Film Reviews by JD

A new version of evil dead made for modern audiences, by modern film makers.

As you can imagine it has no relationship to the original at all. Apart from a book and some minor details in how the evil operates. Oh and there is a chainsaw in it.

As with many modern remakes affairs you get the feeling the writers and director never actually watched any evil dead or really cared for what it set out to do.

They have scanned over it, made some notes and then made there own film and dropped in the odd half hearted reference.

What you do get now however is something much better.

Your introduced to the evil and horror at the very start, so dont worry about boring tension building. There is also a mystery for you to solve. Which one is the daughter and which one is the son. That one had us stumped for most of the film.

and never fear, men are either bad in conversation (the main characters are a pair of who needs men go getters) or simply there as red shirts. Perfect.

And the gore is mostly just thrown in 'coz horror' Its copies scenes from far superior films, only in a way that makes it naff, pointless and out of context.

Id highly recommend you watch the series instead, its brilliant.

This, for all my sarcasm really only misses on 2 points. It doesnt have Bruce Campbell in it and it isnt directed by Sam Raimi. If it had those 2 things it might of been good.

This film is daft. Very daft.

It takes the daftness of the original film and cranks it upto 11.

Eco warrior - man bad, nature wins message that was old and clunky in the original is just turned up double here.

There is loads of teen drama to, which is for the most part incredibly cheesy and tedious.

And sometimes the CGI is apparent.

But, its such a gorgeous film to watch. Its hard to tell CGI from practical (presumably its mostly CGI) The extended periods of naffness are easily forgiven due to incredible effects.

The action is also superbly done, Cameron is master of action scenes and it stands out. Right down to the small details his genius is obvious.

Also it deserves credit for championing family values.

Cameron has made a pretty bad film here, compared to his greats - this really is awful. But the flipside is, regardless of his ability to create a mess if given to much control, he is still arguably the greatest of all directors. And it shows.

2 star film thats hammered into 4 stars by a lump of genius.

I found the film different and well put together.

I notice one reviewer, and no doubt many elsewhere complain about its agenda politics - which i hear.... but in this case the director has used it skillfully and dare i say correctly.

The use of '2 dads' is absolutely critical to making the plot work. Had this been a traditional family the choice would of been instantly made by the dad with even disbelief being pushed to the side at the need to protect his family. Here there is a different dynamic at work and the story uses it to its advantage.

And secondly the young girl, being who she is there is always the twisted choice. So the whole film we are left wondering what is actually going to happen - simply thanks to the alternative family.

And Dave is excellent playing a gentle giant

However the film to me felt oddly empty. Hence 3 stars. watchable and dare i say enjoyable, but ultimately nothing special.

How bad can it be?

Bad is always the answer.

Lets make a film about a man and girl surviving on earth 65million years.

How, why, what, where - dont care.

Its daft and silly. I could write an essay on the stupid things that happen and the incredibly bad script.

After over a hundred years of Cinema, how can we still make things this bad? 40 years ago John Carpenter made a better film than this with Zero budget in his schools stock cupboard (im not kidding, it really is a better film than this!) Im really at a complete loss how with all the experience and money those behind this film had, they cannot come close to something someone like Carpenter can knock up as a school project.

Not the worst film I have seen but there is no doubt it’s a load of pretentious rubbish.

It kept us interested in the way you might take interest in a suspicious brown stain on the carpet.

It fails in every way possible as entertainment. And the arty shots of the scenery or close ups of nature serve no purpose (and look awful on the grainy film) How can Sergio Leone or Ridley Scott express a thousand words in a single shot – yet these arty directors manage to convey not a single piece of usefulness in there countless pointless shots?

Im being harsh, as this is indeed complete rubbish. But I get the feeling the idea of a good film lurks under the garbage.

The first 2 films were brilliant with the third being ok.

And through this we have been treated to a fantastic Keanu who earnt huge respect over the internet for his incredible skillz (brought about by a training regime and dedication that won nothing but praise from tactical experts)

This ruins it. Yes Keanu is mighty effective and looks as professional as a professional can be. But... the film is just silly. Its endless, monotonous action scenes of more and more men running at John (and often stood waiting around for there turn to die)

And this leads to the real downer, Keanu looks old and slow. Stunt men are literally left shadow boxing waiting for there turn. Dont get me wrong, Keanu has all the moves, but the film with its OTT action highlights a miss match in filming technique and Keanu's age.

Donny Yen doesnt help here as he is smooth, slick and fast. He moves round his opponents like a greased up snake.

Keanu has earnt the respect of the internet and even tactical experts rain praise on him for his incredible skill at this so its sad to see the film get so silly as to make him look like he is past it (which he isnt)

In short its just to much to stupid action. And the beleivable and respect earning skill Keanu demonstrated in the earlier films is lost.

On the bright side the scene in Paris and the card game are excellent!

The plot and production quality are pretty good.

However its let down by the OTT attempts at gore. Its not needed and just looks silly. Nobody can shoot straight and there are so many deaths, all by person a walking upto person b, it quickly gets boring.

Also the plot switch half way through is a bit binary. It makes the fact the first part of the film is an hour long pointless and only needed to be 10 minutes.

And you get stuff like 'big pharma'. Yeh, we know there arent angels but calling your bad guys big pharma is very lazy. Talking of Lazy, there is very little depth to many of the key plot points. You get a bit of background on some occasions but mostly its left empty.

There is a lot of criticism that can be leveled at this. Which is a shame as underneath I think its a good film.

Really bad.

Geologists with C24 tech, a kid who can hack the hob with a tablet, a lead actress who the rest of the cast are falling over themselves to tell her how awesome she is. And so they should, she is a world leading Lawyer, engineer, geologist, programmer etc etc.

Terrible effects, terrible acting, awful screenplay.

Someone actually invested money in this tripe.

And i rented it. bummer.

This is the first time im seen Charles Bronson on screen for a long time, and it was great to see him. While he is no Clint Eastwood when it comes to this sort of thing, the guy is still brilliant. Infact my next job is to go through and add a load of films he is in!

Indeed, the main cast is excellent and all 4 of them are top notch even by modern standards.

I found the film a bit drawn out, not getting to the point, slow.

There is only so much the average viewer can take and its being a pushed a bit here.

However, while im no enjoyer of arty direction - pointless pans of the scenery, closeups of actors looking meaningfully into the distance.... Sergio is an absolute master at such things. Where today many directors just do it for the hope of a gong at Cannes - A silence in a Sergio film just continues the story with looks, images, actions. Its brilliant.

Plus we have the master musician doing the score. Its hard to go wrong when you have a brilliant cast, a brilliant director and a legendry composer all linned up.

The effects are pretty good for the most part to, with real stuntmen and that fly at the start on the guys face was brilliant.

Not the best of the bunch, but a great watch nonetheless.

The lead/main character is truly awful.

It looks like they just grabbed the first kid they saw in drama lessons.

We lasted about 5 minutes before being beaten by his terrible acting (the scripting was pretty poor to) and turned it off.

Infact i just noticed what is normally the lead character in the tale of the musketeers (Dogtanion or whatever his name is) isnt mentioned in the films synopsis.....!

Defo one for the 'worst films of all time' list.

Pity as the source material is good

Check out the other reviews - a 1 a 3 and a 5!

And yeh i get all 3. 5 and 1 are bit extreme but I get where they are coming from

From the start i thought this was going to be complete trash. But it sort of turns out a pretty enjoyable film with car chases actually kept to minimum (im into cars so cringe at the awful car scenes films have)

Horrors are very hit and miss. Its hard genre to get right and i guess when you whittle down the group who like your film - often its hardly worth it.

Here we have curse, investigator, people getting picked off and huge clue as to the end, at the start.

What wins this for me is it keeps the usual failures you see in horrors to a minimum.

They are still there, but the writers/director seem to be making an effort rather than go for the cheap plot progression and use jump scares to validate the horror tag.

Even the nasties are well handled, not kept to the dark so your wondering what they are, but at the same time they get very limited frames to keep the losing mystery and creature effects fails to a minimum.

The end i found a bit rushed (i.e started to do some generic horror fails to progress the plot) and the setup from the beginning was a bit confusing (were we ever told the curse was undone in this fashion and how was it found out?) Its was a nicely setup piece of the story tho and ill give it the benefit of the doubt as maybe i did miss someone suddenly dream that was the answer!

Overall its a decent horror. Possibly worthy of 4 stars.

Really just a film with some people acting in it.

The title is interesting when it becomes apparent what it means!

Some interesting things happen and its well put together. But its a bit meandering with pretty much no plot at all.

While hard to say its bad (its not) its just hard to stay interested in it.

Today franchises are often milked within an inch of there lives. And knowing that, first thought of 3 B2TF's is yep, its being milked.

And much like the other 2 movies, this is cheesy, full of holes, predictable and the special effects arent great.

But my lord is it good. Really good.

Its funny, entertaining and although my list of criticism stands, this film oozes quality. Its pretty obvious everyone invloved in this and the other 2 films know exactly how to make a good film.

Brilliant stuff

Just a generic horror, nobody believes her, a few jump scares, predictable plot and its all done.

It has its moments, I did like a couple of scenes. But a couple of good scenes make a good film not.