Dahlia DeWinters - Author

Quirky Heroines, Happy Endings

Horror Movie Review: Final Girl

Title: Final Girl
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Tyler Shields
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2124787/

HERE MAY BE SPOILERS

Portions of the movie may or may not be revealed.

 

Synopsis:

A man teaches a young woman how to become a complete weapon. Later she is approached by a group of sadistic teens who kill blonde women for unknown reasons. The hunting season begins.

 

final girlFor goodness sake.

I knew it was all going wrong when Wes Bentley appeared on my iPad screen.  That deadpan expression and that draggy way of talking he has.  So, I was eye rolling within the first few minutes of the movie.

Then the training sequences began and I became intrigue.  Was she going to be a spy?  Was she going to hunt serial killers?

This movie was highly stylized and seemed to take on the characteristics of a play being presented on film, much like Glengary Glen Ross or Oleanna.  The staging was stilted and the costumes and sets were very….play like.  But I stuck with it.

These four guys in tuxedos are supposed to be serial killers. They take blondes into the forest, give them a head start, then chase and kill them.  Apparenlty, no one cares about these girls enough to report them missing  – high school girls no less – and there is not one whisper of a police presence in the town.

killers from final girl
Who dry cleans their tuxes after a night out hunting?

Okay, I think, suspending disbelief.  No problem, I wanted to see how she was going to fight all these strapping young men and become “FINAL GIRL” (roll credits).

Boy, was I in for a sorry disappointment.  The concept was good, but the acting and the sets and the lackluster fight scenes…I couldn’t suspend everything.

I will say this.  I did like the style of the movie, the use of color and the bizarre lighting of the forest.  The visuals did keep me interested in the end.  However, the story didn’t hold enough water for me.  The dialogue was rather boring.

I don’t regret watching it, but it left me kind of meh.

Grade: D

Thriller Movie Review: Bound to Vengeance

Bound-to-vengeance-copy
Title: Bound To Vengeance
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Director: Jose Manuel Cravioto
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230213/

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.
Do not read this review if you don’t want portions of the movie revealed.

This movie was recommended to me by an author friend of mine. Given that I don’t shy away from the sometimes terrible thriller/horror movies on Netflix (except the ones that are CLEARLY Lifetime movies), I didn’t hesitate to give this one a shot.

Synopsis: A young girl, chained in the basement of a sexual predator, escapes and turns the tables on her captor.

First of all, the protagonist was a young woman, not a young girl. Young girl implies to me a ten year old. Second, after I viewed the movie, I went back to the imdb listing and discovered that two men wrote the screenplay, which didn’t surprise me at all.

One big thing for me with this film: Black woman dies first. WTF? We haven’t got past that yet? Seriously? Enough with this already.

Basically, young woman escapes, then realizes dude has women trapped up all over the place. He tells her, if he dies, they all die since he’s the only one who knows where they are. So, young woman makes the choice to try to rescue all the women.

One complaint I read about the movie was that if she’d just escaped, she’d be all about going to the police. I give the movie a pass, because, her decision to go rescue the other girls hooked me into the movie.

So, like I said previously, she goes to rescue the black woman first, and she dies by accident. The second rescue goes just as badly. But even as stuff went down, I found myself asking “Why are you letting the psycho dude do all the talking? You know these women must be a little nuts…at least TRY to talk some sense into them, don’t just sit back and let him run his mouth.”

These two incidents happened at the beginning of the action and kind set me against the movie. The flashbacks are interesting, but reminded me of Cloverfield. As a woman of a certain age, I was like “why the heck is all this being filmed, how boring”, even as I knew it was being filmed for a payoff at the end. Chekov’s video footage, if you will.

The confrontation with the secondary villain was just strange and not very compelling.

I will say that the main actress played the part to the hilt and she did an excellent job. The issue of sex trafficking and kidnapping is made real without being super obvious. The material itself, however, was not up to par and parts of the movie had me scratching my head.

This could have been much more than it was. I wouldn’t give it a second viewing, but I don’t feel it was a waste of time.

Grade: C