Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

Cinema Review

I’ve been a fan of Star Trek most of my life, watching the original series with Kirk and crew and I enjoyed JJ Abrams‘ reboot of the series with all new younger versions of the familiar characters. Rather than just going back to the start and dumping years of continuity JJ Abrams kept it all and rebooted it with time travel leaving him free to still use the characters to tell new stories in an alternative reality. The weak forgettable villain in that film could be forgiven since he was just a plot device to get the Enterprise crew together and get their roles established. This second film has them face a villain whose a lot smarter and more complex than their

The opening sequence has Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew down on a primitive planet flagrantly breaching Starfleet’s Prime Directive with Kirk and Sulu (John Cho) being chased by the natives for stealing their sacred scroll while Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) try to prevent a world shattering volcanic eruption. This results in Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) giving Spock and Kirk a dressing down with Kirk getting demoted to First Officer while Spock gets reassigned to another ship.

Now it’s time the despicable baddie in this film John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) to makes his move and he does by curing a little terminally ill girl. He does this to extract a favour from her father (Noel Clarke) who explodes a device in a Starfleet facility blowing himself up in the process. In response Starfleet calls a meeting of it senior captains who all attend with their first officers which means Kirk and Spock are there too. This is part of Harrison’s plan and he attacks the meeting from an armed flying car.

With many of the captains injured and dead Kirk finds himself re-promoted to captain of the Enterprise. He pleads with Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) to allow him to hunt down and kill Harrison and Marcus agrees and lets Kirk have Spock back as his first officer. Spock is openly critical of the mission since going after Harrison to execute him instead of bringing him to justice is a breach of Federation law, however after the attack on Starfleet Harrison managed to use a portable teleportation unit to beam away to safety across the galaxy on Kronos, the Klingon home planet. To reach Harrison on Kronos from outside Marcus tells Kirk to take experimental photon torpedoes.

This comes to a head when Scotty (Simon Pegg) refuses to sign off on the torpedoes when told he can’t examine the warheads. Kirk has been convinced that he needs the missiles to kill Harrison without entering Klingon space and igniting a war so Kirk relieves Scotty of his position and once the Enterprise is underway he appoints Chekov (Anton Yelchin) as chief of engineering.

I don’t want to reveal too much more of the plot but when the Enterprise gets to the boundary of Klingon space things turn out to be a lot more complicated than a simple hunt for a terrorist. The film pulls out a few surprises as it progresses thorugh various action sequences full of running and jumping and fans of the old Star Trek films will see a certain familiar turn of events toward the end, which may have been a mistake since it doesn’t manage to evoke the same emotional resonance as it did the first time around and the consequences get waved away with a bit of an ass-pull.

The film has plenty of amusing character interaction and with Uhura doing her part of the action the role of attractive female is filled by Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) a science officer sent to specifically handle the top secret photon torpedoes. In many ways she reminded me of the guest characters who would appear for plot specific purposes in the Star Trek TV episodes. Bones (Karl Urban) is there and plays an important party in the story but he’s side-lined by the action. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a great over the top passionate performance as the dangerous terrorist John Harrison that really fits with the almost hysterical pace of action in this film. The film has the same strong, bright visual style as the 2009 Star Trek film and I really enjoyed it though no doubt there will be talk of lens flare again. The film might not be as great as it could have been but it’s a lot of fun which isn’t something that could be said for all the other Star Trek films.

Rating 8.0/10

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Review: The Lords of Salem

DVD Review

Rob Zombie is a horror director who has impressed me and disappointed me in the past but going by this film he seems to create better work when he has more creative control of the project and a limited budget. This film is strongly influenced by Satanic horror like Rosemary’s Baby but it has a strong visual style that reminded me of Suspiria and like that film the visuals are matched by use of really creepy sound.

Heidi Hawthorne (Sheri Moon Zombie) is a rock DJ at a radio station in Salem, part of a trio of DJs that also includes Herman “Whitey” Salavador (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Herman Jackson (Ken Foree) who have radio show full of jokey chat and music and features such as interviewing musicians from unknown bands. Heidi finds a wooden box has been left for her at reception after the show one night. She finds it really strange since is addressed to her by her real name of Adelaide not Heidi and all she knows about who sent it is that they are called The Lords. Inside is a vinyl record and she decides to take it home to listen to it and Jackson jokes that they should put it on their “Smash or Trash” feature. When she listens to the record it makes her feel funny and she has visions of witches.

These witches are part of a coven that were executed in the 17th century but the leader of the coven Margaret Morgan (Meg Foster) put a curse on those who killed them that the blood of the whores of Salem will be spilled to bring the Anti-Christ into the world and his vessel shall be the descendant of Reverend Jonathan Hawthorne, the man who sentenced them. We learn their story through visions that come to Heidi in her sleep and through the research of Francis Matthias (Bruce Davison), an author of books about witchcraft who is a guest on Heidi’s show the night they play The Lords record. It is Matthias who figures out that Heidi is a descendant of Hawthorne.

All across Salem different women hear the music and are suddenly frozen, mesmerised by the discordant infernal sound. I spotted Barbara Crampton in a small cameo as horticulturalist who is spellbound by the music. It doesn’t affect all the women who hear it since Matthias’s wife Alice () listened to it and just thought it sounded horrible

Heidi goes home and her landlady Lacy Doyle (Judy Geeson) invites her for a drink with her two sisters Megan (Patricia Quinn) and Sonny (Dee Wallace). Heidi asks what the sisters do and Sonny gives a vague description of being some sort of alternative therapist. Sonny tells Heidi that Megan is a very skilled palm reader and prompts her to let Megan do a reading for her. Heidi is sceptical but goes along with it. Megan is a bit more intense than she expects giving her a talk about fate and destiny. It leaves Heidi feeling a bit uncomfortable and she makes her apologies and goes to her room.

From this point Heidi gets drawn into a world that is increasingly unreal. The three sisters are part of Margaret Morgan’s Satanic cult and they take charge of getting Heidi prepared to give birth to their Anti-Christ. Everything comes together in a climax of atrocity and blasphemy at an exclusive one-night invitation only concert of The Lords of Salem.

I remember when the Anti-Christ was all over horror films back in the 70s and this film really shows a strong influence from those films so anyone expecting serious look at the Salem witchcraft trials would be better looking off elsewhere. Meg Foster exudes total evil in the part of Margaret Morgan and there a great performances from Judy Geeson, Dee Wallace and Patricia Quinn as the three sisters. Many reviews have commented on the way that Zombie has not gone for the pretty plastic Hollywood cast, especially with quite a lot of nudity on display but they are usually aiming this at Sheri Moon Zombie who I thought is really well-cast in this role. The number of familiar actor in the cast list with vanishingly small parts seems to hint at an original script that was much more ambitious but the tight budget meant it needed to be ruthlessly trimmed

The film uses some very strong visuals especially in the climax and while some are disturbing others are more comedic and ridiculous. I’m not sure if Satan was the giant Sasquatch or the red dwarf with the flippers and the huge tentacles or both.

The use of sound is very well done, not just with that creepy Lords of Salem music but also some good use of other music, especially All Tomorrow’s Parties by the Velvet Underground. I like the crazy voices ranting over the visuals that add to the sensory overload feeling at the end. This film is a lot less gory than the other films he’s made but then blood isn’t everything.

Rating 7.5/10

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Review: Iron Man 3

Cinema Review

Marvel have launched what they are calling phase 2 with Iron Man 3 and while it can’t match the sheer exuberance of The Avengers it still maintains all the elements that made Iron Man such a hit such as the high octane comic book action you could want and Robert Downey Jr. giving the role a touch of swagger and wit. It is certainly a better story than Iron Man 2 and I think it might be better than the first one though I’ll wait until I have seen it again to decide.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is still haunted by the memories of his brush with death at the end of The Avengers film and sine he can’t sleep he has thrown himself into developing Iron Man suits. We get a flashback to years before Tony became Iron Man in Switzerland. Being Tony he is fascinated by an attractive female scientist Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) but gives a geeky male scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) the brush-off. This all comes back to bite him on the ass in the present which is only to be expected since a large number of the evil villains superheroes have to battle are disgruntled scientists with a chip on their shoulder from having their genius ignored by the hero. The organisation that Killian wants help in founding is called Advanced Idea Mechanics or A.I.M. This organisation will be familiar to people who read Marvel comics as antagonists of The Avengers.

A new terrorist called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) has appeared on the world scene attacking American targets with some new type of bomb that leaves absolutely no trace and so of course Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) is put on the job in his War Machine armour but the government have decided to give the armour a tacky paint job and renamed him Iron Patriot. This does lead to lots of piss-taking by Tony.

Tony himself gets right on the Mandarin’s case when Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) gets seriously injured in an explosion outside the Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. After the Mandarin does one of his videos taking credit for the blast Tony holds a press conference outside the hospital where Happy is lying unconscious. Tony tells the Mandarin that he’s coming for him and dares the Mandarin to attack him, even giving out his home address.

Tony is at home with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and he gets a visit from Maya Hansen who he barely remembers. She wants to warn him about Aldrich Killian but before she has a chance to say anything three helicopters full of the Mandarin’s henchmen start blowing up the place. This leads to a big action scene where Tony has to get Pepper and Maya to safety while the helicopters are destroying his house. Tony takes out two copters but ends up knocked into the sea and covered in rubble by the third which flies off.

When Tony escapes the rubble and flies up into the air but the damage to his suit results in it losing power and crashing in the middle of the countryside, hundreds of miles away. The world thinks Tony is dead so he lets Pepper and Rhodey know he’s still alive. He has to get his suit fixed and recharged and he gets help from a young boy called Harley (Ty Simpkins) with access to a garage and a neglectful mother. With Rhodey’s help he investigates the explosion and finds himself up against the Mandarin’s enhanced super-soldiers without his suit or his computer. This part of the film has Tony realises he’s not just a man in a can but without his suit he is still a technical genius.

I think that the villains in this film are the weakest part of it and they have no convincing motivation for what they are doing. Guy Pearce plays the sleazy sociopathic Killian very well and Ben Kingsley was a revelation in the role of the Mandarin but the main weapon on their side was secrecy and once their secrets were out they were no real threat to Tony and Rhodey. This means the climax had to rely on the predictable damsel in distress trope and of course that means Killian kidnapping Pepper, forcing a confrontation with Tony. Despite being such a hoary old cliché they managed to make it pretty exciting with whole of lot of robots and explosions.

I know people were wondering if Marvel could keep up the standard set by The Avengers and I think that with this film they haven’t tried to do that. I am glad they are keeping the solo films separate while not ignoring events happening in the others. The story is fairly straightforward and though Tony does have tough time it never sees too tough for him to handle without needing to call in help. There is a very controversial character revelation that will be very divisive but it didn’t give me any problem, but then I’m not really a big fan of Iron Man comics. I can totally understand if people feel differently about it. I know it’s a big brash expensive block buster with lots of special effects but it’s also a lot of fun and a lot of the time that is what I want from a film.

Rating 8.0/10

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Review: ZMD Zombies of Mass Destruction

Bluray Review

This is another film to join the growing ranks of zombie comedy films but this seemed to miss its targets a bit more than those it hit and while it was amusing enough for a one time watch it just felt a bit inconsequential and burdened with a crude political subtext.

The zombie plague arrives at the island town of Port Gamble in form of a body washed up on the beach which attacks an old beachcomber. Like most zombie films the story is not about the zombies but about the people. The characters in this film make up cross-section of modern paranoia and prejudice with the sympathetic characters being those subjected to these prejudices. Frida Abbas (Janette Armand) is the American born daughter of Ali Abbas (Ali Hamedani) an Iranian restaurant owner but she gets called Iraqi by her wannabe-redneck neighbour Joe Miller (Russell Hodgkinson) who doesn’t care about the difference. Frida has come back to Port Gamble after dropping out of her studies at Princeton. Ali wants her to work in restaurant and take it over from him but Frida wants something more even if she’s not sure what. Frida has a boyfriend called Derek (Ryan Barret) who used to work as a dishwasher in her father’s restaurant until he got sacked for being late too often. Naturally Ali does not approve of Derek who is a bit of an idiot who also makes the mistake of calling Frida an Iraqi just like her neighbour does.

Tom (Doug Fahl) has come back to Port Gamble with his boyfriend Lance (Cooper Hopkins) to come out to his mother. Lance is comfortably out of the closet but Tom is nervous about the people he grew up with finding out he is gay which is not helped by Lance wearing an ‘I’m with him,‘ T-shirt. They run into Tom’s high school teacher Cheryl Banks (Cornelia Moore) who assumes that they are a couple as soon as she meets them which might be a hint that local people already know but don’t really care.

We get to see the pathetically low congregation at the local church who are listening to the preacher Reverend Haggis (Bill Johns) blaming the Dominionist trio of abortion, Islamic terrorism and homosexual marriage for all the world’s ills. He doesn’t seem very sure of himself so it’s lucky for him, that he will be facing the very apocalypse he hammers on about to the half dozen believers in his church. One of the believers is the town’s mayor Hal E. Burton (James Mesher) [do you get it? Halliburton is the notorious oilfield services with important links to several senior US Republican Party politicians].

The zombie plague has been gradually spreading while we have been getting introduced to the characters. Lance and Mike are having dinner with Mike’s mother (Linda Jensen) and are so preoccupied with Lance coming out to her that they barely pay any attention to the bite on her hand. Lance does his big announcement to his mother while he is in the kitchen but she’s turned into a zombie and attacks Mike. They fight her off but she impales herself on a toasting fork Mike is using to trying hold her off. Mike pins her to the wall and they turn on the TV to see if the news has any answers to what is going on. The TV news has as mixture of information mixed in with speculation and assumption, calling it virus but then calling its victims zombies. The main assumption on the news is that it is a biological terrorist attack.

Frida sneaked out to be with Derek who gets to show us how much of an idiot he is since it’s here he talks about Frida being Iraqi. He doesn’t even get the point when Frida calls him Norwegian in return. He thinks he’s a musician and so Frida has to listen to a song that he wrote about her. This lovely romantic scene is rudely interrupted when zombies attack and Derek gets killed in a very brutal way. Frida manages to escape and she makes her way back home.

Her house is surrounded by zombies but Joe Miller’s wife Judy (Victoria Drake) offers Frida shelter in their cellar. As they get in the cellar a zombie bites Judy’s arm. At first everything is okay but when Joe sees that the terrorist blamed on TV has a medallion like Frida’s he starts getting the delusion that he’s Jack Bauer interrogating a terrorist. If Judy wasn’t slowly turning into a zombie she’d put a stop Joe’s madness but the only other person in the cellar is his teenage son Brian (Andrew Hyde) who is afraid to stand up to his father.

After Lance and Mike get out of Mike’s mother’s house they have to fight through streets full of zombies. They meet up with other survivors who don’t last long. They meet up with Cheryl who has had her own very bad time. They get into the church where the congregation are having a bingo night and seem unaware of what’s going on outside. One look out the door convinces them and so of course Haggis spins it into the apocalypse. When they find out that Lance and Mike are gay they want to cure them so they too can be saved.

I think the worst thing a horror comedy can do is fail to be either funny or scary. This film just plays it too safe and although the film-makers may think themselves brave to include gay characters it plays it safe with a relationship free of any passion or sexuality or any personality beyond their sexuality. As you can probably see this film seems to be mainly a satire about US society and it goes for the easy targets on the right-wing. This did tend to push the zombie aspect of the film to the side which is a pity because the zombie effects were okay though there was some CGI used. I can’t give this film a strong recommendation but humour is very subjective and it might make you laugh more than I did.

Rating 6.0/10

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Review: House at the End of the Street

Bluray Review

I had avoided any trailers for this film and all I knew was that it had Jennifer Lawrence starring in it. For some reason I thought was going to be some sort of cliché haunted house story but I was surprised that it turned out to be a mystery thriller and I’m sure I could re-watch it and pick it apart and see the story fall to pieces but for a first time watch it kept me interested enough.

The film opens with a couple in bed being disturbed by their daughter Carrie Ann walking about in the hall. The daughter brutally kills both her parents with a hammer then runs off into the nearby forest.

Four years later Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence)and her mother Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) move into a large house they are renting in a town at the edge of a National Park forest. The house would normally be much more than they could afford but after the brutal murder in the house next door property prices in the neighbourhood have taken a nosedive. Sarah is doctor and has got a job at the local hospital while is a high school student. Elissa’s father is a musician and is divorced from Sarah and he spent a lot of time on the road while Sarah’s work kept her busier than Elissa would have liked so there is bit of friction between Elissa and her mother.

At a neighbourhood party (what the hell is a potlach?) Sarah and Elissa meet most of the neighbours. One of the neighbours introduces Elissa to her son Tyler (Nolan Gerard Funk), talking about all his achievements and charity work. He is fit and full of himself and Elissa is not very sure about him. Sarah had thought the murder house was empty but it turns out that Ryan, the son of the murdered Jacobsons, still lives there alone. There isn’t much sympathy from the neighbours considering he lost his family. Instead the neighbours seem more worried about how the house’s existence affects the value of their houses.

Next day Tyler invites Elissa to his charity fundraising meeting that night and as soon as Elissa arrive she realise it is really a sleazy drunken teenage party and the charity fundraising just involves handing over some of their allowances to fool their parents. When looking for toilet in a bedroom she finds Jillian (Allie MacDonald) who is lying on a bed feeling a bit too drunk and has to run off to the bathroom urgently. While she is gone Tyler comes in and he’s a gotten a lot drunker and a lot more rapey. After fighting him off Elissa has had enough and leaves.

It is a long ten mile walk back home but passing car stops in front of her and the driver introduces himself as Ryan Jacobson (Max Thieriot), her new neighbour. He offers to drive her home but Elissa is a bit nervous and turns down his offer. A moment later the rain starts and Elissa changes her mind. Elissa wants to know about the murders and why Ryan still lives there. Ryan is happy that someone wants to talk to him  about it since most people in town just avoided him altogether. His story is that he was sent away to live with an aunt and his brain-damaged little sister Carrie Ann killed their parents. Later we find out that the brain damage is because of an accident when she fell off her swing and Ryan blames himself even though his parents were out of their heads smoking meth in the house instead of watching them.

Of course Elissa falls for Ryan but Sarah is a bit concerned when she finds out and has a quiet word with Sheriff Weaver (Gil Bellows) at the hospital. Weaver likes Ryan and has never heard any complaints about him apart from the property value but he does get picked on by other local kids. Sarah wants Elissa to concentrate on graduating high school and is worried that Ryan will distract her by becoming her next ‘wounded bird’ project. She tries to lay down the law that they are never to be alone together but realises she’s over-compensating for years of neglect and guilt at her own wasted youth and Elissa knows it too

The central mystery of the film is what happened to Carrie Ann after the murders? There are of course local scary stories that she still lives in the forest but as Elissa and Sarah uncover the story they find out things are not what they seem.

I think this film is okay but not very memorable. It draws you in and makes you think it’s letting you on its secrets but it has a few twists at the end which you might be able to figure out. It isn’t very original and a lot of the background characters are just sort of there. It really feels like a TV movie that got promoted to cash in on Jennifer Lawrence becoming a star name after the Hunger Games was surprise hit.

Rating 6.0/10

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Review: Evil Dead (2013)

Cinema Review

Oh no they’ve remade another classic 80s horror, how dare they sully the memory of this classic film etc. Except that the ‘they’ in this case are the same ‘they’ who made the original film and the original film was put together on a tiny budget with effects that are only amazing if you take the budget limitations into account. If Sam Raimi wants to use this remake as a jumping off point to getting an Army of Darkness sequel made then I am okay with that. As it turns out this sequel delivers in tense gory horror what the original never could.

So the story is the same as in the original film: five friends go to a cabin in the woods but this time the friends are not going to party. Instead they are here to help Mia (Jane Levy) dry out and quit drugs. Mia’s brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) is there to support her and he’s accompanied by his girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore). Mia has been brought to the cabin by an old friend Olivia (Jessica Lucas who is a nurse and has been trying for a while to get Mia clean. The fifth member of the group is Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), a stuck-up judgemental prick who is the partner of Olivia. What is really Eric problem is that David left home leaving Mia to take care of their terminally ill mother and was never there to support Mia in her grief when their mother died. Another addition to the group is Grampa, the family dog that has been living with David.

The cabin is not just a creepy run-down hut in the middle of nowhere; it is their creepy run-down hut in the middle of nowhere. Mia and David’s mother owned it and the five friends used to come there for a break. They are not happy to discover someone has busted the lock on the front door and left the place in a mess with smell that Mia finds unbearable. Olivia thinks Mia is acting up since she can’t smell anything. Grampa can smell it and he starts scratching at the floor. Underneath a rug the find a trap door down the cellar and when they open it they all smell what Mia smelled.

At the start of the film there was a short scene of an old woman using the evil spell book called the Necronomicon to drive out the evil spirit possessing a young woman. That is who broke into the cabin and what they find down there is a load of dead animals hanging from the ceiling and a support pillar that has been badly burnt. Eric also finds the book wrapped in black plastic and barbed wire and takes it back upstairs with him.

I have no idea why he does it other being an idiot but Eric takes the book to a back room and he snips off the barbed wire and tears off the black plastic. No alarm bells ring in his head as he open the book clearly bound in human skin and sees desperate warnings scrawled all over the pages of the book telling whoever is reading it to not read it not to touch it but leave it alone. On many pages the writing has being obliterated with crayon. This doesn’t put off Eric who uses his Hardy Boy skills to take a pencil rubbing and reveal the text underneath which he reads out as it is revealed.

Mia is outside in the rain trying to cope with pain of withdrawal. As Eric reads the words from the book Mia hears something waking up in the woods. It’s the POV monster and as it rushes through woods Mia gets creeped-out and runs from it. She gets caught in thorn bushes and sees a deadite who infects her with its evil.

Mia tries to warn the others that they have to leave but they are persuaded by Olivia that this is Mia acting up and wanting to go back to her addiction so they don’t listen to her until it’s too late and soon there’s blood and pain as the evil possesses them and they are fighting against their friends for their lives.

This film is a much more straightforward horror than the original with none of the more fantastic effects and mind screw moments. It still manages to keep the violent intensity and thanks to the use physical effects the gore really has that visceral quality that CGI effects cannot yet replicate. I really enjoyed this film though I am not going to say it surpasses the original. There are a few a call outs to the original for fans to look out for. I’d recommend this to any fans of bloody horror and think fans of the original should give it a try

Rating 7.5/10

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Review: Dark Skies

Cinema Review

When writing a review I prefer films that I can say that I clearly like or dislike but so many films fall into a middle range and I don’t have any strong feelings either way. This film is another one of those, with reasonable acting some nice atmospheric directing but it has a poor script and a pretty flat ending.

In a nice normal neighbourhood a nice normal family find themselves at the centre of a series of increasingly disturbing occurrences. This is such a common template for so many modern films and this story never really does anything new with it. The Barrett family are very typical with Daniel (Josh Hamilton) who is an unemployed architect and Lacy (Keri Russell) who works in real estate but is a bit too honest to make a decent living from it. They have two sons, rebellious teenager Jesse (Dakota Goyo) and slightly creepy Sam (Kadan Rockett) who is about six.

The film takes its time before the creepy stuff starts and we get to know the Barretts. Daniel fails another job interview and doesn’t tell Lacy. Money is tight and they are relying on Lacy’s job to support them but she warns clients off buying a run-down property.

Okay onto the creepy stuff and it starts off minor with Lacy waking up and finding a mysterious mess in the kitchen. Then next night Lacy discovers everything in the kitchen in tall stacks of perfectly balanced stuff and there’s a strong similarity to Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist. The police think it’s a prank and suggest they turn on the security system. Jesse claims to know nothing but Sam talks about the sandman. This is the name of a character in a scary story Jesse was reading Sam before he went to sleep. They realise this is the name he’s applied to a strange figure who was in his room.

Daniel switches on the security system before they go to bed the next night and the middle of the night the thing goes off. The security company says they can detect a fault. Lacy goes to check on Sam and in the room she suddenly sees a tall shadowy figure standing in the room next to the boy and she screams. Then Sam and the figure disappear. Daniel spots Sam outside the house in a daze. He runs out and grabs the boy and wakes him up.

Lacy is now convinced and there is something happening to them. Sam has done a crayon drawing of a child with three tall dark figures and it really creeps out Lacy. Then hundreds of birds smash themselves into the house. Lacy does some internet research and comes up with an answer but it takes things getting very serious before Daniel is convinced and they go visit Edwin Pollard (J.K. Simmons) the guy with all the answers in this film.

There isn’t really anything wrong with the film but it is a by-the-numbers collection of common horror tropes and it brings to mind many similar films made recently with this formula including films by the same producers that do it better. It does have a few nice scares and so as long as you don’t expect too much you may enjoy it.

Rating 6.0/10

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