Review of Countdown

 

🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓 out of 🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓

Countdown is an American supernatural horror movie written and directed by Justin Dec and released in 2019. In this chiller, a group of hard-working people find an app that tells them when they're going to die. 

At a party, a teenager named Courtney (Ann Winters) is in peer-pressured into downloading an app called Countdown that tells her when she'll die. It gives her three hours to live. No biggy, she'll just refuse to go with Evan (Dillon Lane), her boyfriend, into his car, as he's drunker than Cootie Brown, therefore outsmarting the app and changing her destiny. Or so it seems. But Courtney receives a message on her app that says she's broken the user agreement. At home, she's killed by an unseen phantom as her time runs out. Then Evan crashes his car. A branch impales the seat where Courtney was supposed to sit.

Evan Rachel Wood lookalike Quinn Harris, our good-hearted angel-of-mercy protagonist (Elizabeth Lail), disbelieves Evan's claim that the app accurately products one's death. Evan skips his surgery at the hospital and is told he's violated the user agreement. Then he tries to escape the hospital but is haunted by Courtney's ghost and is killed by the entity. 

Nurse Quinn enters the morgue and finds out Evan's time ran out on the app. Unfortunately having downloaded the app herself, she is given a short time and refuses to go with her family to her mother's grave, trying to change her fate. Again, the messages comes: you've violated the user agreement. She destroys her phone, gets a new one, then finds the app has downloaded itself.

After she escapes an attack of a demonic entity in the parking lot of the cell phone store, she meets young Matt (Jordan Calloway), whose Countdown app says he'll die in eighteen hours. This is when they learn the countdown's broken if the user tries to change the future. Then Doctor Sullivan (Peter Facinelli) sexually harasses her, then tricks the hospital staff into thinking it was the other way around. 

Quinn and Matt find Father John (P.J. Byrne), who figures out the app is linked to a demon named Ozhin, previously summoned by a Roma woman who told a prince when he'd die. Quinn and Matt meet again with the Padre and find if someone else dies before their countdown ends, they get to live. 

Time for Quinn to give comeuppance to Doc' Sullivan.

If you haven't seen this gem yet, enjoy!

Polaroid Movie Review

 

 

🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓 out of 🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓

Polaroid is a 2019 supernatural horror film based on the 2015 short film of the same title, directed by Lars Klevberg, the screenplay written by Blair Butler. The storyline follows high schooler Bird Fitcher, who's gifted a Polaroid camera from hell. She comes to realize that those who get their picture taken with it meet a horrid death. 

Sarah (Madelaine Petsch) and her bestie, Linda (Erika Prevost), go through a box of her dead mother's stuff when they find an old Polaroid camera. Being a typical teenager, Sarah has a photo taken of herself in lingerie for her boyfriend. But who's that shadow figure behind her? Sarah meets a grizzly end via the phantom that night.

Bashful high School student Bird Fitcher (Kathryn Prescott) is gifted an old Polaroid camera by her co-worker, Tyler (Devi Santos), who bought it from a garage sale. Said camera has the initials RJS carved into it. Bird takes Tyler's picture, then notices a weird smudge in it. 

Bird goes to a costume party with her friend, Kasey (Samantha Logan), and meets the latter's other friends, Devin (Keenan Tracey), Avery (Katie Stevens), and Bird's high-school crush, Connor (Tyler Young). Tyler's murdered by the ghost, and his photo comes free from the shadow, which has moved to Avery's picture. The entity hunts them down one-by-one.

Bird and Connor play detective and find that the camera was owned by photography teacher Roland Joseph Sable from their school in the past. Said teacher had been accused of torturing four students and killing three of them. Then they turn against each other, Connor and Devin fighting for the camera, and Devin is accidentally snapped by the cursed thing. Devin is arrested and attacked by the entity in his cell.

Bird, Connor, and Casey discover Roland's wife, Lena Sable (Grace Zabriskie), still lives. They visit her and find the camera actually belonged to their daughter, Rebecca Jane Sable (Emily Power), who'd been slow and had formed an attachment to the camera, but had been bullied by other students who took inappropriate pictures of her, causing her to commit suicide. But Sheriff Pembroke (Mitch Pileggi), one of the kids who tried to save her, now grown up, reveals to them that Roland molested his daughter, and the students had tried to rescue her. 

If you haven't already, you've got to check this movie out! Enjoy! 

Walden Movie Review

 

🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓 out of 🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓

Walden (previously called The Stenographer) is a 2023 American horror movie written and directed by Mick Davis starring Emile Hirsch and Shane West. It's about a mild-mannered court reporter (Hirsch) who becomes a milquetoast serial killer who murders killers who get off scot-free in court due to loopholes and technicalities when he develops a brain tumor. 

Walden is painfully shy, but driven, attending a stenographer class trying to break the world record of 360 words a minute with 361. He comes damn close. His friend Judge Boyle (David Keith) wants him to spend his time on something more productive, finding a Miss Right. In time, one of the young women in the stenographer class corners him, questioning him on why he's so laser-focused. Unfortunately, he blows her off.

But then the brain tumor hits, and he begins to date the woman who cornered him, the lovely-and-wealthy Emily Duperon (Kelli Garner). A romance ensues. 

Walden is a praying man but, frustrated at these monsters walking away from convictions, he tells God he won't be praying anymore, and good luck with your do-nothing strategy.

He commences killing murderers who beat the system, including a crackhead who torched his three-year-old daughter in an oven, then gets out and buys a new oven. Walden ties him up and fries his head in said oven. 

Yet the murders continue after the brain surgery. When Walden, now a drinker, finally got laid, I was so happy for him. And if Detective Bill Kane (West), and his vivacious partner, Sally Hunt (Tania Raymonde), catch him, what are they going to do, give him a medal? I would.

If you haven't seen it already, go for it! I found it a special film in the same vein of Slingblade. Enjoy!

Review of Under Paris

🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓 out of 🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓

Under Paris is a new French shark thriller that can hold its own with any fish movie out there--and you know I love my scary fishies flicks--a 2024 film directed by Xavier Gens and written by Gens, Yannick Dahan and Maud Heywang.

Grieving, genius scientist Sophia Assalas (Berenice Bejo), working with the river patrol, must figure out a way to save Paris and Olympic triathalon swimmers from becoming chum as an overly-large shark appears in the river Seine. The breeding rate is astronomical, the female sharks engaged in parthenogenesis, the ability to breed without a male.

The movie opens with Sophia's team trying to save the ecosystem in the ocean, then all her men--including her husband--are gored to death by too-large sharks that aren't supposed to be there, who've bred stealthily.

When Sophia, working with eco' warriors, endeavors to get the Seine closed and the triathalon cancelled, the mayor, Anne Marivin (Le maire de Paris) pulls a Jaws and cares more about making money than saving lives.

What results is a bloodbath with some of the greatest shots I've ever seen and gore unparalleled. Foreign films really are the best (not better than Jaws, though)! 

Enjoy if you haven't! It's on Netflix!

Review of Fall

 

🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓 out of 🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓

I had heard that Stephen King gave this one high praise, but also that Google was bragging about it, so I decided to check it out. I'm so glad I did. 

Fall is a 2022 thriller written by Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank, and directed by Scott Mann. The movie showcases two young female thrill seekers who climb a 2,000-foot-tall television broadcasting tower and become stranded at the top. 

The movie opens with a mountain-climbing scene with vivacious protagonist Becky Conner (Grace Caroline Currey), her bestie, Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner), the hot, bosomy blonde, and Becky's husband, Dan (Mason Gooding), who falls to his death. 

Becky crawls into a bottle until her father, James Conner (played by Neganesque Jeffrey Dean Morgan) endeavors to bring her out of it, not allowing her to drive home drunk. We learn her dad wasn't too keen on her late husband.

Hunter shows up to save the day and recommends they climb that old tower, for it's just the thing to bring Becky out of her blue funk. Once there, they find the tower to be too rickety . . . and the stairs fall away after they reach the top. During their struggles to be rescued, Becky learns that Hunter used her wiles to get Dan to cheat--proving her father correct--and that she got Dan to say he loved her, which was something Becky had failed to do. 

Check it out if you haven't: it's killer! Literally!