From time to time, I forget or not motivated enough to write a full length review for every single film I have seen in theaters.
As to catch up, here are some short form reviews:
House at the End of the Street
HATES, the Twitter approved titled of this movie (despite actually being HATEOTS), is a maddening display of the horrors plaguing Hollywood today and the skeevy producers who want to profit off a new hot commodity with a film that should have continued to stay on the shelf. Oscar nominated actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Shue have the unfortunate to move into a small town filled with strangely injurious, rich white people, and next door to a blank-staring young man, who openly chooses to live at the house where his parents were murdered by his deranged sister four years ago. Original screenplay and story by David Locuka and Jonathan Mostow respectively? That's complete bull. The first half is a remake of the super-lame THE TOUCH OF SATAN, sprinkled with plot and camera swipes from TWILIGHT, before embarking on a disrespectful plagiarism of one of the all-time greatest films ever made. The first couple of twists are genuinely interesting but they become negated by later ones, a mixed moral message, and being a slasher film without any sight of blood. Ruined by its PG-13 rating, as well as the pretentious direction by Mark Tonderai, this psycho-sexual thriller wastes the time of its very talented actresses and the pocket money of its easily-fooled target audience.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
The Possession
This movie has to be the biggest laugh riot of the year next to TED. I couldn't suppress the humongous guffaws or the urge to talk back at the screen. A young girl picks up a odd box covered with Hebrew writing at a yard sale of all things, becomes mentally and physically overcome by a Jewish demon, and threatens to further ruin her parents' divorce. The film is well shot, with some striking compositions, and does benefit from the talents of Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick. Even the young actresses as their daughters try to make this harsh knock-off of THE EXORCIST be seriously dramatic and frightening instead of ultra-campy fun. There are too many snicker-filled highlights: the opening pretzel-twisting non-murder(?), Anton Sanko's goofy piano score consisting of loud "DURM"'s after every big scene, an outrageous murder of a teacher, the deliberately over-the-top performance of a college professor, and Jewish reggae musician Matisyahu as a Hasidic priest. It may be highly stupid, not to mention makes the bad decision to setup a possible sequel, but THE POSSESSION is a bit worthy of a view for all the wrong reasons.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
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