The blog of author Stacy Kingsley - Stacy Kingsley

Movie Review - READY OR NOT

8/26/2019

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!

Book Review - THE LAST TIME I LIED by Riley Sager

8/5/2019

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.

Book Review - OUR HOUSE by Louise Candlish

1/28/2019

Our House by Louise Candlish was a chore to get through, such a chore I almost didn't finish it, but at a certain point I just had to know how it was going to end. There will be SPOILERS so if you don't want to read those, skip this review.

Fi is a woman in love, until she finds her husband knocking boots with someone not her in their children's playhouse. This isn't the first time Bram, her husband, has been caught cheating. The problem this time is that the woman he cheats with is someone they both know, someone Fi has considered a friend. Fi is given the lead, and Bram hopes that she chooses to save their marriage, and save him. She suggests something called a "bird's nest" arrangement, where the parents keep the children in the house, while the parents take turns in the house with the children. It works for a while, until Bram's mistakes become bigger and bigger until he can't do anything to save himself, and he is close to killing his family. Bram is blackmailed by a dangerous couple. The crime, he has been driving with a banned license (meaning he has no license to drive with at all) and has an incident with one of the blackmailers, and an accident happens. Bram makes a decision, and Fi makes a decision, and both of them end up hurting the other. Fi loses the one thing that seems to mean anything to her (her house), Bram loses the one thing he should have realized wasn't worth giving away (his freedom and his life), and Bram, once again, screws over Fi, by telling the truth about one of the characters, who Fi states she does not know.

I had a tough time getting through this book. Part of my issue with this book was the writing. There are basically three sections, present day, Fi recording an interview after the fact, and Bram after he has sold the house and before he has killed himself. The sections with Fi are boring, and the writing was very dull, I didn't get to know Fi, and I didn't care about her or what happened. If I could have, I would have skipped all of her parts in this, until the very end when she finally became a little interesting. The writing for Bram was poor in the dialogue. He continually says things through text, dialogue, and his own thoughts, and everything he says is cliche.

The characters themselves weren't very interesting. In fact the only things I took away from the way the characters looked were that Fi is a little overweight, and Bram has blond curly hair. As characters they are boring. Fi is naive and doesn't seem to care for anyone but herself, and she doesn't seem to talk an interest in the changes that are happening to her soon-to-be ex-husband. Bram continues to whine about how he should have been a better husband, and time and time again he has a chance to come clean and doesn't, for absolutely no reason at all.

The only thing that made this book semi-worth it was the very end. We know throughout the book that Bram is going to kill himself, but what we don't know is the bad thing Fi does towards the end, nor do we know what Bram has been writing his story down for.

I can't recommend this book. It was difficult to get through and every day I read it I wished I was reading something else. I only finished it because I was wondering how it was going to end, and if Fi was going to get to keep her house or not. But, the characters weren't likeable, and the story was so incredibly slow.

Television Series Review - THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

10/28/2018

The Haunting of Hill House is a short novel written by Shirley Jackson, who also wrote on of my favorite short stories, The Lottery. There have been a few movies based on this novel, one of the more well known is the 1963 movie, the lesser known version is the 1999 version (which was terribly miscast). This review is for the Netflix series, which was recently released.

If you haven't read the book, you should read it. It isn't very long, and is a quick read. It has none of the characters of the television series, however both movies do try to remain true to the book. The story revolves around Eleonore and her experiences in the house. She is there as part of an experiment to discover if or what might be going on in the house. The study is done by a cocky man, Dr. Montague, who is a supernatural investigator. In the end, the house may be haunted and it takes it's toll on the psyche of Eleonore.

Some of the names of the characters are the same, there is an Eleonore (sometimes called Nell), and there is a Theodora, and a Luke, but none of them are related. The story of Hugh Crane is a lot darker, in one version he was keeping his family in the house, as prisoners, in the 1999 movie the children he killed and entrapped in the house were calling Nell home to protect and save them. In the Netflix series Hugh Crane is a man who loves his wife and his five children. He doesn't know that the house has ghosts and it is built much like the Hotel in AHS: Hotel. Once you die in the house, you become part of the house.

The children, Steve, Nell, Luke, Susie, and Theodora, are all experiencing nightmares brought on by the psychosis of one of them. And after one of the siblings dies, the rest are called back to the house, to either save each other and find out what happened that night they were forced from the house by their father, or they are there to die and become part of the house themselves. None of them have talked about what they have seen, and none of them want to believe that what they saw when they were there, for one summer, in that house, but now, along with their father, they need to figure out what the truth is, and what is just a facade built by the house itself.

I know that several people out there found this frightening or scary, but for me this was, overall, sad. It isn't about an evil house, but more about mental illness and the destruction of a cohesive family. Some of those who have died in the house are only there because they had an untreated mental illness, and the house took advantage of that. There were scenes that were suspenseful, but the show was not scary. It had spooky moments, but mostly, it was sad to see how broken a family was because they didn't talk about one night that forced them to leave the house, and become a broken family. They children are kept in a single home, but not with either of their parents. The audience isn't really told why the father never took the children back in, although the audience does learn why the mother doesn't, and maybe this has some reason as to why the father didn't go back for them. What this did was led to the children staying quiet, broken, and finding different ways to cope with losing their parents. They each have a problem, and each has something they don't want to face.

I did enjoy this, but wonder where it will go for season 2. This may be titled the same as the Shirley Jackson novel, but it really didn't have anything to do with the book, besides some of the characters having the same names as the characters in the books, and the caretakers of the property being the same. Of course, one thing every single version has, which did make me laugh and almost choke on a cookie, was the the words, "In the dark, in the night." This is said by one or more characters, and when I saw it in the 1999 movie, I couldn't help but laugh, and when it was in this version I, like stated earlier, almost choked on a cookie.

I do hope it finds a way to relate more to the book. I enjoyed the book, and I thought, even though neither movie was fantastic, they at least both related to the book as well. For me, this version only made me appreciate my siblings more, and made me think about how much life we take for granted, even when we don't realize we are taking it for granted. Each day is a gift. Each day, we can make a change, and look at what things really mean or what they really are.

So, if you have the time, check out The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, and you decide if it is scary or not.

Book Review - I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS by Iain Reid

9/16/2018

I really wanted to like the book I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. I really did. Unfortunately, I did not like it, I did not like it at all.

I really hated this book. At first I enjoyed it, I thought it was interesting to hear the girlfriends thought, even though they were repetitive, and she got to be a little annoying. Then I just got bored.

Over and over the girlfriend repeats things in her head like: I should tell him I'm going to end things, I should tell him about the caller, Who is the caller, should I answer the phone. I got tired of it all and just wanted to kick her. She never changed her tone, until the end when we find out the huge secret. I also have to say I hated the ending. The last half of the book felt rushed, even though I knew what was going to happen (it was easy to figure out and no, I didn't read any of the reviews before hand). I would have liked it to go in a different direction, and not leave so many loose ends. I would have like it to be more cohesive as well as I found the way things developed was a tedious, time suck.

I don't like hating books. I want to support authors, but I don't get how this has so many good reviews. I think that because it is "literary" that may be why it has garnered so much attention. In my view, it was a book that didn't deliver what was promised, and in the end it left too many things open. I understand that the caller was an abstract idea to some, but to me it was a suspenseful element that didn't add anything to the story.

Not a fan. Not a fan at all. I wanted to like this book so much because of the title, it really drew me in. But, it just couldn't get there and lost me along the journey.

Book Review - Madame Zero: 9 Stories by Sarah Hall

9/12/2018

What can I say about Madame Zero: 9 Stories by Sarah Hall? A lot and yet a little.

So this is a book of nine stories, and some are interesting while some are not. I wasn't sure what I was getting when I won this book in a goodreads giveaway, but I loved the cover and I loved the description so I was excited when I won it. When I received it I couldn't wait to look between the pages to see if it was as beautifully written as it looked.

Of the nine stories I didn't care for a lot of them, because honestly a of them felt unfinished, or like I was missing something. I felt at one point that they were a little pretentious. I did however enjoy "Goodnight Nobody," "Evie," and "Mrs. Fox." All of these seemed to have some element of horror to them though, "Goodnight Nobody" made me think of life and how children are often treated. How much freedom we give them and really how often we depend on them to care for themselves. Also, it was a little freaky if you know the children's book Goodnight Moon.

"Evie" was an interesting story because it was a frightening story about the self and how things might change and we might notice, until something awful happens. It made me think about all of the choices my friends, family, and even those I've made, that might be controversial.

The last was "Mrs. Fox." This was a sad story to me. It was about how we lose things, and can't be around them anymore, even though we want to, and how humans are creeping too far into nature and the natural habitats of the animals we share the world with. It was beautiful, and sad, and lovely.

The rest of the stories didn't touch me as much. I would have liked more involvement for me with the characters. I think this may be what bothered me the most, I didn't get a visual of many of the characters. In fact the most visual images I got were when "Mrs. Fox" and her children were described. Other than that there wasn't a lot of description, or sensory detail, and I would have loved there to be more of that throughout the stories, something to stitch them together.

I can't say I recommend it, but I can't say I don't as I did get a lot out of the stories I did like. But, I know not everyone will enjoy these, or the ending that some of them have, or don't have.

Book Review - OUR LITTLE SECRET by Roz Nay

8/26/2018

SPOILERS!!!

In Our Little Secrets by Roz Nay, the scene starts in a police interrogation room. A young twenty-six year old woman, Angela, is being questioned in a police station by a Detective Novak about her relationship with a young man named HP and his wife. During her time in the police station, Angela continually goes back, beginning her story in the formative high school years of her life, when she first met HP. Throughout their years HP and Angela were friends, but eventually they become more involved after being very close friends for years. When Angela finds that she is being forced to go to England to go to university they make an agreement that they will see how things happen, but they both apparently want their relationship to continue.

In all honesty this book wasn't bad, but I didn't believe what was going on. I didn't believe that Detective Novak would continually let Angela run her mouth off about what life was like as she grew up and grew closer to HP. Every officer I know would have more aggressively brought her back to the subject at hand, what has happened and where is the missing wife? Being able to ramble through her life, meeting HP, inserting herself into his life later, and basically lying about everything, seemed to be a little to much. She was given more time than anyone would have been given to talk about her past relationship.

The one thing that I did take away was the narcissistic nature of the main character, Angela. She was obviously either mentally ill or had antisocial personality disorder. This book did remind me a little of the book The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. The stories had similar main characters, woman who were in love with a man who they weren't sure loved them, or a love triangle.

The ending of the book did surprise me. Although there were characters I wanted a little more information about, like Angela's self-involved mother, her new best friend Freddy, and her absent but intelligent father. I even wanted more information about Saskia, the wife of HP. I don't feel she had enough of her own personality and character, which I do understand since she is being represented through Angela's eyes, and Angela is obviously biased.

I do think this book was interesting, and I do recommend that if you liked books like Girl On a Train and Gone Girl this might hit some of the right spots for you. While I enjoyed it, it did seem to stretch a little long, and I wished that it had gotten deeper into the story earlier. After a certain point I didn't care what was going on between Angela and HP. I just wanted to get to what happened after HP and Saskia were married.

Are There Any GOOD Movies Out There???

3/22/2018

I know it has been a while since I wrote a blog, but either I've been in a funk or there hasn't been a lot that was interesting to me out there in movie land.

Now, I'll be honest, I haven't really felt like going out a lot, partly because it has been freezing cold where I am, and I am just tired of being cold and spending all of my money on warm drinks. However, there also seems to be a good movie freeze, or the movies I am interested in seeing are not appearing in theaters near me, or for very long. For example, I really wanted to see the movie WINCHESTER. Do you want to know when it was playing? 10pm at might. Now I am a night owl, but I also have to wake up at 6:30am to go to work, so I am sorry I am not going to get my butt out of bed after getting home at 12:30am and be happy to go to work that day. I am usually not happy to get up at 6:30am, I'm not going to push it.

Where are all the good movies at? It seems that all the movies being put out are either remakes (DEATH WISH) or weird romantic movies, or something that is just not a type of movie I am interested in. I mean the last good movie I saw was BLACK PANTHER and I thought it was okay, not great, but okay. I hated the ending. It was dumb. And I hated the ease of what happened to Claw, that was stupid too. I know my opinion is one the the few about the movie, but hey, I wasn't a fan of WONDER WOMAN either.

So, someone, tell me what's good out there! I feel like I am falling behind in my movie watching. I've been catching some good television, like, JESSICA JONES, ALTERED CARBON, 9-1-1, and catching up on MAJOR CRIMES. In fact, I still get the DVD's from Netflix and the next movie I'm getting is KEDI (so super excited!!!!). I mean a movie about cats... HELL TO THE YES!!

Anyway, enough of my ranting. If you have any good movies I should see, in the theaters, on streaming, or on DVD please share them with me! I am so bored and need more movies to watch!!!!

Movie Review - MOTHER!

3/4/2018

So I watched this movie the other day, and I think I might have accidentally ingested some weird drugs. MOTHER! stars Jennifer Lawrence as the "Mother" in the movie. She wanders hopelessly in a house she in renovating for her poet husband. All during the film she can't say no to anyone, or anything that happens to her, or to the house she is trying to save.

I know a lot of people either didn't watch this movie, or they watched it and didn't like it. It really does feel like a movie one should watch after ingesting copious amounts of drugs, partly because it is all over the place, and partly because it might only make sense to someone who has taken drugs while they watch it. I actually looked up what the plot of the movie was to see if I had figured it out. While looking up a movie is probably something most people will find annoying, I had to know if what I thought was a correct interpretation of the movie.

I was wrong about what the movie was about, but it is fine because I actually had to think about it before I tried to figure it out. It is defined as a psychological thriller, and to that extent it is exactly what it promises. A psychological thriller film is one that makes you think, one that will make you question not only what a movie is about but if you are right when you decide what you think it is about.

This might now be Jennifer Lawerence's best acting, it is a movie where she seems to have a lot of development, or at least or emotion she had in both The Hunger Games and SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. She ran around this house as things happened around her. She tried to control some of these things, but they always seemed to get out of her control. She not only loses her house, but she loses herself as her husband grows in popularity because of some particularly awesome poetry he wrote.

This is a hard movie to review, only because it is hard to really tell you what it is about without giving away it all. I recommend watching it, but I am going to warn you that this recommendation is not telling you to watch it because I think it is a good. I am honestly not sure if this is a good or bad movie. It is, however, a movie that will make you think. It will cause you to not only question what you watched, but also question the brilliance behind the themes of the movie. You might be surprised at what you think of after you watch it.

Either way, this is on movie where I am going to let you choose your own path. You decide if you like it or not.

Movie Review - 47 METERS DOWN

2/12/2018

Anyone who has watched JAWS might have a certain fear of sharks. Now, sharks have become the thing of parody with the SHARKNADO movies, but 47 METERS DOWN bring them back to the surface as movie monsters who will eat your face and not care what happens later.

47 METERS DOWN is a suspense horror film about two sisters (which I didn't realize until later in the film when Lisa states that Kate is her sister) who have ventured out for a relaxing and adventurous time with each other. One sister, Lisa, is attempting to move past her broken relationship, while the other sister, Kate (also the younger sister), has been out living life and enjoying adventures. Kate talks Lisa into going out on a boat to see some sharks, which has Lisa very frightened. However, Kate is able to talk Lisa into pretty much anything, and they end up going, which costs a couple of lives, and a lot of time.

There is a lot of suspense in this movie as the audience gets to wonder continually if Kate and Lisa will survive the mishap that left them 47 meters below the surface, with only a little bit of air, and a couple of man hungry sharks. Mandy Moore does a good job as Lisa, but there were several times in the movie where I wanted her to be eaten by a shark. She screamed a lot, and whined over and over and over about being scared and not being able to do this or that because of her fear. Kate, played by Claire Holt, did a much better job, screaming when it was warranted, and I really didn't hate her character at all. While throughout I didn't care if Lisa died, I found myself hoping that Kate lived.

As someone who doesn't find much scary anymore, I will admit there were a couple of times while watching this movie that I did jump, and I was on the treadmill, which almost caused me to fall off. This of course, would have been hilarious, but I am glad I didn't fall off of the treadmill. This is me doing you a solid though, don't watch this while you are on the treadmill, or prepare yourself for some jump scares (which were well done and warranted).

Now for the bad. There is a section of the movie, towards the end, that wasn't good. It tried too hard to make this one point believable and it only served to annoy me. I don't like any of the following because they are overdone - a dream within a dream, someone hallucination that they live, someone hallucinating one thing which turns out to be the exact opposite of what happened, or someone hoping for something so much that the director decides to show us them escaping, then drags us back down into the hell they are trapped in. While this worked in the movie THE DESCENT, every other time it has been used has been overdone. So, that was the only scene in the movie that I did not like, for one it was an eye-rolling moment, and for two it didn't fit the format or theme of the movie.