The plot of Ready or Not is very short if you look at IMDb. In fact it reads: A bride's wedding night takes a sinister turn when her eccentric new in-laws force her to take part in a terrifying game. Now, if you've seen the trailer you know that the game the family plays is Hide and Seek, and you might wonder how that can be something terrifying? Well, the answer is quite simple, you've just married into a cult who worship a being who requires a sacrifice every now and then.

This was not a new idea for a movie, there have in fact been others somewhat similar, but it was quite fun. I will state, as I left the movie I heard a woman say to her date that it wasn't a scary movie, and I have to say, I don't think it was trying to be scary as much it was a a psychological thriller, full of anticipation, and quite a bit of humor.

The characters were all quite fun and each seemed to have their own personality. You could tell who was who just by their attitude. Some of my favorite things in this movie were the characters of Emilie, who was inept at doing the job she was tasked to do, Tony Le Domas, the patriarch of the family who was often both surprised and dismayed by his family's task, and Aunt Helene, who was just evil enough that you wondered if she enjoyed the things she was tasked to do.

The main characters are Grace, played by Samara Weaving, who is a woman with no family of her own, and who is excited to finally be part of a real family, even though she finds her new husband's family odd, and Alex Le Domas, Grace's new husband. Alex has tried to talk Grace into leaving or marriage another way. In fact, he does state that he only proposed and married her because if he hadn't she would have left, and losing her was a worse thing than anything to him. When Grace pulls the card to play Hide and Seek she believes it to be a joke, until people start dying, then she realizes she is in a race for her life.

I really enjoyed this movie more than any I've recently seen. I thought there was a good balance of humor and horror, and I think the humor was perfect for the product (meaning it wasn't too much, nor was it over the top). I found the balance of the humor and horror to be so perfectly balanced I'm not sure there is anything I could compare it to.

I recommend this movie, and I want to warn you that if you are expecting a full on horror movie, this isn't what you will be getting when you see this. If you want more horror go see It: Chapter 2 when it comes out (unless you are like me and you found the character of Pennywise to be humorous).

Go see it. It's fun!

The 1970’s pushed out a whole lot of interesting horror and science fiction movies, and a lot of real stinkers. Nightmare Circus aka Barn of the Naked Dead aka Terror Circus is a 1974 movie that falls flat, even thought the idea behind it is an interesting one. From the IMDb website the synopsis is as follows: Three showgirls on their way to Las Vegas have car trouble and are stuck all night out in the desert. The next morning cheerful Andre offers them help in fixing their car. However, Andre is really a maniac with a lot of family problems; his mother ran out on him when he was a child so now he keeps kidnapped women chained up in his barn and trains them to perform circus tricks. Andre's father is still around of course, but because the old homestead is next to a nuclear test site he has been transformed into a raving homicidal mutant that Andre keeps locked up in a shed.
 
I thought this movie had an interesting idea, as the idea behind imprisoning women to force them to perform in a sick, twisted circus is fascinating. However, there were so many holes and things I didn’t quite understand, or believe. For example, Andre has over ten women chained in a barn, yet none of them, when chained together and walking around, think to fight and attack him. He is the only one there, and if they had thought to attack him, and take his gun, then they might have freed themselves. Instead they cry and whine in the barn, they listen to him as he says they are his now, and they belong to him.
 
When they have the chance to escape, they realize the full extent of Andre’s abuse and anger. Even then, I believe that some of them would fight, or at least try to work together to escape.
 
A huge problem with this movie was that for a horror movie, it wasn’t frightening, just a little uncomfortable at times. It is kind of a mix of Psycho and The Hills have Eyes. Not a good movie, not a bad movie, more a fun 1970’s campy film. Some might enjoy it and some might become annoyed over and over by it (like me).

 The Not Good Enough Mother by Sharon Lamb was not really what I hoped it would be. I won a copy of this book in a goodreads giveaway, and it sounded like it would offer an insiders view of what it was like to work as someone who could recommend parents be reunited or permanently separated from their children. Also this is non-fiction, I like to inform my internet people because I know not everyone reads non-fiction.

What this book actually was as a rambling assessment of other parents and children, and the authors own issues and regrets and guilt with her own children. She had two sons who ended up addicted to drugs, and often her stories about other parents lead her to some rumination of only one of her son's addiction and rehab process.

What I wanted in this book was stories about the woman's work, and less about her life. Also, she continued to state that people either were or weren't "good enough." I get that this was part of the title, and I get that she needed to make sure that people understood her branding, but it got tiresome. At the end I wasn't quite sure what I had read, and I wasn't quite sure I had enjoyed it. I, personally, felt muddled, like I was being judged by someone who only knew me from tests she felt were relevant. In fact, proving how muddled this book was, there was an entire section on the Rorschach test and how it came into existence, then the author stated that she couldn't say any of the secrets about how they were read because she would be giving away secrets. I rolled my eyes at that. Her attempts at humor fell flat.

So, while I was excited to read this book, I felt it glossed over the things that should have been important, and it left me wondering why she had inserted herself into it so deeply. I can't say I recommend this, even with the several good reviews that is had. For me it was a little too shallow.

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager is a novel that takes you through the game "Two Truths and a Lie" several times.

This novel follows Emma, a young woman who is haunted by the disappearance of three girls when she was at Camp Nightingale, fifteen years earlier. Emma, a painter who has just gotten her first art show, is an up and comer, who is afraid that people will find out not only what she has done in her paintings, but the lies she continually attempts to cover up with her paintings. Emma is most often haunted by Vivian, the girl who took her under her wings when she arrived as a scared 13 year old at Camp Nightingale. Now, the Camp is being opened back up, trying to start over and forget about the disappearance of the three girls fifteen years earlier. Emma is invited by the owner, Franny, to come be a an art instructor, teaching a new batch of campers to paint. When tragedy strikes again, and Emma falls under the suspicion of the police, she must decide, is it time to tell the truth, or has she just buried herself too deep under her lies.

This book is in the same suspenseful vein as Sager's first novel, Final Girls. It has a build up of suspense as the reader needs to decide what is going on, and who they should believe. There are a few twists to make the reader relax, and feel as if they do know what is going on, before it twists again, telling the reader how wrong they are.

Emma is an unreliable narrator. She is a woman who went through and didn't get over, something traumatic that happened to her when she was still a child. She is crazy, and continues to try to convince herself, and the reader, that she isn't crazy. In reality, she likely is since she hasn't really dealt with the trauma, and doesn't seem to be over the disappearances that happened. Most of the other characters are limited in their development, as the reader doesn't get enough information to make judgements for themselves about whether they believe a person is guilty or not. I would have liked a little more development of both Theo and Chet, Franny's two adopted sons. I would have liked to know a little more about their history, or something that could have added a little to their characters. This was especially desired because both boys played very important parts in the story, both in the past disappearances and the present trauma.

Other characters that could have used more development, were, well, most of them. There were characters from the past when Emma was a child at camp, and they weren't given much development, except to say one was an excellent photographer, and the other was a constant smoker. Also, the only character that got development in the present was Chet's wife, Mindy, who was able to tell part of her story when she was in a room with Emma.

The ending of this was a little unsatisfying. I wanted something more along the lines of Final Girls, but instead got something that was trying too hard when it didn't need to. I didn't think the ending was good enough for the book I was reading, and for me, it left me feeling like I had read the book expecting something that was never delivered. While the ending of Final Girls fit the book, the ending to The Last Time I Lied didn't really seem to fit, and it was trying to hard to place the blame on someone who wasn't guilty. It was, in the end, annoying and unsatisfying.