The blog of author Stacy Kingsley

Movie Review - AUTOPSY

9/4/2017

AUTOPSY is a 2008 movie about friends who crash their car and end up at a local hospital. The hospital is a bizarre and possibly very dangerous place, with a weird front desk nurse and criminal deviants working as janitors and ambulance drivers.

The main character, Emily, is the one that the doctor, Benway, focuses on. She is a young girl who at one point was in med school, and the doctor seems to focus on this about her. He tells her she should go back to med school and get her degree, but he isn't who he seems to be, and behind the scenes he is experimenting, on what the audience doesn't really know.

One by one Emily's friends are taken away to be examined, and treated like experiments. She doesn't know what is happening until the doctor starts asking her some very odd questions during her exam. Emily asks after her boyfriend, Bobby, and is constantly told that he is in recovery, but towards the end of the movie she finds that nothing is that simple.

I will once again be honest, this was not the best movie. There was no explanation of plot, and as a horror movie it wasn't scary. It tries too hard to be a grotesque horror movie with violence and blood, but that isn't what makes a movie a horror movie. A good horror movie has something frightening, it suspends belief and makes one want to watch more. A good horror movie makes one sit on the edge of their seat and anxiously wait to see what happens to the characters. This movie had none of that.

I didn't get to know the backstory of any of the characters, which doesn't help make me care what happens to them. The bad guy, Dr. Benway, wasn't at all scary or menacing (even though the character was played by the excellent Robert Patrick). The scares were mostly of the gore and blood type, showing the inside of a characters beaten skull as another character tries to help them isn't scary, it is just dull since it has been done over and over. The movie just didn't grab me like it should have and I found my mind drifting to other things. It was boring, which is a bad thing for a horror movie to be.

I don't recommend this movie to anyone, not even anyone like me who will watch anything (even when it has bad reviews from others). It was dull, unoriginal, and just bland.

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Movie Review - DON'T BREATHE

9/7/2016

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There are times, when a movie comes along and you think to yourself, "well this is so predictable" then your mind is blown. DON'T BREATHE is one of those movies.

The summary from IMDb reads: Hoping to walk away with a massive fortune, a trio of thieves break into the house of a blind man who isn't as helpless as he seems. If you out there in internetland have seen the previews then you know that this is exactly what the previews and trailers show. You also see one of the characters die (so you already know that's going to happen), but what you don't see is the twist which caused the movie to take a really weird turn.

I thought this movie would be the same as it seemed in the previews and trailers, but I was wrong, and honestly I am not sure I liked the twist (I thought it was a little weird) but since I didn't expect it, I was happy to have it. Now, that being said, I have to say it didn't make me like the movie any more, but I did enjoy it, even if I did think it was a little over-the-top.

I felt that none of the characters were likable, and I felt that the movie was going to end with a toss up between the two evils. For one, you don't break into a blind man's house, just don't. Second you don't keep trying to find the money you broke in for when everyone keeps getting killed and there is a secret in the house that causes the blind man to be even more scary. Lastly, if you are trapped in a house and a man is trying to protect his stuff by killing everyone or maiming them and he seems to have some scary, super skills, maybe you should just walk away and forget it.

Beside the surprises towards the end of the movie, and the weird twist, most of the movie was predictable. I am not sure what I would classify this movie as since it had both horror elements and suspense/thriller elements, but I feel it is probably more in line with the horror genre. I recommend that if you are bored with most horror movies out there, go see this one, it's not the best, but it is one of the more original endings I have seen...well really one of the most original second halves to be honest.

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Movie Review - TRUTH OR DIE

5/3/2016

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I wasn't sure about this movie when I first began to watch it. It started like a lot of other movies, a group of friends at a party, having fun at the party, making someone feel awkward at the party. So I thought that maybe this was going to be like a lot of other movies. The person who was made to feel awkward goes out and takes revenge on all those who made them feel bad. It kind of was like this, but much more interesting.

IMDb has the movie summarized as a young British boys and girls travel to an isolated cabin after being promised a night of heavy partying. Instead of the fun they hoped for, they meet a killer out to reap vengeance on them for the death of his brother. This summary does not do this movie justice, it is so much more.

Truth or Dare is a popular game played by schoolchildren. This movie puts a new twist on this innocent game (which usually involves someone kissing someone) and turns it into a game of truth or die. The brother of the boy who died has decided to seek revenge for what his brother did. It involves pride, military idealism, and the need for his brother to not be homosexual. The group of friends are tied to chairs so the brother can interrogate them and find our which one of them sent a postcard to his suicidal brother. He asks them to play truth or dare, but instead it is truth or let's see who gets to guzzle gas and die. One by one the group turn on each other, until they learn who sent the postcard.

Havoc ensues, people die, people get the revenge they desire, and it isn't who or how I expected it.

As far as a horror movie goes, this has lots of gore and blood, and one innocent person quickly gets their neck snapped in a very intense scene, but it isn't really a horror movie as much as it is an intense thriller or suspense.

I liked this movie, I liked the evil of the brother, and the end was not exactly what I was expecting. I thought it held my interest after we got away from the beginning party scene, which I will admit took way too long. If you are bored and wondering what to watch, I suggest giving TRUTH OR DIE a chance.

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Movie Review - THE GALLOWS

1/28/2016

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I like horror movies. I dislike predictable horror movies. I disliked this movie.

The movie starts with the recording of a high school play. There is a tragic incident which leads to the death of a student during the play and then the movie picks up several years later, at the same high school. This movie is a found footage film, which I have to say is really overdone and dull at this point. There isn't much new out there to this type of horror film.

Anyway, I am getting sidetracked. The film follows four students who are either in a redo of the play "THE GALLOWS", the same play where a student died years before. One of the students is a former football player who has given up the game to be in this play, for one reason only, because he has a crush on the main actress. His best friend constantly teases him about giving up football to be in the play, and when he realizes how terrible his friend is as an actor he comes up with a plan to destroy the set and help his friend.

The students sneak into the the school late one night to destroy the set, and realize they are not alone. Some sinister force is there with them, seeking revenge, seeking friends, they don't know what is going on, but one by one, tragic things again happen.

This movie was just not good. The scares were predictable, the actors were terrible, the plot dull, and everything was just so obvious. There was not one moment in this film where I was actually very interested in watching it. I wanted to throw things because it was just so obvious who was the killer, and why they were killing, and who was the daughter or son of the killer, and ugh. I am so tired of these boring, predictable horror films which think they are being clever by having some sort of twist at the end, but in reality the twist is so obvious that there is no twist at all.

I would like to take back the hour and twenty minutes I spent watching this movie. I don't recommend this movie to anyone. It isn't scary, it isn't fun, it isn't interesting, it's just dull.

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Book Review - SAINT ODD by Dean Koontz

1/25/2015

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If you haven't read any of the ODD THOMAS books I suggest you don't read this blog post because while I try not to post spoilers, there may be a moment when I can't help myself.

SAINT ODD is the 8th and final book in the series. After reading all of the books, wanting to give up when I got to ODD INTERLUDE, and then hoping that I could finish the series, I am glad I did.

Growing with the main character, Odd, for all seven books I was curious but not surprised at how the series ended. I would have actually like it better if it hadn't been so obvious what was going to happen in the last book.

This book finds Odd back in his hometown of Pico De Mundo, a small town he saved from disaster in the very first book in the series, ODD THOMAS. He returns home to once again save it from disaster. Followed by a group of cultists that want to kill him and set the world on fire, Odd finds that he has friends he can always depend on, but he also has people who will always want to kill him. Throughout the book I felt that I was reading one disaster after another and one murder after another. Not a lot was described and there wasn't really a lot of movement in the book. When I got halfway through I wondered what was really going on because the book really seemed to be going no where.

The ending of the book was absolutely predictable and expected, especially if one has read the other seven books. I really wish it hadn't been so predictable, and I also wish this last book had a little more substance. The cultists weren't really explored in this book, they were just random killers running amok through the book until they try killing the next person. The other characters weren't really that interesting or developed either, not like previous books in the series. The returning characters were mostly background noise. In the end it didn't make much sense except to lead to the ending that I already knew was coming.

I can't say I recommend this book, but I don't want to deter anyone from reading the rest of the series when the first 3, maybe 4 books, were really pretty good. In my view this book didn't add anything to the story, it felt a little rushed, and the only thing that came out of it was the ending, which wasn't a surprise either.

I was disappointed, but I would have still read it.

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Movie Review - AUTOPSY

Movie Review - DON'T BREATHE

Movie Review - TRUTH OR DIE

Movie Review - THE GALLOWS

Book Review - SAINT ODD by Dean Koontz

Stacy Kingsley

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