The blog of author Stacy Kingsley

Movie Review - THE QUIET PLACE

8/20/2018

The Quiet Place, unlike many horror movies people have recommended to me in the past, was really quite good. Several people recommended It Follows to me because it was a slow burn, but I really did not enjoy most of it.

The Quiet Place is a quiet movie about an apocalypse of origins unknown. What the audience does see is a quick moving monster that kills quickly and for what seems like no reason. The movie begins with a a family on a quiet shopping spree, and while on their way home tragedy ensues. One of the three children, daughter Regan, is deaf, and possibly has been since birth. The parents are seen as a loving couple who try to find romance when they can, but what can you do when you live in a world without sound.

As life continues, and the family learns to live with the silence, and in silence, a relationship is ruptured due to the previous tragedy. Things escalate as it is revealed the mother is pregnant with a child and about to give birth. When that moment comes, everything that can go wrong, does. The alien monsters are blind and work through echo location, searching for their prey through even the slight sounds they make. They run towards the home the family has made, ready to eliminate them all. One by one the family has to fight for survival, and one by one they either live or die.

The ending of this movie was for a moment surprising, as a character is killed who I did not expect to be killed. There is a lot of anxiety in this movie that creates intense feelings of apprehension. One is walking carefully through this movie with the characters wondering who will live and who will die, or if the entire family will be executed.

I did enjoy this movie quite a bit. I would have liked a little more backstory into the alien monsters and how they came to be, but there were hints, although not enough for me to feel satisfied. This movie also reminded me of the movie Mars Attacks a little due to the way the aliens were killed in both movies.

I recommend a viewing of this. And although I am not reviewing it, I highly recommend BlacKkKlansman.

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Movie Review - IT COMES AT NIGHT

11/20/2017

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I don't know how many people saw this movie when it came out in the theater, but I don't think it was a lot of people. I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie, since the trailers seemed to suggest one thing, while the movie synopsis seems to suggest something else.

Here is the synopsis - A malevolent force is terrorizing the world and a father must decide how far he is willing to go to protect his wife and son when another family shows up looking for help, or a safe harbor.

I thought this was a horror movie, but in all honesty it was more of a slow burning suspense. There wasn't much that is frightening, but there was a scene, a predictable scene, where I wondered if what I thought was going to happen would. Of course since what I thought was going to happen did, it wasn't as suspenseful as if could have been.

So what was this movie about, well it wasn't actually about something that came at night, although what seemed to happen did seem to happen at night. The malevolent force is the same force it almost always is, the human population. The man trying to protect his family, well there are two families, so when you watch the movie you can go either way.

I hate to say it, but I didn't like this movie. The reason I hate to say it is because it seems like I am often saying I hate one movie or another. I didn't like the last movie I watched, which was BEDEVILED, and I am starting to wonder if maybe I am burnt out on the horror genre. Thought I would never say that, and I am surprised now to realize that this is actually how I feel.

There are some tropes that are stereotypical in horror movies, and most of these are: the pet gets killed for some reason, there is often a good versus evil force, often if you have two strangers meeting and working together eventually one of them will either hide a deadly secret that gets them killed or they kill the person who helped save their life. These are all true for the movie IT COMES AT NIGHT. I expected something to actually come at night, but since nothing really did the movie left the title up in the air. The unfortunate thing is that I really did find the title interesting, and I wanted to know what "it" was, but this was also the problem I had with IT FOLLOWS, there was no explanation of what "It" was. And yes, I like when things are left up to my imagination, but I didn't even get a hint of what the issue was besides the fact that whatever "it" was "it" would kill you.

The acting was well done but he characters didn't seem to get much to work with, as I didn't get to know anything about their characters, or I didn't get to know enough to really care about the characters. This seems to be a theme of movies these days. Don't say a lot about the characters, then kill them, make the audience wonder why they died. This doesn't create a good story, since we don't care about the characters why would we care about the story?

The entire point of this story is that during a time of extreme crisis, don't try to get from someone more than you deserve, and don't try to take something from someone just because you think it is the fair thing. If that person takes you and your family into their house, and you are hiding a secret that might get everyone killed, then just leave, just leave.

Do I recommend this movie? Absolutely not. It was slow, and underdeveloped, and not at all a horror film, and incredibly predictable. Was it a good movie? I mean some people might think so because there were several people who really liked IT FOLLOWS, and I did not.

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Movie Review - IT FOLLOWS

9/23/2015

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From IMDb - A young woman is followed by an unknown supernatural force after getting involved in a sexual encounter. Doesn't say much does it? This was how I felt about the movie too.

This was one of those summer movies that I really wanted to see, but never got around to. The previews looked interesting, and I love horror, but this summer just didn't lend itself to movie watching so I am catching up. I know, from reading other peoples thoughts about this movie, so many loved this movie, which made me want to love it to. Unfortunately, I didn't love it, or even like it.

Jay, a young college student, has sex with a boy she barely knows. While sitting in his car she gets a terrible surprise and wakes up tied to a chair in her underwear. Her life has been hanged forever and for this one time of unprotected sex she gets a lifetime of murderous beings following her. To be free she needs to have sex with someone else, but the question is can she? And who? And should she?

So, the premise to this movie was great. A supernatural sexually transmitted disease that kills and can only be gotten rid of through sex. However, this movie was incredibly slow with a lot of teenagers running around screaming and being chased by who really knows what. The beginning of the movie was really interesting and it started with a gruesome murder. Then things just went downhill.

There wasn't really interesting about the characters to make me care if they lived or died, and at one point Jay was just so boring I wanted her to die. She was the most uninteresting character, besides Bella Swan from the Twilight series. I just could not get engaged with her character.

My other big problem: there was never an explanation for the supernatural sexually transmitted disease. I wanted more and I wanted there to be a reason behind this, or at least a little more explanation for it. I wanted some research to be done so I wasn't going through this whole movie wondering why these kids were just dealing with this with no freaking information. Also, where were the adults? This was another horror movie where kids were just running around like they have no parents and can do whatever they want. I am so tired of that. Like really. I mean I know one of the fathers was dead, but where was the mom when her daughters went off for days and disappeared to some guys beach house? Really?

Anyway, let's just say I wasn't a fan of this movie. I wanted more from something so different and it fell flat.

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Movie Review - THE QUIET PLACE

Movie Review - IT COMES AT NIGHT

Movie Review - IT FOLLOWS

Stacy Kingsley

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