way which really put me off.

I felt no emotions or connections to the boys in the book, and this greatly diminished the emotional/fright factor of the novel for me. I really wanted to taste the fear that these teenaged boys were going through.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.