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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Dark Tower (2017) in Movies

Feb 13, 2018

The Dark Tower (2017)

2017 | Horror, Sci-Fi, Western

5.6

(68 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Should've Dreamed a Little Bigger

If brevity is the soul of wit, then at only 95 minutes The Dark Tower should have a few clever things to say for itself; not many of them seem to reach the screen, though. Very reminiscent of many other movies in which troubled young boys tumble into fantasy world which it proves to be their destiny to save.

Given it sets out to adapt a 4000+ page novel series with a devoted following, The Dark Tower was probably always on a hiding to nothing as a single movie aimed at a standalone audience. The disappointing thing is, really, that given it's about a vast multiversal setting filled with elementals and psychics and wizards and gunslingers and suchlike, it feels so timidly safe and familiar. The actual story is competently told, but at the end you really wonder what all the fuss was in aid of. Probably too weird for most newcomers and too short for fans of the books; good soundtrack, though.

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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Trollenberg Terror (1958) in Movies

Jun 22, 2019 (Updated Jun 22, 2019)

The Trollenberg Terror (1958)

1958 | Horror, Sci-Fi

5.8

(4 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Independent sci-fi movie has the inevitable hokeyness of films of its period but shows flashes of intelligence, until the climax at least. Vaguely Lovecraftian alien creatures take up residence atop a Swiss mountain, rip the heads off passing mountaineers, turn other people into zombies to eliminate nosey psychics, and so on. Fearing the world supply of cuckoo clocks, cheese with holes in it, and multi-purpose knives may be in peril, a group of assorted boffins attempt to sort things out.

Well, at least it's original, if not always in the best of ways. Things proceed in a relatively effective way until the aliens decide to come down the mountain and attack in person, at which point they are revealed to be tentacled monocular blobs entirely beyond the budget of the film to convincingly realise. The same could be said of many alien invasion and monster movies of the 50s and 60s and this is neither the best nor the worst example of the genre from that period.